The Project Gutenberg eBook, King René d'Anjou and his Seven Queens, by Edgcumbe Staley

KING RENÉ D’ANJOU AND HIS
SEVEN QUEENS

The Ceremonious Entry of the “Lady of the Crest” Saumur Tournament 1446

From “Le Livre des Tournois” Painted by King René

KING RENÉ D’ANJOU
AND HIS SEVEN QUEENS

BY
EDGCUMBE STALEY

AUTHOR OF
“LORDS AND LADIES OF THE ITALIAN LAKES,” “GUILDS OF FLORENCE,” “FAIR WOMEN OF
FLORENCE,” “TRAGEDIES OF THE MEDICI,” “DOGARESSAS OF VENICE,”
“HEROINES OF GENOA AND THE RIVIERAS,” ETC.

WITH COLOURED FRONTISPIECE AND THIRTY-FIVE
OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS

“FIDES VITAT SERVATA”
King René’s Motto

LONDON
JOHN LONG, LIMITED
NORRIS STREET, HAYMARKET
MCMXII

TO
MY BROTHER VERNON
AND
HIS WIFE ETHEL

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PREFACE

King René d’Anjou and his Seven Queens—yes, I stand by my title, and offer no apology to the captious and the curious.

René was the most remarkable personality in the French Renaissance. How many English readers of the romance of history, I wonder, know anything about him but his name? Of his “seven Queens,” two only are at all familiar to the English public,—Marguerite d’Anjou and Jeanne d’Arc,—and their stories as commonly told are unconvincing. The other five are not known even by name to the majority of people; therefore I have immense pleasure in introducing them to any clientèle: Yolanda d’Arragona, Isabelle de Lorraine, Jehanne de Laval, Giovanna II. da Napoli, Jeanne d’Arc and Marguerite d’Anjou. This galaxy of Queens, fair and frail, will appeal as something entirely new in sentimental biography to those in search of novelty.

Turgid facts of history and dryasdust statistics of the past are, of course, within everybody’s ken, or they are supposed to be—this is an age of snobbery! Piquant stories of the persons and foibles of famous men and women are my measure, and such you will have in plenty in my narratives. To get at my facts and fictions I have dug deep into the records of Court chroniclers, and I think I have blended very successfully the spirit of the troubadours and the spirit of the age of chivalry. At the end of the volume I have added a Bibliography, for the benefit of sententious students, and my Index is as full as possible, to assist the casual reader.

The illustrations which adorn my pages have been gathered from many sources. I think they will greatly assist the appreciation of my work. With respect to portraits of my “Queens,” there are no extant likenesses of Yolanda and Jeanne: for the latter I have chosen to reproduce the historical imaginative fresco of M. Lepenveu, at the Pantheon in Paris; for the former the stained-glass window effigy at Le Mans Cathedral must do duty. Queen Isabelle is an enlargement of a miniature by René; Queen Marie is after a French picture of the School of Jean Focquet, now at the National Gallery, London, but wrongly entitled. Queen Giovanna II. is from an altar-piece in the National Museum at Naples. Queen Marguerite is from a miniature by her father,—her portraits in England are eminently unsatisfactory and non-contemporary,—Queen Jehanne is from the right wing of the Aix triptych, by Nicholas Froment.

There is, I think, nothing more to add to my preface, so I leave “King René and his Seven Queens” tête-à-tête with my discerning public. If they are found to be entertaining company I am repaid.

EDGCUMBE STALEY.

CHRONOLOGY

KING RENÉ D’ANJOU AND HIS
SEVEN QUEENS

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY

“René, King of Jerusalem, the Two Sicilies, Aragon, Valencia, Majorca, Sardinia and Corsica; Duke of Anjou, Barrois, and Lorraine; Count of Provence, Forcalquier and Piemont,” so runs the preamble of his Will. To these titles he might have added Prince of Gerona, Duke of Calabria, Lord of Genoa, Count of Guise, Maine, Chailly, and Longjumeau, and Marquis of Pont-à-Mousson!

He was famous as a Sovereign, a soldier, a legislator, a traveller, a linguist, a scholar, a poet, a musician, a craftsman, a painter, an architect, a sculptor, a collector, a sportsman, an agriculturist, and incidentally a chivalrous lover. About such a many-sided character there is much to tell and much to learn. His times were spacious; the clouds of Mediævalism had rolled away, and the Sun of Progress illuminated the heyday of the Renaissance; art and craft had come into their own. Venus disarmed Mars, Diana entranced Apollo, and Minerva restrained Mercury, and all the hierarchy of heaven was captive to the Liberal Arts. René d’Anjou, figuratively, seems to have gathered up in his cunning hand the powers of all the spiritual intelligences alongwith the life-lines of practical manifestations. He has come down to us as the beau-ideal Prince of the fifteenth century.

“A Prince who had great and pre-eminent qualities, worthy of a better future. He was a great Justicier and an enemy to long despatches. He said sometimes, when they presented anything to signe, being a-hunting or at the warre, that the Pen was a kinde of Armes, which a person should use at all times”—so wrote the historian Pierre Mathieu, in his “History of Louis XI.,” in 1614. He goes on to say: “The reign of so good a Prince was much lamented, for he intreated his subjects like a Pastor and a Father. They say that when his Treasurer brought unto him the Royale Taxe,—which was sixteen florins for every kindled fire, whereof Provence might have about three thousand five hundred,—hee enformed himselfe of the aboundance or barenesse of the season; and when they told him, that a mistrall winde had reigned long, hee remitted the moiety and sometimes the whole taxe. Hee contented himself with his revenues, and did not charge his people with new tributes. Hee spent his time in paintings, the which were excellent, as they are yet to be seen in the city of Aix. Hee was drawing of a partridge when as they brought him newes of the loose of the Realme of Naples, yet hee could not draw his hande from the work and the pleasure hee took here in.… They relate that he dranke not wine, and when as the noble men of Naples demanded the reasons, he affirmed that it had made Titus Livius to lie, who had said that the good wine caused the French to passe the Alps.… He was perhaps better suited to make a quiet State happy than to reduce a rebellious one.”

King René’s career and work as a Sovereign, a soldier, a legislator, a traveller, a poet, and a lover, are treated in full in the letterpress of this volume. His work as an artist, a craftsman, an agriculturist, and a collector, is here given under different headings, as introductory to the expression of his personal talents.

I. Artistic Works of King René.

René’s first efforts as a designer and painter were exhibited upon the walls of his prison-chamber at Tour de Bar, near Dijon, 1431-1435. Thence forward he decorated the walls and stain-glazed the windows of his various castles and palaces—Bar-le-Duc, Nancy, Angers, Saumur, Reculée, Tarascon, Marseilles, and Aix. Every bastide and maison inhabited by his Queens and himself was also similarly adorned, and many coloured church windows were due to his gentle art. Alas that so few vestiges of these admirable labours remain! French mobs are proverbial for iconoclastic propensities, and no land has suffered more than France from the suicidal mania of her sans-culottes.

To fresco-painting, portraits, and glass-staining, the Royal artist added miniatures and penmanship. His “style” was formed and developed successively under such personal tuition as that of the brothers Van Eyck and Maistre Jehannot le Flament. Later on Jean Focquet of Tours and Nicholas Froment influenced him. A letter is extant of King René, addressed in 1448 to Jan Van Eyck, in which he asks for two good painters to be sent to Barrois.

Visits to Rome, Florence, Naples, Milan, and other art cities of Italy, very greatly enlarged René’s métier. Intercourse with Fra Angelico da Fiesole, Fra Filippo Lippi, Paolo Ucello, the Della Robbia, and many other Tuscan artists, quickened his natural talent and guided his eye and hand. Leon Battista Alberti, Francesco Brunellesco, and Cennino Cennini, and their works in materia and literature, produced great results in the receptive faculties of the King-artist. At Naples he came in contact with Colantonio del Fiore, Antonio Solario—Il Zingaro—and Angiolo Franco, and gathered up what they taught.

Besides these immense advantages as a personal friend of great ruling Italian families, the Medici, the Pazzi, the Tornabuoni, the Visconti, the Sforza, the Orsini, and many others, René had opportunities enjoyed by very few. His own amiable individuality and his ample knowledge were the highest credentials in the pursuit of art and craft. René witnessed the consecration of the Duomo of Florence and the completion of the guild shrine of Or San Michele, and he was enrolled as an honorary member thereof. At Florence also he was thrown in contact with world famous scrivani—writers and illustrators of manuscript. The subsequent excellence of French miniaturists was largely due to King René’s example and encouragement.

René’s more considerable paintings, which have been preserved, are as follows:

1. The Burning Bush, part of an altar triptych, at the Cathedral of Aix. Projected and begun by the King, it was finished by Nicholas Froment, 1475-76, and for it the artist received no more than 70 gulden (see illustration).

2. Souls in Purgatory, an altar-piece (7 × 5½), originally in hospital chapel at the Chartreuse of Villeneuve les Avignon. It is really a “Judgment,” with Christ and saints above the clouds, and twenty-four little figures in and out torment. The building was destroyed in 1793.

3. La Divina Commedia, an altar-piece (8 × 6), in the church of the Célestins at Avignon in distemper. It was due to René’s vision of his mistress, Dame Chapelle, upon the day of her death, which shocked him so greatly that he painted this composition to remove the painful impression he thus experienced.

4. Saint Madeleine preaching, now in the Hôtel Cluny. It was a whimsical conceit connecting the story of the sisters of Lazarus with René and his Queen Jehanne. It is conventional in treatment but finished most beautifully (see illustration).

King René’s artistic speciality was miniatures. He illuminated many manuscripts.

1. Preces Præ. The Latin “Hours” of King René, a manuscript of 150 sheets of fine vellum, written very beautifully in small lettering, with superb capitals in gold and colours. The borders and miniatures are exquisitely painted. It is bound in red morocco. This precious volume was dedicated to Queen Isabelle, whose portrait is painted as a frontispiece (see illustration). It was one of the King’s wedding presents to his second Queen, Jehanne de Laval. The value of the Preces Præ is enhanced by numerous marginal notes of dates and details written by René’s hand. At the end by way of Finis is a clock-face, upon which is painted “R et J,” under the words “En Un,” all in a circle of gold. This treasure is now in the National Library in Paris, and there is a copy almost exactly in duplicate in the Imperial Library in Vienna. The date is 1454.

2. Pas d’Armes de la Bergère. A poem of Louis de Beauvau, Seigneur de la Roche et Champigny, Grand Seneschal of Angers, Ambassador to Pope Pius II., and a famous Champion in the “Lists.” It is a pastoral allegory, and extols the courage and chivalry of many famous knights—Ferri de Vaudémont, Philippe Lenoncourt, Tanneguy de Chastel, Jean de Cossa, Guy de Laval, and others. It was put forth in 1448 after the celebrated tournaments in Anjou, Lorraine, and Provence. King René illuminated it with portraits and miniature paintings at Tarascon, where he and Jehanne de Laval spent so many happy days ruralizing in 1457.

At Aix, in the Library, is a manuscript Livres des Heures, dated 1458; at Avignon, in the Church of the Cordeliers, is another of the following year; at Poitiers, in the Library, is a “Psalter”; in the Musée de l’Arsenal of Paris, a Breviary (see illustration)—all exquisitely written and illuminated by the master-hand of the King.

II. Literary Works of King René.

The earlier works of the King are sufficiently remarkable as exhibiting his serenity in adversity and his uprightness as a legislator; his later poems are notable in revealing his chivalry as a knight-adventurer, and his tenderness as a dainty troubadour. René, whether as Sovereign, knight, or lover, led the taste of his age. His personality attracted everybody, and his character elevated all in fruitful emulation. His utterances and his writings, in spite of the freedom of manners and the piquancy of speech, were conspicuous for chastity of thought and delicacy of expression. Not a single dubious word or doubtful reference disfigures his pages: a man and King was he without reproach.

The works which René composed as well as decorated place him in the forefront of poets. The principal are as follows:

1. Regnault et Jehanneton, or Les Amours du Bergier et de la Bergeronne. It is an idyllic pastoral. The manuscript occupies seventy sheets of fine vellum, written in black and crimson, very carefully and finely. The miniatures and capitals are very numerous, and display the greatest skill and taste in design and finish. This manuscript was written at Tarascon, after René and Jehanne’s romantic sojourn at his bastide on the Durance.

