History of the Rise of the Huguenots Volume II Part 58

[Sidenote: Beginning of the siege of Sancerre.]

But it was Sancerre which, next to La Roch.e.l.le, occasioned the court the greatest annoyance, both because of its central position[1294] and because of its comparative proximity to Paris. Here the Protestants of Berry and the adjacent provinces had found a welcome refuge. Citizens and refugees refused to admit a royal garrison, and foiled the attempt to capture the place by escalade. Treachery was at work, and, as usual, it was most rife among the richer cla.s.s. By their connivance the citadel or castle was surprised by the troops sent by the governor of the province, M. de la Chastre; but it was retaken on the same day.[1295] Notwithstanding this warning, the people of Sancerre took none of the precautions which their situation demanded, apparently unable to believe that, when such a city as La Roch.e.l.le was in revolt, the king would undertake to subdue so small a place as Sancerre. There were no stores of provisions, and the buildings in proximity to the walls, from which an enemy could incommode the city, had not been torn down, when, between the third and ninth of January, 1573, a force of five thousand foot and five hundred horse, under La Chastre, besides many n.o.bles and gentlemen of the vicinage, made its appearance before the walls. The inhabitants now discovered their capital mistakes, but it was too late to remedy them. Hunger began almost immediately to make itself felt, while the places they had neglected to destroy or preoccupy proved very convenient to the royalists for the next two or three months, during which it was attempted to take Sancerre by a.s.sault. Yet the direct attack proved a failure, and, on the twentieth of March, the siege was changed to a blockade. Forts were erected in the most advantageous spots, and a wide trench was dug around the entire city.[1296] Sancerre was to be tried by the severe ordeal of hunger; and certainly the most frightful among ancient sieges can scarcely be said to have surpa.s.sed in horror that of this small city.[1297]

[Sidenote: The incipient famine.]

Did not the sufferings of the heroic inhabitants claim our sympathy, we might read with entertainment the singular devices they resorted to in grappling with a terrible foe whose insidious advances were more difficult to oppose than the open a.s.saults of the enemy. For the famine of Sancerre boasts of a historian more copious and minute than Josephus or Livy. In reading the narrative of the famous Jean de Lery[1298]--the same writer to whom we are indebted for an authentic account of Villegagnon's unfortunate scheme of American colonization--we seem to be perusing a great pathological treatise. Never was physician more watchful of his patient's symptoms than Lery with his hand upon the pulse of famishing Sancerre. It would almost seem that the restless Huguenot, who united in his own person the opposite qualifications of clergyman and soldier, desired to make his little work a useful guide in similar circ.u.mstances, for a portion of it, at least, has been appropriately styled "a cookery book for the besieged."[1299]

Early in the siege, not without some qualms, the inhabitants made trial of the flesh of a horse accidentally killed. Next an a.s.s, and then the mules, of which there was a considerable number, were brought to the shambles.

The butchers were now ordered to sell this new kind of meat, and a maximum price was fixed. For a fortnight the supply of cats held out, after which rats and mice became the chief staple of food. Dog-flesh was next reluctantly tasted, and found, as our conscientious chronicler observes, to be somewhat sweet and insipid.[1300] And so the spring of 1573 pa.s.sed away, and summer came; but no succor arrived for the beleaguered city. On the contrary, there came the disheartening tidings from the west that a peace had been concluded by the Huguenots of La Roch.e.l.le, in which no mention was made of Sancerre.

[Sidenote: Losses of the royal army before La Roch.e.l.le.]

[Sidenote: Roman Catholic processions.]

So successful had been the defence of the citadel of Protestantism on the sh.o.r.es of the ocean, so unexpectedly large the royal losses, that the court was only waiting for a decent pretext to abandon the unfortunate siege. Pestilence added its victims to those of the sword, and it was currently reported that forty thousand of the besiegers were swept away by their combined a.s.saults.[1301] A more careful enumeration, however, shows that, while the Roch.e.l.lois, out of thirty-one hundred soldiers, lost thirteen hundred, including twenty-eight "pairs," the king, out of a little more than forty thousand troops, had lost twenty-two thousand, ten thousand of whom died in the breach or in engagements elsewhere. Nor was the loss of officers trifling; two hundred had died, including fifty of great distinction, and five "maitres de camp."[1302] And, with all this expenditure of life, and with the heavy drafts upon the public treasure, little or nothing had been accomplished. Meanwhile, in other parts of France there existed a scarcity of food amounting almost to a famine; nor had the solemn processions to the shrines of the saints--processions for the most part rendered contemptible by the irreverent conduct both of the clergymen and the laity that took part in them[1303]--averted the wrath of heaven. The poor suffered extremely. Selfishness gained such ascendancy in some towns, that cruel ruses were adopted to remove the dest.i.tute that had taken refuge within their walls. It was not strange that the extraordinary mortality which soon fell upon the well-to-do burghers was viewed by many as a direct punishment sent by the Almighty.[1304]

