Chapter XVI: The Third CIVIL War (2)

The Prince of Conde was, unfortunately, not the only Huguenot leader murdered in cold blood at the battle of Jarnac. Chastelier-Pourtaut de Latour, who, having lately brought his flotilla back in safety to La Rochelle, had hastened to take the field with the Protestants, was recognized after his capture as the same nobleman who, five years before, had killed the Sieur de Charry at Paris, and was killed in revenge by some of Charry's friends. Robert Stuart, the brave leader descended from the royal house of Scotland, who was said to have slain Constable Montmorency in the battle of St. Denis, was assassinated after he had been talking with the Duke of Anjou, within hearing and almost in sight of the duke, by one of the constable's adherents.[658]

[Sidenote: Henry of Navarre remonstrates against the perfidy.]

These flagrant violations of good faith incurred severe animadversion. A letter is extant, written by young Prince Henry of Navarre, or in his name, to Henry of Anjou, on the twelfth of July, 1569, about four months after the battle of Jarnac. He begins by answering the aspersions cast upon his mother and himself, and by asserting that, if his age (which, however, is not much less than that of Anjou) disqualifies him from passing a judgment upon the present state of affairs, he has lived long enough to recognize the instigators of the new troubles as the enemies of the public weal. It is not Henry of Navarre, whose honors and dignities are all dependent upon the preservation of France, who seeks the ruin of the kingdom; but, rather, they seek its ruin who, in their eagerness to usurp the crown, have gone the length of making genealogical searches to prove their possession of a title superior to that of the Valois, "and have learned how to sell the blood of the house of France against itself,[659] _constraining the king_, as it were, _to make use of his left arm to cut off his right_, so as more easily to wrest his sceptre from him afterward." In reply to the statement of Anjou that Stuart alone was killed in cold blood, Henry of Navarre affirms that he can enumerate many others.[660] "But I shall content myself with merely reminding you of the manner in which the late Prince of Conde was treated, inasmuch as it touches you, Sir, and because it is a matter well known and free of doubt. For his death has left to posterity an example of as noted treachery, bad faith and cruelty as was ever shown, seeing that those, Sir, who murdered him could not be deterred from the perpetration of so wicked an act by the respect they owed to the greatness of your blood, to which he had the honor of being so nearly related, and that they dealt with him as they would have done with the most miserable soldier of the whole army."[661]

The Huguenot loss in the battle of Jarnac was surprisingly small in the number of men killed. It is probable that, including prisoners, they lost about four hundred men, or about twice as many as the Roman Catholics.[662] But the loss was in effect much more considerable. The dead and the prisoners were the flower of the French nobility. Among those that had fallen into the enemy's hands were the bastard son of Antoine of Navarre, Francois de la Noue, Soubise, La Loue, and others of nearly equal distinction. Of infantry the Huguenot army lost but few men, as the regiments, with the exception of that of Pluviaut, did not enter the engagement at all. Coming up too late, and finding themselves in danger of falling into the hands of the enemy's victorious cavalry, they evacuated Jarnac, crossed to the left bank of the Charente, and, after breaking down the bridge, retreated leisurely toward Cognac. Admiral Coligny, meantime, upon whom the command in chief now devolved, diverged to the right, and conducted the cavalry in safety to Saintes. The Roman Catholic army, apparently satisfied with the success it had gained, made no attempt at pursuit.

The Duke of Anjou entered Jarnac in triumph. With him was brought the corpse of the Prince of Conde, tied to an ass's back, to be afterward exposed by a pillar of the house where Anjou lodged--the butt of the sneers and low wit of the soldiers.[663] In the first glow of exultation over a victory, the real credit of which belonged to Gaspard de Tavannes,[664] Anjou contemplated erecting a chapel on the spot where Conde fell. The better counsels of M. de Carnavalet, however, induced him to abandon a design which would have confirmed all the sinister rumors respecting his complicity in the assassination.[665] The prince's dead body was given up for interment to the Prince of Navarre, and found a resting-place in the ancestral tomb at Vendome.[666]

[Sidenote: Exaggerated bulletins.]

Henry of Anjou was not inclined to suffer his victory to pass unnoticed. Almost as soon as the smoke of battle had cleared away, a careful description of his exploit was prepared for circulation, and it was no fault of the compiler if the account he gave was not sufficiently flattering to the young prince's vanity. Conde's body had not been four days in the hands of the Roman Catholics, before Anjou wrote to his brother, the King of France, announcing the fact that he had already despatched messengers with the precious document to the Pope and the Duke of Florence, to the Dukes of Savoy, Ferrara, Parma, and Urbino, to the Republic of Venice and the Duke of Mantua, and to Philip of Spain; while copies were also under way, intended for the French ambassadors in England and Switzerland, for the Parliaments of Paris, Bordeaux, and Toulouse, the "prevot des marchands," and the "echevins" of the capital, and others.[667]

[Sidenote: The Pope's sanguinary injunctions.]

