Chapter XI: Part 11

Guise beleaguered the city, and was menacingly furious at its obstinacy in holding out. One evening he had ridden with his staff to gaze more nearly at the walls, from behind which defiance was flung at him. “You will never be able to get in,” remarked roughly a too presuming official. “Mark me!” roared the chafed Duke, “yon setting sun will know to-morrow how to get behind that rampart; and by Heaven, so will I!” He turned his horse, and galloped back alone to his quarters. He was encountered on his way by a Huguenot officer, Poltrot de la Mer, who brought him down by a pistol-shot. The eyes of the dying Duke, as he lay upon the ground, met for the last time the faint rays of that departing sun, with which he had sworn to be up and doing on the morrow. He died in his hut. His condition was one of extreme “comfortableness.” He had robbed the King’s exchequer to gratify his own passions;--and he thanked Heaven that he had been a faithful subject to his sovereign! He had been notoriously unfaithful to a noble and virtuous wife; and he impressed upon her with his faltering lips, the assurance that “generally speaking” his infidelity as a husband did not amount to much worth mentioning! He confessed to, and was shriven by his two brothers, Cardinals John and Charles. The former was a greater man than the Duke. The latter was known in his own times and all succeeding, as “the bottle cardinal,” a name of which he was only not ashamed, but his title to which he was ever ostentatiously desirous to vindicate and establish.

The first Duke had acquired possession of crown-lands; the second had at his disposal the public treasure; and the third hoped to add to the acquisitions of his family the much-coveted sceptre of the Kings of France.

Henri, surnamed _Le Balafré_, or “the scarred,” succeeded his father in the year 1560. During the greater portion of his subsequent life, his two principal objects were the destruction of Protestantism, and the possession of the King’s person. He therewith flattered the national vanity by declaring that the natural limits of France, on two sides, were the Rhine and the Danube--an extension of frontier which was never effected, except temporarily, in the latter days of Napoleon. But the declaration entailed a popularity on the Duke which was only increased by his victory at Jarnac, when the French Protestants not only suffered defeat, but lost their leader, the brave and unfortunate Condé. This gallant chief had surrendered, but he was basely murdered by a pistol-shot, and his dead body, flung across an ass, was paraded through the ranks of the victors, as a trophy. How far the Duke was an accomplice in the crime, is not determined. That such incidents were deemed lightly of by him, is sufficiently clear by his own proclamation in seven languages, wherein he accused Coligny as the instigator of the murder of the late Duke of Guise, and set a price upon that noble head, to be won by any assassin.

For that so-called murder, Guise had his revenge on the day of St. Bartholomew, when he vainly hoped that the enemies of his house had perished for ever. On the head of more than one member of the house of Guise rests the responsibility of that terrible day. During the slaughter, Guise gained his revenge, but lost his love. The cries of the victims were the nuptial songs chanted at the marriage-ceremony of Henri of Navarre and Margaret, the King’s sister. The latter had looked, nothing loath, upon the suit offered to her by Guise, who was an ardent wooer. But the wooing had been roughly broken in upon by the lady’s brother, the Duc d’Anjou, who declared aloud in the Louvre, that if Guise dared look with lover’s eyes upon “Margot,” he would run his knife into the lover’s throat! The threat had its influence, and the unfaithful wooer, who had been all the while solemnly affianced to a Princess Catherine of Cleves, married that remarkable brunette, and showed his respect for her, by speaking and writing of her as “that amiable lady, the negress.” It may be noticed in passing, that the objection of D’Anjou to Guise as a brother-in-law, was not personal; it had a political foundation. The two dukes became, indeed, brothers-in-law; not by Guise marrying the sister of D’Anjou, but by D’Anjou marrying the sister of Guise, and by sharing with her the throne which he, subsequently, occupied rather than enjoyed, as Henri III.

When summoned to the throne by the unedifying death of Charles IX., Henry of Anjou was king of Poland. He escaped from that country with difficulty, in order to wear a more brilliant but a more fatal crown in France. He had no sooner assumed it, when he beheld the Guises encircling him, and leaving him neither liberty nor will. The Protestants were driven into rebellion. They found a leader in Henry of Navarre, and Guise and his friends made war against them, irrespective of the King’s consent, and cut in pieces, with their swords, the treaties entered into between the two Henrys, without the consent of the third Henri--of Guise and Lorraine. The latter so completely enslaved the weak and unhappy sovereign, as to wring from him, against his remonstrance and conviction, the famous articles of Nemours, wherein it was solemnly decreed in the name of the King, and confirmed by the signature of Guise, that, thenceforward, it was the will of God that there should be but one faith in France, and that the opposers thereof would find that opposition incurred death.

There is a tradition that when Henri III. was told of this decree, he was seated in deep meditation, his head resting upon his hand; and that when he leaped to his feet with emotion, at the impiety of the declaration, it was observed that the part of his moustache which had been covered by his hand, had suddenly turned gray.

