Chapter XV: Book II (4)

What was the number of victims throughout France? De Thou says 30,000; Sully, 70,000; the bishop Péréfixe, 100,000. This last figure is probably exaggerated, if we reckon those only who met with a violent death. But if there be added those who died of misery, hunger, grief, the aged, who were helpless and abandoned, women without shelter, children without bread, the many wretched beings, whose lives were shortened by this great catastrophe, it will be confessed that the number given by Péréfixe is still below the truth.

The sensation produced by the massacre of Saint Bartholomew throughout Europe was immense. Men were unwilling to believe the first accounts. When they were confirmed, all the courts, all the churches, all the public places, every house resounded with acclamations; and there was not a hut, into which the deeds done on that day did not carry, according to the sentiments of the inhabitants, the exultations of joy, or the stupor of overwhelming grief.

Many thought, at first, that it was only the first scene of a vast conspiracy, and that the (Roman) Catholic powers had resolved to exterminate all the Protestants of Europe. The Papacy, Philip II., and the court of Charles IX., in fact never ceased to talk of the complete extirpation of heretics: the power, not the will, was wanting.

At Rome, the news of the massacre, which Charles IX. had announced in ambiguous words to the legate, was expected, and received with transports of joy. The messenger was gratified with a present of a thousand pieces of gold. He brought a letter from the nuncio Salviati, written on the very day, the 24th August, in which this priest said to Gregory XIII., that “he blessed God to see his pontificate commence so auspiciously.” The king Charles IX., and the queen Catherine, were praised for having shown so much prudence in extirpating this pestilent race, and for having so well chosen their time that all the rebels had been secured under lock and key, as in a dovecot (_sotto chiave, in gabbia_).

After having offered up solemn thanksgivings with the college of cardinals, the pope caused the guns of the castle of Saint Angelo to be fired, declared a jubilee, and struck a medal in honour of the great event. The Cardinal de Lorraine, who had gone to Rome on the election of the new pontiff, also celebrated the massacre by a great procession to the French church of Saint Louis. He caused an inscription to be written on the gates in letters of gold, in which he said that “the Lord had granted the prayers, which he had offered to Him for twelve years!”

Madrid shared in the rejoicings of Rome. Philip II. wrote to Catherine that this was the greatest and best news that could ever be announced to him. This prince, who has been surnamed “the Demon of the South,” had other reasons for his joy besides fanaticism.

In the Low Countries, the duke of Alba cried out, on learning the assassination of Coligny: “The Admiral is dead; there is a great captain the less for France, and a great enemy the less for Spain.”

But how shall we relate the impression produced by the massacre of Saint Bartholomew in Protestant countries? It may be seen in the letters of Theodore de Bèze, and others of his contemporaries, that, for more than a year, they could not chase from their minds that bloody and horrible image, and that they spoke of it with a trembling, which attested the profound shock which their souls [had sustained].

Germany, England, Switzerland, in witnessing the arrival of a multitude of fugitives appalled and half-dead, and on hearing from their mouth the narrative of the massacres, cursed the name of France. At Geneva, a day of abstinence and prayer was instituted, which has been kept up to this day. In Scotland, all the pastors preached upon the massacre of Saint Bartholomew; and the aged Knox, borrowing the language of the prophets, pronounced in a church at Edinburgh the following words: “The sentence is gone forth against this murderer, the king of France, and the vengeance of God will not be withdrawn from his house. His name shall be held in execration by posterity; and no one who shall spring from his loins, shall possess the kingdom in peace, unless repentance come to prevent the judgment of God.”

The ambassador Lamothe-Fénélon, charged to justify the massacre at the court of London, on accusing the Admiral of having conspired against Charles IX., cried out in the bitterness of his spirit that he blushed to bear the name of a Frenchman. “Never,” says Hume, “was there a spectacle more terrible and more touching than that of the solemnity of this audience. A gloomy grief sat on every countenance; the profound silence of night seemed to reign in all the apartments of the queen. The lords and ladies of the court, in long mourning apparel, suffered the ambassador to pass between them without saluting him, or deigning to give him so much as a look.”[64] On coming near the queen, Lamothe-Fénelon stammered out his odious apology, and retired in confusion.

The justification of the massacre was not an easier matter in Germany. The ambassador Schomberg did what he could to support the fable of the plot of Coligny. They refused even to treat with him otherwise than in writing, so much did they mistrust an envoy of Charles IX.; so deeply degraded was the word, the honour, and the name of France! When the duke of Anjou traversed Germany in 1573, the Elector Palatine led him into his cabinet, and showing him the portrait of Coligny, said to him, “You know this man; you have killed the greatest captain of Christendom, and you ought not to have done it; for he had rendered great services to you and the king.” The duke of Anjou answered that it was the Admiral who had sought to destroy them all. “We know that tale, sir,” was the cold reply of the Elector.

If all the circumstances of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew be well weighed,—the premeditation, the intervention of the court and of the councils of the king, the snares that were laid to entrap the Calvinists, the solemn oaths which had drawn them to Paris, the royal marriage ceremony stained with blood, the dagger put into the hands of the people by the chiefs of the state, the hecatombs of human victims immolated at a time of universal peace, the carnage prolonged for two months in the provinces, and lastly, the priests and the princes of the priests, ankle-deep in blood, lifting their hands to heaven to thank God,—if, we say, we ponder upon all these circumstances, we cannot escape the conviction that the slaughter of Saint Bartholomew is the greatest crime of the Christian era since the invasion of the men of the North. The Sicilian Vespers, the extermination of the Albigeois, the tortures of the Inquisition, the murders committed by the Spaniards in the New World, odious though they be, do not unite in the same degree the violation of all laws, human and divine. And frightful calamities have sprung from this monstrous crime. Individuals may indeed commit crimes, which remain unpunished in this world; but dynasties, castes, and nations, never go unrewarded.

