selection of topics. In every country of Eu- that good wishes for the bliss of Empress rope there are still men whose hearts can re- Eugenia should be damped by doubts and spond to the sentimentfears. By casting with us a quick and comDulce et decorum est PRO PATRIA mori. - Hor.prehensive glance over the memoirs of the royal ladies to whom we have alluded, the Such men would have esteemed it more judi- reader will be convinced of the great preponcious to have avoided any mention of the de-derance of cares, crimes, and sorrows, over ceased father of Eugenia de Montijo, than to peace, innocence, and felicity, in their lives. have announced him as one who, in the strug-We will commence our summary with the gle of Spain for independence, fought against reign of Charlemagne, as a remarkable era, his own countrymen, and with the invaders and sufficiently early for our purpose. of his native land. The unnecessary allusion to the bereaved Duchess of Orleans is in such bad taste, that to comment on it would be a continuation of the fault. But we must excuse the inconsistencies of Charlemagne, A. D. 768 (date of his accession). His first wife was HERMENGARDE (daughter of Desiderius, King of the Lombards), whom he had been persuaded by his mother, Bertha, whom he divorced in two years after his to wed, contrary to his inclinations, and accession, on the plea of her ill health. She had the grief to see her father dethroned by Charlemagne, whose prisoner he died. The desolate Lombard princess died in obscurity. The second wife, HILDEGARDE, a noble Swabian, was fair, wise, and good, but was calumniated by Taland, a half-brother of Charle who (in revenge for her disdain of his magne, a man too much in love to see the import of all he said; and we must not, in common courtesy, omit for his bride the customary compliment to all brides, the expression of our good wishes. We wish her happiness, and the more willingly for the sake of the good blood in her veins the blood of worthy, Bagacious, and patriotic Scotland (derived, not from her father, but from her mother, a Kirkpatrick). May the "canny drop" be allowed free circulation through her heart! Yes, we wish her happiness willingly, but very doubt-own proffered addresses) accused her of crimifully; not because she has wedded a Bona- nality with a foreign knight, during the king's parte, for the men of that name have not the conceal herself from her incensed husband, expedition against a German tribe. Obliged to reputation of unkind husbands (even to the she lived in great poverty, till her accuser, wives they repudiated), and she might be very struck with remorse after a dangerous illness, happy with Louis Napoleon in another sphere; declared her innocence. In memory of her not merely because her position is trying, and restoration to her home and her good fame, apparently insecure, but because she places she founded, in Swabia, the Abbey of Kempon her head the crown matrimonial of France -a circlet with which some dark fatality is written the history of her patience and her sten; in the annals of which religious house seems connected; for, among the many fair suffering (during her concealment), and her brows on which it has rested, there are very noble forgiveness of her persecutor. But her few that it has left without a blight or a recovered happiness was brief; she was snatched by death from her numerous chil dren at the early age of twenty-six, in 784. wound. When our memory passes in review the royal and imperial wives of France, we are surprised to see how many have been divorced, how many broken-hearted, how many have left a disgraceful name behind to posterity. And among the smaller number, the innocent and the happy, how many have been snatched away by a premature death, or have been early and sadly widowed! The crown matrimonial of France has been borne, by the majority of its wearers, unworthily, unhappily, or too briefly. For some it has been imbued, as it were, with a disfiguring stain; for others, lined with sharp, cruel thorns; for others, wreathed with the funereal cypress. If history, holding her mirror to our view, Bids us in the past descry The visions of futurity,* with such a history of French queens and empresses before our eyes, it is but natural Quoted from the Prologue to Bland's Translations from the Greek Anthology. FASTRADE, the third consort, daughter of Raoul, Count of Franconia, so disgusted the People by her arrogance, that a conspiracy count of her influence over him. This plot, though abortive, caused Fastrade much mortification and anxiety; and she died very young, in 794, as much hated as her prede was formed to dethrone her husband on ao cessor had been lamented. Charlemagne, handsome, generous, and literLUTGARDE, a German, the last consort of ary, loved her husband; and to enjoy his chase. But he was faithless to her, choosing society, usually accompanied him to the for his favorite one of the ladies of her train. Whatever mortification Lutgarde might have felt was soon terminated by death. She died She enjoyed the friendship of the learned Alcuin (disciple of the venerable Bede), at whose persuasion Charlemagne founded the University of Paris. young and childless (in A. D. 800), after a formed an attachment for Richilde, sister of union of little more than four years. Boson, King of Provence, and ill-treated Hermentrude, whom he sought to divorce, but found public opinion too strong in her favor. The unhappy wife died, overwhelmed with cares, A. D. 869, and was buried at S. Denis. children (four sons and a daughter) died young. After her husband's death she lived a most licentious life, and pillaged and fired houses in her Bacchanalian riotings, until the Bishop of Rheims threatened her with excommunication unless she restrained her disgraceful conduct. Louis I. (le Debonnaire). 