Martyrs and Murderers: The Guise Family and the Making of Europe (17 page)

Educated from birth to compete with each other in acts of bravery, the arrival of these ill-disciplined hotheads might have spelt disaster for a man of lesser status and authority. But Guise knew how to channel their competitive streak. He divided the city walls into sections, each of which was assigned its own family in the knowledge that honour would ensure that no man would fail to do his duty.

Among them were the greatest princes of the kingdom: the younger brothers of the King of Navarre, the Duke of Enghien and the Prince of Condé, were given the section from the Saint-Thibaut gate down to the river Seille; Charles de Bourbon-Montpensier, Prince de la Roche-sûr-Yon, defended the des Barres gate and the wall up to the Charriers tower; one section of trenches and revetments was assigned to Guise’s own brothers, the Grand Prior and René d’Elbeuf; and next to them were their rivals, the eldest sons of the Constable of Montmorency, François and Henri.

As soon as the Duke of Alva appeared with his army, Guise launched sorties to disrupt the full investment of the city. His brother, the Duke of Aumale, with a force of light cavalry, operating behind enemy lines, was caught up in a skirmish just outside Nancy and captured after being wounded several times and his finger severed. Guise was proud of his brother for ‘being taken while fighting to the last, not having surrendered until having been brought to the ground and having a cocked pistol put to his throat’. 34 This sort of aggressive defence would characterize Guise’s tactics, constantly harrying the enemy in their trenches, disrupting and demoralizing them as the weather worsened and it began to snow. Sorties and surprise attacks in particular targeted foragers, supply columns, and the imperialist lines of communication. Charles V’s arrival in a litter on 20 November was greeted with a sally which slaughtered several hundred horses and plundered the imperial mule train. Even so, the siege was not without its chivalric interludes. The monotony of hand-to-hand fighting in the besiegers’ trenches was occasionally broken by challenges and jousts between Spanish and French knights.

The imperialist artillery fire maintained a furious rate of fire. By 17 December Guise estimated that the imperialists had fired 11,800 cannonballs, but even where breaches were made the defenders raised formidable earthworks eight feet high in their place and set them bristling with guns. And whereas the French were well stocked with provisions, with enough salt meat to last until Lent and flour until August, the imperialists meanwhile were starving and shivering in their bivouacs. On Christmas Day, Charles prayed for a miracle. It did not come and on 1 January he left, a broken man, his army destroyed, for Brussels. When the French moved into the abandoned positions the scene they found was pitiable; intermingled with unburied horses and many of the corpses of the 12,000 men who had died from typhus and scurvy were large numbers of sick and wounded abandoned to their fate. In the abandoned tent of the emperor the French found six magnificent tapestries, depicting significant episodes in the life of France’s first king, Clovis, that had once decorated the banqueting hall for the marriage feast of Charles the Bold and Margaret of York.

Their abandonment to François de Lorraine, Duke of Guise, who sent them for his brother to hang in Reims, the spiritual home of the king’s of France, was symbolic. The nemesis of the Habsburgs had once again triumphed. In his retreat from Metz Charles had given up all hope of rebuilding the Burgundian dynastic empire, just as his great-grandfather’s plans had been destroyed by Guise’s grandfather in 1477. Guise held a solemn procession on 15 January 1553, after which the Lutheran books taken in the booty were ceremonially burnt—a sort of offering for the deliverance of the city.

In France, the response to victory was euphoric. During the siege the cardinal wrote to his brother, telling him that he was ‘winning a reputation’ and that ‘all our affairs depend on where you are’. 35 On 20 February the king lauded the duke publicly during a full session of the Paris Parlement. Henry spoke of his ‘perfect happiness’ and of the ‘immortal glory and honour’ that was Guise’s due. Public celebrations throughout the kingdom were ordered. A medal was struck. The duke had proved himself far more than a great organizer, a role which Montmorency could also perform. He had proved himself a great leader and inspirer of men.

He had shown compassion too: the way he had treated the wounded and sick imperialist soldiers abandoned by Charles V was widely praised. His name and deeds spread throughout Europe: Italians took to calling him ‘the great’ and even Spaniards, who were harder to impress, often referred to him as ‘el gran ducque de Guysa’ or ‘el gran capitan di Guysa’.

