Volume 2 / Book 2 — CHAPTER XV. (continued 2)

The trap was not ill contrived, and its bars were strong enough to hold anything that might venture within. Fortunately, however, the bait did not conceal the cruel design lurking behind it. Why, it might be asked, this new test? Was Condé, whom the king had only four or five months ago recognized by solemn edict as his "dear cousin and faithful servant and subject," a friend or a foe? Had peace been concluded with the Huguenots only that they might anew be treated as rebels and enemies? What had become of the prescribed amnesty? Was it at all likely that private citizens would bury in oblivion their former dissensions and abstain from mutual insults, when the monarch officially reminded them that there was one class of his subjects whose past conduct made them objects of grave suspicion? While, therefore, the Huguenots professed themselves ready to give the king all possible assurances of their loyal devotion, they declined to swear to a form that bore on its face the proof that it was composed, not in accordance with Charles's own ideas, but by an enemy of the crown and of public tranquillity. They requested that it might receive such modifications as would permit them to sign it with due regard to their own self-respect and to their religious convictions, and they entreated Charles to confirm their liberty of conscience and of religious observance; for, without these privileges, which they valued above their own existence, they were ready to forsake, not only their cities, but their very lives also.[561]

The plot disclosed by an intercepted letter.

At this critical moment the destiny of France was wavering in the balance, and the decision depended upon the answer to be given to the question whether Chancellor L'Hospital or Cardinal Lorraine should retain his place in the council. The tolerant policy of the former is too well understood to need an explanation. The designs of the latter are revealed by an intercepted letter that fell into the hands of the Huguenots about this time. It was written (on the ninth of August) at the little country-seat named Madrid,[562] whose ruins are still pointed out, near the banks of the Seine, on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne, and not far from the walls of the city of Paris. The writer, evidently a devoted partisan of the house of Guise, had been entrusted by the Cardinal of Lorraine[563] with a glimpse at the designs of the party of which the latter was the declared chief. A proclamation was soon to be made in the king's name, through Marshal Cossé, to the Protestant nobles, assuring them of the monarch's intention to deal kindly and peaceably with them, to preserve their religious liberties, and to treat them as his faithful subjects; and explaining the design of the movement which he was now setting on foot to be merely the reduction of the inhabitants of some insolent cities (those that, like La Rochelle, had refused to admit garrisons) to his authority. This announcement, the cardinal proceeded to say, might disturb some good Catholics, who would think that their labors and the dangers they had undergone were all in vain. In reality, however, it was only intended to secure the power in the hands of the king, and to take away from the Protestant leaders all occasion for assembling, until, being reduced to straits, that rabble, so hostile to the king and the kingdom, should be wholly destroyed. Thus the very remnants would be annihilated; for the seed would assuredly spring up again, unless the same course should be pursued as that of which the French had resplendent examples shown them by their neighbors.[564] Meanwhile, until these plans could be carried into effect, as they would doubtless be within the present month, the Protestant nobles must be carefully diverted, as some were already showing signs of security, and others of falling into the snare prepared for them. The cardinal, so he informed the writer, was confident, with God's favor, of an easy and most certain victory over the enemies of the faith.[565]

Isabella of France again her husband's mouthpiece.

Such were the cardinal's intentions as expressed by himself and reported almost word for word[566] in a letter to which I shall presently have occasion again to direct the reader's attention. It was the policy advocated persistently both by Pius the Fifth and by Philip the Second, and embodied in counsel which would have been resented by a court possessed of more self-respect than the French court, as impertinent advice. For, in the report made to Catharine by one of her servants at the Spanish capital, there is a wonderful similarity in the language employed to that used at the conference of Bayonne. Isabella of France is again the speaker, though much suspected of uttering rather the sentiments of Philip, her husband, who was present,[567] than her own. Again, after expressing the most vehement zeal for the welfare of her native country, she advocated rigorous measures against the Huguenots, in phrases almost identical with those which, as the Duke of Alva relates, she had addressed to her mother three years before. "She told me among other things," says the queen's agent, "that she would never believe that either the king her brother, or you, will ever execute the design already entered into between you (although, by your command, I had notified the king [Philip] and herself of your good-will respecting this matter), until she saw it performed; for you had often before made them the same promises, but no result had ever followed. She feared that your Majesties might be dissuaded from action by the smooth speeches of certain persons in your court, until the enemy gained the opportunity of forming new designs, not only against the king's authority, but even against yourselves. The apprehension kept her in a constant state of alarm."[568]

King Charles entreats his mother to avoid war.

