The Serpent and the Moon: Two Rivals for the Love of a Renaissance King (37 page)

Henri also brought in new social measures. Each district in Paris was to pool its wealth for the needs of the poor, and on certain days convents would hand out food and
money. The more robust beggars were put to work repairing the city’s roads and walls, while those who were ill or crippled were moved into hospitals. Even the
Parlement
was to reform and to accept only members over thirty years old whose morals and way of life were above reproach.

An incident from Henri’s past resurfaced to stain the somber moral character of his court. The aborted duel between Guy Chabot, later baron de Jarnac, and Henri’s representative, La Châtaigneraie, had left both men unsatisfied, and the recent disgrace of Jarnac’s aunt, Anne d’Etampes, exacerbated the situation. With the advent of the new reign, the calumny against Jarnac, namely that he was the gigolo of his young stepmother, was again repeated by La Châtaigneraie. Would the new king allow the duel his father had refused? Henri discussed it with Montmorency at Ecouen and later with Diane at Anet. The king liked the concept of chivalric duels and finally agreed to let the contest take place. It does seem strange that a man of such noted kindness and consideration would agree to a duel to be fought to the death. The imperial ambassador Saint-Mauris wrote that, having seen Charles V, he knew what it means to be a real sovereign and found Henri II immature: “… It is his youth which can cause him to do some very trivial things.”

La Châtaigneraie would boast that he could throw a bull by holding his horns and was risking nothing insulting this young man. Having originally challenged La Châtaigneraie as Henri’s representative under the previous reign, and perhaps suspecting that Henri II
would
allow the duel to take place, Jarnac begged Diane to cancel it. But Diane hoped that the memory of Anne d’Etampes would be further disgraced by the defeat of her nephew in a duel of honor, and she refused to oblige. If Jarnac lost and was dishonored, the late king’s mistress and her regime would be, too. Diane’s enthusiasm for the duel was a rare example of her thirst for vengeance, albeit against a woman who had grievously wronged her. She saw herself as the pure influence on Henri, who would transform his court from the decadence of the past reign.

In the context of the new propriety, the duel between Jarnac and
La Châtaigneraie rapidly became a contest of the new morality versus the immorality of the past regime. Diane felt confident that La Châtaigneraie’s inevitable victory over Jarnac would represent the triumph of her virtue over the vice of Anne d’Etampes. The Guises suggested that François d’Aumale, the brave
Balafré
, should be La Châtaigneraie’s second. As Montmorency was forced to be the judge of the contest, he chose an excellent knight and Master of the Horse, the sieur de Boisy, to act as Jarnac’s second. Henri was delighted with the chivalric content of the contest, especially the point of view that the winner would be “God’s choice.” More than anything, he liked the fact that Diane would wreak her revenge on Anne d’Etampes.

The contestants began to train. The handsome but delicate Jarnac was clearly at a disadvantage against the massive bulk and strength of his adversary, who boasted having taken on several swordsmen at once and winning. Jarnac was as good as dead, and prepared himself for the inevitable outcome. However, on the advice of a friend (and some say Catherine was behind this), he agreed to take some fencing lessons with an Italian master named Caize. His opponent’s superior strength was obvious, but La Châtaigneraie was also slow and stupid, and he had an old wound that could weaken his right arm. Jarnac was advised to use his wits and his nimbleness. The date for the duel was fixed: July 10, 1547.

At dawn, a huge crowd began to travel from Paris and the surrounding countryside to the tournament site on the edge of a forest, next to Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Not since the reign of Saint Louis had a king of France authorized a duel to the death to attest to “God’s judgment.” By six in the morning, the area was already crowded. At midmorning, the court and the royal family took their places in the stand, with Henri sitting between Catherine and Diane. Catherine glittered in diamonds and pearls, in brilliant contrast to Henri and Diane, who looked confident and sober in their usual black and white. The spectacle began with a parade led by La Châtaigneraie, his second, the duc d’Aumale, the trumpeters, and behind them, three hundred young men dressed in white satin. After a circuit of the arena, the champion withdrew to his luxurious tent hung with tapestries, where
he had arranged a grand victory feast to celebrate with the court after the contest. La Châtaigneraie had even borrowed gold and silver plates from the local nobility to embellish the long center table.

When Jarnac appeared and paraded before the crowd with a small retinue all dressed in somber black, with little finery, the people murmured their disappointment. Boisy, his second, presented Jarnac to the king. As the offended party, Jarnac exercised his right to choose the weapons. To the great surprise of the crowd and the court, Boisy announced that the weapons would be huge swords, weapons not used since the fifteenth century, and that each man would carry a heavy shield. Suddenly, the contest looked a little more even: brute strength against nimbleness and wit. The heavy weapon could quickly weaken the mighty champion’s damaged arm. Aumale protested on behalf of La Châtaigneraie, and Anne de Montmorency, who presided over the tournament’s jury, took the whole day to deliberate the problem in great detail. Once the jury had referred to each aspect of the armaments, the verdict was decided in favor of Jarnac, and the competition was judged fair. By now it was six in the evening and the crowd had grown restless with the waiting.

At the given signal, La Châtaigneraie charged at once, hoping to annihilate his opponent before the weight of the sword could slow his movements. Jarnac easily dodged the manic approach, then dived toward his adversary. The crowd was stupefied. What was Jarnac trying to achieve by rushing at La Châtaigneraie? The young man’s Italian fencing master had taught him a new move unknown to swordsmen in France. It needed courage, and Jarnac had that. It had to work or he was a dead man. To the amazement of everyone, as La Châtaigneraie rushed past, Jarnac plunged his sword into his opponent, whose blood spurted onto the sand from a deep cut to the back of his knee. The wounded man hesitated and was struck again by Jarnac with a second deep cut in the same place. La Châtaigneraie collapsed.
¹³

Seeing his man crumple, Henri turned white with rage, Diane red with embarrassment. They had set the scene as if they were paragons of
virtue and now their champion lay in the dust. Did Catherine dare a slight smile?

