Sandy Spencer

Scattered To The Wind Sandy Spencer

On May 19, 1610, France launched a war the scale of which Europe had never seen before over a pair of pert young breasts and two startlingly blue eyes. Except it never did. On May 14 at about four in the afternoon, the admirer of those four singular objects and the architect of that war - King Henri IV of France, "the Eternal Rake" - was murdered on the rue de la Ferronnerie in Paris by a religious fanatic. Two weeks later, the King's killer, Jean-François Ravaillac, was brutally tortured and put to death in the Place de Grève, his body cut up and his ashes ordered "scattered to the wind". End of story? Not quite. Ravaillac insisted to the very end that he acted alone. The historical record - or what remains of it - suggests otherwise. Was Ravaillac a "lone wolf" or was he more likely the instrument of a much larger conspiracy? Drawing on trial transcripts and first-hand accounts from the time, SCATTERED TO THE WIND recounts the events of the King's death and what followed through the eyes of an actual historical figure - Pierre Coton: Jesuit priest, confessor to the King and, here, renegade investigator. As one of Coton's contemporaries, the formidable First President of the Parlement of Paris and interrogating magistrate Achille de Harlay, replied when asked if there were sufficient proofs to indicate a conspiracy: "Too many by far." For you to decide then - but bear in mind what another formidable personage, Pliny the Elder, wrote: "In these matters, the only certainty is that nothing is certain." With these other conspiracies: Lady With A Fan, Dream Again, Bird On A Wing and Another Russia