EIGHT
My courage is as great as yours
1562–64
News of the Massacre of Vassy reverberated across the kingdom, not least because it was hailed as a ‘great victory’ by many Catholics. François, Duke of Guise, carefully avoiding armed Huguenot contingents sent to intercept and kill him, made for Paris at the head of 3000 men. Greeted outside the city by the Constable, they rode triumphantly into the capital together. Cheered in the streets as a hero, the duke was offered help by an infini peuple (countless people) including the powerful Provost of Merchants, to take the fight to the Huguenots. Tactfully he replied that he would leave matters to the Queen Mother and Antoine de Bourbon, as Lieutenant-General of France, and would be content to serve them honourably in whatever capacity they saw fit. When the duke arrived in Paris, Condé was already in the city with 1000 armed Huguenots.
At Saint-Germain when she heard the news of the Massacre at Vassy, Catherine made an eleventh-hour attempt to stop open warfare breaking out in the capital. She commanded Condé’s brother, the Cardinal de Bourbon, governor of Paris, to order both Guise and Condé to quit the city at once, taking their men with them. Knowing he was secure, Guise did not move, but Condé rightly feared for his life and left Paris on 23 March 1562. The Queen Mother sent four emotional letters to him in the last two weeks of March begging him not to abandon either her or the peace of France. In one she wrote, ‘I see so much that pains me, that were it not for the confidence I have in God and the certainty that you will help me preserve this kingdom and serve the King, my son, I would feel even worse. I hope that we shall remedy all with your good counsel and help.’1 Even at the best of times Condé rarely allowed himself to be taken in by Catherine’s flattery; the prince now considered it time to arm and fight for what he believed to be right. Her appeals were made in vain.
Catherine and the Court had moved to Fontainebleau when Guise arrived there on 26 March with 1000 cavalrymen. Claiming to be anxious that the Huguenots might take the royal family hostage, he said he had come to escort them back to Paris where they would be safe. Catherine refused, but when the duke insisted that the King and her children were in grave danger she tearfully capitulated and left the chateau the following day. Catherine understood all too well that once they were in possession of the King, the Catholic faction led by Guise were de facto also in possession of the law. On 2 April Condé, having earlier joined forces with Coligny and his men, took Orléans where they raised the Huguenot standard. In a local uprising Rouen fell a few days later. This was a particular blow to Guise pride since it lay in the heart of the family’s Norman territories. On 8 April Condé issued a manifesto stating his aims and those of his Huguenot followers. Proclaiming their loyalty to the King and the royal family, they stated that they only wished to free them from the Guises, whom they accused of breaking the law. They also asked for their recently won freedom of conscience to be guaranteed in law beyond doubt.
Catherine – stubbornly determined not to give up her contact with Condé – travelled to Toury on 9 June where she met the rebel leader. Disarming and friendly, she kissed him on the mouth as was the proper greeting between members of the royal family. Each of the principals was accompanied by his or her own escort of one hundred men. Catherine’s troops, in royal purple, contrasted strongly beside Condé and his men in white, henceforth to become the colour adopted by the Huguenot armies. Catherine, astonished at their choice, since white was for mourning but it also implied poverty and simplicity, asked Condé, ‘Monsieur, why do your men dress like millers?’ He replied, ‘To show, Madame, that they can beat your donkeys.’2 As the two talked, their escorts waited and one Huguenot cavalryman wrote afterwards, ‘I had a dozen friends from the other side, of whom each one was as dear to me as a brother, so much so that they asked permission from their officer [to speak to us]. Soon the two separate lines of those in purple and those in white were mixed, and when the time came to separate, many of us had tears in our eyes.’3
Despite her efforts Catherine gained nothing more from the encounter than the promise of a further meeting. This took place a few weeks later when she met other Huguenot leaders. While these futile talks were held and Catherine tried to maintain an ultimately untenable position above the dispute, both sides appealed abroad for aid. The Huguenots turned to Geneva, the German Protestant princes and to Queen Elizabeth of England. Originally Elizabeth had offered to act as a mediator between the two sides, but the ineluctable slide towards chaos in France tempted her to closer involvement, not for any pious motives but for the spoils. With Mary on the throne of Scotland, she also had no wish to see the Guises dominate France again. Condé’s delegates arrived in England and on 20 September 1562 signed the Treaty of Hampton Court. In exchange for Le Havre, which would later be substituted for Calais – the Queen’s true goal – she sent 6000 men to Le Havre where they started work on improving the fortifications.
Catherine and the Triumvirs had meanwhile sent out their own appeals for help. In the first instance French nobles were heavily taxed, raising 300,000 écus. Philip of Spain rejoiced that France was at last undertaking a holy war against the Huguenots, and despatched 10,000 foot soldiers and 3000 cavalrymen. Similarly, Catherine raised money from the papacy, Florence and Venice. Swiss mercenaries and other foreign troops were hired to boost the royal army well organised by Guise. The early days of what became known as the First War of Religion were characterised by the particular viciousness of localised atrocities, committed by both sides settling old scores. In Sens monks had their throats cut; 200 Protestants were drowned at Tours, and in Angers the Duke de Montpensier decapitated those unfortunate Huguenots he managed to capture. Hotheads from both parties committed outrages that exacerbated already deep hatreds. Francis II’s heart was taken from its urn at Saint-Denis and burned; other royal tombs also suffered desecration. The intense fighting in the south of France left the area ravaged. After initially spectacular results in Guyenne by the Protestants, Blaise de Monluc, one of Henry II’s most renowned soldiers, enjoyed a considerable victory there, though the Languedoc was almost entirely in Huguenot hands.
