Full Text - European History Quarterly

David Potter
Kingship in the Wars of Religion: The
Reputation of Henri III of France
for the French monarchy during the Wars of
reached
at the house of J6r6me de Gondi in SaintReligion
Cloud at around eight in the morning of 1 August 1589. Henri III,
who was residing there during the siege of League dominated
Paris, was still at his lever when he was stabbed in the stomach by
the Dominican friar Jacques C16ment. The wound, thought at first
by the king to be superficial, proved much worse and he expired
at around three in the following morning. Though the king’s cousin
and ally Henri of Navarre immediately claimed the crown, many
of the former king’s servants left him and the court was already
dispersed.’ The scene was set for Henri IV’s long and painful
reconquest of his kingdom.
The main issue that had divided Frenchmen after 1560 was
religion but this was inseparable from a political crisis which generated a new and furious debate on the foundations of nationality,
political power, legitimate authority and the social hierarchy, and
brought into question the way in which the French state had
developed in the first half of the sixteenth century.2 The crisis of
confidence was compounded by the growing financial problems
which undermined the role of the crown as the guarantor of public
peace. The Wars of Religion were accompanied in effect by a tax
revolt which grew in severity during the period and deprived the
crown of crucial revenues in both Catholic and Protestant regions.
In essence, it was a reaction against the worst of the war-finance
system in the 1550s.3 This, with a seriously deficient military system
that prevented the crown from mobilizing its full internal strength,
prevented it from imposing a military solution even though it
might defeat the Protestants in set-piece battles. A final solution
would involve long and costly sieges, while the crown’s forces,
The lowest
point
was
European History Quarterly (SAGE, London,
Delhi), Vol. 25 (1995), 485-528.
Thousand Oaks, CA and New
486
heavily dependent on mercenaries, were faced by a Huguenot
force well organized for wars of attrition.~4
Such was the fundamental background to Henri III’s inability
to impose a solution to the liking of his majority Catholic subjects.
His mother Catherine de Medici had aimed at conciliation for
much of her period in power, with the principal objective of
maintaining the crown’s freedom of manoeuvre. Thus, her antidote
to the first stage of the wars was the great royal tour de France of
1564-6, a project she repeated with similar lack of success in
September 1578 to November 1579.5 After the Massacre of SaintBartholomew, the crown steadily lost that freedom of manoeuvre
and much hope of controlling events, instead responding to them,
sometimes energetically, sometimes not. The problem deepened
immeasurably after Anjou’s death in 1584; the royal couple were
widely thought to be sterile and the Navarre succession began to
dominate the political world, exacerbating the fears of Catholics.6
The personal problems of Henri III did not, of course, cause
the prolongation of the wars, but the shortcomings of his rule,
justified or not, became the major political issue of the day, much
as Charles I’s policies in the England of the 1640s were to do.
Ultimately, the ancient constitutional dictum that ’Ie roi ne peut
mal faire’ and the unchallenged inviolability of the roi tres chretien
were overturned.’ Henri III became perhaps the most hated king
in French history, the clergy of his capital praying for his destruction. In this, the activity of publicists in debasing the king’s character was central, for how could a monster of depravity be the Lord’s
anointed?8 Already, in 1587, Pierre de 1’Estoile noted the attack
on the king by the preachers of Paris ’et que IA dessus les crocheteurs de Paris le trainaient par la fange de leurs infdmes m6disances
et bouffoneries.’9
Henri III was undoubtedly one of the most intelligent and
gifted of the sixteenth-century Valois kings. Not only that; his
correspondence shows him to be perhaps the most hard-working.
Why, then, was he overtaken by disaster? The answer must be
seen partly in the intractability of the problems already outlined
and partly in the methods he used to deal with them. His early
public career as a militant leader of Catholic reaction was deceptive. De Thou recalled with hindsight that, during his brother’s
reign, ’personne ne parassait plus digne du tr6ne que Henri, et
tout le monde souhaitoit 1’avoir pour maitre; a peine fut-il arriv6,
qu’on s’en degouta jusqu’A augurer fort mal de son regne.’ But
487
Charles IX had remarked in September 1573: ’My brother’s
character will alone be appreciated when he rules.’’° On his return
to France, his tendency to be all things to all men and thus satisfy
none became more pronounced. His proclaimed position was that
he would guarantee the security of Protestants as long as they
behaved as good subjects ’pour faire cesser la guerre et division
entre mes subjectz’.’ ~ Within months, military developments made
this impossible. He established his credentials as a Catholic by
extravagant public devotions in 1574-5 but began negotiations
with the Protestants as early as February 1575 that led to the
Peace of Monsieur and the Edict of Beaulieu in May 1576,
the most favourable terms conceded since the 1562 Edict of January. The consequence was to disappoint and frustrate Catholic
hopes of victory engendered since 1572. This cost the king much
support and established a pattern for the next ten years; war began
again in 1577, ended by the peace of Bergerac and the edict of
Poitiers on pacification (September 1577) that modified that
of Beaulieu and proved as difficult to establish. The edict of
Poitiers was Henri’s own work and he saw it as the key to his
solution of his kingdom’s problems, but it quickly failed and this
was a severe blow that compounded more personal problems. 12
His parallel determined efforts to reform the government, from
the Estates General of Blois (1577) and the great reforming edict
stemming from it in May 1579, to the Assembly of Notables (1583)
and the reforms of the council and the court, ultimately failed to
solve the underlying problems.
Despite the lingering loyalty of figures like Villeroy and Brantôme,13 few had anything good to say about the king by the end
of his reign and the critical tradition remained central in the
historiography down to Gaston Dodu’s Les valois of 1934, in
which nothing positive can be found about him. 14 The work of the
last generation of historians on the period has revealed Henri III
to be one of the more interesting rulers of the sixteenth century.
Pierre Chevallier’s biography with its subtitle ’Roi Shakespearien’
gives us the picture of a cultivated, intelligent and, at times, energetic monarch with fatal flaws to his political personality; as a
result of his complex heredity and domination by his mother
he was the enforced involuntary actor in a tragedy. 15 Jacqueline
Boucher’s massive study of the court life of the period reveals
among other things the immense innovative energies of the period
and the undoubted personal and intellectual gifts of the monarch.
even
488
This is an important corrective, though not universally accepted
in its entirety.16
We also know more about the range of forces opposed to the
king. Arlette Lebigre’s work on the League tells us much about
the way the king’s reputation was twisted in Parisian propaganda.
Robert Descimon’s and Eli Barnavi’s work on the League reveals
the role of Guise partisans in constructing the ’black legend’
about the king. Bamavi, for instance, has shown how the fiscal
demands of the crown made necessary by civil war and its trampling on the rights of the Parisian establishment led many, including the historically influential L’Estoile, to believe the worst about
him and brought recruits among frustrated lawyers and clergy to
the Catholic cause.&dquo; Jacqueline Boucher has pointed out the crucial role of disgruntled priests and lawyers in the authorship of
the campaign against the king. Of 77 known authors of the 870
League publications in Paris between 1585 and 1594, there were
26 clerics, 14 nobles, 14 lawyers, 7 jobbing writers, 6 royal officiers,
2 clients of great nobles, 2 artisans or merchants and 6 unclassifiable.’R
Margaret McGowan has shown how the attacks on the king
took the form of a reversal of the customary visual and literary
imagery that sustained the legitimacy of the monarchy from the
time of Henri’s return from Poland: the tres chrétien monarch of
wisdom, prudence and virtue. Thus, Hercules becomes Herod,
Solomon Nero and Saint Louis Julian the Apostate. The roi-soleil
(Helios) becomes Heliogabalus, most depraved of Emperors.19
Keith Cameron in his work on the satirical propaganda of the
League has shown how reputations could be torn apart in the
course of the political and religious struggles of the 1580S.21 That
propaganda he considers essentially as satire in the form of
’stylised distortion’, though the works considered in his study
could also be described as invective, a distinction made by J.H.
Salmon. The device of showering accusations of perversion or
immorality on enemies was well established by the 1580s, however,
and used against other rulers. It was essential in the justification
for deciding ’when a king was not a king’. 21
Distortions of the king’s image by likening him to Heliogabalus
and Sardanapalus can be seen in Barnaud’s Le cabinet du Roy de
France of 1582, along with the attacks on the mignons that were
to become commonplace.22 As early as 1576, though, a joke titulary
appeared on the streets of Paris, which began:
489
Henri, par la grace de sa mere incertain roi de France et de Pologne imaginaire,
concierge du Louvre, marguillier de Saint-Germain I’Auxerrois et de toutes les
églises de Paris, gendre de Colas, godronneur des collets de sa femme et friseur
de ses cheveux, visiteur des 6tuves, gardien des Quatre Mendiants, p~re conscrit
des Blancs-Battus et protecteur des Caputiers.’~
This sudden transformation of the earlier Henri, Catholic general
in the field, to a monarch who avoided his primary duty of leading
his armies against his enemies, was disastrous for his reputation.
The Savoyard ambassador Lucinge, a hostile observer but with
access to the views of the king’s enemies, pointed out in 1585 that
the moment he was crowned ’tout a coup on vid rabaistre cette
humeur martialle’ and his desire to enjoy peace declared him to
be ’pusillanime et faute de valeur’.24 The readiness to disseminate
severe criticism as early in the reign as 1575-6 indicates that the
rot may have set in for monarchical authority before Henri III’s
accession. As Arlette Jouanna has reminded us, the years 1573-6
and of the fifth War of Religion were a period in which a reexamination of the very bases of absolute monarchy was being
conducted in pamphlet literature, and the notion of power concentrated in one unstable and unpredictable person challenged. 25
It was, though, the vituperative propaganda of the Parisian
League and especially that born in the aftermath of the king’s
summary execution of the duke of Guise and his brother the
cardinal of Lorraine in December 1588, that saw the final collapse
of royal mystique. 26 For many contemporaries, Henri III was either
a demon or a profoundly ambiguous character. The demonization
was largely a response to the popular audience for the propaganda
of the League which, as Jacqueline Boucher pointed out, was
manichaean in its need for heros and villains and which, since
1572 at least, had been suffused with a rhetoric of extreme hatred. 21
Since the publication of Denis Crouzet’s remarkable work on
Catholic discourse in the period, it is also now clear that the
frenzied attack on the king was fuelled by the overwhelming
eschatological anxiety of the period that identified an unfaithful
monarch as.one cause of God’s anger, though Crouzet’s tendency
to set aside social and political determinants should be treated
with caution. Crouzet tends to see League writers as expecting
divine punishment to descend upon the king. It is true that early
in 1589 they seldom called directly for tyrannicide, though their
portrayal of the king as a wicked Herod was certainly used to
490
resistance and, as Baumgartner makes clear, there was
much discussion of tyrannicide in Paris during those months.=8
The vituperation of the League has to be set in a wider context.
Among contemporary writers who were capable of taking a more
measured view, Brant6me is perhaps characteristic. It is significant
that, though he promised a biography of the king in the course of
his Hommes Ilhistres, he was never able to pull one together. His
opinions do emerge from many references and we can see how
ambiguous his view was. The monarch’s disreputable acts as heir
to the throne are fully detailed (e.g. his participation in the murder
of the first prince of Cond6 at Jarnac) but he goes on to praise
his diligent attention to affairs of state and at one point sums him
up as ’un tr6s bon Roi s’il eut rencontr6 un bon siècle.’29 From
another angle, the Parisian lawyer Pierre de 1’Estoile, normally a
loyalist and who described the League as ’ce grand monstre’ in
April 1589, could never refrain from recording any gossip, however
adverse, about the king and carefully listed the worst examples of
hostile propaganda .30 The distorted picture of the king that
emerges from Agrippa d’Aubign6’s Tragiques was born in the
Protestant vituperation of the monarchomach era, itself a source
of impetus in the process of the discrediting of Henri III, as F.J.
Baumgartner has pointed out.;’ Aubign6’s lines:
justify
Mais malheureux celui qui vit esclave infame
Sous une femme hommace et sous un homme femme
[Les Tragiques,
bk. 11, 1.
759-60]
proved particularly influential and powerful for their partial verisimilitude. 32 Yet in his History, d’Aubign6 was much more measured,
in tones similar to those of Brant6me:
prince d’agr6able conversation avec les siens, amateur des lettres, liberal pardela tous les rois, courageux en jeunesse et lors desire de tous; en vieillesse aim6
de peu, qui avoit grandes parties de roi, souhait6 pour 1’estre avant qu’il le fust,
et digne du royaume s’il n’eust point r6gn6; c’est ce qu’on peut dire d’un bon
...
François.33
The object of this study is to compare the virulent outpourings
of the contemporary printed propaganda with other sources, in
order to show how ambiguous or hostile attitudes were rooted
in the perceptions of most of his contemporaries. It is plain that
some distinction needs to be made between the ’black legend’ and
objective reality, though how far it is possible to disentangle them
491
is debatable. The way in which the anti-monarchical propaganda
was put together is the place to start. Seldom have the sources for
a period and such a significant figure been so contaminated by
contemporary malice, invective and ambiguity.
A few representative examples of this propaganda in 1588-9,
amounting in the catalogues of the Biblioth6que Nationale to
some 800 works, will be used to illustrate the point. The first,
Andr6 de Rossant’s Meurs, humeurs et comportemens de Henry
de Valois,34 is marked by extreme virulence of language; the other,
La vie et faits notables de Henry de Valois is still vituperative but
consists of a more systematic analysis of the king’s policies.35 Once
attributed to the leading ligueur preacher, Jean Boucher (also
author of a work on the reasons for deposing the king, De junta
abdicatione Henrici tertii and of the historical parallel with Edward
II in the Histoire tragique de Gaverston), this now seems less likely
on grounds of tenor and style, which are much cruder. 36
Rossant’s work accuses the king of Machiavellism, of a secret
plan to overthrow the kingdom and rebuild it as a tyranny. His
wickedness is a sign that the people would be punished by God if
they continued to endure his reign and the personal attacks are
mounted to demonstrate Machiavellism. Thus the building up of
favourites and pouring of taxes into the hands of his ’vrays satalittes, Machiauellistes comme luy’ all formed part of a secret plan
to ’mettre le feu dedans la pouldre, pour bouluerser en une nuict
toute la France, et la reedifier en une forme toute nouuelle a la
Machiaueliste’.37 By this is implied the murder of the Guise. The
accusation of Machiavellism was common at the time and was
especially dangerous for a ruler like Henri III who was seeking
to establish his credentials as a roi 1r8s chrétien. Another tract of
1589 says that Henri was unlike any of his predecessors: ’si ce
n’est du Roy Loys vnsiesme, qui tenoit vne maxime d’estat que
qui ne sqauoit dissimuler ne sqauoit regner.... Mais nostre Roy
auoit fort bien estudl6 en 1’escole de Machiauel.’38
Henri had indeed read The Prince but under the direction of
his Italian lecteur Corbinelli, who published his edition of the
Ricordi of ’Guicciardini as an antidote to political cynicism in
the same year (1576) as the Protestant Gentillet’s attack on Machiavelli in the Contre Nicolas Machiavel.39 Rossant would have
ignored these details even had he known of them. From these evil
plans, he says, the Day of the Barricades has delivered the country
as the Roman Capitol from the Gauls or Bethulia from Holofer-
492
The argument is used to justify the contention, concerning
the king’s wickedness, that ’Ie peuple ne le doit endurer, car c’est
le peuple qui a contract6 aussi bien que les grands auec Dieu’ to
maintain religion and would deserve punishment should it do so.
