ELEVEN

MARGOT’S MARRIAGE IS ARRANGED

I would prefer to see him become a Huguenot than to see him endanger his life in this way

1570–72

Once the Treaty of Saint-Germain had been signed, the Queen Mother could indulge in her favourite pastime, making grand matrimonial matches for her children. Despite Philip’s anger at what he considered the capitulation of Saint-Germain – which prompted the typically smug remark from him ‘The King and the Queen will finish by losing everything, but at least I shall have the satisfaction of having always assisted them with our advice’ – he no longer stood in the way of the marriage between Charles and the Emperor’s younger daughter Elisabeth. Now Philip blessed the proposed alliance between Margot and King Sebastian of Portugal, and encouraged the resurrection of the negotiations. Unfortunately, the Portuguese King, who had been brought up clinging to the skirts of his domineering grandmother, appeared to be more interested in reading Thomas Aquinas, a volume of which he carried attached to a belt round his slender waist.

Tall, slim and blond, the King never ventured anywhere without his two constant companions, monks of the Theatine order intent on preserving their King’s innocence. If anyone tried to approach him he would run and hide with these beloved clerics until the visitor had gone. To Catherine’s indignation this monk manqué declared himself unimpressed with the suppression of the Huguenots in France and preferred to wait and see how matters evolved before making any matrimonial decision. Philip hoped that two such alliances with Portugal and the Habsburgs might help keep the troublesome Catherine and her brood firmly in the ultra-Catholic camp. Unsurprisingly, these plans made the Protestants uneasy and they consequently put forward their own suggestions. A marriage between Henri of Navarre and Margot had already been briefly considered during the early stages of the recent peace negotiations; indeed, some said the union formed a secret clause in the treaty. As Margot’s nuptial future was considered she charmed the gentlemen at Court with her high spirits and youthful beauty, turning not only the head of the Duke of Guise, but also, inadvertently as she later claimed, those of her own brothers.¹

A brilliant and tempting bride was now proposed for Anjou. The Cardinal de Châtillon and the Vidame of Chartres – a senior member of the Bourbon family and a Protestant – had fled France and were then living at the English Court. They confirmed that Queen Elizabeth of England would welcome discussions of a possible marriage with Catherine’s favourite son. Catherine feverishly brushed aside any talk of their age difference – Elizabeth was thirty-seven years old and Anjou nineteen at the time – and the prickly issue of religion. Marriage with a heretic (if she was the Queen of England) presented no problems that could not be easily overcome in Catherine’s ambitious maternal breast. The Queen Mother’s head buzzed with the possibilities the match afforded when Anjou put a rude end to his mother’s daydreams. Unaccustomedly perching himself on high moral ground, he told her that he found it unacceptable to take an illegitimate heretic as a bride, sovereign or not, let alone one who had dallied with such a number of admirers. Elizabeth’s relationship with the Earl of Leicester had caused no end of ribald jokes at the French Court and Anjou made it clear he would not countenance a marriage with, as he put it, a ‘putain publique’ (a public whore). He also referred to what Lady Cobham, one of the Queen’s women, called the ‘inequality of age’; he mocked the limp he had heard Elizabeth suffered from due to a varicose vein, calling her an ‘old creature with a sore leg’.² This and other impertinent remarks made their way back to the English Queen who, infuriated, henceforth danced with particularly athletic vigour whenever the French ambassador was present.

Elizabeth, in any case, had only ever intended to embark upon a long diplomatic courtship that would send Spain into a frenzy of worry and end with her guarding her ‘stale virginity’. So she strung out the ritual exchange of portraits, letters and talks with special emissaries for a whole year. Charles, who would have been delighted to see his brother exiled to England, denounced Anjou’s priggishness, saying of the huge pension secretly paid to his brother by the Church, ‘You speak of your conscience, there is another motivewhich you do not mention – the large sum of money – to keep you here as the champion of the Catholic cause. Let me tell you that I recognise no champion but myself … as for those who meddle in these intrigues, I shall shorten some of them by a head if necessary.’³ Charles could not abide the reputation his brother had acquired on the battlefield as a hero for the Catholic cause, while he had had to bear the odium of concluding unpopular peace treaties loaded with concessions.

After Jarnac and Moncontour the court poets had busied themselves praising the King as the suppressor of heretics and a modern Crusader. He angrily refused their garlands, calling them ‘a mass of lies and flatteries. I have done nothing yet worth mentioning. Keep your fine phrases … for my brother. He affords fresh themes for your Muses every day.’⁴ On another occasion he was heard to say, ‘My mother loves him so much that she steals the honour due to me for him. I wish that we might take it in turn to reign, or at least that I might have his place for a half-year.’⁵ The King grew increasingly hostile and uncontrollable over Anjou, and Catherine became fearful lest the King should one day harm his brother. Despite his mother’s pleading and weeping ‘hot tears’, Anjou refused to budge over the marriage with Elizabeth. Catherine, without a blush, eventually exchanged him as a bridegroom with her youngest son, the fifteen-year-old pock-marked hunchback, François, Duke d’Alençon, as a possible husband for the Queen of England. Elizabeth, equally unblushing, recommenced the marriage ritual with all its attendant diplomatic foreplay.

On 25 November 1570 Charles’s bride, Elisabeth of Austria, arrived at Mézières, a small frontier town at the edge of her father’s empire. The groom and his brother Anjou had already greeted the young archduchess at Sedan where she came accompanied by a huge entourage of German nobles. Catherine, determined that the wedding should be splendid, ignored her war-ravaged treasury by raising money from the clergy and levying a special tax on cloth sales throughout the kingdom. An enthusiastic throng greeted Elisabeth as she entered Mézières in a gilded pink-and-white coach. They were enraptured by the white-skinned, blonde and beautiful princess, her loveliness enhanced by her astonishing innocence and naivety. Charles mingled incognito among the crowd as he watched his bride drive past.

Unbeknown to Elisabeth, Charles had a mistress in Paris named Marie Touchet, the daughter of a bourgeois Protestant of Flemish stock. He had decided that he loved Marie from their first encounter in Orléans in 1569 and had carried on a secret love affair for many months during that summer. A portrait of her by Clouet shows a girl with strawberry-blonde hair and a pretty round face. Charles entrusted his secret to Margot and asked her to take Marie into her household as one of her ladies. As the courtiers amused themselves during the summer evenings, the King’s personal guard would, at his signal, play tambourines and pipes to create a noisy commotion, allowing him to escape to meet his love. One day he gave her a piece of paper upon which he had written ‘Je charme tout’. Marie asked what it meant and Margot explained that he had created an anagram from her name. When the Court returned to Paris, Catherine discovered the relationship and, after making enquiries about the girl, approved of the liaison with this country girl who harboured no aspirations to control Charles or detach him from her. The King’s mistress was a world removed from Diane de Poitiers. In fact, she proved to be a benign influence upon the King and bore him a baby son, whom they named after his father, always known as ‘Petit Charles’. He became a particular favourite among Catherine’s grandchildren and was later given the title Duke of Angoulême. Petit Charles was notable among Catherine’s descendants for his longevity. Having clearly inherited a strong constitution from his mother, he survived well into the reign of Louis XIV. Always conscious of being the son of a king, Petit Charles was nevertheless careful not to annoy Louis, who behaved courteously towards him but understandably considered Angoulême an insignificant relic of the past.

