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Becoming a Queen in
Early Modern Europe
East and West
Katarzyna Kosior
Queenship and Power
Series Editors
Charles Beem
University of North Carolina
Pembroke, NC, USA
Carole Levin
University of Nebraska
Lincoln, NE, USA
This series focuses on works specializing in gender analysis, women’s studies,
literary interpretation, and cultural, political, constitutional, and diplomatic
history. It aims to broaden our understanding of the strategies that queens—
both consorts and regnants, as well as female regents—pursued in order to
wield political power within the structures of male-dominant societies. The
works describe queenship in Europe as well as many other parts of the world,
including East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Islamic civilization.
More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14523
Katarzyna Kosior
Becoming a Queen
in Early Modern
Europe
East and West
Katarzyna Kosior
Northumbria University
Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
Queenship and Power

ISBN 978-3-030-11847-1 ISBN 978-3-030-11848-8 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11848-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019933185
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019

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For my family
Acknowledgements
My greatest debt is to my PhD supervisors, Professor Maria Hayward and

Dr Alice Hunt. Their expertise, enthusiastic support, and belief in me and
the importance of the project have been my greatest motivation. The time
they gave to reading drafts, in-depth discussions, and providing me with
thoughtful feedback left me feeling very lucky indeed. I would also like to
thank my PhD examiners, Professor Mark Stoyle and Dr Natalia
Nowakowska, for their feedback, encouragement, and a great discussion
in the viva. Dr Nowakowska’s continuing support has been generous and
invaluable. I’m also grateful to Professor Robert Frost for reading and
commenting on the full manuscript; his feedback was exactly what I
needed at the time. I would also like to thank the two anonymous readers
for their constructive and supportive suggestions. Any remaining crudities
of argument are my own. I am also indebted to a broader circle of col-
leagues working in the field of royal studies, especially Dr Ellie Woodacre,
Professor Russell Martin, Dr Neil Murphy, Dr Carey Fleiner, and Dr
Catherine Fletcher. Completing the doctoral thesis that is the basis for this
book would not have been possible without the financial support of sev-
eral institutions. I am grateful to the Hanna and Zdzislaw Broncel Trust,
the Society for Renaissance Studies, Funds for Women Graduates, and
Catherine Mackichan Trust. Since September 2018, I have been a
Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Department of Humanities at
Northumbria University, Newcastle, and I’m grateful indeed for the
friendliness and support of my new colleagues.
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My friends gave me feedback at various stages of the project, which

proved to be anything but a solitary exercise. Amber Dudley, Dr Caroline
Williams, and Dr Leona Skelton proofread and commented on sections of
the text. They did a fantastic job and any remaining mistakes are my own.
I would like to thank Marcin Knut for his friendship and support. The
challenges of conducting international research have been significantly
lessened by the help and support of Ewa Knut, Dr Barbara Charmas,
Michał Charmas, Kasia Charmas, Michalina Fijałkowska, Jacek Fijałkowski,
and Dr Leonie Hicks. My friends have been enthusiastic about the project,
and I would like to thank Lusia Kiszewska, Emma Travers, Tom Wilson,
Jack Mellish, Rachel Hardy, Paulina Bulczak, Chloë McKenzie, Brenna
Gibson, and Kasia Jaworska. I am particularly grateful to Trish and Martin
Roscoe for their warm friendship and support.
This thesis is strongly grounded in my origin and heritage. It would not
have been possible without the education and continuous support provided
by my parents, Ela and Darek. They put the first history book in my hand
and sent me to my first language lessons. My tutor, Professor Maria Charmas,
not only taught me English, but also hopefully managed to instil in me
something of her impeccable work ethic. I would also like to thank mem-
bers of my family: my fantastic stepdad Krzyś, and my grandparents, Zosia,
Stach, and Jan. Michał was my first intellectual sparring partner and remains
the best older brother anyone could wish for. Matt’s unfailing enthusiasm,
curiosity, and belief in me have been an inspiration and a positive force. I’m
incredibly lucky to have a partner who can tirelessly spend hours reading
drafts and discussing early modern history, but who knows when it’s time
for us to put on our coats and step out into the forests and hills.
Contents
1 Introduction: East and West 1
2 Royal Weddings: Protocol, Identity, and Emotion 23
3 Coronation: Consort to Royal Power 61
4 Political Culture and the Rhetoric of Queenship 99
5 Conception, Childbirth, and Motherhood: Performing a

Royal Family139
6 Conclusion173
Appendix A: ‘List of Catherine of Austria’s Trousseau’ 181
Appendix B: ‘The Manner of Queen Barbara’s Coronation’ 199
Appendix C: ‘Speech welcoming Queen Anna to Kazimierz’ 205
Appendix D: ‘Piotr Boratyński’s Third Speech…’ 207
ix
x Contents

Appendix E: ‘Libel Against the Second Marriage of King
Sigismund August’ 215
Bibliography 219
Index251
Abbreviations in Footnotes
AGAD The Central Archives of Historical Records in Warsaw.

AT IV S. Górski (ed.), Acta Tomiciana: Tomus Quartus Epistolarum.
Legationum. Responsorum. Actionum et Rerum Gestarum;
Serenissimi Principis Sigismundi Primi, Regis Polonie et Magni
Ducis Lithuanie (Kórnik: Biblioteka Kórnicka, 1855).
Auton P. L. Jacob (ed.), Chroniques de Jean d’Auton, publiées pour la
première fois en entier, d’apres les manuscrits de la Bibliothéque
du Roi, vol. 2 (Paris: Silvestre, Libraire-Éditeur, 1834).
BL British Library
BnF Bibliothèque nationale de France
Choque A. Le Roux De Lincy, Discours des cérémonies du mariage
d’Anne de Foix, de la maison de France, avec Ladislas VI, roi de
Bohême, précédé du discours du voyage de cette reine dans la
seigneurie de Venise, le tout mis en écrit du commandant
d’Anne, reine de France, duchesse de Bretagne, par Pierre
Choque, dit Bretagne, l’un de ses rois d’armes. Mai 1502. (Paris:
Bibliothèque de l’école des chartes, 1861).
CSPV R. Brown (ed.) Calendar of state papers and manuscripts
relating to English affairs existing in the archives and collections
of Venice, and in other libraries of northern Italy, 1202 [1675],
vol. 2 (London: Longman and Roberts, 1873).
Hall’s Chronicle M. Ellis (ed.), Hall’s chronicle: containing the history of
England during the reign of Henry the fourth, and the
succeeding monarchs, to the end of the reign of Henry the eighth,
in which are particularly described the manners and customs of
those periods, carefully collated with the editions of 1548 and
1550 (London: J. Johnson, 1809).
xi
xii ABBREVIATIONS IN FOOTNOTES
LP J. S. Brewer (ed.), Letters and papers, foreign and domestic, of

the reign of Henry VIII: preserved in the Public Record Office,
the British Museum, and elsewhere in England, vol. 1 (London:
Longman and Roberts, 1862).
Rymer’s Foedera T. Rymer (ed.), Foedera: conventions, literæ, et cujuscunque
generis acta publica, inter reges Angliæ, et alios quosvis
Imperatores, Regis, Pontifices, Principes, vel communitates, ab
ineunte sæculo duodecimo, viz. ab anno 1101, ad nostra usque
tempora, habita aut tractata, vol. 8 (London: J. Tonson,
1727–1735).
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: East and West
Archduchess Catherine of Austria and Sigismund August, King of Poland

and Grand Duke of Lithuania, married by proxy on the cusp of summer
1553. It should have been a happy occasion. Catherine, daughter of
Ferdinand, King of the Romans, would become queen of the largest mon-
archy in Europe. But the atmosphere at the wedding deteriorated soon
after the hand of the princess was bound with a bishop’s stole to the hand
of Mikołaj ‘the Black’ Radziwiłł, Voivode of Vilnius and Sigismund
August’s proxy. Some modern historians are still too careful to include an
account of the episode in their studies, calling it ‘distasteful’.1 It was also
removed from the nineteenth-century edition of the chronicle by Łukasz
Górnicki, who was in the entourage of Jan Przerębski, the other ambas-
sador sent to conclude the marriage negotiations.2 Górnicki reports:
After the banquet there was dancing. King Ferdinand was dancing himself,
and rather a lot. After dancing they went to the bedroom. There, the King
told the Voivode of Vilnius to lie down, saying: ‘The usual custom has to be
observed in our House.’ And when the Voivode of Vilnius lay down as he
was dressed, the King ordered his daughter to lie down beside him, but she
was too embarrassed to do it. So her father caught her by the shoulders and
said to his son: ‘Maximilian, help me.’ Maximilian caught her legs, and they
put her next to the Voivode. Immediately afterwards the Queen leapt out of
1
U. Borkowska, Dynastia Jagiellonów w Polsce (Warsaw: PWN, 2011), p. 251.
2
The censored version: Ł. Górnicki, Dzieje w Koronie Polskiej od r. 1538 do r. 1572, K. J.
Turowski (ed.) (Sanok: Karol Pollak, 1855).
© The Author(s) 2019 1

