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Jean V de Parthenay — news, coverage & facts — IJR

Religion

Early in his adult life, the child of honor of Henry II, Jean V of Parthenay seemed destined for the pleasures of the court until he met John Calvin in Ferrara.

Protestant celebrations of Pré-aux-Clercs in Paris began in 1557. Antoine de Navarre and his brother, the Prince of Condé, attended the celebration from 13 to 19 May 1558, which drew many gentlemen to the Reformed faith. This is also the case for Jean V de Parthenay, who converted to the new religion. Antoinette, his wife, preached on his lands. Jean V, however, was hesitant to announce his conversion and waited for some time before making it known. Converting to Protestantism was a dangerous position at the time. It meant leaving a life that had been built upon relationships with priests for confessions and those who offered her spiritual counsel. There was also the risk of persecution.

Peace made, Jean V de Parthenay was acquitted of the Renaudie affair in 1560 and he returned to the good graces of the queen and tried again to bring her back to the cause of the Calvinists. He paid court to her in Lyon during her visit, and stayed with her for a long time. He saw her again in Niort during her trip to Bayonne and accompanied her to La Rochelle. He no longer benefited from the complicity of Jacqueline de Longwy, Duchess of Montpensier, who died in 1561, but again encountered the jealousy of her husband, the Louis (III) de Bourbon, Duke of Montpensier.

About early 1562, Jean V announced "loyally" to Catherine de' Medici his intention to abandon the mass. Interestingly, Catherine de’ Medici, the Catholic queen mother, allowed her children to attend Protestant services in the early 1560s and asked Jean V to only have Protestant preaching at night. She tried to stop Jean V from becoming a Protestant and promised him the most significant charges in the kingdom. Among other things, she offered him tutoring from young King Charles. The queen, anxious to retain support, sent him the Order of Saint Michael as if to invite him to return.

Returning home after he visited La Rochelle, Parthenay declared to Antoinette d'Aubeterre that there was nothing more to hope for on that side. Catherine de' Medici now refused to admit before him her former sympathies for the reformed religion.

War of Parma (1553)

On 4 January 1553, Jean V received an order from King Henry II to go to the Duke of Parma and bring him to Fontainebleau.

Immediately after his marriage in May 1553, Jean V received the order to go to Picardy to fight for Thérouanne and Hesdin. They were commanded by Antoine of Navarre, whose wife Jeanne d'Albret, pregnant with the future Henry IV, remained at the scene of the fight with her husband. The king's armies suffered a terrible defeat. Antoine of Navarre saved Hesdin from the Imperials but lost Thérouanne between May and June. A few months later, Charles V took over and razed the two strongholds.

Around July 1552, Henry II discovered the rapprochement between the Duke of Parma, Ottavio Farnese, and the King of Spain, Philip II. The king, his advisers, and Cardinal Oliviero Carafa decided to act. The Guises had Jean V de Parthenay sent on a mission to Parma with orders to propose an alliance between the Duke and King Henry II that included a marriage between his son Oratio, Duke of Castro and Diane de France, Duchess of Angoulême. He was given letters from Henry II to give to Ercole II d'Este, Duke of Ferrara to rally him and ask him to join the Pope in combating Spanish Inquisitions.

In preparation for the War of Parma, Jean V was appointed lieutenant general for His Majesty and then moved to Siena on 25 November 1554. On 25 February 1555, he moved to Parma at the rate of 500 pounds per month and helped to keep the duke in benevolent neutrality concerning the French, though Farnese ended up getting closer to Philip II of Spain two years later. Around the same time, Jean de Parthenay witnessed the capitulation of Montluc in Siena on 17 April, being unable to help him due to a lack of troops.

In 1555, Jean V joined the assault on Denain with Admiral Gaspard II de Coligny. There, wounded in the head and thrown to the ground, he was almost choked to death by his helm. He nevertheless continued the assault bareheaded until the end of the battle. Jean V commissioned surveying work from Bernard Palissy in 1555.

