Paris put on mourning; officials were placed in the street to strip
and scourge even ladies who ventured to appear without some sign of
sorrow. Wax effigies of the king were brought into the churches,
and frantically stabbed by the priests at the altar. The priests
then solemnly paraded the streets, chanting as they went, “May God
extinguish the Valois!”
The whole city broke into insurrection, and the brother of Guise, the
Duke de Mayenne, placed himself at the head of the “league,” whose
object was the deposing of the king, and the transferring of the crown
to a child of Lorraine. In the contest which ensued, Valois and Navarre
united against the Guisards, and carried victory with them wherever
they raised their banners. The exultation of Henri III. was only
mitigated by the repeated Papal summonses received by him to repair to
Rome, and there answer for his crime.
Henri of Navarre induced him to rather think of gaining Paris than of
mollifying the Pope; and he was so occupied when the double vengeance
of the church and the house of Guise overtook him in the very moment of
victory.
The Duchess de Montpensier, sister of the slaughtered duke, had made no
secret of her intentions to have public revenge for the deed privately
committed, whereby she had lost a brother. There was precaution enough
taken that she should not approach the royal army or the king’s
quarters; but a woman and a priest rendered all precautions futile.
The somewhat gay duchess was on unusually intimate terms with a young
monk, named Jacques Clement. This good Brother was a fanatic zealot for
his church, and a rather too ardent admirer of the duchess, who turned
both sentiments to her own especial purpose. She whispered in his ears
a promise, to secure the fulfilment of which, he received with furious
haste, the knife which was placed in his hands by the handsomest
woman in France. It is said that knife is still preserved, a precious
treasure, at Rome.
However this may be, on the 1st of August, 1589, the young Brother,
with a weapon hid in the folds of his monkish gaberdine, and with a
letter in his hand, sought and obtained access to the king. He went
straightforward to his butcher’s work, and had scarcely passed beneath
the roof of the royal tent before he had buried the steel deep in the
monarch’s bosom. He turned to fly with hot haste to the lady from whom
he had received his commission; but a dozen swords and pikes thrust
life out of him ere he had made three steps in the direction of his
promised recompence.
She who had engaged herself to pay for the crime cared for neither
victim. She screamed indeed, but it was with a hysteric joy that
threatened to slay her, and which was only allayed by the thought that
the last King of the Valois race did not know that he had died by a
dagger directed by a sister of Guise.
In testimony of her exultation she distributed green scarfs, the
color of Lorraine, to the people of Paris. She brought up from the
provinces the mother of Clement, to whom was accorded the distinction
of a triumphal entry. Priests and people worshipped the mother of the
assassin as she passed wonderingly on her way; and they blasphemously
saluted her with the chanted words, “Blessed be the womb that bare him,
and the paps that gave him suck.” She was led to the seat of honor at
the table of Guise, and Rome sheltered the infamy of the assassin, and
revealed its own, by pronouncing his work to be a god-like act. By
authority of the Vatican, medals were struck in memory and honor of
the dead; but the Huguenots who read thereon the murderer’s profession
and name--_Frère Jacques Clement_--ingeniously discovered therein the
anagrammatic interpretation “_C’est l’enfer qui m’a crée_”--“It is hell
that created me.”
The last Valois, with his last breath, had named the Protestant Henri
of Navarre as his legal successor to the throne; but between Henri and
his inheritance there stood Rome and the Guise faction. Then ensued
the successive wars of the League, during which the heavy Mayenne
suffered successive defeats at the hands of Henri of the snowy plume.
While the contest was raging, the people trusted to the pulpits for
their intelligence from the scene of action. From those pulpits was
daily uttered more mendacity in one hour than finds expression in all
the horse-fairs of the United Kingdom in a year. When famine decimated
those who lived within the walls, the people were reduced to live
upon a paste made from human bones, and which they called “Madame de
Montpensier’s cake.”
