History of the Rise of the Huguenots Volume I Part 45

[Footnote 776: La Planche, 221, 223; Hist. eccles., i. 144--147, where the account is taken word for word from La Planche; De Thou, ii. 691, 692; Felibien, Hist. de Paris, ii. 1069; Mem. de Castelnau, liv. i., c.

4.]

[Footnote 777: "La royne Catherine de Medicis, florentine, nation desireuse de nouvellete ... haissoit, comme belle mere, la Royne sa fille, qui l'esloignoit des affaires et portoit l'amitie du Roy son fils a MM. de Guise, lesquels ne luy deportoient du gouvernement qu'en ce qu'ils cognoissoient qu'elle ne pouvoit nuire, luy donnant credit en apparence sans effect," Mem. de Tavannes, ii. 260.]

[Footnote 778: La Planche, 211; Hist. eccles., i. 141, seq.; Beza to Bullinger, Sept. 12, 1559; Baum, ii., App., 3.]

[Footnote 779:

"Vers l'eternel, des oppresses le pere, Je m'en iray, luy monstrant l'impropere Que l'on me fait; et luy feray priere," etc.

[Footnote 780: "Coppie de lettres envoyees a la Royne Mere par un sien serviteur apres la mort du feu Roy Henri deuxieme." Cimber et Danjou, Archives curieuses, iii. 349, etc. The substance of Villemadon's letter, which is dated August 26th, 1559, is given by La Planche, 211, 212, and, after him, by Hist. eccles., i. 141, 142.]

[Footnote 781: La Planche, 219; Hist. eccles., i. 143; cf. Forbes, State Papers, i. 226.]

[Footnote 782: La Planche, 220; Hist. eccles., _ubi supra_. It is not at all improbable that those who endeavored to influence Catharine showed too little discretion in their zeal, and needlessly provoked her displeasure by reference to the judgment of G.o.d upon her husband. So, at least, thought the judicious Frenchman Languet, who added, with some bitterness, that whoever urged upon them moderation was rewarded for his pains by being called a traitor to the faith. Epist. secretae, ii. 41.]

[Footnote 783: Or, Trouillard, according to Castelnau, _ubi supra_.]

[Footnote 784: La Planche, 223-225; Castelnau, liv. i., c. 4; De Thou, ii. 691.]

[Footnote 785: La Planche and De Thou, _ubi supra_.]

[Footnote 786: Epistolae secretae, ii. 30.]

[Footnote 787: See _ante_, c. viii., p. 275. The authority of the Memoires de Tavannes (ii. 258)--"Les chambres ardentes sont erigees pour persecuter les Huguenots, et ce d'autant plus que les princes du sang et les freres de Coligny favorisoient la religion nouvelle"--cannot weigh against the positive statement of the preamble of Henry II.'s edict of Paris, Nov. 19, 1549, _ante_, c. viii., p. 275. Yet Drion, Hist. chron.

de l'eglise prot. de France, i. 63, places the original inst.i.tution here.]

[Footnote 788: Drion, i. 64; Hist. eccles., i. 151. On the other hand, Protestant sympathizers sometimes interfered with the course of law in the interest of their brethren in the faith. "Since our arrivall to this towne," wrote Killigrew and Jones from Blois, Nov. 14, 1559, "there were xvii persones taken for the worde's sake, and committed to the sergeaunts to be conveyed to Orleauns, and other places therabouts, to be prosecuted. Notwithstanding, it hathe so happened, as the prisoners in the way betwene this towne and Orleans were rescued, and taken from the sergeaunts who had charge of them, by sixty men on horsebacke, and so were conveyed away." Forbes, State Papers, i. 261. At Rouen, Jan. 29, 1560, a bookbinder was s.n.a.t.c.hed from between two friars, as he was being led in a cart to be burned alive, a cloak thrown over him, and he conveyed out of the hands of his enemies. Unfortunately, the gates having been closed, he was recaptured the same night, and the cruel sentence was executed the next day, with a guard of 300 men-at-arms, for fear of the people. Memorandum of Feb. 8th, State Paper Office.]

