Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886)/Chapter 10
(1536–1538.)
CHANGES.
On the field of Pavia, Francis had sent his ring to Soliman. The King had established the College of France, in spite of the Sorbonne. In defiance of the Church, he had endowed two chairs of Greek. In founding two Professorships of Hebrew, he had taken its reproach and its squalor from the Ghetto. The Jews, the learned, these two persecuted and endangered peoples he had glorified and reassured. In sending his ring to Soliman, Francis embraced the last enemy of mediæval Christendom—the Turk.
In the Turk Francis perceived the one ally that could truly aid him against the Emperor. Venice, the enlightened eye of Europe, already perceived the undue predominance of Austria, and saw in Soliman the natural balance. With Venice, whose trade required the Porte; with England, whom the Church no more controlled; with Scotland, Denmark, and the Saxon princes—France might head a formidable confederation, capital danger to the Empire and the Inquisition. Such a league was the dream of the sixteenth century, from the Battle of Pavia in 1525 to the renew project of Spires in 1573. But, as a rule, the Christian princes were as parochial in their hatred of the East in their yet bitterer hatred of Christian heresy. The Catholic hated the Turk and the Huguenot—the Huguenot the Catholic and the Turk. It was the merit of Francis to rise above sectarian considerations, to propose a great political alliance between the Protestant North, and Catholic Venice, and Catholic France, and Mahommedan Turkey. Such an alliance would have been the last word, the greatest masterpiece of the Renaissance. Humanity, tolerance, freedom of judgment, would have been naturalized thereby in Europe, and the dreadful history of the 17th century might have had a different record. But the thing was difficult beyond belief, for each State suspected the other, and all alike suspected Soliman. He was reckoned, as in their State-papers England and Spain and Germany alike conspire to name him, "the Turk, the Common Enemy." Francis would find it no easy task to make the most enlightened kingdoms of Europe accept his alliance.
For great and deep spread the horror of the Turk. Venice was too wise, England too far to share it, save in a nominal and intermittent fashion; but in Germany the dread of Soliman was as natural and fierce as superstition. Nor was this wholly an unreasonable fear. Selim was dead and gone, and in these later days the Ottomans themselves were admirably well and merciful. In 1526 two hundred thousand Turks traversed the Empire; they marched along the roads, avoiding the fields lest they should ruin the harvest. Not a village was burned, not a hamlet plundered. Any soldier caught in the act of pillage was hung to the trees by the roadside, whatsoever his rank or station. In 1532 Captain Rincon, the envoy of Francis, visited the prodigious camp of Soliman, thirty miles in extent. "Astonishing order, no violence. Merchants, women even, coming and going in perfect safety, as in a European town. Life as safe, as large and easy as in Venice. Justice so fairly administered that one is tempted to believe the Turks are turned Christians now, and the Christians Turks."
The Turks themselves were just, wise, moderate, and humane. But, alas! the Turkish armies were not all composed of Turks. The fierce Algerian pirates, slave-dealers, kidnappers of boys and women, were the allies of Soliman. The terrible Khair-Eddin Barbarossa bore the title of Turkish Admiral. This should have been the double and exacting task of Francis: to reassure Europe against the Turk, to secure Soliman while excluding Barbarossa.
The first step on this errand he had taken on the morrow of his capture at Pavia, when, drawing from his finger his last possession, he had said to his attendant, "Take this to the Sultan!" The second step was passed in this year 1536, when, on the eve of battle with Charles, Francis signed a secret treaty with Soliman. The third step, the open acknowledgment and precision of that treaty, was still to be taken, if ever it should be taken.
"The Venetians are nowe al Turkiche and alienated from th' Emperour utterly," writes Harvel, so late as the spring of 1539; "and I am of constant opinion that the French State seketh to perturbate the world in th' Emperour's detriment." Indeed, while Francis and Rincon and Du Bellay were welding the French treaty with the Turk, the Queen of Navarre was as busily employed in seeking to bring England into a French alliance. She herself interviewed the English Ambassadors, and in our collection of Foreign State-papers her name is at least as frequently quoted as the King's. "The Queen of Navarre is a right English woman," said Francis to Sir William Paget. "She is always a member of the King's Secret Council," writes Matteo Dandolo, Venetian Ambassador in France, "and, therefore, is obliged to follow the King wherever he goes, though narrow and inconvenient be her lodgings."
