| Charles | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Duke of Orléans | |
| Tenure | 23 November 1407 – 5 January 1465 |
| Predecessor | Louis I |
| Successor | Louis II |
| Born | 24 November 1394 Paris, France |
| Died | 5 January 1465(1465-01-05) (aged 70) Amboise, France |
| Burial | Saint Denis Basilica, France |
| Spouse | |
| Issue | Joan, Duchess of Alençon Marie, Viscountess of Narbonne Louis XII of France Anne, Abbess of Fontevraud |
| House | Valois-Orléans |
| Father | Louis I, Duke of Orléans |
| Mother | Valentina Visconti |
Charles of Orléans (24 November 1394 – 5 January 1465) wasDuke of Orléans from 1407, following the murder of his father,Louis I, Duke of Orléans. He was alsoDuke of Valois, Count ofBeaumont-sur-Oise and ofBlois,Lord of Coucy, and the inheritor ofAsti in Italy via his motherValentina Visconti.
He is now remembered as an accomplishedmedieval poet, owing to the more than five hundred extant poems he produced, written in both French and English, during his 25 years spent as a prisoner of war and after his return to France.
Charles was born in Paris, the son ofLouis I, Duke of Orléans and Valentina Visconti, daughter ofGian Galeazzo Visconti,Duke of Milan.[1] He acceded to theduchy at the age of thirteen after his father had beenassassinated on the orders ofJohn the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy.[2] Charles was expected to carry on his father's leadership against theBurgundians, a French faction which supported theDuke of Burgundy. The latter was never punished for his role in Louis' assassination, and Charles had to watch as his grief-stricken mother Valentina Visconti succumbed to illness not long afterwards. At her deathbed, Charles and the other boys of the family were made to swear the traditional oath of vengeance for their father's murder.
During the early years of his reign as duke, the orphaned Charles was heavily influenced by the guidance of his father-in-law,Bernard VII, Count of Armagnac, for which reason Charles' faction came to be known as theArmagnacs.[citation needed]
Even before his father's death, he received a pension of 12,000livres fromKing Charles VI, his uncle, in 1403. In addition, his first marriage, toIsabella of Valois, widow ofRichard II of England, may have brought him adowry of 500,000 francs.[3]
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After war with theKingdom of England was renewed by KingHenry V of England in 1415,[4]Charles was one of the many French noblemen at theBattle of Agincourt on 25 October 1415. He was discovered unwounded but trapped under a pile of corpses. He was taken prisoner by the English, and spent the next twenty-four years as their hostage. After his capture his entire library was moved from Blois into the care of the Duchess of Anjou,Yolande of Aragon[5](who had elected to support the French), atSaumur in theDuchy of Anjou in 1427[6]to prevent the works from falling into hostile hands.
The captive Duke was held at various locations in England; he was moved from one castle to another, including theTower of London,[7][a]Bolingbroke Castle (from 1422[9]to 1423, where he contributed to the building of the Church tower), andPontefract Castle – the castle where a former English king,Richard II (the first husband of Charles's own deceased first wifeIsabella of Valois), had been imprisoned and had died in 1400 at the age of 33. His last place of confinement seems to have beenStourton, Wiltshire.
The conditions of his confinement were not strict; he was allowed to live more or less in the manner to which he had become accustomed, like so many other captured nobles. However, for a quarter of a century he was notransomed, since the English King Henry V (r. 1413–1422) had left instructions forbidding any release:[10]Charles of Orléans was the natural head of the Armagnac faction and (as aPrince of the blood and the head of the House ofValois-Orléans) prominent in the line of succession to the French throne.[b]He was therefore long deemed by English statesmen too important to be returned to circulation within the French political scene.
