00:00:00.100Hello, and welcome to Vulgar History. My name is Anne Foster, and this is a pandemic super special episode, which is like a mini episode where I'm just kind of telling some stories about people in other times and eras who were faced with other sorts of pandemic type events, and the weird things that happened to them. That's what this is.
00:00:21.540So today, so you know, content warning, pandemics, if you don't want to hear about that, then you might want to skip to a different episode of this podcast. That being said, this week's pandemic is sort of an influenza pandemic, but I'm not going to get into the nitty gritty of the symptoms that this person suffered.
00:00:40.620but it's more just the circumstances of how he died and how it's just like, it's a pretty goofy
00:00:47.240story. I think even if you're like sensitive to medical type things, you, I don't think you should
00:00:53.000be bothered, but you know, content warning, I will be mentioning influenza and someone dying of it
00:00:58.540in this podcast. So cast your minds back to 16th century France. Oh, and I'm going to mention as
00:01:05.160well, my sources for this story are a book called Francis the First, the maker of modern France,
00:01:10.460by leone frida and also wikipedia and i also got a bit of content from from a book called the rival
00:01:19.880queens by nancy goldstone so the rival queens is a story about catherine de medici her daughter
00:01:27.000marguerite de valois and the betrayal that ignited a kingdom and it really super quickly passes over
00:01:32.860this weird story i'm going to tell you but for some context for me it was helpful just to kind
00:01:37.080to remember because i study not even study i just research um women in history so when it's like a
00:01:45.040bunch of men i need to like orient myself by seeing like what women were around when and that's
00:01:51.420going to be how i'm going to explain part of this to you as well but that's a really great book it's
00:01:54.760a really great book uh the rival queens by nancy goldstone super recommend anyway um and wikipedia
00:02:00.580did i mention that there's some details that i found there they were not in either book so
00:02:04.380what we're dealing with here is france 16th century so the king is francis i his wife is
00:02:11.520named claude of france and we're living in a patriarchal primogeniture type situation so he
00:02:19.880the whole succession planning for him is it's going to go to his oldest son and then if god
00:02:25.420forbids and the hampsest oldest son then it goes to the second son and then god forbid then it goes
00:02:29.000the third son even though there are some sisters in here as well so the oldest son it's sort of
00:02:36.020this is sort of the story of three brothers one of whom is just exercises poor judgment that's
00:02:42.200what the story is so the oldest son is named francis and so he was born february 28th 1518
00:02:50.920so francis the king so his son francis jr so the king said of his son at birth he is a beautiful
00:02:57.600dauphin and dauphin is the word for french people in france for uh the heir to the throne
00:03:04.240like in england it's like the prince of wales scenario so francis said of his son also called
00:03:09.260francis he's a beautiful dauphin who is the most beautiful and strong child one can imagine and who
00:03:13.980will be the easiest to bring up uh baby francis's mother claude said tell the king that this child
00:03:20.640is even more beautiful than himself so francis the oldest son gorgeous um leonardo da vinci was
00:03:28.420around at this time he decorated designed the decorations for the christening of the dauphin
00:03:34.080and so one of the so i mean spoiler francis jr is not going to live a long life it's not plague
00:03:42.320related um it's weirder than that so uh just to also orient everybody if you're coming to to learn
00:03:49.660about this history like i did via the late and lamented and wonderful cw show rain which i think
00:03:57.000would be great binge watching for if you're self-isolating at home right now because it's
00:04:02.080a bonkers show and every episode is great anyway so the king in that at the beginning is king henry
00:04:08.700who is actually the second of these three brothers so that's those characters are going to be
00:04:14.400tangentially involved in this story as well so um henry was born one year later almost exactly
00:04:21.080one year later than francis so francis is the older brother henry's the second brother he was
00:04:25.820born march 31st 1519 and which frankly just based on the birthdates of these brothers you can sort
00:04:33.240of see the fertility cycle of claude of france they're all born in between january february and
