Volume 2 / Book 2 — CHAPTER XIII.

THE FIRST CIVIL WAR.

Inconsistencies of the Edict of January.

The Edict of January was on its very face a compromise, and as such rested on no firm foundation. Inconsistent with itself, it fully satisfied neither Huguenot nor Roman Catholic. The latter objected to the toleration which the edict extended; the former demanded the unrestricted freedom of worship which it denied. If the existence of two diverse religions was compatible with the welfare of the state, why ignominiously thrust the places of Protestant worship from the cities into the suburbs? If the two were irreconcilable, why suffer the Huguenots to assemble outside the walls?

Huguenot leaders urge the observance of the edict.

Yet there was this difference between the attitude assumed by the rival parties with reference to the edict: while the Roman Catholic leaders made no secret of their intention to insist upon its repeal, [1] the Huguenot leaders were urgent in their advice to the churches to conform strictly to its provisions, restraining the indiscreet zeal of their more impetuous members and exhibiting due gratitude to Heaven for the amelioration of their lot. To the people it was, indeed, a bitter disappointment to be compelled to give up the church edifices, and to resort for public service to the outskirts of the town. Less keen was the regret experienced by others not less sincerely interested in the progress of the purer doctrines, who, on account of their appreciation of the violence of the opposition to be encountered, had not been so sanguine in their expectations. And so Beza and other prominent men of the Protestant Church, after obtaining from Chancellor L'Hospital some further explanations on doubtful points, addressed to their brethren in all parts of France a letter full of wholesome advice. "God," said they, "has deigned to employ new means of protecting His church in this kingdom, by placing those who profess the Gospel under the safeguard of the king, our natural prince, and of the magistrates and governors established by him. This should move us so much the more to praise the infinite goodness of our Heavenly Father, who has at length answered the cry of His children, and lovingly to obey the king, in order that he may be induced to aid our just cause." The provisional edict, they added, was not all that might yet be hoped for. As respected the surrender of the churches, those Huguenots who had seized them on their own individual authority ought rather to acknowledge their former indiscretion than deplore the necessity for restitution. In fine, annoyance at the loss of a few privileges ought to be forgotten in gratitude for the gain of many signal advantages. [2] The letter produced a deep impression, and its salutary advice was followed scrupulously, if not cheerfully, even in southern France, where the Huguenots, in some places, outnumbered the adherents of the Romish Church.

Seditious Sermons.

The papal party was less ready to acquiesce. The Edict of January was, according to its representative writers, the most pernicious law for the kingdom that could have been devised. By forbidding the magistrates from interfering with the Protestant conventicles held in the suburbs, by permitting the royal officers to attend, by conferring upon the ministers full liberty of officiating, a formal approval was, for the first time, given to the new sect under the authority of the royal seal.[3] The pulpits resounded with denunciations of the government. The King of Navarre and the queen mother were assailed under scriptural names, as favoring the false prophets of Baal. Scarcely a sermon was preached in which they did not figure as Ahab and Jezebel.[4] A single specimen of the spirited discourses in vogue will suffice. A Franciscan monk—one Barrier—the same from whose last Easter sermon an extract has already been given[5]—after reading the royal ordinance in his church of Sainte-Croix, in Provins, remarked: "Well now, gentlemen of Provins, what must I, and the other preachers of France, do? Must we obey this order? What shall we tell you? What shall we preach? 'The Gospel,' Sir Huguenot will say. And pray, stating that the errors of Calvin, of Martin Luther, of Beza, Malot, Peter Martyr, and other preachers, with their erroneous doctrine, condemned by the Church a thousand years ago, and since then by the holy œcumenical councils, are worthless and damnable—is not this preaching the Gospel? Bidding you beware of their teaching, bidding you refuse to listen to them, or read their books; telling you that they only seek to stir up sedition, murder, and robbery, as they have begun to do in Paris and numberless places in the realm—is not this preaching 'the Gospel?' But some one may say: 'Pray, friar, what are you saying? You are not obeying the king's edict; you are still talking of Calvin and his companions; you call them and those who hold their sentiments heretics and Huguenots; you will be denounced to the courts of justice, you will be thrown into prison—yes, you will be hung as a seditious person.' I answer, that is not unlikely, for Ahab and Jezebel put to death the prophets of God in their time, and gave all freedom to the false prophets of Baal. 'Stop, friar, you are saying too much, you will be hung.' Very well, then there will be a gray friar hung! Many others will therefore have to be hung, for God, by His Holy Spirit, will inspire the pillars of His church to uphold the edifice, which will never be overthrown until the end of the world, whatever blows may be struck at it."[6]

Opposition of the parliaments.

The parliaments exhibited scarcely less opposition to the edict than did the pulpits of the Roman Catholic churches. One—the Parliament of Dijon—never registered it at all;[7] while that of Paris instituted a long and decided resistance. "Non possumus, nec debemus," "non possumus, nec debemus pro conscientia," were the words in which it replied when repeatedly pressed to give formal sanction.[8] The counsellors were equally displeased with the contents of the edict, and with the irregularity committed in sending it first to the provincial parliaments. Even when the king, yielding to their importunity, by a supplementary "declaration," interpreted the provision of the edict relative to the attendance of royal officers upon the reformed services, as applicable only to the bailiffs, seneschals, and other minor magistrates, and strictly prohibited the attendance of the members of parliament and other high judicatories,[9] the counsellors, instead of proceeding to the registry of the obnoxious law, returned a recommendation that the intolerant Edict of July be enforced![10] It was not possible until March to obtain a tardy assent to the reception of the January Edict into the legislation of the country, and then only a few of the judges vouchsafed to take part in the act.[11] The delay served to inflame yet more the passions of the people.

New conference.

Scarcely had the edict which was to adjust the relations of the two religious parties been promulgated, when a new attempt was made to reconcile the antagonistic beliefs by the old, but ever unsuccessful method of a conference between theologians. On the twenty-eighth of January a select company assembled in the large council-chamber of the royal palace of St. Germain, and commenced the discussion of the first topic submitted for their deliberation—the question of pictures or images and their worship. Catharine herself was present, with Antoine of Navarre and Jeanne d'Albret, Michel de l'Hospital, and other members of the council. On the papal side appeared the Cardinals of Bourbon, Tournon, and Ferrara, and a number of less elevated dignitaries. Beza and Marlorat were most prominent on the side of the reformed. The discussion was long and earnest, but it ended leaving all the disputants holding the same views that they had entertained at the outset. Beza condemned as idolatrous the practice of admitting statues or paintings into Christian churches, and urged their entire removal. The Inquisitor De Mouchy, Fra Giustiniano of Corfu, Maillard, dean of the Sorbonne, and others, attempted to refute his positions in a style of argument which exhibited the extremes of profound learning and silly conceit. Bishop Montluc of Valence,[12] and four doctors of theology—Salignac, Bouteiller, D'Espense, and Picherel—not only admitted the flagrant abuses of image-worship, but drew up a paper in which they did not disguise their sentiments. They recommended the removal of representations of the Holy Trinity, and of pictures immodest in character, or of saints not recognized by the Church. They reprobated the custom of decking out the portraits of the saints with crowns and dresses, the celebration of processions in their honor, and the offering of gifts and vows. And they yielded so far to the demands of the Protestants as to desire that only the simple cross should be permitted to remain over the altar, while the pictures should be placed high upon the walls, where they could neither be kissed nor receive other objectionable marks of adoration.[13] It was a futile task to reconcile views so discordant even among the Roman Catholic partisans. Two weeks were spent in profitless discussion, and, on the eleventh of February, the new colloquy was permitted to dissolve without having entered upon any of the more difficult questions that still remained upon the programme marked out for it.[14] The cardinals had prevailed upon Catharine de' Medici to refer the settlement to the Council of Trent.[15] The joy of De Mouchy, the inquisitor, and of his companions, knew no bounds when Chancellor L'Hospital declared the queen's pleasure, and requested the members to retire to their homes, and reduce their opinions to writing for future use. They were ready to throw themselves on Beza's neck in their delight at being relieved of the necessity of debating with him![16]

Defection of Antoine and its results.

Constancy of Jeanne.

