Habsburg queen of France

Contemporary descriptions of Eleanor suggest that she was a credit to her House: well-educated, beautifully mannered, musically skilled, and dedicated. When called upon to marry the French king, she performed her role impec­cably.

which [Eleanor] received generously and read in our presence; and, afterwards, we told her that we had permission to pass on your and the king’s cordial rec­ommendations. After hearing how much she desired the liberation of the king and peace, we thanked her on your behalf, begging her to continue until the very end.^[607]

The queen, “with great sweetness, after having them sit very close to her, told them she was striving with all her heart for peace and the liberty of the king.”^[608]

Sebastien Moreau, treasurer for the Milanais for Franpois I and author of The History of the capture and liberation of Franςois I, arrival of the queen and return of the children of France, created an entertaining romance with long descriptions of Eleanor and the king’s engagement. The couple had heard so much of each other’s beauty that they had already fallen in love before ever laying eyes on each other. Before leaving Spain, the newly liberated king was invited to a feast by the emperor:

[The king] was filled with joy, especially to see the ladies of Spain, most of all the exalted and illustrious princess Madame Eleanor, dowager of Portugal, sister of the said Emperor, whom he had heard lauded by many, as an accom­plished princess of such virtue that none could surpass her; and together with this widow, given that both [the king and she] were marriageable, an alliance and beautiful marriage could be made.

The two could not get enough of exchanging glances throughout dinner; their sighs secretly signaled their deepening affection, and, in speaking together, their honest conversation lacked for nothing.^{[609] [610] After a wait of nearly five years, during which time the French king reneged on certain terms of the treaty, claiming that he had agreed to them under duress, Eleanor finally married the king by proxy on 20 March 1530, Francois II de la Tour, viscount of Turenne, standing in.}

In a letter to the king just before her departure for France, edited by Chloe Pardanaud-Landriot, Eleanor has assumed her new role, performing gratitude and promising devotion:

Monseigneur, giving thanks to God for the gift he has given me, that is, the conclusion of that for which it has pleased you to send here your ambassador Monseigneur de Turenne, along with the words you told him to pass on to me, I also thank you most humbly for having done me the honor in your last letter of showing that you no longer want to dissimulate in giving to me, Monseigneur, that of yours, upon which I have always counted; I have never expected less from you [word illegible] than the good and honor that it pleases you to give me.. Your most humble and very obedient wife, Leonor.^[611]

Eleanor, along with the young dauphin Francois and his brother Henri, arrived in Fontarabie on the border between Spain and France in late June. On 7 July 1530, the king arrived from Bordeaux to meet the group and lead them back to Bordeaux where they joined Louise and then continued on to Paris.

Eleanor continued her diplomatic efforts from her new home. The emperor, keeping a close eye on the events, wrote to his wife on 31 July:

In France the most Christian Queen, our sister, has been received in pomp, and the marriage consummated. Great rejoicings and festivals have been made, of which a full account has been remitted to Spain.

But the emperor was too optimistic. The love narrative, so convincingly related by Moreau, was disavowed by the king, who almost immediately began to dis­play an indifference toward the emperor’s sister equal to that he had shown the Treaty of Madrid. Already in May 1529, Henry VIII's ambassador to the French court Thomas Boleyn had reported that “although [Franpois I] was anxious for the delivery of his children, he had little desire to marry lady Eleanor,”^[613] and, once arrived in Paris, the king made a point of showing how little the new queen mattered to him. I noted in the previous chapter that during her entry to the city on 16 March 1531 English diplomat Francis Bryan informed Henry VIII that the French king sat with his mistress Anne de Pisseleu d’Heilly perched in front of him throughout the ceremony, “in the syght and face of all the peple; whych was not a lytyll marvelyd at of the beholders,”^[614] and, also according to Bryan, that the king and queen had had not lain together once in four nights, and the king spent most of his time with his mistress.

Nonetheless, Eleanor persisted. Her aunt Marguerite of Austria, who mon­itored her niece’s first months at the French court from Malines, advised her to be gentle. In of letter of July 1530, Marguerite instructed the emperor’s sec­retary, Jean Le Sauch, how to counsel the new queen.^[615] Marguerite seems to have received news that Le Sauch had misadvised Eleanor by suggesting that she discuss political matters directly with the king and the regent. On the contrary, Marguerite explains that

it is necessary above all things that she conduct herself according to the will of the king and by the hand of Madame, his mother, and that she do everything according their desire and wish, capturing their benevolence and grace, as best she can, without arguing in any manner whatsoever; for I know them, and

[Eleanor] will get more with sweetness than by pushing too hard.

The new queen won warm approval. On 12 August 1530 Philip Lalaing, Marguerite’s maitre d'hotel, adviser, and occasional ambassador, reported to his lady from Louise’s palace in Cognac that Louise and the king were most beholden to Marguerite for the peace, the return of the king’s sons, and the queen, whom Louise lauds “wonderfully, saying that she is the most virtuous and best lady that it is possible to find; and she said that she is ashamed that the said queen does her, Louise, such honor..” Lalaing adds that he has personally observed and heard it said by many people that the praise is well deserved.^{[616] [617]}

Along with Louise, whom Eleanor addresses as she who holds “all power,”^[618] Anne de Montmorency, Francois I’s grand maitre de France, became the new queen’s most significant ally at court. Montomorency had praised Eleanor lavishly even before she arrived in France, writing to Marguerite of Austria that the “wise, beautiful and honest woman” had “conversed with him about subjects as good and honest as they could possibly be.”^[619] He placed his younger sister, Louise, Mareschale de Chatillon, in the queen’s entourage as her principal lady-in-waiting.^[620] In a letter of instruction to his advisor, Jean de Sainte-Aldegonde, seigneur de Noircomes, Charles V asks Noircomes to recommend him affectionately to Montmorency and “thank him for the good work that his had done and does every day for his sister and for the good of peace and friendship between us..”^[621]

But Eleanor lost a powerful ally when Louise died in September 1531. With the most influential proponent for good relations with the emperor gone, even Montmorency’s continued support did not persuade much of the court, and, over the next several years, opinion turned increasingly against the emperor and toward an alliance with Henry VIII. In particular, the king’s reform-minded sis­ter, Marguerite, whom historian Ghislaine de Boom describes as seducing a naive Eleanor with displays of friendship even as she worked to convince the king of the emperor’s malign intentions, tended in this direction.^[622] Marguerite of Austria, in the letter of instruction cited above, had signaled the importance of winning over the king’s sister.^[623] However, this Marguerite’s religious convictions placed her beyond Eleanor’s reach as an ally.

Norfolk further describes for Henry VIII Marguerite’s assessment of the relationship between the king and queen, relating that in Marguerite’s opinion, “no man can be worse content with his wife than her brother is, so that these seven months he neither lay with her, nor yet meddled with her.” Norfolk asked why this was. Marguerite replied, “ ‘Because he does not fancy her’; nor when he doth lie with her, he cannot sleep; and when he lieth fro her, no man sleepeth better.” At which point Norfolk asked, “Madam, what should be the cause?” to which Marguerite replied, maliciously, one assumes, “She is very hot in bed, and desireth to be too much embraced.” Then Marguerite “fell upon a great laughter, saying, ‘I would [not] for all the good in Paris that the king of Navarre were [no be]tter pleased to be in my bed than my brother is to be [in hers].’ ”

Certainly Marguerite’s account must be taken with a grain of salt, but ambas­sadors confirm that the king visibly preferred Anne de Pisseleu, who became the Duchesse of Etampes in 1534. Although Anne remained in the queen’s house­hold, they report the king’s visits to his mistress, his leaving Eleanor behind while hunting with Anne and the “little entourage,” and his advice-taking from Anne on political matters.^[625] As I discussed in the previous chapter, the Duke of Norfolk also notes that Eleanor’s servants had formed two “bands,” one taking the king’s and one the queen’s side, keeping to different sides of the chamber. The dauphin Francois and his mistress were on the queen’s side, which angered the king, “who reminded the dauphin that the queen ‘did not behave as she ought to his father’ and exclaimed that he would keep him ‘out of her company.’ ”^[626]

Still, Eleanor continued to do her job, requesting a first a rendez-vous with her sister Marie of Hungary in 1532.

Eleanor sought a meeting with her sister again in 1535 when the emperor and king were about to go to war; this time she prevailed. Franpois I was obsessed, from the time of his accession to the throne until his death, with the desire to recover the duchy of Milan, which he claimed as his birth right, via his great-grandmother, Valentina Visconti. After taking the duchy early in his reign, he had lost it to the emperor in 1525 with the defeat at Pavia. When Duke of Milan Francesco II Sforza died suddenly in October 1535, the king demanded a marriage between one of his sons and an imperial daughter or niece, who would bring the duchy as dowry. Charles V appears at several points to have been ready to cede, but, each time, he postponed.

The meeting between the sisters, however, which took place in Cambrai, 16 August 1535, settled nothing.^[631] War seemed inevitable when Charles V, hav­ing captured Tunis in 1535, began to work his way up the Italian peninsula in early spring 1536,^[632] exposing Montmorency’s diplomatic approach as hopelessly naive. Eleanor’s in-between position became excruciating. Louise of Chatillon was removed from the queen’s entourage, an aggression carried out at the behest of Marguerite of Navarre, or so a letter of Charles V to his advisor Nicholas Perrenot de Granvelle claims.^[633] Charles V’s ambassador to France Jean Hannaert writes on 29 March 1536 to Charles V’s wife, Empress Isabella, that courtiers were watching the emperor’s moves with interest, asserting that “the Turk will soon give the Emperor so much to do in various parts of the Mediterranean sea that he will be unable to defend himself if attacked simultaneously at so many points.” Eleanor, he reports, “is in very good health, though sad and dejected at the signs of the approaching war.”^[634]

Franpois I, publicly disavowing Montmorency’s—and Eleanor’s— philosophy of peace with the emperor, invaded Savoy; in response, the imperial army took Piedmont and then invaded Provence in July 1536.^[635] The French army attempted to take Milan but failed, and war broke out in earnest, with Charles V simultaneously invading Provence and northern France. When the dauphin Franpois, whom Norfolk had described as “on the queen’s side,” died suddenly in August, rumors circulated that the young man had been poisoned at the order of emperor and that had the poisoner not been quickly arrested he would have done the king in as well.^[636]

And yet, this war eventually offered Eleanor an opportunity to carry out the work for which she had been married to the Valois king in the first place. She appears with the king, who had accompanied Montmorency north to oversee military action in April 1537.^[637] In a long letter to his ambassador of 15 September 1537 on how to deal with the Pope, the emperor leaves no doubt that he sees his sister as central to peace making initiatives. Franpois I, he writes, had noted

in general terms, without specifying anything, that he was a Christian prince and wished to obviate the sufferings of Christendom; that it would not be his fault if peace was not concluded, and that he could certify that. The Queen, our sister [Eleanor], and the Grand Master of France [Anne de Montmorency], both of whom were present, expressed the same wish in warmer and more explicit terms, saying that the King was more inclined than ever to peace, and that they both would strenuously work for it, or at least for a good long truce, during the preliminaries of which peace might be settled.

The queen and Montmorency, he continues, had explained that if he, the emperor, sent his mandate to Marie, Eleanor “could easily obtain from her hus­band [Francois I] the necessary powers and instructions to treat.” Eleanor was about to “send a person” to the emperor to discuss “meeting the King at some place on the frontier.”^[638]

The end result was the Truce of Nice in July 1538 between France and the Empire, followed by a personal meeting between the king and emperor. The long account of events composed by Cardinal Siguenza offers Eleanor a visible role.^[639] The king of France arrived at Villeneuve “with great pomp and splendor and with a large suite of courtiers, for he has with him his Queen [Eleanor], and an infinite number of ladies,” including the ever-present Duchess of Etampes, an array of other family members and advisers, and “8,000 Swiss to guard his per­son.” During a reception in Nice, the Emperor’s envoys asked permission from the king to “go and kiss the hand of queen Eleanor.” They were led to the rooms of the queen, “who was anxiously expecting them; all kissed her hands, and she embraced them with tears in her eyes.”

The queen’s presence is next recorded when on 7 June she appears accompanied by Montmorency, bringing “in her suite many ladies and gentlemen beautifully dressed and arrayed.” On 10 June the queen visited her brother, “who, knowing of her arrival beforehand, had ordered the open ground before the palace where he is now living to be carefully swept, awnings of linen-cloth to be prepared as a guard against the rays of the sun.” A bridge was erected to receive the queen’s boat and imperial galleys sent out to welcome her. When the queen arrived, “the emperor advanced a few steps, stretched his hand to his sister, and, reaching the pier, embraced and kissed her most affectionately, his countenance beaming with joy. In this way brother and sister remained for some time....” Suddenly the pier collapsed, and everyone, including the emperor and the queen, were plunged into the shallow water, causing much merriment after the initial shock.

The following year, Francois I allowed Charles V to cross through France on his way to Ghent to suppress warring cities in Flanders.^[640] But he waited in vain for Charles V to cede Milan, and, in April 1540, the emperor changed course, offering, along the dauphin his niece and the Low Countries, Burgundy, and the Charolais rather than the duchy that the king so coveted. In October, Charles V invested his own son Philip with Milan. No record of Eleanor’s chagrin remains; still, it was clear that Montmorency’s policy was a failure and that the queen’s sit­uation would worsen as the outraged Franqois I turned against Montmorency.^[641]

Eleanor’s victory, then, was short-lived. Her position was furthered damaged by the increased influence of the Duchess of Etampes, who by 1540 appears regu­larly in ambassador reports as a much-sought after, fully engaged political figure. Montmorency and the queen’s faith in the emperor afforded Anne an opportu­nity to convince the king that she was better equipped to promote his interests. Eleanor, always discreet, left only one straightforward trace of her sentiments toward the duchess. During the 1538 meeting between her husband and brother in Nice, gossip circulated that although the king “declared himself the ‘cavalier servente’ ” of the duchess, Eleanor not only felt no jealousy but even welcomed her husband’s comportment, “thinking that it [was] only a fit of courtly gallantry on his part.” However, the queen seems to have revealed the truth behind her public acceptance to her brother, as the report continues. The queen confessed to the emperor that “she was upset and humiliated” by the illicit relationship. She even recruited the emperor to “pay his court to the said lady and signal in such a manner that all should see and notice it,” presumably to annoy the king. The emperor complied. No record of the king’s reaction remains.^[642]

And yet, Eleanor experienced a final triumph, or so it seems, against the duchess and her ally, the king’s sister, Marguerite, when the king signed the Peace of Crepy with the emperor on 18 September 1544.^[643] In May 1543, Henry VIII, having agreed with Charles V to invade France within the year, sent Franqois I an ultimatum threatening war and, on 22 June, war was declared.^[644] Despite an important French victory at the Battle of Ceresole on 11 April 1544, the king still failed to gain Milan, forced to send troops from Italy to Picardy, which the English and Charles V had just invaded.^[645] Charles V, struggling to manage religious turmoil in the Empire, eventually asked Henry VIII to continue the fight without him or to allow him to make a separate peace with France.Without waiting for the reply, the emperor sealed peace with the French with an agree­ment of marriage between the king’s younger son, Charles, and a niece of the emperor, reawakening the king’s hope of regaining Milan by diplomatic means. Most interesting, the treaty contained a secret appendix, presumably known only to Francois I and Charles V—and possibly Eleanor?—and unfavorable, one assumes, to the reform-minded duchess and Marguerite, in which the king prom­ised to help the emperor support the church, specifically, the Council of Trent, make no separate peace with the English, and contribute to the war effort that Charles V was planning against the Protestant Schmaldkaldic League, which had formed in 1531 against him.^[646]

With the king’s death in 1547, Eleanor rejoined her sister Marie in Brussels. As Ghislaine de Boom notes, the queen would never have the pleasure of an hon­orable retirement at the court of Franqois I’s successor, his son Henri II.^[647] The new king, who as a child had been held hostage along with his older brother in Spain while his father decided whether or not to honor the Treaty of Madrid, wanted nothing to do with Eleanor. She had done her best to make the boy’s captivity as pleasant as possible, but even as a grown man he did not overcome his grudge. Once again, she was left to manage an impossible situation not of her own mak­ing. When Charles V abdicated in 1556, she and Marie joined him in Spain.