The Rival Queens

by Nancy Goldstone

  The effect of his mother-in-law’s scolding missive on the erring husband was somewhat less than efficacious. The breach between Henry and Marguerite, already wide, became insurmountable. In recognition of this, Margot’s helpful letters to her husband dwindled. She seems to have given up. Instead she turned her attention to her brother François’s affairs—and to Champvallon.

  IN THE YEAR SINCE he had left Gascony, François’s prospects for advancement had shown considerable promise. His Flemish campaign had been helped enormously by the actions of Philip II, who, upon the death of the old ruler of Portugal, had claimed the kingdom for his own over the objections of several other candidates, including Catherine. To reinforce his somewhat shaky pretensions to the newly vacated throne, Philip had sent the indomitable duke of Alva at the head of a large army to occupy Lisbon. This strategy had gone a long way toward resolving the question of succession definitively in his favor.

  But it had also given the rest of Europe pause. Was it the best policy, many wondered, to simply sit back and let Philip II take whatever he desired? Nobody wanted to go to war with powerful Spain, but the sudden, unilateral annexation of Portugal did make it seem as though the Spanish king was getting a trifle greedy. Moreover, if the other European powers were to fight back, the Netherlands was the obvious choice of battleground. Philip had had to pull many of his men out of the region in order to have enough soldiers to invade Lisbon, leaving the Spanish occupation in the north at its lowest level in years. And there was François, already in position and clamoring to make the attempt. It was a question of being in the right place at the right time.

  But military campaigns require money, men, and supplies—mostly money—and François was perpetually in debt. In August of 1581 he had raised another army and taken Cambrai from the Spanish, but because of a lack of specie had been unable to follow up on the victory. As a result he spent more of his time as a fundraiser than as a general. He spent three months in England at the end of 1581 ostensibly wooing Elizabeth I when actually his goal was to shore up his finances. Elizabeth played along, pretending to consider a marriage alliance, a ruse that fooled no one. “The primary object of his visit is to ask for money,” the Spanish ambassador reported bluntly, “and the queen is inclined to give it to him.”

  She did give it to him surreptitiously, as did Henri III and even Catherine (although, fearing Spanish retaliation, officially the king and queen mother remained opposed to the duke of Anjou’s Flemish campaign). But although the overall sums were often substantial, the money was dispensed fitfully, in dribs and drabs. There was never enough to launch a full-scale attack.

  The covert payments were sufficiently encouraging, however, to win François the support of the Netherlanders themselves. In February 1582, just after Marguerite had left Nérac and was on her way to Paris, her brother was installed with great ceremony as the duke of Brabant. François, dressed in the traditional vestments of ruby velvet trimmed in ermine, rode through Antwerp on a magnificent white horse, pledging his life and “whatever it pleased the king his lord and brother and the queen of England to lend him” in order “to protect them [the citizens of the Netherlands] and to restore their ancient liberties.” In turn, the various states in the region, including Brabant, Holland, and Flanders, pledged to provide their new duke with an annual stipend amounting to some two million livres, which should have been more than adequate to support his military effort.

  Unfortunately, by May 1582, when Marguerite arrived in Paris, the Netherlanders had only advanced some thirty-two thousand livres, which was a far cry from two million. François, unable to pay his soldiers and faced with massive defections as a result, was forced to appeal once again to his older brother for funds. Henri III was not pleased to be continually dunned for money but felt he had no choice other than to subsidize the new duke of Brabant, at least on some minimal level. As the Venetian ambassador observed, the king of France, “not wanting to drive his brother to complete despair… will aid him with a good sum, which together with the first grant, amounts to 100,000 écus [approximately three hundred thousand livres]. And with that plus the 100,000 the States [the Netherlands] are obliged to pay him every month and whatever aid he receives from the queen of England, it is hoped that he can make some headway in Flanders.”

  Marguerite was naturally thrilled with François’s investment as duke of Brabant; this was what she had wanted all along. But it also meant an extended absence from her lover, Champvallon, who formed part of her brother’s suite and remained with him in Antwerp. It is clear from her letters that Margot pined for him. “Let it never be said that marriages are made in heaven; the gods do not commit so great an injustice… But, my radiant sun, let us scatter the clouds of these unhappy obstacles which separate our bodies, but which can never separate our souls—united in an eternal destiny and bound with a deathless bond,” she wrote with somewhat alarming intensity to the absent Champvallon. It therefore came as a rude surprise to discover that during their separation, while she had been consumed with preparing for an ecstatic reunion, her devoted swain had gotten himself engaged to the pretty sister of the duke of Bouillon, quite an advantageous match.

