Catherine De Medici (21 page)

"All is not over yet," she said. "We shall see what your conduct will be at the execution of the noblemen, your friends, at which the Council has decided to make a great public display of severity."

"I shall do," said the prince, "whatever the king does."

"The king, the queen-mother, and myself will be present at the execution, together with the whole court and the ambassadors--"

"A fete!" said the prince, sarcastically.

"Better than that," said the young queen, "an /act of faith/, an act of the highest policy. 'Tis a question of forcing the noblemen of France to submit themselves to the Crown, and compelling them to give up their tastes for plots and factions--"

"You will not break their belligerent tempers by the show of danger, madame; you will risk the Crown itself in the attempt," replied the prince.

At the end of the dinner, which was gloomy enough, Queen Mary had the cruel boldness to turn the conversation openly upon the trial of the noblemen on the charge of being seized with arms in their hands, and to speak of the necessity of making a great public show of their execution.

"Madame," said Francois II., "is it not enough for the king of France to know that so much brave blood is to flow? Must he make a triumph of it?"

"No, sire; but an example," replied Catherine.

"It was the custom of your father and your grandfather to be present at the burning of heretics," said Mary Stuart.

"The kings who reigned before me did as they thought best, and I choose to do as I please," said the little king.

"Philip the Second," remarked Catherine, "who is certainly a great king, lately postponed an /auto da fe/ until he could return from the Low Countries to Valladolid."

"What do you think, cousin?" said the king to Prince de Conde.

"Sire, you cannot avoid it, and the papal nuncio and all the ambassadors should be present. I shall go willingly, as these ladies take part in the fete."

Thus the Prince de Conde, at a glance from Catherine de' Medici, bravely chose his course.

* * * * *

At the moment when the Prince de Conde was entering the chateau d'Amboise, Lecamus, the furrier of the two queens, was also arriving from Paris, brought to Amboise by the anxiety into which the news of the tumult had thrown both his family and that of Lallier. When the old man presented himself at the gate of the chateau, the captain of the guard, on hearing that he was the queens' furrier, said:--

"My good man, if you want to be hanged you have only to set foot in this courtyard."

Hearing these words, the father, in despair, sat down on a stone at a little distance and waited until some retainer of the two queens or some servant-woman might pass who would give him news of his son. But he sat there all day without seeing any one whom he knew, and was forced at last to go down into the town, where he found, not without some difficulty, a lodging in a hostelry on the public square where the executions took place. He was obliged to pay a pound a day to obtain a room with a window looking on the square. The next day he had the courage to watch, from his window, the execution of all the abettors of the rebellion who were condemned to be broken on the wheel or hanged, as persons of little importance. He was happy indeed not to see his own son among the victims.

When the execution was over he went into the square and put himself in the way of the clerk of the court. After giving his name, and slipping a purse full of crowns into the man's hand, he begged him to look on the records and see if the name of Christophe Lecamus appeared in either of the three preceding executions. The clerk, touched by the manner and the tones of the despairing father, took him to his own house. After a careful search he was able to give the old man an absolute assurance that Christophe was not among the persons thus far executed, nor among those who were to be put to death within a few days.

"My dear man," said the clerk, "Parliament has taken charge of the trial of the great lords implicated in the affair, and also that of the principal leaders. Perhaps your son is detained in the prisons of the chateau, and he may be brought forth for the magnificent execution which their Excellencies the Duc de Guise and the Cardinal de Lorraine are now preparing. The heads of twenty-seven barons, eleven counts, and seven marquises,--in all, fifty noblemen or leaders of the Reformers,--are to be cut off. As the justiciary of the county of Tourine is quite distinct from that of the parliament of Paris, if you are determined to know about your son, I advise you to go and see the Chancelier Olivier, who has the management of this great trial under orders from the lieutenant-general of the kingdom."

