Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub
[blocks in formation]

in a similar manner, and the conversation runs by turns on all the different sorts of literary composition of the sentimental school, which is severely and deservedly castigated. But we have reached or, perhaps, even exceeded, the limits of the space granted us this month; we leave the Dutch Muses in their graceless state till our next paper, when we shall endeavor to trace their revival under Feith and Bilderdijk, and their fortunes down

The state of the other Muses is described to the present day.

From the London Quarterly Review.

THE VALOIS AND BOURBON DUKES OF ORLEANS.*

THAT the Duke of Orleans, for the time being, was always a pretender to the throne, and the enemy of its occupant, appears ever to have been considered an incontrovertible fact. It is one that can hardly be disputed; and the antagonism between Orleans and the sceptre commenced with the first little Prince on the roll of these royal Dukes.

The young gentleman in question was the second son of Philip VI. (de Valois). He was born at Vincennes, in 1336; and the good city whose name was borrowed, in order to furnish him with a ducal title, fell, or rose, into a state of delightful enthusiasm at the honor. It was to this Prince that Humbert, Dauphin of Vienne, made gift of his territory; but the father of Philip of Orleans compelled him to resign gift and title, which were transferred to his elder brother John. From that period the heir to the French throne was called "the Dauphin ;" and it is historically clear that the Dukes of Orleans not only desired to recover the title, but the inheritance. The career of the first Duke, Philip, was not very long, nor yet particularly brilliant. He was a good soldier and a sorry Christian. At Poictiers, when scarcely twenty years of

[blocks in formation]

age, he led six-and-thirty banners and a couple of hundred pennons into the field. When he had brought his followers within sight of the English ranks, he remarked, "Now, Sirs, you talked right valiantly at your hearths of how you would eat these pestilent English knaves, if you could but get your hands upon their throats. There they are before you! Charge! and may St. Denis give you power both to eat and to digest!" But the broad-cloth arrows and spears of England were too much for even the eager followers of Orleans. Few of them got back to the hearths around which they had so lately boasted.

Duke Philip led a gay life in England during the period he remained here as hostage for his brother the King, John, who had been allowed to return to France to raise a ransom. He had been married, when only in his ninth year, to Blanche, daughter of Charles the Fair; and his profligacy was of a quality to break the heart of sterner wives than gentle Blanche. He survived till the reign of Charles V., the son of John, who cut down his appanages, and had much to do in guarding against his uncle's designs in return. But the King had not to keep guard long; for Philip of Orleans, worn out with his excesses, died, in 1375, in the thirty-ninth year of his age, and was buried with as much pomp, in the church of the Celestines in Paris, him when living, or who mourned at his as though there were men who had honored departure.

