CHAOS.
[1562–1563.]
Nature of the Struggle--Montluc--His Barbarity--Des Adrets--His
Ferocity--Murders at Gaillac--The Reform in Provence and
Languedoc--Scenes at Orange--Revolt at Valence--Disturbances at
Lyons--Compromise--La Rochelle--Massacre at Toulouse--Exodus
of Sisteron--Sauteries of Macon--Limoux--Palm Sunday at
Castelnaudary--The Monks of St. Calais--Violence in Berry--The
Chatelaine of Avallon--The Proctor of Bar--Atrocities of the
Bishop of Le Mans and his Lieutenant--Huguenot Cruelties at
Dieppe and Bayeux--Angoulême--Quarrels at Court--Siege of
Havre--Duplicity of English Government--Charles Proclaimed of
Age--His Character--Council of Trent.
While the events we have described in the preceding chapter were taking
place in the north and west of France, the rest of that beautiful land
was a prey to anarchy and all the direst evils of civil war. In our
favored country, where internecine strife has been so long unknown, and
where, even in its worst days, Englishmen never forgot that they were
brothers, we can hardly picture to ourselves the frightful condition of
France during the whole reign of Charles IX. A few scattered incidents
must be taken as a sample of the hideous mass of horrors: to repeat
a tenth part of them would sicken and disgust the least sensitive of
readers.
Foremost among the blood-stained heroes of these cruel scenes are two
personages, distinct yet alike, to whom no parallel can be found except
in the sanguinary butchers of the Revolution of 1789. They are Montluc
and Des Adrets.
Blaise de Montluc had distinguished himself in the Italian wars of
Francis I. He had been made prisoner at Pavia, and had decided the
wavering fortunes of Cerisoles. As lieutenant of Guyenne he was
ordered to reduce that province to submission, and he did it in a very
characteristic manner, putting his Huguenot prisoners to death without
permitting them to say a word, “for they have golden tongues.” Terror
was his great weapon, and he used to boast that any one could know
which way he had passed by the “marks” he left upon the trees by the
roadside, adding, with a grim smile, that “one man hanging frightens
more than a hundred slain.” His “Commentaries,” an autobiographical
sketch, which he composed when years and disease prevented his using
the sword any longer, are a curious illustration of the state of mind
to which a man can be brought who makes mere military discipline the
principle of his actions. Reform was insubordination; “obedience to
the king’s edict or death”--he allowed no middle course. One day
he hanged six prisoners without a minute’s delay. “Why,” said the
terrified neighbors when they heard of it, “he puts men to death
without trial.” What need of trial? he would have replied; you are
in arms against the king. At St. Mezard four prisoners were brought
before him as he stood in the church-yard, his two executioners behind
him with their swords drawn; they always accompanied him, with cords
and other implements of their office. One of the prisoners was charged
with seditious language. Montluc caught him violently by the throat:
“Rascal, how dare you insult the king with your ribald tongue?” “Mercy,
mercy!” cried the man. “What! expect me to spare you when you have
not spared your king!” And, in a towering passion, Montluc threw the
poor wretch to the ground, his head falling on a broken monument.
“Strike, scoundrel!” roared Blaise to one of his executioners; and
at the word the sword fell, decapitating the man, and chipping a
fragment of stone from the slab. Two others were hanged on a tree hard
by, and the fourth was scourged so severely that he died a few days
after. Montluc complacently adds, “And this was the first execution
I ordered after starting from home, without trial or sentence, for I
have heard say that in these matters you should hang first.... It shut
the mouths of many seditious people.” He avenged M. Fumel’s murder by
hanging or breaking on the wheel in one day between thirty and forty
persons, innocent as well as guilty. The hot-headed Huguenots of the
south retaliated at Cahors by hanging as many Catholics as they could
catch, fourteen or fifteen in number, who had assisted Montluc in his
atrocities. At Gironde he made a capture of some eighty Huguenots, of
whom he hanged seventy to the pillars of the market-house “sans autre
cérémonie.” Describing his doings at the village of Feugaroles, he
says: “We were so few that we were not able to kill all: the bandoliers
shot them down like game.” In one of his expeditions he fell in with
the Queen of Navarre, who received him very badly, and to his great
surprise “called him a tyrant,” and otherwise reproached him. His
ferocity he considered a virtue, and justified his cruelty as necessary
to get the better of his enemies. “God,” he adds, “must be very
merciful to us, considering the evils we commit.”[337] He was thankful
not without reason, for at the end of the war he was richer by 100,000
crowns.
