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- Herausgeber: Pushkin Press
- Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
- Sprache: Englisch
Stefan Zweig's classic biography of one of British history's most fascinating figures, rereleased in a new edition to tie in with launch of the major new Hollywood film Mary Queen of Scots 'Zweig's readability made him one of the most popular writers of the early twentieth century... His lives of Mary Stuart and Marie Antoinette were international bestsellers'Julie Kavanagh, The Economist Intelligent Life From the moment of her birth to her death on the scaffold, Mary Stuart spend her life embroiled in power struggles that shook the foundations of Renaissance Europe. Revered by some as the rightful Queen of England, reviled by others as a murderous adulteress, her long and fascinating rivalry with her cousin Elizabeth I led ultimately to her downfall. This classic biography, by one of the most popular writers of the twentieth century, breathes life into the character of a remarkable woman, and turns her tale into a story of passion and plotting as gripping as any novel. Stefan Zweig was born in 1881 in Vienna, a member of a wealthy Austrian-Jewish family. He studied in Berlin and Vienna and was first known as a translator and later as a biographer. Zweig travelled widely, living in Salzburg between the wars, and enjoying literary fame. His stories and novellas were collected in 1934. In the same year, with the rise of Nazism, he briefly moved to London, taking British citizenship. After a short period in New York, he settled in Brazil where in 1942 he and his wife were found dead in bed in an apparent double suicide.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010
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‘Zweig’s accumulated historical and cultural studies… remain a body of achievement almost too impressive to take in’
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Contents
Chapter One
Queen in the Cradle(1542–8)
(1542–8)
MARY STUART WAS ONLY SIX DAYS OLD when she became Queen of Scotland, thus obeying in spite of herself what appears to have been the law of her life—to receive too soon and without conscious joy what Fate had to give her. On the same dreary December day in 1542 that Mary was born at Linlithgow Castle, her father, James V, was breathing his last in the royal palace at Falkland, little more than twenty miles away. Although he had hardly reached the age of thirty-one, he was broken on the wheel of life, tired of his crown and wearied of perpetual warfare. He had proved a brave and chivalrous man, fundamentally cheerful by disposition, a passionate friend of the arts and of women, trusted by his people. Many a time would he put on a disguise in order to participate unrecognised at village merry-makings, dancing and joking with the peasant folk. But this unlucky scion of an unlucky house had been born into a wild epoch and within the borders of an intractable land. From the outset he seemed foredoomed to a tragical destiny.
A self-willed and inconsiderate neighbour, Henry VIII, tried to force the Scottish King to introduce the Reformation into the northern realm. But James V remained a faithful son of the old Church. The lords and nobles gleefully took every opportunity to create trouble for their sovereign, stirring up contention and misunderstanding, and involving the studious and pacific James in further turmoil and war. Four years earlier, when he was suing for Mary of Guise’s hand in marriage, he made clear in a letter to the lady how heavy a task it was to act as King to the rebellious and rapacious clans. “Madam,” he wrote in this moving epistle (penned in French),
I am no more than seven-and-twenty years of age, and life is already crushing me as heavily as does my crown … An orphan from my earliest childhood, I fell a prey to ambitious noblemen; the powerful House of Douglas kept me prisoner for many years, and I have come to hate the name of my persecutors and any references to the sad days of my captivity. Archibald, Earl of Angus, George his brother, together with their exiled relatives, are untiring in their endeavours to rouse the King of England against me and mine. There is not a nobleman in my realm who has not been seduced from his allegiance by promises and bribes. Even my person is not safe; there is no guarantee that my wishes will be carried out, or that existing laws will be obeyed. All these things alarm me, madam, and I expect to receive from you both strength and counsel. I have no money, save that which comes to me from France’s generosity and through the thrift of my wealthier clergy; and it is with these scanty funds that I try to adorn my palaces, maintain my fortresses and build my ships. Unfortunately, my barons look upon a king who would act the king in very deed as an insufferable rival. In spite of the friendship shown me by the King of France, in spite of the support I receive from his armies, in spite of the attachment of my people to their monarch, I fear that I shall never be able to achieve a decisive victory over my unruly nobles. I would fain put every obstacle out of the path in order to bring justice and tranquillity to my people. Peradventure I might achieve this aim if my nobles were the only impediment. But the King of England never wearies of sowing discord between them and me; and the heresies he has introduced into the land are not only devouring my people as a whole, but have penetrated even into ecclesiastical circles. My power, as did that of my ancestors, rests solely upon the burgesses of my towns and upon the fidelity of my clergy, and I cannot but ask myself whether this power will long endure …
All the disasters foretold by the King in this letter took place, and even worse things befell the writer. The two sons Mary of Guise brought into the world died in the cradle, so that James, in the flower of his manhood, had no heir growing up beside him, an heir who should relieve him of the crown which, as the years passed, pressed more heavily on his brow. In despite of his own will and better judgement, he was pressed by his nobles to enter the field against England, a mighty enemy, only to be deserted by them in the eleventh hour. At Solway Moss, Scotland lost not only the battle but likewise her honour. Forsaken by the chieftains of the clans, the troops hardly put up even the semblance of a fight, but ran leaderless hither and thither. James, too, a man usually so acutely aware of his knightly duty, when the decisive hour came was no longer in a position to strike down the hereditary foe, for he was already wounded unto death. They bore him away, feverish and weary, and laid him to bed in his palace at Falkland. He had had his fill of the senseless struggle and of a life which had become nothing but a burden to him.
