Women of Mediaeval France Part 14

The very portraits of Isabeau de Baviere, and of other women of her court, suggest sensuality. They are fat, and of the earth, earthy, suggesting lives led in indolence and the pursuit of pleasures not of the highest. As Michelet says, "Obesity is a characteristic of the figures of this sensual epoch. See the statues at Saint Denys; those of the fourteenth century are clearly portraits. See, in particular, the statue of the Duke de Berri in the subterranean chapel of Bourges, with the ign.o.ble fat dog lying at his feet." As was the epoch, so was the queen; she was not actively bad, except where interference with her pleasures was threatened; she was merely a vain and utterly incapable woman of low tastes and cold heart who was called upon to be Queen of France in the most disastrous period of the history of that land. We need not think her a second Fredegonde, as some historians have tried to represent her; for her follies and her vices were such as to cause abhorrence by their puerility or their b.e.s.t.i.a.lity rather than to stir the deeper feelings of fear and hate excited by the greater among the bad women of history.

CHAPTER XI

CHRISTINE DE PISAN

"SEULETE suy et seulete veuil estre, Seulete m'a mon doulz ami laissiee, Seulete suy sans compagnon ne maistre, Seulete suy dolente et courrouciee, Seulete suy en langueur mesaisiee, Seulete suy plus que nulle esgaree, Seulete suy sans amis demouree."

(Alone am I in the world, and alone would I remain, Alone has my dear love left me, Alone am I, a poor lone woman, without companion or master, Alone am I, stricken with sorrow and anguish of mind, Alone am I, and ill at ease, Alone am I, more lonely than one who has lost her way, Alone have I been left without friends.)

This complaint of one who has lost her lover, or been betrayed and forsaken by him, might well have been the lament of France, betrayed by Isabeau de Baviere and left naked to her enemies. But the author of the lament, though one ready enough to find matter for her pen in the condition of her adopted country, had no thought of France in this case; for the little _ballade_ was composed by Christine de Pisan with no other reference than to her own life.

The age of the mad king and the bad queen would not have been, one would think, favorable to the advancement of literature; and yet some of the best literature of medieval France was composed while Isabeau de Baviere was still alive. We shall allude at this time to but two writers, Froissart, of whom we have already said something, and Christine de Pisan, both of whom were writing between 1380 and 1400. Christine, the first professional auth.o.r.ess in France of whose life we have record, is well worthy of study both as an auth.o.r.ess and as a woman.

The fourteenth century was the heyday of the astrologer as it was of the witch, and the wise Charles V., "le Salomon de la France," was not alone in his superst.i.tion when he placed his reliance upon the predictions of the learned doctor, Thomas of Pisa, whom he had summoned from Italy to be court astrologer. We are told that the n.o.bles and great ones of the earth at that time "dared do nothing new without the commands of astrology; they dared neither build castles, nor churches, nor begin war, nor even so much as put on a new robe, undertake a journey, nor go out of their houses without the consent of the stars." Whether or not this be somewhat of an exaggeration, there is no question that Thomas de Pisan occupied, at the court of Charles V., a position not only lucrative but dignified. Established in the Louvre itself, the Italian scholar sent for his wife and daughter to make their home in France. The daughter, then (1368) but five years of age, was already a precocious little lady, and was presented to the king when she arrived in France.

Charles was pleased with the graces of the child, and made her his especial protegee, promising that she should have as good an education and place at his court as any _demoiselle_ of n.o.ble birth. Charles was himself a scholar and capable of appreciating the n.o.bility of intelligence; and in this case he had not judged amiss.

It is from the works of Christine herself--_La Vision de Christine_, in prose, _La Mutation de Fortune_, and _Le Chemin de Long Estude_,--in verse that we learn most of her story, which was happy and uneventful up to her fourteenth year. At this time she had already acquired, under her father's careful tuition, a remarkable familiarity with the cla.s.sic authors of Rome, and could turn off as neat Latin verses as any boy in the schools, and could also write French verse. It was most fortunate for her that her father, "not thinking girls any more unfit for learning than boys," allowed her to "glean some straws of learning." Before she was fifteen Christine was married to a notary, Etienne Castel, a Picard gentleman of good birth and excellent character, whom she loved tenderly.

