The Maid and the Queen (34 page)

Although René, still accompanied by the lord of Barbazan, commanded the larger force—some seventy-five hundred men in all—Antoine had the benefit of position. The Burgundians were entrenched behind a stream and had taken the precaution of digging trenches and erecting the customary line of stakes behind which stood a crack troop of four hundred archers lent by Philip. Antoine had also thought to bring along some heavy artillery. René had no bowmen to speak of and was without guns altogether, serious drawbacks that the more experienced Barbazan took pains to point out. But René, with one victory under his belt, was overeager for a second and was the superior in rank. He overruled Barbazan and ordered his men to cross the stream and attack. René would later defend this decision by observing that he felt that “he had so many men that it seemed that he could fight all the world for a day.”

This sentiment proved optimistic. René’s forces charged directly into a thumping bombardment of cannonballs and a storm of lethal arrows. It was one of the shortest battles in French history. The poor lord of Barbazan died alongside his men in the first wave of the assault. René himself was struck in the face and went down soon thereafter. Seeing their commander incapacitated, the remainder of René’s forces deserted, allowing Antoine to claim victory in a record fifteen minutes (although it took a further two hours for the Burgundians to chase down and slay the fleeing opposition). In the resulting chaos, the wounded duke of Bar and Lorraine was initially claimed by an ignominious squire intent on making a profit from his noble captive, but Antoine soon discovered the identity of the prisoner and took possession of René himself. But even Antoine was to be denied so great a prize, and René was almost immediately consigned to the duke of Burgundy, who had him carted off to Dijon and sequestered in a high tower cell at one of his castles, there to await his fate.

The defeat and capture of René of Anjou had infinitely more impact upon the court of Charles VII than had the burning of Joan of Arc six weeks earlier. “Intelligence of this defeat was spread throughout the countries of Bar and Lorraine, and that their lord had been made prisoner, which caused
the severest grief to all attached to him,” wrote the chronicler Enguerrand de Monstrelet. Not that anyone close to him feared for his life. The difference in René’s experience of captivity and Joan’s is striking. The duke of Bar and Lorraine was a man of high birth and position. The laws of chivalry had been expressly developed to safeguard such a lord as he, and he received the full benefit of their protection, even though he had somewhat broken the rules and surrendered to a mere squire and not a member of the nobility as was the proper etiquette. René was never shackled in irons nor threatened by his jailers. Nor was it conceivable that he would ever be sold to the En glish no matter what the sum offered; the very idea was ridiculous; the duke of Burgundy would never have lived down the dishonor. And although René was of course made melancholy by his confinement, he was certainly never reduced by terror to such despair that he felt the need to throw himself out the window. On the contrary, he was allowed visitors and furloughs. He seems to have whiled away most of his time in prison painting pictures on the walls of his room and preparing sketches of stained glass windows.

But to have the queen’s younger brother a prisoner of “our adversary of Burgundy” was a bitter pill to Charles VII. Philip the Good was fully cognizant of the boost that had been given to his bargaining position and would not in the beginning even consider setting a ransom for his hostage. To convince him otherwise, Charles was moved to real action. The military offensive against Burgundian territory, in both the north and east, was stepped up significantly in the wake of René’s capture. By a letter of July 22, the lord of Albret was named to replace the deceased Barbazan and sent to Champagne to continue to try to reclaim the area for Charles. On July 20, the duke of Austria was finally induced to declare war on Philip and began a series of border strikes that, while not seriously endangering his duchy, nonetheless forced the duke of Burgundy to divert resources to this area. Charles even sent ambassadors to the Holy Roman Emperor, who had his own territorial disputes with Philip, to arrange an alliance against Burgundy.

