toward greatness by the chivalric duke, and his brother the cardinal.
Henry II. had just received the mortal blow dealt him at a tournament
by the lance of Montgomery. Francis II., his brother, the husband of
Mary Stuart, and therewith nephew to Guise, succeeded to the uneasy
throne and painful privileges of Henri. On the night of this monarch’s
decease, two courtiers were traversing a gallery of the Louvre. “This
night,” said one, “is the eve of the Festival of the Three Kings.” “How
mean you by that?” asked the other with a smile. “I mean,” rejoined the
first, “that to-morrow we shall have three monarchs in Paris--one of
them, King of France; the others Kings _in_ France--from Lorraine.”
Under the latter two, Duke and Cardinal, was played out the second
act of the great political drama of Lorraine. It was altogether a
melo-drama, in which there was abundance of light and shadow. At
times, we find the hero exhibiting exemplary candor; anon, he is the
dark plotter, or the fierce and open slayer of his kind. There are
stirring scenes of fights, wherein his adversaries draw their swords
against him, at the instigation of a disgusted King, who no sooner saw
Guise triumphant, than he devoted to death the survivors whom he had
clandestinely urged into the fray.
The battles were fought, on one side, for liberty of conscience; on
the other, for the sake of universal despotism. The bad side triumphed
during a long season; and field after field saw waving over it the
green banner of Lorraine. Catherine de Medicis, and her son Charles
IX., accompanied the Duke in more than one struggle, after the
short-lived reign of Francis II. had come to an end. They passed, side
by side, through the breach at Rouen; but accident divided them at
Orleans, where had assembled the gallant few who refused to despair for
the Protestant cause.
Guise beleaguered the city, and was menacingly furious at its obstinacy
in holding out. One evening he had ridden with his staff to gaze more
nearly at the walls, from behind which defiance was flung at him.
“You will never be able to get in,” remarked roughly a too presuming
official. “Mark me!” roared the chafed Duke, “yon setting sun will
know to-morrow how to get behind that rampart; and by Heaven, so will
I!” He turned his horse, and galloped back alone to his quarters. He
was encountered on his way by a Huguenot officer, Poltrot de la Mer,
who brought him down by a pistol-shot. The eyes of the dying Duke,
as he lay upon the ground, met for the last time the faint rays of
that departing sun, with which he had sworn to be up and doing on
the morrow. He died in his hut. His condition was one of extreme
“comfortableness.” He had robbed the King’s exchequer to gratify his
own passions;--and he thanked Heaven that he had been a faithful
subject to his sovereign! He had been notoriously unfaithful to a noble
and virtuous wife; and he impressed upon her with his faltering lips,
the assurance that “generally speaking” his infidelity as a husband did
not amount to much worth mentioning! He confessed to, and was shriven
by his two brothers, Cardinals John and Charles. The former was a
greater man than the Duke. The latter was known in his own times and
all succeeding, as “the bottle cardinal,” a name of which he was only
not ashamed, but his title to which he was ever ostentatiously desirous
to vindicate and establish.
The first Duke had acquired possession of crown-lands; the second had
at his disposal the public treasure; and the third hoped to add to the
acquisitions of his family the much-coveted sceptre of the Kings of
France.
Henri, surnamed _Le Balafré_, or “the scarred,” succeeded his father in
the year 1560. During the greater portion of his subsequent life, his
two principal objects were the destruction of Protestantism, and the
possession of the King’s person. He therewith flattered the national
vanity by declaring that the natural limits of France, on two sides,
were the Rhine and the Danube--an extension of frontier which was
never effected, except temporarily, in the latter days of Napoleon.
But the declaration entailed a popularity on the Duke which was only
increased by his victory at Jarnac, when the French Protestants not
only suffered defeat, but lost their leader, the brave and unfortunate
Condé. This gallant chief had surrendered, but he was basely murdered
by a pistol-shot, and his dead body, flung across an ass, was paraded
through the ranks of the victors, as a trophy. How far the Duke was an
accomplice in the crime, is not determined. That such incidents were
deemed lightly of by him, is sufficiently clear by his own proclamation
in seven languages, wherein he accused Coligny as the instigator of the
murder of the late Duke of Guise, and set a price upon that noble head,
to be won by any assassin.
