Chapter XV (2)

"The true method of breaking up the leagues of the Huguenots is to remove the necessity for forming them. This must be done by treating the Huguenots no longer as enemies, but as friends. For, if we examine carefully into the matter, we shall find that hitherto they have been dealt with as rebels; and this has compelled them to resort to all means of self-preservation. This has placed arms in their hands; this has engendered the horrible desolation of France. For the intrigues set on foot against them in all quarters were conducted with so little attempt at secrecy--the disfavor was so evident, the disdain was so apparent, the threats of the rupture of the Edict of Pacification and of the publication of the decrees of the Council of Trent were so open, and the injustice of their handling was so manifest, that they had been too dull and stupid, had they not avoided the treachery in store for them.[500] Even brute beasts perceive the coming of the storm, and seek the covert; let us not find fault if men, perceiving it, arm themselves for the encounter. Our menaces have been the messengers of our plots, as truly as the lightning is the messenger of the thunderbolt. We have shown them our preparatives; let us, therefore, cease to wonder that they stand ready to start on the first intimation of danger.[501] When they see that they have no longer anything to fear, they will certainly return to their accustomed occupations."[502]

[Sidenote: Edict of Pacification, Longjumeau, March 23, 1568.]

L'Hospital was right. The Huguenots wanted nothing but security of person and conscience--the latter even more than the former. And they were ready to lay down their arms so soon as the court could bring itself to concede the restoration of the Edict of Amboise, without the restrictive ordinances and interpretations which had shorn it of most of its value. On this basis negotiations now recommenced. The more prudent Huguenots suggested that the party ought to receive at the king's hands some of the cities in their possession, to be held as pledges for the execution of the articles of the compact. But Charles and his counsellors resented the proposal as insulting to the dignity of the crown,[503] and the Huguenots, not yet fully appreciating the fickleness or treachery of the court, did not press the demand--a fatal weakness, soon to be atoned for by the speedy renewal of the war on the part of the Roman Catholics.[504] After brief consultation the terms of peace were agreed upon, and were incorporated in the royal edict of the twenty-third of March, 1568, known, from the name of the place where it was signed, as the "Edict of Longjumeau." The cardinal provisions were few: they re-established the supremacy of the Edict of Amboise, expressly repealing all the interpretations that infringed upon it; and permitted the nobles, who under that law had been allowed to have religious exercises in their castles, to admit strangers as well as their own vassals to the services of the reformed worship. Conde and his followers were, at the same time, recognized as good and faithful servants of the crown, and a general amnesty was pronounced covering all acts of hostility, levy of troops, coining of money, and similar offences. On the other hand, the Huguenots bound themselves to disband and lay down their arms, to surrender the places they held, to renounce foreign alliances, and to eschew in future all meetings other than those religious gatherings permitted under the last peace. The new edict was not a final and irrevocable law, but was granted "until, by God's grace, all the king's subjects should be reunited in the profession of one and the same religion."[505]

[Sidenote: Conde favors and Coligny opposes the peace.]

The Huguenots gained by this peace all their immediate demands, and so far the edict might be deemed satisfactory. But what better security had they for its observance more than they had had for the observance of that which had preceded it? Coligny, prudent and far-sighted, had shown himself as averse to concluding it without sufficient guarantees for its faithful execution, as he had been opposed to beginning the war a half-year before. The peace, he urged, was intended by the court only as a means of saving Chartres, and of afterward overwhelming the reformers;[506] and he attempted to prove his assertions by the signal instances of bad faith which had provoked the recourse to arms. But Conde was impatient. If we may believe Agrippa d'Aubigne, his old love of pleasure was not without its influence;[507] but he covered his true motives under the specious pretext afforded him by the Huguenot nobles, who, fatigued with the incessant toils of the campaign, reduced to straits by a warfare which they had carried on at their own expense, and longing to revisit homes which had been repeatedly threatened with desolation, had abandoned their standards and scattered to their respective provinces at the first mention of peace.[508] Francois de la Noue, more charitable to the prince, regards the universal desire for peace, without much concern respecting its conditions, as the wild blast of a hurricane which the Huguenot captains could not resist if they would.[509] When whole cornets of cavalry started without leave, before the siege of Chartres was actually raised, what could generals, deserted by volunteers who had come of their own accord and had served for six months without pay, expect to accomplish?

[Sidenote: Was the court sincere?]

[Sidenote: A treacherous plot detected. The king indignant.]