But above all else, René’s capture served to convince his mother that the time had finally come to separate Philip the Good from his English allegiance. She had always believed in and worked toward this goal, but now it acquired a new urgency. A truce alone was no longer acceptable; there had been truces in the past and these had been implemented merely as a means of stalling for advantage; they were easily made and just as easily broken. What was required now was a firm peace treaty between the king of France
and the duke of Burgundy, for only in this way could her son be assured of his freedom. Keeping military pressure on Philip might encourage the duke to come to terms, but it could be only one component of the overall strategy. Of equal importance would be the opening of a confidential diplomatic channel between the two courts, aimed at assessing the duke of Burgundy’s state of mind and exploiting any potential friction between Philip and the regency government in France. The question was only how best to do this, and the prisoner himself soon provided the answer.

A
S IT HAPPENED,
by the summer of 1431, just at that critical juncture in the war when he had so fortuitously captured René, Philip the Good was in fact experiencing some deep reservations about his dealings with England. This was entirely based on the sudden realization by the English exchequer that the war in France was costing a great deal of money. In the Middle Ages, foreign conquests were undertaken as much for the expectation of profit as for glory; the whole point was to ravage the enemy and bring home whatever spoils could be conveniently appropriated. But in France, the En glish baronage was beginning to suspect, the reverse was true. It was the French who were making all the money! French priests and officials were on the English payroll; there was a seemingly endless demand for more soldiers, more supplies, more arms; after Charles’s coronation at Reims, the English treasury had been required to pay for a competing enthronement ceremony for ten-year-old Henry VI in Paris. The French, it seemed, could do nothing for themselves: the government had even to foot the bill for the purchase and prosecution of that Armagnac witch who had caused so much trouble in Orléans. For most of the 1420s, while the English were winning and Charles’s resistance was feeble, the war had more or less paid for itself. But in 1429, with the arrival of Joan of Arc, English outlays suddenly exceeded receipts by a distressing 10,000 pounds. And since that time, the trend had continued, and for precious little return, at least as perceived by the native English baronage. Henry VI’s forces held less territory in France in 1431 than they had in 1428 and there was apparently need of significant funds just to ensure against further losses. Although she never realized it, Joan’s most meaningful blow against her enemies was in
making the war expensive
.

And when it came to allies who expected to be paid for their assistance, no one’s hand reached deeper into the pocket of the English treasury, the
regency government noted, than Philip the Good’s. The duke of Burgundy had already been much enriched—outlandishly so, it was believed by some in England—in terms of both authority and territory as well as by currency. And yet in November 1430, he had had the temerity to write a letter to Henry VI complaining that Compiègne had been lost because he hadn’t received his money quickly enough and that if his expenses weren’t met soon Burgundy would refuse to participate in the war altogether! “It is… true, most redoubted lord,” the duke of Burgundy had written disagreeably to the boy king, “that, according to the agreement drawn up on your part with my people, you ought to have paid me the sum of 19,500 francs of royal money each month for the expenses of my troops before Compiègne, as well as the cost of the artillery…. It was under the impression that this would be done on your part, and especially that the said payment would be made without fail, as agreed, that I had my men stationed before Compiègne all the time. But, most redoubted lord, these payments have not been kept up by you, for they are in arrears to the tune of two months…. My most redoubted lord, I cannot continue without adequate provision in future from you… and without payment of what is due me.”

