The early part of the sixteenth century must ever be memorable in the
history of Europe. Ferdinand and Isabella had given to the human race
a new world. Luther had hurled his defiance at Rome--had arraigned Leo
X. for blasphemy and corrupt practices. Henry V., grandson of
Ferdinand and Isabella (and nephew of Katharine, wife of Henry VIII.)
was Emperor of Germany. Astute and powerful though he was, he had been
unable to stay the Protestant flood. His empire, apparently hungering
for the new heresy, was divided already into States Protestant and
States Catholic. England was Protestant. The conversion of her King,
because the Pope refused to annul his marriage with Katharine, was not
one of the proudest triumphs of the new faith, but one of the most
important. Had Katharine's charms been fresher, or Anne Boleyn's less
alluring, the course of history might have been strangely changed.
Henry VIII. as persecutor of heretics would have found congenial
occupation for his ferocious instincts, and Protestantism would have
been long delayed. Spain was unchangeably Catholic, while France
offered congenial soil for the new faith. The germs of heresy, long
slumbering, were everywhere stirred into life.
Francis I. was King; sumptuous in tastes, suave and elegant in manners,
as handsome as an Apollo, gay, pleasure-loving, as vicious as he was
false, and if need be with a cruelty which matched his ambition, such
was the man who held the destinies of France at this time.
A rival claimant for the throne of Germany, he was destined to spend
his life in fruitless contest with the more able, wily, and astute
Henry V., the possession of that Empire the ignis-fatuus ever luring
him on; an end to which all other ends were simply the means. The
religious question upon which Europe was divided meant nothing to him,
except as he could use it in his duel with the Emperor. He was in turn
the ally of Henry VIII. or the willing tool of Henry V. If he needed
the English King's friendship, the Protestants had protection. If he
desired to placate Henry V., the roastings and torturings commenced
again.
In 1547 Francis and Henry VIII. each went to his reward, and a few
years later Henry V. had laid down his crown and carried his weary,
unsatisfied heart to St. Yuste. The brilliant pageant was over; but
Protestantism was expanding.
The question at issue was deeper than any one knew. Neither Luther nor
Leo X. understood the revolution they had precipitated. Protestants
and Papists alike failed to comprehend the true nature of the struggle,
which was not for supremacy of Romanist or Protestant; not whether this
dogma or that was true, and should prevail; but an assertion of the
right of every human soul to choose its own faith and form of worship.
The great battle for human liberty had commenced; the struggle for
religious liberty was but the prelude to what was to follow. There was
abundant proof later that Protestants no less than Papists needed only
opportunity and power to be as cruel and intolerant as their
persecutors had been. Before the Reformation was fifty years old,
Servetus, one of the greatest men of his age, a scholar, philosopher,
and man of irreproachable character, was burned at Geneva for heretical
views concerning the nature of the Trinity, Calvin, the great organizer
of Protestant theology, giving, if not the order for this crime, at
least the nod of approval.
* * * * *
Huguenot, that name of tragic association, was a corruption of the
German _Eidgenossen_--meaning associates. By the way of Switzerland it
came into France as _Eguenots_, and the transition to its present form
was simple. The Huguenots were no longer a timorous band hiding in
darkness as in the time of Francis I. A party with such leaders as
Anthony de Bourbon, Prince of Conde (his brother), and Admiral Coligny,
was not to be put down by a few roastings and stranglings here and
there. Anthony de Bourbon (King of Navarre) was next in succession
should the House of Valois become extinct, with a young son valiant as
himself (the future Henry IV.) pressing on toward manhood.
Catholic France needed plenty of comfort from Rome and Madrid in
dealing with this formidable body of heretics which had fastened upon
her vitals, and which was in turn receiving aid and comfort from the
young Protestant Queen across the Channel.
When that fair princess Catharine de Medici became the wife of Henry,
second son of Francis I., no one suspected the tremendous import of the
event. Powerless to win the affection or even confidence of her
husband, she remained during his reign almost unobserved, but, as the
event proved, not unobservant. Her alert faculties were not idle, and
when upon the death of Henry II. she found herself Queen-Regent, with
only a frail boy of sixteen to obstruct her will, she quickly gathered
the threads she already knew so well, and her supple hand closed upon
them with a grasp not to be relinquished while she lived.
Another young Princess had been tossed across the Channel. This time
it was her most serene little highness, Marie Stuart, Queen of
Scotland, intended for the dauphin, who was to be Francis II.
In order to be prepared for this high destiny, the little maid was
brought when only six years old to the Court of France to be trained
under the direct supervision of her future mother-in-law, Catharine de
Medici. Poor little Marie Stuart--predestined to sin and to tragedy!
Who could be good, with the blood of the Guises in her veins, and with
Catharine de Medici as preceptress?
This marriage was planned before Catharine's advent to power, or it
would never have been. Marie was the niece of the Duke of Guise, and
the central thought of Catharine's policy was the exclusion of this
ambitious, intriguing family from every avenue to power in the state.
Now, Marie would be Queen, and who so natural advisers as her uncles of
the house of "Lorraine"?
The marriage of the two children had taken place--the sickly boy with
only a modest portion of intelligence was Francis II. Marie, his
Queen, whom he adored, controlled him utterly, and was in turn
controlled by her uncles, the Guises. The wily Catharine saw herself
defeated by a beautiful girl of sixteen.
The family of Guise was the self-appointed head of the Catholic party
in France and represented the most extreme views regarding the
treatment of heretics. So the strange result was, that Catharine, if
she looked for any allies in her fight with the house of Lorraine, of
which the Duke of Guise was the head, must make common cause with the
Protestants, whom she hated a little less than she did the uncles of
Marie Stuart. But events were soon to change the situation. Did she
hasten them? Such a suspicion may never have existed. But may one not
suspect anything of a woman capable of a St. Bartholomew?
Francis II. was dead. Marie Stuart had passed out of French history.
The fates were fighting on the side of Catharine, who wasted no regrets
upon the death of a son, which made her Queen-Regent during the
minority of her second son Charles. She entered upon her fight with
the Guises with renewed energy, and became to some extent protector of
the Protestants. Realizing that her time was brief, she prepared
Charles for the position he would soon hold.
What can be said of a mother who seeks to exterminate every germ of
truth or virtue in her son--who immerses him in degrading vices in
order to deaden his too sensitive conscience and make him a willing
tool for her purposes? Inheriting the splendid intelligence as well as
genius for statecraft of the de Medici, nourished from her infancy upon
Machiavellian principles, cold and cruel by nature, this Florentine
woman has written her name in blood across the pages of French history.