University of Virginia Library

The Forest of Le Mans,
OR,
THE FRENZY OF CHARLES VI.
1387.

It was a blazing day in August. For above six weeks the
earth had been scourged with intolerable heat; not a drop of
rain had fallen to refresh the fading verdure, or swell the channels
of the wasted rivulets. The meadows and the pasture-lands
of Brittany were as sere and yellow as the sands of the
Olonne; the foliage of the forests had put on, two months before
their time, the melancholy tints of autumn. A few miserable,
half-starved cattle were to be seen, the only signs of life,
panting beneath the scanty shelter of the half-denuded trees, or
standing, fetlock-deep, in the muddy hollows which a little
while before had been cool ponds and watering places. No
song of birds was to be heard in the deserted woodlands; all
was sad, solitary, silent.

From the horizon to the zenith there was not a cloud so large
as a man's hand in the lurid sky, which shone with a strange
brassy glare, as if the light were transmitted through a dusty
haze, amid which the blood-red sun stood portentous, “shorn
of his beams,” yet withering and scorching everything within
the sphere of his malign influence.

Not a breath of wind moved the torpid air—not a leaf, not
a blade of grass quivered.

All that preserved its green unaltered over a vast tract of
country was the dark prickly furze, patient of all extremes of
heat or cold, the long sprays of the Spanish broom, child of the
arid waste, the stunted furs which spotted, singly or in clumps,
the surface of that blasted heath, and the heavy masses of
almost black pine-forest, which gloomed on the level horizon.

The only sounds were the monotonous and droning cry of the
field-crickets, and the snapping of the seed-pods of the broom,
which crackled away continually like a pigmy fusillade under
the hot noon-tide. If the casual passage of a dull and weary
ox, or the stealthy tread of the fox, the wild-cat, or the wolf of
the neighboring forest, disturbed the deep dust, which lay six
inches deep on the many unfenced roads which meandered
through those sterile commons, it rose thick and dark, and hung
there long, fanned away by no breath of air, and immovable as
though it were a point of question whether the earthy particles,
or the atmosphere on which they seemed upborne, were the
heavier.

Such was the day, most strange, and most unfit, on which
it was determined that a royal army—one of those stupendous
chevauchées of mail-clad men-at-arms—numbering thousands
upon thousands of high-born cavalry, which formed the feudal
array—the ban and arrière ban of France—should take the field.

Charles the Sixth, the unhappy king of France, who but
twelve years before had mounted the throne with auguries so
proud and happy, whose gay youth had been blessed with
visions ominous of great glory, even while his mad orgies were
making the sepulchral vaults of St. Denys to resound with
revelry and riot, now a king in little more than name, betrayed
by whom he should most have trusted, deserted by his nearest
relatives, alone among traitors, had resolved—at length resolved

when it was too late, to assert his royalty and rights, to be—no
longer seem—a king.

A few months before an atrocious crime had been committed
in the streets of Paris, on the holy festival of the Fête Dieu,
almost within ear-shot of the palace, whence the intended victim
had scarce departed, leaving the presence of the king. “This
was an attack of expiring feudality upon feudal right, traitorously
made by an arrière vassal on his suzerain's office, within
the very palace of his suzerain.”[1] That was a villanous night
attack, a murderous ambuscade, executed under the instigation,
if not by the positive orders of the Duke of Brittany—the secret
enemy of France, and sworn friend of the English.

The victim of this base outrage was Sir Oliver le Clisson, High
Constable of France, and the only man, perhaps, in all his realm
on whom the unfortunate monarch could really place reliance;
for his uncles, the Dukes of Burgundy and Berry, were his ill-counsellors
at least, and ill-wishers, while his own brother, the
young and handsome Duke of Orleans, recently espoused to the
beautiful daughter of the Duke of Milan, was neither firm
friend, nor sure dependence.

By these men, and by all the secret evil-doers and enemies
of the king, Clisson was mortally hated, and in addition
feared.

