PART TWO
SIX
From this come my tears and my pain
1559–60
The sudden death of King Henry II of France brought with it the certainty of a new order. With a grieving passivity that masked her absolute determination to form a central part of the Guise’s ruling clique, Catherine, despite her tragic loss, ensured she did not become separated from her eldest son, the new King Francis II. While many favourites of the old regime prepared themselves for an all too bracing change in status, Catherine knew she brought legitimacy to the Guise family that stood so close to her son’s throne. Just how much influence she would be able to wield to protect him and his kingdom she had yet to find out.
The royal party moved into the Louvre Palace on 11 July 1559 and with this simple act the Guises accomplished their coup d’état without spilling a drop of blood. By installing themselves in the best apartments the new regime lost no time falling upon the initial spoils of their stunning victory. The Duke of Guise took Diane de Poitiers’ rooms, and his brother the Cardinal those of Montmorency. Catherine had covered her walls and floors with black silk. With no daylight allowed to penetrate, the two flickering candles did little but add to the gloom. Wearing black, with only a tiny white ermine collar to highlight the effect, Catherine was described by observers as remaining virtually motionless in her anguish. She was exhausted by the strain of the past ten days and barely acknowledged the visiting foreign dignitaries who came to pay their doleful respects. Many confessed that they were moved to tears themselves at the sight of Catherine’s utter desolation. Often the new Queen would stand behind her mother-in-law to help with these difficult interviews. Wearing her lily-white wedding dress (the traditional hue of royal mourning) Mary would reply on Catherine’s behalf, thanking the visitors for their condolences and whenever possible managing to insert a flattering reference to her uncles and their ability to help the new King steer France safely forward.
Henry’s legacy to his heirs and widow was pregnant with peril as they now had little more than his Valois name to sustain them. Medieval monarchs were judged according to the moral authority that they could project and the allegiance that they were able to command, and according to these lights Francis II could not have had a worse start to his reign. His father had acceded to the throne as a mature adult with the personal qualities required of a successful king. He had sought the advice of Montmorency and the Guises but had been controlled by neither. His death turned their competition for influence into a struggle for supremacy.
Henry’s recent war had left France flayed by debt; strict financial retrenchment was now unavoidable if she were to recover economic prosperity. Such sacrifices would be bound to test to the utmost loyalty to the new young King. Pouring back into France from Italy were large numbers of troops who felt as angry at their arrears in pay as they were enraged by the treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis. They were to provide the foot soldiers for the coming wars of religion. Their primary reason to be loyal to the state – their love for Henry – had died with him.
Meanwhile what the state regarded as Protestant heresy was on the increase; the harsh Henrician policy of repression could not be imposed with the same degree of confidence by the incoming regime. In the international arena there were looming problems too, with a resurgent Spain under Philip II to the south and a newly unified England under her recently crowned Queen Elizabeth I across the Channel. More serious than any of France’s economic, religious or diplomatic problems, however, was the potentially disastrous rivalry between the factions that had coalesced around the Guise and Montmorency families. Whereas in earlier years Henry II had provided a fulcrum between these vying groups ensuring they balanced each other, now there was the real danger of the monarch being identified with one party alone. With their niece Queen of France, the Guises were triumphant.
Montmorency arrived on the day after the family’s move to the Louvre. He offered himself and his clan to the new King, who declined in a nervous speech carefully rehearsed by his uncles. Francis thanked the Constable for his long service, adding, ‘We areanxious to solace thine old age, which is no longer fit to endure the toils and hardships of my service.’1 The polite exchange finished, the seals of office were given up. Montmorency, effectively dismissed by his rivals, went to find Catherine to take his leave of her. After his short speech about the dangers she and her family faced at the hands of the Guises, the Queen Mother collapsed, tearfully promising that she would do all in her power to protect his estates and prerogatives. The Constable had never been fond of the Queen, and she had always been jealous of the power he had held over her late husband. She had not forgiven him for apparently advocating repudiation during her barren years, nor for the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis, but Catherine knew she might need the services of the doughty old patriot one day and was determined not to alienate him. He would remain at a distance, ready to come to her assistance if the situation required it.
Montmorency remained Constable of France, though it was now an empty title with the Guises in effective control of the government and the army. Catherine hid her true feelings about the soldier by acting as an intermediary. In exchange for the Grand Mastership, which was to be given to François of Guise, she had his eldest son, François de Montmorency, who was married to Henry’s natural daughter Diane, made a Marshal of France. She wrote to the Constable confirming that because of his prompt co-operation in handing back ‘la grant mestrise’ she would ‘fayst depeche la marichausye a votre fyls’ (ensure the prompt creation of your son as Marshal).2 Catherine also guaranteed that the general kept the governorship of the Languedoc. This vast territory in southern France, firmly in the Montmorency family grip, would in any case have been practically impossible to wrest from the clan. His nephews, Coligny, an Admiral of France, François d’Andelot, Colonel-General of the Infantry, and Cardinal Ôdet de Châtillon, all retained their positions. Largely thanks to Catherine’s diplomacy the old warrior left Paris peacefully ‘with such a retinue that the King’s train seemed small in comparison’. One potential source of strife had been removed, at least for the time being.
Trouble could be expected from the First Prince of the Blood, Antoine de Bourbon, who, because of his status, should head any regency council. Catherine and the Guises managed to render Bourbon ineffective by a combination of flattering messages, assurances and the sheer indolence of the man himself. Despite being urged by both the departing Constable and his own brother, Louis de Condé, to get to Paris as quickly as he could to claim his rightful place, Bourbon – who had been in Guyenne in south-west France at the time of Henry’s sudden death – made his way up through France to Paris slowly. The Guises had promised a warm welcome and a role in the government, but by the time he finally arrived he found only slights awaiting him. The King, who by custom should meet an exalted visitor on the road as though by chance, had gone out hunting and no rooms had been put aside at Saint-Germain, where the Court had moved in preparation for Bourbon’s arrival. Both Catherine and the Guises feared him as a figurehead of legitimacy for those disaffected members of the nobility who saw no future for themselves under the new regime. Bourbon had paraded his allegiance to the Protestant cause, notably appearing at the Protestant rally at the Pré-aux-clercs in 1558, and this made him the natural, if as a cardinal’s brother somewhat unlikely, leader of the reformers. The Bourbon family, though the most senior in France after the Valois, had long suffered from the treason of the Constable de Bourbon early in the reign of Francis I. Antoine de Bourbon’s inability to rub along with Henry’s favourites had infuriated the late King, who treated him with scant regard, often pointedly ignoring his rank.
