Chapter XIII: Book II (2)

The pastor, Leonard Morel, was on his knees in his pulpit, calling upon the God of Mercies. He was fired at when he sought to fly; but when near the door he tripped over a corpse, and instantly received several sword-cuts on his right shoulder, and on his head. Thinking himself fatally wounded, he cried out: “Lord, into Thy hands I yield my spirit, for Thou hast redeemed me.”

Two gentlemen, who were near, exclaimed, “This is the minister; let us take him before M. de Guise.” They dragged him, for he was not able to walk, and the duke thus addressed him: “Minister, come here; are you the minister here? What makes you so bold as to seduce these people?” “I am no seducer,” answered Morel, “I have preached the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” “Mort-Dieu,” replied the duke, “does the Gospel preach sedition? Thou art the cause of the death of all people; thou shalt be hanged. Provost, up with a gibbet to hang him!” Happily, out of these hundreds of cut-throats, no one could be found to fill the office of executioner. Morel was kept under strict guard, and the delay saved him.

Sixty persons were left upon the floor after this butchery, and two hundred more were wounded, several fatally. The corpses were stripped, and some days after, the footmen of the duke sold their property in open market, “crying them aloud,” says Crespin, “as a bailiff would who had taken furniture in execution.”

During this carnage, the Bible of the Calvinists was brought to the duke. He gave it to his brother the Cardinal Louis de Guise, who had remained on the walls of the cemetery. “Here,” said he, “see the titles of the books of these Huguenots.” “There is no harm in this,” answered the cardinal; “it is the Holy Scriptures.” “How, sang-Dieu! the Holy Scriptures! It is fifteen hundred years and more since they were made, and these books have only been printed a year. By the mort-Dieu! it is good for nothing.” The cardinal could not help saying: “My brother is wrong.”

This circumstance is not unworthy of history: it exhibits, once more, how profound and degrading was the ignorance in religious matters of the principal defender of the Romish church.

The duke was walking up and down, biting his beard, a sign with him of furious anger. He summoned the judge of the district, and upbraided him for having suffered these conventicles. The judge pleaded the Edict of January. “The Edict of January!” said Guise, laying his hand upon his sword; “this steel shall speedily cut asunder this edict, however tightly bound.”

The following day, being at Eclairon, his people informed him that the Huguenots of Vassy had sent complaints to the king. “Let them go,” he said with scorn; “they will find neither their admiral, nor their chancellor.”

Reflection, however, made him understand that it was no trifling matter to have authorized this butchery in a time of perfect peace, and he therefore sent a lawyer to Vassy to commence a sort of inquiry. A tale that the Huguenots had been the aggressors was invented, as if it were likely that such an extravagant notion could be believed, that people unarmed, assembled at the foot of the pulpit with women and children, should be the first to attack the numerous escort of François de Guise!

In the following year, when upon his death-bed, the duke protested that he had neither premeditated, nor ordered the massacre of Vassy. We are willing to take him at his word, notwithstanding the overwhelming remarks of Bayle; it would grieve us to witness an ignoble leader of a band of assassins in this brave and valiant captain, the defender of Metz, the conqueror of Renty. But had he not a firm resolve to use at least some violence against the Huguenots of Vassy? What did he do to prevent the massacre? Was he the man to be disobeyed? Towards the end of the affair, he ordered, at the request of the duchess of Guise, that the women with child should be spared, but nothing more. Moreover did he prosecute, did he so much as disclaim any one of the murderers? Even the charge of premeditation he set aside; his consent to the massacre cannot be denied. The blood of Vassy is on his head: it has been visited upon him, his son, and his race. “All they who take the sword, shall perish by the sword.”

The news of the massacre of Vassy created an extraordinary impression throughout the kingdom; it roused all the Reformed to indignation and horror. This was not the crime of a vile populace led on by some contemptible priests, or abject monks. Here was one of the greatest lords of France, who had, in contempt of the law, shed the blood of the faithful in torrents. If this offence were to go unpunished, where would justice be henceforth, and who could be secure against assassination?

At Paris the agitation was so great that an immediate resort to arms was apprehended, and the Marshal de Montmorency, the governor of the town, invited the faithful to suspend their assemblies. But they answered that this would be to give up the cause to their enemies, and to acknowledge that there existed a power superior to that of the law in the kingdom. They, however, restricted themselves to demanding from the marshal the compulsory observance of the edict.

The prince of Condé and the principal members of the party addressed themselves to Catherine de Medicis. They represented to her the insolence of the triumvirate, the league of the Lorraine princes with the king of Spain, the growing audacity of their enterprises, the dangers which threatened the royal authority, and protested that they were ready to sacrifice their possessions and their lives for the cause of the throne, which was now linked with the Reformed faith. Catherine employed her usual dissimulation, gave evasive answers, and tried to penetrate the secrets of the Calvinists, in order to turn them to her own account, as occasion might serve, for or against them.

The consistory of Paris resolved to exhaust every legal means before opposing force to force, and sent Theodore de Bèze to the court to demand the exemplary punishment of the murderers. The king of Navarre, who was present at the audience, and who wished to give some testimony of his zeal to his new allies, exclaimed: “They threw stones at my brother, the duke of Guise; he could not restrain the fury of his people; and mark me, whosoever shall touch but the end of his finger, shall touch my whole body.” “Sire,” Bèze answered, “it is indeed the part of the Church of God, in whose name I speak, to endure blows and not to give them; but you will also please to remember that it is an anvil, which has used up many hammers.”