The Royalists took Poitiers and Bourges, after which they moved further into Normandy with the aim of recapturing Rouen, the defence of which was led by Gabriel de Montgomery, the young nobleman whose lance had been the unwitting cause of Henry II’s death. Catherine execrated Montgomery, although Henry had personally exculpated him and one of his dying wishes had been that he should not be pursued or prosecuted for what had obviously been an accident. None of this carried any weight with the Queen Mother; Montgomery had to be punished. She believed him responsible for the kingdom’s present troubles, for had Henry lived France would not have suffered such torturous ordeals. Filled with hatred for the man who had ‘killed’ her husband, it became her obsession that he should be brought to justice for his ‘regicide’. Despite her undeserved reputation in history for vengefulness, this is one of the very few instances when Catherine did indeed pursue a personal vendetta.
In mid-October, during the bombardment of Rouen, the Queen Mother came to Fort Sainte-Catherine, above the city, to discuss the progress of her son’s armies. She had brought the King with her to hearten the troops, but kept him sheltered and safe. Listening to the military experts put forward their strategies, she seemed more a campaigning king than a forty-three-year-old queen. Animated and involved, she walked the ramparts watching her guns fire upon the rebels. Both Guise and Montmorency warned her not to expose herself to danger but she laughed at their fears, saying, ‘My courage is as great as yours.’ They did not exaggerate the risks she ran. When Antoine de Bourbon, occupying one of the forward royalist positions, needed to relieve himself, he wandered into the bushes a little way off from his men and was hit in the left shoulder by the shot of an arquebus. Guise, who found Bourbon knocked to the ground, picked him up and had him carried to the surgeons. At first sight the wound did not look mortal but despite what must have been excruciating exploratory surgery as the physicians poked and dug about, the bullet could not be found. Ambroise Paré, who had attended Henry II on his deathbed, became alarmed. He wrote afterwards, ‘Monsieur de la Roche-sur-Yon, who loved the King of Navarre greatly, took me to one side and asked me if the wound was fatal. I answered that it was … He asked the other [surgeons] … who replied that they had high hopes that the King, his master, would recover, and this gave the prince much joy.’4
Catherine arrived at Bourbon’s sickbed, bringing with her Guise and Antoine’s brother, the Cardinal de Bourbon, as the host of doctors and surgeons surrounding him maintained their optimism. Ambroise Paré continued to be privately pessimistic, however, and wrote later, ‘Until I saw signs of a good recovery I would not change my opinion.’ While the medical consultation was in full flow, much to the royalists’ delight so was the recapture of Rouen. Bourbon asked to be carried into the city through a breach in the Porte Saint-Hilaire so the walls of his room were knocked down and the victorious troops carried him into the town. Once installed there, Paré’s diagnosis proved correct as the wound became gangrenous. The surgeon recalled Bourbon’s suffering: ‘It was necessary to open his arm, from which came a smell so foul that many people, unable to bear the stench, were forced to leave the room.’ Unfortunately no pus accompanied the putrid odour and the patient grew delirious as his fever rose. He asked to be removed from the unhealthy air of Rouen and taken up the Seine on a galley. With his end approaching, Bourbon behaved as indecisively in death as he had done in life. Both Catholics and Protestants, eager to claim the salvation of this high prince, surrounded him, arguing over his soul. On 9 November he confessed to a Catholic priest, but the following day, regaining consciousness, he declared, ‘I wish to live and die “en l’opinion d’Auguste”’ (i.e. as a Lutheran). On the night of 17 November, one month after receiving his wound, death, the one thing Bourbon could be certain of, finally claimed him. His last words were to his Italian valet of whom he was fond; grabbing the man’s beard, he gasped, ‘Serve my son well and make sure he serves the King.’
Antoine’s demise made his eight-year-old son, Henri, First Prince of the Blood and heir to the throne of France after Catherine’s sons. Henri left Court to join his mother, Jeanne d’Albret, Queen of Navarre, where under her fanatical influence he became a follower of Calvin. If Antoine de Bourbon had been an unreliable but malleable irritant for the Queen Mother, his son Henri later grew to present a far cannier foe when provoked. More than anything else Catherine feared what the boy represented; prophesied by her soothsayers as the eventual ruler of France after her sons, Henri incarnated her very worst nightmare.
