Women of Mediaeval France Part 11

The confessions of their lovers left no doubt as to the guilt of Blanche and Marguerite. The former, still but a girl, had been led into her evil ways by Marguerite, and pitifully owned her sin, pleading for forgiveness in accents of such sincere repentance that all who heard her were moved. But her husband was inexorable; and she remained in prison until 1322, when Charles, having become king, obtained a dissolution of the marriage on the ground that Mahaut had been his G.o.dmother and that this established a spiritual relationship for which he had forgotten to ask a dispensation when he married Blanche. Then Charles married Marie de Luxembourg, and his unhappy divorced wife was compelled to retire to a nunnery.

It was said that in her prison of Chateau Gaillard she had suffered violence from her jailer; it is more charitable to suppose that this is so than to a.s.sume, as some do, that she was so depraved in morals as voluntarily to abandon herself to debauchery; and one must always remember that it was to the interest of the court party to represent her in colors as dark as possible. The belief in her guilt, nevertheless, cannot be avoided; and even her mother gives silent proof of her belief in it, for after the disgrace of her daughter, that daughter's name appears no more in the accounts of Mahaut's household. Blanche retired to the convent of Maubuisson, where she took the veil in 1325, and died in the next year. Under "a large white stone, much carved and decorated with roses, without any inscription, and bearing a figure representing a nun," lay the body of the unhappy Blanche, once Queen of France in right.

Her companion in debauchery, Marguerite de Bourgogne, met a fate more suddenly tragic, though surely not more pathetic. Her marriage with Louis le Hutin could have been dissolved, of course, on the score of adultery; but Louis preferred less public methods. Having become king, on the death of his father, not many months after Marguerite's disgrace, he desired to find another wife; so Marguerite was put to death in the Chateau Gaillard, being smothered, it is said, between two mattresses.

The third of the daughters-in-law of Philippe le Bel, the Countess Jeanne de Poitiers, was more fortunate than her sister and Marguerite.

When the three had been arrested she was separated from the other two and sent to Dourdan. Her character seems to have been better formed than that of Blanche, and she had not indulged in the excesses proved against Blanche and Marguerite. Mahaut was from the first firmly convinced of her innocence, and sent frequent messages of consolation and sympathy to her during her confinement in Dourdan. Although she had been aware of the evil practices of her sister and her sister-in-law, it could hardly be held an unpardonable crime for her to have refrained from talebearing. In one of the rhymed chronicles, which gives a graphic account of this tragedy, Jeanne is represented as confessing her small share in the wrong and pleading for mercy before Philippe le Bel: "Sire, for G.o.d's sake hear me! Who is it that accuses me? I say I am a good woman, without guilt, without sin or shame." She demanded an investigation, and the king granted her request. While she was confined a strict inquiry was held into her conduct, and the result was that, at Christmastide, 1314, she was adjudged innocent, and came back to her husband, "whereof there was great joy throughout France." She was to become Queen of France not long afterward, and then to be widowed; but during the rest of her life there was no blot on her good name, and no interruption in the affectionate relations existing between herself and her mother. As Countess of Poitiers, as Queen of France, and as dowager Queen and d.u.c.h.ess of Burgundy, she visited Mahaut frequently, accompanied her in journeys, and exchanged gifts with her.

The scene of the orgies indulged in by Blanche de la Marche and Marguerite de Bourgogne was long pointed out in Paris and became an object of peculiar horror--one of those places of evil a.s.sociation which, without our knowing why, always arouse a feeling of repulsion and of dread. It was in the dark old Tour de Nesle, on the bank of the Seine opposite the Louvre, that, said the Parisian horror-mongers, the wicked queens had held high revel. The legend was not only enduring, but, like most legends, endowed with the faculty of gathering new matter as the years went by. Francois Villon, that great repository of the quaint beliefs of the people of the purlieus of the Sorbonne, tells of the great queen "who had Jean Buridan cast in the Seine in a sack" from the high walls of the Tour de Nesle. Brantome, in his _Dames galantes_, records the same popular story of a queen "who dwelt in the Hotel de Nesle, at Paris, and lay in wait for pa.s.sers-by; and those who pleased and suited her best, whatever cla.s.s of people they might be, she had them summoned and made them come to her by night; and after she had had her pleasure of them she had them cast into the water from the top of the high tower, and had them drowned." Other historians are even more definite in their statements--which, nevertheless, are unfounded,--naming the queen who is said to have been the Parisian Messalina and to have given a tragic end to the celebrated legist, Jean Buridan; she was, they say, Jeanne de Navarre, wife of Philippe le Bel.

Jeanne, who died in 1307, was a violent and savage woman, but there is no proof that she was at all immoral. She it was who manifested such savage virulence against the Flemish women during the revolt of 1302: "When you kill these Flemish boars," she said to the soldiers, "do not spare the sows; them I would have spitted;" and she it was who did her best to ruin the minister Guichard, who had incurred her enmity by saving an unfortunate creditor whom she was resolved to destroy. She pursued Guichard with such relentless fury, indeed, that he had resort to the black art, seeking at first to win back the queen's favor by his enchantments, then seeking to compa.s.s her death by the favorite method of constructing a waxen image, representing his enemy, and causing it to melt slowly away, in the belief that she would waste as the image wasted. But Jeanne did not die of witchcraft, though Guichard was imprisoned and long persecuted as a sorcerer. We have given these few facts about her to show that she was a person of ill repute, which will partly account for the subst.i.tution of her name for the names of Marguerite and Blanche in the tales of the Tour de Nesle.

