Kitabı oku: «Margaret of Anjou», sayfa 12

CHAPTER XXIII.
Childless, and a Widow

Margaret found by friends.

Margaret did not trust entirely for her safety to the sacredness of the sanctuary where she had sought refuge. She endeavored, by all the means in her power, to keep the place of her retreat secret from all but her chosen and most trustworthy friends. Very soon, however, she was visited by some of these, especially by some young nobles, who came to her exasperated, and all on fire with rage and resentment, on account of the death of their friends and relatives, who had been slain in the battle.

Her sad condition.

They found Margaret, however, in a state of mind very different from their own. She was beginning to be discouraged. The long-continued and bitter experience of failure and disappointment, which had now, for so many years, been her constant lot, seemed at last to have had power to undermine and destroy even her resolution and energy. Her friends, when they came to see her, found her plunged in a sort of stupor of wretchedness and despair from which they found it difficult to rouse her.

Her friends encourage her. Little success.

And when, at length, they succeeded in so far awakening her from her despondency as to induce her to take some interest in their consultations, her only feeling for the time being seemed to be anxiety for the safety of her son. She begged and implored them to take some measures to protect him. They endeavored to convince her that her situation was not so desperate as she imagined. They had still a powerful force, they said, on their side. That force was now rallying and reassembling, and, with her presence and that of the young prince at their head-quarters, the numbers and enthusiasm of their troops would be very rapidly increased, and there was great hope that they might soon be able again to meet the enemy under more favorable auspices than ever.

Her wishes.

But the queen seemed very unwilling to accede to their views. It was of no use, she said, to make any farther effort. They were not strong enough to meet their enemies in battle, and nothing but fresh disasters would result from making the attempt. There was nothing to be done but for herself and the young prince, with as many others as were disposed to share her fortunes, to return as soon as possible to France, and there to remain and wait for better times.

The young prince.

But the young prince was not willing to adopt this plan. He was young, and full of confidence and hope, and he joined the nobles in urging his mother to consent to take the field. His influence prevailed; and Margaret, though with great reluctance and many forebodings, finally yielded.

An army collected.

So she left the sanctuary, and, with the prince, was escorted secretly to the northward, in order to join the army there. The western counties of England, those lying on the borders of Wales, had long been very favorable to Henry's cause, and when the people learned that the queen and the young prince were there, they came out in great numbers, as the nobles had predicted, to join her standard. In a short time a large army was ready to take the field.

To Bath.

Margaret was at this time at Bath. She soon heard that King Edward was coming against her from London with a large army. Her own forces, she thought, were not yet strong enough to meet him; so she formed the plan of crossing the Severn into Wales, and waiting there until she should have a larger force concentrated.

To Bristol. Endeavors to cross the river.

Accordingly, from Bath she went down to Bristol, which, as will be seen from the map, is on the banks of the Severn, at a place where the river is very wide. She could not cross here, the lowest bridge on the river being at Gloucester, thirty or forty miles farther up; so she moved up to Gloucester, intending to cross there. But she found the bridge fortified, and in the possession of an officer under the orders of the Duke of Gloucester, who was a partisan of King Edward, and he refused to allow the queen to pass without an order from his master.

Arrival of Edward.

It seemed not expedient to attempt to force the bridge, and, accordingly, Margaret and her party went on up the river in order to find some other place to cross into Wales. She was very much excited on this journey, and suffered great anxiety, for the army of King Edward was advancing rapidly, and there was danger that she would be intercepted and her retreat cut off; so she pressed forward with the utmost diligence, and at length, after having marched thirty-seven miles in one day with her troops, she arrived at Tewkesbury, a town situated about midway between Gloucester and Worcester. When she arrived there, she found that Edward had arrived already within a mile of the place, at the head of a great army, and was ready for battle.

They make a stand.

There was, however, now an opportunity for Margaret to cross the river and retire for a time into Wales, and she was herself extremely desirous of doing so, but the young nobles who were with her, and especially the Duke of Somerset, a violent and hot-headed young man, who acted as the leader of them, would not consent. He declared that he would retreat no farther.

"We will make a stand here," said he, "and take such fortune as God may send us."

So he pitched his camp in the park which lay upon the confines of the town, and threw up intrenchments. Many of the other leaders were strongly opposed to his plan of making a stand in this place, but Somerset was the chief in command, and he would have his way.

Battle of Tewkesbury. Preparations for the fight.

