The Serpent and the Moon: Two Rivals for the Love of a Renaissance King (28 page)

Thus began one of the most enduring and unexpected royal liaisons in French history. The precociousness of the young prince was not unusual for the period. However, until this time, all Henri had known of love were the clumsy efforts with his wife, for whom he felt nothing, and fleeting adventures on his military campaigns. Henri had been worshipping this goddess from afar all his young life; now, holding Diane in his arms, already her slave, his joy overwhelmed him. Through her beauty and refinement, her intelligence and romance, Diane offered Henri infinite seduction. The morose and taciturn young man disappeared. With Diane constantly by him, he began to radiate happiness and joy. The change was remarkable.

Until Diane became Henri’s lover, she had only known the touch of a man forty years her senior. Although Brézé was old enough to be her grandfather, she had experienced a complete marriage with him, bearing him two children. But their relationship had centered on the intellectual interests they shared and on the strong family ties so valued in the social structure of the day. With Henri, Diane discovered the pleasure
of an inexperienced yet ardent adolescent lover. As his mistress, her womanly role was reversed; now she would be the teacher and pass on to this shy youth all the knowledge gleaned from her long apprenticeship with the clever, worldly Louis de Brézé. The sensuality of Diane’s intelligence and her wisdom were part of the magic with which she enthralled the romantic young prince, just as his physical beauty, strength, and healthy youth were all part of his attraction for her.

For an independent woman like Diane to become the mistress of a much younger man placed her in a hazardous situation, not only with regard to her image but also to her own sensibilities. For years Henri had worshipped Diane as a goddess—serene, distant, pure—and was content to love her from afar. Diane was a Poitiers, too noble and proud to be a concubine. By stepping down from her pedestal and assuming human frailties, a woman old enough to be her lover’s mother risked ridicule. She could also be forced to stand aside if her lover turned to a younger woman should Catherine be repudiated. That she accepted these risks indicates Diane’s confidence in herself and her thorough knowledge of Henri’s character. It also shows that she was in love. In giving herself to Henri, she made him feel she was bestowing on him the greatest possible honor.

Diane did not engineer her good fortune; it came of itself. She did not seek Henri’s love; he gave it freely and without encouragement. But once it was offered to her, Diane did everything to keep that love aglow. As Henri grew in stature and maturity, Diane held him with the power of her imaginative mind, winding him ever tighter within the magic web of her intelligence. Henri now lost all interest in Catherine and virtually stopped seeing her altogether.

Some historians are of the opinion that the haughty, ambitious Grande Sénéchale would never have considered becoming Henri’s lover if he had not become the dauphin. This is a man’s way of thinking. To a lady who has never experienced a handsome, virile young lover whose lifelong devotion was so obvious, Henri was a wondrous gift. Perhaps Diane had so adored this child all his life that once he made her aware of his desire for her, she could deny him nothing. François I was only forty-two, and to all appearances would be healthy for many more years. If Diane was expecting the dauphin to inherit
soon, she was taking a huge risk. She was also taking on Catherine without any guarantees, and the king’s young mistress was her avowed enemy. No, Diane’s capitulation to Henri was not a political move. Instead, what could be more natural than this beautiful widow falling in love with a young man of great physical beauty who was ready to die for her? Their story was the stuff of the romantic novels so popular at the time, and both succumbed to their emotions.

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1
. Brantôme was writing after the event and may well have been influenced by the usual accusations of poison in the case of a royal death.

2
. Hypospadias, or hypospadies, usually a mild deformity, is characterized by an abnormal positioning of the urethra, along the underside of the male member. Hypospadias is usually but not always associated with chordee—a downward curve of the penis, in particular when erect. Several diplomatic dispatches allude to Henri having this condition, which does not necessarily preclude fathering children and often exists in several generations of a family.

3
. Some sources claim that Henri actually raped Filippa Duci, and that it was through remorse that he brought the child home. This is unlikely.

4
. This young man had actually married secretly, without his parents’ consent, and that marriage was forcibly annulled. A union with a daughter of the king was considered much more appropriate for a son of the Constable of France.

5
. According to the contemporary Italian ambassadors Giulio Alvarotti and Girolamo Corregiani.

