The Maid and the Queen

by Nancy Goldstone

  Yolande kept Charles with her that summer for as long as possible. He accompanied her and the rest of the family when she arranged to have her eldest son, Louis III, now duke of Anjou, count of Provence, and king of Sicily, engaged to the daughter of the count of Brittany, another major diplomatic coup. Louis II had wanted this alliance for many years but the duke of Brittany had always hesitated. However, now that Yolande’s daughter, Marie, was engaged to the dauphin of France, the duke of Brittany’s objections vanished, and he himself came to Angers to negotiate the terms of the nuptial agreement (which included a highly satisfactory dowry of 100,000 francs). Yolande made sure to bring Charles into the proceedings, and the engagement received “the consent of our very dear lord, son and brother, the Dauphin,” as a further reassurance to the duke of Brittany of the family’s now lofty royal connections.

  But eventually Charles had to go back; with his new station in life came official responsibilities. Toward the end of July, an outbreak of civil disorder demanded that the dauphin, who had been accorded the position of lieutenant general of the kingdom by his father, led a military force to Rouen to put down the disturbance. On July 29, 1417, Charles and a small troop of men-at-arms successfully negotiated a peaceful settlement to the uprising, and the dauphin was able to enter the city and was accorded all of the dignities associated with his rank. Unfortunately, at the same moment, Henry V, accompanied by a seriously intimidating army of some twelve thousand soldiers, was midway across the English Channel at the head of a fleet of fifteen hundred ships heading for France.

  THE ARRIVAL of this second invasion from England set off the final, calamitous series of events that would result in the French capitulation. No sooner had Henry V’s army landed than the duke of Burgundy, in accordance with the secret agreement he had made with the English the previous October, raised a force of his own. While Henry and his men methodically worked their way south down the coast and inward toward Alençon in an effort to secure Normandy, John the Fearless led his army out of the northern stronghold of Arras to march on Paris.

  In the midst of the turmoil, Isabeau suddenly reemerged. Still smarting in Tours over her humiliation at the hands of the count of Armagnac, the queen of France, so long a friend to the party associated with the duke of Orléans, abruptly changed sides. She sent a covert messenger to John the Fearless, pledging to join forces with him against the Armagnacs if he would only use his army to rescue her from her exile. As a symbol of her goodwill, she took the valuable gold signet ring off her finger and had it delivered to John, to seal her part of the bargain.

  The duke of Burgundy was only too pleased to accommodate the queen. Having the participation of so high a member of the royal family greatly increased the legitimacy of his military action. On November 2, 1417, he conducted a force of eight hundred men-at-arms to Tours to relieve Isabeau of her confinement. Isabeau then accompanied John as he made his way to Paris. While on the road, she wrote letters and issued edicts claiming that the king and the dauphin were being held against their will by evil counselors and “persons of low rank,” and called on her subjects to join with the duke of Burgundy to liberate her husband and son from their oppressors. This, of course, was a complete fabrication, but he’d gotten her out and she had to say something.

  Working together, the queen and the duke tried to breach Paris at the end of November by secretly contriving to have one of the gates to the city left open. But the plot was discovered and thwarted at the last minute by Tanneguy du Chastel, who arranged for crossbowmen to guard the compromised gate. Frustrated, the duke of Burgundy and the queen of France were forced to withdraw and bide their time while they waited for another opportunity to present itself.

  In the interim, the dauphin Charles had returned to Paris and was doing his best to govern. To counteract his mother’s propaganda, he too penned letters and edicts in which he informed his subjects that the duke of Burgundy was an accomplice to the king of England and warned them not to believe his words or follow his commands. Still, Charles was not equipped to handle so profound a crisis. He could control neither his father nor the count of Armagnac. The result was chaos. At the beginning of February 1418, just before the dauphin’s fifteenth birthday, Charles VI suddenly took it into his head to attack the English, and with the count of Armagnac took an army to Senlis. There weren’t any English in Senlis, only Burgundians, but this didn’t matter to the king, and the count of Armagnac was of course only too thrilled to besiege the rival political faction. Unfortunately, this partnership between king and count was particularly inept, and two months later they were forced to retreat, having accomplished nothing besides wasting a great deal of money and losing most of their military equipment to the duke of Burgundy. Their incompetence was manifest to the citizens of Paris, who paid for this fiasco with both higher prices and taxes.

