A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times Volume IV Part 12

He had not to disquiet himself for long about this rival. On the 18th of February, 1563, the Duke of Guise was vigorously pushing forward the siege of Orleans, the stronghold of the Protestants, stoutly defended by Coligny. He was apprised that his wife, the d.u.c.h.ess Anne d'Este, had just arrived at a castle near the camp with the intention of using her influence over her husband in order to spare Orleans from the terrible consequences of being taken by a.s.sault. He mounted his horse to go and join her, and he was chatting to his aide-de-camp Rostaing about the means of bringing about a pacification, when, on arriving at a cross-road where several ways met, he felt himself struck in the right shoulder, almost under the arm, by a pistol-shot fired from behind a hedge at a distance of six or seven paces. A white plume upon his head had made him conspicuous, and as, for so short a ride, he had left off his cuira.s.s, three b.a.l.l.s had pa.s.sed through him from side to side. "That shot has been in keeping for me a long while," said he: "I deserve it for not having taken precautions." He fell upon his horse's neck, as he vainly tried to draw his sword from the scabbard; his arm refused its office.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Duke of Guise waylaid---315]

When he had been removed to the castle, where the d.u.c.h.ess, in tears, received him, "I am vexed at it," said he, "for the honor of France;" and to his son Henry, Prince of Joinville, a boy of thirteen, he added, kissing him, "G.o.d grant you grace, my son, to become a good man." He languished for six days, amidst useless attentions paid him by his surgeons, giving Catherine de' Medici, who came daily to see him, the most pacific counsels, and taking of the d.u.c.h.ess his wife the most tender farewells mingled with the most straightforward and honest avowals. "I do not mean to deny," he said to her, "that the counsels and frailties of youth have led me sometimes into something at which you had a right to be offended; I pray you to be pleased to excuse me and forgive me." His brother, the Cardinal de Guise, Bishop of Metz, which the duke had so gloriously defended against Charles V., warned him that it was time to prepare himself for death by receiving the sacraments of the church.

"Ah! my dear brother," said the duke to him, "I have loved you greatly in times past, but I love you now still more than ever, for you are doing me a truly brotherly turn." On the 24th of February they still offered him aliment to sustain his rapidly increasing weakness but "Away, away," said he; "I have taken the manna from heaven, whereby I feel myself so comforted that it seems to me as if I were already in paradise. This body has no further need of nourishment;" and so he expired on the 24th of February, 1563, an object, at his death, of the most profound regret amongst his army and his party, as well as his family, after having been during his life the object of their lively admiration. "I do not forget," says his contemporary Stephen Pasquier in reference to him, "that it was no small luck for him to die at this period, when he was beyond reach of the breeze, and when shifting Fortune had not yet played him any of those turns whereby she is so cunning in lowering the horn of the bravest."

It is a duty to faithfully depict this pious and guileless death of a great man, at the close of a vigorous and a glorious life, made up of good and evil, without the evil's having choked the good. This powerful and consolatory intermixture of qualities is the characteristic of the eminent men of the sixteenth century, Catholics or Protestants, soldiers or civilians; and it is a spectacle wholesome to be offered in times when doubt and moral enfeeblement are the common malady even of sound minds and of honest men.

The murderer of Duke Francis of Guise was a petty n.o.bleman of Angoumois, John Poltrot, Lord of Mere, a fiery Catholic in his youth, who afterwards became an equally fiery Protestant, and was engaged with his relative La Renaudie in the conspiracy against the Guises. He had been employed constantly from that time, as a spy it is said, by the chiefs of the Reformers--a vocation for which, it would seem, he was but little adapted, for the indiscretion of his language must have continually revealed his true sentiments. When he heard, in 1562, of the death of Anthony de Bourbon, King of Navarre, "That," said he, "is not what will put an end to the war; what is wanted is the dog with the big collar."

"Whom do you mean?" asked somebody. "The great Guisard; and here's the arm that will do the trick." "He used to show," says D'Aubigne, "bullets cast to slay the Guisard, and thereby rendered himself ridiculous."

After the battle of Dreux he was bearer of a message from the Lord of Soubise to Admiral de Coligny, to whom he gave an account of the situation of the Reformers in Dauphiny and in Lyonness. His report no doubt interested the admiral, who gave him twenty crowns to go and play spy in the camp of the Duke of Guise, and, some days later, a hundred crowns to buy a horse. It was thus that Poltrot was put in a position to execute the design he had been so fond of proclaiming before he had any communication with Coligny. As soon as, on the 18th of February, 1563, in the outskirts of Orleans, he had, to use his own expression, done his trick, he fled full gallop, so as not to bear the responsibility of it; but, whether it were that he was troubled in his mind, or that he was ill acquainted with the region, he wandered round and round the place where he had shot the Duke of Guise, and was arrested on the 20th of February by men sent in search of him. Being forthwith brought before the privy council, in the presence of the queen-mother, and put to the torture, he said that Admiral de Coligny, Theodore de Beze, La Rochefoucauld, Soubise, and other Huguenot chiefs had incited him to murder the Duke of Guise, persecutor of the faithful, "as a meritorious deed in the eyes of G.o.d and men." Coligny repudiated this allegation point blank. Shrinking from the very appearance of hypocrisy, he abstained from any regret at the death of the Duke of Guise. "The greatest blessing," said he, "which could come to this realm and to the church of G.o.d, especially to myself and all my house;" and he referred to conversations he had held with the Cardinal of Lorraine and the d.u.c.h.ess of Guise, and to a notice which he had sent, a few days previously, to the Duke of Guise himself, "to take care, for there was somebody under a bond to kill him." Lastly, he demanded that, to set in a clear light "his integrity, innocence, and good repute," Poltrot should be kept, until peace was made, in strict confinement, so that the admiral himself and the murderer might be confronted. It was not thought to be obligatory or possible to comply with this desire; amongst the public there was a pa.s.sionate outcry for prompt chastis.e.m.e.nt. Poltrot, removed to Paris, put to the torture and questioned by the commissioners of Parliament, at one time confirmed and at another disavowed his original a.s.sertions. Coligny, he said, had not suggested the project to him, but had cognizance of it, and had not attempted to deter him. The decree sentenced Poltrot to the punishment of regicides. He underwent it on the 18th of March, 1563, in the Place de Greve, preserving to the very end that fierce energy of hatred and vengeance which had prompted his deed. He was heard saying to himself in the midst of his torments, and as if to comfort himself, "For all that, he is dead and gone,--the persecutor of the faithful,--and he will not come back again." The angry populace insulted him with yells; Poltrot added, "If the persecution does not cease, vengeance will fall upon this city, and the avengers are already at hand."

