FIRST RELIGIOUS WAR.
[1562–1563.]
Beginning of Reaction--Causes of the War--The Huguenots
arm--Advice of Coligny’s Wife--Covenant of Association--Massacre
at Sens and Sisteron--Discipline of the Armies--Catherine
attempts to mediate--Conference at Thoury--Negotiations broken
off--Fearful state of Paris--The Constable’s violence--Appeals
to Foreign Sympathy--Successes of the Royalists--Atrocities
at Blois and Tours--Rouen Besieged--The Breach stormed--The
Hour of Vengeance--Pastor Marlorat hanged--Death of Anthony of
Navarre--Disturbances in Normandy--Offer of Amnesty--Battle
of Dreux--Condé and Montmorency captured--St. André
killed--Siege of Orleans--Duke of Guise murdered--Poltrot de
Méré--Pacification of Amboise--Distress caused by the War--Death
of Coligny’s Son--Letter to his Wife.
All great efforts are followed by a reaction. We have seen how
Protestantism had been spreading over France during the last forty
years, the attempts to crush it serving but to give it greater
vitality. We are now approaching a period of counter-revolution; the
tide of reform has reached its flood and will soon begin to ebb,
slowly, irregularly, but certainly, so that at last we entirely lose
sight of religion in the political struggle that ensued.
Attempts have been made to fix upon the Huguenots the terrible
responsibility of beginning the civil strife. It is easy to prove
this, or any other historical untruth, by a skillful manipulation of
documents; but the evidence of eye-witnesses of, and actors in, the
events of the spring of 1562, points to the opposite conclusions. La
Noue, who was present at Meaux, positively affirms that there was no
plan or previous arrangement. “Most of the nobility,” he says, “hearing
of the slaughter at Vassy, partly of a voluntary good-will, and partly
for fear, determined to draw toward Paris, imagining that their
protectors might stand in some need of them.”[284] And that there was
good ground for this fear appears certain from a contemporary letter,
in which the writer says: “Every thing is in such confusion at court
that, if God does not lend a helping hand, I fear that in less than ten
days you will have news of the prettiest (_plus beau_) massacre
that ever was.”[285]
Is it wonderful if in such a state of things the Protestant gentry
thought it necessary to take counsel together? Of their deliberations
we know nothing, but the result was a resolution to take up arms.
Coligny alone appears to have held back, and without his countenance
and support the chances of success were very small. There is a story
told of him, which we could hope to be true, though it is at variance
with certain known facts. He had long kept aloof, notwithstanding
the entreaties of his brothers Andelot and the Cardinal of Chatillon
that he would take the field; and when his wife added her entreaties
to theirs, he drew a terrible picture of civil war and the possible
fate of herself and their children, and begged her take three weeks
to weigh the matter deliberately in her mind. “The three weeks are
already past,” replied the heroic dame; “you will never be conquered
by the virtue of your enemies; employ your own, and do not take upon
your head the murders of three weeks.” He hesitated no longer, and the
next day set off to join Condé at Meaux, where the Huguenot gentlemen
held rendezvous. That prince had already committed himself too far not
to see that none but the boldest measures could save him: “It is all
over,” he said; “we have plunged in so deep that we must either drink
or drown.”
The confederate, knowing how greatly success depended upon prompt
action, spent but few moments in deliberation. Their first step must be
to secure some strong town, in which they could make a safe stand until
reinforcements arrived. For obvious strategical and political reasons
they selected Orleans, and thitherward, to the number of two thousand,
they turned their horses’ heads. As the delay of even a few minutes
might be dangerous, they rode on like a fierce whirlwind, not stopping
to pick up any one who fell on the road. Once in Orleans, which they
entered on the 2d April, 1562, they sent secret orders to their
co-religionists all over France, and their first measures were crowned
with success. Almost on the same day the Huguenots made themselves
masters of Havre, Rouen, Caen, and Dieppe in Normandy; Blois, Tours,
and Angers on the Loire; Poitiers and Rochelle in Poitou; Chalons and
Troyes in Champagne; Macon in Burgundy; Gap and Grenoble in Dauphiny;
and Nismes, Montpellier, Béziers, and Montauban in Languedoc; as well
as a large number of castles in the north, west, and south, with the
Cevennes district between Lyons and Toulouse.
From all these quarters the best gentlemen in France rallied round
Condé in defense of the rights of their body and the princes of
the blood-royal against the usurpation and violence of the Guises,
who were foreigners. Many of them were related to Condé: the three
Chatillons were the uncles of his wife; Prince Porcien the husband of
his niece; La Rochefoucault had married his sister-in-law. Viscount
Rohan represented the nobles of Dauphiny; Andelot the Pays de France;
the Count of Grammont led the Gascons; Montgomery the Normans; and
Genlis the sober and industrious Picards. Their first step was to
sign a Covenant of Association, binding them to spend their goods and
their lives in restoring the king to liberty, and procuring freedom of
worship to all Frenchmen. They necessarily made Condé their leader, and
then sent off letters (7th May) to all the churches, desiring them “in
God’s name” to furnish both men and money. “We have taken up arms,”
said the confederates, “that we may deliver the King and Queen from
the hands of their enemies, and secure the full execution of the Edict
of January.” Condé also thought it his duty to dispatch a messenger to
the queen-mother, with an explanation of the motives which had driven
him to such extreme measures. Catherine would not commit herself to a
written answer, but desired the Baron de la Garde to tell the Prince,
“that she would never forget what he might do for the king her son.”
The Catholics, if less prompt, were not less vigorous in their
proceedings. In 1561 the citizens of Paris had been disarmed as a
measure of precaution; now every member of the “ancient Catholic
religion,” capable of bearing arms, was ordered to procure them and
attend drill.[286] By this means fifteen corps of infantry, amounting
to the almost incredible number[287] of 30,000 men (others say 24,000),
were placed at the disposal of the Triumvirate for the protection
of the capital. By another order, issued by Marshal Brissac, who
had succeeded Montmorency as governor, all persons, “notoriously
famed as being of the new religion,” were ordered to leave the city
within twenty-four hours, or they would be hanged; as for such as
were “suspected” only, they were required to get a certificate of
confession.[288] The populace did not fail to take advantage of the
opportunity thus placed within their reach, by informing against those
whom, from any personal or other motive, they wanted to turn out of
their houses; and if the Huguenots did not go, they were plundered and
ill-used.
