Henri II: His Court and Times (32 page)

The accession of Henri II followed by a revolution of the palace —
Montmorency is recalled and entrusted with the supreme direction of affairs — The
Ministers of the late King are dismissed and the Council reorganised — Disgrace
and persecution of Madame d'Étampes — Diane de Poitiers comes into her
kingdom — Weakness of the new Sovereign, who allows himself to be governed
by his favourites — Diane aspires to rule both the King and the kingdom — Impressions of the Imperial Ambassador, Saint-Mauris — Power of Montmorency —
An amusing caricature — Diane, jealous of the authority of the Constable, resolves
to pit the Guises against him, and then to hold the balance between the two
parties — Aggrandizement of the Guises — Honours and benefits procured by
Montmorency for his family — Favours bestowed on Saint-André — Shameless
rapacity of the favourites, who "devour the King as a lion his prey" — Madame d'Étampes buys off the hostility of Diane — Her later years

S
CARCELY
had François I drawn his last breath than
the new King hastened to throw to the winds the
counsels which his father had given him, and, leaving
the mortal remains of "
le roi chevalier
" to the care of
Annebaut and the Cardinal de Tournon, with orders that they
were to be removed to Saint-Cloud for the ceremonies of what
was called "the quarantine," started for Saint-Germain-en-Laye, to meet his old
friend Anne de Montmorency, who had arrived in all haste from Chantilly. The
meeting between Henri and the Constable after their separation of nearly six
years was, as might be expected, a very affectionate one, and, as the result of
a conference of more than two hours, Montmorency left the royal presence chief of the Privy Council
and charged with the direction of affairs. He had, moreover,
been reinstated in his functions of captain of the fortresses of
the Bastille, Vincennes, Saint-Malo, and Nantes, and in the
command of his company of one hundred men-at-arms, which
during his disgrace had been discharged by his lieutenants;
had been restored to his offices of governor and lieutenant-general of Languedoc, of which he had been deprived, and
had been offered a sum of 100,000 écus,
⁰¹
as compensation for the salaries which had been sequestrated. This he at first
refused, but subsequently accepted.

The restoration of Montmorency to power and favour was
only the first act of a complete revolution. "In the sixteenth
century," says Decrue, "France presents in her government
some resemblance to Turkey. One assists there at the
disgrace of sultanas, at the replacing of grand viziers, at
veritable revolutions of the palace. In 1547, it is not only a
King who dies; it is a policy which changes, a court which
disappears."
⁰²

Annebaut and the Cardinal de Tournon, who had enjoyed
the late King's entire confidence, were both got rid of,
Annebaut being deprived of his rank of
maréchal de France
,
which he held together with the office of Admiral, and
excluded from the Council; while Tournon was sent to
Rome, under the pretext of maintaining French influence
there. The remaining three members of the Royal Council,
Gilbert Bayard, Duval, and Bochetel, were also eliminated, and
the vacant places filled by the new King's uncle, the King of
Navarre, his cousin, the Duc de Vendôme, and three of the
Guises, the Cardinal Jean, the Comte d'Aumale, and Charles,
Archbishop of Rheims, afterwards the celebrated Cardinal
Charles de Lorraine. With them were associated the
Constable; the Comte d'Harcourt, a kinsman of the Guises;
the two Saint-Andrés, the younger of whom, a great favourite
of Henri, replaced Annebaut as marshal; Robert de la
Marck, Seigneur de Sedan, who had married one of the
daughters of Diane de Poitiers; Humières, a cousin of
Montmorency and
gouverneur
of the Children of France, the
Chancellor Olivier, and two friends of the Constable, the
patriarchal President Bertrandi
⁰³
and the financier Villeroy.
All real power, however, resided in the hands of the Constable,
the Guises, and the younger Saint-André.
⁰⁴

