History of the Rise of the Huguenots Volume I Part 50

Or read the lines in which the writer sums up a portion of the Cardinal's villainy: "Quand je te diray que les fautes des finances de France ne viennent que de tes larcins? Quand je te diray qu'un mari est plus continent avec sa femme que tu n'es avec tes propres parentes? Si je te dis encore que tu t'es empare du gouvernement de la France, et as derobe cet honneur aux Princes du sang, pour mettre la couronne de France en ta maison--que pourras-tu repondre?

Si tu le confesses, il te faut pendre et estrangler; si tu le nies, je te convaincrai."

A pa.s.sage of unsurpa.s.sed bitterness paints the portrait of the hypocritical churchman: "Tu fais mourir ceux qui conspirent contre toy: et tu vis encore, qui as conspire contre la couronne de France, contre les biens des veuves et des orphelins, contre le sang des tristes et des innocens! Tu fais profession de prescher de saintete, toy qui ne connois Dieu que de parole; qui ne tiens la religion chretienne que comme un masque pour te deguiser; qui fais ordinaire trafic, banque et marchandise d'evesches et de benefices: qui ne vois rien de saint que tu ne souilles, rien de chaste que tu ne violes, rien de bon que tu ne gates!... Tu dis que ceux qui reprennent tes vices medisent du Roy, tu veux donc qu'on t'estime Roy? Si Caesar fut occis pour avoir pretendu le sceptre injustement, doit-on permettre que tu vives, toy qui le demandes injustement?"

With which terribly severe denunciation the reader may compare the statements of a pasquinade, unsurpa.s.sed for pungent wit by any composition of the times, written apparently about a year later.

Addressing the cardinal, Pasquin expresses his perplexity respecting the place where his Eminence will find an abode. The _French_ dislike him so much, that they will have him neither as master nor as servant; the _Italians_ know his tricks; the _Spaniards_ cannot endure his rage; the _Germans_ abhor incest; the _English_ and _Scotch_ hold him to be a traitor; the _Turk_ and the _Sophy_ are Mohammedans, while the cardinal believes in _nothing_!

_Heaven_ is closed against the unbeliever, the devils would be afraid to have him in _h.e.l.l_, and in the ensuing council the Protestants are going to do away with _purgatory_! "Et tu miser, ubi peribis?" Copy in State Paper Office (1561).

The peroration of "Le Tigre" is worthy of the great Roman orator himself. The circ.u.mstance that, on account of the limited number of copies of M. Read's edition, the "Tigre" must necessarily be accessible to very few readers, will be sufficient excuse for here inserting this extended pa.s.sage, in which, for the sake of clearness, I have followed M. Read's modernized spelling:

"Mais pourquoi dis-je ceci? Afin que tu te corriges? Je connais ta jeunesse si envieillie en son obstination, et tes murs si depravees, que le recit de tes vices ne te scauroit emouvoir. Tu n'es point de ceux-la que la honte de leur vilainie, ni le remords de leurs d.a.m.nables intentions puisse attirer a aucune resipiscence et amendement. Mais si tu me veux croyre, tu t'en iras cacher en quelque tanniere, ou bien en quelque desert, si lointain que l'on n'oye ni vent ni nouvelles de toy! Et par ce moyen tu pourras eviter la pointe de cent mille espees qui t'attendent tous les jours!

"Donc va-t'-en! Descharge-nous de ta tyrannie! Evite la main du bourreau! Qu'attends-tu encore? Ne vois-tu pas la patience des princes du sang royal qui te le permet? Attends-tu le commandement de leur parolle, puisque leur silence t'a declare leur volonte? En le souffrant, ils te le commandent; en se taisant, ils te cond.a.m.nent. Va donc, malheureux, et tu eviteras la punition digne de tes merites!"

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 847: Reaching Paris early in May, 1560, Hubert Languet wrote that suspicion was everywhere rife; men of any standing scarcely dared to converse with each other; some great calamity seemed on the point of breaking forth. The king's ministers evidently feared the great cities; so the court proceeded from one provincial town to another. Disturbances in Rouen and Dieppe had frightened the Guises away from Normandy, whither they had intended leading their royal nephew. Letter from Paris, May 15th, Epistolae secr., ii. 50.]

[Footnote 848: "En ce temps (Mars, 1560) furent appelles Huguenots."

Journal d'un cure ligueur (Jehan de la Fosse), 36.]

[Footnote 849: Soldan, Geschichte des Prot. in Frankreich, who, in an appendix, has very fully discussed the whole matter (i. 608-625). There is some force in the objection that has been urged against this view, that, were it correct, Beza, himself a resident of Geneva, could not have been ignorant of the derivation, and would not, in the Histoire ecclesiastique, prepared under his supervision, if not by him, have given his sanction to another explanation.]

