He arose; he sprang forward intoxicated and furious: “By the death of
God,” he cried, “since you think good to kill the admiral, I will have it
so; but kill all the Huguenots in France as well, that there may not be
left one of them to reproach me with it afterwards! By the death of God
give the order promptly!” And he went out like one frantic. Catherine had
won--the race of Valois was devoted to the furies!
The conspirators passed the rest of the day, the evening, and a great
part of the night in preparing for the enterprise. The king having gone
they had discussed the heads to be proscribed. Should they strike at the
princes--Henry of Navarre, a king, and the king’s brother-in-law? They
shrank from this. Henry of Condé, son of him who died at Jarnac? The duke
de Nevers, whose sister-in-law he had just married, had, it is said,
great difficulty in obtaining his life. Catherine was aware that to kill
the Bourbons would be to render the Guises too strong. Should they strike
at the friends of the Huguenots, the Montmorencys? Retz, soon recovered
from his scruples, advised it. Tavannes opposed it. The head of the
house, who was at Chantilly, was not in their power; to kill the younger
members in the absence of the eldest would be to give a leader to the
civil war.
Thus it was agreed to kill only the Huguenots. All the Huguenots, as
the king had exclaimed in his madness. Catherine afterwards pretended
that she had the blood of only five or six on her conscience. Hypocrisy!
She insisted on the deaths of only these five or six, but she foresaw
and accepted the deaths of all the others. At the pass to which things
had come it was no longer a question of isolated assassinations but of
massacre--the massacre at least of the nobles who had come with the
princes and the admiral.[l]
[Illustration: A COURT GENTLEMAN, TIME OF CHARLES IX]
Everything was soon decided on; the duke of Guise was to begin the
massacre by despatching the admiral directly he heard the signal
given, by ringing the great bell of the palace, which was used only on
public rejoicings. Tavannes in the meantime sent for the provost of
the trades and some other persons of influence among the inhabitants;
he ordered them to arm the companies and to be ready by midnight at
the Hôtel-de-Ville. Those persons made some excuses and scruples of
conscience, for which Tavannes abused them in the king’s presence. He
told them that if they refused they should all be hanged and advised
the king to threaten them too. The poor frightened men then yielded
and promised to do such execution that it should never be forgotten.
The instructions they received were that directly they heard the
bell, torches were to be put in the windows and chains placed across
the streets; pickets were to be posted in the open places; and, for
distinction, they were to wear a piece of white linen on their left
arms and put a white cross on their hats. Notwithstanding the awful
crime in contemplation, the king rode out on horseback in the afternoon
accompanied by the chevalier d’Angoulême, his natural brother: but the
sight of his unsuspecting people had no effect upon him. The queen also
showed herself at court as usual in order to avoid suspicion.
Secrecy was desirable till the last moment and no one was informed of
the plan who was not necessary to its execution. But there were several
persons who caused great concern and anxiety to both the king and queen.
The queen of Navarre describes herself as altogether ignorant of the
affair previous to the execution; and when she retired after supper to go
to bed, her sister, the duchess of Lorraine, entreated her not to go. The
queen-mother was angry at that and forbade her telling anything further.
The duchess of Lorraine thought that it would be sacrificing her to let
her go to bed; and the queen-mother said that if she did not go it might
cause suspicion and observed that if it pleased God no harm would befall
her.
The count de la Rochefoucauld was a great favourite with Charles, who
took such delight in his company that he wished to save his life. He had
passed the evening with the king, and when he prepared to go home Charles
advised him to sleep in the Louvre. In vain did he press him; the count
resolved to go; the king was grieved that he could not preserve him
without violating his secret, and observed as his guest retired, “I see
clearly that God wishes him to perish.” Ambrose Paré, his surgeon, was a
person indispensable for the king’s health and comfort, and he used less
ceremony with him. He sent for him in the evening into his chamber and
ordered him not to stir from thence; he said, according to Brantôme,[e]
“that it was not reasonable that one who was so useful should be
massacred, and therefore he did not press him to change his religion.”
THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW, AUGUST 24TH, 1572
As midnight approached the armed companies were collecting before the
Hôtel-de-Ville. They required some strong excitement to bring them to a
proper mind, and in order to animate and exasperate them they were told
that a horrible conspiracy was discovered which the Huguenots had made
against the king, the queen-mother, and the princes, without excepting
the king of Navarre, for the destruction of the monarchy and religion;
that the king, wishing to anticipate so execrable an attempt, commanded
them to fall at once upon all those cursed heretics (rebels against God
and the king), without sparing one; and afterwards their property should
be given up to plunder. This was sufficient inducement for a populace who
naturally detested the Huguenots: everything being thus arranged, they
impatiently waited the dawn and the signal which it was to bring with it.
The wretched king of France had gone so far that a retreat was
impossible; but there is every reason to believe that even at the
last moment he would gladly have obeyed the dictates of nature and
have desisted from the cruel purpose. But the queen had perceived the
inquietude which tormented him; she saw that if the signal depended upon
him he would not have resolution enough to give it; she considered that
the hour should be hastened to prevent any rising remorse from destroying
her work: she therefore made another effort to inflame her son by telling
him that the Protestants had discovered the plot; and then sent someone
to ring the bell of St. Germain l’Auxerrois, an hour earlier than had
been agreed upon. A few moments after was heard the report of a pistol,
which had such an effect on the king that he sent orders to prevent the
massacre; but it was then too late.
Guise, who had waited with impatience for the signal, went at once to
Coligny’s house accompanied by his brother Aumale, Angoulême, and a
number of gentlemen. Cosseins, who commanded the guards posted there,
broke open the doors in the king’s name and murdered some Swiss who were
placed at the bottom of the stairs. Besme, a Lorrainer, and Pestrucci,
an Italian, both in Guise’s pay, then went upstairs to the admiral,
followed by some soldiers. He was awakened by the noise, asked one of his
attendants what it was: he replied, “My lord, God calls us to himself.”
Coligny then said to his attendants: “Save yourselves, my friends; all
is over with me. I have been long prepared for death.” They all quitted
him but one, and he betook himself to prayer, awaiting his murderers.
Every door was soon broken open, and Besme presented himself. “Art thou
Coligny?” said he. “I am he indeed,” said the admiral; “young man,
respect my gray hairs; but do what you will you can shorten my life only
by a few days.” Besme replied by plunging his sword into Coligny’s body;
his companions then gave him numerous stabs with their daggers. Besme
then called out of the window to Guise that it was done: “Very well,”
replied he, “but M. d’Angoulême will not believe it unless he sees him at
his feet.” The corpse was then thrown out into the court from the window;
and the blood spurted out on the faces and clothes of the princes. Guise
wiped the murdered man’s face in order to recognise him, and then gave
orders to cut off his head.
The ringing of the bell of St. Germain l’Auxerrois was answered by the
bells of all the churches, and the discharge of firearms in different
parts. Paris resounded with cries and howlings which brought the
defenceless people out of their dwellings, not only unarmed, but half
naked. Some tried to gain Coligny’s house in the hope of obtaining
protection, but the companies of guards quickly despatched them; the
Louvre seemed to hold out a refuge; but they were driven away by men
armed with spears and musketry. Escape was almost impossible; the
numerous lights placed in the windows deprived them of the shelter which
the darkness would have afforded them; and patrols traversed the streets
in all directions killing everyone they met. From the streets they
proceeded to the houses; they broke open the doors and spared neither
age, sex, nor condition. A white cross had been put in their hats to
distinguish the Catholics, and some priests holding a crucifix in one
hand and a sword in the other preceded the murderers and encouraged them,
in God’s name, to spare neither relatives nor friends. When the daylight
appeared, Paris exhibited a most appalling spectacle of slaughter: the
headless bodies were falling from the windows; the gateways were blocked
up with dead and dying, and the streets were filled with carcasses which
were drawn on the pavement to the river.