He fought in the capture of Calais (3 January 1558) with his friend le maréchal Strozzi. In August 1558, the king granted John V of Parthenay a gratuity of 6,900 pounds as a reward for the wars in Italy and "others". However, because of the boldness of his words and his foresight of military views during councils of war, Jean V made himself an enemy of Gaspard de Saulx, Marshal de Tavannes.

The Renaudie affair (1559–1560)

King Henry II died in 1559 and was succeeded by his son François II, then only 15. Though he was old enough to rule without a regent, he delegated his power to the House of Guise. Jean du Barry, Lord of La Renaudie, a friend of Jean's, then imagined removing the queen-mother and the young king from the influence of the Guise.

La Renaudie took the lead in the conspiracy, which originated in December 1559, in Geneva, shortly after the execution of Anne du Bourg. Its goal was to impose around the young king a council of regency, where the princes of blood, particularly Condé, would hold the first place. Antoine de Bourbon was opposed to it as well as Calvin; it does not seem that the latter nor Théodore de Bèze were really informed of the real aims of the conspirators. La Renaudie was personally angry with François II and Charles de Guise who had his brother-in-law arrested and executed. He gave himself as accomplices a few friends, Raunay, Baron Charles de Castelnau, François II, Baron d'Aubeterre (Jean V de Parthenay's brother-in-law), Edme de Ferrière-Maligny (brother of Jean II de Ferrières), Captain Mazères, but also the father of Agrippa d'Aubigne. If the Guises resisted, the conspirators promised to massacre them. La Renaudie, who linked up with Soubise at the siege of Metz, confided to him his intention of seizing the king from the month of September 1559, at a time when the conspiracy was far from having taken shape.

A first assembly of conspirators was held in Nantes in February 1560, and their troops, nearly 500 men, split up with the intention of moving towards Blois, Tours, and Orléans. Originally scheduled for 10 March 1560; the operation was postponed until 17 March. However, from 12 February, the Guises, warned by the Parisian lawyer with whom La Renaudie was staying, were made aware of the plot. They decided to take refuge in Amboise. Condé d'Andelot, Coligny, and Odet de Chatillon—taken into confidence by La Renaudie—negotiated an amnesty for Protestants except for the conspirators with Guise.

On 15 March, Jacques de Savoie, Duke of Nemours, seized the castle of Noizay, where some of the conspirators had gathered. Condemned for the crime of lèse-majesté, Castelnau, Mazères, and Raunay died beheaded or hanged at the windows of the castle of Amboise. For the next few days, La Renaudie was nowhere to be found. Jean V, for his part, was retained by the service of the queen mother, who interrogated Jean V and tried to ascertain where his friend was hiding.

Conversation between the Queen mother and Jean V de Parthenay. Jean replied,

When I know, I'd rather be dead than say it.

The Queen Mother assures him that he need fear nothing if La Renaudie has done nothing against the King. Jean V de Parthenay replied,

I know well that it will be found that he acted against the king, since he acted against those of Guise, because today in France it is a criminal lèse-majesté to have acted against them, of as indeed they are the ones who are kings.

The conspiracy ended in a massacre. Bertrand de Chandieu's troops were destroyed when they marched towards Ambroise on 17 March. La Renaudie was killed on 19 March.

Lyon headquarters (1562)

Having left Fontainebleau, Jean V de Parthenay came to meet Admiral de Coligny and Condé in Meaux. Their army passed through Paris to Orléans. Condé, Coligny, d'Andelot, La Rochefoucauld, and Soubise went to find the queen near Beaugency. Their conference produced no results. Shortly after, Jean V became critically ill. Barely recovered, he was sent to Lyon by Condé.

He left on horseback with forty gentlemen, including his chaplain, Claude Courtois, Sieur de Lessart. He crossed the Vivarais, Burgundy, where the bailly of Autun followed him for three days with 120 men without daring to attack him. He took command of Lyon on 15 or 19 July 1562, with the full powers of the Prince of Condé (letters dated 25 May) to counterbalance the abuses and cruelties of François de Beaumont, Baron des Adrets. He joined forces with Charles Dupuy de Montbrun.