When Charles first received a portrait of Elisabeth of Austria his laconic comment was, ‘At least she won’t give me a headache.’ Seeing her now so fresh and unspoiled touched him. Surrounded by painted and sophisticated courtiers, he longed to preserve her sweetness. To mark the joyous occasion of her son’s marriage, Catherine made the unprecedented gesture of putting aside her habitual black dress for the ceremony and wore a gown of gold brocade and lace sparkling with diamonds and pearls. When Charles watched his bride approach him for the Nuptial Mass he seemed completely struck by her beauty. She wore a gown of silver embroidered with pearls, a purple cloak covered her shoulders decorated with the fleur-de-lys and upon her head sat a crown studded with emeralds, rubies and diamonds. Even the most critical French noblewomen had to admit that this ingenue looked ravishing. The morning after the wedding the bride, who spoke little French, seemed completely smitten with her husband and from that day forward devoted herself to his happiness. Worried that the wanton ways of the Court might shock the innocent new Queen, Catherine took great pains to protect her as far as possible from seeing too much too soon.

Elisabeth was a devout and conscientious girl who had been strictly brought up in Vienna. She attended Mass twice daily and spent many hours of the day at prayer. Her first and by no means last shock was the sight of members of Catherine’s flying squadron at Mass taking the Sacrament in fits of giggles. Charles found the arrival of a wife did little to spoil his routine. His affair with Marie Touchet continued with barely an interruption. Eager for his wife to feel at home he kindly and gently taught her French ways and manners. He loved both his women and they took care of his needs between them. Anjou, unable to resist teasing and annoying his brother, also took it upon himself to initiate Elisabeth in the ways of the Court and paid her much flirtatious attention in front of an infuriated Charles. Anjou had recently adopted the habit of wearing vast pendant earrings, always made up of huge precious gems or pearls, so Charles responded by piercing the ears of fifty of his hunting companions with a needle and ordering them that henceforth they were to sport gold rings in their lobes. Just as suddenly he changed his mind and commanded that they remove these ridiculous adornments. Anjou enjoyed baiting Charles in this kind of rivalry, showing the King that he was the superior man and that the only thing he lacked was a crown. Neither could know that he would eventually wear two.

During the wedding celebrations Catherine and Charles held secret talks with the papal nuncio, Fabio Frangipani. Rumours abounded that the Queen Mother had assured the nuncio that the recently arrived Princess de Condé had been given a warm welcome as a prelude to tempt other Huguenots back to Court. Many believed that the ultimate goal was to entice Coligny and the two young Bourbon princes, Condé and Navarre, into her web and to trap them there. The Archbishop of Sens, Nicolas de Pellevé, told the nuncio that the Edict of Saint-Germain had only been concluded to give the King and Queen Mother a chance to rid themselves of the foreign soldiers fighting for the rebels, lull the fears of the Protestants and then kill their chiefs. He added that there were men who had already infiltrated the Huguenot high command with orders to kill the senior officers by poison or steel.

With the King away on hunting expeditions, Catherine and her daughter-in-law received congratulatory visits from foreign ambassadors and princes. The main theme of the visiting notables was a plan to vanquish the infidel Turks and form an alliance to fight a holy war. Catherine and Charles resisted the persistent efforts to join a league against the Turks, who were traditionally pro-French, and secretly sent an emissary to the Sultan with a gift of a dozen particularly fine falcons that he prized enormously.

In preparation for the magnificent official entry of the new Queen into Paris, Catherine had frantically set about raising money from whatever source she could; again she mortgaged and pawned her own possessions in order to ensure a spectacular event. In January 1571, shortly before herentrée, Elisabeth fell ill with bronchitis at the Château of Madrid in the Bois de Boulogne, and Catherine and the King nursed her attentively. Desperate to amuse his ailing bride, Charles ordered clowns and dancers to entertain her. Once she recovered the King, Elisabeth, Margot and Catherine decided to have some fun among the Parisian crowd. Disguised as bourgeois they set out to enjoy a fair at Saint-Germain. Charles played the coachman and wore a large hat to hide his face. Spotting one of his courtiers riding along the street, he lashed his friend’s shoulders with the whip. Furious, the man turned and berated the impudent driver, but just as he was about to strike him, Charles took off his hat and everyone in the party – especially the presumably highly relieved nobleman whose smile might have been somewhat strained – roared with approval and laughter. It was just the sort of rough joke that kings could revel in with impunity. Having enjoyed the incognito visit to the fair, Charles decided that he would go again, only this time he borrowed the robes of a Carmelite monk and led a procession of friends similarly dressed. A scandalised Alava reported the sacrilegious behaviour to Philip, making as much of it as possible.

While Charles and his companions were enjoying themselves, Catherine had been trying to tempt Jeanne d’Albret and her son from La Rochelle to Paris. In January she had written to Jeanne saying she and the King wished to ‘embrace the affairs of the Prince of Navarre whom the King and I infinitely desire to see here with you’.⁶ Jeanne’s reply came straight to the point: ‘I am not enjoying the fruits of your edict in the majority of my strongholds, Lectoure, Villemur, Pamiers … you can judge from this how well you are obeyed.’⁷ If the King of Portugal remained uninterested by an alliance through marriage with Margot, Catherine’s mind returned more and more to the idea of marrying her to Henri of Navarre. The couple’s consanguinity and the fact that he was the nominal leader of the Huguenot party – yesterday’s enemy – left Catherine untroubled. To achieve this union, however, she would require not only Jeanne’s backing, but also a special dispensation from the Pope.

For the Queen of Navarre, the obstacles against the marriage were enormous. She did not trust Catherine and her schemes; she felt disgusted by the behaviour of the Court over which Catherine presided, and fearful of how it might corrupt her son who was proving all too weak when it came to the sins of the flesh. As a committed member of the new religion, she could not contemplate her beloved Henri falling into the papists’ hands and possibly one day relinquishing his faith. An ambitious mother herself, Catherine knew that her strongest suit was to play on Jeanne’s own aspirations for Henri. As First Prince of the Blood, there was much to be said on his side for uniting the junior and senior branches of the family. For the moment, however, clearly neither Jeanne nor Henri would be coming to Paris in the near future, so the Queen Mother must do without their presence at the forthcoming celebrations for Elisabeth’s coronation and entrée.