Even the Louvre became the scene of great carnage; the guards were drawn
up in a double line, and the unfortunate Huguenots who were in that
place were called one after another and were killed with the soldiers’
halberts. Most of them died without complaining or even speaking; others
appealed to the public faith and the sacred promise of the king. “Great
God,” said they, “be the defence of the oppressed. Just judge! avenge
this perfidy.” Some of the king of Navarre’s servants who lived in the
palace were killed in bed with their wives. Tavannes, Guise, Montpensier,
and Angoulême rode through the streets encouraging the murderers; Guise
told them that it was the king’s wish; that it was necessary to kill
the very last of the heretics, and crush the race of vipers. Tavannes
ferociously exclaimed, “Bleed! Bleed! the doctors tell us that bleeding
is as beneficial in August as in May.” These exhortations were not lost
upon an enraged multitude, and the different companies emulated each
other in atrocity. One Crucé, a goldsmith, boasted of having killed four
hundred persons with his own hands.
The massacre lasted during the whole week, but after the third day its
fury was considerably abated; indeed, on the Tuesday, a proclamation was
issued for putting an end to it, but no measures were taken for enforcing
the order; the people however were no longer urged on to the slaughter.
What horrors were endured during that time can be best described by those
who were present, or by contemporaries.
[Illustration: SULLY
(1560-1641)]
Sully[j] gives the following account of his suffering: “I went to bed the
night before, very early. I was awakened about three hours after midnight
by the noise of all the bells and by the confused cries of the populace.
St. Julien, my governor, went out hastily with my valet-de-chambre to
learn the cause, and I have never since heard anything of those two
men, who were, without doubt, sacrificed among the first to the public
fury. I remained alone dressing myself in my chamber where a few minutes
after I observed my host enter, pale and in consternation. He was of
the religion, and having heard what was the matter he had decided on
going to mass to save his life and preserve his house from plunder. He
came to persuade me to do the same and to take me with him. I did not
think fit to follow him. I resolved on attempting to get to the college
of Burgundy where I studied, notwithstanding the distance of the house
where I lived from that college, which made my attempt very dangerous. I
put on my scholar’s gown, and taking a pair of large prayer books under
my arm, I went down stairs. I was seized with horror as I went into the
street at seeing the furious men running in every direction, breaking
open the houses and calling out, ‘Kill! Massacre the Huguenots!’ and
the blood which I saw shed before my eyes redoubled my fright; I fell
in with a body of soldiers, who stopped me. I was questioned; they
began to ill-treat me, when the books which I carried were discovered,
happily for me, and served me for a passport. Twice afterwards I fell
into the same danger, from which I was delivered with the same good
fortune. At length I arrived at the college of Burgundy; a still greater
danger awaited me there; the porter having twice refused me admittance,
I remained in the middle of the street at the mercy of the ruffians,
whose numbers kept increasing and who eagerly sought for their prey,
when I thought of asking for the principal of the college, named Lafaye,
a worthy man who tenderly loved me. The porter, gained by some small
pieces of money, which I put into his hand, did not refuse to fetch him.
This good man took me to his chamber, where two inhuman priests whom I
heard talk of the Sicilian Vespers tried to snatch me from his hands to
tear me to pieces, saying that the order was to kill even the infants at
the breast. All that he could do was to lead me with great secrecy to a
remote closet, where he locked me in. I remained there three whole days,
uncertain of my fate and receiving no assistance but from a servant of
this charitable man who came from time to time and brought me something
to live upon.”[k]
EFFECTS OF THE MASSACRE
No allowable space would suffice for the records of such indiscriminate
massacre. Charles, by his missives, ordered the same scene to be renewed
in every town throughout his dominions. And the principal cities but
too zealously responded. Fifty thousand Protestants are said to have
fallen victims of the monarch’s order.[76] A few commanders refused. The
viscount d’Orthe wrote back to the court, that he “commanded soldiers,
not assassins.” And even the public executioner of a certain town, when
a dagger was put into his hands, flung it away, and declared himself
above the crime. The family of the Montmorencys, though Catholic, showed
their abhorrence of these acts, and had the courage to take down the
body of the admiral, which had been hung to the common gibbet, and to
give it burial at Chantilly. Charles IX had not failed to visit it,
while yet suspended. His followers complained of the odour. “The body
of a dead enemy cannot smell otherwise than sweet,” was his reply. He
now avowed that all was committed by his orders; and even held a “bed of
justice” in his parliament for the very purpose. The trembling judges,
with De Thou, their president, could not but applaud his zeal. As for De
l’Hôpital, who had long been banished from court, and who had abandoned
the friendship of Catherine since she had joined the Guises, he expected
not to be spared, and ordered his domestics to throw open the gates. They
disobeyed, and the murderers were unable to reach him. But De l’Hôpital
did not long survive to deplore the miseries of his country. His words
were, “After such horrors, I do not wish to live.” The joy of the pope,
on the other hand, and of Philip of Spain, knew no bounds. The supreme
pontiff went in state to his cathedral, and returned public thanks to
heaven for this signal mercy.
[Illustration: MICHEL DE L’HÔPITAL
(1505-1573)]
Charles had spared his sister’s husband, the young king of Navarre, and
his companion the prince of Condé. It was only at the price of being
converted. Death or the mass was the alternative offered to them; and
both, after some resistance, yielded in appearance. On the other hand,
mere abhorrence of the massacre caused many Catholic gentlemen to turn
Huguenots. Amongst these was Henry de la Tour d’Auvergne, viscount de
Turenne. After all, the crime, from which so much was expected, produced
neither peace nor advantage. The Huguenots were, indeed, paralysed by
the blow; but the Catholics were no less stupefied by remorse and shame.
King Charles himself seemed stricken already by avenging fate. He was
nervous and agitated. The blood he had spilled seemed ever to stream
before his eyes. A continual fever took possession of him, and henceforth
never ceased to consume him. The chiefs were equally languid, equally
disunited. The Huguenots had time to rally, and to prepare for defence.
Rochelle and Montauban shut their gates. Charles in his blindness sent La
Noue, the Huguenot, to Rochelle; he became its commander. The town was
at length besieged, and thousands of the Catholics fell before it; among
them, not a few of the murderers who assisted in the massacre on St.
Bartholomew’s eve. At length Charles, unable to conquer, and incompetent
to carry on the war with vigour, granted the Huguenots a peace. Rochelle
and Montauban preserved the freedom of their religion; and Charles had
the pain of perceiving that the grand and sweeping crime to which he had
been impelled had but enfeebled the Catholic party, instead of insuring
its triumph.
LAST YEARS, DEATH, AND CHARACTER OF CHARLES IX
[Sidenote: [1572-1574 A.D.]]
Catherine, in the meantime, had the address to procure the crown of
Poland for the son of her predilection, Henry duke of Anjou. She had
lavished her wealth upon the electors for this purpose. No sooner was
the point gained than she regretted it. The health of Charles was now
manifestly on the decline, and Catherine would fain have retained Henry;
but the jealousy of the king forbade. After conducting the duke on his
way to Poland the court returned to St. Germain, and Charles sank,
without hope or consolation, on his couch of sickness. Even here he was
not allowed to repose. The young king of Navarre formed a project of
escape with the prince of Condé. The duke of Alençon, youngest brother
of the king, joined in it. A body of horse were to wait in the forest
of St. Germain for the princes, and protect them in their flight. The
vigilance of the queen-mother discovered the enterprise, which, for her
own purposes, she magnified into a serious plot. Charles was informed
that a Huguenot army was coming to surprise him, and he was obliged to be
removed into a litter, in order to escape. “This is too much,” said he;
“could they not have let me die in peace?”