Because of the misfortunes which overtook her daughters, Countess Mahaut was compelled to be very circ.u.mspect in her own conduct. She had been an indulgent and affectionate mother to both; but her own political situation was at this time top precarious to admit of her attempting to defend them with a high hand. After the death of her father, in 1302, Mahaut and her husband had been invested with the county of Artois, and she had continued to govern it unmolested after Otho's death until 1307, when we first hear rumors of a claim affecting the validity of her t.i.tle. Mahaut had inherited the county as being nearest of kin to Robert II., the Salic law not applying under the customs of Artois. At the time there was living a son of Mahaut's brother, Philippe; and this young Robert de Beaumont, calling himself Robert d'Artois, was the person who, instigated by his mother, now attacked Mahaut's t.i.tle, appealing for judgment to the king and the court of peers. Robert demanded the recognition of his rights to the countship of Artois, or, failing that, to an indemnity of considerable amount. This latter had been already provided for by a convention between his grand-fathers at the time of the marriage of Philippe d'Artois and Blanche de Bretagne, and Robert was perfectly justified in demanding its payment. When the cause was tried before Philippe le Bel, October, 1309, he rendered fair judgment, confirming Mahaut in the possession of Artois and granting certain lands and a large sum of money to Robert.

But mediaeval politics were very uncertain; what one king did or said might well be reversed by his successor; and so the death of Philippe le Bel (1314) was the signal for a renewed attempt to dispossess Mahaut and her children. At this time there was much disquiet over all the kingdom, and Mahaut had the dreadful shame of her daughter to hara.s.s her; it seemed, therefore, a peculiarly opportune time to begin the attack upon her. Robert addressed a most insolent letter to his aunt: _A tres haute et tres n.o.ble dame, Mahaut d'Artoys, comtesse de Bourgogne, Robert d'Artoys, chevalier_. But we will translate: "Since you have wrongfully denied me my rights to the countship of Artois, at which I have been and still am greatly troubled, and which I neither can nor will longer suffer, therefore I notify you that I shall take counsel to recover mine own as soon as may be." Not content with this formal claim, which he pushed before the king, Robert resorted to most unworthy weapons in his contest with Mahaut, stirring up the va.s.sals and communes of Artois, inciting them to acts of violence against her and her children, and circulating rumors most dangerous in an age when people were but too ready to credit accusations of the sort that Mahaut had employed sorcery against her son-in-law, Philippe le Long, and had poisoned the King, Louis X.

We have had occasion to mention now and again this subject of witchcraft; it may be permissible, therefore, to give some few details brought out in the investigation, in 1317, of the charges of evil practices brought against Mahaut d' Artois. The belief in witchcraft was almost a cardinal article of faith throughout many centuries, even among the educated cla.s.ses, and one might say that the cynical author of the second part of the _Roman de la Rose_, Jean de Meung, is almost a unique exception in his scepticism regarding the power of sorcery. Many a miserable old woman had suffered horrible tortures at the hands of justice or had been hounded to her death by superst.i.tious neighbors who credited her with causing diseases of men and cattle, dearth, drouth, storms, or any other untoward misfortunes; and many a monk, devoting himself to rational study of the phenomena of nature, to chemistry, astronomy, medicine, or any other science, had incurred suspicion of d.a.m.nable traffic with the devil, like the Guichard mentioned above, and like Gerbert himself, who lived to become Pope. The Church authorized the belief in evil spirits and provided forms of exorcism to rid the land, the cattle, the house, the body, of the demons that possessed them; while the mediaeval books of medicine show us that that science relied largely upon charms, peculiar times and seasons, and incantations, for the compounding of the drugs that were to effect cures. The witch and her h.e.l.lish brews maintained a perfect reign of terror over the ignorant and the superst.i.tious.

Instigated doubtless by Robert d'Artois or his emissaries, a certain Isabelle de Ferieves, reputed a witch in her own country of Hesdin, testified that Mahaut d'Artois had come to her and asked her to compound a sort of philtre or potion to restore the love of Count Philippe de Poitiers for her daughter Jeanne, then imprisoned at Dourdan under the charge of adultery. Isabelle required Mahaut to procure for her and deliver to her, in secret, some blood from Jeanne's right arm, which she mingled with three herbs, vervain, liver-wort, and daisy, p.r.o.nouncing over the mixture a mystic incantation. Placing it then upon a clean new brick, she burned it by means of a fire fed with oak wood, and pounded up the paste so produced into a powder, which was to be administered to Philippe in his food or drink or cast upon his right side. For this Isabelle received a substantial price, seventy _livres parisis_, and was given a similar order for a philtre to recover the affections of the Count de la Marche for his wife Blanche. Moreover, she a.s.serted that Mahaut, well pleased with the efficacy of these decoctions, asked for a poison to envenom arrows, which she pretended that she desired to use upon nothing more than the deer of her forests. The enchantress set to work again, with an adder's tail and spine and a toad dried in the open air, which she pounded up into a powder and mingled with wheat flour and incense. The sorceress was painfully lacking in imagination, else we should have had something to rival:

"Eye of newt, and toe of frog, Wool of bat, and tongue of dog, Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting, Lizard's leg, and owlet's wing, For a charm of powerful trouble, Like a h.e.l.l-broth boil and bubble."