Philip died childless, Charles V., his elder | ther serve, because from that criminal there brother, had two sons; one named after him- was nothing more to be gained. self; the second, Louis Count de Valois, who But Louis of Orleans had contrived to ultimately had conferred on him the title, by secure much of the ill-gotten wealth of De which he became the second Duke of Orleans. Craon; and with a portion thereof he erectHe was a marvellous boy; and the first words ed an expiatory chapel, at the opening of he uttered were, “Ave, Maria!" It is seri- which he walked barefooted to the altar, in ously averred that, at the age of eleven years, testimony of his sorrow at the fatal issue of he bore himself as bravely on the bloody one of the roughest of his jokes. At a grand field of Rosbecque as any veteran soldier marriage-festival, given in honor of the nupthere. He was, indeed, precocious in most tials of one of the ladies of Queen Isabella, things, and began to whisper in ladies' ears, Louis introduced an entrée masquée, consistwhen preceptors should have been pulling ing of six individuals chained together as sahis own. He was fair of face, graceful of tyrs. One of these was the King; and the figure, sweet of voice, seductive of speech, whole half-dozen were attired in dresses of and easy of principle. He loved money and a highly inflammable nature. The deporthated morality; a double fact which he illus- ment of these satyrs was "beastly;" nay, it trated by receiving under his protection Pierre is almost an injustice to "beasts" to say so. de Craon, who came to him laden with the Heaven and human nature were alike outraged gold of which that unfaithful servant had on this occasion. The debauchery and drunkplundered his master, Louis of Anjou. He en revelry of the satyrs were at the highest, was, in truth, a young monster of iniquity and when Louis of Orleans, thoughtlessly—and avarice. He married the superb Valentine, yet some say, maliciously-thrusting a lightdaughter of Galeas Visconti, Duke of Milan; ed torch at the King's dress, set it on fire; but he basely outraged this lady, as he did and, in an instant, the chained six were strugnature itself, when he seduced from her duty gling in a mass of flames, howling, cursing, the wife of his own brother, Isabella of and helpless. The King was rescued; but Bavaria. He could not gain the crown; but two Knights died of their injuries: and it was he could dishonor and destroy the Queen, that their souls might rest in peace, and that nothing loth to encounter him half-way in he himself might be reconciled with Heaven, guilt. The Duke and his royal brother held that Louis built a chapel out of funds which a passage-of-arms at St. Denis, at which the he had forced from a man who had stolen orgies would have made even the Babylonians them from his master. Louis laughed when of Quintus Curtius blush. Valor induced all was done; but the angels must have wept. friends to hack at one another gallantly in the This consequence, however, would have little lists by day; and the general license of the affected the unscrupulous Duke, who was as night made of the banquet a scene, at sight unjust as he was grasping. He banished his of which not only might the angels have wife, Valentine, to Neufchatel, on an accusawept, but demons have shuddered. Louis tion of her being too familiar with the now was leader in the fray; for it was more of half insane King; and from the royal semifray than feast, where drink maddened the idiot he obtained a grant of all property forvicious, and the vicious acknowledged no feited by criminals. Mezeray might well say restraint. At banquet or in battle, however, of him, "Il profitait de tout." But he forced the thoughts of Louis were with his sister- more from the King than this. He obtained in-law, Isabella. He had neither respect nor the power of levying taxes, and the revelove for his consort, Valentine, and their two nue arising therefrom he placed in his own sons. He was, on one occasion, in Langue- coffers; thus robbing the people, and cheatdoc with his brother Charles, when he pro- ing the King. When murmurs arose at the posed that they should try their skill in horse- impost, his answer was, that it was levied, manship by galloping back to Paris. The not on his sole authority, but with the consent trial was accepted; but Louis arrived in the of the other administrators of the kingdom,capital long before his King and brother; and his kinsmen, the Dukes of Burgundy and Isabella too warmly welcomed him who first Berri. The wrathful denial of the two Dukes arrived. Valentine, perhaps, would not have compelled Louis of Orleans to abolish the learned her husband's guilt, but for that very tax; and thereupon he unblushingly intimaPierre de Craon whom Louis had encouraged ted to the people, that they were relieved of in crime, by the commission of which he the impost solely in consequence of his own pecuniarily profited; and he was now betray- remonstrance with the King! That poor ed by he criminal, whom he would not fur-King! He never woke to transient reason

without beholding the precipice down which Louis was driving the chariot of the state; Isabella at his side; and fierce .Burgundy loading the air with imprecations, not at the wickedness of Orleans, but that he himself could not share in the government and the profits. And these profits were enormous: that they were tempting to unscrupulous cupidity, may be seen in the fact that, on one occasion, when the royal officers deposited the taxes in the treasury, and defended the deposit, Louis headed an armed force, attacked the treasury, defeated its faithful defenders, and triumphantly carried off the "resources of the kingdom." He was, moreover, a remover of landmarks; acre to acre he added to his estates; and, like the nobleman in Hamlet, he was "spacious in the possession of dirt."

