Catherine de' Medici

Catherine de' Medici (April 13, 1519 – January 5, 1589) was born in Florence, Italy, as Caterina Maria Romola di Lorenzo de' Medici. Her parents, Lorenzo II de' Medici, Duke of Urbino, and Madeleine de la Tour d'Auvergne, countess of Boulogne, both died shortly after she was born. Under the Gallicised version of her name, Catherine de Médicis,^[1] she was queen consort of King Henry II of France from 1547 to 1559.

In 1533, at the age of fourteen, Caterina married Henry, second son of King Francis I of France and Queen Claude. When the dauphin, Prince François died in 1536, Henry became the heir to the throne and Catherine as she was now known, his dauphine. Henry ascended the throne as Henry II in 1547. Throughout his reign, he excluded Catherine from influence and instead showered favours on his mistress, Diane de Poitiers. Henry’s death in 1559 thrust Catherine into the political arena as mother of the frail fifteen-year-old King Francis II. When he too died in 1560, she was appointed regent for her ten-year-old son King Charles IX, and granted sweeping powers. After Charles died in 1574, Catherine played a key role in the reign of the third of her sons to become king, Henry III. He dispensed with her advice only in the last months of her life.

Catherine's three weak sons reigned in an age of almost constant civil and religious war in France. The monarchy had no control over the causes of these conflicts, which would have daunted even a mature king. At first, Catherine compromised and made concessions to the Huguenots, as the Protestant rebels became known.^[2] She failed, however, to grasp the theological issues at the root of their movement. Later, she resorted in frustration and anger to hard-line policies against them.^[3] As a result, she was blamed for all the sins of the régime, in particular for the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of 1572, in which thousands of Huguenots were butchered in Paris and throughout France. Lurid tales printed about Catherine in the pamphlets of the day gave birth to "the black legend" of the wicked queen. She was branded as a Machiavellian Renaissance prince who fed a lust for power with dark crimes, poisonings, even witchcraft. The Huguenot poet Agrippa d'Aubigné called her, "the Florentine plague".^[4] In the nineteenth century, historian Jules Michelet described her as that "maggot which came out of Italy's tomb".^[5]

Some recent historians have excused Catherine from the worst excesses of the crown.^[6] R. J. Knecht, however, points out that proof of her ruthless streak can be found in her letters. Nicola Sutherland also warns against overstating Catherine's real power. Far from bestriding France, she fought a losing battle for control of a kingdom that was lapsing into chaos.^[7] Her policies, therefore, may be seen a series of desperate efforts to keep the Valois monarchy on the throne at all costs.^[8] It is arguable that without Catherine, her sons would never have survived in power.^[9] The years in which they reigned have been called "the age of Catherine de' Medici".^[10]

Birth and upbringing

Giovanni di Lorenzo de' Medici, Pope Leo X, by Raphael. Leo noted with satisfaction how "fine and fat" Catherine was as a baby.^[11]

According to a chronicler, when Catherine de’ Medici was born, in Florence on Wednesday 13 April 1519, at eleven o'clock at night, her parents, were "as pleased as if it had been a boy".^[12] Their pleasure, however, was short-lived. Catherine's mother, Madeleine de la Tour d’Auverne, countess of Bologne, died on 28 April at the age of seventeen. Catherine's father, Lorenzo II de’ Medici, duke of Urbino, died on 4 May, probably from syphilis.^[13] The young couple had been married the year before at Amboise as part of the alliance between King Francis I of France and Pope Leo X, Lorenzo’s uncle, against the Habsburg emperor Maximilian I. King Francis asked that Catherine be raised at the French court, but Pope Leo had other plans for her.^[11] He intended to marry her to his brother's bastard son, Ippolito de' Medici, and set the pair up as rulers of Florence.

Catherine was first cared for by her grandmother, Alfonsina Orsini. After Alfonsina died in 1520, Catherine was brought up by her aunt, Clarissa Strozzi, among her own children. Catherine loved her Strozzi cousins for the rest of their lives, treating them as brothers and sisters.^[11] The death of Pope Leo in 1521 led to a break in Medici power, until Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici was elected Pope Clement VII in 1523. Clement housed Catherine in the Palazzo Medici in Florence, where she lived in state. She was known to the Florentine people as Duchessina, "the little duchess".^[14]

In 1527, the Medici were overthrown in Florence, and Catherine was taken hostage and placed in a series of convents.^[15] Clement had no choice but to crown Charles as Holy Roman emperor in return for his help in retaking the city.^[16] In October 1529, Charles's troops laid siege to Florence. As the siege dragged on, voices called for Catherine to be killed and exposed on the city walls or sent to a brothel to spoil her marriage value. When soldiers arrived to move her to the fortified Santa Lucia convent, she put up a fight. They made her ride through the streets on a donkey, jeered by an angry crowd.^[17] Though the city withstood all bombardment, hunger and plague finally forced its surrender on 12 August 1530. Clement called Catherine to Rome, greeting her with open arms and tears in his eyes. Then he set about the serious business of finding her a husband.^[18]