The exaggerated bulletins of the Duke of Anjou were received with great demonstrations of joy by all the Roman Catholic allies of France. Pope Pius the Fifth in particular sent warm congratulations to the "Most Christian King" and to Catharine de' Medici. But he was very careful to couple his expressions of thanks with an earnest recommendation to pursue the work so auspiciously begun, even to the extermination of the detested heretics. "The more kindly God has dealt with you and us," he promptly wrote to Charles, "the more vigorously and diligently must you make use of the present victory to pursue and destroy the remnants of the enemy, and wholly tear up, not only the roots of an evil so great and which had gathered to itself such strength, but even _the very fibres_ of the roots. Unless they be thoroughly extirpated, they will again sprout and grow up (as we have so often heretofore seen happen), where your Majesty least expects it." Pius pledged his word that Charles would succeed in his undertaking, "if no respect for men or for human considerations should be powerful enough to induce him to spare God's enemies, who had spared neither God nor him." "In no other way," he added, "will you be able to appease God, than by avenging the injuries done to God with the utmost severity, by the merited punishment of most accursed men." And he set as a warning before the eyes of the French monarch the example of King Saul, who, when commanded by God, through Samuel the Prophet, so to smite the Amalekites, an infidel people, that none should escape, neither man nor woman, neither infant nor suckling, incurred the anger and rejection of the Almighty by sparing Agag and the best of the spoil, instead of utterly destroying them.[668]

Two weeks later the pontiff received the unwelcome tidings that some of the Huguenot prisoners taken in the battle of Jarnac had been spared. La Noue, Soubise, and other gentlemen had actually been left alive, and were likely to escape without paying the forfeit due to their crimes. At this dreadful intelligence the righteous indignation of Pius was kindled. On one and the same day (the thirteenth of April) he wrote long letters to Catharine, to Anjou, to the Cardinal of Lorraine, to the Cardinal of Bourbon, as well as to Charles himself.[669] Of all these letters the tenor was identical. Such slackness to execute vengeance would certainly provoke God's patience to anger; the king must visit condign punishment upon the enemies of God and the rebels against his own authority. To the victor of Jarnac he was specially urgent, supplicating him to counteract any leanings that might be shown to an impious mercy. "Your brother's rebels have disturbed the public tranquillity of the realm. They have, so far as in them lay, subverted the Catholic religion, have burned churches, have most cruelly slain the priests of Almighty God, have committed numberless other crimes; consequently they deserve to receive those extreme penalties (_supplicia_) that are ordained by the laws. And if any of their number shall attempt, through the intercession of your nobles with the king your brother, to escape the penalties they deserve, it is your duty, in view of your piety to God and zeal for the divine honor, to reject the prayers of all that intercede for them, and to show yourself equally inexorable to all."[670]

[Sidenote: The sanguinary action of the Parliament of Bordeaux.]

Was it in consequence of the known desire of the occupant of the Holy See that the policy of the French courts of justice became more and more sanguinary? We can scarcely doubt that the Pope's injunctions had much to do with these increasing severities. Beginning in March, 1569, the Parliament of Bordeaux issued a series of decrees condemning a crowd of Protestants to death. The names that appear upon the records within the compass of one year number not less than _twelve hundred and seventeen_. The victims were taken out of all grades of society--from noblemen, military men, judges, priests and monks, down to humble mechanics and laborers. The lists made out by their enemies prove at least one fact which the Huguenots had long maintained: that they counted in their ranks representatives of the first families of the country, as well as of every other class of the population. Happily sentence was pronounced generally upon the absent, and the barbarous punishment of beheading, quartering, and exposing to the popular gaze, remained unexecuted. But the incidental penalty of the confiscation of the property of reputed Huguenots, which, so far from being a mere formal threat, was in fact the principal object contemplated by the prosecution, proved to be sober reality, and the goods of the banished Protestants afforded rich plunder to the informers.[671]

[Sidenote: Queen Elizabeth becomes colder.]

Upon Elizabeth of England the first effect of the reported victory at Jarnac was clearly marked. Her favorite, the Earl of Leicester, assured the French ambassador that, although the queen was sorry to see those professing her religion maltreated, yet, as queen, she would arm in behalf of Charles when fighting against his own subjects.[672] Her own declarations, however, were not so strong, or perhaps, after a little reflection, she took a more hopeful view of the fortunes of the Huguenots. For, although she exhibited curiosity to hear the "true" account, which a special messenger from Charles the Ninth was commissioned to bring her, and received the tidings in a manner satisfactory to the French ambassador, she would not rejoice at the death of Conde, whom she held to be a very good and faithful servant of his Majesty's crown, and deplored a war which, whether victory inclined to one side or the other, must lead to the diminution of Charles's best forces and the ruin of his noblesse.[673]

[Sidenote: Spirit of the Queen of Navarre.]

In point of fact, however, the defeat which the royalists had flattered themselves would terminate the war, and over which they had sung Te Deums, weakened the Huguenots very little.[674] The Queen of Navarre, on hearing the intelligence, hurried to Cognac, where she presented herself to the army, and reminded the brave men who heard her voice that, although the Prince of Conde, their late leader, was dead, the good cause was not dead; and that the courage of such good men ought never to fail. God had provided, and ever would provide, fresh instruments to uphold His own chosen work. Her brief address restored the flagging spirits of the fugitives. When she returned to La Rochelle, to devise new means of supplying the necessities of the army, she left behind her men resolved to retrieve their recent losses. They did not wait long for an opportunity. The Roman Catholics, advancing, laid siege to Cognac, confident of easy success. But the garrison, which included seven thousand infantry newly levied, received them with determination. Sallies were frequent and bloody, and when, at last, the siege was raised, the army of Anjou had sacrificed nearly as many men before the walls of a small provincial city as the Huguenots had lost on the much vaunted field of Jarnac.[675]

[Sidenote: The Huguenots recover strength.]

