THIRTEEN

THE LAST YEARS OF CHARLES IX

Too much malice! Too much malice!

1572–74

As the murders continued outside, the royal family stayed, anxious and frightened, inside the Louvre. For nearly three days they did not venture outside, fearing attack. There were moments of calm in the streets outside, but all too often these were followed by a sudden resurgence of violence. Had an assault been made on the palace it would have proved singularly difficult to protect it in its current condition, halfway through its transition from medieval fortress to baroque palace. Horrified at the bloody manhunt that they had witnessed in the palace itself and what they could see from the windows, the family were nonetheless weirdly isolated in the midst of the bloodbath. Catherine had so often been forced to evolve her policies as events unfolded, navigating around difficulties as they arose, but never had her will been so completely submerged and her powers of action so circumscribed as they were during those disastrous days.

The fate of Coligny’s body, the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew’s first and foremost victim, epitomised the fanatical hatred that had taken over the city. The corpse had been emasculated and pieces cut off it as the crowd pulled it through the streets and then threw it into the Seine. What remained of the corpse was eventually fished out and hung by its feet from the gibbet at Montfaucon, where during the last civil war it had only hung in effigy. According to Agrippa d’Aubigné and Brantôme, the decapitated head was then presented to Catherine, who had it embalmed and sent on to Rome as a gift to the Pope.^fn1 A few days after the violence had subsided – and then only under cover of darkness – François de Montmorency sent a small group of men to cut down his uncle’s remains and take them to Chantilly for a Christian burial.

Catherine’s first and only thought was not for the innocent dead but how to keep the King on his throne after such a calamity. Before reliable information could be gathered she could only guess at repercussions. The King’s complete loss of control over what were meant to be limited and legal executions showed how slight was his authority and what terrifying power the mob possessed. The Queen Mother also understood how the Massacre, originally driven by religious passions, had quickly spun out of control and had become a popular uprising of angry despair by people who felt little or no fear of royal retribution. Some historians have even viewed it as a portent of what was to come in 1789. Although it is impossible to say with any accuracy how many people perished during what was later called the ‘Season of Saint Bartholomew’ in Paris and its aftermath in the provinces, most experts believe that the death toll throughout the kingdom was possibly as high as between 20,000 and 30,000. In Paris alone it is thought that 2000 to 3000 people lost their lives. The Huguenots registered in Paris had numbered only some 800, although there were many too poor to be on any list or register and therefore the number is likely to have been far higher. This still leaves around 1000 dead Parisians who were not Huguenots. Some of these died when a Protestant victim managed to fight back, though many were probably the victims of criminals motivated by greed. It might therefore be argued that a high percentage of the remaining hundreds were killed as a result of general discontent, the ‘haves’ killed by the ‘have-nots’.

The Duke of Guise, appalled at the scale of the bloodletting he found when he returned to the city after giving chase to Montgomery and the Vidame of Chartres, tried to calm the mob. But even he, the Catholic hero of Paris, could do nothing. Guise, already considering how his role would be perceived, had taken steps to protect his reputation, let alone his immortal soul, by defending Protestants in the streets and giving them sanctuary at the Hôtel de Guise. He argued that the Admiral’s death had restored his family honour and he had sought the death only of those on the King’s list. Realising that the names of the authors and perpetrators of this enormity would be stained for ever, he soon began to distance himself from the King, particularly so since Catherine was already according Guise a prominent role in the massacre. He argued that Charles should make a public avowal that the original executions were by the sovereign’s command. This would be at odds with the early royal declarations that the horrors sprang from the blood feud between the Houses of Guise and Châtillon, and the ensuing carnage was perpetrated by lawless thugs and criminals.

On Tuesday, 26 August, before having regained proper control of the city, Charles held a special Lit de Justice attended by his brothers and Henri of Navarre, at which he carefully listed the outrages and crimes committed by Coligny and his rebels against himself and the Crown over recent years. He also outlined the number of concessions he had made to the Huguenots. In return for all his goodness, patience and generosity, he claimed that the Admiral and his cohorts had plotted to kill him and his family. He added that the Duke of Guise had acted solely with his royal authority. Finally he made the declaration: ‘I wish it to be known that the severe executions of the past few days have been performed by my express command in order to prevent the results of this abominable conspiracy.’ When asked if the King wished his words to be entered on to the records of the Parlement he replied, ‘I wish it.’ The parlementaires then proceeded to heap praise upon the King for his magnificent defence of the throne against the perfidious rebels, but in reality they lauded a convenient formula that protected them all.

France required an official explanation and Charles gave them one. The historian Jacques-Auguste de Thou, whose father was the Parlement’s president and had been charged by the King to investigate the original attempt on Coligny’s life, wrote that it was ‘deplorable to see persons who were respectable for their piety, their knowledge and their integrity … praising, contrary to their feelings … an act which they detested in their hearts … but in the false conviction that present circumstances and the good of the state required that they should speak as they did’.¹ Before the session ended the King was asked to restore order over the city. He declared that he desired this above all things. On the short journey back to the Louvre a surviving Protestant, hoping to go unnoticed, joined the large number walking with the King, but one of the lawless crew jostling among the people noticed the luckless fellow and stabbed him to death. ‘I wish to God that this were the last one,’ Charles muttered as he continued on his way towards the palace.

Aside from the dead, Catherine soon appreciated that the real victims of the Saint Bartholomew Massacre were the monarchy and herself. Having endured the mistrust of the Protestants despite her edicts that had favoured a number of rights and some recognition for them, she knew she must now live with their undying enmity. After 24 August the Huguenots had every reason to believe what the preachers and pamphleteers told them: that the ultimate responsibility for the premeditated and terrible massacre lay at her door. According to them, the royal marriage had been a devious trap set by the Machiavellian Queen Mother, perhaps with the backing of Spain, to capture and exterminate their brothers and sisters. The massacre had also made it impossible for the Huguenots, who had hitherto always claimed loyalty to the throne, to maintain this line. Once Charles had officially admitted responsibility for the order to kill the leaders of their party, ordinary Protestants knew that they could no longer offer him allegiance.

As the news spread quickly throughout the Courts of Europe, Catherine found herself the cynosure of Catholic rulers. When word first reached Philip II on 7 September the French ambassador reported that a huge smile was seen to grace the royal countenance and to his observers’ further astonishment Philip danced a little jig of delight, ‘so contrary to his native temperament and custom’. He then hurried to the monastery of San Geronimo to render his thanks to the Almighty for ridding France of so many heretics. Catherine and Charles enjoyed the rare and short-lived beam of approval emanating from Madrid. The Pope heard the news from the Cardinal of Lorraine himself, anxious to take as much credit for his family as possible. A special medal was struck to commemorate the glorious rout of the Protestants and Te Deums were sung in Rome. The French ambassador quickly published a short version of the events of the massacre under a pseudonym, giving all credit to the King and entitling it The Stratagem of Charles IX.

Cardinal Flavio Orsini, the new papal nuncio about to leave for France, carried a message of fulsome praise and thanks from Pope Gregory to the French King. Unfortunately, just as Charles and Catherine had begun to bask in this unexpected upturn in events, the true and accidental nature of the massacre was transmitted to both the Pope and Philip of Spain. Not only had the massacre been an unforeseen explosion by the mob in Paris, but the killing of Coligny – though ordered by Catherine – had been motivated by political rather than spiritual reasons. This had been no national religious crusade orchestrated by the Queen Mother and her son, but a chaotic chain of events set off by a largely secular assassination. The Pope sent a messenger to stop Orsini en route and ordered him not to pass on the message of congratulation to the King and his mother after all.

Catherine, realising that she could no longer claim the laurels that had so temptingly been held out, wrote to Philip telling him that while she had not premeditated the massacre, she had been able to stymie a Huguenot plot to kill the King and the royal family. Astonishingly, she also considered the moment propitious for putting forward another of her matchmaking plans, suggesting that Philip’s eldest daughter and Catherine’s granddaughter, Isabella Clara Eugenia, should marry her uncle the Duke of Anjou, in order to ‘increase the friendship between the two Crowns’. Philip gave his usual negative response. Closer ties with France and the Queen Mother were an odious thought to him.

