Renaissance Murders
Page 19
Many of Henri’s mignons were sexually ambivalent or had strong heterosexual preferences, but because they would allow themselves to be coiffed and dressed by mignons who were openly homosexual, one thing would lead to another, a dainty touch to a frank caress, and when the king himself took a personal interest, who would dare resist? Far more than today, the king’s casting couch was the key to a veritable cornucopia of riches, lands, titles and even one’s own chateau, all thanks to money coming into the treasury, in part through taxation, but principally through the church.
He gave one boy a gift of 100 écus. When the lad heartily thanked him, he upped it to 1,000. The boy nearly collapsed with gratitude, especially when Henri, pleased, increased the largess to 10,000. This perhaps inspired the scene, later, in Molière’s Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme.
How many boys never married because they were exclusively homosexual is not known, although most did marry, in luxurious style thanks to their king.
Jean-Louis de Nogaret de La Valette duc d’Épernon, perhaps the love of his life to whom he said on his death bed: ‘’I assure you that I have more regrets in leaving you than you have in seeing me leave this world,’’ (Je t’assure que j’ay plus de regret de te laisser que tu n’as de contrition et déplaisante de me voir partir de ce monde), and ‘’This soul that separates itself from your beautiful body.’’
Épernon
Henri’s boys were rarely adventures of one night. His relationships were woven of threads as solid as steel. He showered them with proofs of love, through private conversation, ‘’pillow’’ confidences, small gifts that the lads knew would become veritable fortunes if they sufficiently demonstrated their loyalty, as well as gestures of affection by arranging a lad’s hair, applying, lovingly, a touch of coloration to his cheeks, verifying the cleanliness of a boy’s shirt collar, as would a mother. Henri was as devoted to his mignons as was Christ to his disciples, and they would literally die for him, some doing so in duels and on the battlefield.
One of Henri’s enemies, François de Balzac d’Entragues, accused Jacques de Lévis Quélus of earning advancement through the habile use of his buttocks. Quélus called for a duel. At the time duelers had seconds who assisted the duelers but never took part in the combat. But this time the participants, six in all, decided to join in the fun. They met at the Horse Market. Quélus was seconded by his friends Maugiron and Livarot; Entragues by his friends Ribérac and Schombert. The fighting, of incredible savagery, left Maugiron and Schomberg dead on the field nearly immediately. Ribérac died a few hours afterwards and Livarot was healed enough to walk six weeks later. Quélus received 19 wounds and took 33 days to die, despite Henri’s offer of 100,000 écus if the doctors saved him. The handsome Entragues got off with a scratch.
Louis de Maugiron that I’m showing a second time because the drawing is so extraordinary.
One source has them dying in a kind of homosexual embrace. Ribérac projected himself against the body of Maugiron, impaling himself at the same time on Maugiron’s sword. While Schomberg hit Livarot on the head with the blade of his sword at the same moment Livarot plunged a dagger into Schomberg’s heart, and both, interlaced, fell to the floor.
In the streets the people sang to show Entragues their support: ‘’Entragues and his companions trounced the mignons; it’s only too bad they didn’t kill more’’. (Entraigues et ses compagnons/Ont bien étrillé les mignons/Chacun dit que c'est bien dommage/Qu'il n'y en est mort davantage.) Entragues was named governor of Orléans in order to pacify the town, which he did in a blood bath (le sang coulait à flot), massacring Protestants who believed they were safe there, their bodies thrown into the Loire. The director of the University was killed by his own students, one of 1,000 victims.
A month later another of Henri’s boys was waylaid and murdered, perhaps by the husband of one of his mistresses. It was said that his lads always died crying out his name, but never that of God or their mothers. Henri was bedridden after each of these events, and in honor of Quélus and Maugiron he had mausoleums raised in the church of Saint-Paul, one for each--and he carried of lock of their hair with him until he himself was cut down. He personally removed Quélus’s earrings that he kept in a jeweled box near him at all times. Guise was obviously powerful enough to attack the content of the king’s own bed, for which he would soon receive far more than the 19 cuts inflicted on Quélus.