[Sidenote: Election of Henry of Anjou to the crown of Poland.]

The event which came just in time to free the court from its embarra.s.sment was the election of Henry of Anjou to the vacant throne of Poland. We have already witnessed the perplexity of Bishop Montluc when the tidings of the ma.s.sacre first reached him.[1305] If he could have denied its reality, he would have done so. This being impossible, he was forced to content himself with misrepresenting the origin of the slaughter, slandering the admiral and the other victims, and circulating the calumnies of Charpentier and others who prated about a Huguenot conspiracy. A judicious distribution of French gold a.s.sisted his own eloquent sophistry; and the Duke of Anjou, portrayed as a chivalric prince and one who was not ill-affected to religious liberty, was chosen king over his formidable rivals. Charles and Catharine were alike delighted. The former could scarcely find words to express his joy[1306] at the prospect of being freed from the presence of a brother whom he feared, and perhaps hated; while the queen mother's gratification was even more intense at the peaceful solution of the prophecy of Nostradamus, than at the elevation of her favorite son.

[Sidenote: Edict of Pacification, Boulogne, July, 1573.]

The peace between the king and the Roch.e.l.lois was concluded in June, and was formally promulgated in July, 1573, in a royal edict from Boulogne.

The chief provision was that the Protestants in the cities of La Roch.e.l.le, Montauban, and Nismes should enjoy entire freedom of public worship, while their brethren throughout the kingdom should have liberty of conscience and the right to sell their property and remove wherever they might choose, whether within or without the realm. Only gentlemen and others enjoying high jurisdiction, who had remained constant in their faith, and had taken up arms with the three cities, were to be allowed to collect their friends to the number of ten to witness their marriages and baptisms, according to the custom of the Reformed Church. Even this privilege could not be exercised within the distance of two leagues from the royal court or from the city of Paris; nor did the edict confer the right to preach or celebrate the Lord's Supper.[1307] La Roch.e.l.le, Nismes, and Montauban gained their point, and were to be exempted from receiving garrisons or having citadels built, with the condition that they should for two years constantly keep four of their princ.i.p.al citizens at court as pledges of their fidelity. All promises of abjuration were declared null and void. Amnesty was proclaimed, and, to cap the climax of absurdity, the brave Huguenots who had defended their homes for months against Charles were solemnly declared to be held the king's "good, loyal, and faithful subjects and servants."

[Sidenote: Meagre results of the war.]

The results of the war on the king's side were certainly very meagre. To have fought for the greater part of a year with the miserable Huguenots that had escaped the ma.s.sacre of St. Bartholomew's Day, and then to conclude the war by such a peace, was certainly ignominious enough for Charles and his mother. For the Huguenot party was now, more than ever, a recognized power in the state, with three strongholds--one in the west and two in the south. Into no one of these could a royal garrison be introduced. La Roch.e.l.le, in particular, having repulsed every a.s.sault of the best army that could be brought against it, was acknowledged invincible by the exemptions accorded to it in common with Nismes and Montauban. It was hardly by such expectations that Charles had been prevailed upon to throw down the gage of war to his subjects of the reformed faith.

[Sidenote: The siege and famine of Sancerre continue.]

