General History for Colleges and High Schools Part 54

THE CONSPIRACY OF AMBOISE (1560).--The foregoing notice of parties and their chiefs will render intelligible the events which we now have to narrate. The harsh measures adopted against the reformers by Francis II., who of course was entirely under the influence of the Guises, led the chiefs of the persecuted party to lay a plan for wresting the government from the hands of these "new Mayors of the Palace." The Guises were to be arrested and imprisoned, and the charge of the young king given to the Prince of Conde. The plot was revealed to the Guises, and was avenged by the execution of more than a thousand of the Huguenots.

THE Ma.s.sACRE OF Va.s.sY (1562).--After the short reign of Francis II. (1559- 1560), his brother Charles came to the throne as Charles IX. He was only ten years of age, so the queen-mother a.s.sumed the government in his name.

Pursuing her favorite maxim to rule by setting one party as a counterpoise to the other, she gave the Bourbon princes a place in the government, and also by a royal edict gave the Huguenots a limited toleration, and forbade their further persecution.

These concessions in favor of the Huguenots angered the Catholic chiefs, particularly the Guises; and it was the violation by the adherents of the Duke of Guise of the edict of toleration that finally caused the growing animosities of the two parties to break out in civil war. While pa.s.sing through the country with a body of armed attendants, at a small place called Va.s.sy, the Duke came upon a company of Huguenots a.s.sembled in a barn for wors.h.i.+p. His retainers first insulted and then attacked them, killing about forty of the company and wounding many more.

Under the lead of Admiral Coligny and the Prince of Conde, the Huguenots now rose throughout France. Philip II. of Spain sent an army to aid the Catholics, while Elizabeth of England extended help to the Huguenots.

THE TREATY OF ST. GERMAIN (1570).--Throughout the series of lamentable civil wars upon which France now entered, both parties displayed a ferocity of disposition more befitting pagans than Christians. But it should be borne in mind that many on both sides were actuated by political ambition, rather than by religious conviction, knowing little and caring less about the distinctions in the creeds for which they were ostensibly fighting. [Footnote: What are usually designated as the _First_, _Second_, and _Third Wars_ were really one. The table below exhibits the wars of the entire period of which we are treating. Some make the Religious Wars proper end with the Edict of Nantes (1598); others with the fall of La Roch.e.l.le (1628).

First War (ended by Peace of Amboise) ... ... . 1562-1563.

Second War (ended by Peace of Longjumeau) ..... 1567-1568.

Third War (ended by Peace of St. Germain) ..... 1568-1570.

Ma.s.sacre of St. Bartholomew's Day, Aug. 24... .....1572.

Fourth War (ended by Peace of La Roch.e.l.le)..... 1572-1573.

Fifth War (ended by Peace of Chastenoy) ... ... 1574-1576.

Sixth War (ended by Peace of Bergerac)... ... ... .1577.

Seventh War (ended by Treaty of Fleix)... ... . 1579-1580.

Eighth War (War of the Three Henries) ... ... . 1585-1589.

Henry of Bourbon, King of Navarre, secures the throne . .1589.

Edict of Nantes ... ... ... ... ... ... ...1598.

Siege and fall of La Roch.e.l.le ... ... ..... 1627-1628.

By the fall of La Roch.e.l.le the political power of the Huguenots was completely prostrated.]

Sieges, battles, and truces followed one another in rapid and confusing succession. Conspiracies, treacheries, and a.s.sa.s.sinations help to fill up the dreary record of the period. The Treaty of St. Germain (in 1570) brought a short but, as it proved, delusive peace. The terms of the treaty were very favorable to the Huguenots. They received four towns,--among which was La Roch.e.l.le, the stronghold of the Huguenot faith,--which they might garrison and hold as places of safety and pledges of good faith.

To cement the treaty, Catherine de Medici now proposed that the Princess Marguerite, the sister of Charles IX., should be given in marriage to Henry of Bourbon, the new young king of Navarre. The announcement of the proposed alliance caused great rejoicing among Catholics and Protestants alike, and the chiefs of both parties crowded to Paris to attend the wedding, which took place on the 18th of August, 1572.

