History of the Rise of the Huguenots Volume I Part 57

[Footnote 996: Quintin's speech is given in full by La Place, 93-109; Hist. eccles., i. 270-274; De Thou, iii., liv. xxvii., 11, etc. Letter of Beza to Bullinger, _ubi supra_.]

[Footnote 997: "Son discours, qu'il lut presque tout entier, fut long et ennuyeux.... rempli de lonanges fades, et de flatteries outrees, fit rougir, et ennuya les a.s.sistans." De Thou, iii. 11, 12. Quintin's address drew forth from the Protestants a written reply, directed to the queen, exposing his "ignorance, calumnies, and malicious omissions." It is inserted in Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., i. 275-277.]

[Footnote 998: La Place, 109, 112; De Thou, iii. 12, 14; Hist. eccl., i.

280.]

[Footnote 999: Beza, Letter to Bullinger, Geneva, Jan. 22, 1561; Baum, Th. Beza, ii., App., 21, 22; Calvin to Ministers of Paris, Lettres franc., ii. 348.]

[Footnote 1000: "Hanc supplicationem, scribitur ad nos, Regina ex Amyraldi manu acceptam promisisse se Concilio exhibituram, et magna omnium spes est n.o.bis omnia haec concessum iri, modo privatis locis et sine tumultu pauci simul conveniant.... Ita brevi futurum spero ut Gallia tandem Regem et nomine et re christianissimum habeat." Beza, _ubi supra_.]

[Footnote 1001: Catharine's fears that the States would enter upon the discussion of matters affecting her regency undoubtedly had much to do with this action (Hist. eccles. des eglises ref., i. 280: "qu'on craignoit vouloir pa.s.ser plus outre en d'autres affaires qu'on ne vouloit remuer"). Ostensibly in order to avoid confusion and expense, each of the thirteen princ.i.p.al provinces was to depute only two delegates to Pontoise.]

[Footnote 1002: Letter of Charles IX., Jan. 28, 1561, Memoires de Conde, ii. 268.]

[Footnote 1003: March 1st, "puysque la volunte du Roy est," Mem. de Conde, ii. 273. When the secretary of state, Bourdin, brought to parliament the mandates of Charles and Catharine from Fontainebleau, of Feb. 13th and 14th, ordering its registry, he stated that Charles had granted this doc.u.ment "at the urgent prayer of the three estates, and in order to obviate and provide against troubles and divisions, while waiting for the decision of the General Council granted by the Pope." On the 22d of February a new missive of the king was received in parliament, enjoining the publication of the letter of January 28th, with the modification that any of the liberated prisoners that would not consent to live in a Catholic fashion must leave the kingdom under pain of the halter. Mem. de Conde, ii. 271, 272.]

[Footnote 1004: Calvin, Memoire aux eglises ref. de France, Dec., 1560, Lettres franc. (Bonnet), ii. 350.]

[Footnote 1005: Letter of Calvin to brethren of Paris, Feb. 26, 1561, _ap._ Baum, ii., App., 26; Bonnet, Lettres fr. de Calvin, ii. 378, etc.]

[Footnote 1006: "E benche la piu parte fossero ignoranti, e predica.s.se mille pazzie, per ogn'uno aveva il suo seguito." Michel Suriano, Commentarii del regno di Francia, Relations des Amb. Ven. (Tommaseo), i.

532. M. Tommaseo supposes this relation to belong to 1561, and mentions the somewhat remarkable opinion of others that it was somewhere between 1564 and 1568. The doc.u.ment itself gives the most decided indications that it was written in the early part of 1562, before the outbreak of the first civil war--indeed, before the return of the Guises to court.

After stating that Charles IX. when he ascended the throne was _ten_ years old (page 542), the author says that he is now _eleven and a half_. The proximate date would, therefore, seem to be January or February, 1562. Throkmorton wrote to the queen, Paris, Nov. 14, 1561, that "the Venetians had sent Marc Antonio Barbaro to reside there, in the place of Sig. Michaeli Soriano." State Paper Office MSS.]

[Footnote 1007: Gaberel, Histoire de l'eglise de Geneve, i., pieces just., p. 201-203, from the Archives of Geneva; Soulier, Histoire des edits de pacification (Paris, 1682), 22-25.]

[Footnote 1008: Gaberel, Hist. de l'eglise de Geneve, i. (pieces justif.), 203-206. He gives the deliberation of the council, as well as the reply. Lettres franc. de Calvin, ii. 373-378. It needs scarcely to be noticed that the "Sieur Soulier, pretre," while he parades the royal letter as a convincing proof of the seditious character of the Huguenot ministers, does not deign even to allude to the satisfactory reply. No wonder; so apposite a refutation would have been sadly out of place in a book written expressly to justify the successive steps of the violation of the solemn compacts between the French crown and the Protestants--to prepare the way, in fact, for the formal revocation of the edict of Nantes (three years later) toward which the priests were fast hurrying Louis XIV.]

