Charles I of Anjou

“ The duke of Anjou, then in his twentieth year, had been brought up, like his brother, by Gondi, who had taught him to violate faith and to feast himself with spectacles of blood. He was already given up to those unbridled debaucheries, and to those ignoble superstitions, which made him a modern Heliogabalus, and the most abject prince ever seen upon the throne of France. “As for me,” said Charles IX. to Coligny, “I am a Frenchman and king of the French; my brother, the duke of Anjou, speaks only with his head, his eyes, and his shoulders; he is an Italian.” ”

“ They could only hear the murmur of voices; but could discern plainly the keen looks and animated gestures of Charles of Anjou, the sickly sullen indifference of Philippe, and the majestic gravity of Edward, whose noble head towered above the other two as if he were their natural judge. Charles was, in fact, trying to persuade the others to sail with him for Greece, and there turn their forces on the unfortunate Michael Palæologos, who had lately recovered Constantinople, the Empire that Charles hoped to win for himself, the favoured champion of Rome. ”

“ But for him Henry III. would be King of France."
"Alas, madame," returned Henry, "M. D'Anjou, who is always my enemy, will now hate me more than ever; but everyone has to do what he can."
Had Charles IX. been killed, the Duke d'Anjou would have been King of France, and D'Alençon most probably King of Poland. Henry of Navarre would have gained nothing by this change of affairs.
Instead of Charles IX. who tolerated him, he would have had the Duke d'Anjou on the throne, who, being absolutely at one with his mother, Catherine, had sworn his death, and would have kept his oath. ”

“ Charles offered his sister Margaret to young Henry of Navarre, and the hand of his brother, the Duke of Anjou, to the queen of England. This was in April 1571. Elizabeth was in her thirty-eighth year, Anjou was twenty. She amused herself with the new negotiations. While they were going on the evil day for the Huguenots was postponed. But Anjou was not the man to be used as a plaything. If he saw his way to a crown and something more, he would sacrifice himself. When he became convinced that the queen meant nothing serious, he threw her over, July 1571. ”

“ Supported upon either hand by the most distinguished Sovereign Princes of France,—Louis III., King of Sicily and Duke of Anjou, and his brother René, Duke of Barrois and heir-consort of Lorraine,—he passed majestically up the nave under the heavy golden canopy of state. Another Anjou Prince, Charles, Duke of Maine, nephew of Louis and René, bore the monarch’s train—his cousins all. The Grand Peers, with one exception, Burgundy, marched alongside in sovereign dignity and pride. Strange it was that no royal ladies graced the auspicious sacring. Queen Marie bore no part ”

“ The task of reconstruction was to be left to Henry of Anjou: his predecessor was only remembered as an example of the evil that may be done by a weak man who has been reckless enough to seize a throne which he is incapable of defending. England has had many worse kings, but never one who wrought her more harm. If his successor had been like him, feudal anarchy might have become as permanent in England as in Poland. ”

“ A beautiful girl and a brave is unmatchable! Fortune of war favoured the French-Anjou colours, and Charles became master of Normandy and all English-held North France. Guienne, too, was yielded to the valiant young Duke of Calabria. Moreover, the war-galleys of “Le Petit Roy de Bourges” scoured the Channel, and gained prizes and renown for Charles and René off the English coast.
Somerset’s defeat was a loss of credit, however, to Queen Margaret, and York of course made the most of it. ”

“ Margaret, loving peace and holy things, was easily persuaded to reason with her husband; she submitted absolutely to the overpowering personality of the Queen. With Charles, Yolande had a stiffer fight, but she gathered up her strength, and in the end, lusty warrior that he was, he yielded up his defence to the tactful diplomacy of the good mother of Anjou. Woman’s wit once more, as it generally does, triumphed over man’s obstinacy. ”

