The Royal Succession (31 page)

The bells shattered the air as they rang out his triumph; outside the people were cheering, wishing him glory and long life; all his adversaries were defeated. He had a son to assure his line, a happy wife to share his sorrows and his joys. The Kingdom of France was his.

`How weary I am, how very weary!' Philippe thought.

To this king of twenty-three, who had imposed himself on the kingdom by his own tenacious will, who had accepted the benefits of crime, and who possessed all the gifts of a great monarch, nothing, indeed, seemed to be lacking.

The days of chastisement were about to begin.

The End

Continued in Book 5 " The She Wolf of France"

Historical notes

1
. Charles of Valois (see preceding volumes), second son of Philippe III and Isabella of Aragon, younger brother of Philip the Fair, was nominated at the age of thirteen, by Pope Martin IV, to receive the throne of Aragon which had been withdrawn from his Uncle Pierre of Aragon, who had been excommunicated after the massacre of the Sicilian Vespers. Crowned as a matter of form in 1284, during the disastrous campaign conducted by Philippe III, the Bold, who was to die immediately afterwards, Valois never occupied his throne and finally renounced it in 1295.

Later, having married as his second wife Catherin
e de Courtenay, titular heiress
to Byzantium, he bore, from 1301 to 1313, the title of Emperor of Constantinople.

The relationship between Charles of Valois and Clemence of Hungary is among the most complicated that have ever existed; Valois was cousin to Clemence, because they were both descended, one in the third and the other in the fourth generation, from Louis VIII of France. He was also her uncle twice over. In the first place because he had married as his first wife Marguerite of Anjou-Sicily's Clemence's aunt, and secondly because he married Clemence off to his nephew, Louis X.

But he was also related to the Anjou family in another way, having in 1313 married his eldest daughter by Catherine de Courtenay, Catherine of Valois, to Philippe, Prince of Taranto, the brother of his first wife. He was thus also great-uncle by marriage to Queen Clemence.

It was owing to the Valois-Taranto marriage that the titular crown of Constantinople, which was part of Catherine of Valois' inheritance, had had to be abandoned by Charles to his son-in-law Prince Philippe.

2. These quotations are from the Elixir des Philosophes by Cardinal Jacques Dueze, Pope John XXII. This work, besides a dictionary of the principal terms of alchemy, contains curious recipes, such as the following for `purifying', a child's urine: `Take it and put it in a jar and let it remain for three days or four; then pour it out gently; let it stand again till the solids sink to the bottom. Then heat it well and - skim it until it is reduced to a third; then strain it through felt and keep it well stoppered against the corruption of the air.'

3. It was not until about the middle of his pontificate, in 1325, that Jacques Dueze (John XXII) began to proclaim in sermons and studies his theory of the beatific vision, One may, however, well sups pose that he had been interested in the subject for a long time.

His theory was passionately argued among all the theologians in Europe, arguments which lasted several years and nearly brought about a schism.: The University of Paris condemned John XXII's theories and the question arose of deposing the `Pope of Cahors', as he was derisively called. Dueze retracted on his deathbed, the day before his death, doubtless anxious to preserve the unity of the Church. He was ninety years of age.

Among other propositions put forward by this strange and fascinating Pontiff must be noted that concerning the legislative powers of the Pope. According to him a pope might modify all legislation created by his, predecessors; he considered, indeed, that popes, being men, were incapable of knowing or foreknowing everything, and that their laws were thus subject to the consequences of change in the world, which necessitated new rules of conduct.

John XXII also pronounced himself against the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, but considered that if Mary had been conceived with original sin, God had purified her before birth but at a moment, he added,' difficult precisely to determine.

It was also he, if Viollet-le-Duc's opinion is correct, who added the third crown to the tiara of which, indeed, no trace is to be found in the Papal effigies before his reign.

3
. The sovereign lords of Viennois
bore the name of `Dauphin' be
cause of the dolphin which ornamented their crests and their arms, from which arose the name of Dauphine, given to the whole region over which they exercised sovereignty, and which included: Gresivaudan, Roannez, Champsaur, Briancorinais, Ambrunois, Gapencais, Viennois, Valentinois, Diois, Tricastinois and the Principality of Orange.