Catherine de' Medici, well pleased, perhaps, that there was now a question personally embarra.s.sing for the admiral and as yet in abeyance, had her mind entirely occupied apparently with the additional weakness and difficulty resulting to the position of the crown and the Catholic party from the death of the Duke of Guise; she considered peace necessary; and, for reasons of a different nature, Chancellor de l'Hospital was of the same opinion: he drew attention to "scruples of conscience, the perils of foreign influence, and the impossibility of curing by an application of brute force a malady concealed in the very bowels and brains of the people." Negotiations were entered into with the two captive generals, the Prince of Conde and the Constable de Montmorency; they a.s.sented to that policy; and, on the 19th of March, peace was concluded at Amboise in the form of an edict which granted to the Protestants the concessions recognized as indispensable by the crown itself, and regulated the relations of the two creeds, pending "the remedy of time, the decisions of a holy council, and the king's majority." Liberty of conscience and the practice of the religion "called Reformed" were recognized "for all barons and lords high-justiciary, in their houses, with their families and dependants; for n.o.bles having fiefs without va.s.sals and living on the king's lands, but for them and their families personally." The burgesses were treated less favorably; the Reformed worship was maintained in the towns in which it had been practised up to the 7th of March in the current year; but, beyond that and n.o.blemen's mansions, this worship might not be celebrated save in the faubourgs of one single town in every bailiwick or seneschalty. Paris and its district were to remain exempt from any exercise of the said "Reformed religion."

During the negotiations and as to the very basis of the edict of March 19, 1563, the Protestants were greatly divided; the soldiers and the politicians, with Conde at their head, desired peace, and thought that the concessions made by the Catholics ought to be accepted. The majority of the Reformed pastors and theologians cried out against the insufficiency of the concessions, and were astonished that there should be so much hurry to make peace when the Catholics had just lost their most formidable captain. Coligny, moderate in his principles, but always faithful to his church when she made her voice heard, showed dissatisfaction at the selfishness of the n.o.bles. "To confine the religion to one town in every bailiwick," he said, "is to ruin more churches by a stroke of the pen than our enemies could have pulled down in ten years; the n.o.bles ought to have recollected that example had been set by the towns to them, and by the poor to the rich." Calvin, in his correspondence with the Reformed churches of France, severely handled Conde on this occasion. At the moment when peace was made, the pacific were in the right; the death of the Duke of Guise had not prevented the battle of Dreux from being a defeat for the Reformers; and, when war had to be supported for long, it was especially the provincial n.o.bles and the people on their estates who bore the burden of it. But when the edict of Amboise had put an end to the first religious war, when the question was no longer as to who won or lost battles, but whether the conditions of that peace to which the Catholics had sworn were loyally observed, and whether their concessions were effective in insuring the modest amount of liberty and security promised to the Protestants, the question changed front, and it was not long before facts put the malcontents in the right.

Between 1563 and 1567 murders of distinguished Protestants increased strangely, and excited amongst their families anxiety accompanied by a thirst for vengeance. The Guises and their party, on their side, persisted in their outcries for proceedings against the instigators, known or presumed, of the murder of Duke Francis. It was plainly against Admiral de Coligny that these cries were directed; and he met them by a second declaration, very frank as a denial of the deed which it was intended to impute to him, but more hostile than ever to the Guises and their party. "The late duke," said he, "was of the whole army the man I had most looked out for on the day of the last battle; if I could have brought a gun to bear upon him to kill him, I would have done it; I would have ordered ten thousand arquebusiers, had so many been under my command, to single him out amongst all the others, whether in the field, or from over a wall, or from behind a hedge. In short, I would not have spared any of the means permitted by the laws of war in time of hostility to get rid of so great an enemy as he was for me and for so many other good subjects of the king."

After three years of such deadly animosity between the two parties and the two houses, the king and the queen-mother could find no other way of stopping an explosion than to call the matter on before the privy council, and cause to be there drawn up, on the 29th of January, 1566, a solemn decree, "declaring the admiral's innocence on his own affirmation, given in the presence of the king and the council as before G.o.d himself, that he had not had anything to do with or approved of the said homicide. Silence for all time to come was consequently imposed upon the attorney-general and everybody else; inhibition and prohibition were issued against the continuance of any investigation or prosecution.

The king took the parties under his safeguard, and enjoined upon them that they should live amicably in obedience to him." By virtue of this injunction, the Guises, the Colignies, and the Montmorencies ended by embracing, the first-named accommodating themselves with a pretty good grace to this demonstration: "but G.o.d knows what embraces!" [Words used in La Harenga, a satire of the day in burlesque verse upon the Cardinal of Lorraine.] Six years later the St. Bartholomew brought the true sentiments out into broad daylight.

At the same time that the war was proceeding amongst the provinces with this pa.s.sionate doggedness, royal decrees were alternately confirming and suppressing or weakening the securities for liberty and safety which the decree of Amboise, on the 19th of March, 1563, had given to the Protestants by way of re-establishing peace. It was a series of contradictory measures which were sufficient to show the party-strife still raging in the heart of the government. On the 14th of June, 1563, Protestants were forbidden to work, with shops open, on the days of Catholic festivals. On the 14th of December, 1563, it was proclaimed that Protestants might not gather alms for the poor of their religion, unless in places where that religion was practised, and nowhere else.

