CHAPTER VI
THE MOTHER AND THE WIFE OF A SAINT
As the regency of Queen Blanche had begun without formality, so it ceased insensibly. There was no set day upon which she formally relinquished the reins to Louis; and so one can but determine an approximate date. On April 25, 1234, Louis may be considered to have attained his majority. Though we find the name of Blanche figuring in royal acts after this date, it becomes less frequent: her share in the government is growing less, though throughout her life she never ceased to stand by her son and act with or advise him. At the very close of her regency we find her once more the central figure with that unaccountable person Thibaud de Champagne. It must be remembered that he was now King of Navarre, a dignity which brought with it less of real power in France than one might suppose; for the French and the Spanish dominions, Champagne and Navarre, were separated. His elevation to the throne may have momentarily turned the head of the poet-king; at any rate, he began to show dissatisfaction and to demur about fulfilling some of the conditions incident to the settlement of the claims of Alix de Champagne. In defiance of his duty as a vassal he gave his daughter, without the king's consent, to Jean le Roux, son of Pierre Mauclerc. He formed alliances with Mauclerc and with others of the old league; the hostile intent could not be mistaken. The king mobilized his forces and went to meet those of Thibaud. As the latter had not had time to effect a junction with his Breton allies, the royal forces were overwhelming, and he was compelled to find some way out of his difficulty other than fighting. Remembering that he had assumed the Cross, and was, therefore, under the protection of the Church, he persuaded the Pope to enjoin Louis from attacking him, declaring that his person and his lands were, on account of his crusading vow, under the protection of the Church. Even this intervention might not have saved him from severe punishment at the hands of his incensed sovereign; but when he sent to make submission and to ask mercy, Queen Blanche, to whom he especially appealed, summoned him to her presence and promised to obtain fair terms for him. The terms, indeed, were not hard, nor were the reproaches unduly severe which Blanche is said to have made in her last interview with Thibaud: "In God's name, Count Thibaud, you should not have taken sides against us; you should have called to mind the great goodness of my son, the king, when he came to your aid to protect your county and your lands from all the barons of France, who would have burned everything and reduced it to ashes." Then came the courteous reply of the gallant and contrite Thibaud: "By my faith, madame, my heart and my body and all my lands are yours; there is naught that could please you that I would not do willingly; and never again, please God, will I go against you or yours."
The romance of this scene, almost pathetic, is ruthlessly disturbed by the scene that is said to have followed, yet we must tell of this also. The young Prince Robert, always of a violent temper, took it upon him to insult the vanquished King of Navarre. He had the tails of the latter's horses cut off a--shameful insult to a knight--and as Thibaud was leaving the palace Robert threw a soft cheese on his head. Thibaud returned to Blanche indignant at the insult offered him despite her safe conduct; and she was preparing to punish the offenders summarily when she discovered that the ringleader was her own son.
During the ten or twelve years that now intervened before Blanche was again to take the regency during Saint Louis's crusade, her role in public life is of less importance; there will be a fact in history to note here and there, but most of that which we shall say concerns the woman, the mother, rather than the queen. Though eminently fitted in intellect and temperament for exercising the powers of an active ruler, Blanche never forgot that she was only the king's mother, and that she held the royal power in trust for him. In all her acts--they were really done on her own responsibility--she sought to associate the name of her son, as if she would keep for him the honor. In that speech to Count Thibaud she does not reproach him for ingratitude to her; it is, "you should have called to mind the great goodness of my son, the king." Her whole life was devoted to the service of this son, whom she loved with a love painfully intense, cruelly jealous.
