The Royal Succession

by Maurice Druon

  ‘Could you not’, she asked, ‘declare simply: “If the two daughters renounce their rights …” without talking of submitting the question of whether women may reign or not to the Assembly of Peers?’

  ‘Well, Mother,’ Philippe replied, ‘in that case they would not renounce their rights at all. The peers, of whom you are one, are the only court of appeal. Originally they were electors of the King, as the Cardinals are of the Pope or the Palatines of the Emperor, and it was thus that they chose Hugues, our ancestor, who was Duke of France. If they no longer elect, it’s because for three centuries our kings have always had a son to ascend the throne.’13

  ‘It’s a purely chance custom!’ replied Mahaut. ‘Your new law is precisely calculated to serve the pretensions of my nephew Robert. You’ll see that he will not fail to use it to try and take my county back from me.’

  She was thinking only of the quarrel over the succession of Artois, and not of the whole of France.

  ‘The custom of the kingdom is not necessarily the custom of a fief, Mother. And you’ll be more likely to keep your county with your son-in-law as King, than by the arguments of jurists.’

  Mahaut surrendered without being convinced.

  ‘There’s the gratitude of sons-in-law for you,’ she said a little later to Béatrice d’Hirson. ‘You poison a king so that they may take his place, and then they do exactly as they please without consideration for anyone!’

  ‘The fact is, Madame, he doesn’t know what he owes you, nor how our Lord Louis came to die.’

  ‘And, Lord, he must never know!’ cried Mahaut, quickly putting her hands to her dress and feeling for the relic of Saint Druon, as she always did when she spoke of her crimes. ‘It was his brother, after all, and Philippe has strange ideas about justice. Hold your tongue, for God’s sake, hold your tongue!’

  During these days Charles of Valois, with the assistance of Charles de La Marche and Robert of Artois, was very active everywhere, spreading the view that it was lunacy to confirm the Count of Poitiers in the regency, and still more so to consider him as heir-presumptive. Philippe and his mother-in-law had made too many enemies; and the death of Louis served their designs, now openly avowed, too well for this suspect death not to be their work. Valois was in a position to offer other guarantees and put himself forward as the only man who could find a solution for the kingdom’s difficulties. He was on the best possible terms with the King of Naples, and declared that he could put a stop to any difficulties likely to be made by Queen Clémence. He was the only member of the royal family who, despite the wars, had preserved relations with the Count of Flanders. Having served the Roman Papacy, he had the confidence of the Italian Cardinals, without whom a Pope could not be elected, in spite of the infamous procedure of locking up the Conclave. The ex-Templars remembered that he had never approved the suppression of their Order, and on this account, too, he carried considerable weight.

  When Philippe heard of this campaign, he ordered his friends to reply that it was very strange to see the King’s uncle relying, for the purpose of seizing power, on his good relations with the enemies of the kingdom, and that if one wished to see the Pope in Rome, and France in the hands of the Angevins, the Flemings or the resuscitated Temple, the Count of Valois should immediately be offered the crown.

  At last the decisive Friday, on which the Assembly was to be held, arrived. At dawn Béatrice d’Hirson came to the Palace and was immediately shown into the Count of Poitiers’s room. The lady-in-waiting was somewhat out of breath from having run all the way from the Rue de Mauconseil. Philippe sat up among his pillows.

  ‘A boy?’ he asked.

  ‘A boy, Monseigneur, and well-membered,’ replied Béatrice, flashing her eyelashes. Philippe dressed hastily and hurried to the Hôtel d’Artois.

  ‘The gates! The gates! Keep the gates shut!’ he said as soon as he had entered. ‘Have my orders been properly obeyed? No one, except Béatrice, has been allowed to leave? Let it remain so for the rest of the day.’

  Then he dashed upstairs. He had lost the stiffness and solemnity which he normally forced himself to adopt.

