Strickland's Queens of England; Mrs. Jameson's Memoirs of Queen
Elizabeth; E. Lodge's Sketch of Elizabeth; G.P.R. James's Memoir of
Elizabeth; Encyclopaedia Britannica, article on England: Hallam's
Constitutional History of England; "Age of Elizabeth," in Dublin Review,
lxxxi.; British Quarterly Review, v. 412; Aikin's Court of Elizabeth;
Bentley's Elizabeth and her Times; "Court of Elizabeth," in Westminster
Review, xxix. 281; "Character of Elizabeth," in Dublin University
Review, xl. 216; "England of Elizabeth," in Edinburgh Review, cxlvi.
199; "Favorites of Queen Elizabeth," in Quarterly Review, xcv. 207;
Reign of Elizabeth, in London Quarterly Review, xxii. 158; "Youth of
Elizabeth," in Temple Bar Magazine, lix. 451, and "Elizabeth and Mary
Stuart," x. 190; Blackwood's Magazine, ci. 389.
HENRY OF NAVARRE.
A. D. 1553-1610.
THE HUGUENOTS.
In this lecture I shall confine myself principally to the connection of
Henry IV. with that memorable movement which came near making France a
Protestant country. He is identified with the Huguenots, and it is the
struggles of the Huguenots which I wish chiefly to present. I know he
was also a great king, the first of the Bourbon dynasty, whose heroism
in war was equalled only by his enlightened zeal in the civilization of
France,--a king who more deeply impressed himself upon the affections of
the nation than any monarch since Saint Louis, and who, had he lived to
execute his schemes, would have raised France to the highest pitch of
glory. Nor do I forget, that, although he fought for a great cause, and
reigned with great wisdom and ability, and thus rendered important
services to his country, he was a man of great defects of character,
stained with those peculiar vices which disgraced most of the Bourbon
kings, especially Louis XIV. and Louis XV.; that his court was the
scene of female gallantries and intrigues, and that he was more under
the influence of women than was good for the welfare of his country or
his own reputation. But the limits of this lecture will not permit me to
dwell on his acts as a monarch, or on his statesmanship, his services,
or his personal defects of character. I am obliged, from the magnitude
of my subject, and from the necessity of giving it unity and interest,
to confine myself to him as a leader of the Huguenots alone. It is not
Henry himself that I would consider, so much as the struggles of the
brave men associated with him, more or less intimately, in their attempt
to secure religious liberty in the sixteenth century.
The sixteenth century! What a great era that was In comparison with the
preceding centuries since Christianity was declared! From a religious
and heroic point of view it was immeasurably a greater period than the
nineteenth century, which has been marked chiefly for the triumphs of
science, material progress, and social and political reforms. But in
earnestness, in moral grandeur, and in discussions which pertain to the
health and life of nations, the sixteenth century was greater than our
own. Then began all sorts of inquiries about Nature and about mind,
about revelation and Providence, about liberty of worship and freedom of
thought; all of which were discussed with an enthusiasm and patience
and boldness and originality to which our own times furnish no parallel.
And united with this fresh and original agitation of great ideas was a
heroism in action which no age of the world has equalled. Men risked
their fortunes and their lives in defence of those principles which have
made the enjoyment of them in our times the greatest blessing we
possess. It was a new spirit that had arisen in our world to break the
fetters which centuries of fraud and superstition and injustice had
forged,--a spirit scornful of old authorities, yet not sceptical, with
disgust of the past and hope for the future, penetrating even the
hamlets of the poor, and kindling the enthusiasm of princes and nobles,
producing learned men in every country of Europe, whose original
investigations should put to the blush the commentators and compilers of
this age of religious mediocrity and disguised infidelity. Such
intellectual giants in the field of religious inquiry had not appeared
since the Fathers of the Church combated the paganism of the Roman
world, and will not probably appear again until the cycle of changes is
completed in the domain of theological thought, and men are forced to
meet the enemies of divine revelation marshalled in such overwhelming
array that there will be a necessity for reformers, called out by a
special Providence to fight battles,--as I regard Luther and Calvin and
Knox. The great difference between the sixteenth and nineteenth
centuries, outside of material aspects, is that the former recognized
the majesty of God, and the latter the majesty of man. Both centuries
believed in progress; but the sixteenth century traced this progress to
first, and the nineteenth to second, causes. The sixteenth believed that
human improvement was owing directly to special divine grace, and the
nineteenth believes in the necessary development of mankind. The school
of the sixteenth century was spiritual, that of the nineteenth is
material; the former looked to heaven, the latter looks to earth. The
sixteenth regarded this world as a mere preparation for the next, and
the nineteenth looks upon this world as the future scene of indefinite
and completed bliss. The sixteenth century attacked the ancient, the
nineteenth attacks the eternal. The sixteenth destroyed, but
reconstructed; the nineteenth also destroys, but would substitute
nothing instead. The sixteenth reminds us of audacious youth, still
clinging to parental authority; the nineteenth reminds us of cynical and
irreverent old age, believing in nothing but the triumphs of science and
art, and shaking off the doctrines of the ages as exploded
superstitions.
