The accession of Henri II followed by a revolution of the palace — Montmorency is recalled and entrusted with the supreme direction of affairs — The Ministers of the late King are dismissed and the Council reorganised — Disgrace and persecution of Madame d'Étampes — Diane de Poitiers comes into her kingdom — Weakness of the new Sovereign, who allows himself to be governed by his favourites — Diane aspires to rule both the King and the kingdom — Impressions of the Imperial Ambassador, Saint-Mauris — Power of Montmorency — An amusing caricature — Diane, jealous of the authority of the Constable, resolves to pit the Guises against him, and then to hold the balance between the two parties — Aggrandizement of the Guises — Honours and benefits procured by Montmorency for his family — Favours bestowed on Saint-André — Shameless rapacity of the favourites, who "devour the King as a lion his prey" — Madame d'Étampes buys off the hostility of Diane — Her later years
SCARCELY had François I drawn his last breath than the new King hastened to throw to the winds the counsels which his father had given him, and, leaving the mortal remains of "le roi chevalier" to the care of Annebaut and the Cardinal de Tournon, with orders that they were to be removed to Saint-Cloud for the ceremonies of what was called "the quarantine," started for Saint-Germain-en-Laye, to meet his old friend Anne de Montmorency, who had arrived in all haste from Chantilly. The meeting between Henri and the Constable after their separation of nearly six years was, as might be expected, a very affectionate one, and, as the result of a conference of more than two hours, Montmorency left the royal presence chief of the Privy Council and charged with the direction of affairs. He had, moreover, been reinstated in his functions of captain of the fortresses of the Bastille, Vincennes, Saint-Malo, and Nantes, and in the command of his company of one hundred men-at-arms, which during his disgrace had been discharged by his lieutenants; had been restored to his offices of governor and lieutenant-general of Languedoc, of which he had been deprived, and had been offered a sum of 100,000 écus,01 as compensation for the salaries which had been sequestrated. This he at first refused, but subsequently accepted.
The restoration of Montmorency to power and favour was only the first act of a complete revolution. "In the sixteenth century," says Decrue, "France presents in her government some resemblance to Turkey. One assists there at the disgrace of sultanas, at the replacing of grand viziers, at veritable revolutions of the palace. In 1547, it is not only a King who dies; it is a policy which changes, a court which disappears."02
Annebaut and the Cardinal de Tournon, who had enjoyed the late King's entire confidence, were both got rid of, Annebaut being deprived of his rank of maréchal de France, which he held together with the office of Admiral, and excluded from the Council; while Tournon was sent to Rome, under the pretext of maintaining French influence there. The remaining three members of the Royal Council, Gilbert Bayard, Duval, and Bochetel, were also eliminated, and the vacant places filled by the new King's uncle, the King of Navarre, his cousin, the Duc de Vendôme, and three of the Guises, the Cardinal Jean, the Comte d'Aumale, and Charles, Archbishop of Rheims, afterwards the celebrated Cardinal Charles de Lorraine. With them were associated the Constable; the Comte d'Harcourt, a kinsman of the Guises; the two Saint-Andrés, the younger of whom, a great favourite of Henri, replaced Annebaut as marshal; Robert de la Marck, Seigneur de Sedan, who had married one of the daughters of Diane de Poitiers; Humières, a cousin of Montmorency and gouverneur of the Children of France, the Chancellor Olivier, and two friends of the Constable, the patriarchal President Bertrandi03 and the financier Villeroy. All real power, however, resided in the hands of the Constable, the Guises, and the younger Saint-André.04
Henri II had promised his dying father to protect Madame d'Étampes, perhaps with the intention of keeping his word, since he is said to have sent a kind message to the duchess, who, shortly before the King's death, had retired to her estate at Limours, and to have invited her to remain at Court. He soon found, however, that the reaction against the lady was too strong for him to resist, even if he had wished to do so; a jealous woman does not pardon, and, besides, Madame d'Étampes had mortally offended the Constable and many other influential persons, as well as Diane. When, ten days later, the duchess wrote to him to claim the disposal of her apartment at Saint-Germain, in which, by the way, Montmorency had already installed himself, his Majesty answered, rather maliciously, that the matter was one for Queen Eleanor05 to decide, and that she must apply to her. Needless to say, nothing more was heard of the matter.