Bourbon’s main interest in life was to restore the tiny kingdom of Navarre, which had been halved in size by the Spaniards in the early 1500s. Dithering and hopelessly self-indulgent, he became miraculously animated by the slightest hint of retrieving these lost territories, which were his by virtue of his marriage to Henry’s cousin Jeanne d’Albret. Otherwise he proved an uninspiring leader, surrounded by bad advisers. Furthermore, he was a man incapable of making any decisions, especially good ones. When he arrived at Saint-Germain it had been placed under heavy guard by the Guises in case he came in force. There he was simply outfaced and outmanoeuvred by Catherine and the Guises; their public disdain for him, and his spineless acceptance of their treatment, emasculated him in front of his followers.
Catherine, who watched Bourbon accept the insults, commented that he was ‘reduced to the position of a chambermaid’. He was offered a place on the essentially bogus council, where he was outnumbered by Guisards and others, including both Queens and Catherine’s younger sons. Together they ensured Bourbon’s voice would not be heard should he ever dare to speak up. When Catherine later offered him the job of accompanying her daughter Elisabeth to Spain to be united with King Philip, Bourbon accepted for it offered him the opportunity – or so he thought – of treating with Spain over Navarre. However, by agreeing to the regime’s suggestion that he make the long journey away from the Court, Antoine de Bourbon effectively neutralised himself as a contender for power. Thus Catherine and the Guises relieved themselves, for the moment at least, of another potential opponent.
One who no longer posed any threat was Henry’s favourite. Almost as soon as her lover had died and knowing that her reign was over, Diane de Poitiers promptly returned all the jewels that were inalienable Crown property to Catherine and the new King. Typical of her thoroughness and businesslike ways, a full inventory accompanied the gems that Henry had given his mistress. Fearful for her life, she also sent a letter begging forgiveness for any past wrongs she might have committed against the Queen, and theoretically offered the Queen Mother her life and her goods. Catherine, perhaps remembering Francis I’s dictum that vengeance was the mark of a feeble king and magnanimity a sign of his strength, seemed curiously uninterested in pursuing Diane. But she was behind the letter written by her son, Francis, to Diane. According to the Venetian diplomat Giovanni Michiel in his report of 12 July 1559, ‘The King has sent to inform Madame de Valentinois that, because of her evil influence with the King, his father, she merited a severe punishment; but that in his royal clemency, he did not wish to disquiet her further.’3
The Queen Mother contented herself with banishing Diane from Court and included her daughter Françoise de la Marck, Duchess of Bouillon, in the interdiction. Catherine could not extend the ban to Diane’s other daughter for she was married to François of Guise’s younger brother, now the Duke d’Aumale. So Diane’s policy of marrying one of her daughters into the Guise family had paid off. This also meant that the fabulous estates and riches belonging to Diane de Poitiers remained more or less intact, since the Guises knew that half her goods would (via Louise d’Aumale) be incorporated into their fortune upon her death.
There was one of the mistress’s properties that the Queen Mother coveted more than any other and that was the enchanting Château of Chenonceau. Diane had, by false means and the support of King Henry, bought the estate from the Crown; Catherine now saw that the simplest way to have it was to offer Diane her own castle at Chaumont in exchange for the less valuable but far lovelier Chenonceau. Diane was hardly in a position to refuse. She had spent a considerable amount of time and money embellishing and extending it. Now Catherine set about making it even more beautiful. She lavished money on the gardens, creating waterfalls, enclosures for exotic animals, aviaries for rare birds and planted mulberry trees for silkworms.4 She added significantly to the building itself, which is set beside the river Cher, over which Diane had built a bridge to extend it. Catherine was determined to efface the memory of her rival and increase the castle’s splendour, including adding two storeys of long galleries on to the bridge that straddles the river. The delicate palace still stands today, with the waters of the Cher rushing beneath the gracious rooms above.
Diane retired to her other estates, spending most of her remaining days at Anet doing good works and ensuring that her family would inherit her vast wealth at her death in 1566. With so much Crown money spent creating her Renaissance masterpiece, she was fortunate not to have had Anet confiscated. A Florentine gentleman travelling nearby in the late 1550s wrote ‘that the golden house of Nero was not so costly or so beautiful’.5 Catherine later employed many of the master craftsmen Diane and Henry had used at Anet when she came to her own building projects. She also got rid of Diane’s lackeys who had tormented her during her early regencies. After Henry’s death she and her late husband’s favourite never met again.
Enjoyable though it would doubtless have been, Catherine had too much on her mind to bother with vengeance. The new King was far from strong, and while he showed his mother respect and filial love, she had carefully to protect him from being over-influenced by the Guises and his young wife, whom he worshipped. He showed little interest in governing the country and spent most of his time hunting frantically, or engaging in other sporting pursuits to which his puny physique was unequal. His health proved an ever-present worry. He was still subject to weakness and dizzy spells, his nose ran constantly and he had problems breathing due to a childhood respiratory infection.6 More significantly for Mary and the Guises, Francis is believed to have suffered from a condition which meant that his testicles had not dropped at puberty, which might have made him incapable of fathering a child, or possibly (depending upon the cause) of even having sex.
Despite his obvious frailties Francis had, since childhood, behaved in a manner that did not allow anyone to forget his position. Perhaps his infirmities made him more determined to act with dignity, but instead he managed only to seem pompous. He had a weakness for display and dressed gorgeously in the finest costumes, but rather than enhancing his appearance his attempts at glamour made a pathetic sight. His body’s weakness frustrated him and he was apt to fall into rages and tantrums when thwarted by ill-health. Physically timid except when he was out hunting, he seemed more than happy to leave the horrible difficulties of running the kingdom to others. The large official council only met in full on one occasion in the year 1560; the real power lay with the Guises and Catherine who conducted their secret meetings either in the King’s chambers or those of his mother. François of Guise took charge of all military matters and his brother the Cardinal of Lorraine was given the domestic and foreign affairs portfolios.
The funeral of Henry II took place between 11 and 13 August 1559. The late King was buried with his predecessors at Saint-Denis, where Catherine had been crowned Queen only twelve years earlier. On 18 September the young King, wearing black velvet, was crowned at Rheims. The stormy wet weather did nothing to lift the occasion, which was by necessity kept muted due to Henry’s untimely and violent death. Mary, already crowned Queen of Scotland, could not be crowned twice; however her pretensions to the English Crown were carefully noted by the English ambassador, Throckmorton, who reported that the French had displayed the ‘arms of England, France and Scotland quartered brimly set out in show over the gate’.7 This deliberately provocative gesture was duly registered by the English Queen. Mary based her claim to the throne of England on the questionable validity of Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne Boleyn and Elizabeth’s consequent bastardy in the eyes of the Catholic Church. If Elizabeth were illegitimate she could not rule and the throne therefore theoretically belonged to Mary.
