Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886)/Chapter 6
THE CAPTIVITY.
Left a captive in the tents of Charles, Francis looked towards every State in Europe and saw no hope of succour. England was against him; Spain, Austria, Italy, Germany, were his enemies. Drawing his ring from his finger, Francis sent it as a sign to Soliman the Magnificent, Sultan of Turkey.
The first messenger was murdered on his way; but the ring was finally obtained by Ibrahim, the brilliant Vizier of the Sultan, who wore it in triumph. A second ambassador, a certain Frangipani, was immediately despatched; he bore a letter and messages from Francis to Soliman, and returned secretly with the Sultan's answer. Thus a secret understanding began between France and the East, by the terms of which trade was to be encouraged between the two countries. Soliman promised that the Christian creed should be respected as his own. A French Consul was appointed at Alexandria. Whilst, more than all this, it was agreed that Soliman should attempt to win the Hungarian frontier of the Empire; thus harassing Charles in the East and giving room for the development of France in the West.
But before any result could come of this alliance Francis must be free. Soliman, in his letter, bids him not despair. It is not strange that great kings should be captive. And he adds, "My horse is always saddled, and my sword by day and night is girdled on." But it is difficult to see how Soliman could rescue the royal captive, unless by invading Hungary he could call Charles and his armies from Madrid, and leave Spain open to a French invasion.
Such plans were vague and audacious; and the present misery very real. The King was taken from Lombardy and sent to Madrid. Meanwhile panic reigned in his kingdom. Notwithstanding the poverty and division of the Emperor's camp, it still seemed possible to abandoned France that Bourbon the traitor might enter in and ravage her. Religious discord increased. The party of Luther and the Clerical party each attributed the sorrows of France to the corruption or the impiety of the other. In this year the first burnings began; and, under the influence of Cardinal Duprat, Louisa the Regent showed herself implacable towards the Reformation. The Parliament wrote to her, representing "the inconveniences which may arise from the heresies which pullulate throughout this realm": and trials were instituted against Lefebvre, Caroli, and Roussel. These were with difficulty rescued by Margaret, who procured an autograph remission of their process from her brother. Francis commanded Parliament to entreat the accused as "personages of great knowledge and men of letters and doctrine." But the danger was still so great that Roussel and Lefebvre fled to Strasburg, and henceforth corresponded under feigned names, only known to the initiated. Danger, however, only increased the fervour of the Reformers; and from their exile they influenced the current of thought in France. The misery of earth helped to quicken the impulse towards Heaven.
"The further they take you from us," writes Margaret to her brother in May, on the eve of his journey to Spain, "the more increases in me the firm hope that I have of your deliverance and speedy return. For at the time when human wisdom fails and is troubled, then the master-work of our Lord is wrought; for it is He who alone will have the glory and the honour."
So, in these early days of the captivity, France awaited a miracle in favour of her King. His captivity had revived all the enthusiastic devotion of his people. Amadis for chivalry, Absalom for beauty, Ogier for courage, so the popular ballads of the moment portray him. The fight he made on foot alone against his captors of Pavia inspired a host of songs:—
Son cheval fust tué
Là on vist Olivier,
Roland, aussy Richard
Demenant leur mestier
Combattant tout à pied
Comme Hector Troyannois
Oncques tel n'en sortit
Du beau nom de Valoys.
Through the whole civilised world, his captivity shed a brighter lustre on the chivalry of Francis. England classed him with Richard, her troubadour par excellence; France with Charlemagne and with John the Good, her paragons of honour; and Soliman himself, writing to the King in prison, reminds him that Bajazet, the hero of Turkey, suffered a like misfortune. But it was above all in Spain, in the land of his captivity, that the cult of Francis reached its most fantastic heights. The Spaniards, instinct with romance, chivalry, respect for heroic misfortune, saw their ideal in this flimsy and volatile Francis. Thrown by the Austrian Charles (always a foreigner to all his subjects) into a dark, unsightly prison, the French King inspired a reverent pity in the generous heart of Spain. From the lowest to the highest, the nation was interested in the illustrious captive. The family of the Duke of Infantado received a caution from the Emperor, offended by their enthusiasm. "Persons of great standing," writes Margaret, later, "desire nothing more than the return of the Emperor to Italy; and then you would not long be left in prison!" Ximena del Infantado fell so passionately in love with the royal captive, that, on his betrothal to another in 1526, she entered the religious life. And, indeed, Francis had never conquered so many hearts by his magnificence as yielded now to his misfortunes.