If the fallen favourite had cherished the illusion that her voluntary retirement from the scene of her former glory would serve to disarm her enemies, she was rudely undeceived. For soon she found herself assailed on all sides. The King sent her a peremptory order to surrender the jewels which his father had given her, and these souvenirs of François's munificence, which are said to have been worth 50,000 écus, he presented to Diane; the Chancellor drew up an indictment charging her with treasonable correspondence with the enemies of France during the invasion of 1544; her property was sequestrated, her servants were thrown into prison, and Longueval and Gilbert Bayard were arrested as her accomplices.
Nor did the persecution stop here, for her husband — that precious Jean de Brosse who had profited so much by her dishonour — accused her of appropriating the salary of his government of Brittany, and of ruining his family in order to enrich her favourite sister, Charlotte, Comtesse de Vertus, and, for greater security, caused her to be imprisoned.
People of every condition, we are told by the Imperial Ambassador, Saint-Mauris, seem to have combined together against her. "If the said lady," he writes, "were to appear in public, the people would stone her." And he expresses his belief that she will be brought to the block, "which is what is demanded and what she deserves."06
The arm which directed these attacks was, needless to say, the arm of Diane de Poitiers, the woman whose ambition Madame d'Étampes had thwarted, whose beauty she had criticised, and whose pride she had offended. After eleven years of waiting, Diane had come into her kingdom, and she was determined to enjoy her triumph to the full, and to satisfy at the same time her vindictiveness, her cupidity, and her love of power. Not only did she humble her rival to the dust and procure the disgrace of the Ministers and nobles who had supported the duchess against her, but she pursued with her vengeance a poor engineer, who, charged by the King to fortify a place on the frontier, had, acting presumably with the royal authority, cut down a few trees in a wood upon one of her estates, and compelled him to fly for his life to Franche-Comte. To celebrate his "joyous accession" Henri presented her with "the proceeds of the confirmation of all the estates in France,"07 valued at 300,000 livres — a sum which, according to precedent, ought to have been reserved for Madame Marguerite, the King's sister, who, however, did not venture to dispute the matter with the all-powerful favourite. Indeed, if we are to believe Saint-Mauris, before Henri had been three months on the throne, the lady had extracted from him no less a sum than two million livres. Probably, however, Saint-Mauris exaggerates; even Ambassadors cannot always resist the temptation of drawing the long bow.
With all his faults, the new King was a conscientious man, who really desired to do his duty and to promote the happiness of his subjects. Matteo Dandolo tells us that at his coronation he was observed to be praying long and earnestly. Afterwards, Diane asked him what had been the subject of his petitions, to which he replied that he had prayed "that, if the crown which he was about to assume promised good government and would assure the happiness of his people, God would be mercifully pleased to leave it to him for a long time, but, if otherwise, that He would deprive him of it very quickly."08 Left to himself or guided by disinterested Ministers, it is probable that he would have fulfilled the expectations of which Marino Cavalli speaks in the despatch we have cited in the preceding chapter. But he was "born to be governed rather than to govern,"09 and was surrounded by greedy and ambitious favourites who thought only of exploiting him for their own selfish ends, and to whose interest it was to prevent the grievances of his subjects from reaching the King's ears; while his infatuation for the Sénéchale rendered him "entirely her subject and slave."10
And Diane was a Pompadour as well as a Maintenon, who aspired to govern the kingdom as well as the King, or, at any rate, to assist in governing it. Honoured, flattered, consulted and dreaded as never mistress had been before her time, she was at once Henri's trusted counsellor and the dispenser of his benefits and favours. For her there existed no secret of State. She insisted on being told everything, and she was told. Every matter which was discussed in the Council-chamber, every despatch which arrived from the French representatives at foreign Courts, was communicated to her; and scarcely had the King finished giving audience to one of the Ambassadors than he hurried off to tell his mistress all about it.
