Claude de la Trémoille, Duke de Thonars, peer of France, Prince de Tarente and de Talmont, with the very noble and gracious Dame Charlotte Brabantine de Nassau, daughter of William the Silent, Prince of Orange, and of his third wife, Charlotte de Bourbon Montpensier.
Thus the noblest blood of France and of Nassau ran in the veins of the child who was destined to play such an heroic part in the land of her adoption, and whose romantic story stands enshrined in England’s historic annals.
She was born in days of comparative peace: the Wars of the League were at an end, the accession of Henri IV. to the crown of France had silenced the clash of martial strife. Catholic and Calvinist no longer fought at the sword’s point. The Edict of Nantes, extending liberty of conscience and civil rights to the Protestants, had brought at least outward tranquillity. The act of Henri IV. in abjuring the Reformed faith and entering the Roman Communion had justified the hopes of all moderate minds. The Reformed party, with Henri’s lifelong friend and good genius—the minister Sully—at its head, had seconded the wishes of the Catholics, and advised him to the change.
The effect was magical, restoring tranquillity to distracted France. The ravaged fields and hillsides were once more clothed with growing grain and vines. “Husbandry and pastures,” said Sully, “were the true treasures of Peru, and the paps which nourished the kingdom.”
Claude de la Trémoille, a Huguenot by birth, had always concerned himself less about politics and polemics than fealty to his royal master. A certain sturdy, loyal singleness of mind seems to have been a distinguishing characteristic of his race. The Duke was a born soldier. From the moment he could wield a sword, it had been employed for France and the King. Henri had need of his valiant subject, and did not forget to reward his services. It was after his brave fighting at Fontaine-Française, 1595, that the King raised the territory of Thonars to the rank of a peerage; and three years later, Claude de la Trémoille married the daughter of William the Silent.
Still, though peace and prosperity once more smiled upon the face of the country, the bitterness of religious difference rankled. Mutual jealousy further aggravated the soreness. The Catholics were arrogant in their triumph, and never lost sight of the fact that it was Henri’s policy which had drawn him into their ranks. The Protestants, on the other hand, lost their inspiration when the King became a Catholic. Their allegiance to the sovereign remained; but their devotion to the man cooled. Theoretically, civil prerogative might be extended to them; but practically, their advice in the guidance of the State was not sought. The Court party was not slow to let them understand this fact, in defiance of the King’s goodwill and affection which he never lost for his old co-religionists. Already the clouds of the sad and troubled future were beginning to gather for the Huguenots. Sullen and disappointed, their leaders retired from the Court, and with them went the Duke de Thonars, to occupy himself exclusively with the affairs of his own estate and the interests of his family.
He had four children—two sons and two daughters. He lived in great state at Thonars; and when Monsieur de Rosny, the Duke de Sully, came to Poitou to assume the governorship of the province, he received him with great magnificence.
Still, though he had hung up his sword, the Duke regarded it longingly, and at the smallest incitement was ready to take it down. The chance came before a very few years had passed. The great Protestant leader, the Duke de Bouillon, who, by his second marriage with a daughter of William the Silent, was the brother-in-law of the Duke de Thonars, had compromised himself in the matter of the Maréchal Biron’s treasonable correspondence with Spain; and Biron’s consequent disgrace with the King sorely troubled the peace of the family at Thonars.
The minister Sully, as full of goodwill towards de Thonars as of a desire to secure the services of so brave and tried a soldier, sent de Thonars a message to come to Paris. “The King,” he wrote, “contemplates war, and has need of you to fight against the Spaniards.”
De Thonars, who was still a young man of barely thirty-eight, had let fall to Sully a few words of dissatisfaction at his enforced inactivity, when the minister had been his guest at Thonars; and Sully now reminded him of these expressions. “Henri,” he wrote, “liked to see his Protestant servants about him, and objected to such powerful lords remaining long at a time in their own provinces. They might be lending themselves to the hatching of plots.”