by Susan Ronald
* * *
While unraveling the Ridolfi Plot, Elizabeth was plotting as well. Negotiations had been opened with Catherine de’ Medici for the marriage of Elizabeth to her younger son, Henry, Duke of Anjou. It was deemed to be such an important matter of state, particularly as Parliament was in session, that the garrulous French ambassador, La Mothe Fénélon, was to be kept out of the loop on Elizabeth’s express command. Catherine readily agreed and selected her trusted councilor Paul de Foix to handle the preliminaries in Paris with Walsingham.
Still, Elizabeth had acquired a shady reputation when it came to marriage. Catherine impressed on Walsingham the necessity of concluding this marriage treaty swiftly, for she knew full well that marriage was Elizabeth’s way to promise much and deliver little. Though Catherine was aware of the tactic, she remained anxious to see the negotiations come to fruition. She saw this as France’s best means of quelling disgruntled Huguenot voices and obtaining peace within her realm. Walsingham had to agree with her. Within weeks of the discussions commencing, England’s enemies were at work to stop the talks.
Philip dangled the leadership of his league against the Ottoman Turk in front of Henry of Anjou’s eyes, even though Henry had only acquitted himself marginally in France’s third civil war. The papal nuncio urged the nineteen-year-old to reflect on how life would be, married to a heretic, and an old, barren woman of thirty-seven. The Guises, of course, had hoped Henry would marry the Scots queen, who was after all some ten years younger than Elizabeth. They even worked hard to persuade Henry that it would be a straightforward matter to invade England and free Mary.
In the end, the marriage plans faltered, as anticipated, on the grounds of religion. Henry refused any compromise regarding his devotions remaining a private affair, and so negotiations stopped. Two days later, it was a desperate Catherine who proposed her youngest son, sixteen-year-old Francis, Duke of Alençon, in his brother’s stead. This time, it was Elizabeth who refused to entertain the marriage, imagining everyone mocking her for marrying a boy less than half her age. The most influential person against the match with the youngest Valois prince was Leicester.
In fact, Leicester and Walsingham had been exchanging correspondence about how the Protestants in England might prevail without Elizabeth marrying a Catholic prince—an anathema to them both. On August 3, 1571, Walsingham wrote to Leicester that the main stumbling block to creating a Protestant League against Spain, the papacy, and the Hapsburgs of Austria was “our ancient league with the House of Burgundy,” of which Philip was duke. With Philip’s cousin as the Holy Roman Emperor in Vienna, and Austria acting as “the Pope’s champion,” Leicester and Walsingham agreed that courting the anger of both the Austrian and Spanish Hapsburgs simultaneously was too dangerous to contemplate.
Worse still, the French heir was no great catch since most of England’s overseas trade still took place at Hamburg or Antwerp. What France did offer, however, was an “advancement of the Gospel there but also elsewhere, and therefore though it yieldeth not so much temporal profit, yet in respect of spiritual fruit that thereby may ensue, I think it worthy the embracing.”14
As the wedding plans crumbled, both Elizabeth and Catherine agreed that a Protestant League would resolve many of their mutual problems on religious matters. The odd thing was that the French Catholic “war party” was not opposed. They viewed the struggle with Spain and Austria in dynastic terms of Valois against Hapsburg, as in the bad old days of the first half of the sixteenth century. So the politiques and the Huguenots at court presented Charles IX with a comprehensive policy against Spain through a Protestant League with England.
Fortuitously, William of Orange’s younger brother, Louis of Nassau, had fled to France for asylum and was at the French court at the time of these discussions. He had fought on behalf of the Huguenots during the third civil war and settled at La Rochelle. From there, Nassau had been successfully launching piratical raids against Spanish shipping with his small fleet of Beggars. Just as Walsingham hatched his plan, Nassau had been attempting to entice Charles IX into an invasion of the Netherlands by sea. When Nassau heard that the English were contemplating an intervention, he addressed his heartfelt appeal to Walsingham instead. As Spain had just received Irish rebels at Philip’s Escorial palace, Walsingham grasped how through Nassau’s plan Elizabeth might be “revenged for the pretended troubles in Ireland by keeping the King of Spain occupied in Flanders.”15
For Walsingham, all else would flow from the resolution of the prickly religious issues surrounding the queen of Scots. That meant the establishment of an effective Protestant League—both offensive and defensive—against the pope and Spain and not directly embroiling England in a ragtag invasion force in Flanders.
