Isabeau's regency and the crisis of authority
In August 1392, while leading a military expedition against Duke Jean IV of Brittany, King Charles VI suffered his first known episode of the insanity that would plague him for the duration of his life.[94] The expedition had been motivated by the Duke of Brittany’s harboring of Pierre de Craon, would-be assassin of the king’s longtime friend and advisor, Olivier de Clisson.
Although the king recovered within a few days of his initial attack, another episode in that same year dashed hopes that the incident was a one-off. In January 1393, the king promulgated the first in a series of ordinances laying out the chain of command should he die leaving a minor heir, and, although the earliest ordinances do not specifically touch on the issue, assigning responsibility for the continued functioning of the government during his periods of insanity.[95] Regency of the realm (“government, guard and defense”) was to go to the king’s brother, Louis, and guardianship of the king’s young son to Isabeau, aided by his uncles, prelates, and other officials, including the king’s uncles.[96]Although regents had been named in the past, no general precedent for appointing one existed. Some kings had named a leading religious figure, their wife or mother; others, like Charles VI’s father, Charles V, named a brother, in that case Louis of Anjou. Charles V also assigned his other brothers, Jean of Berry and Philip of Burgundy, to a college of guardians for the minor king. But when Charles V died in 1380, Philip and Jean ejected Louis of Anjou from regency and seized power for themselves.11 They reigned until Charles VI dismissed them from his Royal Council in 1388 and assumed full rule. With the onset of the king’s madness just a few years later, they reappeared, and the battle for control of the king began. On the one hand, the royal brother, Louis, was authorized by royal ordinance to govern during the king’s episodes.
In addition, he claimed priority based on rank; as the living king’s brother he outranked his uncles.[97] [98] On the other hand, Philip insisted that regency should be vested in a council headed by himself.[99] The dispute would devolve into a feud that led eventually to Louis’s assassination by the Burgundians in 1407 and the revenge assassination of Philip’s son Jean of Burgundy in 1419.Charles VI began to involve the queen in managing the factions in 1402. In December 1401, writes chronicler Michel Pintoin, the Monk of Saint Denis, “seeing the hatred of the two dukes to be excessively dangerous,” the lords of the realm begged the Duke of Berry and the queen “several times to intervene between the parties in the interests of peace.”[100] On 7 December Philip entered Paris with 600 men-at-arms and 60 archers. But bloodshed was avoided, thanks to Isabeau’s “long, considered deliberation with the princes.”[101] Unfortunately, the peace was temporary. In an ordinance of 16 March 1402, occasioned by a dispute over how to deal with the papal schism, the king tried to boost the queen’s authority by officially naming her to mediate in quarrels when he was incapacitated. The ordinance in question explains that the king, “by means of grace and divine disposition,” seeks to keep his subjects in “peace and tranquility.”[102] When Louis and the royal uncles enter into a dispute, they should come immediately to him. When he is absent, they should go to the queen, who will avail herself of counsel as she deems necessary.[103]
But as modern political polarization shows, minus a final arbitrator capable of enforcing decisions, implacable enemies will continue to battle. If the ordinance of March 1402 affirms his confidence in the queen, the king soon found it necessary to promulgate a new ordinance reinforcing her authority. An ordinance of 1 July references new disputes that had arisen during the king’s latest episode of madness.
Shortly before that latest episode, the king had put Louis in charge of collecting payments (“aides”) in the north of the kingdom. But on regaining his senses in early June, the king was told of Louis’s profligacy by the Duke of Burgundy. According to Pintoin, the king then attempted to appease his uncle by naming Philip to share Louis’s post. Predictably, this created further conflict, a fact reflected in the king’s order that, effective immediately, the queen would both mediate between his brother and uncle and oversee finances and other difficulties of the realm when he could not take care of them himself.[104] Isabeau attempted to manage the situation, Pintoin writing that she and the dukes of Berry and Bourbon barred Philip and Louis from meetings of the council until the king regained his senses, because their quarreling prevented business from being accomplished.[105]The tensions only increased, and an ordinance of 26 April 1403 shows the king employing a new strategy, this one circumventing his male relatives and in effect authorizing the queen to act in his place as co-regent with the dauphin. Once again, the ordinance deals explicitly with succession after the king’s death, but those involved took it to settle regency during the king’s episodes of madness. The ordinance withdraws the regency powers the king had assigned to Louis in 1393, stating that when the king dies the kingdom will have no regent. Rather, the new king, no matter how young, will succeed immediately, “without anyone else, no matter how closely related, taking over the care, regency or government of our kingdom, and without any obstacle, through regency or government of our kingdom or for any reason whatsoever, being placed between our oldest son and the natural right that is due to him.”[106] With no specially designated regent, governance would naturally fall to the queen, the minor heir’s guardian, who would effectively become co-regent, and, de facto, regent.
Louis appealed to his brother, however, and a letter patent of 7 May 1403 in the king’s name acknowledges that “certain” recent ordinances may have been damaging to Louis and that any portion of these recent ordinances that deprived him of his power were to be ignored.[107] The ordinance effectively making Isabeau regent therefore lay dormant until it was reinstated some weeks after Louis’s 1407 assassination. Whether this was at the instigation of Isabeau or Jean of Burgundy, hoping to rule by controlling the queen, is not clear.[108]
In a practical sense, Isabeau was stymied: to be effective her authority required the power to enforce. Such power normally would have come from the king’s closest male relatives, but these men were locked in a struggle with each other for primacy. Other powerful barons were loyal to one or the other of the warring dukes, because during the king’s episodes, Louis and Philip managed to fill the Royal Council with their own men. Attached either to the house of Orleans or Burgundy by office or pension, the majority of the men of the Council had no motivation to follow Isabeau’s attempts to lead.[109] Both Louis and Philip could summon armies, which meant that violence was a constant threat. When Philip died in April of 1404, Isabeau’s authority was further diminished. Son of one king and uncle of another, Philip had occupied a central role in the government and had access to royal funds, receiving about half of his total yearly revenues from the royal treasury in the form of ordinary pensions, gifts, and aides for military ventures conducted in the interests of the French kingdom by soldiers from Burgundian territories.[110] When the new duke, Jean of Burgundy, took up the role, he expected to retain the privileges his father had enjoyed, but, as a cousin of the king, he was not entitled to them. The feud between the Orleanists and the Burgundians grew still more intense and Isabeau’s ability to manage it still more attenuated.
In short, at no point in her career did Isabeau’s ad hoc regency enjoy the kind of backing that later regencies received. The ordinance of 1403 awarding her what might legitimately might be considered regency was overturned at Louis’s intervention, almost as soon as it was authorized, as we have seen. Even as mediator, Isabeau never had adequate support to enforce her authority. In contrast, later regents received explicit designation and support. When Anne of France, who with her husband, Pierre of Beaujeu, served as regent for her brother Charles VIII, was confirmed in her position by the Estates General, one of the stated reasons for the confirmation was the danger presented by male relatives, surely a reference to the struggle for power between Louis and the Burgundians.[111] Louise of Savoy, who served as regent when her son Franpois I left the kingdom to fight in Italy, did not have to contend with civil unrest, although the Parlement of Paris challenged her at times. Catherine de Medicis was confirmed by the Estates General, as were Marie de Medicis and Anne of Austria.[112]