On 6 March 1571 Charles made his formal entry into the capital. As both the bride and groom claimed descent from Charlemagne this theme was much played upon. Francion and Pharamond – the mythical creators of both the French and German nations – were also glorified and depicted in magnificent sculptures. Catherine had employed some of the greatest artists and craftsmen of the day to ensure the splendour she wished the people to witness. She charged Pierre de Ronsard with commemorating the marriage in verse; Primaticcio’s pupil, Niccolò dell’ Abbate, painted the King and Queen; and Germain Pilon, the sculptor who had made the superb marble urn that contained Henry II’s heart, received the commission to create sculptures, temporary triumphal arches and other structures for the festivities.⁸

Catherine was portrayed as a goddess of antiquity holding a map of France; scattered about her were symbols of peace such as the lyre, a broken sword and two hearts entwined. This was a salute to Catherine as the author of the peace. Also surrounding the statue were four others from antiquity: one of these was Catherine’s personal favourite, Queen Artemisia, wife of the Carian Satrap King Mausolus. The legend of her uxoriousness, both as a wife and a widow, was the one with which the Queen Mother most liked to be associated. According to the ancient legend, upon the cremation of Mausolus Artemisia took his ashes blended with wine and drank the mixture in a formal ceremony. This symbolised her devotion and fidelity to him, her body having become a living tomb for her husband. She also built him an actual tomb at Halicarnassus, so magnificent it gave us the word ‘Mausoleum’, which was one of the seven wonders of the Ancient World. Drinking the King’s ashes also publicly legitimised Artemisia’s regency and she continued to govern in his name for three years in the mid-fourth century BC. In 1562, soon after Francis II’s death when Catherine effectively became regent of France, she had commissioned Nicolas Houel to write a history of Artemisia illustrated by Antoine Caron, which formed an iconography of her reign and her right to serve as regent.^fn1

Charles’s processional cortège stopped at Notre-Dame Cathedral where an oraison was sung followed by a huge banquet. On 11 March Charles gave a speech to the Parlement of Paris in which he paid eloquent homage to his mother. He told his listeners, This tribute had, of course, been orchestrated, like everything else in the celebrations, by the Queen Mother herself and it also contained the veiled message that she would continue to keep charge of state affairs, if always standing politely and tactfully a few paces behind her son. Despite the King’s talk of his mother’s success in guarding the kingdom during the civil wars, the unsurprising but glaring absence of the Huguenot princes and many other nobles holed up at La Rochelle was duly noted.

After God, the Queen my mother is the person to whom I am most indebted. Her tenderness for me and for my people, her tireless work, energy and wisdom have assured the running of state affairs so well during a time when, because of my age I was unable to take charge of them myself, that even the tempests of civil war have been unable to harm my kingdom.¹⁰

On 25 March 1571 Elisabeth was crowned at Saint-Denis, as Catherine had herself been over twenty years before. Her official entry into Paris followed four days later. Celebrating the theme of Franco–German friendship, the new Queen passed below arches emblazoned with Imperial eagles and fleur-de-lys. Much of the decoration and construction for the King’s entry a few weeks before had been changed and rebuilt. A statue had also been created of Catherine placing a crown of fleur-de-lys upon her daughter-in-law’s head, and one arch surmounted with a statue of Henry II bore the legend ‘Protector of German Liberties’ that alluded to his so-called ‘Promenade to the Rhine’ of 1552. Elisabeth enchanted the crowd in her litter of silver cloth. She wore a cloak of royal ermine studded with precious gems and decorated with fleur-de-lys. Her fabulous golden crown, covered in vast pearls, perfectly set off her blonde beauty to the great appreciation of the people. Flanked by her brothers-in-law Anjou and Alençon, who were almost as bejewelled as she, and followed by a splendid entourage, the new Queen enthralled Paris.

As the festivities in the capital gathered pace, a sombre marriage took place at La Rochelle. Amid the singing of psalms the black-clad Coligny married Mademoiselle d’Entremonts. Notwithstanding the general lack of adornment preferred by the Calvinists at even the most merry events, the Admiral’s nuptials had been hit by exceptional gloom when the news arrived of the death at Canterbury of his last surviving brother, Cardinal Ôdet de Châtillon. Coligny felt the loss deeply; he was now the last of the three Châtillon brothers and Queen Elizabeth knew enough about the loathsome methods employed by her Continental cousins to place Châtillon’s household under arrest, locking the servants into the dungeons as she ordered a post-mortem. Talk of poison received further fuel when the surgeons opened the cardinal’s body: ‘His liver and lungs were rotten and the stomach linings so eaten away that the skin bore a livid hue.’ A few months later a young man was arrested for spying at La Rochelle. Before his execution he admitted to having poisoned the cardinal. It is hard to see Catherine’s hand in this crime since Châtillon provided a channel for negotiating with Elizabeth at the English Court. Besides, killing Coligny’s brother would hardly further her latest project of marrying Margot to Henri of Navarre. It is more likely that if there had been an assassination it would have been carried out by a Jesuit agent working with the Pope’s benediction to kill leading Protestants, or perhaps a killer hired by the Guises who were continuing their vendetta against Coligny and his family for the murder of Duke François.

For some time Charles had become restless and he now made increasingly serious attempts to free himself from his mother’s domination in matters of state. He had until then shown little interest in anything but hunting and had been happy to leave Catherine to carry the burdens of government that she seemed to relish. An opportunity arose for Charles to decide French foreign policy and gain what he coveted most – military glory. Many Flemish Protestants had taken refuge from the Spanish at La Rochelle and were using the port as a base from which they frequently attacked Spanish shipping. In early 1571 William of Orange, their rebel leader, tried to organise an invasion of the Netherlands from Germany with the aim of liberating the Low Countries. As Orange attempted to build up a coalition of enemies of Spain, his brother Louis of Nassau remained at La Rochelle where he had been since the end of the Third War of Religion. It was essential to their plans that France support any move against Spain and Charles saw a war in the Netherlands against Philip II as a scintillating chance to lead French troops into action.

Catherine knew that by paying lip service and lending some support to the plan she would stand a real chance of winning over Coligny and Jeanne d’Albret to the marriage between Henri and Margot, which now seemed her main preoccupation. Risking war with Spain put a terrifically high price on this union, but Catherine hoped to navigate around the difficulties and gain what she most desired from being seen as an ally of the Flemish rebels without an open rupture with her powerful former son-in-law. She understood that war with Spain would be a disaster, though for the moment she would use the plans to her advantage.

Charles found an unexpected ally in his hopes for the Dutch enterprise in his distant relative Cosimo de Medici. To the fury of the Emperor Maximilian and Philip II, Cosimo, formerly the Duke of Florence, had been created Grand Duke of Tuscany by Pope Pius V in 1569. The two Habsburg potentates argued that the Pope had no right to raise Cosimo to this exalted position since they held Florence to be technically under Imperial suzerainty. Such was the ensuing row – greatly enjoyed by Catherine who despite appearances and her need for his troops in the last civil war loathed her upstart relative and his pretensions – that Cosimo felt he might be attacked or deposed by the angry Habsburgs.^fn2 Searching for allies in the event of a crisis, Cosimo drew Charles into his camp. The two agreed an alliance between Tuscany and France against Spain. This brought no comfort to Catherine, who wryly watched her son’s total lack of experience in foreign affairs as he bungled about noisily in the subtle art of European diplomacy. Secrecy was almost non-existent and finesse, her own greatest strength, entirely absent in Charles’s dealings.

