Strained relations between the King and the Dauphin — The Dauphin "sells the bear's skin before the bear is killed," and is betrayed by the Court jester Briandas — Singular sequel to a dinner-party — François and the princes at the siege of Boulogne — The plague breaks out among the besiegers — Mad freak of the Duc d'Orléans — He is carried off by the pestilence, and the Peace of Crépy is rendered, to all intents and purposes, null and void — Refusal of the Emperor to enter into a new treaty — François prepares for war, but cannot be persuaded to take any definite action — Pitiful moral and physical condition of the King — The accession of the Dauphin anticipated with hopefulness by both Court and people — Portrait of Henri by the Venetian Ambassador, Marino Cavalli — Singular reflections on the nature of the prince's relations with Diane de Poitiers — Death of the Comte d'Enghien in a snowball-fight — Charges of foul play against the Dauphin and the Guises considered — Effect upon the King of the death of Henry VIII — Last days of François I — He falls ill at Rambouillet — His admonitions to the Dauphin — His death
AFTER the Peace of Crépy, the relations of the Dauphin with his father, which since the prince's infatuation for Diane de Poitiers had been far from satisfactory, became more strained than ever. François, his ambition flattered by the brilliant alliance which Orléans was about to contract, no longer made any attempt to disguise his preference for his younger son, whose frank and open nature so closely resembled his own, and whose gaiety and good-humour often served to divert his hours of ennui or bodily suffering, and, while lavishing upon him every mark of affection, treated his heir with coldness and suspicion. The Dauphin, on the other hand, indignant at what he considered the King's betrayal of his interests in the recent treaty and the indifference and distrust which he showed towards him, confined himself more and more to his own circle of intimates, which was chiefly composed of the friends and adherents of the exiled Constable, seldom visited his father, save when the exigencies of etiquette required, and, though usually so reserved, could not always conceal his impatience to grasp the sceptre.
One day, the Dauphin had invited several of his favourite nobles to dinner in his apartments. The wine seems to have circulated pretty freely, for when presently the conversation happened to turn upon the time now obviously fast approaching when François, whose health was steadily failing, should exchange his throne for a gilded tomb at Saint-Denis, the Dauphin observed that, "when he was King, he should name such and such persons marshals or grand-masters, chamberlains or masters of artillery," adding that "he should recall the Constable, who had fallen into disgrace with the King."
The future Maréchal de Vieilleville, in whose Mémoires the anecdote is related, endeavoured to check this highly dangerous conversation. But the prince, in the belief that he was surrounded by none but friends, continued in the same strain, upon which Vieilleville, unwilling to be a party to his Royal Highness's indiscretion, requested permission to withdraw, telling the Dauphin that "he was selling the skin before the bear was killed." Soon afterwards, another person quitted the room; one who, though unobserved, or, at least, unheeded by the company, had heard every word that had been said. It was Briandas, one of the King's jesters, whose office gave him the privilege of wandering at will about the palace, and who had been sitting in the recess of a window. Hastening to François's apartments, where he found his master at table with Madame d'Étampes, the Cardinal de Lorraine, the Comte de Saint-Pol, Grand Chamberlain, Tais, Grand-Master of the Artillery, and several of the other grand officers of the Crown, and dropping the title of King, by which he was accustomed to address him, he exclaimed:
"God save you, François de Valois!"
"Hey, Briandas! Who has taught you that lesson?" inquired the King sharply.
'"Sblood! Thou art King no longer. I have just seen it proved. And thou, M. de Tais, art no longer Grand-Master of the Artillery; Brissac is appointed. And thou," turning to Saint-Pol, "art no longer Grand Chamberlain; Saint-André01 is." And thus, one after another, he transferred all the grand offices of the Crown, when, once more addressing the astonished King, he added: "Zounds! thou wilt soon see Montmorency back; he will make thee do his will, and will teach thee to be a fool. Begone! I call God to witness, thou art a dead man!"
