The Serpent and the Moon: Two Rivals for the Love of a Renaissance King (24 page)

A
T the end of 1531, François I decided to make a “progress” through much of his kingdom to show his people their new
queen and their dauphin. The king was justly proud of his heir, who was so like him in many ways. A handsome young man, the dauphin had his father’s
joie de vivre
, his energy, charm, and a natural affinity with ordinary people. His kindness and the care the young François demonstrated on this tour caused people to compare him to Louis XII. Like him, the dauphin began to be called “father of his people.”

As the queen’s senior
dame d’honneur
, Diane de Poitiers’ place at court and on the progress through France was at Eleonore’s side. The pace was stately, and Anne de Mortmorency’s organization of the various entries of the queen into her cities was faultless. The court moved through Picardy and Normandy. At Dieppe, François and his sons saw a
tableau vivant
representing the New World, featuring exotic birds, monkeys, reptiles, and even real savages. These were all then given to the king and his sons. The next stop was Rouen, capital of Normandy and Brézé territory, where the royal party was feted magnificently.
They moved on to the king’s new town of Le Havre on the coast, still under construction.

During the many leisurely stops in the royal progress, it is probable that the king reviewed recent developments in Italy with Diane de Poitiers, and in particular, Prince Henri’s forthcoming marriage, first discussed at Anet with Louis de Brézé. As emperor and suzerain of Milan, Charles V had installed his natural daughter, married to Pope Clement’s natural son Alessandro de’ Medici, to rule in Florence as Duke and Duchess of Urbino. The Medici pope was powerless to prevent this move. As the only
legitimate
heiress to the duchy of Florence, Catherine was being distanced from her inheritance by her forthcoming marriage to a royal prince of France, even though her claim would not be affected. The French king and the pope had common cause in wanting to diminish the power of the emperor in Italy. Meanwhile, Henry VIII saw an opportunity in the French king’s proximity to the pope, and arranged a friendly meeting with François I in Boulogne. Henry VIII was still seeking the annulment of his marriage from Catherine of Aragon.

Diane de Poitiers was in attendance on the queen as she made glorious entries into Rheims in March, and Lyons in May. The governor of the Auvergne, John Stewart, Duke of Albany, uncle by marriage to Catherine de’ Medici, and cousin to Diane through his La Tour d’Auvergne wife, met the royal party in Lyons.
⁵
As Catherine had inherited property in Auvergne through her mother, the tableau in Lyons proclaimed the Triumph of Juno, goddess of marriage, alluding to the queen, and to the forthcoming nuptials of Henri and Catherine. On July 18, as the royal caravanserai reached Puy in the Velay, Barbarossa—pirate chief of the Ottoman fleet and envoy of the Sultan—presented François I with a lion, a noble animal renowned for its courage and a symbol of the Sultan’s friendship.
⁶
This was the beast
François would later pass on to Catherine’s cousin, Ippolito de’ Medici. Neither the heraldic nor the mythological symbolism of the gift was lost on the French king. Since the days of Charlemagne, France, oldest daughter of the church, had always enjoyed courteous relations with the Ottoman rulers.

With the addition of the permanently hungry lion, which was kept as far as possible from the monkeys, the reptiles, the exotic birds, and the savages, the royal cortège was taking on the appearance of a circus on the move. François also had a lynx that proved a bit of a handful on his travels and had to be left at an inn. A receipt exists of payment to the innkeeper’s wife for bandages!
⁷
Having passed through Avignon and Arles, the procession finally reached Marseilles on October 8, 1533. There, the king’s entourage installed themselves in the castle of the counts of Toulouse to prepare for the wedding of Henri and Catherine.

_____________________

1
. Diane was to keep the title until she was created a duchess. The dauphin, François de Valois, would be named governor of the province.

2
. Diane’s parasol, which would have been carried in front of her by a page, can still be seen at the château d’Anet.

3
. In some cases, good teeth were taken from corpses and attached by a bridge using gold wire.

4
. When Christian Dior visited Anet, he declared that Diane was the greatest fashion leader of her time and the woman with the most influence on style during her era.

5
. John Stewart, Duke of Albany, had been regent of Scotland from 1515 to 1524. Both he and his wife were first cousins of Diane’s father, Jehan de Poitiers.

6
. The alliance between François I and the Sultan survived the Treaty of Cambrai and continued to form the basis for French influence in the Middle East until the twentieth century. The text of the treaty, signed in 1536, has never been found. Such copies as exist do not seem genuine, since treaties with the Sultan always took the form of a gracious concession from him, not a compact between equals.

7
. I am grateful to Professor R. J. Knecht for sharing this information. He found the receipt in France during his researches into the Valois.

