While the Protestants had been forced to abandon one important place after another in Poitou, Saintonge and Aunis, they had in other parts of the kingdom been displaying their old enterprise, and had obtained considerable success. Vezelay in Burgundy, the birthplace of the reformer Theodore Beza, passed through a fiery ordeal. This ancient town, built upon the brow of a hill, and strong as well by reason of its situation as of its walls constructed in a style that was now becoming obsolete in France, had been captured at the beginning of the war by some of the neighboring Huguenot noblemen, who scaled the walls and surprised the garrison. One of the few points the Protestants held in the eastern part of the kingdom, it was regarded as a place of the greatest importance to their cause.

[Sidenote: Huguenot successes. Vezelay.]

Within a few weeks Vezelay was twice besieged by a Roman Catholic army under Sansac. A vigorous sortie, in which the Huguenots destroyed almost all the engines of war of the assailants, on the first occasion caused the siege to be raised. When Sansac renewed his attempt he fared no better. The soldiers who had thrown themselves into the place, with the enthusiastic citizens, repelled every attack, and promptly suppressed treacherous plots by putting to death two persons whom they found engaged in revealing their secrets to the enemy. Sansac next undertook to reduce Vezelay by hunger; but the Huguenots broke his lines, aided by their friends in La Charite and Sancerre, and supplied themselves abundantly with provisions. When, on the sixteenth of December, Sansac finally abandoned the fruitless and inglorious undertaking, he had lost, since October, no fewer than fifteen hundred of his soldiers.[744]

[Sidenote: Brilliant capture of Nismes.]

The Huguenots of Sancerre in turn made an attempt to enter Bourges, the capital of the province of Berry, by promising a large sum of money to the officer second in command of the citadel; but he revealed their plan to his superior, M. de la Chastre, governor of the province, and the advanced party which had been admitted within the gates (on the twenty-first of December) fell into the snare prepared for them.[745] The capture of Nismes—"the city of antiquities"—more than compensated for the failure at Bourges. Rarely has an enterprise of equal difficulty been more patiently prosecuted, or been crowned with more brilliant success. The exiled Protestants, a large and important class, had now for many months been subjected to the greatest hardships, and were anxiously watching an opportunity to return to their homes. At last a carpenter presented himself, who had long revolved the matter in his mind, and had discovered a method of introducing the Huguenots into the city which promised well. There was a fountain, a short distance from the walls of Nismes, known to the ancients by the same name as the city itself—Nemausus—whose copious stream, put to good service by the inhabitants, turned a number of mills within the municipal limits. To admit the waters a canal had been built, which, where it pierced the fortifications, was protected by a heavy iron grating. Through this wet channel the carpenter resolved that the Huguenots should enter Nismes. It so happened that a friend of his dwelt in a house which was close to the wall at this spot; with his help he lowered himself by night from a window into the ditch. A cord, which was slackened or drawn tight according as there was danger of detection or apparent security, served to direct his operations. The utmost caution was requisite, and the water-course was too contracted to permit more than a single person to work at once. Provided only with a file, the carpenter set himself to sever the stout iron bars. The task was neither pleasant nor easy. Night after night he stood in the cold stream, with the mud up to his knees, exposed to wind and rain, and working most industriously when the roar of the elements covered and drowned the noise he made. It was only for a few minutes at a time that he could work; for, as the place was situated between the citadel and the "porte des Carmes," a sentry passed it at brief intervals, and was scarcely out of hearing except when he went to ring the bell which announced a change of guard. Fifteen nights, chosen from the darkest of the season, were consumed in this perilous undertaking; and each morning, when the approach of dawn compelled him to suspend his labors, the carpenter concealed his progress by means of wax and mud. All this time he had been prudent enough to keep his own counsel; but when, on the fifteenth of November, his work was completed, he called upon the Huguenot leaders to follow him into Nismes. A detachment of three hundred men was placed at his disposal. When once the foremost were in the town, and had overpowered the neighboring guards, the Huguenots obtained an easy success. The clatter of a number of camp-servants, who were mounted on horseback, with orders to ride in every direction, shouting that the city was in the hands of the enemy, contributed to facilitate the capture. Most of the soldiers, who should have met and repelled the Protestants, shut themselves up in their houses and refused to leave them. In a few minutes, all Nismes, with the exception of the castle, which held out a few months longer, was taken.[746]

[Sidenote: Coligny encouraged.]

When Admiral Coligny, wounded and defeated, was borne on a litter from the field of Moncontour, where the hopes of the Huguenots had been so rudely dashed to the ground, his heart almost failed him in view of the prospects of the war and of his faith. Two persons seemed at this critical juncture to have exercised on his mind a singular influence in restoring him to his accustomed hopefulness. L'Estrange, a simple gentleman, was being carried away in a plight similar to his own, when, having been brought to the admiral's side, he looked intently upon him, and then gave expression to his gratitude to Heaven, that, in the midst of the chastisements with which it had seen fit to visit his fellow-believers, there was yet so much of mercy shown, in the words, "Yet is God very gentle!"[747]—a friendly reminder, which, the great leader was wont to say, raised him from gloom and turned his thoughts to high and noble resolve.[748] Nor was the heroic Queen of Navarre found wanting at this crisis. No sooner had she heard of the disaster than she started from La Rochelle, and at Niort met the admiral, with such remnants of the army as still clung to him. Far from yielding to despondency, Jeanne d'Albret urged the generals to renew the contest; and, having communicated to them a part of her own enthusiasm, returned to La Rochelle to watch over the defence of the city, and to lend still more important assistance to the cause, by writing to Queen Elizabeth and the other allies of the Huguenots, correcting the exaggerated accounts of the defeat of Moncontour which had been studiously disseminated by the Roman Catholic party, and imploring fresh assistance.

[Sidenote: Withdrawal of the troops of Dauphiny and Provence.]

