Chapter XIV (3)

An event of principal importance that occurred during the stay of the court at Moulins was a fresh altercation between Lorraine and L'Hospital. A tolerant but apparently unauthorized act of the chancellor furnished the occasion. The Edict of Pacification had made provision for the worship of the Huguenots in but a small number of places through the kingdom. If living out of reach of these more favored localities, what were they to do, that they might not be compelled to exist without the restraints of religion during their lifetime, and to die without its consolations, nor leave their children unbaptized and uninstructed in the articles of their faith? L'Hospital proposed to remedy the evil by permitting the Protestants, in such cases, to institute a species of private worship in their houses, and had procured the royal signature to an edict permitting them to call in, as occasion might require, ministers of the Gospel from other cities where their regular ministrations were tolerated by the law of Amboise.[404] This edict he had sent forthwith to the different parliaments for registration. The Parliament of Dijon, in Burgundy, however, instead of obeying, promptly despatched two counsellors with a remonstrance to the king.[405] On arriving at court, the delegation at first found it impossible to gain the royal ear. In such awe did the "maitres de requetes"--to whom petitions were customarily entrusted--stand of the grave and severe chancellor--that venerable old man with the white beard, whom Brantome likened to another Cato--that none was found bold enough to present the Burgundian remonstrance. At last the delegates went to the newly-arrived cardinal, and Lorraine readily undertook the task. Appearing in the royal council he introduced the matter by expressing "his surprise that the Catholics had no means of making themselves heard respecting their grievances." The objectionable edict was read, and all the members of the council declared that they had never before seen or heard of it. Cardinal Bourbon was foremost in his anger, and declared that if the chancellor had the right to issue such laws on his own responsibility, there was no use in having a council. "Sir," said L'Hospital, turning to the Cardinal of Lorraine, "you are already come to sow discord among us!" "I am not come to sow discord, but to prevent you from sowing it as you have done in the past, scoundrel that you are!" was the reply.[406] "Would you prevent these poor people, whom the king has permitted to live with freedom of conscience in the exercise of their religion, from receiving any consolation at all?" asked L'Hospital. "Yes, I intend to prevent it," answered the cardinal, "for everybody knows that to suffer such things is to tolerate secret preaching; and I shall prevent it so long as I shall have the power, in order to give no opportunity for the growth of such tyrannical practices. And," continued he, "do you, who have become what you now are by my means, dare to tell me that I come to sow discord among you? I shall take good care to keep you from doing what you have done heretofore." The council rose in anger, and passed into the adjoining apartment, where Catharine, who had not recovered from a temporary illness, strove to appease them as best she could. Charles ordered a new meeting, and, after hearing the deputies from Dijon, the king, conformably to the advice of the council, revoked the edict, and issued a prohibition of all exercise of the Protestant religion or instruction in its doctrines, save where it had been granted at Amboise. The chancellor was strictly enjoined to affix the seal of state to no papers relating to religious affairs without the consent of the royal council.

[Sidenote: Protestantism on the northern frontier.]

[Sidenote: Progress of the reformation at Cateau-Cambresis.]

For several years the Protestants in the northern provinces of France had been busily communicating the religious views they had themselves embraced to their neighbors in Artois, Flanders, and Brabant. This intercourse became exceedingly close about the beginning of the year 1566; and its result was a renunciation of the papal church and its worship, which was participated in by such large numbers, and effected so instantaneously, that the friends and the foes of the new movement were almost equally surprised. The story of this sudden outburst of the reformatory spirit in Valenciennes, Tournay, and other places, accompanied--as are all movements that take a strong hold upon the popular feelings--with a certain amount of lawlessness, which expended itself, however, upon inanimate images and held sacred the lives and honor of men and women, has been well told in the histories of the country whose fortunes it chiefly affected.[407] I may be permitted, therefore, to pass over these indirect results of Huguenot influence, and glance at the fortunes of a border town within the present bounds of France, and closely connected with the history of France in the sixteenth century, of which little or no notice has been taken in this connection.[408] Cateau-Cambresis, famous for the treaty by which Henry the Second bartered away extensive conquests for a few paltry places that had fallen into the hands of the enemy, was, as its name--Chastel, Chateau or Cateau--imports, a castle and a borough that had grown up about it, both of them on lands belonging to the domain of Maximilian of Bergen, Archbishop and Duke of Cambray, and Prince of the Holy Roman Empire. It was smaller, but relatively far more important three hundred years ago than at the present day. For several years a few "good burgesses," with their families, had timidly studied the Holy Scriptures in secret, restrained from making an open profession of their faith by the terrible executions which they saw inflicted upon the Protestants in the Netherlands. But, encouraged by the toleration prevailing in France, they began to cross the frontier, and to frequent the Huguenot "assemblees" at Crespy, Tupigny, and Chauny. The distance was not inconsiderable, and the peril was great. The archbishop had not only written a letter, which was read in every parish church, forbidding the singing of Marot's psalms and the frequenting of French conventicles, but he had sent his spies to the conventicles to discover cases of disobedience. The Huguenots of Cateau multiplied in spite of these precautions. "The eyes of the aforesaid spies," writes a witness of the events, "were so holden that they did not even recognize those with whom they conversed." Yet, although the Huguenots met at home to read the Bible and to "sing the psalms which were most appropriate to the persecution and dispersion of the children of God," the town was as quiet as it had ever been. A slight incident, however, revealed the intensity of the fire secretly burning below the surface. A Huguenot minister was discovered on Whitsunday, in an adjoining village, and brought to Cateau. His captors facetiously told the suspected Protestants whom they met, that they had brought them a preacher, and that they would have no further occasion for leaving the town in quest of one. But the joke was not so well appreciated as it might have been by the adherents of the reformed faith, who seem by this time to have become extremely numerous. The excitement was intense. When the bailiff of Cambresis was detected, not long after, stealing into the place by night, accompanied by some sixty men, with the intention of carrying the preacher off to Cambray, he met with unexpected resistance. A citizen, on his way to his garden outside the walls, was the first to notice the guard of strange arquebusiers at the gate, and ran back to give the alarm. The tocsin was rung, and the inhabitants assembled in arms. It was now the turn of the bailiff to be astonished, and to listen humbly to the remonstrances of the people, indignant that he should have presumed to seize their gates and usurp the functions of the local magistrates. However, the intruders, after being politely informed that, according to strict justice, the whole party might have been summarily put to death, were suffered to beat a hasty retreat; not that so perfect a control could be put upon the ardor of some, but that they "administered sundry blows with the flat of their swords upon the back of the bailiff and a few of his soldiers."