CHAPTER TEN

Catherine’s New World

W
hen Catherine arrived in France, the population numbered 16 million, compared with England’s 4 million. François I’s court was hugely extravagant, and he needed a source of income to match his expenditure. His large, fertile kingdom was blessed by nature, and French farmers worked hard. Vast areas were covered with fields of grain, vineyards, and orchards; and cattle thrived on the rich pasture. Little towns girdled churches, and great manorhouses had begun to replace the feudal castles that dotted the land. Rivers teemed with fish and sailboats, and barges carried the crops and livestock to the cities—especially Paris. Religion was an integral part of life and religious feast days were plentiful. Industry flourished in workshops, mines, forges, and quarries; cloth was woven from wool and silk and was exported. France was rich, and rightly described by Henry VIII as a “fair and abundant kingdom.”

At the time of Catherine’s arrival life in France was truly blessed, but did either Pope Clement VII or King François I consider the happiness or comfort of the two young people they had just forced to marry? In the sixteenth century, happiness was not a part of the marriage
equation. A successful marriage was one in which power, wealth, and property increased, and heirs were born to consolidate the greater family unit. The royal newlyweds were mere tools in this traditional power play. This particular contract may have seemed unequal to the court, but the king was satisfied. Through the union of his son, Henri d’Orléans, to the heiress Catherine de’ Medici, Clement VII and François I had secretly agreed to join forces in eighteen months’ time in order to reclaim the duchies of Milan and Urbino. At long last, François would realize his elusive dream of repossessing his lost conquests on the Italian peninsula. The pope was even more satisfied than the king. Through this marriage, the parvenu Medici had joined an elite permitted to marry into the oldest royal house in Europe; together, king and pope would then vanquish their mutual enemy, the emperor. The two monarchs, Charles V and François I, were playing on the chessboard of Europe, and Henri and Catherine were mere pawns in the great game.

Two weeks after the wedding, François I left Marseilles with the court, but the pope stayed on for a month due to bad weather. He also hoped Catherine might be pregnant. The little
duchessina
, as the French court contemptuously dubbed her, would not know this joy for another ten years. Henri had done his duty in consummating the marriage but was not prepared to do more, and he ignored his bride thereafter. Catherine may have arrived, but she did not
belong
to the brilliant, subtle, extravagant community that was the French court.

To distract Charles V from his designs on Italy, François I followed Montmorency’s advice and agitated the emperor’s enemies in Germany. The Lutheran Reformation was gathering converts who, through their Protestant princes, were beginning to challenge the Holy Roman Emperor’s right to rule them. Following his renewed alliance with the Sultan, François urged Barbarossa to attack imperial ships. To put even more pressure on the emperor, the king of France made public his son’s right, as Catherine de’ Medici’s husband, to the duchy of Urbino. To that end he gathered a mighty force to join with Clement and push Charles V out of Italy.

Within a year of the Medici-Orléans marriage in Marseilles, on November 25, 1534, Clement VII died, and the treaties made with the
king of France went with him. All possible advantage, financial or political, that could have accrued from the marriage of Henri and Catherine disappeared. Only the stigma of a
mésalliance
remained. The new pope, an anti-Medici Farnese, repudiated the alliance with France. The French court’s opinion that their royal prince had been “squandered on a grocer’s daughter”
¹
was confirmed. With nothing gained, the French king would be heard to exclaim: “
J’ai eu la fille toute nue
”—“She came to me naked as a newborn babe.” There is no record that Catherine grieved for Clement VII; his death merely added to the delicacy of her situation at the French court.

The new pope, Paul III, belonged firmly in the imperial camp, and François I’s chimera of Italy evaporated once again.

T
HE king withdrew into the
douceur de vivre
—the sweetness of life—at Fontainebleau. François had not forgotten Diane’s great skill in the saddle and often invited her to accompany him hunting to hounds, marveling at her ability to call for a fresh horse when even he was ready to drop. He renewed his invitation for her to join his
Petite Bande
, and she accepted.

This tall, serene Artemis, who appeared transformed, mature, and confident in black and white, stood out dramatically among the courtiers and ladies in their gaily colored luxury. With her extraordinary allure and air of self-possession, her presence was even more arresting. She was a perfect product of Anne de Beaujeu’s training, repeatedly described as reserved and reflective, who spoke little and kept her distance. Her beauty was majestic.

La Grande Sénéchale
²
believed in her role as the perfect widow, but her black and white “uniform” was also full of allure. How else could she hope to find a protector or husband at the court? Despite the assertions of some biographers, it is doubtful that she looked to thirteen-year-old Henri to fill that role.

The Palace of Fontainebleau had been under construction for the
past eight years; work was to continue for another thirteen. François delighted in leading the Grande Sénéchale (or comtesse de Saint-Vallier, as she now styled herself) through the endless stuccoed galleries emblazoned with his salamander symbol. He enjoyed her opinions, her reactions, and her knowledge. A true Renaissance man, he welcomed and admired this Renaissance woman.

The palace was still comparatively small and focused on the Galerie François I, the central section added to the old ruined keep. The gallery, a triumph of the French Renaissance, still exists but has doubled in size. It had a wing on either side. The main entrance was the fabled
Porte Dorée
(Golden Gate), which opened onto a straight wide passage leading into the château. Eventually, one came out into an avenue that led to the forest—Fontainebleau was, after all, a
château de chasse
. The king’s apartment consisted of only four rooms.