When the breakthrough in negotiations occurred at last, it seems to have been due to Walsingham’s silent ability to read people and situations. Unexpectedly, Admiral Coligny returned to Charles IX’s side at court in the autumn, leaving the disgraced Guise faction exiled from power. Within days, word came that the papal nuncio desired an audience with the king to present a sword blessed by Pius V and, more significantly, to prevent the negotiations succeeding with England. Philip had empowered the nuncio to speak on his behalf to entice Anjou into accepting his earlier offer to head up the Catholic League.
Just as all appeared to be lost, Walsingham could see by Catherine’s demeanor that religion and, especially, the queen of Scots had become less important than the treaty. Walsingham had pressed Catherine on the issue of Mary and Scotland several times after the queen mother’s private conferences with her son the king. Each time, Catherine admitted freely that she had forgotten to mention Mary. It was the breakthrough the English commissioners, Walsingham and Sir Thomas Smith, needed. What Walsingham hadn’t known was that Catherine did discuss Mary’s latest shenanigans with Charles, who said, “Alas, the poor fool will never cease until she loses her head … It is her own fault and folly.”16
In the end, an offensive league was dropped from the treaty negotiations, and Charles IX provided a private side letter to Elizabeth promising to come to her aid in the event of an attack or invasion of England for religious reasons. Significantly for Elizabeth, the commissioners had obtained two further major concessions. First, France and England would join together to bring Scotland under the rule of one government. This concession may have been cemented by the unwelcome news that a band of Mary’s followers had attacked Stirling Castle, murdering the regent, Lennox. Second, France would provide a secure base for England’s cloth trade, which had become semi-itinerant since the loss of Calais in 1557. The establishment of Anglican churches in France for the English merchant community was an essential part of this provision. The Treaty of Blois was finally signed by the French and English commissioners on April 19, 1572.
The treaty held great promise for the future. It resolved the issue of a French or English partisan Scotland, created a home for the cloth trade, and provided a framework for both countries to work together for each other’s defense. Above all, it strengthened the Protestant position in Europe, and in particular, Huguenot influence in France. Although it was an imperfect treaty, relying as so many do on the goodwill of the signatories to it, no one could foresee that a few short months later, all would be lost.
FIFTEEN
Massacre in Paris
And with this weight I’ll counterpoise a crown,
Or with seditions weary all the world.
—The Massacre at Paris, act 1, scene 2
by Christopher Marlowe (1592)
While negotiations were under way for a marital alliance with England, Catherine de’ Medici was also aiming to catch a Protestant bridegroom for her daughter Marguerite. The man in her sights was Henry of Navarre, First Prince of the Blood of France.1 If only she could manage a Protestant League with Elizabeth in the north, covertly fund William of Orange’s invasion of the Low Countries from Germany in the northeast, and seal a wedding to the southwest with Navarre, Catherine
would, at a stroke, neutralize the Huguenot and ultra-Catholic Guise factions in France and secure her borders against the pope and Philip.
The plan had already been partially implemented. Catherine had succeeded in winning Elisabeth of Austria, daughter of Maximilian II, for her son Charles IX to protect her eastern flank. With Charles increasingly unpredictable in his behavior, Catherine was determined to take control of her own and France’s destiny. Seemingly, she chose to side with the Protestants in the religious wars rumbling through Europe without openly breaking with either Spain or Rome.