On 11 June 1571 the ungracious King wrote with great bravado to Cosimo’s ambassador Petrucci, ‘La reine, ma mère, est trop timide.’ In reality he hoped to advance matters to such a point that Catherine would be forced to support his strategy. Cosimo realised that Charles might prove a liability without his mother’s help and advised him to seek her counsel and approval as well as that of his father-in-law. Undaunted, Charles continued to offer support to the Flemish Protestants, and two secret meetings to further their plans were held in July 1571 with Louis of Nassau, the first at Lumigny and the second at Fontainebleau, during which Nassau hid in a gatehouse to escape detection. The discussions apparently included a general carving up of the Low Countries and as Charles’s reward he could expect to expand French territories. Nassau also assured him that he would be enthusiastically welcomed as a liberator if their war against the Spanish succeeded.

It is difficult to say for certain how much Catherine knew about the plans against Spanish power in the Netherlands at this point, but she must have known enough to be fearful of her son’s bellicose intentions. Everything she had tried to achieve since her husband had died would suggest opposition to armed conflict against a foreign power such as Spain. Her aims had always been simple: peace and prosperity inside France, obedience to the King, glorious alliance-building marriages for her children, and a return to the days of a powerful monarchy such as it had been under her late husband and King Francis I. She was quite capable of appearing to wish for conflict using ruses to fool her neighbouring states, but an outright foreign war was not a risk Catherine would ever have taken unless forced. As one historian has written of the Queen Mother, her ‘dread of war with Spain and the concomitant effort to maintain the amity of Cateau-Cambrésis was the lodestar of her political career’.¹¹ Using the Netherlands only as a project by which she could bring the Huguenots to trust her and to promote her marriage plans for Henri and Margot was very much more to her taste. In July 1571 she wrote to Cosimo asking for his intervention with the Pope. She wanted Pius to understand that should Coligny return to the French Court it would redound well for the internal peace of France. Knowing she would eventually require papal dispensation for a marriage between Henri and Margot, she added that she might need Cosimo’s help with this later. English support for any forthcoming hostilities against Spain was also essential, so she revived the marriage talks between Anjou and Elizabeth, but they soon foundered. Had these fruitless talks come to anything it is possible that with the English as allies Catherine might have lent her fullest support to a war in the Low Countries.

Alava, who had heard enough to become suspicious of trouble in the Netherlands, lodged an official complaint that a war with Spain would be the most likely outcome of the King’s machinations with the rebels. Charles replied that he refused to be bullied over what he considered Frances’s best interests, or indeed, any foreign plans. Alava complained to Catherine, who may not have known the extent of the plans but nevertheless took much the same line as her son since she was angry that Alava had been writing inflammatory reports about her to Philip for months.

After many ignored invitations, on 12 September 1571 Gaspard de Coligny arrived to join the Court at Blois. He came armed with a promise of safe conduct signed by the King, Anjou and Catherine, and promises to discuss a remedy for frequent breaches of the Peace of Saint-Germain. At last Catherine saw a scintilla of hope for Margot’s marriage. She had much else to hope for now, and needed to have Coligny at Court in order to attempt to dismantle the armed mini-state at La Rochelle, where Jeanne, her son and other senior Huguenots lived under their own laws. They were inside France geographically, though not part of it politically. For Charles, Coligny’s presence represented a step further towards war in the Netherlands, for he could not hope to undertake such an enterprise without the fullest understanding and harmony between himself and the Admiral. Coligny had asked to come in an unofficial capacity and to be received informally. Many of his comrades at La Rochelle had begged him not to go, fearing that his life would be in danger, if not from the Queen Mother then certainly from the Guises and other ultra-Catholics. Mindful of his responsibilities as their leader and the disastrous effect his death would have, Coligny nonetheless still believed he must see the King. Blois, ‘the capital of peace’, had been especially chosen for the meeting rather than Paris where he would be in far greater danger.

The Admiral arrived to find Catherine in bed with a fever and so the King received him in her room. The formal informality that had been decided upon as the correct etiquette for the meeting was observed to the last detail. After watching her son and Coligny talking, Catherine asked that the Admiral approach and kiss her. Charles is then alleged to have joked, ‘We have you now, mon père, we shall not let you go whenever you please.’ The recent war and deep distrust created a pregnant pause that conveyed just how unfamiliar this intimacy had become to them all. Catherine talked for a few moments with the Admiral and then he visited Anjou who, though also unwell, received him courteously. During the five weeks that Coligny spent at Blois, Charles showered him with gifts, confidences and friendship. He received 100,000 livres in compensation for his personal losses during the war and one year’s income of 160,000 livres, equivalent to the sum that had been his brother’s income from his Church benefices. All his confiscated properties and goods that could be tracked down were returned to the Admiral. He was also permitted an escort of fifty nobles wherever he went, a privilege normally reserved only for princes.

On 3 October Catherine received a letter from Cosimo announcing that he had decided to join the Holy League against the Turks. Seeing this as an opportunity to ingratiate himself with his Imperial masters he grasped it. He also made it quite clear that the French no longer enjoyed his support for their plans in the Low Countries. This was just the sort of obstacle to the enterprise that Catherine had been hoping for and it was compounded by the league’s sensational naval victory of Lepanto over the Turks, won on 7 October. Catherine’s reluctance to become involved in conflict against the Spanish was amply justified by these events and she quickly despatched instructions to Fourquevaux in Madrid to congratulate Philip on his holy victory against the infidel. She assured the Spanish King that she wished only for peace between them and no matter how questionable her recent behaviour might have seemed, she claimed that she had only been monitoring events to ensure that her influence and desire for peace could be brought to bear upon them.

When Charles heard of the victory against the Turks – the news did not reach France until November – he was with the Venetian ambassador, Contarini. Venice had formed part of the Holy Alliance against the Turks and Charles, in a state of feverish overexcitement, heard of the many infidel ships that had been lost in the battle. Afterwards a member of his council reminded him that since many of the Turkish vessels were in fact on loan from France, he was celebrating the loss of his own ships and the downfall of his ally in the Mediterranean. This sobering reminder dampened his earlier high spirits. In response to the losses, shipbuilding was stepped up at Marseilles where reports stated that one hundred galleys were being constructed. Despite Lepanto, the atmosphere at Court appeared ominous and strained as Charles’s war party seemed intent upon proceeding with their plans to attack the Netherlands. Alava grew increasingly paranoid about his own safety, and his fears amplified to hysteria when he was accused of writing a letter to Spain in which he denounced the King for being drunk every night and alleged that Catherine had given birth seven times to babies fathered by the late Cardinal de Châtillon while also conducting a simultaneous love affair with the Cardinal of Lorraine.

When Charles sent a delegation to the ambassador with his message of congratulation on the victory at Lepanto, Alava, sure his life was in danger and that the King had actually sent an assassin to kill him, decided he must leave France immediately. It was reported that he fled to the Netherlands ‘dressed as a parrot’ with a mask covering his face.¹² If indeed the ambassador was attempting to appear inconspicuous it seems a curious choice of disguise. This ludicrous episode proved a tremendous tonic for Catherine, suffering from sciatica, fever and catarrh, and it became a huge joke at Court.