He, however, showed no disposition to shelter himself personally from any portion of the danger to which his friends and followers were to be exposed. He took command of the advanced guard. The young prince, supported by some other leaders of age and experience, was also to be placed in a responsible and important position. When all was ready, Margaret and the prince rode along the ranks, speaking words of encouragement to the troops, and promising large rewards to them in case they gained the victory.

Tewkesbury.

Margaret's maternal anxiety.

Margaret's heart was full of anxiety and agitation as the hour for the commencement of hostilities drew nigh. She had often before staked very dear and highly-valued friends in the field of battle, but now, for the first time, she was putting to hazard the life of her dearly beloved and only son. It was very much against her will that she was brought to incur this terrible danger. It was only the sternest necessity that compelled her to do it.

She witnesses the fight.

When the battle began, Margaret withdrew to an elevation within the park, from which she could witness the progress of the fight. For some time her army remained on the defensive within their intrenchments, but at length Somerset, becoming impatient and impetuous, determined on making a sally and attacking the assailants in the open field.

Somerset.

So, ordering the others to follow him, he issued forth from the lines. Some obeyed him, and others did not. After a while he returned within the lines again, apparently for the purpose of calling those who remained there to account for not obeying him. He found Lord Wenlock, one of the leaders, sitting upon his horse idle, as he said, in the town. He immediately denounced him as a traitor, and, riding up to him, cut him down with a blow from his battle-axe, which cleft his skull.

Panic and flight.

The men who were under Lord Wenlock's banner, seeing their leader thus mercilessly slain, immediately began to fly. Their flight caused a panic, which rapidly spread among all the other troops, and the whole field was soon in utter confusion.

Margaret's terror. She swoons.

When Margaret saw this, and thought of the prince, exposed, as he was, to the most imminent danger in the defeat, she became almost frantic with excitement and terror. She insisted on rushing into the field to find and save her son. Those around found it almost impossible to restrain her. At length, in the struggle, her excitement and terror entirely overpowered her. She swooned away, and her attendants then bore her senseless to a carriage, and she was driven rapidly away out through one of the park gates, and thence by a by-road to a religious house near by, where it was thought she would be for the moment secure.

Capture of the prince.

The poor prince was taken prisoner. He was conveyed, after the battle, to Edward's tent. The historians of the day relate the following story of the sad termination of his career.

The Murder of Prince Henry.

When Edward, accompanied by his officers and the nobles in attendance upon him, covered with the blood and the dust of the conflict, and fierce and exultant under the excitement of slaughter and victory, came into the tent, and saw the handsome young prince standing there in the hands of his captors, he was at first struck with the elegance of his appearance and his frank and manly bearing. He, however, accosted him fiercely by demanding what brought him to England. The prince replied fearlessly that he came to recover his father's crown and his own inheritance. Upon this, Edward threw his glove, a heavy iron gauntlet, in his face.

Death of the Prince of Wales.

The men standing by took this as an indication of Edward's feelings and wishes in respect to his prisoner, and they fell upon him at once with their swords and murdered him upon the spot.

Margaret receives the tidings.

Margaret did not know what had become of her son until the following day. By that time King Edward had discovered the place of her retreat, and he sent a certain Sir William Stanley, who had always been one of her most inveterate enemies, to take her prisoner and bring her to him. It was this Stanley who, when he came, brought her the news of her son's death. He communicated the news to her, it was said, in an exultant manner, as if he was not only glad of the prince's death, but as if he rejoiced in having the opportunity of witnessing the despair and grief with which the mother was overwhelmed in hearing the tidings.

She is borne to London. Her condition on the journey.

Stanley conveyed the queen to Coventry, where King Edward then was, and placed her at his disposal. Edward was then going to London in a sort of triumphant march in honor of his victory, and he ordered that Stanley should take Margaret with him in his train. Anne of Warwick, her son's young bride, was taken to London too, at the same time and in the same way.

During the whole of the journey Margaret was in a continued state of the highest excitement, being almost wild with grief and rage. She uttered continual maledictions against Edward for having murdered her boy, and nothing could soothe or quiet her.

Her last hope. Murder of the king.

It might be supposed that there would have been one source of comfort open to her during this dreadful journey in the thought that, in going to the Tower, which was now undoubtedly to be her destination, she should rejoin her husband, who had been for some time imprisoned there. But the hope of being thus once more united to almost the last object of affection that now remained to her upon earth, if Margaret really cherished it, was doomed to a bitter disappointment. The death of the young prince made it now an object of great importance to the reigning line that Henry himself should be put out of the way, and, on the very night of Margaret's arrival at the Tower, her husband was assassinated in the room which had so long been his prison.