The King, more and more astonished, took the jester aside and bade him, as he valued his life, explain the meaning of his words. Briandas obeyed, and named all who had been present at the Dauphin's dinner. François, beside himself with wrath, summoned the captain of his Scottish Guard, bade him bring thirty or forty of his archers, and set off at their head for his son's apartments. But the Dauphin and his friends, warned that they had been betrayed, had prudently made their escape, and when the enraged monarch arrived upon the scene, he found only a number of the prince's attendants, who were engaged in removing the remains of the feast. Upon them and upon the plate and furniture, if we are to believe the Vieilleville Mémoires, the royal wrath expended itself. The terrified pages and lackeys were obliged to save themselves by leaping from the windows into the courtyard below, to be speedily followed by plate, glass, cutlery, tables, chairs, mirrors, tapestries, beds, in short, everything which the Dauphin's apartments contained. The King himself entered with zest into the work of destruction, and snatching a halberd from one of the guards, laid about him lustily.02
The Dauphin did not dare to appear before his father for more than a month after this affair, and it was only with great difficulty that François could be persuaded to pardon him; while all his guests on the occasion in question were banished from the Court.
The war with England continued for nearly two years after the Peace of Crépy, its chief incidents being a descent by the French on the Sussex coast and the Isle of Wight, and a second and equally unsuccessful attempt to recover Boulogne.
The operations round Boulogne, during which, it may be mentioned, François de Guise received the terrible wound which earned him the name of "le Balafré," had one important result: they delivered the Dauphin from the rivalry of his younger brother, and rendered the Peace of Crépy, to all intents and purposes, mere waste parchment.
The two princes had accompanied their father to Picardy, for François, notwithstanding his feeble health, wished to be in touch with the investing army, and had established himself for that purpose at the Abbey of Forêt-Moutiers, between Abbeville and Montreuil. In the last days of August, the plague broke out with fearful virulence among the besiegers; whole companies were swept away; and soon the men were dying in such numbers that it was no longer possible to bury them. Terror reigned among the survivors; but Orléans laughed at their fears, and one day, in a spirit of bravado, entered, with some young nobles as thoughtless as himself, a house in which several persons had recently succumbed to the pestilence, slashed open the beds with his sword, and scattered the feathers over himself and his companions, observing that "never yet had a Son of France died of the plague."
The sequel was a grim commentary on the boasted immunity of the Royal House. That same evening, the prince was taken ill. Three days later, he was dead.
With the untimely death of his much-loved son, François resumed his claims on the Milanese, and all the old subjects of controversy between him and Charles V, which the treaty had been intended to lay to rest, sprang into life again. The King despatched Annebaut and the Chancellor Olivier to Ghent to endeavour to persuade the Emperor to enter into a new treaty, which might replace that of Crépy; but they got nothing from Charles but vague assurances of his desire to remain at peace with France.
François thereupon began strengthening the fortresses on the northern and eastern frontiers, made peace with England (June 1546), and sought allies all over Europe. But he went no further, and though the Dauphin pressed him earnestly to invade Lombardy while the Emperor was occupied with his war against the League of Schmalkalde, he had lost the power of resolution and could not make up his mind to take definite action; and, on the advice of the fanatical Cardinal de Tournon, persecuted the Protestants in France in place of assisting their co-religionists in Germany.
And so amidst infamy at home and impotence abroad the reign which had once been so brilliant drew towards its close. The King in whose name the fires of persecution were kindled, and whose vacillation rendered futile all the efforts of French diplomacy, was perhaps more deserving of pity than of condemnation. Since the death of his younger son he had fallen into a state of profound melancholy; he was frequently a prey to the most cruel sufferings, which the remedies to which his physicians had recourse served only to aggravate, and his domestic life was embittered by the quarrels between Madame d'Étampes and Diane de Poitiers, the enmity of the former towards the Dauphin, and the fears which the lady was constantly expressing as to the fate which awaited her when she should lose her protector.
If Madame d'Étampes and her friends had good reason to fear a change of sovereigns, the majority of the Court and the great mass of the nation seem to have regarded the prospect with equanimity. For the Court was weary of the domination of a favourite who made and unmade Ministers, was suspected of intriguing with the enemies of France, and pursued with the utmost vindictiveness those who refused to abase themselves before her; and the nation was disgusted with the ruinous wars in which François's futile rivalry with a monarch so manifestly superior in statecraft to himself was perpetually involving the country. It was believed, too, that the quiet, reserved Dauphin, if he lacked those showy qualities which had so often served to conceal the grave defects in his father's character, possessed a good sense and intelligence which would more than atone for any shortcomings in this respect, and that, while upholding the honour of France abroad, he would abstain from wars of aggression, and make it his first study to repair the ravages which the ambition of François had wrought. That this belief was held not only by Frenchmen, but by foreigners who were well qualified to form an opinion of the Dauphin's character, is proved by a despatch which the Venetian Ambassador, Marino Cavalli, addressed in 1546 to his government, and which also contains some singular reflections on the nature of the relations between Henri and Diane de Poitiers.