Kings do not rule by divine right and, though dynastic succession
had been practised, it was not immutable. The signs of the king’s
wickedness are detailed at length. In sum: ’II exige, il tyrannize, il
sacrilege, il simonie, il charge et appauurist les Eglises, il destruit
tout son peuple.’40 Addressing the Politiques with heavy irony,
Rossant declares: here is your king, at least ’au reste il est le
meilleur fils du monde’ and ’keeps you in your abuses’. The work
ends with a clarion call for his deposition. For those fearful to
repudiate a king without God’s command, he adduces Biblical
examples and points out his favour to Protestants. Finally, he refers
to Boucher’s recently published tract on Edward II and launches
a call to capture the king and dethrone him:
nes.
les choses sont a trop aduancees. II n’est plus de temps de reculer, si ne
voulez perdre tout en vn coup.... Quoy tremblez vous a cet antique nom de
Roy? En France maintenant c’dt le nom d’vn hypocrite, d’vn periure et d’vn
...
tyrant’
If this tract leaves
one
reeling
from the
venom
of its frantic
attack, La vie et faits notables poses the ideal antidote. In the form
of a sombre and sober dossier of accusations, some scandalous it
is true, but mostly rational and well argued, its main aim is to
accuse the king of a well-laid plan to introduce two religions into
his kingdom and does so by outlining his early years, his reign in
Poland and his record in France. Having become accustomed to a
regime of toleration in Poland, he returned to France ’ayant resolu
d’entretenir en France deux religions’ and ’d6sirant tousjours deus
religions en son royaume’.42 When he saw the Protestants becoming weak, he immediately started to think of peace in 1576. His
heavy taxes (a grievance even of L’Estoile) were raised without
any consistent policy to use the money to crush the Huguenots.
Nor would he reform the Church, putting this off on the argument
that the wars made this impossible. Ultimately, the argument is that
this inconsistency of policy was a sure sign that Henri III was a
secret sympathizer with the Protestants. In the end, the usual
personal accusations are brought in to back up the case: he is
Caligula, Nero and Heliogabalus; from 1577 ’ce n’estoit plus question que de vivre selon la sensualit6.’
493
Ainsi Henry de Valois chassoit hors de sa cour la vdritd et en eslongnoit la
divine et humaine, sans laquelle un Roy ne peut subsister ne conserver
heureusement son royaume; car c’est elle qui fait les Roys, et sans elle ceux qui
se disent tels et le pensent estre ne le sont pas v6ritablement, ains plustost des
tyrans naiz la ruyne et perdition du pays.43
justice
There follows a history of the League and of the efforts of the
good duke of Guise to preserve it, while the wicked king even
prompts the Jezebel of England to martyrize Mary Stuart and
Paris is rescued by the rebellion of May 1588. The climax comes
with the tyrant’s murder of the Guise at Blois. The second edition
adds a postscript, accusing the king of a desire to introduce ’un
ath6isme coulour6 d’une religion nou veiled
For these accusations to have any effect, they needed to respond
to notions that were already common currency. It is certainly the
case that the king was widely accused of falling down in his duty
to suppress heresy from the late 1570s. Rossant declared that ’il est
muable, sans arrest, sans tenure’ having already drawn attention to
the fact that ’il ieusnoit quelquesfois, mais il est credible que
c’estoit par sa sant6, qui ne luy permectoit manger dauantage à
cause des accidens qu’il auoit par les intemperaments de sa lubrique vie.’45 Not even here, then, could he earn credit. Henri III
was notoriously undermined by ill-health. A scalp infection that
left him bald caused him to wear a cap or wig, constant indigestion,
for which wine was prescribed (1575), migraine, kidney infection
(1578) and sciatica caused periodic crises. Chronic fear of gallstones, to which he thought he might be prone, suggests hypochondria and led him to take the waters. Then, in the crisis of 1579, he
had severe ear pains, caused by an abscess, that left him partially
deaf.16 The king was an early adept of spa and thermal cures,
despite his being seized by abdominal pains when he had spa
water brought from M6zi6res in 1583. He tried the springs of
Bourbon-Lancy and Pougues in 1582, hoping for a cure for sterility
(thus creating the success of these places as spas). In 1581, he had
bottled water brought in paniers at 18-hour intervals from La
F6re-sur-Oise in Picardy.41
Rossant’s strictures against his instability were certainly given
colour by the widespread reports of the fads indulged in by the
king. He was blamed for such trivial things as a liking for Italian
shirts and for collecting dogs and monkeys, which in another ruler
would have been ignored. On a visit to Normandy, the childless
royal couple delighted in acquiring a menagerie of exotic animals,
494
including parrots from the West Indies, though again the king
incurred criticism since the creatures had been taught to say rude
things about the Pope by the sailors of Dieppe. When taxed with
this, the king remarked that ’il ne se mêlait point de la conscience
des perroquets.’48 Then came the notorious cup and ball game
about which he briefly became passionate in 1585 and which thereafter often appeared in satirical pictures of him. Thus whims
become distorted into vices. Arlette Lebigre makes the point
neatly when she remarks that the Louvre ’plus qu’un palais de
verre
est un miroir d6formant qui renvoie a la ville une caricature de son roi.’49
One widely discussed royal vice was the king’s supposed debauches with nuns and excessive indulgence in flagellation. We know,
in fact, that in 1580-1 the king’s increasing anxiety about his
failure to beget an heir led to a startling increase in his religious
devotions, but his enemies, as ever, saw only evil in this. 50 Perhaps
the most salient story here was his relations with nuns.
The most scurrilous attack on him in 1589, the one by Rossant,
declared his religion to be a fraud ’vne opinion d’vne irreligion
croupissante en son coeur’; his priests ’luy servir de bouffons’ and
are ’vne escolle de Bacchus ou d’Epicurie’ and he had practised
en plusieurs Monasteres.’51
’la prostitution des vierges sacrees
Even the calmer and more measured attack of La vie et faits
notables repeats this accusation in even greater detail: his favourite
Nogaret (Epernon) had taken him to Poissy where
...
...
monast6re et religion dicte de Sainct-Loys, y avoit une belle vi6rge
professee, laquelle de force, nonobstant toutes les remonstrances qu’elle peust
faire, disant qu’eUe estoit dediee a Dieu, Henry de Valois, n’estant un Scipion
en continence, mais vray sacril6ge de ce qui est offert a la divinite viola ceste
en print avec Nogaret tant de contentement qu’il a
pauvre vierge; et depuis
voulu.
...
au
...
The writer did not fail to point up the parallel with a Merovingian
monarch, Clovis II, deposed for such a crime .52 This was a point
taken up by another pamphlet of the time, Histoire des faits et
gestes d’Henri de valois.53
It may perhaps be worth pausing over the essence of this accusation. That there was in 1580 and 1581 much talk about the king’s
monastic debauches is undeniable. From the start of his reign, he
maintained a courtly and increasingly devout intercourse with
nuns. 54 In August 1579, Pierre de L’Estoile collected for his journal
495
of extreme obscenity concerning the king’s visits to the
and affixed to the gates of the convent of Poissy. In 1580
he testily remarked that ’nonobstant la peste et la guerre qui
travaillaient son pauvre peuple de tous les c6t6s, ne laissait d’aller
voir les nonnains, et ne bougeait de leurs couvents et abbayes, à
leur faire 1’amour’ [n.b. this was an equivocal term that could as
easily mean courteous relations].55 The English envoy Cobham
reported in January 1580: ’the Kinge hathe bene at Saint Germans
[and] at Poyse with those devout nunnes’ and in March ’when he
is at St Germaynes, his pleasure is sometymes to goe on pilgrimage
to the holye nunnes of Poisy’. Not until October, however, does he
send the ciphered-and startling-message: ’The kinges sickenes is
happenid through wantones yoused among the nunnes having
shed blood at his privie partes, which may become more dangerus.’S6 Lorenzo Priuli, the Venetian envoy, assumed in 1582 that
the king’s physical weakness was the result of youthful venereal
disease, though he stressed that he had reformed .51 His brother
Anjou was also thought by rumour to have died of venereal
disease but in fact did so of pulmonary infection. Reports of a
fistula in ’une mauvaise place’ in 1582 are almost certainly tubercular.~ It was the Papal nuncio, Dandino, who got near the truth
through his contacts with the king’s confessor. In February he
reported, ’Sono molti giorni che si murmura secretamente per
Corte che il re se pratica nel luogo di Poisi, vicina a San Germano,
d’una monaca’ and that Catherine de Medici had reproached the
king, who blamed Saint-Luc for letting the story get out.5~ The
nuncio and the Papal curia were frequently concerned with matters of the king’s conscience and signs that he might not be living
up to his position as Most Christian King and took steps to delve
into a matter that was ’una voce publica et universale’. He persuaded a chaplain who had the king’s confidence to put the matter
before him in the confessional without letting the king think that
the Pope was involved. The chaplain had spoken to one of the
king’s confessors and found that he had:
a verse
nuns
avvertito il re et ammonitolo, et che gli rispose et giur6 non esser venuto
lei ad atto alcuno. Crede bene lui che I’habbia tentata et in ogni maniera, ma
che la giovane sia sempre stata renitente et constante in non volere consentire, et
la badessa e molto diligente et prudente in guardarla. Et dopo questo ha mandato a dirmi son trovare in fatti che la cosa sia vera. Ii capellano ancora mi
conferma il medesimo, anzi dice haveme ne le confessioni interrogato il re
diligentemente, senza che S.M. habbia detto mai cosa alcuna, et creder che se
...
con
496
fusse, ella che suole farsi conscienza d’altre cose non di gran lunga cosi gravi,
haveria fatto il medesimo di questa. Con tutto cio io non so che dime, sapendo
che molti de li migliori la tengono per certs.60
we have the king’s dilemma since not even those with
the most privileged information could seem to withstand
the power of rumour and, like the nuncio, blamed the king for
the laxity which gave rise to it. The extent of such privileged
information is indicated by the report of the next nuncio, Castelli
(1582) that the king had asked for a Jesuit confessor in the general
of the Jesuits, Claude Mathieu, ’havendo gia S.M. confessatogli
tutta la vita sua ’.61
Even in 1585 we find the Florentine envoy Busini reporting that
’6 qui una monaca d’anni sedici, assai bella di viso e vita, che
dodici giorni fa, fu con il Re tutto il di alla casa del medico, Miron’.
But the origins of the scandal immediately became apparent, ’la
medesima sera fu dato conto di questa cosa a madama di
Montpensier che me fece parte’. The duchess of Montpensier was,
of course, sister to the duke of Guise and the king’s sworn enemy,
who went around with a pair of golden scissors with which she
declared she would tonsure the king like the last of the Merovingians. 62 It is worth noting, too, that Louis XIII’s frequent conversations at the grille with nuns did not stimulate such a vendetta,
even though one nun-Louise Ang6lique de Lafayette-was
among his closest confidantS.61
An important feature of the king’s religiosity was his founding
of new penitent orders. A. Lynn Martin has argued that the
phases of the king’s piety were dictated by his contacts with
the Jesuit Edmond Auger, though this is perhaps too straightforward a view.’ On his arrival in France in 1574, his strenuous
activities in processions had seen off the ailing cardinal of Lorraine, who could not stand the pace, and thereafter such exertions
came in spasms, with frequent pilgrimages to Chartres on foot in
the early 1580s.
The congregation of Penitents was founded in March 1583. At
the foundation, the king was rumoured to have paraded anonymously in a Penitent sack. Another order founded was the
Brothers of the Passion and Death of Jesus Christ, even more
devoted to flagellation (1585). In the summer of 1583 he installed
the new order of Hieronymites (later Minims) and in December
gave them their home at Bois de Vincennes.65 All the foreign
Here, then,
access to
497
envoys noted his new frantic access of devotions, and many, like
Sir Edward Stafford, were alarmed at his supposed neglect of state
business while he participated in the services.’
These devotions prompted some of the most venomous attacks
against him. Even in 1583, Pierre de L’Estoile recorded a verse
ridiculing him:
11 a choisi la Bonne Dame
Pour la patronne de ses voeux:
Mais il aime mieux, sur mon dme,
Un jeune fils aux blonds cheveux.6’
pamphleteers of 1588-9 were particularly harsh about all this
course, they needed to dispose of any idea that the king
was a truly pious Catholic. How could Catholics reject a monarch
so given to extravagant devotion? The answer, of course, was that
The
since, of
it was all a show-’dissimulation’ was the word most often used.
The accusation of Machiavellism already mentioned had added
force in this context since Machiavelli had seemed to argue in
book XVIII of Il Principe that the crafty ruler should certainly
strive to appear ’pietoso, fedele, umano, religioso, intiero’ but be
ready to reverse these qualities in reality. Henri III’s religiosity
could therefore be discounted by his enemies as another example
of his guile.68
La vie et faits implies that the new religious orders ’n’estoyent
que hypocrisie, et pour faire des monopoles a 1’encontre des
princes catholiques’.69 Rossant is quite specific here, building on
the king’s well-known public devotions to distort the meaning,
starting with his inconsistency in building now in one place, now
in another, now one rule, now another, chanting the antiphons
’non sans rire quelquefois’ and taking the sacraments standing up
with his dogs on a leash. The first cloister, at Saint-Catherine in
Paris, he had built ’pour attraper les princes et les faire enserrer
en la Bastille’, while another house at Bois de Boulogne was to
get others imprisoned at the chdteau de Madrid or massacre them
in the woods. But in the end he chose Vincennes as nearer to the
great keep there.
