Chapter IV: The Reformation in France.161 (3)

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]

§ 14. _The Massacre of St. Bartholomew._

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.

§ 15. _The Huguenot resistance after the Massacre._

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.

§ 16. _The beginnings of the League._

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.

§ 17. _The League becomes disloyal._[224]

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.

§ 18. _The Day of Barricades._[225]

The King redoubled his guards, and ordered four thousand Swiss troops which he had stationed at Lagny into the suburbs of Paris. The Parisian Leaguers in alarm sent for the Duke of Guise; and Guise, in spite of a prohibitive order from the King, entered the city. When he was recognised he was received with acclamations by the Parisian crowd. The Queen-Mother induced the King to receive him, which he did rather ungraciously. Officers and men devoted to the League crowded into Paris. The King, having tried in vain to prevent the entry of all suspected persons, at last ordered the Swiss into Paris (May 12th, 1588). The citizens flew to arms, and converted Paris into a stronghold. It was "the day of Barricades." Chains were stretched across the streets, and behind them were piled beams, benches, carts, great barrels filled with stones or gravel. Houses were loop-holed and windows protected. Behind these defences men were stationed with arquebuses; and the women and children were provided with heaps of stones. Guise had remained in his house, but his officers were to be seen moving through the crowds and directing the defence. The Swiss troops found themselves caught in a trap, and helpless. Henry III. was compelled to ask Guise to interfere in order to save his soldiers. The King had to undergo further humiliation. The citizens proposed to attack the Louvre and seize the King's person. Guise had to be appealed to again. He had an interview with the King on the 13th, at which Henry III. was forced to agree to all the demands of the League, and to leave the conduct of the war against the Huguenots in the hands of the leader of the League. After the interview the King was able to escape secretly from Paris.

The day of the "Barricades" had proved to Henry III. that the League was master in his capital. The meeting of the States General at Blois (Oct. 1588) was to show him that the country had also turned against him.

The elections had been looked after by the Guises, and had taken place while the impression produced by the revolt of Paris was at its height. The League commanded an immense majority in all the three Estates. The business before them was grave. The finances of the kingdom were in disorder; favouritism had not been got rid of; and no one could trust the King's word. Above all, the religious question was embittering every mind. The Estates met under the influence of a religious exaltation fanned by the priests. On the 9th of Oct. representatives of the three Estates went to Mass together. During the communion the assistant clergy chanted the well-known hymns,--_Pange lingua gloriosi, O salutaris Hostia, Ave verum Corpus natum_,--and the excitement was immense. The members of the Estates had never been so united.

Yet the King had a moment of unwonted courage. He had resolved to denounce the League as the source of the disorders in the kingdom. He declared that he would not allow a League to exist within the realm. He only succeeded in making the leaders furious. His bravado soon ceased. The Cardinal de Bourbon compelled him to omit from the published version of his speech the objectionable expressions. The Estates forced him to swear that he would not permit any religion within the kingdom but the Roman. This done, he was received with cries of _Vive le Roi_, and was accompanied to his house with acclamations. But he was compelled to see the Duke of Guise receive the office of Lieutenant-General, which placed the army under his command; and he felt that he would never be "master in his own house" until that man had been removed from his path.

The news of the completeness of the destruction of the Armada had been filtering through France; the fear of Spain was to some extent removed, and England might help the King if he persisted in a policy of tolerating his Protestant subjects. It is probable that he confided his project of getting rid of Guise to some of his more intimate councillors, and that they assured him that it would be impossible to remove such a powerful subject by legal means. The Duke and his brother the Cardinal of Guise were summoned to a meeting of the Council. They had scarcely taken their seats when they were asked to see the King in his private apartments. There Guise was assassinated, and the Cardinal arrested, and slain the next day.[226] The Cardinal de Bourbon and the young Prince de Joinville (now Duke of Guise by his father's death) were arrested and imprisoned. Orders were given to arrest the Duchess of Nemours (Guise's mother), the Duke and Duchess of Elboeuf, the Count de Brissac, and other prominent Leaguers. The King's guards invaded the sittings of the States General to carry out these orders. The bodies of the two Guises were burnt, and the ashes thrown into the Loire.

