The Royal Succession (5 page)

`The war of the three Arnauds,' said Dueze in his whispering voice. `Now let's have a look at the Italian party.'

There were only eight of them, but divided into three sections. The redoubtable Cardinal Caetani, nephew of Pope Boniface VIII, was opposed to the two Cardinals Colonna by a time
-
honoured family feud which had become an inexorable hatred since the Anagni affair and the blow in the face Colonna had given Boniface. The other Italians wavered between these adversaries. Stefaneschi, from hostility to Philip the Fair's policy, supported Caetani, whose relation moreover he was. Napoleon Orsini tacked about. The eight were only agreed on a single point: the return of the Papacy to the Eternal City. On that point they were fiercely determined.

`You know well, Monseigneur,' continued Dueze, `that at one moment we ran the risk of schism; and indeed we still do so. Our Italians refused to meet
i
n France and they let it be known, but a little while ago, that if a Gascon pope were elected, they would
refuse him recognition and would set up a pope of their own In Rome.'

`There will be no schism,' said the Count of Poitiers calmly.

`Thanks to you, Monseigneur, thanks to you. I am happy to recognize it, and I tell everyone so. Going, as you have, from town to town with sage advice, if you have not yet found the shepherd, you have at least gathered the flock.'

`Expensive sheep, Monseigneur! Do you know that I left Paris with sixteen thousand livres, and that only the other week I had to have as much again sent to me? Jason was nothing compared to me. I hope that all thes
e golden fleeces won't
slip through-my fingers,' said the Count of Poitiers, screwing up his eyes slightly to look the Cardinal in the face.

The Cardinal, who had done very well out of this largesse by roundabout ways, did not take up the allusion directly but replied: `I think that Napoleon Orsini and Albertini de Prato, and perhaps even Guillaume de Longis, who was Chancellor to the King of Naples before me, might be fairly easily detached. Avoiding schism is worth the price.'

Poitiers thought: `He has used the money we gave him to acquire three of the Italian votes. It's clever of him.'

As for Caetani, though he continued to play an implacable game, he was not in so strong, a position since his practice of sorcery and his attempt to cast a spell on the King of France and the Count of Poitiers himself had been discovered. The ex-Templar Everard, a half-wit, whom Caetani had used for his devilish work, had talked rather too much before giving himself up to the King's men.

`I am holding that matter in reserve,' said the Count of Poitiers. `The smell of the faggots might, at the right moment, make Monseigneur Caetani a little more pliant.'

At the thought of seeing another cardinal grilled, a very slight and furtive smile passed over the aged prelate's thin lips.

`It seems that Francesco Caetani,' he went on, `has quite abandoned God's affairs to devote himself entirely to Satan's. Do you think that, having failed with sorcery, he managed to strike at the King, your brother, with poison?'

The Count of Poitiers shrugged his shoulders.

`Whenever a king dies, it's asserted that he was poisoned,' he said. `It was said of my ancestor, Louis VIII; it was said of my father, whom God keep. My brother's health was poor enough. Still, one must take the possibility into account'

"Finally'
Dueze went on, `there is the third party, which is called Provencal because of the most turbulent among us, Cardinal de Mandagout'

This last party numbered only six cardinals of diverse origin; southerners, such as the brothers Berenger Fredol, were allied in it with Normans and with one member from Quercy, Dueze himself.

The gold lavished on them by Philippe of Poitiers had made them more receptive to the arguments of French policy.

`We are the smallest, we are the weakest,' said Dueze, `but our votes are decisive in any majority. And since the Gascons and the Italians each refuse to elect a pope from the other party, then, Monseigneur...'

`They'll have to take a pope from your party, won't they?'

`I believe so, I firmly believe so. I've said so ever since Clement died. No one listened to me; doubtless people thought I was preaching on my own behalf, for indeed my name had been mentioned without my wishing it. But the Court of France has never placed much confidence in me.'

`It was because you were rather too openly supported by the Court of Naples, Monseigneur.'

