which she had been exposed. After Philip's | geon, by the king's order, in 1315, when only death she lived in close retreat from the twenty-six. world. One of her daughters, Margaret, was the second wife of Edward I. of England. Philip IV. (the Fair). 1284. His queen was JOAN, daughter of Henry, King of Navarre. She had great talents, and a taste for the fine arts; and seems to have escaped, in great degree, the sorrows of the crown matrimonial of France. But she had only attained the age of thirty-three at her death. One of her daughters, Isabel, was married to Edward II. of England subsequently to her mother's decease. We come now in order of time to four Burgundian princesses (two pairs of sisters), whose respective husbands filled the throne of France in succession, under the titles of Louis X. (le Hutin), Philip V. (the Tall), Charles IV. (the Handsome), and Philip VI. (de Valois). These ladies were MARGARET and JOAN, daughters of Robert II., Duke of Burgundy, consorts of Louis X. and Philip de Valois, and JANE and BLANCHE, daughters of Otho of Burgundy, and wives of Philip V. and Charles IV. BLANCHE remained a close prisoner for twelve years. She was then removed to the Abbey of Maubuisson, where she took the veil, but did not long survive her profession. Her two children pre-deceased her. She was never crowned as the consort of Charles IV., but the shadow of the crown matrimonial projected itself forwards, and fell upon her, as it were, by anticipation. JANE was sentenced to imprisonment in the Castle of Dourdan. But she was the heiress of the province of Franche Comté, which her husband did not think it good policy to restore, as he should do if he divorced her. He therefore affected to believe her innocent of the charges brought against her, and applied to the parliament for her acquittal and restoration to her rank and honors. During the life of her husband, King Philip V., Jane lived decorously; but her after years proved the truth of the former accusations; for her widowhood was a career of the utmost profligacy. She died in Flanders at the age of thirty-seven. guilty relatives. She was prudent and virtuous, and was beloved by her husband, but had the grief to see his kingdom overrun by the English. The fate and the criminality of her sister must have given her many bitter pangs. She died at fifty-five, and was buried at St. Denis. After the execution of Margaret in the dungeon of Chateau Gaillard, her husband, Louis X., took for his second wife CLEMENCE of Anjou. But she had been only a few months wedded when Louis died, leaving her enceinte. The violence of her grief brought on fever, and her posthumous child died in a few days after its birth. She herself died young, in retirement. JOAN of Burgundy, sister of Queen Marga. MARGARET was married when scarcely fif- ret, and wife to Philip VI. (de Valois), bore teen to Louis X. She was very handsome, a very different character from that of her and depraved in no ordinary degree. She, with her sisters-in-law, Jane and Blanche, inhabited the Hotel de Nesle, that stood on the Seine, and that has acquired an infamous celebrity from the scandalous revels of these beautiful but wicked young females, who are said to have caused the guests they admitted secretly to be hurled down a trapdoor and drowned in the river, if they unfortunately recognized in their fair and anonymous entertainers the wives of their princes. Margaret and Blanche had selected two favorites, Norman knights and brothers, named Philip and Walter d'Aulnay. The latter had been attached to a Mademoiselle de Morfontaine, who, finding herself neglected, was inspired by jealousy to watch her fickle lover, and thus discovered the double intrigue, which soon came to the knowledge of the king (then Philip IV). On the trial of the criminals, revelations especially disgraceful to the princesses were made. The brothers D'Aulnay were executed after being put to tortures too horrible to relate. Some persons proved to have been accessories to the royal intriguants were likewise put to death. Margaret and Blanche were degraded, and stripped of their inheritances; their heads were shaved, and they were imprisoned in a most rigorous manner in the Chateau Gaillard, about seven leagues from Rouen. Margaret was strangled by the hands of an executioner in her dun Its site is now occupied by the Palace of the Institute, and some other buildings. CCCCLXVII. LIVING AGE. VOL. I. 19 After the demise of Blanche in her cloister, her widower, Charles IV., married MARY of LUXEMBURG, daughter of the Emperor Henry VII. She was amiable, discreet, and beloved, and died in childbirth, aged only eighteen, in a year after her marriage. The third wife of Charles, JANE D'EVREUX, his cousin, was worthy of the love and esteem he bestowed upon her. But she lost her affectionate husband by death after three years only of union. Jane lived to the age of sixty, and was buried at St. Denis. The crown made for her coronation was used to crown the succeeding queens of France. On the death of Joan of Burgundy, the virtuous sister of the strangled Margaret, Philip VI. married BLANCHE of NAVARRE, then only eighteen. But her regal splendors and domestic affections were overthrown by the John (the Good). 