K. Kosior, Becoming a Queen in Early Modern Europe, Queenship
and Power, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11848-8_1
2 K. KOSIOR
bed, not without help, and the Voivode as well. There were other ceremo-
nies too, but not accompanied by grand speeches as in our country.3
This moment of tension has much to teach us about queenship, royal cer-
emonies, and royal families. The Polish and Habsburg sides both under-
stood the purpose and general procedure of marriage by proxy, but
differences in political cultures were alluded to. The Poles, having just
arrived from an elective, parliamentary monarchy where rhetorical skill
was highly valued as part of the culture of active political participation,
expected royal ceremony to be accompanied by ‘grand speeches’.
Consummation by proxy was not usually part of Polish ceremonies, and
Ferdinand referred to it as the custom of ‘our House’. These differ-
ences could be navigated by ambassadors, who acted as intermediaries and
were normally well versed in the protocol of royal courts. However,
Mikołaj ‘the Black’ Radziwiłł was not an experienced ambassador and had
only entered the world of high-level politics following his cousin Barbara’s
scandalous, but short-lived, marriage to Sigismund August in 1547—she
died in 1551. This helps explain why he was so oblivious to the custom
that Ferdinand had to give him instructions. Górnicki reports that the
voivode lay down ‘as he was dressed’, while the usual custom was for the
ambassador to undress down to his shirt. Even if Radziwiłł’s behaviour
was unusual, Catherine’s resistance cannot be explained by maidenly
embarrassment. She was already 20 years old and a widow, having been
married to Francesco III Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, for four months in
1549–1550. Catherine must have been familiar with the custom and
understood that this was part of the job. Instead of the maidenly blushes
that would befit a princess bride, the episode reveals the complex personal
anxieties Catherine must have felt about the marriage. She had to be put
into bed by force and immediately leapt out almost fainting in the process,
because she was marrying the same man her sister Elizabeth had married
ten years previously, the man who notoriously neglected the older
Archduchess on account of his then mistress, Barbara Radziwiłł. Having
to get into bed with the cousin of the woman who stole her older sister’s
(and now Catherine’s own) husband added insult to injury. This episode
3
All translations are my own unless otherwise stated. Ł. Górnicki, Dzieie w Koronie Polskiey
za Zygmunta I y Zygmunta Augusta aż do śmierci iego z przytoczeniem niektorych postronnych
Ciekawości od Roku 1538 aż do Roku 1572 (Warsaw: Drukarnia J.K.M. y Rzeczypospolited
Collegium XX Scholarum, 1754), p. 56.
INTRODUCTION: EAST AND WEST 3
throws into sharp relief that these ceremonies, which so often come down
to us as sets of depersonalised platitudes, were, in fact, deeply personal.
Górnicki’s report also helps us think about family dynamics in the context
of dynasticism and rehearses ideas about the gendered expectations of
royal women. Ferdinand would not be humiliated by his daughter and she
is made to comply by force. In the report, dynastic rhetoric of ‘our house’
quickly becomes the family business of disciplining Catherine—the father
calls his son, not his courtiers, to help him.
Catherine embodies the connections between European royal courts in
the sixteenth century that this study encompasses. As the daughter of
Anne of Bohemia and Hungary, she was niece, sister, and aunt to queens
of France and Poland-Lithuania. She was also the granddaughter of Anne
de Foix, who was the cousin to the queens of France Anne of Brittany and
Claude of France. But even though Catherine’s cousins, sisters, aunts, and
nieces figure prominently in French and English-language scholarship, she
and her fellow queens of Poland are absent from narratives about sixteenth-
century queenship, even those that claim to have a pan-European focus.4
The obscurity of Polish queens helps perpetuate the notion that Europe
was historically divided into ‘West’ and ‘East’, implying that a fundamen-
tal political and cultural divide animated life on the continent. As Norman
Davies observes, ‘by taking transient contemporary divisions, such as the
4
For example, see: T. Earenfight, Queenship in Medieval Europe (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2013); T. M. Vann (ed.), Queens, Regents and Potentates (Cambridge, 1993);
J. Eldridge Carol, Fairy Tale Queens: Representations of Early Modern Queenship (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); D. Barrett-Graves (ed.), The Emblematic Queen: Extra-Literary
Representations of Early Modern Queenship (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); S. Jansen,
The Monstrous Regiment of Women: Female Rulers in Early Modern Europe (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2002); A. J. Cruz and M. Suzuki (eds) The Rule of Women in Early
Modern Europe (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2009); L. O. Fradenburg (ed.)
Women and Sovereignty (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1992); J. C. Parsons (ed.)
Medieval Queenship (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1993). Exceptions: A. Bues (ed.) Frictions
and Failures: Cultural Encounters in Crisis (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2017),
pp. 105–132; C. Fleiner and E. Woodacre (eds), Virtuous or Villainess? The Image of the
Royal Mother from the Early Medieval to the Early Modern Era (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2016); E. Woodacre (ed.), A Companion to Global Queenship (Amsterdam: ARC
Humanities Press); H. Matheson-Pollock, J. Paul, C. Fletcher (eds), Queenship and Counsel
in Early Modern Europe (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), pp. 15–34. Two Polish
eighteenth-century queens were included by: H. Watanabe-O’Kelly, ‘Religion and the con-
sort: two Electresses of Saxony and Queens of Poland (1697–1757), in C. Campbell Orr
(ed.) Queenship in Europe 1660–1815: The Role of the Consort (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2004), pp. 252–276.
4 K. KOSIOR
Iron Curtain, as a standing definition of “West” or “East”, one is bound

to distort any description of Europe in earlier periods. Poland is neatly
excised from the Renaissance, Hungary from the Reformation’.5 Davies
wrote this in the immediate aftermath of the fall of communism, but the
tendency to diminish the extent of contact between Poland and the West
while emphasising the ‘otherness’ or marginality of Polish culture persists
in the historiography. For example, the tendency to downplay the signifi-
cance of the Polish nobility in European affairs is even evident in Fanny
Cosandey’s otherwise outstanding study of French queenship. In her
introduction, she lists the 12 French queens of her study. Only Marie
Leszczyńska, the wife of Louis XV and queen of France for 42 years, is
given a descriptor. She is called ‘a modest Polish princess’ in direct con-
trast to Marie Antoinette, who is identified as ‘born archduchess of
Austria’.6 This apparently innocuous contrast speaks volumes. Marie
Leszczyńska was the only surviving daughter of King Stanisław I
Leszczyński of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania (1704–1709,
1733–1736), later Duke of Lorraine, and Katarzyna Opalińska, like her
husband of a very distinguished Polish family.
Since Davies wrote in 1992, Robert Frost and Natalia Nowakowska
have pioneered early modern Polish history as an English-language field of
study. Nowakowska is right to argue that ‘where our models are built from
examples garnered from only half the continent, we risk operating with
only a half (or even a half-accurate) picture of Renaissance European
society’.7 In other words, historians have tried to define the ‘European’ by
looking only at half of Europe, as eastern and central Europe remains the
primary context for representing the Polish monarchy.8 Polish historiogra-
phy is no less guilty of this tendency. It tends to treat queenship in even
more reclusive terms, for although it includes assiduously researched
biographies of some queens, particularly Bona Sforza, few attempts have
N. Davies, Europe: a history (London: Pimlico, revised edition 2010), pp. 25–26.
5
F. Cosandey, La Reine de France. Symbole et pouvoir, XVe–XVIII siècle (Paris: Gallimard,

6
2000), pp. 11–12.

7
N. Nowakowska, Church, State, and Dynasty in Renaissance Poland: The Career of
Cardinal Fryderyk Jagiellon (1468–1503) (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), p. 6. Also, R. Frost,
The Oxford History of Poland-Lithuania. Volume I: The Making of the Polish-Lithuanian
Union, 1385–1569 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).
8
Of this tendency, see: U. Borkowska and M. Hörsch (eds), Hofkultur der Jagiellonendynastie
und verwandter Fürstenhäuser (Ostfildern: J. Thorbecke, 2010); F. N. Ardelean, C. Nicholson
and J. Preiser-Kapeller (eds), Between Worlds: The Age of the Jagiellonians (Frankfurt am
Main: Peter Lang, 2013).
been made to relate Polish queens to each other, never mind other
European consorts.9
This study seeks to address these imbalances. It uses ‘East’ and ‘West’
in a strictly geographical sense, eschewing any sense that these terms nec-
essarily signify fundamental cultural difference, and pierces stereotypes of
sixteenth-century Poland’s cultural and political isolation by offering the
first substantial comparison of Polish royal ceremony and culture with that
of France, an apparently quintessentially western realm. French queens
have been studied as a group by historians such as Fanny Cosandey,
Kathleen Wellman, and Simone Bertière, but their connection to the
Polish queens has never been fully understood or appreciated.10 More
9
Bogucka, Bona Sforza (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1998/2010);
M. Bogucka, Anna Jagiellonka (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1994/2009);
J. Besala, Zygmunt Stary i Bona Sforza (Poznań: Zysk i S-ka, 2012); W. Pociecha, Królowa
Bona (1494–1557): czasy i ludzie Odrodzenia, vols. 1–4 (Poznań: Poznańskie Towarzystwo
Nauk, 1949). A collection of sources relating to Jagiellonian women was published by:
A. Przeździecki, Jagiellonki Polskie w XVI w.: uzupełnienia, rozprawy, materyały, vols. 1–5
(Cracow: Drukarnia Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, 1878). Jagiellonian princesses who
became Queen of Sweden and Duchess of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel: A. Bues, ‘Art collec-
tions as dynastic tools: The Jagiellonian Princesses Katarzyna, Queen of Sweden, and Zofia,
Duchess of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel’, in H. Watanabe-O’Kelly and A. Morton (eds),
Queens Consort, Cultural Transfer and European Politics, c. 1500–1800 (Oxon and New York:
Routledge, 2017), pp. 15–36. The discussion about the post-1572 queenship was opened up
by Robert Frost with a study Louise Marie Gonzaga: R. I. Frost, ‘The Ethiopian and the
Elephant? Queen Louise Marie Gonzaga and Queenship in an Elective Monarchy,
1645–1667’, The Slavonic and East European Review, vol. 91, no. 4 (October 2013),
pp. 787–817; Maria Bogucka put Polish women on the map of English-language gender
studies with her book that applies its methodologies to studying Polish women’s everyday
lives. M. Bogucka, Women in Early Modern Polish Society, against the European Background
(Oxon: Routledge, 2nd edition, 2016).
10
Cosandey, La Reine de France. Symbole et pouvoir, XVe–XVIIIe siècle; S. Bertière, Les
Reines de France au Temps des Valois (Paris: Éditions de Fallois, 1994); K. Wellman,
Queens and Mistresses of Renaissance France (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013).
See also: J. Boucher, Deux épouses et reines à la fin du XVIe siècle: Louise de Lorraine
et Marguerite de France (Saint-Étienne: Publications de l’Université de Saint-Étienne,
1995). However, the most studied queens remain Anne of Brittany, Catherine de Medici,
and Mary, Queen of Scots: J. Poirier, ‘Catherine de Medicis and the Performance of
Political Motherhood’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, vol. 31, no. 3 (Autumn 2000),
pp. 643–673; K. Crawford, Perilous Performances: Gender and Regency in Early Modern
France (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004); R. J. Knecht, Catherine de’ Medici
(London: Longman, 1998); I. Cloulas, Catherine de Médicis (Paris: Fayard, 1992); C. J.
Brown, The Queen’s Library image-making at the court of Anne of Brittany, 1477–1514
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011); J. J. Rorimer, ‘The Unicorn
6 K. KOSIOR
generally, even in the robustly developing area of royal studies, sustained

