Volume I Part 40 (2/2)
FRANCIS THE SECOND AND THE TUMULT OF AMBOISE.
[Sidenote: The victims breathe more freely.]
[Sidenote: Epigrams on the death of Henry.]
The plans carefully matured by Henry for the suppression of the reformed doctrines were disarranged by his sudden death. The expected victims of the Spanish Inquisition, which he was to have established in France, breathed more freely. It was not wonderful that the ”Calvinists,”
according to an unfriendly historian, preached of the late monarch's fate as miraculous, and magnified it to their advantage;[729] for they saw in it an interposition of the Almighty in their behalf, as signal as any ill.u.s.trating the Jewish annals. Epigrams of no little merit were composed on the event, and were widely circulated. One likened the lance of Montgomery to the stone from David's sling, which became ”the unexpected salvation of the saints.”[730] In another, Henry is the soldier who pierces the Crucified through the side of those whom He styles His members; but the impious weapon--such is Heaven's avenging decree--shall be stained with the murderer's own blood.[731] These verses, and others like them, obtaining great currency, offended the ears of the late king's favorites and of the devoted adherents of the Roman Catholic Church, who ceased not for years to pour forth lamentations over the untimely death of Henry the Second, and the ill-starred peace with which it was so closely connected.[732]
[Sidenote: The young king.]
From the hands of a monarch in the prime of life, the sceptre had pa.s.sed into those of a stripling of sixteen, who was unfortunately endowed neither with his grandfather's intellect nor with his father's vigor of body; but who inherited the enfeebled mental and physical const.i.tution which was, perhaps, the result of the excesses of both. Although married to the beautiful Queen of Scots, some time before his father's reign came to its tragic conclusion, Francis the Second exhibited few of the instincts of a man and of a king, and showed himself to be even more of a minor in intelligence than in years. Content to leave the cares of government to his favorites, he sought only for repose and pleasure. Yet in this, as has been the case in more than one other instance, the most turbulent lot fell to him who would gladly have chosen quiet and sloth.
[Sidenote: Fall of the constable's power.]
With Henry's last breath, the supremacy of Constable Montmorency in the councils of state came to an end. In view of the minority of the successor to the throne, two measures were dictated by the customs of the realm--the appointment of the nearest prince of royal blood as regent, and the immediate convocation of the States General to confirm the selection, and to a.s.sign to the regent a competent council of state.[733] Unfortunately for the interests of France during the succeeding half-century, there were powerful personages interested in opposing this most natural and just arrangement, and there were specious excuses behind which their ambitious designs might shelter themselves.
The Cardinal of Lorraine and the Duke of Guise, with the queen mother, maintained that Francis was in all respects competent to rule; that he had already pa.s.sed the age at which previous kings had a.s.sumed the reins of government; that the laws had prescribed the time from which the majority of subjects, not of the monarch, should be reckoned;[734]
that, if too young himself to bear the entire burden of the administration, he could delegate his authority to those of his own kin in whom he reposed implicit confidence. There was, therefore, no necessity for establis.h.i.+ng a regency, still less for a.s.sembling the States General--an impolitic step even in the most quiet times, but fraught with special peril when grave dissensions threaten the kingdom.
[Sidenote: Catharine de' Medici a.s.sumes an important part.]
With the advent of her eldest son to the throne, Catharine de' Medici first a.s.sumed a prominent position, although not an all-controlling influence at court. During the reign of Francis the First she had enjoyed little consideration. Her marriage with Henry, in 1533, had given, as we have seen, little satisfaction to the people, who believed that her kinsman, Pope Clement the Seventh, had deceived the king; and Francis himself, disappointed in his ambitious designs by the pontiff's speedy death, looked upon her with little favor. For several years she had borne no children, and Henry was urged to put her away on the ground of barrenness. Nor was she more happy when her prayers had been answered, and a family of four sons and three daughters blessed her marriage. Her husband's infatuation respecting Diana of Poitiers embittered her life when dauphiness, and compelled her as queen to tolerate the presence of the king's mistress, and pay her an insincere respect. Excluded from all partic.i.p.ation in the control of affairs, she fawned upon power where her ambitious nature would have sought to rule.
