Chapter XVI: The Third CIVIL War (3)

The admiral might still have succeeded in avoiding a capital engagement, and in reaching Partenay or some other point of safety, had he not been again embarrassed by the mutiny of the Germans, who, as usual, were most urgent for pay on the eve of battle. As it was, before they could be quieted, the duke had made up for his considerable detour, and overtook the Protestants a short distance beyond Moncontour. Coligny, having given command of the right wing to Count Louis of Nassau, interposed the left, of which he himself assumed command, between the main body and the enemy, hoping to get off with a mere skirmish.[722] In this he was disappointed. Attacked in force, his troops made a sturdy resistance. The fight resembled in some of its incidents the conflicts of the paladins of a past age. The elder rhinegrave rode thirty paces in front of his Roman Catholic knights; Coligny as far in advance of the Protestants. The two leaders met in open field. The rhinegrave was killed on the spot. The admiral received a severe injury in his face. The blood, gushing freely from the wound, nearly strangled him before his visor could be raised. Reluctantly he was compelled to retire to the rear of the army. Still the tide of battle ran high. The Swiss troops of Anjou displayed their accustomed valor. It was matched by that of the Huguenots, who several times seemed on the point of winning the day, and already shouted, "Victory! Victory!" The Duke of Anjou, who, however little he was entitled to the credit of planning the engagement, certainly displayed great courage in the contest itself, was at one time in extreme peril, and the Marquis of Baden was killed while riding near him. On the other side, the Princes of Bearn and Conde, who had come to the army from Partenay, to encourage the soldiers by their presence, endeavored by word and example to sustain the courage of the outnumbered Huguenots.[723] But at the critical moment, when the Roman Catholic line had begun to give way, Marshal Cosse, who as yet had not been engaged, advanced with his fresh troops and changed the fortunes of the day. The personal valor of Louis of Nassau was unavailing. The German reiters, routed and panic-stricken, fled from the field. Encountering their own countrymen, the lansquenets or German infantry, they broke through their ranks and threw them into confusion. Into the breach thus made the Swiss poured in an irresistible flood. Inveterate hatred now found ample opportunity for satisfaction. The helpless lansquenets were slaughtered without mercy. No quarter was given. One of the German colonels, who had been the foremost cause of the morning's mutiny, and who had prevented his soldiers from fighting until their wages were paid, now made them tie handkerchiefs to their pikes to show that they surrendered; but they fared no better than the rest.[724] Others kneeled and begged for mercy of their savage foes, crying in broken French, "_Bon papiste, bon papiste moi!_" It was all in vain. Of four thousand lansquenets that entered the action, barely two hundred escaped with their lives. Three thousand French, enveloped by Anjou's cavalry, were spared by the duke's express command, but not before one thousand of their companions had been killed. In all, two thousand French foot soldiers and three hundred knights perished on the field, while with the valets and camp-followers the loss was much more considerable. La Noue was again a prisoner in the enemy's hands. So also was the famous D'Acier. His captor, Count Santa Fiore, received from Pius the Fifth a severe letter of rebuke for "having failed to obey his commands _to slay at once every heretic that fell into his hands_."[725]

The battle of Moncontour, fought on Monday, the third of October, 1569, was a thorough success on the side of the Guises and of Catharine de' Medici. Compared with it, the battle of Jarnac was only an insignificant skirmish. Although, under the skilful conduct of Louis of Nassau and of Wolrad of Mansfeld, the remnants of the army drew off to Airvault and thence to Partenay, escaping the pursuit of Aumale and Biron, the Huguenot losses were enormous, and the spirit of the soldiers was, for the time, entirely crushed.[726] The Roman Catholics, on the contrary, had lost scarcely any infantry, and barely five hundred horse, although among the cavalry officers were several persons of great distinction.

[Sidenote: The Roman Catholics exulting.]

[Sidenote: Extravagance of parliament.]

Fame magnified the exploit, and exalted the Duke of Anjou into a hero. Charles himself became still more jealous of his brother's growing reputation. Pius the Fifth, on receipt of the tidings, sent the latter a brief, congratulating him upon his success, renewing his advice to make thorough work of exterminating the heretics, and warning him against a mercy than which there was nothing more cruel.[727] To foreign courts--especially to those which betrayed a leaning to the Protestant side--the most exaggerated accounts of the victory were despatched. A "relation" of the battle of Moncontour, with which Philip the Second was furnished, stated the Huguenot loss at fifteen thousand men, eleven cannon, three thousand wagons belonging to the reiters, and eight hundred or nine hundred horses.[728] For a moment the court believed that the Protestants were ruined, and that their entire submission must inevitably ensue.[729] The Parisian parliament, in the excess of its joy, added the third of October to the number, already excessive, of its holidays, declaring that henceforth no pleadings should be held on the anniversary of so glorious a triumph.[730] About the same time, in order to exhibit more clearly the spirit by which it was animated, the same dignified tribunal gave the order that the bodies of Francis D'Andelot and his wife should be disinterred and hanged upon a a gibbet![731]

[Sidenote: Murder of De Mouy by Maurevel.]

[Sidenote: The assassin rewarded with the collar of the order.]