And now began a war of manifestoes and remonstrances. The walls of the
capital were covered with placards in which the Huguenots declared
that they had taken up arms in self-defense and not for plunder,
and the Catholics replied in terms that exhausted the vocabulary of
abuse. The Lorraine party, or the Triumvirate, was the Ultramontane or
foreign party; the Protestant party was especially that of national
independence. The Huguenots, like the English Parliamentarians of
1642, represented the middle classes, and were (perhaps unconsciously)
democratic in their tendencies; the Royalists (as we may call them,
since they held the king’s person, although they were not more loyal
than their opponents) were supported by the clergy, the ignorant rural
population, and the poverty of the towns. Both parties sought political
power to carry out their views.
It may be said that, if ever there was a time when Christians were
justified in resorting to the sword, it was the present. The laws in
favor of the Huguenots were constantly and systematically broken. The
massacre at Vassy was only the first of a series of outrages equally
barbarous. At Sens in Burgundy, a Huguenot having insulted a Catholic
procession, the tocsin was rung, and there was a general onslaught upon
the Reformed, without regard either to age or sex. The bodies of the
victims, stripped and fastened to planks, were thrown into the river
and floated down to Paris, twenty leagues distant. One of them, that of
a Gascon officer, was dragged through the streets by boys leaping and
shouting: “Take care of your pigs, for we have got the pigkeeper.” The
fanatic populace destroyed every thing, even rooting up the vines in
the Calvinist vineyards. For three days the hideous carnival of murder
went on, and ceased only from want of victims.[289]
The massacre of Sens took place in April, while the Baron de la Garde
was on his mission of peace in the Protestant camp. It was said to
have been perpetrated at the instigation of the Cardinal of Lorraine,
who was archbishop of that city, and who took no steps to prevent
the murders. As soon as the news reached the ears of Condé, he broke
off all negotiations, and declared that he would not lay down his
arms “until he had driven his most cruel enemies (the Guises) out of
France.” The nuncio Santa Croce seems to allude to two massacres:
“Since the massacre at Sens, of which I wrote in my last, another great
slaughter of eighty Huguenots has happened, and some thirty of their
houses have been burned in that city.” Perrenot de Chantonnay, the
Spanish embassador, writes exultingly: “Already in many parts of this
kingdom, as at Sens, Toulouse, Castel-Navarre, and Villefranche, the
Catholics have risen against the Huguenots, who have had the worst of
it; and in some places the preachers were burned in the market-place.”
All over France, from the Channel to the Mediterranean, similar
ferocious outbreaks occurred. At Sisteron, beneath the shadow of the
Lower Alps, three hundred women and children, refugees from all parts
of Provence, were pitilessly murdered, the men having made their
escape. One poor woman with a baby in her arms was taken outside the
town and put to death, and her body buried beneath the ruins of the
house where she used to worship.
All comment on these things[290] would be superfluous. Is it wonderful
that in such a state of lawlessness the Reformed nobles and gentlemen
armed in self-defense? With indignant eloquence, Agrippa d’Aubigné
vindicates the rebellion in which the Huguenots sought to protect
themselves: “So long as the adherents of the new religion were
destroyed merely under the form of law, they submitted themselves to
the slaughter, and never raised a hand in their own defense against
those injuries, cruel and iniquitous as they were. But when the public
authorities and the magistracy, divesting themselves of the venerable
aspect of justice, put daggers into the hands of the people, abandoning
every man to the violence of his neighbors; and when public massacres
were perpetrated to the sound of the drum and of the trumpet, who
could forbid the unhappy sufferers to oppose hand to hand, and sword
to sword, and to catch the contagion of a righteous fury from a fury
unrestrained by any sense of justice?”
This appeal to arms was quite contrary to the principles of the founder
of the French Church. In 1556, when Calvin had reason to fear that the
Reformed would resist if they were attacked, he wrote to the church of
Angers: “I pray you put aside such counsels; they will never be blessed
by God, or come to a good issue.” And to the church at Paris he wrote
in the same strain: “Show yourselves like lambs against the rage of the
wolves, for you have the promise of the Good Shepherd, who will never
fail you. It is better that we be all destroyed than for the Gospel to
be reproached with leading the people to sedition and tumult. God will
always fructify the ashes of his servants, whilst violence and excess
will bring nothing but barrenness.”[291]
It is with great hesitation that I venture to differ from so high
an authority as Calvin; but--to oppose authority to authority--St.
Augustine acknowledges that overwhelming necessity may justify
Christians in drawing the sword.[292] And Knox went still farther,
maintaining in his “Appellation” that it was not only the duty of
a nation to resist a persecuting sovereign, but (as in the case of
the Marian persecutions) also to depose the queen, and even “punish
her to death, with all the sort of her idolatrous priests.” But the
propriety of arming in defense of religion can hardly in these days
be maintained on such grounds. The Huguenots of 1562 felt that their
only choice lay between extermination, hypocritical conformity, or
rebellion. They were contending against intolerable oppression; the
laws were no protection to them; and in such circumstances they
believed resistance to be justifiable. Why should they apostatize,
or be burned, while they had strength to wield the sword, especially
as the letter of the law was in their favor? Such a line of argument
may fall below the great ideal of the Founder of Christianity, in
which the highest victory is gained through suffering: “Unto him that
smiteth thee on the one cheek, offer also the other.” But how can we
apply such a rule to a whole nation, the mass of which consists of
ordinary individuals? Upon men of low moral constitutions persecution
has a searing, hardening, revengeful effect. It would not raise the
victims into martyrs, or lift them up to the divine spirit of the
Crucifixion. To forbid the use of the sword for any and every cause,
as one very narrow sect does, is intelligible; but to say that we may
draw it in defense of our homes and our goods, but not in defense of
our faith, is to count the latter of less value than the former. Those
who sympathize with Calvin argue that the midnight assassin, or the
violator of woman’s purity, may be lawfully resisted, even unto death;
not so another who would force a man to abjure his faith. This is
putting the purse above the conscience. Calvin had never been tested in
the fire. Brentius and Languet, who had both been face to face with the
enemy, thought differently.[293] The latter, speaking of a meeting at
La Cerisaye, which had been attacked, says: “There were some who would
have rather been beaten than draw their swords, but I was not of their
opinion.”[294] It may indeed be urged that the differences between
the Romanists and Huguenots were not important enough to justify armed
resistance; but the alternative appeal is to the conscience; and if
men and women, young and old, rich and poor, through a long series of
years, held their faith as dearer than their life, we must infer that
the differences to them were vital.
There is, however, a potent element of evil in armed resistance. When
Christians unite into armies, they are too apt to become a political
party, and losing sight of the motives and principles which first
banded them together, to contend for mere temporal objects like any
other body of men. It was perhaps a misfortune that the Reformed were
so numerous in France; had they been a small, insignificant body, they
would hardly have created such malignant animosity, and might have
escaped being mixed up in the civil war, which was sooner or later
inevitable between the political parties.