Henri of Navarre, their deliverer, did not arrive before the gates
of Paris without trouble. In 1521, Charles of Guise, the young Duke,
had escaped most gallantly, in open day, from the Castle of Tours, by
sliding from the ramparts, down a rope, which simply blistered his
hands and made a rent in his hose. He was speedily accoutred and in the
field, with Spain in his rear to help him. Now, he was making a dash at
Henri’s person; and, anon, leaping from his camp-bed to escape him. At
other times he was idle, while his uncle Mayenne pursued the cherished
object of their house--that crown which was receding from them more
swiftly than ever. For the alert Bourbon, the slow and hard-drinking
Mayenne was no match. The latter thought once to catch the former in
his lady’s bower, but the wakeful lover was gayly galloping back to
his quarters before the trumpets of Mayenne had sounded to “boot and
saddle.” “Mayenne,” said the Pope, “sits longer at table than Henri
lies in bed.”
The gates of Paris were open to Henri on the 21st of March, 1591.
Old Cardinal Pellevi died of disgust and indignation, on hearing of
the fact. The Duchess of Montpensier, after tearing her hair, and
threatening to swoon, prudently concluded, with Henry IV., not only
her own peace, but that of her family. The chief members of the house
of Guise were admitted into places of great trust, to the injury
of more deserving individuals. The young Duke de Guise affected a
superabundant loyalty. In return, the King not only gave him the
government of several chief towns, but out of compliment to him forbade
the exercise of Protestant worship within the limits of the Duke’s
government! Such conduct was natural to a King, who to secure his
throne had abandoned his faith; who lightly said that he had no cannon
so powerful as the canon of the mass, and who was destitute of most
virtues save courage and good-nature. The latter was abused by those
on whom it was lavished; and the various assaults upon his life were
supposed to be directed by those very Guises, on whom he had showered
places, pensions, and pardons, which they were constantly needing and
continually deriding.
The young Duke of Guise enjoyed, among other appointments, that of
Governor of Marseilles. He was light-hearted, selfish, vain, and
cruel. He hanged his own old partisans in the city, as enemies to
the king; and he made his name for ever infamous by the seduction of
the beautiful and noble orphan-girl, Marcelle de Castellane, whom he
afterward basely abandoned, and left to die of hunger. He sent her
a few broad pieces by the hands of a lacquey; but the tardy charity
was spurned, and the poor victim died. He had little time to think of
her at the brilliant court of the first Bourbon, where he and those
of his house struggled to maintain a reputation which had now little
to support it, but the memories of the past--and many of those were
hardly worth appealing to. He was a mere fine gentleman, bold withal,
and therewith intriguing; ever hoping that the fortunes of his house
might once more turn and bring it near a throne, and in the meantime,
making himself remarkable for his vanity, his airs of greatness, and
his affectation. Brave as he was, he left his brothers, the cardinal
and chevalier, to draw their swords and settle the quarrels which were
constantly raging on disputed questions touching the assumed Majesty of
the House of Guise.
The streets of Paris formed the stage on which these bloody tragedies
were played, but they, and all other pretensions, were suppressed
by that irresistible putter-down of such nuisances--the Cardinal de
Richelieu. He used the sword of Guise as long as it was needed, but
when Charles became troublesome the Cardinal not only banished him, but
wounded the pride of his family by placing garrisons in the hitherto
sovereign duchy of Lorraine. When Cardinal Fleury subsequently annexed
Lorraine itself to the territory of France, the Guises thought the
world was at an end. The universe, however, survived the shock.
Duke Charles died in exile at Cune, near Sienne, in the year 1640. Of
his ten children by the Duchess de Joyeuse, he left five surviving. He
was succeeded by Henri, the eldest, who was bishop and cardinal. He had
been raised to the episcopate while yet in the arms of his wet-nurse;
and he was in frocks when on his long curls was placed the scarlet hat
of a cardinal. He was twenty years of age when he became Duke of Guise.
He at once flung away all he possessed of his religious profession--its
dress and titles, and walked abroad, spurs on his heels, a plume in his
cap, and a long sword and a bad heart between!
The whole life of this chivalrous scoundrel was a romance, no portion
of which reflects any credit on the hero. He had scarcely reached the
age of manhood, when he entered into a contract of marriage with the
beautiful Anne of Gonzaga. He signed the compact, not in ink, but
with his own blood, calling Heaven to witness, the while, that he
would never address a vow to any other lady. The breath of perjury had
scarcely passed his lips when he married the Countess of Bossu, and he
immediately abandoned _her_ to sun himself in the eyes of Mademoiselle
de Pons--an imperious mistress, who squandered the property he lavished
on her, and boxed the ex-cardinal’s ears, when he attempted, with
degrading humility, to remonstrate with her for bringing down ruin upon
his estate.
