Marie de Medici, Queen of France

1575-1642, Queen and Regent of France

Here we have a much more light-hearted entry than the previous one!

Marie de Medici has a complex and contradictory legacy: she was a spectacular failure at all things political but a greatly successful and important patroness of art and architecture.  I suspect she is here mainly because she is responsible for having the Luxembourg palace and gardens built, as she was an incompetent regent.

Marie was a member of the extremely influential Medici family of Florence, who, rising in just a few generations, managed to spread the progeny through all the major houses of Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries.  Her childhood was not significant, so we'll skip to her marriage in 1600.

Marie's husband was Henry IV, King of France and son of Jeanne d'Albret.  He had had to convert to Catholicism upon gaining the crown to satisfy the overwhelmingly Catholic country, and he had done it cheerfully.  In 1600 he had just succeeded in annulling his childless first marriage, and the Catholic Marie de Medici was a good choice, politically.  However, people soon realized this would be a rocky union: Henry had an official mistress, with whom Marie fought constantly, using rough and colorful language that shocked the nobles.  She additionally made a point of befriending Henry's exiled first wife, seemingly just to annoy him and his advisers.  They lived with a lot of bickering for the next ten years, until Marie was officially crowned queen in 1610.

Henry was one of the most popular kings ever in French history, both during his reign and since.  However, just one day after Marie's coronation Henry was assassinated by a fanatical Catholic determined to be rid of a once-Protestant king.  Because their son was only nine years old at the time Marie was made regent for him, and this is when her lack of skill was truly allowed to shine.

Her first order of business was to banish her late husband's mistress.  The second was apparently to fall under the influence of her scheming maid, of all people, who had an ambitious husband.  Marie succeeded in creating him a Marquis soon afterwards.  She then proceeded to dismiss most of Henry's best ministers and to completely change the course of France's foreign relations; she decided to ally with all the Hapsbergs (an Austrian ruling family that had spread to Germany and Spain) she could find despite France's traditional anti-Hapsberg policy.  This did not go well.  In response, some of the most powerful nobles rebelled and she was forced to buy them off because she didn't have enough power to reason with them.

Six years into her regency Marie's son asserted his authority and kicked her out: she was exiled, her maid's husband assassinated, her diplomacy changed back, and he appointed the famous Cardinal Richelieu to his council.  Marie soon became the figurehead of a weak aristocratic revolt which was very unsuccessful.  Richelieu convinced the king to forgive his mother and she was no longer exiled.  As years passed, though, Marie came to resent and hate Richelieu for his influence over the king, and she attempted a coup against him in 1630.  It failed, and she was again exiled, but this time from the country.  She traveled around Europe in grand fashion, ignoring her disfavor with her son, until her death in 1642.

Despite her poor political record, unpopularity, and condemnation from most historians, it has to be said that Marie was an extraordinary patroness of the arts.  Her favorite painter was the renowned Reubens, and he not only painted her portrait but also a crazy cycle of huge paintings of scenes of her life for the Luxembourg palace.  I don't mean they're artistically crazy; they're very good of course.  But they show her in such an exaggeratedly favorable light that they're frankly ridiculous.  She also of course commissioned the whole Luxembourg palace and gardens as her new residence, and supported other artists of the time.

Marie de Medici is one of those figures in history that you kind of have to snicker at.  She was just so lacking in self awareness and had an overblown opinion of herself, but got practically nothing done and caused lots of unnecessary trouble in her lifetime.  While I do appreciate her good contributions, historically she is just a footnote.

Thanksgiving Break

Tomorrow I'm leaving for NY to celebrate Thanksgiving there, yay!  I'll be back in Paris the 26th and will recommence writing and such then; while I'm in NY I don't plan to do any new posts.  But keep an eye out because Christmas in Paris is awesome and I will probably have some interesting things to post.  Not to mention talking about the rest of my trip to the Loire Valley.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Mary Stuart, aka Mary, Queen of Scots

1542-1587, Queen of France and Scotland

Here is something completely different for the series so far: a woman who was not particularly bright or politically-savvy, was decidedly not French, and is mostly here because of a series of accidents of politics and birth.  Her story is long, so get settled in.

Mary Stuart was the daughter and sole heir of James V of Scotland, and the great-niece to King Henry VIII of England.  Her life was constantly marked by her political rivalry with her cousin-once-removed, sometimes friend, sometimes enemy, Elizabeth I.  Nearly her whole life was spent as pawns of other people's political ambitions, and the few times she asserted herself for her own wishes she made extremely poor and rash decisions.  Frankly I'm not sure why she is included in this series of statues; although there is something profoundly moving and sad about her life, she was not very important to history in any way, nor was she personally remarkable.

Anyway, her life started with a very dramatic first week: she was born prematurely (extremely dangerous at the time) to the queen of Scotland, a French duchess, and six days later her father, the king, died unexpectedly.  Mary, at six days old, therefore was the youngest person I know of to ascend a throne.  A council of regents governed for the infant queen, but for the last few decades Scotland's ruling class had been severely polarized by the issue of religion, so the council was always quarreling.  The traditional Scottish aristocracy was largely Catholic, while most of the rest of the population had converted to Calvinism, a very strict and puritanical form of Protestantism.

Henry VIII of England attempted to betroth Mary to his young son, Edward, in order to unite the two countries.  Just before this was official, a powerful Scottish Catholic cardinal got in the way to push a pro-Catholic agenda.  For him, and other Scottish Catholics, the best course of action was to ally with Catholic France against Protestant England.  The six month old baby Mary was of course at the center of the controversy, with both sides afraid the other would kidnap her, and she was moved into protective custody for the first of many times in her life.

