Catherine de Medici can be called the most "hated" woman in history. “Black Queen”, poisoner, child killer, instigator of St. Bartholomew's Night - contemporaries did not spare epithets for her, although some of them were unfair.
Child of death
The ominous image of Catherine de Medici was not Dumas' invention. She was born under an eerie star. No joke, the child was christened "the child of death" right after birth in 1519. This nickname as a train will accompany her entire future life. Her mother, 19-year-old Duchess Madeleine de la Tour, died six days after giving birth, and her father, Lorenzo Medici II, two weeks later.
Catherine de Medici is credited with poisoning her husband's older brother, Francis, Queen of Navarre, Jeanne Dalbre, and even her son, Charles IX. The most terrible of her antics was the St. Bartholomew's Night.
However, she did not become the "Black Queen" because of her reputation. Catherine first put on black mourning. Before that, in France, white was considered a symbol of grief. In what, what, and in fashion, she was the first at court. Catherine was in mourning for her deceased husband Henry II for 30 years, she made broken spears as an emblem, and as a motto - "From this my tears and my pain", but more on that later.
Diana cult
Promotional video:
According to the marriage lottery, Catherine was identified as the wife of the second son of the French king, Henry of Valois. But the marriage became actually fictitious. The king already had the love of his life - his childhood teacher Diana de Poitiers. He was in love with her from the age of 11. She already had an illegitimate son from the king, and Catherine, on the contrary, could not get pregnant. The situation was complicated by the fact that the Medici loved her husband. Subsequently, in one of her letters to her daughter, she wrote: "I loved him and will be faithful to him all my life."
The French court rejected her, as did Henry. Behind my back they constantly threw: “Merchant's wife! Where is she to the noble Valois! Little educated, ugly, sterile. When, after the death of the first contender for the throne, Francis, she became the wife of the Dauphin, the situation did not improve.
It was rumored that Francis I, Henry's father, practically agreed to dissolve his son's marriage to Catherine.
Meanwhile, the cult of Diana flourished at the court. Henry II adored his favorite until his death, when she was already 60. Even at tournaments, he performed under her flowers. The queen next to her is just a shadow. In order to somehow achieve the favor of her husband after the birth of such long-awaited children, she gave them to Diana to be raised. At court, Catherine completely dissolved in the politics that the king and his Diana were engaged in. Perhaps, if it happened in Russia, she would have ended her days in a monastery.
Trendsetter
But during the life of Henry II, Catherine had her own path, in which she had no equal: she was the main trendsetter throughout Europe. The whole aristocracy of France listened to her taste.
It is to her that the fair sex of Europe owes the subsequent fainting - she set a limit for the waist - 33 cm, which was achieved with the help of a corset.
She brought with her from Italy and heels, which concealed the shortcomings of her small stature.
Ice cream arrived with her in France. It first appeared at her 34-day wedding. Every day Italian chefs served a new dish, a new kind of these "pieces of ice". And after that, their French colleagues mastered this dish. Thus, the first thing that Catherine de Medici brought to France became the only thing that was fixed there. The dowry was quickly squandered, all her political contributions led only to the fall of Valois, and the ice cream remained.
Nostradamus in favorites
The position of the shadow under the king's favorite did not suit Catherine. She did not give vent to emotions and patiently endured all the insults of the court, but universal contempt only fueled her vanity. She wanted her husband's love and power. To do this, Catherine had to solve the most important problem - to give birth to an heir to the king. And she resorted to a non-standard path.
Even as a child, when she studied at a monastery in Siena, Catherine became interested in astrology and magic.
The fortuneteller Nostradamus became one of the main confidants of the French queen.
Contemporaries said that it was he who cured her of infertility. It must be said that the traditional folk methods that she used were very extravagant - she had to drink tincture from mule urine, wear cow pus and fragments of deer antlers on her stomach. Some of this worked.
From 1544 to 1556, she continuously gave birth to children. For 12 years she gave birth to ten. A fantastic result.
