Propaganda and Long Term Impact

Want to walk the halls of Anne Bleyn's childhood home? or explore the castles that made up Henry VI's English stronghold With a subscription to History Hit, you can dive into our Tutor past alongside the world's leading historians and archeologists You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a brand new release every single week coovering everything from the ancient world World War II Just visit history hit. com For slash, suubbscribe Hello, I'm Professor Suusanna Lipbskom and welcome to Not Just the Tudors from History Hit podcast in which we explore everything from Anne Boleyn to the Aztecs, fromom Holbein to the Huguenotos, from Shakespeare to Samuraise Relieved by regular doses of murderaths, espionage, and witchcraard In other words, just the tutors But most definitely also the tudors Paris twenty fourth of april sixteen seventeen. A morning much like any other for Concino Concini. Marquis Donre Marshall of France He's striding through the Louvre, as he has done a thousand times before. self assured Magnificent. utterly contemptuous of those around him He has survived seven years of intrigue Rebellion and noble fury. He has made an unmade ministers, pocketed governorships and bent the regent Marie de Medici so completely to his will that France has come to feel like his personal stestate solely existing to be plundered at his leisure Contidi does not realize that the young king has had enough. Because sixteen year old Louis IteI has been simmering for months humiliated by this Florentine upstart who treats the French court conquered territory Porded by his own favourite Charleses Dalbert Douin, Louis has settled upon a single brutal solution. Fontcini He cannot simply be arrested. He commands a private army of more than seven thousand men So the order passes quietly to the captain of the Royal Guard Nicola de Lopital, Baron of Vitri Concini out Vitry and his accomplices position themselves at the drawbridge of the Louvre and wait It is not long before Concini approaches, surrounded by attendants unhurried, expecting the world to part before him. He is almost across the bridge when suddenly Vitri steps forward, blocking his path. Concini barely has time to register the obstruction before the guns of Vitri's accomplices roar out at near point blank range Contini is hit. Three times in the head and crumples dead Before the echo of the pistols even leads to the courtyard When news of Concini's killing reaches Louis XIteenth He weeps with relief I thank you He tells Vitri, From this hour, I am king Contini's story is far from over. What follows is Savage, a terrifying act of mob vengeance against the corpse of this foreigner who has gorged himself on their country for years And that is nothing compared to the fate Concini's wife Leonora Di Galigi The woman whose thirty year intimacy with the quQeen made her husband's career possible What then follows is an unprecedented propaganda campaign that weaponises print culture to justify murder and establish an entirely new political order My guest today is Dr. Ua Maklenner, Associate professor in English at the Australian National University and an Australian Research Council future Fellow Her book, Scandal and Reputation at the Court of Catherine D Medici explores how women have been collectively slandered for centuries and her most recent work singing the newews of deeath execution ballads in Europe fifteen hundred to nineteen hundred. It looks at the fascinating and long lived tradition of execution ballads. It won the twenty twenty three Catherine Briggs Award from the Folklore Society Together we're going to explore the assassinations Ccino Concini and spoiler, Leonora calculated coup detart that transformed Louis XI from a powerless teenage prince into something like an absolute monarch andm profess this is Anna Lipskom And this is not just the tudors from History hits. Dr. Mclverna, welcome to not just the Tudors. Thank you, Susanna. It's lovely to be here Well, let us start by finding out more about Concini Who was he? What was his background? How did he come to be in Paris? So Conino Concini is a Florentine nobleman, he's born into a noble family that has a history of public service, particularly in diplomacy for the Grand Duke of Tuscany So his father has been an ambassador, his brother. And so it's kind of expected that he will do something like this the moment that really comes for him is this fantastic news The niece of the Grand Duke of Tuscany is going to marry the French king. Henry I Fth And so a lot of Florentine noblemen. and noble womomen think this is my moment to go to the incredibly powerful court of France where I can seek my fortune like so many have done already the courourt of Catherine Domedici and afterwards How did his rightise to power begin once he' got to the court? Well, it begins a few months before he gets there because of course they take a few months on to get to France ing many times along the way this huge sort of train of nobles. And on that boat next to the queen, the future queen, the iminent queen, is a young woman called Leonora Dorory. She is the companion, the very close companion of the young Qeen to be And he he falls for her. Very conveniently, she is the Queen's best friend since childhood. She's got a quite an interesting story because she's a commoner. She has no no b. history at all, no lineage like that When Marita Mici is quite young, she loses a lot many members of her family. and herer stepmother eventually feels sorry for her and gets her this little friend to play with when she's about eleven who's a few years older. And the one thing that we know about her is that she does Marita made it she's hair. That's the one thing