Catherine de' Medici wrote several times, asking him to return to the city. Jean V replied, "as long as he was governor of Lyon, he would keep it faithfully in the name of the king and queen."

He then faced the Catholic armies of Jacques de Savoie, Duke of Nemours. One of the most courageous leaders of the Protestant party on the eve of Saint Barthélemy, Jean V de Parthenay managed to hold the city until the pacification edict of 19 March 1563. This siege is illustrated two years later by the "speech that occurred in the city of Lion [Lyon] while Monsieur Soubise commanded there," a pleading attributed to François Viète and published (for the first time in the 19th century) by Hector de the Ferriere. Although suspected of sympathy with Soubise, the document revealed how Soubise managed to feed Lyon during his siege and in what resolution he finds himself facing Duke of Nemours. It also allowed Jean V to maintain his freedom of worship. He became one of the heroes of the Huguenot cause by thoughtful protection of the city. Haag states that he would be known "by his virtues, even more that by his services".

During this siege, Jean V organized the supply of the city by the Dombes, which attracted to him the unfailing hatred of Louis III de Bourbon, Duke of Montpensier.

The judgement of posterity

Upon the death of Jean V, his daughter and heiress Catherine became Dame de Soubise. She first married Charles de Quellenec, Baron du Pont. In her second marriage, the land that she inherited, the land of Soubise, passed to Benjamin, Duke of Soubise, her youngest son with René II, Viscount of Rohan. On his death in 1642, the seigneury of Soubise passed to his niece the Duchess of Rohan, who bequeathed it to her daughter Anne de Rohan-Chabot, wife of his cousin François, Prince of Soubise. The seigneury of Soubise was erected by letters patent (unregistered) of Louis XIV dated March 1667, in the Principality of Soubise in favor of François, Prince of Soubise (1630–1712). The latter's grandson Charles de Rohan-Soubise, Marshal of France protected by the Marquise de Pompadour, left the memory of an incapable favourite, leaving his men to be massacred at the Battle of Rossbach in 1757. A song, "les reproaches de The Tulip to Madame de Pompadour," recounts this episode. Its lyrics have been attributed to Voltaire.

Brantôme and Bossuet were extremely severe against Jean V de Parthenay. For one as for the other, he was the accomplice of the assassin of Francis, Duke of Guise. Jean-Antoine Roucher says of the first,

Brantôme charged his memory. He positively accuses him of having incited Poltrot to the assassination of the Duc de Guise: but as Jean Le Laboureur has well remarked, Brantôme enveloped the Sieur de Soubise in the hatred he bore to the Lord of Aubeterre.

The second recognizes himself,

[Queen Catherine de' Medici] had continual talks with Soubise, a man of great quality, devoted to the Huguenot party and well instructed in the new doctrine.

The memory of Jean V de Parthenay, however, was never completely erased. Antoine Varillas read his memoirs and took it for granted that Catherine de' Medici had some Protestant leanings, or at least that she was Catholic only out of politics. In the 18th century, Dreux du Radier remembers that Jean de Parthenay failed to convert Queen Catherine de' Medici to Protestantism and Louis Moréri mentions his figure in his large dictionary, and recognizes him as "a man of great merit and great service". In the 19th century, with the revival of Protestant studies, however, the figure of Jean de Parthenay regained prominence. Eugène and Émile Haag, Auguste-François Lièvre, Jules Bonnet, Hector de la Ferrière, Auguste Laugel bring to light all that is chivalrous in his attitude. Finally, the rediscovery of François Viète by Frédéric Ritter and Benjamin Fillon naturally leads many historians of science to focus on this minor nobility of Poitou, open to new ideas, keen on Greek, Latin and Hebrew, a small protective circle of an astonishing master of requests, who, starting from the bottom, was awakened to mathematics by a 12-year-old girl, served as secretary to her father, and was about to found the new algebra. Protector of Palissy, father of a young scholar, it is also in this capacity that Jean de Parthenay also deserves to be known, as the first protector of a founding mathematician.