Meanwhile, the inhabitants of Sancerre, not even named in the edict,[1308]

had been sustained under appalling difficulties by the confident hope of a.s.sistance from the south. But the hope was long deferred, and they grew sick at heart. The prospect was already dark enough, when, on the second of June, a Protestant soldier, who had made his way into the city through the enemy's lines, brought the depressing announcement that no aid must be expected from Languedoc for six weeks. As but little wheat remained in Sancerre, the immediate effect of the intelligence was that liberty was given to some seventy of the poor to leave the city walls. At the same time the daily ration was limited to half a pound of grain. A week later it was reduced to one-quarter of a pound. Not long after only a single pound was doled out once a week, and by the end of the month the supply entirely gave out. The beginning of July reduced the besieged to the necessity of tasking their ingenuity to make palatable food of the hides of cattle, next of the skins of horses, dogs, and a.s.ses. The stock of even this unsavory material soon became exhausted; whereupon, not very unnaturally, parchment was turned to good account. Ma.n.u.scripts a good century old were eaten with relish. Soaked for a couple of days in water, and afterward boiled as much longer, when they became glutinous they were fried, like tripe, or prepared with herbs and spices, after the manner of a hodge-podge. The writer who is our authority for these culinary details, informs us that he had seen the dish devoured with eagerness while the original letters written upon the parchment were still legible.[1309] But the urgent necessities of their situation did not suffer the half-famished inhabitants to stop here. With the proverbial ingenuity of their nation, they turned their attention to the parchment on old drums, and subjected to the skilful hands of cooks the discarded hoofs, horns, and bones of animals, the harness of horses, and even refuse sc.r.a.ps of leather. There seemed to be nothing they could not lay under contribution to furnish at least a little nutriment.

And yet ghastly hunger little by little tightened her relentless embrace.

Almost all the children under twelve years of age died. In the universal reign of famine there were at last found those who were ready to repeat the horrible crime of feeding upon the flesh of their own kindred. It was discovered that a husband and wife, with a neighboring crone, had endeavored to satisfy the gnawings of hunger by eating a newly dead child.

Their guilt came speedily to light, and was punished according to the severe code of the sixteenth century. The father was sentenced by the council to be burned alive; his wife to be strangled and her body consigned to the flames; while the corpse of the old woman who had instigated the foul deed but had meanwhile died, was ordered to be dug up and burned. But the feeling of the great majority of the besieged was far removed from that despair which prompts to an inhuman disregard of natural decency and affection. Near the close of July a boy of barely ten years, as he lay on his death-bed, said to his weeping parents: "Why do you weep thus at seeing me die of hunger? I do not ask bread, mother; I know you have none. But since G.o.d wills that I die thus, we must accept it cheerfully. Was not that holy man Lazarus hungry? Have I not so read in the Bible?"[1310]

The catastrophe could not much longer be deferred. Within the city speedy death stared every man in the face. Permission had, we have seen, been accorded to the poor, early in June, to go forth from the city walls; but the besieging force had mercilessly driven them back when they attempted to gain the open country. Numbers, unwilling to accept a second time the fatal hospitality of the city, preferred to remain in their exposed situation, miserably dragging out a precarious existence by subsisting upon snails, buds of trees and shrubs--even to the very gra.s.s of the field.

[Sidenote: Sancerre capitulates.]

Happily for Sancerre, the political exigencies of the royal court insured for the besieged Protestants, in the inevitable capitulation, more favorable terms than they might otherwise have obtained. As early as the eighteenth of July, Lery had been informed at a parley, by a former acquaintance on the Roman Catholic side, that a general peace had been concluded, and that Henry of Anjou had been elected to the throne of Poland. This first intimation was discredited by the cautious Protestants, not unused to the wiles of the enemy. But when, some twenty days later (on the sixth of August), the statement was confirmed, and the Sancerrois received the additional a.s.surance that they would be mildly treated, their surprise knew no bounds. The terms of surrender were easily arranged. A ransom of forty thousand livres was to be exacted from the city. On the thirty-first of August, M. de la Chastre made his solemn entry into Sancerre, accompanied by a band of Roman Catholic priests chanting a _Te Deum_ over his success. As was too frequently the case, the promise of immunity to the inhabitants was but poorly kept. Scarcely had two weeks pa.s.sed before the "bailli" Johanneau,[1311] summoned from his house by the archers of the prevot, on the plea that M. de la Chastre desired his presence, was treacherously murdered on the way to the governor's house.