comparisons are rare, an exception being Jeroen Duindam’s study of the
Valois-Bourbon and Habsburg royal courts.11 By framing Polish and
French queenship comparatively and relating Polish queenship and mon-
archy to the ongoing debates in recent scholarship, this study will rein-
force our growing understanding of how queens helped spin the thread
that connected early modern Europe, linking together various European
realms with blood-ties and alliances; it will also demonstrate that Poland
was very much a part of that rich tapestry, exposing the extent to which
the wives of the Valois and Jagiellonian kings related to each other.
Tapestries Were Made for Anne of Brittany’, The Metropolitam Museum of Art Bulletin,
New Series, vol. 1, no 1 (Summer 1942), pp. 7–20; C. J. Brown, ‘Books in Performance:
The Parisian Entry (1504) and Funeral (1514) of Anne of Brittany’, Yale French Studies,
No 110 (2006), pp. 75–79; A. Fraser, Mary Queen of Scots (London: Pheonix,
1969/2002); J. Guy, My Heart is My Own: The Life of Mary Queen of Scots (London:
Harper Perennial, 2004); J. Wormland, Mary, Queen of Scots: Politics, Passion and a
Kingdom Lost (New York: Tauris Parke Paperbacks, 2nd edition, 2001). Focus on the
more ‘powerful’ queens, i.e. regnants and regents has persisted in queenship studies since
the pioneering articles on Elizabeth I: A. Heish, ‘Queen Elizabeth I and the Persistence
of Patriarchy’, in Feminist Review, vol. 4 (1980), pp. 45–56; C. Levin, The Heart and
Stomach of a King: Elizabeth I and the Politics of Sex and Power (Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press, 1994); T. Earenfight, The King’s Other Body: Maria of Castile and
the Crown of Aragon (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009). Fanny
Cosandey similarly focuses on queens of France as regents: F. Cosandey, ‘“La blancheur
de nos lys”. La reine de France au cœur de l’État royal’, Revue d’histoire moderne et con-
temporaine, vol. 44, no 3 (1997), pp. 387–403. See also: M. Perry, Sisters to the King: The
Tumultuous Lives of Henry VIII’s Sisters: Margaret of Scotland and Mary of France
(London: Andre Deutsch Limited, 1998); J. F. Petrouch, Queen’s apprentice: archduchess
Elizabeth, empress María, the Habsburgs, and the Holy Roman Empire, 1554–1569 (Leiden,
Boston: Brill, 2010).
11
J. Duindam, Vienna and Versailles: The Courts of Europe’s Dynastic Rivals, 1550–1780
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Some examples of thematic or regional
approaches: Peggy McCracken, The Romance of Adultery: Queenship and Sexual Transgression
in Old French Literature (Philadelphia, 1998); Eldridge Carol, Fairy Tale Queens; Jansen,
The Monstrous Regiment of Women; Cruz and Suzuki (eds) The Rule of Women in Early
Modern Europe; W. Layher, Queenship and Voice in Medieval Northern Europe (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Woodacre, The Queens Regnant of Navarre; Elena Woodacre
(ed.) Queenship in the Mediterranean: Negotiating the Role of the Queen in the Medieval and
Early Modern Eras (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); C. Beem, The Lioness Roared: The
Problems of Female Rule in English History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); A. Hunt
and A. Whitelock (eds) Tudor Queenship: The Reigns of Mary and Elizabeth (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); C. Levin, D. Barrett -Graves, and J. E. Carney (eds), High and
Mighty Queens of Early Modern England: Realities and Representations (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2003).
The ceremonies of becoming a queen, understood as the wedding with

the accompanying festivals, coronation, childbirth, and motherhood,
marked the transition of a bride into a queen consort but have never been
studied as a sequence in a larger European context. The analysis of these
ceremonies illuminates French and Polish queenship by revealing the ide-
ological, conceptual, political, diplomatic, and family frameworks within
which queens functioned. Establishing the patterns that marked the move-
ment of royal brides between East and West, laying bare the connections
that bound together monarchical Europe, enables us to question whether
the differences in European royal ceremony and queenship were moti-
vated by specific ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ ideas. This study uses both
queens and royal ceremonies as a way of understanding the political and
cultural dynamics that animated life on the continent in the sixteenth
century.
Although the historiography of the Polish monarchy has not been
affected by the ‘ceremonial turn’ to the same extent as the English and
French-language scholarship, works on Polish royal ceremony have been
produced by Michał Rożek, Urszula Borkowska, Aleksander Gieysztor,
Krystyna Turska, and Karolina Targosz.12 But the tremendously prolific
English-language scholarship on ceremonies is limited too. The tendency
12
M. Rożek, Polskie Koronacje i Korony (Cracow: Krajowa Agencja Wydawnicza, 1987);
U. Borkowska, ‘Theatrum Ceremoniale at the Polish Court as a System of Social and Political
Communication’, in A. Adamska and M. Mostert (eds), The Development of Literate
Mentalities in East Central Europe (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2004), pp. 431–452;
Borkowska, Dynastia Jagiellonów, pp. 229–259; U. Borkowska, ‘Królewskie zaślubiny,
narodziny i chrzest’, in Jacek Banaszkiewicz (ed.), Imagines Potestatis: Rytuały, symbole i
konteksty fabularne władzy zwierzchniej. Polska X–XV w. (Warsaw: Instytut Wydawniczy
PAN, 1994), pp. 75–92; A. Gieysztor, ‘Gesture in the Coronation Ceremonies of Medieval
Poland’, in J. M. Bak (ed.), Coronations: Medieval and Early Modern Monarchic Ritual (Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1990), pp. 152–164; K. Turska, ‘Stroje Jagiellonów
podczas ceremoniału witania narzeczonych’, in M. Markiewicz and R. Skowron (eds),
Theatrum ceremoniale na dworze ksia ̨ża ̨t i królów polskich (Cracow: Zamek Królewski na
Wawelu, 1999), pp. 101–111; K. Targosz, ‘Oprawa artystyczno-ideowa wjazdów weselnych
trzech sióstr Habsburżanek (Kraków 1592 i 1605, Florencja 1608), in Markiewicz and
Skowron (eds), Theatrum ceremoniale, pp. 207–244. See also, a work of popular history:
K. Targosz, Królewskie Uroczystości Weselne w Krakowie i na Wawelu, 1512–1605 (Cracow:
Zamek Królewski na Wawelu, 2007). Texts related to ceremonies, like wedding songs, are
often studied not by historians but from the literary criticism point of view: J. Nowak-
Dłużewski, Okolicznościowa poezja polityczna w Polsce. Czasy Zygmuntowskie (Warszawa: Pax,
1966); K. Mroczek, Epitalamium staropolskie: między tradycja ̨ literacka ̨ a obrzędem weselnym
(Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1989).
8 K. KOSIOR
to focus on the western part of the continent has produced a lopsided

account of European ceremony, and therefore royal culture, because not
only does the literature neglect a large expanse of European territory but
it also fails to take account of ceremonies in a different political setting
than that provided by hereditary and absolute monarchies.13 Among the
works claiming to have a European focus, only Karin Friedrich’s chapter in
Europa Triumphans deals with ceremony in sixteenth-century Poland.14
The spotlight on Western Europe in other works, for example, by Gordon
Kipling or Roy Strong, limits them to analysis of one type of royal ingress
celebrated with pageants, which was often not characteristic of other parts
of the continent, including Poland.15 Polish ceremony can be miscon-
strued as developing more slowly, rather than understood as developing a
set of theatrical forms more appropriate to parliamentarism and elective
monarchy, the bedrocks of Poland’s early modern political culture.16
Addressing this imbalance is the aim of this study. To approach these cer-
emonies systematically using the methodologies of the ‘American ceremo-
nial school’, as some French historians call it, would be to reproduce much
of the interpretation already developed by historians like Edward Muir
and David Kertzer.17 Undeniably, monarchical authority was based on a
13
J. Adamson (ed.), The Princely Courts of Europe: Ritual, Politics and Culture Under the
Ancien Régime (London: Seven Dials, 2000); R. J. Knecht, The French Renaissance Court
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008).
14
J. R. Mulryne and E. Goldring (eds), Court Festivals of the European Renaissance: Art,
Politics and Performance (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002); R. Strong, Art and Power: Renaissance
Festivals 1450–1650 (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1973/1984); K. Friedrich [et al]
(ed.), ‘Festivals in Poland-Lithuania from the 16th to the 18th Century’, in J. R. Mulryne,
H. Watanabe-O’Kelly and M. Shewing (eds) Europa Triumphans: court and civic festivals in
early modern Europe, vol. 1 (Aldershot: MHRA and Ashgate, 2004), pp. 371–462.
15
G. Kipling, Enter the King: Theatre, Liturgy, and Ritual in the Medieval Civic Triumph
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998); R. Strong, Art and Power.
16
For example, see: D. Kosiński, Teatra polskie. Historie (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Naukowe
PWN, 2010), pp. 189, 400–414.
17
Anthropological approaches and some studies that emulate them: A. van Gennep, The
Rites of Passage, transl. M. B. Vizedom and G. L. Caffee, (London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1960/2004); V. Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (London:
AldineTransaction, 1969/2008); D. I. Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, and Power (London and
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988); E. Muir, Ritual in Early Modern Europe
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). A very good critique of these approaches
is provided by: P. Buc, The Dangers of Ritual: Between Early Medieval Texts and Social
Scientific Theory (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001).
familial model, with all that this implied for queens as wives and mothers.
Instead of seeking to establish how Polish and French ceremonies fit
anthropological models, this study investigates how, on the one hand, cer-
emonies marking the universal stages of human life were adapted to the
political context particular to each match and each realm, and how, on the
other, connections help us understand royal culture as a pan-European
phenomenon. It takes inspiration from studies that locate ceremonies in
their particular political contexts, including Maria Hayward on ceremonial
dress, Alice Hunt on royal coronations, Fanny Cosandey on queenship
and the legal frameworks of monarchy, Retha Warnicke on royal marriage
protocol, and Erin Sadlack on ceremony and letters.18 By placing Polish
and French queenship and ceremony firmly in their political context and
approaching these subjects comparatively, an analysis is offered of the
transnational and local contexts of both royal courts.
This study will not attempt to homogenise queenship or underestimate
the personal experiences of queens. Of central concern is whether displays
of emotion made during ceremonies reflected political calculations and
should be seen only as a staged part of the public life of a monarch.
Moreover, it is my contention that affection between spouses or between
parents and children has not attracted the serious historical scrutiny it
deserves, perhaps seeming reminiscent of popular biographies and histori-
cal fiction. However, sentiment animated the life of early modern courts
and this demands serious and nuanced analysis. Royal ceremony, espe-
cially, has been considered a staged performance, an orchestrated festival
of contrived propaganda.19 The role family feelings played in governing
dynastic display has very rarely been tackled by historians. The focus on
18
M. Hayward, Dress at the Court of King Henry VIII (Leeds: Maney, 2007); A. Hunt, The
Drama of Coronation: Medieval Ceremony in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2008); R. Warnicke, The marrying of Anne of Cleves: royal protocol in early
modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); E. Sadlack, The French
Queen’s Letters: Mary Tudor Brandon and the Politics of Marriage in 16th-Century Europe
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). See also: L. Oakley-Brown and Louise J. Wilkinson
(eds), The Rituals and Rhetoric of Queenship: Medieval and Early Modern (Dublin: Four
Courts Press, 2009).
19
S. Broomhall, ‘Ordering Distant Affections: Fostering Love and Loyalty in the
Correspondence of Catherine de Medici to the Spanish Court, 1568–1572’, in S. Broomhall
(ed.), Gender and Emotions in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Destroying Order,
Structuring Disorder (Oxon/New York: Routledge, 2016), pp. 67–88; T. Adams, ‘Married
Noblewomen as Diplomats: Affective Diplomacy’, in S. Broomhall, Gender and Emotions,
pp. 51–66.
10 K. KOSIOR
dynasticism is a valuable approach that helps us contextualise the particu-