1350. death of Philip, in a year and a half after terval. Another, Saligny, was arrested by the their nuptials; and she was left a widow and dauphin, who confined his mother in a prison, enceinte before she had completed her twenti- whence she was delivered by the Duke of eth year. She had subsequently the misfor- Burgundy, in arms. France was overrun by the tune to lose her only child, Blanche, in the English, and deluged with blood by intestine bloom of youth. Queen Blanche lived in factions; the people were starving, the king retirement, and died at seventy, and was insane, and with his children often in want of buried at St. Denis. the commonest necessaries. Isabel and her son, the dauphin, detested each other; she endeavored to poison him, and failing, negoHe was much attached to his estimable for the cession of France; and made a martiated, in order to ruin him with the English, wife, BONA of LUXEMBURG; but the calamities riage between her daughter Catherine* and of his unfortunate reign were a source of Henry V. of England. On the death of the anguish to her, both as wife and queen. The lunatic and neglected king, Isabel, despised realm was torn by civil factions, and devas- by the English, and abhorred by the French, tated by the victorious arms of the English, fell into merited poverty and desolation; and under Edward III. Bona did not long survive when she died, none could be found to pay the, to her, disastrous battle of Cressy, in any regard to her remains, which were conwhich so many of the French nobles perished. veyed at night in a little boat across the His second wife, the charming JANE D'AU-Seine to St. Denis, accompanied only by one VERGNE widow of Philip de Rouvres, Duke of priest and the boatman. Burgundy, had her share of sorrows, as queen, wife, and mother. She saw her royal husband defeated at all points by the English, taken prisoner at Poictiers, and carried to London, to endure a four years' long captivity; and the kingdom, in his absence, a prey to the horrible atrocities of the peasant war, called the Jacquerie. The dauphin, her step-son, treated her with disrespect, deprived her of the regency, and obliged her to retire to Burgundy. Her own two daughters died young; and when her husband was free to return to her, in 1361, it was with estranged affections, he having fallen in love, while in London, with a lady, to be near whom he returned to England and to captivity, in which he died. Grief shortened the days of his unhappy queen, who survived him but a year. She died in 1365, and was buried at St. Denis. Charles V. (the Wise). 1369. His wife, the accomplished and handsome JANE DE BOURBON, died in childbirth, leaving her husband inconsolable. Of her nine children, six had died before her. Dying in 1378, aged forty, she was buried at St. Denis. Charles VI. (the Beloved). 1380. He married the beautiful and depraved ISABEL OF BAVARIA, notorious for her conjugal infidelities, her violence, cruelty, prodigality, and want of natural affection for her children. On account of her licentious conduct, the king caused her to be imprisoned for a time; his subsequent insanity, however, gave her power and liberty, which she abused. She was disgraced by her intimacy with her husband's brother, the Duke of Orleans, and then with the Duke of Burgundy, the murderer of Orleans. Her favorite, Boisdourdan, was put to death by order of the king, issued in a lucid in Charles VII. (the Victorious). 1422. He married MARY of ANJOU, daughter of James II., King of Naples. She was a woman of most exemplary conduct, good sense, and religious feelings, and was at first much esteemed by Charles, till he was alienated from her by his mistresses then he treated her with the utmost disdain, and would not even speak to her and his favorites (with the exception of the celebrated Agnes Sorel), emboldened by his example, behaved to the queen with great indignity. Yet she endured all with uncomplaining meekness, and declined the advice of her friends to withdraw from court, the scene of her griefs, lest it should injure the king with his people, who were suffering deeply from the English armies in their country; and, to add to her griefs, her son, Charles of Normandy, was poisoned. After the death of the king, Mary founded twelve chapelles ordentes, with twelve priests in each, to pray night and day for the repose of his soul. She died in 1463, and was buried at St. Denis. Louis XI. The first wife of this bad man was MARwas witty and accomplished, but had no perGARET, daughter of James I. of Scotland. Sho sonal attractions, and was disliked and illtreated by Louis. Having been calumniated, and without redress, by a gentleman named Count James de Tilly, she fell ill from chagrin, and was so weary of her sad existence, that she refused to take any remedy to save her life, saying, "Fie upon life! let no one speak of it to me any