SEVEN

‘GOUVERNANTE DE FRANCE’

I am what I am in order to preserve your brothers and their kingdom

1560–62

Due to a series of ‘dynastic accidents’ and dexterous manipulation of her opportunities, Catherine de Medici, the forty-one-year-old Italian Dowager Queen of France, now found herself de jure as well as de facto ruler of the kingdom. Her foremost desire was to bring back the glorious days of Francis I and Henry II. To do this she needed to heal a divided realm.

Catherine set about creating the national symbols of authority reflecting her new position. As for a new monarch, she had a huge seal specially created for her as ‘Gouvernante de France’. It depicted Catherine standing, holding the sceptre in her right hand with her left hand raised and index finger pointing upwards in a gesture of command. Upon her head sat a crown with her widow’s veils clearly visible. The following legend was inscribed around the edge: ‘Catherine by the grace of God, Queen of France, Mother of the King’. The phrase ‘Mother of the King’ implied a different and more important status than queen mother and all previous regent queens of France. Catherine had begun carving out a new and unique role for herself, and her powers were far superior to those of a regent. She was effectively the absolute monarch of France.

Though he had been with her from the beginning of Charles IX’s reign, Michel de L’Hôpital was officially confirmed as Catherine’s Chancellor in March 1561. This educated man with his legal training helped Catherine develop intellectually some of the ideas which had hitherto been reached by her sometimes primitive, visceral instincts. Her half-formed solutions based on common sense now acquired a finished elegance. Though her innate ability to understand what a situation required had proved sound enough thus far, de L’Hôpital translated the Queen Mother’s will into a form that could be converted into policy by the state apparatus. He also aided the Queen Mother’s presentation of her agendas. Through de L’Hôpital she acquired a polish and gravitas that frequently left her listeners surprised and impressed.

Catherine accorded Bourbon the prize that had bought his quiescence, making him Lieutenant-General of France, and freed his brother Condé on 8 March 1561. But when Bourbon suggested, at an early Privy Council meeting, that if the Queen Mother fell ill he should be automatically placed in charge, Catherine’s emphatic response crushed his aspirations: ‘My brother, all that I can say is that I shall never be too ill to supervise whatever affects the service of the King my son. I shall ask you therefore to withdraw your request. The case you foresee shall never arise.’ Perhaps she also feared that some ‘Florentine malady’ – the popular sobriquet for poison – might one day afflict her if this road were left available to him. Catherine now opened all despatches before the King, who signed nothing until she had read and approved it first, and a letter from her would always accompany any order or letter from Charles. Presiding over the King’s Council, all policy decisions, whether domestic or foreign, were hers, and she could dispose of the rewards and benefices that were in the monarch’s gift as she wished. As Charles was only ten and would technically be a minor for another four years, the Queen Mother’s plans were designed for a long stay in power.

Catherine, despite her unpromising physique that might at first glance suggest a woman of country origins, still managed to convey the dignity her position required. Her face had grown heavier, the large nose and bulbous eyes seemed more pronounced. Her pale-brown hair could only just be seen from under her veils and her olive skin was still smooth. Though her waist had thickened, her legs remained well shaped and, as usual, her hands were singled out for their supposed loveliness. She was capable of the most elegant deportment, yet, when inspired and hard at work she seemed equally able to leave aside her feminine and regal bearing to become robust and energetic. ‘While she walks or eats she talks always of business with this one or that,’ the Venetian ambassador wrote. ‘Nor does she confine herself to politics but thinks about other subjects so numerous that I do not know how she is able to keep an interest in such diverse matters.’ Catherine loved to walk fast while talking to her ministers. She was also extremely greedy. ‘Her appetite is enormous,’ the ambassador noted, ‘she is already a stout woman.’ Indigestion as a result of overeating dogged Catherine’s otherwise remarkable constitution.

Regal and serious when the situation required, with her keen sense of the ridiculous Catherine was generally the first to burst into gales of laughter when it did not. She also enjoyed comedies and clowns, but could just as easily shed tears when presented with anything sentimental. She continued to take the greatest pleasure in the hunt. ‘She loves exercise, walking a great deal and riding too, very active, she hunts with the King her son, and follows the chase deep into the bush with rare courage.’¹ This woman of passionate and extreme contradictions managed an extraordinary feat of combining the looks of an Italian matron with the manners and bearing of a French queen.

In the first days after Francis’s death, Catherine wrote to her daughter, Queen Elisabeth of Spain. The magnitude of the crisis in France was not lost on the Queen Mother:

Madame ma fille, the bearer will tell you many things, which dispenses me from writing a long letter, all I shall say is that you need not trouble your mind about anything, and may rest certain that I shall govern myself in such a manner that God and the world will have cause to be pleased with me, since my principal aim is to honour God in everything and to preserve my authority, not for myself but for the conservation of this kingdom and welfare of all your brothers, whom I love as springing from the same source whence you all came.

She then added a tiny glimpse into her past unhappiness, and her present fears and isolation:

Ma fille, m’amie, commend yourself to God, for you have seen me as happy as you are now, never knowing any sorrow but that I was not loved as much as I wished to be by the King your father, who honoured me more than I deserved, but I loved him so much that I was always in fear, as you know; and God has taken him from me and, not content with that, has deprived me of your brother whom you know how I loved, and has left me with three little children and a divided kingdom, where there is not one man whom I can trust, who is not governed by private passion of his own. So, m’amie, think of me and take me as an example, not to trust so much to the love your husband feels for you, and to the honour and ease you enjoy, as to neglect to pray to Him who can continue your blessing, or if He please, can place you in my position; I had rather die than see you in it, for fear you could not bear so many ordeals as I have had, and still have, which without His aid, I am sure I could not endure.