[Footnote 1009: La Place, Commentaires, 120; Sommaire recit de la calomnieuse accusation de Monsieur le prince de Conde, avec l'arrest de la cour contenant la declaration de son innocence, in the Mem. de Conde, ii. 383; De Thou, iii. 38.]

[Footnote 1010: The arret of parliament of June 13th is given in Histoire eccles., i. 291-293; Sommaire recit de la calomnieuse accusation de Monsieur le prince de Conde, iii. 391-394. See also La Place, 128-130; De Thou, iii. 50, 51; Journal de Bruslart, Mem. de Conde, i. 39, 40.]

[Footnote 1011: Strange to say, the editor of the Memoires de Conde in the Collection Michaud-Poujoulat expresses his disbelief of this occurrence; but not only are the historians explicit, but an official statement was drawn up and signed by the secretaries of state, under Charles's orders. This notarial doc.u.ment is inserted in La Place, 139, 140, and in the Histoire ecclesiastique, i. 296, 297; De Thou, iii. 56, gives the wrong date, Aug. 28th. Beza had from the lips of Conde, that very afternoon, an account, which he transmitted the next day to Calvin.

Letter of Aug. 25th, _apud_ Baum, iii., App., 47.]

[Footnote 1012: La Place, 121; De Thou, iii. (liv. xxvii.) 40; Mem. de Conde, ii. 24, 25.]

[Footnote 1013: La Place, 121, 122; De Thou, iii. (liv. xxvii.) 40, 41.]

[Footnote 1014: Letter of Beza to Wolf, March 25, 1561, _ap._ Baum, ii., App., 30, 31; The Journal de Jehan de la Fosse, under May, 1561 (p. 43), has this entry: "Artus Desire fist amende honorable, tout nud, la torche au poing, dedans le palais, en ung jeudy, 14^e du mois, et fut cond.a.m.ne a rester dedans les Chartreux cinq ans au pain et a l'eau: il y fut quatre moys; les ungs disent qu'il s'en fut, les aultres que les Chartreux le firent sortir, craignant les huguenots. Depuis il ne se cacha pas, et se promenoit a Paris."]

[Footnote 1015: "Ou il n'a rien entendu qui ne fust bon." Reg. capit.

Eccles. Rothom., March 16, 1561, _apud_ Floquet, Hist. du parlement de Normandie, ii. 374, 375.]

[Footnote 1016: "Aliud est Christianum esse quatn Papistam non esse."

Letter to Wolf, March 25, 1561, _ap._ Baum, _ubi supra_.]

[Footnote 1017: This very year parliament had issued an order, at the commencement of Lent, directing the sick, "permission prealablement obtenue," to purchase the meat they needed of the butcher of the Hotel-Dieu, who alone was permitted to sell, and who was compelled to submit weekly to the court a record, not only of the permissions granted and the persons to whom he sold, but even of the _quant.i.ty_ which each applicant obtained! Registers of Parliament, Feb. 27, 1561, _apud_ Felibien, Histoire de Paris, iv., Preuves, 797.]

[Footnote 1018: Honorat de Savoie, Comte de Villars, had a private grudge to satisfy against the admiral, who had complained to the king of the cruelties which he had perpetrated in Languedoc. La Place, 122.]

[Footnote 1019: La Place, Commentaires, _ubi supra_; De Thou, iii. (liv.

xxvii.) 41-43; Hist. eccles., i. 287; Huguenot poetical libel in Le Laboureur, Add. to Castelnau, i. 745.]

[Footnote 1020: "Auquel (l'evesque de Valence) il dict qu'il se contentoit de ceste fois, et qu'il n'y retournerois plus." La Place, Commentaires, _ubi supra_; De Thou, _ubi supra_.]

[Footnote 1021: La Place, Commentaires, 123, De Thou, iii. (liv. xxvii.) 45. How deep the disappointment felt by the Protestants at the constable's course must have been, can be gathered from the sanguine picture of the prospects of the French Reformation drawn by Languet a couple of months earlier. Arguing from the comparative mildness of Montmorency in the persecutions under Henry II., from the fact that he had allowed no one of his five sons to enter the ecclesiastical state, which offered rare opportunities of advancement, and from the influence which his sons and his three nephews--all favorably inclined to, if not open adherents of the new doctrines--would exert over the old man, he not unnaturally came to this conclusion: "I am, therefore, of opinion that, if the Guises still retain any power, the constable will join Navarre for the purpose of overwhelming them, and will make no opposition to Navarre if he sets on foot a moderate reformation of doctrine." Epist. secr., ii., p. 102.]

[Footnote 1022: La Place and De Thou, _ubi supra_.]

