Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/584

F RANG E [itlSTOfcY. 1380-90. called on to fill the throne. Charles VI. was not twelve Charles years old, a light-witted, handsome boy, under the guar- VI. dianship of the royal dukes his uncles, who had no principles except that of their own interest to guide them in bringing up the king and ruling the people. They selfishly quarrelled round his person ; the duke of Anjou stole his money and set off to make good his claims on Naples and Sicily; the duke of Burgundy had great prospects in the Low Countries; the duke of Berri ruled in southern France, and was a man of no character or worth; the duke of Bourbon, the late king s brother-in-law, with Burgundy, had charge of the boy s education; Oliver Clisson was made constable of France in the room of Du Guesclin. Before Charles VI. had reached years of discretion he was involved by the French nobles in war against the Flemish cities, which, under guidance of the great Philip van Arteveldt, had overthrown the authority of the count of Flanders. The French cities showed ominous signs of being inclined to ally themselves with the civic movement in the north. The men of Ghent came out to meet their French foes, and at the battle of Roosebek (1382) were utterly defeated and crushed. Philip van Arteveldt himself was slain. It was a great triumph of the nobles over the cities ; and Paris felt it when the king returned. All movement there and in the other northern cities of France was ruthlessly repressed; the noble reaction also overthrew the " new men " and the lawyers, by whose means the late king had chiefly governed. Two years later, the royal dukes signed a truse with England, includ ing Ghent in it ; and Louis de Male, count of Flanders, having perished at the same time, Margaret, his daughter, wife of Philip of Burgundy, succeeded to his inheritance (ISSi). Thus began the high fortunes of the house of Burgundy, which at one time seemed to overshadow emperor and king of France. In 1385 another of the brothers, Louis, duke of Anjou, died, with all his Italian ambitions unfulfilled. In 1386 Charles VI., under guid ance of his uncles, declared war on England, and ex hausted all France in preparations ; the attempt proved the sorriest failure. The regency of the dukes became daily more unpopular, until in 1388 Charles dismissed his two uncles, the dukes of Burgundy and Berri, and began to rule. For a while all went much better; he recalled his father s friends and advisers, lightened the burdens of thg people, allowed the new ministers free hand in making prudent government; and learning how bad had been the state of the south under the duke of Berri, deprived him of that command in 1390. Men thought that the young king, if not good himself, was well content to allow good men to govern in his name; at any rate the rule of the selfish dukes seemed to be over. Their bad influences, however, still surrounded him; an attempt to assassinate Oliver Clisson the constable was connected with their intrigues and those of the duke of Brittany; and in setting forth to punish the attempt on his favourite the constable, the unlucky young king, who had sapped his health by debauchery, suddenly became mad. The dukes of Burgundy and Berri at once seized the reins, and put aside his brother the young duke of Orleans. It was the beginning of that great civil discord between "Rurgtin- Burgundy and Orleans, the Burgundians and Armagnacs, dians which worked so much ill for France in the earlier part of and Ar- ^ e nex ^ century. The rule of the uncles was disastrous iiaguacs. or jYancQ . no g 00( j government seemed even possible for that unhappy land. From time to time the unfortunate king had lucid intervals ; he seems even to have tried to put a stop to the great schism of the West, that struggle between rival popes, the scandalous quarrel of "Urbanists," followers of Urban VI., elected at Rome (in 1378) in opposition to the French power, and of "Clementines," followers of the Avignon pope, Clement VII. But his lucid I39c intervals were too short and few; and the French court TJrb; was also too much engaged in the Burgundian and Orleanist ists : contest to care much for the peace of the church. There is 9 en no more gloomy period of French history than the coming tmef 50 years. It is the record of party strife of a mean and unscrupulous kind, in which also Paris begins her new role of partisan. The struggle in the 15th century between royalty and aristocracy is an unlovely sight, whether it be watched in England, in Germany, or in France. In France the contest took a peculiar form ; the whole country seemed to be arrayed under two hostile banners that of the house of Burgundy, and that of the duke of Orleans. The house of Burgundy was headed by men of grasp and power, and its party bore the name of Burgundians, little as it expressed the true position; while the duke of Orleans was a mean and foolish person, and his party did not go by his name, but, by some accident, took that of the count of Armaguac, who was father-in-law to the duke of Orleans, and a prince of great name and vigour in the south of France. The duke of Burgundy was Philip the Bold, fourth son of King John of France, to whom his father had granted the duchy on the death of Philip de Rouvres, who had left no heirs, so that his inheritance had escheated to the crown. The duke was therefore uncle to Charles VI., and to his rival in France, Louis, duke of Orleans. By his marriage willi Margaret of Flanders, to whom the county of Burgundy had descended by female succession, he reunited the duchy and county, and also became lord of Flanders. Though the county (Franche Comte") carried him to the east of France into the empire, his chief power lay in the north. His connexion with Germany led him to espouse the side of the Urbanists against the corrupt Avignon papacy. The policy of the duke made him popular with the cities of the north of France, and specially with Paris, a popularity in no way impaired by his terrible punishment of Liege, which opposed him in 1408; that policy professed to relieve the cities of their worst burdens, and to give them a position of some independence in the presence of their unhappy sovereign and the corrupt court around him. In his foreign politics the duke had also added much to his strength by supporting the house of Lancaster in its successful attack on Richard II.; the friendship of Henry IV. and Henry V. of England was the result. In resources the house of Burgundy was deemed the richest in tho world, and its magnificence on great occasions rivalled all that had been dreamt in fable. Lastly, while the French rnonarchs were a weary series of diseased or dissolute princes, their Burgundiau cousins were all strong men, men of faults enough, no doubt, but not of weak vices. On the other hand, the duke of Orleans, with his follow ing of nobles, was of the south ; all his strength lay beyond the Loire, and his party represented the old aristocracy against the modern princes and the popular instincts of the cities. There is no greater mistake than that of speaking of the Burgundian dukes as the last great leaders of feudalism; the feudalism of the age was far more definitely on the side of the Armagnacs. In his church politics Orleans supported the southern Avignon pope against the Germanic and Italian Urbanists ; in his foreign politics he and the court went with the losing Yorkist party in England, Richard II. having in 1396 espoused Isabelle of Valois, eldest daughter of Charles VT. At tho beginning the Armagnacs were a mere court and noble party ; no general or patriotic feelings seemed to be in question ; as, however, time went on, and the house of Burgundy drew closer and closer to that of Lancaster, and when England and Burgundy in the days of Henry V. and Bedford seemed to be subjecting France for ever to the foreigner, then the Armagnac party gradually asserted