History of the Rise of the Huguenots Volume II Part 31

[Sidenote: He sweeps through Guyenne.]

Coligny's army was chiefly composed of cavalry; of infantry he had but three thousand men.[753] The young Princes of Navarre and of Conde, whom he wished to accustom to the fatigues of the march and of the battle-field, while endearing them to the Huguenots by their partic.i.p.ation in the same perils with the meanest private soldier, were his companions, and had commands of their own. He had left La Rochefoucauld in La Roch.e.l.le to protect the city and the Queen of Navarre. The admiral's course was first directed to Montauban, that city which has been the stronghold of Protestantism in southern France down to the present time. But the difficulties of the way, and, particularly, the improbability of finding easy means of crossing so near their mouths the successive rivers, which, rising in the mountainous region of Auvergne and the Cevennes, all flow westward and empty into the Garonne, or its wide estuary, the Gironde, compelled Coligny to make a considerable deflection to the left. He effected the pa.s.sage of the Dordogne at Argentat, a little above the spot where Montbrun had sustained his recent check, and, after making a feint of throwing himself into Auvergne, crossed the Lot below Cadenac, and reached Montauban in safety.[754] The Count of Montgomery, returning from his victorious campaign in Bearn, had been ordered to be in readiness in this city. But learning that, by an unaccountable delay, he was still in Condom, south of the Garonne, Coligny marched westward to Aiguillon, at the confluence of the Lot and the Garonne. Near this place he constructed, with great trouble, a substantial bridge across the Garonne, with the intention of transporting his army to the left bank, and ravaging the country far down in the direction of Bordeaux. This bold movement was prevented by Blaise de Montluc, who, adopting the suggestion of another, and appropriating the credit due to the sagacity of this nameless genius, detached one of the numerous floating windmills that were moored in the Garonne, and having loaded it with stones, sent it down with the current against Coligny's bridge. Not only were the chains that bound the structure broken, but the very boats on which it rested were carried away as far as to Bordeaux itself. It was with great difficulty that the admiral brought back to the right bank the division of his army that had already crossed, and with it the troops of Count Montgomery.[755]

The united army now returned to Montauban, where, in the midst of a rich district in part friendly to the Huguenots, it spent the last days of 1569 and the greater part of the month of January, 1570. Its numbers had by this time received such large accessions, that Coligny wrote to Germany that he had six or seven thousand horse and fifteen thousand foot.[756] As the reformed population of Montauban had contributed enough money to satisfy the prince's indebtedness to the importunate reiters and lansquenets,[757] the troops were enthusiastic in their devotion to the cause, and pushed their raids under the intrepid La Loue south of the Garonne toward the Bay of Biscay, as far as Mont de Marsan and Roquefort in the "Pays des Landes."[758]

[Sidenote: "Vengeance de Rapin."]

[Sidenote: Coligny pushes on to the Rhone.]

The Huguenots now proceeded towards Toulouse, but that city was too strongly fortified and garrisoned to tempt them to make an attack. They inflicted, however, a stern retribution upon the vicinity, devoting to destruction the villas and pleasure-grounds of the members of a parliament that had rendered itself infamous for its injustice and blind bigotry. The cruel fate of Rapin, murdered according to the forms of law, simply because he was a Protestant and brought from the king an edict containing too much toleration to suit the inordinate orthodoxy of these robed fanatics, was yet fresh in the memory of the soldiers, and fired their blood. On ruined and blackened walls, in more than one quarter, could be read subsequently the ominous words, written by no idle braggarts: "_Vengeance de Rapin!_" Leaving the marks of their pa.s.sage in a desolated district, the Huguenots swept on to the friendly city of Castres, and thence through lower Languedoc, by Carca.s.sonne and Montpellier, which they made no attempt to reduce, to Uzes and Nismes. Meanwhile Piles had from Castres made a marauding expedition with a body of picked troops to the very foot of the Pyrenees, and, in retaliation for the aid which the Spaniards had furnished Charles the Ninth, had penetrated to Perpignan, and ravaged the County of Roussillon.[759]

[Sidenote: His singular success and its causes.]