00:04:38.120march successive years anyway so there's two brothers there's francis and there's henry they're
00:04:42.580one year apart from each other so and they as children um were sent to spain to be hostages
00:04:51.260so what happened is that their father was badly defeated and captured in 1525 in a battle in
00:04:58.180spain and became a prisoner of charles v who was the holy roman emperor at the time in order to
00:05:03.220ensure his release the king signed the treaty of madrid but to ensure that the king abided by the
00:05:10.280treaty charles demanded he said like okay i'll let you go but i'm going to have to do like a
00:05:15.420prisoner exchange so the king was allowed to go back to france but in exchange uh charles demanded
00:05:20.580that the king's two older sons take his place as hostages so like a little switcheroo so they were
00:05:26.820keeping keeping the children there to ensure that francis would be true to his word i guess implicit
00:05:32.680in that is like or else we'll kill your sons i guess so this happened in 1526 by then so it's
00:05:40.180his two oldest sons you'd be like oh my god why you know who's gonna inherit if something happens
00:05:44.460to them in prison in spain but don't worry because there's a third son who's charles who's born on
00:05:49.720january 22nd 1522 so henry and francis are let me just do some quick brain math uh they're eight
00:05:57.500and six years old while charles is like four so the two older sons were sent over so this exchange
00:06:04.740took place between spain and france and what happened is that um so the whole point of this
00:06:11.120treaty was that it was or this taking the sons as hostages was to make sure that the king would
00:06:17.600still abide by the treaty to like not attack spain etc but um the king almost immediately
00:06:23.940went against the treaty um so that angered charles obviously charles not charles the son charles the
00:06:30.080holy roman emperor and so the eight-year-old dauphin and his younger brother spent the next
00:06:34.860three years as captives of charles v a period that according to wikipedia scarred them for life
00:06:43.000uh as well you might think it would so it's not like in some of these other stories where it's like
00:06:48.060um royal people were sent to prison and but it was actually just sort of like a castle and they
00:06:53.720could just sort of hang out and whatever like they were like literally kept in isolation um treated
00:06:58.180like increasingly badly because they were there to make so their father would not attack spain
00:07:03.640but the father kept attacking spain so the two boys were treated worse and worse so um so after
00:07:09.700this um apparently the dauphin francis the older brother he became um he was very serious um he was
00:07:17.240known to keep to himself and he preferred to dress in black uh like the spanish did so that
00:07:22.440was maybe based on having spent those years there he also became bookish preferring reading to being
00:07:28.000a soldier so and then also henry came back and apparently he was like not super social or friendly
00:07:34.660he was like prone to fits of rage sort of like harry potter in those middle books of the harry
00:07:38.940potter series and apparently um the king was like what what is with these sons like especially henry
00:07:44.400he found it really off-putting like why is this boy so upset all the time like yes so he was sent
00:07:49.320off to live in isolation in jail and not be fed or treated well for three years but like he's back
00:07:54.880now it's like what's what's the deal so he wasn't super impressed by that and so because of this so
00:08:01.520francis and henry came back changed and the king sort of came to prefer his youngest son charles
00:08:06.700who was not did not spend time in a dungeon and was much more pleasant which makes lots of
00:08:13.220psychological sense so the dauphin francis the whole thing was like who's he gonna marry because
00:08:18.940he's going to be the next king etc um henry was married off to an italian woman named catherine
00:08:26.620de medici who i am 10 000 going to do a podcast about later on and they were trying to figure
00:08:33.140out who are they going to marry the oldest son francis to because catherine de medici was sort
00:08:38.300of like not a great match at the time because she like it was sort of like france and italy got
00:08:43.580along but then they didn't and so it's kind of like it's not the best marriage like they sort
00:08:47.880have got henry to marry catherine de medici because they just like didn't care about him
00:08:51.480very much and wanted to marry him to whoever anyway so the dauphin francis was briefly engaged
