An authentic portrait engraved exclusively for the Court Magazine. 1842 VOL XXII 329 [THE MEMOIR OF CHARLOTTE CORDAY IS CONCLUDED AT PAGE 488.] MEMOIR OF KATHERINE OF VALOIS, (Daughter of Charles VI., and Isabel of Bavaria.) QUEEN-CONSORT OF HENRY V., AND MOTHER OF HENRY VI. OF ENGLAND. Embellished with a full-length Authentic-colored Portrait, No. 103 of this series. (This portrait, with a description, will appear January 1st 1842.) FEW queens either of England or of France could boast of more princely lineage and alliance than Katherine, the subject of this memoir-the fair dove whose high destiny it was to bear the olive branch of peace to her blood-deluged native-land—and of whom Drayton rightly tells us, yet both the opening and closing scenes of this princess's short life were fraught with misery and sorrow rarely felt even by those born in more humble conditions of life. Katherine, surnamed the Fair, the eleventh and youngest child of the imbecile Charles the Sixth of France and Isabel of Bavaria,* was born in the Hôtel de St. Paul at Paris, October 27th 1401; history records little of her early youth save the neglect and privation she shared in common with the rest of the royal children of France, from the heartless indifference of her unnatural mother. Contemporary historians draw a frightful picture of the state of destitution in which the young family and their unhappy father were frequently left whilst the heartless Isabel and her paramour Louis of Orleans, abandoned to every refinement of luxurious life, in open profligacy and guilty folly, profusely squandered the royal treasures. Whilst we read. of the ever-changing variety exhibited by the queen in her fashions of dress, the sumptuous furniture of her abode, her fêtes, balls, and banquets, lamentable is the contrast of the scene recorded to have been witnessed within the deserted halls of the Hôtel de St. Paul, where her insane husband was left without a change of vesture for many days, her children without nurture or education, and frequently deprived of even the common necessaries of life. A contemporary writer pathetically relates, that being one day told that his unfortunate little ones, deprived by Isabel's orders of the funds set apart for their maintenance, were actually in want of bread, "alas!" replied the wretched Charles with a deep sigh, "you see that I fare no better ! !" The infamous conduct of the queen and her brother-in-law furnished the ambitious Jean Sans-Peur, duke of Burgundy, a pretext whereby to excite the Parisians * See memoir and portrait of the Queen, July, 1840. 2 E-DECEMBER, 1881.-(To be bound up after p. 328. 4 to revolt. On learning that the duke was approaching the capital at the head of a strong body of men-at-arms, the guilty pair instantly fled to Corbeil, ordering Louis of Bavaria, the queen's brother, to follow with the royal children of Valois and Burgundy-the latter being likewise inmates of the Hôtel de St. Paul. At the moment Louis of Bavaria passed through the gates of Paris with his precious charge, SansPeur entered the capital by the opposite quarter, and traversing the streets with the utmost possible speed amidst the acclamations of the populace, the prisoner flew direct to the Hôtel de St. Paul, where having learnt that his children had been carried off but a few moments previously, he leaped again into his saddle, started in hot pursuit, overtook them at Juvisy, and brought them, together with the dauphin and his sisters, back in triumph to Paris. The duke, finding himself undisputed custodian of the king and royal family, proclaimed that he had come to restore order and justice to the state, declared his intention of watching over the king's health and safety, and providing in future for the welfare of his deserted offspring. The princess Katherine was thus, fortunately for herself, removed from all communication with her vile mother, until she had attained comparative maturity. The first important incident in the life of Katherine the Fair, who gave early promise of possessing that dazzling beauty for which she afterwards became so celebrated,―is one connecting her name with the valiant Henry of Monmouth, king of England. She had scarcely attained her thirteenth year when, on the occasion of the duke of York, Henry's uncle, visiting Paris to make proposals for an alliance between his royal nephew and the young princess of France, she appeared at the interview attended by a splendid retinue of ladies, her native charms heightened by every adventitious ornament of dress. The duke of York was greatly struck by the grace and loveliness of the young Katherine, but the death of king Henry IV. happening whilst the embassy was at the court of France, put a stop, for a while, to