Isabelle de Valois (1389-1409)
Isabelle de Valois LG (also called Isabelle de France or Isabella of France ; * November 9, 1389 in Paris ; † September 13, 1409 in Blois ) was a princess of France and, while still a child, was the second wife from 1396 to 1399 Richard II Queen of England. After the murder of her husband (1400) she returned to France and in 1406 married her eleven-year-old cousin, the future Duke Charles d'Orléans . She died in childbirth giving birth to her only daughter Johanna.
Life
Ancestry and Marriage Projects
Isabelle was the third child and second daughter of King Charles VI. of France and his wife Isabeau de Bavière . Her two older siblings Charles and Jeanne died when they were young. She also had nine younger siblings, including Charles VII ascended the French throne in 1422 and Catherine became Queen of England in 1420 as the wife of Henry V.
Isabelle, who was born in the Louvre in Paris in 1389, was included in the dynastic marriage policy from early childhood . At the age of two she was betrothed on December 15, 1391 to Johann (I) , the six-year-old son of Count Peter II of Alençon . But this marriage project should not be realized.
Soon after the death of his first wife Anne of Bohemia (June 7, 1394), King Richard II of England, who had remained childless until now, looked around for a new wife. As early as August 1394 he sent envoys to France, among other places, but they did not yet explicitly advertise a bride for the English king. In March 1395, however, an English delegation traveled to Aragon for their sovereign as an express bride-to-be . The French government, whose country was waging the Hundred Years' War against England, was concerned about a possible alliance between its war opponent and Aragón and immediately sent envoys to Richard II, who was on military intervention in Ireland . In the subsequent marriage negotiations, the then 28-year-old English decided King for Isabelle, who is only five years old. Both sides were interested in peace. Due to the increasing, intermittent mental illness of Charles VI. The shaping of French policy was largely in the hands of Duke Philip the Bold , who was also concerned about securing the economy of his own Burgundian state. Richard II, in turn, was able to strengthen his position vis-à-vis his domestic political opponents. But the marriage project also had many opponents, in particular Ludwig von Orléans and the youngest uncle of the English king, Duke Thomas von Gloucester .
In a mid-1395 on behalf of Charles VI. The French diplomat and writer Philippe de Mézières recommended the marriage of Isabelle to the English king on the grounds that, given her very young age, it was easier for her to be brought up according to Richard's wishes. In July 1395 a first high-ranking English delegation, led by the Earl Marshal and Earl of Nottingham, Thomas Mowbray , also traveled to Paris. According to the French chronicler Jean Froissart , the little king's daughter is said to have expressed her joy to Mowbray independently and without being asked to become the wife of Richard II, since she would then be a great lady:
The next year a second English embassy came to the French capital, and now the final marriage contract was signed on March 9, 1396. Its clauses provided for Isabelle's renunciation of her French right to the throne and brought the English king a large dowry from his bride of 800,000 gold francs, which roughly corresponded to the state income for a whole year. A first tranche of 300,000 francs was to be paid immediately, the rest in annual installments of 100,000 francs. Only the amount of money to be paid out immediately was to remain with the English treasury under all circumstances, but the remaining amount transferred should be reimbursed in the event that Richard II died before Isabel was twelve years old - which later actually occurred. In this case, Isabelle should be allowed to return to her parents unhindered with all her possessions. Since no lasting peace could be negotiated due to the insoluble question of the future status of Calais, which is under British control, a 28-year armistice between France and England was also agreed in a separate agreement. This seemingly unrealistic length was probably chosen to show the seriousness of both parties' desire for peace. As the representative of the English king, Mowbray carried out the long-distance wedding with Isabelle in the Saint-Chapelle on March 12, 1396.
Wedding with Richard II.
A good six months later, the princess, endowed with great splendor, accompanied by her father and a high-ranking entourage of over 100 people, including the Duke of Burgundy, set off for Calais to actually marry her royal bridegroom. Charles VI met in Ardres . met Richard II on October 27 and 28, 1396, and on the latter day the English ruler received his future little wife. It was entrusted to the care of the Duchesses of Lancaster and Gloucester. At the head of her French retinue was the Dame de Courcy. The wedding of the royal couple, led by the recently reigning Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Arundel , took place on November 4th in the Saint-Nicolas church in Calais. After receiving the promised first installment of the dowry of 300,000 gold francs, Richard II and his wife crossed over to Dover . On November 23, 1396, Isabelle made her solemn entry into London . She was crowned Queen by Thomas Arundel on January 5, 1397 at Westminster Abbey . It is said that several people were killed in the crowd when they tried to catch a glimpse of the young queen.