One of the joys Catherine had anticipated upon the recapture of Rouen evaded her. Gabriel de Montgomery, with a handful of men, escaped on board a ship before the town fell. In a vengeful frenzy 4000 rebel captives were put to the sword by royalist soldiers, though Guise tried to put a stop to the worst excesses and keep some of the more valuable prisoners for ransom. More pressing problems now occupied the Queen Mother, however. Despite the royalists regaining the momentum, there was a sudden and real danger posed when Condé and his army left Orléans marching towards Paris. Guise, who had planned to take Le Havre, abandoned his project and set out with his army in a headlong rush to reach the capital before the Huguenots. Guise won the race and Condé turned towards the English troops in Normandy, planning to join forces with them before any major engagement took place. He was foiled by Montmorency’s army blocking the route northwards and the battle of Dreux was fought on 19 December 1562.
Describing the opening moments of this, the first major battle in the war, François de la Noue, a Huguenot gentleman and soldier, wrote, ‘Each one of us thought to himself that the men coming towards him were either his companions, his relatives or friends and within the next hour they would be killing each other. The thought filled us with horror, but we maintained our courage.’5 A dazzling cavalry charge led by Coligny almost won this decisive battle, but Guise, with more men, had managed to keep troops in reserve and carried the day. Saint-André, one of the Triumvirs and bosom friend of Henry II, was killed in action, and Montmorency found himself once more a prisoner of war, as did Condé. This left Guise in charge of the royalist army and the only Triumvir still in circulation. Coligny meanwhile took command of the Huguenot forces. Catherine saw the victory at Dreux as a chance to start peace talks, but with public opinion against her Guise set off for Orléans, to which he laid siege.
On the evening of 18 February 1563 the Duke of Guise inspected the progress of the siege and made an assessment of his troop dispositions at Orléans. Returning to camp as evening fell, he was preceded by a young man named Poltrot de Méré and one of his pages. Poltrot was a twenty-year-old youth, ‘short in stature and yellow skinned’. It later transpired that la Renaudie, author of the Amboise Conspiracy, was a distant relation of his. De Méré, originally a spy for the Huguenots, had been turned by Guise into a counter-spy. Now, some claimed, he had been given the order to murder François of Guise by his original master, Admiral de Coligny. That evening he noticed that the duke was not wearing his usual coat of chain mail. Keeping to one side near a sentry, the would-be assassin hid behind some bushes as the duke passed him on horseback. Guise did not see his attacker as he emerged from the brush and fired an arquebus at the warlord’s back. Hit by the shot, the duke fell to the ground and by the time a search began for the culprit, Poltrot de Méré had left the camp on a fast horse.
Catherine was at Blois when she heard the news. Her emotions, apart from shock, could best be described as a mixture of despair at losing ‘the ablest and worthiest minister [her son] could ever have’ yet delight that she might shortly be freed from the powerful duke’s yoke. Knowing that Guise’s death would damage the chances of a true and lasting peace almost irreparably, the Queen Mother decided that the crime must be properly examined and its perpetrator punished in an exemplary fashion. Genuinely appalled that Guise should have been struck down in this cowardly manner, she wrote to Anne d’Este, the duke’s wife, ‘Even though I have been assured that the wound is not fatal, I am so troubled I know not what to do. But I wish to avail myself of every favour and all the power that I possess in the world to avenge this crime and I am sure that God will forgive all that I will do to this end.’6 As soon as she could, Catherine left Blois for the duke’s camp, where she sat by his bedside.
Poltrot de Méré had, meanwhile, been caught and brought back to camp. One look at the half-witted creature satisfied everyone that this was not the work of a clever man, but a fool possibly operating under orders from others, or striking out to make his own mark on history. The gibbering youth quickly confessed that he had been working under orders from Coligny, who had offered him one hundred écus to kill the duke. Catherine wrote to her sister-in-law, Marguerite of Savoy, that Coligny and de Bèze hadQuestioned by the Queen Mother, Poltrot later contradicted himself and withdrew the accusation against Coligny’s involvement in the attack. Nevertheless, the military man famed even more for his severe morals than his courage and military expertise found himself stained by the original accusation, one which the Guises certainly believed to be the truth. Catherine, on the other hand, had no objection to Coligny losing the moral high ground, but ultimately desired peace between France’s most influential families. For the moment, the ambiguity suited her well; a tarnished and compromised Coligny would be easier to keep in check.
persuaded him that if he carried out their plan he would go straight to heaven … he also told me that he had orders to keep my children and myself under surveillance and warned me of the infinite hatred that the Admiral has for me and that I must take the greatest care. There, Madame, this man of good (Coligny), who says he does nothing but for religion, but tries to have us all killed. I hear that during this war, he will eventually kill my children and get rid of my best men.7
As was almost invariably the case, the cheery prognostications of the surgeons proved wildly optimistic and François of Guise – war hero, military genius and charismatic Catholic leader – died on 24 February 1563. On 19 March the state accorded him an almost royal funeral; the cortège, composed of twenty-two town criers ringing bells, important citizens carrying burning torches, and representatives of the Church and nobility, all processed through Paris. A large troop of armed militiamen accompanied them. Thousands of mourners lined the streets. The assassination of François of Guise set off a blood feud between his family and Coligny’s – the Châtillons – that would culminate in the death of tens of thousands of people nine years later.
