Reign of Henry III. continued—Conspiracy of Salcede—Francis
de Rosières—Peter de Belloy—Francis le Breton—Bernard
Palissy—Daring plots of the League—Henry III. expelled from
Paris—The Bastile surrenders to Guise—Bussi le Clerc appointed
governor—Damours—James de la Guesle—Reign of Henry IV.—Members
of the parliament arrested—President de Harlay—Potier de
Blancmesnil—The family of Seguier—Speeches of Henry IV.—Louis
Seguier—James Gillot—Outrage committed by the Council of
Sixteen—It is punished by the duke of Mayenne—Henry IV. enters
Paris—Surrender of the Bastile—Du Bourg—Treasure deposited in
the Bastile by Henry.
It was a conspiracy against the duke of Anjou, and the king of France,
that brought the next prisoner of importance to the Bastile. This
conspiracy originated with the Guises, was promoted by that great artisan
of mischief Philip the Second of Spain, and contained the seminal
principle of the subsequent war, which is known as the war of the League.
The agent employed in carrying it on was Nicholas Salcede, a man of
daring and profligate character, whose father, a Spanish gentleman, the
governor of Vic, in Lorraine, having offended the Guises, was slain,
though he was a catholic, in the massacre of St. Bartholomew. By dint,
however, of heaping favours and attentions on him, the Guises, to whom,
indeed, he was distantly related, soon induced Salcede to forget the
murder of his parent. By a crowning act of kindness, they, in some
measure, acquired a right to his services. Counterfeiting the king’s
coin, as well as that of foreign states, was a crime which, for a long
series of years, was of common occurrence in France among persons of
rank. The punishment of throwing them into boiling oil was insufficient
to deter them; for it was so often evaded that it ceased to create
terror. Salcede had carried the practice of coining to such an extent as
to be able to purchase an estate. Being detected, he was summoned to take
his trial at Rouen, and, as he prudently refused to appear, sentence of
death was passed upon him as a contumacious criminal. But the duke of
Lorraine interceded for him, and his pardon was granted. This, and the
prospect of honours and rewards, linked him firmly to the Guises.
The duke of Anjou was, at this period, struggling to acquire the
sovereignty of the Netherlands, and under his banner were arrayed an
immense number of the French nobles. To the members of the house of
Lorraine he was inveterately hostile; for he looked upon them as his
personal enemies, and as having been authors of the many mortifications
which he had undergone. To prevent him from entering France, for the
purpose of succouring his brother Henry, was, therefore, an object of
primary importance; as, if that were not attained, their project of
dethroning the king, or at least becoming viceroys over him, could
scarcely hope for success. Morality was, in those days, at so low an
ebb among the great, that it is probable the Guises would have felt but
few scruples in accomplishing their purpose by the death of the duke;
though, avowedly, their sole aim was to shut him out of France, by
closing against him the northern frontier and the ports of Britanny.
The daring spirit and desperate situation of Salcede—for he was deeply
involved in debt—pointed him out to the Guises as a fit instrument. The
duke of Guise tempted him by a solemn assurance, that the king of Spain
would reward him with rank and occupation proportioned to the magnitude
of his services; and he backed his arguments and promises by descanting
on the benefit which the catholic religion would derive from ruining the
duke of Anjou. His eloquence prevailed, and Salcede unreluctantly devoted
himself to the furtherance of the treasonable scheme.
It was arranged, that the Guises should secretly furnish funds for
raising a regiment, to be commanded by Salcede, and that he should then
proceed to the duke of Anjou, and offer to bring to his banner a chosen
body of men, who would engage to remain under it for several months. No
doubt was entertained that, as the duke was scantily provided with money,
was, in consequence, daily deserted by some of his troops, and had no
great confidence in the Belgians, he would gladly accept this offer; and
would either entrust the new corps with the keeping of some important
fortress, or reserve it as a guard for his own person. In either case,
the conspirators could turn the circumstance to account. The seizure of
Dunkirk and Cambray were the main points to which Salcede’s attention
was to be directed; but he was also to do his best to shake the fidelity
of Anjou’s officers, and, of course, was to act as spy for the Spanish
monarch. The prince of Parma, meanwhile, was gradually to approach
Calais, the governor of which town, it is said, had promised to betray
his trust. The sudden loss of Calais would, it was imagined, so terrify
Henry, that he would give the supreme command of his forces to the duke
of Guise; the French accomplices of the Guises would then rise in arms;
and the plan of subverting the government would be easily executed.
As had been expected, the proposal of Salcede was listened to with much
pleasure by the duke of Anjou, who treated him as a valuable friend. The
duke was as yet ignorant that the conspirator had been reconciled to the
Guises. Nor was he aware that, in his way to Bruges, Salcede had visited
the enemy’s camp, had a conference with the prince of Parma, the viceroy,
and been accompanied to Bruges by two of the prince’s agents. But the
sharp-sighted prince of Orange was not disposed to grant his confidence
to the newcomer so readily as the duke; he disliked and suspected him,
both as being in his origin a Spaniard, and as having been found guilty
of an infamous offence. The enquiries of the prince of Orange elicited
sufficient evidence to justify his suspicion that Salcede had sinister
designs, and he, therefore, advised the duke to arrest him. This advice
was followed by Anjou, who had already learned, from another quarter,
that his pretended partisan was connected with the Guises. Salcede was
accordingly arrested on his coming to the palace. The two agents of the
prince of Parma were waiting at the palace gate for their confederate’s
return; one of them escaped, the other, Francis Baza by name, was seized
and committed to prison. In the course of a few days, Baza put an end to
his existence.
In the first examination, mysterious hints were all that could be drawn
from Salcede; in the second, he spontaneously disclosed so complicated
and gigantic a conspiracy, that his hearers were astounded. That part of
it which related to Belgium and the duke of Anjou was the smallest part;
a mere episode in the Guisian Iliad. The conspirators purposed nothing
less than to imprison the king of France, exterminate the royal family,
and subject the kingdom to the domination of Spain. Their means Salcede
stated to be immense. As implicated in the plot, he named a multitude
of the most powerful nobles, a majority of the governors of provinces
and towns, and even some of the king’s ministers and favourites. The
provinces of Picardy, Champagne, Burgundy, Britanny, and the Cotentin,
were, he said, secured by the plotters; nor would foreign aid be wanting,
as the papal and Piedmontese troops were to enter France on the side of
Lyons, while two Spanish armies were to pass the Pyrenees into Bearn
and Gascony, where the malecontents were in readiness to receive them.