Still more ferocious, and, if possible, with still fewer redeeming
qualities, was François de Beaumont, baron des Adrets, whose name is
still used in the south to scare naughty children. Ostensibly he was
a Protestant, but in reality a mere agent of the queen-mother against
the Lorraine party.[338] He would sometimes amuse himself by making
his prisoners leap from the top of a tower, or from a high window, on
the pikes of his soldiers stationed below. On one occasion--it was
at Montbrison, in August, 1562--a prisoner hesitated, upon which Des
Adrets reproached him with cowardice. The other retorted: “I dare
you to do it in ten times,” which caused his life to be spared. The
slaughter in that little town was fearful: more than eight hundred
men, women, and children were murdered; the streets were strewn with
corpses, and “the gutters looked as if it had rained blood,” says a
contemporary. At another time, though this belongs to a different
period of his history--the baron marched to besiege Valence, where
(as we shall see presently) the Reformed had revolted and seized upon
the Grey Friars’ Church. In defiance of his threats, they publicly
celebrated the Lord’s Supper in the appropriated church, as many as
5000 partaking of the sacrament. They afterward came to terms with
him, agreeing to open their gates and restore the church; but Des
Adrets had no sooner entered than he seized a number of Protestants
and sentenced them to lose their heads. They were taken to punishment
with their mouths gagged; and after being dismembered, their limbs were
fastened to the doors of the church they had profaned.[339] Strange to
say, however, the baron professed to deplore the cruel necessities of
war, and excused his barbarities by pleading that it was not cruelty
to retaliate. “The first acts are cruelties,” he said, “the second
mere justice.” De Thou, who saw him at Grenoble, describes his green
and vigorous old age, his fierce eyes, and thin, fleshless features,
marked, like Sylla’s, with red spots, as of blood.[340]
The ferocity of Des Adrets was exceeded by the atrocities committed
under the eyes of Cardinal Strozzi, Bishop of Albi, who excited the
populace of Gaillac to massacre their Protestant brethren, with whom
they had hitherto lived on friendly terms. About seventy Huguenots
were seized as they were attending divine worship, and thrust into a
dungeon of the abbey of St. Michael, situated on a precipitous rock
above the river Tarn. A laborer, wearing the judicial cap and robe
of a magistrate whom he had killed, went through the farce of trying
the prisoners and condemning them to be thrown from the wall into the
river. Boatmen were stationed on the banks of the stream to brain such
as were not killed by the fall.
In the south of France, the Reformed doctrines had extended more
widely and struck deeper root than in other parts of that kingdom.
This difference was owing to a combination of many causes. The great
cities of Provence and Languedoc still retained many of their municipal
privileges, dating from the time of the Roman dominion, which made them
almost republican. This begat the spirit of independence which always
accompanies self-government. Moreover, the Albigensian crusade of the
thirteenth century had not exterminated heresy: the opinions that had
been so bitterly persecuted fastened their roots deep in the hearts of
the southern population, where they lay, generation after generation,
waiting for the opportunity of displaying themselves. It came at
last, and with it a desire to revenge themselves on the descendants
of those who had devastated the fair south with fire and sword. It
was an oppressed nation rising against their oppressors, the sins of
the fathers being visited upon the children. At the first outbreak
of hostilities, the Huguenots seized upon the churches, which they
purified of all marks of idolatry, destroying the relics and making
a jest of the consecrated wafer. In some towns they entirely forbade
the Catholic worship, turned the nuns from their convents, and even
compelled them to marry. Beza, in a letter to the Queen of Navarre,
expressed himself plainly, though not very strongly, upon the matter:
“About this destruction of images I can say nothing more than what I
have always felt and preached, that such a mode of procedure does not
at all please me.” The violation of sepulture he declared to be utterly
without excuse, and that Condé was determined to punish it.