The Roman Catholics were, nevertheless, entirely mistaken in their anticipations of the speedy subjugation of their opponents. The latter were disheartened for a few days, but not in the least disposed to give over the struggle. "The reformed were too numerous," a modern historian well remarks, "too well organized, and had struck their roots too deeply, to be subdued by the loss of a few pitched battles."[732] The prospect at first was, indeed, very dark. It seemed almost impossible for the Huguenots to maintain themselves in the region which for a whole year had been the chief field of operations. As Anjou advanced southward, Partenay was abandoned without a blow, and after occupying it he pushed on toward Niort. Of this important place the intrepid De Mouy had been placed by Coligny in command. Not content with a bare defence, he sallied out and repulsed the enemy. But his boldness proved fatal to him. There was a Roman Catholic "gentilhomme," Maurevel by name, who, allured by the reward of fifty thousand crowns offered by parliament for the capture or assassination of Admiral Coligny, had entered the Protestant camp with protestations of great disgust with his former patrons the Guises, and had vainly sought an opportunity to take the great chieftain's life. Three years later that opportunity was to present itself in the streets of Paris itself. Loth to return to his friends without accomplishing any noteworthy exploit, Maurevel joined De Mouy, with whom he so ingratiated himself that the general not only supplied him from his purse, but made him a companion and a bed-fellow. As the Huguenots were returning to Niort, the traitor found the conjuncture he desired. Chancing to be left alone with De Mouy, he drew a pistol and shot him in the loins; then putting spurs to his horse, reached with ease the advancing columns of Anjou. De Mouy was taken back to Niort mortally wounded. His friends, contrary to his earnest desire, insisted on taking him by boat down the Sevre to La Rochelle, where he died. Meanwhile Niort, in discouragement, surrendered to the Roman Catholic army.[733] The assassin was well rewarded. A letter is extant, written by Charles the Ninth to the Duke of Anjou, from Plessis-lez-Tours, on the tenth of October, 1569, in which the king begs his brother to confer on "Charles de Louvier, sieur de Moureveil, being the person who killed Mouy," the collar of the royal order of Saint Michael, to which he had been elected by the knights companions, as a reward for "his signal service;" and to see that he receive from the city of Paris a present commensurate with his merits![734]

[Sidenote: Fatal error of the court.]

Catharine de' Medici and the Cardinal of Lorraine came from Tours, where they had been watching the course of the war, Niort, and the plan of future operations was discussed in their presence. Almost every place of importance previously held by the Huguenots toward the north and east of La Rochelle had fallen, even to the almost impregnable Lusignan. Saint Jean d'Angely, on the Boutonne, was the only remaining outwork, whose capture must precede an attack on the citadel itself. Should the victorious army of the king lay siege to Saint Jean d'Angely, or should it continue the pursuit of Coligny and the princes, who, in order to divert it from the undertaking, had retired from Saint Jean d'Angely to Saintes, and thence, not long after, in the direction of Montauban? This was the question that demanded an instant answer. Jean de Serres informs us that the Protestant leaders were extremely anxious that their enemies should adopt the latter course;[735] yet the best military authorities on both sides declare without hesitation that the failure of the Roman Catholics to follow it was the one capital error that saved the Huguenots, perhaps, from utter destruction. "Hundreds of times have I been amazed," says the Roman Catholic Blaise de Montluc, "that so many great and wise captains who were with Monsieur (the Duke of Anjou) should have adopted the bad plan of laying sieges, instead of pursuing the princes, who were routed and reduced to such extremities that they had no means of getting to their feet again." And the Protestant Francois de la Noue devotes an entire chapter of his "discourses" to the proof of the assertion that "as the siege of Poitiers was the beginning of the mishaps of the Huguenots, so that of Saint Jean was the means of arresting the good fortune of the Catholics."

What, it may be asked, led to the commission of so fatal an error? The memoirs of Tavannes, who advocated the immediate pursuit of the admiral, ascribe it to the reluctance of the Montmorencies to permit their cousin to be overwhelmed; to the jealousy felt by Cardinal Lorraine of the military successes which threw his brother, the Duke of Aumale, and his nephew, the Duke of Guise, into obscurity; and to the suggestions of De Retz, the king's favorite, who persuaded Charles that it was dangerous to permit the renown of Anjou to increase yet further.[736] It must, however, be remembered that the younger Tavannes is not always a good authority; and that where, as in the present instance, the glory of his father is affected, he becomes altogether untrustworthy. If we reject his account as apocryphal, which apparently we must do, there still remains good reason to believe that the siege of Saint Jean d'Angely was agreed to by the majority of the Roman Catholic leaders from the sincere conviction that its reduction, to be followed by the still more important capture of La Rochelle, would annihilate the Huguenot party in the west, its stronghold and refuge, and that it could then subsist but little longer in other parts of the kingdom.

[Sidenote: Siege of Saint Jean d'Angely.]

