The Serpent and the Moon: Two Rivals for the Love of a Renaissance King (9 page)

Gathering his friends about him, François I rode out at the head of an army of 30,000 men and 370 pieces of artillery—a huge force at the time. While on the march, the king received the news that on August 19, Queen Claude had given birth to a daughter, Louise, a good omen for the forthcoming battle. The Battle of Marignano, near Milan, began on September 13, 1515 and lasted two days. François I fought heroically in the thick of it, like a warrior from ancient times, and
emerged the overwhelming victor. He defeated the indomitable Swiss mercenaries, who were employed by the ruler of Milan, Maximilian Sforza, an ally of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and of the pope. In a brief ceremony, Pierre du Terrail, chevalier de Bayard, France’s most famous warrior, knighted the king on the field as he knelt among the fifteen thousand slain. François wrote to his mother: “There has not been seen so fierce and cruel a battle these last two thousand years.…”

On October 13, 1515, François I was declared duke of Milan and Parma. He had begun his reign in glory by regaining France’s lost territories in northern Italy, and he could return home to enjoy his kingdom with Milan part of France once more. A medal was struck with the profile of the twenty-two-year-old warrior-king, and his splendid conquest was immortalized in paintings and friezes.

Diane’s honeymoon at her husband’s château of Anet had been brief. Just three weeks after the wedding, Louis de Brézé and Jehan de Saint-Vallier left for Grenoble to join the king’s army heading toward Italy. Brézé and Saint-Vallier each distinguished themselves in the battle of Marignano, and when the king made his triumphal entry into Milan on October 11, the hundred crossbowmen under Brézé and the hundred led by Saint-Vallier, all fully armed and in the liveries of their captains, were much admired. Diane pined for her husband. In a letter she sent him through Florimond Robertet, powerful secretary to the previous king, Diane wrote complaining of having been deserted, and gave the impression of being sincerely attached to Louis de Brézé.

Marignano entered the annals of French history as a great victory, but tragically its gains were short-lived. During her son’s absence at war, the regent Louise de Savoie had held back for herself funds that the king had instructed be sent to his troops in Milan. Without pay, the soldiers of the army of occupation in Italy deserted, and the duchy was lost. By May 1522, after the Battle of La Bicocca, all that the French retained were the castles of Milan and Cremona. The territory won by François’ dazzling victory at Marignano vanished through the greed of his mother.

Shortly before his coronation, the king had appointed his mother’s protégé, Charles de Bourbon, as Constable of France, an office not
held for some fifteen years, and thus made him the second most powerful man in the kingdom. (It was common rumor at the time, though it has never been proven, that Louise de Savoie and Charles de Bourbon were lovers.) The Constable de Bourbon acquitted himself superbly at Marignano, and in gratitude, in September following the battle, François appointed the half-Italian Charles lieutenant general in the duchy of Milan. That privilege, together with his vast estates joined to those of his wife, Suzanne de Beaujeu, made the duc de Bourbon a sovereign in all but name. In fact, he was the last great feudal magnate in the style of the old dukes of Burgundy or Brittany, and from his seat of Chantelles, he virtually ruled central France. His holdings were just smaller than today’s Belgium.

In 1517, the king, as godfather, with the queen and his mother, Louise de Savoie, attended the almost royal christening of the long-awaited son of Charles and Suzanne de Bourbon. Louis and Diane de Brézé were present at this sumptuous event at Moulins, together with Jehan de Poitiers, Diane’s father, whose rank depended on his liege lord, Charles de Bourbon.

It was on this occasion that François I finally appreciated the incredible wealth and power of the Constable de Bourbon. All along the route Bourbon had stationed formations from his own army, dressed in bright costumes, while others staged mock battles on the road. Upon arrival at the château, the royal party was met by the duke, attended by five hundred gentlemen, all dressed in velvet, each wearing a heavy three-strand gold chain. In fact, Charles de Bourbon so loved gold that he would have nothing made of any other metal, whether his plate, his mirrors, cups, or candlesticks. From his own estates he could raise an army of 34,000—and this man was the commander-in-chief of the king’s forces. Such wealth and power could rival that of the king of France himself, and perhaps even threaten the security of his realm.