Coligny answered the accusations from afar, and he did so with such frankness and so contrary to the flowery usage of the day that his honesty almost incriminated him. Admitting that he had heard of several plots to kill Guise or members of his family even before Vassy, and claiming that he had warned the duke via the Duchess of Guise, he went on to say that since the Massacre he regarded Guise and his family as enemies of the King and kingdom. He added that several plots had been uncovered, instigated by the duke, to murder both Condé and himself. Furthermore, under the present situation where the two men were fighting in the war on opposite sides, he did not feel himself obliged to warn Guise of any threats to his life. Coligny went on to say that although he had never actively instigated any plans to murder the duke, he had indeed taken Poltrot de Méré into his pay as a spy. He continued that the latter was the last person to whom he would entrust such a delicate task as killing the leader of the opposition, though at their last meeting de Méré had commented upon how easy it would be to kill the duke. Coligny finished by begging that Poltrot be kept alive to testify in any legal investigation, as he was the only man who could clear his name.
Since it was not in Catherine’s interests to have matters clarified by a trial, Poltrot de Méré was duly executed and dismembered before a huge crowd at the Place de Grève in Paris on 18 March. The people, inflamed at the loss of their hero, tore the flesh from Poltrot’s body and dragged it round the streets of Paris. The truth, probably complicated and unlikely to have directly involved Coligny, died with him. In a letter to Catherine accompanying his statement, Coligny’s ‘injudicious candour’ sealed the Châtillon–Guise enmity for ever. In his explanation the Admiral concluded, ‘Although he was entirely innocent, he nevertheless regarded the duke’s death as the greatest benefit which could have befallen the kingdom, God’s Church, and in particular, his whole House.’8
Almost inevitably, Catherine’s long and turbulent relationship with the Guises left a cloud of suspicion over her too. She is supposed to have remarked to her trusty confidant the Marshal de Tavannes, ‘The Guises wished to make themselves kings, but I stopped them outside Orléans.’9 She is also alleged to have told Condé, ‘Guise’s death released her from prison as she herself had freed the prince; just as he had been the duke’s prisoner, so she had been his captive given the forces with which Guise had surrounded her and the King.’10 The Venetian ambassador noted the Queen Mother’s remark that ‘if M. de Guise had perished sooner, peace would have been achieved more quickly’.11 It is relatively safe to say that Catherine had nothing to do with the death of the Duke of Guise, though for the moment chance served her well in freeing her from the man who most opposed settlement with the Huguenots. She was now, by default, chief of the Catholic party, while Coligny with Condé, also by default, became the leaders of the Huguenots. It was clear to her that the majority of her people were faithful Catholics and that she must seek a peace agreement that would prevent the spread of the reform religion.
Using the two captives Condé and Montmorency as pourparleurs for their respective parties, their talks resulted in the Edict of Amboise on 19 March 1563. Its terms reflected the growth of Protestantism within the nobility and the concessions to noble Protestants were far greater than to the lowlier believer. Freedom of conscience was granted to all Huguenots, though their places and rights of worship favoured the nobles. Broadly speaking, a nobleman could hold services on his estates, while those further down the social scale were restricted to worshipping in their homes. Paris and its environs were banned, though Huguenots were allowed to hold services in any town they held before 7 March. Neither the two parties nor the people received the edict well, and those who subscribed to the blame-the-messenger principle threw mud at the town criers whose job it was to shout out its terms. Adding to the general tone of dissatisfaction on both sides, Calvin condemned Condé as a ‘wretch who, in his vanity, had betrayed his God’.
The recapture of Le Havre now became Catherine’s next objective. This would serve the added purpose of bringing the two opposing sides together against the English. Queen Elizabeth received a message from Condé and Coligny asking her to give up the town. She replied that it was her right as compensation for the loss of Calais and that she would hold Le Havre ‘despite all of France’.12 Catherine called upon Huguenot and Catholic troops to join together beneath the royal banner and remove the foreigner from French soil. With a common cause once more, Montmorency and Condé besieged Le Havre and to Elizabeth’s fury succeeded in ejecting the English on 23 July 1563. Elizabeth’s troops – even more afraid of the plague epidemic raging inside the town than the cannon fire to which they were subjected – made it an easy victory. Understandably, Elizabeth never viewed the Huguenots with anything other than bitterness following what she saw as their betrayal. After Catherine also arrested Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, the English ambassador, for treating with the Huguenots, Catherine and the English Queen eventually agreed peace terms under the Treaty of Troyes (12 April 1564), which officially recognised French ownership of Calais in exchange for 120,000 crowns.
Despite the Peace of Amboise, neither side in the French civil war completely disarmed. Undaunted, Catherine promoted peace at Court, hoping that it would filter down throughout the realm. Condé was reconciled with the Queen Mother in Paris as she and the King became the prince’s guests for the feast of Corpus Christi. As they appeared in public together there seemed little reaction from the people, though the following day a mob attacked the Princess de Condé in her carriage while travelling to Vincennes, and one of her men, a Huguenot named Couppe, was killed in the struggle. Condé immediately accused the Guise family of seeking vengeance but Catherine soothed the prince and tried to use sedative measures upon the principal nobles at Court. She decided to employ the same principles for keeping nobles at peace that were once used by her revered father-in-law, Francis I, whose dictum had been: ‘Two things are vital for the French: to love their King and to live in peace; amuse them and keep them physically active.’