For the benefit of his father-in-law the Emperor, Charles instructed his ambassador in Vienna to peddle the story that he had been forced to act having uncovered a vast Huguenot plot. However, Maximilian II preferred to subscribe to the theory that it had been a premeditated massacre. His reason for doing so was more selfish than a humble search for truth. He coveted the vacant throne of Poland for one or other of his sons, Archdukes Ernest and Albert, at the expense of the Duke of Anjou. King Sigismund-August had died on 7 July 1572 and Maximilian knew that Anjou’s candidature – and the French in general – were stained with obloquy in the eyes of the many Lutheran Polish electors whose favour was pivotal for election to the throne. Maximilian, content to keep matters that way, even employed his own team of learned men to elaborate further on the iniquitous personal role played by Anjou and his family in the horrors of August 1572.

Arnaud du Ferrier, Catherine’s ambassador to Venice, sent a brutally frank account of how the events had been perceived in that bastion of pragmatic capitalism:

Madame, the truth is certain and indubitable that the massacres which have occurred throughout the whole kingdom of France, not only against the Admiral and other principal leaders of the religion, but against so many poor and innocent people, have so profoundly moved and altered the feeling of those here who are friendly to your Crown, even though they are all Catholics, that they cannot be satisfied with any excuse, attributing everything that has been done to you alone and Monsieur d’Anjou.²

The Queen Mother’s reply on behalf of herself and her son implied scant contrition but much justification: ‘We deeply regret that, in the commotion, a number of other persons belonging to their religion were killed by the Catholics who were smarting from the infinite afflictions, pillage, murder, and other wrongs which had been inflicted upon them.’³

Throughout the Protestant Courts of Europe the reaction to the massacre was one of shock and unfeigned disgust. There is a legend that when Elizabeth of England, after many delays, finally received the French ambassador, she and her Court wore mourning for their co-religionists. There is no evidence of this in the ambassador’s subsequent correspondence, though the Queen’s attitude could best be described as most forbidding when she granted an audience to La Motte-Fénélon at Woodstock, where she had been hunting until the terrible news arrived. Elizabeth feared that the Massacre represented but the first step in a grand design against Protestantism, and her theory was supported by Burghley and her spy-master Sir Francis Walsingham, who had been in Paris at the time, barely escaping with his life. Much had been hoped from the growing closeness with France, but now, as Walsingham put it, ‘I think it less peril to live with them as enemies than as friends.’⁴ La Motte-Fénélon made no attempt to justify the events of Saint Bartholomew, but explained to the Queen that his master had uncovered a Huguenot plot against himself and the royal family, and had taken the necessary measures to protect his kingdom and his throne. The death of so many of the King’s subjects had been an unfortunate accident. Elizabeth felt relieved, if not entirely convinced, by his account. After their meeting she continued to order defensive measures against a foreign invasion, but felt more inclined to believe that this was no opening salvo in a campaign against her and other Protestant princes by the Catholic powers. The ambassador went to great lengths to assure Elizabeth that the King wanted nothing better than closer ties with England, which was indeed the truth.

After only a few months the paranoia passed, though there remained a feeling that France must be treated as an unreliable ally and Elizabeth should do what she could to keep the French and Spanish busy with troubles in their own kingdoms, subtly supporting Protestants from time to time inside the two countries. Much as this kind of covert intervention went against her fundamental beliefs, Elizabeth was seen, albeit unwillingly, as an international champion of Protestantism. Her preferred policy was to lend her support only when she believed that a real risk existed of the complete elimination of foreign Protestantism. Even then she sanctioned aid only on the merits of each case at it arose. She was certainly loath to provoke the Catholic superpowers for a cause she did not consider primarily an English one. There seemed to be no lasting damage between Elizabeth and the French royal family, as the Queen agreed to stand godmother to Charles’s daughter Isabella, born on 27 October 1572. The desultory talks over her marriage to Alençon even recommenced.

The German Lutheran princes and the Swiss Calvinists were aghast when news of the massacre reached them. Catherine promptly instructed her ambassador to assure them that the killing of Coligny and his comrades had not been because of their religion, but their plot aimed at ridding themselves of the King. As for the massacre, there had been no premeditation, he claimed. Germany had long been a source of soldiers to boost French armies and provided a useful counterbalance against Spain; to risk losing their friendship would have had grave consequences. Like Elizabeth of England, the Protestant princes feared a concerted Catholic attack against those of the new religion and ordered defensive measures to be taken. Economics proved a useful salve, helping to remove obstacles to the resumption of normal diplomatic relations between the German states and France. The German Reiters provided an important source of revenue for their rulers who had found French support against Habsburg domination invaluable in the past.

There was even a clamour of self-righteous protest from Tsar Ivan IV of Russia, who criticised the French for their barbarism. This sounds pretty rich coming from the man who rightfully earned history’s sobriquet ‘The Terrible’ for his savage repression of the boyars in the 1560s and only two years before Saint Bartholomew had laid waste to the free city of Novgorod. Nor did age mellow Ivan, who in a fit of ill temper accidentally killed his eldest son in 1581. The Tsar’s disingenuous daintiness can probably be ascribed to the greedy eye that he too cast towards the vacant Polish throne.

Still held captive, Navarre and Condé were only safe for as long as Catherine and royal policy deemed it important for them to remain alive. In her memoirs Margot claims that one week after the massacre Catherine and her advisers ‘perceived that they had missed their main aim and hating the Huguenots less than the Princes of the Blood, became impatient that the King my husband and the Prince de Condé had survived. And knowing that since he was my husband no one would dare to attack him, they contrived another scheme.’ Catherine is alleged to have approached Margot at her lever asking her daughter to ‘swear to tell her the truth and asked me whether the King my husband were a man, adding that, if he were not, she would be able to divorce me. I begged her to believe that I did not know what she meant … but that, since she had married me, I wished to remain so; for I suspected that they wished to separate me from him in order to do him a bad turn.’⁵

Despite their precarious position they were alive. When they had been brought to the King’s rooms on 24 August he had assured them, ‘My brother and my cousin, be not fearful or troubled by what you hear, if I have summoned you it is for your own safety.’ Navarre and Condé had abjured the new religion and taken their first Mass the following day. Navarre showed a cool head, but Condé, like his father before him, was unable to imitate his cousin and feign a pliable spirit of co-operation. Instead he threatened Charles, saying he had 500 men coming to his aid and to avenge the atrocities. Charles, seized with fury, pulled out his dagger and menaced Condé. He then turned to Navarre, saying, ‘As for you, show some goodwill and I will treat you well.’ The two princes’ reception back into the Catholic Church was essential to Catherine. Until this had taken place they were still, then more than ever, the legitimate leaders of the Huguenots.

On 29 September, one month after the murder of many of their closest friends and councillors, Henri of Navarre and the Prince de Condé were officially received back into the Roman Church at Notre-Dame Cathedral during a service celebrating the Order of Saint-Michel with most of the Court present, including many foreign ambassadors. Catherine wanted as many prominent witnesses to this event as possible. As the young princes bowed their heads and made the sign of the cross before the great altar, Catherine, uncharacteristically, lost her regal composure and burst into fits of laughter. Turning to the ambassadors sitting either side of her, she mocked the young princes’ attempts at piety. Perhaps it was an outburst of nervous release after the tension of the previous weeks, or maybe it was a calculated attempt to draw attention to the princes’ hypocrisy in embracing the faith of their enemies due to force majeure.

Henri’s own words lend pathos to the Queen Mother’s premature and imprudent gaiety. Many years later he wrote about the anguish he felt at the time:

Those who accompanied me to Paris and who were massacred had not left their houses during the troubles. … You can imagine the regret this caused me, seeing those who had come because I had given them my word of honour and had no other assurance but that which the King had given me … assuring me that he would take me as his brother. My misery was such that had I been able to buy their lives by giving my own I would have done so. I saw them killed even at my bed, I was left alone, deprived of friends.⁶

Though Henri had intended no irony, in the House of Valois to be treated as a brother was to take your life in your hands.

Despite his agony, Navarre maintained a public face of astonishing detachment. His friends’ killers became his closest companions; although still a prisoner at Court he was agreeable and good company, and betrayed not a scintilla of his true feelings. He made an official apology to the Pope on 3 October 1572 and a few days later, on 16 October, came the most humiliating concession of all when he restored his Principality of Béarn to Catholicism. Unlike Condé’s obvious truculence, Henri was determined to survive and employed the same submission and suppleness which his Florentine mother-in-law had once had to do.

