The Serpent and the Moon: Two Rivals for the Love of a Renaissance King (18 page)

Following France’s defeat at Pavia, Pope Clement VII had switched his allegiance to Charles V. But the spread of Charles’ empire, and its stranglehold on the various Italian states, frightened the pope and he reverted his allegiance to the French king, making every effort to form a coalition against the emperor. When envoys from Venice and the Vatican came to visit the king at the end of March to persuade him to join a holy league against the emperor, he seemed interested, and prepared to leave his sons in Spain for two or three years. François said the boys would come to no harm; they would learn the language and make useful contacts. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

On April 26, 1526, the Papal States, France, Venice, and England all joined to form the League of Cognac, with the aim of expelling the imperial forces from Italy and bringing the hostage French princes home. On June 21, the chancellor of France officially announced to the viceroy of Naples and the Spanish ambassador that the Treaty of Madrid was null and void. Also in June the imperial viceroy, Charles de Lannoy, tried to take Burgundy by force and was repulsed—not by the king’s army, but by the Burgundians themselves.

In July, war began again between France and the empire, and inevitably, the little princes had to pay for their father’s breach of trust. The duc de Frias had died and the two Sons of France were transferred
to the hostile fortress of Villalpando near Zamora, where their situation worsened considerably. An alleged escape plot resulted in thirty-one of their suite being jailed, including René de Cossé-Brissac, his son, the comptroller, the chaplain, and their staff; a number of the serving men were sent to the galleys
⁶
and some even sold as slaves.

By the end of August, the princes’ French staff had almost all been replaced by about twenty Spanish guards under a brutal captain named Peralta. These guards spoke only Spanish. Louise de Savoie wrote to the chancellor of England, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, to complain of the inhumane treatment of her grandsons, who had been deprived of their French servants by Henry VIII’s ally the emperor. The English ambassador, who saw the boys in October 1526, reported:

In case any of the guards should feel sympathy with the young princes, others were placed to spy on them. Even the French priest who had been charged to report to France on the princes’ welfare was prevented from doing so. Henri was a naughty child, who teased his jailers and grew fat on a diet of greasy Spanish food and lack of sufficient exercise. Occasionally the princes were allowed to ride in the countryside, the dauphin on a mule and Henri on a little mare with two grooms holding his bridle on either side in case he might gallop off out of frustration. François seemed to adapt better to prison conditions
and faced his situation with fortitude, but Henri became increasingly bitter and never lost his sense of injustice over their treatment. All his life he would blame the emperor and hate the Spanish.

When even these privations imposed on the princes appeared to have little effect on the king of France, and Burgundy was no nearer the emperor’s grasp, Charles went further. In January 1527, the noose was tightened; all the princes’ French attendants were removed except their tutor and the dwarf. According to Joachim du Bellay, Henri fell ill and “was in danger of his life”; but it may be that this report to the English court was intended to annoy the emperor. In June, the discovery and execution of a French spy caused the two princes to be transferred again, this time to the château-prison of Pedrazza de la Sierra, north of Madrid. There they lived in two small adjoining cells, each with one little barred window above their reach. The cells were icy in the winter and in summer suffocatingly hot. The princes were never left alone but were spied on night and day by four Spanish guards, and they were only rarely allowed outside into the fresh air. Their rations were meager portions of salty dried fish, and seldom any meat—a poor diet for growing boys.

When Queen Eleonore heard of the boys’ latest situation, she was so distressed that she retired to a monastery. With minimal tutoring, no companions their own age, and only their Spanish jailers around them all the time, the dauphin and his brother learned a vulgar Spanish and strange manners. A letter exists from March 1528 to the king from Brissac asking for more money as the boys “were increasing in virtue and size” and what clothes they had brought with them were worn out. In 1529, the spy Clermont reported to Anne de Montmorency:

Although aware of his children’s plight, the French king still would not relent; his country’s welfare must come first. Help for the boys came from an unlikely quarter. Isabella of Portugal, the emperor’s enchanting young wife, was so moved by the story of the two young princes that she sent the prison governor a large sum of money from her personal account to provide them with some clothes and ease their misery. Her letter explained that they were said to be in such a wretched condition that she wished to help them, but that she was anxious not to draw anyone’s attention to an improvement in their circumstances.

A little later, in 1529, a gentleman-usher from the household of Louise de Savoie, Jean Baudin, gained access to the princes. He realized that the emperor hoped he would return with such a negative report that the French king would be persuaded to agree to the demands of the Treaty of Madrid. His description of their gloomy quarters and the state they were in was pitiable. He wrote that they were kept under heavy guard in “a dark chamber with neither carpet nor hangings or decoration save a straw mattress in which chamber my lords were seated on small stone stools beneath a window, furnished both inside and out with solid iron bars and so high that only with difficulty could they enjoy air or light.” The walls were about eight or ten feet high, and the quarters would have been better suited to major criminals than two blameless children. Their clothes were so poor and worn, and their life so dull and restricted, that tears came to Baudin’s eyes.

The prison governor showed him the drawings the dauphin had made all over the walls; seeing their explicit vulgarity, the courtier realized that their jailers were trying to break the boy’s spirit so that he would never be suited to kingship. To Baudin’s astonishment, when he addressed the princes, they replied in Spanish, asking if he could use that language, as they had had no one with whom they could speak French for some time and had forgotten much. With the governor’s permission, Baudin followed them into a second room even smaller than the first and they rushed to the window to get some air. He saw them pick up a little dog to play with. Baudin had the impression that even the soldiers who watched them thought it a shame for such highborn princes to have to spend their time in this way.

The next day, not without difficulty, Baudin was permitted to return with gifts for the princes: caps of embroidered golden velvet, each with a white feather, which Baudin kissed reverently. He was about to give the caps to the boys when the guards snatched them away, showed them to the princes, and said they would keep them safe. The boys longed to have their first pretty objects since their imprisonment, but the superstitious Spaniards thought Baudin was a magician and that the hats might enable them to fly out of the prison and back to France. When Baudin asked to take the boys’ measurements as they had grown so much, the guards refused. Baudin wrote that he found it hard to believe that such primitive men could be the guardians of the dauphin of France and his brother. As he left, the two little boys reverted to their strange mix of Spanish and French.

In fact, the princes had only been without their own attendants for eighteen months, and it is unlikely that they would have forgotten their French at this age. On the other hand, Baudin had no reason to lie, and the princes pretending they had forgotten their own language could be explained by their anger at having been abandoned for so long. According to the French spy, the princes did have outdoor exercise; indeed, when they returned to France they were not stunted physically in any way. Still, their imprisonment was to have a deep and lasting effect. The ebullient, cheerful dauphin lapsed into periodic lethargy and ill health, and a deep, black depression left Henri sullen and silent for many years.

W
HILE the princes were languishing in prison in Spain, their fate appeared to be of little concern to the French court, which celebrated three marriages in 1527 at the Palace of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. As the king’s sister, Marguerite, had not been happy in her first union with the duc d’Alençon, her brother tried hard to find her a suitable spouse. He negotiated a marriage with the king of Navarre, Henri d’Albret, comte de Béarn, a brave nobleman who had been captured at Pavia. He had escaped from prison two months later by letting himself
down from his cell window on a rope. Charles V had not honored a treaty with Henri d’Albret promising to restore his kingdom of Navarre, which lay between France and Spain, so he had lived for some time at the French court.

Eleven years younger than his bride, Henri d’Albret was a handsome man, a fearless soldier, an intellect, and a king to boot. As Marguerite had known him for many years and approved of the match, it is probable that she really wanted to marry him. Many criticized the king’s decision to allow Marguerite, a pearl of the Renaissance, to marry Henri d’Albret, because he had only a tiny, rather miserable kingdom that was very far away But there are many examples of a sincere love between Henri and Marguerite—a rare occurrence in marriages arranged for convenience and advantage. An inscription in Latin at the bottom of a miniature of Henri d’Albret means: “I have found a pearl [
margarita
] and have taken it to my heart.”

François permitted one of his friends who shared his imprisonment, Philippe Chabot de Brion, to marry his niece, Françoise de Longvy, and elevated him to the rank of admiral. Anne de Montmorency, newly created
Grand Master, married Madeleine de Savoie, niece of the king’s mother. (Madame Louise wished him well, called him “my nephew,” and gave him the additional charge of governing the Languedoc.)