CHAPTER XXXIII.----CHARLES IX. AND THE RELIGIOUS WARS. (1560-1574.)

We now enter upon the era of the civil wars, massacres, and

assassinations caused by religious fanaticism or committed on religious

pretexts. The latter half of the sixteenth century is the time at which

the human race saw the opening of that great drama, of which religious

liberty is the beginning and the end; and France was then the chief scene

of it. At the close of the fifteenth and at the commencement of the

sixteenth centuries, religious questions had profoundly agitated

Christian Europe; but towards the middle of the latter century they had

obtained in the majority of European states solutions which, however

incomplete, might be regarded as definitive. Germany was divided into

Catholic states and Protestant states, which had established between

themselves relations of an almost pacific character. Switzerland was

entering upon the same course. In England, Scotland, the Low Countries,

the Scandinavian states, and the free towns their neighbors, the

Reformation had prevailed or was clearly tending to prevail. In Italy,

Spain, and Portugal, on the contrary, the Reformation had been stifled,

and Catholicism remained victorious. It was in France that,

notwithstanding the inequality of forces, the struggle between

Catholicism and Protestantism was most obstinately maintained, and

appeared for the longest time uncertain. After half a century of civil

wars and massacres it terminated in Henry IV., a Protestant king, who

turned Catholic, but who gave Protestants the edict of Nantes; a

precious, though insufficient and precarious pledge, which served France

as a point of departure towards religious liberty, and which protected it

for nearly a century, in the midst of the brilliant victory won by

Catholicism. [The edict of Nantes, published by Henry IV. in 1598, was

revoked by Louis XIV. in 1685.]

For more than three centuries civilized Europe has been discussing, pro

or con, the question of religious liberty, but from instinct and with

passion far more than with a serious understanding of what is at the

bottom of things. Even in our own day it is not without difficulty that

a beginning is being made to understand and accept that principle in its

true sense and in all its bearings. Men were wonderfully far from it in

1560, at the accession of Charles IX., a child ten years old; they were

entering, in blind confidence, upon a religious war, in order to arrive,

only after four centuries of strife and misconception, at a vindication

of religious liberty. “Woe to thee, O country, that hast a child for

king!” said, in accordance with the Bible, the Venetian Michael Suriano,

ambassador to France at that time. Around that royal child, and seeking

to have the mastery over France by being masters over him, were

struggling the three great parties at that time occupying the stage in

the name of religion. The Catholics rejected altogether the idea of

religious liberty for the Protestants; the Protestants had absolute need

of it, for it was their condition of existence; but they did not wish for

it in the case of the Catholics, their adversaries. The third party

(_tiers parti_), as we call it nowadays, wished to hold the balance

continually wavering between the Catholics and the Protestants, conceding

to the former and the latter, alternately, that measure of liberty which

was indispensable for most imperfect maintenance of the public peace, and

reconcilable with the sovereign power of the kingship. On such

conditions was the government of Charles IX. to establish its existence.

The death of Francis II. put an end to a grand project of the Guises,

which we do not find expressly indicated elsewhere than in the _Memoires_

of Michael de Castelnau, one of the best informed and most intelligent

historians of the time. “Many Catholics,” says he, “were then of opinion

that, if the authority of the Duke of Guise had continued to be armed

with that of the king as it had been, the Protestants would have had

enough to do. For orders had been sent to all the principal lords of the

kingdom, officers of the crown and knights of the order, to show

themselves in the said city of Orleans on Christmas-day at the opening of

the states, for that they might be all made to sign the confession of the

Catholic faith in presence of the king and the chapter of the order;

together with all the members of the privy council, reporting-masters (of

petitions), domestic officers of the king’s household, and all the

deputies of the estates. The same confession was to be published

throughout all the said kingdom, in order to have it sworn by all the

judges, magistrates, and officers, and, finally, all private persons from

parish to parish. And in default of so doing, proceedings were to be

taken by seizures, condemnations, executions, banishments, and

confiscations. And they who did repent themselves and abjured their

Protestant religion were to be absolved.” [_Memoires de Michel de

Castelnau,_ book ii. chap. xii. p. 121, in the _Petitot_ collection.]

It is not to be supposed that, even if circumstances had remained as they

were under the reign of Francis II., such a plan could have been

successful; but it is intelligible that the Guises had conceived such an

idea: they were victorious; they had just procured the condemnation to

death of the most formidable amongst the Protestant princes, their

adversary Louis de Conde; they were threatening the life of his brother

the King of Navarre; and the house of Bourbon seemed to be on the point

of disappearing beneath the blows of the ambitious, audacious, and by no

means scrupulous house of Lorraine. Not even the prospect of Francis

II.’s death arrested the Guises in their work and their hopes; when they

saw that he was near his end, they made a proposal to the queen-mother to

unite herself completely with them, leave the Prince of Conde to

execution, rid herself of the King of Navarre, and become regent of the

kingdom during the minority of her son Charles, taking them, the Lorraine

princes and their party, for necessary partners in her government. But

Catherine de’ Medici was more prudent, more judicious, and more

egotistical in her ambition than the Guises were in theirs; she was not,

as they were, exclusively devoted to the Catholic party; it was power

that she wanted, and she sought for it every day amongst the party or the

mixtures of parties in a condition to give it her. She considered the

Catholic party to be the strongest, and it was hers; but she considered

the Protestant party strong enough to be feared, and to give her a

certain amount of security and satisfaction: a security necessary,

moreover, if peace at home, and not civil war, were to be the habitual

and general condition of France. Catherine was, finally, a woman, and

very skilful in the strifes of court and of government, whilst, on the

field of battle, the victories, though won in her name, would be those of

the Guises more than her own. Without openly rejecting the proposals

they made to her under their common apprehension of Francis II.’s

approaching death, she avoided making any reply. She had, no doubt,

already taken her precautions and her measures in advance; her

confidante, Jacqueline de Longwy, Duchess of Montpensier and a zealous

Protestant, had brought to her rooms at night Antony de Bourbon, King of

Navarre, and Catherine had come to an agreement with him about the

partition of power between herself and him at the death of the king her

son. She had written to the Constable de Montmorency, a rival of the

Guises and their foe though a stanch Catholic, to make haste to Orleans,

where his presence would be required. As soon as Chancellor de

l’Hospital became aware of the proposals which were being made by the

Guises to the queen-mother, he flew to her and opposed them with all the

energy of his great and politic mind and sterling nature. Was she going

to deliver the Prince of Conde to the scaffold, the house of Bourbon to

ruin, France to civil war, and the independence of the crown and of that

royal authority which she was on the point of wielding herself to the

tyrannical domination of her rivals the Lorraine princes and of their

party? Catherine listened with great satisfaction to this judicious and

honest language. When the crown passed to her son Charles she was free

from any serious anxiety as to her own position and her influence in the

government. The new king, on announcing to the Parliament the death of

his brother, wrote to them that “confiding in the virtues and prudence of

the queen-mother, he had begged her to take in hand the administration of

the kingdom, with the wise counsel and advice of the King of Navarre and

the notables and great personages of the late king’s council.” A few

months afterwards the states-general, assembling first at Orleans and

afterwards at Pontoise, ratified this declaration by recognizing the

placement of “the young King Charles IX.’s guardianship in the hands of

Catherine de’ Medici, his mother, together with the principal direction

of affairs, but without the title of regent.” The King of Navarre was to

assist her in the capacity of lieutenant-general of the kingdom.

Twenty-five members specially designated were to form the king’s privy

council. [_Histoire des Etats generaux,_ by M. Picot, t. ii. p. 73.]

And in the privacy of her motherly correspondence Catherine wrote to the

Queen of Spain, her daughter Elizabeth, wife of Philip II., “Madame, my

dear daughter, all I shall tell you is, not to be the least anxious, and

to rest assured that I shall spare no pains to so conduct myself that

God and everybody may have occasion to be satisfied with me. . . .

You have seen the time when I was as happy as you are, not dreaming of

ever having any greater trouble than that of not being loved as I should

have liked to be by the king your father. God took him from me, and is

not content with that; He has taken from me your brother, whom I loved

you well know how much, and has left me with three young children, and

in a kingdom where all is division, having therein not a single man in

whom I can trust, and who has not some particular object of his own.”

The queen-mother of France, who wrote to her daughter the Queen of Spain

with such firmness of tone and such independence of spirit, was, to use

the words of the Venetian ambassador John Michieli, who had lived at her

court, “a woman of forty-three, of affable manners, great moderation,

superior intelligence, and ability in conducting all sorts of affairs,

especially affairs of state. As mother, she has the personal management

of the king; she allows no one else to sleep in his room; she is never

away from him. As regent and head of the government, she holds

everything in her hands, public offices, benefices, graces, and the seal

which bears the king’s signature, and which is called the cachet

(privy-seal or signet). In the council, she allows the others to speak;

she replies to any one who needs it; she decides according to the advice

of the council, or according to what she may have made up her own mind

to. She opens the letters addressed to the king by his ambassadors and

by all the ministers. . . . She has great designs, and does not

allow them to be easily penetrated. As for her way of living, she is

very fond of her ease and pleasure; she observes few rules; she eats and

drinks a great deal; she considers that she makes up for it by taking a

great deal of exercise a-foot and a-horseback; she goes a-hunting; and

last year she always joined the king in his stag-chases, through the

woods and thick forests, a dangerous sort of chase for anyone who is not

an excellent rider. She has an olive complexion, and is already very

fat; accordingly the doctors have not a good opinion of her life. She

has a dower of three hundred thousand francs a year, double that of

other queens-dowager. She was formerly always in money-difficulties and

in debt; now, she not only keeps out of debt, but she spends and gives

more liberally than ever.” [_Relations des Ambassadeurs venztzens,_

published by A. N. Tommaseo, t. i. pp. 427-429.]

