Dark Eminence Catherine De Medici And Her Children

by Marguerite Vance

  They fawned upon the sick boy, surrounding him, flatter-

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  ing him with windy praise for his courage, his sovereign might. And Francis's eyes glowed, his thin cheeks flushed crimson. "But what must I do, milords?" he quavered; and they knew they had won him over.

  It would all be very simple, they assured him. He would summon Navarre to his presence chamber and confront him with the accusation. Doubtless the Bourbon prince would deny the charge, might even reach for his sword to defend his honor. Given that threat as an excuse, Francis would lunge at him with his dagger. There was nothing to fear. His "uncles" would be there to help him the moment he called. After all, it would look as though they were but defending their beloved King—as, indeed, they would be, they hastened to add.

  Badly frightened, Francis, sworn to secrecy, nevertheless must have confided in his mother. It was unthinkable among the Valois children that "Her Grace, my mother' should not share their every thought. She in turn probably warned Navarre. He arrived at the presence chamber in high spirits and whenever Francis began his halting accusation he simply laughed good-naturedly, brushing it aside. Try as he would, the frightened boy could not rouse him to anger and presently the Bourbon prince smilingly bowed himself out. The plot had failed dismally and Francis faced the fury of the Guises.

  A few days later he collapsed and was put to bed and surgeons did what they could to relieve his suffering. However, the growth behind his ear ruptured and on December 5, 1560 Francis, King of France, aged seventeen, died.

  His young wife, who had loved Kim deeply, was inconsolable. She chose to wear white as her sign of mourning, and Catherine cringed to see the unabashed admiration in the eyes of every man at Court as Mary followed the coffin down the nave at Saint-Denis. How she disliked the girl! Now that she, Catherine, was restored to first place, she would make it her business to get rid of .her by some means.

  Catherines grief for her son, the baby she had awaited with such joy seventeen years earlier, was not profound. He had been a weakling from birth and this she found hard to forgive. True, he had brought the crown of Scotland to ap-

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  pease her for his other defections, but he still was not the prince of her highest hopes since the Scottish crown, after all, had come through the Guises. So now to concentrate on the next heir in line, Charles IX. Francis's kief life had been a defect in the threads of the tapestry of dynastic strength her ambition was weaving. Unmoved, she put him out of her mind,

  Charles, the precocious boy of ten with his beetling dark eyes, his extraordinarily broad shoulders and thin, spindly legs, was a character to cope with. Already his admiration for his beautiful widowed sister-in-law was causing comment at Court, his temper tantrums were bringing woe to his tutors and governors. This was the new King.

  In a measure Catherine was proud of him, proud of his abnormal physical strength, his ability to outride, outshoot and outwrestle any of his gentlemen. But there her interest in him seemed to come to a full halt. It was his brother, Henry, Duke of Anjou, she was watching. He had ever been her favorite son and to see him on the throne of France was her dream. Incredible mother that she was, Catherine deliberately instructed Charles's tutors not to be overzealous in their training of his morals or his physical habits; let him, she implied, become another Francis, weak, easily influenced— by her—and not too long-lived. Henry must wear the crown as soon as possible. Meanwhile neither the Guises nor the Bourbons were going to influence Charles if Catherine could prevent it, and with this uppermost in her mind, she took Antoine of Bourbon to task.

  By ancient law the Bourbon House would succeed the

  last Valois as the reigning House of France. Catherine coolly looked over her remaining three sons and admitted hitterly to herself that the end of the Valois strain was by no means unlikely. Distrusting the Guises, she still must watch the Bourbons who were formidable in their own right. For one thing she must retain the regency for the ten-year-old King. Antoine of Navarre, the Bourbon prince, as closest male relative, might claim the regency himself and so be in control of Charles's every move. She must act swiftly and cautiously if she hoped to keep her own power over the throne. With all the charm at her command, that subtle Medici charm, she made Navarre a daring promise.

