The Serpent and the Moon: Two Rivals for the Love of a Renaissance King (54 page)

During the Wars of Religion, which devastated Normandy, Rouen was taken over by the Huguenots. When the Constable de Montmorency and Antoine de Navarre, who was the first Prince of the Blood, and their extensive suites arrived to relieve Rouen on September 24, 1562, all stayed at Anet for four days before mounting the siege. Diane had been at her house at Limours
⁷
and arrived just in time
to receive the royal party. It is clear from the accounts showing the amount of food and hay ordered for the visit that the contingent was sizable. When the queen-regent and the young King Charles IX arrived with the army, the sojourn of the advance party with Diane at Anet at this critical time was made public, and demonstrated her continued close links with the establishment. Two months later, Diane’s grandson was born at Anet, and the dukes of Montmorency and of Navarre both agreed to be godfathers. According to Brantôme, “Diane was wanted more than ever and returned to favor as I have seen.”

On December 19, 1562, the Battle of Dreux was fought a few kilometers from Anet. Strange as it may seen, to be on opposite sides in a civil war did not necessarily damage family ties and friendships. The Huguenots were led by Louis, prince de Condé, and Gaspard de Coligny, while the royalists were commanded by Montmorency, François de Guise, and the maréchal de Saint-André. The Protestant prince de Condé, after leaving Paris with his army, spent several nights at Diane’s house at Limours while she was in Paris, and, accompanied by the English ambassador and another courtier, spent the night before the Battle of Dreux at Anet during Diane’s absence. The Protestants were beaten, with terrible losses on both sides. Montmorency was captured and a son of his killed; also killed was Henri’s old friend Saint-André. Diane’s son-in-law Aumale was seriously wounded. Ambassador Throckmorton took refuge with Diane’s widowed daughter Françoise in her house nearby.

Diane hurried from Paris and arrived at Anet two days after the battle, but the signs of death and devastation were unmistakable. She was received by her daughter Louise d’Aumale and her granddaughter, wife of Montmorency’s son Henri—more proof of Diane’s enduring place in the center of life as it affected the court. In the 1660s, she succeeded in recommending Robert de Quesnel for the post of abbé de Conches in Normandy.

When Diane de Poitiers was in her early sixties, she was recorded as still being fit enough to ride throughout the night on horseback. At the age of sixty-four, however, she had a serious riding accident, badly breaking her leg. Brantôme wrote after visiting Diane at Anet:

“In spite of her fall and its attendant suffering, the charming and
noble widow was still so lovely that I know not a heart, even one of rock, capable of resisting her … while her beauty, her grace, her majesty, were all the same as they have always been. I believe that should she live to a hundred years, she would have aged neither in face, so well was it made, nor in body, so excellent her constitution, so perfect her figure and her carriage.” Perhaps Brantôme, like Henri, saw what he wanted to see. Surely this was Diane’s triumph.

Two years later, on April 25, 1566, after a serious though brief illness and no pain, Diane de Poitiers, duchesse de Valentinois, died without any other family at Anet. She was the same age as the century.

After her death, Brantôme recalled that “Six months before she died she was still so beautiful … she was of the most perfect whiteness, without using any cosmetic though they do say that every morning she used a wash of liquid gold. It is sad that earth should hide that beautiful body.”

Diane had always insisted that Henri burn all the letters she wrote him, perhaps fearing the use Catherine might make of them after her death. Few remain, but as Henri’s death came unexpectedly before her own, she decided to preserve at Anet all of his letters and his simple, elegant poems. It was Henri’s nature to love once and completely; it was Diane’s privilege to be the recipient of that love, and to cherish and nourish it so that their names and their story would live on in the minds and hearts of future generations.

Diane had signed her will at Limours in January 1564 with a copy for the senior priest at Anet’s chapel. She divided her vast fortune between her two daughters, but stipulated that should either become Protestant, the one would forfeit her inheritance to the other—“Never shall a Protestant have revenue from Diane de Poitiers.” Even in death, Diane de Poitiers confirmed her position in the realm. She had gone to considerable trouble to ensure that her lands were secure for her two children’s families, making an exact division between them.

Possibly fearing divine retribution for her own career, she left a bequest for masses to be said at a number of convents for fallen women. For her funeral procession, she wrote that one hundred poor from the villages surrounding Anet should be dressed in white and, carrying lit tapers, should follow her coffin chanting:

“
Priez Dieu pour Diane de Poitiers
.”

_____________________

1
. This would be Philip’s third marriage. His previous wives, Mary of Portugal and Mary Tudor, had both died. Next he had tried to marry Elizabeth I of England and failed. With Philip II’s French marriage, peace in Europe was brought a step nearer.

2
. Some biographers say the horse received his name only in retrospect.

3
. If the opponent was not unseated by the blow of the lance, it would often snap and break. The invitation to joust was termed to “break a lance.”

4
. Armond Baschet,
La Diplomatie vénitienne
.

5
. Ibid.

6
. Thereafter, the only time Catherine de’ Medici put aside her black mourning and wore brilliant robes was for the weddings of her sons.

