A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times Volume IV Part 15

Guise cultivated very carefully this ardent confidence on the part of Catholic France; he recommended to his partisans attention to little pious and popular practices. "I send you some paternosters [meaning, in the plural, the beads of a chaplet, or the chaplet entire]," he wrote to his wife, Catherine of Cleves; "you will have strings made for them and string them together. I don't know whether you dare offer some of them to the queens and to my lady mother. Ask advice of Mesdames de Retz and de Villeroy about it." The flight and insurrection of the Duke of Anjou and the King of Navarre furnished the Duke of Guise with a very natural occasion for re-engaging in the great struggle between Catholicism and Protestantism, wherein the chief part belonged to him. Let us recur, for a moment, to the origin of that struggle and the part taken in it, at the outset, by the princes of the house of Lorraine. "As early as the year 1562, twenty-six years before the affair of the barricades," says M.

Vitet in the excellent introduction which he has put at the head of his beautiful historic dramas from the last half of the sixteenth century, "Cardinal Charles of Lorraine, being at the Council of Trent, conceived the plan of a Holy League, or a.s.sociation of Catholics, which was to have the triple object of defending, by armed force, the Romish church in France, of obtaining for the cardinal's brother, Duke Francis de Guise, the lieutenant-generals.h.i.+p of the kingdom, and of helping him to ascend the throne, in case the line of the Valois should become extinct. The death of Duke Francis, murdered in front of Orleans by Poltrot, did not permit the cardinal to carry out his plan. Five years afterwards, Henry de Guise, eldest son of Francis, and then eighteen years of age, caused to be drawn up, for the first time, a form of oath whereby the dignitaries bound themselves to sacrifice their goods and lives in defence of the Catholic religion in the face of and against all, except the king, the royal family, and the princes of their connection. This form was signed by the n.o.bility of Champagne and Brie, a province of which Henry de Guise was governor, and on the 25th of July, 1568, the bishop and clergy of Troyes signed it likewise. The a.s.sociation is named, in the form, _Holy League, Christian and royal_. Up to the year 1576 it remained secret, and did not cross the boundaries of Champagne."

To this summary of M. Vitet's may be added that independently of the Champagnese league of 1568 and in the interval between 1568 and 1575 there had been formed, in some provinces and towns, other local a.s.sociations for the defence of the Catholic church against the heretics.

When, in 1575, first the Duke of Anjou and after him the King of Navarre were seen flying from the court of Henry III. and commencing an insurrection with the aid of a considerable body of German auxiliaries and French refugees, already on French soil and on their way across Champagne, the peril of the Catholic church appeared so grave and so urgent that, in the threatened provinces, the Catholics devoted themselves with ardor to the formation of a grand a.s.sociation for the defence of their cause. Then and thus was really born the League, secret at first, but, before long, publicly and openly proclaimed, which held so important a place in the history of the sixteenth century. Picardy and Champagne were the first scene of its formation; but in the neighboring provinces the same travail took place and brought forth fruits. At Paris, a burgess named La Roche-Blond, and devoted to the Guises, a perfumer named Peter de la Bruyere and his son Matthew de la Bruyere, councillor at the Chatelet, were, says De Thou, the first and most zealous preachers of the Union. "At their solicitation," continues the austere magistrate, "all the debauchees there were in this great city, all folks whose only hope was in civil war for the indulgence of their libertinism or for a safe means of satisfying their avarice or their ambition, enrolled themselves emulously in this force. Many, even of the richest burgesses, whose hatred for Protestants blinded them so far as not to see the dangers to which such a.s.sociations expose public tranquillity in a well-regulated state, had the weakness to join the seditious."

Many asked for time to consider, and, before making any engagement, they went to see President de Thou [Christopher, premier president of the Parliament of Paris since 1562, and father of the historian James Augustus de Thou], informed him of these secret a.s.semblies and all that went on there, and begged him to tell them whether he approved of them, and whether it was true that the court authorized them. M. de Thou answered them at once, with that straightforwardness which was innate in him, that these kinds of proceedings had not yet come to his knowledge, that he doubted whether they had the approbation of his Majesty, and that they would do wisely to hold aloof from all such a.s.sociations. The authority of this great man began to throw suspicion upon the designs of the Unionists, and his reply prevented many persons from casting in their lot with the party; but they who found themselves at the head of this faction were not the folks to so easily give up their projects, for they felt themselves too well supported at court and amongst the people. They advised the Lorraine princes to have the Union promulgated in the provinces, and to labor to make the n.o.bility of the kingdom enter it.

Henry de Guise did not hesitate. At the same time that he avowed the League and labored to propagate it, he did what was far more effectual for its success: he entered the field and gained a victory. The German allies and French refugees who had come to support Prince Henry de Conde and the Duke of Anjou in their insurrection advanced into Champagne.

Guise had nothing ready, neither army nor money; he mustered in haste three thousand horse, who were to be followed by a body of foot and a moiety of the king's guards. "I haven't a son," he wrote to his wife; "take something out of the king's chest, if there is anything there; provided you know that there is something there, don't be afraid; take it and send it me at once. As for the _reitres,_ they are more afraid of us than we of them; don't be frightened about them on my account; the greatest danger I shall run will be that a gla.s.s of wine may break in my hand." He set out in pursuit of the Germans, came up with them on the 10th of October, 1575, at Port-a-Binson, on the Marne, and ordered them to be attacked by his brother the Duke of Mayenne, whom he supported vigorously. They were broken and routed. The hunt, according to the expression at the time, lasted all the rest of the day and during the night. "A world of dead covers the field of battle," wrote Guise. He had himself been wounded: he went in obstinate pursuit of a mounted foe whom he had twice touched with his sword, and who, in return, had fired two pistol-shots, of which one took effect in the leg, and the other carried away part of his cheek and his left ear. Thence came his name of Henry the Scarred (_le Balafre_), which has clung to him in history.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Henry le Balafre----400]

Scarcely four years had rolled away since the St. Bartholomew. In vain had been the ma.s.sacre of ten thousand Protestants, according to the lowest, and of one hundred thousand, according to the highest estimates, besides nearly all the renowned chiefs of the party. Charles IX.'s earnest prayer, "That none remain to reproach me!" was so far from accomplishment that the war between Catholicism and Protestantism recommenced in almost every part of France with redoubled pa.s.sion, with a new importance of character, and with symptoms of much longer duration than at its first outbreak. Both parties had found leaders made, both from their position and their capacity, to command them. Admiral Coligny was succeeded by the King of Navarre, who was destined to become Henry IV.; and Duke Francis of Guise by his son Henry, if not as able, at any rate as brave a soldier, and a more determined Catholic than he. Amongst the Protestants, Sully and Da Plessis-Mornay were a.s.suming shape and importance by the side of the King of Navarre. Catherine de' Medici placed at her son's service her Italian adroitness, her maternal devotion, and an energy rare for a woman between sixty and seventy years of age, for forty-three years a queen, and worn out by intrigue, and business, and pleasure. Finally, to the question of religion, the primary cause of the struggle, was added a question of kings.h.i.+p, kept in the background, but ever present in thought and deed: which of the three houses of Valois, Bourbon, and Lorraine should remain in or enter upon possession of the throne of France. The interests and the ambition of families and of individuals were playing their part simultaneously with the controversies and the pa.s.sions of creed.