But let us allow the Imperial Ambassador to give in his own words his impressions of the new King and of this power behind the throne, whom he designates by the name of Silvius:
"As for the King, he continues to yield more and more to the yoke of Silvius [Diane] and has become her subject and slave entirely, a circumstance which his people lament. The said King had, on his own initiative, introduced the practice of giving audience after his dinner; now he does so no longer. And it is said that these Ministers of his have cleverly and cunningly put an end to this, in order that he may not hear the grievances of his subjects and get to the bottom of the evil and the good. Thus, when he has dined, the Constable or some other of his favourites approaches him, spoiling, in this way, the opportunity of speaking to him, and, apart from this, those of Guise11 follow him so closely all day that it is difficult for any one to address him.
"He does not admit any one to his chamber until he is dressed, with the exception of the young Saint-André; no, not even the Constable or his physicians, of whom, he says, he has no need at present. His whole pleasure consists of playing tennis and sometimes following the chase. He is never heard to speak ill of any one. He expresses the wish to retain his own and to recover what he pretends belongs to his Crown, without encroaching on the possessions of others. If the matters under consideration are of importance, he attends the meeting of the Council of State after dinner, although that does not often happen; but, in the morning, he attends every day, for about two hours, to his affairs in his Privy Council.
"The worst thing is that the said King allows himself to be led, and approves everything which Silvius and his nobles advise, of which the people here complain, fearing that the King will remain always in that net. After dinner he visits the said Silvius. When he has given her an account of all the business he has transacted in the morning and up to that moment, whether with the Ambassadors or other persons of importance, he seats himself upon her lap, a guitar in his hand, upon which he plays, and inquires often of the Constable or of Aumale [François de Guise] if the said Silvius 'has not preserved her beauty,' touching from time to time her bosom and regarding her attentively, like a man who is insnared by his love. And the said Silvius declares that hereafter she will be wrinkled, in which she certainly is not mistaken. She takes every possible care to adorn herself becomingly, and devotes more attention to that than to anything that she does, in so much that the King's affection for her increases. Madame de Roye12 has said so to the Queen-Dowager.
"The King has many natural good qualities, and one might hope much from him, if he were not so stupid as to allow himself to be led as he does. The Chancellor is in despair about it, saying that 'the women of to-day are worse than those of former times, and that they spoil everything.' It is said that not a soul dares to remonstrate with the King, lest he should offend Silvius, fearing that the said King will reveal it to her, since he loves her so intensely. It is said that the King has intimated that he was conscious of his weakness in the above-mentioned matter; but that he was so deeply involved, and so long since, that he would not know how to withdraw now, which, however, encourages the hope that, if he is able to see a way of escape, he will not fall back again.
"The said King has still much youthful spirit in him, which leads him to do many foolish things; among others, he makes lackeys and other vulgar persons play at tennis with him, such as Marchaumont13 and l'Aubespine.14 And lately, at Anet, he began to push those who were near the bank into the water, so that he nearly drowned a page whom he had thrown into the river.
"As for Silvius, since she has come into authority, she has changed her humour and her behaviour, and people find her, in short, very haughty and insolent; while, apart from that, she is endeavouring with her wiles and her attractions to remain in the good graces of the King, and to extract from him everything that she possibly can."
Great as was the influence of "Silvius" over the King, she had in the Constable a formidable rival in the royal favour. Anne de Montmorency was neither a great general, nor a great administrator, nor a far-sighted statesman, but he was a shrewd, hard-headed man and an indefatigable worker; and the value of such a Minister in a frivolous Court, where almost every one was given over to pleasure, the new Sovereign could not fail to appreciate. Moreover, the Constable was not only one of Henri's oldest friends, but had special claims to his consideration, since it was the late King's suspicion that he preferred the interests of the son to those of the father that had been mainly responsible for his disgrace.