On the 24th of June, 1564, a proclamation from the king interdicted the exercise of the Reformed religion within the precincts of any royal residence. On the 4th of August, 1564, the Reformed churches were forbidden to hold synods and make collections of money, and their ministers to quit their places of residence and to open schools. On the 12th of November, 1567, a king's ordinance interdicted the conferring of judiciary offices on non-Catholics. In vain did Conde and Coligny cry out loudly against these violations of the peace of Amboise; in vain, on the 16th of August, 1563, at the moment of proclaiming the king's majority, was an edict issued giving full and entire confirmation to the edict of the 19th of March preceding, with the addition of prescriptions favorable to the royal authority, as well as, at the same time, to the maintenance of the public peace; scarcely any portion of these prescriptions was observed; the credit of Chancellor de l'Hospital was clearly very much on the decline; and, whilst the legal government was thus falling to pieces or languishing away, Gaspard de Tavannes, a proved soldier and royalist, who, however, was not yet marshal of France, was beginning to organize, under the name of Brotherhood of the Holy Spirit, a secret society intended to renew the civil war "if it happened that occasion should offer for repressing and chastising them of the religion called Reformed." It was the League in its cradle. At the same time, the king had orders given for a speedy levy of six thousand Swiss, and an army-corps was being formed on the frontiers of Champagne. The queen-mother neglected no pains, no caresses, to hide from Conde the true moving cause at the bottom of all these measures; and as "he was," says the historian Davila, "by nature very ready to receive all sorts of impressions," he easily suffered himself to be lulled to sleep. One day, however, in June, 1567, he thought it about time to claim the fulfilment of a promise that had been made him at the time of the peace of Amboise of a post which would give him the rank and authority of lieutenant-general of the kingdom, as his late brother, the King of Navarre, had been; and he asked for the sword of constable which Montmorency, in consequence of his great age, seemed disposed to resign to the king. Catherine avoided giving any answer; but her favorite son, Henry, Duke of Anjou, who was as yet only sixteen, repudiated this idea with so much haughtiness that Conde felt called upon to ask some explanations; there was no longer any question of war with Spain or of an army to be got together. "What, pray, will you do," he asked, "with the Swiss you are raising?" The answer was, "We shall find good employment for them."

It is the failing of a hypocritical and lying policy, however able, that, if it do not succeed promptly, a moment arrives when it becomes transparent and lets in daylight. Even Conde could not delude himself any longer; the preparations were for war against the Reformers. He quitted the court to take his stand again with his own party. Coligny, D'Andelot, La Rochefoucauld, La Noue, and all the accredited leaders amongst the Protestants, whom his behavior, too full of confidence or of complaisance towards the court, had shocked or disquieted, went and joined him. In September, 1567, the second religious war broke out.

It was short, and not decisive for either party. At the outset of the campaign, success was with the Protestants; forty towns, Orleans, Montereau, Lagny, Montauban, Castres, Montpellier, Uzes, &c., opened their gates to them or fell into their hands.

They were within an ace of surprising the king at Monceaux, and he never forgot, says Montluc, that "the Protestants had made him do the stretch from Meaux to Paris at something more than a walk." It was around Paris that Conde concentrated all the efforts of the campaign. He had posted himself at St. Denis with a small army of four thousand foot and two thousand horse. The Constable de Montmorency commanded the royal army, having a strength of sixteen thousand foot and three thousand horse.

Attempts were made to open negotiations; but the constable broke them off brusquely, roaring out that the king would never tolerate two religions.

On the 10th of November, 1567, the battle began at St. Denis, and was fought with alternations of partial success and reverse, which spread joy and sadness through the two hosts in turn; but in resisting a charge of cavalry, led to victory by Conde, the constable fell with and under his horse; a Scot called out to him to surrender; for sole response, the aged warrior, "abandoned by his men, but not by his manhood," says D'Aubigne, smashed the Scot's jaw with the pommel of his broken sword; and at the same moment he fell mortally wounded by a shot through the body. His death left the victory uncertain and the royal army disorganized. The campaign lasted still four months, thanks to the energetic perseverance of Coligny and the inexhaustible spirits of Conde, both of whom excelled in the art of keeping up the courage of their men. "Where are you taking us now?" asked an ill-tempered officer one day. "To meet our German allies," said Conde. "And suppose we don't find them?" "Then we will breathe on our fingers, for it is mighty cold." They did at last, at Pont-a-Mousson, meet the German re-enforcements, which were being brought up by Prince John Casimir, son of the elector-palatine, and which made Conde's army strong enough for him to continue the war in earnest. But these new comers declared that they would not march any farther unless they were paid the hundred thousand crowns due to them. Conde had but two thousand. "Thereupon," says La Noue, "was there nothing for it but to make a virtue of necessity; and he as well as the admiral employed all their art, influence, and eloquence to persuade every man to divest himself of such means as he possessed for to furnish this contribution, which was so necessary. They themselves were the first to set an example, giving up their own silver plate. . . . Half from love and half from fear, this liberality was so general, that, down to the very soldiers' varlets, every one gave; so that at last it was considered a disgrace to have contributed little. When the whole was collected, it was found to amount, in what was coined as well as in plate and gold chains, to more than eighty thousand livres, which came in so timely, that without it there would have been a difficulty in satisfying the reiters. . . . Was it not a thing worthy of astonishment to see an army, itself unpaid, despoiling itself of the little means it had of relieving its own necessities and sparing that little for the accommodation of others, who, peradventure, scarcely gave them a thankee for it?" [_Memoires de La Noue, in the Pet.i.tot collection,_ 1st Series, t. x.x.xiv. p. 207.]

So much generosity and devotion, amongst the humblest as well as the most exalted ranks of the army, deserved not to be useless: but it turned out quite differently. Conde and Coligny led back to Paris their new army, which, it is said, was from eighteen to twenty thousand strong, and seemed to be in a condition either to take Paris itself, or to force the royal army to enter the field and accept a decisive battle. To bring that about, Conde thought the best thing was to besiege Chartres, "the key to the granary of Paris," as it was called, and "a big thorn,"

according to La Noue, "to run into the foot of the Parisians." But Catherine de' Medici had quietly entered once more into negotiations with some of the Protestant chiefs, even with Conde himself. Charles IX.

published an edict in which he distinguished between heretics and rebels, and a.s.sured of his protection all Huguenots who should lay down arms.

