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| Catherine de' Medici widowed Queen of France workshop of François Clouet Public domain. |
France’s Salic Law barred females and any man who claimed through a woman from inheriting the throne. However, the country had a tradition of women exercising power as regents on behalf of absent husbands or under-age sons. In the thirteenth century Blanche of Castile acted as regent for her son Louis IX. Anne de Beaujeu was regent for her brother, Charles VIII.
The French regents often exercised power under difficult circumstances. However, competent their government, a period of royal minority was always a time of instability; and the regents were usually foreigners and inclined to be unpopular because they were not perceived to have the interests of France at heart.
Catherine de’ Medici (1519-89)
Catherine was the daughter of Lorenzo de Medici, Duke of Urbino, who died a few weeks after her birth. Her French mother, Madeleine de la Tour d’Auvergne had already died of puerperal fever. She was raised by her formidable aunt, Clarice Strozzi. In May 1527 when Florence turned against the Medici and declared itself a republic, she was left behind as a hostage for her fleeing family. She faced a truly traumatic experience in 1529 when, following the Ladies’ Peace, imperial troops besieged Florence with the aim of restoring the Medici. While the siege was going on, the 10-year-old Catherine was taken prisoner. She feared she would be raped or killed though this did not happen.Marriage
When the Medici were restored, her relative, Pope Clement VII, moved her to Rome and secured her betrothal to Henri, the second son of François I. This was a great match for her and the Medici family. The two fourteen-year-olds were married in Marseille in October 1533. |
| The marriage of Henri and Catherine October 1530. Public domain. |
The marriage quickly went wrong. Clement VII died in 1534 and his successor, Paul III, was hostile to France and refused to pay Catherine’s dowry. King François came to regret the marriage, saying, ‘the girl has come to me stark naked’. Even more seriously, the marriage initially failed in its prime purpose to produce children. The pressure on her increased after 1536 when Henry’s older brother, François, died suddenly, leaving Henri as dauphin, the heir to the French throne. There was talk of divorcing Catherine and in desperation she turned to the recommended fertility remedies of mule’s urine, ground stag’s antlers and cow dung. Her situation was even more painful because Henri was in love with Diane de Poitiers, who had been his mistress since he was 15 and she was 38. There is more about Diane here.
In January 1544, after thirteen years of marriage, Catherine gave birth to a son, François. Her fertility problems were over, and she gave birth in quick succession to nine more children. However, her husband remained infatuated with Diane. On 31 March 1547 François I died and Henri became king. Catherine was now queen, but still her political influence was negligible. Instead, Diane presided at court and was given the château of Chenonceau,
which Catherine had wanted for herself. Politically as well, she was eclipsed by the powerful Guise brothers, whose niece, Mary, Queen of Scots, married the dauphin François in 1558.
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| Catherine as Queen Consort of France attributed to François Clouet Public domain |
On 10 July 1559 Henri II died, the delayed result of a jousting accident in April. Catherine was distraught and wore widow’s clothing for the rest of her life. Diane was banished, having handed over her jewels (together with a careful inventory) and Chenonceau back to the Crown.
Queen Mother
At the age of 15, the new king, François II was legally no longer a minor and therefore able to rule for himself. In reality, a power struggle developed between Catherine and the Guise brothers, who were using their niece, Mary, Queen of Scots to further their ambitions. The reign of François II saw the beginnings of the French Wars of Religion between Catholics and Huguenots. While Catherine disliked Protestantism, she favoured moderation and conciliation wherever possible, but the Guises were militant Catholics.On 5 December 1560, François II died. On the following day, Catherine moved to secure her own position and that of the new king, her ten-year-old son, Charles-Maximilien. She ordered access to the palace to be barred and called a Privy Council meeting at which she declared her son to be Charles IX.
Since it has pleased God to deprive me of my eldest son, I do not mean to abandon myself to despair, but to submit to the Divine Will, and to assist and serve my second son in the feeble measure of my experience. I have decided therefore to keep him beside me and to govern the state as a devoted mother must do. Since I have assumed this duty, I do wish all correspondence to be addressed in the first place to me… such is my will. Quoted Leonie Frieda, Catherine de Medici (2003), p. 164.
