Martyrs and Murderers: The Guise Family and the Making of Europe (50 page)

After two days of instruction, on the seventh Sunday after Pentecost, a time in the liturgical calendar when ‘there is signified and expressed this regenerated life, which is to be spent on the model of Christ’s, and under the direction of his Spirit’, Navarre abjured Protestantism. The League, already undermined by war weariness and foreign domination, had lost its raison d'être. In the course of the next few years, all the Guise clan, except the super-pious Duke of Aumale, who died in Spanish exile, made their peace with Navarre, now King Henry IV. Henry could afford to be generous to his former enemies, who were crippled by enormous debts, but he was careful to deal with them individually, thereby ensuring that the erosion of clan solidarity continued and was not revived by adherence to a single peace treaty.

* * * *

The death of the 4-year-old François-Joseph de Lorraine, the seventh duke, from smallpox on 16 March 1675, ended the House of Guise in the male line after a history of more than 160 years. The duchy and peerage of Guise were extinguished and the inheritance divided.

History has not been kind to the Guise. Commentators have been overwhelmingly hostile and there was plenty of ammunition at hand: since the end of Francis I’s reign there were anti-Guise printed polemics, as well as songs and jokes, which reached a peak during the Catholic League. Henri I de Guise, in particular, became synonymous with rebellion, ambition and Machiavellian scheming. It was in England that the Black Legend was first popularized. Christopher Marlowe’s
The Massacre at Paris, With the Death of the duke of Guise
, first performed in 1593 had good takings at its ten performances the following year. The duke is ‘a typical Machiavel, ambitious, ruthless, commonly dissimulating, yet possessed of courage and restless energy’. 5 The appetite for contemporary French history had been whetted and did not wane in the seventeenth century. John Webster’s
Guise
and Henry Shirley’s
The Duke of Guise
are both sadly lost, but the English Civil War and Revolution were, for many royalists in particular, a repetition of events in France. After the Restoration there was a flurry of histories, plays, and treatises about the French Wars of Religion that traced the roots of seditious political association to the Catholic League, such as Thomas Shipman’s
Henry the Third of France, Stabb’d by a Fryer; with the Fall of Guise: a Tragedy
, which was first performed in 1671–2. Most controversially, Dryden, in his
The Duke of Guise
, first conceived in 1661 but only performed in 1682 as religious and political tensions mounted, made the explicit link:

Our Play’s a Parallel: The Holy league 
Begot our Cov’nant: Guisards got the Whigg:
Whate’er our hot-brained Sheriffs did advance 
Was, like our Fashions, first produc’d in France.

Polemical interest in the Wars of Religion was also undergoing a revival in France. Initially, under the Bourbons, histories contributed to the spirit of reconciliation, and had been balanced and judicious. But under Louis XIV criticism of the monarchy was tantamount to treason. A year after its publication in 1683, Dryden undertook a translation of the official version of the history of the Catholic League written by Louis de Maimbourg. For Dryden this was contemporary history: ‘there is nothing but the Age that makes the difference, otherwise the Old man of an hundred and the Babe in Swadling-clouts, that is to say, 1584, and 1684, have but a century and a Sea betwixt then, to be the same’. What the early Tories found so satisfying in Maimbourg was the equation between Calvinism and radical Catholicism. The good guys were royalist Catholics. The Guise came out of Maimbourg badly, as abusers of religion, exhibiting ‘Ambition under the masque of true zeal’. During the eighteenth century an image, which still persists, further distorted the Guise. They were now accused of selling out the ‘nation’, a term recently invented by patriots, for their own interests. In 1789 a catalogue of the crimes of the princes of Lorraine, who were deemed ‘always to have been the enemies of the nation and the king’s of France’, appeared. 6 It traced the origins of France’s misfortune on the eve of the revolution to Guise rule at the end of the 1550s! Sole responsibility for the civil wars of the sixteenth century was laid at their feet. Their story made great material for novelists (and later film-makers) and in the nineteenth century the Guise were romanticized. This was much better than their treatment for most of the twentieth century, as professional historians shunned the aristocracy as not worthy of study.