[Sidenote: Interference of the Archbishop of Cambray.]

The incident itself was of trifling importance, for the Huguenot minister was promptly given up to the baron of the village where he had been captured, and was taken by his orders to Cambray. But it led to serious consequences. Threatened by the archiepiscopal city, the Protestants of Cateau, afraid to go to the French preaching-places, sent for Monsieur Philippe, minister of Tupigny, and held the reformed services just outside of their own walls. Alarmed at the progress of Protestant doctrines in his diocese, the Archbishop convened the estates of Cambray, and, on the eighteenth of August, 1566, sent three canons of the cathedral to persuade his subjects of Cateau to return to the Papal Church, and to threaten them with ruin in case of refusal. Neither argument nor menace was of any avail. The Protestants, who had studied their Bibles, were more than a match for the priests, who had not; and, as for the peril, the Huguenots quaintly replied: "Rather than yield to your demand, we should prefer to have our heads placed at our feet." When asked if they were all of this mind, they reiterated their determination: "Were the fires made ready to burn us all, we should enter them rather than accede to your request and return to the mass." These were brave words, but the sturdy Huguenots made them good a few months later.

[Sidenote: The images and pictures overthrown.]

Scarcely a week had passed before the news reached Cateau (on the twenty-fifth of August) that the "idols" had been broken in all the churches of Valenciennes, Antwerp, Ghent, Tournay, and elsewhere. Although stirred to its very depths by the exciting intelligence, the Protestant population still contained itself, and merely consulted convenience by celebrating Divine worship within the city walls, in an open cemetery. Unfortunately, however, the minister whom the reformed had obtained was ill-suited to these troublous times. Monsieur Philippe, unlike Calvin and the great majority of the ministers of the French Protestant church, was rash and impetuous. Early the next morning he entered the church of St. Martin, in company with three or four other persons, and commenced the work of destruction. Altars, statues, pictures, antiphonaries, missals, graduals--all underwent a common fate. From St. Martin's the iconoclasts visited in like manner the other ecclesiastical edifices of the town and its suburbs. Upon the ruins of the Romish superstition the new fabric arose, and Monsieur Philippe preached the same day in the principal church of Cateau, to a large and attentive audience.

[Sidenote: The Protestant claims.]

And now began an animated interchange of proclamations on the one hand, and of petitions on the other. The archbishop demanded the unconditional submission of his subjects, and gave no assurances of toleration. The Protestants declared themselves ready to give him their unqualified allegiance, as their temporal sovereign, but claimed the liberty to worship God. Maximilian referred to the laws and constitutions of the Empire of which they formed an integral part. The burgesses answered by showing that they had always been governed in accordance with the "placards" issued by the King of Spain for his provinces of the Netherlands, and that, whenever they had appealed in times past to the chamber of the Empire, as for example at Spires, they had not only been repelled, but even punished for their temerity.[409] They claimed, therefore, the benefit of the "Accord" made by the Duchess of Parma at Brussels a few days previously, guaranteeing the exercise of the reformed religion wherever it had heretofore been practised;[410] while the archbishop, when forced to declare himself, plainly announced that he would not suffer the least deviation from the Roman Catholic faith. In their perplexity, the Protestants had recourse to the Count of Horn, at Tournay, by whom they were received with the utmost kindness. The count even furnished them with a letter to the archbishop, entreating him to be merciful to them.[411]

[Sidenote: The Archbishop's vengeance.]

But nothing was further from the heart of Maximilian than mercy. He was the same blind adherent of Cardinal Granvelle and his policy, whom, a year or two before, Brederode, Hoogstraaten, and their fellow-revellers had grievously insulted at a banquet given to Egmont before his departure for Spain; the same treacherous, sanguinary priest who wrote to Granvelle respecting Valenciennes: "We had better push forward and make an end of all the principal heretics, whether rich or poor, without regarding whether the city will be entirely ruined by such a course."[412] On Monday, the twenty-fourth of March, 1567, the troops of the archbishop appeared before Cateau, and the same day the place was surrendered by the treachery of some of the inhabitants. At once Cateau became a scene of bloody executions. All that had taken part in the Protestant worship were brought before a tribunal, which often tried, condemned, and punished with death upon one and the same day. Monsieur Philippe, the rash preacher, and one of his deacons seem to have been the first victims. There was no lack of food for the gallows. To have been present at the "preachings," to have partaken of the communion, to have maintained that the Protestant was better than the Roman Catholic religion, to have uttered a jest or drawn a caricature reflecting upon the Papal Church and its ceremonies--any of these was sufficient reason for sending a man to be hung or beheaded. The duchess's "moderation" had effected thus much, that no one seems to have been burned at the stake. And so, at last, by assiduous but bloody work, the Reformation was completely extirpated from Cateau Cambresis. It was, at least, a source of mournful satisfaction that scarce one of the sufferers failed to exhibit great constancy and pious resignation in view of death.[413]

[Sidenote: The idea of toleration is not understood.]

Let us return from the Flemish borders to France proper, where, notwithstanding attempts at external reconciliation, the breach between the Protestants and their Roman Catholic neighbors was daily widening, where, in fact, the elements of a new war were gathering shape and consistency. It was becoming more and more difficult--especially for a government of temporary shifts and expedients--to control the antagonistic forces incessantly manifesting themselves. The idea of toleration was understood by neither party. The Roman Catholics of Provins were so slow to comprehend the liberty of conscience and religious profession of which the Huguenots had wrung a concession in the last edict by force of arms, that they undertook to prosecute the Protestants for eating roast lamb and capons during Lent. With little more appreciation of the altered posture of affairs, the Archbishop of Sens (Cardinal Guise) initiated a trial against a heretical curate of Courtenay, according to the rules of canon law, and the latter might have stood but a poor chance to recover his freedom had not the Huguenot lord of Courtenay seized upon the archbishop's "official" as he was passing his castle, and held him as a hostage to secure the curate's release.[414]

[Sidenote: Huguenot pleasantries.]

