A Book of Golden Deeds

C >> Charlotte M. Yonge >> A Book of Golden Deeds

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On the very day, eighteen years later, of the taking of Ceuta, King Joao
died of the plague at Lisbon, on the 14th of August, 1433. Duarte came
to the throne; and, a few months after, his young brother, Fernando,
persuaded him into fitting out another expedition to Africa, of which
Tangier should be the object.

Duarte doubted of the justice of the war, and referred the question to
the Pope, who decided against it; but the answer came too late, the
preparations were made, and the Infantes Henrique and Fernando took the
command. Henrique was a most enlightened prince, a great mathematician
and naval discoverer, but he does not appear to have made good use of
his abilities on the present occasion; for, on arriving at Ceuta, and
reviewing the troops, they proved to have but 8,000, instead of 14,000,
as they had intended. Still they proceeded, Henrique by land and
Fernando by sea, and laid siege to Tangier, which was defended by their
old enemy, Zala ben Zala. Everything was against them; their scaling
ladders were too short to reach to the top of the walls, and the Moors
had time to collect in enormous numbers for the relief of the city,
under the command of the kings of Fez and Morocco.

The little Christian army was caught as in a net, and, after a day's
hard fighting, saw the necessity of re-embarking. All was arranged for
this to be done at night; but a vile traitor, chaplain to the army,
passed over to the Moors, and revealed their intention. The beach was
guarded, and the retreat cut off. Another day of fighting passed, and at
night hunger reduced them to eating their horses.

It was necessary to come to terms, and messengers were sent to treat
with the two kings. The only terms on which the army could be allowed to
depart were that one of the Infantes should remain as a hostage for the
delivery of Ceuta to the Moors. For this purpose Fernando offered
himself, though it was exceedingly doubtful whether Ceuta would be
restored; and the Spanish poet, Calderon, puts into his mouth a generous
message to his brother the King, that they both were Christian princes,
and that his liberty was not to be weighed in the scale with their
father's fairest conquest.

Henrique was forced thus to leave his brave brother, and return with the
remnants of his army to Ceuta, where he fell sick with grief and
vexation. He sent the fleet home; but it met with a great storm, and
many vessels were driven on the coast of Andalusia, where, by orders of
the King, the battered sailors and defeated soldiers were most kindly
and generously treated.

Dom Duarte, having in the meantime found out with how insufficient an
army his brothers had been sent forth, had equipped a fresh fleet, the
arrival of which at Ceuta cheered Henrique with hope of rescuing his
brother; but it was soon followed by express orders from the King that
Henrique should give up all such projects and return home. He was
obliged to comply, but, unable to look Duarte in the face, he retired to
his own estates at the Algarve.

Duarte convoked the States-general of the kingdom, to consider whether
Ceuta should be yielded to purchase his brother's freedom. They decided
that the place was too important to be parted with, but undertook to
raise any sum of money for the ransom; and if this were not accepted,
proposed to ask the Pope to proclaim a crusade for his rescue.

At first Fernando was treated well, and kept at Tangier as an honorable
prisoner; but disappointment enraged the Moors, and he was thrown into a
dungeon, starved, and maltreated. All this usage he endured with the
utmost calmness and resolution, and could by no means be threatened into
entreating for liberty to be won at the cost of the now Christian city
where his knighthood had been won.

His brother Duarte meantime endeavored to raise the country for his
deliverance; but the plague was still desolating Portugal, so that it
was impossible to collect an army, and the infection at length seized on
the King himself, from a letter which he incautiously opened, and he
died, in his thirty-eighth year, in 1438, the sixth year of his reign
and the second of his brother's captivity. His successor, Affonso V.,
was a child of six years old, and quarrels and disputes between the
Queen Mother and the Infante Dom Pedro rendered the chance of redeeming
the captivity of Fernando less and less.

The King of Castille, and even the Moorish King of Granada, shocked at
his sufferings and touched by his constancy, proposed to unite their
forces against Tangier for his deliverance; but the effect of this was
that Zala ben Zala made him over to Muley Xeques, the King of Fez, by
whom he was thrown into a dungeon without light or air. After a time, he
was brought back to daylight, but only to toil among the other Christian
slaves, to whom he was a model of patience, resignation, and kindness.
Even his enemies became struck with admiration of his high qualities,
and the King of Fez declared that he even deserved to be a Mahometan!