By the end of October 1572 the ‘Season of Saint Bartholomew’ was over, yet its historic repercussions were only just beginning. Not only did it become a byword for oppression, tyranny, cruelty and arbitrary power, but the reverberations were to haunt Catherine’s reputation throughout history. Having been so completely at the mercy of the events of Saint Bartholomew, Catherine felt relieved that the kingdom seemed under relative control and relations with the foreign powers were back to normal. She did not appreciate, however, that it was but an appearance of normality. Her enduring appetite for appearances now dangerously overwhelmed her ability to comprehend that she needed to take drastic measures to prevent the massacre from becoming a weapon for her enemies to mould and use against her. For lack of a concerted effort to present a coherent and plausible account of her actions, Catherine allowed the legend of ‘The Black Queen’ to take hold and to predominate over the years. One nineteenth-century historian, Jules Michelet, even dubbed her ‘The Maggot from Italy’s Tomb’. Over the years, pamphleteers further distorted the facts about the Queen Mother, creating a patchwork of conflicting but almost universally damning accounts.

Charles IX’s reign was so dominated by his mother, due to his youth, his poor health and his lack of ability, that it is almost solely remembered for the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew. The young King remains an opaque figure to history, except as the villain-victim of the massacre, son of his evil Italian mother. Machiavelli’s The Prince, dedicated to Catherine’s father, Lorenzo II de Medici, became known as the ‘textbook for tyrants’, and rumour held that each of Catherine’s children carried a volume with them at all times.⁷ The colourful legends about Catherine arose from her tragic mishandling of the crisis and its aftermath. The Huguenots believed the killings had been planned as early as the meeting at Bayonne between the Duke of Alba and ‘La Nouvelle Jezebel’, as the pamphleteers called her, where the pair had coolly plotted the massacre of the French Protestants.

Although the Huguenots had lost almost all their leaders, new men stepped in to take over and reorganise their resistance. Whipped up by their pastors, the Protestants became more zealous than ever. In southern France areas of strong Huguenot control such as Nîmes, Montauban, Privas and Sancerre locked their gates and prepared to defend themselves against further Catholic aggression. Most troublesome of all was the port of La Rochelle on the western shores of France. The citizens, who had raised a force of some 1500 men, defied the regime when, not long after Saint Bartholomew, Marshal Biron – a moderate Catholic who had saved many Protestants from the massacre – arrived at La Rochelle to take over as governor, whereupon the inhabitants denied him entry to the town. The Rochellais sought the aid of Elizabeth of England, calling her ‘their natural sovereign princess for all eternity’. In November 1572 Charles and Catherine were determined that this Huguenot bastion be retaken and ordered Biron to lay siege to the city. La Rochelle boasted over fifty pastors who enjoined all the citizens, including women, to mount the strongest defence possible. Anjou, who did not take up his command until early 1573, arrived to lead a strangely mixed army, whose commanders were nearly all at odds with each other.

Since the massacre, Anjou’s force now comprised reconverted Catholics, a few royalist Protestants and rival feudal lords. With him he brought Navarre, Condé and his brother, Alençon, who was furious that as brother of the King he had been given no important military role and whined about it constantly. The royalist army included many senior officers who found their loyalty to the Crown strained by the events of August 1572. The most prominent of these were Coligny’s cousins, the old Constable’s sons, the eldest François, Marshal de Montmorency, and his brother Henri de Montmorency-Damville, the governor of Languedoc. Fearful of future Guise domination, for the duke and his uncle d’Aumale had accompanied Anjou, they decided to join the force outside La Rochelle bringing with them some junior members of the family, including Charles de Montmorency-Méru (younger son of the late Constable and Marshal de Cossé’s son-in-law) and François, Vicomte de Turenne (husband to the Montmorencys’ sister Eleanore). Turenne and Montmorency-Méru began to form part of a clique that was grouping around the whingeing Duke d’Alençon. The city meanwhile resisted the army’s assaults and put up a valiant defence, repulsing attacks and bombardments. The Rochellaise women, standing on the city ramparts exposed to royalist fire, attacked the soldiers below with rocks and stones.

Anjou not only had to endure stone-throwing women, the fanatical defence of the Rochellais, constant squabbles of his disparate group of senior commanders and a particularly harsh winter in the field, but also the reality that he might shortly become King of Poland. The prospect, once distant and with a pleasant shimmer to it, now ceased to hold quite the attraction for him that it once had. Tavannes had unhelpfully described Anjou’s prospective kingdom as a ‘desert and worth nothing, not so large as they say and where the people are brutes’. Catherine retorted that the Marshal would prefer ‘to remain on his own dunghill’ and continued, unyielding in her determination to see a crown upon her adored son’s head, putting as much of a gloss on the prospect as she could.⁸ ‘The Poles are highly civilised and intelligent,’ she wrote, adding that ‘it is a good and great kingdom which can always supply 150,000 livres with which to do whatever he wished’.⁹ Explaining that she could not bear to be parted from him unless it were for his own good, she reminded him, ‘I have shown you only too well that I love you better where you can acquire reputation and greatness than to have you beside me. … I am not one of those mothers who love their children only for themselves. I love you because I see and wish to see you foremost in greatness and reputation and honour.’¹⁰ This last remark was no more than the truth; no mother in history has done more to promote her children, at whatever cost to herself, themselves and their times.

Ignoring Henri’s growing reluctance, Catherine did all she could to support Jean de Monluc, Bishop of Valence, her special envoy in Poland for the election, to carry the vote in Anjou’s favour. A superb diplomat, Monluc had been faced with an almost insuperable problem after Saint Bartholomew, which he privately considered ‘a colossal blunder’. Anjou’s role in the Massacre had been amplified by his rival the Habsburg archduke; the Emperor’s camp advertised Anjou not only as a murderous Catholic fanatic but also as highly effeminate, arguing that a more martial figure would be appropriate for Poland. In religious matters the Poles were singularly tolerant and would not allow a zealot monarch, be he Protestant or Catholic, to jeopardise their exemplary religious harmony. Fortunately the other candidates for the Crown did not appear particularly appetising to the Poles either, who also feared domination by their neighbouring states. This rather dampened the prospects for Emperor Maximilian II’s son, Ernest. A Habsburg king would almost certainly involve Poland in the Empire’s constant wars against the Turks. Ivan the Terrible’s own candidature was also predictably rejected by the Poles, who were justifiably as afraid of his ambitions as his methods of achieving them. (Rare indeed are the people who actually elect a monarch bearing the sobriquet ‘The Terrible’.) The Protestant candidates were Albert-Frederick, Duke of Prussia, and King John III of Sweden’s son, the nine-year-old Sigismund. The Protestant electors were in a minority, however, and these two candidates lacked enough support for victory.

Charles was as anxious to see Anjou elected King of Poland as Catherine, albeit for quite different reasons. The thought of getting his brother packed off to Poland evinced such fraternal largesse in the King that he bedazzled the Poles. Among the sweeteners were enough funds to build a Polish fleet. Charles also promised that he would negotiate a treaty between Poland and the Sultan, France’s long-time friend but traditionally Poland’s foe; in addition he agreed to come to their aid if they were attacked by Russia. The income from the Duchy of Anjou and the prince’s other properties were promised to settle Poland’s debts. Having arrived at the same time as the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew, Monluc led a brilliant campaign despite the deluge of anti-French propaganda. On 5 April 1573 40,000 nobles assembled on the plain of Kamien south of Warsaw to elect their new King. Monluc played every ruse available to him, including feigning an illness that allowed him to defer overnight his speech for Anjou to the delegates, giving him enough time to examine, dissect and undermine the Imperials’ proposals for the archduke made earlier that day.

