THE DEATH OF CHARLES IX. AND THE ACCESSION OF HENRY III.
1576-1577
Henry, King of Poland.--Henry's journey through Germany.--Enmity
between the two brothers.--Sickness of Charles IX.--Remorse of the
king.--Death of Charles IX.--Chateaubriand.--Character of the
king.--Henry III.--The stratagem.--Flight from the crown.--The
sojourn in Italy.--The three Henrys.--Marriage of Henry III.--The
Duke of Alencon.--Suspicions of poison.--Invectives of the
king.--Recovery of the king.--Disappointment of Francis.--Fanaticism
of the king.--Escape of the Duke of Alencon.--The king aroused.--War
of the public good.--Defeat of Guise.--Perplexity of Catharine.--The
guard of honor.--Plan of escape.--Successful artifice.--The false
rumor.--Escape accomplished.--Trouble of the Duke of Alencon.--Terms
of settlement.--Paix de Monsieur.--Duke of Anjou.--Arrival at
Rochelle.--Conduct of Catharine and Henry III.--Complexity of
politics.--Francis and Queen Elizabeth.--New assaults on the
Protestants.--Anecdote of the Protestants.--Gratitude of the citizens
of Bayonne.--Anecdote of Henry of Navarre.--Another peace.--The
battle arrested.--Pledge of peace.--Morality in France.--Disgraceful
fete.--Murder in the royal palace.
After the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, a large number of the
Protestants threw themselves into the city of Rochelle. For seven
months they were besieged by all the power which the King of France
could bring against them. They were at length, weakened by sickness
and exhausted by famine, compelled to surrender. By their valiant
resistance, however, they obtained highly honorable terms, securing
for the inhabitants of Rochelle the free exercise of their religion
within the walls of the city, and a general act of amnesty for all the
Protestants in the realm.
Immediately after this event, Henry, the brother of Charles IX., was
elected King of Poland, an honor which he attained in consequence of
the military prowess he had displayed in the wars against the
Protestants of France. Accompanied by his mother, Catharine de Medici,
the young monarch set out for his distant dominions. Henry had been a
very active agent in the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. At Lorraine
Catharine took leave of him, and he went on his way in a very
melancholy mood. His election had been secured by the greatest efforts
of intrigue and bribery on the part of his mother. The melancholy
countenances of the Protestants, driven into exile, and bewailing the
murder of friends and relatives, whose assassination he had caused,
met him at every turn. His reception at the German courts was cold and
repulsive. In the palace of the Elector Palatine, Henry beheld the
portrait of Coligni, who had been so treacherously slaughtered in the
Massacre of St. Bartholomew. The portrait was suspended in a very
conspicuous place of honor, and beneath it were inscribed the words,
"SUCH WAS THE FORMER COUNTENANCE OF THE HERO COLIGNI, WHO
HAS BEEN RENDERED TRULY ILLUSTRIOUS BOTH BY HIS LIFE AND HIS
DEATH."
The Protestant Elector pointed out the picture to the young king, whom
he both hated and despised, and coolly asked him if he knew the man.
Henry, not a little embarrassed, replied that he did.
"He was," rejoined the German prince, "the most honest man, and the
wisest and the greatest captain of Europe, whose children I keep with
me, lest the dogs of France should tear them as their father has been
torn."
Thus Henry, gloomy through the repulses which he was ever
encountering, journeyed along to Poland, where he was crowned king,
notwithstanding energetic remonstrances on the part of those who
execrated him for his deeds. The two brothers, Charles IX. and Henry,
were bitter enemies, and Charles had declared, with many oaths, that
one of the two should leave the realm. Henry was the favorite of
Catharine, and hence she made such efforts to secure his safety by
placing him upon the throne of Poland. She was aware that the feeble
Charles would not live long, and when, with tears, she took leave of
Henry, she assured him that he would soon return.
The outcry of indignation which the Massacre of St. Bartholomew called
forth from combined Europe fell like the knell of death on the ear of
the depraved and cowardly Charles. Disease began to ravage, with new
violence, his exhausted frame. He became silent, morose, irritable,
and gloomy. He secluded himself from all society, and surrendered
himself to the dominion of remorse. He was detested by the
Protestants, and utterly despised by the Catholics. A bloody sweat,
oozing from every pore, crimsoned his bed-clothes. His occasional
outcries of remorse and his aspect of misery drove all from his
chamber excepting those who were compelled to render him service. He
groaned and wept incessantly, exclaiming,
"Oh, what blood! oh, what murders! Alas! why did I follow such evil
counsels?"