He was as disloyal to his King as to his “lady;” he tampered with
rebellion, was sentenced to death, and was pardoned. But a state of
decent tranquillity agreed ill with his constitution. To keep that and
his nerves from rusting, he one day drew his sword in the street, upon
the son of Coligny, whose presence seemed a reproach to him, and whom
he slew on the spot. He wiped his bloody rapier on his mantle, and
betook himself for a season to Rome, where he intrigued skilfully, but
fruitlessly, in order to obtain the tiara for the brother of Mazarin.
Apathy would now have descended upon him, but for a voice from the city
of Naples, which made his swelling heart beat with a violence that
almost threatened to kill.
Masaniello had just concluded his brief and mad career. The Neapolitans
were not, on that account, disposed to submit again to Spain. They were
casting about for a King, when Guise presented himself. This was in
the year 1647. He left France in a frail felucca, with a score of bold
adventurers wearing the colors of Lorraine, intertwined with “buff,” in
compliment to the Duke’s mistress. The Church blessed the enterprise.
The skiff sped unharmed through howling storms and thundering Spanish
fleets; and when the Duke stepped ashore at Naples, and mounted a
charger, the shouting populace who preceded him, burnt incense before
the new-comer, as if he had been a coming god.
For love and bravery, this Guise was unequalled. He conquered all his
foes, and made vows to all the ladies. In love he lost, however, all
the fruits of bravery. Naples was but a mock Sardanapalian court, when
the Spaniards at length mustered strongly enough to attack the new,
bold, but enervated King. They took him captive, and held him, during
four years, a prisoner in Spain. He gained liberty by a double lie, the
common coin of Guise. He promised to reveal to the Court of Madrid the
secrets of the Court of Paris; and bound himself by bond and oath never
to renew his attempt on Naples. His double knavery, however, brought
him no profit. At length, fortune seeming to disregard the greatness
of his once highly-favored house, this restless reprobate gradually
sunk into a mere court beau, passing his time in powdering his peruke,
defaming reputations, and paying profane praise to the patched and
painted ladies of the palace. He died before old age, like most of the
princes of his house: and in his fiftieth year this childless man left
his dignity and an evil name to his nephew, Louis Joseph.
The sixth Duke bore his greatness meekly and briefly. He was a
kind-hearted gentleman, whose career of unobtrusive usefulness was cut
short by small-pox in 1671. When he died, there lay in the next chamber
an infant in the cradle. This was his little son Joseph, not yet twelve
months old, and all unconscious of his loss, in a father; or of his
gain, in a somewhat dilapidated coronet. On his young brow that symbol
of his earthly rank rested during only four years. The little Noble
then fell a victim to the disease which had carried off his sire, and
made of himself a Duke--the last, the youngest, the most innocent, and
the happiest of the race.
During a greater portion of the career of the Dukes, priest and
swordsman in the family had stood side by side, each menacing to the
throne; the one in knightly armor, the other in the dread panoply
of the Church. Of the seven ducal chieftains of the house, there is
only one who can be said to have left behind him a reputation for
harmlessness; and perhaps that was because he lived at a time when he
had not the power to be offensive. The boy on the mule, in 1506, and
the child in the cradle, in 1676, are two pleasant extremes of a line
where all between is, indeed, fearfully attractive, but of that quality
also which might make not only men but angels weep.
It must be confessed that the Dukes of Guise played for a high prize;
and lost it. More than once, however, they were on the very point
of grasping the attractive but delusive prize. If they were so near
triumph, it was chiefly through the co-operation of their respective
brothers, the proud and able Cardinals. The Dukes were representatives
of brute force; the Cardinals, of that which is far stronger, power of
intellect. The former often spoiled their cause by being demonstrative.
The latter never trusted to words when silver served their purpose
equally well. When they _did_ speak, it was with effective brevity.
We read of a Lacedemonian who was fined for employing three words
to express what might have been as effectually stated in two. No
churchman of the house of Guise ever committed the fault of the
Lacedemonian.
Cardinal John of Lorraine was the brother of the first Duke Claude.
