Chapter XV (1)

THE SECOND CIVIL WAR AND THE SHORT PEACE.

[Sidenote: Coligny's pacific counsels.]

[Sidenote: Rumors of plots to destroy the Huguenots.]

[Sidenote: D'Andelots warlike counsels prevail.]

[Sidenote: Cardinal Lorraine to be seized and King Charles liberated.]

A treacherous peace or an open war was now apparently the only alternative offered to the Huguenots. In reality, however, they believed themselves to be denied even the unwelcome choice between the two. The threatening preparations made for the purpose of crushing them were indications of coming war, if, indeed, they were not properly to be regarded, according to the view of the great Athenian orator in a somewhat similar case, as the first stage in the war itself. The times called for prompt decision. Within a few weeks three conferences were held at Valery and at Chatillon. Ten or twelve of the most prominent Huguenot nobles assembled to discuss with the Prince of Conde and Coligny the exigencies of the hour. Twice was the impetuosity of the greater number restrained by the calm persuasion of the admiral. Convinced that the sword is a fearful remedy for political diseases--a remedy that should never be applied except in the most desperate emergency--Coligny urged his friends to be patient, and to show to the world that they were rather forced into war by the malice of their enemies than drawn of their own free choice. But at the third meeting of the chiefs, before the close of the month, they were too much excited by the startling reports reaching them from all sides, to be controlled even by Coligny's prudent advice. A great friend of "the religion" at court had sent to the prince and the admiral an account of a secret meeting of the royal council, at which the imprisonment of the former and the execution of the latter was agreed upon. The Swiss were to be distributed in equal detachments at Paris, Orleans, and Poitiers, and the plan already indicated--the repeal of the Edict of Toleration and the proclamation of another edict of opposite tenor--was at once to be carried into effect. "Are we to wait," asked the more impetuous, "until we be bound hand and foot and dragged to dishonorable death on Parisian scaffolds? Have we forgotten the more than three thousand Huguenots put to violent deaths since the peace, and the frivolous answers and treacherous delays which have been our only satisfaction?" And when some of the leaders expressed the opinion that delay was still preferable to a war that would certainly expose their motives to obloquy, and entail so much unavoidable misery, the admiral's younger brother, D'Andelot, combated with his accustomed vehemence a caution which he regarded as pusillanimous, and pointedly asked its advocates what all their innocence would avail them when once they found themselves in prison and at their enemy's mercy, when they were banished to foreign countries, or were roaming without shelter in the forests and wilds, or were exposed to the barbarous assaults of an infuriated populace.[430] His striking harangue carried the day. The admiral reluctantly yielded, and it was decided to anticipate the attack of the enemy by a bold defensive movement. Some advocated the seizure of Orleans, and counselled that, with this refuge in their possession, negotiations should be entered into with the court for the dismissal of the Swiss; others that the party should fortify itself by the capture of as many cities as possible. But to these propositions the pertinent reply was made that there was no time for wordy discussions, the controversy must be settled by means of the sword;[431] and that, of a hundred towns the Protestants held at the beginning of the last war, they had found themselves unable to retain a dozen until its close. Finally, the prince and his companions resolved to make it the great object of their endeavors to drive the Cardinal of Lorraine from court and liberate Charles from his pernicious influence. This object was to be attained by dispersing the Swiss, and by conducting hostilities on a bold plan--rather by the maintenance of an army that could actively take the field,[432] than by seizing any cities save a few of the most important. On the twenty-ninth of September, the feast-day of St. Michael, the Huguenots having suddenly risen in all parts of France, Conde and Coligny, at the head of the troops of the neighboring provinces, were to present themselves at the court, which would be busy celebrating the customary annual ceremonial of the royal order. They would then hand to the king a humble petition for the redress of grievances, for the removal of the Cardinal of Lorraine, and for the dispersion of the Swiss troops, which, instead of being retained near the frontiers of the kingdom which they had ostensibly come to protect, had been advanced to the very vicinity of the capital.[433] It might be difficult to prevent the enterprise from wearing the appearance of a plot against the king, in whose immediate vicinity the cardinal was; but the event, if prosperous, would demonstrate the integrity of their purpose.[434]

[Sidenote: The secret slowly leaks out.]

The plan was well conceived, and better executed than such schemes usually are. The great difficulty was to keep so important a secret. It was a singular coincidence that, as in the case of the tumult of Amboise, over seven years before, the first intimations of their danger reached the Guises from the Netherlands.[435] But the courtiers, whose minds were taken up with the pleasures of the chase, and who dreamed of no such movement, were so far from believing the report, that Constable Montmorency expressed vexation that it was imagined that the Huguenots could get together one hundred men in a corner of the kingdom--not to speak of an army in the immediate vicinity of the capital--without the knowledge of himself, the head of the royal military establishment; while Chancellor de l'Hospital said that "it was a capital crime for any servant to alarm his prince with false intelligence, or give him groundless suspicions of his fellow-subjects."[436]

The news, however, being soon confirmed from other sources, a spy was sent to Chatillon-sur-Loing to report upon the admiral's movements. He brought back word that he had found Coligny at home, and apparently engrossed in the labors of the vintage--so quietly was the affair conducted until within forty-eight hours of the time appointed for the general uprising.[437] It was not until hurried tidings came from all quarters that the roads to Chatillon and to Rosoy--a small place in Brie, where the Huguenots had made their rendezvous--were swarming with men mounted and armed, that the court took the alarm.

