• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1446 0

war in their own interests. Physically, “nature seemed to have been prodigal in her gifts” to him. Above average height, robust in figure, wearing his blond hair to his shoulder, he was frank, energetic, gracious, carelessly and excessively generous, giving to anyone and everyone regardless of what was in his Treasury, lacking in steadiness or seriousness. During a hunt when he was thirteen, a deer was reportedly taken wearing a golden collar inscribed in “ancient characters”: Caesar hoc mihi donavit. Told that the deer must have been in the forest since the days of Julius Caesar “or some other emperor,” the boy King was so enchanted that he ordered all the royal plate and other furnishings to be engraved with a deer wearing a collar in the form of a crown. No less easily inflamed in amours, he was the victim, according to the Monk of St. Denis, of “carnal appetites,” and was equally quickly disenchanted. Instability trembled beneath outward health. His mother, Queen Jeanne, had suffered a phase of insanity in 1373, his heritage was a web of intermarriage, all his sisters but one had died before maturity.

The charm of Isabeau and the delights of marriage were suitably dwelt upon by his various aunts and uncles at the resplendent double wedding of Burgundy’s son and daughter at Cambrai in April 1385. As a prince of great pretensions, Philip intended the ceremony to outshine any that had gone before. He borrowed the crown jewels from Charles VI, transported extra tapestries and special jousting horses from Paris, ordered special liveries made for the occasion of red and green velvet (the two most expensive colors), furnished all the ladies with gowns of cloth of gold, and supplied a thousand jousting lances for the tournament. Papal dispensations of consanguinity were obtained in duplicate, one from each Pope because the marriages spanned the schism. Gifts were distributed throughout festivities that lasted five days, and their cost was twice that of the clothes. The total cost was 112,000 livres, equal to one quarter the revenues of the Flemish-Burgundian state in a time of deep social anger and want.

Isabeau reached France in July after being tutored for four weeks, at the court of her Wittelsbach relatives in Hainault, in French dress, etiquette, and flirtation. The meeting with Charles took place at Amiens, where the French court had moved owing to renewed war in Flanders. The King, in a fever of excitement, arrived on July 13, the same day that Coucy arrived from Avignon “in great haste with news of the Pope,” although what news is not recorded. Sleepless and agitated, Charles kept asking, “When will I see her?” and when he did, fell instantly enamored, gazing at the German girl with admiration and ardor. Asked if she was to become Queen of France, he replied forcefully, “By my faith, yes!”

Isabeau understood nothing of what was being said because her lessons had apparently left her innocent of the French language except for a few words spoken in a thick German accent. Her manner, however, was alluring, and Charles’s impatience was such that the wedding followed hastily on July 17 to the accompaniment of numerous jokes about the hot young couple. “And if,” concluded Froissart, “they passed that night together in great delight, one can well believe it.” No such eager marriage was ever to sink to a sadder end, in madness, debauchery, and hate.

After Venus, Mars. Even before the truce with England was due to expire in October, the Scots had sent envoys to ask for a French force to join them “and make so great a hole in England that it should never be recovered.” The pride of France welcomed the chance to show themselves not only strong enough to repel attack but ready to take the offensive. The English should be shown that they could not always be the aggressor but must “get accustomed themselves to being attacked”—in their own land, as Coucy had suggested to Charles V. Philip the Bold, who effectively controlled the government, arranged for Admiral de Vienne, “a knight of proven valor and a passion for glory,” to take