This deposition, after a lapse of some days, he voluntarily repeated and
enlarged, and he offered to prove it, by being confronted with three
persons, whom he had before mentioned, and who, he was convinced, would
confess that he had spoken but the truth.
This disclosure was of too much importance to Henry of France to admit of
delay in making it known to him. The duke of Anjou accordingly despatched
one of his chamberlains to Paris, with the depositions, and a letter, in
which the Guises were not spared. At first, Henry was startled at the
seeming danger; but his natural dislike of business, and his love of
pleasure, soon induced him to take refuge in the idea that the whole was
an invention of some one who wished to disturb his quiet, or a stratagem
of his brother, to obtain liberal succours. Not so thought his minister
Bellièvre, in whom he placed great confidence. While the minister perused
the paper, the changes in his countenance plainly showed that he thought
the plot was real, and the peril from it extreme. It was at length
settled, that Bellièvre, accompanied by Brulart, one of the secretaries
of state, should proceed to Bruges, interrogate Salcede, and require
that the criminal should be transferred to Paris. “If,” said the king,
“my brother consents to the transfer, I shall believe that a conspiracy
exists.”
When Bellièvre questioned him, Salcede, for the third time, repeated
his story. He was now conveyed to France, and placed in the castle of
Vincennes; the duke of Anjou having readily acceded to the wish of his
brother. When, however, he was brought before the king in council,
he disavowed all that he had previously said. His confession had, he
affirmed, been dictated to him by three persons in the duke’s service,
who compelled him to write it. “Why, then, did you say the same to
Bellièvre, when those persons were absent?” inquired the king. To this
the unblushing prisoner answered, that Bellièvre had intimidated him by
threats, and that he had always been under the influence of terror while
he was in the ducal palace. Bellièvre was a man remarkable for patience
and politeness, but he was so provoked by this charge, that he could not
forbear from exclaiming, “You are an impudent slanderer.” At the close of
the examination, Salcede was removed to the Bastile. There he was again
examined, and there he persisted in his disavowal.
It now became a question what should be done with Salcede. The president
de Thou advised that he should be retained in prison. He urged that, if
the conspiracy were real, his detention would intimidate his accomplices,
and afford the means of convicting them in case of need; while, on the
other hand, if the conspiracy were only a calumny, invented by turbulent
and ill-disposed persons, the existence of the criminal might serve
to justify the innocence of those whom he had accused. His son, the
celebrated historian, tells us, that the president had an additional
motive in thus advising; he wished not merely to hold the conspirators
in check, by preserving the evidence of their guilt, but, at the same
time, to keep before the king’s eyes a memento of the danger to which
he exposed himself by his unbridled licentiousness, and his oppressive
misgovernment.
This prudent counsel was, however, strenuously opposed. It was contended
that, in whatever light the question was viewed, the culprit ought to
die. Supposing the plot to be a reality, his death would terrify his
associates; his being suffered to live might drive them to rebellion
through despair. If, on the contrary, his tale were false, death ought
to punish the calumny; and the more so because, if impunity were granted
to him, resentment, at being unjustly suspected, might provoke innocent
persons to become really criminal.
The motive which prompted many to insist on the latter mode of proceeding
cannot be mistaken; they were pleading for their own lives, or the
lives of their friends. The weakness of their reasoning is so evident
as to need no exposure. It was not by stifling inquiry that the monarch
could hope to neutralize or convert his enemies. History does, indeed,
record instances where it was wise as well as generous to throw the
veil of oblivion over an incipient plot, and save the plotters from the
necessity of becoming open rebels; but this was not a case of the kind.
The plotters against Henry were irreclaimable, and, ascribing his conduct
to fear and not to mildness, would only be encouraged to persist in their
destructive projects. When justice has pronounced upon the criminal,
then is the time for a sovereign to show mercy; and, if he have a human
heart, he will set no other bounds to his clemency than those which are
imperatively prescribed by the safety of the state. But he who shrinks
from prosecuting a traitor offers a premium for the growth of treason.
Henry, nevertheless, decided otherwise. He adopted the opinion of those
who were for sending Salcede to the scaffold. In thus following their
insidious advice, he was not influenced by principle or mistaken policy;
he was mainly actuated by a childish impatience, an eagerness to get rid
of a disagreeable subject, which interrupted his contemptible pleasures.
Like the stupid bird, which hopes to baffle its pursuers by hiding its
head, he seems to have thought that if danger were out of sight it could
not reach him. He had, however, another and an equally mean reason for
his decision; the wish to mortify de Thou. The president had recently
offended him by a virtuous and truly loyal act. Dreading the effect which
would be produced by the king’s incessant edicts to extort money, he
implored him to pause, lest poverty and despair should drive the people
to resistance. Instead of profiting by this patriotic warning, Henry
turned round to his train of flatterers, and sneeringly exclaimed, “The
poor man is in a state of dotage!” He was righteously punished for his
scorn of honest and prudent counsel. Ere many years had gone by, he was
taught to lament with tears the loss of this doting magistrate, and to
confess that, had de Thou lived, Paris would never have revolted.
Salcede was brought to trial. Everything that could throw light on the
fact of the conspiracy was studiously suppressed; there was no search for
evidence relative to it, no examination and confronting of the persons
who had been charged by the prisoner. The sole object was to obtain a
sentence of death against the man whose existence might prove fatal to
the conspirators. That object was accomplished on the 25th of October,
1582. Salcede was pronounced guilty of high treason, and was condemned
to be torn into quarters by four horses; his quarters were to be placed
on gibbets, at the principal gates of Paris, and his head was to be sent
to Antwerp, to be exposed in a similar manner. Immediately previous to
his execution, he was likewise to be put to the torture; this was a
supererogatory act of cruelty, for, even if we admit the possibility of
justifying the use of torture, its infliction in this instance could
answer no useful purpose. It was decreed, also, by his judges, that “his
confessions, the private letters found on him, and _the declarations
which he had made since the commencement of his trial_, should be burnt
to ashes; as having been malignantly and calumniously invented, to
prejudice the honour of various princes, nobles, and other persons.” Here
is the key to the whole proceeding.
