Queen Margot, wife of Henry of Navarre

Front matter

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CHAPTER I Page i HI 28

VII „ 93

VIII in

XVII „ 245

XVIII „ 256

„ XXII j 324

XXIV „ 364

LIST OF PORTRAITS

IN PHOTOGRAVURE

Marguerite de Valois, Queen of France and Navarre (" Queen Margqt "), atat. 20, from an engraving after a drawing by an unknown artist, in the Bibliotheque

Nationale, Paris Frontispiece

Henri de Lorraine, Due de Guise, from an engraving by

Le Blond, in the British Museum To fact page 38

Jeanne d'Albret, Queen of Navarre, from an engraving after a drawing attributed to Francois Clouet, in the Bibliothique Nationale, Paris „ 58

Henri IV., King of France and Navarre, from an engraving after a drawing attributed to Pierre du Moustier, in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris „ 86

Gaspard de Coligny, Admiral of France, from an engraving after a drawing attributed to Francois Clouet, in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris „ 100

Elizabeth of Austria, Queen of France, from an engraving after a drawing attributed to Janet, in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris „ 114

Charles IX., King of France, from an engraving after a drawing by an unknown artist, in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris „ 138

Charlotte de Beaune, Baronne de Sauve (afterwards Marquise de Noirmoutier),y5vM« an engraving after a drawing by an unknown artist, in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris „ 162

xvii

LIST OF PORTRAITS

Don Juan of Austria,/rflz» a contemporary Spanish print To face page 210

Francois de Valois, Due d'Alencon (afterwards Due d'Anjou),y/w!w an engraving after a drawing attributed to Francois Clouet, in the Bibliothlque Rationale, Paris „ 234

Catherine de' Medici, Queen of France, from the drawing

by Francois Clouet, in the British Museum „ 250

Henri III., King of France, after an engraving by

L'Armessin „ 294

Marguerite de Valois, Queen of France and Navarre, (" Queen Margot "), from an engraving by Merger after the painting by Vincent „ 316

Gabrielle d'Estrees, Duchesse de Beaufort, from an engraving after a drawing attributed to Francois Quesnel, in the Bibliothique Nationale, Paris „ 352

Henriette de Balzac d'Entragues, Marquise de Verneuil,

from an engraving by Aubert „ 366

Marie de' Medici, Queen of France, from the painting by Franz Pourbus the younger {by permission of Mrs. Alfred Morrison) „ 376 xvin

CHAPTER I

Brant6me's eulogy of Marguerite de Valois — Characteristics of the Valois family — The three Marguerites — Early years of Marguerite de Valois — Accession of Charles IX. — Critical condition of the kingdom — Catherine de' Medici — Her character and policy — The Colloquy of Poissy — Progress of Protestantism at this period — Endeavours of the Due d'Anjou to persuade his sister to embrace the new religion — Outbreak of the first civil war — Marguerite is sent to the Chateau of Saint- Germain — Her education — Her mother summons her to accompany the court on the " Grand Foyage."

" To speak now of the beauty of this rare princess ; I believe that all those who are, will be, or ever have been, are plain beside it and cannot have beauty ; for the fire of hers so burns the wings of others that they dare not hover or even appear around it. . . . It is believed, on the advice of several, that no goddess was ever seen more beautiful, so that, in order to suitably proclaim her charms, merits, and virtues, God must lengthen the earth and heighten the sky, since space in the air and on the land is lacking for the flight of her perfections and renown." * Thus wrote Brantome of Marguerite de Valois, eighth child of Henri II. and Catherine de' Medici, and first wife of Henri IV., the restorer of the French monarchy ; an exaggerated description no doubt, and one which even the object of his adoration seems to have found a trifle highly-coloured, but which, so far at least as regards the

1 Dames illustres. 1 princess's outward perfections, finds more than a faint echo in the writings of other contemporary chroniclers.