00:08:58.820to mary who later became mary the first henry the eighth's daughter this was when he was an infant
00:09:06.600they were briefly engaged but then this didn't work out um but anyway what happened after all
00:09:14.000of this so francis the dauphin was just like whatever being a serious guy who liked to wear
00:09:17.880black um dealing with some untreated ptsd type issues and then one day he died um he died at
00:09:25.020the age of 18 on august 10th 1536 um some people believe he was poisoned just because the
00:09:32.020circumstances of his death were just like weird um although it was probably tuberculosis partially
00:09:39.380because he had never fully recovered his health from the years spent in the damp cells in prison
00:09:46.340where he spent three formative years of his childhood so what happened is that he Francis
00:09:51.820was playing tennis and then he asked for a cup of water and his private secretary count
00:09:58.080Monta Cuccioli brought him a cup of water he drank the water and then collapsed and then died
00:10:03.920several days later so there were some thoughts that like did monta kiccioli did he like poison
00:10:10.540him was a water poison like already everybody was like oh catherine de medici is on the scene like
00:10:14.520is she she became known for being a fan of poison but also italian people were just sort of assumed
00:10:20.300to be always poisoning everybody all the time so it's sort of like did he did she do this because
00:10:25.640she wanted her husband henry to be king instead of francis um apparently they found a book about
00:10:31.120poisons in her room but that's just like her hobby anyway under torture Montecucholi confessed to
00:10:38.700having poisoned Francis even though he almost definitely died of tuberculosis like the whole
00:10:44.100thing where it's like he asked for a cup of water after playing tennis and then collapsed it's like
00:10:48.820well he probably fell badly that's why he asked for the water so it's not like the water made him
00:10:52.500collapse that's my that's my csi type evaluation um so so his death was a catastrophic blow to
00:11:02.600everybody because the king was obviously devastated to lose his oldest son who you remember he thought
00:11:08.040was so attractive even though he became serious and liked to read books you know the king was
00:11:12.580upset that's his oldest son like it's it's his son um but also there's like the whole king
00:11:16.760heir to the throne reason so francis prayed after his son died um god you have afflicted me by0.53
00:11:24.040humiliating my kingdom and my army now you have taken away my son what else remains safe to0.81
00:11:28.500destroy me utterly when it shall please you to do so at least warn me that it is your will so i do0.51
00:11:33.320not rebel um anyway so he they had the secretary secretary was blamed for it etc um so he was
00:11:43.680subjected to length the secretary monticcioli so lengthy horrendous tortures and then he
00:11:49.660eventually confessed like people confessed to lots of things after they've been horribly tortured
00:11:54.560um and he claimed that he had planned to murder the king that he had done this um for the holy
00:12:00.160roman emperor as revenge he later withdrew his confession um but he wanted to die with his
00:12:06.580conscious and conscience intact like he didn't want to die with this these lies on the punishment
00:12:11.460um he was um executed pretty horribly um and that's just sort of like setting the stage for
00:12:22.460what's happening because this is a pandemic special episode there's going to be some
00:12:26.140the whole point of the story i'm telling you today has to do with plague so hang tight so
00:12:31.800one of the other consequences of francis jr dying is that henry who was the duke of orleans became
00:12:39.060the heir to the throne and the thing is that his father did not like him um he didn't like how he
00:12:43.660was so serious had these like temper tantrums um again the fact that he was the father didn't
00:12:50.840rescue him from being in jail for three years of basically being isolated with no one to talk to
00:12:54.800except for his brother like when the boys came back they didn't even speak french anymore i think
00:12:58.520they only spoke spanish because that's how their captors spoke to them so he was like damaged from
00:13:04.740that um and he also didn't have the the book here um the biography francis the first mentions that
00:13:11.020henry lacked even the little charm his brother had possessed tall dark and repressed it was said
00:13:16.220he never laughed and seldom spoke um his mistress was the only person whom he regarded with anything
