A Gateway of Bayonne
Bayonne glories in the fact that she has never submitted to a foreign yoke, and when taken from the English, who had usurped it as a Plantagenet birthright, by Charles VII, in the fifteenth century, the people of Bayonne recognized that they had come to their own again through the efforts of their fellow Basques. The city’s device “Nunquam Polluta” is distinctly appropriate.
It was to Bayonne that François Premier came to meet his court, after his days of imprisonment at Madrid, as the hostage of his old enemy Charles V. He was confined only in the luxuriously appointed palace at Madrid, but, as he himself said, “the cage was none the less a cage for being gilded.”
Here at Bayonne awaited François’ mother, his sister Marguerite, and a gay court of followers, not forgetting “a brilliant parterre of young beauties assembled in their train,” as Du Bellay puts it.
François’ adoration for “brilliant parterres” of young ladies was ever one of his failings, and the master of ceremonies of the temporary court of Bayonne thought enough of his position to get together an entrancing bevy, the most beautiful among them all being the famous Anne de Pisseleu, she who was afterwards to become the Duchesse d’Étampes. Diane de Poitiers was there too, having come to Bayonne as lady in waiting to the regent, but it was Anne de Pisseleu who won François’ favour of the moment, and he even allowed her to publicly refer to the insistent Diane as “an old hag,” and declare that she herself was born on Diane’s wedding day. This was after he had put aside Diane.
Vicomte d’Orth was governor of Bayonne on that dread Bartholomew’s night when the tocsin rang out all over the French domain. He wrote to Charles IX as follows, showing the fidelity and steadfastness of the people of these parts, when in more frigid climes they lost their heads in an uncontrollable fury:
“I have communicated the letter of your Majesty to the garrison, and to the inhabitants of the city; I have found only brave soldiers and good citizens and not a single murderer.”