This letter is exceptional in the way that Catherine opened her heart to her young daughter. It has been argued that it proves Catherine did not wish for the power she now possessed. Whatever the truth, she certainly protected the power jealously from anyone who threatened it and in time she came to guard her position with increasing vigour, though her motives were – at least initially – born out of necessity. As she pointed out, whom else could she trust with the monumental task of governing France? This emerging part of Catherine came from a woman who had lived in the background for too long. She had been born into mercantile splendour, acquiring from birth lavish tastes and expensive habits. She considered the glory that came with her position a perquisite for her to enjoy, though now was clearly not a time for spending but for major retrenchment. To set the tone she made instant, even though largely symbolic, economies in the running of the royal household.

Due to the pressing financial nightmare that continued to bedevil France, Catherine needed the Estates-General’s endorsement of her position and to support her desperate need to raise money. Despite the death of Francis II, it had been agreed that the meeting of the assembly should proceed, and Catherine had spent the days immediately beforehand reinforcing her powers. Guise was still at hand with his small army; Bourbon continued to be docile; letters were sent out to the provinces and to foreign powers announcing Catherine’s new powers and the subordinate role accorded to Bourbon. The arrival of the Constable with 400 armed men suggested he might cause difficulties, especially when Catherine confirmed that Guise remain in command of the army, but Montmorency well understood that with the change of regime he and his family could expect to prosper more than they had under Francis II and the Guises. Nothing would be gained from agitating now; he needed the transition of power to be confirmed first. Thus Catherine managed to present an at least superficially united front to the Estates-General when they finally convened.

The historic purpose of the Estates-General was to ‘present grievances to the King and the voting of money’, but it was only rarely and reluctantly called.^fn1 To present the factions of Guise, Bourbon and Montmorency as both loyal and harmonious – however incredible a picture that projected – was essential to the Queen Mother. Seated together at the opening ceremony with Catherine and her children, their albeit incongruous unity strengthened her image as an effective ruler and sent a message to the Estates’ potentially troublesome representatives that she had the backing of the country’s most powerful nobles. In his address to the deputies, de L’Hôpital made it quite clear that the Queen Mother viewed decisions by the Crown to be above debate and final. Nor would she hear any claims made arising from the past.

It rapidly dawned on the deputies that they had been called not for genuine consultation but in order to ease the plight of the exchequer. If Henry’s wars and gifts had depleted King Francis II’s patrimony, his son’s short reign left Catherine staring at an empty treasury. Even the usual means of raising money by the sale of offices – however corrupt – had been so diluted that they could no longer contribute anything of substance. Squeezing money from the peasantry during the wars of Henry II had left them so impoverished that the Estates were now being called upon to replenish the treasury. This invoked the phantom of partnership between the Estates and the Crown, for when the monarchy ceased to be able to finance its government it ceased to be independent. The Chancellor proceeded to ask that the Estates help buy back alienated Crown properties, offices and other usual sources of royal revenue that had been squandered. Of the three Estates that made up the Estates-General (the nobility, the clergy and commoners), only the clergy felt itself really vulnerable, since its riches were still relatively intact. It was certainly the most contentious Estate to pillage. In effect, the Chancellor was asking the Estates-General to raise the funds and the means to give the Crown back its independence from themselves. Once the flowery legal and loyal language had been removed, the bare fact remained that this was an audacious proposal.

Since none of the three Estates offered to produce a solution, de L’Hôpital asked them to consider the proposal he now put to them. His prescription was to raise the tailles (the Crown’s only direct tax, the burden of which fell upon the peasantry as the nobles and clergy were exempt) for six years, and that the clergy should buy back the rents and revenues that the Crown had been forced to sell. The only suggestion that emerged from the Estates themselves could best be described as unimaginative: the Crown must prune its expenditure. Catherine diligently cut down the number of servants and offices, lowered pensions and salaries, and triumphantly announced a saving of 2.3 million livres. Instead of congratulating the Queen Mother on her endeavours, however, the deputies merely observed that if such a sum could be saved with ease, could not more telling cuts be made?

One contemporary wrote of Catherine’s efforts, ‘The greatest of subsidies is the drastic economy which the Court imposes on itself in all things.’ De L’Hôpital received instructions from the Queen Mother to send the deputies away and to return with an answer in May. Although the financial question had been left without solution, Catherine and de L’Hôpital congratulated themselves upon the reforms of the judicial system that they had pushed through. In an attempt to alleviate the terrible abuses taking place within the judiciary, magistrates must henceforth be elected, and several other measures were agreed which would protect the peasantry and prevent abuses mainly by the nobility and the Church. A unification of weights and measures was adopted and the taxes levied on moving goods from one area within France to another abolished. The further notable decision taken decreed that the Estates-General should meet at least once every five years.

As to religion, the Chancellor pronounced that he considered it impossible to expect accord between people of different faiths, confirming his axiom: ‘One faith, one law, one king!’ He added, ‘Let us not innovate lightly. Let us deliberate long and previously instruct ourselves … if a man may be allowed to adopt a new religion as he chooses beware lest there be as many religions as there are families and heads of men. You may say that your religion is better, I defend mine; which is more reasonable, that I should follow yours, or you mine?’² For all its orthodoxy, de L’Hôpital’s speech nonetheless outlined Catherine’s clear break with the Guises’ methods of violent persecution. ‘The knife is of no avail against the spirit, save to lose both body and soul,’ he said. ‘Gentleness will accomplish more than rigour.’³ He spoke of the need for a general assembly of the Church Council to get to the root of the religious troubles and made it clear that a council would be convoked for this purpose in the near future.

