Page:EB1911 - Volume 03.djvu/830

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BERRY, DUKE OF—BERRYER
809

but who is known in history as the comte de Chambord. A daughter, afterwards duchess of Parma, was born in 1819.

The duchess of Berry was compelled to follow Charles X. to Holyrood after July 1830, but it was with the resolution of returning speedily and making an attempt to secure the throne for her son. From England she went to Italy, and in April 1832 she landed near Marseilles, but, receiving no support, was compelled to make her way towards the loyal districts of Vendée and Brittany. Her followers, however, were defeated, and, after remaining concealed for five months in a house in Nantes, she was betrayed to the government and imprisoned in the castle of Blaye. Here she gave birth to a daughter, the fruit of a secret marriage contracted with an Italian nobleman, Count Ettore Lucchesi-Palli (1805–1864). The announcement of this marriage at once deprived the duchess of the sympathies of her supporters. She was no longer an object of fear to the French government, who released her in June 1833. She set sail for Sicily, and, joining her husband, lived in retirement from that time till her death, at Brunnensee in Switzerland, in April 1870.


BERRY, JOHN, Duke of (1340–1416), third son of John II., king of France and Bonne of Luxemburg, was born on the 30th of November 1340 at Vincennes. He was created count of Poitiers in 1356, and was made the king’s lieutenant in southern France, though the real power rested chiefly with John of Armagnac, whose daughter Jeanne he married in 1360. The loss of his southern possessions by the treaty of Bretigny was compensated by the fiefs of Auvergne and Berry, with the rank of peer of France. The duke went to England in 1360 as a hostage for the fulfilment of the treaty of Bretigny, returning to France in 1367 on the pretext of collecting his ransom. He took no leading part in the war against the English, his energies being largely occupied with the satisfaction of his artistic and luxurious tastes. For this reason perhaps his brother Charles V. assigned him no share in the government during the minority of Charles VI. He received, however, the province of Languedoc. The peasant revolt of the Tuchins and Coquins, as the insurgents were called, was suppressed with great harshness, and the duke exacted from the states of Languedoc assembled at Lyons a fine of £15,000. He fought at Rosebeke in 1382 against the Flemings and helped to suppress the Parisian revolts. By a series of delays he caused the failure of the naval expedition prepared at Sluys against England in 1386, and a second accusation of military negligence led to disgrace of the royal princes and the temporary triumph of the marmousets, as the advisers of the late king were nicknamed. Charles VI. visited Languedoc in 1389–1390, and enquired into his uncle’s government. The duke was deprived of the government of Languedoc, and his agent, Bétizac, was burnt. When in 1401 he was restored, he delegated his authority in the province, where he was still hated, to Bérnard d’Armagnac. In 1396 he negotiated a truce with Richard II. of England, and his marriage with the princess Isabella of France. He tried to mediate between his brother Philip the Bold of Burgundy and his nephew Louis, duke of Orleans, and later between John “sans Peur” of Burgundy and Orleans. He broke with John after the murder of Orleans, though he tried to prevent civil war, and only finally joined the Armagnac party in 1410. In 1413 he resumed his rôle of mediator, and was for a short time tutor to the dauphin. He died in Paris on the 15th of June 1416, leaving vast treasures of jewelry, objects of art, and especially of illuminated MSS., many of which have been preserved. He decorated the Sainte Chapelle at Bourges; he built the Hôtel de Nesle in Paris, and palaces at Poitiers, Bourges, Mehun-sur-Yèvre and elsewhere.

See also L. Raynal, Histoire du Berry (Bourges, 1845); “Jean, duc de Berry,” in S Luce, La France pendant la guerre de Cent Ans (1890), vol. i.; Toulgoët-Tréanna, in Mém. de la Soc. des antiquaires du centre, vol. xvii. (1890). His beautiful illuminated Livre d’heures was reproduced (Paris, fol. 1904) by P. Durrieu.