Was the peace of Longjumeau--"the patched-up peace," or "the short peace," as it was called; that "wicked little peace," as La Noue styles it[510]--a compact treacherously entered into by the court? This is the old, but constantly recurring question respecting every principal event of this unhappy period; and it is one that rarely admits of an easy or a simple answer. So far as the persons who had been chiefly instrumental in forwarding the negotiations which ended in the peace of Longjumeau were concerned, they were Chancellor L'Hospital and the Bishops of Orleans and Limoges--the most moderate members of the royal council,[511] whose fair spirit was so conspicuous that for years they had been exposed to insult and open hostility as supposed Huguenots. Nothing is clearer than that the purpose of these men was the sincere and entire re-establishment of peace on a lasting foundation. The arguments of L'Hospital which I have laid before the reader furnish sufficient proof. This party had, through the force of circumstances, temporarily obtained the ascendancy in the council, and now had the ear of the queen mother. But there were by the side of its representatives at the council-board men of an entirely different stamp--advocates of persecution, of extermination; a few, from conscientious motives, preferring, with Alva, a kingdom ruined in the attempt to root out heresy, to one flourishing, with heresy tolerated; a larger number--and Cardinal Lorraine, who had now resumed his seat and his influence, must be classed with these--counting upon deriving personal advantage from the supremacy of the papal faction. It is equally manifest that this party could have acquiesced in the peace, which again formally acknowledged the principle of religious toleration, only with the design of embracing the first favorable opportunity for crushing the Huguenots, when scattered and disarmed. Their desires, at least, deceived no one of ordinary perspicacity. Indeed, the peace came near failing to go into effect at all, in consequence of the discovery of the fact that a "privy council" had been held in the Louvre, to which none but sworn enemies of the Huguenots were admitted, "wherein was conspired a surprise of Orleans, Soissons, Rochelle, and Auxerre," to be executed by four designated leaders, while the Protestants were laying down their arms. In an age of salaried spies, it is not astonishing that by ten o'clock the next morning the whole plot was betrayed to Cardinal Chatillon, who immediately sent word to stay the publication of the peace. When Charles heard of it, we are told that he swore, by the faith of a prince, that, if there had been any such conspiracy, it had been formed wholly without his knowledge, and, laying his hand on his breast, said: "This is the cardinal and Gascoigne's practice. In spite of them, I will proceed with the peace;" and, commanding pen and ink to be brought, he wrote Conde a letter promising a good and sincere observance of the articles agreed upon.[512]

[Sidenote: Short-sightedness of Catharine.]

But, besides the two parties, and wavering between them--fluctuating in her own purposes, as false to her own plans as she was to her promises, with no principles either of morality or of government, intent only on grasping power, the enemy of every one that stood in the way of this, even if it were her son or her daughter--was that enigma, Catharine de' Medici, whose secret has escaped so many simply because they looked for something deep and recondite, when the solution lay almost upon the very surface. Was Catharine sincerely in favor of peace? She was never sincere. Her Macchiavellian training, the enforced hypocrisy of her married life, the trimming policy she had thought herself compelled to pursue during the minority of the kings, her two sons, had eaten from her soul, even to its root, truthfulness--that pure plant of heaven's sowing. Loving peace only because it freed her from the fears, the embarrassments, the vexations of war--not because she valued human life or human happiness--she embraced it as a welcome expedient to enable her to escape the present perplexities of her position. It is improbable that Catharine distinctly premeditated a treacherous blow at the Huguenots, simply because she rarely premeditated anything very long. I am aware that this estimate of the queen is quite at variance with the views which have obtained the widest currency; but it is the estimate which history, carefully read, seems to require us to adopt. Catharine's plans were proverbially narrow in their scope, never extending much beyond the immediate present. After the catastrophe, which had perhaps been the result of the impulse of the moment, she was not, however, unwilling to accept the homage of those who deemed it a high compliment to her prudence to praise her consummate dissimulation. She probably entered upon the peace of Longjumeau without any settled purpose of treachery--unless that state of the soul be in itself treachery that has no fixed intention of upright dealing. But she had not, in adopting the advice of Chancellor de l'Hospital, renounced the policy of the Cardinal of Lorraine, in case that policy should at some future time appear to be advantageous; and it was much to be feared that the contingency referred to would soon arrive. Catharine, not less than Charles himself, resented "the affair of Meaux" of the preceding September. It was studiously held up to their eyes by the enemies of the Huguenots as an attempt upon the honor, and indeed even upon the personal liberty and life of their Majesties. Might not Catharine and Charles be tempted to retaliate by trying the effect of a surprise upon the Huguenots themselves?

[Sidenote: Imprudence of the Huguenots.]

The Huguenots had certainly been grossly imprudent in putting themselves at the mercy of a woman whom they had greatly offended, and whose natural place, according to those mysterious sympathies which bind men of similar natures, was with their adversaries. They had been warned by their secret friends at court, some of them by Roman Catholic relatives.[513] But the caution was little heeded. It was not long[514] before those who had been the most strenuous advocates of peace began to admit that the draught they had put to their own lips, and now must needs drink, was likely to prove little to their taste.[515]

[Sidenote: Judicial murder of Rapin, at Toulouse.]

The parliaments made serious objections to the reception of the edict. Toulouse was, as usual, pre-eminent for its intolerance. The king sent Rapin, a Protestant gentleman who had served with distinction under Conde in Languedoc, to carry the law to the parliament, and require its official recognition. The choice was unfortunate, for it awakened all the hatred of a court proverbial for its hostility to the Reformation. An accusation of matters quite foreign to his mission was trumped up against Rapin, and, contrary to all the principles of justice, and notwithstanding the privileged character he bore as the king's envoy, he was arrested, condemned to death, and executed. So atrocious a crime might perhaps have been punished, had not the new commotions to which we shall soon be obliged to pay attention, intervened and screened the culprits from their righteous retribution.[516] Not content with murdering Rapin, the Parliament of Toulouse still refused to register the edict, and not less than four successive orders were sent by the king before his refractory judges yielded an unwilling consent, even then annexing restrictive clauses which they took care to insert in their secret records.[517]

[Sidenote: Seditious preachers and mobs.]