lar politics of European monarchies, but it often overshadows our under-
standing of the royal family as a family.20 This study brings insight gleaned
from the history of emotions to try to add another layer of understanding
to these ceremonies.21
Previously untranslated and unpublished sources are drawn upon to
explore the dynamic between the pan-European royal culture, political
cultures particular to the French and Polish states, and the practicalities of
staging royal ceremonies. These ceremonies are the gateway to under-
standing European royal culture as a blend of national, alien, and shared
customs and fashions. Analysis of the ceremonies of becoming a queen
casts a new light on how queens experienced their marriages both in pri-
vate and public, suggesting that there were moments of unstaged emo-
tion. Treating ‘family’ and ‘dynasty’ as distinct terms of historical analysis,
this study asks about the ways in which Polish and French royal families
were emotionally connected and tests the idealised vision of royal queen-
ship and motherhood conveyed by coronation and pageants against the
reality of the lives of queens. Although this examination of the ceremonial
processes that accompanied the continuous swapping of brides posits a
new pan-European model of queenship and court culture that is resistant
20
Examples of dynastic approaches: A. J. Cruz and M. G. Stampino (eds), Early Modern
Habsburg Women: Transnational Contexts, Cultural Conflicts, Dynastic Continuities
(Farnham: Ashgate, 2013); A. Hunt and A. Whitelock (eds), Tudor Queenship: The Reigns of
Mary and Elizabeth (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); A. Weir, The Six Wives of Henry
VIII (London: Vintage Books, 2011); D. Starkey, Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII
(London: Vintage Books, 2004); D. Loades, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (Chalford:
Amberley, 1994/2009).
21
S. Broomhall (ed.), Early Modern Emotions: An Introduction (London and New York:
Routledge, 2016); J. Plamper, The History of Emotions: An Introduction, transl. K. Tribe
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015); C. Jones, The Smile Revolution in 18th Century
Paris (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); T. Dixon, Weeping Britannia: Portrait of a
Nation in Tears (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015); G. K. Paster, K. Rowe and
M. Floyd-Wilson (eds), Reading the Early Modern Passions: Essays in the Cultural History of
Emotion (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); R. Meek and E. Sullivan,
The Renaissance of Emotion: Understanding Affect in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015); M. Champion and A. Lynch (eds),
Understanding Emotions in Early Europe (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015); B. Escolme, Emotional
Excess: on the Shakespearean Stage: Passion’s Slaves (London: Bloomsbury, 2013); L. R.
Perfetti, The Representation of Women’s Emotions in Medieval and Early Modern Culture
(Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005); M. Steggle, Laughing and Weeping in Early
Modern Theatres (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007).
to crude East/West categorisations, it does not obscure its variety.

Ultimately, no complete understanding of early modern European court
culture can ignore its Polish dimension.
Polish and French Politics and Culture

This comparison between Poland and France aims to complicate our
notion of what ‘European’ means and to demonstrate that early modern
queens had to operate in a variety of political contexts. Even though the
royal customs and ceremonies of these monarchies developed from the
shared experience of medieval Christian rulership, during the sixteenth
century, these countries were in the final stages of developing two very
distinctive political systems: elective and absolute monarchy. There had
been precedent for both legendary and historical election of Polish kings,
but Poland became an elective monarchy after the Grand Duke of
Lithuania, Władysław Jagiełło, married the Polish queen regnant, Jadwiga
I, in 1386; the electiveness of the Polish monarchy was formalised in
1434.22 The marriage between Władysław and Jadwiga also established
the personal union between Poland and Lithuania, creating what was to
become the largest composite monarchy on the continent, and laying the
foundation for the subsequent elections of Jagiełło’s sons and grandchil-
dren, as hereditary rulers of Lithuania, to the Polish throne. Thus, in the
sixteenth century, Poland still functioned as a de facto hereditary monar-
chy, because the king’s son was likely to be elected to the Polish throne to
perpetuate the union with Lithuania. The elective monarchy was further
consolidated when Poland and Lithuania entered into a constitutional
union at the Parliament of Lublin in 1569. This coincided with the lack of
a Jagiellonian male heir to the Polish throne following Sigismund August’s
death in 1572, which allowed the nobility to choose their kings in ‘free
elections’ theoretically open to any member of the European nobility. In
practice, candidates tended to come from the European royal and princely
houses, or from the Polish nobility.
The establishment of the elective monarchy was accompanied by the
consolidation of the political privileges and freedoms of the Polish
22
J. Bardach, B. Lesnodorski and M. Pietrzak, Historia państwa i prawa polskiego (Warsaw:
PWN, 1987), pp. 62–63; 102–103; Nowakowska, Church, State and Dynasty in Renaissance
Poland, p. 33.
12 K. KOSIOR
obility.23 In order to secure the succession for his daughter, Jadwiga I, in

n
1374 Louis I of Hungary signed the Koszyce privileges, which exempted
the nobility from all taxes levied without their consent, except for a land
tax, and ‘established the important principle that the monarchy could only
levy extraordinary taxes with szlachta [noble] consent’.24 This started the
process of gradually establishing the Polish nobility as the dominant politi-
cal group. In 1505, Alexander I Jagiellon signed the Nihil Novi act, in
which the Polish kings renounced much of their legislative power in favour
of the bicameral parliament, or sejm, giving equal powers to the Senate
and Chamber of Envoys. The sejm was thus established as the central
organ of what Robert Frost calls ‘Poland’s consensual, mixed parliamen-
tary monarchy’.25 The Nihil Novi act provided the basis for the idea of the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, based on the Roman Republic, where
all nobles enjoyed equal privileges and liberties. Within this extraordinary
political system, the nobility were identified by their non-hereditary
offices, such as voivode or castellan, rather than aristocratic titles like duke
or count. This fostered a sense of collective responsibility for the state in
theory and practice, because service to the Commonwealth by holding a
state office rather than birth was the mark of status and power. Despite the
best efforts of some historians to dispel these negative stereotypes, Karin
Friedrich is right to argue that the modern view of Poland-Lithuania is still
largely based on ‘the caricature of Poland’, propagated successfully by
Austria, Prussia, and Russia following their partitions of Poland at the end
of the eighteenth century, as an ‘ineffective elected monarchy with its
“medieval” corporate freedoms and factionalised nobility’.26
During the early modern period France developed into an absolute
monarchy, which ‘has long been considered to be the essential form of the
early modern state’ and does not require a lengthy introduction.27 French
kings were legitimised by divine and hereditary right, which was strength-
ened by the fact that since the first Capetian was crowned in 987, France
23
Nowakowska, Church, State and Dynasty in Renaissance Poland, p. 32.
24
Frost, The Oxford History of Poland-Lithuania, pp. 65–66.
25
Ibid., p. 351.
26
K. Friedrich, ‘Royal Entries into Cracow, Warsaw and Danzig: Festival Culture and the
Role of the Cities in Poland-Lithuania’, in J. R. Mulryne, H. Watanabe-O’Kelly and
M. Shewring (eds), Europa Triumphans: Court and Civic Festivals in Early Modern Europe,
vol. 1 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), p. 386.
27
P. R. Campbell, ‘Absolute Monarchy’, in W. Doyle (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of the
Ancien Régime (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 11.
was ruled by the same dynasty until the end of the sixteenth century and
the advent of the Bourbons. Even though the French king’s powers were
far from truly absolute, French absolutism ‘developed claims and practices
that ran counter to long-term representative tendencies contained within
its own structures’.28 The French Estates General wielded less power than
the Polish sejm and, before their temporary revival in 1560, ‘they were a
nearly defunct institution’.29 The king was at the very centre of French
politics and his court was an important instrument of government, so the
nobility flocked to it in order to secure royal favour—a significant means
for French nobles to be involved in politics.30 It is rather extraordinary
that at the end of the eighteenth century the French and Polish models of
government, despite their fundamental differences, both started to be per-
ceived as decayed and inefficient. This cast a long shadow onto the period
when both of these regimes were robustly developing in the sixteenth
century. For example, Georges Picot, a nineteenth-century French histo-
rian makes a harsh judgement that ‘avec François Ier, la monarchie […]
avait marché rapidement vers la despotisme’, while Peter R. Campbell
makes a more balanced claim that the French monarchy merely failed at
‘modernising sufficiently’.31
Rather than explaining the diversity of European political culture, his-
torians tend to homogenise it by excluding or representing stereotypically
what is considered different. A few studies of the Renaissance include
Poland, notably by Peter Burke and Harold B. Segel, but many works still
mention it only in passing or not at all.32 If Poland is referred to, it is often
28
Ibid., p. 12.
29
P. Zagorin, Rebels and Rulers 1500–1660, Volume 2: Provincial rebellion (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 71.
30
O. Chaline, ‘The Kingdoms of France and Navarre: The Valois and Bourbon Courts c.
1515–1750’, in J. Adamson (ed.) The Princely Courts of Europe: Ritual, Politics and Culture
Under the Ancien Régime 1500–1750 (London: Seven Dials, Cassel & Co, 2000), pp. 76–77;
Detailed information about the French nobility may be found in: J. Russell Major, From
Renaissance Monarchy to Absolute Monarchy: French Kings, Nobles & Estates (Baltimore: The
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), pp. 57–107; D. Bitton, The French Nobility in Crisis,
1560–1640 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1969).
31
G. Picot, Histoire des Etats Généraux considérés au point de vue de leu influence sur le
Gouvernement de la France de 1355 à 1614, vol. 2, (Genève: Mégariotis Reprints, 1979),
p. 1; Campbell, ‘Absolute Monarchy’, p. 12.
32
J. B. Segel, Renaissance Culture in Poland: The Rise of Humanism, 1470–1543 (New
York: Cornell University Press, 1989); J. Hale, The Civilisation of Europe in the Renaissance
(New York: Touchstone, 1993); P. Burke, The European Renaissance: Centres and Peripheries
14 K. KOSIOR
to emphasise its cultural ‘otherness’. Dispelling these stereotypes is impor-

tant, because they go hand-in-hand with misinformed statements such as
that ‘it was not unusual for a coronation in Poland to be accompanied by
bloodshed’.33 In her recent book about expressions of identity through
costume in the European Renaissance, Ulinka Rublack mentions Poland
once and in relation to its ‘ostentatious barbarism’ and argues that the
Polish nobility
used oriental clothes, weapons, and hairstyles to emphasise its closeness to

Asian rather than Western European aesthetic ideals, as well as male valour
and hardiness. Italy, France, and Spain mattered less than Ottoman, Russian,
and Tartar styles, so that French observers of Polish ceremonies routinely
felt as though they were back in periods of ancient Persian glory.34
Karin Friedrich also argues that the ‘otherness’ of Polish culture was
‘founded on Polish self-representations of a heroic eastern “Sarmatian”
tribe of warriors, with chivalric values, Tartar-style haircuts and Turkish
style dress’.35 However, most of these ostentatious characteristics became
established as a form of national culture only at the end of the period dis-
cussed in this study. For much of the sixteenth century, and prior to the
great wars of the seventeenth century, Poland, and its elites in particular,
followed the trends of the European Renaissance.36 Łukasz Górnicki, the
chronicler who recorded what happened during Catherine of Austria’s
marriage by proxy and the author of the Polish adaptation of Castiglione’s
The Courtier, comments on the range of fashions in Poland: ‘we have so
many fashions here today that there is no counting them: Italian, Spanish,
Brunswick, Hungarian, either old or new, Cossack, Tartar, Turkish […].
Some shave their beards and wear only moustaches, others trim their
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1998); C. G. Nauert, Humanism and the Culture of Renaissance Europe
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
33
R. J. Knecht, Hero or Tyrant? Henry III, King of France, 1574–1589 (Farnham: Ashgate,
2014), p. 79.
34
U. Rublack, Dressing Up: Cultural Identity in Renaissance Europe (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2011), p. 146; Term ‘ostentatious barbarism’ was first coined by
G. Klaniczay, ‘Everyday Life and the Elites in the Later Middle Ages: The Civilised and the
Barbarian’, in P. Linehan and J. L. Nelson (eds), The Medieval World (London: Routledge,
2001), pp. 684–685.
35
Friedrich, ‘Royal Entries into Cracow, Warsaw and Danzig’, p. 386.
36
P. Mrozowski, ‘Ubiór jako wyraz świadomości narodowej szlachty polskiej w XVI–XVIII
wieku’, in A. Sieradzka and K. Turska (eds) Ubiory w Polsce (Warsaw: Kopia, 1994), p. 25.
beards in the Czech style, or in the Spanish fashion.’37 Sixteenth-century

Poland was a bustling cosmopolitan and multi-cultural environment where
Latin, German, and Ruthenian were spoken almost as often as Polish, and
the Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish refugees of the religious wars could
find a safe haven.38 The robust academic culture of the University of
Cracow, founded in 1364, contributed to the dissemination of other
(especially literary) Renaissance trends, through constant interaction with
other European universities.39 Most importantly, the Polish royal court
keenly pursued the fashionable Italian Renaissance. In 1516, Sigismund I
the Old contracted Francisco of Florence and Bartolommeo Berrecci to
carry out the conversion of the medieval Wawel palace into a Renaissance
palazzo.40 Foreign brides of Polish kings arrived in Cracow to find that,
despite differences, in some ways their new home resembled the palaces
they had left behind in the West.
Politics of French and Polish Royal Marriages

To explicitly link the interests behind the Jagiellonian and Valois marriages
is to demonstrate how politically connected Europe was in the sixteenth
century. However, Poland is often removed from the master narrative of
sixteenth-century European politics just as from the Renaissance. Some
studies do include it, if only to point out that Poland was ‘too republican
for its own good’, or to argue that ‘the politics of Poland, Lithuania,
Muscovy and Sweden only rarely came seriously into contact with the
affairs of any western European state’.41 However, in their essence
European dynasties were a network of relatives in which the connections
37
Ł. Górnicki, Dworzanin Polski (Gdańsk: Wirtualna Biblioteka Literatury Polskiej), p. 76,
[http://biblioteka.vilo.bialystok.pl/lektury/Odrodzenie/Lukasz_Gornicki_Dworzanin_
polski.pdf, accessed on 24/11/2014].
38
P. Jasienica, Ostatnia z rodu (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1965), p. 53.
39
P. Knoll, ‘A Pearl of Powerful Learning’: The University of Cracow in the 15th Century
(Amsterdam: Brill, 2016).
40
Burke, The European Renaissance, p. 82.
41
E. Cameron, Early Modern Europe: An Oxford History (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2001), p. 131. See also: R. Mackenney, 16th Century Europe: Expansion and Conflict
(London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1993); T. A. Morris, Europe and England in the 16th-Century
(London: Routledge, 1998), p. 5; Other works including eastern and northern Europe:
M. E. Wiesner-Hanks, Early Modern Europe 1450–1789 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2013); C. Wilson, The Transformation of Europe, 1558–1648 (Berkeley and
Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976); H. G. Koenigsberger, G. L. Mosse,
16 K. KOSIOR
were motivated by the ever-changing alliances comprising both East and

West. Poland maintained wide-ranging relationships with other European
countries resulting in dynastic marriages, the majority of which were moti-
vated by three elements: the Polish struggle to maintain its influence in
Hungary, the need to protect eastern Lithuania from the expansionist
designs of Muscovy, and the Italian Wars. The below account of the mach-
inations behind Polish and French royal marriages between 1495 and
1576 makes clear that Europe was nothing if not politically connected.
Muscovy started to gain significance as its subjugation to the Mongolian
Horde lessened in 1480 and thereafter rapidly became an important player
on the European stage. After the annexation of the Grand Duchy of Tver,
Grand Duke Ivan III started to call himself the ‘overlord of all Rus terri-
tories’. The Slavonic term ‘Rus’ refers to the eastern European ethno-
cultural region, which in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries comprised
the majority of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (modern Belarus, Ukraine,
south-eastern Poland) and the western parts of Muscovy.42 Ivan promptly
proceeded to annex parts of Lithuania, gathering support among the
Lithuanian orthodox Christian nobility. In 1483, he married Zoe
Paialologina, the granddaughter of the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II and
adoptive daughter of Pope Pius II. Their daughter, Helena of Moscow
(b. 1476–d. 1513), had suitors from both Poland and the Holy Roman
Empire. Muscovy flirted with the idea of an anti-Polish alliance with the
Habsburgs but chose a temporary peace on its western borders. Helena
married the Polish prince and Grand Duke of Lithuania, Alexander
Jagiellon, in 1495 and became the queen of Poland following the prema-
ture death of her husband’s brother, John I Albert, in 1501.
However, the conflict between Muscovy and Poland was only resolved
for a very short time, and its renewal resulted in the alliance between the
Habsburgs and Muscovy, which was then countered by the alliance
between Poland, France, and the Ottomans. The dynastic expansion of
the Jagiellonians was directed, ever since the times of Władysław Jagiełło
(crowned 1386–d. 1434) and Władysław Warneńczyk (crowned 1434–d.
1444), towards the Hungarian and Czech territories, where it collided
G. Q. Bowler, Europe in the 16th Century (London: Longman, 1999); F. Tallett and D. J.
B. Trim, European Warfare 1350–1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
42
K. Chojnicka, Narodziny rosyjskiej doktryny państwowej: Zoe Paleolog – między Bizancjum,
Rzymem a Moskwa ̨ (Cracow: Collegium Columbianum, 2008), pp. 32, 44–45, 113–114.
with the dynastic politics of the German Habsburgs.43 At the beginning of

the sixteenth century, the kings of Poland (Alexander I Jagiellon until
1506, then followed by Sigismund I the Old) and Hungary (Vladislav II
Jagiellon) were brothers, but by the end of the sixteenth century Hungary
was under control of the Holy Roman Emperors. The duo of Jagiellonian
kings began to weave a network of alliances, which from the very begin-
ning included France, fortifying their dominions against the Habsburgs.
In 1500, Hungary, Poland, France, Rome, and Venice signed a treaty
‘against all common enemies’, meaning in fact Emperor Maximilian I and
Sultan Bayezid II, even if the Polish king was determined to bypass the
treaty and remain on good terms with the Ottoman Empire.44 Vladislav
married Anne de Foix (b. 1484–d. 1506), the daughter of Gaston of Foix
and Catherine of Navarre, in 1502. Anne was the cousin of the French
queen, Anne of Brittany (b. 1477–d. 1514), and the two women were
close friends. Anne de Foix stayed with her royal cousin from the time of
her betrothal until the beginning of her journey to Hungary in May
1502.45 Anne of Brittany was the heiress to the Duchy of Brittany, which
resulted in her marriages to two consecutive kings of France, Charles VIII
and Louis XII. For similar reasons, Anne and Louis’ daughter Claude
became the queen consort to Francis I of France in 1515. Even though
Poland and France were not linked by a dynastic marriage in the sixteenth
century, the French and Polish queens consort were related by blood.
Anne de Foix would later become the grandmother to two Polish queens
(Elizabeth and Catherine of Austria) and a great-grandmother to another
French queen (Elizabeth of Austria).
The conflict between the Jagiellonian brothers and Emperor Maximilian
I was escalated by Sigismund’s deliberate choice of his wife, Barbara
Zapolya (b. 1495–d. 1515), the daughter of a Hungarian, anti-Habsburg
magnate Stefan Zapolya. The marriage linked the Jagiellonians to the
Hungarian national party, which was Maximilian’s worst nightmare
realised. The wheels of politics turned again, when Muscovy, realising that
Poland was once again at odds with the Emperor, attacked Lithuania soon
after Barbara and Sigismund’s wedding in 1512. On the other side of the
43
H. Łowmiański, Polityka Jagiellonów (Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie, 2006),
p. 319.
44
It was the first ever treaty that Poland and France entered together: Łowmiański,
Polityka, pp. 447–448.
45
Brown, The Queen’s Library, pp. 27–62, 321. For the family tree including Anne of
Brittany and Anne de Foix, see: Woodacre, The Queens Regnant of Navarre, Chart 4.
Another random document with
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not so far off, after all, so the march was stayed and all was war
again in so far that street fighting continued during the night. The
British intelligence might have been somewhat at fault when the
Faubourg de Lille was entered in parade style, but it was only a little
premature. The German rear guard quitted the place next day, but,
of course, blew up all the bridges over the Scheldt. The Germans
evacuated the city of Tournai only on the 9th November, and the very
next day it was entered by the good King Albert of the Belgians, who
was accompanied by his Queen. They came to congratulate their
faithful people on their release from German thraldom which had
oppressed them for so long.
The next day was the 11th November and at eleven o’clock in the
morning there was no more war in France nor Flanders, and the
Yeoman of Kent had done his work even if it was not done on
horseback. The 10th Battalion was, on receipt of the great news, in
the Faubourg de Lille. At 11.45 it marched through Tournai and
moved away to the eastward, halting at Montreuil au Bois and
Herquecies till, on the 14th of the month, it reached Barry, where it
remained for nearly a month. During the operations which
culminated in the capture of Tournai and which ended in the
armistice, the Military Cross was awarded to Captain J. I. H. Friend
and the Military Medal to Sgt. Rudman and to Pte. Hale. The
casualties were 2 officers and 18 men killed, 2 officers and 71 men
wounded.
On the 7th December a visit was received from His Majesty King
George. It was, at his own request, a very informal affair. The men
were drawn up on each side of the Tournai-Leuze road just outside
Barry, and the King walked quietly down between them, but the
welcome he received was one which it is pretty safe to believe was
pleasing to our monarch.
The demobilization of such of the men as were miners
commenced on the 10th December; but the total dispersal to their
homes of an army the size of the British one at this period is a long
and tedious job.
VII. 1st Battalion

