The Rival Queens (15 page)

The royal family was naturally in attendance at the wedding. It must have been wrenching for Marguerite to stand and observe impassively as her poignant first love was pledged to another and to hear her brother Henri, who had so callously used her for his own purposes, threaten to have the duke of Guise stabbed through the heart if after his marriage he ever dared look at his sister again. But for all the bitterness, the lessons of this experience were extremely useful. They drilled into Margot the urgency of being on her guard at an early age, and they honed the skills she would need to exist in a family as duplicitous and dangerous as hers.

And this was fortunate indeed, because after this events spiraled out of control with such ferocity that it was going to take everything she had simply to survive.

W
HATEVER RELIEF FROM FAMILY PRESSURE
Margot experienced as a result of the wedding of the duke of Guise was short-lived, as there still remained the question of her own continuing eligibility. It wasn’t just Marguerite: all Catherine’s children were growing older, and arranging prestigious matches for her offspring was uppermost in the queen mother’s mind. In November, she finally managed to marry Charles to the Holy Roman Emperor’s second daughter, an event that was marred only slightly by the fact that Philip II once again bested her by wedding the emperor’s much more desirable eldest daughter, who had been originally pledged to the king of France. By deliberately stealing Charles’s intended, Philip II doubly managed to insult the French: he both very publicly rejected the idea of uniting himself to Marguerite or allowing the king of Portugal to espouse her while also demonstrating his superior appeal and political clout.

Catherine had no better luck furthering her designs to see her adored Henri wed to the queen of England. To her great dismay, the lieutenant-general brusquely rejected the proffered bride on the
grounds that Elizabeth I was a Protestant. The queen mother was eventually forced to substitute his younger brother, François, duke of Alençon, as a candidate. (Sixteen-year-old François “
will not show himself
so scrupulous in the matter of religion,” Catherine wrote soothingly to thirty-eight-year-old Elizabeth.) But Sir Francis Walsingham, the English ambassador to France, did not hold out much hope for the success of this latest stratagem. “
To be plain
,” Walsingham observed in a report to his government, “the only thing that I fear in this match is the consideration of the delicacy of her majesty’s eye and of the hard favor [ugliness] of the gentleman besides his disfigurement with the small pox: which if she should see with her eye, I misdoubt much would withdraw her liking to proceed.”

Catherine was not the only marriage broker to cast an appraising glance on the throne of England. From his home base in La Rochelle (by that time officially recognized as the property of the Huguenots, thanks to the Peace of Saint-Germain), Admiral Coligny was making discreet inquiries through Protestant ambassadors at the English court as to whether Elizabeth might consider
his
candidate for the future king of England: Jeanne d’Albret’s son, seventeen-year-old Henry of Navarre.

A tenuous peace had followed the signing of the Peace of Saint-Germain, and Coligny had used this respite to formulate a course of action designed to promote stability within the realm and allow the kingdom of France time to recover from the destruction wreaked upon the civilian population by the continuing Wars of Religion. For all his militarism, at heart the admiral was a patriot who did not relish his role as an antagonist within his own country. Coligny
wanted
to serve the king, he just didn’t think he should have to give up his faith to do so.

After some consideration, based upon his long years of experience in government and the army, the admiral concluded that the problem was not with the fight but with the battlefield. France had been materially weakened by the internal religious conflict. Good
men were lost on both sides, crops were destroyed, and the kingdom was seriously in debt. Coligny’s idea was to turn the focus of hostilities outward and make it a war, not of Frenchman against Frenchman but of France against Spain. He proposed moving the field of operation out of the kingdom altogether. The Protestants of the Netherlands were already rebelling against their Catholic overlord, Philip II. Why not intervene on the side of his coreligionists to the north and fight this out in the Spanish empire? If the Protestants won with French help, then the Netherlands would become part of France, and its people would become subjects of the French king. This would give everyone in France a real boost in morale when they needed it most and might just unite the religions sufficiently for them to learn to live in peace. After all, even French Catholics would enjoy taking territory away from the condescending Spanish. And if the Protestants in the Netherlands lost, well, at least it would be Philip II who would be materially weakened for a change and who would have to deal with the surly population, the destruction, the lost crops, and the drain on the royal treasury. Not that Coligny was intending to lose.

Spain being the richest and most powerful kingdom in Europe, the admiral conceded that it wouldn’t hurt to go into the fight with the support of a couple of Protestant allies—such as England and Germany, for example—as a means of improving the chances for success. Elizabeth I didn’t commonly like to send cavalry, but she could usually be talked into providing money. And Coligny knew that the queen of England would be less suspicious of France’s motives and more likely to support the French effort if her future husband were helping to lead the charge. Hence the inclusion of Henry of Navarre’s name in the roster of suitors vying for Elizabeth’s hand.