The race of the Valois was exterminated by the poniard, and nearly every actor in the massacre of Saint Bartholomew perished by a violent death.[65]

In France, the detestable reign of Henry III. followed, together with ignoble and brutal manners, laws despised, the madness of the League, and twenty-five years of civil war. Abroad, every old and natural alliance was broken off; Protestant Switzerland, Germany, England, were against France, or wrapped themselves in a suspicious neutrality; the country was at length reduced to a depth of opprobrium, submitting to the tutelage of the king of Spain, and of humbly begging for an army at Madrid. The great reigns of Henry IV. and of Richelieu could scarcely restore her to that place in Europe which she had lost, and they only restored her by a policy diametrically opposed to that of Saint Bartholomew’s day.

Where then was the compensation for so much disgrace, and so many misfortunes? One there was, if any chose to invoke it. Without the deeds of Saint Bartholomew’s day, the French Reformation, notwithstanding the losses it had suffered, would still have constituted an imposing minority; half the nobility of the kingdom would have remained in the new communion. It is doubtful whether Henry IV. would have abjured. In any case, the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes would have been impossible, and there might have been, in our time, with the progress of population, five or six millions of the Reformed in France. The massacre of that day, by murder, emigration, and abjuration, inflicted a wound, from which France has never recovered. Is this a justification of the crime?

But we would deprive those, who would dare appeal to it, of even this resource. “The execrable day of Saint Bartholomew,” says Châteaubriand, “only made martyrs; it gave to philosophical ideas an advantage over religious ideas, which have never since been lost.”[66]

Thus there have been some millions of Protestants the less, and several millions of philosophers or atheists the more; that is the balance of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew. What then did the priests gain by diminishing the number of the disciples of Luther and Calvin, in order to increase that of the followers of Montaigne and Voltaire? They gained the anti-Catholic reaction of the eighteenth century, the hostility of the Constituent Assembly, the massacres of the Abbaye, the proscriptions of 1793; and what besides?—the spirit of our own epoch. This spirit, which has passed from France into Italy, has not yet said its last word to (Roman) Catholicism!

XIV.

The Calvinists, who had survived the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, now only thought of organizing their means of defence. In Cevennes, Rouergue, Vivarais, and Dauphiné, they had the refuge of their mountains. In the plains of the south, fifty towns, large and small, Aubenas, Anduze, Milhau, Sommières, Privas, closed their gates, and resolved to oppose a desperate resistance to the king’s troops. At Nismes, the inhabitants were summoned to admit a garrison, but they refused, notwithstanding they were most vehemently threatened. A councillor, M. de Clausonne, “_a man of great credit in the district_,” says Jean de Serres, “had made them understand that firmness alone could save them.”

Some gentlemen and pastors, gathered together at Montauban, even drew up a project of religious and political federation, “_until it should please God to change the heart of the king, or to raise up a liberator for this poor afflicted people_.” Every town was to appoint a council of one hundred persons, without distinction of nobles, citizens, or peasants, to direct all affairs of justice, police, taxes, and war, and these councils were to elect a general chief. The utmost severity was recommended to be employed towards the seditious in arms; but they were to exercise moderation and gentleness towards peaceable (Roman) Catholics.

Catherine de Medicis and Charles IX. were then in a condition to become convinced that they were egregiously deceived in supposing that all would be at an end when the principal Calvinist leaders were no more. They had reckoned too much upon the strength of the old principle of vassalage, and not enough on the power of religious principle. The Reformation had given the feeling of a personal conscience to the humblest, which could but emanate from God, and this new sort of independence prepared the way for the advent of modern right.

Wheresoever resistance was possible, it showed itself, more decisively and obstinately than before; for in the prince they now saw only an enemy. The siege of Sancerre has remained famous. This little town held out for more than ten months against the royalist army, although the inhabitants, wanting fire-arms, were compelled to defend themselves with simple slings, which were called the arquebuses of Sancerre. It endured a famine, which brought back the recollection of that of Jerusalem, in the time of Titus and Vespasian. An eyewitness, the pastor Jean de Léry, has written the details of this siege, day by day. The inhabitants were reduced to feed upon snails, moles, and wild herbs, upon bread made with the flour of straw, mixed with slate-dust, harness of horses, and even the parchment of old books and title-deeds, which were steeped in water. “I have seen some served up,” says Léry, “on which the printed and written characters were still visible, and one might read from the pieces placed upon the table to be eaten.”