We left the 1st Battalion in the Malin House area in the vicinity of
Dickebusch. It did not immediately take part in the great triumphant
and final push, and indeed its history up to the middle of September
is not so exciting or full of incident either as that of the sister
battalions or as certain periods of its own recent history. It remained
in the neighbourhood of Dickebusch, taking its turn in trench work, till
the 23rd August; during this period two American companies were
attached for a few days, which not only gave our men the pleasure of
making new and interesting friends, but was a tangible proof that
matters were going well and a successful end to a very awful and
strenuous existence fairly in sight; during August, too, came the
news of honours, which is always pleasant. First Sgt. Hills got the
M.M.; then 2nd Lieut. Lister the M.C. The D.C.M. fell to Sgt. Ayres;
and on the 19th there was news of the M.M. for Corpl. Swaine, L.-
Corpl. Voyle, and Privates Cook, Dockerill, Lovesey, Stapley and
Whiskin.
On the 23rd August the 16th Infantry Brigade was relieved by the
106th American Infantry Regiment and withdrew for training into the
St Omer area, the training consisting of the practice of open warfare,
and on the 1st September a long railway journey, which was
completed next day, took the Buffs with the others all the way to
Heilly (between Amiens and Albert). The 16th Brigade spent nearly a
fortnight in this neighbourhood, first at Bonnay and then at Fouilloy
and Aubigny; and so it was not till the 14th, or five weeks after the
British offensive had begun, that the first brigade move was made to
Montecourt, the Buffs going to Trefcon, a few miles west of St
Quentin. On the 17th the battalion moved to St Quentin Wood and
into the battle line after dark, Captain Morley being wounded.
The 1st Battalion, like all the other Buffs in France, was now in the
4th Army, which, as we have seen, was busily engaged in pushing
on and fighting its way from Albert to the Hindenburg Line. On the
8th September and following days was fought the great and
prolonged Battle of Epehy, the limits of which battle area is officially
given as extending from St Quentin (exclusive) to Villers Plouich, a
distance of nearly twenty miles as the crow flies. Sir Douglas Haig in
his despatches makes use of the words: “Next day at 7 a.m. on the
18th September the 4th and 3rd Armies attacked in heavy rain on a
front of about seventeen miles from Holnon to Gouzeaucourt, the 1st
French Army co-operating south of Holnon”; and a little later on he
writes: “On the extreme right and in the left centre about Epehy the
enemy’s resistance was very determined, and in these sectors
troops of the 6th, 12th, 18th and 58th Divisions had severe fighting.”
The country over which the 16th Brigade and its immediate
neighbours were working during the battle of September may briefly
be described as follows: Three miles or so west of St Quentin is a
large wood called the Holnon, but sometimes described as the St
Quentin Wood. St Quentin itself is commanded to the west and
south by high ground; the Hindenburg Line ran just outside this town
to the canal at Bellenglise. Holnon village lies in a hollow
commanded by Round and Manchester Hills, which latter height lies
in the area that was allotted to the French. From the east edge of the
wood the ground is a bare slope rising to the high ground
overlooking St Quentin. At the highest point and opposite where the
centre of the 6th Division was to attack was a network of trenches
called the Quadrilateral, which could be reinforced unseen from the
enemy’s side of the hill. It was expected that the Germans would
stand on the heights commanding St Quentin, but they were
reported as being much disorganized and that resistance might not
be very obstinate.
The 1st and 6th Divisions, in co-operation with the French, were
to capture, on the 18th September, a starting-place for the assault of
the Hindenburg Line, and to do this the 11th Essex had, on the 16th,
after tremendous effort, secured trenches clear of the Holnon Wood
for an assembly position, while with the same object the West
Yorkshire had endeavoured to secure Holnon village, but had only
gained a part, because the French on the right had failed to take the
hills. This failure had its effect on the forming-up arrangements of our
troops, as had the fact that the Holnon Wood had become almost
impassable from gas shells and wet weather, so much so that the
16th and 71st Brigades had to move round to the north and south of
it to get to their places. This fatigued the troops and rendered
communications difficult. There was not much time for
reconnaissance, for the advance had to be timed in accordance with
the movement of the troops to the northward. So on the afternoon of
the 17th the 16th Brigade concentrated west of St Quentin Wood
preparatory to forming up the next morning. The 18th Brigade had
attacked at dawn on the 17th in order to capture the starting-place
for the later date, but without success. It was at 6 p.m. that the
brigadier of the 16th went out with the commanding officers of the
Buffs and the York and Lancaster and chose assembly positions.
On the morrow, with the 71st Brigade on the right and the 16th on
the left, the 6th Division attacked the Quadrilateral, being the point
where the two joined, and the left of the 16th Brigade being on
Fresnoy le Petit. Zero hour was at 5 a.m., the barrage started and
the York and Lancaster Regiment moved to the attack. The Buffs
were at the north edge of the wood and the objective was south of
the village of Gricourt. The York and Lancaster were to capture a line
east-south-east of Fresnoy le Petit, and then the Buffs and K.S.L.I. to
pass through to their objective. Two tanks were taken to assist the
attack, but one failed to start, and the other, after being seen going
through Fresnoy le Petit, was never heard of again. At 6.40 the York
and Lancaster were reported on their objective, and A, B and C
Companies of the Buffs, who had already advanced some distance
and suffered a little from shell fire, prepared to play their part. At first
they lost direction somewhat owing to the darkness and rain, and
then discovered that the satisfactory report about the York and
Lancaster Regiment was not quite accurate and that the whole of its
objective had not been reached; so that the left company of the Buffs
had been held up by machine guns from Fresnoy le Petit, and the
support company, after reaching the outskirts of the village, had had
to withdraw somewhat. All these causes prevented the remainder of
the Buffs with the K.S.L.I. from advancing beyond the position
gained by their comrades. Nothing could be heard or seen of the
71st Brigade, which should have been on the right, so this flank was
exposed and D Company the Buffs had to be placed on guard there.
By evening the different events of the day, together with the difficulty
of maintaining direction in the early morning, had completely mixed
up the units of the 16th Brigade so much so that the immediate
unravelling seemed almost impossible, and the senior officers at
various points had to collect all troops in their immediate vicinity and
take command of them, thus forming temporarily three composite
battalions wherewith to carry on. The 1st Buffs lost 6 officers and 150
men killed and wounded on the 18th.
On the 19th the two more forward of the composite battalions
were ordered to attack again at dawn, but the Germans evidently
anticipated this move, for they opened a very heavy artillery and
machine-gun barrage before the attackers had even started. Fighting
went on throughout the day, the Buffs having seventeen more
casualties; but no success crowned the British effort, and it became
evident enough that the Germans were making a real stand and not
merely fighting a rear-guard action. Indeed, it was very noticeable all
along the line how the opposition to our advance increased the
nearer to the Hindenburg Line we penetrated. Everybody had now
experienced heavy fighting and some battalions had suffered heavy
loss, and so it was determined to remain comparatively quiet for a
day or two and to prepare the way for another regular attack by
means of a proper artillery preliminary work. About this time the
officer commanding received a petition, signed by thirty men, asking
that the gallantry of their company commander might be recognized
by the authorities. Captain W. T. Johnston was the officer concerned,
and he was awarded the Military Cross.
The renewed attack was commenced on the 24th. The 18th
Brigade was on the right and the 16th on the left. The 18th failed to
take the Quadrilateral, which was its objective. The front of the
fighting, as regards the 16th, was allotted this day to the York and
Lancaster and K.S.L.I., the Buffs being in support. It was a very
gallant affair and all objectives were taken, but the right of the
brigade was exposed as it advanced, owing to the Quadrilateral still
being in German hands; so bombing operations on that stronghold
were commenced by the Buffs and K.S.L.I. and most of the northern
face was taken. The 3rd Brigade, assisted by the York and
Lancaster, took Gricourt in the afternoon, and at night the Buffs
relieved the K.S.L.I. in first line. The battalion had a list of twenty
casualties.
On the 25th the 18th Brigade made good the objectives before
which they had at first failed. They took the Douai trench, and by
midnight the 25th/26th the 16th and 18th, in co-operation, had
completed the capture of the Quadrilateral, which the enemy had
considered an impossibility. Two German counter-attacks on the 16th
Brigade were repulsed, though the enemy managed to rush and to
hold one of the forward posts; but the opposition was now obviously
dying down and the German spirit sadly broken, and our patrols
were able to gain further ground. On the 27th a prisoner was
captured, who stated that he was the last patrol covering the
withdrawal of the enemy, and this proved correct, for next day our
people could by no means get touch of him.
The 6th Division was relieved during the 29th and 30th of
September by the 4th French Division, and by this time our posts
were round three sides of the village of Fayet, which was ultimately
captured by a patrol under Lieut. Lushington, and Manchester Hill
was in the hands of our allies. The Buffs went back to camp at
Trefcon.
While the fighting recorded above had been in progress on the
right of the British Army, the 47th Division, with the 1st protecting its
right flank and an American force on its left, had by means of a
magnificent attack on the 29th September broken the Hindenburg
Line and crossed the canal, together with the 32nd Division, after
which these units experienced very severe fighting about Ramicourt
and Sequehart. It was therefore necessary that they should rest, and
when the 6th Division had had four days in the back areas, which
was largely utilized in absorbing reinforcements and generally
reorganizing, it was ordered to relieve these others with a view to
attacking, on the 8th October, in the direction of the little town of
Bohain.
Therefore on the 4th October the Buffs marched, complete with
transport and all else, to the Bellenglise area and billeted by the
banks of the canal, and on the night of the 5th/6th the 16th Brigade
relieved the 3rd Brigade about Preselles Farm, which is between
Ramicourt and Sequehart and opposite the position to be attacked.
This position was in a country of rolling downs, divided by a valley
opening out towards the British and closed at the far end by a ridge
on which stood the village of Mericourt. In the valley itself stood
Mannikin Wood and other points suitable for hidden machine guns.
The 6th Division was to attack up the left spur which bounded the
valley, and the French up the right one; but our allies had been
delayed in passing through St Quentin and by opposition on the way,
and although the whole operation had been postponed for twenty-
four hours, namely from the 7th to 8th October, it was pretty obvious
that at first, at any rate, the British right flank would be exposed. A
battalion of the West Yorkshire Regiment and three whippet tanks
had the task of clearing the valley, but, as a matter of fact, the tanks
were knocked out almost immediately. The 16th Brigade was on the
right next the valley, and the 71st on the left next the Americans.
ST. QUENTIN
On the night of the 7th/8th the Buffs moved up to their forming-up
line for the second time, for when the operation was postponed the
battalion had gone back to Bellenglise for a day, and the marching
and counter-marching had proved a strain on the men. The hour was
5.10 a.m., at which time the Shropshire Light Infantry were to move
off and secure the first objective, after which the Buffs, passing
through, were to go on to the second, which was in front of
Beauregard Farm. The men were not in position till a quarter of an
hour before zero, on account of the darkness and the difficulty of
guiding, and Lieut. H. H. Carter and his batman were killed on the
way; but the attack started in good order, the Buffs having B and D
Companies in front line, C and half A in support and the remainder of
A in reserve. The first objective was soon in the hands of the
Salopians and the Buffs quickly on the move for the second. The
shelling was now, however, very heavy both from the other side of
the valley, which had not yet been reached by the French, and also
from Mannikin Wood, in the valley itself, which kept up fire for some
time, in spite of some magnificent work done by the West Yorkshire
Regiment. A counter-attack appeared to be likely, and Lieut.
Stainforth, with the two reserve platoons, was ordered up to get
touch with the front line and reinforce it, if necessary. At 11.45
battalion headquarters, moving forward, found the situation well in
hand on the battalion front, though no reorganization was possible,
as the slightest movement was observed by the enemy from the
right. In fact, A and C Companies were harassed by ·77 guns all day.
However, a defensive flank was formed later on. By 3 p.m. the
French, too, began to advance and completely changed the
situation. The West Yorks pushed up the valley and got touch with
them, and so towards evening the companies were reorganized and
patrols pushed forward through Beauregard Farm and Copse and
the line established east of these. By nightfall Mericourt was taken
and the 6th Division had done all it had set out to do. Captains
Hamilton and Moss were both wounded early in the day, but
remained with their companies until the objective was reached. The
latter was again seriously wounded whilst waiting for a stretcher at
battalion headquarters.
The work of the day had hardly been accomplished when orders
came for the 6th Division to take over part of the American front on
the left and hand over some of their own to the 46th Division on the
right; in fact, to side-step to the left, as it was called. As far as the
Buffs were concerned, their reorganization during the night was
barely complete when, about 3 a.m., the 4th Battalion of the
Leicestershire Regiment arrived in relief with orders that they were at
once to move off to a position two miles away to support a new
attack, this time on Bohain, timed for 5.30 a.m., which was to be
made by the K.S.L.I. and York and Lancaster Battalions of the 16th
Brigade. This meant, of course, that a brigade of very tired troops
had to move off two miles to a new position, issue all detailed orders,
make elaborate arrangements and take up position all in less than
three hours in pitch darkness and over unreconnoitred country. It
was a most extraordinary performance, but it was done and the 16th
Brigade duly advanced at the correct zero hour, though the Buffs
themselves were not called upon to take part. Both the 16th and 71st
Brigades carried their first objectives successfully, and the whole
operation ended during the following night by the capture of Bohain,
the release of some four thousand French civilians and the
acquisition of considerable war booty.
After returning to Doon Mill, from whence the start on the 9th had
been made, coming back to the front line again and having Lieut.
Lloyd wounded on the 15th, the Buffs on the 16th October were
preparing for another battle. On that date A and C Companies were
in billets and bivouacs east of Bohain, and B and D in the outskirts of
Becquiguy, the battalion being under the temporary command of
Major Lord Teynham. Orders were issued for an attack on the 17th
from Vaux Audigny and the Buffs formed up to the north-west of that
place. The objective, or Blue Line, was a trench system which
included the Bois St Pierre and a level crossing on the railway and
was in front of the village of Wassigny. Then the 1st Division was to
pass through and take Wassigny. The Buffs attacked on a two-
company frontage, A on the left, C with a platoon of B on the right, D
in support, and B in reserve.
The morning proved to be one of the foggiest that had been
experienced during the war. Nothing could be seen anywhere and
direction was naturally extremely difficult to maintain. The Buffs had
to pass the village of Vaux Audigny in fours and to deploy outside it.
The advance was made by compass bearings, and more than one
instance occurred of sergeants taking the compasses from their
injured officers and leading their companies on, so that the battalion
reached its objective correctly, which was more than all the troops
contrived to do. The railway which runs from Vaux Audigny to Vaille
Mulatre is not by any means a straight one, but it was of
considerable assistance in keeping direction. With the exception of
making it so difficult to keep the line, the fog was an advantage to
the British advance, because parties of the enemy were come upon
unseen and in one or two cases machine guns were outflanked
unobserved. Both the leading companies reached their objective
about 7.30 a.m. Lieut. Stainforth, who commanded C, found that his
flank was exposed, so he at once established a post and pressed
into the service of the defence certain stragglers of the 1st Division.
He remained here himself for some hours and until a battalion of
Cameron Highlanders arrived. Nothing could be found of the 11th
Essex which should have been on the Buffs’ right. They had utterly
lost their way in the fog, though it was afterwards discovered that the
men had resorted to the expedient of attempting to advance arm in
arm. Our artillery barrage was excellent and the enemy’s shelling
somewhat light after leaving the railway station. The hostile machine
guns were very active throughout the fight. At 11.45 a report came
that the enemy had a division in reserve for a counter-attack and
preparations were made to meet it, but nothing materialized;
headquarters moved forward, and the battalion set to work to
consolidate. The casualties, considering the nature of the operation,
were slight, though four officers were killed and one wounded, five of
the men killed and thirty-one were wounded.
On the 19th October battalion headquarters moved back to Vaux
Audigny, and next day the whole battalion was billeted there, and the
battle surplus, as small bodies kept back from action to reinforce in
case of heavy casualties were called, as well as a draft of eighty-
eight men, was sent up. On the 21st the complete unit marched to St
Souplet and was billeted in that village. Two days later the 71st
Brigade was in action again and the Buffs moved up to its support,
starting at very short notice. They bivouacked round Baziel, and on
the 25th took over the line in Bois L’Eveque from the K.S.L.I.; there
were three men killed and fifteen wounded on this date.
Imperial War Museum Crown Copyright

