“You may determine now who are your friends, who your loyal servants,” she told him. “How is so much force to be resisted in the state in which you find yourself? The Catholics exhausted, and weary as they are by a civil war in which their king was of little account to them, are going to arm so as to offer what resistance they can without depending upon you. Thus, within your State you will have two great parties under arms, neither of which can be called your own. Unless you stir yourself, and quickly, unless you choose now between friends and foes, you will find yourself alone, isolated, in grave peril, without authority or power.”
He sank overwhelmed to a chair, and took his head in his hands, cogitating. When next he looked at her there was positive fear in his great eyes, a fear evoked by contemplation of the picture which her words had painted for him.
He looked from her to Anjou.
“What then?” he asked. “What then? How is the danger to be averted?”
“By a simple stroke of the sword,” she answered calmly. “Slice off at a blow the head of this beast of rebellion, this hydra of heresy.”
He huddled back, horror in his eyes. His hands slid slowly along the carved arms of his chair, and clenched the ends so tightly that his knuckles looked like knobs of marble.
“Kill the Admiral?” he said slowly.
“The Admiral and the chief Huguenot leaders,” she said, much in the tone she might have used, were it a matter of wringing the necks of a dozen capons.
“Ah, ca! Par la Mort Dieu!” He heaved himself up, raging. “Thus would your hatred of him be served. Thus would you—”
Coolly she sliced into his foaming speech.
“Not I — not I!” she said. “Do nothing upon my advice. Summon your Council. Send for Tavannes, Biragues, Retz, and the others. Consult with them. They are your friends; you trust and believe in them. When they know the facts, see if their counsel will differ from your mother’s. Send for them; they are in the Louvre now.”
He looked at her a moment.
“Very well,” he said; and reeled to the door, bawling hoarsely his orders.
They came, one by one — the Marshal de Tavannes, the Duke of Retz, the Duke of Nevers, the Chancellor de Biragues, and lastly the Duke of Guise, upon whom the King scowled a jealous hatred that was now fully alive.
The window, which overlooked the quay and the river, stood open to admit what air might be stirring on that hot day of August.
Charles sat at his writing-table, sullen and moody, twining a string of beads about his fingers. Catherine occupied the chair over beyond the table, Anjou sitting near her on a stool. The others stood respectfully awaiting that the King should make known his wishes. The shifty royal glance swept over them from under lowering brows; then it rested almost in challenge upon his mother.
“Tell them,” he bade her curtly.
She told them what already she had told her son, relating all now with greater detail and circumstance. For some moments nothing was heard in that room but the steady drone of her unemotional voice. When she had finished, she yawned and settled herself to hear what might be answered.
“Well,” snapped the King, “you have heard. What do you advise? Speak out!”
Nevers was the first to answer.
“There is no other way,” he said stiffly, “but that which Her Majesty advises. The danger is grave. If it is to be averted, action must be prompt and effective.”
Tavannes clasped his hands behind him and said much the same, as did presently the Chancellor.
Twisting and untwisting his chaplet of beads about his long fingers, his eyes averted, the King heard each in turn. Then he looked up. His glance, deliberately ignoring Guise, settled upon the Duke of Retz, who held aloof.
“And you, Monsieur le Marechal, what is your counsel?”
Retz drew himself up, as if bracing himself to meet opposing forces. He was a little pale, but quite composed.
“If there is a man whom I should hate,” he said, “it is this Gaspard de Coligny, who has defamed me and all my family by the foul accusations he has put abroad. But I will not,” he added firmly, “take vengeance upon my enemies at the expense of my king and master. I cannot counsel a course so disastrous to Your Majesty and the whole kingdom. Did we act as we have been advised, Sire, can you doubt that we should be taxed — and rightly taxed in view of the treaty that has been signed — with perfidy and disloyalty?”
Dead silence followed that bombshell of opposition, coming from a quarter whence it was least expected. For Catherine and Anjou had confidently counted upon the Duke’s hatred of Coligny to ensure his support of their designs.