Charles found himself in the position of a gaoler, keeping his captive against the popular desire. The fret and annoyance of such a position hardened his heart. He behaved ungenerously to the prisoner who was none the less his equal, his rival, his companion-in-arms. With no dislike to Francis (for whom, indeed, he ever had a contemptuous affection), he made his prison as dreary, as uncomfortable as possible, thinking thus speedily to exact from him the surrender of Burgundy. But Francis, for all his volatile spirit, had a certain fineness of disposition, a certain real chivalry under his Amadis airs and graces. He refused to grant the Emperor's terms, though, as the year drew on, the Alcazar became, in the sultry summer weather, an intolerable exchange for Fontainebleau. Still Francis refused to dismember his kingdom; growing a little weaker every month in his unaccustomed restraint, and attaining much facility in making verses, the one amusement of his dreary prison.
Naturally this heroic obstinacy increased yet further his popularity in Spain. The Emperor's sister, the young widow of the King of Portugal, shared the universal passion. Leonor of Austria was at this time about six-and-twenty years of age; not regularly beautiful. Yet her face, preserved to us by a painter of Clouet's school, far exceeds in interest and charm the more regular beauties of her day. A thin face, delicately sharp in outline, a hatchet-face it might be called unkindly, is set in bushy masses of crisp hair, whose reddish gold is wonderfully clear and beautiful in tint. The face, too, is fresh and fair in colour. A charming half-boyish face, with its shock of blonde hair and eager chevaleresque expression; an ardent face, with the Austrian lip modified to the self-willed, resolute pout of a spoiled girl, not breaking hindrance to her generous impulses. Yet this ardent blonde, with her look of chivalrous naïveté, her brilliant hair, and clear rosy colour, her full lips, and alert romantic air, has the dreamy, impassive, light-brown eyes, the thin finely-arched jet-black brows of a quite different type. There is something odd, unmatched, inharmonious, yet not unpleasing, in this brilliant face with the dull and dreamy gate—something which tells us that this grand-child of the fiery Maximilian was the daughter of the mad Juana.
She had already played her romance, this quick-blooded Austrian-Spaniard, who represented all those qualities of their mixed race which her brother Charles ignored. In her girlhood, in her Flemish home, under the wing of her aunt, the politic Margaret, she had met a handsome, stalwart German, the fair-haired Palatine Frederic. The two young people had fallen violently in love with each other, and kept their passion a secret for some months. But, finally, some well-informed Prime Minister got a hint of it; and the wayward Leonor was married against her will to a dissolute old dotard, the King of Portugal. On his death, the Palatine Frederic renewed his offers. But Leonor had already heard of her brother's captive, the Ogier, the Amadis, the Roland of France. She turned a deaf ear to her faithful Palatine.
Leonor had been promised by her brother to the Constable Bourbon. She refused to wed the traitor who had mined her hero. Her frank, expansive nature did not seek to hide her interest. She writes to Louisa, "Would that it were in my power to deliver the King!" And, seeing Leonor so devoted, a new condition of peace began to be mooted in the court of Louisa at Lyons.