He saw continually the spectres of the slain, with ghastly, gory
wounds, stalking about his bed; and demons of hideous aspect, and with
weapons of torture in their hands, with horrid and derisive malice,
were impatiently waiting to seize his soul the moment it should pass
from the decaying body.
The day before his death he lay for some time upon his bed in perfect
silence. Suddenly starting up, he exclaimed,
"Call my brother."
His mother, who was sitting by his side, directed an attendant to call
his brother Francis, the Duke of Alencon.
"No, not him," the king replied; "my brother, the King of Navarre, I
mean."
Henry of Navarre was then detained in princely imprisonment in the
court of Catharine. He had made many efforts to escape, but all had
been unavailing.
Catharine directed that Henry should be called. In order to intimidate
him, and thus to prevent him from speaking with freedom and boldness
to her dying son, she ordered him to be brought through the vaults of
the castle, between a double line of armed guards. Henry, as he
descended into those gloomy dungeons, and saw the glittering arms of
the soldiers, felt that the hour for his assassination had arrived.
He, however, passed safely through, and was ushered into the chamber
of his brother-in-law and former playfellow, the dying king. Charles
IX., subdued by remorse and appalled by approaching death, received
him with gentleness and affection, and weeping profusely, embraced him
as he knelt by his bedside.
"My brother," said the dying king, "you lose a good master and a good
friend. I know that you are not the cause of the troubles which have
come upon me. If I had believed all which has been told me, you would
not now have been living; but I have always loved you." Then turning
his eyes to the queen mother, he said energetically, "Do not trust
to--" Here Catharine hastily interrupted him, and prevented the
finishing of the sentence with the words "_my mother_."
Charles designated his brother Henry, the King of Poland, as his
successor. He expressed the earnest wish that neither his younger
brother, Francis, the Duke of Alencon, nor Henry, would disturb the
repose of the realm. The next night, as the Cathedral clock was
tolling the hour of twelve, the nurse, who was sitting, with two
watchers, at the bedside of the dying monarch, heard him sighing and
moaning, and then convulsively weeping. Gently she approached the bed
and drew aside the curtains. Charles turned his dimmed and despairing
eye upon her, and exclaimed,
"Oh, my nurse! my nurse! what blood have I shed! what murders have I
committed! Great God! pardon me--pardon me!"
A convulsive shuddering for a moment agitated his frame, his head fell
back upon his pillow, and the wretched man was dead. He died at
twenty-four years of age, expressing satisfaction that he left no heir
to live and to suffer in a world so full of misery. In reference to
this guilty king, Chateaubriand says,
"Should we not have some pity for this monarch of twenty-three years,
born with fine talents, a taste for literature and the arts, a
character naturally generous, whom an execrable mother had tried to
deprave by all the abuses of debauchery and power?"
"Yes," warmly responds G. de Felice, "we will have compassion for him,
with the Huguenots themselves, whose fathers he ordered to be slain,
and who, with a merciful hand, would wipe away the blood which covers
his face to find still something human."
Henry, his brother, who was to succeed him upon the throne, was then
in Poland. Catharine was glad to have the pusillanimous Charles out of
the way. He was sufficiently depraved to commit any crime, without
being sufficiently resolute to brave its penalty. Henry III. had, in
early life, displayed great vigor of character. At the age of fifteen
he had been placed in the command of armies, and in several combats
had defeated the veteran generals of the Protestant forces. His renown
had extended through Europe, and had contributed much in placing him
on the elective throne of Poland. Catharine, by the will of the king,
was appointed regent until the return of Henry. She immediately
dispatched messengers to recall the King of Poland. In the mean time,
she kept Henry of Navarre and her youngest son, the Duke of Alencon,
in close captivity, and watched them with the greatest vigilance, that
they might make no movements toward the throne.