Theodore de Bèze spoke the truth. Anthony of Bourbon and his have fallen; the persecutors rest in their sepulchre, but the French Reformation still lives.

VI.

We now come to the wars of religion. The history of the Reformed at this juncture becomes the general history of France, and as that is related in writings without number, which are in everybody’s hands, we shall only give a rapid summary of the principal facts, directing our especial attention to whatever may serve to depict the private life of the oppressed party.

The duke of Guise made a triumphal entry into Paris. The priests urged on the multitude to crowd the path of the man of Vassy, whilst comparing him to Judas Maccabæus, and awarding to him the glorious name of _defender of the faith_. Catherine de Medicis was offended at this triumph both in her pride as queen-mother, and in her right as regent; but the duke left her no time to concert a league with the Calvinists. Encouraged by the support of the king of Navarre, of Anne of Montmorency, and of the Marshal de Saint André, he carried off Charles IX. and Catherine herself, and dragged them from Fontainebleau to Melun, from Melun to Vincennes, and from Vincennes to Paris. These were the days of the 5th and 6th October of the triumvirate.

Where legitimate authority now rested was unknown. The sovereignty was floating about at hap-hazard. The Reformed were in some sort placed beyond the law by the enterprises of the man, who had recently massacred their brethren; they found themselves thrown into an attitude of personal defence. So, from one end of France to the other, without preliminary concert, they flew to arms, just as one would do when he sees his house broken into at midnight by a band of robbers.

“It is ever to be remembered,” says an historian of the sixteenth century, “that so long as the Reformed were put to death under any form of justice, however iniquitous and cruel, they held out their necks, and offered no resistance. But when public authority, in the person of the magistracy, wearied of burnings, flung the knife into the hands of the people, and the tumults and enormous massacres of France had torn away the venerable aspect of justice, and had made neighbour to slaughter neighbour at the sound of trumpet and drum, who could forbid the wretched to oppose arm to arm, steel to steel, and to catch from a fury without justice the contagion of a just fury?... Let foreign nations judge which of the two parties have their foreheads stained with the crime of war!”[42]

The queen-mother seemed to authorize the Huguenots’ resort to arms, and even to solicit it in the name of Charles IX. “My cousin,” she wrote to the prince of Condé, “you will take care to preserve the children and the mother, and the kingdom for him whom it concerns, by whom you may rest assured it will never be forgotten. If I die before I have an opportunity of showing my gratitude, as I wish to do, I will leave instructions to my children. I see so many things which grieve me, that were it not for the confidence I feel in you, that you will aid me in preserving this kingdom and the authority of the king, my son, in spite of those who would lose all, I should be yet more grieved.” These letters, communicated to the gentry of the religion, strengthened them in their projects: for they believed they were upholding not only their own cause, but that of the crown.

Both sides invited foreign aid into the kingdom. The (Roman) Catholics set the example; the Roman pontiff preached a crusade in Italy and Spain similar to that of Simon de Montfort against the Albigeois, and the Huguenots, in their turn, claimed the assistance of every Protestant nation. Under one or the other banner, Spaniards, Swiss, Germans, and Englishmen were speedily ranged. So will it ever be in the great wars of religious or political principles. Men then separate themselves, not people from people, but faith from faith, because something is at stake more powerful than nationality itself, and because country is only dear when it realizes the mighty convictions, which have taken possession of their souls. If a struggle were to break out in Europe to-morrow for the fundamental principles of politics, what occurred in the sixteenth century would be seen again; the only difference would be in the device of the colours and the watchword of the combatants.

Each party published long manifestoes, another inevitable occurrence in a war of principles. The Calvinists demanded the strict execution of the Edict of January, the restoration to liberty of the king and queen-mother,—who, they declared, were prisoners,—the punishment of the authors of the crime of Vassy, or at least, the withdrawal of the duke of Guise, and of the two other triumvirs, to their houses. The (Roman) Catholics answered, respecting the Edict of January, by equivocal phrases; as to the liberation of the king and queen, they asserted that they were perfectly free; as to the punishment of the authors of the affair of Vassy, that there was no one to punish; and with regard to the retreat of the members of the triumvirate, that their presence was essential to the public good.

The most remarkable document of these preliminary discussions is the act of association, which was concluded between the prince of Condé and the Calvinist lords, on the 11th of April, 1562, after the celebration of the communion. All avowed that they had only in this alliance the honour of God before their eyes, the liberation of the king and of the queen, the maintenance of the edicts, and the punishment of those who had violated them. They solemnly swore to prevent blasphemy, violence, pillage, all that is forbidden by the law of God, and to establish good and faithful ministers, who should teach them to do His will. They appointed the prince of Condé the chief and leader of their enterprise, as being of the blood royal and protector of the crown of France. Lastly, they promised, on their hope of Paradise, to fulfil their duty with unshrinking fidelity.

Their first deeds of arms were fortunate. Orleans, Tours, Bourges, Poitiers, Rouen, Le Hâvre, Lyons, Montauban, Nismes, and the greater number of the strong castles of Normandy, of Poitou, of Saintonge, of Guienne, of Languedoc, and of Dauphiné, fell into their hands almost without a blow, towards the end of April.