“Light dies before thy uncreating word!
Thy hand, great anarch, lets the curtain fall,
And universal darkness buries all.”
The king was sufficiently devoid of feeling to witness, behind a curtain,
the torturing of the prisoner, and to go to the Town Hall, to see
executed the ferocious and sickening sentence, which condemned a fellow
being to be torn to pieces by horses. But, even in that corrupt and
semi-barbarous age, there were not wanting persons who passed a severe
censure on Henry, for conduct which was disgraceful to him as a king and
a man.
When the torture was applied, Salcede again veered about; he re-asserted
the whole of what he had originally stated, with respect to the
conspiracy. This blow was, however, adroitly parried by those whom it
might otherwise have injured. As he was passing up a dark staircase,
after having been tortured, he was joined by a priest, of the order of
Jesuits, who exhorted him to retract his confession once more. This
ghostly adviser no doubt worked powerfully on his hopes and fears, with
regard to another world, and he succeeded in prevailing on him to make a
new retractation. As nothing was to be gained by varying in his story, he
persisted in this retractation, and, at the place of execution, he loudly
extolled the virtues, and proclaimed the innocence, of his patrons, the
Guises. He lived a villain, and he died a self-convicted liar.
In the following year, 1583, there occurred another, but comparatively
a trivial, illustration of the ambitious views of the Guises, and
the vacillation and timidity of the king. Francis de Rosières, a
native of Toul, born in 1534, was a man of prepossessing manners, and
of considerable erudition and eloquence. He rose to be archdeacon of
Toul, and through the patronage of cardinal de Guise, obtained several
benefices, and the office of counsellor to the duke of Lorraine. To prove
his gratitude to his benefactors, and probably at their instigation, he
composed and published a voluminous work, on “the genealogy of the dukes
of Lorraine and Bar.” Its evident purpose was to degrade the reigning
family, and exalt that of the Guises. Not satisfied with tracing back
in a direct line to Charlemagne the descent of the house of Lorraine,
he carried it further through the starless night of ages, up to a son
of Clodion, from whom Merovæus was pretended to have usurped the crown.
The inference was easy, that the monarchs of the Capetian race were
intruders, and that the Guises alone had a legitimate right to the
throne. From thence to the assertion of the right was but a single step,
on the propriety of which it was for prudence to decide, the question of
justice being already settled. This doctrine was, in fact, openly taught
in other works, which the Guises, however, affected to disavow, and to
regard as fabrications of the protestants, for the purpose of throwing
suspicion on their loyalty.
In addition to his laboured genealogy of his patrons, Rosières had been
guilty of various misrepresentations, and of a personal attack upon
Henry; and he had supported his fabric of falsehood by documents which
were manifestly spurious, and by altering others, so as to suit them to
his purpose. The other libels Henry had repelled only by employing Pons
de Thyard, a man of varied talents, to write an elaborate answer: against
this he resolved to proceed in a different manner; he treated it as a
state crime. He who had swallowed the camel of last year’s conspiracy,
now strained at this gnat of a volume. And here again his infirmity of
purpose betrayed him to the scorn of his enemies. Commencing vigorously,
he despatched Brulart to Toul, to interrogate Rosières; after which the
archdeacon was conveyed to Paris, and housed in the Bastile. Thus far,
Henry seemed to have meditated a tragedy; but, in its further progress
the drama dwindled down to a miserable farce. The plan which he adopted
had the demerit of alike disclosing an inclination to mortify the Guises,
and a dread of offending them. It was the latter feeling which prompted
him to prohibit the parliament from intervening in the cause, because
that body would probably pass a sentence derogatory to the house of
Lorraine; it was the former feeling which induced him to persevere in
seeking to gain the shadow of a triumph. He could not see that any thing
short of complete victory was in reality a defeat.
Pursuing the absurd system which he had framed for himself, Henry now
convoked, at the Louvre, a numerous council of nobles and eminent men;
all the heads of the Lorraine family were present. Rosières was brought
from the Bastile, and, on his knees confessed his fault, owned that
he deserved rigorous punishment, and sued for pardon. The keeper of
the seals then gravely lectured him on the enormity of his crime, and
declared him to be guilty of high treason. It was next the turn of the
queen-mother to play her part; and, accordingly, as had previously been
arranged, she stepped forward, and entreated her son to forgive the
offender, for the sake of the duke of Lorraine. The king graciously
consented, and delivered Rosières into the hands of the duke. This
ludicrous scene was terminated by a decree, that the book should be torn
to pieces before the author’s face, but that no public record should be
made of these things, “lest reproach should fall on the illustrious house
of Lorraine.” Anquetil pithily remarks, that the crime ought either to
have been left unnoticed, or been more severely chastised.
Rosières did not pass the whole of his remaining days in tranquillity.
He involved himself in a quarrel with his bishop, and was under the
necessity of repairing to Rome, to plead his own cause. How he sped in
the holy city is doubtful; one writer affirms that he was censured,
another maintains that he was absolved. He died in 1607. Besides the
Genealogy, he wrote various works, which are as dead as their author.
Writers who ventured to thwart the Guises in their treasonable designs
did not meet with so much lenity from them as was shown to Rosières by
the feeble-minded Henry. No merit whatever could counterbalance the sin
of opposing them. This was experienced by Peter de Belloy, an eminent
jurisconsult, who was born at Montauban, about 1540, and became public
professor and counsellor at Toulouse. Belloy was a zealous catholic, and
his three elder brothers had fallen in combating against the protestants.
But these claims to consideration were not sufficient to prevent him from
being persecuted by the house of Lorraine.
