Part 14

These children, so different in character and destiny, were the dearer to their mother that she felt she had not long to love them. Valentine was dying of a broken heart, “of anger and mourning,” writes Juvenal; “of anger and impotent vengeance,” says Monstrelet. Her eyes were quite dim with useless tears, and still she resented the very grief that drained her life; for she did not want to leave her little children and her unaccomplished task. “It was pitiful,” says Juvenal, “before she died to hearken to her regrets and her complaints, so piteously she regretted her children, and a bastard, called John, whom she could not suffer out of her sight, saying none of her children was fitter to avenge their father.”... “Since the tragic end of her husband,” says the Monk, “this Duchess spent her days in tears, and many say the bitterness of her heart induced that unhealthy languor of which she died.”

This was in November. Upon St. Clement’s day, upon that heart-sickening anniversary of her husband’s murder, Jean-sans-Peur rode into Paris. It was a triumph. As he passed the people, and their little children cried, “Noel, noel au bon Duc.”

It was near a week before the news came down to Blois. When she heard it, Valentine felt that all was over. No vengeance was possible. On the 4th of December the unhappy woman died, with her last breath entreating her little children never to forget their father’s murder. But these children were only children, and they were orphans. The death of Valentine seemed to secure the triumph of her enemy. Jean-sans-Peur did not seek to hide his rejoicing: “Car icelle Duchesse continuoit moult asprement et diligemment sa poursuitte.“ But already Retribution at her grindstone was sharpening the fatal battle-axe of Montereau.

THE CLAIM OF THE HOUSE OF ORLEANS TO MILAN.

Let us recapitulate.

When, on September 16, 1380, Charles V. of France expired, he left behind him two young sons. One was twelve years old, tall, stalwart, healthy, amiable; the other was a lad of nine, less regularly handsome than his brother, slighter, darker, more agile, more acute, and more engaging.

Charles V. had left his younger son no more than the pension of a private gentleman; the elder was the king of France. The dying monarch, a man of many brothers, had seen the dangers that arise when royal princes are too rich. But he had died before his time; and of his two heirs the king was gentle, dull, and generous; the gentleman, brilliant, grasping, and ambitious. The result was calculable. Twenty years later the younger son was king in all but name; he was rich, puissant, terrible, and hated; while his brother, impoverished and neglected, starved on the throne, the best-beloved man in France. Circumstances had made the rise of the younger son singularly easy. In his twenty-fourth year King Charles VI. became violently mad, and henceforward till his death there were long regencies (the subject of angry contests between his uncle and his brother) interrupted by periods of lax and kindly government. His younger brother, Louis, Duke of Orleans, became, as first prince of the blood, more powerful than the king. He was too powerful; and his arrogance and his extortions raised many enemies against him. On November 23, 1407, he was cruelly murdered as he was riding by night through the streets of Paris. He had made himself so terrible that even the brother who loved him did not seek to avenge him, but praised the murderer “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.” No one mourned the murdered man absolutely and completely except his devoted widow and his orphaned children.

A year and a week later the duchess died. Her three sons, her one daughter, with Dunois, the natural son of Orleans, whom his widow had adopted, were left fatherless and motherless in a kingdom full of enemies, where their father’s murderers triumphed. They entered the world as a battlefield; but, though so young, they entered armed and mounted. From their father they inherited the duchies of Orleans, Luxembourg, and Aquitaine, the counties of Valois, Beaumont, Soissons, Blois, Dreux, Périgord, and Angoulême, with the seigneuries of Coucy and Savona. Through their mother they acquired the county of Vertus in Champagne, the county of Asti in Lombardy, and certain pretensions to the ducal crown of Milan.

I.

In the year 1387 their father, Louis of France, not yet the Duke of Orleans, had been contracted to the Duke of Milan’s only daughter, Valentine Visconti, whom two years later he espoused. In relation to the established monarchs of his time, the father of Valentine stood in much the same situation as afterwards the great Napoleon, in the first years of his empire, towards the kings of Germany. He was rich, too powerful to be safely opposed, a conqueror of whom the end was still beyond prediction; hence a man to conciliate and appease. Yet in their hearts they despised him as a parvenu and an adventurer, and deplored and deprecated the moral flaws that marred the beauty of his prosperity.