A letter exists, of which the signature is quite illegible, dated the 2nd of June 1525, and addressed to Louisa. Here the new plan is formulated for, I think, the first time. It is proposed that Leonor shall be given in marriage, not to Bourbon, but to Francis; that her daughter by her first husband he married to the young Dauphin; that the Duchess Margaret wed the Emperor; and Constable Bourbon the Princess Renée. On this plan the Duchy of Burgundy might be reserved for the eldest son of Leonor and Francis. This would, however, dismember the Dauphin's inheritance. On the 6th of June, Madame, who was Regent in France, sent an embassy to Madrid, to treat of the marriage of Leonor with Francis and of the Dauphin with her daughter. But all the other conditions of peace waited the arrival of Madame d'Alençon. For it was now determined that the Duchess Margaret should visit her brother at Madrid, and solicit the Emperor on his behalf. "The arrival of Madame Marguerite," writes Brion in July from Venezuello, "will decide the deliverance of the King."
After some delay the Emperor sent a safe conduct to Margaret, and she prepared for her adventurous journey. Many mistrusted the integrity of Charles, and feared that he might invent some pretext to detain her as a hostage. "Dieu vuelle que la fin seé como la principé" (God grant that the end be no worse than the beginning), wrote at this moment a citizen of Marseilles. And many feared other perils less august: the highway robbers who then infested the less-travelled portions of France and Spain. The season, too, was signally unhealthy; hot, with violent storms and thunder. But Margaret disregarded all these things; she was to see her brother again and to do him a service.
Much was, indeed, hoped for this journey, much expected from the influence of Margaret upon the Emperor. At another moment she might have shrunk from petitioning the man who had not yet answered the proposals which gave her to him in marriage. But during this long tedious journey she was subject to an access of exaltation, such as in times of great danger and difficulty she had experienced before. She seemed impervious to any thought but one, that she was nearing her captive brother; and as needles do not hurt the tender flesh of tranced women, nor tortures reach the acne of martyrs in their hour of crowning, so neither bodily discomfort nor wounded pride touched the feeling of Margaret at this moment.
On her road towards Madrid, a fortnight's journey then from the frontier, she sent frequent letters to her brother. "I implore you," she cries, "to believe that whatsoever I can do in your service, were it to scatter to the winds the ashes of my bones, nothing would be to me either strange, or difficult, or painful, but consolation, repose, and honour. An at this hour, my Lord, I well know what strength of love our Lord has put in us three; for that which seemed to me impossible, thinking only of myself, is easy in the memory of you; and this makes me desire, for your good, things which the pains of death should not have made me wish for my own repose."
On her slow and painful way Margaret was met by dreadful news: the King was very ill. The hot summer weather and close confinement had brought him to death's door. The news spread like wildfire, causing a thrill of horror in France. The Dauphin was but seven years old; and a long regency seemed to threaten the exhausted nation. "News came," says the Bourgeois of Paris, "that the King was dead, captive, in a town called Madril; whence great trouble and sorrow arose among the people of Paris and throughout the land of France; and this lasted nigh a month."
Meanwhile Margaret hastened her journey towards her dying brother. In her litter, as she went, she wrote songs about him:—
Le desir du bien que j'actendz
Me donne de travail matière ;
Une heure me dure cent ans,
Et me semble que ma lictière
Ne bouge, ou retourne en arrière ;
Tant j'ay de m'avancer desir.
Ô qu'ell' est longue, la carrière
Où à la fin gist mon plaisir !
Je regarde de tous costés
Pour veoir s'il arrive personne ;
Pryant sans cesser, n'en doubtez,
Dieu, que santé a mon Roy donne.
Quant nul ne voy, l'oiel j'abandonne
À pleurer; puis sur le pappier
Ung peu de ma douleur j'ordonne :
Voilà mon douloureux mestier !
Ô qu'il sera le bienvenu,
Celluy qui, frappant à ma porte
Dira : Le Roy est revenu
En sa santé très bonne et forte !
Alors le seur, plus mal que morte,
Courra baiser le messaiger
Qui telles nouvelles apporte
Que son frère est hors de dangier !
