Beneath these eddies of sartorial rivalry there were the undercurrents of more dangerous enmities. The constable and Diane de Poiters were now all-powerful with Henry II, and their own alliance was symbolized by the marriage of a granddaughter of Diane with the son of the constable. Moreover, the Montmorency faction was beginning to have Protestant affiliations, in contrast to the strong Catholicism of the Guises, since Montmorency’s own nephew Admiral Coligny had become a Huguenot. These Huguenot connections were also starting to be shared by the third powerful French family, the Bourbons, through their head, King Antoine of Navarre and his wife Jeane d’Albret. As the cardinal busied himself with preparations for the double wedding, it must have seemed to him that the fortunes of the Guises had taken a definite downward trend. At this moment, the volatile wheel of fortune, which the Guises had so often observed turning to their advantage in the past, was once again to take a dynamic revolution in their favour.
On 15th June the duke of Alva arrived to claim Elisabeth by proxy for his master Philip II, and on 21st June the proxy wedding took place, although as the young bride had not yet reached the age of puberty, it was decided that she should not depart for the Spanish court until the autumn. On 27th June the marriage contract was signed between Mme Marguerite and the duke of Savoy. There were endless tournaments and festivities, and the culmination of the double event – the wedding of Marguerite – was only a few days away. On 30th June, the king, magnificent in the black and white which he wore because they were the favourite colours of Diane de Poitiers, mounted his horse Le Malheureux and entered the lists along with the duke of Guise wearing red and white, the duke of Ferrara in yellow and red, and the duke of Nemours, commonly known to be enamoured of the duchess of Guise, in yellow and black. The king’s love of jousting amounted almost to a mania.* He broke three lances with the duke of Savoy, the duke of Guise, and Jacques de Lorge, count of Montgomery, a Norman with Scottish blood who was colonel of the archers of the guard and a man of renowned courage.
All went well until, on a sudden whim, the king challenged Montgomery to break a last lance with him. Apparently, with some presentiment of evil, Montgomery tried to excuse himself from the encounter, until Henry finally commanded him to obey as his sovereign. Now Catherine de Médicis tried to dissuade her husband, having had two visions of ill-omen about the tournament. Her daughter Marguerite tells us in her memoirs that on the previous night Catherine had actually dreamt of the death of Henry, pierced in the eye by a lance, exactly as it transpired. Henry merely replied that he would break one more lance in the queen’s honour. Catherine’s forebodings were justified: the shock of the meeting between the two resulted in Montgomery’s lance splintering; one splinter went into the king’s right eye, another into his throat. Throckmorton, the English ambassador, described the scene; Henry was borne off, ‘nothing covered but his face, he moved neither hand nor foot, but lay as one amazed’.29
The king was carried to the nearby Hôtel des Tournelles, and here lay in a state of virtual unconsciousness for nine days. On 8th July, in a lucid moment, he ordered Queen Catherine to proceed with the marriage of Mme Marguerite and the duke of Savoy. The ceremony was bathed in extreme gloom: the church of St Paul, close by the Hôtel des Tournelles, was hastily decorated and at midnight the young couple knelt at the altar. Catherine sat alone on the royal dais, in floods of tears, while Francis and Mary did not even attend, but remained within earshot of the king. Jérôme de la Rovère, bishop of Toulon, said a Low Mass, trembling all the while lest he should find the herald at arms announcing the death of the king at the door of the sanctuary. As Henry felt himself dying, he called for his son and began ‘My son, I recommend to you the Church and my people …’ but he could not go on. He gave the dauphin his blessing and kissed him. That evening he became paralysed, his breathing was painful, and at 1 a.m. on 10th July he died with grossly swollen hands and feet, all showing signs of a virulent infection.