The triumvirate, on their side, acted with vigour. They dictated at their discretion the resolutions of the Council and the decrees of the Parliaments. They strove especially to bind the people of Paris, without reservation, to their fortunes. The (Roman) Catholic citizens were armed and formed into regiments. Fifty thousand men were counted upon at the first sound of the tocsin. The commune sat _en permanence_. Chains were placed at the corners of the streets, to barricade them, in case of attack. Certificates of (Roman) Catholicism were required from all the procureurs, receivers, constables, and other public officers. The churches were the clubs of the time; they were still more so under the League.

The Huguenots received orders to quit Paris in twenty-four hours under pain of death. The infamous accusations of former years were again brought against them. Coarse prints were constantly circulated, representing the heretics tearing out the bowels of the monks, and casting their victims before swine. The fanaticism of the populace was raised by these provocations to the blindest pitch of frenzy, and it was enough to pass for a Huguenot in the streets to be instantly slaughtered. Theodore de Bèze cites many instances of these facts.

The triumvirs and the priests knew very well what they would gain by seizing upon the opinion of this powerful city. “Paris,” says the historian Davila, “alone gave more credit, and more weight, than one-half of the kingdom could have given.”[43]

Coligny felt this. He advised the prince of Condé to march direct upon Paris, urging that the triumvirs had as yet no army, and that a multitude without discipline might be easily overcome. Condé refused. Brother of the king of Navarre, and looking forward to be one day lieutenant-general of the kingdom, he was obliged to act with circumspection even towards his most violent adversaries. A prince of the blood is not the man to lead a party in those critical moments, when all must be hazarded to conquer all. Would the English Puritans have triumphed, if they had chosen a member of the royal family for their chief instead of Cromwell?

Catherine de Medicis proposed to open conferences between the two parties. It was the only plan, by which she could still make any figure. In the struggles of warriors she could do nothing; in negotiations she relied upon her genius, and flattered herself that she could entangle the heads of the (Roman) Catholics, as well as of the Reformed, in her intrigues.

A first conference was held on the 2nd of June, at Thoury, in Beauce. It was agreed that each party should meet, with an equal escort of gentlemen, who should keep aloof, at a distance of eight hundred paces from each other. But whilst the chiefs debated, the gentlemen drew near together; in fact, they yearned towards each other. On a sudden, old friendships rekindled; party quarrels were forgotten; there were no longer Papists and Huguenots, but mingling embraces and tears; they only remembered that they had spent their childhood together, had drunk out of the same cup, and slept under the same roof. Sacred instinct of the heart! It inspired better emotions than the science of theologians, or the politics of statesmen!

The queen-mother had conceived, with the bishop Montluc, her private counsellor, a strange expedient. It was to engage the chiefs of the two parties to impose on themselves a voluntary exile. The triumvirs were to withdraw from the court; the prince of Condé, the admiral, and the principal Calvinists, were to leave the kingdom until the majority of Charles IX., that the religious differences might be peaceably arranged. Such an idea was but a court stratagem, which could settle nothing.

Much time had been lost. The Calvinist gentlemen, who had to maintain themselves at their own expense, were beginning to return home, and the army of the triumvirs was increasing. This was perceived by the increase of persecution. The Parliament of Paris passed a decree, at the end of June, commanding heretics to be set upon, and to be killed, wherever they should be met, like madmen, who were enemies of God and man. Every Sunday the curates were to read this dreadful decree from the pulpit. The peasants, the workmen, armed themselves with whatever weapon came to hand, and began to scour the country, as if to rid it of wild beasts. The monks, in their hideous language, called this “letting slip the great greyhound.”

A new decree of the Parliament, passed on the 18th of August, declared all the gentlemen of the new religion, with the exception of the prince of Condé, traitors to God and the king, and summoned them to appear in three days, in default of which they were to be punished by the confiscation of their bodies and their goods.

It was then that the Calvinists determined to press D’Andelot to bring some lansquenets from Germany, and to conclude a treaty with Elizabeth, queen of England, by which she undertook to furnish a force of six thousand men. Three thousand were to land at Havre-de-Grâce, and three thousand were to serve for the defence of Dieppe and Rouen, which were in the hands of Condé. This treaty was signed on the 20th of September, 1562, and Queen Elizabeth published a manifesto, in which she affirmed before heaven and before the world, that she had no other object, but to defend the loyal subjects of King Charles IX., her brother, against the tyranny of their oppressors.

VII.

The duke of Guise and his confederates hastened to lay siege to the town of Rouen. The count of Montgomery, the same who had mortally wounded Henry II. in a tournay, took the command, and had with him a devoted population, and a strong garrison.

Between the besiegers and the besieged a contrast might be observed, which was to be reproduced eighty years later, between the Puritans of Cromwell and the royalist cavaliers. In the (Roman) Catholic army licentiousness reigned. Catherine de Medicis, who had turned to the strongest side, had brought with her her maids of honour. The trenches were opened to the sound of serenades, and the damsels of the court, constituting themselves the judges of the camp, awarded prizes to the cavaliers. In the interior of the town all was sober and severe. Here were no games or spectacles, but only sermons, prayers, and psalms; and after the religious service, the women went to the ramparts to fight by the side of their husbands.

After a siege of five weeks, Rouen was taken by assault, and given up for eight days to the fury of the soldiery. The Parliament, which had retired to Louviers, came to complete the work by judicial murders. Several of the principal inhabitants were condemned to death, among others Jean de Mandreville, president of the “cour des aides,” and the pastor Augustin Marlorat.

