Volume 2 / Book 2 — CHAPTER XIV.

THE PEACE OF AMBOISE, AND THE BAYONNE CONFERENCE.

The restoration of Havre demanded.

Fall of Havre.

Scarcely had the Edict of Amboise been signed when a demand was made upon the English queen for the city of Havre, placed in her possession by the Huguenots, as a pledge for the restoration of Calais in accordance with the treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis, and as security for the repayment of the large sums she had advanced for the maintenance of the war. But Elizabeth was in no favorable mood for listening to this summons. Instead of being instructed to evacuate Havre, the Earl of Warwick was reinforced by fresh supplies of arms and provisions, and received orders to defend to the last extremity the only spot in France held by the queen. A formal offer made by Condé to secure a renewal of the stipulation by which Calais was to be given up in 1567, and to remunerate Elizabeth for her expenditures in the cause of the French Protestants, was indignantly rejected; and both sides prepared for open war.[265] The struggle was short and decisive. The French were a unit on the question of a permanent occupation of their soil by foreigners. Within the walls of Havre itself a plot was formed by the French population to betray the city into the hands of their countrymen; and Warwick was forced to expel the natives in order to secure the lives of his own troops.[266] But no vigilance of the besieged could insure the safety of a detached position on the borders of so powerful a state as France. Elizabeth was too weak, or too penurious, to afford the recruits that were loudly called for. And now a new and frightful auxiliary to the French made its appearance. A contagious disease set in among the English troops, crowded into a narrow compass and deprived of their usual allowance of fresh meat and wholesome water. The fearful mortality attending it soon revealed the true character of the scourge. Few of those that fell sick recovered. Gathering new strength from day to day, it reigned at length supreme in the fated city. Soon the daily crowd of victims became too great to receive prompt sepulture, and the corpses lying unburied in the streets furnished fresh fuel for the raging pestilence. Seven thousand English troops were reduced in a short time to three thousand, in a few days more to fifteen hundred men.[267] The hand of death was upon the throat of every survivor. At length, too feeble to man their works, despairing of timely succor, unable to sustain at the same moment the assault of their opponents and the fearful visitation of the Almighty, the English consented to surrender; and, on the twenty-eighth of July, a capitulation was signed, in accordance with which, on the next day, Havre, with all its fortifications and the ships of war in its harbor, fell once more into the hands of the French.[268]

How the peace was received.

The pacification of Amboise, a contemporary chronicler tells us, was received with greater or less cordiality in different localities of France, very much according to the number of Protestants they had contained before the war. "This edict of peace was very grievous to hear published and to have executed in the case of the Catholics of the peaceable cities and villages where there were very few Huguenots. But it was a source of great comfort to the Catholics of the cities which were oppressed by the Huguenots, as well as of the neighboring villages in which the Catholic religion had been intermitted, mass and divine worship not celebrated, and the holy sacraments left unadministered—as in the cities of Lyons and Orleans, and their vicinity, and in many other cities of Poitou and Languedoc, where the Huguenots were masters or superior in numbers. As the peace was altogether advantageous to the Huguenots, they labored hard to have it observed and published."[269]

Vexatious delays in Normandy.

But to secure publication and observance was not always possible.[270] Not unfrequently the Huguenots were denied by the illiberality of their enemies every privilege to which they were entitled by the terms of the edict. At Troyes, the Roman Catholic party, hearing that peace had been made, resolved to employ the brief interval before the edict should be published, and the mayor of the city led the populace to the prisons, where all the Huguenots that could be found were at once murdered.[271] The vexatious delays, and the actual persecution still harder to be borne, which were encountered at Rouen, have been duly recorded by an anonymous Roman Catholic contemporary, as well as in the registers of the city hall and of the Norman parliament, and may serve as an indication of what occurred in many other places. From the chapter of the cathedral and the judges of the supreme provincial court, down to the degraded rabble, the entire population was determined to interpose every possible obstacle in the way of the peaceable execution of the new law. Before any official communication respecting it reached them, the clergy declared, by solemn resolution, their intention to reserve the right of prosecuting all who had plundered their extensive ecclesiastical domain. The municipality wrote at once to the king, to his mother, and to others at court, imploring that Rouen and its vicinity might be exempted from all exercise of the "new religion." Parliament sent deputies to Charles the Ninth to remonstrate against the broad concessions made in favor of the Protestants, and, even when compelled to go through the form of a registration, avoided a publication of the edict, in order to gain time for another fruitless protest addressed to the royal government.

When it came to the execution of the law, the affair assumed a more threatening aspect. The Roman Catholics had resolved to resist the return of the "for-issites," or fugitive Huguenots. At first they excused their opposition by alleging that there were bandits and criminals of every kind in the ranks of the exiles. Next they demanded that a preliminary list of their names and abodes should be furnished, in order that their arms might be taken away. Finally they required, with equal perverseness, that, in spite of the express stipulation of the king's rescript, the "for-issites" should return only as private individuals, and should not venture to resume their former offices and dignities. Meantime the "for-issites," driven to desperation by the flagrant injustice of which they were the victims, began to retaliate by laying violent hands upon all objects of Roman Catholic devotion in the neighboring country, and by levying contributions upon the farms and villas of their malignant enemies. The Rouenese revenged themselves in turn by wantonly murdering the Huguenots whom they found within the city walls.

Protest of the Norman parliament.

The embittered feeling did not diminish at once after the more intrepid of the Huguenots had, under military compulsion, been readmitted into Rouen. There were daily complaints of ill-usage. But the insolence of the dominant party rose to a still higher pitch when there appeared a royal edict—whether genuine or forged has not as yet been settled—by which the cardinal demands of the Huguenots were granted. The alleged concessions may not strike us as very extraordinary. They consisted chiefly in disarming the Roman Catholics equally with the adherents of the opposite creed, and in erecting a new chamber in parliament to try impartially cases in dispute between the adherents of the two communions.[272] This was certainly decreeing but a small measure of the equality in the eye of the law which the Protestants might claim as a natural and indefeasible right. The citizens of the Norman capital, however, regarded the enactment as a monstrous outrage upon society. Charles the Ninth, happened at this time to be passing through Gaillon, a place some ten leagues distant from Rouen, on his way to the siege of Havre; and Damours, the advocate-general, was deputed to bear to him a protest drawn up by parliament. The tone of the paper was scarcely respectful to the monarch; it was positively insulting to the members of the royal council who professed the Protestant faith. It predicted the possible loss of Normandy, or of his entire kingdom, in case the king pursued a system of toleration. The Normans, it said, would not submit to Protestant governors, nor to the return of the exiles in arms, nor to their resumption of their former dignities. If the "for-issites" continued their excesses, they would be set upon and killed. The Roman Catholic burgesses of Rouen even proclaimed a conditional loyalty. Should the king not see fit to accede to their demands, they declared themselves ready to place the keys of their city in his hands to dispose of at his pleasure, at the same time craving permission to go where they pleased and to take away their property with them.

A rude rebuff.

Truly the spirit of the "Holy League" was already born, though the times were not yet ripe for the promulgation of such tenets. The advocate-general was a fluent speaker, and he had been attended many a weary mile by an enthusiastic escort. Parliamentary counsellors, municipal officers, clergy, an immense concourse of the lower stratum of the population—all were at Gaillon, ready to applaud his well-turned sentences. But he had chosen an unlucky moment for his oratorical display. His glowing periods were rudely interrupted by one of the princely auditors. This was Louis of Condé—now doubly important to the court on account of the military undertaking that was on foot—who complained of the speaker's insolent words. So powerful a nobleman could not be despised. And so the voluble Damours, with his oration but half delivered, instead of meeting a gracious monarch's approval and returning home amid the plaudits of the multitude, was hastily taken in charge by the archers of the royal guard and carried off to prison. The rest of the Rouenese disappeared more rapidly than they had come. The avenues to the city were filled with fugitives as from a disastrous battle. Even the grave parliament, which the last winter had been exhibiting its august powers in butchering Huguenots by the score, beginning with the arch-heretic Augustin Marlorat, lost for a moment its self-possession, and took part in the ignominious flight. Shame, however, induced it to pause before it had gone too far, and, putting on the gravest face it could summon, it reappeared ere long at Gaillon with becoming magisterial gravity. Never had there been a more thorough discomfiture.[273] A few days later the Marshal de Bourdillon made his entry into Rouen with a force of Swiss soldiers sufficient to break down all resistance, the "for-issites" were brought in, a new election of municipal officers was held, and comparative quiet was restored in the turbulent city.[274]

Commissioners to enforce the edict.

Alienation of a profligate court.

Profanity a test of Catholicity.