The sixteenth century was marked not only by intensely earnest religious
inquiries, but by great civil and social disorders,--showing a
transition period of society from the slaveries and discomforts of the
feudal ages to the liberty and comforts of highly civilized life. In
the midst of religious enthusiasm we see tumults, insurrections,
terrible animosities, and cruel intolerance. War was associated with
inhuman atrocities, and the acceptance of the reformed faith was
followed by bitter and heartless persecution. The feudal system had
received a shock from standing armies and the invention of gunpowder and
the central authority of kings, but it was not demolished. The nobles
still continued to enjoy their social and political distinctions, the
peasantry were ground down by unequal laws, and the nobles were as
arrogant and quarrelsome as the people were oppressed by unjust
distinctions. They were still followed by their armed retainers, and had
almost unlimited jurisdiction in their respective governments. Even the
higher clergy gloried in feudal inequalities, and were selected from the
noble classes. The people were not powerful enough to make combinations
and extort their rights, unless they followed the standards of military
chieftains, arrayed perhaps against the crown and against the
parliaments. We see no popular, independent political movements; even
the people, like all classes above them, were firm and enthusiastic in
their religious convictions.
The commanding intellect at that time in Europe was John Calvin (a
Frenchman, but a citizen of Geneva), whom we have already seen to be a
man of marvellous precocity of genius and astonishing logical powers,
combined with the most exhaustive erudition on all theological subjects.
His admirers claim a distinct and logical connection between his
theology and civil liberty itself. I confess I cannot see this. There
was nothing democratic about Calvin. He ruled indeed at Geneva as
Savonarola did in Florence, but he did not have as liberal ideas as the
Florentine reformer about the political liberties of the people. He made
his faith the dearest thing a man could have, to be defended unto death
in the face of the most unrelenting persecution. It was the tenacity to
defend the reformed doctrines, of which, next to Luther, Calvin was the
greatest champion, which kindled opposition to civil rulers. And it was
opposition to civil rulers who proved themselves tyrants which led to
the struggle for civil liberty; not democratic ideas of right. These may
have been the sequence of agitations and wars, but not their animating
cause,--like the ideas of Rousseau on the French revolutionists. The
original Puritans were not democratic; the Presbyterians of Scotland
were not, even when Cromwell led the armies, but not the people, of
England. The Huguenots had no aspirations for civil rights; they only
aspired for the right of worshipping God according to the dictates of
conscience. There was nothing popular in their notions of government
when Henry IV. headed the forces of the Huguenots; he only aimed at the
recognition of religious rights. The Huguenots never rallied around
popular leaders, but rather under the standards of princes and nobles
fighting for the right of worshipping God according to the dictation or
ideas of Calvin. They would preserve their schools, their churches,
their consistories, and their synods; they would be unmolested in their
religious worship.
