The Song of Blancheflor: was Charlemagne cuckolded by a dwarf?

No, he was not. Adam's Notes for February 13, 2024

(Quick reminder that Old Moon Quarterly 6, which contains my short story “Diary of the Wolf,” is out now, available in ebook and paperback.)

Stabbed in the groin at the Siege of Montargis

Blancheflor, circa 1240, is a really interesting chanson de geste because it involves not just a woman protagonist but also a peasant hero and a dog. More than that, the aristocrats are portrayed as weak and out-of-touch (Charlemagne) or scheming and outright evil (Macaire). It’s a poem of of 3700 lines and I believe it’s sometime titled Macaire after it’s villain.

Actually, it’s a bit confusing because there are a few gestes with the name Blancheflor (‘white flower’) in the title, and they aren’t the same poem but they can have overlapping plot elements. The version I’m looking at today is from Michael Newth’s Heroines of the French Epic, which is a great volume because it organizes its six poems to show the evolving role of women in the chansons de geste: they go from war prizes to be captured and wed by heroes, to wives with a duty to help advance their husbands’ interests, until finally here, where they become protagonists in their own right, generally after being falsely repudiated and then going on a sort of quest to clear their name.

Let’s dive into the story.

The prologue of twenty-three lines introduces the three most important characters to us: first, Macaire, a knave and an evil knight of the house of Ganelon. Then there’s Charlemagne, who is at the height of his powers and is said to have lived for over two hundred years. Finally there is Blancheflor, a princess of Constantinople and Charlemagne’s wife and queen.

As the story begins, Charlemagne is holding high court in Paris. Duke Naimon and Ogier the Dane are present, and we’re told that Macaire is present too, but only because he’s bribed his way to favour with the court, and now dines regularly with Charlemagne. Blancheflor is off in a pine grove with her maids, listening to a man play a lyre when Macaire comes and begins to flirt with her, and asserts that Charlemagne is too old to be a good husband. Blancheflor tries to put him off, jokes that he’s just testing her loyalty to the king. But he says he’s serious and so she has to tell him to knock it off.

Macaire then bribes a dwarf, a “ribald rogue who entertained the court,” to get close to Blancheflor and sing his praises. He carries out his mission but Blancheflor is enraged and throws the dwarf down the stairs of her tower—one of the gross parts of the chansons de geste is that whenever a dwarf shows up you can be sure he’s going to suffer some violence, usually in a vein that’s supposed to be humorous but that really hasn’t carried down through the centuries. Macaire has the dwarf bandaged and seen by a doctor, and because no one says anything about the incident the dwarf is able to play it off for laughs at court. Macaire offers the dwarf a plan for revenge: knowing the king habitually wakes earlier than his wife to go to mass, then comes back to bed when he’s done, Macaire tells the dwarf to sneak into bed with Blancheflor while the king is out, so that he can be discovered when the king comes back, but to say that it was Blancheflor’s idea. The idea is that the the king will be so outraged at the thought of being cuckolded by a dwarf that he’ll have Blancheflor burned at the stake.

At first, everything goes according to Macaire’s evil plan. Charlemagne is angry when he finds the dwarf and has Blancheflor arrested. Judges are appointed for a trial, including Duke Naimon, Charlemagne’s wisest counsellor. Macaire is appointed as well, not through merit, we’re told, but through favour. Naimon reminds the king that Blancheflor is a princess of Constantinople—if she’s burned at the stake it’ll cause a diplomatic crisis, to put it lightly. But Macaire reminds the king he’s been made a laughing stock. Blancheflor proclaims her innocence, and Charlemagne laments, but still Blancheflor is brought to the stake, and all of Paris comes out to see her burn. Macaire picks up the dwarf and asks if he slept with Blancheflor, and the dwarf gives the answer Macaire coached him to give: yes, a hundred times. Macaire then throws the dwarf onto the burning pyre. The townsfolk see it as an act of justice, but we know Macaire is really just covering up his own crime, killing a co-conspirator.