  The birth-chamber, as was the custom in princely families, had been sumptuously decorated. There were tall hangings depicting flowers and parrots, the fine tapestries from Arras of which the Countess Mahaut was so proud, entirely covering the walls. The ground was strewn with flowers, irises, roses and daisies, which got trampled under foot. The mother, pale, her eyes bright, and her face still showing signs of strain, was lying in a huge bed surrounded with silk curtains, under white sheets which stretched from the bed an ell across the floor. In the corners of the room were two small beds, one for the sworn midwife and the other for the nurse on duty.

  The young Regent went straight to the ostentatious cradle, and bent low to take a good look at the son who had been born to him. Ugly and yet touching, as are all babies in their first hours, red, wrinkled, its eyelids stuck together and its lips dribbling, with a small wisp of fair hair sticking up from its bald head, the child was still sleeping its embryonic sleep, and looked, in the swaddling clothes which covered it to the shoulders, like a tiny mummy.

  ‘So here’s my little Philippe,14 whom I so longed for and who has arrived so well named and at the right moment,’ said the Count of Poitiers.

  Only then did he go to his wife, kiss her on both cheeks, and say in a tone of profound gratitude: ‘Thank you, darling, thank you. You have given me great joy, and this wipes out for ever our disagreements of the past.’

  Jeanne took her husband’s long hand, carried it to her lips and stroked her face with it.

  ‘God has blessed us, Philippe; God has blessed our reunion of last autumn,’ she murmured. She was still wearing her coral necklaces.

  The Countess Mahaut, her sleeves rolled up over her forearms, which were covered with thick hair, was a triumphant witness of the scene. She tapped her stomach with a lively gesture.

  ‘Well, my son!’ she cried. ‘Didn’t I tell you so? We have good wombs, we of Artois and Burgundy.’

  She spoke as if discussing the merits of brood mares.

  Philippe went back to the cradle.

  ‘Can he not be unwrapped so that I may see him better?’ he asked.

  ‘Monseigneur,’ replied the midwife, ‘it is not advisable. A child’s limbs are very soft and must remain swaddled as long as possible, that they may become strong and be prevented from growing crooked. But have no fear, Monseigneur, we have rubbed him well with salt and honey and have enveloped him in crushed roses to remove the viscous humour, and he has had his mouth cleaned with a finger dipped in honey, to give him sweetness and appetite. You may be sure that he is well cared for.’

  ‘And your Jeanne too,’ added Mahaut; ‘I have had her anointed with a good unguent mixed with hare’s droppings to contract her, according to the receipt of Master Arnaud of Villeneuve.’

  She wished to reassure her son-in-law as to the quality of his future pleasures.

  ‘But, Mother,’ said Jeanne, ‘I thought it was a receipt for a barren woman.’

  ‘Nonsense! Hare’s droppings are good for everything.’

  Philippe went on gazing at his heir.

  ‘Don’t you think he looks very like my father, the great King?’ he asked. ‘He’s got his forehead, and his chin.’

  ‘A little perhaps,’ replied Mahaut. ‘To tell you the truth, when I looked at him a little while ago, I thought I discerned the features of my late good Othon. May he have the strength of mind and body of them both, that is what I hope.’

  ‘He looks more like you than anyone, Philippe,’ said Jeanne softly.

  The Count of Poitiers straightened himself up with some pride.

  ‘I think’, he said, ‘that you now understand my orders better, Mother, and why I asked you to keep your gates closed. No one must know yet that I have a son. For it would be said that I have drawn up the law of succession expressly to assure him the throne after me, if Clémence does not have a male c
hild; and I know many, my brother Charles to begin with, who would give trouble if they knew that their hopes had been so soon destroyed. Therefore, if you wish this child one day to have a chance of becoming King, don’t say a word to anybody during the Assembly today.’

  ‘Of course, there’s the Assembly! That young gallant made me forget all about it,’ cried Mahaut pointing to the cradle. ‘It’s high time I went and dressed, and had a morsel to eat so as to be fit and strong for it. I feel hollow inside from having got up so early. Philippe, you’ll join me. Béatrice, Béatrice!’

  She clapped her hands, and ordered a pike pie, boiled eggs, a white spiced cheese, pickled walnuts, peaches and white wine from Château-Chalon.

  ‘It’s Friday; we must fast,’ she said.

  The sun, rising over the roofs of the city, bathed the happy family in its light.

  ‘Have a little something to eat. Pike pie won’t lie heavy on your stomach,’ said Mahaut to her daughter.

  Philippe soon left to see to the last preparations for the Assembly, the hour for which was drawing near.

  ‘My dear, no one will come to pay you their respects today,’ he said to Jeanne, indicating the cushions for visitors arranged in a semicircle round the bed. ‘But you will have a crowd of people tomorrow.’

  As he was leaving, Mahaut caught him by the sleeve.

  ‘My son, think of Blanche a little; she is still in Château-Gaillard. She is your wife’s sister.’

  ‘I’ll think about it, I’ll think about it. I’ll see what can be done to improve her lot.’

  And he went, carrying away on the sole of his boot one of the irises from the birth-chamber.

  Mahaut closed the gates.

  ‘Well, nurses,’ she cried, ‘why don’t you sing a lullaby!’

  10

  The Assembly of the Three Dynasties

  SECLUDED IN HER APARTMENTS, Queen Clémence became aware that the lords and great men were arriving for the Assembly, and heard the tumult of voices in the courtyards and under the vaulted roofs.

  Her forty days’ seclusion, imposed on the Queen by mourning, had come to an end the day before, and Clémence had thought ingenuously that the date of the meeting had been chosen expressly that she might be able to preside at it. She had prepared herself for this solemn reappearance with interest, curiosity and even impatience; and it had seemed to her that she had begun to take pleasure in life again these last days. But, at the last minute, a council of sages and doctors, among whom were the Count of Poitiers’s and the Countess Mahaut’s personal physicians, had forbidden her to attend on the ground that the fatigue might be dangerous in her condition.

  Everyone approved this decision, for indeed no one wished to put forward Clémence’s rights to the regency nor even her right to be associated with it. And yet, since so determined a search had been made into the history of the kingdom for possible precedents, they had naturally not failed to be reminded of Anne of Russia, widow of Henri I, who had shared the government with her brother-in-law Beaudoin of Flanders ‘owing to the ineffaceable quality conferred on her by her coronation’, or again of Queen Blanche of Castile, who was very present to their memories.15

  But the Dauphin of Viennois, Clémence’s brother-in-law, who was therefore in the best position to defend her prerogative, had gone completely over to Philippe since the contract of marriage between their two children had been signed.

  Charles of Valois, who gave himself out as his niece’s great protector, made no more effort in her favour than the others; he had enough to do standing up for himself.

  As for Duke Eudes of Burgundy, who was there, as he had been saying for the last month, to support the rights of his sister Marguerite, and avenge her death, he could not but be utterly hostile to Clémence.

  As she had been on the throne for too short a time to become known to and acquire an ascendancy over the great barons, they looked on her merely as the survivor of a brief and troubled reign which had been calamitous in more ways than one.

  ‘She has not brought the kingdom luck,’ they said of her.

  And if she still existed as an expectant mother, she had ceased to exist as Queen.

  Shut up in a wing of the Palace, she heard the sound of voices diminish as the Assembly began its session in the Grand Council Hall and the doors were closed.

  ‘My God,’ she thought, ‘why did I not remain in Naples!’

  And she began to weep as she thought of her childhood, the blue sea, and the swarming, noisy, generous people, who were compassionate towards sorrow, her people who knew so well how to love.

  And now Mille de Noyers was reading the Act of Succession.

  The Count of Poitiers had taken care not to surround himself with any of the trappings of royal majesty; his faldstool was placed in the middle of a dais, but he had refused to have it surmounted by a canopy. He was dressed in sombre clothes without ornament, though the official mourning had come to an end. He seemed to be saying: ‘Messeigneurs, we are here in council to do business.’ The only outward show was provided by the three mace-bearers who preceded him at his entry and now stood behind his chair. It was clearly he who exercised sovereignty, but without any of its trappings. All the same, he had carefully arranged the room and had everyone shown to his place by his chamberlain, inaugurating an arbitrary and inflexible ceremonial which impressed those present, for they recognized in it the touch of Philip the Fair.