00:13:22.240approaching affection and his father regarded him as a disappointment so you remember there's the
00:13:28.860youngest son charles was now second in line to the throne and the king just liked him so much
00:13:34.020better and the whole I mean this is largely I think because Charles was like not psychologically
00:13:39.700affected because he had not been trapped in jail in Spain for three years so Charles was
00:13:47.060apparently the most handsome of the three sons even though he had gone blind in one eye from
00:13:53.100smallpox apparently that was not noticeable or if it was it just made him look even more handsome
00:13:58.220he was known for his wild antics his practical jokes his extravagance and frivolousness which
00:14:03.760his father approved of wholeheartedly so if you think about the king as a sort of guy who's just
00:14:08.080like you know who my favorite son is the jokester over there like of course he's not gonna like
00:14:11.600henry who's just like brooding all over the place like kylo ren sort of person uh charles's wild
00:14:18.080antics include he once jumped up behind the emperor of the holy roman empire like literally
00:14:23.000the person who had imprisoned his brothers for years slash his father's sworn enemy um and
00:14:27.940charles shouted you are my prisoner apparently charles v spurred his horse into a friend of
00:14:32.700gallop without once looking behind him um so he's just like a little goofball but slash also kind of
00:14:40.200um chaotic shall we say so there were um henry and charles did not get along with each other
00:14:49.160very much um this was partially because henry could tell that everybody liked charles better
00:14:54.340because charles was a jokester and friendly and more handsome and not like brooding all the time
00:14:59.680and also his father liked charles better so it was widely believed that everybody wanted charles
00:15:06.520to be the dauphin instead of henry and 1542 francis the king and charles v his longtime nemesis
00:15:14.060again went to war against each other charles fought and captured luxembourg um henry was
00:15:21.820leading some commands as well luxembourg was lost and retaken several times and i'm just gonna kind
00:15:29.240of like some behind the scenes stuff happened basically um as a result of some further treaties
00:15:35.580was that um so they were deciding on who who charles would marry and as so this is part of
00:15:43.380the treaty uh between the king and the holy roman emperor was like okay one of the terms of this was
00:15:48.600that charles the goofball youngest son was going to marry a relative of the emperor to sort of like
00:15:52.980form an alliance between the two places they would stop being at war with each other that sort of
00:15:56.960stuff and so as the groom's father the king was expected by the treaty to endow his son with some
00:16:04.720certain territories but this deeply offended uh henry and catherine de medici because so the
00:16:13.060treaty and i think this is sort of like charles the roman emperor just sort of like dicking around
00:16:17.220he just put a thing in the treaty being like you know i want your son charles to marry one of my
00:16:21.380relatives and also want you to give charles all these titles and lands because he knew that that
00:16:25.580would annoy henry because henry was not good at he had no poker face um so what would happen
00:16:32.480anyways the whole thing like the marriage treaty was just sort of like good news for charles
00:16:36.500bad news for henry can you hear my cat purring she's just here to help there's not cats in this
00:16:41.220story hepburn but maybe one day i'll do a story with cats in it so i'm just gonna like pivot over
00:16:48.200to to reading some more from this francis the first biography so do do so henry was really
00:16:57.180mad about all of this francis the king had never made any secret of the preference he felt for his
00:17:01.600younger son and henry believed with some justification that the last years of his
00:17:05.540father's reign had seen him increasingly sidelined he was also aware from whisperings at court that
00:17:10.380once the king died henry might potentially find himself facing um an imperial slash orleanist
00:17:17.140alliance so he basically there's the fear that charles would because of this marriage he would
00:17:23.560ally with the holy roman empire and then they could maybe try and take down henry so france
00:17:28.760was just beginning to unite as a country after long long long long periods of factionalism and
00:17:34.280this had the potential to revive a dangerous and divisive situation so henry in december 1544 took
