des Guerres de la comte de Venayscin et de la Prouence ... par le seigneur
Loys de Perussiis, escuyer de Coumons, subiect uassal de sa sainctete"
(dedicated to "Fr. Fabrice de Serbellon, cousin-germain de N. S. P. et son
general en la cite d'Avignon et dicte comte,") Avignon, 1563, and
reprinted in Cimber (iv. 401, etc.), makes no mention of the fig-tree, and
regards the preservation as almost miraculous. There is a faithful
representation of the ruined Chateau of Mornas above the frightful
precipice, in Count Alexander de Laborde's magnificent work, Les Monuments
de la France (Paris, 1836), plate 179.
[107] Discours des Guerres de la comte de Venayscin, etc., 453; De Thou,
iii. 240.
[108] Mem. de Blaise de Montluc, iii. 393 (Petitot ed.): "pouvant dire
avec la verite qu'il n'y a lieutenant de Roy en France qui ait plus faict
passer d'Huguenots par le cousteau ou par la corde, que moy."
[109] "Me deliberay d'user de toutes les cruautez que je pourrois." Ib.,
iii. 20. "Je recouvray secrettement deux bourreaux, lesquels on appella
depuis mes laquais, parce qu'ils estoient souvent apres moy." Ib., iii.,
21. Consult the succeeding pages for an account of Montluc's brutality,
which could scarcely be credited, but that Montluc himself vouches for it.
[110] Since the publication of the Edict of January at Toulouse (on the
6th of February), the Protestant minister had sworn to observe its
provisions before the seneschal, viguier, and capitouls, and, when he
preached, these last had been present to prevent disturbance. A place of
worship, twenty-four cannes long by sixteen in width (174 feet by 116),
had been built on the spot assigned by the authorities. Hist. eccles. des
egl. ref., iii. 1.
[111] De Thou, iii. 294; Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., iii. 1-32.
[112] Even in 1762, Voltaire remonstrated against a jubilee to "thank God
for four thousand murders." Yet a century later, in 1862, Monseigneur
Desprez, Archbishop of Toulouse, gave notice of the recurrence of the
celebration in these words: "The Catholic Church always makes it a duty to
recall, in the succession of ages, the most remarkable events of its
history--particularly those which belong to it in a special manner. It is
thus that we are going to celebrate this year the jubilee commemorative of
a glorious act accomplished among you three hundred years ago." The
archbishop was warm in his admiration of the last centennial procession,
"at which were present all the persons of distinction--the religious
orders, the officiating minister under his canopy, the red robes, and the
members of parliament pressing behind the university, the seneschal, the
_bourgeoisie_, and finally a company of soldiers." But the French
government, not agreeing with the prelate in the propriety of perpetuating
the reminiscence, forbade the procession and all out-door solemnities, and
declared "the celebration of a jubilee of the 16th to the 23d of May next,
enjoined by the Archbishop of Toulouse, to be nothing less than the
commemoration of a mournful and bloody episode of our ancient religious
discords." See a letter from a correspondent of the New York Evening Post,
Paris, April 10, 1862.
[113] Papal brief of April 23, 1562: "Ista sunt vere catholico viro digna
opera, ista haud dubie divina sunt beneficia. Agimus omnipotenti Deo
gratias, qui tam praeclaram tibi mentem dedit," etc. Soldan, ii. 61.
[114] De Thou, iii. 149-151.
[115] Ibid., iii. 143, April 7th.
[116] Catharine de' Medici stated to Sir Harry Sydney, the special English
envoy, in May, 1562, that her son-in-law, the King of Spain, had offered
Charles thirty thousand foot and six thousand horse "payd of his owne
charge," besides what the Duke of Savoy and others were ready to furnish.
Letter of Sidney and Throkmorton to Queen Elizabeth, May 8, 1562, MSS.
State Paper Office. Duc d'Aumale, Princes de Conde, Pieces justif., i.
363.
[117] Sir T. Chaloner, ambassador in Spain, to Sir Nicholas Throkmorton,
May 1, 1562, Haynes, State Papers, 382, 383.
[118] April 17th. Mem. de Conde, iii. 281-284.
[119] May 15th and 16th, Mem. de Conde, iii. 284-287.
[120] Froude, History of England, vii. 404.
[121] Throkmorton to the queen, April 1, 1562, State Paper Office.
[122] Cecil to Mundt, March 22, 1562, State Paper Office.
[123] Wm. Hawes to Throkmorton, July 15, 1562, State Paper Office.
[124] Hist. eccles., iii. 143-145; De Thou, iii. 233, 234.
[125] Almost all the members of Conde's council favored a call upon the
German Protestant princes for prompt support. But "the admiral broke off
this plan of theirs, saying that he would prefer to die rather than
consent that those of the religion should be the first to bring foreign
troops into France." It was, therefore, concluded to send two gentlemen to
Germany, to remain there until the conclusion of the war, in order to
explain the position of the Huguenots. Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii.
23.
[126] Mem. de Conde, i. 79, 80. Cf. Baum, ii., App., 177.
[127] Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 14; Mem. de Conde, i. 81-83, and
iii. 256; De Thou, iii. 143.
[128] "Que sans sa venue a Paris, il fust arrive vers les Pasques, plus de
quinze centz chevaulx de tous costez du royaume, pour saccager la ville,"
etc. Response a la Declaration que faict le Prince de Conde, etc. Mem. de
Conde, iii. 242.
[129] Mem. de Conde, iii. 388-391; Hist, eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 30,
31; Jean de Serres, ii. 63; De Thou, iii. 152.
[130] J. de Serres, ii. 112-117; Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 27-29;
Mem. de Conde, iii. 392, 393; De Thou, iii. 153, 154.
[131] Jean de Serres, ii. 118-150; Mem. de Conde, iii. 395-416; Hist.
eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 32-46; De Thou, iii. 154-157. It is incredible
that, as De Thou suggests, this answer should have been penned by Montluc,
Bishop of Valence. On the other hand, it bears every mark of having
proceeded from the pen of that learned, eloquent, and sprightly writer,
Theodore Beza. As a literary production it fully deserves the warm
encomium passed upon it by Professor Baum: "It is a masterpiece in respect
both to the arrangement and to the treatment of the matter; and, with its
truly Demosthenian strength, may, with confidence, be placed by the side
of the most eloquent passages to which the French language can point."
Baum, Theodor Beza, ii. 642.
[132] J. de Serres, ii. 93, etc.; De Thou, iii. 158. See the acts of the
third National Synod in Aymon, Tous les Synodes, i. 23-31. The Second
National synod had been held at Poitiers, on the tenth of March, 1561. Its
acts are in Aymon, i. 13-22.
[133] J. de Serres, ii. 170; De Thou, iii. 160; Jehan de la Fosse, 50;
Hist. eccles. des egl. ref. ii. 47.
[134] De Thou, iii. 160.
[135] Journal de Bruslart, Memoires de Conde, i. 87; Claude Haton, i. 284;
Hist. eccles. des egl. ref. ii. 48.
[136] See the prince's affectionate letter to Antoine, June 13th, Hist.
eccles. des egl. ref. ii. 49; De Thou, _ubi supra_; J. de Serres, ii. 156.
[137] Mem. de Guise, 495.
[138] It was in the presence of seven knights of the order of St. Michael,
of the secretaries of state, etc. See Conde's long remonstrance against
the judgment of the Parisian parliament, Aug. 8, 1562. Hist. eccles. des
egl. ref., ii. 71; Mem. de Conde, iii. 587.
[139] Unlucky Bishop Montluc has received the doubtful credit of having
laid this pretty snare for the Huguenot chiefs, but with what reason it is
beyond my ability to conjecture. The same brain could scarcely have
indited the bitter reply to the petition of the triumvirs, and devised the
cunning project of entangling their opponents. Evidently the Bishop of
Valence has received some honors to which he is not entitled.
[140] Mem. de Guise, 494; Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 59.
"Conclusion," says the duke in his confidence in the success of his
project, "la religion reformee, en nous conduisant et tenant bon, comme
nous ferons jusques au bout, s'en va aval l'eau, et les admiraux, mal ce
qui est possible: toutes nos forces entierement demeurent, les leurs
rompues, les villes rendues sans parler d'edits ne de presches et
administration de sacremens a leur mode." A memorandum of eight articles
from the triumvirs to Navarre, seized at the same time, showed the
intention to arrest the Prince of Conde. Ib., ii. 60.
[141] J. de Serres, ii. 170-180; Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., _ubi supra_;
De Thou, iii. 164-168. Harangue of Bishop Spifame to the emperor, Le
Laboureur, Add. aux Mem. de Castelnau, ii. 28-38. Memoires de Jehan de
l'Archevesque, Sieur de Soubise, Bulletin, xxiii. (1874) 460, 461.
[142] La Noue, c. v., p. 597; De Thou, iii. 168, 169, etc.
[143] J. de Serres, ii. 180; Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 61, 62.
[144] Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 62; La Noue, c. iv.
[145] La Noue, c. vii., p. 600. "Ledict seigneur prince de Conde," says
Jean Glaumeau of Bourges, in his journal, "voyant qu'il ne pouvoit avoir
raison avec son ennemy et qu'il ne le pouvoit rencontrer, ayant une armee
de viron trente ou quarante milles hommes, de peur qu'ilz n'adurassent
(endurassent) fain ou soif, commence a les separer et envoya en ceste
ville de Bourges, tant de cheval que de pied, viron quatre milles, et y
arriverent le samedi xie jour de juillet." Bulletin, v. (1857) 387.
[146] Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 61.
[147] "Si celle-cy y faut, nous ferons la croix a la cheminee." Mem. de la
Noue, c. vi. 598, 599.
[148] The author of the Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 61, regards the
failure of the confederates promptly to put to the death--as Admiral
Coligny and others had insisted upon their doing--a Baron de Courtenay,
who had outraged a village girl, and their placing him under a guard from
which he succeeded in making his escape, as "the door, so to speak,
through which Satan entered the camp."
[149] De Thou, iii. 171.
[150] Abbe Bruslart, Mem. de Conde, i. 90; Hist. eccles. des egl. ref.,
ii. 66; Journal de Jehan de la Fosse, 52. The latter erroneously calls it
an edict "de par le roi;" but certainly gives the essence of the order
according to the popular estimate when he says "qu'il estoit permis au
peuple de tuer tout huguenot qu'il trouveroit, d'ou vint qu'il y en eust
en la ville de Paris plusieurs tues et jetes en l'eau."
[151] Mem. de Conde, i. 91. Text of arret of July 13th, ib., iii. 544; of
arret of July 17th, ib., iii. 547. Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., _ubi
supra_; Recordon, p. 108.
[152] Nicholas Pithou has left in his MSS., which, unfortunately, have not
yet been published entire, a thrilling narrative of the savage excesses
committed partly by the authorities of Troyes, partly by the soldiers and
the rabble, under their eyes and with their approval. There is nothing
more abominable in the annals of crime than what was committed at this
time with the connivance of the ministers of law. The story of the
sufferings of Pithou's sister, Madame de Valentigny, will be found of
special interest. See Recordon, 107-129.
[153] Mem. de Conde, i. 91, and Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., _ubi supra_.
J. de la Fosse, 53, 54, "pour huguenoterye." Even with these judicial
executions the people interfered, cutting off the heads of the victims,
using them for footballs, and finally burning them. The contemptuous
disobedience of the _people_ of Paris and their cruelty are frequent
topics touched upon in Throkmorton's correspondence. He acknowledges
himself to be afraid, because of "the daily despites, injuries, and
threatenings put in use towards him and his by the insolent, raging
people." He sees that "neither the authority of the king, the queen
mother, or any other person can be sanctuary" for him; for they "daily
most cruelly kill every person (no age or sex excepted) whom they take to
be contrary to their religion, notwithstanding daily proclamations under
pain of death to the contrary." He declares that the king and his mother
are, "for their own safety, constrained to lie at Bois de Vincennes, not
thinking good to commit themselves into the hands of the furious
Parisians;" and that the Chancellor of France, "being the most sincere man
of this prince's council," is in as great fear of his life as Throkmorton
himself, being lodged hard by the Bois de Vincennes, where he has the
protection of the king's guards; and yet even there he has been threatened
with a visit from the Parisians, and with being killed in his own house.
See both of Throkmorton's despatches to the queen, of August 5, 1562,
State Paper Office. One of them is printed in Forbes, ii. 7, etc.
[154] Mem. de Conde, i. 91-93; Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., _ubi supra_;
De Thou, iii. 192, 193; J. de La Fosse, 54.
[155] It appears from a letter of the Nuncio Santa Croce (April 29th),
that, as early as two months before, the court flattered itself with the
hope of deriving great advantages from excluding Conde from the ban, and
affecting to regard him as a prisoner (Aymon, i. 152, and Cimber et
Danjou, vi. 91). "Con che pensano," he adds, "di quietar buona parte del
popolo, che non sentendo parlar di religione, e parendoli ancora che la
guerra si faccia per la liberatione del Principe de Conde, stara a
vedere."
[156] "The byshopp off Rome hathe lent these hys cheampions and frends on
hundrethe thousand crowns, and dothe pay monthely besyds six thousand
sowldiers." Throkmorton to the Council, July 27, 1562, Forbes, State
Papers, ii. 5.
[157] De Thou, iii. 191, etc.; Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 64, etc.
[158] The number was, in fact, only about 15,000 foot and 3,000 horse,
according to De Thou, iii. 198.