Chartres seemed to be on the point of capitulating, when news came that peace had just been signed at Longjumeau, on the 23d of March. The king put again in force the edict of Amboise of 1563, suppressing all the restrictions which had been tacked on to it successively. The Prince of Conde and his adherents were reinstated in all their possessions, offices, and honors; and Conde was "held and reputed good relative, faithful subject, and servant of the king." The Reformers had to disband, restore the new places they had occupied, and send away their German allies, to whom the king undertook to advance the hundred thousand gold crowns which were due to them. He further promised, by a secret article, that he too would at a later date dismiss his foreign troops and a portion of the French.

This news caused very various impressions amongst the Protestant camp and people. The majority of the men of family engaged in the war, who most frequently had to bear the expense of it, desired peace. The personal advantages accruing to Conde himself--made it very acceptable to him.

But the ardent Reformers, with Coligny at their head, complained bitterly of others being lured away by fine words and exceptional favors, and not prosecuting the war when, to maintain it, there was so good an army and the chances were so favorable. A serious dispute took place between the pacific negotiators and the malcontents. Chancellor de l'Hospital wrote, in favor of peace, a discourse on the pacific settlement of the troubles of the year 1567, containing the necessary causes and reasons of the treaty, together with the means of reconciling the two parties to one another, and keeping them in perpetual concord; composed by a high personage, true subject, and faithful servant of the French crown. But, if the chancellor's reasons were sound, the hopes he hung upon them were extravagant; the parties were at that pitch of pa.s.sion at which reasoning is in vain against impressions, and promises are powerless against suspicions. Concluded "through the vehemence of the desire to get home again," as La Noue says, the peace of Longjumeau was none the less known as the little peace, the patched-up peace, the lame and rickety peace; and neither they who wished for it nor they who spurned it prophesied its long continuance.

Scarcely six months having elapsed, in August, 1568, the third religious war broke out. The written guarantees given in the treaty of Longjumeau for security and liberty on behalf of the Protestants were misinterpreted or violated. Ma.s.sacres and murders of Protestants became more numerous, and were committed with more impunity than ever: in 1568 and 1569, at Amiens, at Auxerre, at Orleans, at Rouen, at Bourges, at Troyes, and at Blois, Protestants, at one time to the number of one hundred and forty or one hundred and twenty, or fifty-three, or forty, and at another singly, with just their wives and children, were ma.s.sacred, burned, and hunted by the excited populace, without any intervention on the part of the magistrates to protect them or to punish their murderers. The contemporary Protestant chroniclers set down at ten thousand the number of victims who perished in the course of these six months, which were called a time of peace: we may, with De Thou, believe this estimate to be exaggerated; but, without doubt, the peace of Longjumeau was a lie, even before the war began again.

During this interval Conde was living in Burgundy, at Noyers, a little fortress he possessed through his wife, Frances of Orleans, and Coligny was living not far from Noyers, at Tanlay, which belonged to his brother D'Andelot. They soon discovered, both of them, not only what their party had to suffer, but what measures were in preparation against themselves.

Agents went and sounded the depth of the moats of Noyers, so as to report upon the means of taking the place. The queen-mother had orders given to Gaspard de Tavannes to surround the Prince of Conde at Noyers. "The queen is counselled by pa.s.sion rather than by reason," answered the old warrior; "I am not the sort of man to succeed in this ill-planned enterprise of distaff and pen; if her Majesty will be pleased to declare open war, I will show how I understand my duty." Shocked at the dishonorable commands given him, Tavannes resolved to indirectly raise Conde's apprehensions, in order to get him out of Burgundy, of which he, Tavannes, held the governorship; and he sent close past the walls of Noyers bearers of letters containing these words: "The stag is in the toils; the hunt is ready." Conde had the bearers arrested, understood the warning, and communicated it to Coligny, who went and joined him at Noyers, and they decided, both of them, upon quitting Burgundy without delay, to go and seek over the Loire at La Roch.e.l.le, which they knew to be devoted to their cause, a sure asylum and a place suitable for their purposes as a centre of warlike operations. They set out together on the 24th of August, 1568. Conde took with him his wife and his four children, two of tender age. Coligny followed him in deep mourning; he had just lost his wife, Charlotte de Laval, that worthy mate of his, who, six years previously, in a grievous crisis for his soul as well as his cause, had given him such energetic counsels: she had left him one young daughter and three little children, the two youngest still in the nurse's arms. His sister-in-law, Anne do Salm, wife of his brother D'Andelot, was also there with a child of two years, whilst her husband was scouring Anjou and Brittany to rally the friends of his cause and his house. A hundred and fifty men, soldiers and faithful servants, escorted these three n.o.ble and pious families, who were leaving their castles to go and seek liberties and perils in a new war. When they arrived at the bank of the Loire, they found all points in the neighborhood guarded; the river was low; and a boatman pointed out to them, near Sancerre, a possible ford. Conde went over first, with one of his children in his arms.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Conde at the Ford---328]

They all went over singing the psalm, _When Israel went out of Egypt,_ and on the 16th of September, 1568, Conde entered La Roch.e.l.le. "I fled as far as I could," he wrote the next day, "but when I got here I found the sea; and, inasmuch as I don't know how to swim, I was constrained to turn my head round and gain the land, not with feet, but with hands." He a.s.sembled the burgesses of La Roch.e.l.le, and laid before them the pitiable condition of the kingdom, the wicked designs of people who were their enemies as well as his own: he called upon them to come and help; he promised to be aidful to them in all their affairs, and, "as a pledge of my good faith," said he, "I will leave you my wife and children, the dearest and most precious jewels I have in this world." The mayor of La Roch.e.l.le, La Haise, responded by offering him "lives and property in the name of all the citizens," who confirmed this offer with an outburst of popular enthusiasm. The Protestant n.o.bles of Saintonge and Poitou flocked in. A royal ally was announced; the Queen of Navarre, Jeanne d'Albret, was bringing her son Henry, fifteen years of age, whom she was training up to be Henry IV. Conde went to meet them, and, on the 28th of September, 1568, all this flower of French Protestantism was a.s.sembled at La Roch.e.l.le, ready and resolved to commence the third religious war.