`And had I not been supported by someone, Monseigneur, who would have paid any heed to me at all? Believe me, I have no other ambition than to see a little order restored to the affairs of Christendom which are in a bad way; it will be a heavy task for the next successor to Saint Peter.'

The Count of Poitiers clasped his long hands together before his face and thought for a few seconds.

`Do you think, Monseigneur,' he asked, `that the Italians would agree to the Holy See remaining in Avignon in return for the satisfaction of not having a Gascon pope, and that the Gascons, in return for the certainty of Avignon, would agree to renounce their own candidate and rally to your third party?'

By which he in fact meant: `If you, Monseigneur Dueze; became Pope with my support, would you formally agree to preserving the present residence of the Papacy?'

Dueze perfectly understood.

`It would, Monseigneur,' he replied, `be the wise solution.'

`I am grateful for your valuable advice,' said Philippe of Poitiers, rising to his feet to put an end to the audience.

He showed the Cardinal out.

When two men, who to all seeming are utterly diverse in age, appearance, experience and position, recognize each other as of
similar quality and believe that mutual collaboration and friendship are possible between them, it is due more to the mysterious conjunctions of destiny than to the words they may exchange.

When Philippe bowed to kiss his ring, the Cardinal murmured, `You would make an excellent regent, Monseigneur.'

Philippe straightened up. `Does he realize that I have been thinking all this time of nothing else?' he wondered. And he replied: `Would you not yourself, Monseigneur, make an excellent Pope?'

And they could not help smiling discreetly to each other, the old man with a sort of paternal affection, the young man with friendly deference.

`I will be beholden to you; Philippe added, "if you will keep secret the grave news you have brought me until it is publicly announced.'

`T will do so, Monseigneur, in order to serve you.'

Left alone, the Count of Poitiers reflected only for a few
seconds.
Then he summoned his first
chamberlain.

`Adam Heron, has no courier arrived from Paris?' he asked. `No, Monseigneur.'

`Then close all the gates of. Lyons.'

4. Let us dry our tears

THAT MORNING the people of Lyons were without vegetables.

The market-gardeners' wagons had been stopped outside the walls, and the housewives were clamouring in the empty markets.

The o
nly bridge, that over the Saone (for the one over the
Rhone had not yet been completed), was barred by soldiery. But if one could not enter Lyons, one could not leave it either. Italian merchants, travellers, itinerant friars, reinforced by loungers and idlers, gathered about the gates and demanded an explanation. The guard invariably replied: `The Count of Poitiers' orders,' with the distant and important air that agents of authority tend to adopt when executing an order they do not understand.

People were shouting:

`But my daughter is ill at Fouviere ...'

`My barn at Saint-Just burned down yesterday at vespers...' '

`The bailiff of Villefranche will have me arrested if I don't take him my poll-tax today ...'

`The Count of Poitiers' orders!'

And when the crowd began to press forward, the royal sergeants-at-arms raised their maces.

There were strange rumours going round the town.

Some declared that there was going to be war. But with whom? No one could say. Others asserted that a bloody riot had taken place during the night near the Augustinian monastery between the King's men and those of the Italian cardinals. Horses had been heard going by. Even the number of the dead was mentioned. But at the Augustinians' all was quiet.

The Archbishop, Pierre de Savoie, was very anxious, wondering whether the events which had taken place before 1312 were
about to begin all over again and whether he would be compelled to abandon, to the advantage of the archbishopric of Sens, the primacy of the Gaules, the only prerogative he had succeeded in preserving when Lyons had been attached to the Crown.
5
He had sent one of his canons for news; but the canon, having gone to the Count of Poitiers' lodging, had been met by a curtly silent equerry. And now the Archbishop was expecting an ultimatum.

The cardinals, who were lodged in various religious houses, were no less anxious and, indeed, inclined to panic. Were they to be treated as they had been at Carpentras? But how could they escape this time? Messengers rushed from the Augustinians to the Franciscans and from the Jacobins to the Carthusians. Cardinal Caetani had sent his general assistant, the Abbe Pierre, to Napoleon Orsini, to Albertini de Prato and to Flisco, the only Spaniard, with orders to say to those prelates: `Look what has happened! You let yourselves be persuaded by the Count of Poitiers. He swore not to molest us, that we should not even have to go into seclusion to vote, and that we should be completely free. And now he has shut us up in Lyons!'

