Henri II: His Court and Times (31 page)

With the untimely death of his much-loved son, François
resumed his claims on the Milanese, and all the old subjects of
controversy between him and Charles V, which the treaty had
been intended to lay to rest, sprang into life again. The King
despatched Annebaut and the Chancellor Olivier to Ghent to
endeavour to persuade the Emperor to enter into a new treaty,
which might replace that of Crépy; but they got nothing from
Charles but vague assurances of his desire to remain at peace
with France.

François thereupon began strengthening the fortresses on
the northern and eastern frontiers, made peace with England
(June 1546), and sought allies all over Europe. But he went
no further, and though the Dauphin pressed him earnestly to
invade Lombardy while the Emperor was occupied with his
war against the League of Schmalkalde, he had lost the power
of resolution and could not make up his mind to take definite
action; and, on the advice of the fanatical Cardinal de Tournon,
persecuted the Protestants in France in place of assisting their
co-religionists in Germany.

And so amidst infamy at home and impotence abroad the
reign which had once been so brilliant drew towards its close.
The King in whose name the fires of persecution were kindled,
and whose vacillation rendered futile all the efforts of French
diplomacy, was perhaps more deserving of pity than of condemnation. Since the death of his younger son he had fallen into
a state of profound melancholy; he was frequently a prey to
the most cruel sufferings, which the remedies to which his
physicians had recourse served only to aggravate, and his
domestic life was embittered by the quarrels between
Madame d'Étampes and Diane de Poitiers, the enmity of the
former towards the Dauphin, and the fears which the lady was
constantly expressing as to the fate which awaited her when
she should lose her protector.

If Madame d'Étampes and her friends had good reason to
fear a change of sovereigns, the majority of the Court and the
great mass of the nation seem to have regarded the prospect
with equanimity. For the Court was weary of the domination
of a favourite who made and unmade Ministers, was suspected
of intriguing with the enemies of France, and pursued with
the utmost vindictiveness those who refused to abase themselves before her; and the nation was disgusted with the
ruinous wars in which François's futile rivalry with a monarch
so manifestly superior in statecraft to himself was perpetually
involving the country. It was believed, too, that the quiet,
reserved Dauphin, if he lacked those showy qualities which
had so often served to conceal the grave defects in his father's
character, possessed a good sense and intelligence which would
more than atone for any shortcomings in this respect, and that,
while upholding the honour of France abroad, he would
abstain from wars of aggression, and make it his first study
to repair the ravages which the ambition of François had
wrought. That this belief was held not only by Frenchmen,
but by foreigners who were well qualified to form an opinion
of the Dauphin's character, is proved by a despatch which the
Venetian Ambassador, Marino Cavalli, addressed in 1546 to
his government, and which also contains some singular
reflections on the nature of the relations between Henri and
Diane de Poitiers.

"Thus," says he, after speaking of the two princes who had
been cut off in the flower of their youth, "the fortune which
he would have had to share with the other brothers seems
reserved entirely for him who is now Dauphin, and whose
qualities promise France the most worthy king she has had
for two hundred years. This hope is, moreover, a great
comfort for this nation, which consoles itself for present ills
by the hope of prosperity to come. This prince is twenty-eight
years of age; he is of a very robust constitution and of a
rather melancholy disposition; very skilful in martial exercises; not very ready
with his answers when addressed, but very decided and very firm in his opinions,
and what he has once said he adheres to with great tenacity. His is not a very
keen intellect, but men of that stamp are often the most successful; they are like autumn fruits, which ripen late, but which
are, for that reason, better and more durable than those of the
summer or the spring. He is in favour of maintaining a footing
in Italy, and has never been of opinion that Piedmont should
be given up, to which end he supports Italians who are discontented with the affairs of their country. He spends his
money in a manner at once prudent and honourable.
⁰³
He is but little addicted to women; his own wife is sufficient for
him; while, for conversation, he confines himself to that of the
Sénéchale of Normandy, who is forty-eight years of age. He
entertains for her a sincere affection; but it is not thought
that there is anything lascivious about it, and that this affection
is like that between mother and son; and it is asserted that
this lady has taken upon herself to instruct, correct, and
counsel the Dauphin, and to urge him to all actions worthy
of him."
⁰⁴

