Memoirs and Historical Chronicles of the Courts of Europe Part 18

I know, for I was there, that many said that the plan was not of her invention, but rather that of Cardinal de Tournon, a wise and judicious prelate; but this is false, for, old hand as he was for prudence and counsel, my faith, the Queen knew more tricks than he, or all the Council of the King put together.

For often, when he was at fault, she would help him and put him on the track of what he ought to know, of which I might give many examples; but it will be enough to cite this one instance, which is recent, and about which the Queen herself did me the honour to disclose.

It is as follows:

When she went to Guyenne, and, later, to Coignac to reconcile the princes of the Religion and those of the League, and so give peace to the kingdom again--for she saw that it would soon be ruined by this division--she determined to declare a truce in order to formulate this peace; because of which the King of Navarre and the Prince de Conde became very discontented and mutinous--for the reason, they said, that this proclamation did them great harm because of their foreign troops, who, having heard of it, might repent of their coming, or might delay in coming, thinking that the Queen had made it with that very intention.

And they declared and resolved not to see the Queen nor to treat with her until the said truce was revoked.

Her Council, whom she had with her, though composed of able men, she found to be without much sense and weak, because they could find no means by which this truce could be rescinded.

The Queen then said to them, "Truly, you are very stupid as to finding a remedy. Don't you know any better? There is only one solution to this. You have at Maillezais the Huguenot regiment of Neufvy and of Sorlu. Send for me from here, from Niort, all the arquebusiers you can muster and cut the regiment to pieces and so you will have the truce broken and rescinded without any further trouble."

And as soon as she commanded it, it was done, the arquebusiers started, led by Captain l'Estelle, and forced their fort and barricades so well that the Huguenot regiment was defeated, Sorlu killed, who was a valiant man, Neufvy taken prisoner and many others killed. Their flags were all captured and brought to the Queen at Niort. She showed her accustomed clemency by pardoning all, and sent them away with their ensigns and flags, which, as regards flags, is a very rare thing.

But she wished to make this concession, she told me, on account of its very rarity, so that the princes would now know that they had to deal with a very able princess, and that they should not apply to her such mockery as to make her revoke a truce by the very heralds who had proclaimed it. For while they were planning to give her this insult, she had fallen upon them, and now sent word to them by the prisoners that it was not for them to affront her by demanding of her unseemly and unreasonable things, since it remained in her power to do them good or evil.

In this manner this Queen knew how to give and drill in a lesson to her Council. I might tell of other instances, but I have other points to treat upon, the first of which will be to answer those whom I have often heard accuse her of being the first to fly to arms, thus being the cause of our civil wars.

Whoever will look to the source of the thing will not believe it; for, the triumvirate being created, with the King of Navarre at its head, she, seeing the plots that were being concocted, and knowing the change of faith made by the King of Navarre--who from being Huguenot and very strict, had turned Catholic--and knowing by this change she had cause to fear for the King, for the kingdom, and for herself, and that he might move against them, she reflected and wondered to what tended such plots, such numerous meetings, colloquies and secret audiences; and, not being able to fathom the mystery, it is said that one day she bethought herself to go to the room above which the secret session was being held, and there, by means of a tube which she had caused to be surrept.i.tiously inserted under the tapestry, she listened unperceived to all their plans.

Among other things she heard one that was very terrible and bitter for her, and that was when Marechal de Saint-Andre, one of the triumvirate, proposed that the Queen be taken, put in a sack and flung into the river, since otherwise they would never succeed in their plans.

But the late M. de Guise, who was always fair and generous, said that such a thing must not be, for it was going too far, and was too unjust to thus cruelly slay the wife and mother of our kings, and that he was utterly opposed to the plan.

For this the said Queen has always loved him, and proved it by her treatment of his children, after his death, by giving them his entire possessions.

I leave to your imagination what such a sentence meant to the Queen, hearing it as she did with her own ears, and also whether she did not have cause for fear, notwithstanding her defence by M. de Guise.

From what I have heard told by one of the Queen's intimates, the Queen feared, as indeed she had cause to, that they would strike the blow without the knowledge of M. de Guise. For, in a deed so detestable, an upright man is to be distrusted, and should never be informed of the act. She was thus compelled to look out for her own safety, and to employ for it those who were already under arms (the Prince de Conde and the leaders of the Protestant party), imploring them to have pity for a mother and her children.

Such as it was, this was the sole cause of the Civil War.

For this reason she would never go, with the others, to Orleans, nor allow them to have the King and her children, as she could have done; and she felt glad, and with reason, that amongst the uproar and rumour of strife, she and the King, her son, and her other children were in safety.

Moreover she begged and obtained the promise from others, that when she should summon them to lay down their arms that they would do so, but this they would not do when the time came, notwithstanding the appeals she made to them, and the trouble she took, and the great heat she endured at Talsy, trying to induce them to listen to terms of peace which she could have made favourable and lasting for France had they only listened to her. And this conflagration, and others which we have seen lighted from this first brand, would have been stamped out forever in France had they but believed in her. I know the zeal she showed, and I know what I myself have heard her say, with tears in her eyes.