We can no longer ignore the Guise. While it is true that, unlike their contemporaries, the Valois, the Tudors, the Habsburgs, and the Bourbons, their legacy is often intangible and always ambiguous, they nevertheless left a significant mark on history. The Council of Trent, which defined Catholicism for 300 years, would not have succeeded without the Cardinal of Lorraine. Their outright hostility to Protestantism came later than commonly supposed, but they were a major factor in halting and turning back the Reformation tide in France. Consciously or unconsciously, they were convectors of a new form of politics that looked beyond the traditional elites to the people, in which the nature of the monarchical state was itself called into question. Dynastically, the Guise were among the sixteenth century’s great losers: their dreams of empire proved elusive and they failed to grasp the crown of France when it was in their hands. And yet, the fact that, at one time or another, they opposed the greatest dynasties of the age and, at great personal sacrifice, emerged from the religious wars and dynastic convolutions of the sixteenth century intact, is evidence that henceforth the name of Guise deserves wider recognition.

CHAPTER 1
1. Pierre de Bourdeille, sieur de Brantôme, Oeuvres, L. Lalanne (ed.), 11 vols.
(Paris, 1864–82), IV, 233.
2. M. N. Tommaseo (ed.), Relations des ambassadeurs vénitiens sur les affaires de
France au XVIe siècle 2 vols. (Paris, 1838), I, 499.
3. Ibid.
4. G. Pimodan, La mère des Guises: Antoinette de Bourbon, 1494–1583 (Paris:
Champion, 1925).
5. R. Bouillé
du Chariol, Histoire des ducs de Guise, 4 vols. (Paris: Duverger, 1849–
50), I, 223.
6. Ibid., 224.
7. Ibid., 225.
8. The New Catholic Encyclopedia, G. Baum and E. Caunitz (eds.), Histoire
eccleśiastique des églises reformées au royame de France, 3 vols. (Nieuwkoop:
B. de Graaf, 1974), I, 806, C. Serfass, Histoire de l’Eglise réformée de Wassy en Champagne depuis ses origines jusqu’à sa dispersion, 1561–1685 (Paris:
Librairie Protestante, 1928), 17, 26.
9. Jacques-August de Thou, Histoire universelle de 1543 jusqu’en 1607, 16 vols.
(London, 1734), III, 167.
10. P. Roberts, A City in Conflict: Troyes during the Wars of Religion (Manchester: Manchester University Press), 12.
11. Serfass, Histoire de Wassy, 17.
12. H. Dannreuther, ‘Jean de Luxembourg (1537–1576) et la réforme dans le comté
de Ligny-en-Barrois’, Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme
Français, XLIII (1894).
13. ‘Mémoires-journaux de François de Lorraine duc d’Aumale et de Guise, 1547 à
1563’, Michaud and Poujoulat (eds.), Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de
France, VI, 478.
14. Ibid.
15. Translations and music from the Genevan Psalter can be found at
genevanpsalter.redeemer.ca/>
(accessed December 2006).
16. Nicolas Pithou, Chronique de Troyes et de la Champagne (1524–1594), P.-E. Le Roy and I. Palasi (eds.), 2 vols. (Reims: Presses Universitaires de Reims, 1998–
2000), I, 221.
17. Louis de Lorraine to Antoinette de Bourbon, Blois, 5 April 1551, cited in
Pimodan, La mère des Guises, 338–9.
18. Histoire eccle
śiastique, III, 252.
19. ‘Mémoires-journaux de François de Lorraine duc d’Aumale et de Guise’, 475.
20. De Thou, Histoire Universelle, III, 167.
21. A. Corbin, Village bells: Sound and meaning in the nineteenth-century French countryside, tr. Martin Thom (London: Papermac, 1998), 254.
22. ‘Mémoires-journaux de François de Lorraine duc d’Aumale et de Guise’, 484,
486.
23. Jules de la Brosse, Histoire d’un capitaine Bourbonnais au XVIe siècle: Jacques de la Brosse, 1485(?)–1562 (Paris: Champion, 1929), 27.
24. ‘Mémoires-journaux de François de Lorraine duc d’Aumale et de Guise’, 481.
25. L-F. Lefèvre de Caumartin, Recherche de la Noblesse de Champagne (Paris,
1673), entry for the Marc family.
26. ‘Mémoires-journaux de François de Lorraine duc d’Aumale et de Guise’, 482.
27. I am persuaded by the arguments of Serfass, Histoire, 55–6.
28. Ibid., 207.
29. De Thou, Histoire Universelle, III, 167.
30. The figures range from 200 to 1,200.
31. ‘Mémoires-journaux de François de Lorraine duc d’Aumale et de Guise’, 482.
32. J. Stevenson et al. (eds.), Calendar of State Papers, foreign series, of reign of Elizabeth I (London: HMSO, 1863–1950), [hereafter CSPF], 1561–2.
33. Mémoires-journaux de François de Lorraine duc d’Aumale et de Guise’, 474.
34. M. Greengrass, ‘Hidden transcripts: Secret histories and personal testimonies of religious violence in the French Wars of Religion’ in M. Levene and P. Roberts
(eds.), The Massacre in History (New York and Oxford: Berghan, 1999).