Francis made sure that his mother was well provided for and on 15 August 1559 he issued letters patent which accorded Catherine ‘the most opulent settlement that had ever been made to a queen dowager’. He set her annual pension at 70,000 livres, and among other properties and lands he gave her the chateaux of Villers-Cotterêts and Montceaux, in addition to the Duchy of Alençon. The King also gave his mother the right to half of the payments now due for the confirmation of offices, fiefs and privileges at the start of the new reign.8 Underscoring Catherine’s importance, henceforth all the young King’s official acts opened with the words: ‘This being the good pleasure of the Queen, my lady-mother, and I also approving of every opinion that she holdeth, am content and command that …’ Mary commented in a letter to her mother in Scotland, ‘I believe that if the King her son were not so obedient that he does nothing but what she desires, she would soon die, which would be the greatest misfortune that could happen to this poor country and to all of us.’9 In case anyone needed reminding of her loss, the Queen Mother adopted a new personal device to replace her cheerful rainbow. Henceforth her emblem depicted a broken lance with the words ‘Lacrymae hinc, hinc dolor’ (From this come my tears and my pain). For the rest of her life she also refused to do business on Fridays, the day of Henry’s accident.
Catherine meanwhile treated the new Queen with deference and respect. She handed over the Crown jewels to Mary and among the fabulous gems she added pieces that belonged to her personally. She was studiously correct in her dealings with her daughter-in-law and never treated her less than cordially. It is said that Mary felt unwisely snobbish about Catherine’s less exalted origins than her own and the notorious comment that Catherine was just a Florentine shopkeeper’s daughter has been attributed to her, among other people. If Catherine heard these remarks, she chose to ignore them. But she would not forget them. Besides, the Queen Mother seemed more regal and remote than ever in her severe black gowns and widow’s dignity.
Much has been made of a rivalry between the two women, or at least of jealousy on Catherine’s part. Fantastic stories about her desire to rid herself of Mary – there is even one suggestion that the Queen Mother was planning to poison her own son to remove the young woman from her powerful position – are romantic fiction. While Catherine might have been keen to minimise her daughter-in-law’s hold over the young King, she always appeared kind and good-natured to Mary, at least while her son lived. At Blois during the first winter since Henry’s death the two Queens could often be found in each other’s company, sometimes listening to their daily sermon together either in their shared dining room or the chapel. They also received visitors jointly on many occasions. They were frequently together when Francis left for one of his frantic hunting expeditions. It is likely that Mary learned her love of intrigue from her mother-in-law, though as her later career shows she was to prove herself a keen but poor pupil in this art. Catherine’s maternal considerations would also have played an important part in her relationship with Mary; while the girl made her son happy Mary’s own contentment would have been of interest to her.
Forced to take an active role in affairs of state, the Queen Mother was also nursing her terrible loss. She replied conscientiously to the countless letters from foreign monarchs and princes who wrote to condole over the tragic death of her husband. In a letter to Elizabeth I of England, Catherine addressed her as ‘The Most High and Excellent Princess, our true friend, good sister and cousin, the Queen of England’. Thanking Elizabeth for her ‘wise and kind words of consolation’, she wrote, ‘The loss … of the late King … is so recent and so dreadful and brings such pain, regret and despair that we have need of God, who has visited us with this affliction, to give us the power to endure it.’10 In the months just following Henry’s death one visitor described Catherine’s grief: ‘The queen is so wept out, that she brings tears to our eyes.’11 Mary wrote to her mother in Scotland, ‘She is still so troubled and has suffered so much during the sickness of the late King that, with all the worry it has caused her, I fear a grave illness.’12
Not long after this letter was written there arose an intriguing legend about Catherine’s use of the occult. Tradition has it that during the Queen Mother’s final visit to the Château of Chaumont before handing it over to Diane de Poitiers, she wished to know the fate of her sons and the dynasty. Summoning Cosimo de Ruggieri, her astrologer and expert in the black arts, she asked him to use his craft to foretell the future. According to Marshal de Retz, son of Catherine Gondi, Catherine’s close friend, Ruggieri produced a mirror in a darkened room of the castle. Apparently possessing powers similar to the looking-glass in the fairy tale Snow White, the mirror became a magic chamber, and each of Catherine’s sons, except Hercules, appeared in turn. Ruggieri told the Queen that the number of times the faces circled the mirror would correspond to the number of years they would reign. First King Francis emerged: his face, only faintly discernible, circled the mirror once. He was followed by Charles-Maximilien (later Charles IX), who appeared to circle fourteen times, then Edouard-Alexandre (later Henri III) whose ghostly face made fifteen turns. After Edouard-Alexandre a flash is supposed to have appeared showing the Duke of Guise crossing the mirror’s face, followed by the son of Antoine de Bourbon, Henri, Prince of Navarre. He would be the legal heir to the throne should the Valois line die out. His image orbited the mirror twenty-two times. Catherine who, since the accurate predictions of Henry’s death, hardly needed persuading that the forecasts of her sorcerers and astrologers were sound, cannot have felt comforted by what she might have seen. There are many different contemporary accounts of Catherine and this bizarre episode with the enchanted mirror, but how successful it was is impossible to say. When Diane took possession of the castle she found a considerable number of items, including pentacles drawn on the floor and other sinister indications that the Queen Mother had used the place for her occult practices. The former favourite, who disliked Chaumont anyway, never returned there.
From the first days of her eldest son’s reign, Catherine wisely left the political spotlight to fall on the Guise brothers, keeping for herself the pathos-laden image of a stricken woman with small fatherless children, and the mother figure of the kingdom. She knew that as the country gradually became engulfed in the crises left after Henry’s death, the stringent measures required to deal with them would almost inevitably make the brothers deeply unpopular. Unwilling to be tainted by their methods and beliefs, she kept herself at a distance, leaving the others to wonder what her position on policy matters truly was. Even if the Guises were successful they would alienate certain vital elements of society with their extreme religious views, impetuous ambition and an ever-growing band of enemies. Catherine felt their ultimate success seemed unlikely. Had Henry survived, his most pressing problems were the near bankruptcy of his kingdom and the reform religion that threatened to split France. With Henry alive, the presence of a strong monarch ensured control over his rival nobles and kept the essential social hierarchy intact. With his disappearance, however, there no longer existed the quasi-mystical figurehead of a powerful anointed king behind whom they rallied and beneath whom their differences could be buried.