more." Mary died childless, * Her daughter Isabel had been previously married to Richard II. of England, who was dethroned by the father of Catherine's husband. and very young. She was never queen; but being dauphiness, was queen expectant; and the crown matrimonial had cast its dark shadow forwards. . an object of dislike. She was allowed, for a brief space, the empty title of queen, of which Louis XII. was in haste to despoil her, for the sake of her brilliant rival, her brother's widow, Anne of Brittany. The new king assembled a council to sanction his divorce from Joan; and the proceedings took a peculiar course, that were torture to the mind of a delicate and sensitive princess. After her divorce was pronounced, Joan retired to the Convent of the Annunciation at Bourges, where she lived in the odor of sanctity, and died at the age of forty-one. The second wife of Louis, and his crowned queen, was CHARLOTTE, daughter of Louis, Duke of Savoy. She was amiable, meekspirited, and modest; yet her evil-minded husband treated her not merely with unkindness, but with brutality. He insulted her by his numerous infidelities, and kept her in such poverty, that her food was scanty and coarse, and her apparel mean and patched. When he was at war with the Duke of Burgundy, The third wife of Louis XII. was MARY, suspecting the queen to be well-inclined to daughter of Henry VII. of England - an unthe interests of his adversary, he imprisoned willing and sorrowful bride, constrained to the unfortunate Charlotte in the Chateau of marry, in the bloom of seventeen, an infirm Ambois, where she suffered still greater dis-old king, while her heart was given to Charles tresses than ever. Of six children, she buried Brandon, afterwards Duke of Suffolk. Her two sons and a daughter young. Her consti- love for Brandon, who had accompanied her tution was so broken by the inroads of penury to France, was discovered by the Countess of and constant vexation, that she died in three months after the decease of the tyrant. Her tomb at Clery was broken open and profaned by the Huguenots in the subsequent religious wars. Francis I. 1515. Angouleme, whose son Francis was heir to the crown, Louis having no male offspring; and the young queen had the mortification to find herself placed under a rigorous and humiliating surveillance, established by Madame d'Angouleme, who had determined to keep Charles VIII. (the Courteous). 1443. watch over her conduct. However, the death His consort was ANNE, only child of Francis of Louis, after a brief union of only three II., Duke of Brittany -a princess distin-months, terminated her restraint, and her unguished by brilliant advantages of mind and welcome royalty. She wedded her first love; person. She was at first attached to the but numbered no more than thirty-seven years Duke of Orleans, afterwards Louis XII., but at her death. was required to relinquish him, in order to marry Charles VIII., to whom she made an affectionate wife. In her early years some His first queen, CLAUDE, daughter of Louis clouds dimmed her horizon; but subsequently XII. and Anne of Brittany - amiable and her sky was calm and bright. Charles was, mild, but not handsome- was neglected by for some time, a negligent and unfaithful her husband for his many mistresses. Of husband; and she lost all her children, three seven children, she lost four, and died forsaken sons and a daughter, in infancy; the loss of and spirit-broken at twenty-five, and was the young dauphin, in particular, afflicted her buried at St. Denis. Her successor was the severely. At the close of his life, Charles handsome and accomplished ELEANOR, sister became more sensible of his wife's merits, and of the Emperor Charles V., and widow of more endeared to her; and she grieved sin- Emanuel King of Portugal. Notwithstandcerely at his premature death. But her ing all her attractions, she received neither destiny was prosperous; she retained her attention nor respect from Francis; who, unrank as queen consort, by becoming the wife grateful to her for all her exertions to mainof her first love, the Duke of Orleans, who tain peace between him and the emperor, succeeded Charles on the throne; and over seemed as though he studied to distress her the heart and mind of Louis she ever pre- by his public and various profligacies; and served a strong influence. Yet she died early, she was, in particular, deeply pained by the in childbirth, when she had scarce numbered ostentatious appearance of the Duchess thirty-eight years; she was buried at St. d'Etampes (Anne de Pisselieu) at court. Denis. The predecessor of ANNE, with Louis Eleanor felt the sorrow of being separated XII., had been JOAN, the sister of Charles from her first lover, Frederick, brother to the VIII., and daughter of Louis XI., whom Elector Palatine of losing an amiable, reLouis, when Duke of Orleans, had been re-spectable husband, who loved her, and whom luctantly forced to marry when the princess was but twelve years old. This ill-fated lady *Madame de Genlis' Novel, "Jeanne de France," was