Dark Eminence Catherine De Medici And Her Children (13 page)

Nor was Catherine his only enemy. The young generation of Guise, led by Henry, son of the murdered Francis, Duke of Guise, sincerely believed Coligny had shot his father. Nothing to the contrary had been proved and young Henry of Guise once had remarked in the hearing of members of the Court that if left alone with the Admiral with his

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sword unsheathed he would very quickly avenge his father's death. To the great embarrassment of both Guise and Co-ligny, King Charles arranged an official reconciliation between them just a few days before Marguerite s wedding and stood by, beaming, as they grimly, unwillingly, shook hands.

On Friday morning, August 22, Coligny watched a tennis match for a time on the courts of the Louvre. Charles, he noted absently, was playing an unusually fine game; the young Duke of Guise fumbled frequently and dropped the ball. The Admiral collected a sheaf of papers he had been reading, and with a small group of his followers, started for his house in the Rue des Poulies. The morning was oppressively hot and still; pigeons cooed and strutted about in what shade they could find high under the eaves; the air was aquiver with the electric tension preceding a storm.

Then two shots rang out as the Admiral stooped to adjust his shoe buckle. The gesture saved his life as one bullet severed the index finger of his left hand and the other was imbedded in his right upper arm. Retaining his presence of mind, he pointed to the shuttered window of a house nearby from which smoke was still curling, and shook his head, smiling ruefully.

"A touching reminder of our renewed friendship, Guise's and mine," he said before slumping into the arms of his companions. The house from which the shots had been fired belonged to a former tutor of Henry of Guise.

The King and the Queen Mother were notified and came promptly, bringing with them the Duke of Anjou and the King s physician, Ambrose Pare* There was talk of moving

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Coligny to the Louvre for safety, but this was deemed unwise in his weakened state following the amputation of the stump of the mangled finger and the probing for and removal of the large copper bullet in his arm. Instead, Henry of Navarre dispatched a group of his Swiss Guards to watch beside the wounded man around the clock, and the King, his face drawn, his eyes stricken and wild, could only weep loudly like a small boy, swearing by his crown to track down the guilty ones and administer such punishment as France never should forget.

Catherine and Anjou exchanged glances. Charles more and more was taking on the looks and manner of a madman. And here lay danger, Catherine reminded herself, for the deranged mind retains much that is lost to the rational thinker. Charles, determined to find the culprits, would stop at nothing. On the rack Guise's old tutor could be made to talk . . . In sheer panic Catherine refused to think further.

The attempt on Coligny's life and the massacre that followed it within twenty-four hours have been favorite subjects for writers of French history for centuries. Little can be proved beyond a doubt; much can be assumed, all facets considered in the light of sixteenth-century morals. Probably, since Catherine, Henry of Guise, and his mother, like Catherine an Italian, all hated Coligny, it is not beyond the bounds of reason to believe they plotted his death among them. With the Guises it doubtless was even considered a deed of honor; with Catherine a deed of expediency to save the throne for her sons. It is possible, too, that she felt the time had come to make a definite move for the Catholic

cause, to do away with all Huguenot chiefs. Surely that should prove to Philip of Spain and to the Pope himself that she was being true to her faith. However, that is all supposititious.

One fact may have escaped the notice of everyone in Paris as Friday the 22nd of August and Saturday the 23d passed in a shimmer of breathless heat: the mob of Paris like a thick alloy in a pot over flame began to show around its edges the first small eruptions of power ... a shot here, a savage knife thrust there, nothing more for the moment. Catholics, still seething over the presence of Navarre, the bridegroom, recalled to one another the wanton destruction of their shrines and sacred vessels by Huguenots on the march. Protestants told and retold tales they had heard of the Inquisition. Hate was in every man's heart; the powder was ready for the match.

In the first false dawn of Sunday, Saint Bartholomew's Day, lights could be seen moving about in the Louvre and the adjoining Tuilleries. Then shortly after three o'clock the great bell of Saint-Germain d'Auxerrois near the Louvre began to toll—a terrifying sound booming over the sleeping city. Who gave the orders for what followed? Guise with a group of courtiers broke down the door of Coligny's house, annihilated his faithful servants with their swords and hurried on to the bedroom.

Brave men die bravely. Still too weak to stand, the Admiral had asked to be helped into his robe and then to be lowered to his knees beside his bed. And there they found him. He made no outcry, but lowered his head as they fell upon him. Mutilated beyond recognition, his body was thrown from the

window to the court below where it is said Guise touched it with his foot and smiled.

An inexplicable thing happened at that moment. A rider came clattering up, shouting, "By order of Her Majesty the Queen, spare Coligny!" What had happened? Had Charles become violent? Had Anjou weakened in one of his unpredictable outbursts of conscience? There is no known answer. But it was too late.

Paris, one of the world's most gracious, most beautiful cities, has through all time been a city all too susceptible to mob rule. Whoever fomented the mob terror of Saint Bartholomew's Day had organized it well Catholics were to be distinguished from Huguenots by white crosses worn on hats or caps. Now as Guise and his followers pounded through the streets shouting, ''Kill! Kill! Kill all Huguenots by the Kings command!" all Paris was suddenly abloom with white crosses. Huguenots, old and young, the sick and aged, and newborn babies were mercilessly slaughtered by any and every means available, hacked to pieces, stripped and thrown into the Seine, outraged in every conceivable way. Parents saw their little children brutally tortured by laughing, shouting ruffians; children screamed vainly for help from parents themselves begging for mercy. And because a mob is senseless, blind and deaf to reason, old scores were settled between rivals who had no religious differences whatever.