Henri II had promised his dying father to protect Madame
d'Étampes, perhaps with the intention of keeping his word,
since he is said to have sent a kind message to the duchess,
who, shortly before the King's death, had retired to her estate
at Limours, and to have invited her to remain at Court. He
soon found, however, that the reaction against the lady was
too strong for him to resist, even if he had wished to do so;
a jealous woman does not pardon, and, besides, Madame
d'Étampes had mortally offended the Constable and many
other influential persons, as well as Diane. When, ten days
later, the duchess wrote to him to claim the disposal of her
apartment at Saint-Germain, in which, by the way, Montmorency had already installed himself, his Majesty answered,
rather maliciously, that the matter was one for Queen Eleanor
⁰⁵
to decide, and that she must apply to her. Needless to say,
nothing more was heard of the matter.

If the fallen favourite had cherished the illusion that her
voluntary retirement from the scene of her former glory
would serve to disarm her enemies, she was rudely undeceived.
For soon she found herself assailed on all sides. The King
sent her a peremptory order to surrender the jewels which
his father had given her, and these souvenirs of François's
munificence, which are said to have been worth 50,000 écus,
he presented to Diane; the Chancellor drew up an indictment
charging her with treasonable correspondence with the enemies
of France during the invasion of 1544; her property
was sequestrated, her servants were thrown into prison, and
Longueval and Gilbert Bayard were arrested as her
accomplices.

Nor did the persecution stop here, for her husband — that
precious Jean de Brosse who had profited so much by her
dishonour — accused her of appropriating the salary of his
government of Brittany, and of ruining his family in order to
enrich her favourite sister, Charlotte, Comtesse de Vertus, and,
for greater security, caused her to be imprisoned.

People of every condition, we are told by the Imperial
Ambassador, Saint-Mauris, seem to have combined together
against her. "If the said lady," he writes, "were to appear in
public, the people would stone her." And he expresses his
belief that she will be brought to the block, "which is what
is demanded and what she deserves."
⁰⁶

The arm which directed these attacks was, needless to say, the
arm of Diane de Poitiers, the woman whose ambition Madame
d'Étampes had thwarted, whose beauty she had criticised, and
whose pride she had offended. After eleven years of waiting,
Diane had come into her kingdom, and she was determined
to enjoy her triumph to the full, and to satisfy at the same
time her vindictiveness, her cupidity, and her love of power.
Not only did she humble her rival to the dust and procure the
disgrace of the Ministers and nobles who had supported the
duchess against her, but she pursued with her vengeance a
poor engineer, who, charged by the King to fortify a place on
the frontier, had, acting presumably with the royal authority,
cut down a few trees in a wood upon one of her estates, and
compelled him to fly for his life to Franche-Comte. To
celebrate his "joyous accession" Henri presented her with
"the proceeds of the confirmation of all the estates in
France,"
⁰⁷
valued at
300,000 livres — a sum which, according
to precedent, ought to have been reserved for Madame
Marguerite, the King's sister, who, however, did not venture
to dispute the matter with the all-powerful favourite. Indeed,
if we are to believe Saint-Mauris, before Henri had been
three months on the throne, the lady had extracted from him
no less a sum than two million livres. Probably, however,
Saint-Mauris exaggerates; even Ambassadors cannot always
resist the temptation of drawing the long bow.

With all his faults, the new King was a conscientious man, who really desired
to do his duty and to promote the happiness of his subjects. Matteo Dandolo tells us that at his
coronation he was observed to be praying long and earnestly.
Afterwards, Diane asked him what had been the subject
of his petitions, to which he replied that he had prayed "that,
if the crown which he was about to assume promised good
government and would assure the happiness of his people,
God would be mercifully pleased to leave it to him for a
long time, but, if otherwise, that He would deprive him of it
very quickly."
⁰⁸
Left to himself or guided by disinterested
Ministers, it is probable that he would have fulfilled the
expectations of which Marino Cavalli speaks in the despatch
we have cited in the preceding chapter. But he was "born
to be governed rather than to govern,"
⁰⁹
and was surrounded by greedy and ambitious favourites who thought only of
exploiting him for their own selfish ends, and to whose
interest it was to prevent the grievances of his subjects from
reaching the King's ears; while his infatuation for the
Sénéchale rendered him "entirely her subject and slave."
¹⁰