Francis, Elizabeth, Claude, Louis, Karl Maximilian, Edward-Alexander, who would then be Henry III, Margaret, Hercule, the last adored son, and in 1556 the twins Victoria and Jeanne, but the latter died right in the womb.
The most important prediction in the life of Catherine is also associated with the name of Nostradamus. Historian Natalya Basovskaya says that once the queen came to him with the question "How long will her sons rule?" He sat her down by the mirror and began to turn some kind of wheel. According to Francis the young, the wheel turned once, he really ruled for less than a year, according to Charles the Ninth - the wheel turned 14 times, he ruled for 14 years, according to Henry III - 15, and he ruled 15.
In the family
On July 10, 1559, Henry II died due to wounds received in the tournament. An enemy spear slid over his helmet and pierced his eye, leaving a shard in his brain. Catherine de Medici donned her famous black mourning, made herself the symbolic emblem of a broken spear and prepared to fight her way through her children to power. She succeeded - she achieved the status of "governess of France" with her sons. Her second heir, Charles IX, solemnly announced right at the coronation that he would rule with his mother. By the way, his last words were also: "Oh, mom."
The courtiers were not mistaken when they called Catherine "uneducated." Her contemporary Jean Boden subtly remarked: "the most terrible danger is the intellectual unsuitability of the sovereign."
Catherine de Medici could be anyone - a cunning intriguer, an insidious poisoner, but she was far from understanding all the subtleties of domestic and international relations.
For example, her famous confederation in Poissy, when she organized a meeting of Catholics and Calvinists to reconcile the two denominations. She sincerely believed that all the problems of the world can be settled by heart-to-heart negotiations, so to speak, "in the bosom of the family." According to historians, she could not even understand the true meaning of the speech of the approximate Calvin, who stated that eating bread and wine during the sacrament is only a remembrance of the sacrifice of Christ. A terrible blow to Catholic worship. And Catherine, who was never distinguished by special fanaticism, only watched with amazement the flaring up conflict. All that was clear to her was that, for some reason, her plan had failed.
Her entire policy, despite Catherine's terrible reputation, was painfully naive. As historians say, she was not a ruler, but a woman on the throne. Her main weapon was dynastic marriages, none of which were successful. She married Charles IX to the daughter of Emperor Maximilian of Habsburg, and sent her daughter Elizabeth to Philip II, a fanatic Catholic who broke his last life, but did not bring any benefit to France and Valois. She wooes her youngest son to Elizabeth I of England - the main enemy of the same Philip. Catherine de Medici believed that dynastic marriages are the solution to all problems. She wrote to Philip: "Start arranging children's marriages, and this will facilitate the resolution of the religious issue." Catherine intended to reconcile two conflicting denominations by one wedding of her Catholic daughter Margaret with the Huguenot Henry of Navarre. And then, immediately after the wedding, she staged a massacre of the Huguenots invited to the celebration, declaring them in a conspiracy against the king. It is not surprising that after such steps, the Valois dynasty sank into oblivion, along with its only surviving son, Henry III, and France fell into the nightmare of the Civil War.
Crown of thorns?
So, how should one treat Catherine de Medici. Was she unhappy? Indisputably. An orphan, an abandoned wife, a humiliated "merchant" at court, a mother who outlived almost all of her children. An energetic, busy queen mother whose political activities were mostly pointless. At the combat post, she kept driving and driving around France, until ill health overtook her in Blois, where she died during her next visit.
Her "loyal subjects" did not leave her alone even after her death. When her remains were taken to Paris to be buried in Saint-Denis, the citizens of the city promised to dump the body in the Seine if the coffin appeared at the city gates.
Already after a long time, the urn with the ashes was moved to Saint-Denis, but there was no place next to the spouse, as in life. The urn was buried on the sidelines.
Recently, the historian Gulchuk Nelia published a book called "Catherine de Medici's Crown of Thorns." She had a crown, of course, but is it possible to compare it with a crown of thorns? An unhappy life does not justify her methods - "all for the sake of power." Not fate, but her terrible, but naive policy destroyed in one generation the prosperous Valois dynasty, as it was under her father-in-law Francis I.