But no messenger came to win Margaret's embraces by such welcome news. The King sank lower and lower. An abscess had formed on the crown of his head; the body, already wasted by fever, could scarcely support this additional cause of weakness. On Monday, the 18th of September, Francis was so ill that his attendants sent for the Emperor, who all this time had never visited his ailing captive. Charles was really shocked when he heard that his rival lay a-dying. He travelled all the next day from Segovia to Madrid. It was dark when he reached the Alcazar where Francis was confined. Charles dismounted, leaving his cortège outside, lest their presence should fatigue his prisoner. The Viceroy of Naples and Anne de Montmorency met him at the gate, lighting the way with torches. So they reached the unprincely room where the most magnificent prince in Europe lay dying on his prison-bed.
Seeing the Emperor enter, Francis tried to raise himself on his elbow; but Charles, who, after all, was still a young man with a natural heart, threw himself on his knees beside the bed and flung himself into the arms of Francis. So for a long time captive and captor held each other tightly embraced.
Then said Francis, who witnessed this affection with some excusable irony, "Sire, you see before you your prisoner and your slave!"
"Nay," cried Charles, with real remorse, "my good brother and true friend whom I hold as free!"
This was too much for Francis. He looked round the room.
"Your slave!" he repeated.
"My friend, who shall be free!" repeated the Emperor.
So the little scene has been handed down to us. We can imagine to what hopes and desires gave rise these words of Charles, dictated half by generous remorse, half by a desire to keep alive a valuable prisoner. On the morrow Margaret arrived. It was the 20th September. The Emperor was still at the Alcazar. When the bustle of her attendants announced her arrival he went down-stairs to receive this woman who had been proposed to him as a wife. He found her in the doorway, pale and in tears. She was dressed from head to foot in white, the mourning of a royal widow. He led her, still weeping, to her brother. When he shut the door on their meeting, he must have remembered that proposal of marriage, and recalled the pale, dishevelled woman he had left. She had had no time to repair the disorders of travel; she was worn with her long, hot journey over rough, unshaded roads. Her beautiful hair and graceful figure were seen at a disadvantage. Her long face with the marked features must have appeared haggard in its grief. At least so much is clear; Charles, who at twenty-five years old, was the most important personage of his age, did not fall in love with this pale and tearful widow of three-and-thirty, whom he now encountered for the first time. We hear no more of a marriage between him and Margaret.
Meanwhile the joy was great between the brother and the sister. For the moment Francis appeared out of danger. But three days after, on the 25th September, the sinking of death appeared to overpower him. Montmorency sent a hurried message to the Emperor, who received with chill resignation the news that his scheming was outplanned by Death. "God has given him to me," he exclaimed, "and God has taken him away!" Yet he knew that if Francis died the battle of Pavia had been bought too dearly.
Meanwhile Margaret, in agony and exaltation, knelt praying by her brother's side. Francis lay quite insensible upon his bed. But none the less his sister had an altar dressed in his cell, and sent for the Archbishop and his priests to say a mass. At the moment of the elevation of the Host, the Archbishop turned and spoke to the dying King. Francis opened his eyes and asked for the Holy Sacrament. That evening the abscess broke, and immediate danger was over.
The King was still very weak; still feverish and needing better air and greater comforts than his prison could supply. Margaret at once began negotiations for a peace. But now she found the Emperor did not remember the words that had so often been quoted to her. He seemed in no haste to set his good brother free.
Margaret was in great distress. Even for her brother's sake she could not counsel the surrender of Burgundy. And yet, unless she could satisfy Charles, there seemed nothing but perpetual imprisonment for Francis. No other king would come forward as a champion. Soliman as yet had made no sign, nor would he be likely to leave Turkey in the winter; and before another summer came her brother might be dead. Louisa, at home, had concluded a peace with Henry of England; but that wary king would only risk his moral support. And, to complicate her troubles, Montmorency had become jealous of her influence with her sick brother. She has to warn Francis not to listen to such tales of her as this old and long-loved friend may tell him. "I pray you, my lord," she writes, "keep me in your good graces, in spite of Montmorency, who is jealous."
