SIXTEEN

HOPE DIES

‘The Phosphorescence of Decay’

1584–88

Catherine had barely finished burying her youngest son on 25 June 1584 before the furore over the succession broke.^fn1 The Catholic leagues that had been banned since 1577 sprang once more into action with the Duke of Guise, his brothers and other senior clansmen meeting at Nancy. Broadly, their aims were to prevent Navarre’s succession and to create a Holy Catholic League that would extirpate Protestantism in France and Flanders. Guise asked for the support of Philip of Spain, who agreed to give the ultra-Catholics aid under the provisions of the Treaty of Joinville, signed during the first days of 1585.

In place of the heretical Navarre’s rights of succession the Holy League recognised his aged uncle, the Cardinal de Bourbon, as heir presumptive. Catholic demagogues raged and priests agitated from their pulpits as pamphlets and polemical tracts were circulated by the zealots to whip up support for the League and denounce the Valois as a ‘decayed’ line. Catherine’s health had become increasingly poor and she had aged markedly since Alençon’s death, but despite her rheumatism, gout,^fn2 colic and raging toothaches, she remained dogged in her determination that the Guises would neither supplant Henri nor become his masters, imposing their will upon him as they once had upon her.

From the moment of Alençon’s death, Henri had made it clear that he viewed his brother-in-law as his legal successor, declaring, ‘I recognise the King of Navarre as my sole and only heir’ and adding, ‘He is a prince of good birth and good parts. I have alwaysbeen inclined to like him and I know that he likes me. He is a little sharp and choleric, but at bottom he is a good man. I feel certain that my disposition will please him and that we shall agree very well.’¹ He warned Navarre, ‘My brother, this is to notify you that whatever resistance I have made, I have not been able to prevent the mischievous designs of the Duke of Guise. He is under arms. Be on your guard and make no move. … I shall send a gentleman … to advise you of my will. Your good brother, Henri.’² As the unmistakable signs of rebellion from the ultra-Catholics grew, Henri, in a public statement to the Provost of Merchants, supported the First Prince of the Blood: ‘I am highly pleased with the conduct of my cousin of Navarre. … There are those who are trying to supplant him, but I shall take good care to prevent them from succeeding. I find it very strange, moreover, that any dispute should arise as to who is to be my successor as if it were a question admitting of doubt or dispute.’³

The King’s sentiments, however, were but brave and empty words under the circumstances. Henri supported Navarre and hoped that in due course he could persuade him to convert back to Catholicism (which would be his fifth conversion). Even Navarre’s closest counsellor and friend, Philippe Duplessis-Mornay, advised him, ‘Now, Your Majesty, it is time to make love to France.’ But Navarre resisted, realising that the time had not yet come for a conversion as he could not afford to lose the support of the Protestants. The King also shrank from a full alliance with his heir in order to defend his rights. Together they might have provided a buttress against the perilous menace of the Guises, but it would also have meant a coalition with the Huguenots. The idea not only repelled the King on religious grounds, as daily he grew more fanatical in his devotions, but it also guaranteed inflaming those moderate Catholics who hoped for a solution without a war, but who would not tolerate fighting alongside the Huguenots if one did break out.

As the network of the provincial leagues grew and melded with the Holy Catholic League, the Guises received arms and soldiers from Philip’s forces in the Netherlands. The Duke of Guise’s kinsmen, the Dukes of Elbeuf, Aumale, Mercoeur and Mayenne, incited uprisings in Normandy, Brittany, Picardy and Burgundy, and led their troops to capture several key towns including Bourges, Orléans and Lyons. The situation presented an almost complete role reversal from a decade earlier: now the Protestants, anxious to see Navarre eventually succeed the King, gave their allegiance to the Crown while many Catholics became subversive activists undermining it.

By the spring of 1585 Henri of Guise had amassed a fighting force of over 27,000 men at Châlons. France was split roughly in half; the north and centre were League territories while the south and west fell under mainly Protestant control and thus – as long as the King supported Navarre’s claim – royalist.⁴ Henri responded to the Guises’ imprecations by hiring Swiss mercenaries and turned to his mother for help. Ever since his return from Poland a decade earlier he had been slowly edging Catherine out of her position as his chief adviser and encouraging his mignons to take an increasingly prominent role in his life. Two of the King’s favourites, the Dukes of Joyeuse and d’Épernon, had become pre-eminent at Court and now wielded enormous influence. D’Épernon could often be heard speaking ill of the Queen Mother to Henri, snidely insinuating to him that she had grown senile and unreliable. Of course, Catherine knew the upstart to be her particular nemesis and she hated him, though she was powerless to harm or remove him while he held such sway over her son. In the Florentine fashion, she bided her time, believing that sooner or later he would undo himself. No one loved Henri as she did and she would wait for an opportunity to prove her devotion to him yet again. Now her time had come.

On 1 April 1585 Catherine received a letter from the King granting her full powers to negotiate with the Duke of Guise. Though she felt unwell, the message revived her spirits; filled with protestations of affection and love, it proved his trust in her. She was nonetheless still so ill with chest and ear infections and running a fever that she took to her bed whenever possible. She found breathing difficult and her teeth hurt. Pains down her side made it agonising to move or to write as she awaited the duke’s arrival at Épernay in Champagne where they had agreed to meet. Catherine had also sent a request to her much-loved widowed son-in-law, the Duke of Lorraine, asking that he come to help broker a deal between the Crown and his relatives.

When Guise finally arrived on Easter Sunday, 9 April 1585, he knelt before Catherine, who had decided that her best tack would be to welcome him with all the warmth and familiarity of a grandmother. This cunning and unexpected sweetness momentarily wrong-footed the duke, who tearfully started to talk of the troubles in the kingdom, insisting that his motives had been misunderstood. She hushed him and said that it would be better if he took off his boots and ate something, after which they could speak at length. When they did meet later that same afternoon Guise, who had by now regained command of himself, seemed willing to talk about almost anything except the issue that surely burned in both their minds. All attempts by Catherine to draw the League’s demands out of him were skirted by the duke or parried with questions of his own about the King’s intentions.

As the days went by Catherine began to suspect that Guise had come only to play for time while preparing an attack on the King or on his Swiss mercenaries crossing into France. She wrote urgently to Henri that he must prepare for war, as peace ‘would only be achieved with a stick’ (bâton porte paix – i.e. by threat of force). On 11 April Guise left and, passing his cousin of Lorraine by chance on his route, he told him how contrite and sorry he felt that things had come to such a grave pass. When Lorraine arrived and relayed this to the Queen Mother she snorted and took it for the errant nonsense she knew it to be. If he had been serious in his desire to resolve the crisis Guise would not have left her without having made any progress whatever. Despite Henri’s faith in her negotiating ability, this time she had patently failed.

Guise proceeded to Verdun while Catherine sent a message to Henri of Navarre asking him to meet her for talks. Navarre had just led his army to a victory over League forces in Bordeaux and Marseilles. This prompted Guise to hurry back to the Queen Mother, but his demands were so extortionate that even the Cardinal de Bourbon, who was also present, wrote, ‘The Queen talks of peace but we ask for so much that I do not think our demands will be granted.’⁵ For as long as she could, Catherine resisted contemplating a coalition (or more realistically a capitulation) between the League and the Crown for fear that the King would become their puppet. She also worried about his safety, especially when word arrived that League forces were not far from the capital and would march on the city at the duke’s command.

Paris itself was notoriously pro-League and Catherine believed that the city gates would be thrown open to welcome its army. ‘Take care,’ she wrote to her son, ‘especially about your person, there is so much treachery around that I die of fear.’ In response to the risk of capture or assassination and no longer knowing who could be counted upon to remain loyal, the King set up a special new bodyguard called les quarante-cinq (the forty-five) composed of that number of young noblemen, mostly Gascons famed for their martial skills and ferocity, whom Henri knew to be absolutely loyal to him. They were also, in effect, a personal force of assassins who would do their master’s bidding without question. Despite his small cohort of killers, Henri nevertheless remained trapped.

By early May, the realisation finally dawned on Catherine that, for the moment at least, the King must come to some kind of terms with the League and the Guises. Hoping that he could sidestep any treaty and that it would prove as unenforceable as many of the earlier agreements with the Protestants had been, he therefore signed the Treaty of Nemours on 7 July 1585. In broad terms this revoked all previous edicts of pacification and effectively banned Protestantism in France. As a heretic Navarre was thus barred from inheriting the throne and many towns were given over to the League (or, for the most part, loyal Guise toadies) as surety. When Navarre received the terms of the treaty it is said that half of his moustache turned white overnight. Clearly he would once more have to fight for his rights and those of his co-religionists.