Once again the Protestants misunderstood this measure of toleration as a gesture of support from the Queen Mother. Unfortunately, as a consequence they grew ever more brazen in their open practice of the new religion and magnified Catholic fears by damaging Church property, smashing sacred statues and committing other sacrilegious acts. None of this gave any comfort to Catherine. While eager to understand and reach an accommodation with the more moderate reformers, and to prevent the worst abuses of the Church, their beliefs per se did not concern her; she merely wanted to find a way around the many entrenched difficulties that separated the two religious parties. Catherine would only remain a religious moderate if she believed it would preserve her son’s crown and the kingdom’s unity. Her moderation was directly proportionate to what she believed to be politically expedient; beyond that it simply did not interest her. Sadly, the Protestants seemed blind to this essential fact.

There then occurred a brief and dangerous moment as Antoine de Bourbon, fired by his supporters from the Estates-General, made a pathetic lunge for the regency he had earlier so feebly relinquished. First he demanded that François of Guise be sent away from Court. Catherine furiously demanded an explanation. Montmorency and his nephews declared that they would leave with Bourbon if she did not expel Guise, which she had no intention of doing, not least because he was still commander-in-chief of the army. Catherine called upon the Constable to visit the King. The little boy, rehearsed by his mother, asked the Constable to remain at Court. Loyalty to the Crown had been so bred into the old man that he declined to leave the boy. Bourbon, faced with departure alone, lost his nerve as usual. Finally giving up his claims to the regency, he was officially confirmed as Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom; Condé received a full pardon and was promised ‘all that will conserve the honour of a Prince of the Blood’ including a seat on the King’s Council.⁴ With this the bottom fell out of any further opposition to Catherine’s supremacy. As the meeting of the Estates broke up, Catherine had her position as ‘Gouvernante’ ratified, although she had been voted no money. For all the glory of her position it was empty without funds.

Catherine had weathered the meeting of the Estates-General but she still knew the unity of the kingdom as guaranteed by her most powerful nobles to be far from assured. From Fontainebleau, where she and the Court had moved for Easter, she wrote of the assembly in a garbled letter to her ambassador in Spain:

Considering how difficult it is that this farce should be performed with so many characters without someone looking black, and that the diversity of men’s minds, moved by so many passions, of which this world is so full, is much to be feared, especially since so sudden and unforeseen a change cannot, I fear, be accepted at once by everyone, and above all by those who lately held the first place here …⁵

She went on to congratulate herself about her handling of Antoine de Bourbon: ‘The position which the King of Navarre [Bourbon] holds here is beneath mine and under my authority, and I have done nothing for him or for the other Princes of the Blood … except by force or necessity, but I have so won him that I dispose of him and do with him what I please.’ But could Catherine count upon a man who, one observer noted, ‘is frivolous enough to wear rings on his fingers and earrings like a woman, in spite of his age and his white hair?’ adding, ‘In an important matter he follows the advice of his sycophants and of light persons … and I can attest that concerning religion he has shown neither firmness nor wisdom.’⁶

Montmorency, though jubilant at power being wrested from his enemies the Guises, was as much a traditional Catholic as they and feared that Catherine’s overtures to the new religion were merely the first steps towards according them full religious liberty. Nor did he find comfort in the Edict of Romarantin (registered on 28 January 1561), which Catherine had tried to enforce the previous year and which had been modified to alleviate the Protestants’ situation further. Under its terms religious prisoners were released and, apart from surviving ringleaders, even those who had taken part in the Conspiracy of Amboise received a pardon. This displeased her son-in-law, Philip of Spain, who had written earlier in January instructing his emissary to impart the following message to Catherine:

Respecting the affairs of religion, you are to speak to Queen Catherine very clearly and frankly, exhorting her on our part to the greatest care and vigilance: she must never permit the innovations which have sprung up in her kingdom to make further progress; and she must not favour in any manner whatsoever or admit to her intimacy any of those who are not as firm in their faith as they should be.⁷

Catherine countered with an argument that she believed would appease the anxious Philip. ‘As for the fact of religion, the examples which we have seen for several years have taught us that to cure an evil of such long standing one remedy alone will not suffice … we must vary our medicaments. For twenty or thirty years now we have tried … to tear out this infection by the roots, and we have learned that violence only serves to increase and multiply it, since by the harsh penalties which have been constantly enforced in this kingdom, an infinite number of poor people have been confirmed in this belief … for it has been proved that this fortifies them.’ She continued disingenuously, ‘I have been advised by all the Princes of the Blood and the other princes and lords of the council to consider the season in which we live, and in which we are sometimes obliged to dissimulate many things which in other times we should not endure, and for this reason to pursue a course of gentleness in this question … [this] may preserve us from the troubles from which we are only just beginning to emerge.’ She asked her ambassador to Spain, Sebastien de l’Aubespine, to explain all this to the King ‘so that he may not conceive a worse opinion of my actions until he has sifted them as he should; for he must consider that the situation is not the same here as in Spain’.⁸ Philip, a man unable to comprehend words that implied half-measures, or proceeding with caution when it concerned others (he could be pragmatic when it suited Spanish interests),^fn2 remained deeply troubled. He believed that Catherine would be unable to pursue religious matters as methodically, and if necessary brutally, as he.

