A king of France unnamed in history
Cheney, Charles Edward, 1836-1916 | Rienzo, Cola di, d. 1354
A KING OF FRANCE UNNAMED IN HISTORY ' raj- y 1 % zi 4 ft II 3 cT li'i SsLliSI*' ca ^ f i ^ J <i « ^ 3 1 r » j- f - > "1 '- IV c- 4>3 3 (5 2 4 i ^C» fcMjfe ^? ■feg :x« 5 ^ftJ^C 12 f II Is -ft*- Bo -^ '* ft '2 c§ j? <$ t m \ ■ fe 1 ^2. SIC3 fl «s r^> fC '<& *-4& :%>%i ^ w^fUfel flip 1 otf- 1 (Us s \|vv S^f -Pi \r(M $14 6-2 £ ■* 1 ri g r f*j i § ill ti 13 i <^>s^ 1^ h vl t- to g (gv ^to -S? I Lis i W ^i_ I C8 s ^« ^ OS rl||j||f I44-4 ii^i ij-r *^2 f HI '. IW s 3 lg >^ 1 S"3 ; °s MU.Utttili 1 Zi|- •■ '"" <s-cr, §<_3 fr Itff, ITRllItt 'It t-TH^ tfc A KING OF FRANCE UNNAMED IN HISTORY BY CHARLES EDWARD CHENEY CHICAGO LITERARY CLUB 1902 n THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, Two Copies Received FEB 2 1903 Copyngnt Entry CLASS Oi, XXfc. No. CO PY B. ] ■ i urn Bii— rrr L/ ^ Copyright, 1902 CHARLES EDWARD CHENEY The following pages are the result of researches outside of the beaten paths of mediaeval history. The mysterious career of Giannino of Siena, who claimed to be John I. of France, has stimulated the cu- riosity of European scholars, and elicited several monographs in both French and Italian, If, however, it has hitherto been narrated in English, the fact has escaped the investigations of the present writer. His grateful acknowledgments are due to friends in Rome and Paris for valuable assistance, to the Rev. William Fairley, D.D., Ph.D., for translations from mediae- val Latin, and especially to Mr. Frederick W. Gookin, secretary of the Chicago Lit- erary Club, for helpful suggestions and un- wearying care in passing the work through the press. C. E. C. A KING OF FRANCE UNNAMED IN HISTORY HE glory of the old Tuscan city of Siena is the cam- panile which bears the name of the Mangia. Tow- ering skyward with needle- like slenderness, it seems as it nears its full height J to expand as the tulip blos- soms on its graceful stem, and bears aloft, like the stamen of the flower, the sacred bell of the republic. For more than five hun- dred years has that brazen voice pealed on the ears of the Siennese. In mediaeval times its sonorous notes were associated with every phase and mood of the turbulent town. It was the great bell which sum- moned the citizens to war, rang out their joy in victory, and tolled forth their mourning in disaster. But when at high noon on the eighteenth day of October, in the year of grace 1359, the echoes of Siena were awakened by twelve strokes of the bell of the Mangia, there was none so ignorant as to mistake the meaning of the summons. It was the signal that the Seignory,* the supreme legislature of the republic, was about to meet in solemn session. The legal title of the body bespoke what place the great bell, at the call of which it assembled, held in the hearts of the people — for this Siennese Senate was known as "The Council of the Bell." f That assembly was the resultant product of innumerable revolutions — the final gov- ernmental structure in which the Siennese had taken refuge when the storms of their own fury had swept away its many prede- cessors. For singularly capricious and fickle as was the populace of all the Italian cities of the Middle Ages, no other of them had known such changes and incon- sistencies as marked the story of Siena.;); It is difficult to draw one thread of definite historic truth out of the confused tangle of dissension and bloodshed, when in less than half a year five revolutions convulsed the city. We only know that when the Coun- * Chroniques Siennoises: Introduction par le Due de Dino, p. 9. j" See Appendix V. J Siena, art. Encyc. Brit., Cesare Paoli. 8 cil of the Bell assembled on that October day, it was equally independent of the nobility and of the common people.* In the mysterious crucible of political evolu- tion there had been produced a supreme governing body to which no noble could belong, yet which the people did not choose. Composed exclusively of the class engaged in trade, its members were vested with the choice of their successors, and the body was thus self-perpetuating. We are not dependent wholly upon that seductive artist, the imagination, for a picture which shall set before our mental vision the appearance of the rulers of Siena. So many and so striking are the paintings of mediaeval times, transmitting to modern days the portraiture of similar assemblies, that it becomes easy to reconstruct the scene when the all-powerful Twelve responded with their presence to the summons of the great bell. Commerce was the secret of the great- ness of Siena; f and the wealth which had made her craftsmen and merchants famous through southern Europe appeared in the dress and decoration of these lords in the realm of trade. Velvet