CHAPTER III
Catherine de’ Medici and her “escadron volant”—Adroitness with which the Queen employs the charms of her maids-of-honour to seduce the Huguenot chiefs—The King of Navarre and la belle Rouet—Policy of Catherine after the Peace of Amboise—She determines to compromise Condé with his foreign allies and the French Protestants, by encouraging his taste for sensual pleasures—And selects for his subjugation her maid-of-honour and kinswoman Isabelle de Limeuil—Description of this siren—Her admirers—Her mercenary character—Beginning of her liaison with the prince—Condé and Elizabeth of England—Mlle. de Limeuil, inspired by Catherine, seeks to persuade Condé to break with Elizabeth—Mission of d’Alluye to England—Condé is induced to take up arms against his late allies—Siege and surrender of Le Havre.
The life of the Court, which naturally possessed a great attraction for a man of Condé’s temperament, was full of snares and pitfalls. It was not for the mere pleasure of beholding their pretty faces that Catherine recruited her entourage from the most beautiful young girls in France. During the lifetime of her husband, in the days before she had been called upon to play a political rôle, Catherine had been the most austere of queens, guarding the reputation of her ladies as jealously as she did her own, and visiting with her severe displeasure the slightest breach of decorum on their part. But when she found herself a widow, struggling in an endless web of plot and falsehood to protect her children’s heritage; beset on one side by the Catholics, on the other, by the Huguenots; often driven to her wits’ end to devise means to prevent the royal authority being submerged amid the strife of contending parties, her austerity gave way before political exigencies, and, recognizing how formidable a weapon she possessed in the charms of her “escadron volant,” she exploited them without scruple. “These maids-of-honour,” writes Brantôme, “were sufficient to set fire to the whole world; indeed, they burned up a good part of it, as many of us gentlemen of the Court as of others who approached their flames.”
Catherine received not a few remonstrances concerning the havoc wrought by the beaux yeux of these damsels. “You ought, Madame,” runs one of them, “to content yourself with a small train of maids-of-honour, and to look to it that they do not pass and repass through the hands of men, and that they are more modestly clothed.” But Catherine’s squadron had demonstrated its peculiar value on too many occasions for her to dream of disbanding it, or even of placing it on a peace-footing; and so its members continued to illuminate the Court ball-rooms, “like stars shining in a serene heaven.”[23] For the rest, her Majesty pretended to ignore the vices of her filles d’honneur, the better to make use of them when occasion for their services arose. No one could have shown more adroitness in throwing some isolated and often unconscious combatant in the path of the politicians and party-leaders whom she had reason to fear, to captivate their senses and surprise their secrets. It was against the Huguenot chiefs that this insidious mode of warfare was most frequently employed. “However austere they may wish to appear, these men are of their time, and share the weaknesses of their contemporaries. Women had, in many cases, launched them into adventures, women will check them in full career. Those who succeed without provoking scandal are highly praised and rewarded; the maladroit will be the less supported in their difficulties in that they are never able to invoke the excuse of a definite mission.”[24]
Knowing what we do of Catherine’s little ways, it is not difficult to imagine the tactics adopted. The destined victim, on some pretext or other, is lured to the Court. He comes, not ill-pleased to be afforded an opportunity of airing his grievances in the royal presence, but very resolved not to allow the Queen to penetrate the secrets of his party or to obtain from him the least concession. He is very coldly received, informed that his demands are unreasonable, and that the Queen fears that it will be impossible to accede to them. However, she has not the leisure to go further into the matter at that moment; let him return at the same hour on the following day, when she will hope to find him less exigent. And the audience is at end almost as soon as it has begun.
Somewhat piqued at the abruptness of his dismissal, he takes his departure, without the faintest suspicion that the most accomplished actress of the sixteenth century has been playing one of her many parts. Passing through the ante-chamber, he perceives, apparently awaiting her royal mistress’s summons, a demure damsel of disturbing beauty—it is always the freshest and most innocent-looking of the squadron who is detailed for this kind of service—who modestly lowers her eyes as they meet his, but not before he has had time to remark that they are in keeping with her other perfections. Our Huguenot, who, though he yawns through a long sermon each Sunday and conducts family worship every day of the week, that is to say, when he does not happen to be engaged in burning his Catholic neighbours’ chateaux over their heads, is none the less a courtier of beauty, finds himself wondering who the lady can be, and goes on his way not without a lingering hope that he may see her again.