that everyone says about her. These two girls are inseparable and will remain so for the rest of their lives They're really, really close. and that's the most important thing to know about her So Concino meets this girl, they seem to hit it off. It's convenient for him that he is now in a romantic relationship with the woman who is by the quQueen's side twenty first day. How? given that they have been married and are close with the queen. How does that translate into winning the trust of Henry IV, Henry IV, the king at the time. I mean, it's not omomatic and The important thing to understand is that a whole bunch of these Italian nobles go to the court, but only a select few will be allowed to stay. So Contino really has to kind of play a good game here he doess One of his qualities is that he's really charming. He wins people over. He's a real gentleman. He knows exactly how to be a courtier, how to say the right things clearly gets the judunge of Henry I F's personality quite quickly. He's got a good sense of humor at times a bit coarse, but Henry IV is a is an old style nobleman. He likes that. He likes his filthy jokes He's also, he seays that Concino was a master negotiator. One of the things that is a real issue when they arrive is that O the fourth is on his His second serious mistress at least, he's had multiple mistresses and is very used to this. He's a man in his fifties, remember? Marie is much younger than him He is not prepared to give up his mistress, just because he's got a new queen, because she's, you know a political appointee sort of thing. His mistress Henette Dt Craig. He's absolutely committed to her. He has several children with her and he's absolutely not giving her up. And that's a real problem for Marida Medici. She cannot abide this idea this insults. It becomes a real problem and it's the Cininis who kind of work to resolve that that they convince all yet to become friendly with Leonora because she's got the quQueen's ear, etcet. And they kind of kind of manipulate that situation and everyone withs And so Hri is very happy about that and kind of starts to really recognize the usefulness of the Ccinis at Core So they're becoming more ensconced, they're becoming more powerful What happens then They start to amass very quickly some incredible fortunes. Now it's important to understand that of course, that's what's going to happen to any court here. The closer you are in proximity to the monarch, the more positions and money you will receive. but it really is quite something. It starts, you get these sort of smaller positions.ne of the things that becomes quite lucrative is that they're given the right to or the access to fines that people have to pay. And so they kind of like, oh, I'll take a bit of that, I'll take a bit of that. They start to get more and more positions and of course, she's next to the queen constantly and that kind of proximity is very important. One of the things that is important to understand though, because it becomes important later on is that Leonora is a sort of thin, frail, sickly woman. She's never very well. It starts in Surnus from sort of winter sixteen oh two, so a year or two after she's arrived And it's also around the time of her first pregnancy. so that might be in the mix there as well. She gets very sick seizures, she can't breathe, it's, you know, really bad. So they try everything. They try all the kind of stattered medical treatments That doesn't work. They turn to public prayer. The queen is freaking out that her lady in wedding that she is that her best friend is going to die. The people of Paris are taught to pray for this woman for the Queen's Lady in wedding That doesn't work They then think, oh maybe she's got demons, you know, Satan is believed to work, you know, his bad magic in the world. So they try exorcisms, which are more acceptable at this point, but they're still a bit like people don't really know what to do with those They don't work The most extreme this might not this might seem weird, but the most extreme is that a Jewish doctor is called Now importantly, Jews are not allowed to practice their religion in France at this point, haven't been allowed for about twenty years This Jewish doctor Montalto, who has an enormous reputation over Europe comes He prescribes what sounds to us like pretty straightforward, you know bed rest goodood air, nice diet But it works ures her. They desperately try to get Mort Talto to stay, but he can't because he can't be a court if Jews are allowed to practice So She's getting better. they have children, things are going well and they're more they're getting closer to the royal family all the time And then to sixteen and I mean ten years after becoming queen, Marita Medici is crowned to the next day and why Yeahah. Really shockingly, Henry IV is assassinated. He is just crowned his queen He's about to set off on a kind of military expedition. That's going to be quite strategic importance for France and for Europe and a man grabs him as he gets out of his carriage and stabs him several times. He dies almost instantly. Fse sw Haak. is the name of this guy who says I had a vision. you know, I was told to do this claims to be acting on his own, but many observers don't believe that because this isn't the first attempt on Henry IV's life. And there's a lot of belief that the Spanish are behind this If we understand friends at this point It's surrounded on all sides by Habsburgs There's the Spanish Habsburgs on the south, there's the Holy Roman Empire run by Habsburgs, you know, just two different branches of the same family on the east even the Netherlands is at this point controlled by the Spanish Habsburgs. So everyone assumes that It's got to be something