Blancheflor then goes to make her last confession, and recounts the story as we know it so far. The abbott who hears her confession tells Charlemagne he believes she is innocent, and adds one new development: she’s pregnant with Charlemagne’s child. They can’t kill a pregnant woman, so her sentence is commuted to exile, and the knight Aubri is assigned to escort Blancheflor out of Charlemagne’s territories.

On their journey, Blancheflor realizes Macaire is following them. He still lusts for her. There’s a confrontation that turns to combat, and Macaire slays Aubri, who isn’t wearing his armour. Blancheflor, however, manages to escape into a forest. Aubri happened to take his favourite greyhound with him on the journey, and the dog stays at the side of Aubri’s corpse for three days before returning to Paris. It wanders into Charlemagne’s hall and attacks Macaire, clenching its jaws around his neck. Then it releases Macaire and steals his bread. The dog runs off and Macaire gets stitched up and orders his men to be ready to kill the dog. Duke Naimon, however, realizes something is up and convinces Charlemagne to follow the dog, and in so doing they follow it out of Paris to Aubri’s corpse.

At this point, Charlemagne realizes he’s been played dirty, but he isn’t sure how and no one wants to speak against Macaire. The guy is rich and has powerful allies all over Germany. Duke Naimon has an answer: let’s have a trial by combat, he says, Macaire (armed only with a rod) versus Aubri’s dog. If the dog wins, Macaire is some kind of traitor.

The combat is a fantastic setpiece battle with a great twist: early on, one of Macaire’s clansmen hops into the ring to help out, but Charlemagne orders the guy arrested, so he hops back out of the ring and flees town. He’s captured by “A villager, who’d come to town that day / To buy some shoes.” Charlemagne pays the villager a handsome bounty and they hang the clansman on the spot, and all the while the combat is still going on. Finally the dog wears Macaire down, gets that pitbull lock on him, and Macaire is ready to confess. Still pinned by the dog, he confesses his crimes while recounting the action of the poem so far, and then Charlemagne has Macaire tied to a horse and dragged through Paris. All the townspeople follow behind, abusing him, and finally they throw Macaire on a fire.

“Now let us leave Macaire to burn in hell, / Where sinners reap the evil seed they spread!”

The story turns back to Blancheflor, who wanders through the wilderness of a forest until she meets a woodsman with an axe. The woodsman, whose name is Varocher, hears her story and promises to escort her back to her parents in Constantinople. He goes home to grab his favourite weapon, a club, and to tell his wife he’s leaving. Varocher takes Blancheflor first to Venice. Then they sail and journey overland to Hungary. We’re told that, “all who saw big Varocher made merry – / Behind his back – and mocked the burly peasant.”

In Hungary, the prosperous merchant Primerain and his wife give hospitality to Blancheflor, but they have to tiptoe around Varocher, who has appointed himself Blancheflor’s bodyguard. He never sets down his club. On their third night with Primerain, Blancheflor gives birth to her baby. Primerain has the Magyar king baptize the boy, who is named Louis after this king, and the king tosses a handful of coins to Varocher, who he mistakenly thinks is the father. But then the king sees the secret birthmark common to all kings (!) and Blancheflor confesses her story. So the Magyar king buys fine clothes for Blancheflor and Varocher, then sends envoys to Constantinople to explain the situation.

King Clarien, the Eastern emperor, then sends for his daughter, to bring her home. He’s extremely angry with Charlemagne, who has already sent an envoy, Berart, to explain the French view of the situation, but the envoy left France before Macaire’s confession, so he’s told King Clarien that his daughter is an adulterer has cuckolded the king with a dwarf. But then, post-Macaire, Charlemagne realizes more to the story, and tells Berart to go back and try to fix things. Clarien, angry at how his daughter has been treated, decides to play a trick on Charlemagne and sends a return envoy with an ultimatum: send Blancheflor home along with her weight in gold, otherwise it’s war. But of course, Charlemagne has no idea that Blancheflor is already in Constantinople. He has no idea where she is.

