Charlie Fenton’s Reviews > Catherine de Medici: Renaissance Queen of France > Status Update

‘Catherine felt no great fondness for Mary Stuart and despised her reckless actions while on the throne of Scotland. She had been particularly outraged by the murder of Lord Darnley in 1567, that ‘horrible, mischievous and strange enterprise and execution done against the King’s majesty’. At the time, the Queen Mother had demanded that her former daughter-in-law show her innocence to the world’

‘On 22 November, while walking and chatting to Alençon in a gallery at Whitehall, the Queen [Elizabeth I] was asked by the French ambassador for a definite answer about the marriage. Her reply silenced everyone: ‘You may write to the king that the Duke of Alençon shall be my husband.’ Having uttered those words, she drew Alençon to her and kissed him full on the lips’

‘After many obstacles had been cleared during the marriage talks it was decided that the duke should actually meet Elizabeth. Catherine, who at the time was still on her journey of pacification in the south, even talked of travelling to England herself, to push matters along. She wrote to the Duchess d’Uzès, ‘Although our age is more suited to rest than to travel, I must go to England.’‘

‘Her adoption of tobacco was naturally taken up by the Court and eventually by the people, who called it herbe de la reine or nicotiane, and it is thus thanks to Catherine de Medici that the French learned to love tobacco. For all the talk of her as a poisoner, this is the only definite evidence of her use of it - albeit unwittingly.’

‘There was even a clamour of self-righteous protest from Tsar Ivan IV of Russia, who criticised the French for their barbarism. This sounds pretty rich coming from the man who rightfully earned history’s sobriquet ‘The Terrible’ for his savage repression of the boyars in the 1560s… Nor did age mellow Ivan, who in a fit of ill temper accidentally killed his eldest son in 1581.’

‘Although it is impossible to say with any accuracy how many people perished during what was later called the ‘Season of Saint Bartholomew’ in Paris and its aftermath in the provinces, most experts believe that the death toll throughout the kingdom was possibly as high as between 20,000 and 30,000. In Paris alone it is thought that 2000 to 3000 people lost their lives.‘

‘The King’s complete loss of control over what were meant to be limited and legal executions showed how slight was his authority and what terrifying power the mob possessed. The Queen Mother also understood how the Massacre, originally driven by religious passions, had quickly spun out of control and had become a popular uprising of angry despair by people who felt little or no fear of royal retribution.’

‘It was impossible to ignore the whispering and febrile activity around her, yet she was cold-shouldered by both sides. In her memoirs she recalled that dreadful night:
The Huguenots suspected me because I was a Catholic, and the Catholics because I had married the King of Navarre, so that no one told me anything until that evening.’

‘unstable King is said to have uttered the immortal cry for which he is principally remembered: ‘Then kill them all! Kill them all!’ It is almost certain that by this he meant all those on a list drawn up by Catherine and not, as has often been claimed, all the Huguenots in France. A terrible massacre would not resolve anything, but the killing of a select few might eliminate the heretics’ high command.’

‘A rumour now circulated about a scented apple that the Queen Mother had supposedly ordered as a gift for Condé at the start of the religious troubles. When the apple arrived from her infamous parfumier Maître René, the prince’s surgeon, Le Cros, happened to be present. His suspicions aroused, he took the apple and held it to his nose to smell it. Immediately his nostrils became red and inflamed.‘