A strange race were these Valois of Angouleme ; a race which personified, in both their good qualities and their defects, the epoch in which they lived ; brilliant, frivolous, adventurous; lovers of letters and patrons of the arts ; generous, eloquent, quick-witted, and courageous : but bigoted and superstitious, cruel and unscrupulous, dissolute, and deceitful. And, as the Valois were typical of their age, so Marguerite may be said to have been typical of her family, " the most attractive figure, the most curious personality of that truly royal race, which was distinguished by so many happy gifts, whose destiny was marked by so many strange vicissitudes, full of triumphs, uncertainties, and calamities." 1

Marguerite was born on Sunday, May 14, 1553, in the beautiful Chateau of Saint-Germain,2 overlooking the winding course of the Seine, which had been the birthplace of her father Henri II. and her brother Charles IX., and was one day to be the cradle of Louis XIV. The name which she received had already been borne by two celebrated princesses of her House. The first Marguerite was that " paragon and phcenix of ladies, queens, and princesses," the beloved sister of Francois I., who married, firstly, the Due d'Alenc,on, and, afterwards, Henri d'Albret, King of Navarre, and was the author, or compiler, of the " Heptameron " and a writer of charming verse. By her second marriage, Marguerite dAngouleme, as she was called, became the mother of Jeanne d'Albret, who married Antoine de Bourbon, Due de Vendome, and was

x Comte Leo de Saint-Poncy, Marguerite de Valois, Reine de France et de Navarre (Paris : Gaume, 1887), i. 3.

2 Some historians have erroneously placed her birth at Fontainebleau.

the mother of Henri the Fourth of France and the Third of Navarre. The second Marguerite was the second daughter of Francois I., the sister of Henri II., and the wife of Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy. It was during the festivities in honour of the marriage of this princess and of her niece Elisabeth, eldest daughter of Henri II., to Philip II. of Spain that the King of France was fatally wounded in a tournament, by Gabriel de Montgommery, Comte de Lorges, the Captain of his Scottish Guard.

Of Marguerite's childhood we know little, for her famous Memoires contain but scanty information about this period of her life. Her early years were passed at the Chateau of Saint-Germain, in the company of her elder sisters, Elisabeth and Claude (married, in 1559, to Charles II., Duke of Lorraine), and Marie Stuart, the little Queen of Scotland, who became her sister-in-law, in 1558, by her marriage with the Dauphin (afterwards Francois II.), under the care of Charlotte de Vienne, Baronne de Curton, "a wise and virtuous lady greatly attached to the Catholic religion," who, according to Marguerite's eighteenth-century historian Mongez, had been the gouvernante of seven queens and princesses.1

After the marriage of her sisters and Marie Stuart, Marguerite appears to have spent the greater part of her time at the Chateau of Vincennes and to have had as her companions in her studies and games her two younger brothers, Henri d'Anjou and Frangois d'Alencon, for the latter of whom she early conceived a warm affection, which

1 She was the fourth wife of Joachim de Chabannes, Seneschal of Toulouse and chevalier cPhonneur to Catherine de' Medici. After Marguerite's marriage with Henri II. of Navarre, she became her first dame d'honneur, a post which she held until her death in 1575.

was returned and endured down to the time of the prince's death in 1584.

In the meanwhile, great changes had been taking place in France. The lance of Montgommery had cut short the life of Henry II. and, after a brief reign of eighteen months, Francois II., the youthful and sickly husband of Marie Stuart, had followed him to the grave, leaving the Crown to his younger brother, Charles.

Seldom has a reign opened under more unfavourable auspices than that of Charles IX. The King was a boy of ten ; several years must elapse before he could be capable of exercising more than a nominal authority, while never had a strong and energetic ruler been more sorely needed. The condition of affairs in France was indeed most critical. To the difficulties which invariably beset a Regency were joined other troubles. Since the death of Henri II., the authority of the Crown had greatly declined ; rival factions, the Bourbons, the Montmorencies, and the Guises disputed the power ; the Court was a hotbed of intrigue, the people oppressed and discontented ; while the antagonism between the Reformation and the Old Religion had assumed a pronounced and openly hostile character.

