This was sung all over France during Condé’s imprisonment; after his release the tone varied:
Catherine de’ Medici was forty-one years of age when she became the Regent of France.[211] Her life had been hard. Born in 1519, the niece of Pope Clement VII, she was married to Henry of France in 1534. She had been a neglected wife all the days of her married life. For ten years she had been childless,[212] and her sonnets breathe the prayer of Rachel—Give me children, or else I die. During Henry’s absence with the army in 1552, he had grudgingly appointed her Regent, and she had shown both ability and patience in acquiring a knowledge of all the details of government. After the defeat of Saint-Quentin she for once earned her husband’s gratitude and praise by the way in which she had promptly persuaded the Parliament to grant a subsidy of 300,000 livres. These incidents were her sole apprenticeship in the art of ruling. She had always been a great eater, walker, and rider.[213] Her protruding eyes and her bulging forehead recalled the features of her grand-uncle, Pope Leo X. She had the taste of her family for art and display. Her strongest intellectual force was a robust, hard, and narrow common sense which was responsible both for her success and for her failures. She can scarcely be called immoral; it seemed rather that she was utterly destitute of any moral sense whatsoever.
The difficulties which confronted the Regent were great, both at home and abroad. The question of questions was the treatment to be given to her Protestant subjects. She seems from the first to have been in favour of a measure of toleration; but the fanatically Roman Catholic party was vigorous in France, especially in Paris, and was ably led by the Guises; and Philip of Spain had made the suppression of the Reformation a matter of international policy.
Meanwhile Catherine had to face the States General, summoned by the late King in August 1560. While the Guises were still in power, strict orders had been given to see that none but ardent Romanists should be elected; but the excitement of the times could not be restrained by any management. It was nearly half a century since a King of France had invited a declaration of the opinions of his subjects; the last meeting of the States General had been in 1484.[214] Catherine watched the elections, and the expression of sentiments which they called forth. She saw that the Protestants were active. Calvinist ministers traversed the West and the South almost unhindered, encouraging the people to assert their liberties. They were even permitted to address some of the assemblies met to elect representatives. A minister, Charles Dalbiac, expounded the Confession of Faith to the meeting of the nobles at Angers, and showed how the Roman Church had enslaved and changed the whole of the Christian faith and practice. In other places it was said that Antoine de Bourbon had no right to allow Catherine to assume the Regency, and that he ought to be forced to take his proper place. The air seemed full of menaces against the Regent and in favour of the Princes of the Blood. Catherine hastened to place the King of Navarre in a position of greater dignity. She shared the Regency nominally with the premier Prince of the Blood, who was Lieutenant-General of France. If Antoine had been a man of resolution, he might have insisted on a large share in the government of the country, but his easy, careless disposition made him plastic in the hands of Catherine, and she could write to her daughter that he was very obedient, and issued no order without her permission.
The Estates met at Orléans on the 13th of December. The opening speech by the Chancellor, Michel de l’Hôpital, showed that the Regent and her councillors were at least inclined to a policy of tolerance. The three orders (Clergy, Nobles, and Third Estate), he said, had been summoned to find remedies for the divisions which existed within the kingdom; and these, he believed, were due to religion. He could not help recognising that religious beliefs, good or bad, tended to excite burning passions. He could not avoid seeing that a common religion was a stricter bond of unity than belonging to the same race or living under the same laws. Might they not all wait for the decision of a General Council? Might they not cease to use the irritating epithets of Lutherans, Huguenots, Papists, and remember that they were all good Christians. The spokesmen of the three orders were heard at the second sitting. Dr. Quintin, one of the Regents of the University of Paris, voiced the Clergy. He enlarged against the proposals which were to be brought forward by the other two orders to despoil the revenues of the Church, to attempt its reform by the civil power, and to grant toleration and even liberty of worship to heretics. Coligny begged the Regent to note that Quintin had called subjects of the King heretics, and the spokesman of the Clergy apologised. Jacques de Silly, Baron de Rochefort, and Jean Lange, an advocate of Bordeaux, who spoke for the Nobles and for the Third Estate, declaimed against the abuses of ecclesiastical courts, and the avarice and ignorance of the clergy.
At the sitting on Jan. 1st, 1561, each of the three Estates presented a written list of grievances (cahiers). That of the Third Estate was a memorable and important document in three hundred and fifty-four articles, and reveals, as no other paper of the time does, the evils resulting from absolutist and aristocratic government in France. It asked for complete toleration in matters of religion, for a Reformation of the Church in the sense of giving a large extension of power to the laity, for uniformity in judicial procedure, for the abolition or curtailment of powers in signorial courts, for quinquennial meetings of the Estates General, and demanded that the day and place of the next meeting should be fixed before the end of the present sitting. The Nobles were divided on the question of toleration, and presented three separate papers. In the first, which came from central Prance, stern repression of the Protestant faith was demanded; in the second, coming from the nobles of the Western provinces, complete toleration was claimed; in the third it was asked that both parties should be made to keep the peace, and that only preachers and pastors be punished. The list presented by the Clergy, like those of the other two orders, insisted upon the reform of the Church; but it took the line of urging the abolition of the Concordat, and a return to the provisions of the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges.
The Government answered these lists of grievances presented by an edict and an ordinance. In the edict (Jan. 28th, 1561) the King ordered that all prosecutions for religion should cease, and that all prisoners should be released, with an admonition “to live in a catholic manner” for the future. The ordinance (dated Jan. 31st, but not completed till the following August), known as the Ordinance of Orléans, was a very elaborate document. It touched upon almost all questions brought forward in the lists of grievances, and enacted various reforms, both civil and ecclesiastic—all of which were for the most part evaded in practice. The Estates were adjourned until the 1st of May.