In Monluc’s masterly speech he outlined Henri of Anjou’s excellent and noble lineage, the ancient friendship between France and Poland, the fine qualities of the candidate, dilating upon his virtue, wisdom and valour. The French promises of monetary, military and diplomatic aid were outlined in detail. Monluc ended his long speech with a touch of genius, by adding a note of family sentiment. Henri would be leaving his home and his family in France but he would be finding a new home and family as father and King to the Poles. Wild enthusiasm greeted his oration. Monluc had also taken the precaution of having 1000 copies translated into Polish and widely disseminated. Before the proceedings could go any further, Monluc was obliged to undertake promises on Anjou’s behalf to honour the Pacta Conventa and the Articuli Henriciani, which proscribed the King’s powers, protected the nobles’ privileges and guaranteed freedom of worship. On 11 May 1573, at the end of the lengthy campaign, to cries of ‘Gallum! Gallum!’, Henri was officially elected King of Poland.

Henri received the news on 29 May as he sat outside the intractable town of La Rochelle. By now the miserable siege and the unsuccessful assaults had allegedly cost the French army 22,000 men and two of their most important commanders: both the Marshal de Tavannes and the Duke d’Aumale had been killed. Tavannes was a particularly grievous loss to the Queen Mother; he had given her long and faithful service. The soldiers were mutinous and Anjou felt that his own life might even be at risk. The Polish news neatly provided the deus ex machina that gave the Crown an excuse to seek a peaceful solution and come to terms with the stubborn Rochellais. An agreement was reached that allowed both sides to keep their arms and honour. The Edict of Boulogne permitted the Huguenots freedom of conscience throughout the kingdom and freedom of worship at La Rochelle, Nîmes and Montauban.

Catherine received the news of Anjou’s election with ecstasy, apparently hearing it from her Polish dwarf Krassowski an hour before the official confirmation arrived. He presented himself before the Queen Mother, gave a deep bow and said, ‘I come to salute the mother of the King of Poland.’ She wept with joy and – with some justification – regarded the election of her beloved son to the Polish throne as her personal triumph. Charles shared his mother’s high good humour; buying the votes for the Crown of Poland had strained his almost empty treasury, but he considered every écu well spent. Anxious to speed the new King on his way, on 1 June 1573 he gave his brother permission to leave and to compound his own happiness he gave Henri 4000 Gascon soldiers to take with him to his new kingdom. (The Gascons – who came from a strongly Huguenot part of France – were troublesome though brave troops and had been a thorn in Charles’s side for their reluctance to accept his authority.)

Initially Henri received the tidings with elation; Poland might be an unknown and distant country but now he was a king in his own right. On 17 June a delegation of Polish nobles arrived at La Rochelle to salute their King. The siege was officially lifted nine days later, giving the Poles an apt and nicely timed illustration of how the French were prepared to come to terms with their rebellious Protestant subjects. Anjou’s schedule now became hectic and Catherine, as ever, became the catalyst for the organisation of the magnificent receptions and entrées which must be accorded to her beloved as a sovereign.

On 24 July Anjou made his entrée into Orléans, after which he hurried to the Château de Madrid. There in the Bois de Boulogne he received the many delegations of foreign ambassadors and officials coming to congratulate him throughout early August 1573. The Spanish, Portuguese and Imperial representatives – the latter still smarting from their defeat in the election – were notable absentees from this queue of well-wishers. Catherine’s happiness was complete as she watched her son – the son she felt had been born to be a king – receiving gifts, speeches and decorations from the representatives sent by his fellow sovereigns. Henri enjoyed the fuss and there was more to come. The official Polish embassy made up of twelve men including both Catholics and Protestants had embarked upon the journey to their new King. Accompanying the ambassadors were 250 Polish nobles, composed of clergy, senators and other important feudal lords representing the Polish Diet. The twelve Polish delegates not only brought with them the official declaration of Henri’s election, but also the agreements undertaken by Monluc on his behalf defining the new King’s powers. The electors had been promised, too, that Henri would take the hand of the late King’s sister, Anna Jagellona, a prospect that held so little attraction for him that while the diversions in France lasted he decided not to think about it.

On 19 August 1573 the people of Paris were treated to a rare and extraordinary spectacle as the Polish envoys made their official entry into the city. Their arrival was announced by a deafening volley fired by 1500 arquebusiers, and their welcome party included the Duke of Guise, his brothers and other dignitaries. Fifty Polish coaches, each pulled by seven or eight horses ridden by pages, carried the visiting officials. The Parisians, usually blasé and hard to impress, were agog at the extraordinary-looking foreigners making their way to their lodgings in the quartier des Grands-Augustins. The Poles wore their traditional costumes – fur-trimmed hats or jewelled caps, wide boots with iron spikes, fabulous scimitars and swords encrusted with precious gems, and jewelled quivers filled with arrows on their backs. The horses were almost as begemmed as the Poles; their saddles and bridles glimmered with precious stones. The Parisian crowd stood unusually silent as it watched the train of strange-looking but majestic men pass before them, with their long beards flowing ‘like the sea’ and their heads shaved to the nape of their necks. In an unusual break with traditional hyperbole, the inscription on the triumphal arch under which the cortège passed read Miramur cultus, Miramur Galli, Vestra Polonorum quasi semideum.¹¹

Catherine, Charles and Elisabeth received their exotic visitors at the Louvre on 21 August. Dressed in long robes of gold brocade the Poles, led by the Bishop of Poznan, presented themselves to Their Majesties. Far from the savages anticipated by Tavannes, the ambassadors were both highly cultured and multilingual. They spoke Latin, Italian, German and some French ‘with a purity of accent as if they had been born on the banks of the Seine, instead of in those distant lands watered by the Vistula or the Dnieper’. Charles and Henri probably felt a twinge of regret at their own half-hearted efforts at learning Latin. After their speech to Charles, the ambassadors went to address Catherine. She stood, looking magnificently regal, and listened to their speech in Latin. Madame Gondi, La Comtesse de Retz, gave the reply, also in Latin, after which the Queen Mother took the Bishop of Poznan to one side and they spoke together in Italian. Of the royal family, Margot alone required no translator when she and Navarre received the ambassadors a few days later. She was able to converse with them ‘with vivacity and grace of manner’ alternating between Italian, Latin and French. Holding out her white hand to be kissed by the delegates, she made a profound impression on her visitors. One of them, the smitten Palatine of Siradia, henceforth referred to Margot as ‘that divine woman’. A large number of the French courtiers reputed to be well educated were left blushing and tongue-tied when the Poles addressed questions to them in Latin, which they found incomprehensible.

The following day, 22 August, Henri received his new countrymen and subjects at the Louvre. First they processed through Paris, even more sumptuously dressed than when they had entered the city. The twelve ambassadors wore long robes of gold cloth trimmed with sable. It was precisely the sort of glittering tenu that would normally have guaranteed a warm reception from Anjou, famed for his fascination with jewels and rich clothes. Now, however, it served only to remind the new King that he was leaving his beloved France for a strange country with strange customs. The early joy of his elevation, the congratulations from fellow monarchs and the other delightful accoutrements of kingship were wearing off. Soon he would be leaving home for Poland.

Before the ambassadors arrived, Henri had given his official thanks to Monluc for his success in winning him the throne, but his words of gratitude were insincere. De Thou wrote,

Monsieur was not glad, though he hid his true sentiments. Honourable as was the dignity conferred upon him, he regarded its acceptance as an exile. He was piqued at his brother’s determination to banish him from the realm. This young prince, therefore, nurtured amid the luxuries and refinements of the court of France, saw himself most unwillingly doomed to inhabit such a country as Poland.

Henri could not but be aware of the joy his imminent departure also gave to Margot and her fraternal protégé, Alençon. Delighted at the prospect of ‘the favourite son’s’ departure, they were already planning what they could appropriate when he had gone. The Bishop of Poznan came forward to kiss the King’s hand and to hail him as their new sovereign. In his address to Henri there were many references to the Diet and to the King’s signature on the Articuli Henriciani and Pacta Conventa. Henri found the speech tinged with an element unfamiliar to a French royal prince; it smacked of the ‘unceremonious remonstrance with which he had been told the Polish magnates regaled their sovereign’. It was most unpleasing to the Valois ear.

If the French found the Polish ambassadors and nobles extraordinary and foreign-looking, one wonders what the Poles made of their new King. The richly dressed, elegant, slender and highly effeminate young man before them was scented, pomaded and rouged. His tong-curled, backcombed hair was topped with a toquet of diamonds. The trembling grapes of pearls and pendant earrings that swung with the movement of his head were certainly unusual. Compared with their own robust physiques, the Poles cannot have failed to notice Henri’s physical frailty. It was common knowledge that he suffered from agonising headaches and a weak stomach. The fistula on one of Henri’s eyes could be clearly seen, as was the foetid seepage from the open sore below his armpit whenever he waved or lifted his arm. It is probable that at their first meeting both parties looked at each other with equal astonishment. Henri’s entourage, remarkable for its number of exquisite-looking young noblemen, might also have given the ambassadors pause for thought.

