Knights and their days

by Dr. Doran

Guise fired his followers with the assurance that the invasion of England, and the establishment of Popery there, should be an enterprise which they should be called upon to accomplish. The King was in great alarm at the “League,” but he wisely constituted himself a member. The confederates kept him in the dark as to the chief of their objects. The suspicious monarch, on the other hand, encouraged his minions to annoy his good cousin of Lorraine. One of these unworthy favorites, St. Megrim, did more: he slandered the wife of Guise, who took, thereon, a singular course of trial and revenge. He aroused his Duchess from her solitary couch, in the middle of the night, hissed in her alarmed ear the damning rumor that was abroad, and bade her take at once from his hands the dagger or the poison-cup, which he offered her:—adding that she had better die, having so greatly sinned. The offended and innocent wife cared not for life, since she was suspected, and drank off the contents of the cup, after protestation of her innocence. The draught was of harmless preparation, for the Duke was well assured of the spotless character of a consort whom he himself daily dishonored by his infidelities. He kissed her hand and took his leave; but he sent a score of his trusty-men into the courtyard of the Louvre, who fell on St. Megrim, and butchered him almost on the threshold of the King’s apartments.

The monarch made no complaint at the outrage; but he raised a tomb over the mangled remains of his favorite minion, above which a triad of Cupids represented the royal grief, by holding their stony knuckles to their tearless eyes, affecting the passion which they could not feel.

In the meantime, while the people were being pushed to rebellion at home, the ducal family were intriguing in nearly every court in Europe. Between the intrigues of Guise and the recklessness of the King, the public welfare suffered shipwreck. So nearly complete was the ruin, that it was popularly said, “The Minions crave all: the King gives all; the Queen-mother manages all; Guise opposes all; the Red Ass (the Cardinal) embroils all, and would that the Devil had all!”

But the opposition of Guise was made to some purpose. By exercising it he exacted from the King a surrender of several strong cities. They were immediately garrisoned by Guisards, though held nominally by the sovereign. From the latter the Duke wrung nearly all that it was in the power of the monarch to yield; but when Guise, who had a design against the life of the Protestant Henri of Navarre, asked for a royal decree prohibiting the granting of “quarter” to a Huguenot in the field, the King indignantly banished him from the capital. Guise feigned to obey; but his celebrated sister, the Duchess of Montpensier, refused to share in even a temporary exile. This bold woman went about in public, with a pair of scissors at her girdle, which, as she intimated, would serve for the tonsure of brother Henri of Valois, when weariness should drive him from a palace into a monastery.

The King, somewhat alarmed, called around him his old Swiss body guard, and as the majority of these men professed the reformed faith, Guise made use of the circumstance to obtain greater ends than any he had yet obtained. The people were persuaded that their religion was in peril; and when the Duke, breaking his ban, entered Paris and, gallantly attired, walked by the side of the sedan of Catherine of Medicis, on their way to the Louvre, to remonstrate with the unorthodox king, the church-bells gave their joyous greeting, and the excited populace hung upon the steps of the Duke, showering upon him blessings and blasphemous appellations. “Hosanna to our new son of David!” shouted those who affected to be the most pious; and aged women, kissing his garment as he passed, rose from their knees, exclaiming, “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation!”

The less blasphemous or the more sincere sufficiently expressed their satisfaction by hailing him, as he went on his way, smiling, “King of Paris!”