Henry was by this time utterly weary of his Polish crown, and sighed
for the voluptuous pleasures of Paris. The Poles were not willing that
their king should leave the realm, as it might lead to civil war in
the choice of a successor. Henry was compelled to resort to stratagem
to effect his escape. A large and splendid party was invited to the
palace. A wilderness of rooms, brilliantly illuminated, were thrown
open to the guests. Masked dancers walked the floor in every variety
of costume. Wine and wassail filled the halls with revelry. When all
were absorbed in music and mirth, the king, by a private passage,
stole from the palace, and mounting a swift horse, which was awaiting
him in the court-yard, accompanied by two or three friends, commenced
his flight from his crown and his Polish throne. Through the long
hours of the night they pressed their horses to their utmost speed,
and when the morning dawned, obtaining fresh steeds, they hurried on
their way, tarrying not for refreshment or repose until they had
passed the frontiers of the kingdom. Henry was afraid to take the
direct route through the Protestant states of Germany, for the
Massacre of St. Bartholomew was still bitterly remembered. He
therefore took a circuitous route through Italy, and arrived at Venice
in August. In sunny Italy he lingered for some time, surrendering
himself to every enervating indulgence, and even bartering the
fortresses of France to purchase the luxuries in the midst of which he
was reveling. At last, sated with guilty pleasure, he languidly turned
his steps toward Paris.
There were now three Henrys, who had been companions in childhood, who
were at the head of the three rival houses of Valois, of Bourbon, and
of Guise. One of these was King of France. One was King of Navarre.
But Henry of Guise was, in wealth and in the attachment of the
Catholic population of France, superior to either. The war which
ensued is sometimes called _The War of the three Henrys_.
As soon as his mother learned that he was approaching France, she set
out from Paris with a magnificent retinue to meet her pet child,
taking with her his brother, the Duke of Alencon, and Henry of
Navarre. Dissipation had impaired the mental as well as the physical
energies of the king, and a maudlin good-nature had absorbed all his
faculties. He greeted his brother and his brother-in-law with much
kindness, and upon receiving their oaths of obedience, withdrew much
of the restraint to which they previously had been subjected. Henry
was now known as Henry III. of France. Soon after his coronation he
married Louisa of Lorraine, a daughter of one of the sons of the Duke
of Guise. She was a pure-minded and lovely woman, and her mild and
gentle virtues contrasted strongly with the vulgarity, coarseness, and
vice of her degraded husband.
The Duke of Alencon was, however, by no means appeased by the kindness
with which he had been received by his brother the king. He called him
the robber of his crown, and formed a conspiracy for attacking the
carriage of his brother and putting him to death. The plot was
revealed to the king. He called his brother to his presence,
reproached him with his perfidy and ingratitude, but generously
forgave him. But the heart of Alencon was impervious to any appeals of
generosity or of honor. Upon the death of Henry III., the Duke of
Alencon, his only surviving brother, would ascend the throne.
The Duke of Guise hated with implacable rancor the Duke of Alencon,
and even proffered his aid to place Henry of Navarre upon the throne
in the event of the death of the king, that he might thus exclude his
detested rival. Francis, the Duke of Alencon, was impatient to reach
the crown, and again formed a plot to poison his brother. The king was
suddenly taken very ill. He declared his brother had poisoned him. As
each succeeding day his illness grew more severe, and the
probabilities became stronger of its fatal termination, Francis
assumed an air of haughtiness and of authority, as if confident that
the crown was already his own. The open exultation which he manifested
in view of the apparently dying condition of his brother Henry
confirmed all in the suspicion that he had caused poison to be
administered.
Henry III., believing his death inevitable, called Henry of Navarre to
his bedside, and heaping the bitterest invectives upon his brother
Francis, urged Henry of Navarre to procure his assassination, and thus
secure for himself the vacant throne. Henry of Navarre was the next
heir to the throne after the Duke of Alencon, and the dying king most
earnestly urged Henry to put the duke to death, showing him the ease
with which it could be done, and assuring him that he would be
abundantly supported by all the leading nobles of the kingdom. While
this scene was taking place at the sick-bed of the monarch, Francis
passed through the chamber of his brother without deigning to notice
either him or the King of Navarre. Strongly as Henry of Navarre was
desirous of securing for himself the throne of France, he was utterly
incapable of meditating even upon such a crime, and he refused to give
it a second thought.