When she was left a widow, there was entrusted to her not merely the ruling of a kingdom but the rearing of a large family of children. To this latter task Blanche devoted herself with as much energy and as much good sense as she displayed in larger affairs. She reared with particular care the son who, though not the eldest, had become the heir to the crown. She tried to make of him a good man. It was certainly not her training or her example that taught him excessive devoutness; for, though a good Christian, she was not a devotee. When he was a boy she gave him over to the care of masters who were to instruct him in all things. There was physical exercise and recreation as well as study; the young prince was not even exempt from discipline: according to his own testimony, one of his masters "sometimes beat him to teach him discipline." His days were regularly portioned off into periods of work, of play, and of religious devotion; in the midst of his teachers, most of whom were Dominicans, the little prince led a very sober life. He was of a quiet and docile disposition, and received instruction willingly and readily, and became a man of considerable learning. From his youth he manifested a tendency to extreme piety, going daily to church, where he entered into the services with strange fervor; he sang no songs but hymns, and led a pure and temperate life. It is said that a religious fanatic, who had listened to some of the calumnies circulated against the queen, one day came to her and rebuked her bitterly for encouraging her son to live a life of licentiousness, in the society of concubines. She corrected his mistaken impression, and said that if her son, whom she loved better than any creature living, were sick unto death she would not have him made whole by the commission of a mortal sin. Saint Louis never forgot this saying of his mother's, which he was fond of repeating to Joinville, and by which he sought to regulate his conduct.
Another of Blanche's children was of the same disposition as Saint Louis in regard to religion. This was the Princess Isabelle, whom her mother had trained as carefully as Louis. On one occasion, when the family was going on a journey and there was much noise of preparation in the midst of the packing, Isabelle covered herself up in the bedclothes in order to pray undisturbed. One of the servants, occupied in packing, picked up child and bedclothes together, and was about to put her with the rest of the baggage, when she was discovered. Even as a child she would take no part in games, and as a young girl shunned all the gayeties of the court, devoting herself to study, to reading the Scriptures, and to devotional and charitable works, leading a life of the utmost austerity. It is pleasant to know that this timid, pious little lady was not forced into a distasteful union and passed her days in the pursuits she liked best.
Blanche's devotion to her son Louis was repaid by the greatest deference and affection. Her ascendency over him lasted as long as she lived, and was responsible, no doubt, for much unhappiness to his wife. Blanche's love was full of jealousy; she would brook no rival; she must always be first in the affections of her son. And one cannot deny that the great queen was selfish even to the point of positive cruelty in her treatment of Marguerite de Provence. A mere child when she came to the court of France, Marguerite was made to feel that she was not to be first there, though her position as the wife of Louis gave her a claim to first place. She was not of masculine temperament, like Blanche, and she did not seek even the show of power; but Blanche grudged her even the love of her husband, though we have no evidence that Marguerite ever reproached Saint Louis with excessive filial devotion or sought to detach him from his mother. Many stories have come down to us of how "the young queen" was treated by the one whom all France continued to call "the Queen." From the testimony of those intimate with the habits of the royal family come to us details of espionage, petty malice, and cold-heartedness on the part of Blanche: we could not believe these things if they came from less competent witnesses. They are not to the credit of Blanche, for they show the worst side of her nature. The confessor of Saint Louis says: "The queen mother displayed great harshness and rudeness towards Queen Marguerite. She would not permit the king to remain alone with his wife. When the king, with the two queens, went in royal progress through France, Queen Blanche commonly separated the king and the queen, and they were never lodged together. It happened once that, at the manor of Pontoise, the king was lodged in a room above the lodging of his wife. He had instructed the ushers in the anteroom that, whenever he was with the queen and Queen Blanche wished to enter his room or the queen's, they should whip the dogs to make them bark; and when the king heard this he hid from his mother." Imagine the King of France, the man whose peculiar piety won for him the name of a saint, dodging about like a guilty urchin to keep his mother from finding him in the company of his wife!
The honest old Sieur de Joinville, who feared not to tell his master when he thought him in the wrong, tells us that on one occasion, when Marguerite was very ill after the birth of a child, Louis came in to see her, fearing she was in danger of death. Blanche came in, and Louis hid himself behind the bed as well as he could, but she detected him. Taking him by the hand, she said: "Come away, for you are doing no good here." She led him out of the room. "When the queen saw that Queen Blanche was separating her from her husband, she cried out with a loud voice: 'Alas! will you let me see my husband neither in life nor in death?' And so saying she fainted away so that they thought she was dead; and the king, who thought so too, ran back to her and brought her out of her swoon." There is nothing in these stories to the credit of Blanche or of her saintly son.
Let us turn from this unpleasant picture to glance at some of the facts in the domestic economy of the royal household. The expenditures of the court were not great; the household was kept on a scale befitting its rank, but there was no vain display. Besides the queen's children there were always a number of dependents, ladies and gentlemen in waiting, etc., and the expenses for the whole establishment were kept in a common account.