The Serpent and the Moon: Two Rivals for the Love of a Renaissance King (20 page)

Civil war was the theme of Catherine de’ Medici’s most formative years, and she would never forget its horror. By September 12, less than three weeks later, the City of the Red Lily had surrendered due to hunger and plague and was in imperial hands. On February 24, 1530, Charles V was finally crowned in Bologna, and with this seal of alliance between the Church and the emperor, a Holy League of States was formed. On April 27, 1532, the Medici were written into the constitution of Florence and Alessandro de’ Medici was installed as duke.

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HE ransom demanded for the French princes, four tons of gold, entailed a huge burden on the country, but the French people united and made an enormous effort to assemble the payment. Once it was gathered the Spanish claimed the gold was not pure and procrastinated by insisting on having each piece assayed in case of swindle. On June 10, 1530, one year after the Treaty of Cambrai, the Spanish ambassador at last announced himself satisfied. It took hundreds of loaded mules and four hundred cavalry to escort the gold over the Pyrenees and to bring back to France the two princes and the new queen.

The scene of the exchange was the same spot on the Bidassoa, and it was performed with rigid Spanish protocol. At eight o’clock in the evening of July 1, 1530, the princes and the Constable of Castile embarked from the Spanish side on a barge manned by twelve rowers and a helmsman, with eleven Spanish gentlemen in attendance. At the same moment, Anne de Montmorency and Don Alvaro de Lurgo, together with the gold, left the French bank in a barge with the same number of rowers, eleven French gentlemen, and two pages the same height as the dauphin and Henri. The princes and pages wore daggers, and the gentlemen were armed with swords and daggers.

The two boats headed toward a pontoon in the middle of the river, which was manned by one French and one Spanish gentleman. As the
boats docked, one gentleman called out to the Grand Master, the other to the Constable of Castile, and they mounted the pontoon together. The Constable of Castile turned toward the boys, bowed, and made a sincere speech to the effect that he had done his best to treat them according to their station, and regretted any errors he might have made. The dauphin replied just as generously that the Constable had indeed done all that he could have been expected to do in his position and under the circumstances. But Henri was not feeling remotely gracious, and when the Spaniard turned to speak to him, he broke wind loudly and repeatedly.
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Some sources say he blew a series of raspberries, but whatever he did, the message was clear.

The Constable of Castile then stepped into the barge that carried the gold and the Spanish rowers, and Anne de Montmorency joined the princes with the French rowers. As the gold left for Spain, Montmorency took charge of the real “treasure of France.” While the exchange took place, the new queen of France, accompanied by her suite of one hundred, her ladies, and the cardinal de Tournon, was rowed across the river. The entire party, including the new queen in a litter, then left by torchlight for Saint-Jean-de-Luz.

As soon as the princes stepped on shore, a courier galloped off to Bordeaux to inform the king that his sons were safely in France. The messenger reached his goal one day later. Upon hearing the news, the king fell to his knees in front of a crucifix and wept tears of joy and gratitude. Couriers were sent galloping throughout the kingdom to spread the news of the princes’ return. All the church bells of Paris started to ring, led by the great bells of Nôtre-Dame. Everyone who had a musical instrument came out into the streets, and blew or banged or otherwise made a noise to show their heartfelt relief that their princes were safe.

It was midnight when the dauphin and Henri, asleep on Montmorency’s shoulder, rode into Saint-Jean-de-Luz preceding the new queen in her litter. The streets of Saint-Jean were lined with curious, cheering crowds, gathered to welcome these Sons of France they had
all helped to ransom. There was rather less interest in Eleonore of Portugal, the new queen.

In spite of their miserable diet, both boys had grown, though Henri was the more compact of the two. It seems no one could understand much of what they said because they spoke to one another in a mix of the French they remembered and the Spanish they had learned from their rough jailers. Their language may also have been a secret code which they used deliberately and which bound them together through their mutual ordeal. For some time, they chose to dress in the Spanish fashion.

As the cortège with the new queen of France and the princes progressed homeward, they learned that their grandmother, Louise de Savoie, who had instigated their release, was again suffering from gout and could not come further than Bordeaux to meet them and embrace her new daughter-in-law. The boys’ aunt Marguerite de Navarre was expecting a child and had remained at Blois, so Louise had sent her ladies of the court to represent her. As one of the three ladies chosen to attend Queen Eleonore on her triumphal entry into France, Diane de Poitiers rode at their head to welcome home the princes and the new queen.

Late on the evening of July 6, the caravan with the princes and Queen Eleonore reached the Abbey of the Poor Clares of Beyries, not far from Mont-de-Marsan, south of Bordeaux, where they would join the king and the whole court. The boys had collapsed from emotion and exhaustion and were in bed, but when their father arrived shortly afterward, he could not stop himself rushing to their room and kissing them awake, tears streaming from his eyes. Then he went to welcome Eleonore. She was at her dressing table, still wearing her formal Spanish court dress, with her reddish-blond hair undone and hanging loose about her shoulders and down to her ankles. François was quite enchanted.