But, in truth, the time for the calm discussion of theological differences, the time for friendly salutation between the champions of the rival systems of faith, was rapidly drawing to a close. If some rays of sunshine still glanced athwart the landscape, conveying to the unpractised eye the impression of quiet serenity, there were also black and portentous clouds already rising far above the horizon. Those who could read the signs of the times had long watched their gathering, and they trembled before the coming of the storm. Although they were mercifully spared the full knowledge of the overwhelming ruin that would follow in the wake of that fearful war of the elements, they saw the angry commotion of the sky, and realized that the air was surcharged with material for the most destructive bolts of heaven. And yet it is the opinion of a contemporary, whose views are always worthy of careful consideration, that, had it not been for the final defection of the King of Navarre at this critical juncture, the great woes impending over France might still have been delayed or averted.[17] That unhappy prince seemed determined to earn the title of the "Julian Apostate" of the French Reformation. Plied by the arts of his own servants, D'Escars (of whom Mézeray pithily remarks that he was ready to sell himself for money to anybody, save his master) and the Bishop of Auxerre; flattered by the Triumvirate, tempted by the Spanish Ambassador, Cardinal Tournon, and the papal legate, he had long been playing a hypocritical part. He had been unwilling to break with the Huguenots before securing the golden fruit with which he was lured on, and so he was at the same time the agent and the object of treachery. Even after he had sent in his submission to the Pope by the hands of D'Escars, he pretended, when remonstrated with by his Protestant friends, that "he would take care not to go so far that he could not easily extricate himself."[18] He did not even show displeasure when faithfully rebuked and warned.[19] Yet he had after long hesitation completely cast in his lot with the papal party. He was convinced at last that Philip was in earnest in his intention to give him the island of Sardinia, which was depicted to him as a terrestrial paradise, "worth four Navarres."[20] It was widely believed that he had received from the Holy See the promise of a divorce from his heretical consort, which, while permitting him to retain the possessions which she had justly forfeited by her spiritual rebellion, would enable him to marry the youthful Mary of Scots, and add a substantial crown to his titular claims.[21] But we would fain believe that even Antoine of Bourbon had not sunk to such a depth of infamy. Certain it is, however, that he now openly avowed his new devotion to the Romish Church, and that the authority of his name became a bulwark of strength to the refractory parliament in its endeavor to prevent the execution of the edict of toleration.[22] But he was unsuccessful in dragging with him the wife whom he had been the instrument of inducing first to declare herself for the persecuted faith of the reformers. And when Catharine de' Medici, who cared nothing for religion, tried to persuade her to arrange matters with her husband, "Sooner," she said, "than ever go to mass, had I my kingdom and my son in my hand, I would cast them both into the depth of the sea, that they might not be a hinderance to me."[23] Brave mother of Henry the Fourth! Well would it have been, both for her son and for France, if that son had inherited more of Jeanne d'Albret's devotion to truth, and less of his father's lewdness and inconstancy!

Immense crowds at Huguenot preaching.

The canons of Sainte Croix.

As early as in February, Beza was of the opinion that the King of Navarre would not suffer him to remain longer in the realm to which he himself had invited him so earnestly only six months before. At all events, he would be publicly dismissed by the first of May, and with him many others. With this disquieting intelligence came also rumors of an alliance between the enemies of the Gospel and the Spaniard, which could not be treated with contempt as baseless fabrications.[24] But meanwhile the truth was making daily progress. At a single gathering for prayer and preaching, but a few days before, twenty-five thousand persons, it was computed, had been in attendance, representing all ranks of the population, among whom were many of the nobility.[25] In the city of Troyes, a few weeks later, eight or nine thousand persons assembled from the neighboring country to celebrate the Lord's Supper, and the number of communicants was so great that they could not all partake on a single day; so the services were repeated on the morrow.[26] Elsewhere there was equal zeal and growth. Indeed, so rapid was the advance of Protestantism, so pressing the call for ministers, that the large and flourishing church of Orleans, in a letter written the last day of February, proclaimed their expectation of establishing a theological school to supply their own wants and those of the adjacent regions; and it is no insignificant mark of the power with which the reformatory movement still coursed on, that the canons of the great church of Sainte Croix had given notice of their intention to attend the lectures that were to be delivered![27] In such an encouraging strain did "the ministers, deacons, and elders" of the most Protestant city of northern France write on the day before that deplorable massacre of Vassy, which was to be the signal for an appeal from argument to arms, upon which the newly enkindled spirit of religious inquiry was to be quenched in partisan hatred and social confusion. Within less than two months the tread of an armed host was to be heard in the city which it had been hoped would be thronged by the pious students of the gospel of peace, and frenzied soldiers would be hurling upon the floors of Sainte Croix the statues of the saints that had long occupied their elevated niches.

We must now turn to the events preceding the inauspicious occurrence the fruits of which proved so disastrous to the French church and state.

The Guises meet the Duke of Würtemberg at Saverne.

Having at length made sure of the co-operation of the King of Navarre in the contest upon which they had now resolved with the view of preventing the execution of the Edict of January, the Guises desired to strengthen themselves in the direction of Germany, and secure, if not the assistance, at least the neutrality of the Protestant princes. Could the Protestants on the other side of the Rhine be made indifferent spectators of the struggle, persuaded that their own creed resembled the faith of the Roman Catholics much more than the creed of the Huguenots; could they be convinced that the Huguenots were uneasy and rebellious radicals, whom it were better to crush than to assist; could, consequently, the "reiters" and "lansquenets" be kept at home—it would, thought the Guises, be easy, with the help of the German Catholics, perhaps of Spain also, to render complete the papal supremacy in France, and to crush Condé and the Châtillons to the earth. Accordingly, the Guises extended to Duke Christopher of Würtemberg an invitation to meet them in the little town of Saverne (or Zabern, as it was called by the Germans), in Alsace, not far from Strasbourg.[28] The duke came as he was requested, accompanied by his theologians, Brentius and Andreä; and the interview, beginning on the fifteenth of February,[29] lasted four days. Four of the Guises were present; but the conversations were chiefly with Francis, the Duke of Guise, and Charles, the Cardinal of Lorraine; the Cardinal of Guise and the Grand Prior of the Knights of St. John taking little or no active part. Christopher and Francis had been comrades in arms a score of years back, for the former had served several years, and with no little distinction, in the French wars. This circumstance afforded an opportunity for the display of extraordinary friendship. And what did the brothers state, in this important consultation, respecting their own sentiments, the opinions of the Huguenots, and the condition of France? Happily, a minute account, in the form of a manuscript memorandum taken down at the time by Duke Christopher, is still extant in the archives of Stuttgart.[30] Little known, but authentic beyond the possibility of cavil, this document deserves more attention than it has received from historians; for it places in the clearest light the shameless mendacity of the Guises, and shows that the duke had nearly as good a claim as the cardinal, his brother, to the reputation which the Venetian ambassador tells us that Charles had earned "of rarely telling the truth."

Lying assurances.

Duke Christopher made the acquaintance of Charles of Lorraine as a preacher on the morning after his arrival, when he heard him, in a sermon on the temptation in the wilderness, demonstrate that no other mediators or intercessors must be sought for but Jesus Christ, who is our only Saviour and the only propitiation for our sins. That day Christopher had a long conversation with Guise respecting the unhappy condition of France, which the latter ascribed in great part to the Huguenot ministers, whose unconciliatory conduct, he said, had rendered abortive the Colloquy of Poissy. Würtemberg corrected him by replying that the very accounts of the colloquy which Guise had sent him showed that the unsuccessful issue was owing to the prelates, who had evidently come determined to prevent any accommodation. He urged that the misfortunes that had befallen France were much rather to be ascribed to the cruel persecutions that had been inflicted on so many guiltless victims. "I cannot refrain from telling you," he added, "that you and your brother are strongly suspected in Germany of having contributed to cause the death, since the decease of Henry the Second—and even before, in his lifetime—of several thousands of persons who have been miserably executed on account of their faith. As a friend, and as a Christian, I must warn you. Beware, beware of innocent blood! Otherwise the punishment of God will fall upon you in this life and in the next." "He answered me," writes Würtemberg, "with great sighs: 'I know that my brother and I are accused of that, and of many other things also. But we are wronged,[31] as we shall both of us explain to you before we leave.'"

The cardinal entered more fully than his brother into the doctrinal conference, talking now with Würtemberg, now with his theologian Brentius, and trying to persuade both that he was in perfect accord with them. While pressing his German friends to declare the Zwinglians and the Calvinists heretics—which they carefully avoided doing—and urging them to state the punishment that ought to be inflicted on heretics, there seemed to be no limit to the concessions which Lorraine was willing to make. He adored and invoked only Christ in heaven. He merely venerated the wafer. He acknowledged that his party went too far in calling the mass a sacrifice, and celebrating it for the living and the dead. The mass was not a sacrifice, but a commemoration of the sacrifice offered on the altar of the cross ("non sacrificium, sed memoria sacrificii præstiti in ara crucis"). He believed that the council assembled at Trent would do no good. When the Romish hierarchy, with the Pope at its head, as the pretended vicar of God on earth, was objected to, he replied that that matter could easily be adjusted. As for himself, "in the absence of a red gown, he would willingly wear a black one."

The Guises deceive no one.

He was asked whether, if Beza and his colleagues could be brought to consent to sign the Augsburg confession, he also would sign it. "You have heard it," he replied, "I take God to witness that I believe as I have said, and that by God's grace I shall live and die in these sentiments. I repeat it: I have read the Confession of Augsburg, I have also read Luther, Melanchthon, Brentius, and others; I entirely approve their doctrines, and I might speedily agree with them in all that concerns the ecclesiastical hierarchy. But I am compelled still to dissemble for a time, that I may gain some that are yet weak in the faith." A little later he adverted to Würtemberg's remarks to Guise. "You informed my brother," he said, "that in Germany we are both of us suspected of having contributed to the execution of a large number of innocent Christians during the reigns of Henry and of Francis the Second. Well! I swear to you, in the name of God my Creator, and pledging the salvation of my soul, that I am guilty of the death of no man condemned for religion's sake. Those who were then privy to the deliberations of state can testify in my favor. On the contrary, whenever crimes of a religious character were under discussion, I used to say to King Henry or to King Francis the Second, that they did not belong to my department, that they had to do with the secular power, and I went away."[32] He even added that, although Du Bourg was in orders, he had begged the king to spare him as a learned man. "In like manner," says Würtemberg, "the Duke of Guise with great oaths affirmed that he was innocent of the death of those who had been condemned on account of their faith. 'The attempt,' he added, 'has frequently been made to kill us, both the cardinal and myself, with fire-arms, sword, and poison, and, although the culprits have been arrested, I never meddled with their punishment.'" And when the Duke of Würtemberg again "conjured them not to persecute the poor Christians of France, for God would not leave such a sin unpunished," both the cardinal and the Duke of Guise gave him their right hands, promising on their princely faith, and by the salvation of their souls, that they would neither openly nor secretly persecute the partisans of the "new doctrines!" Such were the barefaced impostures which this "par nobile fratrum" desired Christopher of Würtemberg to publish for their vindication among the Lutherans of Germany. But the liars were not believed. The shrewd Landgrave of Hesse, on receiving Würtemberg's account, even before the news of the massacre of Vassy, came promptly to the conclusion that the whole thing was an attempt at deception. Christopher himself, in the light of later events, added to his manuscript these words: "Alas! It can now be seen how they have kept these promises! Deus sit ultor doli et perjurii, cujus namque res agitur."[33]

Throkmorton's account of the French court.

