Sacre and coronation of Henri II — Affairs of Italy — Charles V and the Farnesi — Assassination of Pierluigi Farnese, natural son of Paul III, by the nobles of Piacenza, and occupation of the town by the Imperialists — Fury of the Pope — Negotiations for an alliance between France and the Papacy — The Constable dissuades Henri II from making war — Journey of Henri II to Piedmont — Mimic combat in honour of the King at Beaune — Arrival of Henri II at Turin — Annexation of the marquisate of Saluzzo
SO soon as the remains of François I had been deposited at Saint-Denis, where Henri II subsequently erected a magnificent monument to his memory, preparations were made for the Coronation of his successor. This ceremony, in accordance with ancient custom, took place at Rheims, July 26 being the date selected.01
On the day preceding the ceremony, Henri II made his entry into the town, where "several pleasant and sumptuous spectacles had been prepared for him," and proceeded to the cathedral. At the western door, over which "a great canopy of crimson velvet enriched with sumptuous gold and silver embroidery" had been erected, he was received by Charles de Guise, Archbishop of Rheims, and his chapter, the ecclesiastical peers of France, and a number of other prelates, all in full canonicals. After acknowledging their salutations, the King knelt upon a velvet cushion placed upon a footcloth of cloth of gold, and the archbishop presented to him a copy of the Gospels, which he kissed. He then rose, and was conducted into the cathedral by the Cardinal de Guiry, Bishop of Langres, and the Cardinal de Châtillon, Bishop of Beauvais, the former walking on his right hand and the latter on his left. The two cardinals escorted him to the high altar, which he kissed, and laid upon it "a rich reliquary of the Resurrection of Our Lord, made of costly agate, which was valued at 1,000 écus."
His Majesty next entered an oratory which had been prepared for him on the right of the high altar, where he heard vespers, the archbishop officiating, and at the conclusion of the service proceeded to the archiepiscopal palace, in which a suite of apartments, magnificently furnished and decorated, had been made ready for his reception. After he had supped, he again visited the cathedral to confess and receive absolution, and then returned to the palace "to take his repose."
The following morning, at six o'clock, the four premier barons of France — Montmorency, Martigues, Harcourt, and La Trémoille — were summoned to the royal presence and directed to proceed to the Abbey of Saint-Rémy and command the grand prior to bring the Holy Ampulla to the cathedral,02 while they themselves were to remain in the abbey as hostages for the safe restoration of the precious relic.03 They departed, preceded by equerries bearing their banners,04 and taking with them a white horse, which was to carry the grand prior to and from the cathedral, and a canopy of white damask spangled with golden fleurs-de-lis, which was always held over the prior's head, both going and returning.
So soon as the four barons had started for the Abbey of Saint-Rémy, the lay peers, Henri d'Albret, King of Navarre, and the Ducs de Vendôme, de Guise, de Nevers, de Montpensier and d'Aumale, representing the six primitive peerages of Burgundy, Normandy, Aquitaine, Flanders, Champagne, and Toulouse,05 set out for the cathedral, where they found the ecclesiastical peers, the Archbishop of Rheims, the Cardinal de Guiry, Bishop of Langres, the Cardinal de Châtillon, Bishop of Beauvais, and the Bishops of Noyon, Saintes, and Châlons, awaiting them.06
In solemn state, accompanied by the canons, vicars, and chaplains of the cathedral, and preceded by crosses, candles, holy water, and censers, the twelve peers repaired to the archiepiscopal palace, and were ushered into the royal bedchamber, a most magnificent apartment, hung with priceless tapestries and with a ceiling ornamented with fleurs-de-lis of fine gold. His Majesty was reclining on a splendid bed, which was "covered with a great cloth of gold damask over crimson silk, reaching to the ground on both sides, with his head resting on a pillow of crimson velvet covered with rich embroidery." He was dressed in a fine chemise of Holland cloth, with slits on both front and back, to receive the Holy Unction, above which was the camisole of crimson satin,07 which had also slits on front and back, for the same reason, and a long robe, in the fashion of a robe de nuit, of cloth of silver.