On 20 October Admiral Coligny’s wife of less than one year, Jacqueline d’Entremonts, was received at Blois by the King and Queen Mother. They behaved very graciously towards the young woman and made much of her. Their invitation and attention to his bride pleased her fifty-year-old husband as day by day Charles grew fonder of the older man, and once again the parallels between Henry II and his relationship with Coligny’s uncle Montmorency were drawn. As a gesture of goodwill Coligny accompanied the Queen Mother to Mass, though he did not remove his hat and refused to bow to the Host. Charles ordered that anyone breaching the terms of the Peace of Saint-Germain must be held strictly accountable and even ordered that the Cross of Gastines, a monument to Catholic supremacy in the rue Saint-Denis, be dismantled. Under the recent peace treaty, any symbolic reference to the religious wars must be removed but the Parisians had hitherto refused to take down the cross. As it was finally taken away by an armed escort the seething crowd erupted in fury.

Those at Court followed the King’s lead – especially since the Guise family were absent and still in disgrace – most courtiers going out of their way to extend every courtesy to Coligny. But Paris and other staunchly Catholic areas refused to bow to their sovereign’s policy, and their displeasure would soon prove hard to contain. The new Queen’s attitude reflected the people’s true feelings as well as her own inexperience in the art of diplomacy. When Coligny was formally presented to her, the grizzled warrior bowed, stepped forward, knelt down on one knee and reached to kiss the royal hand. Elisabeth, for whom the Admiral was Satan incarnate, pulled away with a gasp of horror to avoid being touched by so evil a heretic. Naturally the incident had the courtiers sniggering; for them the practice of hiding their true feelings was not only completely natural but often crucial to their survival.

One day towards the end of Coligny’s stay Catherine asked him to visit her. She wished only to conclude the marriage between her daughter and Henri, she said, and she could not do this without meeting Jeanne, who refused to expose herself to danger at a Court that she in any case regarded as a sink of iniquity. The Admiral told Catherine how well he understood Jeanne’s fears for her own safety. To this Catherine replied, ‘We are too old, you and I, to deceive each other.… She has less reason to be suspicious than you because she cannot believe that the King would be trying to marry his sister to her son in order to harm her.’¹³ Coligny pressed the Queen Mother on pursuing the expedition against the Spanish in the Netherlands and Catherine promised that with his support for Margot’s marriage she would give the matter her full attention. But only after the wedding had taken place. How much store he set by her promise is impossible to say, but his growing influence over Charles had boosted the Admiral’s confidence that his plans for the Netherlands might go forward with or without the Queen Mother’s approval. Yet again someone had tried to interpose himself between Catherine and one of her children. Yet again the threat would be seen off.

Before the arrival of Coligny at Blois in September 1571, Catherine had sent Marshal de Cossé with a letter for Jeanne from the King requesting that she and Henri also join them. When Cossé arrived at Béarn he found he had just missed the Queen of Navarre who had left to take the waters at Eaux-Chaudes; she had been feeling ill for some time and hoped to regain her strength there. Marshal Biron followed Cossé and found the Queen, still feeling unwell, at Nérac on 10 December. He reported to Catherine that many of her senior advisers were counselling Jeanne against the Valois marriage. Jeanne did not like the project any more than they did but found it increasingly hard to resist. Catherine could blackmail her, since she had the power to stir up the Pope, who for obvious reasons opposed the marriage and could declare Henri of Navarre illegitimate. He was the son of Jeanne’s second marriage, which ‘was itself of questionable validity’.¹⁴ Should the Pope exercise this power, Henri would immediately lose his position as First Prince of the Blood and with it his rights to the throne of France should Catherine’s sons die without a male heir. Jeanne therefore wearily decided to fall in with Catherine’s plans, although certain stipulations had to be met. Guyenne must form part of Margot’s dowry; the towns that belonged to Jeanne currently occupied by royalist troops must be returned to her and she would only come if she could negotiate alone with Catherine. In January 1572 the fortress of Lectoure – one of Jeanne’s preconditions for her rendezvous with the Queen Mother – was returned to her and she set out, at last, for her fateful meeting with Catherine.

At the same time as Jeanne prepared to meet the Queen Mother, a conspiracy to assassinate Elizabeth of England had been uncovered. Known as the Ridolfi Plot, the scheme sponsored by Spain and Rome to put Mary, Queen of Scots on the English throne with the Duke of Norfolk as her consort had very nearly succeeded. Catherine told the English ambassador that two Italians had been hired by Alava and that she had sent urgent messages warning the Queen of the great peril she faced. Charles, once protective and fond of his former sister-in-law, decided that she had finally placed herself beyond the pale with her plotting. His only comment upon the desperate situation in which Mary now found herself was prescient: ‘Alas, the poor fool will never cease until she loses her head. They will put her to death. It is her own fault and folly.’¹⁵ The upshot of the plot evoked a desire for England to draw closer to the enemies of Spain, France being the most powerful of these. Elizabeth had been given to understand that although Anjou was no longer a possible matrimonial candidate, his younger brother would serve just as well. François, Duke of Alençon, the boy usually referred to by Alava as ‘le petit voyou visceux’ (the vicious little blackguard), presented an unappealing potential suitor, but nevertheless talks began. These included a mutual arrangement by which each country promised to defend the other should either be attacked by a common enemy.

Charles pushed for the English alliance, anxious to rid himself of his detested youngest sibling. Anjou disliked him equally and neither had Catherine showed Alençon any particular affection. Margot was the youth’s only champion within the family. The earlier dalliance with Guise, whether innocent or not, had destroyed the perhaps unnaturally deep bond between Margot and Anjou, who felt jealous of his sister’s admirer and now constantly caused trouble for her. Charles had felt equally betrayed by the Guise incident and could no longer be relied upon by Margot. Sometimes he would stroke his sister but at others she feared his blows, especially after the beating she had received from him. Both brothers behaved like lovers scorned, both were capable of hurting Margot and both were jealous of the attention she paid her younger brother.

Queen Elizabeth’s envoy, Sir Thomas Smith, arrived in France in December 1571. He recommended Alençon above Anjou as a husband, writing to the Queen that the former was ‘not so obstinate and forward, so papistical and (if I may say so) so foolish and restive like a mule as his brother was. He is the more moderate, the more flexible and the better fellow.’¹⁶ Smith also reported that for the ‘getting of children’ Alençon was by far the better choice, being ‘more apt than th’other’.¹⁷ This presumably referred obliquely to Anjou’s ambiguous sexual orientation, though the idea of either of the Valois princes fathering a child by Elizabeth was faintly comical. Catherine felt it best not to ignore the obvious and pointed out the problem of her dwarfish son’s height and hideous skin, but she added reassuringly that though the sixteen-year-old was ‘not tall’ he showed signs of growing a beard which would obscure his horrendous complexion. Smith observed that pockmarks were anyhow of little consequence in a man and cited the illustrious precedent provided by King Pepin ‘le Bref’ (the Short) who despite only reaching the belted waist of his wife Queen Bertha, fathered the great Charlemagne, the first Holy Roman Emperor.