BERRY, or Berri, a former province of France, absorbed in 1790 in the departments of Cher, corresponding roughly with Haut-Berry, and Indre, representing Bas-Berry. George Sand, the most famous of “berrichon” writers, has described the quiet scenery and rural life of the province in the rustic novels of her later life. Berry is the civitas or pagus Bituricensis of Gregory of Tours. The Bituriges were said by Livy (v. 34) to have been the dominating tribe in Gaul in the 7th century, one of their kings, Ambigat, having ruled over all Gaul. In Caesar’s time they were dependent on the Aedui. The tribes inhabiting the districts of Berry and Bourbonnais were distinguished as Bituriges Cubi. The numerous menhirs and dolmens to be found in the district, to which local superstitions still cling, are probably monuments of still earlier inhabitants. In 52 B.C. the Bituriges, at the order of Vercingetorix, set fire to their towns, but spared Bourges (Avaricum) their capital, which was taken and sacked by the Romans. The province was amalgamated under Augustus with Aquitaine, and Bourges became the capital of Aquitania Prima. In 475 Berry came into the possession of the west Goths, from whom it was taken (c. 507) by Clovis. The first count of Berry, Chunibert (d. 763), was created by Waifer, duke of Aquitaine, from whom the county was wrested by Pippin the Short, who made it his residence and left it to his son Carloman, on whose death it fell to his brother Charlemagne. The countship of Berry was suppressed (926) by Rudolph, king of the Franks (fl. 923–936). Berry was for some time a group of lordships dependent directly on the crown, but the chief authority eventually passed to the viscounts of Bourges, who, while owning the royal suzerainty, preserved a certain independence until 1101, when the viscount Odo Arpin de Dun sold his fief to the crown. Berry was part of the dowry of Eleanor, wife of Louis VII., and on her divorce and remarriage with Henry II. of England it passed to the English king. Its possession remained, however, a matter of dispute until 1200, when Berry reverted by treaty with John of England to Philip Augustus, and the various fiefs of Berry were given as a dowry to John’s niece, Blanche of Castile, on her marriage with Philip’s son Louis (afterwards Louis VIII.). Philip Augustus established an effective control over the administration of the province by the appointment of a royal bailli. Berry suffered during the Hundred Years’ War, and more severely during the wars of religion in the 16th century. It had been made a duchy in 1360, and its first duke, John [Jean] (1340–1416), son of the French king John II., encouraged the arts and beautified the province with money wrung from his government of Languedoc. Thenceforward it was held as an apanage of the French crown, usually by a member of the royal family closely related to the king. Charles of France (1447–1472), brother of Louis XI, was duke of Berry, but was deprived of this province, as subsequently of the duchies of Normandy and Guienne, for intrigues against his brother. The duchy was also governed by Jeanne de Valois (d. 1505), the repudiated wife of Louis XII.[1]; by Marguerite d’Angoulême, afterwards queen of Navarre; by Marguerite de Valois, afterwards duchess of Savoy; and by Louise of Lorraine, widow of Henry III., after whose death (1601) the province was finally reabsorbed in the royal domain. The title of duke of Berry, divested of territorial significance, was held by princes of the royal house. Charles (1686–1714), duke of Berry, grandson of Louis XIV., and third son of the dauphin Louis (d. 1711), married Marie Louise Elisabeth (1686–1714), eldest daughter of the duke of Orleans, whose intrigues made her notorious. The last to bear the title of duke of Berry was the ill-fated Charles Ferdinand, grandson and heir of Charles X.


BERRYER, ANTOINE PIERRE (1790–1868), French advocate and parliamentary orator, was the son of an eminent advocate and counsellor to the parlement. He was educated at the Collège de Juilly, on leaving which he adopted the profession of the law; he was admitted advocate in 1811, and in the same year he married. In the great conflict of the period between Napoleon I. and the Bourbons, Berryer, like his father, was an ardent Legitimist; and in the spring of 1815, at the opening of the campaign of the Hundred Days, he followed Louis XVIII. to Ghent as a volunteer. After the second restoration he distinguished himself as a courageous advocate of moderation in the treatment of the military adherents of the emperor. He

  1. See R. le Maulde, Jeanne de France, duchesse d’Orléans et de Berry (Paris, 1883).