The misery that followed on the publication of these infamous articles was widely spread, and extended to other hearths besides those of the Huguenots. Sword, pestilence, and famine, made a desert of a smiling country; and the universal people, in their common sorrow, cursed all parties alike--“King and Queen, Pope and Calvin,” and only asked from Heaven release from all, and peace for those who suffered by the national divisions. The King, indeed, was neither ill-intentional nor intolerant; but Guise so intrigued as to persuade the “Catholic” part of the nation that Henri was incapable. Faction then began to look upon the powerful subject as _the_ man best qualified to meet the great emergency. He fairly cajoled them into rebellion. They were, indeed, willing to be so cajoled by a leader so liberal of promises, and yet he was known to be as cruel as he engaged himself to be liberal. He often kept his own soldiers at a point barely above starvation; and the slightest insubordination in a regiment entailed the penalty of death. To his foes he was more terrible still. As he stood in the centre of a conquered town that had been held by the Huguenots, it was sport to him to see the latter tossed into the flames. On one occasion he ordered a Huguenot officer to be torn asunder by young horses for no greater crime than mutilating a wooden idol in a church. The officer had placed the mutilated figure on a bastion of the city, with a pike across its breast, as a satire on the guardianship which such a protector was popularly believed to afford.

He could, however, be humane when the humor and good reason for it came together. Thus he parted with a pet lioness, which he kept at his quarters, on the very sufficient ground that the royal beast had, on a certain morning, slain and swallowed one of his _favorite_ footmen! A commonplace lacquey he might have spared without complaining; but he could not, without some irritation, hear of a _valet_ being devoured who, though a valet, had a profound belief that his master was a hero.

The “Bartholomew” had not destroyed all the foes of the name of Guise. What was not accomplished on that day was sought to be achieved by the “League.” The object of this society was to raise the Duke to the throne of Henri, either before or after the death of the latter. The King was childless, and the presumptive heir to the throne, Henri of Navarre, was a Protestant. The Lorrainers had double reason, then, for looking to themselves. The reigning sovereign was the last of three brothers who had inherited the crown, and there was then a superstitious idea that when three brothers had reigned in France, a change of dynasty was inevitable.

Guise fired his followers with the assurance that the invasion of England, and the establishment of Popery there, should be an enterprise which they should be called upon to accomplish. The King was in great alarm at the “League,” but he wisely constituted himself a member. The confederates kept him in the dark as to the chief of their objects. The suspicious monarch, on the other hand, encouraged his minions to annoy his good cousin of Lorraine. One of these unworthy favorites, St. Megrim, did more: he slandered the wife of Guise, who took, thereon, a singular course of trial and revenge. He aroused his Duchess from her solitary couch, in the middle of the night, hissed in her alarmed ear the damning rumor that was abroad, and bade her take at once from his hands the dagger or the poison-cup, which he offered her:--adding that she had better die, having so greatly sinned. The offended and innocent wife cared not for life, since she was suspected, and drank off the contents of the cup, after protestation of her innocence. The draught was of harmless preparation, for the Duke was well assured of the spotless character of a consort whom he himself daily dishonored by his infidelities. He kissed her hand and took his leave; but he sent a score of his trusty-men into the courtyard of the Louvre, who fell on St. Megrim, and butchered him almost on the threshold of the King’s apartments.

The monarch made no complaint at the outrage; but he raised a tomb over the mangled remains of his favorite minion, above which a triad of Cupids represented the royal grief, by holding their stony knuckles to their tearless eyes, affecting the passion which they could not feel.

In the meantime, while the people were being pushed to rebellion at home, the ducal family were intriguing in nearly every court in Europe. Between the intrigues of Guise and the recklessness of the King, the public welfare suffered shipwreck. So nearly complete was the ruin, that it was popularly said, “The Minions crave all: the King gives all; the Queen-mother manages all; Guise opposes all; the Red Ass (the Cardinal) embroils all, and would that the Devil had all!”

But the opposition of Guise was made to some purpose. By exercising it he exacted from the King a surrender of several strong cities. They were immediately garrisoned by Guisards, though held nominally by the sovereign. From the latter the Duke wrung nearly all that it was in the power of the monarch to yield; but when Guise, who had a design against the life of the Protestant Henri of Navarre, asked for a royal decree prohibiting the granting of “quarter” to a Huguenot in the field, the King indignantly banished him from the capital. Guise feigned to obey; but his celebrated sister, the Duchess of Montpensier, refused to share in even a temporary exile. This bold woman went about in public, with a pair of scissors at her girdle, which, as she intimated, would serve for the _tonsure_ of brother Henri of Valois, when weariness should drive him from a palace into a monastery.

The King, somewhat alarmed, called around him his old Swiss body guard, and as the majority of these men professed the reformed faith, Guise made use of the circumstance to obtain greater ends than any he had yet obtained. The people were persuaded that their religion was in peril; and when the Duke, breaking his ban, entered Paris and, gallantly attired, walked by the side of the sedan of Catherine of Medicis, on their way to the Louvre, to remonstrate with the unorthodox king, the church-bells gave their joyous greeting, and the excited populace hung upon the steps of the Duke, showering upon him blessings and blasphemous appellations. “Hosanna to our new son of David!” shouted those who affected to be the most pious; and aged women, kissing his garment as he passed, rose from their knees, exclaiming, “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation!”

The less blasphemous or the more sincere sufficiently expressed their satisfaction by hailing him, as he went on his way, smiling, “King of Paris!”