[Footnote 1023: This doc.u.ment first appears in the Memoires de Conde, under the t.i.tle "Sommaire des choses premierement accordees entre les Ducs de Montmorency Connestable, et De Guyse Grand Maistre, Pairs de France, et le Mareschal Sainct Andre, pour la Conspiration du Triumvirat, et depuis mises en deliberation a l'entree du Sacre et Sainct Concile de Trente, et arrestee entre les Parties, en leur prive Conseil faict contre les Heretiques, et contre le Roy de Navarre, en tant qu'il gouverne et conduit mal les affaires de Charles neufiesme Roy de France, Mineur; lequel est Autheur de continuel accroiss.e.m.e.nt de la nouvelle Secte qui pullule en France." The princ.i.p.al provisions are given by De Thou, iii. (liv. xxix.) 142, 143, under date of 1562, who explicitly states his disbelief of its authenticity. Neither, indeed, does the compiler of the Mem. de Conde vouch for it. Among other objections that have been urged with force against the genuineness of the doc.u.ment, are the following: The improbability that the Triumvirs would mature a plan involving all the Catholic sovereigns of Europe without previously obtaining their consent, of which there is no trace; the inconsistency of the project with the well-known policy and character of the German Emperor Ferdinand; the improbability that the Council of Trent would indorse a plan aimed at the humiliation of Navarre, who, when the council actually rea.s.sembled in January, 1562, was completely won over to the Roman party. In favor of the doc.u.ment may be urged: First, that M. Capefigue (Histoire de la reforme, de la ligue, etc., ii. 243-245) a.s.serts: "J'ai trouve cette piece, qu'on a crue supposee, en original et signee dans les MSS. Colbert, bibl. du roi."

Prof. Soldan, who has devoted an appendix to the first volume of his Gesch. des Prot. in Frankreich, to a discussion of this reported agreement between the Triumvirs, was unsuccessful in finding any trace of such a paper. Secondly, that the Memoires de Guise, the ma.n.u.script of which, according to the statement of the editor, M. Aime Champollion, fils (Notice sur Francois de Lorraine, due d'Aumale et de Guise, prefixed to his Memoires, first published in the Collection Michaud-Poujoulat, 1851, p. 5), is partly in the handwriting of the duke himself, partly in that of his secretary, Millet, insert the "Sommaire"

precisely as it stands in the Memoires de Conde, without any denial of its authenticity. This would appear, at first sight, to settle the question beyond cavil. But it must be borne in mind that many of the memoires of the sixteenth century are compiled on the plan of including all contemporary papers of importance, whether written by friend or by foe. Frequently the most contradictory narratives of the same event are placed side by side, with little or no comment. This is precisely the case with those of Guise, in which, for example, no less than _four_ accounts--_three_ of them from Huguenot sources--are given of the ma.s.sacre of Va.s.sy. Now we have the testimony of De Thou (_ubi supra_) that this agreement, industriously circulated by the Prince of Conde and the Huguenots, made a powerful impression not only in France, but in Germany and all Northern Europe. So important a doc.u.ment, even if a forgery, would naturally find a place in such a collection as the Memoires of Guise. Altogether the matter is in a singularly interesting position. Could the ma.n.u.script seen by M. Capefigue be found and re-examined critically, the truth might, perhaps, be reached. M. Henri Martin, in his excellent Histoire de France, x. 79, note, accepts the doc.u.ment as genuine.]

[Footnote 1024: The "plebe e populo minuto," the Venetian Michiel tell us, "e quello che si vede certo con gran fervenzia e devozione frequentar le chiese, e continuar li riti cattolici." Relations des Amb.

Ven. i., 412.]

[Footnote 1025: "Aulcuns desditz ecclesiasticques," is Claude Haton's ingenuous admission respecting his fellow priests of this period, "estoient fort vicieux encores pour lors, et les plus vicieux estoient ceux qui plus resistoient auxditz huguenotz, jusques a mettre la main aux cousteaux et aux armes." Memoires, i. 129.]

[Footnote 1026: Memoires de Conde, i. 27.]

[Footnote 1027: "In viginti urbibus aut circiter trucidati fuerunt pii a furiosa plebe." Letter of Calvin to Bullinger, May 24, 1561, _apud_ Baum, ii., App., 33. At Mans, on Lady-Day (March 25th), so serious a riot took place, that the bishop felt compelled to apologize in a letter to Catharine (April 23d), in which he excuses his flock by alleging that they were exasperated beyond endurance by the sight of a Huguenot "a.s.semblee" openly held by day in the "Faubourg St. Jehan," contrary to the royal ordinances--some of the attendants, he a.s.serts, coming out of the meeting armed. His letter is to be found in the Mem. de Conde, ii.

339.]