The Bishops of Langres and Beauvais08 offered up certain prayers proper to the occasion, at the conclusion of which they advanced, kissed the King's hand, and assisted him to rise from the bed. The procession was then reformed and set out for the cathedral. First, came the Constable, dressed in similar fashion to the lay peers, and bearing his sword of office, unsheathed. Next, the King, with the Bishop of Langres on his right hand and the Bishop of Beauvais on his left. Behind the King, came the Chancellor, in his ermine-trimmed robes, with his mortier on his head. After the Chancellor, the Maréchal de Saint-André, filling for the nonce Montmorency's post of Grand-Master, the Grand Chamberlain, the Duc de Longueville walking on his right, and the First Chamberlain the Maréchal de Sedan — or de la Marck, as some historians call him — on his left. The other peers, ecclesiastical and lay, followed in order of precedence.
On reaching the cathedral, Henri II proceeded to the high altar, on either side of which two chairs covered with cloth of gold had been placed, one for the King, the other for the Archbishop of Rheims. The King knelt at the altar in prayer, and was then conducted to his seat by the Bishops of Langres and Beauvais, where the archbishop sprinkled him with holy water.
A few minutes later, the Prior of the Abbey of Saint-Rémy09 arrived, bearing the Holy Ampulla, suspended by a chain round his neck. The archbishop descended the altar steps to meet him, and received the sacred vessel, solemnly promising to restore it at the conclusion of the ceremony. Then he returned to the altar, upon which he placed the Ampulla, the King bowing low before it. While the choir was singing an anthem, the archbishop retired to a vestry behind the altar to assume his pontifical robes, and, on his return, administered to the King the oath of Promitto. Then the Bishops of Langres and Beauvais demanded of the people of France if they accepted Henri de Valois as their King; and the congregation having signified its assent, his Majesty took the oath to the Kingdom,beginning "Hæc tria promitto," with his hand on the text of the Gospels, which he kissed. This finished, the two bishops conducted him to the altar, where the Maréchal de Saint-André divested him of the robe of cloth of silver in which he had come from the palace; while, after the archbishop had recited over him the customary prayers, the Grand Chamberlain put the buskins on his feet, and the King of Navarre, as Duc de Bourgogne, fixed the spurs on his heels, which, however, he immediately afterwards removed. Then the archbishop took up the sword in its scabbard, girded it on, ungirded it, unsheathed it, and, leaving the scabbard on the altar, recited the customary prayer, and placed the blade in the King's hand. The monarch received it with every mark of humility and placed it on the altar; but the archbishop, taking it up, returned it to the King, who immediately handed it to the Constable, that functionary having previously given his sword of office to his equerry.
The moment had now arrived for the ceremony of the Holy Unction; and the archbishop, going to the altar, took the plate on which stood the chalice of Saint-Rémy, and placed upon it the chrism which he used in the consecration of bishops. He then took from the Holy Ampulla, with a golden needle which was attached to it, a very small quantity of the oil which it contained — "the size of a pea," says the official account — placed it upon his finger and mixed it with the chrism; while the choir sang the anthemGentem Francorum, and the King prostrated himself before the altar. At the conclusion of the anthem, the bishops commenced the Litany, the choir making the responses; and when they came to the Hunc famulum tuum, the King rose, and, approaching the archbishop, who was seated, as when he consecrated a bishop, knelt at his feet. And the archbishop anointed him, first, on the crown of the head; secondly, on the chest; thirdly, between the two shoulders; fourthly, on the right shoulder; fifthly, on the left shoulder; sixthly, in the bend of the right arm, and lastly, in the bend of the left arm, repeating at each unction the prayer of Ungo te Regem.
The Bishops of Langres and Beauvais having closed the slits in the chemise and camisole which they had opened before the ceremony, the Grand Chamberlain came forward and invested the King with the tunic, the dalmatica, and the mantle.
The King being now arrayed in all his Coronation robes, the archbishop proceeded to the eighth and final unction— that of the hands — which performed, he presented a pair of gloves, and these his Majesty put on. Next, the archbishop consecrated a magnificent diamond ring and offered it to the King, who placed it upon the forefinger of his right hand, in token of his espousal of the Kingdom; after which the archbishop took up the sceptre and the Hand of Justice from the altar, and placed the one in the monarch's right hand and the other in his left.
Then the Chancellor stepped to the altar, and, turning so as to face the congregation, summoned in turn each of the peers, secular and ecclesiastical, to present himself; and the twelve peers came forward, one by one, until they formed a circle round the King. The archbishop, however, immediately went back to the altar, and taking up the great crown of Charlemagne, held it just over the King's head, but without allowing it to touch it, while the other peers placed their hands under the crown in order to support it. The archbishop said the prayer Coronet te Deus, and the crown was placed upon the King's head, after which all the peers repeated another prayer, beginning "Accipe Coronam."
