CHARLES D’ORLÉANS
(1394–1465). Son of Valentina, daughter of the duke of Milan, and Louis, duke of
Orléans and brother of King Charles VI. In 1407, Louis was murdered by John the
Fearless, duke of Burgundy, and Valentine died at Blois the following year. In 1406,
Charles had married Isabelle, widow of Richard II of England and daughter of Charles
VI. The year after her death in 1409, he married Bonne d’Armagnac. Captured by the
English at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, Charles spent the next twenty-five years in
England in the custody of several noblemen. Bonne died in France during this period.
Released in 1440, Charles returned joyfully to France and soon afterward married
fourteen-year-old Marie de Clèves, niece of Philip of Burgundy, who had helped to
arrange his release. After a period of political involvement, he spent most of his
remaining years at Blois, where two daughters and a son who was to become King Louis
XII were born.
During the last fifteen years of his life at Blois, Charles received many visitors, who
joined with members of his household to participate in poetry contests. Samples of this
literary activity have survived in a manuscript (B.N. fr. 25458) that served as Charles’s
personal album, in which he recorded in his own hand his own poems, had some entered
by scribes, and also invited members of his entourage and visitors to make contributions.
Included in this collection are poems by important political figures of the day, by writers
with established reputations, and even by the itinerant poet and sometime criminal
François Villon, who may have received a small allowance while living at the court.
Charles often proposed the first line of a rondeau or ballade and asked his entourage to
write a poem following the restrictions of the prescribed form. It was under these
circumstances that Villon wrote Je meurs de suef auprés de la fontaine, probably in 1457
or 1458. Villon’s other poem in the collection, Épître a Marie d’Orléans, was probably
composed to celebrate the birth of Charles’s daughter in December 1457. The wit and
good-natured bantering found in the poems written at the court of Blois serve as evidence
of an unusually pleasant and relaxed atmosphere, in which poetry writing was an
agreeable pastime.
Charles and his two younger brothers, Philippe and Jean, received a traditional
medieval education under the direction of a private tutor. Writing in verse seems to have
come naturally, since the first work attributed to Charles, Le livre contre tout péché, was
written at the age of ten. His numerous poetic works include the Complainte de France,
written in 1433 after he had been in England for many years; Retenue d’amours,
composed prior to his capture; the Songe en complainte (1437), a 550-line sequel to
Retenue d’amours; eighty-nine chansons and five complaintes written in England,
perhaps after Bonne’s death; 123 ballades written mostly during but also after his
captivity; four caroles; and 435 rondeaux written mostly at Blois. In addition to the
poems in French, about 125 in English, many with French counterparts, are attributed to
him with increasing confidence.
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