As Catherine’s moderate religious policy began to take effect, an unlikely alliance arose between former enemies. Montmorency and the Guises came together with the Marshal de Saint-André and on 7 April 1561 formed what became known as the Triumvirate. Their stated aim was to preserve the Catholic faith in France and, once that was secure, to take the holy struggle against Protestantism to the rest of Europe. More than likely they also held a covert aim: to dislodge Catherine from her position of political hegemony. Not only did they enjoy the support of Philip of Spain but that of the papacy and the Empire too. The Triumvirs deemed Antoine de Bourbon essential to their success in France and a battle to win him over from his lukewarm Protestantism ensued as Catherine also tried to entice him down her own political path. She even suggested that Philip might restore Spanish Navarre to Bourbon’s kingdom, something Philip had no intention of doing. This bird-brained man, largely ignored and overlooked all his life, felt quite overcome with all the attention he now received from the greatest powers in France and abroad. Much in the same way that the Huguenots were causing trouble in various parts of the kingdom, now supporters of the Triumvirate came out and spread disorder by openly attacking Protestants.

After Easter, during which the Duke of Guise and Saint-André dined conspicuously with Montmorency to celebrate the inauguration of their Triumvirate, the three men left Court without permission and announced they would not return. Catherine wrote an excoriating letter about the Guises to her daughter in Spain. Had they not stolen her husband from her? Had they not turned her son against her? Despite these crimes, she wrote, ‘I decided I would preserve them from harm, but I would … no longer mingle their quarrels with mine, knowing that they would have appointed themselves, if they could have, and would have left me out, as they always do whenever there is … greatness and profit; for they have nothing else in their hearts.’⁹ Her bitterness grew as she described how they misrepresented her to Philip ‘and to the country as a whole … giving out that I was not a good Christian, to make everyone suspect me and to force me to trust no one but them, telling me that everyone is my enemy.… I have discovered just the contrary that I was hated only for favouring them … Therefore ma fille, m’amie, do not let your husband the King believe an untruth. I do not mean to change my life or my religion or anything. I am what I am in order to preserve your brothers and their kingdom.’¹⁰ For all her ranting, Catherine knew she was ultimately doomed without the support of either the Guises or the Constable.

Furious that the Triumvirs backed by Philip were agitating against her, Catherine determined to tie the Spanish King in closer to the Valois family. She already blamed the Guises for causing strife with their violence and refusal to follow her policy of clemency, so when she subsequently heard rumours of marriage talks between Philip and the Guises, proposing a union between Mary, Queen of Scots and Philip’s son and heir, Don Carlos, she was livid. The attentions paid by the Spanish ambassador, Chantonnay, to the mourning Queen of Scots were noted by all. Throckmorton reported to Elizabeth of England, ‘The House of Guise use all means to bring to pass the marriage between the Prince of Spain and the Queen of Scotland.’¹¹

Catherine, who had not been officially informed of these marriage talks, maintained a show of kindness towards her daughter-in-law, but wrote in code to Elisabeth in Spain that any influence she had must be used to prevent a match between ‘the gentleman’ (Catherine’s code name for Mary) and Don Carlos. Mary, once the embodiment of Guise hopes in France, now threatened, in Catherine’s fevered imagination, her own daughter. If Mary became the Spanish Infante’s wife and Philip were to die young, Elisabeth would suffer the same fate as Catherine had herself and be swept to one side by the Scots Queen.¹² The further threat Catherine saw before her, if the union were to materialise, was the massive Spanish support the Guises would receive, perhaps endangering her and her sons’ futures and France itself. Philip, however, daunted by the international complications – Elizabeth of England wanted the match as little as Catherine did – decided not to press ahead and by April 1561 the project was dead.

The prospect of a grand marriage for one of her children always guaranteed Catherine’s wholehearted attention and energy. She immediately put forward her own solution, proposing that Margot, her youngest daughter, be promised to Don Carlos instead of the Queen of Scots. Don Carlos, a short, frail epileptic who weighed less than six stone, had a hunched back and twisted shoulders. He was severely brain-damaged since tumbling head first down a stone staircase in pursuit of a servant girl whom he particularly enjoyed flagellating. The fall had almost killed him. Philip’s doctors operated to save his life and drilled a hole in Don Carlos’s skull to relieve the pressure that had built up on his brain. The operation seemed a success, but for good measure Philip put the shrivelled corpse of a pious Franciscan monk into his son’s bed, and insisted that it was this ‘odour of sanctity’ and not the doctors that had saved the Infante’s life. Though he made a partial physical recovery, the accident left Don Carlos prone to periods of sadism that progressed to homicidal mania. Prevented from embracing opportunities to murder human beings, he sought light relief in roasting live rabbits and torturing horses for the pleasure of hearing them scream. There was thus little to commend him as a husband, apart from the huge inheritance he stood to receive when his father died.