Hours later, at one in the morning on July 7, 1530, the marriage was ratified. The service was conducted by the same Bishop of Lisieux who had heard the confession of the two Norman knights who exposed Bourbon’s treason. Eleonore entered, glittering with jewels, accompanied by the two sleepy princes. Her headdress was made of
golden filigree butterflies on a crimson velvet bonnet sewn with precious stones, and she wore white flowers on her ears. Her hair hung loose in curls all the way to her ankles and was threaded with ribbons. Her dress was of crimson velvet backed with white satin, and the sleeves were covered in gold and silver embroidery. Diane de Poitiers, as principal matron of honor, walked behind Eleonore, dazzling in her beauty, height, and her own magnificent gems. Witnesses to the marriage service were astonished that the king and queen chatted merrily throughout. They went to bed at 2 a.m. and did not emerge until 2 p.m. the next day. It seemed the king was quite taken with his new wife. For her part, as she had only known a husband in his seventies, poor Eleonore fell in love with her brother’s greatest enemy. She would soon be disillusioned. Anne de Pisseleu was present at Bordeaux among the ladies of the court, and did not even leave the king on his honeymoon.

According to the court gossip Brantôme, it was François who was the more disillusioned; in her magnificent court robes and jewels, Eleonore had looked rather splendid. Undressed, her short legs and long torso made her look like a dwarf. He goes on to say: “it is true that this fault would be less apparent when the new queen was lying down.” The king was a perfect gentleman, and if he was disappointed in any way, no one could tell; he always treated Eleonore with great respect and courtesy. There were no children of their marriage and it is not certain whether François had already contracted the syphilis that was the possible eventual cause of his death.

A
S the royal cavalcade continued on its leisurely way northward, the princes became accustomed to the unfamiliar faces around them and learned their language again. François noted that the boys looked physically well but that the dauphin, who was now twelve, was no longer the ebullient child who had left France. He spoke slowly and sparingly, was a serious lad, and refused to drink alcohol. He had absorbed Spanish etiquette and followed it carefully. The more sensitive Henri had become awkward, taciturn, morose, and unsociable—nothing
like the bright, intelligent child described by the English ambassador just prior to the princes’ departure four years earlier. Clearly, the two boys’ extreme reserve was due to the lack of affection, sympathy, and friendship they had endured; the boredom of their existence; and the constant petty humiliations that had crushed their spirits.
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Henri’s anger was immediately noted and censored, and he reacted by disguising all emotion and becoming rigidly controlled. This gave the impression that he was enduring a sullen, dark melancholy. Neither the king nor his son reached out to the other, and Henri never really forgave his father for causing the loss of his childhood. His lack of loving parents resulted in an unswerving attachment to the two people who gave him affection prior to his departure. They were both there for him immediately upon his return—Diane de Poitiers and Anne de Montmorency.

Wherever they stopped, the princes were enthusiastically welcomed, as was the queen. Carried on a litter draped with cloth of gold, Eleonore was a splendid spectacle. She held a huge fan to combat the July heat and wore her magnificent Spanish dresses. One was “of double white taffeta, with huge bouffant sleeves covered with embroidery in silver thread”; with it she wore a matching velvet cap covered in precious stones accentuated by a “white feather in the same style as worn by the king on that day.”

Everywhere in Bordeaux there were banners of welcome for the princes bearing the message: “They left in tears, they have come back in joy.” Eleonore went to greet her new mother-in-law, Madame Louise, who was residing just outside the city. Louise was in great pain, but she joined the caravan the following day, requesting that her new daughter-in-law dress in the French fashion. The court remained in Angoulême for a month while the princes left for Amboise, where they were reunited with their siblings, and in their favorite surroundings, rediscovered their old haunts and toys.

What did the princes think or feel about their freedom; about seeing their dazzling father again; about getting to know their gentle stepmother Eleonore, who had been so instrumental in helping to free
them; and about watching their father’s new mistress, Anne de Pisseleu, assuming the queen’s place? We can only imagine. But the king made plain his displeasure at the change in his sons, particularly Henri. Some of François’ annoyance might have been due to his guilt over his role as the cause of their misery. The king was not a natural father. More concerned with himself than his children, he did not give them the reassurance, confidence, and affection they craved at this difficult time. His court was devoted to the pursuit of pleasure. François felt it was a courtier’s duty to be always gay and lively, saying that “he did not care for dreamy, sullen, sleepy children.” He avoided the two older boys and focused his attention on the youngest, Charles d’Angoulême, now nine years old, who was so like him and had been his constant companion for the past four years.

However, the king was not entirely unfeeling, and he was well aware of his sons’ miserable time abroad for almost four years—more than half of Henri’s lifetime. They had returned with no manners, no idea of courtly behavior or how to conduct themselves within their own circle. Not long after their return, the king decided to send the princes to stay for some months with Louis de Brézé and his wife, Diane, who loved them both and had known them since their birth. Diane’s feeling gesture in embracing Henri so warmly when the boys left for Spain had not gone unnoticed. For the rest of the summer and autumn of 1530, the boys stayed at Anet, having fun and hunting to hounds with the two Brézé girls and their friends. In September, the king joined them for a few days, inviting himself to hunt with his hosts and his sons. Then the court decamped to Saint-Germain for the winter.

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1
. Biographers often describe this as Diane and Henri’s first kiss, which is most unlikely as Diane de Poitiers had spent much of her time with the queen in the royal nursery, and had known all the children since their birth.