Besides a.s.sa.s.sination, other infractions of the capitulation were committed; the gates of the city were burned, the walls dismantled, many of the houses torn down. In fact, so unmercifully was Sancerre harried, partly by the troops, partly by the peasantry of the neighborhood, and by the "bailli" of Berry, that the reformed church of this place seems to have been, for the time, completely dispersed.[1312]

Thus ended a siege which had lasted some eight months. The besieged had lost only eighty-four men by the direct effects of warfare; but more than five hundred persons perished during the last six weeks of sheer starvation.[1313]

Sancerre owed its release from the horrors of the siege in great part to the same causes that had powerfully contributed to the conclusion of the peace. The Polish amba.s.sadors, coming to proffer the crown to the king's brother, Henry of Anjou, were about to reach the French court. They were already not a little surprised at the discovery that the statements and promises made in the king's name by that not over-scrupulous negotiator, Montluc, Bishop of Valence, were impudent impostures, fabricated for no other purpose than to secure at all hazards the success of the French candidate for the Polish throne. To exhibit to them at this critical juncture the edifying spectacle of a royal governor of the province of Berry engaged in the reduction of a city the only crime of which was its desire to enjoy religious liberty--this would have been a dangerous venture. Consequently it was no fortuitous coincidence that Sancerre capitulated the very day the Polish amba.s.sadors made their appearance.

[Sidenote: Reception of the Polish amba.s.sadors.]

We shall not dwell upon the pomp attending their reception. The banquet held in the new palace of the Tuileries was brilliant. In the pageant succeeding it was displayed a ma.s.sive rock of silver, with sixteen nymphs in as many niches, personating the provinces of the French kingdom. When, after some verses well sung but indifferently composed, these nymphs descended from their elevation, and took part in an intricate maze of dance, the Polish spectators remarked, in the excess of their admiration, that the French ballet was something that could be imitated by none of the kings of the earth. "I would rather," dryly adds a contemporary historian, "that they had said as much respecting our _armies_."[1314]

[Sidenote: Discontent of the south with the terms of peace.]

The Protestants of Southern France had been included in the Edict of Pacification. In fact, Nismes and Montauban were as distinctly referred to by name as La Roch.e.l.le.[1315] But the terms of peace were not to the taste of the enterprising and self-reliant Huguenots of Languedoc and Guyenne.

They had learned, during the last ten years, to distrust all a.s.surances emanating from the court, even when claiming the authority of the king's name. Experience had taught them that previous edicts were framed simply to secure the destruction of those whom open warfare had failed to destroy.[1316] Without, therefore, either definitely accepting or rejecting the terms offered them, the Protestants of Nismes applied to Marshal Damville, who, at the conclusion of the peace, found himself with the royal troops at the hamlet of Milhaud, a league or two from their gates,[1317] for a fortnight's suspension of hostilities. The request being granted, a truce was established which was extended by successive prolongations beyond the beginning of the next year.[1318]

[Sidenote: a.s.sembly of Milhau and Montauban.]

Meantime the Protestants, notified by the Duke of Anjou of the conclusion of the peace, sent messengers to his camp requesting that as the matter was one vitally affecting the entire Protestant population, they might receive permission to meet, under protection of the royal authority, and deliberate respecting it. The king's consent having been obtained, Protestant deputies from almost all parts of the kingdom came together, late in the month of August, 1573, in the city of Milhau-en-Rouergue, from which they shortly transferred their sessions to Montauban.

[Sidenote: Military organization of the Huguenots.]

This important a.s.sembly resolved to accept no peace unless based upon equitable terms and secured by ample guarantees. In view of the possibility of the recurrence of war, provision was made for a complete military organization of the Huguenot resources in the south of France.

For this purpose Languedoc was divided into two "generalites" or governments--the government of Nismes, or Lower Languedoc, placed under command of M. de Saint Romain, and that of Upper Languedoc, with Montauban for its chief city, to which the Viscount de Paulin was a.s.signed as military chief. Both governments were in turn subdivided into dioceses or particular governments, each furnished with a governor and a deliberative a.s.sembly. It was provided that in Nismes and Montauban respectively a council should be convened consisting of deputies from all the dioceses of the government, and that to this council, together with the governor, should be intrusted the administration of the finances, with authority to impose taxes alike upon Protestants and Roman Catholics. The organization, it was estimated, could readily place twenty thousand men in the field.[1319]

Such were the first attempts to perfect a system of warfare forced upon the Huguenots by the treacherous a.s.saults of their enemies--a fatal necessity of inst.i.tuting a state within a state, foreboding nothing but ruin to France.

