Volume II Part 13 (2/2)
”The tears of princes fell, What time the bishop said, 'Sir Bertrand loved ye well; Weep, warriors, for the dead!
The knell of sorrow tolls For deeds that were so bright: G.o.d save all Christian souls, And his--the gallant knight: '
The life, character, and name of Bertrand du Guesclin were and remained one of the most popular, patriotic, and legitimate boasts of the middle ages, then at their decline.
Two months after the constable's death, on the 16th of September, 1380, Charles V. died at the castle of Beaute-sur-Marne, near Vincennes, at forty-three years of age, quite young still after so stormy and hard-working a life. His contemporaries were convinced, and he was himself convinced, that he had been poisoned by his perfidious enemy, King Charles of Navarre. His uncle, Charles IV., Emperor of Germany, had sent him an able doctor, who ”set him in good case and in manly strength,” says Froissart, by effecting a permanent issue in his arm.
”When this little sore,” said he to him, ”shall cease to discharge and shall dry up, you will die without help for it, and you will have at the most fifteen days' leisure to take counsel and thought for the soul.”
When the issue began to dry up, Charles knew that death was at hand; and ”like a wise and valiant man as he was,” says Froissart, ”he set in order all his affairs, and sent for his three brothers, in whom he had most confidence, the Duke of Berry, the Duke of Burgundy, and the Duke of Bourbon, and he left in the lurch his second brother, the Duke of Anjou, because he considered him too covetous. 'My dear brothers,' said the king to them, 'I feel and know full well that I have not long to live.
I do commend and give in charge to you my son Charles. Behave to him as good uncles should behave to their nephew. Crown him as soon as possible after my death, and counsel him loyally in all his affairs. The lad is young, and of a volatile spirit; he will need to be guided and governed by good doctrine; teach him or have him taught all the kingly points and states he will have to maintain, and marry him in such lofty station that the kingdom may be the better for it. Thank G.o.d, the affairs of our kingdom are in good case. The Duke of Brittany [John IV., called the Valiant] is a crafty and a slippery man, and he hath ever been more English than French; for which reason keep the n.o.bles of Brittany and the good towns affectionate, and you will thus thwart his intentions. I am fond of the Bretons, for they have ever served me loyally, and helped to keep and defend my kingdom against my enemies. Make the lord Clisson constable, for, all considered, I see none more competent for it than he.
As to those aids and taxes of the kingdom of France, wherewith the poorer folks are so burdened and aggrieved, deal with them according to your conscience, and take them off as soon as ever you can, for they are things which, although I have upheld them, do grieve me and weigh upon my heart; but the great wars and great matters which we have had on all sides caused me to countenance them.”
Of all the dying speeches and confessions of kings to their family and their councillors, that which has just been put forward is the most practical, precise, and simple. Charles V., taking upon his shoulders at nineteen years of age, first as king's lieutenant and as dauphin, and afterwards as regent, the government of France, employed all his soul and his life in repairing the disasters arising from the wars of his predecessors and preventing any repet.i.tion. No sovereign was ever more resolutely pacific; he carried prudence even into the very practice of war, as was proved by his forbidding his generals to venture any general engagement with the English, so great a lesson and so deep an impression had he derived from the defeats of Crecy and Poitiers, and the causes which led to them. But without being a warrior, and without running any hazardous risks, he made himself respected and feared by his enemies.
”Never was there king,” said Edward III., ”who handled arms less, and never was there king who gave me so much to do.” When the condition of the kingdom was at the best, and more favorable circ.u.mstances led Charles to believe that the day had come for setting France free from the cruel conditions which had been imposed upon her by the treaty of Bretigny, he entered without hesitation upon that war of patriotic reparation; and, after the death of his two powerful enemies, Edward III. and the Black Prince, he was still prosecuting it, not without chance of success, when he himself died of the malady with which he had for a long while been afflicted. At his death he left in the royal treasury a surplus of seventeen million francs, a large sum for those days. Nor the labors of government, nor the expenses of war, nor far-sighted economy had prevented him from showing a serious interest in learned works and studies, and from giving effectual protection to the men who devoted themselves thereto. The University of Paris, notwithstanding the embarra.s.sments it sometimes caused him, was always the object of his good-will. ”He was a great lover of wisdom,” says Christine de Pisan, ”and when certain folks murmured for that he honored clerks so highly, he answered, 'So long as wisdom is honored in this realm, it will continue in prosperity; but when wisdom is thrust aside, it will go down.'” He collected nine hundred and fifty volumes (the first foundation of the loyal Library), which were deposited in a tower of the Louvre, called the library tower, and of which he, in 1373, had an inventory drawn up by his personal attendant, Gilles de Presle. His taste for literature and science was not confined to collecting ma.n.u.scripts. He had a French translation made, for the sake of spreading a knowledge thereof, of the Bible in the first place, and then of several works of Aristotle, of Livy, of Valerius Maximus, of Vegetius, and of St. Augustine. He was fond of industry and the arts as well as of literature. Henry de Vic, a German clock-maker, constructed for him the first public clock ever seen in France, and it was placed in what was called the Clock Tower in the Palace of Justice; and the king even had a clock-maker by appointment, named Peter de St. Beathe. Several of the Paris monuments, churches, or buildings for public use were undertaken or completed under his care. He began the building of the Bastille, that fortress which was then so necessary for the safety of Paris, where it was to be, four centuries later, the object of the wrath and earliest excesses on the part of the populace. Charles the Wise, from whatever point of view he may be regarded, is, after Louis the Fat, Philip Augustus, St. Louis, and Philip the Handsome, the fifth of those kings who powerfully contributed to the settlement of France in Europe, and of the kings.h.i.+p in France. He was not the greatest nor the best, but, perhaps, the most honestly able. And at the same time he was a signal example of the shallowness and insufficiency of human abilities. Charles V., on his death-bed, considered that ”the affairs of his kingdom were in good case;” he had not even a suspicion of that chaos of war, anarchy, reverses and ruin into which they were about to fall, in the reign of his son, Charles VI.
END OF VOLUME II.
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