Meanwhile events of the greatest consequence were occurring at the capital. The very day after the Saverne conference began, Sir Nicholas Throkmorton wrote to Queen Elizabeth an account of "the strange issue" to which affairs had come at the French court since his last despatch, a little over a fortnight before. His letter gives a vivid and accurate view of the important crisis in the first half of February, 1562, which we present very nearly in the words of the ambassador himself. "The Cardinal of Ferrara," says Throkmorton, "has allured to his devotion the King of Navarre, the Constable, Marshal St. André, the Cardinal of Tournon, and others inclined to retain the Romish religion. All these are bent to repress the Protestant religion in France, and to find means either to range [bring over to their side] the Queen of Navarre, the Prince of Condé, the Admiral, and all others who favor that religion, or to expel them from the court, with all the ministers and preachers. The queen mother, fearing this conspiracy might be the means of losing her authority (which is as dear to her as one religion or the other), and mistrusting that the Constable was going about to reduce the management of the whole affair into the King of Navarre's hands, and so into his own, has caused the Constable to retire from the court, as it were in disgrace, and intended to do the like with the Cardinal of Tournon and the Marshal St. André. The King of Navarre being offended with these proceedings, and imputing part of her doings to the advice of the Admiral, the Cardinal Châtillon, and Monsieur D'Andelot, intended to compel those personages to retire also from the court. In these garboils [commotions] the Prince of Condé, being sick at Paris, was requested to repair to the court and stand her [Catharine] in stead. In this time there was great working on both sides to win the house of Guise. So the Queen Mother wrote to them—they being in the skirts of Almain—to come to the court with all speed. The like means were made [use of] by the King of Navarre, the Cardinal of Ferrara and the Constable, to ally them on their part. During these solicitations the Duke D'Aumale arrived at the court from them, who was requested to solicit the speedy repair to the court of the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine.

"The Prince of Condé went from hence in a horse litter to the court of St. Germain, where he found the Protestant preachers prohibited from preaching either in the King's house or in the town, and that the King of Navarre had solemnly vowed to retain and maintain the Romish religion, and had given order that his son should be instructed in the same. The Prince, finding the Queen of Navarre and the house of Châtillon ready to leave the court, fell again dangerously sick. Nevertheless his coming so revived them, as by the covert aid of the Queen Mother, they attempted to make the Protestant preachers preach again at the town's end of St. Germain, and were entreated to abide at the court, where there is an assembly which is like to last until Easter. The Cardinal of Ferrara assists daily at these disputes. The King of Navarre persists in the house of Châtillon retiring from the court, and it is believed the Queen of Navarre, and they, will not tarry long there."[34]

Such was the picture drawn by the skilful pencil of the English envoy. It was certainly dark enough. Catharine and Navarre had sent Lansac to assure the Pope that they purposed to live in and defend the Roman Catholic religion. Sulpice had gone on a like mission to Spain. It was time, Throkmorton plainly told Queen Elizabeth, that she should show as great readiness in maintaining the Protestant religion as Ferrara and his associates showed in striving to overthrow it. And in a private despatch to Cecil, written the same day, he urged the secretary to dissuade her Majesty from longer retaining candles and cross on the altar of the royal chapel, at a time when even doctors of the Sorbonne consented to the removal of images of all sorts from over the altar in places of worship.[35]

From Saverne the Cardinal of Lorraine returned to his archbishopric of Rheims, while the duke, accompanied by the Cardinal of Guise, proceeded in the direction of the French capital. On his route he stopped at Joinville, one of the estates of the family, recently erected in their favor into a principality. Here he was joined by his wife, Anne d'Este; here, too, he listened to fresh complaints made by his mother, Antoinette of Bourbon, against the insolence of the neighboring town of Vassy, where a considerable portion of the inhabitants had lately had the audacity to embrace the reformed faith.

Vassy in Champagne.

Origin of the Huguenot Church.

Vassy, an important town of Champagne—though shorn of much of its influence by the removal of many of its dependencies to increase the dignity of Joinville—and one of the places assigned to Mary of Scots for her maintenance, had apparently for some time contained a few professors of the "new doctrines." It was, however, only in October, 1561, after the Colloquy of Poissy, that it was visited by a Protestant minister, who, during a brief sojourn, organized a church with elders and deacons. Notwithstanding the disadvantage of having no pastor, and of having notoriously incurred the special hatred of the Guises, the reformed community grew with marvellous rapidity. For the Gospel was preached not merely in the printed sermons read from the pulpit, but by the lips of enthusiastic converts. When, after a short absence, the founder of the church of Vassy returned to the scene of his labors, he came into collision with the Bishop of Châlons, whose diocese included this town. The bishop, unaccustomed to preach, set up a monk in opposition; but no one would come to hear him. The prelate then went himself to the Protestant gathering, and sat through the "singing of the commandments" and a prayer. But when he attempted to interrupt the services and asserted his episcopal authority, the minister firmly repelled the usurpation, taking his stand on the king's edict. Then, waxing warm in the discussion, the dauntless Huguenot exposed the hypocrisy of the pretended shepherd, who, not entering the fold by canonical election, but intruding himself into it without consulting his charge, was more anxious to secure his own ease than to lead his sheep into green pastures. The bishop soon retired from a field where he had found more than his match in argument: but the common people, who had come to witness his triumph over the Huguenot preacher, remained after his unexpected discomfiture, and the unequal contest resulted in fresh accessions to the ranks of the Protestants. Equally unsuccessful was the Bishop of Châlons in the attempt to induce the king to issue a commission to the Duke of Guise against the unoffending inhabitants, and Vassy was spared the fate of Mérindol and Cabrières. At Christmas nine hundred communicants, after profession of their faith, partook of the Lord's Supper according to the reformed rites; and in January, 1562, after repeated solicitations, the church obtained the long-desired boon of a pastor, in the person of the able and pious Leonard Morel. Thus far the history of Vassy differed little from that of hundreds of other towns in that age of wonderful awakening and growth, and would have attracted little attention had not its proximity to the Lorraine princes secured for it a tragic notoriety.[36]

Approach of the Duke of Guise.

On the twenty-eighth of February, Guise, with two hundred armed retainers, left Joinville. That night he slept at Dommartin-le-Franc. On Sunday morning, the first of March, he continued his journey. Whether by accident or from design, it is difficult to say, he drew near to Vassy about the time when the Huguenots were assembling for worship, and his ears caught the sound of their bell while he was still a quarter of a league distant. The ardor of Guise's followers was already at fever-heat. They had seen a poor artisan apprehended in a town that lay on their track, and summarily hung by their leader's order, for the simple offence of having had his child baptized after the reformed rites. When Guise heard the bell of the Vassy church, he turned to his suite to inquire what it meant. "It is the Huguenots' preaching," some one replied. "Par la mort-Dieu," broke in a second, "they will soon be huguenotted after another fashion!" Others began to make eager calculations respecting the extent of the plunder. A few minutes later an unlucky cobbler was espied, who, from his dress or manner, was mistaken for a Huguenot minister. It was well that he could answer the inquiries of the duke, before whom he was hurried, by assuring him that he was no clergyman and had never studied; otherwise, he was told, his case had been an extremely ugly one.[37]

The massacre.

On entering Vassy Guise repaired to the monastery chapel to hear mass said. He was followed by some of the gentlemen of his suite. Meantime, their valets found their way to the doors of the building in which the Protestants were worshipping, scarcely more than a stone's throw distant. This motley crowd was merely the vanguard of the Papists. Soon two or three gentlemen sent by Guise, according to his own account, to admonish the Huguenot assembly of their want of due obedience, entered the edifice, where they found twelve hundred persons quietly listening to the word of God. They were politely invited to sit down: but they replied by noisy interruption and threats. "Mort-Dieu, they must all be killed!" was their exclamation as they returned to report to Guise what they had seen. The defenceless Huguenots were thrown into confusion by these significant menaces, and hastened to secure the entrance. It was too late. The duke himself was approaching, and a volley from the arquebuses of his troop speedily scattered the unarmed worshippers. It is unnecessary to describe in all its details of horror the scene that ensued. The door of the sheep-fold was open and the wolf was already upon his prey. All the pent-up hatred of a band of fanatical and savage soldiers was vented upon a crowd of men, women, and children, whose heterodoxy made them pleasing victims, and whose unarmed condition rendered victory easy. No age, no sex was respected. It was enough to be a Huguenot to be a fit object for the sword or the gun. To escape from the doomed building was only possible by running the gauntlet of the troops that lay in wait. Those who sought to climb from the roof to the adjacent houses were picked off by the arquebuses of the besieging party. Only after an hour and a half had elapsed were the soldiers of Guise called off by the trumpet sounding a joyful note of victory. The evidence of their prowess, however, remained on the field of contest, in fifty or sixty dead or dying men and women, and in nearly a hundred more or less dangerously wounded.[38]

In a few hours more Guise was resuming his journey toward Paris. He was told that the Huguenots of Vassy had forwarded their complaints to the king. "Let them go, let them go!" he exclaimed. "They will find there neither their Admiral nor their Chancellor."[39]

Upon whose head rests the guilt of the massacre of Vassy? This was the question asked by every contemporary so soon as he realized the startling fact that the blow there struck was a signal that called every man to take the sword, and stand in defence of his own life. It is the question which history, more calm and dispassionate, because farther removed from the agitations of the day, now seeks to solve, as she looks back over the dreary torrents of blood that sprang from that disastrous source. The inquiry is not an idle one—for justice ought to find such a vindication in the records of past generations as may have been denied at the time of the commission of flagrant crimes.