So far as a character so undecided could frame any fixed purpose, Catharine de' Medici was resolved to cement, if possible, a stable peace. The Chancellor, Michel de l'Hospital, still retained his influence over her, and gave to her disjointed plans somewhat of the appearance of a deliberate policy. That policy certainly seemed to mean peace. And to prove this, commissioners were despatched to the more distant provinces, empowered to enforce the execution of the Edict of Amboise.[275] Yet never was the court less in sympathy with the Huguenots than at this moment. If shameless profligacy had not yet reached the height it subsequently attained under the last Valois that sat upon the throne of France, it was undoubtedly taking rapid strides in that direction. For the giddy throng of courtiers, living in an atmosphere that reeked with corruption,[276] the stern morality professed by the lips and exemplified in the lives of Gaspard de Coligny and his noble brothers, as well as by many another of nearly equal rank, could afford but few attractions. Many of these triflers had, it is true, exhibited for a time some leaning toward the reformed faith. But their evanescent affection was merely a fire kindled in the light straw: the fuel was soon consumed, and the brilliant flame which had given rise to such sanguine expectations died out as easily as it sprang up.[277] When once the novelty of the simple worship in the rude barn, or in the retired fields, with the psalms of Marot and Beza sung to quaint and stirring melodies, had worn off; when the black gown of the Protestant minister had become as familiar to the eye as the stole and chasuble of the officiating priest, and the words of the reformed confession of sins as familiar to the ear as the pontifical litanies and prayers, the "assemblée" ceased to attract the curious from the salons of St. Germain and Fontainebleau. Besides, it was one thing to listen to a scathing account of the abuses of churchmen, or a violent denunciation of the sins of priest and monk, and quite another to submit to a faithful recital of the iniquities of the court, and hear the wrath of God denounced against the profane, the lewd, and the extortionate. There were some incidents, occurring just at the close of the war, that completed the alienation which before had been only partial. The Huguenots had attempted by stringent regulations to banish swearing, robbery, and other flagrant crimes from their army. They had punished robbery in many instances with death. They had succeeded so far in doing away with oaths, that their opponents had paid unconscious homage to their freedom from the despicable vice. In those days, when in the civil struggle it was so difficult to distinguish friends from foes, there was one proof of unimpeachable orthodoxy that was rarely disputed. He must be a good Catholic who could curse and swear. The Huguenot soldier would do neither.[278] So nearly, indeed, did the Huguenot affirmation approach to the simplicity of the biblical precept, that one Roman Catholic partisan leader of more than ordinary audacity had assumed for the motto on his standard the blasphemous device: "'Double 's death' has conquered 'Verily.'"[279] But the strictness with which theft and profanity were visited in the Huguenot camp produced but a slight impression, compared with that made by the punishment of death inflicted by a stern judge at Orleans, just before the proclamation of peace, on a man and woman found guilty of adultery. Almost the entire court cried out against the unheard-of severity of the sentence for a crime which had never before been punished at all. The greater part of these advocates of facile morals had even the indiscretion to confess that they would never consent to accept such people as the Huguenots for their masters.[280]

Admiral Coligny accused.

His defence espoused by Condé and the Montmorencies.

Even after the publication of the Edict of Amboise, there was one matter left unsettled that threatened to rekindle the flames of civil war. It will be remembered that the murderer of the Duke of Guise, overcome by terror in view of his fate had charged Gaspard de Coligny with having instigated the perpetration of the foul crime; that, as soon as he heard the accusation, the admiral had not only answered the allegations, article by article, but had written, earnestly begging that Poltrot's execution might be deferred until the return of peace should permit him to be confronted with his accuser. This very reasonable demand, we have seen, had been rejected, and the miserable assassin had been torn into pieces by four horses, upon the Place de Grève, on the very day preceding that which witnessed the signing of the Edict of Amboise. If, however, the queen mother had hoped to diminish the difficulties of her position by taking this course, she had greatly miscalculated. In spite of his protestations, and of a second and more popular defence which he now made,[281] the Guises persisted in believing, or in pretending to believe, Coligny to be the prime cause of the murder of the head of their family. His very frankness was perverted into a proof of his complicity. The admiral's words, as an eminent historian of our own day observes, bear the seal of sincerity, and we need go for the truth nowhere else than to his own avowals.[282] But they did not satisfy his enemies. The danger of an open rupture was imminent. Coligny was coming to court from his castle of Châtillon-sur-Loing, with a strong escort of six hundred gentlemen; but so inevitable did a bloody collision within the walls of Paris seem to the queen, that she begged Condé to dissuade him for the present from carrying out his purpose. Meantime, Condé and the two Montmorencies—the constable and his son, the marshal—espoused Coligny's cause as their own, by publicly declaring (on the fifteenth of May) his entire innocence, and announcing that any blow aimed at the Châtillons, save by legal process, they would regard and avenge as aimed at themselves.[283] Taking excuse from the unsettled relations of the kingdom with England and at home, the privy council at the same time enjoined both parties to abstain from acts of hostility, and adjourned the judicial investigation until after arms had been laid down.[284]

Petition of the Guises.

At length, on the twenty-sixth of September—two months after the reduction of Havre—the Guises renewed their demand with great solemnity. Charles was at Meulan (on the Seine, a few miles below Paris), when a procession of mourners entered his presence. It was the family of Guise, headed by the late duke's widow, his mother, and his children, coming to sue for vengeance on the murderer. All were clad in the dress that betokened the deepest sorrow, and the dramatic effect was complete.[285] They brought a petition couched in decided terms, but making no mention of the name of Coligny, and signed, not only by themselves, but by three of the Bourbons—the Cardinal Charles, the Duke of Montpensier, and his son—and by the Dukes of Longueville and Nemours.[286] Under the circumstances, the king could not avoid granting their request and ordering inquisition to be made by the peers in parliament assembled.[287] But the friends of the absent admiral saw in the proposed investigation only an attempt on the part of his enemies to effect through the forms of law the ruin of the most prominent Huguenot of France. It was certain, they urged, that he could expect no justice at the hands of the presidents and counsellors of the Parisian parliament. Nor did they find it difficult to convince Catharine that to permit a public trial would be to reopen old sores and to risk overturning in a single hour the fabric of peace which for six months she had been laboring hard to strengthen.[288] The king was therefore induced to evoke the consideration of the complaint of the Guises to his own grand council. Here again new difficulties sprang up. The Duchess of Guise was as suspicious of the council as Coligny of the parliament, and challenged the greater number of its members as too partial to act as judges. In fact, it seemed impossible to secure a jury to settle the matter in dispute. After months spent to no purpose in wrangling, Charles determined to remove the question both from the parliament and from the council, and on the fifth of January, 1564, reserved for himself and his mother the duty of adjudication. At the same time, on the ground that the importance of the case demanded the deliberations of a prince of greater age and of more experience than he as yet possessed, and that its discussion at present might prove prejudicial to the tranquillity of the kingdom, he adjourned it for three full years, or until such other time as he might hereafter find to be convenient.[289]

Embarrassment of Catharine.

The feud between the Châtillons and the Guises was not, however, the only embarrassment which the government found itself compelled to meet. Catharine was in equal perplexity with respect to the engagements she had entered into with the Prince of Condé. It was part of the misfortune of this improvident princess that each new intrigue was of such a nature as to require a second intrigue to bolster it up. Yet she was to live long enough to learn by bitter experience that there is a limit to the extent to which plausible but lying words will pass current. At last the spurious coin was to be returned discredited to her own coffers. Catharine had enticed Condé into concluding a peace much less favorable to the Huguenots than his comrades in arms had expected in view of the state of the military operations and the pecuniary necessities of the court, by the promise that he should occupy the same controlling position in the government as his brother, the King of Navarre, held at the time of his death. We have seen that he was so completely hoodwinked that he assured his friends that it was of little consequence how scanty were the concessions made in the edict. He would soon be able, by his personal authority, to secure to "the religion" the largest guarantees. If we may believe Catharine herself, he went so far in his enthusiastic desire for peace as to threaten to desert the Huguenots, if they declined to embrace the opportunity of reconciliation.[290]

The majority of Charles proclaimed.

How to get rid of the troublesome obligation she had assumed, was now the problem; since to fulfil her promise honestly was, for a person of her crooked policy and inordinate ambition, not to be thought of for an instant. The readiest solution was found in abolishing the office of lieutenant-general. This could be done only by declaring the termination of the minority of Charles. For this an opportunity presented itself, when, on the seventeenth of August, 1563,[291] the queen and her children, with a brilliant retinue, were in the city of Rouen, on their return from the successful campaign against Havre. That day Charles the Ninth held a "lit de justice" in the palace of the Parliament of Normandy. Sitting in state, and surrounded by his mother, his younger brothers, and a host of grandees, he proceeded to address the assembled counsellors, pronouncing himself of full age, and, in the capacity of a major king, delivered to them an edict, signed the day before, ordering the observance of his Edict of Amboise and the complete pacification of his kingdom by a universal laying down of arms.[292] True, Charles was but a few days more than thirteen years of age; but his right to assume the full powers of government was strenuously maintained by Chancellor L'Hospital, upon whom devolved the task of explaining more fully the king's motives and purposes. Then Catharine, the author of the pageant, rising, humbly approached her son's throne, and bowed to the boy in token that she resigned into his hands the temporary authority she had held for nearly three years. Charles, advancing to meet her, accepted her homage, saying, at the same time, in words that were but too significant and prophetic of the remainder of his reign: "Madame ma mère, you shall govern and command as much or more than ever."[293]

Charles and the refractory Parliament of Paris.