While Catherine and Monluc undertook the serious business of ratifying the details of the Articuli and Conventa, Henri used every opportunity to let his mother witness his misery. They had wept together over his imminent departure, but her maternal ambitions for her favourite son required a huge sacrifice. Blinded by her hopes for him, she seemed unable to heed another great danger ahead.

Charles was visibly dying. When Henri first saw his elder brother after the eight-month siege of La Rochelle, the deterioration in Charles’s health so shook him that he is alleged to have muttered ‘he is dead’ to one of his suite standing beside him. As heir presumptive, Henri would be leaving a great deal at stake when he finally departed for Poland. Although Alençon was plotting with Margot at his expense, the protective presence of his mother reassured him. She would never allow anyone to usurp the French throne in his place.

As a precaution against any future move for the throne by Alençon, already clamouring for the shortly to become vacant position of Lieutenant-General, Catherine had arranged for Charles formally to acknowledge ‘my brother the King of Poland’ as heir-presumptive at a council meeting on 22 August 1573. This cheered Henri’s drooping spirits as the arguments continued over the final agreement between the Poles and their King, undertaken by Catherine and some of France’s ablest ministers, each of whom had been carefully selected by her. Worried about the hostility of the Empire at Henri’s election, Catherine had also to ensure safe passage for Henri and his vast entourage to reach Poland unharmed. With this in mind, talks with the German Protestants about plans to support an attack against the Spanish Netherlands commenced. Just before Henri’s departure, Catherine went so far as to promise ‘to embrace the affairs of the said Netherlands as much and as far as the Protestant princes may wish’.¹² Matters with the ambassadors came to a head as Henri maintained his stubborn unwillingness to sign the agreements upon which his kingship hinged. One of the envoys made the situation absolutely clear by stating firmly, ‘Jurabis aut non regnanbis!’ (Swear the oath or you will not reign!) The proposed marriage to Anna Jagellona, for which Henri had no appetite, provided the other stumbling block.

The princess, as demanded by tradition, waited in Cracow with the body of her dead brother, longing impatiently for the arrival of the dashing prince she believed would become her husband. A description of her sent to Henri, that lover of perfection and beauty, made the prospect anathema to his delicate tastes. She wore a black costume covered by a cloak of rough sackcloth, apparently traditional Polish mourning attire, and she received Henri’s gentleman most graciously. He reported, ‘The princess is of little stature, her age is nearly fifty years, as one may read on her highness’s features.’ The prospective suitor finessed his way out of the problem for the moment by protesting that since the princess’s consent had not been given, the matrimonial question must remain open. On 9 September 1573, after further wrangling, Henri swore the articles of the Conventa. He gave a banquet for the ambassadors that evening and the following day a ceremony took place in which Henri undertook to uphold his oaths and commitments, Charles swearing to act as a guarantor.

On the following day at the Palais de Justice, the French royal family, nobles, dignitaries and a huge crowd watched the ambassadors come to make the official presentation of the document declaring Henri’s election as King of Poland.^fn2 Two canopied thrones had been placed on a platform, one bearing the fleur-de-lys of France and the other the white eagle of Poland. The ambassadors approached in pairs, until two delegates entered carrying a large silver casket upon their shoulders. In the ornate casket lay the decree which they placed before Charles. The Bishop of Poznan formally asked the King of France whether he had his royal permission to present the decree to his brother. He then asked Catherine the same question and both of them gave their assent. Henri, who was kneeling, had the long fought-over agreement handed to him, followed by a pretty speech before the document was read out loud.

On 14 September Henri made his official entry into Paris as King of Poland. To celebrate the event Catherine inaugurated her new palace of the Tuileries with a ball that was to surpass all the other entertainments that had been laid on for the Poles. Having abandoned and eventually demolished the Château des Tournelles (now the Place des Vosges) as a miserable reminder of her husband’s death, in 1563 she had conceived the idea of a palace close to the Louvre extending to the banks of the Seine. This was the first palace she had built entirely for herself and in which she could indulge her great love of architecture. Other substantial works on existing châteaux had taken place at, among them, Chenonceau, Montceaux and Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, but the Tuileries was entirely her own, ‘where she would never have to feel as though she were a guest of the kings of France, but that they were her guests’. The name derived, rather uninspiringly, from the tile works that had once been situated there. Designed by Philibert de l’Orme, Henry II’ssurintendant of royal buildings and preferred architect, the palace was never completed. After de l’Orme’s death in 1570 Jean Bullant took over the commission but work stopped for several years in 1572, the year of the Massacre, probably for lack of funds. Pasquier recalls that Catherine received a warning from one of her seers that if she wanted to live a long life she must avoid Saint-Germain for it would presage her death. Unfortunately she had already commissioned the building of the Tuileries Palace that lay in the parish of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois, whose church had tolled the signal for the Massacre to begin. Nevertheless the deeply superstitious Catherine continued to visit the Tuileries. Though she never made it her Parisian home, as had originally been intended, she used it to give large banquets and magnificences there. She also enjoyed its gardens where she often walked. Instead, she made plans for a new residence outside the parish of Saint-Germain, which was supposed to augur her death.

In 1572 Catherine decided that she wanted a residence near the Louvre but within the walls of the city. In the parish of Saint-Eustache she bought a whole area that included the Hôtel Guillart and the Filles Repenties (a convent for destitute young girls to save them from life on the streets). Also on the intended site was the Hôtel d’Albret. After acquiring the various properties she had all the existing buildings of this large site, except for the chapel of the Filles Repenties, demolished. With her love for gardens she ensured that she had acquired enough space to incorporate one that would be both large and decorative into the plans for her palace known as the ‘Hôtel de la Reine’. Catherine employed Jean Bullant as the architect for this most personal of projects, the most significant feature of which was a Doric column that could be seen from afar situated in the centre of the courtyard, which is the only part of the hôtel that remains today.

The column, called La Colonne de l’Horoscope, covered in lovers’ knots and interlaced Hs and Cs, and other emblems of conjugal love, was both a memorial to Henry II and, it is believed, an astronomers’ observatory. The first tall column of its type in Paris, it was a landmark of outstanding originality in its day. The top of the column provided enough room for three people at a time to observe the skies underneath a metal-worked dome and there is thought to have been a small balcony outside that encircled the dome, with a balustrade for safety. To reach the dome a wide staircase of 147 steps had to be climbed, leading finally to a ladder, which opened up to a trapdoor on the floor of the viewing platform. Not only could the skies be scanned by the experts, but also communication by lights with the Louvre was possible. The panoramic view could be used for pleasure but it also enabled an early warning of any approaching danger. When the hôtel on the rue Saint-Honoré was completed, Catherine filled it with books, various collections, and covered the walls with portraits of her family and friends. Although she never completely gave up her apartments at the Louvre – which meant that the Crown had the expense of maintaining both with the enlarged household that two residences required – Catherine used her own palace increasingly as the years went by.