Marriage

Wedding

Catherine was never destined to be a beauty. On her visit to Rome, the Venetian envoy described her as "small of stature, and thin, and without delicate features, but having the protruding eyes peculiar to the Medici family".^[20]

Clement lined up many suitors for Catherine, but when in early 1531, Francis I of France proposed his second son, Henry, duke of Orléans, Clement jumped at the chance. Henry was a real catch for Catherine, who despite her wealth was only a commoner. Clement called it "the greatest match in the world".^[11]

The wedding took place in Marseille on 28 October 1533.^[21] It was a grand affair, marked by extravagant display and gift-giving. For example, Clement presented the king of France with a supposed unicorn's horn.^[22] The Constable of France, Anne de Montmorency, had blown up part of Marseille to make room for a new wooden palace. Prince Henry danced and jousted for Catherine. She was reported to have been pleased with what she saw, a fit young man, his muscles toned from sports.^[23] The fourteen-year-old couple left their wedding ball at midnight to carry out their nuptial duties. Queen Eleanor of France made Catherine ready for the marriage bed. Henry arrived in the bedroom with King Francis, who is said to have stayed until the marriage was consummated. Both Francis and Clement were well satisfied. Francis noted that "each had shown valour in the joust".^[24] Clement visited the newlyweds in bed the following morning and gave the night’s events his blessing.^[25]

Catherine saw little of her husband in their first year of marriage. The ladies of the court, however, treated her well, impressed with her intelligence and keenness to please.^[26] The honeymoon period, however, was brought to an abrupt end on 25 September 1534 by the death of Pope Clement. The next pope, Paul III, broke the alliance with France and refused to pay off Catherine's huge dowry. Catherine’s political value vanished overnight and with it her standing in the French court. King Francis lamented, "The girl has come to me stark naked."^[27]

Prince Henry showed not the slightest interest in Catherine as a wife. Instead, he openly took mistresses. Worse still, for the first ten years of the marriage, Catherine failed to produce any children. In 1537, one of Henry's mistresses, Philippa Duc, gave birth to a daughter.^[28] This proved to the public that Henry was virile, and piled more pressure on Catherine.

Dauphine

In 1536, Henry's older brother, François, died after overheating during a game of tennis. Catherine, as dauphine, was now expected to provide a future heir to the throne.^[29] According to Brantôme, "many people advised the king and the dauphin to repudiate her, since it was necessary to continue the line of France". The Venetian ambassador reported that Henry and Francis had discussed a divorce. Catherine meanwhile tried every known trick for getting pregnant, such as drinking mule's urine and placing cow dung and ground stags' antlers on her "source of life".^[30] On 20 January 1544, she finally gave birth to a son. The boy was named after King Francis, who greeted the news with tears of joy. After becoming pregnant once, Catherine seems to have had no trouble doing so again. She may have owed her change in luck to a doctor called Jean Fernel, who noticed slight abnormalities in the couple's sexual organs and advised them on how to solve the problem.^[31] Catherine went on to bear Henry a further nine children, six of whom survived infancy. The long-term future of the Valois line seemed assured.

Catherine’s new-found ability to bear children, however, failed to improve the quality of her marriage. In 1538, at the age of nineteen, Henry had taken as his mistress the thirty-eight-year-old Diane de Poitiers, who was to prove the love of his life. Even so, he respected Catherine's status as his consort. When King Francis I died in 1547, therefore, Catherine duly became queen consort of France. She was crowned in the basilica of Saint-Denis in June 1549.

Queen of France

Catherine had minimal political influence during Henry's reign.^[33] Although she sometimes acted as regent during Henry's absences, her powers were strictly limited.^[34] In the words of the historian Ralph Roederer, “Politics died at her doorstep”.^[35]Henry began by sacking his father’s advisers. He gave the Château of Chenonceau, which Catherine had an eye on for herself, to his mistress Diane de Poitiers. She took her place at the centre of power, handing out gifts and accepting favours.^[36] In 1547, Henry spent a third of each day in Diane’s company. The imperial ambassador wrote that in the presence of guests, Henry would sit on her lap and play the guitar, chat about politics or fondle her breasts.^[37] Under Henry, the Guise brothers, sons of Claude, Duke of Guise, also rose to power. Charles de Lorraine became a cardinal in July 1547, and Francis, Duke of Guise, known as “scarface” (le belafré) from a battle wound, became the duke of Guise in 1550.^[38] Mary of Guise, their sister, had married James V of Scotland in 1538 and was the mother of Mary, Queen of Scots. At the age of five and a half, Mary was sent for safety to the French court, where she was promised to the Dauphin Francis.^[39] Catherine brought Mary up with her own children at the French court, while Mary of Guise governed Scotland as her daughter’s regent.^[40]

Catherine and Henry were devoted parents by the standards of the day. Henry often played with the children and even assisted at their births. In 1556, pregnant with twin daughters, Catherine nearly died giving birth. Surgeons saved her life by breaking the legs of one of the two, who lay dead or dying in her womb for six hours.^[41] The surviving daughter, who died seven weeks later, was to be the last of Catherine’s children.

