History of the Rise of the Huguenots Volume I Part 43

Meanwhile, not only were vigorous measures adopted to guard against attack, but the most powerful n.o.bles, who might be suspected of complicity, were sounded respecting their intentions. Coligny and his brother, D'Andelot, who, in virtue of their offices as Admiral and Colonel-General of the infantry, stood at the head of the army, received affectionate invitations from Catharine to visit the court. Upon their arrival they were taken apart, and were earnestly entreated by the queen mother and Chancellor Olivier to a.s.sist them by their counsel, and not to abandon the young king. To so urgent a request Coligny made a frank reply. He explained the existing discontent and its causes, both religious and political. Persecution, and the usurpation of those who were esteemed foreigners by the French, lay at the root of the troubles.

He advised the relaxation of the rigorous treatment of the adherents of the Reformation. _Extermination_ was out of the question. The numbers of the Protestants had become too great to permit the entertaining of such a thought. Moreover, the court might be a.s.sured that there were those--and they were not few--who would no longer consent to endure the cruelty to which, for forty years, they had been subjected, especially now that it was exercised under the authority of a young king governed by persons "more hated than the plague," and known to be inspired less by religious zeal than by excessive ambition, and by an avarice that could be satisfied only by obtaining the property of the richest houses in France. An edict of toleration, couched in explicit terms and honestly executed, was the only remedy to restore peace and quiet until the convocation of a free and holy council.[823]

[Sidenote: The edict of amnesty March, 1560.]

[Sidenote: It is promptly registered.]

The privy council, if not persuaded of the propriety of initiating a policy of toleration, were at least convinced of the necessity of yielding temporarily to the storm; and even the Guises deemed it advisable to make concessions, which could easily be revoked on the advent of more peaceful times. Accordingly, an edict of pretended amnesty was hastily drawn up, and as expeditiously published. The king was moved to take this step--so the edict made him say--by compa.s.sion for the number of persons who, from motives of curiosity or simplicity, had attended the conventicles of the preachers from Geneva--for the most part mechanical folk and of no literary attainments--as well as by reluctance to render the first year of his reign notable in after times for the effusion of the blood of his poor subjects. By the provisions of this important instrument the royal judges were forbidden to make inquisition into, or inflict punishment for any _past_ crime concerning the faith: and all delinquents were pardoned _on condition that they should hereafter live as good Catholics and obedient sons of Mother Holy Church_. But from the benefits of the amnesty were expressly excluded all preachers and those who had conspired against the person of the king or his ministers.[824] The edict--much to the surprise of those who knew the sanguinary disposition of the judges--was promptly registered by parliament; whether it was that the judges were reconciled to the step by a secret article with which, it was said, they accompanied it, to guide in the future interpretation of the law, or that the majority regarded it as a piece of deceit.[825]

[Sidenote: A year's progress.]

[Sidenote: Beza's comment.]

In spite of its insincerity, however, the edict, wrung from the unwilling hands of the cardinal and the privy council, marks an important epoch in the history of the Reformed Church in France. Barely nine months had elapsed since five members of the Parisian Parliament had been thrown into the Bastile for daring to advocate a mitigation of the penalties p.r.o.nounced against the Protestants, until the a.s.sembling of the long-promised c.u.menical Council. Little more than two months had pa.s.sed since one of their number, and the most virtuous judge on the bench, had been ignominiously executed. And now the King of France, with the approval and almost at the instigation of the chief persecutor, proclaimed an oblivion of all offences against religion, and the liberation of all persons imprisoned for heresy. The reformers, who had rarely succeeded by their most strenuous exertions in obtaining the release of a few of their co-religionists, could scarcely restrain a smile when they discovered what a potent auxiliary they had obtained unawares--in the _fears_ of their antagonists. "Would that you could read and understand the number of contradictory edicts they have written in a single month!" wrote one who took a deep interest in French affairs. "You would a.s.suredly be amazed at their incredible fright, when no one is pursuing them, except Him whom they least fear! What you could not succeed in obtaining by any of your emba.s.sies in former years, they have given of their own accord to those who sought it not--the liberation of the entire number of prisoners on all sides. Most have been released in spite of their open profession of their faith. The injustice of the judges has, however, led to the retention of a few in chains up to this moment."[826]

[Sidenote: A powerful party had arisen.]