This is why they cannot tax her with the first spark of the Civil War, nor yet with the second, which was that day's work at Meaux, for at that time she was thinking only of the hunt, and of giving pleasure to the King at her beautiful house at Monceaux.

The warning came that M. le Prince and those of the Religion were under arms and in the field to surprise and seize the King under pretext of presenting a request.

G.o.d knows who was the cause of this new disturbance, and had it not been for the six thousand Swiss troops, newly raised, no one knows what might not have happened.

This levy of Swiss troops was the pretext for them to take up arms, and of saying and spreading broadcast that it was done to force them into war.

But it was they themselves who requested this levy of troops from the King and Queen, as I know from being then at Court, on account of the march of the Duke of Alva and his army, fearing that, under pretext of marching on Flanders, he might descend upon the frontiers of France, and besides urging that it was always the custom to strengthen the frontiers whenever a neighbouring state was arming.

No one can be uniformed of how urgently they pressed this upon the King and Queen, both by letters and by emba.s.sies. Even M. le Prince himself and M. l'Admiral (Coligny) came to see the King on this subject, at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, where I saw them.

I should also like to ask (for all that I write here I saw myself), who it was who took up arms on Shrove Tuesday, and who bribed and begged Monsieur, the King's brother, and the King of Navarre to listen to the schemes for which Mole and Coconas were executed in Paris?

It was not the Queen, for it was by her wisdom that she prevented them from uprising, holding Monsieur and the King of Navarre so imprisoned in the forest of Vincennes that they could not break out, and on the death of King Charles she held them as tightly in Paris and the Louvre, even barring their windows one morning--at least those of the King of Navarre, who was lodged on the lower floor (this I know from the King of Navarre, who told it me with tears in his eyes), and kept such strict watch over them that they could not escape as they intended.

Their escape would have greatly embroiled the state and prevented the return of Poland to the King, a thing for which they were striving.

I know this from having been invited to the fracas, which was one of the finest strokes of policy ever made by the Queen.

Starting from Paris, she carried them to the King at Lyons so watchfully and skilfully that no one who saw them would think that they were prisoners.

They journeyed in the same coach with her, and she herself presented them to the King, who pardoned them soon after their arrival.

Again, who was it that enticed Monsieur, the King's brother, to leave Paris one fine night, casting off the affection of his brother who loved him so much, and to take up arms and embroil all France?

M. de La Noue knows all this, and the plots which began at the siege of La Roch.e.l.le, and what I told him about them.

It was not the Queen Mother, for on this open and abrupt departure by her son, she felt such grief to see one brother banded against another brother, his King, that she swore she would die of grief if she could not reunite them as they were before, which she accomplished. I have heard her say at Blois, in conversation with Monsieur, that she prayed for nothing so much as that G.o.d would grant the favour of this re-union, after which He might send her death and she would accept it with the best of heart. Or else she would retire to her houses of Monceaux and Chenonceaux and never again meddle with the affairs of France, willing to end her days in tranquillity.

In fact she really wished to do this, but the King begged her to refrain, for both he and his kingdom had great need of her.

I am a.s.sured that had she not gained peace by this re-union, all would have been up with France, for there were then fifty thousand foreigners scattered over France who would have gladly helped to humble and destroy her.

It was not, therefore, the Queen who brought about this taking up of arms, nor was it the State a.s.sembly at Blois, who wanted but one religion and proposed to abolish all contrary to their own, and who demanded that, if the spiritual sword did not suffice to abolish it, recourse should be had to the temporal.

Some have stated that the Queen bribed them; this was wrong, for in each province there were authorities who would not have yielded to her wishes. I do not say that she did not win them over later; that was a fine stroke of policy, showing her resourcefulness. But it was not she who summoned the a.s.sembly. On the contrary, she laid all the blame on it, because it lessened both the King's authority and her own. It was the Church party which had long demanded the a.s.sembly, and voluntarily called it together, and required by the articles of the last peace that it should be convened and held; to which the Queen strongly objected, foreseeing this abuse of power. Nevertheless, to quiet their incessant clamour, they were allowed to convoke it, to their own confusion and injury, not to their profit and contentment as they had thought; and for this reason they resorted to arms.

Again it was not the Queen who did so.

Neither was it she who caused certain of them to be seized when they captured Mont-de-Marsan, La Fere in Picardy, and Cahors. I recall what the King said to M. de Moissans, who came to him on behalf of the King of Navarre. He repulsed him roughly, telling him that while these men were cajoling him with fine speeches, they were taking up arms and seizing cities.

This, then, is the way in which the Queen was the fomenter of all our wars and civil fires, the which she not only did not light but employed all her energies and efforts to extinguish, abhorring to see the death of so many n.o.bles and landed gentlemen.

And without that and her commiseration, those who bore against her a mortal enmity would have found themselves in dire straits, themselves laid beneath the sod, and their party not flourishing as it now is. All this must be imputed to her goodness of heart, of which we now stand in sore need--so everybody agrees and the poor people cry: "We no longer have the Queen Mother to make peace for us!" It was not through lack of her efforts that she did not succeed when she went to Guienne recently to treat for peace, at Coignac and Jarnac, with the King of Navarre and the Prince de Conde. I know that which I have witnessed--the tears in her eyes and the regret in her heart to which these princes would not yield; and the result we possibly see in the evils which afflict us to-day.

