Critical condition of France at the accession of Charles
IX.--Character and policy of Catherine de’ Medici--The
Triumvirate--Catherine leans to the side of the Reformers--The
“Edict of January”--Massacre of Vassy--Condé remains
faithful to the Protestant cause--Beginning of the civil
war--The Protestants, at first successful, soon in a
desperate position--Condé turns to England for aid:
Treaty of Hampton Court--Fall of Rouen--Condé marches on
Paris--Battle of Dreux: the prince taken prisoner--Second
captivity of Condé--Assassination of Guise--Conference on the
Île-aux-Bœufs--The maids-of-honour--Peace of Amboise--Condé
follows the Court.
Never had the internal condition of France been more critical, never
had she stood more in need of a strong and wise government, than at the
moment when the imaginary majority of François II. was succeeded by the
real minority of Charles IX. The danger which threatened her was no
longer, as in the time of the last Sovereign of that name, a struggle
between individual ambitions; private ambitions had now identified
themselves with the living forces of the nation; the whole of the
nobility and gentry were already engaged in the quarrel of the great
factions which divided France, and the mass of the people only awaited
the signal to follow their example.
And the person who was called upon to deal with this critical situation
was Catherine de’ Medici, a woman, a foreigner. During the reign of
her husband, Catherine had perforce remained in the background, Henri
II. being completely under the influence of his mistress, Diane de
Poitiers; under François II., the government, as we have seen, had
fallen into the hands of the Guises, and she had been, politically
speaking, a mere cipher. But the early death of her eldest son had
given her the opportunity which she so ardently desired--for all her
life she had hungered for power and influence as a starving man
hungers for bread--and having persuaded the King of Navarre to resign
his claims to the Regency, in consideration of receiving the title of
Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom, she at once assumed a quasi-absolute
authority. She brought to the task a remarkable knowledge of men and
affairs--the fruit of long years of quiet study and observation--a
boundless activity, an untiring vigilance, a charm of manner which few
who came into contact with her could resist, and a soul depraved by a
life of subjection and dissimulation. Her master-passion was to govern
through her sons, and she dreaded every influence which might weaken by
one iota her personal authority.
To a certain extent, she succeeded in preserving this, but, though
sincerely anxious to maintain peace, she was powerless to save France
from the anarchy which menaced her. For she was timid, shifty, and
irresolute, and incapable of any noble aim; while it is also probable
that she failed to recognize, at any rate until matters had gone too
far to be remedied, the gravity of the situation. “To divide in order
to reign” was the principle upon which she acted; to give a little
encouragement to the Huguenots, to instil a little apprehension
into the Catholics, and to accustom both parties to regard her as
the dominating factor in the situation. The result was that she was
distrusted by both alike, and hastened the very calamity she desired to
avert.
And this calamity was rapidly approaching. Calvinism was not, as
certain Protestant historians would have us believe, a sect which
demanded nothing but the liberty to worship God in its own way; it was
violent, intolerant, propagandist, and, under the influence of the
exiles who had tasted democracy in Switzerland, and of the discontented
nobles who exploited it for their own ends, was becoming as much a
political as a religious organisation. Thus, it deliberately provoked
persecution and played into the hands of its most implacable enemies.
The coalition which had been formed to check the ambition of the Guises
was dissolved; while Condé and Coligny turned openly to Protestantism,
the Constable, a rigid Catholic and a fervent absolutist, joined hands
with those who had formerly plotted his ruin, and formed with the Duc
de Guise and the Maréchal de Saint-André a new Catholic league, the
ill-omened Triumvirate. Shortly afterwards, the vain and fickle Antoine
de Bourbon, allured by what de Thou calls “the entertainment of hopes”
dangled before his eyes by Philip II. of Spain, renounced both his
family ties and his Protestant convictions and joined the Triumvirs.
Nevertheless, during the latter part of the year 1561 the Court was
certainly rallying to the side of the Reformers, for the King of
Navarre’s accession to the Triumvirate had given the latter such a
predominance that Catherine was obliged to seek a counterpoise. It was
with her warm approval that the Colloquy of Poissy took place, in the
hope of arriving at some settlement of the chief differences between
the two religions. The latitudinarian Prince de la Roche-sur-Yon
was appointed the young King’s _gouverneur_; Coligny’s brother
Andelot, most stalwart of Huguenots, was admitted to the Council.
The celebrated Théodore de Bèze was invited to Paris; the King and
Queen-Mother went to hear him preach, and he and other eminent divines
expounded Calvinistic doctrines daily in the lodgings of Condé and
Coligny to the ladies and gentlemen of the Court. The Huguenots in the
provinces as well as in the capital were accorded a covert toleration,
and the authorities recommended “to close their eyes to what only
concerned the practice of their religion.”