  If he would under oath renounce his claim as Regent during the minority of the young King, he should be rewarded by receiving the high office of Lieutenant General. With every intention of declining, Antoine, under the spell of Catherine's charm, accepted and she relaxed. For a few more years at least she would be at the head of the kingdom, the power guiding the course of the throne of the one man in France who had shown her sincere friendship, her father-in-law, Francis I.

  As for the presence of Mary Stuart, the little Dowager Queen, this, too, required thought. Charles had fallen hopelessly in love with her even before his brothers death, and once in a hysterical outburst, he shouted that in the tomb Francis must never forget that he had possessed as his very own this beautiful princess for even a short time and so should never regret his untimely death. Catherine, however, had had all she could endure of the girl who had dared call

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  her "a merchant's daughter," and refused even to consider the match.

  The wily Guises then remembered Don Carlos of Spain. Their position in the Catholic party would he immeasurably improved by the marriage of their niece to the son of His Most Catholic Majesty, Philip of Spain. However, they had not considered how the staunchly Protestant Elizabeth of England or Catherine de Medici, whose daughter was the young stepmother of Don Carlos, would view such a marriage. The plan, they decided, might better be abandoned.

  Scotland made overtures for the return of Mary to her native land and Catherine was quick to agree to the suggested terms. So on a cold spring day in 1561 the young Queen of Scotland set sail from Calais for the land she scarcely remembered, leaving behind her bitter-sweet memories of a way of life she had found good and of a love which was profound, however contrived. Her marriage to her cousin, Henry Darnley, son o£ the Earl of Lennox, followed almost immediately. So Mary Stuart, for years a part of the Valois family, passed out of its bounds.

  The perplexing subject of Huguenot versus Catholic at this time can be explained quite simply, though the endless plots and counterplots by leaders of both factions in the war for religious supremacy are too many and too complicated to follow unless one is making a serious study of the epoch.

  Wherever class hatred is strong there are often the elements for religious controversy as well. The Huguenots were largely made up of middle-class folk, professional men, small

  landowners and merchants. They were the ones who paid the high taxes from which the nobility was exempted; they dressed modestly, even somberly, as a rebuke to their wealthy adversaries, the Catholic nobility. They sincerely believed the Catholic dogma regarding the Real Presence of Our Lord in the Holy Communion was a sacrilege and for this they were willing to die—and did, by the thousands. On the other hand, the Catholics detested the Huguenots for their dreary hymns, their general attitude of self-righteousness and above all, their denial of the Real Presence. And, like the Huguenots, they were glad to suffer if need be in defense of their faith. That among leaders of both parties there were hypocrites and turncoats goes without saying. Most of the supporters of the Bourbons were Huguenots, most Guises "were ultra-Catholic, and their hatred for each other was lethal.

  Catherine as Regent was caught between the two. To be on friendly terms with the Huguenots, to merely wink and look away when she saw their religious gatherings, this meant loyalty from the Bourbons and renewed double-dealing from the Guises; to show an interest in the Catholic progress brought the Guises beaming and fawning into her cainp while the Bourbons looked askance and planned reprisals.

  All that really interested Catherine, having no religious scruples of her own, were the sovereign rights of her children and her continued place at the
helm of the ship of state. What difference, thought Catherine, what the convictions of the French people were concerning their religion so long as she was sure of those two things?

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  With this in mind she called a council of both churches to meet with her at Poissy. Here the clergy would sit down to talk matters over calmly like sensible people, she thought, and in the end there would be agreement and peace all around. Delegates to the council would be housed at Saint-Germain, the conferences to be held in the big refectory at the Abbey of Poissy. Everyone should have an opportunity to air his views and so surely, thought Catherine, a perfectly logical solution would be reached.

  But a complete stranger herself to religious zeal and the heights of the emotional tempest it could rouse, she was dum-founded at Poissy to hear pious clergymen, both Catholic and Protestant, shouting at one another in anything but pious language.

