were recognized and confirmed by subsequent monarchs,
especially by Louis the Eleventh, Charles the Eighth, Louis
the Twelfth, and Francis the First. (Callot, 11.) The
resistance of the inhabitants to the exaction of the obnoxious
"gabelle," or tax upon salt, did indeed, toward the end of the
reign of the last-named king (1542), bring them temporarily
under his displeasure; but, with the exception of a
modification in their municipal government, made in 1530, and
revoked early in the reign of Henry the Second, the city
retained its quasi-independence without interruption until the
outbreak of the religious wars.
As we have seen (_ante_, p. 227), La Rochelle was in 1552 the
scene of the judicial murder of at least two Protestants. The
constancy of one of the sufferers had been the means of
converting many to the reformed doctrines, and among others
Claude d'Angliers, the presiding judge, whose name may still
be read at the foot of their sentence. (Arcere, i. 329.) So
rapidly had those doctrines spread, that on Sunday, May 31,
1562, the Lord's Supper was celebrated according to the
fashion of Geneva, not in one of the churches, but on the
great square of the hay-market, in a temporary enclosure shut
in on all sides by tapestries and covered with an awning of
canvas. More than eight thousand persons took part in the
exercises. But if the morning's services were remarkable, the
sequel was not less singular. "As the disease of
image-breaking was almost universal," says an old chronicler,
"it was communicated by contagion to the inhabitants of this
city, in such wise that, that very afternoon about three or
four o'clock, five hundred men, who were under arms and had
just received the same sacrament, went through all the
churches and dashed the images in pieces. Howbeit it was a
folly conducted with wisdom, seeing that this action passed
without any one being wounded or injured." (P. Vincent, _apud_
Callot, 34, and Delmas, 61.) As usual, the whole affair was
condemned by the ministers.
Although La Rochelle had steadily refused, during the earlier
part of the first religious war, to declare for the Prince of
Conde, and had maintained a kind of neutrality, the court was
in constant fear lest the weight of its sympathies should yet
draw it in that direction. It was therefore a matter of great
joy when, in October, 1562, the Duke of Montpensier succeeded,
by a ruse meriting the designation of treachery, in throwing
himself into La Rochelle with a large body of troops. With his
arrival the banished Roman Catholic mass returned, and the
Protestant ministers were warned to leave at once. (Arcere, i.
339.)
For two months after the restoration of peace, the Huguenots
of La Rochelle, embracing almost the entire population, held
their religious services, in accordance with the terms of the
Edict of Pacification, in the suburbs of the city. But, on the
9th of May, 1563, Charles the Ninth was prevailed to give
directions that one or two places should be assigned to the
Huguenots within the city. This gracious permission was
ratified with greater solemnity in letters patent of July
14th, in which the king declared the motive to be the
representations made to him of "the inconveniences and eminent
dangers that might arise in our said city of La Rochelle, if
the preaching and exercise of the pretended reformed religion
should continue to be held outside of the said city, being, as
it is, a frontier city in the direction of the English,
ancient enemies of the inhabitants of that city, where it
would be easy for them, by this means, to execute some evil
enterprise." (Commission of Charles IX., to M. de Jarnac. This
valuable MS., with other MSS., carried to Dublin at the
revocation of the Edict of Nantes, by M. Elie Bouhereau, and
placed in the Marsh Library, has recently been restored to La
Rochelle, in accordance with M. Bouhereau's written
directions. Delmas, 369.)
Two years later, Charles and his court, returning from their
long progress through France, came to La Rochelle, and spent
three days there (Sept., 1565). A noteworthy incident occurred
at his entry. The jealous citizens had not forgotten an
immemorial custom which was not without significance. A silken
cord had been stretched across the road by which the monarch
was to enter, that he might stop and promise to respect the
liberties and franchises of La Rochelle. Constable Montmorency
was the first to notice the cord, and in some anger and
surprise asked whether the magistrates of the city intended to
refuse their sovereign admission. The symbolism of the pretty
custom was duly explained to him, but for all response the old
warrior curtly observed that "such usages had passed out of
fashion," and at the same instant cut the cord with his sword.
(Arcere, i. 349; Delmas, 80, 81.) Charles himself refused the
request of the mayor that he should swear to maintain the
city's privileges. After so inauspicious a beginning of his
visit, the inhabitants were not surprised to find the king,
during his stay, reducing the "corps-de-ville" from 100 to 24
members, under the presidency of a governor invested with the
full powers of the mayor; ordering that the artillery should
be seized, two of the towers garrisoned by foreign troops, and
the magistrates enjoined to prosecute all ministers that
preached sedition; or banishing some of the most prominent
Protestants from La Rochelle.
It was characteristic of the government of Catharine de'
Medici--always destitute of a fixed policy, and consequently
always recalling one day what it had done the day before--that
scarcely two months elapsed before the queen mother put
everything back on the footing it had occupied before the
royal visit to La Rochelle.
FOOTNOTES:
[430] The most authentic account of these important interviews is that
given by Francois de la Noue in his Memoires, chap. xi. It clearly shows
how much Davila mistakes in asserting that "the prince, the admiral, and
Andelot persuaded them, without further delay, to take arms." (Eng.
trans., London, 1678, bk. iv., p. 110.) Davila's careless remark has led
many others into the error of making Coligny the advocate, instead of the
opposer, of a resort to arms. See also De Thou, iv. (liv. xlii.) 2-7, who
bases his narrative on that of De la Noue, as does likewise Agrippa
d'Aubigne, l. iv., c. vii. (i. 209), who uses the expression: "L'Amiral
voulant endurer toutes extremitez et se confier en l'innocence."
[431] "Ains avec le fer."
[432] "Une armee gaillarde." La Noue, _ubi supra_.
[433] Mem. de Castelnau, liv. vi., c. iv., c. v.; La Noue, c. xi.; De
Thou, iv. (liv. xlii.) 5, 6. Davila, l. iv., p. 110, alludes to the
accusation, extorted from Protestant prisoners on the rack, that "the
chief scope of this enterprise was to murder the king and queen, with all
her other children, that the crown might come to the Prince of Conde," but
admits that it was not generally credited. The curate of Saint Barthelemi
is less charitable; describing the rising of the Protestants, he says: "En
ung vendredy 27e se partirent de toutes les villes de France les
huguenots, sans qu'on leur eust dit mot, mais ils craignoient que si on
venoit au dessein de leur entreprise qui estoit de prendre ou tuer le roy
Charles neuvieme, qu'on ne les saccagea es villes." Journal d'un cure
ligueur (J. de la Fosse), 85.
[434] La Noue, and De Thou, _ubi supra_.
[435] The historian, Michel de Castelnau, sieur de Mauvissiere, had been
sent as a special envoy to congratulate the Duke of Alva on his safe
arrival, and the Duchess of Parma on her relief. As he was returning from
Brussels, he received, from some Frenchmen who joined him, a very
circumstantial account of the contemplated rising of the Huguenots, and,
although he regarded the story as an idle rumor, he thought it his duty to
communicate it to the king and queen. Memoires, liv. vi., c. iv.
[436] Mem. de Castelnau, _ubi supra_. It is probable that the French court
partook of Cardinal Granvelle's conviction, expressed two years before,
that the Huguenots would find it difficult to raise money or procure
foreign troops for another war, not having paid for those they had
employed in the last war, nor holding the strongholds they then held.
Letter of May 7, 1565, Papiers d'etat, ix. 172.
[437] Mem. du duc de Bouillon (Ancienne Collection), xlvii. 421.
[438] La Fosse, p. 86, represents Charles as exclaiming, when he entered
the Porte Saint Denis: "Qu'il estoit tenu a Dieu, et qu'il y avoit quinze
heures qu'il estoit a cheval, et avoit eust trois alarmes."
[439] Mem. de Castelnau, liv. vi., c. v.; La Noue, c. xiii. (Anc. Coll.,
xlvii. 180-185); De Thou, iv. 8; J. de Serres, iii. 129-131; La Fosse, 86;
Agrippa d'Aubigne, Hist. univ., i. 210.
[440] "Ravi d'avoir allume le feu de la guerre," says De Thou, iv. 9.
[441] De Thou, _ubi supra_.
[442] The circumstance of two messengers, each bearing letters from the
same person, while the letters made no allusion to each other, following
one another closely, struck Alva as so suspicious, that he actually placed
the second messenger under arrest, and only liberated him on hearing from
his own agent on his return that the man's credentials were genuine.
[443] Alva proposed to detach 5,000 men to prevent the entrance of German
auxiliaries into France, and protect the Netherlands.
[444] Letter of Alva to Philip, Nov. 1, 1567, Gachard, Correspondance de
Philippe II., i., 593.
[445] "Que la ley salica, que dizien, es baya, y las armas la allanarian."
Ibid, i. 594.
[446] The price of wheat, Jehan de la Fosse tells us (p. 86) advanced to
fifteen francs per "septier."
[447] Journal d'un cure ligueur (J. de la Fosse), 86.
[448] In one of Charles's first despatches to the Lieutenant-Governor of
Dauphiny, wherein he bids him restrain, and, if necessary, attack any
Huguenots of the province who might undertake to come to Conde's
assistance, there occurs an expression that smacks of the murderous spirit
of St. Bartholomew's Day: "You shall cut them to pieces," he writes,
"without sparing a single person; for the more dead bodies there are, the
less enemies remain (car tant plus de mortz, moins d'ennemys!)" Charles to
Gordes, Oct. 8, 1567, MS. in Conde Archives, D'Aumale, i. 563.
[449] Davila (i. 113) makes the latter her distinct object in the
negotiations: "The queen, to protract the time till supplies of men and
other necessary provisions arrived, and to abate the fervor of the enemy,
being constrained to have recourse to her wonted arts, excellently
dissembling those so recent injuries, etc."
[450] Of course "Sieur Soulier, pretre" sees nothing but perversity in
these grounds. "Ils n'alleguerent que des raisons frivolles pour excuser
leur armement." Histoire des edits de pacification, 64.
[451] Davila is certainly incorrect in stating that the Huguenots demanded
"that the queen mother should have nothing to do in the government" (p.
113).
[452] October 7th, Soulier, Hist. des edits de pacification, 65.
[453] De Thou, iv. (liv. xlii.) 10-15; Jean de Serres, iii. 131, 132;
Davila, bk. iv. 113-115; Agrippa d'Aubigne, Hist. universelle, l. iv., c.
6, 7 (i. 211, 212); Castelnau, l. vi., c. 6.
[454] So closely was Paris invested on the north, that, although
accompanied by an escort of sixty horse, Castelnau was driven back into
the faubourgs when making an attempt by night to proceed by one of the
roads leading in this direction. He was then forced to steal down the left
bank of the Seine to Poissy, before he could find means to avoid the
Huguenot posts. Memoires, l. vi., c. 6.
[455] Castelnau was instructed to ask for three or four regiments of
Spanish or Italian foot, and for two thousand cavalry of the same nations.
[456] I have deemed it important to go into these details, in order to
exhibit in the clearest light the insincerity of Philip the Second--a
prince who could not be straightforward in his dealings, even when the
interests of the Church, to which he professed the deepest devotion, were
vitally concerned. My principal authority is the envoy, Michel de
Castelnau, liv. vi., c. 6. Alva's letter to Catharine de' Medici, Dec.,
1567, Gachard, Correspondance de Philippe II., i. 608, 609, sheds some
additional light on the transactions. I need not say that, where Castelnau
and Alva differ in their statements, as they do in some essential points,
I have had no hesitation in deciding whether the duke or the impartial
historian is the more worthy of credit. See, also, De Thou, iii. (liv.
xli.) 755.
[457] Mem. de Fr. de la Noue, c. xiv. (Ancienne coll., xlvii. 189);
Davila, bk. iv. 116; Agrippa d'Aubigne, Hist. universelle, i. 212, 213; De
Thou, iv. 22; Martin, Hist. de France, x. 246. There is some discrepancy
in numbers. There is, however, but little doubt that those given in the
text are substantially correct. D'Aubigne blunders, and more than doubles
the troops of the constable.
[458] Agrippa d'Aubigne relates an incident which has often been repeated.
Among the distinguished spectators gathered on the heights of Montmartre,
overlooking the plain, was a chamberlain of the Turkish sultan, the same
envoy who had been presented to the king at Bayonne. When he saw the three
small bodies of Huguenots issue in the distance from Saint Denis, and the
three charges, in which so insignificant a handful of men broke through
heavy battalions and attacked the opposing general himself, the Moslem, in
his admiration of their valor, twice cried out: "Oh, that the grand
seignior had a thousand such men as those soldiers in white, to put at the
head of each of his armies! The world would hold out only two years
against him." Hist. univ., i. 217.
[459] "Autant de volontaires Parisiens bien armez et _dorez comme
calices_." Agrippa d'Aubigne, l. iv., c. 8 (i. 213). "Tenans la bataille
desja achevee, tout ce gros si bien dore print la fuitte." (Ibid., i.
215.)
[460] At Marignano, in 1515.
[461] He was taken prisoner by the Emperor Charles V. at Pavia, in company
with Francis I.; at the battle of Saint Quentin, in 1557; and in 1562, at
the battle of Dreux, by the Huguenots. It was rather hard that the story
should have obtained currency, according to the cure of Meriot, that
Constable Montmorency was shot by a royalist, who saw that he was
purposely allowing himself to be enveloped by the troops of Conde, in
order that he might be taken prisoner, "comme telle avoit ja este sa
coustume en deux batailles!" Mem. de Claude Haton, i. 458.
[462] Even Henry of Navarre, in a letter of July 12, 1569, published by
Prince Galitzin (Lettres inedites de Henry IV., Paris, 1860, pp. 4-11)
states that he is unable to say whether it was Stuart, "pour n'en scavoir
rien;" but asserts that "il est hors de doubte et assez commung qu'il fut
blesse en pleine bataille et combattant, et non de sang froid."