As for Coligny, his plans were soon formed. The troops of Dauphiny and Provence, always among the most reluctant to leave their homes, had long been clamoring for permission to return. It was now impossible to retain them. On the fourteenth of October they started from Angouleme, whither they had gone without consulting the Protestant generals, and, under the leadership of Montbrun and Mirabel, directed their course toward their native provinces. In two days they reached the river Dordogne at Souillac, where a part of their body, while seeking to cross, was attacked by the Roman Catholics, and suffered great loss. The rest pushed forward to Aurillac, in Auvergne, which had recently been captured by a Huguenot captain, and soon found their way to Privas, Aubenas, and the banks of the Rhone.[749] Thence, after refreshing themselves for a few days, they crossed into Dauphiny to renew the struggle for their own firesides.[750]

[Sidenote: Plan of the admiral's bold march.]

On the eighteenth of October, four days after the departure of the Dauphinese troops from Angouleme, Coligny set forth from Saintes upon an expedition as remarkable for boldness of conception as for its singularly skilful and successful execution—an expedition which is entitled to rank among the most remarkable military operations of modern times.[751] In the face of an enemy flushed with victory, and himself leading an army reduced to the mere shadow of its former size, the admiral deliberately drew up the plan of a march of eight or nine months, through a hostile territory, and terminating in the vicinity of the capital itself. As sketched by Michel de Castelnau from the admiral's own words in conversation with him, the objects of the Protestant general were principally these: to satisfy the claims of his mutinous German mercenaries by the reduction of some of the enemy's rich cities in Guyenne; to strengthen himself by forming a junction with the army of Montgomery and such fresh troops as "the viscounts" might be able to raise; to meet on the lower Rhone the recruited forces of Montbrun and Mirabel; thence to turn northward, and, having reached the borders of Lorraine, to welcome the Germans whom the Elector Palatine and William of Orange would hold in readiness; and, at last, to bring the war to an end by forcing the Roman Catholics to give battle, under circumstances more advantageous to the reformed, in the immediate vicinity of Paris.[752]

[Sidenote: He sweeps through Guyenne.]

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

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

[Sidenote: "Vengeance de Rapin."]

[Sidenote: Coligny pushes on to the Rhone.]

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

[Sidenote: His singular success and its causes.]

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

[Sidenote: The admiral turns toward Paris.]

[Sidenote: His illness interrupts negotiations.]

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

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

But Gaspard de Coligny was destined to die a death more glorious for himself, and to leave behind him a name more illustrious than it would have been had he died on the eve of the return of peace to his desolated country. He recovered, and once more advanced with his brave Huguenots. And now the distance between the Protestant camp and the Roman Catholic capital was rapidly diminishing. To meet the impending danger, the king ordered Marshal Cosse, who had succeeded the prince dauphin in command of the new army, to cross into Burgundy, check the admiral's course, and, if possible, defeat him. The two armies met on the twenty-fifth of June, in the neighborhood of the small town of Arnay-le-Duc.[766] Great was the disparity of numbers. Cosse had four thousand Swiss, six thousand French infantry, three thousand French, German, and Italian horse, and twelve cannon. Coligny's army had lost so much during its incessant marches through a thousand difficult places, and in a country where desertion or straying from the main body was so easy, that it consisted of but twenty-five hundred arquebusiers and two thousand horsemen, besides a few recruits from Dauphiny.

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

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

[Sidenote: Coligny approaches Paris.]

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

[Sidenote: Progress of the negotiations.]

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

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

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

[Sidenote: Better conditions proposed.]

[Sidenote: Charles and his mother for peace.]

[Sidenote: The war fruitless for its authors.]

But when at last the admiral reached the Loire, and, at La Charite and Chatillon, was within a few hours of Paris, the attitude of the court in relation to the peace seemed to undergo an entire change, and it became evident that the negotiations, which had previously been employed for the mere purpose of amusing the Huguenots, were now resorted to with the view of ending a war already protracted far beyond expectation. Nor is it difficult to discover some of the circumstances that tended to bring about this radical mutation of policy.[777] The resources of the kingdom were exhausted. It was no longer possible to furnish the ready money without which the German and other mercenaries, of late constituting a large portion of the royal troops, could not be induced to enter the kingdom. The Pope and Philip were lavish of nothing beyond promises and exhortations that above all things Charles should make no peace with the heretical rebels. Indeed, Philip had few men, and no money, to spare. The French troops were in great straits. The gentlemen, who, in return for their immunity from all taxation, were bound to serve the monarch in the field at their own expense, had exhausted their available funds in so long a contest, and it was impossible to muster them in such numbers as the war demanded. Charles himself had always been averse to war. His tastes were pacific. If he ever emulated the martial glory which his brother Anjou had so easily acquired, the feeling was but of momentary duration, and met with little encouragement from his mother. He had, undoubtedly, consented to the initiation of the war only in consequence of the misrepresentations made by those who surrounded him, respecting its necessity and the ease of its prosecution. He had now the strongest reasons for desiring the immediate return of peace. His marriage with the daughter of the emperor had for some months been arranged, but Maximilian refused to permit Elizabeth to become the queen of a country rent with civil commotion. Catharine de' Medici, also, from the advocate of war, had become anxious for peace—tardily returning to the conviction which she had often expressed in former years, that the attempt to exterminate the Huguenots by force of arms was hopeless. After two years she was no nearer her object than when the Cardinal of Lorraine persuaded her to endeavor to seize Conde at Noyers. Jarnac had accomplished nothing; Moncontour was nearly as barren a victory. A great part of what had been so laboriously effected by Anjou's army in the last months of 1569, La Noue had been undoing in the first half of 1570.[778] The Protestants, who were, a few months since, shut up in La Rochelle, had defeated their enemies at Sainte Gemme, near Lucon, and had retaken Fontenay, Niort, the Isle d'Oleron, Brouage, and other places. The Baron de la Garde, who had lately, in the capacity of "general of the galleys," been infesting the seas in the neighborhood of La Rochelle, was compelled to retire to Bordeaux.[779] Saintes had been besieged and captured, and the Huguenots were advancing to the reduction of St. Jean d'Angely, not long since so dearly won by the Roman Catholics.[780] Montluc had, it is true, met with success in Bearn, where Rabasteins was taken and its entire garrison massacred.[781] But what were these advantages at the foot of the Pyrenees, when an army under Gaspard de Coligny, after sweeping four hundred leagues through the southern and western provinces, was now in the immediate vicinity of Paris? His forces, indeed, were small in numbers, but would speedily grow formidable. The French ambassador sent from London the intelligence that letters of credit had been sent from England to Hamburg in order to hasten the entrance into France of some twelve or fifteen thousand Germans under Duke Casimir; that twenty-five hundred men were to be despatched from La Rochelle to make a descent on some point in Normandy or Brittany, in conjunction with the ships of the Prince of Orange; and that the English were to be invited to co-operate.[782] If it had proved impracticable to prevent the Duc de Deux Ponts from marching across France to join the confederates near the ocean, what hope was there that the king would be able to hinder the union of Coligny and Casimir? Or, why might not both be reinforced by the troops of La Noue, who had been accomplishing such exploits in Aunis and Saintonge?