Again Roman Catholic pulpits resounded, as they did whenever any degree of toleration was accorded the Protestants, with denunciations of Catharine, of Charles, of all in the council who had advocated such pernicious views. Again Ahab and Jezebel appear; but while Catharine is always Jezebel, it is Charles that now figures, in place of poor Antoine of Navarre, as Ahab.[518] Again, in the struggle of royalty with priests and monks breathing sedition, it is the churchman who by his arrogance carries off the victory with the common people, while from the sensible he receives merited contempt.[519] So fine a text as the edict afforded for spirited Lenten discourses did not present itself every day, and the clergy of France improved it so well that the passions of their flocks were inflamed to the utmost.[520] Except where their numbers were so large as to command respect, the Protestants scarcely dared to return to their homes.

[Sidenote: Riot when the edict is published at Rouen.]

The very mention of the peace, with its favorable terms for the Protestants, was enough to stir up the anger of the ignorant populace. When the Parliament of Rouen, after agreeing to the Edict of Longjumeau in private session, threw open its doors (on the third of April, 1568) to give it official publication, a rabble that had come purposely to create a tumult, interrupted the reading with horrible imprecations against the peace, the Huguenots, the edicts, the "preches," and the magistrates who approved such impious acts. The presidents and counsellors fled for their lives. The populace, as though inspired by some evil spirit, raged and committed havoc in the "palais de justice." The mob opened the prisons and liberated eight or ten Roman Catholics; then flocked to the ecclesiastical dungeons and would have massacred the Protestants that were still confined there, had these not found means to ransom their lives with money. It was not until six days later that the royal edict was read, in the presence of a large military force called in to preserve order.[521]

[Sidenote: Treatment of the returning Huguenots.]

In spite of the provisions of the edict, the Huguenots wandered about in the open country, avoiding the cities where they were likely to meet with insult and violence, if not death. The Protestants of Nogent, Provins, and Bray hesitated for three months, and then we are told that each man watched his opportunity and sought to enter when his Roman Catholic friends might be on guard to defend him from the insolence of others.

[Sidenote: At Provins.]

But the sufferings of the Huguenot burgess were not ended when he was once more in his own house. He was studiously treated as a rebel. Every movement was suspicious. A Roman Catholic chronicler, who has preserved in his voluminous diary many of the details that enable us to restore something of its original coloring to the picture of the social and political condition of the times, vividly portrays the misfortunes of the unfortunate Huguenots of Provins. They were not numerous. One by one, thirty or forty had stealthily crept into town, experiencing no other injury than the coarse raillery of their former neighbors. Thereupon the municipal government met and deliberated upon the measures of police to be taken "in order to hold the Huguenots in check and in fear, and to avoid any treachery they might intend to put into practice by the introduction of their brother Huguenots into the city to plunder and hold it by force." The determination arrived at was that each of the four captains should visit the Huguenot houses of his quarter, examine the inmates, and take all the weapons he found, giving a receipt to their owners. This was not the only humiliation to which the Protestants were subjected. A proclamation was published forbidding them from receiving any person into their houses, from meeting together under any pretext, from leaving their houses in the evening after seven o'clock in summer, or five in winter, from walking by day or night on the walls, or, indeed, from approaching within two arquebuse shots' distance of them--all upon pain of death! They could not even go into the country without a passport from the bailiff and the captain of the gate, the penalty of transgressing this regulation being banishment. No wonder that the Huguenots were irritated, and that most of them wished that they had not returned.[522] Since, however, a royal ordinance of the nineteenth of May expressly enjoined upon all fugitive Huguenots to re-enter the cities to which they belonged, and in case of refusal commanded the magistrates to raise a force and attack them as presumptive robbers and enemies of the public peace,[523] they were perhaps quite as safe within the walls as roaming about outside of them.

[Sidenote: Expedition and fate of De Cocqueville.]

Early in the summer an event occurred on the northern frontier, which, although in itself of little weight, augmented the suspicions which the Protestants began to entertain of the Spanish tendencies of the government. One Seigneur de Cocqueville, with a party of French and Flemish Huguenots, had crossed the northern boundary and invaded Philip's Netherland provinces. He had, however, been driven back into France. As he was believed to have acted under Conde's instructions, that prince was requested by Charles to inform him whether Cocqueville were in his service. When Conde disavowed him, and declined all responsibility for the movement, Marshal Cosse was directed to march against Cocqueville, and, on the eighteenth of July, the Huguenot chieftain was captured at the town of Saint Valery, in Picardy, where he had taken refuge. Of twenty-five hundred followers, barely three hundred are said to have been spared. In order to please Alva, the Flemings received no quarter. The leaders, Cocqueville, Vaillant, and Saint Amand, were brought to Paris and gibbeted on the Place de Greve.[524]

[Sidenote: Attitude of the government suspicious.]

[Sidenote: Garrisons and interpretative ordinances.]

