The making of a king (3 page)

It was not expected that much difficulty would attend the dissolution of the one marriage which was a necessary preliminary to entering upon another. There was little doubt that Rome would consent. Marguerite could be trusted not to oppose the measure. No one would lose by it ; many would gain. King and people were at one in desiring that Henri should be set free to form new ties. The question as to who should fill the place to be left vacant was less easily settled. The rival parties in the State had each their views on the subject, and the person chiefly concerned had his own. When Henri first discussed the matter with Rosny he enumerated every marriageable princess in Europe, and, whilst praising some and pointing out the disabilities of others, he found objections to all. He desired to wed—so the Minister sardonically defined the situation when the list was complete —but could discover no woman upon earth fit to become his wife. Rosny was tacitly declining to admit as a possibility the match he was well aware was in his master's mind, and was doggedly ignoring the fact that Gabrielle d'Estrees, Duchesse de Beaufort, fulfilled in Henri's eyes all the conditions necessary to satisfy him. When the King broached the subject in plain words, he made answer no less plainly, and the reply was not such as to encourage Henri to place the crown upon the head of the woman he loved, or to make her son his heir.

Yet Henri was master, and, in spite of Rosny, in spite of the mass of public opinion by which the Minister was backed, Gabrielle's chances were not small. She was genuinely and devotedly attached to

the King, whilst Henri repaid her by a love greater than he had perhaps ever bestowed, or was to bestow, upon a woman. She was already the mother of one son, and was soon to give birth to another. Powerful friends were ready to support her claims. The Princess of Orange, Coligny's daughter, was her advocate; those who wished for a French Queen, and feared and dreaded a Spanish one, would have rejoiced at the match. Marguerite de Valois, indeed, indignant at the prospect of her place being filled by a woman of Gabrielle's birth and antecedents, might declare that, rather than permit the disgrace, she would oppose the decree pronouncing her own marriage void ; Rosny might contemptuously refuse to allow the designation " enfants de France" to be applied to the Vendome children in the account of the expenses incurred at their baptism, saying that no such children existed ; but Henri adored the mother, was proud of his boy, and it was more than possible that the one would become Queen and the other be acknowledged heir to the throne.

So the case stood when, in Holy Week, 1600, Gabrielle solved the question by dying. Whether there had been foul play or not is of no consequence here. It was undeniable that, whilst some mourned her, more rejoiced. In the eyes of many of the King's well-wishers a peril was averted. His enemies felt that an influence adverse to their aims and objects had been removed. Henri himself lamented ; but those acquainted with him foresaw that his grief would be short-lived. If brief, it was bitter.

GABRIELLE D'ESTREES, DUCHESSE DE BEAUFORT.

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u The root of love is dead in me," he wrote to his sister. " It will throw out no more shoots."

He probably believed what he said. Yet almost at once followed his passion for Henriette d'Entragues, the cold, ambitious, unloving woman who held him enslaved till close upon the end, and to whom the unhappiness of his nine years of married life was chiefly due.

Gabrielle gone, the question of the King's marriage was simplified, and it soon became clear that his choice of a wife would fall upon Marie de Medicis, niece of the Grand Duke of Tuscany.

Henriette d'Entragues, indeed, aspired to the position her predecessor had hoped to fill. Henri, wax in the hands of an intriguing woman, had gone so far as to sign a paper pledging himself to marry her should she bear him a son within a year ; and though Rosny, when his master placed the document in his hands, had been bold enough to tear it across, nothing was easier than to replace it. Nevertheless, whatever might have been the case had Gabrielle lived, whatever promises had been wrung from him by Henriette, Henri could scarcely, in his saner moments, have deemed it possible to make the object of his fresh passion Queen.

As a matter of policy and convenience the Florentine match had much to recommend it. Marie de Medicis, it was true, had been one of the ladies he had mentioned to Rosny in terms of depreciation. The Duke of Florence, he said, had a niece reported to be good-looking. She came, however, of one of the least of the princely houses of Christendom, and was besides of the same race as Catherine, the late Queen-mother,

who had worked so much ill to France and to himself! Yet, in spite of her disadvantages, Marie was fast distancing her rivals. Henri was under obligations— especially money obligations — to her uncle. He hoped, should he wed the niece, to be relieved from a part of his debts, and to obtain in addition more of the ready money he urgently needed. Another war was inevitable if the rights of France were to be vindicated, and a war, even if a minor one, meant fresh needs and necessities. The Duke of Savoy retained possession of territory acquired during the time when France was distracted by the League and its civil wars. His promises of restitution or compensation were only made to be broken or evaded ; it was becoming plain that force must be used. Rosny, wise, prudent, and fearless, was prepared for the struggle; Henri was never unwilling to unsheath the sword. In August 1600 the standard was raised at Lyons, and success again attended upon the arms of the great captain. Treachery, it was true, was one of the forces to be contended with, but if the Due de Biron, Marshal of the troops, was at heart a traitor, Rosny and his master were at hand to counteract the effects of his double dealing. The incompetent nobles in command of the artillery were replaced by capable officers ; every resource of the country was brought into requisition to ensure success, and once more the King was a victor.

In the meantime the last obstacle in the way of his remarriage had been removed. A decree from Rome had been obtained annulling his union with Marguerite; Marie de Medicis was to be Queen of France.

