Meanwhile the English movement rather accelerated than retarded the

operations of the royal army. After the fall of Bourges, there had been a

difference of opinion in the council whether Orleans or Rouen ought first

to be attacked. Orleans was the centre of Huguenot activity, the heart

from which the currents of life flowed to the farthest extremities of

Gascony and Languedoc; but it was strongly fortified, and would be

defended by a large and intrepid garrison. A siege was more likely to

terminate disastrously to the assailants than to the citizens and

Protestant troops. The admiral laughed at the attempt to attack a city

which could throw three thousand men into the breach.[168] Rouen, on the

contrary, was weak, and, if attacked before reinforcements were received

from England, but feebly garrisoned. Yet it was the key of the valley of

the Seine, and its possession by the Huguenots was a perpetual menace of

the capital.[169] So long as it was in their hands, the door to the heart

of the kingdom lay wide open to the united army of French and English

Protestants. Very wisely, therefore, the Roman Catholic generals abandoned

their original design[170] of reducing Orleans so soon as Bourges should

fall, and resolved first to lay siege to Rouen. Great reason, indeed, had

the captors of such strongholds as Marienbourg, Calais, and Thionville, to

anticipate that a place so badly protected, so easily commanded, and

destitute of any fortification deserving the name, would yield on the

first alarm.[171] It was true that a series of attacks made by the Duke of

Aumale upon Fort St. Catharine, the citadel of Rouen, had been signally

repulsed, and that, after two weeks of fighting, on the twelfth of July he

had abandoned the undertaking.[172] But, with the more abundant resources

at their command, a better result might now be expected. Siege was,

therefore, a second time laid, on the twenty-ninth of September, by the

King of Navarre.

The forces on the two sides were disproportionate. Navarre, Montmorency,

and Guise were at the head of sixteen thousand foot and two thousand

horse, in addition to a considerable number of German mercenaries.

Montgomery,[173] who commanded the Protestants, had barely eight hundred

trained soldiers.[174] The rest of the scanty garrison was composed of

those of the citizens who were capable of bearing arms, to the number of

perhaps four thousand more. But this handful of men instituted a stout

resistance. After frequently repulsing the assailants, the double fort of

St. Catharine, situated near the Seine, on the east of the city, and

Rouen's chief defence, was taken rather by surprise than by force. Yet,

after this unfortunate loss, the brave Huguenots fought only with the

greater desperation. Their numbers had been reinforced by the accession of

some five hundred Englishmen of the first detachment of troops which had

landed at Havre on the third of October, and whom Sir Adrian Poynings had

assumed the responsibility of sending to the relief of the beleaguered

capital of Normandy.[175] With Killigrew of Pendennis for their captain,

they had taken advantage of a high tide to pass the obstructions of boats

filled with stone and sand that had been sunk in the river opposite

Caudebec, and, with the exception of the crew of one barge that ran

ashore, and eleven of whom were hung by the Roman Catholics, "for having

entered the service of the Huguenots contrary to the will of the Queen of

England," they succeeded in reaching Rouen.[176]

These, however, were not the only auxiliaries upon whom the Huguenot chief

could count. The women were inspired with a courage that equalled, and a

determination that surpassed, that of their husbands and brothers. They

undertook the most arduous labors; they fought side by side on the walls;

they helped to repair at night the breaches which the enemy's cannon had

made during the day; and after one of the most sanguinary conflicts during

the siege, it was found that there were more women killed and wounded than

men. Yet the courage of the Huguenots sustained them throughout the

unequal struggle. Frequently summoned to surrender, the Rouenese would

listen to no terms that included a loss of their religious liberty. Rather

than submit to the usurpation of the Guises, they preferred to fall with

arms in their hands.[177] For fall they must. D'Andelot was on his way

with the troops he had laboriously collected in Germany; another band of

three thousand Englishmen was only detained by the adverse winds; Conde

himself was reported on his way northward to raise the siege--but none

could arrive in time. The King of Navarre had been severely wounded in the

shoulder, but Guise and the constable pressed the city with no less

decision. At last the walls on the side of the suburbs of St. Hilaire and

Martainville were breached by the overwhelming fire of the enemy. The

population of Rouen and its motley garrison, reduced in numbers, worn out

with toils and vigils, and disheartened by a combat which ceased on one

day only to be renewed under less favorable circumstances on the next,

were no longer able to continue their heroic and almost superhuman

exertions.

[Sidenote: Fall of Rouen.]

[Sidenote: The Norman parliament.]

On Monday, the twenty-sixth of October, the army of the triumvirate forced

its way over the rubbish into Rouen, and the richest city of France,

outside of Paris, fell an unresisting prey to the cupidity of an

insubordinate soldiery. Rarely had so tempting a prize fallen into the

hands of a conquering army; rarely were the exactions of war more

remorsely inflicted.[178] But the barbarities of a licentious army were

exceeded in atrocity by the cooler deliberations of the Norman parliament.

That supreme court, always inimical to the Protestants, had retired to the

neighboring city of Louviers, in order to maintain itself free from

Huguenot influence. It now returned to Rouen and exercised a sanguinary

revenge. Augustin Marlorat, one of the most distinguished among the

reformed ministers of France, and the most prominent pastor of the church

of Rouen, had been thrown into prison; he was now brought before the

parliament, and with others was sentenced to death as a traitor and a

disturber of the public repose, then dragged on a hurdle to the place of

execution and ignominiously hung.[179]

The ferocity of the Norman parliament alarming the queen mother, she

interfered to secure the observance of the edict of amnesty she had

recently prepared. But serious results followed in the case of two

prominent partisans of Guise who had fallen into Conde's hands, and were

in prison when the tidings reached Orleans. On the recommendation of his

council, the prince retaliated by sending to the gallows Jean Baptiste

Sapin, a member of the Parisian parliament, and the Abbe de Gastines, who

had been captured while travelling in company with an envoy whom the court

were sending to Spain.[180]

[Sidenote: Death of Antoine de Bourbon, King of Navarre.]

The fall of Rouen was followed within a few weeks by the death of the King

of Navarre. His painful wound was not, perhaps, necessarily mortal, but

the restless and vainglorious prince would not remain quiet and allow it

to heal. He insisted on being borne in a litter through the breach into

the city which had been taken under his nominal command. It was a sort of

triumphal procession, marching to the sound of cymbals, and with other

marks of victory. But the idle pageant only increased the inflammation in

his shoulder. Even in his sick-room he allowed himself no time for serious

thought; but, prating of the orange-groves of Sardinia which he was to

receive from the King of Spain, and toying with Rouhet, the beautiful maid

of honor by whom Catharine had drawn him into her net, he frittered away

the brief remnant of an ignoble life. When visibly approaching his end, he

is said, at the suggestion of an Italian physician, to have confessed

himself to a priest, and to have received the last sacraments of the

Romish Church. Yet, with characteristic vacillation he listened, but a few

hours later, with attention and apparent devoutness, to the reading of

God's Word, and answered the remonstrances of his faithful Huguenot

physician by the assurance that, if he recovered his health, he would

openly espouse the Augsburg Confession, and cause the pure Gospel to be

preached everywhere throughout France.[181] His death occurred on the

seventeenth of November, 1562, at Les Andelys, a village on the Seine. He

had insisted, contrary to his friends' advice, upon being taken by boat

from Rouen to St. Maur-des-Fosses, where, within a couple of leagues of

Paris, he hoped to breathe a purer air; but death overtook him before he

had completed half his journey.[182]

Had Antoine embraced with sincerity and steadfastly maintained either of

the two phases of religious belief which divided between them the whole of

western Christendom, his death would have left a void which could have

been filled with difficulty. He was the first prince of the blood, and

entitled to the regency. His appearance was prepossessing, his manners

courteous. He was esteemed a capable general, and was certainly not

destitute of administrative ability. If, with hearty devotion, he had

given himself to the reformed views, the authority of his great name and

eminent position might have secured for their adherents, if not triumph,

at least toleration and quiet. But two capital weaknesses ruined his

entire course. The love of empty glory blinded him to his true interests;

and the love of sensual pleasure made him an easy dupe. He was robbed of

his legitimate claims to the first rank in France by the promise of a

shadowy sceptre in some distant region, which every sensible statesman of

his time knew from the first that Philip the Second never had entertained

the slightest intention of conferring; while, by the siren voices of her

fair maids of honor, Catharine de' Medici was always sure of being able to

lure him on to the most humiliating concessions. Deceived by the

emissaries of the Spanish king and the Italian queen mother, Antoine would

have been an object rather of pity than of disgust, had he not himself

played false to the friends who supported him. As it was, he passed off

the stage, and scarcely left a single person to regret his departure.

Huguenots and papists were alike gratified when the world was relieved of

so signal an example of inconstancy and perfidy.[183] Antoine left behind

him his wife, the eminent Jeanne d'Albret, and two children--a son, the

Prince of Bearn, soon to appear in history as the leader of the Huguenot

party, and, on the extinction of the Valois line, to succeed to the throne

as Henry the Fourth; and a daughter, Catharine, who inherited all her

mother's signal virtues. The widow and her children were, at the time of

Antoine's death, in Jeanne's dominions on the northern slopes of the

Pyrenees, whither they had retired when he had first openly gone over to

the side of the Guises. There, in the midst of her own subjects, the Queen

of Navarre was studying, more intelligently than any other monarch of her

age, the true welfare of her people, while training her son in those

principles upon which she hoped to see him lay the foundations of a great

and glorious career.

[Sidenote: The English in Havre.]

The sagacity of the enemy had been well exhibited in the vigor with which

they had pressed the siege of Rouen. Conde, with barely seven thousand

men, had several weeks before shut himself up in Orleans, after

despatching the few troops at his disposal for the relief of Bourges and

Rouen, and could do nothing beyond making his own position secure, while

impatiently awaiting the long-expected reinforcements from England and

Germany.[184] The dilatoriness that marked the entire conduct of the war

up to this time had borne its natural fruit in the gradual diminution and

dispersion of his forces, in the loss of one important city after another,

and almost of entire provinces, and, worst of all, in the discouragement

pervading all classes of the Huguenot population.[185] Now, however, he

was on the eve of obtaining relief. Two days after the fall of Rouen, on

the twenty-eighth of October, a second detachment of the English fleet

succeeded in overcoming the contrary winds that had detained them ten days

in crossing the channel, and landed three thousand troops at the port of

Havre.[186] D'Andelot had finally been able to gather up his German

"reiters" and "lansquenets,"[187] and was making a brilliant march through

Alsace, Lorraine, Burgundy, and Champagne, skilfully avoiding the enemy's

forces sent out to watch and intercept him.[188] On the sixth of

November, he presented himself before the gates of Orleans, and was

received with lively enthusiasm by the prince and his small army.[189]

Now at length, on the seventh of November, Conde could leave the walls

which for seven months had sheltered him in almost complete inaction, and

within which a frightful pestilence had been making havoc among the flower

of the chivalry of France; for, whilst fire and sword were everywhere

laying waste the country, heaven had sent a subtle and still more

destructive foe to decimate the wretched inhabitants. Orleans had not

escaped the scourge. The city was crowded with refugees from Paris and

from the whole valley of the Loire. Among these strangers, as well as

among the citizens, death found many victims. In a few months it was

believed that ten thousand persons perished in Orleans alone; while in

Paris, where the disease raged more than an entire year, the number of

deaths was much larger.[190]

[Sidenote: Conde takes the field.]

With the four thousand lansquenets and the three thousand reiters brought

him from Germany,[191] Conde was able to leave a force, under command of

D'Andelot, sufficient to defend the city of Orleans, and himself to take

the field with an army of about fifteen thousand men.[192] "Our enemies,"

he said, "have inflicted two great losses upon us in taking our

castles"--meaning Bourges and Rouen--"but I hope that now we shall have

their knights, if they move out upon the board."[193]

As he was leaving Orleans, he was waited upon by a deputation of fifty

reformed ministers, who urged him to look well to the discipline and

purity of the army. They begged him, by salutary punishment, to banish

from the camp theft and rapine, and, above all, that more insidious and

heaven-provoking sin of licentiousness, which, creeping in, had doubtless

drawn down upon the cause such marked signs of the Lord's displeasure,

that, of all the congregations in France, only the churches of a few

islands on the coasts, and the churches of Montauban, Havre, Orleans,

Lyons, and of the cities of Languedoc[194] and Dauphiny, continued to rear

their heads through the storm that had prostrated all the rest; and, to

this end, they warned him by no means to neglect to afford his soldiers

upon the march the same opportunities of hearing God's Word and of public

prayer which they had enjoyed in Orleans.[195]

The Huguenot army directed its course northward, and the different

divisions united under the walls of Pluviers, or Pithiviers, a weak place,

which surrendered after six hours of cannonading, with little loss to the

besieging party. The greater part of the garrison was dismissed unharmed,

after having been compelled to give up its weapons. Two of the officers,

as guilty of flagrant breach of faith and other crimes, were summarily

hung.[196] And here the Huguenot cause was stained by an act of cruelty

for which no sufficient excuse can be found. Several Roman Catholic

priests, detected, in spite of their disguise, among the prisoners, were

put to death, without other pretext save that they had been the chief

instigators of the resistance which the town had offered. Unhappily, the

Huguenot regarded the priest, and the Roman Catholic the reformed

minister, as the guilty cause of the civil war, and thought it right to

vent upon his head the vengeance which his own religion should have taught

him to leave to the righteous retribution of a just God. After the fall of

Pithiviers, no resistance was attempted by Etampes and other slightly

garrisoned places of the neighborhood, the soldiers and the clergy taking

refuge, before the approach of the army, in the capital.

[Sidenote: The prince appears before Paris.]

The prince was now master of the country to the very gates of Paris, and

it was the opinion of many, including among them the reformer, Beza, that

the city itself might be captured by a sudden advance, and the war thus

ended at a blow.[197] They therefore recommended that, without delay, the

army should hasten forward and attack the terrified inhabitants before

Guise and the constable should have time to bring the army and the king

back from Normandy, where they still lingered. The view was so plausible,

indeed, that it was adopted by most of the reformed historians, and, being

indorsed by later writers, has caused the failure to march directly

against the capital to be regarded as a signal error of Conde in this

campaign. But it would certainly appear hazardous to adopt this conclusion

in the face of the most skilful strategists of the age. It has already

been seen that Francois de la Noue, one of the ablest generals of whom the

Huguenots could ever boast, regarded the idea of capturing Paris at the

beginning of the struggle, with the comparatively insignificant forces

which the prince could bring to the undertaking, as the most chimerical

that could be entertained. Was it less absurd now, when, if the Protestant

army had received large accessions, the walls of Paris could certainly be

held by the citizens for a few days, until an army of fully equal size,

under experienced leaders, could be recalled from the lower Seine? Such,

at least, was the conclusion at which Admiral Coligny, the commanding

spirit in the council-chamber and the virtual head of the Huguenot army,

arrived, when he calmly considered the perils of attacking, with twelve or

fifteen thousand men and four pieces of artillery, the largest capital of

continental Europe--a city whose population amounted to several hundred

thousand souls, among whom there was now not a single avowed Protestant,

and whose turbulent citizens were not unaccustomed to the use of arms. He

resolved, therefore, to adopt the more practicable plan of making the city

feel the pressure of the war by cutting off its supplies of provisions and

by ravaging the surrounding country. Thus, Paris--"the bellows by whose

blasts the war was kept in flames," and "the kitchen that fed it"--would

at last become weary of sustaining in idleness an insolent soldiery, and

of seeing its villages given over to destruction, and compel the king's

advisers to offer just terms of peace, or to seek a solution of the

present disputes on the open field.[198]

But, whatever doubt may be entertained respecting the propriety of the

plan of the campaign adopted by the Prince of Conde, there can be none

respecting the error committed in not promptly carrying that plan into

execution. The army loitered about Etampes instead of pressing on and

seizing the bridges across the Seine. Over these it ought to have crossed,

and, entering the fruitful district of Brie, to have become master of the

rivers by which the means of subsistence were principally brought to

Paris. With Corbeil and Lagny in his possession, Conde would have held

Paris in as deadly a grasp as Henry the Fourth did twenty-eight years

later, when Alexander of Parma was forced to come from Flanders to its

assistance.[199] When, at last, the Huguenot army took the direction of

Corbeil, commanding one of the bridges, the news arrived of the death of

Antoine of Navarre. And with this intelligence came fresh messengers from

Catharine, who had already endeavored more than once by similar means to

delay the Huguenots in their advance. She now strove to amuse Conde with

the hope of succeeding his brother as lieutenant-general of the kingdom

during Charles's minority.[200]

In vain did the soldiers chafe at this new check upon their enthusiasm,

in vain did prudent counsellors remonstrate. There was a traitor even in

the prince's council, in the person of Jean de Hangest, sieur de Genlis

(brother of D'Ivoy, the betrayer of Bourges), whose open desertion we

shall soon have occasion to notice, and this treacherous adviser was

successful in procuring a delay of four days.[201] The respite was not

thrown away. Before the Huguenots were again in motion, Corbeil was

reinforced and rendered impregnable against any assaults which, with their

feeble artillery, they could make upon it. Repulsed from its walls, after

several days wasted in the vain hope of taking it, the prince moved down

the left bank of the Seine, and, on the twenty-eighth of November,

encamped opposite to Paris in the villages of Gentilly and Arcueil.[202]

New proffers came from Catharine; there were new delays on the road. At

Port a l'Anglais a conference with Conde had been projected by the queen

mother, resulting merely in one between the constable and his nephew

Coligny--as fruitless as any that had preceded; for Montmorency would not

hear of tolerating in France another religion besides the Roman Catholic,

and the Admiral would rather die a thousand deaths than abandon the

point.[203]

Under the walls of Paris new conferences took place. The Parisians worked

night and day, strengthening their defences, and making those preparations

which are rarely completed except under the spur of an extraordinary

emergency. Meanwhile, every day brought nearer the arrival of the Spanish

and Gascon auxiliaries whom they were expecting. At a windmill near the

suburb of St. Marceau, the Prince of Conde, Coligny, Genlis, Grammont, and

Esternay met the queen mother, the Prince of La Roche-sur-Yon, the

constable, his son Marshal Montmorency, and Gonnor, at a later time known

as Marshal Cosse. On both sides there were professions of the most ardent

desire for peace, and "Huguenot" and "papist" embraced each other

cordially at parting. But the dangerous intimacy soon bore the bitter

fruit of open treachery. A _camisade_ had been secretly planned by the

Huguenots, and the attack was about to be made on the enemy's works, when

word was brought that one of the chiefs intrusted with the knowledge of

all their plans--the same Genlis, who had been the principal advocate of

the delays upon the route--had gone over to the enemy, and the enterprise

was consequently abandoned.[204]

The deliberations being set on foot by the one party, at least, only in

order to gain time, it is not surprising that they accomplished nothing.

The court would concede none of the important demands of the prince. It

was resolved to exclude Protestantism not only from Paris, but from Lyons,

from all the seats of parliaments, from frontier towns, and from cities

which had not enjoyed the right of having preaching according to the Edict

of January. The exercises of the reformed worship could not be tolerated

in any place where the court sojourned--a cunning provision which would

banish from the royal presence all the princes and high nobility, such as

Renee of France, Conde, and the Chatillons, since these could not consent

to live without the ordinances of their faith for themselves and their

families and retainers. The triumvirs would not agree to the recall of

those who had been exiled. They were willing to have all proceedings

against the partisans of Conde suspended; but they would neither consent

that all edicts, ordinances, and sentences framed against the Huguenots be

declared null and void, nor assent to the restoration of those dignities

which had been taken from them. In other words, as the prince remarked,

the Protestant lords were to put a halter about their own necks for their

enemies to tighten whenever the fancy should take them so to do.[205]

At last the Parisian defences were completed, and the Spanish and Gascon

troops, to the number of seven thousand men, arrived. Then the mask of

conciliation was promptly laid aside. Two weeks of precious time had been

lost, the capital was beyond doubt impregnable, and the unpleasant fact

stared the prince in the face that, after leaving a sufficient force to

garrison it, the constable and Guise might still march out with an army

outnumbering his own.[206] On the tenth of December the Huguenot army

broke up its encampment, and moved in the direction of Chartres,

hesitating at first whether to lay siege to that city or to press on to

Normandy in order to obtain the needed funds and support of the English.

The decision was made in a few days to adopt the latter course, and Conde

had proceeded as far as the vicinity of Dreux on the river Eure, when he

found himself confronted by the enemy, who, enjoying the advantage of

possessing the cities and bridges on the route, could advance with greater

ease by the principal roads. The triumvirs, so lately declining battle in

front of Paris, were now as eager as they had before been reluctant to try

their fortunes in the open field. No longer having the King of Navarre

behind whose name and authority to take shelter, they desired to cover

their designs by the queen mother's instructions. So, before bringing on

the first regular engagement, in which two armies of Frenchmen were to

undertake each other's destruction, they had sent Michel de Castelnau, the

well-known historian, on the fifteenth of December, to inquire of

Catharine de' Medici whether they should give the Huguenots battle. But

the queen was too timid, or too cunning, to assume the weighty

responsibility which they would have lifted from their own shoulders.

"Nurse," she jestingly exclaimed, when Castelnau announced his mission,

calling to the king's old Huguenot foster-mother who was close at hand,

"the generals have sent to ask a woman's advice about fighting; pray, what

is your opinion?" And the envoy could get no more satisfactory answer than

that the queen mother referred the whole matter to themselves, as

experienced military men.[207]

[Sidenote: The battle of Dreux, December 19, 1562.]

On the nineteenth of December, 1562, the armies met. The enemy had that

morning crossed the Eure, and posted himself with sixteen thousand foot

and two thousand horse, and with twenty-two cannon, between two villages

covering his wings, and with the city of Dreux and the village of Treon

behind him as points of refuge in case of defeat. The constable commanded

the main body of the army. Guise, to rebut the current charge of being the

sole cause of the war, affected to lead only his own company of horse in

the right wing, which was under Marshal Saint Andre. The prince's army was

decidedly inferior in numbers; for, although he had four thousand

horse,[208] his infantry barely amounted to seven thousand or eight

thousand men, and he had only five pieces of artillery. Yet the first

movements of the Huguenots were brilliant and effective. Conde, with a

body of French horse, fell upon the battalion of Swiss pikes. It was a

furious onset, long remembered as one of the most magnificent cavalry

charges of the age.[209] Nothing could stand before it. The solid phalanx

was pierced through and through, and the German reiters, pouring into the

way opened by the French, rode to and fro, making havoc of the brave but

defenceless mountaineers. They even penetrated to the rear, and plundered

the camp of the enemy, carrying off the plate from Guise's tent. Meanwhile

Coligny was even more successful than the prince. With a part of the

Huguenot right he attacked and scattered the troops surrounding his

uncle, the constable. In the melee Montmorency himself, while fighting

with his usual courage, had his jaw fractured by a pistol-shot, and was

taken prisoner. But now the tide turned. The Swiss, never for a moment

dreaming of retreat or surrender, had promptly recovered from their

confusion and closed their ranks. The German infantry, or lansquenets,

were brought up to the attack, but first hesitated, and then broke before

the terrible array of pikes. D'Andelot, ill with fever, had thus far been

forced to remain a mere spectator of the contest. But now, seeing the

soldiers whom he had been at such pains to bring to the scene of action in

ignominious retreat, he threw himself on his horse and labored with

desperation to rally them. His pains were thrown away. The lansquenets

continued their course, and D'Andelot, who scarcely escaped falling into

the enemy's hands, probably concurred in the verdict pronounced on them by

a contemporary historian, that no more cowardly troops had entered the

country in fifty years.[210] It was at this moment that the Duke of Guise,

who had with difficulty held his impatient horse in reserve on the Roman

Catholic right, gave the signal to his company to follow him, and fell

upon the French infantry of the Huguenots, imprudently left unprotected by

cavalry at some distance in the rear. The move was skilfully planned and

well executed. The infantry were routed. Conde, coming to the rescue, was

unable to accomplish anything. His horse was killed under him, and, before

he could be provided with another, he was taken prisoner by Damville, a

son of the constable. The German reiters now proved to be worth little

more than the lansquenets. Returning from the pursuit of the fugitives of

the constable's division, and perceiving the misfortunes of the infantry,

they retired to the cover of a wood, and neither the prayers nor the

expostulations of the admiral could prevail on them to face the enemy

again that day.[211] But Guise could not follow up his advantage. The

battle had lasted five hours. Almost the whole of the Huguenot cavalry and

the remnants of the infantry had been drawn up by Coligny in good order on

the other side of a ravine; and the darkness would not allow the Duke,

even had he been so disposed, to renew the engagement.[212]

On either side the loss had been severe. Marshal Saint Andre,

Montberon--one of the constable's sons--and many other illustrious Roman

Catholics, were killed. Montmorency was a prisoner. The Huguenots, if they

had lost fewer prominent men and less common soldiers, were equally

deprived of their leading general. What was certain was, that the

substantial fruits of victory remained in the hands of the Duke of Guise,

to whom naturally the whole glory of the achievement was ascribed. For,

although Admiral Coligny thought himself sufficiently strong to have

attacked the enemy on the following day,[213] if he could have persuaded

his crestfallen German auxiliaries to follow him, he deemed it advisable

to abandon the march into Normandy--difficult under any circumstances on

account of the lateness of the season--and to conduct his army back to

Orleans. This, Coligny--never more skilful than in conducting the most

difficult of all military operations, a retreat in the presence of an

enemy--successfully accomplished.[214]

The first tidings of the battle of Dreux were brought to Paris by

fugitives from the constable's corps. These announced the capture of the

commanding general, and the entire rout of the Roman Catholic army. The

populace, intense in its devotion to the old form of faith, and

recognizing the fatal character of such a blow,[215] was overwhelmed with

discouragement. But Catharine de' Medici displayed little emotion. "Very

well!" she quietly remarked, "_then we shall pray to God in French_."[216]

But the truth was soon known, and the dirge and the _miserere_ were

rapidly replaced by the loud _te deum_ and by jubilant processions in

honor of the signal success of the Roman Catholic arms.[217]

[Sidenote: Riotous conduct of the Parisian mob.]

Recovering from their panic, the Parisian populace continued to testify

their unimpeachable orthodoxy by daily murders. It was enough, a

contemporary writer tells us, if a boy, seeing a man in the streets, but

called out, "Voyla ung Huguenot," for straightway the idle vagabonds, the

pedlers, and porters would set upon him with stones. Then came out the

handicraftsmen and idle apprentices with swords, and thrust him through

with a thousand wounds. His dead body, having been robbed of clothes, was

afterward taken possession of by troops of boys, who asked nothing better

than to "trail" him down to the Seine and throw him in. If the victim

chanced to be a "town-dweller," the Parisians entered his house and

carried off all his goods, and his wife and children were fortunate if

they escaped with their lives. With the best intentions, Marshal

Montmorency could not put a stop to these excesses; he scarcely succeeded

in protecting the households of foreign ambassadors from being involved in

the fate of French Protestants.[218] Yet the same men that were ready at

any time to imbue their hands in the blood of an innocent Huguenot, were

full of commiseration for a Roman Catholic felon. A shrewd murderer is

said to have turned to his own advantage the religious feeling of the

people who had flocked to see him executed. "Ah! my masters," he exclaimed

when already on the fatal ladder, "I must die now for killing a Huguenot

who despised our Lady; but as I have served our Lady always truly, and put

my trust in her, so I trust now she will show some miracle for me."

Thereupon, reports Sir Thomas Smith, the people began to murmur about his

having to die for a Huguenot, ran to the gallows, beat the hangman, and

having cut the fellow's cords, conveyed him away free.[219]

[Sidenote: Orleans invested.]

[Sidenote: Coligny returns to Normandy.]

Of the triumvirs, at whose instigation the war had arisen, one was

dead,[220] a second was a prisoner in the hands of the enemy, the

third--the Duke of Guise--alone remained. Navarre had died a month before.

On the other hand, the Huguenots had lost their chief. Yet the war raged

without cessation. As soon as the Duke of Guise had collected his army and

had, at Rambouillet, explained to the king and court, who had come out to

meet him, the course of recent events, he followed the Admiral toward

Orleans. Invested by the king with the supreme command during the

captivity of the constable, and leading a victorious army, he speedily

reduced Etampes and Pithiviers, captured by Conde on his march to Paris.

Meantime, Coligny had taken a number of places in the vicinity of Orleans,

and his "black riders" had become the terror of the papists of

Sologne.[221] Not long after Guise's approach, fearing that his design was

to besiege the city of Orleans, Coligny threw himself into it. His stay

was not long, however. His German cavalry could do nothing in case of a

siege, and would only be a burden to the citizens. Besides, he was in want

of funds to pay them. He resolved, therefore, to strike boldly for

Normandy.[222] Having persuaded the reiters to dispense with their heavy

baggage-wagons,[223] which had proved so great an incumbrance on the

previous march, he started from Orleans on the first of February with four

thousand troopers, leaving his brother D'Andelot as well furnished as

practicable to sustain the inevitable siege. The lightness of his army's

equipment precluded the possibility of pursuit; its strength secured it an

almost undisputed passage.[224] In a few days it had passed Dreux and the

scene of the late battle, and at Dives, on the opposite side of the

estuary of the Seine from Havre, had received from the English the

supplies of money which they had long been desirous of finding means to

convey to the Huguenots.[225] The only considerable forces of the Guise

faction in Normandy were on the banks of the river, too busy watching the

English at Havre to be able to spare any troops to resist Coligny. Turning

his attention to the western shores of the province, he soon succeeded in

reducing Pont-l'Eveque, Caen, Bayeux, Saint Lo, and the prospect was

brilliant of his soon being able, in conjunction with Queen Elizabeth's

troops, to bring all Normandy over to the side of the prince.[226]

Meanwhile, however, there were occurring in the centre of the kingdom

events destined to give an entirely different turn to the relations of the

Huguenots and papists in France. To these we must now direct our

attention.

Francois de Guise, relieved of the admiral's presence, had begun the siege

of Orleans four days after the departure of the latter for Normandy (on

the fifth of February), and manifested the utmost determination to destroy

the capital city, as it might be regarded, of the confederates. Indeed,

when the court, then sojourning at Blois, in alarm at the reports sent by

Marshal de Brissac from Rouen, respecting Coligny's conquests and his own

impotence to oppose him, ordered Guise to abandon his undertaking and

employ his forces in crushing out the flames that had so unexpectedly

broken forth in Normandy, the duke declined to obey until he should have

received further orders, and gave so cogent reasons for pursuing the

siege, that the king and his council willingly acquiesced in his

plan.[227] From his independent attitude, however, it is evident that

Guise was of Pasquier's mind, and believed he had gained as much of a

victory in the capture of the constable, his friend in arms, but dangerous

rival at court, taken by the Huguenots at Dreux, as by the capture of the

Prince of Conde, his enemy, who had fallen into his hands in the same

engagement.[228]

[Sidenote: Capture of the Portereau.]

The city of Orleans, on the north bank of the Loire, was protected by

walls originally of no great worth, but considerably strengthened since

the outbreak of the civil war. On the opposite side of the river, a

suburb, known as the _Portereau_, was fortified by weaker walls, in front

of which two large bastions had recently been erected. The suburb was

connected with Orleans by means of a bridge across the Loire, of which the

end toward the Portereau was defended by two towers of the old mediaeval

construction, known as the "tourelles," and that toward the city by the

city wall and a large square tower.[229] Against the Portereau the duke

directed the first assault, hoping easily to become master of it, and

thence attack the city from its weakest side. His plan proved successful

beyond his expectations. While making a feint of assailing with his whole

army the bastion held by the Gascon infantry, he sent a party to scale the

bastion guarded by the German lansquenets, who, being taken by surprise,

yielded an entrance almost without striking a blow. In a few minutes the

Portereau was in the hands of Guise, and the bridge was crowded with

fugitives tumultuously seeking a refuge in the city. Orleans itself was

nearly involved in the fate of its suburb; for the enemy, following close

upon the heels of the fleeing host, was at the very threshold of the

"tourelles," when D'Andelot, called from his sick-bed by the tumult,

posting himself at the entrance with a few gentlemen in full armor, by

hard blows beat back the troops, already sanguine of complete

success.[230] A few days later the "tourelles" themselves were scaled and

taken.[231]

After so poor a beginning, the small garrison of Orleans had sufficient

reason to fear the issue of the trial to which they were subjected. But,

so far from abandoning their courage, they applied themselves with equal

assiduity to their religious and to their military duties. "In addition to

the usual sermons and the prayers at the guard-houses, public

extraordinary prayers were made at six o'clock in the morning; at the

close of which the ministers and the entire people, without exception,

betook themselves to work with all their might upon the fortifications,

until four in the evening, when every one again attended prayers."

Everywhere the utmost devotion was manifested, women of all ranks sharing

with their husbands and brothers in the toils of the day, or, if too

feeble for these active exertions, spending their time in tending the sick

and wounded.[232]

[Sidenote: "A new and very terrible device."]

Not only did the Huguenots, when they found their supply of lead falling

short, make their cannon-balls of bell-metal--of which the churches and

monasteries were doubtless the source--and of brass, but they turned this

last material to a use till now, it would appear, unheard of. "I have

learned this day, the fifteenth instant, of the Spaniards," wrote the

English ambassador from the royal court, which was at a safe distance, in

the city of Blois, "that they of Orleans shoot brass which is hollow, and

so devised within that when it falls it opens and breaks into many pieces

with a great fire, and hurts and kills all who are about it. Which is a

new device and very terrible, for it pierces the house first, and breaks

at the last rebound. Every man in Portereau is fain to run away, they

cannot tell whither, when they see where the shot falls."[233]

[Sidenote: Huguenot reverses.]

It could not, however, be denied that there was much reason for

discouragement in the general condition of the Protestant cause throughout

the country. Of the places so brilliantly acquired in the spring of the

preceding year, the greater part had been lost. Normandy and Languedoc

were the only bright spots on the map of France. Lyons still remained in

the power of the Huguenots, in the south-east; but, though repeated

assaults of the Duke of Nemours had been repulsed, it was threatened with

a siege, for which it was but indifferently prepared.[234] Des Adrets, the

fierce chieftain of the lower Rhone, had recently revealed his real

character more clearly by betraying the cause he had sullied by his

barbarous advocacy, and was now in confinement.[235] Indeed, everything

seemed to point to a speedy and complete overthrow of an undertaking which

had cost so much labor and suffering,[236] when an unexpected event

produced an entire revolution in the attitude of the contending parties

and in the purposes of the leaders.

[Sidenote: Assassination of Francois de Guise.]

This event was the assassination of Francois de Guise. On the evening of

the eighteenth of February, 1563, in company with a gentleman or two, he

was riding the round of his works, and arranging for a general attack on

the morrow. So confident did he feel of success, that he had that morning

written to the queen mother, it is said, that within twenty-four hours he

would send her news of the capture of Orleans, and that he intended to

destroy the entire population, making no discrimination of age or sex,

that the very memory of the rebellious city might be obliterated.[237] At

a lonely spot on the road, a man on horseback, who had been lying in wait

for him, suddenly made his appearance, and, after discharging a pistol at

him from behind, rode rapidly off, before the duke's escort, taken up with

the duty of assisting him, had had time to make any attempt to apprehend

the assassin. Three balls, with which the pistol was loaded, had lodged in

Guise's shoulder, and the wound, from the first considered dangerous,

proved mortal within six days. The murderer had apparently made good his

escape; but a strange fatality seemed to attend him. During the darkness

he became so confused that, after riding all night, he found himself

almost at the very place where the deed of blood had been committed, and

was compelled to rest himself and his jaded horse at a house, where he was

arrested on suspicion by some of Guise's soldiers. Taken before their

superior officers, he boldly avowed his guilt, and boasted of what he had

done. His name he gave as Jean Poltrot, and he claimed to be lord of

Merey, in Angoumois; but he was better known, from his dark complexion and

his familiarity with the Spanish language, by the sobriquet of

"L'Espagnolet." He was an excitable, melancholy man, whose mind,

continually brooding over the wrongs his country and faith had experienced

at the hands of Guise, had imbibed the fanatical notion that it was his

special calling of God to rid the world of "the butcher of Vassy," of the

single execrable head that was accountable for the torrents of blood which

had for a year been flowing in every part of France.

After having been a page of M. d'Aubeterre, father-in-law of the Huguenot

leader Soubise, Merey, at the beginning of the civil war, had been sent by

the daughter of D'Aubeterre to her husband, then with Conde at Orleans.

Subsequently he had accompanied Soubise on his adventurous ride with a few

followers from Orleans to Lyons, when the latter assumed command in behalf

of the Huguenots. Soubise appears to have valued him highly as one of

those reckless youths that court rather than shun personal peril, while he

shared the common impression that the lad was little better than a fool.

True, for years--ever since the tumult of Amboise, where his kinsman, La

Renaudie and another relative had been killed--Merey had been constantly

boasting to all whom he met that he would kill the Duke of Guise; but

those who heard him "made no more account of his words than if he had

boasted of his intention to obtain the imperial crown."[238]

He had given expression to his purpose at Lyons, in the presence of M. de

Soubise, the Huguenot governor, and again to Admiral Coligny before he

started on his expedition to Normandy. But the Huguenot generals evidently

imagined that there was nothing in the speech beyond the prating of a

silly braggart. Soubise, indeed, advised him to attend to his own duties,

and to leave the deliverance of France to Almighty God; but neither the

admiral nor the soldiers, to whom he often repeated the threat, paid any

attention to it. In short, he was regarded as one of those frivolous

characters, of whom there is an abundance in every camp, who expect to

acquire a cheap notoriety by extravagant stories of their past or

prospective achievements, but never succeed in earning more, with all

their pains, than the contempt or incredulity of their listeners. Still,

Poltrot was a man of some value as a scout, and Coligny had employed

him[239] for the purpose of obtaining information respecting the enemy's

movements, and had furnished him at one time with twenty crowns to defray

his expenses, at another with a hundred, to procure himself a horse. The

spy had made his way to the Roman Catholic camp, and, by pretending to

follow the example of others in renouncing his Huguenot associations, had

conciliated the duke's favor to such an extent that he excited no

suspicion before the commission of the treacherous act.

[Sidenote: Execution of Poltrot.]

But, if Poltrot was a fanatic, he was not of the stuff of which martyrs

are made. When questioned in the presence of the queen and council to

discover his accomplices, his constancy wholly forsook him, and he said

whatever was suggested. In particular he accused the admiral of having

paid him to execute the deed, and Beza of having instigated him by holding

forth the rewards of another world. La Rochefoucauld, Soubise, and others

were criminated to a minor degree. During his confinement in the prisons

of the Parisian parliament, to which he was removed, he continually

contradicted himself. But his weakness did not save him. He was condemned

to be burned with red-hot pincers, to be torn asunder by four horses, and

to be quartered. Before the execution of this frightful sentence, he was,

by order of the court, put to torture. But, instead of reiterating his

former accusations, he retracted almost every point.[240] To purchase a

few moments' reprieve, he sought an interview with the first president of

the parliament, Christopher de Thou; and we have it upon the authority of

that magistrate's son, the author of an imperishable history of his times,

that, entering into greater detail, Poltrot persisted constantly in

exculpating Soubise, Coligny, and Beza. A few minutes later, beside

himself with terror and not knowing what he said in his delirium, he

declared the admiral to be innocent; then, at the very moment of

execution, he accused not only him, but his brother, D'Andelot, of whom he

had said little or nothing before.[241]

[Sidenote: Beza and Coligny are accused, but vindicate themselves.]

Coligny heard in Normandy the report of the atrocious charges that had

been wrung from Poltrot. Copies of the assassin's confession were

industriously circulated in the camp, and he thus became acquainted with

the particulars of the accusation. With Beza and La Rochefoucauld, who

were with him at Caen, he published, on the twelfth of March, a long and

dignified defence. The reformer for himself declared, that, although he

had more than once seen persons ill-disposed toward the Duke of Guise

because of the murders perpetrated by him at Vassy, he had never been in

favor of proceeding against him otherwise than by the ordinary methods of

law. For this reason he had gone to Monceaux to solicit justice of

Charles, of his mother, and of the King of Navarre. But the hopes which

the queen mother's gracious answer had excited were dashed to the earth by

Guise's violent resort to arms. Holding the duke to be the chief author

and promoter of the present troubles, he admitted that he had a countless

number of times prayed to God that He would either change his heart or rid

the kingdom of him. But he appealed to the testimony of Madame de Ferrare

(Renee de France, the mother-in-law of Guise), and all who had ever heard

him, when he said that never had he publicly mentioned the duke by name.

As for Poltrot himself, he had never met him.

The admiral himself was not less frank. Ever since the massacre of Vassy

he had regarded Guise and his party as common enemies of God, of the king,

and of the public tranquillity; but never, upon his life and his honor,

had he approved of such attacks as that of Poltrot. Indeed, he had

steadfastly employed his influence to deter men from executing any plots

against the life of the duke; until, being duly informed that Guise and

Saint Andre had incited men to undertake to assassinate Conde, D'Andelot,

and himself, he had desisted from expressing his opposition. The different

articles of the confession he proceeded to answer one by one; and he

forwarded his reply to the court with a letter to Catharine de' Medici, in

which he earnestly entreated her that the life of Poltrot might be spared

until the restoration of peace, that he might be confronted with him, and

an investigation be made of the entire matter before unsuspected judges.

"But do not imagine," he added, "that I speak thus because of any regret

for the death of the Duke of Guise, which I esteem the greatest of

blessings to the realm, to the Church of God, to myself and my family,

and, if improved, the means of giving rest to the kingdom."[242]

The admiral's frankness was severely criticised by some of his friends. He

was advised to suppress those expressions that were liable to be perverted

to his injury, but he declared his resolution to abide by the consequences

of a clear statement of the truth. And indeed, while the worldly wisdom of

Coligny's censors has received a species of justification in the avidity

with which his sincere avowals have been employed as the basis of graver

accusations which he repelled, the candor of his defence has set upon his

words the indelible impress of veracity which following ages can never

fail to read aright. That Catharine recognized his innocence is evident

from the very act by which she endeavored to make him appear guilty. He

had begged that Poltrot might be spared till after the conclusion of

peace, that he might himself have an opportunity to vindicate his

innocence by confronting him in the presence of impartial judges. It was

Catharine's interest, she thought, to confirm her own power by attaching a

stigma to the honor of the Chatillons, and so depriving them of much of

their influence in the state.[243] Accordingly, on Thursday, the

eighteenth of March, Poltrot was put to death and his mouth sealed forever

to further explanations. _The next day the Edict of Pacification was

signed at Amboise._[244] After all, it is evident that Coligny's innocence

or guilt, in this particular instance, must be judged by his entire course

and his well-known character. If his life bears marks of perfidy and

duplicity, if the blood of the innocent can be found upon his skirts, then

must the verdict of posterity be against him. But if the careful

examination of his entire public life, as well as the history of his

private relations, reveals a character not only above reproach, but the

purest, most beneficent, and most patriotic of all that France can boast

in political stations in the sixteenth century, the confused and

contradictory allegations of an enthusiast who had not counted the cost of

his daring attempt--allegations wrung from him by threats and

torture--will not be allowed to weigh for an instant against Coligny's

simple denial.[245]

[Sidenote: Various estimates of Guise.]

Of the Duke of Guise the estimates formed by his contemporaries differed

as widely as their political and religious views. With the Abbe Bruslart

he was "the most virtuous, heroic, and magnanimous prince in Europe, who

for his courage was dreaded by all foreign nations." To the author of the

history of the reformed churches his ambition and presumption seemed to

have obscured all his virtues.[246] The Roman Catholic preachers regarded

his death as a stupendous calamity, a mystery of Divine providence, which

they could only interpret by supposing that the Almighty, jealous of the

confidence which His people reposed rather in His creature than in

Himself, had removed the Duke of Guise in order to take the cause of His

own divinity, of His spouse the Church, of the king and kingdom, under His

own protection.[247] The Bishop of Riez wrote and published a highly

colored account of the duke's last words and actions, in the most approved

style of such posthumous records, and introduced edifying specimens of a

theological learning, which, until the moment of his wounding, Guise had

certainly never possessed, making him, of course, persist to the end in

protesting his innocence of the guilt of Vassy.[248] The Protestants,

while giving him credit for some compunctions of conscience for his

persecuting career, and willingly admitting that, but for his pernicious

brother, the Cardinal of Lorraine, he might have run a far different

course, were compelled to view his death as a great blessing to

France.[249]

[Sidenote: Renee de France at Montargis.]

A famous incident, illustrating the perils to which the Huguenots of the

central provinces were subjected during the siege, is too characteristic

to be passed over in silence. More than once, in the course of the war,

the town and castle of Montargis, the Duchess of Ferrara's residence, had

been threatened on account of the asylum it afforded to defenceless

Protestants flocking thither from all quarters. When the minds of the

Roman Catholics had become exasperated by nine or ten months of civil war,

they formed a settled determination to break up this "nest of Huguenots."

Accordingly the Baron de la Garde--Captain Poulain, of Merindol

memory--brought an order, in the king's name, from the Duke of Guise, at

that time before the walls of Orleans, commanding Renee to leave

Montargis, which had become important for military purposes, and to take

up her abode at Fontainebleau, St. Germain, or Vincennes. The duchess

replied that it was idle to say that so weak a place as Montargis could,

without extensive repairs, be of any military importance; and that to

remove to any place in the vicinity of Paris would be to expose herself to

assassination by the fanatical populace. She therefore sent Poulain back

to the king for further instructions. Meantime, Poulain was followed by

Malicorne, a creature of the duke's, at the head of some partisan troops.

This presumptuous officer had the impertinence to demand the immediate

surrender of the castle, and went so far as to threaten to turn some

cannon against it, in case of her refusal. But he little understood the

virile courage of the woman with whom he had to do. "Malicorne," she

answered him, "take care what you undertake. There is not a man in this

kingdom that can command me but the king. If you attempt what you

threaten, I shall place myself first upon the breach, that I may find out

whether you will be audacious enough to kill a king's daughter. Moreover,

I am not so ill-connected, nor so little loved, but that I have the means

of making the punishment of your temerity felt by you and your offspring,

even to the very babes in the cradle." The upstart captain was not

prepared for such a reception, and, after alleging his commission as the

excuse for the insolence of his conduct, delayed an enterprise which the

wound and subsequent death of Guise entirely broke off.[250] Montargis

continued during this and the next civil wars to be a safe refuge for

thousands of distressed Protestants.

A great obstacle to the conclusion of peace was removed by Guise's death.

There was no one in the Roman Catholic camp to take his place. The

panegyric pronounced upon the duke by the English ambassador, Sir Thomas

Smith, may perhaps be esteemed somewhat extravagant, but has at least the

merit of coming from one whose sympathies were decidedly adverse to him.

"The papists have lost their greatest stay, hope, and comfort. Many

noblemen and gentlemen did follow the camp and that faction, rather for

the love of him than for any other zeal or affection. He was indeed the

best captain or general in all France, some will say in all Christendom;

for he had all the properties which belong [to], or are to be wished in a

general: a ready wit and well advised, a body to endure pains, a courage

to forsake no dangerous adventures, use and experience to conduct any

army, much courtesy in entertaining of all men, great eloquence to utter

all his mind. And he was very liberal both of money and honor to young

gentlemen, captains, and soldiers; whereby he gat so much love and

admiration amongst the nobility and the soldiers in France, that I think,

now he is gone, many gentlemen will forsake the camp; and they begin to

drop away already. Then he was so earnest and so fully persuaded in his

religion, that he thought nothing evil done that maintained that sect; and

therefore the papists again thought nothing evil bestowed upon him; all

their money and treasure of the Church, part of their lands, even the

honor of the crown of France, they could have found in their hearts to

have given him. And so all their joy, hope, and comfort one little stroke

of a pistolet hath taken away! Such a vanity God can show men's hope to

be, when it pleaseth Him."[251]

Of the four generals on the Roman Catholic side under whose auspices the

war began, three were dead and the fourth was in captivity. The treasury

was exhausted. The interest of old debts was left unpaid; new debts had

been contracted. Less than half the king's revenues were available on

account of the places which the Huguenots held or threatened. The

alienation of one hundred thousand livres of income from ecclesiastical

property had been recently ordered, greatly to the annoyance of the

clergy. The admiral's progress had of late been so rapid that but two or

three important places of lower Normandy remained in friendly hands.

After the reduction of these he would move down through Maine and Anjou

to Orleans, with a better force than had been marshalled at Dreux;[252]

the English would gain such a foothold on French soil as it would be

difficult to induce them to relinquish. And where could competent

generals be secured for the prosecution of hostilities? The post of

lieutenant-general, now vacant, had, indeed, been offered to the Duke

Christopher of Wuertemberg; but what prospect was there that a Protestant

would consent to conduct a war against Protestants?[253]

[Sidenote: Deliberations for peace.]

Catharine was urgent for an immediate conclusion of peace. For the purpose

of fixing its conditions, Conde was brought, under a strong guard, to the

camp of the army before Orleans, and, on the small "Isle aux Bouviers" in

the middle of the Loire, he and the constable, released on their honor,

held a preliminary interview on Sunday, the seventh of March, 1563.[254]

At first there seemed little prospect of harmonizing their discordant

pretensions; for, if the question of the removal of the triumvirs had lost

all its practical importance, the old bone of contention remained in the

re-establishment of the Edict of January. On this point Montmorency was

inflexible. He had been the prime instrument in expelling Protestantism

from Paris, and had distinguished himself by burning the places of

worship. It could hardly be expected that he should rebuild what he had so

laboriously torn down. And, whatever had been his first intentions, Conde

proved less tenacious than might have been anticipated from his previous

professions. The fact was, that the younger Bourbon was not proof against

the wiles employed with so much success against his elder brother.

Flattered by Catharine, he was led to suppose that after all it made

little difference whether the full demands of the Huguenots were expressly

granted in the edict of pacification or not. The queen mother was

resolved, so he was assured, to confer upon him the dignity and office of

lieutenant-general, left vacant by Navarre's death. When this should be

his, it would be easy to obtain every practical concession to which the

Huguenots were entitled. So much pleased was the court with the ardor he

displayed, that he was at last permitted to go to Orleans on his own

princely parole, in order to consult his confederates.

The Huguenot ministers whose advice he first asked, seeing his

irresolution, were the more decided in opposing any terms that did not

expressly recognize the Edict of January. Seventy-two united in a letter

(on the ninth of March, 1563), in which they begged him not to permit the

cause to suffer disaster at his hands, and rather to insure an extension,

than submit to an abridgment of the liberty promised by the royal

ordinance.[255] From the ministers, however, Conde went to the Huguenot

"noblesse," with whom his arguments of expediency had more weight, and

who, weary of the length and privations of the war, and content with

securing their own privileges, readily accepted the conditions reprobated

by the ministers. The pacification was accordingly agreed upon, on the

twelfth of March, and officially published in the form of a royal edict,

dated at Amboise, on the nineteenth of March, 1563.

[Sidenote: Edict of Pacification, March 12, 1563.]

Charles the Ninth, by advice of his mother, the Cardinal of Bourbon, the

Princes of Conde and La Roche-sur-Yon, the Dukes of Montmorency, Aumale,

and Montpensier, and other members of his privy council, grants, in this

document, to all barons, chatellains, and gentlemen possessed of the right

to administer "haute justice," permission to celebrate in their own houses

the worship of "the religion which they call reformed" in the presence of

their families and retainers. The possessors of minor fiefs could enjoy

the same privilege, but it extended to their families only. In every

bailiwick or senechaussee, the Protestants should, on petition, receive

one city in whose suburbs their religious services might be held, and in

all cities where the Protestant religion was exercised on the seventh of

March of the present year, it should continue in one or two places

_inside_ of the walls, to be designated hereafter by the king. The

Huguenots, while secured in their liberty of conscience, were to restore

all churches and ecclesiastical property which they might have seized, and

were forbidden to worship according to their rites in the city of Paris or

its immediate neighborhood. The remaining articles of the peace were of a

more personal or temporary interest. Foreign troops were to be speedily

dismissed; the Protestant lords to be fully reinstated in their former

honors, offices, and possessions; prisoners to be released; insults based

upon the events of the war to be summarily punished. And Charles declared

that he held his good cousin, the Prince of Conde, and all the other

lords, knights, gentlemen, and burgesses that had served under him, to be

his faithful subjects, believing that what they had done was for good ends

and for his service.[256]

[Sidenote: Sir Thomas Smith's remonstrance.]

Such was the Edict of Amboise--a half-way measure, very different from

that which was desired on either side. The English ambassador declared he

could find no one, whether Protestant or papist, that liked the "accord,"

or thought it would last three weeks. And he added, by way of warning to

Coligny and Conde: "What you, who are the heads and rulers, do, I cannot

tell; but every man thinketh that it is but a traine and a deceipt to

sever the one of you from another, and all of you from this stronghold

[Orleans], and then thei will talke with you after another sorte."[257] He

urged the Huguenots to learn a lesson from the fate of Bourges, Rouen, and

other cities which had admitted the "papists," and to consider that these

fine articles came from the queen mother, the Cardinals of Bourbon,

Ferrara, and Guise, and others like them, who desired to take the

Protestants like fish in a net. And he gave D'Andelot the significant

hint--very significant it was, in view of what afterwards befell his

brother Gaspard--that the report spread by the enemy respecting Poltrot's

confession was only a preparation that, _in case any of the Huguenot

noblemen should be assassinated, it might be said that the deed had been

done in just revenge by the Guises_, who would not hesitate to sacrifice

them either by force or by treason.[258]

[Sidenote: Coligny's disappointment.]

Of the other party, Catharine de' Medici alone was jubilant over the

edict. On the contrary, the Roman Catholic people of Paris regarded it as

an approval of every sort of impiety and wicked action, and the parliament

would register it only after repeated commands (on the twenty-seventh of

March), and then with a formal declaration of its reluctance.[259] But no

one was so much disappointed as the admiral. Hastening from Normandy to

Orleans, he reached that city on the twenty-third of March, only to find

that the peace had been fully concluded several days before. In the

council of the confederates, the next day, he spoke his mind freely. He

reminded Conde that, from the very commencement of hostilities, the

triumvirs had offered the restoration of the Edict of January with the

exclusion of the city of Paris; and that never had affairs stood on a

better footing than now,[260] when two of the three chief authors of the

war were dead, and the third was a prisoner. But the poor had surpassed

the rich in devotion; the cities had given the example to the nobles. In

restricting the number of churches to one in a bailiwick, the prince and

his counsellors had ruined more churches by a single stroke of the pen

than all the forces of their enemies could have overthrown in ten years.

Coligny's warm remonstrance was heard with some regret for the

precipitancy with which the arrangement had been made; but it was too

late. The peace was signed. Besides, Conde was confident that he would

soon occupy his brother's place, when the Huguenots would obtain all their

demands.

But while the prince refused to draw back from the articles of peace to

which he had pledged himself, he consented to visit the queen mother in

company with the admiral, and endeavor to remove some of the restrictions

placed upon Protestant worship. And Catharine was too well satisfied with

her success in restoring peace, to refuse the most pressing of the

admiral's requests. However, she took good care that none of her promises

should be in writing, much less be incorporated in the Edict of

Pacification. "The prince and the admyrall," wrote the special envoy

Middlemore to Queen Elizabeth, "have bene twice with the quene mother

since my commynge hyther, where the admirall hath bene very earnest for a

further and larger lybertye in the course of religion, and so hath

obtayned that there shall be preachings within the townes in every

balliage, wheras before yt was accordyd but in the suburbs of townes only,

and that the gentylmen of the visconte and provoste of Parys shall have in

theyr houses the same libertye of religion as ys accordyd elzwhere. So as

the sayd admyrall doth now seame to lyke well inoughe that he shewyd by

the waye to mislyke so muche, which was the harde articles of religion

concludyd upon by the prince in his absence."[261]

On Sunday, the twenty-eighth of March, 1563--the anniversary of that

Sunday which they had kept with so much solemnity at Meaux, on the eve of

their march to Orleans--the Huguenot nobles and soldiers celebrated the

Lord's Supper, in the simple but grand forms of the Geneva liturgy, within

the walls of the church of the Holy Rood, long since stripped of its

idolatrous ornaments, and on the morrow began to disperse to the homes

from which for a year they had been separated.[262] The German reiters, at

the same time, set out on their march toward Champagne, whence they soon

after retired to their own country.

[Sidenote: Results of the war.]

The war that had just closed undoubtedly constituted a turning-point in

the Huguenot fortunes. The alliance between the persecuted reformers, on

the one hand, and the princes of the blood and the nobility of France, on

the other, had borne fruit, and it was not altogether good fruit. The

patient confessors, after manfully maintaining their faith through an

entire generation against savage attack, and gaining many a convert from

the witnesses of their constancy, had grasped the sword thrust into their

hands by their more warlike allies. In truth, it would be difficult to

condemn them; for it was in self-defence, not against rightful authority,

but against the tyranny of a foreign and hostile faction. Candidly viewing

their circumstances at the distance of three centuries, we can scarcely

see how they could have acted otherwise than as they did. Yet there was

much that, humanly speaking, was unfortunate in the conjuncture. War is a

horrible remedy at any time. Civil war super-adds a thousand horrors of

its own. And a civil war waged in the name of religion is the most

frightful of all. The holiest of causes is sure to be embraced from impure

motives by a host of unprincipled men, determined in their choice of party

only by the hope of personal gain, the lust of power, or the thirst for

revenge--a class of auxiliaries too powerful and important to be

altogether rejected in an hour when the issues of life or death are

pending, even if by the closest and calmest scrutiny they could be

thoroughly weeded out--a process beyond the power of mortal man at any

time, much more in the midst of the tumult and confusion of war. The

Huguenots had made the attempt at Orleans, and had not shrunk from

inflicting the severest punishments, even to death, for the commission of

theft and other heinous crimes. They had endeavored in their camp to

realize the model of an exemplary Christian community. But they had

failed, because there were with them those who, neither in peace nor in

war, could bring themselves to give to so strict a moral code any other

obedience than that which fear exacts. Such was the misery of war. Such

the melancholy alternative to which, more than once, the reformed saw

themselves reduced, of perishing by persecution or of saving themselves by

exposing their faith to reproach through alliance with men of as little

religion or morality as any in the opposite camp.

[Sidenote: It prevents France from becoming Huguenot.]

The first civil war prevented France from becoming a Huguenot country.

This was the deliberate conclusion of a Venetian ambassador, who enjoyed

remarkable opportunities for observing the history of his times.[263] The

practice of the Christian virtue of patience and submission under

suffering and insult had made the reformers an incredible number of

friends. The waging of war, even in self-defence, and the reported acts of

wanton destruction, of cruelty and sacrilege--it mattered little whether

they were true or false, they were equally credited and produced the same

results--turned the indifference of the masses into positive aversion. It

availed the Huguenots little in the estimate of the people that the crimes

that were almost the rule with their opponents were the exception with

them; that for a dozen such as Montluc, they were cursed with but one

Baron des Adrets; that the barbarities of the former received the

approbation of the Roman Catholic priesthood, while those of the latter

were censured with vehemence by the Protestant ministers. Partisan spirit

refused to hold the scales of justice with equal hand, and could see no

proofs of superior morality or devotion in the adherents of the reformed

faith.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Huguenot ballads and songs.]

Besides their psalms, hallowed by so many thrilling

associations, the Huguenots possessed a whole cycle of song.

The meagre portion of this that has come down to us is among

the most valuable of the monuments illustrative of their modes

of thought and their religious and political aspirations. At

the same time it brings vividly before us the great crises of

their history. M. Henri Bordier has done a service not easily

estimated at its full worth, by the publication of a

considerable collection of the popular songs of the

Protestants, under the title, "Le Chansonnier Huguenot du XVIe

Siecle" (Paris, 1871). These songs are grouped in four

divisions: religious songs, polemic and satirical songs, songs

of war, and songs of martyrdom.

The three oldest Huguenot songs known to exist belong to the

first two divisions, and have been saved from destruction by

the enemies of their authors, in the very attempt to secure

their suppression. They have recently been found upon the

records of the Parliament of Paris, where they obtained a

place, thanks to the zeal of the "lieutenant general" of Meaux

in endeavoring to ferret out the composers of anti-papal

ballads. They were entered, without regard to metre, as so

much prose. A stanza or two of the song entitled _Chanson

nouvelle sur le chant: "N'allez plus au bois jouer,"_ and

evidently adapted to the tune of a popular ballad of the day,

may suffice to indicate the character of the most vigorous of

these compositions. It is addressed to Michel d'Arande, a

friend of Farel, whom Bishop Briconnet had invited to preach

the Gospel in his diocese of Meaux, and begins:

Ne preschez plus la verite,

Maistre Michel!

Contenue en l'Evangille,

Il y a trop grand danger

D'estre mene

Dans la Conciergerie.

Lire, lire, lironfa.

Il y a trop grand danger

D'estre mene

Dans la Conciergerie

Devant les chapperons fourrez

Mal informez

Par gens plains de menterie.

Lire, lire, lironfa.

The "chants religieux," of which M. Bordier's collection

reproduces twenty-five, are partly poetical paraphrases of the

Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, etc., and partly original

compositions on a variety of themes, such as patient endurance

of insult, etc. They display great familiarity with the Holy

Scriptures, and sometimes not a little poetic fire.

The "chants polemiques" treat of a number of subjects,

prominent among which are the monks and nuns, and the

doctrines of the papal church. In one the expiring papacy is

represented as summoning to her bedside cardinals, bishops,

and other members of the clergy, to witness her last

struggles. In another the Sorbonne is held up to ridicule, in

company with all the mediaeval doctors of theology. In a third

the poet more seriously combats the belief in purgatory as

unscriptural. But it is the mass that bears the brunt of

attack. The Host figures under the designation, current in the

literature of the sixteenth century,[264] of _Le Dieu de

Pate_, or _Le Dieu de Farine_. The pompous and complicated

ceremonial, with its repetitions devoid of meaning for the

illiterate spectator, is, on the whole, the favorite object of

satire. In strict accordance with the spirit of the rough

controversy of the times, little mercy is shown to religious

antagonists. There is a good specimen of this style of

treatment in an interesting song dating from about 1564,

entitled "Noel nouveau de la description ou forme et maniere

de dire la Messe, sur ce chant: Hari, bouriquet." Of the

fifteen stanzas of which it is composed, two or three may

serve as samples. The preliminary service over, the priest

comes to the consecration of the wafer:

Un morceau de paste

Il fait adorer;

Le rompt de sa patte

Pour le devorer,

Le gourmand qu'il est.

Hari, hari l'asne, le gourmand qu'il est,

Hari bouriquet!

Le Dieu qu'il faict faire,

La bouche le prend;

Le coeur le digere,

Le ventre le rend,

Au fond du retrait!

Hari, hari l'asne, au fond du retrait,

Hari bouriquet!

Le peuple regarde

L'yvrongne pinter

Qui pourtant n'a garde

De luy presenter

A boire un seul traict.

Hari, hari l'asne, a boire un seul traict,

Hari bouriquet!

Acheve et despouille

Tous ses drapeaux blancs,

En sa bourse fouille

Et y met six blancs.

C'est de peur du frais.

Hari, hari l'asne, c'est de peur du frais,

Hari bouriquet!

A somewhat older song (written before 1555) purports to be the

dirge of the Mass uttered by itself--_Desolation de la Messe

expirant en chantant_. The Mass in perplexity knows not how to

begin the customary service:

_Spiritus_, _Salve_, _Requiem_,

Je ne scay si je diray bien.

Quel _Introite_, n' _Oremus_

Je prenne; _Sancti_, _Agimus_.

Feray-je des Martyrs ou Vierges?

_De ventre ad te clamamus!_

Sonnez la, allumez ces cierges:

Y a-t-il du pain et du vin?

Ou est le livre et le calice

Pour faire l'office divin?

Ca, cest autel, qu'on le tapisse!

Helas, la piteuse police.

Ame ne me vient secourir.

Sans Chapelain, Moine, Novice,

Me faudra-il ainsi perir?

Pope and cardinals are summoned in vain. No one comes, no one

will bring reliquary or consecrated wafer. The Mass must

finally resign all hope and die:

Helas chantant, brayant, virant,

Tant que le crime romp et blesse

Puis que voy tost l'ame expirant,

Dites au moins adieu la Messe.

A tous faisant mainte promesse

Ore ai-je tout mon bien quitte

Veu qu'a la mort tens et abaisse

_Ite Missa est_; donc _Ite_,

_Ite Missa est_.

The "chants de guerre" furnish a running commentary upon the

military events of the last forty years of the sixteenth

century, which is not devoid of interest or importance. The

hopeful spirit characterizing the earlier ballads is not lost

even in the latest; but the brilliant anticipations of a

speedy triumph of the truth, found before the outbreak of the

first civil war, or immediately thereafter, are lacking in

other productions, dating from the close of the reign of Henry

the Third. In a spirited song, presumably belonging to 1562,

the poet, adopting the nickname of Huguenots given to the

Protestants by their opponents, retaliates by applying an

equally unwelcome term to the Roman Catholics, and forecasting

the speedy overthrow of the papacy:

Vous appellez Huguenots

Ceux qui Jesus veullent suivre,

Et n'adorent vos marmots

De boys, de pierre et de cuyvre.

Hau, Hau, Papegots,

Faictes place aux Huguenots.

Nostre Dieu renversera

Vous et vostre loy romaine,

Et du tout se mocquera

De vostre entreprise vaine.

Hau, Hau, Papegots,

Faictes place aux Huguenots.

Vostre Antechrist tombera

Hors de sa superbe place

Et Christ partout regnera

Et sa loy pleine de grace.

Hau, Hau, Papegots,

Faictes place aux Huguenots.

The current expectation of the Protestants is attested in a

long narrative ballad by Antoine Du Plain on the siege of

Lyons (1563), in which Charles the Ninth figures as another

Josiah destined to abolish the idolatrous mass:

Ce Roy va chasser l'Idole

Plain de dole

Cognoissant un tel forfait:

Selon la vertu Royale,

Et loyale,

Comme Iosias a fait.

It is noticeable that the words "va chasser l'Idole" are an

anagram of the royal title _Charles de Valois_--an anagram

which gave the Huguenots no little comfort. The same play upon

words appears with a slight variation in a "Huictain au Peuple

de Paris, sur l'anagrammatisme du nom du tres-Chrestien Roy de

France, Charles de Valois IX. de ce nom" (Recueil des Choses

Memorables, 1565, p. 367), of which the last line is,

"O Gentil Roy qui _chassa leur idole_."

But after the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day the hopes of

the Huguenots were blighted. If the king is not referred to by

name, his mother figures as the guilty cause of all the

misfortune of France. She is a second Helen born for the ruin

of her adopted country, according to Etienne de Maisonfleur.

Helene femme estrangere

Fut la seule mesnagere

Qui ruina Ilion,

Et la reine Catherine

Est de France la ruine

Par l'Oracle de Leon.

"Leon" is Catharine's uncle, Pope Leo the Tenth, who was said

to have predicted the total destruction of whatever house she

should be married into. See also the famous libel "Discours

merveilleux de la vie de Catherine de Medicis" (Ed. of

Cologne, Pierre du Marteau, 1693), p. 609.

The massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day naturally contributes a

considerable fund of laments, etc., to the Huguenot popular

poetry of the century. A poem apparently belonging to a more

remote date, discovered by Dr. Roullin, and perhaps the only

Breton song of the kind that has come down to us, is as simple

and unaffected a narrative as any of the modern Greek

_moerologia_ (Vaurigaud, Essaie sur l'hist. des eglises ref.

de Bretagne, 1870, i. 6). It tells the story of a Huguenot

girl betrayed to the executioner by her own mother. In spite

of a few dialectic forms, the verses are easily understood.

Voulz-vous ouir l'histoire

D'une fille d'espit

Qui n'a pas voulu croire

Chose que l'on lui dit.

--Sa mere dit: "Ma fille,

A la messe allons donc!"

--"Y aller a la messe,

Ma mere, ce n'est qu'abus.

Apportez-moi mes livres

Avec mes beaux saluts.

J'aimerais mieux etre brulee

Et vantee au grand vent

Que d'aller a la messe

En faussant mon serment."

--Quand sa tres-chere mere

Eut entendu c' mot la,

Au bourreau de la ville

Sa fille elle livra.

"Bourreau, voila ma fille!

Fais a tes volontes;

Bourreau, fais de ma fille

Comme d'un meurtrier."

Quand elle fut sur l'echelle,

Trois rollons ja montee,

Elle voit sa mere

Qui chaudement pleurait.

"Ho! la cruelle mere

Qui pleure son enfant

Apres l'avoir livree

Dans les grands feux ardents.

Vous est bien fait, ma mere,

De me faire mourir.

Je vois Jesus, mon pere,

Qui, de son beau royaume,

Descend pour me querir.

Son royaume sur terre

Dans peu de temps viendra,

Et cependant mon ame

En paradis ira."

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The nuncio alone seems to have thought that the edict would work so

well, that "in six months, or a year at farthest, there would not be a

single Huguenot in France!" His ground of confidence was that many, if not

most of the reformed, were influenced, not by zeal for religion, but by

cupidity. Santa Croce to Card. Borromeo, Jan. 17, 1562, Aymon, i. 44;

Cimber et Danjou, vi. 30.

[2] Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., i. 428, 429. The letter is followed by an

examination of the edict, article by article, as affecting the

Protestants. Ib. i. 429-431.

[3] Abbe Bruslart, Mem. de Conde. i. 70. Barbaro spoke the universal

sentiment of the bigoted wing of the papal party when he described "the

decree" as "full of concealed poison," as "the most powerful means of

advancing the new religion," as "an edict so pestiferous and so poisonous,

that it brought all the calamities that have since occurred." Tommaseo,

Rel. des Amb. Ven., ii. 72.

[4] Claude Haton, 211. "Et longtemps depuis ne faisoient sermon qu'ilz

_Acab_ et _Hiesabel_ et leurs persecutions ne fussent mis par eux en

avant," etc. In fact, Catharine seemed fated to have her name linked to

that of the infamous Queen of Israel. A Protestant poem, evidently of a

date posterior to the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, is still extant in

the National Library of Paris, in which the comparison of the two is drawn

out at full length. The one was the ruin of Israel, the other of France.

The one maintained idolatry, the other papacy. The one slew God's holy

prophets, the other has slain a hundred thousand followers of the Gospel.

Both have killed, in order to obtain the goods of their victims. But the

unkindest verses are the last--even the very dogs will refuse to touch

Catharine's "carrion."

"En fin le jugement fut tel

Que les chiens mengent Jhesabel

Par une vangeance divine;

Mais la charongne de Catherine

Sera differente en ce point,

Car les chiens ne la vouldront point."

Appendix to Mem. de Claude Haton, ii. 1, 110.

[5] _Ante_, i. 477.

[6] Mem. de Claude Haton, 211, 212.

[7] Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., i. 431.

[8] Abbe Bruslart, Mem. de Conde. i. 70, 71.

[9] Declaration of Feb. 14, 1561/2, Du Mont, Corps diplomatique, v. 91,

92.

[10] And, indeed, with modifications which were to render it still more

severe. Letter of Beza to Calvin, Feb. 26, 1562, Baum, ii., App., 167.

[11] The registry took place on Friday, March 6th. Isambert, xiv. 124; La

Fosse, 45, who says "Ledict edict fut publie en la salle du palais en ung

vendredy, 5e [6e] de ce moys, _la ou il y eut bien peu de conseillers et

le president Baillet qui signerent_."

[12] The same prelate to whom Cardinal Lorraine doubtless referred in no

complimentary terms, when, at the assembly of the clergy at Poissy, he

said, "qu'il estoit contrainct de dire, _Duodecim sumus, sed unus ex nobis

Diabolus est_, et passant plus outre, qu'il y avoit ung evesque de la

compagnie ... qui avoit revele ce qui se faisoit en laditte assemblee,"

etc. Journal de Bruslart, Mem. de Conde, i. 50.

[13] See the document in Schlosser, Leben des Theodor de Beze, App.,

359-361; Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., i. 436, 437.

[14] Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., i. 436-450; Baum, ii. 512-545. In

connection with Prof. Baum's long and thorough account of the colloquy,

Beza's correspondence, printed in the appendix, is unusually interesting.

[15] "Cardinalium intercessione ac precibus mox soluta sunt omnia." Beza

to Bullinger, March 2, 1562. Baum, ii., App., 169.

[16] "Nihil hoc consilio gratius accidere potuit nostris adversariis

quibus iste ludus minime placebat, adeo ut _ipse Demochares ... pene sui

oblitus in meos amplexus rueret_, et ejus sodales honorifice me

salutarent!" Beza to Calvin, Feb. 26, 1562, ibid., 165. The Venetian

Barbaro represents this second conference as an extremely efficient means

of spreading heresy: "La qual [in San Germano] apporto un grandissimo

scandalo e pregiudizio alla religion nostra, e diede alla loro,

reputazione e fomento maggiore." Rel. des Amb. Ven., ii. 74.

[17] Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., i. 432.

[18] "Qu'il ne s'y mettroit si avant qu'il ne s'en pust aisement tirer."

Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., _ubi supra_.

[19] See the frank letter of Calvin, written to him about this time, in

Bonnet, Lettres franc., ii. 441; Calvin's Letters, Amer. ed., iv. 247.

[20] "That pestilent yle of Sardigna!" exclaimed Sir Thomas Smith, a

clever diplomatist and a nervous writer, "that the pore crowne of it

should enter so farre into the pore Navarrian hed (which, I durst

warraunt, shall never ware it), [as to] make him destroy his owen

countrey, and to forsake the truth knowen!" Forbes, State Papers, ii. 164.

[21] Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., _ubi supra_; De Thou, iii. (liv.

xxviii.), 96-99.

[22] Letter of Beza to Calvin, Feb. 1, 1562, Baum, ii., App., 163.

[23] Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., i. 433.

[24] Letter to Calvin, Feb. 26, 1562, _apud_ Baum, ii., App., 167, 168.

[25] Ibid., _ubi supra_.

[26] Recordon, Le protestantisme en Champagne (Paris, 1863), from MSS. of

Nicholas Pithou, p. 105. This learned jurist, the equal of his more

celebrated brothers in ability, and their superior in moral courage, has

left his testimony respecting the beneficent influence of the reformed

doctrines upon his fellow-citizens: "A la verite la ville de Troyes en

general fit une perte incroyable en la rupture de cette Eglise. Car

c'etait une grande beaute et chose plus que emerveillable de la voir si

bien fleurie. Il se voyoit en la jeunesse, touchee par la predication de

la parole de Dieu, qui auparavant etait si depravee que rien plus, un

changement si subit et si etrange que les catholiques memes en etoient

tout etonnes. Car, tels qui au precedent se laissaient aller du tout a

leurs voluptez et s'etaient plongez en gourmandises, yvrogneries et jeux

defendus, tellement qu'ils y passaient la plus grande et meilleure partie

du temps, et faisaient un fort mauvais menage, depuis qu'ils etaient

entres dans l'Eglise quittaient du tout leur vie passee et la detestaient,

se rangeant et se soumettant allegrement a la discipline ecclesiastique,

ce qui etait si agreable aux parents de tels personnages, que, quoiqu'ils

fussent catholiques, ils en louaient Dieu." Ibid., pp. 107, 108.

[27] "Nous avons esperance que non seulement la jeunesse d'icy se

faconnera par la main d'un si excellent ouvrier qui nous est venu; mais

que les chanoines mesmes de Sainte-Croix le viendront ouyr en ses lecons,

ce qu'ils ont desja declare. De quoy sortiront des fruicts surmontant

toute expectation." Gaberel, Hist. de l'egl. de Geneve, i., Pieces

justificatives, 168.

[28] The archives of Stuttgart contain the instructive correspondence

which the Duke of Guise had, ever since the previous summer, maintained

with the Duke of Wuertemberg. From the letters published in the Bulletin of

the French Protestant Historical Society (February and March, 1875), we

see that Francois endeavored to alienate Christopher from the Huguenots by

representing the latter as bitter enemies of the Augsburg Confession, and

as speaking of it with undisguised contempt. (Letter of July 2, 1561,

Bull., xxiv. 72.) Christopher made no reply to these statements, but urged

his correspondent to a candid examination of religious truth, irrespective

of age or prescription, reminding him (letter of Nov. 22, 1561) that our

Lord Jesus Christ "did not say 'I am the _ancient custom_,' but 'I am the

_Truth_.'" (Ibid., xxiv. 114.) And he added, sensibly enough, that, had

the pagan ancestors of both the French and the Germans followed the rule

of blind obedience to custom, they would certainly never have become

Christians.

[29] Guise's original invitation was for Saturday, January 31st, but

Christopher pleaded engagements, and named, instead, Sunday, Feb. 15th.

(Ibid., xxiv. 116, 117.)

[30] The relation was first noticed and printed by Sattler, in his

Geschichte von Wuertemberg unter den Herzoegen. I have used the French

translation by M. A. Muntz, in the Bulletin, iv. (1856) 184-196.

[31] In a letter of Wuertemberg to Guise, written subsequently to the

massacre of Vassy, he reminds him of the advice he had given him, and of

Guise's assurances: "Vous savez aussi avec quelle asseurance vous m'avez

respondu _que l'on vous faisoit grand tort_ de ce que l'on vous vouloit

imposer estre cause et autheur de la mort de tant de povres chrestiens qui

ont espandu leur sang par ci-devant," etc. Memoires de Guise, 494.

[32] There are some characters with whom mendacity has become so essential

a part of their nature, that we cease to wonder at any possible extreme of

lying. It was, however, no new thing with the cardinal to assume

immaculate innocence. Over two years before this time, at the beginning of

the reign of Francis II., when bloody persecution was at its height, Sir

Nicholas Throkmorton wrote to Queen Elizabeth, Sept. 10, 1559: "I am

enformed that they here begin to persecute againe for religion more than

ever they did; and that at Paris there are three or four executed for the

same, and diverse greate personages threatened shortly to be called to

answer for their religion. Wherin the Cardinal of Lorraine having bene

spoken unto, within these two daies, hathe said, _that it is not his

faulte; and that there is no man that more hateth extremites, then he

dothe_; and yet it is knowne that it is, notwithstanding, _alltogither by

his occasion_." Forbes, State Papers, i. 226, 227.

[33] Bulletin, iv. 196. De Thou's account of the Saverne conference (iii.

(liv. xxix.) 127, 128) is pretty accurate so far as it goes, but has a

more decidedly polemic tone than the Duke of Wuertemberg's memorandum.

[34] Throkmorton to the Queen, Paris, Feb. 16, 1562. State Paper Office. I

have followed closely the condensation in the Calendars.

[35] Same to Cecil, of same date. State Paper Office.

[36] Discours entier de la persecution et cruaute exercee en la ville de

Vassy, par le duc de Guise, le 1. de mars, 1562; reprinted in Memoires de

Conde, iii. 124-149, and Cimber et Danjou, iv. 123-156. This lengthy

Huguenot narrative enters into greater details respecting the early

history of the church of Vassy than any of the other contemporary

relations. The account bears every mark of candor and accurate

information.

[37] "Que son cas estoit bien sale s'il eust este ministre."

[38] The "Destruction du Saccagement" has preserved the names of

forty-five persons who died by Tuesday, March 3d; the "Discours entier"

has a complete list of forty-eight that died within a month, and refers to

others besides. A contemporary engraving is extant depicting in quaint but

lively style the murderous affair. Montfaucon reproduces it. So does also

M. Horace Gourjon in a pamphlet entitled "Le Massacre de Vassy" (Paris,

1844). He gives, in addition, an exterior view of the barn in which the

Huguenots were worshipping.

[39] Besides a brief Latin memoir of minor importance, there were

published two detailed accounts of the massacre written by Huguenots. The

one is entitled "Destruction du Saccagement, exerce cruellement par le Duc

de Guise et sa cohorte, en la ville de Vassy, le premier jour de Mars,

1561. A Caens. M.D.LXII.," and having for its epigraph the second verse of

the 79th psalm in Marot's poetical version, "The dead bodies of thy

servants have they given to be meat unto the fowls of the heaven, the

flesh of thy saints unto the beasts of the earth." (The year 1562, it will

be remembered, did not commence in France until Easter Sunday, March

29th.) The account seems to have been composed on the spot and within a

very few days of the occurrence. This may be inferred from the list of

those who died being given only up to Tuesday, March 3d. The other

narrative: "Discours entier de la persecution et cruaute exercee en la

ville de Vassy," etc., enters into much greater detail, and is preceded by

a full account of the early history of the Church. It was written and

published a little later in the spring of 1562. Both memoirs are reprinted

in the invaluable Archives curieuses of Messrs. Cimber et Danjou, iv.

103-110, and 123-156, as well as in the Memoires de Conde, iii. 111-115,

124-149 (the former document with the title "Relation de l'occasion"),

etc. Another contemporary account was written in Guise's interest, and

contains a long extract of a letter of his to the Duke of Wuertemberg:

"Discours au vray et en abbrege de ce qui est dernierement aduenu a Vassi,

y passant Monseigneur le Duc de Guise. A Paris. M.D.LXII.... Par priuilege

expres dudict Seigneur." (Cimber, iv. 111-122; Mem. de Conde, iii.

115-122). To these authorities must be added Guise's vindication in

parliament (Cimber, iv. 157, etc., from Reg. of Parl.; Mem. de Guise, 488,

etc.), and his letter and that of the Cardinal of Lorraine to Christopher

of Wuertemberg, March 22 (Ib. 491, 492). Compare J. de Serres, De statu

rel. et reip. (1571), ii. 13-17; De Thou, iii. 129, etc.; Jehan de la

Fosse, 45. Davila, bk. iii. in init., is more accurate than Castelnau,

iii., c. 7. Claude Haton's account (Memoires, i. 204-206) may be classed

with the curiosities of literature. This veracious chronicler would have

it that a crowd of Huguenots, with stones in their hands, and singing at

the top of their voices, attempted to prevent the passage of the duke and

his company through the outskirts of Vassy, where they were apparently

worshipping in the open air! Of course they were the aggressors.

[40] And yet there is great force in M. Sismondi's observation (Hist. des

Francais, xviii. 264): "Malgre leur assertion, il est difficile de ne pas

croire qu'au moment ou ils se reunissoient en armes pour disputer aux

protestans l'exercise public de leur culte que leur accordoit l'edit de

janvier, c'etoit un coup premedite que l'attaque du duc de Guise contre

une congregation de huguenots, composee, a ce qu'il assure, en partie de

ses vassaux, et qui se trouvoit la premiere sur son passage a peu de

distance de ses terres."

[41] It is extremely unfortunate that Mr. Froude should have based his

account of French affairs at this important point upon so inaccurate and

prejudiced a writer as Varillas. To be correct in his delineation of these

transactions was almost as important for his object, as to be correct in

the narration of purely English occurrences. If he desired to avoid the

labor, from which he might well wish to be excused, of mastering the great

accumulation of contemporary and original French authorities, he might

have resorted with propriety, as he has done in the case of the massacre

of St. Bartholomew's Day, to Henri Martin's noble history, or to the

history of Sismondi, not to speak of Soldan, Von Polenz, and a host of

others. Varillas wrote, about a century after the events he described, a

number of works of slender literary, and still slighter historical value.

His "Histoire de Charles IX." (Cologne, 1686)--the work which Mr. Froude

has but too often followed--begins with an adulatory dedication to Louis

XIV., the first sentence of which sufficiently reveals the author's

prepossessions: "Sire, it is impossible to write the history of Charles

IX. without beginning the panegyric of your Majesty." No wonder that Mr.

Froude's account of the massacre of Vassy (History of England, vii. 401,

402), derived solely from this source (Hist. de Charles IX., i. 126,

etc.), is as favorable to Guise as his most devoted partisan could have

desired. But where in the world--even in Varillas--did the English

historian ever find authority for the statement (vii. 402) that, in

consequence of the necessity felt by Guise for temporizing, a little later

"_the affair at Vassy was censured in a public decree_"? To have allowed

_that_ would have been for Guise to admit that he was guilty of murder,

and that his enemies had not slandered him when they styled him a "butcher

of the human race." The duke _never did_ make such an acknowledgment; on

the contrary, he asseverated his innocence in his last breath. What was

really done on the occasion referred to was to try to shift the

responsibility of the war from the shoulders of the papists to those of

the Huguenots, by pretending to re-enact the edict of January with

restrictions as to the capital.

[42] Jean de Serres, ii. 17, 18; De Thou, iii. 132, 133.

[43] "Sire, c'est a la verite a l'Eglise de Dieu, au nom de laquelle je

parle, d'endurer les coups, et non pas d'en donner. Mais aussi vous

plaira-t-il vous souvenir que _c'est une enclume qui a use beaucoup de

marteaux_." Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 1, 2; Pierre de Lestoile,

Journal de Henri III. (ed. Petitot), i. 55; De Thou, iii. 132, 133.

[44] Journal de Jehan de la Fosse, 45, 46; Santa Croce to Borromeo, Aymon,

i. 96, 97; Jean de Serres, ii. 18; Chantonnay, _ubi supra_, ii. 27; Hist,

eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 2, 3; Throkmorton to the Queen, March 20th,

State Paper Office; De Thou, iii. 133; etc. The date was the 15th of

March, according to La Fosse; the 16th, according to Languet (ii. 212) and

Throkmorton; the 18th, according to Santa Croce; the 20th, according to J.

de Serres. I prefer to all the authority of a letter of one Chastaigner,

written from Paris to a friend in Poitou on the very day of Guise's entry.

It is dated March 17th. "Quant aux nouvelles de Monsieur de Guyse, il est

arrive ce soir en ceste ville, Monsieur le connestable et Monsieur le

marechal de Saint-Andre avec luy, et en tout avoient bien deux mil

chevaulx, les ungs disent plus." (Archives of Poitiers, and printed in

Bulletin, xiii. (1864), 15, 16.)

[45] This was not by accident. It had been planned by Conde, to show that

the Huguenots were brave and determined, and it succeeded so well that it

not only made an impression on the party of Guise, but also largely

augmented the courage of his own men. Letter of Beza to Calvin, March 22,

1562, _apud_ Baum, ii., App., 171. Conde had returned to Paris by the

urgent request of the Protestants. Jean de Serres, ii. 19.

[46] Letter of Chastaigner, _ubi supra_.

[47] Throkmorton to the queen, March 6th, State Paper Office.

[48] "The King of Navarre was never so earnest on the Protestant side as

he is now furious on the papists' part, insomuch as men suspect he will

become a persecutor." Throkmorton to Cecil, March 9th, State Paper Office.

Summary in Calendar.

[49] Throkmorton to the queen, March 6, 1562, State Paper Office.

[50] The same to Cecil, same date, State Paper Office.

[51] "Whilst these assemblies were in the town, the queen mother conceived

great jealousy (the King of Navarre being allied to the said duke

[Guise]), lest she should be put from the government and the king taken

from her hands, to prevent which she left Monceaux, her own house, _for

Orleans_, thinking they were secure there, because the Prince of

Rochesurion (being governor of the king's person and also of Orleans) was

not conjoined with the King of Navarre, the Duke of Guise, and the

constable, in their purposes. The King of Navarre, perceiving this, would

not consent to the king going to Orleans, and, after great disputes

betwixt the queen mother and him, she, with the king, were constrained to

reside all this Easter at Fontainebleau." Throkmorton to the queen, March,

20, 1562, State Paper Office, Summary in Calendar.

[52] "Combien que le Chancelier luy dict, qu'il n'y esperoit plus rien,

qu'elle n'avoit point de resolution, qu'il la congnoissoit bien." Memoires

de la vie de Jehan l'Archevesque, Sieur de Soubise, printed from the

hitherto unknown MS. in the Bulletin, xxiii. (1874), 458, 459.

[53] Four of the seven letters that constituted the whole correspondence

are printed in the Mem. de Conde, iii. 213-215. Jean de Serres gives two

of them in his Comment. de statu rel. et reip., ii. 38, 39. They were laid

by Conde's envoy before the princes of Germany, as evidence that he had

not taken up arms without the best warrant, and that he could not in any

way be regarded as a rebel. They contain no allusion to any promise to lay

down his arms so soon as she sent him word--the pretext with which she

strove at a later time to palliate, in the eyes of the papal party at home

and abroad, a rather awkward step. The cure of Meriot, while admitting the

genuineness of the letters, observes: "La cautelle et malice de la dame

estoit si grande, qu'elle se delectoit de mettre les princes en division

et hayne les ungs contre les aultres, affin qu'elle regnast et qu'elle

demeurast gouvernante seulle de son filz et du royaume." Mem. de Cl.

Haton, i. 269. The queen mother's exculpatory statements may be examined

in Le Laboureur, Add. aux Mem. de Castelnau, i. 763, 764.

[54] Bruslart, in Mem. de Conde, i. 75, 76; J. de Serres, ii. 20; La

Fosse, 46; De Thou, iii. 134. The date is variously given--March 17th or

18th.

[55] J. de Serres, ii. 21; De Thou, _ubi supra_; the Prince of Conde's

declaration of the causes which have constrained him to undertake the

defence of the royal authority, etc., _ap._ Mem. de Conde, iii. 222, etc.;

same in Latin in J. de Serres, ii. 46.

[56] Throkmorton to the queen, March 20, State Paper Office.

[57] March 23d. "Ce meme jour (lundi xxiii.) le Prince de Conde s'en

partit de Paris pour s'en aller a une sienne maison, combien qu'il avoit

dict qu'il ne bougeroit de Paris que M. de Guise ne s'en fut parti."

Journal anonyme de l'an 1562, _ap._ Baum, iii. App., 175, note.

[58] Letter of March 28th, Baum, ii., App., 175, 176.

[59] Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 3.

[60] Letter to Fonssomme, OEuvres choisies, ii. 248.

[61] One of the latest exploits of the populace was the disinterring of a

Huguenot buried in the cemetery of the Holy Innocents, and throwing his

body into a public sewer! March 15th, Journal de Jehan de la Fosse, 45.

[62] "Je cuide que si les novices des couvens et les chambrieres des

prestres seulement se fussent presentez a l'impourveue avec des bastons de

cotterets (cotrets) es mains, que cela leur eust fait tenir bride." Mem.

de la Noue, c. ii.

[63] Circular letter dated Paris, March 25th, _apud_ Baum, ii., App., 172.

[64] Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 132, 133 (liv. iii., c. 2). This striking

incident rests on the sole authority of Agrippa d'Aubigne, who claims to

have learned it "de ceux qui estoient de la partie." Hotman, who wrote his

_Gasparis Colinii Vita_ (1575) at the earnest request of the admiral's

_second_ wife, makes no allusion to a story throwing so much lustre upon

the _first_.

[65] Throkmorton to the queen, April 10, 1562, State Paper Office.

[66] "Ou il faut que venez avec nous, ou nous emmenerons le Roy sans

vous." Letter of Conde to the Emperor Ferdinand, April 20th, Mem. de

Conde, iii. 305, etc.

[67] "Alors Leurs Majestez, ne pouvant mieux, eurent recours a quelques

larmes." Mem. de Castelnau, liv. iii., c. 8.

[68] "Le Roy enfant de bonne nature et grande esperance, tesmoignoit non

seulement par paroles, mais aussi avec abondance de larmes, extreme dueil

et tristesse; et souventefois s'escriant, deploroit sa condition par

telles paroles: 'Pourquoy ne me laissez-vous? Pour quelle raison me voy-je

circuy et environne de gens armez? Pourquoy contre ma volonte me

tirez-vous du lieu ou je prenoye mon plaisir? Pourquoy deschirez-vous

ainsi mon estat en ce mien aage?'" Letter of Conde, _ubi supra_, iii. 306.

[69] Charles the Ninth's entry into Paris was a sorry pageant compared

with that of Guise only a few weeks earlier. "Only the merchants and a few

counsellors of the city were present," says Jehan de la Fosse (p. 47). The

king rode between the queen mother and the King of Navarre. According to

Chamberlain, it was a _sober_, but not a _solemn_ entry (C. to Chaloner,

April 7, 1562, State Paper Office). Either when Guise returned to Paris

from Fontainebleau, or on his previous entry into the city--it is

difficult from Claude Haton's confused narrative to determine which was

intended--the people sang: "Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the

Lord." Memoires, i. 245.

[70] The singular name of this building is explained by the sign that hung

before it. "Apvril. En ung samedy. M. Anne de Montmorenssy, connetable de

France, fut devant brasque _en la maison ou pendoit pour enseigne la ville

de Jerusalem_, ou preschoient les huguenots, et fist mettre le feu dedans

la maison." Journal de J. de la Fosse, 46.

[71] La Fosse, _ubi supra_; J. de Serres, ii. 27; Hist. eccles. des egl.

ref., ii. 8; De Thou, iii. 136, 137; Bruslart, Mem. de Conde, i. 80; Santa

Croce to Borromeo, April 5 (Aymon, i. 125); Throkmorton to the queen, _ubi

supra_.

[72] Santa Croce to Borromeo, April 5th, Aymon, i. 126, and Cimber et

Danjou, vi. 74.

[73] Chantonnay, _ubi supra_, ii. 32.

[74] Journal de Jehan de la Fosse, 46. The "Porte St. Honore," before

which the Huguenots, after passing north of the city, presented themselves

(Bruslart, Mem. de Conde, i. 78), was in Francis I.'s time near the

present "Palais Royal," in the time of Louis XIII. near the "Madeleine."

See the map in Dulaure, Histoire de Paris.

[75] Mem de la Noue, c. i. The letter of Beza to Calvin from Meaux, March

28, 1562, shows, however, that even before the prince left that city it

was known that the triumvirs had set out for Fontainebleau. Beza, not

apparently without good reason, blamed the improvidence of Conde in not

forestalling the enemy. "Hostes, relicto in urbe non magno praesidio, in

aulam abierunt quod difficile non erat et prospicere et impedire. Sed

aliter visum est certis de causis, quas tamen nec satis intelligo nec

probo." Baum, ii., App., 176.

[76] Yet, if we may credit the unambiguous testimony of Jean de Tavannes,

Catharine did not cease to endeavor to favor the Huguenots. He assures us

that, a few months later, during the summer, his father, Gaspard de

Tavannes, intercepted at Chalons a messenger whom Catharine had despatched

to her daughter the Duchess of Savoy ("qui agreoit ces nouvelles

opinions") ostensibly as a lute-player. Among his effects the prying

governor of Burgundy found letters signed by the queen mother, containing

some rather surprising suggestions. "La Royne luy escrivoit qu'elle estoit

resolue de favoriser les Huguenots, d'ou elle esperoit son salut contre le

gouvernement du triumvirat ... qu'elle soupconnoit vouloir oster la

couronne a ses enfans; et prioit madame de Savoye d'aider lesdits

Huguenots de Lyon, Dauphine et Provence, et qu'elle persuadast son mary

d'empescher les Suisses et levee d'Italie des Catholiques." Mem. de

Tavannes (Petitot ed.), ii. 341, 342. Tavannes did not dare to detain the

messenger, nor to take away his letters; and if, as his son asserts, the

enmity of Catharine, which the discovery of her secret gained for him,

delayed his acquisition of the marshal's baton for ten years, he certainly

had some reason to remember and regret his ill-timed curiosity.

[77] Mem. de la Noue, c. iii.; De Thou, iii. 138; Letter of Beza, of April

5th, Baum, ii., App., 177; Jean de Serres, ii. 24, 25; Bruslart, Mem. de

Conde, i. 79. Chamberlain (to Chaloner, April 7, 1562), who on his way

from Orleans met the first detachment within a mile of that city--"a

thousand handsome gentlemen, well mounted, each having two or three daggs,

galloping towards him." State Paper Office.

[78] Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 7.

[79] April 7th. Mem. de Conde, iii. 221; Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii.,

9; J. de Serres, ii. 58, 59; De Thou, iii. 139. The historian of the

reformed churches, as well as Beza in his letter of March 28th (Baum, ii.,

App., 176), complains bitterly of the slowness and parsimony of the

Parisian Protestants, who seemed to be unable to understand that war was

actually upon them.

[80] April 8th. "Declaration faicte par M. le prince de Conde, pour

monstrer les raisons qui l'ont contraint d'entreprendre la defence de

l'authorite du Roy," etc. Mem. de Conde, iii. 222-235; Jean de Serres, ii.

42-57; Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 9, 10; De Thou, iii. 139-141.

[81] Traicte d'association, etc., April 11th. Mem. de Conde, iii. 258-262;

J. Serres, ii. 31-37; De Thou, iii. 141.

[82] See Pasquier's letter to Fonssomme, already referred to, which

contains a vivid picture of the confusion reigning in Paris, the surprise

of the papal party, and the delight of the untrained populace at the

prospect of war. OEuvres (ed. Feugere), ii. 246-250.

[83] Mem. de Castelnau, liv. iii., c. 8.

[84] Ibid., liv. iii., c. 9.

[85] Even so late as May 8, 1562, the English minister resident at the

court, than whom probably no other person in France felt obliged to keep

himself better informed, wrote to Cecil respecting the Prince of Conde's

strength: "I can assur you att thys dyspatche _he ys the strongest

partie_, and in suche state his matter standeth, that _these men_ [the

court] _wold fayne have a reasonable end, thoughe yt were with some

dishonnour_." MSS. State Paper Office, Duc d'Aumale, Princes de Conde,

Pieces justif., i. 370.

[86] It is strange that a historian at once so conscientious and generally

so well-informed as M. Rosseeuw Saint-Hilaire should, in his Histoire

d'Espagne, ix. 60, 61, have made the grave mistake of holding Calvin

responsible for the excesses of the iconoclasts. See the Bulletin, xiv.

127, etc., for a complete refutation.

[87] Like the undeceived dupe in the old Athenian comedy, who mournfully

laments that he had been led to worship a bit of earthenware as a god:

Oimoi deilaios,

Hote kai se chutreoun onta theon hegesamen.

(ARISTOPHANES, CLOUDS, 1473, 1474.)

On the other hand, the zealous Roman Catholic had his arguments for the

preservation and worship of images, some of which may strike us as

sufficiently whimsical. "I confess," says one, "that God has forbidden

idols and idolatry, but He has not forbidden the images (or pictures)

which we hold for the veneration of the saints. For if that were so, _He

would not have left us the effigy of his holy face_ painted in His

likeness, on the cloth which that good lady Veronica presented Him, which

yet to-day is looked upon with so much devotion in the church of St. Peter

at Rome, nor the impression of His holy body represented in the 'saint

suaire' which is at Chambery. Is it not found that Saint Luke thrice made

with his own hand the portrait of Our Lady?... That holy evangelist ought

certainly to have known the will of his Lord and Master better than you,

my opponent, who wish to interpret the Scripture according to your

sensuality." Discours des Guerres de Provence (Arch. curieuses, iv. 501,

502). Of course, the author never dreamed that his _facts_ might possibly

be disputed.

[88] Les Recherches et Antiquitez de la ville de Caen, par Charles de

Bourgueville, sieur du lieu, de Bras, et de Brucourt. A Caen, 1588. Pt.

ii. 170-172. From page 76 onward the author gives us a record of notable

events in his own lifetime. So also at Clery, it is to be regretted that,

not content with greatly injuring the famous church of Our Lady, the

Huguenot populace, inflamed by the indiscretion of the priests, desecrated

the monuments of the brave Dunois, and of Louis the Eleventh and his

queen. Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 23. According to the author of the

"Horribles cruautes des Huguenots en France" (Cimber et Danjou, vi. 304),

they even burned the bones of Louis; nor did they respect those of the

ancestors of the Prince of Conde.

[89] "Monsieur, ayez patience que j'aie abattu cette idole, et puis que je

meure, s'il vous plait."

[90] "Comme etant ce fait plutot oeuvre de Dieu que des hommes." Hist.

eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 20. "L'impetuosite des peuples etait telle

contre les images, qu'il n'etait possible aux hommes d'y resister." Ibid.

ii. 23.

[91] Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 20-22.

[92] "Ledict moys," says Jehan de la Fosse in his journal (p. 47), "des

citoyens de Sens tuerent beaucoup de huguenots, voyant que monsieur le

connetable avoict faict bruler Popincourt."

[93] Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 242-245; Jean de Serres, ii. 40; De

Thou, iii. 144. The massacre commenced on Sunday, April 12th (not 14th, as

the Hist. eccles. states), and was continued the next day or two.

According to De Serres, the horrors of Sens seemed to efface those of

Vassy itself. Read the really terrible paragraph on the subject in the

contemporary "Remonstrance au Roy sur le faict des Idoles abbatues et

dejettees hors des Temples" (Mem. de Conde, iii. 355-364), beginning "Ou

sont les meurtres, les boucheries des hommes passes au fil de l'espee, par

l'espace de neuf jours en la ville de Sens?" The address to the Cardinal

of Guise is not less severe than the address to his brother in the famous

"_Tigre_": "Te suffisoit-il pas, Cardinal, que le monde sceust que tu es

Atheiste, Magicien, Necromantien, sans le publier davantage, et faire

ouvrir en pleine rue les femmes grosses pour voir le siege de leurs

enfans?" P. 360. White (Mass. of St. Bartholomew, 200) confounds in his

account the two brother cardinals, and makes _Lorraine_ to have been

Archbishop of Sens.

[94] Letter of Conde of April 19th, Mem. de Conde, iii. 300, 301; Hist.

eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 246, 247; J. de Serres, ii. 40-42.

[95] Throkmorton to Cecil, April 10, 1562. State Paper Office.

[96] I will not sully these pages even by a reference to the unnatural and

beastly crimes which De Thou and other trustworthy historians ascribe to

the Roman Catholic troops, especially the Italian part.

[97] So late as January, 1561, he wrote: "Quant a la religion, que sa

Majeste se peult asseure que je viveray et moreray en icelle." Gachard,

Correspondance de Guillaume le Taciturne, ii. 6.

[98] "Et suis mervilleusement mari de veoir comme ces mechantes heresies

se augmente partout," etc.

[99] "Qu'il fasse tout debvoir du monde, tant par puplication, comme par

force (autant qui j'en porrois la avoir) de remedier a telle desordre, qui

est si domagable a tout la christiente."

[100] Letter to Card. Granvelle, Oct. 21, 1560, Gachard, i. 461-463.

[101] De Thou (whose graphic account I have principally followed), iii.

226-228; J. de Serres, ii. 183, 184; Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., iii.

164-167.

[102] Agrippa d'Aubigne has inserted in his history (i. 154-156) an

interesting conversation which he held with the Baron des Adrets, then an

old man, a dozen years later, in the city of Lyons. In answer to the

question, Why he had resorted to acts of cruelty unbecoming to his great

valor? the baron replied that no one commits cruelty in avenging cruelty;

for, if the first measures are _cruelty_, the second are _justice_. His

severities, he urged, were needed in order to show proper spirit in view

of the past, and proper regard for the future. His soldiers must be forced

to commit themselves beyond hope of pardon--they must, especially in a war

in which their opponents cloaked themselves with the royal authority,

fight without respect of persons. "The soldier cannot be taught," said he

with characteristic bluntness, "to carry his sword and his hat in his hand

at the same time." When asked what motive he had in subsequently leaving

his old comrades in arms, he explained that it was neither fear nor

avarice, but disgust at their timid policy and at seeing himself

superseded. And to D'Aubigne's third question--a somewhat bold one, it

must be confessed--Why success had never attended his recent undertakings,

he answered "with a sigh": "_Mon enfant_, nothing is too warm for a

captain who has no greater anxiety for victory than have his soldiers.

With the Huguenots I had _soldiers_; since then I have had only

_hucksters_, who cared for nothing but money. The former were moved by

apprehension unmingled with fear, and revenge, passion, and honor were the

wages they fought for. I could not give those Huguenot soldiers _reins_

enough; the others have worn out my _spurs_."

[103] And yet I agree with Von Polenz, Gesch. des Franz. Calvinismus

(Gotha, 1859), ii. 188, 189, note, in regarding the Roman Catholic

accounts of Des Adrets's cruelties and perfidy as very much exaggerated,

and in insisting upon the circumstance that the barbarity practised at

Orange had furnished him not only the example, but the incentive.

[104] According to Jean de Serres, this leader was the Baron des Adrets in

person; according to De Thou, Montbrun commanded by the baron's

appointment. So also Histoire eccles., iii. 171.

[105] So at Montbrison, the Baron des Adrets reserved thirty prisoners

from the common slaughter to expiate the massacre of Orange by a similar

method. One of them was observed by Des Adrets to draw back twice before

taking the fatal leap. "What!" said the chief, "do you take _two springs_

to do it?" "I will give you _ten_ to do it!" the witty soldier replied;

and the laugh he evoked from those grim lips saved his life. De Thou (iii.

231, 232) and others.