[Sidenote: Flight of the court to Paris.]

It was almost too late. The Huguenots had possession of Lagny and of the crossing of the river Marne. The king and queen, with their suite, at Meaux, were almost entirely unprotected, the six thousand Swiss being still at Chateau-Thierry, thirty miles higher up the Marne. Instant orders were sent to bring them forward as quickly as possible, and the night of the twenty-eighth of September witnessed a scene of abject fear on the part of the ladies and not a few of the gentlemen that accompanied Charles and his mother. At three o'clock in the morning, under escort of the Swiss, who had at last arrived, the court started for Paris, which was reached after a dilatory journey that appeared all the longer because of the fears attending it.[438] The Prince of Conde, who had been joined as yet only by the forerunners of his army, engaged in a slight skirmish with the Swiss; but a small band of four or five hundred gentlemen, armed only with their swords, could do nothing against a solid phalanx of the brave mountaineers, and he was forced to retire. Meanwhile Marshal Montmorency, sent by Catharine to dissuade the prince, the admiral, and Cardinal Chatillon from prosecuting their enterprise, had returned with the message that "the Huguenots were determined to defeat the preparations made to destroy them and their religion, which was only tolerated by a conditional edict, revocable by the king at his pleasure."[439]

[Sidenote: Cardinal Lorraine invites Alva to invade France.]

The Cardinal of Lorraine did not share in the flight of the court to Paris. Never able to boast of the possession of overmuch courage, he may have feared for his personal safety; for it was not impossible that he might be sacrificed by a queen rarely troubled with any feelings of humanity, to allay the storm raging about the ship of state; or he may have hoped to be of greater service to his party away from the capital.[440] However this may be, the Cardinal betook himself in hot haste to the city of Rheims, but reached his palace only after an almost miraculous escape from capture by his enemies.[441] Once in safety, he despatched two messengers in rapid succession[442] to Brussels, and begged Alva to send him an agent with whom he might communicate in confidence. The proposals made when that personage arrived at Rheims were sufficiently startling; for, after calling attention to Philip's rightful claim to the throne of France, in case of the death of Charles and his brothers, he offered in a certain contingency to place in the Spanish monarch's hands some strong places that might prove valuable in substantiating that claim. In return, the Cardinal wished Philip to assume the defence of the papal church in France, and particularly desired him to undertake the protection of his brothers and of himself. The message was not unwelcome either to Alva or to his royal master. They were willing, they said, to assist the King of France in combating the Huguenots,[443] and they made no objection to accepting the cities. At the worst, these cities would serve as pledges for the repayment of whatever sums the King of Spain might expend in maintaining the Roman Catholic faith in France. With respect to the propriety of Philip's becoming the formal guardian of the Guises, Alva felt more hesitation, for who knew how matters might turn out? And Philip, never quite ready for any important decision, praised his lieutenant's delay, and inculcated further procrastination.[444] But the succession to the throne of France was worthy of deep consideration. As Alva intimated, the famous Salic law, under which Charles's sister Isabella was excluded from the crown, was merely a bit of pleasantry, and force of arms would facilitate the acknowledgment of her claims.[445]

[Sidenote: Conde at Saint Denis.]

The blow which the Huguenots had aimed at the tyrannical government of the Cardinal of Lorraine had missed its mark, through premature disclosure; but they still hoped to accomplish their design by slower means. Shut up in Paris, the court might be frightened or starved into compliance before the Roman Catholic forces could be assembled to relieve the capital. With this object the Prince of Conde moved around to the north side of the city, and took up his quarters, on the second of October, in the village of Saint Denis. With the lower Seine, which, in one of its serpentine coils, here turns back upon itself, and retreats from the direction of the sea, in his immediate grasp, and within easy striking distance of the upper Seine, and its important tributary the Marne--the chief sources of the supply of food on which the capital depended--the Prince of Conde awaited the arrival of his reinforcements, and the time when the hungry Parisians should compel the queen to submit, or to send out her troops to an open field. At the same time he burned the windmills that stretched their huge arms on every eminence in the vicinity. It was an ill-advised measure, as are all similar acts of destruction, unless justified by urgent necessity. If it occasioned some distress in Paris,[446] it only embittered the minds of the people yet more, and enabled the municipal authorities to retaliate with some color of equity by seizing the houses of persons known or suspected to be Huguenots, and selling their goods to defray part of the expense incurred in defending the city.[447]

[Sidenote: The Huguenot movement alienates the king.]

The attempt "to seize the person of the king"--for such the movement was understood to be by the Roman Catholic party--was even more unfortunate. It produced in Charles an alienation[448] which the enemies of the Huguenots took good care to prevent him from ever completely forgetting. They represented the undertaking of Meaux as aimed, not at the counsellors of the monarch, but at the "Sacred Majesty" itself, and Conde and Coligny, with their associates, were pictured to the affrighted eyes of the fugitive boy-king as conspirators who respected none of those rights which are so precious in the view of royalty.

[Sidenote: Negotiations opened. The Huguenots gradually abate their demands.]

[Sidenote: Constable Montmorency the mouthpiece of intolerance.]