This state of things continued for twelve years, from 1576 to 1588, with constant alternations of war, truce, and precarious peace, and in the midst of constant hesitation, on the part of Henry III., between alliance with the League, commanded by the Duke of Guise, and adjustment with the Protestants, of whom the King of Navarre was every day becoming the more and more avowed leader. Between 1576 and 1580, four treaties of peace were concluded; in 1576, the peace called Monsieur's, signed at Chastenay in Orleanness; in 1577, the peace of Bergerac or of Poitiers; in 1579, the peace of Nerac; in 1580, the peace of Fleix in Perigord. In November, 1576, the states-general were convoked and a.s.sembled at Blois, where they sat and deliberated up to March, 1577, without any important result. Neither these diplomatic conventions nor these national a.s.semblies had force enough to establish a real and lasting peace between the two parties, for the parties themselves would not have it; in vain did Henry III. make concessions and promises of liberty to the Protestants; he was not in a condition to guarantee their execution and make it respected by their adversaries. At heart neither Protestants nor Catholics were for accepting mutual liberty; not only did they both consider themselves in possession of all religious truth, but they also considered themselves ent.i.tled to impose it by force upon their adversaries. The discovery (and the term is used advisedly, so slow to come and so long awaited has been the fact which it expresses), the discovery of the legitimate separation between the intellectual world and the political world, and of the necessity, also, of having the intellectual world free in order that it may not make upon the political world a war which, in the inevitable contact between them, the latter could not support for long, this grand and salutary discovery, be it repeated, and its practical influence in the government of people cannot be realized save in communities already highly enlightened and politically well ordered. Good order, politically, is indispensable if liberty, intellectually, is to develop itself regularly and do the community more good than it causes of trouble and embarra.s.sment. They only who have confidence in human intelligence sincerely admit its right to freedom; and confidence in human intelligence is possible only in the midst of a political regimen which likewise gives the human community the guarantees whereof its interests and its lasting security have absolute need. The sixteenth century was a long way from these conditions of harmony between the intellectual world and the political world, the necessity of which is beginning to be understood and admitted by only the most civilized and best governed amongst modern communities. It is one of the most tardy and difficult advances that people have to accomplish in their life of labor. The sixteenth century helped France to make considerable strides in civilization and intellectual development; but the eighteenth and nineteenth have taught her how great still, in the art of governing and being governed as a free people, are her children's want of foresight and inexperience, and, to what extent they require a strong and sound organization of political freedom in order that they may without danger enjoy intellectual freedom, its pleasures and its glories.

From 1576 to 1588, Henry III. had seen the difficulties of his government continuing and increasing. His attempt to maintain his own independence and the mastery of the situation between Catholics and Protestants, by making concessions and promises at one time to the former and at another to the latter, had not succeeded; and in 1584 it became still more difficult to practise. On the 10th of June in that year Henry III.'s brother, the Duke of Anjou, died at Chateau-Thierry. By this death the leader of the Protestants, Henry, King of Navarre, became lawful heir to the throne of France. The Leaguers could not stomach that prospect. The Guises turned it to formidable account. They did not hesitate to make the future of France a subject of negotiation with Philip II. of Spain, at that time her most dangerous enemy in Europe. By a secret convention concluded at Joinville on the 31st of December, 1584, between Philip and the Guises, it was stipulated that at the death of Henry III. the crown should pa.s.s to Charles, Cardinal of Bourbon, sixty-four years of age, the King of Navarre's uncle, who, in order to make himself king, undertook to set aside his nephew's hereditary right, and forbid, absolutely, heretical wors.h.i.+p in France. He published on the 31st of March, 1585, a declaration wherein he styled himself premier prince of the blood, and conferred upon the Duke of Guise the t.i.tle of lieutenant-general of the League. By a bull of September 10, 1585, Sixtus V., but lately elected pope, excommunicated the King of Navarre as a heretic and relapsed, denying him any right of succession to the crown of France, and releasing his Narvarrese subjects from their oath of fidelity. Sixtus V. did not yet know what manner of man he was thus attacking. The King of Navarre did not confine himself to protesting in France, on the 10th of June, 1585, against this act of the pope's: he had his protest placarded at Rome itself upon the statues of Pasquin and Marforio, and at the very doors of the Vatican, referring the pope, as to the question of heresy, to a council which he claimed at an early date, and at the same time appealing against this alleged abuse of power to the court of peers of France, "of whom," said he, "I have the honor to be the premier." The whole of Italy, including Sixtus V. himself, a pope of independent mind and proud heart, was struck with this energetic resistance on the part of a petty king. "It would be a good thing," said the pope to Marquis Pasani, Henry III.'s amba.s.sador, "if the king your master showed as much resolution against his enemies as the King of Navarre shows against those who attack him." At the first moment Henry III. had appeared to unravel the intentions of the League and to be disposed to resist it; by an edict of March 28, 1585, he had ordered that its adherents should be prosecuted; but Catherine de' Medici frightened him with the war which would infallibly be kindled, and in which he would have for enemies all the Catholics, more irritated than ever. And Henry III. very easily took fright. Catherine undertook to manage the recoil for him. "I care not who likes it and who doesn't," she was wont to say in such cases. She asked the Duke of Guise for an interview, which took place, first of all at Epernay, and afterwards at Rheims. The hard demands of the Lorrainers did not deter the queen-mother, and, on the 7th of July, 1585, a treaty was concluded at Nemours between Henry III. and the League, to the effect "that by an irrevocable edict the practice of the new religion should be forbidden, and that there should henceforth be no other practice of religion, throughout the realm of France, save that of the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman; that all the ministers should depart from the kingdom within a month; that all the subjects of his Majesty should be bound to live according to the Catholic religion and make profession thereof within six months, on pain of confiscation both of person and goods; that heretics, of whatsoever quality they might be, should be declared incapable of holding benefices, public offices, positions, and dignities; that the places which had been given in guardians.h.i.+p to them for their security should be taken back again forthwith; and, lastly, that the princes designated in the treaty, amongst whom were all the Guises at the top, should receive as guarantee certain places to be held by them for five years."