to do with them. They torture other act He never gives up any accomplices or any other motive than just sort of acting in his own God's interest It's an enormous It's a massive event for Europe because Henry I F has importantly been able to He is the guy who kind of brought the wardars of religion to a close He fought against the royal forces in order to take on his hereditary role as King And then, you know, as a Protestant, he's born and raised a Protestant. But then in order to just kind of assuage everyone, he converts to Catholicism Probably not really, but he does it in order to make everyone happy And he manages to kind of play off those big powers in Europe against each other He knows the power of the Habsburgs, even though, you know, France is Catholic They don't want this you know, huge kind of Catholicism dominating across France, so he cultivates and negotiates with Protestant leaders in the Holy Roman Empire to form a kind of union that can act as a bit of a bulwark against this mass of the Spanish Habsburgs. With him gone, it's potentially chaos and Spain is a real issue. So We also have a new king Eight year old, Louis I thirirteh and his mother Marie D Medici acting as his regent How do Concino and Leonora benefit from this new arrangement? Immediately, Marie is confirmed as regent. Not the first time this has happened. This is what's kind of ironic about French history in this period is that there's quite a few mothers acting as regents for their young sons or kings. And indeed, Medices, right? you know, we were kind of used to it by now Marie knows that her her Now dead husband has did a really good job. And so initially tries to really keep his model and work with the same guys in the Cncil of the King. And she does that and they go in and they you know they make their discussions and she spends all the day. People are really impressed that she goes from having no role whatsoever to working very, very hard Then at the end of the day, she goes back into her private quarters with just Leonora and they spend two hours Debriefing and And then she'll come out of those meetings with Leonor and go, actually I've changed my mind about what we decided And this starts to happen more and more And it becomes clear The Leonora has really the ear of the queen and is in her ear Everyone is coming to Leonora All of the nobles, the princes, the officers, everybody ambassadors, everybody wants to talk to her Now there is, of course a role played by those ladies and waeting of queens who are the access point? It seems like maybe there's more going on here that this woman has way more power than she's supposed to. And of course, So does her husband becausecause what starts to happen is that the minute that Henri is assassinated They start to really ramp up in terms of their income in terms of their positions at court So They've already had the sort of control over certain kinds of incomes that are coming in, but that kind of takes off They get control over revenues for the public purse. So say, for example, some lands are sort of sold and there's money to be paid off to different people They are allowed that to do that, those reimbursements or disbursements this doesn't seem to be any kind of scrutiny over who they pay So they get to build a client base. like they don't just keep all the money for themselves, but they buy off people So they start to amass this really, really powerful ponele without any real scrutiny And and then like there's all kinds of deals that sound a bit dodgy. They get at one point like so temember it's about four months after the king is dead They There's an amount that comes in that's three hundred eighty five thousand lre, like an enormous amount. We're talking about millions in today's money teen and a half thousand goes into the queen's coffers and the Cincinis get their rest So they are really coming into enormous amounts of money. They start to buy a property. She buys the Chateau L laeigny near Fontainelau she can host the court when it comes by you know, blown away by it. it's very beautiful. She's buying all kinds of nice things, tapestries, furniture, jewelry, unim it Money is starting to be placed in banks all over Europe She's giving it at Amstdam and in various nice places. Meanwhile, of course, Leonora can't accrue a position at court. She's not noble Her husband Okan So he starts to setll his mind really strategically to that He first, in September gets a seat on know Cncil of finance, so he actually then gets entry into the King's council which means this is sort of like a privy console Foreigners are not supposed to be on the Privy Council, right? That's not supposed to happen So there's already scandal there. Then same month he is made into the first gentleman of the King's Chamber So one of these really, really high officers, the only people who precede him in royal ceremonies are the literal princes of the blood, the heirs to the throne, or the very high great officers of the kingdom. So this is an enormous honor that he's been given The next year they're given land, they're allowed to build a house that literally backs onto the Louvre. He has a secret entrance into the Louvre, right on the Sine But he knows that if you want to really become French nobility, they've got to get French lands, they've got to get in their ownership of it. So they're given, Marie gives them the lands of Ancre, which are in Picardin in the sort of north of France. They become the marquis and Marquis of Ecre He says that's not enough. I need ad mininistry of P as well He buys the governorship of Cehon or lands that nearby because all of these positions are of course bought. there's a venality of offices. you don't just get given it So he does