Meantime Catharine was not slow in resorting to the arts by which she was accustomed to seek either to avert the evil consequences of her own short-sighted policy, or to gain time to defeat the plans of her opponents.[449] The Huguenots received a deputation consisting of the chancellor, the Marshal de Vieilleville, and Jean de Morvilliers--three of the most influential and moderate adherents of the court--through whom Charles demanded the reason of the sudden uprising which causelessly threatened his own person and the peace of the realm. The Huguenot leaders replied by denying any evil design, and showing that they had armed themselves only in self-defence against the manifested malice of their enemies.[450] Subsequent interviews between Conde and the envoys of Charles seemed to hold forth some hopes of peace. The king declared himself ready to furnish the Protestants with proofs of the uprightness of his intentions, and L'Hospital even exhibited the draft of an edict in which their rights should be guaranteed. As this proved unsatisfactory, the prince, at the chancellor's suggestion, submitted the requests of his associates. These related to the banishment of the foreign troops, the permission to come and present their petitions to the king, the confirmation and maintenance of the past edicts, with the repeal of all restrictive interpretations, the assembling of the states general, and the removal of the burdensome imposts under which the people groaned, and which were of advantage only to the crowd of Italians and others enjoying extraordinary credit at court.[451] If the first of these demands were sufficiently bold, the last demand was little calculated to conciliate Catharine, who naturally conceived herself doubly insulted by the covert allusion to her own prodigality and by the reference to her countrymen. She found no difficulty in inducing Charles to answer through a proclamation sent by a herald to the confederates, commanding Conde, Coligny, D'Andelot, La Rochefoucauld, Genlis, and the other leaders, by name, to lay down the arms which they had taken up without his consent.[452] Perceiving the mistake they had committed in making requests which, although just and appropriate, were in part but ill-suited to the times, the Protestants began to abate their demands. Confining themselves to the matter of religion, they now petitioned only for an unrestricted liberty of conscience and worship, confirmed by the repeal of all ordinances or parliamentary decisions conflicting with it. Their moderation inspired fresh hopes of averting the resort to arms, and a new conference was held, between the Huguenot position and the city of Paris, at the hamlet of La Chapelle Saint Denis. It was destined to be the last. Constable Montmorency, the chief spokesman on the Roman Catholic side, although really desirous of peace, could not be induced to listen to the only terms on which peace was possible. "The king," he said, "will never consent to the demand for religious toleration throughout France without distinction of persons or places. He has no intention of permanently tolerating two religions. His edicts in favor of the Protestants have been intended only as temporary measures; for his purpose is to preserve the old faith by all possible means. He would rather be forced into a war with his subjects than avoid it by concessions that would render him an object of suspicion to neighboring princes."[453]

[Sidenote: Insincerity of Alva's offers of aid.]

The simultaneous rising of the Huguenots in every quarter of the kingdom, and the immediate seizure of many important cities, had surprised and terrified the court; but it had also stimulated the Roman Catholic leaders to put forth extraordinary efforts to bring together an army superior to that of their opponents. Besides the Parisian militia and the troops that flocked in from the more distant provinces, it was resolved to call for the help repeatedly promised by Philip of Spain and his minister, the Duke of Alva, when urging Charles to break the compacts he had entered into with his reformed subjects. But the assistance actually furnished fell far short of the expectations held forth. When Castelnau, after two efforts, the first of which proved unsuccessful,[454] reached Brussels by a circuitous route, he found Alva lavish of good wishes, and urgent, like his master, that no arrangement should be made with the rebels before they had suffered condign punishment. But the envoy soon convinced himself that all these protestations meant little or nothing, and that the Spaniards were by no means sorry to see the French kingdom rent by civil war. Ostensibly, Alva was liberal above measure in his offers. He wished to come in person at the head of five thousand horse and fifteen thousand foot, and make short work of the destruction of Conde and his followers--a proposition which Castelnau, who knew that Catharine was quite as jealous of Spanish as of Huguenot interference in her schemes, felt himself compelled politely to decline; especially as the very briefest term within which Alva professed himself ready to move was a full month and a half. For seven or eight days the duke persisted in refusing the Spanish troops that were requested,[455] and in insisting upon his own offer--precious time which, had it been husbanded, might have changed the face of the impending battle before the walls of Paris. When, at length, pressed by the envoy for a definite answer or for leave to return, the duke offered to give him, in about three weeks' time, a body of four or five thousand German lansquenets--troops that would have been quite useless to Charles, who already had at his disposition as many pikemen as he needed, in the six thousand Swiss. All that Castelnau was finally able to bring home was an auxiliary force of about seventeen hundred horse, under Count Aremberg. Even now, however, the officer in command was bound by instructions which prevented him from taking the direct road to the beleaguered capital of France, and compelled him to pass westward by Beauvais and Poissy.[456]

[Sidenote: Battle of Saint Denis, Nov. 10, 1567.]

[Sidenote: The constable is mortally wounded.]