robes were bordered with costly fur, delicate laces half covered the hands, massive gold chains encircled * Chroniques Siennoises: Introduction par le Due de Dino, pp. 9, 23. t Ibid., p. 24. the neck, and jeweled buckles held to the broad hat the shadowing plumes which made darker still the swarthy Tuscan faces. The place of meeting was fitting such an assembly. The vast Palazzo Pubblico was not then the time-worn relic of an age long past. Just half a century before, in the year 1309, all Siena had gone wild with enthusiasm over the completion of the noble pile which still attests the genius of its architect. While as yet it had not lost the freshness of youth, it had already acquired some of the artistic treasures that have made the municipal palace the pride of the Siennese. As the Twelve gathered for de- liberation in the Hall of the Grand Council, the same frescoes by Simone Martini * looked down on them as upon the modern visitor. A letter of the poet Petrarch has been preserved, which records the circumstance that in that very October of I359.,f the winter came early to the plains of Lom- bardy, and drove the luxurious singer from his country home to the shelter of the city of Milan. We need not doubt, however, that mild autumn winds stirred the yet unfallen leaves of the chestnut woods which then covered the now naked hills about * Guide to Siena and San Gimignano, London, 1885, p. 23. •fMemoires de Francois Petrarque, Amsterdam, 1767, Vol. III., p. 522. 10 Siena, and that the warm Tuscan sun, mak- ing its way through the pointed windows of the Hall of the Grand Council, took some- thing from the chilly vastness of that great apartment. It was grave business which the rulers of Siena had met to transact. Two months was their brief term of office,* and now they were to choose the twelve burghers who, in succession to themselves, should hold sovereign power for November and December. Human nature was, then as now, tenacious of power once grasped, and the modern reader familiar with the muni- cipal politics of our American cities can hardly stifle the suspicion that the Council of the Bell may each alternate month have re-elected itself. Yet the quaint language of the archives of Siena seems to hint that this election was by lot. Thus runs the ancient chronicle: There were drawn out of the chest and the box existing in the chest, in which are de- scribed those who ought in the time to come to hold the office of the twelve lords adminis- trators and governors of the commonwealth and people of the State of Siena, for the said office of the twelve lords, and for the two months, namely, for November and December, next approaching, a ball of wax, on which was folded a small sheet of parchment; and on * Chroniques Siennoises, p. 140, makes the term but fifteen days. 11 this were found written, as I the Notary of the Reformation subscribed, read, twelve names.* The list which follows bears striking wit- ness to the complete exclusion of the ancient nobility from the government of Siena. Among the twelve one is specified as a shopkeeper, another as a dealer in linen, a third as a silk merchant, a fourth as a baker. The title to power in the Sien- nese republic lay, not in gentle blood or soldierly achievement, but in bourgeois line- age and success in the fields of commerce. Even the list proposed on that October afternoon was not to be accepted without challenge. For the notary adds that when he reached in his reading the name of "Janninus, or Gianni Guccio, the wool merchant of the section of Camollia," grave protest sprang to the lips of more than one member of the Seignory: not because of moral delinquency, intellectual incapacity or political turpitude, but because it had been clearly shown that Guccio was not a burgher born, but of blood royal, and heir apparent to the throne of France.f Upon that entry in the ancient minutes of the Council of the Bell hangs a tale that ranks among the strangest to be found in the annals of mediaeval Europe. Our story carries us nearly half a century backward * See Appendix V. | Ibid- 12 in point of time, and changes the scene from Central Italy to the capital of France. It is the 15th of November, 13 16. Paris is tumultuous with joy. Crowds throng the narrow streets. Houses are illuminated. Te Deum is sung at Notre Dame. His- tory does not record it, but we may hazard the guess that at the solemn services in which the church gave expression to the universal gladness of the people, the arch- bishop may have preached in the great cathedral from the text, "For unto us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulders." Five months earlier, on the 5 th of June,* Louis X., surnamed Le Hutin, or the Quarreler, had reached the end of his brief and stormy reign. His accession to the throne had brought the elder line of de- scent from Hugh Capet to its last gener- ation, and his death threatened France with the horrors of civil war. While Louis was yet a boy, his crafty father, Philip the Fair, to cement his own power, had negoti- ated the marriage of the young prince with the heiress of the ducal house of Burgundy. Similar splendid alliances had been made by Philip for his two younger sons. It casts a lurid light upon the morals of the great in that period of history, that each of the three princesses thus introduced into *Memoires relatifs a PHistoire de France. Paris, 1825. 