[463] Memoires de Fr. de la Noue, c. xiv.; Jean de Serres, iii. 137, 138;
De Thou, iv. 22, etc.; Agrippa d'Aubigne, Hist. univ., i. 214-217;
Castelnau, liv. vi., c. 7; Claude Haton, i. 457; Jean de la Fosse, 88, 89;
Charles IX. to Gordes, Nov. 11, 1567, Conde MSS., D'Aumale, i. 564.
[464] "La mort dudit connestable fut plaincte de peu de gens du party des
catholicques, a cause de la huguenotterie de l'admiral, du card. de
Chastillon, et d'Andelot, ses nepveux, qui estoient, apres le Prince de
Conde, chefz des rebelles huguenotz francoys et des plus meschant; et
avoient plusieurs personnes ceste oppinion du connestable, qu'il les eust
bien retirez de ceste rebellion s'il eust voulu, attendu que tous avoient
este avancez en leurs estatz par le feu roy Henry, par son moyen." Claude
Haton, i. 458.
[465] Charles IX. to Gordes, Nov. 17, 1567, Conde MSS., Duc d'Aumale, i.
565.
[466] This expose, committed to writing by the elector palatine's request,
and translated for Frederick's convenience into German, is published by
Prof. A. Kluckholn, in a monograph read before the Bavarian Academy of
Sciences: "Zur Geschichte des angeblichen Buendnisses von Bayonne, nebst
einem Originalbericht ueber die Ursachen des zweiten Religionskriegs in
Frankreich." (Abhandlungen, iii. Cl., xi. Bd., i. Abth.) Munich, 1868. The
Huguenot envoys were Chastelier Pourtaut de Latour and Francour. The
document is probably from the pen of the former (p. 13).
[467] De Thou, iv. 28, 29; Castelnau, liv. vi., c. 8; Jean de Serres, iii.
144, 146. Agrippa d'Aubigne, Hist. univ., i. 217, 218. Wenceslaus Zuleger's
Report is printed in full by F. W. Ebeling, Archivalische Beitraege, 48-73,
and by A. Kluckholn, Zwei pfaelzische Gesandtschaftsberichte, etc. Abhandl.
der Bayer. Akad., 1868, 189-205.
[468] It is needless to say that no authentic coins or medals bearing
Conde's head, with the designation of "Louis XIII.," have ever been found.
After the direct contradiction by Catharine de' Medici, no other testimony
is necessary. The Jesuits, however, impudently continued to speak of
Conde's treason as an undoubted truth, and even gave the legend of the
supposed coin as "Ludovicus XIII., Dei gratia, Francorum Rex primus
Christianus." See "Plaidoye de Maistre Antoine Arnauld, Advocat en
Parlement, pour l'Universite de Paris ... contre les Jesuites, des 12 et
13 Juillet, 1594." Memoires de la ligue, 6, 164. Arnauld stigmatizes the
calumny as "notoirement fausse."
[469] Frederick, Elector Palatine, to Charles IX., Heidelberg, Jan. 19,
1568. Printed in full in F. W. Ebeling, Archivalische Beitraege, 74-82.
[470] Agrippa d'Aubigne, _ubi supra_.
[471] November 13th, "Hier au soyr, vers les sept heures," says Charles to
Gordes, Nov. 14, 1567, MS. Conde Arch., D'Aumale, i. 565. The king
naturally represents the movement as confused--"une bonne fuyte"--and
confidently states that he will follow, and, by a _second_ victory, put a
speedy end to the war.
[472] Agrippa d'Aubigne, liv. iv., c. 11 (i. 219).
[473] Ibid., i. 219, 220.
[474] La Noue, c. xiv.; De Thou, iv. 37; Jehan de la Fosse, 89, 90;
Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 227. Davila, bk. iv., pp. 119, 120, represents
Brissac's attack (which, according to him, was not made till after the
expiration of the truce) as a part of a projected general assault. Anjou's
main body failed to come up, and so Conde was saved. The blame was thrown
on Marshal Gonnor (Cosse) and on M. de Carnavalet, the king's tutor, whom
some suspected of unwillingness to allow so much noble blood to be shed.
Others accused the one of too much friendship with the Chatillons, the
other of a leaning to heresy ("de sentir le fagot") Agrippa d'Aubigne, i.
227. See also Cl. Haton, i. 503. These two noblemen were accused of
advocating other designs which were very obnoxious to the Roman Catholic
party. "La verite est," says Jehan de la Fosse, in his journal, p. 90,
under date of December, 1567, "que aulcuns grands seigneurs entre lesquels
on nomme Gonor [et] Carnavallet donnoient a entendre que si Monsieur,
frere du roy, voloit prendre une partie de ces gens et les joindre avec le
camp des huguenots, qui [qu'ils] le feroient comte de Flandre."
[475] De Thou, iv. 37-41; Castelnau, liv. vi., c. 8; La Fosse, 91.
[476] Catharine de' Medici to Alva, Dec. 4, 1567, Gachard, Correspondance
de Philippe II., i. 607.
[477] Alva to Catharine de' Medici, Dec., 1567, Gachard, Correspondance de
Philippe II., i. 608, 609.
[478] It is told of one lackey that he contributed twenty crowns.
[479] The scene is described in an animated manner by Francois de la Noue,
c. xv. (Ancienne Collection, xlvii. 199-201); De Thou, iv. 41. "Marque le
lecteur," writes Agrippa d'Aubigne, in his nervous style, "un trait qui
n'a point d'exemple en l'antiquite, que ceux qui devoient demander paye et
murmurer pour n'en avoir point, puissent et veuillent en leur extreme
pauvrete contenter une armee avec 100,000 livres a quoi se monta cette
brave gueuserie; argument aux plus sages d'aupres du roi pour prescher la
paix; tenans pour invincible le parti qui a la passion pour difference, et
pour solde la necessite." Hist. univ., i. 228. D'Aubigne is mistaken,
however, in making the army contribute the entire 100,000. Davila and De
Thou say they raised 30,000; La Noue, over 80,000.
[480] Mem. de Fr. de la Noue, c. xv.
[481] Ibid., _ubi supra_.
[482] Memoires de Claude Haton, i. 500-503.
[483] Ibid., ii. 517. "Et des lors fut le pillage mis sus par les gens de
guerre des deux partis; et firent tous a qui mieux pilleroit et
ranconneroit son hoste, jugeant bien en eux que qui plus en pilleroit plus
en auroit. Les gens de guerre du camp catholicque, excepte le pillage des
eglises et saccagemens des prebstres, estoient au reste aussi meschans, et
quasi plus que les huguenotz."
[484] Menard, Hist. de Nismes, apud Cimber et Danjou, vii. 481, etc.;
Bouche, Histoire gen. de Languedoc, v. 276, 277. Prof. Soldan, Geschichte
des Protestantismus in Frankreich, ii. 274-276, whose account of an event
too generally unnoticed by Protestant historians is fair and impartial,
calls attention to the following circumstances, which, although they do
not excuse in the least its savage cruelties, ought yet to be borne in
mind: 1st, That no woman was killed; 2d, that only those _men_ were killed
who had in some way shown themselves enemies of the Protestants; and, 3d,
that there is no evidence of any premeditation. To these I will add, as
important in contrasting this massacre with the many massacres in which
the Huguenots were the victims, the fact that the Protestant ministers not
only did not instigate, but disapproved, and endeavored as soon as
possible to put an end to the murders.
[485] De Thou, iv. 33-35.
[486] Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 211.
[487] Henri Martin (Histoire de France, x. 255), on the authority of
Coustureau, Vie du duc de Montpensier, states that the Rochellois had,
after the peace of 1563, bought from Catharine de' Medici, for 200,000
francs, the suppression of the garrison placed in their city by the Duke
of Montpensier, and remarks: "Ces 200,000 francs couterent cher!" The
authority, however, is very slender in the absence of all corroborative
evidence, and Arcere, more than a century ago, showed (Histoire de la
Rochelle, i. 625) how improbable, or, rather, impossible the story is. If
any gift was made to Catharine by the city, it must have been far less
than the sum, enormous for the times and place, of 200,000 crowns; and, at
any rate, it could not have been for the purchase of a privilege already
enjoyed for hundreds of years. See the illustrative note at the end of
this chapter.
[488] Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 218. "Plus absolument et avec plus d'obeisance
que les Rochellois, qui depuis ont tousjours tenu le parti reforme, n'en
ont voulu deferer et rendre aux princes mesmes de leur parti, contre
lesquels ils se sont souvent picquez, en resveillant et conservant
curieusement leurs privileges."
[489] Others were beaten and banished, and suffered the other penalties
denounced by the Edict of Chateaubriant, as Soulier goes on to show with
much apparent satisfaction. Hist. des edits, etc., 67, 68. The text of the
joint sentence of Couraud, Constantin, and Monjaud is interesting. It is
given by Delmas, L'Eglise reformee de la Rochelle (Toulouse, 1870), pp.
19-25.
[490] Martin, Hist. de France, x. 254.
[491] Agrippa d'Aubigne, _ubi supra_; Davila, bk. iv. 122; De Thou, iv. 27
seq.; Soulier, 69. According to Arcere, Hist. de la Rochelle, i. 352, the
mayor's correct name was Pontard, Sieur de Trueil-Charays.
[492] The commission was dated from Montigny-sur-Aube, January 27, 1568,
Soulier, 70. De Thou's expression (_ubi supra_), "peu de temps apres," is
therefore unfortunate.
[493] Soulier, Hist. des edits de pacification, 70.
[494] Norris to Queen Elizabeth, January 23, 1568, State Paper Office. I
retain the quaint old English form in which Norris has couched the
marshal's speech. It is plain, in view of the perfidy proposed by Santa
Croce, even in the royal council, that Conde was not far from right in
protesting against the proposed limitation of Cardinal Chatillon's escort
to twenty horse, insisting "que la qualite de mondict sieur le Cardinal,
qui n'a acoustume de marcher par pais avecques si peu de train, ny son
eage (age) ne permectent pas maintenant de commencer." Conde to the Duke
of Anjou, Dec. 27, 1567, MS. Bibl. nat., Aumale, Prince de Conde, i. 568.
[495] The "seven viscounts"--often referred to about this period--were the
viscounts of Bourniquet, Monclar, Paulin, Caumont, Serignan, Rapin, and
Montagut, or Montaigu. They headed the Protestant gentry of the provinces
Rouergue, Quercy, etc., as far as to the foot of the Pyrenees. Mouvans
held an analogous position in Provence, Montbrun in Dauphine, and D'Acier,
younger brother of Crussol, in Languedoc. Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 220, 221;
De Thou, iv. 33; Duc d'Aumale, Princes de Conde, i. 327. When "the
viscounts" consented, at the earnest solicitation of the second Princess
of Conde, to part with a great part of their troops, they confided them to
Mouvans, Rapin, and Poncenac.
[496] The _village_ of Cognac, or Cognat, near Gannat, in the ancient
Province of Auvergne (present Department of Allier), must not, of course,
be confounded with the important _city_ of the same name, on the river
Charente, nearly two hundred miles further west.
[497] Jean de Serres, iii. 146, 147; De Thou, iv. 48-51; Agrippa
d'Aubigne, i. 226.
[498] Opinions differed respecting the propriety of the movement.
According to La Noue, Chartres in the hands of the Huguenots would have
been a "thorn in the foot of the Parisians;" while Agrippa d'Aubigne makes
it "a city of little importance, as it was neither at a river crossing,
nor a sea-port;" "but," he adds, "in those times places were not estimated
by the standard now in vogue."
[499] "Car encore que les Catholiques estiment les Huguenots estre _gens a
feu_, si sont-il toujours mal pourveus de tels instrumens," etc. Mem. de
la Noue, c. xviii. For the siege of Chartres, besides La Noue, see Jean de
Serres, iii. 148; De Thou, iv., 51-53; Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 229-232.
[500] "Ils eussent este par trop lourds et stupides, s'ils n'en eussent
evite la feste."
[501] "Cessons donc de nous esbahir s'ils ont un pied en l'air et l'oeil
en la campagne."
[502] The whole of this remarkable memorial is inserted in the older
Collection universelle de memoires, xlv. 224-260. Its importance is so
great, as reflecting the views of a mind so impartial and liberal as that
of Chancellor L'Hospital, that I make no apology for the prominence I have
given to it. Besides the omission of much that might be interesting, I
have in places rather recapitulated than translated literally the striking
remarks of the original.
[503] La Noue, c. xviii.
[504] Castelnau, who was behind the scenes, assures us that had "the
Huguenots insisted upon keeping some places in their own hands, for the
performance of what was promised, it would have been granted, and, in all
probability, have prevented the war from breaking out so soon again," etc.
Mem., liv. vi., c. 11.
[505] Jean de Serres, iii. 149-154; De Thou, iv. 54, 55; Davila, bk. iv.
124; Castelnau, _ubi supra_; Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 260, etc.
[506] "L'Amiral maintenoit et remonstroit que cette paix n'estoit que pour
sauver Chartres, et puis pour assommer separez ceux qu'on ne pourroit
vaincre unis." Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 232.
[507] "Le Prince de Conde plus facile, desireux de la cour, ou il avoit
laisse quelque semence d'amourettes, se servit de ce que plusieurs
quittoient l'armee," etc. Ibid., _ubi supra_.
[508] La Noue, c. xviii.
[509] La Noue, c. xix.
[510] "La paix fourree," Soulier, Histoire des edits de pacification, 73.
"Ceste meschante petite paix," La Noue, c. xix. Agrippa d'Aubigne, Hist.
universelle, i. 260, and, following him, Browning, Hist. of the Huguenots,
i. 220, and De Felice, Hist. of the Protestants of France, 190, say that
this peace was wittily christened "La paix boiteuse et mal-assise;" but,
as we shall see, this designation belongs to the peace of Saint
Germain-en-Laye, in 1570, concluding the third religious war.