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

[Sidenote: Anxiety of Cardinal Chatillon.]

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

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

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

There were in this document the usual stipulations respecting amnesty, the prohibition of insults and recriminations, and kindred topics. The liberty of religious profession was guaranteed. Respecting worship according to the Protestant rites, the provision was of the following character. All nobles entitled to "high jurisdiction"[786] were permitted to designate one place belonging to them, where they could have religious services for themselves, their families, their subjects, and all who might choose to attend, so long as either they or their families were present. This privilege, in the case of other nobles, was restricted to their families and their friends, not exceeding ten in number. To the Queen of Navarre a few places were granted in the fiefs which she held of the French crown, where service could be celebrated even in her absence. In addition to these, there was a list of cities, designated by name—two in each of the twelve principal governments or provinces—in which, or in the suburbs of which, the reformed services were allowed; and this privilege was extended to all those places of which the Protestants had possession on the first of the present month of August. From all other places—from the royal court and its vicinity to a distance of two leagues, and especially from Paris and its vicinity to the distance of ten leagues—Protestant worship was strictly excluded. Provision was made for Protestant burials, to take place in the presence of not more than ten persons. The king recognized the Queen of Navarre, the prince her son, and the late Prince of Conde and his son, as faithful relations and servants; their followers as loyal subjects; Deux Ponts, Orange, and his brothers, and Wolrad Mansfeld, as good neighbors and friends. There was to be a restitution of property, honors, and offices, and a rescission of judicial sentences. To protect the members of the reformed faith in the courts of justice, they were to be permitted to challenge four of the judges in the Parliament of Paris; six—three in each chamber—in those of Rouen, Dijon, Aix, Rennes, and Grenoble; and four in each chamber of the Parliament of Bordeaux. They were to be allowed a peremptory appeal from the Parliament of Toulouse. To defend the Huguenots from popular violence, four cities were to be intrusted to them for a period of two years—La Rochelle, Montauban, Cognac, and La Charite—to serve as places of refuge; and the Princes of Navarre and Conde, with twenty of their followers, were to pledge their word for the safe restoration of these cities to the king at the expiration of the designated term.[787]

[Sidenote: Dissatisfaction of the clergy.]

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

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

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

FOOTNOTES:

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

[588] Jean de Serres, iii. 247.

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

[590] The text of the edict is given by Jean de Serres, iii. 272-281. See also De Thou, iv. (liv. xliv.) 145, 146; Castelnau, liv. vii., c. ii. La Fosse (Journal d'un cure ligueur, 98), gives the correct date: "Septembre. La veille du Saint Michel (i.e., Sept. 28th) fut rompu l'esdict de janvier, et publie dedans le palais esdict au contraire;" while the ambassador La Mothe Fenelon alludes to it in a despatch to Catharine as "votre edict du xxxe de Septembre." Correspondance diplomatique, i. 28.

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

[592] Zway Edict, u. s. w., ubi infra, p. 38.

[593] Castelnau, ubi supra.

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

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

[596] "Notre sang nous sera ung secong bapteme, par quoy sans aucun empeschement, nous irons avec les autres martyrs droit en paradis." Publication de la croisade, Hist. de Languedoc, v. (Preuves) 216, 217. See the account, ibid., v. 290.

[597] Ibid., v. (Preuves) 217. The laborious author of the Hist. de Languedoc, v. 290, makes a singular mistake in saying "that this bull is dated March 15th, of the year 1568, which proves that the project had been formed several months before its execution." The date of the bull is, indeed, given as stated at the close of the document; but the addition, "pontificatus nostri anno quarto," furnishes the means for correcting it. Pius V. was not created Pope until January 7, 1566. See De Thou, iii. (liv. xxxix.) 622.

[598] Memoires de Claude Haton, ii. 541, 542.

[599] Jehan de la Fosse, 99.

[600] Jean de Serres, iii. 249.

[601] Jean de Serres, iii. 255, 256; De Thou, iv. (liv. xlix.) 141. De Serres (iii. 256-266) gives interesting extracts of the letters which Jeanne wrote to Charles, to his mother, to the Duke of Anjou, and to her brother-in-law, the Cardinal of Bourbon. She urged the latter, by every consideration of blood and honor, to shake off his shameful servitude to the counsels of the Cardinal of Lorraine, whom she openly accused of having conspired to murder Bourbon, with Marshal Montmorency and Chancellor L'Hospital, during a recent illness of the queen.