The craftsmen imported for the stuccowork and the frescoes were mostly Italian, a good number of them pupils of Giulio Romano, who had just completed the Palazzo del Te in Mantua for Federigo Gonzaga. In the famous
Camera degli Sposi
(Bridal Suite), sixty-four little salamander lizards were depicted on the ceiling and in the frescoes lining the upper walls. The salamander was a symbol of a reputation that these two hot-blooded
patrones
, Federigo Gonzaga and François I, proudly shared.

The king had planned Fontainebleau as his homage to Italy within France, a palace made and filled with all things beautiful, dedicated to the pursuit of pleasure. Rare woods and marbles came from Italy; stucco reliefs surrounded the wall murals and the window embrasures; the wooden ceilings were all painted, and gold leaf glowed, highlighting everything. François loved this palace, with its gardens and shady walks, its Venetian crystal, and its elaborate system of mirrors reflecting the light and the water. His walls bore the works of Leonardo, Titian, Bronzino, Andrea del Sarto; and the magnificent classical statue known as the
Apollo Belvedere
stood gazing down the long gallery. Fontainebleau was François I’s idea of heaven, and to be there gave him peace.

Fontainebleau also was the closest Catherine came to having a home in the early years of her marriage. Clement VII’s death had
placed her in a difficult position. She was well aware of the sniggers and the stigma of
mésalliance
, whispered in her presence behind cupped hands. Catherine’s letters reveal that at times not even she could believe the honor of her elevation into the French royal house. The Venetian ambassador Giustiniani reported that the marriage had displeased the entire nation. Catherine, he wrote, kept her head down and was “
molto obediente
.” It would be natural to assume that two young people, having both endured unhappy childhoods, outcasts in their respective ways, would have found comfort in one another’s company. But Henri’s imagination had been captured by Diane de Poitiers and Catherine was the outsider among François’ band of dazzling young enchantresses. How they mocked the
duchessina
. As a young woman facing difficult circumstances, Louise de Savoie had made her motto: “Humility and Patience.” It had worked for Louise (that great dissembler), and Catherine, in her cunning, chose the same maxim.

Since Henri was a younger son with an unmarried elder brother, the couple was not given an establishment of their own. Catherine moved into Henri’s “bachelor” apartments, which he shared with his two brothers. Catherine’s ladies and personal staff also attended to her sisters-in-law, Madeleine and Marguerite. The three princes moved about with the court, giving Henri and Catherine little privacy as they journeyed between Fontainebleau, Blois, Amboise, or to the seat of some great nobleman where the king wished to hunt. The arrangement did not seem to bother them at all.

Although the marriage had been consummated, there were a number at court who thought Catherine’s health was still too delicate for the young couple to take part in marital relations. Henri was very aware that the court considered this marriage a gross
mésalliance
—something his stay in protocol-obsessed Spain had taught him was unacceptable in a royal house. As a result, he wanted nothing to do with his wife.

In order for her to learn the ways of the French court, Catherine had been placed in the care of her kinswoman, Diane. It didn’t take the bride long to become aware of Henri’s devotion to this serene lady. Catherine understood that her husband’s love for Diane was of a chivalrous kind, and that ever since the tournament in Paris Henri had
been Diane’s
chevalier servant
. Catherine knew instinctively that she could not hope to compete for her husband’s devotion to this beautiful older woman, secure in her high birth and experience. No amount of intelligence and education would ever be a match for Diane’s power of enchantment over Henri. But she would try.

Catherine de’ Medici was determined to succeed where Diane excelled. She began with riding lessons. Catherine had a short, awkward frame and little natural talent or ability, but she compensated with courage, and persevered until she became quite a proficient horsewoman. Catherine begged the king to let her join the
Petite Bande
. They all rode magnificently and shared the full confidence of the king, often to a greater extent than his Privy Council. To be one of their number was the greatest wish of the little
duchessina
, even though they mocked her accent and her origins.

Despite one horrific fall recorded by the Venetian ambassador Lorenzo Contarini, Catherine continued to try to emulate her rival on the hunting field. A born strategist and survivor, she was very vain about her pretty hands and legs, and cleverly devised a method of attaching her skirts to her saddle to expose her slender calves, which were much admired. For this reason she is sometimes credited with inventing the sidesaddle. In fact, ladies in Italy had long ridden with one leg—the right—crossed over to the left side supported in a crook, and Catherine simply encouraged this fashion in France. Ladies who were not skilled horsewomen rode sitting in a padded chair or
planchette
on the back of an ambling mare, a quiet hack trained to a smooth movement. Catherine is also credited with introducing the
divided skirt, or
culotte
, for riding. The
culotte
was then adopted by chaste ladies who did not wish any dissolute young blade to take the liberty of slipping his hand under their dresses while they were dismounting—quite a common practice at the time. It was essential, too, for ladies who rode astride, like Diane or members of the
Petite Bande
, to wear men’s hose under their skirts or
culottes
. The king’s sister, Marguerite de Navarre, was often described as looking magnificent in men’s clothes at court. Cross-dressing is a custom as old as chivalry.