Women of Modern France | Page 7

gained ascendency over Francis II.--a mere boy. The house
of Guise was then supreme and began its bloody campaign against its
enemies; fortunately, however, its power was short-lived, for in 1560
the king died after reigning only seventeen months. At this point,
Catherine enters upon the scene of action. Jealous of Mary Stuart and
fearing that the young king, Charles IX., then but ten years old, might
become infatuated with her and marry her, she promptly returned the

fair young woman to Scotland.
The task before the regent was no light one; her kingdom was divided
against itself, the country was overburdened with taxes, and discontent
reigned universally. All who surrounded her were full of prejudice and
actuated solely by personal aspirations--she realized that she could trust
no one.
Her first act of a political nature was to rescue the house of Valois and
solidify the royal authority. Some critics maintain that she began her
reign with moderation, gentleness, impartiality, and reconciliation. This
view finds support in the fact that during the first years she favored
Protestantism; finding, however, that the latter was weakening royal
power and that the country at large was opposed to it, she became its
most bitter enemy. To the Protestants and their plottings she attributed
all the disastrous effects of the civil war, all thefts, murders, incests,
and adulteries, as well as the profanation of the sepulchres of the
ancestors of the royal family, the burning of the bones of Louis XI. and
of the heart of Francis II.
The Machiavellian policy was Catherine's guide; bitter experience had
robbed her of all faith in humanity--she had learned to despise it and
the judgment of her contemporaries. At first she was amiable and polite,
seemingly intent upon pleasing those with whom she talked; in fact, it
is said that she was then more often accused of excessive mildness and
moderation than of the violence and cruelty which later characterized
her. Experience having taught her how to deal with people, she never
lost her self-control.
Subsequent history shows that any gentle and conciliatory policy of
Catherine was merely a method of furthering her own interests, and
was therefore not the outcome of any inborn feeling of sympathy or
womanly tenderness. Whether her signing of the Edict of
Saint-Germain, admitting the Protestants to all employments and
granting them the privilege of Calvinistic worship in two cities of every
province, and her refusal, upon the urgent solicitations of her
son-in-law, Philip II., to persecute heretics were really snares laid for
the Huguenots, is a matter which historians have not decided.

Inasmuch as the entire history of France plays about the personality of
Catherine de' Medici, no attempt will be made to give a detailed
chronological account of her career; the results, rather than the events
themselves, will be given. M. Saint-Amand, in his work on French
Women of the Valois Court, presents one of the strongest pictures
drawn of Catherine. We shall follow him in the greater part of this
sketch.
According to some historians, Catherine was a mere intriguer, without
talent or ability, living but in the moment, often caught in her own
snares; according to others, by her intelligence, ability, and strength of
character she advanced a cause truly national--that of French unity;
thus, she worked either the ruin or the salvation of France. Michelet
calls her a nonentity, a stage queen with merely the externals--the
attire--of royalty, remaining exactly on a level with the rulers of the
smaller Italian principalities, contriving everything and fearing
everything, with no more heart than she had sense or temperament.
Being a female, she loved her young; she loved the arts, but cared to
cultivate only their externalities. In this, however, Michelet goes to an
extreme; for no woman ever lived who had so great a talent for
intrigues and politics as she--a very type of the deceit and cunning
which were inherent in her race. If she were not important, had not
wielded so much influence and decided the fate of so many great men,
women, and even states, she would not be the subject of so much
writing, of such fierce denunciation and strong praise. To her family,
France owes her finest palaces, her masterpieces of art--painting,
bookmaking, printing, binding, sculpture.
M. Saint-Amand declares that "isolated from her contemporaries,
Catherine de' Medici is a monster; brought back within the circle of
their passions and their theories, she once more becomes a woman."
But Catherine was the instigator, the embodiment of all that is vice,
deceit, cunning, trickery, wickedness, and bold intrigue; she set the
example, and her ladies followed her in all that she did; "the heroines
bred in her school (and what woman was not in her school?) imitate,
with docility, the examples she gives them." She was not only