Both armies now began to prepare for the coming struggle. Never before
in all history, and only once since, has any thing been seen like the
discipline at first maintained among the Huguenots. A form of prayer,
drawn up by Beza, was repeated every night and morning; and the troops
were “to beware of oppressing the poor commons.” As they marched over
the open country, “they neither spoiled nor misused their hosts, but
were content with a little.... Most of them paid honestly for all
things.” La Noue aptly describes it as a “well-ordered disorder.”
Speaking of the discipline of the army while it lay for a fortnight in
the camp at Vassadonne near Orleans, he says: “Among all this great
troop, ye should never hear God’s name blasphemed. There was not a pair
of dice or cards, the fountains of many brawls and thefts, walking in
any quarter.... Truly, many wondered to see them so well-disposed, and
my late brother the Lord of Teligny and myself, discoursing thereof
with the Lord Admiral, did greatly commend it. Whereupon he said unto
us: ‘It is indeed a goodly matter if it would continue; but I fear this
people will pour forth all their goodness at once, so as within these
two months they will have nothing but malice left. I have a great while
governed the footmen, and do know them. They will fulfill the proverb:
A young saint, an old devil. If this fail, we may make a cross upon the
chimney.’ We smiled, but took no farther heed thereof, until experience
taught us that herein he was a prophet.” The admiral had not long to
wait for the fulfillment of his prophecy. At Beaugency, the Huguenot
force treated with more cruelty the Protestants who had been unable
to escape than they did the Catholic soldiers who had held the town
against them. “Thus,” continues the amusing chronicler, “thus did our
footmen lose their virginity, and of this unlawful conjunction ensued
the procreation of Lady Picoree, who is since grown into such dignity
that she is now termed madame; yea, if this civil war continue, I
doubt she will become a princess. Of the Catholics, I will say that at
the beginning they were likewise well ordered, and did not much annoy
the commons.” The Huguenots were the first to make the war support
itself by contributions levied upon the enemy. When the admiral was in
Normandy, the Catholic population of Caen was required to furnish the
sum of 10,000, not, however, until Beza’s appeal to his co-religionists
for money had utterly failed.[295]
Before the two armies came into actual collision, Catherine interposed
as a peace-maker. She saw plainly that, whichever side conquered, the
crown must suffer, and that it would be ruinous to her power to allow
one party to exterminate the other. Accordingly, several attempts
were made to induce the Huguenots to lay down their arms. Montluc and
Vieilleville were successively dispatched to Orleans, and as they could
obtain nothing from the confederated nobles, Catherine determined to
try the effect of her own power of persuasion.
A conference took place on the 2d of June between her and Condé at
Thoury in Beauce, ten leagues from Orleans. La Noue describes the armed
escorts on each side, sitting on horseback and looking at each other
for half an hour, “each coveting to see, one his brother, another
his uncle, cousin, friend, or old companion.” At last they got leave
from their respective commanders to speak with one another. They met
with great “demonstrations of amity.” “The Catholics, imagining the
Protestants to be lost, exhorted them to see to themselves, and not
to enter obstinately into this miserable war, wherein near kinsmen
must murder one another. Hereto they answered that they detested it;
howbeit, if they had no recourse to their defense, they were assured of
like entreaty as many other Protestants had received, who were cruelly
slain in sundry parts of France. Each provoked the other to peace,
and to persuade their superiors to hearken thereto.” An eye-witness
writes: “On the 17th of June the queen set off again from the forest of
Vincennes in great haste, and it was believed this time that she would
conclude a peace before her return. She had taken medicine and been
bled the day before, being ill through a fall from her hackney, going
and coming with such dispatch.”
At a subsequent interview at Talcy[296] (28th June, 1562), Condé,
yielding to the persuasions of Montluc, Bishop of Valence, offered to
show his good faith by leaving the country, provided the Guises would
do the same; and a meeting was fixed for the next day at which the
conditions of this singular agreement were to be arranged. La Noue
tells us how “the prince returned to his camp laughing (but between his
teeth) with the chief of his gentlemen who had heard all his talk; some
scratching their heads where they itched not, others shaking them;
some were pensive; and the younger sort gibed at one another, each one
devising with what occupation he should be forced to get his living
in a foreign land.” With similar lightness of heart, but not with
equal chivalry, the gentlemen of France forsook their country in 1789,
trusting to return in a few weeks to a land which most of them never
saw again.
Condé’s officers refused to follow him. Coligny supposed the
queen-mother meant no harm, but thought that “those who had weapons
in their hands did circumvent her to the end to betray them.” Andelot
said to the prince: “If you forsake us now, it will be said that you
do it for fear. The best way of coming to an agreement is to lead us
within sight of the enemy. We can never be perfect friends, before
we have skirmished a little together.” The Lord of Boucarde, one of
the bravest gentlemen in the realm, “whose head was fraught with fire
and lead,” declared: “I would be loth to walk up and down a foreign
land with a tooth-pick in my mouth, and in the mean time see some
flattering neighbor be the master of my house, and fatten himself with
my revenues.” These opinions being generally approved of, Condé gave
way, and “they all shook hands in confirmation thereof.” Beza, who was
present at this council, afterward besought the prince “not to give
over the good work he had begun which God, whose honor it concerned,
would bring to perfection.” Thus the conference came to nothing; the
queen-mother and Condé separated, “each very sorry that they had no
better success.”
The Huguenots had lost much valuable time by this attempted mediation;
while the clergy and Parliament of Paris, improving the opportunity,
issued an order for those of the true Church to take up arms and kill
the heretics like mad dogs. A contemporary denounces this proclamation
as “a means to arm thieves, vagabonds, and villains. It made the
ploughman to leave the plough, and the craftsman to shut up his shop;
it changed the multitude into tigers and lions, and fleshed them
against their own countrymen.”[297] Woe to the vanquished, for atrocity
begets atrocity! A manuscript journal of this year, kept by some person
attached to the court, describes the fearful state of Paris. Every day
had its tale of outrage and murder by sword, rope, or water. Houses
were pillaged and razed to the ground; cemeteries were broken open, and
the relics of the dead scattered to the winds. The voice of the law was
silent, and the government looked on, as if powerless to prevent, but
in reality pleased to see their enemies exterminated. On one occasion,
a child, hardly six months old, who had been christened by a Huguenot
pastor, was rechristened at the Church of St. Germain l’Auxerrois. More
than 10,000 spectators were witnesses of the ceremony: the bells rang
out joyous peals from every steeple, and the crowd shouted: “Praised
be God for the recovery of the poor little soul.” These profanations
of the holy rite of baptism were not confined to Paris. At Le Puy the
infant of “an apostate” was christened with great pomp of minstrels,
arquebusiers, and “taborins,” the lord-bishop of the city being
godfather.[298]
On the last day of June several persons were murdered, and among them
a woman accused of not going to mass for ten years. She was cruelly
beaten and then flung into the Seine, when the boatmen knocked her on
the head with oars and poles. Two men also were killed and thrown into
the river, charged with being Huguenots. The blood-stained doublet of
one of them was fastened to a stick and carried in procession through
the streets of Paris by a troop of noisy children. “This, or something
of the sort, was done every day,” says the court chronicler, “so that
no one could be punished.”[299] The blood-thirstiness of the multitude
spread even to the young. Santa Croce writes to Cardinal Borromeo:
“Monsieur d’Enghien, who is only a little boy of seven, is always
saying that we must no longer delay to burn all the Huguenots without
mercy.... This I learned from the constable, who expressed how greatly
he was pleased to hear it.”