On Henri's accession, indeed, it had seemed for a moment that all authority was to belong to Montmorency. "In the first days of the reign, the Constable took possession of the King, in such a way that he carried him off to all his residences, Chantilly, Écouen and l'Isle-Adam; and, wherever the prince was, no one could approach his person, save by his favour and introduction."15
So sudden a return of Fortune occasioned a good deal of surprise, and some people even ventured to protest against the complete surrender of authority which the King was making. A caricature appeared representing an ass saddled with a pack-saddle, with the bit under the tail, and bearing the following inscription: "Qui a mis mon mors ainsi? — Harry, Harry." All the copies which were discovered were seized and burned, and the authors severely punished; but it undoubtedly expressed the views of the bulk of the people.
The affection and unbounded confidence which Henri accorded the Constable were regarded with equal disapproval by Diane, though, of course, for very different reasons. Montmorency had been a useful friend to her in the first years of her favour, when she was waging a somewhat unequal battle with Madame d'Étampes and her allies, and she had been quite prepared to acquiesce in his restoration to all his honours and dignities. But that was an altogether different matter from allowing him to become "the pilot and master of the vessel of which she held the helm,"16 and to exercise as much influence over the King's affairs as she did over the King's person. As ambitious as she was greedy, jewels, money, titles, and estates were not sufficient for her; she aspired, as we have seen, to govern at the same time Henri and his kingdom, and she could not endure the idea of sharing power with Montmorency.
The Sénéchale was too clever a woman not to be aware that, great as was her influence over the King, it had its limitations, and their long intimacy had also taught her that perhaps the most pronounced feature in her royal lover's character was his remarkable constancy in friendship. Cold and suspicious, Henri did not easily bestow his friendship, still less his affection; but, once given, it was seldom or never withdrawn, in which respect he offered a singular contrast to his father, whose favour had been as easy to lose as it was to secure. Thus, Diane did not for a moment cherish the hope that she would be able to get rid of Montmorency as Madame d'Étampes had succeeded in doing; nor is it probable that she had any desire for such an extreme measure, since she and the Constable were old friends, and she was aware that his services were indispensable to the King, both in the Council-chamber and in the field.
To attain her end, to secure the power for which she craved, she decided upon a much more skilful policy. Since to raise up an adversary against one's rival is generally the surest means of overcoming him, she would pit one against the Constable. If two parties were contending for the government of France, she flattered herself that she would be able to hold the balance between them.
But where was she to find any one of the necessary rank, ability, and courage to dispute the ground with the redoubtable Montmorency? Certainly not among the nobility, nor even among the Princes of the Blood, that is to say, the two branches of the House of Bourbon, the Vendômes and Montpensiers. Since the treason of the Connétable de Bourbon, the family of which he had been the head had fallen into a sort of discredit, from which it was only just beginning to recover; indeed, the favour shown by François I to the ill-fated Comte d'Énghien had been the first sign of returning favour. Moreover, its present chief, Antoine, Duc de Vendôme, who was to marry Jeanne d'Albret and become the father of Henri IV, and his uncle, the Cardinal Louis de Bourbon, were hopelessly mediocre. Antoine, though brave enough in war, was weak, voluptuous, and unstable; the cardinal, remarkable only for his indolence; while the duke's three brothers, Charles, Bishop of Saintes, Jean, Comte d'Enghien, and Louis, Prince de Conde, were as yet too young to play a prominent part, though Louis, who was now seventeen, was a youth of considerable promise. As for the younger branch, which was represented by two brothers, Louis, Duc de Montpensier, and Charles, Prince de la Roche-sur-Yon, it was entirely without influence or importance, and, in fact, remained in the shadow throughout the reign of Henri II.
And so Diane had perforce to turn to the Guises, those able and ambitious Lorraine princes against whom the late King had warned his son on his deathbed, and who were to play so prominent a part in all the troubles of the latter half of the century. Cadets of the sovereign dukes of Lorraine and descendants on the distaff side of the House of Anjou, the Guises enjoyed the advantages of foreign princes, and, aided by the impotence of the Bourbons, usurped those of the Princes of the Blood. Their wealth was considerable; they had claims to the kingdom of Naples, and through Claude de Guise's eldest daughter, Marie, widow of James V of Scotland and mother of the little Mary Stuart, they aspired to control the destinies of that country.