Conditions worsened over the next few years between Scotland and England, and when Mary was five she was betrothed to the three year old heir to the French throne, and sent to France to grow up there.  She received a stellar education, was reputed to be extremely beautiful, and developed a close friendship with her future husband.  They made a strange pair: the very tall, beautiful, eloquent Scottish Mary, and the short, ugly, stuttering Francois.  Just before their marriage in 1558, Mary, 15 years old, was manipulated into signing a secret agreement passing both the kingdom of Scotland and her claim to the English throne on to her husband if she died without children.

This was probably because Mary Tudor, then the queen of England, was dying, and the heir apparent was her Protestant sister Elizabeth. Long before this, Henry had annulled his marriage with Elizabeth's mother, Anne Boleyn, declaring it had never happened, and therefore making Elizabeth illegitimate.  Although Henry later restored her to the succession many English Catholics did not recognize her claim to the throne.  Mary Stuart, as the granddaughter of Henry's sister, was the last remaining Catholic Tudor heir.  Realizing this, French nobles thought they could use her claim to take over the throne of England, and convinced her to sign that agreement.  It would be the start of a long struggle over the English crown.

When Mary was fifteen the king of France died, making her queen of France.  Sadly, though, her husband died a year and a half later (of an ear infection!) and Mary was sent back to Scotland.  [Note: this is the extent of Mary's having any impact on the government of France, so I don't quite know why she is honored as a Frenchwoman here.]  While Mary had been growing up in France, the regent council had continued to rule Scotland for her, and the religious tensions had increased.  Mary herself was Catholic, although not terribly pious, and this linked her far more with the minority aristocracy rather than the Scottish people.  She always spoke English with a bit of a French accent, and was completely out of touch with her subjects; by the time she returned to Scotland she was already unpopular as an absentee queen.

In spite of the religious strife Mary didn't involve herself: she tolerated and even sometimes supported the Protestants on the council.  There was a lot of pressure for her to remarry, and of course each faction suggested princes of their own religion.  Elizabeth of England herself suggested that if Mary married an English noble she would consider making her heir (as Elizabeth had no intention of marrying).  Mary rejected all of these ideas and when she was 22 more or less eloped with her first cousin, the deeply unpopular Catholic aristocrat, Robert Darnley.  This infuriated Elizabeth firstly because as her cousin Darnley was technically not allowed to marry without her permission, and because both Mary and Darnley had claims to her throne.  The marriage also incited the most powerful Scottish Protestants into open rebellion against Mary. 

Much has been written about Mary and Darnley's marriage, but suffice to say here, that Mary was infatuated with him while he was clearly angling to become co-sovereign of Scotland.  He was absolutely hated by the Protestants, he personally helped murder Mary's closest friend in front of her while she was pregnant, and was just generally a detestable guy.  Just a year and a half after their marriage Darnley was murdered, probably with Mary's complicity.  They had had one son together, who would become James VI of Scotland.

The whole affair of Mary's marriage was sordid and surrounded by gossip, and it made her even more unpopular.  When rumors of Mary's involvement in Darnley's death reached Elizabeth she sent Mary a letter advising her to be seen to severely punish the murders, so that people would see her being a strong, just monarch.  During this period Elizabeth still saw Mary as a possible heir to England, and often sent her friendly letters with advice.

Mary did nothing, however, and a couple of months later was kidnapped and coerced into marrying the man who was in charge of Darnley's murder, James Bothwell.  This alienated both Catholics and Protestants, who were shocked that she would marry Darnley's murderer, and, you guessed it, she became more unpopular.  The rebellion against her continued and four months later Mary was forced to abdicate her throne in favor of her one year old son.  Her husband was exiled and she was imprisoned in Scotland.

She remained there for one year before escaping across the border into England, where she expected Elizabeth to help her get the Scottish throne back.  Elizabeth was not overjoyed about this, considering Mary's likely involvement in Darnley's murder, and set an inquiry into the matter before agreeing to help Mary.  Mary in turn was very angry, saying no court had a right to try her, since she was a sovereign ruler.  It went ahead anyway, but Elizabeth did not want to convict or acquit her cousin; in the meantime there was a Protestant regent of Scotland who was allied with Elizabeth, so she essentially had a puppet government in place.  Elizabeth by this time had realized Mary's unpredictable nature, and that she could become the centerpiece of a Catholic plot to overthrow her.  Therefore Mary was kept imprisoned in grand comfort in England. 

The next year a Catholic rebellion coincided with the assassination of Elizabeth's puppet in Scotland, making her very paranoid and more determined to neutralize Mary.  (Please note: Elizabeth was not just paranoid.  She probably had more attempts on her life than any other Western European monarch, ever, including assassins sent from the Pope.  She had enemies solely on the basis that she was female and Protestant, so it's not hard to see why she felt this was a necessary measure.)  In 1571 Mary was again implicated in a plot to overthrow Elizabeth (although she probably wasn't personally involved, just the figurehead), and this went on periodically for the next fourteen years while Mary was in captivity.

Finally in 1586 letters from Mary were used to implicate her in a plot on Elizabeth's life.  The letters were definitely not forged, and although it's unlikely that Mary was actively plotting against Elizabeth, she was very careless in her correspondence and was friendly towards people who wanted to assassinate the queen.  Mary was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death.  In spite of all the plotting Elizabeth still did not want to execute Mary.  This is remarkable, since Elizabeth generally had no problem executing anyone who plotted against her; I tend to think she knew Mary wasn't the mastermind behind these plots, and that she pitied Mary's difficult position.  She also feared a Scottish rebellion if she killed their deposed queen.  Anyway, she eventually signed a death warrant - although there is evidence that she never intended for it to be carried out.  One of her advisers ordered it to be immediate, without Elizabeth's knowledge.

Mary was beheaded in February 1587.  Elizabeth immediately executed the man who was in charge of Mary's death warrant, saying he acted without her authority in enforcing it.

Her life was undoubtedly tragic, and I think it's clear that she had very little control over it most of the time.  Mary was an unremarkable woman living in a difficult position during a tumultuous time, and only a very strong and competent person could have survived it.  However, she had very little impact on history on the whole, and I've never really understood why she is a such a popular figure.  In the end, anyway, Mary had the posthumous last laugh: her son James VI became Elizabeth's heir, and the Scottish throne eventually took over the English one.

Incidentally, Mary's post-France life had very little to do with France - they wouldn't even help her when she was in captivity.  I have no idea why she's in the Luxembourg gardens.

Fontrevraud l'Abbaye

I've spent so many words the last couple of weeks telling you the story of Alienor of Aquitaine because I made the trip to the Loire Valley to see the place she spent her last years.  As I mentioned in the first part, Alienor is a hero of mine, and possibly my favorite woman of history.  I was really (nerdily) excited to see her effigy and the abbey where much of the Angevin dynasty (the family of King Henry II of England) was laid to rest.

Fontevraud is a tiny town about a half hour drive from Saumur.  Originally it was just an abbey, but gradually a small village built up to support the abbey, and even now tourism to the abbey is the major business there.  I found this old sign near the town hall, a greeting to tourists, adorable and kind of indicative of the relationship between little towns like this and their visitors.

(Tourists: welcome to Fontevraud.  You are just a few steps from the famous royal abbey.  Guides will let you visit the big monastic complex.  When you leave, take a little time to see the houses, discover the town.  Right next to the town hall, to the left, St Michel's church [late 12th century] will enchant you with its picturesque exterior and the art treasures it contains.  Follow the Allee des Tilleuls, parking is at the end.  Halfway down the path note the funerary chapel of St Catherine [13th century], topped by a lantern for the dead.  Have a good stay in our town, and a good return to your homes.)


The town appears to have not changed much from late medieval times: most of the streets are extremely narrow, lots of buildings survive, and the layout is clearly the same.

 

 

 

Here is the town hall, with the flag in front, and the 12th century church mentioned above to the left.

And the church.

The 13th century funerary chapel - the thing sticking out of the top is what they call the lantern of the dead.  You can't walk a block here without coming across a medieval building.

The more modern part of the town consists of a retirement home and this area, which is next to the tourist parking lot.

It features this memorial of those who died during WWI, one of the best ones I've seen.

Next time I'll show you the abbey itself.

Alienor d'Aquitaine, part 2

That is the only representation of Alienor that I was able to find, aside from a simple one on her official seal.  It's hard to tell here, I guess, but all sources note her great beauty, and some particularly say that she was very seductive even into middle age.

Anyway, I left off Alienor's story last time as she got married to her second husband, Henry II of England.  Their partnership has gone down as one of the most important, but most volatile relationships in history, and I find their story fascinating.

Alienor was around 28 or 29 at the time of her second marriage - already getting old by medieval standards - a divorcee, and had two daughters in France.  Henry had just turned 19, had been involved in the war for the English throne since 14, and inherited his French lands a year or two earlier.  His mother was the only surviving heir to the English throne - but because she was a women war broke out over letting her be queen - and his father was the duke of Anjou, an independent province just north of Aquitaine and southeast of France, now part of modern France.  Alienor had been known to Henry's father's court and had a rather notorious reputation: his father had warned him not to get involved with her.

Despite this, the first years of Alienor and Henry's marriage seemed to be okay - they argued a lot, because Alienor was not one to hold back her opinions, and Henry was known to be hot-headed, but they also had a very strong attraction and probably had a good understanding on an intellectual level.

Henry finally won his throne in 1154, two years after their marriage, and things were good for a few years.  He had many mistresses at this time but Alienor mostly ignored them, as a queen was supposed to do.  Since they had already had a son, her Aquitaine lands officially came under Henry's rule, adding to his wealth and prestige; Henry had control over England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Normandy, Anjou, and Aquitaine, creating a veritable empire and making them probably the most powerful couple in the Western world.

Over the first thirteen years of their marriage Alienor and Henry had eight known children, five sons and three daughters (one son died as a toddler).  With that many sons it seemed like their line would have no trouble or dispute in succeeding to the rules of their various territories, and Henry did what many kings in his position at the time did: he intended to give different territories to different sons. 

Henry "the Young King," their oldest, was to have the British Isles and Normandy; Richard, Alienor's clear favorite child, who would eventually be Richard I "the Lionhearted", was to have Aquitaine; and Geoffrey, the third son, was to have some various minor lands.  John, who would become the notorious King John of Robin Hood and Magna Carta fame, was originally intended to not inherit any major territories. Henry II even had young Henry crowned as joint king during his lifetime, just to make a show of how clear he succession was to be.

Nice as the plans were, though, things did not go as intended.  Firstly, Aquitaine, which had always been a fiercely proud and independent land, did not accept Henry's rule willingly.  In fact, they only really recognized Alienor as their ruler, and her sons once they got older; they did not want to be ruled by this son of the duke of Anjou.  Henry attempted to enforce his rule by military means, and also tried to expand his territory into the county of Toulouse, and failed.  For the next decade and more Aquitaine would have on-and-off rebellions.

The other major event of this time was Henry's inadvertently causing the murder of Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury and most powerful clergy member in the country - it's a pretty interesting story but the details aren't important here.  The assassination utterly shocked Europe, and was one of the most important events in medieval history.  Henry lost a lot of prestige and was forced to do penance in front of the Pope like anyone else.

It also put their marriage, which had been deteriorating over the years, under major strain.  By their youngest child's birth in 1166 Henry had begun his relationship with his most famous mistress, Rosamond Clifford, and his relationship with Alienor seems to have ended.  Alienor moved to the capital city of Aquitaine with her oldest daughter (by French king Louis), which helped the rebellions there, and over about five years she set up the most famous court in Europe.  It was focused on chivalric ideals of courtly love and consequently women were actually the most important people there, having semi-official control over the knights who came to see them.

In 1173 Henry "the Young King" was extremely angry with his father for not giving him more power over the kingdom, despite the fact that he was also crowned king.  Henry the elder's enemies joined with Henry "the Young King" and urged him to start a rebellion.  He went to Aquitaine, where his next two youngest brothers were living with Alienor, and the three brothers plus their mother organized a major uprising against Henry II.  There is some evidence that after her sons went north to go to battle Alienor convinced some of the feudal lords in the south to join as well.

Henry II had Alienor arrested when she tried to travel to her sons in the north, and as punishment for her role in the rebellion he had her imprisoned in England for the next sixteen years.  She was not allowed to see her sons very often although the king did allow her to come out for major social occasions, so people would not think he was too cruel.  Henry "the Young King" attempted another rebellion in 1183, joined by his brother Geoffrey,  but he died at the end of it.  There was dispute over Normandy, part of his lands, and Henry II insisted they were supposed to go to Alienor rather than their son's French widow.  He allowed Alienor to travel to Normandy and from this period on she had some more freedom, although she was still supervised at all times.  (If you've ever seen the excellent play/movie "The Lion in Winter," it's from this period of time.)

The king and queen never really reconciled; Henry died in 1189 with Alienor still imprisoned.  Their son Richard I "the Lionhearted" was heir, and really the legal heir to their entire kingdom because by this point their sons Henry "the Young King" and Geoffrey, who were to inherit parts of the kingdom, had died.  Richard, who was always the closest to Alienor, immediately let his mother out of prison.  She was around 65 and already quite elderly for the time.  He then went on crusade and Alienor ruled as his regent, personally negotiating his ransom in Germany when he was captured.

Richard died in 1199, leaving no children and just his youngest brother, King John, as heir.  John was Alienor's least favorite child and he did not allow her nearly as much influence and power as his brother had.  However, she was sent, at about age 77, to negotiate the French king's marriage to one of her granddaughters in southern France, Blanche of Castile.  She was captured by an enemy along the way but managed to do her duty.  Her party was again attacked as she was bringing Blanche to France, and this time it was too much for her.  Eleanor decided not to return to England and her son John, and instead retired to the the abbey at Fontevraud.  Fontevraud was a renowned but small abbey that had been patronized by Henry II's family, the dukes of Anjou, for years.  It is in the Anjou area of France, part of the Loire Valley.

When Alienor was about 80 years old King John got into a war with the king of France and Eleanor came out of her seclusion to help her son.  She traveled to Normandy, in the north, to stop one of John's enemies (also her own grandson) from taking control of the land.  The Norman leader put her castle there under siege until John came with reinforcements to free her.

It would be the last adventure for Alienor; she traveled back to Fontevraud, became a nun, and died there three years later.  She was about 83 years old and outlived all but two of her ten children.

Alienor is buried at Fontevraud Abbey, along with her husband Henry II and their son Richard "the Lionhearted."  I'll tell you more about that place next time - as seeing her abbey and resting place were in fact the main reason for my trip to Anjou last weekend.

Here is her effigy.

School lunch in France

Why do I keep going on about French food?  There are two main reasons: firstly, a lot of people ask me questions about it when I'm in NY so I assume they're interested; secondly, it's a huge part of French culture, and is key to some of the differences between France and the USA.

Recently the lunches schools serve have been a big deal in the news in a few countries.  Not only have there been some changes (and non-changes) made in the USA to school lunch mandates, but there are also Jamie Oliver's school lunch initiatives in both the UK and USA.  It's an interesting topic because of course, both of those countries are going through a childhood obesity epidemic, and it only makes sense to consider the food children consume at school when looking for solutions.

In the USA 17% of kids 6-17 are obese (and 20% of 6-11 year olds), about triple the number in 1980, and in the UK 19% are obese (although I believe the ways of measuring this are different between countries).  I can't find new statistics for France but in 2007 3% of children were obese and 17.8% were "overweight or obese" (compare to the USA where that rate is more than one third).

Most Western countries have steadily been growing fatter, but France is one of the least-overweight countries in that classification, and recently the numbers have shown signs of leveling off.  It's not quite clear why this is, but one of the factors is definitely education and food culture - teaching kids how to choose foods and training them to eat healthily is a big deal here.

I came across a fantastic blog on this subject recently, and it's inspired me to do a post on it myself.  The writer points out that French schools treat lunchtime as a continuation of education, teaching kids about foods, exposing them to a lot of different things, and providing very balanced and relatively healthy meals.  She has a lot of really great information on there.

Anyway, I get questions about what I make for the kids I watch, so I thought I'd give an idea of what French kids get to eat at school, and what they are clearly willing to eat (as opposed to the "picky eaters" we all know who eat a very small variety of foods as children).  Keep in mind here that France has outlawed vending machines, sugary drinks, flavored milk, and overuse of condiments in schools.  Lunches are always served with water, and generally kids aren't given a choice in what they get for lunch; instead it's served to them like at a restaurant.  There are usually four courses in their lunch (which is usually 1.5-2 hours long, including recess): first a vegetable dish; second the main course, which usually features protein and starch; thirdly a cheese with one piece of baguette; lastly a dessert.

This one week menu comes from the poorest town in France, a place in the north of the country, whose traditional foods are notoriously much heavier and fattier.  They also are known for eating more sweets.  So bear in mind, this is probably the worst quality lunch in France.  Families pay between 60 cents and $3 for a meal, depending on income.  Unusually, children are given two options for the first two courses most days.

Monday:
Green salad with croutons
Sauteed pork with sauce OR fish filet with Provencal sauce (usually a sauce with tomato, onion, herbs, and olives), with Brussels sprouts and cubed apple
Gouda cheese
apple compote (like a thick sauce)

Tuesday:
Tomato salad OR grated carrot salad
Beef tongue with ecarlate sauce (red wine, onions, herbs, butter) OR steak with unspecific cheese sauce, with pureed parsnips and butter beans with mushrooms
Tomme de Savoie cheese (a mild semi firm cow's cheese)
Far Breton (a flan-like cake from Brittany)

Wednesday: no school

Thursday:
Celery remoulade (raw celery salad, kind of like coleslaw) OR red cabbage with grapes
Turkey breast with a thick white stew sauce OR medallions of hake in sauce, with bulgar and vegetables
Thick fruit smoothie
Strawberry cookie

Friday:
Cheese pastry
Hake filet OR a plain omelette with sauteed vegetables and potato slices
Edam cheese (a semi-firm mild Dutch cheese)
Jonagold apples

Keep in mind this is the menu for all kids in school, ages 3-18.  The French government doesn't give any subsidies for school lunches, so municipalities figure out the money side of things themselves.  Many districts have set goals of 25% organic, local food for lunches as well, although it appears this one has not; as I mentioned, it's the poorest town in France so this isn't surprising.

If this was interesting to you, do check out the above linked blog - she translated a randomly picked school menu every week and they're often really interesting.  I'm trying to imagine little American kids eating those things for lunch and utterly failing!

Saumur in pictures

The little town of Saumur is in the Loire Valley region, southeast of Paris.  The area is mostly known for its wine production, food, and nicely preserved chateaux, and consequently it's a favored spot for wine tours, bike tours, and short stay vacations.  It's also in the historical territory of Anjou, and close to both that province's capital, Angers, and Fontevraud, the little abbey town where Alienor d'Aquitaine, Henry II of England, and Richard the Lionhearted of England are buried.  Since Fontevraud was the main object of my trip and I wanted to see Angers, I thought Saumur would be a good base.

Although I stayed there overnight I was only in Saumur for a few hours of exploring so I don't have too much to say about it.  Also it was very rainy while I was there and I didn't do too much.  So here is what I saw of the town.

A lot of this is from my walk from the train station to my hotel.  You cross two bridges - this is the first, I guess sometimes this is an actual river.

And the next is over the Loire.

In the distance is the Saumur town center.

That castle in the left back is called the Castle of the King of Sicily - I didn't go there but I assume it's from when in the late Middle Ages the dukes of Anjou acquired Sicily due to some weird inheritances.

The rest are taken from the bus window as I went to Fontevraud so forgive the weird angles and glare!

There are late medieval structures all around when you get outside of the town proper.  

There are also these cave dwellings - if you look you can see windows and doors built into the rock face in the background.  These aren't ancient; people built and lived in these regularly through after the Renaissance.  For all I know they're still used today.

Outside the town there are also lots of vineyards and various farm type things.  This is a mushroom growing place - "La champignonniere du saut aux loups."

And that's it for Saumur!  It was a really cute town and there are actually a lot of things to do: they have several museums, the castle, a handful of old churches done in a very specific style, and a few wine caves that give tours and samplings.  It's a stop on a lot of those bike tours around the Loire, and I think it would be perfect in that setting.  It appears to shut down around 7pm even on a Friday, though!

Jeanne d'Albret, Queen and Regent of Navarre

1528-1572, Queen and sole ruler of Navarre and Duchess of Vendome

Here we have a woman and character who is quite different from the last few featured here, she is more in the vein of Marguerite of Anjou in many ways.  Nearly her whole life was characterized by religious strife, wars, and political maneuverings, even though she herself was quite intelligent and a strong theologian and philosopher.

In the last entry here I described the life of Jeanne's mother, Marguerite of Angouleme, who was at the center of the French Renaissance and started movements towards reformation in the Catholic Church.  By the time of Jeanne's adolescence the Church's problems were dominating the European stage.  Things became increasingly polarized between Roman Catholics, many of whom wanted reform of the corruption and excesses then present in the Church, and many of whom favored keeping things just the same, and newly organized Protestants, who broke entirely with the Church, some of whom wanted to simply keep their new religion, and some wanted to completely abolish the Church. 

Jeanne was the sole living child and heir of Marguerite and the king of Navarre.  It was a kingdom between Spain and France, largely dominated by France but also having significant ties with Spain.  At this time Spain did not favor any reform of the Church (and began the Inquisition) while France was still staunchly Catholic, but favored reform.

Jeanne was not raised in Navarre, or even in her mother's Renaissance court in Amboise, but she spent her childhood in Normandy, and her main teacher was a famous humanist.  From him and her mother she learned to be a reformer of the Church, and absorbed strongly individualistic ideas about personal religion.  Despite this stories say she was a carefree, stubborn, and somewhat frivolous princess.  She had to be physically carried down the aisle at her first wedding because she objected so strongly.  This marriage was annulled after four years, and after that she was placed in the guardianship of Francois I, king of France and her uncle.

After Francois' death in 1547 Jeanne was married to the second in line to the French throne, Antoine, duke of Vendome.  They had a fairly happy marriage, and together they ascended the throne of Navarre when her father died in 1555 - although Antoine allowed her to rule pretty much freely, as she was that actual heiress to the territory.  Before she had been crowned a year, Jeanne decided to convert to Calvinism (a particularly strict and puritan version of Protestantism), and went so far as to declare it now Navarre's official religion.  She offered protection and support to French Huguenots - Protestants who were being persecuted in France.  She made loads of religious reforms in Navarre, including having the Bible translated into the native languages.  The conversion made her the most powerful Protestant in Europe.

Despite ruling Navarre, which was south of France, Jeanne and Antoine spent much of their time at the French court in Paris.  They were there when the French Wars of Religion broke out in 1562; her husband, who had not converted with her, leaned towards supporting the court's Catholic position, while Jeanne favored the Protestants.  Faced with pressure, she left Paris soon after to head back to Navarre, at which point her husband threatened to have her kidnapped and sent to a Catholic nunnery.  He died in battle soon after.

She made it safely to Navarre but was subsequently under more pressure from Spain to convert back.  Spain was supported by the Pope, who not only plotted to have her kidnapped and sent to Spain for the Inquisition, but also excommunicated her, threatened to confiscate her kingdom and declare it fair game for any Catholic to take over.  Wedged between two unfriendly bigger states, Jeanne had few allies except Queen Elizabeth I of England, who was also Protestant and had also had the same threats from the Pope (he even probably did send out an assassin for Elizabeth).  Despite the uproar, however, Jeanne had not yet openly given her support to the French Protestants in the war they were fighting.

Finally in 1568, though, she did throw her weight behind those Protestants, and Jeanne and her son went to the main French Protestant city, La Rochelle.  They were soon under siege, and during that time Jeanne was tirelessly writing pamphlets and letters defending her conversion, Protestantism in general, and asking foreign rulers for aid.  Two years later there was more or less a stalemate: the Protestants had lost a major battle but the Catholics had run out of money to fund their army.  Jeanne was one of the main diplomats in charge of the peace treaty, and agreed for her son, the heir to the throne of Navarre, to marry the French king's daughter.

Jeanne was the 4th generation of powerful French women to have taken up arms - literally, intellectually, or diplomatically - to fight for what she believed in.  Although she ended up on the losing side of history she's still recognized as the spiritual leader of the whole Protestant movement in France.  Many of her contemporaries, and some historians today, believed she was too rigid and puritanical, too willing to sacrifice her people and resources for religion.  I think that's a tricky judgment to make considering that this conflict was essentially a Europe-wide war involving every major power.  But she certainly had huge significance in her time, and for that she definitely deserves her place in the Luxembourg gardens.

Alienor d'Aquitaine, part 1

I realized that it would be difficult to explain why I went on my last trip to the Loire Valley without explaining the background of Alienor (aka Eleanor of Aquitaine) and a bit about the family she married into.  She deserves to be noted in my series on significant historical French women, anyway, so I thought I'd tell you the story of her life.  It's a long story, as she lived to approximately 80 years old (possibly older) and continually put herself in the forefront of the politics and culture of her day.

The main reason I chose the area I did for my last trip was because I really wanted to see Alienor's memorial and the abbey where she spent the last years of her life, at Fontevraud in the Loire Valley area.  She is a personal hero of mine - perhaps my main historical hero, even - and I hope this can give you an idea of why.

Alienor was born sometime between 1122 and 1124, the oldest child of the duke of Aquitaine.  No one knows the day or year of her birth because no one thought at the time to note the birth of a daughter, no matter how noble.  Although most people have only heard of Aquitaine in passing, if that, at its height - and Alienor was born at its height - Aquitaine covered about the same area of modern France that the country then called "France" covered.  You must understand that at this time France as we know it did not exist; it was split into several feudal kingdoms that were often at war, always trying to get more land.  Here is a good map of France at the time.  Note Aquitaine in the pale orange, France in the green (mostly ruled by vassals) - and you can see other duchies I've discussed, such as Toulouse in the southeast and Brittany on the western peninsula. 

 

The other important thing to note on this map is the pink, Normandy, and the darker orange, Anjou.  Both of these were held by the king of England - but for Alienor's story it's important to remember that the England of her time was politically French, and had been since its emergence as a country.  In 1066 William the Conqueror, a Frenchman, arrived from Normandy, and always considered his primary possession, his home base, to be Normandy rather than England.  His children were all born in France, and his whole court spoke French.  His great-granddaughter Matilda (an extraordinary woman) married the Duke of Anjou (see above map) and she ended up being the sole descendent of William's who was eligible to take the throne.  There was a war over her succession and eventually her son, Henry II, was put on the throne.  Henry was born in Anjou, raised speaking French, and always considered Anjou his home base; his British possessions were secondary, even though his highest title was "King of England."

Anyway, Alienor was born into a glittering, cultured, very wealthy court that was more renowned than probably any other in Europe at the time.  She was also lucky enough to be raised in a land where women could inherit and own their own property and manage it independently of their husbands, write their own wills, arrange their own marriages if they were over 20, and where noble girls were educated to a very high standard.  She did not grow up with the social constraints of so many women of her time; although at her birth she wasn't seen as the heir to Aquitaine, soon it was apparent that her parents would only have daughters, and her inheritance was never a problem.  

Aquitaine was also the richest area in modern France - far more than France at the time, which perpetually had financial difficulties.  So Alienor had the best education, grew up in the richest court, and by all accounts was very intelligent, willing to learn, witty, and vivacious at a young age.  

Her father, the duke of Aquitaine, died when she was fourteen or fifteen, leaving her as the reigning duchess.  He had placed her under the protection of the king of France until her majority, but the king immediately married her to his son and heir, Louis VII.  This would bring the rich duchy of Aquitaine under the influence of the French crown.

However, as I mentioned before, Alienor had the right to hold onto her own land, so a provision was made that Aquitaine would not be merged with France until a son of Alienor's acceded the French throne - so for now she was free to rule it more or less alone.  Just a few days after her marriage the king of France died, leaving the teens ruling as King and Queen.

The French court did not agree with Alienor: she had a deep love for poetry, music, and the arts, and her open enthusiasm for this, her interest in dancing, hunting, and reading, and her free-spirited personality earned her a reputation for flightiness.  She was also more willing than most French women to speak to men on her own terms, involve herself in politics, and generally behave "immodestly." By all accounts she was also extremely beautiful.

It's clear, though, that as she grew older she learned how to use her charms to deflect from her somewhat shocking behavior: one story tells how she gave her opinion on a religious and political matter to a leading abbot he scolded her for interfering.  When she saw how he disapproved she broke into tears, saying she was just a bitter woman because she had no children after seven years of marriage (she didn't have children at the time, but this was certainly not true).

In 1145 Alienor and Louis, who had had a daughter by then, joined the Second Crusade.  It did not go well from the start; Louis was a terrible tactician and very indecisive.  Eventually they stayed with Alienor's uncle, the prince of Antioch, who tried to influence Louis to take up the prince's strategies and help him in battle.  Alienor's reputation had been damaged due to a series of tactical errors by the army she was riding with, and also there were rumors that she was having an affair with her uncle (people mostly said this to smear her, knowing it was not true).  Louis forced her to continue to Jerusalem with him despite her wish to stay in a safer city, and it seems like these factors made her very unhappy.

When they returned to France Alienor asked the pope for an annulment of their marriage based on the fact that they were something like fourth cousins.  It was virtually unheard of at the time for a woman to take this sort of initiative; marriages were dissolved all the time but it was almost always on a request by the husband or the wife's father.  The pope did not initially agree but after the birth of another daughter he dissolved their marriage.

Louis retained complete custody over their two young daughters, but Alienor's Aquitaine lands reverted back to her sole control, without any ties to France.  Within days of the annulment - during which noblemen had twice tried to kidnap her for her lands - Alienor was already engaged to Henry II, the king of England, and Louis' main rival.  It seems likely that she had proposed to Henry before her marriage to Louis was annulled, and they were married eight weeks later.  

The tumultuous story of her second marriage and later life will come in the next part - and also why the area I just visited is inextricably linked with Alienor, Henry, and their family.

Picpus Cemetery

In my post on the 12th arrondissement I mentioned the Picpus Cemetery, where the victims of the guillotine of the Place de la Nation.  I had originally decided to visit it while exploring the 12th in general but I found it interesting enough to merit its own post.

Firstly, it's not a very well known place; it's privately owned (though I don't know if the noble families' descendents or the church owns it) and one of the few places in the city that does not have a student discount.  There is a plaque on the wall outside saying what the place is, but there is no indication of it being a site that's open to the public.

 

("Here, in two common graves, the bodies of more than 1300 people who were guillotined at the Place du Trone [now Place de la Nation] were buried between June 13 and July 28 1794.")

I went in and it seemed deserted, with just a little chapel.  This is not the original church that was here at the time of the Revolution; a convent had been on this ground at that point but it was seized by the revolutionary government.

An older guy came out of a small office to the right and told me the site is privately owned and you have to pay two euros to get in.  It seemed like most people must leave when they find that out, because he started to go back in, but I responded that I knew that and I'd like to see the cemetery.  He seemed quite surprised, but told me where to go and gave me a little map of the grounds.  I guess no one really comes here; the only other person I saw visiting was a little old lady who I think was a family member of some of the people buried there.

Anyway, first I went to check out the chapel, which is the darkest one I've ever seen, and is dedicated to the victims of the Terror.  I had to take this picture with the door open to let in some light.  It's a simple place, with a list of those buried here in the back.

Then I went out and through the gate to the garden and cemetery.  It was immediately evident that it's historically been a site of particular American interest; the Marquis de Lafayette, aka General Lafayette of American War of Independence fame, is buried here.  These plaques are next to the gates:

("In memory of General Lafayette, 1757-1834.  Gift of the Benjamin Franklin Paris Chapter and the Daughters of the American Revolution.")

("To commemorate the arrival of General Pershing and the American army in France, July 1917.  Gift of the Benjamin Franklin Paris Chapter and the Daughters of the American Revolution.")

After that is a rather empty garden, which separates the modern chapel grounds from the old convent living areas.

That is one of the old convent walls.

Passing through the wall, I came to the cemetery proper.  There is a garden and then the burial area is off to the right, but at the far end of these trees is one of the common graves.

Weirdly, I did not take any long shots of the cemetery itself so I can't show it as a whole.  Instead I will direct you to the first part of this post, because overall it looks like a compact version of the other Parisian cemeteries.

Anyway, some background on the modern cemetery: in 1797, after the Terror was over and people were no longer being guillotined, Princess Amelie Zephyrine of Salm-Kyrburg secretly bought a small area of the old convent land, intending to make it a memorial to the victims buried there, one of whom was her brother.  By Napoleon's time some other family members of the noble victims bought the rest of the land and formed a proper cemetery right next to the common graves.  These were mostly women, and included widows, sisters, and mothers of men who had been killed.  General Lafayette's wife, born Adrienne de Noailles, was one of the main members; her sister, mother, and grandmother were some of those in the common grave.  Her extended family was nearly wiped out during the Terror because they were very close to the monarchy.

Their graves

The following is going to be largely pictures of plaques and gravestones, with translations and a bit of commentary.  Since it's not going to interest most people I'm going to do something I never do and generally dislike, and put a page jump.

13th arr

Today we are headed into a really unknown (by tourists) area of Paris: the 13th arrondissement.  If you take another look at the map of the arrs, you'll see that the 13th is south and east of the 5th, where I live now.

The sad fact is, although I had so much to say about the 5th that it took two posts (and I still didn't fit it all in), I don't have nearly as much to say about the 13th.  This is particularly disheartening because it's where I lived when I was here in 2008!

As I said all the time back then, the northern part of the 13th is very residential, quiet, and frankly almost boring.  However there are a few things of note: the 13th is home to the extremely cool National Library and the only prison in Paris, which I lived next to last time and I wrote about once before.

The BNF (Bibliotheque Nationale de France, the National Library) is an almost brand new site and kind of interesting architecturally.  It mainly consists of four large towers (representing areas of learning: time, letters, law, and numbers) that are supposed to look like open books.  They don't, really, to me.  These pictures aren't mine.

Between them is a large, inaccessible courtyard, but underneath that there are more levels of the library.  Anyone can get a membership and study there (I'm a member of a different branch).

Two areas of the 13th are distinctive neighborhoods: there is Paris' Chinatown in the south/southeastern part (the only place to get good, authentic Chinese), and the Buttes aux Cailles, the only cute area in the arrondissement, which used to be a village to itself.

You get a lot of this type of thing in the 13th, as below: some late 19th/early 20th century buildings juxtaposed with quite moderns ones.

That's basically all I would remark on in the 13th.  But that's me; there is another person, long dead, who wrote a good deal about the 13th in his second most famous novel.  A good portion of Les Miserables is in fact set in the 13th, and Victor Hugo describes one particular area in some detail.

I was going to talk a bit about how the 13th is one of the newest areas of the city, and not so long ago it wasn't even considered part of Paris, but why would I do that when there is a much better writer to tell you about it?

Hugo was a native Parisian and although the scenes he's describing here were set between thirty and forty years before the novel was published (1862) he remembered the city as it was in meticulous detail.  By the mid 1800's the 13th had become more integrated into the city - as Hugo notes, a train station was built there in the 1840's and "wherever it is placed on the borders of a capital, a railway station is the death of a suburb and the birth of a city."*  

So I'm going to give you some quotes from Les Miserables describing the Place d'Italie area of the 13th, and show some modern pictures of the places he's talking about.  I'll try to edit him as best I can!

“[In 1823], a rambler who had ventured into that unknown country...reached a point where it might be said that Paris disappeared. It was no longer solitude, for there were passers-by; it was not the country, for there were houses and streets; it was not the city, for the streets had ruts like highways, and the grass grew in them; it was not a village, the houses were too lofty. What was it, then? It was an inhabited spot where there was no one; it was a desert place where there was some one; it was a boulevard of the great city, a street of Paris; more wild at night than the forest, more gloomy by day than a cemetery.”  

He's talking about going southwest down the Boulevard de l'Hopital; here are a couple shots from the walk I took based on his directions (these were taken on Sunday, which was very sunny!):

“The rambler, if he risked himself...after leaving on his right a garden protected by high walls; then a field in which tan-bark mills rose like gigantic beaver huts; then an enclosure encumbered with timber, with a heap of stumps, sawdust, and shavings...then a long, low, utterly dilapidated wall, with a little black door in mourning, laden with mosses, which were covered with flowers in the spring; then, in the most deserted spot, a frightful and decrepit building...this daring rambler would have reached little known latitudes at the corner of the Rue des Vignes-Saint-Marcel.”

 
Those "little known latitudes at the corner" are roughly here, just before you reach the Place d'Italie.  Now the Place d'Italie is one of those huge roundabouts, but at this time it was a "barrier," or a little station attached to low city walls, marking the official end point of the city.  As he says, it was a rather deserted area then called a suburb rather than actually part of Paris. Here is that corner today, first the corner itself then looking into the Place d'Italie.

After a lot of surveying the area and going over old names of roads I think this is where the house/"decrepit building" he refers to would have stood (funnily enough now a police station - in the book lots of crimes take place in the house):

 "Opposite this house, among the trees of the boulevard, rose a great elm which was three-quarters dead; almost directly facing it opens the Rue de la Barriere des Gobelins, a street then without houses, unpaved, planted with unhealthy trees, which was green or muddy according to the season, and which ended squarely in the exterior wall of Paris. An odor of copperas issued in puffs from the roofs of the neighboring factory."

The factory he mentions was one of the dyeing factories that served as part of the Gobelins manufacture, a large business that made tapestries and cloth.  The Gobelins had been functioning in that spot since the mid 1400's and had expanded to include large factories after the industrial revolution.  Parts of these factories are now museums.  Here is the modern Avenue des Gobelins (what he refers to as the "barriere des Gobelins) where it meets the Place d'Italie.

And one of the late 19th century factory buildings, which is now the main museum for the manufacture.

“this Place Saint-Jacques, which was, as it were, predestined, and which has always been horrible, probably the most mournful spot on that mournful boulevard...”

This is where he's talking about, across the roundabout from where we started.

 
This is now a large boulevard with a divider; where the divider meets the roundabout there is now a WWI monument to the fallen of the 13th - strange that it's there when he had described that exact intersection as "the most mournful." 

And now his overall impression of this neighborhood:


“The place was unpleasant. In addition to the gloomy thoughts which assailed one there, one was conscious of being between the Salpetriere [a hospital], a glimpse of whose dome could be seen, and Bicetre [an old prison just south of Paris], whose outskirts one was fairly touching; that is to say, between the madness of women [hospital] and the madness of men [prison]. As far as the eye could see, one could perceive nothing but the slaughterhouses, the city wall, and the fronts of a few factories, resembling barracks or monasteries; everywhere about stood hovels, rubbish, ancient walls blackened like cerecloths, new white walls like [funereal] winding-sheets; everywhere parallel rows of trees, buildings erected on a line, flat constructions, long, cold rows, and the melancholy sadness of right angles. Not an unevenness of the ground, not a caprice in the architecture, not a fold. The ensemble was glacial, regular, hideous. Nothing oppresses the heart like symmetry. It is because symmetry is ennui, and ennui is at the very foundation of grief. Despair yawns. Something more terrible than a hell where one suffers may be imagined, and that is a hell where one is bored. If such a hell existed, that bit of the Boulevard de l'Hopital might have formed the entrance to it.”

Depressing, no?  I thought the above pictures might be the modern version of what he's talking about.  I wouldn't currently describe it the way he does, but this area of Paris is certainly one of the ugliest, least creative, and - he's still right about this - symmetrical in the city.

Anyway, starting at that roundabout and going south and southeast is Chinatown, and that area certainly has a more interesting energy.  I wish I had pictures of Chinese New Year there because it's fun and awesome - they have a parade of dragons and lanterns, lots of people, food everywhere, and just cool stuff.

That about sums it up for the 13th; sorry it was a rather depressing description.  I don't mind the 13th particularly, it's just not that interesting to write about!

*All the quotes are from Volume II, book IV, chapter I of Les Miserables.  For those who know the story and might be wondering, this is where Valjean rented a house after adopting Cosette, and, years later, where Marius and the Thenardiers had rented rooms just before the uprising - the implication is that Valjean wanted to get lost in the vast population of unfortunates, while Marius and the Thenardiers were forced to live in such a terrible area because of their poverty.