Moreover, from hour to hour the besieged fell from inanition. The war killed but eighty-four; hunger destroyed more than five hundred. “The young children under twelve years,” says Jean de Serres, “almost all died. It was lamentable to hear the wailings of the poor fathers and mothers, of whom nevertheless the greater part fortified themselves by the assurance of the grace of God. A boy of ten years old, drawing nigh unto death, seeing his parents weeping near him, and handling his arms and legs, which were as dry as wood, said to them: ‘Why do you weep to see me die of hunger? I do not ask you for bread, mother. I know you have none. But since God wills that I must thus die, we must be content. The holy Lazarus, did he not suffer hunger? Have I not read that in the Bible?’ Saying these words, he gave up his soul to God.”[67]

The inhabitants had resolved to perish to the last man, sooner than give themselves up to the cut-throats of Saint Bartholomew’s day. “Here we fight,” they said; “go and assassinate elsewhere.” An unexpected event delivered them. Deputies, who came from Poland to offer the crown of Jagellons to the duke of Anjou, interceded in their behalf, and the sureties they demanded were granted to them.

It was the same at La Rochelle. This town, which by its ancient municipal franchises, formed a kind of republic, and by its numerous vessels, equalled the forces of the royal navy, refused to receive a garrison. Fifty-five pastors of Poitou and of Saintonge, and a multitude of gentlemen, citizens, and peasants, had, on the first news of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, sought an asylum behind its lofty walls, all of whom were determined to defend themselves to the death. The proposals made to the people of La Rochelle having ended in nothing, and the besieging army having lost many men, Charles IX. took the strange course of sending a Calvinist negotiator and governor into the town, the upright Lanoue.

François de Lanoue, surnamed _Bras-de-Fer_, who had only figured in the second rank in the Huguenot armies, became their most distinguished chief after the death of Coligny. He was a man of a wise and penetrating mind, of a generous character, and of perfect loyalty. He was ever seen in these unhappy wars, forgetful of danger, intrepid without boasting, modest in victory, calm and serene under reverses. He was the Catinat of the sixteenth century.

From the peculiarity of his military life, Lanoue was four or five times made a prisoner. He bore this misfortune like a soldier who had deserved a better fate, and the (Roman) Catholics had learned to esteem him. Not one of the Reformed, without excepting even Coligny, has obtained from them so much praise. Two Jesuits, Maimbourg and Daniel, do homage to his rare virtues; they regret nothing in him but his heresy. The ferocious Montluc calls him as valiant and prudent a man as any captain in France; the frivolous Brantôme says it was impossible to grow tired of recounting his virtues, his valour, and his merits; the sceptic Montaigne praises his constancy as well as the gentleness of his manners. Lastly, when Lanoue died, Henry IV. pronounced over him, in a few words, the most beautiful of funeral orations: “He was a great warrior, and a still better man!”

During one of his long captivities, he composed some _political and literacy discourses_, of which a part form what are called his _Memoirs_. They are written in a terse, nervous style, in the language of a soldier and of an honest man, who speaks to do good, not to acquire applause.

Lanoue was a prisoner of the duke of Alva during the days of the Saint Bartholomew slaughter: it was this that saved him. Restored to liberty, he was charged by the king with the duty of offering conditions of peace to La Rochelle. He was personally well received, but his mission was rejected, and the inhabitants defended themselves until the arrival of the Polish deputies.

The duke of Anjou, who commanded the royal army, was annoyed at losing his troops and his reputation in this long siege, and waited impatiently for an opportunity of withdrawing without excessive disgrace. This was offered him by his election to the crown of Poland.

A new edict, published the 11th August, 1573, authorized the public exercise of the Reformed religion, but in three towns only—La Rochelle, Montauban, and Nismes. The lords high-justices were only allowed to celebrate marriages, baptisms, and sacraments, at private meetings, which were not to exceed ten persons. For all other Calvinists, nothing but the simple liberty of household worship was permitted. It was in this edict that the expression of “_pretended Reformed religion_,” was first used.

This was but one of those half-measures, contradictory in principle, and impracticable in action, which only served to exasperate the minds [of the persons concerned], and to augment the embarrassments of the case. If the worship of the Reformed religion was a crime, it ought to have been everywhere forbidden; if not, it should have been nowhere forbidden. And what was this arbitrary limitation of certain assemblies to ten persons? How could Calvinists be prevented from meeting together in places where they were in power? Did they purpose to place a garrison in every town and every village of the south, and post soldiers in all the gorges of the mountains?

The Reformed of Montauban drew up, on the 24th August, a year after the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, energetic remonstrances, day by day, in which they re-demanded all that had been accorded them by the treaty of 1570, and three noblemen undertook to present this petition to Charles IX. The king, whom they met at Villers-Coterets, contrary to his usual habit, listened to the reading of the memorial without giving utterance to a word. But Catherine exclaimed, in an irritated tone of voice, “If your prince Condé were still alive, and if he were in the heart of France with twenty thousand cavalry and fifty thousand infantry, he could not demand one-half of what these people have the insolence to propose to us.”

This was haughty language; but pride tells badly after infamous assassinations, and Catherine de Medicis was in no position to speak in so high a tone. There was nothing but trouble and anarchy throughout the kingdom; and even in the royal family division and disorder prevailed. The queen-mother feared the eldest of her sons, despised the youngest, loved only the second, who was on the point of starting for Poland, and was distrusted by all of them.

The three brothers were enemies, and their sister Margaret of Valois was stained with adultery and incest.

