Chapter XI: The Three Queens (2)

Dirai je: tant com une jame Vaut de pailes et de sardines Vaut la contesse de reines?

Christian chose curious similes. His dame surpassed all living rivals as smoke passes the winds that blow in May; or as much as a gem would buy of straws and sardines is the Countess worth in queens. Louis XIV would have thought that Christian might be laughing at him, but court styles changed with their masters. Louis XIV would scarcely have written a prison-song to his sister such as Richard Coeur-de-Lion wrote to Mary of Champagne:--

Ja nus bons pris ne dirat sa raison Adroitement s'ansi com dolans non; Mais par confort puet il faire chanson. Moult ai d'amins, mais povre sont li don; Honte en avront se por ma reancon Suix ces deus yvers pris.

Ceu sevent bien mi home et mi baron, Englois, Normant, Poitevin et Gascon, Ke je n'avoie si povre compaingnon Cui je laissasse por avoir au prixon. Je nel di pas por nulle retraison, Mais ancor suix je pris.

Or sai ge bien de voir certainement Ke mors ne pris n'ait amin ne parent, Cant on me lait por or ne por argent. Moult m'est de moi, mais plus m'est de ma gent C'apres ma mort avront reprochier grant Se longement suix pris.

N'est pas mervelle se j'ai lo cuer dolent Cant li miens sires tient ma terre en torment. S'or li menbroit de nostre sairement Ke nos feismes andui communament, Bien sai de voir ke ceans longement Ne seroie pas pris.

Ce sevent bien Angevin et Torain, Cil bacheler ki or sont fort et sain, C'ancombreis suix long d'aus en autrui main. Forment m'amoient, mais or ne m'aimment grain. De belles armes sont ores veut cil plain, Por tant ke je suix pris.

Mes compaingnons cui j'amoie et cui j'aim, Ces dou Caheu et ces dou Percherain, Me di, chanson, kil ne sont pas certain,

C'onques vers aus n'en oi cuer faus ne vain. S'il me guerroient, il font moult que villain Tant com je serai pris.

Comtesse suer, vostre pris soverain Vos saut et gart cil a cui je me claim Et par cui je suix pris. Je n'ou di pas de celi de Chartain La meire Loweis.

No prisoner can tell his honest thought Unless he speaks as one who suffers wrong; But for his comfort he may make a song. My friends are many, but their gifts are naught. Shame will be theirs, if, for my ransom, here I lie another year.

They know this well, my barons and my men, Normandy, England, Gascony, Poitou, That I had never follower so low Whom I would leave in prison to my gain. I say it not for a reproach to them, But prisoner I am!

The ancient proverb now I know for sure: Death and a prison know nor kin nor tie, Since for mere lack of gold they let me lie. Much for myself I grieve; for them still more. After my death they will have grievous wrong If I am prisoner long.

What marvel that my heart is sad and sore When my own lord torments my helpless lands! Well do I know that, if he held his hands, Remembering the common oath we swore, I should not here imprisoned with my song, Remain a prisoner long.

They know this well who now are rich and strong Young gentlemen of Anjou and Touraine, That far from them, on hostile bonds I strain. They loved me much, but have not loved me long. Their plains will see no more fair lists arrayed, While I lie here betrayed.

Companions, whom I loved, and still do love, Geoffroi du Perche and Ansel de Caleux, Tell them, my song, that they are friends untrue.

Never to them did I false-hearted prove; But they do villainy if they war on me, While I lie here, unfree.

Countess sister! your sovereign fame May he preserve whose help I claim, Victim for whom am I! I say not this of Chartres' dame, Mother of Louis!

Richard's prison-song, one of the chief monuments of English literature, sounds to every ear, accustomed to twelfth-century verse, as charming as when it was household rhyme to

mi ome et mi baron
Englois, Normant, Poitevin et Gascon.