But, although Catharine had now given in her adhesion to the Spanish and Lorraine party, the success of that party was as yet incomplete. L'Hospital was still in the privy council, and Charles himself greatly preferred the conciliation and peace advocated by the chancellor. The same letter from the pleasure-palace of "Madrid," on the banks of the Seine, whose contents have already occupied our attention, makes important disclosures respecting the attitude of the unhappy prince, of whom it may be questioned whether his greatest misfortune was that he had so unprincipled a mother, or that he had not sufficient strength of will to resist her pernicious designs. "I observed," wrote this correspondent still further in reference to the Cardinal of Lorraine, "that he was very much excited on account of a conversation which the king had recently had with the queen, and which he believed to have been suggested to him by others. For the king entreated his mother, almost as a suppliant, 'to take the greatest care lest war should again break out, and that the edict should everywhere be observed: otherwise he foresaw the complete ruin of his kingdom.'[569] And when the queen alleged the rebellion of the inhabitants of La Rochelle, he replied, as he had been instructed beforehand, 'that the Rochellois only desired to retain their ancient privileges. Their demand was not unreasonable; and even if it were, it was better to make a temporary sacrifice to the welfare of the realm than to plunge in new turmoil. As to the nobles, he was persuaded that they would live peaceably if the edict were properly executed. In short, he was earnestly desirous that matters should be restored to their best and most quiet state.' The queen and very many other illustrious persons have but one object of fervent desire, and that is to see the kingdom of France return to the condition it was in under Francis and Henry. The queen mother knows that this speech was dictated to him by certain men, and she owes the authors of it no good-will. So much the more anxiously does she desire, in common with a vast multitude of good Catholics, to prove to the king that whatever is done in this affair has for its sole object to liberate him from servitude and make him a king in reality, and to expel the pestilence and those infected by it—a result utterly unattainable in any other way."[570]

Catharine's animosity against L'Hospital.

Catharine could not doubt that it was Michel de l'Hospital that had infused into Charles his own just and pacific spirit. From the moment she had come to this conclusion the chancellor's fall was inevitable. The particular occasion of it, however, seems to have been the opposition which he offered to the reception of a papal bull. To relieve the royal treasury, the court had applied to Rome for permission to alienate ecclesiastical possessions in France yielding an income of fifty thousand crowns (or one hundred and fifty thousand francs), on the plea that the indebtedness had been incurred in defence of the Roman Catholic faith. Pius the Fifth granted the application, but in his bull of the first of August, 1568, he not only made it a condition that the funds should be exclusively employed under the direction of a trustworthy person—and as such he named the Cardinal of Lorraine—in the extermination of the heretics of France, or their reconciliation with the Church of Rome, but he ascribed to Charles in making the request the declared purpose of continuing a work for which his own means had proved inadequate. The reception of the document was in itself an act of bad faith, and the chancellor resisted it to the utmost of his power, urging that the pontiff should be requested to alter its objectionable form.[571]

Another quarrel between Lorraine and the chancellor.

Another of those painful scenes occurred in the privy council (on the nineteenth of September), of which there had been so many within the past four or five years. Again the disputants were the Cardinal of Lorraine and the chancellor. The former angrily demanded the reason why L'Hospital had refused to affix his signature to the bull; whereupon the latter alleged, among many other grounds, that to revoke the Edict of Pacification, as demanded by the Pope, "was the direct way to cause open wars, and to bring the Germans into the realm." The cardinal was "much stirred." He called L'Hospital a hypocrite; he said that his wife and daughter were Calvinists. "You are not the first of your race that has deserved ill of the king," he added. "I am sprung from as honest a race as you are," retorted the other. Beside himself with fury, Lorraine "gave him the lie, and, rising incontinently out of his chair," would have seized him by the beard, had not Marshal Montmorency stepped in between them. "Madam," said the cardinal, "in great choler," turning to the queen mother, in whose presence the angry discussion took place, "the chancellor is the sole cause of all the troubles in France, and were he in the hands of parliament his head would not tarry on his shoulders twenty-four hours." "On the contrary, Madam," rejoined L'Hospital, "the cardinal is the original cause of all the mischiefs that have chanced as well to France, within these eight years, as to the rest of Christendom. In proof of which I refer him to the common report of even those who most favor him."[572]

The chancellor's fall.