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| Charles IX, by François Clouet Kunsthistorisches Museum Public domain. |
Governor of France
At the age of 41, Catherine had become the ruler of France. She created new symbols of authority to reflect her position. She had a seal created for her as ‘Gouvernante de France’, inscribed with the phrase ‘Catherine by the grace of God, Queen of France, Mother of the King’.It was Catherine’s great misfortune that she ruled France at a time of the devastating Religious Wars, which lasted from 1562 to 1594. French politics was also dominated by powerful factions, the Catholic Guises, led by François, Duke of Guise and his brother, Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine, and the Protestant (Huguenot) Bourbons, led by Antoine, King of Navarre and his brother, Louis, Prince of Condé. Court politics was thus entwined with religion. After Antoine de Bourbon’s death in 1562 his widow, Jeanne d’Albret, Queen of Navarre in her own right, and niece of François I, became the virtual leader of the Protestants.
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| Another formidable woman - Jeanne d'Albret, Queen of Navarre François Clouet Public domain. |
There was a further complication. In 1568 the Dutch revolted against Spanish rule. Many of the Dutch leaders were Protestant and this drew the Huguenots to support them. The politics of the Netherlands and France thus became intertwined.
Catherine represented another political strand, that came to be known as the Politiques, who wished to strike a compromise between the two factions. She ran the risk of alienating her son-in-law, the firmly Catholic Philip II, and she gained a reputation for untrustworthiness. One Englishman said of her, ‘She hath too much wit for a woman, and too little honesty for a queen’. Another commentator said, ‘She lies even when she is telling the truth’. Philip is said to have referred to her as ‘Madame la Serpente’. The Cardinal of Lorraine told the Duke of Alba,
She is so dissimulating that when she says one thing, she thinks another, her only aim being to command, as she does. As for the rest, she cares nothing. Frieda, Catherine de Medici, p. 293.
The Massacre of St Bartholomew
This is the greatest stain on Catherine’s reputation, the most controversial event of her reign. Like Isabella of Castile, Catherine pursued politics through marriage diplomacy. From an English perspective, the best-known of these is her son, Alençon’s, courtship of Queen Elizabeth. In 1559, following the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis between France and Spain, her 14-year-old daughter Elisabeth became the third wife of Philip II.
In 1570 she signed the Peace of St Germain with the Huguenots. The chief instigator was Jeanne d’Albret. It was another of those sixteenth-century treaties negotiated by women. Catherine now planned another diplomatic marriage, between her daughter, Marguerite (Margot) and Jeanne’s son, Henry of Navarre. The marriage contract was signed in April 1572 and Henry set out from his stronghold of Béarn for Paris. Jeanne died on 9 June, and her son became King of Navarre.
The Protestants were now led by Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, who was prepared to lead an armed force into the Netherlands in support of the Dutch rebels against Spain. Catherine believed this would push France into a disastrous war against Philip II, and to prevent this, she plotted the death of Coligny. She was aided in this plot by the Guises, who hated Coligny because they blamed him for the assassination of the first Duke of Guise in 1563.
On 8 July Henry of Navarre entered Paris at the head of 800 armed horsemen. As more Huguenots poured into Paris from the provinces, the atmosphere in the strongly Catholic city grew tense. Catherine knew that many of the Huguenots in the city were about to set off for the Netherlands once the wedding was over.
The marriage took place on 18 August in Notre Dame. (Margot was later to complain that it was not of her own free will.) Four days of feasting followed. On the morning of 22 August, Coligny was shot with an arquebus from a building. He was wounded not killed, and the would-be assassin escaped. When Catherine heard that the attempt had failed she know that she faced the most dangerous situation of her life.
The mood in Paris grew dangerous. The Huguenots were restive and angry and many Catholics began to arm themselves. The authorities went round inns and boarding houses compiling lists of Protestants. Catherine and her inner circle decided that another attempt would have to be made on Coligny and this time it was to include his most senior nobles and captains. On the evening of 23 August she persuaded the king to agree to the assassination of all the senior Huguenots, starting with the Admiral. The king is then said to have cried, ‘Then kill them all, kill them all!’ But he probably meant a limited number rather than a general massacre.
The killings began in the early hours of 24 August. Coligny was run through with a sword in the house where he was recuperating. His body fell out of the window at the feet of the Duke of Guise. Henry of Navarre was held by the king’s guards, while the killings started in earnest. (He prudently converted to Catholicism.) Few of the Protestants in Paris escaped.