The defence of Saint Jean d'Angely had been intrusted by Coligny to competent hands. De Piles had found the fortifications weak and imperfect; he completed and strengthened them.[737] With a small garrison of Huguenots he repaired by night the breaches made by the enemy's cannon during the day, and repelled every attempt to storm the place. When the siege had advanced about two weeks, Charles himself, who was resolved not to suffer Henry of Anjou any longer to win all the laurels of the war, made his appearance in the Roman Catholic camp, on the twenty-sixth of October, and summoned the garrison to surrender. De Piles, however, declined to listen to the commands of the king, even as he had disobeyed those of the duke, taking refuge in the feudal theory that he could give up the place only to the Prince of Navarre, the royal governor of the province of Guyenne, at whose hands he had received it. Yet the position of the Protestants was growing extremely perilous. During one of the assaults upon the wall, De Piles himself became so thoroughly convinced that Saint Jean would be carried, that he caused a breach to be made in the fortifications in his rear, in order to facilitate the withdrawal of his troops. Happily, he had no need of this mode of escape on the present occasion. Meanwhile the most honorable terms were offered him. These he refused to accept; but, finding his stock of ammunition rapidly becoming exhausted, he agreed to a truce of ten days, that he might have time to send a messenger to the princes to obtain their orders; promising, in case he received no succor in the interval, to surrender the city on condition that the garrison should be permitted to retire with their horses, arms and personal effects, and that religious liberty should be granted to all the residents. But, before the armistice had quite expired, Saint Surin, and forty other brave horsemen from Angouleme, succeeded in piercing the enemy's lines, and relieved De Piles from an engagement into which he had entered with great reluctance. The hostages on both sides were given up, and the siege was renewed with greater fury than ever. In the end, seeing no prospect of sufficient reinforcement to enable him to maintain his position, De Piles capitulated (on the second of December) on similar terms to those that he had before declined, and the garrison marched out with flying banners. Seven weeks had they detained the entire army of the victors of Moncontour before an ill-fortified place. More than six thousand men had died under its walls, by the casualties of war and by the scarcely less destructive diseases that raged in the camp.[738] One of the ablest and most enterprising of the royal generals--Sebastian of Luxemburg, Viscount of Martigues and governor of Brittany--had been killed.[739] Of the Protestants, only about a hundred and eighty persons perished, nearly the half of them inhabitants of the town; for the men of Saint Jean d'Angely, and even the women and children, had labored industriously in defending their firesides.

It was a part of the compact, that, while neither De Piles nor his soldiers should serve on the Huguenot side for four months, they should be safely conducted without the Roman Catholic lines. The Duc d'Aumale and other leaders seem to have endeavored conscientiously to execute the stipulation; but their followers could not resist the temptation to attack the Huguenots as they were traversing the suburbs. Nearly all were robbed, and a considerable number--as many, according to Agrippa d'Aubigne, as fell during the siege--were murdered. De Piles, on his arrival at Angouleme, wrote to demand the punishment of those who had committed so flagrant a breach of faith, and, when he could obtain no satisfaction, sent a herald to the king to declare that he held himself and his fellow-combatants absolved from all obligations, and that they would at once resume their places in the Huguenot army.[740]

Nearly three months of precious time elapsed since the disastrous rout of Moncontour before the royalists completed the reduction of the region adjoining La Rochelle. Outside of that citadel of French Protestantism only the little town of Tonnay, on the Charente, still held for the Prince of Navarre. Yet so long as La Rochelle itself stood firm, the Duke of Anjou had accomplished little; and La Rochelle had made good use of the respite to strengthen its works. Every effort to gain a lodgement in its neighborhood had signally failed. The end of December came, and with it cold and discouragement. Anjou's army was dwindling away. The King of Spain and the Pope recalled their troops, as if the battle of the third of October had ended the war, and Santa Fiore, the pontifical general, sent to Rome twenty-six standards, taken by the Italians at Moncontour--a present from Charles the Ninth, which Pius accepted with great delight, and dedicated as a trophy in the Basilica of St. John Lateran.[741] Henry of Anjou himself was ill, or was unwilling any longer to endure separation from a court of whose pleasures he was inordinately fond; and, resigning the command of the army into the hands of the eldest son of the Duke of Montpensier, Francois de Bourbon--generally known as the prince dauphin--he hastened, at the beginning of the new year, to join Charles and Catharine de' Medici at Angers. The French troops, meantime, were either furloughed or scattered, and the generals condemned to inaction, while the German reiters and lansquenets and the Swiss pikemen were permitted to return to their own homes.[742] Such was the suicidal policy of the Roman Catholic party--a policy which saved the Huguenots from prostration; for it may with truth be affirmed that the errors committed in the siege of Saint Jean d'Angely, and in disbanding the powerful army of Anjou, completely obliterated the advantage which had been won on the bloody field of Moncontour.[743]

While the Protestants had been forced to abandon one important place after another in Poitou, Saintonge and Aunis, they had in other parts of the kingdom been displaying their old enterprise, and had obtained considerable success. Vezelay in Burgundy, the birthplace of the reformer Theodore Beza, passed through a fiery ordeal. This ancient town, built upon the brow of a hill, and strong as well by reason of its situation as of its walls constructed in a style that was now becoming obsolete in France, had been captured at the beginning of the war by some of the neighboring Huguenot noblemen, who scaled the walls and surprised the garrison. One of the few points the Protestants held in the eastern part of the kingdom, it was regarded as a place of the greatest importance to their cause.

[Sidenote: Huguenot successes. Vezelay.]

Within a few weeks Vezelay was twice besieged by a Roman Catholic army under Sansac. A vigorous sortie, in which the Huguenots destroyed almost all the engines of war of the assailants, on the first occasion caused the siege to be raised. When Sansac renewed his attempt he fared no better. The soldiers who had thrown themselves into the place, with the enthusiastic citizens, repelled every attack, and promptly suppressed treacherous plots by putting to death two persons whom they found engaged in revealing their secrets to the enemy. Sansac next undertook to reduce Vezelay by hunger; but the Huguenots broke his lines, aided by their friends in La Charite and Sancerre, and supplied themselves abundantly with provisions. When, on the sixteenth of December, Sansac finally abandoned the fruitless and inglorious undertaking, he had lost, since October, no fewer than fifteen hundred of his soldiers.[744]

[Sidenote: Brilliant capture of Nismes.]