Meanwhile the outer world kept assuring her that she was certain to conclude an advantageous peace. "À vous, Madame, l'honneur et la mérite," write the ministers from France in premature congratulation. "Ne fais doubte que Madame d'Alençon, vostre seur, conclura tost une bonne paix," writes Charles himself to the king, in the letter where he excuses himself from paying further visits to his captive. But Margaret must have suffered many a bitter doubt. She writes to her brother on the road to Toledo, from a village whither she has gone to conduct her business with the Emperor; and her letter (before the 18th) is full of trouble and of wounded pride:—
"October 1525.
"My Lord,
"You will have heard from Monsieur d'Ambrun and Babou of the terms they persist in here; which are not like the letters and the kind words which Véré brought you from his master, as you shall know at greater length from their lips. Since their departure the Viceroy has sent me word that, in his opinion, it were better for me to go to meet the Emperor. But I have forwarded him a message by Monsieur de Senlys that I have never yet stirred from my lodging without being sent for; and that when the Emperor chooses to send for me I am to be found in a certain convent, where at present I have stayed from one o'clock till five, vainly waiting an answer.
"This is already the third day I have scarcely set my foot outside of convents; and this I have told the Viceroy I shall continue to do, so that the world at large may know that, if I do not speak with the Emperor, still my rank requires me not to court his courtiers and tamper with the servants of a master who promised you that I should speak to him alone of your affairs. I shall see, this evening, what they will do; and to-morrow, having received your commands, I shall follow them as best I can. And I assure you, my lord, that here they are so perplexed and hindered that they greatly fear I shall ask the Emperor's leave to retire; or so I gather from what has been said to the seneschal and to Senliz; and I fancy that by keeping our heads high a little longer we may force them to speak another language. And, come what may, we will deliver you by the grace of God. But I beseech you, since they set so infamously to work, do not trouble yourself about the slow progress we make in bringing them to the point, where so greatly desires to arrive
"Your Marguerite."[1]
Finally, on the 13th October, Margaret was received at Toledo by the Emperor in person, "with great politeness," says Ferreras, the Spaniard; but Margaret does not seem so satisfied. "Je le trouvay bien froit," she writes to her brother—"I found him very cold, but not inclined to stand on ceremony; for he put me off on pretext of speaking to his council, and said he would give me an answer to-day. And then he took me to see Queen Alyenor, his sister; where I stayed until quite late. And last night I went to see her, and she spoke to me in terms of great friendliness. It is true she goes on her journey[2] to-morrow, and I must go and take leave of her. I think she goes more by obedience than by choice, for they keep her very much in order. And as I was talking to her the Viceroy came in quest of me, and I went to the Emperor's apartments, who sent for me to come to his chamber; and he told me he desired your deliverance in perfect amity; but, in the end, he stopped at the question of Burgundy."
Margaret, by this time, centred her hopes on the intercession of Leonor. The Emperor's fine speeches, though abundant, covered an iron will, and she learned to put little trust in them. "He assures me always," she writes, "that he will do a thing that I shall marvel at." "But," she adds, elsewhere, "I think they all wish to content me without doing anything in reason." And again, "Everyone tells me he loves the King, but I have little experience of it." The only way to get at a peace was through Leonor, who might bring Burgundy as a dower.
"I desire, for your good, things which the pains of death should not make me wish for my own repose." So Margaret had written to her brother on her journey to Madrid; and now she found herself obliged perforce to agree to cruel terms. "I assure you, my lord," she writes to Francis, "that the office of solicitor in so unreasonable a company is a far more difficult service than it was to be your physician when you were sick."
Not until the end of the month was any result obtained from the frequent conferences between Margaret and the Emperor; then the following conditions were drawn up and sent to the King, "things which the bitterness of death should not make me wish for my own repose."
The King of France was to resign Burgundy, Auxonne, Macon, Auxerre, La Brie, Bar-sur-Seine, to the banks of the Somme. To this extravagant demand Margaret would not agree.