Mist wreaths darkened the window panes on 9th December 1542, when there came a messenger knocking at the door. He announced to the sick King that a daughter had been born to the House of Stuart—an heiress to the throne. But James V was by that time so near his end that he lacked the strength to feel happy at the tidings or to harbour any hope as to the issue. Why was he not granted a son, a male heir? The dying man could see nothing but disaster in every event, nothing but tragedy and defeat. In a resigned voice, he answered the messenger: “Farewell, it came with ane lass and it will pass with ane lass.” This dismal prophecy proved to be the last words he was destined to utter. With a sigh, he turned his face to the wall and, heeding nobody, refused to answer any questions. A few days later he was buried, and Mary Stuart, before she had been given time to open her baby eyes and look around her, became Queen of the Scottish realm.
To be a Stuart and at the same time to be Queen of Scotland was to be placed indeed under an evil star and to be exposed to a twofold doom, for no Stuart had so far been happy on the Scottish throne, nor had any occupied it for long. James I and James III were murdered; James II and James IV perished on the battlefield; while for two of their descendants, the unwitting infant Mary and her grandchild Charles I, an even crueller end was in prospect, for they both died on the scaffold. Not one of this Atrides-race ever reached the zenith of life’s course, not one was born under a happy star. The Stuarts were always to be at war with enemies without, with enemies within the frontiers of their homeland, with themselves; they were surrounded by unrest, and unrest raged perpetually in their hearts. Just as they could find no peace for their own turbulent spirits, so they could not safeguard peace for their country. Those who should have proved the most loyal of their subjects were the least to be depended upon—lords and barons of the dark, strong land, the whole knighthood, inconstant and headstrong, wild and unbridled, rapacious and rejoicing in the fight, constantly betraying and betrayed. As Ronsard sighed during his enforced stay in this fog-bound region, “c’est ung pays barbare et une gent brutelle”—This is a barbaric country with a brutal people. Themselves acting the king on their estates, behind the massive walls of their strongholds they would herd the clansmen, who were their ploughmen and shepherds, into vast armies so as to carry on their endless feuds and forays—for these autocrats of the clans knew only one genuine pleasure, and that pleasure was war. “A bonnie fecht” was their delight; they were goaded on by jealousy; their one thought was to have power and ever more power. The French ambassador wrote: “Money and personal advantage are the only sirens to whose voices the Scottish lords will lend an ear. To try and bring them to a sense of their devoir towards their prince, to talk to them of honour, justice, virtue, decent and reliable negotiations, merely incites them to laughter.” In their amoral combativeness and cupidity they resembled the Italian condottieri, though lacking their culture, and being even more unbridled in their instincts. Thus they were ceaselessly battling for precedence; and the ancient and powerful clans of the Gordons, the Hamiltons, the Arrans, the Maitlands, the Crawfords, the Lindsays, the Lennoxes, the Argylls, were unendingly at one another’s throats. During certain periods they would be fighting their age-long feuds; during others, swearing a pact—which was never of long duration!—that they might outwit and overthrow a third party; though they were never tired of forming cliques and factions, none of these minor leagues ever possessed any internal cohesion; and no bond of blood or of kinship by marriage was able to break down the relentless feeling of envy and enmity that existed among them. A vestige of the heathen barbarian lived on in their wild souls, whether they called themselves Protestants or Catholics; and they took up with either faith according to which would be most profitable to their ambitions. They were genuine descendants of Macbeth and Macduff, the fierce thanes of Shakespearian drama.
One cause only was capable of bringing this envious rabble to act in concert: to attack their liege lord, their King; for they knew neither what loyalty meant nor obedience. If, in actual fact, this “pack of rascals” (as Burns, that true son of his native soil, nicknamed them) tolerated a shadow king to rule over their castles and estates, this was made possible solely through the jealousies entertained by one clan against another. The Gordons helped to keep the crown on the Stuarts’ heads merely that it might not fall to the Hamiltons; whereas the Hamiltons swore fealty to the King to keep the Gordons out. But woe to him who should try to act as a genuine king in Scotland, should endeavour to introduce discipline and order into the realm, should, in a fit of youthful enthusiasm, set his will up against the arrogance and greed of his nobles! In such circumstances, they would join forces to frustrate the designs of the sovereign, and if the issue could not be solved on the battlefield, it could easily be dealt with through the assassin’s dirk.
This last outpost of Europe towards the northern seas that lash its rugged coasts was indeed a tragic land, perpetually rent in sunder by antagonistic passions, dark and romantic as a saga, a poverty-stricken land to boot, since unremitting warfare crushed every effort to make it prosperous. The few towns, which hardly deserved the name seeing that they consisted of a huddle of wretched hovels clustering for protection around a stronghold, were eternally being plundered and destroyed by fire, so that it was impossible for them to acquire wealth or to bring the semblance of well-being to a settled burgherdom. We may still behold today the ruins of the gloomy and domineering castles wherein the nobles dwelt, castles by courtesy, for these buildings show none of the ornate brilliance we are accustomed to find in such edifices, nor is it easy to imagine any courtly state possible within those austere walls. Their uses were purely for war, and there had been no scope in their construction for the gentler arts of entertainment and hospitality. Between this handful of nobles and their serfs there existed no middle estate of the realm which could serve as an efficient pillar for the maintenance of the state authority. The most populous district, that situated between Tweed and Forth, was never given a chance to prosper, for it was always being invaded by the English from over the border, its people killed and the fruits of their industry destroyed. In the northern half of the country a man could walk for hours by lonely lake shores over boundless heaths, through mysterious forests and woodlands, without spying a village, a castle, a town. Here the hamlets did not press one upon the other as they did on the overpopulated continent of Europe; here were no broad highways serving as channels for intercourse and commerce; not here, as in Holland and England, did one see the ships sail forth out of busy harbours, making for far-off strands, and bringing back gold and spices. Sheep-herding, fishing, hunting—such constituted the patriarchal occupations of the folk in northern Scotland at that date. Their customs, their laws, their wealth and their culture lay a hundred years in arrear of England and the rest of Europe. Whereas, with the advent of new times in the coast towns elsewhere banks and exchanges were beginning to flourish, in Scotland, as in biblical days, wealth was calculated by the amount of land and the number of sheep a man owned. James V, Mary’s father, possessed ten thousand head, and that was the whole of his fortune. He had no crown treasure; nor had he an army, or a bodyguard wherewith to strengthen his authority, for he could not have paid for their services. Nor would his parliament, where the decisive word belonged to his lords, ever consent to vote him supplies. Everything this King needed over and above the barest necessities of life was provided by wealthy allies, France and the Pope for instance, either as a loan or as a gift, so that every carpet, every Gobelin, every chandelier to be found in his palaces, was bought with fresh humiliation.