It was a hard life; but Margaret was happy in this career of active and beneficent devotion. In these years of work and counsel her letters are brilliant and contented—letters of how different a sort to those inspired by the quietism of her youth (1520–24), the unrest and superstition of her age (1547–48). In this year 1536, while the question of the Turco-Huguenot alliance was filling the secret counsels of France, war fell out again with the Emperor on the old question of the Milanese. The Queen of Navarre was now, perhaps, the busiest woman in France. Her letters are full of the details of the campaign. She encourages her husband and his kinsmen to raise experienced regiments for the war; she inspects the troops with her cousin, De Carman; she goes to suppress a rising of the disaffected Basques; she and Montpezat discover and interrogate a spy. And all the time she is investigating the ruined fortunes of Isabeau de Rohan; she is securing the advancement of her old play-mate, Anne de Montmorency; she is assisting her husband, and sounding his trumpet in the ears of Francis.
Henry of Navarre, in his quality of Governor of Guyenne, raised an army and led it to the southern frontier. Margaret's letters to Montmorency (very frequent at this moment) are full of allusions to her young husband, to his valour, his troops. We see in her mind the happy contrast that she makes between this eager service of the brave young King of Navarre and the cowardice and failure of the husband of her youth. Margaret, we feel, is no less anxious than her brother to wipe out, on a fresh field, the disgraces of Pavia.
"I have had news," she writes to Montmorency, "of your soldier, the King of Navarre. He is, I fancy, on the march, for he has determined to depart without going to Bayonne—for by this time he has the letters in which I told him that the Emperor is at hand, and that you await him at the camp of Avignon. I am sure he will not fail you there. I pray you, my son, that you will hold him as a brother, for I am sure that you will find his love so good and firm that you will not repent you for having taken him to your heart."
The preparation for the campaign went on with enthusiasm. The army in Piedmont met with brilliant success. The camp on the frontier was impatient for battle.
"My Lord," writes Margaret to the King, "I came yesterday evening to this place of Moufrin (near Avignon), where is the division of the King of Navarre, which I have seen in battle array. I will say nothing of the men-at-arms; but there are few soldiers better mounted than our light horse. You will be pleased with the Gascons; and would to God the Emperor would try to cross the Rhone while I am here for, with the succour you mean to send us (and but little is necessary!), I would gladly undertake, on my life—mere woman though I be—to keep him from passing."
The Emperor did not pass. His armies starved and thirsted on the devastated frontier. Victory attended the arms of the French; but Death, the faithful retainer, fought now, as ever, upon the Emperor's side. The war shrank into insignificance beside a blow that, not without suspicion of treason, changed the future of France.
For the young Dauphin, Francis, the idol of his father, the heir of the kingdom, suddenly died. He was sailing down the Rhone to join the King in the camp at Valence. He broke his journey at Lyons, and there, one day, being overheated from a game of tennis, he sent his page to draw him a cup of water from a well. It is probable the young prince succumbed to a violent pleurisy. But, when he died that night in extremity of torture, all France declared that Montecuculi, the Dauphin's cup-bearer, had smeared some Spanish poison of the Emperor's upon the edges of the cup.
More than mourning and anger were to come of this event. The Dauphin, Francis, had been, in mind as well as in body, singularly his father's child. He was of Francis's party: gay, chivalric, gallant, perhaps unstable, liberal, easy. But Henry, the second son, was now the heir. The unusual character of this youth of eighteen made him already remarkable at Court. Henry was taciturn, sardonic, melancholy.
"He seems all nerve," says Matteo Dandolo; "he is so strong and tall. But he is dark, pallid, livid—even green—and it is said he was never seen to laugh a hearty laugh. Still, he is, in his way, a good companion to his own friends, and loves the liveliness of his younger brother. He has a small head, large eyes looking down, thin temples, and a narrow forehead. He is brave, and loves hunting and fighting; and he is very religious, and will not ride on Sundays."