For that so-called murder, Guise had his revenge on the day of St.
Bartholomew, when he vainly hoped that the enemies of his house had
perished for ever. On the head of more than one member of the house
of Guise rests the responsibility of that terrible day. During the
slaughter, Guise gained his revenge, but lost his love. The cries of
the victims were the nuptial songs chanted at the marriage-ceremony
of Henri of Navarre and Margaret, the King’s sister. The latter had
looked, nothing loath, upon the suit offered to her by Guise, who was
an ardent wooer. But the wooing had been roughly broken in upon by the
lady’s brother, the Duc d’Anjou, who declared aloud in the Louvre,
that if Guise dared look with lover’s eyes upon “Margot,” he would run
his knife into the lover’s throat! The threat had its influence, and
the unfaithful wooer, who had been all the while solemnly affianced
to a Princess Catherine of Cleves, married that remarkable brunette,
and showed his respect for her, by speaking and writing of her as
“that amiable lady, the negress.” It may be noticed in passing,
that the objection of D’Anjou to Guise as a brother-in-law, was not
personal; it had a political foundation. The two dukes became, indeed,
brothers-in-law; not by Guise marrying the sister of D’Anjou, but by
D’Anjou marrying the sister of Guise, and by sharing with her the
throne which he, subsequently, occupied rather than enjoyed, as Henri
III.
When summoned to the throne by the unedifying death of Charles IX.,
Henry of Anjou was king of Poland. He escaped from that country
with difficulty, in order to wear a more brilliant but a more fatal
crown in France. He had no sooner assumed it, when he beheld the
Guises encircling him, and leaving him neither liberty nor will. The
Protestants were driven into rebellion. They found a leader in Henry of
Navarre, and Guise and his friends made war against them, irrespective
of the King’s consent, and cut in pieces, with their swords, the
treaties entered into between the two Henrys, without the consent
of the third Henri--of Guise and Lorraine. The latter so completely
enslaved the weak and unhappy sovereign, as to wring from him, against
his remonstrance and conviction, the famous articles of Nemours,
wherein it was solemnly decreed in the name of the King, and confirmed
by the signature of Guise, that, thenceforward, it was the will of God
that there should be but one faith in France, and that the opposers
thereof would find that opposition incurred death.
There is a tradition that when Henri III. was told of this decree, he
was seated in deep meditation, his head resting upon his hand; and
that when he leaped to his feet with emotion, at the impiety of the
declaration, it was observed that the part of his moustache which had
been covered by his hand, had suddenly turned gray.
The misery that followed on the publication of these infamous articles
was widely spread, and extended to other hearths besides those of the
Huguenots. Sword, pestilence, and famine, made a desert of a smiling
country; and the universal people, in their common sorrow, cursed
all parties alike--“King and Queen, Pope and Calvin,” and only asked
from Heaven release from all, and peace for those who suffered by the
national divisions. The King, indeed, was neither ill-intentional nor
intolerant; but Guise so intrigued as to persuade the “Catholic” part
of the nation that Henri was incapable. Faction then began to look upon
the powerful subject as _the_ man best qualified to meet the great
emergency. He fairly cajoled them into rebellion. They were, indeed,
willing to be so cajoled by a leader so liberal of promises, and yet
he was known to be as cruel as he engaged himself to be liberal. He
often kept his own soldiers at a point barely above starvation; and the
slightest insubordination in a regiment entailed the penalty of death.
To his foes he was more terrible still. As he stood in the centre of a
conquered town that had been held by the Huguenots, it was sport to him
to see the latter tossed into the flames. On one occasion he ordered
a Huguenot officer to be torn asunder by young horses for no greater
crime than mutilating a wooden idol in a church. The officer had placed
the mutilated figure on a bastion of the city, with a pike across its
breast, as a satire on the guardianship which such a protector was
popularly believed to afford.
He could, however, be humane when the humor and good reason for it
came together. Thus he parted with a pet lioness, which he kept at his
quarters, on the very sufficient ground that the royal beast had, on a
certain morning, slain and swallowed one of his _favorite_ footmen! A
commonplace lacquey he might have spared without complaining; but he
could not, without some irritation, hear of a _valet_ being devoured
who, though a valet, had a profound belief that his master was a hero.
The “Bartholomew” had not destroyed all the foes of the name of Guise.