[159] Although Coligny captured six cannon and over forty wagons of
powder, he was compelled reluctantly to destroy, or render useless, and
abandon munitions of war of which he stood in great need; for the enemy
had taken the precaution to kill or drive away the horses, and the wagons
could not be dragged to Orleans, a distance of over twenty miles. It
happened that Sir Nicholas Throkmorton, whose instructive correspondence
furnishes so lucid a commentary upon the events from 1559 to 1563, was
travelling under escort of the royal train, to take leave of Charles IX.
at Bourges. In the unexpected assault of the Huguenots he was stripped of
his money and baggage, and even his despatches. Under these circumstances
he thought it necessary to accompany Coligny to Orleans. Catharine, who
knew well Throkmorton's sympathy with the Protestants, and hated him
heartily ("Yt is not th' Ambassador of Englande," he had himself written
only a few days earlier, "which ys so greatlye stomackyd and hatyd in this
countreye, but yt ys the persone of Nicholas Throkmorton," Forbes, ii.
33), would have it that he had purposely thrown himself into the hands of
the Huguenots. His confidential correspondence with Queen Elizabeth does
not bear out the charge. Despatch from Orleans, Sept. 9, 1562, Forbes,
State Papers, ii. 36, etc. Catharine assured Sir Thomas Smith, on his
arrival at court as English ambassador, that she wished he had been sent
before, instead of Throkmorton, "for they took him here to be the author
of all these troubles," declaring that Throkmorton was never well but when
he was making some broil, and that he was so "passionate and affectionate"
on the Huguenots' side, that he cared not what trouble he made. Despatch
of Smith, Rouen, Nov. 7, 1562, State Paper Office.
[160] Histoire eccles., ii. 296-306 (the terms of capitulation, ii. 304,
305); Mem. de Castelnau, liv. iii., c. xi. (who maintains they were
implicitly observed); Throkmorton, in Forbes, State Papers, ii. 41;
Davila, bk. iii., p. 71; De Thou, iii. 198, 199. "Bituriges turpiter a
duce praesidii proditi sese dediderunt, optimis quidem conditionibus, sed
quas biduo post perfidiosissimus hostis infregit." Beza to Bullinger,
Sept. 24, 1562, Baum, ii., Appendix, 194. M. Bourquelot has published a
graphic account of the capture of Bourges in May, by the Huguenots, under
Montgomery, and of the siege in August, from the MS. Journal of Jean
Glaumeau, in the National Library (Bulletin de l'hist. du prot. fr., v.
387-389). M. L. Lacour reprints in the same valuable periodical (v.
516-518) a contemporary hymn of some merit, "Sur la prise de Bourges." We
are told that a proverb is even now current in Berry, not a little
flattering to the Huguenot rule it recalls:
"L'an mil cinq cent soixante et deux
Bourges n'avoit pretres ny gueux." (Ibid., v. 389.)
[161] Jean de Serres, De statu relig. et reip., ii. 258, 259.
[162] This conclusion was arrived at as early as Aug. 29th. Froude, Hist.
of England, vii. 433. Seventy thousand crowns were to be paid to the
prince's agents at Strasbourg or Frankfort so soon as the news should be
received of the transfer of Havre, thirty thousand more within a month
thereafter. The other forty thousand were in lieu of the defence of Rouen
and Dieppe, should it seem impracticable to undertake it. Havre was to be
held until the Prince should have effected the restitution of Calais and
the adjacent territory according to the treaties of Cateau-Cambresis,
although the time prescribed by those treaties had not expired, and until
the one hundred and forty thousand crowns should have been repaid without
interest. The compact, signed by Queen Elizabeth at Hampton Court, Sept.
20, 1562, is inserted in Du Mont, Corps Diplomatique, v. 94, 95, and in
Forbes, State Papers, ii., 48-51.
[163] See the declaration in Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 415, 416;
and Forbes, State Papers, ii. 79, 80. J. de Serres, ii. 261, etc. Cf.
Forbes, State Papers, ii. 60, 69-79.
[164] Throkmorton to the queen, Sept. 24, 1562. Forbes, State Papers, ii.
64, 65.
[165] Froude, _ubi supra_. In fact, Elizabeth assured Philip the
Second--and there is no reason to doubt her veracity in this--that she
would recall her troops from France so soon as Calais were recovered and
peace with her neighbors were restored, and that, in the attempt to secure
these ends, she expected the countenance rather than the opposition of her
brother of Spain. Queen Elizabeth to the King of Spain, Sept. 22, 1562.
Forbes, State Papers, ii. 55. It is not improbable, indeed, that there
were ulterior designs even against Havre. "It is ment," her minister Cecil
wrote to one of his intimate correspondents, "to kepe Newhaven in the
Quene's possession untill Callice be eyther delyvered, or better assurance
of it then presently we have." But he soon adds that, in a certain
emergency, "I think the Quene's Majestie nead not be ashamed to utter her
right to Newhaven as parcell of the Duchie of Normandy." T. Wright, Queen
Elizabeth and her Times (London, 1838), i. 96.
[166] Froude, History of England, vii. 460, 461.
[167] Catharine to Throkmorton, Etampes, Sept. 21, 1562, State Paper
Office.
[168] Mem. de la Noue, c. vii.; De Thou, iii. 206, 207 (liv. xxxi).
Throkmorton is loud in his praise of the fortifications the Huguenots had
thrown up, and estimates the soldiers within them at over one thousand
horse and five thousand foot soldiers, besides the citizen militia.
Forbes, ii. 39.
[169] Cuthbert Vaughan appreciated the importance of this city, and warned
Cecil that "if the same, for lack of aid, should be surprised, it might
give the French suspicion on our part that the queen meaneth but an
appearance of aid, thereby to obtain into her hands such things of theirs
as may be most profitable to her, and in time to come most noyful to
themselves." Forbes, ii. 90. Unfortunately it was not Cecil, but Elizabeth
herself, that restrained the exertions of the troops, and she was hard to
move. And so, for lack of a liberal and hearty policy, Rouen was suffered
to fall, and Dieppe was given up without a blow, and Warwick and the
English found themselves, as it were, besieged in Havre. Whereas, with
those places, they might have commanded the entire triangle between the
Seine and the British Channel. See Throkmorton's indignation, and the
surprise of Conde and Coligny, Forbes, State Papers, ii. 193, 199.
[170] In a letter to Lansac, Aug. 17, 1562, Catharine writes: "Nous nous
acheminons a Bourges pour en deloger le jeune Genlis.... L'ayant leve de
la, comme je n'y espere grande difficulte, nous tournerons vers Orleans
pour faire le semblable de ceux qui y sont." Le Laboureur, i. 820.
[171] Mem. de Francois de la Noue, c. viii. (p. 601.)
[172] Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 375, 376, 383; J. de Serres, ii.
181; De Thou, iii. 179-181.
[173] It was undoubtedly a Roman Catholic fabrication, that Montgomery
bore on his escutcheon _a helmet pierced by a lance_ (un heaume perce
d'une lance), in allusion to the accident by which he had given Henry the
Second his mortal wound, in the joust at the Tournelles. Abbe Bruslart,
Mem. de Conde, i. 97, who, however, characterizes it as "chose fort dure a
croire."
[174] Mem. de la Noue, c. viii.
[175] When Lord Robert Dudley began to break to the queen the
disheartening news that Rouen had fallen, Elizabeth betrayed "a marvellous
remorse that she had not dealt more frankly for it," and instead of
exhibiting displeasure at Poynings's presumption, seemed disposed to blame
him that he had not sent a thousand men instead, for his fault would have
been no greater. Dudley to Cecil, Oct. 30, 1562, Forbes, State Papers, ii.
155.
[176] De Thou, iii. 328; Froude, vii. 436; Sir Thomas Smith to
Throkmorton, Paris, Oct. 17, 1562, Forbes, State Papers, ii. 117.
[177] "But thei will have there preaching still. Thei will have libertie
of their religion, and thei will have no garrison wythin the towne, but
will be masters therof themselves: and upon this point thei stand."
Despatch of Sir Thomas Smith, Poissy, Oct. 20, 1562, Forbes, State Papers,
ii. 123.
[178] The plundering lasted eight days. While the Swiss obeyed orders, and
promptly desisted, "the French suffered themselves to be killed rather
than quit the place whilst there was anything left." Castelnau, liv. iii.,
c. 13. The _cure_ of Meriot waxes jocose over the incidents of the
capture: "Tout ce qui fut trouve en armes par les rues et sur les
murailles fut passe par le fil de l'espee. La ville fut mise au pillage
par les soldatz du camp, qui se firent gentis compaignons. _Dieu scait que
ceux qui estoient mal habillez pour leur yver_ (hiver) _ne s'en allerent
sans robbe neufve._ Les huguenotz de la ville furent en tout maltraictez,"
etc. Mem. de Claude Haton, i. 288.
[179] On the siege of Rouen, see the graphic account of De Thou, iii.
(liv. xxxiii.) 328-335; the copious correspondence of the English envoys
in France, Forbes, State Papers, vol. ii.; the Hist. eccles. des egl.
ref., ii. 389-396 (and Marlorat's examination and sentence _in extenso_,
398-404); J. de Serres, ii. 259; La Noue, c. viii.; Davila (interesting,
and not so inaccurate here as usual, perhaps because he had a
brother-in-law, Jean de Hemery, sieur de Villers, in the Roman Catholic
army, but who greatly exaggerates the Huguenot forces), ch. iii. 73-75;
Castelnau, liv. iii., c. 13.
[180] It is to be noted, however, that the order of the Prince of Conde,
in the case of Sapin (November 2, 1562), makes no mention of the judicial
murder of Marlorat, but alleges only his complicity with parliament in
imprisoning the king, his mother, and the King of Navarre, in annulling
royal edicts by magisterial orders, in constraining the king's officers to
become idolaters, in declaring knights of the Order of St. Michael and
other worthy gentlemen rebels, in ordering the tocsin to be rung, and
inciting to assassination, etc. Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 115, 116.
See Bruslart, Mem. de Conde, i. 100. When Conde was informed that the
Parisian parliament had gone in red robes to the "Sainte Chapelle," to
hear a requiem mass for Counsellor Sapin, he laughed, and said that he
hoped soon to multiply their _litanies_ and _kyrie eleysons_. Hist.
eccles., _ubi supra_.
[181] As early as October 27th, Navarre sent a gentleman to Jeanne
d'Albret, then at Pau in Bearn, "desiring to have her now to cherish him,
and do the part of a wife;" and the messenger told Sir Thomas Smith, with
whom he dined that day in Evreux, "that the king pretendeth to him, that
this punishment [his wounds] came to him well-deserved, for his unkindness
in forsaking the truth." Forbes, State Papers, ii. 167. The authenticity
of the story of Antoine of Navarre's death-bed repentance is sufficiently
attested by the letter written, less than a year later (August, 1563), by
his widow, Jeanne d'Albret, to the Cardinal of Armagnac: "Ou sont ces
belles couronnes que vous luy prometties, et qu'il a acquises a combattre
contre la vraye Religion et sa conscience; comme la confession derniere
qu'il en a faite en sa mort en est seur tesmoignage, et les paroles dites
a la Royne, en protestation de faire prescher les ministres par tout s'il
guerissoit." Pierre Olhagaray, Histoire de Foix, Bearn, et Navarre (Paris,
1609), p. 546. See also Brantome (edition Lalanne), iv. 367, and the
account, written probably by Antoine's physician, De Taillevis, among the
Dupuy MSS. of the Bibliotheque nationale, ibid., iv. 419.
[182] Lestoile (Collection Michaud et Poujoulat), 15; Hist. eccles. des
egl. ref., ii. 397, 406-408; De Thou, 336, 337; Relation de la mort du roi
de Navarre, Cimber et Danjou, iv. 67, etc.
[183] I am convinced that the historian De Thou has drawn of this fickle
prince much too charitable a portrait (iii. 337). It seems to be saying
too much to affirm that "his merit equalled that of the greatest captains
of his age;" and if "he loved justice, and was possessed of uprightness,"
it must be confessed that his dealings with neither party furnish much
evidence of the fact. (I retain these remarks, although I find that the
criticism has been anticipated by Soldan, ii. 78). Recalling the earlier
relations of the men, it is not a little odd that, when the news of
Navarre's death reached the "holy fathers" of the council then in session
in the city of Trent, the papal legates and the presidents paid the
Cardinal of Lorraine a formal visit to _condole_ with him on the decease
of his dear relative! (Acta Conc. Tridentini, _apud_ Martene et Durand,
Amplissima Collectio, tom. viii. 1299). The farce was, doubtless, well
played, for the actors were of the best in Christendom.
[184] Letter of Beza to Bullinger, Sept. 1, 1562, Baum, iii., App., 190.
The Huguenots had sustained a heavy loss also in the utter defeat and
dispersion by Blaise de Montluc of some five or six thousand troops of
Gascony, which the Baron de Duras was bringing to Orleans.
[185] The sentiments of well-informed Huguenots are reflected in a letter
of Calvin, of September, 1562, urging the Protestants of Languedoc to make
collections to defray the expense entailed by D'Andelot's levy. "D'entrer
en question ou dispute pour reprendre les faultes passees, ce n'est pas le
temps. Car, quoy qu'il en soit, Dieu nous a reduicts a telle extremite que
si vous n'estes secourus de ce coste-la, on ne voit apparence selon les
hommes que d'une piteuse et horrible desolation." Bonnet, Lettres franc.,
ii. 475.
[186] Hist. eccles., ii. 421.
[187] See "Capitulation des reytres et lansquenetz levez pour monseigneur
le prince de Conde, du xviii. d'aoust 1562," Bulletin, xvi. (1867),
116-118. The reiters came chiefly from Hesse.
[188] Claude Haton, no friend to Catharine, makes the Duke d'Aumale, in
command of eight or nine thousand troops, avoid giving battle to
D'Andelot, and content himself with watching his march from Lorraine as
far as St. Florentin, in obedience to secret orders of the queen mother,
signed with the king's seal. Memoires, i. 294, 295. The fact was that
D'Andelot adroitly eluded both the Duke of Nevers, Governor of Champagne,
who was prepared to resist his passage, and Marshal Saint Andre, who had
advanced to meet him with thirteen companies of "gens-d'armes" and some
foot soldiers. Davila, bk. iii. 76; De Thou, iii. (liv. xxxiii.) 356.
[189] Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 114, 115. The writer ascribes the
fall of Rouen to the delay of the reiters in assembling at their
rendezvous. Instead of being ready on the first of October, it was not
until the tenth that they had come in sufficient numbers to be mustered
in.
[190] Eighty thousand, according to the Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii.
91, 92; twenty-five thousand, according to Claude Haton, Memoires, 332,
333.
[191] Letter of Beza to Bullinger, Sept. 1st, Baum, ii., App., 191; Hist.
eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 114, 115; Davila, bk. iii., 77; De Thou, iii.
355, 356.
[192] Letter of Beza to Calvin, Dec. 14, 1562, Baum, ii., App., 196. The
authority of Beza, who had recently returned from a mission on which he
had been sent by Conde to Germany and Switzerland and who wrote from the
camp, is certainly to be preferred to that of Claude Haton, who states the
Huguenot forces at 25,000 men (Memoires, i. 298). The prince's chief
captains--Coligny, Andelot, La Rochefoucauld, and Mouy--Haton rates as the
best warriors in France after the Duke of Guise. According to
Throkmorton's despatches from Conde's camp near Corbeil, the departure
from Orleans took place on the 8th of November, and the prince's French
forces amounted only to six thousand foot soldiers, indifferently armed,
and about two thousand horse. Forbes, State Papers, ii. 195. But this did
not include the Germans--some seven thousand five hundred men more. Ibid.,
ii. 196. Altogether, he reckons the army at "6,000 horsemen of all sorts
and nations, and 10,000 footmen." Ibid., ii. 202.
[193] Mem. de La Noue, c. viii., p. 602.
[194] The Protestants of Languedoc held in Nismes (Nov. 2-13, 1562) the
first, or at least one of the very first, of those "political assemblies"
which became more and more frequent as the sixteenth century advanced.
Here the Count of Crussol, subsequently Duke d'Uzes, was urged to accept
the office of "head, defender, and conservator" of the reformed party in
Languedoc. To the count a council was given, and he was requested not to
find the suggestion amiss that he should in all important matters, such as
treaties with the enemy, consult with the general assembly of the
Protestants, or at least with the council. By this good office he would
demonstrate the closeness of the bond uniting him as head to the body of
his native land, besides giving greater assurance to a people too much
inclined to receive unfounded impressions ("ung puple souvent trop
meticulleux et de legiere impression"). Proces-verbal of the Assembly of
Nismes, from MS. Bulletin, xxii. (1873), p. 515.
[195] Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 117; De Thou, iii. 357. Calvin's,
or the Geneva liturgy, was probably used but in part. Special prayers,
adapted to the circumstances of the army, had been composed, under the
title of "Prieres ordinaires des soldatz de l'armee conduicte par Monsieur
le Prince de Conde, accomodees selon l'occurrence du temps." Prof. Baum
cites a simple, but beautiful evening prayer, which was to be said when
the sentinels were placed on guard for the night. Theodor Beza, ii. 624,
note.
[196] Throkmorton (Forbes, ii. 195, 197) represents the executions as more
general, and as an act of severity, "chiefly in revenge of the great
cruelty exercised by the Duke of Guise and his party at Rouen against the
soldiers there, but specially against your Majesty's subjects."
[197] Throkmorton was convinced of the practicability of capturing Paris
by a rapid movement even from before Corbeil: "The whole suburbes on this
syde the water is entrenched, where there is sundry bastions and cavaliers
to plante th' artillerye on, which is verey daungerous for th'
assaylantes. Nevertheles, if the Prince had used celeritie, in my opinion,
with little losse of men and great facilitie he might have woon the
suburbes; and then the towne coulde not longe have holden, somme parte of
the sayd suburbes havinge domination therof." Forbes, ii. 217.
[198] Memoires de Francois de la Noue, c. ix., p. 603 (Collection Michaud
et Poujoulat). See also Davila (bk. iii. 77), who represents the advice of
the admiral rather to have been to employ the army in recapturing the
places along the Loire, while Conde insisted on trying to become master of
Paris. De Thou, iii. 358. Beza, in his letter of Dec. 14th, says: "Quum
enim urbs repentino impetu facile capi posset, etc." So also the Hist.
eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 118.
[199] See Motley, United Netherlands, iii. 59.
[200] "The Prince of Conde and his campe having approched the towne of
Corbeille, and being ready to batter the same, the queene mother sente her
principal escuyer, named Monsieur de Sainte-Mesme, with a lettre to the
sayd prince, advertisinge him of the deathe of the kinge, his brother. The
sayd de Sainte-Mesme had also in credence to tell the prince from the
queene, that she was verey desirous to have an ende of theise troubles:
and also that she was willinge that the sayd prince should enjoy his ranke
and aucthorite due unto him in this realme.... This the queene mother's
lettre and sweete words hathe empeached the battrye and warlyke procedings
against Corbeill; the prince therby beeing induced to desist from using
any violence against his ennemyes. I feare me, that this delaying will
torne much to the prince's disadvantage; and that there is no other good
meaning at this time in this faire speeche, then there was in the treaty
of Bogeancy (Beaugency) in the monethe of July last." Throkmorton to the
queen, from Essonne, opposite Corbeil, Nov. 22, 1562, Forbes, ii. 209.
[201] Letter of Beza to Calvin, Dec. 14th, Baum, ii., App., 197.
[202] Ib., _ubi supra_.
[203] Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 120; De Thou, iii. 359.
[204] Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 132; De Thou, iii. 361; Mem. de
Castelnau, liv. iv., c. iv.; Forbes, ii. 227, 228. Even in September, the
English ambassador wrote from Orleans, "there is greate practise made by
the queene mother and others to winne Monsieur de Janlis and Monsieur de
Grandmont from the prince." Forbes, ii. 41.
[205] "Par ce moyen, un chacun de nous trainera son licol, jusques a ce
que les dessusdits le serrent a leur appetit." Hist. eccles. des egl.
ref., ii. 126. The details of the conferences, with the articles offered
on either side, are given at great length, pp. 121-136.
[206] "The queene mother and hyr councelours," wrote Throkmorton to
Elizabeth, four or five days later (Dec. 13, 1562), "have at the length
once agayne showed, howe sincerely they meane in their treatyes. For when
their force out of Gascoigne together with two thousand five hundred
Spainardes were arrived, and when they had well trenched and fortefyed the
faulxbourges and places of advantage of Paris; espienge, that the prince
coulde remayne no longer with his campe before Paris for lack of victuaill
and fourrage, having abused him sufficiently with this treaty eight or ten
dayes: the sayd queene mother ... refused utterly the condicions before
accorded." Forbes, State Papers, ii. 226. It is not strange that the
ambassador, after the meagre results of the past five weeks, "could not
hope of any great good to be done, until he saw it;" although he was
confident that "if matters were handled stoutly and roundly, without
delay," the prince might constrain his enemies to accord him favorable
conditions.
[207] Mem. de Castelnau, liv. iv., c. iv.
[208] Five thousand, according to the Duke d'Aumale (Les Princes de Conde,
i. 190).
[209] "Quatre-vingtz salades ... lesquels sembloient estre _quatre-vingtz
saettes_ du ciel!" Explanation of plan of battle sent by Guise to the
king, reprinted in Mem. de Conde, iv. 687.
[210] "Etant chose certaine qu'il n'entra de cinquante ans en France des
plus couards hommes que ceux-la, bien qu'ils eussent la plus belle
apparence du monde." Hist. eccles. ii. 144.
[211] It ought perhaps, in justice to the reiters, to be noticed that
Coligny attributes their failure not to cowardice, as in the case of both
the French and the German infantry, but to their not understanding orders,
and to the occasional absence of an interpreter.
[212] La Noue in his commentaries (Ed. Mich., c. x., p. 605 seq.) makes
some interesting observations on the singular incidents of the battle of
Dreux. The author of the Histoire eccles., ii. 140, and De Thou, iii. 367,
criticise both the Roman Catholic and the Protestant generals. They find
the former to blame for not waiting to engage the Huguenots until they had
reached the rougher country they were approaching, where the superiority
of Conde in cavalry would have been of little avail. They censure the
latter for leaving his own infantry unprotected, and for attacking the
enemy's infantry instead of his cavalry. If this had been routed, the
other would have made no further resistance.
[213] He had, according to Beza's letter to Calvin, Dec. 27th (Baum, ii.
Appendix, 202), lost only one hundred and fifty of his horsemen; or,
according to the Histoire eccles. (ii. 146), only twenty-seven.
[214] For details of the battle of Dreux, see Hist. eccles., ii. 140-148;
Mem. de Castelnau, liv. ii., c. v.; De Thou, iii. 365, etc.; Pasquier,
Lettres (Ed. Feugere), ii. 251-254; Guise's relation, reprinted in Mem. de
Conde, iv. 685, etc., and letters subsequently written, ibid. iv. 182,
etc.; Coligny's brief account, written just after the battle, ibid. iv.
178-181; the Swiss accounts, Baum, ii. Appendix, 198-202; Vieilleville,
liv. viii., c. xxxvi.; Davila, 81, seq. Cf. letter of Catharine, _ubi
infra_, and two plans of the engagement, in vol. v. of Mem. de Conde. The
Duc d'Aumale gives a good military sketch, i. 189-205.
[215] "Et non sans cause," says Abbe Bruslart; "d'autant que de ceste
bataille despendoit tout l'estat de la religion chrestienne et du
royaume." Mem. de Conde, i. 105. A despatch of Smith to the Privy Council,
St. Denis, Dec. 20, 1562, gives this first and incorrect account. MS.
State Paper Office.
[216] H. Martin, Hist. de France, x. 156. Le Laboureur, ii. 450.
Catharine's own account to her minister at Vienna, it is true, is very
different. "J'en demeuray pres de 24 heures _en une extreme ennuy et
fascherie_, et jusques a ce que le S. de Losses arriva par-devers moy, qui
fut hier sur les neuf heures du matin." Letter to the Bishop of Rennes,
Dec. 23, 1562, _apud_ Le Laboureur, Add. aux Mem. de Castelnau, ii. 66-68.
[217] The Council of Trent, on receiving an account of the battle, Dec.
28th, offered solemn thanksgivings. Acta Concil. Trid. _apud_ Martene et
Durand, Ampl. Coll., t. viii. 1301, 1302; Letter of the Card. of Lorraine
to the Bishop of Rennes, French ambassador in Germany, _apud_ Le
Laboureur, Add. aux Mem. de Castelnau, ii. 70.
[218] Sir Thomas Smith to Cecil, February 4, 1563, State Paper Office.
[219] Same to same, February 26, 1563, State Paper Office.
[220] For Marshal Saint Andre, who had once gravely suggested in the
council the propriety of sewing the queen mother up in a bag and throwing
her into the river, it is understood that the Medici shed few tears.
Brantome and Le Laboureur, Add. aux Mem. de Castelnau, ii. 81. The marshal
had been shot by a victim whom he had deprived of his possessions by
confiscation. Ibid., _ubi supra_.
[221] "Black devils," Guise calls them in a letter of Jan. 17th. "M. de
Chatillon et ces diables noirs sont a Jerjuau." Mem. de Guise, 502.
[222] Coligny had notified the English court of his intention early in
January, and Cecil entertained high hopes of the result: "A gentleman is
arryved at Rye, sent from the Admyrall Chastillion, who assureth his
purpose to prosecute the cause of God and of his contrey, and meaneth to
joyne with our power in Normandy, which I trust shall make a spedy end of
the whole." Letter to Sir T. Smith, January 14th, Wright, Q. Eliz., i.
121.
[223] How important a matter this was, may be inferred from the fact that
the Admiral took pains to dwell upon it, in a letter to Queen Elizabeth,
written two or three days before his departure: "Advisant au reste vostre
Majeste, Madame, que j'ay faict condescendre les reistres a laisser tous
leur bagages et empechemens en ceste ville (_chose non auparavant ouye_):
de sorte que dedans le dix ou douziesme de ce moys de Febvrier prochain au
plus tard, avec l'aide de Dieu, nous serons bien prez du Havre de Grace,"
etc. Letter from Orleans, Jan. 29, 1563, Forbes, ii. 319.
[224] "En cest equipage, nous faisions telle diligence, que souvent nous
prevenions la renommee de nous mesmes en plusieurs lieux ou nous
arrivions." Mem. de la Noue, c. xi. La Noue states the force at two
thousand reiters, five hundred French horse, and one thousand mounted
arquebusiers.
[225] "The 8th of that moneth" (February), says Stow, "the said Admirall
came before Hunflew with six thousand horsemen, reisters and others of his
owne retinues, beside footmen, and one hundred horsemen of the countries
thereabout, and about sixe of the clocke at night, there was a great peale
of ordinance shot off at Newhaven (Havre) for a welcome to the sayd
Admirall." Annals (London, 1631), 653. The passage is inaccurately quoted
by Wright, Queen Eliz., i. 125, note.
[226] Hist. des egl. ref., ii. 156, 157; Mem. de Castelnau, liv. iv., c.
vii. and viii.
[227] Mem. de Castelnau, liv. iv., c. ix.
[228] OEuvres (Ed. Feugere), ii. 254; and again, ii. 257.
[229] Davila, bk. iii., p. 85.
[230] Castelnau (liv. iv., c. ix.), who was present, gives a less graphic
account than Davila (bk. iii., pp. 85, 86), who was not. Hist. eccles. des
egl. ref., ii. 159-161; La Noue, c. xi. 607-609.
[231] Feb. 9th--the day before Sir Thomas Smith reached Blois. Letter to
Privy Council, Feb. 17, 1563, State Paper Office; Hist. eccles. des egl.
ref., ii. 160.
[232] Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 162.
[233] Sir Thomas Smith to the Privy Council, Feb. 15th and 17th, 1563,
State Paper Office, Calendar, pp. 138, 141. It is now known, of course,
that _bombs_ had been occasionally used long before 1563, by the Arabs in
Spain, and others. But this kind of missile was practically a novelty, and
was not adopted in ordinary warfare till near a century later.
[234] It was at a most trying moment--when M. de Soubise, the Protestant
governor, found that only two weeks' provisions remained in the city, and
therefore felt compelled to issue an order to force some 7,000
non-combatants--women, children, and the poor--to leave Lyons, that Viret,
the Huguenot pastor, had an opportunity to display the great ascendancy
which his eminent piety and discretion had secured him over all ranks in
society. According to the newly published Memoirs of Soubise, Viret boldly
remonstrated against an act which was equivalent to a surrender of
thousands of defenceless persons to certain butchery, and declared that
the ordinary rules of military necessity did not apply to a war like this,
"in which the poorest has an interest, since we are fighting for the
liberty of our consciences," adding his own assurance that help would come
from some other quarter. Finally the governor yielded, saying: "Even
should it turn out ill and my reputation suffer, as though I had not done
my duty as a captain, yet, at your word, I will do as you ask, being well
assured that God will bless my act." Bulletin, xxiii. (1874), 497. It will
be remembered that Pierre Viret had been the able coadjutor of Farel in
the reformation of Geneva, twenty-eight years before. The siege of Lyons
was made the subject of a lengthy song by Antoine Du Plain (reprinted in
the Chansonnier Huguenot, 220 seq.), containing not a few historical data
of importance.
[235] "Nous venons maintenans d'estre advertyz de Lion par M. de Soubize,
comme le Baron des Adrez, ayant este practique par M. de Nemours, avoit
complote de faire entrer quelque gendarmerie et gens de pied de M. de
Nemours dedans Rommans, ville du Daulphine: dont il a este empesche par le
sieur de Mouvans, et par la noblesse du pays; qui se sont saisiz de sa
personne, et le ont mene prisonnier a Valence, pour le envoyer en
Languedoc devers mon frere, nagueres cardinal de Chastillon, et Monsieur
de Crussol (qui ont presque delivre tout le dict pays de Languedoc de la
tyrannie des ennemys de Dieu et du Roy) a fin de le faire punir, et servir
d'exemple aux autres deserteurs de Dieu, de leur debvoir, et de la
patrie." Admiral Coligny to Queen Elizabeth, Orleans, January 29, 1562/3,
Forbes, ii. 320.
[236] The gloomy picture is painted by Henri Martin, x. 158, etc.
[237] This statement does not rest upon any documentary proof that I am
aware of. It is, however, vouched for by the Hist. eccles. des egl. ref.,
ii. 162. Moreover, Admiral Coligny, in his later defence, expressly
states, "on the testimony of men worthy of belief," that Guise "was
accustomed to boast that, on the capture of the city, he would spare none
of the inhabitants, and that no respect would be paid to age or sex." Jean
de Serres, iii. 29; Mem. de Conde, iv. 348.
[238] Mem. de Soubise, Bulletin, xxiii. (1874) 499.
[239] Not without some hesitation, however. So little confidence in his
good judgment did his frivolous appearance inspire, that Coligny observed:
"I would not trust him, without knowing him better than I do, had not
Monsieur de Soubise sent him to me." Mem. de Soubise, Bulletin, xxiii.
(1874) 502.
[240] The Proces verbal of Poltrot's examination just before his death,
March 18th, is inserted in the Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 187-198.
In this he declares that his first testimony was _false_ and extorted by
the fear of death, and exculpates Soubise, Beza, Coligny, etc., from
having instigated him. He says that when put to torture he will say
anything the questioners want him to. Accordingly, when so tortured, he
accuses them, and when released a moment after the horses have begun to
rend him in pieces, he conjures up a plot of the Huguenots to sack Paris,
etc. May it not properly be asked, what such testimony as this is worth?
For or against Coligny, volumes of it would not affect his character in
our estimation.
[241] The direct testimony of Jacques Auguste de Thou, on a matter with
which he was evidently intimately acquainted through his father, is
unimpeachable, and will outweigh with every unprejudiced mind all the
stories of Davila, Castelnau, etc., founded on mere report. De Thou,
Histoire univ. (liv. xxxiv.), iii. 403.
[242] Poltrot's pretended confession of Feb. 26th, at Camp Saint Hilaire,
near Saint Mesmin, with the replies signed by Coligny, la Rochefoucauld,
and Beza to each separate article, is inserted in full in Mem. de Conde,
iv. 285-303, and the Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 176-186. Coligny's
letter to Catharine, ibid., ii. 186, 187, Mem. de Conde, iv. 303.
[243] That Catharine de' Medici was no very sincere mourner for Guise is
sufficiently certain; and it is well known that there were those who
believed her to have instigated his murder (See Mem. de Tavannes, Pet.
ed., ii. 394). This is not surprising when we recall the fact that almost
every great crime or casualty that occurred in France, for the space of a
generation, was ascribed to her evil influence. Still the Viscount de
Tavannes makes too great a draft upon our credulity, when he pretends that
she made a frank admission of guilt to his father. "Depuis, au voyage de
Bayonne, passant par Dijon, elle dit au sieur de Tavannes: 'Ceux de Guise
se vouloient faire roys, je les en ay bien garde devant Orleans.'" The
expression "devant Orleans" can hardly be tortured into a reference to
anything else than Guise's assassination.
[244] I entirely agree with Prof. Baum (Theodor Beza, ii. 719) in
regarding "this single circumstance as more than sufficient to demonstrate
both the innocence of Coligny and his associates, and the consciously
guilty fabrication of the accusations."
[245] Besides the authorities already referred to, the Journal of
Bruslart, Mem. de Conde, i. 123, 124; Davila, bk. iii. 86, 87; Claude
Haton, i. 322, etc.; J. de Serres, ii. 343-345; and Pasquier, Lettres
(OEuvres choisies), ii. 258, may be consulted with advantage. Prof. Baum's
account is, as usual, vivid, accurate, and instructive (Theodor Beza, ii.
706, etc.). Varillas, Anquetil, etc., are scarcely worth examining. There
is the ordinary amount of blundering about the simplest matters of
chronology. Davila places the wounding of Guise on the 24th of February,
his death three days later, etc.
[246] Mem. de Conde, i. 124; Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 164.
[247] Claude Haton, i. 325, 326.
[248] See Riez's letter to the king, reprinted in Mem. de Conde, iv.
243-265, and in Cimber and Danjou's invaluable collection of contemporary
pamphlets and documents, v. 171-204; Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 164.
[249] Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., _ubi supra_. There is extant an
affecting letter from the aged Renee of Ferrara to Calvin, in which she
complains with deep feeling of the reformed, and especially their
preachers, for the severity with which even after his death they attacked
the memory of her son-in-law, and even spoke of his eternal condemnation
as an ascertained fact. "I know," she said, "that he was a persecutor; but
I do not know, nor, to speak freely, do I believe that he was reprobated
of God; for he gave signs to the contrary before his death. But they want
this not to be mentioned, and they desire to shut the mouths of those who
know it." Cimber et Danjou, v. 399, etc. Calvin's reply of the 24th of
January, 1564, is admirable for its kind, yet firm tone (Bonnet, Lettres
franc. de Calvin, ii. 550, etc., Calvin's Letters, Am. edit., iv. 352,
etc.). He freely condemned the beatification of the King of Navarre, while
the Duke of Guise was consigned to perdition. The former was an apostate;
the latter an open enemy of the truth of the Gospel from the very
beginning. Indeed, to pronounce upon the doom of a fellow-sinner was both
rash and presumptuous, for there is but one Judge before whose seat we all
must give account. Yet, in condemning the authors of the horrible troubles
that had befallen France, and which all God's children had felt scarcely
less poignantly than Renee herself, sprung though she was from the royal
stock, it was impossible not to condemn the duke "who had kindled the
fire." Yea, for himself, although he had always prayed God to show Guise
mercy, the reformer avowed, in almost the very words of Beza, that he had
often desired that God would lay His hand upon the duke to free His Church
of him, unless He would convert him. "And yet I can protest," he added,
"that but for me, before the war, active and energetic men would have
exerted themselves to destroy him from the face of the earth, whom my sole
exhortation restrained."
Some of the composers of Huguenot ballads were bitter enough in their
references to Guise's death and pompous funeral; see, among others, the
songs in the Chansonnier Huguenot, pp. 253 and 257.
[250] Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 285, 286. The story is well told in
Memorials of Renee of France, 215-217. De Thou (liv. xxx.), iii. 179, has
incorrectly placed this occurrence among the events of the first months of
the war. During the second war Brantome once stopped to pay his respects
to Renee, and saw in the castle over 300 Huguenots that had fled there for
security. In a letter of May 10, 1563, Calvin speaks of her as "the
nursing mother of the poor saints driven out of their homes and knowing
not whither to go," and as having made her castle what a princess looking
only to this world would regard almost an insult to have it called--"God's
hostelry" or "hospital" (ung hostel-Dieu). God had, as it were, called
upon her by these trials to pay arrears for the timidity of her younger
days. Lettres franc., ii. 514 (Amer. trans., iv. 314).
[251] Despatch to the queen, Blois, February 26, 1562/3, Forbes, State
Papers, ii. 340. "Of the thre things that did let this realme to come to
unity and accorde," adds Smith, "I take th' one to be taken away. How th'
other two wil be now salved--th' one that the papists may relent somwhat
of their pertinacie, and the Protestants have som affiaunce or trust in
there doengs, and so th' one live with th' other in quiet, I do not yet
se."
[252] Mem. de Castelnau, liv. iv., c. xii.; Davila, bk. iii. 88; Journal
de Bruslart, Mem. de Conde, i. 124; Letter of Catharine to Gonnor, March
3d, ibid., iv. 278; Hist. eccles., ii. 200.
[253] Rascalon, Catharine's agent, proffered the dignity in a letter of
the 13th of March, and the duke declined it on the 17th of the same month.
At the same time he gave some wholesome advice respecting the observance
of the Edict, etc. Hist. eccles., ii. 165-168.
[254] "La Royne ... y a si vivement procede, que ayant ordonne que sur la
foy de l'un et de l'autre nous nous entreveorions en l'Isle aux Bouviers,
joignant presque les murs de ceste ville, dimenche dernier cela fut
execute." Conde to Sir Thomas Smith, Orleans, March 11, 1563, Forbes, ii.
355.
[255] Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 170, 171. Coupled with demands for
the restitution of the edict without restriction or modification, the
prohibition of insults, the protection of the churches, the permission to
hold synods, the recognition of Protestant marriages, and that the
religion be no longer styled "new," "inasmuch as it is founded on the
ancient teaching of the Prophets and Apostles," we find the Huguenot
ministers, true to the spirit of the age, insisting upon "the rigorous
punishment of all Atheists, Libertines, Anabaptists, Servetists, and other
heretics and schismatics."
[256] The text of the edict of Amboise is given by Isambert, Recueil des
anc. lois franc., xiv. 135-140; J. de Serres, ii. 347-357; Hist. eccles.
des egl. ref., ii. 172-176; Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. (liv. iii.) 192-195. See
Pasquier, Lettres (OEuvres choisies), ii. 260.
[257] Smith to the queen, April 1, 1563, in Duc d'Aumale, Princes de
Conde, i. Documents, 439.
[258] Smith to D'Andelot, March 13, 1563, State Paper Office.
[259] Journal de Bruslart, Mem. de Conde, i. 125: "de expresso Regis
mandato iteratis vicibus facto." Claude Haton is scarcely more
complimentary than Bruslart: "elle (la paix) estoit faicte du tout au
desavantage de l'honneur de Dieu, de la religion catholicque et de
l'authorite du jeune roy et repos public de son royaume." Memoires, i.
327, 328.
[260] Elizabeth of England was herself, apparently, awakening to the
importance of the struggle, and new troops subsidized by her would soon
have entered France from the German borders. "This day," writes Cecil to
Sir Thomas Smith, ambassador at Paris, Feb. 27, 1562/3, "commission
passeth hence to the comte of Oldenburg to levy eight thousand footemen
and four thousand horse, who will, I truste, passe into France with spede
and corradg. He is a notable, grave, and puissant captayn, and fully bent
to hazard his life in the cause of religion." Th. Wright, Queen Elizabeth
and her Times, i. 125. But Elizabeth's troops, like Elizabeth's money,
came too late. Of the latter, Admiral Coligny plainly told Smith a few
weeks later: "If we could have had the money at Newhaven (Havre) _but one
xiii daies sooner_, we would have talked with them after another sorte,
and would not have bene contented with this accord." Smith to the queen,
April 1, 1563, in Duc d'Aumale, i. 439.
[261] Letter from Orleans, March 30, 1563, MSS. State Paper Office, Duc
d'Aumale, i. 411.
[262] Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 203. Theodore Beza was the preacher
on this occasion, and betrayed his own disappointment by speaking of the
liberty of religion they had received as "not so ample, peradventure, as
they would wish, yet such as they ought to thank God for." Smith to the
queen, March 31, State Paper Office.
[263] Relazione di Correro, 1569. Rel. des Amb. Ven., ii. 118-120.
[264] It appears at least as early as in Farel's Epistre a tous Seigneurs,
written in 1530, p. 166 of Fick's edition.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE PEACE OF AMBOISE, AND THE BAYONNE CONFERENCE.
[Sidenote: The restoration of Havre demanded.]
[Sidenote: Fall of Havre.]
Scarcely had the Edict of Amboise been signed when a demand was made upon
the English queen for the city of Havre, placed in her possession by the
Huguenots, as a pledge for the restoration of Calais in accordance with
the treaty of Cateau-Cambresis, and as security for the repayment of the
large sums she had advanced for the maintenance of the war. But Elizabeth
was in no favorable mood for listening to this summons. Instead of being
instructed to evacuate Havre, the Earl of Warwick was reinforced by fresh
supplies of arms and provisions, and received orders to defend to the last
extremity the only spot in France held by the queen. A formal offer made
by Conde to secure a renewal of the stipulation by which Calais was to be
given up in 1567, and to remunerate Elizabeth for her expenditures in the
cause of the French Protestants, was indignantly rejected; and both sides
prepared for open war.[265] The struggle was short and decisive. The
French were a unit on the question of a permanent occupation of their soil
by foreigners. Within the walls of Havre itself a plot was formed by the
French population to betray the city into the hands of their countrymen;
and Warwick was forced to expel the natives in order to secure the lives
of his own troops.[266] But no vigilance of the besieged could insure the
safety of a detached position on the borders of so powerful a state as
France. Elizabeth was too weak, or too penurious, to afford the recruits
that were loudly called for. And now a new and frightful auxiliary to the
French made its appearance. A contagious disease set in among the English
troops, crowded into a narrow compass and deprived of their usual
allowance of fresh meat and wholesome water. The fearful mortality
attending it soon revealed the true character of the scourge. Few of those
that fell sick recovered. Gathering new strength from day to day, it
reigned at length supreme in the fated city. Soon the daily crowd of
victims became too great to receive prompt sepulture, and the corpses
lying unburied in the streets furnished fresh fuel for the raging
pestilence. Seven thousand English troops were reduced in a short time to
three thousand, in a few days more to fifteen hundred men.[267] The hand
of death was upon the throat of every survivor. At length, too feeble to
man their works, despairing of timely succor, unable to sustain at the
same moment the assault of their opponents and the fearful visitation of
the Almighty, the English consented to surrender; and, on the
twenty-eighth of July, a capitulation was signed, in accordance with
which, on the next day, Havre, with all its fortifications and the ships
of war in its harbor, fell once more into the hands of the French.[268]
[Sidenote: How the peace was received.]
The pacification of Amboise, a contemporary chronicler tells us, was
received with greater or less cordiality in different localities of
France, very much according to the number of Protestants they had
contained before the war. "This edict of peace was very grievous to hear
published and to have executed in the case of the Catholics of the
peaceable cities and villages where there were very few Huguenots. But it
was a source of great comfort to the Catholics of the cities which were
oppressed by the Huguenots, as well as of the neighboring villages in
which the Catholic religion had been intermitted, mass and divine worship
not celebrated, and the holy sacraments left unadministered--as in the
cities of Lyons and Orleans, and their vicinity, and in many other cities
of Poitou and Languedoc, where the Huguenots were masters or superior in
numbers. As the peace was altogether advantageous to the Huguenots, they
labored hard to have it observed and published."[269]
[Sidenote: Vexatious delays in Normandy.]
But to secure publication and observance was not always possible.[270] Not
unfrequently the Huguenots were denied by the illiberality of their
enemies every privilege to which they were entitled by the terms of the
edict. At Troyes, the Roman Catholic party, hearing that peace had been
made, resolved to employ the brief interval before the edict should be
published, and the mayor of the city led the populace to the prisons,
where all the Huguenots that could be found were at once murdered.[271]
The vexatious delays, and the actual persecution still harder to be borne,
which were encountered at Rouen, have been duly recorded by an anonymous
Roman Catholic contemporary, as well as in the registers of the city hall
and of the Norman parliament, and may serve as an indication of what
occurred in many other places. From the chapter of the cathedral and the
judges of the supreme provincial court, down to the degraded rabble, the
entire population was determined to interpose every possible obstacle in
the way of the peaceable execution of the new law. Before any official
communication respecting it reached them, the clergy declared, by solemn
resolution, their intention to reserve the right of prosecuting all who
had plundered their extensive ecclesiastical domain. The municipality
wrote at once to the king, to his mother, and to others at court,
imploring that Rouen and its vicinity might be exempted from all exercise
of the "new religion." Parliament sent deputies to Charles the Ninth to
remonstrate against the broad concessions made in favor of the
Protestants, and, even when compelled to go through the form of a
registration, avoided a publication of the edict, in order to gain time
for another fruitless protest addressed to the royal government.
When it came to the execution of the law, the affair assumed a more
threatening aspect. The Roman Catholics had resolved to resist the return
of the "for-issites," or fugitive Huguenots. At first they excused their
opposition by alleging that there were bandits and criminals of every kind
in the ranks of the exiles. Next they demanded that a preliminary list of
their names and abodes should be furnished, in order that their arms might
be taken away. Finally they required, with equal perverseness, that, in
spite of the express stipulation of the king's rescript, the "for-issites"
should return only as private individuals, and should not venture to
resume their former offices and dignities. Meantime the "for-issites,"
driven to desperation by the flagrant injustice of which they were the
victims, began to retaliate by laying violent hands upon all objects of
Roman Catholic devotion in the neighboring country, and by levying
contributions upon the farms and villas of their malignant enemies. The
Rouenese revenged themselves in turn by wantonly murdering the Huguenots
whom they found within the city walls.
[Sidenote: Protest of the Norman parliament.]
The embittered feeling did not diminish at once after the more intrepid of
the Huguenots had, under military compulsion, been readmitted into Rouen.
There were daily complaints of ill-usage. But the insolence of the
dominant party rose to a still higher pitch when there appeared a royal
edict--whether genuine or forged has not as yet been settled--by which the
cardinal demands of the Huguenots were granted. The alleged concessions
may not strike us as very extraordinary. They consisted chiefly in
disarming the Roman Catholics equally with the adherents of the opposite
creed, and in erecting a new chamber in parliament to try impartially
cases in dispute between the adherents of the two communions.[272] This
was certainly decreeing but a small measure of the equality in the eye of
the law which the Protestants might claim as a natural and indefeasible
right. The citizens of the Norman capital, however, regarded the enactment
as a monstrous outrage upon society. Charles the Ninth, happened at this
time to be passing through Gaillon, a place some ten leagues distant from
Rouen, on his way to the siege of Havre; and Damours, the
advocate-general, was deputed to bear to him a protest drawn up by
parliament. The tone of the paper was scarcely respectful to the monarch;
it was positively insulting to the members of the royal council who
professed the Protestant faith. It predicted the possible loss of
Normandy, or of his entire kingdom, in case the king pursued a system of
toleration. The Normans, it said, would not submit to Protestant
governors, nor to the return of the exiles in arms, nor to their
resumption of their former dignities. If the "for-issites" continued their
excesses, they would be set upon and killed. The Roman Catholic burgesses
of Rouen even proclaimed a conditional loyalty. Should the king not see
fit to accede to their demands, they declared themselves ready to place
the keys of their city in his hands to dispose of at his pleasure, at the
same time craving permission to go where they pleased and to take away
their property with them.
[Sidenote: A rude rebuff.]
Truly the spirit of the "Holy League" was already born, though the times
were not yet ripe for the promulgation of such tenets. The
advocate-general was a fluent speaker, and he had been attended many a
weary mile by an enthusiastic escort. Parliamentary counsellors, municipal
officers, clergy, an immense concourse of the lower stratum of the
population--all were at Gaillon, ready to applaud his well-turned
sentences. But he had chosen an unlucky moment for his oratorical display.
His glowing periods were rudely interrupted by one of the princely
auditors. This was Louis of Conde--now doubly important to the court on
account of the military undertaking that was on foot--who complained of
the speaker's insolent words. So powerful a nobleman could not be
despised. And so the voluble Damours, with his oration but half delivered,
instead of meeting a gracious monarch's approval and returning home amid
the plaudits of the multitude, was hastily taken in charge by the archers
of the royal guard and carried off to prison. The rest of the Rouenese
disappeared more rapidly than they had come. The avenues to the city were
filled with fugitives as from a disastrous battle. Even the grave
parliament, which the last winter had been exhibiting its august powers in
butchering Huguenots by the score, beginning with the arch-heretic
Augustin Marlorat, lost for a moment its self-possession, and took part in
the ignominious flight. Shame, however, induced it to pause before it had
gone too far, and, putting on the gravest face it could summon, it
reappeared ere long at Gaillon with becoming magisterial gravity. Never
had there been a more thorough discomfiture.[273] A few days later the
Marshal de Bourdillon made his entry into Rouen with a force of Swiss
soldiers sufficient to break down all resistance, the "for-issites" were
brought in, a new election of municipal officers was held, and comparative
quiet was restored in the turbulent city.[274]
[Sidenote: Commissioners to enforce the edict.]
[Sidenote: Alienation of a profligate court.]
[Sidenote: Profanity a test of Catholicity.]
So far as a character so undecided could frame any fixed purpose,
Catharine de' Medici was resolved to cement, if possible, a stable peace.
The Chancellor, Michel de l'Hospital, still retained his influence over
her, and gave to her disjointed plans somewhat of the appearance of a
deliberate policy. That policy certainly seemed to mean peace. And to
prove this, commissioners were despatched to the more distant provinces,
empowered to enforce the execution of the Edict of Amboise.[275] Yet never
was the court less in sympathy with the Huguenots than at this moment. If
shameless profligacy had not yet reached the height it subsequently
attained under the last Valois that sat upon the throne of France, it was
undoubtedly taking rapid strides in that direction. For the giddy throng
of courtiers, living in an atmosphere that reeked with corruption,[276]
the stern morality professed by the lips and exemplified in the lives of
Gaspard de Coligny and his noble brothers, as well as by many another of
nearly equal rank, could afford but few attractions. Many of these
triflers had, it is true, exhibited for a time some leaning toward the
reformed faith. But their evanescent affection was merely a fire kindled
in the light straw: the fuel was soon consumed, and the brilliant flame
which had given rise to such sanguine expectations died out as easily as
it sprang up.[277] When once the novelty of the simple worship in the rude
barn, or in the retired fields, with the psalms of Marot and Beza sung to
quaint and stirring melodies, had worn off; when the black gown of the
Protestant minister had become as familiar to the eye as the stole and
chasuble of the officiating priest, and the words of the reformed
confession of sins as familiar to the ear as the pontifical litanies and
prayers, the "assemblee" ceased to attract the curious from the salons of
St. Germain and Fontainebleau. Besides, it was one thing to listen to a
scathing account of the abuses of churchmen, or a violent denunciation of
the sins of priest and monk, and quite another to submit to a faithful
recital of the iniquities of the court, and hear the wrath of God
denounced against the profane, the lewd, and the extortionate. There were
some incidents, occurring just at the close of the war, that completed the
alienation which before had been only partial. The Huguenots had attempted
by stringent regulations to banish swearing, robbery, and other flagrant
crimes from their army. They had punished robbery in many instances with
death. They had succeeded so far in doing away with oaths, that their
opponents had paid unconscious homage to their freedom from the despicable
vice. In those days, when in the civil struggle it was so difficult to
distinguish friends from foes, there was one proof of unimpeachable
orthodoxy that was rarely disputed. He must be a good Catholic who could
curse and swear. The Huguenot soldier would do neither.[278] So nearly,
indeed, did the Huguenot affirmation approach to the simplicity of the
biblical precept, that one Roman Catholic partisan leader of more than
ordinary audacity had assumed for the motto on his standard the
blasphemous device: "'Double 's death' has conquered 'Verily.'"[279] But
the strictness with which theft and profanity were visited in the Huguenot
camp produced but a slight impression, compared with that made by the
punishment of death inflicted by a stern judge at Orleans, just before the
proclamation of peace, on a man and woman found guilty of adultery. Almost
the entire court cried out against the unheard-of severity of the sentence
for a crime which had never before been punished at all. The greater part
of these advocates of facile morals had even the indiscretion to confess
that they would never consent to accept such people as the Huguenots for
their masters.[280]
[Sidenote: Admiral Coligny accused.]
[Sidenote: His defence espoused by Conde and the Montmorencies.]
Even after the publication of the Edict of Amboise, there was one matter
left unsettled that threatened to rekindle the flames of civil war. It
will be remembered that the murderer of the Duke of Guise, overcome by
terror in view of his fate had charged Gaspard de Coligny with having
instigated the perpetration of the foul crime; that, as soon as he heard
the accusation, the admiral had not only answered the allegations, article
by article, but had written, earnestly begging that Poltrot's execution
might be deferred until the return of peace should permit him to be
confronted with his accuser. This very reasonable demand, we have seen,
had been rejected, and the miserable assassin had been torn into pieces by
four horses, upon the Place de Greve, on the very day preceding that which
witnessed the signing of the Edict of Amboise. If, however, the queen
mother had hoped to diminish the difficulties of her position by taking
this course, she had greatly miscalculated. In spite of his protestations,
and of a second and more popular defence which he now made,[281] the
Guises persisted in believing, or in pretending to believe, Coligny to be
the prime cause of the murder of the head of their family. His very
frankness was perverted into a proof of his complicity. The admiral's
words, as an eminent historian of our own day observes, bear the seal of
sincerity, and we need go for the truth nowhere else than to his own
avowals.[282] But they did not satisfy his enemies. The danger of an open
rupture was imminent. Coligny was coming to court from his castle of
Chatillon-sur-Loing, with a strong escort of six hundred gentlemen; but so
inevitable did a bloody collision within the walls of Paris seem to the
queen, that she begged Conde to dissuade him for the present from carrying
out his purpose. Meantime, Conde and the two Montmorencies--the constable
and his son, the marshal--espoused Coligny's cause as their own, by
publicly declaring (on the fifteenth of May) his entire innocence, and
announcing that any blow aimed at the Chatillons, save by legal process,
they would regard and avenge as aimed at themselves.[283] Taking excuse
from the unsettled relations of the kingdom with England and at home, the
privy council at the same time enjoined both parties to abstain from acts
of hostility, and adjourned the judicial investigation until after arms
had been laid down.[284]
[Sidenote: Petition of the Guises.]
At length, on the twenty-sixth of September--two months after the
reduction of Havre--the Guises renewed their demand with great solemnity.
Charles was at Meulan (on the Seine, a few miles below Paris), when a
procession of mourners entered his presence. It was the family of Guise,
headed by the late duke's widow, his mother, and his children, coming to
sue for vengeance on the murderer. All were clad in the dress that
betokened the deepest sorrow, and the dramatic effect was complete.[285]
They brought a petition couched in decided terms, but making no mention of
the name of Coligny, and signed, not only by themselves, but by three of
the Bourbons--the Cardinal Charles, the Duke of Montpensier, and his
son--and by the Dukes of Longueville and Nemours.[286] Under the
circumstances, the king could not avoid granting their request and
ordering inquisition to be made by the peers in parliament assembled.[287]
But the friends of the absent admiral saw in the proposed investigation
only an attempt on the part of his enemies to effect through the forms of
law the ruin of the most prominent Huguenot of France. It was certain,
they urged, that he could expect no justice at the hands of the presidents
and counsellors of the Parisian parliament. Nor did they find it difficult
to convince Catharine that to permit a public trial would be to reopen
old sores and to risk overturning in a single hour the fabric of peace
which for six months she had been laboring hard to strengthen.[288] The
king was therefore induced to evoke the consideration of the complaint of
the Guises to his own grand council. Here again new difficulties sprang
up. The Duchess of Guise was as suspicious of the council as Coligny of
the parliament, and challenged the greater number of its members as too
partial to act as judges. In fact, it seemed impossible to secure a jury
to settle the matter in dispute. After months spent to no purpose in
wrangling, Charles determined to remove the question both from the
parliament and from the council, and on the fifth of January, 1564,
reserved for himself and his mother the duty of adjudication. At the same
time, on the ground that the importance of the case demanded the
deliberations of a prince of greater age and of more experience than he as
yet possessed, and that its discussion at present might prove prejudicial
to the tranquillity of the kingdom, he adjourned it for three full years,
or until such other time as he might hereafter find to be convenient.[289]
[Sidenote: Embarrassment of Catharine.]
The feud between the Chatillons and the Guises was not, however, the only
embarrassment which the government found itself compelled to meet.
Catharine was in equal perplexity with respect to the engagements she had
entered into with the Prince of Conde. It was part of the misfortune of
this improvident princess that each new intrigue was of such a nature as
to require a second intrigue to bolster it up. Yet she was to live long
enough to learn by bitter experience that there is a limit to the extent
to which plausible but lying words will pass current. At last the spurious
coin was to be returned discredited to her own coffers. Catharine had
enticed Conde into concluding a peace much less favorable to the
Huguenots than his comrades in arms had expected in view of the state of
the military operations and the pecuniary necessities of the court, by the
promise that he should occupy the same controlling position in the
government as his brother, the King of Navarre, held at the time of his
death. We have seen that he was so completely hoodwinked that he assured
his friends that it was of little consequence how scanty were the
concessions made in the edict. He would soon be able, by his personal
authority, to secure to "the religion" the largest guarantees. If we may
believe Catharine herself, he went so far in his enthusiastic desire for
peace as to threaten to desert the Huguenots, if they declined to embrace
the opportunity of reconciliation.[290]
[Sidenote: The majority of Charles proclaimed.]
How to get rid of the troublesome obligation she had assumed, was now the
problem; since to fulfil her promise honestly was, for a person of her
crooked policy and inordinate ambition, not to be thought of for an
instant. The readiest solution was found in abolishing the office of
lieutenant-general. This could be done only by declaring the termination
of the minority of Charles. For this an opportunity presented itself,
when, on the seventeenth of August, 1563,[291] the queen and her children,
with a brilliant retinue, were in the city of Rouen, on their return from
the successful campaign against Havre. That day Charles the Ninth held a
"lit de justice" in the palace of the Parliament of Normandy. Sitting in
state, and surrounded by his mother, his younger brothers, and a host of
grandees, he proceeded to address the assembled counsellors, pronouncing
himself of full age, and, in the capacity of a major king, delivered to
them an edict, signed the day before, ordering the observance of his Edict
of Amboise and the complete pacification of his kingdom by a universal
laying down of arms.[292] True, Charles was but a few days more than
thirteen years of age; but his right to assume the full powers of
government was strenuously maintained by Chancellor L'Hospital, upon whom
devolved the task of explaining more fully the king's motives and
purposes. Then Catharine, the author of the pageant, rising, humbly
approached her son's throne, and bowed to the boy in token that she
resigned into his hands the temporary authority she had held for nearly
three years. Charles, advancing to meet her, accepted her homage, saying,
at the same time, in words that were but too significant and prophetic of
the remainder of his reign: "Madame ma mere, you shall govern and command
as much or more than ever."[293]
[Sidenote: Charles and the refractory Parliament of Paris.]
The Parliament of Rouen, flattered at being selected for the instrument in
so important an act, published and registered the edict of Charles's
majority, notwithstanding some unpalatable provisions. Not so the
Parliament of Paris. The counsellors of the capital were even more
indignant at the slight put upon their claim to precedence, than at the
proposed disarming of the Roman Catholics--a measure particularly
distasteful to the riotous population of Paris.[294] The details of their
opposition need not, however, find a record here. In the end the firmness
of the king, or of his advisers, triumphed. At Mantes[295] Charles
received a deputation from the recalcitrant judges, with Christopher de
Thou, their first president, at its head. After hearing their
remonstrances, he replied to the delegates that, although young and
possessed of little experience, he was as truly king of France as any of
his predecessors, and that he intended to make himself obeyed as such. To
prove, however, that he had not acted inconsiderately in the premises, he
called upon the members of his council who were present to speak; and each
in turn, commencing with Cardinal Bourbon, the first prince of the blood,
declared that the edict of Amboise had been made with his consent and
advice, and that he deemed it both useful and necessary. Whereupon Charles
informed the parliamentary committee that he had not adopted this course
because he was under any obligation to render to them an account of his
actions. "But," said he, "now that I am of age, I wish you to meddle with
nothing beyond giving my subjects good and speedy justice. The kings, my
predecessors, placed you where you are, in order that they might unburden
their consciences, and that their subjects might live in greater security
under their obedience, not in order to constitute you my tutors, or the
protectors of the realm, or the guardians of my city of Paris. You have
allowed yourselves to suppose until now that you are all this. I shall not
leave you under the delusion; but I command you that, as in my father's
and grandfather's time you were accustomed to attend to justice alone, so
you shall henceforth meddle with nothing else." He professed to be
perfectly willing to listen to their representations when modestly given;
but he concluded by threatening them that, if they persisted in their
present insolent course, he would find means to convince them that they
were not his guardians and teachers, but his servants.[296] These stout
words were shrewdly suspected to come from "the shop of the
chancellor,"[297] whose popularity they by no means augmented. But Charles
was himself in earnest. A fresh delegation of counsellors was dismissed
from the royal presence with menaces,[298] and the parliament and people
of Paris were both finally compelled to succumb. Parliament registered the
edict; the people surrendered their arms--the poor receiving the estimated
value of the weapons, the tradesmen and burgesses a ticket to secure their
future restoration. As a matter of course, the nobles do not appear at all
in the transaction, their immemorial claim to be armed even in time of
peace being respected.
[Sidenote: The Pope's bull against princely heretics.]
[Sidenote: Cardinal Chatillon.]
Pope Pius the Fourth had been as indignant as Philip the Second himself at
the conclusion of peace with the Huguenots. He avenged himself as soon as
he received the tidings, by publishing, on the seventh of April, 1563, a
bull conferring authority upon the inquisitors general of Christendom to
proceed against heretics and their favorers--even to bishops, archbishops,
patriarchs and cardinals--and to cite them before their tribunal by merely
affixing the summons to the doors of the Inquisition or of the basilica of
St. Peter. Should they fail to appear in person, they might at once be
condemned and sentenced. The bull was no idle threat. Without delay a
number of French prelates were indicted for heresy, and summoned to come
to Rome and defend themselves. The list was headed by Cardinal Odet de
Chatillon, Coligny's eldest brother, who had openly espoused the reformed
belief, and St. Romain, Archbishop of Aix. Caraccioli, who had resigned
the bishopric of Troyes and had been ordained a Protestant pastor, Montluc
of Valence, and others of less note, figured among the suspected.[299] As
they did not appear, a number of these prelates were shortly
condemned.[300] Not content with this bold infraction of the Gallican
liberties, the Roman pontiff went a step farther, and, through the
Congregation of the Inquisition, cited Jeanne d'Albret, Queen of Navarre,
to appear at Rome within six months, on pain of being held attainted of
heresy, and having her dominions given in possession to the first Catholic
occupant.[301]
[Sidenote: The council protests against the papal bull.]
In other words, not only Bearn, the scanty remnant of her titular
monarchy, but all the lands and property to which the Huguenot queen had
fallen heir, were to follow in the direction the kingdom of Navarre had
taken, and go to swell the enormous wealth and dominion of the Spanish
prince,[302] who found his interest to lie in the discord and misfortunes
of his neighbors. Surely such an example would not be without significance
to princes and princesses who, like Catharine, were wont occasionally to
court the heretics on account of their power, and whose loyalty to the
papal church could scarcely be supposed, even by the most charitable, to
rest on any firmer foundation than self-interest. Nor was the lesson
thrown away. Catharine and Michel de l'Hospital, and many another, read
its import at a glance. But, instead of breaking down their opposition,
the papal bull only forearmed them. They saw that Queen Jeanne's cause was
their cause--the cause of any of the Valois who, whether upon the ground
of heresy or upon any other pretext, might become obnoxious to the See of
Rome. The royal council of state, therefore, promptly took the matter in
hand, in connection with the recent trial of the French prelates, and
replied to the papal missive by a spirited protest, which D'Oisel, the
French ambassador at Rome, was commissioned to present. In his monarch's
name he was to declare the procedure against the Queen of Navarre to be
not only derogatory to the respect due to the royal dignity, which that
princess could claim to an equal degree with the other monarchs of
Christendom, but injurious to the rights and honor of the king and
kingdom, and subversive of civil society. It was unjust, for it was
dictated by the enemies of France, who sought to take advantage of the
youth of the king and his embarrassments arising from civil wars, to
oppress a widow and orphans--the widow and orphan children, indeed, of a
king for whom the Pope had himself but recently been endeavoring so
zealously to secure the restoration of Navarre. The malice was apparent
from the fact that nothing similar had been undertaken by the Holy See
against any of the monarchs who had revolted from its obedience within the
last forty years. Sovereign power had been conferred upon the Pope for the
salvation of souls, not that he might despoil kings and dispose of
kingdoms according to his caprice--an undertaking his predecessors had
engaged in hitherto only to their shame and confusion. Finally, the King
of France begged Pius to recall the sentence against Queen Jeanne,
otherwise he would be compelled to employ the remedies resorted to by his
ancestors in similar cases, according to the laws of the realm.[303] Not
content with this direct appeal, Catharine wrote to her son's ambassador
in Germany to interest the emperor and the King of the Romans in an affair
that no less vitally affected them.[304] So vigorous a response seems to
have frightened the papal court, and the bull was either recalled or
dropped--at least no trace is said to be found in the Constitutions of
Pius the Fourth--and the proceedings against the bishops were indefinitely
suspended.[305]
But while Catharine felt it necessary, for the maintenance of her own
authority and of the dignity of the French crown, to enter the lists
boldly in behalf of the Queen of Navarre, she was none the less bent upon
confirming that authority by rendering it impossible for the Huguenots
ever again to take the field in opposition to the crown. A war for the
sake of principle was something of which that cynical princess could not
conceive. The Huguenot party was strong, according to her view, only
because of the possession of powerful leaders. The religious convictions
of its adherents went for nothing. Let the Condes, and the Colignies, and
the Porciens, and the La Rochefoucaulds be gained over, and the people,
deprived of a head, would subordinate their theology to their interest,
and unity would be restored under her own rule. It was the same vain
belief that alone rendered possible a few years later such a stupendous
crime and folly as the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre. Many an obscure and
illiterate martyr, who had lost his life during her husband's reign, might
have given her a far juster estimate of the future than her Macchiavellian
education, with all its fancied shrewdness and insight into human
character and motives, had furnished her.
[Sidenote: Catharine's attempt to seduce Conde from the Huguenots.]
To overthrow the political influence of the Huguenots she must seduce
their leaders. Of this Catharine was sure. With whom, then, should she
commence but with the brilliant Conde? The calm and commanding admiral,
indeed, was the true head and heart of the late war--never more firm and
uncompromising than after defeat--as reluctant to renounce war without
securing, beyond question, the religious liberty he sought, as he had been
averse to take up the sword at all in the beginning. Of such a man,
however, little hope could be entertained. But Louis of Bourbon was cast
in another mould. Excessively small in stature and deformed in person, he
was a general favorite; for he was amiable, witty, and talkative.[306]
Moreover, he was fond of pleasure to an extent that attracted notice even
in that giddy court, and as open to temptation as any of its frivolous
denizens.[307] For such persons Catharine knew how to lay snares. Never
did queen surround herself with more brilliant enticements for the unwary.
Her maids of honor were at once her spies and the instruments of
accomplishing her designs. As she had had a fair Rouhet to undermine the
constancy of Antoine, so she had now an Isabeau de Limueil to entrap his
younger brother. Nor did Catharine's device prove unsuccessful. Conde
became involved in an amorous intrigue that shook the confidence of his
Huguenot friends in his steadfastness and sincerity; while the silly girl
whom the queen had encouraged in a course that led to ruin, as soon as her
shame became notorious, was ignominiously banished from court--for no one
could surpass Catharine in the personation of offended modesty.[308] Yet,
notwithstanding a disgraceful fall which proved to the satisfaction of a
world, always sufficiently sceptical of the depth of religious
convictions, that ambition had much more to do with the prince's conduct
than any sense of duty, Conde was not wholly lost to right feelings. The
tears and remonstrances of his wife--the true-hearted Eleonore de
Roye--dying of grief at his inconstancy, are said to have wrought a marked
change in his character.[309] From that time Catharine's power was gone.
In vain did she or the Guises strive to gain him over to the papal party
by offering him, in second marriage, the widow of Marshal Saint Andre,
with an ample dower that might well dazzle a prince of the blood with but
a beggarly appanage;[310] or even by proposing to confer upon him the hand
of the yet blooming Queen of Scots,[311] the Prince of Conde remained true
to the cause he had espoused till his blood stained the fatal field of
Jarnac.
[Sidenote: Huguenot progress.]
But while the queen mother was plying the great with her seductions, while
the Roman Catholic leaders were artfully instilling into the minds of the
people the idea that the Edict of Amboise was only a temporary
expedient,[312] while royal governors, or their lieutenants, like
Damville--the constable's younger son--at Pamiers, were cruelly abusing
the Protestants whom they ought to have protected,[313] there was much in
the tidings that came especially from southern France to encourage the
reformers. In the midst of the confusion and carnage of war the leaven had
yet been working. There were even to be found places where the progress of
Protestantism had rendered the application of the provisions of the edict
nearly, if not quite impossible. The little city of Milhau, in
Rouergue,[314] is a striking and very interesting instance.
[Sidenote: Milhau-en-Rouergue.]
The edict had expressly directed that all churches should be restored to
the Roman Catholics, and that the Protestants should resort for worship to
other places, either in the suburbs, or--in the case of cities which the
Huguenots had held on the seventh of March, 1563--within the walls. But,
soon after the restoration of peace, the consuls and inhabitants of Milhau
presented a petition to Charles the Ninth, in which they make the
startling assertion that the entire population has become Protestant ("de
la religion"); that for two years or thereabouts they have lived in
undisturbed peace, whilst other cities have been the scene of
disturbances; and that, at a recent gathering of the inhabitants, they
unanimously expressed their desire to live in the exercise of the reformed
faith, under the royal permission. By the king's order the petition was
referred for examination to the commissioners for the execution of the
edict in the province of Guyenne. All its statements were found to be
strictly correct. There was not one papist within the city; not one man,
woman, or child expressed a desire for the re-establishment of the Roman
Catholic ceremonial. The monks had renounced the cowl, the priests their
vestments. Of their own free will, some of the friars had married, some
had taken up useful trades. The prior had voluntarily resigned the greater
part of his revenues; retaining one-third for his own support, he had
begged that the remainder might be devoted to the preaching of God's Word
and the maintenance of the poor. The two churches of the place had for
eighteen months been used for Protestant worship, and there were no other
convenient places to be found. Indeed, had the churches been given up,
there would have been no one to take possession. A careful domiciliary
examination by four persons appointed by the royal judge had incontestably
established the point. Over eight hundred houses were visited,
constituting the greater part of the city. The occupants were summoned to
express their preferences, and the result was contained in the solemn
return of the commission: "We have not found a single person who desired
or asked for the mass; but, on the contrary, all demanded the preaching of
the Word of God, and the administration of His holy sacraments as
instituted by Himself in that Word. And thus we certify by the oath we
have taken to God and to the king."[315]
[Sidenote: The cry for ministers.]
From other places the cry of the churches for ministers to be sent from
Geneva was unabated. In one town and its environs, so inadequate was a
single minister to the discharge of his pastoral duties, that the peasants
of the vicinity were compelled to baptize one another's children, or to
leave them unbaptized.[316] At Montpellier it is the consuls that beg that
their corps of ministers may be doubled; their two pastors cannot preach
every day and three times upon Sunday, and yet visit the neighboring
villages.[317]
[Sidenote: Establishment of the Reformation in Bearn.]
Nowhere, however, was the advance of Protestantism so hopeful as in the
principality of Bearn, whither Jeanne d'Albret had retired, and where,
since her husband's death, she had been dividing her cares between the
education of her son, Henry of Navarre, and the establishment of the
Reformation. A less courageous spirit than hers[318] might well have
succumbed in view of the difficulties in her way. Of the nobility not
one-tenth, of the magistracy not one-fifth, were favorable to the changes
which she wished to introduce. The clergy were, of course, nearly
unanimous in opposition.[319] She was, however, vigorously and wisely
seconded in her efforts by the eminent reformed pastor, Merlin, formerly
almoner of Admiral Coligny, whom Calvin had sent from Geneva at her
request.[320] But when, contrary to his advice, the Queen of Navarre had
summoned a meeting of the estates of her small territory, she detected
unexpected symptoms of resistance. She accordingly abstained from
broaching the unwelcome topic of reformation. But the deputies of the
three orders themselves introduced it. Taking occasion from a prohibition
she had issued against carrying the host in procession, they petitioned
her to maintain them in the religion of their ancestors, in accordance
with the promise which the princes of the country were accustomed to
make.[321] Fortunately a small minority was found to offer a request of an
entirely opposite tenor; and Jeanne d'Albret, with her characteristic
firmness, declared in reply "that she would reform religion in her
country, whoever might oppose." So much discontent did this decision
provoke that there was danger of open sedition.[322]
These internal obstacles were, however, by no means the only
difficulties. The court of Pau was disturbed by an uninterrupted
succession of rumors of trouble from without. Now it was the French king
that stood ready to seize the scanty remnants of Navarre, or the Spaniard
that was all prepared for an invasion from the south; anon it was Montluc
from the side of Guyenne, or Damville from that of Languedoc, who were
meditating incursions in the interest of the Roman Catholic Church. "In
short," exclaims her indefatigable coadjutor, Raymond Merlin, "it is
wonderful that this princess should be able to persist with constancy in
her holy design!"[323] Then came the papal citation, and the necessity to
avoid the alienation of the French court which would certainly result from
suddenly abolishing the papal rites, especially in view of the
circumstance that Catharine de' Medici had several times begged the Queen
of Navarre by letter to refrain from taking that decided step.[324]
[Sidenote: A plan to kidnap Jeanne and her children.]
It speaks well for the energy and intrepidity of Jeanne d'Albret, as well
as for the wisdom of some of her advisers, that she was able to lay in
these troublous times such broad foundations for the Protestant system of
worship and government as we shall shortly have occasion to see her
laying; for she was surrounded by courtiers who beheld in her bold
espousal of the Reformation the death-blow to their hopes of advancement
at Paris, and were, consequently, resolute in their opposition. An
incident occurring some months later demonstrates that the perils from her
treacherous neighbors were not purely imaginary. This event was nothing
less than the discovery of a plan to kidnap the Queen of Navarre and her
young son and daughter, and to give them over into the hands of the
Spanish Inquisition. Shortly after Antoine's death, her enemies in
France--among whom, despite his subsequent denial, it is probable that
Blaise de Montluc was one--had devised this plot as a promising means of
promoting their interests. They had despatched a trusty agent to prepare a
few of their most devoted partisans in Guyenne for its execution; he was
then to pass into Spain, to confer with the Duke of Alva. The latter part
of his instructions had not been fulfilled when the assassination of Guise
took place. Nothing daunted by this mishap, the conspirators ordered their
agent to carry out the original scheme. Alva received it with favor, and
sent the Frenchman, with his own approval of the undertaking, to the
Spanish court, where he held at least three midnight interviews with
Philip. No design was ever more dear to that prudent monarch's heart than
one which combined the rare attractions of secrecy and treachery,
particularly if there were a reasonable hope in the end of a little
wholesome blood-letting. Fortunately, however, the messenger had not been
so careful in his conversation but that he disclosed to one of Isabella's
French servants all that was essential in his commission. The momentous
secret soon found its way to the Spanish queen's almoner, and finally to
the queen herself. The blow impending over her cousin's head terrified
Isabella, and melted her compassionate heart. She disclosed to the
ambassador of Charles the Ninth the astounding fact that some of the
Spanish troops then at Barcelona, on their way to the campaign in Barbary,
were to be quietly sent back from the coast to the interior. Thence,
passing through defiles in the Pyrenees, under experienced guides, they
were to fall upon the unsuspecting court of the Queen of Navarre at Pau.
In such a case, to be forewarned was to be forearmed. The private
secretary of the French envoy was despatched to inform Jeanne d'Albret of
her peril, and to notify Catharine de' Medici of the intended incursion
into the French territories. The premature disclosure occasioned the
abandonment of the plan; but it is said that Philip the Second never
forgave his unfortunate wife her part in frustrating its execution.[325]
[Sidenote: The Council of Trent closes its sessions.]
The month of December, 1563, witnessed the close of that celebrated
convocation, the Council of Trent. This is not the place for the
discussion of its extraordinary history, yet it is worth while to note the
conclusion of an assembly which exerted so weighty an influence in
establishing the dogmas of the papal church. Resumed after its long
suspension, on the eighteenth of January, 1562, the council from whose
deliberations such magnificent results of harmony had been expected, began
its work by rendering the breach between the Roman Catholic and the
Protestant worlds incurable. Fortunately for the Roman See, all the
leading courts in Christendom, although agreed in pronouncing for the
necessity of reform, were at variance with one another in respect to the
particular objects to be aimed at. It was by a skilful use of this
circumstance that the Pope was enabled to extricate himself creditably
from an embarrassing situation, and to secure every essential advantage.
At the reopening of the council, the French and German bishops were not
present, and the great majority of the members being poor Italian prelates
dependent almost for their daily bread upon the good pleasure of the
pontiff, it is not surprising that the first step taken was to concede to
the Pope or his legates the exclusive right to introduce subjects for
discussion, as well as the yet more important claim of sitting as judge
and ratifying the decisions of the assembled Fathers before they became
valid. Notwithstanding this disgraceful surrender of their independence
and authority, the Roman See was by no means sure as to the results at
which the prelates of the Council of Trent would arrive. France and the
empire demanded radical reforms in the Pope and his court, and some
concessions to the Protestants--the permission of marriage for the
priesthood, the distribution of the wine to the laity in the eucharistic
sacrament, and the use of the vernacular tongue in a portion, at least,
of the public services. The arrival of the Cardinal of Lorraine and other
bishops, in the month of November, 1562, to reinforce the handful of
French prelates in attendance, enhanced the apprehensions of Pius. For,
strange as it may appear to us, even Pius suspected Charles of favoring
innovation--so far had the arch-hypocrite imposed on friend as well as foe
by his declaration of adhesion to the Augsburg Confession! The fact was
that there was no lack of dissimulation on any side, and that the prelates
who urged reforms were among the most insincere. They had drawn up certain
articles without the slightest expectation, and certainly without the
faintest desire, to have them accepted. Their sole aim seemed to be to
shift the blame for the flagrant disorders of the Church from their own
shoulders to those of the Pope. If their suggestions had been seriously
entertained and acted upon, no men would have had more difficulty than
they in concealing their chagrin.[326] The monarchs--and it was their
ambassadors who, with the papal legates, directed all the most important
conclusions--were at heart equally averse to the restoration of canonical
elections, and to everything which, by relieving the ecclesiastics of
their servile dependence upon the crown, might cut off that perennial
fountain for the payment of their debts and for defraying the expenses of
their military enterprises, which they had discovered in the contributions
wrung from churchmen's purses. Thus, in the end, by a series of
compromises, in which Pope and king each obtained what he was anxious to
secure, and sacrificed little for which he really cared, the council
managed to confirm the greater number of the abuses it had been expected
to remove, and to render indelible the line of demarcation between Roman
Catholic and Protestant, which it was to have effaced.
[Sidenote: Cardinal Lorraine returns to France,]
The Cardinal of Lorraine returning to France, after the conclusion of the
council (the fourth of December, 1563), made it his first object to secure
the ratification of the Tridentine decrees. He had now thrown off the mask
of moderation, which had caused his friends such needless alarms, and was
quite ready to sacrifice (as the nuncio had long since prophesied he would
sacrifice)[327] the interests of France to those of the Roman See. But the
undertaking was beyond his strength.
[Sidenote: and unsuccessfully seeks the approval of the decrees of Trent.]
On Lorraine's arrival at court, then stopping at St. Maur-sur-Marne
(January, 1564), Catharine answered his request that the king should
approve the conclusions of Trent by saying that, if there was anything
good in them, the king would gladly approve of it, even if it were not
decreed by the council. And, at a supper, to which he was invited the same
evening at the quarters of the Cardinal of Bourbon, he had to put up with
a good deal of rough jesting from Conde and his boon companions, who plied
him with pungent questions respecting the Pope and the doings of the holy
Fathers.[328]
[Sidenote: Wrangle between Lorraine and L'Hospital.]
A few weeks later Lorraine made a more distinct effort to secure
recognition for the late council's work. Several of the presidents of
parliament, the avocat-general, and the procureur du roi had been summoned
to court--which, meanwhile, had removed to Melun (February, 1564)--to give
their advice to the privy council respecting this momentous question. The
cardinal's proposition met with little favor. Chancellor L'Hospital
distinguished himself by his determined opposition, and boldly refuted the
churchman's arguments. The cardinal had long been chafing at the
intractability of the lawyer, who owed his early advancement to the
influence of the house of Guise, and now could no longer contain his
anger. He spoke in a loud and imperious tone, and used taunts that greatly
provoked the illustrious bystanders. "It is high time for you to drop your
mask," he said to L'Hospital, "for, as for myself, I cannot discover what
religion you are of. In fact, you seem to have no other religion than to
injure as much as possible both me and my house. Ingrate that you are, you
have forgotten all the benefits you have received at my hands." The
chancellor's answer was quiet and dignified. "I shall always be ready,
even at the peril of my life, to return my obligations to you. I cannot do
it at the expense of the king's honor and welfare." And he added the
pointed observation that the cardinal was desirous of effecting, by
intrigue, what he had been unable to effect by force of arms. Others took
up the debate, the old constable himself disclaiming any intention of
disputing respecting doctrines which he approved, but expressing his
surprise that Lorraine should disturb the tranquillity of the kingdom, and
take up the cause of the Roman pontiff against a king through whose
liberality he was in the enjoyment of an annual revenue of three or four
hundred thousand francs. Catharine, as usual, did her best to allay the
irritation; but the cardinal, greatly disappointed, retired to
Rheims.[329]
[Sidenote: Opposition of Du Moulin.]
A few months after the scene at Melun, the most eminent of French jurists,
the celebrated Charles Du Moulin, published an unanswerable treatise,
proving that the Council of Trent had none of the characteristics of a
true oecumenical synod, and that its decrees were null and void.[330] And
the Parliament of Paris, although it ordered the seizure of the book and
imprisoned the author for some days, could not be induced to consent to
incorporate in the legislation of the country the Tridentine decrees, so
hostile in spirit to the French legislation.[331] Evidently parliament,
although too timid to say so, believed, with Du Moulin, that the
acceptance of the decrees in question "would be against God and against
the benefit of Jesus Christ in the Gospel, against the ancient councils,
against the majesty of the king and the rights of his crown, against his
recent edicts and the edicts of preceding kings, against the liberty and
immunity of the Gallican Church, the authority of the estates and courts
of parliament of the kingdom, and the secular jurisdiction."[332]
It was shortly before this time that the report gained currency that
Charles the Ninth had received an embassy from Philip of Spain and the
Duke of Savoy, inviting him, it was said, to a conference with all other
"Christian" princes, to be held on the twenty-fifth of March (1564), to
swear submission in common to the decrees of Trent and devise means for
the repression of heresy. But neither Charles nor his mother, still very
much under the influence of the tolerant chancellor, was disposed to enter
upon the path of persecution marked out for them. The conference was
therefore, we are told, gracefully, but firmly declined.[333] The story
was but an idle rumor, the absurdity of which is clearly seen from this
one fact among many, that Philip had not at this time himself accepted and
published the Tridentine decrees;[334] while, from various documents that
have come down to us, it appears that Catharine de' Medici had for some
months[335] been projecting a trip that should enable her son to meet
several of the neighboring princes, for the purpose of cultivating more
friendly relations with them. From this desire, and from the wish, by
displaying the young monarch to the inhabitants of the different
provinces, to revive the loyalty of his subjects, seriously weakened
during the late civil war, apparently arose the project of that well-known
"progress" of Charles the Ninth through the greater part of France, a
progress which consumed many successive months.
[Sidenote: The "progress" of Charles IX.]
Whether the Cardinal of Lorraine had any direct part, as was commonly
reported, in bringing about the journey of the king, is uncertain. He
himself wrote to Granvelle that he had neither advocated nor opposed
it;[336] but the character of the man has been delineated to little
purpose in these pages if the reader is disposed to give any weight to his
assertion. Certain, however, it is that the Huguenots looked upon the
project with great suspicion, and that its execution was accepted as a
virtual triumph of their opponents. Conde and Coligny could see as clearly
as the cardinal the substantial advantages which a formal visit to the
elder branch of the Lorraine family might secure to the branch of the
family domiciled in France; and they could readily imagine that under
cover of this voyage might be concealed the most nefarious designs against
the peace of their co-religionists. It is not surprising that many
Huguenot nobles accepted it as a mark of the loss of favor, and that few
of them accompanied the court in its wanderings.[337] The English
ambassador, noting this important fact, made, on his own account, an
unfavorable deduction from what he saw, as to the design of the court.
"They carry the king about this country now," he observed, "mostly to see
the ruins of the churches and religious houses done by the Huguenots in
this last war. They suppress the losses and hurts the Huguenots have
suffered."[338] On the other hand, the Roman Catholic party received their
success as a presage of speedy restoration to full power, and entertained
brilliant hopes for the future.[339] The queen mother was beginning to
make fair promises to the papal adherents, and the influence of the
admiral and his brothers seemed to be at an end.
Leaving the palace of Fontainebleau, the court passed through Sens and
Troyes to the city of Bar-sur-Seine, where Charles acted as sponsor for
his infant nephew, the son of the Duke of Lorraine. The brilliant _fetes_
that accompanied the arrival of the king here and elsewhere could not,
however, hide from the world one of the chief results, if not designs, of
the journey. It was a prominent part of the queen mother's plan to seize
the opportunity for carrying out the system of repression toward the
Huguenots which she had already begun. While there is no reason to suppose
that as yet she felt any disposition to lend an ear to the suggestions of
Spanish emissaries, or of Philip himself, for a general massacre, or at
least an open war of extermination, she was certainly very willing by less
open means to preclude the Protestants from ever giving her trouble, or
becoming again a formidable power in the state. The most unfavorable
reports, in truth, were in circulation against the Huguenots. At Lyons
they were accused of poisoning the wells, or, according to another version
of the story, the kitchen-pots, in order to give the impression that the
plague was in the city, and so deter the king from coming.[340] Catharine
had no need, however, of crediting these calumnious tales in order to be
moved to hostile action. Her desire was unabated to reign under her son's
name, untrammelled by the restraint of the jealous love of liberty
cherished by the Huguenots. Their numbers were large--though not so large
as they were then supposed to be. Even so intelligent a historian as
Garnier regards them as constituting nearly one-third of the kingdom.[341]
M. Lacretelle is undoubtedly much more correct in estimating them at
fifteen or sixteen hundred thousand souls, or barely one-tenth of the
entire population of France--a country at that time much more sparsely
inhabited, and of which a much larger part of the surface was in inferior
cultivation, or altogether neglected, than at present.[342] But, however
small their number in proportion to the papists, the Huguenots, from their
superior industry and intelligence, from the circumstance that their
strength lay in the sturdy middle class and in the nobility, including
little of the rabble of the cities and none of that of Paris,[343] were a
party that naturally awakened the jealousy of the queen. We need make
little account of any exasperation in consequence of such silly devices as
the threatening letter said to have been put in Catharine's bed-room,
warning her that if she did not drive the papists from about her, "she and
her L'Aubespine" (secretary of state) would feel the dagger.[344] She was
too shrewd not to know that a Roman Catholic was more likely to have
penned it than a Huguenot.
[Sidenote: Catharine's new zeal.]
In furtherance of the policy to which she had now committed herself, she
caused the fortifications of the cities that had been strongholds of the
Protestants during the late war to be levelled, and in their place erected
citadels whereby the Huguenots might be kept in subjection.[345] As Easter
approached, Catharine revealed the altered tone of her mind by notifying
her maids of honor that she would suffer none to remain about her but
those who were good Catholics and submitted to the ordinary test of
orthodoxy. There is said to have been but a single girl who declined to go
to mass, and preferred to return to her home.[346] Well would it have been
if the queen had been as attentive to the morals[347] as to the orthodoxy
of these pleasure-seeking attendants. But, to belong to the "religion
ancienne et catholique" was a mantle large enough to cover a multitude of
sins.
[Sidenote: Interpretative declarations infringing upon the Edict.]
[Sidenote: Declaration of Roussillon.]
More direct infringements upon the liberty guaranteed by the Edict of
Amboise had already been made or were yet in store. The legislation which
could not conveniently be repealed by formal enactment could be rendered
null by interpretative declarations. Charles was made to proclaim that by
the Edict he had not intended to permit preaching in places previously
belonging to the patrimony of the Church, or held as benefices. This was
aimed at such prelates of doubtful catholicity as Saint Romain, Archbishop
of Aix, or the Cardinal Bishop of Beauvais, Odet de Chatillon. He was made
to say, that by the places where Protestant worship could be held within
the walls, by virtue of its having been exercised on the seventh of March,
1563, were meant only those that had been garrisoned by Protestants, and
had undergone a successful siege. This stroke of the pen cut off several
cities in which Protestantism had been maintained without conflict of
arms. The Huguenot counsellors of the parliament were deprived of the
enjoyment of their right to attend the "assemblee," or "Protestant
congregation," by a gloss which forbade the inhabitants of Paris from
attending the reformed worship in the neighboring districts. When the
court reached Lyons, a city which, as we have seen, had been among the
foremost in devotion to the Protestant cause, a fresh edict, of the
twenty-fourth of June, prohibited the reformed rites from being celebrated
in any city in which the king might be sojourning. Five or six weeks
later, at the little town of Roussillon, a few miles south of Vienne, on
the Rhone, another and more flagrant violation of the letter and spirit of
the edict of pacification was incorporated in a declaration purporting to
remove fresh uncertainties as to the meaning of its provisions. It forbade
the noblemen who might possess the right to maintain Protestant services
in their castles, to permit any persons but their own families and their
vassals to be present. It prohibited the convocation of synods and the
collection of money, and enjoined upon ministers of the gospel not to
leave their places of residence, nor to open schools for the instruction
of the young. But the most vexatious and unjust article of all was that
which constrained all priests, monks, and nuns, who during or since the
troubles had forsaken their vows and had married, either to resume their
monastic profession and dismiss their consorts, or to leave the kingdom.
As a penalty for the violation of this command, the men were to be
sentenced to the galleys for life, the women to close confinement in
prison. I omit in this list of grievances suffered by the Huguenots some
minor annoyances such as that which compelled the artisan to desist from
working in his shop with open doors on the festivals of the Roman
Catholic Church.[348]
[Sidenote: Assaults upon unoffending Huguenots.]
These legal infractions were not all. Everywhere the Huguenots had to
complain of acts of violence, committed by their papist neighbors, at the
instigation of priests and bishops, and not infrequently of the royal
governors. Little more than a year had passed since peace was restored,
and already the victims of religious assassination rivalled in number the
martyrs of the days of open persecution. At Crevant the Protestants were
attacked on their way to their "temple;" at Tours they were attacked while
engaged in worship. At Mans the fanatical bishop was the chief instigator
of a work of mingled murder and rapine. At Vendome it was the royal
governor himself, Gilbert de Curee, who fell a victim to the hatred of the
Roman Catholic noblesse, and was treacherously killed while hunting.[349]
If anything more was needed to render the violence insupportable, it was
found in the fact that any attempt to obtain judicial investigation and
redress resulted not in the condemnation of the guilty, but in the
personal peril of the complainant.[350]
[Sidenote: Conde appeals for redress.]
Smarting under the repeated acts of violence to which at every moment they
were liable, and under the successive infringements upon the Edict of
Amboise, the Huguenots urged the Prince of Conde to represent their
grievances to the monarch, in the excellence of whose heart they had not
yet lost confidence. The Protestant leader did not repel the trust. His
appeal to Charles and to the queen mother was urgent. He showed that, even
where the letter of the edict was observed, its spirit was flagrantly
violated. The edict provided for a place for preaching in each prefecture,
to be selected by the king. In some cases no place had yet been
designated. In others, the most inconvenient places had been assigned.
Sometimes the Huguenots of a district would be compelled to go _twenty or
twenty-five leagues_ in order to attend divine worship. The declaration
affecting the monks and nuns who had forsaken their habit was a violation
of the general liberty promised. So also was the prohibition of synods,
which, though not expressly mentioned, were implied in the toleration of
the religion to which they were indispensably necessary. But it was the
prejudice and ill-will, of which the Huguenots were the habitual victims
at the hands of royal governors and other officers, which moved them most
deeply. The evident desire was to find some ground of accusation against
them. The ears of the judges were stopped against their appeals for
justice. It was enough that they were accused. Decrees of confiscation, of
the razing of their houses, of death, were promptly given before any
examination was made into the truth of their culpability. On a mere rumor
of a commotion in the Protestant city of Montauban, an order was issued to
demolish its walls. The case was far otherwise with turbulent Roman
Catholic towns. The people were encouraged to acts of violence toward the
Huguenots by the impunity of the perpetrators of similar crimes, and by
the evident partiality of those who were set to administer justice. Out of
six or seven score murders of Protestants since the peace, not two of the
abominable acts had been punished. Under such circumstances it would not
be surprising if the victims of inordinate cruelty should at length be
driven in desperation to take their defence into their own hands.[351]
[Sidenote: Conciliatory reply of the king.]