The poor old man, acting on this advice, went three times to see the chancellor, standing in a long queue of persons waiting to ask mercy for their friends. But as the titled men were made to pass before the burghers, he was obliged to give up the hope of speaking to the chancellor, though he saw him several times leave the house to go either to the chateau or to the committee appointed by the Parliament, --passing each time between a double hedge of petitioners who were kept back by the guards to allow him free passage. It was a horrible scene of anguish and desolation; for among these petitioners were many women, wives, mothers, daughters, whole families in distress. Old Lecamus gave much gold to the footmen of the chateau, entreating them to put certain letters which he wrote into the hand either of Dayelle, Queen Mary's woman, or into that of the queen-mother; but the footmen took the poor man's money and carried the letters, according to the general order of the cardinal, to the provost-marshal. By displaying such unheard-of cruelty the Guises knew that they incurred great dangers from revenge, and never did they take such precautions for their safety as they did while the court was at Amboise; consequently, neither the greatest of all corrupters, gold, nor the incessant and active search which the old furrier instituted gave him the slightest gleam of light on the fate of his son. He went about the little town with a mournful air, watching the great preparations made by order of the cardinal for the dreadful show at which the Prince de Conde had agreed to be present.

Public curiosity was stimulated from Paris to Nantes by the means adopted on this occasion. The execution was announced from all pulpits by the rectors of the churches, while at the same time they gave thanks for the victory of the king over the heretics. Three handsome balconies, the middle one more sumptuous than the other two, were built against the terrace of the chateau of Amboise, at the foot of which the executions were appointed to take place. Around the open square, stagings were erected, and these were filled with an immense crowd of people attracted by the wide-spread notoriety given to this "act of faith." Ten thousand persons camped in the adjoining fields the night before the day on which the horrible spectacle was appointed to take place. The roofs on the houses were crowded with spectators, and windows were let at ten pounds apiece,--an enormous sum in those days. The poor old father had engaged, as we may well believe, one of the best places from which the eye could take in the whole of the terrible scene, where so many men of noble blood were to perish on a vast scaffold covered with black cloth, erected in the middle of the open square. Thither, on the morning of the fatal day, they brought the /chouquet/,--a name given to the block on which the condemned man laid his head as he knelt before it. After this they brought an arm-chair draped with black, for the clerk of the Parliament, whose business it was to call up the condemned noblemen to their death and read their sentences. The whole square was guarded from early morning by the Scottish guard and the gendarmes of the king's household, in order to keep back the crowd which threatened to fill it before the hour of the execution.

After a solemn mass said at the chateau and in the churches of the town, the condemned lords, the last of the conspirators who were left alive, were led out. These gentlemen, some of whom had been put to the torture, were grouped at the foot of the scaffold and surrounded by monks, who endeavored to make them abjure the doctrines of Calvin. But not a single man listened to the words of the priests who had been appointed for this duty by the Cardinal of Lorraine; among whom the gentlemen no doubt feared to find spies of the Guises. In order to avoid the importunity of these antagonists they chanted a psalm, put into French verse by Clement Marot. Calvin, as we all know, had ordained that prayers to God should be in the language of each country, as much from a principle of common sense as in opposition to the Roman worship. To those in the crowd who pitied these unfortunate gentlemen it was a moving incident to hear them chant the following verse at the very moment when the king and court arrived and took their places:--

"God be merciful unto us, And bless us! And show us the light of his countenance, And be merciful unto us."

The eyes of all the Reformers turned to their leader, the Prince de Conde, who was placed intentionally between Queen Mary and the young Duc d'Orleans. Catherine de' Medici was beside the king, and the rest of the court were on her left. The papal nuncio stood behind Queen Mary; the lieutenant-general of the kingdom, the Duc de Guise, was on horseback below the balcony, with two of the marshals of France and his staff captains. When the Prince de Conde appeared all the condemned noblemen who knew him bowed to him, and the brave hunchback returned their salutation.

"It would be hard," he remarked to the Duc d'Orleans, "not to be civil to those about to die."

The two other balconies were filled by invited guests, courtiers, and persons on duty about the court. In short, the whole company of the chateau de Blois had come to Amboise to assist at this festival of death, precisely as it passed, a little later, from the pleasures of a court to the perils of war, with an easy facility, which will always seem to foreigners one of the main supports of their policy toward France.

The poor syndic of the furriers of Paris was filled with the keenest joy at not seeing his son among the fifty-seven gentlemen who were condemned to die.

At a sign from the Duc de Guise, the clerk seated on the scaffold cried in a loud voice:--

"Jean-Louis-Alberic, Baron de Raunay, guilty of heresy, of the crime of /lese-majeste/, and assault with armed hand against the person of the king."

A tall handsome man mounted the scaffold with a firm step, bowed to the people and the court, and said:

"That sentence lies. I took arms to deliver the king from his enemies, the Guises."

He placed his head on the block, and it fell. The Reformers chanted:--

"Thou, O God! hast proved us; Thou hast tried us; As silver is tried in the fire, So hast thou purified us."

"Robert-Jean-Rene Briquemart, Comte de Villemongis, guilty of the crime of /lese-majeste/, and of attempts against the person of the king!" called the clerk.

The count dipped his hands in the blood of the Baron de Raunay, and said:--

"May this blood recoil upon those who are really guilty of those crimes."

The Reformers chanted:--

"Thou broughtest us into the snare; Thou laidest afflictions upon our loins; Thou hast suffered our enemies To ride over us."

"You must admit, monseigneur," said the Prince de Conde to the papal nuncio, "that if these French gentlemen know how to conspire, they also know how to die."

"What hatreds, brother!" whispered the Duchesse de Guise to the Cardinal de Lorraine, "you are drawing down upon the heads of our children!"

"The sight makes me sick," said the young king, turning pale at the flow of blood.

"Pooh! only rebels!" replied Catherine de' Medici.

The chants went on; the axe still fell. The sublime spectacle of men singing as they died, and, above all, the impression produced upon the crowd by the progressive diminution of the chanting voices, superseded the fear inspired by the Guises.

"Mercy!" cried the people with one voice, when they heard the solitary chant of the last and most important of the great lords, who was saved to be the final victim. He alone remained at the foot of the steps by which the others had mounted the scaffold, and he chanted:--

"Thou, O God, be merciful unto us, And bless us, And cause thy face to shine upon us.
Amen!"

"Come, Duc de Nemours," said the Prince de Conde, weary of the part he was playing; "you who have the credit of the skirmish, and who helped to make these men prisoners, do you not feel under an obligation to ask mercy for this one? It is Castelnau, who, they say, received your word of honor that he should be courteously treated if he surrendered."

"Do you think I waited till he was here before trying to save him?" said the Duc de Nemours, stung by the stern reproach.

The clerk called slowly--no doubt he was intentionally slow:--

"Michel-Jean-Louis, Baron de Castelnau-Chalosse, accused and convicted of the crime of /lese-majeste/, and of attempts against the person of the king."

"No," said Castelnau, proudly, "it cannot be a crime to oppose the tyranny and the projected usurpation of the Guises."

The executioner, sick of his task, saw a movement in the king's gallery, and fumbled with his axe.

"Monsieur le baron," he said, "I do not want to execute you; a moment's delay may save you."

All the people again cried, "Mercy!"

"Come!" said the king, "mercy for that poor Castelnau, who saved the life of the Duc d'Orleans."

The cardinal intentionally misunderstood the king's speech.

"Go on," he motioned to the executioner, and the head of Castelnau fell at the very moment when the king had pronounced his pardon.

"That head, cardinal, goes to your account," said Catherine de' Medici.

The day after this dreadful execution the Prince de Conde returned to Navarre.

The affair produced a great sensation in France and at all the foreign courts. The torrents of noble blood then shed caused such anguish to the chancellor Olivier that his honorable mind, perceiving at last the real end and aim of the Guises disguised under a pretext of defending religion and the monarchy, felt itself no longer able to make head against them. Though he was their creature, he was not willing to sacrifice his duty and the Throne to their ambition; and he withdrew from his post, suggesting l'Hopital as his rightful successor.
Catherine, hearing of Olivier's suggestion, immediately proposed Birago, and put much warmth into her request. The cardinal, knowing nothing of the letter written by l'Hopital to the queen-mother, and supposing him faithful to the house of Lorraine, pressed his appointment in opposition to that of Birago, and Catherine allowed herself to seem vanquished. From the moment that l'Hopital entered upon his duties he took measures against the Inquisition, which the Cardinal de Lorraine was desirous of introducing into France; and he thwarted so successfully all the anti-gallican policy of the Guises, and proved himself so true a Frenchmen, that in order to subdue him he was exiled, within three months of his appointment, to his country-seat of Vignay, near Etampes.