in 8vo,
with maps.]

CHAPTER IV

THE JOURNEY TO NANCY--THE ITINERARY OF VAUCOULEURS--TO
SAINTE-CATHERINE-DE-FIERBOIS

By giving his eldest daughter, Isabelle, the heiress of Lorraine, in
marriage to Rene, the second son of Madame Yolande, Queen of Sicily
and of Jerusalem, and Duchess of Anjou,[423] Duke Charles II of
Lorraine, who was in alliance with the English, had recently done his
cousin and friend, the Duke of Burgundy, a bad turn. Rene of Anjou,
now in his twentieth year, was a man of culture as much in love with
sound learning as with chivalry, and withal kind, affable, and
gracious. When not engaged in some military expedition and in wielding
the lance he delighted to illuminate manuscripts. He had a taste for
flower-decked gardens and stories in tapestry; and like his fair
cousin the Duke of Orleans he wrote poems in French.[424] Invested
with the duchy of Bar by the Cardinal Duke of Bar, his great-uncle,
he would inherit the duchy of Lorraine after the death of Duke Charles
which could not be far off. This marriage was rightly regarded as a
clever stroke on the part of Madame Yolande. But he who reigns must
fight. The Duke of Burgundy, ill content to see a prince of the house
of Anjou, the brother-in-law of Charles of Valois, established between
Burgundy and Flanders, stirred up against Rene the Count of Vaudemont,
who was a claimant of the inheritance of Lorraine. The Angevin policy
rendered a reconciliation between the Duke of Burgundy and the King of
France difficult. Thus was Rene of Anjou involved in the quarrels of
his father-in-law of Lorraine. It befell that in this year, 1429, he
was waging war against the citizens of Metz, the War of the Basketful
of Apples.[425] It was so called because the cause of war was a
basketful of apples which had been brought into the town of Metz
without paying duty to the officers of the Duke of Lorraine.[426]

[Footnote 423: Le Pere Anselme, _Histoire genealogique de la maison de
France_, vol. ii, p. 218. Ludovic Drapeyron, _Jeanne d'Arc et Philippe
le Bon_, in _Revue de Geographie_, November, 1886, p. 236. S. Luce,
_Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy_, pp. lxvi, cxcix.]

[Footnote 424: _Oeuvres du Roi Rene_, by Le Comte de Quatrebarbes,
Angers, 1845, vol. i, preface, pp. lxxvi _et seq._ Lecoy de la Marche,
_Le Roi Rene, sa vie, son administration, ses travaux artistiques et
litteraires_, Paris, 1875, 2 vols. in 8vo, and Giry, Review in the
_Revue critique_.]

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