Asserting the king of Navarre’s right to succeed to the reigning monarch,
and exposing the machinations and hollow pretexts of the Guises, was
the crime of which Belloy was guilty. The works which drew on him
the vengeance of the Guisian faction were the “Catholic Apology;” “A
Refutation of the Bull of Pope Pius V. against the Navarrese sovereign;”
and “An Examination of the Discourse published against the Royal House
of France.” In these works, which were given to the press in 1585 and
1586, he contended, that the protestantism of Henry of Navarre did not
deprive him of his title to the crown; that the king could not disinherit
his legitimate heir; that the Pope had no authority to sit in judgment
upon the question of the succession; and that the seeming ardour of the
Guises, in behalf of catholicism, was nothing more than a mask to cover
their designs upon the throne. His language was strictly decorous, his
candour and impartiality were evident, but his facts and arguments were
unforgivable.
Slander was the weapon which his enemies began by using against Belloy.
To his “Catholic Apology” a reply was published by a Jesuit, who assumed
the designation of Francisculus Romulus, but who is believed to have been
the celebrated Bellarmin. To give weight to his reasonings, the Jesuit
boldly asserted that his opponent, who falsely took the name of catholic,
was at least a heretic, if not an atheist. This calumny fell harmless
upon the object at which it was aimed. It was not so with calumny from
a higher quarter. The Guises were not satisfied with defaming him; they
determined to make him feel their power more effectually. An unfortunate
maniac, le Breton by name, of whom I shall have next occasion to speak,
had written a seditious libel. This libel the Guises ascribed to Belloy.
Failing to effect their purpose by this accusation, they painted him
in the darkest colours to the king, as a dangerous mischief-maker and
heretic, and the weak monarch was at last prevailed upon to commit him to
the prison of the Concièrgerie.
After Henry had assassinated the duke of Guise, the Council of Sixteen
removed Belloy to the Bastile, where he remained in close confinement
for nearly four years. He at length found means to escape, and he sought
refuge at St. Denis, which was garrisoned by the troops of Henry IV. He
was introduced to Henry, by Vic, the governor, and the king rewarded
his talents and fidelity, by appointing him advocate-general to the
parliament of Toulouse. His subsequent life appears to have been passed
in quiet. The date of his death is not known, but in 1612 he was still
living. He wrote various works, besides those which have already been
mentioned: among them are a “Dissertation on the Origin and Institution
of various Orders of Chivalry;” and “An Exposition of the Seventy Weeks
of Daniel.”
Francis le Breton, to whom I have already alluded, affords a striking
proof that, when Henry the third forbore to punish, it was not clemency,
but fear, indolence, or caprice, that withheld his hand. Le Breton was a
barrister of Poitiers, who had acquired considerable reputation by his
forensic talents. It speaks strongly in favour of his honesty and the
kindness of his nature, that he espoused so warmly the part of those for
whom he pleaded, as entirely to identify their interest with his own. A
mere mercenary counsel, indifferent to the justice or injustice of his
client’s claim, could have had no such feelings. Unfortunately, le Breton
was of a family in which symptoms of insanity had often appeared, and the
dreadful malady was lurking in his brain. The loss of a cause, in which
he was engaged for a poor individual, at once roused the latent disease
into action. He burst into vehement invectives against the judges, and
presented a violent memorial against them to a higher tribunal. The
superior judges, who saw how he was affected, gave him a gentle rebuke,
and dismissed the complaint. Irritated by this, he journeyed to Paris,
to make an appeal to the king. Having fastened his memorial on the
end of a stick, he went to the Louvre, where the guards, who rightly
concluded that he was bereft of his senses, endeavoured to drive him
away. Le Breton, however, was immovable, and he exclaimed so loudly and
incessantly, “The cause of the poor is abandoned, and God will take
vengeance for it,” that the noise reached the king’s ear, and he ordered
him to be admitted. Henry listened to his story, and then commanded him
to return to his own country, and to keep silence in public. To have
sent him to the hospital would have been a more praiseworthy act.
Instead of proceeding to Poitiers, the maniac wandered through the
provinces, calling on the people to recover their liberty, and sending
inflammatory writings to the towns which were too distant for him to
visit. At last he reached Bordeaux, and demanded an interview with the
duke of Mayenne. It was granted; and the unfortunate lunatic employed
the whole of it in conjuring the duke to defend the cause of the poor.
Mayenne, who felt that le Breton’s harangues to the multitude, mad as he
was, might be serviceable to the Guises, gave him money, and probably
hopes, and then desired him to withdraw.
Encouraged by this gracious reception, le Breton made the best of his
way to Paris, where he sat down to compose a furious invective against
the king, whom, with more truth than prudence or decorum, he styled
a debauched tyrant, and the magistrates, whom he stigmatised as men
steeped in wickedness, who, to please that tyrant, and gratify men in
power, betrayed the cause of the poor. Two printers were found who had
sufficient boldness to risk the printing of this libel. But, just as it
was about to appear, the whole impression was seized, and the author was
lodged in the Bastile. The printers were sentenced to be whipped, with
their necks in a halter, and then to be banished from the kingdom. The
libel was burnt by the public executioner.
Believing, or affecting to believe, that the prisoner was less a madman
than an instrument of the malecontents, Henry endeavoured, by secret
interrogations, to obtain a confession that such was the fact. The
attempt failed, and the prisoner was then given up to the parliament for
trial. It was his misfortune that he was not the agent of some formidable
conspirator; he would in that case have had a fair chance of escaping.
When le Breton was brought before the parliament, his malady manifested
itself in a more extravagant manner than ever. He treated the court with
unbounded contempt, spoke to the members with his hat on, and would
answer no questions. As he thus suffered judgment to go by default,
sentence of death was passed upon him, as guilty of having excited
the people to revolt; but his equitable and compassionate judges also
decreed, that “a deputation should wait upon the king, to represent that
the culprit laboured under mental alienation, and to entreat that his
majesty would pardon a crime which was rather the effect of disease than
of free will.”
But neither the prayer of the parliament, nor the supplications of le
Breton’s mother, who brought irrefragable evidence of his madness, had
any effect upon the heartless Henry. Here was a victim whom he could
safely sacrifice, and he would not forego the pleasure. Yet even here
his mental cowardice peeped out. Instead of the involuntary offender
being conveyed to the Grêve, which was the usual place of execution,
he was hanged in the palace court. It seems to have been supposed, and
perhaps correctly, that the people could not witness without emotion
the death of a man, whose malady and whose fate had been brought upon
him by commiseration for their sorrows, and who perished because he had
no friend, while notorious criminals were daily allowed to brave the
laws with impunity. Far from acting as an example to deter others, the
murder of le Breton—for in his deplorable situation it was a murder—only
served to exasperate the people in a tenfold degree. It was the singular
infelicity of Henry never to be right in his treatment of crime; he was
despised when he did not punish, he was hated when he did.
