A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times Volume IV Part 11

As to the question of a council, general or national, it was referred to the decision of the pope and the bishops of France. Meanwhile, it was announced that the punishment of sectaries would, for the present, be suspended, but that the king reserved to himself and his judges the right of severely chastising those who had armed the populace and kindled sedition. "Thus it was," adds De Thou, "that the Protestant religion, hitherto so hated, began to be tolerated, and in a manner authorized, by consent of its enemies themselves." [_Histoire Universelle,_ t. iii.

p. 535.]

The elections to the states-general were very stormy; all parties displayed the same ardor; the Guises by identifying themselves more and more with the Catholic cause, and employing, to further its triumph, all the resources of the government; the Reformers by appealing to the rights of liberty and to the pa.s.sions bred of sect and of local independence.

A royal decree was addressed to all the bailiffs of the kingdom.

"Ye shall not fail," said the king to them, "to keep your eyes open, and give orders that such mischievous spirits as may be composed of the remnants of the Amboise rebellion or other gentry, studious of innovation and alteration in the state, be so discovered and restrained that they be not able to corrupt by their machinations, under whatsoever pretexts they may hide them, simple folks led on by confidence in the clemency whereof we have heretofore made use." The bailiffs followed, for the most part successfully, but in some cases vainly, the instructions they had received. One morning in December, 1560, the Duke of Guise was visited by a courier from the Count de Villars, governor of Languedoc; he informed the duke that the deputies of that province had just been appointed, and that they all belonged to the new religion, and were amongst the most devoted to the sect; there was not a moment to lose, "for they were men of wits, great reputation, and circ.u.mspection. The governor was very vexed at not having been able to prevent their election and departure; but plurality of votes had carried the day against him."

This despatch was "no sooner received than some men were got ready to go and meet those deputies, in order to put them in a place where they would never have been able to do good or harm." The deputies of Languedoc escaped this ambuscade, and arrived safe and sound at Orleans; but they "were kept under strict watch, and their papers were confiscated up to the moment when the death of the king occurred to deliver them from all fear." [_Histoire des Etats generaux,_ by G. Picot, t. ii. pp. 25-29.]

In Provence, in Dauphiny, in the counts.h.i.+p of Avignon, at Lyons, on occasion and in the midst of the electoral struggle, several local risings, seizures of arms, and surprisals of towns took place and disturbed the public peace. There was not yet religious civil war, but there were the preparatory note and symptoms of it.

At the same time that they were thus laboring to keep out of the approaching states-general adversaries of obscure rank and belonging to the people, the Guises had very much at heart a desire that the great leaders of the Reformers and of the Catholic malcontents, especially the two princes of the house of Bourbon, the King of Navarre and the Prince of Conde, should come to this a.s.sembly, and there find themselves under the thumb of their enemies. They had not gone to the a.s.semblage of notables at Fontainebleau, and their hostility to the Guises had been openly shown during and since that absence. Nothing was left untried to attract them, not to Meaux any longer, but to Orleans, whither the meeting of the states-general had been transferred. King Francis II., a docile instrument in the hands of his uncles and his young queen their niece, wrote letter after letter to the King of Navarre, urging him to bring with him his brother the Prince of Conde to clear himself of the accusations brought against him "by these miserable heretics, who made marvellous charges against him. . . . Conde would easily prove the falsity of the a.s.sertions made by these rascals." The King of Navarre still hesitated; the king insisted haughtily. "I should be sorry," he wrote on the 30th of August, 1560, "that into the heart of a person of such good family, and one that touches me so nearly, so miserable an inclination should have entered; being able to a.s.sure you that whereinsoever he refuses to obey me I shall know perfectly well how to make it felt that I am king." The Prince of Conde's mother-in-law, the Countess of Roye, wrote to the queen-mother that the prince would appear at court if the king commanded it; but she begged her beforehand not to think it strange if, on going to a place where his most cruel enemies had every power, he went attended by his friends. Whether she really were, or only pretended to be, shocked at what looked like a threat, Catherine replied that no person in France had a right to approach the king in any other wise than with his ordinary following, and that, if the Prince of Conde went to court with a numerous escort, he would find the king still better attended. At last the King of Navarre and his brother made up their minds. How could they elude formal orders? Armed resistance had become the only possible resource, and the Prince of Conde lacked means to maintain it; his scarcity of money was such that, in order to procure him a thousand gold crowns, his mother-in-law had been obliged to pledge her castle of Germany to the Constable de Montmorency. In spite of fears and remonstrances on the part of their most sincere friends, the two chiefs of the house of Bourbon left their homes and set out for Orleans.

On their arrival before Poitiers, great was their surprise: the governor, Montpezat, shut the gates against them as public enemies. They were on the point of abruptly retracing their steps; but Montpezat had ill understood his instructions; he ought to have kept an eye upon the Bourbons without displaying any bad disposition towards them, so long as they prosecuted their journey peacefully; the object was, on the contrary, to heap upon them marks of respect, and neglect nothing to give them confidence. Marshal de Termes, despatched in hot haste, went to open the gates of Poitiers to the princes, and receive them there with the honors due to them. They resumed their route, and arrived on the 30th of October at Orleans.