At Orange, the capital of the little principality which gave a title to
William III. of England, and to his still more illustrious predecessor,
the liberator of Holland, the Huguenots had long enjoyed an unusual
immunity from persecution; but the news of the massacre at Vassy, and
the threatening language of their orthodox neighbors, made them arm in
self-defense. This but accelerated the crisis; the Catholics attacked
the city, which, after a stout resistance, was captured, and treated as
a fortress taken by storm (6th May, 1562). Serbelloni, who commanded
the pontifical auxiliaries, excited his followers to their bloody
work. They spared neither age nor sex: all the sick in the hospital
were killed, some being tossed from the windows on the spears of the
soldiers below. Women were hanged to the balconies of houses, and
made targets to be shot at. But this was the least of the atrocities
they had to suffer at the hands of a licentious soldiery, who often
took pleasure in destroying their victims by the most lingering
tortures they could devise.[341] When Montbrun captured Mornas, where
these butchers had taken refuge, he put them all to death, and threw
their bodies into the river, having stuck on them a notice to the
“toll-keepers of Avignon to permit the ruffians to pass, as they had
paid the toll already.”
On the 25th April, 1562, the Seigneur de la Motte-Gondrin, who was
governor of Dauphiny in the absence of the Duke of Guise, seized the
gates of Valence; but his force was not strong enough to hold the city,
which the next day was retaken by the Huguenot citizens, aided by their
brethren of Montelimart and other places. Gondrin himself was attacked
at his lodging, and the rebels having set fire to it to drive him out,
he and all his party were slain. Among them was the provost of the
city, upon whom was found a missive from the Duke of Guise, ordering
him to “massacre and put to death all followers of the Gospel without
any regard to age or sex.”[342]
The disturbances at Lyons began in the night of the 12th April, when
the Catholics, “without any provocation,” rose in several parts of the
city. About a dozen persons were murdered, and among them a woman, who
fell by the hand of her own son. The governor, De Saulx, called in
reinforcements, while the Huguenots were strengthened by the arrival of
two hundred men from the surrounding Protestant towns. Both parties,
watching each other, kept under arms for a fortnight, until Wednesday
the 26th, when the Protestants, to the number of 1200, assembled
in their temple, and after invoking the blessing of God upon their
enterprise, marched out, occupied the Saone bridge, and made themselves
masters of the city. Every convent was broken open, every friar and
nun turned out.[343] In this tumult only three persons were killed,
and as many wounded. A treaty was now arranged with the Senate, who
promised to assign churches to the Protestants. The citizens who had
left for religion were permitted to return, the mass was abolished,
liberty of conscience proclaimed, and the Senate was in future to be
composed of twelve Protestant and as many Catholic councilors.[344] But
the Huguenots do not appear to have kept to the spirit of the treaty,
however faithfully they may have adhered to the letter. They committed
devastations that would have disgraced the Vandals. Churches were
ravaged, tombs broken open, coffins stripped of their lead and their
gold or silver plates; the bells were broken up and the basilica of the
Maccabees destroyed by gunpowder. There does not appear to have been
any private plunder, and this is the only redeeming feature in these
riotous scenes.
The flagrant violations of the January edict by the Catholics roused
the Huguenots of La Rochelle to assert their rights, and accordingly
the Lord’s Supper was administered with much solemnity--not without the
walls, but in the very heart of the city--in the Place de la Bourserie,
on the 31st May. Armed men closed every avenue, and a guard of forty
soldiers patrolled the adjacent streets to prevent violence. About four
in the afternoon, the people, excited by the novelty of the spectacle
and the language of the preachers, rushed to the churches, threw down
the altars, and burned the images.[345] The Count of Jarnac and the
mayor, who were both Calvinists, vehemently but ineffectually condemned
such violence, and were supported by the ministers. Some priests who
had been shut up in the Lantern Tower were stabbed and thrown half dead
into the sea. One Stephen Chamois, a Carmelite monk, had escaped from
the city; but being recognized at Aunai in Saintonge, he was called
upon to abjure, and, on his refusing to do so, was murdered on the spot.