The English response to this irksome dunning came addressed to Philip in a long letter issued by the regency council from Rouen on May 28, 1431, just two days before Joan’s execution. It was a masterpiece of evasion. “And firstly, with regard to… the great damages, outlays, and expenses which my said lord of Burgundy and his lands… have sustained by occasion of the wars; the king [Henry VI] is as much annoyed therewith as if they had been in his own country,” the letter began diplomatically, before going on to address, at some length, “the great diligence” with which the English king was prosecuting the war, and how much he was doing and had already done on Philip’s behalf. The issue of the outstanding debt owed to the duke was referred to only at the end of this extensive missive. “To the tenth article, which makes mention of what is demanded by my said lord of Burgundy in consequence of his troops who have been before Compiègne, and the artillery which has been there employed, the king will cause to be inspected the indentures and arrangements which have been made and taken in these matters… and if it shall be agreeable to my said lord of Burgundy to send him some of his people, he will cause such an arrangement to be made as ought reasonably to be satisfactory,” the English council concluded. Apparently what was satisfactory to the king of England did not involve actually
paying Philip his money, because the duke had to remind Henry VI quite forcefully again six months later by a letter of December 12, 1431, that he still was not in receipt of his funds. “Notwithstanding all letters, statements, requests, and supplications, I have been unable to obtain from you, not even the payment of what you clearly owe me by the account made with your people, which amounts to a large sum…. In consequence of which I have been compelled to disband the said armies… and have been constrained to consent that certain truces and abstinences of war should be made in my said countries, and especially in my countries of Burgundy, with your said enemies and mine,” Philip finished ominously. To further communicate his displeasure at this unwarranted disruption to his cash flow, the duke of Burgundy pointedly did not attend the coronation of Henry VI that was held in Paris later that month, but instead made good on his threat to collaborate with the enemy by signing a truce (which he had no intention of keeping, of course) with Charles’s representatives at Lille in order to prevent further incursions into his territory while he regrouped and waited for reinforcements.

In the past, this behavior had always resulted in England’s capitulating to his demands, with perhaps some additional monies, territories, or honors thrown in as an extra incentive to remain true to the alliance. The duke of Burgundy no doubt waited confidently for this to happen; it must have come as quite a shock when it didn’t. And just as Philip came to the recognition that, inexplicably, a bribe would not be forthcoming, his chancellor, a man named Nicolas Rolin, who was the duke of Burgundy’s most trusted adviser (“it is he who does and decides everything, and through whose hands everything passes,” an eyewitness reported), found a convenient loophole in the treaty between Burgundy and England. According to Nicolas’s understanding of international law, Philip wasn’t obligated to maintain his allegiance to the English king, on the grounds that Henry V had died prior to the demise of the mad king Charles VI. Nicolas (who had tallied the devastation to the duke’s property caused by the war and had decided that peace would be far more profitable for all concerned, including himself) argued that although Henry V had been
named
Charles VI’s chosen successor, he had never actually
assumed
the French crown, being already dead when the reigning French monarch had died and passed it on. Therefore, as Henry V had never worn the crown of France, his son could not have inherited it from him, a legal nicety that had somehow been overlooked for the past decade while the English were winning and still paying.

While all of this was going on, in February 1432, Philip finally met face-to-face with his captive in order to hammer out the conditions of René’s release. The negotiations lasted off and on until April. No ransom figure was agreed on at this time, but René was required to marry his eldest daughter (four years old at the time) to the son of his rival, Antoine. The duke of Bar and Lorraine was allowed temporary freedom from his cell, but only on the condition that he pay an upfront installment of 20,000 gold pieces and substitute his two young sons (the eldest was six) as hostages in his place. This René did, and he was released on April 30. René was then required to travel to Brussels to continue discussions with Antoine under the mediating influence of Philip the Good as to who would inherit Lorraine after his death. Nicolas Rolin, Philip’s chancellor, also attended these meetings and was responsible for drawing up the documentation.

As a result of all of these negotiations, René got to know Philip the Good and Nicolas Rolin quite well. It didn’t take him long to figure out that the duke of Burgundy was not all that happy with his English allies, and that the duke of Burgundy’s chancellor had found a way out of their treaty arrangements. (Actually, it seems likely from later events that Nicolas deliberately leaked this information to René as a means of opening a backdoor diplomatic channel to Charles’s court.) Whichever way René came to this information, however, the message was the same: the glimmer of an opportunity to dislodge Philip from his heretofore unshakable adherence to En gland had suddenly appeared.

The exploitation of so rare an opening was too important and sensitive to leave to routine officials. Upon completion of the talks in Brussels in February 1433, René did not go directly home to his wife in Nancy. Rather, he went to see his mother.