On the morrow, he returns. This time, he is informed that the Queen is giving audience to one of the foreign ambassadors, and that he will have to wait for a few minutes. A quarter of an hour passes, and he is beginning to grow impatient, when the damsel whom he has seen on the previous day enters and advances to the door of the Queen’s cabinet, with something for her royal mistress in her hand. Here, however, she is stopped by the usher; Mademoiselle cannot be allowed to enter; her Majesty has given orders that she is on no account to be disturbed. And she, too, must wait. In the circumstances, Monsieur, who is, of course, a great noble, and may therefore be permitted what in others might be considered a liberty, ventures to address her. She answers with a modesty which charms him, and they converse very agreeably until presently he is summoned to the royal presence.
Here, some further pretext is invented for detaining him some days longer at the Court, but he resigns himself to the delay with a good grace, for those few minutes’ conversation in the ante-chamber have not been barren of result. A few hours later, he receives a courteous note from Catherine, greatly regretting the inconvenience to which he is being subjected and inviting him to a ball which she is giving the following evening. “The Religion” looks with scant favour on such worldly pleasures, but he tells himself that it would be churlish, perhaps impolitic, to refuse. Naturally, he meets Mademoiselle, arrayed in a ravishing toilette—very probably a present from the Queen—and looking more alluring than ever. He requests to be presented to her; they dance together, and he finds her as charming as she is beautiful. Opportunities for further meetings will not be wanting, for by this time the girl has received her instructions from headquarters; and soon there will be no further need for Catherine to devise pretexts for keeping the gentleman at Court.
When our Huguenot’s partisans learn what is going on, they will write letter upon letter, warning him that an ambush is being laid for him, and reproaching him with bringing discredit upon the Faith. But he is now fairly in the toils, and their warnings and reproaches will serve no purpose save to irritate him against them and loosen the ties which bind him to them. Perhaps, lured by the blandishments of his inamorata and incensed by the suspicions of his party, he will end by abandoning it altogether; at the least, a breach will be created between them which will not be easy to heal, and some very useful information, which has escaped his lips in unguarded moments, will find its way into Catherine’s cabinet.
It was thus that Condé’s elder brother, Antoine de Bourbon, King of Navarre, had met Louise de la Beraudière,[25] Demoiselle de Rouet—la belle Rouet, as the Court called her—in whom he found so refreshing a contrast to his sharp-featured and austere consort that he permitted her to lead him whither she, or rather Catherine, willed.[26] She was the cause of his death. Wounded at the siege of Rouen and scarcely convalescent, he called her to him, and “behaved as though he considered that kings were immortal,” with the result that might be expected.
“Cy-gist le corps au vers en proye
Du roy qui mourut pour la Roye [Rouet].
Cy-gist qui quitta Jésus-Christ
Pour un royaume par escript,[27]
Et sa femme très vertueuse
Pour une puante morveuse.”
So ran a Huguenot epitaph on the ill-fated Antoine. But her connexion with the King of Navarre did not prevent la belle Rouet from making an advantageous marriage with Robert de Gombault, Sieur d’Arcis-sur-l’Aube, maître d’hôtel to Charles IX., whom she presented with two daughters.
The events of the civil war had profoundly altered Catherine’s views in regard to the two parties which divided the kingdom. At the opening of hostilities, she had believed that the Huguenots possessed the better chance of success, and, though constrained to lend her name to the Catholic leaders, she was careful not to allow herself to be identified too closely with their objects. But, as time went on, it became evident that, although the Huguenots were undoubtedly formidable, they were very inferior in numbers, and that the mass of the people were faithful to the Old Religion. She was compelled, therefore, to recognize that she had been mistaken, and that it would be very inadvisable for her to alienate the Catholic party. On the other hand, it would be easy to seize the direction of that party, for the King of Navarre and François de Guise were dead, the sons of Guise mere boys, the Cardinal de Bourbon absolutely incapable, the Montmorencies divided among themselves, and the Cardinal de Lorraine, deprived of the support of his brother, as humble as he had once been arrogant. She, therefore, decided to place herself and her son at the head of the Catholics and to re-establish unity in the kingdom by the ruin of Protestantism. But she had no intention of resorting to force; “she wished to undermine the ramparts of Calvinism, not to carry them by assault;”[28] to take back little by little, by restrictive interpretations of the Edict of Amboise, the concessions granted the Reformers; to disarm and dissolve their religious and military associations; and to dishearten them by withholding the protection of the Law and assuring impunity to the violence of the Catholics. But, aware that her task would be immensely facilitated if she could begin by depriving them of their protectors in high places, she was determined to leave no means untried to seduce or discredit the Huguenot chiefs, and particularly Condé—the first Prince of the Blood, the link between the noble and democratic sections of the party, the man whom she half-suspected of aspiring to the throne.