The reception they there met with cannot be better described than it has been by the Duke of Aumale: "Not one of the crown's officers came to receive the princes; no honor was paid them; the streets were deserted, silent, and occupied by a military guard. In conformity with usage, the King of Navarre presented himself on horseback at the great gate of the royal abode; it remained closed. He had to pocket the insult, and pa.s.s on foot through the wicket, between a double row of gentlemen wearing an air of insolence. The king awaited the princes in his chamber; behind him were ranged the Guises and the princ.i.p.al lords; not a word, not a salutation on their part. After this freezing reception, Francis II.

conducted the two brothers to his mother, who received them, according to Regnier de la Planche's expression, 'with crocodile's tears.' The Guises did not follow them thither, in order to escape any personal dispute, and so as not to be hearers of the severe words which they had themselves dictated to the young monarch. The king questioned Conde sharply; but the latter, 'who was endowed with great courage, and spoke as well as ever any prince or gentleman in the world, was not at all startled, and defended his cause with many good and strong reasons,' protesting his own innocence and accusing the Guises of calumniation. When he haughtily alluded to the word of honor which had been given him, the king, interrupting him, made a sign; and the two captains of the guard, Breze and Chavigny, entered and took the prince's sword. He was conducted to a house in the city, near the Jacobins', which was immediately barred, crenelated, surrounded by soldiers, and converted into a veritable bastile. Whilst they were removing him thither, Conde exclaimed loudly against this brazen violation of all the promises of safety by which he had been lured on when urged to go to Orleans. The only answer he received was his committal to absolutely solitary confinement and the withdrawal of his servants. The King of Navarre vainly asked to have his brother's custody confided to him; he obtained nothing but a coa.r.s.e refusal; and he himself, separated from his escort, was kept under ocular supervision in his apartment."

The trial of the Prince of Conde commenced immediately. He was brought before the privy council. He claimed, as a prince of the blood and knight of the order of St. Michael, his right to be tried only by the court of Parliament furnished with the proper complement of peers and knights of the order. This latter safeguard was worth nothing in his case, for there had been created, just lately, eighteen new knights, all friends and creatures of the Guises. His claim, however, was rejected; and he repeated it, at the same time refusing to reply to any interrogation, and appealing "from the king ill advised to the king better advised." A priest was sent to celebrate ma.s.s in his chamber: but "I came," said he, "to clear myself from the calumnies alleged against me, which is of more consequence to me than hearing ma.s.s." He did not attempt to conceal his antipathy towards the Guises, and the part he had taken in the hostilities directed against them. An officer, to whom permission had been given to converse with him in presence of his custodians, told him "that an appointment (accommodation) with the Duke of Guise would not be an impossibility for him." "Appointment between him and me!" answered Conde: "it can only be at the point of the lance."

The d.u.c.h.ess Renee of Ferrara, daughter of Louis XII., having come to France at this time, went to Orleans to pay her respects to the king.

The Duke of Guise was her son-in-law, and she reproached him bitterly with Conde's trial. "You have just opened," said she, "a wound which will bleed a long while; they who have dared to attack persons of the blood royal have always found it a bad job." The prince asked to see, in the presence of such persons as the king might appoint, his wife, Eleanor of Roye, who, from the commencement of the trial, "solicited this favor night and day, often throwing herself on her knees before the king with tears incredible; but the Cardinal of Lorraine, fearing lest his Majesty should be moved with compa.s.sion, drove away the princess most rudely, saying that, if she had her due, she would herself be placed in the lowest dungeon." For them of Guise the princess was a thorn in the flesh, for she lacked not wits, or language, or courage, insomuch that they had some discussion about making away with her. [_Memoires de Castelnau,_ p. 119; _Histoire de l'Etat de France, Cant de la Republique que de la Religion, sous Francois II.,_ by L. Regnier, Sieur de la Planche.] She demanded that at any rate able lawyers might act as counsel for her husband. Peter Robert and Francis de Marillac, advocates of renown in the Parliament of Paris, were appointed by the king for that purpose, but their a.s.sistance proved perfectly useless; on the 26th of November, 1560, the Prince of Conde was sentenced to death; and the sentence was to be carried out on the 10th of December, the very day of the opening of the states-general. Most of the historians say that, when it came to the question of signing it, three judges only, Chancellor de l'Hospital, the councillor of state, Duportail, and the aged Count of Sancerre, Louis de Bueil, refused to put their names to it. "For my part," says the scrupulous De Thou, "I can see nothing quite certain as to all that. I believe that the sentence of death was drawn up and not signed. I remember to have heard it so said a long while afterwards by my father, a truthful and straightforward man, to whom this form of sentence had always been distasteful."

Many contemporaries report, and De Thou accords credence to the report, that, in order to have nothing more to fear from the house of Bourbon, the Guises had resolved to make away with King Anthony of Navarre as well as his brother the Prince of Conde, but by another process. Feeling persuaded that it would be impossible to obtain against the elder brother a sentence ever so little in accordance with justice, for his conduct had been very reserved, they had, it is said, agreed that King Francis II.

should send for the King of Navarre into his closet and reproach him severely for his secret complicity with his brother Conde, and that if the King of Navarre defended himself stubbornly, he should be put to death on the spot by men posted there for the purpose. It is even added that Francis II. was to strike the first blow. Catherine de' Medici, who was beginning to be disquieted at the arrogance and successes of the Lorraine princes, sent warning of this peril to the King of Navarre by Jacqueline de Longwy, d.u.c.h.ess of Montpensier; and, just as he was proceeding to the royal audience from which he was not sure to return, Anthony de Bourbon, who was wanting in head rather than in heart, said to Renty, one of his gentlemen, "If I die yonder, carry my blood-stained s.h.i.+rt to my wife and my son, and tell my wife to send it round to the foreign princes of Christendom, that they may avenge my death, as my son is not yet of sufficient age." We may remark that the wife was Jeanne d'Albret, and the son was to be Henry IV. According to the chroniclers, when Francis II. looked in the eyes of the man he was to strike, his fierce resolve died away: the King of Navarre retired, safe and sound, from the interview, and the Duke of Guise, irritated at the weakness of the king his master, muttered between his teeth, "'Tis the very whitest liver that ever was."

In spite of De Thou's indors.e.m.e.nt of this story, it is doubtful whether its authenticity can be admitted; if the interview between the two kings took place, prudence on the part of the King of Navarre seems to be quite as likely an explanation of the result as hesitation to become a murderer on the part of Francis II.