It would be asserting too much to say that the Protestants were innocent of any infraction upon the letter or spirit of the Edict of Amboise. They would have been angels, not men, had they been proof against the contagious spirit of raillery that infected the men of the sixteenth century. Where they dared, they not unfrequently held up their opponents to ridicule in the coarse style so popular with all classes.[415] Thus a contemporary Roman Catholic recounts with indignation how Prince Porcien held a celebration in Normandy, and among the games was one in which a "paper castle" was assaulted, and the defenders, dressed as _monks_, were taken prisoners, and were afterward paraded through the streets on asses' backs.[416] But these buffooneries were harmless sallies contrasted with the insults with which the Protestants were treated in every town where they were not numerically preponderating; nor were they anything more than rare occurrences in comparison with the latter. This page of history is compelled to record no violent commotion on the part of the reformed population, save in cases where, as at Pamiers (a town not far south of Toulouse, near the foot of the Pyrenees), they had been goaded to madness by the government deliberately trampling upon their rights of worship, at the instigation of the ecclesiastical authorities.[417] A trifling accident might then, however, be sufficient to cause their inflamed passions to burst out; and in the disturbances that were likely to ensue, little respect was usually paid to the churches or the monasteries. Such are wont to be the unhappy effects of the denial of justice according to the forms of established law. They would have been a hundred-fold more frequent had it not been for the persistent opposition interposed by the Huguenot ministers--many of them with Calvin carrying the doctrine of passive submission to constituted authority almost to the very verge of apparent pusillanimity.

[Sidenote: Alarm of the Protestants.]

[Sidenote: Attempts to murder the admiral and Prince Porcien.]

From month to month the conviction grew upon the Protestants that their destruction was agreed upon. There was no doubt with regard to the desire of Philip the Second; for his course respecting his subjects in the Netherlands showed plainly enough that the extermination of heretics was the only policy of which his narrow mind could conceive as pleasing in the sight of heaven. The character of Catharine--stealthy, deceitful, regardless of principle--was equally well understood. Between such a queen and the trusted minister of such a prince, a secret conference like that of Bayonne could not be otherwise than highly suspicious. It is not strange that the Huguenots received it as an indubitable fact that the court from this time forward was only waiting for the best opportunity of effecting their ruin; for even intelligent Roman Catholics, who were not admitted into the confidence of the chief actors in that celebrated interview, came to the same conclusion. Those who knew what had actually been said and done might assure the world that the rumors were false; but the more they asseverated the less they were believed. For it is one of the penalties of insincere and lying diplomacy, that when once appreciated in its true character--as it generally is appreciated in a very brief space of time--it loses its persuasive power, and is treated without much investigation as uniform imposture.[418] With a suspicious vigilance, bred of the very treachery of which they had so often been the victims, the Huguenots saw signs of dangers that perhaps were not actually in preparation for them. And certainly there was enough to alarm. Not many months after the assembly of Moulins a cut-throat by the name of Du May was discovered and executed, who had been hired to murder Admiral Coligny, the most indispensable leader of the party, near his own castle of Chatillon-sur-Loing.[419] The last day of the year there was hung a lackey, who pretended that the Cardinal of Lorraine had tried to induce him to poison the Prince of Porcien; and, although he retracted his statements at the time of his "amende honorable,"[420] his first story was generally credited. The rumor was current that in December, 1566, Charles received special envoys from the emperor, the Pope, and the King of Spain, warning him that, unless he should revoke his edict of toleration, they would declare themselves his open enemies.[421] This was certainly sufficiently incredible, so far as the tolerant Maximilian was concerned; but stranger mutations of policy had often been noticed, and, as to Pius the Fifth and Philip, nothing seemed more probable.

[Sidenote: Alva in the Netherlands.]

[Sidenote: The Swiss levy.]

With the opening of the year 1567 the portentous clouds of coming danger assumed a more definite shape. In the neighboring provinces of the Netherlands, after a long period of procrastination, Philip the Second had at length determined to strike a decisive blow. The Duchess of Parma was to be superseded in the government by a man better qualified than any other in Europe for the bloody work assigned him to do. Ferdinando de Toledo, Duke of Alva, in his sixtieth year, after a life full of brilliant military exploits, was to undertake a work in Flanders such as that which, two years before, he had recommended as the panacea for the woes of France--a work with which his name will ever remain associated in the annals of history. The "Beggars" of the Low Countries, like the Huguenots in their last war, had taken up arms in defence of their religious, and, to a less degree, of their civil rights. The "Beggars" complained of the violation of municipal privileges and compacts, ratified by oath at their sovereign's accession, as the Huguenots pointed to the infringement upon edicts solemnly published as the basis of the pacification of the country; and both refused any longer to submit to a tyranny that had, in the name of religion, sent to the gallows or the stake thousands of their most pious and industrious fellow-citizens. The cause was, therefore, common to the Protestants of the two countries, and there was little doubt that should the enemy of either prove successful at home, he would soon be impelled by an almost irresistible impulse to assist his ally in completing his portion of the praiseworthy undertaking. It is true that the Huguenots of France were not now in actual warfare with the government; but, that their time would come to be attacked, there was every reason to apprehend. Hence, when the Duke of Alva, in the memorable summer of 1567, set out from Piedmont at the head of ten thousand veterans, to thread his way over the Alps and along the eastern frontiers of France, through Burgundy and Lorraine, to the fated scene of his bloody task in the Netherlands, the Protestants of France saw in this neighboring demonstration a new peril to themselves. In the first moments of trepidation, their leaders in the royal council are said to have acquiesced in, if they did not propose, the levy of six thousand Swiss troops, as a measure of defence against the Spanish general; and Coligny, the same contemporary authority informs us, strongly advocated that they should dispute the duke's passage.[422] Even if this statement be true, they were not long in detecting, or believing that they had detected, proofs that the Swiss troops were really intended for the overthrow of Protestantism in France, rather than for any service against the Duke of Alva. Letters from Rome and Spain were intercepted, we learn from Francois de la Noue, containing evidence of the sinister designs of the court.[423] The Prince of La Roche-sur-Yon, a prince of the blood, a short time before his death, warned his cousin of Conde of the impending danger.[424] Conde, who, within the past few months, had repeatedly addressed the king and his mother in terms of remonstrance and petition for the redress of the oppression under which the Huguenots were suffering, but to no purpose, again supplicated the throne, urging in particular that the levy of the Swiss be countermanded, since, if they should come, there would be little hope of the preservation of the peace;[425] while Admiral Coligny, who found Catharine visiting the constable, his uncle, at his palace of Chantilly, with faithful boldness exposed to them both the impossibility of retaining the Protestants in quiet, when they saw plain indications that formidable preparations were being made for the purpose of overwhelming them. To these remonstrances, however, they received only what they esteemed evasive answers--excuses for not dismissing the Swiss, based upon representations of the danger of some Spanish incursion, and promises that the just requests of the Huguenots should receive the gracious attention of a monarch desirous of establishing his throne by equity.[426]