Such was the situation with which Catherine de' Medici was called upon to deal, when, in the teeth of the rival factions, she took up the reins of government. During the reign of her husband, Catherine had perforce remained in the background, the King being completely under the influence of his mistress, Diane de Poitiers, though once, for a brief period, when Henri II. was with the army in Germany, she had acted as Regent of the Kingdom. Under Francois II., the government had fallen into the hands of Marie Stuart's uncles, the Due de

Guise and the Cardinal de Lorraine, and the Queen- Mother had been, politically speaking, a mere cipher. But the early death of Francois had given her the opportunity which she so ardently desired — for all her life she had hungered for power and influence as a starving man hungers for bread — and she at once assumed a quasi-absolute authority. And that authority once in her hands, all her efforts were henceforth directed to safeguarding it and enabling her to remain the first — the only personage in the State. She brought to the task a remarkable knowledge of men and affairs, the fruit of long years of quiet study and observation, a boundless activity, an untiring vigilance, a charm of manner which few who came into contact with her could resist, and a soul depraved by a life of subjection and dissimulation. Her master-passion was to govern through her sons, and she dreaded every influence which might weaken by one iota her personal authority. In State ceremonies, she loved to be treated as on an equality with them ; at the Estates of Orleans in 1560, her seat was placed on the same level and under the same canopy as that of Charles IX. When, in 1569, she visited Metz, she desired to precede him into the town, with her own cortege of ladies and officers, in order not to be confounded with his suite. In fact, she governed during the whole reign of her second son, resumed the Regency after his death, while awaiting the return of Henri III. from Poland, and her influence may be traced in almost every important act of his reign down to the time of her death.

By the majority of her contemporaries, particularly by those who viewed her only from a distance, Catherine is represented as a sinister figure, with little of the woman about her save her sex ; a creature of Machiavellian subtlety, ambitious, cruel and unscrupulous. This estimate would seem to be in great part erroneous. Ambitious and unscrupulous she certainly was ; but she was never cruel, except when it was impossible to gain her ends by other means. Violent measures were naturally alien to her character ; when she struck, it was because bribery, cajolery and intimidation had failed. Nor was she, by any means, the profound politician which some would have us believe. The rapid changes of front, the shifty expedients, to which she so constantly resorted, so far from being part of any carefully-matured scheme, were, in most instances, the manoeuvres of a timid, irresolute woman, anxious at all costs to escape from the difficulties of the moment and incapable of perceiving any but the immediate consequences of her actions.

If Catherine had really possessed the political sagacity sometimes ascribed to her, she would most certainly, on her assumption of the Regency, have pursued the course suggested to her by her able and disinterested Minister, Michel l'Hopital. This was to adopt a strictly neutral position, and, by the enforcement of toleration, of civil reform, and of justice, to raise the Crown above the region of controversy and prevent civil war. But the Queen only followed this advice so far as to avoid siding definitely with either party. She was incapable of anynoble aim, while it is also probable that she failed to fully realise, at any rate until matters had gone too far to be remedied, the gravity of the situation. " If one follows all her proceedings," writes Chateaubriand, " one perceives that in the whole vast realm of which she was the sovereign, she beheld only a large Florence, the broils of her petty republic, the risings of one quarter of her native city against another, the quarrels between the Pazzi and the Medici, in the struggle between the Guises and the Chatillons." " To divide in order to reign " was the principle upon which she acted ; to give a little encouragement to the Huguenots, to instil a little apprehension into the Catholics, and to accustom both parties to regard her as the dominating factor in the situation. The result was that she was distrusted by both alike, and is more than any one responsible for the thirty years of civil war that thenceforward devastated France.

It must not be supposed, however, that Catherine desired war. On the contrary, she was sincerely anxious to maintain peace. War might mean a decisive victory for the Huguenots, in which case she foresaw that the turbulent nobles who would fight for their old feudal rights under the banner of religious toleration would require far greater concessions than that of freedom of worship. Or it might mean the complete triumph of the Catholics, and the consequent supremacy of the Guises. Both results were equally to be feared.

And so she expressed her warm approval of the Colloquy of Poissy, which took place in the early autumn of 1 56 1, in the hope of arriving at some settlement of the chief points in dispute between the two religions, and, in company with the King, assisted at its deliberations. But the colloquy came to nothing, and, after long and acrimonious discussions, the rival theologians parted more divided in opinion than ever.

