A History of the Reformation Volume II Part 9

While these terrifying suggestions were being whispered, the young King fell ill, and died suddenly. This ended the rule of the Guises, and the French Protestants breathed freely again.

"Did you ever read or hear," said Calvin in a letter to Sturm, "of anything more opportune than the death of the King? The evils had reached an extremity for which there was no remedy, when suddenly G.o.d shows Himself from heaven. He who pierced the eye of the father has now stricken the ear of the son."

-- 10. _Catherine de' Medici becomes Regent._

In the confusion which resulted, Catherine recognised that at last the time had come when she could gratify the one strong pa.s.sion which possessed her--the pa.s.sion to govern. Charles IX. was a boy of ten. A Regent was essential. Antoine de Bourbon, as the first Prince of the Blood, might have claimed the position; but Catherine first terrified him with what might be the fate of Conde, and then proposed that the Constable Montmorency and himself should be her princ.i.p.al advisers. The facile Antoine accepted the situation: the Constable was recalled to the Court; Louis de Conde was released from prison. His imprisonment had made a deep impression all over France. The Protestants believed that he had suffered for their sakes. Hymns of prayer had been sung during his captivity, and songs of thanksgiving greeted his release.[210]

"Le pauvre Chrestien, qui endure Prison, pour verite; Le Prince, en captivite dure Sans l'avoir merite?

An plus fort de leurs peines entendent Tes oeuvres tons parfaits, Et gloire et louange te rendent De tes merveilleux faits."

This was sung all over France during Conde's imprisonment; after his release the tone varied:

"Resjonissez vons en Dieu Fideles de chacun lieu; Car Dieu pour nous a mande (envoye) Le bon prince de Conde;

Et vous n.o.bles protestans Princes, seigneurs attestans; Car Dieu pour nous a maude Le bon prince de Conde."

Catherine de' Medici was forty-one years of age when she became the Regent of France.[211] Her life had been hard. Born in 1519, the niece of Pope Clement VII, she was married to Henry of France in 1534. She had been a neglected wife all the days of her married life. For ten years she had been childless,[212] and her sonnets breathe the prayer of Rachel--Give me children, or else I die. During Henry's absence with the army in 1552, he had grudgingly appointed her Regent, and she had shown both ability and patience in acquiring a knowledge of all the details of government. After the defeat of Saint-Quentin she for once earned her husband's grat.i.tude and praise by the way in which she had promptly persuaded the Parliament to grant a subsidy of 300,000 livres. These incidents were her sole apprenticeship in the art of ruling. She had always been a great eater, walker, and rider.[213] Her protruding eyes and her bulging forehead recalled the features of her grand-uncle, Pope Leo X. She had the taste of her family for art and display. Her strongest intellectual force was a robust, hard, and narrow common sense which was responsible both for her success and for her failures. She can scarcely be called immoral; it seemed rather that she was utterly dest.i.tute of any moral sense whatsoever.

The difficulties which confronted the Regent were great, both at home and abroad. The question of questions was the treatment to be given to her Protestant subjects. She seems from the first to have been in favour of a measure of toleration; but the fanatically Roman Catholic party was vigorous in France, especially in Paris, and was ably led by the Guises; and Philip of Spain had made the suppression of the Reformation a matter of international policy.

Meanwhile Catherine had to face the States General, summoned by the late King in August 1560. While the Guises were still in power, strict orders had been given to see that none but ardent Romanists should be elected; but the excitement of the times could not be restrained by any management. It was nearly half a century since a King of France had invited a declaration of the opinions of his subjects; the last meeting of the States General had been in 1484.[214] Catherine watched the elections, and the expression of sentiments which they called forth. She saw that the Protestants were active. Calvinist ministers traversed the West and the South almost unhindered, encouraging the people to a.s.sert their liberties. They were even permitted to address some of the a.s.semblies met to elect representatives. A minister, Charles Dalbiac, expounded the Confession of Faith to the meeting of the n.o.bles at Angers, and showed how the Roman Church had enslaved and changed the whole of the Christian faith and practice. In other places it was said that Antoine de Bourbon had no right to allow Catherine to a.s.sume the Regency, and that he ought to be forced to take his proper place. The air seemed full of menaces against the Regent and in favour of the Princes of the Blood. Catherine hastened to place the King of Navarre in a position of greater dignity. She shared the Regency nominally with the premier Prince of the Blood, who was Lieutenant-General of France. If Antoine had been a man of resolution, he might have insisted on a large share in the government of the country, but his easy, careless disposition made him plastic in the hands of Catherine, and she could write to her daughter that he was very obedient, and issued no order without her permission.

The Estates met at Orleans on the 13th of December. The opening speech by the Chancellor, Michel de l'Hopital, showed that the Regent and her councillors were at least inclined to a policy of tolerance. The three orders (Clergy, n.o.bles, and Third Estate), he said, had been summoned to find remedies for the divisions which existed within the kingdom; and these, he believed, were due to religion. He could not help recognising that religious beliefs, good or bad, tended to excite burning pa.s.sions.

He could not avoid seeing that a common religion was a stricter bond of unity than belonging to the same race or living under the same laws.

Might they not all wait for the decision of a General Council? Might they not cease to use the irritating epithets of _Lutherans_, _Huguenots_, _Papists_, and remember that they were all good Christians.

The spokesmen of the three orders were heard at the second sitting. Dr.

Quintin, one of the Regents of the University of Paris, voiced the Clergy. He enlarged against the proposals which were to be brought forward by the other two orders to despoil the revenues of the Church, to attempt its reform by the civil power, and to grant toleration and even liberty of worship to heretics. Coligny begged the Regent to note that Quintin had called subjects of the King heretics, and the spokesman of the Clergy apologised. Jacques de Silly, Baron de Rochefort, and Jean Lange, an advocate of Bordeaux, who spoke for the n.o.bles and for the Third Estate, declaimed against the abuses of ecclesiastical courts, and the avarice and ignorance of the clergy.

At the sitting on Jan. 1st, 1561, each of the three Estates presented a written list of grievances (_cahiers_). That of the Third Estate was a memorable and important doc.u.ment in three hundred and fifty-four articles, and reveals, as no other paper of the time does, the evils resulting from absolutist and aristocratic government in France. It asked for complete toleration in matters of religion, for a Reformation of the Church in the sense of giving a large extension of power to the laity, for uniformity in judicial procedure, for the abolition or curtailment of powers in signorial courts, for quinquennial meetings of the Estates General, and demanded that the day and place of the next meeting should be fixed before the end of the present sitting. The n.o.bles were divided on the question of toleration, and presented three separate papers. In the first, which came from central Prance, stern repression of the Protestant faith was demanded; in the second, coming from the n.o.bles of the Western provinces, complete toleration was claimed; in the third it was asked that both parties should be made to keep the peace, and that only preachers and pastors be punished. The list presented by the Clergy, like those of the other two orders, insisted upon the reform of the Church; but it took the line of urging the abolition of the Concordat, and a return to the provisions of the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges.

The Government answered these lists of grievances presented by an edict and an ordinance. In the edict (Jan. 28th, 1561) the King ordered that all prosecutions for religion should cease, and that all prisoners should be released, with an admonition "to live in a catholic manner"

for the future. The ordinance (dated Jan. 31st, but not completed till the following August), known as the _Ordinance of Orleans_, was a very elaborate doc.u.ment. It touched upon almost all questions brought forward in the lists of grievances, and enacted various reforms, both civil and ecclesiastic--all of which were for the most part evaded in practice.

The Estates were adjourned until the 1st of May.

The Huguenots had gained a suspension of persecution, if not toleration, by the edict of Jan. 28th, and the disposition of the Government made them hope for still further a.s.sistance. Refugees came back in great numbers from Switzerland, Germany, England, and even from Italy. The number of Protestant congregations increased, and Geneva provided the pastors. The edict did not give liberty of worship, but the Protestants acted as if it did. This roused the wrath of the more fanatically disposed portion of the Roman Catholic population. Priests and monks fanned the flames of sectarian bitterness. The Government was denounced, and anti-Protestant riots disturbed the country. When the Huguenots of Paris attempted to revive the psalm-singings in the Pre-aux-Clercs, they were mobbed, and beaten with sticks by the populace. This led to reprisals in those parts of the country where the Huguenots were in a majority. In some towns the churches were invaded, the images torn down, and the relics burnt. The leaders strove to restrain their followers.[215] Calvin wrote energetically from Geneva against the lawlessness:

"G.o.d has never enjoined on any one to destroy idols, save on every man in his own house or on those placed in authority in public places.... Obedience is better than sacrifice; we must look to what it is lawful for us to do, and must keep ourselves within bounds."

At the Court at Fontainebleau, Renee, d.u.c.h.ess of Ferrara, and the Princess of Conde were permitted by the Regent to have worship in their rooms after the Reformed rite; and Coligny had in his household a minister from Geneva, Jean Raymond Merlin, to whose sermons outsiders were not only admitted but invited. These things gave great offence to the Constable Montmorency, who was a strong Romanist. He was still more displeased when Monluc, Bishop of Valence, preached in the State apartments before the boy King and the Queen Mother. He thought it was undignified for a Bishop to preach, and he believed that Monluc's sermons contained something very like Lutheran theology. He invited the Duke of Guise and Saint-Andre, both old enemies, to supper (April 16th, 1561), and the three pleged themselves to save the Romanism of France.

This union was afterwards known as the Triumvirate.

Meanwhile religious disturbances were increasing. The Huguenots demanded the right to have "temples" granted to them or built at their own expense; and in many places they openly gathered for public worship and for the celebration of the Lord's Supper. They frequently met armed to protect themselves from attack. The Government at length interfered, and by an edict (July 1561) prohibited, under penalty of confiscation of property, all conventicles, public or private, whether the worshippers were armed or unarmed, where sermons were made and the sacraments celebrated in any other fashion than that of the Catholic Church. The edict declared, on the other hand, that magistrates were not to be too zealous; persons who laid false information were to be severely punished; and all attacks on houses were forbidden. It was evidently meant to conciliate both parties. Coligny did not discontinue the services in his apartments, and wrote to his co-religionists that they had nothing to fear so long as they worshipped in private houses. Jeanne d'Albret declared herself openly a Protestant; and as she travelled from Nerac to Fontainebleau she restored to the Huguenots churches which the magistrates had taken from them in obedience to the edict of July.

The prorogued meeting of the States General did not a.s.semble until the 1st of August, and even then representatives of two orders only were present. An ecclesiastical synod was sitting at Poissy (opened July 28th), and the clerical representatives were there. It was the 27th of August before the three orders met together in presence of the King and the members of his Council at Saint-Germain. The meeting had been called for the purpose of discussing the question of national finance; but it was impossible to ignore the religious question.

In their _cahiers_, both the n.o.bles and the Third Estate advocated complete toleration and the summoning a National Council. The financial proposals of the Third Estate were thoroughgoing. After a statement of the national indebtedness, and a representation that taxation had reached its utmost limits, they proposed that money should be obtained from the superfluity of ecclesiastical wealth. In their _cahier_ of Jan.

1st, the Third Estate had sketched a civil const.i.tution for the French Church; they now went further, and proposed that all ecclesiastical revenues should be nationalised, and that the clergy should be paid by the State. They calculated that a surplus of seventy-two million livres would result, and proposed that forty-two millions should be set aside to liquidate the national debt.

This bold proposal was impracticable in the condition of the kingdom.

The _Parlement_ of Paris regarded it as a revolutionary attack on the rights of property, and it alienated them for ever from the Reformation movement; but it enabled the Government to wring from the alarmed Churchmen a subsidy of sixteen million livres, to be paid in six annual instalments.

-- 11. _The Conference at Poissy._

It was scarcely possible, in view of the Pope and Philip of Spain, to a.s.semble a National Council, but the Government had already conceived the idea of a meeting of theologians, which would be such an a.s.sembly in all but the name. They had invited representatives of the Protestant ministers (July 25th) to attend the synod of the clergy sitting at Poissy. The invitation had been accepted, and the Government intended to give an air of unusual solemnity to the meeting. The King, surrounded by his mother, his brothers, and the Princes of the Blood, presided as at a sitting of the States General. The Chancellor, in the King's name, opened the session with a remarkable speech, in which he set forth the advantages to be gained from religious union. He addressed the a.s.sembled bishops and Roman Catholic theologians, a.s.suring them that they ought to have no scruples in meeting the Protestant divines. The latter were not heretics like the old Manicheans or Arians. They accepted the Scriptures as the Rule of Faith, the Apostles' Creed, the four princ.i.p.al Councils and _their_ Creeds (the symbols of Nicea, Constantinople, and Chalcedon). The main difference between them was that the Protestants wished the Church to be reformed according to the primitive pattern.

They had given proof of their sincerity by being content to die for their faith.

The Reformers were represented by twelve ministers, among whom were Morel of Paris; Nicolas des Gallars, minister of the French Protestant Church in London, and by twenty laymen. Their leader was Theodore de Beze (Beza), a man of n.o.ble birth, celebrated as a Humanist, a brilliant writer and controversialist, whom Calvin, at the request of Antoine de Bourbon, Catherine de' Medici, and Coligny, had commissioned to represent him. De Beze was privately presented to the King and the Regent by the King of Navarre and by the Prince de Conde, and his learning, presence, and stately courtesy made a great impression upon the Court. He had been born in the same year as the Regent (1519), and had thrown away very brilliant prospects to become a minister of the Reformed Church.

The meeting was held in the refectory of the nuns of Poissy.[216] The King and his suite were placed at one end of the hall, and the Romanist bishops and theologians were arranged by the walls on the two sides.

After the Chancellor had finished his speech, the representatives of the Protestants were introduced by the Duke of Guise, in command of an escort of the King's archers. They were placed in front of a barrier which separated them from the Romanist divines. "There come the dogs of Geneva," said the Cardinal of Tournon as they entered the hall.

The speech of de Beze, delivered on the first day (Sept. 7th) of the Colloquy, as it came to be called, made a great impression. He expounded with clearness of thought and precision of language the creed of his Church, showing where it agreed and where it differed from that of the Roman Catholic. The gravity and the charm of his eloquence compelled attention, and it was not until he began to criticise with frank severity the doctrine of transubstantiation that he provoked murmurs of dissent. The speech must have disappointed Catherine. It had made no attempt to attenuate the differences between the two confessions, and held out no hopes of a reunion of the Churches.

The Cardinal of Lorraine was charged to reply on behalf of the Roman Catholic party (Sept. 16th). His speech was that of a strong partisan, and dealt princ.i.p.ally with the two points of the authority of the Church in matters of faith and usage, and the doctrine of the Sacrament of the Holy Supper. There was no attempt at conciliation.

Three days after (Sept. 19th), Cardinal Ippolito d'Este arrived at Saint-Germain, accompanied by a numerous suite, among whom was Laynez, the General of the Society of Jesus. He had been sent by the Pope, legate _a latere_, to end, if possible, the conference at Poissy, and to secure the goodwill of the French Government for the promulgation of the decrees of the Council of Trent. He so far prevailed that the last two sittings of the conference (Sept. 24th, 26th) were with closed doors, and were scenes of perpetual recriminations. Laynez distinguished himself by his vituperative violence. The Protestant ministers were "wolves," "foxes," "serpents," "a.s.sa.s.sins." Catherine persevered. She arranged a conference between five of the more liberal Roman Catholic clergy and five Protestant ministers. It met (Sept. 30th, Oct. 1st), and managed to draft a formula about the Holy Supper which was at once rejected by the Bishops of the French Church (Oct. 9th).

Out of this Colloquy of Poissy came the edict of January 17th, 1562, which provided that Protestants were to surrender all the churches and ecclesiastical buildings they had seized, and prohibited them from meeting for public worship, whether within a building or not, inside the walls of any town. On the other hand, they were to have the right to a.s.semble for public worship anywhere outside walled towns, and meetings in private houses within the walls were not prohibited. Thus the Protestants of France secured legal recognition for the first time, and enjoyed the right to worship according to their conscience. They were not satisfied--they could scarcely be, so long as they were kept outside the walls; but their leaders insisted on their accepting the edict as a reasonable compromise. "If the liberty promised us in the edict lasts,"

Calvin wrote, "the Papacy will fall to the ground of itself." Within one year the Huguenots of France found themselves freed from persecution, and in the enjoyment of a measured liberty of public worship. It can scarcely be doubted that they owed this to Catherine de' Medici. She was a child of the Renaissance, and was naturally on the side of free thought; and she was, besides, at this time persuaded that the Huguenots had the future on their side. In the coming struggle they regarded this edict as their charter, and frequently demanded its rest.i.tution and enforcement.

Catherine de' Medici had shown both courage and constancy in her attempts at conciliation. To the remonstrances of Philip of Spain she had replied that she meant to be master in her own house; and when the Constable de Montmorency had threatened to leave the Court, he had been told that he might do as he pleased. But she was soon to be convinced that she had overestimated the strength of the Protestants, and that she could never count on the consistent support of their nominal leader, the vain and vacillating Antoine de Bourbon. Had Jeanne d'Albret been in her husband's place, things might have been different.

The edict of January 17th, 1562, had exasperated the Romanists without satisfying the ma.s.s of the Protestants. The marked increase in the numbers of Protestant congregations, and their not very strict observance of the limitations of the edict, had given rise to disturbances in many parts of the country. Everything seemed to tend towards civil war. The spark which kindled the conflagration was the Ma.s.sacre of Va.s.sy.[217]

-- 12. _The Ma.s.sacre of Va.s.sy._

The Duke of Guise, travelling from Joinville to Paris, accompanied by his brother, the Cardinal of Guise, his children and his wife, and escorted by a large armed retinue, halted at Va.s.sy (March 1st, 1562). It was a Sunday, and the Duke wished to hear Ma.s.s. Scarcely a gunshot from the church was a barn where the Protestants (in defiance of the edict, for Va.s.sy was a walled town) were holding a service. The congregation, barely a year old, was numerous and zealous. It was an eyesore to Antoinette de Bourbon, the mother of the Guises, who lived in the neighbouring chateau of Joinville, and saw her dependants attracted by the preaching at Va.s.sy. The Duke was exasperated at seeing men whom he counted his subjects defying him in his presence. He sent some of his retainers to order the worshippers to quit the place. They were received by cries of "Papists! idolaters!" When they attempted to force an entrance, stones began to fly, and the Duke was struck. The barn was rushed, the worshippers fusilladed, and before the Duke gave orders to cease firing, sixty-three of the six or seven hundred Protestants were slain, and over a hundred wounded.

The news of the ma.s.sacre spread fast; and while it exasperated the Huguenots, the Romanists hailed it as a victory. The Constable de Montmorency and the Marshal Saint Andre went out to meet the Duke, and the Guises entered Paris in triumph, escorted by more than three thousand armed men. The Protestants began arming themselves, and crowded to Paris to place themselves under the orders of the Prince of Conde. It was feared that the two factions would fight in the streets.

The Regent with the King retired to Fontainebleau. She was afraid of the Triumvirs (Montmorency, the Duke of Guise, and Marshal Saint-Andre), and she invited the Prince de Conde to protect her and her children. Conde lost this opportunity of placing himself and his co-religionists in the position of being the support of the throne. The Triumvirate, with Antoine de Bourbon, who now seemed to be their obedient servant, marched on Fontainebleau, and compelled the King and the Queen Mother to return to Paris. Catherine believed that the Protestants had abandoned her, and turned to the Romanists.

The example of ma.s.sacre given at Va.s.sy was followed in many places where the Romanists were in a majority. In Paris, Sens, Rouen, and elsewhere, the Protestant places of worship were attacked, and many of the worshippers slain. At Toulouse, the Protestants shut themselves up in the Capitol, and were besieged by the Romanists. They at last surrendered, trusting to a promise that they would be allowed to leave the town in safety. The promise was not kept, and three thousand men, women, and children were slain in cold blood. This slaughter, in violation of oath, was celebrated by the Roman Catholics of Toulouse in centenary festivals, which were held in 1662, in 1762, and would have been celebrated in 1862 had the Government of Napoleon III. not interfered to forbid it.

These ma.s.sacres provoked reprisals. The Huguenots broke into the Romanist churches, tore down the images, defaced the altars, and destroyed the relics.

-- 13. _The Beginning of the Wars of Religion._

Gradually the parties faced each other with the Duke of Guise and the Constable Montmorency at the head of the Romanists, and the Prince of Conde and Admiral Coligny at the head of the Huguenots. France became the scene of a civil conflict, where religious fanaticism added its cruelties to the ordinary barbarities of warfare.

The Venetian Amba.s.sador, writing home to the chiefs of his State, was of opinion that this first war of religion prevented France from becoming Protestant. The cruelties of the Romanists had disgusted a large number of Frenchmen, who, though they had no great sympathy for the Protestant faith, would have gladly allied themselves with a policy of toleration.

The Huguenot chiefs themselves saw that the desecration of churches did not serve the cause they had at heart. Calvin and de Beze wrote, energetically urging their followers to refrain from attacks on churches, images, and relics. But it was all to no purpose. At Orleans, Coligny and Conde heard that their men were a.s.saulting the Church of the Holy Spirit. They hastened there, and Conde saw a Huguenot soldier on the roof of the church about to cast an image to the ground. Seizing an arquebus, he pointed it at the man, and ordered him to desist and come down. The soldier did not stop his work for an instant. "Sire," he said, "have patience with me until I destroy this idol, and then let me die if it be your pleasure." When men were content to die rather than refrain from iconoclasm, it was in vain to expect to check it. Somehow the slaughter of men made less impression than the sack of churches, and moderate men came to the opinion that if the Huguenots prevailed, they would be as intolerant as the Romanists had been. The rising tide of sympathy for the persecuted Protestants was checked by these deeds of violence.

The progress of the war was upon the whole unfavourable to the Huguenots, and in the beginning of 1553 both parties were exhausted. The Constable Montmorency had been captured by the Huguenots, and the Prince de Conde by the Romanists. The Duke of Guise was shot from behind by a Huguenot, and died six days later (Feb. 24th, 1563). The Marshal Saint-Andre and Antoine de Bourbon had both died during the course of the war. Catherine de' Medici was everywhere recognised as the head of the Romanist party. She no longer needed the Protestants to counterbalance the Guises and the Constable. She could now pursue her own policy.