About Charles

Charles, Duke of Orleans was born on November 24, 1394, in Paris, France. His father Louis, Duke of Orleans was the brother of King Charles VI of France and his mother, Valentina Visconti, was the daughter of the Duke of Milan. Charles’s whole life was marked by political strife and war. His uncle the king was mentally ill, and control of the government was fought over by several nobles, including Charles’s father, which eventually broke into civil war during the Hundred Years’ War against England. Charles would be involved in both

Charles had four siblings – Philippe (1396-1420), Jean (1399-1467), Marguerite (1406-1466) and an illegitimate half-brother, Jean, better known as Dunois or the Bastard of Orleans (1402-1468). The Orleans boys were given an excellent education, taught by Nicole Garbet, their father’s secretary. Charles would be skilled in both French and Latin and began writing poetry at a young age. In 1406, he married his sixteen year old cousin Isabelle d'Valois, daughter of the King of France and young widow of King Richard II of England.

His father had an ongoing rivalry with John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, which would ultimately result in Louis’s assassination on November 23, 1407, one day before Charles turned thirteen. The next year, his grief-stricken mother Valentina died, and Isabelle died a year later in childbirth at the age of nineteen. Their daughter Joan survived.

The death of Louis d’Orleans left a power vacuum in French politics. Charles became the new Duke but had little political power, which would soon go to another powerful man, Bernard VII, Count of Armagnac. Charles remarried in 1410 to Bernard’s daughter Bonne, and Armagnac became leader of the remnants of Louis’s party, now called the Armagnacs. This faction would be allied with the House of Valois in the ensuing war against Burgundy, which considered itself largely independent of France.

King Henry V of England, determined to press his claim to the French throne, invaded France in 1415. Charles was present at the Battle of Agincourt on October 25, 1415, where he was one of the leaders of the French army and taken captive. King Henry took Charles back to England and refused to let him be ransomed. Charles was a prince of the blood, meaning he was legally a possible heir to the throne, something Henry had to keep out of circulation. He would be held in England under the watch of various nobles for twenty-five years, including a stint in the Tower of London and later at Pontefract Castle in Yorkshire, where Richard II had died and Charles became friends with his host and his family. For a time, he joined his younger brother, Jean, Count of Angoulême, who had been sent to England as a hostage of the Duke of Clarence in 1412.

It is during this time that Charles did two things – he learned English and took to seriously writing poetry in both French and English, producing over 6000 lines of English in the book left in England (now Harley 682), and beginning a manuscript in French that would return with him to France (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS French 25458). He is credited with having written the first Valentine’s Day poem (Ballade 72) while there and according to English chronicler Raphael Holinshed would return to France speaking better English than French.

Henry V died in 1422, missing Charles VI’s death by only months. Henry’s son, Henry VI, was Charles’s cousin as the boy’s mother was Catherine, Charles VI’s daughter. Charles was not liked by Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, one of the young king’s uncles and guardians and the premier literary patron in England. Gloucester was suspicious enough of Charles to warn his nephew of the French duke’s “grete Subtilitie and Cauteleux [wily] disposition.” This animosity was one of the main reasons Charles’s English work did not become popular in the country in which it was produced.

Charles was finally released late in 1440, ransomed by the Duke and Duchess of Burgundy, Philip the Good and Isabelle of Portugal. John the Fearless, who had ordered the death of Charles’s father had himself been assassinated in 1417. The conditions of Charles’s release were that he would help the peace effort between England and France and would not seek vengeance for his father’s death. By now twenty-five years had passed. Charles VI’s son the Dauphin Charles had initially been disinherited for probably being behind the assassination of John the Fearless; he successfully pressed his claim to the throne of France as Charles VII with the support of Joan of Arc, who liberated the city of Orleans from a siege in 1429. Charles’s brother, Philippe, Count of Vertus had died in 1420 and their sister Marguerite had taken his place as Countess of Vertus; Dunios had served alongside Joan of Arc in the war against England. Charles’s daughter Joan died in 1432 and somewhere around that time, between 1430 and 1435, his second wife Bonne died, reflecting the death of the first lady of the poetry. His younger brother Jean would not be released for another four years.

Soon after returning to France, Charles married for the third and final time, to Marie de Cleves, niece of Philip the Good and granddaughter of John the Fearless. Marie was an accomplished poet herself, several of her poems appear in Charles’s personal manuscript. The couple had three children – Marie, Countess of Foix (1457-1493), Louis (1462-1515), and Anne, Abbess of Fontevrault and Poitiers (1464-1491). Louis would later become King Louis XII of France. Charles was finally able settle down at his favorite residence of Blois, where he became a patron of literature, hosted other authors including François Villon, and continued to write. He died in 1465 and his French poetry would be well-remembered, though his English work would remain more obscure until the twentieth century.

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Bibliography

Arn, Mary-Jo. Fortunes Stabilnes: Charles of Orleans’s English Book of Love : A Critical Edition. Binghamton, New York: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1995.

------, ed. Charles d’ Orléans in England (1415-1440). Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000.

Holinshed, Raphael. Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Vol. 3. London: J. Johnson, 1807.