Henri II: His Court and Times (57 page)

G
UISE'S
brilliant campaign, which in a few days had
effaced two centuries of humiliating recollections,
made him a national and popular hero. He and
his brother, the Cardinal de Lorraine, were not slow to turn
the former's military successes to political account, and
hurried on the marriage of the Dauphin to the little Queen
of Scotland, by which they hoped to render their already
immensely strong position altogether impregnable.

They had to encounter some opposition. The Queen
pleaded the extreme youth and delicate health of her son,
while Diane also wished to delay the marriage. The course
of events during the last few months had caused that lady to
reconsider her position very seriously. Until the summer of
1557 her policy of supporting the Guises against the Montmorency party had answered admirably, at least so far as she
herself was concerned. For the Constable, backed by the
Princes of the Blood and the great majority of the nobility,
and enjoying the affection and confidence of the King, was
still too strong for the Guises; and Diane's assistance was
therefore indispensable to the latter. Thus, she had established the equilibrium between the contending factions and
dominated the situation.

But Saint-Quentin and Calais had changed all that. The
Constable was a prisoner, his party discredited; while the
praises of the Guises were in every mouth. Her former
protégés
now considered themselves strong enough to dispense
with her support; they no longer consulted her; they no
longer treated her with their customary deference. Diane,
indignant at their ingratitude, resolved to show them their
mistake, and to restore the equilibrium by an alliance with the
captive Constable. However, neither she nor the Queen was
able to delay the marriage, for Henri II not only felt himself
under great obligations to the Guises, but "he desired to avail
himself more surely of the forces of Scotland against the
kingdom of England next year";
⁰¹
and the happy event was fixed for April 24, 1558.

On the 19th, the betrothal took place in the great hall of the
new Louvre, and the bridegroom of fourteen and the bride of
fifteen plighted their troth and exchanged a ring. A ball
followed, which the King opened with the Queen of Scotland.

M
ARY
S
TUART AS
D
AUPHINE OF
F
RANCE
FROM THE DRAWING BY FRANÇOIS CLOUET IN THE BIBLIOTHÈQUE SAINTE-GENEVIÈVE

On the following Sunday, the marriage was celebrated at
Notre-Dame, with a magnificence which must have entailed very
serious inroads on the loan which had been extracted from the
Notables in the flush of their enthusiasm over the taking of
Calais. A long gallery was erected from the palace of the
Bishop of Paris (Eustache du Bellay), where the bridal party
had spent the night, to the west door of Notre-Dame, the
porch of which was hung with red tapestries adorned with
fleurs-de-lis.

Early in the morning, the members of the
Parlement
of
Paris and the municipal authorities assembled at the Palais de
Justice and the Hôtel de Ville respectively, and repaired in
procession to the cathedral, where they took the places reserved
for them on the right and left of the chancel, the
scarlet robes of the magistrates and the crimson and yellow
of the civic dignitaries making a wonderfully striking effect.
About ten o'clock, François de Guise, who replaced the
captive Montmorency in his functions of Grand-Master of the
King's Household, arrived, accompanied by an imposing suite,
to see that everything was in order, and "showed himself a
kind prince" towards the populace, by making a number of
nobles and gentlemen who had congregated on the scaffolding
descend and enter the church, so that the humbler spectators
might enjoy an uninterrupted view of the pageant. Following
him came a multitude of musicians, with "trumpets, clarions, hautboys, flageolets, viols, violins, citherns, and an infinitude
of other instruments, playing so melodiously that it was very
delightful to listen to them." Soon the bridal procession was
seen approaching. One hundred gentlemen of the King's
Household led the way; then the Princes of the Blood, "so
richly clothed and adorned that it was marvellous to see
them"; the cardinals, archbishops, bishops, and abbots; the
Papal Legate, the Cardinal Trivulzio; the Dauphin, escorted
by the Ducs d'Orléans and d'Angoulême, his brothers, and
Antoine de Bourbon, King of Navarre; the Queen of Scotland,
with Henri II holding her right hand and the Duke of Lorraine her left; while Catherine de' Medici, Jeanne d'Albret,
Queen of Navarre, the princesses, and all the ladies of the
Court followed, "so nobly accoutred that it would be impossible to write of it without too much prolixity."

The bride was clad "in a robe white as the lily, fashioned
so sumptuously and richly that it would be impossible to
describe it. The train, which was of marvellous length, was
borne by two young demoiselles. Around her neck there
hung a circlet of untold value, formed of jewels of great price,
and on her head she wore a golden crown studded with pearls,
diamonds, rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and other gems of
priceless value, the most remarkable of all being a carbuncle
set in the middle, which was valued at five hundred thousand écus or more."

The Bishop of Paris received the King and the bridal pair
in the porch of the cathedral, and delivered "a learned and
elegant oration." Then his Majesty drew from his finger a
gold ring and handed it to the Cardinal de Bourbon, who was
to perform the ceremony; and the bridal party entered the
church, while the heralds cried "Largesse!" three times, and
threw gold and silver among the crowd. A frenzied struggle
ensued, the people scrambling for the money "with such
tumult, cries, and clamour that thunder could not have been
heard above the din; some fainted, others lost their cloaks,
others their hats and divers garments, so that the people cried
to the heralds to throw nothing more, by reason of the said
tumult."

To the accompaniment of all this uproar, the Cardinal de
Bourbon pronounced the words which made François de
Valois and Mary Stuart one, and the Bishop of Paris celebrated Mass. During the offertory, the heralds repeated in
the nave the largesse which had led to such a commotion at
the doors, and the pages and gentlemen of the Court contended for the money as eagerly as the mob. At the conclusion
of the service, the bridal pair returned to the episcopal palace,
where a grand banquet took place, followed by a ball, "the
Most Christian King dancing with the Queen-Dauphine and the
King-Dauphin
⁰²
with the
Queen."