The central government itself gave the gravest grounds for fear and suspicion. The Huguenots had promptly disbanded. They had lost no time in dismissing their German allies, who, retiring with well-filled pockets to the other side of the Rhine, seemed alone to have profited by the intestine commotions of France.[525] On the contrary, the Roman Catholic forces showed no disposition to disarm. It is true that, in the first fervor of the ascendancy of the peace party, Catharine countermanded a levy of five thousand Saxons, much to the annoyance of Castelnau, who had by his unwearied diligence brought them in hot haste to Rethel on the Aisne, only to learn that the preliminaries of peace were on the point of being concluded, and that the troopers were expected to retrace their steps to Saxony.[526] But the Swiss and Italian soldiers, as well as the French gens-d'armes, were for the most part retained. To Humieres, who commanded for the king in Peronne, Charles wrote an explanation of his course: "Inasmuch as there are sometimes turbulent spirits so constituted that they neither can nor desire to accommodate themselves so soon to quiet, it has appeared to me extremely necessary to anticipate this difficulty, and act in such a manner that, force and authority remaining on my side, I may be able to keep in check those who might so far forget themselves as to set on foot new disturbances and be the cause of seditious uprising."[527] Large garrisons were thus provided for those towns which had rendered themselves conspicuous in the defence of the Huguenots during the late war, and the sufferings of the Protestants, upon whom, in preference to their Roman Catholic neighbors, the insolent soldiers were quartered, were terrible beyond description.[528] The horrors of the "dragonnades" of the reign of Louis the Fourteenth were rivalled by these earlier military persecutions. Multitudes were despoiled of their goods, hundreds lost their lives at the hands of their cruel guests. France assumed the aspect of a great camp, with sentries posted everywhere to maintain it in peace against some suspected foe. The sea-ports, the bridges, the roads were guarded; the Huguenots themselves were placed under a species of surveillance. Nor were the old resorts of the court forgotten. Again interpretative ordinances were called in to abrogate a portion of the law itself. Charles declared in a new proclamation that he had not intended by the Edict of Longjumeau to include Auvergne, nor any district belonging as an appanage to his mother, to Anjou, Alencon, or the Bourbon princes, in the toleration guaranteed by the edict. And thus a very considerable number of Protestants were by a single stroke of the pen stripped of the privileges solemnly accorded to them but a few weeks before.[529] Other pledges were as shamelessly broken. The Huguenot gentlemen whom the court had attempted to punish by declaring them to have forfeited their honors and dignities, were not reinstated according to the terms of the edict.[530]

[Sidenote: Oppression by royal governors.]

The conduct of individual governors furnished still greater occasion for complaint and alarm. The Duke of Nemours, who, in marrying Anne of Este, Guise's widow, two years before, seemed also to have espoused all the hatred which the Lorraines felt for Protestantism, and for the family of the Chatillons, its most prominent and faithful defenders, was governor of the provinces of Lyonnais and Dauphiny. This insubordinate nobleman loudly proclaimed his intention to disregard the Edict of Longjumeau, as opposed to the Roman Catholic Church and to the king's honor. In vain did the Protestants, who were numerous in the city of Lyons, demand to be allowed to enjoy the two places of worship they had possessed, before the late troubles, within the city walls. The duke would not listen to their just claims, and the court, in answer to their appeals, only responded that the king did not approve of the holding of Protestant services inside of cities, and that a place would shortly be assigned for their use in the vicinity.[531] Unrebuked by the queen or her son for his flagrant disobedience, Nemours received nothing but plaudits from the fanatical adherents of the religion he pretended to maintain, and was honored by the Pope, Pius the Fifth (on the fifth of July, 1568), with a special brief, in which he was praised for being the first to set a resplendent example of resistance to the execution of an unchristian peace.[532]

Marshal Tavannes, in Burgundy, earned equal gratitude for his opposition to the concession of Protestant rights. Not content with remonstrance respecting a peace which had excited every one "to raise his voice against the king and Catharine," and with dark hints of the danger of handling so carelessly a border province like Burgundy,[533] he openly favored the revival of those "Confraternities of the Holy Ghost" which Charles had so lately condemned and prohibited. Being himself detained by illness, two of his sons were present at a meeting of one of these seditious assemblages, held in Dijon, the provincial capital, where, before a great concourse of people, the most inflammatory language was freely uttered.[534]

[Sidenote: The "Christian and Royal League."]

[Sidenote: Insubordination to royal authority.]

At Troyes, the capital of Champagne, a similar association assumed the designation of "the Christian and Royal League." The document, containing the oath taken by the clergy whom the king's lieutenant had associated with the nobility and the provincial estates in the "holy" bond, is still extant, with the signatures of the bishop, the deans, canons, and inferior ecclesiastics appended.[535] The primary object was the maintenance of "the true Catholic and Roman Church of God;" and after this the preservation of the crown for the house of Valois was mentioned. It was to be sustained "against all persons, without excepting any, save the persons of the king, his sons and brothers, and the queen their mother, and without regard to any relationship or alliance," and "so long as it might please God that the signers should be governed according to the Roman and Apostolic Church."[536] In less public utterances the spirit of insubordination to the regal authority made itself understood even more clearly. When the formation of such associations was objected to, on the ground of the king's prohibition, the response given by those who pretended to be better informed than the rest was that the Cardinal of Lorraine could make the matter agreeable to his Majesty. Others more boldly announced the intention of the Roman Catholic party, in case Charles should refuse to sanction its course, to send him to a monastery for the rest of his days, and elect another king in his place. Three months' time was all that these blatant boasters allowed for the utter destruction of the Huguenots in France. An end would be made of them as soon as the harvest and vintage were past.[537]

[Sidenote: Admirable organization of the Huguenots.]

