Seven Ages of Paris (14 page)

Of notable Italian lineage, Catherine de Médicis was well versed in the arts of Machiavelli—and of poison. Apparently barren for the first nine years of her marriage, she went on to produce ten children, three of whom became the next kings of France—and the last of the Valois dynasty. Coming to the throne aged fifteen, her eldest son, François II, who had married Mary, Queen of Scots, had one of the shortest and most wretched reigns in French history (1559–60). Oppression of French Protestants reached new heights; and in 1560, after summary trials, a number of their leaders were hanged from the battlements of the beautiful Château d’Amboise—with François and Mary, reputedly, gloating over the hanged men by torchlight. A few months later, François died of meningitis; Mary Stuart returned to Britain and met her tragic end. The next King, Charles IX, was only ten. Under Catherine as regent, a confused series of civil wars broke out between Protestants—now becoming numerically threatening—and Catholics, with multiple murders of the rival leaders and massacres of their supporters.

The killings culminated in the infamous Saint Bartholomew’s Eve massacre of 24 August 1572. In the atmosphere of confusion, sectarian hatred and fear that prevailed in Paris, who was actually responsible for the massacre is regarded by modern historians as uncertain. The view long held was that Charles IX, acting on his mother’s advice to resolve France’s dilemma by a mass purge of Protestants, gave the terrible order: “Kill them all, so that not one will be left to reproach me for it.” Possibly the court intended only the liquidation of a few Protestant ringleaders, gathered in Paris for the wedding earlier of Henri of Navarre to Catherine’s daughter Marguerite (Margot), and the Paris mob then ran amok. Some fifteen thousand were slaughtered that night, most of them in Paris, which according to witnesses “looked like a conquered city.” Survivors, the Huguenots, began to leave France in legions. Shortly after Saint Bartholomew’s Eve, Charles too died of a mysterious illness. Tuberculosis was suspected, but it has been suggested that he was poisoned by his ruthless mother. Charles’s younger brother now became king as Henri III. One of France’s more bizarre monarchs, on account of his effeminacy and occasional practice of appearing at official ceremonies in drag, he became known as the “King of Sodom,” surrounded as he was by a mincing entourage known as his mignons. It was clear that Henri, though married, would produce no heir, and a serious dynastic crisis ensued. The end of the Valois dynasty loomed. The obvious and most promising contender was a cousin twenty times removed (and also his brother-in-law by marriage), Henri of Navarre. The only trouble was that Henri (the future Henri IV) was a Protestant. The forceful reigning Pope, Sixtus V, promptly proclaimed a virulent bull nullifying his rights to the throne of France, and gained the support of Philip II’s Spain. When Elizabeth executed Mary, Queen of Scots, François’s widow, a new war of religion (the eighth) engulfed France—and Europe.

THE THREE HENRIS

By the 1570s, the Catholic Guise family had come to control the army, much of the Church and whole provinces of France. Paris herself was controlled by the Catholic League, created in 1576 and directed by the second, all-powerful Duc de Guise (Henri, 1550–88). The League was more dangerous than anything preceding it in Paris, insofar as it incited and mobilized the lower orders. Amid fresh internecine bloodshed, in 1588 it organized a Day of Barricades, virtually taking over the city, despite the opposition of the city’s Catholic aristocracy. Henri III fled his capital; Henri de Guise was then assassinated in Catherine’s bloody Château de Blois, on the orders of his namesake the King. Catherine de Médicis herself died the following January. “It is not a woman,” observed a contemporary, “it is Royalty which has just expired.”

In August of that same year, 1589, Henri III, fleeing from his enemies, and held responsible by the Catholic “ultras” for the death of their hero, Henri de Guise, was stabbed in the stomach (while sitting on his commode at his Château de Saint-Cloud, south-west of Paris) by a fanatical monk. With his dying breath, Henri sent for the other Henri (of Navarre) to be his successor: “Mon frère, I can feel clearly that it is for you to possess the right which I have worked for, to preserve for you what God has given you.” He urged his successor to embrace Catholicism.

As with Philippe Auguste before him, Henri IV’s reign began with a great battle outside Paris, this time at its very portals in 1590. But it was a battle the King did not win. With a motley force of 10,000 men, he had taken off from Tours to assert his right to the throne bestowed on him by the dying Henri III. It was a fairly distant right, in that he was the nearest blood descendant along the line from the thirteenth-century Saint Louis, but he was enormously popular, especially down in Navarre. Indeed he was an immensely attractive figure, to women and to men—despite its being said that he was disinclined to bathe and smelled strongly of goat. A warm-hearted Gascon from the south-west of France, he was always in love (usually inconstant), sending his current mistress(es) passionate—and indiscreet—letters full of details of his military and political operations. As, in all probability, they had meanwhile been dumped, the scorned women tended to hand over to his enemies valuable intelligence about his intentions.