His name was a familiar one in England at the period of which we are treating; for it was by his especial aid that Henry of Lancaster dethroned the gentle Richard. Monstrelet cites the legal deed by which Henry of Lancaster and Louis of Orleans entered into bonds of sworn brotherhood; but this line of fraternity did not restrain the French Duke from summoning the usurper King to mortal combat, on the ground that the latter was the assassin of his liege lord. Henry denied the imputation, refused the challenge, and dismissed the bearer of it with the deed of brotherhood, which he contemptuously returned to his capricious quasi-kinsman.

Louis was the father of Dunois, the famous "Bâtard d'Orleans." The mother of Dunois was a married lady, Mariette d'Enghien; and history has no such horrible story, nor romance any such revolting legend, as that which tells of the fiendish brutality of the sire of Dunois. The very soul sickens at the thought of the revolting treatment to which the noble Mariette was subjected. But fiend as was the perpetrator, he could, like the devils spoken of by the apostle, " tremble." | His courage was not perfect, even when he became Lieutenant-General of the kingdom, with the Pope to sanction all he did. The most truculent of Roman Emperors used to hide himself beneath his bed when thunder hurtled in the air; and Louis, once overtaken by a sudden storm on his way from chapel, where he had heard a comminatory sermon, was so alarmed that he called his creditors together, in order that he might satisfy their demands, and so, in one sense, obey the apostolic injunction, which says, "Owe no man any thing." But when the ecstatic creditors were assembled at the ducal palace, the storm had passed away, and the sermon

was forgotten; and therewith the creditors were violently driven from the mansion, with pouches and purses as ungarnished as when they had entered. Avarice was, perhaps, his besetting sin; and he even offered to resign his high office of Lieutenant-General, provided he might have, in its place, the irresponsible administration of the national finances. He negotiated the marriage subsequently concluded between his son Charles and Isabella, the widow of our own royal Richard, with a sharpness of view towards the settlements, which proves that the Orleans of the House of Valois were not of a less mercantile spirit, even in affairs of the heart, than the Orleans of Bourbon, who transacted the famous marriage which united the illegitimate and the legitimate branches of the house, in the persons of Mlle. de Penthièvre and the Duke de Chartres, (Philippe Egalité.)

The fiercest adversary of Louis was that redoubtable Duke of Burgundy, who is known in history as "John the Fearless." These foes, however, were reconciled by mutual friends; and to show how earnest they were, they proceeded hand-in-hand to church, knelt at the altar, received the sacrament, and, with what they took for "very God" in their mouths, swore that thenceforward they would be only as loving brothers. In further token of their reconciliation, they for several nights shared the same couch,--a knightly ceremony much followed by men in their respective positions. Shortly after, Orleans conducted Burgundy into his gallery of portraits. It was a gallery like that which some of our readers may have seen at Munich, during the late King's reign, wherein hung the counterfeit presentments of all those ladies whose beauty had excited the admiration of the owner of the gallery. Jean Sans-Peur is said to have recognized among them a portrait which marvellously reminded him of his own consort; but he passed on and said nothing. He meditated so much the more deeply; and such terrible threatenings seemed to sit upon his brow, that the Duke de Berri, suspecting at whom they pointed, made both his kinsmen attend him to the altar, where they once more took the sacrament, and vowed eternal friendship. It was not many nights after, that Orleans was on his way, mounted on a mule, and accompanied by a feeble escort of his followers, returning from a guilty visit to the Queen Isabella, at her residence, the Hotel Barbette. He had suddenly arisen from supper with the Queen, on feigned intimation conveyed to him by a conspirator,-who assumed, for the nonce, the office of a King's messenger,

[ocr errors]

very stage where it had been enacted; and
our then youthful indignation found expres-
sion in some stringent terms. "Burgundy had
his virtues, nevertheless," was the remark of
one at our side. "Ay, marry, and how did the
villain manifest them?" 66
Nay, Sir," was
the calm rejoinder, "call him not villain ;'
for, in pious thanksgiving for his escape, he

one o'clock in the afternoon, in memory of
the hour at which he crossed the frontier into
his ducal territory, on the last day of Novem-
ber, 1407." We looked inquiringly at the
speaker, but we saw nothing on his brow, save
sincerity and error.