François realized that neither Blois nor Amboise could equal the duke’s two great châteaux, Moulins and Chantelles, nor the ducal possessions—his library, paintings, furniture and furnishings, and
objets d’art
—all emblazoned with the arms of their owner. At last the king understood why Anne de Beaujeu’s husband had so strongly opposed the marriage of his daughter and Charles de Bourbon. With their combined
might and wealth, the peace of the realm would depend on the goodwill of a vassal. Charles de Bourbon, a proud man, easily offended, who kept his own counsel and with unknown ambitions, was someone the king would have to watch carefully.

The magnificent celebrations for the Bourbons’ baby, the comte de Clermont, imprudently lavish in the eyes of some, lasted eight days. Tragically, the baby died five months later. The Constable and Suzanne de Beaujeu had been married for twelve years and failed to have another child.

_____________________

1
. A Prince of the Blood (Royal) is a prince of the ruling house and not just a member of a princely family.

2
. According to Erasmus, some girls were women at ten and mothers at eleven. Anne de Beaujeu was fifteen years older than her first cousin, Louise de Savoie (their mothers were sisters).

3
.
Marguerita
is the Latin word for pearl.

4
. At the king’s autopsy it was pronounced that the blow to his head would not have killed him, and it was noted that he had eaten an orange shortly before the accident, which was thought to have been sent from Italy. Whispers of poison circulated.

5
. Her father, Louis XI, considered Jeanne so ugly that she had to hide behind a screen whenever he entered the room. She founded a religious order and was canonized by Pope Pius XII in 1950.

6
. Jeanne de France solemnly swore that the marriage had indeed been consummated.

7
. The duke’s line belonged to the Valois family, senior to the Bourbon.

8
. Although François was the heir to the throne and would be popularly known as “
Monsieur le Dauphin
,” he was never entitled to be so called: only the eldest son or grandson of a king could be dauphin.

9
. Spain was not yet united. Technically, Charles was king of Castile, Aragon, Navarre, Leon, Galicia, Algeciras, Jaen, etc. The unification happened in three stages—in 1707, 1715, and 1716. For the sake of simplicity, these countries are referred to here as “Spain.”

10
. According to the doctors of the time, a girl could only be expected to produce strong, healthy children from the age of seventeen or eighteen. François I himself was almost six feet four inches tall.

11
. Traditionally, the upturned candle or torch symbolized the end of the pleasures of life. According to Dr. Allison Rawles, this old French saying is a take on the Petrarchan idea of the paradox that love brings both pleasure and pain. It was a commonly expressed Renaissance conceit.

12
. There were two Clouets, Jean and his son François, both painters to the king and the French court.

13
. Charles de Bourbon-Montpensier was half Italian, as his mother was Claire de Gonzaga.

14
. Pierre II de Bourbon suffered all his life from migraines—he was therefore known as
Malatesta
.

15
. Antonio de’ Beatis,
The Travel Journal
.

16
. Queens and royal princesses are traditionally addressed as “
Madame
” even though Louise de Savoie was not the queen mother because she was never crowned. After the coronation of her son, she was always referred to as “Madame Louise.”

17
. Scrofula was a tubercular infection of the skin of the neck manifested by ugly sores that ulcerated; it was repulsive but not life-threatening. The only other European monarch who traditionally had this alleged gift and “touched for the king’s evil” was the king of England.

18
. Forty days was the length of strict quarantine imposed on the widow of a king, to ensure she could not conceive a child she could claim was her late husband’s. With the exception of some states in Italy, the mourning dress code for Christian queens prescribed white, not black. After the Reformation, only Catholic queens wore white for mourning or during an audience with the pope, which is still the custom today.

19
. With Mary, he would produce a son and two daughters. After her death, he married again and had two more sons.

20
. The king’s representative, similar to governor—Louis was made Grand Sénéchal in 1490.

21
. A long nose like that of François I, inherited no doubt from his adulterous Valois mother, Charlotte.

22
.
Journal d’un bourgeois de Paris
. Edited by Ludovic Lalanne.

23
. Pronounced “Annette.”