Catherine resolved that her Court would be filled with glorious pleasures, balls, masques and the scintillating attractions that would bring the feudal lords, both Huguenot and Catholic, together. By keeping the grands seigneurs busy enjoying themselves, she hoped they would be distracted from killing each other or plotting to overthrow her son. To this end, and in a departure from her previous policy regarding her household, the Queen Mother now happily availed herself of the charms of the loveliest maidens of high birth. These young beauties became known as her ‘flying squadron’, numbered (according to different sources and various periods) between eighty and three hundred. Catherine insisted that they be dressed ‘like goddesses’ in silk and gold cloth at all times. Brantôme described the women, probably exaggerating their virtuous conduct, as ‘very beautiful and very polite maidens, with whom one conversed each day in the Queen’s antechamber’. He went on to add that the women provided only the most innocent and chaste diversions for the gentlemen and anyone ‘who ignored this would be banished’.
Jeanne d’Albret, Queen of Navarre, scandalised by the loose living at Court, summed matters up far more accurately: ‘It is not the men who invite the women but the women who invite the men.’ Catherine cared only that her flying squadron should appear to behave decorously in public but privately they were free to do as they wished ‘provided they had the wisdom, ability and knowledge to prevent a swelling of the stomach’. One such, Isabelle de Limeuil, dame d’honneur to the Queen Mother, started a passionate love affair with Condé. Unused to the refinements of Court life and the temptations it offered, the soldier prince fell completely under her sway. One pleasing result for the Queen Mother was that Condé was so influenced by Isabelle that he stopped attending Protestant worship at Court. Some time later the careless young woman became pregnant and eventually gave birth to her baby. She sent the infant to Condé in a little basket and Catherine, who quickly discovered the truth, flew into a rage and had Isabelle locked in a convent until she regained her good sense and the Queen’s pleasure.
The ingenious spectacles, lavish entertainments and the flying squadron’s physical attractions were henceforth to mark Catherine’s rule and made her Court famous for its brilliance. Brantôme called it ‘a true paradise on earth’. The Queen Mother, always in her black mourning, stood in stark but regal contrast amid the pomp and colour of her surroundings. She cleverly played to her strengths, particularly using the ‘mature charms’ she had acquired over the years of her long apprenticeship for power. Catherine could be witty and strangely alluring; even her sternest critics at Court could be momentarily seduced into appreciating her qualities. Yet just as they felt they had grasped her essence it would disappear, and she remained as chimerical and puzzling to them as ever. One observer of the Queen Mother during these years remarked upon her ‘humanity’, ‘goodwill’ and ‘patience in meeting everyone on his own level’.13 He also praised her ‘indefatigable constancy in receiving all manner of people, listening to their speeches, and treating them with so much courtesy that it would be impossible to ask for more consideration’.14
Notwithstanding her efforts, Catherine’s days still seemed to be spent answering complaints from both sides of the First War of Religion, each accusing the other of not observing the Peace of Amboise. To every complaint she applied herself with calm determination to settle the disputes tactfully and above all expediently. She grew so exasperated by the continual protests from Coligny that she finally wrote to him stating that if the Protestants continued to agitate and break the law, she would retaliate ‘without respect to persons, religion, or any other consideration but the peace of this state’. Catherine the arbitrator was indomitable in her thankless task. The desire for vengeance, the inevitable fruit of civil war, seemed endemic; contract murders became commonplace and acquired the nickname ‘vengeance in the Italian manner’. Finally, recognising that drastic measures were required, the Queen Mother took a course of inspired and audacious political bravery. She decided to have the thirteen-year-old King declared to be of age.
Although the legal age of majority for a king of France had been laid down as fourteen by Charles V of France, Catherine decided that the boy should be declared of age in his fourteenth year. She knew that the loyalty commanded by a monarch was far greater than that of a regent. The move hinged upon the gamble that although the King was still a boy, the nobles’ traditional feelings of allegiance and obedience to their monarch would assert themselves, and order might thus be restored. Catherine herself would effectively continue to rule, but the essentially cosmetic change might just bring about the peace she so urgently desired. On 17 August 1563, therefore, in a great ceremony at the Parlement of Rouen – the Parlement of Paris had been rejected as the venue because they were furious at what they considered a sleight of hand by Catherine – Charles was declared of majority. Despite the Paris Parlement’s argument against the declaration, Catherine insisted upon it, answering that there had been various exceptions to the age of majority ‘when the situation in the kingdom required it’.