The Huguenots had gained a suspension of persecution, if not toleration, by the edict of Jan. 28th, and the disposition of the Government made them hope for still further assistance. Refugees came back in great numbers from Switzerland, Germany, England, and even from Italy. The number of Protestant congregations increased, and Geneva provided the pastors. The edict did not give liberty of worship, but the Protestants acted as if it did. This roused the wrath of the more fanatically disposed portion of the Roman Catholic population. Priests and monks fanned the flames of sectarian bitterness. The Government was denounced, and anti-Protestant riots disturbed the country. When the Huguenots of Paris attempted to revive the psalm-singings in the Pré-aux-Clercs, they were mobbed, and beaten with sticks by the populace. This led to reprisals in those parts of the country where the Huguenots were in a majority. In some towns the churches were invaded, the images torn down, and the relics burnt. The leaders strove to restrain their followers.[215] Calvin wrote energetically from Geneva against the lawlessness:
“God has never enjoined on any one to destroy idols, save on every man in his own house or on those placed in authority in public places.... Obedience is better than sacrifice; we must look to what it is lawful for us to do, and must keep ourselves within bounds.”
At the Court at Fontainebleau, Renée, Duchess of Ferrara, and the Princess of Condé were permitted by the Regent to have worship in their rooms after the Reformed rite; and Coligny had in his household a minister from Geneva, Jean Raymond Merlin, to whose sermons outsiders were not only admitted but invited. These things gave great offence to the Constable Montmorency, who was a strong Romanist. He was still more displeased when Monluc, Bishop of Valence, preached in the State apartments before the boy King and the Queen Mother. He thought it was undignified for a Bishop to preach, and he believed that Monluc’s sermons contained something very like Lutheran theology. He invited the Duke of Guise and Saint-André, both old enemies, to supper (April 16th, 1561), and the three pleged themselves to save the Romanism of France. This union was afterwards known as the Triumvirate.
Meanwhile religious disturbances were increasing. The Huguenots demanded the right to have “temples” granted to them or built at their own expense; and in many places they openly gathered for public worship and for the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. They frequently met armed to protect themselves from attack. The Government at length interfered, and by an edict (July 1561) prohibited, under penalty of confiscation of property, all conventicles, public or private, whether the worshippers were armed or unarmed, where sermons were made and the sacraments celebrated in any other fashion than that of the Catholic Church. The edict declared, on the other hand, that magistrates were not to be too zealous; persons who laid false information were to be severely punished; and all attacks on houses were forbidden. It was evidently meant to conciliate both parties. Coligny did not discontinue the services in his apartments, and wrote to his co-religionists that they had nothing to fear so long as they worshipped in private houses. Jeanne d’Albret declared herself openly a Protestant; and as she travelled from Nérac to Fontainebleau she restored to the Huguenots churches which the magistrates had taken from them in obedience to the edict of July.
The prorogued meeting of the States General did not assemble until the 1st of August, and even then representatives of two orders only were present. An ecclesiastical synod was sitting at Poissy (opened July 28th), and the clerical representatives were there. It was the 27th of August before the three orders met together in presence of the King and the members of his Council at Saint-Germain. The meeting had been called for the purpose of discussing the question of national finance; but it was impossible to ignore the religious question.
In their cahiers, both the Nobles and the Third Estate advocated complete toleration and the summoning a National Council. The financial proposals of the Third Estate were thoroughgoing. After a statement of the national indebtedness, and a representation that taxation had reached its utmost limits, they proposed that money should be obtained from the superfluity of ecclesiastical wealth. In their cahier of Jan. 1st, the Third Estate had sketched a civil constitution for the French Church; they now went further, and proposed that all ecclesiastical revenues should be nationalised, and that the clergy should be paid by the State. They calculated that a surplus of seventy-two million livres would result, and proposed that forty-two millions should be set aside to liquidate the national debt.
This bold proposal was impracticable in the condition of the kingdom. The Parlement of Paris regarded it as a revolutionary attack on the rights of property, and it alienated them for ever from the Reformation movement; but it enabled the Government to wring from the alarmed Churchmen a subsidy of sixteen million livres, to be paid in six annual instalments.
It was scarcely possible, in view of the Pope and Philip of Spain, to assemble a National Council, but the Government had already conceived the idea of a meeting of theologians, which would be such an assembly in all but the name. They had invited representatives of the Protestant ministers (July 25th) to attend the synod of the clergy sitting at Poissy. The invitation had been accepted, and the Government intended to give an air of unusual solemnity to the meeting. The King, surrounded by his mother, his brothers, and the Princes of the Blood, presided as at a sitting of the States General. The Chancellor, in the King’s name, opened the session with a remarkable speech, in which he set forth the advantages to be gained from religious union. He addressed the assembled bishops and Roman Catholic theologians, assuring them that they ought to have no scruples in meeting the Protestant divines. The latter were not heretics like the old Manicheans or Arians. They accepted the Scriptures as the Rule of Faith, the Apostles’ Creed, the four principal Councils and their Creeds (the symbols of Nicea, Constantinople, and Chalcedon). The main difference between them was that the Protestants wished the Church to be reformed according to the primitive pattern. They had given proof of their sincerity by being content to die for their faith.
The Reformers were represented by twelve ministers, among whom were Morel of Paris; Nicolas des Gallars, minister of the French Protestant Church in London, and by twenty laymen. Their leader was Théodore de Bèze (Beza), a man of noble birth, celebrated as a Humanist, a brilliant writer and controversialist, whom Calvin, at the request of Antoine de Bourbon, Catherine de’ Medici, and Coligny, had commissioned to represent him. De Bèze was privately presented to the King and the Regent by the King of Navarre and by the Prince de Condé, and his learning, presence, and stately courtesy made a great impression upon the Court. He had been born in the same year as the Regent (1519), and had thrown away very brilliant prospects to become a minister of the Reformed Church.
The meeting was held in the refectory of the nuns of Poissy.[216] The King and his suite were placed at one end of the hall, and the Romanist bishops and theologians were arranged by the walls on the two sides. After the Chancellor had finished his speech, the representatives of the Protestants were introduced by the Duke of Guise, in command of an escort of the King’s archers. They were placed in front of a barrier which separated them from the Romanist divines. “There come the dogs of Geneva,” said the Cardinal of Tournon as they entered the hall.