The Parliament of Rouen, flattered at being selected for the instrument in so important an act, published and registered the edict of Charles's majority, notwithstanding some unpalatable provisions. Not so the Parliament of Paris. The counsellors of the capital were even more indignant at the slight put upon their claim to precedence, than at the proposed disarming of the Roman Catholics—a measure particularly distasteful to the riotous population of Paris.[294] The details of their opposition need not, however, find a record here. In the end the firmness of the king, or of his advisers, triumphed. At Mantes[295] Charles received a deputation from the recalcitrant judges, with Christopher de Thou, their first president, at its head. After hearing their remonstrances, he replied to the delegates that, although young and possessed of little experience, he was as truly king of France as any of his predecessors, and that he intended to make himself obeyed as such. To prove, however, that he had not acted inconsiderately in the premises, he called upon the members of his council who were present to speak; and each in turn, commencing with Cardinal Bourbon, the first prince of the blood, declared that the edict of Amboise had been made with his consent and advice, and that he deemed it both useful and necessary. Whereupon Charles informed the parliamentary committee that he had not adopted this course because he was under any obligation to render to them an account of his actions. "But," said he, "now that I am of age, I wish you to meddle with nothing beyond giving my subjects good and speedy justice. The kings, my predecessors, placed you where you are, in order that they might unburden their consciences, and that their subjects might live in greater security under their obedience, not in order to constitute you my tutors, or the protectors of the realm, or the guardians of my city of Paris. You have allowed yourselves to suppose until now that you are all this. I shall not leave you under the delusion; but I command you that, as in my father's and grandfather's time you were accustomed to attend to justice alone, so you shall henceforth meddle with nothing else." He professed to be perfectly willing to listen to their representations when modestly given; but he concluded by threatening them that, if they persisted in their present insolent course, he would find means to convince them that they were not his guardians and teachers, but his servants.[296] These stout words were shrewdly suspected to come from "the shop of the chancellor,"[297] whose popularity they by no means augmented. But Charles was himself in earnest. A fresh delegation of counsellors was dismissed from the royal presence with menaces,[298] and the parliament and people of Paris were both finally compelled to succumb. Parliament registered the edict; the people surrendered their arms—the poor receiving the estimated value of the weapons, the tradesmen and burgesses a ticket to secure their future restoration. As a matter of course, the nobles do not appear at all in the transaction, their immemorial claim to be armed even in time of peace being respected.

The Pope's bull against princely heretics.

Cardinal Châtillon.

Pope Pius the Fourth had been as indignant as Philip the Second himself at the conclusion of peace with the Huguenots. He avenged himself as soon as he received the tidings, by publishing, on the seventh of April, 1563, a bull conferring authority upon the inquisitors general of Christendom to proceed against heretics and their favorers—even to bishops, archbishops, patriarchs and cardinals—and to cite them before their tribunal by merely affixing the summons to the doors of the Inquisition or of the basilica of St. Peter. Should they fail to appear in person, they might at once be condemned and sentenced. The bull was no idle threat. Without delay a number of French prelates were indicted for heresy, and summoned to come to Rome and defend themselves. The list was headed by Cardinal Odet de Châtillon, Coligny's eldest brother, who had openly espoused the reformed belief, and St. Romain, Archbishop of Aix. Caraccioli, who had resigned the bishopric of Troyes and had been ordained a Protestant pastor, Montluc of Valence, and others of less note, figured among the suspected.[299] As they did not appear, a number of these prelates were shortly condemned.[300] Not content with this bold infraction of the Gallican liberties, the Roman pontiff went a step farther, and, through the Congregation of the Inquisition, cited Jeanne d'Albret, Queen of Navarre, to appear at Rome within six months, on pain of being held attainted of heresy, and having her dominions given in possession to the first Catholic occupant.[301]

The council protests against the papal bull.

In other words, not only Béarn, the scanty remnant of her titular monarchy, but all the lands and property to which the Huguenot queen had fallen heir, were to follow in the direction the kingdom of Navarre had taken, and go to swell the enormous wealth and dominion of the Spanish prince,[302] who found his interest to lie in the discord and misfortunes of his neighbors. Surely such an example would not be without significance to princes and princesses who, like Catharine, were wont occasionally to court the heretics on account of their power, and whose loyalty to the papal church could scarcely be supposed, even by the most charitable, to rest on any firmer foundation than self-interest. Nor was the lesson thrown away. Catharine and Michel de l'Hospital, and many another, read its import at a glance. But, instead of breaking down their opposition, the papal bull only forearmed them. They saw that Queen Jeanne's cause was their cause—the cause of any of the Valois who, whether upon the ground of heresy or upon any other pretext, might become obnoxious to the See of Rome. The royal council of state, therefore, promptly took the matter in hand, in connection with the recent trial of the French prelates, and replied to the papal missive by a spirited protest, which D'Oisel, the French ambassador at Rome, was commissioned to present. In his monarch's name he was to declare the procedure against the Queen of Navarre to be not only derogatory to the respect due to the royal dignity, which that princess could claim to an equal degree with the other monarchs of Christendom, but injurious to the rights and honor of the king and kingdom, and subversive of civil society. It was unjust, for it was dictated by the enemies of France, who sought to take advantage of the youth of the king and his embarrassments arising from civil wars, to oppress a widow and orphans—the widow and orphan children, indeed, of a king for whom the Pope had himself but recently been endeavoring so zealously to secure the restoration of Navarre. The malice was apparent from the fact that nothing similar had been undertaken by the Holy See against any of the monarchs who had revolted from its obedience within the last forty years. Sovereign power had been conferred upon the Pope for the salvation of souls, not that he might despoil kings and dispose of kingdoms according to his caprice—an undertaking his predecessors had engaged in hitherto only to their shame and confusion. Finally, the King of France begged Pius to recall the sentence against Queen Jeanne, otherwise he would be compelled to employ the remedies resorted to by his ancestors in similar cases, according to the laws of the realm.[303] Not content with this direct appeal, Catharine wrote to her son's ambassador in Germany to interest the emperor and the King of the Romans in an affair that no less vitally affected them.[304] So vigorous a response seems to have frightened the papal court, and the bull was either recalled or dropped—at least no trace is said to be found in the Constitutions of Pius the Fourth—and the proceedings against the bishops were indefinitely suspended.[305]

But while Catharine felt it necessary, for the maintenance of her own authority and of the dignity of the French crown, to enter the lists boldly in behalf of the Queen of Navarre, she was none the less bent upon confirming that authority by rendering it impossible for the Huguenots ever again to take the field in opposition to the crown. A war for the sake of principle was something of which that cynical princess could not conceive. The Huguenot party was strong, according to her view, only because of the possession of powerful leaders. The religious convictions of its adherents went for nothing. Let the Condés, and the Colignies, and the Porciens, and the La Rochefoucaulds be gained over, and the people, deprived of a head, would subordinate their theology to their interest, and unity would be restored under her own rule. It was the same vain belief that alone rendered possible a few years later such a stupendous crime and folly as the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre. Many an obscure and illiterate martyr, who had lost his life during her husband's reign, might have given her a far juster estimate of the future than her Macchiavellian education, with all its fancied shrewdness and insight into human character and motives, had furnished her.

Catharine's attempt to seduce Condé from the Huguenots.

To overthrow the political influence of the Huguenots she must seduce their leaders. Of this Catharine was sure. With whom, then, should she commence but with the brilliant Condé? The calm and commanding admiral, indeed, was the true head and heart of the late war—never more firm and uncompromising than after defeat—as reluctant to renounce war without securing, beyond question, the religious liberty he sought, as he had been averse to take up the sword at all in the beginning. Of such a man, however, little hope could be entertained. But Louis of Bourbon was cast in another mould. Excessively small in stature and deformed in person, he was a general favorite; for he was amiable, witty, and talkative.[306] Moreover, he was fond of pleasure to an extent that attracted notice even in that giddy court, and as open to temptation as any of its frivolous denizens.[307] For such persons Catharine knew how to lay snares. Never did queen surround herself with more brilliant enticements for the unwary. Her maids of honor were at once her spies and the instruments of accomplishing her designs. As she had had a fair Rouhet to undermine the constancy of Antoine, so she had now an Isabeau de Limueil to entrap his younger brother. Nor did Catharine's device prove unsuccessful. Condé became involved in an amorous intrigue that shook the confidence of his Huguenot friends in his steadfastness and sincerity; while the silly girl whom the queen had encouraged in a course that led to ruin, as soon as her shame became notorious, was ignominiously banished from court—for no one could surpass Catharine in the personation of offended modesty.[308] Yet, notwithstanding a disgraceful fall which proved to the satisfaction of a world, always sufficiently sceptical of the depth of religious convictions, that ambition had much more to do with the prince's conduct than any sense of duty, Condé was not wholly lost to right feelings. The tears and remonstrances of his wife—the true-hearted Éléonore de Roye—dying of grief at his inconstancy, are said to have wrought a marked change in his character.[309] From that time Catharine's power was gone. In vain did she or the Guises strive to gain him over to the papal party by offering him, in second marriage, the widow of Marshal Saint André, with an ample dower that might well dazzle a prince of the blood with but a beggarly appanage;[310] or even by proposing to confer upon him the hand of the yet blooming Queen of Scots,[311] the Prince of Condé remained true to the cause he had espoused till his blood stained the fatal field of Jarnac.

Huguenot progress.

But while the queen mother was plying the great with her seductions, while the Roman Catholic leaders were artfully instilling into the minds of the people the idea that the Edict of Amboise was only a temporary expedient,[312] while royal governors, or their lieutenants, like Damville—the constable's younger son—at Pamiers, were cruelly abusing the Protestants whom they ought to have protected,[313] there was much in the tidings that came especially from southern France to encourage the reformers. In the midst of the confusion and carnage of war the leaven had yet been working. There were even to be found places where the progress of Protestantism had rendered the application of the provisions of the edict nearly, if not quite impossible. The little city of Milhau, in Rouergue,[314] is a striking and very interesting instance.

Milhau-en-Rouergue.