Concealing her chagrin beneath an exterior of contentment, she exhibited, if we may believe the Venetian Soranzo, such benignity of disposition, especially to her own countrymen, that it would be impossible to convey an idea of the love entertained for her both by the court and by the entire kingdom.[735]
[Sidenote: Her timidity and dissimulation.]
[Sidenote: She dismisses Diana of Poitiers.]
Hypocrisy is the vice of timid natures. Such, we have the authority of a contemporary, and one who knew her well, for stating the nature of Catharine was.[736] In her, however, dissimulation was a well-known family trait, which she possessed in common with her kinsman, Pope Leo the Tenth, and all her house.[737] And it must be admitted that the idiosyncrasy had had a fair chance to develop during the five-and-twenty years she had spent in France, threatened with repudiation, contemned as an Italian upstart, suffering the gravest insult at the hands of her husband, but forced to dissemble, and to hide the pain his neglect gave her from the eyes of the curious world. Nor was her position altogether an easy one even now. It is true that her womanly revenge was gratified by the instant dismissal of the d.u.c.h.ess of Valentinois, who, if she retained the greater part of her ill-gotten wealth, owed it to the joint influence of Lorraine and Guise, whose younger brother, the Duke of Aumale, had married Diana's daughter.[738] But her ambitious plan, while securing the authority of her children, to rule herself, was likely to be frustrated by the pretensions of the two families of Montmoreney and Guise, raised by the late monarch to inordinate power in the state, and by the claim to the regency which Antoine of Bourbon-Vendome, King of Navarre, might justly a.s.sert. To establish herself in opposition to all these, her sagacity taught her was impossible. To prevail by allying herself to the most powerful and those from whom she could extort the best terms seemed to be the most politic course. Her choice was quickly made. It was unfortunate for France that her prudence partook more of the character of low cunning than of true wisdom, and that, in seeking a temporary ascendancy, she neglected the true interests of her own children and of the kingdom they inherited.
[Sidenote: Her alliance with the Guises.]
In order to prevent the convocation of the States and the appointment of the King of Navarre as regent, but one course appeared to be open to Catharine: she must throw herself into the arms of the Guises. Only thus could she become free from the odious dictation of the constable, under which she had groaned during her husband's reign. The Guises had had a narrow escape, it was said; for Henry the Second, having tardily discovered the insatiable ambition of the Lorraine family, had definitely made up his mind to banish them from court.[739] Now availing themselves of the great influence of their niece, Mary Stuart, over her royal husband, the duke and the cardinal prepared, by a bold stroke, to become masters of the administration, and made to Catharine such liberal offers of power that she readily acquiesced in their plans.
Of their formidable rivals, the King of Navarre was at a distance, in the south. The constable alone was dangerously near. But an immemorial custom furnished a convenient excuse for setting him aside. The body of the deceased monarch must lie in state for the forty days previous to its interment, under protection of a guard of honor selected from among his most trusty servants. Upon Montmorency, as grand master of the palace, devolved the chief care of his late Majesty's remains.[740]
Delighted to have their princ.i.p.al rival so well occupied, the cardinal and the duke hastened from the Tournelles to secure the person of the living monarch.
[Sidenote: The Guises make themselves masters of the king.]
When the delegates of the parliaments of France came, a few days later, to congratulate Francis on his accession, and inquired to whom they should henceforth address themselves, the programme was already fully arranged. The king had been well drilled in his little speech. He had, he said, committed the direction of the state to the hands of his two uncles, and desired the same obedience to be shown to them as to himself.[741]
[Sidenote: The court fool's sensible remark.]
The Cardinal of Lorraine was intrusted with the civil administration and the finances. His brother became head of the department of war, without the t.i.tle, but with the full powers, of constable.[742] Of royalty little was left Francis but the empty name.[743] There was sober truth lurking beneath the saucy remark of Brisquet, the court fool, who told Francis that in the time of his Majesty's father he used to put up at the ”_Crescent_,” but at present he lodged at the ”_Three Kings_!”[744]
[Sidenote: Montmorency retires to his own estates,]
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