The two chiefs of the House, in France, at the time of the accession of Henri II, were the Duc Claude and his brother, the Cardinal Jean; the former, a good general and a skilful politician, who acted as intermediary between the King and the princes beyond the Rhine, and to whom fell the task of raising the landsknechts for the service of France; the latter, an adroit diplomatist, whom Montmorency had been obliged to tolerate as a colleague during his great favour under François I, and who was still more celebrated for his luxury, his extravagant generosity, and the license of his morals.
The duke appeared seldom at Court. Court life, indeed, was but little to his taste, since his habits were more those of a German than a Frenchman, and hunting and the pleasures of the table absorbed most of his leisure. Both he and his brother, however, were very much on the alert, though they were now ambitious for the rising generation of their House rather than for themselves.
And this second generation of the Guises, represented by six young princes, is destined to eclipse altogether the first. Like the first, it will give to France, in the persons of the two eldest, a soldier and a cardinal, "a lion and a fox,"17 but their association will be much more formidable than that of their father and uncle, and will raise their family so high, that when the third generation comes on the stage, still with a soldier and a cardinal at its head, it can mount no higher save by ascending the throne itself.
The "lion and the fox" of the second generation were already much in evidence at Court. François "le Balafré" — from the double view of character and ability undeniably the greatest man whom the House of Guise produced — was high in favour with the King, and Henri's usual opponent at tennis, a game at which he greatly excelled. His brother, Charles, Archbishop of Rheims since the mature age of nine, "who had a keen and subtle mind, eloquence and grace, combined with dignity and an active and vigilant nature,"18 had also not failed to make his way into the good graces of the new sovereign, and gave every promise of following in the footsteps of his uncle, the Cardinal Jean.
The fixed idea of these two young men — the elder twenty-eight, the younger twenty-three — was the aggrandizement of their House; and, like their father and uncle, they never for a moment lost sight of their interests or their pretensions. Both perfectly comprehended the advantage which they would derive from the friendship of Diane, and had been at pains to ingratiate themselves with the favourite; indeed, the archbishop, "one of the most accomplished in the art of paying court, had, for the space of nearly two years, constrained himself to the point of giving up his own table and dining at that of Madame (Diane); for thus she was called even by the Queen."19
To arrive at an understanding with the Guises was, then, an easy task for the Sénéchale. She and they together would put an effectual check on Montmorency's progress. But she was far from contemplating an offensive alliance with them, which should end in relegating the Constable to obscurity; she was much too astute for that. With the Constable out of the way, she foresaw that the Guises would become as great a menace to her influence as was the old Minister, probably more so, since they were his superiors in rank and perhaps in ability as well. No; her intention was merely to adjust the equilibrium between the two parties, and then to devote all her energies to maintain it, ready to ally herself with whichever side was for the time being the weakest, that is to say, which seemed to threaten the least danger to her own authority. It was the rôle which, in after years, Catherine de' Medici was to play between the Bourbons and the Guises; but Diane will play it more skilfully than Catherine.
Accordingly, the King, with the gracious approval of his mistress, proceeded to load this family, which had already received so much from the Crown, with honours and benefits. François and Charles were admitted to the Privy Council; the county of Aumale was erected into a duchy-peerage for the benefit of the former;20 a cardinal's hat was procured for the latter; their barony of Joinville was erected into a principality, their lordships of Mayenne, Elbeuf and Chevreuse into marquisates; and Diane married her elder daughter, Louise de Brézé, to Charles, Marquis de Mayenne, the third of the Guise brothers, and obtained for him a grant of all the estates in France which were held by persons without an absolute title to them, and all the unoccupied lands, which belonged de jureto the Crown — a gift which not only deprived the Treasury of a valuable source of revenue, but led to the dispossession of a number of nobles, communes, and private persons, and to much harshness and injustice.