Notwithstanding its incompleteness and insincerity, however, "the Edict of Forgiveness," as it was termed, is a significant landmark in the history of French Protestantism. It is the point where begins the transition from the period of persecution to the period of civil war. By this concession, reluctantly granted and faithlessly executed, the first recognition was made of the existence of a large and powerful body of dissidents from the Roman Catholic Church. No longer were there a few scattered sectaries whose heretical views might be suppressed by their individual extermination. But a compact and wide-spread and rapidly growing party had a.s.sumed dimensions that defied any such paltry measures. It had outgrown persecution. The time for its eradication by open war or by secret ma.s.sacre might yet come. Meanwhile, it was important to avert present disaster by partial concessions.

[Sidenote: Dismay of the court.]

[Sidenote: New alarms.]

The treachery of Des Avenelles had warned the Guises of their danger, but had left them in dismay and doubt. They knew not whom to trust, nor whence to expect the impending blow. Sir Nicholas Throkmorton's correspondence is full of interesting details throwing light upon the confusion and embarra.s.sment of the Guises. "You shall understand," he writes on the seventh of March, "that the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine have discovered a conspiracy wrought against themselves and their authority, which they have bruited (to make the matter more odious) to be meant only against the king: whereupon they are in such fear as themselves do wear privy coats, and are in the night guarded with pistoliers and men in arms. They have apprehended eight or nine, and have put some to the torture." "Being ready to seal up this letter,"

he adds in a postscript, "I do understand that the fear of this commotion is so great, as the sixth of this present, the Duke of Guise, the Cardinal of Lorraine, the Grand Prior, and all the knights of the Order which were here, watched all night long in the court, and the gates of this town were all shut and kept." On the fifteenth of March he writes: "These men here have their hands full, and are so busied to provide for surety at home, that they cannot intend to answer foreigners. This night a new hot alarm is offered, and our town doth begin again to be guarded. It is a marvel to see how they be daunted, that have not at other times been afraid of great armies of hors.e.m.e.n, footmen, and the fury of shot of artillery: I never saw state more amazed than this at some time, and by and by more reckless; they know not whom to mistrust, nor to trust.... He hath all the trust this daye, that to-morrow is least trusted. You can imagine your advantage." A few days later he writes again: "And now it was thought that this was but a popular commotion, without order, and not to be feared; when, unlooked for, the 17th, in the morning, about four of the clock, there arrived a company of 150 hors.e.m.e.n well appointed, who approached the court gates, and shot off their pistolets at the church of the Bonhommes, whereupon there was such an alarm and running up and down in the court, as if the enemies being encamped about them had sought to make an entry into the castle: and there was crying, _To horse, to horse_.... This continued an hour and a half,"[827] etc.

La Renaudie had actually established himself within six leagues of Amboise on the second of March, and had made his arrangements for the vigorous execution of his plans a fortnight later. The Guises were to be seized by a party that counted upon gaining secret admission to the castle, and opening the gates to comrades concealed in the neighborhood.

But another act of treachery on the part of a confederate enabled the cardinal and his brother to frustrate a project so sagaciously laid and offering fair promise of success. The parties of cavaliers, who had succeeded, as by a miracle, in eluding the spies and agents of their enemies, posted in every important city of France, and had reached the very vicinity of the court without discovery, were caught in detail at their rendezvous. Companies of fifteen or twenty men thus fell into the hands of the troops hastily a.s.sembled by the urgent commands of the king's ministers.

[Sidenote: Treacherous capture of Castelnau.]

[Sidenote: Death of La Renaudie.]

A more powerful detachment of malcontents could not be so easily stopped, and threw itself into the castle of Noizay. It seemed more feasible to overcome them by stratagem than by open a.s.sault. The Duke of Nemours, having been sent to reduce the place, allowed Baron de Castelnau, commander of the insurgents, a personal interview. Here the Huguenot defended his adherents against the imputation of having revolted against their lawful monarch, and maintained that, on the contrary, they had come to uphold his honor and free him from the intrigues of the Guises. Seeing, however, the hopelessness of resisting the superior force of his enemy, Castelnau consented to capitulate, after exacting from the Duke of Nemours his princely word that he and his followers should receive no injury, and be permitted to have free access to the king, in order to lay before him their grievances. The pledge thus given was redeemed in no chivalrous manner. No account was made of the terms accepted. Castelnau and his companions-in-arms were at once thrown into the dungeons of Amboise, and steps were taken for their trial on a charge of treason.[828] Much larger numbers, arriving in the vicinity of Amboise ignorant of what had happened, were surrounded by cavalry and brought in tied to the horses' tails. Many a knight, better accoutred than his fellows, was despatched in a more summary manner and stripped of his armor, after which his body was carelessly thrown into a ditch by the roadside.[829] La Renaudie was so fortunate as to escape this fate and the yet more cruel doom that awaited him at Amboise, by meeting a soldier's death, while courageously fighting against a party of Guisards who fell in with him. He had just slain his antagonist--one Pardaillan, his own relative--when (on the nineteenth of March) he was himself instantly killed by the ball from an arquebuse fired by his opponent's servant.[830]

[Sidenote: Plenary powers given to the Duke of Guise.]