The new heir presumptive, the Cardinal de Bourbon, an old friend of whom Catherine was fond, paid the most florid and extravagant compliments to the Queen Mother. He lauded her for her sagacity, saying that ‘without this honourable and great lady the kingdom would have been broken up and lost’. But all the phoney cooing and appropriately respectful phrases from the new pretender to the throne merely made Catherine nauseous. For the moment, though, she stayed silent. On 15 July when, after three months of struggling against, and eventually succumbing to, the overwhelming power of the chief Leaguers, she returned to Paris, the people received her at the Porte Saint-Antoine as a heroine who had saved the kingdom from heresy. The citizens rejoiced that their King would now be free to rule as he should. The reality, however, would prove very different.

At a Lit de Justice on 18 July 1585 Catherine heard her son officially remove Navarre from the succession. This went against everything that Henri, as a king, believed in. Furthermore, nothing in his coronation oath gave him the right to bar the succession of his legal heir. It also went against his personal feelings. He had hated Henri of Guise since they were teenagers when Guise had tried to seduce Margot, and had long been resentful of his rival’s health, his masculinity, charisma and talents as a military commander. On the other hand, Navarre was the rightful heir to the throne of France and Henri, like his brother Charles before him, felt a sneaking admiration and fondness for the brave and honourable Bourbon soldier-prince. Navarre did not evoke any envy in the King; Guise certainly did. Now Henri’s troops were joined with the League’s formidable forces and he had to fight alongside his worst enemy.

In September 1585 Pope Sixtus V issued a bull excommunicating Navarre and Condé, and denied the rights of succession to the French Protestant Princes of the Blood. Navarre replied by boldly (and rather cheekily) excommunicating the Pope and had posters announcing the counter-excommunication plastered up on walls around Rome. The papal bull provoked outrage among the vast majority of Frenchmen, who jealously guarded against any encroachment by Rome on their domestic affairs. They considered it a staggering affront that the Pope dared pronounce upon who should or should not be allowed to wear the Crown of France. This had the unexpected bonus of making a David out of Navarre, facing the Goliath of Rome.

The War of the Three Henris (Valois, Guise and Navarre) should be seen as a confusing and essentially personal conflict of beliefs, ambitions and hopes for survival between the eponymous three men. At first the fighting between the Catholics and Protestants was sporadic. The King, suffering from a dire lack of funds, had promised the League that he would field three armies against the Huguenots by the following summer. The Duke of Joyeuse was sent to the Auvergne, the Duke d’Épernon to Provence and Marshal Biron to Saintonge, each at the head of an army. In July 1586 the King moved to Lyons to be near his two favourites, Joyeuse and d’Épernon.

Back in March 1585, just as the Holy League had come into being, Margot had caused a sensation by leaving Nérac, ostensibly as a protest against her husband’s latest love affair with an ambitious, nobly born young widow named Diane d’Andouins (nicknamed‘La belle Corisande’). She shared not only the Christian name of Catherine’s hated but now long-dead rival Diane de Poitiers, but possessed all the cool elegance of her namesake. Her stylish, remote beauty and singular determination had humiliated and effectively eclipsed Margot; now she planned to have her lover’s wife repudiated and become Queen of Navarre herself. This proved too much for the dignity of the Valois princess of France who, in revenge, tried to have her seemingly bewitched husband poisoned by a secretary. When this attempt failed she took a pistol and shot at the King, but missed. With Navarre’s anger fully aroused, Margot fled before he could act against her, taking refuge in her own apanage at the town of Agen. To protect herself she began to raise troops and, it is thought, secretly allied herself with the League. Margot appealed to her mother for money. For once Catherine responded sympathetically to her daughter, whom she described as ‘desperately short of means’ and ‘in very great need, not having money even to put food on her table’.⁶ Villeroy received orders to send funds to Margot. Only a short while before, the Queen Mother had optimistically described her daughter and Navarre as the happiest couple in France.

Catherine’s sympathy was soon put to a severe test when she heard that Margot had written to her former brother-in-law, the widowed Duke of Lorraine, asking him to take her under his protection. This appeal and her apparent sympathy with, if not actual support for, the League, the enemy of her husband and her brother, now placed Margot entirely beyond the pale. The lovely princess’s gradual loss of caste through scandalous behaviour, open love affairs and support for her late younger brother’s wild schemes was now complete. Henri of Navarre regarded her as a soiled liability, as did the King. Enraged by this latest affront, Catherine referred to her daughter as an ‘affliction’ (mon fléau) sent to her by God ‘as a punishment’ for her sins.⁷ Before long Margot was expelled from Agen by Marshal de Matignon acting on orders from the King and hurried on her way by the inhabitants whom she had quickly managed to alienate. She had tried to strengthen the fortifications of the city and run it as an independent fiefdom, but lack of money and tact in handling the townspeople soon proved her undoing. So she made her way to Carlat, also one of her properties, where her supporter, François de Lignerac, Lieutenant of the Haute-Auvergne, had offered her protection.

This once impregnable fortress, perched high in the mountains, might have been hard to capture, but its solitude and discomfort must also have made it even harder to endure. The castle had become a ruin but for its fortifications; Margot’s medieval redoubt was a far cry from the welcoming beauty of Blois or Fontainebleau where she had once set the fashions, led the dancing and been the Court’s brilliant star. Despite her daughter’s absolute fall from grace, Catherine suggested that she take up residence at the manor of Iboise near Issoire, but the Queen of Navarre knew that this offer meant supervision by her mother and control from her hated brother. She declined it, writing to Catherine, ‘Thanks be to God that I have no need, as I am in a very good place which belongs to me and where I am helped by decent people [gens d’honneur].’ She added that she must protect herself from ‘falling back into the hands of those that wished to take my life, my goods and my honour’. During the year that she spent at this remote eyrie Margot formed a passionate attachment with a minor nobleman, Jean de Lart de Galard, Seigneur d’Aubiac. The first time this arrestingly beautiful young gentleman set eyes upon the Queen he declared to a friend that he wished to sleep with her even if it meant that he might hang for it.

In the autumn of 1586, disgusted by the news of Margot’s flagrant affair with d’Aubiac and the fact that she had now become a ruined woman, Catherine advised Henri to take ‘this insufferable torment’ into custody before she ‘brings shame upon us again’.⁸ The King needed little prompting and had in any case already issued his own orders regarding his sister. On 13 October 1586 Margot was arrested by the Marquis de Canillac, Henri’s governor of the Haute-Auvergne, and taken via Ibois to the heavily fortified Château d’Usson where she was held prisoner. The château had been a favourite of Louis XI’s for locking away political prisoners and the poor wretches were rarely seen again. The King also ordered that henceforth in any declarations or letters Margot should no longer be referred to as ‘his well-beloved’ or ‘dear’ sister. As he himself had predicted, Aubiac paid with his life for the love affair with the sulphurous and magnetic young woman. Although Henri wrote to Villeroy that ‘the Queen my mother wishes me to hang Obyac [sic] in the presence of this miserable creature [Margot] in the courtyard of the Château d’Usson’, mercifully for the Queen of Navarre her lover was put to death at Aigueperse without any notable spectators.

At the treble-ramparted fortress of Usson, held by Swiss guards and supervised by Canillac, Margot feared that she too would be killed. In a dramatic farewell letter to her mother she asked that her ‘pauvres officiers’ (poor household) be paid their wages that were in arrears by several years and that she might be allowed a gentlewoman to keep her company in her confinement. She added the request that if she were to be put to death, to restore her honour a post-mortem be made on her body that would disprove the rumours that she carried d’Aubiac’s child. Knowing her family and its methods of ridding itself of enemies, she also secretly employed a food taster.

Yet, as had long been the way in her short but tumultuous life, Margot’s fortunes did not take long to turn. Canillac felt insulted at his new position as merely the goaler to the King’s sister and shortly after her arrival at Usson he made a visit to Lyons. Here, in the beginning of January 1587, he joined the League. After ordering the Swiss guards away, he set Margot free. Anxious that Navarre remained married but childless, it is likely that the Guises had a hand in the plot to release his Queen.