As soon as the reign of Charles IX. and the queen-mother’s government

were established, notice was sent to the Prince of Conde that he was

free. He refused to stir from prison; he would wait, he said, until his

accusers were confined there. He was told that it was the king’s express

order, and was what Francis II. on his death-bed had himself impressed

upon the King of Navarre. Conde determined to set out for La Fere, a

place belonging to his brother Anthony de Bourbon, and there await fresh

orders from the king. In February, 1561, he left La Fare for

Fontainebleau. On his road to Paris his friends flocked to him and made

him a splendid escort. On approaching the king’s palace Conde separated

himself from his following, and advanced alone with two of his most

faithful friends. All the lords of the court, the Duke of Guise amongst

them, went to meet him. On the 15th of March he was admitted to the

privy council. Chancellor de l’Hospital, on the prince’s own demand,

affirmed that no charge had been found against him. The king declared

his innocence in a deed signed by all the members of the council. On the

13th of June, in solemn session, the Parliament of Paris, sitting as a

court of peers, confirmed this declaration. Notwithstanding the Duke of

Guise’s co-operation in all these acts, Conde desired something of a more

personal kind on his part.

[Illustration: Francis de Lorraine, Duke of Aumale and of Guise----302]

On the 24th of August, at St. Germain, in presence of the king, the

queen-mother, the princes, and the court, the Duke of Guise, in reply to

a question from the king, protested “that he had not, and would never

have desired to, put forward anything against the prince’s honor, and

that he had been neither the author nor the instigator of his

imprisonment.” “Sir,” said Conde, “I consider wicked and contemptible

him or them who caused it.” “So I think, sir,” answered Guise, “and it

does not apply to me at all.” Whereupon they embraced, and a report was

drawn up of the ceremony, which was called their reconciliation. Just as

it was ending, Marshal Francis de Montmorency, eldest son of the

constable, and far more inclined than his father was towards the cause of

the Reformers, arrived with a numerous troop of friends, whom he had

mustered to do honor to Conde. The court was a little excited at this

incident. The constable declared that, having the honor to be so closely

connected with the princes of Bourbon, his son would have been to blame

if he had acted differently. The aged warrior had himself negotiated

this reconciliation; and when it was accomplished, and the Duke of Guise

had performed his part in it with so much complaisance, the constable

considered himself to be quits with his former allies, and free to

follow his leaning towards the Catholic party. “The veteran,” says the

Duke of Autnale, “did not pique himself on being a theologian; but he

was sincerely attached to the Catholic faith because it was the old

religion and the king’s; and he separated himself definitively from

those religious and political innovators whom he had at first seemed to

countenance, and amongst whom he reckoned his nearest relatives.” In

vain did his eldest son try to hold him back; a close union was formed

between the Constable de Montmorency, the Duke of Guise, and Marshal de

Saint-Andre, and it became the Catholic triumvirate against which

Catherine de’ Medici had at one time to defend herself, and of which she

had at another to avail herself in order to carry out the policy of

see-saw she had adopted as her chief means of government.

Before we call to mind and estimate as they deserve the actions of that

government, we must give a correct idea of the moral condition of the

people governed, of their unbridled passions, and of the share of

responsibility reverting to them in the crimes and shocking errors of

that period. It is a mistake and an injustice, only too common, to lay

all the burden of such facts, and the odium justly due to them, upon the

great actors almost exclusively whose name has remained attached to them

in history; the people themselves have very often been the prime movers

in them; they have very often preceded and urged on their masters in the

black deeds which have sullied their history; and on the masses as well

as on the leaders ought the just sentence of posterity to fall. The

moment we speak of the St. Bartholomew, it seems as if Charles IX.,

Catherine de’ Medici, and the Guises issued from their grave to receive

that sentence; and God forbid that we should wish to deliver them from

it; but it hits the nameless populace of their day as well as themselves,

and the hands of the people, far more than the will of kings, began the

tale of massacres for religion’s sake. This is no vague and general

assertion; and, to show it, we shall only have to enumerate, with their

dates, the principal facts of which history has preserved the memory,

whilst stigmatizing them, with good reason, as massacres or murders. The

greater number, as was to be expected, are deeds done by Catholics, for

they were by far the more numerous and more frequently victorious; but

Protestants also have sometimes deserved a place in this tragic category,

and when we meet with them, we will assuredly not blot them out.

We confine the enumeration to the reign of Charles IX., and in it we

place only such massacres and murders as were not the results of any

legal proceeding. We say nothing of judicial sentences and executions,

however outrageous and iniquitous they may have been.

The first fact which presents itself is a singular one. Admiral de

Coligny’s eldest brother, Odet de Chatillon, was a Catholic, Bishop of

Beauvais, and a cardinal; in 1550, he had gone to Rome and had

co-operated in the election of Pope Julius III.; in 1554, he had

published some _Constitutions synodales_ (synodal regulations), to remedy

certain abuses which had crept into his diocese, and, in 1561, he

proposed to make in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper some

modifications which smacked, it is said, of the innovations of Geneva.

The populace of Beauvais were so enraged at this that they rose up

against him, massacred a schoolmaster whom he tried to protect, and would

have massacred the bishop himself if troops sent from Paris had not come

to his assistance.

In the same year, 1561, the Protestants had a custom of meeting at Paris,

for their religious exercises, in a house called the Patriarch’s house,

very near the church of St. Medard. On the 27th of December, whilst the

Reformed minister was preaching, the Catholics had all the bells of St.

Medard rung in full peal. The minister sent two of his congregation to

beg the incumbent to have the bell-ringing stopped for a short time. The

mob threw themselves upon the two messengers: one was killed, and the

other, after making a stout defence, returned badly wounded to the

Patriarch’s house, and fell dead at the preacher’s feet. The provost of

tradesmen was for having the bells stopped; the riot became violent; the

house of the Reformers was stormed; and the provost’s archers had great

difficulty in putting a stop to the fight. More than a hundred persons,

it is said, were killed or wounded.

[Illustration: Massacre of Protestants---305]

In 1562, in the month of February, whilst the Guises were travelling in

Germany, with the object of concluding, in the interests of policy,

alliances with some German Lutheran princes, disturbances broke out at

Cahors, Amiens, Sens, and Tours, between the Protestants and the

Catholics. Which of the two began them? It would be difficult to

determine. The passions that lead to insult, attack, defence, and

vengeance were mutually felt and equally violent on both sides. Montluc

was sent to Guienne by the queen-mother to restore order there; but

nearly everywhere he laid the blame on the Protestants. His Memoires

prove that he harried them without any form of justice. “At Sauveterre,”

says he, “I caught five or six, all of whom I had hanged without expense

of paper or ink, and without giving them a hearing, for those gentry are

regular Chrysostoms (_parlent d’or_).” “I was informed that at Gironde

there were sixty or eighty Huguenots belonging to them of La Reole, who

had retreated thither; the which were all taken, and I had them hanged to

the pillars of the market-place without further ceremony. One hanged has

more effect than a hundred slain.” When Montluc took Monsegur, “the

massacre lasted for ten hours or more,” says he, “because search was made

for them in the houses; the dead were counted and found to be more than

seven hundred.” [_Memoires de Montluc,_ t. ii. pp. 442, 443-447.]

Almost at the very time at which Montluc, who had been sent to Guienne to

restore order there between the Catholics and the Protestants, was

treating the latter with this shocking severity, an incident, more

serious because of the rank of the persons concerned, took place at

Vassy, a small town in Champagne, near which the Duke of Guise passed on

returning from Germany. Hearing, as he went, the sound of bells, he

asked what it meant. “It is the church of the Huguenots of Vassy,” was

the answer. “Are there many of them?” asked the duke. He was told that

there were, and that they were increasing more and more. “Then,” says

the chronicler, “he began to mutter and to put himself in a white heat,

gnawing his beard, as he was wont to do when he was enraged or had a mind

to take vengeance.” Did he turn aside out of his way with his following,

to pass right through Vassy, or did he confine himself to sending some of

his people to bring him an account of what was happening there? When a

fact which was at the outset insignificant has become a great event, it

is hardly possible to arrive at any certain knowledge of the truth as to

the small details of its origin. Whatever may have been the case in the

first instance, a quarrel, and, before long, a struggle, began between

the preacher’s congregation and the prince’s following. Being informed

of the matter whilst he was at table, the Duke of Guise rose up, went to

the spot, found the combatants very warmly at work, and himself received

several blows from stones; and, when the fight was put a stop to,

forty-nine persons had been killed in it, nearly all on the Protestant

side; more than two hundred others, it is said, came out of it severely

wounded; and, whether victors or vanquished, all were equally irritated.

The Protestants complained vehemently; and Conde offered, in their name,

fifty thousand men to resent this attack, but his brother, the King of

Navarre, on the contrary, received with a very bad grace the pleading of

Theodore de Beze. “It is true that the church of God should endure

blows and not inflict them,” said De Beze, “but remember, I pray you,

that it is an anvil which has used up a great many hammers.”