The edict had expressly directed that all churches should be restored to the Roman Catholics, and that the Protestants should resort for worship to other places, either in the suburbs, or—in the case of cities which the Huguenots had held on the seventh of March, 1563—within the walls. But, soon after the restoration of peace, the consuls and inhabitants of Milhau presented a petition to Charles the Ninth, in which they make the startling assertion that the entire population has become Protestant ("de la religion"); that for two years or thereabouts they have lived in undisturbed peace, whilst other cities have been the scene of disturbances; and that, at a recent gathering of the inhabitants, they unanimously expressed their desire to live in the exercise of the reformed faith, under the royal permission. By the king's order the petition was referred for examination to the commissioners for the execution of the edict in the province of Guyenne. All its statements were found to be strictly correct. There was not one papist within the city; not one man, woman, or child expressed a desire for the re-establishment of the Roman Catholic ceremonial. The monks had renounced the cowl, the priests their vestments. Of their own free will, some of the friars had married, some had taken up useful trades. The prior had voluntarily resigned the greater part of his revenues; retaining one-third for his own support, he had begged that the remainder might be devoted to the preaching of God's Word and the maintenance of the poor. The two churches of the place had for eighteen months been used for Protestant worship, and there were no other convenient places to be found. Indeed, had the churches been given up, there would have been no one to take possession. A careful domiciliary examination by four persons appointed by the royal judge had incontestably established the point. Over eight hundred houses were visited, constituting the greater part of the city. The occupants were summoned to express their preferences, and the result was contained in the solemn return of the commission: "We have not found a single person who desired or asked for the mass; but, on the contrary, all demanded the preaching of the Word of God, and the administration of His holy sacraments as instituted by Himself in that Word. And thus we certify by the oath we have taken to God and to the king."[315]

The cry for ministers.

From other places the cry of the churches for ministers to be sent from Geneva was unabated. In one town and its environs, so inadequate was a single minister to the discharge of his pastoral duties, that the peasants of the vicinity were compelled to baptize one another's children, or to leave them unbaptized.[316] At Montpellier it is the consuls that beg that their corps of ministers may be doubled; their two pastors cannot preach every day and three times upon Sunday, and yet visit the neighboring villages.[317]

Establishment of the Reformation in Béarn.

Nowhere, however, was the advance of Protestantism so hopeful as in the principality of Béarn, whither Jeanne d'Albret had retired, and where, since her husband's death, she had been dividing her cares between the education of her son, Henry of Navarre, and the establishment of the Reformation. A less courageous spirit than hers[318] might well have succumbed in view of the difficulties in her way. Of the nobility not one-tenth, of the magistracy not one-fifth, were favorable to the changes which she wished to introduce. The clergy were, of course, nearly unanimous in opposition.[319] She was, however, vigorously and wisely seconded in her efforts by the eminent reformed pastor, Merlin, formerly almoner of Admiral Coligny, whom Calvin had sent from Geneva at her request.[320] But when, contrary to his advice, the Queen of Navarre had summoned a meeting of the estates of her small territory, she detected unexpected symptoms of resistance. She accordingly abstained from broaching the unwelcome topic of reformation. But the deputies of the three orders themselves introduced it. Taking occasion from a prohibition she had issued against carrying the host in procession, they petitioned her to maintain them in the religion of their ancestors, in accordance with the promise which the princes of the country were accustomed to make.[321] Fortunately a small minority was found to offer a request of an entirely opposite tenor; and Jeanne d'Albret, with her characteristic firmness, declared in reply "that she would reform religion in her country, whoever might oppose." So much discontent did this decision provoke that there was danger of open sedition.[322]

These internal obstacles were, however, by no means the only difficulties. The court of Pau was disturbed by an uninterrupted succession of rumors of trouble from without. Now it was the French king that stood ready to seize the scanty remnants of Navarre, or the Spaniard that was all prepared for an invasion from the south; anon it was Montluc from the side of Guyenne, or Damville from that of Languedoc, who were meditating incursions in the interest of the Roman Catholic Church. "In short," exclaims her indefatigable coadjutor, Raymond Merlin, "it is wonderful that this princess should be able to persist with constancy in her holy design!"[323] Then came the papal citation, and the necessity to avoid the alienation of the French court which would certainly result from suddenly abolishing the papal rites, especially in view of the circumstance that Catharine de' Medici had several times begged the Queen of Navarre by letter to refrain from taking that decided step.[324]

A plan to kidnap Jeanne and her children.

It speaks well for the energy and intrepidity of Jeanne d'Albret, as well as for the wisdom of some of her advisers, that she was able to lay in these troublous times such broad foundations for the Protestant system of worship and government as we shall shortly have occasion to see her laying; for she was surrounded by courtiers who beheld in her bold espousal of the Reformation the death-blow to their hopes of advancement at Paris, and were, consequently, resolute in their opposition. An incident occurring some months later demonstrates that the perils from her treacherous neighbors were not purely imaginary. This event was nothing less than the discovery of a plan to kidnap the Queen of Navarre and her young son and daughter, and to give them over into the hands of the Spanish Inquisition. Shortly after Antoine's death, her enemies in France—among whom, despite his subsequent denial, it is probable that Blaise de Montluc was one—had devised this plot as a promising means of promoting their interests. They had despatched a trusty agent to prepare a few of their most devoted partisans in Guyenne for its execution; he was then to pass into Spain, to confer with the Duke of Alva. The latter part of his instructions had not been fulfilled when the assassination of Guise took place. Nothing daunted by this mishap, the conspirators ordered their agent to carry out the original scheme. Alva received it with favor, and sent the Frenchman, with his own approval of the undertaking, to the Spanish court, where he held at least three midnight interviews with Philip. No design was ever more dear to that prudent monarch's heart than one which combined the rare attractions of secrecy and treachery, particularly if there were a reasonable hope in the end of a little wholesome blood-letting. Fortunately, however, the messenger had not been so careful in his conversation but that he disclosed to one of Isabella's French servants all that was essential in his commission. The momentous secret soon found its way to the Spanish queen's almoner, and finally to the queen herself. The blow impending over her cousin's head terrified Isabella, and melted her compassionate heart. She disclosed to the ambassador of Charles the Ninth the astounding fact that some of the Spanish troops then at Barcelona, on their way to the campaign in Barbary, were to be quietly sent back from the coast to the interior. Thence, passing through defiles in the Pyrenees, under experienced guides, they were to fall upon the unsuspecting court of the Queen of Navarre at Pau. In such a case, to be forewarned was to be forearmed. The private secretary of the French envoy was despatched to inform Jeanne d'Albret of her peril, and to notify Catharine de' Medici of the intended incursion into the French territories. The premature disclosure occasioned the abandonment of the plan; but it is said that Philip the Second never forgave his unfortunate wife her part in frustrating its execution.[325]

The Council of Trent closes its sessions.

The month of December, 1563, witnessed the close of that celebrated convocation, the Council of Trent. This is not the place for the discussion of its extraordinary history, yet it is worth while to note the conclusion of an assembly which exerted so weighty an influence in establishing the dogmas of the papal church. Resumed after its long suspension, on the eighteenth of January, 1562, the council from whose deliberations such magnificent results of harmony had been expected, began its work by rendering the breach between the Roman Catholic and the Protestant worlds incurable. Fortunately for the Roman See, all the leading courts in Christendom, although agreed in pronouncing for the necessity of reform, were at variance with one another in respect to the particular objects to be aimed at. It was by a skilful use of this circumstance that the Pope was enabled to extricate himself creditably from an embarrassing situation, and to secure every essential advantage. At the reopening of the council, the French and German bishops were not present, and the great majority of the members being poor Italian prelates dependent almost for their daily bread upon the good pleasure of the pontiff, it is not surprising that the first step taken was to concede to the Pope or his legates the exclusive right to introduce subjects for discussion, as well as the yet more important claim of sitting as judge and ratifying the decisions of the assembled Fathers before they became valid. Notwithstanding this disgraceful surrender of their independence and authority, the Roman See was by no means sure as to the results at which the prelates of the Council of Trent would arrive. France and the empire demanded radical reforms in the Pope and his court, and some concessions to the Protestants—the permission of marriage for the priesthood, the distribution of the wine to the laity in the eucharistic sacrament, and the use of the vernacular tongue in a portion, at least, of the public services. The arrival of the Cardinal of Lorraine and other bishops, in the month of November, 1562, to reinforce the handful of French prelates in attendance, enhanced the apprehensions of Pius. For, strange as it may appear to us, even Pius suspected Charles of favoring innovation—so far had the arch-hypocrite imposed on friend as well as foe by his declaration of adhesion to the Augsburg Confession! The fact was that there was no lack of dissimulation on any side, and that the prelates who urged reforms were among the most insincere. They had drawn up certain articles without the slightest expectation, and certainly without the faintest desire, to have them accepted. Their sole aim seemed to be to shift the blame for the flagrant disorders of the Church from their own shoulders to those of the Pope. If their suggestions had been seriously entertained and acted upon, no men would have had more difficulty than they in concealing their chagrin.[326] The monarchs—and it was their ambassadors who, with the papal legates, directed all the most important conclusions—were at heart equally averse to the restoration of canonical elections, and to everything which, by relieving the ecclesiastics of their servile dependence upon the crown, might cut off that perennial fountain for the payment of their debts and for defraying the expenses of their military enterprises, which they had discovered in the contributions wrung from churchmen's purses. Thus, in the end, by a series of compromises, in which Pope and king each obtained what he was anxious to secure, and sacrificed little for which he really cared, the council managed to confirm the greater number of the abuses it had been expected to remove, and to render indelible the line of demarcation between Roman Catholic and Protestant, which it was to have effaced.