While the adversaries which Diane had decided to raise up against him were being thus aggrandized, the Constable was far from idle, and allowed no opportunity to pass of advancing the importance of his family and enriching his relatives and friends. He had five sons and seven daughters to provide for, besides numerous nephews and nieces, and he did his duty nobly by them all.
Though the eldest of the sons, François, was but seventeen years old at the accession of Henri II, their father pushed their fortunes vigorously, and procured them the posts of gentlemen of the Chamber or pages of honour while they were awaiting military appointments, for notwithstanding that he was so devout a Catholic, none of them was intended for the Church. When, in 1548, he entered, by the death of his brother the Baron de Rochepot, into possession of all the vast estates of the Montmorency family, his eldest son received permission to bear the name of "Monsieur de Montmorency," the second, Henri, took the title of Baron de Damville, while the other three — Charles, Gabriel, and Guillaume — were known respectively as the Seigneurs de Méru, de Montbéron, and de Thoré. Of the Constable's seven daughters, four were provided with husbands, selected from the greatest and wealthiest families of the kingdom; the other three entered religion, ready to become abbesses.
Nor had his nephews and nieces any reason to complain. The post of Colonel-General of Infantry was created for Gaspard de Coligny, his sister's second son; the hand of a rich heiress bestowed on his younger brother, François d'Andelot, and an equally advantageous marriage arranged for their half-sister, Mlle, de Mailly. Governments, estates, benefices, pensions, companies of men-at-arms. Such were the gifts which the King, at the instance of the Constable, distributed right and left among Montmorency's relatives and friends.21
The insinuating M. de Saint-André naturally took care not to be overlooked while all these good things were going round. He received, as his share of the spoil, the post of Grand-Chamberlain, promised him on the occasion of the famous dinner-party which had such a singular sequel, very considerable gifts at the expense of the royal demesne, and the bâton of marshal of France, which the Constable was persuaded to resign in his favour, in order to compose a very pretty quarrel between him and Diane, who claimed thebâton which Saint-André had been promised for her son-in-law, Robert de la Marck. Of that lady's numerous acquisitions we shall speak in a subsequent chapter.
Henri's favourites stood like a bodyguard around the throne to prevent any one else approaching it. Enormous as were the benefits which they received, they were never satisfied, for their greed was absolutely insatiable, and the Vieilleville Mémoires22 accuse them of stooping to the basest methods, and even to crimes, in their endeavours to gratify it:
"If one inquires why this great King was unable to advance a worthy and deserving servant whom he loved [Vieilleville himself], in accordance with his own inclination, it is easy to reply that it was out of the question, when those who had taken possession of him were unabashed, and vying with one another in their insensate desire to aggrandize their families. For estates, dignities, bishoprics, abbeys, offices, no more escaped them than do the flies the swallows. There was not a choice morsel which was not snapped up in a moment. And, for this purpose, they had, in all parts of the kingdom, paid agents and servants to give them notice of all the deaths which occurred, so that they might demand any vacant inheritance or confiscated estate. Further, they had doctors in Paris, to which all the great people in France resort, who did not fail to keep them informed as to the progress of the maladies of their patients, when these happened to be rich, and very often, in consideration of a gift of a thousand écus or a benefice of a thousand livres a year, caused them to die. So that it was almost impossible for this good-natured prince to extend his bounty in other directions. For there were four who devoured him as a lion his prey, until they had wrested from him even what he had given to his domestics, in order to provide for their own, to wit, the Duc Claude de Guise, who had six children [sons], whom he made very great; the Constable, who had twelve; the Duchesse de Valentinois,23 with her daughters and sons-in-law, and the Maréchal de Saint-André, who was surrounded by a great number of nephews and other relations, all poor, whom he himself had to provide for. And, if the King desired to bestow a benefice upon any one else, he was obliged to lie to them and to say, when they demanded it of him, that it was already disposed of. Even then, so impudent were they, that they would argue with him that this could not be, alleging that they had received immediate information when the vacancy occurred."