In exchange for her liberty Margot gave Canillac all her properties in the Auvergne as well as a generous pension and other gifts. Some accounts also claim that she had seduced the marquis to win him over. Despite her new-found freedom, for the next fourteen years Margot remained in the Auvergne, far away from the political and dynastic storms ahead, living on the generosity of her sister-in-law, Charles IX’s widow Elisabeth of Austria, who made half her dowry over to her. She never saw her mother or brother again.

During the months of Margot’s descent into disgrace, Catherine had struggled to meet the chiefs of the factions that ranged so dangerously around her son. Ill as she was, she made several journeys to meet Navarre though he considered her to have little influence any longer. Being treated as someone of only marginal political relevance must have been a grave insult to the once all-powerful Queen Mother. Upon meeting Navarre at Saint-Brice in Cognac in December 1586, Catherine complained to him of the travails she faced in her attempts to stave off a full-scale war. His reply was acidic: ‘This trouble pleases you and feeds you; if you were at rest you would not know how to continue to live.’ It is at Saint-Brice that the Queen Mother is believed to have made an astonishing proposal to Navarre.

The story was reported many years later both by Navarre himself and the Marshal de Retz, who had also been present at the meeting and later recounted what occurred to Claude Grouard, President of the Parlement of Normandy. It is said that Catherine offered to have Margot ‘eliminated’ or the marriage annulled, thus freeing her son-in-law to remarry and have children. She apparently nursed a private ambition that he should take her companion and favourite granddaughter Christina of Lorraine as his bride, thus joining all three warring dynasties by marriage. After the bloodbath following his first nuptials – which after all were also meant to bring harmony between the Huguenots and Catholics – Navarre’s reaction to his mother-in-law’s latest matrimonial brainwave can only be wondered at.

In whatever terms Catherine might have couched her suggestion, she had not reckoned with her son, and the King proceeded to make his position absolutely clear. He wrote to his mother in December 1586 saying Navarre must not expect us

to treat her [Margot] inhumanely nor that he can repudiate her in order to marry another. I would like her to be kept in a place where he can see her when he wishes in order to try to have children with her. He must resolve never to marry another as long as she lives and if he should forget and do otherwise then he will place a doubt upon the legitimacy of his line for ever and have me as his enemi capital.⁹

If Catherine really did offer to have her daughter ‘eliminated’ it proves that her desire to achieve her aims overrode even her strong maternal instincts. For her, however, the disgraced Margot had virtually ceased to exist and, in Catherine’s eyes, quite possibly did not even deserve to. Neither scruples nor remorse were feelings that intruded upon the Queen Mother’s psyche. In order to serve her own and now Henri’s interests she had proved time and again to be quite capable of doing whatever was necessary. Indeed, it is this strength that sets Catherine apart. She had placed Margot in mortal danger once before, to protect her scheme on the night of Saint Bartholomew. Yet it is difficult to believe that she would have exterminated her own child (however dishonoured), not for anysentimental reasons that might imply she loved Margot but merely because in her daughter’s veins flowed the blood of her long-dead but adored husband.

While Navarre, playing for time, held futile talks with Catherine, he was also amassing a considerable army, which included Lutheran mercenaries from Jean-Casimir and the King of Denmark, to counter the threat of Spanish troops from the Low Countries. Almost immediately after the signing of the Treaty of Nemours, Navarre and Condé had met Damville and re-formed their alliance with the moderate Catholics. Navarre’s plan was straightforward: he must fight for his right to the French throne and only a decisive victory over the League, crushing the Guises and their ambitions, could re-establish his proper place in the succession. He knew that the King was too weak and a virtual captive of the ultra-Catholics to be able to impose his will on events.

As for the King, once he had exerted himself by signing the Treaty of Nemours and sent his mother off on her fruitless diplomatic travels again, he returned to the life of frivolous excess and contrasting religious penitence that had marked his reign till then. Lapdogs in jewelled baskets held by ribbons hung round his neck became his latest craze, copied by the faithful mignons. He shocked even his more moderate and generally loyal subjects by carrying a favourite lapdog in one hand as he touched for the king’s evil with the other.

Increasingly, Henri took to making long journeys by foot from Paris to Chartres Cathedral to pray to the Blessed Virgin for a son and beg the Almighty for absolution. This desperate quest for redemption took on increasingly morbid and even necromantic tones. He began wearing death’s heads embroidered on his clothes and had a sinister oratory built, festooned with black crêpe, in which he placed bones and skulls that had been taken from a local cemetery. In the yellow glow of thick candles he would spend his Fridays in a trance-like state of self-mortification and prayer, attended by his most faithful monks.

Catherine fell into despair over her son; she feared for both his health and his sanity. The Pope, hearing of the extremes of the King’s behaviour, wrote and reminded His Majesty that as a sovereign on the brink of a full-scale war to save France for Catholicism his duties lay elsewhere for the moment. When the reclusive Henri did bestir himself to play an active role in affairs and be seen to be the monarch of France, the people largely ignored him. Paris, the stoutest of Catholic redoubts, had created a league of its own headed by a body known as ‘The Sixteen’ (Les Seize) after the sixteen quartiers of Paris. For most of the citizens of the capital there was only one king of Paris, and that was the Duke of Guise.

To complicate matters further for Catherine, her former daughter-in-law, Mary, was about to become a Catholic martyr. At Fotheringhay Castle in October 1586 the Queen of Scots had been tried and found guilty of treason against Elizabeth I for her part in the Babington Plot that Mary had believed would place her upon the throne of England. Despite Elizabeth’s long agonising over her royal prisoner’s fate and her fears that in the Catholic world ‘it shall be spread that for the safety of her life, a maiden Queen could be content to spill the blood even of her own kinswoman’, she knew she could not spare her since this would ‘cherish a sword to cut mine own throat’.¹⁰

Catherine, appalled at the verdict, dispatched Bellièvre to England in November 1586 to plead for clemency. Mary herself wrote to Elizabeth thanking her for her ‘happy tidings’, though she reminded the Queen that she would have to answer for her actions in the next world. Ignoring Mary’s professed enthusiasm to ‘abandon this world’, Bellièvre heroically fought for, and managed to obtain, a promise from Elizabeth of a stay of execution for twelve days. Henri wrote to the Queen of England stating that he would take Mary’s execution as a ‘personal affront’, but this only strengthened Elizabeth’s resolve. Never one to bow to intimidation, she replied to the French King that this was ‘the shortest way to make me dispatch the cause of so much mischief’.¹¹

Catherine felt no great fondness for Mary Stuart and despised her reckless actions while on the throne of Scotland. She had been particularly outraged by the murder of Lord Darnley in 1567, that ‘horrible, mischievous and strange enterprise and execution done against the King’s majesty’. At the time, the Queen Mother had demanded that her former daughter-in-law show her innocence to the world and threatened that ‘if she performed not her promise to have the death of the King revenged to clear herself, they [the Valois] would not only think her dishonoured but would be her enemies’.¹² Nearly twenty years later time had not changed Catherine’s views; one sovereign executing another was contrary to all her beliefs. She anticipated the impact that the former Queen of France’s death would have upon the Guise clan and French Catholics in general. In disgust she wrote to Bellièvre, ‘I am most grieved that you have been unable to do more for the poor Queen of Scotland. It has never been the case that one queen should have jurisdiction over another having placed herself into her hands for her safety as she did when she escaped from Scotland.’¹³

Mary’s execution took place on 18 February 1587. Catherine heard the news of the ‘cruel death of the poor Queen of Scots’ in a dispatch from Bellièvre as she made her way back to Paris from her long and hopeless peace mission in Poitou. Her initial reaction was of genuine sorrow and anger that Henri’s appeals had been ignored. This turned to alarm when she arrived in Paris to find the people inflamed by the Catholic preachers ascribing Mary’s death to her religion and denouncing it as an assault upon Catholicism by a heretical foreigner.

Rumours leapt through the angry mob threatening Henri, even alleging that he had had a hand in Mary’s death. To be sure of his own safety he increased his personal security and, hoping to calm the furious populace, the jittery King ordered the Court into mourning. A funeral Mass was held at Notre-Dame on 13 March. Joyeuse and d’Épernon also returned to Paris at the same time and the League worried that their presence would ‘put heart into the King’. Joyeuse had lost much credit with Henri since his absence, having been accused of giving tacit support to the Guises.