But perhaps the report of unsympathetic historians and lawyers has been unjust to her, and has toned down the horrors of her "charm of powerful trouble," which she alleged the Countess Mahaut gave to Louis X., thereby procuring his death and the accession of her son-in-law, Philippe V.

The king conducted a serious and searching investigation, to which Mahaut declared herself more than ready to submit, provided that the court were properly const.i.tuted and that her cause in the matter of the succession in Artois be in no wise prejudiced. Witnesses on both sides were examined, including the widow of the late King Louis X. and the officers of his household, and on October 9, 1317, a solemn verdict of acquittal resulted for Mahaut. There need be no doubt that the accusations against her had been entirely groundless, merely trumped up in the hope of prejudicing her cause in the eyes of the court. It was only a few months later that Philippe V., after a careful and impartial reexamination of the allegations on both sides, gave judgment in parliament confirming the finding of his father and establishing Mahaut's right to Artois, and ordering that "the said parties (Mahaut and Robert) should desist from all hate and all felonious acts,... and that the said Robert should love the said Countess as his dear aunt, and the said Countess the said Robert as her dear nephew" which both swore to do.

While Mahaut was forced to contend in the courts for her authority over Artois, the rebellion of the n.o.bles on the death of Philippe le Bel had not been without serious results in Artois, where she had found it no easy task to maintain any sort of hold upon her va.s.sals. Her chief counsellor, and a faithful servitor he proved, was Thierry d'Hirecon, whom the va.s.sals of Artois hated as a parvenu foreigner he was from the Bourbonnais. In 1314 her va.s.sals began complaining to Mahaut of abuses in the government; but they soon pa.s.sed from peaceful and legitimate remonstrance to active outrages upon the servants and the property of their countess. In all this Robert d'Artois was no doubt the hidden instigator. One of Mahaut's officers, Cornillot, bailli of Hesdin, who had incurred the enmity of the Sire de Crequi by interfering with his hunting over field and forest without regard for the rights of others, was set upon by a mob of villains who hanged him to a tree; when the weight of his body broke the limb and brought the poor wretch to the ground, they buried him in the earth up to his neck, cut off his head, and carried it as a trophy to the Sire de Crequi. Mahaut despatched her son with a considerable force to arrest two of the rebel va.s.sals in the act of going to war; they were taken to prison, but unwisely released by the intervention of the king, and on the very steps of the prison proclaimed their intention of going over to Mahaut's enemy, Robert. Some of the n.o.bles came upon the young count and his sister, Jeanne, in a country house, insulted them grossly, and even threw mud in the face of the defenceless Jeanne and her brother, who had with them but three knights. Jeanne fled to Hesdin, where Mahaut was at the time, and on the road her carriage was surrounded by a mob of knights, who terrified her by their insults and their threats. At last both she and Mahaut were forced to abandon Artois till quieter days should come, leaving the officers and armies of the king to restore order, a task not completed until July, 1319.

The rebels committed so many outrages, and the public peace was so frequently disturbed by their quarrels, that the better element was ready to welcome Mahaut as a deliverer when she came back, fortified by the recent decree of the king in her favor. At Arras a sort of triumphal procession was arranged to welcome her, and "she entered seated upon a chariot, preceded by thirteen banners, accompanied by the Constable of France, by Thierry d'Hirecon,--who, like his mistress, had been driven to flight,--and, more wonderful still, by many bold knights who had long sworn to destroy her." The next day the countess gave a splendid banquet, at which were present "the Constable, all the knights, the burgesses and notables (of Arras), and besides many ladies." The towns in particular were glad to have their countess once more in power; indeed, all the towns except Arras had remained faithful to her, resisting the enticing proposals of Robert d'Artois and the rebel n.o.bility, for well the burgesses knew that only a strong hand could protect them and their goods from the rapacity of n.o.bles who were always in want of money and always ready to take the first that came to hand.

To two of the emissaries of the rebels the citizens of Saint-Omer gave answer that their countess "was a good guardian of their law and their privileges, and if she were not they should make complaint to none but the King;" while they told the emissaries of Robert d'Artois, who dared not affirm that the king had decided in favor of their patron, "then we are not makers of any Count of Artois."

Though severe in her administration of justice and strict in the maintenance of order within her dominions, Mahaut appears to have been just, even kind, and hence able to command the respect of her subjects.

With the citizens of Arras she exchanges courteous greetings and gifts; cloths, wine, fish, come to her from the townspeople; and she invites to her table the burgesses and their wives. When she is ill, they send to inquire solicitously after her health, and she replies: "Mahaut, Countess d'Artois, etc.... to our beloved and faithful _echevin_ and twenty-four burgesses of Arras, greeting and love. We are much pleased, and heartily do we thank you for that you sent to inquire concerning our health.... Therefore we wish you to know that on the day when this letter was written we were in good bodily health, thanks be to G.o.d....

Give greeting in our name to all our good subjects, and be a.s.sured that as soon as we shall be able we will journey into that part of the country. Our Lord have you in His care. Given at Bracon, the thirteenth day of August." What a quaint and yet dignified and kindly letter is this, showing us at once the great feudal lady and the woman really grateful for kindly sympathy.