C’est ce lieu IA qu’il a choisi, jadis sainct & tresantique, pour y apporter soubs
le voile de pi6t6, toute malice, hypocrisie et couuerte impi6t6.... LA il portoit le
fouet pendu a sa ceincture, mais pourtant se gardoit d’en estaller ses 6paulles;
il laissoit ce deuoir aux pauures religieux qu’a cette intention il faisoit convoquer
de divers ordres, et son passe-temps cependant estoit d’y amener les dames £ la
498
ris6e,
et
quelquefois, la chandelle esteinte, il tastoit ou bien faisoit taster
religieux s’ils estoient nuds et s’ils fouettoient a bon escient.
sur
le
dos desdits
Catholiques’ he showed his Penitent’s whip to Miron
day, saying, ’Voila de quoy ie les fouette.’ ’Du magazin de
telles parades et fictions,’ he adds, ’est issue l’ordre du S. Esprit,
les confreres, les Penitens, les flagellez et les Hieronymites’ so that
many had left him, seeing his way of life?&dquo; Why, asked the writer,
was he involved so often in the exercises of the flagellants ’si non
pour en avoir le plaisir ou s’en mocquer en derriere, puis qu’il
amenoit les dames et demoyselles, et autres les veoir’.&dquo; Such
vituperation reflected much other contemporary comment. In
1586, Franqols Le Breton wrote that he had committed acts
’Parlant des
one
’diametrallement contraires a telles d6votions’. In 1588, Charles
Hurault wrote that ’Ie Roy n’est pas Catholique, il est bigot. il ne
hayt pas les Huguenots, les Huguenots luy sont poison’, while one
Leaguer pamphlet of 1589 claimed that he had dressed ’en habit
d’Hermite d6guis6’ the better to plot his ’trahison’?2
We have, of course, seen that the king’s religious devotions were
regarded with some confusion and puzzlement by contemporaries.
Even L’Estoile remarked at the time of the king’s participation in
the Penitent procession in 1586 that ’il vivait plus en capucin qu’en
roi, n’aimant plus la guerre, son champ de bataille 6tant un cloitre
et sa cuirasse un sac de p6niten t.’71 Not even the papal nuncios
were quite sure how to respond to them and it was widely thought
that the king was spending too much time on his knees. He was,
though, quite capable of keeping his religious observances in control. Edward Stafford reported from Paris in January 1585 that he
would not ’make a color of a devotion slacke the lookynge into
a matter of so great a weight’-negotiations with the Dutch’especiallie his devotion beinge so fewe howeres in the daye’. This
is how Stafford described the king’s routine at this time:
He hathe never missed everie daye sence he went into Boys de Vincennes to
hether to dynner to gooe all the after noone into companyes in the towne
that are assembled together to mak merie and gooe so from one to an other tyll
eleven a clock att night or myd night and then lye at Zamettis and rise at six
againe in the morninge [to] goe to Boys de Vincennes and att none be heere
come
againe.&dquo;
It is sometimes assumed that this
prostitutes, though the
contact with
the king has resumed
meaning here is far from clear.
means
499
The Florentine envoy at the same time talks of the king going
continually to disport himself at fetes and ’mascherate’ and trying
but failing to seduce a beautiful widow?&dquo; Certainly we have the
extraordinary testimony of the Cardinal d’Este’s agent in Paris
(now in the Vatican archives) that the king and Joyeuse went
through a paroxysm of fornication with fourteen prostitutes
(’puttane’) in August 1585-to be followed in September by excessive devotionalism.’~
It has been reasonably argued that Henri III used his
devotionalism to some extent for political purposes and such a
view was recorded in Paris as early as 1576.&dquo; The summer of 1585
was one of growing crisis, with the Catholic League increasingly
active and opinion in Paris increasingly hostile to his policies. The
autumn of 1585 saw another bout of red-hot piety: the reason may
well have been a desire to place his religious credentials before
the public at a time when he was anxious to minimize League
power .71 Nevertheless, the effect is real enough: the nuncio Raggazoni reported in October that he had heard from a capucin friar
close to the king’s devotions:
che S. M.tA si e molto infiammata di alcuni giorni in qua ne gli essercitij
et particolarmente che spogliatosi, si flagella, il che m’e stato anco
affermato da uno che ha veduto la camiscia sua ben insanguinata, et intendo
che questo nuovo et maggior calore di devotione e stato accesso nel animo suo
per opera et predicatione principalmente di un padre jesuita francese nominato
il Padre Emondo Ocherio (Auger)’&dquo;
...
spirituali,
seems no reason to doubt that the king was capable of
inflicting such punishment on himself-a point usually left in
obscurity by his enemies in 1588-9.
Frances Yates argued that Henri III’s religious movement had
not been taken seriously: ’it was explicitly a non-violent CounterReformation, a religious revival which should appeal to heretics
through works of charity and exhibitions of penitence.&dquo;10 The king
made this point explicitly in a letter to Henri of Navarre in 1579
and in his speech to the Assembly of Notables in 1583.~’ Nor does
there seem good reason to discount the king’s statement to his
envoy in Rome, meant for Papal consumption of course, that the
’calamitez et miseres’ of his subjects ’je confesse proceder de mes
vices et pechez’ and for which ‘seul j’en portasse la penitance’, an
avowal made on his return from pilgrimage in thanks for recovery
There
from
a
grave illness in October 1579.82 Such ideas, however sincere,
500
bound to sound hollow in the ears of Protestants who had
lived through Saint Bartholomew’s day and eventually to Catholics
for whom the priority was the ’cleansing’ of their world of the
filth of heresy. Ultimately, the enemies of 1589 had the last word:
’Quel fruit la France a elle rapporte de toutes ses parades de
deuotion et papelardises: beaucoup d’argent en petis trous et
curiositez mal employ6 et perdu.’g3 In the end, all the king’s devotion failed to save him since his true commitment to the Catholic
cause-his function as le roi trés chrgtien-had been seriously
brought into doubt and no amount of public show could counteract
this.
Not only was the king accused of hypocrisy in religion, however,
he was thought to have gone all the way to Diabolism and the
occult, the latter, of course, a preoccupation of the late Valois
court. Catherine de Medici’s preoccupation with the occult is well
known; as early as 1561 it was reported that Nostradamus had
told her that all her sons would reign. The tendency for the high
magical arts to involve a political dimension was therefore well
established.&dquo; The 1589 pamphlet, Les sorcelleries de Henry de
Valois accused the king of maintaining a diabolic cult at Vincennes
and adduced as evidence the finding of two figures of satyrs in
silver gilt, supporting crystal bowls. The description is a convincing
one but the conclusion is not:
were
y avoit des drogues incognues qu’ils avoient pour oblation; et
est a detester, ils estoient au devant d’une croix d’or au
milieu.... Les politiques disent que c’estoient des chandeliers; mais ce qui fait
croire le contraire est que dans ces vases il n’y avoit point d’esguille
joinct
qu’ils toumoyent le derriere ladite vraye croix.&dquo;’’
...
ce
dans
ces vases
qui plus
en ce
...
Who had instructed the king in these black arts? Sorcery, it was
was little known in France until the present reign but
Epernon and others had brought ’magiciens’ from all over the
world while, even before the king went to Poland ’il estoit jA
assez incline a I’ath6isme’, i.e. occultism. Rossant adds further
accusations: ’Un jour estant auec quelques Religieux qui parloient
des peines d’enfer, il entendoit son Medecin Miron qui luy dit, et
pensez vous, Sire, qu’il y ait vn enfer. A ce il se teut.’ A propos
of diabolic possession ’il dit tout haut qu’il ne croyoit que les
Diables possedassent les hommes, et les vinssent a tourmenter....
C’est vne chose asseur6 qu’il s’aide de 1’art de Magie, laquelle ne
se peut exercer, sinon par l’operation des Diables.’ Rossant adds
claimed,
501
the story of the man possessed by a devil at Meaux who, when
exorcized, claimed he had been besetting the king for eleven years
to murder the great enemy of the Huguenots.86
The accusation of diabolic possession as political attack has a
long tradition behind it going back to the early fourteenth century
and, of course, was potentially devastating. Frances Yates argued
that the items found at Vincennes are fully explained by mystic
reference to pagan sacrifice as prefiguring the mass and related to
a reliquary given by St Carlo Borromeo to the king.8’ This was
well over the head of public opinion, more represented by the
wildly extravagant satire Les choses horribles contenues en une
lettre envoyee à Henry de Valois, in which the king is reminded
that Nogaret d’Espernon was none other than an evil spirit Teragon, who had possessed the king while in bed with him.88
Perhaps more serious for the king’s reputation was the accusation of sodomy, since it then carried the penalty of death by
burning at the stake. The accusations here are often vague and
the evidence usually difficult to interpret. Certainly the king’s
enemies saw nothing surprising in the coupling of accusations of
misconduct with nuns and women of low repute and the ’abominable vice’, as it was called, of acts with men. The Protestants in
the 1570s, in their public attacks on Catholic atrocities, could
proclaim:
Que concluerai-je donc, sinon qu’hypocriser,
Derober et trahir, ruer, sodomiser,
C’est etre
catholique
Rossant brings his
when he says:
a
I’usage
de Rome!89
castigations against
Henri III to
a
crescendo
Ne voyez vous bien outre plus, qu’il est tout faitart, craintif, effemine, heliogabaliz6, et du tout appastez a ses voluptez et a tant de sortes de paillardises, que la
terre en regorge et le ciel en a horreur? Mais non pas celuy duquel le page
racontoit vn iour, passant la riuière pres du Louure, que le Roy aymoit bien son
maistre, lequel il venoit tout seul foitter souuent en son lict, ayant ledict page
commandement de s’en fouyr, quand il verroit le entrer. Ie nommerois bien le
personnage estant tesmoing de ce recit. Et plusieurs fois ce mesme amoureux
transy a est6 veu baiser et rebaiser ses mignons, voire en lieu qu’il deuoit
respecter. Ce n’est donc pas de merveilles, s’il auoit fait poser le lict de son
coeur Espemon iouxte le sien en son cabinet de Vincennes. Et s’il faUoit cacher
quelques rules Religieuses dedans la caue, quand il aUoit en pelerinage Maubuisson.1
502
It is well known that mockery of the so-called effeminacy of
the courtiers was rife in the late 1570s judging only by the satires
and verses collected by Pierre de L’Estoile for the period 1577-9.~’
It is also certain that the fashions of the court became more
extravagant in the period. The conclusions which may be drawn
are, however, questionable. Pierre de 1’Estoile is often used to
confirm the fact that Henri III dressed in women’s clothes. This
and other comments led G. Robin, in his study of Henri III’s
sexuality, to construct a zany interpretation of Henri III as a man
of undecided sexuality, psychologically castrated by Catherine de
Medici’s excessive and possessive love. Though his love of women
was normal, his other characteristics made him ’une femme manqu6e’. What is more, this bisexuality is supposed to have made
him an indecisive ruler. 92
Nothing illustrates more the tendency of certain ’historians’ to
copy each other or to use primary sources uncritically. Robin lists
Henri’s dressing as a woman at Navarre’s marriage in 1572, his
use of make-up, a comment of the Spanish ambassador that he
had earrings so heavy that they were bigger than an African
Moor’s, an isolated comment likening the young Anjou to a young
girl and his dressing as a woman at a banquet at Plessis-lez-Tours
in 1577.9=’ What, in fact, is the evidence for the King’s transvestism?
Largely, again, the fact that at the magnificence of Bayonne in 1565
he accompanied his brother Charles IX at the quintain dressed as
an Amazon-a role he played again in Paris, in September 1576
according to L’Estoile. In February 1577, L’Estoile disapprovingly
commented that, while the Huguenots made alliances with Protestant powers abroad:
le roi faisoit toumois, joutes et ballets et forces mascarades, ou il se
trouvait ordinairement habll]6 en femme, ouvroit son pourpoint et d6couvroit
sa gorge, y portant un collier de peries et trois collets de toille, deux a fraise et
un renvers6, ainsi que lors portaient les dames de cour.&dquo;’
Cependant
So-in the course of a mascarade, the king is just wearing a
woman’s collar for the ballet. In fact, such disguise was very
popular among the court aristocracy. The Venetian ambassador
Suriano observed in 1561 that Henri IV’s father, Antoine de Bourbon, wore jewels and earrings in the manner of women, though
commendably, as a man of grey beard and advanced years, refrained from condernnation.95 Even the model seducer Nemours
dressed as a bourgeoise for one mascarade. The point made clearly
503
Boucher in her study of the court is that such
mascarades have to be placed in their cultural context and simply
cannot be lifted as stray pieces of evidence for ‘perversion’.96
Needless to say Pierre Champion, who began the work of
assembling the king’s correspondence, was quite certain that it
contained no hint of homosexuality; a view confirmed by the four
volumes of his letters published so far, though the king’s letters
to his ’troupe’ indicate great intimacy and friendship.97 Phrases
like ’je baise les mains’ addressed to favourites in letters, are
stereotypes transferred from formal Italian usage of the period.
Among foreign envoys, only the prejudiced and hostile Savoyard
Lucinge, writing in 1586, relates the accusation that the king had
learned the ’vice que la nature d6teste’ from the godless mignon
Villequier and that the royal cabinet ’a est6 un vray sarail de toute
lubricite et paillardise, un’escole de Sodomie, ou se sont achevez
les salles esbats que tout le monde a peu sqavoir’. Lucinge cited
the eye-witness testimony of one who was present at the king’s
own admission but immediately undermined the case by admitting
that it was ’rebut6 parce qu’alors il volut exaggérer’ .98 Certainly
the king gave his enemies ammunition by his extreme generosity
to his friends, and he himself admitted, in writing to secretary of
state Villeroy, who received some of his most unguarded letters,
in 1579, ’Nous nous connaissons assez byen; se que j’aime s’est
vous sqavez comme je vous ayme’, while
aveques extremite
Etienne Pasquier wrote in 1589: ’11 aimoit sans mesure ceux qu’il
favorisait sans savoir pourquoy.’99
Jacqueline Boucher, followed by Pierre Chevalier, categorically
rejects the case for the king’s sexual ambiguity, though she does
draw attention to what is ostensibly a poem, published in 1597, in
which a former courtier confesses to illicit relations with the
mignon, Maugiron.100 However, an intriguing side issue raised by
her indicates the way evidence can be distorted even by the most
scholarly of historians. In the course of her argument, she throws
out the confirmed opinion that the king’s younger brother Anjou
was certainly homosexual. 101 What evidence is offered for this?
First, the remark by the Spanish ambassador in 1575 about the
duke’s ’abominable vice’ and then a report by the Florentine
envoy Busini in October 1583 that Monsieur: ‘E inamorato di
quello Avrilly; dico con tale dimostrazione, che in effetto 6 cosa
bruttissima.’102 Avrilly was Monsieur’s current favourite and premier maitre d’hotel; he was receiving boons in the form of abbeys
by Jacqueline
...