Present at the ceremony were Montmorency, the Princes of the Blood, royal councillors, many powerful nobles and the Marshals of France. Both François of Guise’s brother, the Cardinal of Lorraine, and Coligny’s brother, the Cardinal of Châtillon, were also in attendance. Despite the mutual hatred between the two families they appeared united for the King. The boy, tall for his age but of a puny physique and generally poor health, solemnly declared that he would no longer tolerate ‘the disobedience that has, until now, been shown me’. Catherine then officially placed the governance of France in Charles’s hands. Having had his powers proclaimed, he descended to where Catherine stood. As the Queen Mother approached the King he got up from the throne and made a gesture which left no doubt as to who would really be ruling France. After Catherine had curtsied deeply to him as her sovereign, the boy gave his mother a filial kiss, holding his velvet cap, and announced that he gave her ‘the power to command’ and stated ‘that she would continue to govern and command as much and more than before’. The great nobles followed one after the other to pay homage, kissing the King’s hand and bowing deeply.
In a document that she drafted for her son at this time the Queen Mother set out the four points that she believed essential to his successful rule. The King must provide leadership and be accessible and central to all that happened at Court. The key to harmony and to maintaining a grip on affairs was to ‘restore the proper function of the Court’.15 It must be the central attraction of French life and revolve around the King. She stressed the importance of a regular routine that ought to be kept by the King. Within this, priority must be given to public affairs and the ‘expectations’ of the nobles must be fulfilled; she also stressed her determination that the corruption of Court officials should be stamped out and business dealt with properly and quickly. Officials often left urgent affairs untended for weeks or months, adding to the impression that the King was a distant and uncaring figure. She insisted that Charles be personally available to all the people who came to present their grievances: ‘Take care to speak to them whenever they present themselves in your chamber. I saw this done in the day of your grandfather and your father, and when they had finished speaking about their business, they were encouraged to converse about their families and their personal matters.’16
She also advised the King to keep a close hand on all questions of patronage. If he had a firm grasp of affairs relating to available offices, vacancies and everything within his gift, he would control not only the Court but also the provinces, stamp out the corruption against the Crown and win the people’s loyalty at the same time. Here she cited the story that Louis XII had carried a list of vacant offices on him everywhere he went. Francis I paid key provincial figures to keep him abreast of vacancies and developments, down to the last detail. The provincial garrisons whose importance Francis had constantly stressed were not just for local defence, but also provided a useful ‘chivalric centre for local magnates dissipating … their esprit de pis faire’ (desire to make trouble).17 She also commended to Charles ‘the care of merchants and the urban bourgeoisie’.18 This political testament does not address many important elements required for a successful ruler, such as advice on finance or military matters, but it is believed that the original document had two parts of which only one remains.
Catherine had cleverly tied the ratification of the Peace of Amboise to the proclamation of the King’s coming of age. This was greatly resented by the ultra-Catholic party whose tempers continued to run high. Almost immediately after the declaration of his majority, Charles was faced with the Guise clan’s demands that the duke’s murderer be brought to justice. Attempting to accentuate their cause, they made a dramatic reappearance at Court dressed in the deepest mourning. In January 1564 the King, with unusual maturity, made an official pronouncement that the case would be held over for three years in the interests of peace. In the meantime neither party was to pursue its own personal vendettas. Catherine, most probably the true author of this sage decision, trilled ecstatically at her son’s great wisdom, calling him ‘the new Solomon’ and saying, ‘The King my son of his own volition without anyone’s prompting has issued a decree that is so beneficial that all the council said that God had spoken through his mouth.’ Yet of course nothing changed, and the murders and assassination attempts continued. One of Catherine’s bravest and most loyal captains, Captain Chaury, was killed by a Huguenot mob in Paris, but the Queen Mother decided not to pursue the killers for fear of stirring yet greater passions. An attempt on Catherine’s own life was also rumoured at the same time. There were certainly two attempts to kill d’Andelot, Coligny’s brother, which can be traced to the Duke d’Aumale, the late Duke of Guise’s brother. D’Andelot managed to thwart the assassins, but only just escaped with his life each time.
Although Catherine hoped that Charles would command obedience as a major, his anaemic features, frail body and a disfiguring birthmark between his nose and upper lip suggested little of the majesty that his father and grandfather had possessed in abundance. He later grew a moustache which covered the birthmark, but he was known by many as ‘le roi morveux’ (the snotty or brat king). The Venetian ambassador, Giovanni Michiel, described the boy a little more kindly as ‘an admirable child, with fine eyes, gracious movements, though he is not robust. He favours physical exercise that is too violent for his health, for he suffers from shortness of breath.’19 Catherine undertook the unenviable task of creating a king out of Charles; fortunately a sense of majesty was one thing she understood perfectly. Though the raw material could hardly have been less promising, she nevertheless approached her project with absolute determination. Charles ‘ate and drank very sparingly’ – in the late Renaissance world of masculine excesses this frugality might generally be regarded as unmanly. He showed little interest in balls, Court entertainments or women, though he drove himself to excel in martial activities. Above all, he enjoyed hunting in all its forms.
Like his late brother, Francis II, Charles seemed to lose himself in the frenzy of the chase. Although weak and of ailing health, he would push himself as hard as he could. It was noticed by all that he had difficulty in catching his breath and as the years passed he grew weaker with each debilitating crisis, slowly becoming maddened in both body and mind by his infirmities. As time progressed his rages became so violent that courtiers genuinely feared for their lives. Eventually attacks of complete dementia would seize the King, but even now, at thirteen years of age, the essentially kind and generous-hearted boy found himself prey to occasional ungovernable outbursts of temper. Charles delighted in the chase but showed an abnormal and morbid interest in the ‘kill’, which excited and transfixed him. On occasion he eviscerated his gory prey with his own hands. All this belied the surprisingly charming poetry he wrote when the mood took him and the fact that he also enjoyed music, especially the horn, which he played well.