CHAPTER 2
1. Why they preferred the more unusual feminine form is intriguing. Dumas
employs the more conventional masculine, Tous pour un, un pour tous.
2. C. Michon, ‘Les richesses de la faveur à la Renaissance: Jean de Lorraine (1498–
1550) et François Ier’, Revue d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine L (2003),
34–61.
3. Pimodan, La mère des Guises, 18.
4. Bouillé, I, 49.
5. R. Knecht, Renaissance Warrior and Prince: The reign of François I (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1994), 70.
6. Ibid., 165.
7. Bouillé, I, 74.
8. Longueville (1510) was a duchénon-pairie.
9. H. Forneron, Les ducs de Guise et leur époque, 2 vols. (Paris: Plon, 1893), I, 58, n. 3.
10. M. Wood (ed.), ‘Foreign correspondence with Marie de Lorraine, Queen of
Scotland, 1537–1548’, Scottish Historical Society, 3rd series, IV (Edinburgh:
Edinbrugh University Press, 1923), 11–12.
11. Forneron, Les ducs de Guise, I, 68.
12. Ibid., 71.
13. Bouillé, Histoire, I, 117.
14. Ibid., I. 91, 144.
15. Ibid., I, 76.
16. Brantôme, Oeuvres, III, 232.
17. Pimodan, La mère des Guises, 51.
18. Ibid., 52.
19. D. Crouzet, ‘Capital identitaire et engagement religieuse: aux origines de
l’engagement militant de la maison de Guise ou le tournant des années 1524–5’,
in J. Fouilleron et al. (eds.), Sociétéet ideólogies des temps modernes: hommage à Arlette Jouanna, 2 vols. (Montpellier, 1996).
20. Brantôme, Oeuvres, IX, 481.
21. A. Collignon, ‘Le mécénat du cardinal Jean de Lorraine (1498–1550)’, Annales
de l’Est, 23 (1910), 32.
22. Letter of Admiral Chabot quoted in Bouillé
, I, 98.
23. J. Brooks ‘Les Guises et l’air de cour: images musicales du prince guerrier’ in Y. Bellanger (ed.), Le mećeńat et l’influence des Guises (Paris: Champion, 1997).
24. F. Giacone, ‘Les Guises et le psautier de David’, in Bellanger (ed.), Le me ćeńat.
25. For this and following, A. Collignon, ‘Le mécénat du cardinal Jean de Lorraine
(1498–1550)’, Annales de l’Est, 23 (1910), 23.
26. Ibid., 68.
27. Technically, Jean’s nephew, Nicolas, was the bishop, but this was a fiction.
28. J. Cooper, ‘Le reve italien des premiers Guises’ in Bellanger, Le mećeńat, 121.
29. Bouillé, Histoire, I, 192.
30. Pimodan, La mère des Guises, 46.
31. Ibid., 30.
32. Bouillé
, I, 125.
33. Ibid., I, 545.
34. R. Harding, The Provincial Governors of Early Modern France (Yale: Yale
University Press, 1979), 27.
35. Pimodan, La mère des Guises, 33.
36. Ibid., 48.
37. Wood (ed.), ‘Foreign Correspondence of Marie de Lorraine, 1537–1548’, 33.
38. Pimodan, La mère des Guises, 105.
39. Wood, ‘Foreign Correspondence of Marie de Lorraine, 1537–1548’, 19.
40. J. Delaborde, ‘Antoine de Croy, prince de Porcien’, Bulletin de la Société de
l’Histoire du Protestantisme Français, XVIII (1869), 2–26.
41. British Library, Additional MS 21361.
42. Pimodan, La mère des Guises, 125.
43. J-A. de Thou, Histoire universelle de 1543 jusque’en 1607, 16 vols. (London, 1734), I, 183.
44. Brantôme, Oeuvres, IV, 272.