While the alarm arising from the "tumult" was yet at its height, the Guises took advantage of it to obtain yet larger powers, at the same time securing their position against future a.s.saults. The king, in his terror, was readily induced to accept the warlike uncle of his wife as the only person on whose military prowess and faithfulness he could rely. He regarded the interest of the Guises and his own as identical; for he had been told, and he firmly believed it, that the enmity of the insurgents was directed no less against the crown than against its unpopular ministers.[831] On the seventeenth of March he therefore gave a commission to "Francis of Lorraine, Duke of Guise, peer, grand master, and grand chamberlain," to be his lieutenant-general with absolute powers, promising to approve of all his acts, and authorizing him to impose the customary punishment upon the seditious, without form or figure of process.[832]

[Sidenote: Chancellor Olivier opposes.]

[Sidenote: Forgiveness to the submissive.]

There were those about the monarch who could not but look with concern upon the unlimited authority thus accorded to an ambitious prince.

Chancellor Olivier was of this number. He at first refused to affix the seal of state to a paper which falsely purported to have been made by advice of the council. It was, however, at length decided that another edict should be published contemporaneously, extending forgiveness to all that had a.s.sembled in arms in the neighborhood of the city of Amboise, under color of desiring to present to the king a confession of their faith. To avail themselves of the benefits of this pardon, they must, within "twice twenty-four hours," return to their homes, in companies of two, or, at the most, three together. The disobedient were to be hung without process of law, and the tocsin might be rung to gather a force for the purpose of capturing them. The king, however, invited all that desired to present him their requests to depute one of their number to lay them before his council, promising, on the pledge of his royal word, redress and security.[833]

[Sidenote: Explained away by a new edict.]

The acts of the court little agreed with these words of clemency. Many of those who, in obedience to the edict, turned their steps homeward, found that edict to be only a snare for their simplicity. Indeed, five days only had elapsed when, on the twenty-second of March, a fresh edict, explanatory of the former, excluded from the amnesty all that had taken part in the conspiracy![834]

[Sidenote: Carnival of blood.]

[Sidenote: The young king visibly affected.]

But it was at Amboise that the vengeance of the Guises found its widest scope. Day and night the execution of the prisoners stayed not. Their punishment was ingeniously diversified. Some were decapitated, others hung; still others were drowned in the waters of the Loire.[835] The streets of Amboise ran with blood, and the stench of the unburied corpses threatened a pestilence. Ten or twelve dead bodies, in full clothing and tied to a single pole, floated down from time to time toward the sea, and carried tidings of the wholesale ma.s.sacre to the cities on the lower Loire. Neither trial nor publication of the charge preceded the summary execution. Most frequently the victims were placed in the hangman's hand immediately after the hour for dinner, that their dying agonies might furnish an agreeable diversion to the ladies of the court, who watched the gibbet from the royal drawing-rooms. Few, besides the d.u.c.h.ess of Guise, daughter of Renee of Ferrara, manifested any disgust at the repulsive spectacle. Some of the prisoners who importunately insisted on seeing the king, and making before him a profession of their faith, were summarily hanged from the castle windows. One intrepid reformer had been so fortunate as to be admitted to the queen mother's presence, and there, by his ready and cogent reasoning, had well-nigh brought the Cardinal of Lorraine to admit that his view of the Lord's Supper was correct. Catharine's attention having been for a moment withdrawn, when she returned to the discussion the man had disappeared. Actuated by curiosity or by a desire to spare his life, she requested him to be sent for. It was too late; he had already been despatched.[836] For the most part, the victims displayed great constancy and courage. Many died with the words of the psalms of Marot and Beza on their lips.[837] Castelnau, after having in his interrogatory made patent to all the hypocrisy of the cardinal and the cowardice of the chancellor, died maintaining that, before he was p.r.o.nounced guilty of treason, the Guises ought to be declared kings of France. Villemongys, upon the scaffold, dipped his hands in the blood of his companions, and, raising them toward heaven, exclaimed in a loud voice: "Lord, this is the blood of Thy children, unjustly shed. Thou wilt avenge it!"[838] The body of La Renaudie was first hung upon one of the bridges of Amboise, with the superscription: "_La Renaudie, styling himself Laforest, author of the conspiracy, chief and leader of the rebels_." Afterward it was quartered, and his head, in company with the heads of others, was exposed upon a pole on a public square.[839] The sight of these continually recurring executions, succeeding a fearful struggle in which so many of his subjects had taken part, is said to have affected even the young king, who asked, with tears, what he had done to his people to animate them thus against him. It is even reported that, catching for an instant, through the mist with which his advisers sought to keep his mind enshrouded, a glimpse of the true cause of the discontent, he made a feeble suggestion, which was easily parried, that the Guises should for a time retire from the court, in order that he might find out whether the popular enmity was in reality directed against him, or against his uncles.[840] Their fertile invention, however, was not slow in concocting a story that turned his short-lived pity into settled hatred of the "Huguenot heretics."