Return home after deposition and death of Richard II.
Although the marriage came about for purely political reasons, a respectful relationship developed between the English king and his child-wife. Isabelle lived separately from him and mostly resided at Windsor Castle , but sometimes in other places near London. Richard II took care of their proper upbringing. However, he exercised an increasingly tyrannical arbitrary rule and thus aroused growing opposition. In particular, he dealt with his former political opponents, the so-called appellants , cruelly. When, after the death of John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster (February 3, 1399), he confiscated his property for the English crown and banished his son and heir Heinrich Bolingbroke, who had been in exile for ten years, for life, he wanted his complete disempowerment in no way accept it in England. The king, however, apparently paid no attention to the signs of an impending revolution, but, after entertaining his wife in Windsor with splendid tournaments at the end of May 1399 and then saying goodbye to her, went on another campaign against rebellious Irish nobles. Because he was above all a thorn in the side of the Dame de Coucy's extravagance, Isabel's French retinue was dismissed according to his orders. Only one of the French ladies-in-waiting and the queen's confessor were allowed to stay, which aroused great indignation in their homeland. Isabelle soon moved to protect them in the in Oxfordshire located Wallingford Castle over.
Henry Bolingbroke took advantage of the king's absence to land on the Yorkshire coast in July 1399 with a few supporters . He quickly found widespread support. The Duke of York, who had been appointed regent of the kingdom by Richard II, placed the queen in the care of a few confidants of Richard. But Isabelle soon fell into the hands of the invader and from then on had to live in the residence of the Bishop of Salisbury in Sonning near Reading . Abandoned by his troops, the English monarch himself was lured into a trap by his adversary and transferred to London as a prisoner. According to an unhistorical tradition, he is said to have met his wife, which resulted in a heartbreaking scene that William Shakespeare painted in his tragedy Richard II ; In reality, the royal couple never met again. In any case, the imprisoned sovereign suffered greatly from his permanent separation from his wife. At the end of September 1399 he was deposed and Heinrich Bolingbroke succeeded him as Henry IV .
The ambassadors sent to Paris soon after Henry IV came to power pushed for a marriage alliance, with the new king probably thinking of the marriage of his son, the later Henry (V) , to the only slightly younger Isabelle. However, the French court did not accept this offer. When supporters of the overthrown Richard rehearsed the uprising in January 1400, they also brought Isabelle's whereabouts Sonning under their control. They informed the young ex-queen of the fate of her husband, which had previously been hidden from her, and raised her hopes for his liberation, but apparently did not try to continue her with them. The revolt was soon put down and the leaders of the rebels partly lynched and partly executed on the scaffold. The following month Richard was killed in his prison at Pontefract Castle ; he was probably murdered on the orders of Henry IV. Isabelle had to move to Havering-atte-Bower Castle in Essex and was now under closer guard. Her husband's death was kept secret from her for a long time.
Now the French government demanded that Isabelle should be allowed to return home and that the installments of her dowry that had been transferred up to that point should be reimbursed, apart from the 300,000 gold francs immediately paid out in 1396. The English king was unable to meet the latter requirement and, for his part, recalled that the French king John II the Good had been captured by the English in 1356 after a defeat and the ransom for his release had not been paid. In response to the request for repayment of Isabelle's dowry, Henry IV raised a claim to this amount. As a result, he delayed the negotiations, but did not dare to completely ignore France's wishes.
Finally, Henry IV agreed in a contract signed on May 27, 1401 in Leulinghen that Isabelle was allowed to leave England again. She was given permission to take her gems with her while the refund of her dowry was postponed until a later date. This money should King Charles VI. never received despite repeated requests. Thomas Percy, 1st Earl of Worcester , escorted Isabelle to Winchester on June 27, but in the presence of King Henry IV, the young ex-Queen in black, who never heard of her marriage to the son of her husband's successor, Henry (V. ), had wanted to know, just kept silent and sullen on. The next day she set out for Dover, where, after a month-long stay, she translated to France on July 28th. Three days later she was in Leulinghen after her tearful farewell to her English ladies-in-waiting from Count Walram III. received by Saint-Pol from the previous custody of the Earl of Worcester. On the way to Paris, she was greeted with cheers in all cities and, after arriving in the capital, entrusted to the care of her mother. But she should never have been happy again. In England there were rumors in the next few years that Richard II had been able to escape, was living in hiding and would try to return when the opportunity was favorable. A fraudster staying in Scotland, who pretended to be Richard, hoped in vain for support from Isabelle's supporters.