Cardinal Lorraine returns to France,

The Cardinal of Lorraine returning to France, after the conclusion of the council (the fourth of December, 1563), made it his first object to secure the ratification of the Tridentine decrees. He had now thrown off the mask of moderation, which had caused his friends such needless alarms, and was quite ready to sacrifice (as the nuncio had long since prophesied he would sacrifice)[327] the interests of France to those of the Roman See. But the undertaking was beyond his strength.

and unsuccessfully seeks the approval of the decrees of Trent.

On Lorraine's arrival at court, then stopping at St. Maur-sur-Marne (January, 1564), Catharine answered his request that the king should approve the conclusions of Trent by saying that, if there was anything good in them, the king would gladly approve of it, even if it were not decreed by the council. And, at a supper, to which he was invited the same evening at the quarters of the Cardinal of Bourbon, he had to put up with a good deal of rough jesting from Condé and his boon companions, who plied him with pungent questions respecting the Pope and the doings of the holy Fathers.[328]

Wrangle between Lorraine and L'Hospital.

A few weeks later Lorraine made a more distinct effort to secure recognition for the late council's work. Several of the presidents of parliament, the avocat-général, and the procureur du roi had been summoned to court—which, meanwhile, had removed to Melun (February, 1564)—to give their advice to the privy council respecting this momentous question. The cardinal's proposition met with little favor. Chancellor L'Hospital distinguished himself by his determined opposition, and boldly refuted the churchman's arguments. The cardinal had long been chafing at the intractability of the lawyer, who owed his early advancement to the influence of the house of Guise, and now could no longer contain his anger. He spoke in a loud and imperious tone, and used taunts that greatly provoked the illustrious bystanders. "It is high time for you to drop your mask," he said to L'Hospital, "for, as for myself, I cannot discover what religion you are of. In fact, you seem to have no other religion than to injure as much as possible both me and my house. Ingrate that you are, you have forgotten all the benefits you have received at my hands." The chancellor's answer was quiet and dignified. "I shall always be ready, even at the peril of my life, to return my obligations to you. I cannot do it at the expense of the king's honor and welfare." And he added the pointed observation that the cardinal was desirous of effecting, by intrigue, what he had been unable to effect by force of arms. Others took up the debate, the old constable himself disclaiming any intention of disputing respecting doctrines which he approved, but expressing his surprise that Lorraine should disturb the tranquillity of the kingdom, and take up the cause of the Roman pontiff against a king through whose liberality he was in the enjoyment of an annual revenue of three or four hundred thousand francs. Catharine, as usual, did her best to allay the irritation; but the cardinal, greatly disappointed, retired to Rheims.[329]

Opposition of Du Moulin.

A few months after the scene at Melun, the most eminent of French jurists, the celebrated Charles Du Moulin, published an unanswerable treatise, proving that the Council of Trent had none of the characteristics of a true œcumenical synod, and that its decrees were null and void.[330] And the Parliament of Paris, although it ordered the seizure of the book and imprisoned the author for some days, could not be induced to consent to incorporate in the legislation of the country the Tridentine decrees, so hostile in spirit to the French legislation.[331] Evidently parliament, although too timid to say so, believed, with Du Moulin, that the acceptance of the decrees in question "would be against God and against the benefit of Jesus Christ in the Gospel, against the ancient councils, against the majesty of the king and the rights of his crown, against his recent edicts and the edicts of preceding kings, against the liberty and immunity of the Gallican Church, the authority of the estates and courts of parliament of the kingdom, and the secular jurisdiction."[332]

It was shortly before this time that the report gained currency that Charles the Ninth had received an embassy from Philip of Spain and the Duke of Savoy, inviting him, it was said, to a conference with all other "Christian" princes, to be held on the twenty-fifth of March (1564), to swear submission in common to the decrees of Trent and devise means for the repression of heresy. But neither Charles nor his mother, still very much under the influence of the tolerant chancellor, was disposed to enter upon the path of persecution marked out for them. The conference was therefore, we are told, gracefully, but firmly declined.[333] The story was but an idle rumor, the absurdity of which is clearly seen from this one fact among many, that Philip had not at this time himself accepted and published the Tridentine decrees;[334] while, from various documents that have come down to us, it appears that Catharine de' Medici had for some months[335] been projecting a trip that should enable her son to meet several of the neighboring princes, for the purpose of cultivating more friendly relations with them. From this desire, and from the wish, by displaying the young monarch to the inhabitants of the different provinces, to revive the loyalty of his subjects, seriously weakened during the late civil war, apparently arose the project of that well-known "progress" of Charles the Ninth through the greater part of France, a progress which consumed many successive months.

The "progress" of Charles IX.

Whether the Cardinal of Lorraine had any direct part, as was commonly reported, in bringing about the journey of the king, is uncertain. He himself wrote to Granvelle that he had neither advocated nor opposed it;[336] but the character of the man has been delineated to little purpose in these pages if the reader is disposed to give any weight to his assertion. Certain, however, it is that the Huguenots looked upon the project with great suspicion, and that its execution was accepted as a virtual triumph of their opponents. Condé and Coligny could see as clearly as the cardinal the substantial advantages which a formal visit to the elder branch of the Lorraine family might secure to the branch of the family domiciled in France; and they could readily imagine that under cover of this voyage might be concealed the most nefarious designs against the peace of their co-religionists. It is not surprising that many Huguenot nobles accepted it as a mark of the loss of favor, and that few of them accompanied the court in its wanderings.[337] The English ambassador, noting this important fact, made, on his own account, an unfavorable deduction from what he saw, as to the design of the court. "They carry the king about this country now," he observed, "mostly to see the ruins of the churches and religious houses done by the Huguenots in this last war. They suppress the losses and hurts the Huguenots have suffered."[338] On the other hand, the Roman Catholic party received their success as a presage of speedy restoration to full power, and entertained brilliant hopes for the future.[339] The queen mother was beginning to make fair promises to the papal adherents, and the influence of the admiral and his brothers seemed to be at an end.

Leaving the palace of Fontainebleau, the court passed through Sens and Troyes to the city of Bar-sur-Seine, where Charles acted as sponsor for his infant nephew, the son of the Duke of Lorraine. The brilliant fêtes that accompanied the arrival of the king here and elsewhere could not, however, hide from the world one of the chief results, if not designs, of the journey. It was a prominent part of the queen mother's plan to seize the opportunity for carrying out the system of repression toward the Huguenots which she had already begun. While there is no reason to suppose that as yet she felt any disposition to lend an ear to the suggestions of Spanish emissaries, or of Philip himself, for a general massacre, or at least an open war of extermination, she was certainly very willing by less open means to preclude the Protestants from ever giving her trouble, or becoming again a formidable power in the state. The most unfavorable reports, in truth, were in circulation against the Huguenots. At Lyons they were accused of poisoning the wells, or, according to another version of the story, the kitchen-pots, in order to give the impression that the plague was in the city, and so deter the king from coming.[340] Catharine had no need, however, of crediting these calumnious tales in order to be moved to hostile action. Her desire was unabated to reign under her son's name, untrammelled by the restraint of the jealous love of liberty cherished by the Huguenots. Their numbers were large—though not so large as they were then supposed to be. Even so intelligent a historian as Garnier regards them as constituting nearly one-third of the kingdom.[341] M. Lacretelle is undoubtedly much more correct in estimating them at fifteen or sixteen hundred thousand souls, or barely one-tenth of the entire population of France—a country at that time much more sparsely inhabited, and of which a much larger part of the surface was in inferior cultivation, or altogether neglected, than at present.[342] But, however small their number in proportion to the papists, the Huguenots, from their superior industry and intelligence, from the circumstance that their strength lay in the sturdy middle class and in the nobility, including little of the rabble of the cities and none of that of Paris,[343] were a party that naturally awakened the jealousy of the queen. We need make little account of any exasperation in consequence of such silly devices as the threatening letter said to have been put in Catharine's bed-room, warning her that if she did not drive the papists from about her, "she and her L'Aubespine" (secretary of state) would feel the dagger.[344] She was too shrewd not to know that a Roman Catholic was more likely to have penned it than a Huguenot.

Catharine's new zeal.

In furtherance of the policy to which she had now committed herself, she caused the fortifications of the cities that had been strongholds of the Protestants during the late war to be levelled, and in their place erected citadels whereby the Huguenots might be kept in subjection.[345] As Easter approached, Catharine revealed the altered tone of her mind by notifying her maids of honor that she would suffer none to remain about her but those who were good Catholics and submitted to the ordinary test of orthodoxy. There is said to have been but a single girl who declined to go to mass, and preferred to return to her home.[346] Well would it have been if the queen had been as attentive to the morals[347] as to the orthodoxy of these pleasure-seeking attendants. But, to belong to the "religion ancienne et catholique" was a mantle large enough to cover a multitude of sins.

Interpretative declarations infringing upon the Edict.

Declaration of Roussillon.