[511] Leopold Ranke, Civil Wars and Monarchy in France in the Sixteenth
and Seventeenth Centuries (New York, 1853), 234.
[512] Norris to Cecil, Paris, March 30, 1568, State Paper Office.
[513] La Noue, c. xviii. (Anc. coll., 214).
[514] A fortnight had not elapsed since the date of the Edict of
Pacification when Conde was compelled to call the king's attention to a
flagrant outrage committed by Foissy, a royalist, against the Sieur
d'Esternay. After having burned Esternay's residence at Lamothe during the
preliminary truce, Foissy subsequently to the conclusion of peace returned
and completed his work of devastation. Conde to Charles IX., April 5,
1568, MS., Archives du dep. du Nord, _apud_ Duc d'Aumale, i. 572.
[515] "Nous avons fait la folie, ne trouvons donc estrange si nous la
beuvons. Toutefois il y a apparence que le breuvage sera amer." La Noue,
_ubi supra_.
[516] De Thou, iv. 55, 56; Jean de Serres, Comm. de statu, etc., iii. 160;
Conde's petition of Aug. 23d, ibid., iii. 218; Mem. de Claude Haton, i.
357-359, who, however, makes the singular blunder of placing the incident
of Rapin's death after the peace of Amboise in 1563. The cure's
description of the zeal of the Toulouse parliament for the Roman Catholic
Church confirms everything that Protestant writers have said on the
subject: "Laditte court de parlement avoit tousjours resiste a laditte
pretendue religion et faict executer ceux qui en faisoient profession,
nonobstant edict a ce contraire faict en faveur d'iceux huguenotz." See
also Raoul de Cazenove, Rapin-Thoyras, sa famille, sa vie, et ses oeuvres
(Paris, 1866), 47-49--a truly valuable work, and a worthy tribute to a
distinguished ancestry.
[517] "Edictum promulgant, hac addita exceptione, _Reservatis clausulis
quae secreto Senatus commentario continentur_." J. de Serres, iii. 160,
161; De Thou, _ubi supra_. See the petition of Conde of Aug. 23d. J. de
Serres, iii. 220, etc.
[518] Mem. de Claude Haton, ii. 527, etc.
[519] "Sire," said a nobleman, after listening to the arguments against
the peace made by some of the remonstrants, and to Charles's replies, "it
is too much to undertake to dispute with these canting knaves; it were
better to have them strapped in the kitchen by your turnspits." Ibid., ii.
530.
[520] Playing upon the chancellor's name, Sainte Foy, one of the court
preachers, exclaimed in the pulpit: "Be not astonished if the Huguenots
demolish the churches, for they have turned all France into a _hospital_
instead"--"donnant a entendre que par le chancelier nomme Hospital, la
France estoit pauvre, pourtant qu'il a par trop encore de douceur pour les
huguenots qui ont ruine le pais de France." Jehan de la Fosse, 93, 94.
[521] Floquet, Hist. du parlement de Normandie, iii. 36-42.
[522] Memoires de Claude Haton, ii. 533, 534. Similar regulations were
made in many other places "cumplurimis in locis." Jean de Serres, iii.
156.
[523] Jean de Serres, iii. 158, 159.
[524] De Thou, iv. 77, 78; Castelnau, l. vii., c. 1; D'Aubigne, i. 260; La
Fosse, 97; Motley, Dutch Republic, ii. 184.
[525] Charles was, however, near experiencing trouble with the reiters of
Duke Casimir. He had, by the terms of the agreement with the Huguenots,
undertaken to advance the 900,000 francs which were due, and on failing to
fulfil his engagements his unwelcome guests threatened to turn their faces
toward Paris. Mem. de Castelnau, liv. vi., c. 11. At last, with promises
of payment at Frankfort, the Germans were induced to leave France. Du
Mont, Corps diplomatique, v. 164, gives a transcript of Casimir's receipt,
May 21, 1568, for 460,497 livres, etc.
[526] Memoires de Castelnau, liv. vi., c. 9, c. 10. Duke John William of
Saxe-Weimar was even more vexed at the issue of his expedition than
Castelnau himself. It was with difficulty that he could be persuaded to
accept an invitation to make a visit to the French court.
[527] Paris MS., _apud_ Soldan, Gesch. des Prot. in Frankreich, ii. 300.
Rumor, as is usual in such cases, outstripped even the unwelcome truth,
and Norris wrote to Queen Elizabeth that the king had sent secret letters
to two hundred and twelve places, charging the governors "to runne uppon
them [the Huguenots] and put them to the sword." "Your Majestie will
judge," adds Norris, "ther is smale place of surety for them of the
Religion, either in towne or felde." Letter of June 4, 1568, _apud_
D'Aumale, Les Princes de Conde, ii. 363, Pieces inedites.
[528] When the Protestants at Rouen begged protection, the king sent four
companies of infantry, which the citizens at first refused to admit. At
last they were smuggled in by night, _and quartered upon the Huguenots_.
Floquet, Hist. du parlement de Normandie, iii. 43.
[529] Jean de Serres, iii. 157, 158.
[530] Ibid., _ubi supra_.
[531] Jean de Serres, iii. 161; Soldan, ii. 303.
[532] Soldan, ii. 306.
[533] Letter to Catharine, April 27, 1568, MS., _apud_ Soldan, ii. 303.
[534] Jean de Serres, iii. 163, 164. Petition of Conde of Aug. 23d. Ibid.,
iii. 215, etc.
[535] MS. Bibl. nat., _apud_ Mem. de Claude Haton, ii. App., 1152, 1153.
Less correctly given in Lestoile's Memoires. The title is "Sermens des
Associez de la Ligue Chrestienne et Roiale," and the date is June 25,
1568.
[536] Prof. Soldan is certainly right (ii. 305) in his interpretation of
the passage, "tant et si longuement qu'il plaira a Dieu que nous serons
_par eux_ regis en nostredicte religion apostolique et romaine," which
Ranke (Civil Wars and Monarchy, p. 236), and, following him, Von Polenz
(Gesch. des franz. Calvinismus, ii. 361), have construed as referring to
"la maison de Valois." Involved as is the phraseology, I do not see how
the word "eux" can designate any other person or persons than "ledit sr.
lieutenant avec mesditz sieurs de la noblesse de cedit gouvernement et
autres associez."
[537] Jean de Serres, iii. 164.
[538] "Den Erfolg des letzten Krieges," well observes Prof. Soldan,
"hatten die Hugenotten nicht ihrer Anzahl, sondern der Organisation und
dem Geiste ihres Gemeindewesens zu verdanken. Diese bewegliche,
weitverzweigte, aus einem festen Mittelpunkte gleichmaessig gelenkte und
von Eifer fuer die gemeinsame Sache belebte Vereinsgliederung hatte ueber
den lahmen und stockenden Mechanismus vielfach groesserer, aber in sich
selbst uneiniger Kraefte einen beschaemenden Triumph erlangt." Geschichte
des Protestantismus in Frankreich, ii. 303.
[539] Relations des Amb. Ven., ii. 116.
[540] Cipierre, a young nobleman only twenty-two years of age, was
returning, with a body-guard of about thirty-five men, from a visit to his
cousin, the duke, at Nice, where he had been treated with great honor.
When approaching Frejus he perceived signs of treachery in a body of men
lurking under cover of a grove, and betook himself for safety into the
city, now, since his father's death, a part of the province of which his
eldest brother was royal governor. The tocsin was rung, and his enemies,
originally a band of three hundred men, being swollen by constant
accessions to four times that number, the house in which Cipierre had
taken refuge was assailed. After a heroic defence the small party of
defenders surrendered their arms, on assurance that their opponents would
at once retire. The papists, however, scarcely made a pretence of
fulfilling their compact, for they speedily returned and massacred every
one whom they found in the house. Cipierre himself was not among the
number. To secure him a new breach of faith was necessary. The captain of
the murderers pledged his own word to the magistrate that if Cipierre
would come forth from his hiding-place he would spare his life. He
discharged the obligation, so soon as Cipierre presented himself, by
plunging a dagger into his breast. J. de Serres, iii. 166-168; Agrippa
d'Aubigne, i. 262.
[541] Petition of Conde, Aug. 23, 1568, J. de Serres, iii. 210, 211.
[542] Vie de Coligny (Cologne, 1686), 349, 350; J. de Serres, iii. 166.
[543] Ibid., iii. 165; Recordon, from MSS. of N. Pithou, 155-157; MS. Mem.
historiques des Antiquites de Troyes, by Duhalle, _apud_ Bulletin de
l'hist. du prot. fr., xvii. (1868) 376. Of the royal edicts guaranteeing
the Protestants, the last author remarks that "ils firent plus de bruit
que de fruit."
[544] Duc d'Aumale, Princes de Conde, ii. 364, Pieces justificatives.
[545] J. de Serres, iii. 168; Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 262.
[546] Jean de Serres does not expressly state that he refers to the
combatants, but I presume this to be his meaning.
[547] Relazione di Correro, Rel. des Amb. Ven., ii. 120.
[548] "Montauban, etc., faisoient conter les cloux de leurs portes aux
garnisons qu'on leur envoyoit." Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 261. It was the
_garrisons_ only that were refused; the royal governors were promptly
accepted. M. de Jarnac, for instance, had no difficulty in securing
recognition at La Rochelle; but he was not permitted to introduce troops
to distress and terrify the citizens. See the letters of the "Maire,
Echevins, Conseilliers et Pairs," of La Rochelle to Charles the Ninth,
April 21st, June 6th and 30th, etc. Le Laboureur, Add. aux Mem. de
Castelnau, ii. 547-551. They deny the slanderous accusation that the Roman
Catholics have not been permitted to return since the peace, asserting, on
the contrary, that they have greeted them as brethren and fellow-citizens.
They appeal to M. de Jarnac himself for testimony to the good order of La
Rochelle. "Meanwhile," they say, "we are preserving this city of yours in
all tranquillity, and maintain it, under your obedience, with much greater
security, devotion, affection, fidelity and loyalty, such as we have
received from our predecessors, than would do all others who were
strangers and mercenaries, and not its natural subjects and inhabitants."
Norris to Queen Elizabeth, June 23, 1568: "The towne of Rochelle hathe now
the thirde time bin admonished to render itself to the king." State Paper
Office, Duc d'Aumale, ii. 367.
[549] His wife, Charlotte de Laval, whose brave Christian injunctions, as
we have seen, decided the reluctant admiral to take up arms in the first
religious war (see _ante_, chapter xiii., p. 35), lay dying of a disease
contracted in her indefatigable labors for the sick and wounded soldiers
at Orleans, whilst the admiral was at the siege of Chartres. On the
conclusion of the peace he hastened to her, but was too late to find her
alive. In a touching letter, written to her husband after all hope of
seeing him again in this world had fled, a letter the substance of which
is preserved by one of his biographers (Vie de Coligny, Cologne, 1686, p.
342), she lamented the loss of a privilege that would have alleviated the
sufferings of her last hours, but consoled herself with the thought of the
object for which he was absent. She conjured him, by the love he bore her
and to her children, to fight to the last extremity for God and religion;
warning him, lest through his habitual respect for the king--a respect
which had before made him reluctant to take up arms--he should forget the
obligations he owed to God as his first Master. She begged him to rear the
children she left him in the pure religion, that they might one day be
capable of taking his place; and, for their sakes, implored him not to
hazard his life unnecessarily. She bade him beware of the house of Guise.
"I do not know," she added, "whether I ought to say the same thing of the
queen mother, as we are forbidden to judge evil of our neighbor; but she
has given so many marks of her ambition that a little distrust is
excusable." The earlier biographer of Coligny (Gasparis Colinii Vita,
1575, p. 63, etc.) gives an affecting picture of the deep sorrow and pious
resignation of the admiral.
[550] Somewhat hyperbolically, the biographer of the admiral (Vie de
Coligny, p. 346) says that the concourse at Chatillon and Noyers was so
great that the Louvre was a desert in comparison! When ten gentlemen left
by one gate, twenty entered by another. The churches raised a purse of
100,000 crowns, one-half of which was to go to him, and the other half to
the Prince of Conde; but, though nearly ruined by the enormous expenses of
his hospitality, he declined to receive his portion.
[551] Noyers and Tanlay are ten or twelve miles from each other, in the
modern department of the Yonne.
[552] Jean de Serres, _ubi supra_. Cf. De Thou, iv. 142; Bulletin de la
Soc. de l'hist. du prot. fr. (1854), iii. 239. This valuable periodical is
mistaken in stating, vii. (1858) 120, that "D'Andelot s'etait retire dans
ses terres de Bretagne a la conclusion de la paix." He did not leave
Tanlay until after writing the letter referred to below, and shortly
before Coligny's arrival: "partant de chez lui, pour se rendre chez son
frere Andelot, il trouva qu'il etoit alle en Bretagne." Vie de Coligny,
350. D'Andelot was in Brittany at the outbreak of the third war. His
adventures in escaping to La Rochelle will be narrated in the next
chapter. Mr. Henry White is, of course, equally wrong when he says
(Massacre of St. Bartholomew, New York, 1868, p. 291): "The admiral had
gone to this charming retreat [Tanlay], to consult with his brother, to
whom it belonged, _and who had joined him there_," and when he mentions
D'Andelot as in the suite of Conde and Coligny in their celebrated flight
(p. 292); "besides which, he (the prince) was accompanied by the admiral
and his family, _by Andelot_ and his wife," etc.
[553] Lettre de Francois d'Andelot a la Royne mere du Roy, de Tanlay, co
8me juillet, 1568. MS. Library of Berne. This letter has been twice
printed in the Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. francais, iv.