“In France,[2] he was Constable, the king's sword against the
barons; in Brittany, on the contrary, he was the leader of the
barons against the duke. Closely allied to the houses of Anjou
and Penthievre, he only waited his opportunity to expel this
duke, and dismiss him to his friends the English. The duke,
who knew De Clisson thoroughly, lived in constant fear of him,

and dreamed only of the terrible man with one eye, could never
forgive himself for having had his enemy within his hands—having
held him, and not having had the courage to make away
with him. Now there was one who had an interest in Clisson's
death, having everything to fear from the Constable, and the
house of Anjou. This was an Anquin lord, Pierre du Craon,
who, by his theft of the treasures of the Duke of Anjou, his
master, during his Neapolitan expedition, was the cause of his
perishing unsuccored. His widow never lost sight of this man;
and Clisson, the ally of the house of Anjou, never met the
thief without treating him as he deserved.

“These two fears, these two hates, came to an understanding.
Craon promised the Duke of Brittany to rid him of Clisson.
Returning secretly to Paris, he entered the city by night—the
gates being constantly open since the punishment of the Maillotins.
He filled his hotel in the market St. Jean with cut-throats,
and here they waited many days with doors and windows
closed. At last, on the 13th of June, the Fête Dieu, a
grand gala being given in the hotel Saint Paul, with jousts,
supper, and dances, till after midnight, the Constable returned
from it almost alone to his hotel, Rue de Paradis. The vast
and silent Marais, desert enough now, was much more so then;
great hotels, gardens, and convents being scattered here and
there over it. Craon stationed himself on horseback, with forty
bandits, at the corner of the rue St. Catherine. On Clisson's
coming up, they extinguished their torches, and fell upon him.
At first the Constable took it to be a freak of the king's younger
brother. But Craon would add to death the bitter pang of
letting him know by whose hand he died. `I am your enemy,'
he cried, `I am Pierre de Craon.'

“The Constable, who had no other weapon than a small
cutlass, defended himself as long as he could, but at length a

blow on the head felled him, and, in falling, he luckily struck
against a half-open door—a baker's, who was heating his oven,
the night being far advanced. He had fallen head-foremost,
half into the shop, so that to complete the murder, it would
have been necessary to enter it. But not one of the forty durst
alight; and preferring to believe that the deed was done, they
escaped at full gallop through the gate St. Antoine.

“The news was instantly brought to the king, who had retired
to bed. He would not wait to dress, but throwing a cloak
over him, hurried off without waiting for his attendants. He
found the Constable come to himself, and promised that he
would avenge him, swearing that nothing should ever be more
dearly paid.

“Meanwhile the murderer had secreted himself in his castle
of Sable au Maine, and then in some secret nook of Brittany.
The king's uncles, who were overjoyed at the event, and who
had some intimation of it beforehand, to put off the king and
gain time, asserted that Craon was in Spain. But the king was
not to be deceived; it was the Duke of Brittany whom he desired
to punish.”

Some time had elapsed since the perpetration of the foul
deed of assassination, so great was the desire of the king's
uncles to shelter the miscreant, whose crime they in sooth
regarded as good service, and their reluctance to proceed to extremities
against the Duke of Brittany, who was of their party,
and their good friend.

But the king was very urgent, and for once resolute in his
will, so that nothing could make him change it. For he was
determined to drive the Duke of Brittany from his duchy, and
nominate a governor over it till his children should be of age,
that it might be restored to them. And it was of no avail that
while the king tarried at Le Mans, his uncles caused a letter to

be written to him by the Lady Jolande de Bar, Queen of Arragon,
and cousin-german of the King of France, informing
him that she had caused to be arrested, and detained in prison
at Barcelona, a French knight, who had come thither with a
handsome array, intending to pass the sea to Naples, and whom
she believed to be Sir Pierre de Craon. The king, however,
was not to be deceived, but persisted in his resolve; and his
uncles could not refuse to accompany their sovereign with their
vassals, since they were bound in honor to do so; the rather
that in order “to put an end to their repugnances and delays,
he had restored to the Duke de Berri that Languedoc, of which
he had on such just grounds deprived him.”[3]

Now, although the king had been for some time past languishing
from the effects of a raging fever, from which he was
not well recovered, and was, moreover, heart-sick with impatience
and anger at the delays imposed upon him by his traitorous
kinsmen, he would now be held back no longer; nor
would he listen to any discussions, but ordered the oriflamme to
be unfurled, for that on the morrow he would surely march.

