A Book of the Riviera

by S. Baring-Gould

Réné has got into such a backwater of history that probably not many English folk know more about him than that he was the father of the unfortunate Margaret, Queen of Henry VI., sketched for us by Shakespeare in an unfavourable light, and more of him than what Scott is pleased to say in Anne of Geierstein. But no man has so taken hold of Provençal affection as has Réné.

“If to the present day,” says a local historian, “the thought of this King makes a Provençal heart beat with tender love, it is due to this: that never was there a sovereign who showed greater consideration for his people, was more sparing of their blood and money, more desirous of promoting their happiness. Simple and modest in all his tastes, enjoying less revenue than most of the Seigneurs who were his vassals, he was to be seen every winter sunning himself in the midst of his subjects, who idolised him.”

Réné, Duke of Anjou and Maine, was prisoner to the Duke of Burgundy, when news reached him that the inheritances of his brother and of Queen Joanna II. of the Two Sicilies, had fallen to him. Married to Isabella, daughter of Charles of Lorraine, he had claimed that duchy on the death of his father-in-law, and in opposition to Anthony, Count of Vaudemont, nephew of Charles. The Count of Vaudemont was supported by Philip, Duke of Burgundy. Réné was defeated and taken prisoner, along with his son and all his great nobles. Conducted to the castle of Blacon, near Salines, he was there retained in captivity till he could pay an enormous ransom. It was, accordingly, whilst a prisoner that he heard the news of the death of his brother, Louis III., and of his adoption by the queen, and then of the death of Joanna, in 1435.

As he was unable to take possession of his kingdom of the Two Sicilies, he was obliged to transfer his authority to his wife, the Duchess Isabella, a woman of rare prudence and of masculine courage. The absence of Réné from his kingdom of Naples gave rise to the formation of factions: one favoured Alphonso of Aragon, a claimant; another took the side of Pope Eugenius IV., who wanted to annex the Sicilies to the papal states; a third party favoured Réné, and this latter was the most numerous. But the King of Aragon was prompt and determined. Alphonso hastened to Naples, took Capua, and laid siege to Gaeta. Happily for Réné’s party, the Genoese, who were jealous of Alphonso, forced him to raise the siege, and took him prisoner. Later, however, Gaeta fell before Peter, the brother of Alphonso.

At this time Isabella was making preparations at Aix and in the port of Marseilles for a descent on Naples. The Pope was induced to withdraw his claim, to lend her 4,000 horsemen, and to help her by hurling excommunications against the Aragonese. Meanwhile, King Réné, by promises, had succeeded in effecting his release, but on very harsh terms. He bound himself to pay 200,000 gold florins, and to cede several fortified places till his ransom was paid. His son, the Duke of Calabria, had been set at liberty the year before for a ransom of 25,000 florins. Réné had spent six years in prison.

Delivered from his long captivity, Réné hastened to Provence, where the estates found him 100,000 gold florins for the prosecution of the war. In April, 1438, Réné sailed from Marseilles for Naples. Unfortunately for him, at this time his trusted constable, Jacopo Caldora, died, and the king gave his place to the son of Caldora, a man of very different stamp, who sold himself to the King of Aragon and threw every possible hindrance in the way of Réné, who was besieged in Naples, and sorely hampered by lack of money wherewith to content his soldiery. One day, as he was passing through the streets, a widow cried to him to give her bread for her starving children. Réné passed without a word. “If he will not feed them, I know who will,” said the woman, and she hastened to betray to a partisan of Alphonso the secret of a subterranean passage into the town; in fact, the old aqueduct through which, nine centuries before, Belisarius had penetrated into Naples. The Spaniards poured into the town, and Réné had but just time to escape to a vessel in the bay. He retired to Provence, and there his wife, Isabella, died in 1453. He had her body moved to Angers, and erected over her a noble tomb, near one he had set up some years before to his old nurse. Réné fought against the English beside the French King, and was in the battle of Crecy. In 1448 his daughter Margaret had been married to Henry VI.

Shakespeare and the chroniclers have combined to blacken the character of this unfortunate woman. She is represented in repulsive colours, as unfeminine, revengeful, loose in her morals; and even her energy and fortitude are distorted into unnatural ferocity and obduracy. But we cannot trust the picture painted of her. The English people resented the marriage with an impecunious woman, and the cession of the duchy of Maine to the French as the price for her hand. They were galled and writhing at the humiliation of the English arms, in a series of victories won by the aid of the Maid of Orleans. She was, moreover, placed in the unnatural position of having to supply, by her force of character, the feebleness of her husband’s rule. The soft, feminine nature of Henry’s disposition threw hers by contrast into undue prominence. She had penetration to discover, what was hidden from Henry’s eyes, that the throne was surrounded by false friends and secret enemies. Considering the incapacity of the King, it is unjust to judge her harshly, if she strove with all her powers to save the crown imperilled by his feebleness. The situation in which she was placed compelled her to do that which is the worst thing a woman can do, to unsex herself, and that, not like the Maid of Orleans, in consequence of a Divine impulse, but from motives of policy. Inevitably much has been attributed to her for which she was not rightfully responsible. It could hardly be otherwise than that much in her way of life was inconsistent with her female character; a woman cannot play a man’s part in the work of the world without detriment to her own nature; but this was forced on her by the helpless imbecility of her husband, and she was compelled by the stress of circumstances to take the first part in a struggle to save the crown, and to hand it on to her son.

After the death of Isabella, Réné married Jeanne de Laval, with whom he lived happily. He loved to walk about the country in a broad-brimmed straw hat, and to chat with the peasants; or else to amuse himself with illuminating MSS. and composing poems.

Louis XI. was his nephew, a crafty and cold-blooded king, and he took advantage of the inability of Réné to offer effective resistance to dispossess him of his duchy of Anjou. Thenceforth Réné, who had spent his time between Anjou and Provence, was constrained to reside only in the latter.