Perhaps luckily for Margot, Philip, who probably already felt the strain of having Catherine as a mother-in-law, did nothing to encourage her plans to become his mad son’s mother-in-law as well. At the same time another marriage rumour reached Catherine. Mary’s uncles were in talks with the Emperor Ferdinand of Austria about a possible alliance with his son Archduke Charles. The Queen Mother wrote urgently to her ambassador in Vienna, ‘The King wishes you to use all your skill to discover what you can about what is being said and done about the proposed marriage between the Queen of Scotland, my daughter, and Prince Charles. Use all the means at your disposal to find out what the true state of affairs is.’¹³ She instructed him to forward any news on the matter to her in code so that she could assess the situation and ‘being warned, as I shall be, it will aid me in whatever remedy I feel to be necessary’.¹⁴

Catherine was impatient to be rid of the attractive but troublesome young woman who, as another Dowager Queen, would have been a political nuisance as well as an expense for France. According to her original marriage contract, Mary had the right to choose whether she remain in France or return to Scotland. She had enough properties in France to maintain her in some style and being Francis’s widow entitled her to live befitting her high rank. Having the charming and beautiful young Dowager at Court provided a general irritant that Catherine preferred to be without. Mary, who had ended her official period of mourning in March, seemed accommodatingly anxious to make a courageous return to her country of origin; how welcome she would be there only time would tell. She made a farewell tour of her relatives in preparation for her departure. Ill health prevented her from attending the coronation of her brother-in-law but on 14 August she left France, the home of her happy youth, for ever. As she sailed away from French shores she was heard to murmur the prophetic words: ‘Adieu France, adieu France adieu donc, ma chere France … Je pense ne vous revoir jamais plus.’ (Adieu France, Adieu France, my beloved France, I do not think I shall ever see you again.)¹⁵

On 15 May 1561 the coronation of Charles IX took place at Rheims. There was little pomp or splendour; economic realities forced themselves even upon this noticeably mean event, usually a monument to regal grandeur. In fact, had it not been for the Pope urging the Duke of Guise and his co-Triumvirs to attend, on the basis that the King would automatically fall under Protestant sway if they continued to absent themselves, the most powerful men in France would have stayed away altogether. Their surly presence strongly suggested their loyalty to the throne itself, if not its present incumbent. Although Catherine had asked the Constable if her favourite son, Edouard-Alexandre, or Monsieur – as the eldest brother of the King was known – could take his place as leader of the peers and Montmorency refused, nevertheless Catherine placed her second son next to the King throughout the ceremony. The Cardinal of Lorraine spoke stern words as he crowned the little boy, though Monsieur actually placed the crown on his brother’s head. Lorraine reminded Charles and those participating in the ceremony who were of the reform faith that ‘anyone who advised the King to change his religion would at the same time tear the crown from his head’.

The little boy cried with fatigue under the weight of the crown. He presented a pathetic image, a physical incarnation of the monarchy’s present weaknesses. Open criticism of Catherine could also be heard; the Duke of Guise had loudly accused her of ‘drinking at two wells’ with her tolerant attitude towards the reformers. The duke and his fellow Triumvirs, Montmorency and Saint-André, posed a serious threat to Catherine, for between them they controlled the French army. Since the creation of the supposedly secret Triumvirate, its leaders had behaved with open hostility towards the Queen Mother. The bullying and impertinence of ‘those who were used to playing king’ were nonetheless unable to deter Catherine from her course. She still believed that religious moderation would heal France and she certainly had the stomach pointedly to ignore the increasingly menacing attitudes of her son’s ‘overmighty subjects’.

Immediately after the coronation Catherine attempted to bring the Constable and the Guises back to the King’s side. First she paid a visit to the cardinal at Rheims, then she announced to the Constable that she would spend one night with him at Chantilly, making a bitter but mocking comment that if she stayed longer ‘you would drive us from your door’. She then insisted that François of Guise come to Paris to lead the great Fête-Dieu procession and thus ‘to defend the honour of God’. It was the only reason he would attend and she well knew it. He replied, ‘Since it is a matter of the honour of God I go, and whatever befalls, I shall die, for I could not die better.’ He duly led the procession through the streets of Paris crowded with throngs of cheering people alongside the King and Bourbon. Paris, that most Catholic of French cities, had been presented with a united front; the Queen Mother had once again applied a cosmetic and temporary cover to disguise the festering sore beneath.

Catherine knew that Philip backed the Triumvirs and in an extraordinary scene even found herself being threatened by his ambassador Chantonnay. As a punishment for her clemency towards the Protestants, he said she would be banished to her Château of Chenonceau. Seeking a meeting with her son-in-law, she wrote to her ambassador in Spain saying their encounter ‘was the thing I desire most in the world, for the fruit it will bear’.¹⁶ She wanted to be able to show the world ‘that the said Catholic King has taken my son under his tutelage and protection’.¹⁷ For all her efforts to win Philip over, Catherine behaved with remarkable tolerance regarding her children’s access to Protestant literature, and it was even said that her son Edouard-Alexandre had stopped going to Mass and sang Protestant psalms to his sister Margot, while snatching the prayer book from her hand. This hardly presented the image of a strict Catholic mother that she should be showing Philip. Rumours also abounded that Edouard-Alexandre already showed signs of being a Huguenot. According to gossip, he even called himself ‘un petit Huguenot’. Mocking the statues of saints – he was nine years old – and on one occasion biting the nose off a statue of Saint Paul, he also exhorted his sister Margot to ‘change my religion and he would throw my book of hours into the fire’. One day, while Catherine was giving an audience to the papal nuncio, the King, his cousin Henri of Navarre and a group of friends dressed up as cardinals, bishops and abbots, and burst into the Queen Mother’s chamber riding a donkey. The hoots of laughter from Catherine could not be disguised and she excused the children’s behaviour as childish antics. The horrified nuncio reported everything back to Rome.

Margot recalled that the Court was ‘infested with heretics’ after her brother’s coronation. She states in her memoirs that Catherine finally reacted to protect her children in their Catholic faith and forbade them to read Protestant literature and had them instructed again ‘in the true, holy and ancient religion, from which she herself had never wavered’.¹⁸ The reckless latitude with which the royal children were apparently allowed to conduct themselves, at least superficially, had sent quite the wrong message to the Calvinists in Geneva, whose hopes grew daily of a royal conversion. Theodore de Bèze, Calvin’s closest lieutenant, wrote to his master, ‘This Queen, our Queen, is better disposed towards us than she has ever been. If only it would please God to allow me a way to write secretly about her three sons of whom so much has been told me by reliable sources. They are so advanced for their age that you could not hope for better.’¹⁹ Catherine would never have considered their childish flirtations with Protestantism anything other than youthful curiosity; she found it inconceivable that any of her own children would ever convert. She began to understand, however, that appearances had to be strictly kept and that she must remain above suspicion of heresy herself as the various factions circled menacingly around her and the royal children. Working long hours, sending despatches all over France, her courage and endurance were evident in these early days of simmering revolt and hostility. ‘As a mother she keeps the King close to her, she does not allow anyone but herself to sleep in his chamber, and she never leaves him,’ reported the Venetian ambassador.²⁰

The kingdom grew unsettled by the religious issues and Catherine’s conciliatory policies appeared to achieve nothing but make her look weak to both Protestants, who demanded more and more concessions, and Catholics, who grew increasingly belligerent towards her and the reformers. De L’Hôpital, after a series of meetings with experts both legal and religious, could offer no solution. The Cour des Pairs was summoned, which included the princes, all chambers of Parlement and the King’s Council. The word ‘Parlement’ in sixteenth-century France could mean ‘the entire judicial complex that included the Parlement of Paris and the six provincial courts at Rouen, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Aix, Grenoble and Dijon … or it could refer only to the Parlement of Paris’ which considered itself the ‘sovereign court of the entire realm and looked on the provincial Parlements as mere branches of their own court’.²¹ For two weeks they met and this resulted in a ban on ‘conventicles and assemblies’, meaning all Protestant religious meetings and gatherings. Catherine and her Chancellor ignored these findings and once again walked the middle ground.

On 30 July an edict was announced that offered amnesty for all religious offences since Henry II’s death, with the proviso that in future those persons led ‘peaceful and Catholic lives’.²² It was yet another stopgap. With the meeting of the Church Council that had been promised at the Estates-General only a month away, Catherine felt more optimistic than most that a reasonable solution could be found. To her, God Almighty should be invoked as a protector, not as an avenger. In religious matters she was no fanatic except when her sons and their birthright were concerned. The Catholic Mass suited her, a lifelong habit that she found comforting, almost as though it were another talisman to ward off evil. Unfortunately, she signally failed to grasp that the burning issues were not niggling doctrinal differences between Christians, but a profound rejection by the reformers of two fundamental truths upon which the Catholic Church was built, the Eucharist and doctrinal authority of the papacy.

Pope Pius IV expressed extreme alarm at the idea of the conference scheduled to take place at Poissy at the end of August; at the very least it undermined his authority and it gave an almost formal recognition to the French Protestants by their inclusion. The Council of Trent – the Catholic Church’s general assembly originally created to fight the Reformation and bring about the Counter-Reformation – had been recalled and this, he stated, should be the only official venue for discussions about the Church. Catherine, afraid that Trent would come too late and anyway prove ineffective for her purposes, pressed on with her own agenda. While it has been argued that the initiative for the forthcoming conference did not belong to her since it had been officially ordered by the Estates-General at the beginning of the new reign, the Queen Mother put her formidable energy into ensuring that the Colloquy of Poissy went ahead. The Pope, unable to prevent the meeting from taking place, sent the Cardinal of Ferrara to attend as his special legate. His instructions were clear: to curb the agenda as far as possible and prevent further concessions to the Protestants. Meanwhile Catherine let it be known that all her subjects would be welcome to present their views.

Shortly before the church conference, the Estates-General met on 27 August. The meeting set for May had been postponed due to the coronation. The outcome of the meeting, which had been called to deal with the Crown’s financial predicament, resulted in money being voted to curb the King’s financial problems. Most of the funds came from the Church which, fearing even harsher demands being made upon it, offered 1 million livres over six years ‘for the redemption of royal domains and of indirect taxes which had been alienated’.²³ A further 7 million livres would be paid to settle the King’s debts. The financial aid promised came as a huge relief for the Queen Mother. With one problem solved, she moved on to the next.

Theodore de Bèze, who had been invited to attend the conference at Poissy to represent the Calvinists, had arrived on 23 August at Saint-Germain, where he was welcomed by Catherine in Antoine de Bourbon’s apartments. De Bèze, a cultivated nobleman, was reckoned to be the least provocative of the Calvinists. Intelligent and sophisticated, he understood the importance of appearing reasonable though devoted to his cause. Fanaticism would not further his aims at Poissy. The Cardinal of Lorraine was also present and the two men had a courteous and brief discussion about the Eucharist. Lorraine asked de Bèze what he understood by the words ‘This is my body’. De Bèze replied he ‘held for a real but sacramental presence’.²⁴ Lorraine then asked if he believed ‘that we communicate truly and substantially the body and blood of Jesus’. He received de Bèze’s careful and qualified reply that he believed it ‘spiritually and by faith’.²⁵ The encounter broke up with the most cordial professions on both sides, the cardinal saying, ‘I am very happy to have seen and heard you, and I adjure you in the name of God to confer with me, in order that I might understand your reasons and you mine, and you will find out I am not as black as they make me out to be.’²⁶ Catherine’s triumphant remark to Lorraine that the reformers ‘have no other opinion than this with which you agree’ was a touch premature, as the following days would soon bear out.