The discovery that the admiral was negotiating independently with the English government (and promoting policies contrary to her own!) was highly unpleasant to Catherine. Henry of Navarre, while not classically handsome, was good-looking enough in his
own way and certainly more attractive than poor stunted, pockmarked François. Moreover, he boasted the distinct advantage of championing the same religion as the queen of England and the majority of her subjects and was already earning a name for himself as a soldier. Coligny had taken both Henry and his cousin the new prince of Condé (son of the deceased prince of Condé) on his recent offensive through southern France, and both young men were advancing in the military arts under his tutelage. When his mother died, Henry would be a king in his own right—true, it was only of tiny Navarre, a vassal state to France, but Elizabeth might look with favor on this, as it meant that if she married him he could retain his rank and still have no problem taking up residence in England.
^*

The idea that fickle Antoine’s son might become king of England in preference to one of her own brood was anathema to Catherine. Even worse, she could not forcibly prevent Coligny from treating separately with the English. The Huguenots were so impregnable at La Rochelle that they could operate virtually as a shadow government. The port city was one of the most well fortified in France. It was protected by water on three sides—the harbor from the sea to the south, which assured diplomatic access to England and the Netherlands as well as a valuable supply route in case of siege, and marshland to the east and west. La Rochelle’s northern aspect, the only direction by which it could be accessed by land, was guarded by a series of strong walls and towers upon which the Huguenots had thought to install state-of-the-art artillery. So safeguarded were Coligny and his supporters that it was doubtful that even an army could dislodge them—not that Catherine had any money left to raise one. There was only one way for the queen mother to stop the admiral, and that was to co-opt him.

And so Catherine gritted her teeth once again and initiated a policy of conciliation toward Coligny and his abettor, the coleader of the Huguenot movement, Jeanne d’Albret. As early as January 1571, she sent warm family greetings to Jeanne, explaining that “
the King, my son
, [intends] to embrace the affairs of the Prince of Navarre [Henry], whom the King and I infinitely desire to see here, with you.” But Jeanne, who had experience with the queen mother’s hospitality, which in the past had tended to turn into house arrest, demurred. Catherine’s next move was to invite Coligny to visit the court at Blois to discuss areas of mutual interest. To ensure that her advances were taken seriously, the queen mother dangled the prize of an alliance between the Huguenots and the royal family by reviving the idea of marrying Marguerite to Henry of Navarre, thereby conveniently removing this potentially damaging suitor from the list of those pursuing Elizabeth. She also hinted that Coligny, whose estates had been confiscated as a result of his opposition to the Crown, might have his property returned to him, in addition to other lucrative forms of compensation, if he would agree to become reconciled to the royal family.

La Rochelle During the Period of Huguenot Possession

The admiral was perfectly happy to wed Henry of Navarre to Marguerite in order to make way for a marital alliance between Catherine’s son and the queen of England. What he really wanted was to move the war of religion out of France and into the Netherlands with English support, and this would have been achieved by either betrothal, as Elizabeth would be equally reassured of the good faith of the French if she married a member of the royal family. He knew he chanced arrest, or even possibly assassination, if he accepted the invitation to court, but he was so convinced that his plan would work that he decided to take the risk. “
Better to die by a bold stroke
than to live a hundred years in fear,” he affirmed to those of his supporters who warned him against trusting the queen mother’s benevolence.

And he had another reason for going: despite all Catherine’s power, Coligny understood that ultimately he held the advantage over her. Not because of his military successes or the number of his cavalry or the unshakable resolve of the Huguenot party—these factors were mutable and subject to outside forces. But the admiral recognized that there was one point on which Catherine was vulnerable, although, after so many years as head of state, she did not yet know it. Her son Charles IX had finally reached manhood.

It was, after all, Charles, not his mother, who was king.

C
HARLES
IX
WAS TWENTY-ONE
years old when Admiral Coligny accepted the invitation to court and rode into Blois on September 12, 1571. The king was by this time a married man who also kept a Protestant mistress by whom he would soon father an illegitimate son. Despite his poor health, he was a tireless hunter and sportsman whose one overriding desire was to distinguish himself in battle.
Charles was not a scholar but nor was he intellectually impaired; he was certainly capable of governing. The problem was, his mother wouldn’t let him. He wasn’t even permitted to fire his own servants. “
His chief attendant, the Count de Retz
(given to him much earlier by his mother), is an Italian,” the Spanish ambassador observed.
^*
“And I know that he has said, ‘If I could once see myself free from that dog I would never allow another Italian in my house.’ ” Charles was also tortured by jealousy of his brother Henri and Catherine’s obvious preference for him. “
My mother
loves him [Henri] so much
that she steals the honor due to me for him,” he sniffed. “I wish that we might take it in turn to reign, or at least that I might have his place for a half-year.”

Then Coligny and his exciting Netherlands idea turned up at court.

The admiral could not have dreamed up a project more enticing to his young sovereign than the plan he laid out before him in all its vivid detail over the course of the next five months. Here was a chance for Charles to prove himself a true king, to take charge, to demonstrate his prowess and bravery, and under Coligny’s tutelage to win a great battle and achieve the glory for which his ancestors were renowned. The admiral “
is to be found
each day at the rising of the King, as well as when he dines and sups,” an eyewitness reported. “At all hours he is close to his chair, and with the same freedom as those who never left the court.” For his part, Coligny, who had experience mentoring fatherless young men, including, just recently, Henry of Navarre and the prince of Condé, understood exactly what Charles needed: a strong male presence to instill in the fledgling monarch the values and courage necessary to rebel against his mother’s will. It was Dad against Mom. Charles even began to
call the admiral
mon père
.