The Huguenots declared Guise to be a murderer. Theodore Beza, in eloquent tones, demanded the punishment of the butcher of the human race. So imposing was the cry for retribution that the duke himself recognized the necessity of entering a formal defence, which was disseminated by the press far and wide through France and Germany. He denied that the massacre was premeditated. He averred that it was merely an unfortunate incident brought about by the violence of the Protestants of Vassy, who had provided themselves with an abundant supply of stones and other missiles, and assailed those whom he had sent to remonstrate courteously with them. He stated the deaths at only twenty-five or thirty. Most of these had been occasioned by the indignant valets, who, on seeing their masters wounded, had rushed in to defend them. So much against his will had the affair occurred, that he had repeatedly but ineffectually commanded his men to desist. When he had himself received a slight wound from a stone thrown by the Huguenots, the sight of the blood flowing from it had infuriated his devoted followers.

The Duke's plea of want of premeditation we may, perhaps, accept as substantially true—so far, at least, as to suppose that he had formed no deliberate plan of slaughtering the inhabitants of Vassy who had adopted the reformed religion.[40] It is difficult, indeed, to accept the argument of Brantôme and Le Laboureur, who conceive that the fortuitous character of the event is proved by the circumstance that the deed was below the courage of Guise. Nor, perhaps, shall we give excessive credit to the asseverations of the duke, repeated, we are told, even on his death-bed. For why should these be more worthy of belief than the oaths with which the same nobleman had declared to Christopher of Würtemberg that he neither had persecuted, nor would persecute the Protestants of France? But the Duke of Guise admits that he knew that there was a growing community of Huguenots at Vassy—"scandalous, arrogant, extremely seditious persons," as he styles them. He tells us that he intended, as the representative of Mary Stuart, and as feudal lord of some of their number, to admonish them of their disobedience; and that for this purpose he sent Sieur de la Bresse (or Brosse) with others to interrupt their public worship. He accuses them, it is true, of having previously armed themselves with stones, and even of possessing weapons in an adjoining building; but what reason do the circumstances of the case give us for doubting that the report may have been based upon the fact that those who in this terror-stricken assembly attempted to save their lives resorted to whatever missiles they could lay their hands upon? If the presence of his wife, and of his brother the cardinal, is used by the duke as an argument to prove the absence of any sinister intentions on his part, how much stronger is the evidence afforded to the peaceable character of the Protestant gathering by the numbers of women and children found there? But the very fact that, as against the twenty-five or thirty Huguenots whom he concedes to have been slain in the encounter, he does not pretend to give the name of a single one of his own followers that was killed, shows clearly which side it was that came prepared for the fight. And yet who that knows the sanguinary spirit generally displayed by the Roman Catholic masses in the sixteenth century, could find much fault with the Huguenots of Vassy if they had really armed themselves to repel violence and protect their wives and children—if, in other words, they had used the common right of self-preservation?[41]

The fact is that Guise was only witnessing the fruits of his instructions, enforced by his own example. He had given the first taste of blood, and now, perhaps without his actual command, the pack had taken the scent and hunted down the game. He was avowedly on a crusade to re-establish the supremacy of the Roman Catholic religion throughout France. If he had not hesitated to hang a poor pin-dealer for allowing his child to be baptized according to the forms of Calvin's liturgy; if he was on his way to Paris to restore the Edict of July by force of arms, it is idle to inquire whether he or his soldiers were responsible for the blood shed in peace. "He that sowed the seed is the author of the harvest."

Condé appeals to the king.

The news quickly flew to Condé that the arch-enemy of the Protestants had begun the execution of the cruel projects he had so long been devising with his fanatical associates; that Guise was on his way toward seditious Paris, with hands yet dripping with the blood of the inhabitants of a quiet Champagnese town, surprised and murdered while engaged in the worship of their God. Indignant, and taking in the full measure of the responsibility imposed upon him as the most powerful member of the Protestant communion, the prince, who was with the court at the castle of Monceaux—built for herself by Catharine in a style of regal magnificence—laid before the king and his mother a full account of the tragic occurrence. It was a pernicious example, he argued, and should be punished promptly and severely. Above all, the perpetrators ought not to be permitted to endanger the quiet of France by entering the capital. Catharine was alarmed and embarrassed by the intelligence; but, her fear of a conjunction between Guise and Navarre overcoming her reluctance to affront the Lorraine family, induced her to consent; and she wrote to the Duke, who had by this time reached his castle of Nanteuil, forbidding him to go to Paris, but inviting him to visit the court with a small escort. At the same time she gave orders to Saint André to repair at once to Lyons, of which he was the royal governor. But neither of the triumvirs showed any readiness to obey her orders. The duke curtly replied that he was too busy entertaining his friends to come to the king; the marshal promptly refused to leave the king while he was threatened by such perils.[42]

Beza's remonstrance.

An anvil that has worn out many hammers.

The King of Navarre now came from Paris to Monceaux, to guard the interests of the party he had espoused. He was closely followed by Theodore Beza and Francour, whom the Protestants of Paris had deputed, the former on behalf of the church, the latter of the nobility, to demand of the king the punishment of the authors of the massacre. The queen mother, as was her wont, gave a gracious audience, and promised that an investigation should be made. But Navarre, being present, seemed eager to display a neophyte's zeal, and retorted by blaming the Huguenots for going in arms to their places of worship. "True," said Beza, "but arms in the hands of the wise are instruments of peace, and the massacre of Vassy has shown the necessity under which the Protestants were laid." When Navarre exclaimed: "Whoever touches my brother of Guise with the tip of his finger, touches my whole body!" the reformer reminded him, as one whom Antoine had himself brought to France, that the way of justice is God's way, and that kings owe justice to their subjects. Finally, when he discovered, by Navarre's adoption of all the impotent excuses of Guise, that the former had sold himself to the enemies of the Gospel, Theodore Beza made that noble reply which has become classic as the motto of the French Reformation: "Sire, it is, in truth, the lot of the Church of God, in whose name I am speaking, to endure blows and not to strike them. But also may it please you to remember that it is an anvil that has worn out many hammers."[43]

Guise's entry into Paris.

At Nanteuil, Guise had been visited by the constable, with two of his sons, by Saint André, and by other prominent leaders. Accompanied by them, he now took the decided step of going to Paris in spite of Catharine's prohibition. His entry resembled a triumphal procession.[44] In the midst of an escort estimated by eye-witnesses at two thousand horse, Francis of Guise avoided the more direct gate of St. Martin, and took that of St. Denis, through which the kings of France were accustomed to pass. Vast crowds turned out to meet him, and the cries of "Vive Monsieur de Guise!" sounding much like regal acclammations, were uttered without rebuke on all sides. The "prévost des marchands" and other members of the municipal government received him with great demonstrations of joy, as the defender of the faith. At the same hour the Prince of Condé, surrounded by a large number of Protestant noblemen, students, and citizens, was riding to one of the preaching-places.[45] The two cavalcades met, but no collision ensued. The Huguenot and the papist courteously saluted each other, and then rode on. It is even reported that between the leaders themselves less sincere amenities were interchanged. Guise sent word to Condé that he and his company, whom he had assembled only on account of the malevolent, were at the prince's commands. Condé answered by saying that his own men were armed only to prevent the populace of Paris from making an attack upon the Protestants as they went to their place of worship.[46]

Anxieties of Catharine de' Medici.

For weeks the position of the queen mother had been one of peculiar difficulty and anxiety. That she was "well inclined to advance the true religion," and "well affected for a general reformation in the Church," as Admiral Coligny at this time firmly believed,[47] is simply incredible. But, on the other hand, there can be little doubt that Catharine saw her interest in upholding the Huguenot party, of which Condé and the three Châtillon brothers were acknowledged leaders. Unfortunately, the King of Navarre, "hoping to compound with the King of Spain for his kingdom of Navarre," had become the tool of the opposite side—he was "all Spanish now"[48]—and Chantonnay, Philip's ambassador, was emboldened to make arrogant demands. The envoy declared that, "unless the house of Châtillon left the court, he was ordered to depart from France." Grave diplomatists shook their heads, and thought the menace very strange, "the rather that another prince should appoint what counsellors should remain at court;" and sage men inferred that "to such princes as are afraid of shadows the King of Spain will enterprise far enough."[49] None the less was Catharine deeply disturbed. She felt distrust of the heads of the Roman Catholic party, but she feared to break entirely with them, and was forced to request the Protestant leaders to withdraw for a time from the vicinity of Paris. That city itself presented to the eye a sufficiently strange and alarming aspect, "resembling more a frontier town or a place besieged than a court, a merchant city, or university." Both sides were apprehensive of some sudden commotion, and the Protestant scholars, in great numbers, marched daily in arms to the "sermons," in spite of the opposition of the rector and his council.[50] The capital was unquestionably no place for Catharine and her son, at the present moment.