The impatience of the Parisians, who for more than a month had been inactive spectators, while their city was besieged by an insignificant force and they were deprived of the greater part of their ordinary supplies of food, could scarcely be restrained. They were the more anxious for battle since they had received encouragement by the recapture of a few points of some military importance along the course of the lower Seine. Unable to resist the pressure any longer, Constable Anne de Montmorency led out his army to give battle to the Huguenots on the tenth of November, 1567. Rarely has such an engagement been willingly entered into, where the disproportion between the contending parties was so considerable. The constable's army consisted of sixteen thousand foot soldiers (of whom six thousand were Swiss, and the remainder in part troops levied in the city of Paris) and three thousand horse, and was provided with eighteen pieces of artillery. To meet this force, Conde had barely fifteen hundred hastily mounted and imperfectly equipped gentlemen, and twelve hundred foot soldiers, gathered from various quarters and scarcely formed as yet into companies. He had not a single cannon. Of his cavalry, only one-fifth part were provided with lances, the rest having swords and pistols. The greater number had no defensive armor; and not a horse was furnished with the leathern _barbe_ with which the knight continued, as in the middle ages, to cover his steed's breast and sides. The constable had wisely chosen a moment when the prince had weakened himself by detaching D'Andelot, with five hundred horse and eight hundred arquebusiers, to seize Poissy and intercept the Count of Aremberg.[457] In the face of such a disparity of numbers and equipment, the Huguenots exhibited signal intrepidity.[458] With Coligny thrown forward on the right, in front of the village of Saint Ouen, and Genlis on the left, near Aubervilliers, they opened the attack upon the overwhelming numbers of the enemy, who descended from higher ground to meet them. Marshal de Montmorency, the constable's eldest son, commanding a part of the royal army, alone was successful, and had the valor of his troops been imitated by the rest, the defeat of the Huguenots would have been decisive; but the "Parisian regiment," despite its gilded armor,[459] yielded at the first shock of battle and fled in confusion to the walls of Paris. Their cowardice uncovered the position of the constable, and the cavalry of the Prince penetrated to the spot where the old warrior was still fighting hand to hand, with a vigor scarcely inferior to that which he had displayed more than fifty years earlier, in the first Italian campaign of Francis the First.[460] A Scottish gentleman, according to the most probable account--for the true history of the affair is involved in unusual obscurity--Robert Stuart by name, rode up to Montmorency and demanded his surrender. But the constable, maddened at the suggestion of a fourth captivity,[461] for all reply struck Stuart on the mouth, with the hilt of his sword, so violent a blow that he broke three of his teeth. At that very moment he received, whether from Stuart or from another of the Scottish gentlemen is uncertain,[462] a pistol-shot that entered his shoulder and inflicted a mortal wound. At a few paces from him, Conde, with his horse killed under him, nearly fell into the hands of the enemy. At last, however, his partisans succeeded in rescuing him, and, while he retired slowly to Saint Denis, the dying constable was carried to Paris, whither the Roman Catholic army returned at evening.[463]

[Sidenote: Character of Anne de Montmorency.]

The battle of Saint Denis was indecisive, and the victory was claimed by both sides. The losses of the Huguenots and the Roman Catholics were about equal--between three and four hundred men--although the number of distinguished Huguenot noblemen killed exceeded that of the slain belonging to the same rank in the royal army. If the possession of the field at the end of the day, and the relief of Paris, be taken as sufficient evidence, the honor of success belonged to the Roman Catholic army. But the loss of their chief commander far more than counterbalanced any advantage they may have gained. Not that Anne de Montmorency was a general of remarkable abilities. Although he had been present in a large number of important engagements ever since the reign of Louis the Twelfth, and had proved himself a brave man in all, he was by no means a successful military leader. The late Duke of Guise had eclipsed his glory, and in a much briefer career had exhibited much more striking tactical skill. The battle of Saint Denis, it was alleged by many, had itself been marred by his clumsy disposition of his troops. Proud and overbearing in his deportment, he alienated even those with whom his warm attachment to the Roman Catholic Church ought to have made him popular. Catharine de' Medici, we have seen, had long been his enemy. In like manner, even the bigoted populace of Paris forgot the pious exploits that had earned him the surname of "le Capitaine Brulebanc," and remembered only his suspicious relationship to Cardinal Chatillon, Admiral Coligny, and D'Andelot, those three intrepid brothers whose uncompromising morality and unswerving devotion to their religious convictions made them, even more than the Prince of Conde, true representatives of the dreaded Huguenot party.[464]

But the loss of the principal general at this important juncture in military affairs dealt a severe blow to the Roman Catholic cause. There was no other leader of sufficient prominence to put forth an indisputable claim to succeed him. Catharine, not sorry to be relieved of so formidable a rival, was resolved that he should have no troublesome successor. Accordingly she induced the king to leave the office of constable vacant, and to confer upon her second surviving son, Henry, Duke of Anjou, whose unscrupulous character had already made him her favorite, the supreme command of the army, with the less ambitious title of royal lieutenant-general.[465]

The death of the constable, who survived his wound only a single day, and the subsequent divisions of the court, furnished the Prince of Conde with an immunity from attack, of which, in view of his great inferiority in number of troops, he deemed it most prudent to take advantage by promptly retiring from his exposed position. Besides this, he had now an imperative summons to the eastern frontier of the kingdom.

[Sidenote: The Protestant princes of Germany determine to aid the Huguenots.]

At the very commencement of the war the Protestants had sent a deputation to the German princes to solicit their support in a struggle in which the adherents of the Augsburg Confession were no less vitally interested than the reformed. But Bochetel, Bishop of Rennes, the envoy of Charles the Ninth, had so skilfully misrepresented the true character of the contest, that the Landgrave of Hesse, and the Electors of Saxony and Brandenburg, persuaded that political motives, rather than zeal for religion, were the occasion of the revolt, had refused to assist the Huguenots, while permitting William of Saxony and the Marquis of Baden to levy troops for the king. To the Elector Palatine, Frederick the Third, surnamed "the Pious," who from a Lutheran had become a Calvinist, a special ambassador was despatched in the person of M. de Lansac. This gentleman, by more than usually reckless misstatements, sought to persuade the elector to abandon the enterprise of assistance which he had intended to intrust to his second son, John Casimir. But his falsehoods were refuted by the straightforward expose of the prince's agents,[466] and Lansac was only so far successful that the elector consented to delay the departure of the troops until he had sent a messenger to France to acquaint himself with the true state of the case. It needed no more than this to determine him; for the minister whom the elector had intrusted with the commission, after visiting successively the court of the king and the camp of the prince of Conde, returned with certain proofs that the representations of Bochetel and of Lansac were altogether false.[467] Consequently the army which John Casimir had gathered was speedily despatched to furnish Conde the support the Huguenots so much needed.