CHAPTER THREE

The Renaissance King

A
s Louis de Brézé’s wife, Diane enjoyed a senior place at court. She had been appointed a matron of honor to Queen Claude and ranked as the third highest placed lady in the land. The queen’s court reflected the religious principles, chastity, and austerity of her parents, Louis XII and Anne de Bretagne. But Louise de Savoie, having arranged her son’s marriage to the late king’s daughter for dynastic reasons, despised Claude for her staunch belief in all the honorable traditions, while she encouraged François in his excesses and his mistresses.

Although the king needed little encouraging in his affairs, he seems to have been genuinely fond of Claude. According to the contemporary Antonio de’ Beatis, the king “holds his wife the queen in such honor and respect that when in France and with her he has never failed to sleep with her each night.” The result was the birth of three sons and four daughters over a period of nine years. Constantly pregnant or recovering from a birth, Claude did not take part in much of the court ritual, but she did have one glorious moment—her coronation in Saint-Denis on May 10, 1517, and her official entry into Paris three
days later. A queen’s coronation and entry into the capital was traditionally celebrated long after the king’s—sometimes only after the birth of an heir. The delay helped to defray the expense of two coronations and state entries so close together. In Claude’s case, the ritual had been postponed for two years due to the queen’s pregnancies and slow recoveries.

It vexed the king that, in order to make the preparations for Claude’s coronation and entry into Paris, he had to remain in the capital for three months. He amused himself by visiting taverns and inns incognito; according to the
Journal d’un bourgeois de Paris
, he drunkenly forced his way into private homes, a diversion that was far from popular.

During the splendid parade, Diane remained in close attendance on the queen, who was carried to the cathedral in a litter draped in cloth of silver. She wore her crown and the crown jewels, including a necklace of untold value. François watched the coronation ceremony from a balcony hidden behind a metal grille. The duc d’Alençon stood behind the queen, holding up Charlemagne’s heavy crown. In front of her, Charles, the Constable de Bourbon, knelt holding the train of her long cloak of blue velvet lined with ermine. The prince de la Rochesur-Yon, who held her scepter, knelt next to her on one side, and on the other was the comte de Guise, who held the “hand of justice.”

As the queen made her state entry into Paris, Diane de Poitiers was again in attendance and noted that it was as splendid as the king’s entry two years earlier.

Carried in a litter shaded by a canopy gallantly borne in turn by all the representatives of the city’s guilds, Claude was escorted by sixteen princesses on horseback whose hats were cut to resemble crowns. All along the processional route, tableaux were staged to demonstrate the queen’s virtues and allegories of her charms. When Claude’s litter reached a fountain, three nymphs burst from a heart, symbolizing the three kinds of love: divine, earthly, and conjugal. Finally, the celebrations came to a climax in the evening with a sumptuous banquet at the Palais de Justice. This was served on an immense marble table, draped in cloth of gold and covered with gold and silver plate. The royal trumpeters announced the serving of each course.

The next day, François organized a tournament under the patronage of the
fleur-de-lys
of France and Claude’s symbol, the white ermine of her duchy of Brittany.
¹
The Knights of the Night, dressed in black and led by the comte de Saint-Pol, competed in the tournament against the Knights of the Day, dressed all in white and led by the king.

The queen’s coronation was the occasion for the king to take her on a “progress,” or journey, through the kingdom, setting in motion an immense royal cavalcade of some ten thousand people. Passing through Picardy, the monarch and the court arrived at Rouen. On August 2, wearing his chain of office and magnificently dressed in cloth of gold, his charger caparisoned in the same, the king made his official entry. François I was met by Louis de Brézé, who presented him with the keys to the city. The next day was the turn of the queen’s official entry.

The king and queen were received in the city by Diane at the château de Rouen, and then again at the Brézé country château de Mauny. While the king hunted with his hosts, his ministers negotiated with the Norman elders for a sizable loan.