[Sidenote: Pet.i.tion to the king.]

One of the chief results of the deliberations at Montauban was the preparation of a pet.i.tion to be laid before the king. This paper, which has come down to us with the signatures of the viscounts, barons, and other adherents of the Huguenot party, was intended to be an expression not only of their own individual views, but also of the sentiments of the churches they represented.[1320] The language is sharp and incisive, the demands are unmistakably bold. For a sufficient justification of their recent words and actions, the Huguenots of Guyenne point the monarch to his own letter of the twenty-fourth of August, 1572, by which constraint was laid upon them to a.s.sume arms. They call upon Charles, in accordance with the promise contained in that letter, to follow up the traces there alleged to have been found regarding the murder of Gaspard de Coligny, to appoint impartial judges for this purpose, and to execute exemplary justice upon the guilty. Not satisfied with claiming the annulling of all judicial proceedings, the destruction of all monuments erected to perpetuate the memory of the Ma.s.sacre of St. Bartholomew's Day, and the abolition of processions inst.i.tuted by the parliaments of Paris and Toulouse with the same end in view, they call on Charles to make a declaration "that justly and for good reasons have 'those of the religion' taken arms, resisting and warring in these last troubles, as constrained thereto by the violent acts with which they have been a.s.sailed and driven to distraction." They next demand those concessions which alone can make the position of the Protestants in France secure and endurable--freedom of worship and church discipline established by perpetual provision, irrespective of place or time; the right of honorable burial; immunity from taxation for the support of Roman Catholic ceremonies; admission to schools and colleges; just regulations as to marriage; amnesty; the power to hold civil office, etc. They request permission to levy a sum of one hundred and twenty thousand livres among themselves to pay off the indebtedness incurred by them in past wars. And they go so far as not only to stipulate that the King of France shall renounce all leagues he may have contracted with the enemies of his Protestant subjects for their destruction, but even to propose that he shall conclude a defensive alliance with the Protestant states of Germany, Switzerland, England, and Scotland. Meanwhile, in order to prevent the recurrence of "a conspiracy and Sicilian Vespers," of which the Huguenots would be the victims, they ask to be permitted to hold forever the guard of those cities which they now have in their possession, and in addition some other cities in each of the provinces of the realm. The Protestant cities, it is stipulated, shall retain their walls and munitions, and the royal governors shall enter them accompanied only by a small retinue. The observance of these articles the Huguenots insist shall be solemnly sworn in privy and public council, and by the inhabitants of all places, the oath to be renewed every five years.[1321]

Such stout demands did the Protestants of the south and south-west address to Charles the Ninth on the first anniversary of the fatal matins of Paris. They were, it must be admitted, somewhat different from what might have been expected, a brief year before, from the fugitives who made their escape from the b.l.o.o.d.y sword of their enemies. Moreover, the terms laid down by the Huguenots of Lower Languedoc and Nismes were conceived in the same brave language, and their demands were virtually identical. Huguenot troops, paid by the king, to garrison both the cities now in the hands of the Protestants, and two cities in each of the sixteen provinces required for additional protection; free worship irrespective of place; new parliaments in all the provinces, with Protestant judges to administer justice to Protestants; liberty to levy t.i.thes for the support of reformed churches; punishment of the instigators and perpetrators of the atrocities of the Ma.s.sacre of St. Bartholomew's Day, as robbers and disturbers of the public peace.[1322] The Tiers etat of Provence and Dauphiny added to the demands of Languedoc and Guyenne an urgent pet.i.tion in favor of the reduction of the onerous imposts under which the country was groaning.[1323]

[Sidenote: "Les fronts d'airain."]

[Sidenote: Catharine's bitter reply.]