Another episode, immediately preceding her triumphant reentry into Artois, reveals again the feminine nature, and we are rather surprised to find that this energetic, courageous Mahaut can be, at need, such a very woman. The royal troops had restored order in Artois, and the va.s.sals of Mahaut, leagued against her authority, had been reduced to submission and had consented to a peaceful settlement of their alleged grievances and to the return of their lawful countess. On July 3, 1319, the royal commissioners came to her mansion in Paris to read her the treaty, in the presence of her counsellors. She protested that the treaty violated her privileges, and declared she would not listen to the reading of an agreement in which she could not alter a word. Tears flowed, and the excited lady now would, now would not, listen to the reading; and that, too, when she admitted that she, like the n.o.bles of the league, had sworn to submit their differences to the arbitration of the king, and that she would keep her oath! Summoning her notary to draw up a formal act of protest,--"all that she might say or swear would be said or sworn against her will and her conscience, and in the fear of losing her county of Artois,"--she hurried to Longchamp, into the presence of the king. Philippe a.s.sured her that all had been done in good faith to safeguard her rights, and that it was merely for form's sake that he would require her to swear to observe the treaty. Presto!

the doubts and the tears disappear: "I swear it!" And the countess went out in apparent peace of mind. But now she was met by two of her relatives, her nephew and her cousin, who pointed out to her that her oath was insufficient, because she had not specified exactly what it was that she swore; an oath so vague might have serious consequences, and so they implored her to return to the presence. More tears, more angry refusals to swear at all, and finally the countess once more yielded and went before the king. The chancellor held out the Bible for her to swear that she would observe the stipulations of the treaty; Mahaut turned toward the king: "Sire, do you wish me to take this oath?" "I advise you to do so." "Sire, I will swear, provided you guard me against all deception." "So help me G.o.d, it shall surely be done." "Then, I swear, as you have said," and once more Mahaut went out.

One can forgive her exasperation at finding that the persistent relatives were still not satisfied; poor woman, she felt that all she possessed and all her children possessed was somehow at stake, and she helplessly ignorant, like too many other women, of the technical points of the law. Again, feeling that her counsellors were probably in the right in protesting against the conditional oath she had taken, Mahaut went into the royal presence. The Sire de Noiers, marshal of France, protested that everyone was acting in good faith by her, and that the king merely wished her to take the oath without equivocation or reservation: "Sire de Noiers, I am here, as you can see, without counsel; some of the king's councillors have so intimidated mine that they dared not appear before you; G.o.d alone inspired me to say what I did say; have I not several times sworn as my lord commanded? What is there so amazing in the king's promising to succor me, a widow, in case of deception? Does he not owe this same protection to every widow in his kingdom? What I have sworn should suffice." Another councillor protested that her conditional oath was an insult to the King's councillors; there was crimination and recrimination, till at length the badgered countess, sighing deeply, appealed to Philippe: "Ah! dear Sire, have pity upon me, a poor widow driven from her heritage, and here without counsel! You see how your people besiege me, one barking on my right, another at my left, till I know not what to answer, in the great trouble of my mind. For G.o.d's sake, give me time to deliberate upon this matter.... I am willing to take any oath you wish." Then, when the chancellor again held out his Bible and required her to swear fearlessly and without conditions, she broke forth in tears: "Many times have I sworn already! I swear again, I swear, I swear, may evil come upon my body if I swear not truly!" And she rushed out and hurriedly left for Paris, in spite of all remonstrances. It was not till the next day that, her advisers succeeded in persuading her to take the oath in proper form, as the king wished it taken.

One may think that this quibbling, this Jesuitical swearing with a mental reservation to be bound only so far as seemed good to herself, was unworthy of Mahaut; it was, as a matter of fact, but the poor defence of the weak in an age when trickery was but too common. Mahaut knew that, although the king was her son-in-law, policy might have won him to the side of her nephew, the claimant of her county. Even if Philippe were above a miserable deception of the kind, there was no telling to what tricks the crafty lawyers, perhaps in the pay of Robert d'Artois, might have recourse. She could not conquer chicanery by force, she could not meet it with chicanery, hence her nervousness and her hesitation and suspicion.

When the countess felt herself strong in her own right and sure of proper support from her servants, she was by no means the tearful and vacillating woman whom we have seen in the preceding page or two. The officers of her government in the various bailiwicks of Artois were usually well chosen and reliable. Appointed and paid by the countess and holding office at her pleasure, these baillis, recruited from the ranks of the petty n.o.bility and the bourgeoisie, had every incentive to honesty and faithful service. They were at once administrators, justices, and financial agents, and in the latter capacity had to make reports, at Candlemas, at Ascension, and at All Saints, to the chief financial officer, the receiver-general, who in turn submitted his accounts to Mahaut. She was not infrequently in dire need of money, for the expenses of her household were always large, and she was burdened by the debts left by Otho, but these she did at last manage to pay.