A little colour crept into the pale cheeks of the King. His glance kindled out of its sullenness. He was as one who sees sudden hope amid despair.
“That is the truth,” he said. “Messieurs, and you, madame my mother, you have heard the truth. How do you like it?”
“Monsieur de Retz is deceived by an excess of loyalty,” said Anjou quickly. “Because he bears a personal enmity to the Admiral, he conceives that it would hurt his honour to speak otherwise. It must savour to him, as he has said, of using his king and master to avenge his own personal wrongs. We can respect Monsieur de Retz’s view, although we hold it mistaken.”
“Will Monsieur de Retz tell us what other course lies open?” quoth the bluff Tavannes.
“Some other course must be found,” cried the King, rousing himself. “It must be found, do you hear? I will not have you touch the life of my friend the Admiral. I will not have it — by the Blood!”
A hubbub followed, all speaking at once, until the King banged the table, and reminded them that his cabinet was not a fish-market.
“I say that there is no other way,” Catherine insisted. “There cannot be two kings in France, nor can there be two parties. For your own safety’s sake, and for the safety of your kingdom, I beseech you so to contrive that in France there be but one party with one head — yourself.”
“Two kings in France?” he said. “What two kings?”
“Yourself and Gaspard I — King Coligny, the King of the Huguenots.”
“He is my subject — my faithful, loyal subject,” the King protested, but with less assurance.
“A subject who raises forces of his own, levies taxes of his own, garrisons Huguenot cities,” said Biragues. “That is a very dangerous type of subject, Sire.”
“A subject who forces you into war with Protestant Flanders against Catholic Spain,” added the blunt Tavannes.
“Forces me?” roared the King, half rising, his eyes aflash. “That is a very daring word.”
“It would be if the proof were absent. Remember, Sire, his very speech to you before you permitted him to embark upon preparations for this war. ‘Give us leave,’ he said, ‘to make war in Flanders, or we shall be compelled to make war upon yourself.’”
The King winced and turned livid. Sweat stood in beads upon his brow. He was touched in his most sensitive spot. That speech of Coligny’s was of all things the one he most desired to forget. He twisted the chaplet so that the beads bit deeply into his fingers.
“Sire,” Tavannes continued, “were I a king, and did a subject so address me, I should have his head within the hour. Yet worse has happened since, worse is happening now. The Huguenots are arming. They ride arrogantly through the streets of your capital, stirring up rebellion. They are here in force, and the danger grows acute and imminent.”
Charles writhed before them. He mopped his brow with a shaking hand.
“The danger — yes. I see that. I admit the danger. But Coligny—”
“Is it to be King Gaspard or King Charles?” rasped the voice of Catherine.
The chaplet snapped suddenly in the King’s fingers. He sprang to his feet, deathly pale.
“So be it!” he cried. “Since it is necessary to kill the Admiral, kill him, then. Kill him!” he screamed, in a fury that seemed aimed at those who forced this course upon him. “Kill him — but see to it a
lso that at the same time you kill every Huguenot in France, so that not one shall be left to reproach me. Not one, do you hear? Take your measures and let the thing be done at once.” And on that, his face livid and twitching, his limbs shaking, he flung out of the room and left them.
It was all the warrant they required, and they set to work at once there in the King’s own cabinet, where he had left them. Guise, who had hitherto been no more than a silent spectator, assumed now the most active part. Upon his own shoulders he took the charge of seeing the Admiral done to death.
The remainder of the day and a portion of the evening were spent in concerting ways and means. They assured themselves of the Provost of the merchants of Paris, of the officers of the Gardes Francaises and the three thousand Swiss, of the Captains of the quarters and other notoriously factious persons who could be trusted as leaders. By ten o’clock at night all preparations were made and it was agreed that the ringing of the bell of Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois for matins was to be the signal for the massacre.