For three days and nights the nightmare held, the air filled with the shrieks of the mortally wounded and the sickening reek of human blood. The palace of the Louvre itself was strewn with the bodies of prominent Huguenots who.

Lad gone there thinking mistakenly to find sanctuary with royal friends. Henry of Navarre talked himself out of danger while Charles stormed and raved at him and the Prince of Conde. He would, he told them, allow their retinues to pay the price for their heresy. In speechless horror the two men watched while their combined staffs of gentlemen were killed hy hired mercenaries before their eyes.

Charles's mad seizures waxed and waned through the days. His young wife, the Austrian Elizabeth, pregnant and near her time, managed to quiet him though he continued to sob that he alone was to blame for the massacre. Again she was helpless and listened, incredulous, while he ordered the death of some of his closest friends who were Huguenots, among them La Rochefoucauld who had come to Paris for Marguerite's wedding, bringing his new bride. Both were killed.

There the horrible Saturnalia rests and as long as time shall be, no one can know of a certainty who was responsible. Did Catherine and Anjou prod and lash Charles, taunting him for giving his affection and trust to the great Coligny, until in a lunatic outburst he did actually order the killing of the hero he worshiped? Did he, driven to it by his mother, send out the Guises to inflame the brutish passions of the Paris mob? How much of all that happened was coincidence? No one will ever know. But the name of Catherine de Medici remains an integral part of it. There is no doubt that she spent much of the rest of her life trying to convince the Catholic world that she and she alone had seen it through as a divinely inspired expulsion of sin, and the Protestant world

that it was all a deeply regretted accident. Somehow she never quite succeeded in doing either. A damaging letter remains, written to Philip of Spain on the 28th of August*

My son, I have no douht that you will share with us our joy at God's goodness in giving my son the King the means to rid himself of subjects rebellious equally to God and to himself, and that it pleased Him to preserve us all from the cruelty of their hands, for which we feel assured you will praise God with us, both for our sakes and for the good which will result to all Christendom and the honor and glory of God . . . and I rejoice still more that this occasion will confirm and augment the friendship between you and the King your brother, which is the thing in this world I most desire. . . . I send my greetings to my grandchildren the Infantas. . . .

Paris, this 28th day of August, 1572

Your good mother and sister Caterine

* Milton Waldman, Biography of a "Family (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1936), 137.

Chapter 10 HENRY III

THE dynastic stature of her children continued to he Catherine's major interest. That they warred so among themselves was a nettle in her side. Charles, the King, definitely tubercular and mentally unsound, hated hoth his brothers, Anjou and Alenjon, and held Marguerite in contempt, calling her "that woman*" Anjou, knowing Charles was insanely jealous of him as a successful campaigner in the wars, did nothing to lessen the tension between them. Young Alengon loathed them both.

For years Catherine had been moving heaven and earth to obtain for her favorite son the election to the throne of Poland. She knew the aged Sigismond Augustus, Poland's great humanist and theologian king, was failing; meanwhile she would pawn the crown jewels, build a fleet, engage some of the shrewdest fiction writers of the day to explain away

Saint Bartholomew's. Sigismond Augustus died. Henry, Duke of Anjou, was elected.

He was not at all pleased; to leave France now was the very last thing he wanted. Alengon, nineteen, seemed to have won over Marguerite for some of his harebrained political intrigues against Henry who must now turn his Lack on them, giving them free rein. Furthermore, Anjou was deeply in love—for the only time in his life—and to go to far-off Poland leaving Marie de Cleves behind was sheer torment. But Catherine as usual had her way. Tears, though she cried seldom, were always her trump card, so now she wept a little, saying, "I love your honor and grandeur more than my own pleasure for I am not one of those mothers who love their children selfishly; I love you that you may be first in splendor and esteem before men. . . ." And, weeping, perhaps she really did not suspect how selfish she was.

Before leaving Paris, Anjou took Marguerite aside and begged her to be friends again, to forget what she chose to call his treachery. But the new Queen of Navarre, in no mood for reconciliations, turned her cheek for his farewell kiss and wished him a cool bon voyage.

Uneasily Catherine watched the new friendliness growing between Marguerite and Alengon. As children they had had nothing in common; now suddenly they seemed to find much to talk about, many projects to share. With something evilly jubilant in their manner they watched Charles's pitifully shrunken figure moving about the palace trying to maintain his air of arrogant infallibility; watched the terrible paroxysms of coughing that left him ashen-hued and crying

weakly behind his cupped Lands. Exchanging glances of mutual understanding, the brother and sister smiled and looked away.

Like her mother, Marguerite had a genius for carrying a grudge and for exacting vengeance. Now, just dimly at first but growing clearer daily, a way seemed to be presenting itself through which she believed she could settle the score with Anjou for the slight he had been guilty of five years earlier. And it should be done through Alengon, ugly, stunted little Alengon.

Catherine and a fabulously equipped entourage, together with members of the royal family, accompanied Henry on his Polish journey as far as Blamont Castle on the German border. Charles had to drop out at Vitry, chagrined at the weakness that put him at such a bitter disadvantage before Henry. And Henry, embracing him at parting, added to his misery by patting him patronizingly on the back. So the brothers parted for the last time.