Poverty—such was the purulent ulcer which sapped the strength from political life in this fair and hardy land. Because of the poverty and the voracity of its kings, its soldiers and its lords, this realm was ever the gruesome plaything of foreign powers. Those who fought against the King and in the cause of Protestantism were in the pay of London; those who championed the Catholic side received their emoluments from Paris, Madrid and Rome. Outsiders gladly put their hands into their pockets for the spilling of Scottish blood. A final decision had yet to be come to between England and France after perennial strife, and Scotland furnished France with a trump card in her contest with the mighty rival across the Channel. Each time the English armies set foot in Normandy, France hastened to stab England in the back. At the first summons, the Scots, who were by nature a war-lusty people, would be over the border, prepared for the enjoyment of a bonnie fecht with the “auld enemies”. Even in times of peace they were a perpetual menace to the southern realm. It became, therefore, a recognised feature of French policy to strengthen Scotland from the military point of view. What could be more natural, in the circumstances, than that England should seek to consolidate her own position by sowing discord and encouraging rebellion among the Scottish nobles? Thus the unhappy country was the cockpit of centenarian wars, of which Mary’s fate was at length to mark the close.
With her incurable delight in racy and paradoxical symbolism, Dame History decreed that this decisive struggle should begin while Mary Stuart was an infant in the cradle. The wee lassie can neither speak nor think as yet, hardly is she sentient and conscious, her tiny hands are scarcely strong enough to move, yet already the world of politics thrusts relentlessly into her innocent life, seizing upon her immature body and grasping at her unsuspecting soul. For it was Mary’s doom to be under the spell of this dicers’ game of politics. Never was she allowed to develop her ego unhindered. All her life long she would be the pawn of policy; be queen or heiress, ally or foe, never simply child or girl or woman. The messenger bearing the twin tidings of James V’s death and the birth of his daughter as Queen of Scotland and the Isles had barely time to convey his news to the King of England when the latter determined to sue for her hand in favour of his little son Edward. A bride worth the wooing from every point of view, Henry VIII considered. So it was that this girl’s body with its yet unawakened soul became an object of haggling from the outset. But politics is impervious to the feelings of mankind; what it is interested in are crowns, countries, heritages. The individual man or woman simply does not exist when politics is in the ascendant; such things are of no value as compared with tangible and practical values to be won in the world-game.
In the present instance, however, Henry VIII’s desire to bring about a matrimonial union between the heiress to Scotland’s throne and the heir to the throne of England was reasonable and humane. For the sempiternal warfare between the neighbouring nations had long since become a senseless iniquity. England and Scotland, forming as they do one island in the northern seas, their shores washed by the waters of the selfsame oceans, their peoples so closely akin, and their mode of life so similar, could have but one common duty to perform: come together in unity and concord. Nature in this case could not have made her wishes plainer. There was nothing to hinder unification except the jealous rivalries which existed between the two dynasties of the Tudors and of the Stuarts. But if a marriage between the children of the contending dynasts could be successfully arranged, then the differences might be amicably smoothed out and the Stuarts and Tudors would achieve simultaneously kingship of England, Scotland and Ireland. Thus the contentious parties would become friends; no more blood need be spilt in fratricidal strife; and a powerful, united Great Britain could take the place that was due to her among the nations in their struggle for dominion over the world.
When, quite exceptionally, a clear and logical idea comes to light up the political arena, it is invariably ruined by the idiotic way men have of putting it into execution. At the start the suggestion of this marriage seemed to strike the precise note that was required to establish harmony. The Scottish lords, whose pockets were quickly and amply filled with moneys from England, gladly agreed to the proposal. But Henry VIII was astute enough not to be satisfied with a mere piece of parchment. Too often had he suffered from the double-dealing and greed of these honourable gentlemen not to know that such shifty wights can never be bound by a treaty, and that should a higher bidder present himself—should, let us say, the French King offer his son and heir as aspirant for Mary’s hand—they would snap their fingers at the first proposal in order to reap what advantage they might from the second. He therefore demanded of the negotiators that Mary should immediately be sent to England. But if the Tudors were suspicious of the Stuarts, the latter wholeheartedly reciprocated the sentiment. The Queen Mother, in especial, opposed the treaty. A Guise and a strict Catholic, she had no wish to see her daughter brought up by heretics. Moreover, in the treaty itself she was not slow to detect a trap which might prove highly injurious to her child’s welfare. In a clause that had been kept secret Henry VIII bribed the Scottish nobles to agree that if the little girl died before her majority the whole of her rights and ownership in the Scottish crown should pass to him. The clause was undoubtedly suspect, especially when associated with the fact that its inventor had already done away with two wives. What more natural than to suppose that a child might die prematurely and not altogether by natural means in order that he might come into the heritage the sooner? Mary of Guise, in her role of prudent and loving mother, rejected the proposal of sending her infant daughter to London. Thereupon the proxy wooing was upon the verge of being converted into a war, for Henry VIII, overbearing as was his wont, dispatched his troops across the border that they might seize the coveted prize by force of arms. The army orders disclose the brutality of those days: “It is His Majesty’s will that all be laid waste with fire and sword. Burn Edinburgh and raze the city to the ground, as soon as you have seized whatever is worth taking. Plunder Holyrood and as many towns and villages as you can; ravage, burn and destroy Leith; and the same whithersoever you go, exterminating men, women and children without mercy, wherever resistance is shown.” At the decisive hour, however, mother and child were safely conducted to Stirling and placed within the shelter of its fortified castle. Henry VIII had to rest content with a treaty wherein Scotland was committed to send Mary to England on the day she reached the tenth year of her life—again she was treated as an object of chaffering and purchase.