The prosperity of her family was first threatened in 1380, when her good patron King Charles died. Then her father, who had lavishly expended a large part of the handsome stipend he received as astrologer, found himself suddenly reduced almost to poverty, and he did not long survive his royal patron. The earnings of her husband not being sufficient to maintain the family, Christine cast about for a means to put to use the education she had received, and had already begun, by some small works, her career as an auth.o.r.ess, when the sudden death of her husband, carried off by the plague in 1389, left her alone and without resources, and under the necessity of providing some sort of support for her mother and her three children.

She never ceased to mourn for her husband, and the pages of her works are filled with poems which, like the little _ballade_ that heads this chapter, hold tender allusion to her loss. Though to modern ears the perpetual repet.i.tion of this strain of mourning grows monotonous, some of the sweetest of her poems are those inspired by this sentiment, expressed with a directness and a simplicity that must appeal to any lover of truth and poetry. "He loved me," she sings, "and 'twas right that he should, for I had come to him as a girl-bride; we two had made such wise provision in all our love that our two hearts were moved in all things, whether of joy or of sorrow, by a common wish, more united in love than the hearts of brother and sister."

She too might have wished to die, she says, in order to follow the loved one, but that there were the children and the mother whom she alone could care for. The energy of her character at last saved the fortunes of her family. Her first task, the saving of some last remnants of the property of her father and her husband, was rendered more difficult by the almost interminable delays of the courts and the dishonesty of advocates and opponents who had more influence with the "blind G.o.ddess"

than the daughter of the old astrologer. She herself gives an interesting picture of her difficulties, all bravely met for the sake of her children, and in time overcome. Not the least of her worries was the determination to conceal from her friends the desperate state of her fortunes; she was too proud to appear poor: "There is no sorrow equal to this, and no one who has not experienced it can know what it means....

Under a furred mantle and a cloak of scarlet, well saved, but not often renewed, there was many a s.h.i.+ver, and in a bed properly appointed with all things of comfort, many a sleepless night. But our meal was always a simple one, as befits a widow."

But from the more sordid cares, the covering of her poverty under threadbare finery that did not keep out the cold, and the vulgar loungers who would ogle her and leer at her as she went about the courts, there was a refuge in the pursuits which were to earn her bread.

At first Christine sang of her lost husband, and the grace and earnestness of these poems pleased the fas.h.i.+onable public of the day.

Her style was the result of long and careful preparation, and her mind almost unconsciously reflected the things which she had read and admired in cla.s.sic literature; and thus she transmitted to her readers much information, not in itself new or original, but strange to them, and therefore interesting. Some of the great personages of the court still remembered the little Italian protegee of Charles V., and asked her to write for them poems of love, in less lugubrious vein. We have seen that the troubadours thought it almost a truism: "Without love, no poesy,"

for love was their only theme; but here we find a woman who frankly admits that she has loved and loves no more, and who yet undertakes to write love poems for a price, and does write some exquisite ones. Poetry made to order can never seem spontaneous after we know that the poet has found inspiration not at the shrine of Phoebus but at that of Plutus; but many of the poetic masterpieces have been composed under stress of dire poverty, of which we are fortunately not always aware when reading them. And so, among the six or seven score little _ballades_ and _jeux_ which in Christine's works are marked _a vendre_--for sale--there are many that we could read with more sincere pleasure if we did not doubt the genuineness of the sentiment expressed. These little poems, many of them really graceful and charming playthings of a moment, lose so much in translation that I shall not attempt to render into English their ephemeral charm. The French of five hundred years ago is not "Frenshe of Paris" to most of us: rather is it of the school of "Stratford atte Bow," or of some other school we have never attended, and therefore I have chosen to give, with some changes in orthography, one of the simplest of Christine's _jeux a vendre_. It is a lover's song in praise of his lady beautiful and good:

"Je vous vens la rose de mai?

Oncques en ma vie n'aimai Autant dame ne damoiselle Que je fais vous, gente femelle, Si me retenez a ami, Car tout avez le coeur de mi (moi).

Je vous vens l'oiselet en gage?

Si vous etes faulx, c'est dommage, Car vous etes et belle et doulx, Si n'ayez telle tache en vous, Et digne serez d'etre aimee, Belle et bonne et bien renommee."

In other poems written for her courtly admirers Christine does not hesitate to voice sentiments quite out of keeping with the manners of her patrons. It is thus that she says: "If true honor is to be reapportioned, many do I know who will have but a little share in it, despite their thinking that they have all that wealth, beauty, n.o.ble birth, and fine clothes can give, and that therefore they are very princes. But however n.o.ble he be in outward show, no man is n.o.ble who lends himself to evil deeds or evil words. Thus some there are in whose boasting there is not one word of truth, who will tell you that the fairest ladies in the land have honored them with love. Good Lord! what gentility! How ill it becomes a n.o.ble man to lie and tell false tales of women! Such fellows are but villains, pure and simple; and should there be a redistribution of honors, theirs should be cut down."

Not infrequently, alas, the pride of learning mars her verse; it is overloaded with pedantic allusions, stiff with learning, and too manifestly the product of a learned head rather than of an overflowing heart. Where these faults appear less, or not at all, is in the poems inspired by genuine feeling for her loved ones; there the real heart of the woman, bravely struggling to bear up and smile before the world, is laid bare to us in sudden glimpses of unpremeditated poetry. It is an old theme, but one of pathos ever fresh, that we find in the following lines:

"Je chante par couverture (_i. e._, contenance), Mais mieux pleura.s.sent mes oeil (yeux), Ne nul ne sait le travail Que mon pauvre coeur endure.

Pour ce (je) muce (cache) ma douleur Qu'en nul je ne vois pitie.

Plus on a cause de pleur (pleurer), Moins on trouve d'amitie.

Pour ce plainte ne murmure Ne fais de mon piteux deuil.

Aincois (plutot) (je) ris quand pleurer veuil (veux), Et sans rime et sans mesure Je chante par couverture."

It is, you see, the old _motif_, in melodramatic pathos that of the harlequin Dorkins, who must play his part in the pantomime even though his child lie dying, in tragedy that of Lady Macbeth, who must play the queen by day and suffer the torments of the murderess at night. It is not the novelty but the universality and truth of the idea or sentiment that makes Christine's verses rank as poetry.

But love songs alone could not support a family of five; the Church, so often the refuge of forlorn women, might have offered Christine a refuge, but not support for those dependent on her, since she had not sufficient influence to a.s.sure herself of any office of dignity and emolument in the convents of the proud and wealthy. Her pen must be her resource; and thus Christine de Pisan became not merely an auth.o.r.ess, but the first auth.o.r.ess to support herself by her pen. For some of her shorter poems she received not inconsiderable sums; but longer works, works of more permanent value must be undertaken, and Christine valiantly set to work.

Her first task was to secure a patron, for only some great lord could afford to pay sums sufficient to enable her to live: there was no eager public of thousands, educated by the printing press to expect, to welcome, to demand fresh intellectual food. One of her patrons was the great Duke of Burgundy, Philippe le Hardi, to whom she dedicated a very long and partly autobiographical poem called _La Mutation de Fortune_.

She tells her story with rather too much display of the fact that she knows all the famous apologues and anecdotes that might apply to her case; still, it is an earnest and in some ways interesting account of how she had been compelled to take up a profession not then regarded as befitting a woman how,--as she says, she had turned herself "from woman to man." She read this work to Philippe de Bourgogne in that same palace where she had once been a familiar inmate, where she had played as a child, where she had learned to know the famous men through whose aid Charles V. had well-nigh regenerated France. It is not surprising that Philippe de Bourgogne should think of her as specially fitted to undertake a task requiring intimate knowledge of that king and his time.

The duke, sending for her one day as she sat in the midst of a pile of books, pen in hand, asked her to undertake the writing of a life of his great brother.

With ready devotion she set about writing the life of Charles V., of the king who, "when I was a child, gave me my bread." In due time her book, _Le Livre des faits et bonnes moeurs du roi Charles V._, was completed; but he for whom she had written it had died in 1404, before half was done. The loss of her generous friend and protector was a serious blow to the poetess. Her mother had also died; while Christine must plod wearily on, though "her heart was filled with joy when she remembered that the day was not very far off when she herself would go to join the loved ones."

The history of Charles V. is a work of which one hardly knows what to say. As history, it is manifestly a failure, for Christine had either no wish or no opportunity to present facts in a narrative at once accurate, detailed, and clear; her work lacks both the accuracy and the breadth of view of genuine history; it is rather, as one critic remarks, an _eloge_, a eulogy upon Charles V.--which, indeed, had been what Philippe desired. The book is in prose, and though the style lacks the clearness and vividness to which we are accustomed in such men of genius as Villehardouin, Joinville, and her own contemporary, Froissart, we must remember that these men had reached the high-water mark of French style, not to be equalled, in sober truth, till the Renaissance, the "New Birth," had regenerated the fallen life and literature of Europe. As prose of the early fifteenth century, Christine's work is better than any other then written, except that of Froissart; and not a little of his charm comes less from the style than from the matters of which he chose to write. There is in Christine's book little of the gorgeousness of chivalry: was not the king in whose praise she wrote a king who won his battles at the council table, while Du Guesclin, upon the field of battle, gave the hard knocks which his sovereign, weak and sickly, could neither give nor take? Where Christine does succeed is in her portraits of the king and his courtiers, whose characters she knew perfectly and whose good and bad traits she does not scruple to depict with such even justice as she may. To quote the words of one of her most recent critics, who does not fail to call attention to the awkward Latinisms of her diction and the lopsided Ciceronian periods in her attempts at elevation or eloquence: "No one has made us feel more distinctly the winning grace of the Duke d'Orleans, brother of Charles VI., nor has any one better depicted the physical aspect of Charles V.; clearly do we see the long face, the broad forehead, the prominent eyes, and the thin lips; the beard is very thick, the cheekbones high and prominent, the skin brown and pale, the whole countenance thin to emaciation; it is the face of an ascetic, tempered by the gentleness of the expression and something staid and thoughtful in the whole look. Nor is there mere ba.n.a.lity and commonplace in the moral portrait of the king; if she praises his chevalerie (chivalry), she does not conceal the fact that, weak and sickly, his hand never drew the sword from the day of his accession to the day of his death."

The mere list of Christine's works would fill much s.p.a.ce, and in the end we should not be much edified thereby; for she was a voluminous writer, really a hack writer, and therefore turned out a huge pile of ill-considered stuff, in prose and in verse, which she well knew would win no fame for her it were sufficient could it but win bread for her children! Much of this work is mere paraphrase of Latin authors of great repute and much read in the Middle Ages, though now all but forgotten: the moral Seneca, the martial Vegetius and Frontinus, Valerius Maximus, and honest Plutarch (whom critics praise, and only unfortunate boys read). It is from these and the like of these that she gleaned much of such works as _L'Epitre d'Othea a Hector_, on the training of a prince; _Le Chemin de Long Estude_, a long moral poem (1402); _Le Livre de Prudence; Le Livre des Faits d'armes et de chevalerie; Le Livre de Police_ (political economy). With such compilations, doubtless both useful and interesting when there were fewer books of general information, encyclopedias and the like, Christine filled many a ma.n.u.script, and much of her work still remains in ma.n.u.script, though the _Societe des anciens textes francais_ is slowly reprinting her works, which will fill four large volumes with verse alone and overflow into several more with prose.

With the great ma.s.s of the work left by Christine de Pisan we shall not even attempt to deal; but the presentation of one of her favorite enthusiasms will prove, we hope, of some interest. Though forced to earn her own bread and so to compete with men, Christine never forgot that she was a woman; neither in conduct nor in her writings did she ever so behave or so write as to forfeit that dearest of her privileges as a woman, the respect of men. Not only did she respect herself, but she was determined that men should respect her, and moreover that they should not with impunity malign woman. We have shown in a previous chapter how outrageous was the literary att.i.tude toward the fair s.e.x, whom the satirists, big and little, were never tired of belaboring as the authors of all the evil in the world. Marriage and love are, of course, fertile subjects of satiric humor, as when the groom is told, in the _sermon joyeux_ on the _Maux de mariage_ (Misfortunes of Marriage), that, from the very wedding day: "all his money will take wings and fly away, but his wife will stay," and stay, and stay, until he is dead and buried, and then, as the church bell tolls his knell his dear wife will be thinking of how she can manage to marry his servant. "Verily," says another, speaking of the pilgrimage of marriage, "'tis a road to which there is no end till the weaker of the two be dead." It was this att.i.tude against which Christine entered a vigorous protest, and she got into a little war of words with two of her contemporaries.

In several of the minor poems noted above there are allusions to the wrong of boastfulness, mendacity, and evil speaking about women; but in the _epitre au Dieu d'Amour_ (properly the Epistle _of_, not _to_, the G.o.d of Love), she brings upon the scene Love himself, who complains of and ridicules tale-telling and blabbing gallants, always ready to recount imaginary conquests of any woman whose name is mentioned. What honor is there, she asks, in deceiving a woman? This was in May, 1399, and it was not many years before she began to a.s.sault the chief citadel of the scorners of womanhood, the great _Roman de la Rose_. Her _Dit de la Rose_ is dated on a day of all others most propitious to lovers, Saint Valentine's day, in the year 1402. Her poem contains the graceful conception of an order of chivalry whose symbol shall be the rose (so long fraught with evil a.s.sociations through the influence of ungenerous clerks), and the chief of the vows exacted of the good knights shall be, never to be licentious, in word or in deed, with regard to women. The gauntlet thus thrown down before the admirers of the satirist one might almost say misogynist Jean de Meung, was not long in finding those willing to take it up. Two secretaries of Charles VI., Jean de Montreuil and Gonthier Col, a.s.sumed the defence of the _Roman de la Rose_, and various letters, sometimes couched in terms of good-humored raillery, sometimes sly and cutting, were exchanged between them and Christine.

Which side, considered merely as debaters, really had the better of the literary duel we need not care; for the common-sense and the moral point of view was certainly not that which justified general condemnation of woman as an inferior and wicked creature, and also justified the degradation of the n.o.blest emotions to mere sensuality. Christine, however, thought that she had made out such a good case for maligned femininity that she collected her letters and the answers, and dedicated the whole correspondence to Isabeau de Baviere. It would be a pleasant relief to the gaudy colors in the picture of that unworthy queen if we could feel that she appreciated the delicate compliment thus paid her, or in any way encouraged the worthy defender of her s.e.x.

This collection of prose and verse was not the only plea Christine made for women. She composed two other works, in prose, whose dominant notion is the rehabilitation of honest womanhood. The first of these, called _La Cite des Dames_, is one of those compilations descending in the main from Boccaccio's Latin work, _De Claris Mulieribus_, "Concerning Famous Women," of which Chaucer's _Legend of Good Women_ and Tennyson's _Dream of Fair Women_ are the greatest examples: the present work itself, indeed, is a record of this nature. But that which Chaucer and Tennyson treat poetically, imaginatively, with all the art of minds supremely artistic, Christine treats in a rather matter-of-fact way; that is, she is concerned to tell such anecdotes of famous women as will support her thesis of the essential n.o.bility of the feminine character. In this way she has acc.u.mulated a considerable amount of evidence showing the patience, the devotion, the fidelity, the heroism of which women are capable under all circ.u.mstances of life. The heroines of antiquity are not alone in eliciting Christine's praises; for she devotes some attention to the patterns of virtue in her own day, to princesses, and to simple bourgeoises, and to one Anastasia, who is of peculiar interest to us because she was a fine illuminator, and may have been the artist who executed the beautiful illuminations in the ma.n.u.scripts of Christine's own works.

The second of the prose works in behalf of women is the _Livre des Trois Vertus_, or _Tresor de la Cite des Dames_, a book of sage counsel to women of all cla.s.ses and full of information most valuable for the historian of manners. It is from this book that one receives the best impression of the fine moral character and catholicity of view of this woman living a life of hards.h.i.+p and struggle in the dark days of the mad king. She is no prude, but simple and charitable in her conception of the problems of life. Though herself a literary woman, she does not place too great stress upon learning for her s.e.x: "This woman in love with scholars.h.i.+p intends, to be sure, that woman should acquire learning; but it must be for the purpose of developing her intelligence, of raising her heart to higher things, not of widening her field of ambitions, dethroning man and reigning in his stead."

The prodigious activity of this auth.o.r.ess can best be appreciated by reference to her own statement that, by the year 1405, she had "produced fifteen works of importance, without counting other special little _ditties_, which together fill about seventy sheets of large size." The chief part of her work was already done; for the disturbed condition of the kingdom after the murder of Louis d'Orleans (1407) interrupted her labors. She had thoroughly naturalized herself in her adopted country, and this fervent patriot, who grieved that she was helpless to save France, must have suffered intensely during the dark years that followed. In 1410, she wrote a _Lamentation_ upon the horrors of civil war, and two years later, after the overthrow of the communist government of Paris, the Cabochiens, she wrote a _Livre de la Paix_, full of harsh but just criticisms upon those butchers and bakers who would reform the whole world if first allowed to destroy it. Then came the greater sorrows of Agincourt and the English conquest. Christine fled from Paris, no longer the home of those princes who had favored her, and found refuge in a convent, probably the convent at Poissy to which her daughter had already retired. It was the breaking up of her little family, her two sons going back to Italy to seek a more favorable field for their peaceful talents, and the mother remaining in seclusion for eleven years.

It was probably not long before her death, of which we do not know the precise date, that the good lady heard in her cloister the glad news of the coming of the Maid of Orleans and of the consecration of the king at Rheims. All her love for her dear land of France welled up in her heart, and in gladness and wonder she sang the _Dittie de Jeanne d'Arc_, the praise of this "girl of sixteen years... before whom enemies fly, not one dare stand.... Oh! what honor to our s.e.x! our s.e.x, that G.o.d loves, it would seem." We cannot better conclude this account of a pure and n.o.ble woman--of one who loved her husband, her children and her country, and who, above all, preserved respect for herself and for her womanhood in an evil age--than in the words of her triumphant song of joy which proclaims that France is saved, and that it is a woman who saves France:

"Chose est bien digne de memoire Que Dieu par une vierge tendre Sur France si grand' grace estendre.

Tu Johanne, de bonne heure nee, Benoist (Beni) soit (le) Ciel qui te crea, Par miracle fut (elle) envoyee Au roi pour sa provision; Son fait n'est pas illusion, Car bien a ete eprouvee....

Par conseil en conclusion A l'effet la chose est prouvee, Et sa belle vie, par (ma) foi, Par quoi (laquelle) on ajoute plus (de) foi A son fait, quoi qu'elle fa.s.se, Toujours en Dieu devant la face....

Hee! quel honneur au feminin s.e.xe! que Dieu l'aime, il appert!"

CHAPTER XII

THE SAVIOR OF FRANCE

_Cettelle ne vient pas de la terre; elle est envoyee du ciel._ Thus it is that a contemporary, a great politician and satirist, Alain Chartier, expresses his convictions regarding the Maid of Orleans. To Christine de Pisan, too, she seemed, as we have seen, a messenger from G.o.d. It was a time when all good patriots wept, when the fair land of France was a prey to the spoiler, when Armagnac, Bourguignon, and hated Saxon roamed at will over the land and laid it waste. In one of Alain Chartier's political satires, _Le Quadriloge invectif_, the three estates of the realm n.o.bles, clergy, commons are in turn appealed to by La France, to "have pity of their common mother." The commons, or _Peuple_, replies: "It is the labor of my hands that feeds and clothes these cowardly loafers, and they oppress me with famine and the sword.... They live upon me, and I am slowly dying under them.... The banners of the host are raised, they say, against our enemies, but no deeds are done except against me." It was a complaint but too true, as was that in Chartier's _Livre de I'Esperance_: "The nights are too short for the shameless pleasures (of the gentlemen at court), and the days too short for sleeping.... It would seem that n.o.ble estate means no more than license to do wrong and yet go unpunished."

In this disregard of the moral law as well as of patriotic duties the dauphin himself led the way. One hardly knows what verdict to pa.s.s upon this man, for his character was a blend of qualities that might have made greatness and that yet resulted in nothing but meanness, littleness of soul, and ingrat.i.tude. It is not the acid meanness of Louis XI, his son, for that had a purpose; what in Louis XI was true vinegar, sharp and biting, had not yet gone through the full process of fermentation in Charles VII. and was simply a fluid evil to the taste, with no useful properties. Reared at a court where pleasure was the only law, under the evil influence of Isabeau de Baviere--whenever she thought to trouble herself about him--and, later, of the savage and unscrupulous Bernard d'Armagnac, who wished to retain power for himself and hence debauched the young prince, it is not surprising to find Charles a libertine, and one easily controlled by any favorite who happened to be in the ascendant. As a boy of sixteen he had been made an accomplice, whether constructively guilty or not of the actual crime, in the murder of Duke Jean de Bourgogne. At nineteen he was proclaimed King of France by his handful of followers, while the victorious English were proclaiming Henry VI. in Paris (1422). Defeat followed defeat for his armies, owing partly to the demoralization of the troops, partly to the inability of the leaders to maintain any sort of discipline among the bands of half savage men at arms from Gascony, Brittany, Scotland, and even Italy and Spain. Yet for most of the disasters, Charles himself was to blame, since he continued to lead a life of slothful pleasure, making no serious efforts to control himself or to take an active part in the affairs of his ruined kingdom.

The salvation of France was to come from a woman, one as nearly a saint as mortal can be; but some part of the preparation for the coming of that saint was made by other women, not by any means saintly. The wife of Charles VII. was Marie d'Anjou, who, with her husband, was under the domination of her mother, Yolande d'Aragon, one of those active, able, but unscrupulous women who rule by intrigue, who are content to let others claim the glory so long as the real secret of power is theirs.

Queen Yolande, anxious to preserve the dignity of the house of Anjou for her son Rene, needed the support of France, and she hated England. She gained a remarkable ascendency over Charles VII., and used this most wisely for the good of France, though some of her methods may seem of a sort to disconcert prevailing opinions.

Seeing that Charles was by nature a libertine, she determined to make use of that side of his character, although at the expense of her own daughter. It was she who presented to Charles that famous and lovely _Dame de beaute_, Agnes Sorel. The role played by this mistress of the king is truly admirable as well as remarkable. Agnes was no vulgar woman, but an Aspasia of her time, of n.o.ble birth, beautiful, and of a character gentle as well as essentially good. It is no paradox to p.r.o.nounce her good, though she led a life condemned by moral laws; for the laxity of the age must be considered, as well as the methods of the mistress herself. Even the wife of her royal lover respected Agnes Sorel, and there was friends.h.i.+p between them. So far from seeking to surround herself with idle and vicious companions and encouraging Charles in offending useful friends or wise counsellors, she used her influence, in conjunction with Yolande, to establish the credit of the Constable de Richemont, the most useful of Charles's allies at this time.