00:17:42.340the unusual step of making a formal complaint saying like this treaty is not fair um he said
00:17:49.100that he didn't like this he didn't like how it was um gonna maybe make charles be more powerful
00:17:55.540than him blah blah blah so like it's documented that henry was upset about all this he was jealous
00:18:00.940about all this but then so the the rivalry between the two brothers was potentially dangerous could
00:18:06.980potentially derail like everything that francis had worked a really long time to get going in
00:18:11.320france but then and this is where we'll get to the pandemic of it all so in the autumn of 1545
00:18:18.640charles and henry together were on their way to bologna which was under siege on september the
00:18:27.3806th they came across a cluster of houses that had been emptied and sealed off from the at the time
00:18:32.720they called it the plague but it was probably a form of influenza like it wasn't people weren't
00:18:36.160getting the like pustules it wasn't like a bubonic situation it was more just like very contagious
00:18:41.260this influenza type thing so they came across this area if you listen to the last pandemic
00:18:47.280super special you'll recall that joan of england and her entourage came up to a city that was all
00:18:53.080and that the people in the city were like leave like don't even come into this city like there's
00:18:57.360plague here everyone's like just like don't come by so even in a pre-germ theory science world
00:19:03.460people knew like if there was plague around it's like you just you steer clear like this is just
00:19:07.620like common knowledge so henry and charles came across across a cluster of houses that had been
00:19:13.120emptied and sealed off from the plague aka influenza and then charles said um quote no son
00:19:20.660of a king of france ever died of plague and then he entered into the houses um laughing he slashed
00:19:28.520at bedding with his sword and started a pillow fight with some of his traveling companions he
00:19:33.660also allegedly laid down on one of the infected beds and rolled around on the bedding so he's
00:19:39.060just like scampering through these like houses where everybody had died of influenza that had
00:19:45.660been like shuttered off because of like the gruesome death and he was just like lol so just
00:19:50.320like i'm just picturing like jumping bed to bed like pillow fighting like pillow fighting um
00:19:55.640rolling around in these mattresses because he thought that because he was the son of the king
00:19:59.980of france that he couldn't get sick and guess what um later that evening after dining with his
00:20:06.720father and brother he took suddenly ill what who saw that coming he was suffering from pain a high
00:20:12.520fever vomiting and shaking limbs henry rushed to to be with him but everybody kept him out of the0.54
00:20:19.260room because they're like oh shit like we've lost like if he's gonna die too like we need henry to0.92
00:20:23.220not die because otherwise there's gonna be no sons to inherit all of france but i think it's nice0.97
00:20:28.120it seems nice that henry wanted to go and be with his brother because even though they were rivals
00:20:31.980and stuff he's just like well i don't want him to literally die uh but die he did um charles died
00:20:38.480on september 9th 1545 so he was age 23 some people thought he was poisoned because again
00:20:45.160catherine de medici is around she is italian and she likes to read about poisons but i mean
00:20:53.220some people thought he was poisoned because some people think everybody is poisoned but he was
00:20:58.120seen like he did this thing everybody saw where he was just like ran inside of these houses where
00:21:02.960people had been dying of influenza rolled around on the mattresses like had pillow fights um and
00:21:09.000so he's buried next to his father and his brother is where he was buried francis died later henry
00:21:15.460became the king catherine de medici became the queen and a whole lot of other stuff happens and
00:21:20.140We'll talk about that on some other podcasts, but not on this podcast, because this podcast is just a super special to tell you the story of Charles II of Valois and how he died of a deadly influenza tinged pillow fight.
00:21:34.080So I think the moral of that story is to not go into places that are infected with highly contagious diseases and have pillow fights in those places.
00:21:47.440so that's my advice for you today really and i hope you enjoyed that story and there'll be
00:21:55.200more regular podcast episodes coming out soon and um take care be well talk to you later
00:22:02.680the war is over and both sides lost kingdoms were reduced to cinders and armies scattered