But the chancellor accomplished nothing. Catharine had overcome her weak son's partiality for the grave old counsellor by persuading him that, as the chancellor's wife, his daughter, his son-in-law, and indeed his entire house, were avowedly Huguenots, it was impossible but that he was himself only restrained from making an open profession of Protestantism by the fear of losing his present position.[573] Finding himself not only stripped of all influence, and compelled to witness the enactment of measures repugnant to his very nature, but an object of hatred to his associates, Michel de l'Hospital withdrew from a council board where, as he asserted, even Charles himself did not dare to express his opinions freely.[574] Subsequently retiring altogether from the court to his country-seat of Vignai, not far from Étampes, he surrendered his insignia of office to a messenger of Catharine, who came to recommend him, in the king's name, to take that rest which his advanced years demanded. Monsieur de Morvilliers succeeded him, with the title of keeper of the seals, but the full powers of chancellor.[575] In quiet retirement, the venerable judge and legislator lingered more than four years, unhappy only in being spared to see the melancholy results of the rejection of his prudent counsels, the desolation of his native land, and the transformation of an amiable king into a murderer of his own subjects. Few days in this eventful reign were more lasting in their consequences than that which beheld the final removal from all direct influence upon the court of the only leading politician or statesman who could have forestalled the horrors of a generation of inhuman wars.

The plot.

Marshal Tavannes its author.

The crisis now rapidly approached. The Huguenot chiefs were widely separated from each other—Montgomery in Normandy, Genlis and Mouy in Picardy, Rochefoucauld at Angoulême, D'Andelot in Brittany, Condé and Coligny in Burgundy. The royal court, now entirely in the interest of the Guises, resolved to execute the plan which the Roman Catholic nobles of this faction had sketched to Alva three years before at Bayonne, by the seizure of five or six of the leaders, as a measure preliminary to the total suppression of Protestantism in France. Gaspard de Tavannes was entrusted with the execution of the most important part of the scheme—the arrest of the prince and the admiral. Fourteen companies of gens-d'armes and as many ensigns of infantry stood under his orders, and Noyers was closely beset on all sides.[576] It was at this moment, when secrecy was all important to the success of the plot, that the tidings of the threatening storm reached its destined victims. It has long been believed and reported that Tavannes, unwilling to lend himself to unworthy machinations whose execution would have wounded his soldierly pride, took measures to warn Condé and Coligny of their danger. Unfortunately, the story rests on no better authority than his "Mémoires," written by a son who has often shown a greater desire to vindicate his father's memory than to maintain historical truth, and who, writing under the rule of the Bourbons, had in this case, as in that of the pretended deliverance of Henry of Navarre and Henry of Condé, at the great Parisian massacre four years later, sufficient inducements for endeavoring to represent the reigning family as indebted to his father for its preservation.[577] Brantôme is consistent with the entire mass of contemporary documents in representing Tavannes as the author of the whole scheme; and certainly one who was so deeply implicated in the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day cannot have been too humane to think of capturing, or even assassinating, two nobles, although one of them was a prince of the blood. A more probable story is that Tavannes was the unintentional instrument of the disclosure, a letter of his having fallen into Huguenot hands, containing the words: "The deer is in the net; the game is ready."[578] But, in point of fact, the Huguenots needed no such hints. With their perfect organization, in the face of so treacherous a foe, after so many violations as they had of late witnessed of the royal edict, they were already on their guard, and the hostile preparations had not escaped their notice.

Condé's last appeal to the king.