Now all was happily settled. Another crown had fallen into the cradle of the Scottish infant Queen. By her future marriage with young Edward of England the kingdoms of Scotland and England would become united. But politics has always been a science of contradiction. It is forever in conflict with simple, natural, sensible solutions; difficulties are its greatest joy, and it feels thoroughly in its element when dissension is abroad. The Catholic party soon set to work intriguing against the compact, wondering whether it would not be preferable to barter the girl elsewhere and offer her as a bride for the French King’s son; and, by the time Henry VIII came to die, there was scant inclination anywhere to hold to the bond. Protector Somerset, acting on behalf of Edward, who was still in his minority, demanded that the child bride should be sent to London. Since Scotland refused to obey, an English army was dispatched over the border. This was the only language the Scottish lords properly understood. On 10th September 1547, at the Battle, or, rather, the massacre, of Pinkie, the Scots were crushed, leaving more than ten thousand dead on the field. Mary Stuart was not yet five years old when blood in gallons flowed in her cause.
Scotland now lay open to any incursion England chose to make. But there was nothing left worth the plundering; the countryside was empty, was cleaned out. One single treasure remained so far as the House of Tudor was concerned: a little girl in whose person was incorporated a crown and the rights this crown commanded. It was essential, therefore, to place the treasure where covetous hands could not reach it. To the despair of the English spies the child suddenly vanished from Stirling Castle. None, not even those in the Queen Mother’s confidence, knew whither Mary had been spirited away. The hiding place was admirably chosen. One night, in the custody of a trustworthy servant, the girl had been smuggled into the Priory of Inchmahome. This is situated on a speck of an island in the Lake of Menteith, “dans le pays des sauvages”—in the land of the savages—as the French envoy reports, very remote from the world of men. Not even a path led to this romantic spot. The precious freight was conveyed to its destination in a boat. Here the child dwelt, hidden and removed from the turmoil of events, while over lands and seas diplomacy continued to weave the tissue of her fate.
Meanwhile France had entered the lists, menacing and determined, resolved that Scotland should not become subject to England. Henry II, son of Francis I, sent a strong fleet to the northern realm and, through the lieutenant-general of the auxiliary army, sued the hand of Mary Stuart for his young son and heir, Francis. In a night-time, Mary’s destiny changed its course owing to the set of the political wind which swept in mighty war-engendering gusts over the Channel. Instead of becoming Queen of England the little daughter of the House of Stuart was now fated to become Queen of France. Hardly had the new and advantageous bargain been struck when, on 7th August 1548, the costly merchandise (Mary was then five years and eight months old) was shipped from Dumbarton for a French port. Once more she had been sold to an unknown bridegroom, and committed to a marriage which might have lasted for decades. Again, and not for the last time, alien hands were moulding her destiny.
Trustfulness is a distinctive quality of childhood. What does a toddler of two, three, or even four years old know of war and of peace, of battles and of treaties? What can such words as England or France, Edward or Francis, mean to it? A fair-haired girl ran gleefully in and out of the dark or the brightly lit rooms of a palace, with four other girls of the same age at her heels. A charming thought had been allowed to blossom in the bleak atmosphere of a barbaric age. From the earliest days of her life Mary Stuart had been given four companions, all of them born at the same time as herself, chosen from among the most distinguished Scottish families, the lucky cloverleaf of the four Marys: Mary Fleming, Mary Beaton, Mary Livingstone and Mary Seton. In early years these namesakes of the Queen were her gay playmates; later they were her classmates in a foreign land so that she did not feel her novel surroundings to be unbearably strange; still later they were to become her maids of honour. In a moment of unusual affection, they took a vow not to enter the married state before Mary herself had found a spouse. Even after three of them had forsaken the Queen in the days when misfortune befell her, the fourth of the Marys followed her mistress, clave to her in adversity, shared in her exile and her prisons, waited upon her when she died on the scaffold, and never left her until her body had been consigned to the grave. Thus, to the very end of her life, Mary was accompanied by a touch of childhood. But at the time she sailed for France as a small child, these sad and darkened days lay far ahead.
At Holyrood or at Stirling, the palace and the castle rang with peals of laughter and the patter of small feet, as the five Marys ran from room to room, untiringly, from morning till nightfall. Little did they care for high estate, for dignities, for kingdoms; nothing did they know of the pride and danger encompassing a crown. One night, Mary the Queen was roused from her baby sleep, lifted from her crib; a boat was waiting in readiness on a lake that was hardly bigger than a pond; someone rowed her across, and they landed on an island. How quiet and pleasant the place! Inchmahome, the isle of peace. Strange men stooped to welcome her; some of these men were robed more like women, and had peaked hoods to their black gowns. They were gentle and kind, they sang beautifully in a high-ceilinged hall with stained-glass windows. Mary soon grew accustomed to her new home. But all too soon another evening came when once more she was taken in a boat across the waters. Fate had decreed that Mary Stuart was constantly to be making such night flittings from one destiny to another. On this occasion she awoke to find herself on a ship with high masts and milk-white sails, surrounded by unknown, rugged soldiers and hirsute sailors. What need was there for Mary to be frightened? Everyone aboard was kind and friendly to her; her seventeen-year-old half-brother James was gently stroking her silky hair. This youngster was one of her father’s innumerable bastards, born in the decade before he married Mary of Guise. There, too, were the four Marys, her beloved playfellows. Delighted and happy in their novel environment, the five little girls frolicked about the vessel, dodging in and out among the cannons of the French man-of-war, laughing madly and joyously. Above these innocents, at the mast-head, was a man whose vigilance never relaxed. Anxiously he spied in every direction, for he knew that the English fleet was cruising about in those waters and only awaited an auspicious moment to pounce upon the precious freight and make her England’s Queen before she had been given a chance to become Queen of France. But what should she know of crowns and the ways of men, of trouble and danger, of England and France? The seas were blue, the people around her were amiable and strong, and the great vessel swam onward like some huge bird, speeding over the waves.