a bit of negotiation, but because he's got this money from Marie He has that kind of negotiating power. People are like, yeah, I'll take that money. So he buys the governorship of Pehon and then he becomes the lieutenant general of the whole province of Picouti So He's The second most important person in the province after its governor And that's a point of friction That's not enough for him. He wants to be in charge of Emillon, which is the capital of Picadi So he buys the governorship of the Citadel, the fortress And then the Baayyj, which is I think it translates is Bilwick, but it means it gives him judicial power as well So he is both military he has both military and judicial power of this whole region. So it's really he's done it very, very quickly and very strategically. And he's creating a Fifem, in other words Yes, and that really brings him into conflict with the governor of Picadi who's not impressed with what's happening at all Yes, and I was thinking, you know, this concentration of power and influence in Florentine hands It's going to have an impact on the native French nobility. There may be some reaction to it Oh, you betch ya Eventually in sixteen fourteen, so we're talking just a few years later He is given one of the great offices of the kingdom. He has given the role of Marich Chel or Marshal of France, which is an office that is given to a glorious former soldier who has led multiple military campaigns. There are a few of them These guys are all white hairs. they're all decorated former soldiers This guy walks in, he's young, he's Italian. He's never fought in a battle. It is even To my mind, it's outrageous. It's outrageous that it becomes a Marichel de Marichel de Honcur And that really really starts to set off. some major friction with The high nobility in France And I want to ask you also about the way in which they are creating a kind of bureaucracy an administration How significant is it for in terms of the influence it might have on later court structures at Versailles, for example Yeah. So as I said, like Marie begins with the same kind of council of the king and even with the same man who had served her husband for years and had been really good at the job Bit by bit, those men are forced start in quite scandalous ways and it becomes it seems to feel like to the nobility that the conchinis and they're often referred to in the plural And I think that's really telling the Marichel of France like the plural of Marichel is Marichau, which means the two Maric Marshals of France, which is him and his wife People who are most upset about that are what come to be known as the princes, right? So there are the princes of the blood who are the heirs to the throne who led by the Prince of Kongde And there's a few others. There's also the as I said, Henry I already has aillgitimate sons The Von Dong brothers. who are also have been legitimized and are in line for the throne and a bunch of other really high ranking members of the noble families of France They are furious that they seem to have no role in the King's council, which is standard practice So they're really upset about that They're really upset about the fact that the role has been taken by Florentine instead of a French person, and his wife, who's a commoner. L it's outrageous They're also You can see that this money is just flooding out of the crown's coffers and that it all seems to be going to the same people. There's a little bit of irony there because those guys, those princes are quite happy to take that money whenever it's offered to them as well. But one of the really big problems is the Spanish marriages. one of the ways in which Marie does turn away from her husband's general policies is a rapproocheemment with Spain And she does that by trying to get her son, this young Louis XteII married to the Infanta of Spain and his younger sister married to an heir to the Spanish throne So two Spanish marriages. this you know, people are looking to the future and saying, well, at one point The whole of Europe could be controlled by Habsburg's evan. if we let this happen. So there's super strong opposition to that. The other thing, of course, to remember is that as princes of the Bood, they feel that they should be regents not a woman who's Italian? So They really feel like that's always a problem with with all of these kind of regencies that I've talked about They feel those men feel that that's their role to take on the Reency. So they show their discontent by leaving court And that's not just like leaving in a huff. I mean, it is, but it's more than that because they go back to their their lands around the provinces where they have thousands of supporters, right? And they can go back there and start to ferent unrest and rebellion and revolt. So every time they leave and they kind of leave en masse and one of them goes and then the others all go, That's a real moment of stress and you start to get, we're building towards civil war. So they leave multiple times and come back multiple times, always with the same reasons But what happens as well is that they when they go They start writing these pamphlets or having these pamphlets published that are kind of open letters You know, a remonstrance to the king or the quQeen mother about why we've left and all the things that are going wrong at court. And this is why we're leaving in protest The Queen mother then publishes Response conflicts So you get the sense that, she's defending the decisions that are being made and saying, oh, the continines are great You get the sense that this is a debate being waged in public for everyone's benefit. And these pamphts are being translated into other languages as well, right So There's a war of pamphlets