Unimpressed by her envoy’s recommendations, Gloriana nonetheless realised that at thirty-eight she was losing her looks almost as fast as she was losing her hair. Despite the Queen’s use of hairpieces and other artifices, Smith remarked to Lord Burghley, one of Elizabeth’s chief councillors, ‘The more hairy she is before [at the front] the more bald she is behind.’¹⁸ Indeed, it could not be denied that Elizabeth was losing the fraicheur she had once possessed. The Queen agreed for talks to continue; these resulted in a defensive and commercial pact, the Treaty of Blois, signed between England and France on 29 April 1572. As for the marriage talks, she allowed them to dawdle along unresolved for the time being.

Elizabeth’s value as an ally became doubtful when the French discovered that she had also secretly opened discussions with Alba at his request only a month before the signing of the Treaty of Blois, with the aim of restoring commercial relations between England and the Spanish Netherlands. These had been suspended in 1569 and were costing both countries dear. Though the English had found other outlets in Hamburg, their traditional and commercial associations with the Netherlands were mutually profitable andmuch preferred. By 1572 Spanish shipping suffered severe interruptions due to the constant attacks from William of Orange’s privateers. The ‘Gueux de Mer’ as they were known, or the ‘Sea Beggars’, successfully roved the English Channel, capturing or sinking a large number of enemy ships with their cargoes before taking refuge at La Rochelle and various English ports. In order for her agreement with Alba to proceed, Elizabeth had already in February 1572 ordered all the rebel ships to leave English ports. Their expulsion set off an unforeseen chain of events that would inflame the already aggravated situation in the Low Countries and encourage French Protestants to believe in the ultimate possibility of a successful invasion to eject the Spaniards altogether.

The Sea Beggars had put out to sea but were forced by a storm to drop anchor at Brille in the Netherlands. By chance the Spanish garrison there had recently departed to put down a rebellion in Utrecht and the Sea Beggars – a highly organised military and naval force – captured the port. It did not take long before they controlled most of Zeeland. Large numbers of refugees in England and La Rochelle now hurried to join them, boosted by special clandestine forces from England and other sympathetic states. On 30 April, the very day after signing the Treaty of Blois, the English announced that commercial relations with Flanders would recommence. Elizabeth, wishing triumph for neither France nor Spain, followed her own strategy of keeping the Spanish tied up in the Netherlands, the French tempted to intervene and Philip unable to concentrate on invading heretical England’s shores.

During the early spring of 1572 a development arose that filled Catherine with a joyful anticipation such as she had not known for a long time. The King of Poland, Sigismund-August II, had just been widowed and his health was failing. As he had no plans to remarry and no legitimate heir, the throne of Poland would fall vacant upon his death. One of Catherine’s favourite dwarves, a Pole named Krassowski, is alleged to have told his mistress that the Polish King was dying, saying, ‘Madam, soon there will be a throne for the Valois.’ She seized upon this dream of a distant crown and decided that her adored Anjou must be elected Sigismund-August’s successor. To ensure a prime position for Anjou when the King died, she sent Jean de Balagny – the natural son of her trusty Bishop of Valence, Jean de Monluc – on a reconnaissance mission to Poland to report back on the conditions there and discover who needed to be bought, bullied or seduced.

Sigismund had also just lost one of his sisters, the wife of the Vovoid of Transylvania, and vassal of the French ally the Sultan of Turkey. To ingratiate herself with Sigismund Catherine offered Anjou’s recently discarded mistress, the ravishing Renée de Rieux, Demoiselle de Châteauneuf, as a bride to the mourning Vovoid in his mountain kingdom. In order to expedite the Sultan’s permission for the match, Charles wrote to his ambassador in Constantinople describing his brother’s ex-mistress’s marvellous attributes: ‘Mademoiselle de Châteauneuf is a beautiful and virtuous girl who comes from the House of Brittany and is therefore my kinswoman.’¹⁹ How she felt having been thrown over by Anjou for Marie of Clèves, sister to the new Duchess of Guise, and then offered as a chattel to the less than polished Vovoid is not known. Having done all she could for the moment to get the Polish plan in motion, Catherine then turned her attention back to the more immediate project, the Navarre–Valois marriage.

After receiving many letters from Catherine reassuring Jeanne that if she came to Court as her guest she would be in no danger, the Queen of Navarre could not resist writing back, ‘Madame, you say that you desire to see us, and not in order to harm us. Forgive me if I feel like smiling, when I read your letters. You allay fears that I have never felt. I do not suppose, as the saying is, that you eat little children.’²⁰ In January 1572 Jeanne set off for the French Court at Blois. She undertook her three-week journey in a carriage so huge it resembled a house. In the middle a burning stove kept the occupants warm and mattresses and cushions compensated for the awful pitching of the coach. Nearing her destination she was asked to wait at Tours. The presence, at Blois, of Pope Pius V’s legate and nephew, Cardinal Alexandrini, who had come specifically to protest against the Navarre marriage, which his uncle deeply opposed, meant Jeanne had to wait at arm’s length from the Court. The cardinal’s first mission had been to visit King Sebastian of Portugal. After detaining his two ever-present Theatine monks in the Monastery of Coimbre, he harangued the King and almost made him a prisoner until he finally extracted a promise from Sebastian that he would marry Margot. With the Portuguese marriage offer in his pocket, Alexandrini arrived at the French Court on 7 February 1572. Hoping that Catherine and Charles would be brimming with gratitude at the proposed Portuguese marriage, he also inserted a demand that France join the Holy League of Lepanto against the Turks.

The cardinal was to be disappointed on both counts. To avoid wasting time and to sound out Jeanne on the potential stumbling blocks that might still prevent the marriage, Catherine invited her to Chenonceau nearby, where they finally met on 15 February 1572. The religious issues surrounding the marriage in general and the ceremony in particular were carefully examined, with Jeanne taking advice from the Protestant ministers she had brought with her. At last Alexandrini left; his mission had been a complete failure. Refusing all the ritual gifts upon departure, he sped away, sulking in his carriage on the journey back to Rome. By coincidence he passed Jeanne d’Albret’s coach as she approached the chateau. Alexandrini diplomatically failed to see that the passenger in the vehicle was the heretical Queen of Navarre and thus avoided having to salute or even acknowledge her as they passed.

The King welcomed Jeanne at Blois on 2 March 1572. She felt ill and tired but was driven on by her determination to see the marriage talks resolved. Torn between her religious scruples and her maternal ambitions, she strove to reconcile the apparently irreconcilable. In many ways Jeanne had dreaded coming to the debauched French Court, less for safety reasons or getting caught in Catherine’s Florentine toils – she felt more than a match for those – but as a senior French princess and sovereign of her own kingdom she feared she had become stale and provincial. She suspected she might even become a laughing stock in the sophisticated hothouse of the Court. Daughter of Marguerite de Valois, Francis I’s sister, she had inherited Navarre from her father and had married – for love – the First Prince of the Blood, Antoine de Bourbon. The Bourbons had suffered many setbacks since the old Constable de Bourbon’s treachery in 1523. Henry II had virtually ignored them during his reign, and her womanising nincompoop of a husband had allowed himself to be consistently outmanoeuvred and marginalised during his lifetime. Jeanne was a highly intelligent and courageous sovereign, upright and morally zealous, yet there was pathos in her feminine pride, and her fear of being snubbed and thought a country bumpkin.