With Mary now dead, Philip II of Spain decided that he would carry the war to the heretical though resilient Queen of England and re-establish the One True Faith in those troublesome isles. He started to build a huge armada for a decisive invasion. The Duke of Parma, governor of the Spanish Netherlands, received instructions to acquire a vast amount of the materials required for the land and sea invasion that the Spanish King was devising. At the same time he urged Guise, now a client and ally of Spain, to push harder for ultimate victory against Navarre and the French Protestants. Planning to use some of the French Channel ports for the attack on England, Philip needed France to be subdued and under Catholic control before he undertook his ‘great enterprise’. The War of the Three Henris must therefore be stepped up.

The feints, skirmishes and half-hearted battles with almost prearranged withdrawals that had thus far marked this war of confused aims and unnatural alliances now became very real. Leaving Catherine in charge of all matters of state, Henri quit the capital on 12 September at the head of an army bound for the Loire, where he hoped to intercept an army of Reiters coming from Germany to aid Navarre. The Queen Mother, rejuvenated by the task ahead, threw herself into providing her son’s troops with supplies and arms. She was never happier than when stretched to her fullest capacities as she examined fortifications and sea defences in case of attack. Her tireless efforts achieved extraordinary results despite the meagre resources at her disposal.

On 20 October 1587, at the battle of Coutras, Henri of Navarre routed the forces led by the Duke of Joyeuse, who was himself killed. Guise fought two successful battles against the Reiters, at Vimory (26 October) and Auneau (24 November), though by this time the mercenaries were already retreating, having been bribed by the King to leave French soil. Guise furiously complained to the Spanish ambassador, ‘Not only has d’Épernon placed himself between the Reiters and me, but he has given them money … and a thousand arquebusiers of the King’s own guard and ten companies of gens d’armes to accompany their retreat. It is strange that Catholic forces must be employed to recompense heretics for the damage they have inflicted upon France. Every good Frenchman must feel himself outraged.’¹⁴ Catherine saw things in quite a different light and wrote to Marshal Matignon encouraging him, ‘Now we must thank God for having helped us in such a way that it is a true miracle and has showed that he loves the King and the kingdom.’¹⁵

When Henri returned to Paris on 23 December to honour yet another empty victory he attended the celebratory Masses sung to glorify God for delivering the Catholics. In fact, it had been winter that had closed down the campaigning for the season and not military accomplishments; underlying matters remained as unresolved as ever. Navarre still held southern France, and the people were far poorer and hungrier and more desperate than they had been before the war started. To the King’s extreme irritation, Guise was acclaimed as a hero for his successes at Vimory and Auneau. As a result he expected a gesture from the King, in particular that he should receive some of the honours that had belonged to the late Duke of Joyeuse. Instead, Henri managed to infuriate Guise and the Parisians not only by giving Joyeuse a funeral fit for a royal prince but also by proceeding to heap the already overladen d’Épernon with Joyeuse’s offices and honours. Guise’s sister, the Duchess de Montpensier – known as the ‘Fury of the League’, who was as much if not a greater Catholic zealot than her brothers – denounced the King’s ingratitude and took to wearing a pair of golden scissors tied to a ribbon round her waist. She announced they would give Henri his third crown; his first being Polish, his second French and his third would come when she cut him the crown of a monk.

During January and February 1588 the Guise faction met at Nancy to review their overall position and demands. In Paris the populace grew increasingly restive and sullen. D’Épernon, Henri’s remaining favourite, found himself a primary target for the League’s attacks, and pamphlets denouncing him started to appear. One, entitled ‘The Great Military Feats of d’Épernon, was, when opened, a blank sheet except for the single word rien (nothing). The Catholic demagogues raved against him and the King for their feeble war effort, which had thus far been militarily and financially costly, and left Navarre still at large.

When the deliberations of the League were delivered to the King he resolved that he would never again allow such insolence, yet in order to avoid a clash before he was ready he refrained from replying to the rebels’ conditions. These were broadly a more stringent version of their original demands. They insisted that the Treaty of Nemours be implemented in full; in addition the King must join the League unequivocally. They also required the publication of the findings of the Council of Trent and the introduction of the Holy Inquisition in France. Henceforth all senior offices of state should be barred to non-Leaguers and, as a further security, they pressed for more surety towns to be handed over to their control. This last was an entirely specious requirement and simply a method of gaining more strongholds. The goods and belongings of Protestants were to be sold and a part of the monies thus raised would go towards the war effort.

With the country effectively split into two states (the Protestants held territories in the south and the League in the north and centre) France now produced a curious and conflicting foreign policy. Though she was bound by a defensive alliance with England, the League had allied itself to Spain and the international fight against heresy, and must therefore aid the planned attack against England. The Guises, helped by Parma from the Netherlands, seized Picardy but were unable to capture Boulogne. Philip ‘by whose grace he [Guise] lives’ required Channel ports and their hinterland for his invasion fleet and men; he also needed to be absolutely sure that the King would not come to the aid of Elizabeth or in any way obstruct his offensive.¹⁶ Accordingly, it had been planned that, whipped up by League preachers and the Parisian Seize, the King would be taken captive by a popular uprising led by the League and neutralised as a political force shortly before the Armada launched its attack.

Catherine had long since given up hope that Navarre would oblige everyone except the Guises by converting back to Catholicism and instead now began to cleave to the Lorrainers for the future. Her family connections to the dynasty were strong. The Duke of Lorraine was her son-in-law and she hoped to see her grandchildren well married. Ever the matchmaker, she pushed for a union between Lorraine’s daughter Christina, her constant companion, and Ferdinand de Medici, the new Grand Duke of Tuscany (Grand Duke Cosimo I had died in 1574 and had been succeeded by Francesco de Medici, who died on 9 October 1587).

Despite the external pressures that might have strained most relationships, Catherine had maintained her close friendship with the Duchess of Nemours, the Duke of Guise’s mother, and she generally remained on surprisingly amicable terms with Guise himself. She had known him all his life and in many ways she regarded him and his siblings as part of her extended family. She even managed to appear cordial towards the rabid League zealot, the Duchess de Montpensier, though it must be wondered what she made of the duchess’s scissors that hung so menacingly from her belt. It should not be doubted, however, that the principal reason she preserved an amicable disposition with the duke was the better to protect her son. Henri was still the only person who really counted for her.

A further consideration for the Queen Mother’s tendency to favour the Lorraine clan was that if the Salic law were set aside her grandson, the Duke of Lorraine’s heir, the Marquis de Pont-à-Mousson, could conceivably inherit the throne of France if Henri remained childless. She had, not unreasonably, given up any hope of her bloodline being continued through Navarre and Margot. Another matter the Guises and Catherine had in common was their visceral hatred for the detested mignon d’Épernon. The once-powerful favourite now lived in constant danger as threats and plots to kill him were regularly uncovered. He who had so arrogantly elbowed the Queen Mother aside now begged for an audience with her.

The nuncio, Morosini, reported in a dispatch dated 15 February 1588 that the duke had ‘knelt before her, with his cap in his hand. He remained thus for an hour before the Queen, without her asking him to rise or to cover himself.’¹⁷ Begging for her help to bring about a reconciliation with the Duke of Guise, and affecting this most humble attitude, d’Épernon promised that in future he would depend entirely upon her. At the regular council meetings, where the King and Queen Mother sat together at a small desk and the councillors were seated at a long table a small distance apart, it was noticeable that Catherine and her son spoke little to each other, if at all. He no longer trusted anyone, not even her.

In April at one of these meetings the skimpy mantle covering the smouldering antipathy between Catherine and d’Épernon was cast aside and their mutual hatred flared up as they had an angry altercation, during which the duke dared to accuse the Queen Mother of being a supporter of the League. She knew that her increasingly isolated son now lived in such an advanced state of paranoia that with only very little help from d’Épernon he could easily be led to misunderstand the motives for her ties with the Guises. As she herself put it, ‘Sometimes the King mistakes my meaning and supposes that I do what I do because I wish to palliate everything, or because I am fond of them, or because I am too good, as if I loved anyone more than him who will always be most dear to me, or as if I were a poor creature who is led by goodness.’ The last was not an accusation often made against Catherine by anyone.