[602] Jean de Serres, iii. 267-269; De Thou, iv. (liv. xliv.) 142, 143; D'Aubigne, liv. v., c. 2, 3 (i. 264-268).

[603] J. de Serres, ubi supra.

[604] "C'est en Judee proprement Que Dieu s'est acquis un renom; C'est en Israel voirement Qu'on voit la force de son Nom: En Salem est son tabernacle, En Sion son sainct habitacle."

I quote from an edition of the unaltered Huguenot psalter (1638).

[605] Jean de Serres, iii. 270; De Thou, iv. (liv. xliv.) 144, 145; Agrippa d'Aubigne, Hist. univ. liv. v., c. 4 (i. 269) states the circumstance that the river fell a foot and a half during the four hours consumed in the crossing, and then rose again as opportunely: "Mais il s'en fust perdu la pluspart sans un heur nompareil; ce fut que la riviere s'estant diminuee d'un pied et demi durant le passage de quatre heures, se r'enfla sur la fin;" adding in one of those nervous sentences which constitute a principal charm of his writings: "Nous dirions avec crainte ces courtoisies de Loire, si nous n'avions tous ceux qui ont escrit pour gariment."

[606] Jean de Serres, iii. 270, 271; De Thou, iv. (liv. xliv.) 147; Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 269.

[607] La Noue, c. xx.

[608] Ibid., ubi supra; De Thou, iv. (liv. xliv.) 150.

[609] Jacques de Crussol, Baron d'Acier (or, Assier), afterwards Duke d'Uzes, lieutenant-general of the royal armies in Languedoc, etc. According to the Abbe Le Laboureur (iii. 56-60), it was interest that induced him, a few years later, to become a Roman Catholic.

[610] Le Laboureur, Add. aux Mem. de Castelnau, ii. 588. The same author elsewhere (ii. 56-60) states the army as only 20,000. Jean de Serres, iii. 284, 285, and De Thou, iv. (liv. xliv.) 150-152, give an account of the difficulties encountered in bringing these troops to the place of rendezvous, and enumerate the leaders and contingents of the three provinces. According to the latter, the total was 23,000 men. See Agrippa d'Aubigne, liv. v., c. 5 (i. 271).

[611] Jean de Serres, iii. 286, 291, 292; De Thou, iv. (liv. xliv.), 153, 154; Agrippa d'Aubigne, ubi supra; Davila, bk. iv., p. 132, 133; Le Laboureur, ii. 588, 589. It is more than usually difficult to ascertain the loss of the Huguenots at Messignac. Jean de Serres, who states it at 600, and Davila, who says that it amounted to 2,000 foot and more than 4,000 horse, are the extremes. De Thou sets it down at more than 1,000; D'Aubigne at 1,000 or 1,200; Castelnau at 3,000 foot and 300 horse; and Le Laboureur, following him, at over 3,000 men.

[612] Hist. univ., liv. v., c. 6 (i. 273).

[613] "Discours envoye de la Rochelle," accompanying La Mothe Fenelon's despatch of January 20, 1569. Correspondance diplomatique, i. 137, 138. Another letter of a later date gives even larger figures—30,000 foot (25,000 of them arquebusiers) and 7,000 or 8,000 horse, besides recruits expected from Montauban. Ibid., i. 147.

[614] Upwards of 23,000 horse and 200 ensigns of foot (which we may perhaps reckon at 40,000 men). Despatch of La Mothe Fenelon, Dec. 5, 1568, Corresp. diplomatique, i. 29.

[615] Memoires de Tavannes, iii. 38. De Thou, iv. 154, assigns 18,000 foot and 3,000 horse to Conde; and 12,000 foot and 4,000 horse, exclusive of the Swiss (who, according to Tavannes, numbered 6,000), to Anjou.

[616] Jean de Serres, iii. 295, 296.

[617] "Resolution qui sembloit la plus necessaire aux Reformez, pource que difficilement pouvoient-ils maintenir une telle troupe sans solde et sans magazins reglez." Agrippa d'Aubigne, liv. v., c. 6 (i. 273).

[618] See "Tableau des phenomenes meteorologiques, astronomiques, etc., mentionnes dans les Memoires de Claude Haton."

[619] Jean de Serres, iii. 304, 305; De Thou, iv. (liv. xliv.) 159.

[620] "Cette Roine, n'aiant de femme que le sexe, l'ame entiere aux choses viriles, l'esprit puissant aux grands affaires, le coeur invincible aux adversitez." Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. 8.

[621] Jean de Serres, iii. 306, 307.

[622] Jean de Serres, iii. 296, 297; Relation sent from La Rochelle, La Mothe Fenelon, i. 173. The Prince of Conde had also made a solemn protestation in writing, and before a large assembly, before entering upon any belligerent acts. The substance of these frequent documents is so similar that I have deemed it unnecessary to do more than refer to it. See J. de Serres, iii. 249, 250. The Huguenot soldiers had, at the same time, taken an oath to support the cause until the achievement of a peace securing the undisturbed enjoyment of life, honors and religious liberty, and to submit to a careful military discipline. Ibid., iii. 251, 252-255, where the oath and a summary of the rules of discipline are inserted.

[623] "Projet d'alliance du Prince d'Orange avec l'Amiral de Coligny et le Prince de Conde pour obtenir entiere liberte de conscience dans les Pays-Bas et en France. Le—aout l'an 1568." Groen Van Prinsterer, Archives de la Maison d'Orange-Nassau, iii. 282-286.

[624] Letter of Favelles (Dec., 1568), Groen Van Prinsterer, Archives, etc., iii. 312-316.

[625] He was not a "marechal," as Mr. Motley inadvertently calls him (Dutch Republic, ii. 261), but a very prominent and successful negotiator, whose eulogy M. de Thou, an intimate friend, has pronounced in the 122d book of his history (ix. 285). Henry, the first Count of Schomberg made Marshal of France, was not born until 1583.