The chronicler relates an instance of this. One day, the Abbey of Saint-Thierry-lez-Rheims became vacant. It was a choice morsel, for, besides a revenue of some 12,000 livres, there was an extensive vineyard, noted for the abundance and excellence of the white wine which it yielded; and no sooner did the news reach the Court than the Duc de Guise, the Constable, and Diane all three applied for it simultaneously. The duke wanted it for his second son, Charles, though that young gentleman was already loaded with benefices; Montmorency for his eldest nephew, Odet, Cardinal de Châtillon, and Diane for a relative of her late husband. This appears to have been the first which the King had heard about the vacancy, but, as his favourites of late had been more than usually importunate in their demands, and he was also anxious to provide for Vieilleville, who, we are assured, had never yet asked for anything, he answered that, much to his regret, he was unable to oblige any of them, since, two hours earlier, he had despatched a courier to Saint-Michel-en-Bois to inform Vieilleville that he had granted the abbey to him. The "three harpies" retired grumbling, whereupon the King sent for his secretary and ordered him to lose not a moment in advising the new holder of his good fortune.
Carloix adds that his master, disgusted with the rapacity of the favourites, and "desirous of showing them how a gentleman should behave when honoured by the King's generosity," gave the abbey to his brother, who was in Holy Orders, without retaining any part of the revenues; the furniture and tapestry to the relatives of the late abbot; the linen, which happened to be of very fine texture, to Diane and two ladies to whom he was related; the wine in the cellars to the nobles of the Court, and the corn in the granaries to the monks and the poor. Two greyhounds, reputed to be of great swiftness, were all that he kept for himself. Wonderful disinterestedness!
If many persons had reason to complain of the shameful rapacity of the favourites, a few found in it cause for thankfulness. Among these were Madame d'Étampes and her friend Longueval. In consideration of the surrender to her of the duchess's estate of Benne, the new left-handed queen consented to forgo the rest of her revenge and to leave her fallen rival in possession of the greater part of her property. On his side, Longueval "sold" his lordship of Marchais, near Laon, to the Cardinal Charles de Guise, who thereupon engaged to prove his innocence to the King, which he did so effectually, that the prosecution which was pending against him for treasonable correspondence with the Emperor was allowed to drop, and he was set at liberty. He could not, of course, have been brought to trial without involving Madame d'Étampes, and the King, according to Varillas, was persuaded by the cardinal "not to stain the beginning of his reign by a signal and gratuitous affront to the memory of his father, by abandoning to the vengeance of Justice the object whom he had so tenderly loved for nearly twenty-two years."24
Madame d'Étampes lived to see the last of the Valois upon the throne, though very little is known of the rest of her life. The lawsuit which her husband had brought against her dragged on for some years, and in the course of it her relations with the late King were ruthlessly exposed. Then Henri II, suddenly seized by a tardy consideration for his father's memory, put a stop to the proceedings,25 so that its only result was to stir up a great deal of mud and put many thousands of livres into the pockets of the gentlemen of the long robe.
In 1565, the Duc d'Étampes, who "was wanting in that delicacy of soul which assures domestic happiness,"26 and appears to have been separated altogether from his wife for the past fifteen years, died, leaving a will in which he stated that "since the duchess had been unwilling to occupy the place of a wife, she was unable to demand her dowry."
After her husband's death, Madame d'Étampes, who was henceforth free to reside where she wished, retired to the Château of Heilly, which was now the property of her nephew, Jean de Pisseleu, and here she passed the rest of her life. She had no child either by her husband or by the King, but she seems to have been much attached to her nephews and nieces and to have been very generous to the poor. She died in September 1580. Mézeray asserts that, during her later years, she was "much addicted to the exercises of the Protestant religion, and protected with all her power those who professed it"; but this statement, like a good many others made by that historian, appears to be without foundation.
Notes
(1) The écu, or crown, at the time of the accession of Henri II, represented two and a quarter livres, or about ten francs in money of to-day.