Not only was Richard a far greater king than any Louis ever was, but he also composed better poetry than any other king who is known to tourists, and, when he spoke to his sister in this cry of the heart altogether singular among monarchs, he made law and style, above discussion. Whether he meant to reproach his other sister, Alix of Chartres, historians may tell, if they know. If he did, the reproach answered its purpose, for the song was written in 1193; Richard was ransomed and released in 1194; and in 1198 the young Count "Loweis" of Chartres and Blois leagued with the Counts of Flanders, Le Perche, Guines, and Toulouse, against Philip Augustus, in favor of Coeur-de-Lion to whom they rendered homage. In any case, neither Mary nor Alice in 1193 was reigning Countess. Mary was a widow since 1181, and her son Henry was Count in Champagne, apparently a great favourite with his uncle Richard Coeur-de-Lion. The life of this Henry of Champagne was another twelfth-century romance, but can serve no purpose here except to recall the story that his mother, the great Countess Mary, died in 1198 of sorrow for the death of this son, who was then King of Jerusalem, and was killed, in 1197, by a fall from the window of his palace at Acre. Coeur-de-Lion died in 1199. In 1201, Mary's other son, who succeeded Henry,--Count Thibaut III,--died, leaving a posthumous heir, famous in the thirteenth century as Thibaut-le-Grand--the Thibaut of Queen Blanche.

They were all astonishing--men and women--and filled the world, for two hundred years, with their extraordinary energy and genius; but the greatest of all was old Queen Eleanor, who survived her son Coeur-de-Lion, as well as her two husbands,--Louis-le-Jeune and Henry II Plantagenet,--and was left in 1200 still struggling to repair the evils and fend off the dangers they caused. "Queen by the wrath of God," she called herself, and she knew what just claim she had to the rank. Of her two husbands and ten children, little remained except her son John, who, by the unanimous voice of his family, his friends, his enemies, and even his admirers, achieved a reputation for excelling in every form of twelfth-century crime. He was a liar and a traitor, as was not uncommon, but he was thought to be also a coward, which, in that family, was singular. Some redeeming quality he must have had, but none is recorded. His mother saw him running, in his masculine, twelfth-century recklessness, to destruction, and she made a last and a characteristic effort to save him and Guienne by a treaty of amity with the French king, to be secured by the marriage of the heir of France, Louis, to Eleanor's granddaughter, John's niece, Blanche of Castile, then twelve or thirteen years old. Eleanor herself was eighty, and yet she made the journey to Spain, brought back the child to Bordeaux, affianced her to Louis VIII as she had herself been affianced in 1137 to Louis VII, and in May, 1200, saw her married. The French had then given up their conventional trick of attributing Eleanor's acts to her want of morals; and France gave her--as to most women after sixty years old--the benefit of the convention which made women respectable after they had lost the opportunity to be vicious. In French eyes, Eleanor played out the drama according to the rules. She could not save John, but she died in 1202, before his ruin, and you can still see her lying with her husband and her son Richard at Fontevrault in her twelfth-century tomb.

In 1223, Blanche became Queen of France. She was thirty-six years old. Her husband, Louis VIII, was ambitious to rival his father, Philip Augustus, who had seized Normandy in 1203. Louis undertook to seize Toulouse and Avignon. In 1225, he set out with a large army in which, among the chief vassals, his cousin Thibaut of Champagne led a contingent. Thibaut was five-and-twenty years old, and, like Pierre de Dreux, then Duke of Brittany, was one of the most brilliant and versatile men of his time, and one of the greatest rulers. As royal vassal Thibaut owed forty days' service in the field; but his interests were at variance with the King's, and at the end of the term he marched home with his men, leaving the King to fall ill and die in Auvergne, November 8, 1226, and a child of ten years old to carry on the government as Louis IX.

Chartres Cathedral has already told the story twice, in stone and glass; but Thibaut does not appear there, although he saved the Queen. Some member of the royal family must be regent. Queen Blanche took the place, and of course the princes of the blood, who thought it was their right, united against her. At first, Blanche turned violently on Thibaut and forbade him to appear at the coronation at Rheims in his own territory, on November 29, as though she held him guilty of treason; but when the league of great vassals united to deprive her of the regency, she had no choice but to detach at any cost any member of the league, and Thibaut alone offered help. What price she paid him was best known to her; but what price she would be believed to have paid him was as well known to her as what had been said of her grandmother Eleanor when she changed her allegiance in 1152. If the scandal had concerned Thibaut alone, she might have been well content, but Blanche was obliged also to pay desperate court to the papal legate. Every member of her husband's family united against her and libelled her character with the freedom which enlivened and envenomed royal tongues.