Terrible reverse of fortune.

Thus all Queen Margaret's bright hopes of happiness were, in two short months, completely and forever destroyed. At the close of the month of March she was the proud and happy queen of a monarch ruling over one of the most wealthy and powerful kingdoms on the globe, and the mother of a prince who was endowed with every personal grace and noble accomplishment, affianced to a high-born, beautiful, and immensely wealthy bride, and just entering what promised to be a long and glorious career. In May, just two months later, she was childless and a widow. Both her husband and her son were lying in bloody graves, and she herself, fallen from her throne, was shut up, a helpless captive, in a gloomy dungeon, with no prospect of deliverance before her to the end of her days. The annals even of royalty, filled as they are with examples of overwhelming calamity, can perhaps furnish no other instance of so total and terrible reverse of fortune as this.

CHAPTER XXIV.
Conclusion

The body of King Henry.

On the day following the assassination of Henry, the body was taken from the Tower and conveyed through the streets of London, with a strong escort of armed men to guard it, to the Church of St. Paul's, there to be publicly exhibited, as was customary on such occasions. Such an exhibition was more necessary than usual in this case, as the fact of Henry's death might, perhaps, have afterward been called in question, and designing men might have continued to agitate the country in his name, if there had not been the most positive proof furnished to the public that he was no more.

View of Chertsey.

Borne away on the river to Chertsey.

The body remained lying thus during the day. When night came, it was taken away and carried down to Blackfriar's—a landing upon the river nearly opposite Saint Paul's. Here there was a boat lying ready to receive the hearse. It was lighted with torches, and the watermen were at their oars. The hearse was put on board, and the body was thus borne away, over the dark waters of the river, to the lonely village of Chertsey, where it had been decided that he should be interred.

Margaret in confinement. Wallingford.

For some time after Henry's death Margaret was kept in close confinement in the Tower. At length, finding that every thing was quiet, and that the new government was becoming firmly established, the rigor of the unhappy captive's imprisonment was relaxed. She was removed first to Windsor, and afterward to Wallingford, a place in the interior of the country, where she enjoyed a considerable degree of personal freedom, though she was still very closely watched and guarded.

She is ransomed.

At length, about four years afterward, her father, King René, succeeded in obtaining her ransom for the sum of fifty thousand crowns. René was not the possessor of so much money himself, but he induced King Louis to pay it, on condition of his conveying to him his family domain.

The ransom was to be paid in five annual installments, but on the payment of the first installment the queen was to be released and allowed to return to her native land. It was stipulated, too, that, as a condition of her release, she was formally and forever to renounce all the rights of every kind within the realm of England to which she might have laid claim through her marriage with Henry. It might have been supposed that they would have required her to sign this renunciation before releasing her. But it was held by the law of England, then as now, that a signature made under durance was invalid, the signer not being free. So it was arranged that an English commissioner was to accompany her across the Channel, and go with her to Rouen, where he was to deliver her to the French embassadors, who, in the name of Louis, were to be responsible for her signing the document.

1476. The commissioner. Margaret crosses the Channel.

This plan was carried into effect. Margaret set out from the castle of Wallingford under the care of a man on whom Edward's government could rely for keeping a close watch over her, and taking care that she went on quietly through England to the port of embarkation. This port was Sandwich. Here she embarked on board a vessel, with a retinue of three ladies and seven gentlemen, and bade a final farewell to the kingdom which she had entered on her bridal tour with such high and exultant expectations of grandeur and happiness.

At Rouen.

She arrived at Dieppe in the beginning of 1476, and proceeded immediately to Rouen, where the commissioner, who came to attend her, delivered her to the French embassadors appointed to receive her, and attend to the signing of the renunciation.

Her renunciation.

The document was written in Latin, but the import of it was as follows:

I, Margaret, formerly in England married, renounce all that I could pretend to in England, by the conditions of my marriage, with all other things there, to Edward, now King of England.

Feelings with which she signed it.

It cost Margaret no effort to sign this paper. With the death of her husband and her son all hope had been extinguished in her bosom, and life now possessed nothing that she desired. She signed this fatal document, renouncing not only all claims to be henceforth considered a queen, but all pretension that she had ever been one, with a passive indifference and unconcern which showed that her spirit was broken, and that the fires of pride and ambition which had burned so fiercely in her breast were now, at last, extinguished forever.