Most people approved of the match. To one

person it meant failure and disappointment, the downfall of inordinate aspirations and ambitions. Henrietta d'Entragues, now Marquise de Verneuil, never forgot that she had hoped to wear a crown and to be mother of a Dauphin ; nor was she a woman to pardon her supplanter. Anxious to propitiate her so far as it was possible, the King delayed the marriage as long as he could find excuses for delay; but the respite could only be short. Marie, as well as her uncle, was impatient. Perhaps, at twenty-six, she was in truth half in love with the great soldier she had never seen, and whom, having seen, she was to love so little and to have so little reason to love. In a letter she wrote when her fate was decided there is a note of something more than the conventional language of compliment.

" Since all my will and all my soul live but in you," so it ran, " may your Majesty be assured of being ever, I will not say loved by me, for that is very little; but, if I may be permitted to say so, adored."

A time came when reasons for delay could be no longer averred. Marie de Medicis and Henri-Quatre were wedded, by proxy, with all the magnificence and pomp due to the position of the bridegroom. The bride was escorted to her new country, and her first meeting with Henri took place at Lyons.

On this occasion all went well. Nevertheless, to those who look back at the company gathered together, germs of disintegration are perceptible already at work. The King had brought a strange companion in the little Due de Vendome, then a tall boy of seven, bright and spirited. His hand was kissed by the Tuscan ambassador, as though he had in truth borne the title

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of enfant de France repudiated by Rosny, and upon him Marie lavished caresses. With the new Queen was her foster-sister, Leonora Galigai, soon to become the wife of the notorious Concini, whose influence was to be so important and disastrous an element in the future, and for whom—also at Lyons—the King at once conceived a marked dislike.

Upon the arrival of the Queen at Paris some six weeks later, she was enlightened as to the mode of existence she was to expect. The very evening that she reached the capital the Duchesse de Nemours and Mademoiselle de Guise, yielding reluctant obedience to the King's command, presented to his bride the Marquise de Verneuil, who, in Henri's own blunt words, having been his mistress, now desired to become the Queen's humble servant.

Without a change of countenance Marie de Medicis endured the insult: she did not forget it. And thus her married life was inaugurated.

From the first, given the characters of husband and wife, it was doomed to failure. Henri was a great King, a great soldier ; he was not a great man. Nothing, says Michelet, summing up the case, was solid in him save the soldierly element ; all else was fluid, changeable as water. Lovable, kindly, affectionate, gay, quick-witted, hot-tempered, impulsive, he retained to the end something of the child — a child's longing for love and approval and sympathy ; something, notwithstanding his abjuration of his early creed, of a child's faith. Royalty in him had never stiffened or overshadowed humanity ; but the moral sense was absent. Like Esau, he would have bartered

his inheritance, spiritual or temporal, for the mess of pottage the moment offered. Yet there was a charm in him hard to resist. Emotional and easily moved, even to the point of tears, his anger was as short-lived as it was sharp. It might almost be said that he did not know how not to forgive, that he was incapable of distrust. Entering Paris as a victor, he went to the house of the Duchesse de Montpensier, his foe, and asked for food. As it was set before him, she was about, according to custom, to taste it before he ate, when he stopped her. That ceremony, he said, was not necessary. The Duchess, remembering the past, demurred.

" What ! " she said, <£ have I not done enough to render myself suspect ? "

" You are not so, ma tante" was the King's reply, and the old enmity broke down, conquered by his confidence.

" Ah," said his hostess, " one must be your servant"; and she kept her pledge.

Again, he had sworn that d'Aubigny, the friend of Huguenot days, the opponent of later years, should die. Nevertheless, when he placed himself in the King's hands and, looking at the scar left upon Henri's mouth by the blow of an assassin, told him sternly that, having renounced God with his lips, He had wounded him on the lips, and, should he renounce Him with the heart, the heart would be pierced, Henri only answered by placing his little son, C£sar de Vendome, with a smile, in the arms of the monitor. A like master might be blamed ; he could not fail to be loved.

Loved, that is, by friends and servants. It was a different matter when a woman was concerned—and a woman whose fate it was to see her husband helpless in the hands of a rival, blind to that rival's disloyalty, ministering to her ambition, and ready to sacrifice to her, not only his wife and her happiness, but the interests of her children. Some women indeed might have been capable of vindicating their position, and, gaining the King's affections, have won the day. Marie de Medicis was not such a woman. Perhaps she never understood her husband sufficiently to render it possible. Henri wanted not only to be happy ; he wanted to be gay. Henriette d'Entragues owed part of her extraordinary ascendancy to the fact that she could always make him laugh. Laughter was not easily come at by means of intercourse with the Queen. Ponderous, serious, injured, with an ever-present sense of her grievances, she had no chance against the cold, clever, unscrupulous Frenchwoman ; and from the first, pitted against her, she played a losing game. u Spanish in heart, Austrian in body, Flemish by birth," she could offer little attraction to the brilliant, versatile Gascon she had married ; and what poor chances might have existed of domestic peace were minimised by the fact that Leonora and Concini were in possession of her ear. Had Henri persisted in the intention he had at first evinced to insist upon Concini's return to France, much subsequent trouble might have been avoided. The Queen's foster-sister, should she remain in France, was to have been married to a Frenchman, and the danger arising from the combined influence of the two foreign favourites would have been averted. Yielding

Concini and Leonora Galigai 21

to his wife's entreaties, Henri was weak enough to permit both Italians to accompany her to Paris, consenting afterwards, though reluctantly, to bestow upon Leonora the post and title of dame d'atour. The interests of the pair having become one by their subsequent marriage, the presence of husband and wife, rapacious and scheming intriguers, could not fail to prove disastrous at Court.