The accounts of the now destroyed Hôtel de la Reine are a most intriguing insight into Catherine’s personality. Although there were five magnificent princely apartments and all the splendour associated with Catherine as Queen Mother, she housed many of her personal collections here and during the last decade of her life made it a home stamped with her character as a woman rather than that of a queen. More than thirty-five portraits of the French royal family, starting with Francis I, lined the gallery; at one end a large room hung with her Medici ancestors paid homage to her own origins. In the middle of the long gallery stood a large Florentine mosaic table and at the other end was a room filled with pictures of her grandchildren, nieces and nephews. A large portrait of Catherine hung over the fireplace in the centre of the main gallery. While this area was for the more official portraits, the whole palace overflowed with pictures of loved ones; few were by artists of note but it was as though Catherine lived in a vast photograph album of her favourite people.¹³

Catherine had always been an enthusiastic if eclectic collector. She had seven stuffed crocodiles hanging from the ceiling in her huge cabinet de travail and minerals of every kind were displayed around this salon. Games filled the cupboards that lined its walls: chess, miniature billiards and other toys could be found to help pass the time in bad weather. Beautiful collections of china, Venetian glass and enamels stood side by side with treasured old mementoes of days past, devotional objects, dolls in various types of dress and sentimental bric-à-brac. On the bookshelves were her favourites: works dedicated to her late husband, folios containing building plans, genealogies of her maternal ancestors, the Counts of Boulogne, and books giving tips on games. These were all favourites that she liked to have to hand. The library itself boasted an outstanding collection of 4500 works, including 776 manuscripts. Some of these were ancient (including a few on papyrus) and others contemporary works. Their topics were as diverse as the rest of the Queen Mother’s collections but her favourite subjects were best represented including history, classical works, occultism, mathematics, philosophy, law and astronomy. At Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, Catherine created her other principal library that contained nearly 4000 books. These two collections together made up the basis for today’s Bibliothèque Nationale.¹⁴

The ball at the Tuileries was Henri’s swansong and Catherine’s tour de force. After the banquet the tables were removed for a ballet, danced by her flying squadron dressed as nymphs. Catherine is generally credited with bringing the earliest form of modern ballet and opera with her from Florence and both were frequently featured favourites at her lavish spectacles. Brantôme wrote,

There appeared a high rock which slowly whirled around. Upon the summit of this rock sat sixteen beautiful nymphs, representing the sixteen provinces of France. The nymphs recited melodious verses, composed by Ronsard, commemorating the glories of the King of Poland and of the realm of France. The nymphs then descended and presented gifts to the said King. Afterwards they danced together. The beautiful order of their movements, their gestures, and extraordinary loveliness of face and figure afforded great delectation to the spectators.

There followed the enchanting voices of the castrati brought by Catherine from Italy, accompanied by the first violinist ever heard in France. Charles wrote to La Motte-Fénélon in London, ‘Last evening, the Queen my mother gave a banquet at her palace, where the Polish gentlemen were so well treated and had so much pleasure that they said they had never seen anything more beautiful … and were very happy with the honour they were shown.’¹⁵ The Poles were indeed dazzled by the magical beauty at the French Court. They proclaimed the fêtes and magnificence of this court ‘peerless’. ‘I wish’, quipped one cynical courtier, ‘that they might say as much of our armies.’

After the presentation of a magnificent gift from the city of Paris, a gilded and enamelled coach pulled by two grey chargers and surmounted by an effigy of Mars, god of war, as a tribute to their prince the Catholic warrior, the inevitable could be delayed no longer. The royal party set off for Fontainebleau on the first leg of their journey. Charles had become increasingly testy at the agonisingly slow pace of his brother’s departure; he had bought Henri the throne at a ruinous cost, now he wanted to see that his cash had been well spent. To ease Catherine’s mind the Imperial Diet at Frankfurt, also at a considerable cost, had promised safe passage for the new King across the Empire’s territories. On 10 October 1573 the party arrived at Villers-Cotterêts on the road to Lorraine and the French frontier. Here Catherine suffered a fit of panic and decided that Henri had not brought enough gifts with him to present to the various grandees and rulers through whose lands he would now be passing. Taking him with her, she hurried back to Paris, where she raised a further half million livres, also buying a large quantity of jewels for him to hand out on his way.

In late October the royal family were forced to stop for longer than intended at Vitry-en-Perthois because Charles had fallen seriously ill. His physicians believed that he had been struck down by a type of smallpox, although it is far more likely to have been the final stages of tuberculosis. Suffering from violent fevers that left him weak and debilitated, the King lay shivering and unable to move from his bed. He was covered not only by sweat but also by watery blood that seemed to seep from the pores of his body. As he lay ‘vomiting a great quantity of blood’, the Court lingered and waited, immobilised by the King’s condition and the uncertainties it cast upon the situation. Henri himself could hardly believe his good fortune; his brother’s death could not have come at a better time for him, just as he was on the verge of leaving France. Philippe de Cheverny, one of the senior counsellors making the journey as far as the frontier, wrote, ‘Many people wished to prevent the King of Poland to continue any further with his journey, remonstrating that the uncertainty of the King’s condition, coming as it did from the lungs, often proved fatal.’ Alençon, on the other hand, felt disconsolate; his best chance to snatch the French Crown would only come if Charles died after Henri had become ensconced in his distant kingdom.

The sight of his two ambitious brothers circling his bed like buzzards over his carrion reanimated the lucid but desperately ill King for a rally of strength that defied the doctors’ gloomy predictions. Calling for his mother, he sat up in his sweat-and-blood-soaked featherbed and ordered Henri’s immediate departure. Catherine promised that his wishes would be carried out, but first she arranged for a proper farewell between the brothers. The Queen Mother demanded a scene of proper family devotion before Henri’s departure. She either did not care or was blind to the staged and phoney theatricals that the brothers performed for her. On 12 November 1573, with his brothers and mother standing round his bed, Charles gave Henri his farewell embrace. The copious tears the two shed as they said goodbye, punctuated by a chorus of seemly background sobs from Alençon, presented a picture of fraternal harmony considered most satisfactory by their mother. Her appetite for idealising any important family or political moment was insatiable. Some onlookers, even the most cynical, wondered if perhaps, just for a moment, the two brothers had indeed felt a true and deep sense of sadness at what both must have known would be their final adieu.

The Queen Mother, Henri and his huge train moved on to Lorraine, where the christening took place of Catherine’s new grandson, recently born to her daughter Claude and son-in-law Charles, Duke and Duchess of Lorraine. Catherine stood godmother and the Bishop of Poznan godfather to the baby boy. During their brief stay in Lorraine Henri caught sight of Louise de Vaudémont, a young niece of the Duke of Lorraine. Louise was nineteen years old and a blonde beauty. Unloved by her family, she had learned to keep herself out of the way. Henri found himself very taken by the sweet girl always to be found in the background. There was another reason he found her irresistible: she resembled Marie of Clèves, the lovely wife of his mortal enemy the Prince de Condé, who had completely ensorcelled him. Marie had been Henri’s romantic obsession during the past year and, although the relationship was idealised and platonic, for him it had become all-consuming. It did not go unnoticed, however, that the new King of Poland rarely left Louise’s side for the few days he spent at his sister’s Court at Nancy.

On 29 November the royal party arrived at Blamont, frontier town between Lorraine and the Empire. Spanish spies reported that the Queen Mother met Louis of Nassau and the son of Jean Casimir, the Elector of Palatine, whose Reiters had wrought such damage in France during the last civil war. Catherine had already advanced 300,000 écus to Louis to help finance his fight against the regime in the Netherlands. She now promised further aid. These talks were essentially to ensure Henri’s safe passage through to Poland and to maintain a cordial relationship with the Protestant powers in case of more trouble with the Huguenots in France. Catherine had not failed to notice that Alençon was being regarded as a potential rallying element to their cause, so recently and violently deprived of most of its leaders. His royal status also lent useful legitimacy to more moderate Catholic nobles who feared their fanatical co-religionists, led by the Guises.

Henri and his mother made their tearful farewells on 2 December 1573. She had helped to choose the men who were to be his closest advisers and companions in Poland. Among the intimates he took with him were the Duke of Nevers (Louis de Gonzaga of Mantua), the Abbot of Noailles and the Duke of Mayenne (one of the Guises), Guy de Pibrac, René de Villequier, Louis du Ghast and his physician, Marc Miron. These men were his most faithful followers and Catherine knew that she had placed her son’s life in devoted hands. Unable to endure the heart-wrenching scene any further, she is said to have cried out to Henri, ‘Partez, mon fils! Partez! Vous n’y demeurerez pas longtemps!’ (Leave my son! Leave! You will not stay there for long!) With those words he set off in the harsh winter weather towards his throne in exile, leaving behind the woman who worshipped, protected and fought for him.