The Huguenots of Sancerre in turn made an attempt to enter Bourges, the capital of the province of Berry, by promising a large sum of money to the officer second in command of the citadel; but he revealed their plan to his superior, M. de la Chastre, governor of the province, and the advanced party which had been admitted within the gates (on the twenty-first of December) fell into the snare prepared for them.[745] The capture of Nismes--"the city of antiquities"--more than compensated for the failure at Bourges. Rarely has an enterprise of equal difficulty been more patiently prosecuted, or been crowned with more brilliant success. The exiled Protestants, a large and important class, had now for many months been subjected to the greatest hardships, and were anxiously watching an opportunity to return to their homes. At last a carpenter presented himself, who had long revolved the matter in his mind, and had discovered a method of introducing the Huguenots into the city which promised well. There was a fountain, a short distance from the walls of Nismes, known to the ancients by the same name as the city itself--Nemausus--whose copious stream, put to good service by the inhabitants, turned a number of mills within the municipal limits. To admit the waters a canal had been built, which, where it pierced the fortifications, was protected by a heavy iron grating. Through this wet channel the carpenter resolved that the Huguenots should enter Nismes. It so happened that a friend of his dwelt in a house which was close to the wall at this spot; with his help he lowered himself by night from a window into the ditch. A cord, which was slackened or drawn tight according as there was danger of detection or apparent security, served to direct his operations. The utmost caution was requisite, and the water-course was too contracted to permit more than a single person to work at once. Provided only with a file, the carpenter set himself to sever the stout iron bars. The task was neither pleasant nor easy. Night after night he stood in the cold stream, with the mud up to his knees, exposed to wind and rain, and working most industriously when the roar of the elements covered and drowned the noise he made. It was only for a few minutes at a time that he could work; for, as the place was situated between the citadel and the "porte des Carmes," a sentry passed it at brief intervals, and was scarcely out of hearing except when he went to ring the bell which announced a change of guard. Fifteen nights, chosen from the darkest of the season, were consumed in this perilous undertaking; and each morning, when the approach of dawn compelled him to suspend his labors, the carpenter concealed his progress by means of wax and mud. All this time he had been prudent enough to keep his own counsel; but when, on the fifteenth of November, his work was completed, he called upon the Huguenot leaders to follow him into Nismes. A detachment of three hundred men was placed at his disposal. When once the foremost were in the town, and had overpowered the neighboring guards, the Huguenots obtained an easy success. The clatter of a number of camp-servants, who were mounted on horseback, with orders to ride in every direction, shouting that the city was in the hands of the enemy, contributed to facilitate the capture. Most of the soldiers, who should have met and repelled the Protestants, shut themselves up in their houses and refused to leave them. In a few minutes, all Nismes, with the exception of the castle, which held out a few months longer, was taken.[746]

[Sidenote: Coligny encouraged.]

When Admiral Coligny, wounded and defeated, was borne on a litter from the field of Moncontour, where the hopes of the Huguenots had been so rudely dashed to the ground, his heart almost failed him in view of the prospects of the war and of his faith. Two persons seemed at this critical juncture to have exercised on his mind a singular influence in restoring him to his accustomed hopefulness. L'Estrange, a simple gentleman, was being carried away in a plight similar to his own, when, having been brought to the admiral's side, he looked intently upon him, and then gave expression to his gratitude to Heaven, that, in the midst of the chastisements with which it had seen fit to visit his fellow-believers, there was yet so much of mercy shown, in the words, "Yet is God very gentle!"[747]--a friendly reminder, which, the great leader was wont to say, raised him from gloom and turned his thoughts to high and noble resolve.[748] Nor was the heroic Queen of Navarre found wanting at this crisis. No sooner had she heard of the disaster than she started from La Rochelle, and at Niort met the admiral, with such remnants of the army as still clung to him. Far from yielding to despondency, Jeanne d'Albret urged the generals to renew the contest; and, having communicated to them a part of her own enthusiasm, returned to La Rochelle to watch over the defence of the city, and to lend still more important assistance to the cause, by writing to Queen Elizabeth and the other allies of the Huguenots, correcting the exaggerated accounts of the defeat of Moncontour which had been studiously disseminated by the Roman Catholic party, and imploring fresh assistance.

[Sidenote: Withdrawal of the troops of Dauphiny and Provence.]

As for Coligny, his plans were soon formed. The troops of Dauphiny and Provence, always among the most reluctant to leave their homes, had long been clamoring for permission to return. It was now impossible to retain them. On the fourteenth of October they started from Angouleme, whither they had gone without consulting the Protestant generals, and, under the leadership of Montbrun and Mirabel, directed their course toward their native provinces. In two days they reached the river Dordogne at Souillac, where a part of their body, while seeking to cross, was attacked by the Roman Catholics, and suffered great loss. The rest pushed forward to Aurillac, in Auvergne, which had recently been captured by a Huguenot captain, and soon found their way to Privas, Aubenas, and the banks of the Rhone.[749] Thence, after refreshing themselves for a few days, they crossed into Dauphiny to renew the struggle for their own firesides.[750]

[Sidenote: Plan of the admiral's bold march.]