Condé was the only prince that succeeded in making his escape. The king
of Navarre and the duke of Alençon were imprisoned. The former, accused
of conspiring against the king’s life, defended himself with magnanimity,
and asked if it were a crime, that he, a king, should seek to free
himself from durance? This young prince had already succeeded by his
address, his frankness, and high character in rallying to his interests
the most honourable of the noblesse, who dreaded at once the perfidious
Catherine and her children; who had renounced their good opinion of
young Guise after the day of St. Bartholomew; and who, at the same time
professing Catholicism, were averse to Huguenot principles and zeal. This
party, called the _politiques_, professed to follow the middle or neutral
course, which at one time had been that of Catherine de’ Medici; but she
had long since deserted it, and had joined in all the sanguinary and
extreme measures of her son and of the Guises. Hence she was especially
odious to the new and moderate party of the _politiques_, among whom the
family of Montmorency held the lead. Catherine feared their interference
at the moment of the king’s death, whilst his successor was absent in a
remote kingdom; and she swelled the project of the princes’ escape into
a serious conspiracy, in order to be mistress of those whom she feared.
Lamole and Coconas, both confidants of the princes, were executed for
favouring their escape. The marshals De Cossé and De Montmorency were
sent to the Bastille.
In this state of the court Charles IX expired on the 30th of May,
1574, after having nominated the queen-mother to be regent during his
successor’s absence.[d] His end was so miserable that even Huguenot
writers express pity for it. His short and infrequent sleeping moments
were troubled by hideous visions. Exhausted by violent hæmorrhages, he
sometimes waked up bathed in his own blood, and this blood reminded him
of that of his subjects which had been shed in streams by his orders. He
saw again in his dreams all their dead bodies floating with the current
of the Seine; he heard mournful lamentations in the air. The night
before his death, his nurse, of whom he was very fond, although she was
a Huguenot, heard him complaining, weeping, and sighing: “Ah nurse,” he
cried, “what streams of blood, how many murders! What wicked counsel I
have had! O my God, pardon me and grant me mercy! I know not where I am,
so much do they agitate and perplex me! What will become of all this
country? What will become of me, to whom God intrusts it? I am lost, I
know it well!” Then his nurse said to him: “Sire, the murders and the
blood shall be on the head of those who influenced you, and on your evil
counsellors.” His last words were that he was glad he left no male child
to wear the crown after him.
This prince, who was so guilty and so unhappy, whose name has been
handed down from generation to generation, loaded with anathemas, was
born with the most brilliant gifts of mind and imagination, and with
less inclination to vice than most of his race. He had that real love
of art which had been the glory of his ancestor, Francis I, and verses
of his have been preserved, which are far superior to those of the
captive at Pavia--beautiful verses, addressed to Ronsard, who might
have taken lessons in good taste and spontaneity from this essay of
royal genius. He loved music no less than poetry, and during his last
illness melody alone had the power to soothe his pain for a moment. A
detestable education had destroyed all the gifts of nature in Charles
IX. When real glory was offered to him, when the chance was given him
to snatch France from factions, to make her enter upon her real destiny
by a bound towards her natural frontiers, by a brilliant and legitimate
conquest, the unfortunate man did not have the strength to seize this
unique opportunity. It came too late for him; his soul was confused and
without a guide, his mind vacillating. After long struggles he became a
prey to the infernal inspirations of his mother, and, as if carried away
by furies, he leaped into the gulf of shame and of blood, into which he
was followed by the rest of his race, and in which France came near being
destroyed with the Valois.[l]
The above version of the end of Charles IX expresses the opinion held
by most of the historians. Dareste,[m] however, finishes the reign of
Charles IX with the following remark in regard to this generally accepted
description: “During his last days there were current rumours which
have been transmitted to us by D’Aubigné,[n] L’Estoile,[o] and other
contemporaries. They recount his great inquietude, his idea that the
phantoms of the victims of the massacre of St. Bartholomew besieged his
death-bed; they tell us that he succumbed to his great remorse and these
avenging hallucinations. All these accounts, of doubtful origin, are at
least greatly exaggerated. His last illness, the phases and progress of
which were followed by the Venetian envoys,[77] was of a most natural
character. Cavalli[p] contents himself with saying that the plots during
the last days of his life caused him great torture of mind and prevented
his tasting an instant’s repose.”
Charles IX does not lack defenders. In great contrast to the almost
universal condemnation of him are the writings of some of his
contemporaries. Sorbin,[t] after a description of his physical qualities,
goes on to express his admiration of him in these words: “His manners
were the most gentle in the world; he loved peace and quiet for his
people, and desired nothing so much as to see his subjects reunited in
the faith and religion of the Catholic church, which made apparent to
everyone his great generosity, and showed how worthy he was to have
reigned in a more happy period than the one he lived in, when the
malice of his subjects kept him in difficulties. Had he reigned in a
more fortunate time, the opinion of his intimate friends and his most
faithful subjects and servants would have been correct, for they called
it a golden age. He would have been loved by all in a good and virtuous
age.”[a]
THE ACCESSION OF HENRY III (1574-1589 A.D.)
[Sidenote: [1574-1575 A.D.]]
The duke of Anjou,[78] heir presumptive of Charles IX, was in Poland at
the time of his brother’s death. Henry was no sooner in possession of
this crown than he took a dislike to the “land of the Sarmatians,” where
the rough and virile nobles knew nothing of the refinements of luxury and
vice which the corrupt civilisation of Italy had inoculated upon France.
Upon the news of his brother’s death he fled from his capital at night,
like a malefactor. Pursued by his subjects, who wished to keep him, he
did not stop until he was on Austrian soil. The pleasures of Vienna and
of Venice captivated him for a long time; he did not set foot within his
new kingdom until two months after he had secretly left the old one.
The prince was ill-fitted to master the situation that his brother had
left him. The victories won in his name by Tavannes had given him a
great reputation; but abuse of pleasure had cooled that early ardour
which had at first made him as brave as his ancestors. He no longer had
a taste for any but childish or effeminate pastimes, when he did not
surrender himself to horrible debauchery. It could hardly be said that
his ostentatious devotion was a trick of impiety, but all his religion
consisted in certain external practices. He thought that all his accounts
with heaven and his own conscience could be settled by a fast and a few
penances. Charles IX, his brother, had sometimes had ideas and plans
worthy of a king. Henry had almost puerile occupations; and D’Aubigné,[n]
seeing this man so careful of his toilet, his complexion, the whiteness
of his hands and face, was uncertain whether he beheld “a woman-king or
a man-queen.” Charles IX was vicious in anger and on occasion; Henry in
character and constantly. He read nothing but Macchiavelli, and, in a
word, he never knew that which makes pardonable much of his brother’s
conduct--remorse.
His first acts showed what was to be expected of him. At Turin he repaid
the hospitality of the duke of Savoy with prodigal magnificence by
giving him Pinerolo, Perugia, and Savigliano, the last remains of the
conquests of Francis I beyond the Alps. Hardly had he entered France
when he commanded the Protestants to turn Catholic or leave the kingdom.
His words were indeed menacing: but the reformers were reassured when
they saw that action was limited to sending a few officers to the
southern provinces, which were then much disturbed, and to processions
of flagellants, in which the king took part and which went through the
streets scourging their shoulders for the remission of their sins. He
made a solemn entry into Paris, where he greatly scandalised serious
people by having about him a great number of monkeys, parrots, and
little dogs. At Rheims, “when the crown was placed upon his head,” says
L’Estoile,[o] “he said in a loud voice that it hurt him; it slipped twice
as though it were going to fall.” An evil omen was seen in this, and with
reason. This head, which could not bear a crown, could no more bear the
strong and virile ideas that would have been so necessary to defend it.