But a much stronger hand than Catherine’s was required to persuade the
two religions to dwell together in even a pretence of harmony. The
Huguenots were determined to be treated no longer as legal outcasts;
the High Catholic party, represented by the Triumvirate, was equally
resolute to allow of no equality. After three months of argument
and recrimination, and, at the last, of mere invective and abuse,
the Colloquy of Poissy was dissolved; daily disturbances broke out;
partisan feeling became more and more embittered; the Regent was
powerless to stem the fast rising tide of hatred.
One last despairing effort for peace Catherine made. In the middle of
January 1562, on the urgent advice of Condé, Coligny, and l’Hôpital,
she promulgated the celebrated edict, known as the “Edict of January,”
which recognized the legality of Protestant worship outside the walls
of towns. The Huguenots were exultant; the Catholics correspondingly
exasperated; disturbances, attended in several instances with
bloodshed, occurred in the capital and in other towns; and on March 1,
the Massacre of Vassy by Guise’s followers kindled the long-expected
conflagration.
No effort had been spared by the Triumvirate to detach Condé from
the Reformers; and the means which had proved so efficacious in the
case of the King of Navarre had not been omitted. But the prince was
made of sterner stuff than his brother; beneath a somewhat frivolous
exterior he concealed a haughty and resolute spirit, and this, joined
to the influence of his noble wife, kept him true to the cause which
he had espoused. When the news of the massacre reached him, he was
in Paris, where every Sunday he might have been seen, pistol in hand
and accompanied by several hundred gentlemen on horseback, escorting
Huguenot pastors through the howling mob to their meeting-place at
Charenton. Furious with indignation, he lost not a moment in sending
Bèze to the Court, which was then at Fontainebleau, to demand that the
_massacreur_ of Vassy should not be permitted to enter Paris.
“I speak,” cried the divine, when the King of Navarre endeavoured
to defend Guise, “for a Faith which is better in suffering than in
avenging wrong; but remember, Sire, that it is an anvil which has worn
out many a hammer.”
Catherine, without declaring her intentions, wrote to the duke ordering
him to join her “_peu accompagné_” at Monceaux, in Brie, whither
she proceeded with the young King, and, at the same time, sent orders
to the Maréchal de Saint-André, who was in Paris, to repair to his
government. Both declined to obey, and on March 16 Guise entered the
capital at the head of 2000 horse, and was hailed by the populace
“_comme envoyé de Dieu_.”
There were now in Paris two hostile camps, as in the time of the
Bourguignons and Armagnacs; and Catherine, fearing a collision, sent
orders to Condé to leave Paris. Recognizing the impossibility of
disputing the capital with the Catholics, he obeyed, and proceeded to
Meaux, where, after some hesitation, Coligny joined him. Catherine and
the young King had returned to Fontainebleau, and the former wrote
to Condé entreating him “to save the children, the mother and the
kingdom.” If he and Coligny had acted with energy and decision, they
might have secured the person of the young Sovereign; but they waited
for reinforcements, and when at length they advanced towards Paris,
they found that the Triumvirs had forestalled them, and that the King
was in the hands of the enemy.
Foiled in this attempt, Condé turned southwards, with the intention of
occupying Orléans, a place which, on account of its central position,
would serve as an admirable base for his operations, and, to some
extent, counterbalance the advantage which the Triumvirs derived from
the possession of the capital.
On reaching Artenay, six leagues from Orléans, on the morning of April
2, he learned that Andelot, with a handful of men, had seized one of
the gates of that town, and was holding it against the garrison and a
part of the citizens. “He had with him about two thousand gentlemen and
their valets, and, putting himself at their head, he set off at full
gallop for the gate, and the whole pack after him.” Baggage, horses,
and men fell and rolled over in the dust, without any one attempting
to draw rein, amid shouts of laughter from the reckless cavalcade,
and to the great astonishment of peaceable travellers, who, ignorant
that hostilities had broken out, asked one another if it were “an
assembly of all the madmen in France.” But the “madmen” swept along on
their headlong course, and before noon had sounded from the clocks of
Orléans, they were masters of the town and “of the taps of the most
delicious wines of France.”[16]
* * * * *
“Under these joyous auspices,” observed Henri Martin, “began the most
horrible civil war of modern times;” and unhappy France became the
scene of a frightful orgy of massacre, rape, and pillage. At first
Fortune smiled upon the Reformers, who, thanks to the organization
of their churches, were better prepared for hostilities than their
adversaries. The principal towns of Central France, Tours, Blois,
and Bourges, declared against the Triumvirate, and admitted Huguenot
garrisons; Rouen and Le Havre, in Normandy, Lyons and many cities in
the South, fell into their hands. For a few weeks the movement seemed
irresistible. But the Catholic party was by far the stronger. It had
secured the person of the young King and forced Catherine to side with
it, and thus had at its disposal the Treasury and most of the permanent
forces of the realm. It appealed, also, to the Catholic States for
assistance, and obtained from Phillip II. an auxiliary corps of 4000
Spaniards, which operated in Guienne and Gascony; while the Duke of
Savoy sent troops into the Rhône valley. By the middle of August, all
the towns seized at the outset by the Huguenots had been recovered, and
the Protestant cause seemed well-nigh hopeless.