It was at the Colloquy of Poissy, and during the months that followed, that Huguenotism reached its flood-tide, and made its supreme effort to capture France and to found a new national Protestant Church. The Court itself was the centre of the struggle. High-born dames, like Renee de France, Duchess of Ferrara, Jacqueline de Rohan, the Princesse de Porcien, and the Comtesses de Mailly and de la Rochefoucauld, exerted all the influence at their command to make converts. Beza and other eminent divines expounded Calvinistic doctrines, in the lodgings of Coligny and Conde, to congregations largely composed of Catholics. The younger members of the Court, particularly the ladies, began to manifest a decided taste for the new heterodox works, and took pleasure in reading the Holy Scriptures in French and singing the Psalms of Marot. " The numbers and boldness of the Protestants increase daily," wrote Languet, " and the Catholics seemed to be disheartened, little by little." 1 Fashion, ever so powerful in France, was probably no stranger to the progress of Protestantism. " It is with a morbid justice," remarks M. de Saint- Poncy, that President Henault observes that " in seeking the true causes of the progress of the Reformation in different countries, one finds that in Germany it was interest,2 in England love,3 and in France novelty." 4

Marguerite de Valois, in her Memoires, casts a curious light upon the trend of opinion in Court circles at this period, and shows us the aristocratic enthusiasts for the

1 Cited by Mr. A. W. Whitehead, " Gaspard de Coligny, Admiral of France."

2 The desire of the minor princes of Germany to enrich themselves with the spoils of the Church.

3 The love of Henry VIII. for Anne Boleyn.

4 Comte L<fo de Saint-Poncy, Histoire de Marguerite de Valois, Relne de Trance et de Navarre, i. 26.

latest fashionable craze carrying their zeal so far as to endeavour to make proselytes by means more forcible than persuasive. It is singular to find at the head of this band of missionaries her brother, the Due d'Anjou, one of the chief instigators of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew.

Then, again, she says, " is the resistance I made in order to remain faithful to my religion, at the time of the Colloquy of Poissy (when the whole Court was infected with heresy), to the arbitrary persuasions of several lords and ladies of the Court, and even to those of my brother of Anjou, since King of France, whose inexperience had prevented him from escaping the influence of that wretched Huguenoterie, and who never ceased conjuring me to change my religion, very often throwing my Book of Hours into the fire and giving me, in its stead, Huguenot songs and prayers, which I used to hand over at once to Madame de Curton, my gouvernante, whom God had done me the favour to keep Catholic, and who would often take me to M. Cardinal de Tournon, who advised and strengthened me in the suffering of all things for the maintenance of my religion, and gave me prayerbooks and rosaries, in the place of those which had been burnt by my brother of Anjou. But when others of his intimate friends who were bent upon my destruction discovered that these were once more in my possession, they reviled me angrily, saying that it was youth and stupidity which caused me to act thus ; that it was easy to see that I was possessed of no understanding ; that all intelligent people, whatever their age or sex, hearing the doctrine of Charity preached, had freed themselves from the trammels of bigotry, but that I should become as foolish as my gouvernante. And my brother of Anjou, adding threats thereunto, declared that the Queen my mother would have me whipped. He said this, however, upon his own responsibility, for the Queen my mother was ignorant of the error into which he had fallen, and when she became aware of it, she reproved him and his tutors as well, and, after having had them instructed, induced them to return to the true, holy, and ancient faith of our fathers, from which she had never departed. I used to say in answer to these threats, melting to tears — as seven or eight, the age I was then, is a somewhat sensitive period — that they might have me whipped or killed if they liked, but that I would endure anything that could be done to me rather than bring about my own damnation." 1

Marguerite, indeed, remained down to the day of her death a most devout Catholic, that is to say, in the sense of being a rigid observer of the forms and ceremonies of her Church, a practice which was not in those days, and, indeed, down to a very much later period, held to be incompatible with the most irregular of lives.

The enthusiasm of the Court for the new teaching was not of long duration, for Protestantism, partly under the stress of the persecution to which it was subjected at the hands of the Guises and their partisans, and partly through the influence of the ambitious nobles who exploited it for their own selfish purposes, was rapidly passing from a purely religious movement into a political one of a most formidable kind. In March 1562, the massacre of Vassy furnished the occasion for which both parties had been waiting, and a few weeks later the first civil war broke out.