going on at the same time that there's this military war going on The one thing that changes, I mean, they le it's exactly the same things that they get mad about every time And in fact, one of the pamphlets is even just reprinted verbatim the following year because nothing that's changed. The one thing that does change. is that the Criticisms of the Conchinis get more explicit explicitly directed at them. And they get more violent. So it starts off We don't like that the quQeen mother and the king are getting bad counsels And then it becomes, we don't like that they're getting counseled from foreigners And then it's, we don't like it that they're getting from these Cinis. and then they start to say these Cchinis are devils They're terrible, they're poisoning. We need to get rid of them As the saying goes, if these walls could talk. And on the Bwixt the Sheets podcast, we make it our business to discover what happened behind closed doors, and even more importantly, in the bedrooms of people all throughout history Kings, queens, mistresses, servants, and everyone in between. We also get up close and personal with medieval aphrodysiacs, lethal Victorian makeup routines and look at the scandalous lives of beloved children's authors. Nothing is off limits. In other words, it's the best bits of history with me, Dr. Kate Lister. Listen to but twwix the sheets of the history of sex scandal in society twice a week every week, wherever it is that you get your podcasts, brought to you by the award winning network History Hit What about the young king in all of this? By sixteen seventeen? He would have been sixteen and would have reached the age of majority. So why is he still being politically marginalized by his mother He has never really shown much interest in any of the things that go on up until this point, including even his own marriage. That's been a bit of a disaster because he just doesn't want to spend any time with her. What he wants to do is spend time hunting and hawking. his sort of closest advisor. And mentor, a man who's a good pl more than twenty years older than him is the Duke de Luine. sorry, he's not the Duke at this point. he's just Chaza something of Louine and he is a great hunter and a great kind of kind fatherly figure to a young boy who's lost his father of course, and who doesn't spend any time with his mother really. Luine and his two brothers are at court. are very, very influential in Louis's life and They are also watching what's happening and starting to say to Louis you need to maybe think about taking on some responsibility here the constant back and forth between the crown and the princes resesults in an estates general, which is a calling of all the three estates of France. It doesn't really get anywhere. They don't really resolve much O real moment of tension shortly after that is that Plans to attack Klinini get more and more severe, more threatening and dangerous Ccini hears that there's a plot to kill it and realizes that maybe this is getting out of hand, he comes back to court tells them that there's a plot to kill Koncini. says, you know what? I'm going to give up all of my things But as long as you give me a seat on the council I'll do that So he's happy And then What they realize, what Marie and Concinis realize is that Now we've the foxes in the hand house. This man is sitting inside and these princes are coming back and now they do have the power And so she has Honde, arrested And that is when everything really the, you know hits the fan as it were because this is the heir to the throne. this is, I don't know, like arresting Prince Harry and locking him in the bestast, you know, It's really, really bad. and very, very controversial And it's at that point that really run that time. Young Louis gets sick And he spends a good kind of month or two in bedrest being taken care of, I mean they really think he's going to die. And that seems to really freak people out. Luine gets in his ear and says you really need to when you get that, you need to fix this problem They're out of control They're now they've now got Konde in the bestastam So he comes back from his sickness and clearly is ready to take over and has had enough of Koncini. He is little mentions of his like genuine hatred for him. So he's not really ready to challenge for his own you know, he wants to become king finally instead of his mother and to Do you make of Luin's motives? Do you think he has ambition for himself orr is his relationship with Louis One that's genuinely supportive and affectionate It's both I think there is you know, from all the countries there's a lot of affection. They really share a lot of mayaybe like paternal affection for this young boy. He spent a lot of time with him. But to be ambitious at courts is not that thing, you know, it's what you're supposed to And so what he thinks is that this is a young man who's supposed to be king And that's not happening. And instead, some other people are. and He needs to become king. and of course that's going to benefit me I'm his you know, at this point, no he's I'd be made Grand Falconor of the King. He is very much the favorite, right? Like Concini is the favorite of Marie. so there's a little irony there. But I think yeah, he is he's He is ambitious and he's definitely wants to get rid of Concini and he actually, he and his brothers start the serious plotting to get rid of Kachini and start to bring in different people and say, this is what we need to do I was Cini oblivious to Louis's feelings for him that they've reached such a point of hatred Yeah, it's kind of crazy. You have to understand. There are pamphlets every day flooding the streets saying Concini is a monster. he's a tyrant We need to get rid