To the surprise of all, the king recovered, and Francis made no
efforts to conceal his disappointment. There were thousands of armed
insurgents ready at any moment to rally around the banner of the Duke
of Alencon, for they would thus be brought into positions of emolument
and power. The king, who was ready himself to act the assassin,
treated his assassin-brother with the most profound contempt. No
description can convey an adequate idea of the state of France at this
time. Universal anarchy prevailed. Civil war, exasperated by the
utmost rancor, was raging in nearly all the provinces. Assassinations
were continually occurring. Female virtue was almost unknown, and the
most shameful licentiousness filled the capital. The treasury was so
utterly exhausted that, in a journey made by the king and his retinue
in mid-winter, the pages were obliged to sell their cloaks to obtain a
bare subsistence. The king, steeped in pollution, a fanatic and a
hypocrite, exhibited himself to his subjects bareheaded, barefooted,
and half naked, scourging himself with a whip, reciting his prayers,
and preparing the way, by the most ostentatious penances, to plunge
anew into every degrading sensual indulgence. He was thoroughly
despised by his subjects, and many were anxious to exchange him for
the reckless and impetuous, but equally depraved Francis.
The situation of the Duke of Alencon was now not only very
uncomfortable, but exceedingly perilous. The king did every thing in
his power to expose him to humiliations, and was evidently watching
for an opportunity to put him to death, either by the dagger or by a
cup of poison. The duke, aided by his profligate sister Marguerite,
wife of Henry of Navarre, formed a plan for escape.
One dark evening he wrapped himself in a large cloak, and issued forth
alone from the Louvre. Passing through obscure streets, he arrived at
the suburbs of the city, where a carriage with trusty attendants was
in waiting. Driving as rapidly as possible, he gained the open
country, and then mounting a very fleet charger, which by previous
appointment was provided for him, he spurred his horse at the utmost
speed for many leagues, till he met an escort of three hundred men,
with whom he took refuge in a fortified town. His escape was not known
in the palace until nine o'clock the next morning. Henry was
exceedingly agitated when he received the tidings, for he knew that
his energetic and reckless brother would join the Protestant party,
carrying with him powerful influence, and thus add immeasurably to the
distractions which now crowded upon the king.
For once, imminent peril roused Henry III. to vigorous action. He
forgot his spaniels, his parrots, his monkeys, and even his painted
concubines, and roused himself to circumvent the plans of his hated
rival. Letter after letter was sent to all the provinces, informing
the governors of the flight of the prince, and commanding the most
vigorous efforts to secure his arrest. Francis issued a proclamation
declaring the reasons for his escape, and calling upon the Protestants
and all who loved the "public good" to rally around him. Hence the
short but merciless war which ensued was called "the war of the public
good."
The Duke of Alencon was now at the head of a powerful party, for he
had thrown himself into the arms of the Protestants, and many of his
Catholic partisans followed him. Henry III. called to his aid the
fearless and energetic Duke of Guise, and gave him the command of his
armies. In the first terrible conflict which ensued Guise was
defeated, and received a hideous gash upon his face, which left a scar
of which he was very proud as a signet of valor.
Catharine was now in deep trouble. Her two sons were in open arms
against each other, heading powerful forces, and sweeping France with
whirlwinds of destruction. Henry of Navarre was still detained a
prisoner in the French court, though surrounded by all the luxuries
and indulgences of the capital. The dignity of his character, and his
great popularity, alarmed Catharine, lest, in the turmoil of the
times, he should thrust both of her sons from the throne, and grasp
the crown himself. Henry and his friends all became fully convinced
that Catharine entertained designs upon his life. Marguerite was fully
satisfied that it was so, and, bad as she was, as Henry interfered not
in the slightest degree with any of her practices, she felt a certain
kind of regard for him. The guards who had been assigned to Henry
professedly as a mark of honor, and to add to the splendor of his
establishment, were in reality his jailers, who watched him with an
eagle eye. They were all zealous Papists, and most of them, in the
Massacre of St. Bartholomew, had dipped their hands deep in Protestant
blood. Catharine watched him with unceasing vigilance, and crowded
every temptation upon him which could enervate and ruin. Her depravity
did but stimulate her woman's shrewdness and tact.