The ball only lasted until a little after four o'clock, when
the whole company crossed the Seine to the Palais de Justice,
for the festivities which were to conclude the day. The King
and the princes rode on war-horses splendidly caparisoned in
cloth of gold and silver; the Queen and Mary Stuart were
carried in a litter; the princesses were in coaches, and the
ladies of the Court on palfreys with trappings of crimson velvet.

In the great hall of the Palais de Justice, "so magnificently
decorated that one might have compared it to the Elysian
Fields," supper was served to the Court and the members of
the
Parlement
and the civic authorities at tables of white
marble, each course being presented to the sound of music.
Every one present, the chronicler assures us, was transported
with delight, and "the dames and demoiselles leaped in the air
for joy."

The supper was followed by a ball, and the ball by
"masques, mummeries, ballads, and other games and pastimes."
The seven planets presented themselves — Mercury,
with golden girdle, spreading wings and caduceus, Mars in
armour, and so forth; the young princes and the children
of Guise and Aumale entered mounted on hobbyhorses, both
riders and mimic steeds being resplendent in cloth of gold,
and pilgrims in silver tissue and jewels "sang sweet hymns
and psalms in praise of marriage and the married pair."
Finally, a fleet of ships with silver sails appeared, sometimes
rocking as in harbour, sometimes gliding forward as on the
open sea. Each of the princes embarked in one of these
vessels and "sailed away" to the table at which the ladies
of the Court sat, where he selected a shipmate. The King
chose Mary Stuart; the Dauphin, his mother; the Prince
de Condé, the Duchesse de Guise; while the Duke of Lorraine
carried off Madame Claude, whom he was to marry later.

The evening concluded with other "fantasies, melodies, and
recreations," during one of which Ronsard read an épître to
the King which he had composed in honour of the marriage.
It concluded as follows:

The festivities were continued at the Louvre for several
days, and "were considered the most regal and triumphant
that had been witnessed in the kingdom for many years."
⁰⁴

The marriage of the Dauphin and Mary Stuart was an even
greater triumph for the Guises than was generally believed,
for at Fontainebleau, on April 4 — fifteen days before the
signing of the marriage-contract, in which the Queen and her
young husband swore to maintain the laws, independence, and
liberties of Scotland — they had persuaded her to sign a secret
treaty, by which she transferred to the King of France, in
the event of her death without children, the kingdom of
Scotland and all rights to the Crown of England, until a
million gold crowns had been paid him as an indemnity for
the sum expended by France in the defence of the country.
How far Mary was culpable is a point which has been much
disputed; but the probability is that she signed the documents which were laid before her without fully realising their
importance.

For the moment, the Guises appeared all-powerful. But
their success rendered them unbearably arrogant, and they
abused their credit with the King. The duke, as we have mentioned,
had discharged Montmorency's functions of Grand-Master at
the royal wedding, and his vicarious importance on
that occasion had so flattered his vanity that, shortly afterwards, he begged the King to confer this exalted office upon
him definitely, as the reward of his military services. The
King, dissembling with difficulty his indignation at being
asked to despoil his oldest friend — at a moment, too, when
the latter was suffering for his devotion to his master's service
— declined; whereupon Guise asked for the reversion of the
post, which, as he was probably well aware, his Majesty had
already accorded to his son-in-law, François de Montmorency.
This was also refused.

Another incident, which happened a little later, served to
increase the King's irritation against the Guises.

The Constable's nephew Andelot, who had been taken
prisoner with his brother Coligny at Saint-Quentin and imprisoned
in the citadel of Milan, had recently been ransomed
by his relatives and had returned to France. His captivity
had afforded him ample leisure for study, with the consequence
that he had embraced the Reformed faith. The
Cardinal de Lorraine, happening to learn of this from a
Spanish source, immediately denounced Andelot's heresy to
the King, who sent for the new convert and questioned him
on the matter. Andelot courageously admitted the truth of
the accusation, whereupon Henri II deprived him of his post
of Colonel-General of Infantry, which he gave to Montluc,
and caused him to be imprisoned at Meaux. The King was,
however, far more angry with the cardinal, who, under the
pretext of religious zeal, had compelled him to disgrace a
near relative of the Constable.

Soon Henri II, chafing beneath the insolence of the Guises,
and yet fearful of offending them, since the political abilities
of the cardinal were as necessary to him in the present crisis
as were the military talents of the duke, began to long for
peace and the return of Montmorency. Madame de
Valentinois did everything in her power to stimulate this desire,
for the return of the Constable could alone re-establish the
equilibrium between the rival factions on which her own
importance so largely depended; and, as a proof of her
friendly intentions towards Montmorency, she wrote him
the most cordial letters and proposed a marriage between her
grand-daughter, Gabrielle de la Marck, and his second son
Damville. At her instigation, the Duc de Nevers, a friend
of the Montmorencies, placed himself at the head of the
Constable's party, which found a supporter in the Queen,
whom the Guises had also contrived to offend. As for the
King, he wrote letter after letter to the captive, urging him
to fix his ransom and pave the way for peace. "I shall die
happy," he writes, in the hyperbolical style of the time, "if
I can see a good peace and the man whom I love and esteem
more than any other in the world. And, since this is so, do
not fear to fix your ransom at any price, however high." And
again: "Do what you can to procure us peace. . . . The
greatest pleasure that I can have is to have a good peace
and to see you at liberty."
⁰⁵
The King's orders coincided too
closely with the Constable's own interests for him to neglect
them, and from the month of July several unofficial
pour-parlers
took place between him and his fellow-prisoner Saint-André, on the one side, and the Prince of Orange, Egmont, Granvelle, and Ruy Gomez, on the other.