Second marriage and death
On June 4, 1404, Isabelle was betrothed to her cousin, Count Charles von Angoulême , who was five years her junior, i.e. only nine years old . This was the eldest son of Duke Ludwig von Orléans and his wife Valentina Visconti . From her father-in-law she received £ 6,000 a year and the income of the castle bailiwick of Crecy-en-Brie. Another suggestion by the English king to marry her to his son Henry (V) met with rejection; instead she was married to her previous fiancé Charles von Angoulême on June 29, 1406 at Compiègne . She is said to have been unhappy about this and, according to the French historian and Bishop Jean Juvénal des Ursins, cried at the wedding ceremony.
Ludwig von Orléans was murdered on November 23, 1407 on behalf of his political opponent, the Burgundian Duke Johann Ohnefurcht , who was struggling with him for power . In September 1408, Isabelle, who now rose to become Duchess of Orléans, accompanied her husband and mother-in-law to Paris at the court of Charles VI, to ask the king to punish her father-in-law's murderers.
After Isabelle had also lost her mother-in-law Valentina Visconti in December 1408, she herself died on September 13, 1409 at the age of only 19 years after the birth of her only daughter Johanna in childbirth. Her husband Charles d'Orléans, who would later become a famous French poet and who would live in English captivity for 25 years after his capture during the Battle of Azincourt (1415), expressed his sadness in poignant verses. Isabelle was buried in the Nôtre Dame des Bonnes Nouvelles chapel of Saint-Laumer Abbey (now the Saint-Nicolas church) in Blois . In 1624 her body was transferred to the burial place of the Orléans dynasty, the church of the Cölestines in Paris.
Isabelle's daughter Johanna married Duke Johann II of Alençon in 1424 , son of Isabelle's first fiancé Johann I of Alençon, but died childless and also very young in 1432.
ancestors
progeny
With Count Charles of Angoulême , Isabelle had a daughter:
- Johanna (* 1409; † 1432), ∞ with Johann II. Von Alençon
literature
- A. d'Esneval: Isabelle 2) de France . In: Dictionnaire de Biographie française . Vol. 18 (1994), col. 196-197.
- JL Kirby: Isabella of France (1389-1409) . In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB). Vol. 29 (2004), pp. 424-425.
- Thomas Frederick Tout: Isabella of France (1389-1409) . In: Dictionary of National Biography (DNB). Vol. 29 (1892), pp. 68-71 (public domain text).
- A. Tuck: Isabella 2) . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages . Vol. 5 (1991) Col. 668.
Web links
Remarks
- ↑ Philippe de Mézières, Letter to Richard II. , Ed. by GW Coopland (1975).
- ↑ Jean Froissart, Œuvres , vol. 15, p. 186, ed. by Kervyn de Lettenhove, Brussels 1872.
- ↑ Marguerite (alias Françoise) Paynel (* 1372), lady of honor of the Queen of England, 1399 member of the Order of the Garter ( Lady of the Garter ), wife of Guillaume de Courcy ( House of Courcy )
- ↑ So probably right Chronique du religieux de Saint Denys , vol. 2, p. 470, on the other hand probably wrong Froissart ( Œuvres , vol. 15, p. 306 ed. K. de Lettenhove): November 1, 1396.
- ↑ Jean Juvénal des Ursins, Histoire de Charles VI, roy de France , in: JF Michaud and JJF Poujoulat (eds.): Nouvelle collection des mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de France , 1st episode, 2nd volume, Paris 1850 , P. 438.
| predecessor | Office | Successor |
|---|---|---|
| Anne of Bohemia |
Queen Consort of England 1396–1399 |
Joan of Navarre |
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Isabelle de Valois |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Isabelle de France; Isabella of Valois; Isabella of France |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Princess of France, daughter of King Charles VI. |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 9, 1389 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Paris |
| DATE OF DEATH | September 13, 1409 |
| Place of death | Blois |