814. His first wife was HERMENGARDE, daughter of Ingram, Count of Hesbay. She has left an unenviable reputation as cruel and despotic. In three months after her death Louis marWhen Bernard, a petty Italian king, who re- ried RICHILDE, who hated, and was hated by volted against Louis, had been conquered, Her- her stepsons, and fomented great disorders in mengarde sentenced him and his adherents to the royal family. Having accompanied the death; and though the sentence was commuted king in his expedition against the countries by Louis, she caused the eyes of Bernard to be on the Rhine, on his defeat she was obliged pulled out, and such tortures to be inflicted to fly from Heristal in the middle of the night, on him, that he expired in consequence. She without clothes or money; suffered great herself died soon after her victim; having, hardships, and lay in by the roadside, with however, been more fortunate in her lot than no one near her but one attendant. All her her predecessors, for she had enjoyed a peaceable wedded life for twenty-one years. Her successor, JUDITH, daughter of Welf of Bavaria, was an artful and licentious woman, whose bad conduct caused her step-sons (children of Hermengarde), to revolt, filling the kingdom with trouble. They published her profligacy with Bernard (the son of her husband's tutor), whom she, by her influence over Louis, caused to be created Duke of ANSGARDE, the daughter of a Count HarSeptimanie. She was taken by her step-sons, douin, was privately wedded by Louis, during and imprisoned in a convent at Poictiers, and the life of his father, Charles the Bald, and compelled to pronounce the vows; but was lib-bore him two sons, Louis (afterwards king), erated by her husband when he had put down and Carloman; but being of an inferior rank, the revolt, she having solemnly sworn to her Charles compelled her husband, whom she innocence. Again the young princes re- tenderly loved, to divorce her, and to esponse volted; and Judith, again captive, was sent to Tortona, in Italy, and her young son Charles separated from her, and shut up in a monastery; the unfortunate Louis himself being confined at St. Medard; from whence he was released only on submitting to some very abject conditions. He received back his wife and her son, but soon died of grief. Judith survived him but three years; having, however, lived to see the murder of her favorite Bernard, by the hands of her son Charles, who stabbed him for a revolt. She has left an odious name in the records of history. Charles I. (the Bald). 840. Louis II. (the Stammerer). 870. ADELAIDE, daughter of Count Begon, whose life was embittered by her doubtful position; for, on the death of Charles the Bald, Ansgarde obtained from Pope John VIII. the establishment of her children's rights, because Charles had not applied to the ecclesiastical power to sanction the divorce between her and his son Louis. Wherefore Adelaide was generally accounted only the concubine of Louis, and the deserted Ansgarde as his lawful wife. Adelaide, who suffered great uneasiness of mind, was enceinte at the time of Louis' death, in 879, and had a posthumous son, Charles, surnamed the Simple. Charles III. (the Fat.) 884. He married first HERMENTRUDE, daughter of He married in 877 RICHARDA, a lady of Odo, Count of Orleans. She was prudent Scottish birth. She was esteemed for wisdom and good, but her life was one of sorrow. and virtue; but was accused by her feebleHer eldest son, Louis, had an impediment in minded and credulous husband of infidelity his speech; her second son, Charles, died with his prime minister, Luitgard, Bishop of young; her third son, Carloman, rebelling Verceil. Richarda in vain protested her inagainst his father, because the latter required nocence, offering to submit to the ordeals of him to become a monk against his will, was fire and water; she was divorced, and retired taken prisoner, had his eyes put out, and was to a convent in Alsace, which she had imprisoned in the Abbey of Corbie. Her only founded, and lived there ten years in retiredaughter Judith, widow of Ethelbald, King ment. of England, eloped from the court with Baldwin of Flanders, causing great scandal and Charles IV. (the Simple). 