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| François Dubois, 'The St Bartholomew's Day Massacre' Musée Cantonal des Beaux Arts, Lausanne Public domain. |
The Spanish ambassador wrote to Philip:
As I write, they are killing them all, they are stripping them naked, dragging them through the streets, plundering the houses and sparing not even children. Blessed be God who has converted the French princes to His cause! May He inspire their hearts to continue as they have begun!
The authorised ‘executions’ were over by 5 am on the 24th, but the massacres continued. The violence soon spread to the provinces and the killings were not finally over until October. Most now believe that the death toll throughout France might have been between 20,000 and 30,000 out of a population of c. 20 million. In Paris alone, between 2,000 and 3,000 died, not all of them Protestant.
Catherine took responsibility for the targeted assassinations but claimed that they were necessary to forestall a Huguenot assassination plot against the royal family. But she was blamed as well for the other killings and the damage to her reputation was permanent. The nineteenth-century historian, Jules Michelet described her as ‘The Maggot from Italy’s Tomb’.
More immediately, the massacre sparked a radical and deeply misogynist Huguenot political theory exemplified in François Hotman’s Franco-Gallia (1573).
After the massacre
On 5 April 1573 Catherine’s favourite son Henri, Count of Anjou, was elected King of Poland. Catherine regarded the election as a personal triumph, and to celebrate the event she instigated a ball at her new palace of the Tuileries. However, Charles IX died in 1574 and Henri returned to France as Henri III. Unlike his brothers, Henri ascended the throne as an adult but, like them, continued to rely on his mother, who continued with her attempts to bring an end to the religious wars. But she was unable to prevent the conflict becoming more serious.With the death of her youngest son the Duke of Anjou (Alençon) in 1584, the heir to the throne was now her son-in-law, the Protestant Henry of Navarre. The militant Catholic League, under its founder, Henri Duke of Guise, allied with Spain in order to prevent Navarre’s accession.
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| The Catholic League in procession a grave threat to the authority of the monarchy. Musée Carnavalet, Paris Public domain. |
Henri was now acting without consulting his mother. On 23 December 1588 the Duke of Guise was assassinated on his orders at the Château de Blois. Catherine was in despair, believing that her son had signed his own death-warrant.
Death and reputation
Catherine died on 5 January 1589 and, because of the disorders of Paris, she was buried without ceremony. Eight months later, Henri III was assassinated in revenge for the Guise murder. The new king, Henry IV, then began his ultimately successful fight for the throne.During her lifetime, he had been hostile to his mother-in-law, but his view of her later softened.
I ask you, what could a woman do, left by the death of her husband with five little children on her arms, and two families of France who were thinking of grasping the crown—our own [the Bourbons] and the Guises? Was she not compelled to play strange parts to deceive first one and then the other, in order to guard, as she did, her sons, who successively reigned through the wise conduct of that shrewd woman? I am surprised that she never did worse. (Quoted Frieda, p. 452)
She was a failure - but could anyone else have done better?
Conclusion
- The career of Catherine de Medici illustrates the way in which a queen could become very powerful if her son, the king, was under age. Even when her sons were adults they relied on her for advice and even the direction of policy.
- She was unfortunate that she ruled France at the time of the religious wars. She failed to pacify the country but probably no-one else would have been more successful.
- The great blot on her reputation was the Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Day - a botched assassination that turned into a bloodbath.
Marie de' Medici (1575-1642)
Marie was distantly related to Catherine de' Medici, and through her mother, Joanna of Austria, she was descended from Ferdinand and Isabella. In 1600 she married Henry of Navarre, now King of France after his struggle to establish his claim to the throne. His unhappy and childless marriage to Margot had been dissolved in 1599. He chose Marie because of the size of the dowry offered by her father. He was 47, she was 25. |
| Marie de' Medici at the time of her marriage Public domain. |
The marriage succeeded in its primary purpose of producing children. The future Louis XIII was born less than a year later. Her youngest child, Henriette-Marie, born in 1609, married Charles I and is better known as Queen Henrietta Maria of Britain, the wife of Charles I.
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| Marie de' Medici and her family, 1607, by Frans Pourbus the younger) |
On 14 May 1610, Henry IV was assassinated by a Catholic fanatic. On the following day, Marie was confirmed as regent for the 13-year-old Louis XIII.
Her regency was not successful. She promoted unsuitable favourites and pursued an unpopular pro-Spanish, pro-Habsburg foreign policy. In 1616 Louis took charge of politics and banished her to the château of Blois. In 1619 she escaped and managed to resume a role in court politics. It is in this period that she commissioned the magnificent series of paintings by Rubens in the Louvre. She also commissioned the Italianate Luxembourg Palace, modelled on the Pitti Palace in Florence, and now the seat of the French Senate.
However, in 1630, she finally fell from power, ousted by a much cleverer politician, Cardinal Richelieu. She lived a life of exile, visiting England in 1638. She died in Cologne in 1642. She had been a scheming and ultimately unsuccessful regent and her main achievements were cultural rather than political.
Anne of Austria (1601-66)
(The Wikipedia article on Anne is unusually poor. A much better account is found in the early chapters of Antonia Fraser's Love and Louis XIV. The Women in the Life of the Sun King (2006).)In spite of her name, Anne of Austria, was Spanish, the daughter of Philip III of Spain and the granddaughter of Philip II. At the age of 14 she was married to Louis XIII. She is probably best known as the queen in Dumas's The Three Musketeers.
In the early years of her marriage two factors worked against her. She became embroiled in court politics, in particular involving herself in the faction opposed to Cardinal Richelieu. And for many years she was childless. Her difficulties increased after Spain and France went to war in 1635. Following the discovery of her correspondence with her brother, Philip IV, she was kept under close observation.
Finally, in September 1638, at the age of 37 and after a succession of stillbirths, she gave birth to a son, the future Louis XIV, followed by his brother, Philippe, in 1640. She had secured the dynasty, but relations with her husband did not improve.
Regent
In 1642 Anne's great enemy, Cardinal Richelieu died and her husband, Louis XIII died in the following year. In his will, he had tried to limit her power by surrounding her with a Regency Council, but Anne managed to get this limitation removed. But, feeling unable to rule on her own, she entrusted much of the government to Cardinal Richelieu's protégé, the Italian-born Cardinal Mazarin. France was thus ruled by two foreigners at a time of a royal minority. |
| Anne of Austria widow, by Charles de Steuben, Versailles Public domain. |
The Fronde
A regency was always a precarious period in French history, providing an excuse for various groups to assert their independence of the crown. In the 1640s the situation was exacerbated because Mazarin’s decision to continue the war against Spain, creating severe financial problems. The result was a series of revolts, known as the Fronde, which exposed all the weaknesses of the French monarchy. The revolt began in Paris and spread to the provinces. It became a means for ambitious nobles, such as the king’s uncle Gaston d’Orléans and his cousin, Louis, Prince of Condé, to reassert the traditional powers they believed they had lost to interlopers like Richelieu and Mazarin. |
| Cardinal Mazarin by Pierre Mignard Musée Condé. Public domain. |
A vicious propaganda war was waged against Anne and Mazarin, and an underground pornographic literature invented lurid scenes of their alleged love-making. (The libels against Anne of Austria anticipated the attacks on Marie Antoinette, another unpopular foreign queen.)
Anne and her sons had to flee Paris twice. However, in October 1652 they returned. Louis was now of age and he never forgot that he had been forced to flee from his own capital. On 7 June 1654 he was crowned at Reims. Anne was no longer exercising power, but she managed to achieve her final great political objective when she secured the marriage of Louis to her niece, Maria Teresa, the daughter of Philip IV in 1660, signalling that the long war with Spain was now over.
Anne died on 20 January 1666. Louis declared that she should be numbered among the great kings of France. He said, 'I never disobeyed her in anything of consequence'. Most historians are less admiring, pointing out her many mistakes, though the disturbances of the Fronde would have presented a problem for any ruler during a royal minority.
Conclusion
- The most intelligent and resourceful of the regents was undoubtedly Catherine de' Medici. To modern students, her attempts to end the religious wars seem praiseworthy, though they were doomed to failure. However, the St Bartholomew massacre was a political as well as a moral failure and she never overcame the stain on her reputation.
- Marie de' Medici was a meddler rather than a stateswoman, and she was outmanoeuvred by Cardinal Richelieu, the most astute politician of the age. But she left behind an enduring cultural legacy.
- Anne of Austria's regency was beset by the problems of the Fronde, and these were only overcome when her son attained his majority. Her dependence on Mazarin was politically unwise. Nevertheless, Louis XIV held her in high honour and believed he had learned the art of statecraft from her.
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