Before the death of her son Charles IX, Catherine had found Charles a wife and approved of his mistresses, the foremost of which was an English girl named Marie that Catherine accepted when she found that Marie was solely interested in Charles and not the French throne. Catherine allowed Marie to come to Paris where Henri infuriated his brother Charles by paying court to her and teaching her French. Charles got his revenge by having 50 of his troops pierce their ears and put in gold earrings as worn by Henri and his mignons, mince about, bringing down peals of laughter by everyone except Henri.
Catherine also saw to her daughter Margot’s future. Like Henri, Margot was intelligent, perhaps the most intelligent of them all, and also like Henri she appreciated boys, without number, obliging her to occasionally sojourn in the country where she gave birth. Catherine had sought many matches for her but finally the choice fell on Henri de Navarre. Because he was a Protestant, Margot refused to say Yes when Catherine asked her if she would consent to the marriage. During the marriage ceremony Margot remained silent when asked if she would take Henri de Navarre for her lawful husband. The priest repeated the question three times. Finally the king brusquely came up behind her and violently pushed her head forward, shouting ‘’She says Yes’’ (there are differing versions). The priest rapidly pronounced them man and wife. Henri de Navarre’s mother, as a Protestant, was against her son’s marriage to the Catholic Margot. Catherine is said by some to have had her poisoned, days before her son’s marriage.
Catherine tried to straighten out Henri. She organized banquets in which the girl servers were nude. Henri just yawned. The only women who caught his attention were his sister Margot and the wife he would take. He would spend hours in their company--creating dresses for both, arranging their make-up and doing their hair. His wedding was held up because he couldn’t get his fiancée’s hair just right, and the folds of her dress and his shirt had to be impeccable. Always careful to fill the needs of those loyal to him, Henri told François de Luxembourg, a former lover of Henri’s new wife, that as he, Henri, had married one of Luxembourg’s former mistresses, he wanted Luxembourg to now marry one of Henri’s former ladies, Renée de Châteauneuf, whom he wished to reward for her services. Luxembourg asked for a day to think it over and then returned, by the fastest horses possible, to his family chateau.
Catherine’s health had been abandoning her for years: de’ Medici gout that had killed a dozen Medici leaders including the great Cosimo and Lorenzo Il Magnifico, torturous pain from bad teeth, and bad indigestion. She had kept strong through a will that defies the imagination, witnessing the intolerable loss of her sons, one after the other, begging Death to take her after each loss so she wouldn’t be obliged to endure still another (recount some historians, perhaps underrating her strength and resilience--that said, is there anything more terrible than the death of one’s child?).
Perhaps her prayers were finally answered. At age 67 she passed into eternal silence, a rare force of nature shared by few men and fewer women--Caterina Riario Sforza de’ Medici, Catherine of All the Russias and a non-Catherine, Eleanor d’Aquitaine. Henri lacked popularity among the people due to several factors. One was his homosexuality, an offense the French would have overlooked had he produced an heir. But he didn’t and the thought of what he and his mignons did together in private was simply too easily imagined and disgusting for Frenchmen to ignore. France was decidedly not Italy: the Renaissance awakening to Greek mores would never fully take hold in Paris as it did in Florence. Henri’s grandfather François I had allowed Cellini and his lads to gallivant around Fontainebleau and Paris, eve
n though François was a woman’s man and sodomy was punished, really punished under François, by burning at the stake.
Secondly, Henri cut himself off from the French people as he had isolated himself from the Poles. At the time, French kings traveled extensively from town to town, allowing the commoners to see and even touch them, eating and defecating in their presence thanks to specially designed portable chairs. Henri’s brother Charles, from 1564 to 1566, entered 109 towns under the Royal Arches the townspeople had set up to honor him; while in all of Henri’s kingship he went to only 4. Royan had prepared for a visit that he cancelled, but Henri still requested that the people offer him the money they had set aside for the event. French kings ate in public. Henri was obliged to do so too, but he had a barrier constructed so that no one could approach closely, to the disgust of court members, some of whom refused to attend the dinners while the barriers were up. Yet his mignons had not only unlimited access to his table, they were automatically allowed entrance to his bedroom. What went on there were real-life orgies, randy stuff if one doesn’t mind cavorting with lads who had themselves coiffed in the manner of their king, who wore large earrings and adorned themselves with gems and pearls--pearls being as expensive as diamonds--as he did, and who even adopted the king’s taste in lively little dogs.