On 13th August, the galleon dropped anchor in the small harbour of Roscoff near Brest. A boat was lowered, and conveyed the Queen to the landing place. Enchanted with her voyage by land and by sea, Mary sprang lightheartedly from the gangway onto French soil. She was not yet six years old; but with this landing, the Queen of Scotland left her childhood behind.
Chapter Two
Youth in France(1548–59)
(1548–59)
THE FRENCH COURT EXCELLED in the courtly accomplishments of the day, and was practised in the mysterious science of etiquette. Henry II, a prince of the House of Valois, knew what was proper to the reception of a dauphin’s bride. Before her arrival he issued a decree that “la reinette”, the little Queen of Scotland, was to be welcomed by every town and village through which she might pass with as much ceremony as if she had been his own daughter. In Nantes, therefore, Mary Stuart was received with almost overwhelming pomp. At the street corners there had been erected galleries adorned with classical emblems, goddesses, nymphs and sirens; to put the escort in a good humour, barrels of costly wine were broached; salvos of artillery and a firework display greeted the newcomer; furthermore, a Lilliputian bodyguard had been enrolled, consisting of one hundred and fifty youngsters under eight years of age, dressed in white uniforms, and marching in front of the child Queen, playing drums and fifes, armed with miniature pikes and halberds, shouting acclamations. Everywhere the same sort of reception had been prepared, so that it was through an uninterrupted series of festivities that Mary at length reached Saint-Germain. There she, not yet six years of age, had the first glimpse of her husband-to-be, four and a half years old, weakly, pale, rachitic, a boy whose poisoned blood foredoomed him to illness and premature death, and who now greeted his “bride” shyly. All the heartier, however, was the welcome accorded her by the other members of the royal family, who were greatly impressed by her youthful charm; and Henry II described her enthusiastically in a letter as “la plus parfayt enfant que je vys jamès”—the most perfect child I have ever seen.
At that time, the French court was one of the most resplendent in the world. A gleam of dying chivalry illumined this transitional generation, which belonged in a certain measure to the gloomier period of the Middle Ages. Hardihood and courage were still displayed in the chase, in tilting at the ring, and in tourneys; the old harsh and virile spirit was manifested in adventure and in war; but more spiritual outlooks had already come into their own amid the ruling circles, and humanistic culture, which had before conquered the cloisters and the universities, was now supreme in the palaces of kings. From Italy the papal love of display, the joie de vivre of the Renaissance (a joy that was both mental and physical) and delight in the fine arts had made their triumphal entry into France; the result being, at this juncture, an almost unique welding of strength with beauty, of high spirits with recklessness—the supreme faculty of having no fear of death while loving life with the full passion of the senses. More naturally and more easily than anywhere else temperament was, among the French, associated with frivolity, Gallic chevalerie being extraordinarily akin to the classical culture of the Renaissance. It was expected of a French nobleman that he should be equally competent in full panoply to charge his adversary in the lists, and gracefully and correctly to tread the mazes of the dance; he must at one and the same time be a past master of the science of war, and proficient in the manners and practices of courts. The hand which could wield the broadsword in a life-or-death struggle must be able to strum the lute tunefully and to indite sonnets to a fair mistress. To be simultaneously strong and tender, rough and cultured, skilled in battle and skilled in the fine arts, was the ideal of the time. In the daylight hours, the King and his nobles, attended by a pack of baying hounds, hunted the stag or the boar, while spears were broken and lances splintered; but when night fell there assembled in the halls of the splendidly renovated palaces of the Louvre or of Saint-Germain, of Blois or Amboise, lords and ladies eager to participate in witty conversation. Poems were read aloud, musical instruments were played, madrigals were sung, and in masques the spirit of classical literature was revived. The presence of numerous lovely and tastefully dressed women, the work of such poets and painters as Ronsard, du Bellay and Clouet gave the French royal court a colour and a verve which found lavish expression in every form of art and of life. As elsewhere in Europe before the unhappy outbreak of the wars of religion, in the France of that epoch a wonderful surge of civilisation was in progress.
One who was to live at such a court, and above all one who might be expected in due time to rule there, must become adapted to the new cultural demands. He must strive to perfect himself in the arts and sciences, must develop his mind no less carefully than his body. It will be an everlasting glory of the movement we call humanism that its apostles insisted upon familiarity with the arts even among those whose mission it was to move in the highest circles. We can hardly think of any other period in history than the epoch then dawning, in which not only men of station, but noblewomen as well, were expected to be highly educated. Like Mary of England and her half-sister Elizabeth, Mary Stuart had to become familiar with Greek and Latin, and, in addition, with modern tongues, with French, Italian, English and Spanish. Having a clear intelligence and a ready wit coupled with an inherited delight in learning, these things came easily to the gifted child. When she was no more than thirteen (having been taught her Latin from Erasmus’ Colloquies) she recited, in the great gallery of the Louvre, before the assembled court and the foreign ambassadors, a Latin oration of her own composition, and did this so ably, with so much ease and grace, that her uncle the Cardinal of Lorraine was able to write to Mary of Guise: “Your daughter is improving, and increasing day by day in stature, goodness, beauty, wisdom and worth. She is so perfect and accomplished in all things, honourable and virtuous, that like of her is not to be seen in this realm, whether among noble damsels, maidens of low degree, or in middle station. The King has taken so great a liking to her that he spends much of his time chatting with her, sometimes by the hour together, and she knows as well how to entertain him with pleasant and sensible subjects of conversation as if she were a woman of five-and-twenty.”