It was the longest and most serious of the four wars of this kind which so profoundly agitated France in the reign of Charles IX. This one lasted from the 24th of August, 1568, to the 8th of August, 1570, between the departure of Conde and Coligny for La Roch.e.l.le and the treaty of peace of St. Germain-en-Laye: a hollow peace, like the rest, and only two years before the St. Bartholomew. On starting from Noyers with Coligny, Conde had addressed to the king, on the 23d of August, a letter and a request, wherein, "after having set forth the grievances of the Reformers, he attributed all the mischief to the Cardinal of Lorraine, and declared that the Protestant n.o.bles felt themselves constrained, for the safety of the realm, to take up arms against that infamous priest, that tiger of France, and against his accomplices." He bitterly reproached the Guises "with treating as mere policists, that is, men who sacrifice religion to temporal interests, the Catholics inclined to make concessions to the Reformers, especially the Chancellor de l'Hospital and the sons of the late Constable de Montmorency." The Guises, indeed, and their friends did not conceal their distrust of De l'Hospital, any more than he concealed his opposition to their deeds and their designs.

Whilst the peace of Longjumeau was still in force, Charles IX. issued a decree interdicting all Reformers from the chairs of the University and the offices of the judicature; L'Hospital refused to seal it: "G.o.d save us from the chancellor's ma.s.s!" was the remark at court. L'Hospital, convinced that he would not succeed in preserving France from a fresh civil war, made up his mind to withdraw, and go and live for some time at his estate of Vignay [a little hamlet in the commune of Gironville, near Etampes, Seine-et-Oise]. The queen-mother eagerly took advantage of his withdrawal to demand of him the seals, of which, she said, she might have need daily. L'Hospital gave them up at once, at the same time retaining his t.i.tle of chancellor, and letting the queen know "that he would take pains to recover his strength in order to return to his post, if and when it should be the king's and the queen's pleasure." From his rural home he wrote to his friends, "I am not downhearted because the violence of the wicked has s.n.a.t.c.hed from me the seals of the kingdom. I have not done as sluggards and cowards do, who hide themselves at the first show of danger, and obey the first impulses of fear. As long as I was strong enough, I held my own. Deprived of all support, even that of the king and the queen, who dared no longer defend me, I retired, deploring the unhappy condition of France. Now I have other cares; I return to my interrupted studies and to my children, the props of my old age and my sweetest delight. I cultivate my fields. The estate of Vignay seems to me a little kingdom, if any man may consider himself master of anything here below. . . . I will tell you more; this retreat, which satisfies my heart, also flatters my vanity; I like to imagine myself in the wake of those famous exiles of Athens or Rome whom their virtues rendered formidable to their fellow-citizens. Not that I dare compare myself with those great men, but I say to myself that our fortunes are similar. I live in the midst of a numerous family whom I love; I have books; I read, write, and meditate; I take pleasure in the games of my children; the most frivolous occupations interest me. In fine, all my time is filled up, and nothing would be wanting to my happiness if it were not for the awful apparition hard by which sometimes comes, bringing trouble and desolation to my heart."

This "apparition hard by" was war, everywhere present or imminent in the centre and south-west of France, accompanied by all those pa.s.sions of personal hatred and vengeance which are characteristic of religious wars, and which add so much of the moral sufferings to the physical calamities of life. L'Hospital, when sending the seals to the queen-mother, who demanded them of him, considered it his bounden duty to give her without any mincing, and the king whom she governed, a piece of patriotic advice.

"At my departure," he says in his will and testament, "I prayed of the king and queen this thing, that, as they had determined to break the peace, and proceed by war against those with whom they had previously made peace, and as they were driving me from the court because they had heard it said that I was opposed to and ill content with their enterprise, I prayed them, I say, that if they did not acquiesce in my counsel, they would, at the very least, some time after they had glutted and satiated their hearts and their thirst with the blood of their subjects, embrace the first opportunity that offered itself for making peace, before that things were reduced to utter ruin; for, whatever there might be at the bottom of this war, it could not but be very pernicious to the king and the kingdom." During the two years that it lasted, from August, 1568, to August, 1570, the third religious war under Charles IX.

entailed two important battles and many deadly faction-fights, which spread and inflamed to the highest pitch the pa.s.sions of the two parties.

On the 13th of March, 1569, the two armies, both about twenty thousand strong, and appearing both of them anxious to come to blows, met near Jarnac, on the banks of the Charente; the royal army had for its chief Catherine de' Medici's third son, Henry, Duke of Anjou, advised by the veteran warrior Gaspard de Tavannes, and supported by the young Duke Henry of Guise, who had his father to avenge and his own spurs to win.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HENRY OF LORRAINE (DUKE OF GUISE)----332]

The Prince of Conde, with Admiral de Coligny for second, commanded the Protestant army. We make no pretension to explain and discuss here the military movements of that day, and the merits or demerits of the two generals confronted; the Duke of Aumale has given an account of them and criticised them in his _Histoire des Princes de Conde,_ with a complete knowledge of the facts and with the authority that belongs to him. "The encounter on the 13th of March, 1569, scarcely deserves," he says, "to be called a battle; it was nothing but a series of fights, maintained by troops separated and surprised, against an enemy which, more numerous to begin with, was attacking with its whole force united.". A tragic incident at the same time gave this encounter an importance which it has preserved in history. Admiral de Coligny, forced to make a retrograde movement, had sent to ask the Prince of Conde for aid; by a second message he urged the prince not to make a fruitless effort, and to fall back himself in all haste. "G.o.d forbid," answered Conde, "that Louis de Bourbon should turn his back to the enemy!" and he continued his march, saying to his brother-in-law, Francis de la Rochefoucauld, who was marching beside him, "My uncle has made a 'clerical error' (_pas de clerc,_ a slip); but the wine is drawn, and it must be drunk." On arriving at the battle-field, whither he had brought with him but three hundred horse, at the very moment when, with this weak escort, he was preparing to charge the deep column of the Duke of Anjou, he received from La Rochefoucauld's horse a kick which broke one of the bones of his leg; and he had already crushed an arm by a fall. We will borrow from the Duke of Aumale the glorious and piteous tale of this incident.

"Conde turned round to his men-at-arms, and showing first his injured limbs and then the device, 'Sweet is danger for Christ and for fatherland!' which fluttered upon his banner in the breeze, 'n.o.bles of France,' he cried, 'this is the desired moment Remember in what plight Louis de Bourbon enters the battle for Christ and fatherland!' Then, lowering his head, he charges with his three hundred horse upon the eight hundred lances of the Duke of Anjou. The first shock of this charge was irresistible; such for a moment was the disorder amongst the Catholics that many of them believed the day was lost; but fresh bodies of royalists arrive one after another. The prince has his horse killed under him; and, in the midst of the confusion, hampered by his wounds, he cannot mount another. In spite of all, his brave comrades do not desert him; Soubise and a dozen of them, covered with wounds, are taken; an old man, named La Vergne, who had brought with him twenty-five sons or nephews, is left upon the field with fifteen of them, 'all in a heap,'

says D'Aubigne. Left almost alone, with his back against a tree, one knee upon the ground, and deprived of the use of one leg, Conde still defends himself; but his strength is failing him; he sees two Catholic gentlemen to whom he had rendered service, Saint-Jean and D'Argence; he calls to them, raises the vizor of his helmet, and holds out to them his gauntlets. The two hors.e.m.e.n dismount, and swear to risk their lives to save his. Others join them, and are eager to a.s.sist the glorious captive. Meanwhile the royal cavalry continues the pursuit; the squadrons successively pa.s.s close by the group which has formed round Conde. Soon he spies the red cloaks of the Duke of Anjou's guards. He points to them with his finger. D'Argence understands him, and, 'Hide your face!' he cries. 'Ah D'Argence, D'Argence, you will not save me,'

replies the prince. Then, like Caesar, covering up his face, he awaited death the poor soul knew only too well the perfidious character of the Duke of Anjou, the hatred with which he was hunting him down, and the sanguinary orders he would give. The guards had gone by when their captain, Montesquion, learned the name of this prisoner. 'Slay, slay, mordioux!' he shouted; then suddenly wheeling his horse round, he returns at a gallop, and with a pistol-shot, fired from behind, shatters the hero's skull." [_Histoire des Princes de Conde,_ by M. le Duc d'Aumale, t. ii. pp. 65-72.]

The death of Conde gave to the battle of Jarnac an importance not its own. A popular ditty of the day called that prince "the great enemy of the ma.s.s." "His end," says the Duke of Aumale, "was celebrated by the Catholics as a deliverance; a solemn Te Deum was chanted at court and in all the churches of France. The flags taken were sent to Rome, where Pope Pius IV. went with them in state to St. Peter's. As for the Duke of Anjou, he showed his joy and his baseness together by the ign.o.ble treatment he caused to be inflicted upon the remains of his vanquished relative, a prince of the blood who had fallen sword in hand. At the first rumor of Conde's death, the Duke of Montpensier's secretary, Coustureau, had been despatched from headquarters with Baron de Magnac to learn the truth of the matter. 'We found him there,' he relates, 'laid upon an a.s.s; the said sir baron took him by the hair of the head for to lift up his face, which he had turned towards the ground, and asked me if I recognized him. But as he had lost an eye from his head, he was mightily disfigured; and I could say no more than it was certainly his figure and his hair, and further than that I was unable to speak.'

Meanwhile," continues the Duke of Aumale, "the accounts of those present removed all doubt; and the corpse, thus thrown across an a.s.s, with arms and legs dangling, was carried to Jarnac, where the Duke of Anjou lodged on the evening of the battle. There the body of Conde was taken down amidst the sobs of some Protestant prisoners, who kissed, as they wept, the remains of their gallant chief. This touching spectacle did not stop the coa.r.s.e ribaldry of the Duke of Anjou and his favorites; and for two days the prince's remains were left in a ground-floor room, there exposed to the injurious action of the air and, to the gross insults of the courtiers. The Duke of Anjou at last consented to give up the body of Conde to the Duke of Longueville, his brother-in-law, who had it interred with due respect at Vendome in the burial-place of his ancestors."

When in 1569 he thus testified, from a mixture of hatred and fear, an ign.o.ble joy at the death of Louis de Conde, the valiant chief of Protestantism, the Duke of Anjou did not foresee that, nearly twenty years later, in 1588, when he had become Henry III., King of France, he would also testify, still from a mixture of hatred and fear, the same ign.o.ble joy at sight of the corpse of Henry de Guise, the valiant chief of Catholicism, murdered by his order and in his palace.

As soon as Conde's death was known at La Roch.e.l.le, the Queen of Navarre, Jeanne d'Albret, hurried to Tonnay-Charente, whither the Protestant army had fallen back; she took with her her own son Henry, fifteen years old, and Henry de Bourbon, the late Prince of Conde's son, who was seventeen; and she presented both of them to the army. The younger, the future Henry IV., stepped forward briskly. "Your cause," said he, "is mine; your interests are mine; I swear on my soul, honor, and life, to be wholly yours." The young Conde took the same oath. The two princes were a.s.sociated in the command, under the authority of Coligny, who was immediately appointed lieutenant-general of the army. For two years their double signature figured at the bottom of the princ.i.p.al official acts of the Reformed party; and they were called "the admiral's pages."

On both of them Jeanne pa.s.sionately enjoined union between themselves, and equal submission on their part to Coligny, their model and their master in war and in devotion to the common cause. Queen, princes, admiral, and military leaders of all ranks stripped themselves of all the diamonds, jewels, and precious stones which they possessed, and which Elizabeth, the Queen of England, took in pledge for the twenty thousand pounds sterling she lent him. The Queen of Navarre reviewed the army, which received her with bursts of pious and warlike enthusiasm; and leaving to Coligny her two sons, as she called them, she returned alone to La Roch.e.l.le, where she received a like reception from the inhabitants, "rough and loyal people," says La Noue, "and as warlike as mercantile."

After her departure, a body of German horse, commanded by Count Mansfeld, joined Coligny in the neighborhood of Limoges. Their arrival was an unhoped-for aid. Coligny distributed amongst them a medal bearing the effigy of Queen Jeanne of Navarre with this legend: "Alone, and with the rest, for G.o.d, the king, the laws, and peace."

With such dispositions on one side and the other, war was resumed and pushed forward eagerly from June, 1569, to June, 1570, with alternations of reverse and success. On the 23d of June, 1569, a fight took place at Roche l'Abeille, near St. Yrieix in Limousin, wherein the Protestants had the advantage. The young Catholic n.o.blemen, with Henry de Guise at their head, began it rashly, against the desire of their general, Gaspard de Tavannes, to show off their bravery before the eyes of the queen-mother and the Cardinal of Lorraine, both of whom considered the operations of the army too slow and its successes too rare. They lost five hundred men and many prisoners, amongst others Philip Strozzi, whom Charles IX. had just made colonel-general of the infantry. They took their revenge on the 7th of September, 1569, by forcing Coligny to raise the siege of Poitiers, which he had been pushing forward for more than two months, and on the 3d of October following, at the battle of Moncontour in Poitou, the most important of the campaign, which they won brilliantly, and in which the Protestant army lost five or six thousand men and a great part of their baggage. Before the action began, "two gentlemen on the side of the Catholics, being in an out-of-the-way spot, came to speech," says La Noue, "with some of the (Protestant) religion, there being certain ditches between them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Parley before the Battle of Moncontour----337]

'Sirs,' said they, 'we bear the marks of enemies, but we do not hate you in any wise, or your party. Warn the admiral to be very careful not to fight, for our army is marvellously strong by reason of re-enforcements that have come in to it, and it is very determined withal. Let the admiral temporize for a month only, for all the n.o.bles have sworn and said to Monseigneur that they will not wait any longer, that he must employ them within that time, and they will then do their duty. Let the admiral remember that it is dangerous to stem the fury of Frenchmen, the which, however, will suddenly ooze away; if they have not victory speedily, they will be constrained to make peace, and will offer it you on advantageous terms. Tell him that we know this from a good source, and greatly desired to advertise him of it.' Afterwards they retired.

The others," continues La Noue, "went incontinently to the admiral for to make their report, which was to his taste. They told it also to others of the princ.i.p.als; and some there were who desired that it should be acted upon; but the majority opined that this notice came from suspected persons, who had been accustomed to practise fraud and deceit, and that no account should be made of it." The latter opinion prevailed; and the battle of Moncontour was fought with extreme acrimony, especially on the part of the Catholics, who were irritated by the cruelties, as La Noue himself says, which the Protestants had but lately practised at the fight of La Roche l'Abeille. Coligny was wounded in the action, after having killed with his own hand the Marquis Philibert of Baden; and the melley had been so hot that the admiral's friends found great difficulty in extricating him and carrying him off the field to get his wound attended to. Three weeks before the battle, on the 13th of September, Coligny had been sentenced to death by the Parliament of Paris, and hanged in effigy on the Place de Greve; and a reward of fifty thousand gold crowns had been offered to whosoever should give him up to the king's justice dead or alive, words added, it is said, to the decree at the desire of Charles IX. himself. Family sorrows were in Coligny's case added to political reverses; on the 27th of May, in this same year 1569, he had lost his brother D'Andelot, his faithful comrade in his religious as well as his warlike career. "He found himself," says D'Aubigne, "saddled with the blame due to accident, his own merits being pa.s.sed over in silence; with the remnant of an army which, when it was whole, was in despair even before the late disaster; with weak towns, dismayed garrisons, and foreigners without baggage; himself moneyless, his enemies very powerful, and pitiless towards all, especially towards him; abandoned by all the great, except one woman, the Queen of Navarre, who, having nothing but the t.i.tle, had advanced to Niort in order to lend a hand to the afflicted and to affairs in general. This old man, worn down by fever, endured all these causes of anguish and many others that came to rack him more painfully than his grievous wound. As he was being borne along in a litter, Lestrange, an old n.o.bleman, and one of his princ.i.p.al counsellors, travelling in similar fashion, and wounded likewise, had his own litter, where the road was broad, moved forward in front of the admiral's, and putting his head out at the door, he looked steadily at his chief, saying, with tears in his eyes, 'Yet G.o.d is very merciful.' Thereupon they bade one another farewell, perfectly at one in thought, without being able to say more. This great captain confessed to his intimates that these few friendly words restored him, and set him up again in the way of good thoughts and firm resolutions for the future." He was so much restored, that, between the end of 1569 and the middle of 1570, he marched through the south and the centre of France the army which he had reorganized, and with which, wherever he went, he restored, if not security, at any rate confidence and zeal, to his party.

On arriving at Arnay-le-Duc, in Burgundy, he found himself confronted by Marshal de Cosse with thirteen thousand men of the king's troops.

Coligny had barely half as many; but he did not hesitate to attack, and on the 13th of June, 1570, he was so near victory that the road was left open before him. On the 7th of July he arrived at Charite-sur-Loire.

Alarm prevailed at Paris. A truce for ten days was signed, and negotiations were reopened for a fresh attempt at peace.

"If any one, in these lamentable wars, worked hard, both with body and mind," says La Noue, "it may be said to have been the admiral, for, as regards the greatest part of the burden of military affairs and hardships, it was he who supported them with much constancy and buoyancy; and he was as respectful in his bearing towards the princes his superiors as he was modest towards his inferiors. He always had piety in singular esteem, and a love of justice, which made him valued and honored by them of the party which he had embraced. He did not seek ambitiously for commands and honors; they were thrust upon him because of his competence and his expertness. When he handled arms and armies, he showed that he was very conversant with them, as much so as any captain of his day, and he always exposed himself courageously to danger. In difficulties, he was observed to be full of magnanimity and resource in getting out of them, always showing himself quite free from swagger and parade. In short, he was a personage worthy to re-establish an enfeebled and a corrupted state. I was fain to say these few words about him in pa.s.sing, for, having known him and been much with him, and having profited by his teaching, I should have been wrong if I had not made truthful and honorable mention of him." [_Memoires de La Noue, in the Pet.i.tot collection,_ 1st series, t. x.x.xiv. p. 288.]

The negotiations were short. The war had been going on for two years.

The two parties, victorious and vanquished by turns, were both equally sick of it. In vain did Philip II., King of Spain, offer Charles IX. an aid of nine thousand men to continue it. In vain did Pope Pius V. write to Catherine de' Medici, "As there can be no communion between Satan and the children of the light, it ought to be taken for certain that there can be no compact between Catholics and heretics, save one full of fraud and feint." "We have beaten our enemies," says Montluc, "over and over again; but notwithstanding that, they had so much influence in the king's council that the decrees were always to their advantage. We won by arms, but they won by those devils of doc.u.ments." Peace was concluded at St.

Germain-en-Laye on the 8th of August, 1570, and it was more equitable and better for the Reformers than the preceding treaties; for, besides a pretty large extension as regarded free exercise of their worship and their civil rights in the state, it granted "for two years, to the princes of Navarre and Conde and twenty n.o.blemen of the religion, who were appointed by the king, the wardenship of the towns of La Roch.e.l.le, Cognac, Montauban, and La Charite, whither those of the religion who dared not return so soon to their own homes might retire." All the members of the Parliament, all the royal and munic.i.p.al officers, and the princ.i.p.al inhabitants of the towns where the two religions existed were further bound over on oath "to maintenance of the edict."

Peace was made; but it was the third in seven years, and very shortly after each new treaty civil war had recommenced. No more was expected from the treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye than had been effected by those of Amboise and Longjumeau, and on both sides men sighed for something more stable and definitive. By what means to be obtained and with what pledges of durability? A singular fact is apparent between 1570 and 1572; there is a season, as it were, of marriages and matrimonial rejoicings. Charles IX. went to receive at the frontier of his kingdom his affianced bride, Archd.u.c.h.ess Elizabeth of Austria, daughter of the emperor, Maximilian II., who was escorted by the Archbishop of Treves, chancellor of the empire; the nuptials were celebrated at Mezieres, on the 26th of November, 1570; the princes and great lords of the Protestant party were invited; they did not think it advisable to withdraw themselves from their asylum at La Roch.e.l.le; but Coligny wrote to the queen-mother to excuse himself, whilst protesting his forgetfulness of the past and his personal devotion. Four months afterwards, Coligny himself married again; it was three years since he had lost his n.o.ble wife, Charlotte de Laval, and he had not contemplated anything of the kind, when, in the concluding weeks of 1570, he received from the castle of St. Andre de Briord, in Le Bugey, a letter from a great lady, thirty years of age, Jacqueline de Montbel, daughter of Count d'Entremont, herself a widow, who wrote to him "that she would fain marry a saint and a hero, and that he was that hero." "I am but a tomb," replied Coligny.

But Jacqueline persisted, in spite of the opposition shown by her sovereign, Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy, who did not like his fair subjects to marry foreigners; and in February, 1571, she furtively quitted her castle, dropped down the Rhone in a boat as far as Lyons, mounted on horseback, and, escorted by five devoted friends, arrived at La Roch.e.l.le. All Coligny's friends were urgent for him to accept this pa.s.sionate devotion proffered by a lady who would bring him territorial possessions valuable to the Protestants, "for they were an open door to Geneva." Coligny accepted; and the marriage took place at La Roch.e.l.le on the 24th of March, 1571. "Madame Jacqueline wore, on this occasion,"

says a contemporary chronicler, "a skirt in the Spanish fashion, of black gold-tissue, with bands of embroidery in gold and silver twist, and, above, a doublet of white silver-tissue embroidered in gold, with large diamond-b.u.t.tons." She was, nevertheless, at that moment almost as poor as the German arquebusiers who escorted her litter; for an edict issued by the Duke of Savoy on the 31st of January, 1569, caused her the loss of all her possessions in her own country. She was received in France with the respect due to her; and when, five months after the marriage, Charles; IX. summoned Coligny to Paris, "to serve him in his most important affairs, as a worthy minister, whose virtues were sufficiently known and tried," he sent at the same time to Madame l'Amirale a safe-conduct in which he called her my fair cousin. Was there any one belonging to that august and ill.u.s.trious household who had, at that time, a presentiment of their impending and tragic destiny?

At the same period, the Queen of Navarre, Jeanne d'Albret, obtained for her young nephew, Henry de Bourbon, Prince of Conde, son of the hero of Jarnac, and companion of Henry of Navarre, the hand of his cousin, Mary of Cleves; and there was still going on in London, on behalf of one of Charles IX.'s brothers,--at one time the Duke of Anjou and at another the Duke of Alencon,--the negotiation which was a vain attempt to make Queen Elizabeth espouse a French prince.

Coincidently with all these marriages or projects of marriage amongst princes and great lords came the most important of all, that which was to unite Henry of Navarre and Charles IX.'s sister, Marguerite de Valois.

There had already, thirteen or fourteen years previously, been some talk about it, in the reign of King Henry II., when Henry of Navarre and Margaret de Valois, each born in 1553, were both of them mere babies.

This union between the two branches of the royal house, one Catholic and the other Protestant, ought to have been the most striking sign and the surest pledge of peace between Catholicism and Protestantism. The political expediency of such a step appeared the more evident and the more urgent in proportion as the religious war had become more direful and the desire for peace more general. Charles IX. embraced the idea pa.s.sionately. At the outset he encountered an obstacle. The young Duke of Guise had already paid court to Marguerite, and had obtained such marked favor with her that the amba.s.sador of Spain wrote to the king, "There is no public topic in France just now save the marriage of my Lady Marguerite with the Duke of Guise." People even talked of a tender correspondence between the princess and the duke, which was carried on through one of the queen's ladies, the Countess of Mirandola, who was devoted to the Guises and a favorite with Marguerite. "If it be so,"