(1856) 329-331, and vii. (1858) 121-123. The first reproduction is in one
important part more correct than the second. It is not impossible, after
all, that the author of the letter was not D'Andelot, but his brother,
Admiral Coligny himself; for M. J. Tessier mentions (Bulletin, xxii.
(1873) 47), that it exists in manuscript in the Paris National Library
(MSS. Vc. Colbert, 24, f. 161), in the admiral's own handwriting, and
signed with his usual signature, _Chastillon_. The whole tone, I must
confess, seems rather to be his.
[554] Journal d'un cure ligueur (Jehan de la Fosse), 96.
[555] Norris to Queen Elizabeth, May 12, 1568, State Paper Office.
[556] Jean de Serres, iii. 170; Davila, bk. iv. 128; Conde to the king,
Noyers, June 11, 1568, MS. Paris Lib., _apud_ D'Aumale, ii. 351-353.
[557] As the prince had described the state of affairs in a letter to the
king, of July 22, 1568: "Nous nous voions tuez, pillez, saccagez, les
femmes forcees, les filles ravies des mains de leurs peres et meres, les
grands mis hors de leurs charges," etc. All this injustice had been
committed with complete impunity. In fact, to use his own forcible words,
were the king to attempt to punish the outrages done to the Protestants,
"the trees in France would have more men than leaves upon them"--"tous les
arbres seroient plus couvertz d'hommes que de feuilles." MS. Paris Lib.,
_apud_ D'Aumale, ii. 355, 356.
[558] J. de Serres, iii. 171-173; Davila, bk. iv. 128.
[559] The Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. francais, ix. (1860)
217-219, published from MSS. in the Library of the British Museum, the
letter of Charles the Ninth to the first president of the Parisian
parliament, dated "du chateau de Bolongne, ce premier jour d'aoust,"
enclosing the formula. The pretext is "afin d'oster tout ce doubte et
differend qui regne aujourd'huy parmi nos subjectz." The president is to
associate with himself the seigneur de Nantouillet, provost of the city,
and the seigneur de Villeroy, "prevot des marchands."
[560] Bulletin, etc., ix. (1860) 218, 219; Jean de Serres, iii. 175, etc.
[561] Jean de Serres (Comm. de statu rel. et reipublicae, iii. 174-183)
inserts the reply of the Protestants to the proposed oath, article by
article.
[562] Built by Francis I., and so named because constructed on the plan of
the palace in which he lived when a captive in Spain.
[563] It is true the writer carefully avoids mentioning the cardinal's
name, but there is no difficulty in discovering that he is intended.
[564] "Uti nimirum detur opera ut vires penes Regem sint, primoresque
religionis illius occupentur, omnes conveniendi rationes illis demantur:
ut ad illas angustias redacti, quemadmodum facillimum erit, possit
hujusmodi colluvies regi regnoque adversaria, plane pessundari, omnesque
adeo reliquiae profligari: quoniam semen profecto esset in dies
egerminaturum, nisi ea ratio observaretur, cujus a vicinis nostris adeo
luculenta exempla demonstrentur." Jean de Serres, iii. 187.
[565] The letter is given entire, with the exception of some matters of no
general interest, in the valuable chronicle of this period, by Jean de
Serres (s. l. 1571), iii. 185-190.
[566] "Haec sunt propemodum ipsa illius verba, quae conatus sum memoriae
mandare, ut possem ad te de rerum omnium statu certius perscribere." Ib.,
iii. 188.
[567] "Et quoniam tunc vehementius quam assuevisset, rem illam mihi
commemoravit, et fortasse regis domini sui, qui ibi tunc erat, mandatu,
volui hac de causa te istarum rerum facere certiorem."
[568] This letter, which was also intercepted by the Huguenots, is
preserved by Jean de Serres, iii. 184, 185. It bears unmistakable marks of
authenticity.
[569] Conde himself alludes to these words of Charles the Ninth to his
mother, in his letter of August 23d. Referring to the king's aversion to a
resort to violence, he says: "Quod mihi repetitis literis saepissime
demonstrasti, et nuper quidem Reginae matri, ex eo sermone quem cum illa
habebas, quo significabas quantum odiosa tibi esset turbarum renovatio cum
nimirum illam orabas, daret operam ut omnia pacificarentur, efficeretque
ne rursus ad bella civilia rediretur, quae non possent non extremum exitium
afferre." Jean de Serres, iii, 193.
[570] Letter _apud_ J. de Serres, iii. 188-190.
[571] De Thou, iii. 136; Castelnau, liv. vii., c. 1, where the sum is
erroneously trebled; Davila, bk. iv., p. 130. See also Soldan, ii., 324,
and Von Polenz, ii. 365.
[572] Norris, in a letter to Cecil, Sept. 25, 1568, gives almost the very
words of the angry contestants. State Paper Office.
[573] Davila, bk. iv. 130; De Thou, iv. (liv. xliv.) 136.
[574] Ranke, Civil Wars and Monarchy in France, 236, 237.
[575] Davila and De Thou, _ubi supra_. De Thou seems certainly to be
wanting in his accustomed accuracy when he represents--iv. (liv. xliv.)
136, 137--the submission of the test-oath to the Protestants as posterior
to, and consequent upon the fall of L'Hospital: "La reine delivree du
Chancelier, et n'ayant plus personne qui s'opposat a ses volontes, ne
songea plus qu'a brouiller les affaires, etc." I have shown that the papal
bull which L'Hospital opposed was dated at Rome on the same day (August 1,
1568) on which Charles sent his orders to the president of the Parisian
parliament to administer the oath to the Protestants of the capital. Yet,
as early as on the 12th of May, 1568, the English ambassador, Norris,
wrote to Cecil that Anjou, a cruel enemy of the Protestants, had a privy
council of which Cardinal Lorraine was the "chiefest" member, and his own
chancellor, who sealed everything submitted to him, "which thing he [the
good olde chauncelor of the Kinges] hathe so to harte as he is retirid him
to his owne house in the towne of Paris; and wheras the King's chauncelor
I meane, who nether for love nor dread wolde seal enything against the
statutes of the realme, or that might be prejudiciall to the same, this of
Mr. d'Anjou's refusithe nothing that is proferid to him." State Paper
Office, Duc d'Aumale, ii. 360.
[576] Jean de Serres, iii. 191; Davila, bk. iv., p. 128.
[577] See Soldan, Gesch. des Prot. in Frankreich, ii. 327, note 63. Yet
Conde himself, shortly before the flight from Noyers, expressed himself in
strikingly confident terms as to Tavannes's probity. In a letter to the
king, complaining of the treacherous plots formed against himself, July
22, 1568, the prince says he is sure that Tavannes is not privy to these
designs, "car je le cognois de trop longue main ennemy de ceulx qui ne
veullent qu'entretenir les troubles. Parquoy je croy que cecy se faict a
son desceu." MS. Paris Lib., _apud_ D'Aumale, ii. 356.
[578] "Le cerf est aux toiles, la chasse est preparee." See Anquetil,
Esprit de la ligue, i. 278.
[579] "Turbarum causas imputamus adversario illi tuo ac tuae dignitatis
hosti Cardinali Lotharingo et sociis, quorum nimirum pravis consiliis et
arcta necessitudine et familiaritate quam cum Hispano habent, dissensiones
et simultates inter tuos subjectos ab hinc sex annis continuantur, et
misere foventur atque aluntur per caedes atque strages, quae ipsorum nutu
quotidie ubique perpetrantur." Jean de Serres, iii. 194. "Impurusne
Presbyter, tigris, tyrannus," etc., ibid., iii. 196. "Cardinalis
Lotharingus, quasi sicariorum ac praedorum patronus," etc., ibid., iii.,
210.
[580] "Quodnam item de illo judicium tulerit Caesar Maximilianus hodie
imperans, cum ad te prescripsit, omnia bella et omnes dissensiones, quae
inter Christianos hodie vagantur, proficisci a Granvellano et Lotharingo
Cardinalibus." Jean de Serres, iii. 234.
[581] This petition or protestation of Conde is among the longest public
papers of the period, occupying not less than forty-three pages of the
invaluable Commentarii de statu religionis et reipublicae of Jean de
Serres. It well repays an attentive perusal, for it contains, in my
judgment, the most important and authentic record of the sufferings of the
Huguenots during the peace. The reader will notice that I have made great
use of its authority in the preceding narrative.
[582] Jean de Serres, iii. 241.
[583] The place is sufficiently designated by Ag. d'Aubigne (Hist. univ.,
i. 263) "a Bonni pres Sancerre;" by Jean de Serres (iii. 242) "ad
Sangodoneum vicum (Saint Godon) qui tribus ferme milliaribus distat ab ea
fluminis parte, qua transiit Condaeus;" by Hotman, Gasparis Colinii Vita,
1575 (p. 68), "ad flumen accessit, quo Sancerrani collis radices
alluuntur," and by the "Vie de Coligny" (p. 351), "vis a vis de Sancerre."
It will surprise no one accustomed to the uncertainties and perplexities
of historical investigation, that while one author, quoted by Henry White
(Mass. of St. Bartholomew, 292), puts the crossing "near les Rosiers, four
leagues below Saumur," Davila (p. 129) places it at Roanne. The two spots
are, probably, not less than 230 miles apart in a straight line.
[584] See De Thou, etc.
[585] Recueil des choses mem. (Hist. des Cinq Rois), 336. The Life of
Coligny (1575), p. 68, states that the rise took place within _three_
hours after the Huguenots crossed.
[586] Jean de Serres, iii. 192, and De Thou, iv. (liv. xliv.) 140. The
dates of Conde's departure from Tanlay and arrival at La Rochelle are, as
usual, given differently by other authorities.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE THIRD CIVIL WAR.
[Sidenote: Relative advantages of the Roman Catholics and Huguenots.]
[Sidenote: Enthusiasm of Huguenot youth.]
[Sidenote: Enlistment of Agrippa d'Aubigne.]
Having narrowly escaped falling into the hands of their treacherous
enemies, and finding themselves compelled once more to take up arms in
defence of their own lives and the liberties of their fellow-believers,
the Prince of Conde and Admiral Coligny resolved to institute a vigorous
contest. A single glance at the situation, the full dangers of which were
now disclosed by the tidings coming from every quarter, was sufficient to
convince them that in a bold and decided policy lay their only hope of
success. The Roman Catholics had, it is true, enjoyed rare opportunities
for maturing a comprehensive plan of attack; although the sequel seemed to
prove that they had turned these opportunities to little practical use.
But the Huguenots possessed countervailing advantages, in close sympathy
with each other, in fervid zeal for their common faith, as well as in an
organization all but perfect. Simultaneously with their flight from
Noyers, the prince and the admiral had sent out a summons addressed to the
Protestants in all parts of the kingdom, and this was responded to with
enthusiasm by great numbers of those who had been their devoted followers
in the two previous wars. Multitudes of young men, also, with imaginations
inflamed by the recital of the exploits of their fathers and friends,
burned to enroll themselves under such distinguished leaders. Many were
the stratagems resorted to by these aspirants for military honors. Among
others, the eminent historian, Theodore Agrippa d'Aubigne, has left an
amusing account of the adventures he passed through in reaching the
Huguenot recruiting station. His prudent guardian had taken the precaution
to remove Agrippa's clothes every evening, in order to prevent him from
carrying out his avowed purpose of entering the army; but one night, on
hearing the report of the arquebuse--which a number of his companions,
bent on the same course, had fired as a signal near his place of
confinement--the youth boldly lowered himself to the ground by the sheets
of his bed, and, with bare feet and no other clothing than a shirt, made
his way to Jonzac. There, after receiving an outfit from some Protestant
captains, he jotted down at the bottom of the receipt which he gave them
in return, the whimsical declaration "that never in his life would he
blame the war for having stripped him, since he could not possibly leave
it in a sorrier plight than that in which he entered it."[587]
[Sidenote: The court proscribes the reformed religion.]
The resolution and enthusiasm of the Huguenots were greatly augmented by
the imprudent course of the court. Notwithstanding their own guilty
designs, Catharine and the Cardinal of Lorraine were taken by surprise
when the news reached them that Conde and Coligny had escaped, and that
the Huguenots were everywhere arming. So sudden an outbreak had not been
expected; and, while awaiting the muster of that portion of the troops
that had been dismissed, but was now summoned to assemble at Etaples on
the 10th of September,[588] it was thought best to quiet the agitated
minds of the people. A declaration was accordingly published, assuring all
the adherents of the reformed faith who remained at home and furnished no
assistance to the enemy, of the royal protection, Charles promising, at
the same time, to give a gracious hearing to their grievances.[589] But,
as soon as the Roman Catholic forces began to collect in large numbers,
and the apprehension of a sudden assault by the Huguenots died away, the
court threw off the mask of conciliation, and Charles was made to sign two
laws unsurpassed for intolerance. The first purported to be "an
irrevocable and perpetual edict." It rehearsed the various steps taken by
Charles the Ninth and his brother Francis in reference to the "so-called
reformed religion," from the time of the tumult of Amboise. It alluded to
the edicts of July and of January--the latter adopted by the queen mother,
by advice of the Cardinals of Bourbon and Tournon, of the constable, of
Saint Andre, and others, because less objectionable than an edict
tolerating the worship of that religion _within_ the walls of the cities.
None of these concessions, it asserted, having satisfied the professors of
the new faith, who had collected money and raised troops with the intent
of establishing another government in place of that which God had
instituted, the king now repealed the edicts of toleration, and henceforth
prohibited his subjects, of whatever rank and in all parts of his
dominions, on pain of confiscation and death, from the exercise of any
other religious rites than those of the Roman Catholic Church. All
Protestant ministers were ordered to leave France within fifteen days.