Catherine could only watch as the Cardinal of Lorraine struggled with France’s stricken economy. At Francis II’s accession the public debt was around 40 million livres, mainly a legacy of the wars in Italy and northern France. Royal revenue derived from taxes amounted to less than 10,000 livres per annum. To make matters worse, half the debt was due to be paid immediately. The Guises, who had begun the new reign with lavish gifts to their various client vassals and repayments of their own debts, none of which went unnoticed or enhanced their popularity, now had to find a solution. Rather than raise taxes, the Cardinal decided to cut expenditure drastically, which he did in a highly arbitrary fashion. Royal interest due on loans was simply reneged upon; pensions were frozen; magistrates and other officials had their salaries stopped. French soldiers, many of them still returning from Italy, were demobilised and left unpaid. They had every reason to feel betrayed by the politicians who had simply handed back hard-won territories. These disillusioned men, now receptive to ideas of rebellion, would form the ranks of the armies that were to fight each other in the civil wars to come. The regime was intolerant of criticism; protests at its measures were met with swift punishment.13 The Cardinal of Lorraine, until now schooled only in the cocooned world of silky diplomacy, could soon be heard lamenting, ‘I know that I am hated.’
The religious problem was also growing as the regime enforced ever harsher measures against the Protestants. It was believed that Catherine held moderate views on the religious question; certainly she was extremely fond of her sister-in-law, Marguerite, the new Duchess of Savoy, and others in her close circle with Protestant sympathies but who were not active reformers. Many favoured a softer line in dealing with the heretics. The Queen Mother received appeals from senior Protestants to come to their aid; she told the Protestant Pastor François Morel that she would try to ease the persecution against the reformers provided they in return ‘did not hold assemblies and that each lived secretly and without scandal’.14 She was unable to help save Anne du Bourg, however, who had been sentenced to death just before Henry’s demise. Du Bourg put up a spirited defence that he knew would prove fruitless but might highlight the Calvinist’s plight and render him a martyr. On 23 December 1559 he was put to death by strangulation and then burned at the Place du Grève. Unwisely, Morel wrote an angry letter to Catherine saying that ‘God would not allow such injustice to go unpunished … and just as God had begun by punishing the late King, so she should realise that His arm was still raised to complete His revenge by striking her and her children’.15 This was the very last way to win Catherine’s support; she regarded such threats as treacherous insults; besides, she argued that her offer of help stemmed from a desire to avoid bloodshed and in no way related ‘to the truth or falsehood of their doctrine’.16
The Guises continued to pursue their ruthless policy of persecution, which Catherine believed would merely ignite an avoidable conflagration. Even the Cardinal, who was the enforcer of the new draconian laws against heretics, declared to Throckmorton that ‘No man hates extremes more than I do.’ Despite being unable to save Anne du Bourg or noticeably ease the plight of the reformers, Catherine did maintain contact with certain Calvinists through her moderate or Protestant friends. For the moment, though, her hands were tied. If Catherine was unable to help, then the desperate Calvinists sought leadership and protection elsewhere. Antoine de Bourbon was proving to be nothing short of pathetic. His brother, Louis de Condé, offered a more inspiring figure, however, and began to attract attention as a natural rallying point. Condé was as frustrated by his brother as the other Calvinists had become and, driven by personal ambition, family pride, some religious conviction and the poverty arising from being a second son, he found that the religious cause could provide him with an excellent platform. Condé’s main problem as the potential opposition leader was that he lacked the legitimacy his elder brother possessed as First Prince of the Blood, that gave him his claim to head what was effectively a regency council.
France’s military involvement against the English in Scotland provided another reason for the Guises’ growing unpopularity. When Francis became King of France he was already King of Scotland, by virtue of his marriage to Mary Stuart, and he claimed, with his wife, the throne of England. To the fury of Queen Elizabeth I the royal couple’s coat of arms, incorporating those of Scotland, France and England, brazenly professed this assertion. In September 1559 Marie of Guise, the regent of Scotland, found herself once again facing rebellions, fuelled by religious dissension and political grievance. Elizabeth did all she could to support the rebels in the north. Marie was only saved from catastrophe by the arrival of French troops in what became known as ‘The War of the Insignia’, the name stemming from Mary’s and Francis’s incorporation of the English arms into their own.17 Catherine, whose ambitions did not coincide with the Guises regarding Scotland, rightly feared that France could ill afford further foreign adventures and needed her troops at home. She considered the whole campaign a potential disaster.
Francis’s health meanwhile gave continued cause for grave concern. By the autumn of 1559 his deeply frustrating dizzy spells had become worryingly frequent. When he felt himself lose consciousness he would frantically move his limbs in an attempt not to faint. His skin was blotchy and his face, more swollen than ever, now became covered in boils and pimples. Although he had grown considerably in height since becoming King, this seemed to have sapped his strength further. In an attempt somehow to defy his weakness, hunting became his increasing obsession. At last he fell ill with an abscess of the ear. The agonising pain almost drove him mad. Catherine called in physicians who advised her to remove the King to the Loire valley, where he might recover in the peaceful countryside. She decided to take him to Blois for the winter and early spring. Queen Mary was no stranger to ill health and fainting spells either. She suffered from often minor but debilitating ailments. Unsurprisingly, the Guise family felt unease about the future of the Valois–Guise dynasty, since prospects for a healthy baby – particularly in view of the deformity of Francis’s ‘secret parts’ – did not look promising.
During the early autumn of 1559 Mary seems to have mistaken a usual bout of ill health and fainting fits for the first signs of being pregnant. She optimistically took to wearing a tunic, the customary dress for a woman with child, but quickly abandoned it when she realised it was only a phantom pregnancy. The royal couple’s dismal health could not be kept a secret; apart from the glaringly obvious physical signs that they were not strong there was little or no privacy in sixteenth-century life, and rumours about their various problems circulated quickly and widely. The higher up the social scale one was the less privacy one enjoyed; consequently a monarch almost never had a moment alone and it was quite usual to perform the most personal acts of hygiene in the presence of servants and privileged courtiers. Servants were often paid to spy on their royal masters and mistresses; reports on the state of the bed linen and other such intimate details could tell an ambassador or senior courtier much that was of value.
As well as apprehensions about her ailing son, Catherine had to face the wrench of parting with her two daughters, Elisabeth and Claude, and her sister-in-law, Marguerite, Duchess of Savoy, as they were now married. Claude, Duchess of Lorraine, left France first. During Henry II’s reign her husband, Charles III of Lorraine, had been largely brought up at the French Court where he had been held as a guarantee of the duchy’s good behaviour. Charles and Claude contracted a happy marriage and because their state lay on the eastern border between France and the Empire the couple were able to make frequent visits to Catherine, later bringing her grandchildren with them. Catherine made many visits to Lorraine and some of her happiest moments en famille, rare events in the Queen Mother’s life, were spent there. Duke Charles was kind and attentive and genuinely fond of his mother-in-law.
