Christine de Pizan and the Fight for France - Tracy Adams

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Christine was different from powerful barons in that she had neither physical force to contribute to the struggle nor personal quarrels to settle. She worked, like other contemporary court writers, to give a form to kingship based on abstract principles in addition to personal devotion.20 It has been suggested that because writers attached to the houses of Orleans and Burgundy manifest the same fundamental preoccupations—financial reform, for example—their writings cannot be viewed as partisan.21 But one’s conception of kingship is closely linked to one’s notion of regency, and in these areas political writings do differ. Like the Burgundians and the university, Christine might have called for rule of the kingdom by a council representing the three estates.22 She did not do this.

      In the rest of this chapter, I set the stage for the reexamination of Christine’s work that I present in the chapters that follow. I first consider the different visions of kingship that Christine’s society offered her, including Charles V’s. I then review her comments in the autobiographical sections of her work on Philip of Burgundy’s betrayal of Charles V’s regency ordinances, concluding that these justify reexamining her corpus.

      Kingship and Regency in Late Medieval France

      Christine’s family ties would have inclined her toward the House of Orleans from the feud’s beginnings. As we will see, her husband, Étienne de Castel, moved in chancery circles, Louis’s ambit. But equally important to the poet would have been Charles V’s vision of kingship, transmitted to her by her father, Thomas de Pizan, an advisor to the king, and reinforced by public readings of open letters and royal ordinances, in conversations held within the complex of buildings that formed the Hotel Saint Pol, and in manuscripts that she read or heard read, including the Grandes chroniques de France, an important source for her.23

      Charles V’s regency ordinances betray two interests central to his vision of kingship that Christine will echo: maintaining rank and taking counsel from a group of devoted men of somewhat diverse social backgrounds. As for rank, the earliest of the regency ordinances, dated August 1374, stipulates that the king will be crowned at age fourteen. A set of ordinances dated October of the same year foresee and attempt to prevent a power struggle among the king’s brothers should the succeeding king be younger than fourteen. One ordinance notes tellingly that the task of the king is to administer the public good wisely, especially regarding those things from which the greatest danger might arise in the future. It then awards the king’s eldest brother, Louis of Anjou, gouvernement of the realm during a minority reign. Another ordinance of the same day draws attention to the king’s direct line, mentioning his second son, Louis, by name and specifying that if young Charles dies, Louis will succeed him.24 These regency ordinances thus emphasize rank, with the king’s eldest brother leading the younger brothers, but stressing, too, that the king’s two sons both precede all his brothers. Françoise Autrand describes Charles V’s assiduous maintenance of order, a reaction against his father, King Jean, who had allowed “poor” relations to serve as counselors.25 Bernard Guenée, too, notes that the interest in rank intensified during the reign of Charles V, so that under Charles VI some seventy “cousins” were minutely arranged on the basis of how closely they were related to the reigning king.26

      The importance of rank runs through the continuation of the Grandes chroniques devoted to the reign of Charles V.27 Promoting the king against challengers like Charles of Navarre and defending the French position in the war against England, the chronicle records the precedence followed during royal entries and dinners, an attention that Christine will echo in the Livre des fais et bonnes meurs du sage roy Charles V.28 As for its treatment of Charles V’s regency ordinances, the Grandes chroniques reports that the ordinances, proclaimed before the Parlement de Paris with great numbers of notable lords attending, fixed the age of succession at fourteen.29

      Christine surely observed that just after Charles V’s death, Philip of Burgundy, the youngest brother of the dead king, demanded that Louis of Anjou be denied regency, that the eleven-year-old king be crowned immediately, and that a council headed by Philip himself rule for the young king.30 Regency by a council was not unprecedented. However, violation of a royal ordinance so publicly recognized required justification. The Grandes chroniques mentions in its final pages that because the uncles disagreed about the ordinances, it was advised that it would be expedient for the king to be crowned immediately.31 Pintoin’s chronicle supplies more detail, relating that Louis of Anjou’s spokesman argued before the Parlement that, following the custom of France enshrined in Charles V’s royal ordinance of 1374, the young king should ascend at fourteen and that until then Louis would not be done out of the regency.32 Philip’s spokesman, Pierre d’Orgemont, chancellor of Charles V, countered that the late king had changed his mind about regency just before his death, deciding that he could best guarantee the peaceful succession of power by having his son crowned co-ruler with him before he died (a habit of the Capetians through Philip Augustus) rather than having him ascend at fourteen. Charles V had revealed this decision secretly to a small group, including Pierre.33 But the king fell terminally ill before he could carry out the plan, and, according to Pierre, simultaneously realized that associating his son as king would violate the ordinance that he had recently passed setting the age of succession at fourteen, that is, the ordinance on which Louis of Anjou based his case. Thus Charles V had asked that this regency ordinance be invalidated and that his son be crowned immediately upon his death and placed in the care of Philip and Duke Louis of Bourbon, brother of the deceased queen. Pierre does not explain why Charles V considered this new regency arrangement more likely to result in a peaceful succession.

      The story that Charles V planned to associate his son with him on the throne before his premature death may or may not be true, as Yann Potin has demonstrated. On the one hand, although Pierre was in a position to know, he would have had a motive to lie for Philip—the hope of retaining his office. As it turned out, Pierre was dismissed the day after his appearance before the Parlement, but undoubtedly he had hoped for better.34 Further casting doubt on Pierre’s story of deathbed revision is the treatment of Bureau de La Rivière, Charles V’s chambellan and closest advisor, in whose arms the king had died and whom he had assigned to supervise his brothers after his death. This leads to the second interest manifested in the royal ordinances, the importance of counselors. Although an ordinance awards Louis of Anjou gouvernement, it places him under the surveillance of Bureau de La Rivière. After laying out the sources of income with which Louis will govern the kingdom, the ordinance states that he will turn all that remains over to Bureau de La Rivière. Another ordinance, noted above, awards tutelle, or guardianship, of the dauphin to the queen, Jeanne of Bourbon, assisted by Philip and Louis of Bourbon (the king’s middle brother, Jean of Berry, for reasons unknown, receives no position at all). Again, Charles V places all the guardians under the watch of Bureau de La Rivière, “who completely understands [Charles V’s] will and intention regarding the children mentioned above.” He gives the chambellan veto power over all decisions made by the guardians, commanding that they “do nothing without [Bureau de La Rivière’s] counsel and deliberation.”35 He further lists the members who will serve on the grand council to advise these guardians. The list includes his advisors, known collectively as the “marmousets.”36

      It cannot be a coincidence that the king’s chambellan, along with two other men identified by John Bell Henneman as Charles V’s closest advisors, Jean Le Mercier and Jean de Montaigu, both ennobled commoners, vanished after the king’s death, to reappear, along with the larger group of marmousets, only when Charles VI asserted power in 1388.37 A fourth, Olivier de Clisson, remained and was named connétable, backed by Louis of Anjou, as Françoise Lehoux explains.38

      On the other hand, with Louis of Anjou set to inherit the provençal and Italian holdings of Jeanne of Naples as of 1379, Charles V may indeed have intended to head off problems that would have arisen from this diversion of attention by consecrating care of the kingdom and the dauphin to Philip in the form of tutelle.39 As we will see, whether tutelle or gouvernement of the realm was more significant varied: possession of the dauphin often carried more weight than administration of the realm.

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