On the eighteenth of October, four days after the departure of the Dauphinese troops from Angouleme, Coligny set forth from Saintes upon an expedition as remarkable for boldness of conception as for its singularly skilful and successful execution--an expedition which is entitled to rank among the most remarkable military operations of modern times.[751] In the face of an enemy flushed with victory, and himself leading an army reduced to the mere shadow of its former size, the admiral deliberately drew up the plan of a march of eight or nine months, through a hostile territory, and terminating in the vicinity of the capital itself. As sketched by Michel de Castelnau from the admiral's own words in conversation with him, the objects of the Protestant general were principally these: to satisfy the claims of his mutinous German mercenaries by the reduction of some of the enemy's rich cities in Guyenne; to strengthen himself by forming a junction with the army of Montgomery and such fresh troops as "the viscounts" might be able to raise; to meet on the lower Rhone the recruited forces of Montbrun and Mirabel; thence to turn northward, and, having reached the borders of Lorraine, to welcome the Germans whom the Elector Palatine and William of Orange would hold in readiness; and, at last, to bring the war to an end by forcing the Roman Catholics to give battle, under circumstances more advantageous to the reformed, in the immediate vicinity of Paris.[752]

[Sidenote: He sweeps through Guyenne.]

Coligny's army was chiefly composed of cavalry; of infantry he had but three thousand men.[753] The young Princes of Navarre and of Conde, whom he wished to accustom to the fatigues of the march and of the battle-field, while endearing them to the Huguenots by their participation in the same perils with the meanest private soldier, were his companions, and had commands of their own. He had left La Rochefoucauld in La Rochelle to protect the city and the Queen of Navarre. The admiral's course was first directed to Montauban, that city which has been the stronghold of Protestantism in southern France down to the present time. But the difficulties of the way, and, particularly, the improbability of finding easy means of crossing so near their mouths the successive rivers, which, rising in the mountainous region of Auvergne and the Cevennes, all flow westward and empty into the Garonne, or its wide estuary, the Gironde, compelled Coligny to make a considerable deflection to the left. He effected the passage of the Dordogne at Argentat, a little above the spot where Montbrun had sustained his recent check, and, after making a feint of throwing himself into Auvergne, crossed the Lot below Cadenac, and reached Montauban in safety.[754] The Count of Montgomery, returning from his victorious campaign in Bearn, had been ordered to be in readiness in this city. But learning that, by an unaccountable delay, he was still in Condom, south of the Garonne, Coligny marched westward to Aiguillon, at the confluence of the Lot and the Garonne. Near this place he constructed, with great trouble, a substantial bridge across the Garonne, with the intention of transporting his army to the left bank, and ravaging the country far down in the direction of Bordeaux. This bold movement was prevented by Blaise de Montluc, who, adopting the suggestion of another, and appropriating the credit due to the sagacity of this nameless genius, detached one of the numerous floating windmills that were moored in the Garonne, and having loaded it with stones, sent it down with the current against Coligny's bridge. Not only were the chains that bound the structure broken, but the very boats on which it rested were carried away as far as to Bordeaux itself. It was with great difficulty that the admiral brought back to the right bank the division of his army that had already crossed, and with it the troops of Count Montgomery.[755]

The united army now returned to Montauban, where, in the midst of a rich district in part friendly to the Huguenots, it spent the last days of 1569 and the greater part of the month of January, 1570. Its numbers had by this time received such large accessions, that Coligny wrote to Germany that he had six or seven thousand horse and fifteen thousand foot.[756] As the reformed population of Montauban had contributed enough money to satisfy the prince's indebtedness to the importunate reiters and lansquenets,[757] the troops were enthusiastic in their devotion to the cause, and pushed their raids under the intrepid La Loue south of the Garonne toward the Bay of Biscay, as far as Mont de Marsan and Roquefort in the "Pays des Landes."[758]

[Sidenote: "Vengeance de Rapin."]

[Sidenote: Coligny pushes on to the Rhone.]

The Huguenots now proceeded towards Toulouse, but that city was too strongly fortified and garrisoned to tempt them to make an attack. They inflicted, however, a stern retribution upon the vicinity, devoting to destruction the villas and pleasure-grounds of the members of a parliament that had rendered itself infamous for its injustice and blind bigotry. The cruel fate of Rapin, murdered according to the forms of law, simply because he was a Protestant and brought from the king an edict containing too much toleration to suit the inordinate orthodoxy of these robed fanatics, was yet fresh in the memory of the soldiers, and fired their blood. On ruined and blackened walls, in more than one quarter, could be read subsequently the ominous words, written by no idle braggarts: "_Vengeance de Rapin!_" Leaving the marks of their passage in a desolated district, the Huguenots swept on to the friendly city of Castres, and thence through lower Languedoc, by Carcassonne and Montpellier, which they made no attempt to reduce, to Uzes and Nismes. Meanwhile Piles had from Castres made a marauding expedition with a body of picked troops to the very foot of the Pyrenees, and, in retaliation for the aid which the Spaniards had furnished Charles the Ninth, had penetrated to Perpignan, and ravaged the County of Roussillon.[759]

[Sidenote: His singular success and its causes.]

