Henri II: His Court and Times (18 page)

Her consort's indifference was not the only mortification
which Catherine had to endure. The marriage was distinctly
unpopular with both Court and people. The former looked
upon it as a
mésalliance
; the latter, mindful of the intolerable
burdens which the King's Italian enterprises had entailed,
regarded the Papal alliance as the forerunner of further
ruinous wars, and did not conceal their resentment. The
non-payment of the balance of Catherine's dowry and the
favour shown by her to her Italian attendants naturally did
not tend to make her any the more popular, and two years
after the marriage the Venetian Ambassador, Giustiniani,
writes that it "displeased the entire nation and that it was
considered that Pope Clement had deceived the King." The
Ambassador adds, however, that Catherine is "very submissive,"
and that the King, the Dauphin her husband, and
the Duc d'Angoulême appeared much attached to her.

This submissiveness, or rather suppleness, was to stand the young princess in
good stead, for, if she failed to gain her husband's affection, she at least
ensured kindness and consideration at his hands, while, if she were far from a popular
personage with the majority of the courtiers, she succeeded in
gaining the goodwill of the King.

To secure the favour of such a squire of dames as François
was not difficult. Her shrewdness, her ready wit, her liveliness and good-humour, pleased him greatly; he admired her
grace in the dance, her skill and courage on horseback, and he
was flattered by her evident anxiety to conform to his wishes
and the pleasure she seemed to take in his society. At her
urgent entreaty, he enrolled her in the "
Petite Bande
"
— that little company of beautiful, witty, and complaisant ladies, of
whom Madame d'Étampes was the acknowledged chief, whose
privilege it was to accompany the King on his visits to his
different country-seats, to follow him in the chase, to dine and
sup at his table, to bandy jests with him, most of which, we
fear, would scarcely bear repetition in a modern drawing-
room, and, generally, to do their best to make him forget that
he was now a middle-aged man in very indifferent health.
From that time Catherine was seldom free from his Majesty's
side, and was soon firmly established in the royal favour.

It is probable that Catherine's success with the King was
facilitated by the fact that she had had the wit to insinuate
herself into the good graces of two persons who possessed
more influence with François than all the rest of the Court
combined. One was the Queen of Navarre, to whose kind
heart the lonely, unloved girl made an irresistible appeal, and
whose sympathy, once enlisted on her side, she was careful to
preserve by a skilful appearance of deference. The other was
the reigning favourite, Madame d'Étampes,
dame d'honneur
to
the princesses, without whose sanction no lady was ever
admitted to the King's intimate circle. Finding her young
mistress disposed to seek her friendship and counsel, the
duchess was graciously pleased to accord her the ægis of
her protection and to commend her to the favourable notice
of her royal admirer.

H
ENRI DE
V
ALOIS,
D
UC
D'O
RLEANS
(
AFTERWARDS
H
ENRI
II)
FROM THE DRAWING BY FRANÇOIS CLOUET IN
THE MUSÉE CONDÉ, CHANTILLY

A few words concerning this all-powerful lady may not be
without interest.

Anne de Pisseleu, the future Duchesse d'Étampes, was born
towards the close of the year 1508, at the Château of Fontaine-Lavaganne, near Beauvais. Her father was Guillaume de
Pisseleu, Seigneur d'Heilly, a nobleman whose views on the
subject of children were so completely in accord with those of
the Psalmist that he married three times and gave to his
Majesty no less than thirty lieges. Anne belonged to the
second brood, her mother being a Mlle. Sanguin.

As the years went by, the worthy seigneur began to find the
weight of so very full a quiver somewhat difficult to sustain,
and, so soon as Anne had attained a marriageable age, he
procured her the post of maid-of-honour to Louise of Savoy,
in the hope that her pretty face might suffice to secure her a
husband who would be disposed to waive the question of dowry.

Many writers, on the authority of Brantôme, state that the
girl was presented at Court during the captivity of the King,
and that François met her, for the first time, at Mont-de-Marsan, on his return from Spain in the spring of 1526, and
fell in love with her at first sight. But, in point of fact, she
had made her appearance at Court four years earlier, and
there is reason to believe that she had attracted the attention
of the King before the
débâcle
of Pavia, and
that it was to her, and not to Madame de Chateaubriand, that were addressed
those plaintive verses with which the prisoner of the Alcazar
endeavoured to beguile the tedium of his captivity.

However that may be, scarcely had François been restored
to his kingdom than their relations were a secret from no one;
his Majesty appeared at tournaments wearing the young lady's
colours, and Madame de Chateaubriand was completely discarded.
Nor can we wonder at the monarch's infatuation.
Mlle. d'Heilly, by which name his new enchantress was henceforth
known, was not only young and beautiful, but intelligent
and accomplished. Charles de Sainte-Marthe called her "
la
plus belle des savantes et la plus savante des belles
," and Marot
wrote:

Moreover, she was sprightly and vivacious, and possessed in a
supreme degree the art of pleasing. In short, it would have
been difficult to find anyone more calculated to appeal to a
man of François's temperament at a moment when his only
desire was to forget his misfortunes and sufferings in a round
of pleasure and excitement.