6
. In the saga of
Amadís de Gaula
, “Amour” visited the lovers “one fine morning.” Thereafter, romantic writers often referred to the morning as the time for lovers.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Emperor of Deceit

I
n the spring of 1538, Henri, Diane, and Catherine went with the court to Nice, where Pope Paul III was to mediate between Charles V and François I. As both the emperor and the king had ravaged his city, the duc de Savoie refused to open the gates. As a result, the king stayed in a château nearby and the emperor remained on his galleon near Villefranche. From May 15 to June 20, the pope shuttled between the two camps. Finally, a ten-year truce was agreed between the two eternal opponents.

The emperor and the king met at Aigues-Mortes to confirm the pope’s treaty. Eight years had passed since Henri had left Spain, and not one day had diminished his hatred for his erstwhile captor. Henri watched as the monster of his childhood nightmares was rowed ashore from his galley. Charles V, a little man with a sharp profile and a heavily jutting jaw, stood awkwardly facing the tall, strikingly handsome king and his family. Queen Eleonore broke the ice by coming forward and embracing her brother. François smiled and embraced him, too. Then, treating the emperor as his honored guest, the king presented the dauphin and dauphine, his sister the queen of Navarre, and his son Charles d’Orléans.

Suddenly and most unexpectedly, the emperor fell to his knees. Opening his arms wide before the king’s family, he called out: “It is a tragedy for us and for our subjects that we did not meet sooner or the war would not have lasted so long.” It was a remarkable approach; he spoke to the king and his son as if they had never been his prisoners. A witness wrote that the scene was so unreal it could have been out of a dream. Neither François nor Henri was taken in. They had suffered too much at the hands of this gentle, smiling enemy. Nonetheless, the meeting ended with an appearance of peace. France could expect the duchy of Milan to go to Charles d’Orléans, who would marry the emperor’s niece, while Marguerite de France (Margot), youngest daughter of François, would be united with the emperor’s son, Philip of Spain. As the threat of war receded, the court returned to the valley of the Loire.

While the king was preparing to go on a gentle “progress” throughout his kingdom, Diane was able to bring to fruition a project she had long desired. In January 1539, her eldest daughter, Françoise, comtesse de Maulévrier, was married to the powerful Robert IV de La Marck, prince de Sedan and son of the king’s childhood friend of the same name. This dynastic marriage to a foreign prince, who would be nominated a marshal of France, could only have taken place with the king’s approval, and was another sign of Diane’s high position at court. The wedding was celebrated with great pomp in the chapel of the Louvre Palace in the presence of the king and queen.

It was a season of marriages within the court, and a number took place at Fontainebleau with the king attending. Notably absent from the various festivities was Henri, who had accompanied Diane de Poitiers to Anet following the marriage of her daughter. The papal nuncio thought this of sufficient importance to alert Cardinal Farnese.

The scandal of the season was the disgrace of the admiral Philippe Chabot de Brion, a friend of the king’s youth. François had married him to a royal cousin, and the admiral was a great admirer of the duchesse d’Etampes. But for some years Chabot had been under the cloud of financial irregularities involving the royal coffers. Chabot opposed Montmorency’s war strategies and Montmorency succeeded in convincing the king of Chabot’s disloyal policies. A criminal trial was
announced. Chabot was found guilty of taking bribes and misappropriating money intended for the wars. In addition to losing his property and incurring a great fine, Admiral Chabot de Brion was banished.

Montmorency was in favor of peace with the emperor. He was delighted to hear that Charles V had requested permission to cross France to reach his territory of the Netherlands, where his subjects in Ghent were rebelling. The urgency of the crisis required the emperor’s presence as soon as possible; to sail from Spain would be difficult in winter and to travel around France would take too long. In October, at Montmorency’s urging, François I sent an invitation to Charles V to traverse his kingdom as his guest. As the king was ill with an abscess in his groin, on November 27, 1539 the dauphin Henri and Charles d’Orléans, accompanied by the Constable of France, met Charles V at that unhappy crossing point on the Bidassoa River.