With the aid of her officers, upon whom she kept a close watch, Mahaut was prompt enough to repress any unruly va.s.sal who went beyond the limits of law. Sometimes force was necessary, as when the Sire d'Oisy overran and ravaged the lands of certain monasteries under Mahaut's protection and slew the peaceful inhabitants. Summoned by the bailli to appear before her court, the sire at first refused to admit the bailli, then did admit him and kept him a prisoner. "Not a stone of his chateau shall be left standing," declared Mahaut, and she despatched a little army that soon brought the Sire d'Oisy to reason. The punishments inflicted upon recalcitrant va.s.sals were sometimes most severe and sometimes fantastic. The seigneur himself is sometimes put to death when his crimes have been too much for the patience of the countess and her people; or he is expelled and deprived of his fief; or he is heavily fined and ordered to perform a penitential pilgrimage. It is thus that Jean de Gouves is condemned, in 1323, to undertake a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint-Louis of Ma.r.s.eilles, to the tomb of the Apostles in Rome, and to two other Italian shrines; while, to avoid possibility of deception on the part of this pious pilgrim, he is required to bring back a certificate from each of the places visited.

If the punishments inflicted on rebellious va.s.sals were severe, what epithet shall we reserve for the punishments of the criminal code? The rack and the stake are not unheard of during the reign of Mahaut, and these are the milder forms of punishment: counterfeiters boiled in oil, women guilty of theft or of marital infidelity buried alive, miserable lepers put to the torture,--these are but a few of the ingenious and barbarous punishments of which we find record. But it is to be noted that Mahaut was not wantonly cruel or vindictive; the forms of execution we have mentioned were the established practice of the day, with which no one dreamed of interfering; so far from being heartless, Mahaut reduced the severity of the fines and penalties in some cases and provided for the widows and orphans of some who were sent to the gallows, while she was always endeavoring to restrain the grasping proclivities of her tax-gatherers and holding investigations whenever complaint of injustice reached her ears.

With the minor matters of her household economy we need not deal, since enough has been said of the manner of life of a mediaeval lady of rank.

Suffice it to say that the _hotel_ of the Countess of Artois was famous for its hospitality and that many of the great ones of the earth sat down to her table. With the fashionable world, the world of the court, Mahaut maintained very close relations, since she was, in one way or another, related to most of the royal family and to the great n.o.bles.

Whenever there was a marriage in these circles, there came a rich present from "Madame la Comtesse d'Artois"; sometimes, as in the case of the daughter of her minister, Thierry d'Hirecon, it was practically a whole trousseau: "One scarlet robe, another of deep green cloth, both lined and bordered with fine furs; a mantle and a _cotte_ of cloth of gold, the former lined with fur; a robe of Irish woollen; a coverlet of green cloth; a counterpane of _cendal_ (meaning usually a heavy and strong stuff, but sometimes silk); four green carpets and fifty ells of linens for sheets." Truly a present of which any bride might be proud, though not so expensive, it appears, as the _nef_ (an ornament for the table, shaped like a ship, and used to hold spices, extra spoons, etc.), and costing one hundred and fifty pounds, given to "our niece, Marie d'Artois, on the occasion of her marriage to Jean de Flandre, comte de Namur." Then, if her sovereign requires her presence at court, Mahaut equips herself and all her suite, gives presents to friends and dependents, and goes up, it may be, to Rheims, as when Philippe le Long is to be crowned if he can persuade enough of the Peers of France to attend, and where few do attend, so that our Countess Mahaut, a Peer of France, has the privilege of holding the royal crown over the head of her son-in-law. Or mayhap the countess, wishing to keep friends with the great, sends a mess of fine herrings to the powerful favorite, Enguerrand de Marigny, or to her own daughter, Queen Jeanne; or a magnificent jewel of enamelled silver, adorned with rubies and sculptured to represent a little king and queen, and costing one hundred and thirty _livres parisis_, to be delivered to the real king and queen; or a little statuette in enamelled silver, sustaining a shrine, to be presented to the widow of Philippe le Hardi, Marie de Brabant, "de par la comtesse d'Artois et de Bourgogne."

Mahaut spent in this way a considerable amount, besides purchasing for herself and her children various _objets d'art_, statuettes, paintings, illuminated missals and other books, handsome cups and the like for her table, and jewels and rich clothing in profusion. She was evidently a lady of taste, but also of rather extravagant habits and fond of travelling; for she had carriages or vehicles of some sort in plenty, and travelled on horseback when the state of the roads would not permit the use either of carriage or litter. With her retinue of servants and her carts loaded with baggage and provisions, the countess could yet make the trip from Arras to Paris in three or four days.

But the time was drawing nigh when all her journeyings would be at an end; and as she neared the end of her earthly pilgrimage fresh troubles came to disturb her in the lawful enjoyment of her heritage. After the last decree rendered by Philippe V., Mahaut and her nephew were reconciled and lived on good terms--at least so one would fancy from the exchange of courtesies and hospitality which took place in the years ensuing. But Robert was evidently only biding his time; and now an accident supervened to revive his hopes of better fortune in a new hearing before the royal court. Of course, there was a woman in this case, one who does not play a very creditable part. In 1328, Thierry d'Hirecon had been elected to the episcopal see of Arras, but had died in a few months after his election. After his death, which was a serious loss to Mahaut, the episcopal palace was cleansed, by her orders, of the presence of Thierry's infamous concubine, Jeanne de Divion, who had fled to the arms of the unscrupulous old churchman from the indignant vengeance of an outraged husband. Jeanne de Divion, finding herself driven forth by Mahaut, and forgotten in the will of Thierry, from whose senile infatuation she had hoped great things, resolved to be avenged on Mahaut. She fled from Arras to the service of the ambitious and unscrupulous Jeanne de Valois, sister of Philippe VI., and wife of Robert d'Artois.