[626] It was generally believed that Schomberg, gaining access to the Germans through one of the principal officers, to whom he was related, was the occasion of their disaffection. Jean de Serres, iii. 298. "Il mesnagea si bien la plus part des capitaines," says Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 340, "que quand le Prince leur parla d'aller joindre le Prince de Conde, il les trouva tous bons theologiens et mauvais partisans; discourans de la justice des armes, sans oublier le droit des rois et les affaires qu'ils avoient en leur pais. Schomberg s'en revint aiant receu quelques injures par Genlis."

[627] Letter of December 3, 1568, Cissonne, in Motley, Rise of the Dutch Republic, ii. 261, 262.

[628] News-letter from Paris, from the Huguenot physician of the Duke of Jarnac, discovered in the gauntlet of the Prince of Conde, and sent by Anjou, with other papers found on his dead body, to King Charles. Duc d'Aumale, Princes de Conde, Pieces ined., ii. 391.

[629] Jean de Serres, iii. 299; Groen Van Prinsterer, Archives, etc., iii. 316; Motley, Dutch Republic, ii. 263; Ag. d'Aubigne, liv. v., c. 26 (i. 340).

[630] M. Froude falls into a very natural error, in calling him (History of England, Am. edit., ix. 334) "the younger Chatillon." With the exception of a brother who died in early youth, he was the oldest of the family; but his quiet and more sluggish character inclined him to accept the cardinal's hat, when offered to him by his uncle, the constable; and, rich with the revenues of bishoprics and abbeys, he subsequently renounced all his rights as eldest son to his brother Gaspard. Froude is, however, in good company. Even the usually accurate Tytler-Fraser says of Cardinal Chatillon: "This high-born ecclesiastic was in most things the reverse of his elder brother D'Andelot." England under Edward VI. and Mary, i. 36.

[631] Lodged by Elizabeth in Sion House, not far from Hampton Court, he was accorded more honor than usually fell to the lot of an envoy of royalty. Never, says Florimond de Raemond, did the queen meet him but she greeted him with a kiss, and it became a popular saying that Conde's ambassador was a much more important personage than the envoy of the King of France. De ortu, progressu, et ruina haereseon (Cologne, 1614), ii. 284 (l. vi., c. 15).

[632] The letter of Jeanne to Elizabeth, Oct. 15, 1568, is inserted in Jean de Serres, iii. 288-291.

[633] There were many English clergymen with whom the diversity of order in public worship created no prejudice against the reformed churches of France. Of this number was William Whittingham, Dean of Durham, who, when he accompanied the Earl of Warwick, upon the occupation of Havre in 1562, conformed the service of the English garrison to that of the resident Protestants. Understanding that some of his countrymen had made "frivolous" complaints of his action, the Dean justified himself by Saint Augustine's counsel in such matters, and by alleging the disastrous consequences a different course would have produced on the minds of the French Protestants, who, he said, "as they had conceived evil of the infinity of our rites and cold proceedings in religion, so if they should have seen us (but in form only, though not in substance), to use the same or like order in ceremonies which the papists had a little afore observed (against whom they now venture goods and body), they would to their great grief have suspected our doings as not sincere, and have feared in time the loss of that liberty which after a sort they had purchased with the bloodshedding of many thousands." And the dean maintains the wisdom of the course pursued, having "perceived that it wrought here a marvellous conjunction of minds between the French and us, and brought singular comfort to all our people." The Bishop of London seems to have concurred in these views, as well as Cuthbert Vaughan, and probably Warwick himself. Whittingham to Cecil, Newhaven (Havre), Dec. 20, 1562, State Paper Office. It ought to be added that Whittingham, in this letter, expresses in fact a preference for the French forms to the English, as "most agreeable with God's Word, most approaching to the form the godly Fathers used, best allowed of the learned and godly in these days, and according to the example of the best reformed churches." Dean Whittingham, who had married the sister of John Calvin, was a leader of the Puritan party in the Church of England, and the editor and principal translator of the "Genevan" version of the English Bible. His opponents maintained that he was "a man not in holy orders, either according to the Anglican or the Presbyterian rite." (History of the Church of England, by G. G. Perry, Canon of Lincoln, New York, 1879, p. 303.) But a commission appointed by the queen to look into the matter, after the dean had been excommunicated by the Archbishop of York, reported that "William Whittingham was ordained in a better sort than even the archbishop himself." (Historic Origin of the Bible, by Edwin Cone Bissell, New York, 1873, p. 57.)

[634] "A view of a seditious bull sent into England from Pius Quintus, Bishop of Rome, 1569," etc. Works of Bishop Jewel, edited by R. W. Jelf, vii. 263-265.

[635] Despatch of La Mothe Fenelon, Dec. 5, 1568, detailing the justification of Charles, which he had made in an interview with Queen Elizabeth, Correspondance diplomatique, i. 28-33.

[636] Yet no one could speak more courageous words than Elizabeth in her own interests. In December, 1560, she requested the ambassador of Francis II. "to write to his master frankly what she was about to say, viz., that she meant to do her best to defend herself: that she was not of such poverty, nor so void of the obedience of her subjects, but she trusted to be able to do this. She came of the race of lions, and therefore could not sustain the person of a sheep." Communication with the French Ambassador, December 13, 1560, State Paper Office.

[637] Despatch of La Mothe Fenelon, Dec. 21, 1568, Corresp. dipl., i. 55, 56.

[638] "Qu'elle n'avoit rien en si grand horreur, en ce monde, que de voir ung corps s'esmouvoir contre sa teste, et qu'elle n'avoit garde de s'adjoindre a ung tel monstre." Ibid., i. 60.

[639] Ibid., i. 36-130.

