Etudes Epistémè (Nov 2024)
Les réactions polonaises au massacre de la Saint-Barthélemy pendant la campagne de Henri de Valois au trône de Pologne dans les Mémoires de Jean Choisnin
Abstract
This article analyzes Choisnin’s Memoirs, which reports to Catherine de Medici the outstanding work of the French delegation in Poland. In spite of the very small chance of the endeavor’s success, Jean de Monluc, bishop of Valence, who headed the delegation, succeeded in convincing the Polish nobles to elect Henry de Valois to the Polish throne in 1572. Though these Memoirs offer a mixture of different literary forms (travelogue, political and economic report, electoral discourse), they all converge into a demand for recognition from the Queen Mother, in spite of the fact that by the time Choisnin published his Memoirs, Henry had already fled from Cracow to become King of France after Charles IX’s death. I will focus here on the episode in Choisnin’s Memoirs where the news of the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre arrived in Poland right in the middle of the campaign. More than a piece of bad news, it could literally have ruined all hopes of victory for the French Catholic candidate to the Polish crown. Though Choisnin gives a detailed description of the violent Polish reaction to the massacre, he never mentions any genuine opinion from the French delegation about the massacre, but instead strictly concentrates on the rhetorical strategies which Monluc cleverly adopted, succeeding not only in convincing the Polish nobles that Henry de Valois had not taken any part in the massacre, but what is more, that his very war ethic clearly disapproved of it. The success of Monluc’s rhetorical strategies allowed Choisnin to elude the French delegation’s opinion about the massacre, probably in order to avoid irritating Catherine de’ Medici. By that time, she had lost interest in the victory of her former envoys and probably did not intend to reward them anyway.
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