The news of the assassination raised the wildest rage in Paris. The League proclaimed itself a revolutionary society. The city organised itself in its sections. A council was appointed for each section to strengthen the hands of the "Sixteen." Preachers caused their audiences to swear that they would spend the last farthing in their purses and the last drop of blood in their bodies to avenge the slaughtered princes. The Sorbonne in solemn conclave declared that the actions of Henry III. had absolved his subjects from their allegiance. The "Sixteen" drove from _Parlement_ all suspected persons; and, thus purged, the _Parlement_ of Paris ranged itself on the side of the revolution. The Duke of Mayenne, the sole surviving brother of Henry of Guise, was summoned to Paris. An assembly of the citizens of the capital elected a _Council General of the Union of Catholics_ to manage the affairs of the State and to confer with all the Catholic towns and provinces of France. Deputies sent by these towns and provinces were to be members of the Council. The Duke of Mayenne was appointed by the Council the _Lieutenant-General of the State and Crown of France_. The new Government had its seal--_the Seal of the Kingdom of France_. The larger number of the great towns of France adhered to this provisional and revolutionary Government.

In the midst of these tumults Catherine de' Medici died (Jan. 5th, 1589).

§ 19. _The King takes refuge with the Huguenots._

The miserable King had no resource left but to throw himself upon the protection of the Protestants. He hesitated at first, fearing threatened papal excommunication. Henry of Navarre's bearing during these months of anxiety had been admirable. After the meeting of the States General at Blois, he had issued a stirring appeal to the nation, pleading for peace--the one thing needed for the distracted and fevered country. He now assured the King of his loyalty, and promised that he would never deny to Roman Catholics that liberty of conscience and worship which he claimed. A treaty was arranged, and the King of Navarre went to meet Henry III. at Tours. He arrived just in time. Mayenne at the head of an avenging army of Leaguers had started as soon as the provisional government had been established in Paris. He had taken by assault a suburb of the town, and was about to attack the city of Tours itself, when he found the Protestant vanguard guarding the bridge over the Loire, and had to retreat. He was slowly forced back towards Paris. The battle of Senlis, in which a much smaller force of Huguenots routed the Duke d'Aumale, who had been reinforced by the Parisian militia, opened the way to Paris. The King of Navarre pressed on. Town after town was taken, and the forces of the two kings, increased by fourteen thousand Swiss and Germans, were soon able to seize the bridge of St. Cloud and invest the capital on the south and west (July 29th, 1589). An assault was fixed for Aug. 2nd.

Since the murder of the Guises, Paris had been a caldron of seething excitement. The whole population, "_avec douleur et gemissements bien grands_," had assisted at the funeral service for "the Martyrs," and the baptism of the posthumous son of the slaughtered Duke had been a civic ceremony. The Bull "monitory" of Pope Sixtus V., posted up in Rome on May 24th, which directed Henry III. on pain of excommunication to release the imprisoned prelates within ten days, and to appear either personally or by proxy within sixty days before the Curia to answer for the murder of a Prince of the Church, had fanned the excitement. Almost every day the Parisians saw processions of students, of women, of children, defiling through their streets. They marched from shrine to shrine, with naked feet, clad only in their shirts, defying the cold of winter. Parishioners dragged their priests out of bed to head nocturnal processions. The hatred of Henry III. became almost a madness. The Cordeliers decapitated his portraits. Parish priests made images of the King in wax, placed them on their altars, and practised on them magical incantations, in the hope of doing deadly harm to the living man. Bands of children carried lighted candles, which they extinguished to cries of, "_God extinguish thus the race of the Valois._"

Among the most excited members of this fevered throng was a young Jacobin monk, Jacques Clément, by birth a peasant, of scanty intelligence, and rough, violent manners. His excitement grew with the perils of the city. He consulted a theologian in whom he had confidence, and got from him a guarded answer that it might be lawful to slay a tyrant. He prayed, fasted, went through a course of maceration of the body. He saw visions. He believed that he heard voices, and that he received definite orders to give his life in order to slay the King. He confided his purpose to friends, who approved of it and helped his preparations. He was able to leave the city, to pass through the beleaguering lines, and to get private audience of the King. He presented a letter, and while Henry was reading it stabbed him in the lower part of the body. The deed done, the monk raised himself to his full height, extended his arms to form himself into a crucifix, and received without flinching his deathblow from La Guesle and other attendants (Aug. 1st, 1589).[227]

The King lingered until the following morning, and then expired, commending Henry of Navarre to his companions as his legitimate successor.

The news of the assassination was received in Paris with wild delight. The Duchess de Nemours, the mother of the Guises, and the Duchess de Montpensier, their sister, went everywhere in the streets describing "the heroic act of Jacques Clément." The former mounted the steps of the High Altar in the church of the Cordeliers to proclaim the news to the people. The citizens, high and low, brought out their tables into the streets, and they drank, sang, shouted and danced in honour of the news. They swore that they would never accept a Protestant king[228] and the Cardinal de Bourbon, still a prisoner, was proclaimed as Charles x.

