Martyrs and Murderers: The Guise Family and the Making of Europe (48 page)

What the new constitutional arrangement meant in practice soon became evident in the matter of taxation. One of the most significant features of the 1588 Estates was the manner in which the Third Estate, whose deliberations took place in the Hôtel de Ville of Blois, grew in confidence and, with the clergy and nobility quiescent, set the agenda. Leaguer activists ensured coordination and cooperation between the three chambers. Henry would have been prepared to put up with the humiliation over the issue of law-giving had the Estates performed the function it was called for and granted him money. But the taxpayers of the Third Estate were angry. Their moral outrage was stirred by a speech on 23 November from Lazare Coquelay, a Paris canon and member of the Sixteen, who came from the chamber of the clergy to encourage them ‘to discharge the poor and seek out the real riches of the courtiers, financiers and other vermin, who must be squeezed like sponges’. 9 

The deputies of the Third called for scrutiny of the royal accounts. The commission that was appointed for the task was openly hostile to the king; it included President Neuilly and la Chapelle-Marteau, a rich accountant who had succeeded to the leadership of the Sixteen on Hotman’s death in 1587 and who had been elected Mayor of Paris in the wake of the barricades. Much to the king’s annoyance they moved with the meticulous thoroughness of accountants. Perhaps not unsurprisingly they discovered that royal accounting procedures were chaotic. The workings of the sinews of power in sixteenth-century society depended on secrecy, nepotism, and baksheesh. But what made for an effective tool of royal power looked to the commissioners like simple incompetence and fraud. They came to the conclusion, with some justification, that the king already had the means at his disposal; he was just not making the proper use of it. Far from agreeing new taxes, the deputies demanded rebates and, in a move that anticipated the developments of the seventeenth century, the creation of an extraordinary chamber of justice to investigate and prosecute those who had enriched themselves at the expense of the state.

At the end of November Henry offered a compromise. He promised to reduce taxes, to create a chamber of justice (whose members would be chosen by the king), and to permit the provinces to oversee tax collection. These were significant concessions. But the king was exasperated further when the Third Estate dared to negotiate. Guise’s claim to be arbiter between the king and his people was now put to the test. On the evening of the 28 November he dined with la Chapelle-Marteau, who had emerged as the leader of the opposition, and the heads of each provincial delegation. Guise pleaded with them to offer the king some relief. The debate was heated and the duke’s arguments were ‘vigorously’ rebutted. 10 On the following day he warned the Third Estate that the ‘rupture of the Estates was imminent...they should take care not to push things to the extremity for it would only be the cause of leaving the Edict of Union unexecuted’. 11 But the duke’s prestige was insufficient to shake their resolve. The Third Estate, in particular, had long since ceased to trust Henry III. A master of manipulation, his reign was littered with broken promises. As Etienne Pasquier, an acute observer noted, the delegates no longer behaved like subjects; they were no longer content dealing with the king traditionally by means of ‘supplication’; they now worked by ‘resolution’. In order to avoid the failures of previous Estates, where the royal council had sifted through and cherry-picked grievances to suit its own agenda, the Third Estate, somewhat to the embarrassment of the clergy and the nobility, now demanded the right to publish their resolutions. It was tantamount to the power to make their own laws. Why not, they argued, in France? 
Other Christian peoples had long had this right:

They said: was it not the Estates who gave kings their power and authority? Why is it necessary therefore for that which we debate and decide on to be scrutinized by the king’s council? The English Parliament, the Estates of Sweden and Poland and all the Estates of neighbouring kingdoms, are assemblies whose kings are subject to observe that which they agree and decide on, without changing anything. 12 

The deputies threatened that if Henry did not reduce taxes they would walk out. He retorted on 3 December that ‘the Queen of England, wicked though she is, was not maintained by this means’ and that, though there was not a head-tax in England as there was in France, ‘her subjects were more than willing to provide in case of necessity’.

* * * *

It was beginning to dawn on Henry III that he faced a full-scale constitutional revolution. He complained that the deputies’ proposals would ‘reduce him to the doge of Venice and make my state semi-democratic’.13 Further humiliation came with the news that Charles-Emmanuel, Duke of Savoy, taking advantage of France’s internal problems, had occupied the marquisate of Saluzzo, her last possession on the Italian side of the Alps. Henry blamed the Guise. Before the barricades they had had dealings with Charles-Emmanuel, who dreamed of acquisitions in Dauphiné and the Rhône valley should the kingdom of France, as many observers expected, begin to fracture into warring statelets.