Thus the Huguenots--of whom Charles had contemptuously written to his ambassador at London, in January, that they were in so miserable a plight that, even since Anjou had dismissed all his men-at-arms after the capture of Saint Jean d'Angely, they dared not show their faces[760]--had pushed an army from the mouth of the Gironde to the mouth of the Rhone. If Viscount Monclar had fallen mortally wounded near Castres, and brave La Loue had been surprised and killed near Montpellier, the Protestants had, nevertheless, sustained little injury. They had been largely reinforced on the way, both by the local troops that joined them and by chivalric spirits such as M. de Piles, who followed them so soon as he was forced to surrender Saint Jean d'Angely; or, like Beaudine and Renty, who had been left with La Rochefoucauld to guard La Rochelle, but who, impatient of long inaction, at length obtained permission to attach themselves to the princes, and caught up with them at Castres, after a journey full of hazardous adventures. The Huguenot army, says La Noue, had been but an insignificant snow-ball when it started on its adventurous course; but the imprudence of its opponents permitted it to roll on, without hinderance, until it grew to a portentous size.[761] The jealousy existing between Montluc and Marshal Damville, who commanded for the king--the former as lieutenant-general in Gascony, and the latter as governor in Languedoc--undoubtedly removed many difficulties from the way of Admiral Coligny; and Montluc openly accused his rival, who was a Montmorency, of purposely furthering the designs of his heretical cousin. The accusation was a baseless fabrication; yet it obtained, as such stories generally do, a wide currency among the prejudiced and the ignorant, who could explain Damville's failure to impede Coligny's progress in no more satisfactory way than as the result of collusion between the son and the nephew of the late constable.[762]

[Sidenote: The admiral turns toward Paris.]

[Sidenote: His illness interrupts negotiations.]

Coligny had not yet accomplished his main object. Turning northward, and hugging the right bank of the Rhone, he prosecuted his undertaking of carrying the war to the very gates of Paris. The few small pieces of artillery the Protestants possessed, it was now found difficult to drag over rugged hills that descended to the river's edge. They were, therefore, at first transported to the other side, and finally left behind in some castles garrisoned by the Huguenots. The recruits that had been expected from Dauphiny came in very small numbers, and it was with diminished forces that Coligny and the princes, on the twenty-sixth of May, reached Saint Etienne, at that time a small town, which modern enterprise and capital has transformed into a great manufacturing city.[763] A little farther, at St. Rambert on the Loire, an incident occurred which threatened to blight all the fair hopes the Protestants had now again begun to conceive of a speedy and prosperous conclusion of the war. Admiral Coligny fell dangerously ill, and for a time serious fears were entertained for his life. It was a moment of anxious suspense. Never before had the reformed realized the extent to which their fortunes were dependent on a single man. The lesson was a useful one to the young companions of the princes, who, in the midst of the stern discipline of the camp, had shown some disposition to complain of the loss of the more congenial gayety of the court.[764] Louis of Nassau, brother of William of Orange, and next in command, was the only person among the Protestants that could have succeeded to Coligny in his responsible position; but even Louis of Nassau could not exact the respect enjoyed by the admiral, both with his own troops and with the enemy. Indeed, it was the conduct of the Roman Catholics at this juncture that furnished the clearest proof of the indispensable importance to the Huguenots of their veteran leader. The negotiations, which must soon be adverted to, had for some time been in progress, and the court displayed considerable anxiety to secure a peace; but the moment it was announced that Coligny was likely to die, the deputies from the king broke them off and waited to see the issue. Being asked to explain so singular a course, and being reminded that the Huguenots had other generals with whom a treaty might be formed in case of Coligny's death, it is said that the deputies replied by expressing their surprise that the Protestants did not see the weight and authority possessed by their admiral. "Were he to die to-day," said they, "to-morrow we should not offer you so much as a glass of water. As if you did not know that the admiral's name goes farther in giving you consideration than had you another army equal in size to that you have at present!"[765]

[Sidenote: Engagement of Arnay-le-Duc.]

But Gaspard de Coligny was destined to die a death more glorious for himself, and to leave behind him a name more illustrious than it would have been had he died on the eve of the return of peace to his desolated country. He recovered, and once more advanced with his brave Huguenots. And now the distance between the Protestant camp and the Roman Catholic capital was rapidly diminishing. To meet the impending danger, the king ordered Marshal Cosse, who had succeeded the prince dauphin in command of the new army, to cross into Burgundy, check the admiral's course, and, if possible, defeat him. The two armies met on the twenty-fifth of June, in the neighborhood of the small town of Arnay-le-Duc.[766] Great was the disparity of numbers. Cosse had four thousand Swiss, six thousand French infantry, three thousand French, German, and Italian horse, and twelve cannon. Coligny's army had lost so much during its incessant marches through a thousand difficult places, and in a country where desertion or straying from the main body was so easy, that it consisted of but twenty-five hundred arquebusiers and two thousand horsemen, besides a few recruits from Dauphiny.

The Germans, who constituted about one-half of the cavalry, were ill-equipped; but the French horse were as well armed as any corps the Huguenots had been able to set on foot. All were hardened by toil and well disciplined. Of artillery the admiral was entirely destitute.

The armies took position upon opposite hills, separated by a narrow valley, in which flowed a brook fed by some small ponds. Cosse made the attack, and attempted to cross the stream; but, after an obstinate fight of seven hours, his troops were compelled to abandon the undertaking with considerable loss. Next the entrenchments thrown up by the Huguenots in the neighborhood of the ponds were assaulted. Here the Roman Catholics were subjected to a galling fire, and began to yield. Afterward, receiving reinforcements, they seemed to be on the point of succeeding, when Coligny brought up M. de Piles, the hero of Saint Jean d'Angely, who, supported by Count Montgomery, soon restored the superiority of the Huguenots. The enemy was equally unfortunate in the attempt, simultaneously made, to turn the admiral's position; and, foiled at every point, he retired for the day. On the morrow, both armies reappeared in the same order of battle, but neither general was eager to renew a contest in which the advantage was all with those who stood on the defensive, and, after indulging in a brief and ineffective cannonade, the order was given to the Roman Catholic troops to return to camp.[767]

[Sidenote: Coligny approaches Paris.]

