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The Historical Nights’ Entertainment

 

by Rafael Sabatini

 

First Series

PREFACE

In approaching “The Historical Nights’ Entertainment” I set myself

the task of reconstructing, in the fullest possible detail and

with all the colour available from surviving records, a group of

more or less famous events. I would select for my purpose those

which were in themselves bizarre and resulting from the interplay

of human passions, and whilst relating each of these events in the

form of a story, I would compel that story scrupulously to follow

the actual, recorded facts without owing anything to fiction, and

I would draw upon my imagination, if at all, merely as one might

employ colour to fill in the outlines which history leaves grey,

taking care that my colour should be as true to nature as possible.

For dialogue I would depend upon such scraps of actual speech as

were chronicled in each case, amplifying it by translating into

terms of speech the paraphrases of contemporary chroniclers.

 

Such was the task I set myself. I am aware that it has been

attempted once or twice already, beginning, perhaps, with the

“Crimes Celebres” of Alexandre Dumas. I am not aware that the

attempt has ever succeeded. This is not to say that I claim

success in the essays that follow. How nearly I may have

approached success -judged by the standard I had set myself - how

far I may have fallen short, my readers will discern. I am

conscious, however, of having in the main dutifully resisted the

temptation to take the easier road, to break away from restricting

fact for the sake of achieving a more intriguing narrative. In one

instance, however, I have quite deliberately failed, and in some

others I have permitted myself certain speculations to resolve

mysteries of which no explanation has been discovered. Of these it

is necessary that I should make a full confession.

 

My deliberate failure is “The Night of Nuptials.” I discovered an

allusion to the case of Charles the Bold and Sapphira Danvelt in

Macaulay’s “History of England” - quoted from an old number of the

“Spectator” - whilst I was working upon the case of Lady Alice Lisle.

There a similar episode is mentioned as being related of Colonel

Kirke, but discredited because known for a story that has a trick

of springing up to attach itself to unscrupulous captains. I set

out to track it to its source, and having found its first appearance

to be in connection with Charles the Bold’s German captain Rhynsault,

I attempted to reconstruct the event as it might have happened,

setting it at least in surroundings of solid fact.

 

My most flagrant speculation occurs in “The Night of Hate.” But in

defence of it I can honestly say that it is at least no more flagrant

than the speculations on this subject that have become enshrined in

history as facts. In other words, I claim for my reconstruction of

the circumstances attending the mysterious death of Giovanni Borgia,

Duke of Gandia, that it no more lacks historical authority than do

any other of the explanatory narratives adopted by history to assign

the guilt to Gandia’s brother, Cesare Borgia.

 

In the “Cambridge Modern History” our most authoritative writers on

this epoch have definitely pronounced that there is no evidence

acceptable to historians to support the view current for four

centuries that Cesare Borgia was the murderer.

 

Elsewhere I have dealt with this at length. Here let it suffice to

say that it was not until nine months after the deed that the name

of Cesare Borgia was first associated with it; that public opinion

had in the mean time assigned the guilt to a half-dozen others in

succession; that no motive for the crime is discoverable in the case

of Cesare; that the motives advanced will not bear examination, and

that they bear on the face of them the stamp of having been put

forward hastily to support an accusation unscrupulously political in

purpose; that the first men accused by the popular voice were the

Cardinal Vice-Chancellor Ascanio Sforza and his nephew Giovanni

Sforza, Tyrant of Pesaro; and, finally, that in Matarazzo’s

“Chronicles of Perugia” there is a fairly detailed account of how

the murder was perpetrated by the latter.

 

Matarazzo, I confess, is worthy of no more credit than any other of

the contemporary reporters of common gossip. But at least he is

worthy of no less. And it is undeniable that in Sforza’s case a

strong motive for the murder was not lacking.

 

My narrative in “The Night of Hate” is admittedly a purely

theoretical account of the crime. But it is closely based upon all

the known facts of incidence and of character; and if there is

nothing in the surviving records that will absolutely support it,

neither is there anything that can absolutely refute it.

 

In “The Night of Masquerade” I am guilty of quite arbitrarily

discovering a reason to explain the mystery of Baron Bjelke’s sudden

change from the devoted friend and servant of Gustavus III of Sweden

into his most bitter enemy. That speculation is quite indefensible,

although affording a possible explanation of that mystery. In the

case of “The Night of Kirk o’ Field,” on the other hand, I do not

think any apology is necessary for my reconstruction of the precise

manner in which Darnley met his death. The event has long been

looked upon as one of the mysteries of history - the mystery lying

in the fact that whilst the house at Kirk o’ Field was destroyed by

an explosion, Darnley’s body was found at some distance away,

together with that of his page, bearing every evidence of death by

strangulation. The explanation I adopt seems to me to owe little

to speculation.

 

In the story of Antonio Perez - “The Night of Betrayal” - I have

permitted myself fewer liberties with actual facts than might appear.