This last had figured at the conference of Poissy. He was versed in science, and possessed piety and moderation of character, and enjoyed the esteem of the faithful. The constable wished to see Marlorat, and accused him of having seduced the people. “If I have seduced them,” answered the minister of Christ, “God first seduced me; for I have preached to them the simple Word of God.” While they were dragging him on a hurdle to the gibbet, he exhorted his fellow-sufferers to glorify God to their last breath.

Anthony de Bourbon was mortally wounded during this siege, and licentious passions, which he could not subdue, hastened his end. After having received the viaticum, on the entreaty of a court-bishop, he appeared in his last moments to return to the Reformed faith; for he requested his physician to read the Bible to him, and with his eyes full of tears he prayed to God for pardon, declaring that if he recovered, he would cause the Gospel to be preached throughout the kingdom. But it was too late. Anthony de Bourbon died at the age of forty-four, and the only funeral oration that can be made over him is that of Etienne Pasquier: “The king of Navarre is dead, from a gun-shot; he is regretted neither by one party, nor the other!”

On the 19th of December the battle of Dreux was fought. The Calvinist army consisted of four thousand cavalry and five thousand infantry; the (Roman) Catholic army of sixteen thousand foot and two thousand horse. These forces were but small for an encounter, which might produce most important results; but, even of these, the foreign mercenaries of the triumvirs amounted to two-thirds, and to one-half in those of the Huguenots. But the war was at that time carried on from one end of France to the other; every province, every town, and, in some sort, every hamlet, had its soldiers; so that the troops encamped near Dreux formed but the smallest number of the combatants.

For more than two hours, the armies gazed at each other in sullen stillness. “Each one thought within himself,” as relates the honest Lanoue, “that he had relations, friends, and comrades before him.” At length the battle began, and was kept up for seven hours with excessive ferocity. Eight thousand dead bodies encumbered the plain at the end of day.

The Calvinists had at first the advantage, and some runaways having carried the news to Paris, Catherine de Medicis coolly replied: “Well, we must pray to God in French.”

But the duke of Guise, having charged with the reserve, changed the face of the combat. Coligny tried in vain to bring his men back to the attack; all he could effect, was to retreat in good order. The chiefs of the two armies, the prince of Condé and the Constable de Montmorency, were taken prisoners. The Marshal de Saint André, one of the triumvirate, fell upon the field. “Die, traitor,” said a Calvinist officer, in discharging a pistol at his head, “die by the hand of one whom thou hast despoiled.”

The winter did not suspend hostilities. Coligny again took the field in Upper and Lower Normandy. The duke of Guise went to besiege Orleans, the principal place, and the centre of the war-operations of the Calvinists. “Once take the burrow, when the foxes have retreated,” said he, “and we will chase them all over France.”

Already, in spite of the heroic defence of D’Andelot and the citizens, two suburbs had been taken, and the tower of the bridge had been carried, when the duke of Guise was wounded on the evening of the 18th of February, 1563, by Jean Poltrot de Méré, who fired a pistol close to his breast. He died six days after, bitterly regretted by the (Roman) Catholic party. They gave him at Paris the funeral of a king, and Catherine de Medicis assumed great grief, which she did not feel.

Several historians,—Mézeray among others,—assure us, that in his last moments he advised the queen-mother to make peace as quickly as possible; adding, that whosoever prevented it would be an enemy to the king and to the state. This was to counsel toleration, since peace could not be firmly established, except on this condition. Did François de Guise better understand his duty at the hour of death, than he had done throughout his life? Perhaps he did. Ambition no longer led him astray, and the thought of the judgment of God might have inspired him with the words of truth.

The murderer of the Duke de Guise was a gentleman of Angoumois, at that time twenty-five or twenty-six years old. An ardent (Roman) Catholic in his youth, Poltrot had served in Spain, and had so far adopted the language and manners of that country, as to have been called by the nickname of _Espagnolet_. Having embraced the Reformed faith, he was compelled to fly to Geneva, and to follow the trade of an artisan for a livelihood. His temper was soured and his imagination excited. Returned to France, he heard on every side loud complaints against the duke of Guise, whom the Huguenots called the _butcher of Vassy_, and the destruction of the murderer of his brethren appeared to him an act of legitimate reprisal. Such were the deplorable effects of these wars of religion, which distorted all ideas of justice, and depraved the soul—abyss only leading to abyss!

The death of the duke of Guise changed the face of affairs. Anne de Montmorency being a prisoner, there was no longer in the (Roman) Catholic army any chief of renown, and Catherine de Medicis resumed the negotiations, which she had never entirely abandoned. She tried to seduce Condé by the promise of the lieutenancy-general of the kingdom. This prince, who had fallen into the hands of the (Roman) Catholics at the battle of Dreux, had lived for three months apart from the austere men of the Calvinist party; “_he already breathed_,” says Mézeray, “_the soft air of the court, and of the gaieties of the ladies_.” Won over by the artifices of the queen, he asked leave to go and treat for peace at Orleans.

As soon as he arrived, he addressed these two questions to the pastors: Whether it were reasonable to exact that the Edict of January should be restored in all its articles? or, on the other hand, if that could not be obtained, whether it would not be desirable to enter into arrangements with the queen to quell the disorders of the kingdom? The pastors, to the number of seventy-two, seeing him hesitate, addressed a remonstrance to him in writing, asking for a fair and safe exercise of their religion, both in the places where it already existed, and in such places where the inhabitants might claim it.