CHAPTER 3
1. F. Baumgartmer, Henry II King of France, 1547–1559 (Durham NC and Lon
don: Duke University Press, 1988), 25.
2. Ibid., 132.
3. Ibid., 30.
4. L. Romier, Les origins politiques des guerres de religion, 2 vols. (Perrin et Cie: Paris, 1913–14), I, 28.
5. P. Ritche, Mary of Guise in Scotland, 1548–1560: A political career (East Linton: Tuckwell, 2002), 67.
6. Ibid., 68.
7. I. Cloulas, Henri II (Paris: Fayard, 1985), 160.
8. D. Cuisiat (ed.), Lettres du Charles cardinal de Lorraine, 1525–1574 (Droz:
Geneva, 1998), 119.
9. M. Wood (ed.), ‘Foreign correspondence with Marie de Lorraine, Queen of
Scotland, 1548–1557’, Scottish Historical Society, 3rd series, VII (Edinburgh:
Edinbrugh University Press, 1925), 35.
10. British Library, Add MS 38031, fo. 181, copy.
11. N. Boucher, La Conjonction des lettres et des armes des deux...princes lorrains (Reims, 1579).
12. Brantôme, Oeuvres, IV 289.
13. Bouillé, Histoire, I, 276.
14. Brantôme, Oeuvres, IV 269.
15. Ibid., 188.
16. Wood (ed.), ‘Foreign correspondence with Marie de Lorraine, 1548–1557’, 19.
17. For this and following, C. Coester, Schön wie Venus, mutig wie Mars: Anna
d’Este von Guise und von Nemours (1531–1607) (Munich: Oldenburg, 2007).
18. Cuisiat (ed.), Lettres, 173.
19. Romier, Origines politiques, I, 71–3.
20. Brantôme, Oeuvres, IV 276.
21. Bouillé, Histoire, I, 242.
22. Brantôme, Oeuvres, IV, 276.
23. Cuisiat (ed.), Lettres, 66 n. 235.
24. Ibid., 140, n. 3.
25. E. Alberi (ed.), Relazioni degli ambasciatori veneti al Senato, 3 vols. (Florence, 1839–1863), III, 440–1.
26. Cuisiat (ed.), Lettres, 168.
27. Wood (ed.), ‘Foreign correspondence with Marie de Lorraine, 1548–1557’, 237.
28. Ibid., 144.
29. Cuisiat, Lettres, 154.
30. Bouillé
, II, 182.
31. Ibid, I, 282.
32. Cloulas, Henri II, 308.
33. Baumgartner, Henry II, 147.
34. ‘Mémoires-journaux de François de Lorraine duc d’Aumale et de Guise’, 129.
35. Cuisiat (ed.), Lettres, 163.
36. Ibid., 507.
37. Baumgartner, Henry II, 165.
38. Cuisiat (ed.), Lettres, 184.
39. Baumgartner, Henry II, 173.
40. Ibid., 175.
41. Ibid., 176.
42. Cuisiat (ed.), Lettres, 270.
43. Romier, Origines politiques, II, 179.