The events of the next two or three months certainly exhibited no diminution in the power or in the spirit of the Huguenots. St. Jean d'Angely, into which Count Montgomery had thrown himself, defied the entire army of Anjou, and the siege was abandoned. Angouleme, an equally tempting morsel, he tried to obtain, but failed. At Mucidan, a town somewhat to the south-west of Perigueux, he was more successful. But he effected its capture at the expense of the life of Brissac, one of his bravest officers--a loss which he attempted to avenge by murdering the garrison, after it had surrendered on condition that life and property should be spared.[676] Within a month or two after the battle of Jarnac the Protestants at La Rochelle wrote, for Queen Elizabeth's information, that they were more powerful than ever, that Piles had brought them 4,000 recruits, that D'Andelot was soon to bring the viscounts with a large force.[677]

[Sidenote: Death of D'Andelot.]

But the course of that indefatigable warrior was now run. D'Andelot's excessive labors and constant exposure had brought on a fever to which his life soon succumbed. There were not wanting those, it is true, who ascribed his sudden death, like most of the deaths of important personages in the latter part of this century, to poison; and Huguenot and loyal pamphleteers alike laid the crime at the door of Catharine de' Medici.[678] But there is no sufficient evidence to substantiate the accusation, and we must not unnecessarily ascribe this base act to a woman already responsible for too many undeniable crimes.[679] The death of so gallant and true-hearted a nobleman, a faithful and unflinching friend of the Reformation from the time when it first began to spread extensively among the higher classes of the French population, and who had amply atoned for a momentary act of weakness, in the time of Henry the Second, by an uncompromising profession of his religion on every occasion during the reigns of that monarch's two sons, was deeply felt by his comrades in arms. As "colonel-general of the French infantry," he had occupied the first rank in this branch of the service,[680] and his experience was as highly prized as his impetuous valor upon the field of battle. The brilliancy of his executive abilities seemed to all beholders indispensable to complement the more calm and deliberative temperament of his elder brother. It was natural, therefore, that the admiral, while pouring out his private grief for one who had been so dear to him, in a touching letter to D'Andelot's children,[681] should experience as deep a sorrow for the loss of his wise and efficient co-operation. He might be pardoned a little despondency as he recalled the prophetic words that had dropped from D'Andelot's lips during a brief respite from his burning fever: "France shall have many woes to suffer with you, and then without you; but all will in the end fall upon the Spaniard!"[682] The prospect was not bright. Peace was yet far distant--peace, which Coligny preferred a thousand times to his own life, but would not purchase dishonorably by the sacrifice of civil liberty and of the right to worship his God according to the convictions of his heart and conscience. The burden of the defence of the Protestants had appeared sufficiently heavy when Conde, a prince of the blood, was alive to share it with him. But now, with the entire charge of maintaining the party against a powerful and determined enemy, who had the advantage of the possession of the person of the king, and thus was able to cloak his ambitious designs with the pretence of the royal authority, and deprived of a brother whom the army had appropriately surnamed "le chevalier sans peur,"[683] the task might well appear to demand herculean strength.

[Sidenote: New responsibility imposed on Admiral Coligny.]

Henry of Navarre had, indeed, just been recognized as general-in-chief, and he was accompanied by his cousin, Henry of Conde; but Navarre was a boy of little more than fifteen, and his cousin was not much older. Nothing could for the present be expected from such striplings; and the public, ever ready to look upon the comical side of even the most serious matters, was not slow in nicknaming them the "admiral's two pages."[684] Coligny, however, was not crushed by the new responsibility which devolved upon him. No longer hampered by the authority of one whose counsels often verged on foolhardiness, he soon exhibited his consummate abilities so clearly, that even his enemies were forced to acknowledge that they had never given him the credit he deserved. "It was soon perceived," observes an author by no means friendly to the Huguenots, "that the accident (of Conde's death) had happened only in order to reveal in all its splendor the merits of the Admiral de Chatillon. The admiral had had during his entire life very difficult and complicated matters to unravel, and, nevertheless, he had never had any that were not far below his abilities, and in which, consequently, he had no need of exerting his full capacity. Thus those qualities that were rarest, and that exalted him most above others, remained hidden, through lack of opportunity, and would apparently have remained always concealed during the lifetime of the Prince of Conde, because the world would have attributed to the prince all those results to whose accomplishment it could not learn that the admiral had contributed more than had the former. But, after the battle of Jarnac had permitted the admiral to exhibit himself fully on the most famous theatre of Europe, the Calvinists perceived that they were not so unhappy as they thought, since they still had a leader who would prevent them from noticing the loss they had experienced, so many singular qualities had he to repair it."[685]

[Sidenote: The Duke of Deux Ponts comes with German auxiliaries.]

