The horrors of war are not allowed on the scene in the chronicles from which we draw most of our information about Jeanne de Montfort; but it is pleasant to find in these same pages at least one recognition of the higher and better role of woman, as intercessor for the distressed. We allude, of course, to the famous and beautiful story of Philippa of Hainault saving the citizens of Calais, a story which we shall venture to sketch once more, in order to bring before our readers a famous character and a famous scene in history.
For eight months the English army had lain before Calais, while the king stubbornly persevered in his determination to reduce the town and the garrison as stubbornly determined to resist to the death. Edward had built for his camp a regular town about Calais, and starvation had at last reduced the citizens to the point of submission. Jean de Vienne, the commander of the garrison, parleyed with Edward's representatives, but no terms could be obtained; the absolute surrender of the entire garrison was demanded, with the threat of death for the bravest of them, or Edward would go on with the siege till there should be absolute necessity of yielding. To these terms Jean de Vienne nobly refused to consent. Walter de Manny and other knights pleaded with the king to be more merciful, if not out of kindness of heart then at least out of policy, for fear of reprisals on the part of the French. The peculiarly harsh and puerile conditions then proposed by Edward are well known: "Sir Walter de Manny, say then to the captain of Calais that the greatest grace that he and his shall find in me is that six of the chief burgesses of the town come out to me bareheaded, barefooted, and bare-legged, and in their shirts, with halters about their necks, and with the keys of the town and the castle in their hands. With these six will I deal as pleases me; the rest I will admit to mercy."
Jean de Vienne announced the terms to the citizens, and even he wept that he should have to bring them such cruel terms. "After a little while there rose the most rich burgess of the town, called Eustace de St. Pierre, and said openly: 'Sirs, great and small, great mischief it should be to suffer to die such people as be in this town, by famine or otherwise, when there is a means to save them.... As for my part, I have so good trust in our Lord God, that if I die in the quarrel to save the residue, that God would pardon me of all my sins; wherefore to save them I will be the first to put my life in jeopardy.'"
Beside the quiet heroism of this rich merchant of old Calais, what tinsel seems the glory of the best of Froissart's favorite knights! "King Edward may have been the victor,... as being the strongest, but you are the hero of the siege of Calais! Your story is sacred, and your name has been blessed for five hundred years. Wherever men speak of patriotism and sacrifice, Eustace de Saint-Pierre shall be beloved and remembered. I prostrate myself before the bare feet which stood before King Edward. What collar of chivalry is to be compared to that glorious order which you wear? Think,... how out of the myriad millions of our race, you, and some few more, stand forth as exemplars of duty and honour." Well does Eustace de Saint-Pierre merit the enthusiastic phrases which we have copied from one who was no historian, but a great man with a great heart William Makepeace Thackeray! For "greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."
Heroism was contagious in those days as for all time, and the example of Eustace de Saint-Pierre was speedily followed by five of his fellow townsmen. Let us now pass to the heroine of the story, Queen Philippa. When the six burgesses, in their humble state, were led to the feet of the haughty and relentless Edward, all pleas were vain to save them, the king turning away in wrath even from the faithful Walter de Manny and commanding that the hangman be summoned. "Then the Queen, being great with child, kneeled down, and sore weeping said: 'Ah, gentle sir, sith I passed the sea in great peril I have desired nothing of you; therefore now I humbly require you in the honour of the son of the Virgin Mary and for the love of me that ye will take mercy of these six burgesses.' The King beheld the Queen and stood still in a study a space, and then said: 'Ah, dame, I would ye had been as now in some other place; ye make such request to me that I cannot deny you. Wherefore I give them to you, to do your pleasure with them.' Then the Queen caused them to be brought into her chamber, and made the halters to be taken from their necks, and caused them to be new clothed, and gave them their dinner at their leisure; and then she gave each of them six nobles, and made them to be brought out of the host in safeguard and set at their liberty."
A noble picture is this of the clemency of a woman where the prayers of men availed not; and we join Jean Froissart in honoring his royal patroness and mistress, "the most gentle Queen, most liberal and most courteous that ever was Queen in her days, the which was the fair lady Philippa of Hainault, Queen of England and Ireland." But it was not for her mercifulness alone or even in chief that Froissart admired her; he chiefly praises her because she was a woman warrior almost as determined and successful as Jeanne de Montfort, and had come to Calais fresh from her victories over the Scots, of which Froissart gives a careful and glowing account.
CHAPTER X
AT THE COURT OF THE MAD KING
That France which had known queens good and bad, from Constance in the tenth to Blanche of Castille in the thirteenth century, was delivered over, toward the close of the fourteenth, to the hands of one of the worst women in her history. The woes of France under the rule of the mad King Charles VI. would have been enough to bear; but the Court of France was led in a veritable saturnalia by the licentious Queen Isabeau de Bavière. Once more, in Isabeau, we find a woman whose life-story cannot be told without at the same time telling much of the history of France; but it is not because the queen does anything good that we must tell of the government of the kingdom during her ascendancy; she does nothing but indulge her vulgar tastes for pleasure and debauchery, to satisfy which she would pawn France itself.