At Tours, on the other hand, the fact that the heir to the throne was a Protestant, threw the Roman Catholic nobles into a state of perplexity. They had no sympathy with the League, but many felt that they could not serve a Protestant king. They pressed round the new King, beseeching him to abjure his faith at once. Henry refused to do what would humiliate himself, and could not be accepted as an act of sincerity. On the other hand, the nobles of Champagne, Picardy, and the Isle of France sent assurances of allegiance; the Duke of Montpensier, the husband of the Leaguer Duchess, promised his support; and the Swiss mercenaries declared that they would serve for two months without pay.

§ 20. _The Declaration of Henry IV._[229]

Thus encouraged, Henry published his famous declaration (Aug. 4th, 1589). He promised that the Roman Catholic would remain the religion of the realm, and that he would attempt no innovations. He declared that he was willing to be instructed in its tenets, and that within six months, if it were possible, he would summon a National Council. The Roman Catholics would be retained in their governments and charges; the Protestants would keep the strongholds which were at present in their hands; but all fortified places when reduced would be entrusted to Roman Catholics and none other. This declaration was signed by two Princes of the Blood, the Prince of Conti and the Duke of Montpensier; by three Dukes and Peers, Longueville, Luxembourg-Piney, and Rohan-Montbazon; by two Marshals of France, Biron and d'Aumont; and by several great officers. Notwithstanding, the defections were serious; all the _Parlements_ save that of Bordeaux thundered against the heretic King; all the great towns save Tours, Bordeaux, Châlons, Langres, Compiègne, and Clermont declared for the League. The greater part of the kingdom was in revolt. The royalist troops dwindled away. It was hopeless to think of attacking Paris, and Henry IV. marched for Normandy with scarcely seven thousand men. He wished to be on the sea coast in hope of succour from England.

The Duke of Mayenne followed him with an army of thirty thousand men. He had promised to the Parisians to throw the "Bearnese" into the sea, or to bring him in chains to Paris, But it was not so easy to catch the "Bearnese." In the series of marches, countermarches, and skirmishes which is known as the battle of Arques, the advantage was on the side of the King; and when Mayenne attempted to take Dieppe by assault, he was badly defeated (Sept. 24th, 1589). Then followed marches and countermarches; the King now threatening Paris and then retreating, until at last the royalist troops and the Leaguers met at Ivry. The King had two thousand cavalry and eight thousand infantry to meet eight thousand cavalry and twelve thousand infantry (including seventeen hundred Spanish troops sent by the Duke of Parma) under the command of Mayenne. The battle resulted in a surprising and decisive victory for the King. Mayenne and his cousin d'Aumale escaped only by the swiftness of their horses (March 14th, 1590).

It is needless to say much about the war or about the schemes of parties. Henry invested Paris, and had almost starved it into surrender, when it was revictualled by an army led from the Low Countries by the Duke of Parma. Henry took town after town, and gradually isolated the capital. In 1590 (May 10th) the old Cardinal Bourbon (Charles X.) died, and the Leaguers lost even the semblance of a legitimate king. The more fanatical members of the party, represented by the "Sixteen" of Paris, would have been content to place France under the dominion of Spain rather than see a heretic king. The Duke of Mayenne had long cherished dreams that the crown might come to him. But the great mass of the influential people of France who had not yet professed allegiance to Henry IV. (and many who had) had an almost equal dread of Spanish domination and of a heretic ruler.

§ 21. _Henry IV. becomes a Roman Catholic._

Henry at last resolved to conform to the Roman Catholic religion as the only means of giving peace to his distracted kingdom. He informed the loyalist Archbishop of Bourges of his intention to be instructed in the Roman Catholic religion with a view to conversion. The Archbishop was able to announce this at the conference of Suresnes, and the news spread instantly over France. With his usual tact, Henry wrote with his own hand to several of the parish priests of Paris announcing his intention, and invited them to meet him at Mantes to give him instruction. At least one of them had been a furious Leaguer, and was won to be an enthusiastic loyalist.

