The Royal Succession (24 page)

`She gave us a considerable fright; she screamed and even failed to, recognize her own child.'

Madame de Bouville insisted that Marie should receive no visitors and should be left in complete quiet and seclusion.

`If anyone comes to see her, do not let them in and send to warn me.'

That same day two lengths of gold cloth bespangled with lilies, two turkey sheets embroidered with the arms of France and eight ells of black cendal were brought to Vincennes for use in the burial of the first king of France who had borne the name of Jean. And, indeed, it was a child called Jean who was removed in a coffin so small that there was no need to place it on a vehicle; it was simply carried on the pack-saddle of a mule.

Master Geoffroy de Fleury, Bursar of the Palace, noted in his account book that the cost of the funeral amounted to one hundred and eleven livre
s, seventeen
sols and eight deniers.

There was no long ritual procession or ceremony at Notre
Dame. They went straight to Saint-Denis where the burial took place immediately after the mass. A narrow grave had been opened at the foot of the effigy of Louis X, which was still white and fresh in its newly carved stone; it was here, among the bones of the sovereigns of France, that the child of Marie de Cressay, Demoiselle of the Ile-de-France, and of Guccio Baglioni, Sienese merchant, was laid.

Adam Heron, First Chamberlain and Master of the Household, advanced to the edge of the little tomb and cried, looking at his master, Philippe of Poitiers: `The King is dead, long live the King!'

The reign of Philippe V, the Long, had begun; Jeanne of Burgundy had become Queen of France, and Mahaut of Artois was triumphant.

Only three people in the kingdom knew that the real King was alive. One of them had sworn on Holy Writ to keep the secret and the other two were fearful that the secret would not be kept.

After that Saturday of November loth, 1316, all the sovereigns who reigned over France were no more than a long line of involuntary usurpers.

6. France in
firm hands

To GAIN the throne Philippe V had used, within the monarchical constitution, the eternal process known in modern times
as a coup d'etat.

When, owing to his personal
authority
and the support of the clan surrounding him, he
had
found himself invested with the principal royal powers, he had persuaded the Assembly of July to ratify an
Act
dealing with the succession; it might, eventually, favour his own ambitions, but only after considerable delay and after certain preliminary conditions had been fulfill
ed. But the death of the little
King provided a new opportunity; Philippe, casting on one side the law he had himself established, immediately appropriated the crown without submitting to the delay or awaiting the conditions.

Power obtained in these circumstances was naturally subject to menace, at least at the outset.

Busy consolidating his position, Philippe had little time to savour his victory or indulge in
the self-
satisfactions of achieved ambition. The summit he had reached was a perilous one.

There was much talk in the kingd
om and suspicion was spreading.
But the weight of the King's hand was known, and those likely to suffer from it gathered about the Duke of Burgundy.

The latter hurried to Paris to contest the accession of his future father-in-law. He demanded that the Council of Peers be summoned and that Jeanne of Navarre be recognized Queen.

Philippe made no attempt to use guile. For the Regency he had offered his daughter and the, County of Burgundy; to keep the throne he offered the separation of the two crowns of France and Navarre, united so recently, and to give the inheritance of the little Pyrenean' kingdom to his brother's suspect daughter.

But if Jeanne were considered worthy to reign over Navarre, she would also be worthy of reigning over France. At least this was the conclusion reached by Duke Eudes, who refused to yield. Force would therefore be the deciding factor.

Eudes galloped away to Dijon, whence, in the name of his
niece, he issued a proclamation to all the lords of Artois, Picardy,
Brie and Champagne, inviting them to withhold their obedience from the usurper.

He wrote in similar terms to King Edward II of England who, in spite of the efforts of his wife Isabella, did his utmost to inflame the quarrel by taking the Burgundian part. In every division arising within the Kingdom of France, the English King saw the prospect of emancipating Guyenne.

`Is this to be the sole result of my having denounced the adultery of my sisters-in-law? thought Queen Isabella.

Seeing himself threatened in the north, the east and the southwest, anyone but Philippe the Long might perhaps have yielded. But the new King saw that he had several months in hand; the winter was no time for making war; his enemies would await the spring, if indeed they ultimately determined to put armies into the field. For Philippe the most urgent necessity was to be crowned and to clothe himself with the inalienable majesty conferred by coronation.

At first he wished to hold the ceremony at Epiphany; the Feast of the Kings seemed to him a good augury; and it was also the date his father had chosen to be, crowned. But representations were made to him that the burgesses of Rheims would not have enough time to prepare for it; he accorded them a delay of three days. The Court would leave Paris on January 1st, and the coronation take place on Sunday, the 9th.

Since Louis VIII, the first king not to have been elected during his predecessor's lifetime, the heir to the throne had never been so precipitate in repairing to Rheims.

But religious consecration was not enough for Philippe; he wished to add to it something that would fire the people's spirit in a new way.

He had often meditated the instructions of Egidio Colonna, Philip the Fair's tutor, the man who had formed the Iron King's thought. `Considered in absolute terms,' Egidio Colonna had written in his treatise on the principles of sovereignty, `it would be preferable that the king be elected; but the corrupt desires of men and their manner of acting must make heredity preferable to election.'

`I wish to be King with the consent of my subjects,' said Philippe the Long, `and only on that basis shall I feel really worthy to rule them. And since some among the greater do not support me, I shall take the opinion of the smaller.'