It was during these twenty-four years that Charles would write most of his poetry, including melancholy works which seem to be commenting on the captivity itself, such asEn la forêt de longue attente.[citation needed]
The majority of his output consists of two books, one in French and the other in English, in theballade androndeau fixed forms. Though once controversial, it is now abundantly clear that Charles wrote the English poems which he left behind when he was released in 1440.[11] Unfortunately, his acceptance in the English canon has been slow.A. E. B. Coldiron has argued that the problem relates to his "approach to the erotic, his use of puns, wordplay, and rhetorical devices, his formal complexity and experimentation, his stance or voice: all these place him well outside the fifteenth-century literary milieu in which he found himself in England."[12]
One of his poems,Is she not passing fair?, was translated byLouisa Stuart Costello and set to music byEdward Elgar.Claude Debussy set three of his poems to music in hisTrois Chansons de Charles d'Orléans,L.92, for unaccompanied mixed choir.Reynaldo Hahn set six of them:Les Fourriers d'été,Comment se peut-il faire ainsi,Un loyal cœur (inChansons et Madrigaux, 1907),Quand je fus pris au pavillon,Je me mets en votre mercy, andGardez le trait de la fenêtre (inRondels, 1899).Maurice Jaubert set another two : 'Complainte de France' and 'Ballade sur la paix'.[citation needed]
Finally freed on 3 November 1440 by the efforts of his former enemies,Philip the Good andIsabella of Portugal, the Duke and Duchess of Burgundy, he set foot on French soil again after 25 years, by now a middle-aged man at 46 and "speaking better English than French," according to the English chroniclerRaphael Holinshed. Part of the agreement, concluded the previous July, was an immediate ransom payment of 80,000saluts d'or, and a promise to pay 140,000crowns later.[13] Philip the Good had also made it a condition that the murder of Charles' father Louis of Orleans by Philip's own father,John the Fearless, would not be avenged (John himself had been assassinated in 1419).
Charles agreed to this condition prior to his release.[14] Meeting the Duchess of Burgundy after disembarking, the gallant Charles said: "M'Lady, I make myself your prisoner." At the celebration of his third marriage, to Marie of Cleves (Philip's niece), he was created aKnight of the Golden Fleece. His subsequent return toOrléans was marked by a splendid celebration organised by the citizens.[citation needed] Marie brought a considerable dowry, which helped to pay part of his ransom, although he had difficulty making up the balance, and that of his brotherJean d'Angoulême, also a prisoner.[13]
He made an unsuccessful attempt to press his claims to Asti in Italy, before settling down as a celebrated patron of the arts. In Blois, he kept a miniature court at which many of the French men of letters at the time—François Villon,Olivier de la Marche,Georges Chastellain,Jean Meschinot and others—were residents or visitors or correspondents. He died atAmboise in his 71st year.[13]
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Charles married three times. His first marriage, in 1406 atCompiègne, was with his first cousinIsabella of Valois, daughter ofCharles VI of France and widow ofRichard II of England. She died three years later in childbirth aged 19.[1] Their daughterJoan survived and marriedJohn II of Alençon in 1424 in Blois, but died childless.[15]
Secondly, Charles marriedBonne of Armagnac,[1] the daughter ofBernard VII, Count of Armagnac, in 1410. Bonne died before he returned from captivity. The couple had no mutual children.
On his return to France in 1440, Charles marriedMarie of Cleves[1] inSaint-Omer (daughter ofAdolph I, Duke of Cleves) and niece ofPhilip the Good, who had arranged his release. They had three children:
Kingdom of France –Duchy of Orléans : Grand Master and Knight of theOrder of the Porcupine
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Though it is impossible to say at what precise moment [Henry V] 'crossed the Rubicon' and decided definitely on war, it must have been sometime in the early spring of 1415. [...] the [English] fleet cast anchor on August 14, 1415, in the mouth of the Seine [...] Before dawn next day a reconnaissance party [...] landed and soon reported the coast clear. The king then ordered a general but methodical disembarkation and was himself one of the first to land. His first act was to kneel down on the shore and utter a prayer that in the coming war he might do nothing which would not redound to the honour of God and the furtherance of justice.
Upon Charles's capture, the bibliophile Yolande of Aragon lost no time in arranging for his entire library and literary collection to be entrusted[ ]to her personal care for safekeeping.
The transmission of these more private libraries was very much a family affair with the father of Louis XII, Charles de Orléans's private library housed in Blois sent to the dedicated bibliophile Yolande d'Aragon in Saumur for safe-keeping in 1427, probably at her suggestion.
Charles, Duke of Orléans, was captured by Henry V's army at Agincourt in 1415. As the nephew of the French king, Charles VI, he was a considerable asset, and was held in England, although only initially in the Tower.
With Henry V's death in 1422 and the continuing hostilities with the dauphin, the prospects for the release of Charles d'Orléans became ever more remote; by December he had passed into the custody of Sir Thomas Comberworth and was kept mostly at Bolingbroke Castle (Lincolnshire).
[Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester] virulently opposed the release of the duke of Orléans in 1440 which Henry V had expressly forbidden in his will- and decried him as a 'capital enemy' of the English Crown.
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| Preceded by | Duke of Valois 1406–1465 | Succeeded by |
| Duke of Orléans Count of Blois andBeaumont-sur-Oise 1407–1465 | ||
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