Hence, unsurprisingly, his military operations were not always blessed with success (which perhaps could be taken as one good reason why eventually, unable to win on the battlefield, he was forced to change his religion to obtain the crown of France). Nevertheless, he was personally fearless in battle. “I rule with my arse in the saddle and my gun in my fist” was his fighting motto. “Rally to my white plume,” he exhorted his men on the battlefield; “you will find it on the road to victory and honour.”

Ranged against him in Paris was the fanatical Council of Sixteen, its members determined to purge not only Protestants and their own personal enemies, those loyal to the late Henri III, but in addition those aspiring only to remain neutral. The commander of the Catholic forces, and hero of the Parisian crowds, was Charles de Lorraine, Duc de Mayenne, avenging brother of the assassinated Henri de Guise. Mayenne had an eye on the throne himself, and enjoyed the support of Philip II of Spain, the Italian Duke of Savoy—both sworn enemies of France—and the Vatican. Arbitrarily Mayenne proclaimed the aged Cardinal de Bourbon king—though he had already fallen into the hands of Henri of Navarre, his nephew.

With most of the big cities supporting the League, Henri decided to move with his troops into Normandy, where he could be sure of finding friends. From Paris Mayenne followed him, to Arques near Dieppe, boasting that he would bring Henri back in a cage. Instead, in a confused fight in the mist on 20–21 September 1589, he was roundly defeated. A triumphant Henri then headed for Paris, intending to deliver a crushing blow to the heart of the Leaguers. But surveying the vast city from the belfry of the ancient Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, he realized that the 400-year-old walls built by Philippe Auguste were too strong for the effectives available to him to contemplate a frontal assault. So on 11 November he disengaged from Paris, retiring anew to Normandy for the winter.

After four chilly months spent by both sides preparing for the spring campaigning, a new engagement was fought on 14 March 1590 at Ivry, just four days’ march west of Paris. By this time Mayenne had received substantial reinforcements from Spain, Philip II justifying his first military intervention in French affairs on the ground that there was “an imminent danger to the Holy Catholic Church.” Though his forces were outnumbered, again the day ended in a clear-cut victory for Henri—after some ferocious hand-to-hand mounted combat. Following the battle, he demonstrated a less agreeable side of the Renaissance warrior: mercenaries accused of having behaved treacherously at Arques on Mayenne’s side had their throats cut without mercy, as did many French footsoldiers. Mayenne himself fled with his cavalry.

By 7 May the King was on the outskirts of Paris again, his army divided into separate corps to set up a blockade around the city. Writing to his mistress Corisande, from Chelles, he boasted:

I am before Paris, where God will assist me. Taking the city, I will finally begin to feel the effects of the Crown. I’ve taken the Charenton bridge and the bridge of Saint-Maur with cannon, and hanged all that were hiding there. Yesterday, I took the outskirts of Paris, by force; the enemy lost many and we only a few …

He had burned all the windmills, essential for producing bread, that lay outside the city walls, so that “it must happen that within twelve days, they are either rescued or they surrender.” Henri was certain that, after Ivry, the divided Parisians would rapidly capitulate. But he was proved wrong. Paris had had ample time to improve her defences and stock the city’s stores with food. After two failed attacks, the twelve days became three months. Henri now sat down to starve Paris into submission.

THE SIEGE

Historically, besieging armies tend to need a substantial majority over the invested force. To besiege this large walled city of 220,000,* now the biggest in Europe, Henri IV had only some 12,000 to 13,000 men, including a cavalry force of 2,000; the total rose through reinforcements to no more than 25,000 by July. Against this the Leaguers could marshal a garrison of over 50,000 men. These included 800 French arquebusiers, 500 Swiss footsoldiers and 1,200 elderly German Landsknechte, while each of the sixteen quartiers provided a militia of 3,000 men, well armed but not uniformly reliable. Pigaffetta, a veteran Italian captain in the entourage of the Papal Legate, Enrico Caetani, contemptuously described this force on the ramparts as resembling “dogs that bark furiously on the threshold of a house, but never venture outside.” In addition, however, there prowled in the background the potential relieving force of Mayenne (defeated at Ivry) and the Spaniards and Italians of the redoubtable Duke of Parma in the Spanish Netherlands (present-day Belgium). After all their experience gained in the reconquest of Granada from the Moors, and their expeditions in the New World, the Spanish infantry throughout Europe had, justly, gained a reputation something akin to that of the Wehrmacht shock troops of 1940.