of him his wife She knows what's coming She is sending all her stuff back to Italy withith the approval of the quQeen, who's also going, thingsings are getting really bad here She is making plans. She wants to get back to Italy sending her money into different and things like that, really making plans the sort of civil war that's going on at this point Kanini is just completely obsessed with that. He is convinced that he can, you know, he's locked up Konde And he's going to get these other guys and they're going to show them how strong they are So he is convinced somehow that they're not they can't touch him He does travel with a large group of, I think it's like ten gentlemen you know, armed gentlemen and then there's twelve soldiers that surround his carriage. But you know, we find out later on. that he doesn't wear chin mail, he doesn't wear anything underneath, which is the kind of like a, you know, body armor that you would wear if you thought you were at risk So he's weirdly like cut the b Blinkers on or something because things are getting really, really fiery. are peopleople getting executed. There's two guys executed very shortly beside each other. One is a Scottish guard. These are the kind of the royal guards supposed to take care of the king. He's accused of being a spy for the princes. The other guys, he's executed in front of the Louvre A Norman lord is executed for fomenting revolt They put gallows up on the Pont Neuf to scare people to say, don't you be like these two, you know? So this is a really, really fraught moment and yet He doesn't think much of it. He is, of course, at this point fighting the Civil War in Normandy as as this what we now know is going to be his de death day is approaching. So they're trying to work out how they can get rid of him And so they decide that they can they'll call him back. And so now we come to the day of the assassination And obviously I've given some idea of what happens on that day, but pick up the story. What What happens? Crontini is murdered? What happens to his remains? Oh This is the part where if you're a little bit queasy, you might want to, you know, just turn the volume down They say they're going to arrest in Everybody knows what they're going to do. They get this really violent king of of the guards to do it. They shoot him, he's dead immediately. They dump his body. I mean I mean, they bury it in a church, but they they don't do any ceremony. No one prays or anything But it's in the Church of Saint Germain Lauois, under the slab near the Oggan The local people go What do you mean? he's in the church Thats that's hallowed grant. He doesn't deserve to be there So they go, the local people Dig him up and start dragging his body, his corpse through his naked corpse through the city They know what they're doing. They're taking on routes through very significant symbolic places in Paris, where executions happen, where punishments happen in front of the houses of some of his supporters, things like that They eventually bring him to Pneuf where they hang him upside down cut off his ears and his nose and his genitals And then, you know, he's already being dragged around. so his body is pretty mutilated they then eventually will Burn him what's left There are some accounts of people cutting out internal organs and cooking them and eating them We don't know how much to believe that, but this is not the first time this has happened in Paris or even in Europe D Colign, during the Wars of releligion, the Admiral dee Coligny, who was the leader of the Protestants, had a similar thing happen to him and was also hanged, his corpse was mutilated and then hanged upside down at the gibit of Montfouul it Parisian populace detest this man, they come out you know, yelling, vivoir, vivoir and they're thrilled the mutilation of this body. And again, it's something that you see a few, you know, a few decades later in I'm in the Netherlands right now and it happened very famously here in the Netherlands to the Davit brothers who in the know disaster year of sixteen seventy two exactly the same sort of thing, mutilated corpses. Where does this contempt spring from? How did the people even know what Concino and Leonoro were like because of these pamphlets that had been circulating by now for years that, as I said, only got more and more vitriolic as the years went by and more and more focused on the Cincinis as as devilish, as monstrous as usurpers as tyrants. And of course that word tyrant keeps getting used a lot because you're allowed to and for many people, allowed to assassinate someone who's a tyrant. There's also know really interesting about the pamphlet stuff that comes out is the kind of genres, the extraordinary variety of genres in which these things are printed. It's not just long treatises for educated people There's all kinds of songs and poems and plays and things like that that would be entertainment for anyone Anone can hear a song, whether they can read or not. There's lots of nicknames that they give him in particular, Cillon is one of them, which has a bit of a rude connotation. It means sort of coward or scoundrel, but it it's sort of a play on the letters of his name. That gets used a lot. So there's all kinds of ways in which the average person can participate in this real politics of slander that's going on and has been going on for a very long time As the saying goes, if these walls could talk. And on the Bwixt the Sheets podcast, we make it our business to discover what happened behind closed doors, and even more importantly, in the bedrooms of people all throughout history Kings, queens, mistresses, servants, and everyone in between. We also get up close and personal with medieval aphrodisiacs, lethal