The bearers of these demands were well able to give them forcible and fearless enunciation--Yolet, Philippi, Chavagnac, and others of the men known by the expressive designation of "Les fronts d'airain."[1324]

a.s.suredly a brow of bra.s.s was not out of place, when the Protestant deputies, after a delay of some weeks, were reluctantly admitted to an audience. Charles the Ninth and his court were at this time at Villers-Cotterets, on their way to the eastern frontiers of France, accompanying the newly elected King of Poland as he slowly and unwillingly journeyed toward the capital of a kingdom regarded by him in the light of a detestable place of exile. Contemporary writers inform us that Yolet and his companions were in no degree overawed by the splendor of the scene, and made no weak abatement in the terms they had been instructed to propose. Charles heard them through with patient attention. He was not a little astonished at the extent of their demands, we may be certain; but he made no comment upon the courageous a.s.sertion of Protestant rights. Not so with the queen mother. When the deputies had at length finished their harangue, Catharine could no longer contain her indignation. "Why," she exclaimed with marked bitterness of tone, "if your Conde himself were alive and in the heart of the kingdom with twenty thousand horse and fifty thousand foot, and held the chief cities in his power, he would not make half so great demands!"[1325]

[Sidenote: The Huguenots firm.]

Despite the unwelcome character of the claims of the Huguenot deputies, some answer must be given. It was found impossible to induce the envoys to modify them. They denied that they had the power, even if they had the inclination, to alter the action of those who had sent them. They were therefore dismissed with expressions of good-will and the a.s.surance that two royal commissioners, the Duc d'Uzes and the Chevalier de Caylus, would be sent to treat with the delegates whom the Huguenots might choose.

Marshal Damville, governor of the province, was to partic.i.p.ate in the negotiations and to appoint some city in the vicinity of Montauban where they might be held. Charles was to hear the result of their conference on his return from the German borders. Meanwhile he promised to instruct Damville to put an end to all hostilities, provided the Huguenots should desist from everything tending to provoke retaliation.[1326] The Tiers etat received the answer to their pet.i.tion more promptly. It was naturally to the effect that a return to the meagre scale of imposts under Louis XI.

was utterly impracticable, in view of the burdens of the treasury arising from recent wars and the pensions yearly payable to various members of the royal family.[1327]

[Sidenote: Progress of the court to the borders of France.]

[Sidenote: Decline of the health of Charles IX.]

It would be out of place to describe here at any length the slow progress of the French court as it escorted the King of Poland to the borders of the realm. To none of the princ.i.p.al personages taking part was it the occasion of much satisfaction. Catharine was as reluctant to part from Henry, her favorite son, as he was himself averse to exchange the pleasures of the Louvre and Saint Germain for the crown of an unruly and half-civilized kingdom. As for Charles, the gratification he could not conceal at the prospect of being soon freed from the presence of a brother whom he both disliked and feared was more than counterbalanced by the rapid decline of his own health. The boy of eleven, whom the Venetian amba.s.sador had described about the time of his accession to the throne as handsome, amiable, and graceful in appearance, quick, vivacious, and humane--in short, as possessing every quality from which a great prince and a great king might be expected,[1328] was now a man of twenty-three.

But his const.i.tution, never robust, had gained nothing. The violent exercises to which he had been addicted even as a child, and which, though princely, had been p.r.o.nounced dangerous by the amba.s.sador, had been incessantly practised--the ball, horsemanship, arms--and bodily feebleness, not strength, had been the result. Other excesses had contributed to hasten the catastrophe. More than all, if we may believe the testimony of those who were familiar with the young monarch's later life, the mental and moral experience of the last eighteen months left their impress on his physical system. Charles, with the Ma.s.sacre of St.

Bartholomew's Day, had lost all the elasticity of youth. Remorse for complicity in the crime then perpetrated co-operated with the persuasion of the uselessness and complete failure of the attempt to exterminate the Huguenots, and the consciousness of having incurred the indelible mark of hatred and detestation of an impartial posterity. Even in his sleeping hours the curse of the murdered victims pursued him and disturbed his rest. Neither by day nor by night could he banish the remembrance of the time when blood ran so freely in the streets of Paris.

No attentive observer could doubt that the end was drawing near. The court had gone no farther on its way to Lorraine than the little town of Vitry-le-Francais, on the river Marne, when Charles fell so seriously ill as to be unable to prosecute his journey. As was usual in such cases, while the physicians alleged as a sufficient explanation of the attack the king's immoderate exercise in the chase and in blowing the trumpet, the more suspicious frequenters of the court and the credulous people did not hesitate to invent the story that he had been poisoned. But by whom the crime had been committed was not settled. Some ascribed it to Catharine, others to Henry of Anjou, while others still laid the guilt at the door of a person of less note, whose honor the licentious king had offended.[1329]