Friday, April 19, 2024

Dear Valued Customer,
 
Adieu la Court, adieu les dames,
Adieu les filles et les femmes,
Adieu vous dy pour quelque temps,
Adieu vos plaisans passetemps;
Adieu le bal, adieu la dance,
Adieu mesure, adieu cadence,
Tabourins, haulboys, violons,
Puis qu’à la guerre nous allons.
 
Farewell to the Court, farewell dames,
Farewell to maidens and ladies,
Farewell to you for a certain time,
Farewell to those pleasant pastimes;
Farewell to the ball, farewell to the dance,
Farewell, measures, farewell, cadence,
Drums, hautboys, violins,
Off to war we go.
  
Thus Clément Marot, born in Normandy, courtier and royal poet, saluted the pleasures of love and life at court as he and the chevalerie departed to war. Marot served in the campaigns of the Guerres d’Italie in the 1520s, following his royal patron François Ier. 
 
Perhaps the baron of Courtomer, François Le Beauvoisien, felt similar pangs as he left the court of France for the Italian wars in the 1550s. He followed François 1er’s son, Henri II.
 
The Guerres d’Italie had started with glorious opportunities for territorial gain and booty in 1494. There was a gratifying casus belli: the French king was the rightful heir to the vast kingdom of Naples. This territory extended from the papal states near Rome through the entire southern peninsula of Italy. The Normans had conquered it in the 11th and 12th centuries; in 1282, Saint Louis’ brother, the tireless soldier Charles d’Anjou had become king at the pope’s invitation. With the death of the last angevin, René d’Anjou, the crown had slipped away to Spain in 1442.
 
French troops under the command of Charles VIII rampaged through the rich duchies, principalities, republics, and papal states of the peninsula, besieging and sacking cities and slaughtering soldiers and civilians. Throughout the long years of campaigning, which would not end until 1558, the scale of destruction and casualties impressed and shocked even victors.
 
“Everything full of death, flight and rapine,” shuddered the Florentine statesman Francesco Guicciardini, writing in the late 1530s. As the codes of courtly love were refined and elaborated by poets, contemporaries grappled with the codes of war.
 
“La guerre nouvelle,” the new war fought with increasingly powerful cannon, arquebuse, and well-trained mercenary troops was more deadly than preceding wars. So was the practice of “la guerre mortelle,” for which the French were infamous. Enemy soldiers and civilians were slaughtered rather than kept captive for ransom or exchange.
 
"Le plus bel esbat du monde," recounted Charles VIII proudly of the battle and subsequent sack of Monte San Giovanni in 1495. French cannon breached the city walls in a mere 8 hours. Afterwards, the troops put the inhabitants, numbering in the hundreds, to the sword.

“Tous furent tuez,” wrote Charles VIII. “All were killed.” It was a strategy of shock and awe, meant to terrorize and discourage resistance. 
 
Charles himself was dead a few years later, aged only 27, after striding into a stone lintel with such force that he broke his skull.

Famine vient
Labeur aux champs saisir.
Le bras au chef soudaine
Mort désire.
Sous terre vois gentilshommes gésir,
Dont mainte dame en regrettant soupire.

Famine comes,
Seizes the labor of the fields.
The arm attacks the head, 
death desiring.
Under the earth, the soldiers lie
Whom many a lady regrets and sighs,
 
wrote Marot in gloomier vein. France’s superiority on the battlefield was short-lived, as other European powers allied against it. Marot’s balade, optimistically entitled “Of Peace and Victory,” ends with the following envoi:
 
“Prince of France,
Drown discord.
Prince of Spain, 
Cease fighting.
Prince of the English,
Keep your territory.
Prince of Heaven,
Award to France
Happy Peace or 
Triumphant Victory.”
 
In 1558, after 64 years, peace if not triumphant victory was imminent. Henri II of France, Philippe II of Spain, and Elizabeth, queen of England signed the paix de Cateau-Cambrésis in the spring of 1559. 
 
The time of balls and dances, ladies and loving glances had returned.
 
In Paris, the baron of Courtomer must have anticipated the sumptuous celebrations planned for the official signing of the paix with relief. His wife and daughters, at home on the seigneurial estates in Normandy, could look forward to his return after long years of service to the king.
 
Everywhere in the kingdom of France, the end of the Italian wars promised a new and even more glorious age. If Italy was devastated, France was then at the height of its Renaissance, a term that had been coined just a few years earlier by the Italian humanist Vasari.
 