She removes the king to Melun.

and thence to Fontainebleau.

Her painful indecision.

At length, Catharine de' Medici, apprehensive of the growing power of the triumvirate, and dreading lest the king, falling into its hands, should become a mere puppet, her own influence being completely thrown into the shade, removed the court from Monceaux to Melun, a city on the upper Seine, about twenty-five miles south-east of Paris.[51] She hoped apparently that, by placing herself nearer the strongly Huguenot banks of the Loire, she would be able at will to throw herself into the arms of either party, and, in making her own terms, secure future independence. But she was not left undisturbed. At Melun she received a deputation from Paris, consisting of the "prévost des marchands" and three "échevins," who came to entreat her, in the name of the Roman Catholic people of the capital, to return and dissipate by the king's arrival the dangers that were imminent on account of Condé's presence, and to give the people the power to defend themselves by restoring to them their arms. Still hesitating, still experiencing her old difficulty of forming any plans for the distant future, and every moment balancing in her mind what she should do the next, she nevertheless pushed on ten miles farther southward, to the royal palace of Fontainebleau, and found herself not far from half the way to Orleans. But change of place brought the vacillating queen mother no nearer to a decision. Soubise, the last of the avowed Protestants to leave her, still dreamed he might succeed in persuading her. Day after day, in company with Chancellor L'Hospital, the Huguenot leader spent two or three hours alone with her in earnest argument. "Sometimes," says a recently discovered contemporary account, "they believed that they had gained everything, and that she was ready to set off for Condé's camp; then, all of a sudden, so violent a fright seized her, that she lost all heart." At last the time came when the triumvirs were expected to appear at Fontainebleau on the morrow, to secure the prize of the king's person. Soubise and the indefatigable chancellor made a last attempt. Five or six times in one day they returned to the charge, although L'Hospital mournfully observed that he had abandoned hope. He knew Catharine well: she could not be brought to a final resolution.[52] It was even so. Soubise himself was forced to admit it when, at the last moment—almost too late for his own safety—he hurriedly left, Catharine still begging him to stand by her, and made his way to his friends.

She implores Condé's aid.

It seems to have been during this time of painful anxiety that Catharine wrote at least the last of those remarkable letters to Condé which that prince afterward published in his own justification, and respecting the authenticity of which the queen would have been glad had she been able to make the world entertain doubts. They breathed a spirit of implicit confidence. She called herself his "good cousin," that was not less attached to him than a mother to a son. She enjoined upon him to remember the protection which he was bound to give to "the children, the mother, and the kingdom." She called upon him not to desert her. She declared that, in the midst of so many adverse circumstances, she would be driven almost to despair, "were it not for her trust in God, and the assurance that Condé would assist her in preserving the kingdom and service of the king, her son, in spite of those who wished to ruin everything." More than once she told him that his kindness would not go unrequited; and she declared that, if she died before having an opportunity to testify her gratitude, she would charge her children with the duty.[53]

In Paris events were rapidly succeeding each other. Marshal Montmorency, the constable's eldest son, was too upright a man to serve the purposes of the triumvirs; and, with his father's consent and by Navarre's authority, he was removed, and Cardinal Bourbon installed in his place as governor of the city.[54] A few days after Antoine himself came to Paris and lodged in the constable's house. Here, with Guise, Saint André, and the other chief statesmen who were of the same party, conferences were held to which Condé and his associates were not invited; and to these irregular gatherings, notwithstanding the absence of the king, the name of the royal council was given.[55]

Condé retires to Meaux.

There were nine or ten thousand horse—Papist and Huguenot—under arms in Paris.[56] It was evident that Condé and Guise could not longer remain in the city without involving it in the most bloody of civil contests. Under these circumstances the prince offered, through his brother, the Cardinal of Bourbon, to accede to the wish of Catharine, and leave Paris by one gate at the same moment that the triumvirs should leave by another. Indeed, without waiting to obtain their promise, he retired[57] with his body of Protestant noblesse to Meaux, where he had given a rendezvous to Admiral Coligny and others whom he had summoned from their homes. This step has generally been stigmatized as the first of Condé's egregious mistakes. Beza opposed it at the time, and likened the error to that of Pompey in abandoning Rome;[58] and the "History of the Reformed Churches" has perpetuated the comparison.[59] The same historical parallel was drawn by Étienne Pasquier.[60] But the judicious François de la Noue, surnamed Bras-de-Fer, thought very differently; and we must here, as in many other instances, prefer the opinion of the practical soldier to that of the eminent theologian or the learned jurist. Parliament, the clergy, the municipal government, the greater part of the university, and almost all the low populace, with the partisans and servants of the hostile princes and noblemen, were intensely Roman Catholic.[61] The three hundred resident Protestant gentlemen, with, as many more experienced soldiers, four hundred students, and a few untrained burgesses, were "but as a fly matched with an elephant." The novices of the convents and the priests' chambermaids, armed only with sticks, could have held them in check.[62] It were better to lose the advantages of the capital than to be overwhelmed within its walls by superior forces, being completely cut off from that part of France where the main strength of the Protestants lay.

The Huguenot summons.

From Meaux messengers were sent to the Protestant churches in all parts of France to request their aid, both in money and in men. "Since," said the letter they bore, "God has brought us to such a point that no one can disturb our repose without violating the protection it has pleased our king to accord us, and consequently without declaring himself an enemy of his Majesty and of this kingdom's peace, there is no law, divine or human, that does not permit us to take measures for defence, calling for help on those whom God has given the authority and the will to remedy these evils."[63]

Admiral Coligny's reluctance.

Happily for the Huguenot cause, however, the nobles and gentry that favored it had not waited to receive this summons, but had, many of them, already set out to strengthen the forces of the prince. Among others, and by far more important than all the rest, came Gaspard de Coligny, whose absence from court during the few previous weeks has been regarded as one of the most untoward circumstances of the time. At his pleasant castle of Châtillon-sur-Loing, surrounded by his young family, he received intelligence, first, of the massacre, then of the ominous events that had occurred at the capital. Condé sent to solicit his support; his brothers and many friends urged him to rush at once to the rescue. But still, even after the threatening clouds had risen so high that they must soon burst over the devoted heads of the Huguenots, the admiral continued to hesitate. Every instinct of his courageous nature prompted the skilful defender of St. Quentin to place himself at once at the post of danger. But there was one fear that seemed likely to overcome all his martial impulses. It was the fear of initiating a civil war. He could not refer to the subject without shuddering, for the horrors of such a contest were so vividly impressed upon his mind that he regarded almost anything as preferable to the attempt to settle domestic difficulties by an appeal to the sword. But the tears and sighs of his wife, the noble Charlotte de Laval, at length overmastered his reluctance. "To be prudent in men's esteem," she said, "is not to be wise in that of God, who has given you the science of a general that you might use it for the good of His children." When her husband rehearsed again the grounds of his hesitation, and, calling upon her seriously to consider the suffering, the privations, the anxiety, the bereavements, the ignominy, the death which would await not only those dearest to her, but herself, if the struggle should prove unsuccessful, offered her three weeks to make her decision, with true womanly magnanimity she replied: "The three weeks are already past; you will never be conquered by the strength of your enemies. Make use of your resources, and bring not upon your head the blood of those who may die within three weeks. I summon you in God's name not to defraud us any more, or I shall be a witness against you at His judgment." So deep was the impression which these words made upon Coligny, that, accepting his wife's advice as the voice of heaven, he took horse without further delay, and joined Condé and the other Protestant leaders.[64]

The king seized and brought to Paris.

It was unfortunate that the prince, for a week after leaving Paris, should have felt too feeble to make any movement of importance. Otherwise, by a rapid march, he might, according to his plan,[65] have reached Fontainebleau in advance of his opponents, and, with the young king and his mother under his protection, have asserted his right as a prince of the blood to defend Charles against those who had unjustly usurped the functions of royalty. As it was, the unlucky delay was turned to profit by his enemies. These now took a step that put further deliberation on Catharine's part out of the question, and precluded any attempt to place the person of the king in Condé's hands. Leaving a small garrison in Paris, Guise proceeded with a strong body of troops to Fontainebleau, determined to bring the king and his mother back to Paris. Persuasion was first employed; but, that failing, the triumvirate were prepared to resort to force. Navarre, acting at Guise's suggestion, at length told Catharine distinctly that, as guardian of the minor king, he must see to it that he did not fall into his brother's hands; as for Catharine, she might remain or follow him, as she pleased.[66] Tears and remonstrances were of no avail.[67] Weeping and sad, Charles is said to have repeatedly exclaimed against being led away contrary to his will;[68] but the triumvirs would not be balked of their game, and so brought him with his mother first to Melun, then, after a few days, to the prison-like castle of Vincennes, and finally to the Louvre.[69]

The constable's exploits at the "temples."

D'Andelot and Condé throw themselves into Orleans.

