Henry of Navarre had, indeed, just been recognized as general-in-chief,

and he was accompanied by his cousin, Henry of Conde; but Navarre was a

boy of little more than fifteen, and his cousin was not much older.

Nothing could for the present be expected from such striplings; and the

public, ever ready to look upon the comical side of even the most serious

matters, was not slow in nicknaming them the "admiral's two pages."[684]

Coligny, however, was not crushed by the new responsibility which devolved

upon him. No longer hampered by the authority of one whose counsels often

verged on foolhardiness, he soon exhibited his consummate abilities so

clearly, that even his enemies were forced to acknowledge that they had

never given him the credit he deserved. "It was soon perceived," observes

an author by no means friendly to the Huguenots, "that the accident (of

Conde's death) had happened only in order to reveal in all its splendor

the merits of the Admiral de Chatillon. The admiral had had during his

entire life very difficult and complicated matters to unravel, and,

nevertheless, he had never had any that were not far below his abilities,

and in which, consequently, he had no need of exerting his full capacity.

Thus those qualities that were rarest, and that exalted him most above

others, remained hidden, through lack of opportunity, and would apparently

have remained always concealed during the lifetime of the Prince of Conde,

because the world would have attributed to the prince all those results to

whose accomplishment it could not learn that the admiral had contributed

more than had the former. But, after the battle of Jarnac had permitted

the admiral to exhibit himself fully on the most famous theatre of Europe,

the Calvinists perceived that they were not so unhappy as they thought,

since they still had a leader who would prevent them from noticing the

loss they had experienced, so many singular qualities had he to repair

it."[685]

[Sidenote: The Duke of Deux Ponts comes with German auxiliaries.]

Wolfgang, Duke of Deux Ponts, had at length entered France, and was

bringing to the Huguenots their long-expected succor. He had seven

thousand five hundred reiters from lower Germany, six thousand lansquenets

from upper Germany, and a body of French and Flemish gentlemen, under

William of Orange and his brother, Mouy, Esternay and others, which may

have swelled his army to about seventeen thousand men in all.[686] In

vain did his cousin, the Duke of Lorraine, attempt to dissuade him,

offering to reimburse him the one hundred thousand crowns he had already

spent upon the preparations for the expedition. Even Conde's death did not

discourage him. He came, he said, to fight, not for the prince, but for

"the cause."[687] When about entering his Most Christian Majesty's

dominions, he had published the reasons of his coming to assist the

Huguenots. In this paper he treated as pure calumnies the accusations

brought by their enemies against Conde, Coligny, and their associates, and

proved his position by quoting the king's own express declaration, in the

recent edicts of pacification, "that he recognized everything they had

attempted as undertaken by his orders and for the good of the

kingdom."[688] The point was certainly well taken. Charles's various

declarations were not remarkably consistent. In one, Conde was "his

faithful servant and subject," and his acts were prompted by the purest of

motives. In the next, he and his fellow-Huguenots were incorrigible

rebels, with whom every method of conciliation had signally failed. But

Charles did not trouble himself to attempt to smooth away these

contradictions. He is even said to have replied to the envoy whom Deux

Ponts sent him (April, 1569), demanding the restitution of the Edict of

January and the payment of thirty thousand crowns due to Prince Casimir,

that "Deux Ponts was too insignificant a personage (_trop petit

compagnon_) to undertake to dictate laws to him, and that, as to the

money, he would deliberate about _that_ when the duke had laid down his

arms."[689]

The secret of this arrogant demeanor is found in the fact that the court

believed it impossible for the Germans to join Coligny. Even so late as

the middle of May, when Deux Ponts had penetrated to Autun in Burgundy,

Charles regarded the attempt as well nigh hopeless. The fortunes of the

Huguenots were desperate. "There remains for them as their last resort,"

he wrote to one of his ambassadors, "but the single hope that the Duke of

Deux Ponts will venture so far as to go to find them where they are. But

there is little likelihood that an army of strangers, pursued by another

of about equal strength--an army destitute of cities of its own, without

means of passing the rivers, favored by no one in my kingdom, dying of

hunger, so often harassed and put to inconvenience--should be able to make

so long a journey without being lost and dissipated of itself, even had I

no forces to combat it." "The duke," continued the king, "will soon repent

of his mad project of entering France, and attempting to cross the Loire,

where such good provision has been made to obstruct him."[690]

[Sidenote: They overcome all obstacles and join Coligny.]

[Sidenote: Death of Deux Ponts.]

Charles had not exaggerated the difficulties of the undertaking; but Deux

Ponts, under the blessing of Heaven, surmounted them all. The discord

between Aumale and Nemours rendered weak and useless an army that might,

in the hands of a single skilful general, have checked or annihilated

him.[691] Mouy and his French comrades were good guides. The Loire was

reached, while Aumale and Nemours followed at a respectful distance.

Guerchy, an officer lately belonging to Coligny's army, discovered a ford

by which a part of the Germans crossed. The main body laid siege to the

town of La Charite, which was soon reduced (on the twentieth of May), the

Huguenots thus gaining a bridge and stronghold that proved of great

utility for their future operations. Six days after the king had

demonstrated the impossibility of the enterprise, Deux Ponts was on the

western side of the Loire.[692] Meantime, Coligny and La Rochefoucauld

were advancing to meet him with the elite of their army and with all the

artillery they had. On approaching Limoges on the Vienne, they learned

that the Germans had crossed the river and were but two leagues distant.

Coligny at once took horse, and rode to their encampment, in order to

greet and congratulate their leader. He was too late. The general, who had

conducted an army five hundred miles through a hostile country, was in the

last agonies of death, and on the next day (the eleventh of June) fell a

victim to a fever from which he had for some time been suffering. "It is a

thing that ought for all time to be remarked as a singular and special act

of God," said a bulletin sent by the Queen of Navarre to Queen Elizabeth,

"that He permitted this prince to traverse so great an extent of country,

with a great train of artillery, infantry, and baggage, and in full view

of a large army; and to pass so many rivers, and through so many difficult

and dangerous places, of such kind that it is not in the memory of man

that an army has passed through any similar ones, and by which a single

wagon could not be driven without great trouble, so that it appears a

dream to those who have not seen it; and that being out of danger, and

having arrived at the place where he longed to be, in order to assist the

churches of this realm, God should have been pleased, that very day, to

take him to Himself; and, what is more, that his death should have

produced no change or commotion in his army."[693]

Duke Wolfgang of Deux Ponts was quietly succeeded in the command of the

German troops by Count Wolrad of Mansfeld. A day later the two armies met

with lively demonstrations of joy. In honor of the alliance thus cemented

a medal was struck, bearing on the one side the names and portraits of

Jeanne and Henry of Navarre, and on the other the significant words,

"_Pax certa, victoria integra, mors honesta_"--the triple object of their

desires.[694]

[Sidenote: Huguenot success at La Roche Abeille.]

The combined army, now numbering about twenty-five thousand men, soon came

to blows with the enemy. The Duke of Anjou, whose forces were somewhat

superior in numbers, had approached within a very short distance of

Coligny, but, unwilling to risk a general engagement, had intrenched

himself in an advantageous position. A part of his army, commanded by

Strozzi, lay at La Roche Abeille, where it was furiously assaulted by the

Huguenots. Over four hundred royalists were left dead upon the field, and

Strozzi himself was taken prisoner. The disaster had nearly proved still

more serious; but a violent rain saved the fugitives by extinguishing the

lighted matches upon which the infantry depended for the discharge of

their arquebuses, and by seriously impeding the pursuit of the

cavalry.[695]

[Sidenote: Furlough of Anjou's troops.]

Although the Duke of Anjou had recently received considerable

reinforcements--about five thousand pontifical troops and twelve hundred

Florentines, under the command of Sforza, Count of Santa Fiore[696]--it

was now determined in a military council to disband the greater part of

the army, giving to the French forces a short furlough, and, for the most

part, trusting to the local garrisons to maintain the royal supremacy in

places now in the possession of the Roman Catholics. In adopting this

paradoxical course, the generals seem to have been influenced partly by a

desire to furnish the "gentilhommes," serving at their own expense, an

opportunity to revisit their homes and replenish their exhausted purses,

and thus diminish the temptation to desertion which had thinned the ranks;

partly, also, by the hope that the new German auxiliaries of the Huguenots

would of themselves melt away in a climate to which they were

unaccustomed.[697]

[Sidenote: Huguenot petition to the king.]

Meanwhile, the admiral, whose power had never been so great as it now was,

exhibited the utmost anxiety to avert, if possible, any further effusion

of blood. Under his auspices a petition was drawn up in the name of the

Queen of Navarre, and the Princes, Seigneurs, Chevaliers, and gentlemen

composing the Protestant army. A messenger was sent to the Duke of Anjou

to request a passport for the deputies who were to carry it to the court.

But the duke was unwilling to terminate a war in which he had (whether

deservedly or not) acquired so much reputation, and reluctant to be forced

to resume the place of a subject near a brother whose capricious and

jealous humor he had already experienced. He therefore either refused or

delayed compliance with the admiral's demand.[698] Coligny succeeded,

however, in forwarding the document to his cousin Francis, Marshal of

Montmorency--a nobleman who, although he had not taken up arms with the

Huguenots, virtually maintained, on his estates near Paris, a neutrality

which, from the suspicion it excited, was not without its perils.

Montmorency laid the petition before Catharine and the king.

[Sidenote: The single purpose of the Huguenots.]

The voluminous state papers of the period would possess little claim to

our attention, were it not for the singleness of purpose which they

exhibit as animating the patriotic party through a long succession of

bloody wars. The Huguenots were no rebels seeking to undermine the

authority of the crown, no obstinate democrats striving to carry into

execution an impracticable scheme of government,[699] no partisans

struggling to supplant a rival faction. They were not turbulent lovers of

change. They had for their leaders princes and nobles with interests all

on the side of the maintenance of order, men whose wealth was wasted,

whose magnificent palaces were plundered of their rich contents,[700]

whose lives, with the lives of their wives and children, were jeoparded in

times of civil commotion. Even the unauthorized usurpations of the

foreigners from Lorraine[701] would not have been sufficient to move the

greater part of them to a resort to the sword. Their one purpose, the sole

object which they could not renounce, was the securing of religious

liberty. The Guises--even that cruel and cowardly cardinal with hands

dripping with the blood of the martyrs of a score of years--were nothing

to them, except as impersonations of the spirit of intolerance and

persecution. Liberty to worship their God in good conscience was their

demand alike after defeats and after successes, under Louis de Bourbon or

under Gaspard de Coligny. They did, indeed, sympathize with the first

family of the blood, deprived of the position near the throne to which

immemorial custom entitled it--and what true Frenchman did not? But

Admiral Coligny, rather than the Prince of Conde, was the type of the

Huguenot of the sixteenth century--Coligny, the heroic figure that looms

up through the mist of the ages and from among the host of meaner men,

invested with all the attributes of essential greatness--pious, loyal,

truthful, brave, averse to war and bloodshed, slow to accept provocation,

resolute only in the purpose to secure for himself and his children the

most important among the inalienable prerogatives of manhood, the freedom

of professing and practising his religious faith.

The present petition differed little from its predecessors. It reiterated

the desire of the Huguenots for peace--a desire evidenced on so many

occasions, sometimes when prudence might have dictated a course opposite

to that which they adopted. The return they had received for their

moderation could be read in broken edicts, and in "pacifications" more

sanguinary than the wars they terminated. The Protestant princes and

gentlemen, therefore, entreated Charles "to make a declaration of his will

respecting the liberty of the exercise of the reformed religion in the

form of a solemn, perpetual, and irrevocable edict." They begged him "to

be pleased to grant universally to all his subjects, of whatever quality

or condition they might be, the free exercise of that religion in all the

cities, villages, hamlets, and other places of his kingdom, without any

exception, reservation, modification, or restriction as to persons, times,

or localities, with the necessary and requisite securities." True,

however, to the spirit of the age, which dreaded unbridled license of

opinion as much as it did the intolerance of the papal system, the

Huguenots were careful to preclude the "Libertines" from sheltering

themselves beneath this protection, by calling upon Charles to require of

all his subjects the profession of the one or the other religion[702]--so

far were even the most enlightened men of their country and period from

understanding what spirit they were of, so far were they from recognizing

the inevitable direction of the path they were so laboriously pursuing!

It scarcely needs be said that the petition received no attention from a

court not yet tired of war. Marshal Montmorency was compelled to reply to

Coligny, on the twentieth of July, that Charles refused to take notice of

anything emanating from the admiral or his associates until they should

submit and return to their duty. Coligny answered in a letter which closed

the negotiations; protesting that since his enemies would listen to no

terms of accommodation, he had, at least, the consolation of having done

all in his power to avert the approaching desolation of the kingdom, and

calling upon God and all the princes of Europe to bear witness to the

integrity of his purpose.[703]

[Sidenote: Coligny's plans overruled.]

[Sidenote: Disastrous siege of Poitiers.]

The Huguenots now took some advantage of the temporary weakness of the

enemy in the open field. On the one hand they reduced the city of

Chatellerault and the fortress of Lusignan, hitherto deemed

impregnable.[704] On the other, they despatched into Bearn the now famous

Count Montgomery, who, joining the "viscounts," was successful in wresting

the greater part of that district from the hands of Terrides, a skilful

captain sent by Anjou, and in restoring it to the Queen of Navarre.[705]

Respecting their plan of future operations a great diversity of opinion

prevailed among the Huguenot leaders. Admiral Coligny was strongly in

favor of pressing on to the north, and laying siege to Saumur. With this

place in his possession, as it was reasonable to suppose it soon might be,

he would enjoy a secure passage across the river Loire into Brittany,

Anjou, and more distant provinces, as he already had access by the bridge

of La Charite to Burgundy, Champagne, and the German frontier.