The party of the _Politicians_, or the Third Estate, was growing. It was composed of those, who had retained some remembrance of ancient national honour, and who felt profound disgust for a court filled with hired assassins, poisoners, astrologers, and prostitutes. The three sons of the Constable, François de Montmorency, Damville, and Thoré, the marshals Cossé and Biron, several provincial governors, magistrates, and members even of the privy council, were among the number of these politicians or malcontents. Their chief was the Duke d’Alençon, since known under the name of Duke d’Anjou, the last of Queen Catherine’s sons. His position as the king’s brother gave him credit; but this prince, then in his twentieth year, was wanting both in mental and bodily vigour, he was fickle, presumptuous, faithless to his word, and ready to throw himself into great enterprises, which he was incapable of carrying out to a successful issue.

He even circulated among the citizens new maxims of law and political liberty. It was at this period that La Boëtie published his treatise on _Voluntary Servitude_, which even now astonishes us by its boldness; and François Hotman his _Franco-Gallia_, in which he maintained that the States-General might depose bad princes, and appoint their successors.

These malcontents opened negotiations with the Calvinists, who had strengthened their bond of union at Milhau, on the 16th of December, 1573, by promising _fraternity, mutual, perfect, and eternal, in all things, civil and religious_. They had provided in their act of union for the regular convocation of their assemblies every six months, a new judicial code, and the course to be adopted in raising men and money. This was a state within the state; a sad but inevitable consequence of the overthrow of all law by the massacre of Saint Bartholomew. Charles IX. died in the midst of these troubles, beset by vague and sombre terrors, believing that he heard groans in the air, starting up out of his sleep at night, and affected with a strange malady, which caused his blood to ooze through every pore.

“Two days before his death, he had near him,” says D’Estoile, “his nurse, whom he much loved, _although she was a Huguenot_. As she was seated upon a box, and was just beginning to doze, she heard the king murmur, weep, and sigh, which induced her softly to approach his bed, when, drawing aside the curtains, the king, heaving a profound sigh, and weeping so much that his sobs interrupted his utterance, began to say to her: ‘Ah! my nurse, my nurse, what blood and what murders! Oh! that I should have followed such wicked counsel! O my God! pardon me, and have mercy upon me, if it please Thee; I know not where I am. What shall I do? I am lost, I see plain enough.’ The nurse replied to him: ‘Sire, these murders are upon those, who have caused you to commit them! And since you did not give your consent, and you now regret them, believe that God will not impute them to you, but will cover them with the mantle of His Son’s righteousness, in which alone you must take refuge.’ After this, she having fetched him a pocket-handkerchief, because his own was wet with tears, and his majesty having taken it in his hand, he signed her to retire and leave him to repose.”[68]

Charles IX. died on the 30th of May, 1574, not having yet attained the age of twenty-four years, and rejoicing, he said, that he left no male heir of tender age, inasmuch as he would have had too much to suffer.

XV.

Catherine de Medicis resumed the regency, which she had never really abdicated, and endeavoured to negotiate with the Calvinistic party and the malcontents, until the arrival of her second son, whom we shall now call Henry III. He escaped from Poland as from a prison. During his journey he received some good advice from the Emperor Maximilian, the doge of Venice, and even from the dukes of Savoy, who recommended him to re-establish peace in his kingdom by equitable edicts, which should be faithfully observed; but he derived no profit from these counsels.

Arrived in France in the month of September, 1574, Henry III. was joined by his mother at Bourgoin, and made with her a triumphal entry into Lyons. The Duke d’Alençon and the king of Navarre, who were free in appearance, but in reality captives, followed them. It was there that the course of conduct to be pursued towards the Calvinists and the politicians was discussed. Several members of the council,—Pibrac, Bellegarde, Christophe de Thou, Paul de Foix,—inclined to the side of moderation and compromise; but Catherine and her Italian confidants, Retz, Nevers, and Birague, held opposite views, and their opinion biassed that of Henry III. This prince, who was but twenty-three years of age, had shown some marks of courage before the treaty of 1570. He did not want for ability in business, nor for dignity and grace when he appeared in public. Unhappily, he had been corrupted by the voluptuousness of the court. He passed long hours in bedecking himself like a woman, and dishonoured the dignity of his manhood, and the majesty of a king, by riotous debauchery. The creatures by whom he was surrounded, led him into a contemptible and shameful indolence, and the baseness of his vices was only equalled by the extravagance of his superstition.

On his return to France, he joined the brotherhood of the Flagellants or _Frères-Battus_ of Avignon; and in a solemn procession, he led the white, Catherine the black, and Cardinal d’Armagnac the blue order of these _Frères-Battus_. They went through the city with naked feet, uncovered heads, with chaplets of death-bones at their girdles, and making blood spirt from their shoulders with cords. Some historians have been desirous of discovering political reasons under these ignoble masquerades. What is the use of going so far to seek for what is so near? Between the excess of depravity and the extreme of bigotry, there is a singular and close relationship.

In the month of December, the Cardinal de Lorraine caught a fever, from the effects of which he died. The queen-mother, whom history accuses of having been on too intimate terms with him, could not assume on this occasion her habitual dissimulation. On seating herself at table the same evening, as they handed her a glass, she began to tremble so much that it had almost fallen from her hands, and she exclaimed, “Jesus! it is the cardinal that I see.” During the night, for more than a month, she would not remain alone, being incessantly followed by this melancholy apparition, and saying to her women, “Drive away that cardinal; do you not see that he beckons me with his finger?” What was it that had passed between her and this priest that a woman like Catherine de Medicis should have been so terrified at his death?

