King René d'Anjou and His Seven Queens. Staley Edgcumbe
femme, veut le baston!”
Perhaps the pith of the treatise is expressed in the neat quintet:
“Quattuor sunt que mulieres summe cupiunt,
A formis amari juvenibus,
Pottere fillis pluribus
Ornari preciosis vestibus
Et dominari pre ceteris in domibus.”
René’s time was, however, not wholly absorbed by his studies in school and Court, for he bestrode his warhorse like a man, and rode forth by his great-uncle’s side on punitive expeditions against recalcitrant vassals and against the incursions of freebooters, who under the designation of “Soudoyers” were devastating the duchy. It was said of the Cardinal: “Il savait au besoin porter ung bassinet pour mitre et pour croix d’or un tache d’acier!”
Directly Duke Robert died, and the succession fell to an ecclesiastic, the dissatisfied subjects of the Barrois crown considered it a favourable opportunity for throwing off their allegiance. Jean de Luxembourg, a cousin of the widowed Duchess Marie, and Robert de Sarrebouche—at the extreme limits of the territories of the duchy—were perhaps the most conspicuous for their infidelity. The Cardinal-Duke struck home at once, and both rebels surrendered. In the case of the latter, Prince René was put forward to receive his submission, on his great-uncle’s behalf. The “proud Sieur de Commercy,” as he was called, was compelled to kneel in the market-place of Commercy before the boy-knight, and, putting his great hands between the tender palms of his Prince, obliged to swear as vostre homme et vostre vassail! The Prince’s bearing in this his first military campaign was beyond all praise, and the Cardinal was delighted with his chivalry. The Duke of Lorraine sent to compliment him upon his courage, and his doting mother, Queen Yolande, held a ten-days festival at Angers, and rang all the church bells in honour of her son’s baptism of blood.
These exploits caused the youthful hero to carry himself proudly, and greatly increased his self-conceit. This latter development had an amusing and yet a very natural sequel. The Prince with his own hand, under the instruction of Maestre Jehan de Proviesey, wrote letters to all the leading men of Angers, Provence, Barrois, and Lorraine, in which he enlarged upon the boldness of his conduct; and inditing sententious maxims, he sought their approbation and good-will. The Cardinal-Duke doubtless smiled good-humouredly at these juvenile effusions, but at the same time he reconstituted the Barrois knightly “Ordre de la Fidélité,” which embraced as members all the young French Princes, and created René de Bar, as he was now called, first and principal Knight. The Prince henceforward wore the motto of his Order embroidered upon his berretta and chimere—“Tout Ung”—and chose it as his gage de guerre.
Louis de Bar had, however, other duties and pursuits to place before his favourite nephew. At the Court of Dijon resided two famous Flemish painters, brothers—Hubert and Jehan Van Eyck, pensioners of the enlightened Duke of Burgundy. By means of bribes and other influences brought to bear, they were induced to remove to Bar-le-Duc, and with them came Petrus Christus and other pupils. Keen patron of the arts and crafts, the Cardinal-Duke encouraged his principal courtiers and vassals to send their sons to them for instruction in the art of painting. The first pupil enrolled in Barrois upon the books of the Van Eycks was none other than Prince René, and no pupil showed greater talent and greater perseverance. His uncle once said to him: “René, if thou wast not destined to succeed me as Duke of Bar and leader of her armies, I would make of thee an artist.” In his veins, we must remember, ran Flemish blood—his famous and talented ancestress, the Countess-Princess Iolande, came from Flanders—and these excellent pigment masters appear to have stirred qualities in the young Prince which eventually proclaimed him the foremost royal artist in Europe.
The Cardinal also inculcated in his nephew the love and taste for objects of beauty. He was himself a proficient in the craft of goldsmithery, and, moreover, possessed a very magnificent collection of gold and silver work. Part of this had come to him from his mother, Duchess Marie of France, who took to Bar her share of her father’s treasures, the good King John. Of these, the Cardinal presented to Pope John XXIII. in 1414 a writing-table made of cedar, covered with plates of solid gold, and the superb gold chalice and paten which are still used in the Papal chapel at Rome at special Masses by His Holiness himself. Another precious goblet, mounted with sapphires and rubies, was bequeathed to the Cardinal’s sister, the Princess Bonne, Countess of Ligny.
A ROYAL REPAST, FIFTEENTH CENTURY
PROCESSION OF THE KNIGHTS OF THE TABLE
From “L’Album Historique de France”
To face page 80.
The ducal gardens at Bar-le-Duc were famous. The Cardinal sent to Italy for skilled gardeners, who reproduced something of the terrestrial glories of that favoured land. Tuscan sculptors and Venetian decorative painters followed in the wake of the gardeners, who not only designed architectural terraces with marble statues and garden-pavilions with painted ceilings, but also designed and minted medals and plaques of the Cardinal, Prince René, and other members of the family. Naturally, the young Hereditary Duke revelled in these graceful settings for the floral games and festive pastimes which made the Barrois Court, even in the absence of a reigning Duchess, the rendezvous of poets, gallants, and beauties. Here, too, the Prince’s natural love for music had full play; he became a poet and a troubadour “in little,” if not in “great.” In a very real kind of way René’s training in the arts of war and in the arts of peace was the very same which made a Lorenzo de’ Medici at Florence and a Francesco Sforza at Milan.
Amid all these occupations, the Prince had few opportunities for visiting his birthplace, Angers, and his devoted mother there. Travelling was very insecure, and the Cardinal disparaged any expedition beyond the bounds of the duchy. Only one such visit is recorded, and that in 1422, when René took his absent brother’s place to give away his favourite sister Marie to Charles VII. of France, and then Queen Yolande once more embraced her son. On the other hand, the Prince was permitted by his uncle to vigorously assist King Charles against Louis de Châlons, Prince of Orange, who was devastating Dauphiné. In another direction the young warrior gained laurels also. Named protector of the city of Verdun, he destroyed the rebel castle of Renancourt and the fortresses of La Ferté, and hastened to the assistance of his kinsman, the Count of Ligny, at Baumont en Argonne. Guillaume de Flavy and Jehan de Mattaincourt surrendered, and René cleared the country of disaffected marauders and adventurers.
Charles V.’s speech at the siege of Metz one hundred years later might very well have fitted the youthful conqueror in Barrois: “Fortune is a woman: she favours only the young.”
Queen Yolande’s eldest son, Louis III., was meanwhile meeting with varying fortunes in Italy, but the slow progress of his campaign greatly chagrined his dauntless mother. She actually made up her mind to set out for Naples in person to try and turn the slow tide of victory into an overpowering flood; but Anjou was too closely invested by the English for the realization of her project. Here, however, the Queen had her militant opportunity, for at the bloody battle of Baugé—between La Flèche and Saumur—in 1421, the English were routed and so greatly disheartened that they evacuated all their strategic points within and around the duchy. That victory was gained directly by Queen Yolande, who commanded in person, sitting astride a great white charger, clothed in steel and silver mail. Some years later King René built an imposing castle upon the heights overlooking the field of battle in memory of his mother’s valour.
The Queen’s warlike ardour, however, received a check, for Queen Marie, driven with King Charles before the all-conquering English, escaped to Bourges, and there begged her mother to hasten to her side. She needed, not a mailed woman’s fist, but the gentle hand of her good mother at her accouchement. Louis le Dauphin, her first-born, saw the light in the Archbishop’s Palace on July 3, 1423. Those days were dark indeed for France, but a brilliant star