By the time Catherine returned to join Charles he had made a moderate recovery and was enjoying a rare respite from his illness. During her short absence she discovered that Alençon had been fomenting trouble and that his head was filled with ‘nothing but war and tempests’. This least-loved of her sons still pressed hard for the vacant post of Lieutenant-General of the kingdom. Charles, who had originally promised him the post, now clung to the seals of this important office so recently returned to him by Henri. Catherine counselled the King against giving the office to his ambitious younger brother, but he relented on 25 January 1574. This threatened the Guises and their followers who, since Henri of Valois’ departure for Poland with so many good Catholic commanders, had felt exposed and threatened. They even claimed that François de Montmorency, an intimate of Alençon’s, plotted to have the Duke of Guise assassinated. At the Louvre, on 16 February, Guise attacked the supposed assassin, M. de Ventabren. Montmorency pleaded his innocence of any plot against Guise and though no charges were brought, he had to leave the Court. At the same time Charles withdrew his promise to Alençon of the Lieutenant-Generalship. The Guises had thus achieved their goal. As a consolation for Alençon, Charles made his brother head of the council and Commander-General of the armies, which the duke found quite insufficient as a compromise. Charles awarded the key post to his steady brother-in-law, the Duke of Lorraine, a cousin of the Guises, and it is likely that Catherine put Lorraine’s name forward because she trusted him not to abuse his new powers, something that could not be said of her youngest son.

Alençon’s clique consisted of Navarre, Condé, the four Montmorency brothers and Turenne. They felt the prince had enough power to force the Lieutenant-Generalship issue, and if he failed they had all decided to take up arms and head for Sedan where they would lead an armed force of Huguenots into the Netherlands. Alençon had hoped that once in Flanders he might be able to find himself a principality of his own. The throne he coveted most, however, was that of his dying brother Charles, but Catherine stood implacably between his dream and its realisation. This runt of her sickly litter now prepared to take on his mother and determined upon a course to remove her from power. His partisans ensured the distribution of a huge number of pamphlets that directly blamed Catherine, as a foreigner and a woman, for the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew. Other pamphlets appeared questioning Catherine’s right, under Salic law, to be made regent in the event of Charles’s death, arguing that the regency could only go to a male.

The Calvinist writer François Hotman was the primary ‘literary terrorist’ in this campaign. In his treatise Franco Gallia he examined and reviewed the history of the French monarchy, concluding that its present absolutism was a far cry from the original form where the monarch was elected by the National Assembly or Parlement. He also denounced the rule of women in general, citing the fact that many of history’s most brutal tyrants had been female. The arguments of the Calvinist thinkers struck a chord not only with the Huguenots but also with some senior nobles and important elements of French society, who were disgusted with the extremism of both religious sides. They sought a moderate way forward that would require reforms of the monarchy and society as a whole. This growing group of disaffected nobles and moderate Catholics were soon to unite, becoming a new force in the struggle ahead. The royalists hired their own writers in retaliation and there came a blizzard of pamphlets from all sides, but the essential damage had been done. The French people had begun to question some of the most basic political principles under which they lived.

Charles’s health took an increasing downturn and, as it did so, he became dark and dangerous. The Venetian ambassador wrote,

He never looks one in the face when one addresses him, he stoops as his father used to do and contracts his shoulders, and he has a habit of lowering his head and narrowing his eyes. Then he will raise them abruptly, and as if with an effort, and gaze overhead, or drop them again, hardly glancing at the person to whom he is speaking. Besides being morose and taciturn, they say that he is also vindictive and never forgives anyone who offends him, it is feared that from being merely severe he will become cruel. For some time past all his thoughts have been of war and he has nothing else in mind, being naturally inclined to it, and his mother will have the greatest difficulty in restraining him; he wishes to conduct it in person, being bold and courageous. … And it is for this purpose that he gives himself unremittingly to exercise and labour of every sort, to harden himself, and to be fit to endure … the hardships of war.¹⁶

The King hunted for days on end and when he pointed out a dark birthmark or scar below his shoulder to one of his hunting companions he remarked that this was the way to ensure that his body could be identified if he died in battle. The King’s companion begged him not to be preoccupied with so morbid a thought, at which Charles retorted, ‘Do you suppose I would rather die in bed than in battle?’

Martial glory remained an unattainable phantom for Charles. The only battles he fought were the daily ones against ill-health, skirmishes with his mother and the inept plotting of his brother Alençon who, though not clever enough to be dangerous by himself, was becoming the bovine instrument for more cunning minds. Having previously declared that until he reached the age of twenty-five he would allow himself to ‘faire le fou’ (play the fool), Charles now decided to take personal charge of government. He began to blame Catherine for the troubles in his kingdom, saying frequently, ‘Madame, you are the cause of everything! Everything!’ The Venetian ambassador went on to describe the now fraught relationship between mother and son: ‘Recently, they tell me that before he will do anything his mother has to repeat it three times.’ After one of the King’s angry outbursts at Catherine, she complained to her entourage, ‘I always had to deal with a madman and that I should never make anything of him.’¹⁷ By late February, the King was almost constantly ill; many claimed that the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew, and the murder of Coligny and his lieutenants, some of whom had been close to Charles, haunted and unhinged him. He had once written a tribute to the great poet Ronsard, employing words that now held added pathos: ‘I can give death, but you give immortality.’

A peaceful end was not to be granted to this tragic young King. In February 1574 the Court stayed at Saint-Germain. Alençon and his co-conspirators judged this to be the time to push their bid to be allowed to campaign in the Netherlands. The conspirators’ plan, conceived by Hyacynthe Joseph de La Molle – a courtier who had become Margot’s lover – was for Alençon and Navarre to flee from the Court, where they lived under close supervision, and then make off northwards with a force of Huguenot soldiers. They chose the night of 23–24 February, that of Mardi Gras, as ideal, since the Court would be celebrating and the princes’ absence might go undetected for some time. A captain called Chaumont-Guitry had been selected to come to the palace to fetch the two princes. However, he arrived earlier than had been agreed and this minor change in the plan threw the spineless Alençon into a blithering panic and gave him an excuse not to go ahead. Instead, he raced to his mother and confessed his part in the conspiracy. Furthermore, a troop of Huguenot soldiers had been spotted not far from Saint-Germain and it became imperative for the Court to decamp immediately to Paris. A scene reminiscent of the ‘Surprise de Meaux’ was re-enacted as the terrified courtiers fled, and Catherine set off grimly in her coach with her unwilling passengers Navarre and Alençon. The King, in a perilous condition, feverish and haemorrhaging blood, could hardly be left behind and had to be transported back to Paris. Upon hearing of the imminent trouble he is reported to have complained, ‘If they had waited at least for my death’ and then muttered again and again during the agonising journey, ‘Too much malice! Too much malice!’ It might be taken as an epitaph for his age.

On 8 March the Court moved to the Château of Vincennes, a fortress that would prove easier to defend should there be an attack. There Alençon and Navarre were questioned over the recent events by Catherine, the King and Chancellor Birague. Alençon’s version changed at each recital and contained some glaring inconsistencies, though he clearly aimed to shift the blame on to the Guises. He pleaded that he had been forced to act to defend himself against the clan who seemed bent on discrediting him. He swore that the plan had been only to attack the Guises and not to harm the King or their mother. Navarre courageously compromised no one. Birague, meanwhile, urged Catherine and the King to treat Alençon and Navarre as traitors, and have them executed, but both recoiled from such an extreme measure. Their punishment was only to swear loyalty to the Crown and henceforth to live under closer guard. None of this prevented the uprising that had been planned to coincide with the escape of Alençon and Navarre. Montgomery returned to France from hiding in England and proceeded to invade Normandy. The two prisoners felt sure that they would be condemned to death once the true extent of their plans had been uncovered. They therefore decided that they must make another attempt to escape. This time they put their faith in the hands of a jumble of disaffected men, including sailors, mercenaries, horse-traders, general intriguers and Pierre de Grantrye, a former spy and magician who claimed to have discovered ‘the philosopher’s stone’.

The leaders of this unlikely escape team were La Molle, Margot’s lover, and his friend Annibal, Comte de Coconas, the lover of the Duchess of Nevers, Margot’s great friend and confidante. These two gentlemen of Alençon’s band were scented Court dandies renowned for their gambling, dancing and love-making, but not for treacherous plotting that required discretion and dexterous planning. De Thoré (Marshal François de Montmorency’s brother) and Turenne (their brother-in-law) were also linked to the conspirators. It is not surprising that Catherine soon received word that another plan to free the two royal prisoners had been cooked up, and a pre-emptive move by the King resulted in no fewer than fifty arrests from those among Alençon’s closest followers. By ill luck, François de Montmorency, who was not involved in this enterprise, had just returned to Court when the plot was discovered. He found himself not only highly compromised but in immediate mortal danger.