He was to resign Tourney, Flanders, and Artois; he was to resign all right to Milan and Naples; he was to resign all pretensions to Aragon. Agreed.
He was to abandon Henry d’Albret, King of Navarre, Robert de la Marche, and others, to the Emperor's justice. Not agreed to by Margaret.
He was to marry Leonor, Queen of Portugal, and settle Burgundy on their joint heirs. Refused by Charles.
M. de Bourbon, his allies and friends, to be reinstated in their former positions. Agreed.
Such miserable terms were the best to be obtained. With a sore heart must Margaret have watched the couriers set out from Toledo, carrying the news to her brother in prison. If he refused this peace, perpetual imprisonment lay before the gayest and most splendid monarch of Europe. If, enfeebled by long captivity, he assented to these conditions, France must, perforce, descend to the level of a petty state.
But when in a few days the couriers returned, her heart must have beat high with glad recognition of her brother's chivalry. His letter ran:—
"Monsieur, mon Frère,[3]
"I know you cannot condemn me to perpetual imprisonment more honestly than by asking, for my ransom, an impossible thing. On my side I am resolved to take my prison in good part, being sure that God (who knows I merit it not for long, being the captive of honourable warfare), God will give me strength to bear it patiently. And I have no regret, save only the fact that the honest proposals, which you chose to hold to me in my illness, should be barren of effect."
Thus affairs were still in the same state as on the morrow of Pavia.
Margaret was now in despair. Ferreras, the Spanish historian, assures us that she undertook to get Francis out of prison in disguise; that she put in his bed a negro who was accustomed to carry the wood to the King's fire, and dressing her brother in the slave's attire, and having blacked his face, attempted to escape with him in the dusk, but was discovered by a groom of the chambers. This may be true, or it may be a mere blundering remembrance of the escape of Henry d'Albret from Pavia. But in either case, it was evident there was no rescue for the King of France.
In November another scheme began to occupy Margaret and her brother; a scheme by which the Emperor would have left in his hands no king whom a hard captivity might incline to shameful terms, but a simple nobleman whom he could have no interest to misuse. In his prison at Madrid, Francis spent long hours in drawing up the act of abdication, by which he renounced the crown of France in favour of his eldest son. In these letters patent, Francis narrates his misfortunes of Pavia, his illness in prison, and the rigour of Charles; he speaks of the journey of Margaret, and how all her reasonable offorts were refused; then he adds that he would rather that he should remain all his lifetime in prison than sever his kingdom of France in pieces. He and his children will pay the price, "They are born for the good of my kingdom; true children of the public weal"; and France, he reminds his subjects, has been governed well by younger kings with the help of good counsel. He therefore appoints the Dauphin Francis, King of France, under the regency of Madame. In the event of the death of Madame, her place shall be filled by "nostre très chère et très amée seur unicque Marguerite de France." But, in case of the deliverance of the King, this act and all its contents to be held null and void.
History with one voice has attributed the inspiration of this act to Margaret. This one counsel, the cheering cordial of her presence, and the furtherance of a friendship between her brother and Leonor, was all she had accomplished in the visit from which she had hoped so much. And now that visit was at an end. She had incautiously let the three months covered by her safe conduct slip towards the close, dreading no treachery on the Emperor's part in her sweet, dense reliance on the honour of others. But she was warned in time, either by the suspicion of her brother or by some watchful friend. Tradition records that Constable Bourbon, who had loved this gentle end courageous woman, could not stand by and see her condemned unwitting to a dreary imprisonment. After many a debate, the legend runs, he at last sent secret word to Francis, that if Margaret were not out of Spain by the close of December, the Emperor would consider her his captive. From some source, at least, she learned her danger at the end of November. By forced marches and unrelaxed haste, there was just time to reach home in safety.