Suffering from the great infirmity of age and a raging toothache, Catherine wrote to Bellièvre on 1 April 1588 to say that the Guises were breaking every promise they had made to her that they would follow the King’s commands. Henri, she wrote vainly, ‘wishes to be obeyed’.¹⁸ The King had made the same observation himself, writing to Villeroy, ‘I see plainly that if I allow these people to do as they please I shall not only have them as companions but in the end they will be my masters. It is high time to put matters in order.’¹⁹ He continued that from ‘now on we must be King, for we have been the valet for too long’.²⁰ As Meaux, Melun and Château-Thierry fell to the League the King stayed publicly calm, but said ominously, ‘Pain turns to rage when it is wounded too often. Let them not try me too far.’²¹

In May Catherine, still feeling wretched from her painful gout and a lung infection, was in Paris. She spent a large part of her days in bed at the Hôtel de la Reine with any hope of repose marred by the increasingly hostile atmosphere in the city against the King and d’Épernon. League soldiers had been smuggled into the capital over the past weeks in preparation for another Saint Bartholomew-style coup. At a signal from their master they were to rise up and kill the King’s supporters, proceed to the Louvre and capture him (having first cut his hated mignon’s throat). Thanks to the good offices of Nicolas Poulain, a spy working for Henri who had managed to infiltrate the League, one plot to kill d’Épernon and capture the King was uncovered for the night of 24 April. Another attempt to kidnap the King proved to be the work of Guise’s sister, the Duchess de Montpensier. (Guise himself disapproved of his sister’s agents provocateurs, spies, assassins and revolutionary methods. They lacked the honour and essentials which he believed elevated his own actions, befitting his holy purpose and princely station.) Forewarned, Henri increased his guard and this deterred the plotters who decided to wait for another opportunity. He also ordered d’Épernon to place troops outside the city to protect it against any attacking forces.

The Parisian league decided to send an appeal to the Duke of Guise at Soissons to come to their aid. Among other excuses, they too feared another Saint Bartholomew-style massacre as the preachers had made them believe that Henri of Navarre had renewed his alliance with the King and would soon be riding to Paris at the head of an army. Henri sent Bellièvre to Guise with strict orders not to come to the capital, threatening that if he did so he would ‘treat him as a criminal and author of the troubles and divisions in the kingdom’.²² Unbeknown to Henri his mother held yet another agenda. There are strong grounds for believing that Catherine sent Bellièvre with a verbal message of her own asking the duke to come to the capital as soon as he could, judging him to be the only person who could pacify the situation. Guise received the message on 8 May and by noon the following day he rode into the capital by the Porte Saint-Martin with an escort of only ten men. He came without his usual attendants and his hat was pulled down low, his cloak wrapped high round his face and shoulders. Despite this perhaps deliberately poor attempt at appearing incognito, the crowd soon recognised their hero and many ran just to touch his cloak. Others fell to their knees and wept with joy, begging him to deliver them from their evil King and his monstrous creation the Duke d’Épernon.

Guise and his men made straight for the Hôtel de la Reine near the Louvre, where the Queen Mother lay in bed. One of her dwarves, sitting at the window, spotted the duke’s unmistakable figure. He cried out that Guise was below and the Queen, who thought the dwarf was larking about to cheer her up, told someone to give him a sound beating until he learned how to tell a good joke. Hearing the commotion below, she realised that it was indeed the Duke of Guise outside, at which she was observed to ‘change colour and start trembling and shaking’. She well understood that her son’s place on the throne depended upon what happened next.

Catherine greeted the duke warmly, saying, ‘How comforted I am to see you again, though I would rather it were in another season.’ Guise then talked to the Queen Mother about the reasons for his recent actions. The King, meanwhile, fell into a murderous rage that Guise had disobeyed his command and come to Paris. It is said that when he heard of his rival’s presence in the city, Henri had asked Villeroy, ‘We are about to gamble everything. Is this not a question of the future of the kings of my race?’ Turning to Alfonso d’Ornano, his Corsican captain, he asked, ‘If you were in my place … what would you do?’ The ferociously loyal Corsican did not have to ponder over his reply; he merely said, ‘Sire, there is only one important word in all of this. Do you consider M. de Guise your friend or your enemy?’ Henri said nothing but made a gesture which left no doubt as to his feelings. D’Ornano is then supposed to have said, ‘Let us finish with him then.’²³

Despite her illness, Catherine, fearing her son’s fury and desperate to prevent a final rupture between the two men – or worse – knew she must accompany Guise to the Louvre where the King awaited him. She dressed and then, carried in her sedan with Guise walking by her side, they headed towards the palace. As they made their short journey through the narrow streets the people cried ‘Long live Guise!’ and ‘Long live the pillar of the Church!’ Henri awaited the duke in the Queen’s apartments. Guise made a deep reverence before the King, who received him coldly and said only, ‘Why are you here, my cousin?’ To which, after a lengthy pause, the duke replied that he had come on the instructions of the Queen Mother. Catherine acknowledged this to be the truth and thereby made it impossible for the King to censure Guise, whether he believed them or not. Catherine then went on to explain that she had asked the duke to come in order to pacify the dangerous situation and to seek an accord between the two men.

Two days, 10 and 11 May, were spent in talks between Guise and the King. One of these meetings took place when the duke visited Catherine, where he met Henri. When Guise walked into the Queen Mother’s chamber Henri saw the duke and turned his head away as though he had not spotted him. The relatively pleasant but guarded tone of the previous days then took a markedly downward turn. Guise sat beside the Queen Mother and, turning to Bellièvre, complained that much ill was being said of him. Guise did not know it yet, but Henri had heard that there was to be an uprising against him and, ignoring the ancient right of the Parisians to protect themselves in times of trouble, had called for Swiss troops and royalist soldiers to enter the city on the night of 11 May.

The citizens were outraged when they saw the soldiers being deployed around the city. The troops had orders not to shoot though they were menaced by the angry populace, mainly consisting of bourgeois and students from the Sorbonne. During the night the citizens erected barricades of huge barrels filled with rocks and stones to block the streets. On the morning of 12 May, hearing the turmoil outside, the duke, having just risen and not yet dressed, looked out of the window of his bedchamber at the Hôtel de Guise and, affecting an air of sleepy surprise at the febrile activity below, called down to the people in a good-humoured and friendly manner, asking, ‘And what is going on here?’ They loved him for his easy way with them; here was a man they would follow anywhere.

As the temperature of the mob rose Henri sent Bellièvre to Guise with an assurance that the soldiers bore ‘no evil design against him’. Catherine also sent a scout early on the same morning to take a friendly greeting to the duke. She arrived in person shortly afterwards and, having told him how unhappy the King was ‘at all this emotion’, urged him to restore order to the capital. The citizens were pelting the now-trapped soldiers with stones and a few troops had even been killed by snipers. She feared there would be a great loss of life if he did not intervene. Guise gave a brusque reply: he was not the author of this madness, nor was he in a position to deal with it, being ‘neither a colonel nor a captain’. It should, he temporised, be left to ‘the authority of the city magistrates’.

At the request of the King the soldiers were brought back to safety by a number of quaking ministers. Guise himself walked the streets, unarmed, carrying only a riding crop and talking to the people. His calm reassured them and wherever he went they cried out ‘Vive Guise!’, ‘To Rheims, we must bring Monsieur to Rheims!’ Guise acknowledged the crowd but called back, ‘Enough, Messieurs, it is too much. Cry Vive le Roi!’ On the morning of 13 May Henri was observed by Catherine’s Florentine doctor Cavriani: ‘The poor King, who is practically besieged here, is so sad and subdued that he is the image of death. This past night everyone was under arms, and he wept his fate bitterly, complaining of so much treachery.’ The physician called it ‘one of the greatest revolts and rebellions ever heard of’.

Always mistress of her emotions, especially when the situation looked bleak, the Queen Mother, carried in her sedan, ensured that she made her usual journey to hear Mass at the Saint-Chapelle. Descending from her chair, she manoeuvred her way through the barricades as if they were the most normal sight in the world. She was allowed through and greeted with respect by the barricaders who reported that the Queen Mother ‘showed a smiling and assured face, without being astonished by anything’. This determined woman, ill and in complete despair over her son’s future, still had the courage and ability to adapt to any situation with the same sublime fortitude that she had throughout her life. Never had Catherine been more magnificent than when clambering over the rebels’ barricades as they prepared to besiege her son at the Louvre. After Mass, when she had returned to her dîner with only her closest intimates around her, she wept silently but inconsolably.