Wolfgang, Duke of Deux Ponts, had at length entered France, and was bringing to the Huguenots their long-expected succor. He had seven thousand five hundred reiters from lower Germany, six thousand lansquenets from upper Germany, and a body of French and Flemish gentlemen, under William of Orange and his brother, Mouy, Esternay and others, which may have swelled his army to about seventeen thousand men in all.[686] In vain did his cousin, the Duke of Lorraine, attempt to dissuade him, offering to reimburse him the one hundred thousand crowns he had already spent upon the preparations for the expedition. Even Conde's death did not discourage him. He came, he said, to fight, not for the prince, but for "the cause."[687] When about entering his Most Christian Majesty's dominions, he had published the reasons of his coming to assist the Huguenots. In this paper he treated as pure calumnies the accusations brought by their enemies against Conde, Coligny, and their associates, and proved his position by quoting the king's own express declaration, in the recent edicts of pacification, "that he recognized everything they had attempted as undertaken by his orders and for the good of the kingdom."[688] The point was certainly well taken. Charles's various declarations were not remarkably consistent. In one, Conde was "his faithful servant and subject," and his acts were prompted by the purest of motives. In the next, he and his fellow-Huguenots were incorrigible rebels, with whom every method of conciliation had signally failed. But Charles did not trouble himself to attempt to smooth away these contradictions. He is even said to have replied to the envoy whom Deux Ponts sent him (April, 1569), demanding the restitution of the Edict of January and the payment of thirty thousand crowns due to Prince Casimir, that "Deux Ponts was too insignificant a personage (_trop petit compagnon_) to undertake to dictate laws to him, and that, as to the money, he would deliberate about _that_ when the duke had laid down his arms."[689]

The secret of this arrogant demeanor is found in the fact that the court believed it impossible for the Germans to join Coligny. Even so late as the middle of May, when Deux Ponts had penetrated to Autun in Burgundy, Charles regarded the attempt as well nigh hopeless. The fortunes of the Huguenots were desperate. "There remains for them as their last resort," he wrote to one of his ambassadors, "but the single hope that the Duke of Deux Ponts will venture so far as to go to find them where they are. But there is little likelihood that an army of strangers, pursued by another of about equal strength--an army destitute of cities of its own, without means of passing the rivers, favored by no one in my kingdom, dying of hunger, so often harassed and put to inconvenience--should be able to make so long a journey without being lost and dissipated of itself, even had I no forces to combat it." "The duke," continued the king, "will soon repent of his mad project of entering France, and attempting to cross the Loire, where such good provision has been made to obstruct him."[690]

[Sidenote: They overcome all obstacles and join Coligny.]

[Sidenote: Death of Deux Ponts.]

Charles had not exaggerated the difficulties of the undertaking; but Deux Ponts, under the blessing of Heaven, surmounted them all. The discord between Aumale and Nemours rendered weak and useless an army that might, in the hands of a single skilful general, have checked or annihilated him.[691] Mouy and his French comrades were good guides. The Loire was reached, while Aumale and Nemours followed at a respectful distance. Guerchy, an officer lately belonging to Coligny's army, discovered a ford by which a part of the Germans crossed. The main body laid siege to the town of La Charite, which was soon reduced (on the twentieth of May), the Huguenots thus gaining a bridge and stronghold that proved of great utility for their future operations. Six days after the king had demonstrated the impossibility of the enterprise, Deux Ponts was on the western side of the Loire.[692] Meantime, Coligny and La Rochefoucauld were advancing to meet him with the elite of their army and with all the artillery they had. On approaching Limoges on the Vienne, they learned that the Germans had crossed the river and were but two leagues distant. Coligny at once took horse, and rode to their encampment, in order to greet and congratulate their leader. He was too late. The general, who had conducted an army five hundred miles through a hostile country, was in the last agonies of death, and on the next day (the eleventh of June) fell a victim to a fever from which he had for some time been suffering. "It is a thing that ought for all time to be remarked as a singular and special act of God," said a bulletin sent by the Queen of Navarre to Queen Elizabeth, "that He permitted this prince to traverse so great an extent of country, with a great train of artillery, infantry, and baggage, and in full view of a large army; and to pass so many rivers, and through so many difficult and dangerous places, of such kind that it is not in the memory of man that an army has passed through any similar ones, and by which a single wagon could not be driven without great trouble, so that it appears a dream to those who have not seen it; and that being out of danger, and having arrived at the place where he longed to be, in order to assist the churches of this realm, God should have been pleased, that very day, to take him to Himself; and, what is more, that his death should have produced no change or commotion in his army."[693]

Duke Wolfgang of Deux Ponts was quietly succeeded in the command of the German troops by Count Wolrad of Mansfeld. A day later the two armies met with lively demonstrations of joy. In honor of the alliance thus cemented a medal was struck, bearing on the one side the names and portraits of Jeanne and Henry of Navarre, and on the other the significant words, "_Pax certa, victoria integra, mors honesta_"--the triple object of their desires.[694]

[Sidenote: Huguenot success at La Roche Abeille.]