[Footnote 850: La Planche, 262; Hist. eccles., i. 169, 170; De Thou, ii.

(liv. xxiv.) 766. This is also etienne Pasquier's view, who is positive that he heard the Protestants called Huguenots by some friends of his from Tours full _eight or nine years_ before the tumult of Amboise; that is, about 1551 or 1552: "Car je vous puis dire que huict ou neuf ans auparavant l'entreprise d'Amboise je les avois ainsi ouy appeller par quelques miens amis Tourengeaux." Recherches de France, 770. This is certainly pretty strong proof.]

[Footnote 851: La Place, 34; Davila, i. 20; Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 96.

See also Pasquier, _ubi supra_.]

[Footnote 852: Mem. de Castelnau, liv. ii., c. 7. A somewhat similar reason had, in Poitou, caused them, for a time, to be called _Fribours_, the designation casually given to a _counterfeit_ coin of debased metal.

Pasquier, 770.]

[Footnote 853: Advertiss.e.m.e.nt au Peuple de France, _apud_ Recueil des choses memorables (1565), 7. Also in the Complainte au Peuple Francois, ibid., p. 10. Both of these papers were published immediately after the Tumulte d'Amboise. The eminent Pierre Jurieu--"le Goliath des Protestants"--tells us that, having at one time accepted the derivation from "eidgenossen" as the most plausible, he subsequently returned to that which connects the word Huguenot with Hugues or Hugh Capet. The nickname confessedly arose, so far as France was concerned, first in Touraine, and became general at the time of the tumult of Amboise, nearly thirty years after the reformation of Geneva. "Qui est-ce qui auroit transporte en Touraine ce nom trente ans apres sa naissance, de Geneve ou il n'avoit jamais este cognu?" Histoire du calvinisme et celle du papisme, etc. Rotterdam, 1683, i. 424, 425.]

[Footnote 854: J. de Serres, i. 67; Pasquier, 771: "Mot qui en peu de temps s'espandit par toute la France."]

[Footnote 855: La Planche, 270. At Amboise, too, so soon as the court had departed, the prisons were broken open, and the prisoners--both those confined for religion and for insurrection--released. The gallows in various parts of the place were torn down, and the ghastly decorations of the castle, in the way of heads and mutilated members, disappeared. Languet, letter of May 15th, Epist. secr., ii. 51.]

[Footnote 856: M. Archinard, conservator of the archives of the Venerable Company of Pastors of Geneva, has compiled from the records a list of 121 pastors sent by the Church of Geneva to the Reformed Churches of France within eleven years--1555 to 1566. Many others have, doubtless, escaped notice. Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. fr., viii. (1859) 72-76. Cf. also Ib., ix. 294 seq., for an incomplete list of Protestant pastors in France, probably in 1567, from an old MS. in the Genevan library.]

[Footnote 857: The high moral and intellectual qualifications of the Protestant ministers were eulogized by the Bishop of Valence, Montluc, in his speech before the king at Fontainebleau, to which I shall soon have occasion to refer again. "The doctrine, sire," he said, "which interests your subjects, was sown for thirty years; not in one, or two, or three days. It was introduced by three or four hundred ministers, diligent and practised in letters; men of great modesty, gravity, and appearance of sanct.i.ty; professing to detest every vice, and, particularly, avarice; fearless of losing their lives in confirmation of their preaching; who always had Jesus Christ upon their lips--a name so sweet that it gives an entrance into ears the most carefully closed, and easily glides into the heart of the most hardened." "Harangue de l'Evesque de Vallence," _apud_ Recueil des choses memorables (1565), i.

290; Mem. de Conde, i. 558; La Place, 55. The eloquent Bishop of Valence must be regarded as a better authority than those persons who, according to Castelnau, accused the Calvinist ministers of Geneva of "having more zeal and ignorance than religion." Mem. de Castelnau, liv. iii., c. 3.]

[Footnote 858: Calvin, in a letter sent by Francois de Saint Paul, a minister whom he induced to accept the urgent call of the church of Montelimart, dissuaded that church from this step which was already contemplated. Better is it, said he, to increase the flock, and to gather in the scattered sheep, meanwhile keeping quiet yourselves. "At least, while you hold your a.s.semblies peaceably from house to house, the rage of the wicked will not so soon be enkindled against you, and you will render to G.o.d what He requires, namely, the glorifying of His name in a pure manner, and the keeping of yourselves unpolluted by all superst.i.tious observances, until it please Him to open a wider door."