504
in commendam. Yet the
August that:
same
envoy had
already reported
in
[Mme. de Sauve], quando la Regina madre e stata da Monsignore, dormiva
d’Avrilly e Atri [Mlle. d’Atri] con il duca d’Anjou, con grand
carico della Regina. Navara [the queen of Navarre] ancora lei faceva gran
Sauva
ogni
notte con
bordello: che il Re
non
l’ha volsuta vedere.101
Thus can the idea be established on the most flimsy and selected
evidence. Anjou, of course, may have had an unsavoury reputation
but we need not go further.
The relationship of Henri III and his mignons has become a
legend and needs to be considered in more detail. In fact, in the
sixteenth century mignon was just a word to signify a favouriteas in early 1517 when Francis I with ’aucuns jeunes gentilzhommes
de ses mygnons et privez ne faisoient quasi tous les jours que
d’estre en habits dissimulez et bigarrez’, though even then there
was a note of disapproval in the observation ’ce que le populaire
prenoit a mal gré’ .104 Criticism of the effeminacy of courtiers goes
back a long way and at least to Castiglione in Il Cortegiano who,
echoing Vergerio in the mouth of count Ludovico Canossa,
attacked such manners as those ’che si faccian le piit lascive e
disoneste femine del mondo’ (book I, xix). Only early in the
reign of Henri III, however, did the term mignon take on a fully
derogatory meaning when applied to royal favourites and then
because of the special conditions of civil war. L’Estoile, with his
usual eye for such opinions, noted in a celebrated passage in 1576:
Le
des mignons commenqa en ce temps a trotter par la bouche du peuple,
ils 6talent fort odieux, tant pour leurs faqons de faire qui 6talent badines
et hautaines, que pour leurs fards et accoutrements effemin6s et impudiques,
mais surtout pour les dons immenses et lib6ralit6s, que leur faisoit le roi.’°s
nom
auquel
The
also became a by-word for effeminacy and wickedfrom the time of d’Aubign6’s Tragiques, while L’Estoile added
to the traditional view of them when in October 1577 he recorded
that the king had returned from Poitiers to his recently-acquired
country retreat south of Paris at Ollainville:
mignons
ness
avec la troupe de ses jeunes mignons, frais6s et frises avec les cr6tes lev6es,
ratepennades en leurs t~tes, un maintien fardd avec l’ostentation de m~me,
peign6s et pulvdris6s de poudres violettes et senteurs odorif6rantes, qui aromatissaient les rues, places et maisons ou ils fréquentaient,l06
...
les
505
word is farde: now it means made up but then it often
dissimulation. As has been pointed out recently in
another context, dissimulation and preoccupation with it was an
important cultural phenomenon of the later sixteenth century.101
Artus D6sir6, the rancid Catholic controversialist, took up the
theme in his Retour de Guillot le Porcher of 1578, when he attacked
the mignons:
The
key
signified
troussent leurs cheveux pour monstrer bon
Avec de grans collectz d’un demy pied de large
Tant bien chauderonnez (dy je dauderonnez)
Qui
visage
tous les Diables sont, a 1’entour dc leur nez
A leur tortillonner leur morveuses moustaches ...
Que
Unless action
were
taken
quickly
to limit their
’gros estats’:
Que les libidineux prendront I’habit de femmes
Et les femmes I’habit des hommes
aveuglez
...&dquo;&dquo;‘
The curious interrelationship between such disapproval and political criticism is revealed by L’Estoile at the end of 1577, when he
lists the pamphlets of that year, like the Vindiciae (’Iivre bien fait
mais pernicieux pour un 6tat royal comme le notre’), and including
those ’taxant l’impudicit6 des mignons, les corruptions et d6bordements de la court
In fact, L’Estoile, no friend to the League, was also an habitual
castigator of court extravagance and here he seems to have been
as hard on the court of Henri IV where in 1609 he could denounce
the ’renfort d’abominations a la cour, ou toute pi6t6 et crainte de
Dieu est eteinte’.&dquo;° Moreover, Brant6me specifically attacked
those old soldiers who affected to despise as effeminate the mignons of the court, who went on to give many examples of their
bravery in battle.&dquo;’
The controversialists of 1588-9 spent much time castigating the
king’s promotion of favourites and drew out several instances.
Rossant declared that ’il s’est estudi6 a eslever de petis compagnons en grand credit et honneur pour en tirer plus d’obeissance,
celuy sembloit, plus de caresse et de seurete que de ses princes.’
Epernon is accused of accumulating so many governorships ’qu’il
sembloit seuertuer de le mettre en possession durant sa vie, du
total gouvernement de son Royaume’.1 12 La vie et faits asserts that
taxes went to ’appasteller ses mignons et harpies de cour’ and
506
that they were ’tant superbes et orgueilleux qu’en particulier ils
ne le respectoient luy-mesme’.&dquo;; The propagandists of 1589 made
much of the famous duel near the Bastille in April 1578 between
Entraguet, Riberac and Schomberg and the king’s mignons Caylus
and Maugiron, which led to the deaths of the latter. There was no
great mystery here. The mignons and their enemies were fighting
the battle for power between their master the king and his mortal
enemy the duke of Guise; their post-mortem defamation was
orchestrated by the latter’s followers. Caylus was accused in 1589
of crying out at the moment of death: ’Je renie Dieu, je suis mort.’
Even L’Estoile, who gave a rather more likely description of the
scene at the time, remarked that the king’s extravagant grief:
...
indignes
peu a peu le
poss6daient
le peuple.
a la verite d’un grand roi et magnanime comme il était, caus6rent
m6pris de ce prince, et le mal qu’on voulait a ses mignons qui le
donna un grand avantage a ceux de Lorraine, pour corrompre
Furthermore, the pampleteers of 1589 blamed the king for erecting
sumptuous funeral monuments to his friends ’A cause des rares
et d6testables
paillardises et blasphemes ... de tels putassiers et
renieurs de Dieu’ in the church of St Paul at Paris-the monuments were smashed in January 1589. t 14
For the customers of these pamphlets, Epernon had become the
great bogey-man, after the king, and massive calumny was heaped
on him, including the delighted assertion that he had had to retire
to Saint-Germain-en-Laye in May 1585 to be cured of syphilis,
though in fact l’Estoile described it as a cancerous growth. The
Parisians were amused that the king-supposedly the ruler whose
touch could cure scrofula-was thus confounded, they chanted: ’11
n’aime, ne ch6rit qu’un seul Cancer.&dquo; 15
To return to Pierre Champion in his classic La jeunesse de Henri
III:
A vrai dire, les documents ne nous permettent pas de constater autre chose que
de camaraderies militaires.... De ces rapports (avec les favoris) nous ne savons
rien d’autre que ce que le 16gende nous dira des ’mignons’: 16gende n6e plus
tard pour des fins politiques et exploit6e par les Huguenots et les Guise aux
deux grandes p6riodes critiques de 1577 et de 1588.&dquo;6
Where personal letters from the king to his ’troupe’ survive, as to
Henri de Saint-Sulpice or to Gilles de Souvr6, mattre de la garderobe, they bear testimony to the monarch’s passionate concern for
507
his followers and insistent demands, in
practically every letter,
’Aymez-moy, doncques...’, ’Aymez tousjours bien le maistre...’,
and assurances that, despite separation, his regard remained constant.ll7 Within the group, nicknames played a central part. The
king was ’Ie maistre’, Saint-Sulpice ’Colette’, Souvr6 ’ma Gode’,
even secretary Villeroy was ’Bydon’. There was nothing unusual
in this; Henri of Navarre wrote to his friends in the same way.
Henri III, though, gave an extra mark of his favour when he
signed his letters with an enclosed ’S’, probably meant to convey
fidelity in friendship but also used as a mark between true lovers
It may now be argued that we know more than just legend
about the mignons. We should also bear in mind Arlette Jouanna’s
recent revaluation of the role of the mignons and their continuity
with earlier types of favourite.111 It was, of course, customary, for
sixteenth-century monarchs to reward their favourites extravagantly. Henri II had showered fortunes on Saint-Andr6 and
Montmorency, as Francis I had done on his favourites. The purpose
was to create a circle upon whom the king could rely, a circle of
fideles. Catherine de Medici herself wrote to her son in October
1579 that he should promote new men in favour, ’car les vieux
s’an vont et il fault dreser des jeunes’ and she told Epemon in
November 1581: ’nous sommes aujourd’huy en un temps que tout
ce que le Roi fait honnorer en doive avoir pour lui acqu6rir autant
de serviteurs.’ This is the essence of clientèle.12lJ
Henri III relied increasingly on the men who had accompanied
him to Poland like Le Guast, Villequier, Souvr6, Caylus, SaintSulpice, Bellegarde and Entragues, and naturally wished to reward
their services on his accession as king of France. 121 Challenged in
this he responded to the Parlement of Paris: ’Je ne les honore que
parce qu’ils m’ont paru se distinguer par leurs m6rites et je ne me
suis arr~t6 a la bassesse de leur naissance.’ 122
’Low birth’ is here, of course, a relative term. Whether his
judgment was at fault in his choice of friends is a subjective
matter. Any royal advisers by the 1580s were likely to have been
demonized and the notion that Henri was only effective when
under the influence of sensible advisers, like Tavannes in the late
1560s, creates the erroneous impression that he was throughout a
cipher. The influence exercised by Epemon from 1586 over the
use of comptants, essentially uncontrolled privy purse expenditure,
was an aggravation even though it is clear that it was essentially
military and political crises that drove such expedients. 123
508
J.-F. Solnon and Arlette Jouanna have rightly pointed out that
the mignons were used by the king to enlarge his circle of fidèles
beyond the great traditional lineages. Louis B6renger, sieur du
Guast, a favourite whose energy and capacity might have provided
a real support, died violently in 1575; Caylus in 1578. So, Epernon
was chosen to cut through and weaken the principal coteries at
court and he and Joyeuse emerged as ‘arch-mignons’ in the later
years. The Order of the Holy Spirit served the same purpose in
drawing men into the king’s circle. L’Estoile said that its purpose
was ’pour adjoindre a soi, d’un nouvel et plus 6troit, lien, ceux
qu’il y vouloit nommer a cause de 1’effren6 nombre des chevaliers
de l’ordre de Saint-Michel ... et pour les rendre plus loyaux et
affectionn6s serviteurs’ .124 In fact, this aim is not so far from the
purpose of Louis XI’s original creation of the Order of Saint
Michael in 1469.
There was fierce competition for favour at court and in the
course of this individuals like Bellegarde, Saint-Luc and Franqois
d’O fell. Life became more precarious, factions flourished and the
king displayed, despite his strong desire to be a ’good master’ to
his followers, a perplexing complexity.125 By the mid-1580s, it was
widely asserted that two favourites, Epernon and Joyeuse, reigned
supreme in the king’s favour, though it is worth pointing out that
their relations with the king fluctuated. When, in January 1585,
the English ambassador sought to draw them into English policy
on the mission the Dutch were then mounting to get help from
France, Joyeuse said he would egg the king on:
have ytt knowen abroade, the king was
whollie by them as he was, for
he was sometymes in humors thatt theie koulde not tell whatt state theie stode
in with him...
...
butt thatt
thowghe he wolde
nott the man he was wante to
be,
nott
nor
governed
Epemon said that he would simply follow the king’s line. 126
Epemon was the arch-villain for the League and he was the first
casualty of the crisis of the Spring of 1588, when the king was
while
him from his entourage in order, at his mother’s
to an accommodation with the Guise. The
prompting, to
famous
tone of his
(and surely semi-public) letter of supplication
leaves
no doubt of his absolute dependence on his
(July 1588)
forced to
remove
come
master:
...
vous
m’avez eslevez de la
poussiere
aux
plus grandes
honneurs de vostre
509
estat, et de l’indigne petit cadet que j’estois m’avez [faict] grand duc. Je suis de
facon de Vostre Majest6; elle ne laissera point son ouvre imparfaict et pour
m’eslever au ciel de sa grandeur ne m’aurez pas donn6 des aisles de cire sy
malles qu’elle se puisse fondre aux esclairs violentz de la rage de mes ennemis
pour me faire miserablement tomber dans les impetueux flotz de leurs desirs.
In the much more private letter written only slightly later, addressing the king repeatedly as his ’cher maitre ... qui vous baise tr6s
humblement les pieds’, Epernon bemoaned the use of the king’s
name by his enemy Villeroy to attempt to exclude him from his
provincial governorship at Angoul~me: ’Est-il que vous y consentiez, mon cher tout?’ Epernon remained in semi-exile at Angoul~me until after the execution of the Guise. 121
The existence of such favourites who owed their all to the king’s
favour was, of course, exactly what the grandees of the realm
detested, though it should be remembered that it hardly departed
in principle from Louis XI’s promotion of men like Olivier le
Daim or Francis I’s favour to Bonnivet or Montmorency. In March
1585, the Savoyard envoy Lucinge, who had access to ultra-Catholic circles, wrote:
La noblesse, g6n6rallement, est ass6s affectionn6 a la maison de Guyse, et
beaucoup d’eux mal contents de l’estat des choses pr6sentes, et plains de desdeing pour les desfaveurs et umbrages receus, et d’envie de voir pr6f6rer a eux
gens de nul m6rite.&dquo;
This
was
the
essence
of the
problem. Though previous kings raised
war made this a controversial and dangerous matter. Henri III would find it impossible
to allow the full participation in affairs of the duke of Guise
and cardinal of Lorraine, as had been possible with the earlier
generation of the family under Henri II. Yet their exclusion was
also in itself risky. Moreover, while the constable of Montmorency
had waited until the age of fifty-eight (in 1551) to be raised to the
peerage, the elevation of Joyeuse and Epernon to dukedoms in
1581 was judged indecently hasty.
One salient feature of Henri III’s response to the problem was
his continuous preoccupation with the ’reform’ of the court. His
objectives were partly financial but primarily political in that he
aimed both to augment the magnificence of the court through the
much criticized extravaganzas and also render his own position
more secure and dignified by reversing the traditional openness
and easy-going behaviour at the court of France. 121 Yet even this
up favourites, the circumstances of civil
510
controversial. By tradition, it had been possible for all manner
of gentlemen to approach the king in his chamber and the elaborate ritual and privacy of Tudor monarchs was regarded as ’Turkish
was
rigour’.11
The court of Henri II was still a very open one and laxity
probably increased afterwards. The Venetian envoy Suriano
reported in 1561 that all sorts of people, even lackeys, dared to
enter the king’s cabinet in order to listen to discussions.131 Henri
III soon after his accession began a series of measures starting
with the act, attacked by the author of La vie et faits notables, of
surrounding himself with a barrier while at dinner:
mais au lieu qu’ils pensoient trouver un Roy semblable a ses predecesseurs
a tous les autres Roys franqoys, qui fust doux, courtois et affable, ils perceurent
incontinent son orgeuil et le trouv6rent bien autrement qu’ils ne pensoient; car
mesprisant la noblesse de France, il faisoit mettre les barheres allentour de luy,
lequel, assis en un tribunal, vouloit a la mode des Tlircs qu’il avoit apprinse en
peu de temps, se rendre un demy-dieu, et sembler que les princes et seigneurs
du royaume ne fussent dignes de l’approcher; dont les plus advisez se scandalis~rent
ses mignons, desquels entre autres estoient Qu6lus et Maugiron, disoient
que c’estoit bien fait, et qu’un Roy ne se doit familiariser sinon en son cabinet
avec quelque noblesse particuli~re, l~ ou Dieu sqait quel beau mesnage ils
faisoient A la turquesque.~3z
...
et
...