The prince paid no heed to this remonstration, and despairing of overcoming the resistance of the ministers, turned to the gentlemen, who he knew were tired of war, and communicated to them certain clauses, which accorded to the nobility religious privileges. The pastoral body was neither heard nor received in this conference, and the majority of the gentlemen accepted the proposed articles.

The queen-mother vehemently urged on the conclusion; she feared to lose a single day, because she foresaw that if the Admiral Coligny had time to come up, the entire edifice of her intrigues would fall at a blow. Therefore, as soon as the prince of Condé had returned, she signed the articles, and this treaty, drawn up under the form of an edict of pacification, was published at Amboise on the 19th of March, 1563.

It contained the following points: Free exercise of religion in those towns, which were in the power of the Calvinists at the date of the 7th of March, 1563; permission to the lords _haut-justiciers_ to hold assemblies throughout the whole extent of their domains; permission to the nobles of the second rank to celebrate their worship in their own houses, but only for their households; finally, in each bailiwick pertaining directly to the Parliaments, the concession of a single place of worship. To all the other members of the Reformed faith, it accorded only private worship: “Every one,” said the treaty, “shall be permitted to live at liberty in his own house, without search or molestation, and without being forced or constrained for conscience’ sake.”

Truly, there was a wide difference between the articles of Amboise and the Edict of January. Instead of a general right, the mass of the Reformed had now but the toleration of their domestic hearths. The nobles alone, and the faithful who dwelt in the neighbourhood of a bailiwick-town, could hold assemblies. This was separating the disciples of the Reformation like persons sick with the plague in a lazaretto.

When the Admiral learned the contents of this treaty, he felt the most lively indignation. “This stroke of the pen,” said he, “ruins more churches than the enemy could have pulled down in ten years.”

He returned to Orleans by forced marches, and arrived on the 23rd of March, hoping still to find the means of obtaining better conditions. He presented himself before the council, and explained his dissatisfaction to the prince. He said that the affairs of religion were in a favourable state; that two of the principal authors of the war were dead, and the third a prisoner; that, in confining the assemblies to one town in a bailiwick and to the lords _haut-justiciers_, the poor, who had nevertheless set the example to the rich, were sacrificed; and lastly, that the gentlemen themselves who wished to do their duty, would soon feel what heavy chains they had accepted.

This discourse made so strong an impression, that many, who had taken the advice of Condé, would have wished that the whole matter were to be done over again. But the prince answered that he had received private promises, and that when he was lieutenant-general of the kingdom, all would go on well. Coligny had to give way. Orleans was restored to the king’s troops, and the Huguenots aided them in retaking Hâvre from the English.

Such was the end of the first religious war, if such a word can be used to designate a simple suspension of arms, adopted on each side with mental reservations. No one was or could be satisfied. The ardent (Roman) Catholics complained no less than the Calvinists. Politicians could not understand those categories, which surrendered to a few what was refused to the masses. No principle had dictated the Edict of Pacification, and France, covered with blood, had not even time to apply the first dressing to her grievous wounds.

VIII.

Having set forth the course of general affairs, it is now necessary to cast a glance at what had been going on in the provinces. War was waged not only between party chiefs and regular armies; it also broke out in a thousand forms throughout the kingdom. It was a great and fearful struggle of province against province, town against town, house against house, and man against man. Never was it so clearly seen that the worst of all wars are civil wars, and of all civil wars the wars of religion.

The excesses of the revolution would convey but a faint idea [of the then state of things]. Fanaticism had converted France into a band of cannibals, and the gloomiest imagination may be defied to conceive all the kinds of refined, revolting, execrable, and obscene punishments which were then practised. But there is in this spectacle a great lesson to be learned: it is that the principle of religious liberty is one of the most precious possessions of humanity.

A detailed recital of these horrors is not here to be expected. They fill a volume of Theodore de Bèze. Jacques de Thou devotes to them several books of his history. Crespin, Jean de Serres, the memoirs of Montluc, of Tavanes, of Condé, of Lanoue, and of fifty others are full of them. Whoever wishes to investigate the details may seek for them there. Were we to attempt the task, the pen would again and again fall from our hand.

The Huguenots had observed a rigid discipline at the outset of the campaign. Having newly taken up the cross and risen at the call of their conscience, they wished to absolve their arms by the austerity of their lives. There were no women in their camps; no cards or dice; no blasphemy; no profane discourse; no maurauding or pillage. The nobles paid in money for all that they took for themselves or for their followers. Those who committed violence were punished. A lord of Dammartin, who had outraged the daughter of a villager, narrowly escaped execution. Another was hanged at Orleans for adultery; and this, much more than any differences of doctrine had done, aroused the dissolute court of Catherine de Medicis.

At morning and evening, public prayers were said. The ministers, distributed by companies, maintained good order by their exhortations. A prayer has been preserved which was repeated in the army. The Calvinists addressed supplications to God for the king, the queen-mother, the princes of the royal blood, and the members of the council.

