Valentina as political player
According to Froissart, when the Duchesses of Burgundy assumed a place next to the queen, ahead of Valentina, Valentina took offense. Rank was a matter of utmost importance, calculated according to the nearness of relation to the reigning king.[225] Froissart describes Valentina complaining to her intimate entourage that “the Duchess of Burgundy should under no circumstances approach the crown before me, because I am closer to it than she is.” Her reasoning is impeccable: “Monseigneur my husband is the brother of the king, and he might be king someday.” Valentina then added, “I know why she goes ahead of me to take the honors and put us behind.”[226]
The royal ordinance of 1393 naming Louis regent explains why precedence would have been a pressing issue for the duke and duchess of Burgundy.
But, in addition, as Valentina was jealously watching out for Louis’s honor, she was involved in her own political rivalry with the queen. The tense relationship between the queen and the Duchess of Orleans has been treated as faintly amusing, a sort of “cat fight.” As I have noted, nineteenth- and early twentieth-century biographers believed that the spiteful and jealous queen, by planting rumors that the Duchess of Orleans was poisoning the king, had caused Valentina to be chased from court, but, more recently, with the rehabilitation of the once-notorious Isabeau, the conflict between the women has tended to be ignored or denied.[227] Yet, in a society where women in positions of power served as spokespersons and mediators for their families’ interests, they were political rivals. They also lived together at the royal residence, the Hotel Saint Pol, exchanged gifts and letters even during Valentina’s exile, and came together as allies after the assassination of Louis of Orleans in 1407. Isabeau and Valentina therefore also worked in concert.Isabeau and Valentina were second cousins: Isabeau’s mother, Thaddea Visconti, who married the Wittelsbach Stephan III Duke of Bavaria, was the cousin of Valentina’s father, Giangaleazzo Visconti, Lord, then Duke, of Milan. Together, Giangaleazzo, and Isabeau’s grandfather, Bernabo, had ruled over Milan. However, just weeks before Isabeau’s marriage to Charles VI in July 1385, Giangaleazzo had Bernabo imprisoned. The older man soon died in prison. In the face of this treachery to her kinsman, Isabeau did everything possible to thwart Giangaleazzo, who was trying to create a single united kingdom in northern Italy. Because his plans required the aid of the French against his enemies in Italy for their realization, Giangaleazzo saw Isabeau’s marriage to Charles VI as a threat, and he therefore sought to marry his daughter to the king’s brother, Louis.[228] The marriage took place in late July 1389.
The two women, then, met at the French court as political enemies, although, under other circumstances, they might have been close friends. Both loved books. Isabeau, as saw in chapter 3, possessed a personal library that was enormous for the time.[229] As for Valentina, her library at Blois formed the core of the library that would later belong to her son, poet Charles of Orleans.[230] Also, Valentina may have spoken German, Isabeau’s mother tongue, a guess based on the fact that three of the books she brought with her from Italy to France were written in that language.[231] In addition, Isabeau, whose mother was Italian, may have spoken Italian.
But their family loyalties positioned them on opposite sides. Valentina tried to gather French support for the Milanese, while Isabeau advocated for the Florentines, victims of the aggression of Valentina’s father, Giangaleazzo.[232]5 In 1389 the city of Florence created a set of instructions for ambassadors detailing how to convince Isabeau to intervene with Charles VI to persuade him to assist the Florentines in staving off Giangaleazzo’s advances.[233] But as the only supporter of the Florentines at court at that moment, the queen was unable to promote them effectively.
Giangaleazzo’s support was crucial for helping Louis of Orleans realize a plan concocted by Clement VII, the Avignon pope—when and if he returned to Rome as the French hoped—of taking over territories in central Italy to form a kingdom for the young duke. Although the Florentines were neutral regarding the Schism and although they offered to turn over to the French any land that they might confiscate from Giangaleazzo if the French helped them out, the possibility was tenuous relative to the immediate support that Giangaleazzo could offer. A treaty between Paris and Milan was signed in 1391.However, the French relationship with Giangaleazzo shifted dramatically over the next several years, opening an opportunity for Isabeau, which she seized just as Valentina was sent from the royal court. It seems more than a coincidence that the queen helped to realize a political alliance with long-term enemies of the duchess’s father at that time. Louis’s plan for the French to invade Italy to overthrow the Roman pope and enthrone Pope Clement VII, supported by Giangaleazzo, faltered, postponed to a later date because Charles had decided to pursue peace with the English, who favored the Roman pope. All hope of establishing a kingdom for Louis of Orleans in Italy had been abandoned as well. When Clement VII died in 1394, the French cardinals in Avignon elected Benedict XIII, whom the French declined to help return to Rome, which had consequences for France’s relationship with Giangaleazzo, on whom they had depended for support of Clement VII. Moreover, in 1395, the French acquired Genoa. Giangaleazzo, wanting the city for himself, created obstacles, pretending to support the King of France’s claim while all the time stirring up Guelf and Ghibelline animosities to prevent France from imposing authority over the city.[234]
From that point on, as far as the French were concerned, Giangaleazzo was Charles VI’s enemy, Froissart reporting that in 1396 the king held the Duke of Milan in hatred and planned to destroy him with the help of the English.[235] The king made his feelings manifest during a dinner celebrating the wedding of royal daughter Isabelle with King Richard II of England in that year. On catching sight of a herald bearing Giangaleazzo’s arms, Pintoin writes, Charles VI had the arms torn from the herald and chased him from the court, threatening to throw him in prison if he ever returned.[236] Froissart notes that Giangaleazzo returned the hatred.[237]
Isabeau was able successfully to promote the Florentine cause against Giangaleazzo’s in this new environment, initiating negotiations with the Florentine ambassador, Buonacorso Pitti, in 1396.