The combined army, now numbering about twenty-five thousand men, soon came to blows with the enemy. The Duke of Anjou, whose forces were somewhat superior in numbers, had approached within a very short distance of Coligny, but, unwilling to risk a general engagement, had intrenched himself in an advantageous position. A part of his army, commanded by Strozzi, lay at La Roche Abeille, where it was furiously assaulted by the Huguenots. Over four hundred royalists were left dead upon the field, and Strozzi himself was taken prisoner. The disaster had nearly proved still more serious; but a violent rain saved the fugitives by extinguishing the lighted matches upon which the infantry depended for the discharge of their arquebuses, and by seriously impeding the pursuit of the cavalry.[695]

[Sidenote: Furlough of Anjou's troops.]

Although the Duke of Anjou had recently received considerable reinforcements--about five thousand pontifical troops and twelve hundred Florentines, under the command of Sforza, Count of Santa Fiore[696]--it was now determined in a military council to disband the greater part of the army, giving to the French forces a short furlough, and, for the most part, trusting to the local garrisons to maintain the royal supremacy in places now in the possession of the Roman Catholics. In adopting this paradoxical course, the generals seem to have been influenced partly by a desire to furnish the "gentilhommes," serving at their own expense, an opportunity to revisit their homes and replenish their exhausted purses, and thus diminish the temptation to desertion which had thinned the ranks; partly, also, by the hope that the new German auxiliaries of the Huguenots would of themselves melt away in a climate to which they were unaccustomed.[697]

[Sidenote: Huguenot petition to the king.]

Meanwhile, the admiral, whose power had never been so great as it now was, exhibited the utmost anxiety to avert, if possible, any further effusion of blood. Under his auspices a petition was drawn up in the name of the Queen of Navarre, and the Princes, Seigneurs, Chevaliers, and gentlemen composing the Protestant army. A messenger was sent to the Duke of Anjou to request a passport for the deputies who were to carry it to the court. But the duke was unwilling to terminate a war in which he had (whether deservedly or not) acquired so much reputation, and reluctant to be forced to resume the place of a subject near a brother whose capricious and jealous humor he had already experienced. He therefore either refused or delayed compliance with the admiral's demand.[698] Coligny succeeded, however, in forwarding the document to his cousin Francis, Marshal of Montmorency--a nobleman who, although he had not taken up arms with the Huguenots, virtually maintained, on his estates near Paris, a neutrality which, from the suspicion it excited, was not without its perils. Montmorency laid the petition before Catharine and the king.

[Sidenote: The single purpose of the Huguenots.]

The voluminous state papers of the period would possess little claim to our attention, were it not for the singleness of purpose which they exhibit as animating the patriotic party through a long succession of bloody wars. The Huguenots were no rebels seeking to undermine the authority of the crown, no obstinate democrats striving to carry into execution an impracticable scheme of government,[699] no partisans struggling to supplant a rival faction. They were not turbulent lovers of change. They had for their leaders princes and nobles with interests all on the side of the maintenance of order, men whose wealth was wasted, whose magnificent palaces were plundered of their rich contents,[700] whose lives, with the lives of their wives and children, were jeoparded in times of civil commotion. Even the unauthorized usurpations of the foreigners from Lorraine[701] would not have been sufficient to move the greater part of them to a resort to the sword. Their one purpose, the sole object which they could not renounce, was the securing of religious liberty. The Guises--even that cruel and cowardly cardinal with hands dripping with the blood of the martyrs of a score of years--were nothing to them, except as impersonations of the spirit of intolerance and persecution. Liberty to worship their God in good conscience was their demand alike after defeats and after successes, under Louis de Bourbon or under Gaspard de Coligny. They did, indeed, sympathize with the first family of the blood, deprived of the position near the throne to which immemorial custom entitled it--and what true Frenchman did not? But Admiral Coligny, rather than the Prince of Conde, was the type of the Huguenot of the sixteenth century--Coligny, the heroic figure that looms up through the mist of the ages and from among the host of meaner men, invested with all the attributes of essential greatness--pious, loyal, truthful, brave, averse to war and bloodshed, slow to accept provocation, resolute only in the purpose to secure for himself and his children the most important among the inalienable prerogatives of manhood, the freedom of professing and practising his religious faith.

The present petition differed little from its predecessors. It reiterated the desire of the Huguenots for peace--a desire evidenced on so many occasions, sometimes when prudence might have dictated a course opposite to that which they adopted. The return they had received for their moderation could be read in broken edicts, and in "pacifications" more sanguinary than the wars they terminated. The Protestant princes and gentlemen, therefore, entreated Charles "to make a declaration of his will respecting the liberty of the exercise of the reformed religion in the form of a solemn, perpetual, and irrevocable edict." They begged him "to be pleased to grant universally to all his subjects, of whatever quality or condition they might be, the free exercise of that religion in all the cities, villages, hamlets, and other places of his kingdom, without any exception, reservation, modification, or restriction as to persons, times, or localities, with the necessary and requisite securities." True, however, to the spirit of the age, which dreaded unbridled license of opinion as much as it did the intolerance of the papal system, the Huguenots were careful to preclude the "Libertines" from sheltering themselves beneath this protection, by calling upon Charles to require of all his subjects the profession of the one or the other religion[702]--so far were even the most enlightened men of their country and period from understanding what spirit they were of, so far were they from recognizing the inevitable direction of the path they were so laboriously pursuing!

