Duc d'Aumale

“ On the death of his mother, Queen Marie Amélie, the Duc d’Aumale inherited a great many family portraits and miniatures, the most noteworthy among these being a life-size portrait of Gaston d’Orléans by Van Dyck, of which there is a replica in the Radnor Collection. This painting was given to Louis Philippe by George IV and was probably painted at the request of Queen Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I, who was a sister of the Royal sitter. There is not the slightest resemblance in his features to the good King Henri IV, his father. ”

“ That is the reason a stone is missing at Abbadia.
An account is also appropriate here of that other gift to French science and letters of the Château of Chantilly, made to the Institute of France in 1886, by the late Duc d'Aumale, whose tragic death in consequence of the terrible disaster at the Bazaar de Charité, Paris, occurred near in time to that of M. d'Abbadie. The duke was conspicuous as a soldier, as a man of letters, the author of the History of the Princes of Condé, and as a great bibliophile; as a member of the French Academy (1871) , taking the place of Montalembert ”

“ The Duc d’Aumale, in his “Histoire des Princes de Condé,” stigmatizes the Protestants as “unjust and ungrateful,” and declares that “there is no proof that Condé ever contemplated a union by marriage with the House of Lorraine.” “In any case,” continues the royal historian, “if he did ‘bind himself afresh’ to his former rivals; if he refused to take part in all the quarrels and to share all the passions which were raging around him, it was because he was sincerely desirous to obliterate the traces, and prevent the renewal, of the civil war.” ”

“ By the act of exception passed in 1883 all members of families that had reigned in France serving in the army were deprived of their military positions; consequently the duc d’Aumale was placed on the unemployed supernumerary list. Subsequently, in 1886, another law was promulgated which expelled from French territory the heads of former reigning families, and provided that henceforward all members of those families should be disqualified for any public position or function, and for election to any public body. ”

“ Marguerite’s manuscript copy of the First Book of the Iliad is a small quarto, adorned with daisies, fleurs de-lis, and the crowned M. It is in the Duc d’Aumale’s collection at Chantilly. The books of Diane de Poitiers are more numerous and more famous. When first a widow she stamped her volumes with a laurel springing from a tomb, and the motto, “Sola vivit in illo.” ”

“ By the marriage of Anne of Lorraine with the duke of Nemours in 1618 the duchy of Aumale passed to the house of Savoy-Nemours. In 1686 Marie Jeanne Baptiste, duchess of Nemours and of Aumale, and wife of Charles Emmanuel II., duke of Savoy, sold Aumale to Louis XIV., who gave it to his natural son, the duke of Maine. After the death of that prince, the dukedom devolved upon his brother, the count of Toulouse, subsequently passing to the latter’s son, the duke of Penthièvre, whose daughter married the duke of Orleans. ”

“ It has been affirmed that the natural abilities of the Duke of Aumale are superior to those of either of his seniors. As far as can be judged by the scanty opportunities they have hitherto had of displaying them, the military talents of the French princes are respectable. Their personal courage is undoubted. But for the opposition of the king and of their anxious mother, they would, according to M. Appert, be continually in Africa, heading and serving as examples to the troops. ”

“ All the Duchess of Guise's daughters were absent from home, the youngest, Antoinette, having joined her sister, Abbess Renée, in the convent at Reims, where she afterwards took the veil. But her eldest son, as we have seen, was at Joinville on this occasion. A tall, dark-haired, olive-skinned youth, recklessly brave and adventurous, Aumale was a great favourite both in Court and camp, and his mother had been sadly disappointed at the failure of the marriage negotiations, which had cost her so much time and trouble. ”

“ The earl was again in company with Philip, of Flanders in 1179, and joined him in attending Louis VII when he came to England to visit the shrine of St. Thomas of Canterbury. On 14 Jan. 1180 he married, at his castle of Pleshey, Essex, Havice, daughter and heiress of William, count or earl of Aumale (d. 1179) , and received from the king the county of Aumale and all that pertained to it on both sides of the Channel, with the title of Aumale (Diceto, i. 3) . From this date he is described sometimes by the title of Aumale and sometimes by that of Essex. ”

