History of the Rise of the Huguenots Volume II Part 36

[764] Agrippa d'Aubigne, liv. v., c. 21 (i. 322).

[765] Gasparis Colinii Vita, 97, 98.

[766] Arnay-le-Duc, or Rene-le-Duc, as the place was indifferently called, is situated about thirty miles south-west of Dijon, on the road to Autun.

[767] De Thou, iv. (liv. xlvii.) 312-314; Agrippa d'Aubigne, liv. v., c.

22 (i. 321-325); Castelnau, liv. vii., c. 12; Davila, bk. v. 169.

[768] De Thou, iv. (liv. xlvii.) 315. Davila attributes to the connivance of Marshal Cosse the escape of the Protestants from Arnay-le-Duc. This is consistent with the same writer's statement that it was the marshal's intentional slowness that enabled Coligny to seize upon Arnay-le-Duc and post himself so advantageously.

[769] Castelnau, liv. vii., c. 10.

[770] De Thou, iv. (liv. xlvii.) 301.

[771] De Thou, iv. (liv. xlvii.) 302.

[772] The articles, a copy of which was sent to the amba.s.sador at the court of Elizabeth, in a letter from Angers, Feb. 6, 1570, are printed in La Mothe Fenelon, vii. 86-88. I omit reference in the text to the articles prohibiting foreign alliances and the levy of money, prescribing the dismissal of foreign troops, etc. The two cities referred to in the fifth article are rather to be regarded as places of wors.h.i.+p--the only places in the kingdom where Protestant wors.h.i.+p would be tolerated--than as pledges for the performance of the projected edict, as Prof. Soldan apparently regards them chiefly, if not exclusively. Geschichte des Prot. in Frankreich, ii. 379.

[773] Charles to amba.s.sador, Jan. 14th; letter of Catharine, same date; La Mothe Fenelon, vii. 77, 78.

[774] See Froude, History of England, x. 9. etc.

[775] De Thou, iv. (liv. xlvii.) 305. Cf. Soulier, Hist. des edits de pacification, 92.

[776] De Thou, iv. 311. It was at St. etienne in Forez, that the incident occurred.

[777] For a fuller discussion of these circ.u.mstances than the limits of this history will permit me to give, I must refer the reader to the work of Prof. Soldan, Geschichte des Protestantismus in Frankreich, ii. 385.

[778] La Noue was one of the most modest, as well as one of the most capable of generals. "I have felt myself so much the more obliged to speak of it," writes the historian De Thou respecting the battle of Sainte Gemme, "as La Noue, the most generous of men, who has written on the civil wars with as much fidelity as judgment, always disposed to render conspicuous the merit of others, and very reserved respecting his own, has not said a word of this victory." De Thou, iv. (liv. xlvii.) 320.

[779] Brantome has written the eulogy of this personage, whose true name was Antoine Escalin. He was first amba.s.sador at Constantinople, where his good services secured his appointment as general of the galleys. After undergoing the displeasure of the king, and a three years' imprisonment for his partic.i.p.ation in the ma.s.sacre of the Vaudois, he was reinstated in office. Subsequently he was temporarily displaced by the grand prior, and by the Marquis of Elbeuf. It is an odd mistake of Mr. Henry White (Ma.s.s.

of St. Bartholomew, p. 14, note) when he says: "In the religious wars he sided with the Huguenots." Brantome says: "Il ha.s.soit mortellement ces gens-la."

[780] De Thou, iv. 316-325; Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 325-335.

[781] Ibid., _ubi supra_.

[782] La Mothe Fenelon, iii. 210, 215. Despatch of June 21st.

[783] De Thou, iv. 287, 288; Kluckholn, Briefe Friedrich des Frommen, ii.

398.

[784] La Mothe Fenelon, iii. 256, 257.

[785] Letter of April 17, 1570, Rochambeau, Lettres d'Antoine de Bourbon et de Jehanne d'Albret (Paris, 1877), 299.

[786] Cha.s.sanee in his "Consuetudines ducatus Burgundiae, fereque totius Galliae" (Lyons, 1552), 50, defines the "haute justice" by the possession of the power of life and death: "De secundo vero gradu meri imperii, seu altae justiciae, est habere gladii potestatem ad animadvertendum in facinorosos homines."

[787] See the edict itself in Jean de Serres, iii. 375-390; summaries in De Thou, iv. (liv. xlvii.) 328, 329, and Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 364, 365.

[788] Journal d'un cure ligueur, 120.

[789] Ibid., _ubi supra_.

[790] Castelnau, liv. vii., c. 12. The work of this very fair-minded historian terminates with the conclusion of the peace. De Thou, iv. (liv.

xlvii.) 327.

[791] "On la disoit boiteuse et mal-a.s.sise," says Henri de Mesmes himself in his account of these transactions, adding with a delicate touch of sarcasm: "Je n'en ay point vu depuis vingt-cinq ans qui ait guere dure."

Le Laboureur, Add. aux Mem. de Castelnau, ii. 776. Prof. Soldan has already exposed the mistake of Sismondi and others, who apply the popular nickname to the preceding peace of Longjumeau. See _ante_, chap. xv.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE PEACE OF SAINT GERMAIN.

[Sidenote: Sincerity of the peace.]

A problem of cardinal importance here confronts us, in the inquiry whether the peace which had at length dawned upon France was or was not concluded in good faith by the young king and his advisers. Was the treaty a necessity forced upon the court by the losses of men and treasure sustained during three years of almost continual civil conflict? Were the queen mother and those in whose hands rested the chief control of affairs, really tired of a war in which nothing was to be gained and everything was in jeopardy, a war whose most brilliant successes had been barren of substantial fruits, and had, in the sequel, been stripped of the greater part of their glory by the masterly conduct of a defeated opponent? Or, was the peace only a prelude to the ma.s.sacre--a skilfully devised snare to entrap incautious and credulous enemies?

The latter view is that which was entertained by the majority of the contemporaries of the events, who, whether friends or foes of Charles and Catharine, whether Papists or Protestants, could not avoid reading the treaty of pacification in the light of the occurrences of the "b.l.o.o.d.y nuptials." The Huguenot author of the "Tocsin against the murderers" and Capilupi, author of the appreciative "Stratagem of Charles the Ninth"--however much they may disagree upon other points--unite in regarding the royal edict as a piece of treachery from beginning to end.

It was even believed by many of the most intelligent Protestants that the ma.s.sacre was already perfected in the minds of its authors so far back as the conference of Bayonne, five years before the peace of St. Germain, in accordance with the suggestions of Philip the Second and of Alva. This last supposition, however, has been overthrown by the discovery of the correspondence of Alva himself, in which he gives an account of the discussions which he held with Catharine de' Medici on that memorable occasion. For we have seen that, far from convincing the queen mother of the necessity for adopting sanguinary measures to crush the Huguenots, the duke constantly deplores to his master the obstinacy of Catharine in still clinging to her own views of toleration. It seems equally clear that the peace of St. Germain was no part of the project of a contemplated ma.s.sacre of the Protestants. The Montmorencies, not the Guises, were in power, and were responsible for it. The influence of the former had become paramount, and that of the latter had waned. The Cardinal of Lorraine had left the court in disgust and retired to his archbishopric of Rheims, when he found that the policy of war, to which he and his family were committed, was about to be abandoned. Even in the earlier negotiations he had no part, while the queen mother and the moderate Morvilliers were omnipotent.[792]

And when Francis Walsingham made his appearance at the French court, to congratulate Charles the Ninth upon the restoration of peace, he found his strongest reasons of hope for its permanence, next to the disposition and the necessities of the king, in the royal "misliking toward the house of Guise, who have been the nourishers of these wars,"[793] and in the increase of the royal "favor to Montmorency, a chief worker of this peace, who now carrieth the whole sway of the court, and is restored to the government of Paris."[794]

At home and abroad, the peace was equally opposed by those who could not have failed to be its warmest advocates had it been treacherously designed. We have already seen that both Pope Pius the Fifth, and the King of Spain insisted upon a continuance of the war, and offered augmented a.s.sistance, in case the government would pledge itself to make no compact with the heretical rebels. The pontiff especially was unremitting in his persuasions and threats; denouncing the righteous judgment of G.o.d upon the king who preferred personal advantage to the claims of religion, and reminding him that the divine anger was wont to punish the sins of rulers by taking away their kingdoms and giving them to others.[795] The project of a ma.s.sacre of Protestants, had it in reality been entertained by the French court while adopting the peace, could scarcely have been kept so profound a secret from the king and the pontiff who had long been urging a resort to such measures, nor would Pius and Philip have been suffered through ignorance to persist in so open a hostility to the compact which was intended to render its execution feasible.

[Sidenote: The designs of Catharine de' Medici.]

If the Ma.s.sacre of St. Bartholomew's Day, as enacted on the fatal Sunday of August, was not premeditated in the form it then a.s.sumed--if the peace of St. Germain was not, as so many have imagined, a trick to overwhelm the Huguenots taken unawares--are we, therefore, to believe that the idea of such a deed of blood was as yet altogether foreign to the mind of Catharine de' Medici? I dare not affirm that it was. On the contrary, there is reason to believe that the conviction that she might some day find herself in a position in which she could best free herself from entanglement by some such means had long since lodged in her mind. It was not a strange or repulsive notion to the careful student of the code of morality laid down in "Il Principe." Alva had familiarized her with it, and the civil wars had almost invested it in her eyes with the appearance of justifiable retaliation. She had gloated in secret over the story of the Queen Blanche, mother of Louis the Ninth, and her successful struggle with her son's insubordinate n.o.bles, telling her countryman, the Venetian amba.s.sador Correro, with a significant laugh such as she was wont occasionally to indulge in, that she would be very sorry to have it known that she had been reading the old ma.n.u.script chronicle, for they would at once infer that she had taken the Castilian princess as her pattern.[796]

More unscrupulous than the mother of St. Louis, she had revolved in her mind various schemes for strengthening her authority at the expense of the lives of a few of the more prominent Huguenot chiefs, convinced, as she was, that Protestantism would cease to exist in France with the destruction of its leaders. But, despite pontifical injunctions and Spanish exhortations, she formed no definite plans; or, if she did, it was only to unravel on the morrow what she had woven the day before. What Barbaro said of her at one critical juncture was true of her generally in all such deliberations: "Her irresolution is extreme; she conceives new plans from hour to hour; within the compa.s.s of a single day, between morning and evening, she will change her mind three times.[797]"

[Sidenote: Charles the Ninth in earnest.]

[Sidenote: He tears out the record against Cardinal Chatillon.]

While it is scarcely possible to believe Catharine to have been more sincere in the adoption of this peace than in any other event of her life, we may feel some confidence that her son was really in favor of peace for its own sake. He was weary of the war, jealous of his brother Anjou, disgusted with the Guises, and determined to attempt to conciliate his Huguenot subjects, whom he had in vain been trying to crush. Apparently he wished to make of the amnesty, which the edict formally proclaimed, a veritable act of oblivion of all past offences, and intended to regard the Huguenots, in point of fact as well as in law, as his faithful subjects.

An incident which occurred about two months after the conclusion of peace, throws light upon the king's new disposition. Cardinal Odet de Chatillon, deprived by the Pope of his seat in the Roman consistory, had, on motion of Cardinal Bourbon, been declared by the Parisian parliament to have lost his bishopric of Beauvais, on account of his rebellion and his adoption of Protestant sentiments. All such judicial proceedings had indeed been declared null and void by the terms of the pacification, but the parliaments showed themselves very reluctant to regard the royal edict. In October, 1570, Charles the Ninth happening to be a guest of Marshal Montmorency at his palace of ecouen, a few leagues north of Paris, sent orders to Christopher de Thou, the first president, to wait upon him with the parliamentary records. Aware of the king's object, De Thou, pleading illness, sent four of his counsellors instead; but these were ignominiously dismissed, and the presence of the chief judge was again demanded. When De Thou at last appeared, Charles greeted him roughly.

"Here you are," he said, "and not very ill, thank G.o.d! Why do you go counter to my edicts? I owe our cousin, Cardinal Bourbon, no thanks for having applied for and obtained sentence against the house of Chatillon, _which has done me so much service, and took up arms for me_." Then calling for the records, he ordered the president to point out the proceedings against the admiral's brother, and, on finding them, tore out with his own hand three leaves on which they were inscribed; and on having his attention directed by the marshal, who stood by, to other places bearing upon the same case, he did not hesitate to tear these out also.[798]

[Sidenote: His a.s.surances to Walsingham.]

[Sidenote: Gracious answer to the German electors.]

To all with whom he conversed Charles avowed his steadfast purpose to maintain the peace inviolate. He called it his own peace. He told Walsingham, "he willed him to a.s.sure her Majesty, that the only care he presently had was to entertain the peace, whereof the Queen of Navarre and the princes of the religion could well be witnesses, as also generally the whole realm."[799] And the shrewd diplomatist believed that the king spoke the truth;[800] although, when he looked at the adverse circ.u.mstances with which Charles was surrounded, and the vicious and irreligious education he had received, there was room for solicitude respecting his stability.[801] There was, indeed, much to strengthen the hands of Charles in his new policy of toleration. On the twenty-sixth of November he married, with great pomp and amid the display of the popular delight, Elizabeth, daughter of the Emperor Maximilian the Second. This union, far from imperilling the permanence of the peace in France,[802] was likely to render it more lasting, if the bridegroom could be induced to copy the conciliatory and politic example of his father-in-law. Not long after Charles received at Villers-Cotterets an emba.s.sy sent by the three Protestant electors of Germany and the other powerful princes of the same faith. They congratulated him upon the suppression of civil disorder in France, and entreated him to maintain freedom of wors.h.i.+p in his dominions such as existed in Germany and even in the dominions of the Grand Turk; lending an ear to none who might attempt to persuade him that tranquillity could not subsist in a kingdom where there was more than one religion.

Charles made a gracious answer, and the German amba.s.sadors retired, leaving the friends of the Huguenots to entertain still better hopes for the recent treaty.[803]