"The queene returned answer by letters," wrote the English ambassador, Norris, to Elizabeth, "assuringe him"--Conde--"by the faythe of a princesse _et d'une femme de bien_ (for so she termed it), that so long as she might any waies prevayle with the Kinge, her sonne, he should never breake the sayd edicte, and therof required him to assure himselfe; and if he coulde come to the courte, he shoulde be as welcome as his owne harte could devise; if not, to passe the tyme without any suspect or jealousie, protesting that there was nothing ment that tended to his indempnitie, what so ever was bruted abrode or conceyved to the contrary, as he should perceyve by the sequele erst it were long."[427]

Shall we blame those sturdy, straightforward men, so long fed upon unmeaning or readily-broken promises of redress, if they gave little credit to the royal assurances, and to the more honeyed words of the queen mother? Perhaps there existed no sufficient grounds for the immediate alarm of the Huguenots. Perhaps no settled plan had been formed with the connivance of Philip--no "sacred league" of the kind supposed to have been sketched in outline at Bayonne--no contemplated massacre of the chiefs, with a subsequent assembly of notables at Poitiers, and repeal of all the toleration that had been vouchsafed to the Protestants.[428] All this may have been false; but, if false, it was invested with a wonderful verisimilitude, and to Huguenots and Papists it had, so far as their actions were concerned, all the effect of truth. At all events the promises of the king could not be trusted. Had he not been promising, again and again, for four years? Had not every restrictive ordinance, every interpretation of the Edict of Amboise, every palpable infringement upon its spirit, if not upon its letter, been prefaced by a declaration of Charles's intention to maintain the edict inviolate? In the words of an indignant contemporary, "the very name of the edict was employed to destroy the edict itself."[429]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: The Huguenot attempts at colonization in Florida.]

The Huguenot expeditions to Florida have been so well sketched
by Bancroft and Parkman, and so fully set forth by their
latest historian, M. Paul Gaffarel, that I need not speak of
them in detail. In fact, they belong more intimately to
American than to French history. They owed their origin to the
enlightened patriotism of Coligny, who was not less desirous,
as a Huguenot, to provide a safe refuge for his fellow
Protestants, than anxious, as High Admiral of France, to
secure for his native country such commercial resources as it
had never enjoyed. "I am in my house," he wrote in 1565,
"studying new measures by which we may traffic and make profit
in foreign parts. I hope shortly to bring it to pass that we
shall have the best trade in Christendom." (Gaffarel, Histoire
de la Floride francaise, Paris, 1875, pp. 45, 46). But,
although the project of Huguenot emigration was conceived in
the brain of the great Protestant leader, apparently it was
heartily approved by Catharine de' Medici and her son. They
certainly were not averse to be relieved of the presence of as
many as possible of those whom their religious views, and,
still more, their political tendencies, rendered objects of
suspicion. "If wishing were in order," Catharine (Letter to
Forquevaulx, March 17, 1566, Gaffarel, 428) plainly told the
Spanish ambassador, on one occasion, "I would wish that all
the Huguenots were in those regions" ("si c'estoit soueter, ie
voudrois que touts les Huguenots fussent en ce pais-la"). In
the discussion that ensued between the courts of Paris and
Madrid, the queen mother never denied that the colonists went
not only with her knowledge, but with her consent. In fact,
she repudiated with scorn and indignation a suggestion of the
possibility that such considerable bodies of soldiers and
sailors could have left her son's French dominions without the
royal privity (Ibid., 427).

[Sidenote: 1562.]

The first expedition, under Jean Ribault, in 1562, was little
more than a voyage of discovery. The main body promptly
returned to France, the same year, finding that country rent
with civil war. The twenty-six or twenty-eight men left behind
to hold "Charlesfort" (erected probably near the mouth of the
South Edisto river, in what is now South Carolina),
disheartened and famishing, nevertheless succeeded in
constructing a rude ship and recrossing the Atlantic in the
course of the next year.

[Sidenote: 1564.]

A second expedition (1564), under Rene de Laudonniere, who had
taken part in the first, was intended to effect a more
permanent settlement. A strong earthwork was accordingly
thrown-up at a spot christened "Caroline," in honor of Charles
the Ninth, and the colony was inaugurated under fair auspices.
But improvidence and mismanagement soon bore their legitimate
fruits. Laudonniere saw himself constrained to build ships for
a return to Europe, and was about to set sail when the third
expedition unexpectedly made its appearance (August 28, 1565),
under Ribault, leader of the first enterprise.

[Sidenote: 1565.]

[Sidenote: Massacre by Menendez.]