Valentina, who would have seen the tide turning and realized what it meant for her, appealed to the queen, offering Isabeau, Isabeau’s grand maitre d’hotel, Philip de Savoisy, and seven of the queen’s ladies New Year’s gifts, etrennes, as 1396 dawned.[238] But the duchess’s efforts to move Isabeau seem to have failed, for at some time prior to April 1396, that is, before Isabeau summoned Pitti, the duchess left Paris. Through no fault of her own, Valentina was undone. On 29 September 1396, an alliance was signed between France and Florence against Milan.[239]The rest of Valentina’s life—she died in 1410, not quite forty years old—was marked by stress and sorrow, but also by her attempts to bring Jean of Burgundy to justice. Pintoin describes her entry into Paris on 10 December 1407 to seek redress for Louis’s murder.[240] Dressed in mourning and accompanied by her two young sons, she threw herself at the feet of Charles VI, begging for justice.[241] Despite his apparent sympathy, the king remained unresponsive, and, wary of Jean of Burgundy, who was on his way to Paris at the head of his army, Valentina returned to the Orleans castle at Blois, which she had reinforced.[242] There she called men to arms and waited.[243] In March 1408, as we have seen, Jean Petit justified Jean of Burgundy’s hired assassination of Louis; on 11 September 1408, Thomas de Bourg, abbot of Cerisy of Saint-Fiacre, responded to Petit’s charges on behalf of the House of Orleans, and, on September 28 September 1408, Valentina herself spoke at the Louvre.[244] Despite Valentina’s pleas, however, the king awarded Jean of Burgundy a letter of remission, and the duke became the king’s trusted advisor.[245] The despondent Valentina returned for the last time to Blois, where she died in December 1408.
Isabeau could not have forced Valentina’s exile against Louis’s will. In the 1390s, the Duke of Orleans was a far more powerful figure than she.
For example, Pintoin remarks with reference to the “Bal des ardents” of 1393 where Louis accidentally lit a number of revellers on fire by leaning too close to them with a torch, killing several and barely missing incinerating the king, that afterwards no one dared reproach Louis, because he possessed such power (“magnitudinem”).[246] Isabeau’s power, in contrast, would have been relatively paltry, based on her ability to influence the truly powerful.[247]Pintoin tells us that the Duke of Orleans himself ordered his wife’s departure. He was reluctant to send her away, the charges being unfounded, but he finally agreed when a group of his men persuaded him to avoid trouble by doing so. The exile, I believe, aimed, unconsciously, to defuse the tensions that threatened to erupt into social disorder. It might be argued that Valentina was removed from court for the practical reason that it was hoped that she would be less able to bewitch the king from afar. However, as we have seen, Pintoin explains that the exile was meant to prevent a terrible event: the word that the monk uses is “scan- dalum,” a word related to “fall” or “stumbling.” Louis’s concern was for something more serious than what we understand today by “scandal.” He was worried that war would break out, and, in the worst case scenario, that Philip would gain power of the government and that he, Louis, would fall. Valentina’s story reveals, as Robin Briggs has argued for a slightly later period, that accusations of witchcraft sometimes served as much as a means of handling social tensions as a form of persecution, showing that accusers tended to be motivated more by the desire to prevent harm than the desire for blood.[248]
Valentina’s subsequent life apart from Louis and her actions after his death demonstrate her capacity to function strategically on her own. However, because of her premature death, it is impossible to know what role she might have played as the Orleansist-Burgundian feud morphed into war between her son, Charles of Orleans, and Jean of Burgundy. Romantically attributed to a broken heart, her demise so soon after Louis’s death has long been interpreted as a sign of her inability to go on alone: since the murder, “everything had been finished for her,” writes Collas.[249] The nature of her final malady is unknown, but it is more likely to have been one of the many diseases that took people in the prime of life than sadness, and it reminds us, once again, of how contingent the exercise of female power really was.