Desperately pressed, Condé turned to England for aid. Emissaries
were dispatched to London, and on September 20, 1562, the Vidame
de Chartres, on behalf of the prince, signed the Treaty of Hampton
Court, which stipulated that Le Havre and Dieppe were to be placed
in Elizabeth’s hands, in return for a loan of 140,000 crowns and
a contingent of 6000 men. The vidame, however, went beyond his
instructions, and permitted Cecil to insert an article whereby it was
agreed that the English were to remain at Le Havre, not until the
termination of the war, but until Calais was restored to them.
The calling in of the hereditary enemy brought great odium upon the
Huguenot leaders, nor did they derive from it the advantages upon
which they had counted, since Elizabeth, desirous only of securing an
equivalent for Calais, declined to allow her troops to pass beyond the
lines of Le Havre and Dieppe. At the risk of incurring her anger, Sir
Adrian Poynings, who commanded temporarily at Le Havre, pending the
arrival of the Earl of Warwick, sent five hundred men to endeavour to
make their way into Rouen, which was now closely invested by the royal
troops. The majority succeeded in this desperate enterprise, but they
were powerless to save the town, which was taken by assault, after a
siege during which the King of Navarre received a wound from which he
died a month later, “still flattering himself with the hopes raised by
the King of Spain.” He left as his heir a boy nine years old, who was
one day to succeed to the throne of France through the common ruin of
the Valois and the Guises.
The intervention of the English, if it had served no other purpose,
had drawn off the Catholic army from its projected siege of Orléans,
and Condé, ever sanguine, did not allow himself to be cast down by
the reverses his cause had sustained. “We have lost our two castles
(Bourges and Rouen),” said he, employing a chess metaphor, “but we
shall take their knights”; and he was eager to stake the last chances
of his party in a great battle. At the beginning of November, the
news that a considerable force of German mercenaries, which Andelot
had raised in the Rhineland, was on the march to join him, determined
the prince to quit Orléans and advance upon Paris. At Pithiviers, on
November 11, he affected his junction with the foreign levies, and, at
the head of an army of some 15,000 men, more than one-third of whom
were cavalry, he moved slowly towards the capital, taking and pillaging
the towns on his line of march.
Paris was very weakly defended, most of its regular garrison being in
the field with the Triumvirs, and, had he acted with vigour, he might
have made himself master of at least a part of the city. But he allowed
himself to be drawn into negotiations by Catherine, and the delay which
these entailed enabled Guise to arrive with the advance-guard of the
army which had been besieging Rouen.
After a skirmish beneath the walls, and two unsuccessful attempts to
take the city by camisado, Condé drew off his troops and marched into
Normandy, with the intention of getting into touch with the English at
Le Havre. But, owing principally to the immense number of carts for the
conveyance of past and future plunder which the Germans insisted on
taking with them, his army made such slow progress that the Triumvirs
were able to outmarch it, and on December 19 the prince found them
barring his road near the town of Dreux.
The royal forces were superior in infantry and artillery to the
Huguenots, but the latter had a decided preponderance in cavalry,
and the battle which followed was long and obstinately contested.
Condé, who had distinguished himself more by his intrepidity than
his generalship, was unhorsed and taken prisoner; the Constable, who
commanded the royal army, experienced a like fate; while Saint-André
was killed.[17] The carnage on both sides was very great, but the
Catholics remained masters of the field, though Coligny was able to
draw off the beaten Huguenots in excellent order.
The Constable was dispatched, in charge of Andelot, to Orléans,
where he had the Princesse de Condé for hostess; Condé was conducted
by Montmorency’s second son, the Baron de Damville, to whom he had
surrendered, to the quarters of Guise. In these detestable wars,
prisoners were often treated with great harshness and cruelty, and
sometimes, as we have just seen, their lives were not even spared when
they happened to fall into the hands of some personal enemy. But Guise
received Condé with as much courtesy and deference as the Black Prince
had shown his royal captive at Poitiers. He placed at his disposal the
peasant’s cottage in which he was quartered, apologizing for being
compelled to give so poor a reception to so illustrious a visitor, and
it was only at the prince’s repeated request that he consented to share
with him this humble lodging. They supped together off the same coarse
fare, conversing amicably the while, and the same bundle of straw
served them for a bed. The duke, however, could well afford to show
magnanimity towards a fallen foe, for, now that the King of Navarre and
Saint-André were dead, and Condé and the Constable prisoners, he had
no rival but Coligny to fear, and the predominance of his ambitious
House seemed assured.
The day after the battle, Condé was again entrusted to the care of
Damville, who had only surrendered his prisoner to Guise as an act of
deference, and who was subsequently constituted his legal custodian by
a special authority from the King. Damville, who naturally regarded him
as a hostage for the safety of his father, the Constable, guarded him
very strictly, though his servants were allowed to remain with him, and
a Huguenot pastor named Pérussel, who had also been taken prisoner,
was authorized to minister to his spiritual needs and conducted a long
“_prêche_” in his chamber every day. After being successively
conducted to Chartres, Blois, and Amboise in the wake of the Court, he
was incarcerated by the Regent’s orders, in the Château of Onzain, an
old feudal fortress, about three leagues from the last-named town.[18]
Here he succeeded in bribing two of his gaolers, and arranged with
their assistance to escape in the disguise of a peasant. But one of
the men betrayed the plot to Damville, and Condé learned that all had
been discovered by seeing the other soldier dangling from a gibbet
erected beneath his window. After this, the prince was deprived of
his servants, placed in solitary confinement, and most rigorously
guarded; and a rumour began to spread, though it was probably without
foundation, that the Guises intended to compel Catherine to have him
again brought to trial for high treason.
Meanwhile, the Duc de Guise had laid siege to Orléans, the last
stronghold left to the Reformers. The town taken, it was his intention
to call out the _ban_ and _arrière-ban_, for which purpose
a tax had been levied on the revenues of the Church, overwhelm
Coligny, who with the Huguenot cavalry was overrunning Normandy,
drive the English from Le Havre and Dieppe, and convert his office
of Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom, which the King had been obliged
to confer upon him in recognition of his services at Dreux, into a
dictatorship.
The defenders of Orléans, decimated by famine and the plague, were
incapable of offering more than a feeble resistance; the outworks
were quickly captured, and the final assault was daily expected,
when, on the evening of February 15, 1563, while returning from a
reconnaissance, the duke was mortally wounded by a Huguenot fanatic,
Poltrot de Méré, who fired upon him from the shelter of a copse. He
expired six days later, to the undisguised joy of the Reformers and
to the secret relief of Catherine, who dreaded nothing so much as the
prospect of a second period of Guise ascendancy.
The death of the Duc de Guise paved the way for peace; and, through
the intervention of Catherine and the Princesse de Condé, it was
arranged that the prince and the Constable should meet and discuss
its conditions. On March 7, two barges, the first coming from
Orléans, the second from the opposite bank of the Loire, arrived at
the Île-aux-Bœufs, situated a little below the town. In one was the
Constable, under the care of his nephew, Andelot; in the other, Condé,
under that of Damville. “There was a handsome boat ready for them, laid
over with planks to make it broad and chamberlike, and covered with
tapestry from the sun, where they should have ‘parlemented’ together.”
But the uncle and nephew, unwilling to risk their conversation being
overheard, “liked better to walk, which they did for two hours,
d’Anville (sic), l’Aubespine and d’Aussy standing by, but not within
hearing.”[19]
Then they parted, without having arrived at any agreement, since
Condé insisted that the “Edict of January” should be re-established
in its entirety, to which Montmorency absolutely declined to consent,
declaring that the Catholics would refuse to observe it. The Constable
was escorted back to Orléans, and the prince to the Catholic camp at
Saint-Mesmin.
On the morrow, they returned to the Île-aux-Bœufs. This time the
prince’s barge was followed by another, in which sat Catherine de’
Medici, Condé’s only surviving brother, the Cardinal de Bourbon, and
the Duc d’Aumale, and two of the Queen-Mother’s maids of honour. It
was remarked that these two damsels were the most beautiful of the
bevy of young beauties whom Catherine had collected round her, and
there was a shrewd suspicion that it was for that very reason they had
been chosen to attend her Majesty upon this occasion. History has not
preserved the name of the elder, but that of the younger was Isabelle
de Latour-Limeuil, a lady who was destined to play a very prominent
part in Condé’s life.