They have wished to accuse her of having been implicated in the War of the League. Why, then, should she have undertaken to conclude the peace I have just mentioned, if she had been? Why should she have appeased the riots of the barricades of Paris; and why reconciled the King with the Duc de Guise, as we have seen, if it were only to destroy the latter?

In short, no matter how much they slander her, never shall we have in France another so active in peace.

But the chief accusation against her is the ma.s.sacre of Paris [of Saint Bartholomew]. All that is a sealed book to me, for I was just then setting out by boat from Brouage; but I have heard it said on good authority that she was not the prime mover in it. Three or four others, whom I might name, were much more active in it than she, pushing her forward and making her believe, from threats made upon the wounding of Admiral Coligny, that the King was to be killed, with herself and all her children, or else that the country was to be still worse involved in arms.

Certainly the Church party were very wrong to utter such threats as they are said to have made, for they hastened the downward steps of the poor Admiral and procured his death. If they had kept their own counsel and uttered no word, and allowed the Admiral's wounds to heal, he could have left Paris in safety and quiet, and nothing else would have happened. M. de La Noue has been strongly of this opinion. Indeed, he and M. de Strozze and I have talked it over more than once, and he has never approved the bravados, the bold threats and the like which were openly made in the King's Court and his city of Paris. And he blamed no less strongly his brother-in-law, M. de Theligny, who was one of the hottest heads of them all, calling him a downright fool and blockhead. The Admiral never was guilty of this loud talk, at least not in public. I do not say that in secret or with his closest friends he did not say things. And this was the true cause of his death and of the ma.s.sacre of his friends, and not the Queen, as was charged, although there are many who never have been able to get the idea out of their heads that this was a train long laid and a fuse well concealed. It is false.

The least pa.s.sionate agree with me, and the more violent and obstinate think otherwise; and thus very often we credit to kings and great princes the ordering of the natural course of events, and say afterwards how prudent and provident they were and how well they could dissimulate; when all the while they knew nothing more about it than a plum.

To return again to the Queen, her enemies have given it out that she was not a good Frenchwoman. G.o.d knows with what zeal she urged that the English be driven from Havre de Grace, and what she said about it to M. le Prince, and how she made him go, with many cavaliers of his party, with the crown-companies of M. Andelot, and other Huguenots, and how she herself led this army, usually on horseback, like a second beautiful Queen Marfisa, exposing herself to the arquebusades and the cannonades like one of her captains, always watching the batteries, and saying that she would never be at ease until she had taken this city, and driven the English out of France, and hating worse than poison those who had sold it to them. And she accomplished so much that finally she restored it to France.

When Rouen was besieged I saw her in the greatest of fury, when she saw enter English reinforcements, by means of a French galley captured the year before, fearing that this place, failing to be captured by us, might fall into the control of the English.

For this reason she "pushed hard at the wheel," as the saying is, to capture it, and never failed to come each day to the fort Sainte-Catherine to hold council and to watch the bombardment.

I have often seen her pa.s.sing along the covered way to Sainte-Catherine, while the arquebusades and cannonades rained shot around her, and her paying no attention to them. Those who were there saw it as well as I. There are living to-day ladies who accompanied her, to whom the firing was not pleasant (I know this for I saw them there), and when M. le Connetable and M. le Guise remonstrated with her, telling her some accident might happen to her, she merely laughed and said that she saw no reason why she should spare herself more than they, since her courage was as good as theirs, although her s.e.x had denied her the same strength. As for hardship, she endured that very well, either on foot or horseback. I think that for a long time there never was a better queen or princess on horseback, nor one who sat her mount with better grace; not seeming for all that like a masculine woman, formed like some fantastic Amazon, but a n.o.ble princess, beautiful, gracious and sweet.

It was said of her that she was strongly Spanish. Certainly while her good daughter was alive [Elizabeth, wife of Philip II of Spain] she loved the Spanish. But after her daughter died we knew--at least some of us--whether she had cause to love either the land or the people. It is true that she was always so prudent that she desired to receive the Spanish King always as a good son-in-law, to the end that he should treat her daughter the better, as is the way with good mothers; and also that he might never come to trouble us in France, nor make war here according to his warlike tastes and natural ambition.

Others have charged that she never liked the n.o.bles of France and was always glad to shed their blood. I refute that by the many times she made peace and spared bloodshed; and in addition to this one should take notice of the fact that while she was Regent and her children in their minority, there were not seen at Court so many quarrels and duels as we have seen since, for she would not countenance them, giving express orders against such things and punishing those who disobeyed her. At other times, I have often seen her at Court when the King had gone away for some time leaving her absolutely alone, at a time when quarrels were rife and duels common--which she never would permit--I have seen her suddenly give orders to the captain of the guards to make arrests, and to the marshals and officers to regulate all such quarrels; so that, to speak the truth, she was more feared than the King, for she well knew how to deal with the disobedient and unruly and could reprimand them severely.