  The English army, on the other hand, was operating with a devastating effectiveness. By February 1418, Henry V had taken Caen, Bayeux, Alençon, Mortagne, Bellême, and Falaise, and by so doing had securely established the English presence in western Normandy. A chronicler who lived in Paris, who was openly sympathetic to the Burgundians, summed up the situation succinctly: “Indeed, it is perfectly true that some people who had come to Paris from Normandy, having escaped from the English… solemnly affirmed on oath that the English had been kinder to them than the Burgundians had, and the Burgundians a hundred times kinder than the troops from Paris, as regards food, ransom, physical suffering, and imprisonment.”

  Yolande, still in Angers, watched the progress of the English army with alarm. To have Henry V in Alençon, so near Le Mans and the border of her fiefs of Anjou and Maine, was disquieting; if he wasn’t stopped he would soon be in a position to launch a full-scale assault on her property. She sent an ambassador to Paris to ask for reinforcements, but Charles VI was busy besieging Senlis and had no men-at-arms to spare.

  So Yolande made one last great effort to reconcile the Burgundians and the Armagnacs, to prepare the way for a united front against the English. Working together with the duke of Brittany—they were the two whose territories stood closest to Henry V’s army—she called for a parley and actually succeeded in gathering representatives from each faction for a conference near Montereau-Fault-Yonne, about forty miles southeast of Paris. These talks began in March and lasted through the month of May, and at the end of that time, against all odds, an agreement was actually hammered out and a treaty drawn up.

  But in fact no one wanted it. After all this time, the divisions ran too deep, and even the reality of an English invasion could not prompt the two sides to compromise. The count of Armagnac rejected the terms outright when the document was brought to Paris in May, and by his subsequent actions it was clear that the duke of Burgundy also had no intention of complying with the conditions of this truce.

  For on May 29, 1418, after so many failed attempts on Paris, John the Fearless finally succeeded in breaching the city’s defenses. In the early hours just after midnight, Burgundian partisans unlocked the Saint-Germain gate with a stolen key and an army of eight hundred heavily armed warriors swarmed into Paris. Almost immediately, the streets were filled with a rampaging mob, as all the pent-up fury against the incompetence of the Armagnacs’ rule burst out of the citizenry. “Then Paris was in an uproar; the people took up their arms much faster than the soldiers did,” wrote an eyewitness. “And now Fate joined the Burgundians with the people of Paris and with every kind of weapon; she made them break down their doors and pour out their treasures and plunder; she twisted her wheel malevolently round, avenging herself on their ingratitude, because they did not care about peace. They were very glad to hide in cellars or basements or any corner, those that could.”

  As soon as the extent of the danger became clear, Tanneguy du Chastel slipped into the dauphin’s bedroom at the Hôtel Saint-Pol and awakened him. It was just after two o’clock in the morning. For Charles, this nocturnal rousing must have elicited the old fearsome emotions associ
ated with the nightmare journeys from his childhood, only this time he was old enough to understand the ferocity of the passions unleashed by the attack. In the blackness, from the streets below, came the terrifying sounds of violence and murder. Even more ominously, the shouts of the mob could now be heard plainly from within the palace itself: “Vive le duc de Bourgogne! Long live the duke of Burgundy!” and “Death! Death! The town is ours! Kill them all, kill them all!”

  Hastily wrapping the dauphin in a robe—there was no time to dress—Tanneguy led Charles quickly through a back door of the hôtel, which opened onto the rue Saint-Antoine. From there, the pair fled to the fortified safety of the Bastille, the most secure structure in Paris, where they were soon joined by Robert Le Maçon, Charles’s chancellor. Although the massive walls of the Bastille had protected the sovereigns of France for centuries, both counselors feared that in this instance they would be insufficient to shield Charles from the reach of his Burgundian pursuers. After a brief consultation, a fateful decision was made to take advantage of the chaos in the streets to risk a desperate flight out of the city before the mob detected the absence of their prey. Robert Le Maçon valiantly gave up his own horse to Charles, who, in borrowed clothes and in the company of Tanneguy, stole out into the streets under cover of darkness. The intrigue worked; no one recognized the dauphin; and “to the great annoyance of the town of Paris,” as a Burgundian chronicler complained later, both men galloped to safety in Melun, outside the reach of the mob.

