Catherine De Medici
1901
Catherine De Medici
1901
Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley
Balzac turns his forensic gaze on one of history's most demonized women, dismantling four centuries of propaganda to reveal Catherine de Medici as a calculating survivor in an era of unparalleled brutality. Rather than the poisoner's caricature of popular legend, Balzac presents her as a Florentine princess forged in the fires of the French court's treacherous politics: a mother who watched her sons rule through civil war and religious massacre, a regent who balanced between Catholic extremism and Protestant ambition, and a statesmanwoman who understood that throne and grave were often the same destination. Through three interlocking studies - 'The Calvinist Martyr,' 'The Ruggieri's Secret,' and 'The Two Dreams' - Balzac probes the shadowy world of sixteenth-century French politics where Guise princes schemed, mistresses wielded more power than queens, and the only sin was weakness. This is Balzac at his most philosophical, using Catherine as a lens to examine how history writes its victors and villians, and why the dead so rarely get to tell their own stories.
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“Falstaff is, in England, a type of the ridiculous; his very name provokes laughter; he is the king of clowns. Now, instead of being enormously pot-bellied, absurdly amorous, vain, drunken, old, and corrupted, Falstaff was one of the most distinguished men of his time, a Knight of the Garter, holding a high command in the army. At the accession of Henry V. Sir John Falstaff was only thirty-four years old. This general, who distinguished himself at the battle of Agincourt, and there took prisoner the Duc d'Alencon, captured, in 1420, the town of Montereau, which was vigorously defended. Moreover, under Henry VI. he defeated ten thousand French troops with fifteen hundred weary and famished men.””
— Honoré de Balzac