“ The Guelphs, alarmed at Manfred's growing power, now raised a Frenchman to the papal throne, who induced Charles of Anjou, the brother of the French monarch, to strike for the crown of southern Italy. Charles, a gloomy, cold-blooded and cruel prince, gladly accepted the pope's suggestions, and followed by a powerful body of French knights and soldiers of fortune, set sail for Naples in 1266. Manfred had unluckily lost the whole of his fleet in a storm, and was not able to oppose this threatening invasion, which landed in Italy in his despite. ”

“ King Charles VII. was a fugitive or little better, he had no money, and the Duke of Brittany had his own responsibilities and cares. The only wealthy member of the Sicily-Anjou family was the Queen of Naples, and she was financing King Louis III. and his conflict with the King of Aragon. Nevertheless something had to be done, and René and Isabelle together put their pride into their pocket and made approaches to their unlovely relative. Queen Yolande and Duchess Margaret also backed up the appeal. ”

“ This fascinating story of the loves of Count Dunois d’Orléans and Princess Marie d’Anjou was worked up by fanatics into a culpable liaison of the Queen. It grew in vile misrepresentation, and swelled in garbled facts until it became abhorrent in the ears of all decent-minded people. Some of Charles’s legitimate children were said to have been fathered by the Count. The Queen very wisely refrained from making replies to the evil stories, the only sensible way of dealing with them. ”

“ Du Mont had finished his conversation with Charles and, with repeated bows, was descending from the dais with his face toward the throne and his hindquarters to the gathering. Now that Anjou was a king, one did not turn one's back on him. A far cry from du [235] Mont's behavior toward Charles of only a few months earlier, and another mark of Charles's increased stature since his arrival at the gates of Rome. Still, he had been required to compromise on his coronation. He had been crowned in Rome as he wanted, but not by the pope. ”

“ He was a pious young man, simple to the verge of imbecility; a little later he developed actual insanity, the heritage of his grandfather Charles VI. He showed a blind confidence in Suffolk and Somerset, who were wholly unworthy of it, for both were tricky and unscrupulous politicians. His wife Margaret of Anjou, though she possessed all the fire and energy which her husband lacked, was equally devoted to these two ministers, and soon came to share their unpopularity.
The truce with France had offended the natural pride of the nation, which still refused to own itself beaten. ”

“ France was the first to carry abroad an activity unemployed at home, and to make Italy feel the change which had taken place in the politics of Europe. Its king, Charles VIII, claimed the inheritance of all the rights of the second house of Anjou on the kingdom of Naples. Those rights, founded on the adoption of Louis I of Anjou by Joanna I, had never been acknowledged by the people or confirmed by possession. For the space of a hundred and ten years Louis I, II, and III, and René, the brother of the last, made frequent but unsuccessful attempts to mount the throne of Naples. ”

“ Conscious of the inveterate hostility of the French king, he strove to establish relations with foreign powers to counterbalance the preponderance of his rival. When the death of Richard of Cornwall reopened the question of the imperial succession, Charles of Anjou had been anxious to obtain the prize for his nephew, Philip III., on the specious pretext that the headship of Christendom would enable the King of France to "collect chivalry from all the world" and institute the crusade which both Gregory X. and Edward so ardently desired. ”

“ It was a season of universal rejoicing in Anjou, and the Queen-mother, laying aside her widow’s chapelle and veil, entered whole-heartedly into the festivities. The most cheering feature of the gaiety was due to the magnanimity of the Duke of Burgundy, who quite unexpectedly and unreservedly offered the crown of peace by proposi [91] ng that Princess Marie, daughter of Charles I., Duke of Bourbon, his niece, should be affianced to the young Duke of Calabria. The ceremony of betrothal was duly celebrated in Angers Cathedral, the little bride being no more than seven years old. ”

“ Charles III., King of Naples, died in 1386, leaving to his son Ladislaus the royal succession, with his widow, Queen Margaret, as Regent. They with the Princess Giovanna, sixteen years of age, were fugitives from castle to castle, pursued by the troops of Louis d’Anjou. Nevertheless, Margaret was an astute mother, for when Ladislaus was eighteen years old she espoused him to Constance, daughter of the Count of Clermont in Sicily, a very wealthy heiress. ”