THE Ma.s.sACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S DAY (Aug. 24, 1572).--Before the festivities which followed the nuptial ceremonies were over, the world was shocked by one of the most awful crimes of which history has to tell,--the ma.s.sacre of the Huguenots in Paris on St. Bartholomew's Day.

The circ.u.mstances which led to this fearful tragedy were as follows: Among the Protestant n.o.bles who came up to Paris to attend the wedding was the Admiral Coligny. Upon coming in contact with Charles IX., the Admiral secured almost immediately an entire ascendency over his mind. This influence Coligny used to draw the king away from the queen-mother and the Guises. Fearing the loss of her influence over her son, Catherine resolved upon the death of the Admiral. The attempt miscarried, Coligny receiving only a slight wound from the a.s.sa.s.sin's ball.

The Huguenots at once rallied about their wounded chief with loud threats of revenge. Catherine, driven on by insane fear and hatred, now determined upon the death of all the Huguenots in Paris as the only measure of safety. By the 23d of August, the plans for the ma.s.sacre were all arranged. On the evening of that day, Catherine went to her son, and represented to him that the Huguenots had formed a plot for the a.s.sa.s.sination of the royal family and the leaders of the Catholic party, and that the utter ruin of their house and cause could be averted only by the immediate destruction of the Protestants within the city walls. The order for the ma.s.sacre was then laid before him for his signature. The king at first refused to sign the decree, but, overcome at last by the representations of his mother, he exclaimed, "I agree to the scheme, provided not one Huguenot be left alive in France to reproach me with the deed."

A little past the hour of midnight on St. Bartholomew's Day (Aug. 24, 1572), at a preconcerted signal,--the tolling of a bell,--the ma.s.sacre began. Coligny was one of the first victims. After his a.s.sa.s.sins had done their work, they tossed the body out of the window of the chamber in which it lay, into the street, in order that the Duke of Guise, who stood below, might satisfy himself that his enemy was really dead. For three days and nights the ma.s.sacre went on within the city. King Charles himself is said to have joined in the work, and from one of the windows of the palace of the Louvre to have fired upon the Huguenots as they fled past. The number of victims in Paris is variously estimated at from 3,000 to 10,000.

With the capital cleared of Huguenots, orders were issued to the princ.i.p.al cities of France to purge themselves in like manner of heretics. In many places the instincts of humanity prevailed over fear of the royal resentment, and the decree was disobeyed. But in other places the orders were carried out, and frightful ma.s.sacres took place. The entire number of victims throughout the country was probably between 20,000 and 30,000.

The ma.s.sacre of St. Bartholomew's Day raised a cry of execration in almost every part of the civilized world, among Catholics and Protestants alike.

Philip II., however, is said to have received the news with unfeigned joy; while Pope Gregory XIII. caused a _Te Deum_, in commemoration of the event, to be sung in the church of St. Mark, in Rome. Respecting this it should in justice be said that Catholic writers maintain that the Pope acted under a misconception of the facts, it having been represented to him that the ma.s.sacre resulted from a thwarted plot of the Huguenots against the royal family of France and the Catholic Church.

REIGN OF HENRY III. (1574-1589).--The ma.s.sacre of St. Bartholomew's Day, instead of exterminating heresy in France, only served to rouse the Huguenots to a more determined defence of their faith. Throughout the last two years of the reign of Charles IX., and the fifteen succeeding years of the reign of his brother Henry III., the country was in a state of turmoil and war. At length the king, who, jealous of the growing power and popularity of the Duke of Guise, had caused him to be a.s.sa.s.sinated, was himself struck down by the avenging dagger of a Dominican monk. With him ended the House of Valois-Orleans.

Henry of Bourbon, king of Navarre, who for many years had been the most prominent leader of the Huguenots, now came to the throne as the first of the Bourbon kings.