The massacre of Vassy, the name which has remained affixed to it in

history, rapidly became contagious. From 1562 to 1572, in Languedoc, in

Provence, in Dauphiny, in Poitou, in Orleanness, in Normandy even and in

Picardy, at Toulouse, at Gaillac, at Frejus, at Troyes, at Sens, at

Orleans, at Amiens, at Rouen, and in many other towns, spontaneous and

disorderly outbreaks between religiously opposed portions of the populace

took place suddenly, were repeated, and spread, sometimes with the

connivance of the local authorities, judicial or administrative, but more

often through the mere brutal explosion of the people’s passions. It is

distasteful to us to drag numerous examples from oblivion; but we will

cite just two, faithful representations of those sad incidents, and

attested by authentic documents. The little town of Gaillac was almost

entirely Catholic; the Protestants, less numerous, had met the day after

Pentecost, May 18, 1562, to celebrate the Lord’s Supper. “The

inhabitants in the quarter of the Chateau de l’Orme, who are all artisans

or vine-dressers,” says the chronicler, “rush to arms, hurry along with

them all the Catholics of the town, invest the place of assembly, and

take prisoners all who were present. After this capture, they separate:

some remain in the meeting-house, on guard over the prisoners; the rest

go into dwellings to work their will upon those of the religion who had

remained there. Then they take the prisoners, to the number of sixty or

eighty, into a gallery of the Abbey of St. Michael, situated on a steep

rock, at the base of which flows the River Tarn; and there, a field

laborer, named Cabral, having donned the robe and cape of the judge’s

deputy, whom he had slain with his own hand, pronounces judgment, and

sentences all the prisoners to be thrown from the gallery into the river,

telling them to go and eat fish, as they had not chosen to fast during

Lent; which was done forthwith. Divers boatmen who were on the river

despatched with their oars those who tried to save themselves by

swimming.” [_Histoire generale du Languedoc,_ liv. xxxviii. f. v., p.

227.] At Troyes, in Champagne, “during the early part of August, 1572,

the majority of the Protestants of the town, who were returning from

Esleau-Mont, where they had a meeting-house and a pastor under

authorization from the king, were assailed in the neighborhood of

Croncels by the excited populace. A certain number of individuals,

accompanying a mother carrying a child which had just received baptism,

were pursued with showers of stones; several were wounded, and the child

was killed in its mother’s arms.” This affair did not give rise to any

prosecution. “It is no use to think about it any longer,” said the

delegate of the bailiff and of the mayor of Troyes, in a letter from

Paris on the 27th of August. The St. Bartholomew had just taken place

on the 24th of August. [_Histoire de la Ville de Troyes,_ by H. Boutiot,

t. iii. p. 25.]

Where they happened to be the stronger, and where they had either

vengeance to satisfy or measures of security to take, the Protestants

were not more patient or more humane than the Catholics. At Nimes, in

1567, they projected and carried out, in the town and the neighboring

country, a massacre in which a hundred and ninety-two Catholics perished;

and several churches and religious houses were damaged or completely

destroyed. This massacre, perpetrated on St. Michael’s day, was called

_the Michaelade_. The barbarities committed against the Catholics in

Dauphiny and in Provence by Francis de Beaumont, Baron of Adrets, have

remained as historical as the massacre of Vassy, and he justified them on

the same grounds as Montluc had given for his in Guienne. “Nobody

commits cruelty in repaying it,” said he; “the first are called

cruelties, the second justice. The only way to stop the enemy’s

barbarities is to meet them with retaliation.” Though experience ought

to have shown them their mistake, both Adrets and Montluc persisted in

it. A case, however, is mentioned in which Adrets was constrained to be

merciful. After the capture of Montbrison, he had sentenced all the

prisoners to throw themselves down, with their hands tied behind them,

from the top of the citadel; one of them made two attempts, and thought

better of it; “Come, twice is enough to take your soundings,” shouted the

baron, who was looking on. “I’ll give you four times to do it in,”

rejoined the soldier. And this good saying saved his life.

The weak and undecided government of Catherine de’ Medici tried several

times, but in vain, to prevent or repress these savage explosions of

passion and strife amongst the people; the sterling moderation of

Chancellor de l’Hospital was scarcely more successful than the

hypocritical and double-faced attentions paid by Catherine de’ Medici to

both the Catholic and the Protestant leaders; the great maladies and the

great errors of nations require remedies more heroic than the adroitness

of a woman, the wisdom of a functionary, or the hopes of a philosopher.

It was formal and open civil war between the two communions and the two

parties that, with honest and patriotic desire, L’Hospital and even

Catherine were anxious to avoid. From 1561 to 1572 there were in France

eighteen or twenty massacres of Protestants, four or five of Catholics,

and thirty or forty single murders sufficiently important to have been

kept in remembrance by history; and during that space of time formal

civil war, religious and partisan, broke out, stopped and recommenced in

four campaigns, signalized, each of them, by great battles, and four

times terminated by impotent or deceptive treaties of peace which, on the

24th of August, 1572, ended, for their sole result, in the greatest

massacre of French history, the St. Bartholomew.

The first religious war, under Charles IX., appeared on the point of

breaking out in April, 1561, some days after that the Duke of Guise,

returning from the massacre of Vassy, had entered Paris, on the 16th of

March, in triumph. The queen-mother, in dismay, carried off the king to

Melun at first, and then to Fontainebleau, whilst the Prince of Conde,

having retired to Meaux, summoned to his side his relatives, his friends,

and all the leaders of the Reformers, and wrote to Coligny, “that Caesar

had not only crossed the Rubicon, but was already at Rome, and that his

banners were beginning to wave all over the neighboring country.” For

some days Catherine and L’Hospital tried to remain out of Paris with the

young king, whom Guise, the Constable de Montmorency, and the King of

Navarre, the former being members and the latter an ally of the

triumvirate, went to demand back from them. They were obliged to submit

to the pressure brought to bear upon them. The constable was the first

to enter Paris, and went, on the 2d of April, and burned down the two

places of worship which, by virtue of the decree of January 17, 1561, had

been granted to the Protestants. Next day the King of Navarre and the

Duke of Guise, in their turn, entered the city in company with Charles

IX. and Catherine. A council was assembled at the Louvre to deliberate

as to the declaration of war, which was deferred. Whilst the king was on

his way back to Paris, Conde hurried off to take up his quarters at

Orleans, whither Coligny went promptly to join him. They signed, with

the gentlemen who came to them from all parts, a compact of association

“for the honor of God, for the liberty of the king, his brothers and the

queen-mother, and for the maintenance of decrees;” and Conde, in writing

to the Protestant princes of Germany to explain to them his conduct, took

the title of protector of the house and crown of France. Negotiations

still went on for nearly three months. The chiefs of the two parties

attempted to offer one another generous and pacific solutions; they even

had two interviews; but Catherine was induced by the Catholic triumvirate

to expressly declare that she could not allow in France more than one

single form of worship. Conde and his friends said that they could not

lay down their arms until the triumvirate was overthrown, and the

execution of decrees granting them liberty of worship, in certain places

and to a certain extent, had been secured to them. Neither party liked

to acknowledge itself beaten in this way without having struck a blow.

And in the early part of July, 1562, the first religious war began.

We do not intend to dwell upon any but its leading facts, facts which at

the moment when they were accomplished might have been regarded as

decisive in respect of the future. In this campaign there were two; the

battle of Dreux, on the 19th of December, 1562; and the murder of the

Duke of Guise by Poltrot, on the 18th of February, 1563.

The two armies met in the plain of Dreux with pretty nearly equal forces,

the royal army being superior in artillery and the Protestant in cavalry.

When they had arrived in front of one another, the triumvirs sent to ask

the queen-mother’s authority to give battle. “I am astounded,” said

Catherine to her favorite adviser, Michael de Castelnau, “that the

constable, the Duke of Guise, and Saint-Andre, being good, prudent, and

experienced captains, should send to ask counsel of a woman and a child,

both full of sorrow at seeing things in such extremity as to be reduced

to the risk of a battle between fellow-countrymen.” “Hereupon,” says

Castelnau, “in came the king’s nurse, who was a Huguenot, and the queen,

at the same time that she took me to see the king, who was still in bed,

said to me with great agitation and jeeringly, ‘We had better ask the

king’s nurse whether to give battle or not; what think you?’ Then the

nurse, as she followed the queen into the king’s chamber according to her

custom, said several times that, as the Huguenots would not listen to

reason, she would say, ‘Give battle.’ Whereupon there was, at the privy

council, much discourse about the good and the evil that might result

therefrom; but the resolution arrived at was, that they who had arms in

their hands ought not to ask advice or orders from the court; and I was

despatched on the spot to tell them from the king and the queen, that, as

good and prudent captains, they were to do what they considered most

proper.” Next day, at ten in the morning, the armies met. “Then

every one,” says La Noue, one of the bravest amongst the Reformers’

leaders, “steadied himself, reflecting that the men he saw coming towards

him were not Spaniards, or English, or Italians, but Frenchmen, that is,

the bravest of the brave, amongst whom there were some who were his own

comrades, relatives, and friends, and that within an hour they would have

to be killing one another, which created some sort of horror of the fact,

without, however, diminution of courage. . . . One thing worthy of

being noted,” continues La Noue, “is the long duration of the fight, it

being generally seen in battles that all is lost or won within a single

hour, whereas this began about one P. M., and there was no issue until

after five. Of a surety, there was marvellous animosity on both sides,

whereof sufficient testimony is to be found in the number of dead, which

exceeded seven thousand, as many persons say; the majority whereof were

killed in the fight rather than the pursuit. . . . Another incident

was the capture of the two chiefs of the armies, a thing which rarely

happens, because generally they do not fight until the last moment and in

extremity; and often a battle is as good as won before they come to this

point. But in this case they did not put it off so long, for, at the

very first, each was minded to set his men an example of not sparing

themselves. The Constable de Montmorency was the first taken, and

seriously wounded, having always received wounds in seven battles at

which he was present, which shows the boldness that was in him. The

Prince of Conde was taken at the end, also wounded. As both of them had

good seconds, it made them the less fearful of danger to their own

persons, for the constable had M. de Guise, and the Prince of Conde

Admiral de Coligny, who showed equally well to the front in the melley.