One day Conde was playing cards with some officers on guard over him, when a servant of his who had been permitted to resume attendance on his master, pretending to approach him for the purpose of picking up a card, whispered in his ear, "Our gentleman is _croqued_." The prince, mastering his emotion, finished his game. He then found means of being for a moment alone with his servant, and learned from him that Francis II. was dead. [_Histoire des Princes de Conde, by the Duke d'Aumale,_ t. i. p. 94.] On the 17th of November, 1560, as he was mounting his horse to go hunting, he fainted suddenly. He appeared to have recovered, and was even able to be present when the final sentence was p.r.o.nounced against Conde; but on the 29th of November there was a fresh fainting-fit. It appears that Ambrose Pare, at that time the first surgeon of his day, and a faithful Reformer, informed his patron, Admiral Coligny, that there would not be long to wait, and that it was all over with the king. Up to the very last moment, either by themselves or through their niece Mary Stuart, the Guises preserved their influence over him: Francis II. sent for the King of Navarre, to a.s.sure him that it was quite of his own accord, and not by advice of the Guises, that he had brought Conde to trial. He died on the 5th of December, 1560, of an effusion on the brain, resulting from a fistula and an abscess in the ear.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Mary Stuart----284]

Through a fog of brief or doubtful evidence we can see at the bedside of this dying king his wife Mary Stuart, who gave him to the last her tender ministrations, and Admiral de Coligny, who, when the king had heaved his last sigh, rose up, and, with his air of pious gravity, said aloud before the Cardinal of Lorraine and the others who were present, "Gentlemen, the king is dead. A lesson to us to live." At the same moment the Constable de Montmorency, who had been ordered some time ago to Orleans, but had, according to his practice, travelled but slowly, arrived suddenly at the city gate, threatened to hang the ill-informed keepers of it, who hesitated to let him enter, and hastened to fold in his arms his niece, the Princess of Conde, whom the death of Francis II. restored to hope.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Coligny at the Death-bed of Francis II.----295]

CHAPTER x.x.xIII.----CHARLES IX. AND THE RELIGIOUS WARS. (1560-1574.)

We now enter upon the era of the civil wars, ma.s.sacres, and a.s.sa.s.sinations caused by religious fanaticism or committed on religious pretexts. The latter half of the sixteenth century is the time at which the human race saw the opening of that great drama, of which religious liberty is the beginning and the end; and France was then the chief scene of it. At the close of the fifteenth and at the commencement of the sixteenth centuries, religious questions had profoundly agitated Christian Europe; but towards the middle of the latter century they had obtained in the majority of European states solutions which, however incomplete, might be regarded as definitive. Germany was divided into Catholic states and Protestant states, which had established between themselves relations of an almost pacific character. Switzerland was entering upon the same course. In England, Scotland, the Low Countries, the Scandinavian states, and the free towns their neighbors, the Reformation had prevailed or was clearly tending to prevail. In Italy, Spain, and Portugal, on the contrary, the Reformation had been stifled, and Catholicism remained victorious. It was in France that, notwithstanding the inequality of forces, the struggle between Catholicism and Protestantism was most obstinately maintained, and appeared for the longest time uncertain. After half a century of civil wars and ma.s.sacres it terminated in Henry IV., a Protestant king, who turned Catholic, but who gave Protestants the edict of Nantes; a precious, though insufficient and precarious pledge, which served France as a point of departure towards religious liberty, and which protected it for nearly a century, in the midst of the brilliant victory won by Catholicism. [The edict of Nantes, published by Henry IV. in 1598, was revoked by Louis XIV. in 1685.]

For more than three centuries civilized Europe has been discussing, pro or con, the question of religious liberty, but from instinct and with pa.s.sion far more than with a serious understanding of what is at the bottom of things. Even in our own day it is not without difficulty that a beginning is being made to understand and accept that principle in its true sense and in all its bearings. Men were wonderfully far from it in 1560, at the accession of Charles IX., a child ten years old; they were entering, in blind confidence, upon a religious war, in order to arrive, only after four centuries of strife and misconception, at a vindication of religious liberty. "Woe to thee, O country, that hast a child for king!" said, in accordance with the Bible, the Venetian Michael Suriano, amba.s.sador to France at that time. Around that royal child, and seeking to have the mastery over France by being masters over him, were struggling the three great parties at that time occupying the stage in the name of religion. The Catholics rejected altogether the idea of religious liberty for the Protestants; the Protestants had absolute need of it, for it was their condition of existence; but they did not wish for it in the case of the Catholics, their adversaries. The third party (_tiers parti_), as we call it nowadays, wished to hold the balance continually wavering between the Catholics and the Protestants, conceding to the former and the latter, alternately, that measure of liberty which was indispensable for most imperfect maintenance of the public peace, and reconcilable with the sovereign power of the kings.h.i.+p. On such conditions was the government of Charles IX. to establish its existence.

The death of Francis II. put an end to a grand project of the Guises, which we do not find expressly indicated elsewhere than in the _Memoires_ of Michael de Castelnau, one of the best informed and most intelligent historians of the time. "Many Catholics," says he, "were then of opinion that, if the authority of the Duke of Guise had continued to be armed with that of the king as it had been, the Protestants would have had enough to do. For orders had been sent to all the princ.i.p.al lords of the kingdom, officers of the crown and knights of the order, to show themselves in the said city of Orleans on Christmas-day at the opening of the states, for that they might be all made to sign the confession of the Catholic faith in presence of the king and the chapter of the order; together with all the members of the privy council, reporting-masters (of pet.i.tions), domestic officers of the king's household, and all the deputies of the estates. The same confession was to be published throughout all the said kingdom, in order to have it sworn by all the judges, magistrates, and officers, and, finally, all private persons from parish to parish. And in default of so doing, proceedings were to be taken by seizures, condemnations, executions, banishments, and confiscations. And they who did repent themselves and abjured their Protestant religion were to be absolved." [_Memoires de Michel de Castelnau,_ book ii. chap. xii. p. 121, in the _Pet.i.tot_ collection.]