remarkably plain, and even somewhat of which this princess is the heroine, in representing Louis XII. as cherishing any tender feeldeformed; but wise, pious, good, and tender; ings for her, deviates from the general testimonies and was, unhappily for her peace, affection-of history. Scott's "Quentin Durward" conveys ately attached to a husband to whom she was more truthful impressions of his sentiments. she esteemed and of being parted forever, by state policy, from her only child, the Portuguese infanta, Maria, on account of her marriage with the French king, who proved to her so unworthy a husband. After the death of Francis, Eleanor, weary of court life, devoted herself to religious observances. Henry II. 1547. But as His queen has left a detestable memory in the records of Europe. CATHERINE DE MEDICIS, daughter of Lorenzo Duke of Urbino, and niece of Pope Clement VII., handsome, talented, and wicked, in a corrupt and turbulent time, seems to us like a blood-red meteor gleaming from a black and stormy sky. By her own criminal conduct she gave a pretext to her husband for his undisguised infidelities with ladies who were more the queens of his court than his wife was permitted to be, and she was often threatened with divorce. Catherine, ambitious to reign under her son's name, wickedly strove to incapacitate her children from power by a bad education; she indulged them in idleness; early initiated them into luxury and licentiousness; and seared their feelings by bringing them to behold, as spectacles, criminals tortured and executed, and animals tormented. she sowed she reaped. Her sons, broken in constitution from their dissipated habits, died early, and without heirs; by which she saw the sceptre pass into the hands of Henry of Navarre, whom she detested, the husband of her daughter Margaret, who was scorned by that husband for her profligacy, the result of her education; and she saw her innocent daughter Elizabeth, unkindly treated by her morose consort, Philip II. of Spain, who suspected a female brought up under the auspices of Catherine de Medicis. After the death of her husband (killed in a tournament), Catherine fomented the feuds of the Guises and the Montmorencies, that distracted France; and instigated her son, Charles IX., to the massacre of St. Bartholomew; which subsequently so preyed upon his mind, that on his death-bed he drove her from his presence with horror. His brother and successor, Henry III., being defeated by the League, and obliged to quit Paris, in consequence of his mother's intrigues and bad advice, forbade her to reappear at the council, reproaching her with such severity, that irritation, at the words of the only child she had really loved, brought on a fever of which she died; despised for her lapses from virtue, and execrated for her many cruelties. She was buried at St. Denis. Francis II. 1559. with him in France. They tenderly loved each other; but in two years after their marriage, and one year after coming to the throne, Francis died childless, to the great grief of his young widow. Mary frequently indulged and solaced her affection by composing little poems to his memory, and singing them to her lute. As a specimen of these effusions, we translate one of the shortest with which we are acquainted :— When slumbering on my couch I rest, Thy kind voice glads mine ear. It was with deep regret that Mary, compelled by the machinations of the queenmother, Catherine (who dreaded the influence of her talents and her beauty at court), found it necessary to leave France, which she loved as the scene of her youthful happiness, and return to Scotland. The crown matrimonial of France had fallen from her head, yet its thorns clave to her, even when she crossed the seas; for much of her subsequent and well-known misery is attributable to her French education, and to the manners and ideas she had learned in the French court, which had unfitted her for the more sober and decorous country of her birth. Charles IX. 1560. ELIZABETH, his consort, and daughter of the Emperor Maximilian, was good, sensible, and pious; but, though respected by the king, she was very unhappy. The profligate court was a scene shocking to her piety and purity, and she lived in it, but not of it, a very solitary life; seldom speaking, and then only in Spanish, her vernacular tongue. Though she bore meekly with the mistresses whom her husband paraded before her, she was deeply hurt by his infidelities. Charles, on his death-bed, confessed himself unworthy of so amiable a wife, and regretted the sorrows he had caused her; sorrows which left such enduring traces on her mind, that though young when widowed, she retired into a perfect seclusion, refusing the proffered alliances of the kings of Spain and Portugal, and founded at Vienna a convent, in which she devoted herself to religious exercises till her death, at the age of thirty-eight. Henry III. 1574. His wife, LOUISA, daughter of Louis, Duke of Mercœur, of the house of Lorraine, had a cheerless lot. She was separated from her lover, the Count de Solm, to