Part 13

Of the two legitimate sons of the great Duke of Milan—one was a handsome young Nero, blood-mad, inept, given over to passion and cruelty; the other an astute child, timid, unscrupulous, who later should develop a trace of the genius of his father. At first their hold on their inheritance was so slight that Orleans determined on invading Lombardy, whether to defend or to supplant his nephews, who shall say? In October, 1403, he started for Lombardy, accompanied by 13 knights-banneret, 43 knights, 212 squires, 28 archers, 20 crossbow-men, and other soldiers.[43] On the way south he passed by Beaucaire, and had an interview with his charge, the Antipope Benedict. He took into his service the famous captain of adventure, Bernardon de Serres. He made friends with another mighty captain—an ancient enemy—the Count of Armagnac.[42] Vast and serious appeared his project of invasion, but, on the very verge of the Alps, suddenly, on January, 1404, he abandoned the prosperous enterprise, turned right about, and faced home for Paris.

Footnote 42:

Communicated by Comte Albert de Circourt from transcripts in his possession.

Footnote 43:

See M. Paul Durrieu, “Les Gascons en Italie,” p. 214.

What is the meaning of this sudden change of course, unexplained, and perhaps inexplicable? What was the object of the Lombard invasion? What was the cause which so unexpectedly suppressed it? Orleans believed himself to have a certain claim on Pisa, bequeathed by the great Visconti to his bastard son Gabriello-Maria. Gabriello Visconti was ill at ease in Pisa. A little later, in 1404, as we know, he offered his unruly city first to France, then to Florence. It is possible—it is even from the nature of things a necessary hypothesis—to suppose that in 1403 Gabriello had come to terms with Orleans, and that the rights on Pisa which Orleans vaunted as his own through Valentine Visconti were supported by some cession of the actual lord, her half-brother. But Orleans was not the only Frenchman capable of adventure and practice in Italy. By the time his army reached the frontier he found himself outwitted by a higher bidder, nearer at hand.

Jehan le Meingre, Marshal Boucicaut, Governor of Genoa, had intrigued with Gabriello and procured the city of Pisa for the King. A few months later, on the 15th of April, 1404,[44] a deed was drawn up declaring Pisa henceforth a fief of France.

Footnote 44:

Dumont, Corps Diplomatique. II. ccxvii. and ccxxxi.

At the first word of the matter Orleans had turned his back on his contemplated campaign and marched back to Paris, fury in his heart. Probably behind the interference of Boucicaut he divined the inspiration of Burgundy, his enemy;—Burgundy who, as events should prove, had unsuspected designs of his own upon the State of Pisa. Back in wrath marched Orleans: stalked indignant into Paris his men at his heels: found the King in his senses, and docile as was his wont. From him, on the 24th of May, Orleans extracted the deed which we append,[45] a deed that repudiates the action of Boucicaut, and transfers all the rights of France in Pisa to Orleans, who henceforth shall meet with neither let nor hindrance in his projects.

Footnote 45:

Avd Nat. K. 55, No. 11, bis July 26, 1404. À tous ceulx qui ces présentes lettres verront, Guilles, Seigneur de Tignonville, chevalier, conseiller, chamberlain du Roy nostre seigneur et garde de la prévosté de Paris, Salut! Savoir faisons que nous l’an de grace 1404, ce Mercredi 26 jour du mois de Juillet, vismes une lettre du Roy nostre seigneur scellée de son grant scel sur double couronne, des quelles la teneur s’ensuit:

Charles par la grace de Dieu Roy de France, à tous ceulx qui ces lettres verront, Salut! Savoir faisons que après la supplication et requeste à nous faictes par nostre très-cher et très-amé frère Loys Duc d’Orléans, contenant que comme à cause de nostre très chère et très amée soeur, sa femme, fille du feu nostre oncle le Duc de Milan, plusieurs villes terres et seigneuries situées es parties d’Italie et de Lombardie, entre lesquelles est et doit estre la ville et cité de Pise avec toutes ses appartenances, la seigneurie de laquelle nostre dit frère dit estre et appartenir au dit feu Duc de Milan auparavant qu’il alla de vie à tres-passement appartiennent et doivent appartenir à iceluy nostre très-cher frère. Il nous a exposé et il ait entendu de nouvel que la dicte ville et cité de Pise et aucuns chasteaulx appartenant d’icelle, par certains moyens sont à nous acquis et venues en nostre main. Et ont été bailliz pour nous par nostre très-féal Chevalier Chambellan et conseiller Jehan le Meingre dit Boucicaut, Maréschal de France, et Gouverneur pour nous de nostre cité et seigneurie de Jennes, pour quoy il nous a requis en tout le droit que nous avons et pouvons avoir de la dicte ville et cité de Pise et ès aultres cités et appartenances qui furent au dit Seigneur de Milan, nous veuillons bailler et délaisser. Et tout empeschement mis de par nous en la dicte ville et cité de Pise et ès dictes chateaulx et aultres appartenances d’icelles, veuillons faire oster et cesser, sans y plus procéder, ny faire procéder, en sa préjudice. Nous voulons toujours condescendre au justes requestes de nostre-dit frère, comme raison est. Qui avons baillie et délaissié de une certaine science par ces présentes tout le droit et seigneurie par nous acquis de nouvel et que nous avons et pouvons avoir en dicte ville et cité de Pise et ès aultres chasteaulx et appartenances d’iceulx. Et voulons et ordonnons par ces présentes que l’empeschement mis par et en nostre nom en la dicte ville, cité et Seigneurie de Pise et ès chateaulx et aultres appartenances d’icelles, soit osté. Si donnons en mandement par ces présentes et envoyons très-expressement au dit gouverneur de nostre dicte cité de Jeunes et à tous nos aultres justiciers et conseillers ou à leurs lieutenants et à chaseur d’eulx, si que di luy appendra, que de nostre bailli et délaissements dessus ditz faient, sueffrent et laissent jouer et user paisiblement nostre diet frère. En mectant au délivrement de luy ou à ses ditz gens officiers commis et députés de par lui tous les ditz droit et seigneurie par nous acquis de nouvel ès ditz ville cité et chasteaul dessus ditz. Et en ostant tout l’empeschement qui en iceulx a esté mis de nostre part. En tesmoing de ce nous avons fait mettre à ces lettres nostre scel. Donné a Paris le 24 jour de May l’an de grace mil quatre ans et quatre et le 24 de nostre règne. Aussi signées par le Roy en son rayson. Messigneurs les Ducs de Berry et de Bourbon, le Connestable, le Comte de Tancarville, le grand maistre d’ostel et aultres.

Et nous a ce présent transcript in tesmoing de ce que usismes le scel de la dicte prévosté de Paris l’an et jour dessus promis et dietz. Manessier.

The deed was granted in Council, the King being then in his senses, and assisted by Berri, Bourbon, Tancarville, and others. The reader will remark the noteworthy absence of Burgundy. He will remember also that Berry, in 1405, will join Orleans in a defensive league against Jean-sans-Peur. It is possible that Burgundy knew nothing of the deed drawn up behind his back.

But it was too late for Orleans to profit by the King’s good-will. The Florentines were in Pisa, and an invasion against so powerful an enemy could not be undertaken.

For a moment Orleans was obliged to pause in his Italian policy—to pause only, not to abandon it, since in 1406[48] he still reclaimed authority on Pisa, and in the very year of his death was taking an active part in the affairs of Lombardy.[47] That pause was filled in a manner disastrous, fatal, yet natural enough in a man suffocating under a sense of bitter indignation and revolt. Burgundy had interfered with Orleans abroad. Very well; Orleans would interfere with Burgundy at home. Already the first steps were taken. In 1401, Orleans had married his cousin Mary Harcourt to the Duke of Gueldres, the enemy and the neighbour of Burgundy, with whom his rival now concluded an alliance and a league. In 1402, Orleans purchased from the King of the Romans the Duchy of Luxembourg. In 1405,[46] he assembled at Melun the entire strength of his faction, sending even to Asti for the Governor and his men. In 1405 also he allied himself with Berri and the Queen against Jean-sans-Peur. With the Court on one hand, and on the other Gueldres, the most reckless captain of his age;—with an army at his heels, and (through the county of Soissons, and down the banks of the Oise and the Marne), an uninterrupted passage through his own possessions into his new Duchy of Luxembourg: Orleans was a deadly enemy to Burgundy. A glance at the map will show the reader how, like a wedge or like a rivet, Luxembourg must split apart or hold together the domains of the Netherlands and the provinces of Franche Comté and Burgundy. In the hands of Orleans, Luxembourg was a wedge; and the domains of Burgundy were no longer a compact and formidable territory, but two principalities with Brussels for the capital of the one, and Dijon for the capital of the other. Should Orleans march an army into Luxembourg, should Gueldres come to his aid with an armed force, the suppression of the Dukedom of Burgundy would fall within the range of practical politics.