Catherine grimly tolerated Henry’s lovers, fearing divorce if she objected too strongly. "I always told him," she recalled in 1584, "that it was against my will, for no wife who loves her husband has ever loved his whore."^[42] Diane was happy that Henry was married to a woman who offered no threat. A Venetian envoy described Catherine as good-looking only when her face was veiled.^[43] Diane even encouraged the king to sleep with Catherine and father more children. Despite Henry's lovers, Catherine adored him. "I loved him so much," she wrote to her daughter Elisabeth after his death, “I was always afraid.”^[44]

On 3–4 April 1559, Henry signed the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis, ending a long period of war in Italy and with the empire and England. The treaty was sealed with the betrothal of Catherine’s thirteen-year-old-daughter Elisabeth to Philip II of Spain.^[45] Elisabeth’s proxy wedding on 22 June was celebrated with festivities, balls, masques and five days of jousting.

Henry II of France, by François Clouet, c. 1553. The astrologer Luca Gaurico warned Henry in 1552 to take particular care around his fortieth year to "avoid all single combat in an enclosed space".^[46]

Defying the advice of the astrologer Luca Gaurico, Henry decided to participate. He was wearing Diane’s black-and-white colours and riding a horse called Malheureux (Unfortunate).^[47] He defeated the dukes of Nemours and Guise, but the young Gabriel, comte de Montgomery, knocked him half out of the saddle. Henry insisted on riding against Montgomery again, though Catherine tried to stop him. This time, Montgomery's lance shattered into Henry's face.^[48] He came out of the clash reeling, his face pouring blood, with splinters "of a good bigness" sticking out of his eye and head.^[49] Amidst wailing from the ladies, Catherine, Diane, and Prince Francis all fainted. Henry was taken to the Château de Tournelles, where five splinters of wood were pulled from his head, one of which had pierced his eye and brain. The country's top medical experts were called. They dressed his wounds with egg-white, bled and purged him, and made him drink an ounce of barley gruel, which he vomited back up.^[50] Catherine stayed by his bedside, but Diane kept away, “for fear of being expelled by the Queen”, in the words of a chronicler. For the next ten days, Henry’s state fluctuated. At times he even felt well enough to dictate letters and listen to music. Slowly, however, he lost his sight, speech, and reason, and on 10 July he died. From that day on, Catherine took a broken lance as her emblem, inscribed with the words lacrymae hinc, hinc dolor (from this come my tears and my pain). For the rest of her life she wore black.^[51]

Queen mother

Francis II

Guise power

In what has been called a coup d’état, the Cardinal of Lorraine and the Duke of Guise seized power the day after Henry II’s death.^[53] The dauphin, Francis, who now became king at the age of fifteen, had married their niece, Mary, Queen of Scots, the year before. The Guise brothers quickly moved the young couple to the Louvre. They hoped to gain a march on Catherine while she was occupied with mourning. She put duty aside, however,^[54] and followed them to the Louvre, determined not to be shut out. The English ambassador reported a few days later that “the house of Guise ruleth and doth all about the French king”.^[55] For the moment, Catherine was happy to support the Guise coup as far as it served her purposes. She lost no time in forcing Diane de Poitiers to hand the crown jewels over and give Chenonceau back to the crown.^[56]

Despite his puny build and frail health, Francis II was deemed old enough to rule without a regent.^[57] Catherine was therefore not entitled to a role in his government. Nevertheless, all Francis's official acts began with the words:

This being the good pleasure of the Queen, my lady-mother, and I also approving of every opinion that she holdeth, am content and command that...".^[58]

The Guises set about persecuting the Protestants with zeal. They burned Protestant meeting places, for example, and executed those caught worshipping in them.^[59] The policy divided France sharply. Henry II had played the Guise and Montmorency factions off against each other. Now the crown was seen to be in the pocket of the Guise family. Catherine adopted a moderate stance and spoke up against the Guise persecution. As a good Catholic, however,^[60] she had no wish to be lectured on religion by Protestants. She told one pastor who sought her help that though she pitied the victims of the Guise purge, she did not wish "to be otherwise instructed or informed as to the truth or falsehood of their doctrine".^[61]

The Protestants looked for leadership to Antoine de Bourbon, king-consort of Navarre. He tended, however, to waver between the two faiths.^[62] As First Prince of the Blood, he had reason to resent being excluded from the government.^[63] The Guises, however, outwitted him with ease. In Catherine's words, he was "reduced to the position of a chambermaid".^[64] The Protestants found a more active leader in his brother, Louis I de Bourbon, prince de Condé. He backed a plot to overthrow the Guises by force.^[65]