The ceremony of the reception of Henry IV. into the Roman Catholic Church took place at Saint Denis, about four and a half miles to the north of Paris. The scene had all the appearance of some popular festival. The ancient church in which the Kings of France had for generations been buried, in which Jeanne d'Arc had hung up her arms, was decked with splendid tapestries, and the streets leading to it festooned with flowers. Multitudes of citizens had come from rebel Paris to swell the throng and to shout _Vive le Roi!_ as Henry, escorted by a brilliant procession of nobles and guards, passed slowly to the church. The clergy, headed by the Archbishop of Bourges, met him at the door. The King dismounted, knelt, swore to live and die in the catholic apostolic and Roman religion, and renounced all the heresies which it condemned. The Archbishop gave him absolution, took him by the hand and led him into the church. There, kneeling before the High Altar, the King repeated his oath, confessed, and communicated. France had now a Roman Catholic as well as a legitimate King. Even if it be admitted that Henry IV. was not a man of any depth of religious feeling, the act of abjuration must have been a humiliation for the son of Jeanne d'Albret. He never was a man who wore his heart on his sleeve, and his well-known saying, that "Paris was well worth a Mass," had as much bitterness in it as gaiety. He had paled with suppressed passion at Tours (1589) when the Roman Catholic nobles had urged him to become a Romanist. Had the success which followed his arms up to the battle of Ivry continued unbroken, it is probable that the ceremony at Saint Denis would never have taken place. But Parma's invasion of France, which compelled the King to raise the siege of Paris, was the beginning of difficulties which seemed insurmountable. The dissensions of parties within the realm, and the presence of foreigners on the soil of France (Walloon, Spanish, Neapolitan, and Savoyard), were bringing France to the verge of dissolution. Henry believed that there was only one way to end the strife, and he sacrificed his convictions to his patriotism.

With Henry's change of religion the condition of things changed as if by magic. The League seemed to dissolve. Tenders of allegiance poured in from all sides, from nobles, provinces, and towns. Rheims was still in possession of the Guises, and the anointing and crowning took place at Chartres (Feb. 27th, 1594). The manifestations of loyalty increased.

On the evening of the day on which Henry had been received into the Roman Catholic Church at Saint Denis, he had recklessly ridden up to the crest of the height of Montmartre and looked down on Paris, which was still in the hands of the League. The feelings of the Parisians were also changing. The League was seamed with dissensions; Mayenne had quarrelled with the "Sixteen," and the partisans of these fanatics of the League had street brawls with the citizens of more moderate opinions. _Parlement_ took courage and denounced the presence of Spanish soldiers within the capital. The loyalists opened the way for the royal troops, Henry entered Paris (March 22nd), and marched to Notre Dame, where the clergy chanted the _Te Deum_. From the cathedral he rode to the Louvre through streets thronged with people, who pressed up to his very stirrups to see their King, and made the tall houses re-echo with their loyalist shoutings. Such a royal entry had not been seen for generations, and took everyone by surprise. Next day the foreign troops left the city. The King watched their departure from an open window in the Louvre, and as their chiefs passed he called out gaily, "My compliments to your Master. You need not come back."

With the return of Paris to fealty, almost all signs of disaffection departed; and the King's proclamation of amnesty for all past rebellions completed the conquest of his people. France was again united after thirty years of civil war.

§ 22. _The Edict of Nantes._

The union of all Frenchmen to accept Henry IV. as their King had not changed the legal position of the Protestants. The laws against them were still in force; they had nothing but the King's word promising protection to trust to. The war with Spain delayed matters, but when peace was made the time came for Henry to fulfil his pledges to his former companions. They had been chafing under the delay. At a General Assembly held at Mantes (October 1593-January 1594), the members had renewed their oath to live and to die true to their confession of faith, and year by year a General Assembly met to discuss their political disabilities as well as to conduct their ecclesiastical business. They had divided France into nine divisions under provincial synods, and had the appearance to men of that century of a kingdom within a kingdom. They demanded equal civic rights with their Roman Catholic fellow-subjects, and guarantees for their protection. At length, in 1597, four delegates were appointed with full powers to confer with the King. Out of these negotiations came the Edict of Nantes, the Charter of French Protestantism.

This celebrated edict was drawn up in ninety-five more general articles, which were signed on April 13th, and in fifty-six more particular articles which were signed on May 2nd (1598). Two _Brevets_, dated 13th and 30th of April, were added, dealing with the treatment of Protestant ministers, and with the strongholds given to the Protestants. The Articles were verified and registered by _Parlements_; the _Brevets_ were guaranteed simply by the King's word.

The Edict of Nantes codified and enlarged the rights given to the Protestants of France by the Edict of Poitiers (1577), the Convention of Nérac (1578), the treaty of Fleix (1580), the Declaration of Saint-Cloud (1589), the Edict of Mantes (1591), the Articles of Mantes (1593), and the Edict of Saint-Germain (1594).