When the latter was a boy, riding his mule into France, John was the
young Bishop-coadjutor of Metz. He was little more than two years
old when he was first appointed to this responsible office. He was a
Cardinal before he was out of his teens; and in his own person was
possessed of twelve bishoprics and archbishoprics. Of these, however,
he modestly retained but three, namely, Toul, Narbonne, and Alby--as
they alone happened to return revenues worth acceptance. Not that he
was selfish, seeing that he subsequently applied for, and received the
Archbishopric of Rheims, which he kindly held for his nephew Charles,
who was titular thereof, at the experienced age of ten. His revenues
were enormous, and he was for ever in debt. He was one of the most
skilful negotiators of his time; but whether deputed to emperor or
pope, he was seldom able to commence his journey until he had put in
pledge three or four towns, in order to raise money to defray his
expenses. His zeal for what he understood as religion was manifested
during the short but bloody campaign against the Protestants of
Alsatia, where he accompanied his brother. At the side of the Cardinal,
on the field of battle, stood the Apostolic Commissary, and a staff of
priestly aides-de-camp. While some of these encouraged the orthodox
troops to charge the Huguenots, the principal personages kept their
hands raised to Heaven; and when the pennons of the army of Reformers
had all gone down before the double cross of Lorraine, the Cardinal and
his ecclesiastical staff rode to the church of St. Nicholas and sang
_Te Deum laudamus_.
The chivalrous Cardinal was another man in his residence of the Hotel
de Cluny. Of this monastery he made a mansion, in which a Sybarite
might have dwelt without complaining. It was embellished, decorated,
and furnished with a gorgeousness that had its source at once in his
blind prodigality, his taste for the arts, and his familiar patronage
of artists. The only thing not to be found in this celebrated mansion
was the example of a good life. But how _could_ this example be found
in a prelate who assumed and executed the office of instructing the
maids of honor in their delicate duties. Do Thou says it was an
occupation for which he was pre-eminently fitted; and Brantome pauses,
in his gay illustrations of the truth of this assertion, to remark with
indignation, that if the daughters of noble houses arrived at court,
endowed with every maiden virtue, Cardinal John was the man to despoil
them of their dowry.
He was, nevertheless, not deficient in tastes and pursuits of a refined
nature. He was learned himself, and he loved learning in others. His
purse, when there was anything in it, was at the service of poor
scholars and of sages with great purposes in view. He who deemed
the slaughter of Protestant peasants a thing to thank God for, had
something like a heart for _clever_ sneerers at Papistry and also for
Protestants of talent. Thus he pleaded the cause of the amphibious
Erasmus, extended his protection to the evangelical Clement Marot,
and laughed and drank with Rabelais, the caustic curé of Meudon. He
was, moreover, the boon companion of Francis I., a man far less worthy
of his intimacy than the equivocating Erasmus, the gentle Marot, or
roystering Rabelais, who painted the manners of the court and church of
his day, in his compound characters of Gargantua and Panurge.
He was a liberal giver, but he gave with an ostentation for which
there is no warrant in the gospel. At one period of his life he walked
abroad with a game-bag full of crowns slung from his neck. On passing
beggars he bestowed, without counting, a rich alms, requesting prayers
in return. He was known as the “game-bag Cardinal.” On one occasion,
when giving largesse to a blind mendicant in Rome, the latter was so
astonished at the amount of the gift, that, pointing to the giver, he
exclaimed, “If thou art not Jesus Christ, thou art John of Lorraine.”
He was bold in his gallantry. When sent by Francis I. to negotiate some
political business with the pope, he passed through Piedmont, where
he was for a while the guest of the Duke and Duchess of Savoy. The
duchess, on the cardinal being presented, gravely offered her hand (she
was a Portuguese princess) to be kissed. John of Lorraine, however,
would not stoop so low, and made for her lips. A struggle ensued, which
was maintained with rude persistance on one side, and with haughty and
offended vigor on the other, until her highness’s head, being firmly
grasped within his eminence’s arm, the cardinal kissed the ruffled
princess two or three times on the mouth, and then, with an exultant
laugh, released her.