On 18 November 1559 Marguerite of Savoy made her tearful departure from Blois. Catherine grieved to see Henry’s sister leave. Not only would she miss her close companionship, but also her level-headed advice. During her time with Catherine after Henry’s death she had provided much-needed comfort, and had, too, talked much about the Protestant reformers, and urged clemency and understanding for their plight. Marguerite was to have a considerable impact on Catherine’s religious policies through the person of Michel de L’Hôpital, an erudite lawyer and humanist. Like Catherine, he believed strongly that a settlement between the state and the reformers could only be reached by peaceful means. Upon becoming Chancellor in May 1560, de L’Hôpital helped form the Queen Mother’s attitude towards French Protestants in the early days of the coming religious strife.
On the same day that Marguerite of Savoy left for Nice to join her husband, Catherine and her retinue left Blois to accompany her daughter Elisabeth on the first stage of the journey to meet her husband Philip II. Despite great preparations, packing and other arrangements, Catherine delayed her daughter’s departure as much as she could, but on 18 November 1559 the royal party and Elisabeth’s vast baggage train set out from Blois. One week later they reached Châtellerault where the Queen Mother and the younger royal children bade their agonising farewells to their sister, the fourteen-year-old new Queen of Spain. Catherine’s sobbing was so piteous that even the crustiest onlookers found it hard to remain unaffected. The final adieus said, Elisabeth, slim and dark-eyed, not yet nubile but wise beyond her years, set off with composure and presumably not a little excitement to meet her twice-widowed husband twenty years her senior. Catherine was to maintain an energetic correspondence with her eldest daughter. These letters, crammed with advice, instructions and snippets about goings on at Court, give a rare glimpse into the workings of the Queen Mother’s heart and mind. Unable to show her affection with physical tenderness, she more than compensated with these letters. Many of them, written in her own near-indecipherable handwriting, are an outpouring of gossip mixed with news. Catherine’s written French remained phonetic, her spelling entirely inconsistent, but they give the impression that the reader is almost listening to her speaking.
Philip declared his ‘complete happiness’ when he met his bride on 30 January 1560, at Guadalajara in Spain. Elisabeth soon wrote to her mother announcing herself to be the luckiest girl in the world to have such a husband. Although the young woman enjoyed a cheerful and good-natured disposition, it is difficult to imagine how Philip evoked quite such enthusiasm in his bride. Dour, desiccated and pedantic, the Spanish King was driven by duty and the cold conviction that his role was to save the world from heresy, someone for whom no detail could be considered too small to examine, ponder and deliberate upon. As the years went by, Catherine, whose life was fuelled by a tortuous combination of maternal and dynastic preoccupations, proved an incomprehensible anathema to Philip. For the moment however, in part thanks to Elisabeth of Spain’s good offices, the relationship between France and Spain enjoyed a short phase of almost unprecedented warmth. Philip also kept the promise he had made to Henry II when he was dying, that he would take France under his protection. The Spanish King was loath to see his neighbour swamped with heretics that might infect his own kingdom and this furthered the cordial relations between the two countries.
In February 1560 rumours of a plot against the Guises and their regime had started to filter through from Paris to Blois. The swelling number of reformers and others hostile to the administration now looked to the vigorous figure of Louis de Condé to help take direct action against the Guises. They wanted to seize the brothers, put them on trial, and ‘liberate’ the King while making a pledge of loyalty to him. The twenty-nine-year-old Condé, who had become a Protestant through his wife, Eleanore du Roye, was a short, energetic man, with both courage and spirit. Unable to involve himself directly in the plot, the prince entrusted a minor Perigordian nobleman, the Seigneur de la Renaudie, with the preparation of the details. La Renaudie, once a client of the Guises, with a grudge against them and a dubious past, had had to flee to Geneva, where he converted to Calvinism. Calvin himself wanted nothing to do with him, but he did receive support from Theodore de Bèze, Calvin’s most senior lieutenant. After a meeting which took place on 1 February 1560, at Nantes near the port of Hugues, the plotters agreed their aims, which were essentially to capture the Guises and to beg the King to try his ministers for corruption. After that they hoped it would be possible to redress the other wrongs in the kingdom by establishing a Bourbon regency. La Renaudie sent out 500 agents in secret to recruit mercenaries, without being given the name of their chief. Foreign soldiers were enlisted, and the plotter also approached Queen Elizabeth of England for help. Some sources say that the Queen supplied a little money, others that she gave only her moral support, an altogether cheaper commodity. The conspirators’ meeting at Hugues was the origin for the name ‘Huguenot’, the term subsequently used for French Protestants. They initially agreed that the coup should take place on 10 March, although this was later changed to the 16th.
Unfortunately the essential element of surprise vanished as rumours of the plot spread. In the days of informers and agents provocateurs it proved almost impossible to keep an undertaking of this size secret, even with the greatest discretion being employed. In this case there came a profusion of leaks from nearly every quarter. English Catholics, who heard of it, warned the Cardinal of Lorraine; a German prince confirmed the story to the Bishop of Arras. As if to seal the fate of his own plot, la Renaudie recklessly boasted about his involvement and the imminent downfall of his enemies. He told a Parisian lawyer and Huguenot sympathiser with whom he was staying about his plans, down to the last detail. The lawyer, terrified that he himself would be charged with treason, reported all he knew to the Cardinal. As the rumours received confirmation from different quarters, the Guises and Catherine became alarmed. Convinced that Queen Elizabeth of England stood behind the plot in retaliation over French involvement in Scotland, and that the force of rebels might be much larger than reported, François of Guise set about planning how to thwart the uprising and defeat the enemy. Catherine wrote to the Duchess of Guise, ‘We have been warned that from all directions men are marching towards Blois … the King, my son, has been much annoyed by this and ordered that these men should return to their homes.’18 She continued that it would be her policy to act as though there were nothing amiss, but François of Guise had other plans. Because Blois was deemed an easy target for attack, on 21 February 1560 the duke ordered the immediate removal of the King and Court to the nearby fortress of Amboise. This huge medieval stronghold would prove difficult to take particularly since the defenders had received such detailed forewarning about the plot.
Catherine argued with the Guises that far from being an English plot, it seemed more likely to stem from enemies of the regime within France. With the support of Coligny, brought in both as a possible hostage and for his military expertise, the Queen Mother urged that softening the brutal measures against the Protestants might even now prevent the uprising. Initially shaken by news of the planned insurrection and the regime’s growing unpopularity, François of Guise resumed his usual sang-froid. Safe behind the walls of the fortress, he sent out frequent search parties for news or signs of rebel troops. Catherine meanwhile continued to press for a declaration to appease the Huguenots. The Queen Mother’s urgent efforts resulted in the Edict of Amboise, offering an amnesty for all past religious crimes except to those who incited or took part in rebellion. It did not, however, permit freedom of worship. As a result, a few days later some religious prisoners were freed. Her identification with this pacific initiative encouraged the Protestants to believe that she would treat them with more leniency than the brothers from Lorraine. None of this, however, altered the fact that the surrounding countryside hid armed units of hostile soldiers preparing to attack the castle.