Although he had once flirted with Protestantism, as mentioned, Henri now led his mignons, dressed in fashionable white, through the streets of Paris to Notre Dame, reportedly flagellating themselves on the way. He made a pilgrimage on foot to the Cathedral of Chartres, a distance of fifty-five miles. These acts of piety were said to have been scoffed at by the people who never believed for a second in his sincerity or the sincerity of his mignons.
And lastly, he was hated because he had the Duc de Guise murdered. Guise was an extremely popular man in France, a man who hated Protestants as did most Frenchmen, a man’s man who liked wenching and the hunt, virile pursuits unknown to Henri. His popularity was such that Henri became certain Guise would topple him, especially as Guise did not want Henri de Navarre, a Protestant, to follow Henri should Henri die. In fear of his life, Henri invited Guise to his study, access to which was a long corridor. When Guise was in the middle of it, forty men, twenty from each end, entered. Guise immediately went for his sword, fought valiantly, and died of a hundred wounds. Henri ran to his mother, ‘’Now I am the uncontested king!’’ She answered, ‘’No, you’ve just lost your kingdom.’’
For all these reasons, when Henri was assassinated the French went wild with joy: At the time, Henri was at Saint-Cloud, outside Paris, soon after Catherine’s funeral. By chance, one of Henri’s officials passed a monk on foot and offered him a place in his carriage. When the monk, Jacques Clément, said he was on his way to Saint-Cloud with secret information for the king’s ears only, the official took him to see Henri.
The king was at his dressing table attending to his beauty. He welcomed the monk warmly and begged him to be seated next to him. Clément was a very special monk in that he received word directly from God, the last message ordering Henri’s death. Henri knew Clément had come with secret information and allowed him to lean forward and whisper it into his ear. Clément did so, extracting at the same time a dagger from his sleeve that he thrust to the hilt into Henri’s abdomen. Clément was set upon by the guards and run through.
Henri’s last order was for Henri de Navarre to follow him as Henri IV. The year was 1589. During the French Revolution Henri III’s grave was opened and his remains lost forever.
And Henri IV. We’ll now evoke his end, but before, a surprising anecdote concerning Henri IV, the unequaled Don Juan of his times. Marie Touchet had been Charles IX’s lover until his death, a woman he truly couldn’t have lived without. She gave him a son, Charles de Valois-Angoulême, a lad who became a duc, a comte and a Knight of Malta, and in his turn had three sons. After Charles’s death Mary wedded the governor of Orléans with whom she had two girls, both of whom became the mistresses of Henri IV. Now for the end of his life:
Henri IV was a direct descendant of Louis IX as well as being Henri III’s cousin and the husband of Henri III’s sister Margot. He was baptized in Pau in the Béarn manner: the holy water mixed with wine and garlic. Having changed religions six times, he did his best to uphold tolerance between Catholics and Protestants, all duly signed by Henri IV in the Edict of Nantes in 1598. This earned him the title of le bon roi Henri, Henri the Good. As Protestants were nonetheless heretics in the eyes of most Catholics, Henri escaped several attempts on his life, until stabbed by a dagger in a Parisian alley, rue de la Ferronnerie, the work of the religious fanatic François Ravaillac.
Henri IV attacked by Ravaillac.
The king had left the Louvre by carriage with the intention of visiting his first minister Sully, who was ill. Several of his favorites accompanied him in the carriage, of which Épernon, Henri III’s former lover, was part. Other gentlemen were riding alongside on horseback, as well as valets on foot, most of which thought it more adventurous to take a shortcut through the nearby Cemetery of the Innocents. The narrow street was full of onlookers and a few valets went on ahead to clear the passage of a cart of hay and another laden with wine barrels.
At the level of an inn, showing a heart pierced with an arrow a man suddenly darted out from among those staring at Henri, his hair red, his beard brown, a knife already in hand that, leaning through the open carriage window, he plunged into Henri, a first blow just under his armpit, a second a little lower into the lung, cutting through the aorta, and a third lost in the robes of one of the passengers who tried to strike the assassin with his sword but was held back by Épernon who told him if he did he’d lose his head. Apparently Épernon realized, in a flash, the necessity of the man’s being interrogated later on.