At the commencement of hostilities, Catherine de' Medici separated her children ; the young King and her 1 Memoires et lettres de Marguerite de Vakis (edit. Guessard, 1842.)

favourite son, Henri d'Anjou, she kept with her ; while Marguerite and the little Due d'Alengon were sent to the Chateau of Amboise, so charmingly situated on the banks of the Loire. Three years earlier, Amboise had been the scene of tragic events ; but now it was peaceful, and had been chosen by the Queen-Mother as being sufficiently far removed from the theatre of war to prove a safe retreat for her younger children. Here Marguerite and her brother were able to continue their studies, undisturbed by the turmoil in which the greater part of the country was plunged ; the former under the direction of Madame de Curton and the learned and pious Henri Le Maignan, afterwards Bishop of Digne, the latter under that of his gouverneur, Du Plessis.

Catherine de' Medici, belonging to a family in which love for the arts was hereditary, exercised the most careful supervision over the education of her children and spared no pains to secure for them the services of the most capable teachers of the day. The classics, grammar, history, the Holy Scriptures — from the study of which, it must be confessed, they would appear to have derived singularly little benefit — all were carefully taught them. The savant Amyot, Bishop of Auxerre, one of the most profound scholars of his time, whose translation of Plutarch enjoyed so great a vogue, was tutor to Charles IX. and Henri d'Anjou, and gave lessons also to Catherine's younger children. " It is not his least glory," remarks M. de Saint-Poncy, " to have cultivated the mind of the young Princess of Valois and to have prepared, by his learned instruction, one of the most eloquent writers of this remarkable century. The perusal of Marguerite's Mimoires reveals the impression which Plutarch made upon her ; one finds there many passages reminiscent of

ii this work, which had on its appearance an incomparable success, confirmed by posterity."1

Nor were other studies neglected ; music, singing, painting, and dancing — in which accomplishment the last Valois seemed to have particularly excelled — were taught them by the best masters that could be procured. Marguerite received instruction in music and singing from the celebrated singer, Etienne Leroy, and Paul de Rege, who had been the dancing-master of Marie Stuart, gave her lessons in the choregraphic art.

At the conclusion of the first civil war, in the spring of 1563, Catherine, freed for a time from her dread of the Guises, by the assassination of their chief,2 decided that her best chance of maintaining her influence, lay in placing her eldest son at the head of the Catholic party, and directing her efforts to the gradual ruin, by peaceful means, of the Protestants, now become by far the most formidable opponents of the royal authority. The King had been declared of age, but the effective authority remained in the hands of his mother, who now persuaded him to undertake a grand progress through the various provinces of his realm, and sent for Marguerite, who was not yet twelve years old, to accompany her. Catherine hoped much from this progress, which was intended to make the young sovereign acquainted with the position of affairs in the provinces, and to impose by his presence respect for the edicts of toleration accorded the Huguenots, while, at the same time, weakening their influence and rendering it difficult for them to recommence hostilities.

1 Comte Leo de Saint-Poncy, ^Marguerite de Valois, Reine de France et de Navarre, i. 17.

2 Fran£ois de Lorraine, Due de Guise, was assassinated by Poltrot de Mere while besieging Orleans, on February 18, 1563.

Chapter II

The " Grand Poyage" — The interview ofBayonne — Feteonthe Isle of Aiguemeau — Huguenot excesses in Beam — Marguerite returns to Paris — Beginning of the second civil war — Attempts of the Huguenots to seize the King at Monceaux — Flight of the court to Paris — Battle of Saint-Denis — The Due d'Anjou proposes to Marguerite a political r&le — Marguerite is admitted to her mother's confidence — Arrival of the Court at Saint-Jean-d'Angely — Du Guast — Anjou accuses Marguerite of encouraging the attentions of the Due de Guise — Catherine de' Medici withdraws her confidence from her daughter — Marguerite's reason for denying her passion for Guise in her Memoires.