This concluded, the archbishop took the King by the right sleeve of his tunic and led him to the throne, the Constable bearing the sword before them. The King took his seat, and the archbishop, after offering him his mitre, kissed him upon the shoulder, and cried in a loud voice: "Vivat Rex in æternum." The peers, one by one, did the same; the trumpets sounded, and the congregation burst into joyful acclamations, which were taken up by the immense crowd assembled outside the cathedral, whose enthusiasm was not diminished when the heralds proceeded to scatter amongst them "about one thousand pieces of gold forged and struck with the representation and image of the King, with the date of the day and year of his very holy consecration and coronation, and a great quantity of écus and common money."
After the choir had sung the Te Deum, "to the accompaniment of organs and other music," the archbishop celebrated Mass, and having absolved the King, administered to him the Holy Sacrament, which was received "in great humility and perfect devotion." The Comte d'Enghien — the second Prince of the Blood — then came forward, removed the great crown and replaced it by the smaller one; and the procession was reformed and returned to the palace in the same order as it had quitted it, save that it was now headed by Enghien, bearing the great crown on a cushion.
We have an interesting portrait of Henri II at the time of his coronation, from the pen of Matteo Dandolo, who had been selected by the Republic of Venice to felicitate the King on his accession to the throne. Dandolo was already acquainted with Henri, since he had been sent on a mission to the French Court five years earlier, on which occasion, it will be remembered, he had described him as a taciturn and melancholy prince, who had never been known to laugh heartily.10 According to the account which he now despatched to the Senate, however, it would appear that the Crown of France had operated a complete transformation in its present possessor:
"His Majesty is in his twenty-ninth year, and although I once represented him to your Excellencies as a prince of a pale, livid countenance, and so melancholy that many of those about him said that they had never known him laugh heartily, to-day I ought to assure you that he has become gay, that he has a ruddy complexion, and that he is in perfect health. He has but a scanty beard, but nevertheless, he shaves it; his eyes are rather large than otherwise, but he keeps them lowered; his countenance, from one side of the jaw to the other, and the forehead, lack breadth; his head is not too large. His body is very well proportioned, rather tall than otherwise. Personally, he is all full of valour, very courageous and enterprising; he is very addicted to the game of tennis, to such a degree as never to miss a day, for less than rain, for he plays under the open sky, and sometimes even after having hunted at full speed one or two stags, which is one of the most fatiguing of exercises, as your Excellencies know. The same day, after having undergone such exertions, he will practise martial exercises for two or three hours, and at these he is one of the most celebrated. At the time of my first embassy, I assisted at jousts of this kind, and I can say that they are not without danger. Indeed, running one day at the barriers without looking too closely at them, the father and son were overturned, and the former gave the latter such a blow on the head that he removed a good deal of flesh. It should be said, also, that he behaves not less as a good soldier than as a good captain; and a person whom I believe to be trustworthy has told me that he found himself with him in an extremely perilous position, and that he did not wish to leave it, but, on the contrary, bravely to remain there."
On the conclusion of the official fetes which followed the Coronation, the Court proceeded to Fontainebleau, where it remained during the rest of the year 1547 and the first months of 1548, save for visits to Montmorency's Châteaux of Écouen and Chantilly, for a series of grand hunting-parties organised by the Constable in honour of his Majesty. At the beginning of the spring, however, it set out upon a journey to Piedmont.
For Henri II desired to be King in Italy as well as in France, or, at any rate, he wished to show that he had not renounced the heritage of Charles VIII, Louis XII, and François I beyond the Alps, and that he was determined to retain his hold on Piedmont, and to continue the friendly relations of his House with those Italian States which resented the Imperial domination of the peninsula. And it was certainly an opportune moment for France to assert herself, for Italy was seething with intrigue and discontent, and in the previous autumn the antagonism of the Papacy to the Emperor had all but caused another conflagration.
