Women of Mediæval France: Woman: in all ages and in all countries Vol. 5 (of 10)Butler, Pierce
History
Women of Mediæval France: Woman: in all ages and in all countries Vol. 5 (of 10)
Butler, Pierce
Biography -- Middle Ages, 500-1500; Women -- France -- History -- Middle Ages, 500-1500
Isabeau was at this time busying herself less and less about affairs of
state; since she had leagued herself in secret with Jean de Bourgogne
she had no cares but those attendant upon providing pleasures and
amusements for herself. Her son, the dauphin, following in Isabeau's
footsteps, was scandalizing all Paris by his orgies. At last, the people
of Paris rose in one of their occasional sincere but futile attempts to
reform the manners of a corrupt court. We shall not deal with the
horrors of this outburst, one of the many little wavelets of popular
indignation presaging, but presaging only to heedless revellers, the
great tidal wave that was to envelop and bear down the just and the
unjust alike some four hundred years later. The butchers and bakers and
honest workingmen, led chiefly by a surgeon, Jean de Troyes, came by
thousands to reform the morals of the dauphin. This miserable debauchee,
as well as the rest of the court, trembled before them, and willingly
conceded anything that could be asked. Even the poor mad king, whom the
people loved and did not blame, had the white hood, emblem of the
commune, placed upon his head, and smiled pitifully at his rough but
well-meaning subjects. Forthwith, Isabeau equipped her head with a white
hood, and so did all the court, the judges, and even the learned doctors
of the University. But Isabeau's white hood was not wide enough to cover
the scandalous horns of her headdress. Rising to the point of fury upon
hearing that the dauphin, probably at the instigation of his mother, had
been in communication with the Orleanist forces to induce them to march
upon Paris, the Cabochiens, as the communists called themselves, in May,
1413, invaded the palace itself and arrested Louis de Bavière, the
queen's brother, and as many as fifteen of the ladies of her suite
probably such as had made themselves peculiarly conspicuous and
offensive by the extravagance and the indecency of their costumes.
Isabeau wept, and pleaded vainly for a respite for her brother, then on
the eve of his marriage; the stern moralists from the markets of Paris
were inexorable and Louis went to jail unmarried, while Isabeau went to
bed sick with childish fury.
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