Maintes paroles en dit en
Comme d'Iseult et de Tristan.

Had this been all, she would have cared no more than Eleanor or any other queen had cared, for in French drama, real or imaginary, such charges were not very serious and hardly uncomplimentary; but Iseult had never been accused, over and above her arbitrary views on the marriage-contract, of acting as an accomplice with Tristan in poisoning King Marc. French convention required that Thibaut should have poisoned Louis VIII for love of the Queen, and that this secret reciprocal love should control their lives. Fortunately for Blanche she was a devout ally of the Church, and the Church believed evil only of enemies. The legate and the prelates rallied to her support and after eight years of desperate struggle they crushed Pierre Mauclerc and saved Thibaut and Blanche.

For us the poetry is history, and the facts are false. French art starts not from facts, but from certain assumptions as conventional as a legendary window, and the commonest convention is the Woman. The fact, then as now, was Power, or its equivalent in exchange, but Frenchmen, while struggling for the Power, expressed it in terms of Art. They looked on life as a drama,--and on drama as a phase of life--in which the bystanders were bound to assume and accept the regular stage-plot. That the plot might be altogether untrue to real life affected in no way its interest. To them Thibaut and Blanche were bound to act Tristan and Isolde. Whatever they were when off the stage, they were lovers on it. Their loves were as real and as reasonable as the worship of the Virgin. Courteous love was avowedly a form of drama, but not the less a force of society. Illusion for illusion, courteous love, in Thibaut's hands, or in the hands of Dante and Petrarch, was as substantial as any other convention;--the balance of trade, the rights of man, or the Athanasian Creed. In that sense the illusions alone were real; if the Middle Ages had reflected only what was practical, nothing would have survived for us.

Thibaut was Tristan, and is said to have painted his verses on the walls of his chateau. If he did, he painted there, in the opinion of M. Gaston Paris, better poetry than any that was written on paper or parchment, for Thibaut was a great prince and great poet who did in both characters whatever he pleased. In modern equivalents, one would give much to see the chateau again with the poetry on its walls. Provins has lost the verses, but Troyes still keeps some churches and glass of Thibaut's time which hold their own with the best. Even of Thibaut himself, something survives, and though it were only the memories of his seneschal, the famous Sire de Joinville, history and France would be poor without him. With Joinville in hand, you may still pass an hour in the company of these astonishing thirteenth-century men and women:--crusaders who fight, hunt, make love, build churches, put up glass windows to the Virgin, buy missals, talk scholastic philosophy, compose poetry: Blanche, Thibaut, Perron, Joinville, Saint Louis, Saint Thomas, Saint Dominic, Saint Francis--you may know them as intimately as you can ever know a world that is lost; and in the case of Thibaut you may know more, for he is still alive in his poems; he even vibrates with life. One might try a few verses, to see what he meant by courtesy. Perhaps he wrote them for Queen Blanche, but, to whomever he sent them, the French were right in thinking that she ought to have returned his love (edition of 1742):--

Nus hom ne puet ami reconforter Se cele non ou il a son cuer mis. Pour ce m'estuet sovent plaindre et plourer Que mis confors ne me vient, ce m'est vis, De la ou j'ai tote ma remembrance. Pour bien amer ai sovent esmaiance A dire voir. Dame, merci! donez moi esperance De joie avoir.

Jene puis pas sovent a li parler Ne remirer les biaus iex de son vis. Ce pois moi que je n'i puis aler Car ades est mes cuers ententis.

Ho! bele riens, douce sans conoissance, Car me mettez en millor attendance De bon espoir! Dame, merci! donez moi esperance De joie avoir.

Aucuns si sont qui me vuelent blamer Quant je ne di a qui je suis amis; Mais ja, dame, ne saura mon penser Nus qui soit nes fors vous cui je le dis Couardement a pavours a doutance Dont puestes vous lors bien a ma semblance Mon cuer savoir. Dame, merci! donez moi esperance De joie avoir.

There is no comfort to be found for pain Save only where the heart has made its home. Therefore I can but murmur and complain Because no comfort to my pain has come From where I garnered all my happiness. From true love have I only earned distress The truth to say. Grace, lady! give me comfort to possess A hope, one day.