Queen Catherine was left to find gloomy consolation in the fact that the death of Henry II represented a signal triumph for the art of astrology to which she attached such importance. The king’s death had twice been predicted accurately, although of course neither prediction had served in any way to avert the king’s fate, this being a common disadvantage of this absorbing science. Catherine kept a tame astrologer, Luc Gauric, who predicted the death of the king in a duel – which was thought at the time to be extremely unlikely, as a king was seldom to be found in single combat.*
In 1555 the famous Nostradamus first published his prophecies, including the rhyme:
The young lion shall overcome the old one
In martial field by a single duel
In a cage of gold he shall put out his eye
Two wounds from one, then he shall die a cruel death.
Afterwards, it was pointed out that the tilting helm strangely resembles a cage, and that the king’s visor was actually gilded; the two wounds were held to refer to the splintering of the lance, piercing the throat and the eye. There was actually one outcry demanding the burning of Nostradamus, the man who had prophesied ‘so ill and so well’.†
Francis II was now king of France at the age of fifteen and a half, and Mary Stuart queen at the age of sixteen. In one blow of a lance, the fortunes of the Guises had changed. Their niece was now in the very seat of power. The stage was now set for their triumph, however short-lived. The day of Henry’s death was referred to afterwards by one wit as ‘the eve of the feast of the three kings’, and it was commonly asserted that there were now three kings in France, Francis of Valois, Francis of Guise, and Cardinal Charles of Lorraine – ‘one king in name only and two kings of Lorraine in effect’.30 Immediately after his father’s death, Francis entrusted his father’s body to the constable, the Cardinal de Chastillon, Admiral Coligny and the marshal of Saint-André, and entered the coach which had come from the court on the Guises’ orders. King Francis entered first, and as Queen Mary hung modestly back, Queen Catherine forced her into the place of honour. The young king was taken to the Louvre, and by the time the deputation from the Parliament arrived, the government was already in the hands of the Guises.
When the Spanish ambassadors visited Queen Catherine to pay her their condolences, they found the room draped in black, the floor as well as the walls.31 The windows were shut, and there was no light except two candles burning on an altar draped in black. Catherine herself sat in a severe black dress with no ornament except a collar of ermine. The new queen of France on the other hand was dressed in white, the white which she had insisted on wearing for her wedding only fifteen months before, and which now she could wear in earnest as the colour of mourning. Catherine responded only faintly to the ambassador’s condolences, but the new queen, prompted by her uncles, made a gracious little speech, urging them to come often to court, and asking them to give her compliments to the king of Spain. In the course of her speech she took care to sing the praises of her uncles. At the funeral of Henry II, begun at Notre Dame on 11th August, and completed at Saint-Denis on 13th August, the role of the Guises was even more significant than it had been at the beginning of the previous reign. Cardinal Charles, as abbot of St Denis, presided over the interment. Another Guise brother, René of Elboeuf, held the hand of justice, Henry of Guise held the crown, Grand Prior Francis of Guise the sceptre, and the duke of Guise the royal banner of France. By making the young king, as one historian at the Guise family has put it, ‘their nephew by alliance, their pupil by necessity’,32 Mary Stuart had fulfilled the ultimate expectations of her family.
* Mary’s grandmother, Duchess Antoinette of France, and Francis’s maternal grandmother were first cousins; Mary and Francis were thus third cousins.
* When Melville told Queen Elizabeth that Mary was “higher’ than her, Elizabeth remarked jealously that the rival queen must be ‘over high’. But, of course, Elizabeth, despite her obsession on the subject of Mary’s beauty, never actually met her: no man who saw her ever suggested that the quee
n of Scots was ‘over high’.