Another Venetian ambassador adds a stroke or two to the portrait:—
"He is melancholy, saying little, and devoid of repartee; but when once he has said a thing he holds to it mordicus, for he is very clear and decided as to his opinions. He has a mediocre and rather slow intelligence. He is virtuous and reputable, and spends his money liberally but wisely."
"Il est né Saturnien," says Simon Renard—and truly the star of Saturn sheds its singular and pallid radiance upon his course. As a child his father had not loved him, "Je n'aime pas," he had said, "les enfans songeards, sourdaudz et endormis." And dreamy, dull, and sleepy were still the manners of the Prince. Four years of his childhood had passed in the Spanish castle where he had been a hostage for the brilliant father who did not love him. And it was his destiny that he should henceforth detest the land of his captivity and make war upon it, while he himself was imbued with the spirit of it, while he himself should turn the volatile, spontaneous gallic character of his father's France into a thing as pallid, as precise, as decorous, as the Emperor's Spain. Under him the long reign of the Style soutenu begins in Art and Letters. He is slow, solemn, romantic, and yet conventional. In his long straight nose, his fine anxious brows, his singular large eyes, we see the evidence of a certain ideality, but no power to direct it. "A saturnine," says Simon Renard; and another calls him, "a King of Lead." He is, indeed, save when in battle or following the hunt, an inert and sombre youth, with his crooked, sinister mouth, his black, straight hair, his lustreless, black eyes.
In 1533 the King, anxious to conciliate the Papacy, had married Henry to the heiress of Florence and Urbino, the Pope's niece, Catherine dei Medici, a plump child of fourteen, with full lips, large eyes, a retreating chin—a certain vulgar prettiness. She had caressing, charming manners, that made everyone at Court in love with her—except her sombre young husband, with his solemn air of a Spanish grandee, unapproachable and noble. For him his little bride, during her whole life, cherished a devoted passion, that was, perhaps, the only loveable thing in her career. But Henry was at first supremely disgusted with his marriage. Her quickness in pastimes, her lively manners, her neat-ankled prettiness, could not make him overlook the trading ancestry of his bride. Twenty years later the Venetian Ambassadors inform us that all the Court of France looked down on Catherine because she was not of royal blood:—
"She can never do them favours enough. If she gave away the whole of France, they would scarcely thank her, because she is a foreigner; and she has neither credit nor authority, since she is not of royal birth."
"Bah! it is only the shopkeeper's daughter!" said Madame Diane to the little Queen of Scots, more than twenty years after this. And, indeed; though a good enough match for the Duke of Orleans, little Catherine dei Medici, not beautiful even at seventeen, was, doubtless, made to feel herself a very poor alliance for the heir of France. "They have smirched the Valois lilies with a mercantile alliance!" cried the Emperor. Henry was ashamed of his wife, and did not love her. As time went on, and the plain, bourgeoise, unlovely girl did not even give him an heir, he began to think of a divorce. But all the pride and all the real love of Catherine's heart arose and pleaded against him with King Francis. And Henry was finally brought to reason by a very great lady with whom he was in love, Diana of Poictiers, the widow of the great Seneschal of Normandy, and the daughter of that Saint Vallier who had nearly perished for the conspiracy of Bourbon. This most important and almost princely personage, though she called Catherine a daughter of shopkeepers, persuaded Henry to treat her better, and even to reward her with a moderate affection.
"It is wonderful how Madame la Sénéschale has made another man of him," says Marcus Cavalli. "He used not to love his wife at all, but was vain and full of mockery."
For Diana of Poictiers had an almost boundless influence over Henry. She was no longer young. At the time when Montmorency brought her and Henry together in his house at Écouen she was thirty-eight and he not quite eighteen years old. Everyone said that Henry would never fall in love; but Montmorency divined better. He determined to attach the young Prince to this woman, twenty years his senior, who was of Montmorency's party—a Catholic among Catholics, a Conservative, hating the Turco-Huguenot alliance, and hating Spain also, though filled with the spirit of Spain. Diana was still a very beautiful woman. Her abundant hair, jet-black and curly (sometimes she dyed it red), made a frame for a pallid delicate face, beautiful with that peculiar Renaissance beauty, so illustrious and strange, which affects the imagination more strongly than the senses. Her lids were a little tight over the eyes; the small, close-shutting lips tight also; the straight, small nose prominent in profile; the delicate eyebrows arched and tense above the well-set eyes; the forehead round; the neck beautiful but slender; the whole face secret, unemotional, unexpressive, yet most provoking to the imagination.