Giangaleazzo, first Duke of Milan, was the only son of Galeazzo Visconti, who, in conjunction with Bernabò, his brother, swayed the city of Milan and the greater part of Lombardy. They had murdered their own brother, and divided his inheritance between them—Bernabò, the elder, holding his state in Milan, Galeazzo in the city of Pavia.

Bernabò had no less than nine-and-twenty children. Galeazzo had but two, but for these he was ambitious. He married his daughter to the son of the King of England; his son he married to the daughter of the King of France. This was in 1360. The bride and bridegroom were still of childish age. Six years later their eldest child was born. It was a girl, Valentine. The three brothers who followed her died in their minority; but Valentine flourished, grew to womanhood, and brought into the house of Orleans the tangled question of the Milanese succession.

At her birth and during her childhood her father was but one of several rulers in Milan. The Visconti ruled as a clan rather than as an organized dynasty. They were the descendants of a certain Captain Eriprando, who, in the year 1037, defended Milan against the Emperor Conrad. Notwithstanding this beginning the Visconti were eminently Ghibelline, and depended for all their subsequent fortunes on the emperor. In 1277 they chased the Guelfs from Milan, and made themselves masters of the state. They became lords or _domini_ in Milan, lords of an imperial fief, but with no pretence to an imperial investiture. The emperor recognized them only as his captains, his viscounts, or his imperial vicars.

In 1372 the Emperor Charles IV., alarmed at the pretensions of the Visconti clan, deprived them of their office. The rich tyrants, not afraid of a distant emperor beyond the Alps, paid little heed to this punishment. The emperor died, and his son succeeded—the dissolute Wenzel, who was to do so much for Milan. Almost his first act was to create the youthful father of Valentine Imperial Vicar of the Milanese.

This taste of power whetted the ambition of the young man, left fatherless now to confront the faction of his uncle Bernabò and his numerous children. Lax and irregular forms of government favour a violent ambition. By one bold stratagem Giangaleazzo took his uncle prisoner, dispossessed his cousins, and established himself as lord of Milan.

Milan was not enough. Fire and sword cleared the way before him, and his territory stretched to the Apennine ridges. Florence, on the other side, trembled for her independence. The Lombard kingdom was alive again, and, though the Pope refused the indomitable conqueror the title of King of Italy, in 1395 the Emperor Wenzel invested him with the duchy of Milan.

Meanwhile, in 1389, Valentine Visconti had gone to her husband in France. When she left Milan she was no longer her father’s only child. A few months before, her stepmother, Caterina Visconti, had given birth to a son. A little later a second son was born. The greatest conqueror of his age could now divide his possessions between two sons born in wedlock, a bastard boy named Gabriello, and his only daughter Valentine, the child of his first wife, the Princess Isabelle of France. The first question that confronts us is this: What provision did Giangaleazzo Visconti make for his daughter Valentine of Orleans?

For many centuries there has been much debate concerning the claim of Orleans to Milan. Much argument and little evidence has confused the question; it is only the evidence that we shall examine here. In the National Archives of Paris[50] there exists the original marriage-contract of Valentine Visconti. A copy of this document is contained in a brown leather folio, stamped with the Visconti serpent, existing in the British Museum.[49] It is an instrument granted by the Antipope, Clement of Avignon, on January 27, 1387, in favour of Louis of Orleans and Bertrand de Guasche, Governor of Vertus, as representing the father of Valentine. To the marriage contract are appended a dispensation (Louis and Valentine were cousins), a deed of transfer for the bride’s dowry of Asti and its dependencies, and a declaration of her right to succeed her father in Milan, in case his direct male line should become extinct. The clause which chiefly concerns us runs as follows: “_Item est actum et in pactum solempni stipulatione vallatum et expresse deductum quod in casu quo præfatus dominus Johannes Galeas vicecomes, comes Virtutum, dominus Mediolanensis, decedat sine filiis masculis de suo proprio corpore ex legitimo matrimonio procreatis, dicta domina Valentina, nata sua, succedat et succedere debeat in solidum in toto dominio suo presente et futuro quocumque, absque eo quod per viam testamenti, codicillorum, seu alicujus alterius ultimæ voluntatis, aut donatione inter vivos, ipsa aliquid faciat seu facere possit in contrarium quovis modo._”