At the beginning of the fourteenth century the sovereignty was exercised by the third dynasty of the Dauphins of Vienne, that of La Tour du Pin. It was not until the end of the reign of Philippe VI of Valois, by the treaties of 1343 and 1349, that the Dauphine was ceded by Humbert II to the Crown of France, on condition that the eldest son of the Kings of France should hencef
orth bear the title of Dauphin.

5. Most authors give the figure of twenty-three for the cardinals at the Conclave of 1314-16. We make the number twenty-four.

The party of the `Romans' consisted of six Italians: Jacques Colonna, Pierre Colonna, Napoleon Orsini, Francois Caetani, Jacques Stefaneschi-Caetani, Nicolas Alberti (or Albertini) de Prato, one Angevin from Naples, Guillaume de Longis, and finally a Spaniard, Lucas de Flisco (sometimes called Fieschi), brother of the King of Aragon. These cardinals had been created before the pontificate of Clement V and the installation of the Papacy at Avignon; the hat had been conferred on them between 1278 and 1303, during the reigns of Nicolas III, Nicolas IV, Celestin V, Boniface XVIII and Benoit XI.

All
the
others had been created by Clement V. The party called `Provencal' comprised: Guillaume de Mandagout, Berenger Fredol the elder, Berenger Fredol the younger, the native of Cahors, Jacques Dueze and the Normans, Nicolas de Freauville and Michel du Bec:

Finally the Gascons, who were ten in number, were Arnaud de Pelarue, Arnaud de Fougeres, Arnaud Nouvel, Arnaud d'Auch; Raymond-Guillaume de Farges, Bernard de Garves, Guillaume-Pierre Godin, Raymond de Got, Vital du Four and Guillaume Teste.

In preceding volumes we have mentioned the death of Clement V, the aggression of Carpentras and the vagrant conclave.

6. Until the middle of the twelfth century the town of Lyons was under the power of the Counts de Forez and de Roannez, under the purely nominal suzerainty of the Emperor of Germany.

After 1173, the Emperor having recognized the sovereign rights of the Archbishop of Lyons, Primate of the Gaules, Lyonnais was separated from Forez and the town was governed by ecclesiastical power with rights of justice, minting coinage and raising troops.

This rule displeased the Commune of Lyons, which was composed exclusively of burgesses and merchants, who struggled to emancipate
themselves for more than a century. After several unsuccessful rebellions, they appealed to King Philip the Fair who, in 1292, took

Lyons under his protection.

Twenty years later, on April loth, 1312, a treaty was concluded between the Commune, the Archbishop and the King, uniting Lyons permanently to the kingdom of France.

In spite of the claims made by Jean de Marigny, Archbishop of Sens, who controlled the diocese of Paris, the Archbishop of Lyons succeeded in keeping the Primacy of the Gaules, the only one of his prerogatives which remained to him.

By the end of the Middle Ages, Lyons had approximately 24 tavern-keepers, 32 barbers, 48 weavers, 56 tailors, 44 fishmongers, 36 butchers, grocers and sausage-makers, 57 shoemakers, 36 bakers, 25 fruit merchants, 87 lawyers, 15 goldsmiths or gilders, and 2o drapers.

The town was administered by the Commune, which consisted of burgesses engaged in business who elected, on December 21st each year, twelve consuls, always notable men and selected from among the rich families; this consular body was called the 'Syndical'.

7. The family of Varay, drapers and money-changers, was one of the oldest and most considerable in Lyonnais.

Thirty-one of its members bore the title of Consul; some were frequently re-elected, and one of them as many as ten times. There were eight members of the Varay family among the fifty citizens whom the inhabitants of Lyons chose as their leaders, in 1285, in the struggle against the Archbishop and to achieve annexation by France.

8. The `Knights Pursuivant', created by Philippe V at the beginning of his reign,' were nominated by the King to accompany him and advise him; some of them were always .with him on all his journeys.

Among them are to be found close relations of the King, such as the Count of Valois, the Count of Evreux, the Count de la Marche, the Count of Clermont; great lords such as the Counts de Forez, Boulogne, Savoy, Saint-Pol, Sully, Harcourt, and Comminges; great officers of the Crown such as the Constable, the Marshals, the Master of the Crossbowmen, as well as other personages, such as members of the Secret Council or `the Council which governs', jurists, administrators of the Treasury, ennobled burgesses and personal friends of the King. There are to be found such names as Mille de Noyers, Giraud Guette, Guy Florent, Guillaume Flotte, Guillaume Courteheuse, Martin des Essarts, Anseau de Joinville.