whom she was about to This only amiable son of Catherine de Med-be united, and wedded a man who, though at icis was married at fifteen to the beautiful Mary Queen of Scots, who had been educated first dazzled with her beauty, soon wearied of her melancholy and of her inanimate manners; and the queen dowager, Catherine, by her mischievous interposition, estranged him still more from his fair bride. Louisa had the misfortune to lose her only child at its birth; and the murder of the Guises, her beloved relatives, by the treachery of her husband, filled her with horror. She felt great indignation at the insolent conduct of Henry's mistresses at court; and he, in revenge for her complaints, dismissed all her attendants, leaving her in a state of solitude. She sunk into melancholy, became negligent of her dress and appearance, and seemed anxious to forget she was a queen. After the murder of Henry, by James Clement, Louisa dedicated her life to religious seclusion, imposing on herself so many pilgrimages and austerities, that she shortened her days by them, and died 1601. Henry IV. (the Great). 1589. MARGARET DE VALOIS, his first wife, daughter of Henry II. and Catherine de Medicis, corrupted at an early age from the bad examples con around her, was noted for her abandoned duct; yet her beauty and her talents won for her much admiration and even literary homage. Political considerations occasioned her marriage with Henry of Navarre, when her heart was devoted to the Duke of Guise; an illomened marriage, celebrated hurriedly and without the usual regal pomp, and stained soon after with the blood of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. Margaret and Henry hated each other for their mutual infidelities. To compel her to consent to a divorce, that he might marry his favorite, Gabrielle D'Etrées, Henry treated Margaret with contempt, exposed her to want, allowed his mistresses to insult her, and at last imprisoned her in the Castle of Usson, where she suffered great privations. After the death of Gabrielle, Margaret yielded her consent to her divorce, retaining, however, the useless title of queen, but seeing the real regal honors transferred to her successor, Mary de Medicis. Margaret lived to behold the annihilation of her house, and even the extinction of the name of Valois; all her flatterers forsook her; she existed poor and neglected; and solaced herself partly in devotions, partly in revelries unsuited to her age, sex and position; and partly in composing poems and memoirs commemorative of her many lovers, several of whom died violent deaths. She is said to have habitually worn a large farthingale with numerous pockets, and in each pocket a box containing the embalmed heart of some one of her deceased favorites. As she advanced in years she became hypochondriac and gloomy, and died at the age of sixty-three. She composed for herself an epitaph, from the original French of which we make the following translation: This epitaph is in Margaret's handwriting, in one of her MS., preserved in the "Bibliotheque EPITAPH. Hath seen at one rude stroke her lilies fall. This flower of Valois' tree, in which hath died In the Anthology of Constantine Cephalus we have met with a Greek epitaph (by Antipater) on an unfortunate bride, which contains a few lines singularly applicable to the disasboth bride and bridegroom were equally untrous marriage of Margaret de Valois, in which willing, and which was peculiarly calamitous, as the prelude to, and the signal for, the carnage of St. Bartholomew. That the reader translation of the Greek lines: may judge of the applicability, we give our Canst thou, O Sun! this vast calamity MARY DE MEDICIS, second queen of Henry IV., and daughter of Francis, Grand Duke of Tuscany, was very unhappy. She was eclipsed in her own court by her husband's mistress, the Marchioness de Verneuil, who publicly treated her with disrespect, and mimicked her Italian accent and manner. The queen complained of the favorite's insolence, and her remonstrances caused violent quarrels between her and the king, who frequently threatened to divorce her, and illegitimatize her son, the dauphin, in order to marry the marchioness. Mary's temper was soured, and her mind rendered irritable by her constant vexation and apprehension. After Henry's assassination she had the affliction to see her friends, the Marquis Concini and his wife, put to death by the order of her son; by whom, also, she herself was twice imprisoned on account of her disagreement with his prime minister, Richelieu. She witnessed the misery of her daughter, Henrietta Maria, wife of the unfortunate Charles I. of England, and she became an outcast. Dismissed from England by Cromwell; obliged to quit Holland from Richelieu's influence; denied by her son a shelter in Paris, where she had reigned, she retired to Cologne, where, deserted by all, she suffered such poverty that, in the last du Roi" at Paris. An ecclesiastic once falsely claimed the authorship of it, the merit of which has been established to belong only to Margaret. |