Jeanne de Divion was full of vague tales of the valuable papers belonging to the county of Artois which she had seen in the possession of Thierry, and the two women soon saw that some capital could be made for the claims of Robert d'Artois. Robert himself seems to have been reluctant, at first, to have any dealings with the degraded paramour of Thierry d'Hirecon; in place of vague a.s.severations of what she had seen among the papers of Thierry he demanded the doc.u.ments themselves, if there were any. It is probable that at the time there were no doc.u.ments; but Jeanne de Divion was resourceful and not too nice in regard to matters of conscience. Going to Arras to search among the papers of Thierry, she returned with an alleged treaty negotiated in 1281 between the paternal and maternal grand-fathers of Robert, under the terms of which the customs of Artois were set aside and the succession guaranteed to Philippe d'Artois's children, of whom Robert was the representative.

Robert's scruples were laid at rest when this very questionable doc.u.ment, of which n.o.body had ever heard a word, was put into his hands.

He wrote to his brother-in-law, now King of France, to demand a new investigation of the claims to Artois. Meanwhile, the Countess Mahaut set about collecting testimony in reb.u.t.tal, aiming especially to show the falsity of the alleged doc.u.ment containing the treaty. She arrested two servants of Jeanne de Divion, who testified, in the presence of several witnesses and of a notary who took down the depositions, that the treaty in question had been written by one Jacques Rondelet, clerk of Arras, at the dictation of Jeanne de Divion, on her recent visit to Arras. Moreover, the countess had the wisdom to get these witnesses to testify that they had not been coerced by her but testified of their own free will and accord. Then she interrogated Jacques Rondelet, who confirmed all that the servants had said, adding that he had written at dictation, and under oath of secrecy, from a doc.u.ment which Jeanne de Divion would not let him see.

The proofs of the forgery, one would think, were sufficient before the cause came to trial; yet, after a statement of the princ.i.p.al allegations on both sides, the king adjourned the hearing to another day. But that day was not to dawn for Mahaut. On November 23, 1329, the countess was at Poissy, where she dined with the king, going on to the convent of Maubuisson to pa.s.s the night, and thence to Paris next day. Here she fell suddenly ill; and her own physician, Thomas le Miesier, was sent for in all haste from Arras. The crude or dangerous remedies of the medicine of the day were powerless to relieve Mahaut; phlebotomy and purgatives probably served but to exhaust her already depleted strength, and the physicians recognized that her end was at hand. Couriers rode in haste from the Hotel d'Artois in Paris to Queen Jeanne, to the Duke of Burgundy, to the Count of Flanders, on the 26th, and as many as three to the king next day, bearing news of the great countess's peril. Jeanne came to her mother with all speed, but the end had come before she could reach Paris; the good Countess of Artois breathed her last on November 27th.

She who had expended considerable sums in the pomp of funerals, tombs, and effigies for others was buried very simply, at her own request, in the Abbey of Maubuisson, where her grave was marked at first by a plain, flat copper plate, hardly raised above the level of the pavement. In accordance with a custom not unusual in her day, the body was opened and the heart taken to the Franciscan Church in Paris, where it was interred, as she had directed, _juxta sepulturam Roberti carissimi filii mei_--"beside the grave of my very dear son Robert."

Judging from the features of a statue representing Mahaut, which was formerly in a church in Arras and was copied in miniature by an artist of the seventeenth century, the countess was a woman of large and commanding figure, with features rather masculine and strongly marked in their regularity. If one may say so, the sculptor has drawn for us Mahaut's character as well as her features; she was of the masculine type, strong and energetic rather than lovable. For a woman who would hold her own in those days, the qualities she possessed were, in fact, essential; to rule Artois in the fourteenth century there was need of an amazon rather than of a lovely, fragile, soft-hearted daughter of love.

We do not mean that Mahaut was cold, heartless, merely a politician; she was far better both in morals and in kindness of heart than the average lady of her time. She was generous, and yet not a hopeless spendthrift; she was pious and devoted to the glorious memory of her great-uncle Saint Louis, whom she must have seen when a child, and yet not a narrow bigot, displaying her religious feeling rather in acts of charity than in acts of pure devotion. No niche awaits her among the heroines of France, for she is a figure neither heroic nor romantic; but she lived her life, the full, healthy, and useful life of a stirring and good lady of the manor in the fourteenth century.

CHAPTER IX

JEANNE DE MONTFORT

WE are now coming to a period in the history of France when woman, though she may not play a part either more prominent or more honorable, will be a centre of universal interest to the subjects of France and of England. Much ink and much fluid of a brighter hue and a more precious quality will be shed in the war between the lawyers and the soldiers of France on the one hand, and those of England on the other; and all to establish the legal status of woman in the eyes of the French law. The great question is: Shall the succession to the crown of France be governed by the laws and customs prevailing in many other countries and in a large part of France itself, whereby women are ent.i.tled to inherit equally with men; or shall the ancient law of the Salian Franks apply, the _Loi Salique_, "let no part of the Salian land pa.s.s into the hands of a woman"? Since the question has been argued by many a scholiast and many a historian and settled for all time by the arms of Frenchmen defending their right to rule France as seemed best to them, we shall give but small attention to the niceties of the legal argument; but an exposition of the princ.i.p.al facts seems essential.