More direct infringements upon the liberty guaranteed by the Edict of Amboise had already been made or were yet in store. The legislation which could not conveniently be repealed by formal enactment could be rendered null by interpretative declarations. Charles was made to proclaim that by the Edict he had not intended to permit preaching in places previously belonging to the patrimony of the Church, or held as benefices. This was aimed at such prelates of doubtful catholicity as Saint Romain, Archbishop of Aix, or the Cardinal Bishop of Beauvais, Odet de Châtillon. He was made to say, that by the places where Protestant worship could be held within the walls, by virtue of its having been exercised on the seventh of March, 1563, were meant only those that had been garrisoned by Protestants, and had undergone a successful siege. This stroke of the pen cut off several cities in which Protestantism had been maintained without conflict of arms. The Huguenot counsellors of the parliament were deprived of the enjoyment of their right to attend the "assemblée," or "Protestant congregation," by a gloss which forbade the inhabitants of Paris from attending the reformed worship in the neighboring districts. When the court reached Lyons, a city which, as we have seen, had been among the foremost in devotion to the Protestant cause, a fresh edict, of the twenty-fourth of June, prohibited the reformed rites from being celebrated in any city in which the king might be sojourning. Five or six weeks later, at the little town of Roussillon, a few miles south of Vienne, on the Rhône, another and more flagrant violation of the letter and spirit of the edict of pacification was incorporated in a declaration purporting to remove fresh uncertainties as to the meaning of its provisions. It forbade the noblemen who might possess the right to maintain Protestant services in their castles, to permit any persons but their own families and their vassals to be present. It prohibited the convocation of synods and the collection of money, and enjoined upon ministers of the gospel not to leave their places of residence, nor to open schools for the instruction of the young. But the most vexatious and unjust article of all was that which constrained all priests, monks, and nuns, who during or since the troubles had forsaken their vows and had married, either to resume their monastic profession and dismiss their consorts, or to leave the kingdom. As a penalty for the violation of this command, the men were to be sentenced to the galleys for life, the women to close confinement in prison. I omit in this list of grievances suffered by the Huguenots some minor annoyances such as that which compelled the artisan to desist from working in his shop with open doors on the festivals of the Roman Catholic Church.[348]

Assaults upon unoffending Huguenots.

These legal infractions were not all. Everywhere the Huguenots had to complain of acts of violence, committed by their papist neighbors, at the instigation of priests and bishops, and not infrequently of the royal governors. Little more than a year had passed since peace was restored, and already the victims of religious assassination rivalled in number the martyrs of the days of open persecution. At Crevant the Protestants were attacked on their way to their "temple;" at Tours they were attacked while engaged in worship. At Mans the fanatical bishop was the chief instigator of a work of mingled murder and rapine. At Vendôme it was the royal governor himself, Gilbert de Curée, who fell a victim to the hatred of the Roman Catholic noblesse, and was treacherously killed while hunting.[349] If anything more was needed to render the violence insupportable, it was found in the fact that any attempt to obtain judicial investigation and redress resulted not in the condemnation of the guilty, but in the personal peril of the complainant.[350]

Condé appeals for redress.

Smarting under the repeated acts of violence to which at every moment they were liable, and under the successive infringements upon the Edict of Amboise, the Huguenots urged the Prince of Condé to represent their grievances to the monarch, in the excellence of whose heart they had not yet lost confidence. The Protestant leader did not repel the trust. His appeal to Charles and to the queen mother was urgent. He showed that, even where the letter of the edict was observed, its spirit was flagrantly violated. The edict provided for a place for preaching in each prefecture, to be selected by the king. In some cases no place had yet been designated. In others, the most inconvenient places had been assigned. Sometimes the Huguenots of a district would be compelled to go twenty or twenty-five leagues in order to attend divine worship. The declaration affecting the monks and nuns who had forsaken their habit was a violation of the general liberty promised. So also was the prohibition of synods, which, though not expressly mentioned, were implied in the toleration of the religion to which they were indispensably necessary. But it was the prejudice and ill-will, of which the Huguenots were the habitual victims at the hands of royal governors and other officers, which moved them most deeply. The evident desire was to find some ground of accusation against them. The ears of the judges were stopped against their appeals for justice. It was enough that they were accused. Decrees of confiscation, of the razing of their houses, of death, were promptly given before any examination was made into the truth of their culpability. On a mere rumor of a commotion in the Protestant city of Montauban, an order was issued to demolish its walls. The case was far otherwise with turbulent Roman Catholic towns. The people were encouraged to acts of violence toward the Huguenots by the impunity of the perpetrators of similar crimes, and by the evident partiality of those who were set to administer justice. Out of six or seven score murders of Protestants since the peace, not two of the abominable acts had been punished. Under such circumstances it would not be surprising if the victims of inordinate cruelty should at length be driven in desperation to take their defence into their own hands.[351]

Conciliatory reply of the king.

The king, or his ministers, fearful of a commotion during his absence from Paris, answered the letter of the prince with tolerable courtesy, and even made a pretence of desiring to secure justice to his Protestant subjects; but the attempt really effected very little. Thus, for instance, while sojourning in the city of Valence (on the fifth of September, 1564), Charles received a petition of the Huguenots of Bordeaux, setting forth some of the grievances under which they were groaning, and gave a favorable answer. He permitted them, by this patent, to sing their psalms in their own houses. He declared them free from any obligation to furnish the "pain bénit," and to contribute to the support of Roman Catholic fraternities. The Protestants were not to be molested for possessing or selling copies of the Bible. They must not be compelled to deck out their houses in honor of religious processions, nor to swear on St. Anthony's arm. They might work at their trades with closed doors, except on Sundays and solemn feasts. Magistrates were forbidden to take away the children of Huguenots, in order to have them baptized according to Romish rites. Protestants could be elected to municipal offices equally with the adherents of the other faith.[352] In a similar tone of conciliation the king published an order from Roussillon, remitting the fines that had been imposed upon the Huguenots of Nantes for neglecting to hang tapestry before their houses on Corpus Christi Day, and permitting them henceforth to abstain from an act so offensive to their religious convictions.[353]

Protestants excluded from judicial posts.

Such local concessions were, however, only the decoys by which the queen mother intended to lure the Huguenots on to a fatal security. A few months later, at Avignon, Catharine caused an ordinance to be published in the king's name, which Cardinal Santa Croce characterized as an excellent one. It excluded Protestants from holding judicial seats. Catharine told the nuncio that her counsellors had been desirous of extending the same prohibition to all other charges under government, but that she had deterred them. It would have driven the Huguenots to desperation, and might have occasioned disturbances. "We shall labor, however," she said, "to exclude them little by little from all their offices." At the same time she expressed her joy that everything was succeeding so well, and privately assured the nuncio "that people were much deceived in her."[354]

And yet such are the paradoxes of history, especially in this age of surprises, that, at the very moment the king was depriving his own Protestant subjects of their rights, he was negotiating in behalf of the Protestant subjects of his neighbors! The king would not leave Avignon—so wrote the English envoy—without reconciling the inhabitants of the Comtât Venaissin and the principality of Orange, whom diversity of religion had brought into collision. And, by the articles of pacification which the ambassador enclosed, the king was seen "to have had a care for others also, having provided a certain liberty of religion even to the Pope's own subjects, which he had much difficulty in obtaining."[355]

Marshal Montmorency checks the Parisian mob.

His encounter with Cardinal Lorraine.

While the queen mother, under cover of her son's authority, followed the new policy of opposition to the Huguenots upon which she had now entered, an incident occurred at Paris showing that even the Roman Catholics were not unanimous in their support of the Guises and their plan of exterminating heresy. The governor of the metropolis was Marshal Montmorency, the most worthy of all the constable's sons. He had vigorously exerted himself ever since the king's departure to protect the Huguenots in accordance with the provisions of the treaty. A Protestant woman, who during the war had been hung in effigy for "huguenoterie," but had returned from her flight since the conclusion of peace, died and was secretly buried by friends, one Sunday night, in the "Cimetière des Innocents." The next morning a rabble, such as only Paris could afford, collected with the intention of disinterring the heretic. And they would have accomplished their design, had not Marshal Montmorency ridden in, sword in hand, and resolved to hang the culprits that very day. "He would assist the Huguenots," he is reported to have been in the habit of saying, "because they were the weaker party."[356] On Monday, the eighth of January, 1565, the Cardinal of Lorraine approached the city in full ecclesiastical dress, with the intention of entering it.[357] He was attended by his young nephew, the Duke of Guise, and by an escort of armed men, whom Catharine had permitted him to retain in spite of the general prohibition, because of the fears he undoubtedly felt for his personal safety. As he neared Paris he was met by a messenger sent by the governor, commanding him to bid his company lay down their arms, or to exhibit his pretended authority. The cardinal, accustomed to domineer over even such old noble families as the Montmorencies, would do neither, and attempted to ride defiantly into the city. But the marshal was no respecter of persons. With the troops at his command he met and dispersed the cardinal's escort. Lorraine fled as for his life into a shop on the Rue Saint Denis. Thence he was secretly conveyed to his own palace, and shortly after he left the city in utter discomfiture, but breathing dire threats against the marshal.[358] The latter, calling into Paris his cousin the admiral, had no difficulty in maintaining order. Great was the consternation of the populace, it is true, for the absurd report was circulated that Coligny was come to plunder the city, and to seize the Parliament House, the Cathedral, and the Bastile;[359] and even the first president, De Thou, begged him, when he came to the parliament, to explain the reasons of his obeying his cousin's summons, and to imitate the prudence of Pompey the Great when he entered the city of Rome, where Cæsar's presence rendered a sedition imminent. The admiral, in reply, gracefully acknowledged the honor which parliament had done him in likening him to Pompey, whom he would gladly imitate, he said, because Pompey was a patriot. Still he saw no appositeness in the comparison, "as there was no Cæsar in Paris."[360]

The conference at Bayonne, June, 1565.