The Emperor had pledged himself to advance the interests of the Farnesi, and had married his natural daughter Margaret of Austria to Ottavio Farnese, the elder of the two sons of Paul III's rascally son Pierluigi; but he hesitated to invest his son-in-law with Parma and Piacenza, and in 1545 the Pope, losing patience and feeling confident that the Emperor could not afford to quarrel with him, conferred these territories upon Pierluigi, whom Charles detested. At the beginning of the following year, a commission appointed to inquire into the question of the suzerainty over Parma and Piacenza, which was claimed both by Pope and Emperor, decided that Pierluigi must not bear the title of duke without Charles's investiture; and the chagrin of the Farnesi at this decision was increased when, three months later, the Emperor appointed their enemy, Ferrante Gonzaga, to the governorship of the Milanese, which they had coveted for themselves. Pierluigi thereupon threw himself into the arms of France; a marriage was arranged between his younger son, Orazio, and the Dauphin's natural daughter, Diane de France; and insurrections, which were only with difficulty suppressed, were stirred up at Genoa and Naples. The Imperialists retaliated by intriguing against Pierluigi in Parma and Piacenza, where he was cordially hated, and inciting the nobles of those cities to rise against their tyrant.
Meanwhile, the Pope remained the professed ally of Charles V, though France did not despair of gaining him over; and, after the accession of Henri II, no time was lost in making advances to his Holiness through the Ambassador to the Vatican and the French cardinals who were residing at Rome. Paul, however, did not seem in any great hurry to respond to them, and it was not until August that he consented to accord the new King the "indult," or right of nomination to vacant benefices, which François had enjoyed by the terms of the Concordat of 1516, sending, at the same time, a rosary which he had blessed to Catherine de' Medici and a string of pearls to his future grand-daughter. However, a few weeks later, an event occurred which precipitated the desiredrapprochement.
On September 10, the nobles of Piacenza rose against Pierluigi Farnese and assassinated him, and on the following day Gonzaga occupied the city in the name of the Emperor. Paul III, outraged at once in his affections and his ambition, accused the viceroy of having incited the crime, and angrily demanded that the murdered man's elder son, Ottavio, should be established at Piacenza. This was refused, whereupon the Pope, vowing that he would suffer martyrdom rather than renounce his vengeance, declared himself ready to conclude an alliance with Henri II, the Swiss, and Venice; and at the end of October Charles de Guise, who had come to Rome under the pretext of receiving his cardinal's hat from his Holiness's own hands, but really to confirm him in his bellicose dispositions, signed with him, in the name of France, a defensive treaty.
But for the interposition of Montmorency, war must certainly have followed, for the treaty just concluded was defensive in name only, and Paul III made desperate efforts to induce the King to invade the Milanese or to attack Genoa and Naples, and even recommended an alliance with the Turks and the Algerines. The respect, however, which the Constable always professed for the spiritual authority of the Holy See did not go so far as the sacrifice of the interests of the State in order to promote the temporal aggrandizement of its present occupant; and he foresaw that Paul III would in all probability be the sole gainer by the adventure in which he was so anxious to engage France. Nor was he altogether sorry to have an opportunity of thwarting his rivals, the Guises, and of procuring the condemnation of the work of the new cardinal. He accordingly pointed out to the King that it was impossible to place any confidence in the Pope, whose conduct had up to the present been one long tissue of dissimulations, and who, while demanding that France should take the offensive in order to recover Piacenza, refused to enthrone Orazio Farnese, his Majesty's future son-in-law, at Parma, instead of Ottavio, the son-in-law of the Emperor.
The Constable's task was facilitated by the reports of Morvilliers, the French Ambassador at Venice, who represented the Senate as but little inclined to engage in a league with a Pontiff of eighty-four, and on account of a quarrel more private than public; and the Guises being themselves compelled to admit the imprudence of beginning a war with such feeble support, Charles de Guise returned to France, and all armed interference in the affairs of Italy was for the moment abandoned, although an attempt was made to persuade the Pope to renew the league on a purely defensive basis.
In view of the troubles which were agitating Italy, Henri II resolved to lose no time in going in person to secure the recognition of his authority beyond the Alps, and in April 1548, he set out for Piedmont. With the idea of impressing the Piedmontese and his Italian allies, he was accompanied not only by the greater part of the Court, but by a considerable army, the objections of the Imperial Ambassador being met by an assurance that the troops were merely intended to relieve the French garrisons in Savoy and Piedmont.