Unfortunately the majority of the generals regarded it as a matter of more

immediate importance to capture Poitiers, a rich and populous city, said

at that time to cover more ground than any other city in France, with the

single exception of Paris. They supposed that their recent successes at

Chatellerault and Lusignan, on either side of Poitiers, and the six pieces

of cannon they had taken at Lusignan would materially help them. Coligny

reluctantly yielded to their urgency, and the army which had appeared

before Poitiers on the twenty-fourth of July, 1569,[706] began the siege

three days later. It was a serious blunder. The Huguenots succeeded,

indeed, in capturing a part of the suburbs, and in reducing the garrison

to great straits for food; but they were met with great determination, and

with a singular fertility of expedient. The Count de Lude was the royal

governor. Henry, Duke of Guise (son of the nobleman assassinated near

Orleans in 1563), with his brother Charles, Duke of Mayenne, and other

good captains, had thrown himself into Poitiers two days before Coligny

made his appearance. It was Guise's first opportunity to prove to the

world that he had inherited his father's military genius; and the glory of

success principally accrued to him. He met the assailants in the breach,

and contested every inch of ground. Their progress was obstructed by

chevaux-de-frise and other impediments. Boiling oil was poured upon them

from the walls. Burning hoops were adroitly thrown over their heads. Pitch

and other inflammable substances fell like rain upon their advancing

columns. They were not even left unmolested in their camp. A dam was

constructed on the river Clain, and the inundation spread to the Huguenot

quarters. To these difficulties raised by man were added the ravages of

disease. Many of the Huguenot generals, and the admiral himself, were

disabled, and the mortality was great among the private soldiers.

In spite of every obstacle, however, it seemed probable that Coligny would

carry the day. "The admiral's power exceedeth the king's," wrote Cecil to

Nicholas White: "he is sieging of Poitiers, the winning or losing whereof

will make an end of the cause. He is entered within the town by assault,

but the Duke of Guise, etc., are entrenched in a stronger part of the

town; and without the king give a battle, it is thought that he cannot

escape from the admiral."[707] Just at this moment, the Duke of Anjou,

assembling the remnants of his forces, appeared before Chatellerault; and

the peril to the Huguenot city seemed so imminent, that Coligny was

compelled to raise the siege of Poitiers, on the ninth of September, and

hasten to its relief. Seven weeks of precious time had been lost, and more

than two thousand lives had been sacrificed by the Huguenots in this

ill-advised undertaking. The besieged lost but three or four hundred

men.[708] Great was the delight manifested in Paris, where, during the

prevalence of the siege, solemn processions had gone from Notre Dame to

the shrine of Sainte Genevieve, to implore the intercession of the patron

of the city in behalf of Poitiers.[709]

Meanwhile the Huguenots had been more fortunate on the upper Loire, where

La Charite sustained a siege of four weeks by a force of seven thousand

Roman Catholics under Sansac. Its works were weak, its garrison small, but

every assault was bravely met. In the end the assailants, after severe

losses experienced from the enemy and from a destructive explosion of

their own magazine, abandoned their enterprise in a panic, on hearing an

ill-founded rumor of Coligny's approach.[710]

[Sidenote: Cruelties to the Huguenots in the prisons of Orleans.]

It was fortunate for the Protestants of the north and east that they

still had Sancerre and La Charite as asylums from the violence of their

enemies. Far from their armed companions, there was little protection for

their lives or their property. The edict of the preceding September,

assuring to peaceable Protestants freedom from molestation in their homes,

was as much a dead letter as any of its predecessors. The government, the

courts of justice, and the populace, were equally eager to oppress them.

At Orleans the "lieutenant-general" placed all the Huguenots of the city,

without distinction of age or sex, in the public prisons, upon pretext of

providing for the public security. A few days after (on the twenty-first

of August) the people, inflamed to fanaticism by seditious priests,

attacked these buildings. They succeeded in breaking into the first

prison, and every man, woman, and child was murdered. The door of the

second withstood all their attempts to gain admission. But the

bloodthirsty mob would not be balked of its prey. The whole neighborhood

was ransacked for wood and other combustible materials, and willing hands

kindled the fire. As the flames rose high above the doomed house, parents

who had lost all hope of saving their own lives sought to preserve the

lives of their infant children by throwing them to relatives or

acquaintances whom they recognized among their persecutors. But there are

times when the heart of man knows no pity. The laymen who had been taught

that heretics must be exterminated, even to the babe in the cradle, now

put into practice the savage lesson they had learned from their spiritual

instructors. Fathers and brothers took a cruel pleasure in receiving the

hapless infants on the point of their pikes, or in despatching them with

halberds, reserving the same fate for any of more mature age who might

venture to appeal from the devouring flames to their merciless fellow-men.

The number of the victims of sword and fire is said to have reached two

hundred and eighty persons.[711]

[Sidenote: Montargis a safe refuge.]

[Sidenote: Flight of the refugees to Sancerre.]

The tragic end of the Huguenots at Orleans warned the Protestants of the

villages and open country of the dangers to which they were exposed. Many

fled with their wives and children to Montargis, where the aged Renee of

Ferrara was still living, the unwilling spectator of commotions which she

had foreseen and predicted, and which she had striven to prevent. Her

palace was still what Calvin had called it in the time of the first war,

"God's hostelry." Renee's royal descent, her connection by marriage with

the Guises--for Henry, the present duke, was her grandson--her well-known

aversion to civil war,[712] and, added to these, that demeanor which ever

betrayed a consciousness that she was a king's daughter, had thus far

protected her from direct insult, staunch and avowed Protestant as she

was, and had enabled her to extend to a host of fugitives for religion's

sake a hospitality which had not yet been invaded. But, the rancor

entertained by the two parties increasing in bitterness as the third

conflict advanced, it became more and more difficult to repress the

impatience felt by the fanatics of Paris to rid themselves of an asylum

for the adherents of the hated faith within so short a distance--about

seventy miles--of the orthodox capital. Montargis was narrowly watched.

Early in March the duchess was warned, in a letter, of pretended plans

formed by the refugees on her lands to succor their friends elsewhere in

the vicinity--the writer being no other than the adventurer Villegagnon,

the former vice-admiral, the betrayer of Coligny's Huguenot colony to

Brazil, who was now in the Roman Catholic service, under the Duke of

Anjou.[713] But the fresh flood of refugees to Montargis rendered further

forbearance impossible. The preachers stirred up the people, and the

people incited the king. Renee was told that she must dismiss the Huguenot

preachers, or submit to receiving a Roman Catholic garrison in her castle;

that the exercise of the Protestant religion could no longer be tolerated,

and the fugitives must find another home. The duchess could no longer

resist the superior forces of her enemies, and tearfully she provided the

miserable Huguenots for their journey with such wagons as she could find.

The company consisted of four hundred and sixty persons, two-thirds women

and infants in the arms of their mothers. Scarcely knowing whither to

direct their steps, they fled toward the Loire, and hastened to place the

river between them and their pursuers. The precaution availed them little.

They had barely reached the vicinity of Chatillon-sur-Loire,[714] when the

approach of Cartier with a detachment of light horse and mounted

arquebusiers was announced; and the defenceless throng, knowing that no

pity could be expected from men whose hands had already been imbrued in

the blood of their fellow-believers, and being exhorted by their ministers

to meet death calmly, knelt down upon the ground and awaited the terrible

onset. At that very instant, between the hillocks in another direction,

and somewhat nearer to the fugitives, a band of cavalry made its

appearance. They numbered some one hundred and twenty men, and, as they

rode up, were taken for the advance guard of their persecutors. But, on

coming nearer and recognizing some of the kneeling suppliants, the knights

threw off their cloaks and displayed their white cassocks, the badge of

the adherents of the house of Navarre. They were two cornets of Huguenot

horse, on their way from Berry to La Charite, under the command of Bourry,

Teil, and other captains. In the midst of the tearful acclamations of the

women, their new friends turned upon the exultant pursuers, and so bravely

did they fight that the Roman Catholics soon fled, leaving eighty men and

two standards on the field. The Huguenot knights, who had so

providentially become their deliverers, escorted the fugitives from

Montargis to Sancerre and La Charite, where they remained in safety until

the conclusion of peace.[715]

[Sidenote: The "Croix de Gastines."]

Meantime the courts of justice emulated the example of cruelty set them by

the government and the mob. In May they began by sending to the gallows on

the Place Maubert, in Paris, a student barely twenty-two years of age, for

having taught some children the Huguenot doctrines (huguenoterie),

"without any other crime," the candid chronicler adds. After so fair a

beginning there was no difficulty in finding good subjects for hanging.

Accordingly, on the thirtieth of June, three victims more were sacrificed

on the old Place de Greve, "partly for heresy and for celebrating the

Lord's Supper in their house; partly"--so it was pretended--"for having

assisted in demolishing altars." In the great number of similar executions

with which the sanguinary records of Paris abound, the fate of Nicholas

Croquet and the two De Gastines--father and son--would have been

forgotten, but for the extraordinary measures taken in respect to the

house where the impiety had been committed of celebrating the Lord's

Supper according to the simple scheme of its first institution. The

Parisian parliament ordered that "the house of the Five White Crosses,

belonging to the De Gastines, situated in the Rue Saint Denis," should be

razed to the ground, and that upon the site a stone cross should be

placed, with an inscription explanatory of the occasion of its erection.

That spot was to serve as a public square for all time, and a fine of

6,000 livres, with corporal punishment, was imposed upon any one who

should ever undertake to build upon it.[716] It was not foreseen that

military exigencies might presently render imperative a reconciliation

with the Huguenots, and that the "perpetual" decree of parliament, like

the "irrevocable" edicts of the king, might be somewhat abridged by stern

necessity.

[Sidenote: Ferocity of parliament against Coligny and others.]

[Sidenote: A price set on the head of the admiral.]

The work of blood continued. In July two noblemen were decapitated--the

Baron de Laschene and the Baron de Courtene--and denunciation of reputed

heretics was vigorously prosecuted, by command of parliament and of the

city curates.[717] Two months later a cowardly but impotent blow was

struck at a more distinguished personage. Parliament undertook to try

Gaspard de Coligny, and, having found him guilty of treason (on the

thirteenth of September), pronounced him infamous, and offered a reward of

fifty thousand gold crowns for his apprehension, with full pardon for any

offences the captor might have committed. Lest the exploit, however,

should be deemed too difficult for execution, a few days later (on the

twenty-eighth of September) the same liberal terms were held out to any

one who should murder him. As it was not so easy to capture or

assassinate a general who was at that moment in command of an army not

greatly inferior to that of the Duke of Anjou, the court gave the Parisian

populace the cheaper spectacle of a hanging of the admiral in effigy. It

was the eve of the festival of "the Exaltation of the Cross"--Tuesday, the

thirteenth of September--and the time was deemed appropriate for the

execution of so determined an enemy of the worship of that sacred emblem.

While Coligny's escutcheon was dragged in dishonor through the streets by

four horses, the hangman amused the mob by giving to his effigy the

traditional tooth-pick, which he was said to be in the habit of

continually using--a facetious trait which the curate of St. Barthelemi,

of course, does not forget to insert in his brief diary.[718]

Nevertheless, that the decree of parliament setting a price upon the

admiral's head was no child's play, appeared about this time from the

abortive plot of one Dominique d'Albe, who confessed that he had been

hired to poison the Huguenot chief, and was hanged by order of the

princes.[719] Nor was it without practical significance that the decree

itself had been translated into Latin, Italian, Spanish, German, Flemish,

English, and Scotch, and scattered broadcast through Europe by the

partisans of Guise.

[Sidenote: The Huguenots weakened.]

Meantime the condition of the rival armies in western France promised

again, in the view of the court, a speedy solution of the military

problem. The Duke of Anjou had of late been heavily reinforced. With the

old troops that had returned to his standard, and the new troops that

poured in upon him, he had a well-appointed army of about twenty-seven

thousand men, of whom one-third were cavalry. Coligny, on the contrary,

had been so weakened by his losses at the siege of Poitiers, and by the

desertion of those whom disappointment at the delays and the expense of

the service had rendered it impossible to retain, that he was inferior to

his antagonist by nine or ten thousand men. He had only eleven or twelve

thousand foot and six thousand horse.[720] The Roman Catholic general

resolved to employ his preponderance of forces in striking a decisive

blow. This appeared the more desirable, since it was known that Montgomery

was returning from the reduction of Bearn, bringing with him six or seven

thousand veterans--an addition to the Huguenot army that would nearly

restore the equilibrium.

Leaving Chinon, where he had been for some time strengthening himself, the

Duke of Anjou crossed the swollen river Vienne, on the twenty-sixth of

September, and started in pursuit of the Huguenots. Coligny had been

resting his army at Faye, a small town about midway between Chinon and

Chatellerault. It was here that the attempt upon his life, to which

allusion has just been made, was discovered. And it was from this point

that the Prince of Orange started in disguise, and undertook, with forty

mounted companions, a perilous journey across France by La Charite to

Montbeliard, for the purpose of raising in Germany the fresh troops of

which the admiral stood in such pressing need.[721]

[Sidenote: Battle of Moncontour, October 3, 1569.]

The Huguenot general had moved westward, secretly averse to giving battle

before the arrival of Montgomery, but forced to show a readiness to fight

by the open impatience of his southern troops, and by the murmurs of the

Germans, who openly threatened to desert unless they were either paid or

led against the enemy. Within a couple of leagues of the town of

Moncontour, soon to gain historic renown, Coligny, believing the Roman

Catholics to be near, drew up his own men in order of battle (on the

thirtieth of September); but, receiving from his scouts the erroneous

information that there were no considerable bodies of the enemy in the

neighborhood, he resumed his march toward the town of which La Noue had

rendered himself master. The army was scarcely in motion before Mouy,

commanding the rear, was attacked by a heavy detachment of the Duke of

Anjou's vanguard, under the Duke of Montpensier. Mouy's handful of men

stood their ground well, now facing the enemy and driving him off, now

slowly retreating, and gave the rest of the Huguenot army the opportunity

of gaining the opposite side of a marshy tract, through which there flowed

a small stream. Then they themselves crossed, after losing about a hundred

of their number. Anjou neglected the chance here afforded him of gaining

an entire victory; and Coligny, after halting for a short time, drew off

toward Moncontour, which he reached on the next day without further

obstruction. The duke spent the night on the battle-field in token of

victory, and then started in pursuit; but, in order to avoid attack while

crossing the short, but deep river Dive, a tributary of the Loire which

flows by the walls of Moncontour, he turned to the left, and, rapidly

ascending to its sources, descended again on the opposite bank.

