d'Artois who had sought to deprive the
Countess Mahaut of her heritage. He was a man of most unhappy character,
and rested under the cloud of charges of forgery and other malpractices.
To conclude briefly the part of his story which connects him with Mahaut
d'Artois, we may recall the claim he made upon Artois just before
Mahaut's death, based upon documents forged for him by the wicked Jeanne
de Divion. When Jeanne was brought up to be interrogated, her whole
story broke down the attempts to employ the black art against the king,
which she ascribed to Mahaut, and the documents she had pretended to
discover in the archives of Thierry d'Hirecon--all was shown to be but
puerile fabrication. It was in vain for her to protest that she had
acted in these things at the instigation of the wife of Robert d'Artois;
she was burned as a witch and a forger. Robert, terrified by the
unmasking of his complicity in the forgery, did not await his trial, but
fled to Flanders and thence to England, while his wife, Jeanne de
Valois, although she was the king's sister, was banished to Normandy. It
was the utter wreck of the fortunes of the pair. We regret to find the
name of Jeanne de Montfort linked with that of this pitiful, disgraced
knight, whom people did not hesitate to accuse of having poisoned his
aunt, Mahaut d'Artois, and her daughter, Jeanne, both of whom had died
suddenly within a few months of each other.

The war was now to assume proportions far greater than had been at first
contemplated; it was become a war between the two kingdoms, and in this
greater drama we all but lose sight of Jeanne de Montfort. Michelet
remarks that, with curious inconsistency, Philippe VI. was upholding in
Brittany the right of the female line, while he denied that right in his
own kingdom, and Edward III. espoused the right of the male line in
Brittany and maintained that of the female in France. The inconsistency
mattered not to either monarch; in each case merely a pretext was sought
for increasing the dignity of his own crown.

Jean de Montfort, in whose behalf his countess had been conducting the
war in Brittany, escaped from his prison in the Louvre in the spring of
1345, and made his way to England. Furnished with an army by Edward, he
returned to Brittany, but was repulsed before Quimper, and died at
Hennebon, in September, leaving his claims to his young son and their
prosecution to his heroic widow. With the aid of the English, Jeanne