MAHAUT, COUNTESS OF ARTOIS 



Though Mahaut did not live the allotted 

 three score years and ten, she lived long enough 

 to see seven kings on the throne of France, two 

 of whom Philip the Fifth and Charles the 

 Fourth were her sons-in-law. She was a mere 

 child when her great-uncle, King Louis, died in 

 1270. In 1285, the year in which Philip the 

 Fourth, surnamed le Bel, ascended the throne, 

 she wedded Otho, Count Palatine of Burgundy, 

 a widower of forty-five, a companion in arms of her 

 father, and a brave and generous man, who died 

 fighting for his country, but one absolutely in- 

 capable in administration, and, as a consequence, 

 always in debt and in the clutches of the usurer. 

 There are few documents to throw any light on 

 her life until after Otho's death in 1303. This 

 may be due partly to the fact that she only came 

 into her great possessions on her father's death in 

 1302, and partly to the circumstance that the 

 careless and luxurious expenditure of her husband 

 in no small degree dissipated her resources, and 

 naturally prevented, for the time, any material 

 encouragement of art. Doubtless also much of 

 her time was spent in superintending the educa- 

 tion of her children two daughters who were 

 destined to marry kings of France, and a son who 

 was born a peer of the realm, and inheritor of 

 one of its richest territories. But adverse fate, 

 by the disgrace of one of her daughters, and the 

 death of her son, intervened to darken these 

 brilliant prospects, and forms a grey background 

 to her otherwise wonderful and glorious career. 



87 