The Constable Montmorency, who, as governor of Paris, should have
supported the authority of the law, was one of the foremost to break
it. He took such pleasure in destroying the Huguenot places of worship,
that even the Catholics nicknamed him _Mr. Burn-bench_. In one
day he pulled down the two meeting-houses at Popincourt,[300] and the
mob bringing the timber to the square in front of the Hotel-de-Ville,
burned it there with shouts of “God has not forgotten the city of
Paris.” The pulpit was used with great effect to inflame the multitude.
At the Fête Dieu, Charles of Guise, “the bloody cardinal,”[301] told
his hearers “it was better to shed the last drop of their blood than
permit God’s honor and his Church to be defiled by the presence of any
other religion in France than that of their ancestors.”[302] Matters
became so bad that at last Queen Elizabeth instructed her embassador
to leave Paris, “because he could not witness such great cruelties.”
What the queen-mother said or did to conciliate her royal sister is
not known; but it is certain that Catherine was much grieved at this
state of affairs--_diu multumque flevit_. There is a story of
her adopting a rather oriental manner of learning the opinions of the
citizens. Putting on a mask, such as the Italian ladies were accustomed
to wear, she walked through the streets, accompanied by the Queen of
Navarre. They went into the shops, pretending to purchase, and, as
may be imagined, heard many strange things about themselves and the
government.[303]
All efforts at conciliation having failed, each party tried to
strengthen itself by foreign alliances. Guise, Montmorency, and
St. André had already, as we have seen, entered into a treasonable
arrangement with Philip II., by which that monarch bound himself
to aid with money and men in the extirpation of heresy in France;
“on no pretense to spare the life of any heretic,” says the
_Sommaire_.[304] The duke was specially charged “to blot out
entirely the name, family, and race of Bourbon, lest from them some
one should arise hereafter to restore the new religion.” In pursuance
of this agreement the King of Spain wrote to the queen-mother offering
military support.[305] Pius V. ordered collections to be made in the
states of the Church, gathered contributions from the Italian princes,
and sent a small force of mercenaries across the Alps.[306]
In self-defense the Huguenots were forced to appeal to their brother
Protestants for help; nor were Swiss, Germans, or English deaf to
their appeal. By the treaty of Hampton Court (20th Sept., 1562)
Elizabeth agreed to furnish 6000 men, of whom one-half were to garrison
Havre, as a material guarantee until the end of the war. This was an
impolitic concession on the part of the Huguenots; it turned many
friends into enemies, and necessarily drove Catherine into the arms
of the coalition. The Duke of Guise, only a few years before, had by
the capture of Calais expelled the English from the “sacred soil” of
France; and now the Huguenots were traitorously inviting them back.
Unfortunately Elizabeth’s behavior only served to strengthen the
suspicions of the French people. Her declared object was “to check the
aspirations of the Guisian conspirators, who would never be satisfied
until Scotland and England were united under one crown, and that worn
by Mary Stuart.”[307] To the King of Spain she wrote, immediately after
signing the treaty, that her aim was to preserve peace “by securing
such ports as be next us from them (Guisians), without intent of
offense to the king.”[308] But she did not preserve peace, and her
actions did offend.
Hostilities broke out long before these negotiations were concluded.
By the middle of June the two armies were in the field and ready for
action. They were not large: that under Navarre consisting of 4000
foot and 3000 horse, that under Condé of 6000 foot and 2000 horse. The
first movements were favorable to the Catholics. Having frustrated an
attempt to surprise them, the royal forces prepared to attack Orleans,
the Huguenot head-quarters, by cutting it off from the surrounding
country. They retook Blois, Tours, Poitiers, Angers, and Bourges,
almost without striking a blow, signalizing the capture of these cities
by atrocities which could have been perpetrated only when the passions
of a fierce soldiery were inflamed by religious fanaticism. At Blois a
woman found praying with some neighbors was thrown into the water, and
as she floated was beaten with sticks and pelted with stones until she
died. An old man of seventy caught reading the Bible was immediately
massacred; another had his eyes plucked out and was then knocked on
the head; another was paraded through the city on an ass, with his
face to the tail, pelted, hooted, and drowned. The pastor Chassebœuf
was, by Guise’s express order, hung up to a tree without any form of
trial.[309] There was much in the appearance of Tours to rouse the
fanaticism of the soldiery. For some weeks the town had been in the
hands of the Huguenots, who seized upon the churches, stole the plate,
broke the images and ornaments, burned the service-books, desecrated
the relics, and ordered every ecclesiastic to leave the place in
twenty-four hours under pain of imprisonment. Contemporary records
describe the destruction of a “Calvary” of gold and azure, one of the
wonders of the world, which sixty years before had cost the large sum
of ten thousand ducats. The plunder of the churches served to keep up
the war. That of St. Martin at Tours furnished Condé with 1,200,000
livres, without counting the jewels in the shrines.[310]
When the king’s authority was restored in Tours, mass was ordered to
be sung in St. Martin’s Church, but every thing in it had been broken
or destroyed, except the stalls in the choir and a few of the painted
windows. This was on the 13th June, and on the 14th and 15th of the
following month the massacre occurred. The interval is sufficient to
show that it was caused by something more than the usual military
license of those rough days. We shall find a horrible sameness in these
stories: men and women, young and old, were murdered indiscriminately;
even children were not spared. Boats filled with victims were sunk
in the river; thus anticipating, by more than two centuries, the
_noyades_ of the infamous Carrier. Three hundred persons were
shut up in a church, and after being kept there for three days without
food, were bound two and two and taken to the _escorcherie_ (the
knacker’s yard) and there killed. “Little children (whose parents had
been murdered) could be bought for a crown apiece,” adds D’Aubigné. In
five or six days the banks of the river down to Angers were covered
with dead bodies, “dont les bestes mêmes s’espouvantoyent,” says
Crespin, “at which even the wild beasts were horror-stricken.” After
order had been restored by the Duke of Montpensier, a minister was