The sound of this title reached the ears of Henri. Coupling it with the unauthorized return of Guise to court, he passed into alternate fits of ungovernable wrath and profound melancholy. He was under the influence of the latter when there fell on his ear, words which make him start from his seat—“Percutiam pastorem, et dispergentur oves;” and when the Monarch looked round for the speaker, he beheld the Abbé d’Elbene, who had thus calmly quoted Scripture, in order to recommend murder. The King, though startled, was not displeased. On the contrary, he smiled; and the smile was yet around his lips, and in his eyes, when Guise entered the presence, and mistook the expression of the royal face for one of welcome. The Duke, emboldened by what he saw, hurried through a long list of grievances, especially dwelling on the lenity, not to say favor, with which Henri treated the heretics generally. The sovereign made a few excuses, which Guise heeded not; on the contrary, he hastened to denounce the body of minions who polluted the palace. “Love me, love my dog,” said Henri, in a hoarse voice. “Yes,” answered Guise, peering into the royal and unnaturally sparkling eyes, “provided he doesn’t bite!” The two men stood revealed before each other; and from that hour the struggle was deadly. Henri would not give away, with reference to his Swiss guard; and Guise, passing through Paris, with his sword unsheathed, awoke the eager spirit of revolt, and looked complacently on while the barricades were raised to impede the march of the execrable Calvinistic Archers of the Guard. The “King of Paris” earned a decisive victory; but before it was achieved, the King of France hurried, in an agony of cowardly affright, from his capital. He gazed for a moment on the city, as he departed, venting curses on its ingratitude; for, said the fugitive Monarch, “I loved you better than I did my own wife;”—which was indisputably true.

Guise might now have ascended the throne, had he not been too circumspect. He deemed the royal cause lost, but he was satisfied for the moment with ruling in the capital, as generalissimo. He stopped the King’s couriers, and opened his letters. He confiscated the property of Huguenots, and sold the same for his own benefit, while he professed to care only for that of the Commonwealth. Finally, he declared that the disturbed condition of affairs should be regulated by a States-General, which he commanded rather than prayed Henri to summon to a meeting at Blois. The King consented; and the 18th of October, 1588, was appointed for the opening. Guise entered the old town with his family, and a host of retainers, cased in armor, and bristling with steel. Henri had his mother Catherine at his side; but there were also a few faithful and unscrupulous followers with him in the palace at Blois; and as he looked on any of those who might happen to salute him in passing, the King smiled darkly, and Percutiam pastorem fell in murmured satisfaction from his lips. The saturnine monarch became, all at once, cheerful in his outward bearing, even when Guise was so ruling the States as to make their proceedings turn to the detriment of the monarchy. The Guise faction became anxious for the safety of their leader, whose quarters were in the palace; but when the King, in token of reconciliation begged the Duke to participate with him in the celebration of the Holy Sacrament, there was scarcely a man capable of interpreting the manner of the times, who did not feel assured that under such a solemn pledge of security, there lay concealed the very basest treachery. Guise, over-confident, scorned alike open warning and dark innuendoes. He was so strong, and his royal antagonist so weak, that he despised the idea of violence being used against him—especially as the keys of the palatial castle were in his keeping, as “Grand-Master” of the Court.

The 23d of December had arrived. The King intimated that he should proceed early in the morning, soon after daybreak (but subsequently to holding a council, to which he summoned the Duke and Cardinal), to the shrine of Our Lady of Clery, some two miles distant; and the keys of the gates were demanded, in order to let Henri have issue at his pleasure, but in reality to keep the Guises within, isolated from their friends without. Larchant, one of the Archers of the Guard, also waited upon the Duke, to pray him to intercede for himself and comrades with the King, in order to obtain for them an increase of pay. “We will do ourselves the honor,” said Larchant, “to prefer our petition to your Highness, in the morning, in a body.” This was a contrivance to prevent Guise from being surprised at seeing so many armed men together in the King’s antechamber, before the council was sitting. Henri passed a sleepless night. His namesake of Guise, who had just sent his Duchess homeward, her approaching confinement being expected, spent the whole of the same night in the apartments of the Countess de Noirmoutier.

He was seen coming thence, before dawn, gayly dressed, and proceeding to the Chapel of the Virgin, to perform his morning devotions. Long before this, the King was a-foot, visiting the select archers who had accepted the bloody mission of ridding the perplexed monarch of his importunate adversary. He posted them, altered the arrangements, reposted them, addressed them again and again on the lawfulness of their office, and had some trouble to suppress an enthusiasm which threatened to wake the Queen-mother, who slept below, and to excite the suspicion of the Guards in the vicinity. Staircase and hall, closet and arras, no coign of vantage but had its assassin ready to act, should his fellows have failed.