Guise was acutely embarrassed by the situation in which he found himself. He was unable to deliver the compromise with the Estates he had promised: an impasse had been reached. The hours that Guise spent in consultation with his allies in the Third Estate now began to arouse suspicion. In the early days of December, the deputies were well aware of the stakes. Beauvais-Nangis, a noble deputy loyal to the king, warned Guise ‘to consider how the king was being made jealous by the secret councils held every day in his chambers, where [the deputies] come to him to report on what had been resolved in the assembly of the Estates and where they decide all that should be proposed on the following day, and that it was sharing authority with the king’. 14

In order to break the impasse and halt the march of constitutional change the king would have to move against the leaders of the Third Estate. But he could not do so without unleashing the opposition of the Guise, their clients and retinues. Guise was warned repeatedly that his life was in danger. The duke convened several council meetings to discuss the rumours. The duke, his brother Louis, the Archbishop of Lyon, three of Guise’s captains, and five leaguer deputies, including President Neuilly and la Chapelle-Marteau, were present at one of these on 9 December. The majority urged him to leave Blois immediately for the safety of Orléans. But it was the Archbishop of Lyon who carried the day, since, as he put it, ‘he who quits loses the game’. 15 

It was a serious mistake. The duke was losing his patience and the archbishop reassured him that his ultimate goal was within his grasp. 
Just a little more pressure on the king would deliver it. Guise himself was confident that a good Christian like Henry III would not contemplate murder. He had become overconfident. Within a fortnight relations between the king and the duke were stretched to breaking, as Guise pressed his advantage. He complained that the office of lieutenant-general was nothing more than ‘parchment’. 
Henry III told him that ‘he should content himself with the grade he had been given’.

The daily humiliation that the king had undergone during the Estates was taking its toll. Henry saw only one way of restoring his authority. His suspicion of the duke was confirmed on 17 December when, at a Guise family dinner, Cardinal Louis, always less discreet than his elder sibling, drank a toast to his brother as king, and their sister Catherine joked that she soon hoped to use her scissors (and tonsure Henry III). Guise’s over-confidence had made him careless. An Italian actor, Venetianelli, who had been a dinner guest, reported these words to the king the following day. That evening Henry summoned a meeting of three of his most trusted captains, Marshal Aumont, the Marquis of Rambouillet, and Alphonse d’Ornano, and the decision to murder Guise was approved by three votes to one. On the evening of the 20th the plans were laid and the execution entrusted to the
Quarante Cinq
. Guise was always well accompanied, so it would be necessary to separate him from his men. The only place they were unable to follow him was when he was required to attend the Privy Council in the royal château. Counsellors were required to leave their retinues at the head of the grand staircase before entering the royal apartments in which the council chamber was situated.

The plot was not a secret for long. The duke received a steady stream of warnings to leave Blois immediately. On the evening of the 21 December the papal nuncio informed him his life was in danger. 
The following evening his mother told him that he would be killed in the king’s chambers, and the following night between 10 and 11 pm it was the turn of the Duke of Elbeuf to beg him to leave. The duke was not about to abandon his plans on a rumour. Men of honour did not run at the first whiff of danger. Guise returned from the bedroom of his mistress, Madame de Sauves, at three in the morning to be handed five anonymous notes, all of which had the same message. ‘He would not dare’, Guise said to his surgeon, who was among those present at the duke’s
coucher
. His aristocratic self-assurance and poise, once part of his charisma, had turned to arrogance. He dismissed his servants and went to bed.

The king was awakened at 4 am on 23 December. The duke had been asleep barely an hour. He dressed and went to inspect the
Quarante Cinq
who were divided into sections. He reminded them of Guise’s insolence and ambition: ‘I am reduced to such an extremity that this morning either he or I must die.’16 Eight men, led by their captain, Loignac, were told to arm themselves with long daggers and take up a position in the royal bedchamber. After the ‘Gascon devils’, as the League called them, filed out the king, usually so calm and majestic, was wracked by doubt and reduced to pacing up and down, waiting for Guise’s arrival in the council chamber to be announced.

