INTRODUCTION. 1572-1575. THE period in French history occupied by the last two kings of the Valois house is treated by Dumas in a series of three "Valois romances " Marguerite de Valois, La Dame de Monsoreau, and The Forty-Five Guardsmen. With his customary accuracy, Dumas has given us, under the guise of fiction, a wonderfully vivid and absorbing account of a time when not only France but all Europe was in the throes of conflict between Catholics and Protestants. Regarding the character of this period, M. Victor Duruy writes as follows: "When the French and Spanish kings signed the peace of Château Cambrésis (1559) they purposed to introduce into their government the new spirit which animated the Church, and to wage a pitiless war against heresy. The one undertook to stifle the Reformation in France; the other sought to prevent its birth in Italy and Spain, and to crush it in the Netherlands and England. When Henry II. died, his three sons, the last of the Valois, carried on his plans. At first they required only the advice of Spain. The oldest, Francis II., reigned less than a year and a half (1559-1560). The second, Charles IX., died at the age of twenty-four (1574). The third, Henry III. (1574-1589), who alone attained full manhood, always remained in a sort of minority, whence he emerged only in fits of passion. Hence this Valois line was incapable of conducting in France the great battle of creeds. "But at their side or confronting them, there were persons more strongly tempered for good or ill. Such were Catherine de Médicis, their mother, unscrupulous and astute; the Guises, uncles of Mary Stuart, queen of Scotland, who organized the Catholics into a party when they saw the Protestants forming a faction around their rivals, the princes of the house of Bourbon; the general Condé; Coligny, who, from a moral point of view, was the superior of them all; in the Netherlands, William the Silent, the Prince of Orange; in England, Elizabeth, daughter of Henry VIII., who, during the reign of her sister Mary, was the hope of the English Protestants. "In the war many diverging interests were about to engage. The Dutch desired liberty, England her independence, the cities of France their ancient communal rights, and provincial feudalism its former privileges. But the religious form, which was that of the times, covered all." The point where Dumas picks up the chronicle in Marguerite de Valois is the culmination of religious frenzy that resulted in the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, where the unsuspecting Protestant victims were slain by the thousands. This is one of the darkest blots on the history of France, and one which will forever darken the reign of Charles IX. ; yet for the crime he received congratulations from the courts of Rome and Spain. "Be fully assured," wrote Philip II., "that in furthering thus the affairs of God, you are furthering your own still more." The sentence is significant, as revealing the inhuman policy which sought to cloak political treachery with the guise of piety, and which fastened to the hats of cut-throats and murderers the cross of Christ. Dumas gives prominence to another reason for the massacre -the desire of Catherine de Médicis to make away with Henry of Navarre, whose ascendant Bourbon star threatened to eclipse (as afterwards it did) the house of Valois. Although Catherine had four sons, three of whom successively mounted the throne, none of them left issue in the royal line. Catherine gnashed her teeth as she watched the seemingly careless King of Navarre. He was a Protestant. Under pretext of cementing the two houses, the hand of Catherine's daughter, Marguerite de Valois, was given him in marriage and he was enticed to the Louvre. From the moment he entered Paris his life was in jeopardy. The butchery of St. Bartholomew's day was ordered, but Henry escaped. Catherine then made several secret attempts at his life, substantially as related in Marguerite de Valois. The manner in which plot was met with counterplot, on the part of these two crafty minds, is rich in interesting material that Dumas was quick to perceive and to put to the best possible advantage. Marg. An entertaining view is given of Henry of Navarre, who may be considered the hero of all three of the Valois romances. Though playing minor parts in La Dame de Monsoreau and The Forty-Five Guardsmen, his mocking figure casts many a disquieting shadow across their pages, giving the queen mother dark visions of a mighty Henry IV., who should people the tottering throne of France with a race of real kings. But for the present Henry is content to dally and bide his time, masking his intentions behind a baffling smile. The clearest glimpse of him is given in Marguerite de Valois, revealing the adventurer, the gallant, the sardonic philosopher, the man of many minds and any creed, at the same time the man who never forgets a friend, and who unhesitatingly dares death for the sake of friendship or love. He is shrewd enough to foresee his opportunity, patient enough to await it, and generous enough not to abuse it. We do not wonder, therefore, that we find afterwards, in the annals of France, his name associated with the Edict of Nantes, the first strong blow for civil and religious liberty. The person of Catherine de Médicis, never lovable, is, per haps, not treated by Dumas with a severity that history will not justify. Cold, calculating, and treacherous, she stopped at nothing in the pursuit of her plans; nor would she have suffered a qualm from the massacre of St. Bartholomew, if Henry of Navarre and every Protestant in the kingdom had also met their end at that time. Her modes of dispensing deathperfumed gloves, poisoned books, and the like-are vouched for, and the details of Charles IX.'s demise are very credible. The heroine of the story, Marguerite de Valois, is a worthy daughter of a worthy mother. For this verdict, however, we are indebted to history rather than to Dumas, who is somewhat under the spell of her beautiful exterior. Marguerite's moral obliquity did not take the trend of poisoning, but followed the gentler paths of seduction and illicit love. Historians have commented freely upon the questionable life of this, one of the greatest coquettes in history, and upon the sinister use she made of her beauty. Her liaison with La Mole has the one saving clause that she was sincere in her love and exerted every effort to save him. La Mole and Coconnas played fully as important a part at the court of Charles IX. as is here indicated. La Mole was at one time the confidant of the Duc d'Alençon. The King, Marg. |