The state entry of the Sovereigns into Angers,--the major capital of the King-Duke’s dominions,--was just such another pageant as that which greeted Queen Isabeau of Bavaria in Paris in the summer of 1385. From ancient days Angers had been a place of note--the Andegavi of Gallo-Roman times, a _municipium_ and a _castrum_ combined. In the Carlovingian era the Counts--then Dukes--of the Angevines,--founders of the great Capet family,--and their vigorous consorts nursed stalwart sons, who were the superiors of their neighbour rulers in Frankland. From Geoffrey Plantagenet, titular King of Jerusalem, sprang our English Kings. Louis IX.,--St. Louis of blessed memory,--bestowed the duchy of Anjou upon his brother John with the title of King of the Two Sicilies; hence came the sovereign titles of Louis II. and Yolande.
The Castle of Angers in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was one of the most imposing in France. Flanked by eighteen great donjon towers, shaped like dice-boxes, it had the aspect of a prison rather than of a palace. The royal apartments were between two great bastions, _Le Tour du Moulin_ and _Le Tour du Diable_. The drawbridge spanned the deep, wide moat to the esplanade called _Le Pont du Monde_; beneath were dark dungeons and odious oubliettes. To honour their King and Queen, the castle household hung great swaying lengths of scarlet “noble cloth,”--newly purchased from the Florentine merchants of the “_Calimala_,”--to cover up the black slate-stone courses of the masonry of _Le Diable_, whilst they concealed the rough masonry of _Le Moulin_ by strips of gorgeous yellow canvas of Cholet d’Anjou. These were the heraldic colours of Aragon. All the gloomy slate-fronted houses of the city,--“Black Angers” it was called,--were decorated similarly, and gay Flemish carpets and showy skins of beasts were flaunted from the windows. The citizens kept holiday with bunches of greenery and early spring flowers in their hands to cast at their new liege Lady.
Queen Yolande waved her gloved hand,--a novelty in demure Angers,--in friendly response to the plaudits of the throngs, and refused no kiss of bearded mouth or cherry lips thereon as she rode on happily by the side of her royal spouse. At St. Maurice,--the noble cathedral, with its new and glorious coloured windows,--the royal cortège halted whilst _Te Deum_ was sung, and the bridal pair were sprinkled with holy water and censed. Another “Station” was made where the ascent to the castle began, for there pious loyal folk had prepared the mystery-spectacles of the “Resurrection of Christ” with “His Appearance to His Virgin Mother.” The Saviour’s features, by a typical but strange conceit, were those of the King-Duke, St. Mary’s those of the royal bride!