CAMBRAI ON THE MORNING THE ENEMY
WAS DRIVEN OUT
On the 26th the list of Military Medals awarded for gallant conduct
at the Battle of St Quentin on the 18th was issued, and no less than
twenty came to the Buffs, namely: C.S.M. Bones; Sgts. Carr and
Jenkins; Corpl. Millen; L.-Corpls. Cain, Child, Ellis, Hobbs, Hook and
Hutchison; Ptes. Blackford, Brown, Carpenter, Colley, Ericksen,
Stapley, Walters, Whiddett, Wicken and Wright. On this day battalion
headquarters went to Pommereuil.
The 30th of October was the last day of actual fighting that fell to
the lot of the 1st Battalion, and its long record, which as far as the
Great War is concerned began four years before, closed well and
gloriously, for what is termed a minor enterprise was on that date
carried out under the command of a subaltern officer, an enterprise
which in the old days would have made a field officer’s name for the
rest of his service: orders had been received for the relief of the
division, and in order to hand over to the relieving troops a
satisfactory position for continuing the forward movement on the line
of the canal, it was determined to capture on the 30th an important
farm and spur which overlooked the waterway. The business was
entrusted to Lieut. L. W. Barber, M.B.E., of the Buffs, who had at his
disposal B and C Companies and, later on, a platoon of D, also a
section of the Machine Gun Battalion and two light trench mortars.
Zero was at six, at which hour a creeping barrage opened, heavy
artillery bombarding the railway. The attack was made on a platoon
frontage, with other platoons on either flank to protect the advance.
The attempt on the farm was at first frustrated by our own barrage
falling too short and causing casualties in the leading platoon. When
it lifted, another was brought up, but at first could not get in by
reason of the hostile machine guns, and it was not till 10 o’clock that
the farm and another behind it was taken. Meanwhile a separate
small body, which had advanced on the high ground, had also
attained its object and had captured some machine guns, our
barrage here being correct. The enemy now heavily bombarded the
farm with medium and light trench mortars and with field artillery,
after which a counter-attack was the cause of the withdrawal of
Barber’s men, but two sections of Lewis gunners and some riflemen
succeeded in preventing the enemy from advancing beyond the
buildings. The last reserves were now brought up and the line
reorganized and reinforced by a platoon of D Company. Under a
well-directed bombardment by our light trench mortars the farm was
again attacked and captured at the point of the bayonet. Two heavy
and three light machine guns were taken and heavy casualties
inflicted, and by evening the village of Happegarbes was practically
cleared. Casualties: 2nd Lieuts. Hart, Herrmann and Simpson and
twenty-seven men wounded, eight killed and four missing. And so
the last fight of the 1st Battalion ended in congratulations, the
divisional commander expressing his great appreciation.
The first few days of November were spent at Fresnoy le Grand
and at Bohain, to which small town the move was made on the 5th.
This early period of the month was brightened by no less than three
little batches of honours awarded, and joy, of course, culminated on
the 11th November, when the officers dined together to celebrate the
occasion, and four days afterwards the battalion commenced its
march into Germany.
For their work at St Quentin the following were awarded bars to
their M.M.: Sgts. Goodall, Holloway, Stuart and Swaine; Corpl.
Dockerill; L.-Corpl. Rainsbury and Pte. Wright. The M.M. was
awarded to Sgts. Harris, Lawrence, Morey and Waby; L.-Sgt. Caley;
Corpl. Pragnell; L.-Corpls. Kibble and Elsey and Pte. Shackcloth. For
Barber’s fight on the 30th the M.M. was given to Corpls. Cotton and
Oliver and L.-Corpl. Todman.
The oldest unit of the Buffs was thus the only one to represent the
regiment in the enemy’s country. It had been the first to take part in
the war, though, of course, the battalion, so far as individual
members were concerned, was an entirely different one to that of
1914. However, the unit was the same one that had fought in
Flanders over three hundred years before, and, being the oldest
representative of the Buffs, it was perhaps fitting that it should have
the honour. Therefore Lieut. Milles was despatched to England to
fetch the Colours. These have not been carried in war since the Zulu
campaign of 1879, as the tactical use of such flags is obsolete; but
the Colours were to be planted on German soil, all the same, so
Milles went off on his mission. It is not necessary here to describe
the march, which was a long one: first of all, the army destined for
the Rhine had to be collected and reorganized into brigade groups
with divisional troops; there were long halts upon the way until the
2nd December, owing chiefly to the difficulty of feeding the leading
troops, because the railways had been destroyed and, as far as the
frontier, roads had been cratered and bridges blown up.
This crossing of the frontier was made an impressive function by
the Buffs. Colours were uncased, as afterwards they always were on
entering a town, drums were beating, bayonets fixed and the men
were beautifully groomed and turned out—equipment polished, the
harness and saddlery of the mounted men shining, pomp and
circumstance of glorious war once more in evidence. Once across
the frontier, the roads were excellent and delay only caused by the
necessity of closing up now and again, as there was only one road to
each division.
It seems a pity that Christmas Day could not be adequately kept
by the Buffs in 1918, but the wherewithal, in the way of extra
provisions and so on, failed to arrive from England in time. However,
perhaps the general joy and triumph which reigned in every heart,
even if the extraordinary reserve of Englishmen failed to show or
advertise the same, compensated for the lack of extra cheer. It was a
notable Christmas, in any case, and could be nothing else. On the
30th December the battalion was quartered in the little village of
Vettweiss, strength 43 officers, 786 other ranks, and demobilization
soon commenced. During the march into Germany notification of the
following honours was received: M.C. for Captains Barber, M.B.E.,
Johnston and Stainforth; Lieuts. Milles and Piper; 2nd Lieuts. Chater
and Hendin, and a bar to the same for Captain G. F. Hamilton; the
D.C.M. for C.S.M. Poole, Sgt. France, M.M., L.-Sgt. Souster and L.-
Corpl. J. Smith, M.M. (since killed in action); and the M.M. to L.-Sgt.
Waby.
CHAPTER XVI
CONCLUSION
E
xcept in certain remote places and in India, war ended on the
11th November, 1918, and, though the said remote spots still
found work for a small number of our English warriors, the
demobilization of the great majority was immediately put in hand. Of
course, the old standing battalions of the Buffs were to remain in
being, but most of the individuals forming them were entitled to
discharge, while in the cases of the 6th, 7th and 10th Battalions,
those units which had sprung into being at the call of duty and
patriotism, had done their work and were now to disappear
altogether from the Army List, as the 8th had already done.
Those men most required in England to carry on her civil business
and trade went back to their accustomed life almost at once, and
resumed old occupations much as if nothing had happened; but the
men have been through experiences undreamt of by even the old
regular soldier and which can never be effaced from memory. The
men not belonging to what were called key industries had to remain
with their war battalions for some months, for the returning to civil life
of a vast army is by no means a light or easy matter to arrange. In
the case of the 6th Battalion demobilization may be said to have
commenced more or less seriously in January, 1919. On the 4th
February the King’s Colour was presented to the battalion, the
ceremony being performed by no less a personage than H.R.H. The
Prince of Wales. In March a move was made from Auberchicourt to
Bruille, owing to the return of the civil population to the former place.
The sending home of batches of men continued pretty steadily all the
time and, at the beginning of May, the battalion consisted of Captain
Page, M.C., in command; Captain Turk, M.C., adjutant; Captain
Linwood, quartermaster; Lieut. Hickmott in charge of the Colours,
and thirty-two rank and file. This party returned in June to Sandling
Camp, handed their Colours to the Dean of Canterbury at a parade
which will be referred to later, and was finally disbanded at the
Crystal Palace. The 6th had always been a fighting unit, and its total
casualties numbered 4,864, of which 56 officers and 702 men had
actually been killed in action.
The first stages of demobilization in the case of the 7th Buffs were
carried out at Montigny. Somewhat slow at the start, the work took a
turn for the better in January, 1919, and large bodies began to leave
for their dispersal stations. The cadre strength, as laid down in Army
Orders, was reached in April, and all similar parties of the 18th
Division were billeted in Ligny en Cambresis. In early July orders
were received for the sending home and dispersal of the slender
relics of the 7th Queen’s, 7th Buffs and 8th East Surrey; but there
was a good deal of delay at the railhead at Caudry, at Dunkerque,
where equipment was handed in to the Ordnance, and at Boulogne;
but, on the last day of July, Folkestone was reached and the Colour
party went on to Canterbury, where it was billeted till arrangements
were made with the Dean and Chapter to deposit its charge in the
great cathedral.
The following extract from the Kentish Express of the 9th August,
1919, describes the last act of the famous fighting 7th Battalion,
which throughout its career had added so much to the reputation of
the Buffs: “The King’s Colour of the 7th Battalion the Buffs was
deposited at Canterbury Cathedral on Thursday morning for safe
custody by two officers and three other ranks, representing the cadre
of the battalion. Major Peake was in command and Lieut. C. H.
Rowe bore the Colours, while a detachment from the Buffs’ depot,
under Major J. Crookenden, D.S.O. (commanding the depot), formed
a guard of honour. The band of the 1st Battalion, under Mr. Elvin,
took up its position on the nave steps, as did the Cathedral choir,
while Dean Wace was accompanied by Dr. Bickersteth and Canon
Gardiner.
“Major Peake asked the Dean to receive the Colours into safe
custody. Dean Wace, in accepting them, said he did so with pleasure
on behalf of the Dean and Chapter, and they would be placed in the
Warriors’ Chapel, the chapel of the regiment.”
Lt.-Colonel Charles Ponsonby in his book, West Kent (Q.O.)
Yeomanry and 10th (Yeomanry) Battalion the Buffs, describes the
last days of his unit, and with his permission the following few
extracts from his work are reproduced in this place:—
“On the 15th December we marched to Fresnes, and from there,
after a night at Deux Acren, arrived at Thollembeek and Vollezeel, two
villages about thirty-five miles from Brussels.
“Though many of the railways and roads in the neighbourhood had
been destroyed before the enemy retired, this part of the country had
not been in the fighting area at any time during the war. But the
population had suffered much from four years of occupation. They had
had little food; they had received no money for troops billeted on
them; they had had their men taken from them to work behind the line
or in Germany.... The release from such an existence, combined with
a very real desire to express their thanks to the English nation, not
only for its great share in winning the war and rescuing their country
from oppression, but also for having provided a haven of rest for so
many of their fellow-countrymen in England, incited the inhabitants of
Thollembeek and Vollezeel to stretch their hospitality to its utmost
limits. They made every effort to make us comfortable in our billets
during the long and rather tedious period of waiting for
demobilization.... Towards the end of January the battalion was
selected to represent the division, and incidentally the British Army, in
a royal review at Brussels by the King of the Belgians. After a week of
preparation we went by motor bus to Anderlecht, a suburb of Brussels,
where we were billeted for the night. The following day the review took
place, and after two days’ holiday we returned to our Belgian
villages.... On the 27th February the battalion moved to Grammont, a
town of about thirteen thousand inhabitants, and a few days later all
the remaining men (about one hundred and twenty) who joined the
Army after the 1st January, 1916, went off to the 1st Battalion The
Queen’s (Royal West Surrey Regiment). The battalion was now
reduced practically to cadre strength of four officers and forty-six men.
During the month of March a cordial and appreciative Order was
issued by Major-General E. S. Girdwood on relinquishing the
command of the 74th Division.... On the termination of hostilities
Captain G. H. Peckham received the M.C., and C.S.M.’s P. Faulkner
and L. Salt and Sgts. H. J. Smith and S. F. Sparrow received the
M.S.M.... The act of placing their colours in Canterbury Cathedral
marked the end of the 10th (Yeomanry) Battalion the Buffs. In the
short period of its existence it had fully played its part in the war.
Formed on the 1st February, 1917, it ceased to exist on the 21st June,
1919. It fought in Palestine and France. Its casualties numbered 8
officers and 134 men killed, and 24 officers and 486 men wounded.”
The 4th and 5th Battalions had, of course, quite a different status
to those alluded to above. They had been for some time and still
are[34] permanent portions of the regiment, and so when war was
over they could not be disbanded, but merely disembodied in the
same way that they were each year after the annual training. As has
already been noticed, circumstances postponed this desirable rest
from soldiering for a very long time. The unrest and continued wars
in India and her frontiers kept the 4th abroad, and the necessity of
maintaining white troops in Mesopotamia had similar results in the
case of the 5th. The former did not embark for home till November,
1919, a full year after the armistice, and the battalion was
disembodied the same month. The cadre of the 5th Battalion, still
under Lt.-Colonel Body, D.S.O., O.B.E., a very tiny remnant of those
who embarked in 1914, reached home in January, 1920, and were
also, of course, disembodied. The story of the 3rd or Special
Reserve Battalion after the 11th November, 1918, is as follows: the
unit was still quartered in the Citadel at Dover and was about 1,400
strong, many of the men awaiting demobilization, and of the officers
orders to proceed to India, for which duty they had volunteered.
Towards the end of the month several companies had to proceed to
Folkestone for police duty owing to trouble with certain leave-expired
soldiers, who could not see the necessity of returning to their units in
France. In February, 1919, came orders to move to the south of
Ireland in relief of the 3rd Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, who
had been in that country a considerable time. After a short period in
Kinsale, the 3rd Buffs were quartered in Victoria Barracks, Cork, and
there remained during the summer of 1919, except that, owing to
certain troubles, a tour of duty at Limerick for a fortnight or so had to
be undertaken.
On the 7th September the whole of the men were handed over to
Lt.-Colonel R. McDouall, C.B., C.M.G., D.S.O., who had just been
appointed to command the 1st Battalion of the Buffs; and as there
now hardly existed such a unit, as far as the necessary soldiers