[Sidenote: Coligny wounded.]

[Sidenote: Heavy losses of the Huguenots.]

The admiral might still have succeeded in avoiding a capital engagement,

and in reaching Partenay or some other point of safety, had he not been

again embarrassed by the mutiny of the Germans, who, as usual, were most

urgent for pay on the eve of battle. As it was, before they could be

quieted, the duke had made up for his considerable detour, and overtook

the Protestants a short distance beyond Moncontour. Coligny, having given

command of the right wing to Count Louis of Nassau, interposed the left,

of which he himself assumed command, between the main body and the enemy,

hoping to get off with a mere skirmish.[722] In this he was disappointed.

Attacked in force, his troops made a sturdy resistance. The fight

resembled in some of its incidents the conflicts of the paladins of a

past age. The elder rhinegrave rode thirty paces in front of his Roman

Catholic knights; Coligny as far in advance of the Protestants. The two

leaders met in open field. The rhinegrave was killed on the spot. The

admiral received a severe injury in his face. The blood, gushing freely

from the wound, nearly strangled him before his visor could be raised.

Reluctantly he was compelled to retire to the rear of the army. Still the

tide of battle ran high. The Swiss troops of Anjou displayed their

accustomed valor. It was matched by that of the Huguenots, who several

times seemed on the point of winning the day, and already shouted,

"Victory! Victory!" The Duke of Anjou, who, however little he was entitled

to the credit of planning the engagement, certainly displayed great

courage in the contest itself, was at one time in extreme peril, and the

Marquis of Baden was killed while riding near him. On the other side, the

Princes of Bearn and Conde, who had come to the army from Partenay, to

encourage the soldiers by their presence, endeavored by word and example

to sustain the courage of the outnumbered Huguenots.[723] But at the

critical moment, when the Roman Catholic line had begun to give way,

Marshal Cosse, who as yet had not been engaged, advanced with his fresh

troops and changed the fortunes of the day. The personal valor of Louis of

Nassau was unavailing. The German reiters, routed and panic-stricken, fled

from the field. Encountering their own countrymen, the lansquenets or

German infantry, they broke through their ranks and threw them into

confusion. Into the breach thus made the Swiss poured in an irresistible

flood. Inveterate hatred now found ample opportunity for satisfaction.

The helpless lansquenets were slaughtered without mercy. No quarter was

given. One of the German colonels, who had been the foremost cause of the

morning's mutiny, and who had prevented his soldiers from fighting until

their wages were paid, now made them tie handkerchiefs to their pikes to

show that they surrendered; but they fared no better than the rest.[724]

Others kneeled and begged for mercy of their savage foes, crying in broken

French, "_Bon papiste, bon papiste moi!_" It was all in vain. Of four

thousand lansquenets that entered the action, barely two hundred escaped

with their lives. Three thousand French, enveloped by Anjou's cavalry,

were spared by the duke's express command, but not before one thousand of

their companions had been killed. In all, two thousand French foot

soldiers and three hundred knights perished on the field, while with the

valets and camp-followers the loss was much more considerable. La Noue was

again a prisoner in the enemy's hands. So also was the famous D'Acier. His

captor, Count Santa Fiore, received from Pius the Fifth a severe letter of

rebuke for "having failed to obey his commands _to slay at once every

heretic that fell into his hands_."[725]

The battle of Moncontour, fought on Monday, the third of October, 1569,

was a thorough success on the side of the Guises and of Catharine de'

Medici. Compared with it, the battle of Jarnac was only an insignificant

skirmish. Although, under the skilful conduct of Louis of Nassau and of

Wolrad of Mansfeld, the remnants of the army drew off to Airvault and

thence to Partenay, escaping the pursuit of Aumale and Biron, the Huguenot

losses were enormous, and the spirit of the soldiers was, for the time,

entirely crushed.[726] The Roman Catholics, on the contrary, had lost

scarcely any infantry, and barely five hundred horse, although among the

cavalry officers were several persons of great distinction.

[Sidenote: The Roman Catholics exulting.]

[Sidenote: Extravagance of parliament.]

Fame magnified the exploit, and exalted the Duke of Anjou into a hero.

Charles himself became still more jealous of his brother's growing

reputation. Pius the Fifth, on receipt of the tidings, sent the latter a

brief, congratulating him upon his success, renewing his advice to make

thorough work of exterminating the heretics, and warning him against a

mercy than which there was nothing more cruel.[727] To foreign

courts--especially to those which betrayed a leaning to the Protestant

side--the most exaggerated accounts of the victory were despatched. A

"relation" of the battle of Moncontour, with which Philip the Second was

furnished, stated the Huguenot loss at fifteen thousand men, eleven

cannon, three thousand wagons belonging to the reiters, and eight hundred

or nine hundred horses.[728] For a moment the court believed that the

Protestants were ruined, and that their entire submission must inevitably

ensue.[729] The Parisian parliament, in the excess of its joy, added the

third of October to the number, already excessive, of its holidays,

declaring that henceforth no pleadings should be held on the anniversary

of so glorious a triumph.[730] About the same time, in order to exhibit

more clearly the spirit by which it was animated, the same dignified

tribunal gave the order that the bodies of Francis D'Andelot and his wife

should be disinterred and hanged upon a a gibbet![731]

[Sidenote: Murder of De Mouy by Maurevel.]

[Sidenote: The assassin rewarded with the collar of the order.]

The Roman Catholics were, nevertheless, entirely mistaken in their

anticipations of the speedy subjugation of their opponents. The latter

were disheartened for a few days, but not in the least disposed to give

over the struggle. "The reformed were too numerous," a modern historian

well remarks, "too well organized, and had struck their roots too deeply,

to be subdued by the loss of a few pitched battles."[732] The prospect at

first was, indeed, very dark. It seemed almost impossible for the

Huguenots to maintain themselves in the region which for a whole year had

been the chief field of operations. As Anjou advanced southward, Partenay

was abandoned without a blow, and after occupying it he pushed on toward

Niort. Of this important place the intrepid De Mouy had been placed by

Coligny in command. Not content with a bare defence, he sallied out and

repulsed the enemy. But his boldness proved fatal to him. There was a

Roman Catholic "gentilhomme," Maurevel by name, who, allured by the reward

of fifty thousand crowns offered by parliament for the capture or

assassination of Admiral Coligny, had entered the Protestant camp with

protestations of great disgust with his former patrons the Guises, and had

vainly sought an opportunity to take the great chieftain's life. Three

years later that opportunity was to present itself in the streets of Paris

itself. Loth to return to his friends without accomplishing any noteworthy

exploit, Maurevel joined De Mouy, with whom he so ingratiated himself that

the general not only supplied him from his purse, but made him a companion

and a bed-fellow. As the Huguenots were returning to Niort, the traitor

found the conjuncture he desired. Chancing to be left alone with De Mouy,

he drew a pistol and shot him in the loins; then putting spurs to his

horse, reached with ease the advancing columns of Anjou. De Mouy was taken

back to Niort mortally wounded. His friends, contrary to his earnest

desire, insisted on taking him by boat down the Sevre to La Rochelle,

where he died. Meanwhile Niort, in discouragement, surrendered to the

Roman Catholic army.[733] The assassin was well rewarded. A letter is

extant, written by Charles the Ninth to the Duke of Anjou, from

Plessis-lez-Tours, on the tenth of October, 1569, in which the king begs

his brother to confer on "Charles de Louvier, sieur de Moureveil, being

the person who killed Mouy," the collar of the royal order of Saint

Michael, to which he had been elected by the knights companions, as a

reward for "his signal service;" and to see that he receive from the city

of Paris a present commensurate with his merits![734]

[Sidenote: Fatal error of the court.]

Catharine de' Medici and the Cardinal of Lorraine came from Tours, where

they had been watching the course of the war, Niort, and the plan of

future operations was discussed in their presence. Almost every place of

importance previously held by the Huguenots toward the north and east of

La Rochelle had fallen, even to the almost impregnable Lusignan. Saint

Jean d'Angely, on the Boutonne, was the only remaining outwork, whose

capture must precede an attack on the citadel itself. Should the

victorious army of the king lay siege to Saint Jean d'Angely, or should it

continue the pursuit of Coligny and the princes, who, in order to divert

it from the undertaking, had retired from Saint Jean d'Angely to Saintes,

and thence, not long after, in the direction of Montauban? This was the

question that demanded an instant answer. Jean de Serres informs us that

the Protestant leaders were extremely anxious that their enemies should

adopt the latter course;[735] yet the best military authorities on both

sides declare without hesitation that the failure of the Roman Catholics

to follow it was the one capital error that saved the Huguenots, perhaps,

from utter destruction. "Hundreds of times have I been amazed," says the

Roman Catholic Blaise de Montluc, "that so many great and wise captains

who were with Monsieur (the Duke of Anjou) should have adopted the bad

plan of laying sieges, instead of pursuing the princes, who were routed

and reduced to such extremities that they had no means of getting to their

feet again." And the Protestant Francois de la Noue devotes an entire

chapter of his "discourses" to the proof of the assertion that "as the

siege of Poitiers was the beginning of the mishaps of the Huguenots, so

that of Saint Jean was the means of arresting the good fortune of the

Catholics."

What, it may be asked, led to the commission of so fatal an error? The

memoirs of Tavannes, who advocated the immediate pursuit of the admiral,

ascribe it to the reluctance of the Montmorencies to permit their cousin

to be overwhelmed; to the jealousy felt by Cardinal Lorraine of the

military successes which threw his brother, the Duke of Aumale, and his

nephew, the Duke of Guise, into obscurity; and to the suggestions of De

Retz, the king's favorite, who persuaded Charles that it was dangerous to

permit the renown of Anjou to increase yet further.[736] It must, however,

be remembered that the younger Tavannes is not always a good authority;

and that where, as in the present instance, the glory of his father is

affected, he becomes altogether untrustworthy. If we reject his account as

apocryphal, which apparently we must do, there still remains good reason

to believe that the siege of Saint Jean d'Angely was agreed to by the

majority of the Roman Catholic leaders from the sincere conviction that

its reduction, to be followed by the still more important capture of La

Rochelle, would annihilate the Huguenot party in the west, its stronghold

and refuge, and that it could then subsist but little longer in other

parts of the kingdom.

[Sidenote: Siege of Saint Jean d'Angely.]

The defence of Saint Jean d'Angely had been intrusted by Coligny to

competent hands. De Piles had found the fortifications weak and imperfect;

he completed and strengthened them.[737] With a small garrison of

Huguenots he repaired by night the breaches made by the enemy's cannon

during the day, and repelled every attempt to storm the place. When the

siege had advanced about two weeks, Charles himself, who was resolved not

to suffer Henry of Anjou any longer to win all the laurels of the war,

made his appearance in the Roman Catholic camp, on the twenty-sixth of

October, and summoned the garrison to surrender. De Piles, however,

declined to listen to the commands of the king, even as he had disobeyed

those of the duke, taking refuge in the feudal theory that he could give

up the place only to the Prince of Navarre, the royal governor of the

province of Guyenne, at whose hands he had received it. Yet the position

of the Protestants was growing extremely perilous. During one of the

assaults upon the wall, De Piles himself became so thoroughly convinced

that Saint Jean would be carried, that he caused a breach to be made in

the fortifications in his rear, in order to facilitate the withdrawal of

his troops. Happily, he had no need of this mode of escape on the present

occasion. Meanwhile the most honorable terms were offered him. These he

refused to accept; but, finding his stock of ammunition rapidly becoming

exhausted, he agreed to a truce of ten days, that he might have time to

send a messenger to the princes to obtain their orders; promising, in case

he received no succor in the interval, to surrender the city on condition

that the garrison should be permitted to retire with their horses, arms

and personal effects, and that religious liberty should be granted to all

the residents. But, before the armistice had quite expired, Saint Surin,

and forty other brave horsemen from Angouleme, succeeded in piercing the

enemy's lines, and relieved De Piles from an engagement into which he had

entered with great reluctance. The hostages on both sides were given up,

and the siege was renewed with greater fury than ever. In the end, seeing

no prospect of sufficient reinforcement to enable him to maintain his

position, De Piles capitulated (on the second of December) on similar

terms to those that he had before declined, and the garrison marched out

with flying banners. Seven weeks had they detained the entire army of the

victors of Moncontour before an ill-fortified place. More than six

thousand men had died under its walls, by the casualties of war and by the

scarcely less destructive diseases that raged in the camp.[738] One of the

ablest and most enterprising of the royal generals--Sebastian of

Luxemburg, Viscount of Martigues and governor of Brittany--had been

killed.[739] Of the Protestants, only about a hundred and eighty persons

perished, nearly the half of them inhabitants of the town; for the men of

Saint Jean d'Angely, and even the women and children, had labored

industriously in defending their firesides.

