The Serpent and the Moon: Two Rivals for the Love of a Renaissance King (8 page)

Since he had killed the king’s sister, albeit with some justification, Jacques de Brézé was stripped of his titles and his estates. Louis XI had loved Charlotte, but he was generous enough to give all Jacques de Brézé’s properties to Jacques’ son, Louis, and not claim them for the crown. With the death of Louis XI, his successor Charles VIII found Jacques de Brézé’s punishment too harsh and restored to him all his titles and properties. (It was rumored at the time that the reinstatement of the famous huntsman had much to do with the decline and subsequent improvement of the king’s hunt.) With the elegance of a
grand seigneur
, Jacques left his son in possession of everything the king had returned to him and retired to just one of his castles. He died a few years later.

Louis de Brézé—a famous huntsman like his father—had enjoyed the confidence of Charles VIII’s successor, Louis XII, and now shared
that of the new king, François. Although he was considered a loyal servant of the crown, perhaps some of the shame of his mother’s adultery, or the crime of his father’s swift retribution, lingered on in his memory. A union with Diane de Poitiers, a noble girl with illustrious connections, would most certainly help to overcome whatever shame he felt. Brézé’s previous wife had died and their marriage had been childless.

Diane inherited the pride and ambition of the Poitiers. She was accustomed to mixing with the highest in the land, and the value of an alliance with the powerful and well-connected Louis de Brézé would have been clear to her. However, the bridegroom was fifty-six, which was considered very old at the time, and he was also notoriously short-tempered. Diane reminded herself that her mentor and teacher, Anne de Beaujeu, herself a king’s daughter, had obediently married and been happy with the sieur de Beaujeu (later duc de Bourbon), a man twenty years her senior. Anne had arranged Diane’s father’s marriage to the wealthy Jeanne de Batarnay, and Diane knew Anne had her best interests at heart. Anne had taught the young girl that fortunes were maintained and great houses formed through marriages that were planned and not impulsive. Diane understood that girls of her status were brought up at their parents’ behest and to the benefit of their house. Furthermore, all marriages between important nobility required the approval of the king, and once given, no one dared to disagree with his choice. Diane had the satisfaction of knowing she would become one of the first ladies of France. Through this marriage, Diane’s rank would be raised to just one rung below that of a royal princess. Her life would be full and responsible, and she and her husband could share their love of the chase.

Diane had twice caught sight of her intended, first at the cathedral at Rheims during the coronation of François I on January 25, 1515, and again at the king’s solemn entrance into Paris on February 14. When in Paris, she had not yet been officially informed of her betrothal, but she suspected Brézé had been chosen for her. (Her betrothal to Louis had actually been settled since her tenth year.) She thrilled to see him march in the procession with her father, placed just behind the Princes of the Blood, and surrounded by the most senior
courtiers. They in turn were followed by their company of one hundred gentlemen, elegantly attired in outfits of brocaded satin and velvet in various colors. On the tips of their lances and around their thighs they sported narrow taffeta ribbon streamers of white, yellow, and red. They were mounted on splendid chargers, richly caparisoned, some in cloth of gold and others in cloth of silver. Diane could be justifiably proud of the man chosen to become her husband.

Louis de Brézé was most distinguished-looking, with fine features and perceptive eyes. He had the Valois
²¹
family’s large nose, a large mouth, and an air of severity and disdain that inspired fear in some and respect in others. He was stooped—some say humped—and his face bore a strong masculine pride. Contemporary sources agreed that he looked remarkable and alert. Most important, as the bridegroom of a young girl, he seemed to be a man who was interested in pleasing women. In short, he carried his fifties well.

The negative descriptions of Louis de Brézé all come from writers who have trouble understanding the impression such a man would make on a woman. It is even possible that Diane found Brézé attractive and was flattered that such an important, mature man as the Grand Sénéchal of Normandy should take an interest in a fifteen-year-old girl. Did her heart beat faster as she sat with the young queen and watched her future pass in front of her, imagining herself in the front ranks of the kingdom? Brézé’s inscrutable nature and ambiguous glances may even have challenged her. There is no doubt Louis de Brézé had charm and the qualities needed to win Diane’s affection and respect, if not her love. Whatever impression Mary Tudor’s confidences of marriage to an old man may have made on her, or whatever pleasure she had felt at the appreciative glances from the young gentlemen at court, Diane did not hesitate, and agreed to the union.

At the time she left home to marry, Diane de Poitiers’ famous beauty was well recorded. Her pale white skin was described as “luminous” and her hair more golden-red than blond. Her forehead was high, and her eyes an indefinite color between green and blue. Her
nose was straight; her mouth full and small. Contemporary reports all agreed she had a most aristocratic look and bearing, and carried herself with pride in her tall, slender body.

Anne de Beaujeu and her son-in-law the Constable had made all the arrangements for the wedding. On Easter Monday, March 29, 1515, in the presence of King François, Queen Claude, and the court, the wedding was celebrated at the Hôtel de Bourbon in Paris. The young bride was already considered beautiful, mature for her age, with a face as “solemn as Artemis.”
²²
Diane’s elderly bridegroom was fit and strong; he would remain by her side for the next seventeen years.