And Diane was a Pompadour as well as a Maintenon, who
aspired to govern the kingdom as well as the King, or, at any
rate, to assist in governing it. Honoured, flattered, consulted
and dreaded as never mistress had been before her time, she
was at once Henri's trusted counsellor and the dispenser of
his benefits and favours. For her there existed no secret of
State. She insisted on being told everything, and she was told.
Every matter which was discussed in the Council-chamber,
every despatch which arrived from the French representatives
at foreign Courts, was communicated to her; and scarcely
had the King finished giving audience to one of the
Ambassadors than he hurried off to tell his mistress all
about it.

But let us allow the Imperial Ambassador to give in his
own words his impressions of the new King and of this
power behind the throne, whom he designates by the name of
Silvius:

"As for the King, he continues to yield more and more to
the yoke of Silvius [Diane] and has become her subject and
slave entirely, a circumstance which his people lament. The
said King had, on his own initiative, introduced the practice
of giving audience after his dinner; now he does so no
longer. And it is said that these Ministers of his have
cleverly and cunningly put an end to this, in order that he
may not hear the grievances of his subjects and get to the
bottom of the evil and the good. Thus, when he has dined,
the Constable or some other of his favourites approaches him,
spoiling, in this way, the opportunity of speaking to him, and,
apart from this, those of Guise
¹¹
follow him so closely all day
that it is difficult for any one to address him.

"He does not admit any one to his chamber until he is
dressed, with the exception of the young Saint-André; no, not
even the Constable or his physicians, of whom, he says, he
has no need at present. His whole pleasure consists of
playing tennis and sometimes following the chase. He is
never heard to speak ill of any one. He expresses the wish to
retain his own and to recover what he pretends belongs to his
Crown, without encroaching on the possessions of others. If
the matters under consideration are of importance, he attends
the meeting of the Council of State after dinner, although
that does not often happen; but, in the morning, he attends
every day, for about two hours, to his affairs in his Privy
Council.

"The worst thing is that the said King allows himself to be
led, and approves everything which Silvius and his nobles
advise, of which the people here complain, fearing that the
King will remain always in that net. After dinner he visits
the said Silvius. When he has given her an account of all the
business he has transacted in the morning and up to that
moment, whether with the Ambassadors or other persons of
importance, he seats himself upon her lap, a guitar in his
hand, upon which he plays, and inquires often of the
Constable or of Aumale [François de Guise] if the said
Silvius 'has not preserved her beauty,' touching from time to
time her bosom and regarding her attentively, like a man who
is insnared by his love. And the said Silvius declares that
hereafter she will be wrinkled, in which she certainly is not
mistaken. She takes every possible care to adorn herself
becomingly, and devotes more attention to that than to
anything that she does, in so much that the King's affection
for her increases. Madame de Roye
¹²
has said so to the
Queen-Dowager.

"The King has many natural good qualities, and one might
hope much from him, if he were not so stupid as to allow
himself to be led as he does. The Chancellor is in despair
about it, saying that 'the women of to-day are worse than
those of former times, and that they spoil everything.' It is
said that not a soul dares to remonstrate with the King, lest he
should offend Silvius, fearing that the said King will reveal it
to her, since he loves her so intensely. It is said that the King
has intimated that he was conscious of his weakness in the
above-mentioned matter; but that he was so deeply involved,
and so long since, that he would not know how to withdraw
now, which, however, encourages the hope that, if he is able
to see a way of escape, he will not fall back again.

"The said King has still much youthful spirit in him, which
leads him to do many foolish things; among others, he makes
lackeys and other vulgar persons play at tennis with him,
such as Marchaumont
¹³
and l'Aubespine.
¹⁴
And
lately, at Anet, he began to push those who were near the bank into
the water, so that he nearly drowned a page whom he had
thrown into the river.