It is not to be supposed that, even if circ.u.mstances had remained as they were under the reign of Francis II., such a plan could have been successful; but it is intelligible that the Guises had conceived such an idea: they were victorious; they had just procured the condemnation to death of the most formidable amongst the Protestant princes, their adversary Louis de Conde; they were threatening the life of his brother the King of Navarre; and the house of Bourbon seemed to be on the point of disappearing beneath the blows of the ambitious, audacious, and by no means scrupulous house of Lorraine. Not even the prospect of Francis II.'s death arrested the Guises in their work and their hopes; when they saw that he was near his end, they made a proposal to the queen-mother to unite herself completely with them, leave the Prince of Conde to execution, rid herself of the King of Navarre, and become regent of the kingdom during the minority of her son Charles, taking them, the Lorraine princes and their party, for necessary partners in her government. But Catherine de' Medici was more prudent, more judicious, and more egotistical in her ambition than the Guises were in theirs; she was not, as they were, exclusively devoted to the Catholic party; it was power that she wanted, and she sought for it every day amongst the party or the mixtures of parties in a condition to give it her. She considered the Catholic party to be the strongest, and it was hers; but she considered the Protestant party strong enough to be feared, and to give her a certain amount of security and satisfaction: a security necessary, moreover, if peace at home, and not civil war, were to be the habitual and general condition of France. Catherine was, finally, a woman, and very skilful in the strifes of court and of government, whilst, on the field of battle, the victories, though won in her name, would be those of the Guises more than her own. Without openly rejecting the proposals they made to her under their common apprehension of Francis II.'s approaching death, she avoided making any reply. She had, no doubt, already taken her precautions and her measures in advance; her confidante, Jacqueline de Longwy, d.u.c.h.ess of Montpensier and a zealous Protestant, had brought to her rooms at night Antony de Bourbon, King of Navarre, and Catherine had come to an agreement with him about the part.i.tion of power between herself and him at the death of the king her son. She had written to the Constable de Montmorency, a rival of the Guises and their foe though a stanch Catholic, to make haste to Orleans, where his presence would be required. As soon as Chancellor de l'Hospital became aware of the proposals which were being made by the Guises to the queen-mother, he flew to her and opposed them with all the energy of his great and politic mind and sterling nature. Was she going to deliver the Prince of Conde to the scaffold, the house of Bourbon to ruin, France to civil war, and the independence of the crown and of that royal authority which she was on the point of wielding herself to the tyrannical domination of her rivals the Lorraine princes and of their party? Catherine listened with great satisfaction to this judicious and honest language. When the crown pa.s.sed to her son Charles she was free from any serious anxiety as to her own position and her influence in the government. The new king, on announcing to the Parliament the death of his brother, wrote to them that "confiding in the virtues and prudence of the queen-mother, he had begged her to take in hand the administration of the kingdom, with the wise counsel and advice of the King of Navarre and the notables and great personages of the late king's council." A few months afterwards the states-general, a.s.sembling first at Orleans and afterwards at Pontoise, ratified this declaration by recognizing the placement of "the young King Charles IX.'s guardians.h.i.+p in the hands of Catherine de' Medici, his mother, together with the princ.i.p.al direction of affairs, but without the t.i.tle of regent." The King of Navarre was to a.s.sist her in the capacity of lieutenant-general of the kingdom.

Twenty-five members specially designated were to form the king's privy council. [_Histoire des Etats generaux,_ by M. Picot, t. ii. p. 73.]

And in the privacy of her motherly correspondence Catherine wrote to the Queen of Spain, her daughter Elizabeth, wife of Philip II., "Madame, my dear daughter, all I shall tell you is, not to be the least anxious, and to rest a.s.sured that I shall spare no pains to so conduct myself that G.o.d and everybody may have occasion to be satisfied with me. . . .

You have seen the time when I was as happy as you are, not dreaming of ever having any greater trouble than that of not being loved as I should have liked to be by the king your father. G.o.d took him from me, and is not content with that; He has taken from me your brother, whom I loved you well know how much, and has left me with three young children, and in a kingdom where all is division, having therein not a single man in whom I can trust, and who has not some particular object of his own."

The queen-mother of France, who wrote to her daughter the Queen of Spain with such firmness of tone and such independence of spirit, was, to use the words of the Venetian amba.s.sador John Michieli, who had lived at her court, "a woman of forty-three, of affable manners, great moderation, superior intelligence, and ability in conducting all sorts of affairs, especially affairs of state. As mother, she has the personal management of the king; she allows no one else to sleep in his room; she is never away from him. As regent and head of the government, she holds everything in her hands, public offices, benefices, graces, and the seal which bears the king's signature, and which is called the cachet (privy-seal or signet). In the council, she allows the others to speak; she replies to any one who needs it; she decides according to the advice of the council, or according to what she may have made up her own mind to. She opens the letters addressed to the king by his amba.s.sadors and by all the ministers. . . . She has great designs, and does not allow them to be easily penetrated. As for her way of living, she is very fond of her ease and pleasure; she observes few rules; she eats and drinks a great deal; she considers that she makes up for it by taking a great deal of exercise a-foot and a-horseback; she goes a-hunting; and last year she always joined the king in his stag-chases, through the woods and thick forests, a dangerous sort of chase for anyone who is not an excellent rider. She has an olive complexion, and is already very fat; accordingly the doctors have not a good opinion of her life. She has a dower of three hundred thousand francs a year, double that of other queens-dowager. She was formerly always in money-difficulties and in debt; now, she not only keeps out of debt, but she spends and gives more liberally than ever." [_Relations des Amba.s.sadeurs venztzens,_ published by A. N. Tommaseo, t. i. pp. 427-429.]