Unfortunately the arrival of this fresh reinforcement was
closely followed by the approach of a Spanish squadron,
commanded by Pedro Menendez, or Melendez, de Abila, sent by
Philip the Second expressly to destroy the Frenchmen who had
been so presumptuous as to settle in territories claimed by
his Catholic Majesty. Nature seemed to conspire with their own
incompetency to ruin the French. The French vessels, having
gone out to attack the Spaniards, accomplished nothing, and,
meeting a terrible storm, were driven far down the coast and
wrecked. "Caroline" fell into the hands of Menendez, and its
garrison was mercilessly put to death. The same fate befell
the shipwrecked French from the fleet. Those who declared
themselves Roman Catholics were almost the only persons spared
by their pitiless assailants. A few women and children were
granted their lives; also a drummer, a hornblower, and a few
carpenters and sailors, whose services were valuable.
Laudonniere and a handful of men escaped to the woods, and
subsequently to Europe. About two hundred soldiers, who
threatened to entrench themselves and make a formidable
resistance, were able to obtain from Menendez a pledge that
they should be treated as prisoners of war, which, strange to
say, was observed. The rest--many hundreds--were consigned to
indiscriminate slaughter; Ribault himself was flayed and
quartered; and over the dead Huguenots was suspended a tablet
with this inscription: "Hung, not as Frenchmen, but as
Lutherans" (Gaffarel, 229; De Thou, iv. 113; Ag. d'Aubigne, i.
248). Spain and Rome had achieved a grand work. The chaplain
Mendoza could piously write: "The greatest advantage from our
victory, certainly, is the triumph our Lord grants us, which
will cause His Holy Gospel to be introduced into these
regions." (Mendoza, _apud_ Gaffarel, 214).

The report of these atrocities, tardily reaching the Old
World, called forth an almost universal cry of horror.
Fair-minded men of both communions stigmatized the conduct of
Menendez and his companions as sheer murder; for had not the
French colonists of Florida been attacked before being
summoned to surrender, and butchered in cold blood after being
denied even such terms as were customarily accorded to Turks
and other infidels? Among princes, Philip alone applauded the
deed, and seemed only to regret that faith had been kept with
any of the detested Huguenots (Gaffarel, 234, 245). It has
been commonly supposed that whatever indignation was shown by
Catharine de' Medici and her son, was merely assumed in
deference to the popular clamor, and that but a feeble
remonstrance was really uttered. This supineness would be
readily explicable upon the hypothesis of the long
premeditation of the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day. If the
treacherous murder of Admiral Coligny and the other great
Huguenot leaders had indeed been deliberately planned from the
time of the Bayonne conference in 1565, and would have been
executed at Moulins in 1566, but for unforeseen circumstances,
no protests against the Florida butchery could have been
sincere. On the other hand, if Catharine de' Medici was
earnest and persistent in her demand for the punishment of
Menendez, it is not conceivable that her mind should have been
then entertaining the project of the Parisian matins. The
extant correspondence between the French queen mother and her
envoy at the court of Madrid may fairly be said to set at rest
all doubts respecting her attitude. She was indignant,
determined, and outspoken.

So slowly did news travel in the sixteenth century, that it
was not until the eighteenth of February, 1566, that
Forquevaulx, from Madrid, despatched to the King of France a
first account of the events that had occurred in Florida
nearly five months before. The ambassador seems to have
expressed becoming indignation in the interviews he sought
with the Duke of Alva, repudiating with dignity the suggestion
that the blame should be laid upon Coligny, for having abused
his authority as admiral to set on foot a piratical expedition
into the territories of a friendly prince; and holding forth
no encouragement to believe that Charles would disavow
Coligny's acts. He told Alva distinctly that Menendez was a
butcher rather than a good soldier ("plus digne bourreau que
bon soldat," Forquevaulx to Charles IX., March 16, 1566,
Gaffarel, 425). He declared to him that the Turks had never
exhibited such inhumanity to their prisoners at Castelnovo or
at Gerbes--in fact, never had barbarians displayed such
cruelty. As a Frenchman, he assured the Spaniard that he
shuddered when he thought of so execrable a deed, and that it
appeared to him that God would not leave it unpunished (Ibid.,
426).

Catharine's own language to the Spanish ambassador, Don
Francez de Alava, was not less frank. "As their common
mother," she said, "I can but have an incredible grief at
heart, when I hear that between princes so closely bound as
friends, allies, and relations, as these two kings, and in so
good a peace, and at a time when such great offices of
friendship are observed between them, so horrible a carnage
has been committed on the subjects of my son, the King of
France. I am, as it were, beside myself when I think of it,
and cannot persuade myself that the king, your master, will
refuse us satisfaction" (Catharine to Forquevaulx, Moulins,
March 17th, Gaffarel, 427). Not content with this plain
talking to Alava, she "prayed and ordered" Forquevaulx to make
Philip himself understand her desires respecting "the
reparation demanded by _so enormous an outrage_." He was to
tell his Catholic Majesty that Catharine would never rest
content until due satisfaction was made; and that she would
feel "marvellous regret" should she not only find that all her
pains to establish perpetual friendship between the two kings
had been lost, but one day be reproached by Charles for having
suffered such a stain upon his reputation ("que ... j'aye
laisse faire une telle escorne a sa reputation." Gaffarel,
429).

Forquevaulx fulfilled his instructions to the very letter,
adding, on his own account, that in forty-one years of
military service he had never known so execrable an
execution. He seems also to have disposed effectually of the
Spanish claim to Florida through right of ancient discovery,
by emphasizing the circumstance that Menendez, after his
victory, thought it necessary to take formal possession of the
land. He informed Philip that no news could be more welcome to
the Huguenots than that the subjects of Charles had been
murdered by those very persons who were expected to strengthen
him by their friendship and alliance (Forquevaulx to
Catharine, April 9th, Gaffarel, 432). His words had little
effect upon any one at the Spanish court, save the young
queen, who felt the utmost solicitude lest her brother and her
husband should become involved in war with each other. ("Me
sembla qu'il tint a peu qu'elle ne pleurast son soul de
crainte qu'il ne survienne quelque alteration." Forquevaulx,
_ubi supra_, 430.)