The city of Toulouse was notorious for the ferocity of its
population--a character which it has preserved nearly to our own
day. At this time the Protestant inhabitants were estimated at
20,000 souls--a manifest exaggeration, although it was one of the
most populous cities of France. Their number was certainly numerous
enough to ensure a certain amount of toleration, and matters went on
quietly until the Pacification of Amboise. When the Parliament of
Toulouse received the edict, with instructions to see it properly
observed, they protested and sent a deputation to the king, praying
him, in case the edict could not be altered, “to permit them to sell
their property and go elsewhere, preferring to lose their goods,
and even their lives, rather than their faith.” Their petition had
received no answer, when in the month of April (1562) a disturbance
occurred at a funeral. Some lives were lost and the murderers were
punished. The excited Protestants immediately rose and seized the
gates and the Hôtel-de-Ville; and the parliament, determined to crush
the insurrection at any cost, called upon the populace to arm in the
defense of religion and order. They rushed like beasts of prey upon
their victims; they filled the prisons, tossed Huguenots alive out of
the windows of their houses, threw them into the Garonne, and if the
poor wretches tried to crawl out of the water, they were beaten down
with stones and staves. In May the two parties came to an arrangement
by which the Huguenots agreed to leave the city in a body; but they
were not to escape so easily. The Catholic peasants of the neighborhood
waylaid the smaller and unarmed bodies, and killed between 3000 and
4000 of them. Thrice the king granted an amnesty to the Protestant
citizens; thrice the parliament refused to register it, and continued
their vindictive measures.[346]
On the other side of France a similar voluntary expatriation occurred.
The inhabitants of Sisteron left their city. For twenty-two days a
crowd of both sexes and all ages wandered through the wild inhospitable
country of the Upper Durance, passing the night in remote and desert
valleys. Many perished by the swords of the Catholics; many died of
hunger and exhaustion; the remainder at last entered the friendly walls
of Grenoble, singing psalms of deliverance.
At Macon, where the church was barely two years old, the Huguenots
made themselves masters of the city, which was recovered by Tavannes
a few months later (19th August, 1562). He plundered every thing
on which he could lay his hand, and is reported to have picked up
enough to buy an estate of 10,000 livres a year. His wife, who was
equally unscrupulous, contrived to fill one hundred and eighty trunks
with linen, jewelry, ornaments, etc. No wonder that, after such an
example, men of high rank fomented discord and cherished persecution.
St. Point was appointed governor. He was the son of a priest, and
“thoroughly bloody and more than cruel,” said Beza. After dinner, when
the ladies went out to walk, he used to amuse them by throwing his
prisoners off the bridge into the Saone, jesting at their struggles
to save their lives. This savage sport the Catholics named “la farce
de St. Point;” but it is better known in history as the “sauteries,”
or “leaps of Macon.” The governor justified these cruelties as being
mere retaliation for similar barbarities committed by Des Adrets at
Montbrison, which the latter in his turn justified by the outrages
at Orange. Thus one excess leads to another: _abyssus abyssum
invocat_.
At Limoux in Languedoc, the disturbances were so many and so often
accompanied by loss of life that Marshal de Foix entered the town to
enforce the law (6th June, 1562). This he effected by letting his
soldiery loose upon the inhabitants without distinction of religion.
One Catholic, dwelling outside the walls, had his eyes plucked out
and his nose cut off; another was killed as he left mass, and his
body thrown naked into the road. The value of the booty acquired by
the marshal was estimated at three or four hundred thousand livres.
At Castelnaudary, as the Catholics were walking in procession on Palm
Sunday (1562), they set fire to a mill in which the Protestants were
worshiping outside the town, and killed all who tried to escape. The
number of victims amounted to sixty, among whom were the treasurer of
Catherine de Medicis, three municipal councilors, and the minister,
whose bowels were torn out and burned in a bonfire. At St. Calais
in the Vendomois the Protestants put a garrison in the monastery,
which was like a fortress, with its ditches, ramparts, and flanking
towers. The monks called for help, and one day, when the bell rang for
vespers, they headed their allies and killed thirty of the Huguenots.
A bloody retaliation soon followed: a resolute band, collected from
the surrounding district, stormed the abbey and put to death nearly all
the priests and monks they found in it. At Issoudun in Berry (Aug.,
1562), the soldiery rebaptized the little Huguenot children, even a
girl of thirteen being held naked over the font. One Furet was about
to be hanged without trial, and had already mounted the ladder, when
the king’s advocate suggested that it would be well to go through
some judicial formality. Accordingly Furet was led back to prison,
confronted with witnesses, condemned, and executed within an hour.
At Roquebrun two Catholics who protested against the cruelties there
perpetrated had their eyes plucked out by order of De Brezons. At
Aurillac every house was stripped from roof to cellar.[347] At Auxerre,
a street riot in the month of August, in which a man was killed, was
the signal for a rising. The wife of the castellan of Avallon was
stabbed with many daggers, and flung into the river. Being young
and strong, she swam for some time, until a boatman killed her with
an oar. Her body was then drawn ashore and exposed to unmentionable
brutalities. Two months later, when the Protestants were assembled for
worship at a _pressoir_ outside the town, they were attacked, but
fortunately escaped. Their houses, however, were pillaged and one man
so maltreated that he died shortly after. Tavannes was sent to restore
order, and he hanged three Catholics, but by way of compensation
inflicted a similar punishment on five Huguenots. At Bar-sur-Seine,
Ralet, the king’s proctor, put his own son to death for being found
among the Protestants.[348] The historian who reports this adds that
the Catholics cut open the bodies of women and children to eat their
hearts. These and other abominations which he records are probably the
invention, or at least the exaggeration, of religious party spirit.
In the little town of Bellesme a man was hanged for declaring the
costume of the Virgin to be indecent, and another shot because he would
not go to vespers. At Epernay in Champagne, a man who had been thrown
half dead into the Marne, was revived by the shock. He floated down the
river until he reached a sheltered place, where he got out, but was
followed, caught, and drowned in a deep hole. Some of the spectators,
who were Catholics, could not restrain their tears, for which they
were beaten and left for dead. Charles d’Argennes, Bishop of Le Mans,
who had been expelled by the Huguenots, raised a band of ruffians
who plundered the farm-houses and robbed the travelers on the roads.
One victim was hung up by the feet after his eyes were plucked out.
The bishop hanged two hundred persons, some of whom were very young
boys, and two madmen, who went singing and dancing to the gallows. A
woman was killed and her mouth stuffed with leaves torn from the New
Testament. The bishop’s lieutenant, Boisjourdan, distinguished himself
by a crime without parallel even in that cruel age. Two children, whose
mother had been put to death, went and begged him to restore part of
her confiscated property to keep them from starvation. He received
them kindly, and sat them down at table to dine with him. At a given
signal a soldier took the boy, a lad of fourteen, under the pretense of
showing him his bed, led him into the garden, there strangled him, and
threw the body into a pond. He then fetched the sister, who went out
joyfully to meet her brother, whose fate she shared after she had been
foully abused. For such atrocities the pope rewarded Argennes by making
him a cardinal in 1570.
Similar ferocities were alleged against the Huguenots, many of which
are unfortunately too true. Thus we find the people of Dieppe (the
Rochelle of northern France) pillaging and defacing churches, and
melting down the sacred vessels, from which they collected 1200
pounds of silver. In bands of 200 and 300 they made forays into the
adjacent districts--to Eu and Arques--from which they never returned
empty-handed. We read of their dragging priests into Dieppe tied
to their horses’ tails and flogging them at beat of drum in the
market-place. Some were thrown into the sea in their sacerdotal robes;
some were fastened to a cross and dragged through the streets by ropes
round their necks; and, to crown all, some were buried in the ground
up to the shoulders, while the Huguenots, as if playing a game of
nine-pins, flung huge wooden balls at their heads.[349]
A few weeks after the war broke out, the Protestants of Bayeux rose
against the clergy, committing the customary devastations, besides
violating the tombs and throwing out the mouldering corpses. They
gutted the bishop’s palace, and made a bonfire of the chapter library,
then the richest in all France. The priests and others who opposed them
were barbarously murdered and tossed from the walls into the ditch.
When the Duke of Etampes restored order, the Catholics took a terrible
revenge on their former persecutors. Once more, in March 1565, the
Huguenots gained the upper hand, when the troops under Coligny refused
to be bound by the terms of capitulation. Private houses were stripped
of all the gold, silver, copper, and lead that could be found; priests
who resisted were flogged, dragged up and down the streets by a rope at
their necks, and then killed. Children were murdered in their mothers’
arms; one Thomas Noel, a lawyer, was hanged at his own window; and an
unhappy woman had her face stained with the blood of her own son, who
had been killed before her eyes. Here, too, more priests were buried up
to the neck, and their heads made to serve as targets for the soldiers’
bullets; others were disemboweled and their bodies filled with straw.
The priest of St. Ouen--we shudder as we record such horrors--was
seized by four soldiers, who “larded” him like a capon, roasted him,
cut him up, and threw the flesh to the dogs.[350]
It would have been well had these deeds of brutality been confined to
Normandy; but they were repeated all over France. One Friar Viroleau
died of the consequences of a barbarous mutilation. Other priests or
Catholic people were killed by hanging, speared to death, left to die
of hunger, sawn in two, or burned at a slow fire. All this happened in
Angoulême. At Montbrun a woman was burned on her legs and feet with
red-hot tongs. The lieutenant-general of Angoulême and the wife of the
lieutenant-criminal of that city were first mutilated, then strangled,
and their corpses dragged through the streets. At Chasseneuil in the
vicinity, a priest, one Loys Fayard, was shot to death after having
been tortured by having his hands plunged in boiling oil, some of
which had been poured into his mouth. The vicar of St. Auzanni was
mutilated, shut up in a chest, and burned to death. In the parish of
Rivières others had their tongues cut off, their feet burned, and
their eyes torn out; they were hung up by the legs, or thrown from
the walls. Other atrocities were committed which can not be described
without offending propriety. One Huguenot is said to have gone about
with a chain of priests’ ears around his neck.[351] In 1562 men did
not stop to ask whether these things were true or false; they were
passed from mouth to mouth and believed, just as the vulgar even now
believe any story, however wild or improbable, that falls in with their
peculiar temper or prejudices. The Catholic burned with indignation
as he listened to the story of these outrages--sometimes related to
him from the pulpit--outrages against the men and the things that he
reverenced most upon earth. Blasphemy against God might be pardoned,
but against the Virgin Mary--never! They retaliated immediately upon
all the Huguenots within their power, and with all the more cruelty and
persistency that they fervently believed they were doing God a service.
But these are scenes too disgusting to dwell upon, and we gladly turn
to less savage, though hardly to purer scenes. The hostility between
the two sects showed itself at court by quarrels between the ladies,
the Princess of Condé and the Duchess of Ferrara heading one party, and
the widowed Duchess of Guise the other. The queen-mother tried in vain
to check their feminine disputes. The Huguenot ladies would not give
way. Chantonnay says of them: “They do little else at court than preach
sermons and sing psalms. Daily prayers are said in the apartments of
the Prince of Condé, with the help of all who have the will and the
ability to go there.”
These party questions were momentarily silenced by the necessity of
getting rid of the foreign garrison which still occupied Havre. The
Huguenots, as well as the Catholics, were pleased at the opportunity
of showing their prowess against “the natural enemy of France.” The
former, aware of the great blunder they had committed in the treaty of
Hampton Court, were eager to drive out the English, who did not feel
the slightest inclination to depart. Queen Elizabeth’s policy may have
been national, but it was very shabby and prejudicial to the Huguenot
cause. “We are resolutely determined to keep Newhaven [Havre], except
they will resolve to restore us Calais,” wrote Cecil on Christmas Day,
1562.[352] When he heard that peace had been made at Orleans “without
consideration of us,” he added: “If it be so, I know the worst, which
is, by stout and stiff dealing, to make our own bargain.”[353] And yet,
after these big words, the English government did nothing, though the
governor of Havre (the Earl of Warwick) urgently demanded supplies and
reinforcements, which did not sail until the place had capitulated.
With sanctimonious resignation Sir E. Warner wrote to Cecil: “The loss
of Newhaven so suddenly and in such sort, as it seemeth, I am sorry
for to the bottom of my heart. But against God’s ordinance no man can
stand.” The garrison had suffered terribly from the plague, which they
brought with them to England, where it is computed to have killed
20,000 persons in London and the out-parishes.
Condé, who had fought valiantly at Havre, hoped that his services
to the monarchy would be repaid by promotion to the office of
Lieutenant-General of France, vacant by the death of his elder brother,
Anthony of Navarre. Catherine had held this out as a lure without
the remotest intention of keeping her promise. She probably found
that the throne would be weakened by being kept longer in tutelage,
and therefore, with L’Hopital’s concurrence, anticipated the young
king’s majority by twelve months, ordering it to be declared as soon
as he entered his fourteenth year, and thus obviated the necessity
of appointing a new lieutenant-general. The ceremony took place at
Rouen, it being feared that the Parliament of Paris, in which Condé had
friends, would refuse to register the edict of majority. On the 17th
August, 1563, Charles went down to the courts of law in great state,
and after announcing the close of his minority, he declared that he
would not permit the repetition of such acts of insubordination as he
had witnessed during the recent hostilities, and that he desired the
Edict of Pacification should be kept in all its provisions.
Charles appears at this time to have been an amiable youth: he
possessed good natural qualities, and his attempts in poetry (if they
are his own) are not entirely unworthy of Marot, to whom they are
addressed. He had in early days a fair taste for literature, and had he
continued under the training of Amyot and Cipierre, he might have been
worthy of the throne. With such a mother as Catherine, and such tutors
as she gave him, he could hardly fail to become treacherous and cruel.
We shall see at times his better nature breaking through, but the evil
spirit within him was never thoroughly conquered.
There exists a curious letter written about this time by Catherine to
her son, giving him instructions as to the conduct of his life.[354] He
is exhorted to rise early, to go to mass with his four secretaries, to
dine not later than eleven o’clock, to ride or walk for three hours, to
hunt, to read his letters every day and see that they are punctually
answered, and to have the keys of the palace brought to him each night
and placed under his pillow. There are other exhortations of a similar
nature--such as would make him “the first gentleman of the day,” but
would not tend to make him a good Christian. Had she wished to see her
son a good man, Catherine would have given him proper tutors, and not
such as Gondi, whom Brantome describes as “cunning, corrupt, false, and
blasphemous.”
The termination of the sittings of the Council of Trent (December,
1563), imported another element of confusion into the religious
differences of the age. The council, although summoned in 1541, did
not actually meet until December, 1545. It had been hoped that some
means would be found of healing the divisions in the Church, but one
after another every form of Protestant opinion was eliminated from the
new creed, and reconciliation became impossible. The articles of the
council were made compulsory in every Catholic state; but the Church
of France was so far independent that the solemn consent of the crown
was required to make the decrees valid. They might, indeed, be received
as articles of faith, but could not be pleaded in a court of law until
ratified by the sovereign. To procure that ratification, the King of
Spain dispatched an embassador, accompanied by a deputation from the
Dukes of Tuscany and Lorraine, inviting Charles to send commissioners
to Nancy, where an assembly of princes was to meet to consult on the
best measures to be adopted for the extirpation of heresy. L’Hopital,
foreseeing the deadly consequences of such a step, advised the
queen-mother to receive the embassy and deputation very politely,
detain them at court as long as possible, and dismiss them at last with
an evasive answer. “The government,” says Languet, “have no idea of
taking away the liberty granted by the late edict; for (to omit other
reasons) they see that it can not be done without a disturbance, as our
churches are more crowded than they have ever been.”[355] Independently
of this consideration, we find Santa Croce writing to Cardinal Borromeo
(12th Oct., 1564) an account of an interview with the queen. After
listening patiently to his message from the Holy Father relative to the
introduction of the Tridentine decrees, she replied: “No one can feel a
more ardent desire for the observance of the council than myself; but
affairs are in such a state that I am compelled to handle them very
delicately, and it is impossible to issue any fresh edicts just now.
Whenever circumstances permit, I will do as his Holiness desires.” This
was no new language. In the instructions to his embassadors at the
council, the king declared that considering the number of the heretics,
he could not attempt to put down the new religion by force, without
endangering both crown and state.[356]