POLITICAL CONDITIONS
France had need, however, of an able, honest, strong chief to take up
the reins of government. Castelnau[g] estimates that “already, by reason
of the civil wars, more than a million persons had been put to death,
all under the pretext of religion and public utility, with which both
parties shielded themselves.” It was only with great difficulty that
Catherine de’ Medici had been able to prevent a new explosion during
the last days of Charles IX and the two months of her regency. Between
the extreme Catholics and the fanatical Protestants a new party was
gaining ground, that of the _Politiques_, composed of moderate Catholics
who desired the re-establishment of public tranquillity by religious
tolerance and energetic repression of factions. The three Montmorencys,
Damville, Thoré, and Méru, were the most conspicuous men of this party,
which includes a great number of magistrates and of rich bourgeois. A
prince of the blood, the duke of Alençon, had undertaken the leadership
of it, less through patriotism than through ambition, for he counted upon
making use of it for his personal ends. The Guises were at the head of
the Catholics, the Bourbons at the head of the Protestants; in order to
be neither isolated nor second in one or the other camp he had thought it
possible to form a third party that should be devoted to his interests.
The Béarnais [Henry IV] justly calls him “a double heart, an evil and
misshapen mind, like a deformed body.” We must, however, give him credit
for two things: he wished to be French, he said, in name and in fact, and
an enemy of Spain; and he never stained his hands with the blood of the
Huguenots.[c]
On his return to Paris, Henry III remained there for the winter and
during Lent, taking part in the feasts and the devotions. Accompanied
by the queen, and carrying a large rosary in his hand, he visited the
churches, the oratories, and the different religious houses; an action
which gave rise to numberless lampoons, libels, and satirical writings.
[Illustration: HENRY III]
L’Estoile[o] in his journal, indifferent in the main and censorious,
gives a faithful portrayal of the feelings of the Parisian people. They
were anything but disposed to pardon the effeminacy and ridiculous
actions of the king.[m]
[Sidenote: [1575-1576 A.D.]]
They saw the descendant of St. Louis and Francis sink religion into
ridicule, and knighthood into disgrace. They saw a king of France,
surrounded by minions or favourites, dress himself in woman’s clothes,
and sing infamous ballads in a public meeting, and on the same day sing
psalms through the streets dressed in the robe of a penitent--a Christian
Nero, with the solemn voice of Coligny scarcely hushed, and the grim
eyes of the Bible-reading Huguenots fixed on all his proceedings. As a
consequence there was strife and misery in the land. Alençon, wicked
as the king, and not so clever, joined the levies which were gathering
round the old leaders. Henry of Navarre escaped from his honourable and
close-watched detention by the swiftness of his horse at a hunting-party,
and bade his adherents, who came to him in great numbers, once more “to
follow the White Plume, always in the front of battle.” He celebrated
his recovered independence by resuming the exercise of the Protestant
faith. But the great families of the Montmorencys and others, who were
merely discontented with the government, were disinclined to mix their
standards with the avowed Huguenots. It was, therefore, easy for the
queen-mother to break up the ill-assorted union. She sent embassies
of her bedchamber-women to wait on the duke of Alençon, and in a very
short time that feeble prince was detached from the cause. He, however,
mediated a peace which was very favourable to the reformers. Their
worship was permitted in all parts of France except in Paris; all edicts
against them were withdrawn; the massacre itself was disavowed; and
several additional towns were surrendered to them as pledges. This was
the fifth peace since the religious wars began, and was called the Peace
of Monsieur, in honour of Alençon.[79] The king, who appeared at ball
and theatre with rich necklaces round his bare neck, and affected the
appearance of a female beauty, had no wish, in signing this pacification,
but to be left undisturbed by the anger of faction or the ambition of
his brother. To separate Alençon from the Huguenots, he would have made
greater sacrifices still. But the sacrifice he made was quite enough. The
Catholics saw the overthrow of their faith in the terms of the treaty;
the Huguenots the finger of God in the spread of their opinions.
THE HOLY LEAGUE
[Sidenote: [1576-1584 A.D.]]
The Holy League began in 1576--a league which bound itself by the most
awful sanctions to extirpate heresy--to spare neither friend nor foe
till the pestilence was banished, and even, if need be, to alter the
succession to the throne. The next heir after the childless Alençon was a
Huguenot; but ascending far above the successors of Hugh Capet, Bourbon,
or Valois, there was a prince whose whole heart was devoted to Rome,
and who traced his lineal descent to Charlemagne--and this was Henry of
Guise, son of that old Francis who was assassinated by Poltrot, and who
himself bore marks of his Catholic soldiership in a wound upon his face,
which made him known as the Balafré. “No Protestant king of Navarre! We
will have Catholic Henry of Guise!”
But Alençon [who hated Guise and had tried once or twice to assassinate
him] was by no means pleased with this part of the league’s intentions.
He threw himself into its ranks by way of stemming its course, and was
lost or forgotten in the tumult which raged in every heart. The king
summoned the states to meet at Blois, but the states showed the somewhat
contradictory symptoms, not only of hatred of dissent, but of something
very like republicanism. They wished to control the royal power by
commissioners appointed by themselves, whose decision on any disputed
question was to be final; and being bribed and coerced by the party
of the Guises, they passed an edict interdicting the Huguenot faith,
and withdrawing all the guarantee towns from their hands. This was, in
fact, a declaration of war; the white plume was waving in the breeze in
a moment, and all the party were in arms. More sincerity arose on both
sides in viewing the matters in dispute, and amalgamation became almost
impossible. The king brought discredit on the league and on himself by
joining it as a member. This move degraded him from being monarch of
France to being one of a faction, and not even the chief of it; for in
spite of Henry’s calling himself the leader of the confederacy, the
real authority remained with Henry of Guise. The king, for instance,
wished to raise money, but the Balafré frowned, and the Catholic purses
remained closed. He could neither command nor persuade. [In fact there
seems to have been some idea of setting him aside somewhat as his fabled
ancestor Pepin had set aside the last of the Merovingians.] His thoughts,
therefore, were soon bent on peace. He managed to obtain a treaty at
Bergerac in 1577, by which the former state of affairs was restored. A
compliment at the same time was paid to the Huguenots, and a triumph
gained to himself, by the abolition of the league.
But one of the articles of the league was the indissoluble “association
and brotherhood of its members till its objects were obtained.” Now, its
objects could not be obtained while a Huguenot was favoured, or even
tolerated in France, or while there was a chance of the accession of so
dangerous a heretic as Henry of Navarre. War after war broke out, to
the number of seven in all, and with still increasing hatred; but it is
useless to particularise them. It will serve to show the curious mixture
of motive and action that one of these is called the War of the Lovers,
because it arose from the jealousies and rivalries of the leaders who
were invited to meet at the palace of the queen-mother. That astute
Italian introduced a sort of chivalry of vice in the prosecution of a
campaign. She invited the young king of Navarre to come to her court with
all the cavaliers he chose. There were balls and dances every night,
and the appearance of the greatest cordiality; for a radius of a mile
and a half was established round the house, within which quarrels and
fighting were unknown. It was an oasis consecrated to the coarser Venus.
But outside those narrow limits the war raged with undiminished ardour.
A Huguenot lord, after joining in the same dance with a Catholic, would
ask him to accompany him for a ride across the line, and the survivor
came in with bloody sword to boast of the result. One night Henry gave
a return entertainment to the queen and all the court. When the supper
was over, and the dances were resumed, Henry slipped out of the garden,
joined Sully and some other young nobles who were waiting his arrival,
and rode all night. On the following day the queen-mother heard that one
of her towns about thirty miles off had been surprised and pillaged; and
when Henry rode back within the peaceful circle, complimented him on the
success of his stratagem.
But gloomy forebodings began to mingle with these festivities. Alençon,
to weaken the power of Spain, was allowed to place himself at the head of
the revolted provinces. The revolt was religious as much as political,
and the furious leaguers saw the brother of the king and heir of the
throne enlisted against the church. His visit to London, to prosecute
his claim to Elizabeth’s hand, also, though terminating in ridicule and
disappointment, showed his want of attachment to the true faith. He came
back to Paris humiliated and unsuccessful, both in love and war. His want
of zeal was discovered, and not much reliance could be placed on a man
who supported the rebels of Holland and wooed the great heretic Elizabeth
of England. His death, in 1584, was not lamented on any other account
than that it advanced by one step the cause of a far more hated, because
far more terrible opponent.[f]
THE WAR OF THE THREE HENRYS
[Sidenote: [1584-1586 A.D.]]