hanged for preaching a sermon not to the taste of his hearers. Because
the fronts of certain houses had not been decorated with hangings
during the procession of Corpus Christi, some of the inhabitants
were drowned, others imprisoned, and in every case the houses were
thoroughly gutted. Two women were dragged to the river and flung into
water so shallow, that they could not drown, whereupon they were beaten
to death with oars and poles. Jean Bourgeau, president of the city, was
caught while attempting to escape in a boat (30th Nov., 1562). He was
first drowned and then hanged to a tree and disemboweled, “because not
only had he been averse to punishing the heretics, but had moreover
favored them by adhering to their erroneous opinions and oppressing the
Catholics.”[311]
From Tours the king’s forces marched to Poitiers, which fell after
three days’ cannonade, and Bourges surrendered after a siege of ten
days. The terms of capitulation conceded to the inhabitants were
an amnesty for the past and liberty of conscience according to the
Edict of January. Orleans was now quite insulated; but the Catholic
chiefs, instead of following up their successes in that direction,
drew off their army to Rouen, through which they feared that English
forces might be poured into the country. Rouen was at that time one of
the most important cities of France: there was none in the north to
equal it in commerce, wealth, and population. Situated on the Seine,
midway between its mouth and Paris, it commanded the main highway into
the interior; and, so long as it was in hostile hands, no serious
attempt could be made upon the strong city of Orleans. Strategical
and political reasons being thus in favor of attacking Rouen, the
royal army, now 18,000 strong, under the orders of the constable, sat
down before the city on the 25th September. The Count of Montgomery’s
garrison was about 4000 men, of whom nearly half were English. The
trenches were opened to the sound of music, as was done more than
once in the time of Louis XIV. In the town, as in the Huguenot armies
generally, all was serious and severe; prayer-meetings and sermons
with psalm-singing were the amusements of the garrison, who, like
the Covenanters and Puritans, fought none the worse because they
had bent the knee to God before marching to battle. The siege was
pressed vigorously, for the cold nights and heavy rains of autumn were
approaching, when the royal army would be unable to keep the field. The
citizens of Paris, who were anxious to recover a city which interrupted
all traffic with the sea, offered the king 200,000 crowns to pay and
victual the besieging force.[312] Catherine, attended by her licentious
maids of honor--her “flying squadron,” as they were afterward
called--visited the army to encourage the troops by her presence. It
is said that she went every day to Fort St. Catherine, where the fire
was hottest; and when the constable and Guise remonstrated with her,
representing that it was not her duty to expose her life, she answered:
“Why should I spare myself more than you? Have I less interest in
the result, or less courage? True, I have not your strength of body,
but I have equal resolution of mind.” The soldiers called her “mater
castrorum.”
On the 26th October the breach was stormed. The fatigued and
overmatched garrison made but a feeble resistance, and the city was
won. Montgomery escaped, but those who remained had to suffer all the
extremities of a town abandoned to the passions of an unscrupulous
soldiery. The commanders had forbidden all pillage--for the besieged,
though rebels, were still the king’s subjects--but the indiscipline
of the army was too strong. The Swiss mercenaries obeyed the order,
“but the French soldiers would sooner be killed than come away so long
as there was any thing to take.” For three days the license endured,
when the king, attended by his mother and the parliament, made his
triumphal entry through the breach, and put an end to the outrages of
the soldiery.[313]
And now the hour of vengeance had come. The Catholics remembered how,
one Sunday in May, the Huguenots, in the exultation of their triumph,
had sacked and defaced the cathedral and thirty-six parish churches.
“They made such work,” says Beza, “that they left neither altar nor
image, font nor benitier.”[314] That this was not the act of a lawless
mob, or of a sudden excitement, but of calmness and deliberation,
is probable from what happened about the same time at Caen, in the
same province, where the minister Cousin told the judges “that this
idolatry had been put up with too long, and that it must be trampled
down.” And here the destroyers, after scattering the ashes of William
the Conqueror, breaking organs, pictures, pulpits, and statues, to the
estimated value of 100,000 crowns, had the impudence to ask the town
council to pay them for their two days’ work--which was done.[315]
At Rouen, the anger of the Catholic soldiery was increased by the
conduct of the Huguenot clergy, who had refused the honorable terms of
surrender which had been offered them, declaring that Heaven would work
a miracle, if all human means should fail, to prevent their falling
into the hands of the Romanists. That miracle was not worked, and
one of the first victims of this tampering with the Divine will was
Marlorat, chief pastor of the city. He had been an Augustine monk,
and, leaving his convent, escaped to Geneva, where he abjured Romanism.
Apostate as he was in the eyes of the Catholics, he was permitted to
appear at the conference of Poissy, where he acted as the Protestant
leader until Beza arrived. Such an instance of toleration ought not to
be overlooked.
When Rouen fell, Marlorat hid himself, but his hiding-place was
betrayed, and he was imprisoned. The constable went to visit him in
his dungeon, and charged him with seducing the people. “If I have, God
seduced me first,” he answered; “for I have preached nothing but his
pure word.” He suffered in company with two of his flock, exhorting
them to the last. The high bailiff swore a terrible oath, and struck
him with his official staff to make him hold his tongue; and, as he was
hanging, a soldier hacked his legs. Beza, who records these things,
traces the finger of God in the misfortunes that subsequently befell
Marlorat’s persecutors: “The captain who betrayed him was killed three
weeks after; two of his judges died of strange diseases; the soldier
who hacked his legs was killed by a sword; and the high bailiff in
his cups quarreled with Marshal Vieilleville, who cut off the hand
with which he had struck the martyr.” Many other victims fell besides
the pastors, and the prisons were so crammed with pious men and women
that Brevedent, the lieutenant of police, thought it his duty to
remonstrate: “Why do you crowd the dungeons?” he asked. “Can you doubt
what you ought to do? Is the river yet full?”