Armed rebellion

When the Guises heard of the plot,^[66] they moved the king and court to the fortified Château of Amboise. The duke of Guise then launched an attack into the woods around the château. His troops took the rebels by surprise and killed many of them on the spot, including the leader, La Renaudie.^[67] Others they drowned in the river or strung up around the battlements while Catherine and the court watched on. Fifty-two nobles were executed in the courtyard. It was said that they sang psalms as they waited their turn, the chorus growing fainter with each death.^[68] When Catherine tried to save one captain, the Guises turned her down.^[69]

In June 1560, Michel de l'Hôpital was appointed Chancellor of France. He worked closely with Catherine to defend the law in the face of growing anarchy and seek the support of France's constitutional bodies.^[70] They both agreed on the need to resolve differences with the Protestants peacefully. Neither saw the need to punish Protestants who worshipped in private and did not take up arms. On 20 August1560, Catherine and the chancellor put this policy to an assembly of notables at Fontainebleau. Catherine won the respect of both sides at Fontainebleau. Historians note the occasion as an early example of her statesmanship.

However, the king of Navarre and his brother, Louis de Condé, had boycotted the assembly. Condé raised an army, which in autumn 1560 began to attack towns in the south. Catherine ordered him to court. As soon as he arrived, she had him arrested and thrown into prison. He was tried in November, found guilty of offences against the crown, and sentenced to death. However, a sudden turn of events was to save his life.

Death of the king

In early November, Francis II complained of buzzing in his ear and dizziness and, nursed by Catherine and Mary, began to suffer violent seizures which left him unable to speak. Soon fluids began to discharge from his ear, and treatment with rhubarb failed to help.^[71] Realising that if her son died, the First Prince of the Blood, Antoine of Navarre, might be appointed regent to her ten-year-old son Charles-Maximilien, Catherine accused him in front of the Guises of plotting against the crown. When Navarre protested his innocence, fearing the same fate as his brother, Catherine demanded he prove it by renouncing his right to the regency.^[72] The ploy, one of the first of the political manipulations for which Catherine became famous, worked; for her part, Catherine agreed to release Condé.^[73] As a result, when Francis died on 5 December 1560, after a huge eruption of fluid from his mouth and nose as well as his ear, ^[74] she assumed full control of the government of France, a remarkable achievement since the regency was traditionally the preserve of the princes of the blood at a time when the Salic law was often used to argue against political power of any sort for women.^[75] She summoned the Privy Council and opened the meeting with the following words:

Since it has pleased God to deprive me of my elder son, I do not mean to abandon myself to despair, but to submit to the Divine Will and to assist and serve the King, my second son, in the feeble measure of my experience".^[76]

Charles IX

Regent

The Privy Council appointed the forty-one-year-old Catherine “governor of France” (gouvernante de France), with far-reaching powers. She set out her approach to the role in letter to her daughter Elisabeth:

My principal aim is to have the honour of God before my eyes in all things and to preserve my authority, not for myself, but for the conservation of this kingdom and for the good of all your brothers.^[77]

She kept the little king, who cried at his coronation, close to her, and slept in his chamber. She presided over the king’s council, decided policy, controlled state business and patronage. However, she never controlled the country as a whole, which was in chaos and on the brink of civil war. In many parts of France the rule of nobles held sway rather than that of the crown. The challenges Catherine faced were complex and in some ways difficult to understand.^[79]

Catherine summoned church leaders from both sides to solve their doctrinal differences. Despite her optimism, the resulting Colloquy of Poissy ended in failure on October 13 1561, dissolving itself without the queen's permission.^[80] Catherine's view of the religious issues at stake was naive, because she saw the divide only in political terms. In the words of historian R. J. Knecht, "she underestimated the strength of religious conviction, imagining that all would be well if only she could get the party leaders to agree".^[81] The duke of Guise accused her of "drinking at two wells" in her religious policies.^[82] In January 1562, Catherine issued the tolerant Edict of Saint-Germain in a further attempt to build bridges with the Protestants.^[83] On 1 March 1562, however, in an incident known as the Massacre at Vassy, François, duke of Guise, and his men set upon worshipping Huguenots in a barn at Vassy. They killed 74 of them and wounded 104.^[84] Guise, who called the massacre “a regrettable accident”, was cheered as a hero in the streets of Paris; while the Huguenots called for revenge.^[85] The massacre lit the fuse that sparked the French Wars of Religion. For the next thirty years, the country was to be in a state of either civil war or armed truce.^[86]

