A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times, Volume 3

Excerpt

CHAPTER XXIII.——THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR—
CHARLES VI. AND THE DUKES OF BURGUNDY.

Sully, in his Memoirs, characterizes the reign of Charles VI. as "that reign so pregnant of sinister events, the grave of good laws and good morals in France." There is no exaggeration in these words; the sixteenth century with its St. Bartholomew and The League, the eighteenth with its reign of terror, and the nineteenth with its Commune of Paris, contain scarcely any events so sinister as those of which France was, in the reign of Charles VI., from 1380 to 1422, the theatre and the victim.

Scarcely was Charles V. laid on his bier when it was seen what a loss he was and would be to his kingdom. Discord arose in the king's own family. In order to shorten the ever critical period of minority, Charles V. had fixed the king's majority at the age of fourteen. His son, Charles VI., was not yet twelve, and so had two years to remain under the guardianship of his four uncles, the Dukes of Anjou, Berry, Burgundy, and Bourbon; but the last being only a maternal uncle and a less puissant prince than his paternal uncles, it was between the other three that strife began for temporary possession of the kingly power.

Though very unequal in talent and in force of character, they were all three ambitious and jealous. The eldest, the Duke of Anjou, who was energetic, despotic, and stubborn, aspired to dominion in France for the sake of making French influence subserve the conquest of the kingdom of Naples, the object of his ambition. The Duke of Berry was a mediocre, restless, prodigal, and grasping prince. The Duke of Burgundy, Philip the Bold, the most able and the most powerful of the three, had been the favorite, first of his father, King John, and then of his brother, Charles V., who had confidence in him and readily adopted his counsels. His marriage, in 1369, with the heiress to the countship of Flanders, had been vigorously opposed by the Count of Flanders, the young princess's father, and by the Flemish communes, ever more friendly to England than to France; but the old Countess of Flanders, Marguerite of France, vexed at the ill will of the count her son, had one day said to him, as she tore open her dress before his eyes, "Since you will not yield to your mother's wishes, I will cut off these breasts which gave suck to you, to you and to no other, and will throw them to the dogs to devour." This singular argument had moved the Count of Flanders; he had consented to the marriage; and the Duke of Burgundy's power had received such increment by it that on the 4th of October, 1380, when Charles VI. was crowned at Rheims, Philip the Bold, without a word said previously to any, suddenly went up and sat himself down at the young king's side, above his eldest brother, the Duke of Anjou, thus assuming, without anybody's daring to oppose him, the rank and the rights of premier peer of France.

He was not slow to demonstrate that his superiority in externals could not fail to establish his political preponderance. His father-in-law, Count Louis of Flanders, was in almost continual strife with the great Flemish communes, ever on the point of rising against the taxes he heaped upon them and the blows he struck at their privileges....