that it filled the whole Protestant world with grief and indignation,
especially England, and had only the effect of binding together the
Huguenots in a solid phalanx of warriors, resolved on making no peace
with their perfidious enemies until their religious liberties were
guaranteed Though decimated, they were not destroyed; for the provincial
governors and rural magistrates generally refused to execute the royal
decrees,--their hearts were moved with pity. The slaughter was not
universal, and Henry himself had escaped, his life being spared on
condition of his becoming a Catholic, which as a matter of form he did.
Nevertheless, all Protestant eyes were now directed to him as their
leader, since Coligny had perished by daggers, and Condé on the field of
battle. Henry was still a young man, only twenty years of age, but able,
intrepid, and wise. He and his cousin, the younger Condé, were still
held as hostages, while the Huguenots again rallied and retired to their
strong fortress of La Rochelle. Their last hopes centred in this
fortress, defended by only fifteen thousand men, under the brave La
None, while the royal army embraced the flower of the French nobility,
commanded by the Dukes of Anjou and Alençon. But these royal dukes were
compelled to raise the siege, 1573, with a loss of forty thousand men. I
regard the successful defence of this fortress, at this crisis, as the
most fortunate event in the whole Huguenot contest, since it enabled the
Huguenots to make a stand against the whole power of the monarchs. It
did not give them victory, but gave them a place to rally; and it
proclaimed the fact that the contest would not end until the Protestants
had achieved their liberties or were utterly annihilated.
Soon after this successful and glorious defence of La Rochelle, Charles
IX. died, at the age of twenty-four, in awful agonies,--the victim of
remorse and partial insanity, in the hours of which the horrors of St.
Bartholomew were ever present to his excited imagination, and when he
beheld wild faces of demons and murdered Huguenots rejoicing in his
torments, and heard strange voices consigning his name to infamy and his
body to those never-ending physical torments in which both Catholics and
Protestants equally believed. His mother however remained cold,
inflexible, and unmoved,--for when a woman falls under the grip of the
Devil, then no man can equal her in shamelessness and reckless sin.
Charles IX. was succeeded, in 1574, by his brother the King of Poland,
under the name of Henry III., who was equally under the control of his
mother Catherine.
Two years afterward the King of Navarre succeeded in making his escape,
and joined the Huguenot army at Tours. He was now twenty-three. He
astonished the whole kingdom by his courage and intrepidity,--winning
the hearts of the soldiers, and uniting them by strict military
discipline. His friend and counsellor was Rosny, afterwards Duke of
Sully, to whose wise counsels his future success may be in a great
measure traced. Fortunate is the prince who will listen to frank and
disagreeable advice; and that was one of the virtues of Henry,--a
magnanimity which has seldom been equalled by generals.
The Huguenots were now able to make a stand in the open country, partly
from additions to their numbers and partly from the mistakes and
frivolities of Henry III., who alienated stern Catholics and his best
friends. It was then that Bouillon, father of the illustrious Turenne,
joined the standard of Henry of Navarre. Soon after this, Henry became
heir-apparent of the French throne, by the death of the Duke of Alençon,
1584. Only the King, Henry III., a man without children, and the last of
the male line of the house of Valois, stood between Henry of Navarre and
the throne. The possibility that he, a Protestant, might wield the
sceptre of Saint Louis, his ancestor, increased the bitterness and
animosity of the Catholics. All the forces which the Government could
raise were now arrayed against him and his party. The Pope, Sixtus V.,
in a papal bull, took away his hereditary rights; but fortune favored
him. The Duke of Guise, who aspired to the throne, was himself
assassinated, as his father had been; and now, by the orders of his
jealous sovereign, his brother, the Cardinal of Guise, nephew of the
Cardinal of Lorraine,--a man who held three archbishoprics, six
bishoprics, and five abbeys, and these the richest in the
kingdom,--shared the same fate. And Providence removed also, soon after,
the most guilty and wicked of all the perpetrators of the massacre of
St. Bartholomew, even Catherine de Médicis,--who would be regarded as a
female monster, an incarnate fiend, a Messalina, or a Fredegunda, had
she not been beautiful, with pleasing and gracious manners, a great
fondness for society and music and poetry and art,--the most
accomplished woman of her day, and so attractive as to be compared by
the poets of her court to Aurora and Venus. Her life only shows how much
heartlessness, cruelty, malignity, envy, and selfishness may be
concealed by the mask of beauty and agreeable manners and artistic
accomplishments.
The bloody battle of Coutras enabled Henry of Navarre to take a stand
against the Catholics; but after the death of Henry III. by
assassination, in 1589, his struggles for the next five years were more
to secure his hereditary rights as King of France than to lead the
Huguenots to victory as a religious body. It might have been better for
them had Henry remained the head of their party rather than become King
of France, since he might not have afterwards deserted them. But there
was really no hope of the Huguenots gaining a political ascendency at
any time; they composed but a third part of the nation; their only hope
was to secure their religious liberties.
The most brilliant part of the military career of Henry IV. was when he
struggled for his throne, supported of course by the Huguenots, and
opposed by the whole Catholic party, the King of Spain, and the Pope of
Rome. The Catholics, or the "Leaguers" as they were called, were led by
the Duke of Mayenne. I need not describe the successes of Henry, until
the battle of Ivry, March 14, 1590, made him really the monarch of
France. On that eventful day both armies, having performed their
devotions, were drawn out for action. Both armies knew that this battle
would be decisive; and when all the arrangements were completed, Henry,
completely covered with mail except his hands and head, mounted upon a
great bay charger, galloped up and down the ranks, giving words of
encouragement to his soldiers, and assuring them that he would either
conquer or die. "If my standard fail you," said he, "keep my plume in
sight: you will always see it in the face of glory and honor." So
saying, he put on his helmet, adorned with three white plumes, gave the
order of battle, and, sword in hand, led the charge against the enemy.
For some time the issue of the conflict was doubtful, for the forces
were about equal; but at length victory inclined to the Protestants, who
broke forth in shouts as Henry, covered with dust and blood, appeared at
the head of the pursuing squadrons.
"Now, God be praised, the day is ours! Mayenne hath turned
his rein,
D'Aumale hath cried for quarter, the Flemish count is slain.
Their ranks are breaking like thin clouds before a Biscay gale;
The field is heaped with bleeding steeds, and flags, and cloven
mail;
And then we thought on vengeance, and all along our van
'Remember St. Bartholomew' was passed from man to man.
But out spake gentle Henry then: 'No Frenchman is my foe;
Down, down with every foreigner, but let your brethren go!'
Oh, was there ever such a knight, in friendship or in war,
As our sovereign lord, King Henry, the soldier of Navarre?"
The battle of Ivry, in which the forces of the League met with a
complete overthrow, was followed by the siege of Paris, its memorable
defence, and the arrival of the Duke of Parma, which compelled Henry to
retire. Though he had gained a great victory, and received great
accessions, he had to struggle four years longer, so determined were the
Catholics; and he might have had to fight a still longer time for his
throne had he not taken the extraordinary resolution of abjuring his
religion and cause. His final success was not doubtful, even as a
Protestant king, since his title was undisputed; but he wearied of war.
The peace of the kingdom and the security of the throne seemed to him a
greater good than the triumph of the Huguenots. In that age great power
was given to princes; he doubtless could have reigned as a Protestant
prince had he persevered for a few years longer, and Protestantism would
have been the established religion of France, as it was of England under
Elizabeth. Henry as a Protestant king would have had no more enemies, or
difficulties, or embarrassments than had the Virgin Queen, who on her
accession found only one bishop willing to crown her. He had all the
prestige of a conqueror, and was personally beloved, besides being a man
of ability. His prime minister, Sully, was as able a man as Burleigh,
and as good a Protestant; and the nation was enthusiastic. The Huguenots
had deeper convictions, and were more logical in their creed, than the
English Episcopalians. Leagued with England and Holland and Germany,
France could have defied other Catholic powers,--could have been more
powerful politically. Protestantism would have had the ascendency
in Europe.
But it was not to be. To the mind of the King he had nothing before him
but protracted war, unless he became a Catholic; and as all the
Huguenots ever struggled for was religious toleration, he would, as
king, grant this toleration, and satisfy all parties. He either had no
deep religious convictions, like Coligny and Dandelot, or he preferred
an undisturbed crown to the ascendency of the religion for which he had
so bravely fought. What matter, the tempter said, whether he reigned as
a Catholic or Protestant monarch, so long as religious liberty was given
to his subjects? Could he have reigned forever, could he have been
assured of the toleration of his successors, this plea might have had
some force; but it was the dictate of expediency, and no man can predict
its ultimate results. He was not a religious man, although he was the
leader of the Protestant party. He was far from being even moral in his
social relations; still less had he the austerity of manners and habits
that then characterized the Huguenots, for they were Calvinists and
Presbyterians. He was gallant, brave, generous, magnanimous, and
patriotic,--the model of a gentleman, the impersonation of chivalry, the
charm of his friends, the idol of his army, the glory of his country;
but there his virtues stopped. He was more of a statesman than the
leader of a party. He wanted to see France united and happy and
prosperous more than he wanted to see the ascendency of the Huguenots.
He was now not the King of Navarre,--a small country, scarcely thirty
miles long,--but the King of France, ruling, as he aspired, from the
Pyrenees to the Rhine. So it is not strange that he was governed by the
principles of expediency, as most monarchs are. He wished to aggrandize
his monarchy; that aim was dearer to him than the reformed faith.
Coligny would have fought to the bitter end to secure the triumph of the
Protestant cause; but Henry was not so lofty a man as the Admiral,--he
had not his religious convictions, or stern virtues, or incorruptible
life. He was a gallant monarch, an able general, a far-reaching
statesman, yet fond of pleasure and of the glories of a court.
So Henry made up his mind to abjure his faith. On Sunday the 25th of
July, 1593, clad not in helmet and cuirass and burnished steel, as at
Ivry, but in a doublet of white satin, and a velvet coat ornamented with
jewels and orders and golden fleurs de lis, and followed by cardinals
and bishops and nobles, he entered the venerable Abbey of St. Denis,
where reposed the ashes of all his predecessors, from Dagobert to Henry
III, and was received into the bosom of the Catholic Church. A solemn Te
Deum was then chanted by unnumbered priests; and the lofty pillars, the
marble altars, the storied effigies, the purple windows, and the vaulted
roof of that mediaeval monument re-echoed to the music of those glorious
anthems which were sung ages before the most sainted of the kings of
France was buried in the crypt. The partisans of the Catholic faith
rejoiced that a heretic had returned to the fold of true believers;
while the saddened, disappointed, humiliated members of the reformed
religion felt, and confessed with shame, that their lauded protector had
committed the most lamentable act of apostasy since the Emperor Julian
abjured Christianity. It is true they palliated his conduct and remained
faithful to his standard; but they felt he had committed a great
blunder, if it were not a great crime. They knew that their cause was
lost,--lost by him who had been their leader. Truly could they say, "Put
not your trust in princes." To the irreligious, but worldly-wise, Henry
had made a grand stroke of policy; had gained a kingdom well worth a
Mass, had settled the disorders of forty years, had united both
Catholics and Protestants in fealty to his crown, and was left at
leisure to develop the resources of the nation, and lay a foundation for
its future greatness.
I cannot here enumerate Henry IV.'s services to France, after the long
civil war had closed; they were very great, and endeared him to the
nation. He proved himself a wise and beneficent ruler; with the aid of
the transcendent abilities of Sully, whose counsels he respected, he
reduced taxation, founded schools and libraries, built hospitals, dug
canals, repaired fortifications, restrained military license, punished
turbulence and crime, introduced useful manufactures, encouraged
industry, patronized learning, and sought to perpetuate peace. He aimed
to be the father of his people, and he was the protector of the poor.
His memorable saying is still dear to the hearts of Frenchmen: "I hope
so to manage my kingdom that the poorest subject of it may eat meat
every day in the week, and moreover be enabled to put a fowl into the
pot every Sunday." I should like to point out his great acts and his
enlightened policy, especially his effort to create a balance of power
in Europe. The settlement of the finances and the establishment of
various industries were his most beneficial acts. The taxes were reduced
one half, and at his death he had fifty millions in the treasury,--a
great sum in those days,--having paid off a debt of three hundred
millions in eight years.
These and other public services showed his humane nature and his
enlightened mind, until, after a glorious reign of twenty-one years, he
was cut off, in the prime of his life and in the midst of his
usefulness, by the assassin's dagger, May, 1610, in the fifty-eighth
year of his age,--the greatest of all the French kings,--leaving five
children by his second wife, Marie de Médicis, four of whom became kings
or queens.
But to consider particularly Henry's connection with the Huguenots. If
he deserted their ranks, he did not forget them. He gave them religious
toleration,--all they originally claimed. In 1598 was signed the
memorable edict of Nantes, by which the Protestants preserved their
churches, their schools, their consistories, and their synods; and they
retained as a guarantee several important cities and fortresses,--a sort
of _imperium in imperio_. They were made eligible to all offices. They
were not subjected to any grievous test-act. They enjoyed social and
political equality, as well as unrestricted religious liberty, except in
certain cities. They gained more than the Puritans did in the reign of
Charles II. They were not excluded from universities, nor degraded in
their social rank, nor annoyed by unjust burial laws. The two religions
were placed equally under the protection of the government. By this
edict the Huguenots gained all that they had struggled for.
Still, the abjuration of Henry IV. was a great calamity to them. They
lost their prestige; they were in a minority; they could count no longer
on the leadership of princes. They were deprived gradually of the
countenance of powerful nobles and all the potent influences of fashion;
and when a reaction against Calvinism took place in the seventeenth
century, the Huguenots had dwindled to a comparatively humble body of
unimportant people. They lost heart and men of rank to defend them when
the persecution of Richelieu overtook them in the next reign. They were
then unfit to contend successfully with that centralized monarchy of
which Henry IV. had laid the foundation, and which Richelieu cemented by
fraud and force. Louis XIV., educated by the Jesuits and always under
their influence, repealed the charter which Henry IV. had given them.
The persecution they suffered under Louis XIV. was more dreadful than
that they suffered under Charles IX., since they had neither arms, nor
organization, nor leaders, nor fortresses. Under the persecution of the
Valois princes they had Condé and the King of Navarre and Coligny for
leaders; they were strong enough to fight for their liberties,--they had
enthusiasm and prestige and hope. Under the iron and centralized
government of Louis XIV. they were completely defenceless, like lambs
before wolves; they had no hopes, they could make no defence; they were
an obnoxious, slandered, unimportant, unfashionable people, and their
light had gone out. They had no religious enthusiasm even; they were
small farmers and tradesmen and servants, and worshipped God in dingy
chapels. No great men arose among them, as among the Puritans of
England. They were still evangelical in their creed, but not earnest in
defending it; so persecution wiped them out--was terribly successful.
Eight hundred thousand of them perished in prisons and galleys or on
scaffolds, and there was no help.
Henry IV., when he gave toleration to the Huguenots, never dreamed that
his successors would undo his work. Had he foreseen that concession to
the unchanged and unchangeable enemies of human freedom would have ended
as it did, I believe his noble heart would have revolted from any peace
until he could have reigned as a Protestant king. Oh, had he struggled a
little longer for his crown, how different might have been the
subsequent history of France, and even Europe itself! How much greater
would have been his own fame! Even had he died as the defender of
Protestant liberties, a greater glory than that of Gustavus would have
been his forever. The immediate results of his abjuration were doubtless
beneficial to himself, to the Huguenots, and to his country. Expediency
gives great rewards; but expediency cannot control future events,--it is
short-sighted, and only for the time successful. Ask you for the
ultimate results of the abjuration of Henry IV., I point to the
demolition of La Rochelle, under Richelieu, and the systematic
humiliation of the Huguenots; I point to the revocation of the Edict of
Nantes, by Louis XIV., and the bitter and cruel and wholesale
persecution which followed; I point to the atrocities of the dragonnades
and the exile of the Huguenots to England and America and Holland; I
point to the extinction of civil and religions liberty in France,--to
the restoration of the Jesuits,--to the prevalence of religious
indifference under the guise of Roman Catholicism, until at last it
threw off the mask and defied all authority, both human and divine, and
invoked all the maddening passions of Revolution itself.
AUTHORITIES.
Histoire de Thou; L'Estoile; Mémoires de la Reine Marguerite; Histoire
de Henri le Grand, par Madame de Genlis; Mémoires de Sully; D'Aubigné;
Matthien; Brantôme's Vie de Charles IX.; Henri Martin's History of
France; Mézerai; Péréfixe; Sismondi.
GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS.
1594-1632.
THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR (1618-1648).
The Thirty Years' War, of which Gustavus Adolphus was the greatest hero,
was the result of those religious agitations which the ideas of Luther
produced. It was the struggle to secure religious liberty,--a warfare
between Catholic and Protestant Germany. It differed from the Huguenot
contest in this,--that the Protestants of France took up arms against
their king to extort religious privileges; whereas the Protestants of
Germany were marshalled by independent princes against other independent
princes of a different religion, who sought to suppress Protestantism.
In this warfare between Catholic and Protestant States, there were great
political entanglements and issues that affected the balance of power in
Europe. Hence the Thirty Years' War was political as well as religious.
It was not purely a religious war like the crusades, although religious
ideas gave rise to it. Nor was it an insurrection of the people against
their rulers to secure religious rights, so much as a contest between
Catholic and Protestant princes to secure the recognition of their
religious opinions in their respective States.
The Emperor of Germany in the time of Luther was Charles V.,--the most
powerful potentate of Europe, and, moreover, a bigoted Catholic. On his
abdication,--one of the most extraordinary events in history,--the
German dominions were given to his brother Ferdinand; Spain and the Low
Countries were bestowed on his son Philip. Ferdinand had already been
elected King of the Romans. There was a close alliance between these
princes of the House of Austria to suppress Protestantism in Europe. The
new Austrian emperor was not, indeed, so formidable as his father had
been, but was still one of the greatest monarchs of Europe; and so
powerful was the House of Austria that it excited the jealousy of the
other European powers. It was to prevent the dangerous ascendency of
Austria that Henry IV. of France raised a great army with a view of
invading Germany, but was assassinated before he could carry his scheme
into execution. He had armed France to secure what is called the
"balance of power;" and it was with the view of securing this balance of
power that Cardinal Richelieu, though a prince of the Church, took the
side of the Protestants in the Thirty Years' War. This famous contest
may therefore be regarded as a civil war, dividing the German nations;
as a religious war, to establish freedom of belief; and as a war to
prevent the ascendency of Austria, in which a great part of Europe
was involved.