The sound of this title reached the ears of Henri. Coupling it with the unauthorized return of Guise to court, he passed into alternate fits of ungovernable wrath and profound melancholy. He was under the influence of the latter when there fell on his ear, words which make him start from his seat--“_Percutiam pastorem, et dispergentur oves_;” and when the Monarch looked round for the speaker, he beheld the Abbé d’Elbene, who had thus calmly quoted Scripture, in order to recommend murder. The King, though startled, was not displeased. On the contrary, he smiled; and the smile was yet around his lips, and in his eyes, when Guise entered the presence, and mistook the expression of the royal face for one of welcome. The Duke, emboldened by what he saw, hurried through a long list of grievances, especially dwelling on the lenity, not to say favor, with which Henri treated the heretics generally. The sovereign made a few excuses, which Guise heeded not; on the contrary, he hastened to denounce the body of minions who polluted the palace. “Love me, love my dog,” said Henri, in a hoarse voice. “Yes,” answered Guise, peering into the royal and unnaturally sparkling eyes, “provided he doesn’t bite!” The two men stood revealed before each other; and from that hour the struggle was deadly. Henri would not give away, with reference to his Swiss guard; and Guise, passing through Paris, with his sword unsheathed, awoke the eager spirit of revolt, and looked complacently on while the barricades were raised to impede the march of the execrable Calvinistic Archers of the Guard. The “King of Paris” earned a decisive victory; but before it was achieved, the King of France hurried, in an agony of cowardly affright, from his capital. He gazed for a moment on the city, as he departed, venting curses on its ingratitude; for, said the fugitive Monarch, “I loved you better than I did my own wife;”--which was indisputably true.

Guise might now have ascended the throne, had he not been too circumspect. He deemed the royal cause lost, but he was satisfied for the moment with ruling in the capital, as generalissimo. He stopped the King’s couriers, and opened his letters. He confiscated the property of Huguenots, and sold the same for his own benefit, while he professed to care only for that of the Commonwealth. Finally, he declared that the disturbed condition of affairs should be regulated by a States-General, which he commanded rather than prayed Henri to summon to a meeting at Blois. The King consented; and the 18th of October, 1588, was appointed for the opening. Guise entered the old town with his family, and a host of retainers, cased in armor, and bristling with steel. Henri had his mother Catherine at his side; but there were also a few faithful and unscrupulous followers with him in the palace at Blois; and as he looked on any of those who might happen to salute him in passing, the King smiled darkly, and _Percutiam pastorem_ fell in murmured satisfaction from his lips. The saturnine monarch became, all at once, cheerful in his outward bearing, even when Guise was so ruling the States as to make their proceedings turn to the detriment of the monarchy. The Guise faction became anxious for the safety of their leader, whose quarters were in the palace; but when the King, in token of reconciliation begged the Duke to participate with him in the celebration of the Holy Sacrament, there was scarcely a man capable of interpreting the manner of the times, who did not feel assured that under such a solemn pledge of security, there lay concealed the very basest treachery. Guise, over-confident, scorned alike open warning and dark innuendoes. He was so strong, and his royal antagonist so weak, that he despised the idea of violence being used against him--especially as the keys of the palatial castle were in his keeping, as “Grand-Master” of the Court.

The 23d of December had arrived. The King intimated that he should proceed early in the morning, soon after daybreak (but subsequently to holding a council, to which he summoned the Duke and Cardinal), to the shrine of Our Lady of Clery, some two miles distant; and the keys of the gates were demanded, in order to let Henri have issue at his pleasure, but in reality to keep the Guises within, isolated from their friends without. Larchant, one of the Archers of the Guard, also waited upon the Duke, to pray him to intercede for himself and comrades with the King, in order to obtain for them an increase of pay. “We will do ourselves the honor,” said Larchant, “to prefer our petition to your Highness, in the morning, in a body.” This was a contrivance to prevent Guise from being surprised at seeing so many armed men together in the King’s antechamber, before the council was sitting. Henri passed a sleepless night. His namesake of Guise, who had just sent his Duchess homeward, her approaching confinement being expected, spent the whole of the same night in the apartments of the Countess de Noirmoutier.

He was seen coming thence, before dawn, gayly dressed, and proceeding to the Chapel of the Virgin, to perform his morning devotions. Long before this, the King was a-foot, visiting the select archers who had accepted the bloody mission of ridding the perplexed monarch of his importunate adversary. He posted them, altered the arrangements, reposted them, addressed them again and again on the lawfulness of their office, and had some trouble to suppress an enthusiasm which threatened to wake the Queen-mother, who slept below, and to excite the suspicion of the Guards in the vicinity. Staircase and hall, closet and arras, no coign of vantage but had its assassin ready to act, should his fellows have failed.

Precisely at seven o’clock, Guise, attired in a light suit of gray satin, and followed by Pericart, his secretary, entered the council-chamber, where he found several members assembled; among others, his younger brother, the “Bottle-Cardinal” de Guise. An hour passed without the appearance of any message from the King, who was in an inner apartment, now half-frightened at the pale faces of his own confidants, and anon endeavoring to excite his own resolution, by attempts to encourage theirs. It was a long and weary hour for all parties. As it slowly passed away, Guise, he knew not wherefore, grew anxious. He complained of the cold, and heaped billets of wood upon the fire. He spoke of feeling sick, faint, and unnerved; and from his silver sweetmeat-case he took a few bonbons, by way of breakfast. He subsequently asked for some Damascus raisins, and conserve of roses; but these, when supplied to him did not relieve him of an unaccountable nervousness, which was suddenly increased, when the eye next to the scar from which he derived his appellation of _Le Balafré_, began to be suffused with tears. He indignantly wiped away the unwelcome suffusion, and had quite recovered as Rivol, Secretary of State, entered, and requested him to attend on the King, who awaited him in his own chamber.

