King René d'Anjou and His Seven Queens. Staley Edgcumbe
of inspection, and he complained that on Sunday, June 23rd of this month, being within the said castle, where a merry company was occupied with games and drolleries before Queen Yolande and the Court, he stood for a time to watch the fun. Quite unknown to him, the tails of his new long coat, which had cost him ten solz [half a livre], were cut off by some miscreant or other, whereby he became an object of derision! For this insult he claimed satisfaction, and named as his go-betweens Guye Buyneart and Jehan Guoynie.” Whether these practical jokers were inspired by the Queen we know not, but this trifling record shows that she was not entirely absorbed by the heavy responsibilities of her rank as Lieutenant-General of her consort, but found time to indulge in some of the gaieties which had been the joy of her mother and herself in Aragon, and which had graced her own nuptials and entry into Anjou and Provence.
Again the mirthful pursuits of the Court and country were stayed by the stringency of the times. Sedition spread its baneful influence all over Provence and Languedoc what time King Louis was still far away fighting in Italy. With courage, fraught with love and assurance, she set off to the distant province, taking with her, not only an escort of doughty war-lords, but also her own tender nurslings—Louis, Marie, and René. With her children was also the young Princess Catherine, daughter of Jean “sans Peur,” the Duke of Burgundy, whose betrothal to her eldest son Louis was imminent. Through his children her appeal would first be made to her husband’s disaffected subjects. Should that fail, then she could don cuirass and casque and head her royal troops to worst them. With little Vicomte d’Aix upon her saddle-lap, she passed through village, town, and city, receiving enthusiastic plaudits everywhere; she was “Madame la Nostre Royne!” The head of the rebellion was scotched, and from Aix the intrepid Queen despatched messengers to the King to tell of her success, and to say that she was ready to embark at once to his assistance.
This heroic offer was made possible by the death of King Martin of Aragon in 1410, who bequeathed to his niece the whole of his private fortune. This event, however, added to the Queen’s anxieties, for she was not the sort of woman to allow the royal succession to pass for ever unchallenged. La Justicia Mayor of the State of Aragon assembled at the ancient royal castle of Alcañiz to receive the names and to adjudicate the claims of candidates for the vacant throne. Yolande, still styling herself “Queen of Aragon,” was represented by Louis, Duke of Bourbon, and Antoine, Count of Vendôme. Her claim was not immediately for herself, but for her son Louis. Two years were spent in acrimonious deliberations, but the provisions of the Salic Law penalized the female descent, and consequently the next male heir, Prince Ferdinand of Castile, placed the crown of Aragon upon his head as well as that of Castile. Queen Yolande had to be content with her protest and her titular sovereignty.
Back at Angers in 1413, the Queen conceived a notable future for her nine-years-old daughter, Marie. Of the six sons of Charles VI. of France and Isabeau, only one survived, the fifth-born, Charles. The imperious Bavarian Queen had little or none of Queen Yolande’s fondness for her offspring; they were born, alas! put out to nurse, forgotten, and neglected—so they died. Upon the little Prince—the cherished jewel of his father—Queen Yolande fixed her motherly regard. He was a year older than her Marie, and a piteous little object bereft of a mother’s love and solicitude. Yolande’s warm heart yearned towards the lonely child; she would mother him, she would train him, and then she would marry him to Marie—this was the Queen’s dream.
With that promptitude which marked all her well-considered actions, Queen Yolande set about the realization of her castle in the air. She again packed up herself, her children, and her Court, and took up her abode in the Château de Mehun-sur-Yèvre, near Bourges, a favourite residence of the French Court. Among her little ones was a baby-girl, no more than six months old—Yolande, her own name-child. She gave as her reason for so strange a line of conduct her wish for greater facilities in the education of her children. Charles VI. offered no objection to the residence of such a worthy mother and heroine wife in his own neighbourhood; indeed, he regarded her advent with considerable pleasure and satisfaction. Yolande’s influence for good would outweigh Isabeau’s for evil; besides, she would be a trusty counsellor.
Queen Yolande had not been very long established at Mehun before she put in a plea on behalf of the poor little heir to the throne of France. Charles was thankful, he was delighted, and at once gave into her sole charge, untrammelled in any way, his dear little son, to share the home care and the studies of his two young cousins, Louis and René d’Anjou. Having obtained the charge of the little Count de Ponthieu, Queen Yolande once more went home to Angers, by no means embarrassed by the fact that she had assumed the training of two Kings, Louis and Charles, with René a possible King of Aragon besides.
For two years Charles passed for Yolande’s son, the playmate and boy-lover of her sweet Marie. All his inspirations and his examples he took from her and them—at last a happy boy, with a hopeful future. The Queen allowed that future no halting steps; Charles and Marie should be betrothed, and Mary should be Queen of France! Yolande broached the subject to King Charles, and at once gained his cordial consent, but tactfully she left to him the furthering of the project. Upon December 18, 1415, Charles of France and Marie of Sicily-Anjou were privately affianced in the Royal Chapel of the Castle of Bourges. France was in the throes of revolution and dissolution; the terrible defeat at Azincourt, on October 24 that same year, had paralyzed the military power of the French States, and was the ultimate cause of King Charles’s insanity. For seven years he became a fugitive, not only bereft of reason, but of all resources. Queen Isabeau did nothing to relieve the tension, but maintained her irreconcilable position, and continued her ill-living. The King’s only brother, the lamented Duke of Orléans, had been assassinated eight years before, and there appeared to be no one capable of steering the ship of State into a calm haven.
This was Queen Yolande’s opportunity, and she rose to its height majestically. She was already guardian of the Dauphin, who after his espousal returned with his child-bride to Angers. Now she assumed the general direction of affairs, and became virtually Regent of France and the arbiter of her destiny. She personally approached the English King, and obtained from him favourable terms of peace, which assured tranquillity and regeneration for France. She it was who proposed to Henry his alliance with her young goddaughter, Catherine, the youngest child of Charles VI. and Isabeau, then fourteen years of age. He was twenty-eight, and the marriage was consummated five years later, although Henry’s terms included the payment of the arrears of the ransom of King John the “Good,” the prisoner of Poitiers, a sum of 2,000,000 crowns.
The Queen’s judgment and resourcefulness eminently merited the grudging encomium of the wife of her husband’s fiercest rival, the Duchess of Burgundy. “I am always glad,” she said, “when it is a good woman who governs, for then all good men follow her!”
All this time—a time fraught with infinite issues—King Louis II. of Sicily-Anjou was in Italy, meeting in his campaign with varied fortune. He had all he could do to hold his own, but his presence at the head of his army was essential to ultimate success. Three times he entered Naples acclaimed as King, for Queen Giovanna II. had named him so. Three times he fled discomfited after victory, which he failed to follow up. He rarely returned to his French dominions, and really he had no necessity so to do on the score of administration, for his beloved and capable Lieutenant-General was perfectly able to keep everything in order and uphold his authority. At last the King of Sicily-Anjou and Naples returned to Angers a broken and an ailing man, to spend what time Providence would still grant him with his devoted noble wife.
Queen Yolande’s first great grief came to her in 1417, when her faithful husband was taken from her. Happily for them both, they were united at the deathbed—consoling and consoled. He was young to die—barely forty years of age—but ripe enough for the greedy grasp of Death. Louis II.’s fame was that of a “loyal Sovereign, a righteous man, a true spouse, and an affectionate father.”
CHAPTER III
YOLANDA D’ARRAGONA—“A GOOD MOTHER AND A GREAT QUEEN”—continued
I.