The critical step had been taken to demonstrate that the reign of tolerance, according to the prescriptions of the Edict of January, was at an end. The constable, preceding the king to Paris, immediately upon his arrival instituted a system of arbitrary arrests. On the next morning (the fourth of April) he visited the "temple of Jerusalem,"[70] one of the two places which had been accorded to the Huguenots for their worship outside of the walls. Under his direction the pulpit and the benches of the hearers were torn up, and a bonfire of wood and Bibles was speedily lighted, to the great delight of the populace of Paris. In the afternoon the same exploits were repeated at the other Huguenot church, known from its situation, outside of the gate of St. Antoine, as "Popincourt." Here, however, not only the benches, but the building itself was burned, and several adjacent houses were involved in the conflagration. Having accomplished these outrages and encouraged the people to imitate his lawless example, the aged constable returned to the city. He had well earned the contemptuous name which the Huguenots henceforth gave him of "Le Capitaine Brûlebanc."[71] If the triumvirate succeeded, it was plain that all liberty of worship was proscribed. It was even believed that the Duchess of Guise had been sent to carry a message, in the king's name, to her mother, the aged Renée of France, to the effect that if she did not dismiss the Huguenot preachers from Montargis, and become a good Catholic, he would have her shut up for the rest of her life in a convent.[72] Whatever truth there may have been in this story, one thing was certain: in Paris it would have been as much as any man's life was worth to appear annoyed at the constable's exploit, or to oppose the search made for arms in suspected houses. Every good Catholic had a piece of the Huguenots' benches or pulpit in his house as a souvenir; "so odious," says a contemporary, "is the new religion in this city."[73] Meantime, on Easter Monday (the thirtieth of March) Condé left Meaux at the head of fifteen hundred horse, the flower of the French nobility, "better armed with courage than with corselets"—says François de la Noue. As they approached the capital, the whole city was thrown into confusion, the gates were closed, and the chains stretched across the streets.[74] But the host passed by, and at St. Cloud crossed the Seine without meeting any opposition. Here the news of the seizure of the person of Charles by the triumvirs first reached the prince, and with it one great object of the expedition was frustrated.[75] The Huguenots, however, did not delay, but, instead of turning toward Fontainebleau, took a more southerly route directly for the city of Orleans. D'Andelot, to whom the van had been confided, advanced by a rapid march, and succeeded by a skilful movement in entering the city, of which he took possession in the name of the Prince of Condé, acting as lieutenant of the king unlawfully held in confinement. Catharine de' Medici, who, having been forced into the party of the triumvirs, had with her usual flexibility promptly decided to make the most of her position, sent messengers to Condé hoping to amuse him with negotiations while a powerful Roman Catholic detachment should by another road reach Orleans unobserved.[76] But the danger coming to Andelot's knowledge, he succeeded in warning Condé; and the prince, with the main body of the Protestant horse, after a breakneck ride, threw himself, on the second of April, into the city, which now became the headquarters of the religion in the kingdom.[77] The inhabitants came out to meet him with every demonstration of joy, and received him between double lines of men, women, and children loudly singing the words of the French psalms, so that the whole city resounded with them.[78]

Condé's justification.

No sooner had the Prince of Condé established himself upon the banks of the Loire, than he took measures to explain to the world the necessity and propriety of the step upon which he had ventured. He wrote, and he induced the Protestant ministers who were with him to write, to all the churches of France, urging them to send him reinforcements of troops and to fill his empty treasury.[79] At the same time he published a "declaration" in justification of his resort to arms. He recapitulated the successive steps that revealed the violent purposes of the triumvirs—the retreat of the Guises and of the constable from court, Nemours's attempt to carry the Duke of Orleans out of the kingdom, the massacre at Vassy, Guise's refusal to visit the royal court and his defiant progress to the capital, the insolent conduct of Montmorency and Saint-André, the pretended royal council held away from the king, the detention of Charles and of his mother as prisoners. And from all these circumstances he showed the inevitable inference to be that the triumvirs had for one of their chief objects the extirpation of the religion "which they call new," "either by open violence or by the change of edicts, and the renewal of the most cruel persecutions that have ever been exercised in the world." It was not party interest that had induced him to take up arms, he said, but loyalty to God, to his king, and to his native land, a desire to free Charles from unlawful detention, and a purpose to insist upon the execution of the royal edicts, especially that of January, and to prevent new ministers of state from misapplying the sums raised for the payment of the national debts. He warned all lovers of peace not to be astonished at any edicts that might emanate from the royal seal so long as the king remained a prisoner, and he begged Catharine to order the triumvirs to lay down their arms. If they did so, he declared that he himself, although of a rank far different from theirs, would consent to follow their example.[80]

Stringent articles of association.

The Huguenots had thrown off the shackles which a usurping party about the king endeavored to fasten upon them; but they had not renounced the restraints of law. And now, at the very commencement of a great struggle for liberty, they entered into a solemn compact to banish licentious excesses from their army. Protesting the purity of their motives, they swore to strive until the king's majority to attain the objects which had united them in a common struggle; but they promised with equal fervor to watch over the morals of their associates, and to suffer nothing that was contrary to God's honor or the king's edicts, to tolerate no idolatrous or superstitious practices, no blasphemy, no uncleanness or theft, no violation of churches by private authority. They declared their intention and desire to hear the Word of God preached by faithful ministers in the midst of the camps of war.[81]

Huguenot nobles and cities.

The papal party was amazed at the opposition its extreme measures had created. In place of the timid weakling whom the triumvirate had expected, they saw a giant spring from the ground to confront them.[82] To Orleans flocked many of the highest nobles of the land. Besides Condé—after Navarre and Bourbon, the prince of the blood nearest to the crown—there were gathered to the Protestant standard the three Châtillons, Prince Porcien, Count de la Rochefoucauld, the Sieurs de Soubise, de Mouy, de Saint Fal, d'Esternay, Piennes, Rohan, Genlis, Grammont, Montgomery, and others of high station and of large influence and extensive landed possessions.[83] And, what was still more important, the capture of Orleans was but the signal for a general movement throughout France. In a few weeks the Huguenots, rising in their unsuspected strength, had rendered themselves masters of cities in almost every province. Along the Loire, Beaugency, Blois, Tours, and Angers declared for the Prince of Condé; in Normandy, Rouen, Havre, Dieppe, and Caen; in Berry and the neighboring provinces, Bourges, La Rochelle, Poitiers; along the Saône and Rhône, Châlons, Mâcon, Lyons, Vienne, Valence, Montélimart, Tournon, Orange; Gap and Grenoble in Dauphiny; almost the whole of the papal "Comtât Venaissin;" the Vivarais; the Cevennes; the greater part of Languedoc and Gascony, with the important cities of Montauban, Castres, Castelnaudary, Beziers, Pézénas, Montpellier, Aiguesmortes, and Nismes.[84] In northern France alone, where the number of Protestants was small, the Huguenots obtained but a slight foothold.[85]

Can iconoclasm be repressed?

In the midst of this universal movement there was one point in the compact made by the confederates at Orleans, which it was found impossible to execute. How could the churches, with their altars, their statues, their pictures, their relics, their priestly vestments, be guaranteed from invasion? To the Huguenot masses they were the temples and instruments of an idolatrous worship. Ought Christians to tolerate the existence of such abominations, even if sanctioned by the government? It was hard to draw a nice line of distinction between the overthrow of idolatry by public authority and by personal zeal. If there were any difference in the merit of the act, it was in favor of the man who vindicated the true religion at the risk of his own life. Nay, the Church itself had incontrovertibly given its sanction to this view by placing among the martyrs those primitive Christians who had upon their own responsibility entered heathen temples and overthrown the objects of the popular devotion. In those early centuries there had been manifested the same reckless exposure of life, the same supreme contempt for the claims of art in comparison with the demands of religion. The Minerva of Phidias or Praxiteles was no safer from the iconoclastic frenzy of the new convert from heathenism than the rude idol of a less cultivated age. The command, "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image," had not excepted from its prohibition the marvellous products of the Greek chisel.

It was here, therefore, that the chief insubordination of the Huguenot people manifested itself—not in licentious riot, not in bloodshed, not in pillage. Calvin, with his high sense of law and order, might in his letters reiterate the warnings against the irregularity which we have seen him uttering on a previous occasion;[86] the ministers might threaten the guilty with exclusion from the ordinances of the Church; Condé might denounce the penalty of death. The people could not restrain themselves or be restrained. They must remove what had been a stumbling-block to them and might become a snare to others. They felt no more compunction in breaking an image or tearing in pieces a picture, than a traveller, whom a highwayman has wounded, is aware of, when he destroys the weapons dropped by his assailant in his hurried flight. Indeed, they experienced a strange satisfaction in visiting upon the lifeless idol the punishment for the spiritual wrongs received at the hands of false teachers of religion.[87]

It bursts out at Caen.

We have an illustration of the way in which the work of demolition was accomplished in events occurring about this time at Caen. Two or three inhabitants of this old Norman city were at Rouen when the churches were invaded and sacked by an over-zealous crowd of sympathizers with the "new doctrines." On their return to their native city, they began at once to urge their friends to copy the example of the provincial capital. The news reaching the ears of the magistrates of Caen, these endeavored—but to no purpose, as the sequel proved—to calm the feverish pulse of the people. On a Friday night (May eighth), the storm broke out, and it raged the whole of the next day. Church, chapel, and monastery could testify to its violence. Quaint windows of stained glass and rich old organs were dashed in pieces. Saints' effigies, to employ the quaint expression of a Roman Catholic eye-witness, "were massacred." "So great was the damage inflicted, without any profit, that the loss was estimated at more than a hundred thousand crowns." Still less excusable were the acts of vandalism which the rabble—ever ready to join in popular commotions and always throwing disgrace upon them—indulged. The beautiful tombs of William, Duke of Normandy and conqueror of England, and of the Duchess-queen Mathilda, the pride of Caen, which had withstood the ravages of nearly five hundred years, were ruthlessly destroyed. The monument of Bishop Charles of Martigny, who had been ambassador under Charles the Eighth and Louis the Twelfth, shared the same fate. The zealous Roman Catholic who relates these occurrences claims to have striven, although to no purpose, to rescue the ashes of the conqueror from dispersion.[88]

The "idol" of Sainte Croix.