The same discipline prevailed at Orleans. “Besides the ordinary sermons and the prayers to the _corps de garde_,” says Theodore de Bèze, “extraordinary general prayers were said at six o’clock in the morning, after which, the ministers and the people without exception went to work at the fortifications with all their strength, each one returning at four o’clock in the evening to prayers; a place was also set apart for the wounded, who were most humanely tended by the most distinguished ladies of the town, who spared neither their money nor their labour.”[44]

Unfortunately this lasted only for a few months; Coligny had foreseen it. “This discipline is indeed a noble thing,” said he, “as long as it lasts; but I fear these people will throw down all their goodness at once. I have commanded infantry, and I know them; they often fulfil the proverb which says: ‘_out of a young hermit grows an old devil_.’”

Religious passions, added to the want of money, drove the Huguenots to carry off the ornaments of the churches. They broke the sacred vessels, mutilated the statues of the saints, and dispersed the relics. These excesses excited in the hearts of the (Roman) Catholics a rage impossible to be described. “You knock down the images,” they said; “you destroy the relics of the dead; well! we will knock down as many living images as fall into our hands.”

The decrees of the Parliaments added fuel to the popular fury, by giving it a semblance of justice. The peasant left his plough, the artisan his trade. The [Roman Catholic bands] consisted of people of no calling, vagabonds, and beggars, and free companies armed with reaping-hooks, knives, and pikes. They chose a captain at hazard, some famous brigand, or else a monk, or curate; sometimes even a bishop; and these bands, drunk with fanaticism and revenge, respected neither law, modesty, nor pity. In Champagne they were called “_naked-feet_” (_pieds-nus_).

They fell upon the Calvinists by surprise, massacred the men, outraged the women, demolished the houses, tore down the vines, rooted up the trees, and desolated entire cantons. “There are too many people in France,” cried out a leader of these ruffians, “I will kill a sufficient number to make provisions cheap.”

The Huguenots, it may be believed, also resorted to reprisals; but being less numerous, and mostly belonging to the more cultivated classes, they did less harm than they suffered.

The excesses, serious everywhere, were especially so to the south of the Loire, on account of the great number of the Reformed, and the ardent character of the population. At Cahors, five hundred Huguenots were attacked one Sunday while they were at service, and the bishop, Pierre Bertrandi, had them all butchered to the last man. At Montauban the inhabitants had quitted their town at the approach of the (Roman) Catholic bands; but having been massacred in crowds, the survivors returned within their walls, and sustained three sieges with heroic constancy.

The events which happened at Toulouse in May, 1562, will serve to characterize what was passing throughout the whole extent of the southern provinces.

This town contained from twenty-five to thirty thousand of the Reformed, for the most part, burghers, merchants, professors of the university, men of letters, students, and magistrates. They had chosen municipal officers of their own persuasion. “Toulouse,” says an old chronicle, “is governed by a mixture of magistrates of three kinds: Catholics, Huguenots, and Temporizers—people, however, of elevated minds, adorned with many graces, rich and opulent; and there is even a fourth kind, namely, that of the ancient heresy (probably that of the Albigeois), which had already taken root.”[45]

After the publication of the Edict of January, the Reformed had built a wooden church outside the gates of the town, which would hold from five to six thousand persons. They went there in open day, and the women were not less zealous than the men. “They had laid aside with their prayer-books and the beads which they had worn at their girdles,” says our chronicler, “their ample robes, and dissolute garments, dances, and worldly songs, as if they had been guided by the Holy Ghost: all of which our preachers could not obtain from the Catholics with all their holy admonitions.”[46]

The majority of the Parliament continued to protect the ancient worship; and the people, goaded by the imprecations of the monks, attacked the Calvinists on the least pretext and pillaged their houses. All was violence, disorder, anarchy!

Driven to extremes, and headed by some of their municipal magistrates, the Reformed took possession of the _Maison-de-Ville_, or Capitol, on the night of the 11th or 12th of May.

The councillors of the Parliament immediately passed a sentence of arrest against the magistrates who had taken part in this affair, and sent round to demand the armed assistance of all the captains and gentlemen of the surrounding country. Then they presented themselves to the people in red robes, commanding them to take arms and seize the heretics dead or alive. “Pillage, kill boldly, with the approval of the pope, of the king, and of the court,” cried out five or six frenzied councillors, whilst traversing the streets.

The struggle became horrible. The Calvinists who had not been able to take refuge in the Hôtel de Ville were seized in their houses, thrown out of the windows, or dragged to the Garonne. Wretches, whom the constables were taking to prison, were massacred on their way, whilst no mercy was shown to well-dressed passengers! It was taken for granted that every one, who was not a labouring man, a member of the Parliament, a monk or a priest, must be a heretic.

Another characteristic circumstance of the struggle, was that the people, imagining all cultivation of the mind to be a commencement of heresy, crowded at once around the shops of the booksellers, and burned all the books they contained in the public places. These wretched men, who could not read, thought they were thus doing the work of good (Roman) Catholics.

The tocsin rang from all the churches, for five or six leagues round. Bands of peasantry poured into the town, attracted by the hope of plunder. The Reformed, besieged in the Capitol, had cannon, and defended themselves, from the Monday to the Saturday, with all the courage of despair.

Reduced at length to the last extremity, without food for their wives and children, or powder to load their arms, the people having also fired the whole quarter near the Capitol, they demanded a parley, crying: _Vive la Croix! Vive la Croix!_ They were promised their lives, on condition of leaving their arms and effects in the _Maison-de-Ville_. Before, however, they departed, they celebrated the Holy Communion with many prayers and tears, and began, between eight and nine in the evening, to retreat by the gate of Villeneuve. But the labourers and peasants, whom the priests had taught that it was not binding on them to keep faith with heretics, fell on them, and it is reckoned that three thousand five hundred persons perished in these conflicts.