In very truth Mary’s mental development was no less speedy than it was thorough. Soon she had acquired so perfect a command of French that she could venture to express herself in verse, vying with Ronsard and du Bellay in her answers to their adulatory poems. In days to come, when most sorely distressed, or when the fires of passion must find vent, she would by choice use the metrical form; and down to her last hour she remained true to poesy as the most loyal of her friends. In the other arts she could express herself with extraordinarily good taste: she sang charmingly to the accompaniment of the lute; her dancing was acclaimed as bewitching; her embroideries were those of a hand gifted no less than trained; her dress was always discreet and becomingly chosen, since she had no love for the huge hooped skirts in which Elizabeth delighted to strut; her maidenly figure looked equally well whether she was clad in Highland dress or in silken robes of state. Tact and a fine discrimination were inseparable from her nature, and this daughter of the Stuarts would preserve even in her darkest hours, as the priceless heritage of her royal blood and courtly training, an exalted but nowise theatrical demeanour which will for all time endow her with a halo of romance. Even in matters of sport she was well-nigh the equal of the most skilful at this court where sport was a cult. An indefatigable horsewoman, an ardent huntress, agile at the game of pall-mall, tall, slender and graceful though she was, she knew nothing of fatigue. Bright and cheerful, carefree and joyous, she drained the delights of youth out of every goblet that offered, never guessing that this was to be the only happy period of her life. Mary Queen of Scots at the French court comes down to us as an unfading and unique picture. There is scarcely another woman in whom the chivalrous ideal of the French Renaissance found so entrancing and maidenly an expression as in this merry and ardent daughter of a royal race.
She had barely left childhood when, as a maid in her teens and later as a woman, the poets of the day sang her praises. “In her fifteenth year her beauty began to radiate from her like the sun in a noontide sky,” wrote Brantôme. Du Bellay was even more passionate in his admiration:
En votre esprit le ciel s’est surmonté.
Nature et art ont en votre beauté
Mis tout le beau dont la beauté s’assemble.
(Heaven outdid itself when it created your mind. Nature and art have combined to make your beauty the quintessence of all that is beautiful.) Lope de Vega exclaimed: “From her eyes the stars borrow their brilliancy, and from her features the colours which make them so wonderful.” Ronsard attributes the following words to a brother of Charles IX:
Avoir joui d’une telle beauté,
Sein contre sein, valoit ta royauté.
(To have enjoyed such beauty, heart to heart, was worth your regal crown.) Again, du Bellay sums up all the praise of all the poets in the couplet:
Contentez-vous, mes yeux!
Vous ne verrez jamais une chose pareille …
(Rest content, my eyes! Never will you see again so lovely a thing.) Poets are prone to let their feelings run away with them; especially is this so in the case of court poets when they wish to sing the merits of their ruler. With the greater curiosity do we turn to the portraits left to us by such a master as Clouet. Here we suffer no disappointment, indeed, and yet we cannot altogether agree with the paeans of the poets. No radiant beauty shines down from the canvas, but, rather, a piquant little visage, a delicate and attractive oval, a slightly pointed nose, giving the features that charming irregularity which invariably renders a woman’s face so attractive. The dark eyes are gentle, mysterious, veiled; the mouth closed and calm. It must be admitted that each feature is finely moulded, and that nature had made use of her best materials when she was fashioning this daughter of many kings. The skin is wonderfully white and smooth, shimmering like nacre; the hair is abundant and of a chestnut colour, its beauty of texture being enhanced by the pearls entwined in its strands; the hands are long and slim, pale as snow; the body tall and straight; “the corselet so cut as to give but a glimpse of the snowy texture of her breast; and the collar raised, thus revealing the exquisite modelling of her shoulders.” No flaw is to be found in this face and figure. But precisely because it is so cool and flawless, so smooth and pretty, the face is lacking in expression. It seems to be a fair, clean page on which nothing personal, nothing characteristic of the young woman herself, has yet been inscribed. There is something indecisive and vague in the lineaments; something that has not yet blossomed, is awaiting the moment of awakening. Every portrait produces an impression of flatness and debility. Here, one feels, the nature of the real woman has still to be revealed; perhaps the true character of the sitter has never been given the chance to develop along its own lines. The visage is that of one whose spirit and senses lie dormant; the woman within has yet to find expression without. What we see is the portrait of an attractive schoolgirl.
Verbal accounts of the young Queen serve only to confirm the impression of unawakened and incomplete maidenhood, for everyone seems agreed to affirm Mary’s perfection, to praise her deportment, industry and earnest endeavour, just as if she were the top girl of her class. We are told that she was studious, amiable and pleasantly sociable, pretty-mannered and pious, that she excelled in the practice of the arts and sports of the day and yet showed no predilection for any art or sport in particular, nor any special talent one way or the other. Good, obedient, she was a model of the virtues expected of a king’s bride in the making. Always it is her social and courtly virtues that her contemporaries belaud, which seems to point to the fact that the queenly characteristics were developed in Mary before the womanly ones. Her true personality was, for the moment, eclipsed behind a facade of decorum, merely because, so far, it had not been allowed to blossom. For many years to come her dignified behaviour and general culture successfully hid the passionate nature of this lovely princess; no one could guess what the soul of the woman was capable of; it lay quiet and untroubled within her, unmoved and untouched. Smooth and mute is the brow, friendly and sweet the mouth; the dark eyes are pensive, sly and searching, eyes that have looked forth into the world but have not yet looked deep into her own heart. Her contemporaries and Mary herself have no inkling of what is in store for her; they know nothing of the heritage in her own blood. She who was life’s spoilt darling, who had experienced nothing but happiness, could not foresee the dangers lying in the path of her career. Passion is needed in order that a woman may discover herself, in order that her character may expand to its true proportions; love and sorrow are needed for it to find its own magnitude.