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Success bred jealousy. Constable Montmorency noticed that the king kissed the duke and called him his ‘brother’ on his return to court, a level of familiarity that was alarming. The hatred that divided the Houses of Guise and Montmorency and that would dominate politics for a decade had yet to germinate, but the first seeds had been planted.

Despite his elevation to a dukedom the year before, Montmorency was not a prince; he was however a true-born Frenchmen. Though the Guise felt themselves far superior to a man whose father had been a mere baron, they too were sensitive to quips about their ‘foreignness’ and the ammunition it provided to their enemies. In April 1552 Henry II had taken the unusual step of raising the barony of Joinville to a principality, so that the Guise were not simply naturalized foreigners but princes in France. This did not put an end to malicious gossip. One purpose behind the projected marriages of both Mary Stuart and the Duke of Lorraine to royal children was to end such talk. After the marriages took place, the Cardinal of Lorraine was not only delighted that the ‘head of his House’ could quarter his arms with those of France, but henceforth no one would be able to claim that they were ‘foreign princes’. 36

Having failed at Metz, Charles V moved his field of operations onto French territory. In April 1553 his army invested the small fortified town of Thérouanne, an isolated French enclave surrounded by the emperor’s Burgundian inheritance. Thérouanne was well provisioned and garrisoned but it fell in June and the constable’s eldest son, François was captured. The fall of Thérouanne was a great shock to the French.

The king was dismayed and, it was reported, blamed the constable. Worse followed when Hesdin, which had not been repaired since a French assault six months earlier, fell on 19 July. Guise made no attempt to profit from the constable’s discomfort publicly, for he had no need.

The constable’s caution in the field contrasted to the youthful vigour of his rival and it was compounded by a serious illness in the autumn, which left him and his army debilitated. He was the object of derision and lampoons. To make matters worse, his foreign policy was unravelling. The final illness of Edward VI placed the Franco-British project in grave jeopardy. Charles V’s goal was to ensure the succession of his cousin, Mary Tudor. The French, in turn, supported the Protestant candidate, Lady Jane Grey. The French were genuinely surprised and deeply disappointed when word came in mid-July that Mary had been acclaimed queen. The gloom deepened with news of her betrothal to Philip of Spain and the prospect that the first son of the union would add England to the Burgundian territories of the Netherlands and the Franche-Comté. Henry II was left speechless, conversing with the English ambassador on 18 December 1553 he ‘showed by his gestures and drawling half-swallowed words that he was so exceedingly put out [by the marriage] that he could not frame a reply or finish his sentences’. 37

These setbacks were the origins of the rivalry between the Guise and the Montmorency. In January 1554 the Cardinal of Lorraine had to send one of his servants to Scotland because the man had stood up for the Duke of Bouillon, who had been taken prisoner at Hesdin, against slurs on his honour made by Gaspard de Coligny. The cardinal told his sister that ‘if he remained here, he would be killed’ and he told her to keep the matter quiet. 38 But the mistrust soon became public knowledge in the most dramatic fashion. Despite his limitations as a field commander, the constable continued to enjoy the king’s confidence and he led the armies that counter-attacked in the spring of 1554 in Artois, Hainault, and Luxembourg. The two sides were evenly matched with about 45,000 men each. On the French side, the campaign proved a huge disappointment and once again the constable’s over-cautious approach was criticized—some suggesting that he was more interested in ransoming his son, others that he did not want to engage the enemy lest Guise, who took the field as a simple captain of gendarmes, be given the chance to win more glory. The desultory war of position was not the way of war for French aristocrats and once again it was Guise who lifted morale. He had been detailed to shadow the enemy, but on 13 August he suddenly found himself facing the entire imperial army. By a clever ruse, using forest cover and well supported by the infantry under their colonel-general, Coligny, he inflicted a sharp reverse on the enemy, capturing twenty ensigns, killing 500 imperialists, and taking 300 prisoners. The victory celebrations were marred that evening by the quarrel between the two captains over the responsibility for the victory. They were at the point of drawing swords. The king hastily made them exchange the kiss of peace, but their close friendship, already under strain, was at an end.