A gentleman of the Admiral’s household taking his way homeward that night passed several men bearing sheaves of pikes upon their shoulders, and never suspected whom these weapons were to arm. He met several small companies of soldiers marching quietly, their weapons shouldered, their matches glowing, and still he suspected nothing, whilst in one quarter he stopped to watch a man whose behaviour seemed curious, and discovered that he was chalking a white cross upon the doors of certain houses.
Meeting soon afterwards another man with a bundle of weapons on his shoulder, the intrigued Huguenot gentleman asked him bluntly what he carried and whither he went.
“It is for the divertissement at the Louvre tonight,” he was answered.
But in the Louvre the Queen-Mother and the Catholic leaders, the labours of preparation ended, were snatching a brief rest. Between two and three o’clock in the morning Catherine and Anjou repaired again to the King’s cabinet. They found him waiting there, his face haggard and his eyes fevered.
He had spent a part of the evening at billiards, and among the players had been La Rochefoucauld, of whom he was fond, and who had left him with a jest at eleven o’clock, little dreaming that it was for the last time.
The three of them crossed to the window overlooking the river. They opened it, and peered out fearfully. Even Catherine trembled now that the hour approached. The air was fresh and cool, swept clean by the stirring breeze of the dawn, whose first ghostly gleams were already in the sky. Suddenly, somewhere near at hand, a pistol cracked. The noise affected them oddly. The King fell into an ague and his teeth chattered audibly. Panic seized him.
“By the Blood, it shall not be! It shall not be!” he cried suddenly.
He looked at his mother and his brother and they looked at him; ghastly were the faces of all three, their eyes wide and staring with horror.
Charles swore in his terror that he would cancel all commands. And since Catherine and Anjou made no attempt to hinder him, he summoned an officer and bade him seek out the Duke of Guise at once and command him to stay his hand.
The messenger eventually found the Duke in the courtyard of the Admiral’s house, standing over the Admiral’s dead body, which his assassins had flung down from the bedroom window. Guise laughed, and stirred the head of the corpse with his foot, answering that the message came too late. Even as he spoke the great bell of Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois began to ring for matins.
The royal party huddled at that window of the Louvre heard it at the same moment, and heard, as if in immediate answer, shots of arquebus and pistol, cries and screams near at hand, and then, gradually swelling from a murmur, the baying of the fierce multitude. Other bells gave tongue, until from every steeple in Paris the alarm rang out. The red glow from thousands of torches flushed the heavens with a rosy tint as of dawn, the air grew heavy with the smell of pitch and resin.
The King, clutching the sill of the window, poured out a stream of blasphemy from between his chattering teeth. Then the hubbub rose suddenly near at hand. The neighbourhood of the Louvre was populous with Huguenots, and into it now poured the excited Catholic citizens and soldiers. Soon the quay beneath the palace windows presented the fiercest spectacle of any quarter, of Paris.
Half-clad men, women, and children fled screaming before the assassins, until they were checked by the chains that everywhere had been placed across the streets. Some sought the river, hoping to find a way of escape. But with Satanic foresight, the boats usually moored there had been conveyed to the other side. Thus some hundreds of Huguenots were brought to bay, and done to death under the very eyes of the King who had unleashed this horror. Doors were crashed open, flames rose to heaven, men and women were shot down under the palace wall, bodies were flung from windows, and on every side — in the words of D’Aubigne — the blood now flowed, seeking the river.
The King watched a while, screams and curses pouring from his lips to be lost in the horrible uproar. He turned, perhaps to upbraid his mother and his brother, but found that they were no longer at his side. Behind him in the room a page was crouching, watching him with a white, horrified face.
Suddenly the King laughed — it was the fierce, hysterical laugh of a madman. His eyes fell on the arquebuses flanking the picture of the Mother of Mercy. He took one of them down, then caught the boy by the collar of his doublet and dragged him forward to the window.
“Hither, and load for me!” he bade him, between peals of his terrible laughter. Then he levelled the weapon across the sill of the window. “Parpaillots! Parpaillots!” he screamed. “Kill! Kill!” and he discharged the arquebus into a fleeing group of Huguenots.