Cavalli's remarks concerning the nature of the relationship between the Dauphin and Diane are very curious,
since they prove that the liaison must have been conducted
with a circumspection very unusual in royal amours in the
sixteenth century, and that many people found it difficult
to believe that, in a Court full of young and beautiful
women, the prince could really have selected as his mistress,
in the sensual acceptation of the term, a lady old enough
to be his mother. This pleasing illusion, however, did
not long survive Henri's accession to the throne, as the
despatches of Cavalli's successor at the French Court show.

Early in 1546, another grief overtook the sorrow-laden
King. Since the death of the Duc d'Orléans, he had bestowed
his affection on the Comte d'Enghien, the young victor of
Ceresole, who had gathered round him the friends of the
deceased prince and become the centre of opposition to the
Guises, whom the Dauphin favoured, and whose greed, ambition,
and audacity were beginning to cause François serious
uneasiness.

In February, the King was staying at the Château of La
Roche-Guyon, not far from Mantes. As there had been a
heavy fall of snow, his Majesty suggested that the younger
members of the Court should organise a snowball-fight. Sides
were accordingly formed; one, led by the Dauphin and
François de Guise, defending a house; the other, led by
Enghien, besieging it. "During the combat," says Martin du
Bellay, "some ill-advised person threw a linen-chest out of the
window, which fell on the Sieur d'Enghien's head, and inflicted
such injuries that he died a few days later."

Du Bellay does not give the name of the "ill-advised
person"; but some writers, less reticent, name François de
Guise, and have even gone so far as to declare that he acted
by order of the Dauphin, while others assert that he was a
certain Conte Bentivoglio, an Italian noble attached to the
Guises, whom they accuse of having instigated the deed.

Nothing in the character of the future Henri II encourages
the belief that he could have been the instigator, or even a
party, to so foul a crime. Besides, what had he to gain by it?
It is true that Enghien's brilliant victory at Ceresole, in such
striking contrast to his own failures in Roussillon and Picardy,
and the favour shown him by the King, scarcely disposed him
to regard his young kinsman with a very friendly eye; but, in
view of the circumstance that Henri's accession to the throne
could not be long delayed, he had certainly no cause to regard
him in the light of a rival whom it behoved him to get rid of.
The accusation, indeed, is so monstrous that it would not be
worth discussion had not Sismondi affected to credit it.

As for the Guises, as one of their biographers points out, the
murder of Enghien would not only have been of no advantage
to them, since he had four brothers to dispute with them the
royal favour, but extremely hazardous, since these brothers
would certainly have endeavoured to avenge him. Moreover,
François de Guise sought the favour of the Dauphin and
based his hopes of advancement on his accession to the
throne, while it was with the King alone that Enghien was in
favour. Finally, is it conceivable that Claude de Guise, the
head of the House, without whose knowledge François would
not have ventured to engage the family in so dangerous an
enterprise, would have consented to the murder of the son of
his own brother-in-law?
⁰⁵

That, notwithstanding the suspicious circumstances attending
it, the death of Enghien was due merely to one of those acts of brutal horseplay
so common at this epoch is scarcely open to question. Those who scattered the
feathers from the beds of the plague-stricken over themselves and their companions, who were only prevented from strangling their friends
by some one cutting the cord in the very nick of time, who
placed the corpses of felons who had been hanged in the beds
of Court ladies, were quite capable of throwing furniture at one
another's heads without the least homicidal intention. The
King himself, shortly after the Field of the Cloth of Gold, had
narrowly escaped falling a victim to a similar accident, and
carried a memento of it on his forehead in the shape of a
scar.
⁰⁶

At the beginning of February 1547, while the Court was at
Saint-Germain-en-Laye, François received the news of the
death of Henry VIII, which had occurred on the 26th of the
preceding month. "This death," writes Du Bellay, "occasioned the King much sorrow, not only because of the hope
which he had entertained of making with him a firmer alliance
than that which he had begun, but because they were almost
of an age, and of the same constitution; and he feared that he
must soon follow him. Those, moreover, who were about his
person perceived that from that time he became more pensive
than before."