In fact, Henri III was faced by major political problems in his own
household, not the least of which was the office of Grand Maitre
de France, held by the duke of Guise. Two major règlements of
August 1578 and January 1585 sought to tighten up the discipline
of the court, place the duty of surveillance on the shoulders of
officials other than the Grand Maitre, and above all ’r6gle la
confusion qui y est’ by refining protocol. Entry into the king’s
chamber was now restricted and governed by strict rules and a
series of royal chambers created with growing degrees of privacy
for the monarch. These reforms, largely drawn up by the king
himself, sought to formalize a complete royal ritual from waking
to sleeping, much along the lines later familiar under Louis XIV.
The problem was that Henri III seemed to be restricting access
to his person whereas all knew that Louis XIV was accessible.133
The main problem, however, was the political context, in which
any attempt at reform would have come into question. The reaction in the 1580s was a mixture of ridicule for details~.g. the
provision of special robes for various gradations of courtier-and
anger at the main lines of change. Even Burghley in England,
511
when told of some of the court orders of 1582, had described them
as ’matters for the more part for a lord of misrule’ and added ’I
pitte to see so weak a government in so myghty a kyndom.’l34
Giovanni Dolfin, the Venetian ambassador, reported the hostility
of the nobility in 1585:
Ha questa sorte di servitio atterrito ii animi di molti gentilhuomini vecchi d’anni,
di servitu et di merito, che parendo loro in questa maniera di viver con poca,
anzi niuna riputation restano molto affliti et sconsolati, vedendo in un regno che
6 accresciuto et nutrito in grandezza et riputation colla liberta, essere introdotta
strettezza et novita tanto importante, che pregiudicchi gravemente, come parlano
senza alcun rispetto, alla nobilt~ loro.111
Even the queen mother counselled caution to her son but with
only limited effect. She had drawn up a celebrated advice to one
of her sons some years before in which she advised him carefully
to make himself available to his nobles and provide them with
activity. 136 De Thou later recalled that the new rules made the
king odious in the eyes of the nobility, seeing the preference of
access accorded to men like Epernon and Joyeuse.111 As for the
new security arrangements of a sworn guard of forty-five who
were called ’les couppe-jarrets’, they were quickly accused of
carrying out secret assassinations on the king’s orders, with headless corpses found floating in the Seine.’3R
As far as the manners of court life were concerned, throughout
the sixteenth century these were the object of somewhat traditional invective, in terms described also by Solnon as the hostility
of writers that expressed ‘1’amertume, les rancoeurs longtemps
ressass6es, les espoirs déçus’. 139 D’Aubigne recalled that the king
himself had taken the propaganda initiative in 1585 in writing
publicly to the Order of the Holy Spirit and the Penitents
reproaching the Guise for their impiety and debauches. The plan
backfired. Though the Leaguers did little then, Louis Dorl6ans’s
Catholique Anglois opened the theme of the perversions ’active
et passive, qui s’exerqoit au cabinet’ and the stories of ’maladies
v6n6riennes, gaign6es par le derri6re, traict6es et enfin guenes par
le m6decin Miron’.140 In one of its most well-known forms, this
tradition appeared as the Description de l’Ile des Hermaphrodites
by Thomas d’Embry (only published in 1605). The work has as
much reference for the reign of Henri IV in its criticism of courtiers but does hark back to the crescendo of abuse in 1589 when
it describes how ’lesdits officiers [de police] permettront aussi tous
512
discours et libelles diffamatoires contre 1’honneur du prince.’141 At
the other end of the spectrum, N. Rollant’s Catholic Puritanism
led him to launch a tirade in 1588 against loose court morals,
especially those of the women. This work, written ostensibly from
the point of view of a loyal subject, drove home the message that
Catholicism taught obedience and heresy, rebellion, and attacked
the king’s failure to control it. 142
All this was a critique which did little to dispel the determination
of Henri III to use spectacle to exalt his majesty and the principles of order: from the accession celebrations of 1574, through
the magnificences for the duke of Joyeuse’s marriage to the
queen’s sister in 1581, the well-documented Ballet comique de la
Reyne, to the festivals for the conferment of the order of the
Garter on the king in 1585. 143 All of these entailed prodigious and
conspicuous expenditure and set a new standard of court display
that sat oddly with the prevailing political disintegration and
financial malaise.
This all seems to have gone down badly with public opinion.
Catherine’s banquet at Chenonceaux in which it was rumoured
that her ladies had served at table naked to the waist, a gross
exaggeration in the light of the queen mother’s well known strictness in protocol, was enough to lead Pierre de L’Estoile to castigate a new fashion adopted in Paris and the author of La vie et
faits to assert that the king had had himself served ’A table dans
le cabinet par des femmes toutes nues’, a story recounted by
L’Estoile as early as 1577.144
The king’s quest in reality was essentially for refinement; high
expenditure, after all, was nothing new. Even in the midst of the
Habsburg-Valois Wars, one observer noted of Henri 11’s finances
that ’quanto alla casa e persona del re, e alla commodita sue, non
sia mai stato re, di quanti s’ha memoria, che spendesse ne tenisse
maggior casa del re Enrico, non bastandoli per questo conto dui
millioni e mezzo di franci.’ 145 However, even the testy L’Estoile
could admit that court expenditure, far from being the ruin of the
people as they claimed was ’aussit6t transmises au peuple, qu’est
1’eau par un conduit’ since courtiers could never hold on to the
king’s largesse
The morals of the court were a conventional theme. Much of
the critique was plainly exaggerated, though there was plenty
of material. Jacqueline Boucher has pointed out this was an age of
considerable liberation for aristocratic women. The erotic works
513
of Aretino circulated
widely and the king’s turbulent sister, queen
work, Le Ruelle mal assortie, in which sensual
Margot,
love triumphs over platonic and Brant6me remarked that young
women only had fewer lovers than married ones because they had
less wealth and independence. 147
wrote
a
Yet, in perspective, the court of Henri III seemed to have been
model of refinement and good order, a golden age of politesse
to a later generation. ’Notre cour’, to the aging Brant6me, who
died in 1614, was always the court of Henri III and, of Catherine
de Medici’s household in particular, he wrote in his Dames Illustres : ’sa compagnie et sa court estoit un vray paradis du monde et
escolle de toute honnestet6, de vertu, 1’ornement de France.&dquo;&dquo;
When Henri IV started talking of reviving the refinement of the
court, Biron told him he could only do it by persuading God to
bring Catherine back to life. In that reign, too, it was the old
marshal de Bellegarde, a former courtier of Henri III, who seemed
the exemplum of politesse in comparison with the rougher ways
of the new century.’49
Dr Cameron has argued that the propaganda picture of Henri
III is a fictionalized satire, ’one which, in the absence of any
tangible, factual evidence, we are unable to readjust’.110 There is,
though, much factual evidence to indicate the massive extent to
which Henri III was traduced by many of his contemporaries,
though the distorted public image did rest on a very limited nugget
of truth which gave credence to the distortions.
What, finally, can be said of the king’s own views and objectives?
Henri III was an exceptionally thoughtful sovereign who had a
high idea of his calling and of the prerogatives of kingship. He
attached great, perhaps too much, importance to the powers of
persuasion. Even the hostile Lucinge praised his eloquence, ’vivacit6 d’esprit’ and determination to govern in person, while disapproving of his secretive manoeuvres. The king’s eloquence
remained with him until his deathbed. 151 He was also a paternalist
like most of his predecessors, and, in 1579, wrote that ’puisqu’il a
pleu a Dieu me commectre la charge et gouvemement de ce
royaume, joe desire m’y conduire tout ainsy qu’un bon pere de
famille faict envers les siens.’152 His remarkable correspondence
shows that he had pondered long the problems of his realm. His
assessment of the forces ranged against him was acute. In foreign
affairs he and his brother, he told his mother in 1578, were
’despourveuz de moiens, support et amys pour conserver 1’heria
514
taige que noz predecesseurs nous ont laiss6’ and yet were divided
by the plots of others. Internally, ’ceux qui ont connoissance des
calamitez qui ont afflig6 cet Estat depuis seize ou dix sept ans en
ga’ would well understand how little power he had to control his
subjects, especially since, as became clear in 1580, the concessions
to show confidence in them
’la
and to re-establish
paix publicque en mon royaume’, were
fruitless. He told his brother-in-law Navarre in 1579 that ’la trop
longue suite de noz divisions a tellement depprav6 et corrompu
les bonnes meurs’ and rendered his programme of pacification,
problematic for a devout Catholic in any case, difficult to
to the
Protestants, made in order
implement. 153
As far as his objectives were concerned, contradictions inevitably arise from what he wanted his readers, especially abroad, to
know. When he wrote to his ambassador in Rome, he wished the
Pope to know that he was determined to crush heresy; when to
his ambassador in England, he posed as a monarch who, rather
like Elizabeth I, wished to have one established religion but would
protect dissenters as long as they obeyed him as true subjects
should. To be fair, he told the German Protestant envoys in 1586
that: ’c’est Dieu qui m’a fait Roi, et comme je porte le titre de
Roi Tr~s Chr6tien, j’ai tousjours ete tr~s-zel6 pour la conservation
de la Religion Catholique.’ts4 He informed his envoy in Rome in
January 1577 that toleration of heresy had been forced on him,
’press6 de la necessite du temps et de la compassion que j’avois
de tant de maulx et calamitez que je voyois souffrir a mes subjectz’
but that now he was determined to have only the catholic and
apostolic religion in his kingdom. Eight years later, and after two
more periods of armed conflict, he wrote in remarkably similar
terms to another ambassador there, ’La necessite et le malheur
des temps me contraignent de tol6rer plusieurs choses au fait de
la religion qui me sont a contrecoeur.’ In the justification of the
murder of the Guise sent to Rome in January 1589, he wrote of
himself that: ’croissant sa Majesté d’dge, a creu par mesme moyen
sa ferveur et zele en nostre tressaincte Foy Catholicque, & la haine
et detestation de 1’heresie, auec ardente affection d’en voir ce
Royaume purg6 et net’. 155
In his correspondence, though, a constant theme is political
realism, 156 while the impossibility of dealing with the basic problems in the context of lack of means is also clear. 151 Peace was
515
needed above all, as he
and suspicions were rife:
clearly pointed
out in
1576, when fears
qui suivent ordinairement une longue et fascheuse guerre civile, telle qu’a
est6 celle dont mon royaume a estd afflige dont il est bien difficile sortir nettement du premier coup, et faut que le temps, le bon ordre et regle que l’on y
tiendra acheve de consumer les humeurs de cette contagion. Dieu, s’il luy plait,
me fera la grace d’y pourvoir.158
...
There
seems no reason
to doubt that the king saw his country’s
had to be purged by peace, but
problems as a sort of illness that
only according to God’s will.
However, whatever Henri III attempted
distorted
duced by
to do
was
invariably
by public opinion, partly blind, partly orchestrated, pro-
immensely complex situation. The king, in his intellihad
gent way,
perceived the impossibility of military victory over
the Protestants. Moreover, by 1585 he was certain that, should he
co-operate with the League in the total destruction of the Huguenots, he would be more than ever at the mercy of the Guise. 151
He desperately needed to balance between the two while maintaining full public confidence in his Catholicism. The task was
impossible and no doubt aggravated his reputation for indecisiveness. When the climactic decision was taken to eliminate the Guise
at Blois in December 1588, there was an air of desperation that
comes across even in his own justification. He had, he said, been
rendered powerless by the Guise and was in danger of his life. He
had put them to death ’suivant la puissance legitime que Dieu luy
a donn6 sur tous ses subjets’ but ’si elle eust voulu entreprendre
ledit chastiment par les voyes ordinaries de la Iustice, non seulement elle n’eust peu 1’executer, mais y voyoit sa perte & ruine
toute certaine.’ As Catherine de Medici is said to have told him:
’he had given a great blowe, so all the rest might succeed accordingly.’l60 From this moment, he slipped more and more into a
morass of vilification and contempt which was fed by his carefree
defiance of general expectations concerning the demeanour of a
king, his strangely obtuse tolerance of insults, but, above all, by
what seemed to be an inconstancy of policy and way of life. The
king’s odd idea at Blois in January 1589 of receiving a Parisian
passementier at his lever, while in bed with the queen, in order to
make the point that he was truly king, whatever was said about
him at Paris, could hardly answer the problem. 161 The king had
failed to absorb Machiavelli’s fundamental advice in chapter XIX
an
516
of Il Principe, on avoiding hatred and contempt: ’contennendo lo
fa essere tenuto vario, leggieri, effeminato, pusillanime, irresoluto’,
all of which qualities were widely attributed to him by 1589.
On Saturday 25 February 1589, a tableau was mounted in Paris
where an excommunicate tyrant ’avec ses coquins, belistres et
satellites de mignons’ was shown ’en son pontificat’ during the
chapter of the Holy Spirit. It was then burned. At the Louvre,
the king’s furniture and collections were smashed and his great
seal symbolically broken. 162 By March 1589, the Florentine
ambassador was reporting that God alone might save the king’s
soul but that he had great doubts about the safety of his body. 163
The stage was now set for the final act of regicide. The conviction
that the king had betrayed the Catholic cause and failed in his
duty as Most Christian King cancelled out all the serious efforts
he had made to solve the problems of his kingdom. In the course
of these last months, this cardinal fact, combined with the vituperation that we have seen built up out of distortions that were
convincing enough to ’take’ publicly, emerged as the central drive
of League propaganda. All this took shape with the context of
the Parisian revolution of 1588-9, a revolution which, for a time,
seemed to threaten the submergence of the monarchical system
itself, and permanently distorted the image of the king for pos-
terity.
