Inglorious Royal Marriages

by Leslie Carroll

  Like Isabella, when Leonora grew up she too became a patroness of art and culture. By the time she was twenty-two in 1575, Leonora was the only female patron of the Accademia degli Alterati, a literary academy to promote the elevation of discourse and works of verse, drama, comedy, and prose in the Tuscan language.

  Cosimo remained utterly enchanted by Leonora, impressed by her vivacious personality and her athletic skills. Tall, slender, and graceful, with auburn hair and the vigor of a tomboy, she was a skilled equestrienne who excelled in feats of arms, and who received the occasional scolding from her indulgent uncle to conduct herself more like a proper Florentine lady.

  Leonora was also more or less under Cosimo’s wardship, and it was important for him to make a fine marriage for her that would mutually benefit the Toledo family and the House of Medici. Owing to the families’ already close ties, it seemed a no-brainer for the duke to unite Leonora with his youngest son, Prince Pietro. The two cousins had been raised together, so it stands to reason that they would have had ample time to get to know each other and would have made a perfect match, being childhood companions, although Leonora was fifteen months older than her prospective spouse. But there was something wrong with Pietro, and Cosimo knew it. The emotionally disturbed youth had a cruel and violent streak, and had always displayed an unstable temperament that had troubled his parents. Cosimo was aware that it would be difficult to find a match for Pietro, and that few foreign brides would deem him acceptable after their families discovered his history. He assumed that Leonora would be able to handle Pietro because she was already familiar with his idiosyncrasies. Nevertheless, political expedience and the perennial necessity for a legitimate Medici heir to perpetuate the dynasty trumped Cosimo’s concern for Leonora’s welfare.

  With the approval of Philip II of Spain, the couple was betrothed in 1568 when Leonora was only fifteen. Her father provided a substantial dowry of forty thousand gold ducats. Yet the teenagers were not married for another three years.

  In April 1571, eighteen-year-old Leonora, and Pietro, not yet seventeen, were wed at the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. The marriage was a disaster from the start. According to the Ferrarese ambassador, it was not consummated until April 1572, a year after the wedding had taken place, and even then the ambassador to Urbino wrote that the eighteen-year-old Pietro “had to be forced to penetrate” Leonora.

  Pietro had an eye for the ladies, and evidently had no difficulty fornicating with other women at court; the reason for his refusal, or inability, to consummate his marriage remains unknown. However, the young prince’s mistreatment of his beautiful and high-spirited wife soon became common knowledge at the Medici court. In January 1575, at a lively party hosted by her cousin (and now sister-in-law) Isabella, Leonora unwisely, and tearfully, confided her misery to the Ferrarese ambassador Ercole Cortile, who of course reported it to his boss. “[S]he is very unhappy, and the reason is her husband. He will not sleep with her, he attends only to whores and matters of vice. . . . [S]he really is the most unfortunate and unhappy princess who ever lived, especially for being one so beautiful and accomplished.”

  At least Isabella was aware that other eyes were on her, especially those of foreign ambassadors, and made certain that in her correspondence to Paolo she appeared to be nothing but a loving wife who missed him. But Leonora was never that restrained. Airing her dirty linen to a foreign ambassador was a potentially fatal indiscretion.

  Leonora became embroiled in an even more dangerous game during the summer of 1575. On July 25, Ercole Cortile reported to the Duke of Ferrara, “Pierino Ridolfi has been accused of plotting to kill Don Pietro when he was in a whorehouse, to murder his son and poison Cardinal Ferdinando [another Medici brother]. He is in the service of Donna Leonora and the duke [Francesco de Medici] is in a great rage with her for having given Pierino a necklace worth 200 scudi and a horse on which to escape.”

  Like Isabella, Leonora was never at a loss for male admirers, even if her own husband demonstrated little attraction to her. Bastiano Arditi, a Florentine diarist of the era, claimed that Pietro had caught “the French disease [syphilis] . . . from cavorting with so many whores in Florence, when he had the most beautiful girl in the city for a wife!”

