History of the Rise of the Huguenots Volume II Part 15

The author of the pompous show had made a serious mistake. The giant "League," before whom so many a champion failed, it was the lot not of Charles, nor of Henry of Valois, but of the other Henry, of Navarre, to overcome. That giant was already in existence, although still in his infancy. For some time past the zealous papists, impatient of the sluggish devotion of the court, had been forming "confreries," or fraternities, whose members, bound together by a common oath, were pledged to the support of the Roman Catholic religion.[389] The plan was a dangerous one, and it shortly excited the apprehension of the king and his mother. "I am told," Charles wrote in July, 1565, to one of his governors, "that in a number of places in my realm there is a talk of establis.h.i.+ng an a.s.sociation amongst my subjects, who invite one another to join it. I beg you to take measures to prevent that any be made for any purpose whatsoever; but keep my subjects so far as possible united in the desire to render me duty and obedience."[390] And to prove the sincerity of his intentions, the French king ordered the late Edict of Pacification again to be proclaimed by public crier in the streets of the seditious city of Paris--a feat which was successfully performed under Marshal Montmorency's supervision, by the city provost, accompanied by so strong a detachment of archers and arquebusiers, as effectually to prevent popular disturbance.[391] Already there were restless spirits that saw in another civil war fresh opportunity for the advancement of their selfish interests. Months ago Villegagnon, the betrayer of the Brazilian colony of Coligny, had written to Cardinal Granvelle, telling him that he had resigned his dignities and offices in the French court, and had informed Catharine de' Medici, "that until Charles was the declared enemy of the enemies of G.o.d and of His church, he would never again bear arms in his service."[392] The vice-admiral, of whom modesty was never a conspicuous virtue, went so far as to draw a flattering portrait of himself as a second Hannibal, vowing eternal enmity to the Huguenots.[393] And Nicole de St. Remy, whose only claim to honorable mention was found in her oft-paraded boast that, as a mistress of Henry the Second, she had borne him a son, and who held in France the congenial post of a Spanish spy, suggested the marriage of the Cardinal of Bourbon in view of the possible contingency of the death of all Catharine's sons.[394] The centre of all intrigue, the storehouse from which every part of France was supplied with material capable of once more enkindling the flames of a destructive civil war, was the house of the Spanish resident envoy, Frances de Alava, successor of the crafty Chantonnay, the brother of Granvelle. It was he that was in constant communication with all the Roman Catholic malcontents in France.[395] Catharine endeavored to check this influence, but to no purpose. The fanatical party were bound by a stronger tie of allegiance to Philip, the Catholic king, than to her, or to the Very Christian King her son. Catharine had particularly enjoined upon the Cardinal of Lorraine to have no communication with Granvelle or with Chantonnay, but the prelate's relations with both were never interrupted for a moment.[396]

[Sidenote: Siege of Malta, and French civilities to the Sultan.]

The fact was that, so far from true was it that a cordial understanding existed between the courts of France and Spain, such as the mythical league for the extirpation of heresy presupposes, the distrust and hostility were barely veiled under the ordinary conventionalities of diplomatic courtesy. While Catharine and Philip's queen were exchanging costly civilities at Bayonne, the Turks were engaged in a siege of Malta, which has become famous for the obstinacy with which it was prosecuted and the valor with which it was repelled. Spain had sent a small detachment of troops to the a.s.sistance of the grand master, Jean de la Valette, and his brave knights of St. John, and the Pope had contributed ten thousand crowns to their expenses.[397] Yet at this very moment an envoy of the Sultan was at the court of the Very Christian King of France, greatly to the disgust of the Spanish visitors and pious Catholics in general,[398]

and only waited for the departure of Isabella and Alva to receive formal presentation to the monarch and his mother.[399]

[Sidenote: The constable espouses Cardinal Chatillon's defence.]