the negotiation. Shortly after the usurping Bolingbroke had ascended the throne of England, he had anxiously sought the hand of Katherine's eldest sister, Isabel,* the widowed queen of the unfortunate Richard II. for his youthful heir, the prince of Wales; offering, Monstrelet affirms, that, if such match were concluded, he would abdicate the British crown in favour of the young Henry.' The acceptance of this extraordinary offer of Henry IV. was strenuously opposed in council by the French king's brother, Louis, duke of Orleans, who affirmed that the hand of the princess had been promised to his son Charles of Angoulême; and he at the same time expatiated so forcibly upon the fraud and duplicity practised by the king of England against France, as well as the cruelty of forcing Isabel into a union with the son of the murderer of her husband, whose untimely death she still bitterly bemoaned, that the council became unanimous in refusing their consent to the treaty, and dismissed the English ambassadors somewhat abruptly. In the motives, too, which induced Henry of Monmouth shortly after his accession See the portrait and memoir July, 1841; and of her Mother-in-Law, January, 1841. The statue of Henry of Monmouth, afterwards Henry V., graces the front of the Town Hall, and old market place, Monmouth. to the throne, to finally demand the hand of Katherine whom he had never seen, love, as yet, had no share :-policy alone coupling such demand with the extravagant pretensions which he was about to advance to the crown, then tottering on her imbecile father's brow. For, however unbefitting the character of a prince, might have been the irregularities which marked his "madcap" youth, from the hour when he "fleshed his maiden sword" at the bloody battle of Shrewsbury, glory, love of country, desire of conquest occupied his soul to the exclusion of every other affection. The Plantagenets never relinquished the hope of re-establishing their dominion in the native land of their race, and the troubles in which the neighbouring kingdom of France was unhappily involved, offered facilities for conquest too tempting to be resisted by an ambitious and warlike prince. A mutual hatred had for a long time existed between the two countries; the triumphs of Edward III. were remembered by both, and the French had only been prevented by their divisions at home, from endeavouring to wipe off the stain of Crecy and Poictiers, and to punish the English nation for the part it had taken against Richard II., to whose cause they were bound by the ties of friendship and of kindred. The tragical fate of his brother-in-law, the duke of Orleans-assassinated in the rue Barbette*-had plunged Charles VI. into a paroxysm of frenzy, the return of a very afflicting disorder which had previously shewn itself, though not so violently. The Orleans and Burgundian factions had taken advantage of the monarch's incapacity to attend to public affairs, to contend for the supremacy; the kingdom was shaken to the very centre by their intestine jars, and the murder of the duke of Orleans by his rival paved the way to more dreadful scenes of blood and slaughter. The infuriated partisans of the murdered duke, crushed for a time, again exalted themselves. The reins of the government were alternately seized by the Armagnacs, his followers, the Burgundians, and the Dauphin-an impetuous self-willed prince, unequal to the trust, and unable to keep the ascendance or overrule an insolent populace, who in turn usurped the dominion, till subdued by the young duke of Orleans -a leader more intent upon avenging himself upon the house of Burgundy than anxious for the restoration of order. It was at this juncture-during the summer of the year 1414, when he had been little more than twelve months upon the throne of England-that Henry the Fifth, entranced with the splendid illusion of the conquest of France, boldly asserted his title to the crown of that realm, claiming it as the descendant of Edward the Third. It will be remembered that this monarch assumed a right to the throne of France through the female line, in defiance of the Salique law; and, therefore, in admitting his claim to be just, Henry the Fifth, we are told by modern historians, in upholding it, virtually acknowledged the superior title of Mortimer, earl of March, who, through Philippa, daughter of the duke of Clarence, was Edward's legitimate representative; it being only by the introduction of a similar law in England that Henry could hope (though his own sword might keep it in his life time), to maintain his family upon the throne. Edward Mortimer, however, either depressed by long confinement and the con• See our chronicle, translated from M. Alex. Damas, in the volume ending 1839. |