As soon as the reign of Charles IX. and the queen-mother's government were established, notice was sent to the Prince of Conde that he was free. He refused to stir from prison; he would wait, he said, until his accusers were confined there. He was told that it was the king's express order, and was what Francis II. on his death-bed had himself impressed upon the King of Navarre. Conde determined to set out for La Fere, a place belonging to his brother Anthony de Bourbon, and there await fresh orders from the king. In February, 1561, he left La Fare for Fontainebleau. On his road to Paris his friends flocked to him and made him a splendid escort. On approaching the king's palace Conde separated himself from his following, and advanced alone with two of his most faithful friends. All the lords of the court, the Duke of Guise amongst them, went to meet him. On the 15th of March he was admitted to the privy council. Chancellor de l'Hospital, on the prince's own demand, affirmed that no charge had been found against him. The king declared his innocence in a deed signed by all the members of the council. On the 13th of June, in solemn session, the Parliament of Paris, sitting as a court of peers, confirmed this declaration. Notwithstanding the Duke of Guise's co-operation in all these acts, Conde desired something of a more personal kind on his part.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Francis de Lorraine, Duke of Aumale and of Guise----302]

On the 24th of August, at St. Germain, in presence of the king, the queen-mother, the princes, and the court, the Duke of Guise, in reply to a question from the king, protested "that he had not, and would never have desired to, put forward anything against the prince's honor, and that he had been neither the author nor the instigator of his imprisonment." "Sir," said Conde, "I consider wicked and contemptible him or them who caused it." "So I think, sir," answered Guise, "and it does not apply to me at all." Whereupon they embraced, and a report was drawn up of the ceremony, which was called their reconciliation. Just as it was ending, Marshal Francis de Montmorency, eldest son of the constable, and far more inclined than his father was towards the cause of the Reformers, arrived with a numerous troop of friends, whom he had mustered to do honor to Conde. The court was a little excited at this incident. The constable declared that, having the honor to be so closely connected with the princes of Bourbon, his son would have been to blame if he had acted differently. The aged warrior had himself negotiated this reconciliation; and when it was accomplished, and the Duke of Guise had performed his part in it with so much complaisance, the constable considered himself to be quits with his former allies, and free to follow his leaning towards the Catholic party. "The veteran," says the Duke of Autnale, "did not pique himself on being a theologian; but he was sincerely attached to the Catholic faith because it was the old religion and the king's; and he separated himself definitively from those religious and political innovators whom he had at first seemed to countenance, and amongst whom he reckoned his nearest relatives." In vain did his eldest son try to hold him back; a close union was formed between the Constable de Montmorency, the Duke of Guise, and Marshal de Saint-Andre, and it became the Catholic triumvirate against which Catherine de' Medici had at one time to defend herself, and of which she had at another to avail herself in order to carry out the policy of see-saw she had adopted as her chief means of government.

Before we call to mind and estimate as they deserve the actions of that government, we must give a correct idea of the moral condition of the people governed, of their unbridled pa.s.sions, and of the share of responsibility reverting to them in the crimes and shocking errors of that period. It is a mistake and an injustice, only too common, to lay all the burden of such facts, and the odium justly due to them, upon the great actors almost exclusively whose name has remained attached to them in history; the people themselves have very often been the prime movers in them; they have very often preceded and urged on their masters in the black deeds which have sullied their history; and on the ma.s.ses as well as on the leaders ought the just sentence of posterity to fall. The moment we speak of the St. Bartholomew, it seems as if Charles IX., Catherine de' Medici, and the Guises issued from their grave to receive that sentence; and G.o.d forbid that we should wish to deliver them from it; but it hits the nameless populace of their day as well as themselves, and the hands of the people, far more than the will of kings, began the tale of ma.s.sacres for religion's sake. This is no vague and general a.s.sertion; and, to show it, we shall only have to enumerate, with their dates, the princ.i.p.al facts of which history has preserved the memory, whilst stigmatizing them, with good reason, as ma.s.sacres or murders. The greater number, as was to be expected, are deeds done by Catholics, for they were by far the more numerous and more frequently victorious; but Protestants also have sometimes deserved a place in this tragic category, and when we meet with them, we will a.s.suredly not blot them out.

We confine the enumeration to the reign of Charles IX., and in it we place only such ma.s.sacres and murders as were not the results of any legal proceeding. We say nothing of judicial sentences and executions, however outrageous and iniquitous they may have been.

The first fact which presents itself is a singular one. Admiral de Coligny's eldest brother, Odet de Chatillon, was a Catholic, Bishop of Beauvais, and a cardinal; in 1550, he had gone to Rome and had co-operated in the election of Pope Julius III.; in 1554, he had published some _Const.i.tutions synodales_ (synodal regulations), to remedy certain abuses which had crept into his diocese, and, in 1561, he proposed to make in the celebration of the Lord's Supper some modifications which smacked, it is said, of the innovations of Geneva.

The populace of Beauvais were so enraged at this that they rose up against him, ma.s.sacred a schoolmaster whom he tried to protect, and would have ma.s.sacred the bishop himself if troops sent from Paris had not come to his a.s.sistance.

In the same year, 1561, the Protestants had a custom of meeting at Paris, for their religious exercises, in a house called the Patriarch's house, very near the church of St. Medard. On the 27th of December, whilst the Reformed minister was preaching, the Catholics had all the bells of St.