Quiet and peaceable laymen were promised toleration until such time as God
should deign to bring them back to the true fold; and pardon was offered
to all who within twenty days should lay down their arms.[590] The second
edict deprived all Protestant magistrates of the offices they held,
reserving, however, to those who did not take part in the war, a certain
portion of their former revenues.[591]
In order to give greater solemnity to the transaction, Charles, clothed in
robes of state and with great pomp, repaired to the parliament house, to
be present at the publication of the new edicts, and with his own hands
threw into the fire and burned up the previous edicts of pacification.
"Thus did his Royal Highness of France," writes a contemporary German
pamphleteer with intense satisfaction, "as was seemly and becoming to a
Christian supreme magistrate, _pronounce sentence of death upon all
Calvinistic and other heresies_."[592]
[Sidenote: Impolicy of this course.]
Nothing devised by the papal party could have been better adapted to
further the Huguenot cause than the course it had adopted. The wholesale
proscription of their faith united the Protestants, and led every
able-bodied man to take up arms against a perfidious government, whose
disregard of treaties solemnly made was so shamefully paraded before the
world. "These edicts," admits the candid Castelnau, "only served to make
the whole party rise with greater expedition, and furnished the Prince of
Conde and the admiral with a handle to convince all the Protestant powers
that they were not persecuted for any disaffection to the government, but
purely for the sake of religion."[593]
[Sidenote: Attempts to make capital of the proscriptive measures.]
Efforts were not spared by the Guisard party to make capital abroad out of
the new proscriptive measures. Copies of the edicts, translated from the
French, were put into circulation beyond the Rhine, accompanied by a
memorial embodying the views presented by an envoy of Charles to some of
the Roman Catholic princes of the empire. The king herein justified
himself for his previous clemency by declaring that he had entertained no
other idea than that of allowing his subjects of the "pretended" reformed
faith time and opportunity for returning to the bosom of the only true
church. Lovers of peace and good order among the Germans were warned that
they had no worse enemies than the insubordinate and rebellious Huguenots
of his Very Christian Majesty's dominions, while the adherents of the
Augsburg Confession were distinctly given to understand that Lutheranism
was safer with the Turk than where Calvin's doctrines were professed.[594]
To influence the princes the offices of skilled diplomatists were called
into requisition, but to no purpose. When Blandy requested the emperor, in
Charles's name, to prevent any succor from being sent to Conde from
Germany, Maximilian replied by counselling his good friend the king to
seek means to restore concord and harmony among his subjects, and
professing his own inability to restrain the levy of auxiliary troops. And
from Duke John William, of Saxony, the same envoy only obtained
expressions of regret that the war so lately suppressed had broken out
anew, and of discontent on the part of the German princes at the rumor
that Charles had been so ill advised as to join in a league made by the
Pope and the King of Spain, with the view of overwhelming the
Protestants.[595]
[Sidenote: A "crusade" preached at Toulouse.]
On the other hand, the new direction taken by Catharine met with the most
decided favor on the part of the fanatical populace, and the pulpits
resounded with praise of the complete abrogation of all compacts with
heresy. The Roman Catholic party in Toulouse acted so promptly,
anticipating even the orders of the royal court, as to make it evident
that they had been long preparing for the struggle. On Sunday, the twelfth
of September, a league for the extermination of heresy was published,
under the name of a _crusade_. A priest delivered a sermon with the
consent of the Parliament of Toulouse. Next day all who desired to join in
the bloody work met in the cathedral dedicated to St. Stephen--the
Christian protomartyr having, by an irony of history, more than once been
made a witness of acts more congenial to the spirit of his persecutors
than to his own--and prepared themselves for their undertaking by a common
profession of their faith, by an oath to expose their lives and property
for the maintenance of the Roman Catholic religion, and by confession and
communion. This being done, they adopted for their motto the words, "Eamus
nos, moriamur cum Christo," and attached to their dress a white cross to
distinguish them from their Protestant fellow-citizens. Of success they
entertained no misgivings. Had not Attila been defeated, with his three
hundred thousand men, not far from Toulouse? Had not God so blessed the
arms of "our good Catholics" in the time of Louis the Eighth, father of
St. Louis, that eight hundred of them had routed more than sixty thousand
heretics? "So that we doubt not," said the new crusaders, "that we shall
gain the victory over these enemies of God and of the whole human race;
and if some of us should chance to die, our blood will be to us a second
baptism, in consequence of which, without any hinderance, we shall pass,
with the other martyrs, straight to Paradise."[596] A papal bull, a few
months later (on the fifteenth of March, 1569), gave the highest
ecclesiastical sanction to the crusade, and emphasized the complete
extermination of the heretics.[597]
[Sidenote: Fanaticism of the Roman Catholic preachers.]
The faithful, but somewhat garrulous chronicler, who has left us so vivid
a picture of the social, religious, and political condition of the city of
Provins during a great part of the second half of this century, describes
a solemn procession in honor of the publication of the new ordinance,
which was attended by over two thousand persons, and even by the
magistrates suspected of sympathy with the Protestants. Friar Jean
Barrier, when pressed to preach, took for his text the song of Moses: "I
will sing unto the Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and
his rider hath He thrown into the sea." His treatment of the verse was
certainly novel, although the exegesis might not find much favor with the
critical Hebraist. The Prince of Conde was the _horse_, on whose back
were mounted the Huguenot ministers and preachers--the _riders_ who drove
him hither and thither by their satanic doctrine. Although they were not
as yet drowned, like Pharaoh and his army in the Red Sea, France had great
reason to rejoice and praise God that the king had annulled the Edict of
January, and other pernicious laws made during his minority. As for
himself, said the good friar, he was ready to die, like another Simeon,
since he had lived to see the edicts establishing "the Huguenotic liberty"
repealed, and the preachers expelled from France.[598]
[Sidenote: The Huguenot places of refuge.]
Similar rejoicings with similar high masses and sermons by enthusiastic
monks, were heard in the capital[599] and elsewhere. But the jubilant
strains were sounded rather prematurely; for the victory was yet to be
won. The Huguenot nobles, invited by Conde, were flocking to La Rochelle;
the Protestant inhabitants of the towns, expelled from their homes, were
generally following the same impulse. But others, reluctant, or unable to
traverse such an expanse of hostile territory, turned toward nearer places
of refuge. Happily they found a number of such asylums in cities whose
inhabitants, alarmed by the marks of treachery appearing in every quarter
of France, had refused to receive the garrisons sent to them in the king's
name. It was a wonderful providence of God, the historian Jean de Serres
remarks. The fugitive Huguenots of the centre and north found the gates of
Vezelay and of Sancerre open to them. Those of Languedoc and Guyenne were
safe within the walls of Montauban, Milhau, and Castres. In the
south-eastern corner of the kingdom, Aubenas, Privas, and a few other
places afforded a retreat for the women and children, and a convenient
point for the muster of the forces of Dauphiny.[600]
[Sidenote: Jeanne d'Albret and D'Andelot reach La Rochelle.]
Meantime, the Queen of Navarre, with young Prince Henry and his sister
Catharine, started from her dominions near the Pyrenees. The court had in
vain plied her with conciliatory letters and messages sent in the king's
name. Gathering her troops together, and narrowly escaping the forces
despatched to intercept her, she formed a junction with a very
considerable body of troops raised in Perigord, Auvergne, and the
neighboring provinces, under the Seigneur de Piles, the Marquis de
Montamart, and others, and, after meeting the Prince of Conde, who came as
far as Cognac to receive her, found safety in the city of La
Rochelle.[601]
From an opposite direction, Francois d'Andelot, whom the outbreak of
hostilities overtook while yet in Brittany, was warned by Conde to hasten
to the same point. With his accustomed energy, the young Chatillon rapidly
collected the Protestant noblemen and gentry, not only of that province,
but of Normandy, Touraine, Maine, and Anjou, and with such experienced
leaders as the Count of Montgomery, the Vidame of Chartres, and Francois
de la Noue, had reached a point on the Loire a few miles above Angers. It
was his plan to seize and hold the city and bridge of Saumur, and thus
secure for the Huguenots the means of easy communication between the two
sides of the important basin intervening between the smaller basins of the
Seine and the Garonne. His expectations, however, were frustrated
principally by the good fortune of M. de Martigues, who succeeded in
making a sudden dash through D'Andelot's scattered divisions, and in
conveying to the Duke of Montpensier at Saumur so large a reinforcement as
to render it impossible for the Huguenots to dream of dislodging him.[602]
For a time D'Andelot was in great peril. With only about fifteen hundred
horse and twenty-five hundred foot,[603] he stood on the banks of a river
swollen by autumnal rains and supposed to be utterly impassable, and in
the midst of a country all whose cities were in the hands of the enemy. He
had even formed the desperate design of retiring twenty or thirty miles
northward, in hope of being able to entice Montpensier to follow him so
incautiously that he might turn upon him, and, after winning a victory,
secure for himself a passage to the sources of the Loire or to his allies
in Germany. At this moment the joyful announcement was made by Montgomery
that a ford had been discovered. The news proved to be true. The crossing
was safe and easy. Not a man nor a horse was lost. The interposition of
heaven in their behalf was so wonderful, that, as the Huguenot troopers
reached the southern bank, the whole army, by common and irresistible
impulse, broke forth in praise to Almighty God, and sang that grand psalm
of deliverance--the seventy-sixth.[604] Never had those verses of Beza
been sung by more thankful hearts or in a nobler temple.[605]
[Sidenote: Success in Poitou, Angoumois, etc.]
Full of courage, the exultant troops of D'Andelot now pressed southward.
First the city of Thouars fell into their hands; then the more important
Partenay surrendered itself to the Huguenots. Here, according to the cruel
rules of warfare of the sixteenth century, they deemed themselves
justified in hanging the commander of the place, who had thrown himself
into the castle, for having too obstinately insisted upon standing an
assault in a spot incapable of defence, together with some priests who
had shared his infatuation.[606] Admiral Coligny now met his brother, and
the united army, with three cannon brought from La Rochelle, forming his
entire siege artillery, demanded and obtained the surrender of Niort, the
size and advantageous position of which made it a bulwark of La Rochelle
toward the east. Angouleme, Blaye, Cognac, Pons, and Saintes, were still
more valuable acquisitions. In short, within a few weeks, so large a
number of cities in the provinces of Poitou, Angoumois, and Saintonge had
fallen under the power of the Protestants, that they seemed fully to have
retrieved the losses they had experienced through the treacherous peace of
Longjumeau. "In less than two months," writes La Noue of his
fellow-soldiers, "from poor vagabonds that they were, they found in their
hands sufficient means to continue a long war."[607] And the veteran
Admiral Coligny, amazed at the success attending measures principally
planned by himself, was accustomed to repeat with heartfelt thankfulness
the exclamation attributed to Themistocles: "I should be lost, if I had
not been lost!"[608]
[Sidenote: Affairs in Dauphiny, Provence, and Languedoc.]
[Sidenote: Powerful Huguenot army in the south.]
[Sidenote: It effects a junction with Conde's forces.]
Meantime, in the south-eastern part of France, the provinces of Dauphiny,
Provence, and Lower Languedoc, the Huguenots had not been slow in
responding to the call of the Prince of Conde. The difficulty was rather
in assembling their soldiers than in raising them; for there was little
lack of volunteers after the repeal of the royal edicts in favor of the
Protestants. With great trouble the contingents of Dauphiny and Provence
were brought across the Rhone, and at Alais the Baron d'Acier[609]
mustered an army to go to the succor of the Prince of Conde at La
Rochelle. A Roman Catholic historian expresses his profound astonishment
that the Huguenots of this part of the kingdom, when surprised by the
violation of the peace, should so speedily have been able to mass a force
of twenty-five thousand men, well furnished and equipped, and commanded by
the most excellent captains of the age--Montbrun, Mouvans, Pierre-Gourde,
and others.[610] The abbe's wonder was doubtless equalled by the
consternation which the news spread among the enemies of the Huguenots.
The Roman Catholics could bring no army capable of preventing the junction
of D'Acier's troops with those of Conde; but the Duke of Montpensier
succeeded, on the twenty-fifth of October, in inflicting a severe loss
upon one of the divisions at Messignac, near Perigueux. Mouvans and
Pierre-Gourde, who were distant from the main body, were attacked in their
quarters, by a force under Brissac, which they easily repulsed. D'Acier,
suspecting the design of the enemy, had commanded the Huguenot captains to
make no pursuit, and to await his own arrival. But brave Mouvans was as
impatient of orders as he was courageous in battle. Disregarding the
authority which sat so lightly upon him, he fell into an ambuscade, where
he atoned for his rashness by the loss of his own life and the lives of
more than a thousand of his companions. After this disaster, D'Acier
experienced no further opposition, and, on the first of November, he met
the advancing army of Conde at Aubeterre, on the banks of the Dronne.[611]
With the new accessions to his army, the prince commanded a force very
considerably larger than any he had led in the previous wars. Among the
conflicting statements, we may find it difficult to fix its numbers.
Agrippa d'Aubigne says that, after the losses consequent upon the defeat
of Messignac and those resulting from camp diseases, Conde's army
consisted of only seventeen thousand foot soldiers, and two thousand five
hundred horsemen.[612] A Huguenot bulletin, sent from La Rochelle for the
information of Queen Elizabeth and the Protestants of England, may have
given somewhat too favorable a view of the prince's prospects, but was
certainly nearer the truth, in assigning him twenty-five thousand
arquebusiers and a cavalry force of five or six thousand men.[613] On the
other hand, Henry of Anjou, who had been placed in nominal command of the
Roman Catholic army, had not yet been able to assemble a much superior,
probably not an equal, number of soldiers. The large forces which,
according to his ambassador at the English court, Charles the Ninth could
call out,[614] existed only on paper. The younger Tavannes, whose father
was the true head of the royal army, gives it but about twenty thousand
men.[615]
It was already nearly winter when the armies were collected, and their
operations during the remainder of the campaign were indecisive. In the
numerous skirmishes that occurred the Huguenots usually had the advantage,
and sometimes inflicted considerable damage upon the enemy. But the Duke
of Anjou, or the more experienced leaders commanding in his name,
studiously avoided a general engagement. The instructions from the court
were to wear out the courage and enthusiasm of Conde's adherents by
protracting a tame and monotonous warfare.[616] The prince's true policy,
on the contrary, lay in decided action. His soldiers were inferior to none
in France. The flower of the higher nobility and the most substantial of
the middle classes had flocked to his standard so soon as it was unfurled.