It scarcely needs be said that the petition received no attention from a court not yet tired of war. Marshal Montmorency was compelled to reply to Coligny, on the twentieth of July, that Charles refused to take notice of anything emanating from the admiral or his associates until they should submit and return to their duty. Coligny answered in a letter which closed the negotiations; protesting that since his enemies would listen to no terms of accommodation, he had, at least, the consolation of having done all in his power to avert the approaching desolation of the kingdom, and calling upon God and all the princes of Europe to bear witness to the integrity of his purpose.[703]

[Sidenote: Coligny's plans overruled.]

[Sidenote: Disastrous siege of Poitiers.]

The Huguenots now took some advantage of the temporary weakness of the enemy in the open field. On the one hand they reduced the city of Chatellerault and the fortress of Lusignan, hitherto deemed impregnable.[704] On the other, they despatched into Bearn the now famous Count Montgomery, who, joining the "viscounts," was successful in wresting the greater part of that district from the hands of Terrides, a skilful captain sent by Anjou, and in restoring it to the Queen of Navarre.[705] Respecting their plan of future operations a great diversity of opinion prevailed among the Huguenot leaders. Admiral Coligny was strongly in favor of pressing on to the north, and laying siege to Saumur. With this place in his possession, as it was reasonable to suppose it soon might be, he would enjoy a secure passage across the river Loire into Brittany, Anjou, and more distant provinces, as he already had access by the bridge of La Charite to Burgundy, Champagne, and the German frontier. Unfortunately the majority of the generals regarded it as a matter of more immediate importance to capture Poitiers, a rich and populous city, said at that time to cover more ground than any other city in France, with the single exception of Paris. They supposed that their recent successes at Chatellerault and Lusignan, on either side of Poitiers, and the six pieces of cannon they had taken at Lusignan would materially help them. Coligny reluctantly yielded to their urgency, and the army which had appeared before Poitiers on the twenty-fourth of July, 1569,[706] began the siege three days later. It was a serious blunder. The Huguenots succeeded, indeed, in capturing a part of the suburbs, and in reducing the garrison to great straits for food; but they were met with great determination, and with a singular fertility of expedient. The Count de Lude was the royal governor. Henry, Duke of Guise (son of the nobleman assassinated near Orleans in 1563), with his brother Charles, Duke of Mayenne, and other good captains, had thrown himself into Poitiers two days before Coligny made his appearance. It was Guise's first opportunity to prove to the world that he had inherited his father's military genius; and the glory of success principally accrued to him. He met the assailants in the breach, and contested every inch of ground. Their progress was obstructed by chevaux-de-frise and other impediments. Boiling oil was poured upon them from the walls. Burning hoops were adroitly thrown over their heads. Pitch and other inflammable substances fell like rain upon their advancing columns. They were not even left unmolested in their camp. A dam was constructed on the river Clain, and the inundation spread to the Huguenot quarters. To these difficulties raised by man were added the ravages of disease. Many of the Huguenot generals, and the admiral himself, were disabled, and the mortality was great among the private soldiers.

In spite of every obstacle, however, it seemed probable that Coligny would carry the day. "The admiral's power exceedeth the king's," wrote Cecil to Nicholas White: "he is sieging of Poitiers, the winning or losing whereof will make an end of the cause. He is entered within the town by assault, but the Duke of Guise, etc., are entrenched in a stronger part of the town; and without the king give a battle, it is thought that he cannot escape from the admiral."[707] Just at this moment, the Duke of Anjou, assembling the remnants of his forces, appeared before Chatellerault; and the peril to the Huguenot city seemed so imminent, that Coligny was compelled to raise the siege of Poitiers, on the ninth of September, and hasten to its relief. Seven weeks of precious time had been lost, and more than two thousand lives had been sacrificed by the Huguenots in this ill-advised undertaking. The besieged lost but three or four hundred men.[708] Great was the delight manifested in Paris, where, during the prevalence of the siege, solemn processions had gone from Notre Dame to the shrine of Sainte Genevieve, to implore the intercession of the patron of the city in behalf of Poitiers.[709]

Meanwhile the Huguenots had been more fortunate on the upper Loire, where La Charite sustained a siege of four weeks by a force of seven thousand Roman Catholics under Sansac. Its works were weak, its garrison small, but every assault was bravely met. In the end the assailants, after severe losses experienced from the enemy and from a destructive explosion of their own magazine, abandoned their enterprise in a panic, on hearing an ill-founded rumor of Coligny's approach.[710]

[Sidenote: Cruelties to the Huguenots in the prisons of Orleans.]

It was fortunate for the Protestants of the north and east that they still had Sancerre and La Charite as asylums from the violence of their enemies. Far from their armed companions, there was little protection for their lives or their property. The edict of the preceding September, assuring to peaceable Protestants freedom from molestation in their homes, was as much a dead letter as any of its predecessors. The government, the courts of justice, and the populace, were equally eager to oppress them. At Orleans the "lieutenant-general" placed all the Huguenots of the city, without distinction of age or sex, in the public prisons, upon pretext of providing for the public security. A few days after (on the twenty-first of August) the people, inflamed to fanaticism by seditious priests, attacked these buildings. They succeeded in breaking into the first prison, and every man, woman, and child was murdered. The door of the second withstood all their attempts to gain admission. But the bloodthirsty mob would not be balked of its prey. The whole neighborhood was ransacked for wood and other combustible materials, and willing hands kindled the fire. As the flames rose high above the doomed house, parents who had lost all hope of saving their own lives sought to preserve the lives of their infant children by throwing them to relatives or acquaintances whom they recognized among their persecutors. But there are times when the heart of man knows no pity. The laymen who had been taught that heretics must be exterminated, even to the babe in the cradle, now put into practice the savage lesson they had learned from their spiritual instructors. Fathers and brothers took a cruel pleasure in receiving the hapless infants on the point of their pikes, or in despatching them with halberds, reserving the same fate for any of more mature age who might venture to appeal from the devouring flames to their merciless fellow-men. The number of the victims of sword and fire is said to have reached two hundred and eighty persons.[711]

[Sidenote: Montargis a safe refuge.]