At last, in 1443, Fernando's captivity ended, but only by his death.
Muley Xeque caused a tall tower to be erected on his tomb, in memory of
the victory of Tangier; but in 1473, two sons of Muley being made
prisoners by the Portuguese, one was ransomed for the body of Dom
Fernando, who was then solemnly laid in the vaults of the beautiful
Abbey of Batalha on the field of Aljubarota, which had given his father
the throne. Universal honor attended the name of the Constant Prince,
the Portuguese Regulus; and seldom as the Spanish admire anything
Portuguese, a fine drama of the poet Calderon is founded upon that noble
spirit which preferred dreary captivity to the yielding up his father's
conquest to the enemies of his country and religion. Nor was this
constancy thrown away; Ceuta remained a Christian city. It was held by
Portugal till the house of Aviz was extinguished in Dom Sebastiao, and
since that time has belonged to the crown of Spain.

THE CARNIVAL OF PERTH

1435

It was bedtime, and the old vaulted chambers of the Dominican monastery
at Perth echoed with sounds that would seem incongruous in such a home
of austerity, but that the disturbed state of Scotland rendered it the
habit of her kings to attach their palaces to convents, that they
themselves might benefit by the 'peace of the Church', which was in
general accorded to all sacred spots.

Thus it was that Christmas and Carnival time of 1435-6 had been spent by
the Court in the cloisters of Perth, and the dance, the song, and the
tourney had strangely contrasted with the grave and self-denying habits
to which the Dominicans were devoted in their neighboring cells. The
festive season was nearly at an end, for it was the 20th of February;
but the evening had been more than usually gay, and had been spent in
games at chess, tables, or backgammon, reading romances of chivalry,
harping, and singing. King James himself, brave and handsome, and in the
prime of life, was the blithest of the whole joyous party. He was the
most accomplished man in his dominions; for though he had been basely
kept a prisoner at Windsor throughout his boyhood by Henry IV of
England, an education had been bestowed on him far above what he would
have otherwise obtained; and he was naturally a man of great ability,
refinement, and strength of character. Not only was he a perfect knight
on horseback, but in wrestling and running, throwing the hammer, and
'putting the stane', he had scarcely a rival, and he was skilled in all
the learned lore of the time, wrote poetry, composed music both sacred
and profane, and was a complete minstrel, able to sing beautifully and
to play on the harp and organ. His Queen, the beautiful Joan Beaufort,
had been the lady of his minstrelsy in the days of his captivity, ever
since he had watched her walking on the slopes of Windsor Park, and
wooed her in verses that are still preserved. They had now been eleven
years married, and their Court was one bright spot of civilization,
refinement, and grace, amid the savagery of Scotland. And now, after the
pleasant social evening, the Queen, with her long fair hair unbound, was
sitting under the hands of her tire-women, who were preparing her for
the nights rest; and the King, in his furred nightgown, was standing
before the bright fire on the hearth of the wide chimney, laughing and
talking with the attendant ladies.

Yet dark hints had already been whispered, which might have cast a
shadow over that careless mirth. Always fierce and vindictive, the Scots
had been growing more and more lawless and savage ever since the
disputed succession of Bruce and Balliol had unsettled all royal
authority, and led to one perpetual war with the English. The twenty
years of James's captivity had been the worst of all--almost every noble
was a robber chief; Scottish Borderer preyed upon English Borderer,
Highlander upon Lowlander, knight upon traveler, everyone who had armor
upon him who had not; each clan was at deadly feud with its neighbour;
blood was shed like water from end to end of the miserable land, and the
higher the birth of the offender the greater the impunity he claimed.

Indeed, James himself had been brought next to the throne by one of the
most savage and horrible murders ever perpetrated--that of his elder
brother, David, by his own uncle; and he himself had probably been only
saved from sharing the like fate by being sent out of the kingdom. His
earnest words on his return to take the rule of this unhappy realm were
these: 'Let God but grant me life, and there shall not be a spot in my
realm where the key shall not keep the castle, and the bracken bush the
cow, though I should lead the life of a dog to accomplish it.'