2. Mortifiement de Vaine Plaisance, or Tracte entre l’Ame devote et le Cœur. In manuscript, written very carefully in black and scarlet, with many exquisitely-painted miniatures and capital letters. This “Morality” covers fifty-five sheets of the finest vellum. The Royal writer was assisted by Jehan Coppre, a priest of Varronsgues. The frontispiece by René represents the King, fully robed, seated in his studio labouring with his pen and brush (see illustration).

3. La Conquête de la Doulce Mercy, or La Conquête par le Cuer d’Amour Espris. This is a manuscript with 138 sheets of very smooth vellum written in red, black, and purple, with sixty-two miniatures and many capitals superbly painted. It is bound in red morocco, and is in the National Library in Paris. It bears the date 1457. René both wrote and illuminated it shortly before the death of Queen Isabelle.

4. L’Abuzé en Court. A manuscript covering fifty-seven sheets of very fine vellum. Where and how King René got his “skins” we do not know, but they are the finest and most perfect of any French or Italian manuscripts of the period. The colour and grain of the skin are very fine; only an artist-writer could have chosen such splendid folios. This manuscript is bound in walnut-wood boards covered with crimson velvet and embroidered. It contains fifty lovely miniatures and has rich capitals. René has in this case recorded the exact date of completion—July 12, 1473.

5. Very superb—perhaps King René’s chef d’œuvre—is Le Tracte des Tournois, a full description of his splendid tournament at Saumur, with the richest possible illustration. It is dedicated to Charles d’Anjou, his brother, who died in 1470; he was Count of Maine and Guise, and Governor of Lorraine. The frontispiece and two other illustrations are reproductions of the Royal artist’s designs.

One of the most charming incidents in René’s long, useful, and moving life was his intercourse with Charles d’Anjou, son of the first Duke of Orléans, brother of Charles VI. of France. The young Prince was made a prisoner at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, and remained in captivity in the Tower of London for twenty-five years. His constant complaint was: “I mourn with chagrin that no one does anything to release me!” This piteous appeal at length gained the heart of Duke Philippe of Burgundy, who effected his deliverance in 1440. Between King René and Duke Charles there passed, through spiritual affinity, a constant succession of delightful poetic souvenirs—the prisoner of La Tour de Bar and the prisoner of the Tower of London—comrades in sorrow, companions in joy! The form these missives took was that of rondeaux, or valentines, and in this category nothing could be more delicate and sensuous. A very favourite ending of the poems was—

“Après une seule excepter,

Je vous servirai cette conte,

Ma douce Valentine gente,

Puis qu’amour veuilt que on’y contente.”

“With one only reservation,

I will send you this narration,

My gentle, natty Valentine,

Since your love so well content is mine.”

Charles d’Anjou died in 1465, greatly lamented by his poet-confidant.

King René composed and wrote, and also set to music, very many motets and caroles (dance-songs). The former are still sung in village churches in Provence, and the latter danced at village fêtes.

René was famous, too, as a polite letter-writer. Between 1468 and 1474 he despatched thirty-seven missives to Pope Sixtus IV. and others, chiefly relating to affairs in the kingdom of Catalonia.

At the Château d’Angers, as well as at those of Nancy and Aix, King René had splendid collections of manuscripts and books. Rare works in Hebrew, Greek, Arabic, Turkish, and Latin, he collected in the several departments of Scripture, Philosophy, History, Geography, Natural History, and Physics. Writers and students naturally were attracted to such a sapient Prince. Three of the former in particular attached themselves to his patronage: Pierre de Hurion, Jehan de Perin, and Louis de Beauvau; and with them was René’s chief collaborator—Hervé Grellin.

III. Craftman’s Works of King René.

René was a great advocate for the combination and co-operation of the arts and crafts. In no sense was he a free-trader: his policy was to encourage native enterprise and to check destructive intrusion of aliens. To consolidate commercial interests and to safeguard industries, he established “Orders” or “Guilds” for workers. For example, at Tarascon he instituted “The Order of the Sturgeon,” for fisherfolk, which held an annual festival in July, called La Charibande, specially in honour of Le Roy des Gardons—“King of Roaches.” At Aix the King established “The Order of the Plough,” for agriculturists, and their fête-day was the Festival of the Assumption. He could hold the coulter with any of his farm labourers, and greatly delighted in matches of strength and speed. René’s interest in agriculture and stock-rearing did very much to make Anjou and Provence fruitful States. He naturalized the sugar-cane, and introduced many new trees and plants: the rose de Provence; the Œillet de Poëte—our Sweet William; the mulberry; and the Muscat grape.

As patron of crafts, René especially encouraged workers in tapestry, vestments, costumes and tournament decorations, goldsmiths, jewellers, medalists, armourers, and masters of wood, stone, and metal, with operatives in textiles. In Provence, at Aix and Marseilles, he had workshops which he himself superintended, and where such instructors were employed as Jehan de Nicholas, Guillaume le Pelletier, Juan d’Arragona, Jehan le Gracieux, Luigi Rubbotino, Henri Henniquin, and Jehanne Despert. These may be names only, but their fame may be learnt by the study of useful industries in France. The Comptes de Roy René,—René’s business-books,—at Angers are full of orders, instructions, payments, etc., to work-people of all sorts and kinds.

At each of King René’s residences, and more especially at Aix, he designed and erected a raised architectural loggia, or terrace, which at once gained the name of La Cheminée du Roy. Here he was wont to spend a good deal of his time in the enjoyment of the fresh air and the contemplation of the persons and avocations of his subjects within range. Here, too, he gave audience to all sorts and conditions of his subjects, passing the time of the day merely to many, but with some of them entering fully into matters proposed for his consideration. Craftsmen, tradesmen, and merchants, were accustomed to pass that way to expose commodities, and exhibit novelties which might tempt the Royal patronage. One salient object of this amiable habit was that, as he put it, “my children may see their father, and take cognizance of my state of health and my pursuits.” René lived and worked among and for his people, and none who approached him ever went away empty or dissatisfied. Nothing pleased him better than a morning salutation or an evening serenade by troubadour-jongleurs and other makers of music and of fun. Sometimes the municipal authorities made courteous protests to their liege Lord for the creation of crowds and obstruction to the free circulation of the traffic. To all such representations the King turned a ready ear, but also turned their pleas into subjects for good-humoured merriment.

“You see,” he used to say, “I am something of a troubadour myself, and life’s serious moods require joyous elevation.”

René was great in loving-cups, or, more correctly, their contents. Nothing pleased him more than to hand to anyone who had interested or amused him a delicious beverage, and often enough in the utmost good-humour he bade the recipient keep the cup as a memento of his interview—and “mind,” he added, “you drink my health and Queen Jehanne’s sometimes.”

René’s consideration of and generosity to his servants and attendants was proverbial. The Comptes are full of instructions to his Treasurers to pay such and such sums of money or other benefactions. To Jehan de Sérancourt, an equerry, for example, he gave a purse of 200 ducats, “for thy skilful care of my favourite charger.” To Alain le Hérault, a valet and barber “a gold snuffbox and fifty ducats for his daughter’s confinement.” He was very fond of quoting the example of Marie d’Harcourt, mother of his son-in-law Ferri de Vaudémont, who died in 1476. She was affectionately called “the Mother of the Poor.” “She was rightly called; am not I, then, father too?”

René was a great collector of works of art and curios, although, by the way, he was obliged very frequently to distribute his treasures in order to raise money for his warlike enterprises and philanthropic pursuits. A speciality was the acquisition of relics of saints and other venerable objects. In 1470 he and Queen Jehanne assisted at the translation of a piece of the True Cross, which he had obtained in Italy, to the Church of St. Croix at Angers. Lists of such treasures, and, indeed, of the treasures in general of his house, may be read in Les Comptes de Roy René. Many originally came from King John the “Good” of France, René’s great-grandfather, handed down by Louis I. and Louis II. of Sicily-Anjou.

René had a penchant for rock-crystal objects and miniature carvings in wood. Among the former he possessed a very famous winecup, upon which he engraved the following quaint conceit:

“Qui bien beurra

Dieu voira.

Qui beurra tout d’une baleine

Voira Dieu et la Madeleine!”

“Whoso drinks me

God shall see.

Whoso at one good breath drains me

Shall God and the Magdalen see!”

CHAPTER II
YOLANDA D’ARRAGONA—“A GOOD MOTHER AND A GREAT QUEEN.”

I.

The Queen was in labour, and shivering groups of robust citizens and sturdy peasants were gathered in front of the royal castle of Zaragoza, eagerly awaiting the signal of a happy deliverance. The fervent wish of King Juan for a male heir was shared by his subjects, for his brother Martino, next in succession, was in delicate health; moreover, he had only one son, and he was a cripple. The succession to the throne was a source of anxiety to all good Aragonese. To be sure, there was a baby Princess already in the royal nursery, but whether her mother had been a lawful wedded wife, or no more than a barragana of the Sovereign, few knew outside the charmed circle of the Court. In the opinion of the men and women of the triple kingdom generally, this mattered little, for natural children were looked upon as strengthening the family; hijos de ganancia they were called. The Salic Law, however, barred the female heirs of the royal house, so little Juanita was of no importance.

YOLANDA D’ARRAGONA

(KING RENÉ’S MOTHER)

From Coloured Glass Window, Le Mans Cathedral

To face page 30

Within the courtyard, about the royal apartments, and all through the precincts of the Presence, minstrels and poets thronged, as well as Ministers and officials; Queen Yolanda was the Queen of Troubadours, and the courtiers she loved best to have about her were merry maids and men—graduates of the “Gaya Ciencia.” The livelong night they had danced and postured, they had piped and sung. Each poet of the hilarious company had in turn taken up his recitative, printed by staccato notes, to be repeated in chorus and in step, until the fandangoes and boleros of the South were turned into the boisterous whirling jotas of Aragon. The first dawn of day brought into play lutes and harps, restrung, retuned cellos and hurdy-gurdies, and vihuelas de peñola, guitars with metal wires and struck with strong herons’ plumes, and so awoke the phlegmatic guardians of the castle. Sweet and harmonious Provençal voices blended with soft notes of melodious singers from Languedoc to the running accompaniment of the weird Basque music of the mountaineers.

The Queen, upon her massive curtained bed of state, heard the refrains and felt the vibration of the lilting measures, and smiled pleasantly as she laid awake expectantly. At length the great tenor bell up in the chapel turret gave out the hour of six. The last note seemed to hang, and many a devout listener bent a reverent knee and bared his head, whilst the women-folk uttered fervent Aves. One single stroke of the metal clapper was followed, alas! immediately by another. “Two for a Princess!” resounded from lusty throats, but there was a tone of disappointment in the cry. The glaring morning sun, however, made no mistake, impartial in his love of sex. Dancing upon the phosphorescent ripples of the rolling Mediterranean, he shot golden beams within the royal chamber, and crimson flushed the cheeks of the royal mother and her child. It was the red-hot sun of Spain, and the day was red, too—the feast of San Marco, April 25, 1380.

Christened within eight hours of birth—the custom in Aragon—and “Yolanda” named, the little Princess’s advent was speeded right away to distant Barrois, her mother’s home, by the Queen’s Chamberlain, trusty Cavalier Hugues de Pulligny. He had been summoned at once to the accouchement couch, and given to hold and identify the babe. With him he took the Queen’s mothering scarf—the token of a happy birth—and hied post-haste to lay it and his news at the feet of the anxious Duke and Duchess at Bar-le-Duc. His reward was a patent of nobility and 500 good golden livres.

Yolanda, Queen-consort of Juan I., King of the triple kingdom of Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia—Violante de Bar—was the elder of the two daughters of Robert I., Duke of Bar, and his wife, Marie of France, daughter of King John II., “the Good.” Their Court was one of the chief resorts of the Troubadours and Jongleurs, who looked to the Duke’s famous mother, Princess Iolande of Flanders, as their queen and patroness. Bar, or Barrois, first gained royal honours when the Emperor Otto III., in 958, created his son and successor, Frederic, Count of Bar and Prince of the Holy Roman Empire. The succession was handed down for hundreds of years, and in 1321 Count Henry IV. married the Flemish Princess. Her jewels and her trousseau were the talk of half a century. Her gaiety, her erudition, and her skill in handicraft, were remarkable; her Court the most splendid in Europe.