When the news first reached him that the troops sent ostensibly to besiege La Rochelle were recalled, Condé, alarmed by what he heard from every quarter, had begged his mother-in-law, the Marchioness de Rothelin, to go to the court and entreat the king, in his name, to maintain the sanctity of his engagements, confirmed by repeated oaths. Scarcely had she departed, however, before he received fresh and reiterated warnings that his safety depended upon instant escape. He determined, nevertheless, to make a last attempt to avert the horrid prospect of a war which, from the malignant hatred exhibited by all classes of Roman Catholics, he rightly judged would exceed the previous contests both in duration and in destructiveness. He addressed to his young sovereign a letter explaining the necessity of the step he was about to take, accompanied by a long appeal, of which it would be impracticable to give even a brief summary. Every point in the multitudinous grievances of which the Huguenots complained was recapitulated. Every counter-charge with which the court had endeavored to parry the force of previous remonstrances was satisfactorily answered. In eloquent terms the prince indicted Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine, as the enemy alike of the royal dignity and of the liberties of the people, as the author of all the troubles of France, and the advocate and defender of robbers and murderers.[579] He reminded the king of the declaration of Maximilian, the present Emperor of Germany, in a letter written before his election to Charles himself: "All the wars and all the dissensions that are to-day rife among the Christians have originated from two cardinals—Granvelle and Lorraine."[580] And he closed the long and eloquent document by protesting, in the sight of God and of all foreign nations, that the Huguenot nobles sought the punishment of Lorraine and his associates alone, as the guilty causes of all the calamities that portended destruction to the French crown, and would pursue them as perjured violators of the public faith and capital enemies of peace and tranquillity. He therefore hoped that no one would be astonished if he and his allies should henceforth refuse to receive as the king's commands anything that might be decided upon by the royal council, so long as the cardinal might be present at its sessions, but should regard them as fabrications of the cardinal and his fellows. The causes of the misfortunes that might arise must be attributed, not to himself and his Huguenot allies, but to the cardinal and his Roman Catholic confederates.[581]

The flight of the prince and the admiral.

Proves wonderfully successful.

Having despatched "this testimony of the innocence, integrity, and faith" of himself and of his associates, "to be transmitted to posterity in everlasting remembrance," the Prince of Condé set out on the same day (the twenty-third of August) from Noyers. Coligny had joined him, bringing from Tanlay his daughter, the future bride of Téligny—and, after that nobleman's assassination on St. Bartholomew's Day, of William of Orange, the hero of the revolt of the Netherlands—and his young sons, as well as the wife and infant son of his brother D'Andelot. Condé was himself accompanied by his wife, who was expecting soon to be confined, and by several children. His own servants and those of the admiral, with a few noblemen that came in from the neighborhood, swelled their escort to about one hundred and fifty horse.[582] With such a handful of men, and embarrassed in their flight by the presence of those whom their age or their sex disqualified for the endurance of the fatigues of a protracted journey, Condé and Coligny undertook to reach the friendly shelter of the walls of La Rochelle. It was a perilous attempt. The journey was one of several hundred miles, through the very heart of France. The cities were garrisoned by their enemies. The bridges and fords were guarded. The difficulties, in fact, were apparently so insurmountable, that the Roman Catholics seem to have expected that any attempt to escape would be made in the direction of Germany, where Casimir, their late ally, would doubtless welcome the Protestant leaders. This mistake was the only circumstance in their favor, for it diminished the number and the vigilance of the opposing troops.

The march was secret and prompt. Contrary to all expectation, an unguarded ford was discovered not far from the city of Sancerre,[583] by which, on a sandy bottom, the fugitive Huguenots crossed the Loire, elsewhere deep and navigable as far as Roanne.[584] If the drought which had so reduced the stream as to render the passage practicable was justly regarded as a providential interposition of Heaven in their behalf, the sudden rise of the river immediately afterward, which baffled their pursuers, was not less signal a blessing.[585] Other dangers still confronted them, but their prudence and expedition enabled them to escape them, and on the eighteenth of September[586] the weary travellers, with numbers considerably increased by reinforcements by the way, entered the gates of La Rochelle amid the acclamations of the brave inhabitants.

The third civil war opens.

The escape of the prince and the admiral rendered useless all further attempt at the concealment of the treacherous designs of the papal party; and the third religious war dates from this moment.

The city of La Rochelle and its privileges.