The King journeyed by easy stages through the eastern provinces, accepting the hospitality of the Constable's eldest nephew, the Cardinal de Châtillon, at the Abbey of Vauhusant, near Sens, and that of the Guises at Joinville. Magnificent receptions awaited his Majesty in every town through which he passed, perhaps the most interesting being that at Beaune, where he arrived on July 18, and where the decorations were on so sumptuous a scale that we are assured by the secretary of the Chapter that "the greatest nobles raised cries of delight, declaring that they had never beheld anything so beautiful."11
A few days before the arrival of the King, the principal inhabitants of the town had met in solemn conclave to decide upon some divertissement for the amusement of his Majesty. Aware that military exercises and manoeuvres were preferred by Henri II to all other spectacles, it was finally decided that it should take the form of a mimic combat; and the Sieur Denys Berardier, greffier to the Chancery, was accordingly charged with the construction of a wooden fort on the Champagne Saint-Nicolas, which one party of the citizens was to defend, and another to escalade.
The worthy greffier published in the following year an account of this mimic combat, which makes very entertaining reading.12 The fort, he tells us, was fifty feet square, with a tower at each angle; the walls were fifteen feet high, and the ditches ten feet wide. Several pieces of cannon were mounted on the ramparts, which were manned by arquebusiers and pikemen. The attacking party, to the number of some 1,500 men, armed de pied en cap, advanced to the assault, and a Homeric struggle ensued, which bore much too close a resemblance to actual warfare to suit the feminine portion of the spectators, who prayed fervently that their husbands and sons might emerge from it scathless. At first, the assailants had the advantage, and planting their scaling-ladders against the walls, swarmed up them and sprang over the ramparts; but the garrison greeted them with a hail of stones, "so large that they could scarcely be raised in both hands," and drove them back in confusion.
Then, Henri II, who had been an interested spectator of the combat, rode up to a body of pikemen who were marching to the assistance of the stormers, and cried out: "Courage, courage, my lads! Succour your comrades! Are you going to allow yourselves to be beaten to-day?" "And the said assailants," continues the writer, "hearing the words of the prince, received so great an accession of energy and were inspired with such boldness, that they entered and won the said fort, though this was not accomplished without effusion of blood and many concussions and broken limbs."
It is a relief to learn, however, that, "owing to the intercessions and prayers which the wives of the assailants and the defenders made during the combat, no deaths supervened," and that "the lord King, the princes, and the gentlemen of the Court were very delighted and satisfied with the capture of the said fort."
The royal cortège, continuing its journey, passed through Dauphine and Savoy, both Chambéry — the ancient capital of the Dukes of Savoy — and Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne being honoured by state entries,13 crossed the Alps by the pass of Susa, and in the middle of August arrived at Turin, where his Majesty was received by the Prince of Melfi, governor of Piedmont.
Brilliant fétés followed the arrival of the Court at Turin, for Henri, on the advice of the Constable, had resolved to surround himself with all possible magnificence, "in order to give at the beginning a lofty idea of his reign to foreigners, and particularly in Italy."14 He ennobled a number of prominent persons, doubled the pay of the troops, and distributed the soldiers who had been disabled in the recent war among the abbeys of France, where they were maintained for the rest of their lives. This arrangement, which was called at that time "ung donné," and was continued by the successors of Henri II, was the first formal recognition of the duty of the State towards the soldier who had suffered in its service.15
The King did not make himself less welcome among the inhabitants of Piedmont than among the troops, for he charged himself with all the debts owing to the Piedmontese by soldiers who had died or disappeared, which amounted to a very considerable sum.
Henri's arrival in Italy synchronised in a highly suspicious manner with another conspiracy against the Doria at Genoa, and a plot against the life of the Milanese viceroy by the sons of Pierluigi Farnese. Both these enterprises failed, however, and the only direct result of the King's journey was the annexation of the marquisate of Saluzzo, lying in the southern angle of the Western Alps, whose titular ruler had just died in the prison into which the French had thrown him, on a charge of treasonable correspondence with the Imperialists. The possession of this little State was of great importance to France, since it offered a sure means of communication between her and Italy, and it remained French territory until 1601.
Notes
(1) In our account of the Sacre, we have followed the official account, published in Godefroy, le Cérémonial de France (Paris, 1619).