After this indecisive combat, Coligny, who had no desire to bring on a general engagement before receiving the considerable accession of troops of which he was in expectation, slipped away from Cosse, and though hotly pursued by the enemy's cavalry, made his way to the friendly walls of La Charite upon the Loire. Here he busied himself with preparations for further undertakings, and was engaged particularly in providing his army with a few cannon and mortars, of which he had greatly felt the need, when activity was interrupted by a ten days' truce, dating from the fourteenth of July, the precursor of a definite treaty of peace.[768] At the expiration of the armistice, Coligny advanced, toward the end of July, to his castle of Chatillon-sur-Loing, and distributed his troops in the vicinity of Montargis, still nearer Paris. Marshal Cosse, at the same time, moved in a parallel line through Joigny, and took up his position at Sens, where he could at once protect the capital and prevent the Huguenots from making raids in that fertile and populous province, the "Ile de France," from which the whole country had derived its name. Leaving the admiral and his brave followers here, at the conclusion of an adventurous expedition of over twelve hundred miles, which had consumed more than nine months, let us glance at the negotiations for peace which had long been in progress, and were now at length crowned with success.

[Sidenote: Progress of the negotiations.]

[Sidenote: The English rebellion affects the terms offered.]

So true was it of the combatants in the French civil wars, that they rarely carried on hostilities but they were also treating for peace, that since the battle of Moncontour there had hardly elapsed a month without the discussion of the terms on which arms could be laid aside by both parties. Scarcely had the first startling impression made by the defeat of the Huguenots passed away before Catharine de' Medici sent that skilful diplomatist, Michel de Castelnau, to assure the Queen of Navarre, at La Rochelle, of her personal esteem and affection, as well as of her fervent desire to employ her influence with the king, her son, in effecting a pacification based upon just and honorable conditions. Jeanne replied in courteous language; but, while she insisted upon her own hearty reciprocation of the queen mother's wish, she also expressed the suspicion which all the reformed entertained of the sincerity of the leading ministers in the French cabinet, whose relations with Spain and with the Pope showed that they were intent on nothing less than the utter ruin of the Huguenots.[769] In November the matter took a more definite shape, through Marshal Cosse, who appeared in La Rochelle with propositions of peace. This statesman, otherwise moderate in his counsels, was imbued with the notion that the Protestants were so discouraged by their late defeat, that they would gladly accept any terms. But the Huguenots, having understood that he was empowered merely to offer them liberty of conscience, without the right to the public worship of God, promptly broke off the negotiations.[770] A month or two later they were induced to believe that the court was disposed to larger concessions, or, if not, that they might at least justify themselves in the eyes of the world by showing that they were neither unreasonable nor desirous of prolonging the horrors of war. Two deputies--Jean de la Fin, Sieur de Beauvoir la Nocle, and Charles de Teligny: the one sent by the Queen of Navarre, the other sent by Coligny and the princes, who were already far on their journey through the south of France--came to the king at Angers, and presented the demands of the Huguenots. These demands certainly did not breathe a spirit of craven submission. The Huguenots called not only for complete liberty of conscience, but also for the right to hold their religious assemblies through the entire kingdom, without prejudice to their dignities or honors. They stipulated for the annulling of all sentences pronounced against them; the approval of all that they had done, as done for the welfare of the realm; the restitution of their dignities and property, and the giving of good and sufficient securities for the execution of the edict of pacification.[771] Catharine and her counsellors had undoubtedly gained some wholesome experience since Cosse's first proposals. They had already discovered that a single pitched battle had not ruined the Huguenots; and they now suspected that a number of additional battles might be required to effect that desirable result. It is not astonishing, however, that the queen mother was not yet ready to grant terms which could scarcely have been conceded even on the morrow of an overwhelming defeat. The articles sent by the king to the Protestant leaders as a counter-proposal were therefore of a very different character from those which they had submitted. Charles offered to the Queen of Navarre, the Princes of Navarre and Conde, the admiral, and their followers, entire amnesty, and consented to annul all judicial proceedings made against them during these or the late troubles. He would exact no punishment for any treaties which they might have formed with foreign princes, and would restore their goods, honors, and estates. As to the religious question, he would allow them to hold two cities, in which they might do as they pleased, the king placing in each city a capable "gentilhomme" to maintain his authority and the public tranquillity. Elsewhere in France he would tolerate no reformed minister, no exercise of any other religion than his own. Neither would he guarantee the restitution of the judicial and other offices once held by Protestants, since others had bought them, and the money proceeding from the sale had been spent in defraying the expenses of the war; especially as the clergy must look to the courts for the enforcement of their claims for indemnification for the destruction of the churches and other ecclesiastical property. The king professed himself willing to give all reasonable securities for the performance of his promises, but neglected to make any specification of the nature of those securities.[772] Such were the hard conditions offered--all that Catharine and the Guises were willing to concede at a time when it was hoped that the Huguenots would lose the assistance of one of their secret supporters, Elizabeth of England; for the Earls of Westmoreland and Northumberland had risen in the north, and they had not only the best wishes, but the ready co-operation of every Spanish and French sympathizer. Charles himself was writing to his ambassador at London a letter meant to meet the queen's eye, instructing him to congratulate Elizabeth on the progress made in suppressing the insurrection; and Catharine, by the same messenger, sent a secret letter of the same date, ordering the same diplomatic agent, in case the rebellion was not at an end, to give aid and comfort to the rebels.[773] Catharine and the Guises had not lost heart. Moved by repeated supplications, Pius the Fifth at last decided to excommunicate the heretical daughter of Henry and Anne Boleyn. But, as the bull of the twenty-fifth of February, 1570, had been procured solely by the entreaties of the rebel earls, enforced by the intercessions of the Guises, and as it was known that Philip the Second, so far from desiring it, was strongly opposed to the imprudent policy of the pontiff, the document, which pretended to relieve all the queen's subjects of the obligations of their allegiance, was committed to the charge of the Cardinal of Lorraine, to launch at Elizabeth's devoted head whenever the convenient moment should arrive.[774]