The city of La Rochelle, said to have become a walled place about 1126, had received many tokens of favor at the hands of its successive masters before the accession of Queen Alienor, or Éléonore, last Duchess of Aquitaine. It was by a charter of this princess, in 1199, that the municipality, or "commune," was established. (Arcère, Hist. de la Rochelle, ii., Preuves, 660, 661.) The terms of the charter are vague; but, as subsequently constituted, the "commune" consisted of one hundred prominent citizens, designated as "pairs," or peers, in whom all power was vested. The first member in dignity was the "maire" or mayor, selected by the Seneschal of Saintonge from the list of three candidates yearly nominated by his fellow-members. The historian of the city compares him, for power and for the sanctity attaching to his person, to the ancient tribunes of Rome. Next were the twenty-four "échevins," or aldermen, one-half of whom on alternate years assisted the mayor in the administration of justice. Last of all came seventy-five "pairs" having no separate designation, who took part in the election of the mayor, and voted, on important occasions, in the "assemblée générale." (See a historical discussion, Arcère, i. 193-199.)

From King John Lackland, of England, the Rochellois are said to have received express exemption from the duty of marching elsewhere in the king's service, without their own consent, and from admitting into their city any troops from abroad. (P. S. Callot, La Rochelle protestante, 1863, p. 6.) When, in 1224, after standing a siege of three weeks, La Rochelle fell into the hands of Louis VIII. of France, its new master engaged to maintain all its privileges—a promise which was well observed, for not only did the city lose nothing, but it actually received new favors at the king's hands. (Arcère, i. 212; Callot, 6.) In 1360, the disasters of the French, consequent upon the battle of Poitiers, compelled the monarch to surrender the city of La Rochelle to his captors in order to regain his liberty. The concession was reluctantly made, with the most flattering testimony to the past fidelity of the inhabitants (see letters of John II. of France, to the Rochellois, Calais, Oct., 1360, Arcère, ii, Preuves, 761), and it was with still greater reluctance that the latter consented to carry it into effect. "They made frequent excuses," says Froissard, "and would not, for upwards of a year, suffer any Englishman to enter their town. The letters were very affecting which they wrote to the King of France, beseeching him, by the love of God, that he would never liberate them of their fidelity, nor separate them from his government and place them in the hands of strangers; for they would prefer being taxed every year one-half of what they were worth, rather than be in the hands of the English." (Froissard, i. c. 214, Johnes's Trans.) When compelled to yield, it was with the words: "We will honor and obey the English, but our hearts shall never change." Edward the Third had solemnly confirmed their privileges (Callot, 8).

But La Rochelle's unwilling subjection to the English crown was of brief duration. By a plot, somewhat clumsily contrived, but happily executed (Aug., 1372), the commander of the garrison, who did not know how to read, was induced to lead his troops outside of the castle wall for a review. The royal order that had been shown him was no forgery, but had been sent on a previous occasion, and the attesting seal was genuine. At a preconcerted signal, two hundred Rochellois rose from ambush, and cut off the return of the English. The latter, finding their antagonists reinforced by two thousand armed citizens under the lead of the mayor himself, soon came to terms, and, withdrawing the few men they had left behind in the castle, accepted the offer of safe transportation by a ship to Bordeaux. (See the entertaining account in Froissard, i. c. 311.) The wary Rochellois took good care, before even admitting into their city Duguesclin, Constable of France, with a paltry escort of two hundred men-at-arms, to stipulate that pardon should be extended to those who immediately after the departure of the English had razed the hateful castle to the ground, and that no other should ever be erected; that La Rochelle and the country dependent upon it should henceforth form a particular domain under the immediate jurisdiction of the king and his parliament of Paris; that its militia should be employed only for the defence of the place; and that La Rochelle should retain its mint and the right to coin both "black and white money." (Froissard, ubi supra, corrected by Arcère, i. 260.) Not only did the grateful monarch readily make these concessions, and confirm all La Rochelle's past privileges, but, for its "immense services," by a subsequent order he conferred nobility upon the "mayor," "échevins" and "conseillers" of the city, both present and future, as well as upon their children forever. (Letters of January 8, 1372/3, Arcère, ii., Preuves, 673-675.)

The extraordinary prerogatives of which this was the origin were recognized and confirmed by subsequent monarchs, especially by Louis the Eleventh, Charles the Eighth, Louis the Twelfth, and Francis the First. (Callot, 11.) The resistance of the inhabitants to the exaction of the obnoxious "gabelle," or tax upon salt, did indeed, toward the end of the reign of the last-named king (1542), bring them temporarily under his displeasure; but, with the exception of a modification in their municipal government, made in 1530, and revoked early in the reign of Henry the Second, the city retained its quasi-independence without interruption until the outbreak of the religious wars.