(2) Anne, Duc de Montmorency, Connétable et Pair de France, sous les Rois Henri II, François II et Charles IX.
(3) Jean Bertrandi, or Bertrand (1470-1560), had been First President of the Parlement of Toulouse, but in 1538 he became, through the influence of Montmorency, Third President of the Parlement of Paris. On the disgrace of Lizet in 1550, he was appointed First President, and shortly afterwards the Seals were entrusted to him, though Olivier still retained the title of Chancellor. Having lost his wife, he abandoned the Law for the Church, was appointed Bishop of Cominges, then Archbishop of Sens, and, finally, in 1557, at the age of eighty-seven, was created a cardinal.
(4) The King's Council, or le Conseil des affaires politiques, in which questions of State and finance were discussed, must not be confounded with the Conseil d'État, which occupied itself with questions of administration. The Conseil d'État was composed of the members of the King's Council, with the Cardinals de Bourbon, de Châtillon, de Ferrara, and du Bellay, the Bishops of Soissons and Coutances, the Ducs de Guise, de Nevers, and d'Étampes, and the Président Raymond. Of these, the Cardinal de Châtillon, the Bishop of Coutances, and the Ducs de Nevers and d'Étampes had been summoned to it by Henri II. Étampes appears to have been indebted for his selection to the fact that he was now on very bad terms with his wife.
(5) A few weeks after the death of François I, Queen Eleanor, who had been almost as complete a cypher at the Court of France as her predecessor, poor Queen Claude, retired to Brussels. Her last act before leaving France was to procure the disgrace of one of the minor mistresses of the late King.
(6) Despatch of May 1547 to the Queen-Dowager of Hungary, Governess of the Netherlands. This and another despatch of Saint-Mauris, written in the following month, are preserved in the Royal Archives at Brussels. Both are of great length and contain a great deal of curious information about the first few weeks of Henri's reign. They have been published by M. Charles Paillard, in the Revue historique in 1877, but appear to be very little known.
(7) Saint-Mauris. The Ambassador means the tax paid on the accession of a new sovereign by the holders of venal offices, and by the corporations of towns who wished to be confirmed in their privileges and immunities.
(8) Despatch of Matteo Dandolo, in Armand Baschet, la Diplomatie vénitienne.
(9) Beaucaire.
(10) Saint-Mauris.
(11) That is to say François de Guise, Charles, Archbishop of Rheims, who later in 1547 was created a cardinal, and Claude, who was about to marry Louise de Brézé, Diane's younger daughter.
(12) Madeleine de Mailly, widow of Charles, Seigneur de Roye, Comte de Roncy, and mother of Éléonore de Roye, Princesse de Condé.
(13) Côme Clausse, Seigneur de Marchaumont in Picardy. He was Henri II's secretary.
(14) Probably a relative of Claude de l'Aubespine, Secretary of Finance. For the Secretary himself could scarcely be described as a "vulgar person."
(15) Vieilleville, Mémoires.
(16) Tavannes.
(17) Henri Martin.
(18) Castelnau, Mémoires.
(19) L'Aubespine, Histoire particulière de la Cour de Henri IIe, in Cimber and Danjou.
(20) The Parlement of Paris protested vigorously against this erection, on the somewhat singular ground that, as Charlemagne was supposed to have created twelve peers in remembrance of the twelve judges of Israel and the twelve apostles of Our Lord, the number ought not to be increased. Apart from the life-peerages of Alençon and Berry, possessed by the Queen of Navarre, there were at this time seven lay peerages in France, viz.: Flanders, Artois, Eu, Nevers, Vendôme, Guise, and Montpensier.
(21) Decrue, Anne, duc de Montmorency.
(22) It should be remembered that the Mémoires de Vieilleville were not written by the marshal himself, but by his secretary, Vincent Carloix.
(23) Diane de Poitiers was created Duchess de Valentinois in October 1548.
(24) Varillas, Histoire de François Ier.
(25) Henri, however, had already given evidence in person in favour of Jean de Brosse.
(26) Desgardins, la Duchesse d'Étampes.