Notes
1. For recent re-examinations of the regicide, see A. Lebigre, ’Qui a tué Henri
III?’ in R. Sauzet, ed., Henri III et son temps. Actes du colloque international du
Centre de la Renaissance de Tours, octobre 1989 (Paris 1992), 271-4; P. Chevallier,
’Les Poursuites exercées par les Parlements de Tours et Châlons contre les religieux
et tous autres apologistes de Jacques Clément, 1589-94’, ibid, 253-70.
2. For examples of this discourse, see M. Yardeni, La Conscience nationale en
France pendant les guerres de religion (1559-1598) (Paris and Louvain 1971); A.
Jouanna, L’ldée de race en France au XVIe siècle et au début du XVIIe, revised
edn, 2 vols (Montpellier 1981); D. Bitton, The French Nobility in Crisis, 1560-1640
(Stanford, CA 1969).
3. C. Michaud, ’Finances et guerres de religion en France’, Revue d’histoire
moderne et contemporaine, 1981, 572-96.
4. On the military predicament, see J. de Pablo, ’Gaspard de Coligny, chef de
guerre’ in Actes du Colloque L’Amiral de Coligny et son temps (Paris 1974), 53-76;
J.B. Wood, ’The Royal Army during the Early Wars of Religion, 1559-76’ in M.P.
517
Holt, ed., Society and Institutions in
Early Modern France (Athens, GA 1991),
1-35.
5. J. Boutier, J. Dewerpe, D. Nordmann, Un Tour de France royal. Le voyage de
Charles IX (1564-1566
) (Paris 1984).
6. For an example of the perception that the childlessness of the royal couple
was the result of the king’s sterility, see Les Meurs, humeurs et comportemens de
Henry de Valois (Paris 1589), 20. The Venetian envoy Priuli in 1582, however,
ascribed it to ’così per la magrezza della regina, come perchè ella si trova ancor
con un profluvio di mestrui bianchi.’ L. Firpo, Relazioni di ambasciatori veneti al
senato, 11 vols (Turin 1965-), Vol. V, 835 (Alberi, Relazioni I, iv, 425).
7. For discussion of this dictum, see B. Basse, La Constitution de l’ancienne
France. Principes et lois fondamentales de la royauté française (Paris 1986), 219;
unworthy acts were deemed to be extorted ’par surpris’ or result from bad advice.
On the centrality of the concept of the roi très chrétien, see most recently C.
Beaune, Naissance de la nation France (Paris 1985), trans. F.L. Cheyette, The Birth
of An Ideology (Berkeley, CA 1991) and J. Krynen, L’Empire du roi. Idées et
croyances politiques en France, XIIIe-XVe siècle (Paris 1993), 345-83.
8. A. Tilley,’Some Pamphlets of the French Wars of Religion’, English Historical
Review, Vol. 14 (1899), 451-70, esp. 460, made this point in relation to Louis
Dorléans’s Second Advertissment.
9. L.-R. Lefebvre, ed., P. de L’Estoile, Journal pour le règne de Henri III
(1574-1589) (Paris 1943), 489-90. This edition is used here as the most convenient.
The definitive edition, M. Lazard and G. Schrenck, eds, P. de L’Estoile, Registresjournaux du règne de Henri III, Vol. I (1574-5) (Geneva 1992), though it gives the
original text and reconciles the two versions, has not yet proceeded far enough.
10. J.-A. de Thou, Histoire universelle, 16 vols (London 1734) Vol. VIII, 134.
M.W. Freer, Henri III, King of France and Poland. His Court and Times, 3 vols
(London 1858) Vol. I. 246 (after B[ibilothèque] N[ationale] Fontanieu, 331-2).
11. Henri III to Rambouillet, 29 November 1574, Lettres d’Henri III, roi de
France, recueillies par Pierre Champion, ed., M. François, 4 vols so far (Paris
1959-84), Vol. II, 73-5.
12. Henri III to Hautefort, 23 November 1577, François, Lettres, Vol. III, 426:
’l’estimant oeuvre faict de ma main et plus de mon seul conseil que autrement.’
13. J. Nouaillac, Villeroy. Secrétaire d’état et ministre de Charles IX, Henri III et
Henri IV (1543-1610) (Paris 1909), 73-4.
14. G. Dodu, ’Henri III’, Revue historique, Vol. 165 (1930), 1-42 and his Les
Valois. Histoire d’une maison royale (1328-1589) (Paris 1934).
15. P. Chevallier, Henri III. Roi Shakespearien (Paris 1985), cf. 361-73 and 705
for a bibliographical summary and D. Richet, ’Henri III dans 1’historiographie et
la légende’ in R. Sauzet, ed., Henri III et son temps, 13-20.
16. J. Boucher, Société et mentalités autour de Henri III, Lyon II thesis, 4 vols
(Lille 1981) and the summary in her La Cour de Henri III (Ouest France 1986).
E. Barnavi and R. Descimon, La Sainte Ligue, le juge et la potence. L’assassinat
du président Brisson (Paris 1985), 38-42 note that these gifts, though great, ’n’étainent pas celles qui plaisaient au peuple et à la noblesse’ and suggested that the type
of the warrior king was still expected as the norm.
17. A. Lebigre, Le Révolution des curés: Paris, 1588-94 (Paris 1980); E. Barnavi,
La Parti de Dieu. Etude sociale et politique des chefs de la Ligue parisienne
) (Brussels and Louvain 1980),14-15: L’Estoile’s note that Henri III was
(1585-1594
518
On the king’s financial policies, L’Estoile frequently recorded
Journal pour le règne de Henri III, 69, 153, 158, 197, 221. The
renewal of civil war after the Estates-General of Blois cost over 2 million It., 1.8
million from forced loans from the cities and 0.8 million from the clergy (François,
Lettres, Vol. III. 171).
18. J. Boucher, ’Culture des notables et mentalité populaire dans la propagande
qui entraina la chute de Henri III’ in J. Nicolas, ed., Mouvements populaires et
conscience sociale (Colloque de l’Université de Paris VII-CNRS, mai 1984) (Paris
1985), 339-49, esp. 340. D. Pallier, Recherches sur l’imprimerie à Paris pendant la
) (Paris 1976), lists all the anti-Henrician pamphlets.
Ligue (1585-1594
19. M. McGowan, ’Les Images du pouvoir royal au temps de Henri III’, in
Théorie et pratiques à la Renaissance. Colloque international de Tours, 1974, 301-20.
20. K. Cameron, Henri III: Maligned or Malignant King? (Exeter 1978) and
idem., ’Henri III—the Antichristian King’, Journal of European Studies (1974),
152-63.
21. K. Cameron, Henri III, 15, 19. J.H. Salmon, ’French Satire in the Late
Sixteenth Century’ in Renaissance and Revolt (Cambridge 1987), 78-84. See J. de
Serres, Inventaire de l’Histoire de France générale (Paris 1600) Vol. III, 1751: ’Il
falloit rendre les actions du Roy odieuses.’
22. Bamaud’s work is republished as La Polygamie sacrée en France au XVIe
siècle.
23. L’Estoile, Journal pour le règne de Henri III, 125 (September 1576). ’Colas’
is presumably the king’s father-in-law, Nicolas de Lorraine-Vaudemont (Lebigre,
Le Révolution des curés, 46).
24. R. de Lucinge, sieur d’Allymes, Miroir des princes et Grands de France, ed.,
A. Dufour, Ann.-bull. de la Société de l’Histoire de France, (1954-5), 95-186, esp.
104.
25. A. Jouanna, ’La crise monarchique des années 1574-1576 en France’, Proceedings of the Western Society for French History, Vol. 20 (1993), 39-52. See also
her Le Devoir de révolte, la noblesse française et la gestation de l’Etat moderne
’affamé
d’argent’.
discontent,
see
(Paris 1989).
26. Chevallier, Henri III, 408.
27. J. Boucher, ’Culture des notables et mentalités populaires’, 345-6. S. Anglo,
’A Rhetoric of Hate’, in K. Cameron, ed., Montaigne and his Age (Exeter 1981),
5-9.
28. D. Crouzet, ’Henri IV, King of Reason?’, in K. Cameron, ed., From Valois
to Bourbon (Exeter 1989), 71-106, develops this view, 77-8, as part of the argument
that the ’de-dramatisation’ of this eschatological anxiety, so marked by the ’frenzy’
of the 1580s, was part of the establishment of rational neo-stoicism as the dominant
political philosophy of the Bourbon regime. The idea is developed in his Les
Guerriers de Dieu, 2 vols (Paris 1990), Vol. II, 477-85, 543-52, 574-84. F.J.
Baumgartner, Radical Reactionaries: The Political Thought of the French Catholic
League (Geneva 1973), 118-20.
29. A.-M. Cocula, ’Brantôme ou la mauvaise réputation du duc d’Anjou, futur
Henri III’, in R. Sauzet, ed., Henri III et son temps, 39-46.
30. Pierre de L’Estoile, Journal pour le règne de Henri III, 158 (1577); 610 (20
January 1589):
...
car
aussi
n’y
avait-il fils de bonne mère àParis,
qui
ne
vomit
injures
et
519
brocards contre le roi qu’ils appellaient Henri de Valois, bougre, fils de
putain, tyran.... De quoi rendent suffisant témoignage les vilaines figures
et étibelles diffamatoires criés publicquement par les portepaniers de
madame de Montpensier.’, 625-6 (April 1589) and his list of pamphlets
’lesquels on croiraient malaisément, un tempsvenir, qu’ils eussent jamais
été imprimés dans une ville de Paris (655).
31. F.J. Baumgartner, Radical Reactionaries, 17-25 and Salmon, ’French satire’,
78-84.
32. D’Aubigné’s argument is that the tyranny of the Caesars was rendered
bearable by their virtues in war and the arts, but:
Unlucky he who lives his slavish span
’Neath manlike woman and a female man.
His brutish description of Charles IX is followed
with Henri III:
by
a
scarcely flattering
L’autre fut mieux instruit à juger des atours,
Des putains de sa cour et, plus propre aux amours,
Avoir ras le menton, garder la face pasle,
Le geste effeminé, l’oeil d’un Sardanapale. [
Tragiques, II, 11.
contrast
773-6]
33. Agrippa d’Aubigné, Histoire universelle (SHF edn.) Vol. VIII, 78, M.-M.
Fragonard, ’Stratégie de la diffamation et poétique du monstrueux: d’Aubigné et
Henri III’, in R. Sauzet, ed., Henri III et son temps, 47-55.
34. (Paris 1589).
35. (Paris 1589), 2nd edn reprinted in L. Cimber and F. Danjou, eds, Archives
curieuses de l’histoire de France depuis Louis XI jusqu’à Louis XVIII, 30 vols
(Paris 1834-49), Vol. 12.
36. For considerations of authorship, see Baumgartner, Radical Reactionaries,
108-9, n. 38. However, note that Jacqueline Boucher considers La Vie et faits as a
work of Boucher in his more populist mode, see her ’Culture des notables et
mentalités populaires’, 341.
37. Les Meurs et humeurs, 27-8.
38. Histoire veritable de la plus sain[ct]e partie de la vie de Henry de Valois iadis
Roy de France (Paris 1589), 6. On the authorship of this, see F. Yates, The French
Academies of the Sixteenth Century (London 1967). Compare also with Contre les
fausses allegations que les plus qu’Archotifels, Conseillers Cabinalistes proposent
pour excuser Henry le meurtrier (Paris 1589), 32: ’imbu de la Religion de Machaivel,
et ayant ouy en son Cabinet les lectures d’un veillard bazanné conroyé en
l’Atheisme’.
39. S. Anglo, ’Henri III: some determinants of vituperation’, in K. Cameron,
ed., From Valois to Bourbon, 7-20, esp. 18-20. I. Gentillet, Discours sur les moyens
contre Nicolas Machiauel Florentin (Geneva 1576), ed. as
de bien gouverner
Anti-Machiavel by C. Edward Rathé (Geneva 1968).
40. Les Meurs et humeurs, 44, 88.
41. Les Meurs et humeurs, 91, 122-3. ’Asseurez vous de sa personne, faictes
apres qu’vn autre mieux cogneu par sa promesse, mieux aimé par sa vertu et moins
suspect pour sa religion, soit assis en son throsne’ (121). Note the reference to
English history ’qui a esté l’an passé representee en nostre vulgaire’ of the king
...
520
(Edward II) who ’estoit trop amourasté d’vn Gascon, et l’auoit tant àmignon, que
pour le trancher cour, il luy donnoit tout ce qu’il pouuoit’ (115-16).
42. La Vie et faits (eds, Cimber and Danjou), 130, 437.
43. La Vie et faits, 451, 455.
44. La Vie et faits, 450-77 passim and 482 postscript.
45. Les Meurs et humeurs, 90, 18. The criticism of instability had already been
made by the Savoyard envoy Lucinge in 1585: ’il est muable et inconstant en
toutes ses actions’, see Miroir des princes, 106.
46. J. Boucher, Société et mentalités, Vol. I, 9-11. On migraine and its effects,
see François, Lettres, Vol. IV, 78, no. 3115 bis. On the king’s ear problems, which
caused the doctors to despair of his life in 1579, L’Estoile, Journal pour le règne
de Henri III, 223-4 (September 1579), all except doctor Le Grand, who put the
illness down to ’excès des jours gras, durant lesquels, nonobstant les affaires qu’il
avait sur les bras, il avait passé les nuits entières à mômer et masquer.’ Priuli in
1582 noted the king’s scalp infection that caused him to wear a cap at all times
(Firpo, Relazioni, Vol. V, 833). Even as intelligent an observer as Pasquier, though,
could draw attention to the fact that the king ’portoit la teste raze, par le conseil
de ses Medecins, usant d’une fausse perruque’ as a worrying sign in view of the
symbolism of hair for royalty under the Merovingians. However, it was his ’humeur
satumienne & melancholique’ which ’me faisoient craindre de luy’. E. Pasquier,
Lettres historiques pour les années 1556-1594, ed., D. Thickett (Geneva 1966), 448.
47. Boucher, Société et mentalités, Vol. I, 22. Cobham to Walsingham, 22 May
1583, Calendar of State Papers Foreign of the Reign of Elizabeth, 1583 [hereafter
], eds, A.J. Butler and S.C. Lomas (London 1913), 357.
CSPF
48. L’Estoile, Journal pour le règne de Henri III, 85 (November 1575) on the
liking for Italian shirts, collecting dogs and learning grammar and how to ’decline’,
’sur lequel mot, qui sembloit présager la déclinaison de son Estat’, certain Latin
verses were circulating (Lazard edn, Vol. I, p. 207). On the anti-papal parrots,
L’Estoile, ibid., 119-20 (14 July 1576).
49. A. Lebigre, La Révolution des curés, passim and 36, 46. J.-A. de Thou,
Mémoires (Amsterdam 1714): ’petits passe-temps ... dont il changeait de six mois
en six mois ou d’an en an.’