So now there’s a war between France and Constantinople. King Clarien’s army marches to France, and the two sides prepare for battle. Charlemagne arms his guys and gives Ogier and Naimon the Oriflamme, the sacred banner of French victory. On the other side, Varocher is placed with the squires, where he’ll fight on foot with only his club. He thinks about how he left his wife and children to protect Blancheflor. Yet Varocher knows France well, and at dawn he slips into Charlemagne’s camp and steals a horse for himself. The squires are impressed and now they want horses too, so Varocher brings them into camp and they take all the best French horses.

Then the battle begins in earnest. Ogier gets some action, and Blancheflor reminds her father Clarien that Charlemagne still thinks she is missing. Varocher brings two beautiful horses to Blancheflor’s father, and in return he’s knighted. Everyone agrees he’s no longer a country knave, and they joke that now “His sturdy arm will sever more than trees.” Fifty men swear fealty to him, and he leads them to the French camp, and they sneak past the sentries by uttering a war cry that sounds like a password, and they steal weapons from sleeping knights and take more horses, along with gold and silver. Back at camp Blancheflor is given a cut of the gold but is ashamed of the thievery, that it isn’t going to help the needy poor. She also admits that she wants to return to her husband Charlemagne, but only after he has done some penance. The battle rages on again and just as it looks like King Clarien might be defeated, King Louis of Hungary comes to his aid with fresh troops.

Finally, Charlemagne and King Clarien air their grievances to each other and decide to finish this with another one-on-one combat. This time it’s Ogier the Dane versus Varocher. Blancheflor arms Varocher for battle, and she worries that he’s doomed, because Ogier is a badass knight known from all the other chansons de geste. Varocher, however, monologues about how proud he is to be a knight now.

Ogier the Dane and Varocher joust. Here’s a taste of the fight:

They wheeled their mounts; one arrow’s range they walked them
Before they turned and spurred them hotly forward.
They lowered lance and gripped their handles staunchly:
If only you had seen how they employed them!
The shields of each were shorn aside, like cornstalks
Before the scythe, as lances battered hauberks.
My worthy lords, their common strength was awesome,
And either’s spear a peerless wand of warfare –
Yet sturdy mail saved both of them from slaughter.
My worthy lords, if you had seen that tourney,
You would have felt its wonder, I assure you!
At such a speed their impact was enormous:
Their steeds were rocked and staggered, almost falling.
Their sturdy spears were splintered, and their horses
Were on their knees – yet neither fighter faltered!

BOTH CHAMPIONS were valiant of temper –
Both horses too, who’d leapt aloft already
To save their lords, whose courage never lessened.
They came again, withdrew their swords and held them
Erect, like tusks upon a charging elephant!
Cortain was short, and with his longer weapon
Sir Varocher struck Ogier’s bright helmet.
The blow was strong, but didn’t even dent it,
As God was there to lift His hand against it
And turn the blade to strike the buckler’s edges.
It severed those and everything it entered –
It even lopped the lapping on his leggings!
The Dane exclaimed: “Sweet Mary, Queen of Heaven,
How sleek an edge this sword of his possesses!
Its heritor must hate me with a vengeance!”
With all his rage he faced the man who held it
And struck his helm, a blow that, though tremendous,
Could neither dent nor damage it whatever:
So hard it was, with God to guard its metal,
It made the blade to take a fierce deflection
That split his shield and clipped one hundred meshes
Right off his mail and flung them on the meadow –
Wherein the blade was straightaway embedded!
The blow itself had been so harsh and heavy
The saddle-bow in front alone prevented
Sir Varocher from falling off directly
Upon the ground as he was hurled against it.
He called aloud on all the powers of Heaven:
“Dear God above, and blessed Mary, help me!
My cause is just! Allow me to defend it!”
The Dane replied: “Do you not know me, fellow?
You cannot win! I urge you to surrender!”

Neither of them gets the upper hand, which surprises Ogier enough that he asks for his opponent’s name. Varocher tells him and explains that he was until recently a humble villein and woodsman, but he was knighted for bringing Blancheflor home to Constantinople. Ogier is shocked to learn Blancheflor is not only alive, but present at the battle. He calls off the fight and returns to tell the good news to Charlemagne.