From the time of the Peace of Amboise, it was easy for Catherine to perceive that Condé, who had just consented to such important modifications of the “Edict of January,” was unlikely henceforth to show himself a very zealous champion of Protestantism, and that a considerable section of the Huguenots was disposed to question the seriousness of his conversion and the sincerity of his devotion to their cause. She knew, too, that if, on the one hand, Condé aspired, as a Prince of the Blood, to play a prominent part in affairs of State, and was ambitious to secure the title of Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom, he would be, as a man, eager to compensate himself for the ennui of his recent captivity by a round of pleasure and dissipation.
At first, Catherine’s attitude towards Condé was everything that he could possibly desire; she overwhelmed him with attentions; consulted him constantly on public affairs, and showed for his opinion a deference which delighted him. But all this was merely intended to put him off his guard and foster the pleasing illusions which he had entertained since the conference on the Île-aux-Bœufs. For, so far from having any intention of sharing the direction of affairs with the prince, she had determined to detach him from his alliances with the foreign Protestants, compromise him with his own party, and reduce him to political impotence. And, to accomplish this she proposed to deal with him as she had dealt with his unfortunate brother, the King of Navarre, by encouraging his taste for those sensual pleasures which the most dissolute Court in Europe offered so many opportunities of gratifying.
To dominate Condé, Catherine had in reserve an auxiliary not less redoubtable than la belle Rouet. It was Isabelle de Limeuil, one of the two maids-of-honour whom she had brought to the Île-aux-Bœufs, and who had already made a very favourable impression upon the inflammable prince.
Isabelle was a member of a branch of the House of La Tour d’Auvergne, to which Madeleine de la Tour, the mother of Catherine de’ Medici, had belonged, and was therefore a kinswoman of the Queen-Mother.[29] She was a blond, with beautiful blue eyes and a dazzling complexion, in figure somewhat thin, but exquisitely formed. She had been well-educated, was extremely intelligent and possessed of a mordant wit, which she used freely at the expense of those admirers who did not suit her fancy, not sparing even the most exalted personages. Brantôme relates how, one day during the siege of Rouen, she rebuffed the old Connétable de Montmorency, whose bitter tongue was dreaded by all the Court. The Constable, who, in spite of his age and gravity, did not disdain an occasional amourette attempted to make love to her and addressed her, in anticipation, as “his mistress.” She replied tartly that, if he supposed he would ever have the right to address her thus, he was greatly mistaken, and promptly turned her back on him. Little accustomed to such a rebuff, the old gentleman took his departure, decidedly crestfallen. “My mistress,” said he, “I leave you; you snub me cruelly.” “Which is quite fitting,” she retorted, “since you are accustomed to snub everybody else.”
Her soupirants were legion, and included the Duc d’Aumale; Florimond Robertet, Sieur du Fresne, one of his Majesty’s Secretaries of State;[30] Charles de la Marck, Comte de Maulevrier; Claude de la Châtre, afterwards maréchal de France; Brantôme and Ronsard, one of whose most charming chansons she inspired:
“Quand ce beau printemps je voy,
J’apercoy
Rajeunir la terre et l’onde,
Et me semble que le jour
Et l’amour
Comme enfans naissent au monde.
Quand le soleil tout riant
D’Orient
Nous monstre sa blonde tresse,
Il me semble que je voy
Devant moy
Lever ma belle maistresse.
Quand je sens, parmi les prez
Diaprez,
Les fleurs dont la terre est pleine,
Lors je fais croire à mes sens
Que je sens
La douceur de son haleine.
Je voudrois, au bruit de l’eau
D’un ruisseau,
Desplier ses tresses blondes,
Frizant en autant de nœus
Ses cheveux
Que je verrois frizer d’ondes.
Je voudrois, pour la tenir,
Devenir
Dieu des ces forests désertes
La baisant autant de fois
Qu’en un bois
Il y a de feuilles vertes.”