The failure to follow up Renty and French setbacks in Italy, especially the fall of Siena, made Henry willing to discuss peace. Montmorency and the Cardinal of Lorraine were delegated to meet the imperial representatives in the Pale of Calais on 23 May 1555. The Guise were less interested in peace than Montmorency, and not simply because of François’s growing reputation. Claude d’Aumale had been released from captivity in 1554 for 60,000 crowns paid by his mother-in-law Diane de Poitiers, his mother, and his brother Charles, and had resumed his post as captain of the royal light cavalry and dragoons.

Among the setbacks in Italy, the capture of Corsica, involving the two youngest Guise brothers, the Grand Prior, and René d’Elbeuf, stood out as a solitary French success. The latter was rewarded with appointment as commander of the Mediterranean galley fleet; based at Toulon and Marseilles it had considerably increased since the beginning of the reign and comprised forty-two galleys. The constable had nothing to gain from further campaigning, and much to lose. He wanted to hold on to what he had and reunite his family—his son François was still in captivity, along with his nephew, Andelot, who had been captured in 1551. The constable’s desire for peace was evident to one of the imperial negotiators, Cardinal Granvelle. Montmorency was effusive in his praise for the emperor. ‘He knew that in your majesty he had to do with a person who knows what is what. At this point the Cardinal [Lorraine] cast a glance at the constable, who reddened a little, and added ‘‘after my master’’ .’39 The negotiations were inconclusive, but so was the fighting that ensued. The abdication of Charles V

and the division of his titles between his brother Ferdinand and son Philip eased French fears that the latter intended to become a universal emperor in the mould of his father. The breakthrough was made by the delicate diplomacy of Coligny. He was emerging as a major figure in the regime; his rapid rise making him enemies in the process. The favourite nephew of the constable, in 1551 he was made Governor of Paris and the Ile-de-France, a key post which was becoming a Montmorency fief, and a year later he became Admiral of France, an office that had little to do with naval affairs but which was immensely lucrative and in prestige ranked only second to that of the constable.

In an exceptional display of favour, he was awarded a second governorship in June 1555, that of the strategically important province of Picardy, against strong opposition from the princes, especially the man whom he replaced, Antoine de Bourbon. Coligny used his new position on the frontier to maintain discreet contacts with the imperialists and in February 1556 at Vaucelles, with the backing of his uncle, the king was persuaded to accept a five-year truce. This seriously jeopardized Guise plans. French fortunes in Italy had recently been boosted by the election of the anti-Spanish Pope Paul IV. While Coligny was negotiating peace in the north, the Cardinal of Lorraine had been dispatched to Rome in October 1555 to negotiate a league with Paul. The pact that resulted, promising the Pope a monthly subsidy of 350,000 crowns and an army of 12,000 men, was secret and not known to the Habsburgs until the middle of 1556. According to the Venetian ambassador in France, the court was divided between the peace faction and the war faction:

‘the adherents of the constable together with the public, being desirous of its conclusion; whilst on the other hand, the dependants both of the Queen and the house of Guise, together with those of Madame de Valentinois, demonstrate openly that for the benefit of his affairs his most Christian Majesty ought not to come to this agreement, but pursue the execution of the League’. 40 Montmorency continued to dominate policymaking and the fact that the war had already cost Henry 45 million crowns also figured large in the decision to make peace. The opposition of the Guise to the peace was a matter of policy and not personality—their enmity was reserved for the Habsburgs. Six weeks before the signing of Vaucelles the duke had written to the cardinal, ‘The Constable and I, we are getting on well together; he always shows me some sign of friendship as he did before your departure [to Rome]’. 41

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As the man who established the Roman inquisition; who sponsored the first index of prohibited books; and who persecuted evangelical Catholics, Protestants, and Jews alike; the ascetic, nepotistic, and volatile 79-year-old Paul IV must be the sixteenth century’s most unappealing Pope. But his chief attributes in the eyes of Cardinal Charles was that he was a Neapolitan patriot, a supporter of the exile cause who desired nothing more than to drive the hated Spanish from Italy. In Paul IV’s twisted view of the world, Charles V was a friend to schismatics and heretics; Spaniards a blend of Jews and Moors. In return for French support, the Pope consented to the transference of Naples and Milan to the younger sons of Henry II.