The next heir to the throne was now the Huguenot Henry of Navarre. With
such a prospect before them the Catholic party grew stronger and more
determined. Three men, all Henrys, now stood forth as leaders of these
parties, and of these the royal faction was least. The vacillating king
sought alliance first with one side and then with the other. His own
inclination led him away from the Huguenot cause; his safety was not
assured with the cause of Guise. He was not strong enough himself to have
a loyal and determined following of his own.[a]
[Illustration: A GALLANT, TIME OF HENRY III]
The conduct henceforth of Navarre and Guise proved a remarkable contrast.
It was the interest of the Bourbon to elevate and dignify the throne
to which he saw himself likely to succeed; he therefore treated with
profound reverence the office of the king, and his person with outward
respect. It was the business of the Guise to degrade the crown, which
would otherwise have been too sacred for a sacrilegious hand to touch;
he therefore treated the king with marked indignity, and stirred up the
lowest passions of the mob in opposition to the highest authority in the
land. By his success in this policy he made a narrow escape of exciting
feelings of hatred to royalty itself, which would have punished his
ambition by taking away the object of it.[f]
An interesting result, however, of this attitude of the Guise party
was an advance in political thinking. There were hints abroad of the
sovereignty of the people. The Jesuit opponents of Elizabeth and
Navarre must give up the idea of hereditary monarchy. Orthodoxy was the
indispensable qualification, however, rather than popular choice; the
church rather than the nation was the source of sovereignty. It was on
this basis that the Guise party made a treaty with Philip of Spain. The
Pact of Joinville at the end of 1584 made the league party not only a
menace to hereditary monarchy in France, but by junction with Spain it
became anti-national in its character. The war now became more political
and less trivial. The destinies of France were at stake. But the foreign
aid which made the Guise cause a European question, and widened the
quarrel to one of universal religious war, was not destined to amount to
enough to repress Protestantism in France. The year 1585 was spent in
useless negotiations in France; during the next year the war was hardly
begun, and before decisive action had been taken in France the foreign
situation had changed entirely through the action of Elizabeth.[a]
On the 18th of February, 1587, the execution of Mary Queen of Scots
fell like a firebrand on the Catholic plans. She had once been queen
of France, and was related to the Guises. She had been true to but one
object throughout her life, but that object justified and ennobled all
her deeds, for it was the supremacy of the church. The violences of the
league, the curses of the pope, and the threats of Philip of Spain and of
all the Catholics of Europe, had led to the sad catastrophe, by showing
the wise counsellors of Elizabeth that while Mary lived and plotted there
was no safety for Protestantism or freedom; and now the blow recoiled
with tenfold force on the persons who had made it unavoidable. Philip
began his preparations for the Armada. Guise concealed no longer his
enmity to the king, and roused the populace and parliament of Paris,
both of which were entirely at his command, against him. The infatuated
monarch showed his usual want of judgment. He replied to the reclamations
of the magistrates by confiscating their salaries, and threatening to
throw them in sacks into the Seine. But no course of proceeding would
probably have altered the result. Victories and defeats all had the same
effect.[f]
_The Battle of Coutras (1587 A.D.)_
[Sidenote: [1587 A.D.]]
One great battle stands out in the dreary stretch of these years. Henry
of Navarre had marched from La Rochelle across the Loire country to meet
a German force which was advancing from the east. Henry III sent an army
under Joyeuse to intercept the forces of the Huguenots and he succeeded
in doing this at the strong position of Coutras. The situation was such
that the Huguenots had no hope of escape except through victory. Henry
had reached the château of Coutras an hour before Joyeuse and on the
evening of the 19th of October, 1587; the advance guard of the Huguenots
drove the duke’s Albanian scouts from the town. Joyeuse, however, was
afraid that the enemy would try to escape and began preparations for
battle in the middle of the night.[a]
The young courtiers had sworn to give quarter to no one. The king of
Navarre had only time to leave Coutras and prepare for battle, a little
before day, in the angle of land formed by the two rivers Dronne and
Isle. According to D’Aubigné,[n] who has left us the most circumstantial
account of this day [and who was himself a soldier in the service of
Henry IV], the Catholics had about five thousand foot-soldiers and
twenty-five hundred cavalry; the Protestants, almost as many infantry,
but hardly half as many cavalry.
The battle began with volleys of cannon. The Catholics suffered from
the Huguenot artillery, which was better aimed than their own, and with
loud cries demanded a charge. At the moment when the Catholics started,
the ministers Chandieu and D’Amours began to chant in front of the
Protestant army the twelfth verse of Psalm cxviii. At the sight of the
kneeling Protestants the frivolous youths who were about Joyeuse uttered
insulting cries. “They tremble, the cowards, they are confessing.” “You
are mistaken,” replied a more experienced captain, “when the Huguenots
look like that, they are determined to conquer or die.” In an instant the
Huguenot men-at-arms had mounted. “Cousins!” cried the king of Navarre
to Condé and Soissons, “I will say no more to you than that you are
of the blood of Bourbon, and, as God lives, I will show you that I am
your senior.” “And we,” replied Condé, “we will show that you have good
juniors.”
The Huguenot line was formed in a crescent on a little plain. The light
cavalry of Poitou, which formed the point of the crescent on the right,
were driven back by a great force of Catholic cavalry, and drew the
Gascon squadron of the viscount de Turenne along in their rout. The left
wing of the Catholics with a shout of victory pushed on to the baggage
in order to plunder, without heeding what was taking place on the rest
of the battle-field. Three hundred Protestant arquebusiers, believing
the battle lost and inspired by a heroic despair, threw themselves upon
a large battalion of nearly three thousand of the enemy’s foot-soldiers
with such violence as to break through the first ranks. The rest of the
Huguenot infantry followed this movement and the two bodies of infantry
attacked each other with great violence.
But in the meantime the fate of the day was decided elsewhere. Joyeuse
had started at a gallop with his men-at-arms spread out in a single line
of lances; the three Bourbons were awaiting him steadfastly at the head
of three squadrons formed six files deep. Most of the Huguenot cavalry
was armed with sword and pistol; when the enemy was fifteen paces distant
they threw themselves with all their might from their horses and fired
point blank, while some platoons of arquebusiers stationed between the
squadrons fired with surer aim upon the Catholics. The latter could
not even make use of their lances. Their long line was driven back and
broken. There followed a short and terrible hand-to-hand conflict, in
which the king of Navarre and his cousins kept their word to one another
and fought like true knights. The nobles of the court, gaily decked,
plumed, dressed in velvet and embroidery, were crushed like glass by the
poor and rude gentlemen of the south. These young effeminates knew only
how to die.
[Illustration: A FRENCH SAVANT, TIME OF HENRY III]
The first squadrons had met at nine o’clock; at ten there was not a man
of Joyeuse’s army who had not either fallen or fled. The infantry had
also dispersed after the defeat of the cavalry. The king of Navarre had
great difficulty in stopping the carnage. The Protestants took cruel
revenge for the barbarities practised by Joyeuse upon their comrades;
more than four hundred gentlemen and two thousand soldiers were put
to the sword. Joyeuse surrendered to two Huguenots when a third split
open his head with a blow of his pistol butt. Nearly all the lords and
gentlemen who had followed him were killed or taken prisoners. The booty,
including the ransoms, amounted to more than 600,000 crowns. The victors
had not lost forty men.
The king of Navarre showed himself worthy of this brilliant triumph by
moderation and humanity. He exhibited no more pride after the victory
than fear before the combat. He received all the prisoners with kindness,
restored their arms to some, released others without ransom, and declared
that after as before he demanded only the edict of 1577.[l]
At the same time Guise repulsed the enemy from the soil of France in
Alsace. The defeat was attributed to the king, and the victory to the
duke--a fatal contrast between him and Guise, of which he could not
weaken the effect by comparison with Navarre. The two uncrowned Henrys
were held up as models for the third, for even the Catholics saw with a
sort of pride the achievements of Henry, who, though a Huguenot, was a
prince and a Frenchman still. This state of affairs could not last long.