At Paris Henry III. continued his devotional practices; his was the religion not of a king, but of a besotted monk. He caused oratories (otherwise called _paradis_) to be erected in the churches, where he took his place every day during Lent. He also followed the processions dressed in a false wig and ridiculous costume, and in the company of a fool called Sibillot, “the greatest scoundrel,” says Jean de Serres, “that could be found in France, who walked between his master and Cardinal de Ferrara; and whilst the priests sang the burden of their hymn _Ora pro nobis_, this fool was grinning and uttering silly jests, and playing ridiculous antics.” After this, Henry III. would proceed in his carriage with the queen his wife, through the streets, and by the houses of Paris, purchasing little dogs, monkeys, and other rare animals, for which he was made to pay their weight in gold.

At the end of six months he was despised even by the dregs of the people, and by his domestics. A placard in the following terms was distributed throughout the city: “Henry, by the grace of his mother, inert king of France, porter of the Louvre, churchwarden of Saint Germain l’Auxerrois, harlequin of the churches of Paris, plaiter of his wife’s collars, and her hair-dresser, guardian of the four mendicants, conscript father of the Blancs-Battus, and protector of the Capuchins.”

The number of malcontents still increased, and made more direct proposals of alliance to the Calvinists. They were divided as to the course which they ought to adopt. On one side were the Consistorial Reformed, as they were called, on the other, the nobles, great personages, magistrates, and councillors of the towns. This distinction had already been made in the first wars, and it became more marked in those which followed.

The Consistorials, composed mostly of clergymen, principally occupied themselves with the interests of the faith, and only wished to perform their duties quietly. Tradesmen and merchants, for the most part considering these questions under their most simple aspect, and deciding upon them in a religious point of view, felt more repugnance than the others to taking up arms, and only did so at the last extremity, when they were absolutely prevented from serving God according to their conscience; nevertheless when they were once on the battle-field, they would not accept peace without a sufficient guarantee for the liberty of the church. The nobles, on the contrary, always on the alert to raise levies, were more ready to compromise religious differences, and looked mainly to their personal position in the state. The Consistorials were the strongest in number, but the weakest in rank; they were habitually compelled to submit to the domination of the Calvinist nobility, and to share their fortunes.

This was the result of their alliance with the malcontents. It was concluded in Languedoc, notwithstanding the opposition of the Consistorials, and the consequences of it were soon apparent. “The dissoluteness and strange scandals of the politicians, who were mixed with the religious orders,” says a contemporary, “finished by extinguishing whatever warmth of affection for piety and discipline remained to them. Marshal Damville cared but little to observe the conditions promised by him, and included in the association. However, he made use of fair expressions to the clergy and others; but debauchery advanced, and flowed along far and wide, like a torrent. Exactions and brigandage perceptibly increased.”[69] The war continued with varying results, and without any decisive battle being fought. The heroic defence of the small town of Livron, in Dauphiné, has been related. When Henry III. presented himself before its gates in the month of January, 1575, the besieged called out from the ramparts, “Ah! murderers, you shall not stab us in our beds, as you did the Admiral and others. Bring out these bedaubed and perfumed favourites; let them see if they can hold up their heads, even against our women!” Henry III. was compelled to swallow this insult; two-thirds of his little army perished before the town, and the siege was raised. The prince of Condé and the king of Navarre, who had been retained at court since the events of Saint Bartholomew’s day, succeeded in making their escape, and abjured (one at Strasbourg, the other at Tours) the (Roman) Catholic faith, which, under fear of assassination, had been imposed upon them. The Duke d’Alençon himself took refuge in his appanage of Dreux, and published a manifesto, in which he took the French of both religions under his safeguard.

Having no longer either men or money wherewith to oppose the confederates, who threatened to march on Paris, the court endeavoured to gain over the chiefs of the Third Estate, by offering them personal advantages, and submitting very favourable articles of peace to the Calvinists—free exercise of their religion throughout the kingdom, except at Paris, and within a circle of two leagues; admission to all public offices; equal numbers in the Parliaments: eight places of surety; the right to open schools and convoke synods; the restoration of the memory of Coligny; and, in short, the re-establishment of the king of Navarre, of the prince of Condé, and of the nobles of the religion in their appanages and governments. This treaty, called the _Peace of Monsieur_, because it had been concluded under the guarantee of the king’s brother, was signed at Chastenoy, on the 6th of May, 1576.

Catherine and Henry III. only proposed, in putting their signatures to this treaty, to dissolve the alliance of the politicians with the Calvinists. This accomplished, it was treated as void. The (Roman) Catholics of Picardy were secretly authorized to repulse the prince of Condé, who had come to take possession of his government, and persecution did not cease for a single day.

The Reformed of Paris, to adduce only one example, in obedience to the edict, which enabled them to worship at two leagues from the city, held a meeting at Noisy-le-Sec. The populace, on their return, killed several of them, and wounded a larger number. Complaint was made to the king, who at this moment was playing at the ring, dressed as an Amazon (says d’Estoile), but he took no more notice of them than if these murders had been committed in another part of the world.

One article of this treaty had decreed the early convocation of the States-General. They eventually assembled at Blois, in the month of December, 1576; but no longer with the spirit of the States of Orleans. A great part of the nobility had again joined the (Roman) Catholic church, and the misfortunes of the kingdom had ulcerated the heart of the citizens. The deputies of the three orders agreed to demand the unity of religion. They prayed the king to command the ministers, deacons, superintendents, schoolmasters, and other teachers, to quit the kingdom, in default of which they should be proceeded against as guilty of a capital crime.

Unity, thus expressed, was nothing else than war. But to make war, money was necessary; and when this was alluded to, each of the three orders excused itself. The clergy declared that they had been very much impoverished by the disorders of the kingdom, and could give nothing; the nobility only offered their swords; and the Third Estate commissioned its speaker to say, that it contemplated the reunion of all the king’s subjects by gentle means, without war—a great and puerile mockery.

The Calvinists, however, at the news of these resolutions, had again recourse to arms; but, deprived of the aid of the malcontents of the (Roman) Catholic party, and disunited among themselves, their plans did not prosper. The Consistorialists, this time, were the most determined, because with them it had become a question of losing all, or saving all, in the exercise of their religion. Earnest remonstrances were therefore addressed to the nobles by the consistory of La Rochelle. Theodore de Bèze wrote from Geneva: “I cannot in good conscience see how we can consent to limit the spirit of God to certain places; above all, to shut it out from the towns, which do not die and change, like the hearts and houses of princes. I cannot bring my mind to believe that God either can or will bless such agreements, and I would counsel you to place your heads on the block, and to suffer everything without resistance, if it must come to that, rather than approve of such conditions.” These complaints of the Consistorials were disregarded, and the nobles of the party signed a peace at Bergerac, in the month of September, 1577. On the 8th of October following, appeared the Edict of Poitiers, which only granted to the mass of the Reformed the simple liberty of conscience, with admission to public offices. The exercise of religion was limited to the places, in which it was professed when the treaty was under signature. Henry III. boasted of this edict as his own work; he liked to say, “_My edict, my treaty_;” but it was no better observed than those which had preceded it.

XVI.

Catherine de Medicis had conceived a method of overcoming the Huguenot nobles, during the peace, whom it had been found impossible to vanquish by arms; and this was by debauching them. She passed through the provinces with a numerous troop of maids of honour (sometimes to the number of one hundred and fifty), who were called her flying squadron. Everywhere throughout her progress, balls, _fêtes_, gallantries, and intrigues took place, in the midst of which the former austerity of the companions of Coligny was lost.

It was thus, under the pretext of conducting Margaret of Valois to the house of her husband, the king of Navarre, that Catherine set out, in the month of July, 1578, for the southern provinces. The Béarnese king, who had too soon forgotten the lessons of his mother during his long residence at the Louvre, could not resist the seductions with which he was surrounded. “The court of the king of Navarre,” says Agrippa d’Aubigné, “was renowned for its brave nobility and virtuous ladies. Idleness attracted vice to it, as heat draws serpents. The queen of Navarre took the rust off their wits, and let it gather on their arms. She taught the king her husband that a cavalier was without a soul when he was without an amour.”[70]

The same historian relates that Catherine de Medicis affected a style of language borrowed from the Bible. She had composed a vocabulary of expressions in use among the most rigid of the Reformed, and made use of them, sometimes as a matter of policy, and sometimes in derision. “She had learned by heart,” says he, “several phrases, which she termed Consistorial; as, _to approve of the counsel of Gamaliel_; or, _beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace_; to call the king, _the anointed of the Lord, the image of the living God_, with several sentences of the Epistle of St. Peter, in favour of dominion; she would often exclaim, _Let God judge between you and us! I call the Eternal to witness! Before God and his angels!_ This style, which the ladies called among themselves the _language of Canaan_, was studied in the evening, when the queen retired to rest, and not without merriment.”[71]

Before and after the _fêtes_, conferences were held, from which resulted the explicative Treaty of Nérac, signed on the 28th of February, 1579. It added nothing essential to the Edict of Poitiers. The king of Navarre obtained only some fresh places of safety in Guienne and Languedoc, on condition that he should only retain them for six months.

An intrigue of the court caused arms again to be taken up, and this ridiculous quarrel was named _the war of the amorous_; but the great body of the Reformed took no part in it. It terminated by the signing of a peace at the castle of Fleix, in Périgord, on the 26th of November, 1580, which treaty confirmed the Edict of Poitiers; the Béarnese king, however, conquered, the appanage being given as a dowry to his wife in Agenois and Quercy.

Four or five years elapsed without war being declared, but they passed neither with security nor repose. Upon different occasions, the Reformed sent whole volumes of grievances and remonstrances to the court. Promises of reparation were made, but the next day the council troubled themselves no more about them.

Another means was invented of weakening the Calvinist party, and it had better success than all its predecessors. This was to remove or leave out the Huguenots from public appointments. Although the Edict of Pacification accorded to them an equal right of admission to all public offices, a thousand pretexts were made use of to elude this article. It was an indirect and underhand persecution, but it was both systematic and constant.

Mézeray pretends that these proceedings converted more of the Reformed in four years than either the executioner or war had done in forty. This is saying too much. It is certain, however, that many nobles yielded to the temptation of holding offices or court favours. Some, according to the historian Elie Benoît, ashamed of abandoning their religion themselves, made their children renounce it on the score of affection and paternal foresight. Others, on the contrary, declared themselves (Roman) Catholics, that they might enter upon offices, and caused their children to be brought up in the Reformed communion, in order, as they said, to tranquillize their conscience. Has the human heart ever been found deficient in sophisms when desirous of gratifying its passions?