Within its boundaries, the royaume had long been at peace. The English had given up their French prétentions in 1453, ending the Guerre de Cent ans. They had departed to their scept’red isle across La Manche. 
 
The Guerre Folle, the “mad war,” had ended in 1491. This was the last violent revolt of the grands vassaux against the kings of France for many years. The princes, dukes and other powerful aristocrats had been too well occupied in Italy.
 
Brittany, with its rich pastures, Atlantic ports, and perilous proximity to England had been united to the Crown since the marriage of Anne de Bretagne with Charles VIII and then his cousin Louis XII in 1498. And Henri II had seized Les Trois Evêchés, the bishoprics of Toul, Verdun, and Metz in Lorraine, firming up the northeast boundaries of France in 1552. 

Meanwhile, the horrors of the peste noire were but a terrifying memory, dimmed by a lapse of 200 years since the last outbreak of the infection on French soil. The cruel winters of the petit âge glaciaire, which had begun in the 1300s, had temporarily abated. Starting in 1530 and until about 1560, Europe basked in a warm period of gentle winters and long, sunny summers. Harvests were good; the population recovered from the years of internal war, plague, and uncertain weather.
 
And now, at last, foreign adventures – and misadventures -- had also come to a respectable conclusion.
 
François Le Beauvoisien had accompanied Henri II on the last Italian campaigns. These, in the face of a unified Italian opposition augmented by the Holy Roman Emperor and the English, had been considerably less successful than the early invasions.

But the subsequent treaty, the paix de Cateau-Cambrésis, signed in 1559, added new territories in Northern France to the realm. Useful alliances were firmed up with matrimony. Henri II’s eldest daughter, Elisabeth de Valois, was betrothed to the king of Spain.  The hand of Marguerite de France, his sister, was given to the duc de Savoie, whose duchy separated France and Italy. His heir, François II, had already married the Queen of Scotland in 1558. If all were to go as planned, Mary, Queen of Scots, would inherit the English throne.
 
Once again, “c’était tous les jours des parties de chasse et de paume, des ballets, des courses de bague, ou de semblables divertissements,” as Madame de Lafayette described the court of Henri II in La Princesse de Cleves.
 
Hunting parties, tennis, dancing, athletic contests and other charming amusements were to replace battles, sieges, and sacks. In April 1559, the treaties with Spain, England, and the Savoy were signed. In June, the weddings were feted with pomp and divertissements.
 
Unfortunately for the realm, the great celebrations of peace and marriage claimed a victim. Henri II was accidentally killed during a joust. He left four young sons. Their mother, Catherine de Medici, clever and ambitious but incapable of holding political and religious factions in check, was regent. And none of their sons produced an heir.
 
It was the end of the “beau XVIe siècle,” the “good” half of the 1600s. The rest of the century saw a violent descent into religious fury and dynastic rivalry over the Crown.
 
On a smaller scale, it was also the end of an era at Chateau de Courtomer. François Le Beauvoisien died a few months before the king he had served, in December 1558. He left a widow and three young daughters.
 
The baron had known the délices of the humanist Renaissance in France. He had known its pendant as well, the ferocious but effective “nouvelle guerre” in Italy. His descendance at Courtomer would know an entirely different world, a product of both humanism and brutality. They would be caught up in the great conflict of their time, the Guerres de Religion. 
 
But as we will see in this month’s Letters, the baron’s eldest daughter Léonore inherited her father’s tenacious temperament along with the title of baronne. And she had, after all, been named for a queen. 

                           A bientôt au Chateau, 

Image above, "Entrée des laquais et des singes," is from a book of designs for the "Ballet des fées de la forêt de St Germain." The costumes, designed by Daniel Ravel in 1625, show the entrance of the lackeys and the monkeys.

If you would like to forward this email to a friend, please click here.

At Chateau de Courtomer, we are taking bookings for 2025 and 2026. We still have a few opening for the Chateau, Orangerie and Farmhouse for 2024. Soon, we hope to open our "petite maison," the gatekeeper's cottage.

Heather (info@chateaudecourtomer.com and +33 (0) 6 49 12 87 98) will be delighted to help you with your enquiries and dates. And Jane will be happy to preview the property on site. She can also act as your concierge.

English and French spoken.

We look forward to hearing from you.