Since the beginning of the winter the King's health had
been much worse. Nevertheless, he still continued to hunt,
observing to those who endeavoured to dissuade him that
"when old and sick, he would be carried to the chase, and
that perhaps when he was dead, he would wish to go in his
coffin."
⁰⁷
A strange
restlessness now seized upon him, and, "as if seeking to escape
from the death which was now so near, he travelled from
Saint-Germain to La Muette, thence to Villepreux, and subsequently
to Dampierre, Chevreuse, Limours, and Rochefort, revisiting all the places which he had
loved, all the forests in which he had hunted in his vigorous
youth."
⁰⁸
Death, however,
followed swiftly, and at Rambouillet, at which he arrived towards the end of March, he
was compelled to take to his bed, and never left it again.

Persuaded that his end was at hand, he sent for the
Dauphin and gave him his final admonitions, recommending
him to diminish the taxes under which the nation had so long
groaned; to retain as his Ministers Annebaut and Tournon,
and to be guided in all things by their counsels; to exclude
Montmorency from power, and, above all things, to beware
of the Guises, "whose aim was to strip him and his children
to their doublets and his people to their shirts."
⁰⁹
Finally, he made a very pressing recommendation to his son in favour of
Madame d'Étampes, vowing that he was altogether mistaken
in believing that she had been hostile to him, and bidding him
remember that she was a woman, and therefore entitled to
consideration. The Dauphin asked his father for his blessing,
and then "fell in a swoon upon the King's bed; and the King
held him in a half-embrace and was unable to release
him."
¹⁰

Between two and three o'clock in the afternoon of March
31, 1547, François expired, in the fifty-fourth year of his age
and the thirty-third of his reign, "having continued in excellent
memory and sound intellect until the end of his days."
¹¹

(1)
Jacques Albon de Saint-André (1525-72). He was a member of a very
ancient but impoverished family of the Lyonnais, and had come to Court when
very young. His bravery and insinuating manners gained him the friendship of
the Dauphin, who attached him to his person and over whom he soon acquired
great influence. "He was," says l'Aubespine, "an accomplished and cunning
courtier, of very keen intelligence, a very skilful intriguer, very brave, and an
adept at martial exercises. These good qualities were counterbalanced by all
kinds of lasciviousness." François I disliked him intensely. We shall have a
good deal to say about Saint-André presently.

(2)
Mémoires de Vieilleville
.

(3)
The Dauphin's revenues were those of Dauphiné
and Brittany; the latter province alone was worth to him 520,000 livres.

(4)
Armand Baschet,
la Diplomatie vénitienne.

(5)
Forneron,
les Ducs de Guise et leur époque.

(6)
Tavannes; Forneron.

(7)
La Ferrière,
les Grandes Chasses au XVI
^e
siècle.

(8)
La Ferrière.

(9)
De Thou.

(10)
Despatch of the
Imperial Ambassador, Saint-Mauris, to the Queen-Dowager
of Hungary, Governess of the Netherlands, May 1547. The Ambassador says
that François, after recommending his mistress to the Dauphin, observed: "Do
not submit yourself to the will of others, as I have to her."

(11)
Martin du Bellay. All contemporary writers are in accord in attributing to
François a very edifying end. "I assure you," writes the Secretary of Finance,
Bochetel, to l'Aubespine, "that for a century past no prince has ever died with
feelings of such contrition and repentance"; while Ferronius tells us that he
"died with so much piety and constancy, that, as his breath was escaping him,
he repeated several times the name of God, and, when he could no longer speak,
still made with his fingers the sign of the Cross."