13 the royal family of France was accused — whether justly or unjustly, who can tell? — of unfaithfulness to her marriage vows, and condemned to a fearful doom.* The American tourist whose wanderings in France have led him to Les Andelys, on the right bank of the Seine, will long remem- ber the imposing ruins of the Chateau Gaillard, built by Richard Cceur de Lion in the twelfth century. In one of the horrible dungeons still to be explored in the remnant of the old Norman fortress, Mar- garet of Burgundy was strangled by order of her husband. The ill-fated young queen left a daughter who bore the name of Jeanne, and who was destined at a later period to act a conspicu- ous part in the tragedy of French and Burgundian history. Some of the chroniclers do not hesitate to assert that Louis' mad passion for Clemence, or Clementine, the sister of the King of Hungary, was the real source from which sprang the indictment of Queen Margaret, and her cruel execution.f Cer- tain it is that crowding close upon Marga- ret's death came the marriage of her hus- band to the Hungarian princess. In the case of Louis le Hutin "the mills *Milman's Latin Christianity, Vol. VI., p. 533. Dareste's Histoire de France, Vol. II., p. 378. |Martin, Histoire de France, Vol. IV., p. 523. Sismondi, Histoire des Francais, Vol. XL, p. 309. 14 of the gods" did not ' 'grind slow." Less than a year from his second marriage,* and only eighteen months from the unhappy day on which he became King of France, he sickened and died. So insignificant was the personality of the man, and so inglori- ous the career of the monarch, that even the more elaborate histories of France dis- miss the reign of Louis X. with little more than the mention of his name. Not infrequently the actual experience of disaster is more easily endured than the suspense which precedes it. The French people groped like a ship in a fog, through the awful uncertainty which followed the death of Louis X. For once the populace of Paris could not shout, "The King is dead. Long live the King!" For Louis had no successor. From the days of Hugh Capet, through more than three hundred years, each monarch at his death had handed down the scepter to his son.f But when the bells of Notre Dame an- nounced the death of Louis the Quarreler, there was none to claim parentage from him — save the little girl Jeanne — pitiful offspring of a father utterly contemptible, and a mother whose savage murder had not obliterated the stains upon her memory. The child was not without a champion of her claims to be Queen of France. The *Duruy, Histoire de France, Vol. I., p. 411. |Dareste, Hist, de France, Vol. II., p. 387. 15 potent Duke of Burgundy,* her mother's brother, demanded that there should be no departure from the immemorial precedent by which the crown descended from the parent to the child. But closer to the seat of power was Philip, Count of Poitou, brother of the dead king. As the nearest male relative of Louis, this prince had been immediately proclaimed regent of the realm till the question of suc- cession should be settled. But his vaulting ambition was not satisfied with any tempo- rary possession of sovereignty. Out from the musty archives of Carlovingian tradition the cunning plotter dragged an almost for- gotten statute that certain territories known as "Salic" lands could not be inherited by a woman.f With the convincing logic which has rarely failed to make the despot irre- sistible in argument, Philip insisted upon the application of this ancient custom to the title to the throne of France. With the ruthless exclusion of the young Jeanne began the so-called "Salic Law," which bound France to a line of male rulers — however hateful — so long as the nation was ruled by monarchical authority .J But for Philip, shrewd schemer though he was, the voyage to the royal "haven * Monmerque, p. 13; Dareste, Vol. II., p. 388. tDareste, Vol. II., p. 388. $ Sismondi, Histoire des Francais, Vol. IX., p. 352. 