Bar was, so to speak, the golden hub of the great humming wheel of Franco-Flemish arts and crafts. Bordered by Luxembourg, Lorraine, Champagne, and Burgundy, the fountain-heads of rich and generous vintages, she took toll of all, and the Barroisiens were the healthiest, wealthiest, and the merriest folk in the French borderland.

The influence of the bewitching and accomplished Princess-Countess Iolande was paramount, and she was ever adding to her fame by making royal progresses throughout her husband’s domains. Wherever she went, music and the fine arts, and every artistic cult and useful craft, prospered amazingly. Borne in a great swaying chariot, drawn by four strong white Flemish horses, the magnificence of her cortège led on one occasion, if not on more, nearly to her undoing. Travelling in the summer-time of the year 1361 to Clermont en Argonne, one of the ducal castles, she was, when not very far away from storied Laon, beset by an armed company of outlaws, who, however, treated her with charming courtesy. They caused the Princess and her ladies to descend from their equipage and step it with them as vis-à-vis under the greenwood tree. Then, not very gallantly, to be sure, they stripped their fair partners of their ornaments and despoiled the princely treasure, causing the Princess to sign a pardon for their onslaught. The adventure, however, did not end here, for Iolande was a match for any man, and on the spot she enrolled her highwaymen as recruits for Count Henry’s army!

The almost fairy Princess-Countess survived her consort many years, and lived to see the county of Bar raised to a dukedom, and to dance upon her knee a little namesake granddaughter, Violante de Bar. Nothing gave her greater pleasure than the floral games of the troubadours, and one of these fêtes galants was enacted in 1363 at the Ducal Castle of Val de Cassel, where Duchess Marie had just brought into the world this very baby girl. The poets chose their laureate—one Eustache Deschamps-Morel, and Princess Iolande crowned him with bays. The ballade he composed for those auspicious revels is still extant—Du Métier Profitable—wherein he maintains that only two careers are open to happy mortals.

“Ces deux ont partout l’avantage,

L’un en junglant, l’autre à corner.”

The sights and sounds, then, which first greeted the pretty child were merry and tuneful. She was reared on troubadour fare, on troubadour lore. Violante had three brothers, Édouard, Jehan, and Louis, and a younger sister Bonne, married to Nicholas, Comte de Ligny, but alas! buried with her first-born before the high-altar of St. Étienne at Bar-le-Duc.

When Violante was in her seventeenth year, there came a royal traveller, disguised as a troubadour of Languedoc, to the Court of Love at Bar-le-Duc. His quest was for a bride. He was of ancient lineage; his forbears came from Ria, in a southern upland valley of the Eastern Pyrenees, and had ruled the land ’twixt barren mountain and wild seacoast for no end of years—Juan I., King of Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia. He had just buried Mahaud d’Armagnac, the young mother of his little daughter Juanita, and there was a gaping wound in his amorous heart which yearned for healing. The royal Benedict looked for a Venus with a dash of Diana and a measure of Minerva, and chroniclers say he had drawn blank the Courts of Spain and Southern France. Moreover, they tell a pretty tale of him which must now again be told.

After wanderings manifold, the royal knight-errant found himself within the pageant-ground of Bar-le-Duc and at a “Court of Love.” There he broke shield and lance at tilt, and Prince Cupid pierced his heart. Mingling in the merry throng, King Juan found himself partnered by the most beauteous damsel his eyes had ever seen. She was the Princess Violante, daughter of the Duke. Before she realized what her gay vis-à-vis had said and done, he vanished. But upon her maiden finger glittered a royal signet-ring. Back to Zaragoza sped the gay troubadour, and in a trice a noble embassy was on its way to the Barrois Court to claim the hand of the fascinating Princess and to exchange the heavy ring of State for the lighter jewelled hoop of espousal.

The entry of Queen Yolanda (Violante) into Zaragoza was a resplendent function, and, despite their habitual taciturnity, the citizens hailed the lovely consort of their King with heartiest acclamations. In her train came minstrels and glee-maidens from Champagne and Burgundy, from Provence and the Valley of the Rhine and Languedoc. Such merry folk were unknown in phlegmatic Aragon. To be sure, they had their poets, their dances and their songs, but they were the semi-serious pastimes of the sturdy Basque mountaineers.

The Académie des Jeux Floraux of Toulouse,—newly founded in 1323, and better known there as the Collège du Gaye Sçavoir,—sent an imposing company of minstrels to greet the new Queen of Aragon at Narbonne—the city of romance and song—and to offer her a spectacular serenade beneath the balconies of the Archiepiscopal Palace, where she and her suite were accommodated. With them they bore golden flowers and silver with which Royal Violante should crown the laureates, and to Her Majesty they offered a great amaranth of gold, together with the diploma of a Mainteneuse. Acclaimed “Queen of Troubadours,” her motley train swept through the cities of the coast and crossed the Spanish frontier. One and all offered her their true allegiance—to live and dance and sing and die for Yolanda d’Arragona.

If the Aragonese were noted for stubbornness,—and of them was curtly said: “The men of Aragon will drive nails in their heads rather than use hammers,”—they have a sound reputation for chivalry. King Iago II. established this characteristic in an edict in 1327. “We will,” ran the royal rescript, “that every man, whether armed or not, who shall be in company with a lady, pass safely and unmolested unless he be guilty of murder.” Courting an alegra señorita, whether of Aragon, Catalonia, or Valencia, was the duty of every lad, albeit the fair one jokingly called it “pelando la pava” (plucking the turkey). The royal romance was a charming example for all and sundry, and many an amorous French troubadour had his wings cut by Prince Cupid and never went home again at all, and many a glee-maiden, to boot, plucked a “turkey” of Aragon!

King Juan threw himself unreservedly into the arms of his merry Minerva-Venus Queen: no doubt she “plucked” him thoroughly! A “Court of Love” was established at Zaragoza. All day long they danced, and all night through they sang, and at all times played their floral games, whilst dour señors scowled and proud dueñas grimaced. The revels of the “Gaya Ciencia” shocked their susceptibilities, until a crisis was reached in 1340, when the King sent embassies to all the French Courts to enlist the services of their best troubadours. A solemn session of the Cortes, wherein resided the actual power of the State,—the King was King only by their pleasure,—was called, “Podemos mas que vos”—“We are quite as good as you, or even better”—that was the moving spirit of Aragon. A resolution was passed demanding the suppression of “the feast of folly,” as the gay doings at Court were called, and the immediate expulsion of the foreign minstrels and their hilarious company.

Here was a fix for the easy-going King,—dubbed by many “l’Indolente,” the Indolent,—between the devil and the deep sea. The Queen point-blank refused to say good-bye to her devotés, and her wiles prevailed to retain many a merry lover at her Court, for the stoutest will of man yields to the witchery of beauty in every rank of life!

If Queen Yolanda was a “gay woman,” as historians have called her,—and no class of men are anything like so mendacious,—she was not the “fast” woman some of them have maliciously styled her. No, she was a loving spouse and a devoted mother. Perhaps, could she have chosen, she would have brought forth a boy; but, still, every mother loves her child regardless of sex or other considerations. She addressed herself zealously to the rearing of the little princess. No sour-visaged hidalgo and no censorious citizen was allowed the entrée to the nursery. Minstrels rejoiced at the nativity, and minstrels shared the rocking of the cradle. She was baptized at the old mosque-like cathedral of Sa Zeo, or San Salvador,—where the Kings her forbears were all anointed and crowned,—with the courtly ceremonial of Holy Church, whilst outside the people sang their well-loved ditties. Quite the favourite was “Nocte Buena”—

“La Vergin se fui’ in lavar

Sui manos blancas al rio;

El Sol sequedó parado,

La Mar perdio su ruido,” etc.

“To the rivulet the Virgin sped,

Her fair white hands to wash;

The wandering Sun stood still o’erhead,

The Sea cast up no splash,” etc.

and many, many other verses. Zaragoza was famous for the splendour of her mystery plays, as many quaint entries in the archives of the archdiocese prove: “Seven sueldos for making up the heads of the ass and the ox for the stable at Bethlehem; six sueldos for wigs for the prophets; ten sueldos for gloves for the angels.”

The little Princess was not the only occupant of the royal nursery in Zaragoza; King Juan’s child Juanita greeted her baby companion with glee, but the Queen was not too well pleased that she should be allowed to remain there. Indeed, an arrangement was come to whereby Mahaud’s child was delivered over to a governante, and Princess Yolanda was queen of all she saw. Very carefully her training was taken in hand, with due respect to the peccadilloes of the Court; but her mother saw to it that her environment should be youthful, bright, and intelligent. Hardly before the child was out of leading-strings her future was under serious consideration, for the King had no son nor the promise of one by his consort, and Queen Yolanda determined to do all that lay in her power to circumvent the obnoxious clauses of the Salic Law.

The Princess grew up handsome like her father and bewitching like her mother. She was the pet of the palace and the pride of the people, and everybody prophesied great things for her and Aragon. The most important question was, naturally, betrothal and marriage. The King, easy-going in everything, left this delicate matter to his ambitious, clever Queen, and very soon half the crowns in posse in Europe were laid at her daughter’s feet.

The survey of eligible lads of royal birth was far and wide, but, with the tactful instinct of a ruling native, Queen Yolanda made a very happy choice. At Toulouse, three years before the birth of her little daughter, had been born a royal Prince, the eldest son of her uncle Louis of France, her mother’s brother, titular King of Naples, Sicily, and Jerusalem, Duke of Anjou, and Count of Provence. The boy’s mother was Countess Marie de Châtillon, the wealthy heiress of the ducal line of Blois-Bretagne. He was the husband-to-be of Princess Yolanda d’Arragona, Louis d’Anjou. King Juan cordially approved the selection of the young Prince: French royal marriages were popular in Aragon. An imposing embassy was despatched at once to Angers, with an invitation for the boy to visit the Court of Zaragoza under the charge of his aunt, Queen Yolanda. The King and Queen made the most they could of their interesting little visitor. With a view to contingencies, Louis was introduced at the session of the Cortes, and the King gave splendid entertainments to the ricoshombres and other members of the Estates in honour of his future son-in-law, the royal fiancé of the soi-disante heiress to the throne.

This notable visit came to an abrupt and unexpected end upon receipt of the news of the sudden death of King-Duke Louis at the Castle of Bisclin, in La Pouille, on September 20, 1389. His young son, now Louis II., was called home at once. Met at the Languedoc frontier by a kingly escort, the young Sovereign passed on to Arles, and thence to Avignon, where, on October 25, 1389, he was solemnly crowned in the basilica of Nôtre Dame des Dons by Pope Clement VII. A stately progress was made to the Court of Charles VI. in Paris, and the youthful King was presented to imperious Queen Isabeau,—his aunt by marriage,—the proud daughter of Stephen II., Duke of Bavaria, and Princess Thadée Visconti of Milan.

The chief object of this visit was the formal betrothal of the young King and the Princess Yolanda d’Arragona—a ceremony deemed too important for celebration either at Angers or at Aix, in the King’s domains. A notable function, in the grand metropolitan cathedral of Nôtre Dame, was held on, of all days the most suitable, the Feast of the Three Holy Kings, January 6, 1390, whereat assisted all the Princes and Princesses of the House of France, with Prince Ferdinand of Castile and Aragon as proxy for the bride-Princess, and an imposing embassy from King Juan and Queen Yolanda.

SOLEMN ENTRY OF A QUEEN INTO THE CAPITAL OF HER SPOUSE, FIFTEENTH CENTURY

See Froissart’s Chronicles and “L’Album Historique de France”

To face page 40

Back to Angers went, with his mother, Queen-Duchess Marie, the youthful bridegroom-elect, to be safeguarded and trained for his brilliant career. Everybody in Anjou and Provence loved their Duchess. She had won all hearts. Those were prosperous, happy days—the days of the gracious Regent’s kindly government.

Early in 1393 King Juan met with a serious accident whilst hunting in the mountains around Tacca, the ancient capital of Aragon. He was, by the way, a famous huntsman, and had gained by his keenness in pursuit of game the title of “El Cazador”—“The Sportsman.” Mauled by a wolf he had wounded in the chase, he never recovered from the loss of blood and the poison of those unclean fangs. Feeling his end approaching, and anxious about the future of his darling child, he proposed to Queen Marie and the Anjou-Provence Court of Regency that the nuptials of Louis and Yolanda should be celebrated without delay. This he did because he had determined to evade the restrictions of the Salic Law by proclaiming Louis and Yolanda heir and heiress together of Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia.