Meantime, although the queen mother continued her policy of depriving the Huguenots of one after another of the privileges to which they were ent.i.tled, and replaced Protestant governors of towns and provinces by Roman Catholics, her efforts at repression seemed, for the time at least, to produce little effect. "The true religion is so rooted in France,"

wrote one who accompanied the royal progress, "that, like a fire, it kindles daily more and more. In every place, from Bayonne hither, and for the most part of the journey, there are more Huguenots than papists, and the most part of men of quality and mark be of the religion." If the writer, as is probable, was over-sanguine in his antic.i.p.ations, he could not be mistaken in the size of the great gathering of Protestants--full two thousand--for the most part gentlemen and gentlewomen, which he witnessed with his own eyes, brought together at Nantes to listen to the preaching of the eloquent Perucel.[400] And it was not an insignificant proof of the futility of any direct attempt to crush the Huguenots, that Constable Montmorency pretty plainly intimated that there were limits which religious proscription must not transcend. The English amba.s.sador wrote from France, late in November, that the Pope's new nuncio had within two days demanded that the red cap should be taken from the Cardinal of Chatillon. But the latter, who chanced to be at court, replied that "what he enjoyed he enjoyed by gift of the crown of France, wherewith the Pope had nothing to do." The old constable was even more vehement. "The Pope,"

said he, "has often troubled the quiet of this realm, but I trust he shall not be able to trouble it at this time. I am myself a papist; but if the Pope and his ministers go about again to disturb the kingdom, _my sword shall be Huguenot_. My nephew shall leave neither cap nor dignity which he has for the Pope, seeing the edict gives him that liberty."[401]

[Sidenote: The court at Moulins.]

Early in the following year, Charles the Ninth convoked in the city of Moulins, in Bourbonnais, near the centre of France, an a.s.sembly of notables to deliberate on the interests of the kingdom, which had not yet fully recovered from the desolations of the first civil war. The extensive journey, which had occupied a large part of the two preceding years, had furnished him abundant evidence of the grievances under which his subjects in the various provinces were laboring, and he now summoned all that was most ill.u.s.trious in France, and especially those n.o.blemen whom he had dismissed to their governments when about to start from his capital, to a.s.sist him in discovering the best mode of relief. If the Florentine Adriani could be credited, there were other and sinister designs in the mind of the court, or, at least, in that of Catharine. According to this historian, the plan of the second "Sicilian Vespers," resolved upon at Bayonne, was to have been put into execution at Moulins, which, from its strength, was well suited for the scene of so sanguinary a drama; but, although the Huguenot chiefs a.s.sembled in numbers, their actions betrayed so much suspicion of the Roman Catholics, and it seemed so difficult to include all in the blow, that the ma.s.sacre was deferred until the arrival of a more propitious time, which did not come until St. Bartholomew's Day, 1572.[402] I need not stop to refute a story which presupposes the adoption of resolutions in the conference of Bayonne, which we now know, from doc.u.mentary evidence, were never for a moment entertained by Catharine and her son the king.

[Sidenote: Feigned reconciliation of the Guises and Coligny.]

So far from having any such treacherous design, in point of fact the a.s.sembly of Moulins was intended in no small degree to serve as a means of healing the dissensions existing among the n.o.bles. The most serious breaches were the feud between the Chatillons and the Guises on account of the suspected complicity of Admiral Coligny in the murder of the late duke, and that between Marshal Montmorency and the Cardinal of Lorraine, arising out of the affray in January, 1565. Both quarrels were settled amicably in the king's presence, with as much sincerity as generally characterizes such reconciliations. Coligny declared on oath, in the royal presence, that he was guiltless of Guise's murder, neither having been its author nor having consented to it; whereupon the king declared him innocent, and ordered the parties to be reconciled. The command was obeyed, for Anne d'Este, Guise's widow, and Cardinal Charles of Lorraine in turn embraced the admiral, in token of renewed friends.h.i.+p. How much of meaning these caresses contained was to be shown six years later by the active partic.i.p.ation of the one in the most famous ma.s.sacre which the annals of modern history present, and by the exultant rejoicings in which the other indulged when he heard of it. Young Henry of Guise, less hypocritical than his mother and his uncle, held aloof from the demonstration, and permitted the beholders to infer that he was quietly biding his time for vengeance.[403]

[Sidenote: The chancellor introduces a measure for the relief of the Protestants.]

[Sidenote: A new altercation between Lorraine and the chancellor.]

An event of princ.i.p.al importance that occurred during the stay of the court at Moulins was a fresh altercation between Lorraine and L'Hospital.

A tolerant but apparently unauthorized act of the chancellor furnished the occasion. The Edict of Pacification had made provision for the wors.h.i.+p of the Huguenots in but a small number of places through the kingdom. If living out of reach of these more favored localities, what were they to do, that they might not be compelled to exist without the restraints of religion during their lifetime, and to die without its consolations, nor leave their children unbaptized and uninstructed in the articles of their faith? L'Hospital proposed to remedy the evil by permitting the Protestants, in such cases, to inst.i.tute a species of private wors.h.i.+p in their houses, and had procured the royal signature to an edict permitting them to call in, as occasion might require, ministers of the Gospel from other cities where their regular ministrations were tolerated by the law of Amboise.[404] This edict he had sent forthwith to the different parliaments for registration. The Parliament of Dijon, in Burgundy, however, instead of obeying, promptly despatched two counsellors with a remonstrance to the king.[405] On arriving at court, the delegation at first found it impossible to gain the royal ear. In such awe did the "maitres de requetes"--to whom pet.i.tions were customarily entrusted--stand of the grave and severe chancellor--that venerable old man with the white beard, whom Brantome likened to another Cato--that none was found bold enough to present the Burgundian remonstrance. At last the delegates went to the newly-arrived cardinal, and Lorraine readily undertook the task.

Appearing in the royal council he introduced the matter by expressing "his surprise that the Catholics had no means of making themselves heard respecting their grievances." The objectionable edict was read, and all the members of the council declared that they had never before seen or heard of it. Cardinal Bourbon was foremost in his anger, and declared that if the chancellor had the right to issue such laws on his own responsibility, there was no use in having a council. "Sir," said L'Hospital, turning to the Cardinal of Lorraine, "you are already come to sow discord among us!" "I am not come to sow discord, but to prevent you from sowing it as you have done in the past, scoundrel that you are!" was the reply.[406] "Would you prevent these poor people, whom the king has permitted to live with freedom of conscience in the exercise of their religion, from receiving any consolation at all?" asked L'Hospital. "Yes, I intend to prevent it," answered the cardinal, "for everybody knows that to suffer such things is to tolerate secret preaching; and I shall prevent it so long as I shall have the power, in order to give no opportunity for the growth of such tyrannical practices. And," continued he, "do you, who have become what you now are by my means, dare to tell me that I come to sow discord among you? I shall take good care to keep you from doing what you have done heretofore." The council rose in anger, and pa.s.sed into the adjoining apartment, where Catharine, who had not recovered from a temporary illness, strove to appease them as best she could. Charles ordered a new meeting, and, after hearing the deputies from Dijon, the king, conformably to the advice of the council, revoked the edict, and issued a prohibition of all exercise of the Protestant religion or instruction in its doctrines, save where it had been granted at Amboise.

The chancellor was strictly enjoined to affix the seal of state to no papers relating to religious affairs without the consent of the royal council.

[Sidenote: Protestantism on the northern frontier.]

[Sidenote: Progress of the reformation at Cateau-Cambresis.]

For several years the Protestants in the northern provinces of France had been busily communicating the religious views they had themselves embraced to their neighbors in Artois, Flanders, and Brabant. This intercourse became exceedingly close about the beginning of the year 1566; and its result was a renunciation of the papal church and its wors.h.i.+p, which was partic.i.p.ated in by such large numbers, and effected so instantaneously, that the friends and the foes of the new movement were almost equally surprised. The story of this sudden outburst of the reformatory spirit in Valenciennes, Tournay, and other places, accompanied--as are all movements that take a strong hold upon the popular feelings--with a certain amount of lawlessness, which expended itself, however, upon inanimate images and held sacred the lives and honor of men and women, has been well told in the histories of the country whose fortunes it chiefly affected.[407] I may be permitted, therefore, to pa.s.s over these indirect results of Huguenot influence, and glance at the fortunes of a border town within the present bounds of France, and closely connected with the history of France in the sixteenth century, of which little or no notice has been taken in this connection.[408] Cateau-Cambresis, famous for the treaty by which Henry the Second bartered away extensive conquests for a few paltry places that had fallen into the hands of the enemy, was, as its name--Chastel, Chateau or Cateau--imports, a castle and a borough that had grown up about it, both of them on lands belonging to the domain of Maximilian of Bergen, Archbishop and Duke of Cambray, and Prince of the Holy Roman Empire. It was smaller, but relatively far more important three hundred years ago than at the present day. For several years a few "good burgesses," with their families, had timidly studied the Holy Scriptures in secret, restrained from making an open profession of their faith by the terrible executions which they saw inflicted upon the Protestants in the Netherlands. But, encouraged by the toleration prevailing in France, they began to cross the frontier, and to frequent the Huguenot "a.s.semblees" at Crespy, Tupigny, and Chauny. The distance was not inconsiderable, and the peril was great. The archbishop had not only written a letter, which was read in every parish church, forbidding the singing of Marot's psalms and the frequenting of French conventicles, but he had sent his spies to the conventicles to discover cases of disobedience. The Huguenots of Cateau multiplied in spite of these precautions. "The eyes of the aforesaid spies," writes a witness of the events, "were so holden that they did not even recognize those with whom they conversed." Yet, although the Huguenots met at home to read the Bible and to "sing the psalms which were most appropriate to the persecution and dispersion of the children of G.o.d," the town was as quiet as it had ever been. A slight incident, however, revealed the intensity of the fire secretly burning below the surface. A Huguenot minister was discovered on Whitsunday, in an adjoining village, and brought to Cateau. His captors facetiously told the suspected Protestants whom they met, that they had brought them a preacher, and that they would have no further occasion for leaving the town in quest of one.

But the joke was not so well appreciated as it might have been by the adherents of the reformed faith, who seem by this time to have become extremely numerous. The excitement was intense. When the bailiff of Cambresis was detected, not long after, stealing into the place by night, accompanied by some sixty men, with the intention of carrying the preacher off to Cambray, he met with unexpected resistance. A citizen, on his way to his garden outside the walls, was the first to notice the guard of strange arquebusiers at the gate, and ran back to give the alarm. The tocsin was rung, and the inhabitants a.s.sembled in arms. It was now the turn of the bailiff to be astonished, and to listen humbly to the remonstrances of the people, indignant that he should have presumed to seize their gates and usurp the functions of the local magistrates.

However, the intruders, after being politely informed that, according to strict justice, the whole party might have been summarily put to death, were suffered to beat a hasty retreat; not that so perfect a control could be put upon the ardor of some, but that they "administered sundry blows with the flat of their swords upon the back of the bailiff and a few of his soldiers."

[Sidenote: Interference of the Archbishop of Cambray.]

The incident itself was of trifling importance, for the Huguenot minister was promptly given up to the baron of the village where he had been captured, and was taken by his orders to Cambray. But it led to serious consequences. Threatened by the archiepiscopal city, the Protestants of Cateau, afraid to go to the French preaching-places, sent for Monsieur Philippe, minister of Tupigny, and held the reformed services just outside of their own walls. Alarmed at the progress of Protestant doctrines in his diocese, the Archbishop convened the estates of Cambray, and, on the eighteenth of August, 1566, sent three canons of the cathedral to persuade his subjects of Cateau to return to the Papal Church, and to threaten them with ruin in case of refusal. Neither argument nor menace was of any avail. The Protestants, who had studied their Bibles, were more than a match for the priests, who had not; and, as for the peril, the Huguenots quaintly replied: "Rather than yield to your demand, we should prefer to have our heads placed at our feet." When asked if they were all of this mind, they reiterated their determination: "Were the fires made ready to burn us all, we should enter them rather than accede to your request and return to the ma.s.s." These were brave words, but the st.u.r.dy Huguenots made them good a few months later.

[Sidenote: The images and pictures overthrown.]

Scarcely a week had pa.s.sed before the news reached Cateau (on the twenty-fifth of August) that the "idols" had been broken in all the churches of Valenciennes, Antwerp, Ghent, Tournay, and elsewhere. Although stirred to its very depths by the exciting intelligence, the Protestant population still contained itself, and merely consulted convenience by celebrating Divine wors.h.i.+p within the city walls, in an open cemetery.

Unfortunately, however, the minister whom the reformed had obtained was ill-suited to these troublous times. Monsieur Philippe, unlike Calvin and the great majority of the ministers of the French Protestant church, was rash and impetuous. Early the next morning he entered the church of St.

Martin, in company with three or four other persons, and commenced the work of destruction. Altars, statues, pictures, antiphonaries, missals, graduals--all underwent a common fate. From St. Martin's the iconoclasts visited in like manner the other ecclesiastical edifices of the town and its suburbs. Upon the ruins of the Romish superst.i.tion the new fabric arose, and Monsieur Philippe preached the same day in the princ.i.p.al church of Cateau, to a large and attentive audience.

[Sidenote: The Protestant claims.]

And now began an animated interchange of proclamations on the one hand, and of pet.i.tions on the other. The archbishop demanded the unconditional submission of his subjects, and gave no a.s.surances of toleration. The Protestants declared themselves ready to give him their unqualified allegiance, as their temporal sovereign, but claimed the liberty to wors.h.i.+p G.o.d. Maximilian referred to the laws and const.i.tutions of the Empire of which they formed an integral part. The burgesses answered by showing that they had always been governed in accordance with the "placards" issued by the King of Spain for his provinces of the Netherlands, and that, whenever they had appealed in times past to the chamber of the Empire, as for example at Spires, they had not only been repelled, but even punished for their temerity.[409] They claimed, therefore, the benefit of the "Accord" made by the d.u.c.h.ess of Parma at Brussels a few days previously, guaranteeing the exercise of the reformed religion wherever it had heretofore been practised;[410] while the archbishop, when forced to declare himself, plainly announced that he would not suffer the least deviation from the Roman Catholic faith. In their perplexity, the Protestants had recourse to the Count of Horn, at Tournay, by whom they were received with the utmost kindness. The count even furnished them with a letter to the archbishop, entreating him to be merciful to them.[411]

[Sidenote: The Archbishop's vengeance.]

But nothing was further from the heart of Maximilian than mercy. He was the same blind adherent of Cardinal Granvelle and his policy, whom, a year or two before, Brederode, Hoogstraaten, and their fellow-revellers had grievously insulted at a banquet given to Egmont before his departure for Spain; the same treacherous, sanguinary priest who wrote to Granvelle respecting Valenciennes: "We had better push forward and make an end of all the princ.i.p.al heretics, whether rich or poor, without regarding whether the city will be entirely ruined by such a course."[412] On Monday, the twenty-fourth of March, 1567, the troops of the archbishop appeared before Cateau, and the same day the place was surrendered by the treachery of some of the inhabitants. At once Cateau became a scene of b.l.o.o.d.y executions. All that had taken part in the Protestant wors.h.i.+p were brought before a tribunal, which often tried, condemned, and punished with death upon one and the same day. Monsieur Philippe, the rash preacher, and one of his deacons seem to have been the first victims. There was no lack of food for the gallows. To have been present at the "preachings," to have partaken of the communion, to have maintained that the Protestant was better than the Roman Catholic religion, to have uttered a jest or drawn a caricature reflecting upon the Papal Church and its ceremonies--any of these was sufficient reason for sending a man to be hung or beheaded. The d.u.c.h.ess's "moderation" had effected thus much, that no one seems to have been burned at the stake. And so, at last, by a.s.siduous but b.l.o.o.d.y work, the Reformation was completely extirpated from Cateau Cambresis. It was, at least, a source of mournful satisfaction that scarce one of the sufferers failed to exhibit great constancy and pious resignation in view of death.[413]

[Sidenote: The idea of toleration is not understood.]

Let us return from the Flemish borders to France proper, where, notwithstanding attempts at external reconciliation, the breach between the Protestants and their Roman Catholic neighbors was daily widening, where, in fact, the elements of a new war were gathering shape and consistency. It was becoming more and more difficult--especially for a government of temporary s.h.i.+fts and expedients--to control the antagonistic forces incessantly manifesting themselves. The idea of toleration was understood by neither party. The Roman Catholics of Provins were so slow to comprehend the liberty of conscience and religious profession of which the Huguenots had wrung a concession in the last edict by force of arms, that they undertook to prosecute the Protestants for eating roast lamb and capons during Lent. With little more appreciation of the altered posture of affairs, the Archbishop of Sens (Cardinal Guise) initiated a trial against a heretical curate of Courtenay, according to the rules of canon law, and the latter might have stood but a poor chance to recover his freedom had not the Huguenot lord of Courtenay seized upon the archbishop's "official" as he was pa.s.sing his castle, and held him as a hostage to secure the curate's release.[414]

[Sidenote: Huguenot pleasantries.]

It would be a.s.serting too much to say that the Protestants were innocent of any infraction upon the letter or spirit of the Edict of Amboise. They would have been angels, not men, had they been proof against the contagious spirit of raillery that infected the men of the sixteenth century. Where they dared, they not unfrequently held up their opponents to ridicule in the coa.r.s.e style so popular with all cla.s.ses.[415] Thus a contemporary Roman Catholic recounts with indignation how Prince Porcien held a celebration in Normandy, and among the games was one in which a "paper castle" was a.s.saulted, and the defenders, dressed as _monks_, were taken prisoners, and were afterward paraded through the streets on a.s.ses'

backs.[416] But these buffooneries were harmless sallies contrasted with the insults with which the Protestants were treated in every town where they were not numerically preponderating; nor were they anything more than rare occurrences in comparison with the latter. This page of history is compelled to record no violent commotion on the part of the reformed population, save in cases where, as at Pamiers (a town not far south of Toulouse, near the foot of the Pyrenees), they had been goaded to madness by the government deliberately trampling upon their rights of wors.h.i.+p, at the instigation of the ecclesiastical authorities.[417] A trifling accident might then, however, be sufficient to cause their inflamed pa.s.sions to burst out; and in the disturbances that were likely to ensue, little respect was usually paid to the churches or the monasteries. Such are wont to be the unhappy effects of the denial of justice according to the forms of established law. They would have been a hundred-fold more frequent had it not been for the persistent opposition interposed by the Huguenot ministers--many of them with Calvin carrying the doctrine of pa.s.sive submission to const.i.tuted authority almost to the very verge of apparent pusillanimity.

[Sidenote: Alarm of the Protestants.]

[Sidenote: Attempts to murder the admiral and Prince Porcien.]

From month to month the conviction grew upon the Protestants that their destruction was agreed upon. There was no doubt with regard to the desire of Philip the Second; for his course respecting his subjects in the Netherlands showed plainly enough that the extermination of heretics was the only policy of which his narrow mind could conceive as pleasing in the sight of heaven. The character of Catharine--stealthy, deceitful, regardless of principle--was equally well understood. Between such a queen and the trusted minister of such a prince, a secret conference like that of Bayonne could not be otherwise than highly suspicious. It is not strange that the Huguenots received it as an indubitable fact that the court from this time forward was only waiting for the best opportunity of effecting their ruin; for even intelligent Roman Catholics, who were not admitted into the confidence of the chief actors in that celebrated interview, came to the same conclusion. Those who knew what had actually been said and done might a.s.sure the world that the rumors were false; but the more they a.s.severated the less they were believed. For it is one of the penalties of insincere and lying diplomacy, that when once appreciated in its true character--as it generally is appreciated in a very brief s.p.a.ce of time--it loses its persuasive power, and is treated without much investigation as uniform imposture.[418] With a suspicious vigilance, bred of the very treachery of which they had so often been the victims, the Huguenots saw signs of dangers that perhaps were not actually in preparation for them. And certainly there was enough to alarm. Not many months after the a.s.sembly of Moulins a cut-throat by the name of Du May was discovered and executed, who had been hired to murder Admiral Coligny, the most indispensable leader of the party, near his own castle of Chatillon-sur-Loing.[419] The last day of the year there was hung a lackey, who pretended that the Cardinal of Lorraine had tried to induce him to poison the Prince of Porcien; and, although he retracted his statements at the time of his "amende honorable,"[420] his first story was generally credited. The rumor was current that in December, 1566, Charles received special envoys from the emperor, the Pope, and the King of Spain, warning him that, unless he should revoke his edict of toleration, they would declare themselves his open enemies.[421] This was certainly sufficiently incredible, so far as the tolerant Maximilian was concerned; but stranger mutations of policy had often been noticed, and, as to Pius the Fifth and Philip, nothing seemed more probable.

[Sidenote: Alva in the Netherlands.]

[Sidenote: The Swiss levy.]

With the opening of the year 1567 the portentous clouds of coming danger a.s.sumed a more definite shape. In the neighboring provinces of the Netherlands, after a long period of procrastination, Philip the Second had at length determined to strike a decisive blow. The d.u.c.h.ess of Parma was to be superseded in the government by a man better qualified than any other in Europe for the b.l.o.o.d.y work a.s.signed him to do. Ferdinando de Toledo, Duke of Alva, in his sixtieth year, after a life full of brilliant military exploits, was to undertake a work in Flanders such as that which, two years before, he had recommended as the panacea for the woes of France--a work with which his name will ever remain a.s.sociated in the annals of history. The "Beggars" of the Low Countries, like the Huguenots in their last war, had taken up arms in defence of their religious, and, to a less degree, of their civil rights. The "Beggars" complained of the violation of munic.i.p.al privileges and compacts, ratified by oath at their sovereign's accession, as the Huguenots pointed to the infringement upon edicts solemnly published as the basis of the pacification of the country; and both refused any longer to submit to a tyranny that had, in the name of religion, sent to the gallows or the stake thousands of their most pious and industrious fellow-citizens. The cause was, therefore, common to the Protestants of the two countries, and there was little doubt that should the enemy of either prove successful at home, he would soon be impelled by an almost irresistible impulse to a.s.sist his ally in completing his portion of the praiseworthy undertaking. It is true that the Huguenots of France were not now in actual warfare with the government; but, that their time would come to be attacked, there was every reason to apprehend. Hence, when the Duke of Alva, in the memorable summer of 1567, set out from Piedmont at the head of ten thousand veterans, to thread his way over the Alps and along the eastern frontiers of France, through Burgundy and Lorraine, to the fated scene of his b.l.o.o.d.y task in the Netherlands, the Protestants of France saw in this neighboring demonstration a new peril to themselves. In the first moments of trepidation, their leaders in the royal council are said to have acquiesced in, if they did not propose, the levy of six thousand Swiss troops, as a measure of defence against the Spanish general; and Coligny, the same contemporary authority informs us, strongly advocated that they should dispute the duke's pa.s.sage.[422] Even if this statement be true, they were not long in detecting, or believing that they had detected, proofs that the Swiss troops were really intended for the overthrow of Protestantism in France, rather than for any service against the Duke of Alva. Letters from Rome and Spain were intercepted, we learn from Francois de la Noue, containing evidence of the sinister designs of the court.[423]

The Prince of La Roche-sur-Yon, a prince of the blood, a short time before his death, warned his cousin of Conde of the impending danger.[424]

Conde, who, within the past few months, had repeatedly addressed the king and his mother in terms of remonstrance and pet.i.tion for the redress of the oppression under which the Huguenots were suffering, but to no purpose, again supplicated the throne, urging in particular that the levy of the Swiss be countermanded, since, if they should come, there would be little hope of the preservation of the peace;[425] while Admiral Coligny, who found Catharine visiting the constable, his uncle, at his palace of Chantilly, with faithful boldness exposed to them both the impossibility of retaining the Protestants in quiet, when they saw plain indications that formidable preparations were being made for the purpose of overwhelming them. To these remonstrances, however, they received only what they esteemed evasive answers--excuses for not dismissing the Swiss, based upon representations of the danger of some Spanish incursion, and promises that the just requests of the Huguenots should receive the gracious attention of a monarch desirous of establis.h.i.+ng his throne by equity.[426]

"The queene returned answer by letters," wrote the English amba.s.sador, Norris, to Elizabeth, "a.s.suringe him"--Conde--"by the faythe of a princesse _et d'une femme de bien_ (for so she termed it), that so long as she might any waies prevayle with the Kinge, her sonne, he should never breake the sayd edicte, and therof required him to a.s.sure himselfe; and if he coulde come to the courte, he shoulde be as welcome as his owne harte could devise; if not, to pa.s.se the tyme without any suspect or jealousie, protesting that there was nothing ment that tended to his indempnitie, what so ever was bruted abrode or conceyved to the contrary, as he should perceyve by the sequele erst it were long."[427]

Shall we blame those st.u.r.dy, straightforward men, so long fed upon unmeaning or readily-broken promises of redress, if they gave little credit to the royal a.s.surances, and to the more honeyed words of the queen mother? Perhaps there existed no sufficient grounds for the immediate alarm of the Huguenots. Perhaps no settled plan had been formed with the connivance of Philip--no "sacred league" of the kind supposed to have been sketched in outline at Bayonne--no contemplated ma.s.sacre of the chiefs, with a subsequent a.s.sembly of notables at Poitiers, and repeal of all the toleration that had been vouchsafed to the Protestants.[428] All this may have been false; but, if false, it was invested with a wonderful verisimilitude, and to Huguenots and Papists it had, so far as their actions were concerned, all the effect of truth. At all events the promises of the king could not be trusted. Had he not been promising, again and again, for four years? Had not every restrictive ordinance, every interpretation of the Edict of Amboise, every palpable infringement upon its spirit, if not upon its letter, been prefaced by a declaration of Charles's intention to maintain the edict inviolate? In the words of an indignant contemporary, "the very name of the edict was employed to destroy the edict itself."[429]

[Sidenote: The Huguenot attempts at colonization in Florida.]

The Huguenot expeditions to Florida have been so well sketched by Bancroft and Parkman, and so fully set forth by their latest historian, M. Paul Gaffarel, that I need not speak of them in detail. In fact, they belong more intimately to American than to French history. They owed their origin to the enlightened patriotism of Coligny, who was not less desirous, as a Huguenot, to provide a safe refuge for his fellow Protestants, than anxious, as High Admiral of France, to secure for his native country such commercial resources as it had never enjoyed. "I am in my house," he wrote in 1565, "studying new measures by which we may traffic and make profit in foreign parts. I hope shortly to bring it to pa.s.s that we shall have the best trade in Christendom." (Gaffarel, Histoire de la Floride francaise, Paris, 1875, pp. 45, 46). But, although the project of Huguenot emigration was conceived in the brain of the great Protestant leader, apparently it was heartily approved by Catharine de' Medici and her son. They certainly were not averse to be relieved of the presence of as many as possible of those whom their religious views, and, still more, their political tendencies, rendered objects of suspicion. "If wis.h.i.+ng were in order," Catharine (Letter to Forquevaulx, March 17, 1566, Gaffarel, 428) plainly told the Spanish amba.s.sador, on one occasion, "I would wish that all the Huguenots were in those regions" ("si c'estoit soueter, ie voudrois que touts les Huguenots fussent en ce pais-la"). In the discussion that ensued between the courts of Paris and Madrid, the queen mother never denied that the colonists went not only with her knowledge, but with her consent. In fact, she repudiated with scorn and indignation a suggestion of the possibility that such considerable bodies of soldiers and sailors could have left her son's French dominions without the royal privity (Ibid., 427).

[Sidenote: 1562.]

The first expedition, under Jean Ribault, in 1562, was little more than a voyage of discovery. The main body promptly returned to France, the same year, finding that country rent with civil war. The twenty-six or twenty-eight men left behind to hold "Charlesfort" (erected probably near the mouth of the South Edisto river, in what is now South Carolina), disheartened and famis.h.i.+ng, nevertheless succeeded in constructing a rude s.h.i.+p and recrossing the Atlantic in the course of the next year.

[Sidenote: 1564.]

A second expedition (1564), under Rene de Laudonniere, who had taken part in the first, was intended to effect a more permanent settlement. A strong earthwork was accordingly thrown-up at a spot christened "Caroline," in honor of Charles the Ninth, and the colony was inaugurated under fair auspices.

But improvidence and mismanagement soon bore their legitimate fruits. Laudonniere saw himself constrained to build s.h.i.+ps for a return to Europe, and was about to set sail when the third expedition unexpectedly made its appearance (August 28, 1565), under Ribault, leader of the first enterprise.

[Sidenote: 1565.]