Early in the month of June, 1565, Charles the Ninth and his court reached the neighborhood of the city of Bayonne, where, on the very confines of France and Spain, a meeting had been arranged between Catharine and her daughter Isabella, wife of Philip the Second. Catharine's first proposal had been that her royal son-in-law should himself be present. She had urged that great good to Christendom might flow from their deliberations. Philip the Prudent, however, and his confidential adviser, the Duke of Alva, were suspicious of the design. Alva was convinced that Catharine had only her own private ends in view.[361] Granvelle observed that little fruit came of these interviews of princes but discord and confusion, and judged that, had not the queen mother strenuously insisted upon improving perhaps the only opportunity which she and her daughter might enjoy of seeing each other, even the interview between the two queens would have been declined.[362] As it was, however, Philip excused himself on the plea of engrossing occupations.

Such were the circumstances under which the Bayonne conference took place—a meeting which Cardinal Granvelle assured his correspondents was a simple visit of a daughter to her mother,[363] but to which contemporaries, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, ascribed a far deeper significance. At this meeting, according to Jean de Serres, writing only four or five years after the event,[364] a holy league, as it was called, was formed, by the intervention of Isabella, for the purpose of re-establishing the authority of the ancient religion and of extirpating the new. France and Spain mutually promised to render each other assistance in the good work; and both pledged themselves to the support of the Holy See by all the means in their power. Philip himself was not present, either, it was conjectured, in order that the league might the better be kept secret, or to avoid the appearance of lowering his dignity before that of the French monarch.[365] The current belief—until recently almost the universal belief of historians—goes farther, and alleges that in this mysterious conference Catharine and Alva, who accompanied his master's wife, concocted the plan of that famous massacre whose execution was delayed by various circumstances for seven years. Alva was the tempter, and the words with which he recommended his favorite method of dealing with heresy, by destroying its chief upholders, were embodied in the ignoble sentence, "Better a salmon's head than ten thousand frogs."[366]

In fact, a general impression that the conference had led to the formation of a distinct plan for the universal destruction of Protestantism gained ground almost immediately. Within about a month after the queen mother and her daughter had ended their interview, the English ambassador wrote to Leicester and Cecil that "they of the religion think that there has been at this meeting at Bayonne some complot betwixt the Pope, the King of Spain, and the Scottish queen, by their ambassadors, and some say also the Papists of England."[367]

No plan of massacre agreed upon.

Fortunately, however, we are not left to frame by uncertain conjecture a doubtful story of the transactions of this famous interview. The correspondence of the Duke of Alva himself with Philip the Second has been preserved among the manuscripts of Simancas, to dispel many inveterate misapprehensions. These letters not only prove that no plan for a massacre of the Huguenots was agreed upon by the two parties, but that Alva did not even distinctly declare himself in favor of such a plan. They furnish, however, an instructive view, such as can but rarely be so well obtained, of the net of treacherous intrigue which the fingers of Philip and his agents were for many years busy day and night in cautiously spreading around the throne of France.

June 14th.

June 15th.

On Thursday, the fourteenth of June, the young Spanish queen, with her brilliant train of attendant grandees, crossed the narrow stream forming the dividing line between the two kingdoms, and was conducted by her mother, her brothers and sister, and a crowd of gallant French nobles, to the neighboring town of Saint Jean de Luz. On Friday, Catharine and Charles rode forward to make their solemn entry into Bayonne, where they were to await their guests' arrival. Before they started, Alva had already been at work complimenting such good Catholics as the constable, Cardinal Bourbon, and Prince La Roche-sur-Yon, flattering Cardinal Guise (his brother of Lorraine was absent from court, not yet being fully reinstated in favor), the Duke of Montpensier, and vain old Blaise de Montluc. Nor were his blandishments thrown away. Poor weak Guise—the "cardinal des bouteilles" he was called, from the greater acquaintance he had with the wine and good living than with religious or political affairs[368]—was overcome with emotion and gratitude, and begged Alva to implore the Catholic king, by the love of God, to look in pity upon an unhappy kingdom, where religion was fast going to ruin. Montpensier threw himself into Alva's arms, and told him that Philip alone was the hope of all the good in France, declaring for himself that he was willing to be torn in pieces in his behalf, and maintaining the meanwhile, that, should that pleasant operation be performed, "Philip" would be found written on his heart. To Blaise de Montluc's self-conceit Alva laid siege in no very covert manner, assuring him that his master had not given his consent to Catharine's plan for an interview until he had perused a paper written by the grim old warrior's hand, in which he had expressed the opinion that the conference would be productive of wholesome results. The implied praise was all that was needed to induce Montluc to explain himself more fully. He was opposed to the exercise of any false humanity. He ascribed the little success that had attended the Roman Catholic arms in the last struggle to the half-way measures adopted and the attempt to exercise the courtesies of peace in time of war. The combatants on either side addressed their enemies as "my brother" and "my cousin." As for himself, he had made it a rule to spare no man's life, but to wage a war of extermination. To this unburdening of his mind Alva replied by giving Montluc to understand that, as a good Roman Catholic, it should be his task to discover the means of inducing Charles and his mother to perform their duty, and, if he failed in this, to disclose to Philip the course which he must pursue, "since it was impossible to suffer matters to go on, as they were going, to their ruin."

What the duty of the French king was, in Philip's and Alva's view, is evidenced by the advice of the "good" Papists which the minister reports to his master with every mark of approbation. It was, in the first place, to banish from the kingdom every Protestant minister, and prohibit utterly any exercise of the reformed religion. The provincial governors, whose orthodoxy in almost every case could be relied upon, were to be the instruments in the execution of this work.[369] But, besides this, it would be necessary to seize a few of the leaders and cut off their heads. Five or six, it was suggested, would be all the victims required.[370] It was, in fact, essentially the plan of operations with which Alva undertook a year or two later the reduction of the Netherlands to submission to Spanish tyranny and the Papal Church. Treacherous imprisonments of the most suspected, which could scarcely have been confined within such narrow numerical limits as Alva laid down, together with a "blood council" to complete the work, or with a massacre in which the proprieties of judicial investigation would be less nicely observed—such was the scheme after Philip's own heart.

But this scheme suited the present frame of mind neither of Charles nor of Catharine. When the crafty Spaniard, cautiously feeling his way, begged the young king to be very careful of his life, "for God, he was convinced, was reserving him to execute a great work by his hands, in the punishment of the offences which were committed in that kingdom,"[371] Charles briskly responded: "Oh! to take up arms does not suit me. I have no disposition to consummate the destruction of my kingdom begun in the past wars."[372] The duke clearly saw that the king was but repeating a lesson that had been taught him by others, and contemptuously dismissed the topic.[373]

Catharine and Alva.

Catharine was not less determined than her son to avoid a resort to arms. It was with difficulty that Alva could get her to broach the subject of religion at all. Isabella having, at his suggestion, pressed her mother to disclose the secret communication to make which she had sought this interview, Catharine referred, with some bitterness, to the distrust of Charles and of herself evidently entertained by Philip, which would be likely to lead in the end to a renewal of war between France and Spain. And she reproached Isabella with having so soon allowed herself to become "Hispaniolized"[374]—a charge from which her daughter endeavored to clear herself as best she could. When at last Alva succeeded in bringing up the subject, which was, ostensibly at least, so near what Philip called his heart, Catharine's display of tact was such as to elicit the profound admiration of even so consummate a master in the art of dissimulation as the duke himself. Her circumspection, he declared, he had never seen equalled.[375] She maintained that there was no need of alarm at the condition of religion in France, for everything was going on better than when the Edict of Pacification was published. "It is your satisfaction at being freed from war that leads you to take so cheerful a view," urged Alva. "My master cannot but require the application of a more efficient remedy, since the cause is common to Spain; for the disease will spread, and Philip has no inclination to lose his crown, or, perhaps, even his head." Catharine now insisted upon Alva's explaining himself and disclosing his master's plan of action. This Alva declined to do. Although Philip was as conversant with the state of France as she or any other person in the kingdom, yet he preferred to leave to her to decide upon the precise nature of the specific to be administered. Catharine pressed the inquiry, but Alva continued to parry the question adroitly. He asks if, since the Edict of Toleration, ground has been gained or lost. Decidedly gained, she replies, and proceeds to particularize. But Alva is confident that she is deceiving herself or him: it is notorious that things are becoming worse every day.

"Would you have me understand," interrupts Catharine, "that we must resort to arms again?"

"I see no present need of assuming them," answers Alva, "and my master would not advise you to take them up, unless constrained by other necessity than that which I now see."

"What, then, would Philip have me do?" asks Catharine. "Apply a prompt remedy," answers Alva; "for sooner or later your enemies will, by their own action, compel you to accept the wager of war, and that, probably, under less favorable circumstances than at present. All Philip's thoughts are intent upon the expulsion of that wretched sect of the Huguenots, and upon restoring the subjects of the French crown to their ancient obedience, and maintaining the queen mother's legitimate authority." "The king, my son," responds Catharine, "publishes whatever edicts he pleases, and is obeyed." "Then, if he enjoys such authority over his vassals," breaks in Isabella, "why does he not punish those who are rebels both against God and against himself?"