On the preceding evening he had sent for the marshals of his
army to his chamber, and ordered them to have the men-at-arms
ready by early morn to march to Angers; “For,” he
added, “we have determined never to return from Brittany until
we have destroyed the traitors who give us so much trouble.”

And in the morning of the terrible and oppressive August
day which I have described, in the middle of the month, when
the sun has the greatest force, after having heard mass and
drunk a cup, the king mounted his horse, and took his way into
the forest of Le Mans, accompanied by all the following of his
realm; his uncles, with their vassals, and all the great feudatories

of the kingdom, and men-at-arms, from Artois, Beauvais,
Fermandois, and Picardy, and other distant countries; in seeming,
a right royal host. And yet, for all that, Charles was
alone with all that glorious following—alone in the midst of
traitors. The men were about him, by whose very hands, or at
whose instigation, his Constable had been attacked and stricken
down at his own palace-gates, and was it likely that such
should be over scrupulous about laying hands on him!

During the whole of his detention at Mans, the king had
labored hard at the council, where he had met more opposition
than assistance; he was feeble both in mind and body, daily
attacked by fever fits, which were increased by any contradiction
or fatigue; and these his counsellors thrust upon him
daily. No wonder if his intellects were at times disordered and
obscured—for it would seem they would have it so; and the
more that they observed his looks, wild and wandering, or his
words strange and inconsistent, the more they affronted his
desires and thwarted him.

Moreover, he felt, although he gave no inch to the feeling, that
he was beset with domestic enemies; that he was marked out
by the men of his own blood, by the nobles of his realm, the
clergy, the whole people, for hatred—perhaps for destruction.
“What, however, had he done, to be thus hated by all, he who
hated none, but rather loved all the world? his desires were for
the alleviation of his people's burdens—at least his heart was
good; and this all the right-minded knew full well.”

In this state of mind and body, the young king mounted his
horse between nine and ten o'clock of the morning, and rode
forth from Le Mans, followed by the whole of his mighty cavalcade,
across a wide and sandy plain, exposed to the full glare
of the scorching sun. And the dust surged up in clouds from
beneath the thousands of trampling hoofs, and hung fixed in the

sweltering and stirless atmosphere, like the dread crimson cloud
that heralds the deadly simoom of the Arabian desert, stifling
and almost intolerable to both man and beast.

The horses, although travelling at a foot's pace only, literally
sprinkled the soil with the sweat that streamed from their
limbs—the stoutest of the men-at-arms could scarcely endure
the weight of their solid panoply, while the younger and weaker
of their number fainted from heat, or fell from their saddles,
overdone by the excess of toil. So insufferable, in fact, was the
closeness of the weather, that it was found utterly impossible,
not only to march in order, or to preserve anything like regular
rank, but even to hold together in compact bodies. And, consequently,
as they were marching through a friendly territory,
with no enemy within many leagues' distance, and as the country—open,
level, unencumbered by fences, and traversed by
innumerable roads, or rather tracks, running parallel one to the
other, over the heaths and commons—favored such operations,
the army subdivided itself into various bands, columns, and
divisions, each under the banner of its own lord or leader, and
each marching, at its own pleasure, without concert or order,
towards a common point.

Nor, when the vanguard entered the great wooded tract,
known as the forest of Le Mans, was the case materially altered.
For, in the first place, the woodland, like the commons, was
intersected by numerous wood-paths and glades, used by the
charcoal-burners; and, in the second, except in rare spots,
where the underwood grew into tangled thickets, or masses of
large timber-trees had overcrowded the coppice, the forest was
composed for the most part of thin straggling underwood,
scattered more or less sparsely over barrens overspread with
dwarf heather, fern, and broom, such as offered no impediment
to the progress of an array so open and loose, not to say undisciplined,

as that of a chevauchée of feudal horse. Along the
principal causeway only, which ran in a direct line across the
forest, was the woodland dense and continuous; but here, and
on either side, for a breadth of a quarter of a mile, a dense and
almost impenetrable pine-wood still prevailed, with trees so
tall and shadowy, that at high noon the road was gloomy, and
at early evening dark as midnight.

At a distance, the deep green shadows of this avenue seemed
to promise something of coolness and relief from the hourly-increasing
rage of the sunbeams, and to it therefore the king
directed his way, followed only by a few of his personal attendants,
and some men-at-arms of his immediate guard.

It is hardly possible, on reviewing the history of the singular
occurrences which followed, not to believe that deep treason was
intended on this occasion to the unhappy monarch; and that,
although in some degree hideously successful, the plans of the
conspirators were frustrated, or, at least, fell out differently from
what they intended, since the final consequences of the catastrophe
were such as could scarcely have been contemplated, and
were, moreover, too distant and too little certain to have been
devised aforehand.

Certain it is, that no advanced party was thrown forward—
no flankers detached to scour the woods on either hand—no
precautions taken against treachery or ambuscade, in a place
singularly adapted for the harbor of lurking assassins, and in an
age when no place was safe to those in power, and when precautions,
the strictest and most ceremonious, were of daily
custom.

No friend, moreover, no man of rank, or councillor, with
whom he could hold converse, by which to while away the
weariness of the hot and tedious march, or to distract the heavy

and distempered gloom which weighed on his spirits, accompanied
him, or was within call.

It can hardly be imagined that he was not so left alone of set
purpose; so that, whatever might occur—and it was probably
well known that something would occur—there should be no
ready aid at hand, nor any witnesses.

So the king rode along, slowly, in gloom—in distempered
spirits—in dreamy and unsettled mood. It must be remembered,
that, from his childhood, he had been different from other
children, that he had ever a strange and visionary turn of mind,
that he believed himself to have seen visions and have held
intercourse with things supernatural.

Hunting the stag some twelve years before in the forest of
Senlis, he had encountered a miraculous deer, which had survived
to display the golden collar with which it had been decorated
by Julius Cæsar, fourteen centuries ago, to the infant king
of Christendom—who was destined, his flattering courtiers
swore, to emulate the glories of the first emperor of Rome.

From that day the mystic stag had been his chosen emblem;
from that day the wildest mysticism of occult science, of mythical
romance, of awful superstition had laid hold of him; and
that they doubtless knew full well, and counted on, who devised
that which followed. There is a narrow, scanty rill, which traverses
that wide, thirsty tract, fed by perennial sources, crossing
the high road not many miles from Le Mans, and nourishing
along its banks to the present day a heavy coppice of alders
and water-willows. Even in that burning drought its shallow
channel, too insignificant to require a bridge which should span
it, contained a small thread of water.

A huge oak tree completely overhung it, and the path
beneath its heavy umbrage was cool with grateful exhalations
from the brooklet.

The king, merciful to his beast by nature—and the horse he
rode was a favorite—drew him in as he set his fore-feet in the
channel, and casting his reins down upon his glossy neck,
suffered him to bend down his head and drink, smiling the
while with a faint, melancholy smile at the eagerness with
which he plunged his muzzle into the cool current, and clapping
him on his neck with his ungloved hand. Seeing that
the king paused, his pages, who rode next behind him, halted at
some hundred yards' distance, and the men-at-arms again a
little space behind them, unwilling to intrude upon the monarch
in his mood of gloom.

Suddenly, a wild, prolonged, plaintive wail arose from the
thicket, more like to the dolorous howl of some animal in mortal
suffering than to any sound of human agony or sorrow;
and before any one might even surmise what was the meaning
of the outcry, a hideous apparition glided out from the forest
shadows, and confronted the astounded monarch.

It was a tall, emaciated figure of a man, barefooted and
bareheaded, with wild, knotted elf-locks, hollow-eyed, hollow-checked,
white-lipped, liker to an animated corpse than to any
living thing. He was clad in a miserable cassock of white
russet, and nothing can be imagined more deplorable than his
whole aspect and condition—the like of him was never seen
before that day, nor was he ever seen or heard tell of by any
after it.

As he confronted the king, startling his horse, which threw
up its head at the strange vision, he caught the reins boldly;
and the charger, one of the bravest and most fiery that was
ever backed of man, stood snorting, with wide eyes and expanded
nostrils, trembling in every limb, sweating at every pore.

“Ride back!” he cried, in a low, deep, monotonous voice,
“ride back, noble king. You are betrayed!—betrayed!”

And whether it was an echo, or an accomplice, or something
beyond nature, a deep response, “Betrayed! betrayed!” appeared
to the distempered senses of the king—who sat in his
saddle, rigid, glaring on his strange visitant like one stricken
with catalepsy—to resound through the thickets. But, at this
moment, some of the men-at-arms came up at the gallop, and
beat the hands and bare arms of the man, maniac, impostor, or
seer—be he which he might—until he let go his hold, and the
terrified horse sprang forward, and bore his royal master onward,
almost unconscious as it seemed of all that had passed,
and plunged in profound meditation.

But no one stayed to arrest or question that strange personage—it
might be, because no persons of authority were at
hand; it might be, because the men-at-arms were themselves
shaken by superstitious fancies; it might be because they were
so ordered.

And the figure ran along the way, beside the army, until the
men-at-arms had all passed him by, still waving his arms aloft,
and screaming in that dismal, doleful tone—“Ride back, ride
back, sir king! betrayed! betrayed!” and none harmed him,
nor meddled with him at all. But when the last men-at arms
had outstripped and passed him by, some of them looked
back—it may be trembling—and he had disappeared; nor from
that day did any human eyes behold him.

But the king rode on—for none came near to comfort him,
or converse with him, or question him of what had passed; not
his uncles, nor his brother of Orleans, nor any of his nobles—
on “through the weary forest, stunted and affording no shade;
on, into the sultry heaths and dazzling mirages of southern
sand”[4] —solitary, alone, with a multitude around him.

It was high noon, when they cleared the forest and entered
on the vast, open plains; on which, as all the separate bands
defiled out of the forest, and spread out, as best they might, to
avoid the dust and the pressure of the multitude, all might
behold each other, and each one the king, his master.

And the sun was resplendent, and the heat was intolerable;
so that there was none so well used to arms but he suffered by
it fearfully, and many of the horses perished.

At this time the king rode by himself, as before, to avoid the
dust, and the Dukes of Berri and Burgundy, conversing together,
kept on his left hand, at about two acres' distance from
him. The other lords—such as the Count de la Marche, Sir
James of Bourbon, Sir Charles d'Albret, Sir Philip d'Artois,
Sir Henry and Sir Philip de Bar, Sir Peter de Navarre—rode
in different paths. The Duke of Bourbon, the Lord de Coucy,
Sir Charles d'Angers, the Baron d'Ivry, were following at a
gentle pace, talking together, at some distance from the king,
nothing suspecting, as it seemed, the misfortune that should
befall him.

The sandy plain reflected the heat fearfully; and, as it fell
out, the king was dressed, or buried rather, in a dress of black
velvet, and wore on his head “only a single hood of crimson,
ornamented with a chaplet of beautiful pearls, which the queen
had given him on leaving her. He was followed by one of his
pages, who had a Montauban cap of polished steel upon his
head, that glittered in the sun; and behind him another page
rode on horseback, carrying a vermilion-coloured lance, enveloped
with silk, for the king, the head of which lance was
broad, sharp, and bright.

“As they were thus riding, the pages—who were but children—grew
negligent of themselves and their horses; and the
one who bore the lance fell asleep, and forgetful of what he had

in his hand, let it fall on the casque of the page before him,
which made both the casque and the lance ring loudly.”[5]

At the clash and glimmer of the steel, the king's frame was
shaken as if by a convulsive spasm, and he started in his
saddle, and erected his head, which had hung drooping on his
breast, and glared about him for a moment with the clear, keen
glance of an awakened eagle; he gathered up his reins, giving
his horse the spur, and made a demivolt, unsheathing his
sword as he did so, and flashing it in the hot sunlight.

“Forward!” he shouted. “Forward, and set on! God and
Saint Denys! Set upon these traitors who would sell us!”

And, with the words, he dashed between the terrified pages,
who scattered as they saw him coming, and charged full upon
the knights who followed him, reining his horse, and dealing
sweeping blows with his sword from side to side at all whom
he approached; for he was quite distraught, and fancied that
all around him were his enemies. The Duke of Orleans, his
brother, saw him coming, and fled in terror; for he saw that the
king knew him not, or, perhaps, fancied that he knew him too
well. And Charles spurred after him at full speed, shouting
and gaining on him at every stride of his horse—for he was
the better mounted. And of a surety, he had there, on that
day, overtaken and slain him, but that he turned and winded
his horse, and so eluded him; and now, as he did so, some
knights or men-at-arms rode in between and interposed themselves—not
resisting the king or defending themselves, but
striving to avoid him. But right dearly did they pay for their
gallantry and devotion: for the king was in no sort himself,
but was as one possessed; and he struck hard blows with his
sword, which was well tempered of fine Bordeaux steel, and cut

down all who crossed his path—four gallant men-at-arms, who
all died afterwards of the wounds which he dealt them; and
lastly a good knight of Gascony, the bastard of Polignac, whom
he slew outright at a single blow.

And there was a mighty concourse of men galloping in all
directions, and shouting; for those who were near at hand, and
saw what was to do, spurred this way and that—some striving
to avoid the king, and some to lay hold on him, that he might
do no more evil, and called to each other that he should do
likewise; and they who were at a distance, and might not see,
fancied that it was a deer or a hare that they were hunting—
but it was the king. And they, too, shouted and galloped;
and the wilder the tumult waxed the madder grew the king;
until, at length, “when he was quite jaded and streaming with
sweat, and his horse in a lather from fatigue, a Norman knight,
who was one of his chamberlains and much beloved by him,
came behind and caught him in his arms, though he had his
sword still in his hand. When he was thus held, all the other
lords came up, and took the sword from him. He was dismounted,
and gently laid on the ground, that his jerkin might
be stripped from him, to give him more air and cool him.”[6]

They had done better and shown more mercy had they slain
him on that day; for, thenceforth, his life was crueller to him and
sadder than any death had been, how cruel soever—and those
who were the causes of it God will judge, for he knoweth.

Then they laid him on his litter, and carried him back to Le
Mans; and the marshals called back the van, and told them
that the expedition was at an end for that season.

But, as they returned, the word passed among the knights
and men-at-arms, how, that “to ruin France, the king was
poisoned, or bewitched, before he left Le Mans this morning.”

And the word reached the ears of the Duke of Orleans and
the princes of the blood-royal. So when they reached Le Mans,
they questioned his physicians what was his distemper; and
they laid it on his fever, and cleared themselves honestly—
showing that they had advised him to rest quiet, and forbear
from riding in the heat, but he would not.

And they inquired of his chamberlain and butler, Sir Robert
de Lignac and Robert Tulles, who had given him his last wine
and tasted it, and they cleared themselves, and brought bottles
of the same wine which he had drunk of, and proffered themselves
to drink.

“Then said the Duke of Berry—

“ `We are debating here about nothing. The king is poisoned,
or bewitched only by bad advisers—but it is not time, at
present, to talk of these matters. Let us bear the misfortune
as well as we can for the moment.'

“And the Duke of Burgundy said—

“ `We must return to Paris—the expedition is at an end.'

“They did not then say all they thought; but they made
their intentions very apparent to those who were not in their
good graces, on their return to Paris.”[7]