The Serpent and the Moon: Two Rivals for the Love of a Renaissance King (48 page)

But the Guises were still not satisfied. They wanted the
Parlement
to declare them royal princes of France, on a par with the French Princes of the Blood—the Valois and the Bourbons; Montmorency managed to block this. The Constable was occupied with making pacific moves toward England, which needed appeasing. At stake was Calais and its surrounding territories. Grand orders on gold chains were bestowed on the English king, ambassadors were exchanged between the two countries, as well as royal brides. Since Mary, Queen of Scots, was promised to the dauphin of France, Henri offered the English ambassador the hand of his six-year-old daughter Elisabeth for their young king, Edward VI. Edward reciprocated the proposal with a promise to stand as godfather for Catherine’s sixth child, the future King Henri III.

The truce with England did not last long as the young English king died two years later, in 1553. His Catholic sister, Mary Tudor,
⁴
daughter of Catherine of Aragon and Henry VIII, became queen of England and married Philip II of Spain in 1554. This marriage suited both parties as Philip II gained England as an ally in his struggle against France, and Mary Tudor was quite willing to see her country play such a role.

Diane’s letters from this time are mostly concerned with her estates and business dealings, and the reader is hard put to find her personality in them. One letter shows that she meticulously observed her brother’s will and paid the dowries of poor girls so that they could marry. In another touching letter, she writes to the mother of her son-in-law, Robert de La Marck, about the execution of seventeen-year-old Lady Jane Grey: “I have just heard the news of the poor young Queen Jane, and I shed tears for the sweet and resigned words she spoke as her last, for I have never seen such a good and accomplished princess. And you see that it is this kind of woman who dies at the hands of criminals.” Mary Tudor was not going to leave another queen alive in England, still less a Protestant one. Diane took note how the mighty have fallen and wrote that “
L’abîme est en haut
”—“Ruin [or punishment] comes from above [meaning God, or in the case of Lady Jane Grey, the queen].” Somehow she was always conscious of the precariousness of her position and aware of the sinner’s eternal damnation. At a time when death could strike so unexpectedly through wars, sudden illnesses, and epidemics, there was always the fear of being unable to confess one sins and thus losing Paradise.

W
HEN Henri II was in his thirty-third year, the Venetian ambassador Contarini wrote a detailed description of the king:

Contarini also described Diane de Poitiers in the same year:

That year, Contarini wrote of Catherine:

Catherine, he says, is treated like a “legal concubine,” whereas Diane has the dignity of a queen.

Elsewhere, Contarini writes of Catherine:

The king, the queen, and Diane had established and grown accustomed to this gentle routine, in which all three knew their roles. Catherine was as much in love with Henri as on the day they married and buried deep her resentment and jealousy of Diane. Hate and Wait.
She is so much older, she must die sooner
. But it was obvious that Henri was as infatuated with Diane as ever, and did not see or care how time had surely affected the beauty of his beloved. Contarini continues that “it is clear the king still loves Diane, [but] he never shows his feelings in public. She is seen as wise and gives good advice. The king shares his secrets with her and grants favors more easily if approached through her, ecclesiastical privileges especially.” He noted that the queen was in her rightful place, due to the intelligence of Diane, who played to perfection the role of the “perfect friend,” sparing all three of them any embarrassment in the most delicate of situations.

_____________________

1
. After his eldest brother’s death in 1558, the puny Hercule was spared the humiliation of his name and rechristened François.

2
. Jacques d’Urfé became marquis on his father’s death five years later. His wife was Renée de Savoie, a niece by marriage of the Constable. Urfé was related to the king through his grandmother, Louise de Savoie. The charge of the Children of France was a most important post and family ties counted.

3
.
Letters of Mary Stuart
.