Guise made a solemn entry into Paris, and was received with all the
ceremony usually reserved for a king.[f]
Henry de Guise at this time was thirty-eight years of age. He was tall
and well proportioned, with blond curly hair and piercing eyes. The scar
on his cheek gave him a martial appearance. Although not a great general,
he possessed all the military qualities necessary to gain the love of the
populace. Indefatigable, prompt of decision, rapid and sure of execution,
affable, generous, familiar even, though ever guarding his dignity, he
had the external gifts and the successful personality which Henry III
lacked. Madame de Retz said that in comparison to him the other princes
were but people. All were devoted to him. “France,” Balzac said of him
later, “went mad over this man; to say they loved him is too weak an
expression.”[m]
_The Day of the Barricades and the Treaty of Union_
[Sidenote: [1588-1589 A.D.]]
Henry was at the Louvre, and trembled at his subject’s approach. When the
interview was over, Guise returned to his house and surrounded it with
armed men, as if to hint that his life was in danger from the king--a
very old trick, and very often successful. Everything continued quiet
on both sides till some Swiss royal guards marched into the town. In a
moment the mob were up in arms. Barricades were erected in the streets;
pistols were fired at the passengers. The Swiss were attacked, and
indiscriminate massacre began. Catherine strove in vain to induce her
unworthy son to go and show himself to the malcontents. He heard the
firing on his troops, and had not the courage to order them to defend
themselves; and while his mother rode boldly into the streets to quell
the insurrection, he slipped noiselessly to his stables, where the
Tuileries gardens now are, and galloped without pause to Rambouillet.
On the following day he got safe within the walls of Chartres. This was
called the day of the Barricades, and for a while it certainly advanced
the cause of the duke of Guise. With affected moderation he rejected the
acclamations of his party, allowed the Swiss guards to escape, and in
other ways endeavoured to pacify the adherents of the king. To Chartres
the king was followed by the now triumphant Guise, who dictated there,
to the degraded king, what was thenceforward called the Treaty of Union
of July, 1588. It forgave, or rather it applauded, all the outrages of
Paris. It declared all heretics incapable of any public trust, office,
or employment. It excluded the heretical members of the house of Bourbon
from the line of succession to the crown. It raised the duke to the
office of lieutenant-general of the kingdom; and it provided for the
immediate convention of the states-general of France. To the observance
of these terms, Henry pledged himself in the most solemn forms of
adjuration.
_The Meeting of the States-General_
Again, therefore, the states-general were summoned to meet at the city
of Blois; and, on the 16th of October, 1588, 505 deputies were assembled
to listen to the inaugural oration of the king. “Among them,” says the
contemporary historian, Matthieu, “was conspicuous Henry, duke of Guise,
who, as great master of the royal household, sat near the throne, dressed
in white satin, with his hood thrown carelessly backward; and from that
elevated position he cast his eyes along the dense crowd before him that
he might recognise and distinguish his followers, and encourage with
a glance their reliance on his fortune and success; and thus, without
uttering a word, might seem to say to each of them, ‘I see you;’ and
then (proceeds Matthieu) the duke rising, with a profound obeisance
to the assembly, and followed by the long train of his officers and
gentlemen, retired to meet and to introduce the king.”
The lofty consciousness of his royal character still imparted some
dignity to Henry’s demeanor. Addressing the states with a majestic and
touching eloquence, he asserted his title to the gratitude of his people,
claimed the unimpaired inheritance of the prerogatives of his ancestors,
pronounced the pardon of those who had already entered into traitorous
conspiracies against him, and threatened condign punishment of all who
might in future engage in any similar attempts. Even Guise listened, with
evident discomposure, to this unexpected rebuke, and public menace, from
the lips of his sovereign. It was, however, the single gleam of success
with which Henry was cheered in his intercourse with the representatives
of his people; and the rest of the history of the states-general of 1588,
is little else than a record of the humiliations to which they subjected
him.
He spoke, as we have seen, with royal indignation, of the outrages of
Paris and of Chartres: but he was compelled to omit all those passages of
his address in his subsequent publication of it. He publicly claimed for
himself the cognizance of all questions respecting the verification of
the powers of the deputies: but he was constrained, with equal publicity,
to retract that pretension. He entertained an appeal from one of the
members of the Tiers État against a decision of his order: but he was
sternly reminded that the states had met at Blois, not as supplicants
to obey, but as councillors to advise, him. He pardoned the dukes of
Soissons and Conti their having borne arms under the Huguenot standards,
that so they might be qualified to take their places among the order of
the nobles: but the validity of his pardon was contemptuously denied.
He resisted, as an insult, the demand of the states, that he should
repeat, in their presence, the oath he had already taken to observe the
Treaty of the Union: but he was taught that submission was inevitable.
He demanded that the states should, in their turn, swear fidelity to
himself, and to the fundamental laws of the realm: but he was obliged to
withdraw that demand. He insisted that the exclusion of Henry of Béarn
from the succession to the throne should be preceded by an invitation to
that prince to return into the bosom of the church: but his proposal was
inflexibly and scornfully resisted. He commissioned two of his officers
to lay before the order of the clergy his objections to the acceptance of
the decrees of the Council of Trent: but his officers were driven away
with insult. He solicited pecuniary aid for carrying on the war against
the Huguenots: but the suit was answered by a demand for his surrender of
a large part of his actual revenue.
This long series of indignities was readily traced by Henry to the
guidance of a single hand. Guise was but too successfully exerting his
influence at Blois to dethrone the king by degrading him. The crown,
which must inevitably fall from the grasp of a prince whom all men had
been taught to despise, might readily be transferred to the brows of a
prince to whom all were looking with admiration.
Yet it was a hazardous policy. The king who had conquered at Jarnac
and Montcontour, and who had concurred in devising the massacre of St.
Bartholomew, was not a man to be restrained by the voice either of fear,
of humanity, or of conscience. The friends of Guise saw, and pointed out
to him, the danger of provoking the dormant passions of the enervated
Henry; but he received their remonstrances with contempt, and habitually
and ostentatiously placed himself within the powers of the sovereign
whom he at once despised, exasperated, and defied.[w] This contemptuous
attitude was to lead to his undoing.
THE ASSASSINATION OF HENRY, DUKE OF GUISE (1588 A.D.)
On December 23rd, at three o’clock in the morning, the duke of Guise left
the room of Charlotte de Beaune, and found on returning to his house five
notes which warned him to leave Blois immediately. His attendants begged
him to take refuge without delay with his troops; but being weary he
retired to sleep. At about eight o’clock, he got up, dressed himself in
a new gray satin doublet, too thin for the season, took his cloak, went
out, passed over the drawbridge and entered the castle.
Henry III, during the same night, prepared the ambuscade. The evening
before, at seven o’clock, he told Liancourt, the chief equerry, in a loud
voice, to order his coach for four o’clock in the morning, because he
wished to visit a shrine and return in time for the council. He gave a
secret order to the Corsican Ornano, and to the forty-five Gascons of his
especial guard, to be near his room the following day at five o’clock;
then he shut himself up in his private chamber. At four he rose and went
out, saying nothing to the queen, who was uneasy. He ascended one flight
with Du Halde, led him into a gallery which he had divided into fifty
cells, during the last two or three days, under the pretext of lodging
there some Capuchin friars whom he wished to have constantly near him,
but in reality to hide and separate all those who were to take part in
the premeditated act. He pushed Du Halde into one, and without speaking
a word shut him in. Towards five o’clock the forty-five guards presented
themselves, one by one. He took each one in turn to the higher landing,
and locked them up, each in a separate cell.