Since she first arrived at Chenonceau, Jeanne’s letters to Henri are fraught with anxiety and complaints. On 21 February she wrote,

I urge you not to leave Béarn until you receive word from me … it is evident that [Catherine] thinks everything I say is only my own opinion and that you hold another.… When you next write please tell me to remember all that you have told me and especially to sound out Madame [Margot] on her religious views, emphasizing that this is the only thing holding you back, so that when I show it to her she will tend more to believe that such is your will. … I assure you I am very uncomfortable because they oppose me strongly and I need all the patience in the world.²¹

Jeanne’s first impression of Margot was encouraging, as she wrote to Henri:

I must tell you that Madame Marguerite showed me all possible honour and hospitality and told me frankly how much she liked you. If she embraces our religions, I may say that we are the happiest persons in the world.… On the other hand if she should remain obdurate in her faith, and they say that she is deeply devoted to it, then this marriage will be the ruin of our friends and our country. … Therefore, my son, if ever you prayed to God – pray to Him now.²²

Henri’s ten-year-old sister had accompanied their mother to Court and she added a postscript: ‘Monsieur, I have seen Madame Marguerite, I found her very beautiful, and I wish you might have seen her … she gave me a beautiful little dog which I love.’²³

Margot’s legendary beauty is described by Brantôme shortly before her marriage during Easter 1572 when he saw her appear in a procession during the festivities:

So beautiful was she, that one had never seen anyone lovelier in the world. Besides the beauty of her face and her well-turned body, she was superbly dressed and fantastically valuable jewellery adorned her attire. Her lovely face shone with faultless white skin and her hair was dressed with big white pearls, precious stones and extremely rare diamonds shaped like stars – one could say that her natural beauty and the shimmering of her jewels competed with a brilliant night sky full of stars, so to speak.

Even taking into consideration royal flattery and Brantôme’s customary hyperbole, Margot was undoubtedly a true sixteenth-century beauty, although today her features might not please as much as they did then. Her high cheekbones, white skin and full lips are timeless attributes, but her nose was not as delicate as the rest of her features and her round face also hinted at the full cheeks and double chin that would come with the years. A glance at her mother confirmed that inheritance. She carried herself regally, danced superbly and wore an imperious air, but even a brief look at her portraits allows one to see the seductive and playful young woman as famed for beauty as for her innate sense of style. She understood exactly how to show herself off to her best advantage.

As the negotiations continued and Jeanne’s ‘catarrh’ caused ever more frequent and tiring coughing fits, she felt increasingly concerned about the debauched Court and what it might do to her son. She also felt fearful of the provincial rather than princely figure he might cut among the dashing courtiers. She wrote, ‘I beg you to bear three things in mind; cultivate grace, speak boldly, especially when you are drawn aside, for remember that you will be judged by first impressions.’ She even included a fashion tip: ‘Train your hair to stand up, do not wear it in the way it is worn at Nérac, I recommend the latest fashion that I prefer.’²⁴ She began to see Margot in a less glowing light:

As for the beauty of Madame Marguerite, I own that she has a fine figure; as for the face, there is too much artificial aid, it annoys me, she will spoil herself, but paint is as common in this Court as in Spain. … I would not have you live here for all the world. I wish you to marry and come out of this corruption with your wife. Great as I believed it to be, it surpasses all my expectations. Here it is not the men who solicit the women but the women the men.²⁵

Jeanne went on to complain that proper access to talk to Margot had been denied her and that the only person she could speak freely to was Catherine, ‘who goads me’. The Duke of Anjou was no better:

Monsieur tries to get around me in private with a mixture of mockery and deceit.… Perceiving that nothing is being accomplished and that they do everything possible to bring about a hasty decision instead of proceeding logically. I have remonstrated with the Queen, but all she does is mock me.… She treats me so shamefully that you might say that the patience I manage to maintain surpasses that of Griselda herself … [Margot] is beautiful, discreet and graceful, but she has grown up in the most vicious and corrupt atmosphere imaginable. I cannot see that anyone escapes its poison.²⁶

Jeanne did not pause to consider what Margot, beneath the charming exterior she presented, really made of the proposed match with her son. After the silky charms of Henri of Guise and the lacquer of court flirtations, the thought of marriage to Navarre was hateful to her. In her eyes he lacked any refinement, barely ever washed, wore outmoded clothes and his breath smelt famously of garlic. This could hardly be a combination to turn a girl’s head; the mingled odours were more likely to make her stomach churn. For Margot, however, the principal consideration was that this plan had been conceived by her mother and had the full support of her elder brothers, by whom, as ever, she felt ill used; unable to resist their wishes, however, any thought of escape would prove useless. She was as unwilling a bride as Henri was a bridegroom.

The two sides haggled on and on over the religious issues. Jeanne feared – probably with some justification – that holes had been drilled in the walls of her apartment so that she could be easily spied upon. ‘I do not know how I can stand it,’ she lamented; ‘they scratch me, they stick pins into me, they flatter me, they tear out my fingernails.’²⁷ As time went by and Jeanne refused to yield on the religious points even her Protestant nobles began to despair of her obstinacy. Suddenly the King cut the matter short and though he had not yet received papal dispensation he gave Jeanne all she asked for. He agreed that Henri need not enter the Cathedral of Notre-Dame for the Nuptial Mass and that a proxy could stand in for him. He did insist, however, that Henri come to Paris in person for the wedding to Margot. On 11 April 1572 the marriage contract was duly signed. A few weeks later Jeanne, exhausted, set out for Vendôme to rest. Henri had been summoned to meet her there but he fell ill and postponed his journey. By the time he recovered his mother, who had much to prepare before the wedding, had already set out for Paris. She needed to find gifts for her daughter-in-law-to-be and fine fashionable clothes for her son.

The images that Jeanne of Navarre had witnessed while staying at Blois of the debauched French Court in general and Margot’s brothers’ behaviour in particular must have haunted her. The banquets and masked balls provided opportunities for every moral laxity. Charles, still more child than King, pretending to be a horse with a saddle on his back frolicking about on all fours, his face covered in soot. Anjou, scented and begemmed, dressed in the most fabulous sartorial creations, resembled a female courtier more than a male. These japes were all presided over by Catherine who seemed to ignore the excesses of her sons – whose hatred for each other remained as alive as ever – and realised it was better to see them debauch themselves than slit each other’s throats.

As Jeanne set out for the capital she looked ravaged by illness; nevertheless, determined not to appear anything less than regal, observers noted that for her journey to Paris she wore more pearls than she had ever done in her life. Once there, the Queen stayed at the house of her Bourbon relation, the Vidame de Chartres. As Catherine was not in the capital she charged the Comte de Retz – Alberto Gondi – with taking care of the Navarrese Queen. During the month of May 1572 Jeanne tried bravely to ignore her failing health and look forward to the arrival of her son. On 4 June she was forced to take to her bed and two days later she rewrote her will. Coligny, who had recently arrived at Court, heard of the Queen’s desperate condition and arrived at her bedside on 8 June. Here he remained with Jeanne’s chaplain, Merlin, praying and reading the Scriptures to her as she slipped in and out of consciousness. Jeanne never saw her beloved son again and died on 9 June aged only forty-four. The autopsy revealed that she had died of tuberculosis and an abscess in her right breast. After the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew the rumour predictably surfaced that Catherine had done away with the tiresome Queen who had been such anathema to her. The story was spread that Maître René, the Queen Mother’s Florentine parfumier, had been ordered to make Jeanne a pair of gloves tainted with poison. In fact, Catherine had nothing to gain from killing the Queen of Navarre; her objectives had been achieved once the marriage contract was signed, though there is no doubt that her death dealt a great blow to the Huguenots.