4
. Known in history as “Bloody Mary”—not to be confused with Henry VIII’s younger sister, also Mary Tudor, who married Louis XII.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Henri II at War

A
fter the death of François I in 1547, Henri and Diane knew that it was only a matter of time before hostilities with the emperor erupted again. The king’s hatred of Charles V was veiled but intense. He could never forget or cease to blame the emperor for his childhood imprisonment, which was, no doubt, the reason behind his demeaning invitation to Charles V to attend his coronation as his vassal count of Flanders. The emperor replied that he would gladly come—at the head of five thousand soldiers. Some contemporaries even claimed this enduring hatred was the reason why Henri refused to notify Queen Eleonore of his father’s death. It also annoyed the young king of France that England still held the French port of Boulogne, another score to settle. To strengthen his forces for the inevitable confrontation, he reinstated France’s alliances with Scotland, and the infidel—the Sultan Suleiman.

In François I, the Emperor Charles had recognized a formidable adversary, but the reports Charles received on Henri described his former child-prisoner as a weakling. Time and again the young French king, intent on peace, ignored the emperor’s baited jibes and focused
on strengthening his army, demanding strict discipline from his soldiers, securing pensions for them, and establishing homes for the mutilated. His other great military interest was in enlarging his navy, and this he did with defense rather than aggression in mind. In his foreign policy, Henri II invariably agreed with Montmorency, who advocated peace at almost any price and believed firmly in “one King, one Faith, one Law.” The Italian ambassador Alvarotti maintained that when Henri was in the presence of the Constable, the king behaved like a child before his master. Despite his own heroic nature, Henri II was himself a hero worshipper, whether that hero was Montmorency, or the Guises, or Diane de Poitiers. If he had to go to war, then it would be for the glory of France and of his beloved “Lady.”

The emperor interpreted Henri II’s tolerance to his persistent aggression as the weakness of a man dominated by an older woman. Certain that he would meet little or no resistance, a confident Charles V decided to annex the rich, independent town of Cambrai, ruled by its count-bishops, into the Spanish Netherlands, and annexed as well the independent towns of Metz, Toul, and Verdun in the duchy of Lorraine. These towns had been under French protection since 1551 with the agreement of the German princes opposing Charles V.

In 1552, on Diane’s advice, the king took the precaution of signing a secret treaty with the delegates from the threatened towns, enabling France to fight a war of defense with their total support. The French armies would be ready, properly equipped and ably led by his wise Diane’s nominees or relatives. To save the lives of the wounded and help ease their suffering, “
Madame
” had appointed a famous surgeon to set up field hospitals in readiness for war.
¹
It is possible that the German princes intimated to Henri that they would like to elect him “king of the Romans” and therefore emperor. This vote included protecting those parts of the empire where French was spoken—Cambrai, Toul, Metz, and Verdun.

When the king left Paris for Metz at the head of his army, his flying banners emblazoned with the “HD” cipher and the crescent moon, the despondent queen, appointed regent for the second time, did not
share her husband’s confidence about the outcome. To her dismay, Catherine learned that she was to share her regency with the chancellor and Keeper of the Seals, Jean Bertrand, an appointee of Diane’s, and she became aware of other measures to diminish her authority. With Bertrand her ally, Diane de Poitiers was effectively sharing the regency with the queen, who complained bitterly that Louise de Savoie had had far more power as regent for François I. Montmorency warned Catherine not to overstep her authority; it was a battle she was sure to lose. Catherine and her ladies promptly donned the deepest black mourning and gave themselves over to prayer.

Henri had prepared well, and in the euphoria before his departure for Metz, he composed these charming lines to leave with his beloved Diane:

The lover-king was no distance from Paris before a breathless courier galloped up to him with a tender reply:

One must wonder if we would have a gentler glimpse of Diane’s character if Henri had
not
obeyed Diane’s instructions to destroy her letters. Her remaining correspondence is devoted mostly, and coldly, to business matters. Gaillard Guiffrey, who so ably edited the letters, remarked that “her signature appeared at the end of a note like a magic word, radiant and with an irresistible strength.” Strength certainly, but tenderness?