The Colloquy of Poissy – as it came to be called – opened in a refectory of the Dominican Convent there, not far from Paris. Seated on a raised dais were Catherine and her children, the Princes of the Blood and the King’s Council. Along each side of the long room sat the prelates, doctors of theology, cardinals and ministers who were to participate in the debate and hear the arguments. The Duke of Guise brought in the meagre number of Protestant representatives under guard and placed them behind a low barrier, as if to prevent them from contaminating the rest of those present. As seating arrangements go, it was neither tactful nor auspicious. De Bèze opened with a graceful speech and then proceeded to go straight to the heart of the matter before them. Lulled by his eloquence, his listeners heard him move on to the subject of the Eucharist. He then spoke the fatal words about the Host: ‘His body is as far removed from the bread and wine as heaven is from the earth.’ A horrified silence was followed by uproar, then shouts of ‘Blasphemy!’ and ‘Scandal!’. The Cardinal de Tournon rounded upon the Queen Mother on her raised platform crying, ‘How can you tolerate such horrors and blasphemy to be spoken before your children who are still of such a tender age?’ Catherine replied that she and her sons would ‘live and die as Catholics’. The Jesuit General, Diego Lainez, warned the Queen Mother that the kingdom was doomed if she did not banish the heretics. With de Bèze’s words Catherine’s hopes for doctrinal compromise collapsed. After a few more days that produced nothing but deeper division and hatred, the Colloquy of Poissy closed on 13 October 1561.

Despite the acrimony at Poissy, Catherine continued to show favour to the Protestants. One explanation, apart from her pragmatism and hopes of unity based on reason, could be put down to the conduct of the Huguenot hierarchy. While the Triumvirs and Spain bullied and threatened her, the Protestant leaders and noblemen treated the Queen Mother with the greatest respect, calling her ‘our Queen’ and making endless loyal professions as French subjects to the King, the Crown and Catherine herself. Their clever policy of appealing to her as their ruler and protector, lauding her wisdom and foresight, gained them much ground. This was particularly true since the Catholic chiefs were frequently absent from Court sulking on their estates, and if they did deign to appear at Court at all they were often insufferably rude to the Queen Mother. In the absence of the war hero Guise and other Catholic icons, the most brilliant Huguenot leaders such as the charismatic Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, who had been publicly disowned by his uncle Montmorency for his change of religion, his brother d’Andelot and Louis de Condé had the stage to themselves. They proved irresistible to many, and de Bèze received a gracious invitation to remain at Court; indeed, Catherine allowed him to preach to the increasing number of Protestant converts there, among them some of the most important noblemen and women in the country.

Again the Guises withdrew in protest. As they did so, they made an attempt to kidnap Catherine’s adored son, Edouard-Alexandre. The boy had been approached by various members of the Guise clan to come with them and stay with his sister, Claude, Duchess of Lorraine, or to be taken to his aunt, Marguerite of Savoy. The prince listened to their proposals and promptly went to tell his mother. He reported that the Duke of Nemours, a onetime friend of Catherine’s but now a supporter of the Guises, had visited his bedroom and demanded, ‘What religion are you? Are you a Huguenot? Yes or no?’ The frightened boy answered, ‘I am of the same religion as my mother.’ Nemours had insisted that the prince, as heir presumptive, would be much better off out of France in the safety of Lorraine or Savoy, since Condé and Bourbon were plotting to take the throne. Nemours finished by warning the prince, ‘Mind well not to speak to your mother of this, and if anyone asks you of what I have spoken, tell them I was merely entertaining you with comedies.’²⁷ Catherine also heard that the Duke of Guise’s eldest son Henri had on several occasions tried to tempt Edouard-Alexandre to come with them saying, ‘You will be so happy. You will have so much freedom … you cannot imagine the pleasures we shall share.’ Henri of Guise went on to tell the prince that they would fetch him in the middle of the night and he would have to climb from a window into a coach. And before anyone had had time to discover his absence, Edouard-Alexandre would be in Lorraine.

This threat to Catherine’s children, and most of all her beloved second son, struck at her heart. Handsome and tall for his age, Edouard-Alexandre seemed to have inherited more Italian than French looks and interested himself less in physical exercise and more in reading and the arts than was the Valois habit. With long and beautiful hands like his mother, he had a handsome face and well-proportioned body. He was more precious to her than anyone or anything. Catherine decided for the moment to pretend that she had known of the plan all along and that her son had told her all about it from the first, although Guise denied any knowledge of the plot. She was appalled when Ambassador Chantonnay came to speak to her on behalf of Philip, who had not been party to the abduction plan. He said that the King of Spain thought it wise that the royal children should be taken to a place of safety in view of the trouble that would surely descend upon the kingdom. Her reply came quickly: if she must part with her sons for their own safety then she would rather place them in the hands of the King of Spain than anyone else. Catherine then tried to have Nemours arrested, but he fled to Savoy, sending an emissary to explain that the plan was no more than a fantasy. Eventually, for raisons d’état, Catherine decided to let the matter drop and by 9 June 1562 Nemours had returned to Court. As was her habit, however, Catherine did not forget this iniquity.

During the late autumn of 1561 monks were being killed and churches pillaged in the south-west of France where the Huguenots held sway. In revenge, Parisian Catholics rose up and attacked Huguenot gatherings. In an attempt to keep the warring parties separate, Protestants were banned from worshipping within city walls and not at all on Sundays or Catholic feast days.²⁸ De Bèze wrote to Calvin that he had secret permission for the Protestants to meet in safety and awaited an edict that ‘gives us better and more secure terms’.²⁹ Catherine was making a final brave attempt to unite the two faiths. Holding back French churchmen from setting out to attend the Council of Trent, she struggled heroically to find an accommodation. She chased her dream of unity throughout the last days of 1561, but it could only be a chimera; her pragmatism and, in this case, lack of imagination fatally blinded her to the passion with which men and women clung to their spiritual beliefs.

