The Huguenot writers, and following them also Dumas-Father, presented Catherine de Medici as the devil incarnate, which causes modern revisionist historians to search for positive aspects of her character and actions, but as far as I am concerned, this is simply a fairly early incarnation of John Kerry – an unskilled and unaware man who, by force of circumstances, was placed at the top of politics, and wants to do only good – and time after time, turns out terribly.
In both cases, it is a person with whom one can easily identify personally and appreciate his efforts, but the nature of these efforts and their results eliminate any affection you might have felt for him.
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The tragic story of Catherine de Medici
Personally, she is, of course, a tragic figure – an unfortunate child whose young parents died a few days after her birth. The daughter of Lorenzo II, to whom Machiavelli dedicated “The Prince,” she grew up, through no fault of her own, under the constant threat of feelings of hatred for her own dynasty, which were very prevalent in the palace during her childhood years.
Although, thanks to two popes from the family, the Medici managed, for the most part, to hold on to the reins of power in the city, this grip was rather loose. The poor girl was a plaything in the hands of her relatives and a symbol of Republican hatred at the same time: in good times, she was left to live, stuck in a convent in Siena, and in less good times – the crowds threatened to hang her at the city gates or deliver her to a brothel, just to send a message to her family.
In 1531, when she was 14, her uncle, Pope Clement VII, sought a suitable political match for her, choosing between the Holy Roman Empire and the Kingdom of France, chose to marry her to Henry, Duke of Orléans. The boy was Catherine's age and seemed like an excellent potential groom.
This marriage was supposed to make the French allies, and bring them in return a very serious dowry, which included 130 thousand ducats and estates such as Parma, Pisa and Livorno. The wedding celebrations were held in Marseille and lasted 34 consecutive days – with Catherine surprising the French with two impressive Italian innovations – High heels shoes And ice cream. But the trouble started very quickly.
Trouble comes in bundles.
First, she discovered that her young husband was already, how to put it, “taken.”
The thing is, in the French court, the world capital of adultery, there was a widespread custom of teaching crown princes the secrets of the art of love by selected court ladies, and this - at a shockingly young age.
In Henry's case, it was Diane de Poitiers, twenty years his senior and one of the most beautiful women of her time, who had rescued him from his virginity when he was 11. Catherine, who could not compete with her on any level, discovered that her husband adored the ground on which Diane walked, spent all his free time in her company, and almost completely ignored her existence. Incidentally – this situation would continue until his death, when he was 40 and Diane was 60 – he never stopped loving her openly and publicly for a moment.
Secondly, it became clear that the arrogant French court was unwilling to forget the plebeian origins of her ancestors. Although her mother was a member of a noble family, French Old-fashioned, but her father was the scion of a banking family. “Groceress” was Catherine’s common nickname at the French court. They laughed at her appearance, her accent, her ambiguous family situation…
Third, after a year her uncle the Pope died, and his successor, Paul III, chose to ally with the Emperor and refused to hand over Catherine’s dowry to the French, thus completely nullifying her value in their eyes. “The girl came to me completely naked,” the king complained. Francis I, and seriously considered annulling the little Italian woman's marriage to his son.
Fourth, the sudden death of the young and healthy heir to the throne, from a fatal cold that attacked him after drinking a glass of cold water during a game of ball, did indeed make Catherine (who had now Frenched her Italian name) the wife of the new Dauphin, but because the cupbearer was an Italian count (who was quickly executed), a rumor mill began that forever labeled her as the "poisoner."
So what have we got, in the meantime? A miserable girl, an outcast in an alienated and hostile royal court, abandoned by her husband, and living under the constant threat of shameful deportation back to her country.
The fact that she hadn't gotten pregnant yet didn't add to her comfort either – Henri, her husband, already had an illegitimate child by Philippa Duchy, so he had already proven his skills at producing heirs. Now, it was her turn – and she tried everything, all the horrible, painful and humiliating remedies, from drinking mule urine to smearing cow dung on her stomach.
Apparently, these weren't exactly promising, but Nostradamus, her personal physician, eventually came up with something, and after a decade of marriage she finally got pregnant (another version says it was Diana de Poitiers who showed the royal couple how to do it properly and that's what made Catherine start having children).
The curse struck Catherine de Medici there, too, apparently: of the ten children she bore, three died in infancy, while the twin twins – Victoria and Joan – kept the births and her husband’s visits to her bedroom a secret: the birth was terrible, and to save the mother, the doctors killed Joan in her womb. Victoria survived only a few weeks.
None of her children, except Marguerite (“Queen Margot") did not survive beyond the age of 40, and she predicted the deaths of almost everyone.
She was not supposed to rule, she was not educated for it and she lacked the skills. Henri did not involve her in state decisions at all – he left that to Diane, and only the sudden death of her husband, in an accident during a knightly tournament he held in the place that would later becomePlace de Vosgesand the ascension of her 15-year-old son, François II, to the French throne, pushed her to the forefront.
Catherine de Medici's initiatives brought disaster after disaster upon France
The “Black Queen” (she changed the white mourning colors, customary at the French royal court, to black attire, which remains dominant to this day) turned out to be a complete political disaster.
During the reign of her son, Francis II, she had only a brief taste of power – most of the power was concentrated in the hands of the young king’s wife’s relatives – the wealthy, well-connected and powerful De Guise family. But Francis died of an ear infection within a year and a half, and was succeeded by his second son, 10-year-old Charles, entirely subject to his mother’s influence.
The time had come to truly reign. Although the arrogant French refused to grant her the title of “regent,” instead inventing the derogatory “nanny” for her, she hoped to prove to everyone that she too could.
And her first major action already set a pattern that would repeat itself – she simply did not understand complex situations, and always looked for simple rational solutions. I am currently reading “Summer with Montaigne” by Antoine Compagnon, and he believes that Machiavelli’s approach, which he defines as a simple adjustment of means to ends, was then on the political agenda and Catherine was its embodiment.
Personally, I tend to doubt this analogy, because Machiavelli, for all his faults, understood and appreciated human complexity. Catherine – No. Her means to achieve her goals always turned out to be a disaster.
Her first initiative, to appease her Catholic and Huguenot subjects by means of a joint conference at Poissy (1561), ended in a great explosion and a sharp escalation of the civil and religious wars. She assumed in advance that with a little good will, these insignificant religious divisions could be overcome, and although she was a Catholic, she simply did not understand religion, and tended to despise and belittle religious sentiment. The conference dispersed in fury, without receiving the approval of the Queen Mother.
The ongoing process of alliances with powers through the marriage of her children to foreign rulers also did not bring about any desired result – all the pairings turned out to be disasters, couples who hated and ignored each other, and did not bring about any rapprochement between countries. Her attempt to match her youngest son, Ercole-François, with Elizabeth, Queen of England, was met with open ridicule by the Virgin Queen. She flirted a little with the intended groom, then sent him home in disgrace, to her mother.
When she saw that her attempts to appease the Huguenots were causing outrage among the Catholics, that her daughter's marriage to the young Protestant leader, Henry of Navarre, was again not producing any desired results, that the Huguenot leader, theAdmiral Coligny, gaining enormous influence over her son the king, and leading France into a head-on collision with Spain, the powerful power of her time, Catherine chose another simple solution, approving the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre.
The streets of France were washed with blood, but the civil war did not end, but only burned more fiercely. All Catherine received as a result of this terrible decision was the enormous strengthening of Catholic competitors for power (from the De Guise family) and universal hatred from the surviving Protestants, led by the young groom Henry.
And it was impossible to accuse her of carelessness or laziness: she worked tirelessly, wrote twenty letters every day, did not stop traveling around the country, trying to compromise, to negotiate. She devoted her all to preserving the Valois dynasty and establishing peace in her kingdom. As the Night of St. Bartholomew and the series of veils attributed to her showed – even if she did not do it happily and lightly, she was indeed ready for any step that was necessary to achieve this.
But all she achieved was to fuel the war and the approaching end of the dynasty. All of her children, except for her beloved Henry (Henry III, the last king of France from the Valois dynasty), and the hated Marguerite, died during her lifetime, before they turned 30. Henry was stabbed to death by a Catholic fanatic seven months after her death.
Her dynasty fell and peace was restored by her Protestant son-in-law, Henry IV, who understood the value of complex and non-obvious steps.