But, although no progress was made toward obtaining justice,
the French government did not relax its efforts. Charles wrote
from Saint Maur, May 12, 1566, that his will was that
Forquevaulx should renew his complaint and insist with all
urgency upon a reparation of the wrong done him. "You will not
cease to tell them," said the king, "that they must not hope
that I shall ever be satisfied until I see such a reparation
as our friendship demands." (Gaffarel, 437.)

[Sidenote: Sanguinary revenge of De Gourgues, April, 1568.]

The French ambassador continued to press his claim, and, in
particular, to demand the release of the French prisoners,
even up to near the time when a private citizen, Dominique de
Gourgues, undertook to avenge his country's wrongs while
satisfying his thirst for personal revenge. De Gourgues was
not, as has usually been supposed, a Huguenot; he had even
been an adherent of Montluc and of the house of Guise
(Gaffarel, 265). But, having been captured in war by the
Spaniards, in 1566, he had been made a galley-slave. From that
time he had vowed irreconcilable hatred against the Catholic
king. He obtained a long-deferred satisfaction when, in April,
1568, he surprised the fort of Caroline, slew most of the
Spanish soldiers, and placed over the remainder--spared only
for the more ignominious punishment of hanging upon the same
trees to which Huguenots had been suspended--the inscription,
burned with a hot iron on a pine slab: "I do this not as to
Spaniards, nor as to seamen, but as to traitors, robbers, and
murderers." (The words are given with slight variations. See
"La Reprinse de la Floride par le Cappitaine Gourgue,"
reprinted by Gaffarel, 483-515; Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 354-356;
De Thou, iv. 123-126.)

FOOTNOTES:

[265] Froude, Hist. of England, vii. 519. Seethe courteous summons of Charles, April 30, 1563, Forbes, State Papers, ii. 404, 405, and Elizabeth's answer, May 7th, ibid., ii. 409-411; Conde's offer in his letter of June 26, 1563, Forbes, ii. 442. See also the extended correspondence of the English envoys, in the inedited documents published by the Duc d'Aumale, Princes de Conde, i. 423-500.

[266] Froude, vii. 520; Castelnau, liv. v., c. ii. Compare Forbes, ii. 422.

[267] "The plage dothe increace here dayly, wherby our nombres are decayde within these fowr days in soche sorte, as we have not remayning at this present (in all our judgements) 1500 able men in this towne. They dye nowe in bothe these peces upon the point of 100 a daye, so as we can not geyt men to burye theym," etc. Warwick to the Privy Council, July 11, 1563. Forbes, ii. 458.

[268] De Thou, iii. (liv. xxxv.) 417-420; Mem. de Castelnau, liv. v., c. ii. and iii.; Cimber et Danjou, v. 229; Stow's Annals (London, 1631), 655, 656; Agrippa d'Aubigne, liv. iv., c. ii. (i. 198-200); Davila, bk. iii. (Eng. trans., London, 1678), p. 89; Froude, vii. 519-528. Consult especially Dr. Patrick Forbes, Full View of the Public Transactions in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth (London, 1741), vol ii. pp. 373-500. This important collection of letters, to which I have made such frequent reference under the shorter title of "State Papers," ends at this point. Peace was definitely concluded between France and England by the treaty of Troyes, April 11, 1564 (Mem. de Conde, v. 79, 80). Sir Nicholas Throkmorton, who had long been a prisoner, held to be exchanged against the hostages for the restitution of Calais, given in accordance with the treaty of Cateau-Cambresis, now returned home. Before leaving, however, he had an altercation with his colleague, Sir Thomas Smith, of which the latter wrote a full account. Sir Nicholas, it seems, in his heat applied some opprobrious epithets to Smith, and even called him "traitor"--a charge which the latter repudiated with manly indignation. "Nay, thou liest, quoth I; I am as true to the queen as thou any day in the week, and have done her Highness as faithful and good service as thou." Smith to Cecil, April 13, 1564, State Paper Office.

[269] Mem. de Claude Haton, i. 356, 357.

[270] See the order of the fanatical Parliament of Toulouse, which it had the audacity to publish with, or instead of, the king's edict. It contains this clause: "Ce que estant veu par nous, avons ordonne et ordonnons que, en la ville de Thoulouse ni aultres du ressort du parlement d'icelle, ne se fera publicquement ni secrettement aulcun exercice de la nouvelle pretendue religion, en quelque sorte que ce soit, sous peine de la hart. Item, que tous ceux qui vouldront faire profession de laditte pretendue religion reformee ayent a se retirer," etc. Mem. de Claude Haton, i. 358, 359.

[271] Recordon, Le Protestantisme en Champagne, 132, 133.

[272] M. Floquet, in his excellent history of the Norman Parliament (ii. 571), repudiates as "une de ces exagerations familieres a De Beze," the statement of the Histoire eccles. des eglises reformees, "that in the Parliament of Rouen, whatever the cause might be, whoever was known to be of the (reformed) religion, whether plaintiff or defendant, was instantly condemned." Yet he quotes below (ii. 571, 573, 574), from Chancellor de l'Hospital's speech to that parliament, statements that fully vindicate the justice of the censure. "Vous pensez bien faire d'adjuger la cause a celuy que vous estimez plus homme de bien ou meilleur chrestien; comme s'il estoit question, entre les parties, lequel d'entre eux est meilleur poete, orateur, peintre, artisan, et enfin de l'art, doctrine, force, vaillance, ou autre quelconque suffisance, non de la chose qui est amenee en jugement." And after enumerating other complaints: "Ne trouvez point estrange ce que je vous en dy: car souvent sont apportez au roy de vos jugements qui semblent, de prime face, fort esloignez de toute droicture et equite."

[273] Chron. MS. du xvi. siecle, Registres, etc., _apud_ Floquet, Hist. du parlement de Normandie, ii. 525-547.

[274] Ibid., ii. 548.