It was a part of the compact, that, while neither De Piles nor his

soldiers should serve on the Huguenot side for four months, they should be

safely conducted without the Roman Catholic lines. The Duc d'Aumale and

other leaders seem to have endeavored conscientiously to execute the

stipulation; but their followers could not resist the temptation to attack

the Huguenots as they were traversing the suburbs. Nearly all were robbed,

and a considerable number--as many, according to Agrippa d'Aubigne, as

fell during the siege--were murdered. De Piles, on his arrival at

Angouleme, wrote to demand the punishment of those who had committed so

flagrant a breach of faith, and, when he could obtain no satisfaction,

sent a herald to the king to declare that he held himself and his

fellow-combatants absolved from all obligations, and that they would at

once resume their places in the Huguenot army.[740]

Nearly three months of precious time elapsed since the disastrous rout of

Moncontour before the royalists completed the reduction of the region

adjoining La Rochelle. Outside of that citadel of French Protestantism

only the little town of Tonnay, on the Charente, still held for the Prince

of Navarre. Yet so long as La Rochelle itself stood firm, the Duke of

Anjou had accomplished little; and La Rochelle had made good use of the

respite to strengthen its works. Every effort to gain a lodgement in its

neighborhood had signally failed. The end of December came, and with it

cold and discouragement. Anjou's army was dwindling away. The King of

Spain and the Pope recalled their troops, as if the battle of the third of

October had ended the war, and Santa Fiore, the pontifical general, sent

to Rome twenty-six standards, taken by the Italians at Moncontour--a

present from Charles the Ninth, which Pius accepted with great delight,

and dedicated as a trophy in the Basilica of St. John Lateran.[741] Henry

of Anjou himself was ill, or was unwilling any longer to endure separation

from a court of whose pleasures he was inordinately fond; and, resigning

the command of the army into the hands of the eldest son of the Duke of

Montpensier, Francois de Bourbon--generally known as the prince

dauphin--he hastened, at the beginning of the new year, to join Charles

and Catharine de' Medici at Angers. The French troops, meantime, were

either furloughed or scattered, and the generals condemned to inaction,

while the German reiters and lansquenets and the Swiss pikemen were

permitted to return to their own homes.[742] Such was the suicidal policy

of the Roman Catholic party--a policy which saved the Huguenots from

prostration; for it may with truth be affirmed that the errors committed

in the siege of Saint Jean d'Angely, and in disbanding the powerful army

of Anjou, completely obliterated the advantage which had been won on the

bloody field of Moncontour.[743]

While the Protestants had been forced to abandon one important place after

another in Poitou, Saintonge and Aunis, they had in other parts of the

kingdom been displaying their old enterprise, and had obtained

considerable success. Vezelay in Burgundy, the birthplace of the reformer

Theodore Beza, passed through a fiery ordeal. This ancient town, built

upon the brow of a hill, and strong as well by reason of its situation as

of its walls constructed in a style that was now becoming obsolete in

France, had been captured at the beginning of the war by some of the

neighboring Huguenot noblemen, who scaled the walls and surprised the

garrison. One of the few points the Protestants held in the eastern part

of the kingdom, it was regarded as a place of the greatest importance to

their cause.

[Sidenote: Huguenot successes. Vezelay.]

Within a few weeks Vezelay was twice besieged by a Roman Catholic army

under Sansac. A vigorous sortie, in which the Huguenots destroyed almost

all the engines of war of the assailants, on the first occasion caused the

siege to be raised. When Sansac renewed his attempt he fared no better.

The soldiers who had thrown themselves into the place, with the

enthusiastic citizens, repelled every attack, and promptly suppressed

treacherous plots by putting to death two persons whom they found engaged

in revealing their secrets to the enemy. Sansac next undertook to reduce

Vezelay by hunger; but the Huguenots broke his lines, aided by their

friends in La Charite and Sancerre, and supplied themselves abundantly

with provisions. When, on the sixteenth of December, Sansac finally

abandoned the fruitless and inglorious undertaking, he had lost, since

October, no fewer than fifteen hundred of his soldiers.[744]

[Sidenote: Brilliant capture of Nismes.]

The Huguenots of Sancerre in turn made an attempt to enter Bourges, the

capital of the province of Berry, by promising a large sum of money to the

officer second in command of the citadel; but he revealed their plan to

his superior, M. de la Chastre, governor of the province, and the advanced

party which had been admitted within the gates (on the twenty-first of

December) fell into the snare prepared for them.[745] The capture of

Nismes--"the city of antiquities"--more than compensated for the failure

at Bourges. Rarely has an enterprise of equal difficulty been more

patiently prosecuted, or been crowned with more brilliant success. The

exiled Protestants, a large and important class, had now for many months

been subjected to the greatest hardships, and were anxiously watching an

opportunity to return to their homes. At last a carpenter presented

himself, who had long revolved the matter in his mind, and had discovered

a method of introducing the Huguenots into the city which promised well.

There was a fountain, a short distance from the walls of Nismes, known to

the ancients by the same name as the city itself--Nemausus--whose copious

stream, put to good service by the inhabitants, turned a number of mills

within the municipal limits. To admit the waters a canal had been built,

which, where it pierced the fortifications, was protected by a heavy iron

grating. Through this wet channel the carpenter resolved that the

Huguenots should enter Nismes. It so happened that a friend of his dwelt

in a house which was close to the wall at this spot; with his help he

lowered himself by night from a window into the ditch. A cord, which was

slackened or drawn tight according as there was danger of detection or

apparent security, served to direct his operations. The utmost caution was

requisite, and the water-course was too contracted to permit more than a

single person to work at once. Provided only with a file, the carpenter

set himself to sever the stout iron bars. The task was neither pleasant

nor easy. Night after night he stood in the cold stream, with the mud up

to his knees, exposed to wind and rain, and working most industriously

when the roar of the elements covered and drowned the noise he made. It

was only for a few minutes at a time that he could work; for, as the place

was situated between the citadel and the "porte des Carmes," a sentry

passed it at brief intervals, and was scarcely out of hearing except when

he went to ring the bell which announced a change of guard. Fifteen

nights, chosen from the darkest of the season, were consumed in this

perilous undertaking; and each morning, when the approach of dawn

compelled him to suspend his labors, the carpenter concealed his progress

by means of wax and mud. All this time he had been prudent enough to keep

his own counsel; but when, on the fifteenth of November, his work was

completed, he called upon the Huguenot leaders to follow him into Nismes.

A detachment of three hundred men was placed at his disposal. When once

the foremost were in the town, and had overpowered the neighboring guards,

the Huguenots obtained an easy success. The clatter of a number of

camp-servants, who were mounted on horseback, with orders to ride in every

direction, shouting that the city was in the hands of the enemy,

contributed to facilitate the capture. Most of the soldiers, who should

have met and repelled the Protestants, shut themselves up in their houses

and refused to leave them. In a few minutes, all Nismes, with the

exception of the castle, which held out a few months longer, was

taken.[746]

[Sidenote: Coligny encouraged.]

When Admiral Coligny, wounded and defeated, was borne on a litter from the

field of Moncontour, where the hopes of the Huguenots had been so rudely

dashed to the ground, his heart almost failed him in view of the prospects

of the war and of his faith. Two persons seemed at this critical juncture

to have exercised on his mind a singular influence in restoring him to his

accustomed hopefulness. L'Estrange, a simple gentleman, was being carried

away in a plight similar to his own, when, having been brought to the

admiral's side, he looked intently upon him, and then gave expression to

his gratitude to Heaven, that, in the midst of the chastisements with

which it had seen fit to visit his fellow-believers, there was yet so much

of mercy shown, in the words, "Yet is God very gentle!"[747]--a friendly

reminder, which, the great leader was wont to say, raised him from gloom

and turned his thoughts to high and noble resolve.[748] Nor was the heroic

Queen of Navarre found wanting at this crisis. No sooner had she heard of

the disaster than she started from La Rochelle, and at Niort met the

admiral, with such remnants of the army as still clung to him. Far from

yielding to despondency, Jeanne d'Albret urged the generals to renew the

contest; and, having communicated to them a part of her own enthusiasm,

returned to La Rochelle to watch over the defence of the city, and to lend

still more important assistance to the cause, by writing to Queen

Elizabeth and the other allies of the Huguenots, correcting the

exaggerated accounts of the defeat of Moncontour which had been studiously

disseminated by the Roman Catholic party, and imploring fresh assistance.

[Sidenote: Withdrawal of the troops of Dauphiny and Provence.]

As for Coligny, his plans were soon formed. The troops of Dauphiny and

Provence, always among the most reluctant to leave their homes, had long

been clamoring for permission to return. It was now impossible to retain

them. On the fourteenth of October they started from Angouleme, whither

they had gone without consulting the Protestant generals, and, under the

leadership of Montbrun and Mirabel, directed their course toward their

native provinces. In two days they reached the river Dordogne at Souillac,

where a part of their body, while seeking to cross, was attacked by the

Roman Catholics, and suffered great loss. The rest pushed forward to

Aurillac, in Auvergne, which had recently been captured by a Huguenot

captain, and soon found their way to Privas, Aubenas, and the banks of the

Rhone.[749] Thence, after refreshing themselves for a few days, they

crossed into Dauphiny to renew the struggle for their own firesides.[750]

[Sidenote: Plan of the admiral's bold march.]

On the eighteenth of October, four days after the departure of the

Dauphinese troops from Angouleme, Coligny set forth from Saintes upon an

expedition as remarkable for boldness of conception as for its singularly

skilful and successful execution--an expedition which is entitled to rank

among the most remarkable military operations of modern times.[751] In the

face of an enemy flushed with victory, and himself leading an army reduced

to the mere shadow of its former size, the admiral deliberately drew up

the plan of a march of eight or nine months, through a hostile territory,

and terminating in the vicinity of the capital itself. As sketched by

Michel de Castelnau from the admiral's own words in conversation with him,

the objects of the Protestant general were principally these: to satisfy

the claims of his mutinous German mercenaries by the reduction of some of

the enemy's rich cities in Guyenne; to strengthen himself by forming a

junction with the army of Montgomery and such fresh troops as "the

viscounts" might be able to raise; to meet on the lower Rhone the

recruited forces of Montbrun and Mirabel; thence to turn northward, and,

having reached the borders of Lorraine, to welcome the Germans whom the

Elector Palatine and William of Orange would hold in readiness; and, at

last, to bring the war to an end by forcing the Roman Catholics to give

battle, under circumstances more advantageous to the reformed, in the

immediate vicinity of Paris.[752]

[Sidenote: He sweeps through Guyenne.]

Coligny's army was chiefly composed of cavalry; of infantry he had but

three thousand men.[753] The young Princes of Navarre and of Conde, whom

he wished to accustom to the fatigues of the march and of the

battle-field, while endearing them to the Huguenots by their participation

in the same perils with the meanest private soldier, were his companions,

and had commands of their own. He had left La Rochefoucauld in La Rochelle

to protect the city and the Queen of Navarre. The admiral's course was

first directed to Montauban, that city which has been the stronghold of

Protestantism in southern France down to the present time. But the

difficulties of the way, and, particularly, the improbability of finding

easy means of crossing so near their mouths the successive rivers, which,

rising in the mountainous region of Auvergne and the Cevennes, all flow

westward and empty into the Garonne, or its wide estuary, the Gironde,

compelled Coligny to make a considerable deflection to the left. He

effected the passage of the Dordogne at Argentat, a little above the spot

where Montbrun had sustained his recent check, and, after making a feint

of throwing himself into Auvergne, crossed the Lot below Cadenac, and

reached Montauban in safety.[754] The Count of Montgomery, returning from

his victorious campaign in Bearn, had been ordered to be in readiness in

this city. But learning that, by an unaccountable delay, he was still in

Condom, south of the Garonne, Coligny marched westward to Aiguillon, at

the confluence of the Lot and the Garonne. Near this place he constructed,

with great trouble, a substantial bridge across the Garonne, with the

intention of transporting his army to the left bank, and ravaging the

country far down in the direction of Bordeaux. This bold movement was

prevented by Blaise de Montluc, who, adopting the suggestion of another,

and appropriating the credit due to the sagacity of this nameless genius,

detached one of the numerous floating windmills that were moored in the

Garonne, and having loaded it with stones, sent it down with the current

against Coligny's bridge. Not only were the chains that bound the

structure broken, but the very boats on which it rested were carried away

as far as to Bordeaux itself. It was with great difficulty that the

admiral brought back to the right bank the division of his army that had

already crossed, and with it the troops of Count Montgomery.[755]

The united army now returned to Montauban, where, in the midst of a rich

district in part friendly to the Huguenots, it spent the last days of 1569

and the greater part of the month of January, 1570. Its numbers had by

this time received such large accessions, that Coligny wrote to Germany

that he had six or seven thousand horse and fifteen thousand foot.[756] As

the reformed population of Montauban had contributed enough money to

satisfy the prince's indebtedness to the importunate reiters and

lansquenets,[757] the troops were enthusiastic in their devotion to the

cause, and pushed their raids under the intrepid La Loue south of the

Garonne toward the Bay of Biscay, as far as Mont de Marsan and Roquefort

in the "Pays des Landes."[758]

[Sidenote: "Vengeance de Rapin."]

[Sidenote: Coligny pushes on to the Rhone.]

The Huguenots now proceeded towards Toulouse, but that city was too

strongly fortified and garrisoned to tempt them to make an attack. They

inflicted, however, a stern retribution upon the vicinity, devoting to

destruction the villas and pleasure-grounds of the members of a parliament

that had rendered itself infamous for its injustice and blind bigotry. The

cruel fate of Rapin, murdered according to the forms of law, simply

because he was a Protestant and brought from the king an edict containing

too much toleration to suit the inordinate orthodoxy of these robed

fanatics, was yet fresh in the memory of the soldiers, and fired their

blood. On ruined and blackened walls, in more than one quarter, could be

read subsequently the ominous words, written by no idle braggarts:

"_Vengeance de Rapin!_" Leaving the marks of their passage in a desolated

district, the Huguenots swept on to the friendly city of Castres, and

thence through lower Languedoc, by Carcassonne and Montpellier, which they

made no attempt to reduce, to Uzes and Nismes. Meanwhile Piles had from

Castres made a marauding expedition with a body of picked troops to the

very foot of the Pyrenees, and, in retaliation for the aid which the

Spaniards had furnished Charles the Ninth, had penetrated to Perpignan,

and ravaged the County of Roussillon.[759]

[Sidenote: His singular success and its causes.]