ACCESSION OF HENRY IV. (1589).--Notwithstanding that the doctrines of the reformers had made rapid progress in France under the sons of Henry II., still the majority of the nation at the time of the death of Henry III.

were Roman Catholics in faith and wors.h.i.+p. Under these circ.u.mstances, we shall hardly expect to find the entire nation quietly acquiescing in the accession to the French throne of a Protestant prince, and he the leader and champion of the hated Huguenots. Nor did Henry secure without a struggle the crown that was his by right. The Catholics declared for Cardinal Bourbon, an uncle of the king of Navarre, and France was thus kept in the whirl of civil war. Elizabeth of England aided the Protestants, and Philip II. of Spain a.s.sisted the Catholics.

HENRY TURNS CATHOLIC (1593).--After the war had gone on for about four years,--during which time was fought the noted battle of Ivry, in which Henry led his soldiers to victory by telling them to follow the white plume on his hat,--the quarrel was closed, for the time being, by Henry's abjuration of the Huguenot faith, and his adoption of that of the Roman Catholic Church (1593).

Mingled motives led Henry to do this. He was personally liked even by the Catholic chiefs, and he was well aware that it was only his Huguenot faith that prevented their being his hearty supporters. Hence duty and policy seemed to him to concur in urging him to remove the sole obstacle in the way of their ready loyalty, and thus bring peace and quiet to distracted France.

THE EDICT OF NANTES (1598).--As soon as Henry had become the crowned and acknowledged king of France, he gave himself to the work of composing the affairs of his kingdom. The most noteworthy of the measures he adopted to this end was the publication of the celebrated Edict of Nantes (April 15, 1598). This decree granted the Huguenots practical freedom of wors.h.i.+p, opened to them all offices and employments, and gave them as places of refuge and defence a large number of fortified towns, among which was the important city of La Roch.e.l.le.

The temporary hus.h.i.+ng of the long-continued quarrels of the Catholics and Protestants by the adoption of the principle of religious toleration, paved the way for a revival of the trade and industries of the country, which had been almost destroyed by the anarchy and waste of the civil wars. France now entered upon such a period of prosperity as she had not known for many years.

LOUIS XIII, AND HIS MINISTER, CARDINAL RICHELIEU.--Henry IV. was a.s.sa.s.sinated by a fanatic named Ravaillac, who regarded him as an enemy of the Roman Catholic Church. As his son Louis, who succeeded him as Louis XIII. (1610-1643), was a child of nine years, during his minority the government was administered by his mother, Mary de Medici. Upon attaining his majority, Louis took the government into his own hands. He chose, as his chief minister, Cardinal Richelieu, one of the most remarkable characters of the seventeenth century. From the time that Louis admitted the young prelate to his cabinet (in 1622), the ecclesiastic became the virtual sovereign of France, and for the s.p.a.ce of twenty years swayed the destinies not only of that country, but, it might almost be said, those of Europe as well.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CARDINAL RICHELIEU. (After a painting in the Louvre.)]

Richelieu's policy was twofold: first, to render the authority of the French king absolute in France; secondly, to make the power of France supreme in Europe.

To attain the first end, Richelieu sought to crush the political power of the Huguenots, and to trample out the last vestige of independence among the old feudal aristocracy; to secure the second, he labored to break down the power of both branches of the House of Hapsburg,--that is, of Austria and Spain.

For nearly the life-time of a generation Richelieu, by intrigue, diplomacy, and war, pursued with unrelenting purpose these objects of his ambition. His own words best indicate how he proposed to use his double authority as cardinal and prime minister to effect his purpose: "I shall trample all opposition under foot," said he, "and then cover all errors with my scarlet robe."

In the following paragraph we shall speak very briefly of the cardinal's dealings with the Huguenots, which feature alone of his policy especially concerns us at present.