Catherine’s last effort at producing a peaceful solution came with the Edict of January. In de L’Hôpital’s opening speech before the meeting to discuss it, he put forward the view he shared with the Queen Mother. Affirming that the assembly had not been called to decide which was the best religion but only the best way to restore the state, he said it was possible to be a citizen without being a Christian; indeed, it was even possible for an excommunicate to be a citizen. The debate and resulting vote took place on 15 January 1562. The edict effectively recognised and legalised the Protestant religion in France, which had hitherto been outlawed. By giving the Protestants even minimal recognition Catherine now allowed them the right of citizenship, albeit a very much second-class one. Henceforth they would be permitted to practise their religion, but only outside town walls. Closing the council with an eloquent speech in which she explained her vision and her hopes, she reaffirmed that ‘she and her children and the King’s Council wished to live in the Catholic faith and obedience to Rome’.³⁰ Catholics were furious with the edict and Parlement refused to ratify it. Even Elisabeth wrote from Spain saying bluntly that her mother must either declare unambiguously for the Catholics and receive support from Spain, or side with the Protestants in which case she could expect Spain’s enmity. Finally Catherine sent her delegates to attend the Council of Trent and argued that the edict must be seen as a stopgap until the council had deliberated.

Antoine de Bourbon, who with his usual infirmity of purpose had been attending both Mass and the Protestant services during the past months, finally renounced the new religion and came over to the Triumvirs. He had been offered a mirage of thrones, territories and even the hand of Mary Stuart by the Spanish and other Catholic forces. These blandishments were without substance but they made the muddle-headed weakling into a champion of Catholicism, and he boldly denounced the recent edict and declared his intention to ‘live in closest friendship with the Guises’. His wife Jeanne d’Albret, Queen of Navarre, though a long-time sympathiser, had only just officially embraced the Protestant religion. Jeanne was in despair as her husband, whom she had loved passionately, heaped this public humiliation upon her. When Catherine asked her to induce her co-religionists to adopt more moderate behaviour, the Queen of Navarre – whose eight-year-old son would succeed Catherine’s sons should they die without issue – replied, ‘Madame, if I had my son and all the kingdoms in the world within my hands, I would rather cast them to the bottom of the sea than lose my salvation.’³¹ Calvin flew into a rage at Bourbon’s behaviour: ‘This wretch is completely lost and is determined that all should be lost with him.’³² As both Protestants and Catholics continued to agitate, the edict having achieved nothing but to annoy both parties, Louis de Condé firmly stepped into his brother’s much-neglected place as official leader of the Huguenots. Meanwhile Catherine finally managed to force Parlement to register the edict, even though most Catholics still demanded it be revoked.

Deciding it was time to present a spotless face upon her own religious intentions, Catherine aimed to silence her critics and parade her unshakeable Catholicism. The hope that she would convert had even been fostered by some Protestants. Although she had unwisely allowed it to appear that she was open to hearing the new teachings, she naively assumed that she would be considered above suspicion. Changing her faith, such as it was, an amalgam of superstition, habit and a genuine love of the Catholic rites and rituals, was unthinkable and held no attraction for her. When Chantonnay criticised the Queen Mother for the ‘nourriture’ (in this case he meant education, not food) that she allowed the King and his brothers to receive, and the latitude she permitted them to ‘say whatever pleased them on matters of religion’, Catherine was stung into replying, ‘This does not regard you but me alone.’ The Queen Mother added that she knew well that the ambassador had been told lies about her and her actions, and that if she discovered who had spoken the untruths she would ‘make them understand that it was most unwise to speak with so little reverence for their Queen’. Nevertheless, her weak position – which had in some instances been undermined by her naively ambiguous behaviour – obliged her to write a placatory letter to Philip. Her explanations were the same as ever: ‘the season in which we live’ constrained her from acting as she would ideally like. Catherine now ostentatiously appeared with her children at Mass, in every religious procession and observed every rule as laid down by her Church. Furthermore, she commanded her ladies to behave above reproach with regard to religion and warned that they would be banished from Court if they did not. The Constable’s nephews, Coligny and d’Andelot, left Fontainebleau on 22 February after a furious quarrel with their uncle Montmorency who remarked that he wished he had not ‘raised them so high’.

The Duke of Guise had been visiting his family estates in the Champagne region during early 1562 and on Sunday, 1 March rode with an armed escort to hear Mass. As he passed through the small town of Vassy belonging to his niece Mary Stuart, he heard singing coming from a barn within the town walls. A Protestant service was being held which, according to the terms of the new edict, was clearly illegal. The duke attended Mass in a church not far from the barn. To his mounting wrath the voices of the psalm singers could be clearly heard as they filtered through the church walls. Whoever provoked the subsequent fight is unclear – the duke’s official version gave it out to be ‘a regrettable accident’ – but tempers boiled over into a violent struggle between the Huguenots and Guise’s men, which left seventy-four Protestants dead and over one hundred wounded. Among the casualties were women and children. Guise himself received a cut to the face and some of his men were also hurt. The incident became known as the ‘Massacre of Vassy’ and it immediately lit the fuse that sparked off what came to be known as the French wars of religion.

^fn1 It is worth noting that Francis I never once called a meeting of the Estates-General during his reign.

^fn2 For twelve years Philip helped prevent the excommunication of Elizabeth I as it was in his interests to do so.