Footnote 49:

J. 409, No. 42. Contrat de Mariage. 42 _bis_, Vidimus du Contrat et Acte de la remise d’Asti. Pavia, April 8, 1387. 42 _ter_, Confirmation du Contrat par Clement VII. à Avignon. For further documents on the subject see Carton K. 553.

Footnote 50:

Additional MSS., No. 30,669, fo. 215.

The husband of Valentine was for many years the tool with which the astute Visconti hoped to assure his own supremacy in Italy. In 1393 and in 1394 Visconti had no dearer scheme than that Clement, the Antipope at Avignon, should make the Duke of Orleans king of Adria. With Clement at Rome, Anjou at Naples, Orleans ruling the centre from Spoleto to Ferrara, Visconti beheld the annihilation of Venice and the Tuscan republics—a united Italy north of Rome. Doubtless he intended the kingdom of Adria and the kingdom of Lombardy to lose themselves in one monarchy: but whether that result was to be attained by the subsequent spoliation of Orleans or by his adoption as heir to Milan, was a question which probably depended on the living or dying of the sons of Giangaleazzo. Orleans, however, though so young, proved himself no facile instrument. He had no intention that Adria and Lombardy should unite to his own disadvantage; and silently he contemplated another scheme—to secure the docility of Lombardy by bounding it on the south by Adria and on the north by another French principality, to be formed by a fusion of Asti and Genoa. Orleans, therefore, determined to begin by the conquest of Genoa; and for three years he displayed so much ability that Giangaleazzo began to suspect this count of Asti and seigneur of Savona, whom the Genoese implored to become the governor of the Ligurian republic. Then came the scandal of the acquisition of Genoa by Charles VI., to the detriment of his brother. From 1395 to 1397 there is a moment of division between the interests of Orleans and Visconti; but, as we shall see, the last act of Visconti was to enforce the claims of Orleans to Milan, and the Duke of Orleans in his will[51] expressly bequeaths to his eldest son “_la comté d’Ast et autres terres que j’ay et puis avoir au pays de Lombardy et d’outre les monts_.” As far as Orleans and Visconti could decide, there is no doubt of the claim of Orleans to Milan. But it is more difficult to decide by what right Giangaleazzo Visconti disposed of the emperor’s fiefs of Milan; for although, when Visconti signed his daughter’s marriage-contract, he was simply the illegal despot of Milan, eight years later the emperor made him duke and received tribute at his hands. The lands which Visconti had gained by succession, by fraud, and by conquest, which he had ruled by force and national custom, were now indubitably his by feudal right. But in order to acquire the security of this legality, the Duke of Milan, in theory at all events, had sacrificed a certain portion of his independence.

Footnote 51:

Champollion-Figeac, “Louis et Charles ducs d’Orléans,” p. 253. The will is dated Oct. 17, 1403: Pisa was probably counted in the “autres terres que puis avoir.”

The first investiture was granted him on Sept. 5, 1395. From this date he held his duchy of Milan as an imperial fief. But as what manner of fief? And which class of fiefs admits a woman to be her father’s heir?

These questions, seemingly simple, are in reality difficult to answer, because feudal law was quite indefinitely modified by provincial custom. It was chiefly custom which decided if an hereditary fief could be inherited by a woman in default of males. Thus in France the provinces of Burgundy and Normandy were strictly masculine fiefs; but Lorraine, Guienne, and Artois descended to daughters in default of sons; and the duchy of Brittany, the kingdoms of Cyprus, Navarre, and Naples (a Papal fief), will occur to every mind; while in Germany itself, in the stronghold of feudalism, the duchy of Mecklenburg descended to daughters on extinction of the masculine branch; many fiefs in Swabia, Zutphen, Pomerania, and Saxony, followed this example.

