Виктория Холт - Queen Jezebel

How he hated that man, with his tall spare figure and that masculine beauty which appealed to the people! How dared they treat Guise as their King while they insulted their true ruler!

‘Mother,’ he said, ‘you are right, Not yet . . . this is not the time,’

He returned to the Duke and after a brief discussion the meeting broke up.

‘I shall call again on you, sir,’ said the Duke, ‘when I shall hope to receive a satisfactory answer.’

When he had left, the King roared aloud in his fury. ‘Who is the King of this realm?’ he demanded. ‘The King of France or the King of Paris?’

Catherine looked on uneasily, asking herself what would happen next.

Guise had set up his headquarters in his hôtel in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. He was not quite certain how to act. A great part of the army was with the King; and it was largely the mob on whom Guise must rely to support him: and when he stood at his window and looked at those people, cheering him madly, tears streaming down their grimy faces, it occurred to him that that hysterical adoration could quickly be turned to hatred. He was not of the people; he was an aristocrat of aristocrats; and he did not trust the people. He was almost at the summit of his ambition, but he was wise enough to know that the road grew more slippery towards the top.

He waited.

The next day he presented himself at the King’s Levee, but he did not go alone this time; he took four hundred armed men with him. The meeting was fruitless.

The King, in great terror, refused to take his mother’s advice to stay in the Louvre and ignore the state of the city while giving no sign of his fear; she had begged him to give no special instructions for his protection, and certainly to make no attempt to double his guard. But the King would not listen, and he sent for Epernon and the Swiss Guard whom the favourite had with him outside Paris.

The people watched the soldiers march in. They knew how to act then. By sending for the foreign soldiers, the King, they declared, was making war on them. Merchants ran into the streets with their apprentices; students, restaurateurs , fathers, mothers and their children came hurrying into the streets, to be joined by beggars and the homeless. The King had called in foreign soldiers against Paris, and Paris was ready. Arms were brought out from secret places; chains were placed across streets; the barricades went up all over the city. All churches and public places were boarded up. And the battle began.

The people killed fifty of the Swiss Guard before the rest surrendered, declaring to the enraged mob that they were good Catholics. The French guards gave up their arms, and the King was barricaded in the Louvre.

The streets were filled with shouting people.

Guise stood at his window watching the demonstration with feigned astonishment, as though it had nothing to do with him. Catherine, ill as she was, went bravely through the streets from the Hôtel de Soissons to the Hôtel de Guise. The people allowed her to pass in silence, as they knew whither she was bound.

Guise received her coolly. He was the master now. The King, he told her, should immediately appoint him Lieutenant-General of the country and carry out the demands of the League.

Catherine was desperate. ‘I am a weak woman,’ she said, ‘and a sick one. What can I do? I do not rule this realm. My dear Duke, where will this end? What are you urging these people to do? Assassinate their King and set up another in his place? You forget that death begets death. The people should not be taught that it is an easy matter to assassinate a King.’

After she had left, Guise thought of her words; indeed, he could not forget them. ‘Death begets death.’ She was right. Before he allowed himself to be set up as King he must make sure that he could hold the throne. It must be no brief triumph for him.

The people in the streets were growing impatient. The King was their prisoner; they were thirsty for his blood.

As the evening drew on Guise went into the streets; he was unarmed and he carried a white wand. The people clustered round him. ‘Vive Guise!Vive le Balafré!’ They thought that he would lead them to the Louvre, that under his guidance they would drag the shrinking King from his apartments, that he would order them to kill Henry of Valois as he had ordered them to kill Gaspard de Coligny.

To them it was all so simple. They wished one King out of the way and another to be crowned. They thought that that would mean an end of their troubles. This was the most important hour in the life of Henry of Guise, but it found him unsure, uncertain how to act.

He wanted to be cautious. He wanted to make sure of what he had won.

‘My friends,’ he cried, ‘do not shout, Vive Guise! I thank you for this expression of your love for me. But now I ask you to shout Vive le Roi! No violence, my friends. Keep up your barricades. We must act with care, my friends. I would not see any of you lose his life for a little lack of caution. Will you wait for instructions from me?’

They roared their approval. He was their hero. His word was law. He had but to state his wishes.

He made them bring out their Swiss prisoners, who fell on their knees before him.

‘I know you for good Catholics, my friends,’ he said. ‘You are at liberty.’

He then freed the French guards; and he knew immediately that he had acted wisely in this. He was now the soldiers’ hero, for he had saved their lives; with tears streaming down their faces they promised that those lives should be dedicated to him.

The people fell on their knees, blessing him. Bloodshed was averted, they cried, by the wisest Prince in France. They loved him; they were his to command. They would follow him to death . . . or to Rheims.

For a short while danger had been averted. Guise wrote to the Governor of Lyons asking that men and arms be sent to Paris.

‘I have defeated the Swiss,’ he wrote, ‘and cut in pieces a part of the King’s Guard. I hold the Louvre invested so closely that I will render a good account of whatsoever is in it. This is so great a victory that it will be remembered for ever.’

Guise had taken over the Hôtel de Ville and the Arsenal. The tocsins were sounding in the streets. The spies of Spain were urging the immediate assassination of the King, the setting up of Guise in his place and the introduction of the Inquisition, which would result in an automatic suppression of Huguenots.

Guise’s sister, the Duchesse de Montpensier, marched through the streets at the head of a procession, urging people to rally to her brother. This energetic lady was already known throughout Paris as the Fury of the League; there was no restraining her. She had distributed pamphlets throughout the city; she had had a picture painted to represent Elizabeth of England torturing Catholics. She was urging people to revolution, to the assassination of the King and the crowning of her brother.

But Henry of Guise could not bring himself to that climax which must mean the killing of the King. lie could not share the emotional enthusiasm of his sister. He looked further ahead than she did. The title of King of France would not be so easily held as that of King of Paris, and in reaching for the first he might lose the second. Jesuits from the Sorbonne were congregating in the streets before the university declaring their determination to go to the Louvre and get Brother Henry. Guise knew that it would not be long before one of these fanatics—many of whom believed that the quickest way to achieve a martyr’s crown was to plunge a knife into the heart of an enemy of Rome—found his way to the King and killed him.

He could not count on an army of sufficient size to back him up. He must not forget that it would be folly to put too much trust in Spain. The English, if he found himself in a weak position, would be ready to move in against him. In the Netherlands his enemies would be waiting; and he knew that Philip was more likely to squander his men and money in that country than to help to the throne of France a man who he was unsure would prove a good vassal. Nor must he forget the armies of Navarre, not yet subdued; the brilliant victory over Joyeuse could not easily be forgotten.