7
. She purchased Limours from Anne d’ Etampes.

Epilogue

D
iane was buried in the funerary chapel she had built next to Anet. But when French revolutionaries desecrated and opened her tomb in 1795, two small skeletons were found lying next to hers. For some time it was thought these were children she had borne the king. However, a manuscript belonging to the house of Guise in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris states that Diane’s daughter Louise, duchesse d’Aumale, gave birth to three children at Anet. The youngest, Charles, died on May 7, 1568, and was “conveyed to Anet and buried there, and placed in the sepulcher with the late Mme Diane de Poitiers, duchesse de Valentinois, his grandmother, deceased at the Château d’Anet on April 25, 1566.” If one of the “little girls” was a boy, perhaps the other existed only in the imagination. The despoilers of Diane’s tomb cut her hair into small souvenirs and a later owner of Anet sold much of the château stone by stone. All that remains today are two beautifully restored wings. Goujon’s great white marble sculpture
Diana and the Stag
is safe in the Louvre.

W
HEN Henri II became king of France in 1547, the country’s situation was precarious. The Italian wars of François I had emptied the state’s coffers; the people of Paris were in the throes of religious ferment; the outer French territories had collapsed almost beyond redemption; and hundreds of Huguenots had been executed in the Protestant persecutions of the final years of his father’s reign.

The Peace of Câteau-Cambrésis, signed with Philip II of Spain in 1559, only a few months before the death of Henri II, brought a much-needed break in the almost continuous foreign or civil wars in which France was embroiled throughout the first half of the sixteenth century. With peace came a dramatic improvement in the country’s finances, which at that point were in better shape than they had been for nearly three decades. Overall, the economy expanded gradually for a number of years, and France’s territories were extended. At home, Henry II almost achieved the daunting task of balancing the opposing factions at court.

Diane de Poitiers was deeply embedded in the fabric of French public life by birth, by marriage, and then by her association with Henri II. With or without the Reformation, that fabric was being constantly rewoven, and with it, the balance of power between rival groups within the French nobility. The Guise family had risen with her—Charles de Lorraine had been made a cardinal and François d’Aumale became duc de Guise on the death of his father in 1550. With Diane’s initial support, they balanced the power of the Bourbon Princes of the Blood, who had the backing of the Constable de Montmorency. With the death of Henri, Diane’s protectors, the Guises, threw their influence behind Catherine and turned against their patron. Her son-in-law Claude d’Aumale tried to help, but was firmly told that he should be grateful for the wealth his
mésalliance
had brought him. To be married to the daughter of a former royal mistress could now “only bring shame” on the Guise family. He should distance himself from his mother-in-law and never forget the pain his association with Diane de
Poitiers caused Queen Catherine. But it would not take long before both families were frequenting each other’s houses again.

Due to Diane’s careful balancing of the two opposing camps, the reign of Henri II, though short, was very positive for France, and in its every aspect, the sure guiding hand of Diane de Poitiers was easily detected. François I had brought to his country the glory of the Renaissance; but it was under Henri II, with the help of Diane de Poitiers, that France developed to its full magnificence. Contemporary writers vied with one another in their search for superlatives to describe the glamour and
galanteries
of Henri IPs court. Such luxury, elegance, and refinement existed nowhere else in Europe at the time. Yet it was Diane, not Henri, whose interest lay in the arts. It was Diane who encouraged a whole nation of craftsmen and artists, and who expanded on the enlightened patronage of François I and his School of Fontainebleau. Diane gloried in the High Renaissance and aimed, through her royal lover, to fulfill the ambition of his father: to create an intellectual and artistic climate that would rival the great courts and seats of learning in Italy.

The morals of the court of François I left very much to be desired, and the king was himself a formidable philanderer. According to the journal of Beatis: “The king is a great womanizer and readily breaks into others’ gardens and drinks from many sources.” Adultery was regarded lightly at court, and the courtiers’ mistresses had marriages arranged to facilitate their
affairs
,
¹
a reasonable solution accepted by all sides. The relaxed morality of François I’s court should be seen in relation to the austerity of the two previous reigns, as well as to that of Emperor Charles V, the French king’s contemporary.

Although Diane de Poitiers was the mistress of Henri II, his court had quite a different tone from his father’s. Adultery was not condoned or encouraged, and although many came to know she was the king’s mistress, Diane was officially his “Lady” and their relationship was portrayed as philosophical, not physical. As Grande Sénéchale, Diane had matured within the spirit and immorality of François I’s
court, but it was she who orchestrated the dramatic moral change in direction during Henri II’s reign. It would be wrong to claim that Diane de Poitiers achieved this singlehandedly, but despite the attempts to smear her name—particularly following Henri’s death—she retained the image of the “pure one” to the end of her life. It was claimed by Madame de La Fayette in
La Princesse de Clèves
, written a century later, that at no time in the history of France was the court so magnificent and so gallant as during the reign of Henri II.

Henri II continued the religious policies instituted by the
Parlement
during his father’s last years; but the situation deteriorated severely. There is no doubt that following the Peace of Câteau-Cambrésis, persecution of the Protestants intensified as the Catholic monarchs of France and Spain united to stamp out heresy. Although Henri gave his sympathy and patronage to the Counter-Reformation Society of Jesus, court intrigues were aggravated by the religious issues.

Jean Calvin’s enormous and growing influence in France led to a dramatic rise in converts, and as a result, the numbers of sentences against heretics increased. Diane certainly encouraged Henri in the persecution of those she saw as a direct threat to the old order of absolutism and Catholicism. Even in her will, a practical, meticulous document, and a tribute to her lucidity and pride, Diane de Poitiers remained steadfastly opposed to Protestants. Nonetheless, it is worth noting that by the standards of the Age of Faith, Henri II was not considered outstandingly brutal or even intolerant toward heretics.

After his death, the civil wars between Catholics and Protestants in France continued sporadically until the Edict of Nantes in 1598 granted them an
imperium in imperio
²
—religious forbearance to all creeds. The French Wars of Religion were notorious for their brutality and mob violence, the most extreme example being the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew. This was carried out on the eve of the wedding of the Protestant king of Navarre, the future Henri IV of France, to Catherine’s youngest child, Margot. Although ordered by the weakling Charles IX, the blame for this atrocity and the murder of countless thousands can be laid squarely at the feet of Catherine de’ Medici.

T
HE first half of the sixteenth century was an era of contradictions, a transitory period between medieval times and the Renaissance, a rebirth of the art, philosophy, and literature of the Golden Age of Greece. Henri was the very embodiment of these contradictions—medieval in his outlook and yet prepared to initiate quite modern changes in government and his army. Although a cold and largely indifferent husband to Catherine, he was a loving, cozy father to his many children. Henri was a loyal and generous friend and yet a vindictive and vengeful enemy. He could be easily persuaded, but once he had made up his mind, he refused to see that his argument was ill-founded. It was this obstinacy that made him insist on breaking yet another lance with Montgomery.

Diane de Poitiers was an intelligent though not strikingly original thinker. Nor was she an innovator. In outlook, she was a woman of her time, highly educated certainly, but passionately committed to the social hierarchy, and superb in her management of it. Perhaps Diane’s iconographic legacy leads us to overlook her faults, but maybe her faults were exaggerated by jealous contemporaries, or those wishing to curry favor with her powerful successors.

Diane did not play a major part in forming French foreign or domestic policy, but she provided Henri II with all that her education at the hands of Anne de Beaujeu had taught her: in essence, a blueprint for living a worthy, romantic, and honorable life. It was her respect for that education that made her want to pass on such traditions. In fairness, the chroniclers all depict Diane de Poitiers as a reserved woman, thoughtful, who said little and kept her distance. Nor did anyone claim that there was a lascivious side to her extraordinary beauty. Diane never meddled in politics except in cases that touched Henri’s personal affairs. She was his support, his comfort, his muse, his reason for living, and she valued this more than any desire for the political power and influence she could so easily have had. Diane was the queen of Henri’s heart and would not have envied Catherine her role after his death. She had molded an awkward youth into a poet, a troubadour, a cavalier, and
then a ruler. Henri and Diane looked to the Age of Chivalry for their values and behavioral code, a code that embraced “pure love.” His father, François I, and aunt, Marguerite de Navarre, had both espoused the philosophy of Plato. Henri and Diane lived the legacy of that belief.

Their life together was an idyll shared by two people devoted to one another forever. Tragically but inevitably, Catherine de’ Medici did all she could to destroy the memory of the love her husband shared with Diane. “Hate and Wait” had been her motto, and she had done both with the intelligence no one doubted she possessed. Her patience was superhuman, and it paid dividends, even if the price was the loss of her husband. Catherine de’ Medici was the real ruler of France throughout the reigns of her three sons, François II, Charles IX, and Henry Ill’s until her death. The negative and harmful image of Diane de Poitiers propagated in the literature of Catherine’s time, and later, has convinced many historians to see Diane through a man’s eyes, as a woman who takes advantage of a foolish young prince for profit and power. They forget her disciplined upbringing and the education to which she adhered all her life, and which she passed on to her children. They forget that she had only known a man more than forty years her senior, older than her father, and that the attraction of a virile, handsome, powerful young man is one few single women could resist. Why should she care how misguided history sees her? She alone knew the love of her king. She alone knew the truth.

Diane de Poitiers’ legend lives on, not only because we see her today in the guise of her image as goddess created by the great masters of the French Renaissance, but because she was a woman of independent spirit who made an art of living the highest quality of life while preserving a youthfulness of spirit, body, and personality. She was an enchantress who inspired an unpromising youth to become a splendid king; that he loved her all his life, although she was twenty years his senior, is proof of her enduring mystique.

Omnium Victorem Vici
—Diane the moon goddess truly conquered the King, Love, and Time.

_____________________

1
. A mistress should be married as a cover lest she become pregnant with her lover’s child.

2
. Literally, “power within power” or “government within a government”—a double society, in this case religious, functioning on different levels.