Yet to win over Henry, Prince of Navarre—the tall and handsome but as yet uninspiring leader of the Huguenots—Catherine needed to persuade his mother, Jeanne, queen of Navarre, that she was sincere in her support and that the Huguenot population of France would be protected. Coaxing Jeanne out of her fortress stronghold at La Rochelle (which had its own government and laws) needed to be done subtly, with just a soupçon of menace, particularly as Jeanne had been unwell. France remained a Catholic country and, in matters of religion, loyal to Rome. Naturally, Pius V opposed any marriage linking Navarre and France and would require little persuasion to declare the queen of Navarre’s son Henry illegitimate, since he was the child of Jeanne’s second marriage “of questionable validity.”2
Like so many menaces made in the French court, it was whispered to Jeanne with a velvet voice. The attraction to such a political marriage from Navarre’s viewpoint was obvious. The more the ailing Jeanne thought about it, the more appealing it seemed. So Jeanne traveled to meet privately with Catherine de’ Medici under a safe conduct signed by Catherine, Charles, and the Duke of Anjou to lay down her terms. Jeanne, who had been in long and amicable correspondence with Elizabeth, was taking no chances. While Walsingham and Smith were negotiating on behalf of Elizabeth, Jeanne was in talks with Catherine.
In mid-March, Jeanne invited Walsingham and Smith to a private dinner, where she discussed her concerns quite openly with the two English commissioners. After dinner, they adjourned to another room where twelve men “of religion” greeted them—men who were Jeanne’s closest advisers. Many were Calvinist ministers whose hearts palpitated at the thought of a frocked priest performing the wedding ceremony, as it could “not but breed general offense to the Godly.” Jeanne agreed. She feared she would “incur God’s high displeasure” if the ceremony was a Catholic one. Walsingham calmly gave advice on how matters could be resolved for the good of all by use of a proxy bridegroom within the cathedral precinct of Notre Dame. When the proposed marriage seemed lost to all others, Walsingham wrote to Burghley “that hardly any cause will make them break; so many necessary causes there are why the same should proceed.”3 Once again, Walsingham was right. The marriage treaty was signed on April 11, 1572, only eight days before the Treaty of Blois united England and France.
* * *
That April proved momentous in other ways, too. Pius V became grievously ill. The pope, who had begun life as a shepherd before becoming a Dominican priest, then promoted through the ranks to cardinal, was not expected to survive. His pontificate had revised the catechism, breviary, and missal; reinstituted the Inquisition against “northern heretics”; set up a permanent Congregation of the Index, which would oversee and update the list of banned books; and issued numerous decrees against blasphemy, sodomy, adultery, and clerical marriage.4
April 1572 was also the month when the Dutch Sea Beggars who had been expelled from England’s shores in February retook Brielle, one of two deepwater ports in the Netherlands, from the Spanish. Two months earlier Elizabeth and Alba had begun to discuss a resumption of trade between the Low Countries and England, interrupted since Elizabeth had sequestered Alba’s pay ships in November 1568. The precondition to any agreement was for the queen to exile the Sea Beggars from her shores.5 She readily complied, knowing it was a cunning deceit that would cost Spain dearly. It was also the “green light” for Louis of Nassau to press home his desire with Charles IX to invade the Netherlands.
* * *
Still, Elizabeth was not the only queen capable of cunning deceits that spring and summer. Catherine de’ Medici, having secured the marriages of two of her children, proceeded to insinuate her younger and ambitious son Henry, Duke of Anjou, into a crown of his own. Anjou and his elder brother Charles loathed one another, with Anjou constantly taunting the king. Alençon and Marguerite also detested Anjou for his malicious nature (he was a remorseless teaser), but both were powerless to rebel against him, as he was Catherine’s favorite child. On hearing from one of her favorite dwarves that Sigismund-Augustus II, king of Poland and Lithuania, lay dying, and without issue, Catherine sprang into action, bribing, cajoling, and bullying everyone who would make the decision on the king’s elected successor. For her, only Anjou was fit to wear Poland’s crown.6
By mid-May, Rome had elected Cardinal Ugo Boncompagni as Pope Gregory XIII. Where previously the pope was believed to be infallible and worshipped as the “sundial of the Church,” by the end of his papacy Gregory XIII (1572–85) would be hailed by Catholics as a “Vice-God … greater and more excellent than a man.”7 For now, all that mattered to Catherine de’ Medici was that the new pope give his dispensation to allow Henry of Navarre to marry Marguerite, his cousin in the third degree. With assurances from Catherine to Gregory XIII that the union was part of a master plan she had devised to keep Charles IX from going to war against Spain, the Pope assented to the marriage. It was the first important international action of his papacy.