16 where he would be" was not yet "plain sailing." There was another and more perplexing contingency to be reckoned with. The widowed Queen Clemence was expect- ing the birth of a posthumous child and heir of Louis X. All authorities concur in as- cribing to the noblesse at this critical junc- ture an intense suspicion of Philip, and perhaps still more of Mathilde, Countess of Artois,* whose daughter was the regent's wife. This haughty woman had not scru- pled to express in the most public way her chagrin that her son-in-law had not been seated on the throne when the death of his brother made it vacant. The great heredi- tary lords saw with keen apprehension that the selfish ambition of Philip was tempted by an opportunity which placed the prize of regal power just within his grasp. Him- self already king except in name, and with his unscrupulous mother-in-law in constant attendance upon Queen Clemence, nothing was easier than to compass the early death of the child with whose fate the future of France was bound up. Against so perilous a contingency the great barons of France proceeded to make provision. The exact date and the precise place of the meeting vary slightly in the different chronicles, but certain it is that while the posthumous child of Louis le Hutin was yet unborn, an *Gigli, Diario Sanese, quoted by Monmerque, Dissertation Historique, p. 73. i7 assembly of the princes and highest nobility- was held, at which an agreement was reached, to which Philip himself, however reluctantly, assented. The Duke of Bur- gundy withdrew the claim of his little niece Jeanne, to whom was flung the sop of a possi- ble inheritance of the kingdom of Navarre.* Relieved of this peril to his claim, Philip entered into a solemn covenant with the barons and lords of France, that should the child of Louis and Clemence prove to be a son, he should be proclaimed king immedi- ately on his birth, but Philip should be guardian of the baby-monarch and regent of the realm until the young prince should attain the age of eighteen years.f But if the child had the misfortune to be a girl, Philip should become king not only in fact, but by public acknowledgment and conse- cration. Hated and feared as Philip was, little wonder that the thoughts and prayers of France, from the peasant to the peer, were centered on that chamber in the fort- ress of the Louvre, where from the time of Philip Augustus the heirs to the crown of France had first seen the light of day. Little wonder that when, on the 15th of November, 1316,^: the gorgeously arrayed * Chronique de St. Victor. See foot-note in Monmerque, pp. 10, II. I Sismondi, Vol. IX., p. 338. Others say twenty- four years. Monmerque, Dissert. Histor., p. 8. J Sismondi, Vol. IX., p. 344. heralds proclaimed that a young prince had that day been born to the late King Louis of blessed memory and to the gracious Queen Clemence, the bells rang till the steeples rocked, joyous crowds thronged the streets, and bonfires blazed in every public place. When, a little later, in accord with a vow which the queen had made to St. John the Baptist,* the young prince was christened John, the people hailed as an omen of good the relinquishment of the names Philip and Louis which their mon- archs had borne through so many genera- tions, and to this day the hapless babe is counted in the history of France as "John I."t Short-lived was the popular jubilation. The chroniclers of that period relate that when but eight days old the royal infant, inheriting feebleness of constitution from both its parents, suddenly died, and all France was plunged in mourning. The brief sunshine which had broken through the clouds of misrule shadowing the nation, was turned to midnight when John I. was laid at the feet of his father in the tombs of his ancestors at St. Denis,;); and Philip, fifth of the name, was proclaimed King of France and Navarre. * Gigli's Diario Sanese, quoted by Monmerqu£, P. 73- t Sismondi, Histoire des Francais, Vol. IX., p. 344. X Martin, Hist, de France, Vol. IV., p. 533. 19 Thus far we have traveled a road known to scholars. Every student of French his- tory may verify the pathetic tale of the little king whose birth was welcomed as the advent of a deliverer, and whose life and reign were bounded by the horizon of a single week. But he whose curiosity prompts him to search amidst the dust of mediaeval archives for truth stranger than fiction will find an account of the only son of Louis X. of France widely variant from the narratives of Sismondi, or Guizot, or Martin. While there is no lack of corrobo- rative testimony in other documents, the principal source of information is contained in an unpublished manuscript in the Chigi Library in Rome. The work of a Domini- can monk, Sigismund Titius (or Tiziano),* it is the fullest and most elaborate history of the republic of Siena which has been pre- served to modern times. The remainder of this paper will follow closely the record of this mediaeval chronicle. The suspicion and fear with which Philip of Poitou and his ally, the Countess of Artois, had inspired the great lords at the court of France, had taken form in an un- usual precaution. Some weeks before the birth of the royal child, two barons of ancient lineage and distinguished services to France were appointed, together with their wives, to be a personal guard to * Article Siena, Encyclop. Brit., Vol. XXII., p. 43. 