893. trouble. Hermentrude had not the consola-sister of Beuves, Bishop of Chalons-sur-Marne, tion of her husband's affection; for Louis * In the country of Liege. Her oldest son, who reigned as Louis III., died unmarried, as did also his brother Carloman. offers nothing remarkable. She had four daughters, but no son; and died 918, after a marriage of eleven years. the marriage was an ill-suited one; for Blanche was animated, and Louis inert, and so much disliked her vivacity, that he often retired from her company to a country residence. She became corrupt in her conduct, and attached herself to the Count de Verdon, and afterwards to several others. At length she poisoned Louis, after a short reign of fifteen months; and in him ended the Carlovinian race. Blanche re-married with Hugh, eldest son of Hugh Capet, the next heir, for whose benefit she removed her first husband, but shortly afterwards died childless. His second wife was OGINA, an English princess, sister of King Athelstane. Her royalty was clouded. Her husband was dethroned by his subjects, and imprisoned at St. Quentin, where he died in great misery. Ogina, divided from him, fled to England for the protection of her only child, Louis, thence surnamed Outremer, or 66 beyond sea. On her son's recall, after thirteen years of exile, she returned to France, where she married (at the age of forty-five) Herbert Count of Vermandois, then but twenty years of age, and son of Herbert de Vermandois, who had betrayed and imprisoned her royal husband, the dethroned Charles. This ill-assorted marriage alienated the love and respect of her son, King Louis. Ogina lived happily, how-years, dying in 989. ever, with her young husband, but only for two years, as she died in childbirth, 853. Louis IV. (Outremer). 936. He married GERBERGA of Saxony, daughter of Emperor Henry the Fowler, and widow of Gilbert Duke of Lorraine, who was drowned in attempting to cross the Rhine on horseback, to escape the pursuit of Louis d'Outremer, then at war with him. Gerberga defended her dead lord's fortress so gallantly, that when King Louis at length succeeded in taking it, he admired the spirit of his fair adversary so much that he offered her his hand and throne. She was loved and respected by Louis, whose friend and counsellor she was; but her lot had many cares. The king, in an expedition, was made prisoner, and remained a year in captivity; her young son Carleman died while a hostage for his father; others of her children also died young; and she survived her affectionate husband. Lothaire. 954. Married, in 966, EMMA, daughter of Lothaire, King of Italy. She was depraved, and gave cause of scandal with Adalberon, Bishop of Laon; and then poisoned her husband, in the hope of reigning in the name of her son, an only child, Louis le Faineant, or the Idle. Louis, on his accession, threatened Adalberon and herself with punishment; but he, too, died by poison; and the Duke of Lorraine, uncle to the king, imprisoned both Emma and Adalberon, and treated them with severity. Emma escaped from prison in 988, but became a miserable outcast and wanderer, and died in the following year. Louis V. (le Faineant). 986. By some writers she is called Constance. Hugh Capet. 987. His queen was ADELAIDE of Guinne, who appears to have lived in tranquillity; but enjoyed her elevation to the throne only two Robert (the Devout). 997. His first wife was BERTHA, daughter of Conof Blois. But the Pope, Gregory V., prorad of Burgundy, and widow of Odo, Count nounced their marriage invalid, because Robert had been sponsor to one of Bertha's children by her first marriage, which circumstance had constituted what the canons of Rome termed "a spiritual affinity" between them. attached, and refused to separate. The Pope But the royal pair was strongly laid France under an interdict; Robert and Bertha retired to the Castle of Vaivert, near Paris, where they were rendered miserable by crowds of their subjects daily haunting them, with piteous entreaties that they would consent to part, and so terminate the evils the kingdom was enduring from the interdict. All their friends and attendants fled from them; and they would have been utterly desolate, but for two servants who remained to aid them, but who, notwithstanding, viewed their wretched master and mistress with such horror, that they passed through the fire for purification everything which had been touched by the excommunicated couple. The king remained firm, refusing to forsake his unhappy wife; she lay in of a premature birth from grief, and Robert being assured that she had produced a monster with the neck of a goose,* he considered this (fictitious) occurrence as a proof of the wrath of Heaven, and at length consented to give her up. In two years after, Bertha, still loving, and who still called herself queen, went to Rome to solicit the new Pope (Sylvester II.) to establish her marriage; but while she was urging her suit, Robert, *A similar legend was related of Bertha, queen of Pepin, and mother of Charlemagne, who was said to have borne a child with the leg of a goose. And, strange to say, Bertha herself is represented in effigies still extent, with one foot that of a goose. Louis to be detained a prisoner in England, whither he had gone to attend the coronation of Henry