Now, at the time when Henry IV. was born, in the year 1553, when Henry
II. was King of France and Edward VI. was King of England, the ideas of
the Reformation, and especially the doctrines of Calvin, had taken a
deep and wide hold of the French people. The Calvinists, as they were
called, were a powerful party; in some parts of France they were in a
majority. More than a third of the whole population had enthusiastically
accepted the reformed doctrines. They were in a fair way toward triumph;
they had great leaders among the highest of the nobility. But they were
bitterly hated by the king and the princes of the house of Valois, and
especially by the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine,--the most
powerful famlies in France,--because they meditated to overturn, not the
throne, but the old established religion. The Pope instigated the most
violent proceedings; so did the King of Spain. It was resolved to
suppress the hated doctrines. The enemies of the Calvinists resorted to
intrigues and assassinations; they began a furious persecution, as they
held in their hands the chief political power. Injustice succeeded
injustice, and outrage followed outrage. During the whole reigns of the
Valois Princes, treachery, assassinations, and bloody executions marked
the history of France. Royal edicts forbid even the private assemblies
of the Huguenots, on pain of death. They were not merely persecuted but
calumniated. There was no crime which was not imputed to them, even that
of sacrificing little children; so that the passions of the people were
aroused against them, and they were so maltreated that all security was
at an end. From a condition of hopeful progress, they were forced back
and beaten down. Their condition became insupportable. There was no
alternative but desperate resistance or martyrdom, for the complete
suppression of Protestantism was resolved upon, on the part of the
government. The higher clergy, the parliaments, the University of Paris,
and the greater part of the old nobility supported the court, and each
successive Prince of the house of Valois adopted more rigorous measures
than his predecessor. Henry II. was more severe than Francis I.; and
Francis II. was more implacable than Henry II., who was killed at a
tournament in 1559. Francis II., a feeble prince, was completely ruled
by his mother, Catherine de Médicis, an incarnated fiend of cruelty and
treachery, though a woman of pleasing manners and graceful
accomplishments,--like Mary of Scotland, but without her levities. Under
her influence persecution assumed a form which was truly diabolical. The
Huguenots, although supported by the King of Navarre, the Prince of
Condé, Coligny (Admiral of France), his brother the Seigneur d' Andelot,
the Count of Montgomery, the Duke of Bouillon, the Duke of Soubise, all
of whom were nobles of high rank, were in danger of being absolutely
crushed, and were on the brink of despair. What if a third part of the
people belonged to their ranks, when the whole power of the crown and a
great majority of the nobles were against them; and these supported by
the Pope and clergy, and stimulated to ferocity by the Jesuits, then
becoming formidable?
At last the Huguenots resolved to organize and arm in their own defence,
for there is a time when submission ceases to be a virtue. If ever a
people had cause for resistance it was this persecuted people. They did
not rise up against their persecutors with the hope of overturning the
throne, or producing a change of dynasties, or gaining constitutional
liberty, or becoming a political power hostile to the crown, like the
Puritans under Cromwell or Hampden, but simply to preserve what to them
was more precious than life. All that they demanded was a toleration of
their religion; and as their religion was dearer to them than life, they
were ready to undergo any sacrifices. Their resistance was more
formidable than was anticipated; they got possession of cities and
fortresses, and were able to defy the whole power of the crown. It was
found impossible to suppress a people who fought with so much heroism,
and who defied every combination. So truces and treaties were made with
them, by which their religious rights were guaranteed. But these
treaties were perpetually broken, for treachery is no sin with religious
persecutors, since "the end justified the means."
This Huguenotic contest, attended with so much vicissitude, alternate
defeat and victory, and stained by horrid atrocities, was at its height
when Henry IV. was a boy, and had no thought of ever being King of
France. His father, Antoine de Bourbon, although King of Navarre and a
prince of the blood, being a lineal descendant from Saint Louis, was
really only a great noble, not so powerful as the Duke of Guise or the
Duke of Montmorency; and even he, a leader of the rebellion, was finally
won over to the court party by the seductions brought to bear on him by
Roman priests. He was either bribed or intimidated, and disgracefully
abjured the cause for which he at first gallantly fought. He died from a
wound he received at the siege of Rouen, while commanding one of the
armies of Charles IX., who succeeded his brother Francis II., in 1560.