With the exception of Du Fresne, who passed for her amant de cœur, it is doubtful if any of the gentlemen we have named ever saw his hopes materialize, for the fair Isabelle was exceedingly fastidious. Moreover, she appears to have been one of those sirens who have a nice appreciation of the commercial value of their charms, and who not only set an exalted price upon their favours, but do not scruple to discount it in advance and subsequently decline to meet their obligations. “Monseigneur,” writes she to the Duc d’Aumale, in a letter appealing to his benevolence, “if you have not discovered how much I desired to do the thing which was agreeable to you, it was not because you had not the means, but the will.”[31]
Isabelle lent herself the more readily to Catherine’s plans, since the mission confided to her was one in which her inclination happened to harmonize with her interests. For she seems to have been attracted from the first by this good-humoured little man, with his pleasant face and his laughing eyes, who danced so gracefully, paid such pretty compliments to the ladies, and, notwithstanding his lack of inches, could hold his own in manly exercises with any gentleman at the Court. And, besides, he was a Prince of the Blood and one of the bravest captains in France; and his narrow escape from the scaffold three years before, his exploits in the field, and his recent captivity, all of which naturally made a powerful appeal to ladies of a romantic disposition, had greatly enhanced the favour with which he had always been regarded by the opposite sex, many of whom would have been only too willing to accept him as a “serviteur.”
As for Condé, flattered by the preference of a young beauty for whom some of the most fascinating gallants of the Court had sighed in vain, he never paused to consider how far this bonne fortune was due to his own attractions, but plunged into it with the same impetuosity with which on the battlefield he threw himself into the thick of the enemy’s squadrons. He promised himself merely an agreeable adventure; he found one of those entanglements from which it is a difficult matter to escape.
Isabelle de Limeuil was very soon afforded an opportunity of putting the devotion which her royal admirer professed for her to the test.
Coligny and the Huguenot stalwarts had not been the only allies whom Condé had offended in accepting the conditions imposed by the Court in the Peace of Amboise. It will be remembered that an article in the Treaty of Hampton Court had stipulated that the English were to retain possession of Le Havre and Dieppe until Calais had been restored to them. Now, Condé had never officially ratified the engagements that the Vidame de Chartres had undertaken in his name; indeed, he pretended to be unaware of their full import; and had he ever been so desirous of it, it would have been impossible for him to have made the immediate restoration of Calais, or the continued retention of Le Havre by the English as a lien upon that town, a condition of peace. As an English historian very justly remarks, such a proposal would have “enlisted the pride of France against himself and his cause and have identified religious freedom with national degradation.”[32] When, therefore, on his return to Orléans after the conference on the Île-aux-Bœufs, he wrote to inform Elizabeth of what was taking place, he said not a word about Calais, but boldly assumed that her Majesty’s motives in coming to the assistance of the Huguenots had been entirely disinterested, and that, since liberty of conscience was on the point of being secured, there was no longer any occasion for continuing the war. “Now, Madame,” he wrote, “you will let it be known that none other reason than simply your zeal for the protection of the faithful who desire the preaching of the pure Gospel induced you to favour our cause.”[33]
Elizabeth, however, cared very little for the protection of the faithful in comparison with Calais, and she wrote the prince a very angry letter, in which she called upon him to fulfil his promise and bade him beware “how he set an example of perfidy to the world.” Her remonstrances, however, produced no effect, and immediately after the signing of the Peace, in accordance with an article which stipulated that the foreign auxiliaries on both sides should be sent home, the Earl of Warwick received notice that he was expected to withdraw from Le Havre.
This, however, Elizabeth firmly declined to allow him to do. In vain, Condé wrote, offering her, in the name of himself, the Regent, and the entire nobility of France, to renew formally and solemnly the clause in the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis for the restoration of Calais in 1567, to repay the money which she had advanced the Huguenots, and to remove all restrictions upon English trade with France. In vain, he despatched envoys to explain his position and to reason with her. In vain, the young King wrote himself, offering the ratification of the treaty, with “hostages at her choice” for its fulfilment from the noblest families in France. Bitterly mortified at having been outwitted in a transaction from which she had intended to reap all the advantage, she would listen to no terms. The Prince de Condé, she declared, was “a treacherous, inconstant, perjured villain,” with whom she desired to have no dealings; she required Calais delivered over to her and her money paid down, and until she had obtained both, Le Havre should remain in her hands.
Catherine de’ Medici had viewed with complacency the obstinacy of the English Queen. Although the reduction of Le Havre, a place which could easily be revictualled from the sea and which had been furnished during the English occupation with new defences, might prove a formidable undertaking, she had no doubt of success; and she preferred recovering it by conquest to seeing it amicably restored, since she would then be at liberty to retain Calais. Moreover, if Condé could be brought to turn against Elizabeth the army which her own money had assisted him to raise, and to take part in the war in person, an irremediable breach would be created between them, and she would have nothing more to fear from English intervention.