T
HE dauphin and his brother accompanied the emperor across France, until they met with the king on December 10 at his castle of Loches on the river Indre. The royal caravanserai continued as François showed his kingdom and châteaux to the emperor. There is a legend that Anne d’Etampes was part of a plot to kidnap Charles V while he was in France. When Anne handed the emperor a towel to dry his hands before dinner one night, he dropped a large diamond ring into her lap. As she made to return it, Charles V is supposed to have said: “No, Madame, it is now in hands too beautiful for me ever to consider removing it.”
¹
In fact, Anne d’Etampes loathed the deeply religious emperor for his icy disapproval of her role as the king’s mistress.

The royal party visited Amboise, Blois, Chambord, and Orléans, and spent Christmas 1539 at Fontainebleau. Splendid celebrations were planned in Charles V’s honor—parades, illuminations, theatricals, and the obligatory fountain spouting wine. François proudly showed his brother-in-law his fabled gallery, which Il Rosso had decorated to the glory of France.

Charles V was not a healthy man. He had arrived in France with a bad chill, which had not left him, and he suffered terribly from hemorrhoids. His protruding lower jaw made elegant eating difficult. The emperor was by nature a glutton who wolfed down his food, and others dining with him were repelled by his table manners. He failed to chew his food and would hold his plate under his long chin, a napkin tucked into his neck, and literally shovel the food into his mouth by hand. At each meal he downed a full bottle of wine. With such a diet, it is not surprising that he suffered dreadfully from gout and indigestion all his life.

At some point on the journey, an exuberant Prince Charles had jumped onto the back of the emperor’s horse and, holding him tight in his arms from behind, shouted: “Sire! You are a prisoner!” The sick emperor was seen to blanch and tremble. Henri is recorded as having been secretly delighted that his young brother was able to humiliate his former jailer.

The emperor made his grand entry into Paris on New Year’s Day, 1540, with the customary splendid parades. He continued on as far as Valenciennes, where the princes bade him farewell. In gratitude for their services, Charles V presented them with some superb diamonds, and Montmorency was given a valuable emerald.

The emperor promised to sort out the question of Milan as soon as he had control of his rebellious subjects in the Netherlands. But by April—having regained his own territory again—Charles V changed his mind. Milan was no longer a bargaining chip in the peace treaty and he still claimed Burgundy. François was also required to withdraw from his conquered territory of Savoy and Piedmont.

The king was enraged, refused to withdraw, and blamed his Constable, Montmorency, who had always advocated peace, for Charles V’s volte-face. The emperor’s new proposition was to offer the hand of his daughter the Infanta Maria to Charles d’Orléans, together with the Netherlands, Burgundy, and Charolais. The wily emperor hoped that once Henri succeeded to the throne, he would surely go to war with his brother Charles over the disputed French territory. François I had been duped by Charles V, but as the king could not be at fault, Montmorency was demoted. Two camps formed at court: those for the Constable and
those for his successor, the reinstated Admiral Chabot de Brion. Naturally, Diane was on the side of the Constable and Anne d’Etampes supported Chabot de Brion. Charles V’s enemies rejoiced at the news that the peace between France and the empire was over.

Although François I had once again begun repressive measures against the reformers in France, he now signed a treaty with the Protestant German princes against the emperor. The treaty was formalized at Anet in front of the entire court and in the presence of Diane. Her son-in-law, Robert de La Marck, was a distant relation of the Duke of Cleves, leader of the German princes. According to the treaty, the duke would produce men-at-arms, and the king would consent to the duke’s marriage with his niece, Jeanne d’Albret, daughter of his sister Marguerite and Henri d’Albret, king of Navarre. The king and queen of Navarre resisted this move, as they had hoped their daughter would marry Philip of Spain, the emperor’s heir. But Diane was delighted by the king’s arrangement because it would bring her family closer to the French throne. After all, the sister of the Duke of Cleves, Anne, had just married Henry VIII of England.

François I had recently left Anet to inspect his constructions at Le Havre, when an extreme heat wave hit northern France for the whole month of August. An epidemic of dysentery broke out, which even affected the king. The dauphin Henri seemed to be the worst sufferer. He fell seriously ill, and Diane’s devotion in nursing him humiliated Catherine.

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1
. It is probable that this story was an invention of the seventeenth-century author Scipion Dupleix.