  Her disappointment was cruel. Coming so soon after the disintegration of her own marriage, Champvallon’s betrayal unnerved her, accentuating her fears that love and her own beauty were slipping away from her. “There is no longer justice in Heaven nor fidelity on earth,” she burst out at him by letter. “O God! What must my soul bear? What more remains, O merciless Heaven, to overwhelm me with such sorrow?” Her previous experience of scandal and humiliation were only too evident in her next words. “Triumph, triumph over my too ardent love!” she despaired. “Boast of having deceived me; laugh and mock at it with her… When you receive this letter, the last, I beg you to return it to me,” she concluded bitterly, “since I do not desire that at this fine interview, to which you are going this evening [Champvallon evidently intended to call on his fiancée’s family], it serves for a topic of conversation to the father and the daughter.”

  Her unhappiness was profound and affected her judgment. She sought to lose herself in a round of forced gaiety—late-night parties, dancing, music. Brantôme noted that she was openly critical of the royal court and made many enemies, including two of the most powerful of Henri III’s mignons.

  NOT MUCH HAD CHANGED at the royal court in the four years Margot had been away. The mignons were still prominent, although due to the fatalities of many of Henri’s former favorites, violence was no longer encouraged. Instead, those who fell afoul of the close circle of counselors surrounding the king were attacked with gossip and slander. To fill the emotional void created by the loss of Quélus, Henri III had particularly attached himself to two new mignons, the duke of Épernon and the duke of Joyeuse. These young men, whom he called his sons (the duke of Joyeuse was barely twenty), had been singled out for truly astonishing gifts of wealth and position. Although neither came from a particularly ancient or distinguished family, the king had nonetheless made them peers of France, outranking nearly every other member of the aristocracy. This had naturally caused a great deal of discontent and jealousy among the more established elite. Specifically, a deadly enmity had arisen between the duke of Épernon and the duke of Guise over the preferment shown to the king’s favorite; this was the reason the Guises’ tennis parties were not well attended.

  As for the duke of Joyeuse, Henri III was so taken with this retainer that he arranged to make him his brother-in-law by marrying him to his wife’s sister. Margot was present at this wedding, which was held in Paris in October 1582. A chronicler composed a detailed account of the festivities, rumored by a foreign envoy to the court to have cost the royal treasury “two million in gold.” Henri and his protégé wore matching outfits “so covered with embroidery, pearls and other precious stones that their value could not be estimated, and at every one of the seventeen feasts which followed the marriage, all the lords and ladies came in costumes of which the
larger part were of cloth of gold or of silver; enriched with laces, gimp and embroideries in gold and silver and with precious stones and pearls in great number and great value,” the courtier reported. “Everybody was amazed at so great luxury and such an enormous and superfluous expense which was made by the King and by the others of his court by his express commandment, in a time which was… very hard and severe for the people, eaten and gnawed to the bone, in the country, by the soldiers and, in the cities, by new taxes,” he concluded darkly.

  While Henri III caroused in splendor at the duke of Joyeuse’s lavish wedding, his brother François was struggling to hold together what remained of his army in the absence of the money promised by the combined states of the Netherlands. A knight attached to his suite detailed the plight of the French forces that autumn and early winter. “All those poor soldiers left in the fields are without any food or supplies. It is so bad that they come into Antwerp in groups of a hundred, thirty, forty, fifty, completely naked on occasion. Every morning on his way to Mass His Highness [François] gives each of them an écu. Nevertheless, more than three hundred have died in the fields from hunger and cold,” the officer deplored. Desperate, François sent messenger after messenger to Henri begging for funds. “Everything is falling apart in ruin,” he wrote in October. “It would be better to promise me only a little money and keep your word than to promise so much and not send anything at all.” In November came another pleading missive. “I find that my expenses amount to some 200,000 livres per month, which I cannot meet without the aid of the king,” François reiterated. “I beg him… to assist me as he promised to do.” Then, in December, knowing his sister was at court and hoping she could do something to promote his cause, he sent Champvallon to Paris.

  Although newly married, Champvallon understood that it behooved him to placate his master’s sister, and he soon succeeded in reviving the romance. Marguerite was happy to have him back, so happy, in fact, that she forgot to be discreet. The details of their affair were evidently so public that it was reported that the queen of Navarre entertained her lover “in a bed lighted by many tapers, lying between two sheets of black taffeta, and surrounded by other luxuries.” Two members of Margot’s household, Madame de Duras and Mademoiselle de Béthune, acted as liaisons for the intrigue, passing notes back and forth and arranging meetings.