At a council meeting that afternoon Catherine pressed her son to remain in Paris, yet hers was a lone voice among all the others who believed the King should flee while he still could. She insisted, ‘Yesterday, I gathered from the words of Monsieur de Guise that he was ready to reason; I shall return to him now and I am sure that I shall make him quiet this trouble.’ She had little time to lose; the Porte Neuve was the only gate to the city that still remained open, since by some amazing blunder the Leaguers had not secured it, but for how long would their mistake remain undiscovered? Guise had written with premature confidence to the Governor of Orléans, ‘I have defeated the Swiss, cut to pieces a part of the guards of the King, and I am holding the Louvre so closely invested that I shall give a good account of those within it. This victory is so great that the memory of it will live forever.’²⁴ Catherine hurried to Guise after the council meeting and begged him to calm the madness in the streets. He was not, he said, able to deal with the rebel mob whom he likened to ‘mad bulls that were difficult to restrain’. Upon hearing this Catherine turned and whispered something to Secretary Pinart who had accompanied her. The secretary made his excuses and left the Queen Mother with Guise.

Pinart carried a message for the King that he must quit the city without delay, but Henri had not waited for his mother’s signal. He had already fled, leaving word for his mother to take charge of affairs in the capital. A mob was marching towards the Louvre coming to fetch ‘Brother Henri’ just as the King walked casually through the Tuileries Gardens and then on to the stables. He and a group of friends had then quietly mounted their waiting horses and ridden through the Porte Neuve, close to the walls of the gardens. Cantering gently at first, the party had broken into a full gallop as it set out for Rambouillet, where they stopped for the night, then rode on to Chartres at the break of day on 14 May. About an hour after Pinart had left the Hôtel de Guise, news of the King’s escape reached the duke, who still sat talking to Catherine. He cried out, ‘Ah! Madame, I am killed. While Your Majesty has been holding me off here, the King has left to make me more trouble.’²⁵

On the morning of 14 May Parlement was due to meet. There still remained a strong body of men who abhorred the zealotry of the League and stayed loyal to their King no matter how weak a man he was. True to the principle that Henri had been anointed byGod, they believed nobody had the right to usurp him. Guise insisted that the session begin, but Achille de Harley, the President, reproached him with the words, ‘It is a great pity to see the lackey drive out the master. As for myself, my soul belongs to God, my heart to the King, and my body is in the hands of scoundrels. Do what you please.’²⁶

Guise took the precaution of taking a few strategic towns around Paris to prevent any possible blockade by the royalists, then he replaced municipal officers loyal to the King with members of the League. The keys of the Bastille were sent to the duke and the League promptly filled it with their enemies. Control of the Arsenal was also handed over. Guise ensured that the frustrated mob did not go on a rampage of destruction, nor attack any royal properties, so a semblance of normality did return to the streets. Finally, though, Paris was no good to the League without the King there and he had shattered the duke’s plans by escaping. As a man who believed in the honour of his rank, Guise had shrunk from killing Henri outright, but to control him in the capital as a virtual captive to the Catholic (and ultimately his own) cause would have been perfectly acceptable to his chivalrous daintiness. It is proof of his remarkable popularity with the people that he was not blamed for the monarch’s escape.

The two Queens, Louise and Catherine, were well treated, save for one incident when the Queen Mother’s way through a city gate to hear Mass at the Capuchins had been barred. Furious, she faced the duke and threatened to leave the city, and if necessary, she added melodramatically, she would happily die in the attempt. But this was no more than bravura; she knew that she served her son better by staying in the capital and anyhow Guise would almost certainly have prevented her from leaving had she tried to. In the end, to save face for both of them, the duke pretended that the lock to the gate had merely been broken. Semi-captive as she was, Catherine managed to keep her son informed of events by being at the centre of them, and Louise proved an asset because she was not only a Lorrainer by birth but also adored by the Parisians for her piety, beauty and sweet nature. The following month a series of deputations were sent by Guise to Henri at Chartres. They brought with them a list of demands from the League which again outlined the essentials of the Treaty of Nemours with some additions to incorporate the recent developments in Paris. These included the requirement that d’Épernon and his brother should be treated as crypto-Huguenots and banished.

The King received the delegates from the capital on 16 May. He said he would absolve the Parisians for their behaviour if they acknowledged their faults and from now on obeyed their anointed sovereign. One matter he did not fret over was the banishment of d’Épernon and his brother to Angoumois. He continued, ‘The people are overburdened with taxes and as only the state can remedy the evils from which the state suffers we have resolved to summon the Estates-General at Blois so that, without injuring the rights and authority attached to the royal majesty, we may proceed freely according to the custom of the nation, to seek the means of relieving the people.’²⁷ But still the King and the League haggled. Catherine wrote to Bellièvre at Chartres with Henri, ‘I should prefer to give away half of my kingdom and to give the Lieutenant-Generalship to Guise, and to be recognised by him and by the whole kingdom than still to tremble, as we do now, lest worse befall the King. I know this is a hard medicine for him to swallow, but it is harder yet to lose all authority and all obedience.’ Then she proffered the old formula that had served her so well in the past: ‘It would be much to his credit if he were to come to terms in whatever way he could for the present; for time often brings many things which one cannot foresee, and we admire those who know how to yield to time in order to preserve themselves.’ Before finishing her letter she let show a rare glimpse of her inner despair at this time: ‘I am preaching a sermon; excuse me, for I have never been in such trouble before, nor with less light to see my way out of it, unless God puts His Hand to it I do not know what will happen.’²⁸

At Rouen on 5 July 1588 the King finally accepted the League’s demands and Parlement published the Act of Union in Paris on 21 July. In it the League received official recognition, although Henri insisted that it break all its foreign alliances immediately. He had in mind the growing peril from Spain as the Armada had set forth from Lisbon against England and was even then skirting the French coast. This stupendous flotilla, a solid evocation of Spanish naval might, provided an unsettling reminder of Guise’s semi-client relationship with Philip II. Catherine in particular, stuck in Paris – now a hive of Philip’s agents – had always feared an attack by Spain. She had grown restless in her isolation and fearful lest Henri’s delays provoke an attack by her seemingly unstoppable former son-in-law.

The Act of Union made the Cardinal de Bourbon Henri’s heir presumptive and his subjects had henceforth to give an undertaking not to allow a heretic to succeed him. Guise became Lieutenant-General and there were other rich pickings for the Lorrainers’ clan and supporters. Henri also agreed to field two armies against Navarre and the Huguenots, and he extended a general amnesty to all those who had taken part in the Day of the Barricades. A special Mass held at Notre-Dame celebrated the publication of the edict, attended by the two Queens, the Cardinals de Bourbon and Vendôme. Among those also present were Guise and a host of foreign ambassadors. They were there to send reports to their masters that the new order had been officially recognised. Henri, however, remained absent from his capital and the revelry so horrid to him.

As soon as the Te Deums had been sung, Catherine and Queen Louise left Paris to meet Henri, who had moved to Mantes not far to the west of Paris. His mother begged him to return to the capital but he declined, preferring instead to go with his wife to Chartres. Catherine arrived there a few days later and Guise, anxious to pay his respects to the King whom he had recently held a virtual prisoner, accompanied her with the Cardinal de Bourbon. Guise knelt on both knees when he was brought before Henri. The King raised him gently and kissed him tenderly on both cheeks. That night he invited Guise to dine and celebrate the recent pact and reconciliation between himself and the League. Henri appeared to be enjoying the atmosphere of conviviality tinged with menace. It hung like an uninvited guest around every remark that invited a possible double entendre and every toast to empty loyalty. The King asked ‘his dear cousin’ to whom they should drink? ‘That is for Your Majesty to determine,’ came the duke’s reply. ‘Well, then, drink to our good friends the Huguenots,’ upon which there was a roar of laughter and Guise raised his glass with the remark, ‘Well said, Sire.’ The laughter was strangled when Henri added, ‘and to our good friends the Barricaders of Paris’. Guise did not like the association, but said nothing. Henri took great pleasure in playing this kind of game, but it was not to the duke’s taste at all.

A sharp change in Spanish fortunes came at this moment of triumph for the League. Starting on 31 July and continuing until 9 August and afterwards, the Armada, the pride of Spain, was beaten by an alliance of courageous English maritime enterprise and appalling weather. The cocky Leaguers saw Spain, their cast-iron ally, desperately weakened by the brutal beating its towering fleet had taken. Philip’s defeat gave new heart to the King and all the moderates in France, who felt safer now the mighty ogre had been stalled. When Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador called by Henri to give an account of the battle, arrived he claimed it a victory for his master in Madrid. As each day passed and remnants of the ‘invincible’ Spanish hulks washed up on the French coast, and galley slaves who had miraculously survived were brought ashore, it became harder for even the most polished diplomat to turn the truth upon its head.