In terms of artillery, Henri’s royal army was able to wheel into place no more than a handful of heavy siege cannon, and lighter culverins, or field pieces. By the end of the sixteenth century the art of siege gunnery had advanced over that of previous centuries, but not that much; moreover, as of 1590, the Huguenots were not renowned either for their artillery or for efficient handling of it. So Henri was faced with reducing Paris through starvation—as indeed the far better equipped forces of Bismarck and Moltke were to do three centuries later.

News of the defeat at Ivry had caused a great deal of “annoyance and astonishment” among Mayenne’s supporters inside Paris. As Henri increased the pressure, a mood of bloodthirsty defiance took hold in Catholic circles, with priests taking to the streets with cries of “Au meurtre! Au feu! Au sang! A la vengeance!” against the King. Yet there was also a dominant sense of foreboding. Poor peasants from the outlying regions whose stores had been consumed by the besiegers poured into the city. It was calculated that there was only enough food within the city for four to six weeks, and there were fears that Henri would be able to stir up an insurrection inside the city. Orders were issued—and then mistakenly rescinded—to expel refugees, the sick and other “useless mouths” to save food. In a kind of scorched-earth strategy, houses on the perimeter that might prove useful to the besiegers were demolished; and, because there weren’t enough soldiers, it was decided to make little attempt to defend the faubourgs.

The Paris defenders were placed under command of the twenty-two-year-old half-brother of Mayenne, the Duc de Nemours, said to be energetic and zealous, but short of experience. Then, upon a scene hardly encouraging for the Catholics, there suddenly appeared a secret weapon—in the shape of the Papal Legate, Enrico Caetani, sent by Pope Sixtus V, perhaps the most resolute of all the Counter-Reformation pontiffs. Caetani’s mission was to purchase the release from Henri of Cardinal de Bourbon and to stiffen the resistance of the Parisians. Furnished with a credit note for 100,000 écus to devote to the Cardinal’s freedom, he promptly spent the money on providing the besieged with arms and foodstuffs. (The Cardinal died anyway during the siege.) Caetani established his moral ascendancy by declaring in a sermon before the Sorbonne that, “whether Catholic or not,” Henri was to be excluded for ever from the throne of France.

Henri positioned two batteries of cannon on the heights of Montmartre, bombarding Paris indiscriminately, but with little effect on civilian morale. The Parisians, according to contemporary accounts, “just laughed.” But hunger began to take hold. Donkeys began to disappear, then—as would also happen in 1870—cats and dogs, and even rats. Rations were reduced, and one man was reported eating candle tallow; there were said to be experiments in milling bones out of the graveyards for flour, and there was more than one account of cannibalism—“little children disguised as meat.” A mother was found to have eaten her two dead children—both supposedly interred in accordance with Catholic rites, but a thigh was discovered in an armoire. The maid confessed everything, after the mother’s own death. As always, it was the poor who suffered most grievously, while (so it was claimed) religious establishments had stored provisions to last a year. According to Captain Pigaffetta, in the wealthy districts there were shops selling game and a wide range of foods—at extortionate prices. By August, Henri had captured all the suburbs and brought his guns “to within a stone’s throw” of the ramparts. It looked as if the fall of Paris was now but a matter of time. Pacifist feelings gathered strength. The Catholics, especially the extremist leaders of the League, steeled themselves for a dreadful orgy of revenge for St. Bartholomew’s Eve. But Henri, with his customary shrewdness, saw that clemency would serve him best. The League, however, rejected Henri’s terms, and the siege continued. Then two events of great significance took place—both of them outside Paris. First, on 27 August, the intransigent Pope Sixtus died, to be followed by more liberal pontiffs, three in just over a year; then came Clement VIII, who was radically to alter Vatican policy towards France and come to terms with Henri of Navarre. On the other side of the balance, however, and with far more immediate consequence for the starving Parisians was the news, which reached the city on 30 August, of the approach of a formidable liberating army led by the Italian Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, commander of Philip II’s forces in the Spanish Netherlands. One of Europe’s most outstanding generals, Parma had been ordered by Madrid to give up his current campaign against the Dutch and to hasten south to save Paris. At Meaux, some forty kilometres east of Paris, close to where the Kaiser was to be halted on the Marne in 1914, Parma linked up with Mayenne.