Thus the Huguenots--of whom Charles had contemptuously written to his amba.s.sador at London, in January, that they were in so miserable a plight that, even since Anjou had dismissed all his men-at-arms after the capture of Saint Jean d'Angely, they dared not show their faces[760]--had pushed an army from the mouth of the Gironde to the mouth of the Rhone. If Viscount Monclar had fallen mortally wounded near Castres, and brave La Loue had been surprised and killed near Montpellier, the Protestants had, nevertheless, sustained little injury. They had been largely reinforced on the way, both by the local troops that joined them and by chivalric spirits such as M. de Piles, who followed them so soon as he was forced to surrender Saint Jean d'Angely; or, like Beaudine and Renty, who had been left with La Rochefoucauld to guard La Roch.e.l.le, but who, impatient of long inaction, at length obtained permission to attach themselves to the princes, and caught up with them at Castres, after a journey full of hazardous adventures. The Huguenot army, says La Noue, had been but an insignificant snow-ball when it started on its adventurous course; but the imprudence of its opponents permitted it to roll on, without hinderance, until it grew to a portentous size.[761] The jealousy existing between Montluc and Marshal Damville, who commanded for the king--the former as lieutenant-general in Gascony, and the latter as governor in Languedoc--undoubtedly removed many difficulties from the way of Admiral Coligny; and Montluc openly accused his rival, who was a Montmorency, of purposely furthering the designs of his heretical cousin. The accusation was a baseless fabrication; yet it obtained, as such stories generally do, a wide currency among the prejudiced and the ignorant, who could explain Damville's failure to impede Coligny's progress in no more satisfactory way than as the result of collusion between the son and the nephew of the late constable.[762]

[Sidenote: The admiral turns toward Paris.]

[Sidenote: His illness interrupts negotiations.]

Coligny had not yet accomplished his main object. Turning northward, and hugging the right bank of the Rhone, he prosecuted his undertaking of carrying the war to the very gates of Paris. The few small pieces of artillery the Protestants possessed, it was now found difficult to drag over rugged hills that descended to the river's edge. They were, therefore, at first transported to the other side, and finally left behind in some castles garrisoned by the Huguenots. The recruits that had been expected from Dauphiny came in very small numbers, and it was with diminished forces that Coligny and the princes, on the twenty-sixth of May, reached Saint etienne, at that time a small town, which modern enterprise and capital has transformed into a great manufacturing city.[763] A little farther, at St. Rambert on the Loire, an incident occurred which threatened to blight all the fair hopes the Protestants had now again begun to conceive of a speedy and prosperous conclusion of the war. Admiral Coligny fell dangerously ill, and for a time serious fears were entertained for his life. It was a moment of anxious suspense. Never before had the reformed realized the extent to which their fortunes were dependent on a single man. The lesson was a useful one to the young companions of the princes, who, in the midst of the stern discipline of the camp, had shown some disposition to complain of the loss of the more congenial gayety of the court.[764] Louis of Na.s.sau, brother of William of Orange, and next in command, was the only person among the Protestants that could have succeeded to Coligny in his responsible position; but even Louis of Na.s.sau could not exact the respect enjoyed by the admiral, both with his own troops and with the enemy. Indeed, it was the conduct of the Roman Catholics at this juncture that furnished the clearest proof of the indispensable importance to the Huguenots of their veteran leader. The negotiations, which must soon be adverted to, had for some time been in progress, and the court displayed considerable anxiety to secure a peace; but the moment it was announced that Coligny was likely to die, the deputies from the king broke them off and waited to see the issue. Being asked to explain so singular a course, and being reminded that the Huguenots had other generals with whom a treaty might be formed in case of Coligny's death, it is said that the deputies replied by expressing their surprise that the Protestants did not see the weight and authority possessed by their admiral. "Were he to die to-day," said they, "to-morrow we should not offer you so much as a gla.s.s of water. As if you did not know that the admiral's name goes farther in giving you consideration than had you another army equal in size to that you have at present!"[765]

[Sidenote: Engagement of Arnay-le-Duc.]

But Gaspard de Coligny was destined to die a death more glorious for himself, and to leave behind him a name more ill.u.s.trious than it would have been had he died on the eve of the return of peace to his desolated country. He recovered, and once more advanced with his brave Huguenots.