Henri was taken to the Louvre, dead, where his wife Marie was informed. A woman devoted to astrology and soothsayers, she had warned Henri that a seer had predicted his death that day, and had begged him to remain. Épernon was the first to kneel before Henri’s son Louis and Marie, the new king and regent. Louis, age 9, cried out that had he been there he would have killed the man with his sword, Louis the subject of our last chapter.
The assassin, François Ravaillac, was of that part of the French population, the vast majority, that suffered from wars and revolts, when not decimated by plagues, diseases and famines. Abandoned as a child by his father, thrown into jail for debt, he lived with his mother and found his only consolation in God. He tried to enter the orders but was immediately recognized as mentally unstable by the priests he approached, and a goodly Jesuit told him to return home and spend the rest of his life in comforting prayer to God. He had come to Paris several times, always on foot, stealing food. Other men and bands of men were on the road, stealing, murdering, raping girls when found, and young shepherds alone and isolated. Because there was no hope for them, they left no hope for others, finding a kind of inner justice by slitting the throats of the innocent.
Ravaillac’s thumbs were crushed, his torture begun on the very day of his crime, but never did he involve another, other than God who didn’t believe in Henri’s conversion to Catholicism and wanted him dead. His body was torn open by hooks, the wounds filled with molten lead. His four limps were attached to horses and, incredibly, it took nearly two hours before one of his legs was finally torn from his body. Only then did he die. His remains were burned and the ashes dispersed.
Henri IV was buried at Saint Denis.
HENRI VI’S SON LOUIS XIII
MURDERED CINQ-MARS
1620 - 1642
CINQ-MARS had every asset, beauty, brains and the body of a tireless 16-year-old when he entered the court of Louis XIII, where he cornered girls not pretty enough to be brought to his apartments, with a side-room of 300 pairs of boots, trousers lined with silk and wigs on stands placed on lacquered tables. The girls he cornered were given what we today would call the Valentino stare, and with his face inches from each he would look into her eye
s while directing her hand to his hardness, and depending on the reaction he would walk away and find another, or press her against the wall, raising and lowering the intruding clothing, and only the slight but easily identifiable movements of his breeches-clad buttocks betrayed the thrusts, while all around men conversed among themselves, fleetingly glancing in the coupled couple’s direction, brief snickers, envious glimpses, perhaps envious of her, perhaps of him, while the ladies who had already been so honored were perhaps satiated, perhaps wished for still another interlude, and the others, still virgin of Cinq-Mars, knew their turn would eventually come.
Richelieu was a friend of the family from long before the birth of Cinq-Mars, and later historians suggest that the boy must have been deeply impressed by the severity of the ample robes, the color red that encouraged caution, and Richelieu’s extremely lofty manner and stern regard. Perhaps he remembered the cardinal standing over his crib, looking down at the baby that was certainly smiling back in coddled happiness, for that was the way Cinq-Mars grew to manhood, a happy-go-lucky lad, sure of himself and supremely cocky, the word that identifies Cinq-Mars, even when he mounted the steps to the executioner’s platform, sent there by the man who had directed his life, from crib to coffin, and was now standing above him. Before his own beheading Charles I had asked to be given two shirts so that he would not tremble from the cold, giving witnesses the impression he trembled from fear. At age 22 boys are cauldrons of animal heat, so Cinq-Mars would not be troubled by the cold, and his natural courage and pride guaranteed that he, too, would not tremble from fear. Gazing at the baby, could Richelieu possibly have had designs, even then, of turning this child into the instrument he would use as a spy, a distraction aimed at Richelieu’s ultimate goal, the control of an indolent king, a king remorseful of his ungodly need for the lads Richelieu placed in his bed? Cinq-Mars had stirred the entire court, the cynosure of attention, when he entered at age 16, and already, at age 18, he was possessor of 52 changes of clothing, each costing a royal 50 to 100 livres, clothes Cinq-Mars changed four times a day when he visited his mistresses, his body perhaps oiled as was his like when summoned by King Louis himself, and, if not oiled, he was splashed in strong scents, a substitute for baths. His breeches were gold-embroidered and lined with satin; his doublets were edged with gold and silver; and Venetian lace trimmed the cuffs and collars of his shirts, and toppled in cascades over the top of his boots. Four changes of clothing for four acts of love, the virile and desperate need of spending in the body of another, grateful that she would help him forget the bed of Louis, whom doctors daily purged with enemas.