The second cardinal of this branch, Charles of Lorraine, was brother
of the second duke. He was the greatest man of his family, and the
most powerful of his age. His ambition was to administer the finances
of France, and he did so during three reigns, with an annual excess
of expenditure over income, of two millions and a half. He was rather
dishonest than incapable. His enemies threatened to make him account;
he silenced them with the sound of the tocsin of St. Bartholomew, and
when the slaughter was over he merrily asked for the presence of the
accusers who had intended to make him refund.
He was an accomplished hypocrite, and at heart a religious reformer.
At last he acknowledged to the leaders of the reformatory movement,
whom he admitted to his familiarity, that the Reformation was necessary
and warrantable; and yet policy made of him the most savage enemy that
Protestantism ever had in France. He urged on the king to burn noble
heretics rather than the common people; and when Henri was touched
with compassion, in his dying moments, for some Protestant prisoners
capitally condemned, the cardinal told him that the feeling came of the
devil, and that it was better they should perish. And they perished.
He introduced the Inquisition into France, and was made Grand
Inquisitor at the moment the country was rejoicing for the recovery of
Calais from the English. And this was the man who, at the Council of
Trent, advocated the celebration of divine worship in the vernacular
tongue. He was the friend of liberty to the Gallican church, but he
took the other side on finding that liberal advocacy periled his
chances of being pope. The living pope used and abused him. “I am
scandalized,” said his holiness, “at finding you still in the enjoyment
of the revenues of so many sees.” “I would resign them all,” said the
cardinal, “for a single bishopric.” “Which bishopric?” asked the pope.
“Marry!” exclaimed Cardinal Charles, “the bishopric of Rome.”
He was as haughty as he was aspiring. The Guise had induced the weak
Anthony of Navarre to turn Romanist; but the cardinal did not treat
that king with more courtesy on that account. One frosty morning, not
only did the princely priest keep the mountain king tarrying at his
garden gate for an audience, but when he went down to his majesty, he
listened, all befurred as he was, to the shivering monarch who humbly
preferred his suit, cap in hand.
He was covetous and haughty, but he sometimes found his match. His
niece, Mary Stuart, had quarreled with Catherine de Medicis, whose
especial wrath had been excited by Mary’s phrase applied to Catherine,
of “The Florentine tradeswoman.” The Scottish Queen resolved, after
this quarrel, to repair to the North. The cardinal was at her side
when she was examining her jewels, previously to their being packed
up. He tenderly remarked that the sea was dangerous, the jewels
costly, and that his niece could not do better than leave them in his
keeping. “Good uncle,” said the vivacious Mary, “I and my jewels travel
together. If I trust one to the sea, I may the other; and therewith,
_adieu!_” The cardinal bit his lips and blessed her.
Ranke is puzzled where to find the principal author of the massacre of
St. Bartholomew. There is no difficulty in the matter. The Guises had
appealed to the chances of battle to overcome their chief adversaries
in the kingdom. But for every Huguenot father slain, there arose
as many filial avengers as he had sons. The causes of quarrel were
individual as well as general. A Huguenot had slain the second Duke,
and his widow was determined to be avenged. The Cardinal was wroth
with the King for retaining Protestant archers in his body-guard. The
archers took an unclean vengeance, and defiled the pulpit in the Chapel
Royal, wherefrom the Cardinal was accustomed to denounce the doctrine
of their teachers. His Eminence formed the confederacy by which it was
resolved to destroy the enemy at a blow. To the general causes, I need
not allude. The plot itself was formed in Oliver Clisson’s house, in
Paris, known as “the Hotel of Mercy.” But the representatives of Rome
and Spain, united with those of France, met upon the frontier, and
there made the final arrangements which were followed by such terrible
consequences. When the stupendous deed was being done, the Cardinal
was absent from France; but he fairly took upon himself the guilt,
when he conferred the hand of his illegitimate daughter Anne d’Arne on
the officer Besme whose dagger had given the _first_ mortal stab to
Coligny, the chief of the immolated victims of that dreadful day--and
Rome approved.
As a public controversialist he shone in his dispute with Beza. Of
his pride, we have an illustration in what is recorded of him in the
Council of Trent. The Spanish embassador had taken a place, at mass,
above that of the embassador from France. Thereupon, the reverend
Cardinal raised such a commotion in the cathedral, and dwelt so loudly
and strongly in expletives, that divine worship was suspended, and the
congregation broke up in most admired disorder.