Lettres francaises (Bonnet), ii. 335, 336. The author of the Histoire eccles. des eglises ref., i. 138, expresses a belief that had such wise counsels been followed, incomparably the greater part of the district would have embraced the Reformation.]

[Footnote 859: La Planche, 284-286.]

[Footnote 860: Letter of Francis II. to Gaspard de Saulx, Seign. de Tavannes, April 12, 1560, _apud_ Negotiations relatives au regne de Francois II., etc. (Collection de doc.u.ments inedits), 341-343.]

[Footnote 861: With a label attached to their necks bearing this inscription: "Voicy les chefs des rebelles."]

[Footnote 862: La Planche, 286-289.]

[Footnote 863: Letter of the Vte. de Joyeuse to the king, April 26, 1560, _apud_ Neg. sous Francois II., 361-363.]

[Footnote 864: La Planche, 293.]

[Footnote 865: Hence the festival of Corpus Christi witnessed in some places serious riots, especially in Rouen, where a number of citizens of the reformed faith refused to join in the otherwise universal practice of spreading tapestry on the front of their houses when the host was carried by. Houses were broken into, at the instigation of the priests, and near a score of persons killed. Languet, Paris, June 16th, Epist.

sec., ii. 59, 60.]

[Footnote 866: La Planche, 294; Hist. eccles., i. 194; Floquet, Hist. du parl. de Normandie, ii. 284, 288, 294, 302-306, etc. At Dieppe the Huguenots had gone so far as to erect, with the pecuniary a.s.sistance afforded by Admiral Coligny, an elegant and s.p.a.cious "_temple_," as the Protestant place of worship was styled. Vieilleville, much to his regret, felt compelled to demolish it (Aug., 1560), for it stood in the very heart of the city. I quote a part of his secretary's appreciative description: "C'estoit ung fort brave edifice, _ressemblant au theatre de Rome qu'on appelle Collisee, ou aux arenes de Nysmes_. On fut _trois jours_ a le verser par terre, et ne partismes de Dieppe que n'en veissions la fin." Mem. de Vieilleville, ii. 448, etc.; Floquet, ii.

318-336.]

[Footnote 867: De Felice, liv. i., c. 12 (Am. ed., p. 111).]

[Footnote 868: See La Planche, 312, 313, and the "Histoire des cinq rois" (Recueil des choses mem), 1598, p. 99, for the punishment of the possessor of a copy of a virulent pamphlet against the cardinal, ent.i.tled _Le Tigre_ (see the note at the end of this chapter); and Negociations sous Francois II., 456, for a letter from court ordering search to be made for the author and publisher of the "Complaincte des fideles de France contre leurs adversaires les papistes." "En ung lundy apres Pasques, 15^e du moys, fut affiche devant S. Hilaire un papier estant imprime d'autre impression de Paris, et y avoit a l'int.i.tulation: Les Estats opprimez par la tyrannie de MM. de Guise au roy salut."

Journal de Jehan de la Fosse, 37. The piece referred to is inserted in the Memoires de Conde, i. 405-410.]

[Footnote 869: La Planche, 299-302. The remonstrance, signed _Theophilus_, which they addressed her, insisted on the ill-success of the persecutions to which for forty years they had been subjected; for one killed, two hundred had joined their a.s.semblies; for ten thousand open adherents, the Reformation had one hundred thousand secret upholders. The Edict of Forgiveness answered no good purpose: "_c'estoit bien peu d'oster pour un instant la douleur d'une maladie, si quant et quant la cause et la racine n'en estoit ostee_."]

[Footnote 870: La Place, 41-45; La Planche, 316, 317; Mem. de Castelnau, l. ii., c. 7; De Thou, ii., liv. xxv. 788-791. I confess, however, that the careful perusal of La Planche's bold speech has nearly convinced me that the ascription of the anonymous "Hist. de l'estat de Fr. sous Francois II." to his pen is erroneous. I shall not insist upon the fact that the description of La Planche as "homme politique pl.u.s.tost que religieux" is inappropriate to the author of this history. But I can scarcely conceive of La Planche correcting errors in his own speech, and not only expressing an utter dissent from the account which he himself gave the queen of the motives that led La Renaudie to engage in the enterprise that had for its object the overthrow of the Guises, but even accusing himself of falling into a grave mistake with regard to the importance of the differences of creed between the Protestants and the Roman Church: "s'abusant en ce qu'il meit en avant des differends de la religion." La Planche had suggested a conference of theologians--ostensibly to make a faithful translation of the Bible, in reality to compare differences--and had expressed the opinion that there would be found less discord than there appeared to be. The condemnation of this view certainly does not mark a man of political rather than religious tendencies! I fear that we must look elsewhere for the author of this excellent history.]