Disturbed by the noise in the château, the duke’s secretary, Péricard had awakened him at 4 am, but his master assured him that there was nothing out of the ordinary and insisted on going back to bed, not rising until comparatively late at 8 am, when he was roused by a message from the king. He dressed hurriedly in a grey satin doublet and, with no time for breakfast or his lever, rushed to the council meeting, stopping only for a brief prayer outside the oratory, which was locked. The December darkness and the noise of torrential rain hid the unaccustomed sights and sounds of units of soldiers scurrying around the castle. Had the duke been more alert and not still bleary from his nocturnal exertions he might have picked up the signals that not all was well as he hurried along the corridors. As he walked out on to the château’s terrace, an Auvergnat gentleman told him about all the unusual activity and warned him to go no further. The duke thanked him: ‘My good friend, it’s a long time since I have been healed of this apprehension.’ These prognostications were beginning to grate. When an old family retainer approached with the same news, he brushed him aside with the word, ‘fool’.

At the top of the grand staircase he took leave of the two lackeys who had accompanied him. He seems to have had no idea what awaited him as the captain of the royal guard, Larchant, opened the door and he entered the council chamber. He had only minutes to live. 
Nonchalantly he warmed himself in front of the fire and ordered some breakfast. No Damascus raisins could be found for him, so he had to make do with Provençal prunes. If the duke had been the least suspicious or alert to the danger he would have noticed the pallor of Secretary of State Revol, who had been sent to summon him for a royal audience. The king had noticed, as he sent him on his way: ‘Why you’re so pale! You’ll spoil everything! Rub your cheeks!’

Meanwhile the council meeting had got under way, discussing financial matters. The door connecting the council room to the royal chambers opened and Revol entered; unaccustomed as he was to such missions, he timidly told the duke that the king awaited him. Guise rose, picked up his gloves and hat, and, with his cape under his left arm, bid Adieu to his fellow counsellors with a courteous bow. He knocked on the door of the royal bedchamber, which connected the council to the king’s cabinet, and entered. The door was firmly shut behind him. He greeted the squad of the
Quarante Cinq
posted there. 
They replied in the customary fashion and surrounded him as if to escort him to the king. He traversed the room and just before he put his hand to the door handle, he turned to face the guards who followed him. At that moment, fearing that the duke was about to defend himself, Montséry, seized his arm and plunged his dagger into the duke’s breast with the words ‘Traitor! You will die for it!’ The Sieur d’Effranats launched himself at the duke’s legs and clung on to stop him moving, while another member of the
Quarante Cinq
, Sainte-Malines, carried out the death blow close to the throat. For good measure, Loignac, the captain of the
Quarante-Cinq
thrust his sword into the duke’s kidneys. Guise called for his friends, begged for mercy and, showing that he was a man of great physical strength, had the force, despite a final stab in the back from Sariac, to drag himself and his assailants from one side of the room to the other, where he fell dead at the foot of the king’s bed. On the orders of the king, the corpse was taken by the grand provost, Richelieu, to a room on the first floor, where it was burned. The ashes were thrown into the Loire. Guise’s father and cousin Mary were already martyrs and it was essential to prevent a tomb or relics around which the Catholic League could organize a cult.

Guise’s death was not simply a political assassination; it announced a royal coup d’état. Unlike Louis XVI in 1789, Henry III was quick to see the dangers for his authority if the constitutional revolution was not opposed in its infancy by force. As he explained to his mother on the day, ‘I wish to be king and not a prisoner and slave as I have been since the 13 May until now when I begin once more to be king and master.’17 In the town of Blois, Richelieu and his archers burst into the assembly of the Estates, shouting ‘No one move! Someone wanted to kill the king!’ Eight members of the Third Estate were arrested, including the leaders of the Sixteen, Neuilly, la Chapelle-Marteau, and Louis d’Orléans, and led through the rain to the château, where they were thrown into prison. Other units rounded up Guise’s clients and other members of the clan, including the Duke of Nemours; the Duke of Elbeuf; Guise’s son, the Prince of Joinville; several great ladies; and the ailing Cardinal of Bourbon, who was the League’s preferred candidate for the throne.