[640] Mem. de Castelnau, liv. vii., c. 2; Agrippa d'Aubigne, liv. v., c. 10 (i. 283); De Thou, iv. (liv. xliv.) 160. La Mothe Fenelon's despatch of January 24, 1569 (Corr. dipl. i. 153, 154), states the assistance at 6 cannon and furniture, 300 barrels of powder, 4,000 balls, and L7,000.

[641] Despatch to La Mothe Fenelon, March 8, 1569, and "Articles presantez a la royne d'Angleterre par le Sr de la Mothe, etc," Corresp. diplom., i. 224, 237-241.

[642] "Considerant luy-mesmes et toute la flotte des marchands estre en leur pouvoir, il trouva necessaire pour luy de condescendre en partie a leurs demandes, combien quv ce fut contre sa volonte." Coppie du messaige qui a este declaire par la Majeste de la Royne et son conseil, par parolle de bouche, a l'amb. du Roy de France, par Jehan Somer, clerc du signet de sa Majeste le IIIe jour de mars, 1568. Corresp. diplom., i. 242-251.

[643] Despatch of Dec. 5, 1568, Corresp. diplom., i. 32, 33.

[644] In his despatch of March 25, 1569, La Mothe Fenelon admits to Catharine his great perplexity as to how he should act, so as neither to show too little spirit nor to provoke Elizabeth to such a declaration as would compel the king, his master, to declare war at so inopportune a time. Corresp. diplom., i. 281.

[645] Jean de Serres, iii. 307, 308; De Thou, iv. (liv. xlv.) 169, 170; Castelnau, liv. vii., c. 3.

[646] De Thou, iv. 171, 172; Castelnau, ubi supra.

[647] Jean de Serres, iii. 302, 309; De Thou, iv. 161; Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 277.

[648] De Thou, iv. (liv. xlv.) 174, 175.

[649] The Earl of Leicester gives Charles a more direct part in the war. "The king hathe bene these two monethes about Metz in Lorrayne, to empeache the entry of the Duke of Bipounte, who is set forward by the common assent of all the princes Protestants in Germany, with twelve thousand horsemen, and twenty-five thousand footemen, to assiste the Protestants in France, and to make some final end of their garboyles." Letter to Randolph, ambassador to the Emperor of Muscovy, May 1, 1569, Wright, Queen Elizabeth, i. 313. The facilities, even for diplomatic correspondence, with so distant a country as Muscovy, were very scanty. Leicester's despatch is accordingly an interesting resume of the chief events that had occurred in Western Europe during the past sixty days.

[650] Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 277; De Thou, iv. 172, etc.

[651] "Ja Dieu ne plaise qu'on die jamais que Bourbon ait fuyt devant ses ennemis." Lestoile, 21. It is probably to this circumstance that the Earl of Leicester alludes, when he says that "the Prince of Conde, through his overmuche hardines and little regard to follow the Admirall's advise had his arme broken with a courrire shotte," etc. Wright, Queen Elizabeth, i. 313, 314.

[652] Agrippa d'Aubigne, Hist. univ., liv. v., c. 8 (i. 280); De Thou, iv. 175.

[653] D'Aubigne, ubi supra. A Huguenot patriarch, named La Vergne, was noticed by Agrippa himself fighting in the midst of twenty-five of his nephews and kinsmen. The dead bodies of the old man and of fifteen of his followers fell almost on a single heap, and nearly all the survivors were taken prisoners.

[654] Jeanne d'Albret to Marie de Cleves, April, 1569, Rochambeau, Lettres d'Antoine de Bourbon et de Jehanne d'Albret (Paris, 1877), 297.

[655] I regret to say that the current representations as to the termination of Conde's dishonorable attachment to Isabeau de Limueil are proved by contemporary documents to be erroneous. The tears and remonstrances of his wife Eleonore de Roye (see ante, chapter xiv.) may have had some temporary effect. But an anonymous letter among the Simancas MSS., written March 15, 1565 (and consequently more than six months after Eleonore's death, which occurred July 23, 1564), portrays him as "hora piu che mai passionato per la sua Limolia." Duc d'Aumale, Pieces justif., i. 552. Just as Calvin (letter of September 17, 1563, Bonnet, Lettres franc., ii. 539) had rebuked the prince with his customary frankness, warning him respecting his conduct, and saying that "les bonnes gens en seront offensez, les malins en feront leur risee," so now Coligny and the Huguenot gentlemen of his suite united with the Protestant ministers in begging him to renounce his present course of life, and contract a second honorable marriage. The latter held up to him "il pericolo et infamia propria, et il scandalo commune a tutta la relligione per esserne lui capo;" the former threatened to leave him. I have seen no injurious reports affecting Conde's morals after his marriage, November 8, 1565, to Francoise Marie d'Orleans Longueville. Duc d'Aumale, Princes de Conde, i. 263-278.

[656] Long the idol of the Huguenots, both of high or of low degree, he enjoyed a popularity perpetuated in a spirited song ("La Chanson du Petit Homme"), current so far back as the close of the first war, 1563, the refrain of which, alluding to the prince's diminutive stature, is: "Dieu gard' de mal le Petit Homme!" Chansonnier Huguenot, 250, etc.

[657] The author of the Vie de Coligny (Cologne, 1686) gives more than one instance of a deference on the part of the subject of his biography which may seem to the reader excessive, but which alone could satisfy the chivalrous feeling of the loyal knight of the sixteenth century.

[658] Brantome (Hommes illustres, OEuvres, viii. 163, 164) relates that Honorat de Savoie, Count of Villars, begged the Duke of Anjou to have Stuart given over to him, and, having gained his request, murdered him.

[659] "Qui par artifices merveilleusement subtils ont bien sceu vandre le sang de la maison de France contre soy-mesmes."