Guise gayly flung his _bonbonnière_ across the council-table, and laughingly bade the grave counsellors scramble for the scattered sweets. He started up, overturned his chair in so doing, drew his thin mantle around him, and with cap and gloves in hand, waved a farewell to the statesmen present. He passed through two rooms, and closely followed by various of the archers, reached the tapestried entrance to the King’s cabinet. No one offered to raise the arras for him. Guise lifted his own right arm to help himself at the same time looking half-round at the archers who were near him. At that moment, a dagger was buried in his breast, up to the very hilt. The blow was delivered by Montsery, from behind. The Duke let fall his hand to the pommel of his sword, when one assassin clung to his legs, a second, also from behind, stabbed him in the neck; while a third passed his weapon through the Duke’s ribs.

Guise’s first cry was, “Ho, friends!” His second, as Sarine ran him through the lower part of the back, was, “Mercy, Jesus!” He struggled faintly across the chamber, bleeding from a dozen wounds, in every one of which sat death. The murderers hacked at him as he staggered, and wildly yet feebly fought. All paused for a moment, when he had reached the extreme end of the room, where he again attempted to raise his sword; but in the act he rolled over, stone dead, at the foot of the bed of Henri III.

At that moment the tapestry was raised, and the king, whispering “Is it done?” approached the body, moodily remarking as he gazed upon it, “He looks greater than he did when living.” Upon the person of the duke was found a manuscript memorandum, in these words:--“To maintain a war in France, I should require 700,000 livres per month.” This memorandum served in the king’s mind as a justification of the murder just committed by his orders. The body was then unceremoniously rolled up in the Turkey carpet on which it had fallen, was covered with quick lime, and flung into the Loire. Some maimed rites were previously performed over it by Dourgin the royal chaplain, who could not mutter the _De Profundis_ without a running and terrified commentary of “Christ!--the awful sight!” Guise’s second cardinal-brother and the Archbishop of Lyons were murdered on the following day; but the lesser victims were forgotten in the fate which had fallen upon the more illustrious, yet certainly more guilty personages.

The widow of Guise, soon after the dread event, gave birth to a son, subsequently the Chevalier Louis de Guise. “The boy,” said the bereaved lady, “came into the world with his hands clasped, as if praying for vengeance on the assassins of his father.” Every male member of the family whom the king could reach was now subjected to arrest. The young heir of _Balafré_, Charles, now fourth Duke of Guise, was now placed in close restriction in the Castle of Tours, where, sleeping or waking, four living eyes unceasingly watched him--_voire même allant â la garderobe_--but which eyes he managed to elude nevertheless.

In the meantime Rome excommunicated the murderer of her champion. Paris put on mourning; officials were placed in the street to strip and scourge even ladies who ventured to appear without some sign of sorrow. Wax effigies of the king were brought into the churches, and frantically stabbed by the priests at the altar. The priests then solemnly paraded the streets, chanting as they went, “May God extinguish the Valois!”

The whole city broke into insurrection, and the brother of Guise, the Duke de Mayenne, placed himself at the head of the “league,” whose object was the deposing of the king, and the transferring of the crown to a child of Lorraine. In the contest which ensued, Valois and Navarre united against the Guisards, and carried victory with them wherever they raised their banners. The exultation of Henri III. was only mitigated by the repeated Papal summonses received by him to repair to Rome, and there answer for his crime.

Henri of Navarre induced him to rather think of gaining Paris than of mollifying the Pope; and he was so occupied when the double vengeance of the church and the house of Guise overtook him in the very moment of victory.

The Duchess de Montpensier, sister of the slaughtered duke, had made no secret of her intentions to have public revenge for the deed privately committed, whereby she had lost a brother. There was precaution enough taken that she should not approach the royal army or the king’s quarters; but a woman and a priest rendered all precautions futile. The somewhat gay duchess was on unusually intimate terms with a young monk, named Jacques Clement. This good Brother was a fanatic zealot for his church, and a rather too ardent admirer of the duchess, who turned both sentiments to her own especial purpose. She whispered in his ears a promise, to secure the fulfilment of which, he received with furious haste, the knife which was placed in his hands by the handsomest woman in France. It is said that knife is still preserved, a precious treasure, at Rome.

However this may be, on the 1st of August, 1589, the young Brother, with a weapon hid in the folds of his monkish gaberdine, and with a letter in his hand, sought and obtained access to the king. He went straightforward to his butcher’s work, and had scarcely passed beneath the roof of the royal tent before he had buried the steel deep in the monarch’s bosom. He turned to fly with hot haste to the lady from whom he had received his commission; but a dozen swords and pikes thrust life out of him ere he had made three steps in the direction of his promised recompence.

She who had engaged herself to pay for the crime cared for neither victim. She screamed indeed, but it was with a hysteric joy that threatened to slay her, and which was only allayed by the thought that the last King of the Valois race did not know that he had died by a dagger directed by a sister of Guise.

In testimony of her exultation she distributed green scarfs, the color of Lorraine, to the people of Paris. She brought up from the provinces the mother of Clement, to whom was accorded the distinction of a triumphal entry. Priests and people worshipped the mother of the assassin as she passed wonderingly on her way; and they blasphemously saluted her with the chanted words, “Blessed be the womb that bare him, and the paps that gave him suck.” She was led to the seat of honor at the table of Guise, and Rome sheltered the infamy of the assassin, and revealed its own, by pronouncing his work to be a god-like act. By authority of the Vatican, medals were struck in memory and honor of the dead; but the Huguenots who read thereon the murderer’s profession and name--_Frère Jacques Clement_--ingeniously discovered therein the anagrammatic interpretation “_C’est l’enfer qui m’a crée_”--“It is hell that created me.”

The last Valois, with his last breath, had named the Protestant Henri of Navarre as his legal successor to the throne; but between Henri and his inheritance there stood Rome and the Guise faction. Then ensued the successive wars of the League, during which the heavy Mayenne suffered successive defeats at the hands of Henri of the snowy plume. While the contest was raging, the people trusted to the pulpits for their intelligence from the scene of action. From those pulpits was daily uttered more mendacity in one hour than finds expression in all the horse-fairs of the United Kingdom in a year. When famine decimated those who lived within the walls, the people were reduced to live upon a paste made from human bones, and which they called “Madame de Montpensier’s cake.”

Henri of Navarre, their deliverer, did not arrive before the gates of Paris without trouble. In 1521, Charles of Guise, the young Duke, had escaped most gallantly, in open day, from the Castle of Tours, by sliding from the ramparts, down a rope, which simply blistered his hands and made a rent in his hose. He was speedily accoutred and in the field, with Spain in his rear to help him. Now, he was making a dash at Henri’s person; and, anon, leaping from his camp-bed to escape him. At other times he was idle, while his uncle Mayenne pursued the cherished object of their house--that crown which was receding from them more swiftly than ever. For the alert Bourbon, the slow and hard-drinking Mayenne was no match. The latter thought once to catch the former in his lady’s bower, but the wakeful lover was gayly galloping back to his quarters before the trumpets of Mayenne had sounded to “boot and saddle.” “Mayenne,” said the Pope, “sits longer at table than Henri lies in bed.”

The gates of Paris were open to Henri on the 21st of March, 1591. Old Cardinal Pellevi died of disgust and indignation, on hearing of the fact. The Duchess of Montpensier, after tearing her hair, and threatening to swoon, prudently concluded, with Henry IV., not only her own peace, but that of her family. The chief members of the house of Guise were admitted into places of great trust, to the injury of more deserving individuals. The young Duke de Guise affected a superabundant loyalty. In return, the King not only gave him the government of several chief towns, but out of compliment to him forbade the exercise of Protestant worship within the limits of the Duke’s government! Such conduct was natural to a King, who to secure his throne had abandoned his faith; who lightly said that he had no cannon so powerful as the canon of the mass, and who was destitute of most virtues save courage and good-nature. The latter was abused by those on whom it was lavished; and the various assaults upon his life were supposed to be directed by those very Guises, on whom he had showered places, pensions, and pardons, which they were constantly needing and continually deriding.

The young Duke of Guise enjoyed, among other appointments, that of Governor of Marseilles. He was light-hearted, selfish, vain, and cruel. He hanged his own old partisans in the city, as enemies to the king; and he made his name for ever infamous by the seduction of the beautiful and noble orphan-girl, Marcelle de Castellane, whom he afterward basely abandoned, and left to die of hunger. He sent her a few broad pieces by the hands of a lacquey; but the tardy charity was spurned, and the poor victim died. He had little time to think of her at the brilliant court of the first Bourbon, where he and those of his house struggled to maintain a reputation which had now little to support it, but the memories of the past--and many of those were hardly worth appealing to. He was a mere fine gentleman, bold withal, and therewith intriguing; ever hoping that the fortunes of his house might once more turn and bring it near a throne, and in the meantime, making himself remarkable for his vanity, his airs of greatness, and his affectation. Brave as he was, he left his brothers, the cardinal and chevalier, to draw their swords and settle the quarrels which were constantly raging on disputed questions touching the assumed Majesty of the House of Guise.

The streets of Paris formed the stage on which these bloody tragedies were played, but they, and all other pretensions, were suppressed by that irresistible putter-down of such nuisances--the Cardinal de Richelieu. He used the sword of Guise as long as it was needed, but when Charles became troublesome the Cardinal not only banished him, but wounded the pride of his family by placing garrisons in the hitherto sovereign duchy of Lorraine. When Cardinal Fleury subsequently annexed Lorraine itself to the territory of France, the Guises thought the world was at an end. The universe, however, survived the shock.

Duke Charles died in exile at Cune, near Sienne, in the year 1640. Of his ten children by the Duchess de Joyeuse, he left five surviving. He was succeeded by Henri, the eldest, who was bishop and cardinal. He had been raised to the episcopate while yet in the arms of his wet-nurse; and he was in frocks when on his long curls was placed the scarlet hat of a cardinal. He was twenty years of age when he became Duke of Guise. He at once flung away all he possessed of his religious profession--its dress and titles, and walked abroad, spurs on his heels, a plume in his cap, and a long sword and a bad heart between!

The whole life of this chivalrous scoundrel was a romance, no portion of which reflects any credit on the hero. He had scarcely reached the age of manhood, when he entered into a contract of marriage with the beautiful Anne of Gonzaga. He signed the compact, not in ink, but with his own blood, calling Heaven to witness, the while, that he would never address a vow to any other lady. The breath of perjury had scarcely passed his lips when he married the Countess of Bossu, and he immediately abandoned _her_ to sun himself in the eyes of Mademoiselle de Pons--an imperious mistress, who squandered the property he lavished on her, and boxed the ex-cardinal’s ears, when he attempted, with degrading humility, to remonstrate with her for bringing down ruin upon his estate.

He was as disloyal to his King as to his “lady;” he tampered with rebellion, was sentenced to death, and was pardoned. But a state of decent tranquillity agreed ill with his constitution. To keep that and his nerves from rusting, he one day drew his sword in the street, upon the son of Coligny, whose presence seemed a reproach to him, and whom he slew on the spot. He wiped his bloody rapier on his mantle, and betook himself for a season to Rome, where he intrigued skilfully, but fruitlessly, in order to obtain the tiara for the brother of Mazarin. Apathy would now have descended upon him, but for a voice from the city of Naples, which made his swelling heart beat with a violence that almost threatened to kill.

Masaniello had just concluded his brief and mad career. The Neapolitans were not, on that account, disposed to submit again to Spain. They were casting about for a King, when Guise presented himself. This was in the year 1647. He left France in a frail felucca, with a score of bold adventurers wearing the colors of Lorraine, intertwined with “buff,” in compliment to the Duke’s mistress. The Church blessed the enterprise. The skiff sped unharmed through howling storms and thundering Spanish fleets; and when the Duke stepped ashore at Naples, and mounted a charger, the shouting populace who preceded him, burnt incense before the new-comer, as if he had been a coming god.

For love and bravery, this Guise was unequalled. He conquered all his foes, and made vows to all the ladies. In love he lost, however, all the fruits of bravery. Naples was but a mock Sardanapalian court, when the Spaniards at length mustered strongly enough to attack the new, bold, but enervated King. They took him captive, and held him, during four years, a prisoner in Spain. He gained liberty by a double lie, the common coin of Guise. He promised to reveal to the Court of Madrid the secrets of the Court of Paris; and bound himself by bond and oath never to renew his attempt on Naples. His double knavery, however, brought him no profit. At length, fortune seeming to disregard the greatness of his once highly-favored house, this restless reprobate gradually sunk into a mere court beau, passing his time in powdering his peruke, defaming reputations, and paying profane praise to the patched and painted ladies of the palace. He died before old age, like most of the princes of his house: and in his fiftieth year this childless man left his dignity and an evil name to his nephew, Louis Joseph.

The sixth Duke bore his greatness meekly and briefly. He was a kind-hearted gentleman, whose career of unobtrusive usefulness was cut short by small-pox in 1671. When he died, there lay in the next chamber an infant in the cradle. This was his little son Joseph, not yet twelve months old, and all unconscious of his loss, in a father; or of his gain, in a somewhat dilapidated coronet. On his young brow that symbol of his earthly rank rested during only four years. The little Noble then fell a victim to the disease which had carried off his sire, and made of himself a Duke--the last, the youngest, the most innocent, and the happiest of the race.

During a greater portion of the career of the Dukes, priest and swordsman in the family had stood side by side, each menacing to the throne; the one in knightly armor, the other in the dread panoply of the Church. Of the seven ducal chieftains of the house, there is only one who can be said to have left behind him a reputation for harmlessness; and perhaps that was because he lived at a time when he had not the power to be offensive. The boy on the mule, in 1506, and the child in the cradle, in 1676, are two pleasant extremes of a line where all between is, indeed, fearfully attractive, but of that quality also which might make not only men but angels weep.

It must be confessed that the Dukes of Guise played for a high prize; and lost it. More than once, however, they were on the very point of grasping the attractive but delusive prize. If they were so near triumph, it was chiefly through the co-operation of their respective brothers, the proud and able Cardinals. The Dukes were representatives of brute force; the Cardinals, of that which is far stronger, power of intellect. The former often spoiled their cause by being demonstrative. The latter never trusted to words when silver served their purpose equally well. When they _did_ speak, it was with effective brevity. We read of a Lacedemonian who was fined for employing three words to express what might have been as effectually stated in two. No churchman of the house of Guise ever committed the fault of the Lacedemonian.

Cardinal John of Lorraine was the brother of the first Duke Claude. When the latter was a boy, riding his mule into France, John was the young Bishop-coadjutor of Metz. He was little more than two years old when he was first appointed to this responsible office. He was a Cardinal before he was out of his teens; and in his own person was possessed of twelve bishoprics and archbishoprics. Of these, however, he modestly retained but three, namely, Toul, Narbonne, and Alby--as they alone happened to return revenues worth acceptance. Not that he was selfish, seeing that he subsequently applied for, and received the Archbishopric of Rheims, which he kindly held for his nephew Charles, who was titular thereof, at the experienced age of ten. His revenues were enormous, and he was for ever in debt. He was one of the most skilful negotiators of his time; but whether deputed to emperor or pope, he was seldom able to commence his journey until he had put in pledge three or four towns, in order to raise money to defray his expenses. His zeal for what he understood as religion was manifested during the short but bloody campaign against the Protestants of Alsatia, where he accompanied his brother. At the side of the Cardinal, on the field of battle, stood the Apostolic Commissary, and a staff of priestly aides-de-camp. While some of these encouraged the orthodox troops to charge the Huguenots, the principal personages kept their hands raised to Heaven; and when the pennons of the army of Reformers had all gone down before the double cross of Lorraine, the Cardinal and his ecclesiastical staff rode to the church of St. Nicholas and sang _Te Deum laudamus_.

The chivalrous Cardinal was another man in his residence of the Hotel de Cluny. Of this monastery he made a mansion, in which a Sybarite might have dwelt without complaining. It was embellished, decorated, and furnished with a gorgeousness that had its source at once in his blind prodigality, his taste for the arts, and his familiar patronage of artists. The only thing not to be found in this celebrated mansion was the example of a good life. But how _could_ this example be found in a prelate who assumed and executed the office of instructing the maids of honor in their delicate duties. Do Thou says it was an occupation for which he was pre-eminently fitted; and Brantome pauses, in his gay illustrations of the truth of this assertion, to remark with indignation, that if the daughters of noble houses arrived at court, endowed with every maiden virtue, Cardinal John was the man to despoil them of their dowry.

He was, nevertheless, not deficient in tastes and pursuits of a refined nature. He was learned himself, and he loved learning in others. His purse, when there was anything in it, was at the service of poor scholars and of sages with great purposes in view. He who deemed the slaughter of Protestant peasants a thing to thank God for, had something like a heart for _clever_ sneerers at Papistry and also for Protestants of talent. Thus he pleaded the cause of the amphibious Erasmus, extended his protection to the evangelical Clement Marot, and laughed and drank with Rabelais, the caustic curé of Meudon. He was, moreover, the boon companion of Francis I., a man far less worthy of his intimacy than the equivocating Erasmus, the gentle Marot, or roystering Rabelais, who painted the manners of the court and church of his day, in his compound characters of Gargantua and Panurge.

He was a liberal giver, but he gave with an ostentation for which there is no warrant in the gospel. At one period of his life he walked abroad with a game-bag full of crowns slung from his neck. On passing beggars he bestowed, without counting, a rich alms, requesting prayers in return. He was known as the “game-bag Cardinal.” On one occasion, when giving largesse to a blind mendicant in Rome, the latter was so astonished at the amount of the gift, that, pointing to the giver, he exclaimed, “If thou art not Jesus Christ, thou art John of Lorraine.”

He was bold in his gallantry. When sent by Francis I. to negotiate some political business with the pope, he passed through Piedmont, where he was for a while the guest of the Duke and Duchess of Savoy. The duchess, on the cardinal being presented, gravely offered her hand (she was a Portuguese princess) to be kissed. John of Lorraine, however, would not stoop so low, and made for her lips. A struggle ensued, which was maintained with rude persistance on one side, and with haughty and offended vigor on the other, until her highness’s head, being firmly grasped within his eminence’s arm, the cardinal kissed the ruffled princess two or three times on the mouth, and then, with an exultant laugh, released her.

The second cardinal of this branch, Charles of Lorraine, was brother of the second duke. He was the greatest man of his family, and the most powerful of his age. His ambition was to administer the finances of France, and he did so during three reigns, with an annual excess of expenditure over income, of two millions and a half. He was rather dishonest than incapable. His enemies threatened to make him account; he silenced them with the sound of the tocsin of St. Bartholomew, and when the slaughter was over he merrily asked for the presence of the accusers who had intended to make him refund.

He was an accomplished hypocrite, and at heart a religious reformer. At last he acknowledged to the leaders of the reformatory movement, whom he admitted to his familiarity, that the Reformation was necessary and warrantable; and yet policy made of him the most savage enemy that Protestantism ever had in France. He urged on the king to burn noble heretics rather than the common people; and when Henri was touched with compassion, in his dying moments, for some Protestant prisoners capitally condemned, the cardinal told him that the feeling came of the devil, and that it was better they should perish. And they perished.

He introduced the Inquisition into France, and was made Grand Inquisitor at the moment the country was rejoicing for the recovery of Calais from the English. And this was the man who, at the Council of Trent, advocated the celebration of divine worship in the vernacular tongue. He was the friend of liberty to the Gallican church, but he took the other side on finding that liberal advocacy periled his chances of being pope. The living pope used and abused him. “I am scandalized,” said his holiness, “at finding you still in the enjoyment of the revenues of so many sees.” “I would resign them all,” said the cardinal, “for a single bishopric.” “Which bishopric?” asked the pope. “Marry!” exclaimed Cardinal Charles, “the bishopric of Rome.”

He was as haughty as he was aspiring. The Guise had induced the weak Anthony of Navarre to turn Romanist; but the cardinal did not treat that king with more courtesy on that account. One frosty morning, not only did the princely priest keep the mountain king tarrying at his garden gate for an audience, but when he went down to his majesty, he listened, all befurred as he was, to the shivering monarch who humbly preferred his suit, cap in hand.

He was covetous and haughty, but he sometimes found his match. His niece, Mary Stuart, had quarreled with Catherine de Medicis, whose especial wrath had been excited by Mary’s phrase applied to Catherine, of “The Florentine tradeswoman.” The Scottish Queen resolved, after this quarrel, to repair to the North. The cardinal was at her side when she was examining her jewels, previously to their being packed up. He tenderly remarked that the sea was dangerous, the jewels costly, and that his niece could not do better than leave them in his keeping. “Good uncle,” said the vivacious Mary, “I and my jewels travel together. If I trust one to the sea, I may the other; and therewith, _adieu!_” The cardinal bit his lips and blessed her.

Ranke is puzzled where to find the principal author of the massacre of St. Bartholomew. There is no difficulty in the matter. The Guises had appealed to the chances of battle to overcome their chief adversaries in the kingdom. But for every Huguenot father slain, there arose as many filial avengers as he had sons. The causes of quarrel were individual as well as general. A Huguenot had slain the second Duke, and his widow was determined to be avenged. The Cardinal was wroth with the King for retaining Protestant archers in his body-guard. The archers took an unclean vengeance, and defiled the pulpit in the Chapel Royal, wherefrom the Cardinal was accustomed to denounce the doctrine of their teachers. His Eminence formed the confederacy by which it was resolved to destroy the enemy at a blow. To the general causes, I need not allude. The plot itself was formed in Oliver Clisson’s house, in Paris, known as “the Hotel of Mercy.” But the representatives of Rome and Spain, united with those of France, met upon the frontier, and there made the final arrangements which were followed by such terrible consequences. When the stupendous deed was being done, the Cardinal was absent from France; but he fairly took upon himself the guilt, when he conferred the hand of his illegitimate daughter Anne d’Arne on the officer Besme whose dagger had given the _first_ mortal stab to Coligny, the chief of the immolated victims of that dreadful day--and Rome approved.

As a public controversialist he shone in his dispute with Beza. Of his pride, we have an illustration in what is recorded of him in the Council of Trent. The Spanish embassador had taken a place, at mass, above that of the embassador from France. Thereupon, the reverend Cardinal raised such a commotion in the cathedral, and dwelt so loudly and strongly in expletives, that divine worship was suspended, and the congregation broke up in most admired disorder.

So at the coronation, in the Abbey of St. Dennis, of the Queen of Charles IX. The poor, frail, Austrian Princess Elizabeth, after being for hours on her knees, declared her incapacity for remaining any longer without some material support from food or wine. The Cardinal declared that such an irreligious innovation was not to be thought of. He stoutly opposed, well-fed man that he was, the supplying of any refreshment to the sinking Queen; and it was only when he reflected that her life might be imperiled that he consented to “the smallest quantity of something very light,” being administered to her.

He was the only man of his family who was not possessed of the knightly virtue of bravery. He was greatly afraid of being assassinated. In council, he was uncourteous. Thus, he once accused the famous Chancellor le Hospital of wishing to be “the cock of the assembly,” and when the grave chancellor protested against such language, the Cardinal qualified him as “an old ram.” It may be added that, if he feared the dagger directed by private vengeance, he believed himself protected by the guardianship of Heaven, which more than once, as he averred, carried him off in clouds and thunder, when assassins were seeking him. He was wily enough to have said this, in order to deter all attempts at violence directed against himself.

He died edifyingly, kissed Catherine de Medicis, and was believed by the latter, to mysteriously haunt her, long after his death. The real footing on which these two personages stood has yet to be discovered by curious inquiries.

The Cardinal-brother of the third Duke, Louis of Lorraine, loved good living, and was enabled at an early age to indulge his propensities, out of the rich revenues which he derived from his numerous ecclesiastical preferments. He held half a dozen abbeys while he was yet in his cradle; and he was a bishop at the mature age of eighteen. Just before his death, in 1598, when he was about fifty years of age, he resigned his magnificent church appointments, in favor of his nephew and namesake, who was to be a future Cardinal at the side of the fourth Duke. Louis was a man of ability and of wit. He chose a device for his own shield of arms. It consisted of nine zeros, with this apt motto: “Hoc per se nihil est; sed si minimum addideris, maximum erit,” intending, it is said, to imply that man was nothing till grace was given him. He was kindly-dispositioned, loved his ease, was proud of his church, and had a passion for the bottle. That was his religion. His private life was not marked by worse traits than those that characterized his kinsmen in the priesthood. He showed his affection for his mother after a truly filial fashion, bequeathing to her all his estates, in trust, to pay his debts.

The third duke had a second cardinal-brother, known as the Cardinal de Guise, who was murdered by Henri III. He was an intriguer; but as brave as any knight of his family. It was long before the king could find men willing to strike a priest; and when they _were_ found, they approached him again and again, before they could summon nerve wherewith to smite him. After all, this second murder at Blois was effected by stratagem. The cardinal was requested to accompany a messenger to the royal presence. He complied with some misgiving, but when he found himself in a dark corridor with four frowning soldiers, he understood his doom; requested a few moments respite to collect his thoughts; and then, enveloping his head in his outer robe, bade them execute their bloody commission. He was instantly slain, without offering resistance, or uttering a word.

This cardinal was father of five illegitimate sons, of whom the most celebrated was the Baron of Ancerville, or, as he proudly designated himself, “Bastard of Guise.”