That question Catharine did not choose to answer. Instead of it she had some chimerical schemes to propose—a league between France, Spain, and Germany, that should give the law to the world, and a confirmation of the bonds that united the royal houses of France and Spain by two more marriages, viz.: of Don Carlos to Margaret, her youngest daughter, and of the Duke of Anjou to the Princess of Portugal. Alva, however, making light of such projects, which could, according to his view, effect nothing more than the bond already connecting the families, was not slow in bringing the conversation back to the religious question. But he soon had reason to complain of Catharine's coldness. She had already expressed her mind fully, she said; and she resented, as a want of the respect due to her, the hint that she was more indifferent than previously. She would not fail to do justice, she assured him. That would be difficult, rejoined Alva, with a chancellor at the head of the judiciary who could not certainly be expected to apply the remedy needed by the unsound condition of France. "It is his personal enemies," promptly replied Catharine, "who, out of hatred, accuse L'Hospital of being a bad Catholic." "Can you deny that he is a Huguenot?" asked the Spaniard. "I do not regard him as such," calmly answered the French queen. "Then you are the only person in the kingdom who is of that opinion!" retorted the duke. "Even before I left France, and during the lifetime of my father, King Henry," said Isabella, interrupting with considerable animation, "your Majesty knows that that was his reputation; and you may be certain that so long as he is retained in his present office the good will always be kept in fear and in disfavor, while the bad will find him a support and advocate in all their evil courses. If he were to be confined for a few days only in his own house, you would at once discover the truth of my words, so much better would the interests of religion advance."[376] But this step Catharine was by no means willing to take. Nor, when again pressed by Alva, who dwelt much on the importance to Philip of knowing her intentions as to applying herself in earnest to the good work, so as to be guided in his own actions, would she deign to give any clearer indications. Yet she avowed—greatly shocking the orthodox duke thereby[377]—that she designed, instead of securing the acceptance of the decrees of Trent by the French, to convene a council of "good prelates and wise men," to settle a number of matters not of divine or positive prescription, which the Fathers of Trent had left undecided. Alva expressed his extreme astonishment, and reminded her of the Colloquy of Poissy—the source, as he alleged, of all the present disgraceful situation of France.[378] But Catharine threw the whole blame of the failure of that conference upon the inordinate conceit of the Cardinal of Lorraine,[379] and persisted in the plan. The Spaniard came to the conclusion that Catharine's only design was to avoid having recourse to salutary rigor, and indulged in his correspondence with his master in lugubrious vaticinations respecting the future.[380]

Catharine rejects all violent plans.

Cardinal Granvelle's testimony.

So far, then, was the general belief which has been adopted by the greater number of historians up to our own days from being correct—the belief that Catharine framed, at the Bayonne conference, with Alva's assistance, a plan for the extermination of the Protestants by a massacre such as was realized on St. Bartholomew's Day, 1572—that, on the contrary, the queen mother refused, in a peremptory manner that disgusted the Spanish fanatics, every proposition that looked like violence. That we have not read the correspondence of Alva incorrectly, and that no letter containing the mythical agreement of Catharine ever reached Philip, is proved by the tone of the letters that passed between the great agents in the work of persecution in the Spanish Netherlands. Cardinal Granvelle, who, in his retreat at Besançon, was kept fully informed by the King of Spain, or by his chief ministers, of every important event, and who received copies of all the most weighty documents, in a letter to Alonso del Canto expresses great regret that Isabella and Alva should have failed in their endeavor to induce Catharine de' Medici to adopt methods more proper than she was taking to remedy the religious ills of France. She promised marvels, he adds, but was determined to avoid recourse to arms, which, indeed, was not necessary, if she would only act as she should. He was persuaded that the plan she was adopting would entail the ruin of religion and of her son's throne.[381]

Festivities and pageantry.

While the policy of two of the most important nations on the face of the globe, in which were involved the interests, temporal and eternal, of millions of men, women, and children, formed the topic of earnest discussion between two women—a mother and her daughter, the mother yet to become infamous for her participation in a bloody tragedy of which she as yet little dreamed—and a Spanish grandee doomed to an equally unenviable immortality in the records of human suffering and human crime, the city of Bayonne was the scene of an ephemeral gayety that might well convey the impression that such merry-making was not only the sole object of the conference, but the great concern of life.[382] Two nations, floundering in hopeless bankruptcy, yet found money enough to lavish upon costly but unmeaning pageants, while many a noble, to satisfy an ostentatious display, made drafts which an impoverished purse was little able to honor. The banquets and jousts, the triumphal arches with their flattering inscriptions, the shows in which allegory revelled almost to madness—all have been faithfully narrated with a minuteness worthy of a loftier theme.[383] This is, however, no place for the detailed description which, though entertaining, can be read to advantage only on the pages of the contemporary pamphlets that have come down to us.

Yet, in the discussion of the more serious concerns of a great religious and political party, we may for a moment pause to gaze at a single show, neither more magnificent nor more dignified than its fellows; but in which the youthful figure of a Bearnese destined to play a first part in the world's drama, but up to this time living a life of retirement in his ancestral halls, first makes his appearance among the pomps to which as yet he has been a stranger. The pride of the grandfather whose name he bore, Henry of Navarre had been permitted, at that whimsical old man's suggestion, to strengthen an already vigorous constitution by athletic sports, and by running barefoot like the poorest peasant over the sides of his native hills. "God designed," writes a companion of his later days who never rekindles more of his youthful fire than when descanting upon his master's varied fortunes, "to prepare an iron wedge wherewith to cleave the hard knots of our calamities."[384] Later in childhood, when both father and grandfather were dead, he was the object of the unremitting care of a mother whose virtues find few counterparts or equals in the women of the sixteenth century; and Jeanne d'Albret, in a remarkable letter to Theodore Beza, notes with joy a precocious piety,[385] which, there is reason to fear, was not hardy enough to withstand the withering atmosphere of a court like that with which he was now making his first acquaintance.

One evening there was exhibited in a large hall, well lighted by means of blazing torches, a tournament in which the knights fought on foot.[386] From a castle where they held an enchanted lady captive, the knights challengers issued, and "received all comers with a thrust of the pike, and five blows with the sword." Each champion, on his arrival, endeavored to enter the castle, but was met at the portal by guards "dressed very fantastically in black," and repelled with "lighted instruments." Not a few of the less illustrious were captured here. The more exalted in rank reached the donjon, or castle-keep, but as they thought to set foot within it, a trap-door opened and they too found themselves prisoners. It fared better with the princes; for the success of each champion was measured by a rigid heraldic scale. These passed the donjon, but, on a bridge leading to the tower where slept the enchanted lady, a giant confronted them, and in the midst of the combat the bridge was lowered, and they were taken, as had been their predecessors. "The Duke of Vendôme,[387] son of the late duke, whom they call in France the Prince of Navarre—a boy apparently ten or eleven years of age—crossed the bridge, and the giant pretended to surrender; but he too was afterward repulsed like the rest." The Duke of Orleans—whom the reader will more readily recognize under the title of Duke of Anjou, which he, about this time, received—next entered the lists. Naturally he penetrated further than his namesake of Navarre, and "the giant showed more fear of him than of the other;" but a cloud enveloped them both, and "thus the duke vanished from sight." King Charles was the last to fight, and for his prowess it was reserved for him to defeat the giant and deliver the lady.[388]

The confraternities.

The author of the pompous show had made a serious mistake. The giant "League," before whom so many a champion failed, it was the lot not of Charles, nor of Henry of Valois, but of the other Henry, of Navarre, to overcome. That giant was already in existence, although still in his infancy. For some time past the zealous papists, impatient of the sluggish devotion of the court, had been forming "confréries," or fraternities, whose members, bound together by a common oath, were pledged to the support of the Roman Catholic religion.[389] The plan was a dangerous one, and it shortly excited the apprehension of the king and his mother. "I am told," Charles wrote in July, 1565, to one of his governors, "that in a number of places in my realm there is a talk of establishing an association amongst my subjects, who invite one another to join it. I beg you to take measures to prevent that any be made for any purpose whatsoever; but keep my subjects so far as possible united in the desire to render me duty and obedience."[390] And to prove the sincerity of his intentions, the French king ordered the late Edict of Pacification again to be proclaimed by public crier in the streets of the seditious city of Paris—a feat which was successfully performed under Marshal Montmorency's supervision, by the city provost, accompanied by so strong a detachment of archers and arquebusiers, as effectually to prevent popular disturbance.[391] Already there were restless spirits that saw in another civil war fresh opportunity for the advancement of their selfish interests. Months ago Villegagnon, the betrayer of the Brazilian colony of Coligny, had written to Cardinal Granvelle, telling him that he had resigned his dignities and offices in the French court, and had informed Catharine de' Medici, "that until Charles was the declared enemy of the enemies of God and of His church, he would never again bear arms in his service."[392] The vice-admiral, of whom modesty was never a conspicuous virtue, went so far as to draw a flattering portrait of himself as a second Hannibal, vowing eternal enmity to the Huguenots.[393] And Nicole de St. Rémy, whose only claim to honorable mention was found in her oft-paraded boast that, as a mistress of Henry the Second, she had borne him a son, and who held in France the congenial post of a Spanish spy, suggested the marriage of the Cardinal of Bourbon in view of the possible contingency of the death of all Catharine's sons.[394] The centre of all intrigue, the storehouse from which every part of France was supplied with material capable of once more enkindling the flames of a destructive civil war, was the house of the Spanish resident envoy, Frances de Alava, successor of the crafty Chantonnay, the brother of Granvelle. It was he that was in constant communication with all the Roman Catholic malcontents in France.[395] Catharine endeavored to check this influence, but to no purpose. The fanatical party were bound by a stronger tie of allegiance to Philip, the Catholic king, than to her, or to the Very Christian King her son. Catharine had particularly enjoined upon the Cardinal of Lorraine to have no communication with Granvelle or with Chantonnay, but the prelate's relations with both were never interrupted for a moment.[396]