[Footnote 789: La Planche, 236, 337; De Thou, ii. 705, 706.]

[Footnote 790: "Comme d'abus." La Place, 19; Crespin, Gal. chretienne, ii. 304.]

[Footnote 791: La Planche, 209, 210; La Place, 20; Hist. eccles., i.

138, 139; Crespin, Galerie chretienne, ii. 305-318; Forbes, State Papers, i. 185. The Memoires de Conde, i. 217-304, reprint entire a contemporary pamphlet ent.i.tled, "La vraye histoire, contenant l'inique jugement et fausse procedure faite contre le fidele serviteur de Dieu _Anne du Bourg_, conseillier pour le Roy, en la Cour du Parlement de Paris," etc. (Paris) 1561. It contains in full the interrogatories and replies, Du Bourg's confession, etc., and will amply repay a careful reading. It concludes with a pregnant sentence: "Voila l'issue et fin de l'histoire que j'avoye propose d'ecrire, _pour un commencement de beaucoup de troubles, guerres et divisions: car d'injustice procede tout mal_." Significant and prophetic words to be written and published the year before the outbreak of the first civil war! The editor of 1743, p.

217, well observes that the execution of Du Bourg may be regarded as one of the chief causes of the conspiracy of Amboise, which broke out soon after, and, consequently, of the troubles agitating France for nearly forty years.]

[Footnote 792: La Planche, 227-235; Hist. eccles., i. 153-155.]

[Footnote 793: There was no proof that Antoine Minard's murder was wrought by a Protestant hand. An address of Du Bourg, in which he reminded the unrighteous judge of the coming judgment of G.o.d, was, after the event, perversely construed as a threat of a.s.sa.s.sination. A Scotchman, Robert Stuart, a kinsman of the queen, was charged with firing the fatal pistol-shot, but even under the torture revealed nothing. Public opinion was divided, some attributing the catastrophe to Minard's well-known immorality ("d'autant," says La Planche, "qu'il y estoit du tout adonne, et qu'il ne craignoit de seduire toutes les dames et damoiselles qui avoyent des proces devant luy," etc.), others to his equally flagrant injustice, others still to the "Lutherans." La Planche, 233, 234.]

[Footnote 794: Not, as La Planche, 235, and the Hist. eccles., i. 154, state, Otho Henry, but his successor, Frederick III. Baum, Theodor Beza, ii. 35, 36; Languet, Epistolae sec., ii. 36.]

[Footnote 795: So the English agents, Killigrew and Jones, wrote from Blois, Dec. 27, 1559: "Bourg was not executed, till about the xx of this present: who before his deathe made suche an oration to the Lords of the parliament, _as it moved as many of them as were there to shede teares_," Forbes, State Papers, i. 290.]

[Footnote 796: La Place, 22, 23; Crespin, Galerie chretienne, ii.

318-322.]

[Footnote 797: La Place, 23; Crespin, Galerie chretienne, ii. 322, 323; Hist. eccles., i. 155, 156; De Thou, ii. 700-703.]

[Footnote 798: La Planche, 236. "Inter quos," writes Jean Crespin in the colophon to the edition of his Actiones et Monimenta Martyrum of 1560, "egregie cordatus Dei Martyr Annas a Burgo supremae Parisiensis Curiae senator, xxiij. die mensis Decemb. anni M.D.LIX. admirabilem martyrii coronam accepit." In the preface dated Feb. 26th--two months after Du Bourg's death--he is styled "senator innocentissimus, integerrimus, sanctissimus."]

[Footnote 799: Florimond de Raemond, Historia de ortu, progressu, et ruina haesreseon hujus saeculi (Col. 1613), lib. vii, c. vi., p. 411. We have La Planche's testimony to the somewhat extraordinary statement that the judges themselves declared Du Bourg happy in suffering in behalf of so just a cause, and excused themselves for their own conduct by alleging the pressure of the Guises (p. 228). "Stulte fecerunt gubernatores Gallici, quod eum publice supplicio affecerunt," wrote Languet, a few months later; "ejus enim supplicium _est una ex non minimis causis horum tumultuum_." Epist. sec., ii, 47.]

[Footnote 800: Florimond de Raemond, ii. 410, 411. Let not the humane reader mistake. Policy, not pity, dictated toleration. The same Florimond de Raemond, presiding as the oldest counsellor, read an _arret_ of the Parliament of Bordeaux, not only ordering the disinterment of a child buried in the cemetery of Ozillac in Saintonge, but that of all the bodies of Huguenots that had been placed in any other cemetery within ten years. Plaintes des eglises reformees de France, etc., 1597; _apud_ Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. fr., xi. (1862), 145.]

[Footnote 801: Compare La Planche, 242.]

[Footnote 802: The singular details of these trials, which strikingly ill.u.s.trate the horrible corruption of the French judiciary in the sixteenth century, are given by La Planche, 242-245; Hist. eccles., i.

160-164; De Thou, ii. 703, 704; La Place, 24, who remarks upon the singularly different judgments in the five cases, and attributes the variety to the change in the state of the kingdom, and to the diversity of the interrogatories addressed to the prisoners. The sentences against Du Faur and De Foix were subsequently annulled and erased from the records of the parliament, on the ground of irregularity.]

[Footnote 803: De Thou, ii. 699; Agrippa d'Aubigne, Histoire universelle (Maille, 1616), i. 89.]

[Footnote 804: Recueil gen. des anc. lois franc. (July 23, 1359), xiv.

1; (Dec. 17th), xiv. 14; and (Aug. 5, 1560), xiv. 46.]

[Footnote 805: La Planche, 218. Cf. Histoire du tumulte d'Amboise.]

[Footnote 806: "In Gallia omnia sunt perturbatissima," wrote Languet (Jan. 31, 1560), "et scribitur esse omnino impossibile, ut res diu eo modo consistant." The Cardinal of Lorraine, he added, has dissipated the single church of Paris, but during this very period there have been established more than sixty churches in other parts of the kingdom; nor are the Genevese able to supply so many ministers as they are asked to furnish. Meantime many are defending themselves against the royal officers. The Gascons lately drove off the commissioners sent by the Parliament of Bordeaux to make inquisition for Lutherans. The same has happened in the district of Narbonne, not far from Ma.r.s.eilles. Epistolae sec., ii., pp. 32, 33.]

[Footnote 807: Beza to Bullinger, Sept. 12, 1559 (Baum, ii., App., p.

3). Calvin, in his letters to Bullinger and Peter Martyr, both dated May 11, 1560, by the expression "eight months ago," points back to the same period. Calvin's Letters (Bonnet), Eng. tr., iv. 104-106.]

[Footnote 808: Beza, _ubi supra_.]

[Footnote 809: Calvin's Letters, iv. 107. So the ministers of Geneva declare before the council: "que pour les troubles arrives en France, ils n'en sont nullement coupables; qu'il ne doit pas etre inconnu au Conseil qu'ils ont detourne, autant qu'ils ont pu, d'aller a Amboise, ceux qu'ils ont sceu avoir quelque dessein d'y aller." Registers, Jan.

28, 1561, _apud_ Gaberel, Histoire de l'egl. de Geneve, i., pieces justif., 203.]

[Footnote 810: La Planche, 237.]

[Footnote 811: De Heu was a man of great influence. He had been _echevin_ at Metz, and the chief mover in introducing Protestantism into that city. In 1543 he invited Farel to come thither. Persecution drove him to Switzerland. He returned from exile upon the fall of Metz into the hands of the French, in 1552. When he found that the change had only aggravated the condition of the Protestants, he became prominent in the effort to enlist the sympathy and support of the German princes in behalf of the French reformation. Bulletin de l'hist. du prot. fr., xxv.

(1876), 164.]

[Footnote 812: The whole affair remained involved in impenetrable obscurity until the recent fortunate discovery of the "Proces verbal"

(or original minute) "de l'execution a mort de Caspar de Heu, S^r. de Buy" among the MSS. of the Bibliotheque Nationale, 22562, 1re partie, pp. 110-113. It is now printed in the Appendix to "Le Tigre," 103-108, and Bulletin de l'hist. du prot. fr., xxv. (1876), 164-168. The very date (which proves to be Sept. 1, 1558) was previously unknown.]

[Footnote 813: "Ce pendant," says the royal lieutenant, in the interesting doc.u.ment just described, "aurions fait faire une fosse _dans les fosses du donjon dudit chasteau, soubz les arches du pont de la poterne_, comme nous semblant _lieu le plus cache et secret_ d'alentour dudit chasteau, d'autant que _l'on ne va souvent ny ays.e.m.e.nt esdits fossez, et que les herbes y sont communement grandes_," etc. Le Tigre, 108.]

[Footnote 814: The author of that terrible invective, "Le Tigre,"

reminds the cardinal of this crime in one of the finest outbursts of indignant reproach: "N'oys-tu pas crier le sang de celuy que tu fis estrangler dans une chambre du boys de Vincennes? S'il estoit coupable, que [pourquoi] n'a il este puny publiquement? Ou sont les tesmoingts qui l'ont charge? Pourquoy as-tu voulu en sa mort rompre et froisser toutes les loix de France, si tu pencoys que par les loix, il peut estre condemne?" Also in the _versified_ "Tigre," lines 315-326. It is only just to La Renaudie to add that, according to La Planche, those who knew him best acquitted him of the charge of being much influenced by these and other personal considerations. Hist. de l'estat de France, 238, 316-318.]

[Footnote 815: "Homme, comme l'on dit, de grand esprit, et de diligence presque incroyable." Hist. du tumulte d'Amboise, in Recueil des choses memorables (1565), and Memoires de Conde, i. 324.]

[Footnote 816: According to De Thou, ii. 762, March 15th. So Davila, 22, and La Place, 33. Calvin (Letter to Sturm, March 23, 1560, Bonnet, iv.

91) says "before March 15." Castelnau, i. 6, says March 10th.]

[Footnote 817: The uniform statement of the contemporary authorities from whom our accounts of the "Tumult" are derived, is to the effect that the blow was to be struck at Blois, but that, on discovering their peril, the Guises hastily removed the court, for greater safety, to the castle of Amboise. And yet the correspondence of the English commissioners discloses the fact that the time of the removal had been decided upon on the 28th of January, several days before the Nantes a.s.sembly. See Ranke, Am. ed., 176. "The Frenche King, as it is said, the 5th of February removeth hens towardes Amboise; and will be fifteen dayes in going thither." Despatch of Killigrew and Jones, from Blois, January 28, 1559/60, Forbes, State Papers, i. 315. In fact, the general outline of the royal progress was indicated by the Spanish amba.s.sador, Perrenot Chantonnay, to Philip II., so far back as December 2, 1559: "La cour, lui avait-il ecrit, a le projet _de pa.s.ser le cureme_ a Amboise, de se rendre en Guyenne au printemps, en pa.s.sant par Poitiers, Bordeaux, Bayonne, d'aller ensuite a Toulouse, de demeurer l'hiver suivant en Provence et en Languedoc, et _d'agir vigoureus.e.m.e.nt contre les heretiques_." Mignet, Journal des Savants, 1857, 419, from Simancas MSS.

The Spanish amba.s.sador saw so much that appalled him in the rapid progress of the Reformation in every part of France, that he feared alike for the North and the South, when the king was not present to check its growth.]