Henri II: His Court and Times (33 page)

"As for Silvius, since she has come into authority, she
has changed her humour and her behaviour, and people find
her, in short, very haughty and insolent; while, apart from
that, she is endeavouring with her wiles and her attractions to
remain in the good graces of the King, and to extract from
him everything that she possibly can."

Great as was the influence of "Silvius" over the King, she
had in the Constable a formidable rival in the royal favour.
Anne de Montmorency was neither a great general, nor a
great administrator, nor a far-sighted statesman, but he was a
shrewd, hard-headed man and an indefatigable worker; and
the value of such a Minister in a frivolous Court, where
almost every one was given over to pleasure, the new Sovereign
could not fail to appreciate. Moreover, the Constable was
not only one of Henri's oldest friends, but had special claims
to his consideration, since it was the late King's suspicion
that he preferred the interests of the son to those of the father
that had been mainly responsible for his disgrace.

On Henri's accession, indeed, it had seemed for a moment
that all authority was to belong to Montmorency. "In the
first days of the reign, the Constable took possession of the
King, in such a way that he carried him off to all his residences,
Chantilly, Écouen and l'Isle-Adam; and, wherever the
prince was, no one could approach his person, save by his
favour and introduction."
¹⁵

So sudden a return of Fortune occasioned a good deal of
surprise, and some people even ventured to protest against the
complete surrender of authority which the King was making.
A caricature appeared representing an ass saddled with a pack-saddle, with the bit under the tail, and bearing the following
inscription: "
Qui a mis mon mors ainsi? — Harry, Harry.
"
All the copies which were discovered were seized and burned,
and the authors severely punished; but it undoubtedly
expressed the views of the bulk of the people.

The affection and unbounded confidence which Henri
accorded the Constable were regarded with equal disapproval
by Diane, though, of course, for very different reasons.
Montmorency had been a useful friend to her in the first
years of her favour, when she was waging a somewhat unequal
battle with Madame d'Étampes and her allies, and she had
been quite prepared to acquiesce in his restoration to all his
honours and dignities. But that was an altogether different
matter from allowing him to become "the pilot and master
of the vessel of which she held the helm,"
¹⁶
and to exercise as much influence over the King's affairs as she did over the
King's person. As ambitious as she was greedy, jewels,
money, titles, and estates were not sufficient for her; she
aspired, as we have seen, to govern at the same time Henri
and his kingdom, and she could not endure the idea of sharing
power with Montmorency.

The Sénéchale was too clever a woman not to be aware
that, great as was her influence over the King, it had its
limitations, and their long intimacy had also taught her that
perhaps the most pronounced feature in her royal lover's
character was his remarkable constancy in friendship. Cold
and suspicious, Henri did not easily bestow his friendship,
still less his affection; but, once given, it was seldom or never
withdrawn, in which respect he offered a singular contrast to
his father, whose favour had been as easy to lose as it was to
secure. Thus, Diane did not for a moment cherish the hope
that she would be able to get rid of Montmorency as Madame
d'Étampes had succeeded in doing; nor is it probable that she
had any desire for such an extreme measure, since she and
the Constable were old friends, and she was aware that his
services were indispensable to the King, both in the Council-chamber and in the field.

To attain her end, to secure the power for which she
craved, she decided upon a much more skilful policy. Since
to raise up an adversary against one's rival is generally the
surest means of overcoming him, she would pit one against
the Constable. If two parties were contending for the
government of France, she flattered herself that she would
be able to hold the balance between them.