Ungenerousness of Louis.

When the paper was signed Margaret was dismissed and left at liberty to go her own way to her native province of Anjou, where it was her intention to spend the remainder of her days. Her plan was to pass by the way of Paris, in order to see once more her cousin, King Louis, who had treated her with so much consideration and honor when she was on her way to England with a fair prospect of finding her husband upon the throne. But the case was different now, Louis thought, and instead of receiving kindly her intimation that she was intending to visit Paris on her way home, he sent her word that she had better not come, and advised her instead to make the best of her way to her father in Anjou.

An escort offered.

He, however, as if to soften this incivility, sent an escort to accompany her in her journey home, but Margaret was so stung by her cousin's heartless abandonment of her in her distress that she resolved to accept no favor at his hands; so she refused the escort, and set out with her few personal companions alone.

Danger. English people in Normandy.

This little blazing up of the old flames of pride and resentment in her heart came near, however, to costing Margaret her life, for she had not gone far on her journey before an emergency occurred in which an escort would have been of great service to her. It seems that when the English were driven out of Normandy, many families and some whole villages remained of people who were too poor to return. These people were now in a very low and miserable condition. They mourned continually the hard necessity by which they had been left without friends or protection in a foreign land; and they understood, too, that the first beginning of the abandonment of their possessions in France by the English was the cession of certain provinces by the government of Henry VI. at the time of that monarch's marriage with Margaret of Anjou, and that all the subsequent misfortunes of their countrymen in France, by which, in the end, the whole country had been lost, had their origin in these transactions.

Margaret at the inn. Riot at the inn.

Now it happened that Margaret, on her journey from Rouen to Anjou, stopped the first night at one of these villages. The people, seeing a party of strangers come to town, gathered round the inn at night from curiosity to learn who they might be. When they were informed that it was Margaret of Anjou, Queen of England, who had been banished from the kingdom, and was now returning home, they were excited to the highest pitch of anger against her as the author of all their sufferings. They made a rush into the house to seize her, and, if they had been successful, they would doubtless have killed her upon the spot. But some of the gentlemen who were in her party defended her sword in hand, and kept the mob at bay until she gained her apartment. They guarded her there until they could send for the authorities, who came and dispersed the mob. Margaret immediately returned to Rouen, willing enough now to accept of an escort. A proper guard was provided for her, and under the protection of it she set out once more on her journey, and this time went on in safety.

Margaret arrives in Anjou. Her father.

When Margaret at last reached her native country of Anjou, she was received very kindly by her father, and went to live with him in a castle called the castle of Reculée, situated about a league from Angers, the capital of the province.

Here she remained about four years. It was a very pleasant place. The castle was situated upon the bank of a river, and yet in a commanding situation, which afforded a pretty view of the town. There was a beautiful garden attached to the castle, and a gallery of painting and sculpture. Her father, King René, was a painter himself, and he amused himself a great deal in painting pictures to add to his collection or to give to his friends.

Dreadful depression of spirits.

But Margaret could take no interest in any of these things. Her mind was all the time filled with bitter recollections of the past, which, even if she did not cling to and cherish them, she could not dispel. She dwelt continually upon thoughts of her husband and her child. She made ceaseless efforts to obtain possession of their bodies, in order that she might have them transported to Anjou, and, as she could not succeed in this, she paid annually a considerable sum to secure the services of priests to say masses over their graves in England, in order to secure the repose of their souls.

Its effects.

Indeed, the anguish and agitation which continually reigned in her heart preyed upon her like a worm in the centre of a flower. "Her eyes, once so brilliant and expressive," says one of her historians, "became hollow and dim, and permanently inflamed from continual weeping." Indeed, the whole mass of her blood became corrupted, and a fearful disease affected her once beautiful skin, making her an object of commiseration to all who beheld her.

Death of her father.

She continued in this state until her father died. He, on his death-bed, committed her to the care of an old and faithful friend, who, after King René's decease, took her with him to his own castle of Damprierre, which was situated about twenty-five miles farther up the river.

The closing scene.

But, though Margaret was treated very kindly by the friend to whom her father thus consigned her, she did not long survive this change. She died, and was buried in the cathedral at Angers, and for centuries afterward the ecclesiastics of the chapter, once every year, at the return of the proper anniversary, performed a solemn ceremony over her grave by walking round it with a slow and measured step, singing a hymn.

The End