Henry of Navarre sighed for liberty. He was, however, so closely
guarded that escape seemed impossible. At last the following plan was
formed for flight. A hunting-party was got up. Henry was to invite
persons to attend the chase in whose fidelity he could repose
confidence, while one only was to be intrusted with the secret. Others
of his friends were secretly to resort to an appointed rendezvous with
fresh horses, and all well armed and in sufficient numbers to
overpower the guard placed about his person. Henry was to press on in
the chase with the utmost eagerness until the horses of the guard were
completely exhausted, when his friends with the fresh steeds were to
appear, rescue him from the guards, and accompany him in his flight.
The guards, being drawn far from the palace, could not speedily obtain
fresh horses, neither could they pursue him with their jaded animals.
The Duke of Guise was now in great favor with Henry III. Henry of
Navarre, during the few days in which he was making preparation for
his flight, blinded the eagle eyes of the duke by affecting great
confidence that he should obtain from the king the high office of
lieutenant general of France. The duke and Henry III. made themselves
very merry over this supposed simplicity of Henry of Navarre, little
aware that he was making himself equally merry at their expense.
Two days before the execution of the scheme, a rumor spread through
the court that Henry had escaped. For a short time great anxiety and
confusion ensued. Henry, being informed of the report and of the
agitation which filled the palace, hastened to the apartments where
Catharine and the king were in deliberation, and laughingly told them
that he had arrested the King of Navarre, and that he now surrendered
him to them for safe keeping.
In the morning of the day fixed for his flight, the King of Navarre
held a long and familiar conversation with the Duke of Guise, and
urged him to accompany him to the hunt. Just as the moment arrived for
the execution of the plot, it was betrayed to the king by the
treachery of a confederate. Notwithstanding this betrayal, however,
matters were so thoroughly arranged that Henry, after several
hair-breadth escapes from arrest, accomplished his flight. His
apprehension was so great that for sixty miles he rode as rapidly as
possible, without speaking a word or stopping for one moment except to
mount a fresh horse. He rode over a hundred miles on horseback that
day, and took refuge in Alencon, a fortified city held by the
Protestants. As soon as his escape was known, thousands of his friends
flocked around him.
The Duke of Alencon was not a little troubled at the escape of the
King of Navarre, for he was well aware that the authority he had
acquired among the Protestants would be lost by the presence of one so
much his superior in every respect, and so much more entitled to the
confidence of the Protestants. Thus the two princes remained separate,
but ready, in case of emergence, to unite their forces, which now
amounted to fifty thousand men. Henry of Navarre soon established his
head-quarters on the banks of the Loire, where every day fresh
parties of Protestants were joining his standard.
Henry III., with no energy of character, despised by his subjects, and
without either money or armies, seemed to be now entirely at the mercy
of the confederate princes. Henry of Navarre and the Duke of Alencon
sent an embassador to the French court to propose terms to Henry III.
The King of Navarre required, among other conditions, that France
should unite with him in recovering from Spain that portion of the
territory of Navarre which had been wrested from his ancestors by
Ferdinand and Isabella. While the proposed conditions of peace were
under discussion, Catharine succeeded in bribing her son, the Duke of
Alencon, to abandon the cause of Henry of Navarre. A treaty of peace
was then concluded with the Protestants; and by a royal edict, the
full and free exercise of the Protestant religion was guaranteed in
every part of France except Paris and a circle twelve miles in
diameter around the capital. As a bribe to the Duke of Alencon, he was
invested with sovereign power over the three most important provinces
of the realm, with an annual income of one hundred thousand crowns.
This celebrated treaty, called the _Paix de Monsieur_, because
concluded under the auspices of Francis, the brother of the king, was
signed at Chastenoy the sixth of May, 1576.
The ambitious and perfidious duke now assumed the title of the Duke of
Anjou, and entirely separated himself from the Protestants. He tried
to lure the Prince of Conde, the cousin and devoted friend of Henry of
Navarre, to accompany him into the town of Bourges. The prince,
suspecting treachery, refused the invitation, saying that some rogue
would probably be found in the city who would send a bullet through
his head.
"The rogue would be hanged, I know," he added, "but the Prince of
Conde would be dead. I will not give you occasion, my lord, to hang
rogues for love of me."
He accordingly took his leave of the Duke of Alencon, and, putting
spurs to his horse, with fifty followers joined the King of Navarre.