And now the distance between the Protestant camp and the Roman Catholic capital was rapidly diminishing. To meet the impending danger, the king ordered Marshal Cosse, who had succeeded the prince dauphin in command of the new army, to cross into Burgundy, check the admiral's course, and, if possible, defeat him. The two armies met on the twenty-fifth of June, in the neighborhood of the small town of Arnay-le-Duc.[766] Great was the disparity of numbers. Cosse had four thousand Swiss, six thousand French infantry, three thousand French, German, and Italian horse, and twelve cannon. Coligny's army had lost so much during its incessant marches through a thousand difficult places, and in a country where desertion or straying from the main body was so easy, that it consisted of but twenty-five hundred arquebusiers and two thousand hors.e.m.e.n, besides a few recruits from Dauphiny.

The Germans, who const.i.tuted about one-half of the cavalry, were ill-equipped; but the French horse were as well armed as any corps the Huguenots had been able to set on foot. All were hardened by toil and well disciplined. Of artillery the admiral was entirely dest.i.tute.

The armies took position upon opposite hills, separated by a narrow valley, in which flowed a brook fed by some small ponds. Cosse made the attack, and attempted to cross the stream; but, after an obstinate fight of seven hours, his troops were compelled to abandon the undertaking with considerable loss. Next the entrenchments thrown up by the Huguenots in the neighborhood of the ponds were a.s.saulted. Here the Roman Catholics were subjected to a galling fire, and began to yield. Afterward, receiving reinforcements, they seemed to be on the point of succeeding, when Coligny brought up M. de Piles, the hero of Saint Jean d'Angely, who, supported by Count Montgomery, soon restored the superiority of the Huguenots. The enemy was equally unfortunate in the attempt, simultaneously made, to turn the admiral's position; and, foiled at every point, he retired for the day. On the morrow, both armies reappeared in the same order of battle, but neither general was eager to renew a contest in which the advantage was all with those who stood on the defensive, and, after indulging in a brief and ineffective cannonade, the order was given to the Roman Catholic troops to return to camp.[767]

[Sidenote: Coligny approaches Paris.]

After this indecisive combat, Coligny, who had no desire to bring on a general engagement before receiving the considerable accession of troops of which he was in expectation, slipped away from Cosse, and though hotly pursued by the enemy's cavalry, made his way to the friendly walls of La Charite upon the Loire. Here he busied himself with preparations for further undertakings, and was engaged particularly in providing his army with a few cannon and mortars, of which he had greatly felt the need, when activity was interrupted by a ten days' truce, dating from the fourteenth of July, the precursor of a definite treaty of peace.[768] At the expiration of the armistice, Coligny advanced, toward the end of July, to his castle of Chatillon-sur-Loing, and distributed his troops in the vicinity of Montargis, still nearer Paris. Marshal Cosse, at the same time, moved in a parallel line through Joigny, and took up his position at Sens, where he could at once protect the capital and prevent the Huguenots from making raids in that fertile and populous province, the "ile de France," from which the whole country had derived its name. Leaving the admiral and his brave followers here, at the conclusion of an adventurous expedition of over twelve hundred miles, which had consumed more than nine months, let us glance at the negotiations for peace which had long been in progress, and were now at length crowned with success.

[Sidenote: Progress of the negotiations.]

[Sidenote: The English rebellion affects the terms offered.]

