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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 January 2010
“WITHOUT MONEY ONE CAN DO NOTHING”
Within days of the departure from Paris in late November 1567 of the “bien belle et grande armée” which her son the duke of Anjou was to lead in the fruitless pursuit of the Huguenots across Champagne during the second civil war, the queen mother, Catherine de Medici, wrote indignantly to Anjou's principal military advisor, Marshal Cossé,
I would be very distressed if you or others believed that I would want to risk the lives of so many good men, such good servants of this crown as you all are, and the life of my son, which I cherish more than my own, by a reluctance to find the money to pay those who are in the camp and the good subjects of my son the King. Because, God's Mercy, he sent his brother with his army paid for one month, and on the tenth of this month begins the payment of another. I hope to send him what will be necessary to pay the sum that falls due at that time, and on the twentieth, the payment for the remainder of the army, which is not due so soon. I am certain that I will have the money to pay it and to shame all those whom you say will abandon my son for lack of payment, for I cannot believe, having left their homes and come with such affection, for the most part without having been ordered to the aid of the King my son, and having proved their good will in this last battle, as you witnessed, such men would ever want to forsake my son for such a flimsy reason, in such a just and reasonable cause.
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