In the North of Italy the distinction between legitimacy and illegitimacy had become so trivial a thing, that sons, born in or out of wedlock, were generally forthcoming in sufficient numbers to distance any feminine claim; and the Imperial investiture—save in the case when it carried with it the Imperial Vicariat—was rather a rose in the buttonhole of the tyrant than a necessary legalization of a tyranny stronger than the law. Yet the marquisate of Montferrat was brought into the house of the Palæologi through a feminine succession; and in 1387 Valentine Visconti brought the country of Asti (no less than Milan an Imperial fief) unquestioned to her husband, and with only the Pope’s investiture. A century later Caterina Sforza ruled in Pesaro. The custom in Italy, then, though dubious, various, and full of irregularities and confusions was, on the whole, the same as the custom in Mecklenburg, Pomerania, Swabia, Hungary, Brittany, Navarre, and other places: on extinction of the male descent a woman might succeed. If her succession were provided for by the terms of the investiture; or, in other cases, unless she were deliberately excluded.[52]

Footnote 52:

In the ordinary imperial fiefs, which, even so late as the end of the fourteenth century, still in many cases preserved their original idea of military service granted in return for territorial possessions, a woman could not succeed without direct and especial mention of this fact in the investiture, or in some subsequent privilege. But in a purchased fief daughters were admitted to the succession in default of males. Milan was an imperial fief, derived directly from the emperor, and held by the peculiar sort of tenure known as _Fahnlehen_, from the homage of a banner or standard paid by its possessor to his feudal lord; it was destined, even if not explicitly reserved, for masculine operation only. Giangaleazzo Visconti paid the enormous price of 100,000 florins (about £50,000 sterling) for the title and investiture, but I am not aware whether this is or is not sufficient to grant the fief the looser privileges of a _feudum emptum_.

In the investiture of 1395 which made Giangaleazzo duke of Milan there is no mention of Valentine, but neither is there any direct mention of the sons of Giangaleazzo. The duchy of Milan is bestowed on him, _sui heredes et successores_. Now this term in Italy, where the Pandects were still the model of civil law, might be held to include _all_ the children of the possessor; and, on failure of the male line, the daughter would be entitled to put in her claim. I am not aware how much was implied in Germany at this date by the employment of this term; but probably there also it was at least ambiguous, since, under the Hohenstaufen emperors, Roman law had made a great advance through Germany, and since, later on, it was found necessary to formulate a special clause that the use of the expression _sui heredes_ should not be considered sufficient to authorize females to claim succession to a masculine fief.

Any ambiguity was dispelled the following year. There was then a possibility of war between France and Milan, grievously estranged at that date by the presence of the French in Genoa, and by the rumours of witchcraft which defamed the reputation and endangered the safety of Madame Valentine in France. At this juncture Giangaleazzo, probably alarmed at the terms of his daughter’s marriage-contract, procured a second imperial investiture,[54] distinctly limiting the succession to male heirs. But this was not the end. In 1396 news came to Paris of the battle of Nicopolis, which necessitated an immediate _rapprochement_ with Milan; for Giangaleazzo Visconti, feared and hated because of his friendship with the Turk, was at this juncture the one necessary man, capable of mediating between the French and the East. Great court was paid to him, and he accepted the French advances. Peace and amity being restored between the two countries, on March 30, 1397, he obtained a third and last investiture from Wenzel,[53] which restored the conditions of inheritance to their original footing, and bestowed the duchy of Milan on Giangaleazzo Visconti, _descendentes et successores sui_.

Footnote 53:

“Ann. Med.,” in Muratori, “Rer. Ital. Script.” xvi.

Footnote 54:

Dumont, ii. clxxxix.