So true was it of the combatants in the French civil wars, that they rarely carried on hostilities but they were also treating for peace, that since the battle of Moncontour there had hardly elapsed a month without the discussion of the terms on which arms could be laid aside by both parties. Scarcely had the first startling impression made by the defeat of the Huguenots pa.s.sed away before Catharine de' Medici sent that skilful diplomatist, Michel de Castelnau, to a.s.sure the Queen of Navarre, at La Roch.e.l.le, of her personal esteem and affection, as well as of her fervent desire to employ her influence with the king, her son, in effecting a pacification based upon just and honorable conditions. Jeanne replied in courteous language; but, while she insisted upon her own hearty reciprocation of the queen mother's wish, she also expressed the suspicion which all the reformed entertained of the sincerity of the leading ministers in the French cabinet, whose relations with Spain and with the Pope showed that they were intent on nothing less than the utter ruin of the Huguenots.[769] In November the matter took a more definite shape, through Marshal Cosse, who appeared in La Roch.e.l.le with propositions of peace. This statesman, otherwise moderate in his counsels, was imbued with the notion that the Protestants were so discouraged by their late defeat, that they would gladly accept any terms. But the Huguenots, having understood that he was empowered merely to offer them liberty of conscience, without the right to the public worship of G.o.d, promptly broke off the negotiations.[770] A month or two later they were induced to believe that the court was disposed to larger concessions, or, if not, that they might at least justify themselves in the eyes of the world by showing that they were neither unreasonable nor desirous of prolonging the horrors of war. Two deputies--Jean de la Fin, Sieur de Beauvoir la Nocle, and Charles de Teligny: the one sent by the Queen of Navarre, the other sent by Coligny and the princes, who were already far on their journey through the south of France--came to the king at Angers, and presented the demands of the Huguenots. These demands certainly did not breathe a spirit of craven submission. The Huguenots called not only for complete liberty of conscience, but also for the right to hold their religious a.s.semblies through the entire kingdom, without prejudice to their dignities or honors. They stipulated for the annulling of all sentences p.r.o.nounced against them; the approval of all that they had done, as done for the welfare of the realm; the rest.i.tution of their dignities and property, and the giving of good and sufficient securities for the execution of the edict of pacification.[771] Catharine and her counsellors had undoubtedly gained some wholesome experience since Cosse's first proposals. They had already discovered that a single pitched battle had not ruined the Huguenots; and they now suspected that a number of additional battles might be required to effect that desirable result. It is not astonishing, however, that the queen mother was not yet ready to grant terms which could scarcely have been conceded even on the morrow of an overwhelming defeat. The articles sent by the king to the Protestant leaders as a counter-proposal were therefore of a very different character from those which they had submitted. Charles offered to the Queen of Navarre, the Princes of Navarre and Conde, the admiral, and their followers, entire amnesty, and consented to annul all judicial proceedings made against them during these or the late troubles. He would exact no punishment for any treaties which they might have formed with foreign princes, and would restore their goods, honors, and estates. As to the religious question, he would allow them to hold two cities, in which they might do as they pleased, the king placing in each city a capable "gentilhomme" to maintain his authority and the public tranquillity. Elsewhere in France he would tolerate no reformed minister, no exercise of any other religion than his own. Neither would he guarantee the rest.i.tution of the judicial and other offices once held by Protestants, since others had bought them, and the money proceeding from the sale had been spent in defraying the expenses of the war; especially as the clergy must look to the courts for the enforcement of their claims for indemnification for the destruction of the churches and other ecclesiastical property. The king professed himself willing to give all reasonable securities for the performance of his promises, but neglected to make any specification of the nature of those securities.[772] Such were the hard conditions offered--all that Catharine and the Guises were willing to concede at a time when it was hoped that the Huguenots would lose the a.s.sistance of one of their secret supporters, Elizabeth of England; for the Earls of Westmoreland and Northumberland had risen in the north, and they had not only the best wishes, but the ready co-operation of every Spanish and French sympathizer. Charles himself was writing to his amba.s.sador at London a letter meant to meet the queen's eye, instructing him to congratulate Elizabeth on the progress made in suppressing the insurrection; and Catharine, by the same messenger, sent a secret letter of the same date, ordering the same diplomatic agent, in case the rebellion was not at an end, to give aid and comfort to the rebels.[773] Catharine and the Guises had not lost heart. Moved by repeated supplications, Pius the Fifth at last decided to excommunicate the heretical daughter of Henry and Anne Boleyn. But, as the bull of the twenty-fifth of February, 1570, had been procured solely by the entreaties of the rebel earls, enforced by the intercessions of the Guises, and as it was known that Philip the Second, so far from desiring it, was strongly opposed to the imprudent policy of the pontiff, the doc.u.ment, which pretended to relieve all the queen's subjects of the obligations of their allegiance, was committed to the charge of the Cardinal of Lorraine, to launch at Elizabeth's devoted head whenever the convenient moment should arrive.[774]

At Montreal, near Carca.s.sonne, the admiral was again overtaken by a royal messenger, who on this occasion was Biron, equally distinguished on the field and in the council-chamber. While the Protestants replied to his offer that with heartfelt satisfaction they greeted the king's disposition to restore peace to France, and sent to Charles, who was then at Chateaubriand, in Brittany, a delegation consisting of Teligny, Beauvoir la Nocle, and La Cha.s.setiere, they distinctly stated that no terms could be entertained which should not include liberty of worship. For they declared that "the deprivation of the exercise of their religion was more insupportable to them than death itself."[775] But, in fact, the Huguenot princes and n.o.bles placed little reliance upon the sincerity of the court, and had no hope of peace so long as they treated at a distance from the capital. Accordingly, Coligny, in his march up the valley of the Rhone, when again approached in the king's name by Biron, accompanied by Henry de Mesmes, Sieur de Mala.s.sise, peremptorily declined to enter into a truce which should interrupt the efficiency of his movement.[776]

[Sidenote: Better conditions proposed.]

