During these years we find Queen Blanche acting very frequently in a judicial capacity, presiding over the court of Parliament and over the council; she seems to have continued to take an active part in all the affairs of her government. And, strange to say, we do not find the name of any one counsellor exalted above the others, as a greater favorite or as more relied on by the queen; she has her ministers, but so little part do they seem to play that France is really ruled by the queen, not by the ministers. We comment upon this because it is remarkable, especially when we remember that, even with great kings, the names of the ministers are not often utterly obscured.
The most interesting of the queen's activities at this time are those connected with the Church; there are numberless little quarrels in which she had to intervene and hold out for the rights of the crown, but the two examples that follow will suffice to show the sort of thing with which she had to contend. The clergy of France had accorded to Saint Louis a tax of one-tenth on their property, in view' of his crusade. Though this tax had been long due, the Abbey of Cluni, one of the richest and one of the most favored by the royal family, allowed month after month to elapse without making any move to pay. At length, in the early part of 1252, while the abbot was away in England, the royal bailli of Ma'am seized the chateau of Lourdon, belonging to the Abbey of Cluni. There was a tremendous uproar in the clerical camp; the Pope himself wrote to protest against this outrage upon the servants of God, and demanded of Blanche the restitution of the sequestered chateau. At the same time he instructed the Archbishop of Bourges to launch an interdict against all those who continued to hold, to guard, or to inhabit the chateau of Lourdon, with special exception of the queen and her family. Blanche had not, it appears, given the bailli any orders with regard to the collection of the tax, but, since he had acted, she sustained him; there was no persuading her to return the property of the abbey until the abbot had satisfied her just claims. The Pope and the abbot were compelled to accept defeat for the present; but after Blanche was dead a claim was made for indemnity, which we can only hope Saint Louis did not grant.
Another instance in which Blanche intervened is even more to her credit, since it was pure humanity, not the jealous safeguarding of the rights of the crown, that moved her. The inhabitants of the villages of Orly, Chatenay, and some others were serfs of the canons of Notre Dame. Being unable to pay some tax imposed by their masters, the men of the villages--we mean not a few, but all the able-bodied men--were seized and imprisoned in the chapter house. The horrors of the Black Hole of Calcutta have been made familiar to all English readers; there are few who realize that jails as horrible, and jailers as inhuman, were not infrequent in many a period of the world's history. The condition of the prisons of France when the courageous and devoted philanthropist John Howard visited them, at the close of the eighteenth century, was such as to beggar description: how much worse must have been a prison of the thirteenth century! The unfortunate peasants, with insufficient food, water, and air, were so crowded in the prison that several of them died. News of the affair coming to Queen Blanche, she humbly prayed the canons to release their victims, and said that she would investigate the matter. The canons replied that it was none of her affair, that she should not meddle with their serfs, "whom they could take and kill and do such justice on as seemed good to them." To emphasize these rights and to revenge themselves upon the talebearers who had reported to Queen Blanche, they seized the wives and children of their prisoners, and thrust them into the same overcrowded prison. The suffering was, of course, intensified; many of the miserable wretches died. The historian tells us that Blanche "felt great pity for the people, so tormented by those whose duty it was to protect them." We do not need to be told that; but Blanche was not of the milk-and-water kind that would have wasted time in fainéant compassion when there was suffering which her activity could relieve. She summoned a body of knights and citizens, gave them arms, marched straight to the prison, and ordered the doors to be broken down, herself striking the first blow, that all might see that she was not afraid to assume the responsibility for the act. Nor did her beneficent activity cease with the release of the prisoners; for she was determined that there should be no repetition of such tyranny if she could help it. She took the serfs under her special protection and confiscated the goods of the chapter of Notre Dame, which she held until such time as full satisfaction had been rendered. The serfs were enfranchised in consideration of an annual tax. But so far was she from wishing to wrong the canons, or even to interfere with their rights, if they had any, that she ordered the bishops of Paris, Orléans, and Auxerre to hold a special investigation to determine whether or not the people of Orly had owed the tax. With a woman of her character the canons vainly resorted to their favorite threat of excommunication. If they had excommunicated her, she would, in the light of history at least, have been given an absolution more purifying than any they could offer.
For the common people the great queen had always a tender heart. It was a rough and cruel age, especially for those in bondage. "And since this Queen," says an anonymous chronicler, "had great pity for such as were serfs, she ordered, in several places, that they be set free in consideration of the payment of some other dues. This she did partly because of the pity she felt for the girls in this condition, because people would not marry them, and many of them went to ruin thereby."