50. A. Lynn Martin. Henri III and the Jesuit Politicians, 35-8.
51. Les Meurs et humeurs, 76, 81.
52. La Vie et faits, 452. The historical parallel is confused with Louis II and
Eudes.
53. A. Lebigre, La Révolution des curés, 49.
54. See the letters to Mme de Montaigu, January 1575, François, Lettres, Vol.
II, 94-6.
55. L’Estoile, Journal pour le règne de Henri III, 238 (1579), 255 (December
1580).
56. Cobham to
Walsingham,
26
January 1580, P[ublic] R[ecord] O[ffice],
London, SP 78/4A, no. 10 (
CSPF, 142); same to Burghley, 1 March 1580, SP 78/
4A, no. 25 (
CSPF, 177); same to [Walsingham], 17 October 1580, SP 78/4B fo. 309,
passage in cipher not transcribed in the CSPF.
57. Firpo, Relazioni, Vol. V, 833-4 (Alberi, Relazione, 1, Vol. IV, 423-4); having
pointed out the king’s deafness in one ear and scalp disease, he added ’Ha il re
anco avuta qualche infirmità per aver, come i giovani, mal governata a la sua
521
con la pratica troppo familiare delle donne.’ Doctors had predicted he
would not live beyond 37 (in fact he was 38 in 1589).
58. Boucher, Société et mentalités, Vol. I, 12, 62.
59. Dandino to Cardinal Como, 3 February 1580, Correspondence du nonce en
France Anselmo Dandino (1578-81
), ed., I. Cloulas, A[cta] N[untiaturae] G[allicae], Vol. 8 (Rome 1970), 595.
60. Dandino to Cardinal Como, 24 April 1580, ANG 8, 646-7.
61. Castelli to Cardinal Como, 2 April 1582, Correspondance du nonce en France
Giovanni Battista Castelli (1581-83
), ed., R. Toupin, ANG 7 (Rome 1967), 294, no.
132. On all this, see A. Lynn Martin, Henri III and the Jesuit Politicians, 77-9.
62. G. Busini to B. Vinta, Paris, 11 June 1585, Desjardins, Négociations diplomatiques de la France avec la Toscane, 6 vols (Paris 1859-86) Vol. IV, 581.
63. P. Chevallier, Louis XIII, roi corneillien (Paris 1979), 430-7; A. Lloyd Moote,
Louis XIII, the Just (Berkeley, CA 1989), 274-7.
64. A. Lynn Martin, Henri III and the Jesuit Politicians, 88-120 passim.
65. Chevallier, Henri III, 543-57.
66. G. Busini to B. Vinta, 8 August 1583, Desjardins, Négociations diplomatiques
Vol. IV, 467: the king is totally preoccupied by the convent of the Penitents ’sendosi
lasciato crescere la barba
ha buonissima cera, continuando l’orazione più che
mai abbi fatto.’ See also the opinion of the nuncio on damage to state business as
a result of the king’s melancholy, Frangipani to Rusticucci, 27 October 1586,
Correspondance du nonce en France Fabio Mirto Frangipani (1586-7
), ed., A. Lynn
Martin, ANG, 16 (Rome 1984), 330. Note that Henri changed his demeanour from
time to time: see Cobham to Walsingham, Paris, 17 October 1582, PRO SP 78/8,
p. 445: ’The Kynge hath sayde openly that of longe tyme he hath lyved in private
sorte but he was resolved nowe to passe his tyme in more greater conversation.’
67. P. de L’Estoile, Journal pour le règne de Henri III, 345, a series of pasquils
on the confraternity of the Penitents.
68. For the critique of Machiavelli on this point, see Gentillet, Anti-Machiavel,
ed., Rathé, 478-503.
69. La Vie et faits, 167-8.
70. All these passages from Le Meurs et humeurs, 17-21.
71. Les Meurs et humeurs, 76.
72. F. Le Breton, Rémonstrance aux trois estatz de la France (1586, written in
1584). C. Hurault. Discours sur l’estat de France (1588), sig. C, 1. Advertissement
et premières escriptures du proces pour des deputez des Provinces contre Henry de
Valois (Paris, D. Binet 1589), 14.
73. L’Estoile. Journal pour le règne de Henri III, 446 (25 March 1586). See also:
’le roi montrait son front la Ligue, couvert d’un sac de pénitent et d’ermite. au
lieu que César opposait l’autorité de son visage armé à ses légions mutinées’, ibid.,
457 (12 September 1586).
74. Stafford to Walsingham, 28 June 1585, PRO SP 78/13, no. 7.
75. Desjardins, Négociations diplomatiques, Vol. IV, 546.
76. P. Chevallier, Henri III, 438, based on despatches of Giglioli, Cardinal
d’Este’s agent, 17, 25 August 1585, Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Secretariat of State,
Nunziatura di Francia 285, fo. 21v, etc.
77. ’Le roi allait à pied par les rues de Paris gagner le pardon du jubilé
et
tenant en sa main de grosses paternôtres
on disait que ce faisait-il par le conseil
de sa mère, afin de faire croire au peuple de Paris qu’il était fort dévotieux
gioventù,
...
...
...
522
et lui donner courage de fouiller plus librement
à la bourse.’ L’Estoile, Journal pour le règne de Henri III, 124 (August 1576).
78. See A. Lynn Martin, Henri III and the Jesuit Politicians, 149-50.
79. Raggazoni to Cardinal Rusticucci, 7 October 1585, Girolamo Ragazzoni,
évêque de Bergame. Correspondance de sa nonciature (1583-86
), ed., P. Blet, ANG
2 (Rome 1962), 457, no. 208.
80. F. Yates, The Valois Tapestries, 87 and idem, The French Academies, 220-.
81. Henri III to Navarre, 15 June 1580: ’Vous sçavez bien qu’il n’y a que Dieu
seul qui ayt puissance sur ce qui deppend de nostre conscience, que la force et
violence humaine y est du tout innutille’ (François, Lettres, Vol. IV, 215). The
king’s speech at the Assembly of Notables on 22 November 1583: ’il estoit d’advis
de ne rentrer plus en telles malheures et puis que lad. religion ne povoit par
force humaine prendre fin, il estoit besoing d’user d’autres remedes, ascavoir: par
presches, ieusnes, prieres, oraisons et bonne vie pour les ramener àla voie de
salut’ (Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, V.a. 146, fo. 62v).
82. Henri III to du Ferrier, Paris, 9 October 1579, François, Lettres, Vol. IV, 285.
83. Les Meurs et humeurs, 112.
84. See above all the work of Frances Yates on this, but also that of A. Soman.
On Catherine, see Suriano, 1561, in N. Tommaseo, ed., Relations des ambassadeurs
vénitiens sur les affaires de France, 2 vols (Paris 1838) Vol. I, 542-3; her belief in
the ’maistres des arts magiques’ is still reported in 1585 by Lucinge in Miroir des
princes, 109. Louis Dorléans, a leading pamphleteer against the king. was also a
witch-hunting member of the normally sceptical Parlement of Paris. See Soman,
’The Parlement of Paris and the great witch hunt (1565-1640)’, Sixteenth Century
Journal, Vol. 9 (1978), 31-44, esp. 39. M. Yardeni, ’Henri III. sorcier’ in R. Sauzet,
ed., Henri III et son temps, 57-68, argues that the attacks on the king’s supposed
diabolism were rooted in popular hostility to the high magic of the late Valois
catholique, apostolique et romain,
court.
85. Les Sorcelleries de Henry de Valois et les oblations qu’il faisoit au diable
dans le bois de Vincennes (1589), reprinted in Cimber and Danjou, Archives
curieuses, Vol. 12, 487-91, esp. 488-90. It is possible that the author was J. Guincestre who preached this exact theme, showing some such candlesticks to the crowd
(L’Estoile, Journal pour le règne de Henri III. 615.)
86. Les Meurs et humeurs, 73-4, 29. On this theme, see also Les Sorcelleries de
J. d’Esparnon. Pourtraict des charmes et caractères de sorcellerie d’Henri de Valois
(Paris 1589).
87. F. Yates, The French Academies of the Sixteenth Century (London 1947),
172.
88. Choses horribles contenues en une lettre envoyée à Henry de Valois par vn
enfant de Paris (1589). The letter, supposedly ’found’ near the tour de l’Horloge,
tells Henri that he has released the power of sorcerers by sending the true cross
out of France, that he has been given a familiar spirit in the form of ’Teragon’
(Nogaret), ’la nuict suyuante il coucha dans vostre chambre, seul auec vous dans
vostre lict. Vous scauez bien, que toute la nuict il tint sur vostre ventre, droict au
nombril, vn anneau, & sa main liee dans la vostre, et fust le matin vostre main
trouuee comme toute cuite.’
89. L’Estoile, Journal pour le règne de Henri III, 81 (August 1576).
90. Les Meurs et humeurs, 89.
91. L’Estoile, Journal pour le règne de Henri III, 232-8, e.g. 232: ’Ganimèdes
523
effrontés, impudique canaille’; 233: ’Ces fraisés, ces frisés, ces abbateurs de filles/
Ces musqués, ces masqués, nouveaux mignons des villes’; 234 (1579) on Heliogabalus who ’exposa son corps au barbiers inhumains/ Afin d’être changé, par l’oeuvre
de ses mains/ Au sexe féminin’.
92. G. Robin. L’énigme sexuelle de Henri III (Paris 1964), 153, 192-3, with its
implicit assumption that the female nature was indecisive and undesirable in a
ruler.
93. Robin, L’énigme sexuelle, 116-18; also mentions Aubigné’s ’Si qu’au premier
abord, chacun estoit en peine/ S’il voyoit un Roy femme ou bien un homme
Royne.’ (Tragiques II. 11.794-5). For a sensible appreciation of the king’s dress in
the context of contemporary fashion, see Chevallier, Henri III, 414-18.
94. L’Estoile, Journal pour le règne de Henri III, 142 (February 1577).
95. M. Suriano, ’Commentarii del regno di Francia’, 1561, in Tommaseo,
Relations, I, 552-3.
96. J. Boucher, La Cour de France, 26.
97. P. Champion, ’Henri III: la légende des mignons’, Humanisme et Renaissance
6 (1939), 494-528; idem, La Jeunesse de Henri III, 2 vols (Paris 1941-2), Vol. II,
331. For an example of the king’s personal correspondence, see the charming letter
to Louise de Clermont-Tallart, duchess of Uzès, 3 September [1578], Lettres, Vol.
IV, 70. ’Je suis si aysé quand j’antands de nouvelles de ma trouppe’ (Henri III to
Saint-Sulpice, 7 March 1576, Lettres, Vol. II, 386.
98. Lucinge, Miroir des princes, 104-5, in which he ostentatiously refrains ’par
une récit tant sale, offencer la chasteté des oreilles de V.A’. See also R. de Lucinge,
Lettres sur les débuts de la Ligue, 191 (20 September 1585), 242 (19 November
1585) on the king’s devotions. Boucher, Société et mentalités, Vol. I. 104-10.
99. Boucher, Société et mentalités, Vol. I, 107. Henri III to Villeroy, [29 May
1579], François, Lettres de Henri III, Vol. IV, 201, no. 3383 bis; Henri III to Villeroy,
[c.6 March 1580], ibid., 355: ’Adyeu Bydon. Aimez moi tousjours car je serai
vremant tousjours le bon maistre. Il m’ont monstré vostre letre ou vous m’apellez
ainsy. Vous n’i seré jamais tromppé.’ On his relations with Villeroy, see J. Nouaillac,
Villeroy, 67-73. Pasquier, Lettres historiques, 447-8. See also Priuli (1582): ’È sua
Maestà molto amorevole verso i suoi servitori più intimi, e quando comincia ad
amarli li ama con tanto affetto a con tanta tenerezza, che vorrebbe poter mettere
sopra la testa loro la sua medesima corona’ (Firpo, Relazioni, Vol. V, 834, Alberi,
Relazioni, Vol. I, iv, 424).
100. J. Boucher, La Cour de Henri III, 165-70.
101. Boucher, Société et mentalités, Vol. I, 136- ; see also P. Chevallier, Henri
III,
435-7.
102.
Spanish
envoy, 19 June 1576, AN K 1539
Vinta, Paris, October 1583,
(microfilm);
G. Busini to B.
Vol. IV, 474-5,
Desjardins, Négociations diplomatiques,
passage in cipher.
103. G. Busini to B. Vinta, June-July 1583, Desjardins, Négociations diplomatiques, Vol. IV; 465; same to same, Paris, 8 August 1583, ibid., 467-8, passage in
cipher.
des mignons’, 497-8, suggests that the
1575; Journal d’un bourgeois de Paris, ed., L.
Lalanne (Paris 1854), 55 (1517). Note, though, that an anti-courtier preacher of
the early sixteenth century used it in a derogatory sense, see M. Piton, ’L’Idéal
104. P.
Champion,
’Henri III: la
term became one of abuse around
légende
524
épiscopal
selon les
prédicateurs français
de la fin du XVe siècle et du début di
XVIe’, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique. Vol. 61 (1966), 91.
105. L’Estoile, Journal pour le règne de Henri III, 122 ( July 1576).
106. L’Estoile, Journal pour le règne de Henri III, 154 (20 October 1577),
(discussed in J. Boucher, La Cour de Henri III, 25). L’Estoile transcribes a ’sonnet
vilain’ on their arrival with the words: ’Caylus.... Ne trouve qu’en son cul tout
son avancement.’ For other strictures of L’Estoile against the fashions of the court:
ibid., 122-3 ( July 1576); 184 (March 1577): the king dancing several nights a week
in Paris houses ’avec ses mignons fraisés et frisés’: 280 (October 1581) criticism of
’les bombances et extraordinaires et folles dépences’ for festivities on the marriage
of the mignon, the sr d’Arques.
107. T. Sorge, ’The Theatricality of Jacobean Discomfort’, paper presented at
Conference on Christopher Marlowe, Canterbury, 1993.
108. A. Désiré, Le Ravage et deluge des chevaux de louage, contenant la fin et
consommation de leur miserable vie. Avec le retour de Guillot le Porcher, sur les
miseres et calamitez de ce regne present (Paris 1578) fo. 50v-51r.
109. L’Estoile, Journal pour le règne de Henri III, 158.
110. M. Magendie, La Politesse mondaine et les théories de l’honnêteté en France
au XVIIe siècle, 2 vols (Paris 1925), Vol. I, 112, qu. L’Estoile, ed., Petitot, Vol. III,
248 (1609).