Victorian makeup routines and look at the scandalous lives of beloved children's authors. Nothing is off limits. In other words, it's the best bits of history with me, Dr. Kate Lister. Listen to but twwix the sheets of the history of sex scandal and society twice a week every week, wherever it is that you get your podcasts, brought to you by the award winning network History Hit Kontini iss dead, but there must be a question, what are they going to do about his widow Do they do? Well, she's immediately arrested She still thinks through pretty much all of this that she's going to be eventually allowed to go back to Italy There's no way they're going to let that happen because they've always believed her to be just as equally implicated in this and The thing is though She didn't have a role in government technically So they can't You know, they can't point to a specific thing that she did So the only thing they can charge her with is sorcery And that's why all of this thing because she did eventually at one point get that Jewish doctor to come and live at court They changed the rules so that he could come back. So she has been surrounded by Foreigners Jewish Foreigners People who work believe in are scholars of astrology. And of course we have to remember that astrology is seen as a science as part of astronomy in this period. but there is something about The secrets of particularly the Hebrew faith, the Kabalah, these kinds of words that keep being brought up that there's something secret that therefore is mistrustful And so she is able to say, you know There's lots of lots of witnesses called and they say, I never saw her do anything that looked anything like sorcery, etceta. But it doesn't really matter. It's like Marie Antoinette later on. this is being decided in advance. So they convict her of sorcery, She's lucky because she is considered at this point a noblewoman that she will just be decapitated, but her body will be burned You've made it very clear that this witchcraft, this sorcerey trial is transparently political And obviously her power over Marie de Medici must have been part of it because people want to explain how someone can have so much influence How did she try to defend herself? I mean, did she? Yeah, I mean, she did have this extraordinary power over her because she was just, they were very, very close. And so that is the kind of questionions, the line of questioning that's used all the way throughout all of these witnesses. You know, there's a probablyably apocryphal quote by someone. as it's quite hard because there's so many commentators after the fact who are trying to say, you know, I knew what was happening all along. And one of them says, oh, she said at one point, Well, obviously I had power over the queen because she wasn't very clever And I don't think she would have said that. They were genuinely very, very close. She just defends herself by saying, no, I'm doing what a lot of people do, which is consulting my stRars, I have a Jewish doctor. There's nothing secretive about it. But there isn't really much defense against that So she has beheaded her body burnt What impact does the assassination of Concini and the judicial murder of Leonora have on the king's mother. What's her status now that H favites out of the way and her son is stepping into his power as mono. Well, she is immediately also arrested. Well, she's sort of arrested. She is effectively imprisoned in the Louvre in the immediate sense. She sends messengers to her son I need to talk to you. He said absolutely not So for several days that happens and then she is told that she has to go to Blois She's got to leave court And she's not allowed to take anyone with her. So she goes to Bis where she stays for it's less than two years. And then she escapes, it's very dratic. She escapes Climbing a rope out of a window makes her way back to Paris and begins to have this kind of crazy rivalry between her and her son, this sort of all at war begins What becomes really fascinating and ironic about this is that Luine who's been made a duke by this point has become has assumed exactly the role that Kinini had forou Marie. He's taken on exactly that role for Louis Iteenth peopleople are really annoyed about that. So he starts to have to fight off all of those same sorts of accusations People who are against Louine, of course, turn to Marie de Medic and go, she'll be on our side. So she gets involved in these back and forth. There's two wars that break out between mother and son over the next few years eventually it's Cardinal de Richelieu who has moved in very sllyly all the way through this and has managed to just stay on the right side of the right people at the right time, a very smooth operator And he kind of manages to smooth it out between the mother and son and eventually gets that conflict resolved with a peace treaty. But She never stops trying to stick her nose in it She really does feel that she should be making those big decisions Now one thing you've written about this and are researching still, I think, is the fact that if the pamphlets before continuous assassination had been multiple The assassination itself produces you know the pamphlet explosion, this huge propaganda campaign. Can you tell me about that Yeah, so it's actually, of course, if you think about it bit of a PR nightmare for the crowing becausecause you haven't put this guy on trial. he was so bad Why didn't you arrest him and put him on trial and go through the proper things? Instead you secretly assassinated him and buried him Why didn't you do the right things? So they very quickly realized they've got to control the narrative They've got a spin doctor this massive potential disaster And so this Temphate