In the letter which the elector palatine sent about the same time to the King of France, the motives of this apparently inimical action are vividly set forth. His envoy, the Councillor Zuleger, says the elector, has made a careful examination. Lansac and his companion have industriously circulated throughout Germany the report that the Edict of Toleration is kept entire, that Conde and the Protestants have no other object in view but a horrible rebellion against Charles to deprive him of his crown, and that the prince has had money struck as if he were king himself.[468] But Zuleger has, on the contrary, reported that when, in the presence of the royal council, he asked for proofs of Conde's intention to make himself king, Catharine de' Medici replied that it was a "mockery," and that, though Conde had struck money, both in the late and in the present troubles, it was with the king's inscription and arms, and not as though he were himself king. So far from that, Zuleger declares that, during the eleven days of his stay in the prince's camp, he heard prayers offered morning and night for the preservation of the state and for the king's safety. As to the maintenance of the edict, the constable before his death openly affirmed that Charles would not permit a free exercise of religion, and never intended the Edict of Orleans to be other than _provisional_. Indeed, the queen-mother remarked to Zuleger that it is a privilege of the French monarchs never to make a perpetual edict; to which Charles, who was present, promptly responded, "Pourquoi non?"[469]

It was to form a junction with the force brought by John Casimir that the prince now raised the siege of Paris, two or three days subsequently to the battle of Saint Denis,[470] and after that D'Andelot, disappointed in having had no share in the engagement, had scoured the field, driving back into Paris an advanced guard of the enemy, and burning, by way of bravado, some windmills in the very suburbs.[471]

[Sidenote: The Huguenots go to meet the Germans.]

[Sidenote: Treacherous diplomacy.]

The purpose of the Huguenot leaders could not be mistaken, and Catharine was determined to frustrate it. The chief object at which all her intrigues now aimed was to delay the Protestant army in its march toward Lorraine, until the Duke of Anjou, at the head of a force which was daily gaining new accessions of strength from the provinces, should be able to overtake Conde and bring on a general and decisive action. From Saint Denis the Huguenots had first followed the course of the upper Seine to Montereau. Crossing the stream at this point, Coligny, as usual commanding the vanguard, had, at Pont-sur-Yonne, received a powerful detachment, under the Count of La Rochefoucauld, which had made its way from the provinces of Poitou, Saintonge, and Guyenne, across the valley of the Loire, to reinforce the Prince of Conde's army.[472] Having effected a junction, the united body had changed its course, recrossed the Seine, and countermarched to the river Marne, at Epernay and Chalons. Coligny's skilful manoeuvre had disappointed the queen's plan, and she resorted to her accustomed arts of negotiation. So flattering, indeed, were her promises, that Conde, had he not been restrained by the more prudent counsels of his associates (among whom the Vidame of Chartres was most urgent in his protests against so suicidal a policy), would instantly have relaxed the sinews of war.[473] A petty act of treachery served to open his eyes, and to prevent the Protestants from involving themselves in more serious disaster; for the Count de Brissac took advantage of a three days' armistice to fall unexpectedly upon an outpost of the prince's army and gain an advantage, which was duly magnified by report at Paris into a brilliant victory.[474] Unabashed by this incident, Catharine soon after renewed her seductive offers (on the twentieth of December, 1567). She invited a conference with the Cardinal of Chatillon and other Protestant leaders, and herself went so far as Chalons to meet them. Thence the scene of the negotiations was transferred to Vincennes, in the vicinity of Paris, and for a time the prospect of reconciliation was bright and encouraging. The king's envoys consented to the re-establishment of the Edict of Amboise, without any past or future restrictions, until the decision of the religious question by that mythical assembly which, like a mirage of the desert, ever and anon arose to entrance and disappoint the longing eyes of thoughtful men in this century--a free, universal, and legitimate council of the Church. But the hopes founded on these promises were as illusory as any previously conceived. Instead of a formal and unambiguous ratification of the terms by Charles himself, the Cardinal of Chatillon was treated only to complaints about the causeless rising of the Protestants, and expressions of astonishment that Conde had not instantly countermanded the approach of the German auxiliaries on receiving the king's gracious proffers.[475]

[Sidenote: Catharine implores Alva's assistance.]

[Sidenote: Alva's view of accommodations with heretics.]

Meantime Catharine was not idle in soliciting foreign aid. The Duke d'Aumale--who had also marched to Lorraine, in order to meet the Germans coming to the assistance of the Roman Catholics, under command of the Marquis of Baden--not being strong enough to block the passage of Conde's troops, Catharine wrote to Alva, begging him to send to the duke, in this emergency, two thousand arquebusiers. She warned him that if, through the failure to procure them, the German reiters of John Casimir should be permitted to enter the kingdom, she would hold herself exonerated, in the sight of God and of all Christian princes, from the blame that might otherwise attach to her for the peace which she would be compelled to make with the heretics.[476] Alva, in reply, declined to send the Spanish arquebusiers, who, he said, were needed by him, and could do little good in France; but he added that, if Aumale, who was a soldier, would guarantee with this accession to stop the reiters, he would let them go, useful as they were in the Netherlands. As to the accommodation with the Huguenots, which Catharine suggested, he viewed it as a frightful evil, and exclaimed "that it was better to have a kingdom ruined in preserving it for God and the king, than to retain it whole, but without religion, for the advantage of the devil and his partisans, the heretics."[477]

[Sidenote: Conde and John Casimir meet in Lorraine.]

