Once again a stunning military reversal came seemingly from nowhere. Warwick landed in England and marched against Edward IV, who had managed to alienate key supporters and was unable to muster much resistance. Edward fled to the Netherlands to request assistance from his ally the Duke of Burgundy, and England was left to Warwick. Henry VI was released from the Tower, and Warwick held the king’s train as he was formally restored to power in St Paul’s cathedral.
Then exactly the same thing happened in reverse. The Duke of Burgundy, initially somewhat reluctant to be drawn into the English civil war, became more forthcoming when he knew Warwick supported Louis XI, with whom Burgundy was at war. Burgundy provided ships and money for Edward IV, who landed in Yorkshire, then swept into London unopposed. On the same day that Margaret and her son Edward arrived in Weymouth, Edward IV led his forces against Warwick at Barnet. On 14 April 1471, Warwick was killed and Edward IV was victorious.
Margaret still had an army and attempted to join Jasper Tudor in Wales, but Edward IV intercepted her at Tewkesbury. The Lancastrian army was defeated on 4 May, and worse, Margaret’s seventeen-year-old son Edward was killed in the fighting. Edward IV had finally won a complete victory, and Margaret was paraded through London as part of Edward’s triumphal procession. The next day Henry VI was also dead, said to have died of natural causes, but widely believed to have been murdered on Edward IV’s orders, as there was now no reason to keep him alive. Although even in a conflict as ugly and sanguinary as the Wars of the Roses we still have many examples of kings and other key players being captured on the battlefield and not executed, when the Lancastrians were utterly defeated, Edward IV seems to have had no compunction about killing Henry VI, now that his death would not release a more able heir onto the field of battle.67
Margaret was imprisoned in the Tower, and then at Wallingford, where she was placed in the care of Alice Chaucer, who had received her as a teenager in Rouen on the way to meet her destiny in England. Louis XI ransomed her in 1475 and allowed her to return to Anjou, but his price was that she reaffirm her relinquishment of any rights of inheritance to the duchy – given that her brothers were dead and René was sixty-six – sealing Anjou’s fate to be reabsorbed by the crown.68 Margaret returned to Anjou to live with René, surviving him by two years and dying in 1482. She was buried next to her father in the cathedral of Angers, joining him in the tomb (which René naturally had designed himself) showing a skeleton king losing his crown, a bitter testament to the vanity of both their hopes. She did not survive to see the death of Richard III in 1485 at Bosworth Field, which by ending the hated line of York and replacing the Plantagenets with the Tudors, truly ended Angevin rule in England.
Margaret divides opinion. It is just as easy to characterize her as an overbearing, ambitious and ruthless queen who used her power over her feeble-minded husband to dominate the government and bend English policy to her own aims, as to say that she was a woman of iron determination who attempted to maintain order in the kingdom despite her husband’s incompetence and preserve the throne for her son, the rightful heir. These two views are not mutually exclusive.
Despite her perseverance and the undoubted success of some of her policies and actions, Margaret ultimately faced a tragic defeat, with her husband and son killed, her throne lost and her final years spent in obscurity. Yet her character and eventful life make her a gift for the dramatist, as Shakespeare was quick to see, and she is one of the most compelling characters in his history plays, albeit as a villain, making her one of the more recognizable characters from the Angevin story in the modern world. As the ‘She-Wolf’ of France, she takes her place beside Lady Macbeth or Gertrude as a compelling and complex character, and although doubtless she would find this cold comfort, it is a not unfitting epitaph for her.
King René’s Final Years: Le Bon Roi René
The dreadful events of the 1470s continued for the Angevins. René’s illegitimate daughter Blanche of Anjou died in 1470, his brother Charles of Maine died in 1472, and worst of all, on 27 July 1473, came the death of his grandson Nicholas Duke of Lorraine, the son of Jean of Calabria. Nicholas died like his father, probably from poison, as he had broken off relations with Louis XI and was in the midst of marriage negotiations with the Burgundians, which seem to have been undertaken in opposition to King René.69 Lorraine now passed to René and Isabelle’s last surviving child, Yolande of Bar. She and Ferry de Vaudémont had a son, René II, and Yolande gave the duchy to her son, who took formal possession of it in Nancy on 4 August 1473.
The Second House of Anjou was in a succession crisis, especially as René II made it clear that he expected all of King René’s inheritance, despite opposing his grandfather at every turn in favour of Louis XI. King René responded by making a will on 22 July 1474 that confirmed René II as Duke of Bar, which should be joined permanently to Lorraine, but making Charles II of Maine, his brother’s son, the heir to Anjou, Maine and Provence.
This created an extremely complicated situation between Louis XI of France, René II of Bar and Lorraine, Charles of Burgundy and King René. On one hand, Charles continued to encroach on Lorraine and drove René II towards an alliance with Louis. On the other, Louis had seized Bar and Anjou, perhaps driving King René into an unlikely alliance with Burgundy. Although it is not entirely clear, King René does seem at least to have started negotiations with Charles of Burgundy for aid against Louis, and the price of this support was said to be Provence.
If true, this was nothing short of treason, and in April 1476 Louis XI summoned René before the parlement of Paris to answer charges for his dealings with Burgundy. Louis’s intentions were quite clear: the apanage system of Louis VIII had finally broken down, and Louis XI was determined to have Anjou.70
In May 1476 Louis and René met in Lyon to reach an understanding, and Louis returned Anjou to René on 25 May with the provision that it would pass to Charles II of Maine on his death. Part of their understanding had also been Louis’s ransoming of Margaret of Anjou from England. René seems to have been exhausted by the struggle with Louis XI, and without anyone to support him accepted any agreement that would allow him to spend the rest of his life quietly in Provence.71
René II, however, had chosen his allies well. René II declared war on Burgundy on 9 May 1475, and joined the League of Constance, a confederation of German and Swiss towns opposing Burgundy. Although Charles of Burgundy invaded Lorraine in September 1475 and captured Nancy in November, he now began to suffer defeats at the hands of the Swiss – the astonishing new military power in Europe – and his power was waning. Vaudémont, part of René II’s inheritance from his father Ferry, rebelled against Burgundy in April 1476 following a Burgundian defeat. Charles of Burgundy was known as le Téméraire, usually translated as ‘the Bold’ but equally validly as ‘the Reckless’, and he kept attacking the Swiss to avenge his defeats, and kept losing. On 2 March 1476 Charles was defeated by a Swiss army at Grandson, and when he attempted to avenge himself the Swiss defeated him again on 22 June at Morat. René II now swept back into Nancy on 6 October with Swiss support.
Charles lived up to his name and attacked again, although his army was now greatly depleted and it was the middle of winter. On 5 January 1477 he returned to Nancy, where he met the Swiss again, who were led by René II. The Burgundians were outnumbered and ill-supplied, and in another overwhelming defeat Charles was killed. Famously, Charles’s naked, frozen body was only found two days later, and was so mangled and disfigured that it could only be identified by his long fingernails and his scars from old wounds. René II buried Charles honourably in Nancy, but after Charles’s only child, Mary of Burgundy, married Maximilian of Habsburg and joined the family’s fortunes to that great dynasty, Charles’s body was removed to Bruges where his magnificent tomb survives.72
The struggle with Louis XI and tangential involvement in the Burgundian wars must have been an unwelcome interruption for King René, who from 1471 lived permanently in Provence. It is this period
of his life that led to his appellation of ‘the good king’ – le bon roi René – as his lifetime of chivalric pursuits was concentrated into a perfect rural idyll, with his court the epitome of culture and benign rule. Because he remained King René and his queen was Jeanne of Laval, there would later be confusion, and Queen Johanna I of Naples (who had always been known by the French form of her name, Jeanne, in Provence) became known retrospectively as ‘Good Queen Jeanne’, the great patron of the arts. Given everything that happened to Johanna, it is fitting that at least in Provence she is remembered fondly.73
René’s rule was ‘good’ not just because he himself was a learned king. He included nobles and prelates on his councils and gave them some voice in the rule of the county, as well as regulating taxes. More importantly though, René’s rule was consciously styled as a golden age. His pastoral poem Regnault and Jehanneton was the template for his court, and stories tell of him providing food for the sheep shearers at Aix and holding pageants at his parks and residence, with decorations and musicians.74
This musical involvement connects René to another great figure of the age, Josquin des Prez, perhaps the most important composer of the early Renaissance. Josquin is known to have been a singer in René’s chapel in Aix until at least 1478, and after René’s death he maintained his Angevin connection by moving to the Sforza court in Milan. It was in Italy that he produced the music for which he is justly renowned today, but it is fitting that his career started in the highly cosmopolitan environment of René’s Provence.75
René’s own artistic credentials began early in the cultured atmosphere created in Angers by Louis I and continued by Louis II and Yolande of Aragon, but he was exposed to an unprecedented variety of influences. In 1419, the eleven-year-old René went to the court of his uncle the Cardinal Duke of Bar and then to Lorraine, courts that were culturally and politically just as German as they were French. In the aftermath of Agincourt when France itself was practically annexed by England, Burgundy was the primary continental power politically as well as artistically, and René was in Dijon (though as a prisoner) in 1432 and then 1434–35, and also spent time in Brussels, the centre of Flemish art.76 It may have been here that he formed an attachment to the van Eyck family, particularly Barthélemy van Eyck, who illustrated the most iconic manuscripts of René’s works and worked for him from around 1445 until 1470.
The idea that René himself was a painter took hold from the late 15th century, and evolved into the story that René was trained by the great Jan van Eyck, then went on to produce various works of his own, beginning during his imprisonment in Dijon, but continuing throughout his life and even extending to the painting for his own tomb. Within eighty years of René’s death, the essayist Michel de Montaigne could write:
I saw today [in September 1559], at Bar-le-duc, that King François II had been presented, in memory of René, King of Sicily, a self-portrait that he himself had painted.77
There is not any direct evidence for this, and although contemporaries credited René with ‘designing’ many of the paintings and illuminations that would be created by members of his court such as Nicholas Froment and Barthélemy van Eyck, it seems more likely that René commissioned the works and perhaps described what he wanted, rather than playing a direct part. If there was a tension between the political and military duties of a king being incompatible with being too bookish or writing himself, there was a greater stigma attached to a king participating in the ‘manual’ arts like painting (and indeed Montaigne’s essay cited above is in the context of Montaigne wondering whether it is as valid to draw a self-portrait with a pencil as it is to write one with a pen). If René was inspired by the brilliant artists around him to attempt drawing himself, lack of evidence prevents us from attributing any specific work to him, and the fact that he did employ Froment and van Eyck to produce such copious works suggests that he left painting to the professionals.
When I began discussions of the early Angevins I lamented the lack of any portraits until a much later period. We are now in this period and there are multiple portraits of René in oil, illumination, stained glass, sculpture, medals and even in a cameo. The only problem is that he seems to have been astonishingly unattractive, and can only be described as a lump. It is a shock to see the dashing, cultured, ideal patron of courtly society appearing as he does, but I think in the end it makes him more endearing. His most famous portraits are his diptych with his second wife Jeanne de Laval by Nicholas Froment in the Louvre, Froment’s Triptych of the Burning Bush in Aix-en-Provence which shows René and Jeanne on the side panels, and the medals of René and Jeanne, individually and together, by Francesco Laurana. Although much more visible, the statues of René that stand in Angers and Aix-en-Provence are romanticized relatively modern works that show his enduring impact in those cities.
With his brief rule in Naples and his other travels in Italy, René was the most Italianized of all the French princes with the widest range of interests. To call him a ‘Renaissance’ prince perhaps misses the mark, though it is hard to see how he differs substantially from figures such as Federigo da Montefeltro, Sigismundo Malatesta, the Gonzaga, the Este and the Sforza. One difference is that he did not leave a single cultural centre like Urbino, Rimini, Mantua, Ferrara or Milan where we can see a coherent body of his cultural production. More fatal is René’s passion for chivalry: he can only seem backward-looking with his treatise on tournaments, chivalric allegories and residence in fortified castles. Yet René had a library of books in Greek and patronized the music of Josquin de Prez, and any Italian prince in this position would be hailed as a paragon of modern taste.78
If we consider another fundamental dividing line between medieval and modern Europe, the discovery of the New World, which forever changed European economics and politics, the key name is Christopher Columbus. It is slightly shocking, but not really surprising, that Columbus, the discoverer of the New World and the herald of a complete rupture with the past, might have worked for King René. Yet Columbus claimed in a letter that he had been hired by René to attack pirate bases in Tunisia, and although there is some question about whether this is true, there are also claims that Columbus was involved in the naval battles of Jean II against the Aragonese. It would not be so odd for Columbus to be part of a court that contained the latest geographical texts and maps (like those sent to René by Jacopo Marcello), even if he had to go to Spain to find rulers with enough money to fund his voyages.79
René died on 10 July 1480. Although he chose to spend his final years in Provence, he had always intended to be buried in Anjou next to Isabelle of Lorraine, and he had made detailed plans for their tomb. This was inspired by the tombs in Santa Chiara, and René himself is credited with the design – and formerly even for executing the painting – which consisted of supine effigies of him and his wife in robes, and behind them a painting of a mummified, enthroned skeleton king who had dropped his sceptre and whose crown slipped from his head. This image of the roi mort was one that René had used frequently as a memento mori in his manuscripts, and it is truly arresting. Unfortunately the tomb itself does not survive, although drawings of it do. As with Fulk Nerra, the grave beneath the tomb was opened in the 19th century, and in 1895 René and Isabelle’s bodies were found intact, and given new coffins.80
Although by the time of René’s death, Anjou and his first duchy of Bar were gone or slipping away, he had long since lost Naples and his children had died in bitter circumstances, with Margaret and Jean losing their own realms in England and Aragon, he seems to have led a contented and productive life. ‘Le bon roi René’, although taken as a study in failure by many modern historians, is significant for more than simply the crowns he claimed but never wore. Although he is sometimes used as an example of the foolishness of chivalry, portrayed as the stupidly chivalrous French knight who failed because he was no match for the ruthlessness of Italian politics, he is much more than a sad ‘king without a kingdom’. His literary output, artistic commissi
ons and participation in the Hundred Years War make him one of the most important – and interesting – figures of the 15th century.
After René’s death, Angevin fortunes quickly declined. René II’s bad relationship with his grandfather was carried over to King René’s successor, and René II led a revolt in Provence against Charles II of Maine. Charles was only able to quell the revolt with help from Louis XI, who expected to take the county himself. Charles then died in 1481.
As had been arranged, Charles left Maine and Provence to Louis XI, who died on 30 Aug 1483, and the counties passed to Louis’s successor Charles VIII. The Angevin claims to Italy were not forgotten, and whenever other Italian powers were in conflicts with Naples, they would revive the idea that the Angevins might be invited to reconquer the Regno. In 1483, René II led an army to Italy with some initial success, but when he heard about the death of Louis XI he returned to France to try to claim Anjou and Provence. René II was invited back to Italy again in 1488, but Charles VIII prevented him from accepting because the French king wanted to invade Italy himself using the Angevin claim.
With the main lines mostly extinguished, Naples in the hands of Aragon, Hungary and Poland passing to other families, England passing to the Tudors and Anjou itself in the possession of the French crown, the Angevin story is finished. Of course there were still Angevin descendants – René II’s line of Vaudémont/Lorraine ruled for centuries and became the renowned house of Guise, including Mary of Guise who would give birth to Mary Queen of Scots – but we can no longer really talk of ‘Angevin’ ruling families. As the Angevins were the quintessential medieval rulers, perhaps this is appropriate, since the end of the 15th century is the beginning of the ‘modern world’, and rulers in the mould of King René no longer had a place.81
Angevin Dynasties of Europe 900-1500 Page 53