[Footnote 1028: And was openly denounced by his clergy from the pulpit, in Pa.s.sion Week, as an "apostate," a "traitor," a "new Judas," etc.

Bulletin, xxiii. 84.]

[Footnote 1029: De Thou, iii. (liv. xxviii.) 51, 52; Histoire eccles., i. 287; La Place, 124; Calvin to Bullinger, Baum, ii., App., 33; Journal de Bruslart, Mem. de Conde, ii. 27. Interesting doc.u.ments from the munic.i.p.al records of Beauvais, Bulletin, xxiii. (1874) 84, etc. Letter of Chantonnay, Rheims, May 10, 1561 (Mem. de Conde, ii. 11), who adds: "L'Admiral ha tant peu avec le credit qu'il ha ver Monsieur de Vendosme [Navarre], que l'on a execute deux ou trois de ceulx du peuple; lequel depuis s'est leve de nouveau, et a pendu le bourreau qui feit l'execution."]

[Footnote 1030: "Car, de toutes les choses, la plus incompatible en ung estat, ce sont deux religions contraires."]

[Footnote 1031: Journal de Bruslart, Memoires de Conde, i. 26, etc.; Registers of Parliament, ibid., ii. 341, etc., and _apud_ Felibien, Hist. de Paris, Preuves, iv. 798, Arret of April 28th and 29th.

According to the information that had reached Calvin, twelve had been killed and forty wounded by Longjumeau and his friends (Calvin to Bullinger, _ubi supra_). The parliamentary registers do not give the precise number. The good curate of S. Barthelemi makes no allusion to any attack, but sets down the loss of the Roman Catholics at three killed and nine wounded. Journal de Jehan de la Fosse, 41. Hubert Languet says seven were killed. Epist. secr., ii. 117.]

[Footnote 1032: Letters patent of Fontainebleau, April 19, 1561, Mem. de Conde, ii. 334, 335; La Place; and Hist. eccles., _ubi supra_; De Thou, iii. (liv. xxviii.) 52.]

[Footnote 1033: How the devoted adherents of the Roman church received this edict and its predecessor appears from the Memoires of Claude Haton. In the city of Provins, a short distance from Paris, one or two preachers reluctantly consented to read it in the churches; but "maistre Barrier," a Franciscan and curate of Sainte Croix, instead of the required proclamation, made these remarks to the people at the commencement of his sermon: "On m'a cejourd'-huy apporte ung memoire et papier escript, qu'on m'a dict estre la coppie d'un edict du roy, pour vous le publier; et _veult-on que je vous dye que les chatz et les ratz doibvent vivre en paix les ungs avec les aultres_, sans se rien faire de mal l'ung a l'autre, et que nous aultres Francoys, e'est a.s.savoir les heretiques et les catholicques, fa.s.sions ainsi, et que le roy le veult.

_Je ne suis crieur ni trompette de la ville pour faire telles publications._ Dieu veuille par sa misericorde avoir pitie de son eglise et du royaume de France, les deux ensemble sont prestz de tomber en grande ruyne; Dieu veuille bailler bon conseil a nostre jeune roy et inspirer ses gouverneurs a bien faire; ils entrent a leur gouvernement par ung pauvre commencement, mais ce est en punition de noz pechez."

Memoires de Claude Haton, i. 123, 124.]

[Footnote 1034: La Place, 124-126; Histoire eccles., i. 288, etc.; De Thou, iii. (liv. xxviii.) 52, 53. The remonstrance of parliament was, in point of fact, little more than an echo of the strenuous protest of the Spanish amba.s.sador to the queen mother. See Chantonnay to Catharine de'

Medici, April 22, 1561, Memoires de Conde, ii. 6-10.]

[Footnote 1035: According to Claude Haton, the edict was received with ineffable delight, especially in those cities of the kingdom where there were Huguenot judges. The Catholics were despised. The Huguenots became bold: "En toutes compagnies, a.s.semblees et lieux publicz, ilz huguenotz avoient le hault parler." Despite the prohibition of the employment of insulting terms, they called their adversaries "papaux, idolatres, pauvres abusez." and "tisons du purgatoire du pape." Memoires, i. 122.

Doubtless a smaller measure of free speech than this would have sufficed to stir up the bile of the curate of Meriot.]

[Footnote 1036: Already, on the 6th of March, Claude Boissiere had written to the Genevan reformer from Saintes: "G.o.d has so augmented His church that we number to-day by the grace of G.o.d thirty-eight pastors in this province" (Saintonge in Western France), "each of us having the care of so many towns and parishes, that, had we fifty more, we should scarcely be able to satisfy half the charges that present themselves."

Geneva MSS., _apud_ Bulletin, xiv. (1855) 320, and Crottet, Hist. des egl. ref. de Pons, Gemozac, etc., 57.]