I have closely followed his own “Relacion,” which, whilst admittedly

a piece of special pleading, must remain the most authoritative

document of the events with which it deals. All that I have done

has been to reverse the values as Perez presents them, throwing the

personal elements into higher relief than the political ones, and

laying particular stress upon the matter of his relations with the

Princess of Eboli. “The Night of Betrayal” is presented in the form

of a story within a story. Of the containing story let me say that

whilst to some extent it is fictitious, it is by no means entirely so.

There is enough to justify most of it in the “Relaciori” itself.

 

The exceptions mentioned being made, I hope it may be found that I

have adhered rigorously to my purpose of owing nothing to invention

in my attempt to flesh and clothe these few bones of history.

 

I should add, perhaps, that where authorities differ as to motives,

where there is a conflict of evidence as to the facts themselves,

or where the facts admit of more than one interpretation, I have

permitted myself to be selective, and confined myself to a point

of view adopted at the outset.

R. S.

LONDON, August, I9I7

 

CONTENTS

 

I. THE NIGHT OF HOLYROOD

The Murder of David Rizzio

 

II. THE NIGHT OF KIRK O’ FIELD

The Murder of Darnley

 

III. THE NIGHT OF BETRAYAL

Antonio Perez and Philip II of Spain

 

IV. THE NIGHT OF CHARITY

The Case of the Lady Alice Lisle

 

V. THE NIGHT OF MASSACRE

The Story of the Saint Bartholomew

 

VI. THE NIGHT OF WITCHCRAFT

Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan

 

VII. THE NIGHT OF GEMS

The Affaire of the Queen’s Necklace

 

VIII. THE NIGHT OF TERROR

The Drownings at Nantes under Carrier

 

IX. THE NIGHT OF NUPTIALS

Charles the Bold and Sapphira Danvelt

 

X. THE NIGHT OF STRANGLERS

Giovanna of Naples and Andreas of Hungary

 

XI. THE NIGHT OF HATE

The Murder of the Duke of Gandia

 

XII. THE NIGHT OF ESCAPE

Casanova’s Escape from the Piombi

 

XIII. THE NIGHT OF MASQUERADE

The Assassination of Gustavus III of Sweden

 

THE HISTORICAL NIGHTS’ ENTERTAINMENT

 

I. THE NIGHT OF HOLYROOD

The Murder of David Rizzio

 

The tragedy of my Lord Darnley’s life lay in the fact that he was

a man born out of his proper station - a clown destined to kingship

by the accident of birth and fortune. By the blood royal flowing

in his veins, he could, failing others, have claimed succession to

both the English and the Scottish thrones, whilst by his marriage

with Mary Stuart he made a definite attempt to possess himself of

that of Scotland.

 

The Queen of Scots, enamoured for a season of the clean-limbed grace

and almost feminine beauty (“ladyfaced,” Melville had called him

once) of this “long lad of nineteen” who came a-wooing her, had soon

discovered, in matrimony, his vain, debauched, shiftless, and

cowardly nature. She had married him in July of 1565, and by

Michaelmas she had come to know him for just a lovely husk of a man,

empty of heart or brain; and the knowledge transmuted affection into

contempt.

 

Her natural brother, the Earl of Murray, had opposed the marriage,

chiefly upon the grounds that Darnley was a Catholic, and with

Argyll, Chatellerault, Glencairn, and a host of other Protestant

lords, had risen in arms against his sovereign and her consort. But

Mary had chased her rebel brother and his fellows over the border

into England, and by this very action, taken for the sake of her

worthless husband, she sowed the first seeds of discord between

herself and him. It happened that stout service had been rendered

her in this affair by the arrogant border ruffian, the Earl of

Bothwell. Partly to reward him, partly because of the confidence

with which he inspired her, she bestowed upon him the office of

Lieutenant-General of the East, Middle, and West Marches - an office

which Darnley had sought for his father, Lennox. That was the first

and last concerted action of the royal couple. Estrangement grew

thereafter between them, and, in a measure, as it grew so did

Darnley’s kingship, hardly established as yet - for the Queen had

still to redeem her pre-nuptial promise to confer upon him the crown

matrimonial - begin to dwindle.

 

At first it had been “the King and Queen,” or “His Majesty and Hers”;

but by Christmas - five months after the wedding - Darnley was known

simply as “the Queen’s husband,” and in all documents the Queen’s

name now took precedence of his, whilst coins bearing their two

heads, and the legend “Hen. et Maria,” were called in and substituted

by a new coinage relegating him to the second place.

 

Deeply affronted, and seeking anywhere but in himself and his own

shortcomings the cause of the Queen’s now manifest hostility, he

presently conceived that he had found it in the influence exerted

upon her by the Seigneur Davie - that Piedmontese, David Rizzio,

who had come to the Scottish Court some four years ago as a

starveling minstrel in the train of Monsieur de Morette, the

ambassador of Savoy.

 

It was Rizzio’s skill upon the rebec that had first attracted