Catherine, eager to instil a keen appreciation of the arts so beloved by their grandfather Francis I and their Medici ancestors, in Charles and all her children, had them taught to paint, sketch, write verse and carve wood. The young King showed genuine talent in his artistic endeavours. Two of his épîtres were addressed to Pierre de Ronsard, the great French poet, and were published in the distinguished man’s works.fn1 Catherine ensured that her sons received an education befitting kings under the supervision of some of the most learned men of the day. Jacques Amyot, the famed translator of Plutarch, supervised the boys’ intellectual formation. Among other subjects they were taught Latin, Greek and history, and all the children spoke fluent Italian. Charles showed great filial respect and affection for his mother, though her evident preference for Monsieur, his brother Edouard-Alexandre, caused much rivalry and jealousy between the two.
Thirteen-year-old Edouard-Alexandre bore the title Duke of Orléans as the eldest brother of the King, but is best known to history before he ascended the throne as the Duke of Anjou (a duchy awarded to him by his brother in 1564). As he would have his name changed to Henri at his confirmation I shall henceforth refer to him as Henri, Duke of Anjou. He was a delicate though spirited child with a pallid complexion and, as so many of the Valois, a keen practical joker. He did not lack courage, yet Henri showed little of his family’s traditional passion for the hunt, though he did enjoy fencing, a sport at which he showed a notable elegance. His marked interest in clothes, rich cloths and fabrics, jewels, lapdogs and toys, however, did give rise to some concern. Elegant and sophisticated beyond his years in matters of taste, he had an eye for beauty that became an obsession as he grew older. His stylish dress and long, elegant hands with tapering fingers were quite Medicean, as were his faultless manners and ability to charm and seduce whomever he met – when he wished. Henri was handsome and had a well-shaped body but a suppurating fistula between his right eye and nose spoiled an otherwise beautiful face. The fistula was probably an early sign of tuberculosis, one of Catherine’s lethal legacies to her sons.
Margot, dark-haired with a pretty face and tall for her age, was a studious and sweet child. Physically she continued to enjoy blooming health and had a strong enquiring mind; she enjoyed learning and received a fine education, which included learning Latin. Margot loved riding and even as a young girl excelled at the elaborate dances then so integral a part of Court ritual. Dancing was not just for amusement or flirtation; some of the more energetic steps and leaps also provided a subtle method of checking a partner’s stamina, physique and general potential as a future bride and bearer of children. Yet she continued to be her mother’s least favoured child; Catherine seems to have resented the good health of her daughter as though this had somehow cheated her sons of stronger constitutions. The youngest, Hercules, could truly be called the runt of the Valois litter. He had been born an attractive and loving child but at the age of eight a severe bout of smallpox left him hideously altered. ‘His face was deeply pitted all over, his nose swollen and deformed, and his eyes bloodshot, so that from being pleasing and handsome he became one of the ugliest men imaginable.’20 As though that were not enough, his legs and back were twisted, and as he grew up he became swarthy, dark and only a little taller than the Court dwarves. Often he wore the expression of a halfwit, his mouth hanging open, but with a devious look in his eyes. After his illness the boy born with a sunny nature became embittered by the curse of his looks and a name which only made him seem all the more ridiculous. He grew into a cunning schemer and was to cause Catherine continual trouble. From an early age Margot took a protective interest in her little brother, which only further annoyed her mother. Fortunately for Hercules, at the same time that his brother had his name changed at confirmation to Henri, he received the name François after his late brother and his grandfather. (I shall henceforth therefore refer to Hercules as François, Duke of Alençon.)
The royal children were surrounded by all the sumptuous splendour demanded by Catherine’s atavistic desire to return to the days of Francis I’s brilliant Court. No matter what the state of the royal finances and in defiance of her occasional budgetary ‘cutbacks’, the backdrop for Catherine and the royal children’s mise-en-scène had to be superb. Besides, when it came to royal display, profligacy came quite naturally to the French monarchy. Catherine, a spendthrift by nature, struggled continuously to pay for the upkeep of the grandeur she insisted upon. During the reign of Francis I the people of all classes at Court numbered approximately 10,000 – only twenty-five French towns could boast a population of that size at the time – and it did not drop significantly during Catherine’s tenure.21 With approximately sixty different types of officials – from bread carriers, coopers, spit-turners, ushers, carvers and chaplains to librarians – there remained many medieval posts that were no longer relevant but were nonetheless maintained for reasons of tradition.22 She revelled in ceremony and maintained the ancient Court customs, however anachronistic or expensive they had become. Legions of servants were required to maintain Catherine and her children.