  And there were occasions when a cavalier’s interest in Leonora was reciprocated. Bernardino Antinori was a poet, hero of Lepanto, and a Knight of the order of San Stefano who “appeared frequently as a courtier in the Lady Leonora’s coach,” where they were seen flirting with each other. She hid his love letters and poems in her footstool.

  Born in 1537, Antinori was no saint. The last location from which he composed passionate love poetry to Leonora was a prison cell in Elba, where, after being invited to dine with a local count, he had been jailed for repeated brawling.

  Nonetheless, Antinori rhapsodized about his inamorata’s “alabaster throat,” her “polished ivory” hands, and the thrill of gazing into her eyes.

  Oh what perfect joy! oh what bliss!

  Oh what pleasure, to see two trusting lovers

  as each, intent on the other’s eyes

  sees there his own image!

  Oh what sweet oblivion of all torment,

  when the holy spirits of sight go out

  And with a miracle so rare and so welcome

  transform the lover into the beloved!

  But thick stone walls and iron bars could not keep him from the long arm of Medici justice. At five a.m. on July 9, 1576, Antinori was strangled to death in Elba’s prison, presumably because of his illicit relationship with Leonora.

  The shame that the flirtatious Leonora brought upon the House of Medici and her dishonor of Pietro’s name (even though he had done plenty to stain it himself) was too much for him to bear. During the second week in July, the spouses traveled to the Medici villa at Cafaggiolo. On July 10, 1576, Pietro de Medici strangled his twenty-three-year-old wife to death with a dog collar.

  Unsurprisingly, he attempted a cover-up. On July 11, the morning after Leonora’s death, he scrawled a hasty note to his brother Francesco, stating (as if he had not been present when the tragedy had taken place), “Last night at six hours an accident occurred to my wife and she died. Therefore, Your Highness be at peace and write me what I should do. . . .”

  Of course, Leonora’s death was hardly an accident.

  The diarist Agostino Lapini, who knew Leonora personally, eulogized her in his datebook, recording that she was “beautiful, gracious, genteel, becoming, charming, affable, and above all had two eyes in her head which were like two stars in their beauty; everyone said that she was murdered . . . she was buried with rites in S. Lorenzo.”

  However, Bastiano Arditi recorded that she was “deposited, in a box, in San Lorenzo, without any other ceremonies.” No Mass had been said. Given the lack of respect the Medici had for Leonora, it would not be surprising if they interred her without the dignity of a proper funeral Mass. Arditi’s account of her postmortem is probably the more accurate one.

  Isabella had been Leonora’s closest friend and confidante. Yet she was not directly informed of her sister-in-law’s death, leading one to conclude that plans for her own murder may have already been set in motion. Suspiciously, it was Paolo Giordano to whom Francesco had addressed the information about Leonora’s death. Replying to the not-so-shocking news, Paolo told Francesco in an oddly worded note soaked with crocodile tears: “I learned with extreme sorrow, as Your Excellency rightfully supposed, in the letter it pleased you to write to me, of the strange and unexpected accident that Donna Leonora has suffered. The Lady Isabella has suffered no less sorrow. If pain could restore the loss we would grieve to the heart to bring her back . . . as it is we shall console and comfort ourselves that it is Divine vocation.”

  The official Medici lie was that Leonora, young and beautiful, had expired of a heart attack. Pietro had the nerve to tell his brother Cardinal Ferdinando in Rome that she
had been found in bed suffocated, already fudging the time they had discovered her corpse to approximately five p.m.

  Knowing that she was miserably married, Leonora’s Spanish family with its Hapsburg connections had been hoping to spirit her away from Pietro “to take care of her in Naples.” Ironically, at the time they began making plans to perform their intervention, they were unaware of her death.

  But the truth managed to reach Spain with lightning speed. Medici law was absolute in Florence, and the victim would receive no justice, because the perpetrator had been a Medici prince. However, because Leonora came from one of Spain’s highest-ranking noble families, Duke Francesco de Medici, who had ultimately been given the real story, had to confess it to Philip II. He said that his younger brother had in fact killed Leonora, but that Pietro felt justified in doing so “because of the treason she had committed through behaviour unbecoming to a lady . . .” Francesco assured the king of Spain that he would soon be sent relevant documents (Antinori’s amorous letters and poems) “so that he should know with what just cause Lord Pietro was moved to act.” The duke expected Philip to understand and fully accept the Medicis’ contention that uxoricide (the murder of a wife by her husband) was a justifiable response to Leonora’s infidelity.

  On July 29, 1576, the Ferrarese ambassador Ercolo Cortile reported the true events of Leonora’s death in graphic detail to his boss, Duke Alfonso II Este, writing:

  I advise Your Excellency of the announcement of the death of Lady Isabella [16 July] of which I heard as soon as I arrived in Bologna, [and] has displeased as many as had the Lady Leonora’s; both ladies were strangled, one at Cafaggiolo and the other at Ceretto [Guidi]. Lady Leonora was strangled on Tuesday night; having danced until two o’clock, and having gone to bed, she was surprised by Lord Pietro [with] a dog leash at her throat, and after much struggle to save herself, finally expired. And the same Lord Pietro bears the sign, having two fingers of his hand injured by [them being] bitten by the lady. And if he had not called for help to two wretches from Romagna, who claim to have been summoned there precisely for this purpose, he would perhaps have fared worse. The poor lady, as far as we can understand, made a very strong defence, as was seen by the bed, which was found all convulsed, and by the voices which were heard by the entire household. As soon as she died, she was placed in a coffin prepared there for this event, and taken to Florence in a litter at six o’clock [in the morning], led by those from the villa, and accompanied with eight white tapers [carried] by six brothers and four priests; she was interred as if she were a commoner.

  Leonora’s murder had preceded Isabella Romola de Medici’s homicide by six days.

  Pietro and Leonora’s only child, their son Cosimino, died of dysentery at the age of three in August 1576, a few weeks after his mother was murdered. Although there were rumors that Pietro had poisoned him, nothing was proven. Cosimino’s body was later buried near his mother’s in the Cappella dei Principi (Chapel of the Princes) mausoleum in San Lorenzo.

  On September 11, the Florentine ambassador to France urged Francesco to put to rest Catherine de Medici’s “false impressions” that Leonora and Isabella had met their ends by violent means. “She evidently marvels at how these strange accidents could cumulate together in such a way, and the greater marvel is that Your Highness has not sent her any account of the incidents. I would have willingly avoided writing such things, increasing the infinite sorrow that I am certain accompanies such disgrace. . . .”

  Leonora had corresponded so often with her brother Pedro di Toledo about Pietro’s cruelty to her that in April 1577, Pedro declared her assassination reprehensible. Yet Pietro de Medici claimed to possess enough samples of Leonora’s “treason” to condemn her for infidelity, rather than indict him for uxoricide, so the Spanish Hapsburg court not only absolved him, but was prepared to accept him as a courtier and permit him to stand as godfather to King Philip II’s infant heir.

  However, this assignment was intended to be a punishment. Pietro was being exiled to the rigid Spanish court by his disgusted big brother Francesco “to see if he makes [of himself] a man of this house and rises above the indolence that vainly consumes the best years of his youth.”

  But Pietro was incapable of cleaning up his act. He behaved just as recklessly in Spain, his temperament no different, and his manners and behavior described by witnesses as “fastidioso”—repugnant. On April 3, 1578, Prospero Colonna reported that Pietro’s entourage was filled with scoundrels.

  Making only the occasional return to Florence to beg his family for more money, Pietro de Medici lived out his remaining years as a Spanish grandee, squandering every scudo his relatives handed him—perpetually in debt, primarily from his gambling losses. On his death in 1604, his creditors swarmed about his corpse even before the flies had a chance to land. Some of Florence’s most prominent names appeared on a list of his creditors dated June 13, 1605, demanding a total of 148,374 scudi, which in 2007 translated to between $30 and $40 million. Ironically, one of the items demanded as compensation for their unpaid loans was a miniature of Leonora set in a frame studded with gemstones that she had probably commissioned around the time of their betrothal, or even before their marriage. It was the frame that was of value.