Mary Stuart had created so powerful an impression upon all who came in contact with her, and was so universal a favourite at court, that it was agreed to celebrate her nuptials earlier than had been anticipated. Throughout her life Mary’s hour seemed always to be in advance of the solar time, and she invariably was called upon to do things earlier than any others of her own age. The Dauphin, her future husband as by treaty arranged, was barely fourteen, and in addition he suffered from all-round debility. But politics cannot afford to wait upon nature. The French court was suspiciously eager to get on with the job, to celebrate the marriage, especially since it knew from the royal physicians that young Francis’ health was undermined, that, indeed, the boy was dangerously ill. The important thing for France, however, was to make sure of the Scottish crown, and this could be accomplished only if the wedding took place. With all possible speed, therefore, the two children were brought to the altar. In the marriage procuration, which was drawn up by the French and the Scottish parliamentary envoys acting in concert, the Dauphin was to receive the “crown matrimonial”. Simultaneously with the signing of the public marriage contract, Mary’s relatives, the Guises, made the fifteen-year-old girl sign three other, separate and secret deeds which rendered the public guarantees worthless, and which remained hidden from the Scottish parliament. Herein she pledged herself, in the event of her premature death, or if she died without issue, to bequeath her country as a free gift to France—as if it were her own private estate—and to hand over to the reigning House of Valois her rights of succession to the thrones of England and Ireland.
The secrecy wherein the signing of these documents was shrouded was in itself a proof that the bargain was a dishonourable one. Mary Stuart had no right to change the course of succession in so arbitrary a manner, and to hand over her kingdom to a foreign power as if it were a cloak or other personal belonging. But her uncles brought pressure to bear, and the unsuspecting hand of an innocent girl duly signed the instrument. Tragical obedience! The first time Mary Stuart put her signature to a political document brought dishonour upon her fair head, and forced an otherwise straightforward, trustful and candid creature to acquiesce in a lie. If she was to become a queen and remain a queen in actual fact, she could never again follow the dictates of her own will, could never again be genuinely true to herself. One who has vowed himself to politics is no longer a free agent.
These secret machinations were, however, hidden away behind the magnificence of the wedding festivities. It was now more than two hundred years since a dauphin of France had been married within the frontiers of his homeland, and for that reason the Valois court was disposed to provide the French people (who were not, in general, cosseted) with a spectacle of unexampled splendour. Catherine de’ Medici had witnessed festivals in Italy designed by the leading artists of the Renaissance, and it became a point of pride with her to excel these wonders when her eldest son was married. On 24th April 1558, Paris held high revel such as had not before been witnessed. In the large square before Notre Dame there had been erected an open pavilion in which there was a “ciel royal” of blue Cyprus silk bespangled with golden fleurs-de-lis; and a huge blue carpet, stamped likewise with golden lilies, covered the ground. Musicians led the way, clad in red and yellow, playing manifold instruments. Then came the royal procession, sumptuously attired and enthusiastically acclaimed. The rite was solemnised under the eyes of the populace, assembled in thousands to gloat over the bride and the sickly boy-bridegroom, who seemed overwhelmed by the pomp and circumstance. The court poets, on this occasion, again vied with one another in ecstatic descriptions of Mary’s beauty. “She appeared,” wrote Brantôme (whose pen was better accustomed to the writing of salacious anecdotes), “a hundred times more beautiful than a goddess.” Indeed, in that momentous hour, a glow of happiness and a sense of good fortune may have equipped this ambitious girl with a peculiar aureole. As she smiled upon all and sundry, and acknowledged the acclamations, she had arrived in truth—though so early—at the climax of her life. Never again would Mary Stuart be the central figure in such a galaxy of wealth, approval and jubilation as now when, at the side of the most distinguished crown prince in Europe and at the head of a troop of gaily dressed cavaliers, she passed through the streets to the accompaniment of thunderous applause. In the evening there was a banquet at the Palais de Justice, and all Paris thronged to gape through the open windows at the royal family, gleaming with gold, silver and precious stones, paying honour to the young woman who was adding a new crown to the crown of France. The celebrations ended in a ball, for which artists who had studied the achievements of the Italian Renaissance had prepared marvellous surprises. Among these there was a pageant of six ships decked with gold, having masts of silver and sails of gauze, which were propelled into the hall by an unseen and cunning mechanism. They rolled and pitched as if on a stormy sea and made their mimic voyage round the hall. In each of these miniature ships was sitting, apparelled in gold and wearing a damask mask, a prince who, rising with a deferent gesture, led one of the ladies of the court to his vessel: Catherine de’ Medici, Mary Queen of Scots and heiress to the throne of France, the Queen of Navarre, and the Princesses Elizabeth, Margaret and Claude. This was intended to symbolise a happy voyage through life, amid a flourish of pageantry. But fate is not subject to human wishes, and from this dazzling moment the life-ship of Mary Stuart was to be steered towards other and more perilous shores.