The contagion spread even to Orleans. Here, as in other places where the Huguenots had prevailed, there were but few of the inhabitants that had not been drawn over to the reformed faith, or at least pretended to embrace it. Yet Condé, in his desire to convince the world that no partisan hatred moved him, strictly prohibited the intrusion of Protestants into the churches, and assured the ecclesiastics of protection so long as they chose to remain in the city. For a time, consequently, their services continued to be celebrated in the presence of the faithful few and with closed doors; but soon, their fears getting the better of their prudence, the priests and monks one by one made their retreat from the Protestant capital. On the twenty-first of April, word was brought to Condé that some of the churches had been broken into during the preceding night, and that the work of destruction was at that very moment going forward in others. Hastening, in company with Coligny and other leaders, to the spacious and imposing church of the Holy Rood (Sainte Croix), he undertook, with blows and menaces, to check the furious onslaught. Seeing a Huguenot soldier who had climbed aloft, and was preparing to hurl from its elevated niche one of the saints that graced the wall of the church, the prince, in the first ebullition of his anger, snatched an arquebuse from the hands of one of his followers, and aimed it at the adventurous iconoclast. The latter had seen the act, but was in no wise daunted. Not desisting an instant from his pious enterprise, "Sir," he cried to Condé, "have patience until I shall have overthrown this idol; and then let me die, if that be your pleasure!"[89]

The Huguenot soldier's fearless reply sounded the knell of many a sacred painting and statue; for the destruction was accepted as God's work rather than man's.[90] Henceforth little exertion was made to save these objects of mistaken devotion, while the greatest care was taken to prevent the robbery of the costly reliquaries and other precious possessions of the churches, of which inventories were drawn up, and which were used only at the last extremity.[91]

Massacre of Huguenots at Sens.

Far different in character from the bloodless "massacres" of images and pictures in cities where the Huguenots gained the upper hand, were the massacres of living men wherever the papists retained their superiority. One of the most cruel and inexcusable was that which happened at Sens—a city sixty-five or seventy miles toward the south-east from Paris—where, on an ill-founded and malicious rumor that the reformed contemplated rising and destroying their Roman Catholic neighbors, the latter, at the instigation, it is said, of their archbishop, the Cardinal of Guise, and encouraged by the violent example of Constable Montmorency at Paris,[92] fell on the Protestants, murdered more than a hundred of both sexes and of every age, and threw their dead bodies into the waters of the Yonne.[93] While these victims of a blind bigotry were floating on under the windows of the Louvre toward the sea, Condé addressed to the queen mother a letter of warm remonstrance, and called upon her to avenge the causeless murder of so many innocent men and women; expressing the fear that, if justice were denied by the king and by herself, the cry of innocent blood would reach high heaven, and God would be moved to inflict those calamities with which the unhappy realm was every day threatened.[94]

A few days before Condé penned this appeal, the English ambassador had written and implored his royal mistress to seize the golden opportunity to inspirit the frightened Catharine de' Medici, panic-stricken by the violent measures of the Roman Catholic party; assuring her that "not a day passed but that the Spanish ambassador, the Bishop of Rome, or some other papist prince's minister put terror into the queen mother's mind."[95] But Throkmorton's words and Cecil's entreaties were alike powerless to induce Elizabeth to improve her advantage. The opportunity was fast slipping by, and the calamities foretold by Condé were coming on apace.

Disorders in Provence and Dauphiny.

In truth, few calamities could exceed in horror those that now befell France. In the south-eastern corner of the kingdom, above all other parts, civil war, ever prolific in evil passions, was already bearing its legitimate fruits. For several years the fertile, sunny hills of Provence and Dauphiny had enjoyed but little stable peace, and now both sides caught the first notes of the summons to war and hurried to the fray. Towns were stormed, and their inhabitants, whether surrendering on composition or at the discretion of the conqueror, found little justice or compassion. The men were more fortunate, in being summarily put to the sword; the women were reserved for the vilest indignities, and then shared the fate of their fathers and husbands. The thirst for revenge caused the Protestant leaders and soldiers to perpetrate deeds of cruelty little less revolting than those which disgraced the papal cause; but there was, at least, this to be said in their favor, that not even their enemies could accuse them of those infamous excesses of lewdness of which their opponents were notoriously guilty.[96] Their vengeance was satisfied with the lives, and did not demand the honor of the vanquished.

The city of Orange.

The little city of Orange, capital of William of Nassau's principality, contained a growing community of Protestants, whom the prince had in vain attempted to restrain. About a year and a half before the outburst of the civil war, William the Silent, then a sincere Roman Catholic,[97] on receiving complaints from the Pope, whose territories about Avignon—the Comtât Venaissin—ran around three sides of the principality, had expressed himself "marvellously sorry to see how those wicked heresies were everywhere spreading, and that they had even penetrated into his principality of Orange."[98] And when he received tidings that the Huguenots were beginning to preach, he had written to his governor and council, "to see to it by all means in the world, that no alteration be permitted in our true and ancient religion, and in no wise to consent that those wicked men should take refuge in his principality." As Protestantism advanced in Orange, he purposed to give instructions to use persuasion and force, "in order to remedy a disorder so pernicious to all Christendom."[99] While he was unwilling to call in French troops, lest he should prejudice his sovereign rights, he declared his desire to be authorized to employ the pontifical soldiers in the work of repression.[100] But in spite of these restrictive measures, the reformed population increased rather than diminished, and the bishop of the city now called upon Fabrizio Serbelloni, a cousin of Pope Pius the Fourth, and papal general at Avignon, to assist him by driving out the Protestants, who, ever since the massacre of Vassy, had feared with good reason the assault of their too powerful and hostile neighbors, and had taken up arms in self-defence. They had not, however, apprehended so speedy an attack as Serbelloni now made (on the fifth of June), and, taken by surprise, were able to make but a feeble resistance. The papal troops entered the city through the breach their cannon had effected. Never did victorious army act more insolently or with greater inhumanity. None were spared; neither the sick on their beds, nor the poor in their asylums, nor the maimed that hobbled through the streets. Those were most fortunate that were first despatched. The rest were tortured with painful wounds that prolonged their agonies till death was rather desired than dreaded, or were hurled down upon pikes and halberds, or were hung to pot-hooks and roasted in the fire, or were hacked in pieces. Not a few of the women were treated with dishonor; the greater part were hung to doors and windows, and their dead bodies, stripped naked, were submitted to indignities for which the annals of warfare, except among the most ferocious savages, can scarcely supply a parallel. That the Almighty might not seem to be insulted in the persons only of living creatures formed in His own image, the fresh impiety was perpetrated of derisively stuffing leaves torn from French Bibles into the gaping wounds of the dead lying on this field of carnage. Nor did the Roman Catholics of Orange fare much better than their reformed neighbors. Mistaken for enemies, they were massacred in the public square, where they had assembled, expecting rather to receive a reward for their services in assisting the pontifical troops to enter, than to atone for their treachery by their own death.[101]

François de Beaumont, Baron des Adrets.

But the time for revenge soon came around. The barbarous warfare initiated by the adherents of the triumvirate in Dauphiny and Provence bred or brought forward a leader and soldiers who did not hesitate to repay cruelty with cruelty. François de Beaumont, Baron des Adrets, was a merciless general, who affected to believe that rigor and strict retaliation were indispensable to remove the contempt in which the Huguenots were held, and who knew how by bold movements to appear where least expected, and by vigor to multiply the apparent size of his army. Attached to the Reformation only from ambition, and breathing a spirit far removed from the meekness of the Gospel, he soon awakened the horror of his comrades in arms, and incurred the censure of Condé for his barbarities; so that, within a few months, becoming disgusted with the Huguenots, he went over to the papal side, and in the second civil war was found fighting against his former associates.[102] Meantime, his brief connection with the Huguenots was a blot upon their escutcheon all the more noticeable because of the prevailing purity;[103] and the injury he inflicted upon the cause of Protestantism far more than cancelled the services he rendered at Lyons and elsewhere. At Pierrelate he permitted his soldiers to take signal vengeance on the garrison for the recent massacre. At Mornas the articles of the capitulation, by which the lives of the besieged were guaranteed, were not observed; for the Protestant soldiers from Orange, recognizing among them the perpetrators of the crimes which had turned their homes into a howling desert, fell upon them and were not—perhaps could not be—restrained by their leader.[104] The fatal example of Orange was but too faithfully copied, and precipitating the prisoners from the summit of a high rock became the favorite mode of execution.[105] Only one of the unfortunates, who happened to break his fall by catching hold of a wild fig-tree growing cut of the side of the cliff, was spared by his enemies.[106] A number of the naked corpses were afterward placed in an open boat without pilot or tiller, and suffered to float down the Rhône with a banner on which were written these words: "O men of Avignon! permit the bearers to pass, for they have paid the toll at Mornas."[107]

Blaise de Montluc.

Massacre at Toulouse.