“ Meanwhile a military force under Falkes, which had accompanied or followed the King from Northampton to Rockingham, invested the castle, [709] with the ready assistance of the people of the shire, who seem to have found Aumale a very overbearing and troublesome neighbour. ”

“ But as he had lost an eye from his head, he was mightily disfigured; and I could say no more than it was certainly his figure and his hair, and further than that I was unable to speak.’ Meanwhile,” continues the Duke of Aumale, “the accounts of those present removed all doubt; and the corpse, thus thrown across an ass, with arms and legs dangling, was carried to Jarnac, where the Duke of Anjou lodged on the evening of the battle. There the body of Conde was taken down amidst the sobs of some Protestant prisoners, who kissed, as they wept, the remains of their gallant chief. ”

“ The count of Aumale had surrendered his wardenships; but he still kept possession of one castle which by a legal decision of the King’s Court, given four years before, belonged to another man. This was Bytham, in Lincolnshire. Originally a part of the honour of Holderness, it had been alienated by the first husband of Aumale’s mother, and was thus at the time of the war the property of one William de Coleville. This man joined the rebels, and thereupon his lands were occupied by the count of Aumale, to whom they were no doubt granted by John. ”

“ The defiance given, I do not choose to interfere; but this once over, I will permit these things no longer: we thus lose some of our best officers and bravest soldiers, without the slightest advantage to our cause."
"They have gained us a great advantage this morning, my lord," replied the Chevalier d'Aumale, who had entered just as the Duke began to speak. "That same coup de lance between Maroles and Delisle Malivaut has obtained intelligence for which your highness would have given a spy ten thousand crowns had he brought it you."
"How so? how so?" demanded the Duke of Mayenne. ”

“ Stapleton for the pedigree of the family holding Aumale during the eleventh century. Unless Odo, count of Champagne, was married before this time,—as he probably was,—to Adelidis, niece of the conqueror (and daughter of Enguerrand, count of Ponthieu, and Adelidis his wife, mentioned before, page 44) , and was then possessed in her right of Aumale, we know no lord or holder of that fief at the conquest. Is it probable that Guy her uncle, who was released two years after the battle of Mortemer on doing homage to William, held Aumale during her minority, which possibly extended to 1066? ”

“ There was a proposal to take him to Richmond, but the Duchesse d'Aumale has had a miscarriage which has delayed their removal: apparently every member of the family is now asking what he is to do, what path he can pursue, or what policy he can adopt upon the passing away of the old leader, who is said to have become as irritable in temper as he is weak in health. This is a sad end to a career of contrasts, on which history will probably pronounce a severe judgment as a whole. The man who takes an orphan's place should either be able to hold it, or should perish in defending it. ”

“ While D'Aumale exhausts himself in vain efforts, the king's soldier fights calmly and dexterously, and, pressing on at the right moment, strikes down, with a mortal blow, the champion of the League. Extended on the sand, he still vainly menaces Turenne. His sword escapes from his hand; his looks grow wild with the horror of defeat; he raises himself, looks towards Paris, and falls dead. Mayenne, looking on, sees in the event the prognostication of his own approaching overthrow. ”

“ Francis of Lorraine, 2nd duke of Guise (1519–1563) , “le grand Guise,” was born at Bar on the 17th of February 1519. As count of Aumale he served in the French army, and was nearly killed at the siege of Boulogne in 1545 by a wound which brought him the name of “Balafré.” Aumale was made (1547) a peerage-duchy in his favour, and on the accession of Henry II. the young duke, who had paid assiduous court to Diane de Poitiers, shared the chief honours of the kingdom with the constable Anne de Montmorency. ”

“ Nearly every man of them laid down his life, but they saved the king's. Their vigorous hand to hand fighting kept off the assailants until Nevers and Longueville received the king at the gates of Aumale with a force before which the Leaguers were fain to retreat as rapidly as they had come.
In this remarkable skirmish of Aumale the opposite qualities of Alexander and of Henry were signally illustrated. ”