Medard rung in full peal. The minister sent two of his congregation to beg the inc.u.mbent to have the bell-ringing stopped for a short time. The mob threw themselves upon the two messengers: one was killed, and the other, after making a stout defence, returned badly wounded to the Patriarch's house, and fell dead at the preacher's feet. The provost of tradesmen was for having the bells stopped; the riot became violent; the house of the Reformers was stormed; and the provost's archers had great difficulty in putting a stop to the fight. More than a hundred persons, it is said, were killed or wounded.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Ma.s.sacre of Protestants---305]

In 1562, in the month of February, whilst the Guises were travelling in Germany, with the object of concluding, in the interests of policy, alliances with some German Lutheran princes, disturbances broke out at Cahors, Amiens, Sens, and Tours, between the Protestants and the Catholics. Which of the two began them? It would be difficult to determine. The pa.s.sions that lead to insult, attack, defence, and vengeance were mutually felt and equally violent on both sides. Montluc was sent to Guienne by the queen-mother to restore order there; but nearly everywhere he laid the blame on the Protestants. His Memoires prove that he harried them without any form of justice. "At Sauveterre,"

says he, "I caught five or six, all of whom I had hanged without expense of paper or ink, and without giving them a hearing, for those gentry are regular Chrysostoms (_parlent d'or_)." "I was informed that at Gironde there were sixty or eighty Huguenots belonging to them of La Reole, who had retreated thither; the which were all taken, and I had them hanged to the pillars of the market-place without further ceremony. One hanged has more effect than a hundred slain." When Montluc took Monsegur, "the ma.s.sacre lasted for ten hours or more," says he, "because search was made for them in the houses; the dead were counted and found to be more than seven hundred." [_Memoires de Montluc,_ t. ii. pp. 442, 443-447.]

Almost at the very time at which Montluc, who had been sent to Guienne to restore order there between the Catholics and the Protestants, was treating the latter with this shocking severity, an incident, more serious because of the rank of the persons concerned, took place at Va.s.sy, a small town in Champagne, near which the Duke of Guise pa.s.sed on returning from Germany. Hearing, as he went, the sound of bells, he asked what it meant. "It is the church of the Huguenots of Va.s.sy," was the answer. "Are there many of them?" asked the duke. He was told that there were, and that they were increasing more and more. "Then," says the chronicler, "he began to mutter and to put himself in a white heat, gnawing his beard, as he was wont to do when he was enraged or had a mind to take vengeance." Did he turn aside out of his way with his following, to pa.s.s right through Va.s.sy, or did he confine himself to sending some of his people to bring him an account of what was happening there? When a fact which was at the outset insignificant has become a great event, it is hardly possible to arrive at any certain knowledge of the truth as to the small details of its origin. Whatever may have been the case in the first instance, a quarrel, and, before long, a struggle, began between the preacher's congregation and the prince's following. Being informed of the matter whilst he was at table, the Duke of Guise rose up, went to the spot, found the combatants very warmly at work, and himself received several blows from stones; and, when the fight was put a stop to, forty-nine persons had been killed in it, nearly all on the Protestant side; more than two hundred others, it is said, came out of it severely wounded; and, whether victors or vanquished, all were equally irritated.

The Protestants complained vehemently; and Conde offered, in their name, fifty thousand men to resent this attack, but his brother, the King of Navarre, on the contrary, received with a very bad grace the pleading of Theodore de Beze. "It is true that the church of G.o.d should endure blows and not inflict them," said De Beze, "but remember, I pray you, that it is an anvil which has used up a great many hammers."

The ma.s.sacre of Va.s.sy, the name which has remained affixed to it in history, rapidly became contagious. From 1562 to 1572, in Languedoc, in Provence, in Dauphiny, in Poitou, in Orleanness, in Normandy even and in Picardy, at Toulouse, at Gaillac, at Frejus, at Troyes, at Sens, at Orleans, at Amiens, at Rouen, and in many other towns, spontaneous and disorderly outbreaks between religiously opposed portions of the populace took place suddenly, were repeated, and spread, sometimes with the connivance of the local authorities, judicial or administrative, but more often through the mere brutal explosion of the people's pa.s.sions. It is distasteful to us to drag numerous examples from oblivion; but we will cite just two, faithful representations of those sad incidents, and attested by authentic doc.u.ments. The little town of Gaillac was almost entirely Catholic; the Protestants, less numerous, had met the day after Pentecost, May 18, 1562, to celebrate the Lord's Supper. "The inhabitants in the quarter of the Chateau de l'Orme, who are all artisans or vine-dressers," says the chronicler, "rush to arms, hurry along with them all the Catholics of the town, invest the place of a.s.sembly, and take prisoners all who were present. After this capture, they separate: some remain in the meeting-house, on guard over the prisoners; the rest go into dwellings to work their will upon those of the religion who had remained there. Then they take the prisoners, to the number of sixty or eighty, into a gallery of the Abbey of St. Michael, situated on a steep rock, at the base of which flows the River Tarn; and there, a field laborer, named Cabral, having donned the robe and cape of the judge's deputy, whom he had slain with his own hand, p.r.o.nounces judgment, and sentences all the prisoners to be thrown from the gallery into the river, telling them to go and eat fish, as they had not chosen to fast during Lent; which was done forthwith. Divers boatmen who were on the river despatched with their oars those who tried to save themselves by swimming." [_Histoire generale du Languedoc,_ liv. x.x.xviii. f. v., p.

227.] At Troyes, in Champagne, "during the early part of August, 1572, the majority of the Protestants of the town, who were returning from Esleau-Mont, where they had a meeting-house and a pastor under authorization from the king, were a.s.sailed in the neighborhood of Croncels by the excited populace. A certain number of individuals, accompanying a mother carrying a child which had just received baptism, were pursued with showers of stones; several were wounded, and the child was killed in its mother's arms." This affair did not give rise to any prosecution. "It is no use to think about it any longer," said the delegate of the bailiff and of the mayor of Troyes, in a letter from Paris on the 27th of August. The St. Bartholomew had just taken place on the 24th of August. [_Histoire de la Ville de Troyes,_ by H. Boutiot, t. iii. p. 25.]

