 Catherine also maintained about eighty alluring ladies-in-waiting at court, whom she allegedly used as tools to seduce courtiers for political ends. These women became known as her "flying squadron". Catherine did not hesitate to use the charms of her ladies as an attraction of the court. In 1577, for example, she threw a banquet at which the food was served by topless women. In 1572, the Huguenot Jeanne d ’ Albret, Queen of Navarre, wrote from the court to warn her son Henry that Catherine presided over a "vicious and corrupt" atmosphere, in which the women made the sexual advances and not the men. In fact, Charlotte de Sauve, one of the most notorious members of the "flying squadron", first seduced and then became a mistress of Henry of Navarre on Catherine's orders. On the other hand, Brantôme, in his Memoirs, praised Catherine ’ s court as "a school of all honesty and virtue".