For the moment a strange calm reigned over the huge fortress. Court business continued but for the urgent whispered enquiries for news between courtiers. At the same time, la Renaudie was busy deploying his men around the town of Amboise, still confident of the success of his plan. The royal family and chief nobles awaited the first strike, though they hoped that their troops would find the rebels first. In the mounting atmosphere of tension with false alarms and mistaken sightings, the mood of suspicion increased. Word arrived from a foreign informant that the leader of the uprising was ‘a great prince’. Wondering who might be involved of the most senior nobles at Court, Catherine made Condé, who had only just arrived and whose Protestant sympathies were no secret, chief of the King’s bodyguard. This cunning move obliged the prince to remain at the castle by the King’s side. While this post could ostensibly be taken as a great honour, it was also a subtle form of arrest, since he no longer enjoyed the freedom to move about. Condé, however, affected an air of complete calm.
On 6 March a small group of about fifteen men were captured in the woods surrounding Amboise. They seemed relieved to have been caught and appeared confused about the plot and their intended role. A captain of the guard came and confessed to the Queen Mother that he had intended to take part in the plot, and described a plan to seal off the King’s apartments and there to separate him from the Guises. Where small groups of disorganised men were found they appeared to be simple people who merely wanted to speak directly to the King about the new religion. At last on 15 and 16 March the principal captains of the rebels were caught. La Renaudie himself was discovered in the woods on 19 March and killed by an arquebus shot. Larger forces from further afield turned back when they heard of the failure of the enterprise and those who did arrive were easily overcome. Locals and troops sent out by Guise not only repulsed the feeble effort of the remaining rebels but hunted them down in the countryside, either killing them on the spot or bringing them back to summary justice. The triumphant duke wanted the punishment of the rebels to send a message that would resound throughout the kingdom, deterring others from such action. The lowlier rebels were either sewed into sacks and dumped into the river Loire to drown, or hanged from a high balcony in clear view above the town. The battlements proved convenient gibbets and for the next ten days dangling clusters of decomposing bodies decorated the castle. Belying her later bloodthirsty reputation, Catherine tried to intercede for the life of at least one of the officers, but the Guises ignored her. Even Anne d’Este, François of Guise’s wife, came crying to the Queen Mother about the ‘cruelties and inhumanity’ of the retribution.
The grand finale was the execution of the plot’s ringleaders. Tribunes were erected for spectators in the large courtyard of Amboise. The crowd consisted of most of the Court and their distinguished visitors. The King, his mother and younger brother, Charles-Maximilien aged only ten years, watched together as fifty-two noble rebels lost their heads on the block. With the royal family sat Condé. No proof of his complicity had been found and he remained impassive as he watched the men die bravely, commenting only, ‘If the French know how to mount a rebellion, they also know how to die.’ Some say that the condemned men sang psalms as they awaited their turn on the block, the sound becoming ever fainter as the heads in the basket piled up. On horseback near the scaffold, François of Guise presided over the death of each of the traitors. Catherine remained erect and unflinching throughout the bloody spectacle, and anyone who did baulk at the sight drew a furious look from the Queen Mother. For her this brutal parade was no long-term solution, but it was the necessary outcome that must follow treason, especially when the monarch was her son. Even though the protesters had maintained that they were loyal to the King, they had put both him and the peace of his kingdom at risk. For her, therefore, the bloodletting was merely a necessary ritual. Now Catherine wanted to understand exactly what prompted men to risk their lives and her son’s throne in this way.
As soon as the executions were over she sent out enquiries. The answers were clear: there were two types of Huguenots, those who genuinely followed the new religion and others who were unwilling to be ruled by the ‘illegal’ regime of the Guises. The latter would be appeased if the Lorrainers and their stooges were replaced by a proper council with the Bourbon Princes of the Blood at its head. Catherine sought direct talks with these Protestants but understandably received their views only in writing. A propaganda war was being fought throughout the kingdom and Catherine found herself as much a target as the Guises themselves. The pamphlets circulating France called her a whore who had borne a leper for a son. (Francis II was believed by some to have leprosy.) Unrest and open flouting of the religious laws spread throughout the country, with the main trouble spots in the Dauphiné, Guyenne and Provence regions. More worrying still was the fact that the reformers were becoming organised and armed. The Conspiracy of Amboise and the vicious reprisals that followed it had provided a propaganda weapon for the Huguenots, who appealed to Protestant foreign princes for help. It also stiffened the resolve of those who opposed the regime and won over new converts, many of them noblemen, who were able to train and organise the reformers into a fighting force.
Even Catherine’s own initiative, the Edict of Romorantin of May 1560, which ordered that only ecclesiastical courts could hear religious cases, proved impossible to register or enforce. The Church no longer had the authority to order the death penalty and in general terms the edict was designed to circumvent Henry II’s harsh religious laws. Coligny, the Constable’s nephew, who had undertaken enquiries on behalf of the Queen Mother, advised that the only way to save the kingdom from chaos was to call a meeting of the full council. With Catherine’s agreement it met at Fontainebleau on 21 August 1560. At the same time she insisted that peace be made with England and that France must withdraw from its active role in Scotland’s problems, arguing that the kingdom could no longer afford either the men or the costs of the war in the north. Despite the eventual removal of French and English troops from Scotland, Mary and Francis refused to renounce their claims to Elizabeth’s throne and continued to quarter their arms with those of England. Francis, under Mary’s and her uncles’ influence, refused to ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh (as the peace treaty was named), but Catherine had achieved her main objectives: peace with England and to put an end to the haemorrhaging of men and money to Scotland. She enjoyed the added satisfaction of seeing the Guise family’s ambitions no longer supported at the expense of France.
Mary had endured a difficult few months: not only had she witnessed the withdrawal of French military support from her Scots kingdom, but her beloved mother, Marie of Guise, had died of dropsy on 11 June 1560 after a long illness. John Knox, gleeful at the Regent-Queen’s demise and her dreadful suffering, wrote of how ‘Her belly and loathsome legs [did] … swell, and so continued till that God did execute his judgement upon her’.19 He had written earlier that the crown upon the Queen’s head was ‘as seemly a sight … as to put a saddle upon the back of an unruly cow’.20 Mary collapsed when the Cardinal of Lorraine broke the news of her mother’s death. The Queen, passing ‘from one agony to another’, was comforted by Catherine, so recently bereaved herself. Much preoccupied with the forthcoming meeting at Fontainebleau, Catherine’s energies were directed at preserving the peace within France now that the Scots matter was resolved.