The mother of the young prince, destined afterwards to be so famous,
was one of the most celebrated women of history,--Jeanne D'Albret, niece
of Francis L; a woman who was equally extolled by men of letters and
Calvinistic divines. She was as beautiful as she was good; at her castle
in Pau, the capital of her hereditary kingdom of Navarre, she diffused a
magnificent hospitality, especially to scholars and the lights of the
reformed doctrines. Her kingdom was small, and was politically
unimportant; but she was a sovereign princess nevertheless. The
management of the young prince, her son, was most admirable, but
unusual. He was delicate and sickly as an infant, and reared with
difficulty; but, though a prince, he was fed on the simplest food, and
exposed to hardships like the sons of peasants; he was allowed to run
bareheaded and barefooted, exposed to heat and rain, in order to
strengthen his constitution. Amid the hills at the base of the Pyrenees,
in the company of peasants' children, he thus acquired simple and
natural manners, and accustomed himself to fatigues and dangers. He was
educated in the reformed doctrines, but was more distinguished as a boy
for his chivalric graces, physical beauty, and manly sports than for
seriousness of character or a religious life. He grew up a Protestant,
from education rather than conviction. At twelve, in the year 1565, he
was intrusted by his mother, the Queen of Navarre, to the care of his
uncle, the Prince of Condé, and, on his death, to Admiral Coligny, the
acknowledged leader of the Protestants. He thus witnessed many bloody
battles before he was old enough to be intrusted with command. At
eighteen he was affianced to Marguerite de Valois, sister of Charles
IX., in spite of differences of religion.
It was amid the nuptial festivities of the young King of Navarre,--his
mother had died the year before,--when all the prominent leaders of the
Protestants were enticed to Paris, that preparations were made for the
blackest crime in the annals of civilized nations,--even the treacherous
and hideous massacre of St. Bartholomew, perpetrated by Charles IX., who
was incited to it by his mother, the ever-infamous Catherine de Médicis,
and the Duke of Guise.
The Protestants, under the Prince of Condé and Admiral Coligny, had
fought so bravely and so successfully in defence of their cause that all
hope of subduing them in the field was given up. The bloody battles of
Montcontour, of St. Denis, and of Jarnac had proved how stubbornly the
Huguenots would fight; while their possession of such strong fortresses
as Montauban and La Rochelle, deemed impregnable, showed that they could
not easily be subdued. Although the Prince of Condé had been slain at
the battle of Jarnac, this great misfortune to the Protestants was more
than balanced by the assassination of the great Duke of Guise, the
ablest general and leader of the Catholics. So when all hope had
vanished of exterminating the Huguenots in open warfare, a deceitful
peace was made; and their leaders were decoyed to Paris, in order to
accomplish, in one foul sweep, by wholesale murder, the
diabolical design.
The Huguenot leaders were completely deceived. Old Admiral Coligny, with
his deeper insight, hesitated to put himself into the power of a bigoted
and persecuting monarch; but Charles IX. pledged his word for his
safety, and in an age when chivalry was not extinguished, his promise
was accepted. Who could believe that his word of honor would be broken,
or that he, a king, could commit such an outrageous and unprecedented
crime? But what oath, what promise, what law can bind a man who is a
slave of religious bigotry, when his church requires a bloody and a
cruel act? The end seemed to justify any means. I would not fix the
stain of that infamous crime exclusively on the Jesuits, or on the Pope,
or on the councillors of the King, or on his mother. I will not say that
it was even exclusively a Church movement: it may have been equally an
apparent State necessity. A Protestant prince might mount the throne of
France, and with him, perhaps, the ascendency of Protestantism, or at
least its protection. Such a catastrophe, as it seemed to the
councillors of Charles IX., must somehow be averted. How could it be
averted otherwise than by the assassination of Henry himself, and his
cousin Condé, and the brave old admiral, as powerful as Guise, as
courageous as Du Gueslin, and as pious as Godfrey? And then, when these
leaders were removed, and all the Protestants in Paris were murdered,
who would remain to continue the contest, and what Protestant prince
could hope to mount the throne? But whoever was directly responsible for
the crime, and whatever may have been the motives for it, still it was
committed. The first victim was Coligny himself, and the slaughter of
sixty thousand persons followed in Paris and the provinces. The Admiral
Coligny, Marquis of Chatillon, was one of the finest characters in all
history,--brave, honest, truthful, sincere, with deep religious
convictions, and great ability as a general. No Englishman in the
sixteenth century can be compared with him for influence, heroism, and
virtue combined. It was deemed necessary to remove this illustrious man,
not because he was personally obnoxious, but because he was the leader
of the Protestant party.