At Montreal, near Carcassonne, the admiral was again overtaken by a royal messenger, who on this occasion was Biron, equally distinguished on the field and in the council-chamber. While the Protestants replied to his offer that with heartfelt satisfaction they greeted the king's disposition to restore peace to France, and sent to Charles, who was then at Chateaubriand, in Brittany, a delegation consisting of Teligny, Beauvoir la Nocle, and La Chassetiere, they distinctly stated that no terms could be entertained which should not include liberty of worship. For they declared that "the deprivation of the exercise of their religion was more insupportable to them than death itself."[775] But, in fact, the Huguenot princes and nobles placed little reliance upon the sincerity of the court, and had no hope of peace so long as they treated at a distance from the capital. Accordingly, Coligny, in his march up the valley of the Rhone, when again approached in the king's name by Biron, accompanied by Henry de Mesmes, Sieur de Malassise, peremptorily declined to enter into a truce which should interrupt the efficiency of his movement.[776]

[Sidenote: Better conditions proposed.]

[Sidenote: Charles and his mother for peace.]

[Sidenote: The war fruitless for its authors.]

But when at last the admiral reached the Loire, and, at La Charite and Chatillon, was within a few hours of Paris, the attitude of the court in relation to the peace seemed to undergo an entire change, and it became evident that the negotiations, which had previously been employed for the mere purpose of amusing the Huguenots, were now resorted to with the view of ending a war already protracted far beyond expectation. Nor is it difficult to discover some of the circumstances that tended to bring about this radical mutation of policy.[777] The resources of the kingdom were exhausted. It was no longer possible to furnish the ready money without which the German and other mercenaries, of late constituting a large portion of the royal troops, could not be induced to enter the kingdom. The Pope and Philip were lavish of nothing beyond promises and exhortations that above all things Charles should make no peace with the heretical rebels. Indeed, Philip had few men, and no money, to spare. The French troops were in great straits. The gentlemen, who, in return for their immunity from all taxation, were bound to serve the monarch in the field at their own expense, had exhausted their available funds in so long a contest, and it was impossible to muster them in such numbers as the war demanded. Charles himself had always been averse to war. His tastes were pacific. If he ever emulated the martial glory which his brother Anjou had so easily acquired, the feeling was but of momentary duration, and met with little encouragement from his mother. He had, undoubtedly, consented to the initiation of the war only in consequence of the misrepresentations made by those who surrounded him, respecting its necessity and the ease of its prosecution. He had now the strongest reasons for desiring the immediate return of peace. His marriage with the daughter of the emperor had for some months been arranged, but Maximilian refused to permit Elizabeth to become the queen of a country rent with civil commotion. Catharine de' Medici, also, from the advocate of war, had become anxious for peace--tardily returning to the conviction which she had often expressed in former years, that the attempt to exterminate the Huguenots by force of arms was hopeless. After two years she was no nearer her object than when the Cardinal of Lorraine persuaded her to endeavor to seize Conde at Noyers. Jarnac had accomplished nothing; Moncontour was nearly as barren a victory. A great part of what had been so laboriously effected by Anjou's army in the last months of 1569, La Noue had been undoing in the first half of 1570.[778] The Protestants, who were, a few months since, shut up in La Rochelle, had defeated their enemies at Sainte Gemme, near Lucon, and had retaken Fontenay, Niort, the Isle d'Oleron, Brouage, and other places. The Baron de la Garde, who had lately, in the capacity of "general of the galleys," been infesting the seas in the neighborhood of La Rochelle, was compelled to retire to Bordeaux.[779] Saintes had been besieged and captured, and the Huguenots were advancing to the reduction of St. Jean d'Angely, not long since so dearly won by the Roman Catholics.[780] Montluc had, it is true, met with success in Bearn, where Rabasteins was taken and its entire garrison massacred.[781] But what were these advantages at the foot of the Pyrenees, when an army under Gaspard de Coligny, after sweeping four hundred leagues through the southern and western provinces, was now in the immediate vicinity of Paris? His forces, indeed, were small in numbers, but would speedily grow formidable. The French ambassador sent from London the intelligence that letters of credit had been sent from England to Hamburg in order to hasten the entrance into France of some twelve or fifteen thousand Germans under Duke Casimir; that twenty-five hundred men were to be despatched from La Rochelle to make a descent on some point in Normandy or Brittany, in conjunction with the ships of the Prince of Orange; and that the English were to be invited to co-operate.[782] If it had proved impracticable to prevent the Duc de Deux Ponts from marching across France to join the confederates near the ocean, what hope was there that the king would be able to hinder the union of Coligny and Casimir? Or, why might not both be reinforced by the troops of La Noue, who had been accomplishing such exploits in Aunis and Saintonge?