20 Queen Clemence.* Knowing that Philip's succession to his dead brother's throne hung upon the question whether the queen should give birth to a son or a daughter, these guardians were solemnly sworn to forestall any injury to the mother or the infant, and to detect and prevent any fraudulent attempt to misrepresent the sex of the child. Their watchful anxiety was not allayed when, after the birth of the young prince, the Countess of Artois de- manded the privilege of holding him in her arms on the occasion of his public presenta- tion to the people of Paris. f The barons were well aware that this unscrupulous woman and her crafty son-in-law, maddened with the disappointment of their hope, and reckless as to the means to be used to gain their end, might seize the opportunity to compass the death of the new-born king when he should be shown to a loyal popu- lace. Suspicion of their purpose grew as it was discovered that the Countess of Artois had set afloat through Paris the rumor J that the babe was a feeble and puny infant, and was liable to die at any moment. With a spirit characteristic of the Middle Ages, the protectors of the royal child re- * Rienzi's Charte, Monmerque, Dissertation His- torique, p. 41. Vide Appendix IV. I Chifflet, Lumina Salica, Antwerp, 1660, Vol. I., p. 278. Rienzi's Charte, Appendix IV. J Chifflet, quoted by Monmarque, Dissert. Hist., P. 57- 21 solved to "fight fire with fire." They, too, could resort to stratagem, and if Philip and his fellow-plotter were mining in the dark, their opponents with equal secrecy could countermine. Our story leads us from the abode of royalty to the seat of a power which in mediaeval times rivaled and often eclipsed that of kings. In one of the numerous nunneries in the outskirts of Paris a young mother, over whom scarcely fifteen sum- mers had passed, was half the guest and half the prisoner of her relative, the Lady Abbess. Born of the noble stock of the Sieur de Picard,* a household famous in the region about Crecy, where a generation later Edward the Black Prince crushed the power of the House of Valois, the girl, left fatherless in her infancy, had been reared by her widowed mother and two elder brothers. Into the neighborhood of Crecy, some time in 13 15, a young Tuscan mer- chant had found his way. The great pa- trician family of the Tolomei, the most aristocratic in Siena,f did not feel itself degraded in adding to its vast wealth by traffic in the woolen fabrics which to this day constitute the principal factor in Sien- nese commerce. Guccio di Mino di Gieri Baglioni was a nephew of Spinello di To- lomei, and became the representative of *Papencordt's Rienzi, p. 320. I Siena, Cesare Paoli, p. 42. 22 the great nobleman's extended trade with France. How a youth engaged in commercial pursuits — even though connected with a noble house — should have overcome the prejudice with which the warlike French noblesse looked down upon the Italian tendency to traffic, it would be difficult to explain. Certain it is, however, that Pierre and Jean de Picard welcomed Guccio to their hunting and fowling excursions, and made him a frequent guest at their ancestral chateau. Quick and terrible was their revulsion of feeling when one day the discovery was made that the handsome young Tuscan had not only won the affection of their little sister Marie, but had betrayed their hospi- tality by a secret marriage. The furious brothers drove Guccio out of France, and warned him that if he ever again crossed the Italian border, his life would pay the forfeit.* In vain the poor Marie pleaded, and showed her wedding-ring. They would acknowledge no marriage which should commingle the blood of the Picards with that of a base Italian trader. They tried to hide their disgraced sister by placing her in the care of her aunt, the Abbess of the Convent of the Filles Dieu at Paris, where her child was born a fortnight earlier than the baby king. * Chifflet, quoted by Monmerque, p. 56. 23 But the story spread, and reaching the ears of the barons appointed to watch over the queen and the heir apparent, they sum- moned Marie de Picard to be the royal infant's nurse. One chronicler asserts that the barons assured the young mother that no harm to her babe could follow her permission to have him dressed in robes spangled with fleurs de lis, and to allow his exhibition to the populace as the new-born king. They urged that in some vague and unexplained way she would thus show her patriotism and her loyalty to the infant sovereign.