[Sidenote: Charles and his mother for peace.]

[Sidenote: The war fruitless for its authors.]

But when at last the admiral reached the Loire, and, at La Charite and Chatillon, was within a few hours of Paris, the att.i.tude of the court in relation to the peace seemed to undergo an entire change, and it became evident that the negotiations, which had previously been employed for the mere purpose of amusing the Huguenots, were now resorted to with the view of ending a war already protracted far beyond expectation. Nor is it difficult to discover some of the circ.u.mstances that tended to bring about this radical mutation of policy.[777] The resources of the kingdom were exhausted. It was no longer possible to furnish the ready money without which the German and other mercenaries, of late const.i.tuting a large portion of the royal troops, could not be induced to enter the kingdom.

The Pope and Philip were lavish of nothing beyond promises and exhortations that above all things Charles should make no peace with the heretical rebels. Indeed, Philip had few men, and no money, to spare. The French troops were in great straits. The gentlemen, who, in return for their immunity from all taxation, were bound to serve the monarch in the field at their own expense, had exhausted their available funds in so long a contest, and it was impossible to muster them in such numbers as the war demanded. Charles himself had always been averse to war. His tastes were pacific. If he ever emulated the martial glory which his brother Anjou had so easily acquired, the feeling was but of momentary duration, and met with little encouragement from his mother. He had, undoubtedly, consented to the initiation of the war only in consequence of the misrepresentations made by those who surrounded him, respecting its necessity and the ease of its prosecution. He had now the strongest reasons for desiring the immediate return of peace. His marriage with the daughter of the emperor had for some months been arranged, but Maximilian refused to permit Elizabeth to become the queen of a country rent with civil commotion.

Catharine de' Medici, also, from the advocate of war, had become anxious for peace--tardily returning to the conviction which she had often expressed in former years, that the attempt to exterminate the Huguenots by force of arms was hopeless. After two years she was no nearer her object than when the Cardinal of Lorraine persuaded her to endeavor to seize Conde at Noyers. Jarnac had accomplished nothing; Moncontour was nearly as barren a victory. A great part of what had been so laboriously effected by Anjou's army in the last months of 1569, La Noue had been undoing in the first half of 1570.[778] The Protestants, who were, a few months since, shut up in La Roch.e.l.le, had defeated their enemies at Sainte Gemme, near Lucon, and had retaken Fontenay, Niort, the Isle d'Oleron, Brouage, and other places. The Baron de la Garde, who had lately, in the capacity of "general of the galleys," been infesting the seas in the neighborhood of La Roch.e.l.le, was compelled to retire to Bordeaux.[779]

Saintes had been besieged and captured, and the Huguenots were advancing to the reduction of St. Jean d'Angely, not long since so dearly won by the Roman Catholics.[780] Montluc had, it is true, met with success in Bearn, where Rabasteins was taken and its entire garrison ma.s.sacred.[781] But what were these advantages at the foot of the Pyrenees, when an army under Gaspard de Coligny, after sweeping four hundred leagues through the southern and western provinces, was now in the immediate vicinity of Paris? His forces, indeed, were small in numbers, but would speedily grow formidable. The French amba.s.sador sent from London the intelligence that letters of credit had been sent from England to Hamburg in order to hasten the entrance into France of some twelve or fifteen thousand Germans under Duke Casimir; that twenty-five hundred men were to be despatched from La Roch.e.l.le to make a descent on some point in Normandy or Brittany, in conjunction with the ships of the Prince of Orange; and that the English were to be invited to co-operate.[782] If it had proved impracticable to prevent the Duc de Deux Ponts from marching across France to join the confederates near the ocean, what hope was there that the king would be able to hinder the union of Coligny and Casimir? Or, why might not both be reinforced by the troops of La Noue, who had been accomplishing such exploits in Aunis and Saintonge?