But the more ardent (Roman) Catholics again complained, and also accused the leniency of Henry III. and Queen Catherine. Their spirit of opposition was increased by the death of the duke of Alençon or Anjou, which took place in 1584. Henry III. had no children, and his physicians feared that he would not survive the year. The race of Valois then would become extinct. Who would succeed him? Henry of Bourbon, according to the ancient laws of the kingdom. He was the nearest heir male, and no one could contest with him the title of first prince of the blood. But a heretic, an apostate, one who had relapsed (for they affected to look in a serious light at the abjuration, which had been imposed upon him at the massacre of Saint Bartholomew), one, in short, excommunicated by the Holy See, should he mount the throne of the most Christian kings? This single thought shocked three-fourths of the nation, and the League experienced an immense augmentation.

The _League_ or _Holy Union_ had existed since the year 1576. It even dated further back, and extended beyond the French frontier. The Cardinal de Lorraine formed the plan at the Council of Trent; the Jesuits had adopted and enlarged it; Philip II., the popes, and Duke Henry of Guise, had successively put their hand to it, and by degrees the association became developed to such an extent as to aspire to rouse (Roman) Catholic Europe in order that it might crush Protestantism. It was in France that the first blow was struck.

After having exterminated the Huguenots, the new crusaders would have overthrown the rebels of Holland, then they would unitedly have invaded England, and afterwards Germany and the north, never stopping until they had either brought back the last of the disciples of Luther and Calvin to the Church of Rome, or drowned them in their own blood.

Philip II. was the principal leader of this vast conspiracy. In his retreat of San-Lorenzo he incessantly revolved, as the published correspondence of our times attests, these great and dark thoughts. He understood but two things in the world,—the sovereign power of the prince in political matters, and the popes infallibility in questions of religion. The right of resistance to the temporal power, and the privilege of search on points of faith, were in his eyes the most detestable of crimes. All authority, in his idea, was concentrated in the hands of a few chiefs, and there was no liberty beyond or beneath them. The two swords were to strike together, to keep the people enslaved and trembling; and he added the axe of the executioner, with the fire of the inquisitor, and even the poniard of the assassin; for this (Roman) Catholic king descended to such a depth of infamy as to confer letters of nobility on the relations of Balthazar Gérard, the murderer of the prince of Orange. Philip II. had conceived this execrable system of terrorism, that it might redound to the profit of royalty and the pontificate. But it only resulted in the downfall of Spain and the execration of posterity.

The Holy See entertained implacable resentment at the sight of heresy raising itself up so pertinaciously, and was desirous of establishing at any cost, the one faith, under one single spiritual chief. Cardinals, bishops, priests, Jesuits, and monks of all orders, went about spreading these maxims of extermination, at the courts and in the bosom of the people, from the pulpits and in the confessional.

In France, Henry of Guise, _le Balafré_, was the soul of the League. Keeping himself at first in obscurity, he at length came more prominently forward, and made himself esteemed by the masses, in proportion to the contempt which Henry III. inspired. He endeavoured to be affable to wards the lower orders, was a sure friend, an inexorable enemy, generous towards those who were serviceable to him, prodigal of gold to the covetous, and never wanting in promises to the ambitious; he also showed attentions to the citizens and artisans of Paris, which were very flattering to their vanity. Capable of profound dissimulation, he yet assumed the frank and open air of a soldier. As a great captain he understood still better the art of gaining victories at the proper time, than that of merely achieving them. He evinced much zeal for the church of Rome, but without falling into the abject devotions of Henry III.; and, always watchful of his fortunes, he thought nothing more of religion than as a means of improving them.

One of the dependants of his house, Jacques d’Humières, was employed in 1576 to recruit in the cities of Picardy for adherents to the League, and that association soon spread through all the provinces. There was some difference in the articles which were presented for them to swear to, and to sign, but their ultimate object was the same—a mutual understanding between the members of the union; absolute obedience to the secret chief of the League; and an engagement to sacrifice everything, body and goods, in order to exterminate heretics and to re-establish the unity of religion.

The association was composed of very different elements. For the Guises, it was a question of aggrandizement and power; for one portion of the citizens and magistrature, a means of establishing public order; for another part, a precautionary measure against the reprisals, which the Calvinists might adopt towards the murderers and spoliators of Saint Bartholomew’s day; for the tradespeople, a manifestation of antipathy against the Huguenots; and for the priesthood, an affair of religious domination. Among these, as it always happens, there were conscientious men, who devoted themselves to the prosecution of an idea; and ambitious or hypocritical individuals, who thrived upon the sincerity of others. The most moderate were made to figure in the advance-guard, for fear of frightening the well-disposed; but those who were high in rank were resolved to reap all the advantages of the conspiracy.

At Paris, the prebendary Launoy, the curates Prévôt and Boucher, and adventurers of every description, addressed themselves to the very lowest orders,—the men of the slaughter-houses, mariners, horse-dealers, and street-porters,—and told them that the Huguenots were watching their opportunity to cut the throats of all good (Roman) Catholics, and that ten thousand of them were concealed in the faubourg Saint Germain, ready to commence the massacre. The most violent clubs assembled in the churches, and the preachers, monks, or doctors of the Sorbonne, hounded on the people to the most bloody excesses, invoking the will of Heaven. The same provocatives were repeated throughout the kingdom, and the League became a formidable combination.