Dueze himself received the visit of two of his Provencal colleagues, Cardinal de Mandagout and Berenger Fredol, the elder. But Dueze pretended to have but just emerged from his theological studies and to know nothing. During this time, in a cell near the Cardinal's apartment, Guccio Baglioni was sleeping like a log, in no state to speculate what might be the cause of all the panic.

For the last hour Messire Varay, Consul of Lyons, an
d three of his colleagues, who
had come to ask for an explanation in the
name of the City Council, had been kept waiting in the Count of Poitiers' antechamber.

The Count was sitting in camera with the members of his entourage and the great officers who were part of his delegation.

At last the hangings parted and the Count of Poitiers appeared, followed by his councillors. They all wore the grave expressions of men who had just reached an important political decision.

'Ah, Messire Varay, you have come at the right moment, and you too, Messires Consuls,' said the Count of Poitiers. `We can give you at once the message we were about to send you. Messire Mille, will you be so good as to read it?'

Mille de Noyers, a jurist, a Councillor of Parliament and Marshal of the East under Philip the Fair, unrolled the parchment and read as follows:

`To all the bailiffs, seneschals, and councils of loyal towns. We would have you know the great sorrow that has befallen us by the death of our well-beloved brother, the King, our Lord Louis X, whom God has removed from the affection of his subjects. But human nature is such that no one may outlive the term assigned him. Thus we have decided to dry our tears, to pray with you to Christ for his soul, and to show ourselves assiduous for the government of the Kingdom of France and the Kingdom of Navarre that their rights may not perish, and that the subjects of these two kingdoms may, live happily beneath the buckler of justice and of peace.

`The Regent of the two kingdoms, by the Grace of God.

PHILIPPE'

When they had recovered from their astonishment, Messire Varay immediately came forward and kissed the Count of Poiters' hand; then the other consuls unhesitatingly followed suit.

The King was dead. The news was so surprising in itself that no one thought, for several minutes at least, of questioning it. In the absence of an heir who was of age, it seemed perfectly normal that the elder of the Sovereign's brothers should assume power. The consuls did not for a moment doubt that the decision had been taken in Paris by the Chamber of Peers.

'Have this message cried in the town,' Philippe of Poitiers ordered; `which done, the gates will be immediately opened.'

Then he added: 'Messire Varay, you hold a great position in the cloth trade; I should be glad if you would furnish me with
twenty black cloaks which may be, placed in the antechamber to clothe those who come to condole with me.'

He then dismissed the consuls.

The two first acts of his seizure of power had been accomplished. He had been proclaimed Regent by his entourage, who became thereby his Council of Government. He would be recognized by the city of Lyons in which he was staying. He was now in a hurry to extend this
recognition over the whole king
dom and thus place the accomplished fact before Paris. It was a question of speed.

Already the copyists were reproducing his proclamation in considerable quantities, and the couriers were saddling their horses to ride with it into every province.

As soon as the gates of Lyons were opened, they hastily set out, passing three couriers who had been kept on the other side of the Saone since morning. The first of them carried a letter from the Count of Valois, announcing himself as the Regent appointed by the Council of the Crown, and asking Philippe to agree, so that the appointment might become effective. `I am sure that you will wish to help me in my task for the good of the kingdom, and will give me your agreement as soon as possible, like the good and well-beloved nephew you are.'

The second message came from the Duke of Burgundy, who also claimed the Regency in the name of his niece, the little Jeanne of Navarre.

Finally, the Count of Evreux informed Philippe of Poitiers that the peers had not sat in accordance with custom and precedent, and that Charles of Valois' haste to seize the reins of government was supported by
no legal document or assembly.

The Count of Poitiers had immediately gone into Council again with his entourage. It was composed of men who were hostile to the policies pursued by the Hutin and the Count of Valois during the last eighteen months. In the first place, there was the Constable of Fr
ance, Gaucher de Chatillon, Com
mander of the Armies since 1302, who could not forgive the ridiculous campaign of the `Muddy Army' which he had been compelled to conduct in Flanders the preceding summer. Then there was his brother-in-law, Mille de Noyers, who shared his feelings. Then, the jurist Raoul de Presles who, after rendering so many services to the Iron King, had had his goods confiscated, while his friend Enguerrand de Marigny had been hanged and he himself had been put to the question by water though no confession had been extracted from him; as a result, he suffered from
permanent stomach pains and bore the ex-Emperor of Constantinople a considerable grudge. He owed his safety and his return to favour to the Count of Poitiers.

Thus a sort of opposition party, which included the survivors among the great councillors of Philip the Fair, had formed about the Count of Poitiers. No one looked kindly on the ambitions of the Count of Valois or indeed wanted the Duke of Burgundy to meddle in the affairs of the Crown. They admired the speed with which the young Prince had acted and they placed their hopes on him.

Poitiers wrote to Eudes of Burgundy and to Charles of Valois, without mentioning their letters, indeed as if he had not received them, to inform them that he considered himself Regent by natural right, and that he would summon the Assembly of Peers to give him its sanction as soon as possible.

In the meantime he appointed commissaries to go to the principal cities oPS the kingdom and assume authority in his name. Thus that day saw the departure of several of his knights - who were later to become his `Knights Pursuivant'
8
- such as Regnault de Lor. Thomas
de
Marfontaine and Guillaume Courteheuse. He kept with him Anseau de Joinville, the son of the great Joinville, and Henry de Sully.

While the knell tolled from all the steeples, Philippe of Poitiers conferred for a long time with Gaucher de Chatillon. The Constable of France sat by right on every Government assembly, the Chamber of Peers, the Grand Council and the Small Council. Philippe, therefore, asked Gaucher to go to Paris to represent him and oppose Charles of Valois' usurpation until his own arrival; moreover, the Constable would make sure that all the troops in the capital, particularly the Corps of Crossbowmen, were under his control.

For the new Regent, at first to the surprise, but then to the approbation, of his councillors, had determined to remain temporarily in Lyons.

`We cannot leave the tasks we have in hand,' he had declared; `the most important thing for the kingdom is to have a pope, and we shall be all the stronger when we have made him.'

He hurried on the signature of the contract of betrothal between his daughter and the Dauphiniet. At first sight this seemed to have no connexion with the pontifical election, yet in Philippe's mind they were linked. The alliance with the Dauphin of Viennois, who ruled over all the territories south of Lyons and controlled the road to Italy, was a move in his game. If the
cardinals took it into their heads to slip through his fingers, they would not be able to take refuge in that direction. Furthermore, the betrothal consolidated his position as Regent; the Dauphin would be in his camp and would have sound reasons for not abandoning him.

Because of mourning the contract was signed during the following days without festivities.

At the same time Philippe of Poitiers negotiated with the most powerful baron of the region, the Count de Forez, who was also a brother-in-law of the Dauphin, and held the right bank of the Rhone.

Jean de Forez had fought in the campaign in Flanders, had several times represented Philip the Fair at the Papal Court, and had done very good work in getting Lyons ceded to the Crown, The Count of Poitiers knew that as soon as he resumed his father's policy he could count on him.

On June 16th the Count de Forez performed a highly spectacular gesture. He paid solemn homage to Philippe as the suzerain of all the suzerains of France, thus recognizing him as the holder of the royal authority.

The following day Count Bermond de la Voulte, whose f
ief of Pierregourde was in the S
eneschalship of Lyons, placed his hands between those of the Count of Poitiers and swore him a similar oath of loyalty.

Poitiers asked the Count de Forez to hold ready seven hundred men-at-arms in secret. The cardinals would not now be able to escape from the town.

Nevertheless, there was still a long way to go before an election was achieved. Negotiations lagged. The Italians, feeling that the Regent was in haste to return to Paris, had hardened in their position. `He'll tire first,' they said. Little they cared for the tragic state of anarchy in which the affairs of the Church were foundering.