What was not accomplished on that day was sought to be achieved by
the “League.” The object of this society was to raise the Duke to the
throne of Henri, either before or after the death of the latter. The
King was childless, and the presumptive heir to the throne, Henri of
Navarre, was a Protestant. The Lorrainers had double reason, then,
for looking to themselves. The reigning sovereign was the last of
three brothers who had inherited the crown, and there was then a
superstitious idea that when three brothers had reigned in France, a
change of dynasty was inevitable.
Guise fired his followers with the assurance that the invasion of
England, and the establishment of Popery there, should be an enterprise
which they should be called upon to accomplish. The King was in great
alarm at the “League,” but he wisely constituted himself a member. The
confederates kept him in the dark as to the chief of their objects.
The suspicious monarch, on the other hand, encouraged his minions to
annoy his good cousin of Lorraine. One of these unworthy favorites, St.
Megrim, did more: he slandered the wife of Guise, who took, thereon,
a singular course of trial and revenge. He aroused his Duchess from
her solitary couch, in the middle of the night, hissed in her alarmed
ear the damning rumor that was abroad, and bade her take at once from
his hands the dagger or the poison-cup, which he offered her:--adding
that she had better die, having so greatly sinned. The offended and
innocent wife cared not for life, since she was suspected, and drank
off the contents of the cup, after protestation of her innocence. The
draught was of harmless preparation, for the Duke was well assured of
the spotless character of a consort whom he himself daily dishonored by
his infidelities. He kissed her hand and took his leave; but he sent
a score of his trusty-men into the courtyard of the Louvre, who fell
on St. Megrim, and butchered him almost on the threshold of the King’s
apartments.
The monarch made no complaint at the outrage; but he raised a tomb over
the mangled remains of his favorite minion, above which a triad of
Cupids represented the royal grief, by holding their stony knuckles to
their tearless eyes, affecting the passion which they could not feel.
In the meantime, while the people were being pushed to rebellion at
home, the ducal family were intriguing in nearly every court in Europe.
Between the intrigues of Guise and the recklessness of the King, the
public welfare suffered shipwreck. So nearly complete was the ruin,
that it was popularly said, “The Minions crave all: the King gives
all; the Queen-mother manages all; Guise opposes all; the Red Ass (the
Cardinal) embroils all, and would that the Devil had all!”
But the opposition of Guise was made to some purpose. By exercising it
he exacted from the King a surrender of several strong cities. They
were immediately garrisoned by Guisards, though held nominally by the
sovereign. From the latter the Duke wrung nearly all that it was in the
power of the monarch to yield; but when Guise, who had a design against
the life of the Protestant Henri of Navarre, asked for a royal decree
prohibiting the granting of “quarter” to a Huguenot in the field, the
King indignantly banished him from the capital. Guise feigned to obey;
but his celebrated sister, the Duchess of Montpensier, refused to share
in even a temporary exile. This bold woman went about in public, with
a pair of scissors at her girdle, which, as she intimated, would serve
for the _tonsure_ of brother Henri of Valois, when weariness should
drive him from a palace into a monastery.
The King, somewhat alarmed, called around him his old Swiss body
guard, and as the majority of these men professed the reformed faith,
Guise made use of the circumstance to obtain greater ends than any
he had yet obtained. The people were persuaded that their religion
was in peril; and when the Duke, breaking his ban, entered Paris and,
gallantly attired, walked by the side of the sedan of Catherine of
Medicis, on their way to the Louvre, to remonstrate with the unorthodox
king, the church-bells gave their joyous greeting, and the excited
populace hung upon the steps of the Duke, showering upon him blessings
and blasphemous appellations. “Hosanna to our new son of David!”
shouted those who affected to be the most pious; and aged women,
kissing his garment as he passed, rose from their knees, exclaiming,
“Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have
seen thy salvation!”
The less blasphemous or the more sincere sufficiently expressed their
satisfaction by hailing him, as he went on his way, smiling, “King of
Paris!”