[660] The Earl of Leicester wrote to Randolph: "Robert Stuart, Chastellier, and certaine other worthy gentlemen, to the number of six, were lykewise taken and slayne, as the Frenche tearme it, de sang froid." Wright, Queen Elizabeth, i. 314. See also Cardinal Chatillon's letter to the Elector Palatine, June 10, 1569, in which the writer declares significantly of Conde's murder by Montesquiou, "ce qu'il n'eust ose entreprendre sans en avoir commandement des plus grands." Kluckholn, Briefe Friedrich des Frommen, ii. 336.

[661] Letter of Henry of Navarre to the Duke of Anjou, "escript au Camp d'Availle le xiie jour de juillet 1569." Lettres inedites de Henry IV. recueillies par le Prince Augustin Galitzin (Paris. 1860), 4-11.

[662] The Huguenot loss is given by Jean de Serres (iii. 316) at 200 killed and 40 taken prisoners. Agrippa d'Aubigne states it at 140 gentilhommes (Hist. univ., i. 280). The Earl of Leicester's words are: "In which conflicte was slayne on both sydes, as we heare, not above foure hundred men" (Wright, Queen Elizabeth, i. 313, 314). Castelnau speaks of over a hundred Huguenot gentlemen slain and an equal number taken prisoners (liv. vii., c. 4). The "Adviz donne par Mr Norrys, ambassadeur pour la royne d'Angleterre, prins de ses lettres, envoyees de Metz, le 18 d'Avril" (La Mothe Fenelon, i. 362), agrees with Leicester, but is unique in making Anjou's loss greater than that of the Huguenots. De Thou makes the Protestants lose 400. The untruthful Davila says, "the Huguenots lost not above seven hundred men, but they were most of them gentlemen and cavaliers of note."

[663] Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 281. La Fosse and others have preserved one of the good Catholic stanzas composed on this occasion:

L'an mil cinq cent soixante et neuf Entre Congnac et Chateauneuf Fust apporte sur une anesse Le grand ennemi de la messe. (Journal d'un cure ligueur, 104.)

[664] "On donna l'honneur de cette defaicte a M. de Tavannes." La Fosse, 104.

[665] De Thou, iv. (liv. xlv.) 177. Claude de Sainctes, afterward Bishop of Evreux, who, it will be remembered, figured at the colloquy of Poissy, is credited with the suggestion of the chapel.

[666] The principal authorities consulted for the battle of Jarnac, or of Bassac, as it is also frequently called, from the abbey near which it raged, are: Jean de Serres, iii. 309-315; De Thou, iv. (liv. xlv.) 173-176; Castelnau, liv. vii., c. 4; Ag. d'Aubigne, i. 278-281; Le vray discours de la bataille donnee par monsieur le 13. iour de Mars, 1569, entre Chasteauneuf et Jarnac, etc., avec privilege (Cimber et Danjou, Archives curieuses, vi. 365, etc.); Discours de la bataille donnee par Monseigneur, Duc d'Anjou et de Bourbonnoys, ... contre les rebelles ... entre la ville d'Angoulesme et Jarnac, pres d'une maison nommee Vibrac appartenant a la Dame de Mezieres; an inaccurate official account, drawn up at Metz by Neufville on the first reception of the news, and sent by the Spanish ambassador, Alava, to Philip II.; La Mothe Fenelon, Corr. dip., vii. 3-11; Davila, bk. iv.; the "Relation originale" in Documents inedits tires des coll. MSS. de la bibliotheque royale (Fr. gov.), iv. 483, etc. Compare the excellent narratives of the Duc d'Aumale and Prof. Soldan. The Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. fr., i. (1853) 429, gives a representation of a monument, in the form of an obelisk, about eleven feet in height, erected by the Department of the Charente, in 1818, on the spot where Conde fell. A somewhat similar monument, raised in 1770 by the Count de Jarnac, was destroyed during the first French revolution.

[667] Anjou to Charles IX., March 17, 1569, Duc d'Aumale, Les Princes de Conde, ii. 399.

[668] Apostolicarum Pii Quinti, P. M., Epistolarum libri quinque. Antverpiae, 1640, 152.

[669] Pii Quinti Epist., 157-166.

[670] Ibid., 160, 161.

[671] Boscheron des Portes, Hist. du Parlement de Bordeaux (Bordeaux, 1877), i. 214, 216. As the Huguenots were condemned, not for heresy, but for rebellion, sacrilege, etc., the learned author finds no mention of fagot and flame.

[672] La Mothe Fenelon. i. 288-294.

[673] Despatch of April 12, 1569, ibid., i. 303.

[674] It is evident that the results of the battle were designedly exaggerated by the Roman Catholics at the time, and have been overrated ever since. Agrippa d'Aubigne alleges that, out of 128 cornets of cavalry in the Huguenot army, only fifteen were engaged; and that of over 200 ensigns of infantry, barely six—those under Pluviaut—came within a league of the battle-field. Hist. univ., ubi supra.

[675] Jean de Serres, iii. 317, 318; De Thou, iv. (liv. xlv.) 178, 179. De Thou reckons the losses of the Roman Catholics before Cognac at more than 300 men.

[676] De Thou, iv. 180, 181; Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 282; J. de Serres, iii. 318, 319.

[677] La Mothe Fenelon, i. 367. And now, to the insulting quatrain already quoted a propos of Conde's death, the Huguenot soldiers of Angoumois replied in rough verses of their own:

Le Prince de Conde Il a ete tue; Mais Monsieur l'Amiral Est encore a cheval, Avec La Rochefoucauld Pour achever tous ces Papaux.

V. Bujeaud, Chronique protestante de l'Angoumois, 40.

[678] Discours merveilleux de la vie de Catherine de Medicis (Cologne, 1683), 645. See the atrocious letter to Catharine, which the queen found upon her bed, Nov. 8, 1575, and which purports to have been written from Lausanne. In the copy published by Le Laboureur (ii. 425-429), it is signed "Grand Champ;" in that which the editor of Claude Haton gives in an appendix (p. 1111-1115) the name is "Emille Dardani." The date is doubtful. Le Laboureur is apparently more correct in giving it as "le troisieme mois de la quatrieme annee apres la trahison" (St. Bartholomew's Day).