[Sidenote: Generosity of the Huguenot troops.]

About the beginning of the new year the foot-sore Huguenot army, after nearly two months of tedious marches through a hostile country, and no less tedious negotiations, reached Lorraine, only to find that their German allies had not yet arrived. Sick at heart, with a powerful enemy hanging on their rear, and seeking only an opportunity to make a sudden descent upon them, many of the Huguenots were disposed to take advantage of the proximity of the German cities to disperse and find a refuge there. But Conde, with his never-failing vivacity and cheerfulness, and Coligny, with his "grave words," succeeded in checking their despondency until the welcome news of John Casimir's approach was announced. He brought six thousand five hundred horse, three thousand foot, and four cannon of moderate size. His arrival did not, however, prove an occasion of unmingled satisfaction. The reiters, serving from purely mercenary motives, demanded the immediate payment of one hundred thousand crowns, promised as a first instalment on account of their wages, and were resolved to go no farther without receiving it. The Prince of Conde had but two thousand crowns to meet the engagement. In this new perplexity the Huguenots, from the leaders down to the very lowest, gave a noble illustration of devotion to their religion's cause. Conde and Coligny set the example by giving up their plate to replenish the empty coffers of the army. The captains urged, the ministers of the gospel preached, a generous sacrifice of property in the common interest. Their exhortations did not fall upon dull ears. Money, gold chains, silver, articles of every description, were lavishly contributed. An unpaid army sacrificed its own private property, not only without a murmur, but even joyfully. The very camp-servants vied with their masters, and put them to shame by their superior liberality.[478] In a short time a sum was raised which, although less than what had been pledged, contented the reiters, who declared themselves ready to follow their Huguenot fellow-soldiers into the heart of the kingdom.[479] Well might an army capable of such heroic contempt for personal gain or loss be deemed invincible!

[Sidenote: The march toward Orleans.]

And now, with feelings widely different from those which had possessed them in the journey toward Lorraine--a movement too nearly akin to a flight to inspire anything but disgust--the Huguenot soldiers, over twenty thousand strong, turned their faces once more westward. Their late pursuers, no longer seeking an engagement where the result might be worse than doubtful, confined themselves to watching their progress from a safe distance. As all the cities upon their route were in the hands of the Roman Catholics, the Huguenots were forced to take more circuitous and difficult paths through the open country. But the dispositions made by Coligny are said to have been so thorough and masterly, that they travelled safely and in comfort.[480] Not that the soldiers, dispersed at night through the villages, were freed from the necessity or the temptation to pillage;[481] for the poor farmers, robbed of the fruits of their honest toil, frequently had good reason to complain that those who had recently dispensed their own treasure with so liberal a hand were even more lavish of the property of others. But they were far more merciful and considerate toward their enemies than the Roman Catholic army to its friends. Even a curate of Brie--no very great lover of the Huguenots, who relates with infinite gusto the violation of Huguenot women by Anjou's soldiers[482]--admits that, excepting in the matter of the plundering of the churches and the distressing of priests, the Roman Catholics were a little worse than the heretics.[483]

[Sidenote: The "Michelade" at Nismes.]

Leaving the Huguenot army on its march toward Orleans, let us glance at the operations of the party in other quarters of the kingdom. Southern France, where the Protestants were most numerous, and where the excitable character of the people disposed them more easily than elsewhere to sudden outbreaks, was not behind the north in rising at the appointed time (September, 1567). At Nismes, indeed, a furious commotion broke out--the famous "Michelade," as it was called, because it immediately followed the feast-day of St. Michael--a commotion whose sanguinary excesses gave it an unenviable notoriety, and brought deep disgrace upon the Protestant cause. Here the turbulent populace was encouraged by the report that Lyons was in friendly hands, and maddened by the intelligence that, besides the common dangers impending over all the Huguenots of France, the Huguenots of Nismes had more particular occasion for fear in the troops of the neighboring Comtat Venaissin. These troops, it was said, had been summoned by the bishop and chapter of the cathedral of Nismes. The mob accordingly took possession of the city, closing the gates, and imprisoning a large number of persons--consuls, priests, and other obnoxious characters. That night the cathedral and the chapter-house witnessed a wild scene of destruction. Pictures of the saints, and altars, including everything associated with Roman Catholic worship, were ruthlessly destroyed. But the most terrible event occurred in the episcopal palace. The bishop was saved from capture and certain death by the intervention of a courageous man, himself a Protestant; but others were less fortunate. No fewer than eighty prisoners, brought in detachments to the court of the palace, were butchered in rapid succession, and their corpses thrown promiscuously into a well. The next morning the Protestant pastors and elders assembled, and, sending to the ringleaders a minister and a deacon, begged them to discontinue their horrible work. Already, however, had returning shame made everybody unwilling to avow his complicity in the crime. Quiet was restored. The Protestant seneschal and council released such prisoners as had escaped the fate of their comrades, and the bishop himself was sent away under an escort to a place of safety, by order of the very judge whom the clergy had, a year before, sought to deprive of his office as a heretic.[484] Nismes remained in the hands of the Protestants through the war.