But, without regular commissariat, and serving at their own costs, these
troops could not long maintain themselves in the field.[617] The nobles
and country gentlemen, never too provident in their habits, soon exhausted
their ready funds, with their crowd of hungry retainers, and became a more
pitiable class than even the burgesses. The latter, whom devotion to their
religious convictions, rather than any thirst for personal distinction,
had impelled to enter the service, could not remain many months away from
their workshops and counting-rooms without involving their families in
great pecuniary distress. It was not, however, possible for Conde and
Coligny to bring about a combat which the duke was resolved to decline,
and the unparalleled severity of the season suspended, at the same time,
their design of wresting from his hands the city of Saumur, a convenient
point of communication with northern France. Early in December the vines
were frozen in the fields,[618] disease broke out in either camp, and the
soldiers began to murmur at a war which seemed to be waged with the
elements rather than with their fellow-men. While Anjou's generals,
therefore, drew off their troops to Saumur, Chinon on the Vienne, and
Poitiers, Conde's army went into winter quarters a little farther west, at
Montreuil-Bellay, Loudun and Thouars, but afterward removed, for greater
commodity in obtaining provisions, to Partenay and Niort.[619]
[Sidenote: Huguenot reprisals and negotiations.]
It was while the Huguenots lay thus inactive that their leaders
deliberated respecting the best means of providing for their support
during the coming campaign. Jeanne d'Albret, whose masculine vigor[620]
had never been displayed more conspicuously than during this war, was
present, and assisted by her sage counsels. It was determined, in view of
the cruelties exercised upon the Protestants in those parts of the kingdom
where they had no strongholds, and of the confiscation of their property
by judicial decisions, to retaliate by selling the ecclesiastical
possessions in the cities that were now under Huguenot power, and applying
the proceeds to military uses. The order of sale was issued under the
names of the young Prince of Navarre, of Conde, Coligny, D'Andelot and La
Rochefoucauld, and a guarantee was given by them. As a reprisal the
measure was just, and as a warlike expedient nothing could be more
prudent; for, while it speedily filled the coffers of the Huguenot army,
it cut off one great source of the revenues of the court, which had been
authorized both by the Pope and by the clergy itself to lay these
possessions under contribution.[621]
Already the temper of the Protestant leaders had been sounded by an
unaccredited agent of Catharine de' Medici, who found Conde at Mirebeau,
and entreated him to make those advances toward a peace which would
comport better with his dignity as a subject than with that of Charles as
a king. But the prince, who saw in the mission of an irresponsible
mediator only a new attempt to impede the action of the confederates, had
dismissed him, after declaring, in the presence of a large number of his
nobles, that he had been compelled to resort to arms in order to provide
for his own defence. The war was, therefore, directed not against the
king, but against those capital enemies of the crown and of the realm, the
Cardinal of Lorraine and his associates. All knew his own vehement desire
for peace, of which his late excessive compliance was a sufficient proof;
but, since the king was surrounded by his enemies, he intended, with
God's favor, to come and present his petitions to his Majesty in
person.[622]
[Sidenote: William of Orange attempts to aid the Huguenots.]
Abroad the Huguenots had not been idle in endeavoring to secure the
support of advantageous alliances. So early as in the month of August,
after the disastrous defeat of Louis of Nassau, at Jemmingen, the Prince
of Orange had contemplated the formation of a league for common defence
with the Prince of Conde and Admiral Coligny. A draft of such an agreement
has been preserved; but it is unsigned, and may be regarded rather as
indicative of the friendly disposition of the French and Dutch patriots
than as a compact that was ever formally adopted.[623] That same autumn
William of Orange had undertaken an expedition intended to free the
Netherlands from the tyranny of Alva. He had been met with consummate
skill. The duke refused to fight, but hung remorselessly on his skirts.
The inhabitants of Brabant extended no welcome to their liberator. The
prince's mercenaries, vexed at their reception, annoyed by the masterly
tactics of their enemy, and eager only to return to their homes, clamored
for pay and for plunder. Orange, outgeneralled, was compelled to abandon
the campaign, and would gladly have turned his arms against the oppressors
of his fellow-believers in France; but his German troops had enlisted only
for the campaign in the Netherlands, and peremptorily declined to transfer
the field of battle to another country. However, the depth of the Meuse,
which had become unfordable, furnished more persuasive arguments than
could be brought forward by Genlis and the Huguenots who with him had
joined the Prince of Orange, and the army of the patriots was forced to
direct its course southward and to cross the French frontier.
[Sidenote: Consternation and devices of the court.]
[Sidenote: Declaration of the Prince of Orange.]
Great was the consternation at the court of Charles. Paris trembled for
its safety, and vigorous were the efforts made to get rid of such
dangerous guests. Marshal Cosse, who commanded for his Majesty on the
Flemish border, was too weak to copy successfully the tactics of Alva; but
he employed the resources of diplomacy. His secretary, the Seigneur de
Favelles, not content with remonstrating against the prince's violation of
the territory of a king with whom he was at peace, endeavored to terrify
him by exaggerating the resources of Charles the Ninth and by fabricating
accounts of Huguenot reverses. Conde, he said, had been forced to recross
the river Vienne in great confusion; and there was a flattering prospect
that he would be compelled to shut himself up in La Rochelle; for
"Monseigneur the Duke of Anjou" had an irresistible army of six thousand
horse and twenty-five or thirty thousand foot, besides the forces coming
from Provence under the Count de Tende, the six thousand newly levied
Swiss brought by the Duke d'Aumale, and other considerable bodies of
troops.[624] Gaspard de Schomberg[625] was despatched on a similar errand
by Charles himself, and offered the prince, if he came merely desiring to
pass in a friendly manner through the country, to furnish him with every
facility for so doing. In reply, William of Orange, although the refusal
of his soldiers to fight against Charles[626] left him no alternative but
to embrace the course marked out for him, did not disguise his hearty
sympathy with his suffering brethren in France. In view of the attempts
made, according to his Majesty's edict of September last, to constrain the
consciences of all who belonged to the Christian religion, and in view of
the king's avowed determination to exterminate the pure Word of God, and
to permit no other religion than the Roman Catholic--a thing very
prejudicial to the neighboring nations, where there was a free exercise of
the Christian religion--the prince declared his inability to credit the
assertions of his Majesty, that it was not his Majesty's intention to
constrain the conscience of any one. He avowed his own purpose to give
oppressed Christians everywhere all aid, comfort, counsel, and assistance;
asserting his conviction that the men who professed "the religion"
demanded nothing else than the glory of God and the advancement of His
Word, while in all matters of civil polity they were ready to render
obedience to his Majesty. He averred, moreover, that if he should perceive
any indications that the Huguenots were pursuing any other object than
liberty of conscience and security for life and property, he would not
only withdraw his assistance from them, but would use the whole strength
of his army to exterminate them.[627] After this declaration, the prince
prosecuted his march to Strasbourg, where he disbanded his troops, pawning
his very plate and pledging his principality of Orange, to find the means
of satisfying their demands. Great was the delight of the royalists, great
the disappointment of the Huguenots, on hearing that the expedition had
vanished in smoke. "The army of the Prince of Orange," wrote an agent of
Conde in Paris, "after having thrice returned to the king's summons a
sturdy answer that it would never leave France until it saw religion
re-established, has retreated, in spite of our having given it notice of
your intention to avow it. I know not the cause of this sudden movement,
for which various reasons are alleged."[628] William the Silent had not,
however, relinquished the intention of going to the assistance of the
Huguenots, whose welfare, next to that of his own provinces, lay near his
heart. Retaining, therefore, twelve hundred horsemen whom he found better
disposed than the rest, he patiently awaited the departure of the new ally
of the French Protestants, Wolfgang, Duke of Deux-Ponts (Zweibruecken), in
whose company he had determined to cross France with his brothers Louis
and Henry of Nassau.[629]
[Sidenote: Aid sought from England.]
[Sidenote: Generous response of the English people.]
[Sidenote: Bishop Jewel's noble plea.]
The Prince of Conde received more immediate and substantial assistance
from beyond the Channel. When Tavannes undertook to capture Conde and
Coligny at Noyers, it was in contemplation to seize Odet, Cardinal of
Chatillon, the admiral's elder brother,[630] in his episcopal palace at
Beauvais. He received, however, timely warning, and made his escape
through Normandy to England, where Queen Elizabeth received him at her
court with marks of distinguished favor.[631] His efforts to enlist the
sympathies and assistance of the English monarch in behalf of his
persecuted countrymen were seconded by Cavaignes, who soon arrived as an
envoy from Conde. Cavaignes was instructed to ask material aid--money to
meet the engagements made with the Duke of Deux-Ponts, and ships with
their armaments to increase the small flotilla of privateersmen, which the
Protestants had, for the first time, sent out from La Rochelle. Soon after
appeared the vice-admiral, Chastelier-Pourtaut de Latour, under whose
command the flotilla had been placed, bearing a letter from the Queen of
Navarre to her sister of England, in which she was entreated to espouse a
quarrel that had arisen not from ambition or insubordination, but from the
desire, in the first place, to defend religion, and, next, to rescue a
king who was being hurried on to ruin by treacherous advisers.[632] To
these reiterated appeals, and to the solicitations for aid addressed to
them by other refugees from papal violence who had found their way to the
shores of Great Britain, the subjects of the queen returned a more
gracious answer than the queen herself. The exiled Huguenot ministers were
received with open arms by men who regarded them as champions of a common
Christianity,[633] and some Protestant noblemen had in a few weeks after
their arrival raised for their relief, the sum--considerable for those
days--of one hundred pounds sterling. Not only the laity, but even the
clergy of the Church of England, took a tender pride in receiving the "few
servants of God"--some three or four thousand--whom Providence had thrown
upon their shores. They welcomed them to their cities, and resented the
attempts of Pope and king to secure their extradition. Could the Pope, who
harbored six thousand usurers and twenty thousand courtesans in his own
city of Rome, call upon the Queen of England to deny the right of asylum
to "the poor exiles of Flanders and France, and other countries, who
either lost or left behind them all that they had--goods, lands, and
houses--not for adultery, or theft, or treason, but for the profession of
the Gospel?" "It pleased God," wrote Bishop Jewel, "here to cast them on
land: the queen of her gracious pity hath granted them harbor. Is it
become so heinous a thing to show mercy?" "They are our brethren,"
continued their noble-minded advocate, "they live not idly. If they have
houses of us, they pay rent for them. They hold not our grounds but by
making due recompense. They beg not in our streets, nor crave anything at
our hands, but to breathe our air, and to see our sun. They labor truly,
they live sparefully. They are good examples of virtue, travail, faith,
and patience. The towns in which they abide are happy, for God doth follow
them with His blessings."[634]
[Sidenote: Misgivings of Queen Elizabeth.]
[Sidenote: Her double-dealing and effrontery.]