* Nor is it unreasonable to suppose that in such an age of history the pride of her mother-heart was flattered with the thought of her son appearing, even for a brief moment, in the guise of a monarch. The day arrived on which the people of Paris were to see the child whose advent had filled all France with joy. At one of the great windows of the palace appeared Mathilde, Countess of Artois. In her arms she bore a babe, whose tiny figure seemed strangely disproportioned to the jeweled robes of ermine-fringed velvet which pro- claimed his rank, and on whose drooping head was fastened a crown flashing with diamonds. f Unconscious that, despite her shrewdness, a clever trick had been played * Gigli, quoted by Monmerque\ p. 76. •fRienzi's Charte. See Appendix IV. 24 upon her, Mathilde, when the eager crowd had satisfied their enthusiastic loyalty, with- drew from the balcony, but not till she had wrought the evil deed to accomplish which she had asked the honor of displaying the young king to his future subjects. Authori- ties differ as to the mode in which the murder was committed. Some assert that poison concealed in a finger-ring was in- jected through the child's tender skin. Others relate that in a more brutal way the Countess crushed the infant in her strong grasp till some internal injury assured its death. Still others hint that a slender needle was used to pierce the skull and reach the brain.* However the deed may have been done, we know that on the en- suing day a black cloud lowered over France, and a mourning people were told that their young king was dead. Only to two or three great lords and ladies, and to a broken-hearted young mother who went back to her convent-cell carrying a babe not her own, was it known that the mur- dered child was that of a Tuscan trader, and that the survivor of the tragedy was the son of Louis X., and heir to the throne of France. The chroniclers tell us that when the barons announced to the young woman they had so cruelly deceived that her child was dead, they were terrified by her piteous wailing. But while they tried to quiet her * Gigli, quoted by Monmerque, p. 76. 25 cries of grief by pointing out the peril be- trayal of their common secret would bring to her as to them, they also pictured to her imagination the rank and wealth which would be her reward when her foster-child should attain his rightful crown.* Through the Louvre they caused the report to run that the nurse of the dead prince showed the loyalty and affectionateness of her nature by a sorrow as bitter as if the royal infant had been her own offspring. That the secret would be guarded well may be easily believed. For Philip of Poitou became by the supposed death of his nephew unquestioned king of France. Had Marie de Picard revealed the royal lineage of the babe which she had adopted as her own, or had the lords of the court told how they had contrived and executed the exchange of the children, it would have had no result but to bring down on their own heads the certain and terrible ven- geance of the king. So passed nearly ten years. The young foster-mother of an unknown prince was once more reconciled to her family, and restored to the ancestral castle at Crecy. Meantime her husband ventured again into France, and from Paris wrote pleading letters to the wife from whom he had so long been parted, entreating her that he might be permitted to see his son. It is *Rienzi's Charte. See Appendix IV. 26 easy to understand that the bereaved mother should have shrunk from weaving further the tangled web of deception, and that she hesitated long before granting a request which involved the false hypothesis that the boy was the child of Guccio. At last, however, the appeal became too urgent to be longer resisted, and the young Jean, or Gianni, was sent to Paris to meet his sup- posed father. But the wily Tuscan never sent back the borrowed boy. Taking him to Siena, Guccio educated the child in the schools where the young Siennese burghers were fitted for trade. At the proper age he was launched on the tide of business as a member of the wool-weavers' corpora- tion,* and when, in 1 340, the elder Guccio died, his supposed son had become a con- spicuous figure in Siena. A prosperous merchant, repeatedly holding the highest municipal offices, and finally intrusted with the great responsibilities of administrator of the hospital of Santa Maria della Miseri- cordia, Gianni di Guccio lived an unambi- tious life, contented with his lot, and enjoy- ing the boundless confidence of his fellow- burghers of Siena. Once more the scene shifts to France. It is the month of June, 1345-f To the castle of the Picards at Crecy, a Spanish monk of the neighboring Augustinian con- * Chroniques Siennoises, p. 24. "j" Papencordt's Rienzi, p. 322. 