"Thus," says he, after speaking of the two princes who had been cut off in the flower of their youth, "the fortune which he would have had to share with the other brothers seems reserved entirely for him who is now Dauphin, and whose qualities promise France the most worthy king she has had for two hundred years. This hope is, moreover, a great comfort for this nation, which consoles itself for present ills by the hope of prosperity to come. This prince is twenty-eight years of age; he is of a very robust constitution and of a rather melancholy disposition; very skilful in martial exercises; not very ready with his answers when addressed, but very decided and very firm in his opinions, and what he has once said he adheres to with great tenacity. His is not a very keen intellect, but men of that stamp are often the most successful; they are like autumn fruits, which ripen late, but which are, for that reason, better and more durable than those of the summer or the spring. He is in favour of maintaining a footing in Italy, and has never been of opinion that Piedmont should be given up, to which end he supports Italians who are discontented with the affairs of their country. He spends his money in a manner at once prudent and honourable.03 He is but little addicted to women; his own wife is sufficient for him; while, for conversation, he confines himself to that of the Sénéchale of Normandy, who is forty-eight years of age. He entertains for her a sincere affection; but it is not thought that there is anything lascivious about it, and that this affection is like that between mother and son; and it is asserted that this lady has taken upon herself to instruct, correct, and counsel the Dauphin, and to urge him to all actions worthy of him."04
Cavalli's remarks concerning the nature of the relationship between the Dauphin and Diane are very curious, since they prove that the liaison must have been conducted with a circumspection very unusual in royal amours in the sixteenth century, and that many people found it difficult to believe that, in a Court full of young and beautiful women, the prince could really have selected as his mistress, in the sensual acceptation of the term, a lady old enough to be his mother. This pleasing illusion, however, did not long survive Henri's accession to the throne, as the despatches of Cavalli's successor at the French Court show.
Early in 1546, another grief overtook the sorrow-laden King. Since the death of the Duc d'Orléans, he had bestowed his affection on the Comte d'Enghien, the young victor of Ceresole, who had gathered round him the friends of the deceased prince and become the centre of opposition to the Guises, whom the Dauphin favoured, and whose greed, ambition, and audacity were beginning to cause François serious uneasiness.
In February, the King was staying at the Château of La Roche-Guyon, not far from Mantes. As there had been a heavy fall of snow, his Majesty suggested that the younger members of the Court should organise a snowball-fight. Sides were accordingly formed; one, led by the Dauphin and François de Guise, defending a house; the other, led by Enghien, besieging it. "During the combat," says Martin du Bellay, "some ill-advised person threw a linen-chest out of the window, which fell on the Sieur d'Enghien's head, and inflicted such injuries that he died a few days later."
Du Bellay does not give the name of the "ill-advised person"; but some writers, less reticent, name François de Guise, and have even gone so far as to declare that he acted by order of the Dauphin, while others assert that he was a certain Conte Bentivoglio, an Italian noble attached to the Guises, whom they accuse of having instigated the deed.
Nothing in the character of the future Henri II encourages the belief that he could have been the instigator, or even a party, to so foul a crime. Besides, what had he to gain by it? It is true that Enghien's brilliant victory at Ceresole, in such striking contrast to his own failures in Roussillon and Picardy, and the favour shown him by the King, scarcely disposed him to regard his young kinsman with a very friendly eye; but, in view of the circumstance that Henri's accession to the throne could not be long delayed, he had certainly no cause to regard him in the light of a rival whom it behoved him to get rid of. The accusation, indeed, is so monstrous that it would not be worth discussion had not Sismondi affected to credit it.