Within a month Prince Louis de Condé and Admiral Gaspard de Coligny had raised an army of 1,800. They formed an alliance with England and seized town after town in France.^[87] Catherine met Coligny, but he refused to back down. She therefore told him: "Since you rely on your forces, we will show you ours".^[88] The royal army quickly struck back and lay siege to Huguenot-held Rouen. Catherine visited the deathbed of Antoine de Bourbon, King of Navarre, who had been fatally wounded by an arquebus shot there.^[89] Catherine attended the field herself and when warned of the dangers laughed, “My courage is as great as yours”.^[90] Rouen was taken; but the Catholic triumph was short lived. On 18 February 1563, a spy called Poltrot de Méré fired an arquebus into the back of François, duke of Guise, at the siege of Orléans. This murder was to have a lasting effect on the stability of France.^[91] It triggered an aristocratic blood feud that was to complicate the French civil wars for years to come,^[92] in which the Guises sought revenge on Coligny, de Méré's employer.^[93] Catherine was delighted with the death of her ally. “If Monsieur de Guise had perished sooner,” she told the Venetian ambassador, “peace would have been achieved more quickly”.^[94] On 19 March 1563, the Edict of Amboise, also known as the Edict of Pacification, ended the war. To the disgust of many Catholics, the edict allowed Huguenot nobles free worship on their own estates and open worship in many towns. With Navarre and Guise dead, Condé and Montmorency held captive, and the Cardinal of Lorraine absent at the Council of Trent, Catherine found herself more powerful at court.^[95] She rallied both Huguenot and Catholic forces to retake Le Havre from the English. The harmony, however, was short-lived.

Huguenots

On 17 August 1563, Charles IX was declared of age at the Parlement of Rouen. He was never able to rule on his own, however, and showed little interest in government.^[97] He suffered from shortness of breath, a sign of the tuberculosis that was to kill him. He was also prone to tantrums, which took the form of violent rages as he grew older. In 1570, during talks with Coligny’s brother-in-law, Charles de Téligny, for example, Charles lunged at the Huguenot with one hand on his dagger and had to be forcibly restrained.^[98]

Catherine decided to launch a drive to enforce the edict of Amboise and revive loyalty to the crown. To this end, she set out with Charles and the court on a progress around France that lasted from January 1564 until 1 May 1565.^[99] Catherine held talks with the Protestant Queen Jeanne d’Albret of Navarre at Mâcon and Nérac. She also met her daughter Queen Elisabeth of Spain at Bayonne near the Spanish border. Philip II excused himself from the meeting. He sent the duke of Alba to tell her to scrap the edict of Amboise and turn to military solutions instead.^[100]

In 1567, Catherine placed the country on military alert. The duke of Alba was leading an imperial army north along France's eastern frontier to put down a revolt in the Netherlands.^[101] Catherine strengthened the borders and hired 6000 Swiss mercenaries, in case of attack. The Huguenots panicked, guessing that as a result of a secret agreement at Bayonne, these Catholic armies were about to turn on them, and so they took action of their own.^[102] On 27 September, in a swoop known as the Surprise of Meaux (surprise de Meaux), their forces tried to ambush the king.^[103] Taken unawares, the court fled to Paris in disarray.^[104] The Huguenot army then blockaded Paris, before moving off to the south. The seventy-four-year-old Constable Montmorency was killed in fighting outside Paris. The war was ended with the Peace of Longjumeau of March 22–23, 1568. It was followed by civil unrest and bloodshed in many parts of France.^[105]

The Surprise of Meaux marked a turning point in Catherine’s policy towards the Huguenots. From that point onward, she abandoned compromise for a policy of repression,^[106] and her words assume a ruthless edge. She told the Venetian ambassador in June 1568 that all you could expect from Huguenots was deceit. She praised the duke of Alba’s reign of terror in the Netherlands, where Calvinists and rebels were put to death in their thousands.^[107] She told the Spanish envoy that Spain had made a “holy decision” in executing the rebel Flemish counts of Egmont and Hornes. She added that she hoped to take a similar decision soon in France.^[108] Catherine is reported to have rounded on de l’Hôpital at a king's council meeting. “It is you and your advice," she told him angrily, "that have brought us to this pass!”^[109] On 7 October, de l’Hôpital resigned as chancellor.

The Huguenots retreated from the royal armies to the fortified stronghold of La Rochelle on the west coast. Jeanne d’Albret, queen of Navarre, and her fifteen-year-old son Henry of Bourbon, now openly joined the rebels.^[110] “We have come to the determination to die, all of us,” she wrote to Catherine, “rather than abandon our God, and our religion”.^[111] Jeanne's decision presented a dynastic threat to the Valois. Catherine called her “the most shameless woman in the world”.^[112]