  In Italy during the high Renaissance, a double standard for men and women was firmly in place. Paolo Giordano Orsini’s infidelities, including his well-known whoring in the brothels of Rome, were not a blot on the family escutcheon. Husbands were expected to stray, whether they took highborn mistresses or went slumming in the city’s stews. It was the rare man who did not have at least one lover during the course of his marriage. But wives were supposed to remain faithful, no matter how miserable they were. Cosimo I de Medici, himself a ladies’ man, had turned a blind eye to his favorite daughter’s indulgences. But after he was dead and gone, her cruel and humorless older brother Francesco inherited the dukedom and became the titular head of the Medici family. He had no tolerance for Isabella’s independent streak, especially when it manifested itself in adultery.

  Francesco undoubtedly blamed his sister for Leonora’s wildness, as the younger woman had looked up to and emulated Isabella. Both cousins had become the target of pasquinades, the ribald, scurrilous poems posted around the statue of Pasquino near Rome’s Piazza Navona, where people gathered for the latest gossip. Paolo Giordano d’Orsini and Pietro de Medici had been able to tolerate their respective wives’ wild ways as long as the women were fairly discreet (despite the fact that their own love affairs were an open secret within the court).

  Not only was the family honor to remain untarnished, but the bloodline was to remain pure and untainted as well. If a wife was unfaithful, there was always the chance that any child she bore might not be her husband’s, thereby threatening the dynasty. The rules were unspoken, but simple: A man could raise hell with impunity, but a wife had to practice chastity within her marriage and remain above suspicion at all times. Isabella’s wild parties, at which Leonora was surely a guest, her girls’ nights and bawdy games, and her dozen-year love affair with her husband’s cousin—as well as the many casual illicit liaisons she’d enjoyed before she met Troilo Orsini—broke every rule. Strictly speaking, Leonora’s alleged adultery may not have been provable beyond a shadow of a doubt, but she did not behave chastely as a good Renaissance wife should, and that was all Pietro needed to convince himself she needed killing.

  In sixteenth-century Florence, the deaths of Isabella Romola de Medici and Eleonora di Garzia di Toledo were referred to as delitti d’onore—“honor” uxoricides. Men routinely punished their cheating wives, even immuring them in convents for violating their marriage vows. But Paolo d’Orsini and Pietro de Medici, serial adulterers themselves, killed their wives with impunity—and got away with it. Crime paid, if you were rich, powerful, and your family was at the top of the political and ecclesiastical food chain.

  But for these two noblewomen, Isabella and Leonora,
beautiful, intelligent, vivacious, and desperately unhappy, their marriages were more than a vow made till death us do part; in fact, the vow had a sinister connotation. Theirs was a life-ending lesson in rough justice that makes the clear and present dangers of being “married to the mob” look tame by comparison.

  LOUIS XIII

  AND

  ANNE OF AUSTRIA

  MARRIED: 1615–1643

  Most people are more familiar with the fictional reign of Louis XIII and Anne of Austria than the factual one. In the mid–nineteenth century, Alexandre Dumas père immortalized the monarchs in The Three Musketeers and his subsequent novels of the swashbuckling swordsmen, led by another historical figure—the noble and dashing d’Artagnan. These high-booted cavaliers protected Dumas’ ineffectual and effeminate king, whose realm was actually being governed by the Machiavellian Cardinal Richelieu, while the unhappily wed but clever Anne of Austria was clandestinely cavorting with the English envoy, the Duke of Buckingham.

  Dumas wove a few elements of the truth into a sumptuous brocade of historical fiction. If he’d written the real story, it might not have been sexier, but it certainly would have been stranger. Although Louis was not the fop portrayed in the numerous cinematic adaptations of the Dumas classic, he did have male favorites, known as mignons, on whom he bestowed titles, offices, and estates. Yet he was passionately attached to a couple of young women as well, although he probably never slept with any of his favorites of either gender. And while the minister-cardinal Richelieu did wield a tremendous amount of power, Louis was no ineffectual, mincing ignoramus who let others run his government. His policies, both foreign and domestic, were his own, and had been formed long before Richelieu became a force to be reckoned with.