The princes of Germany added their intercessions to the stern logic of the conflict. During the festivities in Heidelberg, attending the marriage of John Casimir, Duke of Bavaria, and Elizabeth, daughter of the Elector of Saxony, in June, 1570, the Elector Palatine, the Elector of Saxony, the Margraves George Frederick of Brandenburg and Charles of Baden, Louis, Duke of Wurtemberg, the Landgraves William, Philip and George of Hesse, and Adolphus, Duke of Holstein, wrote a joint letter to Charles the Ninth of France, in which they drew his attention to the injury which the long war he was carrying on with his subjects was inflicting upon the states of the empire, and to the necessity of speedily terminating it if he would retain their good-will and friendship. And they a.s.sured him that there was no way of accomplishing this result except by permitting the exercise of the reformed religion throughout the kingdom, and abolishing all distinctions between his Majesty's subjects of different faiths.[783]

[Sidenote: Anxiety of Cardinal Chatillon.]

When the war had so signally failed, it is not strange that the king and his mother should have turned once more to the advocates of peace, with whose return to favor the retirement of the Guises from court was contemporaneous. Yet the Protestants, who knew too well from experience the malignity of that hated family, could not but shudder lest they might be putting themselves in the power of their most determined enemies. The Queen of Navarre wrote to Charles urging him to use his own native good sense, and a.s.suring him that she feared "marvellously" that these well-known mischief-makers would lure him into "a patched-up-peace"--_une paix fourree_--like the preceding pacifications. The object they had in view was, indeed, the ruin of the Huguenots; but the first disaster, she warned him, would fall on the monarch and his royal estate.[784] Cardinal Chatillon, when sounded by the French amba.s.sador in England, expressed his eagerness for peace. On selfish grounds alone he would be glad to exchange poverty in England for his revenues of one hundred and twenty thousand a year in France. But he had his fears. "Remembering that the king, the queen, and monsieur (the Duke of Anjou), to confirm the last peace, did him the honor to give him their word, placing their own hands in his, and that those who induced them to break it were those very persons with whom he and his a.s.sociates now had to conclude the proposed peace," he said, "his hair stood upon end with fear." All that the Protestants wanted was security. They would be glad to transfer the war elsewhere--a thing his brother the admiral had always desired; and, if admitted to the king's favor, they would render his Majesty the most notable service that had been done to the crown for two hundred years.[785]

[Sidenote: Royal Edict of pacification, St. Germain, August 8, 1570.]

The terms of the long-desired peace were at last decided upon by the commissioners, among whom Teligny and Beauvoir la Nocle were most prominent on the Protestant side, while Biron and De Mesmes represented the court. On the eighth of August, 1570, they were officially promulgated in a royal edict signed at St. Germain-en-Laye.

There were in this doc.u.ment the usual stipulations respecting amnesty, the prohibition of insults and recriminations, and kindred topics. The liberty of religious profession was guaranteed. Respecting worship according to the Protestant rites, the provision was of the following character. All n.o.bles ent.i.tled to "high jurisdiction"[786] were permitted to designate one place belonging to them, where they could have religious services for themselves, their families, their subjects, and all who might choose to attend, so long as either they or their families were present.

This privilege, in the case of other n.o.bles, was restricted to their families and their friends, not exceeding ten in number. To the Queen of Navarre a few places were granted in the fiefs which she held of the French crown, where service could be celebrated even in her absence. In addition to these, there was a list of cities, designated by name--two in each of the twelve princ.i.p.al governments or provinces--in which, or in the suburbs of which, the reformed services were allowed; and this privilege was extended to all those places of which the Protestants had possession on the first of the present month of August. From all other places--from the royal court and its vicinity to a distance of two leagues, and especially from Paris and its vicinity to the distance of ten leagues--Protestant worship was strictly excluded. Provision was made for Protestant burials, to take place in the presence of not more than ten persons. The king recognized the Queen of Navarre, the prince her son, and the late Prince of Conde and his son, as faithful relations and servants; their followers as loyal subjects; Deux Ponts, Orange, and his brothers, and Wolrad Mansfeld, as good neighbors and friends. There was to be a rest.i.tution of property, honors, and offices, and a rescission of judicial sentences. To protect the members of the reformed faith in the courts of justice, they were to be permitted to challenge four of the judges in the Parliament of Paris; six--three in each chamber--in those of Rouen, Dijon, Aix, Rennes, and Gren.o.ble; and four in each chamber of the Parliament of Bordeaux. They were to be allowed a peremptory appeal from the Parliament of Toulouse. To defend the Huguenots from popular violence, four cities were to be intrusted to them for a period of two years--La Roch.e.l.le, Montauban, Cognac, and La Charite--to serve as places of refuge; and the Princes of Navarre and Conde, with twenty of their followers, were to pledge their word for the safe restoration of these cities to the king at the expiration of the designated term.[787]

[Sidenote: Dissatisfaction of the clergy.]