François I was one of the most attractive and exciting personalities ever to sit on the throne of France—tall, dark, well built, he was thought most handsome (despite rather spindly legs), and very regal. He also had great charm and blind courage, and neither he nor anyone at his court believed there was a woman living who could resist him. He saw the court as a font of pleasure, his own and that of his courtiers. This was an era when tales of chivalry exerted a powerful influence on the young courtiers around the new king. The costly pageantry and
joie de vivre
which enveloped this smiling monarch and his court wherever he went were in stark contrast to the simple ideals of royally maintained in the reign of Louis XII. François loved women, their spirit as well as their beauty. Gathering the charmers of the court about him at one of his châteaux, he told his enchanted listeners: “A court without ladies ’tis like a year without springtime, and a springtime without roses.” Brantôme writes: “Although he held the opinion that they [women] were highly inconstant and variable, he would never hear anything said against them in his Court and required that they should be shown every honor and respect.” Although François encouraged his courtiers to take mistresses—he called them fools if they did not—he himself had exquisite manners and never forced a conquest he could not achieve by gentle persuasion. The court soon realized that Diane, the lovely Grande Sénéchale of Normandy, took her marriage vows seriously and the
chevalier
in François admired her the more for that.

A
S no children had been born to Louis de Brézé in his first marriage, his joy was complete when in the spring, exactly two years after her marriage, his seventeen-year-old wife gave birth to a daughter. She was named Françoise in honor of the king. The queen produced a son at the same time, the dauphin François. At Claude’s request, Diane was soon back at her side at Blois in the Loire, the queen’s favourite château and childhood home.

The gentle queen was constantly mocked for her motto “
Candidior candidis
”—“Whiter than the lilies”—by her husband’s daring sister, Marguerite (praised by the poet Clément Marot as having “
corps
feminin, coeur d’homme et tête d’ange
”—“the body of a woman, the heart of a man and the head of an angel”) as well as by his
maîtresse en tître
,
²
the beautiful brunette Françoise de Foix, comtesse de Château-briand. There was also an English girl called Anne Boleyn at the queen’s court at this time; she had accompanied Mary Tudor to France when Mary married Louis XII, and she remained behind when Mary returned to England. Anne Boleyn stayed in France for seven years and made it known she found the court in which she served exceedingly dull. Claude, however, had conviction in her principles and ignored the court’s excesses. She needed Diane to comfort her and much appreciated her presence.

L
IFE for Diane continued with its round of official events and private pleasures in their various estates. When she was not at home at Anet or in Normandy, Diane was almost constantly in attendance on Queen Claude. Naturally, the comtesse de Brézé’s beauty did not escape the notice of the king or his courtiers, but her reputation was pure. Diane’s portrait was one in a wonderful album of drawings of the ladies of the court gathered in 1520 by Madame de Boisy. It is called
Recueil du crayon d’Aix
—and has several remarks noted in the king’s hand. François’ only comment beneath Diane’s portrait was “
Belle à voir, honnête à hanter
”—“Pleasing to look at, honest to know.” We see a strong young woman, with ample shoulders and chest, and the coloring of someone who takes a great deal of outdoor exercise. Her gaze is level and confident, her demeanor self-assured and discreet. Although most attractive, her face indicates more nobility and dignity than sensuality. As yet, it does not show the great beauty she would acquire with maturity.

Diane was at Amboise when the queen’s second son, Henri, duc d’Orléans, was born there on March 31, 1519. She held him tenderly before placing the tightly swaddled baby into his mother’s arms. Both Claude and Diane were eighteen years old.

Queen Claude liked to spend most of her day in the nursery with the children, particularly as constant childbearing was wearing out what little stamina she had for the activities of the court. She stayed with them predominantly in three palaces, Saint-Germain-en-Laye,
³
Amboise, and Blois. In these châteaux the royal children had the happiest of childhoods; they were joined by a number of others from noble families who were known as “
enfants d’honneur
,” and they received salaries as companions to the royal children. The dauphin and Henri’s domestic arrangements in the royal nursery were lavish: in 1523, 240 people were employed at all the palaces to attend to them alone.

Admiral Guillaume Gouffier, seigneur de Bonnivet, was the children’s first governor before he left to command the Italian campaign. He then passed the post to his brother-in-law, René de Cossé-Brissac, whose wife had been governess to the dauphin for five years. The Brissac sons were
enfants d’honneur
, who lived with the princes and remained close friends. Bonnivet and Brissac were respected warriors, included in the nursery household to supervise the princes in rough
sports such as wrestling, riding, and hunting to hounds—all essential attributes for a Valois. The dauphin and Henri loved their hunting dogs but did not really enjoy falconry, although the king and court had more than five hundred birds of prey. The English ambassador reported that in 1522, Louise de Savoie told him she had never seen a bigger child than Henri at just three years old.