In the course of the siege, Anthony of Navarre received a bullet wound
in his shoulder, of which he died on the 17th November at Andelys.[316]
During his feverish wanderings, he talked to his attendants of
the orange groves of his expected kingdom of Sardinia, and of the
golden sands of its rivers. No wife with loving hand smoothed his
dying-pillow. She was far away in the south, training up her children
in all godliness; but his mistress, Louise de Rouet, stayed with him
to the last. Her character of him is by no means flattering: “The
prince (she said) changed his religion and party almost as easily as
he changed mistresses.” After he had received extreme unction, his
uneasy conscience would not let him rest. “Read me a chapter of the
Bible,” he said to his physician; and after the latter had read a
portion of Scripture, Anthony interrupted him, and with tears in his
eyes exclaimed: “If I do but get well, I will cause the Gospel to be
preached throughout France.” But his good resolutions, if sincere, came
too late; and, at the age of forty-four, he died regretted by neither
party. Garnier mentions a curious peculiarity of this unworthy king
without a kingdom: he was so irresistibly given to pilfering that,
after he had gone to bed, the pages used to search his pockets in order
to restore the property he had stolen.
Condé was much grieved at the Rouen cruelties, particularly with
the hanging of Marlorat and others, and ordered three persons to
be hanged in retaliation.[317] The army, also, was so exasperated,
that they massacred all the priests they found in Pluviers; and when
the Catholics contended that the king might hang his rebellious
subjects, they replied that “his name shrouded other men’s malice,
wherefore, according to the proverb, they would make _such bread such
brewisse_.” The prince’s jest is well known: “Our enemies have given
us two shrewd checks in taking our rooks (meaning Rouen and Bourges),
but I hope that now we may catch their knights, if they take the
field.” But he was caught himself.
The fall of Rouen not only did not restore peace, but the province of
Normandy became more disturbed than ever. Both parties were equally
violent, equally unscrupulous. They burned or plundered each other’s
houses and farmsteads. The neighborhood of Rouen became a wide waste,
and the people were reduced to beggary.[318] The government took
advantage of their success to make a display of generosity which, had
it been sincere, might have terminated the war. A royal edict promised
a full and complete amnesty to all who had taken up arms, on condition
that they ceased to attend Protestant sermons, and conformed outwardly
to Catholicism. The numerous exceptions to this act of grace included
the heads of the party, persons notoriously seditious, and such as had
profaned the churches. A few gentlemen accepted these terms, but the
vast majority saw that the edict was a mere trick to separate the army
from its leaders.
Battles and sieges now followed in quick succession, and in all parts
of France at once. Condé, who had been reinforced by 4000 lansquenets
and 300 reiters, brought from Germany by Andelot, after threatening
Paris had moved into Normandy, in order to meet the auxiliaries, about
3000 in number, promised by Queen Elizabeth. He was followed by the
Duke of Guise, who came up with him on the banks of the Eure, a long
narrow plain separating the two armies. The force under Condé amounted
to 5000 foot and 8000 horse, while that under Guise consisted of 16,000
foot and 3000 horse.[319] The latter fortified “against all chances”
the petty town of Dreux, at the foot of a hill on whose top there stood
a castle even then of some antiquity. A small stream ran through the
plain, which was covered with wood, with here and there a hamlet of a
few houses. Early in that dark winter’s morning (19th December) Condé
prepared for battle. The prince went through the ranks exhorting his
followers to do their duty as became Christians and loyal subjects,
for they were fighting not against the king, but against his evil
advisers; and reminded them of their parents and friends burned and
massacred. After singing a psalm, wherein the God of Israel summons
his people to avenge his cause, the troops knelt down in prayer,
and as soon as the chaplain had ended, the whole army thundered out
_Amen!_ For two hours the armies remained face to face within
cannon-shot. “Every man stood fast,” says La Noue, “imagining in
himself that they that came against him were no Spaniards, Englishmen,
or Italians, but Frenchmen, and those of the bravest; among whom were
their companions, friends, and kinsfolks, and also that within one hour
they were to slay each other. This bred some horror, nevertheless,
without quailing in courage, they thus stayed until the armies moved
to join.” About one o’clock, Condé gave the signal to advance: before
sunset it was all over. Heading the attack in person, he cut through
the enemy’s line, captured some of his cannon, and took the constable
prisoner. But, like Rupert at Edgehill, he followed up the pursuit so
eagerly and so far, that he left his infantry exposed.[320] The Duke
of Guise saw the opportunity, and sweeping down upon them with the
cry of “They are ours! they are ours!” drove the German footmen off
the field.[321] The native Huguenot infantry, now uncovered, resisted
stoutly, but suffered in proportion. Meanwhile Condé, who was making
his way back to the point of danger, fell to the ground in a small
hedge-row, and before he could extricate himself from his horse, which
had been knocked down by a bullet, a troop of Damville’s[322] brigade
came up and took him prisoner. Coligny, who had been trying to make up
for the prince’s rashness, saw that all was over, and made preparations
to save the relics of the defeated army. Gathering round him the
few troops that remained unbroken, he flung himself between the
fugitives and the pursuing foe, to whom he presented such a resolute
face that Guise dared not attack him. There is a story to the effect,
that when the duke’s friends advised him to pursue the Huguenots, he
said, “Peace, peace; I have to fight with a worse beast than all the
Huguenots put together.” He meant Catherine de Medicis. Several fierce
charges were made upon the Huguenot rear-guard, in one of which St.
André was captured, and afterward murdered in cold blood.[323] Although
a drawn battle[324] the number of killed and wounded, according to a
statement by Ambrose Paré, was enormous: “I saw the earth covered for
a good league all round,” he says; “they were reckoned at 2500 men at
the outside. All that had been _polished off_ in less than two
hours.”[325] Until 1789 a solemn procession took place every year at
Dreux to commemorate this triumph of the Catholic cause.
When the news of this battle reached Paris, the citizens gave way to
transports of delight. The houses were illuminated; _Te Deums_
were sung in the churches; salvos of artillery were fired from the
Bastille. The Duke of Guise was made lieutenant-general and decorated
with the Order of the Holy Ghost. Catherine shared the common joy, and
when the good tidings reached Trent, where the council was sitting,
they clapped their hands in exultation. The Catholics had, indeed,
every reason to exult, for if victory had declared in favor of the
Huguenots, the fortunes of France might have changed with its religion.
“Well, then, we still have to say our prayers in French,” said
Catherine, when the first reports of the battle assigned the victory to
Condé.
Both armies now retired to winter-quarters: Coligny leading the remnant
of the Huguenot forces to Orleans, and Guise returning to Paris with an
escort of 2400 Spanish arquebusiers. Now that St. André was killed and
Montmorency a prisoner, the duke found himself the most powerful man
in the kingdom. Reorganizing his troops and being strongly reinforced,
he marched out early next year to lay siege to Orleans, for winter
brought little cessation to the strife. Coligny, who was in great
want of money, had moved into Normandy, to re-open his communications
with England, having left his brother Andelot in command of the city.