[Sidenote: Flight of the refugees to Sancerre.]

The tragic end of the Huguenots at Orleans warned the Protestants of the villages and open country of the dangers to which they were exposed. Many fled with their wives and children to Montargis, where the aged Renee of Ferrara was still living, the unwilling spectator of commotions which she had foreseen and predicted, and which she had striven to prevent. Her palace was still what Calvin had called it in the time of the first war, "God's hostelry." Renee's royal descent, her connection by marriage with the Guises--for Henry, the present duke, was her grandson--her well-known aversion to civil war,[712] and, added to these, that demeanor which ever betrayed a consciousness that she was a king's daughter, had thus far protected her from direct insult, staunch and avowed Protestant as she was, and had enabled her to extend to a host of fugitives for religion's sake a hospitality which had not yet been invaded. But, the rancor entertained by the two parties increasing in bitterness as the third conflict advanced, it became more and more difficult to repress the impatience felt by the fanatics of Paris to rid themselves of an asylum for the adherents of the hated faith within so short a distance--about seventy miles--of the orthodox capital. Montargis was narrowly watched. Early in March the duchess was warned, in a letter, of pretended plans formed by the refugees on her lands to succor their friends elsewhere in the vicinity--the writer being no other than the adventurer Villegagnon, the former vice-admiral, the betrayer of Coligny's Huguenot colony to Brazil, who was now in the Roman Catholic service, under the Duke of Anjou.[713] But the fresh flood of refugees to Montargis rendered further forbearance impossible. The preachers stirred up the people, and the people incited the king. Renee was told that she must dismiss the Huguenot preachers, or submit to receiving a Roman Catholic garrison in her castle; that the exercise of the Protestant religion could no longer be tolerated, and the fugitives must find another home. The duchess could no longer resist the superior forces of her enemies, and tearfully she provided the miserable Huguenots for their journey with such wagons as she could find. The company consisted of four hundred and sixty persons, two-thirds women and infants in the arms of their mothers. Scarcely knowing whither to direct their steps, they fled toward the Loire, and hastened to place the river between them and their pursuers. The precaution availed them little. They had barely reached the vicinity of Chatillon-sur-Loire,[714] when the approach of Cartier with a detachment of light horse and mounted arquebusiers was announced; and the defenceless throng, knowing that no pity could be expected from men whose hands had already been imbrued in the blood of their fellow-believers, and being exhorted by their ministers to meet death calmly, knelt down upon the ground and awaited the terrible onset. At that very instant, between the hillocks in another direction, and somewhat nearer to the fugitives, a band of cavalry made its appearance. They numbered some one hundred and twenty men, and, as they rode up, were taken for the advance guard of their persecutors. But, on coming nearer and recognizing some of the kneeling suppliants, the knights threw off their cloaks and displayed their white cassocks, the badge of the adherents of the house of Navarre. They were two cornets of Huguenot horse, on their way from Berry to La Charite, under the command of Bourry, Teil, and other captains. In the midst of the tearful acclamations of the women, their new friends turned upon the exultant pursuers, and so bravely did they fight that the Roman Catholics soon fled, leaving eighty men and two standards on the field. The Huguenot knights, who had so providentially become their deliverers, escorted the fugitives from Montargis to Sancerre and La Charite, where they remained in safety until the conclusion of peace.[715]

[Sidenote: The "Croix de Gastines."]

Meantime the courts of justice emulated the example of cruelty set them by the government and the mob. In May they began by sending to the gallows on the Place Maubert, in Paris, a student barely twenty-two years of age, for having taught some children the Huguenot doctrines (huguenoterie), "without any other crime," the candid chronicler adds. After so fair a beginning there was no difficulty in finding good subjects for hanging. Accordingly, on the thirtieth of June, three victims more were sacrificed on the old Place de Greve, "partly for heresy and for celebrating the Lord's Supper in their house; partly"--so it was pretended--"for having assisted in demolishing altars." In the great number of similar executions with which the sanguinary records of Paris abound, the fate of Nicholas Croquet and the two De Gastines--father and son--would have been forgotten, but for the extraordinary measures taken in respect to the house where the impiety had been committed of celebrating the Lord's Supper according to the simple scheme of its first institution. The Parisian parliament ordered that "the house of the Five White Crosses, belonging to the De Gastines, situated in the Rue Saint Denis," should be razed to the ground, and that upon the site a stone cross should be placed, with an inscription explanatory of the occasion of its erection. That spot was to serve as a public square for all time, and a fine of 6,000 livres, with corporal punishment, was imposed upon any one who should ever undertake to build upon it.[716] It was not foreseen that military exigencies might presently render imperative a reconciliation with the Huguenots, and that the "perpetual" decree of parliament, like the "irrevocable" edicts of the king, might be somewhat abridged by stern necessity.

