Part 11

The King was mad again; he had fallen into the first of innumerable relapses. Henceforth, for thirty years, any moment of too poignant feeling would throw him back in agony and madness. At such times he suffered much. It would happen (says the Monk of St. Denis), that as he sat in his council chamber, receiving his ambassadors and discoursing with sense and clearness, a sudden shudder would pass over him, the actual world would drift into oblivion. Again the forest near Mans, the leper’s warning, would rise on his tormented vision. He would shriek out for help against his enemies, and yet, poor king, be still aware these enemies were phantasms. At such moments he would cry and wail and sob, till all the Court fell a-weeping to hear him. “O not madness. Death, any pain, anything but madness!” and joining his hands he would look eagerly in face after face of his kinsmen. “I pray you, for the love of Christ, if any of you be party to this magic, then let me die at once and end it.” But no prayers avail, and as the fantastic world of lunacy gradually eclipsed the receding truth, the King’s last entreaty showed the unaltered sweetness of his tormented nature. “Keep away all the knives,” he would cry. “I had rather die than hurt any one.” For no lapse of time, no suffering effaced in his gentle character the stamp of that terrible moment of Mans when he had awoken to find his innocent hands stained henceforth for ever with innocent and loyal blood.

While the King wailed in desperate protest against his oncoming madness, all the Court wept with him. But, once that eclipse accomplished, the Court forgot the King. Part of the royal palace of St. Paul’s had been turned into a safe asylum. There the King lived, sometimes for many weeks unwashed, eaten with filth and vermin, suffering no attendant to approach him. He was then a mere wild beast, tormented with canine hunger, fierce, suspicious, and sometimes wild with fear. Then he would pace from end to end of his apartments, fleeing his imaginary pursuers, until he dropt exhausted in senseless lethargy.

But more often, and especially in the first years of his illness, he was not sunk so low as this. He was then an aimless, laughing, boyish imbecile. He was no longer the King even in his own fancy; he had forgotten himself as others had forgotten him. Did he see his own arms or the Queen’s emblazoned anywhere upon the walls, he would smear out that heraldry, laughing the while and dancing in a burlesque, unseemly fashion. “These are not my arms. I am not King Charles. My name is George,” he would cry, “and my arms are a lion pierced with a spear.” The poor King was himself transfixed with that intangible spear his fair brother of Orleans had planted in his heart for ever. But in his madness, his jealousy had undergone a subtle change. Sometimes he could not endure the sight or mention of the Queen and Orleans, but more often he utterly forgot them. Once they brought Isabel into his presence. He shook his head and swore he did not know the lady.

There was in all the world one only creature whose presence shed a little balm and solace on his unhappy lunacy. This was his sister-in-law, Madame Valentine. She was the only person he ever fully recognized. Absent and present he called upon her, “Oh, my dearest sister! Oh, my beloved sister!” and if Valentine left him a single day unvisited, the poor king would wander up and down for hours in aimless regret and complaining.

Valentine was kind and pitiful. Although at this time she was ailing (her second son was born in August, 1393), she did not fear to bring her delicate magnificence into the filth and peril of the mad king’s presence. For hours she would sit with him, playing at cards: those painted Saracen Naibi which Covelluzzo noticed at Viterbo (the first known in Europe) in 1379. Perhaps Valentine had brought them out of Italy; they were the only pastime of the haggard king; and for hours the painted images of Death, Love, Fortune, Madness, and the Angel, would silently fall from the hands of these two unhappy people, keeping each other melancholy company in the dismantled chambers of the barred and altered palace.

Valentine was ill herself; she was a woman; and yet she was not afraid of this tall, broad-shouldered young man of twenty-five, subject to violent mania, who in one fearful paroxysm had slain four men in armour. His attendants dared not come too near. But Valentine seemed to bear a charmed life, she did not even tremble. This unnatural courage of hers, this fascination, this mastery which she exercised upon their king ... all this was terribly explicable to the people of Paris.

Who was this lady?—Valentine of Milan. “Now,” says Juvenal, “her father was the Duke of Milan,[20] who was a Lombard, and in his country they practise magic and the casting of spells.” “The common people,” says the Monk, “declared the King was bewitched. They accused the Duke of Milan, and in confirmation of this ridiculous proposition they said the Duchess of Orleans was the only person the King recognized or cherished in his sickness. They did not scruple to say she was a witch, though that so generous a lady should commit so great a crime is a fact that never has been proved.” “The King’s physicians, arioles, and charmers,” says Froissart, “affirmed the King was poisoned or bewitched by craft of sorcery; they said they knew it by the spirits that had showed it to them. Of these diviners, arioles, and charmers, certain were burned at Paris and at Avignon. They spake so much, and said the Duchess Valentine of Orleans, daughter to the Duke of Milan, had bewitched the King.”

Footnote 20:

Giangaleazzo in 1395 obtained the title and investiture of the Duchy of Milan from Wenzel, King of the Romans, for 100,000 florins.

In those days the accusation of sorcery was terrible and ominous. To bewitch the King was the most damnable of crimes, for witchcraft in itself was treason against God. It was indeed no less than taking out of heaven the tremendous issues of life and death, apportioning them with profane and mortal hands, and breaking the heavenly order of the universe. God was mocked. This side of sorcery excited the horror of theologians, but it was not this that infuriated with helpless terror the shuddering populace. We know how the Polynesian islanders will die to-day of a fatal langour if they believe their enemy has prayed against them. The citizens of Paris in the Middle Ages died as easily. “Throughout the kingdom,” says the Monk of St. Denis, “many nobles and poor people are attacked with the same strange malady as the King’s.” A contagion of fear paralysed the sources of life. “For they can bewitch you,” said, in 1407, Maître Jean Petit, a very learned doctor in theology; “and they can bewitch the King, and make him die in a very subtle manner, quite unapparent, by the casting of a spell.” “A word is enough,” said two Augustine friars who suffered for sorcery in 1397, “a word, a touch; it is no natural malady.” To those who suffered, and saw their near and dear ones suffer of this incurable, inexorable enchantment, there was no death too cruel for the wizard.

The Duke of Milan was a very powerful magician. By spells and sorcery he, the weakest of his clan, had made himself the most astute and potent of all the princes of the West; by spells and sorcery he would make his daughter queen of France. “Il n’y avait qu’une bouche à clore,“ said Jean Petit. Valentine, the people thought, was helping her father, for the Duchess of Orleans was a witch.

The powers of the Prince of the Air were in high places. Valentine was not only protected by Satan—not only served by Hermas and Astramin the two livid demons of Montjoy that obeyed the House of Orleans—she was also sheltered by the effulgence of the throne. Every power, every protection was hers. Hell and earth obeyed her, and heaven smiles upon the sins of princes. Yet with the cruel heroism of pity the people of Paris rose against her, pouring down the streets, reaching out their fanatic hands to tear in pieces no omnipotent demon in a violent aureole of flame, but a pale neglected foreign woman far from home. They determined to save the King, and at last the peril of the duchess grew so great that Marshal Sancerre and many other nobles advised her husband to send her out of Paris. So in great pomp, nowise abashed, but with all the splendour of a royal progress, Valentine left the city. She went to a fair castle of her husband’s near Pontoise, and then to Neufchatel upon the Loire. She went alone, for Orleans was kept by State affairs in Paris. There was a subtle political reason for the irritation of France against the Milanese. In the complex recesses of the human heart an actual terror of supernatural evil, a crusader’s passion to avenge the honour of God, may co-exist with the most sordid calculations of a worldly advantage to be gained. It was not only for the love of God that the Jews and Moors of Spain, the Protestants of Flanders, the monasteries of England, were made to enrich their persecutors. It was not entirely for thirty pieces of silver that Judas delivered a heretic to the secular arm. And it was the easier to condemn the Duke of Milan that he was not only a wizard, but the political rival of France for the rich suzerainty of Genoa.

VIII.

The French had counted upon Giangaleazzo Visconti rather as a captain than as a rival. Visconti had looked upon the French as the tools of his ambition, and not as serious competitors. In reality each was in pursuit of the same thing; each desired to be supreme in Italy.

Visconti had easily acquired the direction of his son-in-law’s policy. It is not surprising. A lad of eighteen, poor, kept under, systematically neglected, Orleans before his marriage had known little of power, nothing of supremacy. He was nominally Duke of Touraine; but his estates were administered by the King. Until a few months before his marriage he had not even a house of his own, but lived with his retinue in a corner of his brother’s palace. In February, 1389, he appeared for the first time at the Royal Council. Valentine brought him wealth, consideration, and ambition; for, with the possession of Asti, and under the guidance of his father-in-law, the young Duke began to dream of battles and signiories in Italy.

Visconti was very willing to adopt his daughter’s husband in place of the clever and valiant son he should have had. His own son was a baby at the breast. And Orleans brought him not only a clear young mind, a fresh and eager will and the courage that the great Visconti never had, but also the influence of France. Thus the great Ghibelline saw within his reach the support of the Guelfs. To reconcile all parties for his own interest was ever the aim of this unrivalled statesman, as magically gifted to make peace as to foment a discord. Ghibelline and Guelf, Emperor and King of France, Pope and Antipope, aye, even Orleans and Burgundy, should join hands to fight his battles.

His first move was a whisper of ambition in the ear of his son-in-law. And Louis forgot his love-making and ballad-making, his jousting and feasting, and turned to other thoughts. Asti was his; Asti should be the centre of his operations, and in swiftness and silence a French army gathered in Asti.

In 1389, the very year of Orleans’ marriage, there was peace with England; hence, leisure in Court and camp; hence troops of riders and men-at-arms infesting every countryside, preying on the ruined peasants, and loitering hungry for another war. Nothing easier than to enlist a company! In 1389 Orleans sent to his new county François, Seigneur de Chassenage, as governor with twenty men-at-arms and two chamberlains, each with twenty men-at-arms and thirty archers. Fifty-five other men-at-arms and as many archers were added to these, and formed the nucleus of a rapidly increasing army. By the end of June more men-at-arms and squires joined the service. Enguerrand de Coucy, Lieutenant of the Duke and Captain-General _ès parties d’Italie_, went to keep his state at Asti in July.[21]

Footnote 21:

Arch. Nat. (K K. 315 f^{os}. 9-52): “Notes à compter faiz à certaines gens d’armes et archiers retenus par Monsieur le Duc à son service avant la venue de M. de Coucy ès parties d’Ytalie.”

From this moment, long pages of the manuscript account book of Chassenage are filled with lists of captains, men-at-arms, and archers. Archers under Braguet, archers, under Viezville, a concentration of devoted Orleanists, once Angevines, in Italy. Italian names, also, begin to crop up in the French harvest: Messire Othe Tusque, des parties d’Italie, Messire Jehan Visconti, escuier, Messire Aloyset de Plaisance, also Luquin Rusque, Francesquin Martin demourant à Pavey, Hannibal Lommelin of Genoa and his troop, others from as far as Florence and Venice. Then a great name, commander of many others, a name that means business: _Messire Facin Can and his company_.

The red towers of Asti—still here and there existing, a bouquet of wine-red stems slenderly streaking the pale and radiant Lombard sky—the red towers of Asti, innumerable then, grew home-like and familiar to many a French lord. No dreary exile this—large houses, wine-red also (“non hanno acqua ma vino per impetrargli,“ laugh the men of Alba), beautiful churches, a rich plain, streaked with the wide Tanaro, and girt with hills. At night, the Alps come out, invisible by day; they appear at sundown even as a rose-red heavenly wall divinely dividing the Lombard country from the unseen land of France.

Yet here are the French and quite at home. Plenty of wine, red and white; beautiful women; plenty of money. Orleans pays fifteen francs a month to every man-at-arms (but a man-at-arms, we must remember, is more than a man, being at least the soldier himself, his page and his varlet), eight francs a month to every archer; two hundred francs a month to Chassenage and the chamberlains; four hundred and fifty to Enguerrand de Coucy. All this serves at least to bring wealth and custom to Puielhez, mine host of the Cross of Asti, who supplies the wine. But for what other purpose does Orleans thus dissipate his new-got treasure? The “Dance of Fools,” sculptured on a wall in the market place, by some gay ironic band not long dead then, looks down with silent bells and silent laughing lips that answer not.

In August, Orleans sends one of his men (Blaru), on a secret embassy to his father-in-law at Milan, another (Craon) to the Antipope Clement.[22] They have scarcely gone when he sends another (Garancières) to Pavia. In February of the next year (1390) there is much prate at Court of a voyage to Italy—voyage being then the polite name for an invasion—in order to establish Pope Clement in his see of Rome.

Footnote 22:

De Circourt, _op. cit._, p. 48.

And now, little by little, the great plan disengages itself—audacious, simple, as befits the brain of Visconti. Orleans and Burgundy themselves start for Pavia, and arrive there in March, 1391. Brilliant Visconti, to have persuaded Burgundy that the expansion of Orleans in Italy will leave him free to extend his grasp at home! Great things also, as we know from a passage in Walsingham,[23] are vaguely held out to Burgundy. As for Orleans, there are no bounds to his ardour; he defrays the entire expense of the journey, 60,000 francs, lavished magnificently to astound his new ally and his subjects of Asti. The Royal Dukes remain but a week in Lombardy, and then return—recalled by rumours of Armagnac’s disturbance. But the week was long enough.

Footnote 23:

Walsingham, “Historia Anglicana,” vol. ii. p. 201.

The first step of the affair was to persuade Giangaleazzo Visconti to give in his adherence to the Antipope Clement. The Lord of Milan was still in name an Urbanite; but he had suffered the Antipope Clement to arrange the marriage of his daughter and to grant the dispensation that made it lawful; and his wife Caterina was a devoted Clementine. Visconti gives it to be understood that he will fight for Clement if it be made worth his while. Meanwhile the king takes fire:—honest, practical, religious, the idea of thus forcibly putting an end to heresy and schism greatly commends itself to him. There were three Royal visits to Avignon that year. The Antipope suggests to Charles VI. an Imperial Crown for a second Charlemagne.[24] Froissart hears of the royal intention, “de mener notre Saint Père à Rome,“ and on the 23rd of February, 1391, the King signs a quittance of 2,000 francs, “pour nous aider à abiller et mestre est estat pour aller en la compagnie d’icelui seigneur au voyage qu’il a intencion de faire au païs de Lombardie.”

Footnote 24:

Clairambault. sceaux, vol. cxiii. p. 8821. See De Circourt, _op. cit._

But nothing can be done without the indispensable Visconti. What is his plan? At first he holds back, loving by nature the attitude of suspense. But in 1392 the moment came to decide. Armagnac at that moment was invading Italy in defence of the rights of his sister Beatrice and the elder branch of Visconti. He suffered defeat, indeed, and death at the hands of Milan, but not before he had inflicted so severe a check upon his victor that Giangaleazzo no longer saw his triumph clear. Nay, unwelcome as the ghost of Banquo at the board of Macbeth, the pale figures of the dead Armagnac, the once laughing Beatrice, the poisoned Bernabò, intrude themselves between him and his end. Do not such sights as these clamour for revenge?—and Armagnac and Beatrice have a living brother; Bernabò Visconti has left a troop of sons. Milan may yet be snatched from his grasp. He is not safe in Lombardy, and he would fain be King of Italy. But how to obtain that crown? Already Armagnac has forced him to restore Padua to the Carraresi. And Florence, the irreconcileable enemy, is grouping round her a league of hostile states. In August, 1392, Florence, Padua, Faenza, Ravenna—a little later the Malatestas and Forli—are united against Visconti. He is not safe in Milan till he wear the crown of Florence too.

Then he sends to the Pope and to the King of France and announces his plan. How did the Lord of Milan hear of the secret Adrian project? Did Anjou, passing through Pavia, drop a word? Did one of the many Angevines sheltered in the house of Orleans, familiar with Asti and Milan, broach the plan? We know not, but this was the scheme of Visconti: _Naples for Anjou_; _Rome for the Frenchman Clement VII._; _Adria_, that is to say the centre of Italy from Spoleto to Ferrara, and from Massa to Ancona, _Adria for Orleans, the North for Visconti_. That is to say, Italy for the father of Valentine and his allies.[25] As Walsingham tells us Visconti secured for himself the double crown of Tuscany and Lombardy. But in the very moment when the reluctant Pope (less hasty and less egoistic now than at Sperlonga), had promised thus to alienate the Church lands as the price of his restoration, a Divine Hand, as it must have seemed, interposed to save the Church. On the 28th of August, 1394, Pope and Cardinals had approved the Schedule of Orleans. A fortnight later, on the 16th of September, suddenly, Clement VII. died at Avignon.

