History of the Rise of the Huguenots Volume II Part 32

[597] Ibid., v. (Preuves) 217. The laborious author of the Hist. de Languedoc, v. 290, makes a singular mistake in saying "that this bull is dated March 15th, of the year 1568, which proves that the project had been formed several months before its execution." The date of the bull is, indeed, given as stated at the close of the doc.u.ment; but the addition, "pontificatus nostri anno _quarto_," furnishes the means for correcting it. Pius V. was not created Pope until January 7, 1566. See De Thou, iii.

(liv. x.x.xix.) 622.

[598] Memoires de Claude Haton, ii. 541, 542.

[599] Jehan de la Fosse, 99.

[600] Jean de Serres, iii. 249.

[601] Jean de Serres, iii. 255, 256; De Thou, iv. (liv. xlix.) 141. De Serres (iii. 256-266) gives interesting extracts of the letters which Jeanne wrote to Charles, to his mother, to the Duke of Anjou, and to her brother-in-law, the Cardinal of Bourbon. She urged the latter, by every consideration of blood and honor, to shake off his shameful servitude to the counsels of the Cardinal of Lorraine, whom she openly accused of having conspired to murder Bourbon, with Marshal Montmorency and Chancellor L'Hospital, during a recent illness of the queen.

[602] Jean de Serres, iii. 267-269; De Thou, iv. (liv. xliv.) 142, 143; D'Aubigne, liv. v., c. 2, 3 (i. 264-268).

[603] J. de Serres, _ubi supra_.

[604]

"C'est en Judee proprement Que Dieu s'est acquis un renom; C'est en Israel voirement Qu'on voit la force de son Nom: En Salem est son tabernacle, En Sion son sainct habitacle."

I quote from an edition of the unaltered Huguenot psalter (1638).

[605] Jean de Serres, iii. 270; De Thou, iv. (liv. xliv.) 144, 145; Agrippa d'Aubigne, Hist. univ. liv. v., c. 4 (i. 269) states the circ.u.mstance that the river fell a foot and a half during the four hours consumed in the crossing, and then rose again as opportunely: "Mais il s'en fust perdu la pluspart sans un heur nompareil; ce fut que la riviere s'estant diminuee d'un pied et demi durant le pa.s.sage de quatre heures, se r'enfla sur la fin;" adding in one of those nervous sentences which const.i.tute a princ.i.p.al charm of his writings: "Nous dirions avec crainte _ces courtoisies de Loire_, si nous n'avions tous ceux qui ont escrit pour gariment."

[606] Jean de Serres, iii. 270, 271; De Thou, iv. (liv. xliv.) 147; Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 269.

[607] La Noue, c. xx.

[608] Ibid., _ubi supra_; De Thou, iv. (liv. xliv.) 150.

[609] Jacques de Crussol, Baron d'Acier (or, a.s.sier), afterwards Duke d'Uzes, lieutenant-general of the royal armies in Languedoc, etc.

According to the Abbe Le Laboureur (iii. 56-60), it was interest that induced him, a few years later, to become a Roman Catholic.

[610] Le Laboureur, Add. aux Mem. de Castelnau, ii. 588. The same author elsewhere (ii. 56-60) states the army as only 20,000. Jean de Serres, iii.

284, 285, and De Thou, iv. (liv. xliv.) 150-152, give an account of the difficulties encountered in bringing these troops to the place of rendezvous, and enumerate the leaders and contingents of the three provinces. According to the latter, the total was 23,000 men. See Agrippa d'Aubigne, liv. v., c. 5 (i. 271).

[611] Jean de Serres, iii. 286, 291, 292; De Thou, iv. (liv. xliv.), 153, 154; Agrippa d'Aubigne, _ubi supra_; Davila, bk. iv., p. 132, 133; Le Laboureur, ii. 588, 589. It is more than usually difficult to ascertain the loss of the Huguenots at Messignac. Jean de Serres, who states it at 600, and Davila, who says that it amounted to 2,000 foot and more than 4,000 horse, are the extremes. De Thou sets it down at more than 1,000; D'Aubigne at 1,000 or 1,200; Castelnau at 3,000 foot and 300 horse; and Le Laboureur, following him, at over 3,000 men.

[612] Hist. univ., liv. v., c. 6 (i. 273).

[613] "Discours envoye de la Roch.e.l.le," accompanying La Mothe Fenelon's despatch of January 20, 1569. Correspondance diplomatique, i. 137, 138.

Another letter of a later date gives even larger figures--30,000 foot (25,000 of them arquebusiers) and 7,000 or 8,000 horse, besides recruits expected from Montauban. Ibid., i. 147.

[614] Upwards of 23,000 horse and 200 ensigns of foot (which we may perhaps reckon at 40,000 men). Despatch of La Mothe Fenelon, Dec. 5, 1568, Corresp. diplomatique, i. 29.

[615] Memoires de Tavannes, iii. 38. De Thou, iv. 154, a.s.signs 18,000 foot and 3,000 horse to Conde; and 12,000 foot and 4,000 horse, exclusive of the Swiss (who, according to Tavannes, numbered 6,000), to Anjou.

[616] Jean de Serres, iii. 295, 296.

[617] "Resolution qui sembloit la plus necessaire aux Reformez, pource que difficilement pouvoient-ils maintenir une telle troupe sans solde et sans magazins reglez." Agrippa d'Aubigne, liv. v., c. 6 (i. 273).

[618] See "Tableau des phenomenes meteorologiques, astronomiques, etc., mentionnes dans les Memoires de Claude Haton."

[619] Jean de Serres, iii. 304, 305; De Thou, iv. (liv. xliv.) 159.

[620] "Cette Roine, _n'aiant de femme que le s.e.xe_, l'ame entiere aux choses viriles, l'esprit puissant aux grands affaires, le coeur invincible aux adversitez." Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. 8.

[621] Jean de Serres, iii. 306, 307.

[622] Jean de Serres, iii. 296, 297; Relation sent from La Roch.e.l.le, La Mothe Fenelon, i. 173. The Prince of Conde had also made a solemn protestation in writing, and before a large a.s.sembly, before entering upon any belligerent acts. The substance of these frequent doc.u.ments is so similar that I have deemed it unnecessary to do more than refer to it. See J. de Serres, iii. 249, 250. The Huguenot soldiers had, at the same time, taken an oath to support the cause until the achievement of a peace securing the undisturbed enjoyment of life, honors and religious liberty, and to submit to a careful military discipline. Ibid., iii. 251, 252-255, where the oath and a summary of the rules of discipline are inserted.

[623] "Projet d'alliance du Prince d'Orange avec l'Amiral de Coligny et le Prince de Conde pour obtenir entiere liberte de conscience dans les Pays-Bas et en France. Le--aout l'an 1568." Groen Van Prinsterer, Archives de la Maison d'Orange-Na.s.sau, iii. 282-286.

[624] Letter of Favelles (Dec., 1568), Groen Van Prinsterer, Archives, etc., iii. 312-316.

[625] He was not a "marechal," as Mr. Motley inadvertently calls him (Dutch Republic, ii. 261), but a very prominent and successful negotiator, whose eulogy M. de Thou, an intimate friend, has p.r.o.nounced in the 122d book of his history (ix. 285). Henry, the first Count of Schomberg made Marshal of France, was not born until 1583.

[626] It was generally believed that Schomberg, gaining access to the Germans through one of the princ.i.p.al officers, to whom he was related, was the occasion of their disaffection. Jean de Serres, iii. 298. "Il mesnagea si bien la plus part des capitaines," says Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 340, "que quand le Prince leur parla d'aller joindre le Prince de Conde, _il les trouva tous bons theologiens et mauvais partisans_; discourans de la justice des armes, sans...o...b..ier le droit des rois et les affaires qu'ils avoient en leur pas. Schomberg s'en revint aiant receu quelques injures par Genlis."

[627] Letter of December 3, 1568, Cissonne, in Motley, Rise of the Dutch Republic, ii. 261, 262.

[628] News-letter from Paris, from the Huguenot physician of the Duke of Jarnac, discovered in the gauntlet of the Prince of Conde, and sent by Anjou, with other papers found on his dead body, to King Charles. Duc d'Aumale, Princes de Conde, Pieces ined., ii. 391.

[629] Jean de Serres, iii. 299; Groen Van Prinsterer, Archives, etc., iii.

316; Motley, Dutch Republic, ii. 263; Ag. d'Aubigne, liv. v., c. 26 (i.

340).

[630] M. Froude falls into a very natural error, in calling him (History of England, Am. edit., ix. 334) "the _younger_ Chatillon." With the exception of a brother who died in early youth, he was the oldest of the family; but his quiet and more sluggish character inclined him to accept the cardinal's hat, when offered to him by his uncle, the constable; and, rich with the revenues of bishoprics and abbeys, he subsequently renounced all his rights as eldest son to his brother Gaspard. Froude is, however, in good company. Even the usually accurate Tytler-Fraser says of Cardinal Chatillon: "This high-born ecclesiastic was in most things the reverse of his _elder_ brother D'Andelot." England under Edward VI. and Mary, i. 36.

[631] Lodged by Elizabeth in Sion House, not far from Hampton Court, he was accorded more honor than usually fell to the lot of an envoy of royalty. Never, says Florimond de Raemond, did the queen meet him but she greeted him with a kiss, and it became a popular saying that Conde's amba.s.sador was a much more important personage than the envoy of the King of France. De ortu, progressu, et ruina haereseon (Cologne, 1614), ii. 284 (l. vi., c. 15).

[632] The letter of Jeanne to Elizabeth, Oct. 15, 1568, is inserted in Jean de Serres, iii. 288-291.

[633] There were many English clergymen with whom the diversity of order in public wors.h.i.+p created no prejudice against the reformed churches of France. Of this number was William Whittingham, Dean of Durham, who, when he accompanied the Earl of Warwick, upon the occupation of Havre in 1562, conformed the service of the English garrison to that of the resident Protestants. Understanding that some of his countrymen had made "frivolous" complaints of his action, the Dean justified himself by Saint Augustine's counsel in such matters, and by alleging the disastrous consequences a different course would have produced on the minds of the French Protestants, who, he said, "as they had conceived evil of the infinity of our rites and cold proceedings in religion, so if they should have seen us (but in form only, though not in substance), to use the same or like order in ceremonies which the papists had a little afore observed (against whom they now venture goods and body), they would to their great grief have suspected our doings as not sincere, and have feared in time the loss of that liberty which after a sort they had purchased with the bloodshedding of many thousands." And the dean maintains the wisdom of the course pursued, having "perceived that it wrought here a marvellous conjunction of minds between the French and us, and brought singular comfort to all our people." The Bishop of London seems to have concurred in these views, as well as Cuthbert Vaughan, and probably Warwick himself.

Whittingham to Cecil, Newhaven (Havre), Dec. 20, 1562, State Paper Office.

It ought to be added that Whittingham, in this letter, expresses in fact a preference for the French forms to the English, as "most agreeable with G.o.d's Word, most approaching to the form the G.o.dly Fathers used, best allowed of the learned and G.o.dly in these days, and according to the example of the best reformed churches." Dean Whittingham, who had married the sister of John Calvin, was a leader of the Puritan party in the Church of England, and the editor and princ.i.p.al translator of the "Genevan"

version of the English Bible. His opponents maintained that he was "a man not in holy orders, either according to the Anglican or the Presbyterian rite." (History of the Church of England, by G. G. Perry, Canon of Lincoln, New York, 1879, p. 303.) But a commission appointed by the queen to look into the matter, after the dean had been excommunicated by the Archbishop of York, reported that "William Whittingham was ordained in a better sort than even the archbishop himself." (Historic Origin of the Bible, by Edwin Cone Bissell, New York, 1873, p. 57.)

[634] "A view of a seditious bull sent into England from Pius Quintus, Bishop of Rome, 1569," etc. Works of Bishop Jewel, edited by R. W. Jelf, vii. 263-265.

[635] Despatch of La Mothe Fenelon, Dec. 5, 1568, detailing the justification of Charles, which he had made in an interview with Queen Elizabeth, Correspondance diplomatique, i. 28-33.

[636] Yet no one could speak more courageous words than Elizabeth in her own interests. In December, 1560, she requested the amba.s.sador of Francis II. "to write to his master frankly what she was about to say, viz., that she meant to do her best to defend herself: that she was not of such poverty, nor so void of the obedience of her subjects, but she trusted to be able to do this. _She came of the race of lions, and therefore could not sustain the person of a sheep._" Communication with the French Amba.s.sador, December 13, 1560, State Paper Office.

[637] Despatch of La Mothe Fenelon, Dec. 21, 1568, Corresp. dipl., i. 55, 56.

[638] "Qu'elle n'avoit rien en si grand horreur, en ce monde, que de voir ung corps s'esmouvoir contre sa teste, et qu'elle n'avoit garde de s'adjoindre a ung tel monstre." Ibid., i. 60.

[639] Ibid., i. 36-130.

[640] Mem. de Castelnau, liv. vii., c. 2; Agrippa d'Aubigne, liv. v., c.