This great purpose had been before James through the eleven years of his
reign, and he had worked it out resolutely. The lawless nobles would not
brook his ruling hand, and strong and bitter was the hatred that had
arisen against him. In many of his transactions he was far from
blameless: he was sometimes tempted to craft, sometimes to tyranny; but
his object was always a high and kingly one, though he was led by the
horrid wickedness of the men he had to deal with more than once to
forget that evil is not to be overcome with evil, but with good. In the
main, it was his high and uncompromising resolution to enforce the laws
upon high and low alike that led to the nobles' conspiracies against
him; though, if he had always been true to his purpose of swerving
neither to the right nor to the left, he might have avoided the last
fatal offence that armed the murderer against his life.

The chief misdoers in the long period of anarchy had been his uncles and
cousins; nor was it till after his eldest uncle's death that his return
home had been possible. With a strong hand had he avenged upon the
princes and their followers the many miseries they had inflicted upon
his people; and in carrying out these measures he had seized upon the
great earldom of Strathern, which had descended to one of their party in
right of his wife, declaring that it could not be inherited by a female.
In this he appears to have acted unjustly, from the strong desire to
avail himself by any pretext of an opportunity of breaking the
overweening power of the great turbulent nobles; and, to make up for the
loss, he created the new earldom of Menteith, for the young Malise
Graham, the son of the dispossessed earl. But the proud and vindictive
Grahams were not thus to be pacified. Sir Robert Graham, the uncle of
the young earl, drew off into the Highlands, and there formed a
conspiracy among other discontented men who hated the resolute
government that repressed their violence. Men of princely blood joined
in the plot, and 300 Highland catherans were ready to accompany the
expedition that promised the delights of war and plunder.

Even when the hard-worked King was setting forth to enjoy his holiday at
Perth, the traitors had fixed upon that spot as the place of his doom;
but the scheme was known to so many, that it could not be kept entirely
secret, and warnings began to gather round the King. When, on his way to
Perth, he was about to cross the Firth of Forth, the wild figure of a
Highland woman appeared at his bridle rein, and solemnly warned him
'that, if he crossed that water, he would never return alive'. He was
struck by the apparition, and bade one of his knights to enquire of her
what she meant; but the knight must have been a dullard or a traitor,
for he told the King that the woman was either mad or drunk, and no
notice was taken of her warning.

There was likewise a saying abroad in Scotland, that the new year, 1436,
should see the death of a king; and this same carnival night, James,
while playing at chess with a young friend, whom he was wont to call the
king of love, laughingly observed that 'it must be you or I, since there
are but two kings in Scotland--therefore, look well to yourself'.

Little did the blithe monarch guess that at that moment one of the
conspirators, touched by a moment's misgiving, was hovering round,
seeking in vain for an opportunity of giving him warning; that even then
his chamberlain and kinsman, Sir Robert Stewart, was enabling the
traitors to place boards across the moat for their passage, and to
remove the bolts and bars of all the doors in their way. And the
Highland woman was at the door, earnestly entreating to see the King, if
but for one moment! The message was even brought to him, but, alas! he
bade her wait till the morrow, and she turned away, declaring that she
should never more see his face!

And now, as before said, the feast was over, and the King stood, gaily
chatting with his wife and her ladies, when the clang of arms was heard,
and the glare of torches in the court below flashed on the windows. The
ladies flew to secure the doors. Alas! the bolts and bars were gone! Too
late the warnings returned upon the King's mind, and he knew it was he
alone who was sought. He tried to escape by the windows, but here the
bars were but too firm. Then he seized the tongs, and tore up a board in
the floor, by which he let himself down into the vault below, just as
the murderers came rushing along the passage, slaying on their way a
page named Walter Straiton.

There was no bar to the door. Yes, there was. Catherine Douglas, worthy
of her name, worthy of the cognizance of the bleeding heart, thrust her
arm through the empty staples to gain for her sovereign a few moments
more for escape and safety! But though true as steel, the brave arm was
not as strong. It was quickly broken. She was thrust fainting aside, and
the ruffians rushed in. Queen Joan stood in the midst of the room, with
her hair streaming round her, and her mantle thrown hastily on. Some of
the wretches even struck and wounded her, but Graham called them off,
and bade them search for the King. They sought him in vain in every
corner of the women's apartments, and dispersed through the other rooms
in search of their prey. The ladies began to hope that the citizens and
nobles in the town were coming to their help, and that the King might
have escaped through an opening that led from the vault into the tennis
court. Presently, however, the King called to them to draw him up again,
for he had not been able to get out of the vault, having a few days
before caused the hole to be bricked up, because his tennis balls used
to fly into it and be lost. In trying to draw him up by the sheets,
Elizabeth Douglas, another of the ladies, was actually pulled down into
the vault; the noise was heard by the assassins, who were still watching
outside, and they returned.