Philip had fallen from his pinnacle of power. Henri could not resist introducing the Turkish galley slaves to Mendoza; they were technically men under his protection as the Sultan was France’s ally. He now felt safe to ignore the League’s beautifully worded but insistent entreaties to return to the capital. He claimed that his duties lay at Blois where, as stated in the Act of Union, a meeting of the Estates-General was to convene on 15 October. He had much to prepare for the coming assembly. Henri left for Blois on 1 September, taking his mother, the Queen and the Duke of Guise with him.

On 8 September at Blois, Henri made a dramatic and unexpected move by sacking all his ministers of state. This coup confounded Catherine as much as everyone else. He had not consulted her over this drastic action; indeed, when she asked for an explanation he angrily denounced the men with whom she had surrounded him. Mendoza reported to Philip that Henri accused Cheverny of lining his own pockets, Bellièvre of being a Huguenot, Villeroy was a vain glory seeker, Brulart a nobody and Pinart would not scruple to sell his own parents for cash. Henri told Catherine that they had all failed and now he made their failure his own. It was she who had counselled him to be the master when he arrived from Poland in 1574, and shortly before the debacle of the Barricades he had told Villeroy that now he must be King ‘for we have been the valet for too long’. How bitter she must have felt at being cast aside with the men her son had so peremptorily dismissed, many of whom she had chosen herself and who had served her faithfully.

Bellièvre, the surintendant des finances, was among those to have been dispatched, along with the Chancellor Cheverny and the three Secretaries of States, Brulart, Pinart and Villeroy. The last had merely received a letter from the King with the following polite but brief instructions: ‘Villeroy, I remain satisfied with your services; yet fail not to return to your home where you shall remain until I send for you. Seek not the reason for my letter, simply obey me.’²⁹ Catherine wrote to Bellièvre of ‘the wrong that had been done me in teaching the King that one must honour and love one’s mother, as God wills, but not give her so much authority and credit that she can prevent one from doing what one pleases’.³⁰ The men who replaced the sacked ministers were notable for three things only: they were regarded as men of integrity, they were practically unknown and they were not creatures of the Queen Mother. Catherine’s days of power were over.

The Estates-General opened on 15 October with great pageantry and splendour. The ladies of the Court, arrayed in their finery, dazzled from the gallery. The hall had been especially decorated and prepared for this important assembly that would decide the future of the King, the League and the country. Henri sat upon his throne with Catherine on his right-hand side and immediately below him was the Duke of Guise, his Grand Master.

The drama and tension were palpable as the delegates and courtiers sat silent with expectation. Henri opened with a fine speech paying tribute to his mother in what can only be seen as a valedictory address. In recognition for her outstanding and tireless services to France, he said she should not only be called mother of the King, but also of the kingdom. He thanked her for all she had taught him, for her efforts to resolve the nation’s troubles and protecting the Catholic faith, adding that it was to her that he owed his Catholic zeal, his piety and his desire to reform France. He asked, ‘Has she not sacrificed her health in the struggle? Thanks to her good example and teaching I have learned the worries that come from governing. I have called the Estates-General as the most certain remedy for the troubles that afflict my people and my mother has supported me in this decision.’ After his homage to Catherine he returned to the kernel of his message, saying, ‘I am your God-given King, only I can speak lawfully and truly.’

As the assembly was filled with League members the King then addressed himself to their greatest concern, the fight against heresy. He promised to pursue this with the utmost vigour, but underlined the need for money to carry the fight to Henri of Navarre and his armies. He promised to root out corruption, to stimulate commerce and to examine taxation. He called upon all his subjects to unite and follow him in his fight against the injustices and troubles that bedevilled the kingdom.

Throughout his speech the Queen Mother sat motionless and pale with a fixed gaze, still unable to grasp the finality of her removal from power. Only when Henri began an ill-disguised attack on the Guises did Catherine awake from her impassive reverie. His voice rang out replete with new-found regal authority, saying, ‘Some great nobles of my kingdom have formed leagues and associations, but, as evidence of my habitual kindness, I am prepared in this regard to forget the past.’ Guise, not expecting this audacious and ill-concealed assault, ‘changed colour and looked discomfited’. In a fury the duke and his brother the cardinal demanded the removal of the offending references to themselves from the printed version of the King’s speech. Catherine begged Henri to do as they asked and the King agreed to have the passage removed from the final version. As the sessions continued over the following weeks, Catherine became too ill to be present and for the first time in almost three decades she lacked a worthwhile reason to be there. Instead, she allowed herself to submit to her gout, persistent cough and crippling rheumatism.

On 8 December the Queen Mother managed to attend the marriage-by-proxy of her favourite grandchild, Christina of Lorraine, to Ferdinand de Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. It was a match she had hoped for and helped to arrange, and it gave her the last truly happy moments of her long life.^fn3 After the marriage ceremony in the chapel of the Château of Blois she gave a ball in her apartments. A week later, on 15 December, she took to her bed. Her lung infection had returned and she found it difficult to breathe. The doctors fussed but offered no remedy. It was just at this moment that Henri, struggling with the Estates, heard whispers of yet another plot that he was to be kidnapped by Guise and taken to Paris. Others warned him that Guise wanted to be made Constable of France and governor of Orléans. He could no longer turn to his mother for help and his dark heart needed little encouragement to nurture his suspicions.

On 17 December the Duchess de Montpensier had been overheard at dinner with her brothers the Duke and the Cardinal of Guise and their kinsmen, to toast her elder brother as the new King of France and talk about how she would use her golden scissors on Henri. The actor and musician Venetianelli happened to be present and doubtless exaggerated what he had heard, but he nonetheless reported everything to the King. The atmosphere at the château grew fraught with rumour and counter-rumour. Finally on 19 December, with the help of a few of his trusted advisers, Henri decided that Guise, whose position was unassailable by normal methods, must die ‘by the dagger’. He set the date for his assassination for 23 December.

Guise, who had an excellent network of spies, received several warnings of a plot against him and so he begged the nuncio, Morisini, to calm the King. The nuncio had little advice to offer, except for suggesting that the Queen Mother might be able to ease her son’s temper. In the past she had provided a wall of sanity between the King and his enemies, both real and imagined. The duke visited her and she promised that she would do what she could to ease Henri’s excitable mood. On 20 December the Marshal de Bassompierre and the Seigneur de Maineville, both Leaguers, urged Guise to quit Blois at once because they believed a lethal trap was being set for him.

On the morning of 21 December the King and the duke were seen having a heated discussion in the gardens of the chateau, during which Guise asked forcefully to be relieved of his position as Lieutenant-General of France. Henri believed this to be manoeuvring on the duke’s part to obtain the yet greater position as Constable. Later that night he arranged to hold an urgent meeting about how to murder his increasingly threatening rival. The King could meet his co-plotters without arousing suspicion since there was a ball being held to celebrate Christina of Lorraine’s marriage so the Court’s attention would be elsewhere.

At the meeting, not wishing ‘to be remembered as Nero’, the King nevertheless stated his belief that if Guise did not die, he himself would be killed or abducted. It was decided that the Cardinal of Guise must also be executed, since he would provide too strong a rallying point for the extremists were he spared. Henri comforted himself by declaring that the two brothers were guilty of lèse-majesté, a crime punishable by death. Exasperated, the King asked his small circle of trusties, ‘Who will kill these evil Guises for me?’ His loyal ‘quarante-cinq’, the special bodyguard created for him by d’Épernon, had no scruples in accepting the task. That night Morisini heard further rumours and sent his own captain of the guard to the so-called ‘brains of the League’, the Archbishop of Lyons, Pierre d’Epinac, with whom Guise was supping, to alert him to the plot.