[Sidenote: Ferocity of parliament against Coligny and others.]

[Sidenote: A price set on the head of the admiral.]

The work of blood continued. In July two noblemen were decapitated--the Baron de Laschene and the Baron de Courtene--and denunciation of reputed heretics was vigorously prosecuted, by command of parliament and of the city curates.[717] Two months later a cowardly but impotent blow was struck at a more distinguished personage. Parliament undertook to try Gaspard de Coligny, and, having found him guilty of treason (on the thirteenth of September), pronounced him infamous, and offered a reward of fifty thousand gold crowns for his apprehension, with full pardon for any offences the captor might have committed. Lest the exploit, however, should be deemed too difficult for execution, a few days later (on the twenty-eighth of September) the same liberal terms were held out to any one who should murder him. As it was not so easy to capture or assassinate a general who was at that moment in command of an army not greatly inferior to that of the Duke of Anjou, the court gave the Parisian populace the cheaper spectacle of a hanging of the admiral in effigy. It was the eve of the festival of "the Exaltation of the Cross"--Tuesday, the thirteenth of September--and the time was deemed appropriate for the execution of so determined an enemy of the worship of that sacred emblem. While Coligny's escutcheon was dragged in dishonor through the streets by four horses, the hangman amused the mob by giving to his effigy the traditional tooth-pick, which he was said to be in the habit of continually using--a facetious trait which the curate of St. Barthelemi, of course, does not forget to insert in his brief diary.[718] Nevertheless, that the decree of parliament setting a price upon the admiral's head was no child's play, appeared about this time from the abortive plot of one Dominique d'Albe, who confessed that he had been hired to poison the Huguenot chief, and was hanged by order of the princes.[719] Nor was it without practical significance that the decree itself had been translated into Latin, Italian, Spanish, German, Flemish, English, and Scotch, and scattered broadcast through Europe by the partisans of Guise.

[Sidenote: The Huguenots weakened.]

Meantime the condition of the rival armies in western France promised again, in the view of the court, a speedy solution of the military problem. The Duke of Anjou had of late been heavily reinforced. With the old troops that had returned to his standard, and the new troops that poured in upon him, he had a well-appointed army of about twenty-seven thousand men, of whom one-third were cavalry. Coligny, on the contrary, had been so weakened by his losses at the siege of Poitiers, and by the desertion of those whom disappointment at the delays and the expense of the service had rendered it impossible to retain, that he was inferior to his antagonist by nine or ten thousand men. He had only eleven or twelve thousand foot and six thousand horse.[720] The Roman Catholic general resolved to employ his preponderance of forces in striking a decisive blow. This appeared the more desirable, since it was known that Montgomery was returning from the reduction of Bearn, bringing with him six or seven thousand veterans--an addition to the Huguenot army that would nearly restore the equilibrium.

Leaving Chinon, where he had been for some time strengthening himself, the Duke of Anjou crossed the swollen river Vienne, on the twenty-sixth of September, and started in pursuit of the Huguenots. Coligny had been resting his army at Faye, a small town about midway between Chinon and Chatellerault. It was here that the attempt upon his life, to which allusion has just been made, was discovered. And it was from this point that the Prince of Orange started in disguise, and undertook, with forty mounted companions, a perilous journey across France by La Charite to Montbeliard, for the purpose of raising in Germany the fresh troops of which the admiral stood in such pressing need.[721]

[Sidenote: Battle of Moncontour, October 3, 1569.]

The Huguenot general had moved westward, secretly averse to giving battle before the arrival of Montgomery, but forced to show a readiness to fight by the open impatience of his southern troops, and by the murmurs of the Germans, who openly threatened to desert unless they were either paid or led against the enemy. Within a couple of leagues of the town of Moncontour, soon to gain historic renown, Coligny, believing the Roman Catholics to be near, drew up his own men in order of battle (on the thirtieth of September); but, receiving from his scouts the erroneous information that there were no considerable bodies of the enemy in the neighborhood, he resumed his march toward the town of which La Noue had rendered himself master. The army was scarcely in motion before Mouy, commanding the rear, was attacked by a heavy detachment of the Duke of Anjou's vanguard, under the Duke of Montpensier. Mouy's handful of men stood their ground well, now facing the enemy and driving him off, now slowly retreating, and gave the rest of the Huguenot army the opportunity of gaining the opposite side of a marshy tract, through which there flowed a small stream. Then they themselves crossed, after losing about a hundred of their number. Anjou neglected the chance here afforded him of gaining an entire victory; and Coligny, after halting for a short time, drew off toward Moncontour, which he reached on the next day without further obstruction. The duke spent the night on the battle-field in token of victory, and then started in pursuit; but, in order to avoid attack while crossing the short, but deep river Dive, a tributary of the Loire which flows by the walls of Moncontour, he turned to the left, and, rapidly ascending to its sources, descended again on the opposite bank.

[Sidenote: Coligny wounded.]

[Sidenote: Heavy losses of the Huguenots.]