At about this time, Catherine may have approved what has been called a “policy of elimination”.^[113] On 13 March 1569, Louis de Condé was defeated at the battle of Jarnac. After his surrender, the guardsmen of Henry, duke of Anjou shot him in the back, probably on Henry's orders.^[114] On 7 May, François d’Andelot, the brother of Admiral Coligny, died of a fever, probably poisoned.^[115] “We greatly rejoiced over the news of d'Andelot’s death," Catherine gloated. "...I hope God will mete out to the others the treatment they deserve”.^[116] The Peace of Saint-Germain-en-Laye on 8 August 1570, signed because the army had run out of cash, conceded wider toleration to the Huguenots than ever before.^[117] The contemporary historian Étienne Pasquier observed of the treaty, "We have ended where we should have begun if we had been sensible; but in such matters we behave as we do in trials: we never come to an agreement until our purses have been emptied.^[118]

Meanwhile, Catherine looked to further Valois interests by grand dynastic marriages. In 1570, Charles IX married Elisabeth of Austria, daughter of the emperor, Maximilian II. Catherine was also eager for a match between one of her two youngest sons and Elizabeth of England.^[120] After Catherine's daughter Elisabeth died in childbirth in 1568, she had touted her youngest daughter Marguerite as a bride for Philip II of Spain. Now she sought a marriage between Marguerite and Henry of Navarre, to unite Valois and Bourbon interests. Marguerite, however, was encouraging the advances of Henry of Guise, the son of the late duke of Guise. When Catherine and Charles found out, they became crazed. They called her from her bed and beat her up, pulling out handfuls of her hair and ripping her nightclothes.^[121] Guise fled the court and hurriedly announced his marriage to Catherine of Cleves. This affair may have been behind a split between Catherine and the Guises at this time.^[122]

Catherine worked hard between 1571 and 1573 to bring Jeanne d’Albret to court. When she wrote saying that she wanted to see Jeanne's children and promised not to harm them, Jeanne replied: "Pardon me if, reading that, I want to laugh, because you want to relieve me of a fear that I've never had. I've never thought that, as they say, you eat little children".^[123] When Jeanne did come, a confrontation began.^[124] Catherine piled mental pressure on Jeanne,^[125] playing on her hopes for her beloved son. Jeanne finally agreed to a marriage between her son and Marguerite, so long as Henry could keep his Huguenot beliefs. Soon after Jeanne arrived in Paris to buy clothes for the wedding, she was taken ill and died, aged forty-four. Catherine was to be accused of murdering Jeanne with poisoned gloves.^[126] The wedding took place on 18 August 1572 at Notre-Dame, Paris.

St. Bartholomew's Day massacre

Three days later, Admiral Coligny was walking back to his rooms from the Louvre when a shot rang out from a house and wounded him in the hand and arm. A smoking arquebus was discovered in a window, but the culprit had made his escape from the rear of the building on a waiting horse.^[127] Coligny was carried to his lodgings at the Hôtel de Béthisy, where the surgeon Ambroise Paré removed a bullet from his elbow and amputated one of his fingers with a pair of scissors. Catherine was said to have received the news without emotion. She visited Coligny and tearfully promised to punish the attacker. A fifty-strong armed guard was posted around the building, commanded by a Guise loyalist called Cosseins. Many historians have blamed Catherine for the attack on Coligny. Others point to the Guise family or a Spanish-papal plot to end Coligny's influence on the king.^[128] Whatever the truth, the bloodbath that followed was soon beyond the control of Catherine or any other leader.^[129] Historian Nicola Sutherland has called these events "among the most controversial of modern history".^[130]

The St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, which began two days later, has stained Catherine’s reputation indelibly.^[131] It is difficult to excuse her, especially since afterwards she gladly took credit for its planning.^[132] There is no reason to believe she was not party to the decision when on 23 August Charles IX ordered, "Then kill them all! Kill them all!".^[133] The thinking was clear. Catherine and her advisers expected a Huguenot uprising after the attack on Coligny. They chose therefore to strike first and wipe out the Huguenot leaders while they were in Paris after the wedding.^[134] There is no hard evidence that the murders were planned before this meeting.^[135]

The killings started in the early hours of 24 August. The king's guard burst into Coligny’s bedroom, killed him, and threw his body out of the window. At the same moment, the bell of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois was sounded. This was the signal to begin the murder of the Huguenot leaders, and most were slain in their beds.^[136] Henry of Navarre was taken to a room and asked to choose between death, life imprisonment, or becoming a Catholic. He decided to become a Catholic. He was then told to remain in the room for his own safety. All the senior Huguenots staying in and around the Louvre were killed. Those who escaped into the streets were shot down by the waiting royal archers. The slaughter in Paris continued for almost a week. It also spread to many parts of France, being taken up by irregularly by Catholic laymen, where it persisted into the autumn. In the words of historian Jules Michelet, "St Bartholomew was not a day, but a season".^[137]