The subjugation of the King was as complete as it was
speedy, and when his new favourite imperiously demanded
that he should require her predecessor in his affections to
restore the jewels which he had given her, "not because of
their price and value, but because she coveted the beautiful
devices engraved upon them, which the Queen of Navarre,
his sister, had made and composed,"
⁰²
his Majesty consented without the least hesitation. To the messenger charged with
the King's commands Madame de Chateaubriand replied that
she was ill, but that he might return in three days. She
profited by this respite to send for a goldsmith and have the
jewels melted down, and when the messenger returned, she
handed him the simple ingots. "Go," said she, "carry them
to the King, and tell him that, since it is his pleasure to take
back what he gave so generously, I restore his gifts in ingots
of gold. As for the mottoes, they are so indelibly engraved
on my mind, and I hold them so sacred, that I cannot suffer
another than myself to appropriate or find pleasure in them."

When this message was delivered to François, he had the
grace to feel ashamed of his shabby treatment of the woman
whom he had once professed to love, and whom he had cast off
for Mlle. d'Heilly "
ainsi qu'un clou chasse l'autre
." 
"Take them all back to her," he exclaimed; "I valued them not for their
intrinsic worth, but for the mottoes and devices which they
bore, for willingly would I have given her double. Since she
has caused these to be destroyed, I do not wish for the gold,
and she may keep it. She has given proof of more courage
and generosity than I should have believed a woman capable
of showing."
⁰³

Like Madame de Pompadour, two centuries later, Anne de
Pisseleu had the talent to assure by the charms of her mind
the empire which her beauty would not perhaps have sufficed
to maintain, and she ruled her royal lover to the day of his
death. In order to save appearances and diminish the scandal,
François decided to find the lady a husband, of sufficiently high
lineage to be accepted by the Court, and of sufficiently meagre
fortune to bestow the shelter of his name on the avowed
mistress of the King. His choice fell upon Jean de Brosse,
a direct descendant of the Vicomtes de Limoges, who consented
to the marriage proposed to him in order to recover
his family estates, which had been confiscated, owing to the
participation of his father, René de Brosse, in the conspiracy
of Bourbon.
⁰⁴
As the
reward of his complaisance, the King not
only restored to him his confiscated property, but created him
Comte de Penthièvre, appointed him governor of Brittany,
gave him the collar of the Order of Saint-Michel, and finally
erected for him, or rather for his wife, the county of Étampes
into a duchy.

Anne's marriage, of course, made no difference in her
relations with the King, for the union was merely a nominal
one, and her favour seemed only to increase with time. She
used her credit to protect artists and men of letters, who vied
with one another in celebrating her charms,
⁰⁵
and to sustain the Reformed ideas, but especially to enrich her
numerous relatives.
On her recommendation, her uncle, Antoine Sanguin, was
successively created Abbot of Fleury, Bishop of Orléans,
cardinal, and, finally, Archbishop of Toulouse. She procured
for Charles de Pisseleu, her second brother, the Abbey of
Bourgeuil, and afterwards the Bishopric of Condom, and for
another brother the Abbey of Compiègne. Two of her elder
sisters became abbesses, while she found husbands for the
younger among the greatest families in the kingdom. It is
little wonder that, in those days, when a king happened to be
concerned, people were inclined to regard the peccadilloes of
their wives, daughters, or sisters with a very indulgent eye.

But we must now turn from the intrigues of the Court to
more weighty matters.

Ever since the Peace of Cambrai, François had been eagerly
looking forward to the moment when he should once more be
in a position to challenge his arch-enemy's supremacy in Italy;
and his alliance with the Papacy had brought the inevitable
conflict appreciably nearer. Already, indeed, he had found a
specious pretext for disturbing the peace of Europe. At the
end of 1532, François had accredited to the Duke of Milan
a secret agent named Maraviglia, a Lombard by birth, but
engaged for many years past in the service of France. In
the following summer, some
bravi
in the employ of this
personage assassinated a gentleman who had insulted their
master, whereupon Sforza, at the instigation, it was believed,
of the Emperor, caused Maraviglia to be arrested and executed,
after a summary trial. Although Maraviglia's mission was not
publicly recognised, it was understood, and François at once
declared that his death was a violation of the law of nations,
indignantly refused to listen to Sforza's explanations, and
announced his intention of avenging by arms the affront he
had received.

However, though he began mobilising troops along the
Savoy frontier, various causes contributed to suspend his
operations. He was not yet quite ready for war, having a
grand scheme in contemplation for the reorganisation of the
French army, upon which we need not dwell, since it was
never carried out; then, in September 1534, the death of
Clement VII deprived him of the expected support of the
Papacy; while the announcement of Charles V's expedition
against Barbarossa and his pirate hordes necessitated a further
postponement. To attack the Emperor when he was on his
way to avenge Christendom, devastated by the ravages of the
Barbary corsairs, and to deliver from captivity thousands of
Christian slaves would have excited the reprobation of Europe;
while, on the other hand, by awaiting his return before declaring
war, he might find him with a ruined army and an exhausted
treasury.

In this hope he was deceived, for, at the beginning of
September 1534, Charles returned triumphant, having twice
defeated Barbarossa, taken Tunis, and rescued over 20,000
Christian captives, including a number of Frenchmen.

François had now no longer any motive for staying his
hand, and he hastened to conclude a secret alliance with
Soliman, which stipulated that, while the King of France
invaded the Milanese, the Ottoman fleet should make a
descent on the Neapolitan coasts. Pope or Sultan, it was
all the same to this Most Christian King, if, by the aid
of one or the other, he could succeed in regaining a footing
in Italy.

Just as François was preparing to fulfil his part of this
odious contract, Francesco Sforza died (October 24, 1535),
leaving no heir. Imperial troops under Antonio de Leyva at
once entered the Milanese and occupied it as a fief which had
reverted to its suzerain.