The sound of this title reached the ears of Henri. Coupling it with
the unauthorized return of Guise to court, he passed into alternate
fits of ungovernable wrath and profound melancholy. He was under the
influence of the latter when there fell on his ear, words which make
him start from his seat--“_Percutiam pastorem, et dispergentur oves_;”
and when the Monarch looked round for the speaker, he beheld the Abbé
d’Elbene, who had thus calmly quoted Scripture, in order to recommend
murder. The King, though startled, was not displeased. On the contrary,
he smiled; and the smile was yet around his lips, and in his eyes, when
Guise entered the presence, and mistook the expression of the royal
face for one of welcome. The Duke, emboldened by what he saw, hurried
through a long list of grievances, especially dwelling on the lenity,
not to say favor, with which Henri treated the heretics generally. The
sovereign made a few excuses, which Guise heeded not; on the contrary,
he hastened to denounce the body of minions who polluted the palace.
“Love me, love my dog,” said Henri, in a hoarse voice. “Yes,” answered
Guise, peering into the royal and unnaturally sparkling eyes, “provided
he doesn’t bite!” The two men stood revealed before each other; and
from that hour the struggle was deadly. Henri would not give away,
with reference to his Swiss guard; and Guise, passing through Paris,
with his sword unsheathed, awoke the eager spirit of revolt, and looked
complacently on while the barricades were raised to impede the march
of the execrable Calvinistic Archers of the Guard. The “King of Paris”
earned a decisive victory; but before it was achieved, the King of
France hurried, in an agony of cowardly affright, from his capital. He
gazed for a moment on the city, as he departed, venting curses on its
ingratitude; for, said the fugitive Monarch, “I loved you better than I
did my own wife;”--which was indisputably true.
Guise might now have ascended the throne, had he not been too
circumspect. He deemed the royal cause lost, but he was satisfied for
the moment with ruling in the capital, as generalissimo. He stopped
the King’s couriers, and opened his letters. He confiscated the
property of Huguenots, and sold the same for his own benefit, while
he professed to care only for that of the Commonwealth. Finally, he
declared that the disturbed condition of affairs should be regulated by
a States-General, which he commanded rather than prayed Henri to summon
to a meeting at Blois. The King consented; and the 18th of October,
1588, was appointed for the opening. Guise entered the old town with
his family, and a host of retainers, cased in armor, and bristling
with steel. Henri had his mother Catherine at his side; but there were
also a few faithful and unscrupulous followers with him in the palace
at Blois; and as he looked on any of those who might happen to salute
him in passing, the King smiled darkly, and _Percutiam pastorem_ fell
in murmured satisfaction from his lips. The saturnine monarch became,
all at once, cheerful in his outward bearing, even when Guise was so
ruling the States as to make their proceedings turn to the detriment
of the monarchy. The Guise faction became anxious for the safety of
their leader, whose quarters were in the palace; but when the King, in
token of reconciliation begged the Duke to participate with him in the
celebration of the Holy Sacrament, there was scarcely a man capable of
interpreting the manner of the times, who did not feel assured that
under such a solemn pledge of security, there lay concealed the very
basest treachery. Guise, over-confident, scorned alike open warning
and dark innuendoes. He was so strong, and his royal antagonist
so weak, that he despised the idea of violence being used against
him--especially as the keys of the palatial castle were in his keeping,
as “Grand-Master” of the Court.
The 23d of December had arrived. The King intimated that he should
proceed early in the morning, soon after daybreak (but subsequently
to holding a council, to which he summoned the Duke and Cardinal), to
the shrine of Our Lady of Clery, some two miles distant; and the keys
of the gates were demanded, in order to let Henri have issue at his
pleasure, but in reality to keep the Guises within, isolated from their
friends without. Larchant, one of the Archers of the Guard, also waited
upon the Duke, to pray him to intercede for himself and comrades with
the King, in order to obtain for them an increase of pay. “We will do
ourselves the honor,” said Larchant, “to prefer our petition to your
Highness, in the morning, in a body.” This was a contrivance to prevent
Guise from being surprised at seeing so many armed men together in the
King’s antechamber, before the council was sitting. Henri passed a
sleepless night. His namesake of Guise, who had just sent his Duchess
homeward, her approaching confinement being expected, spent the whole
of the same night in the apartments of the Countess de Noirmoutier.
He was seen coming thence, before dawn, gayly dressed, and proceeding
to the Chapel of the Virgin, to perform his morning devotions. Long
before this, the King was a-foot, visiting the select archers who
had accepted the bloody mission of ridding the perplexed monarch of
his importunate adversary. He posted them, altered the arrangements,
reposted them, addressed them again and again on the lawfulness of
their office, and had some trouble to suppress an enthusiasm which
threatened to wake the Queen-mother, who slept below, and to excite the
suspicion of the Guards in the vicinity. Staircase and hall, closet and
arras, no coign of vantage but had its assassin ready to act, should
his fellows have failed.
Precisely at seven o’clock, Guise, attired in a light suit of
gray satin, and followed by Pericart, his secretary, entered the
council-chamber, where he found several members assembled; among
others, his younger brother, the “Bottle-Cardinal” de Guise. An hour
passed without the appearance of any message from the King, who was
in an inner apartment, now half-frightened at the pale faces of his
own confidants, and anon endeavoring to excite his own resolution, by
attempts to encourage theirs. It was a long and weary hour for all
parties. As it slowly passed away, Guise, he knew not wherefore, grew
anxious. He complained of the cold, and heaped billets of wood upon
the fire. He spoke of feeling sick, faint, and unnerved; and from his
silver sweetmeat-case he took a few bonbons, by way of breakfast. He
subsequently asked for some Damascus raisins, and conserve of roses;
but these, when supplied to him did not relieve him of an unaccountable
nervousness, which was suddenly increased, when the eye next to the
scar from which he derived his appellation of _Le Balafré_, began to be
suffused with tears. He indignantly wiped away the unwelcome suffusion,
and had quite recovered as Rivol, Secretary of State, entered, and
requested him to attend on the King, who awaited him in his own chamber.
Guise gayly flung his _bonbonnière_ across the council-table, and
laughingly bade the grave counsellors scramble for the scattered
sweets. He started up, overturned his chair in so doing, drew his thin
mantle around him, and with cap and gloves in hand, waved a farewell
to the statesmen present. He passed through two rooms, and closely
followed by various of the archers, reached the tapestried entrance to
the King’s cabinet. No one offered to raise the arras for him. Guise
lifted his own right arm to help himself at the same time looking
half-round at the archers who were near him. At that moment, a dagger
was buried in his breast, up to the very hilt. The blow was delivered
by Montsery, from behind. The Duke let fall his hand to the pommel
of his sword, when one assassin clung to his legs, a second, also
from behind, stabbed him in the neck; while a third passed his weapon
through the Duke’s ribs.
Guise’s first cry was, “Ho, friends!” His second, as Sarine ran him
through the lower part of the back, was, “Mercy, Jesus!” He struggled
faintly across the chamber, bleeding from a dozen wounds, in every one
of which sat death. The murderers hacked at him as he staggered, and
wildly yet feebly fought. All paused for a moment, when he had reached
the extreme end of the room, where he again attempted to raise his
sword; but in the act he rolled over, stone dead, at the foot of the
bed of Henri III.
At that moment the tapestry was raised, and the king, whispering “Is
it done?” approached the body, moodily remarking as he gazed upon it,
“He looks greater than he did when living.” Upon the person of the duke
was found a manuscript memorandum, in these words:--“To maintain a war
in France, I should require 700,000 livres per month.” This memorandum
served in the king’s mind as a justification of the murder just
committed by his orders. The body was then unceremoniously rolled up in
the Turkey carpet on which it had fallen, was covered with quick lime,
and flung into the Loire. Some maimed rites were previously performed
over it by Dourgin the royal chaplain, who could not mutter the _De
Profundis_ without a running and terrified commentary of “Christ!--the
awful sight!” Guise’s second cardinal-brother and the Archbishop of
Lyons were murdered on the following day; but the lesser victims were
forgotten in the fate which had fallen upon the more illustrious, yet
certainly more guilty personages.
The widow of Guise, soon after the dread event, gave birth to a son,
subsequently the Chevalier Louis de Guise. “The boy,” said the bereaved
lady, “came into the world with his hands clasped, as if praying for
vengeance on the assassins of his father.” Every male member of the
family whom the king could reach was now subjected to arrest. The young
heir of _Balafré_, Charles, now fourth Duke of Guise, was now placed in
close restriction in the Castle of Tours, where, sleeping or waking,
four living eyes unceasingly watched him--_voire même allant â la
garderobe_--but which eyes he managed to elude nevertheless.