History of the Rise of the Huguenots Volume I Part 44

[Footnote 732: "O que si ce bon roy eusse vescu," says Montluc, "ou si ceste paix ne se fust faite, qu'il eust bien rembarre les Lutheriens en Allemagne." Memoires, Pet.i.tot ed., ii. 483.]

[Footnote 733: Davila, Civil Wars of France, p. 6. Hist. du tumulte d'Amboise, Recueil des choses memorables, _in initio_; Mem. de Conde, i.

320.]

[Footnote 734: Yet Catharine herself, in a letter written in 1563 to her son Charles IX., just after he had declared himself to be of age, admits the full truth of her opponents' a.s.sertion, that Francis II. was a minor!--"que l'on cognoisse les desordres qui out este jusques icy _par la minorite du Roy vostre frere_, qui empeschoit que l'on ne pouvoit faire ce que l'on desiroit." Avis donnez par Catherine de Medicis a Charles IX., pour la police de sa cour, etc., printed in Cimber et Danjou, Archives curieuses, v. 245-254.]

[Footnote 735: "Di natura benignissima, e cerca di gratificare ciascuno, e ma.s.sime gl' Italiani quanto piu gli e possibile, ed e tanto amato, non solamente da tutta la corte, ma da tutto il regno che e cosa incredibile." Rel. del clar^mo Giovanni Soranzo, 1558, Relaz. Ven., ii. 429, 430.]

[Footnote 736: "La Royne mere, ambitieuse et craintive." Mem. de Tavannes, ii. 256.]

[Footnote 737: Relaz. di Giovanni Michiel (1561), Tommaseo, i. 426.]

[Footnote 738: La Planche, 204, 205: "The d.u.c.h.esse of Valentinoys and d.u.c.h.es of Buillon are commaunded, that neither they nor any of theirs shall resort to the courte.... The yong Frenche Quene hath sent to the d.u.c.h.es of Valentinoys, to make accompt of the French King's cabenet and of all his jewels." Throkmorton to Queen, July 13, 1559, Forbes, State Papers, i. 158, 159.]

[Footnote 739: Regnier de la Planche, p. 203: "Lequel (Henry) ... avoit entierement resolu, apres avoir acheve ces mariages, et renvoye les estrangers, de les decha.s.ser arriere de soy, comme une peste de son royaume." So Hist. eccles., liv. iii. I can scarcely agree with De Thou (ii., 681, liv. xxiii.) in supposing Catharine deceived in the character of the Guises: "Comme elle ne connoissoit pas encore le caractere de ces Princes, elle crut qu'ils se soumettroient en tout a ses volontes," etc.

This statement does injustice to the perspicacity of Catharine, who for so many years had been quietly, but none the less carefully, studying these courtiers and all others that figured on the stage of French politics. La Planche, with his usual ac.u.men, makes much of the advantage which this circ.u.mstance conferred upon her (_ubi supra_): "La royne mere, italienne, florentine, et de la race des Medicis, et qui plus est, ayant depuis vingt-deux ans [rather, for twenty-five years] eu tout loisir de considerer les humeurs et facons de toutes ces gens, regardoit ce jeu, et sceut si bien empoigner l'occasion, qu'elle gaigna finalement la partie."]

[Footnote 740: For a full and not uninteresting account of the obsequies, see the pamphlet already referred to: "Le Trespas et l'Ordre des obseques," etc. Paris, 1559. Reprinted in Cimber et Danjou, iii.

307, etc.]

[Footnote 741: Regnier de la Planche, Hist. de l'estat de France sous Francois II., 206. "The French King," wrote Throkmorton to his royal mistress, "alredy hathe geven him (the constable) to understande, that the Cardinal of Lorrain and the Duke of Guise shal manage his hole affairs." Throkmorton to the Queen, July 18, 1559, Forbes, State Papers, i. 166.]

[Footnote 742: "Ut re vera sit conestabilis." Beza to Bullinger, Sept.

12, 1559, _apud_ Baum, ii. App. 1. The _t.i.tle_ of constable was for life. Of the tenure of the office, the memoirs of Vieilleville make Henry II. say: "Vous scavez que les estats de connestable, mareschaux et chancelliers de France sont totalement _collez et cousus_ a la teste de ceulx qui en sont honnorez, que l'on ne peut arracher l'un sans l'autre." Mem., i. 207.]

[Footnote 743: Huguenot and papist agreed in this, if they could agree in nothing else. "Guisiani fratres," said Beza, "ita inter se regnum sunt part.i.ti ut regi nihil praeter inane nomen sit relictum." Beza, _ubi supra_. Cardinal Santa Croce used almost the same expression: "Eo devenerat ut regi solum nomen reliquisse, alia omnia sibi sumsisse videretur." Commentarii, v. 1440.]

[Footnote 744: The poor fellow's wit was recompensed with a public flogging. The incident is told in the recently published Journal d'un cure ligueur (Jehan de la Fosse), 37. It need scarcely be said that the _Crescent_ referred to Diana of Poitiers.]

[Footnote 745: "Nam c.u.m ... regem de more salutatum venisset ...

Lotharingii suasu ne respicere hominem voluit." Santa Croce, Comment., v. 1439.]

[Footnote 746: La Planche, 206.]

[Footnote 747: In a remark which he was accused of once making to Henry II., "that he was surprised that the king had no child resembling him, save his illegitimate, but acknowledged daughter, Diana, married to the constable's son!" La Planche, 204, 207; De Thou, ii. 685.]

[Footnote 748: Blaise de Montluc, a trusty agent, kept Guise well posted respecting the King of Navarre's words and disposition. "Encores que M.

le Connestable luy ayt escript plusieurs lettres, neantmoins il m'a toujours dict qu'il ne se fieroit jamais de luy, ayant bien cogneu que ce semblant d'amitie qu'il luy portoit n'estoit que pour l'attirer de son coste, affin de ruiner ses cousins," etc. Instruction donnee par le seign. de Montluc a M. de la Tour, 22 juillet, 1559, Mem. de Conde, i.

307; Mem. de Guise, 450.]

[Footnote 749: The wealth and power of the Montmorency family were proverbial; their palaces were among the most magnificent in France. Of one of them the English amba.s.sadors wrote, four years earlier, a long description for the benefit of Queen Mary, beginning: "We saw another house which the said constable had but lately built, called ecouen, which was praised for the fairest house in France." The Journey of the Queen's Amba.s.sadors to Rome, Anno 1555 (Hardwick, State Papers, i. 63).]

[Footnote 750: See the _Livre des marchands_, Paris, 1565, ascribed to Louis Regnier de la Planche, the reputed author of the most authentic history of this reign (Ed. Pantheon litt., 429, 453, _et pa.s.sim_).]

[Footnote 751: De la Planche, 207.]

[Footnote 752: De la Planche, p. 208.]

[Footnote 753: Ibid., p. 205, 206; De Thou, ii. 683, whose account, as in so many other instances during this reign, is almost exclusively based upon the invaluable history of Regnier de la Planche.]

[Footnote 754: La Planche, p. 208; Tumulte d'Amboise, _ubi supra_; Languet, Epist. secretae, ii. p. 2.]

[Footnote 755: La Planche, p. 212; La Place, 26; De Thou, ii. 684.]

[Footnote 756: "Rex Navarrorum animum in corpore virili gerit muliebrem." J. C. Porta.n.u.s, Oct. 30, 1559, Languet, Epist. secretae, ii.

4.]

[Footnote 757: The Bishop of Mende was to become a member of the privy council; D'Escars to be made a knight of the order of St. Michael, and to command fifty men-at-arms. La Planche, 213.]

[Footnote 758: The Guises did not fail, however, to take precautions against a surprise. If Throkmorton was well informed, the duke had "caused two thousand corselets to be laid up in the house of Burbone (Bourbon), nere to the court, to serve in case of innovacion; if that any such matter shuld happen upon the arrivall of the King of Navarre."

Desp. of Aug. 8, 1559, Forbes, State Papers, i. 194.]

[Footnote 759: La Planche, _ubi supra_.]

[Footnote 760: Idem, 213, 214.]

[Footnote 761: Throkmorton to the queen, Aug. 15, 1559, Forbes, i. 202.]

[Footnote 762: "Qu'il n'est point pet.i.t compagnon en France."]

[Footnote 763: Instruction of Montluc to La Tour, already cited, Mem. de Guise, 450.]

[Footnote 764: Antoine did, indeed, continue his protestations of his firm intention "not to fail to do the best he could to advance G.o.d's true religion and cause." He made secret appointments with the English amba.s.sador, at one time about eleven o'clock at night, near the abbey of St. Denis, at another time in disguise in the cloisters of the Augustinian friars, and had much to say about his satisfaction "that he had so good a colleague" as Elizabeth "in so good a cause." But the diplomatic correspondence does not show a single step which Navarre ever ventured to take in behalf of that "good cause." See Throkmorton's despatch of Aug. 25th, Forbes, State Papers, i. 213, 214.]

[Footnote 765: "Navarrus ad quem jure ipso et more majorum hactenus inviolata pertinebat regni administratio, quamvis a plerisque Ecclesiis salutatus et rogatus ne tam praeclaram et divinitus oblatam occasionem negligeret, quamvis summo et aperto ludibrio a Guisianis exceptus, tamen omnibus annuit et suo exemplo confirmavit Christi dictum; Difficile est divitem ingredi in regnum clorum." Beza to Bullinger, Sept. 12, 1559, _apud_ Baum, ii., App., 1, 2; La Place, 27; La Planche, 213-216; De Thou, ii. 686, 687.]

[Footnote 766: Held Sept. 18th. See a description in Forbes, State Papers, i. 232. Navarre, as one of the six temporal peers, represented the Duke of Burgundy; Guise represented the Duke of Normandy; Nevers, the Duke of Guyenne, etc.]

[Footnote 767: La Planche, 218; De Thou, ii. 688. That the promise of a.s.sistance was only given in order to frighten Navarre was patent to all who were cognizant of Philip's projected African campaign.]

[Footnote 768: De Thou (ii. 722, 723) gives an account apparently correct, save in one or two particulars, of these two missions. The slavish letter of Antoine to D'Audoz or D'Odoux, as De Thou writes the name of the second messenger, may be read in the Negociations relatives au regne de Francois II. (drawn from the papers of the Bishop of Limoges, French amba.s.sador to Philip, and published by the French government, under the editorial care of M. Paris, 1841), pp. 164-166.

Compare Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 91.]

[Footnote 769: La Planche, 209.]

[Footnote 770: Throkmorton to Cecil, July 13, 1559, Forbes, State Papers, i. 161.]

[Footnote 771: La Planche, 221; Beza to Bullinger, Sept. 12, 1559, Baum, ii., App., 3.]

[Footnote 772: La Planche, 221; Mem. de Castelnau (Eng. tr. of 1724, p.

23), bk. i. c. 5; Declarations of Sept. 4th and Nov. 14, 1559, in the Memoires de Guise, 450, 451. These declarations were registered by parliament, with the proviso that no house should be razed unless the owners were privy to the crime or guilty of inexcusable negligence.

Memoires de Conde, i, 310.]

[Footnote 773: La Planche, _ubi supra_.]

[Footnote 774: Arret du parlement, of September 6, 1559, in Memoires de Conde, i. 308, 309.]

[Footnote 775: In August there were nineteen Protestants in Parisian dungeons, sentenced to be executed for heresy, some in one place, some in another. A man and a woman were rescued, on the twenty-first of this month, while on their way to execution at Meaux. Forbes, State Papers, i. 211, 212.]