314 VALOIS
condemned Samuel Zborowski to perpetual banishment. It displeased everyone.
It was too harsh for the Zborowskis, and too indulgent for the nobility as a
whole. It started a series of feuds and vendettas which persisted for a generation.
The Sejm could not be ruled. At their first meeting with the monarch, the sen-
ators had presented him with rich gifts of camels and Tartar slaves. But before
long, they were quarrelling. At one of their sessions, a participant shouted to the
Primate above the hubbub that the 'house was on fire'. Having gained the
desired effect, he then explained that he was referring not to the senatorial
chamber but to the entire Republic 'which has been too long without a king and
without law'. Henry threatened to go on hunger strike unless agreement was
reached. The opposition were still pressing for more explicit guarantees of the
Confederation of Warsaw.
Foreign policy offered no easy success. The French had been hoping to mount
a grand anti-Habsburg coalition, of which the Poles and the Turks would form
the eastern pillars. Before leaving France, Henry had attended the conference at
Bramont in Lorraine where proposals to this end were seriously discussed. In
effect, the incessant embroilments of the Republic on its eastern borders, with
the Muscovites in Livonia, with the Tartars, and at that juncture with the Turks
over the disputed suzerainty of Moldavia, made any early coordination impos-
sible.
There was also the problem of Anna Jagiellonka. Among the many promises
made in Paris, or at the Election, there was an undertaking that Henry would
marry the late king's sister, the last of the Jagiellons. At their first personal
encounter, on the day of his entry into Cracow, Henry had behaved graciously.
The middle-aged spinster dressed in plain grey twill missed a heartbeat at the
prospect of a lusty French husband, twenty-six years her junior. She set her
ladies to embroidering the fleur-de-lys on all her dresses. In reality, Henry had
no honourable intentions. With no serious hope of procreation, the marriage
was entirely unsuitable for the Valois heir; and Henry's passionate thoughts
flew elsewhere.
Henry's anxiety increased on many scores. According to Zamoyski, he was
disappointed by the poverty of the Polish countryside: by the wooden houses
and grey fields which looked their worst in the damp spring. He disliked the
Italian furnishings of the Royal Castle, and ordered a complete refit. He was
bored by the constant debates in Polish and Latin which he could not follow,
and was affronted by the argumentative demeanour of the senators and envoys.
He was offended by the extravagant drinking habits of the Polish court, and, if
Desportes is to be believed, depressed by his enforced separation from the beau-
tiful Marie de Cleves:
De pleurs en pleurs, de complaints en complaints,
je passe, helas, mes languissantes nuits
Sans m'alleger d'un seul de ces ennuis
Dont loing de vous ma vie est si contrainte.