Thus the Huguenots--of whom Charles had contemptuously written to his

ambassador at London, in January, that they were in so miserable a plight

that, even since Anjou had dismissed all his men-at-arms after the capture

of Saint Jean d'Angely, they dared not show their faces[760]--had pushed

an army from the mouth of the Gironde to the mouth of the Rhone. If

Viscount Monclar had fallen mortally wounded near Castres, and brave La

Loue had been surprised and killed near Montpellier, the Protestants had,

nevertheless, sustained little injury. They had been largely reinforced on

the way, both by the local troops that joined them and by chivalric

spirits such as M. de Piles, who followed them so soon as he was forced to

surrender Saint Jean d'Angely; or, like Beaudine and Renty, who had been

left with La Rochefoucauld to guard La Rochelle, but who, impatient of

long inaction, at length obtained permission to attach themselves to the

princes, and caught up with them at Castres, after a journey full of

hazardous adventures. The Huguenot army, says La Noue, had been but an

insignificant snow-ball when it started on its adventurous course; but the

imprudence of its opponents permitted it to roll on, without hinderance,

until it grew to a portentous size.[761] The jealousy existing between

Montluc and Marshal Damville, who commanded for the king--the former as

lieutenant-general in Gascony, and the latter as governor in

Languedoc--undoubtedly removed many difficulties from the way of Admiral

Coligny; and Montluc openly accused his rival, who was a Montmorency, of

purposely furthering the designs of his heretical cousin. The accusation

was a baseless fabrication; yet it obtained, as such stories generally do,

a wide currency among the prejudiced and the ignorant, who could explain

Damville's failure to impede Coligny's progress in no more satisfactory

way than as the result of collusion between the son and the nephew of the

late constable.[762]

[Sidenote: The admiral turns toward Paris.]

[Sidenote: His illness interrupts negotiations.]

Coligny had not yet accomplished his main object. Turning northward, and

hugging the right bank of the Rhone, he prosecuted his undertaking of

carrying the war to the very gates of Paris. The few small pieces of

artillery the Protestants possessed, it was now found difficult to drag

over rugged hills that descended to the river's edge. They were,

therefore, at first transported to the other side, and finally left behind

in some castles garrisoned by the Huguenots. The recruits that had been

expected from Dauphiny came in very small numbers, and it was with

diminished forces that Coligny and the princes, on the twenty-sixth of

May, reached Saint Etienne, at that time a small town, which modern

enterprise and capital has transformed into a great manufacturing

city.[763] A little farther, at St. Rambert on the Loire, an incident

occurred which threatened to blight all the fair hopes the Protestants had

now again begun to conceive of a speedy and prosperous conclusion of the

war. Admiral Coligny fell dangerously ill, and for a time serious fears

were entertained for his life. It was a moment of anxious suspense. Never

before had the reformed realized the extent to which their fortunes were

dependent on a single man. The lesson was a useful one to the young

companions of the princes, who, in the midst of the stern discipline of

the camp, had shown some disposition to complain of the loss of the more

congenial gayety of the court.[764] Louis of Nassau, brother of William of

Orange, and next in command, was the only person among the Protestants

that could have succeeded to Coligny in his responsible position; but even

Louis of Nassau could not exact the respect enjoyed by the admiral, both

with his own troops and with the enemy. Indeed, it was the conduct of the

Roman Catholics at this juncture that furnished the clearest proof of the

indispensable importance to the Huguenots of their veteran leader. The

negotiations, which must soon be adverted to, had for some time been in

progress, and the court displayed considerable anxiety to secure a peace;

but the moment it was announced that Coligny was likely to die, the

deputies from the king broke them off and waited to see the issue. Being

asked to explain so singular a course, and being reminded that the

Huguenots had other generals with whom a treaty might be formed in case of

Coligny's death, it is said that the deputies replied by expressing their

surprise that the Protestants did not see the weight and authority

possessed by their admiral. "Were he to die to-day," said they, "to-morrow

we should not offer you so much as a glass of water. As if you did not

know that the admiral's name goes farther in giving you consideration than

had you another army equal in size to that you have at present!"[765]

[Sidenote: Engagement of Arnay-le-Duc.]

But Gaspard de Coligny was destined to die a death more glorious for

himself, and to leave behind him a name more illustrious than it would

have been had he died on the eve of the return of peace to his desolated

country. He recovered, and once more advanced with his brave Huguenots.

And now the distance between the Protestant camp and the Roman Catholic

capital was rapidly diminishing. To meet the impending danger, the king

ordered Marshal Cosse, who had succeeded the prince dauphin in command of

the new army, to cross into Burgundy, check the admiral's course, and, if

possible, defeat him. The two armies met on the twenty-fifth of June, in

the neighborhood of the small town of Arnay-le-Duc.[766] Great was the

disparity of numbers. Cosse had four thousand Swiss, six thousand French

infantry, three thousand French, German, and Italian horse, and twelve

cannon. Coligny's army had lost so much during its incessant marches

through a thousand difficult places, and in a country where desertion or

straying from the main body was so easy, that it consisted of but

twenty-five hundred arquebusiers and two thousand horsemen, besides a few

recruits from Dauphiny.

The Germans, who constituted about one-half of the cavalry, were

ill-equipped; but the French horse were as well armed as any corps the

Huguenots had been able to set on foot. All were hardened by toil and

well disciplined. Of artillery the admiral was entirely destitute.

The armies took position upon opposite hills, separated by a narrow

valley, in which flowed a brook fed by some small ponds. Cosse made the

attack, and attempted to cross the stream; but, after an obstinate fight

of seven hours, his troops were compelled to abandon the undertaking with

considerable loss. Next the entrenchments thrown up by the Huguenots in

the neighborhood of the ponds were assaulted. Here the Roman Catholics

were subjected to a galling fire, and began to yield. Afterward, receiving

reinforcements, they seemed to be on the point of succeeding, when Coligny

brought up M. de Piles, the hero of Saint Jean d'Angely, who, supported by

Count Montgomery, soon restored the superiority of the Huguenots. The

enemy was equally unfortunate in the attempt, simultaneously made, to turn

the admiral's position; and, foiled at every point, he retired for the

day. On the morrow, both armies reappeared in the same order of battle,

but neither general was eager to renew a contest in which the advantage

was all with those who stood on the defensive, and, after indulging in a

brief and ineffective cannonade, the order was given to the Roman Catholic

troops to return to camp.[767]

[Sidenote: Coligny approaches Paris.]

After this indecisive combat, Coligny, who had no desire to bring on a

general engagement before receiving the considerable accession of troops

of which he was in expectation, slipped away from Cosse, and though hotly

pursued by the enemy's cavalry, made his way to the friendly walls of La

Charite upon the Loire. Here he busied himself with preparations for

further undertakings, and was engaged particularly in providing his army

with a few cannon and mortars, of which he had greatly felt the need, when

activity was interrupted by a ten days' truce, dating from the fourteenth

of July, the precursor of a definite treaty of peace.[768] At the

expiration of the armistice, Coligny advanced, toward the end of July, to

his castle of Chatillon-sur-Loing, and distributed his troops in the

vicinity of Montargis, still nearer Paris. Marshal Cosse, at the same

time, moved in a parallel line through Joigny, and took up his position at

Sens, where he could at once protect the capital and prevent the Huguenots

from making raids in that fertile and populous province, the "Ile de

France," from which the whole country had derived its name. Leaving the

admiral and his brave followers here, at the conclusion of an adventurous

expedition of over twelve hundred miles, which had consumed more than nine

months, let us glance at the negotiations for peace which had long been in

progress, and were now at length crowned with success.

[Sidenote: Progress of the negotiations.]

[Sidenote: The English rebellion affects the terms offered.]

So true was it of the combatants in the French civil wars, that they

rarely carried on hostilities but they were also treating for peace, that

since the battle of Moncontour there had hardly elapsed a month without

the discussion of the terms on which arms could be laid aside by both

parties. Scarcely had the first startling impression made by the defeat of

the Huguenots passed away before Catharine de' Medici sent that skilful

diplomatist, Michel de Castelnau, to assure the Queen of Navarre, at La

Rochelle, of her personal esteem and affection, as well as of her fervent

desire to employ her influence with the king, her son, in effecting a

pacification based upon just and honorable conditions. Jeanne replied in

courteous language; but, while she insisted upon her own hearty

reciprocation of the queen mother's wish, she also expressed the suspicion

which all the reformed entertained of the sincerity of the leading

ministers in the French cabinet, whose relations with Spain and with the

Pope showed that they were intent on nothing less than the utter ruin of

the Huguenots.[769] In November the matter took a more definite shape,

through Marshal Cosse, who appeared in La Rochelle with propositions of

peace. This statesman, otherwise moderate in his counsels, was imbued with

the notion that the Protestants were so discouraged by their late defeat,

that they would gladly accept any terms. But the Huguenots, having

understood that he was empowered merely to offer them liberty of

conscience, without the right to the public worship of God, promptly broke

off the negotiations.[770] A month or two later they were induced to

believe that the court was disposed to larger concessions, or, if not,

that they might at least justify themselves in the eyes of the world by

showing that they were neither unreasonable nor desirous of prolonging the

horrors of war. Two deputies--Jean de la Fin, Sieur de Beauvoir la Nocle,

and Charles de Teligny: the one sent by the Queen of Navarre, the other

sent by Coligny and the princes, who were already far on their journey

through the south of France--came to the king at Angers, and presented the

demands of the Huguenots. These demands certainly did not breathe a spirit

of craven submission. The Huguenots called not only for complete liberty

of conscience, but also for the right to hold their religious assemblies

through the entire kingdom, without prejudice to their dignities or

honors. They stipulated for the annulling of all sentences pronounced

against them; the approval of all that they had done, as done for the

welfare of the realm; the restitution of their dignities and property, and

the giving of good and sufficient securities for the execution of the

edict of pacification.[771] Catharine and her counsellors had undoubtedly

gained some wholesome experience since Cosse's first proposals. They had

already discovered that a single pitched battle had not ruined the

Huguenots; and they now suspected that a number of additional battles

might be required to effect that desirable result. It is not astonishing,

however, that the queen mother was not yet ready to grant terms which

could scarcely have been conceded even on the morrow of an overwhelming

defeat. The articles sent by the king to the Protestant leaders as a

counter-proposal were therefore of a very different character from those

which they had submitted. Charles offered to the Queen of Navarre, the

Princes of Navarre and Conde, the admiral, and their followers, entire

amnesty, and consented to annul all judicial proceedings made against

them during these or the late troubles. He would exact no punishment for

any treaties which they might have formed with foreign princes, and would

restore their goods, honors, and estates. As to the religious question, he

would allow them to hold two cities, in which they might do as they

pleased, the king placing in each city a capable "gentilhomme" to maintain

his authority and the public tranquillity. Elsewhere in France he would

tolerate no reformed minister, no exercise of any other religion than his

own. Neither would he guarantee the restitution of the judicial and other

offices once held by Protestants, since others had bought them, and the

money proceeding from the sale had been spent in defraying the expenses of

the war; especially as the clergy must look to the courts for the

enforcement of their claims for indemnification for the destruction of the

churches and other ecclesiastical property. The king professed himself

willing to give all reasonable securities for the performance of his

promises, but neglected to make any specification of the nature of those

securities.[772] Such were the hard conditions offered--all that Catharine

and the Guises were willing to concede at a time when it was hoped that

the Huguenots would lose the assistance of one of their secret supporters,

Elizabeth of England; for the Earls of Westmoreland and Northumberland had

risen in the north, and they had not only the best wishes, but the ready

co-operation of every Spanish and French sympathizer. Charles himself was

writing to his ambassador at London a letter meant to meet the queen's

eye, instructing him to congratulate Elizabeth on the progress made in

suppressing the insurrection; and Catharine, by the same messenger, sent a

secret letter of the same date, ordering the same diplomatic agent, in

case the rebellion was not at an end, to give aid and comfort to the

rebels.[773] Catharine and the Guises had not lost heart. Moved by

repeated supplications, Pius the Fifth at last decided to excommunicate

the heretical daughter of Henry and Anne Boleyn. But, as the bull of the

twenty-fifth of February, 1570, had been procured solely by the entreaties

of the rebel earls, enforced by the intercessions of the Guises, and as it

was known that Philip the Second, so far from desiring it, was strongly

opposed to the imprudent policy of the pontiff, the document, which

pretended to relieve all the queen's subjects of the obligations of their

allegiance, was committed to the charge of the Cardinal of Lorraine, to

launch at Elizabeth's devoted head whenever the convenient moment should

arrive.[774]

At Montreal, near Carcassonne, the admiral was again overtaken by a royal

messenger, who on this occasion was Biron, equally distinguished on the

field and in the council-chamber. While the Protestants replied to his

offer that with heartfelt satisfaction they greeted the king's disposition

to restore peace to France, and sent to Charles, who was then at

Chateaubriand, in Brittany, a delegation consisting of Teligny, Beauvoir

la Nocle, and La Chassetiere, they distinctly stated that no terms could

be entertained which should not include liberty of worship. For they

declared that "the deprivation of the exercise of their religion was more

insupportable to them than death itself."[775] But, in fact, the Huguenot

princes and nobles placed little reliance upon the sincerity of the court,

and had no hope of peace so long as they treated at a distance from the

capital. Accordingly, Coligny, in his march up the valley of the Rhone,

when again approached in the king's name by Biron, accompanied by Henry de

Mesmes, Sieur de Malassise, peremptorily declined to enter into a truce

which should interrupt the efficiency of his movement.[776]

[Sidenote: Better conditions proposed.]

[Sidenote: Charles and his mother for peace.]

[Sidenote: The war fruitless for its authors.]