The conduct of the wife of Orleans exhibits another curious trait of the times. She was the mother of three sons, Charles, Philip, and John. But she did not look to them in her great sorrow. She sent for Dunois, that natural son of her husband, and who return. ed little of the strange affection which she showed for him. He was then very young, but she looked upon him as missioned to punish her husband's murderer. She loved him as her own, and reared him as tenderly as though he had been heir to a crown. Whenever she saw him full of soul and ardor, the tears would well to her eyes, and she would remark, that she had been wronged of him, that he ought to have been hers, and that none of her children were so well qualified to take revenge upon the assassin of their sire, as this, the illegitimate John, who was afterwards so renowned under his more familiar appellation of Dunois.

-that His Majesty required the Duke's presence at the Hotel de Saint Pol. He went forth, mounted as we have said, three footmen carrying torches before him. Eighteen armed men awaited him in the old Rue de Temple. They fell upon their victim just as he had reached the front of the house called "L'Image de Notre Dame." All his followers fled, save one, who met death with his worth-ordered the Angelus to be rung for ever at less master. The assassins assailed the Duke with cries of "Death! Death!" Orleans, conceiving some mistake, exclaimed, "What means this violence? Know ye not I am the Duke of Orleans?" "All the better!" was the fatal rejoinder; "it is you whom we have been waiting for!" Orleans pulled up his bridle, but a blow from a battle-axe cut off the hand which held the rein, at the wrist. Daggers pierced his sides, and swords his throat; and at length, as he fell from the mule, a blow from a club dashed out his brains, and he lay dead in the middle of the street. At this moment a man issued from the house, "L'Image de Notre Dame;" his features were concealed by a hood of scarlet cloth, trimmed with gold. It was Burgundy himself. He bore a club; and as another of the murderers held a torch over the fallen body, Burgundy dealt the latter a heavy blow with his club, and added, "He is dead! Put out your lights, and disperse!" The order was not prematurely given; the street was filling with people, and the assassins, in passing through the house, set fire to it, in order to attract that way the public attention. They got clear off; and on the following day, when the body of the murdered Orleans was exposed in the church of the Blancs Manteaux, there was no one there who seemed so profoundly sorrowful at the fact, and indignant against the perpetrators, as the hypocritical Burgundy, who touched the corpse, in company with all present, as a token of being innocent of all participation. The attention of the police, however, was inconveniently directed towards the palace of the Duke of Burgundy, whither one of the assassins, in a scarlet hood, had been seen to fly for refuge. John was no longer what his name declared him, "the Fearless." He sent for his kinsman Berri, made hurried avowal of, and apology for, his crime, and then set foot in stirrup, nor ever pulled rein, till he was beyond the power of France, in his own sovereign dukedom. He was of course a pious man, was this Burgundian Duke, according to the spirit of the times,-and, indeed, of very recent times also. It is not many years ago that we were discussing this murder upon the I

Full as strongly did the wronged Valentine continue to mourn. She assumed for her device a watering-pot, of course, pouring forth salt tears. On the mouth-piece of the "rose" was engraven a coil of S's, which some ingenious interpreter declared to signify, "Solam Sæpe Seipsam Sollicitari Suspirareque." She chose, for a legend beneath, the expressive phrase: "Nil mihi præterea, præterea nil mihi." But stranger still was the settlement of this great feud. Burgundy returned to Paris upon safe-warrant. Before the whole court, and in presence therewith of the entire family of Orleans, he made amende for his deed. He confessed the murder, and justified it, pronouncing the late Duke to have been a traitor, to rid the King of whom, was to do the monarch justice. And thereupon that monarch meekly expressed his obligations to the murderer of his brother; the family of the victim (after a show of decent reluctance) declared themselves satisfied; and, to let the tragedy be

followed by a dramatic act of gayety, the assassin espoused a Princess of the family, the Church blessed the entire arrangements, and all was thenceforth to go as merrily as a marriage bell.