“ In 1262 Pope Urban IV. determined to destroy the power of the Hohenstaufen in Italy, and offered the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily, in consideration of a yearly tribute, to Charles of Anjou, in opposition to Manfred, the bastard son of the late emperor Frederick II. The next year Charles succeeded in getting himself elected senator of Rome, which gave him an advantage in dealing with the pope. ”

“ The first subject of dispute was the inheritance of the count of Provence, Raymond-Bérenger IV., father of Margaret and of Eleanor, wife of Henry III of England. Upon his death, in 1245, his youngest daughter, Beatrice, wife of Charles of Anjou, the king's uncle, succeeded to his lands, to the exclusion of her elder sisters, who claimed some portion of them for themselves. In 1281 war nearly broke out on this question. Margaret and her friends formed the league of Macon against Charles of Anjou, but the king managed to keep them at peace. ”

“ A few days subsequent to the coronation, Charles held a council of war at Reims to decide the plan of operations against the enemies of France, and he again sent René to the Maid’s lodging to bid her attend. “You have,” said the King to Jeanne, “not yet quite fulfilled the task you set yourself. The English still possess our gates. I need your presence and your services to rid France of her foes.” The Maid, sad at heart that more bloodshed had to deluge the soil of the devastated land, had no choice but to resume her martial garb, and once more to mount her war-steed. ”

“ Charles of Anjou, after being crowned king of Naples and Sicily by the Pope, and having secured secret advantages [Pg 187] by bribery and intrigue, marched against Manfred in 1266. They met at Benevento, where, after a long and bloody battle, Manfred was slain, and the kingdom submitted to the usurper. By the Pope's order, Manfred's body was taken from the chapel where it had been buried, and thrown into a trench: his widow and children were imprisoned for life by Charles of Anjou. ”

“ The machine of government was beginning to work in a satisfactory fashion, and the realm was already settling down into order, when Henry was called abroad by a rebellion raised in Anjou by his brother Geoffrey—the first of the innumerable dynastic troubles abroad which continued throughout his reign to distract his attention from his duties as an English king. ”

“ The marriage of Beatrice of Provence, the youngest of the daughters of Raymond Berengar, to Charles of Anjou, Louis' younger brother, removed Provence from the sphere of English influence. On his father-in-law's death in 1245, Charles of Anjou succeeded to his dominions to the prejudice of his two English brothers-in-law, and became the founder of a Capetian line of counts of Provence, which brought the great fief of the empire under the same northern French influences which Alfonse of Poitiers was diffusing over the lost inheritances of Eleanor of Aquitaine and the house of Saint-Gilles. ”

“ The duke of Bedford died in 1435, and in the same year Philip the Good of Burgundy concluded a treaty with Charles VII. at Arras, after fruitless negotiations for an English treaty. From this time Charles’s policy was strengthened. La Trémoille had been assassinated in 1433 by the constable’s orders, with the connivance of Yolande of Aragon. For his former favourites were substituted energetic advisers, his brother-in-law Charles of Anjou, Dunois (the famous bastard of Orleans) , Pierre de Brézé, Richemont and others. ”

“ It was bounded on the north by the countship of Maine, on the east by that of Touraine, on the south by that of Poitiers and by the Mauges, on the west by the countship of Nantes.
From the outset of the reign of Charles the Bald, the integrity of Anjou was seriously menaced by a two-fold danger: from Brittany and from Normandy. Lambert, a former count of Nantes, after devastating Anjou in concert with Nominoé, duke of Brittany, had by the end of the year 851 succeeded in occupying all the western part as far as the Mayenne. ”

“ Undoubtedly there is much truth in this view of the situation; if Henry VI., or perhaps we should rather say, if his queen Margaret of Anjou, had been content to accept ministries in which the friends of Richard of York were fairly represented, it is probable that he might have died a king, and have transmitted his crown to his natural heir. But this explanation of the Wars of the Roses is not complete; it accounts for their outbreak, but not for their long continuance.
According to another school the real key to the problem is simply the question of the succession to the crown. ”