Henry was received with royal honors in the Protestant town of
Rochelle, where he publicly renounced the Roman Catholic faith,
declaring that he had assented to that faith from compulsion, and as
the only means of saving his life. He also publicly performed penance
for the sin which he declared that he had thus been compelled to
commit.
Catharine and Henry III., having detached Francis, who had been the
Duke of Alencon, but who was now the Duke of Anjou, from the
Protestants, no longer feigned any friendship or even toleration for
that cause. They acted upon the principle that no faith was to be kept
with heretics. The Protestants, notwithstanding the treaty, were
exposed to every species of insult and injury. The Catholics were
determined that the Protestant religion should not be tolerated in
France, and that all who did not conform to the Church of Rome should
either perish or be driven from the kingdom. Many of the Protestants
were men of devoted piety, who cherished their religious convictions
more tenaciously than life. There were others, however, who joined
them merely from motives of political ambition. Though the Protestant
party, in France itself, was comparatively small, the great mass of
the population being Catholics, yet the party was extremely
influential from the intelligence and the rank of its leaders, and
from the unconquerable energy with which all of its members were
animated.
The weak and irresolute king was ever vacillating between the two
parties. The Duke of Guise was the great idol of the Catholics. Henry
of Navarre was the acknowledged leader of the Protestants. The king
feared them both. It was very apparent that Henry III. could not live
long. At his death his brother Francis, Duke of Anjou, would ascend
the throne. Should he die childless, Henry of Navarre would be his
lawful successor. But the Catholics would be horror-stricken at the
idea of seeing a _heretic_ on the throne. The Duke of Guise was laying
his plans deep and broad to array all the Catholic population of
France in his own favor, and thus to rob the Protestant prince of his
rights. Henry III., Henry of Navarre, Henry, Duke of Guise, and
Francis, Duke of Anjou, had all been playmates in childhood and
classmates at school. They were now heading armies, and struggling for
the prize of the richest crown in Europe.
Francis was weary of waiting for his brother to die. To strengthen
himself, he sought in marriage the hand of Queen Elizabeth of England.
Though she had no disposition to receive a husband, she was ever very
happy to be surrounded by lovers. She consequently played the coquette
with Francis until he saw that there was no probability of the
successful termination of his suit. Francis returned to Paris
bitterly disappointed, and with new zeal consecrated his sword to the
cause of the Catholics. Had Elizabeth accepted his suit, he would then
most earnestly have espoused the cause of the Protestants.
Henry III. now determined to make a vigorous effort to crush the
Protestant religion. He raised large armies, and gave the command to
the Duke of Anjou, the Duke of Guise, and to the brother of the Duke
of Guise, the Duke of Mayenne. Henry of Navarre, encountering fearful
odds, was welcomed by acclamation to head the small but indomitable
band of Protestants, now struggling, not for liberty only, but for
life. The king was very anxious to get Henry of Navarre again in his
power, and sent most flattering messages and most pressing invitations
to lure him again to his court; but years of captivity had taught a
lesson of caution not soon to be forgotten.
Again hideous war ravaged France. The Duke of Anjou, exasperated by
disappointed love, disgraced himself by the most atrocious cruelties.
He burned the dwellings of the Protestants, surrendered unarmed and
defenseless men, and women, and children to massacre. The Duke of
Guise, who had inflicted such an ineffaceable stain upon his
reputation by the foul murder of the Admiral Coligni, made some
atonement for this shameful act by the chivalrous spirit with which he
endeavored to mitigate the horrors of civil war.
One day, in the vicinity of Bayonne, a party of Catholics, consisting
of a few hundred horse and foot, were conducting to their execution
three Protestant young ladies, who, for their faith, were infamously
condemned to death. As they were passing over a wide plain, covered
with broken woods and heath, they were encountered by a body of
Protestants. A desperate battle immediately ensued. The Protestants,
impelled by a noble chivalry as well as by religious fervor, rushed
upon their foes with such impetuosity that resistance was unavailing,
and the Catholics threw down their arms and implored quarter. Many of
these soldiers were from the city of Dux. The leader of the Protestant
band remembered that at the Massacre of St. Bartholomew all the
Protestants in that city had been slain without mercy. With a most
deplorable want of magnanimity, he caused all the prisoners who
belonged to that place to be separated from the rest, and in cold
blood they were slaughtered.