There’s a meeting now between the leaders of the armies, and everything is straightened out. Peace is established, and Charlemagne admits Blancheflor is in the right, that she did not, in fact, cuckold him with a dwarf. He says he was tricked by Macaire, but now Macaire’s bones are ash, and the ashes have been scattered to the wind. Little Louis, Blancheflor’s son, is brought to meet Charlemagne, his father, and again Varocher acts as an overzealous bodyguard, not letting anyone get too close. All is well and the war is ended.

Later, Varocher asks leave of Queen Blancheflor to return to his family, who he’s abandoned to protect her. She gives him a treasure chest and tells him to return to court when he’s ready. He returns to his humble hut in the forest and sees his two sons, now grown, hard at work, their “backs bent low, with wood-stacks to their necks, / The very way he’d shown them worked the best. / On seeing this, what pity filled his breast!” He orders them to stop working immediately, but they think he’s making fun of them, so they take a swing at him, but he steps out of the way and reveals himself as their father. The poem ends with this laisse:

WHEN VAROCHER re-entered his old dwelling
He saw no robes made out of silk or sendal,
No bread or wine, no fish or meat whatever,
And his wife had no cloak of fur or velvet,
But, like his sons, wore clothing rough and wretched.
Without delay good Varocher re-dressed them
In robes of silk and cotton richly blended,
Then asked his men to fill his tiny dwelling
With everything a noble house possesses!
He built, henceforth, a noble tower and belfry –
While, back at court, his name became a legend!
And that, my friends, is all I have to tell you.
May God above and Christ our Saviour bless you!

There’s a lot to like about Blancheflor. It comes late enough in the tradition that you see, as Michael Newth points out in his intro, the hand of a writer starting to take over from the voice of a reciter. Macaire is a villain, yes, but he cares enough about the dwarf to have him patched up by a doctor (though this doesn’t stop him from killing the dwarf to cover up his crime). The conflict between France and Constantinople involves two points of view, and though one side is mistaken, neither is inherently evil. These little nuances, plus named characters like Primerain and Varocher who are of a non-knightly class, are things you don’t find in the earlier gestes.

And yet at the same time Blancheflor’s expanded scope makes it feel like a fairy tale: you’ve got a woman falsely accused and exiled to the forest, a humble woodsman willing to set things right, a dog loyal to its master even in death, all those great elements.

Interestingly, the dog fight part of the story became divorced from the chansons de geste and became it’s own legend, with the fight then being said to have happened during the reign of Charles V. In these later versions, Macaire becomes Robert Macaire, and the dog is referred to as ‘the dog of Montargis’. It seems that the dog became associated with Montargis because there was a painting depicting the fight in that town’s chateau, and then after a while the story’s setting was moved from Paris to Montargis. In some versions of the story, the dog is given a barrel to take refuge in during the fight, or Macaire is buried in dirt up to his waist. The story of the dog fight and the character of Macaire both had a resurgence in the 1800s, with Macaire becoming a sort of stock villain, most often a sort of conman involved in financial schemes.

---

In other news, I’ve been reading The Three Musketeers for the first time since adolescence and it’s great realizing how much fun Dumas is having with all the intrigue and politics continually boiling down to rivalries and love affairs rather than the more complex political questions France was dealing with in the 1840s. I think that’s the appeal of a certain lineage of fantasy and historical fiction, including Game of Thrones, in that readers are encouraged to get invested in romances and plots that might otherwise seem frivolous but here they become dynastic intrigues which have vast geopolitical consequences. I dunno.

Also, I’ve noticed some references to the chansons de geste in Dumas, plus the idiom ‘to play Charlemagne.’

A footnote explains it as, “an old expression meaning to withdraw from a game after winning, without allowing your opponent a second chance. The nineteenth-century lexicographer Littré suggests that it may have come from the fact that the emperor Charlemagne retained all his conquests to the end of his life.”

---

Thanks for reading, especially if you’ve made it this far. This has been Adam’s Notes for February 13, 2024. My name is Adam McPhee, and you can find me on Twitter, Bluesky, Letterboxd, and Goodreads.

The Dog of Montargis used in an ad for I’m not sure what. ‘Extracted from meat?’