The members of the council convoked for six o’clock arrived, and not
noticing anything strange on the staircases or in the corridors, began
their sitting. As soon as the king had seen Cardinal De Guise, who was
staying in the town, at the hôtel d’Allaye, enter the large hall, he
ascended to his cells, opened the doors, made his men come down, took
them into his room, having commanded them to make no noise so as not
to awaken the queen-mother, who was dying on the lower landing. The
glimmering light of the December dawn and the light from the king’s
candle but dimly showed their uneasy countenances and eager eyes. The
king made a speech to his forty-five men, urging them to avenge him; he
was delighted to find that his oratory was more successful than it was
with the state deputies. These young noblemen, suddenly transported from
their Gascony cottages, where they suffered hunger and every sort of
privation, to become the confidants of the king, to enter his chamber,
to hear themselves called his champions, his avengers, his friends, must
have been the more amazed at this sudden fortune, in that the duke of
Guise had threatened to plunge them back into their former misery.
By the advice of the duke of Guise these forty-five noblemen, sent by the
states to entreat the king to reform his household, were to be dispersed
as unnecessary. Still boorish, and knowing nothing beyond the patois
of their villages, they remained homely and unaffected. One of them,
called Périac, dimly understood that the king’s speech showed that it was
necessary to stab the duke of Guise, and he interrupted him with a joyous
familiarity, striking him in the stomach with the flat of his hand, and
crying out to him, “Cap de Jou, I’ll kill him for you!” Reassured by the
enthusiasm of these young men, Henry III himself posted them in his room
and in the passages; then he retired to his private chamber, impatient
and troubled at not having seen the duke of Guise arrive, but learning
finally, at half-past eight, that Henry of Guise had just entered the
council-room.
Henry of Guise had felt very cold in his satin doublet; his night had
exhausted him. As he entered he felt sick and faint; his eyes were full
of tears. “I am cold,” said he, “let me go to the fire.” Whilst more
wood was being thrown on the fire, he said to M. de Morgondaine, keeper
of the treasury, “I beg of you to ask M. de Saint-Prix to give me some
Damascus raisins, or some preparation of roses.” They could only find
some Brignolles plums, which he began to eat. M. de Marillac, master of
requests, read a report upon the salt-taxes, when the door opened and
Revol, secretary of state, was seen to advance. He said to the duke,
“Monsieur, the king asks for you; he is in his old room.” Then he hastily
went out. The duke did not notice this hasty retreat, nor the agitation
of Revol, who was so white that the king had come to him a minute before,
and said, “My God, Revol, how white you are! Rub your cheeks, Revol, rub
your cheeks.” The duke of Guise got up, put some prunes in his silver
comfit plate, leaving the rest upon the cloth. “Gentlemen,” said he “who
will have some?” He threw his cloak upon his left arm, took his gloves
and the comfit plate in the same hand, placed the fingers of his right
hand upon his beard, was saluted and followed by the forty-five who were
waiting for him. Two paces from the door of the old room he turned to see
why they followed him, and immediately received first a sword-thrust in
the back, then innumerable stabs from sword and dagger. Seizing hold of
some of his murderers he dragged them along with him, and fell near the
king’s bed.
On hearing this noise Cardinal De Guise broke up the council and rose:
“Ah,” he cried, “they are killing my brother!” “Do not move, sir,”
answered the marshal D’Aumont, drawing his sword, “the king has need of
you!”
At the same moment, the king half-opened the door of his room, and
seeing the body gave orders for the pockets to be searched. Whilst they
were carrying out this command the Balafré, uttering a long, deep, and
husky sigh, died. The body was covered again with a gray cloak and with
a cross of straw, and left lying there for some time exposed to the
taunts and mockeries of the courtiers, who called him “the handsome king
of Paris.” They were not content with insulting him by words alone. “A
diamond heart,” someone says, “was taken from his finger by the sieur
D’Entragues.” To prevent the members of the league procuring any relics
of their leader, the dead body was burned, by order of M. de Richelieu,
grand provost of France, and the ashes were thrown into the Loire.[s] The
cardinal De Guise and many other partisans of the house of Guise were
arrested. The president of the Tiers État, and three other conspicuous
Leaguers among the members of that body, were made state prisoners. The
cardinal De Guise was murdered next day.[a]
It is said that when Henry III was certain that Guise had expired, he
stepped from his room, sword in hand, and cried out: “We are no longer
two! I am now king!”[80] then pushed with his foot the still quivering
body. It was just sixteen years since Guise, at dawn of a fatal day, had
struck with his foot another corpse!
DEATH OF CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI
Another famous death soon followed that of the Guises. The queen-mother
had been violently affected by the catastrophe of December 23rd. Several
days after, she visited the cardinal De Bourbon in the apartment whither
he had retired. The cardinal broke forth in reproaches and accused
Catherine of having caused the assassination of the Guises. This scene
so disturbed the aged queen that her gout became worse; she was confined
to her bed and never recovered. The 5th of January, 1589, at the age
of sixty-one years, she joined her accomplice in the disaster of St.
Bartholomew. The other accomplice, doubly an assassin, was not long in
following his mother.
The death of this woman, who had figured so prominently in Christian
affairs for thirty years, made but a feeble sound in the midst of the
tempests that rose from the ashes of the Guises. The importance of
Catherine had diminished greatly in the last few years: justly punished
through the only source which could affect her, her love for Henry
III, she had seen her power wane at the moment when she hoped to reign
completely: neglected by her favourite son, half sacrificed to the
favourites, at enmity with her son-in-law the Béarnais, she finally was
without guidance; the race of Valois, which she had dreamed to place on
all the thrones, being without issue, the Bourbons being her enemies,
with the instinct of family, always found in a woman even the most
corrupted, her hopes turned to the children of her eldest daughter;
she thought to found a Lorraine dynasty; and only made herself the
instrument and the puppet of the league. Her qualities as a ruler cannot
be judged by the last years of her life: although morality and patriotism
equally forbid the justification of this fatal woman, the historian must
acknowledge that when it was possible to combine the policy of her family
with the policy of state, she pursued two ideas which were beneficial to
the destiny of France--the humiliation of the great, and resistance to
the house of Austria. The end which she failed to attain by treachery
and deceit might have been gained by the force and audacity of a genius
more magnanimous: Richelieu was in this regard the happy inheritor of
Catherine’s idea.[l]
THE SIEGE OF PARIS AND THE DEATH OF HENRY III
Heaven and earth rose against the massacre of Blois. It seemed a wilful
playing into the hands of the Huguenots to remove the Catholic chief, and
the pope looked on the deed not only as murder, but as heresy. The unruly
capital burst into a cry of disobedience, and the Sorbonne formally
withdrew the allegiance of the people from an unworthy king. The name
of royalist was as fatal as that of Huguenot had been. The president
Harlay, and sixty of the councillors, who bore the royal commission,
were only saved from death by being taken to the Bastille. But in the
midst of this general indignation, the states-general, and they alone,
were, in appearance at least, unmoved. Occasionally, indeed, and even
earnestly, they solicited the release of the prisoners. But they breathed
not so much as a single remonstrance to the king against his enormous
infringement of their sacred character and privileges in the persons of
their colleagues. With an almost incredible abjectness they addressed
themselves at once to the ordinary business of the session, and discussed
with Henry, amendments in the law of treason, schemes for the admission
of his officers to join in their deliberations, and plans for bringing
to account all public defaulters. They presented to him, not indignant
defiances, but humble descriptions of the sufferings of his people,
and meek supplications for the redress of them; and continued, during
a whole month after the death of the Princes of Lorraine, to prostrate
themselves before the king, as in the presence, not of an assassin, but
of a conqueror. The session then closed with the royal audience customary
on such occasions; when, in the hope of propitiating his favour to the
imprisoned deputies, they addressed him in a speech in which his royal
virtues, and especially his _clemency_, were lavishly extolled. On the
16th January, 1589, they at last took their leave of their sovereign, and
of each other: when “we parted,” says their great orator and memorialist,
Bernard, “with tears in our eyes, bewailing what had passed, and looking
forward with terror to what was yet to come; and observing that, in our
separation, France had an evil augury that she herself was about to be
torn in pieces.”