The speech of de Bèze, delivered on the first day (Sept. 7th) of the Colloquy, as it came to be called, made a great impression. He expounded with clearness of thought and precision of language the creed of his Church, showing where it agreed and where it differed from that of the Roman Catholic. The gravity and the charm of his eloquence compelled attention, and it was not until he began to criticise with frank severity the doctrine of transubstantiation that he provoked murmurs of dissent. The speech must have disappointed Catherine. It had made no attempt to attenuate the differences between the two confessions, and held out no hopes of a reunion of the Churches.
The Cardinal of Lorraine was charged to reply on behalf of the Roman Catholic party (Sept. 16th). His speech was that of a strong partisan, and dealt principally with the two points of the authority of the Church in matters of faith and usage, and the doctrine of the Sacrament of the Holy Supper. There was no attempt at conciliation.
Three days after (Sept. 19th), Cardinal Ippolito d’Este arrived at Saint-Germain, accompanied by a numerous suite, among whom was Laynez, the General of the Society of Jesus. He had been sent by the Pope, legate a latere, to end, if possible, the conference at Poissy, and to secure the goodwill of the French Government for the promulgation of the decrees of the Council of Trent. He so far prevailed that the last two sittings of the conference (Sept. 24th, 26th) were with closed doors, and were scenes of perpetual recriminations. Laynez distinguished himself by his vituperative violence. The Protestant ministers were “wolves,” “foxes,” “serpents,” “assassins.” Catherine persevered. She arranged a conference between five of the more liberal Roman Catholic clergy and five Protestant ministers. It met (Sept. 30th, Oct. 1st), and managed to draft a formula about the Holy Supper which was at once rejected by the Bishops of the French Church (Oct. 9th).
Out of this Colloquy of Poissy came the edict of January 17th, 1562, which provided that Protestants were to surrender all the churches and ecclesiastical buildings they had seized, and prohibited them from meeting for public worship, whether within a building or not, inside the walls of any town. On the other hand, they were to have the right to assemble for public worship anywhere outside walled towns, and meetings in private houses within the walls were not prohibited. Thus the Protestants of France secured legal recognition for the first time, and enjoyed the right to worship according to their conscience. They were not satisfied—they could scarcely be, so long as they were kept outside the walls; but their leaders insisted on their accepting the edict as a reasonable compromise. “If the liberty promised us in the edict lasts,” Calvin wrote, “the Papacy will fall to the ground of itself.” Within one year the Huguenots of France found themselves freed from persecution, and in the enjoyment of a measured liberty of public worship. It can scarcely be doubted that they owed this to Catherine de’ Medici. She was a child of the Renaissance, and was naturally on the side of free thought; and she was, besides, at this time persuaded that the Huguenots had the future on their side. In the coming struggle they regarded this edict as their charter, and frequently demanded its restitution and enforcement.
Catherine de’ Medici had shown both courage and constancy in her attempts at conciliation. To the remonstrances of Philip of Spain she had replied that she meant to be master in her own house; and when the Constable de Montmorency had threatened to leave the Court, he had been told that he might do as he pleased. But she was soon to be convinced that she had overestimated the strength of the Protestants, and that she could never count on the consistent support of their nominal leader, the vain and vacillating Antoine de Bourbon. Had Jeanne d’Albret been in her husband’s place, things might have been different.
The edict of January 17th, 1562, had exasperated the Romanists without satisfying the mass of the Protestants. The marked increase in the numbers of Protestant congregations, and their not very strict observance of the limitations of the edict, had given rise to disturbances in many parts of the country. Everything seemed to tend towards civil war. The spark which kindled the conflagration was the Massacre of Vassy.[217]
The Duke of Guise, travelling from Joinville to Paris, accompanied by his brother, the Cardinal of Guise, his children and his wife, and escorted by a large armed retinue, halted at Vassy (March 1st, 1562). It was a Sunday, and the Duke wished to hear Mass. Scarcely a gunshot from the church was a barn where the Protestants (in defiance of the edict, for Vassy was a walled town) were holding a service. The congregation, barely a year old, was numerous and zealous. It was an eyesore to Antoinette de Bourbon, the mother of the Guises, who lived in the neighbouring château of Joinville, and saw her dependants attracted by the preaching at Vassy. The Duke was exasperated at seeing men whom he counted his subjects defying him in his presence. He sent some of his retainers to order the worshippers to quit the place. They were received by cries of “Papists! idolaters!” When they attempted to force an entrance, stones began to fly, and the Duke was struck. The barn was rushed, the worshippers fusilladed, and before the Duke gave orders to cease firing, sixty-three of the six or seven hundred Protestants were slain, and over a hundred wounded.
The news of the massacre spread fast; and while it exasperated the Huguenots, the Romanists hailed it as a victory. The Constable de Montmorency and the Marshal Saint André went out to meet the Duke, and the Guises entered Paris in triumph, escorted by more than three thousand armed men. The Protestants began arming themselves, and crowded to Paris to place themselves under the orders of the Prince of Condé. It was feared that the two factions would fight in the streets.
The Regent with the King retired to Fontainebleau. She was afraid of the Triumvirs (Montmorency, the Duke of Guise, and Marshal Saint-André), and she invited the Prince de Condé to protect her and her children. Condé lost this opportunity of placing himself and his co-religionists in the position of being the support of the throne. The Triumvirate, with Antoine de Bourbon, who now seemed to be their obedient servant, marched on Fontainebleau, and compelled the King and the Queen Mother to return to Paris. Catherine believed that the Protestants had abandoned her, and turned to the Romanists.
The example of massacre given at Vassy was followed in many places where the Romanists were in a majority. In Paris, Sens, Rouen, and elsewhere, the Protestant places of worship were attacked, and many of the worshippers slain. At Toulouse, the Protestants shut themselves up in the Capitol, and were besieged by the Romanists. They at last surrendered, trusting to a promise that they would be allowed to leave the town in safety. The promise was not kept, and three thousand men, women, and children were slain in cold blood. This slaughter, in violation of oath, was celebrated by the Roman Catholics of Toulouse in centenary festivals, which were held in 1662, in 1762, and would have been celebrated in 1862 had the Government of Napoleon III. not interfered to forbid it.
These massacres provoked reprisals. The Huguenots broke into the Romanist churches, tore down the images, defaced the altars, and destroyed the relics.
Gradually the parties faced each other with the Duke of Guise and the Constable Montmorency at the head of the Romanists, and the Prince of Condé and Admiral Coligny at the head of the Huguenots. France became the scene of a civil conflict, where religious fanaticism added its cruelties to the ordinary barbarities of warfare.
The Venetian Ambassador, writing home to the chiefs of his State, was of opinion that this first war of religion prevented France from becoming Protestant. The cruelties of the Romanists had disgusted a large number of Frenchmen, who, though they had no great sympathy for the Protestant faith, would have gladly allied themselves with a policy of toleration. The Huguenot chiefs themselves saw that the desecration of churches did not serve the cause they had at heart. Calvin and de Bèze wrote, energetically urging their followers to refrain from attacks on churches, images, and relics. But it was all to no purpose. At Orléans, Coligny and Condé heard that their men were assaulting the Church of the Holy Spirit. They hastened there, and Condé saw a Huguenot soldier on the roof of the church about to cast an image to the ground. Seizing an arquebus, he pointed it at the man, and ordered him to desist and come down. The soldier did not stop his work for an instant. “Sire,” he said, “have patience with me until I destroy this idol, and then let me die if it be your pleasure.” When men were content to die rather than refrain from iconoclasm, it was in vain to expect to check it. Somehow the slaughter of men made less impression than the sack of churches, and moderate men came to the opinion that if the Huguenots prevailed, they would be as intolerant as the Romanists had been. The rising tide of sympathy for the persecuted Protestants was checked by these deeds of violence.
The progress of the war was upon the whole unfavourable to the Huguenots, and in the beginning of 1553 both parties were exhausted. The Constable Montmorency had been captured by the Huguenots, and the Prince de Condé by the Romanists. The Duke of Guise was shot from behind by a Huguenot, and died six days later (Feb. 24th, 1563). The Marshal Saint-André and Antoine de Bourbon had both died during the course of the war. Catherine de’ Medici was everywhere recognised as the head of the Romanist party. She no longer needed the Protestants to counterbalance the Guises and the Constable. She could now pursue her own policy.
From this time forward she was decidedly hostile to the Huguenots. She had learned the resources and popularity of the Romanists. But she disliked fighting, and the religious war was ruining France. Her idea was that it would be necessary to tolerate the Protestants, but impossible to grant them common rights with the Romanists. She applied herself to win over the Prince de Condé, who was tired of his captivity. Negotiations were opened. Catherine, the Constable, Condé, and d’Andelot met at Orléans; and, after discussion, terms were agreed upon (March 7th), and the Edict of Amboise incorporating them was published (March 18th, 1563).
Condé had asked for the restitution of the edict of Jan. 17th, 1561, and the strict enforcement of its terms. This was refused. The terms of the new edict were as favourable for men of good birth, but not for others. Condé had to undergo the reproaches of Coligny, that he had secured rights for himself but had betrayed his poorer brethren in the faith; and that he had destroyed by his signature more churches than the united forces of Romanism had done in ten years. Calvin spoke of him as a poor Prince who had betrayed God for his own vanity.
The truce, for it was no more than a truce, concluded by the Edict of Amboise lasted nearly five years. It was broken by the Huguenots, who were suspicious that Catherine was plotting with the Duke of Alva against them. Alva was engaged in a merciless attempt to exterminate the Protestants of the Low Countries, and Catherine had been at pains to provide provisions for his troops. The Protestant leaders came to the desperate conclusion to imitate the Triumvirate in 1561, and seize upon the King’s person. They failed, and their attempt began the Second War of Religion. The indecisive battle of Saint Denis was fought on Nov. 10th, 1567, and the Constable Montmorency fell in the fight. Both parties were almost exhausted, and the terms of peace were the same as those in the Edict of Amboise.
The close of this Second War of Religion saw a determined attempt, mainly directed by the Jesuits, to inspire the masses of France with enthusiasm for the Roman Catholic Church. Eloquent preachers traversed the land, who insisted on the antiquity of the Roman and the novelty of the Protestant faith. Brotherhoods were formed, and enrolled men of all sorts and conditions of life sworn to bear arms against every kind of heresy. Outrages and assassinations of Protestants were common; and the Government appeared indifferent. It was, however, the events in the Low Countries which again alarmed the Protestants. The Duke of Alva, who had begun his rule there with an appearance of gentleness, had suddenly seized and executed the Counts Egmont and Horn. He had appointed a commission to judge the leaders and accomplices in the earlier rising—a commission which from its deeds gained for itself the name of the Tribunal of Blood. Huguenot soldiers hastened to enrol themselves in the levies which the Prince of Orange was raising for the deliverance of his countrymen. But the Huguenot leaders had other thoughts. Was Catherine meaning to treat them as Alva had treated Egmont and Horn? They found that they were watched. The suspicion and suspense became intolerable. Coligny and Condé resolved to take refuge in La Rochelle. As they passed through the country they were joined by numbers of Huguenots, and soon became a small army. Their followers were eager to avenge the murders committed on those of their faith, and pillage and worse marked the track of the army. Condé and the Admiral punished some of their marauding followers by death; and this, says the chronicler, “made the violence of the soldier more secret if not more rare.”
D’Andelot had collected his Normans and Bretons. Jeanne d’Albret had roused her Gascons and the Provençals, and appeared with her son, Henry of Navarre, a boy of fifteen, at the head of her troops. She published a manifesto to justify her in taking up arms. In the camp at La Rochelle she was the soul of the party, fired their passions, and sustained their courage.[218]
In the war which followed, the Huguenots were unfortunate. At the battle of Jarnac, Condé’s cavalry was broken by a charge on their flank made by the German mercenaries under Tavannes. He fought till he was surrounded and dismounted. After he had surrendered he was brutally shot in cold blood. The Huguenots soon rallied at Cognac, where the Queen of Navarre joined them. She presented her son and her nephew, young Henry of Condé, to the troops, and was received with acclamations. Young Henry of Navarre was proclaimed head of the party, and his cousin, Henry of Condé, a boy of the same age, was associated with him. The war went on. The Battle of Moncontour ended in the most disastrous defeat the Huguenots had ever sustained. Catherine de’ Medici thought that she had them at her mercy, and proposed terms of submission which would have left them liberty of conscience but denied the right to worship. The heroic Queen of Navarre declared that the names of Jeanne and Henry would never appear on a treaty containing these conditions; and Coligny, like his contemporary, William the Silent, was never more dangerous than after a defeat. The Huguenots announced themselves ready to fight to the last; and Catherine, to her astonishment, saw them stronger than ever. An armistice was arranged, and the Edict of Saint-Germain (Aug. 8th, 1570) published the terms of peace. It was more favourable to the Huguenots than any earlier one. They were guaranteed freedom of conscience throughout the whole kingdom. They had the liberty of public worship in all places where it had been practised before the war, in the suburbs of at least two towns in every government, and in the residences of the great nobles. Four strongly fortified towns—La Rochelle, Montauban, Cognac, and La Charité—were to be held by them as pledges for at least two years. The King withdrew himself from the Spanish alliance and the international policy of the suppression of the Protestants. William of Orange and Ludovic of Nassau were declared to be his friends, in spite of the fact that they were the rebel subjects of Philip of Spain and had assisted the Huguenots in the late war.
After the peace of Saint-Germain, Coligny, now the only great leader left to the Huguenots, lived far from the Court at La Rochelle, acting as the guardian of the two young Bourbon Princes, Henry of Navarre and Henry of Condé. He occupied himself in securing for the Reformed the advantages they had won in the recent treaty of peace.
Catherine de’ Medici had begun to think of strengthening herself at home and abroad by matrimonial alliances. She wished one of her sons, whether the Duke of Anjou or the Duke of Alençon it mattered little to her, to marry Elizabeth of England, and her daughter Marguerite to espouse the young King of Navarre. Both designs meant that the Huguenots must be conciliated. They were in no hurry to respond to her advances. Both Coligny and Jeanne d’Albret kept themselves at a distance from the Court. Suddenly the young King, Charles IX., seemed to awaken to his royal position. He had been hitherto entirely submissive to his mother, expending his energies now in hunting, now in lock-making; but, if one can judge from what awakened him, cherishing a sullen grudge against Philip of Spain and his pretensions to guide the policy of Roman Catholic Europe.
Pope Pius V. had made Cosmo de’ Medici, the ruler of Florence, a Grand Duke, and Philip of Spain and Maximilian of Austria had protested. Cosmo sent an agent to win the German Protestants to side with him against Maximilian, and to engage the Dutch Protestants to make trouble in the Netherlands. Charles saw the opportunity of gratifying his grudge, and entered eagerly into the scheme. His wishes did not for the time interfere with his mother’s plans. If her marriage ideas were to succeed, she must break with Spain. Coligny saw the advantages which might come to his fellow-believers in the Netherlands—help in money from Italy and with troops from France. He resolved to make his peace with Catherine, respond to her advances, and betake himself to Court. He was graciously received, for Catherine wished to make use of him; was made a member of the Council, received a gift of one hundred and fifty thousand livres, and, although a heretic, was put into possession of an Abbey whose revenues amounted to twenty thousand livres a year. The Protestant chiefs were respectfully listened to when they stated grievances, and these were promptly put right, even at the risk of exasperating the Romanists. The somewhat unwilling consent of Jeanne d’Albret was won to the marriage of her son with Marguerite, and she herself came to Paris to settle the terms of contract. There she was seized with pleurisy, and died—an irreparable loss to the Protestant cause. Catherine’s home policy had been successful.
But Elizabeth of England was not to be enticed either into a French marriage or a stable French alliance, and Catherine de’ Medici saw that her son’s scheme might lead to France being left to confront Spain alone; and the Spain of the sixteenth century played the part of Russia in the end of the nineteenth—fascinating the statesmen of the day with its gloomy, mysterious, incalculable power. She felt that she must detach Charles at whatever cost from his scheme of flouting Philip by giving assistance to the Protestants of the Low Countries. Coligny was in her way—recognised to be the greatest statesman in France, enthusiastically bent on sending French help to his struggling co-religionists, and encouraging Charles IX. Coligny must be removed. The Guises were at deadly feud with him, and would be useful in putting him out of the way. The Ambassador of Florence reported significantly conferences between Catherine and the Duchess de Nemours, the mother of the Guises (July 23rd, 1572). The Queen had secret interviews with Maureval, a professional bravo, who drew a pension as “tueur du Roy.”
Nothing could be done until Henry, now King of Navarre by his mother’s death, was safely married to Marguerite. The wedding took place on August 18th, 1572. On Friday (Aug. 22nd), between ten and eleven o’clock, Coligny left the Louvre to return to his lodging. The assassin was stationed in a house belonging to a retainer of the Guises, at a grated window concealed by a curtain. The Admiral was walking slowly, reading a letter. Suddenly a shot carried away the index finger of his right hand and wounded his left arm. He calmly pointed to the window from whence the shot had come; and some of his suite rushed to the house, but found nothing but a smoking arquebus. The news reached the King when he was playing tennis. He became pallid, threw down his racquet, and went to his rooms.
Catherine closeted herself with the Duke of Anjou to discuss a situation which was fraught with terror.[219]
Paris was full of Huguenot gentlemen, drawn from all parts of the country for the wedding of their young chief with the Princess Marguerite. They rushed to the house in which Coligny lay. The young King of Navarre and his cousin, Henry de Condé, went to the King to demand justice, which Charles promised would be promptly rendered. Coligny asked to see the King, who proposed to go at once. Catherine feared to leave the two alone, and accompanied him, attended by a number of her most trusty adherents. Even the Duke of Guise was there. The King by Coligny’s bedside swore again with a great oath that he would avenge the outrage in a way that it would never be forgotten. A commission was appointed to inquire into the affair, and they promptly discovered that retainers of the Guises were implicated. If the investigations were pursued in the King’s temper, Guise would probably seek to save himself by revealing Catherine’s share in the attempted assassination. She became more and more a prey to terror. The Huguenots grew more and more violent. At last Catherine, whether on her own initiative or prompted by others will never be known, believed that she could only save herself by a prompt and thorough massacre of the Huguenots, gathered in unusual numbers in Paris.[220]
She summoned a council (Aug. 23rd), at which were present, so far as is known, the Duke of Anjou, her favourite son, afterwards Henry III., Marshal Tavannes, Nevers, Nemours (the stepfather of the Guises), Birago (Chancellor), the Count de Retz, and the Chevalier d’Angoulême—four of them Italians. They were unanimous in advising an instant massacre. Tavannes and Nevers, it is said, pled for and obtained the lives of the two young Bourbons, the King of Navarre and the Prince de Condé. The Count de Retz, who was a favourite with Charles, was engaged to win the King’s consent by appealing to his fears, and by telling him that his mother and brother were as deeply implicated as Guise.
Night had come down before the final resolution was taken; but the fanatical and bloodthirsty mob of Paris might be depended upon. At the last moment, Tavannes (the son) tells us in his Memoirs, Catherine wished to draw back, but the others kept her firm. The Duke of Guise undertook to slay Coligny. The Admiral was run through with a pike, and the body tossed out of the window into the courtyard where Guise was waiting. At the Louvre the young Bourbon Princes were arrested, taken to the King, and given their choice between death and the Mass. The other Huguenot gentlemen who were in the Louvre were slain. In the morning the staircases, balls, and anti-chambers of the Palace were deeply stained with blood. When the murders had been done in the Louvre, the troops divided into parties and went to seek other victims. Almost all the Huguenot gentlemen on the north side of the river were slain, and all in the Quartier Latin. But some who lodged on the south side (among them Montgomery, and Jean de Ferrières, the Vidame de Chartres) escaped.
Orders were sent to complete the massacre in the provinces. At Orléans the slaughter lasted five days, and Protestants were slain in numbers at Meaux, Troyes, Rouen, Lyons, Toulouse, Bordeaux, and in many other places. The total number of victims has been variously estimated. Sully, the Prime Minister of Henry IV., who had good means of knowing, says that seventy thousand perished. Several thousands were slain in Paris alone.
The news was variously received by Roman Catholic Europe. The German Romanists, including the Emperor, were not slow to express their disapprobation. But Rome was illuminated in honour of the event, a medal was struck to commemorate the Hugonotorum Strages,[221] and Cardinal Orsini was sent to convey to the King and Queen Mother the congratulations of the Pope and the College of Cardinals. Philip of Spain was delighted, and is said to have laughed outright for the first and last time in his life. He congratulated the son on having such a mother, and the mother on having such a son.
Catherine herself believed that the massacre had ended all her troubles. The Huguenots had been annihilated, she thought; and it is reported that when she saw Henry of Navarre bowing to the altar she burst out into a shrill laugh.
Catherine’s difficulties were not ended. It was not so easy to exterminate the Huguenots. Most of the leaders had perished, but the people remained, cowed for a time undoubtedly, but soon to regain their courage. The Protestants held the strongholds of La Rochelle and Sancerre, the one on the coast and the other in central France. The artisans and the small shopkeepers insisted that there should be no surrender. The sailors of La Rochelle fraternised with the Sea-Beggars of Brill, and waged an implacable sea-war against the ships of Spain. Nimes and Montauban closed their gates against the soldiers of the King. Milhaud, Aubenas, Privas, Mirabel, Anduze, Sommières, and other towns of the Viverais and of the Cevennes became cities of refuge. All over France, the Huguenots, although they had lost their leaders, kept together, armed themselves, communicated with each other, maintained their religious services—though compelled generally to meet at night.
The attempt to capture these Protestant strongholds made the Fourth Religious War. La Rochelle was invested, beat back many assaults, was blockaded and endured famine, and in the end compelled its enemies to retire from its walls. Sancerre was less fortunate. After the failure of an attempt to take it by assault, La Châtre, the general of the besieging army, blockaded the town in the closest fashion. The citizens endured all the utmost horrors of famine. Five hundred adults and all the children under twelve years of age died of hunger. “Why weep,” said a boy of ten, “to see me die of hunger? I do not ask bread, mother: I know that you have none. Since God wills that I die, thus we must accept it cheerfully. Was not that good man Lazarus hungry? Have I not so read in the Bible?” The survivors surrendered: their lives were spared; and on payment of a ransom of forty thousand livres the town was not pillaged.
The war ended with the peace of Rochelle (July 1573), when liberty of conscience was accorded to all, but the right of public worship was permitted only to Rochelle, Nimes, Montauban, and in the houses of some of the principal Protestant nobles. These terms were hard in comparison with the rights which had been won before the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew; but the Huguenots had reason for rejoicing. Their cause was still alive. Neither war, nor massacre, nor frauds innumerable had made any impression on the great mass of the French Protestants.
The peace declared by the treaty of La Rochelle did not last long, and indeed was never universal. The Protestants of the South used it to prepare for a renewal of conflict. They remained under arms, perfecting their military organisation. They divided the districts which they controlled into regular governments, presided over by councils whose members were elected and were the military leaders of a Protestant nation for the time being separate from the kingdom of France. They imposed taxes on Romanists and Protestants, and confiscated the ecclesiastical revenues. They were able to stock their strongholds with provisions and munitions of war, and maintain a force of twenty thousand men ready for offensive action.
Their councils at Nimes and Montauban formulated the conditions under which they would submit to the French Government. Nimes sent a deputation to the King furnished with a series of written articles, in which they demanded the free exercise of their religion in every part of France, the maintenance at royal expense of Huguenot garrisons in all the strongholds held by them, and the cession of two strong posts to be cities of refuge in each of the provinces of France. The demands of the council of Montauban went further. They added that the King must condemn the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, execute justice on those who had perpetrated it, reverse the sentences passed on all the victims, approve of the Huguenot resistance, and declare that he praised la singulière et admirable bonté de Dieu who had still preserved his Protestant subjects. They required also that the rights of the Protestant minority in France should be guaranteed by the Protestant States of Europe—by the German Protestant Princes, by Switzerland, England, and Scotland. They dated their document significantly August 24th—the anniversary of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. The deputies refused to discuss these terms; they simply presented them. The King might accept them; he might refuse them. They were not to be modified.
Catherine was both furious and confounded at the audacity of these “rascals” (ces misérables), as she called them. She declared that Condé, if he had been at the head of twenty thousand cavalry and fifty thousand infantry, would never have asked for the half of what these articles demanded. The Queen Mother found herself face to face with men on whom she might practise all her arts in vain, very different from the debonnaire Huguenot princes whom she had been able to cajole with feminine graces and enervate with her “Flying Squadron.” These farmers, citizens, artisans knew her and her Court, and called things by rude names. She herself was a “murderess,” and her “Flying Squadron” were “fallen women.” She had cleared away the Huguenot aristocracy to find herself in presence of the Protestant democracy.
The worst of it was that she dared not allow the King to give them a decided answer. A new force had been rising in France since Saint Bartholomew’s Day—the Politiques,[222] as they were called. They put France above religious parties, and were weary of the perpetual bloodshed; they said that “a man does not cease to be a citizen because he is excommunicated”; they declared that “with the men they had lost in the religious wars they could have driven Spain out of the Low Countries.” They chafed under the rule of “foreigners,” of the Queen Mother and her Italians, of the Guises and their Jesuits. They were prepared to unite with the Huguenots in order to give France peace. They only required leaders who could represent the two sides of the coalition. If the Duke of Alençon, the youngest brother of the King, and Henry of Navarre could escape from the Court and raise their standards together, they were prepared to join them.
Charles IX. died on Whitsunday 1574 of a disease which the tainted blood of the Valois and the Médicis induced. The memories of Saint Bartholomew also hastened his death. Private memoirs of courtiers tell us that in his last weeks of fever he had frightful dreams by day and by night. He saw himself surrounded by dead bodies; hideous faces covered with blood thrust themselves forward towards his. The crime had not been so much his as his mother’s, but he had something of a conscience, and felt its burden. “Et ma Mère” was his last word—an appeal to his mother, whom he feared more than his God.
On Charles’ death, Henry, Duke of Anjou, succeeded as Henry III.[223] He was in Poland—king of that distracted country. He abandoned his crown, evaded his subjects, and reached France in September 1574. His advent did not change matters much. Catherine still ruled in reality. The war went on with varying success in different parts of France. But the Duke of Anjou (the Duke of Alençon took this title on his brother’s accession) succeeded in escaping from Court (Sept. 15th, 1575), and the King of Navarre also managed to elude his guardians (Feb. 3rd, 1576). Anjou joined the Prince of Condé, who was at the head of a mixed force of Huguenots and Politiques. Henry of Navarre went into Poitou and remained there. His first act was to attend the Protestant worship, and immediately afterwards he renounced his forced adhesion to Romanism. He did not join any of the parties in the field, but sent on his own demands to be forwarded to the King along with those of the confederates, adding to them the request that the King should aid him to recover the Spanish part of Navarre which had been forcibly annexed to Spain by Ferdinand of Aragon.
The escape of the two Princes led in the end to the “Peace of Monsieur,” the terms of which were published in the Edict of Beaulieu (May 6th, 1576). The right of public worship was given to Protestants in all towns and places within the kingdom of France, Paris only and towns where the Court was residing being excepted. Protestants received eight strongholds, partly as cities of refuge and partly as guarantees. Chambers of Justice “mi-parties” (composed of both Protestants and Roman Catholics) were established in each Parliament. The King actually apologised for the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew, and declared that it had happened to his great regret; and all sentences pronounced on the victims were reversed. This edict was much more favourable to the Protestants than any that had gone before. Almost all the Huguenots’ demands had been granted.
Neither the King, who felt himself humiliated, nor the Romanists, who were indignant, were inclined to submit long to the terms of peace. Some of the Romanist leaders had long seen that the Huguenot enthusiasm and their organisation were enabling an actual minority to combat, on more than equal terms, a Romanist majority. Some of the provincial leaders had been able to inspire their followers with zeal, and to bind them together in an organisation by means of leagues. These provincial leagues suggested a universal organisation, which was fostered by Henry, Duke of Guise, and by Catherine de’ Medici. This was the first form of that celebrated League which gave twenty years’ life to the civil war in France. The Duke of Guise published a declaration in which he appealed to all France to associate together in defence of the Holy Church, Catholic and Roman, and of their King Henry III., whose authority and rights were being taken from him by rebels. All good Catholics were required to join the association, and to furnish arms for the accomplishment of its designs. Those who refused were to be accounted enemies. Neutrals were to be harassed with “toutes sortes d’offences et molestes”; open foes were to be fought strenuously. Paris was easily won to the League, and agents were sent abroad throughout France to enrol recruits. Henry III. himself was enrolled, and led the movement.
The King had summoned the States General to meet at Blois and hold their first session there on Dec. 6th, 1576. The League had attended to the elections, and the Estates declared unanimously for unity of religion. Upon this the King announced that the Edict of Beaulieu had been extracted from him by force, and that he did not intend to keep it. Two of the Estates, the Clergy and the Nobles, were prepared to compel unity at any cost. The Third Estate was divided. A minority wished the unity brought about “by gentle and pacific ways”; the majority asked for the immediate and complete suppression of the public worship of the Protestants, and for the banishment of all ministers, elders, and deacons.
These decisions of the States General were taken by the Huguenots as a declaration of war, and they promptly began to arm themselves. It was the first war of the League, and the sixth of Religion. It ended with the Peace of Bergerac (Sept. 15th, 1578), in which the terms granted to the Huguenots were rather worse than those of the Edict of Beaulieu. A seventh war ensued, terminated by the Peace of Fleix (Nov. 1580).
The Duke of Anjou died (June 10th, 1584), and the King had no son. The heir to the throne, according to the Salic Law, which excluded females, was Henry of Navarre, a Protestant. On the death of Anjou, Henry III. found himself face to face with this fact. He knew and felt that he was the guardian of the dynastic rights of the French throne, and that his duty was to acknowledge Henry of Navarre as his successor. He accordingly sent one of his favourites, Éperon, to prevail upon Henry of Navarre to become a Roman Catholic and come to Court. Henry refused to do either.
Meanwhile the Romanist nobles were taking their measures. Some of them met at Nancy towards the close of 1584 to reconstruct the League. They resolved to exclude the Protestant Bourbons from the throne, and proclaim the Cardinal Bourbon as the successor of Henry III. They hoped to obtain a Bull from the Pope authorising this selection; and they received the support of Philip of Spain in the Treaty of Joinville (Dec. 31st, 1584).
Paris did not wait for the sanction or recommendation of the nobles. A contemporary anonymous pamphlet, which is the principal source of our information, describes how four men, three of them ecclesiastics, met together to found the League of Paris. They discussed the names of suitable members, and, having selected a nucleus of trustworthy associates, they proceeded to elect a secret council of eight or nine who were to direct and control everything. The active work of recruiting was superintended by six associates, of whom one, the Sieur de la Rocheblond, was a member of the secret council. Soon all the most fanatical elements of the population of Paris belonged to this secret society, sworn to obey blindly the orders of the mysterious council who from a concealed background directed everything. The corporations of the various trades were won to the League; the butchers of Paris, for example, furnished a band of fifteen hundred resolute and dangerous men. Trusty emissaries were sent to the large towns of France, and secret societies on the plan of the one in Paris were formed and affiliated with the mother-society in Paris, all bound to execute the orders of the secret council of the capital. The Sieur de la Rocheblond, whose brain had planned the whole organisation, was the medium of communication with the Romanist Princes; and through him Henry, Duke of Guise, le Balafré as he was called from a scar on his face, was placed in command of this new and formidable instrument, to be wielded as he thought best for the extirpation of the Protestantism of France.
The King had published an edict forbidding all armed assemblies, and this furnished the Leaguers with a pretext for sending forth their manifesto: Déclaration des causes qui ont meu Monseigneur le Cardinal de Bourbon et les Pairs, Princes, Seigneurs, villes et communautez catholiques de ce royaume de France: De s’opposer à ceux qui par tous moyens s’efforcent de subvertir la religion catholique et l’Estat (30 Mars 1585). It was a skilfully drafted document, setting forth the danger to religion in the foreground, but touching on all the evils and jealousies which had arisen from the favouritism of Henry III. Guise at once began to enrol troops and commence open hostilities; and almost all the great towns of France and most of the provinces in the North and in the Centre declared for the League.
Henry III. was greatly alarmed. With the help of his mother he negotiated a treaty with the Leaguers, in which he promised to revoke all the earlier Edicts of Toleration, to prohibit the exercise of Protestant public worship throughout the kingdom, to banish the ministers, and to give all Protestants the choice between becoming Roman Catholics or leaving the realm within six months (Treaty of Nemours, July 7th, 1585). These terms were embodied in an edict dated July 18th, 1585. The Pope, Sixtus V., thereupon published a Bull, which declared that the King of Navarre and the Prince of Condé, being heretics, were incapable of succeeding to the throne of France, deprived them of their estates, and absolved all their vassals from allegiance. The King of Navarre replied to “Monsieur Sixtus, self-styled Pope, saving His Holiness,” and promised to avenge the insult done to himself and to the Parlements of France.
“The war of the three Henrys,” from Henry III., Henry of Guise, and Henry of Navarre, began in the later months of 1585. It was in some respects a triangular fight; for although the King and the Guises were both ostensibly combating the Huguenots, the Leaguers, headed by Guises, and the Loyalists, were by no means whole-hearted allies. It began unfavourably for the Protestants, but as it progressed the skilful generalship of the King of Navarre became more and more apparent—at Coutras (Oct. 20th, 1587) he almost annihilated the royalist army. The King made several ineffectual attempts to win the Protestant leader to his side. Navarre would never consent to abjure his faith, and Henry III. made that an absolute condition.
While the war was going on in the west and centre of France, the League was strengthening its organisation and perfecting its plans. It had become more and more hostile to Henry III., and had become a secret revolutionary society. It drafted a complete programme for the immediate future. The cities and districts of France which felt themselves specially threatened by the Huguenots were to beseech the King to raise levies for their protection. If he refused or procrastinated, they were to raise the troops themselves, to be commanded by officers in whom the League had confidence. They could then compel the King to place himself at the head of this army of the Leaguers, or show himself to be their open enemy by refusing. If the King died childless, the partisans of the League were to gather at Orléans and Paris, and were there to elect the Cardinal de Bourbon as the King of France. The Pope and the King of Spain were to be at once informed, when it had been arranged that His Holiness would send his benediction, and that His Majesty would assist them with troops and supplies. A new form of oath was imposed on all the associates of the League. They were to swear allegiance to the King so long as he should show himself to be a good Catholic and refrained from favouring heretics. These instructions were sent down from the mother-society in Paris to the provinces, and the affiliated societies were recommended to keep in constant communication with Paris. Madame de Montpensier, sister to the Guises, at the same time directed the work of a band of preachers whose business it was to inflame the minds of the people in the capital and the provinces against the King and the Huguenots. She boasted that she did more work for the cause than her brothers were doing by the sword.
The Guises, with this force behind them, tried to force the King to make new concessions—to publish the decisions of the Council of Trent in France (a thing that had not been done); to establish the Inquisition in France; to order the execution of all Huguenot prisoners who would not promise to abjure their religion; and to remove from the armies all officers of whom the League did not approve. The mother-society in Paris prepared for his refusal by organising a secret revolutionary government for the city. It was called “The Sixteen,” being one for each of the sixteen sections of Paris. This government was under the orders of Guise, who communicated with them through an agent of his called Mayneville. Plot after plot was made to get possession of the King’s person; and but for the activity and information of Nicholas Poulain, an officer of police who managed to secure private information, they would have been successful.