Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 5, 1895 - Miscellanies, Volume II

CHARLES OF ORLEANS
modern mind this seems as honourable to his father's
memory as if John the Fearless had been hanged as
high as Haman. And as things fell out, except a
recantation from the University of Paris, which had
justified the murder out of party feehng, and various
other purely paper reparations, this was about the
outside of what Charles was to effect in that direc-
tion. He lived five years, and grew up from sixteen
to twenty-one, in the midst of the most horrible
civil war, or series of civil wars, that ever devastated
France ; and from first to last his wars were ill-
starred, or else his victories useless. Two years after
the murder (March 1409), John the Fearless having
the upper hand for the moment, a shameful and
useless reconcihation took place, by the King's
command, in the Church of Our Lady at Chartres.
The advocate of the Duke of Burgundy stated that
Louis of Orleans had been killed 'for the good of
the King's person and realm.' Charles and his
brothers, with tears of shame, under protest, pour
ne pas desobeir au roi, forgave their father's mur-
derer and swore peace upon the missal. It was, as
I say, a shameful and useless ceremony ; the very
grefiier, entering it in his register, wrote in the
margin, ^ Pax, paoc, inquit Propheta, et non est
pax.'^
Charles was soon after allied with the abominable
Bernard d'Armagnac, even betrothed or married to
a daughter of his, called by a name that sounds like
a contradiction in terms. Bonne d'Armagnac. From
1 Michelet, iv. pp. 123-24.
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