BALLET AND BISCUITS
The bride, Marguerite de Lorraine-Vaudemont, was the sister
of the queen consort of France;
the groom was the 21 year old boyfriend of the king.....
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| The Wedding Ball. Photo source: Wikipedia |
Out of these ephemeral diversions emerged two lasting cultural
phenomena: the first was ballet de cour, the second was the macaroon. Queen
Louise, the king's wife, stepped out of a vast fountain chariot, attended by her ladies and
musicians, to dance in an exquisitely staged allegory, choreographed by the first great ballet director, Balthasar de Beaujoyeulx. Queen Catherine, the king's mother, imported the recipe
of small round pastries made of ground almonds from her native Italy
for the occasion, which the groom, Anne [sic - a male version of the name shared by a contemporary 16th century general of France], duc de Joyeuse, found so delicious he
ordered production to begin at his estates.
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| The Fountain Chariot |
The Joyeuses magnificences, the ballet and the biscuits, in
honour of the wedding were a fantasy of earthly delights before cataclysm.
Civil wars, religious bigotry, political intrigues and bloodlust swallowed up king, favourite and the whole fractured Valois regime which had created such fabulous illusions of power. Six years after his wedding, Joyeuses over-reached himself and fell out of Henri III's favour after ordering the massacre of 800 Huguenots at
Saint-Eloi.
For the king who had been complicit in the Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Day, the atrocity may have been no worse than a disastrous public relations move, but it was quickly avenged by the military defeat and execution of Joyeuses by the Huguenot army. The King himself, after allying with the Huguenot leader Henry of Navarre against the Catholic Guise faction, was assassinated in 1589.
For the king who had been complicit in the Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Day, the atrocity may have been no worse than a disastrous public relations move, but it was quickly avenged by the military defeat and execution of Joyeuses by the Huguenot army. The King himself, after allying with the Huguenot leader Henry of Navarre against the Catholic Guise faction, was assassinated in 1589.