  The Burgundians massacre the Armagnacs in Paris.

  THE WISDOM of Tanneguy du Chastel’s initiative was to prove only too evident in the days ahead. “The people, bitterly inflamed against the confederates [Armagnacs], went through all the houses in Paris, hunting for them,” reported an eyewitness. “All that they found, of whatever rank, whether they had been taken prisoner by the soldiers or not, they hauled out into the streets and killed them at once without mercy, with heavy axes and other weapons…. There was not one of the principal streets of Paris that had not had a killing in it…. They were heaped up in piles in the mud like sides of bacon—a dreadful thing, it was. Five hundred and twenty-two men died by the sword or other weapons that day in Paris out in the streets, not counting the ones who were killed inside the houses.” In fact, in the course of that terrible night and over the next few weeks, some sixteen hundred members of the Armagnac party who had remained in Paris, including the count of Armagnac himself, who was discovered hiding in a cellar, would be arrested and eventually massacred by the Burgundians.

  By July 13, Queen Isabeau and John the Fearless had sufficiently consolidated their hold on Paris to be able to enter the capital in state. Charles VI, ever erratic, welcomed them warmly, believed everything they said, and gave them everything they wanted; he even reinstated all of Isabeau’s powers retroactively, as though she had never been in exile. Perhaps he did not notice the carnage around him—two days before, the citizens of Paris had murdered the last of their Armagnac prisoners, including the count—or, if he did, felt it was a natural extension of his own paranoia. Whatever the reason, from this point on, Isabeau and John the Fearless controlled the Parisian government and the royal council.

  And yet the continued absence of the dauphin, the legitimate heir to the throne, threatened to undermine their authority. To have Charles at large was too dangerous; those members of the Armagnac faction who had escaped or who lived outside the capital might use him as a rallying point. To prevent this, Isabeau issued a formal summons ordering Charles to appear in Paris. This was not a friendly invitation. To obey meant risking imprisonment or worse; to refuse gave the queen and the duke of Burgundy the justification they needed to raise an army and so force the dauphin to submit to their rule.

  But by this time Charles was safely in Bourges, south of the Loire, under Yolande’s protection. With the death of the count of Armagnac and so many others, it was left to the queen of Sicily to undertake the leadership of the opposition to Burgundian rule. Her influence with Charles was so strong during this period that he seems to have been hesitant to act in any capacity without first securing her approval. In a long letter dated June 29, 1418, exactly one month after he had escaped Paris, he wrote to the citizens of Lyon that he would not set a date to visit their city “until we have had the advice of our mother the Queen of Sicily.”

  As the political leader of the former Armagnac faction it was left to Yolande to answer the summons by Isabeau. Her reply, since lost, was reputed to have been recorded by the chronicler Jehan de Bourdigné:

  “We have not nurtured and cherished this one for you to make him die like his brothers or to go mad like his father, or to become English like you. I keep him for my own. Come and take him away if you dare.”

  DESPITE THIS CONTENTIOUS RESPONSE, Yolande was not in fact interested in promoting further warfare with Isabeau and the duke of Burgundy. Throughout her life, the queen of Sicily consistently demonstrated a preference for diplomacy over military action as a means of resolution. Also, she recognized the English as the primary enemy. However, she had first to get Isabeau and John the Fearless’s attention, to make them understand that they could not ignore the dauphin’s rights as heir to the throne. Both she and Charles understood that the king would be of no help—“I know very well that they [Isabeau and John the Fearless] will do to my lord [the king] everything they wish,” the dauphin remarked to one of his officials—so it became necessary to use the threat of military action to intimidate their adversaries. Accordingly, with Yolande’s approval, Charles summoned his vassals and men-at-arms. Some four thousand soldiers answered his call, insufficient, perhaps, to defeat the English, but certainly enough to demonstrate to his mother and the duke of Burgundy that they had to take him seriously. “Those who get power should be careful how they rule, because one day we’ll come back against them,” the dauphin warned.*