Margaret set out at once, grieving sore to leave her brother. It was arranged that she should not wait for the Act of Abdication, which should be brought to France by Montmorency, whose ransom was paid by Francis, and who would leave Spain at the new year. Thus, should she fail to arrive in time, the letters patent would none the less be safe. So, in sore distress of mind, the poor sister departed.
All her hopes had come to nothing; all her endeavours had failed. There was still an endless prospect of exile or captivity before the adored brother and king to whom she said "Adieu!" perchance for ever. How willingly would she not have stayed behind and shared his prison! But she had a task to perform, another service to render. She must return to France, attend to his affairs, and educate his children. If she let fall her burden, there was the less hope for him.
She wrote to Montmorency from Alcala, the first stage of her journey, on the 20th November:—
"My Cousin,
"This morning when I awoke I received your letter, and I leave you to think if I was glad to hear news of the King. As for my news, the body is but too well; but the spirit, I cannot deny it, remembers that which is left behind. Do you know that all night long I held the king's hand, and would not rouse myself in the morning, so as to have that pleasure a little longer? I try to take this departure as well as I can; but succour me with news of him as often as you may. Let me hear some good news—if you have any to tell."
That morning of discouragement and poignant regret was the first of many such days. She can think of nothing but the brother she has left. She encounters Brion, going with news from the frontier to the King. "Would to God," she cries, "that it were I returning! My speed would be nowise Brionnicque." But every day takes her farther and farther away. At last she writes to the brother whom, after all her pains, she has left unaided, and beseeches him to let her return and bare his danger. She writes vaguely and strangely, feeling the risk to Francis if her letters fall into the secret and suspicious hands of Charles:—
"Sire,
"That which you were pleased to write me, saying you would tell me further, has made me go on; hoping, moreover, that you would not leave the straight road, and flee from them who, for all their happiness, only desire to see you, though worse off than before." (Is this a last prayer to give up Burgundy and be free?) "Let my intention be prescribed, if you should ever need the honest and ancient service which I have borne and bear to your good grape. And if the perfect imperfection of a hundred thousand faults make you disdain my obedience—then, at least, Sire, do not increase my lamentable misery by demanding experience in addition to defeat, knowing my impotence without your aid, as you shall learn further by a sign I send. And I ask for the end of my misfortunes and the beginning of a good new year, only that you may let me be for you some little of that which infinitely you are to me, and will be to me, without ending, in my thoughts. And awaiting the joy of seeing you and of speaking with you, Sire, my desire of meeting presses me to humbly beseech you to let me know the answer by this messenger. And, if it be no trouble to you, I will set off at once, feigning another occasion. And there is no stress of weather nor roughness of the roads, that will not be turned for me into an exceeding pleasant repose. And I shall be most grateful to you. And yet more grateful if it please you to bury my letters in the fire and my words in silence. Else you will render worse than dead my miserable life."
Francis had the force to refuse this agonised appeal. He neither called his sister back not yielded Burgundy. He sent her on to France and she obeyed, though sick at heart and shorn of all natural trust in her own efforts, "of which you know the impotence without your aid." But since the King commanded it, she travelled on, and on the 15th December she was home in France; she was in her mother's arms.
Back in France at last, and back again without the good news she had gone so far to get. Back in a disappointed, weary, restless, and ironic country. Back to hear the people singing in the streets, no longer of Ogier and Charlemagne, but a new satirical ballad:—
Rens, rens-toy, Roi de France,
Rens-toy donc, car tu es pris !
Back to confront Parliament with a writ of abdication, and a dissatisfied country, with the news of a Regency of women. Yet not for lack of striving was her task undone.
What else could she have done? Any peace that Charles would grant must, of necessity, dismember France. "And so," concludes the Bourgeois of Marseilles, "the said lady returned by land, and she made no good cheer, and not without cause; for she could not agree with the Emperor that her brother should be ransomed by money, but they demanded a portion of the realm, which we could not grant without great loss and dishonour.—Dieu per sa pietat nos mande bueno pas."