Where they happened to be the stronger, and where they had either vengeance to satisfy or measures of security to take, the Protestants were not more patient or more humane than the Catholics. At Nimes, in 1567, they projected and carried out, in the town and the neighboring country, a ma.s.sacre in which a hundred and ninety-two Catholics perished; and several churches and religious houses were damaged or completely destroyed. This ma.s.sacre, perpetrated on St. Michael's day, was called _the Michaelade_. The barbarities committed against the Catholics in Dauphiny and in Provence by Francis de Beaumont, Baron of Adrets, have remained as historical as the ma.s.sacre of Va.s.sy, and he justified them on the same grounds as Montluc had given for his in Guienne. "n.o.body commits cruelty in repaying it," said he; "the first are called cruelties, the second justice. The only way to stop the enemy's barbarities is to meet them with retaliation." Though experience ought to have shown them their mistake, both Adrets and Montluc persisted in it. A case, however, is mentioned in which Adrets was constrained to be merciful. After the capture of Montbrison, he had sentenced all the prisoners to throw themselves down, with their hands tied behind them, from the top of the citadel; one of them made two attempts, and thought better of it; "Come, twice is enough to take your soundings," shouted the baron, who was looking on. "I'll give you four times to do it in,"

rejoined the soldier. And this good saying saved his life.

The weak and undecided government of Catherine de' Medici tried several times, but in vain, to prevent or repress these savage explosions of pa.s.sion and strife amongst the people; the sterling moderation of Chancellor de l'Hospital was scarcely more successful than the hypocritical and double-faced attentions paid by Catherine de' Medici to both the Catholic and the Protestant leaders; the great maladies and the great errors of nations require remedies more heroic than the adroitness of a woman, the wisdom of a functionary, or the hopes of a philosopher.

It was formal and open civil war between the two communions and the two parties that, with honest and patriotic desire, L'Hospital and even Catherine were anxious to avoid. From 1561 to 1572 there were in France eighteen or twenty ma.s.sacres of Protestants, four or five of Catholics, and thirty or forty single murders sufficiently important to have been kept in remembrance by history; and during that s.p.a.ce of time formal civil war, religious and partisan, broke out, stopped and recommenced in four campaigns, signalized, each of them, by great battles, and four times terminated by impotent or deceptive treaties of peace which, on the 24th of August, 1572, ended, for their sole result, in the greatest ma.s.sacre of French history, the St. Bartholomew.

The first religious war, under Charles IX., appeared on the point of breaking out in April, 1561, some days after that the Duke of Guise, returning from the ma.s.sacre of Va.s.sy, had entered Paris, on the 16th of March, in triumph. The queen-mother, in dismay, carried off the king to Melun at first, and then to Fontainebleau, whilst the Prince of Conde, having retired to Meaux, summoned to his side his relatives, his friends, and all the leaders of the Reformers, and wrote to Coligny, "that Caesar had not only crossed the Rubicon, but was already at Rome, and that his banners were beginning to wave all over the neighboring country." For some days Catherine and L'Hospital tried to remain out of Paris with the young king, whom Guise, the Constable de Montmorency, and the King of Navarre, the former being members and the latter an ally of the triumvirate, went to demand back from them. They were obliged to submit to the pressure brought to bear upon them. The constable was the first to enter Paris, and went, on the 2d of April, and burned down the two places of wors.h.i.+p which, by virtue of the decree of January 17, 1561, had been granted to the Protestants. Next day the King of Navarre and the Duke of Guise, in their turn, entered the city in company with Charles IX. and Catherine. A council was a.s.sembled at the Louvre to deliberate as to the declaration of war, which was deferred. Whilst the king was on his way back to Paris, Conde hurried off to take up his quarters at Orleans, whither Coligny went promptly to join him. They signed, with the gentlemen who came to them from all parts, a compact of a.s.sociation "for the honor of G.o.d, for the liberty of the king, his brothers and the queen-mother, and for the maintenance of decrees;" and Conde, in writing to the Protestant princes of Germany to explain to them his conduct, took the t.i.tle of protector of the house and crown of France. Negotiations still went on for nearly three months. The chiefs of the two parties attempted to offer one another generous and pacific solutions; they even had two interviews; but Catherine was induced by the Catholic triumvirate to expressly declare that she could not allow in France more than one single form of wors.h.i.+p. Conde and his friends said that they could not lay down their arms until the triumvirate was overthrown, and the execution of decrees granting them liberty of wors.h.i.+p, in certain places and to a certain extent, had been secured to them. Neither party liked to acknowledge itself beaten in this way without having struck a blow.

And in the early part of July, 1562, the first religious war began.

We do not intend to dwell upon any but its leading facts, facts which at the moment when they were accomplished might have been regarded as decisive in respect of the future. In this campaign there were two; the battle of Dreux, on the 19th of December, 1562; and the murder of the Duke of Guise by Poltrot, on the 18th of February, 1563.

The two armies met in the plain of Dreux with pretty nearly equal forces, the royal army being superior in artillery and the Protestant in cavalry.

When they had arrived in front of one another, the triumvirs sent to ask the queen-mother's authority to give battle. "I am astounded," said Catherine to her favorite adviser, Michael de Castelnau, "that the constable, the Duke of Guise, and Saint-Andre, being good, prudent, and experienced captains, should send to ask counsel of a woman and a child, both full of sorrow at seeing things in such extremity as to be reduced to the risk of a battle between fellow-countrymen." "Hereupon," says Castelnau, "in came the king's nurse, who was a Huguenot, and the queen, at the same time that she took me to see the king, who was still in bed, said to me with great agitation and jeeringly, 'We had better ask the king's nurse whether to give battle or not; what think you?' Then the nurse, as she followed the queen into the king's chamber according to her custom, said several times that, as the Huguenots would not listen to reason, she would say, 'Give battle.' Whereupon there was, at the privy council, much discourse about the good and the evil that might result therefrom; but the resolution arrived at was, that they who had arms in their hands ought not to ask advice or orders from the court; and I was despatched on the spot to tell them from the king and the queen, that, as good and prudent captains, they were to do what they considered most proper." Next day, at ten in the morning, the armies met. "Then every one," says La Noue, one of the bravest amongst the Reformers'

leaders, "steadied himself, reflecting that the men he saw coming towards him were not Spaniards, or English, or Italians, but Frenchmen, that is, the bravest of the brave, amongst whom there were some who were his own comrades, relatives, and friends, and that within an hour they would have to be killing one another, which created some sort of horror of the fact, without, however, diminution of courage. . . . One thing worthy of being noted," continues La Noue, "is the long duration of the fight, it being generally seen in battles that all is lost or won within a single hour, whereas this began about one P. M., and there was no issue until after five. Of a surety, there was marvellous animosity on both sides, whereof sufficient testimony is to be found in the number of dead, which exceeded seven thousand, as many persons say; the majority whereof were killed in the fight rather than the pursuit. . . . Another incident was the capture of the two chiefs of the armies, a thing which rarely happens, because generally they do not fight until the last moment and in extremity; and often a battle is as good as won before they come to this point. But in this case they did not put it off so long, for, at the very first, each was minded to set his men an example of not sparing themselves. The Constable de Montmorency was the first taken, and seriously wounded, having always received wounds in seven battles at which he was present, which shows the boldness that was in him. The Prince of Conde was taken at the end, also wounded. As both of them had good seconds, it made them the less fearful of danger to their own persons, for the constable had M. de Guise, and the Prince of Conde Admiral de Coligny, who showed equally well to the front in the melley.

. . . Finally I wish to bring forward another matter, which will be supernumerary because it happened after the battle; and that is, the courteous and honorable behavior of the Duke of Guise victorious towards the Prince of Conde a prisoner; which most men, on one side as well as on the other, did not at all think he would have been disposed to exhibit, for it is well known how hateful, in civil wars, are the chiefs of parties, and what imputations are made upon them. Nevertheless here quite the contrary happened: for, when the prince was brought before the duke, the latter spoke to him respectfully and with great gentleness of language, wherein he could not pretend that there was any desire to pique him or blame him. And whilst the prince staid in the camp, the duke often dined with him. And forasmuch as on this day of the battle there were but few beds arrived, for the baggage had been half-plundered and dispersed, the Duke of Guise offered his own bed to the Prince of Conde, which the prince would accept in respect of the half only. And so these two great princes, who were like mortal foes, found themselves in one bed, one triumphant and the other captive, taking their repast together."

[_Memoires de Francois de La Noue,_ in the _Pet.i.tot_ collection; 1st series, t. x.x.xiv. pp. 172-178.]

The results of the battle of Dreux were serious, and still more serious from the fate of the chiefs than from the number of the dead. The commanders of the two armies, the Constable de Montmorency, and the Prince of Conde, were wounded and prisoners. One of the triumvirs, Marshal de Saint-Andre, had been killed in action. The Catholics'

wavering ally, Anthony de Bourbon, King of Navarre, had died before the battle of a wound which he had received at the siege of Rouen; and on his death-bed had resumed his Protestant bearing, saying that, if G.o.d granted him grace to get well, he would have nothing but the gospel preached throughout the realm. The two staffs (_etats-majors_), as we should now say, were disorganized: in one, the Duke of Guise alone remained unhurt and at liberty; in the other, Coligny, in Conde's absence, was elected general-in-chief of the Protestants. At Paris, for a while, it was believed that the battle was lost. "If it had been," says Montluc, "I think that it was all over with France, for the state would have changed, and so would the religion; a young king can be made to do as you please;" Catherine de' Medici showed a facile resignation to such a change. "Very well," she had said, "then we will pray to G.o.d in French."

When the victory became known there was general enthusiasm for the Duke.

of Guise; but he took only a very modest advantage of it, being more anxious to have his comrades' merits appreciated than his own. At Blois, as he handed the queen-mother her table-napkin at dinner-time, he asked her if he might have an audience of her after the repast. "Jesu! my dear cousin," said Catherine, "whatever are you saying?" "I say it, madame, because I would fain show you in the presence of everybody what I have done, since my departure from Paris, with your army which you gave in charge to me together with the constable, and also present to you all the good captains and servants of the king and of yourself who have served you faithfully, as well your own subjects as also foreigners, and hors.e.m.e.n and foot;" whereupon he discoursed about the battle of Dreux, "and painted it so well and so to the life," says Brantome, "that you would have said that they were still about it, whereat the queen felt very great pleasure. . . . Every one listened very attentively, without the least noise in the world; and he spoke so well that there was none who was not charmed, for the prince was the best of speakers and eloquent, not with a forced and overladen eloquence, but simple and soldierly, with a grace of his own to match; so much so that the queen-mother said that she had never seen him in such good form."

[Brantome, _Tries des Brands Capitaines,_ t. ii. pp. 247-250.] The good form, however, was not enough to prevent the ill-humor and jealousy felt by the queen-mother and her youthful son the king at such a great success which made Guise so great a personage. After the victory of Dreux he had written to the king to express his wish to see conferred upon a candidate of his own choosing the marshal's baton left vacant by the death of Saint-Andre. "See now," said Charles IX. to his mother and some persons who were by, "if the Duke of Guise does not act the king well; you would really say that the army was his, and that victory came from his hand, making no mention of G.o.d, who, by His great goodness, hath given it us.

He thrusts the bargain into my fist (dictates to me). Yet must I give him a civil answer to satisfy him; for I do not want to make trouble in my kingdom, and irritate a captain to whom my late father and I have given so much credit and authority." The king almost apologized for having already disposed of the baton in favor of the Marquis de Vieilleville, and he sent the Duke of Guise the collar of the order for two of his minions, and at the same time the commission of lieutenant-general of the kingdom and commander-in-chief of the army for himself. Guise thanked him, pretending to be satisfied: the king smiled as he read his letter; and "_Non ti fidar, e non sarai gabbato_" (Don't trust, and you'll not be duped), he said in the words of the Italian proverb.