The whiteness of her pale complexion was a special beauty of la grande Sénéschale. In some sort, her life was devoted to preserve it. Every morning she arose at early dawn, and bathed herself, winter and summer alike, with icy water. Then, by the light of the daybreak, she went riding through the fields round Paris, or in the woods at Fontainebleau. Before the world awoke she was at home again, reading in her bed till noon. Then began her regular life of a great lady at Court, resolved to marry well her little daughters, resolved to keep her power as a beauty, to make herself a power in politics. Later on, we know that all the secrets of the State were debated in her house at Anet. Even then, we may be sure, no secret of the Catholic party was kept from her; and as soon as she became the mistress of Henry, she devoted herself to be his counsellor, his adviser, giving him wise instruction, and even lending him her money.
Catherine, seventeen years old, plump, merry, affectionate, had not known how to win her husband's love. It was different with Diana. The charm of an elder woman, her refined sweetness and delicate superiority, were, perhaps, the only wiles that could have caught the Dauphin. And Diana, with the dignity, had not the disadvantage of her years. Hers was not the loveliness that fades with youth. Her penetrating Armida graces were unchanged, her grand style, her grave and delicate air, gained rather than lost by the sparer outlines and paler tints of waning youth. Tall and slender, she was ever soberly clad; she affected no rivalry with the cloth of gold and gems of younger beauties; she wore black and white in honour of her widowhood. When the Dauphin became her lover, she still wore her quiet weeds for her dead husband, and he also took for his badge the mourning-colours of the man he had supplanted; all the Dauphin's Court assumed the hues of widowhood.
No one seems to have found it strange. Diana was so inaccessible, so remote, and distant, that rumour itself could find no fault with her. She continued the most pious, the most Catholic, the wisest, the most respectable of ladies. Many said, and say, that she had conferred on Francis the affections that now she bestowed on his son. There is no evidence. There was no evidence then to what degree the Dauphin was her lover, though the Revolution which desecrated the grave of Diana and of two dead babies in her chapel at Anet has settled that question for a later world.
"She has undertaken," says Cavalli, "to indoctrinate the Dauphin, to correct and counsel him, and to urge him on towards all actions worthy of hint."
The moon was her emblem, the crescent moon, with the equivocal device, "Donec totum impleat orbem" And if the star of Saturn shone fitly on the Dauphin's birth, for her the natural planet was the pale, the solemn, the enchanting moon. Cold, narrow-hearted, fanatic rather than religious, curious rather than impassioned, Diana was truly a daughter of the moon, a moon that stooped to kiss her gloomy young Endymion. The Dauphin fell at once under her enchantment. He was then eighteen; but when he died, twenty-three years later, King Henry II. was no less devoted. It was a possession rather than a passion. The amused courtiers laughed in their sleeves. The country people, awe-struck by her name, said that she had enchanted Prince Henry with a philtre. They found her, in her lunar beauty, the image of that pale Diana of the Forests, whom witches hymn by night; and they declared that every morning of her life she drank a draught of molten gold.
This, in a sense, was true. Diana knew how to lend and how to give, but she knew still better how to grasp. Her delicate, tenacious hands filled themselves with the wealth and the power of France. She and Montmorency stood one on either side the melancholy Dauphin and whispered their counsels in his ears. Round them swiftly gathered a strange, sad, rigid, fanatic little Court, an assembly of the orthodox, the pious, the bien pensants, the centre of all that was Romanist and Latinist, a society illumined by the dubious crescent of Diana, and dressed all in black and white in honour of her widowhood.