[Sidenote: Huguenot successes in the south and west.]

[Sidenote: La Rochelle secured for Conde.]

Meanwhile more important movements took place. Rene of Savoy, son of the Count de Tende, but better known as Cipierre, was Conde's agent in assembling the Huguenots of Provence; but Paul de Mouvans, whom we have met with before in this history, was the real hero of the region. In Dauphiny, Montbrun commanded. In Bourbonnais and the neighboring provinces west of the Rhone, Parcenac and Verbelai raised three thousand foot and five hundred horse, but sustained so severe a loss while passing through Forez, that the number was soon reduced to barely twelve hundred. Nearer the Pyrenees, seven thousand men were assembled, known as "the army of the viscounts," to which further reference will shortly be made. Lyons, one of the Huguenot strongholds in the first war, the Protestants failed to capture.[485] But Orleans was secured by the skill of Francois de la Noue, a young champion whose name was destined long to figure in the most brilliant deeds of arms of his party, both in France and in the Low Countries.[486] In the west, too, the Huguenots made the most important gain of the war in the city of La Rochelle, for the next half-century and more their secure refuge on approach of danger.

This place, strong by nature, surrounded by low, marshy grounds, rendering it almost unapproachable from the land side, save by the causeways over which the roads ran, with a large and convenient harbor and with easy access to the sea, was already rich and populous. The citizens of La Rochelle were noted for their independent spirit, engendered or fostered by their maritime habits. Although the great importance of the city dates from the civil wars, when its wharves received the commerce driven from older ports, and when its privateers swept the shores of Brittany and the bosom of the English channel, it had long boasted extraordinary privileges, among which the most highly prized was the right to refuse admission to a royal garrison.[487] Besides this, the citizens were accustomed to choose three candidates for the office of major, from whom the king or the royal governor made his selection; and the magistrate thus appointed enjoyed an authority which the Rochellois would scarcely concede to their monarch.[488] La Rochelle--whose former orthodoxy Father Soulier attempts to establish by instancing the sentence which the "presidial" of the city pronounced in 1552 against some Protestants, condemning them to be dragged on a hurdle with a fagot of sticks bound to their backs, and afterward to be burned, one of them alive[489]--had been so far affected by the progress of the Reformation, that it was perhaps only the fear of losing its trade and privileges that prevented it from openly siding with Conde in the first religious war.[490] By this time, however, Protestantism had struck such deep roots, that one of the three candidates for the mayoralty, at the Easter elections of 1567, was Truchares, a political Huguenot. The king was, indeed, warned of his sentiments; but the royal governor, M. de Jarnac, supported his claims, and Truchares received the requisite confirmation.[491] Still La Rochelle hesitated to espouse the Protestant side. It was not until midwinter,[492] that Conde, returning from Lorraine, commissioned M. de Sainte-Hermine to assume command of the city in his name; and on the tenth of February, 1568, the mayor and echevins of La Rochelle opened their gates to their new friends, with protestations of their purpose to devote their lives and property to the advancement of the common cause. "The sequel proved only too clearly," writes a Roman Catholic historian, "that they were very sincere in their promises; for, having soon after demolished all the churches, they employed the materials to fortify this city in such a manner that it served from this time forward as a citadel for the Protestants, and as a secure retreat for all the apostates and malcontents of the kingdom until it was reduced by Louis the Thirteenth."[493]

[Sidenote: Spain and Rome oppose the negotiations for peace.]

Meantime the irresolute queen mother, always oscillating between war and peace, had again begun to treat with the Huguenots. Between the fifth and twentieth of January she held repeated interviews with Cardinal Chatillon, D'Esternay, and Teligny. The bigots took the alarm. The Papal Nuncio and the ambassadors of Spain and Scotland did their utmost "to impeach the accord." A post arrived from Philip the Second, offering a hundred thousand crowns of gold if Charles would continue the war. The doctors of the Sorbonne remonstrated. All united in a common cry that "it was impossible to have two religions in one realm without great confusion." Poor Charles was so moved by the stale falsehood, as well as by the large promises made him, that he sent the Protestant envoys word that he would treat no further unless Conde and his "complices" would send the reiters back to Germany, and, wholly disarming, come to him with their ordinary retinues to purge themselves of the attempt made at Meaux.

[Sidenote: Cardinal Santa Croce demands that Cardinal Chatillon be surrendered to the Pope.]

[Sidenote: Retort of Marshal Montmorency.]

Even this amount of complaisance on the part of the weak monarch, however, did not satisfy Cardinal Santa Croce, who, on one occasion entering the council chamber (on the twentieth of January), boldly demanded the fulfilment of the queen mother's promise to surrender Cardinal Chatillon into the Pope's hands. Catharine did not deny the promise, but interposed the plea that the present was a very unsuitable time, since Chatillon had come to court upon the king's safe-conduct. To this the churchman replied that no respect ought to be had toward the Cardinal, for he was "an excommunicate person," condemned of schism, and dead in the eyes of the law. Up to this point the Duke de Montmorency, who was present, had kept silence; but now, turning to the queen mother, he is reported by the English ambassador to have made a pungent address. "But, madam," he said, "is it possible that the Cardinal Chatillon's delivery should come in question, being warranted by the king and your Majesty to the contrary, and I myself being made a mean therein? Wherefore this matter is odious to be talked of, and against the law of arms and all good civil policy; and I must needs repute them my enemies who go about to make me falsify my promise once made." After these plain words Santa Croce "departed without attaining his most cruel request."[494]

[Sidenote: March of the viscounts to meet Conde.]