  Thirty-five Archbishops and seven Cardinals were present when the King, not yet eleven, rose to open the conference. His speech was not long but he had learned it by heart without understanding much of it, and his high piping voice gave strange inflections to many of the unfamiliar words.

  On his right sat his mother; on his left his younger brother, Henry of Anjou. Marguerite, fidgeting at the long confinement like any merry eight-year-old, tossed her head, making her long heavy earrings swing as she tried to engage her seven-year-old brother, Hercules, Duke of Alengon, in a whispered conversation. Marguerite could not, would not ever conform to any set of circumstances not of her own making.

  The debates continued for hours, becoming more and more heated. To her surprise, Catherine found the King of

  Navarre, so recently a Huguenot of almost fanatical devotion, now a Catholic, siding with the Guises in every argument! Her astonishment was tempered a little by secret satisfaction. She never had liked his wife, Queen Jeanne, who had converted him to Protestantism in the first place, it was said, and Catherine now found it amusing to think of her chagrin. Sooner or later she knew that Antoine, King of Navarre, weakling that he was, would defect again. She had always found him rather engaging despite his lack of stability, but now suddenly she felt a twinge of contempt for the man.

  Jeanne of Navarre had come to the Council of Poissy, bringing her little son Henry with her. He was something of a young rowdy, this nine-year-old prince from the tiny kingdom straddling the Spanish-French border, and Catherine, watching his high spirits, speculated, thinking what an excellent match he would make for Marguerite. She must give it serious thought. But before the council ended, disgust at Antoine's treatment of the boy outweighed any considerations of matchmaking.

  Young Henry of Navarre, following the Huguenot faith which he believed was his father's as well, refused to hear Mass or to receive Communion. The boy's absence from religious service escaped his father's notice until one day late in the council. Then, roused to hysteria probably by shame over his own treachery, Antoine beat the child unmercifully before the congregation. Henry screamed, begging to be told what he had done that was wrong. But his father, beside himself now with rage and embarrassment, only continued his

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  savage punishment until one of the clergy begged him to stop.

  Alone with her husband when the terrified lad had been turned over to his governors, the Queen of Navarre reproached Antoine. 'Why, milord, did you punish the child for refusing to do the very thing you would have forbidden him to do yourself a fortnight gone?" she asked, Her face was white with anger. After all, Antoine was responsible to her for his crown since she was Queen of Navarre in her own right, being the only daughter of Henry dAlbret, King of Navarre, and he, Antoine, had her to thank, not for his crown alone, but for the rich estates and titles that came with it. Now he had dared to abuse their child.

  "I punished him/ 1 he shouted, "because he's a young heretic, a believer in the folly youVe taught him. You are a heretic yourself, Madame, and for this I am divorcing you—

  by special dispensation. For this you should have a taste of the cold comforts of the dungeon!"

  Something in his mad intensity frightened her. The dungeons of Spain and France were too well-known not to strike terror to any heart. Taking leave of the young King and his mother with unflurried courtesy, Queen Jeanne alerted her attendants and had her chariots and saddle horses made ready. Then when night fell, her cavalcade quietly set out for Navarre. Torches flared as they plunged through the darkness and by morning their lead over any pursuers An-toine might have dispatched after them was a safe one, Days later the Queen and her little son were home. She never saw her husband again.

  For one of the few times in her life Catherine de Medici was frightened. Her Council of Poissy, from which she had expected so much, had failed. Moreover, one could no

  longer distinguish between friend and foe; men were Catholic or Huguenot as a matter not of conviction but of expediency. She had tubes cleverly concealed in draperies leading from one of her rooms to another where frequent meetings of the Guises were held. So it was she learned that plans were being made by Anne de Montmorency, the Duke of Guise and the Marshal de Saint-Andre to have her drowned in the Seine!

