Read Online The Maid and the Queen by Nancy Goldstone - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Nancy Goldstone
Ads: Link
000-franc bequest that the duke put entirely to the purchase of a particularly fine gemstone that had caught his eye.
This level of ostentation and affluence did not go unnoticed by the rest ofthe kingdom. A vehement protest was raised when the duke of Orléans’s obviously improved financial circumstances necessitated an increase in taxes to replenish the treasury. Some of the populace’s anger directed against the king’s brother spilled off onto Isabeau as well, especially when it was revealed that she had secreted a fortune in gold in a convoy subsequently dispatched to Bavaria. The rampant public dissatisfaction with the queen and the duke of Orléans allowed a newcomer to rise to power: Philip the Bold’s son, John the Fearless, the new duke of Burgundy.
John the Fearless was thirty-three years old, as energetic, competent, and assured as his father had been, but also more direct and prone to impatience. He assumed that he held a degree of power and influence that he had not yet quite achieved, and this caused him to overreach politically. He was like an understudy who, from long years of observation in the wings, knew all the lines but whose performance once on stage lacked the nuance of the more seasoned principal actor.
John began, much to the approval of the general populace, with a call for an audit and overhaul of the realm’s finances. To counter the threat, Isabeau and Louis banded together against him and largely prevailed. For the next two years, John the Fearless struggled with a notable lack of success to displace the duke of Orléans from his position of authority in France. John tried to reform the treasury; Louis thwarted him by deftly replacing those members of the royal council loyal to John with his own supporters. John received authority from the king to negotiate a general peace with England; Louis undermined his efforts by ordering the admiral of the French fleet to launch an assault against English ships in the Channel. Even more unsettling, funds that the king had promised would be paid to the account of the duke of Burgundy never arrived, an administrative omission that John attributed, not unreasonably, to the duke of Orléans’s influence.
It is unclear at what point exactly the duke of Burgundy decided to take a shortcut to power, but certainly by the fall of 1407 he had given up on the conventional avenues by which influence is acquired in favor of a more direct approach. On November 23, 1407, the duke of Orléans had dinner and spent the early evening alone with the queen at her private residence at the Hôtel Barbette in Paris. Isabeau had two weeks earlier given birth to a son who had died almost immediately, and was so affected by this death that she had taken to her bed. Louis was there to try to console the queen for her loss. After dinner, they were interrupted by a messenger purporting to comefrom the king, who claimed that the duke of Orléans was needed. Louis said good night to Isabeau and left her apartments in the company of a nominal retinue, with six valets bearing torches to light the way, a German page, and two young knights-in-training, who shared a horse and rode ahead of the duke. As this little procession turned a dark corner, after his sword-bearers had passed, a group of seventeen armed men rushed out of the shadows to attack Louis. Thinking his identity unknown to his assailants, to save himself he cried out, “I am the Duc d’Orléans!” but “It is you we want,” came the cold reply, and a scuffle ensued. The apprentice knights were too far ahead to be of use; by the time they had turned the horse around it was over. It had taken only moments for a prince of the royal blood and his German page to be stabbed to death and their corpses left to lie on the streets of Paris. To distract pursuers, the assassins set fire to a nearby building and then escaped furtively into the blackness of the winter night.
C HAPTER 4
Civil War
EWS OF THE MURDER of the
This level of ostentation and affluence did not go unnoticed by the rest ofthe kingdom. A vehement protest was raised when the duke of Orléans’s obviously improved financial circumstances necessitated an increase in taxes to replenish the treasury. Some of the populace’s anger directed against the king’s brother spilled off onto Isabeau as well, especially when it was revealed that she had secreted a fortune in gold in a convoy subsequently dispatched to Bavaria. The rampant public dissatisfaction with the queen and the duke of Orléans allowed a newcomer to rise to power: Philip the Bold’s son, John the Fearless, the new duke of Burgundy.
John the Fearless was thirty-three years old, as energetic, competent, and assured as his father had been, but also more direct and prone to impatience. He assumed that he held a degree of power and influence that he had not yet quite achieved, and this caused him to overreach politically. He was like an understudy who, from long years of observation in the wings, knew all the lines but whose performance once on stage lacked the nuance of the more seasoned principal actor.
John began, much to the approval of the general populace, with a call for an audit and overhaul of the realm’s finances. To counter the threat, Isabeau and Louis banded together against him and largely prevailed. For the next two years, John the Fearless struggled with a notable lack of success to displace the duke of Orléans from his position of authority in France. John tried to reform the treasury; Louis thwarted him by deftly replacing those members of the royal council loyal to John with his own supporters. John received authority from the king to negotiate a general peace with England; Louis undermined his efforts by ordering the admiral of the French fleet to launch an assault against English ships in the Channel. Even more unsettling, funds that the king had promised would be paid to the account of the duke of Burgundy never arrived, an administrative omission that John attributed, not unreasonably, to the duke of Orléans’s influence.
It is unclear at what point exactly the duke of Burgundy decided to take a shortcut to power, but certainly by the fall of 1407 he had given up on the conventional avenues by which influence is acquired in favor of a more direct approach. On November 23, 1407, the duke of Orléans had dinner and spent the early evening alone with the queen at her private residence at the Hôtel Barbette in Paris. Isabeau had two weeks earlier given birth to a son who had died almost immediately, and was so affected by this death that she had taken to her bed. Louis was there to try to console the queen for her loss. After dinner, they were interrupted by a messenger purporting to comefrom the king, who claimed that the duke of Orléans was needed. Louis said good night to Isabeau and left her apartments in the company of a nominal retinue, with six valets bearing torches to light the way, a German page, and two young knights-in-training, who shared a horse and rode ahead of the duke. As this little procession turned a dark corner, after his sword-bearers had passed, a group of seventeen armed men rushed out of the shadows to attack Louis. Thinking his identity unknown to his assailants, to save himself he cried out, “I am the Duc d’Orléans!” but “It is you we want,” came the cold reply, and a scuffle ensued. The apprentice knights were too far ahead to be of use; by the time they had turned the horse around it was over. It had taken only moments for a prince of the royal blood and his German page to be stabbed to death and their corpses left to lie on the streets of Paris. To distract pursuers, the assassins set fire to a nearby building and then escaped furtively into the blackness of the winter night.
C HAPTER 4
Civil War
EWS OF THE MURDER of the
Similar Books