The following morning as they were leaving Mass the King and the duke were reported by some observers to have had a further altercation, though this seems unlikely as they had both been invited to visit Catherine in her chamber. Henri was a picture of good humour and munificence as the pair joked and gossiped with the bedridden Queen Mother in order to cheer her up. They passed the time pleasantly, eating sweetmeats and chatting, when Catherine asked the two men to embrace each other and to forget the past. Henri is said to have taken the duke into his arms and kissed him. The two parted on what appeared to be cordial terms. The scene had particularly lifted Catherine’s spirits though, as one historian noted, the words of Racine’s Britannicus – ‘I embrace my rival for then it is easier to strangle him’ – would have fitted the occasion perfectly.³¹

Before the pair separated that evening the King announced to Guise that as he was to spend Christmas at a pavilion in the park he must first finish some outstanding business. He turned to the duke, saying, ‘My cousin, we have difficult questions to address that must be decided before the year is out. In order to do this come tomorrow morning early to the council so that we may expedite matters.’ As he was purportedly leaving for the pavilion he told the duke (who as Grand Master had charge of the keys to the château) that his carriages would be collecting his baggage at four o’clock in the morning and he therefore required the keys immediately.

Further warnings arrived for the duke that night. His mother, the Duchess of Nemours, told her son that she had heard of a royal plot to kill him in the morning. Guise is said to have replied hubristically, ‘He would not dare.’ At his souper he found a note tucked into his napkin saying that the King planned to murder him on the morrow. Guise asked for a quill and wrote, ‘He would not dare,’ before casting the paper aside. The fatal belief that Henri was as ‘infirm of purpose’ as ever blinded him to the deadly solution planned by a king who had long felt like cornered quarry. Guise was accompanied everywhere except in the King’s presence by a strong and loyal escort, which tragically reinforced his feeling of security. Five further notes arrived that night, but the duke remained unruffled and even became impatient when his surgeon thrust the messages into his master’s hand, angrily telling him, ‘This will never happen. Let us sleep. All of you go to bed.’ He had just returned from a tryst with the beautiful Madame de Sauve and went to his own bedchamber at around one o’clock in the morning.

Earlier, at 11 p.m. that night, Henri had withdrawn to his own apartments and before going to bed arranged with his valet, du Halde, to wake him at 4 a.m. He passed the night fitfully and was duly woken up – to the Queen’s surprise – at that unusually early hour. He did not dress but took a candle and put on his mantle and slippers to meet the chief of his assassins, Bellegarde, and his henchmen. By five o’clock the killers of the ‘forty-five’ were in place. Eight among them had been selected to carry out the task; eight more were to cut off their victim’s retreat and the rest were hidden about the scene in case something should go wrong at the last minute. The King heard Mass between six and seven o’clock, after which he returned to his cabinet (small chamber).

The duke had also risen early; the morning was dark and rain fell heavily. He dressed and went to hear Mass but found the door to the chapel locked. Instead, he made his devotions on his knees outside the chapel doors before proceeding to the council chamber. On his way an Auvergnate gentleman named Louis de Fontanges approached him, urgently begging him not to go to the council meeting, saying he would be killed there. Patiently the duke replied, ‘But my friend, it is a long time since I have been cured of this fear.’ Having been warned no fewer than nine times of what was about to happen, Guise’s behaviour was little short of suicidal arrogance. Nevertheless, he took his leave, smiled as he turned and walked off to his fatal rendezvous.

Most of the council were already present when Guise arrived; his brother the cardinal sat beside the Archbishop of Lyons, and the members talked for a while awaiting only the arrival of Ruzé de Beaulieu who had the list of matters for discussion. The duke, who had not taken any breakfast, sent his man Péricard to fetch him something to eat. A few minutes later Captain Larchant of the King’s bodyguard arrived with some of his men, ostensibly to discuss their wages. The duke agreed to their requests and, feeling cold, stood up and walked to the fire. Péricard had still not returned with anything for him to eat and he asked for a handkerchief as his nose had begun to bleed. At last, at eight o’clock and after a long wait, some of the royal plums from Brignoles were brought in for Guise and finally Secretary de Beaulieu arrived with the agenda for the meeting.

According to Miron, the King stood listening just on the other side of the wall. He seemed afraid that even outnumbered sixteen to one the duke, who he warned them was ‘tall and strong’, might overcome his assassins. There were two chaplains with the King who prayed for him and asked the Almighty’s pardon for the frightful act he had ordered. At a given signal, Secretary of State Revol was ordered to fetch Guise, but the King took one look at Revol and said, ‘For God’s sake, man, you look so pale. Rub your cheeks! Rub your cheeks or you will spoil everything for me.’ When Revol, presumably having reddened his cheeks to the King’s satisfaction, entered the chamber and asked Guise to come into the Cabinet Vieux, the duke stood up so promptly that he knocked his chair over. Throwing the remaining plums on to the table he asked, ‘Gentlemen, who wants one?’ He walked towards the door, turning only to say with unconscious finality, ‘Gentlemen, adieu,’ uttered with such lightness that he obviously had no idea what lay before him. Lining the antechamber were eight of the ‘forty-five’ who, to allay any fears the duke might have had, saluted him as he walked past. As they raised their right hands to their black velvet caps their left hands each held an unsheathed dagger hidden in the folds of their cloaks. Guise walked into the passage leading to the Cabinet Vieux and the eight assassins followed silently behind, cutting off his retreat.

When Guise raised the curtain to enter the passage he saw the killers standing in the cabinet in front of him and, realising it was a trap, tried to turn back, but the men he had just passed stood blocking his path. The ‘quarante-cinq’ then fell upon him, plungingtheir daggers into his body. He cried out, ‘Eh! Mes amis!’ His cloak had prevented him from drawing his own sword before he was struck, but despite this he managed to punch two of his assailants hard in the face and knock four others to the ground. No matter how valiant his self-defence, though, there was no hope for him and he died after an heroic struggle at the foot of the King’s bed. Before breathing his last he uttered the words, ‘Messieurs! Messieurs!’ then addressed himself to the Almighty: ‘These are my offences, My God! Misericorde!’³² Henri stood looking down at his now dead enemy and is said to have sneered, ‘Look at him, the King of Paris. Not so big now!’

His Majesty then entered the council chamber with his guards and announced that Guise was dead and as their rightful King he would henceforth be obeyed by all. The guards had already sealed the room. The Cardinal of Guise was arrested along with anyone else who formed part of the Guise cabal. Elsewhere around the château at the same time eight further members of the Guise clan were also placed under arrest with other senior Leaguers.

Henri next called on his mother whose apartments lay directly beneath where the duke had been murdered. Catherine was being attended by her Italian doctor, Cavriani, who was also the Grand Duke of Tuscany’s spy. He reported that the King marched into Catherine’s room and, after first asking the physician about the Queen Mother’s condition, said to her, ‘Good morning, Madame, please excuse me but the Duke of Guise is dead and we shall speak of him no more. I have had him killed to prevent his own plans against me.’ He then proceeded to talk in an animated manner of the insults and injuries committed against him by the duke, seeming almost inebriated by the murder he had just planned and witnessed. Then he said he must go to Mass and thank God for delivering him from the duke’s evil plans. ‘I want to be King, not a prisoner or a slave.’

Reports vary as to Catherine’s reaction. Cavriani says she was too ill to speak but understood perfectly what had happened. Morisini wrote that she managed to say that instead of being King he had just lost his kingdom. This is unlikely; there would have been little point in arguing with her son when the blood had already been spilled. The deed was done and whatever she said, if anything, would probably only have been a bland murmur that she hoped Henri had done the right thing.

On the morning of Christmas Eve the Cardinal of Guise was murdered in his prison cell, and the bodies of these two Catholic princes were hacked to pieces and thrown into a fireplace at Blois to burn. The King did not want a burial site where their followers could gather and commune with their dead martyrs. On Christmas Day Catherine, though deeply depressed and in despair over her son’s lunacy, spoke to a Capuchin friar begging him to pray for Henri. ‘Oh! wretched man, what has he done? … Pray for him, he needs your prayers. He is headed towards ruin and I fear he will lose his body, his soul and his kingdom.’ The Guises had posed the greatest danger to her husband’s dynasty ever since his death, but when they finally met their doom she was too politically acute not to understand that both their Houses would be ruined by her son’s impolitic savagery.

^fn1 Alençon’s funeral cortège was magnificent and took over five hours to process through Paris.

^fn2 Gout was a typical Medici ailment.

^fn3 The marriage of Catherine’s granddaughter Christina of Lorraine to the Medici Grand Duke of Tuscany not only settled many vexatious issues regarding Catherine’s Tuscan possessions and inheritance, but also gave the Queen Mother the great satisfaction of joining her senior branch of the family with those descended from Giovanni della Bande Nere.