His father had shown him the road by summoning, at the difficult crises of his reign, assemblies in which all classes, all the
`Estates' of the realm, were represented. He decided that two assemblies of this nature, but larger than former ones, should be held, one in Paris for the langue d'oil, the other at Bourges for the langue d'oc, during the weeks following his coronation. And he used the phrase `States General'.

The lawyers were set to drafting the Bills to be presented to the Estates to ratify Philippe's accession to the throne by popular vote. The arguments of the Constable were naturally renewed to the effect that lilies could not spin wool and that the kingdom was too noble a thing to fall into the hands of wo
men. There were other still stro
nger arguments: that there were, for instance, three inter
mediate generations between the
venerated Saint Louis and Madame Jeanne of Navarre, while between Saint Louis and Philippe there were but two.

And this caused the Count of Valois to exclaim, not unjustifiably: `In that case, why should I not be chosen, for I am separated from Saint Louis only by my father!'

Finally the councillors to Parliament, spurred on by Messire de Noyers, exhumed, though without much belief in it, the ancient code of the customs of the Salian Franks, before the conversion of Clovis to Christianity. This code contained nothing concerning the transmission of the royal powers. It was a fairly rough system of civil and criminal jurisprudence, and almost incomprehensible moreover, since it was over eight centuries old. A brief paragraph laid it down that the inheritance of land must be by equal division among the male heirs. That was all,

No more was necessary for certain doctors of secular law to construct a thesis and support the doctrine for which they were being paid. The crown of France could go only to males, because the crown implied the possession of land. And the best proof that the Salian Code had been applied since the beginning was clearly to be found in the fact that only men had indeed succeeded to it. Thus Jeanne of Navarre could be eliminated without the unprovable accusation of bastardy being even brought forward.

The doctors were masters of their own obscurity. No one thought of objecting that the Merovingian dynasty was not derived from the Salians, but from the Sicambres and the Bructeres; and no one, for the moment, thought of examining the documents on which the famous Salic Law was supposed to be based - this law which was to triumph in history after it had ruined the kingdom by a hundred years of war.

The adultery of Marguerite of Burgundy was to cost France dear.

But for the moment the central powe
r was far from idle, Philippe w
as already reorganizing the administration, summoning important burgesses to his Council, and creating his `Knights Pursuivant', thus rewarding those who had served him unremittingly since Lyons.

From Charles of Valois he bought back the Mint at Mans, before
buying the ten others scattered
over France. From now on, all the coinage circulating in the kingdom would be minted by the King.

Remembering the ideas of John XXII, when he was still no more than Cardinal Dueze, Philippe prepared a reformed system of penal fines and chancellery dues. The lawyers would pay the dues in
to the Treasury every Saturday,
and the registration of deeds would be subject to tariffs decreed by the Exchequer."

He dealt with customs, provostships, captaincies of towns and the inland revenue as he had dealt with the chancelleries. The abuses and malversations, which had been freely indulged in since the death of the Iron King, were now sternly repressed. In every rank of society, in, every national activity, in the courts of justice, in the ports, in the market-places and in the fairgrounds, it was felt and appreciated that; France was now in firm hands - hands of twenty-three! Loyalty is not assured without favours, Philippe's accession was accompanied by considerable liberality.

The old Seneschal de Joinville had been taken back to his Chateau of Wassy, where he decl
ared he wished to die. He knew
that he had reached the very end of his life. His son, Anseau, who since Lyons had never left Philippe's side, one day said to the King: `My father has told me that strange things occurred at Vincennes at the time of the little King's death; disturbing rumours have come to his ears.'

`I know, I know,' Philippe replied. `I too have heard of certain curious events which took place during those days. Do you know what I think, Anseau? I don't want to slander Bouville, for I have no proof; but I sometimes wonder whether my nephew was not already dead when we went to Vincennes and whether another c
hild was not presented to us.'

`Why should he have done that?'

`I do not know. Fear that he would be blamed; fear that he would be accused by Valois and others. For, after all, he alone had charge of the child and obstinately refused to show him, do you remember? But it's only a feeling and not based on anything factual. Anyway, it's too late now.'

He paused and then added: `Anseau, I have put you down at the Treasury for a gift of four thousand livres, and this will show you how grateful I am for the help you have always been to me. And if on the day of the coronation my cousin, the Duke of Burgundy, as I believe, will not be there to put on my spurs, you a shall have that office. You rank high enough as a knight for that.'

For riveting mouths, gold has always been the best metal; and Philippe knew that with some men the rivet must be jewelled.

There remained Robert of Artois
' case to deal with; Philippe
congratulated himself on having kept his dangerous cousin in prison during recent events. But he could not keep him in the Chatelet indefinitely. Coronation is generally accompanied by acts of clemency and the granting of pardons. On the pressing demand of Charles of Valois, Philippe pretended to show himself a kindly prince.

`It's entirely to please you, Uncle,' he said; `Robert shall be given his freedom...'

He left the sentence in suspense and seemed to be calculating.

'... but only three days after my departure for Rheims,' he added, `and he will not be allowed to go more than twenty leagues from Paris.'

7. Shattered dreams

IN His progress towards the throne Philippe the Long had not only stepped over two corpses, he had left in his path two other broken lives, two crushed women, one a queen, the other obscure.

On the day after the funeral of the false Jean I at Saint-Denis, Madame Clemence of Hungary, whom everyone had thought was going to die, slowly began to recover consciousness and return to life. Some remedy had at last proved efficacious; fever and infection left her body as if to give place to other qualities of suffering. The first words the Queen uttered were to ask for her son, whom she had barely had time to see. Her memory was merely of a little naked body being rubbed with rosewater and placed in a cradle.