As we have seen (ante, p. 227), La Rochelle was in 1552 the scene of the judicial murder of at least two Protestants. The constancy of one of the sufferers had been the means of converting many to the reformed doctrines, and among others Claude d'Angliers, the presiding judge, whose name may still be read at the foot of their sentence. (Arcère, i. 329.) So rapidly had those doctrines spread, that on Sunday, May 31, 1562, the Lord's Supper was celebrated according to the fashion of Geneva, not in one of the churches, but on the great square of the hay-market, in a temporary enclosure shut in on all sides by tapestries and covered with an awning of canvas. More than eight thousand persons took part in the exercises. But if the morning's services were remarkable, the sequel was not less singular. "As the disease of image-breaking was almost universal," says an old chronicler, "it was communicated by contagion to the inhabitants of this city, in such wise that, that very afternoon about three or four o'clock, five hundred men, who were under arms and had just received the same sacrament, went through all the churches and dashed the images in pieces. Howbeit it was a folly conducted with wisdom, seeing that this action passed without any one being wounded or injured." (P. Vincent, apud Callot, 34, and Delmas, 61.) As usual, the whole affair was condemned by the ministers.

Although La Rochelle had steadily refused, during the earlier part of the first religious war, to declare for the Prince of Condé, and had maintained a kind of neutrality, the court was in constant fear lest the weight of its sympathies should yet draw it in that direction. It was therefore a matter of great joy when, in October, 1562, the Duke of Montpensier succeeded, by a ruse meriting the designation of treachery, in throwing himself into La Rochelle with a large body of troops. With his arrival the banished Roman Catholic mass returned, and the Protestant ministers were warned to leave at once. (Arcère, i. 339.)

For two months after the restoration of peace, the Huguenots of La Rochelle, embracing almost the entire population, held their religious services, in accordance with the terms of the Edict of Pacification, in the suburbs of the city. But, on the 9th of May, 1563, Charles the Ninth was prevailed to give directions that one or two places should be assigned to the Huguenots within the city. This gracious permission was ratified with greater solemnity in letters patent of July 14th, in which the king declared the motive to be the representations made to him of "the inconveniences and eminent dangers that might arise in our said city of La Rochelle, if the preaching and exercise of the pretended reformed religion should continue to be held outside of the said city, being, as it is, a frontier city in the direction of the English, ancient enemies of the inhabitants of that city, where it would be easy for them, by this means, to execute some evil enterprise." (Commission of Charles IX., to M. de Jarnac. This valuable MS., with other MSS., carried to Dublin at the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, by M. Elie Bouhereau, and placed in the Marsh Library, has recently been restored to La Rochelle, in accordance with M. Bouhereau's written directions. Delmas, 369.)

Two years later, Charles and his court, returning from their long progress through France, came to La Rochelle, and spent three days there (Sept., 1565). A noteworthy incident occurred at his entry. The jealous citizens had not forgotten an immemorial custom which was not without significance. A silken cord had been stretched across the road by which the monarch was to enter, that he might stop and promise to respect the liberties and franchises of La Rochelle. Constable Montmorency was the first to notice the cord, and in some anger and surprise asked whether the magistrates of the city intended to refuse their sovereign admission. The symbolism of the pretty custom was duly explained to him, but for all response the old warrior curtly observed that "such usages had passed out of fashion," and at the same instant cut the cord with his sword. (Arcère, i. 349; Delmas, 80, 81.) Charles himself refused the request of the mayor that he should swear to maintain the city's privileges. After so inauspicious a beginning of his visit, the inhabitants were not surprised to find the king, during his stay, reducing the "corps-de-ville" from 100 to 24 members, under the presidency of a governor invested with the full powers of the mayor; ordering that the artillery should be seized, two of the towers garrisoned by foreign troops, and the magistrates enjoined to prosecute all ministers that preached sedition; or banishing some of the most prominent Protestants from La Rochelle.

It was characteristic of the government of Catharine de' Medici—always destitute of a fixed policy, and consequently always recalling one day what it had done the day before—that scarcely two months elapsed before the queen mother put everything back on the footing it had occupied before the royal visit to La Rochelle.

FOOTNOTES: