Francis II., husband of the beautiful and unfortunate Mary Stuart, had only reached his sixteenth year when he ascended the throne (10th July, 1559).[88] On the very day of his father’s funeral he gratified his mother’s ruling passion by assuring her that all authority should be in her hands, and that she should administer the government in his name. But she had to hold her own against unscrupulous rivals; and in those rude days the spindle had very little chance against the sword, unless it were aided by dissimulation. We shall see that Catherine met force with craft, proving herself at times more than a match for all her rivals. She soon found that she had no chance with the queen-consort, who used all her influence in behalf of the house of Lorraine. In a letter to her daughter Elizabeth she says: “God has deprived me of your father, whom I loved so dearly, as you well know, and has left me with three children and in a divided kingdom. I have no one in whom I can trust: all have some private end to serve.” Mary Stuart behaved to her with all the insolence of youth and beauty, calling her a Florentine shop-keeper,[89] and Catherine returned contempt for contempt.

It will be impossible to understand the stormy period upon which we are now entering, unless we know something of the parties into which France, as well as the court, was divided, and of the individuals at their head. There were in reality only two parties, but it will be more convenient to consider them as represented by the four houses of Guise, Bourbon, Montmorency, and Chatillon. The most formidable of these claimants of the government was the first—the family of Guise, to which Mary Stuart belonged on her mother’s side. The power of this house dates from the reign of Francis I. Genealogists delight to trace its origin back to Charlemagne, and even to Priam, King of Troy: with about equal truth in both cases. The chief of the family was Claude, son of that Réné, Duke of Lorraine, who defeated and slew Charles the Bold under the walls of Nancy. Being a younger son, he had gone to the French court in search of fortune, and the search was not in vain. He married Antoinette of Bourbon, a descendant of Louis IX., and dying, left six sons and four daughters, and an income of 600,000 livres, about equivalent to 160,000l. sterling. The eldest of his sons was Francis, Duke of Guise, now in his fortieth year, a skillful, violent, and unscrupulous soldier. He kept up an almost royal establishment; and when his steward represented to him that the best way of getting out of his pecuniary embarrassments would be to retrench his expenditure, and that he would do well to dismiss a number of poor gentlemen who lived at his expense, he replied: “It is true I do not want them, but they want me.” He was exceedingly popular in Paris, ever ready to listen to the complaints of the humblest citizen; and was beloved by his soldiers, for he never failed to recompense any remarkable exploit. After the surprise of Calais he appointed one Captain Gourdan to be governor, passing over many officers of higher rank; and when these murmured at the preference, the duke justified his choice. “Captain Gourdan is very useful,” he said, “to guard the place he helped to take, and where he left one of his legs during the assault. You have two legs, gentlemen, with which you can go and seek your fortune elsewhere.” He was cool in the midst of danger, brave as his own sword, and even his name was a terror to his enemies. At Terouenne, the Spaniards were checked in the very moment of victory by shouts of “Guise! Guise!” Above all, the family of Lorraine professed to be the champions of orthodoxy, and Duke Francis in particular seems to have entertained an insurmountable aversion for heresy in every form. He possessed almost every advantage that fortune can shower upon a man. He was above the middle height, with oval face, large eyes, and dark complexion, but his beard and hair were reddened by exposure. He was not a fluent speaker, although he could use the right word at the right time. He married Anne of Este, daughter of Renée of France, granddaughter of Louis XII., and first cousin of Henry II.—a connection which will partly account for the ambitious schemes of his son.

The other members of the Lorraine family were Charles, the cardinal; Claude, Duke of Aumale, who married Louisa de Brézé, eldest daughter of Diana of Poitiers; Francis, grand-prior of Malta; Louis, Archbishop of Sens and afterward cardinal; and René, Marquis of Elbœuf; besides three sisters, one of whom married, first, Louis of Orleans, and second, James V. of Scotland, to whom she bore a daughter, the unhappy Mary Stuart of Scottish history. When they were at court, the four younger brothers usually waited upon the cardinal at his rising, and then all five proceeded to pay their respects to the duke, by whom they were conducted to the king.

Charles, better known as the Cardinal of Lorraine, was one of the wealthiest ecclesiastics of the day. In addition to his share of his father’s large fortune, he possessed benefices yielding him a yearly income of 300,000 livres.[90] This prelate, whom Pius V. called “the Ultramontane Pope,” was a man of unbounded ambition, strong passions, great craft, and such fertility of expedients, that his enemies declared he must have a familiar spirit at his elbow. He was a graceful speaker, and of goodly presence,[91] but such an arrant coward, that (like Horace) he used to make a jest of it. Charles IX. gave him permission to be attended by an armed guard even to the steps of the altar, intermixing the smell of gunpowder with the odor of incense.[92] His character has probably been much distorted. He had enemies everywhere, and, in an unscrupulous age, slander and falsehood were ready weapons to damage a rival. He was not so bad as many churchmen of his time; for if he was profligate, he was not profligate openly. He kept neither hawks nor hounds; he sang mass often, fasted regularly, wore sackcloth, and always said grace before his meals. Claude de Saintes, who was in almost daily attendance upon him for sixteen years, speaks of the mortifications of his life, and denies his excessive timidity.[93] Contarini, the Venetian ambassador, extols his virtuous habits, so unlike those of other French cardinals; and Giovanni Soranzo, writing seven years later (1558) says: “He is not much beloved; he is far from truthful, naturally deceitful and covetous, but full of religion.”[94] The religion thus praised was one of forms only.

There is a letter of his in the public library at Rouen, addressed to the French embassador to the court of Spain, in which, speaking of his retirement to his diocese of Rheims during the season of Lent, he says: “I have nothing to write about but prayers and preaching, in which I am busied, instructing my little flock, whereat I assure you I take as much pleasure as I once did in the cares and toils of court, and I feel such sweetness and repose, that the desire to return to court is far from me.”[95] This “world forgetting by the world forgot” is too common with statesmen under a cloud to be taken literally. The cardinal was vindictive as churchmen (and women) alone can be, and so violent that he often marred his brother’s plans. The intoxication of prosperity had made him intolerable.[96] Nor did his religion prevent him from being covetous: he has been charged with robbing his uncle’s creditors by taking his property, and with appropriating the estate of Dampierre, which belonged to Treasurer Duval; that of Meudon, which belonged to Cardinal Sanguin-Meudon; and that of Marchais, which belonged to the Sire of Longueval. He also took up the mortgaged city of Chevreuse without paying for it; and rich as he had become through these exactions, he never paid his debts. He was a shameless pluralist, holding at once the archiepiscopal sees of Lyons, Rheims, Sens, and Narbonne, the bishoprics of Metz, Toul, Verdun, Terouenne, Luçon, Alby, and Valence, and the abbeys of Fécamp, Clugny, and Marmoutier. The last-named abbey he obtained by force. Hurant de Chiverny being unwilling to resign, the cardinal shut him up in the Bastille, where he died, and then took his abbey. In despite of his greediness the French clergy had a boundless devotion for him.[97]

Among the chief adherents of the Lorraine party were the Duke of Nemours, Brissac, and Jacques d’Albon, Marshal of St. André. The latter had been a great favorite with Henry II., who loaded him with presents. He was brave, insinuating in address, magnificent in disposition, greedy, and always in want of money. He received the order of the Garter from Edward VI., to whom he had been sent with the decoration of St. Michael.

Another competitor for the government was Anthony of Bourbon, first prince of the blood. He traced his descent from Louis IX., who left two sons, Philip III. and Robert: from the former descended the house of Valois, from the latter the house of Bourbon. Of this there were two branches—Vendome and Montpensier. Anthony was the head of the elder branch, but his younger brother, Louis of Condé, was its most distinguished member. The family had lost much of its wealth and influence—especially among the populace, who are always the first to take up and the last to discard a personal prejudice—in consequence of the treason of the Constable of Bourbon in the reign of Francis I., but they were still powerful enough to venture to aspire to the crown. Anthony, Duke of Vendome, as he was generally styled before his marriage with Joan of Navarre,[98] was frank and affable, but irresolute and deficient in moral courage; he was of noble presence, fond of dress, and the “mirror of fashion” among the courtiers. Brave in the field, he wanted energy in the council-chamber; he was vacillating in religious principles, and of loose private morals. Thus he became a mere tool in the hands of others, and though trusted by no one, was courted for the splendor and prestige of his name. His only aim in life seemed to be to exchange his petty nominal sovereignty of Navarre for a real kingdom no matter where.

Louis, Prince of Condé, now in his twenty-ninth year, and the youngest of the family, was the reverse of his brother Anthony. High-shouldered, short, ungraceful, and at first sight ill-adapted either for court or camp, he shone in both. He had shared with the Duke of Guise the honor of defending Metz, and had rallied the flying troops after the defeat at St. Quentin. From policy he seems early to have adopted the Reformed religion, though he took no pains to live up to its principles. The great Reformed party was to him a means of power and advancement. By his marriage with Eleanor de Roye, the richest heiress in France, he united against the Guises the powerful houses of Montmorency, Chatillon, and Rochefoucault—the latter being connected with the royal line of Navarre.

A third brother of this family was Charles, Archbishop of Rouen and Cardinal of Bourbon, a weak man, not overburdened with sense, who adhered to the Church of Rome. To the younger branch of the same house belonged two brothers, the Duke of Montpensier and the Prince of Roche-sur-Yon, both inclined to the Reform.

But besides the Duke of Guise and Anthony of Navarre, there was a man of noble birth and large family influence—the representative of a great party in the kingdom—whom it was not safe to neglect. This was Gaspard de Coligny, Governor of Picardy, Admiral of France, and second son of the Count of Chatillon. The Chatillons were originally a sovereign house, and Gaspard’s father had been a marshal of France. He had married Louisa of Montmorency, sister to the constable, and thus became allied to one of the noblest houses in France. The eldest son of this marriage was Cardinal Odet, the youngest François de Chatillon, sieur of Andelot.[99] Gaspard, Count of Coligny, was born in 1518, and in his earlier years was very intimate with Francis of Guise (then Prince of Joinville). He was present at the battle of Renti, all the glory of which the Lorraine party wished to ascribe to Prince Francis. Coligny thought “he might have done better,” and this remark being exaggerated by false friends, the coolness already beginning to exist between them, and which was the work of Diana of Poitiers, gradually increased until they became totally estranged. The admiral was at one time a great favorite with Henry II. and the sharer of all his pleasures. He was Governor of the Isle of France, captain of a hundred men-at-arms (an expensive honor), and knight of the order of St. Michael. He had been made prisoner at the battle of St. Quentin (1557), and it was during the consequent enforced retirement from public life that he strengthened those religious convictions which he had first learned at his mother’s knee. Andelot, the younger brother, was the first convert to the new opinions. Made prisoner in 1551, and detained in the castle of Milan until 1556, he employed his long captivity in studying the works of Calvin: “Such are the sad fruits of leisure and idleness,” says Brantome with a sigh. He was taken with his brother at the siege of St. Quentin, but made his escape, and was present at the surprise of Calais. When he visited his vast estates in Brittany, he encouraged two Reformed ministers in his suite to preach openly wherever he halted, thus laying the foundations of many a Christian church in the north-west of France. Returning to the court where he was in high favor with Henry II., he was denounced by the Cardinal of Lorraine as a heretic and impudent violator of the edicts. To the king’s questions Andelot replied that he had never gone to the Pré aux Clercs, although the religionists did nothing there but sing the Psalms of David, and offer up prayers for the welfare of the king and the safety of the kingdom. He confessed that he had forwarded books of consolation to his brother the admiral, and had countenanced the preaching of a good and sound doctrine, deduced from Holy Scripture. “Your Majesty,” he continued, “has loaded me with such favor that I have spared neither body nor goods in your service, and I will continue to spare neither so long as I live. But having thus done my duty, your Majesty will not think it strange if I employ the rest of my time in caring for my own salvation. It is many years since I have been to mass, and I shall never go again. I entreat your Majesty to leave my conscience alone, and permit me to serve you with my body and goods, which are wholly at your disposal.” Henry II., who could bear no contradiction, flew into a passion, and seizing him by the collar of St. Michael that was round his neck, exclaimed: “But I did not give you this to use it thus—keeping away from mass and refusing to follow my religion.” “I did not know then, what it was to be a Christian,” answered Andelot, “or I should not have accepted it on such conditions.” Henry could contain himself no longer. He seized a platter which lay before him and threw it across the table, but it struck the dauphin; he then drew his sword upon Andelot, who was hurried away by the guards and afterward shut up in the castle of Melun. From prison he wrote to the church of Paris: “Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life or by death. For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” He also addressed a letter to the king: “Sire,” he wrote, “if I have done any thing to displease you, I beseech you in all humility to forgive me, and to believe that, the obedience I owe to God and my conscience excepted, you can command nothing in which I will not expose my goods, my body, and my life. And what I ask of you, Sire, is not, thanks be to God, through fear of death, and still less from a desire to recover my liberty, for I hold nothing so dear that I would not resign it willingly for the salvation of my soul and God’s glory.” He was alike unmoved by the tender entreaties of his wife, Claude de Rieux, and by the prudent advice of his brother the cardinal, who urged him to satisfy Henry II. if it were only by an apparent submission. At length, however, he consented to hold a conference with a learned doctor of the Sorbonne, and to hear mass in his presence, but without previous abjuration. Calvin, who had written exhorting Andelot to be firm, now reproached him for his weakness; but it was easy for the Reformer of Geneva, who was in a place of safety, and who had never been tested by the fires of persecution, to censure one whose faith was weak, and whose affectionate, loyal nature was worked upon by those who were dearest to him.

But Andelot’s elder brother, Gaspard, was made of sterner stuff. While in prison the Bible was his constant companion and chief study. Calvin, who had probably heard of his conversion through Andelot, wrote to him: “I shall use no long exhortation to confirm you in patience, for I have heard that our gracious God hath so strengthened you by the virtue of his Spirit, that I have rather occasion to return thanks to him than to excite you more. Only I would pray you to remember that God, by sending you this affliction, hath wished to draw you out of the crowd, that you may the better listen to him.” In the end, Gaspard adopted the Reformed creed, and became the idol of the Reformed party. In his wife, Charlotte de Laval, he found an affectionate sympathizer in his religious opinions, and a support during many an hour of distress. He was of the middle height, and well-proportioned; he stooped a little as if in meditation, and his countenance was always calm and serious, except on the battle-field, where (as we are told) his face lighted up, and he would chew the tooth-pick which he used to carry in his mouth.[100]

His intrepidity was remarkable, even among the fearless men of his day. “Do not go to Blois to the king and the queen-mother,” his friends said to him; “be sure there is some plot at the bottom.” “Yes, I will go,” he answered; “it is better to die by one bold stroke than to live a hundred years in fear.” He was not a fortunate commander, but was so fertile in resource, and so rapidly did he reorganize his beaten troops, that he was said to be more formidable after a defeat than before it.[101]

At the death of Henry II. the Constable Montmorency was at the head of the government, but he now learned that his influence had expired with his old master. When a deputation from the Parliament of Paris waited upon Francis II. to congratulate him on his accession, he told them that he had selected his uncles the Cardinal of Lorraine and the Duke of Guise to conduct the public affairs, and that to them they must apply in future. Montmorency struggled for awhile, but finding no support, he acted upon the king’s suggestion and retired to his estate at Chantilly. He was deprived of the high-stewardship of the household, and the office was conferred on the Duke of Guise, who, besides assuming the war department, was lord chamberlain and master of the hounds. The department of finance was assigned to the cardinal, and thus the two brothers disposed of all France. “Not a crown could be spent or a soldier moved,” says Buchanan, “without their consent.”[102] Catherine sympathized with Montmorency in his disgrace. In a letter to him she says: “I very much wish your health might permit you to remain at court; for then I believe things would be better conducted than now, and that you would aid me to deliver the king from tutelage, for you have always desired that your master should be obeyed by all his subjects.”

The constable, foreseeing the change that was likely to take place in the new reign, had profited by the last few days of the late king’s life, to urge Anthony of Navarre to come to court and assert his rights as prince of the blood to be one of the new council. A meeting of the chiefs of the Bourbon, or opposition, party was accordingly summoned at Vendome to decide on the line of conduct to be pursued. Condé, Coligny, Andelot, the Vidame of Chartres (Francis of Vendome), and Prince Porcien, all relations and friends, attended the summons. In the interval the Guises had been installed in office, and the question now arose, how their government should be resisted. Condé, Andelot, and the Vidame were for war; the admiral advised delay, as the queen-mother would be sure to join them, if she found securities on their side, and in that case the government must fall. Moderate counsels prevailed, and Anthony, after much vacillation, started for the court; but Francis II. refused to see him except in the presence of his ministers, who offered him every indignity. At length Condé joined him, and instilling some of his own spirit into his brother, urged him to assert his claim. It was granted after some little demur; but he was too much in the way, and to get rid of him honorably he was commissioned to escort the Princess Elizabeth to Spain. He fell into the trap so cunningly laid for him, and the Guises were once more sole masters. Catherine was still ostensibly consulted, and the royal edicts continued to run in this form: “It being the good pleasure of my lady the queen-mother, We also approving the things which she advises, are content and command that,” etc.

Whatever little influence she possessed was exerted to drive her late rival Diana from court, and force her to disgorge much of her ill-gotten wealth. At her instance, the king wrote to the fallen favorite: “That in consequence of her evil influence (mali officii) over the late king his father, she deserved severe punishment; but, in his royal clemency, he would trouble her no farther, but she must return to him all the jewels that had been given her by the king his father.”[103]

The accession of the young king produced no amelioration in the condition of the Lutherans. “In the midst of all these great matters and business,” writes Throckmorton, “they here do not stay to make persecution and sacrifice of poor souls. The 12th of this month [July] two men and one woman were executed for religion.” This was a remnant of the last reign. That the new reign would not be more tolerant was shown by a proclamation issued the next day, “by sound of trumpet, that all such as should speak either against the Church or the religion now used in France, should be brought before the several bishops, and they to do execution upon them.”[104] The edict of Villars-Cotteret (4th September) forbade all “unlawful” meetings, whether by night or by day; the houses in which such meetings were held were to be pulled down, and the proprietors held to bail for their future good behavior. Another edict (that of Blois, November, 1559) punished all who attended the assemblies with death “without hope of pardon or mitigation.” By other decrees (13th November) a reward of 100 crowns and a free pardon were offered to any person who should give information of a secret meeting. Nor were these severe measures confined to Paris. On 23d September, 1559, the magistrates of Poitiers issued an order forbidding religious assemblies, enjoining all strangers to leave the town in twenty-four hours, and innkeepers to send in lists of the lodgers in their houses. There was to be no preaching in public or private, the citizens were to give neither fire nor water to the pastors whom any body might arrest, they were to be tried for sedition, and the lightest penalty was confiscation of goods.[105] The result was that the country was overrun with spies and informers, and the charge of heresy was often made the means of gratifying private revenge.

Meanwhile neither Henry’s death nor the assassination of President Minard by a man named Stuart,[106] had any power to suspend the trial of Du Bourg. He made use of all the forms of the court to find some loop-hole of escape, and lodged appeal after appeal, all of which were decided against him. At length, on the 23d of December, 1559, the long contest was brought to an end.[107] After sentence of death had been delivered, he said: “I am sent to the stake, because I will not confess that justification, grace, and sanctification are to be found elsewhere than in Christ. This is the cause of my death, that I have embraced the pure doctrine of the Gospel. Extinguish your fires and return unto the Lord with real newness of heart, that your sins may be blotted out. Let the wicked man forsake his way and turn unto the Lord. Think upon these things; I am going to my death.” So great were the apprehensions of the court of an attempt at rescue, that the streets were barricaded and lined with armed men, and nearly 600 soldiers were stationed round the Grève, the Tyburn of those days. Du Bourg met his fate like a Christian hero: on reaching the place of execution he said: “Six feet of earth for my body, and the boundless heaven for my soul, are the only possession I shall soon have.” Then turning to the spectators he said: “I am going to die, not because I am a thief and a murderer, but because I love the Gospel. I rejoice to give my life in so good a cause.” His last words were: “My God, my God, forsake me not, lest I forsake thee.” The executioner then adjusted the rope round his neck, uttered the terrible formula: Messire le roi vous salue, and Anne du Bourg was a corpse. His lifeless body was afterward burned to ashes. The royal historiographer, who rarely spares a heretic, writes amplifying the words of the centurion at the foot of the cross. “His execution inspired many persons with the conviction that the faith possessed by so good a man could not be wrong.”[108] Florimond de Remond, the historian of heresy, and at that time a young man, was an eye-witness of Du Bourg’s death. “We burst into tears (he says) in our colleges on returning from the execution, and pleaded his cause after his decease, cursing those unrighteous judges, who had so unjustly condemned him. His preaching at the gallows did more evil than a hundred ministers could have done.”[109] Chandieu, pastor of the church of Paris, shows us how it was that these executions made so many converts. “Most people like what they see hated with such extreme hatred. They think themselves fortunate in knowing what leads others to the gibbet, and return home from the public places edified by the constancy of those whom they have themselves reduced to ashes.”[110]

It is not necessary to dwell upon the sufferings or to count up the number of the victims. Regnier de la Planche describes from personal knowledge the lawless state of the capital. “From August to March there was nothing but arrests and imprisonments, sacking of houses, proclamations of outlawry, and executions of the members of the religion with cruel torments.”[111] Numbers hastened to escape from Paris, and sold their goods to procure the means of flight. The streets were filled with carts laden with furniture, the houses were abandoned to plunderers, the magistrates conniving at the wrong, so that “the poor became rich and the rich poor.” We need not point out what an incentive this was to denunciation, and how often men must have been condemned as heretics whose only fault was their wealth, or their having offended some neighbor. A remarkable passage from Theodore Beza shows how wide and general was the ruin caused by this terrorism. “Poor little children [the children of martyred Reformers], who had no bed but the flag-stones, went crying piteously through the streets with hunger, and yet no one dared relieve them, for fear they should be accused of heresy. So that they were less cared for than dogs.” The pettiest vexations were employed against the Reformers. Crosses and images, with tapers always burning before them, were set up at the corner of every street, and round them gathered a crowd of noisy worshipers, singing, praying, and beating their breasts. If any one refused to take off his hat as he passed, or to put money into the alms-box before the shrine, some dirty priest or monk would raise the cry of “heretic,” and the poor Reformer would be pelted, beaten, and perhaps dragged through the mire to prison. “Death was made a carnival,” says an eloquent Frenchman. It was indeed a show in which the mob—and the same mob reappeared in 1792—feasted their eyes on the sufferings of the Protestants, and often would not allow them to be strangled before they were burned, lest their agonies should be diminished. One Barbeville was thus tortured contrary to the sentence condemning him to be hanged first; but at the same time they rescued a thief from the gallows, “as if they desired to condemn Christ and deliver Barabbas.” To call a man “Lutheran” was to doom him to certain death, often too without any form of justice. By this lynch law many a man worked out his own private revenge: the debtor paid his creditor.[112] Even children dipped their hands in the martyrs’ blood and boasted of it.

The treaty of Cateau-Cambresis had left a number of soldiers of every rank without employment and without resources. There was a public debt of forty-eight million livres, the interest of which was paid with difficulty; the treasury was empty, and there were no ready means of filling it. Perhaps the persecution of the heretics, which was always attended with confiscation of property, may not have been entirely unconnected with the financial difficulties of the royal household. But there certainly was no money, and when the disbanded soldiers applied to the Cardinal of Lorraine for their arrears of pay, he not only threatened to hang them, but erected two gibbets before the gate of the palace of St. Germains, or, as others say, of Fontainebleau. It was a threat as unwise as it was cruel, and nearly cost the Guises very dear. The malcontent soldiery joined the persecuted Huguenots—each party feeling a common hatred against the “Lorrainers,” and resolved to get rid of their common enemy. It has been asserted, but without any solid grounds, that Catherine looked favorably on this coalition, she being equally desirous of freeing herself from both duke and cardinal. But, whatever she may have suspected, she certainly knew nothing of what was actually preparing. In these humaner and more civilized days, obnoxious ministers and administrators are got rid of by dismissal, or by a vote in Parliament: in ruder times they were removed by revolt or assassination. In the middle of the sixteenth century the government of France was a despotism moderated by the dagger. Even within a month of the death of Henry II. a union of the malcontents was meditated, the Reformed only holding back until they should be assured of its lawfulness. They consulted Calvin, who declared that “it would be better they should all perish a hundred times over rather than expose the name of Christianity and of the Gospel to the disgrace of rebellion and bloodshed.” They were more successful with some German divines, who thought “they might lawfully oppose the usurpation of the Guises, even with arms, if the princes of the blood, their lawful magistrates by birth, or even one of them, should be at their head.”

The discontent increased and grew bolder every day. “We will go and complain to the king,” said the oppressed peasantry. As early as the 15th November, 1559, Killigrew wrote to Queen Elizabeth: “The king the last day being on hunting, was (for what cause or upon what occasion we know not) in such fear, as he was forced to leave his pastime, and to leave the hounds uncoupled, and return to the court [at Blois]. Whereupon there was commandment given to the Scottish guard to wear jackets of mail and pistols.”[113] And writing again at the end of the year (29th December), he adds: “It is evident that the discontent has reached a point when something desperate may be expected.” The Guises knew this, and being conscious of the weak foundation on which their authority rested, and fearing an insurrection, they forbade the carrying of arms and the wearing of any kind of dress favorable to the concealment of weapons.[114] At that time the ordinary cloak had no sleeve, and reached to the middle of the calf of the leg, and the large trunk hose were more than an ell and a half wide. This injunction seems to have been binding only on the Protestants, and was intended to prevent them from protecting themselves. That they sometimes did this very effectually is proved by a little incident recorded by Killigrew. Seventeen persons had been arrested at Blois “for the Word’s sake,” and committed to the sergeants to be taken to Orleans for trial; but on the road their escort was attacked by sixty men on horseback, who set them all at liberty.

Although the Ordinance of Chambord (17th December, 1559), by facilitating the trial of heretics and condemning to death all who sheltered them, seemed intended to drive the Reformed to despair, they as yet entertained no serious thoughts of rebellion. There were not wanting men of their own class who preached the doctrine of resistance,[115] yet none of the higher orders came forward as their leaders. Without such champions they would be little better than an undisciplined mob. At last, however, they found the man they wanted in Bary de la Renaudie, a gentleman of a good family in Perigord, and a soldier of some reputation—one of those daring men who always spring up in troublous times. At one period attached to Francis of Guise, who had helped him to escape from prison, he became his most violent enemy in consequence of the duke’s barbarous cruelty to Gaspard de Heu, who was allied to him by marriage.[116] Probably it was this enmity which made him renounce his religion and join the Reformers. He was just the man for getting up a conspiracy, and by his ability and address soon won over great numbers in Switzerland as well as in France. He constantly asserted that Calvin and Coligny approved of the design, and that the Prince of Condé would declare himself at the proper opportunity. As regards the two former, the statement is incorrect; but Condé appears to have played an undecided part, “letting I dare not wait upon I would.”[117] The first meeting of the conspirators was held at Nantes in February. It was a remote place, and as the Parliament of Brittany was then assembled, their numbers would not be noticed. In their articles or bond of agreement they swore to respect the person of the king, but never to lay down their arms until they had driven the Guises from power, brought them to trial (if not worse),[118] and procured the suspension of every edict, both old and new, against the Reformed, pending the assembly of the States-General. Their plan was for each gentleman or captain, of whom there were twenty, to collect a body of troops in his own district, and so to arrange their march that they should all arrive at Blois at the same time. The 6th of March was the appointed day, afterward changed to the 16th, when they hoped to find the Guises unprotected. It was an absurd scheme, and could hardly fail to miscarry, even if it had not been frustrated at the very outset by a circumstance which seems never to have entered into the minds of the conspirators. The court removed from the open town of Blois to the strong castle of Amboise on the Loire, in accordance with arrangements which had been made some time before.[119] That old royal residence had been forsaken by the court since the death of Charles VIII. Its massive walls still tower boldly on the heights above the river, and the cheerful little town clusters at their feet, as if for protection. The Guises accompanied, or rather followed, the king in perfect security: they did not so much as know that La Renaudie was in the kingdom. They had heard rumors of plots, and warning letters had been sent them from Spain, Italy, Germany, and Savoy; but nothing reached them in a definite form until some days after their arrival at Amboise, when one of La Renaudie’s friends[120] betrayed him to the Cardinal of Lorraine. “The duke and the cardinal have discovered a conspiracy against themselves, which they have bruited (to make the matter more odious) to be meant only against the king; whereupon they are in such fear as themselves do wear privy-coats [of mail], and are in the night guarded with pistoliers and men in arms.

... On the 6th they watched all night long in the court, and the gates of the town were kept shut.”[121] The cardinal was indeed thoroughly frightened; but the duke, acting with great promptitude, strengthened the garrison by troops hastily drawn together from every quarter. Still the Guises were by no means free from apprehension, and Throckmorton describes the condition of the little town in the middle of March: “The 17th, in the morning, about four of the clock, there arrived a company of 150 horsemen well appointed, who approached the court gates and shot off their pistolets at the church of the Bonhommes. Whereupon there was such an alarm and running up and down in the court, as if the enemies being encamped about them had sought to make an entry into the castle; and there was crying ‘To horse! to horse!’ and a watch-word given by shooting a harquebus that all men should be in readiness, and the drum was striking. And this continued an hour and a half.” Sixty gentlemen had bound themselves by a solemn oath to penetrate into Amboise during the night, thirty of whom were to slip into the castle, and open one of the gates to the other conspirators. But the duke was on the watch, and had that gate walled up. Detachments of troops were stationed on the roads leading to the town and along the banks of the Loire, by which the various bands, coming up and ignorant of what had happened, were captured or cut to pieces. In one of these encounters La Renaudie was killed; his body was quartered and exposed at the four corners of the bridge.

The Duke of Guise, who, so long as there appeared to be any danger, had treated his prisoners with no undue severity, soon felt himself strong enough to wreak a ferocious vengeance on his enemies. He and his brother the cardinal, in the intoxication of their triumph, indulged in excesses of murder that can hardly find a parallel except in the massacre of St. Bartholomew, or the horrors of the French Revolution. The streets of Amboise ran with blood; and when the public executioners were wearied with decapitating so many victims, the remainder were bound hand and foot and thrown into the river, thus anticipating the frightful Noyades of 1793.[122] Throckmorton writes: “This heat caused upon a sudden a sharp determination to minister justice. The two men taken were the same forenoon hanged, and two others for company; and afterward the same day divers were taken, and in the evening nine more were hanged: all which died very assuredly and constantly for religion, in singing of psalms. Divers were drowned in sacks, and some appointed to die upon the wheel.... The 17th there were twenty-two of these rebels drowned in sacks, and the 18th at night twenty-five more. Among all these which be taken there be eighteen of the bravest captains of France.” Twelve hundred persons are computed to have perished in this massacre. The Baron of Castelnau-Chalosse, and Bricquemaut, Count of Villemangis, a Genevese refugee, had with others surrendered to the Duke of Nemours on condition that their lives should be spared; but the Guises were not the men to be bound by such a condition, when even Olivier the chancellor, not altogether a bad man, declared that “a prince was not required to keep his word to a rebel subject.” The Duke of Nemours had given a written pledge of safety, which, says Vieilleville, “vexed him greatly, who was concerned only about his signature; for if it had been his mere word, he would have been able to give the lie at any time to any one who might reproach him with it, and that without any exception, for the prince was brave and generous.” Pretty morality for a gentleman! When Castelnau was under examination he hesitated in some of his answers, upon which the Duke of Guise bade him “Speak out; one would think you are afraid.” “Afraid!” retorted the baron, “and where is the man so confident as not to be afraid, on seeing himself encompassed by mortal enemies as I am, when he has neither teeth nor nails with which to defend himself? In my place you would be afraid too.” On being condemned for high treason he remonstrated against the charge, not against the sentence, on the ground that he had undertaken nothing against the king; that he had merely leagued with a large portion of the nobility against the Guises, and that “these must be made kings before he could be guilty of lèze-majesté.”

Castelnau, like Coligny, had been taken prisoner by the Spaniards, and had employed the long hours of his enforced inactivity in reading the Bible. If it did not make him a Protestant, it shook his faith in the Church of Rome. In the course of his examination at Amboise, Chancellor Olivier taunted him with his “Puritanism.” Castelnau retorted: “When I saw you on my return from Flanders, I told you how I had spent my time, and you approved of it. We were then friends; why are we not so now? Is it possible that you spoke with sincerity when you were not in favor at court, and that now, in order to please a man you despise, you are a traitor to God and your conscience?” The Cardinal of Lorraine answered for the chancellor, upon which Castelnau appealed to Guise, who replied that he knew nothing about theology. “Would to Heaven you did,” said the baron; “for I esteem you well enough to think that if you were as enlightened as your brother the cardinal, you would follow better things.” A noble testimony to the character of the duke, who somewhat churlishly rejoined that he understood nothing but cutting off heads. Coligny and D’Andelot, as well as Francis II. and Mary, entreated the duke and the cardinal to spare Castelnau’s life; but the latter answered with a blasphemous oath: “He shall die, and no man in France shall save him.” The baron died appealing to God, who would ere long visit them with signal vengeance for the innocent blood they were shedding. When Villemangis ascended the scaffold, he dipped his hands in the blood of his comrades who had been executed before him, and raising them toward heaven exclaimed: “Oh Lord! behold the blood of thy children so unjustly shed; thou wilt avenge it.”

The Cardinal of Lorraine was the chief instigator of these murders: in his excessive cowardice he could not think himself safe unless all his enemies were killed. They threatened to Stuart him—that is, to shoot him with a poisoned bullet, as James Stuart had shot President Minard; and one morning he found the following quatrain in his oratory: