A History of the Reformation Volume II Part 10

From this time forward she was decidedly hostile to the Huguenots. She had learned the resources and popularity of the Romanists. But she disliked fighting, and the religious war was ruining France. Her idea was that it would be necessary to tolerate the Protestants, but impossible to grant them common rights with the Romanists. She applied herself to win over the Prince de Conde, who was tired of his captivity.

Negotiations were opened. Catherine, the Constable, Conde, and d'Andelot met at Orleans; and, after discussion, terms were agreed upon (March 7th), and the Edict of Amboise incorporating them was published (March 18th, 1563).

Conde had asked for the rest.i.tution of the edict of Jan. 17th, 1561, and the strict enforcement of its terms. This was refused. The terms of the new edict were as favourable for men of good birth, but not for others.

Conde had to undergo the reproaches of Coligny, that he had secured rights for himself but had betrayed his poorer brethren in the faith; and that he had destroyed by his signature more churches than the united forces of Romanism had done in ten years. Calvin spoke of him as a poor Prince who had betrayed G.o.d for his own vanity.

The truce, for it was no more than a truce, concluded by the Edict of Amboise lasted nearly five years. It was broken by the Huguenots, who were suspicious that Catherine was plotting with the Duke of Alva against them. Alva was engaged in a merciless attempt to exterminate the Protestants of the Low Countries, and Catherine had been at pains to provide provisions for his troops. The Protestant leaders came to the desperate conclusion to imitate the Triumvirate in 1561, and seize upon the King's person. They failed, and their attempt began the Second War of Religion. The indecisive battle of Saint Denis was fought on Nov.

10th, 1567, and the Constable Montmorency fell in the fight. Both parties were almost exhausted, and the terms of peace were the same as those in the Edict of Amboise.

The close of this Second War of Religion saw a determined attempt, mainly directed by the Jesuits, to inspire the ma.s.ses of France with enthusiasm for the Roman Catholic Church. Eloquent preachers traversed the land, who insisted on the antiquity of the Roman and the novelty of the Protestant faith. Brotherhoods were formed, and enrolled men of all sorts and conditions of life sworn to bear arms against every kind of heresy. Outrages and a.s.sa.s.sinations of Protestants were common; and the Government appeared indifferent. It was, however, the events in the Low Countries which again alarmed the Protestants. The Duke of Alva, who had begun his rule there with an appearance of gentleness, had suddenly seized and executed the Counts Egmont and Horn. He had appointed a commission to judge the leaders and accomplices in the earlier rising--a commission which from its deeds gained for itself the name of the Tribunal of Blood. Huguenot soldiers hastened to enrol themselves in the levies which the Prince of Orange was raising for the deliverance of his countrymen. But the Huguenot leaders had other thoughts. Was Catherine meaning to treat them as Alva had treated Egmont and Horn? They found that they were watched. The suspicion and suspense became intolerable.

Coligny and Conde resolved to take refuge in La Roch.e.l.le. As they pa.s.sed through the country they were joined by numbers of Huguenots, and soon became a small army. Their followers were eager to avenge the murders committed on those of their faith, and pillage and worse marked the track of the army. Conde and the Admiral punished some of their marauding followers by death; and this, says the chronicler, "made the violence of the soldier more secret if not more rare."

D'Andelot had collected his Normans and Bretons. Jeanne d'Albret had roused her Gascons and the Provencals, and appeared with her son, Henry of Navarre, a boy of fifteen, at the head of her troops. She published a manifesto to justify her in taking up arms. In the camp at La Roch.e.l.le she was the soul of the party, fired their pa.s.sions, and sustained their courage.[218]

In the war which followed, the Huguenots were unfortunate. At the battle of Jarnac, Conde's cavalry was broken by a charge on their flank made by the German mercenaries under Tavannes. He fought till he was surrounded and dismounted. After he had surrendered he was brutally shot in cold blood. The Huguenots soon rallied at Cognac, where the Queen of Navarre joined them. She presented her son and her nephew, young Henry of Conde, to the troops, and was received with acclamations. Young Henry of Navarre was proclaimed head of the party, and his cousin, Henry of Conde, a boy of the same age, was a.s.sociated with him. The war went on.

The Battle of Moncontour ended in the most disastrous defeat the Huguenots had ever sustained. Catherine de' Medici thought that she had them at her mercy, and proposed terms of submission which would have left them liberty of conscience but denied the right to worship. The heroic Queen of Navarre declared that the names of Jeanne and Henry would never appear on a treaty containing these conditions; and Coligny, like his contemporary, William the Silent, was never more dangerous than after a defeat. The Huguenots announced themselves ready to fight to the last; and Catherine, to her astonishment, saw them stronger than ever.

An armistice was arranged, and the Edict of Saint-Germain (Aug. 8th, 1570) published the terms of peace. It was more favourable to the Huguenots than any earlier one. They were guaranteed freedom of conscience throughout the whole kingdom. They had the liberty of public worship in all places where it had been practised before the war, in the suburbs of at least two towns in every government, and in the residences of the great n.o.bles. Four strongly fortified towns--La Roch.e.l.le, Montauban, Cognac, and La Charite--were to be held by them as pledges for at least two years. The King withdrew himself from the Spanish alliance and the international policy of the suppression of the Protestants. William of Orange and Ludovic of Na.s.sau were declared to be his friends, in spite of the fact that they were the rebel subjects of Philip of Spain and had a.s.sisted the Huguenots in the late war.

After the peace of Saint-Germain, Coligny, now the only great leader left to the Huguenots, lived far from the Court at La Roch.e.l.le, acting as the guardian of the two young Bourbon Princes, Henry of Navarre and Henry of Conde. He occupied himself in securing for the Reformed the advantages they had won in the recent treaty of peace.

Catherine de' Medici had begun to think of strengthening herself at home and abroad by matrimonial alliances. She wished one of her sons, whether the Duke of Anjou or the Duke of Alencon it mattered little to her, to marry Elizabeth of England, and her daughter Marguerite to espouse the young King of Navarre. Both designs meant that the Huguenots must be conciliated. They were in no hurry to respond to her advances. Both Coligny and Jeanne d'Albret kept themselves at a distance from the Court. Suddenly the young King, Charles IX., seemed to awaken to his royal position. He had been hitherto entirely submissive to his mother, expending his energies now in hunting, now in lock-making; but, if one can judge from what awakened him, cherishing a sullen grudge against Philip of Spain and his pretensions to guide the policy of Roman Catholic Europe.

Pope Pius V. had made Cosmo de' Medici, the ruler of Florence, a Grand Duke, and Philip of Spain and Maximilian of Austria had protested. Cosmo sent an agent to win the German Protestants to side with him against Maximilian, and to engage the Dutch Protestants to make trouble in the Netherlands. Charles saw the opportunity of gratifying his grudge, and entered eagerly into the scheme. His wishes did not for the time interfere with his mother's plans. If her marriage ideas were to succeed, she must break with Spain. Coligny saw the advantages which might come to his fellow-believers in the Netherlands--help in money from Italy and with troops from France. He resolved to make his peace with Catherine, respond to her advances, and betake himself to Court. He was graciously received, for Catherine wished to make use of him; was made a member of the Council, received a gift of one hundred and fifty thousand livres, and, although a heretic, was put into possession of an Abbey whose revenues amounted to twenty thousand livres a year. The Protestant chiefs were respectfully listened to when they stated grievances, and these were promptly put right, even at the risk of exasperating the Romanists. The somewhat unwilling consent of Jeanne d'Albret was won to the marriage of her son with Marguerite, and she herself came to Paris to settle the terms of contract. There she was seized with pleurisy, and died--an irreparable loss to the Protestant cause. Catherine's home policy had been successful.

But Elizabeth of England was not to be enticed either into a French marriage or a stable French alliance, and Catherine de' Medici saw that her son's scheme might lead to France being left to confront Spain alone; and the Spain of the sixteenth century played the part of Russia in the end of the nineteenth--fascinating the statesmen of the day with its gloomy, mysterious, incalculable power. She felt that she must detach Charles at whatever cost from his scheme of flouting Philip by giving a.s.sistance to the Protestants of the Low Countries. Coligny was in her way--recognised to be the greatest statesman in France, enthusiastically bent on sending French help to his struggling co-religionists, and encouraging Charles IX. Coligny must be removed.

The Guises were at deadly feud with him, and would be useful in putting him out of the way. The Amba.s.sador of Florence reported significantly conferences between Catherine and the d.u.c.h.ess de Nemours, the mother of the Guises (July 23rd, 1572). The Queen had secret interviews with Maureval, a professional bravo, who drew a pension as "tueur du Roy."

Nothing could be done until Henry, now King of Navarre by his mother's death, was safely married to Marguerite. The wedding took place on August 18th, 1572. On Friday (Aug. 22nd), between ten and eleven o'clock, Coligny left the Louvre to return to his lodging. The a.s.sa.s.sin was stationed in a house belonging to a retainer of the Guises, at a grated window concealed by a curtain. The Admiral was walking slowly, reading a letter. Suddenly a shot carried away the index finger of his right hand and wounded his left arm. He calmly pointed to the window from whence the shot had come; and some of his suite rushed to the house, but found nothing but a smoking arquebus. The news reached the King when he was playing tennis. He became pallid, threw down his racquet, and went to his rooms.

Catherine closeted herself with the Duke of Anjou to discuss a situation which was fraught with terror.[219]

-- 14. _The Ma.s.sacre of St. Bartholomew._

Paris was full of Huguenot gentlemen, drawn from all parts of the country for the wedding of their young chief with the Princess Marguerite. They rushed to the house in which Coligny lay. The young King of Navarre and his cousin, Henry de Conde, went to the King to demand justice, which Charles promised would be promptly rendered.

Coligny asked to see the King, who proposed to go at once. Catherine feared to leave the two alone, and accompanied him, attended by a number of her most trusty adherents. Even the Duke of Guise was there. The King by Coligny's bedside swore again with a great oath that he would avenge the outrage in a way that it would never be forgotten. A commission was appointed to inquire into the affair, and they promptly discovered that retainers of the Guises were implicated. If the investigations were pursued in the King's temper, Guise would probably seek to save himself by revealing Catherine's share in the attempted a.s.sa.s.sination. She became more and more a prey to terror. The Huguenots grew more and more violent. At last Catherine, whether on her own initiative or prompted by others will never be known, believed that she could only save herself by a prompt and thorough ma.s.sacre of the Huguenots, gathered in unusual numbers in Paris.[220]

She summoned a council (Aug. 23rd), at which were present, so far as is known, the Duke of Anjou, her favourite son, afterwards Henry III., Marshal Tavannes, Nevers, Nemours (the stepfather of the Guises), Birago (Chancellor), the Count de Retz, and the Chevalier d'Angouleme--four of them Italians. They were unanimous in advising an instant ma.s.sacre.

Tavannes and Nevers, it is said, pled for and obtained the lives of the two young Bourbons, the King of Navarre and the Prince de Conde. The Count de Retz, who was a favourite with Charles, was engaged to win the King's consent by appealing to his fears, and by telling him that his mother and brother were as deeply implicated as Guise.

Night had come down before the final resolution was taken; but the fanatical and bloodthirsty mob of Paris might be depended upon. At the last moment, Tavannes (the son) tells us in his Memoirs, Catherine wished to draw back, but the others kept her firm. The Duke of Guise undertook to slay Coligny. The Admiral was run through with a pike, and the body tossed out of the window into the courtyard where Guise was waiting. At the Louvre the young Bourbon Princes were arrested, taken to the King, and given their choice between death and the Ma.s.s. The other Huguenot gentlemen who were in the Louvre were slain. In the morning the staircases, b.a.l.l.s, and anti-chambers of the Palace were deeply stained with blood. When the murders had been done in the Louvre, the troops divided into parties and went to seek other victims. Almost all the Huguenot gentlemen on the north side of the river were slain, and all in the Quartier Latin. But some who lodged on the south side (among them Montgomery, and Jean de Ferrieres, the Vidame de Chartres) escaped.

Orders were sent to complete the ma.s.sacre in the provinces. At Orleans the slaughter lasted five days, and Protestants were slain in numbers at Meaux, Troyes, Rouen, Lyons, Toulouse, Bordeaux, and in many other places. The total number of victims has been variously estimated. Sully, the Prime Minister of Henry IV., who had good means of knowing, says that seventy thousand perished. Several thousands were slain in Paris alone.

The news was variously received by Roman Catholic Europe. The German Romanists, including the Emperor, were not slow to express their disapprobation. But Rome was illuminated in honour of the event, a medal was struck to commemorate the _Hugonotorum Strages_,[221] and Cardinal Orsini was sent to convey to the King and Queen Mother the congratulations of the Pope and the College of Cardinals. Philip of Spain was delighted, and is said to have laughed outright for the first and last time in his life. He congratulated the son on having such a mother, and the mother on having such a son.

Catherine herself believed that the ma.s.sacre had ended all her troubles.

The Huguenots had been annihilated, she thought; and it is reported that when she saw Henry of Navarre bowing to the altar she burst out into a shrill laugh.

-- 15. _The Huguenot resistance after the Ma.s.sacre._

Catherine's difficulties were not ended. It was not so easy to exterminate the Huguenots. Most of the leaders had perished, but the people remained, cowed for a time undoubtedly, but soon to regain their courage. The Protestants held the strongholds of La Roch.e.l.le and Sancerre, the one on the coast and the other in central France. The artisans and the small shopkeepers insisted that there should be no surrender. The sailors of La Roch.e.l.le fraternised with the Sea-Beggars of Brill, and waged an implacable sea-war against the ships of Spain.

Nimes and Montauban closed their gates against the soldiers of the King.

Milhaud, Aubenas, Privas, Mirabel, Anduze, Sommieres, and other towns of the Viverais and of the Cevennes became cities of refuge. All over France, the Huguenots, although they had lost their leaders, kept together, armed themselves, communicated with each other, maintained their religious services--though compelled generally to meet at night.

The attempt to capture these Protestant strongholds made the Fourth Religious War. La Roch.e.l.le was invested, beat back many a.s.saults, was blockaded and endured famine, and in the end compelled its enemies to retire from its walls. Sancerre was less fortunate. After the failure of an attempt to take it by a.s.sault, La Chatre, the general of the besieging army, blockaded the town in the closest fashion. The citizens endured all the utmost horrors of famine. Five hundred adults and all the children under twelve years of age died of hunger. "Why weep," said a boy of ten, "to see me die of hunger? I do not ask bread, mother: I know that you have none. Since G.o.d wills that I die, thus we must accept it cheerfully. Was not that good man Lazarus hungry? Have I not so read in the Bible?" The survivors surrendered: their lives were spared; and on payment of a ransom of forty thousand livres the town was not pillaged.

The war ended with the peace of Roch.e.l.le (July 1573), when liberty of conscience was accorded to all, but the right of public worship was permitted only to Roch.e.l.le, Nimes, Montauban, and in the houses of some of the princ.i.p.al Protestant n.o.bles. These terms were hard in comparison with the rights which had been won before the Ma.s.sacre of Saint Bartholomew; but the Huguenots had reason for rejoicing. Their cause was still alive. Neither war, nor ma.s.sacre, nor frauds innumerable had made any impression on the great ma.s.s of the French Protestants.

The peace declared by the treaty of La Roch.e.l.le did not last long, and indeed was never universal. The Protestants of the South used it to prepare for a renewal of conflict. They remained under arms, perfecting their military organisation. They divided the districts which they controlled into regular governments, presided over by councils whose members were elected and were the military leaders of a Protestant nation for the time being separate from the kingdom of France. They imposed taxes on Romanists and Protestants, and confiscated the ecclesiastical revenues. They were able to stock their strongholds with provisions and munitions of war, and maintain a force of twenty thousand men ready for offensive action.

Their councils at Nimes and Montauban formulated the conditions under which they would submit to the French Government. Nimes sent a deputation to the King furnished with a series of written articles, in which they demanded the free exercise of their religion in every part of France, the maintenance at royal expense of Huguenot garrisons in all the strongholds held by them, and the cession of two strong posts to be cities of refuge in each of the provinces of France. The demands of the council of Montauban went further. They added that the King must condemn the Ma.s.sacre of St. Bartholomew, execute justice on those who had perpetrated it, reverse the sentences pa.s.sed on all the victims, approve of the Huguenot resistance, and declare that he praised _la singuliere et admirable bonte de Dieu_ who had still preserved his Protestant subjects. They required also that the rights of the Protestant minority in France should be guaranteed by the Protestant States of Europe--by the German Protestant Princes, by Switzerland, England, and Scotland.

They dated their doc.u.ment significantly August 24th--the anniversary of the Ma.s.sacre of St. Bartholomew. The deputies refused to discuss these terms; they simply presented them. The King might accept them; he might refuse them. They were not to be modified.

Catherine was both furious and confounded at the audacity of these "rascals" (_ces miserables_), as she called them. She declared that Conde, if he had been at the head of twenty thousand cavalry and fifty thousand infantry, would never have asked for the half of what these articles demanded. The Queen Mother found herself face to face with men on whom she might practise all her arts in vain, very different from the _debonnaire_ Huguenot princes whom she had been able to cajole with feminine graces and enervate with her "Flying Squadron." These farmers, citizens, artisans knew her and her Court, and called things by rude names. She herself was a "murderess," and her "Flying Squadron" were "fallen women." She had cleared away the Huguenot aristocracy to find herself in presence of the Protestant democracy.

The worst of it was that she dared not allow the King to give them a decided answer. A new force had been rising in France since Saint Bartholomew's Day--the _Politiques_,[222] as they were called. They put France above religious parties, and were weary of the perpetual bloodshed; they said that "a man does not cease to be a citizen because he is excommunicated"; they declared that "with the men they had lost in the religious wars they could have driven Spain out of the Low Countries." They chafed under the rule of "foreigners," of the Queen Mother and her Italians, of the Guises and their Jesuits. They were prepared to unite with the Huguenots in order to give France peace. They only required leaders who could represent the two sides of the coalition. If the Duke of Alencon, the youngest brother of the King, and Henry of Navarre could escape from the Court and raise their standards together, they were prepared to join them.

Charles IX. died on Whitsunday 1574 of a disease which the tainted blood of the Valois and the Medicis induced. The memories of Saint Bartholomew also hastened his death. Private memoirs of courtiers tell us that in his last weeks of fever he had frightful dreams by day and by night. He saw himself surrounded by dead bodies; hideous faces covered with blood thrust themselves forward towards his. The crime had not been so much his as his mother's, but _he_ had something of a conscience, and felt its burden. "Et ma Mere" was his last word--an appeal to his mother, whom he feared more than his G.o.d.

On Charles' death, Henry, Duke of Anjou, succeeded as Henry III.[223] He was in Poland--king of that distracted country. He abandoned his crown, evaded his subjects, and reached France in September 1574. His advent did not change matters much. Catherine still ruled in reality. The war went on with varying success in different parts of France. But the Duke of Anjou (the Duke of Alencon took this t.i.tle on his brother's accession) succeeded in escaping from Court (Sept. 15th, 1575), and the King of Navarre also managed to elude his guardians (Feb. 3rd, 1576).

Anjou joined the Prince of Conde, who was at the head of a mixed force of Huguenots and Politiques. Henry of Navarre went into Poitou and remained there. His first act was to attend the Protestant worship, and immediately afterwards he renounced his forced adhesion to Romanism. He did not join any of the parties in the field, but sent on his own demands to be forwarded to the King along with those of the confederates, adding to them the request that the King should aid him to recover the Spanish part of Navarre which had been forcibly annexed to Spain by Ferdinand of Aragon.

The escape of the two Princes led in the end to the "Peace of Monsieur,"

the terms of which were published in the Edict of Beaulieu (May 6th, 1576). The right of public worship was given to Protestants in all towns and places within the kingdom of France, Paris only and towns where the Court was residing being excepted. Protestants received eight strongholds, partly as cities of refuge and partly as guarantees.

Chambers of Justice "mi-parties" (composed of both Protestants and Roman Catholics) were established in each Parliament. The King actually apologised for the Ma.s.sacre of Saint Bartholomew, and declared that it had happened to his great regret; and all sentences p.r.o.nounced on the victims were reversed. This edict was much more favourable to the Protestants than any that had gone before. Almost all the Huguenots'

demands had been granted.

-- 16. _The beginnings of the League._

Neither the King, who felt himself humiliated, nor the Romanists, who were indignant, were inclined to submit long to the terms of peace. Some of the Romanist leaders had long seen that the Huguenot enthusiasm and their organisation were enabling an actual minority to combat, on more than equal terms, a Romanist majority. Some of the provincial leaders had been able to inspire their followers with zeal, and to bind them together in an organisation by means of leagues. These provincial leagues suggested a universal organisation, which was fostered by Henry, Duke of Guise, and by Catherine de' Medici. This was the first form of that celebrated League which gave twenty years' life to the civil war in France. The Duke of Guise published a declaration in which he appealed to all France to a.s.sociate together in defence of the Holy Church, Catholic and Roman, and of their King Henry III., whose authority and rights were being taken from him by rebels. All good Catholics were required to join the a.s.sociation, and to furnish arms for the accomplishment of its designs. Those who refused were to be accounted enemies. Neutrals were to be hara.s.sed with "toutes sortes d'offences et molestes"; open foes were to be fought strenuously. Paris was easily won to the League, and agents were sent abroad throughout France to enrol recruits. Henry III. himself was enrolled, and led the movement.

The King had summoned the States General to meet at Blois and hold their first session there on Dec. 6th, 1576. The League had attended to the elections, and the Estates declared unanimously for unity of religion.

Upon this the King announced that the Edict of Beaulieu had been extracted from him by force, and that he did not intend to keep it. Two of the Estates, the Clergy and the n.o.bles, were prepared to compel unity at any cost. The Third Estate was divided. A minority wished the unity brought about "by gentle and pacific ways"; the majority asked for the immediate and complete suppression of the public worship of the Protestants, and for the banishment of all ministers, elders, and deacons.

These decisions of the States General were taken by the Huguenots as a declaration of war, and they promptly began to arm themselves. It was the first war of the League, and the sixth of Religion. It ended with the Peace of Bergerac (Sept. 15th, 1578), in which the terms granted to the Huguenots were rather worse than those of the Edict of Beaulieu. A seventh war ensued, terminated by the Peace of Fleix (Nov. 1580).

The Duke of Anjou died (June 10th, 1584), and the King had no son. The heir to the throne, according to the Salic Law, which excluded females, was Henry of Navarre, a Protestant. On the death of Anjou, Henry III.

found himself face to face with this fact. He knew and felt that he was the guardian of the dynastic rights of the French throne, and that his duty was to acknowledge Henry of Navarre as his successor. He accordingly sent one of his favourites, eperon, to prevail upon Henry of Navarre to become a Roman Catholic and come to Court. Henry refused to do either.

-- 17. _The League becomes disloyal._[224]

Meanwhile the Romanist n.o.bles were taking their measures. Some of them met at Nancy towards the close of 1584 to reconstruct the League. They resolved to exclude the Protestant Bourbons from the throne, and proclaim the Cardinal Bourbon as the successor of Henry III. They hoped to obtain a Bull from the Pope authorising this selection; and they received the support of Philip of Spain in the Treaty of Joinville (Dec.

31st, 1584).

Paris did not wait for the sanction or recommendation of the n.o.bles. A contemporary anonymous pamphlet, which is the princ.i.p.al source of our information, describes how four men, three of them ecclesiastics, met together to found the League of Paris. They discussed the names of suitable members, and, having selected a nucleus of trustworthy a.s.sociates, they proceeded to elect a secret council of eight or nine who were to direct and control everything. The active work of recruiting was superintended by six a.s.sociates, of whom one, the Sieur de la Rocheblond, was a member of the secret council. Soon all the most fanatical elements of the population of Paris belonged to this secret society, sworn to obey blindly the orders of the mysterious council who from a concealed background directed everything. The corporations of the various trades were won to the League; the butchers of Paris, for example, furnished a band of fifteen hundred resolute and dangerous men.

Trusty emissaries were sent to the large towns of France, and secret societies on the plan of the one in Paris were formed and affiliated with the mother-society in Paris, all bound to execute the orders of the secret council of the capital. The Sieur de la Rocheblond, whose brain had planned the whole organisation, was the medium of communication with the Romanist Princes; and through him Henry, Duke of Guise, le Balafre as he was called from a scar on his face, was placed in command of this new and formidable instrument, to be wielded as he thought best for the extirpation of the Protestantism of France.