As King, Charles had a separate household from the Queen Mother’s, whose own establishment consisted of hundreds of people from nobles down to simple servants, and the number ran into thousands if all the royal residences throughout France were included. Porters, valets, lackeys, footmen and Swiss guards were of a higher grade. Armies of secretaries, almoners, physicians, tutors and gouvernantes for the children were employed, and the kitchens alone required vast numbers of staff to feed the host of people staying or living at Court. Here there existed a whole grading system, as in every other area of royal life: the King was fed by the cuisine de bouche and everybody else by the cuisine commun. The purveyors to the royal kitchens were kept busy finding enough for the thousands of dependants to eat. Food was divided into three sections, panéterie, échansonnerie and fruiterie (bread, wine and fruit).23 One of the principal reasons that the Court had to move, frequently after only a month or two, from one château to another was the lack of food available after a stay in one particular area. Sanitation prompted another compelling reason for leaving. After weeks in the same place, especially during the summer, the stench and filth became dreadful, and the risks of disease grew proportionately. The Court also moved to find new hunting grounds where fresh game could be found. When the King left one château to lodge in another of his residences, most of the furniture and hangings accompanied the caravanserai. The castle left behind was thus almost completely empty when the royal family had moved on.
Catherine had always spent prodigiously on her beloved horses, and now that she controlled the treasury she did not stint herself when it came to building stables and acquiring new horses. Some said that as she grew fatter she caused the early deaths of many of her mounts by simply riding them too hard. A large retinue was required to keep the equestrian establishment to Catherine’s extremely high standards. A gouvernant and an abundance of grooms and stable lads were on the royal payroll. She had her own stud farm and took an active interest in the breeding programme there. Anyone presenting her with a superb stallion or brood mare found a sure route to the Queen Mother’s heart. She loved animals, especially dogs and birds, though her menagerie also contained some particularly exotic creatures. Apart from the lions that she kept at Amboise, there were a large number of bears of which the Queen was fond; these were kept muzzled and led by nose rings. In the wonderland that Catherine created around herself the bears would often form part of her escort when she travelled; following her litter, closely watched by their keeper, the great beasts would lumber obediently behind the Queen Mother.24
Catherine also had a great fascination for dwarves. She accorded a proper household to her troupe of them; they had their own footmen, apothecaries, laundresses, housekeepers, tutors and so on. The Queen Mother kept her dwarves superbly dressed, wearing furs and precious brocades. Among her favourites were ‘Catherine La Jardinière’, ‘The Moor’, ‘The Turk’, ‘The dwarf Marvile’ and ‘August Romanesque’, who carried a sword and dagger. There was even a dwarf monk. Catherine had two favourite fools, both of them Polish, nicknamed ‘Le grand Polacre’ and ‘Le petit Polacron’. They all received pocket money from her and she married off two of her favourites in a splendid miniature ceremony. Catherine La Jardinière was the Queen Mother’s best-loved dwarf and this tiny companion accompanied her almost everywhere. Catherine had two other peculiar attendants constantly by her; one was a long-tailed monkey believed to bring good luck, the other a green parrot that lived to be thirty years old.25
As part of her plan to educate the King, Catherine had, since the declaration of Charles’s majority, been planning a stunning project. If it succeeded it would be her masterstroke. In an extraordinary undertaking she declared that she would take the young King on a vast tour of his whole realm, presenting him to the people. She thereby hoped to resuscitate the mystical tie between monarch and people. She would bring the splendour of the monarchy to the drabbest corners of the kingdom, as well as to its largest cities. Francis I had shown her what it meant to the ordinary provincial people of France to meet their King. When he brought back his two hostage sons from Spain he had taken them on a triumphal tour to thank the populace for paying their enormous ransom. As a bride Catherine had witnessed the King and his Court travel north from Marseilles to Paris and understood what huge political capital could be garnered from this magnificent gesture.
The planning required to take thousands of people to the rough roads of France equalled the complexities of organising a military campaign. She intended to take the entire apparatus of government with her for, as tradition dictated, the capital of France was located with the person of the King. By making this extensive royal progress Catherine not only hoped that she would enhance Charles’s standing with the people of France, but also that he might help heal the deep wounds left by the civil war. This brilliant coup de théâtre would comprise twenty-eight months of travelling, attending ceremonies, banquets and presentations, and ultimately, she hoped, bring peace to France by inspiring love and loyalty for the King. He would wind up knowing his country better than any other French monarch had before or since. The Queen Mother had another sound political reason that helped inspire this stupendous voyage: she had made up her mind to meet her son-in-law, Philip II, at the Franco–Spanish border. Face to face, she felt sure she could work her magic on him and, with his backing and her country at peace, she hoped France would be set fair for a brighter future.
fn1 Pierre de Ronsard (1524–85) served at Court and accompanied Mary of Guise to Scotland, where he stayed for three years. As well as his poetry, he wrote political reflections on the early wars of religion and the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew. He is particularly remembered for his attempt to promote the use of the French language in literature to replace the formal classicism of the Middle Ages. During his lifetime he enjoyed fame and success for his work and was honoured by Francis I, Henry II and Charles IX. A reversion to the classical form after his death meant he was forgotten and discredited until the Romantic movement of the nineteenth century rediscovered him and gave his works the recognition they still enjoy today.