But where was she to find any one of the necessary rank,
ability, and courage to dispute the ground with the redoubtable
Montmorency? Certainly not among the nobility, nor
even among the Princes of the Blood, that is to say, the two
branches of the House of Bourbon, the Vendômes and Montpensiers.
Since the treason of the Connétable de Bourbon,
the family of which he had been the head had fallen into a
sort of discredit, from which it was only just beginning to
recover; indeed, the favour shown by François I to the ill-fated Comte d'Énghien had been the first sign of returning
favour. Moreover, its present chief, Antoine, Duc de Vendôme, who was to marry Jeanne d'Albret and become the
father of Henri IV, and his uncle, the Cardinal Louis de
Bourbon, were hopelessly mediocre. Antoine, though brave
enough in war, was weak, voluptuous, and unstable; the
cardinal, remarkable only for his indolence; while the duke's
three brothers, Charles, Bishop of Saintes, Jean, Comte
d'Enghien, and Louis, Prince de Conde, were as yet too
young to play a prominent part, though Louis, who was now
seventeen, was a youth of considerable promise. As for the
younger branch, which was represented by two brothers,
Louis, Duc de Montpensier, and Charles, Prince de la Roche-sur-Yon, it was entirely without influence or importance, and,
in fact, remained in the shadow throughout the reign of
Henri II.

And so Diane had perforce to turn to the Guises, those able
and ambitious Lorraine princes against whom the late King had
warned his son on his deathbed, and who were to play so
prominent a part in all the troubles of the latter half of the
century. Cadets of the sovereign dukes of Lorraine and
descendants on the distaff side of the House of Anjou, the
Guises enjoyed the advantages of foreign princes, and, aided
by the impotence of the Bourbons, usurped those of the
Princes of the Blood. Their wealth was considerable; they
had claims to the kingdom of Naples, and through Claude de
Guise's eldest daughter, Marie, widow of James V of Scotland
and mother of the little Mary Stuart, they aspired to control
the destinies of that country.

The two chiefs of the House, in France, at the time of the
accession of Henri II, were the Duc Claude and his brother,
the Cardinal Jean; the former, a good general and a skilful
politician, who acted as intermediary between the King and
the princes beyond the Rhine, and to whom fell the task of
raising the
landsknechts
for the service of France; the latter,
an adroit diplomatist, whom Montmorency had been obliged
to tolerate as a colleague during his great favour under
François I, and who was still more celebrated for his luxury,
his extravagant generosity, and the license of his morals.

The duke appeared seldom at Court. Court life, indeed,
was but little to his taste, since his habits were more those of
a German than a Frenchman, and hunting and the pleasures
of the table absorbed most of his leisure. Both he and his
brother, however, were very much on the alert, though they
were now ambitious for the rising generation of their House
rather than for themselves.

And this second generation of the Guises, represented by
six young princes, is destined to eclipse altogether the first.
Like the first, it will give to France, in the persons of the two
eldest, a soldier and a cardinal, "a lion and a fox,"
¹⁷
but their association will be much more formidable than that of their
father and uncle, and will raise their family so high, that when
the third generation comes on the stage, still with a soldier
and a cardinal at its head, it can mount no higher save by
ascending the throne itself.

The "lion and the fox" of the second generation were
already much in evidence at Court. François "
le Balafré
"
— from the double view of character and ability undeniably the
greatest man whom the House of Guise produced — was high
in favour with the King, and Henri's usual opponent at tennis,
a game at which he greatly excelled. His brother, Charles,
Archbishop of Rheims since the mature age of nine, "who had
a keen and subtle mind, eloquence and grace, combined with
dignity and an active and vigilant nature,"
¹⁸
had also not failed to make his way into the good graces of the new sovereign, and
gave every promise of following in the footsteps of his uncle,
the Cardinal Jean.