One murder that almost certainly must be laid at Catherine’s door at this time was that of a young gentleman named Philibert Le Vayer, Sieur de Lignerolles. By 1570 Anjou was causing Catherine much disquiet with some of his more feminine pursuits and by his general lack of interest in women (with a few notable exceptions such as his sister Margot). Catherine went to great lengths to instil simple male lust into her son. She even organised bacchanalian feasts where, it was said, the serving girls were both beautiful and naked. The only noticeable effect upon him seems to have been complete indifference, if not intense boredom. Instead, he surrounded himself with a coterie of exquisite-looking young noblemen who became known as his mignons. They slavishly followed their prince’s pursuits and passions while he protected and cosseted them. Catherine loathed her son’s gang of pretty boys and as soon as a particular favourite emerged she would do all she could to undermine him. One member of this coterie was Lignerolles, who had close Spanish connections and had made himself indispensable to Anjou. Lignerolles, however, differed from the others. This mignon encouraged a side of the duke that reflected the opposite of his normally epicurean self, a side that would later grow and eventually overpower him as the years went by.

Henri had a curious attraction to religious fanaticism and Lignerolles did all he could to foster this. Anjou found himself spellbound by the unusual favourite who encouraged such extreme devotional and ascetic practices in him that he became quite ill. Praying, fasting, pilgrimages and self-flagellation replaced the usual licentiousness and a certain detachment from his mother became noticeable. Anjou’s delicate constitution soon suffered from his intense devotions and one courtier overheard Catherine say in a loud voice that Henri’s ‘face has become quite pale and I would prefer to see him become a Huguenot than to see him endanger his life in this way’. Catherine’s love for Anjou was as blind as it was visceral; anyone who she believed threatened her son’s well-being and his intimacy with her risked provoking a deadly reaction. When Lignerolles was found murdered in a narrow alleyway near the Louvre no one even bothered to search for the assassin; it seemed well understood by all who had ordered the killing. For the moment Anjou returned to his normal pastimes, but his latent fanaticism would revive in the future and do him much harm in the years to come.

On 13 May a new Pope, Gregory XIII, had been elected who proved to be far more amenable and moderate than his predecessor. Catherine assured him that the Navarrese union offered the only sure way to prevent the King being led into war against Spain and to keep the peace within France. She applied for a special dispensation permitting the marriage between Henri and Margot despite the religious dichotomy and their consanguinity à troisième degré. Catherine was undoubtedly sincere in her desire for peace with the Spanish, but France’s relationship with Spain was now jeopardised by a dangerous and highly explosive incident, which bore all the hallmarks of Admiral de Coligny trying to force his agenda of military intervention in the Netherlands.

On 17 July 1572 a Huguenot military expedition of 5000 troops led by Jean de Hangest, Seigneur de Genlis, crossed the border from France into the Spanish Netherlands where they were ambushed near Mons by Spanish troops who had been alerted about the attack well in advance. Genlis and François de la Noue, a Protestant captain, were on a mission to save Louis of Nassau who had, with the support of money and men from Charles, attacked Mons and Valenciennes. Initial success had quickly turned to failure and the Spaniards now had Nassau and his men besieged in the fortress of Mons. At the same time Prince William of Orange, Nassau’s brother, planned an invasion from Germany. For weeks rumours had been circulating at the French Court about the Genlis rescue plan. Parisian armourers were reportedly working throughout the night and every day since mid-June large numbers of armed men had been seen leaving Paris heading north. Some alleged that the King personally received Genlis in Paris on or about 23 June. Charles, however, claimed total ignorance of the attack, though this is hard to credit since the Spanish were well-informed enough to prevent its success. It is most likely that Genlis had the clandestine help of Coligny and the tacit support of the King.

The Huguenot force was decimated, only a few hundred men escaping. One of the survivors was Genlis himself, who unfortunately carried a highly compromising letter written by Charles in which he encouraged French Huguenots in their rebellious activities in the Netherlands. The incursion by an armed force into Spanish territory could easily constitute an act of war by the French, and Charles hastily distanced himself by congratulating Philip on his success in defeating the expedition so roundly. Catherine, furious that her son had even covertly supported so foolish a mission, demanded that he make a public declaration denouncing the Genlis expedition, stating that his aim was to live in harmony with his neighbours. Believing the immediate crisis to have been averted, she left the capital to tend to her daughter Claude of Lorraine at Châlons, where she had been taken ill en route for Paris and Margot’s wedding. Catherine had failed to grasp that as far as Coligny was concerned the Genlis expedition represented little more than an advance party for the far greater French force he planned to lead, and no sooner had the Queen Mother left Paris than the Admiral redoubled his efforts in urging Charles to declare war on Spain.

Catherine soon received warning of the Admiral’s bellicose activities and dashed back to Paris on the night of 4 August to try to prevent catastrophe. Incandescent with rage, she berated the King for allowing himself to be led by the very men who had once tried to kidnap him and against whom he had been at war only a matter of months before. She urged him not to fall into their trap of starting a war against Spain that would soon leave the monarchy at the mercy of the Protestants. At the same time Coligny worked hard to convince Charles that he had not a moment to lose, and that he must see their plan through and strike in the Netherlands. Charles found himself torn between his mentor and his mother. At one point she even asked his permission for her and Anjou to retire immediately to her family estates in Auvergne – some observers reported that she wished to return to her birthplace of Florence. There she would spend the remainder of her days, she declared, rather than stay and watch her tireless work for the preservation of the monarchy go to ruin.

At the emergency council meetings on 9–10 August all those present, including Anjou, the Dukes of Nevers and Montpensier, Marshals Cossé and Tavannes, voted for peace, the only dissenting voice being that of Coligny. At the outcome of the vote he is said to have given a sinister warning to the victorious Queen Mother: ‘Madam, if the King decides against a war, may God spare him another from which he will not be able to extricate himself. I am not able to oppose that which Your Majesty has done but I am assured that she will have occasion to regret it.’ This was clearly intended as a portentous warning, but by making this barely veiled threat Coligny had just unwittingly uttered his own death sentence.

^fn1 Artemisia became a prototype for the future female regencies of Maria de Medici (1610–20) and Anne of Austria (1643–60).

^fn2 In a deliberate attempt to remind Cosimo that she was a Queen of France, and to create a subtle but distinct distance between herself and a man she considered a ‘country bumpkin’, Catherine usually wrote to her distant relative in French, addressing him as ‘Mon Cousin’. At the same time Elizabeth I of England wrote to Cosimo in Italian and even Italianised the name of her palace at Richmond to Mi Castello di Riccamonte.