There is no need to tell of the foul and cruel slaughter that ensued,
nor of the barbarous vengeance that visited it. Our tale is of golden,
not of brazen deeds; and if we have turned our eyes for a moment to the
Bloody Carnival of Perth, it is for the sake of the King, who was too
upright for his bloodthirsty subjects, and, above all, for that of the
noble-hearted lady whose frail arm was the guardian of her sovereign's
life in the extremity of peril.

In like manner, on the dreadful 6th of October, 1787, when the
infuriated mob of Paris had been incited by the revolutionary leaders to
rush to Versailles in pursuit of the royal family, whose absence they
fancied deprived them of bread and liberty, a woman shared the honor of
saving her sovereign's life, at least for that time.

The confusion of the day, with the multitude thronging the courts and
park of Versailles, uttering the most frightful threats and insults, had
been beyond all description; but there had been a pause at night, and at
two o'clock, poor Queen Marie Antoinette, spent with horror and fatigue,
at last went to bed, advising her ladies to do the same; but their
anxiety was too great, and they sat up at her door. At half-past four
they heard musket shots, and loud shouts, and while one awakened the
Queen, the other, Madame Auguier, flew towards the place whence the
noise came. As she opened the door, she found one of the royal
bodyguards, with his face covered with blood, holding his musket so as
to bar the door while the furious mob were striking at him. He turned to
the lady, and cried, 'Save the Queen, madame, they are come to murder
her!' Quick as lightning, Madame Auguier shut and bolted the door,
rushed to the Queen's bedside, and dragged her to the opposite door,
with a petticoat just thrown over her. Behold, the door was fastened on
the other side! The ladies knocked violently, the King's valet opened
it, and in a few minutes the whole family were in safety in the King's
apartments. M. de Miomandre, the brave guardsman, who used his musket to
guard the Queen's door instead of to defend himself, fell wounded; but
his comrade, M. de Repaire, at once took his place, and, according to
one account, was slain, and the next day his head, set upon a pike, was
borne before the carriage in which the royal family were escorted back
to Paris.

M. de Miomandre, however, recovered from his wounds, and a few weeks
after, the Queen, hearing that his loyalty had made him a mark for the
hatred of the mob, sent for him to desire him to quit Paris. She said
that gold could not repay such a service as his had been, but she hoped
one day to be able to recompense him more as he deserved; meanwhile, she
hoped he would consider that as a sister might advance a timely sum to a
brother, so she might offer him enough to defray his expenses at Paris,
and to provide for his journey. In a private audience then he kissed her
hand, and those of the King and his saintly sister, Elizabeth, while the
Queen gratefully expressed her thanks, and the King stood by, with tears
in his eyes, but withheld by his awkward bashfulness from expressing the
feelings that overpowered him.

Madame Auguier, and her sister, Madame Campan, continued with their
royal lady until the next stage in that miserable downfall of all that
was high and noble in unhappy France. She lived through the horrors of
the Revolution, and her daughter became the wife of Marshal Ney.

Well it is that the darkening firmament does but show the stars, and
that when treason and murder surge round the fated chambers of royalty,
their foulness and violence do but enhance the loyal self-sacrifice of
such doorkeepers as Catherine Douglas, Madame Auguier, or M. de
Miomandre.

'Such deeds can woman's spirit do,
O Catherine Douglas, brave and true!
Let Scotland keep thy holy name
Still first upon her ranks of fame.'

THE CROWN OF ST. STEPHEN

1440

Of all the possessions of the old kingdom of Hungary, none was more
valued than what was called the Crown of St. Stephen, so called from
one, which had, in the year 1000, been presented by Pope Sylvester II.
to Stephen, the second Christian Duke, and first King of Hungary. A
crown and a cross were given to him for his coronation, which took place
in the Church of the Holy Virgin, at Alba Regale, also called in German
Weissenburg, where thenceforth the Kings of Hungary were anointed to
begin their troubled reigns, and at the close of them were laid to rest
beneath the pavement, where most of them might have used the same
epitaph as the old Italian leader: 'He rests here, who never rested
before'. For it was a wild realm, bordered on all sides by foes, with
Poland, Bohemia, and Austria, ever casting greedy eyes upon it, and
afterwards with the Turk upon the southern border, while the Magyars, or
Hungarian nobles, themselves were a fierce and untameable race, bold and
generous, but brooking little control, claiming a voice in choosing
their own Sovereign, and to resist him, even by force of arms, if he
broke the laws. No prince had a right to their allegiance unless he had
been crowned with St. Stephen's Crown; but if he had once worn that
sacred circle, he thenceforth was held as the only lawful monarch,
unless he should flagrantly violate the Constitution. In 1076, another
crown had been given by the Greek Emperor to Geysa, King of Hungary, and
the sacred crown combined the two. It had the two arches of the Roman
crown, and the gold circlet of the Constantinopolitan; and the
difference of workmanship was evident.

In the year 1439 died King Albert, who had been appointed King of
Hungary in right of his wife, Queen Elizabeth. He left a little daughter
only four years old, and as the Magyars had never been governed by a
female hand, they proposed to send and offer their crown, and the hand
of their young widowed Queen, to Wladislas, the King of Poland. But
Elizabeth had hopes of another child, and in case it should be a son,
she had no mind to give away its rights to its father's throne. How,
then, was she to help herself among the proud and determined nobles of
her Court? One thing was certain, that if once the Polish king were
crowned with St. Stephen's crown, it would be his own fault if he were
not King of Hungary as long as he lived; but if the crown were not to be
found, of course he could not receive it, and the fealty of the nobles
would not be pledged to him.

The most trustworthy person she had about her was Helen Kottenner, the
lady who had the charge of her little daughter, Princess Elizabeth, and
to her she confided her desire that the crown might be secured, so as to
prevent the Polish party from getting access to it. Helen herself has
written down the history of these strange events, and of her own
struggles of mind, at the risk she ran, and the doubt whether good would
come of the intrigue; and there can be no doubt that, whether the
Queen's conduct were praiseworthy or not, Helen dared a great peril for
the sake purely of loyalty and fidelity. 'The Queen's commands', she
says, 'sorely troubled me; for it was a dangerous venture for me and my
little children, and I turned it over in my mind what I should do, for I
had no one to take counsel of but God alone; and I thought if I did it
not, and evil arose therefrom, I should be guilty before God and the
world. So I consented to risk my life on this difficult undertaking; but
desired to have someone to help me.' This was permitted; but the first
person to whom the Lady of Kottenner confided her intention, a Croat,
lost his color from alarm, looked like one half-dead, and went at once
in search of his horse. The next thing that was heard of him was that he
had had a bad fall from his horse, and had been obliged to return to
Croatia, and the Queen remained much alarmed at her plans being known to
one so faint-hearted. However, a more courageous confidant was
afterwards found in a Hungarian gentleman, whose name has become
illegible in Helen's old manuscript.

The crown was in the vaults of the strong Castle of Plintenburg, also
called Vissegrad, which stands upon a bend of the Danube, about twelve
miles from the twin cities of Buda and Pesth. It was in a case within a
chest, sealed with many seals, and since the King's death, it had been
brought up by the nobles, who closely guarded both it and the Queen,
into her apartments, and there examined and replaced in the chest. The
next night, one of the Queen's ladies upset a wax taper, without being
aware of it, and before the fire was discovered, and put out, the corner
of the chest was singed, and a hole burnt in the blue velvet cushion
that lay on the top. Upon this, the lords had caused the chest to be
taken down again into the vault, and had fastened the doors with many
locks and with seals. The Castle had further been put into the charge of
Ladislas von Gara, the Queen's cousin, and Ban, or hereditary commander,
of the border troops, and he had given it over to a Burggraf, or
seneschal, who had placed his bed in the chamber where was the door
leading to the vaults.

The Queen removed to Komorn, a castle higher up the Danube, in charge of
her faithful cousin, Count Ulric of Eily, taking with her her little
daughter Elizabeth, Helen Kottenner, and two other ladies. This was the
first stage on the journey to Presburg, where the nobles had wished to
lodge the Queen, and from thence she sent back Helen to bring the rest
of the maids of honor and her goods to join her at Komorn. It was early
spring, and snow was still on the ground, and the Lady of Kottenner and
her faithful nameless assistant travelled in a sledge; but two Hungarian
noblemen went with them, and they had to be most careful in concealing
their arrangements. Helen had with her the Queen's signet, and keys; and
her friend had a file in each shoe, and keys under his black velvet
dress.

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