The augury was but too well verified. The states-general of France never
again assembled till they met ineffectually in the reign of Louis XIII,
to be then finally adjourned till the eve of the French Revolution.[w]
Notwithstanding all this, however, when the meeting at Blois was
dissolved, the members spread the flame of disaffection through town
and country. The duke of Mayenne, brother of the murdered Guise, was
declared by the council of Sixteen, consisting of deputies from the
sixteen quarters of Paris, lieutenant-general of the kingdom, till the
states-general could be assembled. In short, the king was deserted by
his people, and nothing was wanting but the formal sentence of his
deposition. Henry of Navarre saw his inheritance endangered, and came
to the rescue. An interview took place between the cousins--the most
Christian king, and the most chivalrous Bourbon. It was not altogether
regard for his own interests which moved the new ally. In so unsettled a
nation as France then was, a forcible change of dynasty would have led
to unending conflict. To save his country from perpetual civil war or
total anarchy was the object of Henry’s efforts. His plans were bold and
masterly. The few devoted adherents who still clung to their sovereign,
from hereditary attachment, or from the poetic compassion which binds
noble natures to a fallen race, accepted the guidance of the Huguenot
chief. Mayenne was repulsed from Tours, and when men saw such measures
of tenderness, as now distinguished the royal army, announced in the
royal name, and such admirable military tactics displayed under the royal
banner, the personal vices of the nominal monarch began to be forgotten.
Opposition was paralysed by the consciousness that the royal authority
was now supported by conduct worthy of a king; and at the end of July,
an army of forty thousand men, confident in their leader, and restored
to the full feeling of loyalty to the throne, commenced the siege of
Paris. Henry of Valois gazed on the hated battlements with delight.
“Farewell, Paris,” he said; “from this time your towers and pinnacles
shall offend my eyes no more. I will make it difficult to discover where
your position was.” But Henry of Navarre was more wisely employed. He was
superintending the placing of the troops, bringing up the guns, arranging
the tents; and it was understood that the day of assault was fixed for
the 2nd of August. Mayenne saw no chance of safety. His garrison was weak
and dispirited; the populace, with its usual fickleness, was cowardly
where it was not mad.
But among the rabble there was a youth of twenty-two, who had been a
Jacobin friar for some time, and had degraded the cowl by the wildest
excesses, both of debauchery and blood. Every crime was sweet-smelling
odour to Jacques Clément the monk. He wore a dagger which was displayed
with ferocious energy in every quarrel, and yet was fanatical in his
religious beliefs, and carried the practices of superstition and idolatry
to an almost insane extent. This was a sort of man who might be extremely
useful in the distress to which the Catholic party was reduced. He was
sent for by the duchess de Montpensier, sister of the duke of Guise, a
woman so wicked that her conduct drives us into a charitable unbelief of
its reality, who used such arguments and arts with the blinded, arrogant,
sensual young fanatic, that he went forth on the 1st of August determined
to repay his benefactress for her goodness and condescension in the way
she herself had prescribed. Letters were furnished to him, which were
obtained by false pretences from the president Harlay in the Bastille,
and on presenting them he was admitted to the camp of the besiegers, and
taken into the presence of the king. While Henry was reading the missive
which Clément put into his hand, the Jacobin drew a knife from his
sleeve, and stabbed him in his chair. It was not at once fatal. The king
started up, and, drawing the weapon from his side, wounded his assailant
in the face, thus mixing on the same blade the blood of the assassin and
his victim. The attendants rushed forward and killed the murderer at
once--a happy chance for his employer, for her name escaped the formal
revelation which a trial would have produced. Henry was placed in his
bed, and for a while hopes were entertained of his recovery.
Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it. An undiscovered
spring of goodness welled forth as his last hour drew nigh. He forgave
his enemies, recommended himself to his friends, embraced the hero of
Navarre, and thanked him for all his aid. He turned to the crowd in the
apartment, and declared Henry his rightful and true successor, and added,
“Dear cousin and brother-in-law, be sure of this, you will never be king
of France unless you profess yourself a Catholic.” If the dignity and
tenderness of a death-bed could have wiped out the vices and deficiencies
of all his former years, Henry III might have been reckoned among the
kings who have done honour to the crown. But the inflexible verdict of
history must be delivered upon the course of a man’s life, and not on
the expressions or aspirations of his last hours; and the last of the
Valois must be pronounced a king without honesty or patriotism, and a man
without courage or virtue.[f]
The Valois had given to France thirteen kings in the space of 261 years.
They had assisted and contributed to the decline of old feudal France:
they seemed at first during several reigns to institute a new order;
then, incapable and weak, they let slip from their hands this great work,
and disappeared after having plunged France into chaos.[m]
FOOTNOTES
[73] [Louis I of Bourbon, first prince of Condé (1530-1569), brother of
Anthony, King of Navarre, and great-grandfather of the “Great Condé.”]
[74] It was this edict which ordered that the year should commence on the
1st of January, instead of, as heretofore, commencing at Easter.
[75] [He did not take the title of King of Navarre until after the death
of his mother in 1572.]
[76] [Martin[l] says: “Nothing definite can be affirmed as to the
exact number of the victims: the _Martyrologe des réformés_ places it
at 30,000; M. de Thou thinks this figure somewhat exaggerated; the
_Réveille-matin_ speaks of no less than 100,000 dead; Capilupi speaks
of 25,000; La Popelinière of more than 20,000; Papyre Masson, one of
the panegyrists of the occasion, reduces the number to 10,000. The last
figure is too low; about twenty thousand appears to be the most probable
estimate.” This estimate of Martin’s, confessedly only conjectural, is
perhaps a trifle conservative. Sully[j] thought that 70,000 perished
throughout France. Davila[i] estimated the number killed in Paris at
10,000, over 500 of whom were nobles. This is manifestly overdrawn, when
we consider that the massacre of the first night was for the most part
confined to the north of the Seine. Possibly about three thousand may
have perished in and about Paris and twenty-five thousand in the rest of
France. But this, let it be repeated, is mere conjecture.]
[77] [The Venetian despatches are regarded as among the most reliable
historical sources.]
[78] The following table shows the genealogy of the last kings of the
house of Valois:
HOUSES OF ORLEANS AND ANGOULÊME
=Charles V= (third king of the house of Valois), 1364-1380.
|
+----------+--------------------------------+
| |
=Charles VI=, Louis, duke of Orleans, 1407.
1380-1422. m. Valentine Visconti
| He received the
| duchy of Orleans
| from Charles VI in
| exchange for Touraine.
+---------------------------+----------+
| |
Charles, John,
duke of Orleans, 1467. count of Angoulême, 1467.
| |
=Louis XII=, Charles,
1498-1515. count of Angoulême, 1496.
m. (2) Anne of Brittany m. Louise of Savoy
| |
Claude II---------------+-------------=Francis I=,
| 1515-1547.
=Henry II=,
1547-1559.
m. Catherine de’ Medici
|
+---------------+--------------+--------+----+------------+--------+
| | | | | |
=Francis II=, Elizabeth, =Charles IX=, =Henry III=, Francis, Margaret,
1559-1560. m. Philip 1560-1574. 1574-1589, duke of m.
m. Mary II, king duke of Anjou, Alençon =Henry IV=
Stuart of Spain king of Poland, and Anjou,
last king of 1584
house of Valois
[79] [The title of Monsieur for the king’s brother next himself begins
to be used from now on. But, according to Saint-Simon, it was not used
regularly and constantly until the time of Gaston, brother of Louis XIII.]
[80] [When he repeated the remark to his mother, she is said to have
replied: “God grant you have not made yourself king of nothing.”]
[Illustration]