. . . Finally I wish to bring forward another matter, which will be

supernumerary because it happened after the battle; and that is, the

courteous and honorable behavior of the Duke of Guise victorious towards

the Prince of Conde a prisoner; which most men, on one side as well as on

the other, did not at all think he would have been disposed to exhibit,

for it is well known how hateful, in civil wars, are the chiefs of

parties, and what imputations are made upon them. Nevertheless here

quite the contrary happened: for, when the prince was brought before the

duke, the latter spoke to him respectfully and with great gentleness of

language, wherein he could not pretend that there was any desire to pique

him or blame him. And whilst the prince staid in the camp, the duke

often dined with him. And forasmuch as on this day of the battle there

were but few beds arrived, for the baggage had been half-plundered and

dispersed, the Duke of Guise offered his own bed to the Prince of Conde,

which the prince would accept in respect of the half only. And so these

two great princes, who were like mortal foes, found themselves in one

bed, one triumphant and the other captive, taking their repast together.”

[_Memoires de Francois de La Noue,_ in the _Petitot_ collection; 1st

series, t. xxxiv. pp. 172-178.]

The results of the battle of Dreux were serious, and still more serious

from the fate of the chiefs than from the number of the dead. The

commanders of the two armies, the Constable de Montmorency, and the

Prince of Conde, were wounded and prisoners. One of the triumvirs,

Marshal de Saint-Andre, had been killed in action. The Catholics’

wavering ally, Anthony de Bourbon, King of Navarre, had died before the

battle of a wound which he had received at the siege of Rouen; and on his

death-bed had resumed his Protestant bearing, saying that, if God granted

him grace to get well, he would have nothing but the gospel preached

throughout the realm. The two staffs (_etats-majors_), as we should now

say, were disorganized: in one, the Duke of Guise alone remained unhurt

and at liberty; in the other, Coligny, in Conde’s absence, was elected

general-in-chief of the Protestants. At Paris, for a while, it was

believed that the battle was lost. “If it had been,” says Montluc,

“I think that it was all over with France, for the state would have

changed, and so would the religion; a young king can be made to do as

you please;” Catherine de’ Medici showed a facile resignation to such a

change. “Very well,” she had said, “then we will pray to God in French.”

When the victory became known there was general enthusiasm for the Duke.

of Guise; but he took only a very modest advantage of it, being more

anxious to have his comrades’ merits appreciated than his own. At Blois,

as he handed the queen-mother her table-napkin at dinner-time, he asked

her if he might have an audience of her after the repast. “Jesu! my dear

cousin,” said Catherine, “whatever are you saying?” “I say it, madame,

because I would fain show you in the presence of everybody what I have

done, since my departure from Paris, with your army which you gave in

charge to me together with the constable, and also present to you all the

good captains and servants of the king and of yourself who have served

you faithfully, as well your own subjects as also foreigners, and

horsemen and foot;” whereupon he discoursed about the battle of Dreux,

“and painted it so well and so to the life,” says Brantome, “that you

would have said that they were still about it, whereat the queen felt

very great pleasure. . . . Every one listened very attentively,

without the least noise in the world; and he spoke so well that there was

none who was not charmed, for the prince was the best of speakers and

eloquent, not with a forced and overladen eloquence, but simple and

soldierly, with a grace of his own to match; so much so that the

queen-mother said that she had never seen him in such good form.”

[Brantome, _Tries des Brands Capitaines,_ t. ii. pp. 247-250.] The good

form, however, was not enough to prevent the ill-humor and jealousy felt

by the queen-mother and her youthful son the king at such a great success

which made Guise so great a personage. After the victory of Dreux he had

written to the king to express his wish to see conferred upon a candidate

of his own choosing the marshal’s baton left vacant by the death of

Saint-Andre. “See now,” said Charles IX. to his mother and some persons

who were by, “if the Duke of Guise does not act the king well; you would

really say that the army was his, and that victory came from his hand,

making no mention of God, who, by His great goodness, hath given it us.

He thrusts the bargain into my fist (dictates to me). Yet must I give

him a civil answer to satisfy him; for I do not want to make trouble in

my kingdom, and irritate a captain to whom my late father and I have

given so much credit and authority.” The king almost apologized for

having already disposed of the baton in favor of the Marquis de

Vieilleville, and he sent the Duke of Guise the collar of the order for

two of his minions, and at the same time the commission of

lieutenant-general of the kingdom and commander-in-chief of the army for

himself. Guise thanked him, pretending to be satisfied: the king smiled

as he read his letter; and “_Non ti fidar, e non sarai gabbato_” (Don’t

trust, and you’ll not be duped), he said in the words of the Italian

proverb.

He had not to disquiet himself for long about this rival. On the 18th of

February, 1563, the Duke of Guise was vigorously pushing forward the

siege of Orleans, the stronghold of the Protestants, stoutly defended by

Coligny. He was apprised that his wife, the Duchess Anne d’Este, had

just arrived at a castle near the camp with the intention of using her

influence over her husband in order to spare Orleans from the terrible

consequences of being taken by assault. He mounted his horse to go and

join her, and he was chatting to his aide-de-camp Rostaing about the

means of bringing about a pacification, when, on arriving at a cross-road

where several ways met, he felt himself struck in the right shoulder,

almost under the arm, by a pistol-shot fired from behind a hedge at a

distance of six or seven paces. A white plume upon his head had made him

conspicuous, and as, for so short a ride, he had left off his cuirass,

three balls had passed through him from side to side. “That shot has

been in keeping for me a long while,” said he: “I deserve it for not

having taken precautions.” He fell upon his horse’s neck, as he vainly

tried to draw his sword from the scabbard; his arm refused its office.

[Illustration: The Duke of Guise waylaid---315]

When he had been removed to the castle, where the duchess, in tears,

received him, “I am vexed at it,” said he, “for the honor of France;” and

to his son Henry, Prince of Joinville, a boy of thirteen, he added,

kissing him, “God grant you grace, my son, to become a good man.” He

languished for six days, amidst useless attentions paid him by his

surgeons, giving Catherine de’ Medici, who came daily to see him, the

most pacific counsels, and taking of the duchess his wife the most tender

farewells mingled with the most straightforward and honest avowals. “I

do not mean to deny,” he said to her, “that the counsels and frailties of

youth have led me sometimes into something at which you had a right to be

offended; I pray you to be pleased to excuse me and forgive me.” His

brother, the Cardinal de Guise, Bishop of Metz, which the duke had so

gloriously defended against Charles V., warned him that it was time to

prepare himself for death by receiving the sacraments of the church.

“Ah! my dear brother,” said the duke to him, “I have loved you greatly in

times past, but I love you now still more than ever, for you are doing me

a truly brotherly turn.” On the 24th of February they still offered him

aliment to sustain his rapidly increasing weakness but “Away, away,” said

he; “I have taken the manna from heaven, whereby I feel myself so

comforted that it seems to me as if I were already in paradise. This

body has no further need of nourishment;” and so he expired on the 24th

of February, 1563, an object, at his death, of the most profound regret

amongst his army and his party, as well as his family, after having been

during his life the object of their lively admiration. “I do not

forget,” says his contemporary Stephen Pasquier in reference to him,

“that it was no small luck for him to die at this period, when he was

beyond reach of the breeze, and when shifting Fortune had not yet played

him any of those turns whereby she is so cunning in lowering the horn of

the bravest.”

It is a duty to faithfully depict this pious and guileless death of a

great man, at the close of a vigorous and a glorious life, made up of

good and evil, without the evil’s having choked the good. This powerful

and consolatory intermixture of qualities is the characteristic of the

eminent men of the sixteenth century, Catholics or Protestants, soldiers

or civilians; and it is a spectacle wholesome to be offered in times when

doubt and moral enfeeblement are the common malady even of sound minds

and of honest men.

The murderer of Duke Francis of Guise was a petty nobleman of Angoumois,

John Poltrot, Lord of Mere, a fiery Catholic in his youth, who afterwards

became an equally fiery Protestant, and was engaged with his relative La

Renaudie in the conspiracy against the Guises. He had been employed

constantly from that time, as a spy it is said, by the chiefs of the

Reformers--a vocation for which, it would seem, he was but little

adapted, for the indiscretion of his language must have continually

revealed his true sentiments. When he heard, in 1562, of the death of

Anthony de Bourbon, King of Navarre, “That,” said he, “is not what will

put an end to the war; what is wanted is the dog with the big collar.”

“Whom do you mean?” asked somebody. “The great Guisard; and here’s the

arm that will do the trick.” “He used to show,” says D’Aubigne, “bullets

cast to slay the Guisard, and thereby rendered himself ridiculous.”

After the battle of Dreux he was bearer of a message from the Lord of

Soubise to Admiral de Coligny, to whom he gave an account of the

situation of the Reformers in Dauphiny and in Lyonness. His report no

doubt interested the admiral, who gave him twenty crowns to go and play

spy in the camp of the Duke of Guise, and, some days later, a hundred

crowns to buy a horse. It was thus that Poltrot was put in a position to

execute the design he had been so fond of proclaiming before he had any

communication with Coligny. As soon as, on the 18th of February, 1563,

in the outskirts of Orleans, he had, to use his own expression, done his

trick, he fled full gallop, so as not to bear the responsibility of it;

but, whether it were that he was troubled in his mind, or that he was ill

acquainted with the region, he wandered round and round the place where

he had shot the Duke of Guise, and was arrested on the 20th of February

by men sent in search of him. Being forthwith brought before the privy

council, in the presence of the queen-mother, and put to the torture, he

said that Admiral de Coligny, Theodore de Beze, La Rochefoucauld,

Soubise, and other Huguenot chiefs had incited him to murder the Duke of

Guise, persecutor of the faithful, “as a meritorious deed in the eyes of

God and men.” Coligny repudiated this allegation point blank. Shrinking

from the very appearance of hypocrisy, he abstained from any regret at

the death of the Duke of Guise. “The greatest blessing,” said he, “which

could come to this realm and to the church of God, especially to myself

and all my house;” and he referred to conversations he had held with the

Cardinal of Lorraine and the Duchess of Guise, and to a notice which he

had sent, a few days previously, to the Duke of Guise himself, “to take

care, for there was somebody under a bond to kill him.” Lastly, he

demanded that, to set in a clear light “his integrity, innocence, and

good repute,” Poltrot should be kept, until peace was made, in strict

confinement, so that the admiral himself and the murderer might be

confronted. It was not thought to be obligatory or possible to comply

with this desire; amongst the public there was a passionate outcry for

prompt chastisement. Poltrot, removed to Paris, put to the torture and

questioned by the commissioners of Parliament, at one time confirmed and

at another disavowed his original assertions. Coligny, he said, had not

suggested the project to him, but had cognizance of it, and had not

attempted to deter him. The decree sentenced Poltrot to the punishment

of regicides. He underwent it on the 18th of March, 1563, in the Place

de Greve, preserving to the very end that fierce energy of hatred and

vengeance which had prompted his deed. He was heard saying to himself in

the midst of his torments, and as if to comfort himself, “For all that,

he is dead and gone,--the persecutor of the faithful,--and he will not

come back again.” The angry populace insulted him with yells; Poltrot

added, “If the persecution does not cease, vengeance will fall upon this

city, and the avengers are already at hand.”

Catherine de’ Medici, well pleased, perhaps, that there was now a

question personally embarrassing for the admiral and as yet in abeyance,

had her mind entirely occupied apparently with the additional weakness

and difficulty resulting to the position of the crown and the Catholic

party from the death of the Duke of Guise; she considered peace

necessary; and, for reasons of a different nature, Chancellor de

l’Hospital was of the same opinion: he drew attention to “scruples of

conscience, the perils of foreign influence, and the impossibility of

curing by an application of brute force a malady concealed in the very

bowels and brains of the people.” Negotiations were entered into with

the two captive generals, the Prince of Conde and the Constable de

Montmorency; they assented to that policy; and, on the 19th of March,

peace was concluded at Amboise in the form of an edict which granted to

the Protestants the concessions recognized as indispensable by the crown

itself, and regulated the relations of the two creeds, pending “the

remedy of time, the decisions of a holy council, and the king’s

majority.” Liberty of conscience and the practice of the religion

“called Reformed” were recognized “for all barons and lords

high-justiciary, in their houses, with their families and dependants;

for nobles having fiefs without vassals and living on the king’s lands,

but for them and their families personally.” The burgesses were treated

less favorably; the Reformed worship was maintained in the towns in

which it had been practised up to the 7th of March in the current year;

but, beyond that and noblemen’s mansions, this worship might not be

celebrated save in the faubourgs of one single town in every bailiwick

or seneschalty. Paris and its district were to remain exempt from any

exercise of the said “Reformed religion.”

During the negotiations and as to the very basis of the edict of March

19, 1563, the Protestants were greatly divided; the soldiers and the

politicians, with Conde at their head, desired peace, and thought that

the concessions made by the Catholics ought to be accepted. The majority

of the Reformed pastors and theologians cried out against the

insufficiency of the concessions, and were astonished that there should

be so much hurry to make peace when the Catholics had just lost their

most formidable captain. Coligny, moderate in his principles, but always

faithful to his church when she made her voice heard, showed

dissatisfaction at the selfishness of the nobles. “To confine the

religion to one town in every bailiwick,” he said, “is to ruin more

churches by a stroke of the pen than our enemies could have pulled down

in ten years; the nobles ought to have recollected that example had been

set by the towns to them, and by the poor to the rich.” Calvin, in his

correspondence with the Reformed churches of France, severely handled

Conde on this occasion. At the moment when peace was made, the pacific

were in the right; the death of the Duke of Guise had not prevented the

battle of Dreux from being a defeat for the Reformers; and, when war had

to be supported for long, it was especially the provincial nobles and the

people on their estates who bore the burden of it. But when the edict of

Amboise had put an end to the first religious war, when the question was

no longer as to who won or lost battles, but whether the conditions of

that peace to which the Catholics had sworn were loyally observed, and

whether their concessions were effective in insuring the modest amount of

liberty and security promised to the Protestants, the question changed

front, and it was not long before facts put the malcontents in the right.

Between 1563 and 1567 murders of distinguished Protestants increased

strangely, and excited amongst their families anxiety accompanied by a

thirst for vengeance. The Guises and their party, on their side,

persisted in their outcries for proceedings against the instigators,

known or presumed, of the murder of Duke Francis. It was plainly against

Admiral de Coligny that these cries were directed; and he met them by a

second declaration, very frank as a denial of the deed which it was

intended to impute to him, but more hostile than ever to the Guises and

their party. “The late duke,” said he, “was of the whole army the man I

had most looked out for on the day of the last battle; if I could have

brought a gun to bear upon him to kill him, I would have done it; I would

have ordered ten thousand arquebusiers, had so many been under my

command, to single him out amongst all the others, whether in the field,

or from over a wall, or from behind a hedge. In short, I would not have

spared any of the means permitted by the laws of war in time of hostility

to get rid of so great an enemy as he was for me and for so many other

good subjects of the king.”

After three years of such deadly animosity between the two parties and

the two houses, the king and the queen-mother could find no other way

of stopping an explosion than to call the matter on before the privy

council, and cause to be there drawn up, on the 29th of January, 1566,

a solemn decree, “declaring the admiral’s innocence on his own

affirmation, given in the presence of the king and the council as before

God himself, that he had not had anything to do with or approved of the

said homicide. Silence for all time to come was consequently imposed

upon the attorney-general and everybody else; inhibition and prohibition

were issued against the continuance of any investigation or prosecution.

The king took the parties under his safeguard, and enjoined upon them

that they should live amicably in obedience to him.” By virtue of this

injunction, the Guises, the Colignies, and the Montmorencies ended by

embracing, the first-named accommodating themselves with a pretty good

grace to this demonstration: “but God knows what embraces!” [Words used

in La Harenga, a satire of the day in burlesque verse upon the Cardinal

of Lorraine.] Six years later the St. Bartholomew brought the true

sentiments out into broad daylight.

At the same time that the war was proceeding amongst the provinces with

this passionate doggedness, royal decrees were alternately confirming and

suppressing or weakening the securities for liberty and safety which the

decree of Amboise, on the 19th of March, 1563, had given to the

Protestants by way of re-establishing peace. It was a series of

contradictory measures which were sufficient to show the party-strife

still raging in the heart of the government. On the 14th of June, 1563,

Protestants were forbidden to work, with shops open, on the days of

Catholic festivals. On the 14th of December, 1563, it was proclaimed

that Protestants might not gather alms for the poor of their religion,

unless in places where that religion was practised, and nowhere else.

On the 24th of June, 1564, a proclamation from the king interdicted the

exercise of the Reformed religion within the precincts of any royal

residence. On the 4th of August, 1564, the Reformed churches were

forbidden to hold synods and make collections of money, and their

ministers to quit their places of residence and to open schools. On the

12th of November, 1567, a king’s ordinance interdicted the conferring of

judiciary offices on non-Catholics. In vain did Conde and Coligny cry

out loudly against these violations of the peace of Amboise; in vain, on

the 16th of August, 1563, at the moment of proclaiming the king’s

majority, was an edict issued giving full and entire confirmation to the

edict of the 19th of March preceding, with the addition of prescriptions

favorable to the royal authority, as well as, at the same time, to the

maintenance of the public peace; scarcely any portion of these

prescriptions was observed; the credit of Chancellor de l’Hospital was

clearly very much on the decline; and, whilst the legal government was

thus falling to pieces or languishing away, Gaspard de Tavannes, a proved

soldier and royalist, who, however, was not yet marshal of France, was

beginning to organize, under the name of Brotherhood of the Holy Spirit,

a secret society intended to renew the civil war “if it happened that

occasion should offer for repressing and chastising them of the religion

called Reformed.” It was the League in its cradle. At the same time,

the king had orders given for a speedy levy of six thousand Swiss, and

an army-corps was being formed on the frontiers of Champagne. The

queen-mother neglected no pains, no caresses, to hide from Conde the true

moving cause at the bottom of all these measures; and as “he was,” says

the historian Davila, “by nature very ready to receive all sorts of

impressions,” he easily suffered himself to be lulled to sleep. One day,

however, in June, 1567, he thought it about time to claim the fulfilment

of a promise that had been made him at the time of the peace of

Amboise of a post which would give him the rank and authority of

lieutenant-general of the kingdom, as his late brother, the King of

Navarre, had been; and he asked for the sword of constable which

Montmorency, in consequence of his great age, seemed disposed to resign

to the king. Catherine avoided giving any answer; but her favorite son,

Henry, Duke of Anjou, who was as yet only sixteen, repudiated this idea

with so much haughtiness that Conde felt called upon to ask some

explanations; there was no longer any question of war with Spain or of

an army to be got together. “What, pray, will you do,” he asked, “with

the Swiss you are raising?” The answer was, “We shall find good

employment for them.”

It is the failing of a hypocritical and lying policy, however able, that,

if it do not succeed promptly, a moment arrives when it becomes

transparent and lets in daylight. Even Conde could not delude himself

any longer; the preparations were for war against the Reformers. He

quitted the court to take his stand again with his own party. Coligny,

D’Andelot, La Rochefoucauld, La Noue, and all the accredited leaders

amongst the Protestants, whom his behavior, too full of confidence or of

complaisance towards the court, had shocked or disquieted, went and

joined him. In September, 1567, the second religious war broke out.

It was short, and not decisive for either party. At the outset of the

campaign, success was with the Protestants; forty towns, Orleans,

Montereau, Lagny, Montauban, Castres, Montpellier, Uzes, &c., opened

their gates to them or fell into their hands.

They were within an ace of surprising the king at Monceaux, and he never

forgot, says Montluc, that “the Protestants had made him do the stretch

from Meaux to Paris at something more than a walk.” It was around Paris

that Conde concentrated all the efforts of the campaign. He had posted

himself at St. Denis with a small army of four thousand foot and two

thousand horse. The Constable de Montmorency commanded the royal army,

having a strength of sixteen thousand foot and three thousand horse.

Attempts were made to open negotiations; but the constable broke them off

brusquely, roaring out that the king would never tolerate two religions.

On the 10th of November, 1567, the battle began at St. Denis, and was

fought with alternations of partial success and reverse, which spread joy

and sadness through the two hosts in turn; but in resisting a charge of

cavalry, led to victory by Conde, the constable fell with and under his

horse; a Scot called out to him to surrender; for sole response, the aged

warrior, “abandoned by his men, but not by his manhood,” says D’Aubigne,

smashed the Scot’s jaw with the pommel of his broken sword; and at the

same moment he fell mortally wounded by a shot through the body. His

death left the victory uncertain and the royal army disorganized. The

campaign lasted still four months, thanks to the energetic perseverance

of Coligny and the inexhaustible spirits of Conde, both of whom excelled

in the art of keeping up the courage of their men. “Where are you taking

us now?” asked an ill-tempered officer one day. “To meet our German

allies,” said Conde. “And suppose we don’t find them?” “Then we will

breathe on our fingers, for it is mighty cold.” They did at last, at

Pont-a-Mousson, meet the German re-enforcements, which were being brought

up by Prince John Casimir, son of the elector-palatine, and which made

Conde’s army strong enough for him to continue the war in earnest. But

these new comers declared that they would not march any farther unless

they were paid the hundred thousand crowns due to them. Conde had but

two thousand. “Thereupon,” says La Noue, “was there nothing for it but

to make a virtue of necessity; and he as well as the admiral employed all

their art, influence, and eloquence to persuade every man to divest

himself of such means as he possessed for to furnish this contribution,

which was so necessary. They themselves were the first to set an

example, giving up their own silver plate. . . . Half from love and

half from fear, this liberality was so general, that, down to the very

soldiers’ varlets, every one gave; so that at last it was considered a

disgrace to have contributed little. When the whole was collected, it

was found to amount, in what was coined as well as in plate and gold

chains, to more than eighty thousand livres, which came in so timely,

that without it there would have been a difficulty in satisfying the

reiters. . . . Was it not a thing worthy of astonishment to see an

army, itself unpaid, despoiling itself of the little means it had of

relieving its own necessities and sparing that little for the

accommodation of others, who, peradventure, scarcely gave them a thankee

for it?” [_Memoires de La Noue, in the Petitot collection,_ 1st Series,

t. xxxiv. p. 207.]

So much generosity and devotion, amongst the humblest as well as the most

exalted ranks of the army, deserved not to be useless: but it turned out

quite differently. Conde and Coligny led back to Paris their new army,

which, it is said, was from eighteen to twenty thousand strong, and

seemed to be in a condition either to take Paris itself, or to force the

royal army to enter the field and accept a decisive battle. To bring

that about, Conde thought the best thing was to besiege Chartres, “the

key to the granary of Paris,” as it was called, and “a big thorn,”

according to La Noue, “to run into the foot of the Parisians.” But

Catherine de’ Medici had quietly entered once more into negotiations with

some of the Protestant chiefs, even with Conde himself. Charles IX.

published an edict in which he distinguished between heretics and rebels,

and assured of his protection all Huguenots who should lay down arms.

Chartres seemed to be on the point of capitulating, when news came that

peace had just been signed at Longjumeau, on the 23d of March. The king

put again in force the edict of Amboise of 1563, suppressing all the

restrictions which had been tacked on to it successively. The Prince of

Conde and his adherents were reinstated in all their possessions,

offices, and honors; and Conde was “held and reputed good relative,

faithful subject, and servant of the king.” The Reformers had to

disband, restore the new places they had occupied, and send away their

German allies, to whom the king undertook to advance the hundred thousand

gold crowns which were due to them. He further promised, by a secret

article, that he too would at a later date dismiss his foreign troops and

a portion of the French.

This news caused very various impressions amongst the Protestant camp and

people. The majority of the men of family engaged in the war, who most

frequently had to bear the expense of it, desired peace. The personal

advantages accruing to Conde himself--made it very acceptable to him.

But the ardent Reformers, with Coligny at their head, complained bitterly

of others being lured away by fine words and exceptional favors, and not

prosecuting the war when, to maintain it, there was so good an army and

the chances were so favorable. A serious dispute took place between the

pacific negotiators and the malcontents. Chancellor de l’Hospital wrote,

in favor of peace, a discourse on the pacific settlement of the troubles

of the year 1567, containing the necessary causes and reasons of the

treaty, together with the means of reconciling the two parties to one

another, and keeping them in perpetual concord; composed by a high

personage, true subject, and faithful servant of the French crown. But,

if the chancellor’s reasons were sound, the hopes he hung upon them were

extravagant; the parties were at that pitch of passion at which reasoning

is in vain against impressions, and promises are powerless against

suspicions. Concluded “through the vehemence of the desire to get home

again,” as La Noue says, the peace of Longjumeau was none the less known

as the little peace, the patched-up peace, the lame and rickety peace;

and neither they who wished for it nor they who spurned it prophesied its

long continuance.

Scarcely six months having elapsed, in August, 1568, the third religious

war broke out. The written guarantees given in the treaty of Longjumeau

for security and liberty on behalf of the Protestants were misinterpreted

or violated. Massacres and murders of Protestants became more numerous,

and were committed with more impunity than ever: in 1568 and 1569, at

Amiens, at Auxerre, at Orleans, at Rouen, at Bourges, at Troyes, and at

Blois, Protestants, at one time to the number of one hundred and forty or

one hundred and twenty, or fifty-three, or forty, and at another singly,

with just their wives and children, were massacred, burned, and hunted by

the excited populace, without any intervention on the part of the

magistrates to protect them or to punish their murderers. The

contemporary Protestant chroniclers set down at ten thousand the number

of victims who perished in the course of these six months, which were

called a time of peace: we may, with De Thou, believe this estimate to be

exaggerated; but, without doubt, the peace of Longjumeau was a lie, even

before the war began again.

During this interval Conde was living in Burgundy, at Noyers, a little

fortress he possessed through his wife, Frances of Orleans, and Coligny

was living not far from Noyers, at Tanlay, which belonged to his brother

D’Andelot. They soon discovered, both of them, not only what their party

had to suffer, but what measures were in preparation against themselves.

Agents went and sounded the depth of the moats of Noyers, so as to report

upon the means of taking the place. The queen-mother had orders given to

Gaspard de Tavannes to surround the Prince of Conde at Noyers. “The

queen is counselled by passion rather than by reason,” answered the old

warrior; “I am not the sort of man to succeed in this ill-planned

enterprise of distaff and pen; if her Majesty will be pleased to declare

open war, I will show how I understand my duty.” Shocked at the

dishonorable commands given him, Tavannes resolved to indirectly raise

Conde’s apprehensions, in order to get him out of Burgundy, of which he,

Tavannes, held the governorship; and he sent close past the walls of

Noyers bearers of letters containing these words: “The stag is in the

toils; the hunt is ready.” Conde had the bearers arrested, understood

the warning, and communicated it to Coligny, who went and joined him at

Noyers, and they decided, both of them, upon quitting Burgundy without

delay, to go and seek over the Loire at La Rochelle, which they knew to

be devoted to their cause, a sure asylum and a place suitable for their

purposes as a centre of warlike operations. They set out together on the

24th of August, 1568. Conde took with him his wife and his four

children, two of tender age. Coligny followed him in deep mourning; he

had just lost his wife, Charlotte de Laval, that worthy mate of his, who,

six years previously, in a grievous crisis for his soul as well as his

cause, had given him such energetic counsels: she had left him one young

daughter and three little children, the two youngest still in the nurse’s

arms. His sister-in-law, Anne do Salm, wife of his brother D’Andelot,

was also there with a child of two years, whilst her husband was scouring

Anjou and Brittany to rally the friends of his cause and his house. A

hundred and fifty men, soldiers and faithful servants, escorted these

three noble and pious families, who were leaving their castles to go and

seek liberties and perils in a new war. When they arrived at the bank of

the Loire, they found all points in the neighborhood guarded; the river

was low; and a boatman pointed out to them, near Sancerre, a possible

ford. Conde went over first, with one of his children in his arms.

[Illustration: Conde at the Ford---328]

They all went over singing the psalm, _When Israel went out of Egypt,_

and on the 16th of September, 1568, Conde entered La Rochelle. “I fled

as far as I could,” he wrote the next day, “but when I got here I found

the sea; and, inasmuch as I don’t know how to swim, I was constrained to

turn my head round and gain the land, not with feet, but with hands.” He

assembled the burgesses of La Rochelle, and laid before them the pitiable

condition of the kingdom, the wicked designs of people who were their

enemies as well as his own: he called upon them to come and help; he

promised to be aidful to them in all their affairs, and, “as a pledge of

my good faith,” said he, “I will leave you my wife and children, the

dearest and most precious jewels I have in this world.” The mayor of La

Rochelle, La Haise, responded by offering him “lives and property in the

name of all the citizens,” who confirmed this offer with an outburst of

popular enthusiasm. The Protestant nobles of Saintonge and Poitou

flocked in. A royal ally was announced; the Queen of Navarre, Jeanne

d’Albret, was bringing her son Henry, fifteen years of age, whom she was

training up to be Henry IV. Conde went to meet them, and, on the 28th of

September, 1568, all this flower of French Protestantism was assembled at

La Rochelle, ready and resolved to commence the third religious war.

It was the longest and most serious of the four wars of this kind which

so profoundly agitated France in the reign of Charles IX. This one

lasted from the 24th of August, 1568, to the 8th of August, 1570, between

the departure of Conde and Coligny for La Rochelle and the treaty of

peace of St. Germain-en-Laye: a hollow peace, like the rest, and only two

years before the St. Bartholomew. On starting from Noyers with Coligny,

Conde had addressed to the king, on the 23d of August, a letter and a

request, wherein, “after having set forth the grievances of the

Reformers, he attributed all the mischief to the Cardinal of Lorraine,

and declared that the Protestant nobles felt themselves constrained, for

the safety of the realm, to take up arms against that infamous priest,

that tiger of France, and against his accomplices.” He bitterly

reproached the Guises “with treating as mere policists, that is, men who

sacrifice religion to temporal interests, the Catholics inclined to make

concessions to the Reformers, especially the Chancellor de l’Hospital and

the sons of the late Constable de Montmorency.” The Guises, indeed, and

their friends did not conceal their distrust of De l’Hospital, any more

than he concealed his opposition to their deeds and their designs.

Whilst the peace of Longjumeau was still in force, Charles IX. issued a

decree interdicting all Reformers from the chairs of the University and

the offices of the judicature; L’Hospital refused to seal it: “God save

us from the chancellor’s mass!” was the remark at court. L’Hospital,

convinced that he would not succeed in preserving France from a fresh

civil war, made up his mind to withdraw, and go and live for some time at

his estate of Vignay [a little hamlet in the commune of Gironville, near

Etampes, Seine-et-Oise]. The queen-mother eagerly took advantage of his

withdrawal to demand of him the seals, of which, she said, she might have

need daily. L’Hospital gave them up at once, at the same time retaining

his title of chancellor, and letting the queen know “that he would take

pains to recover his strength in order to return to his post, if and when

it should be the king’s and the queen’s pleasure.” From his rural home

he wrote to his friends, “I am not downhearted because the violence of

the wicked has snatched from me the seals of the kingdom. I have not

done as sluggards and cowards do, who hide themselves at the first show

of danger, and obey the first impulses of fear. As long as I was strong

enough, I held my own. Deprived of all support, even that of the king

and the queen, who dared no longer defend me, I retired, deploring the

unhappy condition of France. Now I have other cares; I return to my

interrupted studies and to my children, the props of my old age and my

sweetest delight. I cultivate my fields. The estate of Vignay seems to

me a little kingdom, if any man may consider himself master of anything

here below. . . . I will tell you more; this retreat, which satisfies

my heart, also flatters my vanity; I like to imagine myself in the wake

of those famous exiles of Athens or Rome whom their virtues rendered

formidable to their fellow-citizens. Not that I dare compare myself with

those great men, but I say to myself that our fortunes are similar. I

live in the midst of a numerous family whom I love; I have books; I read,

write, and meditate; I take pleasure in the games of my children; the

most frivolous occupations interest me. In fine, all my time is filled

up, and nothing would be wanting to my happiness if it were not for the

awful apparition hard by which sometimes comes, bringing trouble and

desolation to my heart.”

This “apparition hard by” was war, everywhere present or imminent in the

centre and south-west of France, accompanied by all those passions of

personal hatred and vengeance which are characteristic of religious wars,

and which add so much of the moral sufferings to the physical calamities

of life. L’Hospital, when sending the seals to the queen-mother, who

demanded them of him, considered it his bounden duty to give her without

any mincing, and the king whom she governed, a piece of patriotic advice.

“At my departure,” he says in his will and testament, “I prayed of the

king and queen this thing, that, as they had determined to break the

peace, and proceed by war against those with whom they had previously

made peace, and as they were driving me from the court because they had

heard it said that I was opposed to and ill content with their

enterprise, I prayed them, I say, that if they did not acquiesce in my

counsel, they would, at the very least, some time after they had glutted

and satiated their hearts and their thirst with the blood of their

subjects, embrace the first opportunity that offered itself for making

peace, before that things were reduced to utter ruin; for, whatever there

might be at the bottom of this war, it could not but be very pernicious

to the king and the kingdom.” During the two years that it lasted, from

August, 1568, to August, 1570, the third religious war under Charles IX.

entailed two important battles and many deadly faction-fights, which

spread and inflamed to the highest pitch the passions of the two parties.

On the 13th of March, 1569, the two armies, both about twenty thousand

strong, and appearing both of them anxious to come to blows, met near

Jarnac, on the banks of the Charente; the royal army had for its chief

Catherine de’ Medici’s third son, Henry, Duke of Anjou, advised by the

veteran warrior Gaspard de Tavannes, and supported by the young Duke

Henry of Guise, who had his father to avenge and his own spurs to win.

[Illustration: HENRY OF LORRAINE (DUKE OF GUISE)----332]

The Prince of Conde, with Admiral de Coligny for second, commanded the

Protestant army. We make no pretension to explain and discuss here the

military movements of that day, and the merits or demerits of the two

generals confronted; the Duke of Aumale has given an account of them and

criticised them in his _Histoire des Princes de Conde,_ with a complete

knowledge of the facts and with the authority that belongs to him. “The

encounter on the 13th of March, 1569, scarcely deserves,” he says, “to be

called a battle; it was nothing but a series of fights, maintained by

troops separated and surprised, against an enemy which, more numerous to

begin with, was attacking with its whole force united.”. A tragic

incident at the same time gave this encounter an importance which it has

preserved in history. Admiral de Coligny, forced to make a retrograde

movement, had sent to ask the Prince of Conde for aid; by a second

message he urged the prince not to make a fruitless effort, and to fall

back himself in all haste. “God forbid,” answered Conde, “that Louis de

Bourbon should turn his back to the enemy!” and he continued his march,

saying to his brother-in-law, Francis de la Rochefoucauld, who was

marching beside him, “My uncle has made a ‘clerical error’ (_pas de

clerc,_ a slip); but the wine is drawn, and it must be drunk.” On

arriving at the battle-field, whither he had brought with him but three

hundred horse, at the very moment when, with this weak escort, he was

preparing to charge the deep column of the Duke of Anjou, he received

from La Rochefoucauld’s horse a kick which broke one of the bones of his

leg; and he had already crushed an arm by a fall. We will borrow from

the Duke of Aumale the glorious and piteous tale of this incident.

“Conde turned round to his men-at-arms, and showing first his injured

limbs and then the device, ‘Sweet is danger for Christ and for

fatherland!’ which fluttered upon his banner in the breeze, ‘Nobles of

France,’ he cried, ‘this is the desired moment Remember in what plight

Louis de Bourbon enters the battle for Christ and fatherland!’ Then,

lowering his head, he charges with his three hundred horse upon the eight

hundred lances of the Duke of Anjou. The first shock of this charge was

irresistible; such for a moment was the disorder amongst the Catholics

that many of them believed the day was lost; but fresh bodies of

royalists arrive one after another. The prince has his horse killed

under him; and, in the midst of the confusion, hampered by his wounds, he

cannot mount another. In spite of all, his brave comrades do not desert

him; Soubise and a dozen of them, covered with wounds, are taken; an old

man, named La Vergne, who had brought with him twenty-five sons or

nephews, is left upon the field with fifteen of them, ‘all in a heap,’

says D’Aubigne. Left almost alone, with his back against a tree, one

knee upon the ground, and deprived of the use of one leg, Conde still

defends himself; but his strength is failing him; he sees two Catholic

gentlemen to whom he had rendered service, Saint-Jean and D’Argence; he

calls to them, raises the vizor of his helmet, and holds out to them his

gauntlets. The two horsemen dismount, and swear to risk their lives to

save his. Others join them, and are eager to assist the glorious

captive. Meanwhile the royal cavalry continues the pursuit; the

squadrons successively pass close by the group which has formed round

Conde. Soon he spies the red cloaks of the Duke of Anjou’s guards. He

points to them with his finger. D’Argence understands him, and, ‘Hide

your face!’ he cries. ‘Ah D’Argence, D’Argence, you will not save me,’

replies the prince. Then, like Caesar, covering up his face, he awaited

death the poor soul knew only too well the perfidious character of the

Duke of Anjou, the hatred with which he was hunting him down, and the

sanguinary orders he would give. The guards had gone by when their

captain, Montesquion, learned the name of this prisoner. ‘Slay, slay,

mordioux!’ he shouted; then suddenly wheeling his horse round, he returns

at a gallop, and with a pistol-shot, fired from behind, shatters the

hero’s skull.” [_Histoire des Princes de Conde,_ by M. le Duc d’Aumale,

t. ii. pp. 65-72.]

The death of Conde gave to the battle of Jarnac an importance not its

own. A popular ditty of the day called that prince “the great enemy of

the mass.” “His end,” says the Duke of Aumale, “was celebrated by the

Catholics as a deliverance; a solemn Te Deum was chanted at court and in

all the churches of France. The flags taken were sent to Rome, where

Pope Pius IV. went with them in state to St. Peter’s. As for the Duke of

Anjou, he showed his joy and his baseness together by the ignoble

treatment he caused to be inflicted upon the remains of his vanquished

relative, a prince of the blood who had fallen sword in hand. At the

first rumor of Conde’s death, the Duke of Montpensier’s secretary,

Coustureau, had been despatched from headquarters with Baron de Magnac to

learn the truth of the matter. ‘We found him there,’ he relates, ‘laid

upon an ass; the said sir baron took him by the hair of the head for to

lift up his face, which he had turned towards the ground, and asked me if

I recognized him. But as he had lost an eye from his head, he was

mightily disfigured; and I could say no more than it was certainly his

figure and his hair, and further than that I was unable to speak.’

Meanwhile,” continues the Duke of Aumale, “the accounts of those present

removed all doubt; and the corpse, thus thrown across an ass, with arms

and legs dangling, was carried to Jarnac, where the Duke of Anjou lodged

on the evening of the battle. There the body of Conde was taken down

amidst the sobs of some Protestant prisoners, who kissed, as they wept,

the remains of their gallant chief. This touching spectacle did not stop

the coarse ribaldry of the Duke of Anjou and his favorites; and for two

days the prince’s remains were left in a ground-floor room, there exposed

to the injurious action of the air and, to the gross insults of the

courtiers. The Duke of Anjou at last consented to give up the body of

Conde to the Duke of Longueville, his brother-in-law, who had it interred

with due respect at Vendome in the burial-place of his ancestors.”

When in 1569 he thus testified, from a mixture of hatred and fear, an

ignoble joy at the death of Louis de Conde, the valiant chief of

Protestantism, the Duke of Anjou did not foresee that, nearly twenty

years later, in 1588, when he had become Henry III., King of France, he

would also testify, still from a mixture of hatred and fear, the same

ignoble joy at sight of the corpse of Henry de Guise, the valiant chief

of Catholicism, murdered by his order and in his palace.

As soon as Conde’s death was known at La Rochelle, the Queen of Navarre,

Jeanne d’Albret, hurried to Tonnay-Charente, whither the Protestant army

had fallen back; she took with her her own son Henry, fifteen years old,

and Henry de Bourbon, the late Prince of Conde’s son, who was seventeen;

and she presented both of them to the army. The younger, the future

Henry IV., stepped forward briskly. “Your cause,” said he, “is mine;

your interests are mine; I swear on my soul, honor, and life, to be

wholly yours.” The young Conde took the same oath. The two princes were

associated in the command, under the authority of Coligny, who was

immediately appointed lieutenant-general of the army. For two years

their double signature figured at the bottom of the principal official

acts of the Reformed party; and they were called “the admiral’s pages.”

On both of them Jeanne passionately enjoined union between themselves,

and equal submission on their part to Coligny, their model and their

master in war and in devotion to the common cause. Queen, princes,

admiral, and military leaders of all ranks stripped themselves of all the

diamonds, jewels, and precious stones which they possessed, and which

Elizabeth, the Queen of England, took in pledge for the twenty thousand

pounds sterling she lent him. The Queen of Navarre reviewed the army,

which received her with bursts of pious and warlike enthusiasm; and

leaving to Coligny her two sons, as she called them, she returned alone

to La Rochelle, where she received a like reception from the inhabitants,

“rough and loyal people,” says La Noue, “and as warlike as mercantile.”

After her departure, a body of German horse, commanded by Count Mansfeld,

joined Coligny in the neighborhood of Limoges. Their arrival was an

unhoped-for aid. Coligny distributed amongst them a medal bearing the

effigy of Queen Jeanne of Navarre with this legend: “Alone, and with the

rest, for God, the king, the laws, and peace.”

With such dispositions on one side and the other, war was resumed and

pushed forward eagerly from June, 1569, to June, 1570, with alternations

of reverse and success. On the 23d of June, 1569, a fight took place at

Roche l’Abeille, near St. Yrieix in Limousin, wherein the Protestants had

the advantage. The young Catholic noblemen, with Henry de Guise at their

head, began it rashly, against the desire of their general, Gaspard de

Tavannes, to show off their bravery before the eyes of the queen-mother

and the Cardinal of Lorraine, both of whom considered the operations of

the army too slow and its successes too rare. They lost five hundred men

and many prisoners, amongst others Philip Strozzi, whom Charles IX. had

just made colonel-general of the infantry. They took their revenge on

the 7th of September, 1569, by forcing Coligny to raise the siege of

Poitiers, which he had been pushing forward for more than two months, and

on the 3d of October following, at the battle of Moncontour in Poitou,

the most important of the campaign, which they won brilliantly, and in

which the Protestant army lost five or six thousand men and a great part

of their baggage. Before the action began, “two gentlemen on the side of

the Catholics, being in an out-of-the-way spot, came to speech,” says La

Noue, “with some of the (Protestant) religion, there being certain

ditches between them.

[Illustration: Parley before the Battle of Moncontour----337]

‘Sirs,’ said they, ‘we bear the marks of enemies, but we do not hate you

in any wise, or your party. Warn the admiral to be very careful not to

fight, for our army is marvellously strong by reason of re-enforcements

that have come in to it, and it is very determined withal. Let the

admiral temporize for a month only, for all the nobles have sworn and

said to Monseigneur that they will not wait any longer, that he must

employ them within that time, and they will then do their duty. Let the

admiral remember that it is dangerous to stem the fury of Frenchmen, the

which, however, will suddenly ooze away; if they have not victory

speedily, they will be constrained to make peace, and will offer it you

on advantageous terms. Tell him that we know this from a good source,

and greatly desired to advertise him of it.’ Afterwards they retired.

The others,” continues La Noue, “went incontinently to the admiral for to

make their report, which was to his taste. They told it also to others

of the principals; and some there were who desired that it should be

acted upon; but the majority opined that this notice came from suspected

persons, who had been accustomed to practise fraud and deceit, and that

no account should be made of it.” The latter opinion prevailed; and the

battle of Moncontour was fought with extreme acrimony, especially on the

part of the Catholics, who were irritated by the cruelties, as La Noue

himself says, which the Protestants had but lately practised at the fight

of La Roche l’Abeille. Coligny was wounded in the action, after having

killed with his own hand the Marquis Philibert of Baden; and the melley

had been so hot that the admiral’s friends found great difficulty in

extricating him and carrying him off the field to get his wound attended

to. Three weeks before the battle, on the 13th of September, Coligny had

been sentenced to death by the Parliament of Paris, and hanged in effigy

on the Place de Greve; and a reward of fifty thousand gold crowns had

been offered to whosoever should give him up to the king’s justice dead

or alive, words added, it is said, to the decree at the desire of Charles

IX. himself. Family sorrows were in Coligny’s case added to political

reverses; on the 27th of May, in this same year 1569, he had lost his

brother D’Andelot, his faithful comrade in his religious as well as his

warlike career. “He found himself,” says D’Aubigne, “saddled with the

blame due to accident, his own merits being passed over in silence; with

the remnant of an army which, when it was whole, was in despair even

before the late disaster; with weak towns, dismayed garrisons, and

foreigners without baggage; himself moneyless, his enemies very powerful,

and pitiless towards all, especially towards him; abandoned by all the

great, except one woman, the Queen of Navarre, who, having nothing but

the title, had advanced to Niort in order to lend a hand to the afflicted

and to affairs in general. This old man, worn down by fever, endured all

these causes of anguish and many others that came to rack him more

painfully than his grievous wound. As he was being borne along in a

litter, Lestrange, an old nobleman, and one of his principal counsellors,

travelling in similar fashion, and wounded likewise, had his own litter,

where the road was broad, moved forward in front of the admiral’s, and

putting his head out at the door, he looked steadily at his chief,

saying, with tears in his eyes, ‘Yet God is very merciful.’ Thereupon

they bade one another farewell, perfectly at one in thought, without

being able to say more. This great captain confessed to his intimates

that these few friendly words restored him, and set him up again in the

way of good thoughts and firm resolutions for the future.” He was so

much restored, that, between the end of 1569 and the middle of 1570, he

marched through the south and the centre of France the army which he had

reorganized, and with which, wherever he went, he restored, if not

security, at any rate confidence and zeal, to his party.

On arriving at Arnay-le-Duc, in Burgundy, he found himself confronted by

Marshal de Cosse with thirteen thousand men of the king’s troops.

Coligny had barely half as many; but he did not hesitate to attack, and

on the 13th of June, 1570, he was so near victory that the road was left

open before him. On the 7th of July he arrived at Charite-sur-Loire.

Alarm prevailed at Paris. A truce for ten days was signed, and

negotiations were reopened for a fresh attempt at peace.

“If any one, in these lamentable wars, worked hard, both with body and

mind,” says La Noue, “it may be said to have been the admiral, for, as

regards the greatest part of the burden of military affairs and

hardships, it was he who supported them with much constancy and buoyancy;

and he was as respectful in his bearing towards the princes his superiors

as he was modest towards his inferiors. He always had piety in singular

esteem, and a love of justice, which made him valued and honored by them

of the party which he had embraced. He did not seek ambitiously for

commands and honors; they were thrust upon him because of his competence

and his expertness. When he handled arms and armies, he showed that he

was very conversant with them, as much so as any captain of his day, and

he always exposed himself courageously to danger. In difficulties, he

was observed to be full of magnanimity and resource in getting out of

them, always showing himself quite free from swagger and parade. In

short, he was a personage worthy to re-establish an enfeebled and a

corrupted state. I was fain to say these few words about him in passing,

for, having known him and been much with him, and having profited by his

teaching, I should have been wrong if I had not made truthful and

honorable mention of him.” [_Memoires de La Noue, in the Petitot

collection,_ 1st series, t. xxxiv. p. 288.]

The negotiations were short. The war had been going on for two years.

The two parties, victorious and vanquished by turns, were both equally

sick of it. In vain did Philip II., King of Spain, offer Charles IX. an

aid of nine thousand men to continue it. In vain did Pope Pius V. write

to Catherine de’ Medici, “As there can be no communion between Satan and

the children of the light, it ought to be taken for certain that there

can be no compact between Catholics and heretics, save one full of fraud

and feint.” “We have beaten our enemies,” says Montluc, “over and over

again; but notwithstanding that, they had so much influence in the king’s

council that the decrees were always to their advantage. We won by arms,

but they won by those devils of documents.” Peace was concluded at St.

Germain-en-Laye on the 8th of August, 1570, and it was more equitable and

better for the Reformers than the preceding treaties; for, besides a

pretty large extension as regarded free exercise of their worship and

their civil rights in the state, it granted “for two years, to the

princes of Navarre and Conde and twenty noblemen of the religion, who

were appointed by the king, the wardenship of the towns of La Rochelle,

Cognac, Montauban, and La Charite, whither those of the religion who

dared not return so soon to their own homes might retire.” All the

members of the Parliament, all the royal and municipal officers, and the

principal inhabitants of the towns where the two religions existed were

further bound over on oath “to maintenance of the edict.”