Political persecution consigned to the Bastile, at this period, and when
he was on the verge of the grave from extreme old age, a man who was
a benefactor, and an honour, to his native land. Bernard Palissy was
born about the year 1500, in the bishopric of Agen. His parents were so
scantily favoured by fortune that they could do little for his education;
but he contrived to acquire a knowledge of reading and writing, and
sufficient skill in drawing and land-measuring to gain a livelihood as a
draughtsman, a painter of glass and images, and a land surveyor. Geology,
natural philosophy, and chemistry, next attracted his attention, and with
respect to the two former he was far in advance of his contemporaries.
It was about the year 1539, when he had settled at Saintes, after his
journeys through the provinces, that a circumstance occurred which gave
a colour to all his future life. He chanced to be shown a beautiful
enamelled porcelain cup, manufactured in Italy. It struck him that, if
he could discover the secret of fabricating this ware, he might obtain
riches, and likewise serve his country by introducing into it a new
art. From that moment he pursued his object with admirable energy and
perseverance. Innumerable experiments failed, his resources wasted away,
poverty and almost starvation stared him in the face, yet still, in spite
of this, and of the exhortations of some, and the sneers of others, he
steadily persisted. At length, after having suffered a mental martyrdom
of sixteen years’ duration, he succeeded in his efforts, and independence
and fame were his reward. For the adornment of their palaces and gardens,
the king and all the nobles of France were eager to possess the figures
and vases which were produced by Palissy’s taste and skill.
Bernard Palissy had too enlarged a mind to devote himself wholly to
the heaping up of riches. The toils of business he diversified and
lightened by liberal studies. He formed a cabinet of natural history at
Paris; gave, for several years, a course of lectures on natural history
and physics; and wrote a variety of works, valuable for their facts and
reasonings, and the new and just views contained in them, and unaffected
and pleasing in their style.
Palissy was a protestant, firmly attached to his religion, and from that
attachment arose the only troubles which molested him in the decline
of life. When the public exercise of their worship was prohibited, he
gathered into a private assembly a few individuals of his own class, each
of whom in his turn expounded the tenets of the Gospel. In 1562, though
the duke of Montpensier had given him a safeguard, and his manufactory
had been declared a privileged place, the bigoted judges of Saintes
destroyed his establishment, and would have destroyed the proprietor
also, had not the king interposed, and rescued him from their hands.
The memory of Charles the ninth is branded with eternal infamy, but
candour requires it to be owned, that he was a man of taste and talent;
a lover of literature and the arts. It is melancholy to think upon what
he might have been, and what he was. He invited the persecuted artist to
Paris, and gave him apartments in the Tuileries. Thus protected, Palissy
remained unhurt during the horrible slaughter of St. Bartholomew’s day.
The protection which Charles the ninth extended to Palissy, the
weaker-minded Henry the third wanted courage to continue. When the
influence of the Guises became predominant in Paris, the venerable
artist was arrested by the Council of Sixteen, and thrown into the
Bastile. There Henry visited him. “My good man,” said the king, “if
you cannot bring yourself to conform on the point of religion, I shall
be compelled to leave you in the clutches of my enemies.” Palissy was
then nearly ninety years of age, but his spirit was not bowed by the
weight of years, or the prospect of death. He firmly replied, “Sire, you
have several times said that you pity me; but I pity _you_, who have
uttered the words ‘I am compelled.’ This is not speaking like a king. I
will teach you the royal language. Neither the Guisarts, nor your whole
people, can ever compel me to bend my knee before an image, for I know
how to die.”
The firmness of Palissy was not put to the extreme proof; but, had it
been so, there is no reason to believe that his conduct would have belied
his words. He was saved from the fiery ordeal by the duke of Mayenne, who
humanely threw so many obstacles in the way of his trial, that Palissy
died a natural death, in the Bastile, about the year 1589, no less
respected for his virtues than admired for his talents.[4]
Those enemies of Henry, into whose hands he feared that he should be
“compelled” to deliver up Palissy, continued to plot against the monarch
with an astonishing degree of audacity, which could be equalled only by
the tameness with which he endured it. Plans were successively formed
by them, to obtain possession of Boulogne; to arrest him on his way
from Vincennes, and, subsequently, at the fair of St. Germain; and to
make themselves masters of the Bastile, the Arsenal, the Temple, and
other posts in Paris, massacre the ministers, judges, and courtiers,
and depose and imprison him. Among the bitterest and most active of his
enemies was the duchess of Montpensier, sister of the duke of Guise, who
constantly wore at her girdle a pair of golden scissors, for the purpose,
as she insolently said, of giving the monkish tonsure to brother Henry
of Valois, previous to his being sent to a monastery. Henry frustrated
these schemes, but had not spirit to punish them. The impunity which
the criminals enjoyed produced its natural effect. The resources and the
boldness of the conspirators were increased; the memorable day of the
Barricades ensued; the monarch was expelled from Paris; and he entered it
no more.
As soon as the king had taken flight from the Louvre, Guise put garrisons
into the Arsenal, and other military positions of Paris, and likewise
into Vincennes and the town of Corbeil. The Bastile might still have
remained in the power of Henry, and afforded him an easy entrance into
his capital, had he not been guilty of an unaccountable act of folly.
Colonel Ornano, an officer of established reputation, had offered to
pledge his head that, if he were entrusted with the command, he would
hold the place to the last extremity; but Henry preferred leaving it in
the hands of Lawrence Testu, of whom it was sarcastically said, that
he was more fit to govern a bottle than a fortress. He justified the
contempt which was expressed for him, by surrendering the moment that he
received a summons from Guise. His prompt submission called forth another
sarcasm, by which he was declared to have given up his post, because he
had no oranges to flavour his ragoût of partridges.
The government of the Bastile was conferred, by Guise, on Bussi le Clerc,
the most active member of the Council of Sixteen, a determined hater of
the king and the protestants, and devoted heart and soul to the Guises.
Bussi was originally a fencing-master, but changed his calling, and
became an attorney. He was not long without prisoners. Among the first
whom he received were Perreuse, late the provost of the merchants, who
was expelled from his office for being faithful to the king, La Guesle,
the attorney general, and Damours, a protestant minister.
Damours was fortunate. Some ferocious wild beasts have been known to
contract an attachment to helpless animals which were thrown into their
dens. Bussi did so with respect to Damours. Instead of tormenting him,
and being eager to send him to the flames, a mode of proceeding which
might have been expected from a zealous and unenlightened catholic,
he took a singular liking for him. With many oaths, he declared that,
thorough hugonot as he was, Damours was worth more than all those
politicians, the presidents and counsellors, “who were nothing but
hypocrites;” and he bestirred himself so vigorously on behalf of his
favourite, that he procured his liberation.
James de la Guesle was born in 1557, and succeeded his father in
the office of attorney general. After the day of the Barricades, he
endeavoured to escape in disguise from Paris, for the purpose of joining
the fugitive king; but he was recognised, and committed to prison. He
did not long remain in the Bastile, and, as soon as he was set free, he
proceeded to St. Cloud, where Henry was residing. The death of the king,
which soon after occurred, afforded the enemies of La Guesle a pretext
to throw out insinuations against him; for it was by him that Clement,
the assassin monk, was introduced into the presence of the monarch.
His loyalty was, however, too well known to admit of being stained by
calumny. After having held office throughout the reign of Henry IV., and
enjoyed the full confidence of that sovereign, La Guesle died in 1612.
The Bastile was not allowed to remain untenanted by prisoners of
distinction. Bussi had soon the gratification of wreaking his hatred
upon “the presidents and counsellors” whom he had described as being
“nothing but hypocrites.” The parliament, still faithful to the king,
was a serious obstacle in the way of the Leaguers, and the Council of
Sixteen determined, therefore, to apply an effectual remedy to this
evil. This remedy was of the same nature as that which, long afterwards,
was employed in England, by Oliver Cromwell, and is known by the name of
Pride’s Purge. Bussi le Clerc was the colonel Pride on this occasion.
On the 16th of January, 1589, while the parliament was about to choose
deputies, for a mission to the king, at Blois, Bussi, who had surrounded
the hall with troops, suddenly entered, attended by some of his armed
followers, and began to read a list of the proscribed members, among
whom were the two presidents. On hearing this, the whole of the members
simultaneously declared, that they would share the fate of their chiefs.
Bussi took them at their word, and they were led away to the Bastile,
where they were soon joined by some of their colleagues, who, suspecting
what would happen, had not quitted their homes, but whose caution had
failed to ensure their safety. All those who were not on Bussi’s list
were, however, liberated in the course of the same evening, and a part
of the others were allowed to return to their homes, on their friends
becoming answerable for them. Having thus got rid of the persons who were
obnoxious to them, the Leaguers remodelled the parliament, in such a
manner as to render it subservient to their purposes.
The most distinguished of the parliamentary members who were kept in hold
were Achille de Harlay, Nicholas Potier de Blancmesnil, Louis Seguier,
and James Gillot.
The personal and mental courage of Harlay qualified him well for the
stormy times in which he lived. To the influence of fear he seems to
have been scarcely accessible. To the merit of unchangeable loyalty he
added the rarer merit of opposing the rash and oppressive edicts of the
sovereign. His legal knowledge was profound, and his integrity without
a stain. He was born in 1536, and he sprung from a family which had
distinguished itself, for more than two centuries, on the seat of justice
or in the field of battle. At the age of forty-six, he succeeded his
father-in-law, Christopher de Thou, as president of the parliament of
Paris.
When the success of his partisans, on the day of the Barricades, had
rendered the duke of Guise master of the capital, he went, with a train
of followers, to the house of Harlay, for the purpose of prevailing on
him to convoke the parliament, that the recent measures might obtain
something like a sanction. The president was walking in the garden, and
he did not deign to notice his visiter till the duke approached him;
then, raising his voice, he said, “It is a lamentable thing when the
servant drives out his master. As to all the rest, my soul is God’s,
my heart is the king’s, and my body is in the hands of the wicked; let
them do as they please with it.” Guise still pressing him to assemble
the parliament, he sternly replied, “When the majesty of the monarch
is violated, the magistrate has no longer any authority.” Hoping to
intimidate him, some of the duke’s followers threatened him with death,
but their threats were as unavailing as the request of Guise had been.
“I have,” replied the undaunted magistrate, “neither head nor life that
I value more than the love I owe to God, the service which I owe to the
king, and the good which I owe to my country.”
After an imprisonment of several months, Harlay obtained his liberty, at
the price of ten thousand crowns. The moment that he was free he departed
from Paris, to join Henry the fourth at Tours, and the monarch appointed
him president of the parliament sitting in that city, and composed of
Parisian members, who had succeeded in escaping from the clutches of the
Leaguers. In this post, Harlay sustained his high reputation, by the
vigour and eloquence with which he refuted the manifestos of Spain and
the League, and the bulls of the Roman Pontiff.
Peace at length came, and Henry rewarded his services by the estate of
Beaumont, with the title of count. When the first president returned
to Paris, all the members of the parliament went out to meet and
congratulate him. As Harlay advanced in years, he did not bate one jot
of the spirit which he had manifested at an earlier period. He still
unflinchingly supported the rights of the kingdom, and the liberties of
the Gallican church, and protested against whatever he deemed pernicious
to the people or the monarch. The re-establishment of the Jesuits he
strongly but vainly opposed. From one of his speeches to Henry the
fourth, in 1604, we may judge with what an honest freedom he uttered his
sentiments. The parliament having dissented from a measure which the
Council had resolved upon, its dissent was construed into disobedience.
“If to serve well be disobedience,” replied the venerable magistrate,
“the parliament is in the habit of committing that fault; and, when a
conflict arises between the king’s absolute power and the good of his
service, it prefers the one to the other, not from disobedience, but from
a desire to do its duty, and to keep its conscience clear.”
After having held the first presidentship for thirty-four years, Harlay,
whose sight and hearing were impaired, resigned it early in 1616, and he
died, on the 23d of October, of the same year, at the age of eighty.
Born at Paris, in 1541, of a family which had given several eminent
magistrates to the state, Potier de Blancmesnil attained the rank of
president à mortier in 1578. With talents less splendid than those of
Harlay, he was not inferior to him in probity and devoted loyalty. From
the imprisonment which followed his seizure by Bussi le Clerc he was
released in a few days; but he did not long retain his liberty. When
Henry, on the 1st of November, 1589, made himself master of the suburbs
of Paris, and there seemed reason to believe that the new monarch would
soon enter the city in triumph, the joy of Potier was so undisguised,
that the Leaguers again sent him to his old quarters in the Bastile. He
was brought to trial, as an adherent of the Bearnese—for so Henry was
contemptuously called—and he would no doubt have suffered an ignominious
death, had not the duke of Mayenne interposed, and released him from
prison. Throwing himself at the feet of his deliverer, Potier exclaimed,
“My Lord, I am indebted to you for my life; yet I dare to request from
you a still greater benefit, that of permitting me to join my legitimate
sovereign. I shall all my life acknowledge you as my benefactor; but I
cannot serve you as my master!” Mayenne had greatness of mind enough not
to be offended by this speech. Affected even to tears by the appeal, he
raised up and embraced the suppliant, and allowed him to depart. It is
delightful to find a few bright flowers of virtue among the lurid and
noxious growth produced by civil war.
Henry the Fourth rewarded Potier by making him president of the
parliament of Chalons. In that office he continued during the whole of
Henry’s reign. When the monarch perished by the knife of Ravaillac,
the news was carried to Chalons, accompanied, as is customary in such
cases, by a thousand terrific rumours. As soon as he heard the lamentable
tidings, René Potier, the president’s son, who was bishop of Beauvais,
hurried to the hall where the parliament was sitting, and entreated him
to quit the place without delay, in a carriage which he had brought for
the purpose. But the magistrate had more firmness than the prelate. He
answered, in a loud voice, that the state and the country called on him
not to absent himself on such an emergency, but to die, if needful, in
order to secure the obedience which was due to Henry the fourth’s son;
and he earnestly exhorted his colleagues not to remove from their seats.
It was probably for this opportune act of courage and fidelity that Mary
de Medicis conferred on him the title of her chancellor.
Potier lived to the venerable age of ninety-four, preserving all his
faculties to the last. His decease took place on the 1st of June 1635.
It has been remarked by French writers, that no family furnished more
magistrates than that of Seguier. From the first appearance of the name
in the parliament of Toulouse, when that body was originally formed,
in the 14th century, down to the period of the French revolution, the
number amounted to sixty-eight, of whom many possessed high talents, and
consummate legal knowledge. Peter, the first who bore that prenomen,
is characterised, by the poet Scevola St. Marthe, as “one of the most
brilliant lights of the temple of the laws,” and in this praise there
is no poetical exaggeration. To this magistrate France owes eternal
gratitude, for his having frustrated the project of introducing the
Inquisition into that country. He was warned beforehand that he would do
well to avoid venturing too far in his opposition, but he nobly set the
danger at defiance, and he triumphed.
The six sons who survived him were all of the legal profession. No
monarch ever paid a more graceful compliment to a subject than that which
Henry the fourth paid to the second Peter, a son of the first, who became
president on the resignation of his father. The courtiers pressing so
closely round the king that the president could not reach him, Henry
held out his hand to Seguier, and said, “Gentlemen, allow to come to me
my inseparable during my bad fortune, which, with you, he aided me to
surmount. I can answer for it, that, notwithstanding the business with
which I burthen him, he will always be too much my friend to neglect
me.” In a similar strain he publicly addressed Anthony, another brother,
who was setting off on an embassy to Venice. “You made your way into my
affections,” said he, “in the same manner that I did into my kingdom, in
spite of the resistance and the slanders of my enemies and enviers.”
Louis, the fourth brother, was a counsellor of the parliament, and also
dean of the cathedral church of Nôtre Dame, at Paris. He obtained his
release from the Bastile by paying a large ransom; but he was not allowed
to remain in peace, he being soon after expelled from the capital by
the Leaguers. He was subsequently sent to Rome, by Henry the fourth, to
negotiate with the pope for the monarch’s absolution. On his return,
he was offered the bishopric of Laon, which would have given him the
elevated and much coveted rank of duke and peer. Seguier, however, devoid
of ambition, preferred to remain in the humble station of dean. He died
in 1610.
Gillot, the last of those whom I have mentioned as having been lodged
in the Bastile by Bussi le Clerc, was certainly entitled to share the
fate of his companions, his attachment to the royal cause being a matter
of notoriety. He was of a noble Burgundian family, possessed a good
fortune, much erudition, and a valuable library, was connected with most
of the wits and learned men of that period, and assembled them frequently
at his social board, where they conversed on topics of philosophy and
literature. He had also the higher merit of being beneficent, sincere,
and candid. It was said of him, that he had so benign a disposition that
his sole delight was in obliging. Gillot was educated for the church,
and became dean of Langres, and canon of the Holy Chapel at Paris; he
was likewise one of the ecclesiastical counsellors, or judges, in the
parliament. His abode in the Bastile does not appear to have been of long
duration; it is probable that he ransomed himself. For his incarceration
he took an ample revenge, by bearing a part in writing the admirable
satire called “la Satire Ménippée, ou le Catholicon d’Espagne,” which
covered the Leaguers with ineffaceable ridicule, and is said to have been
more injurious to their cause than the sword of Henry the fourth. The
harangue of the legate at the opening of the states of the League, and
the laughable idea of the procession of the Leaguers, are attributed to
Gillot. This estimable and talented man died in 1619.
The Council of Sixteen, like the Common Council of Paris in 1792 and
1793, was eager to monopolize all the power of the state. It carried on
a secret correspondence with the Pope and the Spanish monarch, and was
obviously preparing to subvert the authority of the duke of Mayenne.
In furtherance of its plan, it resolved to strike the parliament with
terror, and of course render that body subservient, by a decisive blow.
A pretext was furnished by the acquittal of a person named Brigard,
who had been tried on a charge of corresponding with the royalists.
A cry was immediately raised, that the parliament had violated its
duty, by granting impunity to treason, and that some measure must be
adopted, to prevent the recurrence of such a crime. Several meetings
were clandestinely held, to decide upon what should be done. The result
was, that on the 15th of November, 1591, the president Brisson, and the
counsellors Larcher and Tardif, were seized by order of the Sixteen,
carried to prison, and hanged there upon a beam, without even the
semblance of a trial. The bodies, with calumnious papers attached to
them, were then removed to the Grêve, and publicly exposed on three
gibbets.
This last outrage caused the downfall of the Sixteen. Mayenne had long
been dissatisfied with the conduct of these turbulent and sanguinary
men, and he was heartily glad of this opportunity to punish them, and
annihilate their political influence. He could do both with safety,
as a great majority of the citizens were shocked and disgusted by the
murderous act which had been committed. The duke was then with his army
at Soissons, where he was expecting to be joined by the prince of Parma.
Leaving his troops under the command of the young duke of Guise, he
hastened, with three hundred horse and fifteen hundred foot, to Paris.
A few days after his arrival, he consigned four of the criminals to
execution, proscribed two who had escaped, prohibited, under pain of
death, all secret meetings, and thus put an end for ever to the tyranny
of the council. The partisans and agents of Spain murmured in private
at these decisive measures, but they were in too feeble a minority to
venture upon doing more.
Among those who were executed was not Bussi le Clerc; though, as he
had been the most conspicuous actor in the murders, he richly deserved
death. It was to being governor of the Bastile that he was indebted for
his safety. When Mayenne came to Paris, Bussi prudently kept within the
walls of the fortress; and, as there were various reasons which made it
unadvisable to besiege him, he was allowed to negociate. On condition
that he should not be punished for his share in the murder of Brisson,
Larcher, and Tardif, and that he should be at liberty to go wheresoever
he pleased with his property, he agreed to surrender the Bastile. The
first of these articles was faithfully performed; but with respect to the
second he was not so lucky, for Mayenne’s soldiers deprived him of the
booty which he had made during the civil war. He retired to Brussels,
where, during forty years, he earned a scanty subsistence, as an obscure
teacher of fencing. The custody of the Bastile was confided, by the duke
of Mayenne, to du Bourg, a brave and trusty officer.
In 1589, after Henry the fourth’s attempt upon Paris, when he had little
more than the shadow of an army left, and was obliged to retreat on
Normandy, the Parisians were so confident that the Bearnese would be
brought back a prisoner by the duke of Mayenne, that the windows in St.
Anthony’s-street were hired, to see him pass along in his way to the
Bastile; in the following year, he held them cooped up within their
walls, suffering the direst extremity of famine; and now, in 1594, he
entered the capital in triumph, as an acknowledged sovereign, amidst
the shouts of the multitude. It must be owned, however, that for the
submission of Paris, as well as of many other cities, Henry had to thank
his purse rather than his sword. For giving up Paris, Brissac, the
governor, received nearly seventeen hundred thousand livres. The whole of
the strong places which the king bought, cost him no less than thirty-two
millions of livres, besides governments, offices, and titles. At dinner,
on the day of his entry, he pointedly alluded to this circumstance, in
the presence of some of the vendors. Nicolas, a jovial poet and man of
wit, was standing by Henry’s chair: “Well,” said the king to him, “what
say you to seeing me here in Paris?” “Sire,” replied Nicolas, “that which
is Cæsar’s has been rendered unto Cæsar.” “Ventre saint-gris!” exclaimed
Henry in reply, “I have not been treated at all like Cæsar, for it has
not been rendered to me but sold to me, and at a pretty high price too.”
There was, nevertheless, one man among the Leaguers who was not venal.
This was du Bourg, the governor of the Bastile. His vigilance had
recently frustrated a plot to seize on the fortress, and he now prepared
to defend his charge to the utmost. For five days he refused to listen to
any overtures, and he even turned his cannon upon the city. But having
received information that it was impossible for Mayenne to succour him,
he consented to capitulate upon honourable terms. His garrison was
allowed to retire with arms and baggage. Money he refused to accept;
nor would he acknowledge Henry as his master; he had, he said, given his
faith to the duke of Mayenne, and he would not violate it. With a strange
mixture of ferocity, coarseness, and chivalrous feeling, he added, that
Brissac was a traitor, that he would maintain it in mortal combat with
him before the king, and that he “would eat his heart in his belly.”
The circumstances of the times, which rendered it necessary to reign with
some degree of caution, but still more the generous and clement character
of Henry, for a few years prevented the Bastile from having many captive
inmates. Menaces of sending individuals to it were occasionally thrown
out, but they were not executed. In 1596, for instance, when, to supply
his pressing wants, Henry had unjustly seized on the money destined to
pay annuitants at the town-hall, we find him giving vent to a momentary
fit of anger, and threatening whoever should presume to hold what he
was pleased to call seditious language, with respect to this arbitrary
measure. The seditious language, which thus excited his wrath, was
nothing more than a petition, which a citizen named Carel had drawn up on
behalf of the plundered annuitants.
There was a moment when the Bastile was on the point of receiving an
illustrious victim; no less a man than Theodore Agrippa d’Aubigné, the
long tried and faithful friend of Henry, amidst peril and misfortune.
Irritated by d’Aubigné’s restless zeal in the cause of the hugonots, the
king gave Sully an order to arrest him, but it was soon withdrawn.
In 1602, Sully was appointed governor of the Bastile. Since 1597 he
had been at the head of the finance department, and during his able
administration, a part of the Bastile was occupied in a manner such as
it had never before been, nor ever was afterwards. It became a place
of deposit for the yearly surplus of revenue, which was obtained by
the judicious system of the minister. The amount of the treasure thus
accumulated has been variously estimated, but it was probably about forty
millions of livres. It was designed to be appropriated to the realising
of Henry’s military projects. The Tour du Trésor is supposed to have
derived its name from its having been the tower in which this hoard was
secured.