Five days later, the King — who by now had thrown the blame of the whole affair, with its slaughter of some two thousand Huguenots, upon the Guises and their hatred of Coligny — rode out to Montfaucon to behold the decapitated body of the Admiral, which hung from the gallows in chains. A courtier of a poor but obtrusive wit leaned towards him.
“The Admiral becomes noisome, I think,” he said.
The King’s green eyes considered him, his lips curling grimly.
“The body of a dead enemy always smells sweet,” he said.
VI. THE NIGHT OF WITCHCRAFT — Louis XIV and Madame De Montespan
If you scrape the rubbish-heap of servile, coeval flattery that usually smothers the personality of a monarch, you will discover a few kings who have been truly great; many who have achieved greatness because they were wisely content to serve as masks for the great intellects of their time; and, for the rest, some bad kings, some foolish kings, and some ridiculous kings. But in all that royal gallery of history you will hardly find a more truly absurd figure than that of the resplendent Roi Soleil, the Grand Monarque, the Fourteenth Louis of France.
I am not aware that he has ever been laughed at; certainly never to the extent which he deserves. The flatterers of his day, inevitable products of his reign, did their work so thoroughly that even in secret they do not appear to have dared to utter — possibly they did not even dare to think — the truth about him. Their work survives, and when you have assessed the monstrous flattery at its true worth, swept it aside and come down to the real facts of his life, you make the discovery that the proudest title their sycophancy could bestow and his own fatuity accept — Le Roi Soleil, the Sun-King — makes him what indeed he is: a king of opera bouffe. There is about him at times something almost reminiscent of the Court buffoons of a century before, who puffed themselves out with mock pride, and aped a sort of sovereignty to excite laughter; with this difference, however, that in his own case it was not intended to be amusing.
A heartless voluptuary of mediocre intelligence, he contrived to wrap himself in what Saint-Simon has called a “terrible majesty.” He was obsessed by the idea of the dignity, almost the divinity — of kingship. I cannot believe that he conceived himself human. He appears to have held that being king was very like being God, and he duped the world by ceremonials of etiquette that were v
ery nearly sacramental. We find him burdening the most simple and personal acts of everyday life with a succession of rites of an amazing complexity. Thus, when he rose in the morning, princes of the blood and the first gentlemen of France were in attendance: one to present to him his stockings, another to proffer on bended knee the royal garters, a third to perform the ceremony of handing him his wig, and so on until the toilette of his plump, not unhandsome person was complete. You miss the incense, you feel that some noble thurifer should have fumigated him at each stage. Perhaps he never thought of it.
The evil fruits of his reign — evil, that is to say, from the point of view of his order, which was swept away as so much anachronistic rubbish — did not come until a hundred years later. In his own day France was great, and this not because but in spite of him. After all, he was not the absolute ruler he conceived himself. There were such capable men as Colbert and Louvois at the King’s side’; there was the great genius of France which manifests itself when and as it will, whatever the regime — and there was Madame de Montespan to whose influence not a little of Louis’s glory may be ascribed, since the most splendid years of his reign were those between 1668 and 1678 when she was maitresse en titre and more than Queen of France. The women played a great part at the Court of Louis XIV, and those upon whom he turned his dark eyes were in the main as wax under the solar rays of the Sun-King. But Madame de Montespan had discovered the secret of reversing matters, so that in her hands it was the King who became as wax for her modelling. It is with this secret — a page of the secret history of France that we are here concerned.
Francoises Athenais de Tonnay-Charente had come to Court in 1660 as a maid of honour to the Queen. Of a wit and grace to match her superb beauty, she was also of a perfervid piety, a daily communicant, a model of virtue to all maids of honour. This until the Devil tempted her. When that happened, she did not merely eat an apple; she devoured an entire orchard. Pride and ambition brought about her downfall. She shared the universal jealousy of which Louise de la Valliere was a victim, and coveted the honours and the splendour by which that unfortunate favourite was surrounded.
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 672