Joachim du Bellay wrote at the time:

B
Y April 1552, Montmorency had occupied Toul. Meanwhile, the king visited Nancy, capital of Lorraine where he was received by the nine-year-old ruling duke, Charles II,
³
with great ceremony. He effectively took possession of the boy’s country. The next day, Henri declared that Charles II would be brought up at the French court and that his tutor would stay on and govern Lorraine. It is possible that Henri, who was always thinking of marrying off his children well, had already decided to marry the young duke to his daughter Claude. This union would certainly strengthen the political ties with Lorraine, which was a buffer against the empire. One thing is certain: the French king was resolved that Charles V would not absorb Lorraine into his empire.

True to the word he gave to the German princes, Henri stopped his advance at the Rhine, having “watered his horses” in the great river. On June 12, he entered Verdun. The French army had also moved into Metz and strengthened its fortifications. The “German voyage” had been a tremendous success, with three strategic towns secured on the French northeastern border, as well as a permanent foothold in Lorraine.

The emperor launched his campaign to recover Metz after signing the Treaty of Passau with Moritz of Saxony on August 2, 1552, although the siege of the city did not begin until the autumn. In November, Charles V brought up a huge army and laid siege to Metz, bombarding it for forty-five days. But the citizens would not yield, secure in the knowledge of the French king’s concern for their well-being, and bolstered by the courageous leadership of François de Guise, accompanied by his brother Claude d’Aumale. A small force of just six thousand men and a few guns held their ground, despite the murderous barrage of the Spanish cannon. With Guise was the cream of France’s army, including Orazio Farnese and Catherine’s cousin, Piero Strozzi. Autumn became winter; digging into the surrounding
boggy flatlands, the imperial forces continued their siege. With half his army incapacitated by fever, Charles V also fell ill and had to command his forces from a litter.

The snow and ice had the same effect on the imperialists as the heat of the sun of Provence had achieved back in 1536. Ill with fever and troubled by the cold, the emperor had had enough, and on New Year’s Day 1553, he gave the order to withdraw.
Le Balafré
, François de Guise, whose tiny force had trounced the huge imperial army, became an even greater hero. The most enduring memory of Metz was the generous way in which the victors treated the enemy, giving their wounded the same assistance as the French soldiers. Henri II was praised thereafter for the “regal chivalry of Metz.”

The French king’s careful preparations had been vindicated, and on Christmas Day 1552, the French won a resounding victory. The jubilation of the Italian states at this triumph was overwhelming, and Henri declared himself protector of Siena. To mark the event, on February 14, 1553, during the season of carnival and amid great rejoicing, he married his natural daughter Diane de France to Orazio Farnese.
Catherine’s cousin Piero Strozzi was sent to Siena as the king’s lieutenant, and Catherine asked and received permission from Henri to raise troops in her territory of the Auvergne to help Strozzi recapture her heritage in Tuscany. Tragically, Orazio Farnese was killed fighting alongside Strozzi at the Battle of Hesdin on July 18, 1553.

Diane was deeply affected by the death of Orazio Farnese. He had been married for just five months to her adored ward. Some years later, on May 3, 1557, Diane de France married François, duc de Montmorency, eldest son of the Constable Anne, at Villers-Cotterêts. Their only child, another male Anne, died before his father in 1579. Diane de France was a gentle, benign influence on the French court, who would later work for the alliance of Catherine’s son Henri III with Henri de Navarre, the future Henri IV, exercising much good influence during his reign.

The pendulum swung back. In August 1554, the emperor took his revenge, defeating the French forces under Strozzi at Marciano. Siena was lost and Diane’s son-in-law Claude d’Aumale was captured.

The following year at Hesdin, Robert de La Marck, Diane’s other son-in-law, was taken prisoner by the imperialists and maltreated by the Spanish in Ghent. Charles V tried to seduce him into joining his forces and freed him “on his honor” to obtain the money to pay for his enormous ransom. It was said that Diane used money confiscated from disgraced Protestants to gain his release. However, there are records of her daughter, Françoise de La Marck, selling much of her Brézé inheritance to her sister Louise in order to pay her husband’s ransom. On the way home to Sedan following his release, La Marck fell ill and died at Guise. Brantôme maintained that he was poisoned.