As for the Guises, as one of their biographers points out, the murder of Enghien would not only have been of no advantage to them, since he had four brothers to dispute with them the royal favour, but extremely hazardous, since these brothers would certainly have endeavoured to avenge him. Moreover, François de Guise sought the favour of the Dauphin and based his hopes of advancement on his accession to the throne, while it was with the King alone that Enghien was in favour. Finally, is it conceivable that Claude de Guise, the head of the House, without whose knowledge François would not have ventured to engage the family in so dangerous an enterprise, would have consented to the murder of the son of his own brother-in-law?05
That, notwithstanding the suspicious circumstances attending it, the death of Enghien was due merely to one of those acts of brutal horseplay so common at this epoch is scarcely open to question. Those who scattered the feathers from the beds of the plague-stricken over themselves and their companions, who were only prevented from strangling their friends by some one cutting the cord in the very nick of time, who placed the corpses of felons who had been hanged in the beds of Court ladies, were quite capable of throwing furniture at one another's heads without the least homicidal intention. The King himself, shortly after the Field of the Cloth of Gold, had narrowly escaped falling a victim to a similar accident, and carried a memento of it on his forehead in the shape of a scar.06
At the beginning of February 1547, while the Court was at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, François received the news of the death of Henry VIII, which had occurred on the 26th of the preceding month. "This death," writes Du Bellay, "occasioned the King much sorrow, not only because of the hope which he had entertained of making with him a firmer alliance than that which he had begun, but because they were almost of an age, and of the same constitution; and he feared that he must soon follow him. Those, moreover, who were about his person perceived that from that time he became more pensive than before."
Since the beginning of the winter the King's health had been much worse. Nevertheless, he still continued to hunt, observing to those who endeavoured to dissuade him that "when old and sick, he would be carried to the chase, and that perhaps when he was dead, he would wish to go in his coffin."07 A strange restlessness now seized upon him, and, "as if seeking to escape from the death which was now so near, he travelled from Saint-Germain to La Muette, thence to Villepreux, and subsequently to Dampierre, Chevreuse, Limours, and Rochefort, revisiting all the places which he had loved, all the forests in which he had hunted in his vigorous youth."08 Death, however, followed swiftly, and at Rambouillet, at which he arrived towards the end of March, he was compelled to take to his bed, and never left it again.
Persuaded that his end was at hand, he sent for the Dauphin and gave him his final admonitions, recommending him to diminish the taxes under which the nation had so long groaned; to retain as his Ministers Annebaut and Tournon, and to be guided in all things by their counsels; to exclude Montmorency from power, and, above all things, to beware of the Guises, "whose aim was to strip him and his children to their doublets and his people to their shirts."09 Finally, he made a very pressing recommendation to his son in favour of Madame d'Étampes, vowing that he was altogether mistaken in believing that she had been hostile to him, and bidding him remember that she was a woman, and therefore entitled to consideration. The Dauphin asked his father for his blessing, and then "fell in a swoon upon the King's bed; and the King held him in a half-embrace and was unable to release him."10
Between two and three o'clock in the afternoon of March 31, 1547, François expired, in the fifty-fourth year of his age and the thirty-third of his reign, "having continued in excellent memory and sound intellect until the end of his days."11
Notes
(1) Jacques Albon de Saint-André (1525-72). He was a member of a very ancient but impoverished family of the Lyonnais, and had come to Court when very young. His bravery and insinuating manners gained him the friendship of the Dauphin, who attached him to his person and over whom he soon acquired great influence. "He was," says l'Aubespine, "an accomplished and cunning courtier, of very keen intelligence, a very skilful intriguer, very brave, and an adept at martial exercises. These good qualities were counterbalanced by all kinds of lasciviousness." François I disliked him intensely. We shall have a good deal to say about Saint-André presently.
(2) Mémoires de Vieilleville.
(3) The Dauphin's revenues were those of Dauphiné and Brittany; the latter province alone was worth to him 520,000 livres.
(4) Armand Baschet, la Diplomatie vénitienne.
(5) Forneron, les Ducs de Guise et leur époque.
(6) Tavannes; Forneron.
(7) La Ferrière, les Grandes Chasses au XVIe siècle.
(8) La Ferrière.
(9) De Thou.
(10) Despatch of the Imperial Ambassador, Saint-Mauris, to the Queen-Dowager of Hungary, Governess of the Netherlands, May 1547. The Ambassador says that François, after recommending his mistress to the Dauphin, observed: "Do not submit yourself to the will of others, as I have to her."
(11) Martin du Bellay. All contemporary writers are in accord in attributing to François a very edifying end. "I assure you," writes the Secretary of Finance, Bochetel, to l'Aubespine, "that for a century past no prince has ever died with feelings of such contrition and repentance"; while Ferronius tells us that he "died with so much piety and constancy, that, as his breath was escaping him, he repeated several times the name of God, and, when he could no longer speak, still made with his fingers the sign of the Cross."