† It has recently been pointed out that Mary was not wearing her white mourning in this portrait for Francis II, since the picture was painted some time prior to August 1560 when Throckmorton reported Mary’s intention of sending her portrait to Elizabeth, and how she commented to him: ‘I perceive you like me better when I look sadly than when I look merrily, for it is told me that you desired to have me pictured when I wore the Deuil.’ Mary was therefore in mourning for her father-in-law Henry or her mother, Mary of Guise.10
* The poem most commonly attributed to her, Adieu, plaisant pays de France, has been shown to be the work of an eighteenth-century French journalist. The authentic poetry of Mary Stuart can best be judged from the poignant lines she wrote on the death of Francis, the sonnet by her to Queen Elizabeth in 1568, and the poems written during her captivity, published by John Leslie.13
* Ronsard! Perchance a passing note of pain Speaks sometimes to thy heart in days gone by, When he who was thy king did not disdain To do thee honour for thy poesy …15
* For a discussion of Mary’s health in later life and the subject of porphyria see Chapter 22, pp. 551–4. It has been suggested that in youth Mary suffered from chlorosis, or ‘green sickness’, on the basis of Throckmorton’s description.18 Chlorosis is, however, usually associated with malnutrition and general lack of exercise, fresh air and sunlight in adolescents living in slum conditions. In her upbringing at the French court Mary certainly did not lack proper exercise, fresh air or substantial meals: nor is the puffiness of the face, generally associated with chlorosis, mentioned in any of the contemporary descriptions of her appearance.
* See genealogical table.
* He seemed to be in excellent health at the time although as Throckmorton had reported to London in May that the king was ill with vertigo, it is just possible that some giddiness afflicted him to explain the events that followed.28
* Gauric also prophesied the death of Duke Francis of Guise correctly, saying that he would be struck down from behind. This met with annoyance as well as scepticism since Francis thought that the prophecy carried with it some implication of cowardice. He forgot that although only the back of the coward is turned towards the enemy, the dagger of the assassin also strikes from behind.
† Queen Catherine was not always so fortunate, in astrological terms, in the truth of the predictions which were made to her. When the future Charles IX was born, it was prophesied that he would one day be as great a king as Charlemagne – a prediction which he did very little to fulfil during his days as king. Another son, for whom Nostradamus equally prophesied a brilliant future, died only eighteen months after his birth.
CHAPTER SIX
The White Lily of France
‘Alba rosis albis mine insere lilia …’
Nuptial song on the marriage of Francis and Mary,
referring to the union of the white lilies of France
and the white roses of the Yorkists
On 18th September, 1559, the young Francis was solemnly crowned king of France at Rheims: his consort Mary had already been crowned queen of Scotland in babyhood and unlike previous queens of France had thus no need of further coronation to confirm her royal state. The weather was wet and windy. Nor was there any great display of pageantry on this occasion, owing to the recent and shocking death of Henry II: Throckmorton noted savagely that the city was scarcely decorated at all ‘save that the arms of England, France and Scotland quartered were brimly set out in the show over the gate’.1 Francis himself wore a coat of black velvet and Mary alone of the ladies who attended the coronation was not dressed in dark colours. The day after the ceremony, court mourning was resumed for a year to mark the late king’s death. Although the ancient crown of St Denis had been placed on his head, the real power in France was very far from lying within the puny grasp of Francis II. The English ambassador Throckmorton analysed the situation as follows – the old French queen (Catherine) had the authority of regent, although she was not in fact regent in name; in the meantime the state was governed by the cardinal of Lorraine and the duke of Guise jointly, the duke having charge of the war, and the cardinal the ordering of all other affairs including finance and foreign affairs. The Venetian ambassador noted that the Guises now conducted secret inner discussions on matters of policy, just before official meetings of the Grand Council: these conferences took place either in Francis’s chamber or in that of Queen Catherine.2