The argument of the French lawyers was that the Salian land was now represented by domains of the crown; and since the protection of the Salian land necessitated the guardianship of a man, _a fortiori_ must the guarding of the kingdom demand the power of the sword rather than the gentler distaff. Feeling that we owe some apology for clothing in figurative language the simple statement that no woman could wear the crown of France, none more apt can we find than a literal transcription of one of the arguments used by the French lawyers, which suggested the unfortunate distaff. It ran thus: In the Gospel of Saint Matthew (6: 28) one reads: "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet 'I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." Now France was the kingdom of the lily, witness the _fleur-de-lis_ upon the royal arms; lilies, according to Scripture, are gloriously arrayed, though they cannot spin: _ergo_, the kingdom of the lily should never pa.s.s to the distaff.

There were of course arguments of more weight than this, which we have ventured to present merely for the sake of its quaintness, characteristic as it is of the day when tireless pedants were wont to debate in this fashion all things in heaven and on earth. Closer study of the Salic law itself, nevertheless, was not rea.s.suring to the adherents of France; for there they found one of the formulas of Marculf proving that, from the days of the Merovingian kings, the _terre salique_, the allodial land, could be inherited by a woman. This ancient act reads: "To my dear daughter: It is among us a custom ancient but impious that sisters shall not share with their brothers in the heritage of the paternal land. I have considered that you all came to me alike from G.o.d, that you should therefore find an equal share of love in me, and, after my death, enjoy equally the heritage of my worldly goods. For these reasons, my sweet daughter, I const.i.tute you by this letter a legitimate and equal co-heir with your brothers in all my estate, in such sort that you shall share with them not only the acquired property but the allodial land." In the abstract, therefore, as much could be said for as against the claims of a woman to succeed to the crown of France. There could be no question, however, that the long established custom of the kingdom had excluded women, and that this exclusion had operated to the great profit of the kingdom, by keeping it under the stronger rule of men, and more still by preventing it from pa.s.sing under the control of foreign princes who had married French princesses. As a French const.i.tutional lawyer has remarked: "France is the only one of the great states of Europe where we see the crown remaining for more than eight centuries in the same family.... It is to the Salic Law that France owes the long persistence of the Capetian dynasty."

In the first half of the fourteenth century it was a danger of exactly the kind alluded to above that menaced the kingdom of France: a foreign prince claimed the throne as his heritage through his mother. In order to understand the absolute futility of the claim made by Edward III. of England, based on the alleged rights of his mother, Isabelle de France, daughter of Philippe le Bel, it is necessary only to recall that both Isabelle's brothers, Louis le Hutin and Charles le Bel, had left daughters who would have had prior rights if any woman could have inherited. The potent reasons of public polity which would also have absolutely excluded Isabelle and Edward III. have been mentioned above, and are stated in a different way by Froissart. He says that after the death of Charles IV., "the twelve peers and all the barons of France would not give the realm to Isabel the sister (of Charles IV., Louis X., and Philippe V.), who was queen of England, because they said and maintained, and yet do, that the realm of France is so n.o.ble that it ought not to go to a woman, and so consequently not to Isabel, nor to the king of England her eldest son: for they determined the son of the woman to have no right nor succession by his mother, since they declared the mother to have no right: so that by these reasons the twelve peers and barons of France by their common accord did give the realm of France to the lord Philip of Valois, nephew sometime to Philip le Beau king of France." Then, as all the world knows, ensued the great wars between France and England of which Froissart tells with such evident enjoyment of deeds of valor and splendid martial pageants; for, he says, "sith the time of the good Charlemagne, king of France, there never fell so great adventures."

The history of the Hundred Years' War is quite beyond the scope of this volume; but let us be humble camp followers of the great armies that march across Froissart's pages, where perchance we may find some women as amazons, as heroines, or as pitiful victims in this sanguinary and ruinous conflict.

The first woman whom we note in this period, Jeanne de Montfort, was a veritable heroine of the wars, one known to us, through the enthusiastic record of Froissart, as an amazon, but hardly known at all as a woman.

The only really interesting part of her career is that occurring during the wars in Brittany, and so we shall begin her history with these events. Marguerite, or Jeanne,--as she was called, perhaps because her husband's name was Jean,--de Montfort, wife of the Count de Montfort, was sister to the Count of Flanders. The countess, whom we shall call Jeanne, was already a matron when events in her husband's native Brittany called for his and her presence there. For generations, Brittany had been ruled by a line of princes who were regarded by the native population with far greater affection and respect than any king of France could inspire; for they were of an ancient house, a.s.sociated with all the poetic legends of the land which, poets tell us, had been of the domain of the n.o.ble King Arthur. Half of Brittany was rather inclined to sympathy with France, owing to admixture of French blood, while the other half, _Bretagne bretonnante_, clung to the Celtic traditions and to those of England, the land once dominated by their race across the channel; but Bretons of any part of Brittany were Bretons first and always; the allegiance to their dukes was paramount; that to the King of France was quite an afterthought.