Seldom the music of her voice I hear Or wonder at the beauty of her eyes. It grieves me that I may not follow there Where at her feet my heart attentive lies.

Oh, gentle Beauty without consciousness, Let me once feel a moment's hopefulness, If but one ray! Grace, lady! give me comfort to possess A hope, one day.

Certain there are who blame upon me throw Because I will not tell whose love I seek; But truly, lady, none my thought shall know, None that is born, save you to whom I speak In cowardice and awe and doubtfulness, That you may happily with fearlessness My heart essay. Grace, lady! give me comfort to possess A hope, one day.

Does Thibaut's verse sound simple? It is the simplicity of the thirteenth-century glass--so refined and complicated that sensible people are mostly satisfied to feel, and not to understand. Any blunderer in verse, who will merely look at the rhymes of these three stanzas, will see that simplicity is about as much concerned there as it is with the windows of Chartres; the verses are as perfect as the colours, and the versification as elaborate. These stanzas might have been addressed to Queen Blanche; now see how Thibaut kept the same tone of courteous love in addressing the Queen of Heaven!

De grant travail et de petit esploit Voi ce siegle cargie et encombre Que tant somes plain de maleurte Ke nus ne pens a faire ce qu'il doit, Ains avons si le Deauble trouve Qu'a lui servir chascuns paine et essaie Et Diex ki ot pour nos ja cruel plaie Metons arrier et sa grant dignite; Molt est hardis qui pour mort ne s'esmaie.

Diex que tout set et tout puet et tout voit
Nous auroit tost en entre-deus giete
Se la Dame plaine de grant bonte
Pardelez lui pour nos ne li prioit

Si tres douc mot plaisant et savoure Le grant courous dou grant Signour apaie; Molt par est fox ki autre amor essai K'en cestui n'a barat ne fausete Ne es autres n'a ne merti ne manaie.

La souris quiert pour son cors garandir Contre l'yver la noif et le forment Et nous chaitif nous n'alons rien querant Quant nous morrons ou nous puissions garir. Nous ne cherchons fors k'infer le puant; Or esgardes come beste sauvage Pourvoit de loin encontre son domage Et nous n'avons ne sens ne hardement; Il est avis que plain somes de rage.

Li Deable a getey por nos ravir Quatre amecons aescbies de torment; Covoitise lance premierement Et puis Orguel por sa grant rois emplir Et Luxure va le batel trainant Felonie les governe et les nage. Ensi peschant s'en viegnent au rivage Dont Diex nous gart par son commandement En qui sains fons nous feismes homage.

A la Dame qui tous les bien avance T'en va, chancon s'el te vielt escouter Onques ne fu nus di millor chaunce.

With travail great, and little cargo fraught, See how our world is labouring in pain; So filled we are with love of evil gain That no one thinks of doing what he ought, But we all hustle in the Devil's train, And only in his service toil and pray; And God, who suffered for us agony, We set behind, and treat him with disdain; Hardy is he whom death does not dismay.

God who rules all, from whom we can hide nought,
Had quickly flung us back to nought again
But that our gentle, gracious, Lady Queen
Begged him to spare us, and our pardon wrought;

Striving with words of sweetness to restrain Our angry Lord, and his great wrath allay. Felon is he who shall her love betray Which is pure truth, and falsehood cannot feign, While all the rest is lie and cheating play.

The feeble mouse, against the winter's cold, Garners the nuts and grain within his cell, While man goes groping, without sense to tell Where to seek refuge against growing old. We seek it in the smoking mouth of Hell. With the poor beast our impotence compare! See him protect his life with utmost care, While us nor wit nor courage can compel To save our souls, so foolish mad we are. The Devil doth in snares our life enfold; Four hooks has he with torments baited well; And first with Greed he casts a mighty spell, And then, to fill his nets, has Pride enrolled, And Luxury steers the boat, and fills the sail, And Perfidy controls and sets the snare; Thus the poor fish are brought to land, and there May God preserve us and the foe repel! Homage to him who saves us from despair!

To Mary Queen, who passes all compare, Go, little song! to her your sorrows tell! Nor Heaven nor Earth holds happiness so rare.