Footnote 46:

A strange document in the Carton K. 55 Arch. Nat., under date July 27, 1406, in the form of a letter from the King in Council (Tancarville “et autres” being present), notifies that that day the King has received conjointly the Dukes of Burgundy and Orleans, who have made him their united homage for Pisa. In 1407 the Signory of Florence, having taken Pisa (a French fief), sent to the King, Orleans, and Burgundy to justify their conduct. Orleans seized the Florentine ambassadors and cast them into prison—a high-handed proceeding which he probably considered warranted by his position as suzerain of the captive city. In so doing Orleans probably meant to underline the fact that _he_, not the King or Burgundy, was lord of Pisa, though all had claims to suzerainty. There is a long correspondence on this subject (Archives of Florence, filza xviii. della Signoria. Cancelleria 27).

Footnote 47:

It is in 1407 that the Italian projects of Orleans appear in vigorous renascence. On the 6th of October he proclaimed himself Protector of his nephews, Giovanni Maria, Duke of Milan, and Filippo Maria, Count of Pavia, “frères de Dame Valentine épouse du Duc” (Arch. Nat. K. 56, No. 16). He made the Governor of Asti their guardian, and appeared to meditate an armed intervention. Was this conduct purely and merely disinterested? Did Orleans in October at Beauté-sur-Marne contemplate a great French protectorate in Lombardy of which he should be the soul and centre? A month later a tragic silence suddenly interrupted any answer to these questions.

Footnote 48:

See “Arch. Nat.” K K. 267 fo. 97. Also the chapter on Bernardon de Serres in M. Paul Durrieu’s valuable work, “Les Gascons en Italie.”

Henceforth, between these two princes the struggle for power should take on a new character and become the very struggle for existence. And while the people, abject, all in tears, prayed to Heaven: “Jesu Christ, send thou some man to deliver us from Orleans,” the hero of the people, Jean-sans-Peur the Belovèd, was urged by every motive of self-interest, every instinct of self-preservation, and with the assurance of popular immunity, to interrupt for ever the fatal progress of the tyrant.

XII.

One Wednesday evening—it was St. Clement’s day, the 23rd of November, 1407—Orleans was supping with the Queen. Isabel was ill and dispirited. Ten days ago her new-born baby had died at its birth, and she sorrowed for this child and loved it as she had never loved her other children. Isabel was away from her husband in her new Hôtel de Montaigu, near the Porte Barbette. It was here that Orleans came every day to see her, and here they “supped right joyously together,” says the Monk of St. Denis. Orleans had been ill all autumn at his Castle of Beauté, and had only recently come back to Paris. Valentine, with her four children and the Princess Isabel, was still in the country.

As these two persons, both ill, both weary, forgot their troubles for a while in each other’s company, a page came to the door with a feigned message: the King earnestly beseeched his brother to come and see him at the palace of St. Paul. Orleans arose at once and left the Queen. He had at least six hundred men of his own lodged that day in Paris, as Monstrelet informs us. Orleans, however, took none of them with him. He leapt on his mule and rode away with two squires on horseback at his side. Two or three footmen with torches ran after him. No gentleman could go more simply than the King’s brother in his plain suit of black damask, riding with no more than five attendants, quickly and gaily down the frosty street. It was the coldest winter ever known, and muffled in their cloaks the little party rode briskly ahead, looking neither to the right or left. Orleans was singing softly to himself and playing with one of his gloves. He feared no enemies. Last Sunday he had taken the Sacrament with Burgundy, and yesterday they two had dined together.