Unfortunately two important members of the council – Antoine de Bourbon and his brother Louis de Condé – boycotted the proceedings at Fontainebleau. Condé, having escaped implication in the Conspiracy of Amboise, had, after his papers and possessions were searched, grown increasingly worried about his personal safety and fled south to join his brother out of reach of the Guises. Catherine by now had the support of Michel de L’Hôpital, who had become Chancellor in May 1560 and whose desire for a peaceful solution was coupled with the motto ‘Un Roi, une Loi, une Foi’ (one king, one law, one faith). He considered it ultimately impossible for the two religions to coexist peacefully in France, but passionately opposed violent and oppressive measures that only ever seemed to stiffen the resolve of the Huguenots. This opinion was much more in sympathy with Catherine’s own. She knew she must tread extremely carefully now, for while she tried to free herself from the iron grip of the Guises, she did not wish to be rid of them entirely. The Queen Mother wanted them brought to heel, thereby giving her more freedom to conduct her son’s business in what she believed were his best interests. If she undermined the Lorrainers too much they might be ousted altogether, and both their military strength and their large following were too important for her to contemplate having in opposition. Replacement of the Guises by the Bourbon princes meant chaos, notwithstanding the fact that, as Princes of the Blood, their proximity to the French throne presented a possible danger to her own children. Catherine considered Montmorency’s recall an even more repugnant option: not only did she dislike him personally but she also feared his strength.
The Queen Mother opened the proceedings at Fontainebleau on 21 August 1560 with a speech asking the councillors to pursue a policy by which the King could ‘conserve his sceptre, his subjects find relief from their suffering and the malcontents find contentment, if it were possible’.21 The new Chancellor took the floor after Catherine and spoke at length about the ailing kingdom and how to find a possible cure. The Guise brothers then proceeded to report on their areas of responsibility. After the discussion was opened to include the other councillors, Coligny presented two petitions, one to the Queen Mother and the other to the King, asking that the reformers might practise their faith in peace until a meeting of the general council to decide the final outcome of the religious issues. The document contained a request for Catherine to become a new Esther and lead God’s people from oppression to salvation.22 In one report of the assembly (which mentions only a single petition) Guise rejected it with contempt, saying that it was unsigned. Coligny replied he could easily furnish 10,000 signatures, to which the duke said he would respond with one of 100,000 signatures signed in blood and he would come riding at the head of the men whose names were upon it.
Jean de Monluc, a supporter of the Queen Mother’s, then spoke. He reflected Catherine’s own views when he asked how anyone could justify the brutality used attacking the reformers, ‘who had such a fear of God and reverence for their King’. He went on to suggest that with a gentler approach the country might calm down and there would then be no need for any drastic changes in the government. After days of discussion, it was agreed that the Estates-General be called for a meeting at Fontainebleau on 10 December 1560, followed by a general meeting of the clergy a month later to consider the religious problems in France and to examine abuses within the French Church. Such a religious council outside of his control appalled Pope Pius IV, who worried that it might be a step down the path towards a schismatic Gallic Church. On the whole, members of the council praised Catherine for her moderation in dealing with the reformers, and while the Guises came away chastised, their powers were left intact. The reformers nursed hopes that they might eventually be allowed to worship in freedom, or at least without oppression. The meeting at Fontainebleau could be considered a political victory for Catherine and it greatly enhanced her standing with the councillors of both sides. It also demonstrated how she had matured politically.
There were those who viewed the proceedings with little hope, however, and still believed that direct action should be taken to remove the Guises and give the Bourbons their rightful place at the head of the council. Their notable absence sent a clear message to the country that there remained many who regarded the Guise regime as essentially illegal. Antoine de Bourbon called a meeting at Nérac for the same time as Catherine’s assembly, and heated talks were held between him and the increasing number of disaffected nobles who now supported him. Montmorency was believed to be sympathetic to Bourbon’s efforts, though he was careful not to be directly implicated in any treacherous behaviour. By November 1560 Huguenot preparations were under way for a military confrontation, and for all Catherine’s hopes after the Fontainebleau assembly, the militant element of the reforming party were left unappeased by the present ambling rate of progress and schedules for further meetings. They believed that only by military force could they rid themselves of the foreign princes and free France’s rightful King from their pernicious influence. Trouble erupted in the autumn of 1560 as Huguenot forces attacked major towns in southern and south-western France. Catherine called for help from both Philip of Spain and the Duke of Savoy. Civil war seemed imminent.
In a bold move in which she hoped to force Bourbon’s hand, the Queen Mother sent a command from the King, summoning him to Court at Orléans. He was ordered to bring his brother Condé with him for an explanation regarding the latter’s activities, particularly in the illegal levying of troops. Catherine made sure that the messenger sent to Bourbon subtly informed the brothers that it was the Constable himself who had exposed Condé’s military preparations. This was, in fact, quite false but the ruse had the desired effect, rupturing the trust between Bourbon and the ‘Connetabilists’. It also flushed the prince out to face a direct challenge. Unnerved, he feebly decided that rather than take up arms he would go with his younger brother to Court and explain himself. The pair duly journeyed to Orléans, and Condé was arrested the moment he arrived.
Arresting a Prince of the Blood was a risky undertaking, and Catherine certainly did not wish to see Condé suffer the death sentence for his crimes. She knew all too well that the Guises, ignoring Condé’s right to be tried by his peers, would have their cronies on the special tribunal in order to dispose of the troublesome prince as quickly as possible, thus inciting his followers to immediate open rebellion. Condé’s death would therefore also kill any hopes of a peaceful settlement. The trial opened on 13 November 1560, and on the 26th Condé was duly found guilty of the charge oflèse-majesté and condemned to be executed on 10 December. Catherine’s two supporters on the tribunal, de L’Hôpital and du Mortier, refused to add their signatures to the document, delaying his death, but only for a short while.
Just as matters seemed at an impasse the King fell desperately ill. Already ailing since a fainting fit on 9 November, a week later – after hunting on an extremely cold day – he fainted again after complaining of pain in his left ear. The following day, however, he attended a service celebrating Saint-Aignan at Orléans where, as was the custom, he touched the scrofulous. The poor boy looked so ill himself that it is hard to think that the sick people he touched laid much store by his ‘healing’ powers; indeed, they could credibly have feared further infection. Leprosy rumours about the King were not helped by his patchy skin and the violent purple colour of his face. At vespers the same afternoon he fell into a faint for the second time in two days. Upon examination the doctors found a fistula in his left ear which was causing the King terrible pain. They were powerless to relieve his agony, and his face took on a terrible red and blotchy hue. Francis’s body was collapsing; even his rotten breath betrayed the decay within.