The first danger arose unexpectedly in her path. Mary was Queen of Scotland in her own right, by birth and heritage, whereas the “roi-dauphin”, the crown prince of France, had raised her to a further high estate by marriage. But hardly had the marriage ceremony terminated when a third and more advantageous crown began to shimmer vaguely before the girl’s eyes, and her young hands, inexperienced and ill advised, grasped at this treasure and its treacherous brilliance. In the year of the Scottish Queen’s marriage to Francis, Mary Tudor, Queen of England, died. Elizabeth, her half-sister, succeeded to the crown. But had she any legal right to ascend the throne? Henry VIII, a veritable Bluebeard with his many wives, had left only three children behind him, Edward and two daughters. Mary, the eldest of the three, issued from his lawful union with Catherine of Aragon; Elizabeth, seventeen years younger than Mary, was the child of his marriage with Anne Boleyn. Edward, four years junior to Elizabeth, was the son of Henry’s third wife, Jane Seymour, and as the only male heir, being then only ten years of age, immediately succeeded his father. On Edward’s premature demise, there was no question as to the legality of Mary’s accession. She left no children, and Elizabeth’s right was of a dubious nature. The English crown lawyers contended that, since Henry’s marriage with Anne had been sanctioned by an ecclesiastical court’s pronouncement and the previous marriage to Catherine of Aragon had been annulled, Elizabeth was a legitimate child of the union. She was his direct descendant, and was a legal claimant to the throne. The French crown jurists, on the other hand, recalled the fact that Henry VIII had himself declared his marriage to Anne Boleyn a union with no legal foundation, and had insisted upon his parliament’s proclaiming Elizabeth a bastard. The whole of the Catholic world held the opinion that Elizabeth was born out of lawful wedlock and was, therefore, cut off from the succession. If this view was a true one, then the next legitimate claimant could be no other than Mary Queen of Scots, the great-granddaughter of Henry VII.
Young Mary was faced with a decision of worldwide importance. Two alternatives presented themselves. She could be diplomatic and yielding, could maintain friendly relations by recognising her cousin as the rightful Queen of England, thus putting aside her own claim which in any case could not be pushed except by the use of arms. Or she could boldly and resolutely declare Elizabeth to be a usurper, and thereupon gather together an army of French and Scottish supporters to enforce her claim and deprive Elizabeth of a usurper’s crown. Unfortunately, Mary and her counsellors chose a third way out of the dilemma, a way which is invariably beset with difficulties, especially in the realm of politics. They elected to take a middle course. Instead of marching forth in full strength and with determination against Elizabeth, the French royal house made an absurd and vainglorious gesture. Henry II commanded that the bridal pair should have the royal arms of England and Scotland surmounted by the crown of France painted and engraved on blason, shield and seal, and moreover that Mary Stuart, in all public announcements and proclamations, henceforward should style herself: “Regina Franciae, Scotiae, Angliae et Hiberniae”. The claim was thus maintained but was left undefended. War was not declared against Elizabeth; she was merely fretted and annoyed. Instead of enforcing a right at the point of the sword, the claim was asserted by a mere painting on a piece of wood and a style at the foot of a sheet of paper. Misunderstanding and ambiguity were thus created, for Mary Stuart’s claim to the English throne remained a fact which at the same time was no tangible fact. According to the prevailing mood, the claim was trotted out into the light of day or kept hidden in the background. When, acting upon the clauses of a well-known treaty, Elizabeth demanded the return of Calais to the English crown, Henry II answered: “Calais ought to be surrendered to the Dauphin’s consort, the Queen of Scotland, whom we take to be the Queen of England.” Nevertheless, Henry made no move to enforce his daughterin-law’s claim, and continued to deal on equal terms with the English monarch as if there were no question of her being a usurper.
This foolish and vain gesture, this childish and idiotic painting of the coat of arms of England and Scotland upon a single escutcheon, brought absolutely no advantage to Mary Stuart. On the contrary it ruined her cause. In this instance Mary Stuart had to suffer throughout life for an act committed in her behalf when she was hardly more than a child, an act which was a gross political blunder performed as a salve to aggressiveness and vanity. This petty mortification of Elizabeth’s pride converted the most powerful woman of Europe into Mary’s irreconcilable foe. A genuine ruler, to the manner born, can tolerate and permit everything except that another should put his dominion in doubt and make a counterclaim to that same dominion. Elizabeth, therefore, in spite of apparently friendly and even tender letters, always looked upon Mary Stuart as a spectre casting a shadow over her throne, invariably held her young cousin to be an enemy, an opponent, a rival. Mary, on the other hand, was too proud to acknowledge herself in the wrong once the claim had publicly been made, and never could she consent unconditionally to recognise a “concubine’s” bastard as the legitimate Queen of England. Relations between the two women could not be any other than a pretence and a subterfuge, beneath which the cleavage remained. Half-measures and dishonourable deeds, whether in the world of politics or in private life, invariably bring more damage in their train than energetic and freehanded decisions. The painting of the English coat of arms onto the Dauphin’s and Mary’s blason caused more blood to flow than a real war could have done, for open warfare in the end must decide the issue one way or another, whereas the ambiguous method adopted by Henry II proved to be a constant and ever-recurring pinprick which estranged the two women for a lifetime and played havoc with their rule as monarchs.
The coat of arms incorporating the English heraldic emblems was, in July 1559, publicly displayed by the “roi-dauphin” and the “reine-dauphine” when they were on their way to a tournament which was to take place in Paris. On that occasion they were borne to the arena in a triumphal car emblazoned with the fatal escutcheon. The car was preceded by two Scottish heralds, apparelled with the arms of England and Scotland, and crying for all men to hear: “Make place! Make place, for the Queen of England!” This festivity had been arranged to celebrate the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis (April 1559). King Henry II, ever the chivalrous knight, did not feel it beneath his dignity to splinter a lance or two “pour l’amour des dames”, and everyone knew which lady was in his mind. Diane de Poitiers, proud and beautiful as ever, sat in her box and looked down leniently upon her royal lover. On a sudden, however, what had been a joyous sport became deadly earnest. The tourney proved to be a pivot of world history. The Comte de Montgomery, a French knight and officer in the Scottish lifeguard of the King, entered the lists at the latter’s command as the opponent of his royal master. Having broken his lance, he galloped to the attack once more with the stump of his weapon. The onslaught was so energetic that a splinter of Montgomery’s lance penetrated the King’s eye through the visor. The monarch fell from his horse in a faint. At first the wound was considered trifling, but the King never regained consciousness. Around his bed the family gathered, appalled and horrified. Valois’s sturdy frame fought valiantly for a few days, but on 10th July he gave up the ghost.