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Queenship and Power

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019933185

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019

Cover illustration: Heritage Image Partnership Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo

My greatest debt is to my PhD supervisors, Professor Maria Hayward and

My friends gave me feedback at various stages of the project, which

1 Introduction: East and West 1

2 Royal Weddings: Protocol, Identity, and Emotion 23

3 Coronation: Consort to Royal Power 61

4 Political Culture and the Rhetoric of Queenship 99

5 Conception, Childbirth, and Motherhood: Performing a

Appendix A: ‘List of Catherine of Austria’s Trousseau’ 181

Appendix B: ‘The Manner of Queen Barbara’s Coronation’ 199

Appendix C: ‘Speech welcoming Queen Anna to Kazimierz’ 205

Appendix D: ‘Piotr Boratyński’s Third Speech…’ 207

AGAD The Central Archives of Historical Records in Warsaw.

LP J. S. Brewer (ed.), Letters and papers, foreign and domestic, of

Introduction: East and West

Archduchess Catherine of Austria and Sigismund August, King of Poland

© The Author(s) 2019 1

Iron Curtain, as a standing definition of “West” or “East”, one is bound

F. Cosandey, La Reine de France. Symbole et pouvoir, XVe–XVIII siècle (Paris: Gallimard,

2000), pp. 11–12.

generally, even in the robustly developing area of royal studies, sustained

The ceremonies of becoming a queen, understood as the wedding with

to focus on the western part of the continent has produced a lopsided

dynasticism is a valuable approach that helps us contextualise the particu-

to crude East/West categorisations, it does not obscure its variety.

Polish and French Politics and Culture

­ obility.23 In order to secure the succession for his daughter, Jadwiga I, in

to emphasise its cultural ‘otherness’. Dispelling these stereotypes is impor-

used oriental clothes, weapons, and hairstyles to emphasise its closeness to

beards in the Czech style, or in the Spanish fashion.’37 Sixteenth-century

Politics of French and Polish Royal Marriages

were motivated by the ever-changing alliances comprising both East and

with the dynastic politics of the German Habsburgs.43 At the beginning of

VII. 1st Battalion

Imperial War Museum Crown Copyright

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1 Introduction: East and West 1

2 Royal Weddings: Protocol, Identity, and Emotion 23

3 Coronation: Consort to Royal Power 61

4 Political Culture and the Rhetoric of Queenship 99

5 Conception, Childbirth, and Motherhood: Performing a

Appendix A: ‘List of Catherine of Austria’s Trousseau’ 181

Appendix B: ‘The Manner of Queen Barbara’s Coronation’ 199

Appendix C: ‘Speech welcoming Queen Anna to Kazimierz’ 205

Appendix D: ‘Piotr Boratyński’s Third Speech…’ 207

obility.23 In order to secure the succession for his daughter, Jadwiga I, in