During the first few months after the assumption of arms, the Huguenots of southern France, surrounded by domestic enemies, had confined themselves to attempting to secure their own safety and that of their neighbors, by taking the most important cities and keeping in check the forces of the provincial governors--an undertaking in which they met with more success in the districts bordering upon the Mediterranean than in those adjoining the Bay of Biscay. These events, although in themselves important and interesting, would usurp a disproportionate place in this history. While Conde was absent from the vicinity of the capital, however, a body of six thousand troops, drawn from the army of the _viscounts_, under Mouvans and other experienced southern leaders, undertook a hazardous march from Dauphiny, intending to join the prince's army at Orleans.[495] The cities were in the possession of the enemy, the fords were carefully guarded, the entire country was hostile. But the perils which might have deterred less resolute men only enhanced the glory of the success of the gallant Huguenots. Abandoned by a considerable number of their comrades, who preferred a life of plunder to a fatiguing journey under arms, they met (on the eighth of January, 1568) and defeated, with a force consisting almost exclusively of infantry, the cavalry which the governor of Auvergne and the local nobility had assembled near the village of Cognac[496] to dispute their passage. Continuing their march, they reached Orleans in time to relieve that city, to whose friendly protection against the Roman Catholic bands of Martinengo and Richelieu that infested its neighborhood and threatened its capture Conde and the other Huguenot leaders of the north had entrusted their wives and children.[497]

[Sidenote: Siege of Chartres.]

Having stopped a brief time to rest the soldiers after the protracted march, the viscounts turned their victorious arms against the city of Blois. After the surrender of this place, they had proceeded down the valley of the Loire, and were about to take Montrichard, on the Cher, when recalled by Conde. The prince had by forced marches anticipated the army of Anjou, resolving to strike a blow which should be felt at the hostile capital itself, and had selected Chartres, an important city about fifty miles in a south-westerly direction from Paris, as the most convenient place to besiege.[498] Rapid, however, as had been his advance--and a part of his army had travelled sixty miles in two days--the enemy had sufficient notice of his intention to throw into the city a small force of soldiers; and when Conde arrived before the walls (on the twenty-fourth of February, 1568), he found the place prepared to sustain an attack, in which the courage of the assailants was equalled by the skill and resolution of the defenders. As usual, the Huguenots were badly off for artillery; the united armies could only muster five siege-pieces and four light culverines. "For, although the Catholics esteem the Huguenots to be 'fiery' men," says a quaint old writer, who was as ready with his sword as with his pen, "they have always been poorly provided with such implements. Nor have they, like the former, a Saint Anthony, who, they say, presides over the element in question."[499]

The operations of the siege of Chartres were interrupted by fresh negotiations for peace. Half a year had the flames of war been desolating the fairest parts of France; yet the court was no nearer the attainment of its ends than at the outbreak of hostilities. If the Roman Catholic forces had been swollen to about forty thousand men, they were confronted by a Huguenot army of twenty-eight or thirty thousand men in the very neighborhood of the capital. The voice of prudence dictated an immediate settlement of the dispute before more lives were sacrificed, more towns and villages destroyed, more treasure squandered. Catharine, reigning supreme under her son's name, with her usual inconstancy of purpose, was ready to exchange the war, into which she had plunged France by lending too willing an ear to the suggestions of Philip of Spain, as they came to her through the Cardinal of Lorraine and others, and which had produced only bloodshed, devastation of the kingdom, and deeper depression of the finances, for the peace to which Michel de l'Hospital, her better genius, was constantly urging her by every consideration of policy and justice.

[Sidenote: Chancellor Michel de l'Hospital's memorial.]

In a paper, wherein about this time the chancellor committed to writing the arguments he had often ineffectually employed to persuade the king and his mother, he combats with patriotic indignation the flimsy pretexts of which the priests and the Spaniard made use in pressing the continuance of hostilities. "'The king has more men than the Huguenots.' True, but we find twice as many battles on record gained by the smaller as by the greater number; in consequence of which fact all princes and nations have recognized the truth that victory is the gift of God. 'The king's cause is the more just.' Grant it--yet God makes use of such instruments as He wills to punish our iniquities--the Babylonians, for instance, of old, the Turks in our own days. The Huguenots have thus far succeeded beyond all expectation. They have little money, but what they have they use well, and they can get more. Their devotion to their cause is conspicuous. They are not a rabble hastily gotten together, which has risen imprudently, in disorder, without a leader, without discipline. They are experienced, resolute, desperate warriors, with plans formed long ago--men ready to risk everything for the attainment of their matured designs. Necessity and despair render them docile and wonderfully subject to discipline; and with this cooperates the high esteem they have conceived of their leaders, whose ambition is restrained, whose union is cemented by the same necessity which the ancients called 'the bond of concord.' On the contrary, the king's camp is rent by quarrels, envy, and rivalry; ambition is unbridled, avarice reigns supreme. With the termination of so wretched a war, there will shine forth a joyous and blessed peace, which I can justly term a 'precious conquest,' since it will render his Majesty redoubtable to all Europe, which has learned the greatness of the two powers which the king will restore to his own subjection.