I.; but being thwarted by the good faith of the English king, she administered to Louis a poison, which he discovered in time to defeat by an antidote, but his face ever after remained colorless. Bertrade incurred reproach and contempt for continuing to receive the visits of Philip at the chateau of the Count Foulques; but after the king's death, she became a prey to remorse, and retired to a convent, where she inflicted on herself such severe penances, that she fell a victim to her austerities, and, in 1117, closed her evil and troubled life. made another alliance, and the unhappy divorce Bertrade, and restore her to her first Bertha retired to a convent, and died 1016. husband. During her short union with CONSTANCE, Robert's second wife, daughter Philip, Bertrade had plotted to cause his son of William Count of Provence, was beautiful, but haughty, violent, and hard-hearted. Robert disliked her so much that he would never term her wife or queen; and took, to console, him, a mistress, Almafrede, who had been betrothed to a Count de Beauvoir, at which Constance was so much chagrined that she caused the count to be assassinated, in revenge for his having yielded his claim on the hand of Almafrede. Robert, in consequence, sought to divorce Constance; but the bishops of the realm interfered to prevent him. Thirteen persons, accused of heresy, being sentenced to the flames at Orleans, in 1022, Constance chose to be present at this dreadful spectacle; and perceiving amongst the condeinned, one Stephen, who had for- Louis VI. (le Gros, or the Fat). 1108. merly been her confessor, she was so much He married ADELAIDE, daughter of Humincensed against him, that she attacked the bert Count of Maurienne. She was lovely wretched man on his way to the scene of his and amiable, and forms an exception to this torture, and thrust out one of his eyes with gloomy list of regal consorts, for she lived her staff. Her eldest and favorite son died happily and worthily with Louis. One grief, young, leaving the succession (to her great however, she felt in the premature death of chagrin) to her second son, Henry, whom she her eldest son, Philip, by a fall from his hated; and she fomented strife in the royal horse. After the king's decease, she married family by her endeavors to place on the throne Matthieu Sire de Montmorency, Constable of her youngest son, to the prejudice of Henry; France, from whom, after fifteen years, she and she excited her children to rebel against separated, to retire to a cloister she had their father, and to quarrel among them- founded. selves, till they were obliged to fly far from her baneful influence. After her husband's death, she conspired against her son, then reigning; but was defeated, and closed an odious life at the Castle of Melun, 1032, and was buried at St. Denis. Henry I. 1031. Louis VII. (the Young). 1137. His first wife, ELEANOR of Aquitaine, dis gusted him by the gross improprieties of her conduct in the Holy Land, whither she had accompanied him, and where she had incurred scandal with the celebrated sultan, Saladin, and others; and even with her own uncle, Raymond of Poictiers. Louis, therefore, divorced her, and she immediately married again with Henry II. of England. But He married ANNE, daughter of the Grand Duke of Muscovy, whose life with him appears to have passed in tranquillity. But after his death, having contracted with Raoul the shadow of the crown matrimonial of Count de Crespy, an ill-advised marriage (for which she was excommunicated, and was finally divorced), she displeased her son, the reigning monarch, and finding herself deserted by her former friends, she retired to Russia, separated forever from her children. Philip I. 1060. France rested upon her still; witness her well-known unhappiness with Henry, their mutual dislike, her jealousy, the discords she excited between her sons and their father, and her deserved and long imprisonment. CONSTANCE, daughter of Alphonso, King of Castille, second wife of Louis, was worthy of the influence she possessed over his heart; but their happiness was very brief, being terminated in four years by the early death of Constance in childbirth. She was buried at St. Denis. The third queen of Louis, ALICE, daughter of Thibaut, Count of Campagne, and niece of our English king, lived peacefully, as it appears, and, surviving her husband, was regent for her son. His first wife, BERTHA, daughter of Fleuri, Count of Holland, lived happily with him for many years, till his affections were alienated by Bertrade, wife of Foulques le Requin, Count of Anjou; and, accordingly, he divorced Bertha, to make way for the beautiful but evil-disposed BERTRADE, who, being repudiated by the complaisant Foulques at the king's desire, married the latter in 1073, a step which roused the indignation of the Philip II. (surnamed Augustus). 1186. nobles and the Pope Urban II.; and Philip, His first wife, ISABEL, daughter of the Count compelled by excommunication, submitted to of Hainault, was married to him when both Louis IX. (St. Louis). 