Condé was a bad subject for prison life, and the rigorous detention
to which he had been subjected at the Château of Onzain had not been
without its effect upon him; he was anxious to safeguard the interests
of his co-religionists, but he was still more anxious to recover his
liberty. “The little man to whom I have spoken,” wrote the Prince de la
Roche-sur-Yon, who had had an interview with him some days before, to
Catherine, “is very desirous to see the end of these troubles; he will
accommodate himself to everything.” The writer had correctly judged the
situation.
The conference was renewed, this time in the presence of the
Queen-Mother. Catherine had always exercised a great influence over
Condé, and, only a few months before, in an interview between them
at Thoury, she had all but brought him to conclude peace on her own
conditions, when Coligny had interfered and caused the negotiations to
be broken off. Now, however, Coligny was far away, and Catherine did
not fail to press her advantage home. She made an eloquent appeal to
the prince’s patriotism; she flattered him; she “insinuated that, if he
were to conclude peace without being too obstinate over the conditions,
he should be elevated to the rank of the late King of Navarre, his
brother,[20] and might do, from that time, all that he wished for those
of the Religion.”
[Illustration: LOUIS I DE BOURBON, PRINCE DE CONDÉ
FROM AN ENGRAVING]
Condé was ambitious; he was far from unsusceptible to flattery, and
he ardently desired to recover his freedom. He looked at the subtle
diplomatist who was speaking him so fair, and forced himself to
believe that she was sincere in her protestations. He looked at
Damville and his guards, and thought with a shudder of the gloomy
fortress which he had lately left, and to which it would probably be
his fate to return, if the negotiations were broken off. And then his
glance wandered to the maids-of-honour, standing just out of earshot,
and rested on Isabelle de Limeuil; and he felt his heart beat a trifle
faster, as he noted her charming face and the graceful lines of her
figure. Did she not represent all the pleasures of the Court from which
he had been so long separated, but which it was now in his power to
enjoy again?
The prince was already won over, already prepared to accept important
modifications of the “Edict of January,” when, that same evening, with
the consent of the Queen, he entered Orléans to confer with the council
of the Protestant Association. He found the council divided into two
sharply defined parties; on the one side were all the ministers, to
the number of seventy-two, with Théodore de Bèze at their head; on the
other, the great majority of the Huguenot gentlemen.
“The men of war demanded only peace; the ministers of the Holy Gospel
called for the continuance of the war, at least until the “Edict of
January” was re-established in its entirety, and invited the prince
to require the King to mete out rigorous punishment to all ‘atheists,
freethinkers, Anabaptists, Servetists, and other heretics and
schismatics.’ Barely escaped from the stake themselves, they demanded
the right to drag other victims to it.”[21]
With ill-concealed impatience, Condé listened to the demands of these
intractable theologians; then, turning from them, he invited his old
companions-in-arms to express their opinion. With one voice these
gentlemen, who were heartily weary of the war and asked only to be
allowed to return to their homes, declared themselves willing to accept
peace on the conditions which the Court was prepared to offer. Strong
in their support, the prince felt that he could afford to defy the
ministers and the democratic section of the party; and when, on March
23, Coligny, fresh from his victorious campaign in Normandy, arrived
at Orléans to take part in the negotiations, he found that he was too
late. The Edict, or Peace, of Amboise had been promulgated in that town
on the 19th, and published in the royal camp on the 22nd.
The Admiral was deeply mortified at Condé’s surrender, in which he
suspected that personal considerations had counted for not a little,
and declared, with pardonable exaggeration, that “by a stroke of the
pen more churches had been ruined than the enemy could have razed in
ten years.” As for the Huguenot ministers, they were exasperated to
the last degree against the prince, stigmatized the treaty as “that of
a man who had left half his manhood in captivity,” and accused him of
having yielded to the seductions of Catherine’s Court, and of having
_halené_ her maids-of-honour.[22]
Somewhat conscience-stricken, Condé joined the Admiral in a belated
attempt to get the articles modified in a Protestant sense, but, though
Catherine agreed to some concessions, she firmly refused to allow
them to be inserted in the edict. On April 1 she made her entry into
Orléans, having the Cardinal de Bourbon on her right hand, and Condé on
her left. A few days later, Coligny set out for Châtillon, to seek in
the bosom of his family the repose which he had so well earned. Condé
would have done well to follow his example. Unfortunately, he preferred
to follow the Court to Amboise.