Queen Elizabeth was less decidedly in their favor. Her court swarmed with
creatures of the Spanish king, who openly gloried in the victories of the
Guises. The ambassadors of Charles and Philip strove to the utmost to
render the Huguenots odious to her mind, and to give a false coloring to
the war raging in France. Her jealousy of the royal prerogative was
appealed to, by the repeated declaration that the Protestants of France
were turbulent men, who, for the slightest occasion and upon the most
slender suspicion, were ready to have recourse to arms--enthusiasts, who
could not be dissuaded from rash enterprises; sectaries, who employed
their consistories and their organized form of church government to levy
men, to collect arms, munitions of war, and money--rebels, in fine, who
could at any moment rise within an hour, and surprise his most Christian
Majesty's cities and provinces. The abrogation of religious liberty was,
therefore, not merely advisable, but absolutely necessary. Elizabeth was
reminded, also, of her own intolerant measures toward the Roman Catholics
of her dominions; and she was assured that her fears of a combined attack
on all the Protestants were devoid of foundation--that Charles had neither
taken up arms, nor revoked the edicts of toleration at the desire of any
other prince, still less because of the instance of any private
individuals, but of his own free will, in order to secure his
kingdom.[635] These arguments, if they did not convince Elizabeth, gave
her a fair excuse for trying to maintain an appearance of
non-intervention, which the perilous position of England seemed to her to
dictate. With the problem of Scotland and Mary Stuart yet unsolved--with a
very considerable part of the lords and commons of her own kingdom
scarcely concealing their affection for the Romish faith--she deemed it
hazardous to provoke too far the enmity of Philip the Second, her
brother-in-law, and a late suitor for her hand. As if any better way could
be found of warding off from her island the assaults of Philip than by
rendering efficient aid to Conde and Orange! As if England's dissimulation
and refusal to support the "Huguenots" and the "Gueux" in any other than
an underhand way were likely to retard the sailing of the great expedition
that was to turn the Pope's impotent threats against the "bastard of
England" into fearful realities! As if Protestantism, everywhere menaced,
could hope for glorious success in any other path than a bold and combined
defence![636] Unfortunately Elizabeth was fairly launched on a sea of
deceitful diplomacy, and not even Cecil could hold her back. She gave La
Mothe Fenelon, the French envoy, assurances that would have been most
satisfactory could he have closed his eyes to the facts that gave these
assurances the lie direct. At one time, with an appearance of sincerity,
she told the Spanish ambassador, it is true, that she could not abandon
the family of Chatillon, who had long been her friends, whilst she saw the
Guises, the declared enemies of her person and state, in such authority,
both in the council and the field; that she could not feel herself secure,
especially since a member of the French council had inadvertently dropped
the hint that, after everything had been settled at home, Charles would
turn his arms against England. She had rather, consequently, anticipate
than be anticipated.[637] But to La Mothe Fenelon himself she maintained
unblushingly that, so far from helping the French Protestants, "there was
nothing in the world of which she entertained such horror as of seeing a
body rising in rebellion against its head, and that she had no notion of
associating herself with such a monster."[638] And again and again she
protested that she was not intriguing in France--that she had sent the
Huguenots no assistance.[639] At the same time Admiral Winter had been
despatched with four or five ships of war and a fleet of merchantmen, to
carry to La Rochelle, in answer to the request of Conde and of the Queen
of Navarre, 100,000 "angelots" and six pieces of cannon and
ammunition.[640] When the ambassador was commissioned to lay before the
queen a remonstrance against this flagrant breach of neutrality, and to
demand an answer, within fifteen days, respecting her intentions,[641]
Elizabeth, in declaring for peace, had the effrontery to assert that the
assistance in cannon and powder (for she denied that any money was left at
La Rochelle) was involuntary, not only with her, but even with the admiral
himself. Having dropped into the harbor to obtain the wine and other
commodities with which his fleet of merchantmen were to be freighted,
Admiral Winter was approached by the governor of the city, who so strongly
pressed him to sell or lend them some pieces of artillery and some powder,
which they could not do without, that, considering that he, as well as the
ships, were in their power, he thought it necessary to comply with a part
of their requests, although it was against his will.[642] Such were the
paltry falsehoods to which Elizabeth's insincere course naturally and
directly led. La Mothe Fenelon was well aware that Admiral Winter, besides
his public commission, had been furnished with a secret order, authorizing
him to assist La Rochelle, signed by Elizabeth's own hand, without which
the wary old seaman absolutely refused to go, doubtless fearing that he
might be sacrificed when it suited his mistress's crooked policy. What the
order contained was no mystery to the French envoy.[643] Neither party in
this solemn farce was deceived, but both wanted peace. Catharine would
have been even more vexed than surprised had Elizabeth confessed the
truth, and so necessitated a resort to open hostilities.[644] As the honor
of the government was satisfied, even by the notoriously false story of
Winter's compulsion, there was no necessity for pressing the question of
its veracity to an inconvenient length.
[Sidenote: Fruitless sieges and plots.]
The cold winter of 1568-1569 passed without signal events, excepting the
great mortality among the soldiers of both camps from an epidemic
disease--consequent upon exposure to the extraordinary severity of the
season--and the fruitless siege of the city of Sancerre by the Roman
Catholics. Five weeks were the troops of Martinengo detained before the
walls of this small place, whose convenient proximity to the upper Loire
rendered it valuable to the Huguenots, not only as a means of facilitating
the introduction of their expected German auxiliaries into central France,
but still more as a refuge for their allies in the neighboring provinces.
The bravery of the besieged made them superior to the forces sent to
dislodge them. They repulsed, with great loss to their enemies, two
successive assaults on different parts of the works, and, at last, gaining
new courage from the advantages they had obtained, assumed the offensive,
and forced Martinengo and the captains by whom he had been reinforced to
retire humiliated from the hopeless undertaking.[645] Meantime, in not
less than three important cities which the Huguenots hoped to gain without
striking a blow, the plans of those who were to have admitted the
Protestants within the walls failed in the execution; and Dieppe, Havre,
and Lusignan remained in the power of the Roman Catholic party.[646]
[Sidenote: Growing superiority of Anjou's forces.]
At the opening of the spring campaign the Prince of Conde found his
position relatively to his opponents by no means so favorable as at the
close of the previous year. His loss by disease equalled, his loss by
desertion exceeded, that of the Duke of Anjou; for it was impossible for
troops serving at their own expense, however zealous they might be for the
common cause, to be kept together, especially during a season of inaction,
so easily as the forces paid out of the royal treasury. Besides this, the
Duke of Anjou had received considerable reinforcements. Two thousand two
hundred German reiters, under the Rhinegrave and Bassompierre, had arrived
in his camp. They were the first division of a force of five thousand six
hundred men who had crossed the Rhine, near the end of December, under
Philibert, Marquis of Baden, and others. The young Count de Tende brought
three thousand foot soldiers from Provence and Dauphiny, and smaller
bodies came in from other parts of France.[647] Conde, on the contrary,
had received scarcely any accessions to his troops. The "viscounts," whose
arrival had turned the scale at the conclusion of the last war, lingered
in Guyenne, with an army of six thousand foot soldiers and a
well-appointed cavalry force, preferring to protect the Protestant
territories about Montauban and Castres, and to ravage the lands of their
enemies, as far as to the gates of Toulouse, rather than leave their homes
unprotected and join Conde. A dispute respecting precedence had not been
without some influence in causing the delay, and M. de Piles, who had been
twice sent to urge them forward, had only succeeded in bringing a corps
of one thousand two hundred arquebusiers and two hundred horse.[648] It
was now expected, however, that realizing the vital importance of opposing
to Anjou a powerful Protestant army, the viscounts would abandon their
short-sighted policy; and it was the intention of Conde and Coligny, after
effecting a junction, to march with the combined armies to meet the Duke
of Deux-Ponts. Anticipating this plan, the court had despatched the Dukes
of Aumale and of Nemours to guard the entrance into France from the side
of Germany. There seemed to be danger that the precaution would prove
ineffectual through the jealousy existing between the two leaders; but
this danger Catharine attempted to avert by removing the royal court to
Metz, where she could exert her personal influence in reconciling the
ambitious rivals.[649] In order to prevent the threatened union of Conde
and the viscounts, the Duke of Anjou now left his winter quarters upon the
Loire and moved southward. On the other hand, the Prince of Conde left
Niort, and, pursuing a course nearly parallel, passed through St. Jean
d'Angely to Saintes, thence diverging to Cognac, on the Charente.[650]
[Sidenote: The armies meet on the Charente.]
The Charente, although by no means one of the largest rivers of France,
well deserves to be called one of the most capricious. For about a quarter
of its length it runs in a northwesterly direction. At Civray it abruptly
turns southward and flows in a meandering course as far as Angouleme,
receiving on the way the waters of the Tardouere (Tardoire), and with it
almost completely inclosing a considerable tract of land. At Angouleme,
the old whim regaining supremacy, the Charente again bends suddenly
westward, and finally empties into the ocean below Rochefort, through a
narrow arm of the sea known as the Pertuis d'Antioche. The tract of
country included between the river and the shores of the Bay of Biscay,
comprising a large part of the provinces of Aunis and Saintonge, was in
the undisputed possession of the Huguenots. They held the right bank of
the river, and controlled the bridges. Here they intended to await the
arrival of the viscounts. Jarnac, an important town on this side, a few
miles above Cognac, Admiral Coligny with the advance guard of the prince's
army had wrested from the enemy. They had also recovered Chateauneuf, a
small place situated higher up, and midway between Jarnac and Angouleme.
In pursuance of his plan, the Duke of Anjou, after crossing the Charente
near Ruffec, had moved around to the south side, determined to prevent the
junction of the two Huguenot armies. Once more Chateauneuf fell into his
hands; but the garrison, after retreating to the opposite bank, had
destroyed the bridge behind them. This bridge the Roman Catholics set
themselves at once to repair. At the same time they began the construction
of a bridge of boats in the immediate vicinity. While these constructions
were pushed forward with great vigor, the royal army marched down as far
as Cognac and made a feint of attack, but retired after drawing from the
walls a furious cannonade. It was now that prudence demanded that the
Protestant army should withdraw from its advanced position with only the
Charente between its vanguard and the far superior forces of the enemy.
This was the advice of Coligny and of others in the council of war. But
Conde prevented its prompt execution, exclaiming: "God forbid that it
should ever be said that a Bourbon fled before his enemies!"[651]
[Sidenote: Battle of Jarnac, March 13, 1569.]
The bridges being now practicable, almost the whole army of Anjou was
thrown across the Charente under cover of the darkness, during the night
of the twelfth and thirteenth of March, only a small force remaining on
the left bank to protect Chateauneuf and the passage. So skilfully was
this movement effected that it escaped the observation even of those
divisions of the Protestant army that were close to the point of crossing.
When at length the admiral was advised that the enemy were in force on the
northern bank, he at once issued the order to fall back toward Conde and
the main body of the Huguenots. Unfortunately, the divisions of Coligny's
command were scattered; some had been discontented with the posts assigned
them, and had on their own responsibility exchanged them for others that
better suited their fancy. The very command to concentrate was obeyed with
little promptness, and the afternoon was more than half spent before
Coligny, and D'Andelot, who was with him, could begin the retreat. Never
was dilatoriness more ill-timed. The handful of men with the admiral, near
the abbey and hamlet of Bassac, fought with desperation, but could not
ward off the superior numbers of the enemy. La Noue, in command of the
extreme rear, with great courage drove back the foremost of the Roman
Catholics, but was soon overpowered and taken prisoner. His men were
thrown in disorder upon D'Andelot, who, by an almost superhuman effort,
not only sustained the shock, but retook and for a short time held the
abbey. D'Andelot was, however, in turn forced to yield the ground.
Meantime Coligny had called upon Conde for assistance, and the prince,
leaving his infantry to follow, had hurried back with the few horse that
were within reach, and now took position on the left. But it was
impossible for so unequal a struggle to continue long. The Huguenots were
outflanked and almost enclosed between their adversaries and the Charente.
It was a time for desperate and heroic venture. Coligny's forces had lost
the ground which they had been contesting inch by inch about a raised
causeway.
Conde himself had but three hundred knights. One of his arms he carried in
a sling, because of a recent injury. To render his condition yet more
deplorable, his thigh had just been broken, as he rode up, by a kick from
the unmanageable horse of his brother-in-law, La Rochefoucauld. The
prince was no coward. Turning to his little company of followers, he
exclaimed: "My friends, true noblesse of France, here is the opportunity
we have long wished for in vain! Our God is the God of Battles. He loves
to be so called. He always declares Himself for the right, and never fails
to succor those who serve Him. He will infallibly protect us, if, after
having taken up arms for the liberty of our consciences, we put all our
hope in Him. Come and let us complete what the first charges have begun;
and remember in what a state Louis of Bourbon entered into the combat for
Christ and for his native land!" Thus having spoken, he bent forward, and,
at the head of his devoted band, and under an ensign bearing for device
the figure of the Roman hero Marcus Curtius and the singularly appropriate
motto, "Doux le peril pour Christ et le Pays," he dashed upon a hostile
battalion eight hundred strong.[652]
[Sidenote: Death of Louis, Prince of Conde.]
The conflict was, in the judgment of that scarred old Huguenot warrior,
Agrippa d'Aubigne, the sharpest and most obstinate in all the civil
wars.[653] At last Conde's horse was killed under him, and the prince was
unable to extricate himself. The day was evidently lost, and Conde,
calling two of the enemies' knights with whom he was acquainted, and the
life of one of whom he had on a former occasion saved, raised his visor,
made himself known, and surrendered. His captors pledged him their word
that his life should be spared, and respectfully endeavored to raise him
from the ground. Just at that moment another horseman rode up. It was
Montesquiou, captain of Anjou's guards, who came directly from his master,
and was charged--so it was said--with a secret commission. He drew a
pistol as he approached, and, without inquiring into the terms of the
capture, shot Conde in the back. The shot penetrated between the joints of
his armor, and caused almost instantaneous death.
So perished a prince even more illustrious for his courage and intrepidity
than for his exalted rank--a prince who had conscientiously espoused the
reformed faith, and had felt himself constrained by his duty to his God
and to his fellow-believers to assert the rights of the oppressed
Huguenots against illegal persecution. "Our consolation," wrote Jeanne
d'Albret a few weeks later, "is that he died on the true bed of honor,
both for body and soul, for the service of his God and his king, and the
quiet of his fatherland."[654] So magnanimous a hero could not be
insensible to the invasion of his claims as the representative of the
family next in the succession to the Valois; but I cannot agree with those
who believe that, in his assumption of arms in three successive wars, he
was influenced solely, or even principally, by selfish or ambitious
motives. His devotion to the cause which he had espoused was sincere and
whole-souled. If his love of pleasure was a serious blot upon his
character, let charity at least reflect upon the fearful corruption of the
court in which he had been living from his childhood, and remember that if
Conde yielded too readily to its fascinations, and fell into shameful
excesses, he yet bore with meekness the pointed remonstrances of faithful
friends, and in the end shook off the chains with which his enemies had
endeavored to bind him fast.[655] As a soldier, no one could surpass Conde
for bravery.[656] If his abilities as a general were not of the very
first order, he had at least the good sense to adopt the plans of Gaspard
de Coligny, the true hero of the first four civil wars. The relations
between these two men were well deserving of admiration. On the part of
Conde there was an entire absence of jealousy of the resplendent abilities
and well-earned reputation of the admiral. On the part of Coligny there
was an equal freedom from desire to supplant the prince either in the
esteem of his followers or in military rank. Coligny was inflexible in his
determination to accept no honors or distinctions that might appear to
prejudice the respect due by a Chatillon to a prince of royal blood.[657]
The Prince of Conde was, unfortunately, not the only Huguenot leader
murdered in cold blood at the battle of Jarnac. Chastelier-Pourtaut de
Latour, who, having lately brought his flotilla back in safety to La
Rochelle, had hastened to take the field with the Protestants, was
recognized after his capture as the same nobleman who, five years before,
had killed the Sieur de Charry at Paris, and was killed in revenge by some
of Charry's friends. Robert Stuart, the brave leader descended from the
royal house of Scotland, who was said to have slain Constable Montmorency
in the battle of St. Denis, was assassinated after he had been talking
with the Duke of Anjou, within hearing and almost in sight of the duke, by
one of the constable's adherents.[658]
[Sidenote: Henry of Navarre remonstrates against the perfidy.]
