The Queen was on the eve of her confinement, so the news of what had happened was obliged to be kept from her, in fact it was forbidden to be told her on pain of death.[143] The Duke of Burgundy seized the government,[144] to which he had no right, the Duc de Berry being his elder brother, and the Duc d’Orléans the nearest in blood to the King. But, as Sismondi remarks, the Duke of Burgundy was the least incapable of the three, and the people, who hated them all, made no opposition.
The Duchess of Burgundy established herself with the Queen on pretence of taking care of her, and remained there, dictating, meddling, and taking precedence of every one. A daughter was born to the Queen very soon afterwards, and as an offering for the restoration of the King, Isabeau, when she heard of the calamity, named the child Marie and dedicated her to religion.[145]
Meanwhile the court was in a ferment. The King’s uncles, directly they got the power into their own hands, began to persecute those of the party opposed to them.[146] The Duchess of Burgundy, furious against Clisson for causing the King to go to war with the Duc de Bretagne, who was her cousin and great friend, incited her husband against him. Clisson fled from the country, so did several others, including the Seigneur de Noviant who had incurred the enmity of the Duke of Burgundy by refusing to give him thirty thousand crowns out of the treasury without the King’s knowledge.[147] He and Bureau de la Rivière, who had been a most intimate friend of Charles V., were caught, thrown into the Bastille, and condemned to death. But, fortunately for the latter, the little Duchesse de Berry, whose marriage he had arranged, and whom he had himself fetched from the castle of Gaston de Foix, had ever since that time been exceedingly fond of him. When she heard that he was arrested and in danger of his life, with the Duke and Duchess of Burgundy resolved on his destruction, the Queen absolutely indifferent, and the King powerless to help him, she resolved to save him herself. She was then about fifteen years old, and she hurried to the Duc de Berry, threw herself on her knees before him crying and declaring that La Rivière was falsely accused, that no one dared speak for him but herself, that he had made her marriage, for which she was much obliged to him, that the duke ought to feel the same, that it would be the deepest ingratitude to desert him to whom they owed their happiness, and that if he were put to death she would never be happy again, but would spend every day “_en tristesse et douleur_.”[148] The Duke, who adored her, comforted her and promised that his life should be spared. He went to the King who, though not recovered, was in a state sufficiently rational to be made to understand and give a command, and got from him the order for his pardon, in which the Seigneur de Noviant shared. They were exiled, but later on the Duchesse de Berry, of whom the King was very fond, got all their castles restored to them.[149] The Duke and Duchess of Burgundy were furious, but they could do nothing.