INTRODUCTORY NOTE
"Never perhaps," says Miss Pardoe (in the Preface to the "Court and Reign of Francis I."), "did the reign of any European sovereign present so many and such varying phases. A contest for empire, a captive monarch, a female regency, and a religious war; the poisoned bowl and the burning pile alike doing their work of death amid scenes of uncalculating splendor and unbridled dissipation; the atrocities of bigotry and intolerance, blent with the most unblushing licentiousness and the most undisguised profligacy;—such are the materials offered to the student by the times of Francis I."
The period thus characterized is that in which the scene of the present romance is laid, and although the plot is mainly concerned with the fortunes of others than subjects of the Roi Chevalier, we are treated to a succession of vivid pictures of life and manners at the French court and in the French capital.
The author depicts the king rather as he appeared to the world before what has been called the "legend of the Roi Chevalier,"—that is to say, the long prevailing idea that François I. was the most chivalrous monarch who ever sat upon a European throne,—had been modified by the independent researches of those who have not feared to go behind the writings of the old and well tutored chroniclers whose works have formed the basis of most modern histories,—chroniclers who seem to have been guided by Cardinal Richelieu's famous remark to an aspiring historian, apropos of certain animadversions upon the character of Louis XI., that "it is treason to discuss the actions of a king who has been dead only two centuries."
The result of these researches is thus summed up by Miss Pardoe in the same Preface:—
"The glorious day of Marignano saw the rising, and that of Pavia the setting, of his fame as a soldier; so true it is that the prowess of the man was shamed by that of the boy. The early and unregretted death of one of his neglected queens, and the heart-broken endurance of the other, contrasted with the unbounded influence of his first favorite and the insolent arrogance of his second, will sufficiently demonstrate his character as a husband. His open and illegal oppression of an overtaxed and suffering people to satisfy the cravings of an extortionate and licentious court, will suffice to disclose his value as a monarch; while the reckless indifference with which he falsified his political pledges, abandoned his allies in their extremity in order to further his own interests, and sacrificed the welfare of his kingdom and the safety of his armies to his own puerile vanity, will complete a picture by no means calculated to elicit one regret that his reign was not prolonged."
Victor Hugo dared to puncture the "legend," when, in the play of "Le Roi s'Amuse," he represented the "knightly king" as being enticed to a low water-side hovel by the charms of a girl of the street; but even the government of the Citizen King, Louis-Philippe, could not brook such an attack upon the "divinity that doth hedge a king," and, after the first performance in 1832, the strong hand of the censorship was laid upon the play, and fifty years elapsed before it again saw the light upon the stage.
The first titular favorite of King François, the Comtesse de Châteaubriand, whose character was in every respect diametrically opposed to that of her successor, was an object of dislike and dread to Louise de Savoie, the king's mother, because of her unbounded influence over François. When he returned to France, after his captivity in Spain following upon his defeat at Pavia, his passion for Madame de Châteaubriand was found to have increased rather than diminished. In looking about for some means to kill this passion, and in that way put an end to the influence of the favorite, Louise de Savoie was not obliged to go beyond the lovely and licentious circle of her own maids of honor. She found in Anne de Pisseleu, Mademoiselle d'Heilly, that combination of loveliness, youth, frailty, and forwardness which she required for her purpose, and so arranged her first presentation to the king that the desired effect was produced almost immediately. It was not long before a suitably complaisant husband was found for the new divinity, in the person of the Duc d'Etampes, and she had soon entirely supplanted Madame de Châteaubriand, driven her from court, and entered upon a period of queenly power and magnificence, which was to endure with little change or diminution for full twenty years, and until the death of her royal lover and slave in 1547.
"His excessive passion for the artful favorite blinded him to her vices," says Miss Pardoe. "Already had she taught him that her love was to be retained only by an entire devotion; and even while he suffered her to become the arbiter of his own actions, she betrayed him with a recklessness as bold as it was degrading. Nothing, moreover, could satisfy her rapacity; and while distress, which amounted almost to famine, oppressed the lower classes of the citizens, she greedily seized upon every opportunity of enriching herself and aggrandizing her family."[1]
The following passage from the same interesting and painstaking work, if compared with the episode in "Ascanio" of Madame d'Etampes's designs upon Colombe, will serve to illustrate the extreme fidelity to historical truth, even in what may seem to be minor matters, which so amply justifies the title of "Historical Romances" as applied to this and many other of Dumas's works:—