* * *
Meanwhile, Louis of Nassau prepared to expand the Sea Beggars’ bridgehead beyond Brielle. In the late spring, he approached Walsingham to ensure that Elizabeth would do no more than “allow Walloon refugees in England to buy provisions and to come over to him” in the Netherlands. No money was required. Walsingham had reported separately that Charles IX would be providing Nassau with all that he could wish.8 Burghley replied that “we have suffered as many of the strangers (Netherlanders) to depart from hence as would, but that is but a simple help.”9 Burghley was alluding to Elizabeth’s adventurers who were itching to become involved in the fray.
Then, on June 9, shortly after arriving in Paris to assist with her son’s wedding plans, Jeanne, already ravaged by illness, died aged only forty-four. Though there was talk of poison, the autopsy result seemed to indicate that she had been suffering from tuberculosis and most likely breast cancer. Prince Henry was now King Henry of Navarre. Despite losing his mother, great protector, and mentor, Henry agreed to proceed with the wedding as planned by treaty in August.
In early July, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, armed with a passport personally endorsed by Elizabeth, crossed the Channel with a large company of English volunteers to help liberate the Netherlands. If confronted, Elizabeth would, as was her custom with all her adventurers, disavow any knowledge of his actions. Notwithstanding, Gilbert’s “instructions” were quite clear—occupy Flushing and Sluys, the two remaining significant coastal towns. Above all, Gilbert was to prevent Admiral Coligny from possessing them. So much for the Treaty of Blois. Elizabeth was finally up for a fight. What had provoked Elizabeth into action was the clear eye with which she viewed Catherine’s machinations across Europe. What the desired reaction to Alba’s tyranny against the Calvinists had failed to provoke, Catherine’s insatiable ambition did.
The beauty of the Gilbert plan was that to ambitious French eyes, Elizabeth was simply carrying out the terms of the Blois Treaty. Smith reported back to London that everyone at court was pleased. “Matters in Flanders begin to wax hot,” Smith wrote later that month, “and the beginning of next month … the brood hereabouts will be fledged.”10
Leicester had been told that Nassau’s forces numbered around five thousand foot soldiers, most of them from Gascony, and twelve hundred horsemen. William of Orange, who had over four thousand horse, would be invading from the east. Meanwhile, Charles prevaricated. The official story was that he would not loose Coligny on the Low Countries until t
he Turks had been attacked in the eastern Mediterranean. Yet both Anjou and Catherine were dead set against France appearing to take part directly in the invasion. Meanwhile, Anjou in the wings, ever more attached to the fanatical Catholic creed and the Guise faction, seethed at Coligny’s increasingly unbreakable influence on his brother the king. Catherine, too, allowed her mother’s jealousy at being usurped by Coligny to rise. She saw the growing danger in the aging admiral’s hold over her son.
* * *
Walsingham saw through all these factors and Charles’s ruse. “The King is so far forward in this matter,” Walsingham wrote to Burghley in early July 1572, “that no disguising will serve.”11 Within the week, Orange had crossed the Rhine with seven thousand horse and fifty ensigns of foot. Even the Ottoman Turks wanted to ally themselves to Charles IX. After their devastating defeat at Lepanto in October 1571, they offered to take to sea in force, and give France phenomenal sums of money to wage war on Spain.
While Walsingham pinned his hopes on Charles IX prevailing, Catherine de’ Medici watched, apparently helplessly, as the Huguenot forces poured across the border into the Netherlands. On July 17, the Seigneur de Genlis invaded, under the orders of Coligny, who remained at Charles’s side. The French were ambushed just outside Mons by the Spanish, who had been alerted well in advance. Within ten days it was all over. The Huguenots were slaughtered, with only a few hundred barely escaping alive. Had Catherine betrayed them and sent word to Alba as proof of her good faith? Or was it Anjou? Either is possible, since they both loathed Coligny and feared the mesmerizing hold he seemed to have over Charles.