  On his right Philippe had placed Charles of Valois and, immediately beyond him, Gaucher de Châtillon, so as to keep the ex-Emperor of Constantinople under control and isolate him from his clan. Philippe of Valois was placed six places away from his father. On his left the Regent had placed his uncle, Louis of Evreux, and only beyond him his brother, Charles de La Marche; he was endeavouring to prevent the two Charleses from concerting together during the course of the meeting and going back on their oath of four days before.

  But the Count of Poitiers’s attention was mostly concentrated on his cousin, the Duke of Burgundy, whom he watched in his place at the end of the dais, where he was flanked by the Countess Mahaut and the Dauphin of Viennois.

  Philippe knew that the Duke was going to speak in the name of his mother, the Duchess Agnès, on whom the fact that she was the last daughter of Louis IX conferred, even in her absence, great prestige among the barons. Anyone who awakened a memory of the canonized King, the defender of Christendom, the hero of Tunis, anyone whom his hand had caressed, was an object of veneration; indeed, anyone still living who had seen him, had been spoken to by him or been the object of his affection, was endued with an almost sacred quality.

  In order to move the hearts of his hearers, Eudes of Burgundy had only to say: ‘My mother, the daughter of Monsieur Saint Louis, who blessed her before going to die in a heathen land …’

  So to check this manoeuvre, Philippe had another and most unexpected card up his sleeve: Robert of Clermont, the other survivor of the Saint’s eleven children, the sixth and last son. Since they desired the blessing of Saint Louis, they should have it.

  The presence of Robert, Count of Clermont, seemed something of a miracle, since the last of his rare appearances at Court had been more than five years ago; his very existence was almost forgotten, and when he was remembered no one dared speak of him save in a whisper.

  Indeed, Great-uncle Robert had been mad since the age of twenty-four, when he had been hit on the head with a mace. His madness was violent but intermittent, with long calm periods which had allowed Philip the Fair to make use of him from time to time for purely ornamental missions. He was not dangerous because of what he said; indeed he hardly spoke. He was dangerous because of what he did; for there were no preliminary signs of an attack, and he might hurl himself, sword in hand, on friends for whom he felt a sudden and murderous hatred.16 It was a shocking sight to see a lord of so noble a race and so handsome an appearance – for at sixty he had still a majestic air – hack the furniture to pieces, slash the tapestries and pursue the female servants,
believing them to be adversaries in a tournament.

  The Count of Poitiers had placed him on the other wing of the dais, opposite the Duke of Burgundy and close to a door. Two enormous equerries stood nearby, their duty being to take hold of him at the first signs of a seizure. He gazed round in a bored, scornful, absent way, his eyes coming suddenly to rest on a face here or there in a sort of agonized anxiety of irrecoverable recollection, only to pass on. Everyone stared at him and his presence caused a certain uneasiness.

  Next to the madman sat his son, Louis I of Bourbon, who was lame, which had always prevented him from distinguishing himself in battle, but had in no way impaired his ability to run away, as had indeed been evident at the battle of Courtrai. Gawky, deformed and a coward, Bourbon had in contrast to his father a clear brain, which he had shown by joining Philippe of Poitiers’s party.

  From these splendid origins, crippled in both head and limb, was to descend the long line of the Bourbons.

  Thus, here in this Assembly of 16 July 1316 were gathered the three Capet branches who were to reign over France for five more centuries. The three dynasties might therefore look on both an end and a beginning: the direct Capet line which was soon to become extinct in Philippe of Poitiers and Charles de La Marche; that of Valois which, with Charles’s son, was to hold the succession for thirteen reigns; and, finally, that of the Bourbons, who were to come to the throne when the Valois were extinct and it became necessary to return once more to the descendants of Saint Louis to find a king. Each change of dynasty was to be accompanied by exhausting and disastrous wars.

  By that invariably surprising combination of men’s actions and the unexpected twists of fate, the history of the French monarchy, in all its grandeur and tragedy, was to flow from the Act of Succession which Messire Mille, the jurist, was at this moment reading.

  Sitting on benches or leaning against the walls, the barons, the prelates, the masters of Parliament and the delegates of the burgesses of Paris listened attentively.