  The queen of Navarre understood the risk she was taking—she had ample evidence of the gleefully malevolent attitude at court toward those caught in acts of sexual imprudence. Only the year before, her close friend Henriette de Clèves, duchess of Nevers (rumored to have enshrined the severed head of her lover, Coconnas, as Marguerite had that of La Môle), had been induced by one of the king’s mignons to engage in a compromising correspondence. Although the flirtation does not seem to have progressed beyond the letter-writing stage, the very existence of the love notes was enough to condemn their author, as the king’s favorite well knew. To curry favor with his master, he handed over the lady’s epistles. Henri III had waited until the entire court was present at yet another magnificent fete in order to confront the duchess. Summoning her to his side, he read each of her letters aloud to the great amusement of those in the crowd within earshot. No saber ever dealt a blow as deadly as the one poor Henriette received that memorable evening. The duchess of Nevers fled the ball in disgrace and the next day resigned her position as lady-in-waiting to the queen of France.*

  But Marguerite was happy for the first time in years and too much in love to stop “so rapturous a game,” as she called it. Probably in the back of her mind was the thought that she and Champvallon could always flee to the Netherlands and that François, who as the duke of Brabant was obviously coming up in the world, would protect her. But as she and the rest of the court were soon to discover, the duke of Brabant was in no position to protect anyone, not even himself.

  THROUGHOUT THE FRIGID MONTHS of November and December 1582 and into January of 1583, François sat in the fields outside Antwerp and watched in mounting frustration as the army he had cobbled together was gradually decimated, with some three thousand men dying from hunger, cold, lack of supplies, and disease. His poignant pleas to the various states and cities of the Netherlands to honor their financial commitment to him were ignored; Henri III had similarly suspended further clandestine payments to his younger brother, pleading the poverty of the royal treasury; and even Elizabeth I, who could usually be counted upon to send something along, declined to advance additional monies. It was a difficult situation for any commander to navigate, but the course of action François adopted in order to solve his problems was, it must be admitted, particularly unwise. Specifically, he decided to get the money he felt was owed him by sacking Antwerp, one of the cities he had sworn to protect. This was akin to trying to win a duel by suddenly whirling around and stabbing your own second.

  Unfortunately for François, his plan was not only ill-advised, it was also leaked to the town’s magistrates. By the time he and his starving soldiers burst through the gates of the municipality at noon on January 17, 1583, the citizens of Antwerp were ready for him. Instead of helpless civilians, the French force faced a mob of angry burghers armed for battle. Caught in the narrow streets, overwhelmingly outnumbered, François’s troops were slaughtered where they stood. Those who tried to get away were stopped at the gates, where their corpses fell “one on top of the other, [so] that no one could possibly pass through,” as a French officer remembered. A thousand died, and several hundred more were captured; François himself only narrowly escaped a similar fate by abandoning his men and fleeing the city.

  The news of this fiasco reached Paris two days later and shocked the court. François’s humiliation reflected shamefully on France and, by extension, the Crown. To have the cream of French knighthood, led by the king’s own brother, indulge in so villainous an act, only to then find themselves routed by a bunch of Dutch shopkeepers! A furious Henri III disavowed his sibling completely. “My said brother… has gone to Flanders against my advice and counsel, as you well know, and neither I nor the queen mother ever had any knowledge or inkling of that deed in Antwerp, which I swear before God,” he dashed off to his envoy in England in February. The king was not alone in his anger. “I have never seen this court more full of trouble, envy and hard feeling and the chief nobles more aroused than they are for that which has happened in Flanders: I mean the bad luck of the brother of the King,” wrote one of Catherine’s most senior ladies-in-waiting to a member of the Guise family. “The Queen Mother is so afflicted over it that all her servants are in the greatest trouble… There are so many malcontents that the number is infinite,” she warned.

  This defeat marked a turning point not only in François’s career but in Marguerite’s as well. The queen of Navarre’s unwavering commitment to her younger brother and her strong advocacy of his Netherlands campaign made her a partner in his dishonor. Overnight, her position at court became much more precarious.

  In spite of this, she remained in secret communication with François, encouraging him to regroup his forces in order to make another attempt. By so doing she acted expressly against both her mother’s and the king’s wishes. Again, she understood the danger of opposing the Crown, but as with Champvallon she had too much of herself invested in the Netherlands project to give it up. Her alliance with François was the source of her political power. He was her only bargaining chip, her safeguard against the vagaries of both her husband’s and the king’s court. He must succeed.

  It was this, her surreptitious urging on of François, that marked her undoing. Henri III, suspecting that she was attempting to persuade his younger brother to flout his authority, had her watched closely. The court understood what was happening and turned against her. It was only a matter of time before the salacious details of her affair with Champvallon were used as an excuse to persecute her. In June she became ill, which gave Henri III the excuse he needed to begin the process of ridding himself of his sister’s presence. “The Queen
of Navarre is pregnant—or suffering from dropsy,” the ambassador from Tuscany reported in a letter to his superiors.* Henri demanded that she dismiss Madame de Duras and Mademoiselle de Béthune, whom he suspected not only of encouraging his sister’s extramarital affair but also of smuggling her letters to François. Marguerite refused but, cognizant of the deterioration in her circumstances, strove to protect her lover by urging him to flee the city. “Please God that on me alone this storm may expend itself,” she wrote fervently to Champvallon. “But to place you in danger—! Ah no, my life: there is no suffering so cruel to which I would not prefer to submit. How better can I show this than by depriving myself of you. Go. Go.”