[Footnote 871: It has been ascribed to the virtuous and tolerant Chancellor L'Hospital, who, it is said, drew it up in order to defeat the project of the Guises to introduce the Spanish Inquisition. (La Planche, 305; cf. also De Thou, ii. 781.) But the edict was published _before_ the appointment of L'Hospital, and while Morvilliers, a creature of the Guises, provisionally held the seals after Chancellor Olivier's death; and the spiritual jurisdiction it established differed little in principle from an inquisition. In fact, three of the French prelates, the Cardinals of Lorraine, Bourbon, and Chatillon, had, as we have seen, been const.i.tuted a board of inquisitors of the faith; and, soon after the publication of the Edict of Romorantin, the Cardinal of Tournon was set over them as inquisitor-general. The subject has been well discussed by Soldan, Geschichte des Prot. in Frankreich, i.

338-342. The Duc d'Aumale, in his usually accurate Histoire des Princes de Conde (i. 113), repeats the blunder of La Planche and De Thou.]

[Footnote 872: Recueil des anc. lois fr., xiv. 31-33; La Planche, 305, 306; La Place, 46, 47. It is, of course, "an edict holily conceived and promulgated," in the estimation of Florimond de Raemond, v. 113. The only redeeming feature I can find in it is the article by which malicious informers made themselves liable to all the penalties they had sought to inflict on others.]

[Footnote 873: La Place, 36 (who states that the burning of Du Bourg was an occasion of deep remorse in Olivier's last hours); La Planche, 266; J. de Serres, De statu rel. et reip., i., fol. 35; De Thou, ii. (liv.

xxiv.), 775; Hist. du tumulte d'Amboise, _ubi supra_.]

[Footnote 874: La Planche, 305.]

[Footnote 875: If we may credit that professed panegyrist, Scaevola de St. Marthe, L'Hospital was of an august appearance, of a dignified and tranquil countenance, and, if his intellectual const.i.tution had a philosophic stamp, his features bore a not less remarkable resemblance to the head of the Stagirite as delineated on ancient medals. Elogia doctorum in Gallia virorum qui nostra patrumque memoria floruerunt (Ienae, 1696), lib. ii., p. 95.]

[Footnote 876: This remarkable statement is made by Agrippa d'Aubigne, Memoires, 478 (Ed. Pantheon Lit.). He tells us that he had inherited from his father, himself one of the conspirators, the original papers of the enterprise of Amboise. The suggestion was made by a confidant, that the possession of the proof of L'Hospital's complicity would certainly secure him 10,000 crowns, either from the chancellor or from his enemies; whereupon the youth threw all the papers into the fire lest he might in an hour of weakness succ.u.mb to the temptation. In his Hist.

universelle, i. 95, D'Aubigne makes the same a.s.sertion with great positiveness: "L'Hospital, homme de grand estime, luy succeda, quoyqu'il eust este des conjurez pour le faict d'Amboise. Ce que je maintiens contre tout ce qui en a este escrit, pource que l'original de l'entreprise fut consigne entre les mains de mon pere, ou estoit son seing tout du long entre celuy de Dandelot et d'un Spifame: chose que j'ai faict voir a plusieurs personnes de marque."]

[Footnote 877: La Planche, 305; La Place, 38; De Thou, ii. 776; Davila, p. 29. I cannot refrain from inserting La Planche's worthy estimate of his course and its results: "Car pour certain, encores que s'il eust prins un court chemin pour s'opposer virilement au mal, il seroit plus a louer, et Dieu, peut-estre, eust beny sa Constance, si est-ce qu'autant qu'on en peut juger, _luy seul, par ses moderes deportemens a este l'instrument duquel Dieu s'est servy pour retenir plusieurs flots impetueux, ou fussent submerges tous les Francois_." _Ubi supra_.]

[Footnote 878: Throkmorton to Cecil, June 24, 1560, State Paper Office; printed in Wright, Queen Elizabeth, i. 32, 33.]

[Footnote 879: La Planche, 338-343.]

[Footnote 880: Ibid., 315; De Thou, ii. 787, 788.]

[Footnote 881: The long address delivered to the two brothers at Nerac, and reproduced verbatim by La Planche (318-338), is a very complete summary of the views of the Huguenots at this juncture.]

[Footnote 882: Letter of Cardinal Lorraine to the Bishop of Limoges, French amba.s.sador to Philip the Second, July 28, 1560. The council "we hold to be the sole and only remedy for our ills," is the minister's language. Although the state of affairs was better than it had been, yet "so many persons were imbued with these opinions, that it was not possible to find out on whom reliance could be placed." Negociations sous Francois II., 442-444.]