It was eight o’clock. All was dark and silent in the Rue Vieille du Temple, then an outlying and quiet district. Orleans and his two squires rode along so fast that the runners with the torches were left some way behind. At last they came to a wider place in the street where there was a well. As the three horsemen passed the Hôtel de l’Image de Notre-Dame, seventeen or eighteen men sprang suddenly out of the shadow of the house. One with an axe chopped off the bridle hand of Orleans. The King’s brother gave a cry of surprise and pain. “I am the Duke of Orleans!” “It is he we seek.”

In another moment the Duke was beaten off his mule on to the frozen paving-stones. Seventeen axes were aimed at him; blow after blow fell heavily; his head was cloven, his brains gushed out into the street. His servants had all fled and left him there, save one of his squires who had been his page (a German, says Monstrelet; a Fleming, says the Monk), who, more constant than Orleans’ compatriots, flung himself upon the body of his master, and was pierced and slaughtered there. When both were murdered the assassins dragged the body of Orleans across the street, propped it up against a heap of mud that was standing frozen there, and lighting a torch of straw, they looked to see if he were really dead. A woman, a cobbler’s wife, looking from a garret window, saw it all, and set up a shriek of “Murder, murder!” “Peace, harlot,” cried the armed men in the street, and began to shoot their arrows at the open casement. At that moment a man with a scarlet hood drawn well over his face, came out of the house opposite, and struck the dead body with his club. “Put out the light. He’s dead. Let us go.” The eighteen assassins rode away in great merriment, sowing caltrops after them; but before they left they set fire to the house where, for the last fortnight, Jean-sans-Peur had kept them hidden. The flames of the burning Hôtel de l’Image streamed up through the darkness of the night, awakening the city, and shedding a strange light on the murdered body of Orleans, still propped up in a sitting posture, his wounded head hanging on one side. Just then a nephew of Maréchal de Rieulx, whose great Hôtel stood opposite, a young man, one of Orleans’ squires, rode up as he left his uncle’s house, and saw his master sitting thus dead, the left hand off, the right arm hanging by a thread. A little distance off, on the stones of the street, lay the page, dying in his faithful youth, murmuring still in his German language, “Ach, my master!” At his side, on the ground, was a white hand severed from the wrist. Close by there lay a fallen glove. The young squire gave the alarm and the dead bodies were carried into the Hôtel de Rieulx.

There was wailing and mourning in the house of Orleans, grief and horror in the house of the King. The deed was soon known, though as yet it was only surmised that one Raoul d’Actonville, a dismissed steward, had wreaked in this ghastly fashion his spite against his master. The next day the royal princes, all in black, with a great multitude of the people of Paris, brought the murdered Duke to the church of St. Guillaume, close at hand. He who had ever loved the good through all his wickedness, lay now among the watching friars, who sang psalms and repeated vigils day and night for his soul; there he lay until they took him to be buried in his own chapel of the Celestines, which is called the Blancs-Manteaux to-day. The people followed him with torches, remembering only his gay and gracious qualities, his capricious generosity, his gentle raillery, his rhetoric and eloquence, how he had loved learning, and that he had often lived as a monk for days among the Celestines. All Paris wept, those also who had prayed Jesus Christ in heaven to deliver them from Orleans; even Burgundy went in the funeral procession, all in black, weeping also. But when the funeral was over Jean-sans-Peur took Berri and the King of Sicily aside: “I had it done. I slew him. It was an inspiration of the demon’s.”

XIII.

There were two women, who were not at the burial, to whom the death of Orleans came nearer than to any mourner there. When Isabel heard that Orleans was slain she went in terror of her life. Ill as she was, she had herself carried in a litter to St. Paul’s, taking shelter there in the arms of her mad husband, and so soon as she was fit for travel the poor, light, beautiful, little Queen went out of Paris, far away from Burgundy, far, too, from that maimed and slaughtered body lying in the chapel of the Celestines. Terrified, indifferent, she could think of nothing but her own imaginary danger.

The mistress and the wife took the matter in a very different spirit. At first, in her transports of sorrow, Valentine could not act. She tore out her hair and shred her garments; she sobbed so much, that for weeks afterwards her voice was hoarse. But when the first paroxysm was over her strong Italian character centred itself upon one fixed idea—justice, vengeance for her murdered husband. Valentine had no thought of her own safety. She sent her two elder sons and her girl into Blois, and then, with the Princess Isabel and little John, her youngest child, on either hand, the Duchess of Orleans set out from Château-Thierry for Paris.

Travelling was slow that terrible winter. It was not till the 10th of December that Valentine entered the capital. She, her children, her servants, were all dressed very plainly and roughly, and, of course, in black. The King of Sicily and the Duke of Berri came out to meet them. When they reached the palace Valentine threw herself upon her knees before the King, demanding justice. The poor Charles (_azzez subtil pour lors_) raised her up and kissed her, while they both wept together. He promised strict justice upon Burgundy. Again, ten days later, he declared, “What is done to my only brother is done to me.” Valentine and her children, satisfied of vengeance, retired to their great hotel in the Marais.

The King fell ill again so soon as Valentine had left him. “They say,... but I affirm nothing,” suggests the Monk. Valentine the witch stayed on, however, among the people who had murdered her husband. One thing that we learn of Valentine at this moment shows us how profound, how selfless was her love of Orleans. She sought out his bastard—the little John, afterwards Count of Dunois, the son of Mariette de Canny—and brought him up with her own children. It even seemed as though she loved him more than the others. Glancing from the poetic Charles, the delicate Philip, the child John, to his determined and eager little face, she exclaimed, “None of your brothers is more fit than you to avenge your father. Nature has cheated me of you!”

To avenge your father! This had become the unique preoccupation of Valentine. But that promised vengeance tarried long. On the 8th of March a learned doctor of theology, the chosen advocate of Burgundy, a certain Maître Jean Petit, excused the murder of Orleans before the King. “_Il est licite d’occire un Tyran._”

It was not only of tyranny that the Burgundians accused their victim. The tremendous accusation of Jean Petit (which every student of the past has read in Monstrelet) enumerates attempted regicide, and secret poisoning, sorcery, necromancy, charms, incantations. “Sorcery, high treason against God, and regicide, high treason against the King. There is also tyranny,” says Maître Jean Petit. It was of course for this third cause, treason against the people, that Orleans’ murder was condoned in Paris.

For the people never hid their support of Jean-sans-Peur. Those who had wept at the funeral of Orleans were ready now to cry again the cry of Burgundy. The King, whose mind was again overcast, although he was not actually mad, the King himself on the 9th of April, 1408, signed letters patent granting pardon to Jean-sans-Peur. “Our very dear and well-beloved cousin of Burgundy, _who for the public good and out of faith and loyalty to us, has caused to be put out of this world our said brother of Orleans_.” This was the last insult to his memory. Valentine would not brook it; she rallied to the charge. Though she herself had been seriously implicated in the tissue of villainy which his murderers had woven about the memory of her husband, Valentine had no thoughts to spare for her own safety. All through July and August she kept agitating against Burgundy. Bringing her children with her she sought the King and cried on her knees for justice. Twenty years’ exile for Burgundy! Her two advocates, Sérisi and Cousinet pleaded eloquently for her; refuting the vile accusations of poison and sorcery with a candour, a logic, a fine and modern spirit worthy of the intellect of the dead man they defended. It was all no use. “The Parisians,” says Monstrelet, “loved so well this Duke of Burgundy; because they believed that if he undertook the government, he would put down throughout the kingdom all salt taxes, imposts, dues, and subsidies which were to the prejudice of the people.” Though nearly all the royal Princes were openly on the side of Valentine, the King did not _dare_ avenge his brother. The Court was impotent against the people.

In the early autumn Valentine left Paris. Life was over for her. “Rien ne m’est plus. Plus ne m’est rien,” ran her melancholy motto. Anger and bereavement and hopeless sorrow had worn her to a shadow. She took the little Dunois with her children to the Castle of Blois. There were four of them, Charles, the Poet, who should be the father of King Louis XII.; and little John, the grandfather of Francis I.; Philip, Count of Vertus; and Margaret, in later years the grandmother of Anne of Brittany. These children, three of whom should be the grandparents or great-grandparents of Henri II., Valentine ceaselessly instructed. All her contemporaries bear witness to her untiring vigilance over them. “They are marvellously good, and well-instructed for their years,” says Monstrelet: “Moult notablement conduits et indoctrinés.” But there was one lesson, dearer than the others, that Valentine perpetually taught her sons. “Avenge your father,” she continually cried.