The remainder of the prisoners were from the city of Bayonne, whose
inhabitants, though Catholics, had nobly refused to imbrue their hands
in the blood of that horrible massacre which Charles IX. had enjoined.
To them, after they had seen their comrades surrendered to butchery
before their eyes, he restored their horses and their arms, and gave
them their entire liberty.
"Go," said he, "to your homes, and there tell the different treatment
which I show to soldiers and to assassins."
The three ladies, thus rescued from impending death, were borne back
in triumph to their friends. Eight days after this, a trumpet was
sounded and a flag of truce appeared emerging from the gates of
Bayonne. The friends of the Catholic soldiers who had been thus
generously restored sent a beautifully embroidered scarf and a
handkerchief to each one of the Protestant soldiers.
It is a singular illustration of the blending of the horrors of war
and the courtesies of peace, that in the midst of this sanguinary
conflict, Henry of Navarre, accompanied by only six companions,
accepted an invitation to a fete given by his enemies of the town of
Bayonne. He was received with the utmost courtesy. His table was
loaded with luxuries. Voluptuous music floated upon the ear; songs and
dances animated the festive hours. Henry then returned to head his
army and to meet his entertainers in the carnage of the field of
battle.
There was but little repose in France during the year 1577. Skirmish
succeeded skirmish, and battle was followed by battle; cities were
bombarded, villages burned, fields ravaged. All the pursuits of
industry were arrested. Ruin, beggary, and woe desolated thousands of
once happy homes. Still the Protestants were unsubdued. The king's
resources at length were entirely exhausted, and he was compelled
again to conclude a treaty of peace. Both parties immediately
disbanded their forces, and the blessings of repose followed the
discords of war.
One of the Protestant generals, immediately upon receiving the tidings
of peace, set out at the utmost speed of his horse to convey the
intelligence to Languedoc, where very numerous forces of Protestants
and Catholics were preparing for conflict. He spurred his steed over
hills and plains till he saw, gleaming in the rays of the morning sun,
the banners of the embattled hosts arrayed against each other on a
vast plain. The drums and the trumpets were just beginning to sound
the dreadful charge which in a few moments would strew that plain with
mangled limbs and crimson it with blood. The artillery on the
adjoining eminences was beginning to utter its voice of thunder, as
balls, more destructive than the fabled bolts of Jove, were thrown
into the massive columns marching to the dreadful onset. A few moments
later, and the cry, the uproar, and the confusion of the battle would
blind every eye and deafen every ear. La Noue, almost frantic with the
desire to stop the needless effusion of blood, at the imminent risk of
being shot, galloped between the antagonistic armies, waving
energetically the white banner of peace, and succeeded in arresting
the battle. His generous effort saved the lives of thousands.
Henry III. was required, as a pledge of his sincerity, to place in the
hands of the Protestants eight fortified cities. The Reformers were
permitted to conduct public worship unmolested in those places only
where it was practiced at the time of signing the treaty. In other
parts of France they were allowed to retain their belief without
persecution, but they were not permitted to meet in any worshiping
assemblies. But even these pledges, confirmed by the Edict of
Poitiers on the 8th of October, 1577, were speedily broken, like all
the rest.
But in the midst of all these conflicts, while every province in
France was convulsed with civil war, the king, reckless of the woes of
his subjects, rioted in all voluptuous dissipation. He was accustomed
to exhibit himself to his court in those effeminate pageants in which
he found his only joy, dressed in the flaunting robes of a gay woman,
with his bosom open and a string of pearls encircling his neck. On one
occasion he gave a fete, when, for the excitement of novelty, the
gentlemen, in female robes, were waited upon by the ladies of the
court, who were dressed in male attire, or rather undressed, for their
persons were veiled by the slightest possible clothing. Such was the
corruption of the court of France, and, indeed, of nearly the whole
realm in those days of darkness. Domestic purity was a virtue unknown.
Law existed only in name. The rich committed any crimes without fear
of molestation. In the royal palace itself, one of the favorites of
the king, in a paroxysm of anger, stabbed his wife and her
waiting-maid while the unfortunate lady was dressing. No notice
whatever was taken of this bloody deed. The murderer retained all his
offices and honors, and it was the general sentiment of the people of
France that the assassination was committed by the order of the
sovereign, because the lady refused to be entirely subservient to the
wishes of the dissolute king.