Queen Yolanda most heartily seconded her consort’s project,—indeed, she it was who had first suggested that line of action,—and when, on May 15, the King breathed his last in the castle of his fathers in Zaragoza, she claimed the succession for her son-in-law and daughter. On the day following the King’s death she took the young Princess,—barely thirteen years of age,—accompanied by the whole Court and a crowd of sympathetic citizens, into the basilica of Sa Zeo, and placed her upon the magnificent and historic silver throne of the Kings of Aragon. Bending her knees before her, she kissed the child’s hand in homage to her sovereignty, and caused heralds to proclaim her “Yolanda Reina d’Arragona.” It was a bold step, but quite in accord with the ruling instinct of the royal house; moreover, it commanded the suffrages of very many members of the Cortes.

The Estates of the three realms met in plenary session, and before the deliberations were opened the little “Queen” was presented by her mother, who demanded a unanimous vote in favour of Louis and Yolanda. There were, however, other claimants for the crown, and the Cortes decided to offer it to Dom Martino, the late King’s only surviving brother, a next heir-male of the blood, whose consort was Queen Maria of Sicily. The new King treated his widowed sister-in-law and his little niece with the utmost consideration. He prevailed upon Queen Yolanda to retain the royal apartments at the castle, for he did not propose to reside there. He only stayed at Zaragoza for his coronation, and returned at once to Palermo.

The whole energy of the widowed Queen was now devoted to the education of her only child. Her widowhood weighed lightly upon her; her buoyant, happy nature soon shook off her grief and mourning. She was now perfectly free to cultivate her tastes. If the “little Queen” was not to be Queen of Aragon, she should succeed herself as “Queen of Hearts and Troubadours.” Accordingly she moved her residence to Barcelona, the sunny and the gay, and there at once set up a “Court of Love.” Catalonia was times out of mind the rival of Provence in romance and minstrelsy; her marts had quite as many merry troubadours as serious merchants. The corridas de toros—bullfights—of Barcelona were the most brilliant in Spain, whilst the people were as independent and as unconventional as they were cultured and industrious. The two Queens very soon became expert aficionadas of the royal sport.

Queen Yolanda never for a moment lost sight of the future of her daughter, and preparations for her marriage to Louis d’Anjou occupied very much of her busy, merry, useful life. Queens’ trousseaux were something more than nine days’ wonders; besides, the ambition of the mother-Queen knew no bounds to her daughter’s horizon. She must go forth at least as richly clothed and dowered as any of her predecessors. Goldsmiths, glass-blowers, cabinet-makers, saddlers, silk-weavers, and potters,—none more accomplished and famous in Europe than the artificers of Barcelona and Valencia,—were set to work to fill the immense walnut marriage-chests of the bride-to-be. Her jewels were superb,—no richer gold was known than the red gold of Aragon,—the royal gems were unique, of Moorish origin, uncut. Years passed quickly along, and Princess Yolanda kept her eighteenth birthday with her mother in Barcelona. She was on the threshold of a new life.

II.

One glorious autumn morning in the good year 1399,—“good” because “the next before a brand-new century,” as said the gossips of the time,—a gallant cavalcade deployed down the battlemented approach to the grim old castle of Angers. At its head, mounted upon a prancing white Anjou charger, rode as comely a young knight as ever hoisted pennoned lance to stirrup-lock. He was dressed in semi-armour,—the armour of the “Lists.” His errand was not warlike, for knotted in his harness were Cupid’s love-ribbons: he was a royal bridegroom-elect speeding off to bring gaily home from distant Aragon his fair betrothed. He had been knighted ten years before by his uncle, Charles VI., at his coronation in Nôtre Dame in Paris, at which solemnity he had,—a slim lad of twelve,—held proudly the stirrup of the Sovereign.

Louis II. d’Anjou, born at the Castle of Toulouse on October 7, 1377, succeeded his father, Louis I., in 1389, and, like him, bore many titles of sovereignty: King of Naples, Sicily, and Jerusalem; Duke of Anjou, Calabria, Touraine, and Pouille; Grand Peer of France; Prince of Capua; Count of Provence, Maine, Forcalquier, and Piemont; Lord of Montpellier; and Governor of Languedoc and Guienne. His grandfather was the brave but unfortunate King John “the Good” of France; his grandmother, the beautiful but sorrowful Queen Bonne of Luxembourg and Bohemia.

The boy-King carrouselled through the lumbering gates of Angers that brilliant October morning between two trusty knights of his household,—loyal lieges of their late King now devoted to the service of the son. As valiant in deeds of war as discreet in affairs of State were Raymond d’Agout and Jehan de Morien. All three bore the proud cognizance of Sicily-Anjou,—the golden flying eagle,—and their silken bannerets were sewn with the white lilies of the royal house of France. A goodly retinue of mounted men followed the young King, guarding the person and the costly bridal gifts which accompanied the royal lover’s cortège.

Queen-Duchess Marie, his mother, had kept as Regent unweariedly her long ten years’ watch, not only over the business of the State, but also over the passions and the actions of her lusty, well-grown son. Many a maid,—royal, noble, and simple,—had attracted the comely youth’s regard, and had flushed her face and his. Women and girls of his time were, as an appreciative chronicler has noted, “franches, désintéressés, capable d’amours, épidémentés, elles restent naïve très longtemps, parceque les vices étrangères n’ont point pénetrés dans les familles.”[A] Louis had responded affectionately and loyally to his mother’s solicitude; he was famed as the St. Sebastian of his time, whose chastity and good report had no sharp shaft of scandal pierced.

[A] “Natural, open-hearted, amorous, and accessible, they are always unspoiled because odious foreign manners have never marred their home.”

The royal cavalcade pranced its way warily over the wide-rolling plains and across the gently cresting hill-country of Central France, making for the Spanish frontier. The whole of that smiling land was ravaged by foreign foes and overrun by native ne’er-do-wells, but, happily, no thrilling adventures have been recorded of that lengthy progress. Near upon the eve of St. Luke, King Louis II. and his suite were cordially welcomed in his royal castle of Montpellier, which the two mother-Queens, Marie and Yolanda, had indicated as the trysting-place. There the royal Court was established, whilst d’Agout and de Morien were despatched, with a lordly following, to Perpignan and across the frontier of Aragon to greet, at the Castle of Gerona, the two Yolandas—who were already on their way from Barcelona—and thence escort them to their Sovereign’s presence.

The young “Queen” was quite as anxious to meet her affianced husband as he was to embrace her, and no undue delay hindered the resumption of the queenly progress. It was a notable cortège, for Queen Yolanda, holding as she did tenaciously that her daughter was, at least, titular Queen of Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia, travelled in extravagant royal state. Besides the great chariot, with its tapestries and furniture of richest Hispano-Moorish origin, were others almost as sumptuous for the lords and ladies of the suite. All these had their guards of honour—trusty veterans of King Juan’s time, and devoted to their “Queen.” Great tumbrils, laden with costly products of Zaragoza, Barcelona, and Valencia,—the royal trousseau and magnificent offerings for King Louis and his widowed mother,—accompanied by well-mounted cavalry, rolled heavily along the ancient Roman road to France.

The whole of Languedoc agreed to pay honour to the royal travellers, and they revelled in the floral games and fêtes galants offered by every town and castle by the way. From Toulouse, the birthplace of the bridegroom-elect, came quite appropriately a phalanx of maintaineurs to Montpellier to recite and sing poems and melodies of the “Gaya Ciencia.” The green rolling hills of Languedoc gave back in sweetly echoing refrains the tuneful music of the shell-sown shores of the rolling sea, the sun-kissed Mediterranean: all sang the “Loves of Louis and Yolanda.”

There is a quaint and suggestive story anent the meeting of the august young couple which calls to mind the adventures of King Juan at the Court of Bar-le-Duc. The young King had timely warning of the approach of his royal bride-elect, and, hastily donning the guise of a simple knight, he mingled in the throng of enthusiastic citizens, unrecognized, at the entrance of the town. Both Queens leaned forward in their chariot to acknowledge the loyal greetings; and the bride,—arrayed in golden tissue of Zaragoza, and wearing Anjou lilies in her hair,—smiled and laughed and clapped her hands in ecstasy, the animation adding immensely to her charms of face and figure. King Louis was enraptured, and, falling head over ears in love, approached the royal carriage; and kneeling on his berretta, he seized the youthful Queen’s white, shapely hand, and implanted thereupon one ardent kiss. The impact sent the hot blood coursing through his veins, and it was as much as his esquire could do to drag his master back and hurry him to the palace in time to change his costume and receive his royal guests with courtly etiquette. The young Queen was conscious of this outburst of love; she, too, coloured, and tried in vain to penetrate the disguise of her impassioned lover. The mother-Queen instinctively guessed who he was, and quietly remarked: “You will meet your gallant knight again, and soon—and no mistake.”

Montpellier was all too small to accommodate such a numerous and such a distinguished company, so King Louis gave his royal visitors barely time to recover from the fatigues of the long coach-ride out of Spain when he hurried on the royal train to Arles, in Provence. Queen-Duchess Marie was already waiting at the great Archiepiscopal Palace to give the royal visitors a cordial greeting. After having waved her son adieu from the boudoir-balcony of the Castle of Angers, she, too, set out for the south. She had chosen Arles for the royal nuptials, as being the capital of the third great kingdom of Europe and the most considerable city in her son’s dominions.

No better choice could have been made from a psychological point of view, for have not the Arlésiennes been noted for all time for their perfect figures,—Venus di Milo was one of them,—their graceful carriage, and surpassingly good looks? They, with their menfolk, animated and merry, have always eaten well and well drunk. The delicious pink St. Peray is a more generous wine than all the vintages of Champagne. Physical charms and fin bouquets were ever incentives to love and pleasure, and Mars of Aragon yielded up his arms to Venus of Arles. Arles—la belle Grecque aux yeux Sarrazines! Perhaps the becoming, close-fitting black velvet chapelles, or bonnets, and the diaphanous white gauze veils, did much to express la grâce fière aux femmes!

It was indeed a gorgeous function at which the royal couple were united in the bonds of matrimony, that morrow of All Saints, 1399. The ancient basilica of St. Trophimus was one vast nave, no choir,—that the royal brothers Louis and René built a generation later,—but it was too circumscribed for the marriage ritual; consequently, under a gold and crimson awning, slung on ships’ masts beyond the deeply recessed chief portal, with its weird sculptures, the clergy took up their station to await the bridal pageant. The Cardinal-Archbishop, Nicholas de Brancas, joined the two young hands in wedlock, and Cardinal Adreano Savernelli, the Papal Legate, gave the blessing of Peter, whilst the two mother-Queens looked on approvingly.

The royal bride,—in white, of course,—had an over-kirtle, or train, of gemmed silver tissue—a thing of wonderment and beauty worn by her royal mother, and her mother, Marie de France, before her, and coming from the Greco-Flemish trousseau of the famous Countess Iolande. Her abundant brown-black hair was plaited in two thick ropes, with pearls and silver lace reaching far below the jewelled golden cincture that encompassed her well-formed bust. Upon her thinly covered bosom reposed the kingly medallion of her father, King Juan, with its massive golden chain of Estate, the emblem of her sovereign rank. Upon her finger she wore the simple ruby ring of betrothal, now to be exchanged for the plain golden hoop of marriage.

“Yolande is one of the most lovely creatures anybody could imagine.” So wrote grim old Juvenal des Ursins, the chatty chronicler of Courts. She brought to her royal spouse a rich dowry—much of the private wealth of her father and many art treasures, among them great lustred dishes and vases of Hispano-Moorish potters’ work, with the royal arms and cipher thereon. Four baronies, too, passed to the Sicily-Anjou crown: Lunel in Languedoc—famed for vintages of sweet muscatel wines—Berre, Martignes, and Istres, all bordering the salt Étang de Berre, in Provence, each a Venice in miniature, and rich in salt, salt-dues, and works. The royal bride’s splendid marriage-chests were packed full of costly products of King Juan’s kingdoms: table services in gold from Zaragoza and finely-cut gems; delicate glass arruxiados, or scent-sprinklers, and crystal tazzas from Barcelona—more famous than Murano; great brazen vessels from Valencia and richly-woven textiles.