With measured steps, Jarnac approached the king to ask if he might be spared having to give his adversary the death blow, which was legal but unnecessary. His honor had been vindicated and he did not wish to strike a fallen man. Henri was still in shock at the outcome and did not, or could not, in his fury and shame, reply. Jarnac approached his victim and ordered him to give him back his honor. La Châtaigneraie pulled himself up on one knee and lashed out wildly at Jarnac with his sword before collapsing once again. When asked by the victor for the third time if he could forgo the death blow, the king managed to pull himself together and announce that Jarnac had done what he had set out to do and had indeed been vindicated. Instead of letting the victor take the traditional lap of honor, his second spirited Jarnac away to avoid the wrath of the many losing punters.

In the chaos that followed, a section of the crowd surged toward La Châtaigneraie’s celebration tent and looted everything they could find—the gold and silver dishes as well as the food—until the king’s guards dispersed them. All this while, the wounded man lay on the ground in the arena, spilling his blood. Montmorency noticed and called for help, but the doctors could do nothing more. In his shame, La Châtaigneraie pulled off their dressings and allowed himself to bleed to death. In the eyes of the cavaliers of the time, death was far better than dishonor. Cowardice was unforgivable.

The result of this foolish and tragic event was a great rush by the gallants of France to the fencing schools to learn the latest Italian techniques, and dueling became quite the fashion, to the detriment of the court. It also made Diane and Henri take stock of their power and how easily they could abuse it. This failure to demonstrate their virtue over the regime of vice headed by Anne d’Etampes in the last reign must have taught the lovers a lesson. The Jarnac incident remained on their conscience for some time.

O
N July 24, 1547, following the traditional ninety days of royal mourning, Henri II made his solemn entrance into the city of Rheims, in a wondrous procession on horseback. He passed under three triumphal arches each emblazoned with his arms, the queen’s, and the dauphin’s, bordered by
fleur-de-lys
and crescents. On the pediment in the center of each arch was Henri and Diane’s motto: “
Donec totum impleat orbem
”—“Until it fills the whole world.” At the first archway, the king stopped to receive the keys of the town and to watch a curious fight between satyrs and savages. At the second gate, he was met by twelve magistrates who carried a canopy over his head decorated with the crescent moon. Once he had passed down a narrow street and through the third
arc de triomphe
, he saw thirteen effigies representing all the virtues, the first letters of their names in French spelling out
HENRI DE VALOIS
. Cannons boomed, church bells rang, trumpets and sundry musical instruments were banged or blown, and fireworks were let off everywhere.

Catherine was seated at a window overlooking the processional route; at a window nearby the other
dames d’honneur
surrounded Diane. The king’s wife and mistress were no doubt equally proud to see the man they loved in his glory, acclaimed by his people. Henri had grown into a fine figure of a man, always at his best on horseback, an accomplished athlete. A likable person, with beautiful manners, gentle, tender, and refined, he had no difficulty in winning the love of his subjects. He also had great charm. Henri reined in his horse and saluted his wife, then he halted beneath Diane’s window and saluted her. Everywhere the crescent moon shone silver, symbol of the dawn of a new reign—and of the goddess with whom Diane shared a name.

It was customary for a new monarch to give a splendid gift to the cathedral—Henri brought with him a fifteenth-century silver-gilt reliquary in the shape of a pyramid, inscribed: “King Henri II brought me here in 1547, the day of his coronation.”
¹⁴
It housed a stone from the Holy Sepulcher, and depicted the tomb of the risen Christ. It was not large, but it was exquisite. Henri’s monogram had been added to either side, the “H” with the two crescents forming the “D,” one side in black, the other in white; three interlaced crescents were also added, two in white and one in black in the center of a circle representing the full moon. The same decoration was embroidered in pearls on Henri’s tunic. Having left his gift on the high altar, Henri retired to rest and hold a vigil on the night before his coronation.

It is during the king’s entry into Rheims that several sources mention he “sleeps in the same bed with Montmorency”—and not for the first time. A number of the ambassadors, including Jean de Saint-Mauris, allude to this, as does the usually reliable Ivan Cloulas, but most biographers omit it completely. In fact, Henri is mentioned as sharing a bed with others of his senior officers on various occasions. It seems it was quite normal in the sixteenth century—and until comparatively recent times—for men to share beds, particularly among the military, without suggestive overtones. It was taken as a sign of friendship, respect, and of trust. The greatest mark of esteem a victorious general could offer his vanquished opponent was to share his bed with a man who could easily kill him during the night.
¹⁵

Two days later, on July 26, Diane was seated among the
dames d’honneur
beneath the queen’s dais in Nôtre-Dame. Everything in the cathedral glittered gold—the vessels, the candelabra, the sovereigns’ and archbishops’ thrones, altar cloths, and vestments. Catherine was heavy with her third child and needed to sit comfortably during the long ceremony. Preceded by the Constable, the king entered the cathedral in procession with the bishops. He wore a fine white shirt and a blue satin tunic, lined in scarlet taffeta and scattered with embroidered
golden
fleur-de-lys
. It was slit down the front at his chest and in the back between his shoulders to enable him to be anointed with the Holy Oil, which symbolized the Most Christian King’s bond with God.