The Court quitted Paris on Monday, January 24, 1564, and proceeded through Champagne and Lorraine to Barle-Duc, where magnificent fetes were held in honour of the baptism of Marguerite's nephew, the Prince of Lorraine, son of her second sister Claude and Duke Charles II. Burgundy and Dauphine were next visited, and at the Chateau of Roussillon, Charles IX. signed the celebrated Ordinance of that name, whereby it was enacted that, for all official purposes, the year should henceforth begin on January 1, instead of, as heretofore, on Easter Sunday, or, to be more exact, on Holy Saturday after vespers. The winter of 15 64-1 565 was passed at Lyons, where the Duke and Duchess of Savoy visited the Court and were splendidly entertained. Then, at the beginning of the spring, the progress was resumed, and the Court proceeded to Bayonne, which was the limit of the journey. Here an interesting family meeting took place, the young Queen of Spain, Catherine's eldest daughter, coming from Madrid to greet her relatives, accompanied by the ill-fated Don Carlos — Philip II. 's son by his first wife — and the famous — or infamous — Duke of Alva, who was charged to invest the King of France with the Order of the Golden Fleece.

Alva's mission masked one of far greater importance, nothing less than to endeavour to prevail upon Charles and Catherine to enter into a treaty with Philip for the extirpation of the Protestants both in France and the Netherlands ; and some Protestant historians go so far as to assert that it was here that the project of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew was first determined on. But contemporary documents, such as Alva's own letters and the papers of Cardinal de Granvelle, clearly prove that the proposals of the terrible general were very coldly received by Catherine, and that he was given nothing but the vaguest assurances ; while it should be remembered that Alva, in marked contrast to his master, expressed the strongest disapprobation of the horrors of the St. Bartholomew, not, of course, on humanitarian, but on political grounds, declaring it to be " a mad, fatuous, and badly-conceived act."

If Alva failed in his mission, he had no reason to be dissatisfied with the reception which he and his royal mistress received at Bayonne. With Catherine de' Medici, it was a point of honour to dazzle the eyes of foreigners with the magnificence of the Court of France, and the French nobles ably seconded her efforts. Marguerite, in her Memoires, describes at length the superb fete and ballet, which Charles IX. and the Queen-

Mother gave on St. John's Eve, on the Isle of Aiguemeau, in the Adour.

"The shape of a room," she writes, "was designed in the middle of an island, as though by Nature, in a large oval meadow, enclosed by stately trees, around which the Queen my mother had arranged niches, in each of which was placed a circular table for twelve persons, whilst that of their Majesties was raised at the end of the enclosure upon a dais, approached by four grass steps. All these tables were served by different groups of shepherdesses dressed in cloth-of-gold and satin, according to the various costumes of all the provinces of France. Upon our disembarking from the magnificent boats (in which, all the way from Bayonne to the island, we were accompanied by several sea-gods, who sang and recited verses to their Majesties), these shepherdesses were discovered, each group apart, in meadows upon either side of a grass valley, which led to the aforesaid enclosure, dancing after the manner of their provinces — the Poitevines with the bagpipes, the Provencales with shawms and cymbals, the Bourguignones and Champenoises with small hautboys, round fiddles, and rustic tambourines, the Bretonnes dancing the passe-pieds and the branks-gais, and so on in respect of all the other provinces. After the performances of these shepherdesses and the feast itself were concluded, a band of musicians, accompanied by a troupe of satyrs, entered that large luminous grotto, which was even more brilliantly illuminated by the radiant beauty and the precious stones of a bevy of nymphs, who made their entry from above, than by the artificial light. These nymphs and satyrs descended and danced that beautiful ballet, whereof Fortune waxed envious and unable to endure its glories, brought about such an extraordinary storm of wind and rain that the confusion of the retreat which took place, in the dark, by boat, furnished material for more diverting stories than even the f£te had afforded.

After a brilliant series of entertainments : tournaments, fetes, illuminations, and banquets, the two Courts separated, and Elisabeth reluctantly bade farewell to her family, which she was never to see again * and set out with Alva and Don Carlos on her return journey ; while the French Court proceeded to Nerac, the favourite residence of Jeanne d'Albret, Queen of Navarre. Their journey thither lay, in great part, through the dominions of that estimable but bigoted princess, and the more devout Catholics of the party were horror-struck by the signs of the devastation recently committed by the Huguenots, in revenge for the cruelties perpetrated on their co-religionists in other parts of France. For Jeanne had proscribed the Catholic religion and persecuted its adherents, and ruined monasteries, desecrated churches, broken crosses, and mutilated images were to be seen on every side. On their arrival at Nerac, Charles IX. and Catherine