The latter, though suffering severely from a quartan ague, took the
most active measures of defense; but Guise was no mean soldier, and
had had large experience in sieges. He captured one of the suburbs by
assault; his lines drawing closer every day effectually cut off all
succor; the admiral was too weak to attempt to raise the siege, and the
duke had fixed the final attack for the 19th February. Writing to the
queen-regent, he expressed a hope that she would not be displeased if
he destroyed every thing within the walls, “even to the dogs and rats,”
and sowed the foundations of the city with salt. It is probable that
there would have been a terrible massacre; but just as all hope seemed
lost, the hand of an assassin brought deliverance (18th February,
1563). On his death-bed Duke Francis attempted to justify himself for
the atrocities at Vassy, protesting that he had neither premeditated
nor ordered them. But death-bed confessions are rarely authentic
enough to be relied on: they are too often colored by the report of
interested witnesses.[326] On this point Maimbourg and Varillas are at
variance--the latter affirming that the duke prayed God to pardon all
his faults, “except that of Vassy.” He is also reported to have sent a
message to the queen-regent, advising her to make peace without delay,
adding that “the man who would prevent it is an enemy to the king and
state.” The near approach of death had probably brought that wisdom and
calm judgment in which he was so deficient, for only a month earlier
Throckmorton wrote of him: “The duke will in no wise accord to peace
till the Protestants be utterly exterminated.”[327] When Catherine
heard the news of his murder, she spoke her mind pretty plainly about
him: “The man is dead I hated most of all the world.” And when Condé
characterized his death as the removal of a burden, she continued: “If
the kingdom has been relieved of one burden, ten have been taken off my
bosom.”
The murderer was Jean Poltrot de Méré, a gentleman of Angoumois and
a convert to the Reformed faith, whose temper had been soured by
misfortune. Imagining the Duke of Guise to be the great obstacle to the
victory of the Huguenot cause, he determined upon his assassination,
and after watching him for several days, succeeded in shooting his
victim as he was passing, slenderly escorted, through a wood.[328]
Poltrot fled, and would probably have escaped; but not knowing the
country, he rode round and round until he returned nearly to the spot
where he had fired at the duke. He was soon captured and taken to
Paris, where, after being tortured to force him to reveal the names
of his accomplices, he was sentenced to a cruel death. He was dragged
to the place of execution on a hurdle, surrounded by a strong guard
to prevent his being torn in pieces by the populace. His right hand
was cut off, his flesh torn by pincers, and melted lead poured into
the wounds. His limbs were then tied to four horses, who, pulling in
opposite directions, endeavored to tear him asunder; but they pulled in
vain, until the hangman severed the muscles with a sword. Finally his
head was cut off and his body burned to ashes.
While stretched upon the rack in the torture-chamber, Poltrot
acknowledged that he had been bribed by Coligny to kill the duke. It is
true he had been much in the Huguenot camp, and the admiral had given
him money to purchase a horse--circumstances that tended to corroborate
his confession; but his hasty execution, without confronting him
with the admiral, or giving the latter an opportunity of vindicating
himself, was highly suspicious. Some persons have supposed that the
queen-regent had a share in the murder, on the ground that she once
said (or is reported to have said) to Tavannes: “The Guises wished to
make themselves kings, but I took good care of them before Orleans.”
Both suspicions are equally baseless, but the Guise family persisted
in charging Coligny with the murder; and it must be acknowledged that
the admiral’s conduct and language were not altogether satisfactory.
In his remarks on Poltrot’s interrogatory he says, that when some
one declared he would kill the duke in the midst of his soldiers, he
had not discouraged him (ne l’avait point détourné), adding that he
remembered well his last meeting with Poltrot, who went so far as to
say that it would be easy to kill M. de Guise, and that he (Coligny)
had made no reply to it, “considering it to be mere idle talk.” In a
letter to the queen-mother, which accompanied these remarks, he says:
“During the last few months, I have no longer contested the matter
against those who displayed such intentions, because I had information
that certain persons had been practiced upon to kill me.... Do not
imagine, however, that what I say proceeds from any regret which the
duke’s death occasions me. No, far from that, I esteem it the greatest
blessing that could possibly have befallen this kingdom, the Church of
God, and more especially myself and all my house.”[329] This leaves
no doubt that Coligny assented, if he did not consent to the crime.
He was not unwilling to profit by it, though he would do nothing to
further it. This may diminish the lofty moral pedestal on which some
writers have placed the Protestant hero; but he was a man, and had all
a man’s failings, though he may have controlled them by his religious
principles. Nor was assassination considered at all cowardly or
disgraceful in those days; not more so than killing a man in a duel was
until very recently among us.
The news of the duke’s murder was received with a cry of horror among
the Catholic party. Pius IV. ordered a magnificent funeral ceremony
to be performed in St. Peter’s, and Julius Poggianus, in his sermon
on the occasion, comparing Francis to Judas Maccabæus, called him the
preserver of France. In a funeral service at Notre Dame in Paris,
the vicar-general of Rouen extolled the duke, but would not pray for
him, “car fait injure au martyr qui prie pour le martyr.” He treated
Guise as a sort of demi-god, and declared that nothing restrained
him from reckoning the murdered man among the saints but his respect
for the pope, who had not yet canonized him.[330] On the other hand,
these honors only served to call forth a torrent of vituperation from
his enemies. The murder was openly defended, Poltrot was compared to
Judith, and ballads were sung in his praise.[331] He was called
L’exemple merveilleux
D’une extrême vaillance,
Le dixième des preux,
Libérateur de France.
In another ballad we are told that
Dieu suscita le vaillant de Méré,
Qui le Guisart a massacré.
Even Beza conferred on him the martyr’s crown, and Cecil “was
very glad to hear of the duke’s hurt, and could wish his soul in
heaven.”[332]
The times were favorable for peace. The Duke of Guise dead and the
constable a prisoner, there was no one to take the command of the
royal army. “I was obliged to command it myself,” said Catherine, “for
Brissac was so ill that he could not leave his bed.” On the other hand,
the Prince of Condé, with all his desire for liberty, was unwilling to
change “the soft air of the court and the smiles of the ladies” for
the austerities of the Huguenot camp. His offer to become the channel
of negotiations between the two religions was accepted, though not
without opposition from the embassadors of Philip II. and the pope,
who were for continuing the war. The Duke of Tuscany expressed his
dissatisfaction at the negotiations; and the queen-regent, to quiet
them, seems to have hinted that the pacification would be only a trap.