[Sidenote: The elder D'Aubigne and his son.]

On others, and especially upon those whose hearts throbbed with patriotic devotion, a less transient impression was made. Some months after, the young Agrippa d'Aubigne, then a mere child of ten years, was traversing the city of Amboise with his father. The impaled heads of the victims were still to be recognized. The barbarous sight moved the elder D'Aubigne's soul to its very depths. "They have beheaded France, hangmen that they are!" he cried out in the hearing of the hundreds that were present at the fair. Then, spurring his horse, he scarcely escaped the hands of the rabble who had caught his words. Afterward, when his young son had rejoined him, he placed his hand on Agrippa's head, and exclaimed, full of emotion: "My child, you must not spare your head after mine, to avenge these chieftains full of honor, whose heads you have just seen! If you spare yourself in this matter, you will have my curse."[841]

[Sidenote: Peril of the Prince of Conde.]

[Sidenote: He is summoned by the king.]

[Sidenote: Conde's defiance.]

[Sidenote: Guise's offer.]

The Prince of Conde had set out for the court about the time of the discovery of the conspiracy. If the coldness of the courtiers whom he met on the way did not convince him that he was suspected, the position in which he soon found himself at Amboise left him no doubts. Surrounded by spies, he was viewed more as a prisoner than as a guest. The Guises even counselled Francis to stab him with his dagger while pretending to sport with him. The crime was averted both by the caution of the prince and by a reluctance on the part of the young king to imbrue his hands in the blood of his kinsman--a sentiment which the Guises interpreted as cowardice.[842] But, unable to resist the urgency of those who accused Conde of being the true head of the conspiracy, and maintained that the testimony of many of the prisoners rendered the fact indubitable, Francis at length summoned the young Bourbon to his presence. He informed him of the accusations, and a.s.sured him that, should they prove true, he would make him feel the difficulty and the danger of attacking a king of France. At Conde's request an a.s.sembly of all the princes, and of the members of the Privy Council and of the Order of St. Michael, was summoned, that he might return his answer to the charges laid against him.[843] In the midst of the august gathering, Louis of Bourbon arose and recited the conversation which he had had with the king. He knew, he said, that he had enemies about him who sought his entire ruin and that of his house. He had, therefore, solicited to be heard in this company, and his answer was: that, excepting the person of the king, his brothers, and the queens, his mother and wife--and he said it with all respect to their presence--whoever had a.s.serted to the king that Conde was the chief of certain seditious individuals who were said to have conspired against his person and estate, had "falsely and miserably lied." To prove his innocence he offered to waive for the time the privileges of his rank as prince of the blood, and in single combat force his accuser at the point of the sword to confess himself a poltroon and a calumniator. As Conde looked proudly around, no one ventured to accept the gauntlet he had thrown down. On the contrary, the Duke of Guise, his most bitter enemy, promptly stepped forward to offer him his services as second in the single combat proposed! Hereupon Conde begged the king to esteem him hereafter a faithful and honorable man, and entreated his Majesty to lend no ear to the authors of such calumnies, but to regard them as common enemies of the crown and of the public peace.[844]

[Sidenote: An alleged admission of disloyal intentions by La Renaudie.]