Louis de Brézé possessed a number of châteaux, including Bréval, Montchauvet, Rouen, Mauny, and Anet.
²³
It was this last, Anet in Normandy, that would become home to the newly married comtesse de Brézé. Anet was a forbidding medieval fortress with four towers, full of old attendants and dark mysteries, that had been left to Brézé by his first wife. The high-vaulted room Diane was to share with her husband contained the wooden four-poster bed in which Charlotte, Brézé’s royal and adulterous mother, had been slain by his father. After the fun and laughter of life among Diane’s young friends at Moulins, it must have been a shock to come to this house of gloom and decrepitude. Everything around her was old—even the servants. But Diane threw herself into her new life, filling the castle with spring flowers, engaging young women from the village, and soon the chill corridors began to ring with laughter. Fires were lit in every room; silver was brought out from the vaults and cleaned, and candelabra spread light on the highly polished oak furniture.

There were other compensations: country life revolved around the thrill of the chase, at which Diane excelled. Anet had magnificent stables and a vast, wonderful library. When Brézé was away traveling with the king or in Normandy on business, Diane would remain content at Anet, reading her husband’s books and riding his horses. There is a legend that while out hunting one day, young Diane, a strong swimmer since early childhood, heard a woman shouting in a swollen river.
Quickly, Diane rode to the bank and removed her heavy skirts and velvet mask. Wearing just her hose and shirt, she swam to the rescue, pulling the half-drowned woman to safety. Diane’s groom arrived on the scene and helped avert a tragedy, covering the frozen woman while Diane’s companions helped her. In gratitude, the woman gave Diane a small medallion, which she swore would preserve her forever from growing old.

T
O understand the Valois passion for Italy, and especially Milan, is to understand their reigns. François I considered it his mission in life to retrieve the lost conquests of his predecessors, Charles VIII and Louis XII. They, like him, believed they had a legitimate right to northern Italy through their ancestor, the heiress to Milan, Valentina Visconti.

The city-states of Italy in the sixteenth century were prizes worth winning. Arguably the most powerful and important was the republic of Venice, successfully governed by an elected oligarchy. When the Visconti family of Milan died out, the rich duchy was ruled successfully by the Sforzas. The republic of Florence was weaker militarily than Milan or Venice, but it was influential on the peninsula, due to the banking and diplomatic skills of the Medici family. The kingdoms of Naples and the Two Sicilies were controlled by various branches of the Spanish house of Aragon. The Papal States stretched across Italy coast to coast, with Rome as their capital, and the expansion of territory and power was the aim of every pontiff. These various autonomous units within the Italian peninsula all had their own agendas and made their alliances accordingly, often against one another.

French claims, conquests, and reversals in Italy during the late fifteenth century and the first quarter of the sixteenth are complicated, and require some study in order to understand the seesaw of French and Habsburg rivalries, which dominated the entire reign of François I and spilled over into that of his son. When Charles VIII invaded Italy in 1494, he was following an established pattern of French claims to Milan and Naples. Four years later, it was the turn of his successor Louis XII to
invade, accompanied by the pope’s son Cesare Borgia and Giuliano de’ Medici, son of Lorenzo the Magnificent.

As a result of this French military initiative into various states on the Italian peninsula, Florence took advantage of the general chaos and rebelled against the ruling Medici, who were chased out, Giuliano among them. In the north, Louis XII met with almost no opposition and the Milanese grandees rushed to join his victorious cavalcade into the city, just as they had joined Charles VIII five years earlier. When Naples also fell to France, the peninsula was in French hands and the dream had been realized.

Foolishly, Louis XII had agreed to a coalition with the pope in an expedition against Venice. This succeeded, and the republic was brought to heel. However, in a curious twist, the pope then had the French expelled from the peninsula with the help of the Swiss, whose pikemen formed the strongest mercenary force in Europe at the time. By 1515, the year of the coronation of François I, France no longer had any territory left in Italy. As a very young man, François had traveled to the northern Italian states and visited the studios of some of the great masters. His passion for the art and culture he experienced there made him mourn the loss of Milan more than any other French possession. Throughout his extraordinary life, Italy was never far from François’ thoughts. Even at the solemn moment of his coronation he had insisted that “Duke of Milan” be included among his many titles.

After a series of elderly kings, the French nation rejoiced in the youthful
joie de vivre
of François I, and his nobles yearned to prove themselves and gain the spoils of victory. The members of François’ court were young, enthusiastic, and daring, and they goaded their young king into reaching for glory by going to war over Milan especially as François had a mighty army and the best captains in memory. While the Spanish army and the pope’s forces were engaged in fighting the Venetians, the republic of Genoa asked France for military assistance. The French king knew that Henry VIII of England would not move against him without allies. The time was ripe for François I to strike against the emperor.

Although it was customary for a king of France to appoint his wife as his regent during his absence abroad, Queen Claude felt lost at court
and was somewhat frail during her first pregnancy. François installed his undoubtedly more able mother as his regent, and on July 15, 1515, a few months after his coronation, he left for Lyons to assemble his forces there.