POLITICAL POWER OF THE HUGUENOTS CRUSHED.--In the prosecution of his plans, Cardinal Richelieu's first step was to break down the political power of the Huguenot chiefs, who, dissatisfied with their position in the government, and irritated by religious grievances, were revolving in mind the founding in France of a Protestant commonwealth like that which the Prince of Orange and his adherents had setup in the Netherlands. The capital of the new Republic was to be La Roch.e.l.le, on the southwestern coast of France. In 1627, an alliance having been formed between England and the French Protestant n.o.bles, an English fleet and army were sent across the Channel to aid the Huguenot enterprise.

Richelieu now resolved to ruin forever the power of these Protestant n.o.bles who were constantly challenging the royal authority and threatening the dismemberment of France. Accordingly he led in person an army to the siege of La Roch.e.l.le, which, after a gallant resistance of more than a year, was compelled to open its gates to the cardinal (1628). That the place might never again be made the centre of resistance to the royal power, Louis ordered that "the fortifications be razed to the ground, in such wise that the plough may plough through the soil as through tilled land."

The Huguenots maintained the struggle a few months longer in the south of France, but were finally everywhere reduced to submission. The result of the war was the complete destruction of the political power of the French Protestants. A treaty of peace, called the Edict of Grace, negotiated the year after the fall of La Roch.e.l.le, left them, however, freedom of wors.h.i.+p, according to the provisions of the Edict of Nantes (see p. 578).

The Edict of Grace properly marks the close of the religious wars which had desolated France for two generations (from 1562 to 1629). It is estimated that this series of wars and ma.s.sacres cost France a million lives, and that between three and four hundred hamlets and towns were destroyed by the contending parties.

RICHELIEU AND THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR.--When Cardinal Richelieu came to the head of affairs in France, there was going on in Germany the Thirty Years'

War (1618-1648), of which we shall tell in the following chapter. This was very much such a struggle between the Catholic and Protestant German princes as we have seen waged between the two religious parties in France.

Although Richelieu had just crushed French Protestantism, he now gives aid to the Protestant princes of Germany, because their success meant the division of Germany and the humiliation of Austria. Richelieu did not live to see the end either of the Thirty Years' War or of that which he had begun with Spain; but this foreign policy of the great minister, carried out by others, finally resulted, as we shall learn hereafter, in the humiliation of both branches of the House of Hapsburg, and the lifting of France to the first place among the powers of Europe.

CHAPTER LIII.

THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR.

(1618-1648.)

NATURE AND CAUSES OF THE WAR.--The long and calamitous Thirty Years' War was the last great combat between Protestantism and Catholicism in Europe.

It started as a struggle between the Protestant and Catholic princes of Germany, but gradually involved almost all the states of the continent, degenerating at last into a shameful and heartless struggle for power and territory.

The real cause of the war was the enmity existing between the German Protestants and Catholics. Each party by its encroachments gave the other occasion for complaint. The Protestants at length formed for their mutual protection a league called the Evangelical Union (1608). In opposition to the Union, the Catholics formed a confederation known as the Holy League (1609). All Germany was thus prepared to burst into the flames of a religious war.

THE BOHEMIAN PERIOD OF THE WAR (1618-1623).--The flames that were to desolate Germany for a generation were first kindled in Bohemia, where were still smouldering embers of the Hussite wars, which two centuries before had desolated that land (see p. 506). A church which the Protestants maintained they had a right to build was torn down by the Catholics, and another was closed. The Protestants rose in revolt against their Catholic king, Ferdinand, elected a new Protestant king, [Footnote: Frederick V. of the Palatinate, son-in-law of James I. of England.] and drove out the Jesuits. The Thirty Years' War had begun (1618). Almost an exact century had pa.s.sed since Luther posted his theses on the door of the court church at Wittenberg. It is estimated that at this time more than nine-tenths of the population of the empire were Protestants.

The war had scarcely opened when, the Imperial office falling vacant, the Bohemian king, Ferdinand, was elected emperor. With the power and influence he now wielded, it was not a difficult matter for him to quell the Protestant insurrection in his royal dominions. The leaders of the revolt were executed, and the reformed faith in Bohemia was almost uprooted.