The third Duke of Orleans was Charles, son of the second Duke. He was of so poor merit that even the party which cared for his interests (and its own) took its name, not from their leader, but from the Count d'Armagnac, father of Bona, the second wife of Duke Charles. Between the Armagnacs and the Burgundians, France was reduces to the most fearful condition of misery. The object of the former was, to avenge and make pecuniary profit of the murder of the late Duke:-and that one murder led to a thousand others; and no one profited thereby, save Satan, who appears to have been the chief adviser of both parties.

At length, however, the arms of each were turned against one common foe-the English. The great collision took place at Agincourt, and resulted in a triumph, the shouts of which still echo in the hearts of the descendants of the victors. The young Duke of Orleans was made captive on that terrible day, and was so overwhelmed at the dreadful calamity, that for two whole days he refused all nourishment. Appetite, however, then got the better of his grief, and his stomach proved stronger than his sorrow. Henry brought him prisoner to England, where he resided during more than a quarter of a century. During this long time, he was occupied in writing poetry, bewailing his detention from La Belle France, kissing with expansive demonstration of affection the French Ambassador from the Duke of Burgundy in England, and tempting Henry to set him at liberty without ransom, in return for certain treachery, which he offered to commit against his own Sovereign, Charles VII., whom he engaged to renounce, acknowledging Henry in his place. At length his release was effected, and that by Burgundian aid. Philip, son of John the Fearless, slain on the bridge at Montereau, paid down 300,000 crowns; the city of Orleans contributed some 9,000 gold francs, and therewith the captive Duke had permission to return to France, where he married a niece of his ransomer, Philip; thus once more, by gold and a wedding, patching up a peace between houses to whom it was second nature to be at war.

There were few things illustrative of character or scene that escaped the observation or memory of Shakspeare. The echo at the foot of Macbeth's Castle still does justice to

the remark of the usurping King to the Doctor,

I would applaud them to the very echo,
That should applaud again.

In Shakspeare's "Henry V.," the Duke of Orleans has little to do, and less to say; but the latter is perfectly characteristic of the Prince in question. The poetical knowledge of the royal poet is illustrated in the remark made by him when the Dauphin states that he had written a sonnet in praise of his palfrey, which began thus, "Wonder of nature." "I have heard," says Orleans, "a sonnet begin so to one's mistress." Of all the French lords, he is the only one who is made to deliver a common truth in fancy phrase, "The sun doth gild our armor; up, my Lords!" And when others despair, he alone, as was the case, entertains hope, and cheerfully exclaims :

We are enough yet living in the field,
To smother up the English in our throngs,
If any order might be thought upon.

When Charles of Orleans returned to France, the last visit he paid was one to the King. He resided for some time in retirement at Orleans and Blois. The French monarch, however, behaved with noble generosity towards him, received him cordially, when the Duke experienced an attack of loyalty, and gave him 160,000 franes, wherewith to purchase the freedom of his brother, the Count of Angoulême, then detained as a hostage in England. Various opinions have been given with respect to the conduct of Duke Charles in this country during his captivity; but the pages of Rymer show, that, much as he was given to poetry, he could dabble a little in treason; and that, in his estimation, it was perfectly right, that self should take precedence of country, and the general good yield to that of the individual,-in other words, of himself. In France, as he grew in years, he became more and more devoted to agricultural pursuits; but, like Philippe Egalité at Villers-Cotterets, while he watched the growth of cabbages, he was vigilant as to what he thought his rights. Thence his expedition against Milan, to the ducal crown of which he laid claim, an immediate male heir to the late Duke being wanting, through his mother. But the lance of Orleans was shivered by the sword of Sforza; and when the former heard of the utter failure of his expeditionary force, he left the quarrel to be bloodily contested, as it was, by more than one succeeding heir. In the mean time, Louis XI. had ascended the throne which his father Charles had left va

« ПредишнаНапред »