[275] The father of Agrippa d'Aubigne was, as his son informs us, one of the commissioners sent on this occasion to Guyenne. Memoires d'A. d'Aubigne, ed. Buchon, 474.

[276] What else can be said, in view of such well authenticated statements as the following? On his progress through France, to which reference will soon be made, Charles the Ninth stopped with his court at Troyes, where no expense was spared in providing tournaments and games for his amusement. Just as he was about to leave the city, and was already booted for his journey, he was detained for a little while that he might witness a novel entertainment. He was taken to a garden where a number of young girls, selected for their extraordinary beauty and entirely nude, executed in his presence the most obscene dances. It was two churchmen that are said to have provided the boy-king with this infamous diversion--Cardinal Charles of Bourbon and Cardinal Louis of Guise. Recordon, 143.

[277] "Il est notoire qu'au temps du colloque de Poissy la doctrine evangelique y fut proposee en liberte; ce qui causa que plusieurs, tans grands que petits, prindrent goust a icelle. Mais, tout ainsi qu'un feu de paille fait grand' flamme, et puis s'esteint incontinent d'autant que la matiere defaut, apres que ce qu'ils avoient receu comme une nouveaute se fut un peu envieilly en leur coeur, les affections s'amortirent, et la pluspart retourna a l'ancienne cabale de la cour, qui est bien plus propre pour faire rire et piaffer, et pour s'enrichir." Mem. de Franc. de la Noue, c. ii. (Ed. Mich, et Pouj., 591).

[278] "Quelque chose qu'il sut dire avec blasphemes horribles--moyen ordinaire a telles gens pour prouver leur religion." Hist. eccles. des eglises reformees, ii. 458. To stuff leaves torn from French Bibles into the mouths or wounds of dying or dead Huguenots, as we have seen, was a diversion not unknown to their opponents. Of course, there is nothing astonishing in the circumstance that the invocation of Calvin's liturgy--"Notre aide soit au nom de Dieu qui a fait le ciel et la terre"--should have been a favorite formula for the beginning of a game of chance, or that the doxology--"Louange a Dieu de tous ses biens"--["Praise God from whom all blessings flow."]--should have been esteemed a fitting ejaculation for the winner. Ibid., ii. 310, 431.

[279] "'Double mort Dieu' a vaincu 'Certes'; entendant par ce dernier mot ceux de la religion qui condamnent ces juremens et blasphemes." Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 507.

[280] De Thou, iii. (liv. xxxv.) 409.

[281] Declaration dated Chatillon-sur-Loing, May 5, 1563. Mem. de Conde, iv. 339-349; and Jean de Serres, iii. 15-29.

[282] Martin, Hist. de France, x. 164.

[283] De Thou, iii. (liv. xxxv.), 415, 416. Catharine had been the involuntary instrument of renewing the old friendship between the constable and his nephews, when, on Guise's death, she conferred the office of grand master upon his young son, instead of restoring it to Anne de Montmorency, to whom the dignity had formerly belonged. Three months later (Aug. 30, 1563) Conde drew up another paper, assuming the entire responsibility for all the acts of the Chatillon brothers during the war: "Acte par lequel M. le prince de Conde declare que tout ce que M. l'amiral de Coligny et M. D'Andelot son frere ont fait pendant les troubles, ils ont fait a sa requisition et par ses ordres." Mem. de Conde, iv. 651.

[284] See Martin, x. 174, 175.

[285] Davila, bk. iii. 92, and D'Aubigne, liv. iv., c. iii. (i. 201), both of whom mistake the place of the occurrence, supposing it to have been Paris.

[286] Copie de la requeste presentee au Roy tres-chrestien par ceulx de la mayson de Guyse, etc. Mem. de Conde, iv. 667, 668.

[287] Ibid., iv. 668.

[288] "C'est un vray moyen pour destruire et gaster en une heure tout le fondement de ce qu'elle a prins grand' peine de bastir depuis six mois." Memoire presente a la Reine-mere, pour empecher que la maison de Guyse n'allat demander justice au parlement de Paris, de l'assassinat de Francois duc de Guise. Mem. de Conde, iv. 493-495.

[289] Arret du conseil du Roy, par lequel il evoque a sa personne le proces meu entre les maisons de Guyse et de Chastillon, etc. Mem. de Conde, iv. 495.

[290] "Ne parlez encore a personne," writes Catharine to M. de Gonnor (March 12, 1563), "des conditions, car j'ay toujours peur qu'ils ne nous trompent; encore que le Prince de Conde leur a declare que s'ils n'acceptent ces conditions et s'ils ne veulent la paix, qu'il s'en viendra avec le Roy mon fils, et se declarera leur ennemy, chose que je trouve tres-bonne." Le Laboureur, ii. 241.

[291] Not September 15th, as Davila states, nor September 24th, as D'Aubigne seems to assert; but his narrative is confused.

[292] The two documents--address and edict--in Mem. de Conde, iv. 574-581.

[293] Floquet, Hist. du parlement de Normandie, ii. 584. The entire scene is very vividly portrayed, ibid., ii. 561-586. Bruslart, Mem. de Conde, i. 132; De Thou, iii. (liv. xxxv.) 421-424; Jean de Serres, iii. 32; Mem. de Castelnau, liv. v., c. iv., etc.; Agrippa d'Aubigne, Hist. univ., liv. iv., c. iii. (i. 200-202); Davila, bk. iii. 90.

[294] "Les Parisiens furent fort presses qu'ils eussent a mettres les armes bas," says the metropolitan curate, Jean de la Fosse, under date of May, 1563, "mais ils n'en volurent jamais rien faire." Mem. d'un cure ligueur, 63, 64.

[295] A town on the left bank of the Seine, four leagues beyond Meulan.

[296] Mem. de Conde (Bruslart), Sept., 1563, i. 133-135.

[297] Ibid., _ubi supra_. "Ces parolles la sont venues de la boutique de Monsieur le Chancellier et non du Roy."