Such were the leading features of the edict of pacification that closed the third religious war, by far the longest and most sanguinary conflict that had as yet desolated France. That the terms would be regarded as in the highest degree offensive by the intolerant party at home and abroad was to be expected. The Parisian curate, Jehan de la Fosse, only spoke the common sentiment of the clergy and of the bigoted Roman Catholics when he said that "it contained articles sufficiently terrible to make France and the king's faithful servants tremble, seeing that the Huguenots were reputed as faithful servants, and what they had done held by the king to be agreeable."[788] It was not astonishing, therefore, that, although the publication of the edict was effected without delay under the eyes of the court at Paris, it gave rise in Rouen to a serious riot.[789] The Papal Nuncio and the Spanish amba.s.sador were indignant. Both Pius and Philip had bitterly opposed the negotiations of the early part of the year. Now their amba.s.sadors made a fruitless attempt to put off the evil day of peace; the Spanish amba.s.sador not only offering three thousand horse and six thousand foot to extirpate the Huguenots, but affirming that "there were no conditions to which he was not ready to bind himself, provided that the king would not make peace with the heretics and rebels."[790]

[Sidenote: "The limping and unsettled peace."]

For the first time in their history, the relations of the Huguenots of France to the state were settled, not by a royal declaration which was to be of force until the king should attain his majority, or until the convocation of a general council of the Church, but by an edict which was expressly stated to be "_perpetual and irrevocable_." Such the Protestants, although with many misgivings, hoped that it might prove. It was not, however, an auspicious circ.u.mstance that the popular wit, laying hold of the fact that one of the Roman Catholic commissioners that drew up its stipulations--Biron--was lame, while the other--Henri de Mesmes--was best known as Lord of Mala.s.sise, conferred upon the new compact the ungracious appellation of "_the limping and unsettled peace_"--"la paix boiteuse et mal-a.s.sise."[791]

FOOTNOTES:

[587] Memoires d'Agrippa d'Aubigne (Ed. Buchon), 475.

[588] Jean de Serres, iii. 247.

[589] Mem. de Claude Haton, ii. 541; De Thou, iv. (liv. xliv.) 145.

[590] The text of the edict is given by Jean de Serres, iii. 272-281. See also De Thou, iv. (liv. xliv.) 145, 146; Castelnau, liv. vii., c. ii. La Fosse (Journal d'un cure ligueur, 98), gives the correct date: "Septembre.

_La veille du Saint Michel_ (i.e., _Sept._ 28th) fut rompu l'esdict de janvier, et publie dedans le palais esdict au contraire;" while the amba.s.sador La Mothe Fenelon alludes to it in a despatch to Catharine as "votre edict du x.x.xe de Septembre." Correspondance diplomatique, i. 28.

[591] J. de Serres, iii. 281, 282; De Thou and Castelnau, _ubi supra_, Recordon, Le protestantisme en Champagne, 158, 159.

[592] Zway Edict, u. s. w., _ubi infra_, p. 38.

[593] Castelnau, _ubi supra_.

[594] I have before me this interesting publication, of which the first lines of the t.i.tle-page (inordinately long and comprehensive, after the fashion of the times) run as follows: "Zway Edict, sampt einer offnen Patent der Koniglichen Wurden in Franckreich, durch welche alle auffrurische Predigten, versamblungen und ubung der newen unchristlichen Secten und vermainten Religion gantz und gar abgeschafft und allain die Romische und Bapstische Catholische ware Religion gestattet werden sollen.... 1568."

[595] De Thou, iv. (liv. xliv.) 160, 161.

[596] "Notre sang nous sera ung secong bapteme, par quoy sans aucun empeschement, nous irons avec les autres martyrs droit en paradis."

Publication de la croisade, Hist. de Languedoc, v. (Preuves) 216, 217. See the account, ibid., v. 290.