But when at last the admiral reached the Loire, and, at La Charite and

Chatillon, was within a few hours of Paris, the attitude of the court in

relation to the peace seemed to undergo an entire change, and it became

evident that the negotiations, which had previously been employed for the

mere purpose of amusing the Huguenots, were now resorted to with the view

of ending a war already protracted far beyond expectation. Nor is it

difficult to discover some of the circumstances that tended to bring about

this radical mutation of policy.[777] The resources of the kingdom were

exhausted. It was no longer possible to furnish the ready money without

which the German and other mercenaries, of late constituting a large

portion of the royal troops, could not be induced to enter the kingdom.

The Pope and Philip were lavish of nothing beyond promises and

exhortations that above all things Charles should make no peace with the

heretical rebels. Indeed, Philip had few men, and no money, to spare. The

French troops were in great straits. The gentlemen, who, in return for

their immunity from all taxation, were bound to serve the monarch in the

field at their own expense, had exhausted their available funds in so long

a contest, and it was impossible to muster them in such numbers as the war

demanded. Charles himself had always been averse to war. His tastes were

pacific. If he ever emulated the martial glory which his brother Anjou had

so easily acquired, the feeling was but of momentary duration, and met

with little encouragement from his mother. He had, undoubtedly, consented

to the initiation of the war only in consequence of the misrepresentations

made by those who surrounded him, respecting its necessity and the ease of

its prosecution. He had now the strongest reasons for desiring the

immediate return of peace. His marriage with the daughter of the emperor

had for some months been arranged, but Maximilian refused to permit

Elizabeth to become the queen of a country rent with civil commotion.

Catharine de' Medici, also, from the advocate of war, had become anxious

for peace--tardily returning to the conviction which she had often

expressed in former years, that the attempt to exterminate the Huguenots

by force of arms was hopeless. After two years she was no nearer her

object than when the Cardinal of Lorraine persuaded her to endeavor to

seize Conde at Noyers. Jarnac had accomplished nothing; Moncontour was

nearly as barren a victory. A great part of what had been so laboriously

effected by Anjou's army in the last months of 1569, La Noue had been

undoing in the first half of 1570.[778] The Protestants, who were, a few

months since, shut up in La Rochelle, had defeated their enemies at Sainte

Gemme, near Lucon, and had retaken Fontenay, Niort, the Isle d'Oleron,

Brouage, and other places. The Baron de la Garde, who had lately, in the

capacity of "general of the galleys," been infesting the seas in the

neighborhood of La Rochelle, was compelled to retire to Bordeaux.[779]

Saintes had been besieged and captured, and the Huguenots were advancing

to the reduction of St. Jean d'Angely, not long since so dearly won by the

Roman Catholics.[780] Montluc had, it is true, met with success in Bearn,

where Rabasteins was taken and its entire garrison massacred.[781] But

what were these advantages at the foot of the Pyrenees, when an army under

Gaspard de Coligny, after sweeping four hundred leagues through the

southern and western provinces, was now in the immediate vicinity of

Paris? His forces, indeed, were small in numbers, but would speedily grow

formidable. The French ambassador sent from London the intelligence that

letters of credit had been sent from England to Hamburg in order to hasten

the entrance into France of some twelve or fifteen thousand Germans under

Duke Casimir; that twenty-five hundred men were to be despatched from La

Rochelle to make a descent on some point in Normandy or Brittany, in

conjunction with the ships of the Prince of Orange; and that the English

were to be invited to co-operate.[782] If it had proved impracticable to

prevent the Duc de Deux Ponts from marching across France to join the

confederates near the ocean, what hope was there that the king would be

able to hinder the union of Coligny and Casimir? Or, why might not both be

reinforced by the troops of La Noue, who had been accomplishing such

exploits in Aunis and Saintonge?

The princes of Germany added their intercessions to the stern logic of the

conflict. During the festivities in Heidelberg, attending the marriage of

John Casimir, Duke of Bavaria, and Elizabeth, daughter of the Elector of

Saxony, in June, 1570, the Elector Palatine, the Elector of Saxony, the

Margraves George Frederick of Brandenburg and Charles of Baden, Louis,

Duke of Wuertemberg, the Landgraves William, Philip and George of Hesse,

and Adolphus, Duke of Holstein, wrote a joint letter to Charles the Ninth

of France, in which they drew his attention to the injury which the long

war he was carrying on with his subjects was inflicting upon the states of

the empire, and to the necessity of speedily terminating it if he would

retain their good-will and friendship. And they assured him that there was

no way of accomplishing this result except by permitting the exercise of

the reformed religion throughout the kingdom, and abolishing all

distinctions between his Majesty's subjects of different faiths.[783]

[Sidenote: Anxiety of Cardinal Chatillon.]

When the war had so signally failed, it is not strange that the king and

his mother should have turned once more to the advocates of peace, with

whose return to favor the retirement of the Guises from court was

contemporaneous. Yet the Protestants, who knew too well from experience

the malignity of that hated family, could not but shudder lest they might

be putting themselves in the power of their most determined enemies. The

Queen of Navarre wrote to Charles urging him to use his own native good

sense, and assuring him that she feared "marvellously" that these

well-known mischief-makers would lure him into "a patched-up-peace"--_une

paix fourree_--like the preceding pacifications. The object they had in

view was, indeed, the ruin of the Huguenots; but the first disaster, she

warned him, would fall on the monarch and his royal estate.[784] Cardinal

Chatillon, when sounded by the French ambassador in England, expressed his

eagerness for peace. On selfish grounds alone he would be glad to exchange

poverty in England for his revenues of one hundred and twenty thousand a

year in France. But he had his fears. "Remembering that the king, the

queen, and monsieur (the Duke of Anjou), to confirm the last peace, did

him the honor to give him their word, placing their own hands in his, and

that those who induced them to break it were those very persons with whom

he and his associates now had to conclude the proposed peace," he said,

"his hair stood upon end with fear." All that the Protestants wanted was

security. They would be glad to transfer the war elsewhere--a thing his

brother the admiral had always desired; and, if admitted to the king's

favor, they would render his Majesty the most notable service that had

been done to the crown for two hundred years.[785]

[Sidenote: Royal Edict of pacification, St. Germain, August 8, 1570.]

The terms of the long-desired peace were at last decided upon by the

commissioners, among whom Teligny and Beauvoir la Nocle were most

prominent on the Protestant side, while Biron and De Mesmes represented

the court. On the eighth of August, 1570, they were officially promulgated

in a royal edict signed at St. Germain-en-Laye.

There were in this document the usual stipulations respecting amnesty,

the prohibition of insults and recriminations, and kindred topics. The

liberty of religious profession was guaranteed. Respecting worship

according to the Protestant rites, the provision was of the following

character. All nobles entitled to "high jurisdiction"[786] were permitted

to designate one place belonging to them, where they could have religious

services for themselves, their families, their subjects, and all who might

choose to attend, so long as either they or their families were present.

This privilege, in the case of other nobles, was restricted to their

families and their friends, not exceeding ten in number. To the Queen of

Navarre a few places were granted in the fiefs which she held of the

French crown, where service could be celebrated even in her absence. In

addition to these, there was a list of cities, designated by name--two in

each of the twelve principal governments or provinces--in which, or in the

suburbs of which, the reformed services were allowed; and this privilege

was extended to all those places of which the Protestants had possession

on the first of the present month of August. From all other places--from

the royal court and its vicinity to a distance of two leagues, and

especially from Paris and its vicinity to the distance of ten

leagues--Protestant worship was strictly excluded. Provision was made for

Protestant burials, to take place in the presence of not more than ten

persons. The king recognized the Queen of Navarre, the prince her son, and

the late Prince of Conde and his son, as faithful relations and servants;

their followers as loyal subjects; Deux Ponts, Orange, and his brothers,

and Wolrad Mansfeld, as good neighbors and friends. There was to be a

restitution of property, honors, and offices, and a rescission of judicial

sentences. To protect the members of the reformed faith in the courts of

justice, they were to be permitted to challenge four of the judges in the

Parliament of Paris; six--three in each chamber--in those of Rouen, Dijon,

Aix, Rennes, and Grenoble; and four in each chamber of the Parliament of

Bordeaux. They were to be allowed a peremptory appeal from the Parliament

of Toulouse. To defend the Huguenots from popular violence, four cities

were to be intrusted to them for a period of two years--La Rochelle,

Montauban, Cognac, and La Charite--to serve as places of refuge; and the

Princes of Navarre and Conde, with twenty of their followers, were to

pledge their word for the safe restoration of these cities to the king at

the expiration of the designated term.[787]

[Sidenote: Dissatisfaction of the clergy.]

Such were the leading features of the edict of pacification that closed

the third religious war, by far the longest and most sanguinary conflict

that had as yet desolated France. That the terms would be regarded as in

the highest degree offensive by the intolerant party at home and abroad

was to be expected. The Parisian curate, Jehan de la Fosse, only spoke the

common sentiment of the clergy and of the bigoted Roman Catholics when he

said that "it contained articles sufficiently terrible to make France and

the king's faithful servants tremble, seeing that the Huguenots were

reputed as faithful servants, and what they had done held by the king to

be agreeable."[788] It was not astonishing, therefore, that, although the

publication of the edict was effected without delay under the eyes of the

court at Paris, it gave rise in Rouen to a serious riot.[789] The Papal

Nuncio and the Spanish ambassador were indignant. Both Pius and Philip had

bitterly opposed the negotiations of the early part of the year. Now their

ambassadors made a fruitless attempt to put off the evil day of peace; the

Spanish ambassador not only offering three thousand horse and six thousand

foot to extirpate the Huguenots, but affirming that "there were no

conditions to which he was not ready to bind himself, provided that the

king would not make peace with the heretics and rebels."[790]

[Sidenote: "The limping and unsettled peace."]

For the first time in their history, the relations of the Huguenots of

France to the state were settled, not by a royal declaration which was to

be of force until the king should attain his majority, or until the

convocation of a general council of the Church, but by an edict which was

expressly stated to be "_perpetual and irrevocable_." Such the

Protestants, although with many misgivings, hoped that it might prove. It

was not, however, an auspicious circumstance that the popular wit, laying

hold of the fact that one of the Roman Catholic commissioners that drew up

its stipulations--Biron--was lame, while the other--Henri de Mesmes--was

best known as Lord of Malassise, conferred upon the new compact the

ungracious appellation of "_the limping and unsettled peace_"--"la paix

boiteuse et mal-assise."[791]

FOOTNOTES:

[587] Memoires d'Agrippa d'Aubigne (Ed. Buchon), 475.

[588] Jean de Serres, iii. 247.

[589] Mem. de Claude Haton, ii. 541; De Thou, iv. (liv. xliv.) 145.

[590] The text of the edict is given by Jean de Serres, iii. 272-281. See

also De Thou, iv. (liv. xliv.) 145, 146; Castelnau, liv. vii., c. ii. La

Fosse (Journal d'un cure ligueur, 98), gives the correct date: "Septembre.

_La veille du Saint Michel_ (i.e., _Sept._ 28th) fut rompu l'esdict de

janvier, et publie dedans le palais esdict au contraire;" while the

ambassador La Mothe Fenelon alludes to it in a despatch to Catharine as

"votre edict du xxxe de Septembre." Correspondance diplomatique, i. 28.

[591] J. de Serres, iii. 281, 282; De Thou and Castelnau, _ubi supra_,

Recordon, Le protestantisme en Champagne, 158, 159.

[592] Zway Edict, u. s. w., _ubi infra_, p. 38.

[593] Castelnau, _ubi supra_.

[594] I have before me this interesting publication, of which the first

lines of the title-page (inordinately long and comprehensive, after the

fashion of the times) run as follows: "Zway Edict, sampt einer offnen

Patent der Koeniglichen Wuerden in Franckreich, durch welche alle

auffrurische Predigten, versamblungen und ubung der newen unchristlichen

Secten und vermainten Religion gantz und gar abgeschafft und allain die

Roemische und Baepstische Catholische ware Religion gestattet werden

sollen.... 1568."

[595] De Thou, iv. (liv. xliv.) 160, 161.

[596] "Notre sang nous sera ung secong bapteme, par quoy sans aucun

empeschement, nous irons avec les autres martyrs droit en paradis."

Publication de la croisade, Hist. de Languedoc, v. (Preuves) 216, 217. See

the account, ibid., v. 290.

[597] Ibid., v. (Preuves) 217. The laborious author of the Hist. de

Languedoc, v. 290, makes a singular mistake in saying "that this bull is

dated March 15th, of the year 1568, which proves that the project had been

formed several months before its execution." The date of the bull is,

indeed, given as stated at the close of the document; but the addition,

"pontificatus nostri anno _quarto_," furnishes the means for correcting

it. Pius V. was not created Pope until January 7, 1566. See De Thou, iii.

(liv. xxxix.) 622.

[598] Memoires de Claude Haton, ii. 541, 542.

[599] Jehan de la Fosse, 99.

[600] Jean de Serres, iii. 249.

[601] Jean de Serres, iii. 255, 256; De Thou, iv. (liv. xlix.) 141. De

Serres (iii. 256-266) gives interesting extracts of the letters which

Jeanne wrote to Charles, to his mother, to the Duke of Anjou, and to her

brother-in-law, the Cardinal of Bourbon. She urged the latter, by every

consideration of blood and honor, to shake off his shameful servitude to

the counsels of the Cardinal of Lorraine, whom she openly accused of

having conspired to murder Bourbon, with Marshal Montmorency and

Chancellor L'Hospital, during a recent illness of the queen.

[602] Jean de Serres, iii. 267-269; De Thou, iv. (liv. xliv.) 142, 143;

D'Aubigne, liv. v., c. 2, 3 (i. 264-268).

[603] J. de Serres, _ubi supra_.

[604]

"C'est en Judee proprement

Que Dieu s'est acquis un renom;

C'est en Israel voirement

Qu'on voit la force de son Nom:

En Salem est son tabernacle,

En Sion son sainct habitacle."

I quote from an edition of the unaltered Huguenot psalter (1638).