27 vent, has been summoned in hot haste. Marie de Picard, conscious that her end is near, has sent for the holy father to hear her last confession. On the ear of the astonished priest falls a story which fear had locked in this woman's breast for nearly thirty years. She tells him that the true King of France is in a foreign country, living a tradesman's life, not only unknown to his subjects, but himself unconscious of the high dignity of his birth. Nor does the dying woman allow her confessor to leave her, till, under every solemn sanction of his religion, he has sworn that he will seek the son of Louis X., and lay before him the proofs of his royalty, and urge him to claim his own. It was a critical hour in the history of France. Philip the Long had died after a brief reign. Charles IV. had speedily fol- lowed his brothers, and now, so far as France knew, no male heir in the elder line from Hugh Capet existed to claim the crown. Philip of Valois, representing the younger branch of the Capetian dynasty, had been for seventeen years upon the throne. Meantime Edward III. of Eng- land had pressed his title to the sovereignty of France by crushing victories over the house of Valois. The French people were rent by intestine dissensions. Earthquakes had desolated the land. Fearful pesti- lences had sent mourning into palaces and 28 hovels.* To Father Jordan, the Augus- tinian confessor of Marie Picard, the secret significance *of these scourges of God was revealed as by a light from heaven. They could only mean that Divine judgment would not be withdrawn from unhappy France until the true king, hidden alike from his people and himself, was brought back to his just inheritance. But while the monk's conscience led him to resolve to spend his days in seeking out the lost prince, he could not conquer his fear of Philip of Valois.f Nine years appear to have passed without action. But in 1354, Jordan con- fided the last testament of Marie Picard to a French Augustinian monk, Father Antoine, whose repeated visits to Italy had fitted him for his delicate responsibility. Landing near Genoa, Antoine was stricken with sudden and severe illness.^ He had heard, before leaving France, the romantic history of Cola di Rienzi, with which all Europe was ringing, and knew that for a second time, and with the full approval of the Pope, the once banished Tribune was reigning in supreme and splendid power in Rome. In Rienzi, Antoine recognized a God-elected man, whose mission on earth was to right every wrong. To him, there- * Rienzi's Charte, Appendix IV. t Letter of Antoine, Appendix I. Also Rienzi's Charte, Appendix IV. J Ibid. 29 fore, the monk sent not only the full account of the concealed King of France, but the documents and other evidences which Marie de Picard had intrusted to the monk Jordan. It should be said that this letter of Antoine to Rienzi is differentiated from all the other versions of the story of Giannino by a marked variation in one particular.* It does not mention the Countess of Artois, nor even hint at the terrible iniquity with which she is charged by the other writers. On the contrary, the monk makes the barons who sought a nurse for the new-born prince to have intrusted the royal babe to the Lady Marie de Picard, while that youthful mother was still an in- mate of the monastery. Her own child was cared for by a nurse, and the two women with the infants occupied the same apartment. At dead of night they discov- ered that the child of Guccio and Marie was lying lifeless beside the woman charged with its care. For some reason which Antoine does not explain, the Lady Marie is represented as taking the dead Giannino and placing him beside herself, consigning the living son of King Louis to the serving- woman, and thus deceiving the attendants whom her cries attracted to the chamber. Antoine therefore lays the responsibility of the exchange of the royal child for another * See the full text of Antoine's letter in Appendix I. 30 to the Lady Marie herself, instead of the barons who watched over the safety of the young prince. What renders this dis- crepant narrative the more perplexing is the fact that the "Charte," or elaborate statement made by Rienzi to attest the claims of Giannino, although evoked by the letter of Antoine, repeats the story as re- lated by the other writers. In that remark- able document, written but a few days before the death of the Tribune, he dis- tinctly records that the lords of the court planned and executed the scheme by which the prince was saved from the murderess who plotted his destruction. Rienzi un- hesitatingly attributes the death of the child of the Lady Marie to Mathilde of Artois. With this statement agree no less than four independent contemporary documents. It is well to remember, however, that this discrepancy affects only the method, not the fact, of the exchange of the child of Guccio for the son of Louis X. of France. It is a principle of all sound historic criti- cism that when the chroniclers differ in subordinate particulars, but agree in the main incident which they relate, it invests that incident with the stronger probability. It should not be forgotten that the monk Antoine was a subject of the King of France.