111. Brantôme, ’Discours sur les colonels’ in Oeuvres complètes, ed., L. Lalanne,
11 vols (Paris 1854-82), Vol. VI, 28-9: ’Ah! disoient-ilz, ce sont des mignons de
court, des mignons de couchette, des pimpons, des douilletz, des frisez, des fardez,
des beaux visages... ils sont trop délicatz, ils craignent trop les coups. Ilz ont veu
despuis le contraire.’ On the concept of the mignon de couchette and whether it
signified ’lover’, see Chevallier, Henri III, 419.
112. Les Meurs et humeurs, 21, 27.
113. La Vie et faits, 438-9.
114. La Vie et faits, 439-43 for a narrative of these events. L’Estoile, Journal
pour le règne de Henri III, 187 (April 1578), has rather different words for Caylus:
’"Ah! Mon roi, mon roi!" sans parler autrement de Dieu ni de sa mère’. On the
destruction of the monuments, ibid., 604. For a narrative of these events, see
Chevallier, Henri III, 467-9.
115. L’Estoile, Journal pour le règne de Henri III, 380 (May 1585).
116. P. Champion, La Jeunesse de Henri III, 331.
117. See the letters to all the mignons and Saint-Sulpice, 23/30 September [1575],
Lettres, Vol. II, 262-3; 1 October [1575], ibid., 264-5; 16 November [1575], ibid.,
p. 303; [December 1575]. ibid., 316-17; 7 December [1575], ibid., 317 (perhaps the
most passionate and intimate of these letters); 7 March 1576, ibid., 386. Letters to
Gilles de Souvré, 5 and 6 July 1576, ibid., Vol. II, 470-1; 19 September 1576, ibid.,
Vol. III, 32; [October 1576], ibid., 56; 17 November [1576], ibid., Vol. III, 72; [May
1577], ibid., Vol. III, 275; [July/August 1577], ibid., Vol. III, 336; [c.21 August 1577],
ibid., Vol. III, 356-8; [August 1577], ibid., Vol. III, 366-7; 4 letters, September
1577, ibid., Vol. III, 397-9. In 1578-80, the letters to Villeroy convey the same
tone (see Vol. IV passim
). For a discussion of these letters, see Chevallier, Henri
III,
422.
118. On this secret mark, see François, Lettres, Vol. II, 316, n. 3. Note that the
king signed thus his letters to Mme de Montaigue in January 1575, ibid., Vol. II, 95.
525
119. A. Jouanna, ’Faveur et favoris: l’exemple des mignons de Henri III’, in R.
Sauzet, ed., Henri III et son temps, 155-65.
120. Catherine de Medici, letters to Henri III, October 1579 and to Epernon,
November 1581, quoted in Boucher, La Cour de Henri III, 24.
121. P
et
Champion,
’La Maison de Henri III
en
Pologne’,
Travaux d’humanisme
Renaissance, 1940.
122. P. Chevallier, Henri III. 531 (source: d’Avila).
123. H. Michaud, ’Ordonnancement des dépenses et le budget de la monarchie,
1587-9’, Annuaire-bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire de France, (1972), 87-150, esp.
112-17.
124. Solnon, La Cour de France, 137, 210. L’Estoile, Journal pour le règne de
Henri III, 210 (January 1579).
125. For a description of the fall of François d’O, see L’Estoile, Journal pour le
règne de Henri III, 278-9 (October 1581). On the disgrace of Saint-Luc in March
1580, see François, Lettres, Vol. IV, 355-6: at first he insists that Saint-Luc must be
pursued ’avec toutte rygeur’, and then within days he compromises, ’estant mon
naturel plus enlin à la bonté et clemence’.
126. Stafford to Walsingham, 28 January 1585, PRO SP 78/13, no. 7. But see his
earlier report, with a quite contrary tone, to Burghley, Paris, 21 October 1583,
B[ritish] L[ibrary], Cotton, Galba E VI, fo. 151-61: ’the K. dysposition ys styll to
be besotted upon these two dukes his creatures, Joyeuses ys syche that he cannot
come to the Court but the K. leaveth not to goe often in post to vysit him... his
not cominge to the Court doth somewhat increase Espernons favour above him,
who so governeth the kinge and keepeth that hand of him that the kinge almost
standeth in awe of offendinge him.’ Giglioli to Ragazzoni, 25 August 1585, reported
that the king had called off a visit to Epernon’s house at Fontenay because the
duke would not have his house used as a brothel, like Joyeuse’s, Arch. Vat. Nunz.
di Francia 285.
127. Henri III showed the first letter around and it was widely copied and
printed in 1588. There is no date but it is evidently after the day of the barricades.
There are two copies of the text in England: PRO SP 78/18 no. 188, fos. 375-6
(slightly corrupt copy) and BL Cotton, Calig. E XII, fo. 129-32 (partially burned).
On this period, see L. Mouton, Un Demi Roi. Le duc d’Epernon (Paris 1922),
208-19 and esp. 212-13. For the letter of 26 July concerning Villeroy, see ibid.,
215-16. On the ’reconciliation’ of Henri III with Guise, H. de l’Epinois, ’La
Réconciliation de Henri III et du duc de Guise d’après les documents des archives
du Vatican, mai-juillet 1588’, Revue des questions historiques, 39 (1886), 52-94.
128. R. de Lucinge, Lettres sur les débuts de la Ligue, 26.
129. D. Potter and P.R. Roberts, ’An Englishman’s View of the Court of Henri
III, 1584-5: Richard Cook’s "Description of the Court of France" ’, French History,
Vol. 2 (1988), 312-26; R.J. Knecht, ’The Court of France, 1550-1650’, Seventeenth
Century French Studies, Vol. 10 (1988), 5-22; M. Châtenent, ’Henri III et l’ordre
de la cour: évolution de l’étiquette à travers les règlements généraux de 1578
et de 1585’ in R. Sauzet, ed., Henri III et son temps, 133-40.
130. Solnon, La Cour de France, 139, quoting Vieilleville, Mémoires (ed., Petitot,
xxvi), 154.
131. M. Suriano, ’Commentarii del regno di Francia’, Tommaseo, Relations, Vol.
I, 509: ’nonmai escluso nessuno dalla sua presenzia: intanto che ancora; lacchè,
526
gente vilissima, hanno ardimento di voler penetrare nell’intima camera del
vedere tutto quello che si fa, e sentire tutto quello che si ragiona.’
re, e
132. La Vie et faits, 431-2. The idea of manners ’à la Turque’ can be linked to
the general tendency to criticize the king’s penchant for things foreign—his Italian
des
shirts, for instance. As C. Pinselet in Le Martyre des deux frères contenant
massacres commis ès personnes du Cardinal et du duc de Guise par Henri de Valois
(Paris 1589) expressed it, and Jean Boucher declared in his sermons of early 1589,
Henri III was a king, Turkish by coiffure, German by his doublet, a harpy by his
hands, English by his garter, a Pole by his feet and a devil in his soul. (L’Estoile,
Journal pour le règne de Henri III, 611).
133. For the 1578 règlement, cf. BN fr. 4258 fo. 1-6. nafr. 7255, Dupuy 218, KK
544. On this and the 1585 reglement, see Potter and Roberts, ’An Englishman’s
View of the Court of France’, 318-22; M. Châtenet, ’Henri III et l’ordre de la
cour’ in R. Sauzet, ed., Henri III et son temps, 133-40.
134. Burghley to Walsingham, 2 November 1582, PRO SP 12/155, fo. 103.
135. G. Dolfin to the Doge, Paris, 17 January 1585, BN f.it.1733, p. 541, copy.
136. Ibid., pp. 538-9:
...
Ascolto (come dicono) molto attentemente essa regina quanto fu letto, et
accomodandosi all’uso di tempi presenti, et a quello che sa esser di gusto
del Re, commendo tutte le cose con molte parole... et in fine come donna
prudentissima, conoscendo che alcuni capi di detta regolatione abbraciano
certi particolari, che possono offendere la dignità regia, mettendosi in
scrittura molte cose apartenenti ad humili servitii della corte, et uscendo
alla stampa li multiplici favori delli Duchi di Gioiosa et d’Espernone,
ricordo che si venivano a disgustar sommamente li Principi dela sangue et
altro grande ancora, che sono di lunga mano meritevoli d’ogni honore.
This should be read in conjunction with Catherine’s celebrated letter to one of her
sons, dated by its editor to September 1563 but possibly written to Henri III, see
H. de la Ferrière, Lettres de Catherine de Médicis, Vol. II, 90-5 (93: ’les malins
avec leurs meschancetez ont faict entendre partout que ne vous soucyez de leur
conservation, aussi que n’aviez agréable de leur veoir
pour vous faire hair’).
137. J.A. de Thou, Histoire universelle, Vol. IX (London, 1734), 202-3.
138. La Vie et faits, 454.
139. P.M. Smith, The Anti-Courtier Trend in Sixteenth-Century French Literature
(Geneva, 1966), 158—;Solnon, La Cour de France, 158-9; the same terms are used
by Boucher in ’Culture des notable et mentalités populaires’, 343: ’Intérêt,
ambition déçue, rancoeur furent les motifs plus fréquents.’ Jean Boucher’s desire
for vengeance over his dismissal from office in the Parlement is a good example.
140. D’Aubigné, Histoire universelle, Vol. VI, 195. L. Dorléans, L’advertissement
des catholiques anglois aux François catholiques (Paris 1586).
141. T. Artus, sr. d’Embry, Description de l’Ile des Hermaphrodites (1605),
reprinted Cologne, 1724, 53. See also, 7: the author’s attendance on the king’s
lever, when there is free entry into the king’s chamber, which is perfumed and
dominated by the bed. The king, when awakened, complains that it is too early.
142. [N. Rollant?], Remonstrances treshumbles au Roy de France et de Pologne
Henry troisiesme, par un sien fidelle officier et subiect (Paris 1588), 145-7; ’or il n’y
a point de doute, Sire, que le plus grand luxe des femmes vient principallement
de vostre cour, ou ce desordre est en telle vogue... Les fardz, couleurs & tout ce
...
527
qui peut servir en telles ordures n’y sont point oubliez. Bref. c’est vne escolle de
luxe, impudicité et immondicité que vous tollerez et fauorisez.’
143. R. Strong, Art and Power. Renaissance Festivals, 1450-1650 (Saint
Edmundsbury 1973), 115-25.
144. La Vie et faits, 452; L’Estoile, Journal du règne de Henri III, 146 (May
1577).
145. Tommaseo, Les Relations, Vol. 1, 405, relazione of Giovanni Michiel.
146. L’Estoile, Journal du règne de Henri III, 122 ( July 1576), from the passage
on the mignons.
147. J. Boucher, La Cour de Henri III, 165-70.
148. Brantôme, ’Des Dames’, Oeuvres complètes (ed., Lalanne), Vol. VII, 377.
149. Solnon, La Cour de France, 163-4.
150. K. Cameron, ’Henri III—Antichristian King’, 163.
151. L’Estoile, Journal pour le règne de Henri III, 129 (13 December 1576): at
the Estates-General ’Sa Majesté harangua dissertement et bien à propos.’ Lucinge,
Miroir des princes, 106. For the elegance of the king’s final speeches on his deathbed, see La Pijardière, ed., Mémoires du duc d’Angoulême sous Henri IV, en 1589,
Pièces fugitifs pour servir à l’histoire de France, XIII (Montpellier 1879), edition
of 1667, 7-10.
152. E.g., his letter to Jacques d’Humières, Blois, 22 February 1577, François,
Lettres, Vol. III, 165: authority to decide is not for the Estates but only for him
’comme estant prince souverain non subiect aux Estatz’; on paternalism, same to
Masparault, 15 August 1579, François, ibid., Vol. IV, 255.
153. Henri III to Catherine de Medici, 28 June 1578, François, Lettres, Vol. IV,
31; to du Ferrier, 9 September, ibid., Vol. IV, 264; to Rambouillet, 6 January 1580,
ibid., Vol. IV, 319-20; to Henri of Navarre, 26 June 1579, ibid., Vol. IV, 228.
154. Henri III to Mauvissière, 2 January 1577, François, Lettres, Vol. III, 128,
138; to Abain, 13 March 1577, ibid., 186; to Mauvissière, 13 March 1577, ibid., 187.
De Thou, Histoire universelle, Vol. IX, 609.
155. Henri III to du Ferrier, 15 January 1577, François, Lettres, Vol. III. 135; to
Paul de Foix, 25 August 1585, qu. Chevallier, Henri III, 556. Instructions for
Angennes, amb. to Rome, 1589, in Recueil de mémoires et instructions servans à
l’histoire de France (Paris 1626), 569-622.
156. See especially the letters to Villeroy, September 1579, François, Lettres,
Vol. IV, 279-80; on Protestant activities in Saluzzo, ’nous sommes tousjours trahis,
a ce que j’antands de qui les murailles ont oreylles’, February 1580, ibid., Vol. IV,
347.
157. For example: the sense of practical realism is to be found in his comment
on Catherine’s remark in her memoir on the court:
ouy dire au Roy vostre grand-père qu’il falloit deux choses pour vivre
les tenir joyeux, et occuper à quelque
repos avec les François
exercice’ (La Ferrière, Lettres de Catherine de Médicis, Vol. II, 92). See
Henri III to Villeroy, 18-23 July 1579: ’Je sçai que l’on dict de temps
immemorial que les Françoys veullent estre employez ou qu’ils s’amployent
d’eus mesmes, mais cella est bon à dire mais non aysé à faire, n’aiant nul
moien, comme nous n’avons.’
’j’ay
en
Franqois,
...
Lettres de Henri III, Vol. IV, 247,
no.
3452.
528
158. Henri III to A. du Ferrier, amb. to Venice, 14 August 1576, François, Lettres,
Vol. III, 8.
159. Lucinge, Miroir des princes, 170, observed this point clearly: ’Le Roy ne
cherchera de procurer la ruyne de ceux qu’il met en la balance d’une part pour
contrepeser la Ligue.’
160. Instructions to Angennes, January 1589, Recueil de mémoires
servans à
l’histoire de France, 606f. ’Advertismentes from Sir Edward Stafford’, 15 December
1585, BL Cotton, Calig. D III, fo. 321.
161. L’Estoile, Journal pour le règne de Henri III, 612.
162. Journal de François bourgeois de Paris, 23 décembre 1588-30 avril 1589,
ed., E. Saulnier (Paris 1913), 62-4. J. du Tillet, Chronique abrégée des Rois de
France (1589), 25-6.
163. Desjardins, Négociations diplomatiques, Vol. IV, 864-7.
...
David Potter
is Senior Lecturer in History at the University
of Kent. He has published studies on politics,
aristocracy, army and diplomacy of sixteenthcentury France. His recent work includes War
and Government in the French Provinces:
A History of France
Picardy 1470-1560 and
1460-1560.