The Parliament next proceeded to judicial executions. They first mutilated their own body, by excluding twenty-two councillors, who, without being Huguenots, had allowed their wives, or other members of their families, to frequent the sermons. Up to the month of March, 1563, the provost of the town and three hundred other heretics had been put to death, and four hundred persons were also condemned to the same penalty for contumacy. The clergy had published a monition enjoining, under pain of excommunication and eternal damnation, not only the denunciation of heretics, but even of those, who had given them counsel, help, or favour.

Acts of atrocious fanaticism were committed. It is related that a boy of twelve or thirteen years, who had come from Montauban to Toulouse, was called upon to recite the _Ave Maria_. He answered that it had not been taught him, and for that reason alone he was taken to the gallows.

In the midst of so many frightful crimes, Blaise de Montluc and the Baron des Adrets had still the frightful honour of distinguishing themselves by their cruelty. The first, a rude and ignorant soldier, was the most ferocious of all the (Roman) Catholic chiefs of the south. He seemed to enjoy a wild and insatiable delight in spectacles of blood, and he has himself related in his _Commentaries_, with the utmost coolness, all the executions he had ordered. He was constantly attended by two executioners armed with hatchets well sharpened, who were called his _laquais_. He ordered the Huguenots to be hanged or beheaded without interrogation; “_for they_,” he said, “_have a golden tongue_.” The roads, by which he passed, were known by the bodies hanging on the trees. Nor did he neglect to take care of his fortune; he knew how to pick up gold out of blood. “He who, heretofore, had but little mercy,” says Brantôme, “found himself at the end of the war possessed of a hundred thousand crowns.”[47] He was rewarded for his exploits by the bâton of a marshal of France.

But pitiless as he was, he once encountered men who surpassed him. They were Spaniards, whom Philip II. had sent to the assistance of the (Roman) Catholic party. Having taken a little town in Agenois, Montluc put all those to the sword who had defended the castle, and sent back the women by a staircase hollowed out of the wall. The Spaniards, who were waiting for them in the court, butchered them all together, with the little children they carried in their arms. When Montluc reproached them for this, they answered with _sang-froid_, “We thought they were Lutherans in disguise (_todos Luteranos tapados_).”

The Baron des Adrets, who led some of the Huguenot bands, showed himself no less barbarous than Montluc. He had embraced the new religion on account of an action, which he accused the duke of Guise of having caused him to lose. He spread terror in the Lyonnais, Dauphiné, Provence, and the county of Avignon. But the chiefs of the Calvinist party were soon ashamed of, and shocked at his crimes, and sent Soubise to Lyons to restrain him. They even made him prisoner at Valence, and he was only set at liberty at the conclusion of the peace, which he resented so much, that he returned to the Romish communion and died a Papist.

IX.

Catherine de Medicis did not, as she had promised, make the prince of Condé lieutenant-general of the kingdom. She caused her son to be declared to have attained his majority, in a _lit de justice_ held at the Parliament of Rouen, on the 17th of August, 1563. Charles IX. was then thirteen years and two months old. This prince was not deficient in natural intelligence; he was fond of literature, and, under better discipline, might have prepared himself to have worn the crown worthily. But his mother had early trained him to be treacherous, dissimulating, suspicious, and eager for bloody spectacles. She had given him for his preceptor a man from her town of Florence, Albert Gondi, afterwards named Marshal de Retz, who, according to Brantôme, was cunning, cautious, corrupt, lying, a great dissembler, swearing, and denying God like a porter.

The Edict of Pacification was not executed. Several Parliaments would only consent to register it after long resistance. The governors of the provinces relaxed or tightened the clauses of the edict at their pleasure; and the states of Burgundy, directed by the Duke d’Aumale, even dared to declare that they could no more endure two religions, than heaven could bear two suns.

In the districts where the (Roman) Catholics were the strongest, they represented themselves as defiled by the neighbourhood of heresy, and gave themselves up to shameful acts of violence against the faithful, who went to the assemblies. They violated even the sanctity of the domestic hearth, maltreating those who sung psalms, compelling the Huguenots to furnish bread for the parochial masses, and to give money to the church societies. When the oppressed appealed to the laws, they were answered by blows, sometimes by assassinations. More than three thousand of them perished by a violent death after the signing of the peace.

Where, on the other hand, the Calvinists were in the majority, they did not obey the Edict of Amboise, nor could they have done so, had they wished; for this treaty had been made rather for the north, than for the south of France. Imagine fifty to a hundred thousand persons compelled to take a journey of several leagues to celebrate their worship in a privileged town!

(Roman) Catholics and the Reformed were not united in the same society: they were encamped face to face, erect, and with arms in their hands. The (Roman) Catholics began, from the year 1563, under the influence of the cardinals and bishops, to form themselves into leagues or private associations for the extirpation of heresy. They bound themselves to devote their persons and their goods, without reservation, [to their cause]. The Calvinists, on their side, had their battle-fields, their rallying-signs, watchwords, and plans of campaign. They were two great armies, who were engaged in constant skirmishes, while waiting for the hour and the place of battle.