It is well known that the Huguenots were accused by their enemies of intending to remodel the government of France. According to some, the king was to be retained, but shorn of his authority; according to others, he was to be dispensed with altogether. Under any circ.u.mstances, the Swiss confederation was to be imitated or reproduced in France. That which gave the pretended scheme most of its air of probability, in the eyes of the unreflecting, and compensated for the entire absence of proof of its substantial reality, was the familiarity of many of the Huguenots--both religious and political--with Geneva, Basle, Berne, and other small republican states. These were fountains of Protestant doctrine; these had afforded many a refugee shelter from persecution in France. It was notorious that the free inst.i.tutions of these cities were the object of admiration on the part of the Calvinists.[845]

I believe that no contemporary writer has brought forward a particle of evidence in support of this view, and impartial men have rejected it as incredible. But a history of the Parliament of Bordeaux, lately published,[846] contains an extract from the records of that court, which, if trustworthy, would go far to establish the reality of treasonable designs entertained by the Huguenots. Under date of Sept. 4, 1561, the following entry appears:

"Ledit jour, M. Geraut Faure, official de Perigueux, a dit: qu'il y a deux ans que le feu _Sieur de La Renaudie_ fust a la maison dudit official, a Nontron, lui dire _que c'estoit grande folie qu'un tel royaume fust gouverne par un roi seul_, et que si l'official vouloit l'entendre, qu'il lui feroit un grand avantage; car _on deliberoit de faire un canton a Perigueux, et un autre a Bordeaux_ dont il esperoit avoir la superintendance. Et lors luy tenant de tels propos, retira a part ledit official sans qu'autre l'entendist. Ainsi signe: Faure."

The late M. Boscheron des Portes, giving full credit to the a.s.sertion of the "official" of Perigueux, believed that the party of which La Renaudie was a prominent leader contemplated, in 1559-1560, the formation of "a federative republic broken up into cantons, the number and situation of which were already, it would appear, determined upon by the authors of the project." And he deplores the blind sectarian spirit which could induce Frenchmen to acquiesce in a plan designed to destroy the unity and consequent power of a realm whose consolidation every successive king since the origin of the monarchy had unceasingly pursued.

I imagine that few unbia.s.sed minds will follow this usually judicious historian in his singularly precipitate acceptance of the "official's" statement. It is in patent contradiction with well-known facts respecting the const.i.tution of the Huguenot party.

The n.o.blemen who gave this party their support had everything to lose, and nothing to gain, by the change from a monarchical to a republican form of government. Conde, the "chef muet," was a prince of the blood, not so far removed from the throne as to regard it altogether impossible that he or his children might yet succeed to the crown. The main body of the party had had no reason to entertain hostility to regal authority. The prevailing discontent was not directed against the young king, but against the persons surrounding him who had illegally usurped his name and the real functions of royalty. If persecution for religion's sake had long raged, the victims had never uttered a syllable smacking of disloyalty, and continued to hope, not without some apparent reason, that the truth might yet reach the heart of kings.

But, independently of the gross inconsistency between the design ascribed to La Renaudie and the known sentiments of the Huguenots at this time, there are other marks of improbability connected with the statement of Geraut Faure. It was not made at the time of the pretended disclosure, or shortly after, when, if genuine, it would have insured the informer favor and reward; but, after the lapse of "two years," when Francis the Second had been dead nine months, and when under a new king fresh political issues had arisen. In fact, if the term of two years be construed strictly, it carries us back to September, 1559, when Francis the Second had been barely three months on the throne, and the plans of the Huguenots had, to all appearance, by no means had time to a.s.sume the completeness implied in Faure's statement. Not to speak of the great vagueness and the utter absence of circ.u.mstantial details in the announcement of the conspiracy and in the promised advantages, it should be remarked that the confidant selected by La Renaudie was a very unlikely person to be chosen. The "official," an ecclesiastical judge deputed by the Bishop of Perigueux to take charge of spiritual jurisdiction in his diocese, could scarcely be regarded by La Renaudie as the safest depositary of so valuable a trust.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 729: Davila, p. 20.]

[Footnote 730: "Lancea sanctorum tunc inopina salus." Epigram _apud_ Le Laboureur, Additions aux mem. de Castelnau, i. 276.]

[Footnote 731:

Sic cruce detractum fixit tua lancea Christum, Per latus illorum quos sua membra vocat.

At Deus omnipotens, Christi justissimus ultor, Sanguine, dixit, erit lancea tincta tuo. _Ib._, _ubi supra_.