Pictures of the old French court

by Mrs. Bearne

So Jeanne was, after all, to be Dauphine, but her husband, instead of a widower old enough to be her father, was to be a young prince of her own age and the future King of France.

{1350}

They were married at Vincennes in the following year, on the 8th of April, 1350, both of them being about thirteen or fourteen years old. Of course they were not strangers to each other, for they were cousins, and had both been brought up at the court of their grandfather and uncle in Paris, and at that ancient castle in the deep shade of the forest, where generations of the children of France[7] had been born, had played in childhood, grown to manhood or womanhood, ruled, loved, suffered and died. The love of the forest and of all beauty in nature and art lay deep in the heart of the young Dauphin, who in no way resembled his father or grandfather. That Philippe and Jean de Valois, the chivalrous King of Bohemia or the warlike Princes of Burgundy should have had such a descendant would surely have seemed impossible at that time and with those surroundings.

Charles had neither inherited the striking beauty nor the martial tastes of the Valois. He was a quiet, delicate lad, tall, pale, dark-eyed and rather timid. He cared very little for riding, and not at all for war and warlike pastimes, but delighted in study and literary pursuits. And he adored the Dauphine, whose bright beauty and charming character made her the idol of the court and country. The children had been attached to one another from the first, and as they grew older Charles, both as Dauphin and King, ever turned for sympathy, counsel, or consolation to Jeanne, whom he called “the light of his eyes and the sunshine of the kingdom.”

The plague had now abated, and people were beginning to recover from the fear and depression in which they had lately been living. The royal family had suffered severely. The Dauphin had lost his mother and grandmother; the two little princesses, sisters of himself and the Dauphine, were widows; the Queen of Navarre, whose daughter Blanche the King had just married, was also among the victims of the pestilence. However, for the present the plague was over, and those who had escaped now breathed freely and tried to console themselves in different ways for the calamities of the last two years. The Duke of Normandy was married just after his father to the widowed Comtesse d’Auvergne; there were fêtes again at court, and things seemed to be returning to their usual state. The death of Philippe VI. came as a sudden shock in the midst of the general rejoicing; but then followed the coronation of the new King and Queen, which was celebrated with great magnificence. On the same day the King knighted his two eldest sons, the Dauphin, and Louis, afterwards Duc d’Anjou, his brother Philippe, Duc d’Orléans, his stepson Philippe, Duc de Bourgogne, his cousins the Comtes d’Alençon and d’Etampes, and other young nobles. The King and Queen left Reims on Monday evening and journeyed by Laon, Soissons, and Senlis to Paris, which they entered in state on Sunday, the 17th October, after vespers. The town was encourtinée, or hung with costly stuffs, the artisans were dressed each in the costume of their own trade, the citizens of the town in costumes like each other, the Lombards who lived in the city all wore long parti-coloured silk robes, and on their heads tall, pointed hats, parti-coloured like their dresses. “And they followed after each other as was ordered, some on horseback and some on foot, and before them went those playing music, to meet the King, who entered Paris with great joy.”[8]

{1352}

The court remained at Paris till the feast of St. Martin in the winter, the time being spent partly in festivities and partly in business connected with parliament. On the accession of a new King all the judicial officers had to be re-invested[9] or they were désappointés; a word which became obsolete in French, was adopted by the English, and from them has been re-adopted by the French, but with a different signification.

“In 1352, on Monday the vigil of the Conception,” says the Monk of Saint Denis, “the King gave the duchy of Normandy to Monseigneur Charles, his eldest son, Dauphin de Vienne et Comte de Poitiers, and on the next day, Tuesday, the day of the feast of the Conception beforesaid, Monseigneur Charles did him homage for it, at the hostel of Maistre Martin de Mello, canon of Paris, of the cloister of Notre Dame.”

After which the Prince always called himself Duc de Normandie, greatly preferring the title to that of Dauphin.

The Dauphin and Dauphine lived chiefly at Vivier-en-Brie, a castle in the midst of the woods not far from Vincennes. This château had been given to the father of the Dauphin, now King, when he married his mother, Bonne de Luxembourg, by his grandfather, Philippe VI. Here the Dauphin afterwards founded a chantry or chapel with fourteen ecclesiastics to chant the offices and give opportunity to the officers who followed the court to perform their devotions.