[605] Jean de Serres, iii. 270; De Thou, iv. (liv. xliv.) 144, 145;

Agrippa d'Aubigne, Hist. univ. liv. v., c. 4 (i. 269) states the

circumstance that the river fell a foot and a half during the four hours

consumed in the crossing, and then rose again as opportunely: "Mais il

s'en fust perdu la pluspart sans un heur nompareil; ce fut que la riviere

s'estant diminuee d'un pied et demi durant le passage de quatre heures, se

r'enfla sur la fin;" adding in one of those nervous sentences which

constitute a principal charm of his writings: "Nous dirions avec crainte

_ces courtoisies de Loire_, si nous n'avions tous ceux qui ont escrit pour

gariment."

[606] Jean de Serres, iii. 270, 271; De Thou, iv. (liv. xliv.) 147;

Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 269.

[607] La Noue, c. xx.

[608] Ibid., _ubi supra_; De Thou, iv. (liv. xliv.) 150.

[609] Jacques de Crussol, Baron d'Acier (or, Assier), afterwards Duke

d'Uzes, lieutenant-general of the royal armies in Languedoc, etc.

According to the Abbe Le Laboureur (iii. 56-60), it was interest that

induced him, a few years later, to become a Roman Catholic.

[610] Le Laboureur, Add. aux Mem. de Castelnau, ii. 588. The same author

elsewhere (ii. 56-60) states the army as only 20,000. Jean de Serres, iii.

284, 285, and De Thou, iv. (liv. xliv.) 150-152, give an account of the

difficulties encountered in bringing these troops to the place of

rendezvous, and enumerate the leaders and contingents of the three

provinces. According to the latter, the total was 23,000 men. See Agrippa

d'Aubigne, liv. v., c. 5 (i. 271).

[611] Jean de Serres, iii. 286, 291, 292; De Thou, iv. (liv. xliv.), 153,

154; Agrippa d'Aubigne, _ubi supra_; Davila, bk. iv., p. 132, 133; Le

Laboureur, ii. 588, 589. It is more than usually difficult to ascertain

the loss of the Huguenots at Messignac. Jean de Serres, who states it at

600, and Davila, who says that it amounted to 2,000 foot and more than

4,000 horse, are the extremes. De Thou sets it down at more than 1,000;

D'Aubigne at 1,000 or 1,200; Castelnau at 3,000 foot and 300 horse; and Le

Laboureur, following him, at over 3,000 men.

[612] Hist. univ., liv. v., c. 6 (i. 273).

[613] "Discours envoye de la Rochelle," accompanying La Mothe Fenelon's

despatch of January 20, 1569. Correspondance diplomatique, i. 137, 138.

Another letter of a later date gives even larger figures--30,000 foot

(25,000 of them arquebusiers) and 7,000 or 8,000 horse, besides recruits

expected from Montauban. Ibid., i. 147.

[614] Upwards of 23,000 horse and 200 ensigns of foot (which we may

perhaps reckon at 40,000 men). Despatch of La Mothe Fenelon, Dec. 5, 1568,

Corresp. diplomatique, i. 29.

[615] Memoires de Tavannes, iii. 38. De Thou, iv. 154, assigns 18,000 foot

and 3,000 horse to Conde; and 12,000 foot and 4,000 horse, exclusive of

the Swiss (who, according to Tavannes, numbered 6,000), to Anjou.

[616] Jean de Serres, iii. 295, 296.

[617] "Resolution qui sembloit la plus necessaire aux Reformez, pource que

difficilement pouvoient-ils maintenir une telle troupe sans solde et sans

magazins reglez." Agrippa d'Aubigne, liv. v., c. 6 (i. 273).

[618] See "Tableau des phenomenes meteorologiques, astronomiques, etc.,

mentionnes dans les Memoires de Claude Haton."

[619] Jean de Serres, iii. 304, 305; De Thou, iv. (liv. xliv.) 159.

[620] "Cette Roine, _n'aiant de femme que le sexe_, l'ame entiere aux

choses viriles, l'esprit puissant aux grands affaires, le coeur invincible

aux adversitez." Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. 8.

[621] Jean de Serres, iii. 306, 307.

[622] Jean de Serres, iii. 296, 297; Relation sent from La Rochelle, La

Mothe Fenelon, i. 173. The Prince of Conde had also made a solemn

protestation in writing, and before a large assembly, before entering upon

any belligerent acts. The substance of these frequent documents is so

similar that I have deemed it unnecessary to do more than refer to it. See

J. de Serres, iii. 249, 250. The Huguenot soldiers had, at the same time,

taken an oath to support the cause until the achievement of a peace

securing the undisturbed enjoyment of life, honors and religious liberty,

and to submit to a careful military discipline. Ibid., iii. 251, 252-255,

where the oath and a summary of the rules of discipline are inserted.

[623] "Projet d'alliance du Prince d'Orange avec l'Amiral de Coligny et le

Prince de Conde pour obtenir entiere liberte de conscience dans les

Pays-Bas et en France. Le--aout l'an 1568." Groen Van Prinsterer, Archives

de la Maison d'Orange-Nassau, iii. 282-286.

[624] Letter of Favelles (Dec., 1568), Groen Van Prinsterer, Archives,

etc., iii. 312-316.

[625] He was not a "marechal," as Mr. Motley inadvertently calls him

(Dutch Republic, ii. 261), but a very prominent and successful negotiator,

whose eulogy M. de Thou, an intimate friend, has pronounced in the 122d

book of his history (ix. 285). Henry, the first Count of Schomberg made

Marshal of France, was not born until 1583.

[626] It was generally believed that Schomberg, gaining access to the

Germans through one of the principal officers, to whom he was related, was

the occasion of their disaffection. Jean de Serres, iii. 298. "Il mesnagea

si bien la plus part des capitaines," says Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 340, "que

quand le Prince leur parla d'aller joindre le Prince de Conde, _il les

trouva tous bons theologiens et mauvais partisans_; discourans de la

justice des armes, sans oublier le droit des rois et les affaires qu'ils

avoient en leur pais. Schomberg s'en revint aiant receu quelques injures

par Genlis."

[627] Letter of December 3, 1568, Cissonne, in Motley, Rise of the Dutch

Republic, ii. 261, 262.

[628] News-letter from Paris, from the Huguenot physician of the Duke of

Jarnac, discovered in the gauntlet of the Prince of Conde, and sent by

Anjou, with other papers found on his dead body, to King Charles. Duc

d'Aumale, Princes de Conde, Pieces ined., ii. 391.

[629] Jean de Serres, iii. 299; Groen Van Prinsterer, Archives, etc., iii.

316; Motley, Dutch Republic, ii. 263; Ag. d'Aubigne, liv. v., c. 26 (i.

340).

[630] M. Froude falls into a very natural error, in calling him (History

of England, Am. edit., ix. 334) "the _younger_ Chatillon." With the

exception of a brother who died in early youth, he was the oldest of the

family; but his quiet and more sluggish character inclined him to accept

the cardinal's hat, when offered to him by his uncle, the constable; and,

rich with the revenues of bishoprics and abbeys, he subsequently renounced

all his rights as eldest son to his brother Gaspard. Froude is, however,

in good company. Even the usually accurate Tytler-Fraser says of Cardinal

Chatillon: "This high-born ecclesiastic was in most things the reverse of

his _elder_ brother D'Andelot." England under Edward VI. and Mary, i. 36.

[631] Lodged by Elizabeth in Sion House, not far from Hampton Court, he

was accorded more honor than usually fell to the lot of an envoy of

royalty. Never, says Florimond de Raemond, did the queen meet him but she

greeted him with a kiss, and it became a popular saying that Conde's

ambassador was a much more important personage than the envoy of the King

of France. De ortu, progressu, et ruina haereseon (Cologne, 1614), ii. 284

(l. vi., c. 15).

[632] The letter of Jeanne to Elizabeth, Oct. 15, 1568, is inserted in

Jean de Serres, iii. 288-291.

[633] There were many English clergymen with whom the diversity of order

in public worship created no prejudice against the reformed churches of

France. Of this number was William Whittingham, Dean of Durham, who, when

he accompanied the Earl of Warwick, upon the occupation of Havre in 1562,

conformed the service of the English garrison to that of the resident

Protestants. Understanding that some of his countrymen had made

"frivolous" complaints of his action, the Dean justified himself by Saint

Augustine's counsel in such matters, and by alleging the disastrous

consequences a different course would have produced on the minds of the

French Protestants, who, he said, "as they had conceived evil of the

infinity of our rites and cold proceedings in religion, so if they should

have seen us (but in form only, though not in substance), to use the same

or like order in ceremonies which the papists had a little afore observed

(against whom they now venture goods and body), they would to their great

grief have suspected our doings as not sincere, and have feared in time

the loss of that liberty which after a sort they had purchased with the

bloodshedding of many thousands." And the dean maintains the wisdom of the

course pursued, having "perceived that it wrought here a marvellous

conjunction of minds between the French and us, and brought singular

comfort to all our people." The Bishop of London seems to have concurred

in these views, as well as Cuthbert Vaughan, and probably Warwick himself.

Whittingham to Cecil, Newhaven (Havre), Dec. 20, 1562, State Paper Office.

It ought to be added that Whittingham, in this letter, expresses in fact a

preference for the French forms to the English, as "most agreeable with

God's Word, most approaching to the form the godly Fathers used, best

allowed of the learned and godly in these days, and according to the

example of the best reformed churches." Dean Whittingham, who had married

the sister of John Calvin, was a leader of the Puritan party in the Church

of England, and the editor and principal translator of the "Genevan"

version of the English Bible. His opponents maintained that he was "a man

not in holy orders, either according to the Anglican or the Presbyterian

rite." (History of the Church of England, by G. G. Perry, Canon of

Lincoln, New York, 1879, p. 303.) But a commission appointed by the queen

to look into the matter, after the dean had been excommunicated by the

Archbishop of York, reported that "William Whittingham was ordained in a

better sort than even the archbishop himself." (Historic Origin of the

Bible, by Edwin Cone Bissell, New York, 1873, p. 57.)

[634] "A view of a seditious bull sent into England from Pius Quintus,

Bishop of Rome, 1569," etc. Works of Bishop Jewel, edited by R. W. Jelf,

vii. 263-265.

[635] Despatch of La Mothe Fenelon, Dec. 5, 1568, detailing the

justification of Charles, which he had made in an interview with Queen

Elizabeth, Correspondance diplomatique, i. 28-33.

[636] Yet no one could speak more courageous words than Elizabeth in her

own interests. In December, 1560, she requested the ambassador of Francis

II. "to write to his master frankly what she was about to say, viz., that

she meant to do her best to defend herself: that she was not of such

poverty, nor so void of the obedience of her subjects, but she trusted to

be able to do this. _She came of the race of lions, and therefore could

not sustain the person of a sheep._" Communication with the French

Ambassador, December 13, 1560, State Paper Office.

[637] Despatch of La Mothe Fenelon, Dec. 21, 1568, Corresp. dipl., i. 55,

56.

[638] "Qu'elle n'avoit rien en si grand horreur, en ce monde, que de voir

ung corps s'esmouvoir contre sa teste, et qu'elle n'avoit garde de

s'adjoindre a ung tel monstre." Ibid., i. 60.

[639] Ibid., i. 36-130.

[640] Mem. de Castelnau, liv. vii., c. 2; Agrippa d'Aubigne, liv. v., c.

10 (i. 283); De Thou, iv. (liv. xliv.) 160. La Mothe Fenelon's despatch of

January 24, 1569 (Corr. dipl. i. 153, 154), states the assistance at 6

cannon and furniture, 300 barrels of powder, 4,000 balls, and L7,000.

[641] Despatch to La Mothe Fenelon, March 8, 1569, and "Articles presantez

a la royne d'Angleterre par le Sr de la Mothe, etc," Corresp. diplom., i.

224, 237-241.

[642] "Considerant luy-mesmes et toute la flotte des marchands estre en

leur pouvoir, il trouva necessaire pour luy de condescendre en partie a

leurs demandes, _combien quv ce fut contre sa volonte_." Coppie du

messaige qui a este declaire par la Majeste de la Royne et son conseil,

par parolle de bouche, a l'amb. du Roy de France, par Jehan Somer, clerc

du signet de sa Majeste le IIIe jour de mars, 1568. Corresp. diplom., i.

242-251.

[643] Despatch of Dec. 5, 1568, Corresp. diplom., i. 32, 33.

[644] In his despatch of March 25, 1569, La Mothe Fenelon admits to

Catharine his great perplexity as to how he should act, so as neither to

show too little spirit nor to provoke Elizabeth to such a declaration as

would compel the king, his master, to declare war at so inopportune a

time. Corresp. diplom., i. 281.

[645] Jean de Serres, iii. 307, 308; De Thou, iv. (liv. xlv.) 169, 170;

Castelnau, liv. vii., c. 3.

[646] De Thou, iv. 171, 172; Castelnau, _ubi supra_.

[647] Jean de Serres, iii. 302, 309; De Thou, iv. 161; Agrippa d'Aubigne,

i. 277.

[648] De Thou, iv. (liv. xlv.) 174, 175.

[649] The Earl of Leicester gives Charles a more direct part in the war.

"The king hathe bene these two monethes about Metz in Lorrayne, to

empeache the entry of the Duke of Bipounte, who is set forward by the

common assent of all the princes Protestants in Germany, with twelve

thousand horsemen, and twenty-five thousand footemen, to assiste the

Protestants in France, and to make some final end of their garboyles."

Letter to Randolph, ambassador to the Emperor of Muscovy, May 1, 1569,

Wright, Queen Elizabeth, i. 313. The facilities, even for diplomatic

correspondence, with so distant a country as Muscovy, were very scanty.

Leicester's despatch is accordingly an interesting resume of the chief

events that had occurred in Western Europe during the past sixty days.

[650] Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 277; De Thou, iv. 172, etc.

[651] "Ja Dieu ne plaise qu'on die jamais que Bourbon ait fuyt devant ses

ennemis." Lestoile, 21. It is probably to this circumstance that the Earl

of Leicester alludes, when he says that "the Prince of Conde, through his

overmuche hardines and little regard to follow the Admirall's advise had

his arme broken with a courrire shotte," etc. Wright, Queen Elizabeth, i.

313, 314.

[652] Agrippa d'Aubigne, Hist. univ., liv. v., c. 8 (i. 280); De Thou, iv.

175.

[653] D'Aubigne, _ubi supra_. A Huguenot patriarch, named La Vergne, was

noticed by Agrippa himself fighting in the midst of twenty-five of his

nephews and kinsmen. The dead bodies of the old man and of fifteen of his

followers fell almost on a single heap, and nearly all the survivors were

taken prisoners.

[654] Jeanne d'Albret to Marie de Cleves, April, 1569, Rochambeau, Lettres

d'Antoine de Bourbon et de Jehanne d'Albret (Paris, 1877), 297.

[655] I regret to say that the current representations as to the

termination of Conde's dishonorable attachment to Isabeau de Limueil are

proved by contemporary documents to be erroneous. The tears and

remonstrances of his wife Eleonore de Roye (see _ante_, chapter xiv.) may

have had some temporary effect. But an anonymous letter among the Simancas

MSS., written March 15, 1565 (and consequently more than six months after

Eleonore's death, which occurred July 23, 1564), portrays him as "hora piu

che mai passionato per la sua Limolia." Duc d'Aumale, Pieces justif., i.

552. Just as Calvin (letter of September 17, 1563, Bonnet, Lettres franc.,

ii. 539) had rebuked the prince with his customary frankness, warning him

respecting his conduct, and saying that "les bonnes gens en seront

offensez, les malins en feront leur risee," so now Coligny and the

Huguenot gentlemen of his suite united with the Protestant ministers in

begging him to renounce his present course of life, and contract a second

honorable marriage. The latter held up to him "il pericolo et infamia

propria, et il scandalo commune a tutta la relligione per esserne lui

capo;" the former threatened to leave him. I have seen no injurious

reports affecting Conde's morals after his marriage, November 8, 1565, to

Francoise Marie d'Orleans Longueville. Duc d'Aumale, Princes de Conde, i.

263-278.

[656] Long the idol of the Huguenots, both of high or of low degree, he

enjoyed a popularity perpetuated in a spirited song ("La Chanson du Petit

Homme"), current so far back as the close of the first war, 1563, the

refrain of which, alluding to the prince's diminutive stature, is: "_Dieu

gard' de mal le Petit Homme!_" Chansonnier Huguenot, 250, etc.

[657] The author of the Vie de Coligny (Cologne, 1686) gives more than one

instance of a deference on the part of the subject of his biography which

may seem to the reader excessive, but which alone could satisfy the

chivalrous feeling of the loyal knight of the sixteenth century.

[658] Brantome (Hommes illustres, OEuvres, viii. 163, 164) relates that

Honorat de Savoie, Count of Villars, begged the Duke of Anjou to have

Stuart given over to him, and, having gained his request, murdered him.

[659] "Qui par artifices merveilleusement subtils ont bien sceu vandre le

sang de la maison de France contre soy-mesmes."

[660] The Earl of Leicester wrote to Randolph: "Robert Stuart,

Chastellier, and certaine other worthy gentlemen, to the number of six,

were lykewise taken and slayne, as the Frenche tearme it, de sang froid."

Wright, Queen Elizabeth, i. 314. See also Cardinal Chatillon's letter to

the Elector Palatine, June 10, 1569, in which the writer declares

significantly of Conde's murder by Montesquiou, "ce qu'il n'eust ose

entreprendre sans en avoir commandement _des plus grands_." Kluckholn,

Briefe Friedrich des Frommen, ii. 336.

[661] Letter of Henry of Navarre to the Duke of Anjou, "escript au Camp

d'Availle le xiie jour de juillet 1569." Lettres inedites de Henry IV.

recueillies par le Prince Augustin Galitzin (Paris. 1860), 4-11.

[662] The Huguenot loss is given by Jean de Serres (iii. 316) at 200

killed and 40 taken prisoners. Agrippa d'Aubigne states it at 140

gentilhommes (Hist. univ., i. 280). The Earl of Leicester's words are: "In

which conflicte was slayne on both sydes, as we heare, not above foure

hundred men" (Wright, Queen Elizabeth, i. 313, 314). Castelnau speaks of

over a hundred Huguenot gentlemen slain and an equal number taken

prisoners (liv. vii., c. 4). The "Adviz donne par Mr Norrys, ambassadeur

pour la royne d'Angleterre, prins de ses lettres, envoyees de Metz, le 18

d'Avril" (La Mothe Fenelon, i. 362), agrees with Leicester, but is unique

in making Anjou's loss greater than that of the Huguenots. De Thou makes

the Protestants lose 400. The untruthful Davila says, "the Huguenots lost

not above seven hundred men, but they were most of them gentlemen and

cavaliers of note."

[663] Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 281. La Fosse and others have preserved one of

the good Catholic stanzas composed on this occasion:

L'an mil cinq cent soixante et neuf

Entre Congnac et Chateauneuf

Fust apporte sur une anesse

Le grand ennemi de la messe.

(Journal d'un cure ligueur, 104.)

[664] "On donna l'honneur de cette defaicte a M. de Tavannes." La Fosse,

104.

[665] De Thou, iv. (liv. xlv.) 177. Claude de Sainctes, afterward Bishop

of Evreux, who, it will be remembered, figured at the colloquy of Poissy,

is credited with the suggestion of the chapel.

[666] The principal authorities consulted for the battle of Jarnac, or of

Bassac, as it is also frequently called, from the abbey near which it

raged, are: Jean de Serres, iii. 309-315; De Thou, iv. (liv. xlv.)

173-176; Castelnau, liv. vii., c. 4; Ag. d'Aubigne, i. 278-281; Le vray

discours de la bataille donnee par monsieur le 13. iour de Mars, 1569,

entre Chasteauneuf et Jarnac, etc., avec privilege (Cimber et Danjou,

Archives curieuses, vi. 365, etc.); Discours de la bataille donnee par

Monseigneur, Duc d'Anjou et de Bourbonnoys, ... contre les rebelles ...

entre la ville d'Angoulesme et Jarnac, pres d'une maison nommee Vibrac

appartenant a la Dame de Mezieres; an inaccurate official account, drawn

up at Metz by Neufville on the first reception of the news, and sent by

the Spanish ambassador, Alava, to Philip II.; La Mothe Fenelon, Corr.

dip., vii. 3-11; Davila, bk. iv.; the "Relation originale" in Documents

inedits tires des coll. MSS. de la bibliotheque royale (Fr. gov.), iv.

483, etc. Compare the excellent narratives of the Duc d'Aumale and Prof.

Soldan. The Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. fr., i. (1853) 429,

gives a representation of a monument, in the form of an obelisk, about

eleven feet in height, erected by the Department of the Charente, in 1818,

on the spot where Conde fell. A somewhat similar monument, raised in 1770

by the Count de Jarnac, was destroyed during the first French revolution.

[667] Anjou to Charles IX., March 17, 1569, Duc d'Aumale, Les Princes de

Conde, ii. 399.

[668] Apostolicarum Pii Quinti, P. M., Epistolarum libri quinque.

Antverpiae, 1640, 152.

[669] Pii Quinti Epist., 157-166.

[670] Ibid., 160, 161.

[671] Boscheron des Portes, Hist. du Parlement de Bordeaux (Bordeaux,

1877), i. 214, 216. As the Huguenots were condemned, not for heresy, but

for rebellion, sacrilege, etc., the learned author finds no mention of

fagot and flame.

[672] La Mothe Fenelon. i. 288-294.

[673] Despatch of April 12, 1569, ibid., i. 303.

[674] It is evident that the results of the battle were designedly

exaggerated by the Roman Catholics at the time, and have been overrated

ever since. Agrippa d'Aubigne alleges that, out of 128 cornets of cavalry

in the Huguenot army, only fifteen were engaged; and that of over 200

ensigns of infantry, barely _six_--those under Pluviaut--came within a

league of the battle-field. Hist. univ., _ubi supra_.

[675] Jean de Serres, iii. 317, 318; De Thou, iv. (liv. xlv.) 178, 179. De

Thou reckons the losses of the Roman Catholics before Cognac at more than

300 men.

[676] De Thou, iv. 180, 181; Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 282; J. de Serres, iii.

318, 319.

[677] La Mothe Fenelon, i. 367. And now, to the insulting _quatrain_

already quoted a propos of Conde's death, the Huguenot soldiers of

Angoumois replied in rough verses of their own:

Le Prince de Conde

Il a ete tue;

Mais Monsieur l'Amiral

Est encore a cheval,

Avec La Rochefoucauld

Pour achever tous ces Papaux.

V. Bujeaud, Chronique protestante de l'Angoumois, 40.

[678] Discours merveilleux de la vie de Catherine de Medicis (Cologne,

1683), 645. See the atrocious letter to Catharine, which the queen found

upon her bed, Nov. 8, 1575, and which purports to have been written from

Lausanne. In the copy published by Le Laboureur (ii. 425-429), it is

signed "Grand Champ;" in that which the editor of Claude Haton gives in an

appendix (p. 1111-1115) the name is "Emille Dardani." The date is

doubtful. Le Laboureur is apparently more correct in giving it as "le

troisieme mois de la quatrieme annee apres la trahison" (St. Bartholomew's

Day).

[679] The Vie de Coligny (Cologne, 1686), p. 360, 361, says nothing to

indicate that the author regarded D'Andelot's death as other than natural.

But Hotman's Gasparis Colinii Vita (1575), p. 75, mentions the suspicion,

and considers it confirmed by the saying attributed to Birague, afterward

chancellor, that "the war would never be terminated by arms alone, but

that it might be brought to a close very easily by _cooks_." Cardinal

Chatillon, in a letter to the Elector Palatine, June 10, 1569, alludes to

his brother's having died of poison as a well-ascertained fact, "comme il

est apparent tant par l'anatomie," etc. Kluckholn, Briefe Frederick des

Frommen, ii 336.

[680] Since the outbreak of the present war, the court had undertaken to

deprive D'Andelot of his rank, and had divided his duties between Brissac

and Strozzi. Brissac had been killed, and Strozzi was now recognized by

the court as colonel-general.

[681] The letter written from Saintes, May 18, 1569, is inserted in

Gasparis Colinii Vita (1575) pp. 75-78, the author remarking, "quam ipsius

manum, atque chirographum prae manibus jam habeo." The possession of so

many family manuscripts on the part of the anonymous writer of this

valuable contemporary account, is explained by the fact that he was no

other than the distinguished Francis Hotman, in whose hands the admiral's

widow, Jaqueline d'Entremont, or Antremont, had placed all the documents

she possessed, entreating him to undertake the pious task of compiling a

life of her husband. In a remarkable letter which has but lately come to

light, dated January 15, 1572 (new style 1573), after an exordium full of

those classical allusions of which the age was so fond, she writes: "Ne

trouvez etrange, je vous supplie, si j'ai essaye de reveiller vostre plume

pour laisser a la posterite autant de temoignages de la vertu de feu

monseigneur et mari, que nos ennemis la veulent designer," etc. Bulletin,

vi. 29.

[682] "La France aura beaucoup de maux avec vous, et puis sans vous; mais

en fin tout tombera sur l'Espagnol." Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 283.

[683] Agrippa d'Aubigne, _ubi supra_.

[684] Berger de Xivrey, Lettres missives de Henri IV. (Paris, 1843), i. 7.

[685] Histoire de Charles IX. par le sieur Varillas (Cologne, 1686), ii.

161, 162. I am glad to embrace this opportunity of quoting a historian in

whose statements of facts I have as seldom the good fortune to concur as

in his general deductions of principles. M. de Thou (iv. 182) remarks in a

similar spirit: "Il fit voir a la France (et ses ennemis meme en

convinrent) qu'il etoit capable de soutenir lui seul tout le parti

Protestant dont on croyoit auparavant qu'il ne soutenoit qu'une partie."

[686] Ranke (Civil Wars and Monarchy), 241; the statement of Jean de

Serres, iii. 325, would make the total number a little larger; the

accounts of Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 285, and De Thou, iv. 185, make it

somewhat smaller.

[687] Adviz, etc., La Mothe Fenelon, i. 363.

[688] De Thou, iv. 184; Jean de Serres, iii. 320-323. This was in

February. It was the more natural for Wolfgang to defend his course, as he

was himself an ancient ally of the King of Spain. In the Papiers d'etat du

card. de Granvelle, ix. 567, we have the text of a compact formed Oct. 1,

1565: "Lettres de Service accordees par le roi d'Espagne a Wolfgang, comte

Palatin et duc de Deux Ponts." According to this document, the duke was

bound for three years to obey Philip's summons, although he refused to

pledge himself to do anything directly or indirectly against the Augsburg

Confession or its supporters.

[689] Journal d'un cure ligueur (Jehan de la Fosse), 104.

[690] Letter of Charles IX. to La Mothe Fenelon, May 14, 1569, Corresp.

dipl., vii. 20, 21. The same incredulity respecting the possibility of

Deux Ponts's enterprise is expressed by the anonymous author of a

memorandum of a journey through France, in Documents inedits tires des

MSS. de la bibl. royale, iv. 493. It is alluded to in the "Remonstrance"

of the Protestant princes presented after the junction of the armies. Jean

de Serres, iii. 337.

[691] Castelnau, liv. vii., c. 5.

[692] De Thou, iv. 185-188; Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 285; Anquetil, Esprit de

la ligue, i. 297.

[693] Discours envoye de La Rochelle a la Royne d'Angleterre. La Mothe

Fenelon, ii. 158, etc.

[694] De Thou, iv. 188; Lestoile, 22; J. de Serres, iii. 524; Castelnau,

liv. vii., c. 6.