It is said that as the fatal hour approached to give the signal for the
meditated massacre, Aug. 24, 1572, the King appeared irresolute and
disheartened. Though cruel, perfidious, and weak, he shrank from
committing such a gigantic crime, and this too in the face of his royal
promises. But there was one person whom no dangers appalled, and whose
icy soul could be moved by no compassion and no voice of conscience. At
midnight, Catherine entered the chamber of her irresolute son, in the
Louvre, on whose brow horror was already stamped, and whose frame
quivered with troubled chills. Coloring the crime with the usual
sophistries of all religious and political persecution, that the end
justifies the means, and stigmatizing him as a coward, she at last
extorted from his quivering lips the fatal order; and immediately the
tocsin of death sounded from the great bell of the church of St. Germain
de Auxerrois. At once the slaughter commenced in every corner of Paris,
so well were the horrid measures concerted. Screams of despair were
mingled with shouts of vengeance; the cries of the murdered were added
to the imprecations of the murderers; the streets flowed with blood, the
dead rained from the windows, the Seine became purple. Men, women, and
children were seen flying in every direction, pursued by soldiers, who
were told that an insurrection of Protestants had broken out. No sex or
age or dignity was spared, no retreat afforded a shelter, not even the
churches of the Catholics. Neither Alaric nor Attila ever inflicted such
barbarities. No besieged city taken by assault ever saw such wanton
butcheries, except possibly Jerusalem when taken by Titus or Godfrey,
or Magdeburg when taken by Tilly. And as the bright summer sun
illuminated the city on a Sunday morning the massacre had but just
begun; nor for three days and three nights did the slaughter abate. A
vulgar butcher appeared before the King and boasted he had slain one
hundred and fifty persons with his own hand in a single night. For seven
days was Paris the scene of disgraceful murder and pillage and violence.
Men might be seen stabbing little infants, and even children were known
to slaughter their companions. Nor was there any escape from these
atrocities; the very altars which had once protected Christians from
pagans were polluted by Catholic executioners. Ladies jested with
unfeeling mirth over the dead bodies of murdered Protestants. The very
worst horrors of which the mind could conceive were perpetrated in the
name of religion. And then, when no more victims remained, the King and
his court and his clergy proceeded in solemn procession to the cathedral
church of Notre Dame, amidst hymns of praise, to return thanks to God
for the deliverance of France from men who had sought only the privilege
of worshipping Him according to their consciences!
Nor did the bloody work stop here; orders were sent by the Government to
every city and town of France to execute the like barbarities. The utter
extermination of the Protestants was resolved upon throughout the
country. The slaughter was begun in treachery and was continued in the
most heartless cruelty. When the news of it reached Borne, the Holy
Father the Pope caused a medal to be struck in commemoration of the
event, illuminated his capital, ordained general rejoicings, as if for
some signal victory over the Turks; and, assisted by his cardinals and
clergy, marched in glad procession to St. Peter's Church, and offered up
a solemn Te Deum for this vile and treacherous slaughter of sixty
thousand Protestants.
In former lectures I have passed rapidly and imperfectly over this awful
crime, not wishing to stimulate passions which should be buried, and
thinking it was more the fault of the age than of Catholic bigots; but I
now present it in its naked deformity, to be true to history, and to
show how cruel is religious intolerance, confirmed by the history of
other inhumanities in the Catholic Church,--by the persecution of
Dominican monks, by the slaughter of the Albigenses, by inquisitions,
gunpowder plots, the cruelties of Alva, and that trail of blood which
has marked the fairest portions of Europe by the hostilities of the
Church of Borne in its struggles to suppress Protestant opinions. I
mention it to recall the fact that Protestantism has never been stained
by such a crime. I mention it to invoke gratitude that such a misguided
zeal has passed away and is never likely to return. Catholic historians
do not pretend to deny the horrid facts, but ascribe the massacre to
political animosities rather than religious,--a lame and impotent
defence of their persecuting Church in the sixteenth century.