Naturally, this new little Court gained immensely by the death of the Dauphin Francis. Now that Henry was the heir, his faction became scarce less puissant than his father's. It stood in the sharpest contrast so the splendid, free-living, tolerant Court of Francis, the Court for which Andrea and Lionardo had painted, the Court which established the College of France, which dreamed of the League with Luther and with Soliman. The object of the one party was the expansion of France; they would give one hand to the Turk and one to the Huguenot; they would draw from Italy, from the East, from the Jews, all that could enrich their country. But the aim of the younger party was the centralisation of France; they wished to develop a civilization of their own, owing nothing to foreign influences. The party of Francis gave us Rabelais, Marot, the Estiennes, the Castles of Blois and Chambord and Fontainebleau, the germ of the collections of the Louvre, and the College of France. The party of Henry, less concerned with ideas, and far more delicate in expression, enriched the world with Ronsard and the Pleiad, with Anet and Écouen, with the Art of Francois Clouët and his school. A delicate, precise, charming, but artificial beauty centres in that Court: a second renaissance not passionate for truth, for knowledge, for freedom, for humanity, like the movement that inspired the life of Margaret of Angoulême.
The first consequence of the Dauphin's death was immensely to increase the prestige of Montmorency. He was now on the topmost pinnacle of success. Both Margaret and the Dauphin had used all their influence in his favour. All parties were for him. His skilful generalship had made a victorious campaign. Francis, perceiving the Grand Master to be a keen and ready soldier, and being himself influenced by Margaret's praises of her friend, determined to reward him richly. On the disgrace of Bourbon, the dangerously powerful office of Constable of France had fallen into a wise desuetude. The King determined to revive it for Montmorency. Margaret, never shrewd or suspicious, rejoiced in this triumph of her friend. The news gave general pleasure at Court, for the Dauphin was Montmorency's close ally, and Queen Leonor and Madeleine de Montmorency were near and zealous companion.
These were all for the Grand Master. No one else was powerful enough to hazard a remonstrance. Yes; there was one—one unlikely and ridiculous Cassandra. Madame d'Étampes, hearing of the King's determination, prayed, wept, urged, implored Francis not to give that post to Montmorency. But for that wise once his pretty Anne begged of Francis all in vain.
In the spring of 1538 the ceremony took place. Leading the Queen of Navarre by the hand, Montmorency advanced to the steps of the throne. Francis, taking the sword of state from its scabbard, placed it, bare-bladed, in the Grand Master's hand. At that moment the heralds waved their flags and cried: "Vive de Montmorency, Connétable de France!" The rash deed was done.
Montmorency was now only second to the King. In addition to his immense wealth, his office of Constable brought him an income of £24,000 Tournois. Constable, Grand Master, Minister of Finance, Anne de Montmorency had virtually the kingdom at his command. He could rise no higher be no greater. Neither Francis nor Margaret could aid him more. He became henceforward less the servant than the rival of the King, chief in the Dauphin's rising Court, counsellor of the outraged Queen Leonor. He scarcely concealed his contempt for the magnificences and frivolities of Francis, nor his aversion for the Lutheran views of Margaret. No question now of repaying old benefits, of requiting a long affection. Montmorency, the harsh, frugal, inquisitorial, and dogmatic Constable, conscientiously disapproved of Nérac and its refugees. He felt no scruple in trying to destroy the influence which had helped him to his seat of honour.
So, when the peace was made, despite his promises, despite the benefactions of Margaret, Montmorency raised no plea for the restoration of Navarre. The French retained Hesdin and Savoy; there was no question of the rights of Henry d'Albret; and one day, a little later, when King Francis complained of the singular growth of heresy: "Sire, if you would exterminate it," said the Constable, "begin with your Court, and first of all with your sister!"
The cruel word missed its mark. "She loves me too much," said Francis. "She would never believe other than I believe, nor anything that would prejudice my estate." The shaft glanced by King Francis, but it lodged in Margaret's heart. In this year, 1538, her frequent letters to the Constable come to a sudden end. From that day she never liked nor trusted Montmorency, and for a year and more she sat, in vague helplessness, watching all her work unravelled by this man, watching Francis drifting towards the Emperor in desertion of his natural allies.