When John III., Duke of Brittany and a descendant of that Pierre Mauclerc who caused such serious trouble to Blanche de Castille, died without issue in 1341, he left the succession to his duchy in a very uncertain state. He himself had intended that the ducal crown should go to his niece, Jeanne de Penthievre, the wife of Charles de Blois, rather than to Jean de Montfort, who was only a half-brother on the mother's side. To the ordinary mind it would seem that Jean de Montfort had at least a reasonable claim; but the Count de Blois was a nephew of Philippe VI., who would therefore throw all his influence against the family of Montfort, long allied in one way or another with England.

Both Montfort and his wife realized that if the succession were left to the adjudication of the French Court of Peers, their claim would receive no consideration. Supported in his bold act by the ambitious and courageous Jeanne, the Count de Montfort, immediately after his half-brother's death, "went incontinent to Nantes, the sovereign city of all Bretayne," where his liberal promises and general fair conduct won him the confidence of the citizens, so that "he was received as their chief lord, as most next of blood to his brother deceased, and so (they) did to him homage and fealty. Then he and his wife, who had both the hearts of a lion, determined with their counsel to call a court and to keep a solemn feast at Nantes at a day limited, against the which day they sent for all the n.o.bles and counsels of the good towns of Bretayne, to be there to do their homage and fealty to him as to their sovereign lord."

While the new duke and d.u.c.h.ess were waiting and hoping for a large accession of Breton knights on the day appointed for doing homage, the duke heard of a large treasure collected by the late duke and stored at Limoges. Leaving Jeanne at Nantes, he took a small body of knights and went to Limoges, where he was favorably received, and secured the treasure, with which he returned to Nantes in time for the appointed day of homage. But the Breton n.o.bles were not at all inclined to flock to his banner and hail him as rightful duke, only one knight, Herve de Leon, appeared to do homage; and though seven out of nine bishops, and the burgesses of Nantes, Limoges, and some other towns, had declared for Montfort, his position was by no means secure. Nevertheless, he and Jeanne held their little court with what state they could, and determined to use the treasure taken from Limoges to pay for the defence of their duchy, hiring mercenaries, "so that they had a great number afoot and a-horseback, n.o.bles and other of divers countries." With the aid of these forces,--not always required, for some places were quite ready to receive him as their lord,--Montfort took certain towns and fortresses, such as Brest, Rennes, Hennebon, and Vannes.

Charles de Blois, baffled by the promptness and activity of Montfort and appalled at the rapidity with which the latter was making himself actual if not rightful Duke of Brittany, appealed to the King of France, presenting the claim of his wife, Jeanne de Penthievre. Montfort, summoned to appear before the French court, went first to England and did homage to Edward III. for Brittany. Returning to France, he obeyed the summons of Philippe, and went to Paris with a splendid retinue, says Froissart, of four hundred horse, leaving his countess to keep watch for him in Brittany. The show of force with which Montfort presented himself before the king did not have the effect of intimidating the latter, if it had been so intended, and Montfort moderated his tone in the interview with Philippe, denying positively that he had sworn fealty to Edward III., and merely urging his rights as nearest of kin to the late Duke of Brittany. Philippe appointed a day for the meeting of the Court of Peers to sit in judgment on the claims of the two heirs, and forbade Montfort to leave Paris during the next fifteen days. Montfort saw, from the reception accorded him by the crafty Philippe, that his case was already judged; "he sat and imagined many doubts"; if he remained in Paris and the verdict of the Peers went against him there was the certainty of arrest and imprisonment until he should have made an accounting for the treasure seized at Limoges and delivered up all the towns he had captured. Therefore he determined upon the course that would at least give him a chance of active resistance if the worst came to the worst; he fled from Paris secretly, and was with his wife in Nantes before the king was aware that the bird had flown. The event justified his distrust, for on September 7, 1341, the Court of Peers adjudged the duchy of Brittany to Jeanne de Penthievre and Charles de Blois.

By the aid and counsel of his wife Montfort gathered his forces and garrisoned the towns he had taken, while Charles de Blois led a French army against him and soon had him beleaguered in Nantes. The events of this siege would not concern us, since the Countess Jeanne was not in Nantes, were it not for the peculiar interest attaching to certain episodes and the light they throw upon the remarkable character of Charles de Blois. This man was reputed a saint in his own day, so much so that, under Pope Urban V., an inquiry was held and a favorable report made but never acted upon for a formal canonization. We learn some most curious things from _The Life and Miracles of Charles, Duke of Brittany, of the House of France_, in regard to what was in those days considered evidence of saintliness. "He confessed himself morning and evening, and heard ma.s.s four or five times daily.... Did he meet a priest, down he flung himself from his horse upon his knees in the mud.... He put pebbles in his shoes." When he prayed he beat himself in the breast till he turned black in the face. Next his skin he wore a coa.r.s.e garment of sackcloth, and "he did not change his sackcloth, although full of lice to a wonder; and when his groom of the chambers was about to clean the said sackcloth of them, the lord Charles said: 'Let be; remove not a single louse;' and said they did him no harm, and when they stung him he remembered his G.o.d." Truly, at such a price salvation would seem dear to many of us! Yet the history of the early Church is full of saints whose fanaticism a.s.sumed this extraordinary type, the predilection for bodily filth. With all this piety, Charles de Blois was unrelentingly cruel and even immoral; for he began the siege of Nantes by cutting off the heads of thirty knightly partisans of Montfort and throwing them over the walls, and when he himself lay dead on the battlefield "a b.a.s.t.a.r.d son of his, called Sir Jean de Blois, was slain by his side."