[298] Ibid., i. 136. Even after Charles's lecture and a still more intemperate address of Montluc, Bishop of Valence, when parliament came to a vote there was a tie. To please Catharine, whose entire authority was at stake, the royal council of state gave the extraordinary command that the minute of this vote should be erased from the records of parliament, and the edict instantly registered. This last was forthwith done. De Thou, iii. (liv. xxxv.) 426, 427. Bruslart (_ubi supra_, i. 136) denies that the erasure was actually made as Charles had commanded.

[299] De Thou, iii. (liv. xxxv.) 441, etc.

[300] Letter of Card. de la Bourdaisiere, Rome, Oct. 23, 1563, in which sentence is said to have been pronounced, the day before, on the Archbishop of Aix, and the bishops of Uzes, Valence, Oleron, Lescar, Chartres, and Troyes. Le Laboureur, i. 863, 864.

[301] Monitorium et citatio officii sanctae Inquisitionis contra illustrissimam et serenissimam dominam Joannam Albretiam, reginam Navarrae, Mem. de Conde, iv. 669-679; and Vauvilliers, Histoire de Jeanne d'Albret, iii. Pieces justif., 221-240. It is dated Tuesday, September 28, 1563. De Thou, iii. (liv. xxxv.) 442. The Card. de la Bourdaisiere (_ubi supra_) merely says: "Tout le monde dit a Rome, que la Reine de Navarre fut aussi privee audit Consistoire, mais il n'en est rien, bien est-elle citee." Mem. de Castelnau, liv. v., c. ix.

[302] It needed no very extraordinary penetration to read "Philip" under the words of the monitorium: "Ita ut in casu contraventionis (quod Deus avertat) et contumaciae, regnum, principatus, ac alia cujuscunque status et dominia hujuscemodi, dentur et dari possint _cuilibet illa occupanti, vel illi aut illis quibus Sanctitati suae et successoribus suis dare et concedere magis placuerit_."

[303] Summary of the protest in De Thou, iii. (liv. xxxv.) 441-447; and Vauvilliers, ii. 7-17; in full in Mem. de Conde, iv. 680-684. "Quant au fait de la Reine de Navarre, qui est celuy qui importe le plus, ledit sieur d'Oysel aura charge de luy faire bien entendre," says Catharine in a long letter to Bishop Bochetel (_ubi infra_), "qu'il n'a nulle autorite et jurisdiction sur ceux qui portent titre de Roy ou de Reine, et que ce n'est a luy de donner leur estats et royaumes en proye au premier conquerant."

[304] See the interesting letter of Catharine to Bochetel, Bishop of Rennes, French ambassador at Vienna, Dec. 13, 1563, in which the papal assumption is stigmatized as dangerous to the peace of Christendom. "De nostre part nous sommes deliberez de ne le permettre ny consentir," she says, and she is persuaded that neither Ferdinand nor Maximilian will consent. Le Laboureur, i. 783.

[305] De Thou, iii. (liv. xxxv.) 447. Castelnau (liv. v., c. ix.) gives a wrong impression by his assertion that "the Pope could never be induced to reverse the sentence against the Queen of Navarre."

[306] Le Laboureur, ii. 610, 611; Brantome, Hommes illustres (OEuvres, ix. 259). We cannot accept, without much caution, the portraits drawn of the prince by the English while they were still smarting with resentment against him for concluding peace with the king without securing the claims of Elizabeth upon Calais. "The Prince of Conde," wrote Sir Thomas Smith, April 13, 1563, "is thought ... to be waxen almost a new King of Navarre. So thei which are most zelous for the religion are marvelously offendid with him; and in great feare, that shortly all wil be worse than ever it was. Et quia nunc prodit causam religionis, as they say, dia ten rhathumian autou kai psychroteta pros ta kala, and begynnes even now gunaikomanein, as the other did; they thinke plainly, that he will declare himself, ere it be long, unkiend to God, to us, and to himself; being won by the papists, either with reward of Balaam, or ells with Cozbi the Midianite, to adjoigne himself to Baal-peor." Forbes, State Papers, ii. 385.

[307] "Le bon prince," says Brantome, "estoit aussi mondain qu'un autre, et aimoit autant la femme d'autruy que la sienne, tenant fort du naturel de ceux de la race de Bourbon, qui ont este fort d'amoureuse complexion." Hommes illustres, M. le Prince de Conde. Granvelle wrote to the Emperor Ferdinand from Besancon (April 12, 1564), that word had come from France, "que le prince de Conde y entendoit au service des dames plus qu'en aultre chose, et assez froid en la religion des huguenotz." Papiers d'etat, vii. 467.

[308] See Bayle's art. on Isabeau de Limueil; J. de Serres, iii. 45, 46; De Thou, iii. (liv. xxxv.) 42.

[309] Jean de Serres, iii. 50, 51; De Thou, iii. (liv. xxxv.) 412, 413. Cf. Bolwiller to Cardinal Granvelle, Sept. 4, 1564, Papiers d'etat du cardinal de Granvelle, viii. 305. See, however, the statements in chapter xvi. of this history.

[310] His revenue from his county of Soissons was not 1,000 crowns a year, and he had little from his other possessions (Le Laboureur, ii. 611). Secretary Courtewille, in his secret report (Dec., 1561), states that the Huguenot nobles of the first rank were in general poor--Vendome, Conde, Coligny, etc.--and that were it not for a monthly sum of 1,200 crowns, which the Huguenots furnished to Conde, and 1,000 which the admiral received in similar manner, they would hardly know how to support themselves. Papiers d'etat du card. de Granv., vi. 440.

[311] Mary herself, however, writing to her aunt, the Duchess of Aerschot (Nov. 6, 1564), represents the offer of marriage as made by Conde, both to her grandmother and to her uncle the cardinal: "a qui il a fait toutes les belles offres du monde." Papiers d'etat du card. de Granv., viii. 481.

[312] Jean de Serres, iii. 32, 33.

[313] Ibid., iii. 45, 46; De Thou, iii. (liv. xxxv.) 414; D'Aubigne, Hist. univ., i. 197.

[314] On the upper Tarn, in the modern department of the Aveyron.