  Having strengthened Charles’s bargaining position, Yolande once again insisted on a peace conference, and in August 1418 she succeeded in bringing together representatives from the two warring factions at Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, just outside of Paris. Here, her ambassadors put forward the novel suggestion that the two sides reconcile and join forces in repelling their common enemy, Henry V, who had by this time taken Rouen, and was demanding to marry Charles VI’s daughter Catherine and to be officially recognized as the future king of France. The duke of Brittany, who was again the queen of Sicily’s ally, managed to obtain a private interview with John the Fearless, and out of this a treaty emerged, which was signed by the duke of Burgundy and sanctioned by the king on September 16.

  And then came a surprise: Yolande could not get Charles to sign it. He was beginning to listen to the more militant members of his entourage, like Tanneguy du Chastel, who had been targeted more than once by the duke of Burgundy. Tanneguy, it turned out, preferred not to come to terms with a man who routinely murdered, or tried to murder, his opponents whenever their interests conflicted with his own. But Yolande was in charge and she worked on Charles until finally, the next year, her efforts were rewarded. Over the course of three days, between July 8 and July 11, 1419, the dauphin met the duke of Burgundy face-to-face on a bridge near Melun, and after a series of talks they shook hands and signed a treaty of friendship. The two even exchanged “the kiss of peace.” At this time, they also made arrangements to meet later in the year, in order to continue the diplomatic dialogue. All of France breathed a sigh of relief.

  Having maneuvered Charles into what she believed to be a position of security, Yolande felt comfortable enough to leave the dauphin in the hands of his advisers and make a journey that she had already been putting off for far too long. It had been two years since her husband’s death, and she still had not brought her eldest son, Louis III, to Provence so that he could be formally installed as count in his father’s place. Provence was an integral component of Louis III’s inheritance; he could not hope to renew the family quest to conquer the kingdom of Naples without the county’s
support. She needed to secure the homage of the principal Provençal barons by going from town to town with her son, just as her mother-in-law, Marie of Blois, had done so many years before with Louis II. And so as soon as she knew that the treaty with John the Fearless had been signed, Yolande left Saumur and began the long journey south, taking Louis III and her two youngest children with her.

  When Yolande quitted the dauphin’s court, she took the voice of moderation with her, and this would be France’s undoing. For in August, Henry V’s forces easily took the city of Pontoise and an Armagnac spy informed the dauphin that the duke of Burgundy had treacherously aided the English in this conquest. Although it is impossible to determine if this source was reliable, John the Fearless’s past behavior did not recommend him to the good opinion of those in the opposition party. The advisers surrounding Charles, particularly Tanneguy du Chastel, did not hesitate to believe the accusation. In a moment, all Yolande’s careful diplomatic groundwork was undone and a desperate plan conceived and put into effect.

  As it happened, Charles had already arranged to meet John the Fearless for another diplomatic talk on the bridge of Montereau-Fault-Yonne on September 10, 1419. (Bridges were so often used as venues in these cases because it was generally assumed that it would be more difficult to conduct an ambush out in the open in such a confined space; in the event, this piece of conventional dogma turned out to be of dubious value.) On the appointed day, the two sides met as planned. The duke of Burgundy and the dauphin each stepped out onto the bridge accompanied by ten members of their respective entourages. As dictated by chivalry, John the Fearless went down on one knee before Charles and swept off his large black velvet chapeau in the required gesture of homage, at which point Charles, also following protocol, politely took him by the hand, raised him to his feet, and indicated that he could return his hat to his head. The niceties having been satisfied, Tanneguy du Chastel then shoved the duke of Burgundy from behind, so that another of Charles’s entourage could slash at his face more easily with his sword, and then Tanneguy du Chastel finished him off with his axe. In less than two minutes the once feared duke of Burgundy was on the ground with his internal organs spilling out all over the bridge. The whole operation was conducted with such ruthless efficiency that John the Fearless’s men did not have time to move before their leader was dead and they themselves surrounded.