Catherine and the Guises had access to the King sealed off from the Court, and for a time the gravity of his condition remained a closely guarded secret. To complicate matters further, members of the Estates-General summoned to meet on 10 December – the date set for Condé’s execution – were even now arriving at Fontainebleau in preparation for the opening session. They had at all costs to be kept in ignorance of the King’s desperate state. Meanwhile the infected ear caused swelling around it as the sepsis spread. The foul-smelling discharge from Francis’s abscess seemed to do little but irritate his skin into further eruptions of violent colour and boils. As he lay in restless agony, the doctors warned the Queen Mother to expect the worst. Although she had always known her son was fragile, and had been told both by doctors and her soothsayers to expect him to die young – Nostradamus had predicted that Catherine’s eldest son would die before he was eighteen – the Queen Mother watched helplessly as Francis suffered and was finally rendered incapable of speech. She wrote to her sister-in-law Marguerite, the new Duchess of Savoy,
I do not know how to start this letter to you when I think of the terrible trouble and affliction that it has pleased God to visit upon us, after so many sorrows and such unhappiness, to see the terrible and extreme pain that the King, my son is suffering. Still I hope that Our Heavenly Father will not suffer me the agony of taking him from me.… This kingdom cannot be saved unless God takes it into His hands.23
The concerned looks on the faces of the Guises and their followers could finally no longer be disguised, and rumours flew that the King was desperately ill. Condé’s followers grasped at the hope that he might be reprieved if the King died. Catherine had meanwhile to consider the likely outcome should Francis not survive. With Charles-Maximilien, the heir, only ten years old, he would legally be declared a minor and a regency would be set in place to rule until he reached the age of fifteen. The Estates-General would be most likely to vote for a Bourbon regency, in which Catherine would have much less power than she had enjoyed in harness with the Guises. She knew that she must act swiftly to prevent a vote from taking place. Catherine now showed how consummate a political manipulator she had become. As the King recovered slightly, thanks to a lancing of the abscess which released a huge amount of pus through his mouth and nostrils, the Queen Mother decided on her move.
She summoned Condé’s brother, Antoine de Bourbon, to her presence. There, in front of the Guises, Catherine bitterly accused Bourbon of plotting to incite rebellion and reproached him for his treacherous behaviour. Fearful of ending up condemned to die like his brother, Bourbon completely lost his head and, while loudly protesting his innocence, he offered – as a sign of good faith – to give up his right to the regency to the Queen Mother. She made him sign a document to this effect and in return she promised that he would be made Lieutenant-General should Charles ascend the throne. The Guises – who now feared for their own safety for prosecuting Condé without due process of law – were paid off by Catherine when she made the dying King confirm the fiction that it was he, and not the Guises, who had ordered the arrest and trial of Condé. Catherine then asked the brothers and Bourbon to embrace each other as a sign of reconciliation. She employed this utterly meaningless gesture as part of a formula for ‘reconciling’ her enemies and it capped her triumph. By brilliantly playing her two rivals off against each other, Catherine had emerged supreme.
Francis’s slight improvement proved to be a false dawn and Catherine, who had been almost constantly at his bedside with Mary except when making her necessary political manoeuvres, took her place by her son again. Vile remedies did little but exacerbate the boy’s suffering. The popular cure-all, rhubarb, proved as incapable of stopping the abscess from spreading to the King’s brain as the prayers led by the royal women and children in a procession to the churches of Orléans. On 5 December 1560, after a reign of only sixteen months, King Francis II of France breathed his last agonising breath and his fragile, ruined body rendered up his soul.
With swift and decisive action, Catherine took over the running of the royal household. The day after Francis’s death she demanded the crown jewels back from his widow and then left the bereft, grieving girl sitting in her black-draped room. None can deny the torment Catherine suffered at the loss of her son, but she now required her immediate concentration to secure her own position and that of her ten-year-old son, the new King. After ordering that access to the palace be barred, the Queen Mother called a Privy Council meeting at which she declared Charles-Maximilien King of France, henceforth to be known as Charles IX. She opened the meeting with the words: ‘Since it has pleased God to deprive me of my elder son, I do not mean to abandon myself to despair, but to submit to the Divine Will and to assist and serve the King, my second son, in the feeble measure of my experience.’ She then delivered her clear intention to rule until her son was of age: ‘I have decided, therefore, to keep him beside me and to govern the state, as a devoted mother must do. Since I have assumed this duty, I wish all correspondence to be addressed in the first place to me; I shall open it in your presence and in particular in that of the King of Navarre, who will occupy the first place in the council as the nearest relative of the King … such is my will. If any of you wish to speak, let him do so.’ Antoine de Bourbon, King of Navarre, gave his assent, and the others formally added theirs, as she knew they would.
Earlier, on the day after Francis’s death, the Duke of Guise and his men, who had spent the night in vigil over the late King’s body, came to express their loyalty to the Queen Mother and her son. Also present were Queen Mary, the younger royal children, the Cardinal of Lorraine, Antoine de Bourbon, and a few other favoured courtiers. It was an important opportunity for both the Guises and Bourbon to load the blame for any past mistakes on to the dead King and thereby clear the way for the future. The Queen Mother listened to their speeches in which they admitted their errors but said that they had acted solely at the express orders of King Francis. Whenever the duke paused, Catherine nodded slowly and replied in a quiet, mournful voice, ‘It is true, it is true, what you have done was by the command of my son.’ Bourbon then proceeded to exculpate himself from past wrongs by saying he wished for nothing but the good of the kingdom. The Cardinal also promised to act in the best interests of the Queen Mother and her son, the new King. Not one of the protagonists departed from the script prearranged by Catherine in her intrigues over the past few days. It is hard to overestimate the satisfaction the Queen Mother must have derived from these professions of loyalty and humble offers of service, coming from those who had not only set themselves above her for so long, but had also frequently ignored her. She knew that their protestations were only that, but for the present they were all she needed while she consolidated her grip on power.
Pressed for time as the Estates-General – which did not know that Bourbon had handed his rights to the regency to Catherine – were gathering, Catherine called a conseil privé on 21 December. Having neutralised both the Guises and Bourbon, she had herself proclaimed Governor of the Kingdom, effectively enjoying all the powers of a monarch. Much as the Guises had done after Henry’s death, she presented the people with a fait accompli. In a country where the monarch had changed twice in seventeen months, Catherine, the regal matriarch clad in mourning, had become a comforting familiar figure and had even come to represent continuity. Finally, at the age of forty-one, she had arrived at the pinnacle of natural power and pre-eminence. The dangers facing France had not diminished, but at last she could now try to deal with them in her own way.