explosion starts that is I think unprecedented at this point and Everything is produced in sixteen seventeen. It's like within the few months after this has happened and variety of genres becomes even more extraordinary Like I said, there's treatises in multiple languages. So every court Every, you know, we've got in English, French, Italian German, you name it Latin because everyone at Europe needs to understand exactly what's happened here. They need to be coached in this narrative of why this had to be done this way And there's also all of these there's the songs, there's the verses, there's the plays on words, there's you know, acrostics. and there are images of all kinds, usually of them as monsters There are Horiscos E you know, these sort of symbols, early modern astrology that I had someone decode for me and they said they're just nonsense. they don't mean anything So I think it's kind of a if you're someone walking the streets and maybe has limited literacy and you see one of these pamphlets with a horoscope on it, and you go, ah, that's that Ccini, you know, he was always up to something. you know, the occult So it's completely one sided. So all of the other pamphlet wars, of course, had been a debate about what the crime was doing This is one sided. There was only one thing that happened and we got rid of the bad guys. And so it is clearly a very concerted calculated propaganda campaign that seems to do the trick and That's fascinating. Is this the first time that pamphlets weighing in so heavily on one side to ignite Pjudices is to sort of instrumentalizeers people are feeling in a certain direction. It's not the first time they've had pamphts and you know, I think that You know, one of the things people when people talk about French history and you know, why did the French Revolution happen? There are centuries by this point of practice in how you desacralize the monarchy, you desacralize something. This is to me, what happens is in this particular moment It becomes a very one sided propaganda campaign. And I think it would be extremely ill advised for anyone to try and defend Kashini at this point. So there's no There's no response what's interesting about it And I think it's just that sort of domination of the market No matter who you are, you will learn this narrative of what the King did write. And what is the depiction of Leonora in this? There's clearly a bit of a rac or a xenophobic element to the attacks on her. Can we talk about the role of misogyny. Oh yeah. I mean, the French are very experienced by this point in misogyny They of course had, I mean, you know, you mentioned my first book was about the satirical attacks on the court of Catherine D Medici, particularly the ladies in Waiting as well as Katherine and There are tropes that you find again and again and again cults, you know, Catherine Domain it, she was accused of poisoning everyone The anti Italianism is absolutely rife particularly because of course, the Italians are really powerful at the French courourt because they're providing all the money. So the maybe cheese are get to be Queens of France because they're providing the funding for all of these things that the French courourt want to do So There's a lot of resentment about that. The fact that France has a salic law, which is this idea that only men can be the ruling monarch, unlike England, we can get Mary and Elizabeth as ruling monarchs in their own right. That doesn't happen in France. So what inevitably happens is that the queens of France are foreign born princesses who marry into the French royal family So they're constantly under attack in the same way. They're bringing their loyalties are really with their origin country. They're bringing their foreign ways with them. If they're Italian, that means they're bringing sexual deviance So, you know, there's all that kind of there's something wrong with how they have sex or who they have sex with, etca. They're bringing cult beliefs, they are underhanded, they're not to trusted etcera, etca Cashini gets a lot of that himself, but because hisis wife is a woman. she will get also those accusations of sorcery, etcera She is depicted in one of the pamphlets. She's depicted as having a dialogue in hell with a kind of an evil demon So there's really a sense that they are monstrous and you know, that thoseose kinds of attacks on women in particular have a very, very nasty history that will continue right through nineteenth century. I was kind of astonished when I was looking at my execution songs, the way that the French press was nasty about women in a way, even female victims of murder in a way that no other language was. So it's yeah, they're very well practiced And what's the spread of these pamphlets? I mean, are they even spreading outside France? Yeah They are there're multiple. I just had a quick look on the early English books online and there're twenty pamphlets about Kcini in English. And then there's loans in Italia, there's those in you know, I've huge spreadsheets of all of these various pamphlets that are Yeah, manufactured deliberately consciously to spread this news across as far a place as possible. I've got a Dutch song with a very intricate Egraving showing the story of that mutilation of the body and how it was the right thing to do. with a song below explaining that in Dutch So yeah, everyone in Europe knows this story and is there's and because there's no against it It is very convincing. Yeah, so this is a systematic use propaganda justify the government's actions to manage public opinion at home and abroad Well, that must be one of the reasons. why the Contini assassination is so important in French history. But as we come to an end, perhaps you can tell me