If the Roman Catholics had resolved upon a renewal of the war, they certainly had reason to desire a better combination of their forces than they had effected in the late contest. They had been startled and amazed at the rapidity with which, although embracing but an inconsiderable minority of the population, the Huguenots had succeeded in massing an army that held at bay that of the king. They admired the completeness of the organization which enabled the Prince of Conde and the admiral to summon the gentry of the most distant provinces, and bring them to the very vicinity of the court before the movement was suspected even by Constable Montmorency, who believed himself to be kept advised of the most trifling occurrences that took place in any part of France. The triumph of the Huguenots--for was it not a triumph which they had achieved in securing such terms as the Edict of Longjumeau conceded?--was a disgrace to the papists, who had not known how to use their overwhelming preponderance in numbers. Never had a more signal example been given of the superiority of united and zealous sympathy over discordant and soulless counsels.[538] While their enemies, with nothing in common but their hatred of Protestantism, were hampered by the want of concert between their leaders, or cheated of their success by their positive jealousies and quarrels, the Huguenots had in their common faith, in their well-ordered form of church government, combining the advantages of great local efficiency with those of a representative union, and in their common danger, the instruments best adapted to secure the ends they desired. "They were so closely bound together by this order and by these objects," wrote the Venetian ambassador Correro, "that there resulted a concordant will and so perfect a union that it made them prompt in rendering instant obedience and in forming common designs, and most ready to execute the commands of their superiors."[539]

[Sidenote: Murder runs riot throughout France.]

With such associations as "the Confraternities of the Holy Ghost," and "the Christian and Royal League" springing up in various parts of France, under the express sanction of the provincial governors, and publishing as their chief aim the extirpation of heresy from the realm; with priests and monks, especially those of the new order of Jesus, inflaming the passions of the people by seditious preaching, and persuading their hearers that any toleration of heretics was a compact with Satan, it is not strange that murder held high carnival wherever the Protestants were not so numerous as to be able to stand on the defensive. The victims were of every rank and station, from the obscure peasant to the distinguished Cipierre, son of the Count de Tende and a relative of the Duke of Savoy, the orders for whose assassination were confidently believed to have issued from the court.[540] At Auxerre, which had been given up by the Huguenots in accordance with the provisions of the peace, one hundred and fifty Protestants paid with their lives the price of their good faith. Their bodies were thrown into the public sewers. In the city of Amiens one hundred and fifty persons were slaughtered at one time. Instead of punishment, the rioters obtained their object: the reformed worship was forbidden in Amiens, or within three leagues of the city.[541] At Clermont the assassins, after plundering the wares of a wealthy merchant, who had refused to hang tapestry before his house at the time of the procession on Corpus Christi Day--La Fete-Dieu--buried him in a fire made of furniture taken from his own house.[542] At Ligny, in Champagne, a Huguenot was pursued into the very bedchamber of a royal officer, and there killed. Troyes, Bourges, Rouen, and a host of other places, witnessed the commission of atrocities which it would be rather sickening than profitable to narrate.[543] In Paris itself the murders of Huguenots were frequent. "On Sunday last," wrote Norris, the English envoy, to his royal mistress, "the Prince of Conde sent a gentleman to the king, to beseech his Majesty to administer justice against such as murder them of the religion, and as he entered into the city there were five slain in St. Anthony's street, not far from my lodging."[544] The aggregate of homicides committed within the brief compass of this so-called peace was enormous. Jean de Serres and Agrippa d'Aubigne may possibly go somewhat beyond the mark when they state the number of victims in three months--April, May, and June, 1568--at over ten thousand;[545] but they are substantially correct in saying that the number far exceeded that of the armed Huguenots slain during the six months of the preceding war;[546] for the Venetian ambassador, who certainly had no motive for exaggeration, asserts that "the principal cities of the kingdom, notwithstanding the conditions of the peace, refused to readmit 'the preachings' to their territories, and slew many thousands of Huguenots who dared to rise and complain."[547]

[Sidenote: Rochelle and other cities refuse to receive garrisons.]

[Sidenote: Conde and Coligny retire.]

[Sidenote: D'Andelot's remonstrance.]

While the majority of the cities held by the Protestants had, as we have seen, promptly opened their gates to the king, a number, perceiving the dangers to which they were exposed, alarmed by the attitude of the Roman Catholics, and doubtful of the good faith of the court, declined to allow the garrisons to enter. This was the case with La Rochelle, which defended its course by appealing to its privileges, and with Montauban, Albi, Milhau, Sancerre, Castres, Vezelay, and other less important towns.[548] The events of a few weeks had amply vindicated the wisdom and justice of their refusal. La Rochelle even began to repair its fortifications, confident that the papal faction would never rest until it had made the attempt to destroy the great Huguenot stronghold in the west. Evidently there was no safety for a Protestant under the aegis of the Edict of Longjumeau. The Prince of Conde dared not resume the government of the province nominally restored to his charge, and retired to Noyers, a small town in Burgundy, belonging to his wife's dower, where he would be less exposed than in the vicinity of Paris to any treacherous attempt upon his person. Admiral Coligny was not slow in following his example. He abandoned his stately manor of Chatillon-sur-Loing, where, with a heart saddened by recent domestic affliction,[549] he had been compelled to exercise a princely hospitality to the crowds that daily thronged to consult with him and to do him honor,[550] and took up his abode in the castle of Tanlay, belonging to his brother D'Andelot, and within a few miles of the prince's retreat.[551] D'Andelot himself had recently started for Brittany, where his first wife, Claude de Rieux, had held extensive possessions.[552] Before leaving, however, he had written to Catharine de' Medici, a letter of remonstrance full of noble sentiments. The occasion was the murder of one of his gentlemen, whom he had sent to the neighboring city of Auxerre; but his letter embraced a complete view of "the calamitous state of the poor kingdom," whose misery "was such as to cause the hair of all that heard to stand on end." "Not only," said D'Andelot, "can we feel no doubt that God will not leave unpunished so much innocent blood, which continues to cry before Him for vengeance, as well as so many violations of women and maidens; so many robberies; so much oppression--in one word, every species of iniquity. But, besides this, we can look for nothing else than the near-approaching desolation and ruin of this state: for no one that has read sacred and profane history will be able to deny that such things have always preceded the overthrow of empires and monarchies. I am well aware, madam, that there will be those who, on seeing this letter, will ridicule me, and will say that I am playing the part of prophet or preacher. I am neither the one nor the other, since God has not given me this calling. But I will yet say, with truth, that there is not a man in the kingdom, of any rank or quality, who loves his king and his kingdom better than I do, or who is more grieved at seeing those disorders that I see, which can, in the end, result only in general confusion. I know full well that I shall be met with the taking up of arms, in which I participated, with so many others, on the eve of last St. Michael's Day, as if we had intended to attack the persons of your Majesties, or anything belonging to you, or this state, as was published wherever it was possible, and as is still daily asserted. But, not to undertake other justification, I will only say that, if such wickedness had entered into my heart, though I might conceal it from men, I could not hide it from God, from whom I never have asked forgiveness for it, nor ever shall I." D'Andelot proceeded to show that the movement in question had been caused by absolute necessity, and that this was rendered evident to all men by that which was now occurring in every part of France. He told her that it was sufficiently manifest that this universal oppression was only designed to provoke "those of the religion" to such a point that they would lose patience, and to obtain a pretext for attacking and exterminating them. He reminded her that he had often insisted "that opinions in matters of religion can be changed neither by fire nor by force of arms, and that those deem themselves very happy who can lay down their lives for the service of God and for His glory." He warned her of those who, unlike the Huguenots, would sacrifice the interests of the state to their own individual ends of ambition or revenge. In conclusion, after alluding to a recent sudden death which much resembled a mark of the divine displeasure upon the murderous assault that had called forth this letter, he exclaimed: "I do not mean to be so presumptuous as to judge the dealings of God; but I do mean to say, with the sure testimony of His word, that all those who violate public faith are punished for it."[553]

[Sidenote: Catharine takes side with the chancellor's enemies.]

That salutary warning had been rung in Catharine's ears more than once, and was destined to be repeated again and again, with little effect: "All those who violate public faith are punished for it." L'Hospital had but a few months before been urging to a course of political integrity, and pointing out the rock on which all previous plans of pacification had split. There was but one way to secure the advantages of permanent peace, and that was an upright observance of the treaties formed with the Huguenots. But Catharine was slow to learn the lesson. Crooked paths, to her distorted vision, seemed to be the shortest way to success. Her Italian education had taught her that deceit was better, under all circumstances, than plain dealing, and she could not unlearn the long-cherished theory. Whether L'Hospital's views were originally the chief motives that influenced her in consenting to the peace of Longjumeau, or whether she had acquiesced in it as a cover to treacherous designs, certain it is that she now began to side openly with the chancellor's enemies, and that the Cardinal of Lorraine regained his old influence in the council. The fanatical sermons that had been a premonitory symptom of the previous wars were again heard with complacency in the court chapel; for, about the month of June, the king appointed as his preachers four of the most blatant advocates of persecution: Vigor, a canon of Notre Dame; De Sainte Foy; the gray friar, Hugonis; and Claude de Sainctes, whose acquaintance the reformers had made at the Colloquy of Poissy.[554]

[Sidenote: Remonstrance of the three marshals.]

[Sidenote: Catharine's intrigues.]

There had been a desperate struggle in the royal council ever since the conclusion of the peace. The extreme Roman Catholics, recognizing the instability of Catharine, had long since begun to base their hopes upon Henry of Anjou's influence. Their opponents accepted the issue, and resolved to circumscribe the duke's inordinate powers. Three of the marshals of France--Montmorency, his brother Damville, and Vieilleville--presented themselves at a meeting of the royal council held in the queen mother's sick-chamber (on the second of May, 1568), to remonstrate against Anjou's retaining the office of lieutenant-general. Even Cardinal Bourbon supported their movement, and, sinking for the time his extreme religious partisanship, threatened to leave the court, and give the world to understand how much he had at heart the honor of his house and the welfare of his friends. The object of the marshals could not be mistaken: it was nothing less than the overthrow of the Cardinal of Lorraine, who sought supreme power under cover of Anjou's name. The end of the war, remarked the ambassador, Sir Henry Norris, had brought no end to the mortal hatred between the houses of Guise and Montmorency. The prospect of permanent peace was dark. The king was easy to be seduced, his mother bent upon maintaining these divisions in the court, and Anjou so much under the cardinal's influence that it was to be feared that the Huguenots would in the end be forced to have recourse once more to arms. In the midst of these perils, the queen mother had been exercising her ingenuity in playing off one party against the other; now giving countenance to the Guises, now to the Montmorencies. At one time she used Limoges, at another Morvilliers or Sens, in her secret intrigues. Presently she resorted to Lorraine, and, when jealous of his too great forwardness, would turn to the chancellor himself, "undoing in one day what the cardinal had intended long afore." Besides these prominent statesmen, she had not scrupled to take up with meaner tools--men whose elevation boded no good to the commonwealth, and with whom she conferred about the imposition of those onerous taxes which had cost her the forfeiture of the good-will of the people. To add to the confusion, the jealousy between the king and his brother Anjou had reappeared, and the chancellor had lost his characteristic courage and avowed his utter despair of being able to stem the fierce tide of human selfishness and passion. Cardinal Lorraine was realizing his long-cherished hope: "for this one man's authority had been the greatest countermand of his devices."[555]

[Sidenote: The court tries to ruin Conde and Coligny.]

The Huguenot leaders had entered into engagements to repay to the king the nine hundred thousand francs advanced by him to the German reiters of Count Casimir. This sum--a large one for the times--Charles now called upon Conde and Coligny to refund, and he expressly commanded that it should not be levied upon the Protestant churches, but be raised by those who had taken up arms in the late contest.[556] It was a transparent attempt to array the masses that had suffered little pecuniarily in the war against the brave men who had not only impoverished themselves, but hazarded their lives in defence of the common cause. Nothing less than the financial ruin of the prince and the admiral, who had voluntarily become sureties, seemed likely to satisfy their enemies.

[Sidenote: Teligny sent to carry a reply.]

The Prince of Conde despatched young Teligny to carry his spirited reply to this extraordinary demand, and, not confining himself to the exhibition of its flagrant injustice, he recapitulated the daily multiplying infractions upon the edict. The Protestants were treated as enemies, he said, and were safe neither at home nor abroad. An open war could not be more bitter.[557] Besides countless general massacres, he complained of the recent assassination of two of his own dependants, and of the surveillance exercised over all the great noblemen "of the religion," who were closely watched in their castles by the commanders of neighboring forces. Against himself the unparalleled insult had been shown of placing a garrison in the palace of a prince of the blood. Nay, he had arrested a spy caught in the very act of measuring the height of the fortifications of Noyers, and sounding the depth of the moat, with a view to a subsequent assault, and the capture not only of the prince, but of the admiral, who frequently came there to see him. He rehearsed the grounds of just alarm which the Protestants had in the threats their indiscreet enemies were daily uttering, and in "the confraternities of the Holy Ghost," defiantly instituted with the approval of the king's own governors. What safety was there for the Huguenots when a counsellor of a celebrated parliament had lately asserted, in the presence of an assembly of three thousand persons, "that he had commands from the leading men of the royal council admonishing the Catholics that they ought to give no credence to any edicts of the king unless they contained a peculiar mark of authenticity." And he was induced to believe him right, by noticing the fact that, since the establishment of peace, no one had obeyed the royal letters. Finally, in decided but respectful language, he remonstrated against the pernicious precedent which the court was allowing to become established, when the express commands of the monarch were set at naught with impunity.[558]

[Sidenote: An oath to be exacted of the Huguenots.]

As the time approached for the blow to be struck that should forever put an end to the exercise of the reformed faith in France, the conspirators began to betray their anxiety lest their nefarious designs might be anticipated and rendered futile by such a measure of defence as that which the Huguenots had taken on the eve of Michaelmas. They resolved, therefore, if possible, to bind their victims hand and foot; and no more convenient method presented itself than that of involving them in obligations of implicit obedience which would embarrass, if they did not absolutely preclude, any exercise of their wonderful system of combined action. About the beginning of August, Charles despatched to all parts of his dominions the form of an oath which was to be demanded of every Protestant subject, and the royal officers and magistrates were directed to make lists of those who signed as well as of those who refused to sign it.[559] "We protest before God, and swear by His name"--so ran the oath--"that we recognize King Charles the Ninth as our natural sovereign and only prince ... and that we will never take up arms save by his express command, of which he may have notified us by his letters patent duly verified; and that we will never consent to, nor assist with counsel, money, food, or anything else whatsoever, those who shall arm themselves against him or his will. We will make no levy or assessment of money for any purpose without his express commission; and will never enter into any secret leagues, intrigues, or plots, nor engage in any underhand practices or enterprises, but, on the contrary, we promise and swear to notify him or his officers of all that we shall be able to learn and discover that is devised against his Majesty.... Moreover, we protest that we will not leave the city, whatever necessity may arrive, but will join our hearts, our wills, and our abilities with our fellow-citizens in defence of that city, to which we will always entertain the devotion of true and faithful citizens, whilst the Catholics will find in us sincere and fraternal affection: awaiting the time when it may please God to put an end to all troubles, to which we hope that this reconciliation will be a happy prelude."[560]

The trap was not ill contrived, and its bars were strong enough to hold anything that might venture within. Fortunately, however, the bait did not conceal the cruel design lurking behind it. Why, it might be asked, this new test? Was Conde, whom the king had only four or five months ago recognized by solemn edict as his "dear cousin and faithful servant and subject," a friend or a foe? Had peace been concluded with the Huguenots only that they might anew be treated as rebels and enemies? What had become of the prescribed amnesty? Was it at all likely that private citizens would bury in oblivion their former dissensions and abstain from mutual insults, when the monarch officially reminded them that there was one class of his subjects whose past conduct made them objects of grave suspicion? While, therefore, the Huguenots professed themselves ready to give the king all possible assurances of their loyal devotion, they declined to swear to a form that bore on its face the proof that it was composed, not in accordance with Charles's own ideas, but by an enemy of the crown and of public tranquillity. They requested that it might receive such modifications as would permit them to sign it with due regard to their own self-respect and to their religious convictions, and they entreated Charles to confirm their liberty of conscience and of religious observance; for, without these privileges, which they valued above their own existence, they were ready to forsake, not only their cities, but their very lives also.[561]

[Sidenote: The plot disclosed by an intercepted letter.]

At this critical moment the destiny of France was wavering in the balance, and the decision depended upon the answer to be given to the question whether Chancellor L'Hospital or Cardinal Lorraine should retain his place in the council. The tolerant policy of the former is too well understood to need an explanation. The designs of the latter are revealed by an intercepted letter that fell into the hands of the Huguenots about this time. It was written (on the ninth of August) at the little country-seat named Madrid,[562] whose ruins are still pointed out, near the banks of the Seine, on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne, and not far from the walls of the city of Paris. The writer, evidently a devoted partisan of the house of Guise, had been entrusted by the Cardinal of Lorraine[563] with a glimpse at the designs of the party of which the latter was the declared chief. A proclamation was soon to be made in the king's name, through Marshal Cosse, to the Protestant nobles, assuring them of the monarch's intention to deal kindly and peaceably with them, to preserve their religious liberties, and to treat them as his faithful subjects; and explaining the design of the movement which he was now setting on foot to be merely the reduction of the inhabitants of some insolent cities (those that, like La Rochelle, had refused to admit garrisons) to his authority. This announcement, the cardinal proceeded to say, might disturb some good Catholics, who would think that their labors and the dangers they had undergone were all in vain. In reality, however, it was only intended to secure the power in the hands of the king, and to take away from the Protestant leaders all occasion for assembling, until, being reduced to straits, that rabble, so hostile to the king and the kingdom, should be wholly destroyed. Thus the very remnants would be annihilated; for the seed would assuredly spring up again, unless the same course should be pursued as that of which the French had resplendent examples shown them by their neighbors.[564] Meanwhile, until these plans could be carried into effect, as they would doubtless be within the present month, the Protestant nobles must be carefully diverted, as some were already showing signs of security, and others of falling into the snare prepared for them. The cardinal, so he informed the writer, was confident, with God's favor, of an easy and most certain victory over the enemies of the faith.[565]

[Sidenote: Isabella of France again her husband's mouthpiece.]

Such were the cardinal's intentions as expressed by himself and reported almost word for word[566] in a letter to which I shall presently have occasion again to direct the reader's attention. It was the policy advocated persistently both by Pius the Fifth and by Philip the Second, and embodied in counsel which would have been resented by a court possessed of more self-respect than the French court, as impertinent advice. For, in the report made to Catharine by one of her servants at the Spanish capital, there is a wonderful similarity in the language employed to that used at the conference of Bayonne. Isabella of France is again the speaker, though much suspected of uttering rather the sentiments of Philip, her husband, who was present,[567] than her own. Again, after expressing the most vehement zeal for the welfare of her native country, she advocated rigorous measures against the Huguenots, in phrases almost identical with those which, as the Duke of Alva relates, she had addressed to her mother three years before. "She told me among other things," says the queen's agent, "that she would never believe that either the king her brother, or you, will ever execute the design already entered into between you (although, by your command, I had notified the king [Philip] and herself of your good-will respecting this matter), until she saw it performed; for you had often before made them the same promises, but no result had ever followed. She feared that your Majesties might be dissuaded from action by the smooth speeches of certain persons in your court, until the enemy gained the opportunity of forming new designs, not only against the king's authority, but even against yourselves. The apprehension kept her in a constant state of alarm."[568]

[Sidenote: King Charles entreats his mother to avoid war.]