Catherine de Medici | Page 5

and a resolute drinker.
A thousand ridiculous stories are told about the author of one of the
finest books in French literature,--"Pantagruel." Aretino, the friend of
Titian, and the Voltaire of his century, has, in our day, a reputation the
exact opposite of his works and of his character; a reputation which he
owes to a grossness of wit in keeping with the writings of his age, when
broad farce was held in honor, and queens and cardinals wrote tales
which would be called, in these days, licentious. One might go on
multiplying such instances indefinitely.
In France, and that, too, during the most serious epoch of modern
history, no woman, unless it be Brunehaut or Fredegonde, has suffered
from popular error so much as Catherine de' Medici; whereas Marie de'
Medici, all of whose actions were prejudicial to France, has escaped the
shame which ought to cover her name. Marie de' Medici wasted the
wealth amassed by Henri IV.; she never purged herself of the charge of
having known of the king's assassination; her /intimate/ was d'Epernon,
who did not ward off Ravaillac's blow, and who was proved to have

known the murderer personally for a long time. Marie's conduct was
such that she forced her son to banish her from France, where she was
encouraging her other son, Gaston, to rebel; and the victory Richelieu
at last won over her (on the Day of the Dupes) was due solely to the
discovery the cardinal made, and imparted to Louis XIII., of secret
documents relating to the death of Henri IV.
Catherine de' Medici, on the contrary, saved the crown of France; she
maintained the royal authority in the midst of circumstances under
which more than one great prince would have succumbed. Having to
make head against factions and ambitions like those of the Guises and
the house of Bourbon, against men such as the two Cardinals of
Lorraine, the two Balafres, and the two Condes, against the queen
Jeanne d'Albret, Henri IV., the Connetable de Montmorency, Calvin,
the three Colignys, Theodore de Beze, she needed to possess and to
display the rare qualities and precious gifts of a statesman under the
mocking fire of the Calvinist press.
Those facts are incontestable. Therefore, to whosoever burrows into the
history of the sixteenth century in France, the figure of Catherine de'
Medici will seem like that of a great king. When calumny is once
dissipated by facts, recovered with difficulty from among the
contradictions of pamphlets and false anecdotes, all explains itself to
the fame of this extraordinary woman, who had none of the weaknesses
of her sex, who lived chaste amid the license of the most dissolute court
in Europe, and who, in spite of her lack of money, erected noble public
buildings, as if to repair the loss caused by the iconoclasms of the
Calvinists, who did as much harm to art as to the body politic. Hemmed
in between the Guises who claimed to be the heirs of Charlemagne and
the factious younger branch who sought to screen the treachery of the
Connetable de Bourbon behind the throne, Catherine, forced to combat
heresy which was seeking to annihilate the monarchy, without friends,
aware of treachery among the leaders of the Catholic party, foreseeing
a republic in the Calvinist party, Catherine employed the most
dangerous but the surest weapon of public policy,--craft. She resolved
to trick and so defeat, successively, the Guises who were seeking the
ruin of the house of Valois, the Bourbons who sought the crown, and
the Reformers (the Radicals of those days) who dreamed of an
impossible republic--like those of our time; who have, however,

nothing to reform. Consequently, so long as she lived, the Valois kept
the throne of France. The great historian of that time, de Thou, knew
well the value of this woman when, on hearing of her death, he
exclaimed: "It is not a woman, it is monarchy itself that has died!"
Catherine had, in the highest degree, the sense of royalty, and she
defended it with admirable courage and persistency. The reproaches
which Calvinist writers have cast upon her are to her glory; she
incurred them by reason only of her triumphs. Could she, placed as she
was, triumph otherwise than by craft? The whole question lies there.
As for violence, that means is one of the most disputed questions of
public policy; in our time it has been answered on the Place Louis XV.,
where they have now set up an Egyptian stone, as if to obliterate
regicide and offer a symbol of the system of materialistic policy which
governs us; it was answered at the Carmes and at the Abbaye; answered
on the steps of Saint-Roch; answered once more by the people against
the king before the Louvre in