In this context, balade 20 could be a response to Louis’s securing positions for Christine and her son at the court of Giangaleazzo. Christine describes herself requesting Louis’s help in the Fais et bonnes meurs and being granted what she asked.106 Waiting more than an hour for her turn to speak to the duke, she watched his face with great pleasure as he listened to those asking his aid and then set their affairs in order. Unfortunately, Giangaleazzo died in September 1402, before Christine could depart for Italy; in the Mutacion de fortune, she describes being hit with a serious illness, and this too may have prevented her departure even before the news of Giangaleazzo’s death.107
The final question is what Jean de Castel was doing in the household of the Duke of Burgundy around the time that Christine was writing the Advision. The chronology is hazy, but after Giangaleazzo’s death, Louis was away from Paris for long periods of time; indeed, he was absent from Paris when the Lord of Milan died.108 Given the dukes’ rivalry, Eric Hicks’s hypothesis seems plausible: “The courtly poetess of the Dit de la Rose would be a handsome acquisition for the duke’s collections.”109 Philip may have offered aid along with a commission to write the Fais et bonnes meurs, and Christine, needing to support her son, would have had no reason to refuse.
Conclusion
Christine’s autobiographical writings betray an early resentment of the Duke of Burgundy originating in her father’s ill treatment by the princes gouverneurs after the death of Charles V. This personal response, coupled with her strongly positive view of Charles V, who successfully put down attempts to overthrow him and whose regency ordinances Philip ignored, justifies revisiting the assumption that Christine ever supported the Burgundians. She does not overtly criticize them, which would have been politically suicidal early in her career and literally suicidal under Jean. Some of her references to Philip suggest a positive attitude. She offers him a manuscript of the Mutacion de fortune; she reports with pride that he asked her to compose a biography of his brother, King Charles V; she writes sadly of his death; and she notes that he took her son into his household. And yet the fact that a politically engaged poet dependent on selling her work to a wealthy clientele would write of the Duke of Burgundy in flattering terms requires no explanation. She praises other contemporaries and princes of the blood in terms at least as flattering as those she uses to describe Philip.
Autrand has seen behind the Orleanist-Burgundian conflict a centralizing movement toward statism on the part of the Armagnacs, countered by the Burgundians’ more traditional view. Claude Gauvard makes a similar point in showing how attitudes toward royal pardons conform to two distinct visions of the state: the Armagnacs insisting that people of all levels must be subject to one justice, and the Burgundians guarding the “liberties” accorded to different social groups.110 As I have noted, Charles V visualized his kingship as one of a strong single figure surrounded by devoted counselors, whereas the Burgundians favored rule by the three estates. It is not clear to what degree Christine saw the conflict in terms of a clash between definitions of government. However, her loyalty to Charles V was unshakeable, and we have seen her avowed affection for the most important marmousets, Bureau de La Rivière and Jean de Montaigu, who were persecuted by the Burgundians. Throughout her corpus she expresses her belief in the importance of the king’s council as a set of trusted advisors of diverse social backgrounds. This tradition was continued by Charles VI and Louis, who summoned the marmousets back to power in 1388, not by Philip and his polyarchy.
I have tried to show in this chapter that, a priori, Christine seems more likely to have supported the Orleanist than the Burgundian faction. Her reverence for Charles V and her early reproaches of Philip do not absolutely preclude the possibility that she backed that duke’s claim to regency. However, the question remains to be investigated.
THE BEGINNINGS OF THE FEUD AND CHRISTINE’S POLITICAL POETRY, 1393–1401
The dukes’ rivalry is mentioned explicitly for the first time in 1401. Pintoin describes the dukes as barely able to conceal their animosity for each other. Their competition was aggravated by courtiers, he continues, who themselves were locked into “the constant excessively jealous and stubborn struggle for superiority . . . ceaselessly attempted through spouting flattery to ignite into a giant fire the sparks of hatred hiding under the embers of dissimulation, with the object of provoking the dukes to shows of public enmities.”1 The word “enmities” (inimicicias) is a legal term denoting a state of hatred between two parties.2 To have reached such a state, the rivalry may have existed for some time. Historians disagree on when the conflict between uncle and nephew began: some, like Jarry, date it to the first years of the 1390s, and others trace it to 1398 or even 1401, when the dukes nearly came to arms in Paris.3 I make the case in this chapter that although the feud—that is, the public exchange of insults leading to violence—may have begun only in 1400 or so, the bad blood began immediately after Charles VI’s illness, when Philip of Burgundy seized control of the government for the second time.
Philip put an enduring positive slant on his two seizures of power. Through public discourse and open letters, he presented himself as a reformer, while discrediting Louis (later, Jean of Burgundy would include the queen in the attacks) as a spendthrift and imposer of massive taxes.4 In the first section below, I attempt to correct for the Burgundian bias in retracing the opening years of the feud.
The Early Days
To create a larger context for this discussion of the first years of the feud, I begin by examining some of the troubles that appeared around the time of Charles V’s death. Charles V left the Valois kingship a significantly more prestigious institution than the one he had inherited. Still, at the moment of his death, a number of problems, old and new, were emerging. The Western Schism, dividing Christendom between Roman and Avignon popes, had been accepted and possibly encouraged by Charles V.5 Pope Gregory XI, the seventh and last of the nonschismatic Avignon popes, died in 1378 in Rome, where he had returned shortly before his death. Pope Urban VI was elected in Rome as his successor. Several months later, however, a group of French cardinals declared the election void, claiming coercion. Returning to Avignon, they elected Clement VII, beginning the Great Schism.
In addition, despite the relative peace of the end of Charles V’s sixteen-year reign, when Charles died in 1380, revolts against heavy taxation began to agitate the kingdom, continuing several years into Philip’s regency. Uprisings in the Languedoc, starting in 1379, against the taxes for war with the English had been followed by slightly less violent rebellion in Auvergne. Like many of his ancestors, the dying Charles V repented of having taxed his subjects and abolished the fouage, source of 30 to 40 percent of the kingdom’s tax revenues.6 An anonymous chronicler comments that the king’s many activities had “greatly burdened the people.”7 Although Charles V soothed his own conscience and temporarily cheered his subjects, his decision created a dramatic shortfall for his successors.8 This worsened when, under pressure from the Parisians, twelve-year-old King Charles VI promised to eliminate all taxes.9 In a panic, the royal uncles convened the Estates General to request funds under a different guise.10 On February 17, 1381, the Estates General decided on a new fouage. However, by early 1382, when it became clear that the revenues collected for the fouage were inadequate, the uncles attempted to go around the Estates General to impose a sales tax.11 Insurgency followed in Paris, the north, and into Flanders.12 In the end, the uncles crushed the Parisian rebels and suppressed the other revolts, defeating the Flemish in the Battle of Roosebeke on November 27, 1382.
Also pertinent to the coming conflict between Philip and Louis of Orleans, Philip had