  For some time recently she had been on friendly terms with the Guises; now once more she swung to the Bourbons. The safety of the King—and of the regency—was all-important. If civil war were actually to break out, then she preferred the Bourbons, her kinsmen, as allies. Even An-toine, wretched turncoat that he was, seemed suddenly not such a bad fellow. Besides, that match between his boy, Henry, and Marguerite must not be forgotten.

  And civil war did come, a senseless, lunatic war in which the greatest victims were the poor farmers who did not know why their lands were being trampled by galloping armies, their cottages burned, and famine the reward of their labors. Antoine, King of Navarre, died of a bullet wound at Rouen with both Catholic priests and Huguenot ministers at his bedside!

  The months crept by and still the war continued. Early in 1563 on a February evening while reconnoitering along the banks of the Loire, the Duke of Guise was shot, murdered, it was suspected, by either agents of the Queen Regent or by that devout Huguenot, Gaspard of Coligny, Admiral of France.

  A ROYAL PROGRESS AND A SNUB

  How could anyone be certain of anything in this life, Catherine wondered, knowing full well that no one could ever be certain of her. The Duke of Guise, so long her feared enemy, was dead at last and there were those who dared say she was responsible for that death.

  Then there was Antoine, the conniving weakling who posed a certain threat to her regency. Now Antoine too was dead, so her worries should have lessened materially. But not at all. There was the Prince of Conde, his brother, a man of strong convictions to whom Catherine always had been attracted, but a statesman whom she also feared for the very qualities of shrewd thinking she most admired in him.

  Doubtless Conde would lay claim to the regency and this must not happen, for if he did and she defied him, it would mean a dangerous break with the Bourbon House. Catherine

  puzzled over the situation for days and then, like a fish swimming toward her through sunny waters, came the answer. The regency should be discontinued! She would declare Charles of legal age to rule though he was only thirteen. He would not dare go counter to her wishes in anything, and as Queen Mother she would in some measure be more apt to bend him to her will than as Regent. The half-mad young King always resented force and as Regent she spoke with the authority of the law; on the other hand, her "advice," more inflexible than any legal mandate, was always obeyed without question. Keep Charles docile, tractable, and the governing of the kingdom was hers until she could place it happily in the hands of her favorite son, Henry of Anjou, a year younger than Charles.

  She was very busy, this incredible woman. For one thing, she reminded herself, she must get in touch with that tiresome Jeanne of Navarre who had left the Council of Poissy so abruptly. (Antoine had been an unpardonable boor thrashing young Henry as
he had, but Jeanne should have overlooked it. Children survive these things.) She, Catherine, must speak to her about a marriage between Henry and Marguerite. A Navarre-Valois union would be excellent unless—and here another plan suddenly slid into the spectrum of her thinking—unless she could prevail upon Elizabeth to suggest to Philip a match between Don Carlos and Marguerite.

  In Spain, Elizabeth had spent five happy years. Physically she was still frail in an exquisite flowerlike way. Scarcely had

  she arrived in Madrid when she developed smallpox and came very close to dying. Philip was never far from her bedside, fearless for his own health, absorbed only in the comfort and well-being of the young Queen.

  His first marriage, to his cousin, Mary of Portugal, when he was seventeen, had been a very happy one. However, Mary had died when their little son, Don Carlos, was only four days old. Looking at the lumpish infant with its vacant expression and continuous whine, Philip probably guessed the taint the child had inherited from both its maternal and paternal grandparents whose families were equally blighted with insanity. Once sure that his suspicions were correct, Philip lost interest in his son. He turned him over to nurses and tutors and gave most of his attention to an English alliance, his loveless marriage with Mary Tudor, eleven years his senior.

  Their wretchedly unhappy marriage ended with Mary's death late in 1558. Now with the lovely Elizabeth his consort, Philip was enjoying some of the happiest years of his life. Courtiers noted that much of his brusqueness had moderated, that his arrogance was less pronounced. He laughed oftener, generously overlooked blunders by inexperienced pages and nervous petitioners. Truly Elizabeth had been well named Princess of Peace.