“ Finding that Philip was threatening Gisors, Henry sent Earl William from England to defend it, and, coming over to Normandy shortly afterwards, was met by the earl at Aumale about the end of February 1187, and gave him the command of a division of his army. In common with the king and many other lords, he took the cross in January 1188 (Ralph of Coggeshall, p. 23) . In the late summer a French army, that was ravaging the Norman border, under the command of the Bishop of Beauvais, burned his castle of Aumale. ”

“ At these dreadful words, the hearts of the king and his wife and daughter trembled within them. For the steward had spoken truly, and the order for the execution must be given. It was in vain that the men worked right slowly; linger as they might, the pile was ready at last, and with one despairing glance round, the duchess and her daughter were bravely walking up to it, when Sir Amyle hastily pushed his way to the duke and demanded that the captives should be instantly set free. Then, followed by the duchess and Belisante, he entered the palace to gird himself with the armour of Sir Amys. ”

“ There ensued the brief but glorious battle of St Denis, in which Montmorency was slain, and the Protestants, opposed to five times their numbers, held victory in their grasp, when d'Aumale, seeing them disordered by success, moved up with a body of picked men, whom he had kept in reserve, (as his brother Francis had done at the battle of Dreux,) rallied the fugitives, saved the Swiss from total defeat, rescued the body of the Constable, and compelled Condé to retreat. The laurels of the day, however, were unquestionably for the Huguenots, notwithstanding that they abandoned the field ”

“ The Duke d'Aumale—who had also marched to Lorraine, in order to meet the Germans coming to the assistance of the Roman Catholics, under command of the Marquis of Baden—not being strong enough to block the passage of Condé's troops, Catharine wrote to Alva, begging him to send to the duke, in this emergency, two thousand arquebusiers. ”

“ William of Aumale, the lord of Holderness, whose father had once aspired to the crown, whom Stephen had made earl of York, and who ruled like an almost independent chieftain in Yorkshire, where he held the royal castle of Scarborough and was in no mind to give it up. As soon as the festival season was over Henry began to move northward; by the end of January he was at York, and William of Aumale was at his feet, making complete surrender of Scarborough and of all his other castles. ”

“ There can be no doubt that Aumale’s vow here referred to was a vow of Crusade, enjoined by Pandulf as the condition of the count’s release from excommunication at the close of the preceding year; and we may see in it a reason for the extreme generosity with which the count was treated. A government whose head was a papal Legate might make a military demonstration, but could hardly use real force against a man who wore the Cross. ”

“ Throughout those months, however, one man was openly setting the government at defiance. In December, 12161216, the royal castles of Rockingham and Sauvey, with the important Forest jurisdictions attached to them, [581] had been committed by the Earl Marshal to the custody of William de Fors, the titular Count of Aumale [582] (or “Albemarle,” as it seems to have been commonly called in England) , “that he might dwell in them with his men until his own lands, which the King’s enemies had occupied during the war, should be restored to him.” ”

“ Besides, even if she were persuaded to go to Chateau-Thierry instead of England, do you think she would yield to the prince?"
"Why not?"
"She does not love the duke."
"Bah! not love a prince of the blood."
"But if Monseigneur the Duc d'Anjou suspects my mistress of loving M. du Bouchage, or M. de Joyeuse, how did he come to think of carrying her off from him she loved?"
"My good man," said Aurilly, "you have trivial ideas, and I fear we shall never understand each other; I have preferred kindness to violence, but if you force me to change my plans, well! I will change them." ”

“ The grounds of the excommunication were fourfold: first, Aumale’s refusal either to fulfill or to redeem his vow of crusade; second, his contempt of the “judgement of the realm” which had adjudged Bytham to William de Coleville; third, his seizure of “a castle of his lord the King” (Fotheringay) by treachery and without previous “defiance”; [764] 166 fourth, his neglect to make amends according to the Legate’s command for the plunderings which had brought upon him his former excommunication. ”