These flagrant violations of good faith incurred severe animadversion. A
letter is extant, written by young Prince Henry of Navarre, or in his
name, to Henry of Anjou, on the twelfth of July, 1569, about four months
after the battle of Jarnac. He begins by answering the aspersions cast
upon his mother and himself, and by asserting that, if his age (which,
however, is not much less than that of Anjou) disqualifies him from
passing a judgment upon the present state of affairs, he has lived long
enough to recognize the instigators of the new troubles as the enemies of
the public weal. It is not Henry of Navarre, whose honors and dignities
are all dependent upon the preservation of France, who seeks the ruin of
the kingdom; but, rather, they seek its ruin who, in their eagerness to
usurp the crown, have gone the length of making genealogical searches to
prove their possession of a title superior to that of the Valois, "and
have learned how to sell the blood of the house of France against
itself,[659] _constraining the king_, as it were, _to make use of his left
arm to cut off his right_, so as more easily to wrest his sceptre from him
afterward." In reply to the statement of Anjou that Stuart alone was
killed in cold blood, Henry of Navarre affirms that he can enumerate many
others.[660] "But I shall content myself with merely reminding you of the
manner in which the late Prince of Conde was treated, inasmuch as it
touches you, Sir, and because it is a matter well known and free of doubt.
For his death has left to posterity an example of as noted treachery, bad
faith and cruelty as was ever shown, seeing that those, Sir, who murdered
him could not be deterred from the perpetration of so wicked an act by the
respect they owed to the greatness of your blood, to which he had the
honor of being so nearly related, and that they dealt with him as they
would have done with the most miserable soldier of the whole army."[661]
The Huguenot loss in the battle of Jarnac was surprisingly small in the
number of men killed. It is probable that, including prisoners, they lost
about four hundred men, or about twice as many as the Roman
Catholics.[662] But the loss was in effect much more considerable. The
dead and the prisoners were the flower of the French nobility. Among those
that had fallen into the enemy's hands were the bastard son of Antoine of
Navarre, Francois de la Noue, Soubise, La Loue, and others of nearly equal
distinction. Of infantry the Huguenot army lost but few men, as the
regiments, with the exception of that of Pluviaut, did not enter the
engagement at all. Coming up too late, and finding themselves in danger of
falling into the hands of the enemy's victorious cavalry, they evacuated
Jarnac, crossed to the left bank of the Charente, and, after breaking down
the bridge, retreated leisurely toward Cognac. Admiral Coligny, meantime,
upon whom the command in chief now devolved, diverged to the right, and
conducted the cavalry in safety to Saintes. The Roman Catholic army,
apparently satisfied with the success it had gained, made no attempt at
pursuit.
The Duke of Anjou entered Jarnac in triumph. With him was brought the
corpse of the Prince of Conde, tied to an ass's back, to be afterward
exposed by a pillar of the house where Anjou lodged--the butt of the
sneers and low wit of the soldiers.[663] In the first glow of exultation
over a victory, the real credit of which belonged to Gaspard de
Tavannes,[664] Anjou contemplated erecting a chapel on the spot where
Conde fell. The better counsels of M. de Carnavalet, however, induced him
to abandon a design which would have confirmed all the sinister rumors
respecting his complicity in the assassination.[665] The prince's dead
body was given up for interment to the Prince of Navarre, and found a
resting-place in the ancestral tomb at Vendome.[666]
[Sidenote: Exaggerated bulletins.]
Henry of Anjou was not inclined to suffer his victory to pass unnoticed.
Almost as soon as the smoke of battle had cleared away, a careful
description of his exploit was prepared for circulation, and it was no
fault of the compiler if the account he gave was not sufficiently
flattering to the young prince's vanity. Conde's body had not been four
days in the hands of the Roman Catholics, before Anjou wrote to his
brother, the King of France, announcing the fact that he had already
despatched messengers with the precious document to the Pope and the Duke
of Florence, to the Dukes of Savoy, Ferrara, Parma, and Urbino, to the
Republic of Venice and the Duke of Mantua, and to Philip of Spain; while
copies were also under way, intended for the French ambassadors in England
and Switzerland, for the Parliaments of Paris, Bordeaux, and Toulouse, the
"prevot des marchands," and the "echevins" of the capital, and
others.[667]
[Sidenote: The Pope's sanguinary injunctions.]
The exaggerated bulletins of the Duke of Anjou were received with great
demonstrations of joy by all the Roman Catholic allies of France. Pope
Pius the Fifth in particular sent warm congratulations to the "Most
Christian King" and to Catharine de' Medici. But he was very careful to
couple his expressions of thanks with an earnest recommendation to pursue
the work so auspiciously begun, even to the extermination of the detested
heretics. "The more kindly God has dealt with you and us," he promptly
wrote to Charles, "the more vigorously and diligently must you make use of
the present victory to pursue and destroy the remnants of the enemy, and
wholly tear up, not only the roots of an evil so great and which had
gathered to itself such strength, but even _the very fibres_ of the roots.
Unless they be thoroughly extirpated, they will again sprout and grow up
(as we have so often heretofore seen happen), where your Majesty least
expects it." Pius pledged his word that Charles would succeed in his
undertaking, "if no respect for men or for human considerations should be
powerful enough to induce him to spare God's enemies, who had spared
neither God nor him." "In no other way," he added, "will you be able to
appease God, than by avenging the injuries done to God with the utmost
severity, by the merited punishment of most accursed men." And he set as a
warning before the eyes of the French monarch the example of King Saul,
who, when commanded by God, through Samuel the Prophet, so to smite the
Amalekites, an infidel people, that none should escape, neither man nor
woman, neither infant nor suckling, incurred the anger and rejection of
the Almighty by sparing Agag and the best of the spoil, instead of utterly
destroying them.[668]
Two weeks later the pontiff received the unwelcome tidings that some of
the Huguenot prisoners taken in the battle of Jarnac had been spared. La
Noue, Soubise, and other gentlemen had actually been left alive, and were
likely to escape without paying the forfeit due to their crimes. At this
dreadful intelligence the righteous indignation of Pius was kindled. On
one and the same day (the thirteenth of April) he wrote long letters to
Catharine, to Anjou, to the Cardinal of Lorraine, to the Cardinal of
Bourbon, as well as to Charles himself.[669] Of all these letters the
tenor was identical. Such slackness to execute vengeance would certainly
provoke God's patience to anger; the king must visit condign punishment
upon the enemies of God and the rebels against his own authority. To the
victor of Jarnac he was specially urgent, supplicating him to counteract
any leanings that might be shown to an impious mercy. "Your brother's
rebels have disturbed the public tranquillity of the realm. They have, so
far as in them lay, subverted the Catholic religion, have burned churches,
have most cruelly slain the priests of Almighty God, have committed
numberless other crimes; consequently they deserve to receive those
extreme penalties (_supplicia_) that are ordained by the laws. And if any
of their number shall attempt, through the intercession of your nobles
with the king your brother, to escape the penalties they deserve, it is
your duty, in view of your piety to God and zeal for the divine honor, to
reject the prayers of all that intercede for them, and to show yourself
equally inexorable to all."[670]
[Sidenote: The sanguinary action of the Parliament of Bordeaux.]
Was it in consequence of the known desire of the occupant of the Holy See
that the policy of the French courts of justice became more and more
sanguinary? We can scarcely doubt that the Pope's injunctions had much to
do with these increasing severities. Beginning in March, 1569, the
Parliament of Bordeaux issued a series of decrees condemning a crowd of
Protestants to death. The names that appear upon the records within the
compass of one year number not less than _twelve hundred and seventeen_.
The victims were taken out of all grades of society--from noblemen,
military men, judges, priests and monks, down to humble mechanics and
laborers. The lists made out by their enemies prove at least one fact
which the Huguenots had long maintained: that they counted in their ranks
representatives of the first families of the country, as well as of every
other class of the population. Happily sentence was pronounced generally
upon the absent, and the barbarous punishment of beheading, quartering,
and exposing to the popular gaze, remained unexecuted. But the incidental
penalty of the confiscation of the property of reputed Huguenots, which,
so far from being a mere formal threat, was in fact the principal object
contemplated by the prosecution, proved to be sober reality, and the goods
of the banished Protestants afforded rich plunder to the informers.[671]
[Sidenote: Queen Elizabeth becomes colder.]
Upon Elizabeth of England the first effect of the reported victory at
Jarnac was clearly marked. Her favorite, the Earl of Leicester, assured
the French ambassador that, although the queen was sorry to see those
professing her religion maltreated, yet, as queen, she would arm in behalf
of Charles when fighting against his own subjects.[672] Her own
declarations, however, were not so strong, or perhaps, after a little
reflection, she took a more hopeful view of the fortunes of the Huguenots.
For, although she exhibited curiosity to hear the "true" account, which a
special messenger from Charles the Ninth was commissioned to bring her,
and received the tidings in a manner satisfactory to the French
ambassador, she would not rejoice at the death of Conde, whom she held to
be a very good and faithful servant of his Majesty's crown, and deplored a
war which, whether victory inclined to one side or the other, must lead to
the diminution of Charles's best forces and the ruin of his noblesse.[673]
[Sidenote: Spirit of the Queen of Navarre.]
In point of fact, however, the defeat which the royalists had flattered
themselves would terminate the war, and over which they had sung Te Deums,
weakened the Huguenots very little.[674] The Queen of Navarre, on hearing
the intelligence, hurried to Cognac, where she presented herself to the
army, and reminded the brave men who heard her voice that, although the
Prince of Conde, their late leader, was dead, the good cause was not dead;
and that the courage of such good men ought never to fail. God had
provided, and ever would provide, fresh instruments to uphold His own
chosen work. Her brief address restored the flagging spirits of the
fugitives. When she returned to La Rochelle, to devise new means of
supplying the necessities of the army, she left behind her men resolved to
retrieve their recent losses. They did not wait long for an opportunity.
The Roman Catholics, advancing, laid siege to Cognac, confident of easy
success. But the garrison, which included seven thousand infantry newly
levied, received them with determination. Sallies were frequent and
bloody, and when, at last, the siege was raised, the army of Anjou had
sacrificed nearly as many men before the walls of a small provincial city
as the Huguenots had lost on the much vaunted field of Jarnac.[675]
[Sidenote: The Huguenots recover strength.]
The events of the next two or three months certainly exhibited no
diminution in the power or in the spirit of the Huguenots. St. Jean
d'Angely, into which Count Montgomery had thrown himself, defied the
entire army of Anjou, and the siege was abandoned. Angouleme, an equally
tempting morsel, he tried to obtain, but failed. At Mucidan, a town
somewhat to the south-west of Perigueux, he was more successful. But he
effected its capture at the expense of the life of Brissac, one of his
bravest officers--a loss which he attempted to avenge by murdering the
garrison, after it had surrendered on condition that life and property
should be spared.[676] Within a month or two after the battle of Jarnac
the Protestants at La Rochelle wrote, for Queen Elizabeth's information,
that they were more powerful than ever, that Piles had brought them 4,000
recruits, that D'Andelot was soon to bring the viscounts with a large
force.[677]
[Sidenote: Death of D'Andelot.]
But the course of that indefatigable warrior was now run. D'Andelot's
excessive labors and constant exposure had brought on a fever to which his
life soon succumbed. There were not wanting those, it is true, who
ascribed his sudden death, like most of the deaths of important personages
in the latter part of this century, to poison; and Huguenot and loyal
pamphleteers alike laid the crime at the door of Catharine de'
Medici.[678] But there is no sufficient evidence to substantiate the
accusation, and we must not unnecessarily ascribe this base act to a woman
already responsible for too many undeniable crimes.[679] The death of so
gallant and true-hearted a nobleman, a faithful and unflinching friend of
the Reformation from the time when it first began to spread extensively
among the higher classes of the French population, and who had amply
atoned for a momentary act of weakness, in the time of Henry the Second,
by an uncompromising profession of his religion on every occasion during
the reigns of that monarch's two sons, was deeply felt by his comrades in
arms. As "colonel-general of the French infantry," he had occupied the
first rank in this branch of the service,[680] and his experience was as
highly prized as his impetuous valor upon the field of battle. The
brilliancy of his executive abilities seemed to all beholders
indispensable to complement the more calm and deliberative temperament of
his elder brother. It was natural, therefore, that the admiral, while
pouring out his private grief for one who had been so dear to him, in a
touching letter to D'Andelot's children,[681] should experience as deep a
sorrow for the loss of his wise and efficient co-operation. He might be
pardoned a little despondency as he recalled the prophetic words that had
dropped from D'Andelot's lips during a brief respite from his burning
fever: "France shall have many woes to suffer with you, and then without
you; but all will in the end fall upon the Spaniard!"[682] The prospect
was not bright. Peace was yet far distant--peace, which Coligny preferred
a thousand times to his own life, but would not purchase dishonorably by
the sacrifice of civil liberty and of the right to worship his God
according to the convictions of his heart and conscience. The burden of
the defence of the Protestants had appeared sufficiently heavy when Conde,
a prince of the blood, was alive to share it with him. But now, with the
entire charge of maintaining the party against a powerful and determined
enemy, who had the advantage of the possession of the person of the king,
and thus was able to cloak his ambitious designs with the pretence of the
royal authority, and deprived of a brother whom the army had appropriately
surnamed "le chevalier sans peur,"[683] the task might well appear to
demand herculean strength.
[Sidenote: New responsibility imposed on Admiral Coligny.]