This political ascendancy had its parallel in the domestic arrangements of the new king and queen of France: Guisards were made gentlemen of the bed-chamber to the king, and Mary’s new list of domestic officers was headed by those ladies who were to receive 800 livres in wages, including Antoinette of Guise, Anne d’Esté, the duchess of Aumale and the marquise of Elboeuf – her grandmother and her three Guise aunts. One of Mary’s first actions after the death of Henry II as a formal expression of her joy at coming to the throne was to make a donation to the grandmother who had contributed so much to her upbringing. The court of France, with Francis, Mary and Catherine at its head, now resumed the endless journeyings which characterized its way of life. These travels were prompted by a variety of motives, including the calls of the chase, domestic convenience and in certain cases the dictates of security or politics. In the first instance the entire court proceeded to Blois to wait for the signal of the departure of young Elisabeth to Spain; from Blois the royal cortège went to Varteuil, and from there to a snow-strewn Châtelherault, which they entered at the end of November. On 25th November Queen Catherine finally permitted her child to depart, with grief so extreme that even the Spanish ambassador was moved by it. Mary herself was equally distraught at the prospect of the departure of her friend: she entrusted Elisabeth with a touching letter to King Philip from his new sister-in-law, saying that she could hardly bear to part with Elisabeth, were it not for the fact that she knew Elisabeth would be happy and contented in her new life. Nevertheless for Mary herself the loss would be irreparable. She ended her letter by begging the Spanish king to receive it ‘as from the person who loves her [Elisabeth] the most in the world, and who wishes always to be – Vôtre bien bonne soeur Marie’.3
With Mary and the royal family immersed in their personal sorrow, the Guise brothers were left to grapple with the internal government of France, which represented at this period a problem which other less bold spirits might, with considerable justification, have shrunk from tackling. The Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis had not come in time to save France from cruel inflation, induced by the economic demands of the Italian wars. It has been estimated that at the death of Henry II the treasury staggered under a war debt of forty million livres the theoretical resources of the crown were ten million livres, but the actual income only amounted to about half this, and the interest on the royal debt consumed it. At the same time the kingdom was being rapidly dissected by the presence of two religions, as French Calvinism became the natural target for discontent with the central authority.4 Even if the country had not been plunged in such grave economic problems, some sort of regency, de facto if not de jure, would have been necessary for the young Francis. At the age of fifteen and a half, when he ascended the throne, his intelligence was scarcely more developed than his physique. In youth, like many other boys he had loved to hunt more than he had loved to learn, but since he was the dauphin of France, not enough pressure had been exerted to redress the balance. The result was that his mind, without being actually feeble, as his body was, had never really developed to the point when the possibilities of power and government excited him. As a king he lacked the necessary self-restraint to attend to the business of government when pleasure offered, his tutors in youth having concentrated more on the importance of the actual role he would play than the importance of the duties which were attached to it. The enemies of the Guises accused them of encouraging their nephew in his pursuit of pleasure in order to have the government of the realm to themselves. But there was no need to carry out such a
policy of corruption, their work had already been done for them by the over-protective upbringing of Catherine de Médicis, who had with all her loving, maternal care developed only self-importance, not self-discipline, in her son.
The nature of the king’s character was fully appreciated by the watchful ambassadors at the French court. His routine was understood to be dominated by his frantic love of hawking: in December 1559 he was reported as having retired to Chambord till Christmas, to which the Chancellor of the Privy Council was obliged to repair in order ‘to arrange his finances for the next year’. In March 1560 when the king refused to see the English ambassadors, giving out that he was ill, their immediate instinct was to suspect that he was merely playing truant ‘as the king is wont to go abroad very often to amuse himself for several days without transacting business’. This was an age when monarchs were still expected to reproduce in themselves the personal qualities of greatness, to win the admiration of their subjects. Duke Francis of Guise owned much of his prestige to his physical courage: despite her frail health Mary Stuart was famed for being personally fearless. King Francis, on the other hand, was timid by nature. He had a certain pathetic dandyism, a love of display revealed by his personal accounts, where swords were made with hilts coloured to match his various costumes; but this was no substitute for the careless courage so attractive in princes.5 He lived in fear for his personal safety, which made it natural for him to depute the government of the kingdom happily to those he felt best able to secure it.