* The journey into Italy was un- dertaken for a definite purpose, having ac- * Rienzi's Charte, Appendix IV. 3i complished which, he expected to return again to his native land. Compelled by his serious illness to substitute a written for an oral communication of his story to Rienzi, whom he knew only by reputation, Antoine might well hesitate to prefer a written indictment of an attempt at regicide against so powerful and so revengeful a woman as the Countess of Artois. Nor would it be inconsistent with the ecclesi- astical conscience of that age so to sup- press or alter a mere detail of the revelation he unfolded as to avoid making an humble monk the accuser of one so closely allied to royalty. Startling as a lightning-flash out of the cloudless heaven it must have been when, one September day in 1354,* a messenger, booted and spurred, rode his jaded horse into the courtyard of Gianni Guccio's house at Siena, and announced himself as an envoy of Rienzi. Wasting no words, and giving no explanation of his master's pur- pose, he simply conveyed the oral mandate of the great ruler of Rome, that Guccio should present himself at the capitol with- out delay. It would be interesting if we knew what conjectures may have filled the mind of the Siennese wool-merchant as to the possible reason that one who then was counted among the very greatest and most powerful of mankind should desire a con- *Papencordt's Rienzi, p. 323. 32 ference with an humble burgher of Tuscany. Most probable it is that his commercial instincts and training led Guccio to dream of profits to be made in some rich contract for supplies to Rienzi's armies, then warring against the revolting barons of Rome. Certain it is that farthest from the dreams of his fancy was the thought that the in- vitation had a political significance. The proverbial caution of the man of affairs was exhibited in Guccio' s refusal to take the journey to Rome until he should receive a written summons in Rienzi's own hand, and sealed with his own signet. It speaks vol- umes for Rienzi's profound conviction that in Guccio he had found the true heir to the French crown, that in compliance with the wool-trader's stipulation a second messen- ger was dispatched to Siena, bearing an autograph letter of the Dictator of Rome — a letter which has been preserved to the present day.* On the second day of October, 1354, a dusty cavalcade entered Rome by the gate now known as the Porta del Popolo, and drew up before a little hostelry which then fronted on the Campo di Fiore. Leaving his servants at the inn, and without more delay than was demanded by the arranging of his dress, disordered by his long ride, Guccio hastened to the capitol. Admitted without delay to the presence of Rienzi, * See Appendix II. 33 and welcomed with that singular charm of manner which drew all men to the ill-fated Tribune, Guccio was ushered by his host into a private cabinet, where they could be alone.* Closing the door, Rienzi flung himself upon his knees, and saluted the wool-merchant of Siena as the rightful King of France. Bewildered by this amazing reception, and perhaps with the thought that Rienzi' s intellect had given way under the strain of his cares and responsibilities, Guccio refused to let the great ruler of Rome humble himself to kiss the hand of a simple burgher of Siena. But before his eyes were spread the documents which had been transmitted by Marie de Picard as she lay upon her death-bed. The sworn state- ment of Father Jordan, and the marvelous circumstantial proofs which had been placed in Rienzi's hands, became irresist- ible. Reluctantly, and doubtless with many a yearning for the happy days of honorable and honored bourgeois life which he must leave behind him, Guccio accepted his high destiny as heir of an historic crown, and God-appointed deliverer of unhappy France. Six days after Guccio had learned the secret of his royal lineage, the mob of Rome tore Rienzi to pieces at the gate of the capitol.f Guccio went back to Siena with a prisoner locked in his breast who was * Papencordt's Rienzi, p. 323. t Ibid., p. 325. 