The fixed idea of these two young men — the elder twenty-eight, the younger twenty-three — was the aggrandizement of
their House; and, like their father and uncle, they never for
a moment lost sight of their interests or their pretensions.
Both perfectly comprehended the advantage which they would
derive from the friendship of Diane, and had been at pains to
ingratiate themselves with the favourite; indeed, the archbishop,
"one of the most accomplished in the art of paying court,
had, for the space of nearly two years, constrained himself to
the point of giving up his own table and dining at that of
Madame (Diane); for thus she was called even by the
Queen."
¹⁹

To arrive at an understanding with the Guises was, then, an
easy task for the Sénéchale. She and they together would put
an effectual check on Montmorency's progress. But she was
far from contemplating an offensive alliance with them, which
should end in relegating the Constable to obscurity; she was
much too astute for that. With the Constable out of the way,
she foresaw that the Guises would become as great a menace
to her influence as was the old Minister, probably more so,
since they were his superiors in rank and perhaps in ability as
well. No; her intention was merely to adjust the equilibrium
between the two parties, and then to devote all her energies to
maintain it, ready to ally herself with whichever side was for
the time being the weakest, that is to say, which seemed to
threaten the least danger to her own authority. It was the
rôle
which, in after years, Catherine de' Medici was to play
between the Bourbons and the Guises; but Diane will play it
more skilfully than Catherine.

Accordingly, the King, with the gracious approval of his
mistress, proceeded to load this family, which had already
received so much from the Crown, with honours and benefits.
François and Charles were admitted to the Privy Council; the
county of Aumale was erected into a duchy-peerage for the
benefit of the former;
²⁰
a cardinal's hat was procured for
the latter; their barony of Joinville was erected into a principality, their lordships of Mayenne, Elbeuf and Chevreuse into
marquisates; and Diane married her elder daughter, Louise
de Brézé, to Charles, Marquis de Mayenne, the third of the
Guise brothers, and obtained for him a grant of all the estates
in France which were held by persons without an absolute
title to them, and all the unoccupied lands, which belonged
de
jure
to the Crown — a gift which not only deprived the Treasury
of a valuable source of revenue, but led to the dispossession of
a number of nobles, communes, and private persons, and to
much harshness and injustice.

While the adversaries which Diane had decided to raise up
against him were being thus aggrandized, the Constable was
far from idle, and allowed no opportunity to pass of advancing
the importance of his family and enriching his relatives and
friends. He had five sons and seven daughters to provide for,
besides numerous nephews and nieces, and he did his duty
nobly by them all.

Though the eldest of the sons, François, was but seventeen
years old at the accession of Henri II, their father pushed their
fortunes vigorously, and procured them the posts of gentlemen
of the Chamber or pages of honour while they were awaiting
military appointments, for notwithstanding that he was so
devout a Catholic, none of them was intended for the Church.
When, in 1548, he entered, by the death of his brother the
Baron de Rochepot, into possession of all the vast estates of
the Montmorency family, his eldest son received permission
to bear the name of "Monsieur de Montmorency," the second,
Henri, took the title of Baron de Damville, while the other
three — Charles, Gabriel, and Guillaume — were known respectively as the Seigneurs de Méru, de Montbéron, and de Thoré.
Of the Constable's seven daughters, four were provided with
husbands, selected from the greatest and wealthiest families of
the kingdom; the other three entered religion, ready to become
abbesses.

Nor had his nephews and nieces any reason to complain.
The post of Colonel-General of Infantry was created for
Gaspard de Coligny, his sister's second son; the hand of a
rich heiress bestowed on his younger brother, François
d'Andelot, and an equally advantageous marriage arranged for
their half-sister, Mlle, de Mailly. Governments, estates, benefices,
pensions, companies of men-at-arms. Such were the
gifts which the King, at the instance of the Constable, distributed
right and left among Montmorency's relatives and
friends.
²¹

The insinuating M. de Saint-André naturally took care not
to be overlooked while all these good things were going round.
He received, as his share of the spoil, the post of Grand-Chamberlain, promised him on the occasion of the famous
dinner-party which had such a singular sequel, very considerable gifts at the expense of the royal demesne, and the
bâton
of marshal of France, which the Constable was persuaded to
resign in his favour, in order to compose a very pretty quarrel
between him and Diane, who claimed the
bâton
which Saint-André had been promised for her son-in-law, Robert de la Marck. Of that lady's numerous acquisitions we shall speak
in a subsequent chapter.