The massacre delighted Catholic Europe, and Catherine basked in the praise. On 29 September, when Navarre knelt before the altar like a good Catholic, she turned to the ambassadors and laughed.^[138] From this time dates the "black legend" of Catherine, the wicked Italian queen. Huguenot writers such as Agrippa d'Aubigné and Henri Estienne branded Catherine a scheming Italian, who had acted on Machiavelli’s advice to kill all enemies in one blow.^[139] The author of the Réveille-matin accused Catherine of planning the massacre long before August 1572, quoting the proverb "the house is cursed in which the hen crows louder than the rooster".^[140] However, historians disagree on how much was planned. Many regard the massacre as a surgical strike that got out of hand.^[141] The closest Catherine came to remorse was in a reply to criticism from Venice:

We deeply regret that, in the commotion, a number of other people belonging to their religion were killed by the Catholics, who were smarting from the infinite afflictions, pillage, murder, and other wrongs which had been inflicted on them.^[142]

Henry III

Favourite son

Two years later, Catherine faced a new crisis with the death of Charles IX at the age of twenty-three. His dying words were "oh, my mother...".^[144] The day before he died, he named Catherine regent, since his brother and heir the duke of Anjou was in Poland, where he had become king the year before. Catherine wrote to Henry: "I am grief-stricken to have witnessed such a scene and the love which he showed me at the end…My only consolation is to see you here soon, as your kingdom requires, and in good health, for if I were to lose you, I would have myself buried alive with you".^[145]

Henry was Catherine’s favourite son. Unlike his brothers, he came to the throne as a grown man. He was also healthier than them, though he too had weak lungs and suffered from constant fatigue.^[146] His interest in the details of government, however, proved fitful.^[147] He relied on Catherine and her chosen group of loyal secretaries until the last few weeks of her life.^[148] He often hid from state affairs and instead spent most of his time in acts of piety, such as pilgrimages and flagellation.^[149]

Henry was not particularly interested in women, but he fell for Louise de Lorraine-Vaudémont, whom he married in February 1575, two days after his coronation. His choice thwarted Catherine’s plans for another grand marriage. The papal nuncio Salviati observed, "it is only with difficulty that we can imagine there will be offspring".^[150]

François, duke of Alençon

During Henry III's reign, the civil wars descended into anarchy, fed as much by power struggles between the high nobles of France as by religion.^[152] A new, unstable element in the mix was Catherine’s youngest son, François, duke of Alençon, known as "Monsieur".^[153] The two brothers hated each other.^[154] Alençon had plotted to seize the throne while Henry was in Poland. He proceeded to disturb the peace of the realm at every chance. With Henry unlikely to have children, Alençon played upon his role as heir to the throne. On one occasion, Catherine had to lecture him for six hours about his behaviour.^[155] However, the more Catherine bought his loyalty with towns and commands, the more powerful and threatening he became. In 1576, in a moment of real danger to Henry's throne, he allied with the Protestant princes against the crown.^[156] On 6 May 1576, Catherine gave in to almost all Huguenot demands in the edict of Beaulieu. The treaty became known as the Peace of Monsieur because it was thought that Alençon had forced it on the king.^[157] However, his ambition was to lead him into disaster. His ill-equipped campaign in the Low Countries ended with the massacre of his depleted army at Antwerp in January 1583.^[158] On 10 June 1584, Alençon, died of consumption, his health broken by his failure in the Netherlands.^[159] Catherine wrote, the next day:

I am so wretched to live long enough to see so many people die before me, although I realize that God’s will must be obeyed, that He owns everything, and that he lends us only for as long as He likes the children whom He gives us.^[160]

The death of her youngest son was a calamity for Catherine's dynastic dreams. Henry III had no children and seemed unlikely to produce any. Under Salic law, by which only males could ascend the throne, the Huguenot Henry of Navarre now became heir presumptive to the French crown.^[161] Catherine had taken the precaution of marrying Marguerite, her youngest daughter, to Navarre.

Marguerite

Catherine's youngest daughter, Marguerite, became almost as much of a thorn in her side as Alençon. On one occasion in 1575, Catherine was heard yelling at her over rumours she had taken a lover.^[163] In a separate incident, the king sent a band of assassins to murder Marguerite's lover Bussy d’Amboise, a friend of Alençon's; but he managed to escape.^[164] In 1576, Henry accused Marguerite of improper relations with a lady-in-waiting.^[165] Marguerite claimed in her memoirs that if Catherine had not stopped him, he would have killed her.

In 1582, Marguerite returned to the French court without her husband. Before long she began taking lovers and acting scandalously.^[166] Catherine sent Pomponne de Bellièvre to Navarre to placate Marguerite's husband and arrange her return. She reminded Marguerite by letter that her own conduct as a wife had been impeccable, despite all provocation.^[167] Marguerite failed to pay heed. In 1585, after she was said to have shot at and tried to poison her husband,^[168] she fled Navarre again. This time, she headed for her property at Agen, from where she begged her mother for money. Catherine sent her enough “to put food on her table”.^[169] Marguerite was then driven out by the people of Agen. Moving on to the fortress of Carlat, she took a lover called d’Aubiac. Catherine asked Henry to act before Marguerite brought shame on them again. In October 1586, therefore, he had Marguerite locked up in the Château d’Usson. D'Aubiac was executed, though not, despite Catherine’s wish, in front of Marguerite.^[170] Catherine cut Marguerite out of her will. She never saw her again.

Pacification of the south

Catherine felt she knew how to handle the Bourbon princes, Navarre and Condé.^[171] She always appealed to Navarre’s instincts as the First Prince of the Blood. For example, she wrote to him: “I will never believe that having come from such a noble race [the Bourbons] you should wish to be the chief and general of the kingdom’s brigands, thieves and criminals." (Huguenots)^[172] The royal armies briefly went to war against the Huguenots in 1577, only to run out of money after a few successes. Hostilities were called off at the peace of Bergerac, known as the “Paix du Roi” (the King’s Peace), on 17 September. During this war, Alençon ordered the slaughter of the Protestant citizens of the town of Issoire, after its surrender.^[173] The Huguenots never trusted him again. By this time, the civil wars had become a way of life and for many a means of livelihood.^[174]

Catherine could not control Henry in the way she had Francis and Charles.^[175] Her role in his government was more that of chief executive and roving diplomat. She travelled widely across the kingdom, enforcing the king's authority and trying to head off war. In 1578, she took on the job of pacifying the south. At the age of fifty-nine, she embarked on an eighteen-month journey around the south of France to meet Huguenot leaders. She suffered constant catarrh and rheumatism, but her main concern was Henry. When he fell ill with an abscess of the ear like the one that killed Francis II, Catherine was beside herself with worry. On hearing he had recovered, she wrote:

I believe God has taken pity on me. Seeing that I have suffered so much from the loss of my husband and children, he has not wanted to crush me by taking this one…It is a terrible pain, dreadful, believe me, to be far from someone whom one loves as much as I love him, knowing him to be ill; it is like dying on a slow fire”.^[176]

Her efforts in search of peace earned Catherine new respect from the French people.^[177] On her return to Paris in 1579, she was greeted outside the city by the Parlement and crowds.^[178] She was under no illusions, however. On 25 November, she wrote to the king, "You are on the evening of a general revolt. Anyone who tells you differently is a liar".^[179]

Catholic League

Many leading Catholics were appalled by these attempts to appease the Huguenots. After the edict of Beaulieu, they had started to form local leagues to protect their religion.^[181] The death of the heir to the throne in 1584 prompted the duke of Guise to assume the leadership of the Catholic League. He planned to block Henry of Navarre’s succession and place Henry's Catholic uncle Cardinal Charles de Bourbon on the throne instead. In this cause, he recruited the great Catholic princes, nobles and prelates, signed the treaty of Joinville with Spain, and prepared to make war on the "heretics".^[182] The chronicler Pierre de L'Estoile noted that Alençon’s death “came at a very opportune time for them [the Guise family], facilitating the designs of their League, which from that moment grew stronger as France grew weaker”.^[183] The League's armies seized control of many parts of France. However they dressed this up, it was open revolt;^[184] and by 1585, Henry III had no choice but to raise the royal armies against them. As Catherine put it, "peace is carried on a stick" (bâton porte paix).^[185] She conducted much of the negotiation with Guise from her bed,^[186] dictating her letters to secretary of state Claude Pinart.^[187] She was under no illusions about the threat. "Take care, especially about your person," she wrote to the king. "There is so much treachery about that I die of fear”.^[188]

In the Treaty of Nemours, signed on 7 July 1585, Henry gave in to all the League’s demands, even that he pay its troops.^[189] Ostrich-like, he left Catherine to sort out the mess. In many ways, he could not cope with the situation. He went into hiding to fast and pray, surrounded by a bodyguard known as “the forty-five”.^[190] At about this time, he took to wearing death’s heads sewn into his clothes and carrying little dogs around with him in jewelled baskets.^[191] Meanwhile, France, in the grip of plague and famine, waited for invasion.^[192] Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador, told Philip II that the abscess was about to burst.^[193]

In 1587, the Catholic backlash against the Protestants turned into a campaign across Europe. Elizabeth I of England's execution of Mary, Queen of Scots on 18 February outraged the Catholic world. Philip II of Spain prepared for an invasion of England.^[194] The League occupied much of northern France to make the channel ports safe for the Spanish armada. Henry found himself at war with the Catholics and the Protestants at once, each with stronger armies than his own.^[195]

Last months and death

Henry attempted to defend himself in Paris with Swiss and French troops. The Parisians, however, claimed the right to defend the city themselves. In defiance, they set up barricades in the streets on 12 May 1588 and would only take orders from the duke of Guise.^[197] When Catherine tried to go to mass, she found her way barred, though she was allowed through the barricades. L’Estoile reported that she cried all through her lunch that day. She wrote to Bellièvre, “Never have I seen myself in such trouble or with so little light by which to escape”.