Inspired by Catherine, Isabelle de Limeuil employed all her persuasions to induce the prince to break with England; but, great as was the empire which she already exercised over Condé, and deeply incensed as the latter was by the tone of Elizabeth’s letters, and still more by the contemptuous manner in which she had spoken of him, he still remained undecided. There was no blinking the fact that, however great the difference between her promises and her performances, and however selfish her motives, the Queen had rendered the Huguenots material assistance in the late war; and Coligny and Andelot had so well recognized this that, while warmly approving of the refusal to surrender Calais, they had declined to bear arms against her. Condé was unwilling to show himself less scrupulous than they; and, besides, he had, while at Orléans, solemnly assured the English envoy that “his sword should never cut against the Queen’s Majesty.”[34]
He, therefore, urged Catherine to make a final endeavour to effect a peaceful settlement. Very reluctantly, she consented, and, towards the end of May, the Sieur d’Alluye was despatched to London with fresh propositions. D’Alluye was a young man of thirty, ignorant, conceited, and presumptuous; in fact, if it had been Catherine’s intention—which it probably was—to wound the pride of Elizabeth and provoke a new and humiliating refusal, she could not have made a better choice. Condé having requested that his confidant La Haye should be joined to d’Alluye, the Regent readily consented, well aware that a refusal transmitted through him would only have the more weight. Everything fell out precisely as might have been foreseen. After several acrimonious conferences with the English Ministers, in which d’Alluye “showed nothing but pride and ignorance,”[35] that gentleman haughtily informed the Queen, that “he had no commission to treat of Calais; his charge was only to demand Newhaven [Le Havre].”[36] Elizabeth lost her temper, and, red with anger, replied that, in occupying Le Havre, she had had no other purpose than to avenge the honour of England, which had been compromised by the loss of Calais.
This frank avowal stung the national pride of the French to the quick; from the Channel to the Pyrenees the universal cry was “Vive la France,” and Catholics and Huguenots, moved by a common impulse, pressed into the army which was being mobilized to wrest Le Havre from the grip of the English. Catherine adroitly seized the occasion to renew, through Isabelle de Limeuil, her importunities; the last scruples of Condé were overcome, and on 19 June the English envoy Middlemore, who, on the pretext of facilitating communications between Condé and Elizabeth, had been charged by the latter to attend the prince everywhere, writes to Cecil: “The inconstancy and miserableness of this Prince of Condé is so great, having both forgotten God and his own honour, as that he hath suffered himself to be won by the Q.[ueen] mother to go against her Majesty at Newhaven [Le Havre], and for the present is the person that, above all others, doth most solicit them of the Religion to serve in these wars against her Majesty.” And he adds that the prince, “specially desiring now to have every man to show himself as wicked as he, hath sent for the Admiral and M. Andelot, his brother, to come to the Court out of hand, where, being once arrived, they think to prevail with them as to win them to like and take in hand the said enterprise.”[37] Isabelle de Limeuil had served Catherine well.
A few days later, Condé having courteously desired Middlemore, who continued to stick to him like a burr, “to retire himself,” joined the army before Le Havre, where operations had already begun. The garrison had promised Elizabeth that “the Lord Warwick and all his people would spend the last drop of their blood before the French should fasten a foot in the town”; but, unhappily, they had an enemy to contend with within the walls infinitely more formidable than the one without—an enemy whom no skill could outwit and no courage repel. In the first days of June, the plague broke out among them, and, pent up in the narrow, fetid streets, the soldiers died like flies. By the end of the month, out of seven thousand men who had formed the original garrison, but three thousand were fit for duty; and by 11 July only fifteen hundred were left. Reinforcements were hurried across the Channel, only to sicken and die in their turn; a south-westerly gale drove the English ships from the coast, and the French succeeded in closing the harbour, so that soon famine was added to pestilence.
Elizabeth, alarmed by the disastrous news from Le Havre, began to repent of her obstinacy, and offered to accept the terms which she had so indignantly rejected. But it was now too late; the French, well aware of the condition of the garrison, refused to reopen the negotiations, and on 27 July, just as the besiegers, who had already made two breaches in the defences, were preparing for a general attack, Warwick, who, the previous evening, had received permission from the Queen to surrender at the last extremity, offered to capitulate. Terms were soon arranged, and on the 29th the town was restored to France, and the remnant of its brave defenders sailed for England, carrying with them the plague, which they spread far and wide through the land.
After long negotiations, peace was finally concluded at Troyes, in April 1564. Elizabeth lost all her rights over Calais, and had to content herself with a sum of 120,000 crowns, as the price of the freedom of the French hostages. Although she on more than one occasion pressed Condé and Coligny for the repayment of the money she had advanced the Huguenots, she does not appear to have succeeded in recovering any part of it.