This treaty was signed by all the negotiators, and specially by the queen-mother, the Cardinals of Bourbon and Guise, and the Dukes of Guise and Mayenne. It was the decisive act which made the war a war of religion.

On the 18th of July following, Henry III., on his way to the Palace of Justice to be present at the publication of the edict he had just issued in virtue of this treaty with the League, said to the Cardinal of Bourbon, "My dear uncle, against my conscience, but very willingly, I published the edicts of pacification, because they were successful in giving relief to my people; and now I am going to publish the revocation of those edicts in accordance with my conscience, but very unwillingly, because on its publication hangs the ruin of my kingdom and of my people." When he issued from the palace, cries of "Long live the king!"

were heard; "at which astonishment was expressed," says Peter de l'Estoile (t. i. p. 294), "because for a long time past no such favor had been shown him. But it was discovered that these acclamations were the doing of persons posted about by the Leaguers, and that, for doing it, money had been given to idlers and sweetmeats to children." Some days afterwards, the King of Navarre received news of the treaty of Nemours. He was staying near Bergerac, at the castle of the Lord of La Force, with whom he was so intimate that he took with him none of his household, as he preferred to be waited upon by M. de la Force's own staff. "I was so grievously affected by it," said he himself at a later period to M. de la Force, "that, as I pondered deeply upon it and held my head supported upon my hand, my apprehensions of the woes I foresaw for my country were such as to whiten one half of my mustache." [_Memoires du Due de la Force,_ t. i. p. 50.] Henry III., for his part, was but little touched by the shouts of Long live the king! that he heard as he left the palace; he was too much disquieted to be rejoiced at them. He did not return the greeting of the munic.i.p.al functionaries or of the mob that blocked his way. "You see how reluctant he is to embroil himself with the Huguenots," said the partisans of the Guises to the people.

It was the recommencement of religious civil war, with more deadliness than ever. The King of Navarre left no stone unturned to convince everybody, friends and enemies, great lords and commonalty, Frenchmen and foreigners, that this recurrence of war was not his doing, and that the Leaguers forced it upon him against his wish and despite of the justice of his cause. He wrote to Henry III., "Monseigneur, as soon as the originators of these fresh disturbances had let the effects appear of their ill-will towards your Majesty and your kingdom, you were pleased to write to me the opinion you had formed, with very good t.i.tle, of their intentions; you told me that you knew, no matter what pretext they a.s.sumed, that they had designs against your person and your crown, and that they desired their own augmentation and aggrandizement at your expense and to your detriment. Such were the words of your letters, Mon seigneur, and you did me the honor, whilst recognizing the connection between my fortunes and those of your Majesty, to add expressly that they were compa.s.sing my ruin together with your own. . . . And now, Monseigneur, when I hear it suddenly reported that your Majesty has made a treaty of peace with those who have risen up against your service, providing that your edict be broken, your loyal subjects banished, and the conspirators armed, and armed with your power and your authority against me, who have the honor of belonging to you, I leave your Majesty to judge in what a labyrinth I find myself. . . . If it is I whom they seek, or if under my shadow (on my account) they trouble this realm, I have begged that, without henceforth causing the orders and estates of this realm to suffer for it, and without the intervention of any army, home or foreign, this quarrel be decided in the Duke of Guise's person and my own, one to one, two to two, ten to ten, twenty to twenty, in any number that the said Lord of Guise shall think proper, with the arms customary amongst gentlemen of honor. ... It will be a happiness for us, my cousin [Henry de Conde] and myself, to deliver, at the price of our blood, the king our sovereign lord from the travails and trials that are a-brewing for him, his kingdom from trouble and confusion, his n.o.blesse from ruin, and all his people from extreme misery and calamity."

The Duke of Guise respectfully declined, at the same time that he thanked the King of Navarre for the honor done him, saying that he could not accept the offer, as he was maintaining the cause of religion, and not a private quarrel. On his refusal, war appeared to everybody, and in fact became, inevitable. At his re-engagement in it, the King of Navarre lost no time about informing his friends at home and his allies abroad, the n.o.blesse, the clergy, and the third estate of France, the city of Paris, the Queen of England. the Protestant princes of Germany, and the Swiss cantons, of all he had done to avoid it; he evidently laid great store upon making his conduct public and his motives understood. He had for his close confidant and his mouth-piece Philip du Plessis-Mornay, at that time thirty-six years of age, one of the most learned and most hard-working as well as most zealous and most sterling amongst the royalist Protestants of France. It was his duty to draw up the doc.u.ments, manifestoes, and letters published by the King of Navarre, when Henry did not himself stamp upon them the seal of his own language, vivid, eloquent, and captivating in its brevity.

Henry III. and the queen-mother were very much struck with this intelligent energy on the part of the King of Navarre, and with the influence he acquired over all that portion of the French n.o.blesse and burgesses which had not fanatically enlisted beneath the banner of the League. Catherine, accustomed to count upon her skill in the art of seductive conversation, was for putting it to fresh proof in the case of the King of Navarre. Louis di Gonzaga, Duke of Nevers, an Italian, like herself, and one of her confidants, was sent in advance to sound Henry of Navarre. He wrote to Henry III., "Such, sir, as you have known this prince, such is he even now; nor years nor difficulties change him; he is still agreeable, still merry, still devoted, as he has sworn to me a hundred times, to peace and your Majesty's service." Catherine proposed to him an interview. Henry hesitated to comply. From Jarnac, where he was, he sent Viscount de Turenne to Catherine to make an agreement with her for a few days' truce. "Catherine gave Turenne to understand that, in order to have peace, the King of Navarre must turn Catholic, and put a stop to the exercise of the Reformed religion in the towns he held."

When this was reported by his envoy, Henry, who had set out for the interview, was on the point of retracing his steps; he went on, however, as he was curious to see Catherine, to satisfy his mind upon the point and to answer her." They met on the 14th of December, 1586, at the castle of St. Brice, near Cognac, both of them with gloomy looks.

Catherine asked Henry whether Turenne had spoken to him about what, she said, was her son's most express desire.

"I am astounded," said Henry, "that your Majesty should have taken so much pains to tell me what my ears are split with hearing; and likewise that you, whose judgment is so sound, should delude yourself with the idea of solving the difficulty by means of the difficulty itself. You propose to me a thing that I cannot do without forfeiture of conscience and honor, and without injury to the king's service. I should not carry with me all those of the religion; and they of the League would be so much the more irritated in that they would lose their hope of depriving me of the right which I have to the throne. They do not want me with you, madame, for they would then be in sorry plight, you better served, and all your good subjects more happy." The queen-mother did not dispute the point. She dwelt "upon the inconveniences Henry suffered during the war." "I bear them patiently, madame," said Henry, "since you burden me with them in order to unburden yourself of them." She reproached him with not doing as he pleased in Roch.e.l.le. "Pardon me, madame," said he, "I please only as I ought." The Duke of Nevers, who was present at the interview, was bold enough to tell him that he could not impose a tax upon Roch.e.l.le. "That is true," said Henry: "and so we have no Italian amongst us." He took leave of the queen-mother, who repeated what she had said to Viscount de Turenne, "charging him to make it known to the n.o.blesse who were of his following." "It is just eighteen months, madame," said he, "since I ceased to obey the king. He has made war upon me like a wolf, you like a lioness." "The king and I seek nothing but your welfare." "Excuse me, madame; I think it would be the contrary."

"My son, would you have the pains I have taken for the last six months remain without fruit?" "Madame, it is not I who prevent you from resting in your bed; it is you who prevent me from lying down in mine." "Shall I be always at pains, I who ask for nothing but rest?" "Madame, the pains please you and agree with you; if you were at rest you could not live long." Catherine had brought with her what was called her flying squadron of fair creatures of her court: but, "Madame," said Henry, as he withdrew, "there is nothing here for me."

Before taking part in the war which was day by day becoming more and more clearly and explicitly a war of religion, the Protestant princes of Germany and the four great free cities of Strasbourg, Ulm, Nuremberg, and Frankfort resolved to make, as the King of Navarre had made, a striking move on behalf of peace and religious liberty. They sent to Henry III.

amba.s.sadors, who, on the 11th of October, 1586, treated him to some frank and bold speaking. "Our princes and masters," they said to him, "have been moved with surprise and Christian compa.s.sion towards you, as faithful friends and good neighbors of yours, on hearing that you, not being pleased to suffer in your kingdom any person not of the Roman religion, have broken the edict of peace which was so solemnly done and based upon your Majesty's faith and promise, and which is the firm prop of the tranquillity of your Majesty and your dominions; the which changes have appeared to them strange, seeing that your royal person, your dominions, your conscience, your honor, your reputation and good fame happened to be very much concerned therewith." Shocked at so rude an admonition, Henry III. answered, "It is G.o.d who made me king; and as I bear the t.i.tle of Most Christian King, I have ever been very zealous for the preservation of the Catholic religion. . . . It appertains to me alone to decide, according to my discernment, what may contribute to the public weal, to make laws for to procure it, to interpret those laws, to change them, and to abolish them, just as I find it expedient. I have done so hitherto, and I shall still do so for the future;" and he dismissed the amba.s.sadors. That very evening, on reflecting upon his words, and considering that his answer had not met the requirements of the case, he wrote with his own hand on a small piece of paper, "that whoever said that in revoking the edict of pacification he had violated his faith or put a blot upon his honor, had lied;" and he ordered one of his officers, though the night was far advanced, to carry that paper to the amba.s.sadors, and read it to them textually. They asked for a copy; but Henry III., always careful not to have to answer for his words, had bidden his officer to suppress the doc.u.ment after having read it; and the Germans departed, determined upon war as well as quite convinced of the king's arrogant pusillanimity.

Except some local and short-lived truces, war was already lazing throughout nearly the whole of France, in Provence, in Dauphiny, in Nivernais, in Guienne, in Anjou, in Normandy, in Picardy, in Champagne.

We do not care to follow the two parties through the manifold but monotonous incidents of their tumultuous and pa.s.sionate strife; we desire to review only those events that were of a general and a decisive character. They occurred, naturally, in those places which were the arena, and in those armies which were under the command, of the two leaders, Duke Henry of Guise and King Henry of Navarre. The former took upon himself the duty of repulsing, in the north-west of France, the German and Swiss corps which were coming to the a.s.sistance of the French Reformers; the latter put himself at the head of the French Protestant forces summoned to face, in the provinces of the centre and south-west, the royalist armies. Guise was successful in his campaign against the foreigners: on the 26th of October, 1587, his scouts came and told him that the Germans were at Vimory, near Montargis, dispersed throughout the country, without vedettes or any of the precautions of warfare; he was at table with his princ.i.p.al officers at Courtenay, almost seven leagues away from the enemy; he remained buried in thought for a few minutes, and then suddenly gave the order to sound boot-and-saddle [_boute-selle,_ i.e., put-on saddle]. "What for, pray?" said his brother, the Duke of Mayenne. "To go and fight." "Pray reflect upon, what you are going to do." "Reflections that I haven't made in a quarter of an hour I shouldn't make in a year." Mounting at once, the leader and his squadrons arrived at midnight at the gates of Vimory; they found, it is said, the Germans drunk, asleep, and scattered; according to the reporters on the side of the League, the victory of Guise was complete; he took from the Germans twenty-eight hundred horses: the Protestants said that the body he charged were nothing but a lot of horse-boys, and that the two flags he took had for device nothing but a sponge and a currycomb. But fifteen days later, on the 11th of November, at Auneau, near Chartres, Guise gained an indisputable and undisputed victory over the Germans; and their general, Baron Dohna, and some of his officers only saved themselves by cutting their way through sword in hand. The Swiss, being discouraged, and seeing in the army of Henry III. eight thousand of their countrymen, who were serving in it not, like themselves, as adventurers, but under the flags and with the authorization of their cantons, separated from the Germans and withdrew, after receiving from Henry III. four hundred thousand crowns as the price of their withdrawal. In Burgundy, in Champagne, and in Orleanness, the campaign terminated to the honor of Guise, which Henry III. was far from regarding as a victory for himself.

But almost at the same time at which the League obtained this success in the provinces of the east and centre, it experienced in those of the south-west a reverse more serious for the Leaguers than the Duke of Guise's victory had been fortunate for them. Henry III. had given the command of his army south of the Loire to one of his favorites, Anne, Duke of Joyeuse, a brilliant, brave, and agreeable young man, whose fortunes he had advanced beyond measure, to the extent of marrying him to Marguerite de Lorraine, the queen's sister, and raising for him the viscounts.h.i.+p of Joyeuse to a duchy-peerage, giving him rank, too, after the princes of the blood and before the dukes of old creation. Joyeuse was at the head of six thousand foot, two thousand horse, and six pieces of cannon. He entered Poitou and marched towards the Dordogne, whilst the King of Navarre was at La Roch.e.l.le, engaged in putting into order two pieces of cannon, which formed the whole of his artillery, and in a.s.sembling round him his three cousins, the Prince of Conde, the Count of Soissons, and the Prince of Conti, that he might head the whole house of Bourbon at the moment when he was engaging seriously in the struggle with the house of Valois and the house of Lorraine. A small town, Coutras, situated at the confluence of the two rivers of L'Isle and La Dronne, in the Gironde, offered the two parties an important position to occupy.

"According to his wont," says the Duke of Aumale in his _Histoire des Princes de Conde,_ "the Bearnese was on horseback whilst his adversary was banqueting." He outstripped Joyeuse; and when the latter drew near to Contras, he found the town occupied by the Protestant advance-guard, and had barely time to fall back upon La Roche-Chalais. The battle began on the 20th of October, 1587, shortly after sunrise. We will here borrow the equally dramatic and accurate account of it given by the Duke of Aumale: "At this solemn moment the King of Navarre calls to his side his cousins and his princ.i.p.al officers; then, in his manly and sonorous voice, he addresses his men-at-arms: 'My friends, here is a quarry for you very different from your past prizes. It is a brand-new bridegroom, with his marriage-money still in his coffers; and all the cream of the courtiers are with him. Will you let yourselves go down before this handsome dancing-master and his minions? No, they are ours; I see it by your eagerness to fight. Still we must all of us understand that the event is in the hands of G.o.d. Pray we Him to aid us. This deed will be the greatest that we ever did; the glory will be to G.o.d, the service to our sovereign lord the king, the honor to ourselves, and the benefit to the state.' Henry uncovers; the clergymen Chandieu and Damours intone the army's prayer, and the men-at-arms repeat in chorus the twenty-fourth versicle of the hundred and eighteenth Psalm: 'This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.' As they were hastening each to his post, the king detains his cousins a moment.

'Gentlemen,' he shouts, 'I have just one thing to say: remember that you are of the house of Bourbon; and, as G.o.d liveth, I will let you see that I am your senior.' 'And we will show you some good juniors,' answered Conde."

Before midday the battle was won and the royalist army routed, but not without having made a valiant stand. During the action, D'Epinay Saint-Luc, one of the bravest royalist soldiers, met the Duke of Joyeuse already wounded. "What's to be done?" he asked. "Die," answered Joyeuse; and a few moments afterwards, as he was moving away some paces to the rear in order to get near to his artillery, says D'Aubigne, he was surrounded by several Huguenots, who recognized him. "There are a hundred-thousand crowns to be gained," he shouted; but rage was more powerful than cupidity, and one of them shattered his skull with a pistol-shot. "His body was taken to the king's quarters: there it lay, in the evening, upon a table in the very room where the conqueror's supper had been prepared: but the King of Navarre ordered all who were in the chamber to go out, had his supper things removed else-whither, and, with every mark of respect, committed the remains of the vanquished to the care of Viscount de Turenne, his near relative. Henry showed a simple and modest joy at his splendid triumph. It was five and twenty years since the civil war commenced, and he was the first Protestant general who had won a pitched battle; he had to regret only twenty-five killed, whereas the enemy had lost more than three thousand, and had abandoned to him their cannon, together with twenty-nine flags or standards. The victory was so much the more glorious in that it was gained over an army superior in numbers and almost equal in quality.

It was owing to the king's valor, decision, vigilance, quick eye, comprehension of tactics, and that creative instinct which he brought into application in politics as well as in war, and which was destined to render him so happily inspired in the beautiful defensive actions of Arques, at the affair of Ivry, and on so many other occasions."

[_Histoire des Princes de Conde, &c.,_ by M. le Due D'Aumale, t. ii.

pp. 164-177.]

And what was Henry III., King of France, doing whilst two great parties and two great men were thus carrying on, around his throne and in his name, so pa.s.sionate a war, on the one side to maintain the despotic unity of Catholic Christianism, and on the other to win religious liberty for Christian Protestantism? We will borrow here the words of the most enlightened and most impartial historian of the sixteenth century, M. de Thou; if we acted upon our own personal impressions alone, there would be danger of appearing too severe towards a king whom we profoundly despise.

"After having staid some time in Bourbonness, Henry III. went to Lyons in order to be within hail of his two favorites, Joyeuse and Epernon, who were each on the march with an army. Whilst he was at Lyons as unconcerned as if all the realm were enjoying perfect peace, he took to collecting those little dogs which are thought so much of in that town.

Everybody was greatly surprised to see a King of France, in the midst of so terrible a war and in extreme want of money, expending upon such pleasures all the time he had at disposal and all the sums he could sc.r.a.pe together. How lavish soever this prince may have been, yet, if comparison be made between the expenditure upon the royal household and that incurred at Lyons for dogs, the latter will be found infinitely higher than the former; without counting expenses for hunting-dogs and birds, which always come to a considerable sum in the households of kings, it cost him, every year, more than a hundred thousand gold crowns for little Lyonnese dogs; and he maintained at his court, with large salaries, a mult.i.tude of men and women who had nothing to do but to feed them. He also spent large sums in monkeys, parrots, and other creatures from foreign countries, of which he always kept a great number.

Sometimes he got tired of them, and gave them all away then his pa.s.sion for such creatures returned, and they had to be found for him at no matter what cost. Since I am upon the subject of this prince's attachment to matters anything but worthy of the kingly majesty, I will say a word about his pa.s.sion for those miniatures which were to be found in ma.n.u.script prayer-books, and which, before the practice of printing, were done by the most skilful painters. Henry III. seemed to buy such works, intended for princes and laid by in cabinets of curiosities, only to spoil them; as soon as he had them, he cut them out, and then pasted them upon the walls of his chapels, as children do. An incomprehensible character of mind: in certain things, capable of upholding his rank; in some, rising above his position; in others, sinking below childishness."

[_Histoire universelle de F. A. de Thou,_ t. ix. p. 599.]

A mind and character incomprehensible indeed, if corruption, la.s.situde, listlessness, and fear would not explain the existence of everything that is abnormal and pitiable about human nature in a feeble, cold, and selfish creature, excited, and at the same time worn out, by the business and the pleasures of kings.h.i.+p, which Henry III. could neither do without nor bear the burden of. His perplexity was extreme in his relations with the other two Henries, who gave, like himself, their name to this war, which was called by contemporaries the war of the three Henries. The successes of Henry de Guise and of Henry de Bourbon were almost equally disagreeable to Henry de Valois. It is probable that, if he could have chosen, he would have preferred those of Henry de Bourbon; if they caused him like jealousy, they did not raise in him the same distrust; he knew the King of Navarre's loyalty, and did not suspect him of aiming to become, whilst he himself was living, King of France. Besides, he considered the Protestants less powerful and less formidable than the Leaguers. Henry de Guise, on the contrary, was evidently, in his eyes, an ambitious conspirator, determined to push his own fortunes on to the very crown of France if the chances were favorable to him, and not only armed with all the power of Catholicism, but urged forward by the pa.s.sions of the League, perhaps further and certainly more quickly than his own intentions travelled. Since 1584, the Leaguers had, at Paris, acquired strong organization amongst the populace; the city had been part.i.tioned out into five districts under five heads, who, shortly afterwards, added to themselves eleven others, in order that, in the secret council of the a.s.sociation, each amongst the sixteen quarters of Paris might have its representative and director. Thence the famous Committee of Sixteen, which played so great and so formidable a part in the history of that period. It was religious fanaticism and democratic fanaticism closely united, and in a position to impose their wills upon their most eminent leaders, upon the Duke of Guise himself.

In vain did Henry III. attempt to resume some sort of authority in Paris; his government, his public and private life, and his person were daily attacked, insulted, and menaced from the elevation of the pulpit and in the public thoroughfares by qualified preachers or mob-orators. On the 16th of December, 1587, the Sorbonne voted, after a deliberation which, it was said, was to be kept secret, "that the government might be taken away from princes who were found not what they ought to be, just as the administration of a property from a guardian open to suspicion." On the 30th of December, the king summoned to the Louvre his court of Parliament and the faculty of theology. "I know of your precious resolution of the 16th of this month," said he to the Sorbonne; "I have been requested to take no notice of it, seeing that it was pa.s.sed after dinner. I have no mind to avenge myself for these outrages, as I might, and as Pope Sixtus V. did when he sent to the galleys certain Cordeliers for having dared to slander him in their sermons. There is not one of you who has not deserved as much, and more; but it is my good pleasure to forget all, and to pardon you, on condition of its not occurring again. If it should, I beg my court of Parliament, here present, to exact exemplary justice, and such as the seditious, like you, may take warning by, so as to mind their own business." At their exit after this address, the Parliament and the Sorbonne, being quite sure that the king would not carry the matter further, withdrew smiling, and saying, "He certainly has spirit, but not enough of it" (_habet quidem animum, sed non satis animi_). The Duke of Guise's sister, the d.u.c.h.ess of Montpensier, took to getting up and spreading about all sorts of pamphlets against the king and his government. "The king commanded her to quit his city of Paris; she did nothing of the kind; and three days after she was even brazen enough to say that she carried at her waist the scissors which would give a third crown to brother Henry de Valois." At the close of 1587, the Duke of Guise made a trip to Rome, "with a suite of five; and he only remained three days, so disguised that he was not recognized there, and discovered himself to n.o.body but Cardinal Pelleve, with whom he was in communication day and night." [_Journal de L'Estoile,_ t. i. p. 345.] Eighteen months previously, the cardinal had given a very favorable reception to a case drawn up by an advocate in the Parliament of Paris, named David, who maintained that, "although the line of the Capets had succeeded to the temporal administration of the kingdom of Charlemagne, it had not succeeded to the apostolic benediction, which appertained to none but the posterity of the said Charlemagne, and that, the line of Capet being some of them possessed by a spirit of giddiness and stupidity, and others heretic and excommunicated, the time had come for restoring the crown to the true heirs," that is to say, to the house of Lorraine, which claimed to be issue of Charlemagne. This case was pa.s.sed on, it is said, from Rome to Philip II., King of Spain, and M. de Saint-Goard, amba.s.sador of France at Madrid, sent Henry III. a copy of it. [_Memoires de la Ligue,_ t. i. pp. 1-7.]

Whatever may have been the truth about this trip to Rome on the part of the Duke of Guise, and its influence upon what followed, the chiefs of the Leaguers resolved to deal a great blow. The Lorraine princes and their intimate a.s.sociates met at Nancy in January, 1588, and decided that a pet.i.tion should be presented to the king; that he should be called upon to join himself more openly and in good earnest to the League, and to remove from offices of consequence all the persons that should be pointed out to him; that the Holy Inquisition should be established, at any rate in the good towns; that important places should be put into the hands of specified chiefs, who should have the power of constructing fortifications there; that heretics should be taxed a third, or at the least, a fourth of their property as long as the war lasted; and, lastly, that the life should be spared of no enemy taken prisoner, unless upon his swearing and finding good surety to live as a Catholic, and upon paying in ready money the worth of his property if it had not already been sold. These monstrous proposals, drawn up in eleven articles, were immediately carried to the king. He did not reject them, but he demanded and took time to discuss them with the authors. The negotiation was prolonged; the ferment in Paris was redoubled; the king, it was said, meant to withdraw; his person must be secured; the Committee of Sixteen took measures to that end; one of its members got into his hands the keys of the gate of St. Denis. From Soissons, where he was staying, the Duke of Guise sent to Paris the Count of Brissac, with four other captains of the League, to hold themselves in readiness for any event, and he ordered his brother the Duke of Aumale to stoutly maintain his garrisons in the places of Picardy, which the king, it was said, meant to take from him.

"If the king leaves Paris," the duke wrote to Bernard de Mendoza, Philip II.'s amba.s.sador in France, "I will make him think about returning thither before he has gone a day's march towards the Picards." Philip II. made Guise an offer of three hundred thousand crowns, six thousand lanzknechts, and twelve hundred lances, as soon as he should have broken with Henry III. "The abscess will soon burst," wrote the amba.s.sador to the king his master.

On the 8th of May, 1588, at eleven P. M., the Duke of Guise set out from Soissons, after having commended himself to the prayers of the convents in the town. He arrived the next morning before Paris, which he entered about midday by the gate of St. Martin. The Leaguers had been expecting him for several days. Though he had covered his head with his cloak, he was readily recognized and eagerly cheered; the burgesses left their houses and the tradesmen their shops to see him and follow him, shouting, "Hurrah! for Guise; hurrah! for the pillar of the church!" The crowd increased at every step. He arrived in front of the palace of Catherine de' Medici, who had not expected him, and grew pale at sight of him.

"My dear cousin," said she to him, "I am very glad to see you, but I should have been better pleased at another time." "Madame, I am come to clear myself from all the calumnies of my enemies; do me the honor to conduct me to the king yourself." Catherine lost no time in giving the king warning by one of her secretaries. On receipt of this notice, Henry III., who had at first been stolid--and silent, rose abruptly from his chair. "Tell my lady mother that, as she wishes to present the Duke of Guise to me, I will receive him in the chamber of the queen my wife."

The envoy departed. The king, turning to one of his officers, Colonel Alphonso Corso, said to him, "M. de Guise has just arrived at Paris, contrary to my orders. What would you do in my place?" "Sir, do you hold the Duke of Guise for friend or enemy?" The king, without speaking, replied by a significant gesture. "If it please your, Majesty to give me the order, I will this very day lay the duke's head at your feet." The three councillors who happened to be there cried out. The king held his peace. During this conversation at the Louvre, the Duke of Guise was advancing along the streets, dressed in a doublet of white damask, a cloak of black cloth, and boots of buffalo-hide; he walked on foot, bareheaded, at the side of the queen-mother in a sedan-chair. He was tall, with fair cl.u.s.tering hair and piercing eyes; and his scar added to his martial air. The mob pressed upon his steps; flowers were thrown to him from the windows; some, adoring him as a saint, touched him with chaplets which they afterwards kissed; a young girl darted towards him, and, removing her mask, kissed him, saying, "Brave prince, since you are here, we are all saved." Guise, with a dignified air, "saluted and delighted everybody," says a witness, "with eye, and gesture, and speech." "By his side," said Madame de Retz, "the other princes are commoners." "The Huguenots," said another, "become Leaguers at the very sight of him." On arriving at the Louvre, he traversed the court between two rows of soldiers, the archers on duty in the hall, and the forty-five gentlemen of the king's chamber at the top of the staircase. "What brings you hither?" said the king, with difficulty restraining his anger.

"I entreat your Majesty to believe in my fidelity, and not allow yourself to go by the reports of my enemies." "Did I not command you not to come at this season so full of suspicions, but to wait yet a while?"

"Sir, I was not given to understand that my coming would be disagreeable to you." Catherine drew near, and, in a low tone, told her son of the demonstrations of which the duke had been the object on his way. Guise was received in the chamber of the queen, Louise de Vaudemont, who was confined to her bed by indisposition; he chatted with her a moment, and, saluting the king, retired without being attended by any one of the officers of the court. Henry III. confined himself to telling him that results should speak for the sincerity of his words.

Guise returned to his house in the Faubourg St. Antoine, still accompanied by an eager and noisy crowd, but somewhat disquieted at heart both by the king's angry reception and the people's enthusiastic welcome.

Brave as he was, he was more ambitious in conception than bold in execution, and he had not made up his mind to do all that was necessary to attain the end he was pursuing. The committee of Sixteen, his confidants, and all the staff of the League, met at his house during the evening and night between the 9th and 10th of May, preparing for the morrow's action without well knowing what it was to be, proposing various plans, collecting arms, and giving instructions to their agents amongst the populace. An agitation of the same sort prevailed at the Louvre; the king, too, was deliberating with his advisers as to what he should do on the morrow: Guise would undoubtedly present himself at his morning levee; should he at once rid himself of him by the poniards of the five and forty bravoes which the Duke of Epernon had enrolled in Gascony for his service? Or would it be best to summon to Paris some troops, French and Swiss, to crush the Parisian rebels and the adventurers that had hurried up from all parts to their aid? But on the 10th of May, Guise went to the Louvre with four hundred gentlemen well armed with breastplates and weapons under their cloaks. The king did nothing; no more did Guise.

The two had a long conversation in the queen-mother's garden; but it led to no result. On the 11th of May, in the evening, the provost of tradesmen, Hector de Perreuse, a.s.sembled the town-council and those of the district-colonels on whom he had reliance to receive the king's orders. Orders came to muster the burgher companies of certain districts, and send them to occupy certain positions that had been determined upon. They mustered slowly and incompletely, and some not at all; and scarcely had they arrived when several left the posts which had been a.s.signed to them. The king, being informed of this sluggishness, sent for the regiment of the French Guards, and for four thousand Swiss cantoned in the outskirts of Paris; and he himself mounted his horse, on the 12th of May, in the morning, to go and receive them at the gate of St. Honord. These troops "filed along, without fife or drum, towards the cemetery of the Innocents." The populace regarded them as they pa.s.sed with a feeling of angry curiosity and uneasy amazement. When all the corps had arrived at the appointed spot, "they put themselves in motion towards different points, now making a great noise with their drums and fifes, which marvellously astonished the inhabitants of the quarter."

Noise provokes noise. "In continently," says L'Estoile, "everybody seizes his arms, goes out on guard in the streets and cantons; in less than no time chains are stretched across and barricades made at the corners of the streets; the mechanic leaves his tools, the tradesman his business, the University their books, the attorneys their bags, the advocates their bands; the presidents and councillors themselves take halberds in hand; nothing is heard but shouts, murmurs, and the seditious speeches that heat and alarm a people." The tocsin sounded everywhere; barricades sprang up in the twinkling of an eye; they were made within thirty paces of the Louvre. The royal troops were hemmed in where they stood, and deprived of the possibility of moving; the Swiss, being attacked, lost fifty men, and surrendered, holding up their chaplets and exclaiming that they were good Catholics. It was thought sufficient to disarm the French Guards. The king, remaining stationary at the Louvre, sent his marshals to parley with the people ma.s.sed in the thoroughfares; the queen-mother had herself carried over the barricades in order to go to Guise's house and attempt some negotiation with him. He received her coldly, demanding that the king should appoint him lieutenant-general of the kingdom, declare the Huguenot princes incapacitated from succeeding to the throne, and a.s.semble the states-general. At the approach of evening, Guise determined to go himself and a.s.sume the conqueror's air by putting a stop to the insurrection. He issued from his house on horseback, unarmed, with a white wand in his hand; he rode through the different districts, exhorting the inhabitants to keep up their barricades, whilst remaining on the defensive and leaving him to complete their work. He was greeted on all sides with shouts of "Hurrah! for Guise!" "You wrong me, my friends," said he; "you should shout, 'Hurrah!

for the king!'" He had the French Guards and the Swiss set at liberty; and they defiled before him, arms lowered and bareheaded, as before their preserver. Next morning, May 13, he wrote to D'Entragues, governor of Orleans, "Notify our friends to come to us in the greatest haste possible, with horses and arms, but without baggage, which they will easily be able to do, for I believe that the roads are open hence to you.

I have defeated the Swiss, and cut in pieces a part of the king's guards, and I hold the Louvre invested so closely that I will render good account of whatsoever there is in it. This is so great a victory that it will be remembered forever." That same day, the provost of tradesmen and the royalist sheriffs repaired to the Louvre, and told the king that, without great and immediate concessions, they could not answer for anything; the Louvre was not in a condition of defence; there were no troops to be depended upon for resistance, no provisions, no munitions; the investment was growing closer and closer every hour, and the a.s.sault might commence at any instant. Henry III. sent his mother once more to the Duke of Guise, and himself went out about four o'clock, dressed in a country suit and scantily attended, as if for a walk in the Tuileries. Catherine found the duke as inflexible as he had been the day before. He peremptorily insisted upon all the conditions he had laid down already, the lieutenant-generals.h.i.+p of the kingdom for himself, the unity of the Catholic faith, forfeiture on the part of the King of Navarre and every other Huguenot prince as heir to the throne, perpetual banishment of the king's favorites, and convocation of the states-general. "The king," he said, "purposes to destroy all the grandees of the kingdom and to harry all those who oppose his wishes and the elevation of his minions; it is my duty and my interest to take all the measures necessary for my own preservation and that of the people." Catherine yielded on nearly every point, at the same time, however, continually resuming and prolonging the discussion. One of the duke's most trusty confidants, Francis de Mainville, entered and whispered in his ear. "Madame," cried the duke, "whilst your Majesty has been amusing me here, the king is off from Paris to harry me and destroy me!" Henry III., indeed, had taken horse at the Tuileries, and, attended by his princ.i.p.al councillors, unbooted and cloakless, had issued from the New gate, and set out on the road to St.

Cloud. Equipping him in haste, his squire, Du Halde, had put his spur on wrong, and would have set it right, but, "That will do," said the king; "I am not going to see my mistress; I have a longer journey to make." It is said that the corps on guard at the Nesle gate fired from a distance a salute of arquebuses after the fugitive king, and that a crowd a.s.sembled on the other bank of the river shouted insults after him. At the height of Chaillot Henry pulled up, and turning round towards Paris, "Ungrateful city," he cried, "I have loved thee more than my own wife; I will not enter thy walls again but by the breach."

It is said that on hearing of the Duke of Guise's sudden arrival at Paris, Pope Sixtus V. exclaimed, "Ah! what rashness! To thus go and put himself in the hands of a prince he has so outraged!" And some days afterwards, on the news that the king had received the Duke of Guise and nothing had come of it, "Ah, dastard prince! poor creature of a prince, to have let such a chance escape him of getting rid of a man who seems born to be his destruction!" [_De Thou,_ t. x. p. 266.]

When the king was gone, Guise acted the master in Paris. He ordered the immediate delivery into his hands of the Bastille, the a.r.s.enal, and the castle of Vincennes. Ornano, governor of the Bastille, sent an offer to the king, who had arrived at Chartres, to defend it to the last extremity. "I will not expose to so certain a peril a brave man who may be necessary to me elsewhere," replied the king. Guise caused to be elected at Paris a new town-council and a new provost of tradesmen, all taken from amongst the most ardent Leaguers. He at the same time exerted himself to restore order; he allowed all royalists who wished to depart to withdraw to Chartres; he went in person and pressed the premier president of Parliament, Achille de Harlay, to resume the course of justice. "It is great pity, sir," said Harlay, "when the servant drives out the master; this a.s.sembly is founded (seated) on the fleur-de-lis; being established by the king, it can act only for his service. We will all lose our lives to a man rather than give way a whit to the contrary."

"I have been in many battles," said Guise, as he went out, "in a.s.saults and encounters the most dangerous in the world; and I have never been so overcome as at my reception by this personage." At the same time that he was trying to exercise authority and restore order, unbridled violence and anarchy were making head around him; the Sixteen and their friends discharged from the smallest offices, civil or religious, whoever was not devoted to them; they changed all the captains and district-officers of the city militia; they deposed all the inc.u.mbents, all the ecclesiastics whom they termed Huguenots and policists; the pulpits of Christians became the platforms of demagogues; the preachers Guiticestre, Boucher, Rose, John Prevost, Aubry, Pigenat, Cueilly, Pelletier, and a host of others whose names have fallen into complete obscurity, were the popular apostles, the real firebrands of the troubles of the League, says Pasquier; there was scarcely a chapel where there were not several sermons a day. "You know not your strength," they kept repeating to their auditors: "Paris knows not what she is worth; she has wealth enough to make war upon four kings. France is sick, and she will never recover from that sickness till she has a draught of French blood given her.

. . . If you receive Henry de Valois into your towns, make up your minds to see your preachers ma.s.sacred, your sheriffs hanged, your women violated, and the gibbets garnished with your members." One of these raving orators, Claude Trahy, provincial of the Cordeliers, devoted himself to hounding on the populace of Auxerre against their bishop, James Amyot, the translator of Plutarch, whom he reproached with "having communicated with Henry III. and administered to him the eucharist;"

brother John Moresin, one of Trahy's subalterns, went about brandis.h.i.+ng a halberd in the public place at Auxerre, and shouting, "Courage, lads!

messire Amyot is a wicked man, worse than Henry de Valois; he has threatened to have our master Trahy hanged, but he will repent it;" and, "at the voice of this madman, there hurried up vine-dressers, boatmen, and marchandeaux (costermongers), a whole angry mob, who were for having Amyot's throat cut, and Trahy made bishop in his stead."

Whilst the blind pa.s.sions of fanatics and demagogues were thus let loose, the sensible and clear-sighted spirits, the earnest and moderate royalists, did not all of them remain silent and motionless. After the appearance of the letters written in 1588 by the Duke of Guise to explain and justify his conduct in this crisis, a grandson of Chancellor de l'Hospital, Michael Hurault, Sieur du Fay, published a doc.u.ment, ent.i.tled Frank and Free Discourse upon the Condition of France, one of the most judicious and most eloquent pamphlets of the sixteenth century, a profound criticism upon the acts of the Duke of Guise, their causes and consequences, and a true picture of the falsehoods and servitude into which an eminent man may fall when he makes himself the tool of a popular faction in the hope of making that faction the tool of his personal ambition. But even the men who were sufficiently enlightened and sufficiently courageous to tell the League and its leader plain truths spoke only rather late in the day, and at first without giving their names; the doc.u.ment written by L'Hospital's grandson did not appear until 1591, after the death of Henry III. and Henry de Guise, and it remained anonymous for some time. One cannot be astonished at such timidity; Guise himself was timid before the Leaguers, and he always ended by yielding to them in essentials, after having attempted to resist them upon such and such an incidental point. His own people accused him of lacking boldness; and his sister, the d.u.c.h.ess of Montpensier, openly patronized the most violent preachers, whilst boasting that she wielded more influence through them than her brother by his armies. Henry III., under stress of his enemies' zeal and his own servants' weakness, Catherine de' Medici included, after having fled from Paris and taken refuge at Chartres to escape the triumph of the Barricades, once more began to negotiate, that is, to capitulate with the League; he issued at Rouen, on the 19th of July, 1588, an edict in eleven articles, whereby he granted more than had been demanded, and more than he had promised in 1585 by the treaty of Nemours; over and above the meas