Only weeks after their first attempted escape plan had been foiled, Alençon and Navarre were arrested again and questioned before the King and Queen Mother. Navarre nobly refrained from incriminating others and refused to direct his answers to the interrogator but addressed himself solely to Catherine. He spoke of her desire to inflame the kingdom with rumours of plots to blacken his name, and ‘the insincerity and perfidy in her relations towards himself’. This brave declaration, which he had prepared with Margot, probably saved his life, as it is likely that Charles believed Navarre. When Alençon received his summons for questioning he was at his loquacious best as he abjectly gabbled out details of the utterly compromised project. To make matters worse a wax doll had been found wearing a crown with needles piercing its heart, the handiwork of Cosimo Ruggieri, the Queen Mother’s own trusted necromancer and specialist in the dark arts. It was immediately assumed that the wax figure represented the King and the needles were part of an evil spell by Ruggieri. Catherine felt stunned that a man she trusted so completely could have betrayed her in such a way. Ruggieri had become close to Alençon’s coterie and had befriended La Molle in particular. On 30 April the two ringleaders, Coconas and La Molle, were beheaded for treason, after which their embalmed heads were said to have been taken secretly to Margot and the Duchess of Nevers, who kept them to mourn their lost lovers. Under questioning, La Molle had revealed nothing and proved to have been made of sterner stuff than Coconas, who spilled out details of the plan to join up with Condé, Thoré, Turenne and Louis of Nassau at Sedan.

On 4 May Charles made a general move against the Montmorencys. Due to the absence of Thoré and Turenne he ordered the arrest of François de Montmorency and Marshal de Cossé, father-in-law to Montmorency’s brother Méru, who were then imprisoned in the Bastille. He also revoked the absent younger brother Damville’s governorship of the Languedoc. The swoop on the Montmorencys proved ruinously flawed, since Damville was at large and soon agitating among his family’s vast clientele in the Languedoc. This province had been controlled by the family for almost 500 years and the people accorded them almost sovereign status there. To compound the difficulties for Catherine and Charles, Damville had a large number of troops at his disposal and it would require more than a revocation of his governorship to dislodge him. The Languedoc was a largely Protestant province and Damville soon entered into talks with its leading Huguenots. As a consequence of the attack on his family and in the absence of his elder brothers, he shortly became the new leader of the opposition. The fruit of his talks with the Huguenots, with whom he soon signed a truce, led to a union between the moderate Catholics like himself and Protestants disaffected by the massacre and the monarchy’s maladministration of the kingdom. Thus emerged a new party in conflict with the Crown led by Damville, known as the ‘Politiques’.

The common soldiers caught up in the scheme were hanged, while Catherine pondered the potentially terrifying problem of what to do about Ruggieri. She dared not cross him, yet he could not go unpunished. It transpired that the wax figure wearing a crown actually represented Margot and not the King. La Molle, desperate for the Queen of Navarre to love him, had asked Ruggieri to cast a spell on her and the doll had been created for this purpose. The sinister Italian whom the Queen Mother feared and respected subsequently received a sentence to serve nine years on the galleys at Marseilles. This was merely a face-saving gesture: he did not have to serve his time but instead received permission to open a school for astrologers and was soon back serving Catherine in Paris.

Condé, in Picardy at the time of the arrests, fled to Germany and immediately abjured the Catholic faith. Ever since the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew he had been either openly difficult or mocking, unlike his cousin Navarre who had never allowed his hatred or fear to be seen, putting on the most amiable mask to survive the ordeal. Catherine had found Condé particularly tiresome because of Anjou’s romantic and idealised obsession with his wife. The new King of Poland wrote to the princess every day, sometimes twice daily, from his distant kingdom, and at the end of these long and fulsome love letters Henri occasionally signed his name in his own blood. Condé – understandably vexed by the attachment – was frequently seen crossing himself at the slightest pretext. Finally Catherine snapped and demanded why, all of a sudden, did he show such piety and devotion? He replied that he must pray for the sins of his wife who loved another man. Catherine took the Princess de Condé under her protection and henceforth she spent much of her time in the Queen Mother’s apartments.

Navarre and Alençon, the two principal parties in the whole plot, still feared for their lives. Once again Birague implored the King and Queen Mother to invoke the death penalty, yet the two prisoners were spared, though put under strict guard at Vincennes.

Since the beginning of May 1574 Charles had grown steadily weaker. By the middle of the month he was in a hopeless condition, though lucid throughout. His suffering was pitiful. As the end of the month of May approached he could no longer leave his bed, but lay sweating and struggling for breath between blood-soaked sheets that needed constant changing. Brantôme recounts that Charles’s wife, Queen Elisabeth, became a regular figure in his chamber, as did his elderly nurse. Elisabeth, instead of sitting at her husband’s bedside, sat opposite him. Although they spoke little during those last days, she gazed at her husband lovingly and he at her. Elisabeth wept ‘tears so tender, and so secret, that they were hardly noticed but when she must dry her eyes frequently’.

On 29 May Catherine received word that her mortal enemy, Gabriel de Montgomery – the man whose lance had inadvertently killed her husband – had been captured at Domfront after the collapse of his invasion of Normandy. She ran into her dying son’s chamber with jubilation and announced to Charles that his father’s killer had been finally caught. Charles merely murmured, ‘Madame, all human affairs no longer mean anything to me.’ Knowing that her son might die at any moment, Catherine had to ensure that she could protect the empty throne until the arrival of the absent Henri of Poland. A formal document was drawn up on the King’s orders declaring his mother’s regency until the return of the new King. Navarre and Alençon witnessed this document and when the contents were announced Catherine ordered that it should be stated that it had been drawn up at their request, which was as untrue as it was unlikely.

Her legal position now secured, Catherine remained with her dying son, who was not yet twenty-four years old. He had become pathetically thin and she held his bloody body in her arms as she tried to comfort him. He had earlier made his confession and then taken some light nourishment; as he did so ‘he cried over the sins he had committed out of weakness and which were the true cause of God’s anger towards him and his people’. In the early afternoon of 30 May 1574 an incident is said to have occurred which is given in several accounts of the King’s death, but is otherwise unverifiable. Charles allegedly asked for his brother, although Alençon was already in the room. Catherine reassured him ‘he is already here’. ‘No, Madame, my brother … the King of Navarre.’ Henri duly arrived at Charles’s bedside who gave him a weak but affectionate embrace. ‘You are losing a good friend, brother … If I had believed all that I was told, you would not be alive. Do not trust …’ The Queen Mother apparently protested, ‘Do not say it, Sire!’ to which Charles replied, ‘I do say it, Madame, it is the truth.’ But he revealed nothing, only commending his wife and his baby daughter to Navarre.

Sorbin, his priest, had been called earlier, and read and prayed with Charles. During the afternoon he lay next to his mother who sat weeping on a chest beside him, her hand holding his as she watched him slip away, the only sound in the room the rattle of his laboured gasps for air. Shortly before four o’clock in the afternoon he tried to speak for the last time. He turned to his mother and said, ‘Adieu ma mère, eh! Ma mère,’ then drifted into his final sleep, his parting words audible to all.

After the awful months of tension, attempted insurrections and Catherine’s desperate attempts to keep Charles from committing fatal political blunders as he tried to wrest control from her, it was over. The Queen Mother now had much to secure and keep safe for the arrival of Henri, King of Poland, though she allowed herself a rare luxury and briefly surrendered to her genuine and terrible sorrow. Charles had been King since he was ten years old, and she had guided and protected him throughout his life; he was not her favourite but she had loved him completely, understanding his weaknesses. For all Charles’s efforts at autonomy he had never been able to manage without his mother during his lifetime and the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew was to tie them together throughout history. Catherine, keeper of the Valois legend, later said, ‘After God, he recognised no one but me.’¹⁸

^fn1 Other sources say that Coligny’s head was originally intended as a gift for the Duke of Alba.

^fn2 Although most historians have this ceremony taking place at the Palais de Justice, Charles’s despatch to his ambassador in England describes the ceremony taking place in ‘la grande salle de mon palais du Louvre’.