These knights more or less foreshadowed the `Gentlemen of the Chamber' instituted by Henri III and kept in being until the reign of Charles X.

9. The Roman Church has never, as its adversaries have contended, sold a
bsolution. But it has, and this
is quite a different matter, made sinners pay for the Bulls given them to prove that they had received absolution for their sin.

These Bulls were necessary when the sin or crime had become public knowledge and proof had to be produced of having been absolved in order to be readmitted to the sacraments.

The same principle was applied in civil law for letters of reprieve and remissions granted by the King; the delivery of these letters and their being recorded in the registers were taxed. This very ancient custom dated from the Franks before even their conversion to Christianity. John XXII's idea was, through his Book of Taxes and by the creation of the Holy Apostolic Penitentiary, to codify and make general this usage; it was an idea which brought in considerable revenues to the Church, as is proved by the flourishing condition of the pontifical treasury at this Pope's death.

Members of the clergy were not alone in being affected by these Bulls; the laity was also taxed. The tariffs were calculated in gros, which were worth about six livres.

Thus parricide, fratricide, or the murder of a relation among laymen was taxed between five and seven gros, as was incest, the rape of a virgin, or the theft of sacred objects. The husband who beat his wife or made her miscarry was fined six gros, and seven if the wife had her hair torn out.
The heaviest fine, twenty-seven
gros, was imposed for the forgery of apostolic letters, that is to say the Pope's signature.

The fines increased with time, in proportion to the devaluation of the coinage.

But, once again, it was not a question of buying absolution; it was a question of duty being raised for registering and f
urnishing the authentic proof.

The innumerable pamphlets put into circulation, after the Reformation to discredit the Roman Church were all based on this wilful confusion.

It is, moreover, a remarkable fact that at the precise period when John XXII created the Holy Penitentiary, King Philippe V, on his side, was reorganizing the functioning of the Royal Chancellery, and revising the tariffs;

10
. The Predicant Friars, or Dominicans, were also called Jacobins because of the Church of Saint-Jacques which had been given to them in Paris, and about which they had established their community.

The monastery at Lyons, where the Conclave of 1316 was held, had been built in 1236 on a site behind the Hotel of the Templars. The monastery extended from the present Place des Jacobins to the Place Bellecour.

11, Geoffroy Coquatrix (without doubt from the term conquatier, an egg and poultry merchant), who first married Marie La Marcelle, then Jeanne Gencien, kept until his death, in 1321, all the posts he had accumulated under three reigns, and for which he never rendered any accounts. It was only the son of Charles of Valois, Philippe VI, who, after 1328, asked for these accounts from Geoffroy Coquatrix's heirs; but he had to give up and ultimately absolved the sons from having to justify their father's administration, though they had to forfeit a sum of fifteen thousand livres.

12. These arguments were first used in the States General of February 1317, and again at the deaths of Philippe V and Charles IV, when the succession to the throne of France was involved in somewhat similar circumstances. There is little doubt that the Constable Gaucher de Chatillon, who lived and held his appointment until 1328, played a preponderant part in denying the throne to women:

13. It is generally forgotten that the Capet monarchy was originally elective and that this preceded, or at least coexisted with, its hereditary character.

At the accidental death of the last Carolingian, Louis V the Slothful, who died at the age of twenty after a reign of a few months, the dukes and counts elected one of their number. They chose Hugues, Duke of France, whose father Hugues the Great, Count of Paris, Duke of France and Burgundy, had i
n fact exercised the powers of
government during the last reigns.

Hugues Capet (that is to say Hugues the Head, Hugues the Chief)
immediately associated his
son Robert II with the throne by having him elected as his successor and crowned in t
he same year as himself. Almost
the same procedure was followed during the five following reigns, up to and including that of Philippe-Auguste. As soon as the eldest son of the King was nominated heir-presumptive, the peers had
to ratify the choice and the newly elec
ted heir was crowned during his
father's lifetime.

It was only at the time of Louis VIII, 227 years after Hugues
Capet, that the formality of a preliminary election was abandoned.

Louis VIII inherited the Crown of France at the death of Philippe
Auguste, on July 14th, 1223, exactly as he would have inherited a fief: It was on July 14th that the French monarchy became truly hereditary.

At the time of Philippe the Long's Regency the new custom was less than a century old.

14. In the genealogies the Christian name of Louis is generally given to the son of Philippe V, who was born in. July 1316. But in the accounts of Geoffroy de Fleury, Bursar to Philippe the Long, who began to keep his books in that year, precisely on July 12th, when he assumed his functions, the child is mentioned by the name of Philippe.

Other genealogists mention two sons of whom one was born in 1315 and was therefore conceived while Jeanne of Burgundy was a prisoner at Dourdan; this seems incredible when one considers the efforts Mahaut made to reconcile her daughter and her son-in-law.

The child who was the fruit of this reconciliation probably received several Christian names, among them both Philippe and Louis; and, since he lived but a short while, the latter-day chroniclers probably, became confused.

15. Blanche of Castille's seizure of power was not, however, without its difficulties. Though nominated by an act of King Louis VIII, her husband, as guardian and regent, Blanche was opposed by the violent hostility of the great vassals who disliked the idea of the kingdom being in the hands of a woman.

But Blanche of Castille was a woman of a different stamp from Clemence of Hungary. Moreover, she had been Queen for ten years and had twelve children. She triumphed over the barons, thanks to the support of Count Thibaud of Champagne, who was said to be her lover. It was even whispered that she used him to poison her husband; but there are no real grounds for this suspicion.

16. There is a remarkable similarity between the madness of Robert of Clermont and that which attacked King Charles VI, who was his nephew in the fifth generation on the male side, and in the fourth generation on the female side.

In both cases the madness began with a wound, with cranial traumatism in the case of Clermont, without traumatism in the case of Charles VI, though in each case the madness became dangerous; they both had periods of frenzy followed by long periods of calm in which their behaviour appeared normal; they were both obsessed with a love for tournaments which they could not be prevented from organizing
and in which they themselves took part, though sometimes in a state of delirium. Clermont, mad and dangerous as he was, had permission to h
unt all over the royal domain.
He also appeared in Philip the Fair's army during one of the campaigns in Flanders, as Charles VI, who had been mad for twenty years, took part, during his reign, in the siege of Bourges and in all the battles against the Duke of Berry.

Clermont died on February 7th, 1317, a month after Philippe V's coronation.

17. The accustomed cries at the beginning of a tournament.

18
. These two children were later to marry each other and receive the crown of Navarre.

19
. Children's toys and games have scarcely altered since the Middle Ages. They already had balls of various sizes made of leather or cloth, hoops, tops, dolls, hobby-horses and quoits. They played at blindman's-buff, prisoners' base, counting each other out, tag, hot cockles, hide-and-seek and leapfrog, and also at puppets. Little boys in rich families also had imitation suits of armour made to measure: helmets of light steel, coats of mail, blunt swords, the ancestors of the modern soldier or cowboy suits.

20; The second daughter of Agnes of Burgundy, Jeanne, married to Philippe of Valois, future Philippe VI, was lame like her first cousin, Louis I of Bourbon, son of Robert of Clermont.

There was also lameness in the collateral branch of Anjou, since King Charles II, grandfather of Clemence of Hungary, had the surname of `the Lame'. There is a tradition, recapitulated by Mistral in the Iles d'Or, which has it that, when the ambassador of the King of France, the Count de Bouville, came to ask Clemence's hand in marriage for his master, he demanded that the Princess should undr
ess before him so that he might
make sure her legs were straight.

Jeanne of Burgundy's infirmity was accompanied by a pathological cruelty which, when she came to the throne, earned her the name of `the Bad Queen of France' or `the Lame Queen'.

The list of her victims is a long one, It is possible that Marguerite of Burgundy (who seems to have been affected, amid all the defects of her family, only with excessive sensuality) has been credited with a great many of the cruelties inflicted by her younger sister.

Among other examples, Jeanne endeavoured to get rid of Archbishop Jean de Marigny by preparing him a poisoned bath. She also forged death sentences which she sealed with the King's seal. Philippe VI, having on one occasion discovered her in the act, whipped, her so violently with birch-rods that he nearly killed her.

When she died of plague in 1349, the populace with considerable satisfaction saw in it the punishment of Heaven;

21.'The hauberk (broigne)
was a garment of leather, cloth
or-velvet, - on which were sewn steel rings; and which had replaced the coat of mail properly so called. On the hauberk, to reinforce it, had begun to appear pieces of steel called `plates' from which derives the name plate armour - which were forged to the shape of the body and articulated like the tails of crayfish.

22. Mahaut drew up a detailed list of the thefts and damage committed in her Castle of Hesdin, a list which contained no fewer than a hundred and twenty-nine articles.

She began a lawsuit in the Court of Justice in Paris to obtain damages, which were partially accorded her by a judgement of May 9th, 1321.

23. Philippe V was called the Long, the Tall, or the Myope.

24. There are three methods of election in the Conclave:

i. By secret scrutiny, completed if necessary by a second scrutiny called `of accession'; the majority must consist of two-thirds of the votes.

2. By delegation, if the Cardinals unanimously appoint some among them to elect the Pope in the name of them all.

3. By `inspiration' or `acclamation'.

Some authors assert that Jacques Dueze was elected by delegation; this opinion may have been based on the numerous negotiations which his election involved. But in fact Dueze was elected by an ordinary vote, since there were the regulation number of four tellers whose names are known.

25. Miniver is the fur of a kind of squirrel, grey on the back and white underneath.

26. It was the custom at that time, in royal and princely families, to give children several godmothers and godfathers, sometimes as many as eight altogether. Thus Charles of Valois and Gaucher de Chatillon were both godfathers to Charles de la Marche, the third son of Philip the Fair, Mahaut was a godmother to this Prince, as she was to many other children in the family. Her selection to carry the posthumous child of Louis X to the font had, therefore, nothing surprising about it; not to have chosen her would, on the other hand, have been an insult.

27. Baptism at this period was always performed on the day after birth.

Total immersion in cold water was practised only until the beginning of the fourteenth century.

A synod, held at Ravenna in 1313, decided for the first time that baptism might also be given by aspersion, if there was a shortage of
holy, water, or if it was feared that total immersion would
imperil
the child's health.

But it was really only- in the fifteenth century, that the practice of immersion disappeared.

If to this form of baptism ar
e added the deplorable hygienic
conditions in which childbirth took place, it is easy to understand why the mortality among newborn children was so high during the Middle
Ages.

28. Queen Clemence was suffering, so it would appear, from puerperal fever.

29. When a newborn child showed signs of illness, medicines were not given to t
he child but to the wet-nurse.

30. These dispositions included not only the registering of private deeds 'but the granting of patents, authorizations for foreigners to reside or trade, and the warrants for royal officers. According to the Ordinance of 1321, it is to be noted for instance that deeds concerning Lombards and Jews were subject to the same tariffs: eleven sous for a letter with a plain label, seven livres and ten sous for a letter with a double label, and nine livres if the se
al affixed to these labels was
green wax, the colour reserved for the royal seal. The letters of appointment to office were charged fifty-one sous for bailiffs and seneschals, six sous for sergeantries or minor offices. Even the gifts or
revenues granted by the sovereign had to be certified by a document which was taxed.

31. The signs of mental derangement grew rapidly worse. Jean XXII, who had always protected Ciernence since she was a Princess of Anjou (did he not go so far as to grant, when he heard of her lying in, twenty days' indulgence to those who prayed for her and for her son!), was compelled, in the following month of May, to take the young widow to task by letter, telling her that she must live in seclusion, chastity, humility, be simple in the table she kept, modest in her speech and clothing, and not show herself only in the company of young men. At the same time he approached Philippe V to fix Clemence's dower, which was a matter of some difficulty.

On several occasions the Pope wrote again to Clemence exhorting her to reduce her private expenditure and asking her firmly to pay her debts, particularly that to the Bardi of Florence. Finally, in 1318, she had to make a retreat lasting several years in the Convent of Saint Mary of Nazareth, near Aix-en-Provence. But, before doing so, she was compelled, in order to satisfy the demands of her creditors, to make a deposit of all her jewels.

When she died, ten years later, in the Hotel of the Templars in Paris, which Philippe V had given her in exchange for the Chateau of Vincennes, all her personal possessions were sold by auction.

32. The brothers Jean and Pierre de Cressay were to be armed knights by Philippe VI of Valois, twenty years later, in 1346, on the battlefield of Cressay, on the eve of the famous English victory.

33. These figures are taken from the accounts of the coronation of Philippe VI, twelve years later. Neither prices nor quantities had much varied. On the other hand, all the details of the dresses and