In 1564, Catherine de Medicis made Charles IX. traverse the provinces of his kingdom, in order to rekindle the affection of the (Roman) Catholics, and to intimidate the Huguenots. When she arrived at Roussillon, a little town of Dauphiné, she published, on the 4th of August, an _interpretative_ declaration of the Edict of Amboise. The lords _haut-justiciers_ were no longer to admit any but the members of their families, and their immediate vassals, to their assemblies. It was forbidden to the churches to hold synods, and to make collections of money. The pastors had no longer the right to leave their place of residence, or to open schools. The priests, monks, and nuns who had married, were commanded instantly to separate themselves from their consorts, or to quit the kingdom with the least possible delay. Thus was the iron circle which surrounded the Huguenots, tightened until they should be stifled by it.

The queen-mother held a conference at Bayonne, with the Duke d’Albe, in the month of June, 1565. This interview has been celebrated, because, according to the testimony of several historians, the plot of the Saint Bartholomew massacre was there laid down. The ferocious envoy of Philip II. told Catherine that a sovereign could do nothing more damaging to his interests, or more degrading to his subjects, than to give them liberty of conscience, and he counselled her to cut down the highest heads of the Huguenots, for then the rest might be easily managed. “Ten thousand frogs,” he continued in his coarse language, “are not worth the head of a salmon.”

We are assured that the plot was to have been carried out in 1566, during the session of the assembly of Notables at Moulins. But Coligny and the other chiefs came well attended, and the bloody deed was adjourned to a better opportunity.

The court having brought six thousand (Roman) Catholic soldiers from Switzerland, the Huguenots saw they had to fear the worst, and the prince of Condé held a council with the chiefs of his party. The Admiral was of opinion that they should still have patience, and wait till things had come to the last extremity. “I see very well,” he said, “how we may light up the fire, but not where to find water to quench it.”

His brother D’Andelot thought differently. “If you wait,” he said, “until we are banished into foreign lands, bound in prison, pursued by the people, despised by the soldiers, what will our patience or our past humility have availed us? What will our innocence profit us? Who will so much as listen to us? Those have already declared war, who have thrust in amongst us six thousand foreign soldiers. If we also give them the advantage of striking the first blow, our misfortune will be without a remedy.”

The prince of Condé went once more with the admiral to the queen, to entreat her to be more just to the Reformed. They were badly received. Seeing that their complaints were useless, they resolved to follow the example given them five years before by the duke of Guise, and to seize the young king, who was then in the castle of Monceaux, in Brie (September, 1567).

The plot was discovered, and the court fled precipitately to Meaux. The Chancellor l’Hospital, always favourable to measures of justice and moderation, proposed to send the Swiss home, to carry out the Edict of Amboise faithfully, and promised that on these conditions the Huguenots should lay down their arms. “Eh! Monsieur le Chancelier,” said the queen, “will you answer that they have no other end than to serve the king?” “Yes, madame,” answered L’Hospital, “if I am assured that there is no intention to deceive them.” But the Cardinal de Lorraine and the Constable were of opinion that no concession should be made.

Nevertheless it was necessary to gain time; for the Swiss had not yet arrived. Catherine therefore cajoled the chiefs of the Calvinists by negotiations; she sent the Marshal de Montmorency to them, as a man of the Third Party. He was well received. The Reformed repeated to him the cry, which was uttered in all their complaints: “The free exercise of our religion!” While this was going on, the Swiss arrived; the conference was broken off, and the opportunity lost. A (Roman) Catholic historian of our own time expresses astonishment at “_the credulity of these country gentlemen who were ready to disperse upon the faith of a simple promise_.” It appears to us, that this remark does as much honour to the good faith of the Calvinist party, as it does little credit to that of the (Roman) Catholic court of Charles IX.

After this undertaking, nothing was left but to resort to the hazard of arms. Condé encamped in the environs of Paris, with one thousand infantry and fifteen hundred cavalry. The Constable offered him battle in the plain of Saint Denis, on the 10th of November, 1567. He had eighteen thousand infantry and three thousand cavalry, but they were for the most part recruits of Parisian volunteers.

A crowd of idlers, and ladies dressed as Amazons, wished to enjoy the spectacle of the fight. Monks distributed beads, and chanted litanies. The action commenced towards the end of the day. At the first shock, the Parisians, who were known by their embroidered dresses and brilliant armour, gave way. The Constable, with the Swiss and the cavalry, defended himself vigorously. At the end of two hours, the Huguenots retreated in good order, and their adversaries dared not pursue them further than a quarter of a league from the field of battle.

Anne de Montmorency, covered with wounds, had been summoned by a Scottish gentleman to surrender. “Dost thou know me?” the Constable asked. “It is because I know thee, that I bring thee this,” answered the other, and fired a pistol at him. Montmorency, the last of the triumvirate, died of his wound a few days after. He obtained from Catherine de Medicis nothing but feigned tears, from the bigoted (Roman) Catholics a cold indifference, and from the Reformed a well-deserved resentment. The accident of his birth had placed his fortune too high. In all his great employments he wanted one quality, for which nothing can compensate—a breadth of understanding.

A man of sense, the Marshal de Vielleville, spoke, indeed, truly [to the king] of the affair of Saint Denis. “It is not your majesty who has gained the battle, and still less the prince of Condé.” “And who then?” asked Charles IX. “Sire, it is the king of Spain.”