The Courtships of Queen Elizabeth: A history of the various negotiations for her marriage
David Hume · en
In January, 1584, Catharine sought her son at Chateau-Thierry, and at
last persuaded him to a reconciliation with his brother, and took him
to Paris with her. There, with tears and repentance on both sides, the
brothers embraced each other, and the King promised his help towards
another expedition to Flanders. Alençon returned to Chateau-Thierry
to make his preparations, and there fell gravely ill. Guise, the
Spaniards, and the Archbishop of Glasgow in Paris, were busy at the
time planning the invasion of England and the liberation of Mary
Stuart; and Catharine, in April, hastened to Alençon with a new project
--that he should share in the plot and marry his sister-in-law, the
Scottish Queen. But his health was broken. For the next two months he
was battling with approaching death, though still actively preparing
for his new expedition. But Elizabeth could not afford to allow the
French to go alone to Flanders, and when she saw that Henry III. was
helping his brother, she suddenly proposed to Castelnau to join her aid
with that of the King. By the time the offer reached Paris Alençon was
dying, and shortly afterwards, on the 11th of June, 1584, he breathed
his last. Catharine cursed the Spaniards, and swore to be revenged
upon them for her dead son, though how they were to blame for his
death is not very clear; but the messages, both from the King and
his mother to Elizabeth, kept up to the last the fiction of the love
and marriage negotiations between her and the dead Prince. Catharine,
indeed, sent to the English Queen the mourning which she wore for her
so-called affianced husband; and the letter in which Elizabeth sent
her condolence to Catharine is carefully conceived in the same strain.
“Your sorrow,” she says, “cannot exceed mine, although you were his
mother. You have another son, but I can find no other consolation than
death, which I hope will soon enable me to rejoin him. If you could see
a picture of my heart, you would see a body without a soul; but I will
not trouble you with my grief, as you have enough of your own.”[168]