This ambiguity of phrase may possibly have been designed. The fact that the fief was a _pm corr 189.17 Fahnlehn Fahnlehen>_, directly dependent on the emperor, and that (so far as I can discover) no special Imperial privilege had been granted to Madame Valentine, would in Germany itself appear as strong evidence in favour of a solely masculine succession as even the second investiture could afford. But in Italy, by the custom of the country and the authority of contract and testament, the children of Valentine would be included among the heirs and descendants of her father; and, in case the whole race of his sons expired, the vague terms of the investiture would allow the line of Orleans to put in a claim which would prevent so important a part of Italy from relapsing to the foreign emperor. Such at least, as it appears to me, must have been the design of the duke in obtaining this last investiture, a two-edged weapon in the hands of him who has been described as the wisest and the most astute among all the princes of the west.

His position, therefore, seems to have been as follows. To secure himself against any inconvenient pretensions of the French, he had the restrictions of the feudal law; and yet he was equally protected against the encroachments of the empire. He had the sanction of local custom, the ambiguity of the terms of investiture; and, in addition to this, a papal privilege, conceding to Valentine the right to succeed her brothers or her nephews in the state of Milan.

The right of a Pope to dispose of an Imperial fief appears upon the face of it a very questionable matter, even when the Empire be really vacant. When Valentine Visconti was contracted to her husband, Clement VII. had merely declared an interregnum in the empire, on account of the adherence of Wenzel, King of the Romans, to the faction of Urban the Pope at Rome. Such was the supremacy of the Church over Imperial affairs at this period, that, notwithstanding the absurdity of this plea and the fact that Clement was an Antipope, none was ever found to question the legality of the French claim to Asti, which was not granted to Orleans by any Imperial privilege until the investiture of 1413. An intriguing adventurer anxious to consolidate a new and unpopular dynasty by every legal claim, Giangaleazzo cultivated Emperor, Pope, and Antipope. Urban and Clement and Wenzel were all in turn solicited to confirm the tenure of Visconti. Corio appears to believe that the succession of Valentine to Milan was granted by Urban, who was certainly in Lombardy in the year 1387. But Urban had denied to Giangaleazzo the coveted title of king of Italy; and there are as yet no documents discovered which prove the alluring hypothesis that the astute Visconti held in his possession a decree of the Pope no less than a decree of the Antipope granting the succession to Milan to his daughter.

Enough, however, remains to show by what a cunning opposition of France to Germany, and Germany to France, the Duke of Milan strove to secure Italian independence. If the Germans, then but the shadow of a power, chose to assert their over-lordship, the claim of the French was strong enough to insure them two enemies instead of one; and _vice versa_:—as, indeed, a later century too adequately proved. Hoping to hold each neighbour in check and fear of the other, Giangaleazzo meant to insure a period of quiet growth for his own principality of Lombardy.

Thus the contract securing Milan to Valentine by a papal transfer made for France; the second investiture was absolute for Germany: the first and third were so worded that they conveyed a different meaning on either side of the Alps. Besides papal privileges and imperial investitures there is, however, a third way of conferring property: I mean the way in which Naples was transferred to Anjou—the way of bequest.

But, the reader will exclaim, can a feoffer dispose of a fief without the written consent of his feodary? Here, as in the question of feminine succession, the matter was chiefly decided by the custom of the province. In certain countries—as, for example, Nassau, Friedland, Ober Lausitz—a feoffer might dispose of his possessions by will, although a contrary law held good in other countries.

But whatever the local law, the tendency was strong, even in feudal Germany, to diminish the rights of the empire to the advantage of the feudatory powers. As Menzel puts it, “the emperor grasped but a shadowy sceptre ... the princes increased in wealth and power, while the emperor was gradually impoverished. Imperial investiture had become a mere form, which could not be refused except on certain occasions; and the pfalzgraves, formerly intrusted with the management of Imperial allods, had seized them as hereditary fiefs.” What was done with impunity in Germany, was done with audacity beyond the Alps. And the Duke of Milan, who had received his principality as a vassal, intended to dispose of it like an hereditary monarch. If we impeach his right to pursue this course, it is not only the claims of the Visconti, but of almost every noble family in Italy, Germany, or Flanders that must submit to be denied or censured.