(2) The Holy Ampulla was supposed to be the vessel with which Saint-Rémy baptized Clovis, though no allusion to the miracle to which it owed its origin is to be found in any contemporary document, and Hinckmar, Archbishop of Rheims, who wrote more than three hundred and fifty years after the baptism of Clovis, is the first to mention it. Hinckmar, indeed, is strongly suspected of having invented the legend, for the twofold purpose of assuring to his church the monopoly of the "sacres," and of investing the unction received by Charles le Chauve, of whom he was a staunch adherent, with an importance which it would not otherwise have possessed. According to him, when Saint-Rémy was about to baptize Clovis, the crowd about them was so great that the priest who was bringing the holy oil was unable to approach. Saint-Rémy was in despair, but suddenly a snow-white dove was seen descending from heaven, bearing a little phial, which it placed on the altar, and immediately disappeared. The phial, when opened, was found to contain oil, which diffused a most delightful odour. It was used for the baptism of Clovis and subsequently for the anointing of the Kings of France.
This miraculous phial was called the Holy Ampulla, and was preserved at Rheims, in the Abbey of Saint-Rémy, in an oval reliquary of silver-gilt set with jewels, with the representation of a dove holding it between its claws in the centre. The oil which it contained had solidified with time and become of a reddish brown colour. At the moment of the anointing of a king, a tiny portion was extracted with a golden needle and mixed with the chrism.
The Holy Ampulla was broken to pieces, in 1793, by Ruhl, the deputy in mission to the department of the Marne, but before it was delivered to the Conventionalist, the Abbé Seraine, curé of Saint-Rémy, had extracted a part of its contents, and this was carefully preserved and used at the coronation of Charles X, in 1825.
(3) As Montmorency's presence in his official capacity was, of course, required in the cathedral, his place was taken by his eldest son.
(4) These banners were afterwards hung up in the cathedral, two on either side of the altar, in memory of the honour which had been conferred upon their owners.
(5) The lay peers wore "tunics of gold damask, reaching to the knee, mantles of scarlet and purple serge, with round capes trimmed with spotted ermine, and coronets on their heads, enriched with gems of inestimable value."
(6) The two last prelates were not peers, but they represented the Bishops of Laon and Troyes, who were at Rome.
(7) The camisole of crimson satin was one of the Coronation vestments, which were kept at the Abbey of Saint-Denis. The others were the tunic, the dalmatica, the mantle, and the buskins, which were all of azure satin, splendidly embroidered and enriched with priceless gems. The Coronation ornaments were the great and smaller crowns, the sceptre, the Hand of Justice, the sword, and the spurs. On the accession of Henri II, the vestments were found to have so much deteriorated that the King ordered fresh ones to be made
(8) Although they were both cardinals, they are referred to throughout the official account as bishops, since it was as ecclesiastical peers, and not as members of the Sacred College, that they officiated.
(9) It was the sub-prior who came, the grand prior, the Cardinal de Lenoncourt, being then at Rome.
(10) See p. 62 supra.
(11) Cited by Aubertin, le Roi Henri IIe à Beaune en 1548. Now that pageants are so much the vogue, it may not be without interest to know that on May 21, 1888, a pageant representing the entry of Henri II and Catherine de' Medici into Beaune was performed in that town with great success. A singular feature of this pageant was that the actors were forbidden to cry "Vive le roi!" and "Vive la reine!" from fear lest such expressions should be misinterpreted.
(12) La Prinse d'un fort, à l'entrée du roy Henri second de ce nom, faicte en la ville de Beaulne le XVIIIe jour de juillet dernier passé, rédigé far escript par maistre Denys Berardier, greffier de la Chancellerie de Beaulne, etc. (Paris, 1549), cited by Aubertin, le Roi Henri II à Beaune en 1548.
(13) At Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne a novel diversion had been prepared for the King. On his arrival, he was met by a troop of one hundred men clothed in the skins of bears, and "so cleverly disguised that they might have been taken for real bears," who followed him on all-fours to the church, whither he proceeded to hear Mass, and afterwards escorted him to his lodging, climbing up walls and the columns of the market-place, and imitating the howling of the animals they represented. Their antics appear to have entertained his Majesty greatly, and he distributed among them a sum of 2,000 écus; but the din they made frightened the horses of his escort, which had been tethered outside the church, with the result that they stampeded and injured a number of people.
(14) Decrue, Anne, duc de Montmorency.
(15) Henri Martin; La Barre Duparc, Histoire de Henri II.