Santa Croce writes: “If any opportunity is found of infringing the
articles of this treaty, they will not be kept.... Should the queen
do as she promises, means will be found of punishing these people
when they are disarmed and dispersed.” But the peace party was too
strong, and the terms of a treaty were soon agreed upon. Before finally
accepting them, the Prince of Condé consulted the synod then assembled
at Orleans; but that impracticable body, while claiming absolute
liberty for themselves, would have denied it to those whom they
called “atheists, libertines, and anabaptists.” As it would have been
useless to attempt to reconcile the extreme fanatics on both sides,
the Pacification of Amboise was signed on the 19th March, 1563. The
right of public worship conceded by the Edict of January was greatly
restricted, the Huguenots being no longer permitted to assemble outside
the walls of the cities, but only in a single place within every
bailliage inhabited by Protestant nobles and their retainers. On the
other hand, one clause expressly bore that “every man should live at
liberty in his own house, without search or molestation, and without
being vexed or constrained for conscience’ sake.” Although the treaty
was acceptable to the majority of the Huguenot party, who were growing
tired of the war, all were not equally pleased. The admiral, who had
protested against it, characterized it by a single phrase: “That stroke
of the pen throws down more churches than the enemy’s soldiers could
have destroyed in ten years.”
Notwithstanding the insinuations of Cardinal Santa Croce, that “she
would pacify every thing in a few hours whenever she pleased,”[333]
there does not appear to be any reason to doubt Catherine’s sincerity.
It was her interest to pacify the country in a sense very different
from that intended by the papal envoy: she had something more to fear
than the hostility of the Huguenots. Spain was looking on, eager to
take advantage of the distresses of France, and a continuation of the
war could bring nothing but disaster whichever side prevailed. Less
than a year of civil strife had been sufficient to exhaust the finances
of the country, to accumulate an immense debt, to destroy commerce,
and to throw half the land out of cultivation. Castelnau’s testimony
in this matter is indisputable: “Agriculture was abandoned; multitudes
of towns and villages, pillaged and burned, were deserted, and the
poor laborers, driven from their homes, dispoiled of their furniture
and cattle, robbed to-day by one party, to-morrow by another, fled
like wild beasts, leaving all they had to the mercy of those who were
without mercy. Commerce was quite given up: no one was secure of his
property or life.... Thus the war, undertaken for religion, annihilated
religion and piety.”[334] “The Catholics,” adds Claude Haton, “were
as great thieves and brigands as the Huguenots.” The husbandman, no
longer able to till his fields in safety, either joined the army or
turned robber--a difference more in name than in reality. In many parts
they banded together to protect themselves, but they soon became little
better than brigands, attacking travelers, and ransoming the smaller
towns and villages. In the Vendomois they were so violent that the
gentlemen of the province united to repress their excesses and restore
order, putting at their head the poet Ronsard, a gentleman and also
a parish priest. “There are too many people in France,” shouted the
leader of one of the wild gangs called Barefeet (_Pieds-Nus_);
“we will kill a lot of them and make bread cheap.”[335] These ruffians
committed horrible atrocities in Champagne, sacking the houses of rich
and poor alike, killing the men and reserving the women for a worse
fate. At Céant-en-Othe, inhabited chiefly by Protestants, they burned
the villagers alive in their cottages. A poor girl, after enduring
unutterable barbarities, was covered with straw and roasted alive, as
they would have scorched a dead pig. One man was tied to a post and
used as a target for their arquebuses.
Trade suffered not less than agriculture, for commerce can not thrive
without the security of peace and law. Intercourse between town and
town was almost entirely cut off, for the highways were no longer
safe except to strong bodies of armed men. Tradesmen and mechanics,
therefore, quitted their counters and workshops for the camp; and
members of the inferior clergy, whose revenues had been extinguished by
the troubled state of affairs, flung aside the frock and assumed the
cuirass. And as if to make the confusion more complete, justice could
not be administered, so much were the tribunals overawed everywhere. In
Paris the anarchy seems to have been complete, each man being a law to
himself. Not even in the terrible revolution that closed the eighteenth
century were the bonds of society more thoroughly relaxed.
The royal edict which carried out the provisions of the treaty of
Amboise met with considerable opposition from the Catholics. At first,
all the parliaments of the kingdom refused to register it, and their
resistance was only to be overcome by the direct intervention of the
crown. The Parliament of Paris yielded under protest; that of Dijon
would not give way. The Duke of Aumale, brother to the murdered Francis
of Guise, and governor of Burgundy, supported the parliament in their
resistance, and declared, “There shall sooner be two suns in heaven
than two religions in my government.” When the municipality of Amiens
was in due course instructed to act in conformity with the edict, they
pleaded that the instructions were insufficient, and put them aside
until the king wrote to them in a tone that was not to be trifled with.
The disappointment of the fanatic Catholics is manifest from a plot
formed by a “fraternal association” to massacre all the Huguenots in
the capital. All not of the Guise faction, and such as were moderate
either in religion or politics, were termed “suspects,” and as such
condemned to be sacrificed. L’Hopital, “the traitor chancellor,” and
Montmorency, “le mauvais riche,” were to be the first victims. The plot
was discovered and frustrated by Joan of Navarre, and some of the most
violent of the civic conspirators were hanged at their own windows
without any form of trial.[336]
The pope did not openly protest against the Pacification of
Amboise, but virtually condemned it by a bull to the cardinal
inquisitors-general (7th April, 1563), permitting them to take
proceedings against heretics and their supporters, even in the states
beyond their jurisdiction. The opposition of the court of Spain was
entirely selfish. Philip II. knew that peace in France was dangerous to
tyranny in the Netherlands. Strengthened by his discontent, the Spanish
faction openly set the treaty at defiance. The government, however, was
sincere in its desire for tranquillity, and Catherine labored earnestly
to conciliate the malcontents. When Jacques Philippeaux was sent to
Gap, he called upon the Huguenots to deliver up their arms, but granted
them liberty of conscience, and permitted them to bury their dead in
the general cemetery with their own forms and ceremonies, until another
place could be provided. But such instances of toleration and charity
were rare; for France was like the sea, where the waves continue to
rise long after the storm has ceased.
Early in the course of the war, Coligny had the misfortune to lose
his son after a short illness of six days. He felt the blow keenly,
and to comfort his wife, who took it very much to heart, he wrote the
following letter: “Although you may grieve over the loss of our dear
child, yet I must remind you that, as it was God’s pleasure to take
him, so it should be ours to obey His will. He was a good child, and
we might have entertained great hopes of one so well conducted; but
remember, dearest, that we can not live without offending God, and that
our boy is happy in dying at an age when he was exempt from sin. It was
God’s will, and I offer Him my other children, if it be His pleasure.
Do the same, if you desire He should bless you, for in Him we should
place all our hope. Farewell, my dearly beloved. I hope to see you
shortly, which will be a great joy to me.”