The same veracious historian has painted a picture in words of the youthful Yolande. “Tall,” he says, “slim, erect, well proportioned in her frame, her features of a Spanish cast, dark lustrous hair, the Queen-Duchess has an intrepid heart and an elevated spirit, which give animation and distinction to her charming personality. She is remarkable for decision, and commands obedience by her authoritative manner.”

The Court did not tarry long at Arles, for, in spite of the beauty of the women and the gallantry of the men and its other notable attractions, it was, after all, somewhat of a dull, unhealthy place. A move was accordingly made,—before, indeed, the festivities were quite exhausted,—to the comfortable and roomy manoir of Tarascon, a very favourite country residence of all the Provence Princes. The gardens were famous, and laid out in the Italian manner, and the extensive park and fresh-water lakes were well stocked with game and fish. The fêtes galants of Louis XV. and “La Pompadour” here had their model. The bridal couple, with their guests and retainers,—often as not in the guise of shepherds and shepherdesses,—thus kept there state for three merry months, until the warmer spring weather hurried them off to Angers, in the north.

FAVOURITE RECREATIONS

1. A DIGNIFIED MUSIC PARTY.

2. HAND-BALL AND CHESS

Both from Miniatures in MS., Fourteenth Century, “Valeur Maxime”

British Museum

To face page 50

The pretty legend of St. Martha of Bethany appealed to the young Queen-Duchess. In the crypt of the principal church of Tarascon is the tomb of the saint, and on the walls is her story sculptured. Once upon a time a deadly dragon,—called by the fearful country-folk “Tarasque,”—dwelt in a hollow cave by the Rhone shore, and fed on human flesh. News of the devastation wrought by the monster reached the ears of Lazarus and his sisters at Marseilles, and St. Martha took upon herself to subdue the beast. With nothing in her hand but a piece of the true Cross of Christ and her silken girdle of many ells in length, she sought out the deadly dragon in his lair. Casting around his loathsome body her light cincture, she enabled her companions to slay him. The girdle of St. Martha became the mascot of all the Tarasconnais, and everybody wore a goodly belt or bodice à la Marthe. Such a girdle, in cloth of gold and tasselled, was offered to the young bride by the loyal townsfolk.

The state entry of the Sovereigns into Angers,—the major capital of the King-Duke’s dominions,—was just such another pageant as that which greeted Queen Isabeau of Bavaria in Paris in the summer of 1385. From ancient days Angers had been a place of note—the Andegavi of Gallo-Roman times, a municipium and a castrum combined. In the Carlovingian era the Counts—then Dukes—of the Angevines,—founders of the great Capet family,—and their vigorous consorts nursed stalwart sons, who were the superiors of their neighbour rulers in Frankland. From Geoffrey Plantagenet, titular King of Jerusalem, sprang our English Kings. Louis IX.,—St. Louis of blessed memory,—bestowed the duchy of Anjou upon his brother John with the title of King of the Two Sicilies; hence came the sovereign titles of Louis II. and Yolande.

The Castle of Angers in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was one of the most imposing in France. Flanked by eighteen great donjon towers, shaped like dice-boxes, it had the aspect of a prison rather than of a palace. The royal apartments were between two great bastions, Le Tour du Moulin and Le Tour du Diable. The drawbridge spanned the deep, wide moat to the esplanade called Le Pont du Monde; beneath were dark dungeons and odious oubliettes. To honour their King and Queen, the castle household hung great swaying lengths of scarlet “noble cloth,”—newly purchased from the Florentine merchants of the “Calimala,”—to cover up the black slate-stone courses of the masonry of Le Diable, whilst they concealed the rough masonry of Le Moulin by strips of gorgeous yellow canvas of Cholet d’Anjou. These were the heraldic colours of Aragon. All the gloomy slate-fronted houses of the city,—“Black Angers” it was called,—were decorated similarly, and gay Flemish carpets and showy skins of beasts were flaunted from the windows. The citizens kept holiday with bunches of greenery and early spring flowers in their hands to cast at their new liege Lady.

Queen Yolande waved her gloved hand,—a novelty in demure Angers,—in friendly response to the plaudits of the throngs, and refused no kiss of bearded mouth or cherry lips thereon as she rode on happily by the side of her royal spouse. At St. Maurice,—the noble cathedral, with its new and glorious coloured windows,—the royal cortège halted whilst Te Deum was sung, and the bridal pair were sprinkled with holy water and censed. Another “Station” was made where the ascent to the castle began, for there pious loyal folk had prepared the mystery-spectacles of the “Resurrection of Christ” with “His Appearance to His Virgin Mother.” The Saviour’s features, by a typical but strange conceit, were those of the King-Duke, St. Mary’s those of the royal bride!

The banquetings and junketings were scenes of deep amazement to the new Queen. In Aragon and Barcelona people ate and drank delicately,—their menus were à la Grecque,—but in cold and phlegmatic Anjou great hunks of beef and great mugs of sack,—quite à la Romain,—were de rigueur. An old kitchen reporter of Angers records the daily fare at the castle: “One whole ox, two calves, three sheep, three pigs, twelve fowls.” The only artistic confection was “hippocras, seasoned with cloves and cinnamon.” Pepper, ginger, rosemary, mint, and thyme, were served as “delicacies.” Another harsh note on the fitness of things which struck the royal bride as extraordinary was the loud laughter indulged in by the gentlemen of the Court and their coarse jests; le rire français had nothing of the mellowed merriment of the “Gaya Ciencia.”

Alas! the rejoicings and the feastings of the Angevines and their guests were suddenly arrested, and the enthusiastic shouts of welcome were drowned by harsh hammerings of armourers and raucous military commands. The King-Duke was summoned to take his position among the captains of France, in battle order, in face of the foreign foe, and the Queen-Duchess, young and inexperienced as she was, assumed the government of Angers and the care of the citizens. All France was ravaged by the English, and State after State fell before their onslaught. Yolande addressed herself to the strengthening of the defences of the castle and the city. Imitating the tact and prudence of Silvestro and Giovanni de’ Medici at Florence, she ordered the levying of a poll-tax, rated upon the variations of land-tenure and the varying incomes of the craftsmen: a tenth of all rateable property,—shrewdly spread over three years, with a credit for immediate needs,—was cordially yielded by the Angevines.

Probably this impost was made upon the advice of worthy councillors, but, all the same, the manner in which the young châtelaine Lieutenant-General in person superintended its operation was an eloquent testimony to her force of character and her true patriotism. She disposed of many personal belongings, and submitted to many acts of self-denial, an example quickly followed by great and small. She sent also to Zaragoza for master-armourers to refurbish old and temper new weapons of various sorts. Some of these craftsmen she ordered to give instruction to native workers; so very shortly her armoury was efficient, not alone for home defence, but for the rearming of the King’s forces in the field.

Not content with these warlike preparations, Queen Yolande gave time and money for the distraction and amusement of her people in their time of stress. Castle fêtes, town sports, and church mystery plays, were bravely carried through. The Queen herself was everywhere—now mounted for the chase, now tending sick folks, now at public prayers. Born daughter of a grand race, and full of dignity, she had inherited her mother’s happy disposition. She charmed everyone in town and country, and endeared herself to her loving subjects by many a homely trait.

A pretty tale has been preserved about her whilst King Louis was standing shoulder to shoulder with Charles VI. and his other peers of France. One afternoon,—according to her wont when not hindered by affairs of State or claims of charity,—she sallied forth to the royal park of L’Vien, her dogs in leash. Let loose, they put up a rabbit, which made directly for their royal mistress, and sought refuge in the skirt of her green velvet hunting-kirtle. Reaching down her hand, she fondled the little trembling creature, when, to her immense surprise, she discovered upon its neck a faded ribbon, with a medallion bearing an image of the Virgin. The incident occurred in a woody dell within the ruins of a half-buried hermit’s cell. Yolande did not for a moment hesitate in her interpretation of the incident. She noted the date,—February 2, the Feast of the Purification,—and she set to work to restore the holy house in honour of St. Mary. Upon the portal, by her command, was sculptured the charming episode, with the legend: “Nôtre Dame de Sousterre, l’amie et la protectrice des âmes en danger.”[A]

[A] “Our Lady of the Deep Cell, the friend and protectress of souls in danger.”

The same year, 1401, found Louis d’Anjou and Yolande upon their way to Paris, where she, as Queen of Jerusalem, Naples, Sicily, and Aragon, made her state entry at the Court of Charles VI. and Isabeau. Doubtless the young Queen was struck with Isabeau’s extraordinary freedom of manner. Her own training, both at Zaragoza and Barcelona, in the rigid conventions of a semi-Moorish Court, had taught her restraint and aloofness. The dress of the French Queen astonished her, for in Aragon and Catalonia physical charms were enhanced by semi-concealment, whereas Isabeau exposed her painted arms, shoulders, and her breast, right down to her cincture; whilst her low waist at the back was pinched by a cotte hardie, so that the bust was enlarged to the degree of distortion: une taille de guêpe—“wasp-like” indeed! The etiquette of the Court of her father, as well as that of Anjou, kept men out of the bedchambers of the fair, but Isabeau, décolletée and en déshabillée, was the centre of a crowd of flatterers and fawners at her daily se lever. The dressing-room of Isabeau was the factory of gossip and intrigue. Perhaps she gave utterance to the aphorism:

“Ostez le fard et le vice,

Vous luy ostez l’âme et le corps.”

“Take away fashion and vice,

And you expose both soul and body.”

On her side Queen Yolande caused a sensation among the French courtiers. No one had ever seen such a wealth of gold and jewels as that which adorned the winsome Spanish Queen. In spite of their great dissimilarity in age, appearance, character, and manner, the two Queens became fast friends, and Yolande was permitted to weld the intimacy into a permanent relationship at the fortunate accouchement of Isabeau. With admirable simplicity and charm she assumed the charge of the royal infant, sponsored it, and gave it her own name added to Catherine. Born to be the consort of Henry V. of England, the victor of Azincourt, Catherine de Valois served as the gracious hostage and pledge of a greatly-longed-for peace.

Queen Yolande was, however, approaching her own accouchement, and Louis, judging that a fortified castle was not a desirable locality for such an auspicious event, hurried his consort and her boudoir entourage off to Toulouse, the gay capital of Languedoc—Toulouse of the Troubadours. There, upon September 25, 1403, within the palace, Yolande brought forth her first-born, her royal husband’s son and heir. Louis the bonny boy was named by the Archbishop at the font of St. Étienne’s Cathedral. Great was the joy over all the harvest-fields and vineyards of Provence and Languedoc. Perhaps the good folk of Aix felt themselves a little slighted. Why was not the happy birth planned for their capital? they asked. Nevertheless, they sent a goodly tribute of 100,000 gold florins to the cradle of the little Prince, and saluted him as “Vicomte d’Aix.”

The year 1404 had seasons of peculiar sorrow for the Angevine Court, followed, happily, by joyous days. On May 19 the King-Duke’s brother, Charles, Duke of Maine and Count of Guise, died suddenly at Angers,—the “Black Death” they called his malady,—amid universal regret. He had been content to play a subordinate rôle in the affairs of State—a man more addicted to scholarly pursuits than political activities. He had, however, proved himself the son of a good mother and the stay of his young sister-in-law from Aragon during her spouse’s absence from his own dominions. The Duke left one only child—a boy—who succeeded him as Charles II. of Maine. Queen-Duchess Marie felt her dear son’s untimely death acutely, and, notwithstanding the loving care of her devoted daughter-in-law, she never recovered from the prostration of her grief. Within a fortnight of the obsequies of her son, the feet of those who had so sorrowfully borne his body forth to burial were treading the same mournful path, tenderly bearing her own funeral casket.

Ever since her happy marriage to Louis I. in 1360, Marie de Châtillon-Blois had borne nobly her part as the worthy helpmeet of her spouse and the devoted mother of his children. For ten years after his death her gentle presence and wise counsels had directed the affairs of the House of Sicily-Anjou, and smoothed away all difficulties from the path of her son. She left immense wealth, which, added to the goodly fortune of Louis I., made her son the richest Sovereign in all France. It was said at the time that she was worth “more than twenty-two millions of livres.” “In spite of reputed avarice and hoarding,“ said a not too friendly historian, ”she was a sapient ruler, moderate and firm, and she left Anjou the better for a good example.” “Sachiez,” wrote Bourdigne of her, “que c’estoit une dame de goût faiet, et de moult grant ponchas, car point ne dormoit en poursuivant ses besoignes.”

These dark clouds hung heavily over Louis II. and Yolande, but the cause of their passing was a signal of enthusiastic joy. On October 14 a little baby-girl was born. Mary, the “Mother of Sorrows,” heard the prayer of the stricken Royal Family, and sent a new Mary to fill the place of the lamented Duchess; for the child was named Marie simply, and was offered to St. Mary for her own.

Troubles, however, were gathering thickly all over the devoted land of France. The enemy in the gate, ever victorious, plundered and pauperized every State in turn, so that the country was “like a sheep bleating helplessly before her shearers.” Tax-gatherers and oppressors of mankind beggared the poor and feeble, and spoiled the rich and brave. “Sà de l’argent? Sà de l’argent?”—“Where’s your money?”—was the desolating cry which the rough cailloux of the village pavé tossed through the draughty doorways of peasant cottages, and the smooth courtyards echoed through the mullioned windows of seigneurs’ castles. The gatherings, in spite of rape and rapine, fell far short of the requirements of these times of stress, and a general appeal was made to Queens and châtelaines to exercise their charms in staying the hands of ravishers. The famous answer of Queen Isabeau was that, alas! of Queen Yolande, though more sympathetically expressed: “Je suis une povre voix criant dans ce royaume, désireuse de paix et du bien de tous!”[A]

[A] “I am a poor voice crying helplessly in this wretched kingdom, seeking only peace and the good of all.”

This aptly expressed the weary sense of disaster which saw that fateful year expire, but for the King and Queen of Sicily-Anjou-Provence a gleam of the brightness of Epiphany fell athwart their marital couch. Yolande was for the third time a mother, and her child was a boy. Born on January 6, 1408, in a crenellated tower of the castle gateway of Angers, his mother had to bear the anxiety and the vigil all alone, for Louis II. was in Italy fighting for his own.

As before the birth of the Princess Marie devotions had been addressed to the Mother of God and to the saints for a favourable carriage, now, in view of the troubles of the land, special petitions were addressed to the most popular saint of Anjou, St. Renatus, that the new deliverance might presage a new birth of hope for France, and that the holy one,—the patron of child-bearing mothers who sought male heirs,—might supplicate at the throne of heaven for a baby-boy.

Baptized in the Cathedral of St. Maurice eight days after birth, the little Prince had for sponsors no foreign potentates, but men of good renown and substance in Anjou: Pierre, Abbé de St. Aubin; Jean, Seigneur de l’Aigle; Guillaume, Chevalier des Roches; and Mathilde, Abbée de Nôtre Dame d’Angers. The Queen by proxy named her child “René—reconnaissance à Messire St. Renatus.”

The Queen folded her little infant to her breast, but after weaning him she gave him over to the care of a faithful nurse, one Théophaine la Magine of Saumur, who came to love him, and he her, most tenderly.

Among the documens historiques of Anjou are Les Comptes de Roi René—notices of public works carried out in various parts of the royal-ducal dominions. Many of these enterprises were undertaken at the direct instance of Queen Yolande, and they throw a strong light upon her character as a loyal spouse and sapient ruler. For example, on July 26, 1408, a marché, or contract, was made between the Queen’s Council and one Julien Guillot, a master-builder, for reslating the roof of the living apartments and the towers of the Castle of Angers, and also of various public buildings in the city, and the manor-houses of Diex-Aye and de la Roche au Due, at an upset price of fifty-five livres tournois (standard gold coins), “to be paid when the work is complete, with twenty more as deposit.”

A MYSTERY OR MIRACLE PLAY, FIFTEENTH CENTURY

From “L’Album Historique de France”

To face page 60

Again, under date October 25, 1410, another marché was signed, whereby “Jean Dueceux and Jean Butort, master-carpenters of Angers, agree to strengthen the woodwork of the castle chapel and replace worn-out corbels. All to be finished against the Feast of the Magdalen, at a total cost of two hundred livres tournois, according to the order of Queen Yolande and her Council.” King Louis had in 1403 assigned a benefaction of twenty-five gold livres to the ancient chapel of St. John Baptist, to be paid yearly for ever, as a thank-offering for the birth of Princess Marie.

These documens are full of such notices, and they also record events of festive interest. One such incident had a most ludicrous dénouement: “On the twenty-seventh of June, 1409, Messire Yovunet Coyrant, Superintendent of the Castle of Angers, paid a visit of inspection, and he complained that on Sunday, June 23rd of this month, being within the said castle, where a merry company was occupied with games and drolleries before Queen Yolande and the Court, he stood for a time to watch the fun. Quite unknown to him, the tails of his new long coat, which had cost him ten solz [half a livre], were cut off by some miscreant or other, whereby he became an object of derision! For this insult he claimed satisfaction, and named as his go-betweens Guye Buyneart and Jehan Guoynie.” Whether these practical jokers were inspired by the Queen we know not, but this trifling record shows that she was not entirely absorbed by the heavy responsibilities of her rank as Lieutenant-General of her consort, but found time to indulge in some of the gaieties which had been the joy of her mother and herself in Aragon, and which had graced her own nuptials and entry into Anjou and Provence.

Again the mirthful pursuits of the Court and country were stayed by the stringency of the times. Sedition spread its baneful influence all over Provence and Languedoc what time King Louis was still far away fighting in Italy. With courage, fraught with love and assurance, she set off to the distant province, taking with her, not only an escort of doughty war-lords, but also her own tender nurslings—Louis, Marie, and René. With her children was also the young Princess Catherine, daughter of Jean “sans Peur,” the Duke of Burgundy, whose betrothal to her eldest son Louis was imminent. Through his children her appeal would first be made to her husband’s disaffected subjects. Should that fail, then she could don cuirass and casque and head her royal troops to worst them. With little Vicomte d’Aix upon her saddle-lap, she passed through village, town, and city, receiving enthusiastic plaudits everywhere; she was “Madame la Nostre Royne!” The head of the rebellion was scotched, and from Aix the intrepid Queen despatched messengers to the King to tell of her success, and to say that she was ready to embark at once to his assistance.

This heroic offer was made possible by the death of King Martin of Aragon in 1410, who bequeathed to his niece the whole of his private fortune. This event, however, added to the Queen’s anxieties, for she was not the sort of woman to allow the royal succession to pass for ever unchallenged. La Justicia Mayor of the State of Aragon assembled at the ancient royal castle of Alcañiz to receive the names and to adjudicate the claims of candidates for the vacant throne. Yolande, still styling herself “Queen of Aragon,” was represented by Louis, Duke of Bourbon, and Antoine, Count of Vendôme. Her claim was not immediately for herself, but for her son Louis. Two years were spent in acrimonious deliberations, but the provisions of the Salic Law penalized the female descent, and consequently the next male heir, Prince Ferdinand of Castile, placed the crown of Aragon upon his head as well as that of Castile. Queen Yolande had to be content with her protest and her titular sovereignty.

Back at Angers in 1413, the Queen conceived a notable future for her nine-years-old daughter, Marie. Of the six sons of Charles VI. of France and Isabeau, only one survived, the fifth-born, Charles. The imperious Bavarian Queen had little or none of Queen Yolande’s fondness for her offspring; they were born, alas! put out to nurse, forgotten, and neglected—so they died. Upon the little Prince—the cherished jewel of his father—Queen Yolande fixed her motherly regard. He was a year older than her Marie, and a piteous little object bereft of a mother’s love and solicitude. Yolande’s warm heart yearned towards the lonely child; she would mother him, she would train him, and then she would marry him to Marie—this was the Queen’s dream.

With that promptitude which marked all her well-considered actions, Queen Yolande set about the realization of her castle in the air. She again packed up herself, her children, and her Court, and took up her abode in the Château de Mehun-sur-Yèvre, near Bourges, a favourite residence of the French Court. Among her little ones was a baby-girl, no more than six months old—Yolande, her own name-child. She gave as her reason for so strange a line of conduct her wish for greater facilities in the education of her children. Charles VI. offered no objection to the residence of such a worthy mother and heroine wife in his own neighbourhood; indeed, he regarded her advent with considerable pleasure and satisfaction. Yolande’s influence for good would outweigh Isabeau’s for evil; besides, she would be a trusty counsellor.

Queen Yolande had not been very long established at Mehun before she put in a plea on behalf of the poor little heir to the throne of France. Charles was thankful, he was delighted, and at once gave into her sole charge, untrammelled in any way, his dear little son, to share the home care and the studies of his two young cousins, Louis and René d’Anjou. Having obtained the charge of the little Count de Ponthieu, Queen Yolande once more went home to Angers, by no means embarrassed by the fact that she had assumed the training of two Kings, Louis and Charles, with René a possible King of Aragon besides.

For two years Charles passed for Yolande’s son, the playmate and boy-lover of her sweet Marie. All his inspirations and his examples he took from her and them—at last a happy boy, with a hopeful future. The Queen allowed that future no halting steps; Charles and Marie should be betrothed, and Mary should be Queen of France! Yolande broached the subject to King Charles, and at once gained his cordial consent, but tactfully she left to him the furthering of the project. Upon December 18, 1415, Charles of France and Marie of Sicily-Anjou were privately affianced in the Royal Chapel of the Castle of Bourges. France was in the throes of revolution and dissolution; the terrible defeat at Azincourt, on October 24 that same year, had paralyzed the military power of the French States, and was the ultimate cause of King Charles’s insanity. For seven years he became a fugitive, not only bereft of reason, but of all resources. Queen Isabeau did nothing to relieve the tension, but maintained her irreconcilable position, and continued her ill-living. The King’s only brother, the lamented Duke of Orléans, had been assassinated eight years before, and there appeared to be no one capable of steering the ship of State into a calm haven.

This was Queen Yolande’s opportunity, and she rose to its height majestically. She was already guardian of the Dauphin, who after his espousal returned with his child-bride to Angers. Now she assumed the general direction of affairs, and became virtually Regent of France and the arbiter of her destiny. She personally approached the English King, and obtained from him favourable terms of peace, which assured tranquillity and regeneration for France. She it was who proposed to Henry his alliance with her young goddaughter, Catherine, the youngest child of Charles VI. and Isabeau, then fourteen years of age. He was twenty-eight, and the marriage was consummated five years later, although Henry’s terms included the payment of the arrears of the ransom of King John the “Good,” the prisoner of Poitiers, a sum of 2,000,000 crowns.

The Queen’s judgment and resourcefulness eminently merited the grudging encomium of the wife of her husband’s fiercest rival, the Duchess of Burgundy. “I am always glad,” she said, “when it is a good woman who governs, for then all good men follow her!”

All this time,—a time fraught with infinite issues,—King Louis II. of Sicily-Anjou was in Italy, meeting in his campaign with varied fortune. He had all he could do to hold his own, but his presence at the head of his army was essential to ultimate success. Three times he entered Naples acclaimed as King, for Queen Giovanna II. had named him so. Three times he fled discomfited after victory, which he failed to follow up. He rarely returned to his French dominions, and really he had no necessity so to do on the score of administration, for his beloved and capable Lieutenant-General was perfectly able to keep everything in order and uphold his authority. At last the King of Sicily-Anjou and Naples returned to Angers a broken and an ailing man, to spend what time Providence would still grant him with his devoted noble wife.

Queen Yolande’s first great grief came to her in 1417, when her faithful husband was taken from her. Happily for them both, they were united at the deathbed—consoling and consoled. He was young to die—barely forty years of age—but ripe enough for the greedy grasp of Death. Louis II.’s fame was that of a “loyal Sovereign, a righteous man, a true spouse, and an affectionate father.”

CHAPTER III
YOLANDA D’ARRAGONA—“A GOOD MOTHER AND A GREAT QUEEN”—continued

I.

A royal corpse reposed upon the state tester bedstead within the great Hall of Audiences in the enceinte of the Castle of Angers, and a royal widow knelt humbly at a prie-dieu at his feet. It was late in the evening of that sweet April day,—half sun, half shower,—that the body of Louis II., King of Sicily, Naples, Jerusalem, and Anjou, was ceremonially displayed, flanked by huge yellow wax candles in chiselled sticks of Gerona brasswork. The tapestried walls of this chapelle ardente were covered with sable cloth sewn with silver lilies and hung with great garlands of yew. The head of the lamented Sovereign reposed upon a soft cushion of blue velvet, put there by the widow herself. Upon his breast, with its pectoral cross, was his favourite “Livre des Heures,” one of the famous treasures of the collection of King John the “Good,” his grandfather.

In her black velvet chapelle, with its close gauze veil concealing her beautiful hair, and attired in sombre black, unrelieved, the devotional figure, sorrowful and brave, was none other than “Good” Queen Yolande. Her right hand rested consolingly upon the shoulder of her eldest son, now Louis III., a well-grown stripling of fourteen. Around his neck his mother had but just hung the chain and medallion of sovereignty, taken tenderly from her dead spouse. Behind them knelt Prince René and Princess Marie, the fondest of playmates, weeping bitterly, poor children! The vast hall was filled with courtiers, soldiers, citizens, all manifesting signs of woe and regret. The royal obsequies were conducted magnificently, under the personal direction of the Queen, within the choir of the Cathedral of St. Maurice. Feuds of rival Sovereigns, operations against the foreign foe, quarrels of fault-finders, and the like, were all hushed in the presence of the King of Terrors. To Angers thronged royal guests and simple folk to pay their last tributes of respect and devotion. In state, King Charles VI. started to tender his homage to the dead, but, struck down with sudden illness at Orléans, he requested Queen Isabeau to take his place. Burial rites were not much in that giddy woman’s way, and her hard heart had no room for sympathy and condolence; so the “Scourge of France,” as she was called, gave Angers a wide berth.

The Angevine royal children were five in number, and Louis left besides a natural son,—Louis de Maine, Seigneur de Mezières,—and a natural daughter,—Blanche,—whom René, when he attained his father’s throne in 1434, married to the Sieur Pierre de Biège. The defunct King’s will appointed four simple knights,—his henchmen true,—executors: Pierre de Beauvais and Guy de Laval for Anjou, and Barthélèmy and Gabriel de Valorey for Provence, with Hardoyn de Bueil, Bishop of Angers, as moderator. The Queen-mother was constituted Regent of the kingdoms and dominions and guardian of the young King, whilst Prince René was commended, under his father’s will, to the charge of his great-uncle Louis, Cardinal and Duke de Bar, with the family title of Comte de Guise.

KING LOUIS OF SICILY-ANJOU

(KING RENÉ’S FATHER)

From Coloured Glass Window, Le Mans Cathedral

To face page 68

The loss of her second son and the parting of the brothers was a sore trial to the whole family. The Cardinal, however, insisted upon his young nephew being sent to him at Bar-le-Duc, to be educated under his eye and prepared for his destiny as future Duke of Bar, which the Cardinal caused to be announced both in Anjou and Barrois. Louis de Bar was a very distinguished ecclesiastic; he had passed through every grade of Holy Order with rare distinction. In 1391 the Pope conferred upon him the bishopric of Poitiers, and two years later translated him to Langres, with the Sees also of Châlons and Verdun. The latter dignity carried with it the degree of Grand Peer of France, and in those days Bishops were regarded as temporal Sovereigns within the jurisdiction of their Sees. Benedict XIII. in 1397 preconized Louis de Bar Cardinal-Bishop, and named him Papal Legate in France and Germany. His temporal honours as Duke of Bar came to him in 1415, after the calamitous battle of Azincourt, in which his two elder brothers, Édouard and Jehan, fell gloriously. Their untimely deaths and disasters keen and sad brought about, too, the death of good Duke Robert, their father. He died of a broken heart, whilst Duchess Marie shut herself up in a convent, and was never known again to smile. Her death has not been recorded.

After bidding adieu to her dearly loved son,—perhaps her favourite child, and most like herself in temperament and character,—Queen Yolande, with the young King, was fully occupied in receiving addresses of condolence and assurances of loyalty both at Angers and at Aix, to which they made a progress in full state. She assumed the personal direction of affairs, appointing tactfully as assessors the most prominent men of all classes in both domains. In a very distinct sense she was a democratic Sovereign, and under her régime the Estates were allowed a good deal of independent action in matters, at least, of local policy. Thus, by maintaining the dignity of the crown of Sicily-Anjou-Provence and encouraging popular government, Queen Yolande initiated the first free constitution in the history of all France.

The stability of the throne and the welfare of its subjects having been secured, the Queen turned her attention to the matrimonial prospect of her eldest son. Some years before King Louis’s death, Jean “sans Peur,” Duke of Burgundy,—in days when the Courts of Angers and Dijon saw eye to eye, and the States were not rivals in the direction of the general policy of the French Sovereigns,—had confided his little daughter Catherine to the charge of the eminent Queen of Sicily-Anjou, to be brought up with her own girls, the Princesses Marie and Yolande. Then the idea of the betrothal of Louis d’Anjou and Catherine de Bourgogne was accepted as a very excellent mutual arrangement; indeed, the Duke had named his intention of dowering the Princess with 50,000 livres tournois (= circa £30,000), besides placing the castle at the disposal of the young couple upon the consummation of the marriage.

There had arisen coolness and suspicion between the Sovereigns of France and the Duke of Burgundy, whose connection with the assassination of the Duke of Orléans, in 1407, had never been cleared up. The Duke, moreover, had seen good,—in view of his professed claims to the crown of France,—to make terms with the King of England which would, under certain circumstances, gain territorial aggrandizement for Burgundy, and ultimately the reversion to his family of the royal title. This rapprochement with the hated invader of Northern France,—the foe at the gates of Anjou,—lead summarily to the renunciation by the Angevine Sovereigns of all matrimonial affinities between the Houses of Anjou and Burgundy. Little Princess Catherine was sent home to Dijon, and the Duke scouted the Anjou alliance, and made terms with Lorraine, a step which in another decade told disastrously against the son of Queen Yolande.

She, on the other hand, cared very little for the change of front of Duke Jean “sans Peur.” Her mind had all along been made up in the matter of her son’s betrothal, and her eyes were turned to Brittany, whose Sovereigns were the most stable and the most powerful in France. The dual crown of Sicily-Anjou was rich, and the prospects of the new occupant of that throne with respect to Naples, and possibly to Aragon, were of the highest; consequently the matrimonial market was absolutely at her command. Politically it was clear that an alliance of Anjou and Brittany would more than balance that of Burgundy and Lorraine. Very tactfully the Angevine Queen-mother caused her “cousin” at Nantes to know that a nuptial arrangement between her son and a daughter of Duke Jean VI. would be favourably considered at Angers. To pave the way more auspiciously, splendid fêtes were organized at the castle, to which the ducal family of Brittany were invited as principal guests of honour. The Duke and Duchess were accompanied by their young daughter, Princess Isabelle, and were greatly affected by their reception. In the tournaments, pageants, and floral games, the young Bretagne Princes gained all the laurels, whilst the blushing Princess, as the “Queen of Beauty,” bestowed the prizes upon the victors.

On July 3 a royal function in the Cathedral of Angers brought the fêtes to an auspicious finish, for there Louis d’Anjou and Isabelle de Bretagne were formally espoused, the young couple being of the same age. Alas for the hopes of all concerned! the Princess,—a very beautiful and an accomplished girl,—was not destined to wear the Queen-consort’s crown of Sicily-Anjou. Before the year was out she sickened of plague,—as captious critics said, caught in “Black Angers,”—and died. This was a serious blow to Queen Yolande’s diplomacy, but she was not the sort of woman to waste time in unprofitable lamentations.

By the force of circumstances, seen and unseen, the Queen-mother’s search for favourable alliances and an eligible consort for her son was greatly aided by the fresh aggression of the English under Henry V. In face of the common danger, which threatened alike the western and the eastern States of France, Queen Yolande found her opportunity of immensely strengthening the position of her son’s dominions by detaching Burgundy and Lorraine from the English alliance. At Saumur she signed the articles of a defensive and offensive treaty between the four great duchies,—Bretagne, of course, being one,—La Ligue de Quatre, it was called.

Next to the assurance of political security at home, this instrument set the astute Queen free to turn her attention to the support of her son’s claims to the throne of Naples. First appertaining to the older line of Anjou in the person and descendants of Jehan, brother of St. Louis, they had lapsed until King Louis I. of Sicily-Anjou asserted his right as head of the younger line of Anjou in virtue of the grant by his father, King John the “Good.” These prerogatives, alas! Louis II. had lost the year he died, and their reacquisition was the destiny of his son. In furtherance of these duties, Queen Yolande conceived that an Italian alliance, with the corollary of a matrimonial contract for the young King, were indicated, and she set to work to elaborate a scheme which should achieve the ends in view.

In September, 1418, Queen Yolande opened negotiations directly with Amadeo VIII., Duke of Savoy, first for his assistance in the field of battle, and next for the betrothal of his daughter Margherita, then an infant of three years old. A treaty was signed on October 18, wherein the Duke agreed to receive young King Louis in Savoy, and either personally to accompany him through the proposed campaign, or at least to see his embarkation at Genoa at the head of a Savoyard contingent of ten thousand men-at-arms, for the recovery of the crown of Naples. One clause ceded the county of Nice to Savoy in lieu of moneys borrowed by Louis II. for his Naples expedition. Appended to this treaty was the marriage contract, which appointed Chambéry,—the capital of Savoy,—as the place, and Lady Day the following year as the date, for the formal espousal of Louis and Margherita.

Steps were at once taken for the young King to enter upon his expedition in a manner suited to his rank and commensurate with the military movements of the time. Angers once more resounded to the metallic music of armourers. A Guild of Sword-Cutlers was incorporated, and skilled craftsmen from Aragon were again welcomed by the Queen. Masters of Arms, too, were invited to give Louis the best instruction in warlike exercises, Yolande herself meanwhile inculcating lessons of hardihood, chivalry, and patriotism. Hers, happily, was the satisfaction of knowing that these efforts were productive of the best results, for the youthful Sovereign quickly became an expert and an enthusiast.

It does not appear that the young King took much interest in the matrimonial part of the negotiations. An unripe boy of sixteen would naturally be very much more affected by military prowess than by uxorious daintiness. The service of Mars was very much more to his liking than that of Venus, and he addressed himself zealously to the task of winning back his grandfather’s crown and sceptre, which his father had failed to retain. It was doubtless a daring enterprise for a youth to undertake, but we may be quite sure that he inherited not a little of his family’s well known fearlessness. Province was denuded of her garrisons, and Languedoc also; but no men could be spared from Anjou and Bar, and it was but the nucleus of an army which Queen Yolande reviewed at Marseilles, whither she went to bid adieu to her dearly loved son upon his adventurous career.

COMMUNION OF A KNIGHT

Sculpture from Interior, Western Façade, Reims Cathedral

To face page 74

Louis sailed for Genoa, where he met the Duke of Savoy and took command of his contingent. He anchored in the Bay of Naples on August 15, 1420, a day full of favourable omens. On the voyage he fell in with the fleet of the King of Aragon, his rival for the crown of Naples, and worsted it. At once he went off to Aversa, where the Queen of Naples, Giovanna II., received him with open arms. His naïveté delighted her, jaded as she was with the attentions of willing and unwilling aspirants for her favours. She created him Duke of Calabria, and proclaimed him her heir in lieu of the defeated and discredited Alfonso.

It was a perilous position for the vigorous and gallant stripling Prince, but the counsels of his virtuous mother were not thrown away. The young King refused the amorous royal overtures successfully, and having kissed the Queen’s hand, he offered a plausible excuse, and speedily took his departure for Rome. The Supreme Pontiff extended to the youthful hero his paternal benediction, and detained him at the Vatican just long enough to invest him with the title of King of Naples, in place, as His Holiness wished, of the worthless and abandoned Queen. Thence Louis travelled on to Florence and Milan, and obtained promises of substantial assistance from their rulers against the pretensions of the King of Aragon.

But to return to Anjou and the “good mother” there, the anxious and busy Queen Yolande.

The Revue Numismatique du Maine contains many paragraphs recounting the Queen’s prudence and activity in military matters. Under date June 10, 1418, for example, she issued an order to the Seneschal and Treasurer of Provence “to reimburse one Jehan Crepin, keeper of the Castle of Forcalquier, whence one of the sovereign titles are taken, the advance made by him for the reparation of the said castle.” On February 18, 1419, the States of Provence assembled at Aix besought the Queen, as head of the State, “to suppress the tax which had been levied upon the circulation of foreign money, with a view to greater facilities being accorded for the payment of sums required for the defence of the country.” A few years later,—in 1427,—the authorities of the city of Marseilles prayed the Queen, then at Tarascon, to authorize them to impose a poll-tax upon all foreign merchants in the port, “so that the funds at their command might be enlarged, for the express purpose of fitting out vessels of war.” The inhabitants of Martignes, which county Yolande had brought, on her marriage, to the possessions of her husband,—on December 20, 1419,—sought for their Queen-Countess, as ruler and administrator, the right to retain certain dues on the production of salt for the defence of their coast-line. There are very many such entries in the State papers of the reign; indeed, both before and after the departure of Louis III. for Naples, Queen Yolande was recognized as responsible ruler for her son.

II.

If Louis’s matrimonial prospects were somewhat clouded by the extreme youth of his child-bride, the Queen was by no means discouraged in her policy of influential alliances. Her second son, René, who had won all hearts in Barrois, was actually married to Princess Isabelle of Lorraine in 1420, although she was no more than nine years old, and he but twelve. This match was, however, not wholly the work of Queen Yolande; her ideas, however, were those which impelled her uncle, Cardinal Louis de Bar, directly to ask the hand of the juvenile Princess.

The year before this precocious marriage the Cardinal had formally proclaimed René his heir to the duchy of Bar, and created him Marquis of Pont-à-Mousson. This action greatly displeased Arnould, Duke of Berg, whose wife was Marie de Bar, a sister of the Cardinal. She preferred claims to the succession as next of kin to her brother, and when she was refused, the Duke took up arms and advanced upon Bar-le-Duc. The movement failed, and young René saw the Duke’s dead body taken away for burial without emotion. The young Prince had been for nearly two years residing at his great-uncle’s castle, under his immediate care and instruction. Among the tutors chosen for his training were Maestre Jehan de Proviesey, a grammarian and Latinist, and Maestre Antoine de la Salle, poet and musician. Such instructors were de rigueur, of course, for the true development of a perfect gentleman and courtier. The latter master wrote a treatise entitled “Les quinze joyes de la mariage: instructions addressés aux jeunes hommes.” This he dedicated to his pupil, Prince René. Among the quaint aphorisms it contains, this must have caused more than a smile on the part of the young knight:

“Bon cheval, mauvais cheval, veut l’esperon;

Bonne femme, mauvaise femme, veut le baston!”

Perhaps the pith of the treatise is expressed in the neat quintet:

“Quattuor sunt que mulieres summe cupiunt,

A formis amari juvenibus,

Pottere fillis pluribus

Ornari preciosis vestibus

Et dominari pre ceteris in domibus.”

René’s time was, however, not wholly absorbed by his studies in school and Court, for he bestrode his warhorse like a man, and rode forth by his great-uncle’s side on punitive expeditions against recalcitrant vassals and against the incursions of freebooters, who under the designation of “Soudoyers” were devastating the duchy. It was said of the Cardinal: “Il savait au besoin porter ung bassinet pour mitre et pour croix d’or un tache d’acier!”

Directly Duke Robert died, and the succession fell to an ecclesiastic, the dissatisfied subjects of the Barrois crown considered it a favourable opportunity for throwing off their allegiance. Jean de Luxembourg, a cousin of the widowed Duchess Marie, and Robert de Sarrebouche,—at the extreme limits of the territories of the duchy,—were perhaps the most conspicuous for their infidelity. The Cardinal-Duke struck home at once, and both rebels surrendered. In the case of the latter, Prince René was put forward to receive his submission, on his great-uncle’s behalf. The “proud Sieur de Commercy,” as he was called, was compelled to kneel in the market-place of Commercy before the boy-knight, and, putting his great hands between the tender palms of his Prince, obliged to swear as vostre homme et vostre vassail! The Prince’s bearing in this his first military campaign was beyond all praise, and the Cardinal was delighted with his chivalry. The Duke of Lorraine sent to compliment him upon his courage, and his doting mother, Queen Yolande, held a ten-days festival at Angers, and rang all the church bells in honour of her son’s baptism of blood.

These exploits caused the youthful hero to carry himself proudly, and greatly increased his self-conceit. This latter development had an amusing and yet a very natural sequel. The Prince with his own hand, under the instruction of Maestre Jehan de Proviesey, wrote letters to all the leading men of Angers, Provence, Barrois, and Lorraine, in which he enlarged upon the boldness of his conduct; and inditing sententious maxims, he sought their approbation and good-will. The Cardinal-Duke doubtless smiled good-humouredly at these juvenile effusions, but at the same time he reconstituted the Barrois knightly “Ordre de la Fidélité,” which embraced as members all the young French Princes, and created René de Bar, as he was now called, first and principal Knight. The Prince henceforward wore the motto of his Order embroidered upon his berretta and chimere—“Tout Ung”—and chose it as his gage de guerre.

Louis de Bar had, however, other duties and pursuits to place before his favourite nephew. At the Court of Dijon resided two famous Flemish painters, brothers—Hubert and Jehan Van Eyck, pensioners of the enlightened Duke of Burgundy. By means of bribes and other influences brought to bear, they were induced to remove to Bar-le-Duc, and with them came Petrus Christus and other pupils. Keen patron of the arts and crafts, the Cardinal-Duke encouraged his principal courtiers and vassals to send their sons to them for instruction in the art of painting. The first pupil enrolled in Barrois upon the books of the Van Eycks was none other than Prince René, and no pupil showed greater talent and greater perseverance. His uncle once said to him: “René, if thou wast not destined to succeed me as Duke of Bar and leader of her armies, I would make of thee an artist.” In his veins, we must remember, ran Flemish blood,—his famous and talented ancestress, the Countess-Princess Iolande, came from Flanders,—and these excellent pigment masters appear to have stirred qualities in the young Prince which eventually proclaimed him the foremost royal artist in Europe.

The Cardinal also inculcated in his nephew the love and taste for objects of beauty. He was himself a proficient in the craft of goldsmithery, and, moreover, possessed a very magnificent collection of gold and silver work. Part of this had come to him from his mother, Duchess Marie of France, who took to Bar her share of her father’s treasures, the good King John. Of these, the Cardinal presented to Pope John XXIII. in 1414 a writing-table made of cedar, covered with plates of solid gold, and the superb gold chalice and paten which are still used in the Papal chapel at Rome at special Masses by His Holiness himself. Another precious goblet, mounted with sapphires and rubies, was bequeathed to the Cardinal’s sister, the Princess Bonne, Countess of Ligny.

A ROYAL REPAST, FIFTEENTH CENTURY

PROCESSION OF THE KNIGHTS OF THE TABLE

From “L’Album Historique de France”

To face page 80.

The ducal gardens at Bar-le-Duc were famous. The Cardinal sent to Italy for skilled gardeners, who reproduced something of the terrestrial glories of that favoured land. Tuscan sculptors and Venetian decorative painters followed in the wake of the gardeners, who not only designed architectural terraces with marble statues and garden-pavilions with painted ceilings, but also designed and minted medals and plaques of the Cardinal, Prince René, and other members of the family. Naturally, the young Hereditary Duke revelled in these graceful settings for the floral games and festive pastimes which made the Barrois Court, even in the absence of a reigning Duchess, the rendezvous of poets, gallants, and beauties. Here, too, the Prince’s natural love for music had full play; he became a poet and a troubadour “in little,” if not in “great.” In a very real kind of way René’s training in the arts of war and in the arts of peace was the very same which made a Lorenzo de’ Medici at Florence and a Francesco Sforza at Milan.

Amid all these occupations, the Prince had few opportunities for visiting his birthplace, Angers, and his devoted mother there. Travelling was very insecure, and the Cardinal disparaged any expedition beyond the bounds of the duchy. Only one such visit is recorded, and that in 1422, when René took his absent brother’s place to give away his favourite sister Marie to Charles VII. of France, and then Queen Yolande once more embraced her son. On the other hand, the Prince was permitted by his uncle to vigorously assist King Charles against Louis de Châlons, Prince of Orange, who was devastating Dauphiné. In another direction the young warrior gained laurels also. Named protector of the city of Verdun, he destroyed the rebel castle of Renancourt and the fortresses of La Ferté, and hastened to the assistance of his kinsman, the Count of Ligny, at Baumont en Argonne. Guillaume de Flavy and Jehan de Mattaincourt surrendered, and René cleared the country of disaffected marauders and adventurers.

Charles V.’s speech at the siege of Metz one hundred years later might very well have fitted the youthful conqueror in Barrois: “Fortune is a woman: she favours only the young.”

Queen Yolande’s eldest son, Louis III., was meanwhile meeting with varying fortunes in Italy, but the slow progress of his campaign greatly chagrined his dauntless mother. She actually made up her mind to set out for Naples in person to try and turn the slow tide of victory into an overpowering flood; but Anjou was too closely invested by the English for the realization of her project. Here, however, the Queen had her militant opportunity, for at the bloody battle of Baugé,—between La Flèche and Saumur,—in 1421, the English were routed and so greatly disheartened that they evacuated all their strategic points within and around the duchy. That victory was gained directly by Queen Yolande, who commanded in person, sitting astride a great white charger, clothed in steel and silver mail. Some years later King René built an imposing castle upon the heights overlooking the field of battle in memory of his mother’s valour.

The Queen’s warlike ardour, however, received a check, for Queen Marie, driven with King Charles before the all-conquering English, escaped to Bourges, and there begged her mother to hasten to her side. She needed, not a mailed woman’s fist, but the gentle hand of her good mother at her accouchement. Louis le Dauphin, her first-born, saw the light in the Archbishop’s Palace on July 3, 1423. Those days were dark indeed for France, but a brilliant star was about to rise above her eastern horizon. Towards the end of 1428 strange reports began to spread all over the stricken country concerning a simple village maiden in far-off Champagne, to whom, in the obscure village of Domremy, Divine visions had been vouchsafed. Her mission, it was stated, was nothing less than the deliverance of France and the coronation of King Charles at Reims.

Nowhere did the mysterious tidings create greater interest than among the members of the Royal Families and Courts of Sicily-Anjou and France. When the news of Jeanne d’Arc’s arrival with Duke René reached Angers, Queen Yolande set out at once for Chinon, that she might judge for herself of the girl and her mission. Very greatly struck was the Queen by the maid’s youth, comeliness, and innocence. Her simple manners and unaffected devotion convinced Yolande that she had no adventuress to deal with. She conversed freely with her, and her simple narrative and fearless courage determined her to take the maid under her direct patronage. When it was proposed to inquire formally into Jeanne’s character and mental bias, the Queen promptly allocated to herself that duty. She called to her assistance three ladies of her Court of good repute. Jehan Pasquerelle has quaintly recorded this plenary council of matrons: “Fust icelle Pucelle baillée à la Royne de Cecile, mère de la Royne, nostre souveraine, et à certaines dames d’estant avec elle, dont estoient les Dames de Gaucourt, de Fiennes, et de Trèves.” Another chronicler adds the name of Jeanne de Mortèmar, wife of the Chancellor, Robert le Maçon. Their verdict was a complete vindication of Jeanne’s honour and sincerity.

The tongue of slander had associated René and Jeanne in a liaison. The Court of Chinon was full of evil gossip, and the more ill-conditioned courtiers and hirelings, both men and women, revelled in compromising insinuations and coarse jests. Queen Yolande determined once and for all to put an end to these baseless and foul rumours. She knew her son too well to doubt his honour, and now she pledged herself to defend that of the village maid. Several of the offenders were dismissed the service of the King, and warned to hold their tongue, unless they wished for condign punishment.

History has done scant justice to Queen Yolande for the part she bore in the drama of Jeanne d’Arc. It was in a very great measure due to her that the maid’s mission was carried out. Whilst Charles was dallying with his idle associates and procrastinating in his military measures, Yolande played the man. Her intrepid counsels and fearless insistence were the levers which moved her son-in-law’s inertness. There is a story told that, when Queen Marie’s gentle chiding had failed to rouse her desponding consort, Queen Yolande appeared before him clothed in full armour, and demanded why the King of France skulked in his castle!

“See, Charles,” she said, “if you refuse to follow La Pucelle at once and do your duty to God and to your country, I will go forth as your lieutenant, and in person lead your army against the English. But shame to you to trust in a woman’s arm rather than your own! Rouse you like a man, and begone!”

This emphatic order fairly called out Charles’s manhood, roused, to be sure, by the mission of Jeanne d’Arc. Nothing excites a man more than a woman’s threats to take his place and do his work; and many women can be as good as their word, and one of these was Yolande of Sicily-Anjou-Aragon.