Footnote 25:

For all this question of the kingdom of Adria, too vast for this incidental line, see the excellent paper of M. Paul Durrieu in the “Revue des Questions Historiques” for July, 1880; also the scarce volume of Champollion-Figeac, “Louis et Charles, Ducs d’Orléans,” Paris, 1844; and especially the box of Manuscripts in the Paris National Archives labelled Carton J. 495. I may also indicate an interesting passage in Walsingham’s “Historia Anglicana,” vol. ii. p. 201, communicated to me by Comte Albert de Circourt, “Item Dominus Papa significat Regi per prædictum nuncio, qualiter Rex Franciæ et Antipapa pacta inierunt hinc inde: Videlicet quod idem Rex, per fortitudinum Ducum (Burgundiæ et Turoniæ, poni faciat Antipapem in Sedem Petri et Antipapa promisit Regem Imperio coronare, et Duci Burgundiæ) magnalia et investiet Ducem Turoniæ de omnibus terris ecclesiæ in partibus Italiæ, et _quendam alium_ coronare Regem Tusciæ et Lombardiæ, et Ducem Andexaciæ (Andegaviæ) firmare in Regno Siciliæ.” The passage in brackets exists only in the Brit. Mus. MS.

His successor was less able; and the scheme of Adria was abandoned. Valentine would never reign as Queen of Adria. Yet, as Duchess of Genoa, she would be nearer home. Then in all manner of subtle and secret ways Orleans and Visconti immediately manœuvred to secure the Ligurian province. Armies in the field, diplomats in the Cabinet, worked for one end alone. In November, 1394, Savona had submitted to Orleans. Now Genoa must be gained. The young Duke had already a strong faction in his favour. The Lomellini, Spinole, Flischi, figure in the rolls of Orleans’ army.[28] But, at the same time, they were intriguing with an unsuspected enemy.[29] In August, 1395, the Doge of Genoa sent to Paris offering to Charles himself the suzerainty of Genoa. There was in France a strong current of popular opinion running in favour of Italian colonization. Why should Orleans have Genoa?—asked the people. Why not the King? Why not all of us? Why not France? The King, as we know, was never a very solid creature. Honest, but feeble, he let himself be dominated by the nearest influence. The Duke of Burgundy was in Paris, and he, it is probable, persuaded Charles[26] to abandon his brother and to accept the gift of the Doge. In October, Genoa was united to the Crown of France. In December the King bought from Orleans his rights in Savona and Genoa.[27] This was checkmate both to Orleans and Visconti.

Footnote 26:

“Arch. Nat.,” K K. 315.

Footnote 27:

“Arch. Nat.,” J. 497, No. 15. February, 1392, Lomellini, Flisco, and other nobles of Genoa sign an instrument offering Genoa to the King of France.

Footnote 28:

Paul Durrieu, “Le Royaume d’Adria.” See also an important passage, “Religieux de St. Denis,” t. ii. p. 402.

Footnote 29:

“Arch. Nat.,” K. 54, No. 37. December 12, 1396: “Comme depuis que nostre très-cher et très amé frère le Duc d’Orleans eut, pour les causes et les concideracions qui le meurent, entrepriz d’avoir la Seigneurie des cité, pays et territoire de Gennes. Et tant fait pour venir à son entencion.... Savoir faisons que pour contenter et deffraier nostre dit frère des trés-grans fraiz missions et despenses par luy en plusieurs manières faiz et soustenuz ... nous avons avec nostre dit frère traicté et accordé sur de et pour ces choses et leurs dependances la somme de trois cents mile frans d’or pour une foiz.”

Burgundy and the Queen were triumphant. The Queen wrote to the Florentines that affairs were going well, that her enemy and theirs was fallen in disgrace, and on the 29th December the King joined the Florentines against his late ally. For there was now great irritation in France against Visconti, who, furious at the treachery which had outwitted his plans for Genoa, played a double game with France. Signing with one hand a fraternal alliance with King Charles,[30] with the other he stirred up the Genoese to rebel against his yoke. But the Genoese suspected his counsels, and revealed the whole intrigue to the Court of Paris. Hence fury among the nobles, an ardent desire to punish the false friend.[31] Hence among the populace the best will in the world to believe the Duke of Milan a wizard and his daughter a witch, an infernal spirit bringing death and madness upon the beloved King.

Footnote 30:

August 31, 1395. Lünig Codex Italiæ Diplomaticus, i. col. 421.

Footnote 31:

“Religieux de St. Denis,” ii. p. 436, _et. seq._

IX.