Still, Philip and Jean of Berry went on to govern until November 1388, when the twenty-year-old Charles VI decided that he would rule on his own from that point on.18 Announced during the French army’s return home from a military expedition to subdue William of Guelders, an old enemy of Philip’s and rival for the duchy of Brabant, the assertion of power seems to have been long in the making. In June 1387, Olivier de Clisson, greatly loved by Charles VI, had been taken prisoner by the Duke of Brittany, ally of the royal uncles. The uncles’ implication in the incident so enraged the king that he turned against them.19 Charles VI’s independence was declared in Rheims by the cardinal of Laon, a former marmouset, during a meeting of the Royal Council.20 Once in power, Charles VI recalled the marmousets to positions of financial influence. These new advisors tried to implement numerous reforms, although many contemporaries did not appreciate their efforts, especially the university, whose traditional privileges the marmousets often ignored, and those who continued to bear the burden of taxes.21 Philip bitterly resented the marmousets for their potential to restrict his access to royal funds. As for Jean of Berry, between September 1388 and February 1389, the marmousets scrutinized his administration of the Languedoc. They removed him from his post, suspended his officers, and burned his secretary at the stake for heresy and sodomy.22
Charles VI presented his emancipation from his uncles as a new beginning for the kingdom, with the queen and his brother as support. A truce with the English signed at Leulinghem on June 20, 1389, was celebrated with the queen’s coronation in August.23 The first queen of France to be crowned in a ceremony separate from the king’s, Isabeau was honored with an entry and coronation, replete with Virgin imagery, emphasizing her capacity to unify. Accompanying Isabeau was Valentina Visconti, Louis’s new wife, who had arrived in Paris just five days earlier.24 The date of the entry, the octave Sunday of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, created the first of many parallels between Isabeau and Mary.25 As her cortège meandered from Saint Denis and into Paris and finally to Notre Dame for the coronation, the queen was regaled with reenactments from the life of the Virgin.26 At the Porte Saint Denis, the intersection of the present-day rue Saint Denis and boulevard Saint Denis, she was crowned by two angels proclaiming her the queen of paradise, a theatricalization of the sacred nature of her coronation. Above the gate the Virgin with child was visible, a reference to the queen’s own pregnancy, then in its sixth month. Other pageants along the way represented the kingdom “transformed into paradise by the peace and harmony that the queen’s advent had brought to France.”27
The king also enhanced the role of his brother. Just after the coronation, as noted above, the Duke of Berry was removed from his lieutenancy of the Languedoc, and on September 2 the king, accompanied by Louis, set off on a five-month journey to inspect the territory. During his travels he helped to achieve one of the “happiest results of the royal voyage,” peace between the houses of Armagnac and Foix, whose rivalry had weighed heavily on the Languedoc.28 On a lighter note, the trip was the occasion of the poetic debate that resulted in the Cent ballades of Jean le Seneschal, a first association of Louis with courtly poetry.29 In this collection, Louis is credited with a poem extolling loyauté in love, while the Duke of Berry’s poem expresses relief that he has managed to avoid love and promotes artful lying—saying one thing while doing another. Before the trip, the king had already made Louis his closest advisor, inviting him to sit on the Royal Council, and he would later award his brother personal governance over his appanage, the duchy of Orleans.30 Charles VI further facilitated Louis’s rise through marriage to Valentina Visconti. Besides reinforcing Louis’s financial situation, the marriage brought him the county of Asti, which soon resurrected the possibility of a kingdom in Italy, a possibility that had evaporated with the death of Louis of Anjou.31 In the case of Louis of Orleans, the kingdom, which would be called Adria, was to be created of papal fiefs in central Italy.32
These efforts to realize the kingdom of Adria are the first sign of an attempt to amass territories for Louis commensurate with those of Philip of Burgundy. As we saw in chapter 1, Charles V had awarded his three brothers large appanages in order to maintain their loyalties. This leaving him with little for his second son, however, he had negotiated a marriage in 1374 between Louis and the king of Hungary’s daughter, Catherine, who would bring the counties of Provence, Forcalquier, and Piedmont, and, more significant, the kingdoms of Sicily and Naples, as well as La Pouille, Salerne, and Monte San Angelo, over which Louis and Catherine and their heirs would rule.33 The thrones of Sicily and Naples being contested, however, the deal was dropped.
Still, the Schism had created further possibilities for a French entry into Italy.34 In 1379, Clement VII, attempting to entice the French into the peninsula, had infeudated Louis of Anjou with papal lands situated on the Adriatic, north of Rome, and, soon afterward, as we have seen, the duke was named heir to the throne of Naples, adopted by the childless Jeanne, queen of Naples, in defiance of the Roman pope Urban VI.35 The idea was that Louis of Anjou would rout Pope Urban VI and leave the Avignon pope Clement VII as the single pope. Although the duke failed, the dream of an Italian kingdom continued. The Schism had freed the Visconti, Valentina’s father, Giangaleazzo, and his uncle Bernabo, rulers over much of Lombardy, from papal interference, because the claimants to the Apostolic See were too preoccupied with each other to pay attention to anyone else. When Giangaleazzo, just after succeeding his father as lord of Pavia, heard of the Schism, he celebrated by calling for a three-day feast.36 To take full advantage of the situation, however, he had to rid himself of his uncle Bernabo, which he did in 1385. The murder of Bernabo earned Giangaleazzo the enmity of Queen Isabeau and her branch of the House of Wittelsbach, for Isabeau’s mother, Taddea Visconti, had been Bernabo’s daughter. The queen and the duchess were daughters of first cousins; their parents, Isabeau’s mother, married to Stephen III Duke of Bavaria, and Valentina’s father, Giangaleazzo, shared a grandfather. Hence Giangaleazzo’s eagerness to place his daughter Valentina at the French court as a counterbalance. The French court split over the murder, some, centered around the house of Orleans, supporting Giangaleazzo, and others supporting Giangaleazzo’s rival for control of Tuscany, the Seigneurie of Florence, centered around the queen.
The winter of 1391 saw Charles VI planning an expedition to Rome to help the Avignon pope Clement VII and Naples press the claim to the throne of the young Louis II of Anjou, already crowned king of Jerusalem and Sicily by Clement VII. Froissart writes that it was the king’s intention to head for Lombardy, accompanied by armies led by Louis of Orleans, the dukes of Berry and Burgundy, the Duke of Bourbon, connétable Olivier de Clisson, the sire of Coucy, and the Count of Saint Pol.37 The king sent Louis and Philip ahead to seek an alliance with Giangaleazzo. They arrived in Pavia in March. But although Louis reached an agreement, when he returned to Paris he found the situation altered. The English—prodded by Boniface IX, successor