The last days of Blanche de Castille were drawing to a close amid sad and fruitless longing to see her son. Her health was failing; one after another of those dear to her fell ill or passed away; the dearest of all lingered in the Holy Land, leading a forlorn hope and deaf to the entreaties of his mother that he would return. She was at Melun when, in November, 1252, she became so ill that she hastened to return to Paris. She put her affairs in order and left instructions that those whom she had unwittingly wronged should be indemnified out of her private fortune. All worldly thoughts were now put aside, and she summoned the Bishop of Paris, took the Holy Communion, and was admitted, by the prelate's decree, into the Cistercian order, becoming a nun of her Abbey of Maubuisson. Clothed in the simple garments of the sisterhood, the noble queen passed, not many days later, from the scene of her useful labors, murmuring in her last moments the words of the prayer for those in extremis: Subvenite, saticti Dei.
It was on November 26th or 27th, in her sixty-fourth year, that Blanche died. Over her nun's habit they placed her royal robes, and on her head the crown; thus clothed, and placed upon a bier ornamented with gold, she was borne by her sons and the great nobles through the streets of Paris to the Abbey of Saint-Denis. The next day, after a mass for the dead, the body was carried in procession to Maubuisson, where another service was held. Here, in the choir of the chapel, the body of the queen was buried, and a tomb, bearing her effigy in nun's habit, was erected. The other convent founded by her wished to have the honor of guarding her heart, which, in March of the following year, was taken to Notre Dame du Lys by the abbess, Countess Alix de Macon.
Let us pause awhile by the tomb before we attempt to review the character of Blanche de Castille; and meanwhile we may see how the news of her death was received by Saint Louis. He was at Jaffa when, after a long delay, the intelligence reached him. At the very first ominous words of the papal legate who had come to break the tidings to him Saint Louis gave way to uncontrollable emotion. Consolation was unavailing; even the clergy seemed to realize that it would have been but an impertinent aggravation; and for two days no one ventured to speak to him. Then, rousing himself from the depths of his grief, he sent for that best and sturdiest of his friends, the fearless, honest, blunt Sire de Joinville, Seneschal of Champagne, who leaves us an account of what followed. When Joinville came into the presence, the king rose, and, stretching out his arms to him, cried in simple grief: "Ah! Seneschal! I have lost my mother!" Joinville replied: "Sire, I do not marvel at it, for she had to die; but I do marvel that you, a wise man, should mourn so deeply; you know that in the words of Wisdom it is said that, whatever grief a man have at his heart, none of it should be seen in his countenance; for he who does so (i. e., shows his grief) rejoices the heart of his enemies and brings sorrow to his friends." As all consolation would have been inadequate to the magnitude of the loss, we do not know that anyone could have spoken better than Joinville. The Seneschal continues: "Madame Marie de Vertus, a very good and pious woman, came to tell me that Queen Marguerite, who had rejoined the king a little before, was in great grief, and prayed me to go to her and comfort her. When I arrived I saw that she was weeping, and I said to her that he spoke truth who maintained that one ought not to believe women; for she who is dead was the person in the world whom you most hated, and yet you display such grief for her. And she told me that it was not for the Queen that she wept, but for the suffering and the grief of the King, and for her little daughter, now left in the care of men."
There is no quality more to be admired in one who attempts to write a life of some great man or woman than fearless frankness; the passages we have given are characteristic of the Vie de Saint Louis, by the Sire de Joinville, whose straightforward bluntness of speech is an amusing but also a valuable quality. We shall keep Joinville in mind while concluding, in brief, the story of Saint Louis's return and of the subsequent career of Marguerite.
More than a year of misery and futile battling intervened between the time when the news of his mother's death reached Louis and the time when he set sail for France. There was no hope of succor from Europe: there was no Queen Blanche to husband the resources of France that her son might continue his fight for the faith. On April 25, 1254, Saint Louis, accompanied by Marguerite, their little son Jean Tristan, and the remnant of the crusaders, embarked at Acre. The sea was rough, and when they were off the coast of Cyprus the vessel bearing the royal family ran on a sand bank. The nurses rushed frantically to arouse the queen, and asked her what they should do with the children. Marguerite, thinking all would be lost in the violence of the storm, said: "Neither waken them nor move them; let them go to God in their sleep." Saint Louis, urged to transfer himself and his family into another vessel, refused to do so, resolving to take the risk with those who had to remain and might be forced to land in Cyprus: "If I leave this vessel, there are on it five hundred men, each one of whom loves his life as much as I love mine, and who may have to stay in this island, and they may never return to their own country. That is why I had rather place in the hands of God my person, my wife, and my children, than cause such great suffering to the many people in this ship."
Joinville narrates another accident during this voyage, one which will recall the instructions for extinguishing one's candle given in a previous chapter. It seems that one of the queen's ladies, having undressed her, carelessly threw over the little iron lantern in which the candle was burning an end of the cloth she had used to wrap up the queen's head. The cloth caught fire, and in its turn set fire to the bedding, which was all ablaze when the queen awoke. Jumping out of bed toute nue, she seized the blazing stuff and threw it overboard, and put out the little fire which had started in the wood of the bed. The cry of fire arose, however, and Joinville tells us that he went to keep the sailors quiet, and later asked Marguerite to go to the king, who had been disturbed and excited by the noise.