1226. When only nineteen, he married MARGARET, daughter of Raymond Berenger Count of Toulouse, who was herself but fifteen. She had every advantage of person, mind, and heart, and was ever beloved by Louis. But in her early days she experienced great vexation from her mother-in-law, Blanche, who so entirely separated the affectionate young couple, that she would not permit them even to converse together. On one occasion when Margaret was dangerously ill, and Louis had ventured to her room to inquire after her health, his mother, finding him there, took him by the hand to lead him out; and the poor invalid called to her in tears—“What, madame! will you not suffer me, either living or dying, to speak to my lord and husband?" After the death of Blanche, the domestic happiness of Margaret was unbroken, if we except her natural grief at losing six of her eleven children. But her greatest affliction was the loss of St. Louis, who died of the plague in Tunis. She died 1295, and was buried at St. Denis. bride and bridegroom were only twelve years was so fair that she was called Candide, and of age. Philip having afterwards quarrelled was good, prudent, and pious. She enjoyed with her uncle, the Count of Flanders, the her husband's love in a happy union of twengirlish queen, then but seventeen, was ac- ty-six years. Yet she was not exempt from cused by some malicious persons of taking royal anxieties; for during her regency for part with the count against her husband, who, her son (St. Louis), she had many troubles, imbibing a dislike to her, exiled her from cares, and difficulties, on account of the incourt, and sent her to live in a kind of dis-surgent nobles and the Bretons. She had grace at Sens. At length relenting, he re-lost four sons and a daughter in infancy, and called her; but her young and clouded life she finally died of grief at Maubuisson, on was terminated by her dying in childbirth at hearing that her son, St. Louis, who had gone the age of twenty-one. Her successor was to Palestine, was a prisoner in Egypt. INGERBURG, daughter of Waldemar, King of Denmark. She was beautiful, with a profusion of fair hair, and was scarcely seventeen when married. The day after the nuptials she was crowned. During the rites Philip was observed to gaze upon her, and then to turn pale; and became so troubled, that he could scarcely be induced by his ministers to allow the ceremony to continue. But in a fortnight afterwards he called a council and divorced the poor young foreigner, who, on learning from an interpreter what the proceedings meant, burst into tears, exclaiming in a broken dialect-"Bad France!-Rome!" implying that she appealed to Rome from the injustice of France. But Philip brutally imprisoned her in the convent of Cisoin, near Lisle, and left her in such penury, that she was often dependent on her needlework for her food. In 1196, Philip married AGNES, the lovely and amiable daughter of the Duke of Merania. But Pope Celestine, at the instance of Canute, Ingerburg's brother, annulled the divorce of the latter, and dissolved the marriage of Agnes and Philip. The king refused to renounce his new wife, and shut up Ingerburg in a still more rigorous imprisonment than before, at Etampes. The kingdom was laid under an interdict, and a council was called at Soissons, where the cause of Ingerburg was pleaded so earnestly, that Philip, without waiting for the termination, silently retired; and riding to the prison of the young Dane, placed her behind him on horseback, and, without any attendants or respect, carried her to Paris, and acknowledged her as queen. Agnes de Merania, seeing herself abandoned, died of grief soon after at the Castle of Poissi. After her death, Philip again cast off the so-often insulted Ingerburg, and again imprisoned her; but was constrained by the Pope to release and recall her to court, where she continued to reside meekly and patiently, ill-treated by the king, but pitied by the people. She survived her tyrant, who has incurred the odium of making three lovely and virtuous young women undeservedly miserable. Louis VIII. (the Lion). 1223. Philip III. (the Hardy). 1270. His first wife, ISABEL, daughter of James I. King of Arragon, was only fifteen at the time of her marriage, and had a fair prospect of happiness, had life been spared. But she died at twenty-five, in consequence of a fall from her horse, which occasioned premature confinement. She was buried at St. Denis. The second queen of Philip, MARY OF BRABANT, daughter of Henry, Duke of Brabant, was handsome and intellectual, and was at first beloved by her husband. But a gulf was soon opened between them by the calumny of a man named La Brosse, an upstart favorite of Philip, who accused Mary of having poisoned Louis, the son of her predecessor Isabel. Philip imprisoned the queen, and treated her with rigor. But her brother, then Duke of Brabant, came forward in her defence; and, after a searching examination, La Brosse was convicted (by the confession of one of his tools) of the young prince's murder, and was hanged. Mary was honorably acquitted; but she had suffered severely, in mind and in health, from the trials and indignities to |