The atrocities of Des Adrets and his soldiers in the East were, however, surpassed by those which Blaise de Montluc inflicted upon the Huguenots of the West, or which took place under his sanction. His memoirs, which are among the most authentic materials for the history of the wars in which he took part, present him to us as a remorseless soldier, dead to all feelings of sympathy with human distress, glorying in having executed more Huguenots than any other royal lieutenant in France,[108] pleased to have the people call the two hangmen whom he used to take about with him his "lackeys."[109] It is not surprising that, under the auspices of such an officer, fierce passions should have had free play. At Toulouse, the seat of the most fanatical parliament in France, a notable massacre took place. Even in this hot-bed of bigotry the reformed doctrines had made rapid and substantial progress, and the great body of the students in the famous law-school, as well of the municipal government, were favorable to their spread.[110] The common people, however, were as virulent in their hostility as the parliament itself. They had never been fully reconciled to the publication of the Edict of January, and had only been restrained from interference with the worship of the Protestants by the authority of the government. Of late the Huguenots had discovered on what treacherous ground they stood. A funeral procession of theirs had been attacked, and several persons had been murdered. A massacre had been perpetrated in the city of Cahors, not far distant from them. In both cases the entire authority of parliament had been exerted to shield the guilty. The Huguenots, therefore, resolved to forestall disaster by throwing Toulouse into the hands of Condé, and succeeded so far as to introduce some companies of soldiers within the walls and to seize the "hôtel de ville." They had, however, miscalculated their strength. The Roman Catholics were more numerous, and after repeated conflicts they were able to demand the surrender of the building in which the Protestants had intrenched themselves. Destitute alike of provisions and of the means of defence, and menaced with the burning of their retreat, the latter accepted the conditions offered, and—a part on the day before Pentecost, a part after the services of that Sunday, one of the chief festivals of the Reformed Church—they retired without arms, intending to depart for more hospitable cities. Scarce, however, had the last detachment left the walls, when the tocsin was sounded, and their enemies, respecting none of their promises, involved them in a horrible carnage. It was the opinion of the best informed that in all three thousand persons perished on both sides during the riot at Toulouse, of whom by far the greater number were Huguenots. Even this effusion of blood was not sufficient. The next day Montluc appeared in the city. And now, encouraged by his support, the Parliament of Toulouse initiated a system of judicial inquiries which were summary in their character, and rarely ended save in the condemnation of the accused. Within three months two hundred persons were publicly executed. The Protestant leader was quartered. The parliament vindicated its orthodoxy by the expulsion of twenty-two counsellors suspected of a leaning to the Reformation; and informers were allured by bribes, as well as frightened by ecclesiastical menaces, in order that the harvest of confiscation might be the greater.[111]

Such were the deeds which the Roman Catholics of southern France have up to our times commemorated by centenary celebrations;[112] such the pious achievements for which Blaise de Montluc received from Pope Pius the Fourth the most lavish praise as a zealous defender of the Catholic faith.[113]

Foreign alliances sought.

Meanwhile, about Paris and Orleans the war lagged. Both sides were receiving reinforcements. The ban and rear-ban were summoned in the king's name, and a large part of the levies joined Condé as the royal representative in preference to Navarre and the triumvirate.[114] Charles the Ninth and Catharine had consented to publish a declaration denying Condé's allegation that they were held in duress.[115] The Guises had sent abroad to Spain, to Germany, to the German cantons of Switzerland, to Savoy, to the Pope. Philip, after the abundant promises with which he had encouraged the French papists to enter upon the war, was not quite sure whether he had better answer the calls now made upon him. He was by no means confident that the love of country of the French might not, after all, prove stronger than the discord engendered by their religious differences, and their hatred of the Spaniard than their hatred of their political rivals.[116] "Those stirrings," writes Sir Thomas Chaloner from Spain, "have here gevyn matter of great consultation day by day to this king and counsaile. One wayes they devise howe the Gwisans may be ayded and assisted by them, esteming for religion sake that the prevaylment of that syde importithe them as the ball of theire eye. Another wayes they stand in a jelousie whither theis nombers thus assembled in Fraunce, may not possibly shake hands, and sett upon the Lowe Countries or Navarre, both peecs, upon confidence of the peace, now being disprovided of garisons. So ferfurthe as they here repent the revocation of the Spanish bands owt of Flanders.... So as in case the new bushops against the people's mynd shall need be enstalled, the Frenche had never such an opertunyte as they perchauns should fynd at this instant."[117] To the Duke of Würtemberg the Guises had induced Charles and Catharine to write, throwing the blame of the civil war entirely upon Condé;[118] but Christopher, this time at least, had his eyes wide open, and his reply was not only a pointed refusal to join in the general crusade against the Calvinists, but a noble plea in behalf of toleration and clemency.[119]

Queen Elizabeth's aid invoked.

The Huguenots, on the other hand, had rather endeavored to set themselves right in public estimation and to prepare the way for future calls for assistance, than made any present requisitions. Elizabeth's ambassador, Throkmorton, had been carefully instructed as to the danger that overhung his mistress with all the rest of Protestant Christendom. He wrote to her that the plot was a general one, including England. "It may please your Majesty the papists, within these two days at Sens in Normandy, have slain and hurt two hundred persons—men and women. Your Majesty may perceive how dangerous it is to suffer papists that be of great heart and enterprise to lift up their crests so high."[120] In another despatch he warned her of her danger. "It standeth your Majesty upon, for the conservation of your realm in the good terms it is in (thanks be to God), to countenance the Protestants as much as you may, until they be set afoot again, I mean in this realm; for here dependeth the great sway of that matter."[121]

Cecil's urgency and schemes.

Divided sympathies of the English.

Cecil himself adopted the same views, and urged them upon Elizabeth's attention. Not succeeding in impressing her according to his wish, he resorted to extraordinary measures to compass the end. He instructed Mundt, his agent in Germany, to exert himself to induce the Protestant princes to send "special messengers" to England and persuade Elizabeth to join in "a confederacy of all parts professing the Gospel." In fact, the cunning secretary of state went even farther, and dictated to Mundt just what he should write to the queen. He was to tell her Majesty "that if she did not attempt the furtherance of the Gospel in France, and the keeping asunder of France and Spain, she would be in greater peril than any other prince in Christendom," for "the papist princes that sought to draw her to their parts meant her subversion"—a truth which, were she to be informed of by any of the German princes, might have a salutary effect.[122] But the vacillating queen could not be induced as yet to take the same view, and needed the offer of some tangible advantages to move her. No wonder that Elizabeth's policy halted. Every occurrence across the channel was purposely misrepresented by the emissaries of Philip, and the open sympathizers of the Roman Catholic party at the English court were almost more numerous than the hearty Protestants. A few weeks later, a correspondent of Throkmorton wrote to him from home: "Here are daily bruits given forth by the Spanish ambassador, as it is thought, far discrepant from such as I learn are sent from your lordship, and the papists have so great a voice here as they have almost as much credit, the more it is to be lamented. I have not, since I came last over, come in any company where almost the greater part have not in reasoning defended papistry, allowed the Guisians' proceedings, and seemed to deface the prince's quarrel and design. How dangerous this is your lordship doth see."[123] The Swiss Protestant cantons were reluctant to appear to countenance rebellion. Berne sent a few ensigns to Lyons at the request of the Protestants of that city, but wished to limit them strictly to the defensive, and subsequently she yielded to the urgency of the Guises and recalled them altogether.[124] But as yet no effort was made by Condé to call in foreign assistance. The reluctance of Admiral Coligny, while it did honor to the patriotism which always moved him, seems to have led him to commit a serious mistake. The admiral hoped and believed that the Huguenots would prove strong enough to succeed without invoking foreign assistance; moreover, he was unwilling to set the first example of bringing in strangers to arbitrate concerning the domestic affairs of France.[125] And, indeed, had his opponents been equally patriotic, it is not improbable that his expectation would have been realized. For, if inferior to the enemy in infantry, the Huguenots, through the great preponderance of noblemen and gentlemen in their army, were at first far superior in cavalry.

Diplomatic manœuvres.

The beaten path of diplomatic manœuvre was first tried. Four times were messengers sent to Condé, in the king's name, requiring his submission. Four times he responded that he could not lay down his arms until Guise should have retired from court and been punished for the massacre of Vassy, until the constable and Saint André should have returned to their governments, leaving the king his personal liberty, and until the Edict of January should be fully re-established.[126] These demands the opposing party were unwilling to concede. It is true that a pretence was made of granting the last point, and, on the eleventh of April, an edict, ostensibly in confirmation of that of January, was signed by Charles, by the advice of Catharine, the King of Navarre, the Cardinals of Bourbon and Guise, the Duke of Guise, the constable, and Aumale. But there was a glaring contradiction between the two laws, for Paris was expressly excepted from the provisions. In or around the capital no exercises of the reformed religion could be celebrated.[127] Such was the trick by which the triumvirs hoped to take the wind out of the confederates' sails. Though the concession could not be accepted by the Protestants, it might be alleged to show foreigners the unreasonableness of Condé and his supporters. Meantime, in reply to the prince's declaration as to the causes for which he had taken up arms, the adherents of Guise published in their own vindication a paper, wherein they gravely asserted that, but for the duke's timely arrival, fifteen hundred Huguenots, gathered from every part of the kingdom, would have entered Paris, and, with the assistance of their confederates within the walls, would have plundered the city.[128]

The month of May witnessed the dreary continuation of the same state of things. On the first, Condé wrote to the queen mother, reiterating his readiness to lay down the arms he had assumed in the king's defence and her's, on the same conditions as before. On the fourth, Charles, Catharine, and Antoine replied, refusing to dismiss the Guises or to restore the Edict of January in reference to Paris, but, at the same time, inviting the prince to return to court, and promising that, after he should have submitted, and the revolted cities should have been restored to their allegiance, the triumvirs would retire to their governments.[129]