Henry III., not daring openly to oppose the League, thought that he should perform a master-piece of policy by signing the articles of the union with his own hand; but he only emboldened the League and disgraced himself. From being king, he became the second among the conspirators, and a conspirator despised by his accomplices.

The League demanded that he should declare the king of Navarre disinherited, and name the Cardinal de Bourbon as his heir, an old man of upwards of sixty years of age, of limited capacity, of feeble character, and a priest of little reputation, since he had lived in habits of effeminate and dissolute luxury. This cardinal would have made way for the duke of Guise. Henry III. was aware of this, he knew also that the Lorraines only awaited an opportunity of making him turn monk, and shutting him up in a cloister, as other do-nothing kings had been treated in times gone by.

At this critical moment Henry III. displayed some courage, and refused. The kingdom was then a prey to the greatest anarchy; neither authority, government, nor law any longer existed. The Leaguers published manifestoes in the name of the Cardinal de Bourbon, and by treachery or force obtained possession of Toul, Verdun, Lyons, Châlons, Bourges, and other important towns. Henry III., who had no army to oppose to them, contracted a peace with the duke of Guise, at the expense of the Huguenots. He engaged by the treaty of Nemours, signed in 1585, to deprive them not only of the public exercise of their religion, but also of liberty of conscience. It was ordered that all the Calvinist clergy should quit the kingdom at the expiration of a month, and that all the Reformed should abjure or emigrate at the end of six months, under penalty of death and confiscation of their property. This term was shortly afterwards reduced to fifteen days, as if it were intended to take away from these abjurations even the appearance of good faith.

In thus putting an end to war on one side, it again broke out on the other. It no longer originated in some wretched court quarrel, but it became a war of liberty, of religion, of fortune, and for existence itself.

The Edict of Nemours was apparently intended to be so rigorously executed, that the king rejected the request of some poor women, who prayed to be permitted to live with their children in some corner of France, which it might please his majesty to assign to them. Henry III. would only promise to have them conveyed without injury or insult to England. Some women were even burned at Paris after the treaty,—the atrocious laws of Henry II. were again reverted to.

Some timid Calvinists endeavoured to find refuge by the use of equivocal terms, such as: “Since it pleases the king,” &c., and in that manner they subscribed, not an abjuration, but an act of obedience to the royal will. The bishops perceived this, and were most rigorous with those whom they admitted. One of them, the Bishop d’Angers, gave directions that none of the Huguenots should be received until they had undergone a lengthened course of instruction, and a strict examination on points of faith. Thus the prince enjoined their conversion in fifteen days, and the bishops repulsed those, who were not minutely versed in all the details of the Romish doctrines. Thus there was nothing but contradictions.

Henry III. did not, however, wish to crush the Calvinist party entirely; he feared lest too much power should be given to the League, and to the duke of Guise. His most ardent desire was to ruin each of the two parties by means of the other, and he was frequently heard to mutter: “I will be revenged upon my enemies by my enemies.”

Seeing that the king was deficient in energy in the prosecution of the heretics, Pope Sixtus V. lost patience, and fulminated a bull of excommunication against the Bourbons, which twenty-five cardinals signed with him. It stated that Henry of Bourbon, formerly king of Navarre, and Henry, also of Bourbon, Prince de Condé, being heretics, having relapsed into heresy, and not having repented, were deprived of all their principalities, they and their heirs for ever. If any one again dared to obey “this bastard and detestable race of Bourbons,” and to recognise as his sovereign this former king of the pretended kingdom of Navarre, he should incur the same excommunication. Never, even in the most violent invectives against “the _ci-devant_ king, Louis Capet,” did the Convention of 1793 so completely fail in decency and modesty.

The Béarnese king replied to this insolent bull, by causing a protest to be posted up, on the 6th of November, 1585, in all the public resorts of Rome, commencing thus: “Henry, by the grace of God, king of Navarre, sovereign prince of Béarn, first peer and prince of France, protests against the declaration and excommunication of Sixtus V., calling himself pope of Rome, declares that it is false, and appeals against the same as slanderous to the court of the Peers of France. And in that, which touches the crime of heresy, of which he is falsely accused by the declaration, he says and maintains that Sixtus, calling himself pope in that behalf, hath falsely and maliciously lied, and that he is himself a heretic, as shall be made manifest in full council freely and lawfully assembled.” It is said that Sixtus, astonished by so bold an act, began from that time properly to appreciate the character of his adversary.

XVII.

The prince of Condé was first in the field; still young and full of zeal for religion, he was impatient to vindicate his claim to the high place, to which his birth entitled him. But he possessed less military talent than courage; he passed the Loire upon false intelligence, and having advanced too far, lost at the gates of Angers the first army, which was raised against the Leaguers.

In Languedoc, the Duke de Montmorency (formerly Marshal Damville) renewed his alliance with the Calvinist party, and nothing took place in this province but the encounters of partisans. Lesdiguières, at the head of the Huguenots of Dauphiny, took possession of several strong places, and managed to keep all that country quiet. The king of Navarre maintained his position in Guienne. Henry III. courted him, and proposed that he should change his religion, in order to deprive the League of its most formidable argument; and Catherine de Medicis, always ready to open negotiations, visited and conferred with the Béarnese king, towards the end of the year 1586, at the castle of Saint Bris, near Cognac. But her Italian _finesse_ this time met with no success.