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VALOIS:
The French Experiment (1572-1575)
Seven weeks after the death of Sigismund-August, there occurred in France one
of the most sanguinary outrages of the sixteenth century. On 24 August 1572.,
the Eve of St. Bartholomew, twenty thousand Huguenots were slaughtered in
cold blood by their Catholic royalist enemies. At the time, the two events in
Poland and in France had no apparent connection. Yet within a year, one of the
perpetrators of the massacre was elected to the Polish throne in succession to the
last of the Jagiellons. Henry de Valois, Duke of Anjou, the third son of Henri II
and Catherine de Medici, brother and heir of Charles IX, one time brother-in-
law to Mary, Queen of Scots, Lieutenant-General of France, was just twenty-
two years old.^1
Henry left France for Poland on 3 December 1573. Accompanied by 1,200
gentlemen, he crossed the frontier of the Empire from Metz, and proceeded
through Saarburg, Mainz, and Frankfurt-am-Main. He spent Christmas at the
Abbey of Fulda, and the New Year at Torgau in Saxony. He crossed the Oder
at Frankfurt on 17 January, and the Polish frontier at Miedzyrzecz (Medzeritz)
near Poznan ten days later. On the long wintry stages of his journey, he was
entertained by the verses of the court poet, Philippe Desportes, and by readings
from Aristotle's Politics recited by his secretary, Guy du Faur de Pibrac. He
stood before the gates of Cracow on 18 February 1574, after three-and-a-half
months on the road.
In Paris, Henry's departure was the cause of considerable rejoicing. The
Huguenots were no doubt relieved to see the back of the victor of Jarnac. The
royalists and Catholics were pleased to see their influence extending to distant
parts. On 13 September 1573, the eleven ambassadors of the Polish-Lithuanian
Republic, headed by Adam Konarski, Bishop of Kujawy, had been received in
the Palais de Justice by the King and Queen, in the presence of Catherine de
Medici and the royal pair of Navarre. The Electoral Decree, signed by one hun-
dred and seven senators and hung with one hundred and twenty-one seals, was
read aloud, and laid on the altar of the Sainte-Chapelle, as Henry solemnly
undertook to preserve the constitution of the Republic. The guests were ban-
queted at the Louvre. Henry's personal triumph was shared by the whole of
France. It seemed that the national enemy, the House of Habsburg, had at last
been outflanked. France, in conjunction with Poland, could straddle the