[679] The Vie de Coligny (Cologne, 1686), p. 360, 361, says nothing to indicate that the author regarded D'Andelot's death as other than natural. But Hotman's Gasparis Colinii Vita (1575), p. 75, mentions the suspicion, and considers it confirmed by the saying attributed to Birague, afterward chancellor, that "the war would never be terminated by arms alone, but that it might be brought to a close very easily by cooks." Cardinal Chatillon, in a letter to the Elector Palatine, June 10, 1569, alludes to his brother's having died of poison as a well-ascertained fact, "comme il est apparent tant par l'anatomie," etc. Kluckholn, Briefe Frederick des Frommen, ii 336.

[680] Since the outbreak of the present war, the court had undertaken to deprive D'Andelot of his rank, and had divided his duties between Brissac and Strozzi. Brissac had been killed, and Strozzi was now recognized by the court as colonel-general.

[681] The letter written from Saintes, May 18, 1569, is inserted in Gasparis Colinii Vita (1575) pp. 75-78, the author remarking, "quam ipsius manum, atque chirographum prae manibus jam habeo." The possession of so many family manuscripts on the part of the anonymous writer of this valuable contemporary account, is explained by the fact that he was no other than the distinguished Francis Hotman, in whose hands the admiral's widow, Jaqueline d'Entremont, or Antremont, had placed all the documents she possessed, entreating him to undertake the pious task of compiling a life of her husband. In a remarkable letter which has but lately come to light, dated January 15, 1572 (new style 1573), after an exordium full of those classical allusions of which the age was so fond, she writes: "Ne trouvez etrange, je vous supplie, si j'ai essaye de reveiller vostre plume pour laisser a la posterite autant de temoignages de la vertu de feu monseigneur et mari, que nos ennemis la veulent designer," etc. Bulletin, vi. 29.

[682] "La France aura beaucoup de maux avec vous, et puis sans vous; mais en fin tout tombera sur l'Espagnol." Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 283.

[683] Agrippa d'Aubigne, ubi supra.

[684] Berger de Xivrey, Lettres missives de Henri IV. (Paris, 1843), i. 7.

[685] Histoire de Charles IX. par le sieur Varillas (Cologne, 1686), ii. 161, 162. I am glad to embrace this opportunity of quoting a historian in whose statements of facts I have as seldom the good fortune to concur as in his general deductions of principles. M. de Thou (iv. 182) remarks in a similar spirit: "Il fit voir a la France (et ses ennemis meme en convinrent) qu'il etoit capable de soutenir lui seul tout le parti Protestant dont on croyoit auparavant qu'il ne soutenoit qu'une partie."

[686] Ranke (Civil Wars and Monarchy), 241; the statement of Jean de Serres, iii. 325, would make the total number a little larger; the accounts of Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 285, and De Thou, iv. 185, make it somewhat smaller.

[687] Adviz, etc., La Mothe Fenelon, i. 363.

[688] De Thou, iv. 184; Jean de Serres, iii. 320-323. This was in February. It was the more natural for Wolfgang to defend his course, as he was himself an ancient ally of the King of Spain. In the Papiers d'etat du card. de Granvelle, ix. 567, we have the text of a compact formed Oct. 1, 1565: "Lettres de Service accordees par le roi d'Espagne a Wolfgang, comte Palatin et duc de Deux Ponts." According to this document, the duke was bound for three years to obey Philip's summons, although he refused to pledge himself to do anything directly or indirectly against the Augsburg Confession or its supporters.

[689] Journal d'un cure ligueur (Jehan de la Fosse), 104.

[690] Letter of Charles IX. to La Mothe Fenelon, May 14, 1569, Corresp. dipl., vii. 20, 21. The same incredulity respecting the possibility of Deux Ponts's enterprise is expressed by the anonymous author of a memorandum of a journey through France, in Documents inedits tires des MSS. de la bibl. royale, iv. 493. It is alluded to in the "Remonstrance" of the Protestant princes presented after the junction of the armies. Jean de Serres, iii. 337.

[691] Castelnau, liv. vii., c. 5.

[692] De Thou, iv. 185-188; Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 285; Anquetil, Esprit de la ligue, i. 297.

[693] Discours envoye de La Rochelle a la Royne d'Angleterre. La Mothe Fenelon, ii. 158, etc.

[694] De Thou, iv. 188; Lestoile, 22; J. de Serres, iii. 524; Castelnau, liv. vii., c. 6.

[695] Castelnau, liv. vii., c. 7; De Thou, iv. 192; Jean de Serres, iii. 327 (who states the Roman Catholic loss as higher than given in the text). Brantome ascribes the defeat of Strozzi to the circumstance that the matches of his troops were put out by the rain, and that his infantry, unsupported by cavalry, was at the mercy of Mouy and the Huguenot troopers. Colonnels fr., OEuvres, ed. Lalanne, vi. 60. But the "Discours envoye de la Rochelle a la Royne d'Angleterre" (La Mothe Fenelon, ii. 160) states that the Huguenots would have done much greater execution and perhaps put an end to the dispute, "n'eust ete que, tout ce jour la, la pluye fut si extreme et si grande que noz harquebouziers ne pouvoient plus jouer." La Roche Abeille, or La Roche l'Abeille, is a hamlet seventeen miles south of Limoges.

[696] According to J. A. Gabutius, the biographer of Pius V. (sec. 120, p. 646), the Pope sent 4,500 foot and 1,000 horse, and Cosmo, Duke of Florence, 1,000 foot and 200 horse. Besides these, many nobles attached themselves to the expedition as volunteers. Santa Fiore was instructed to leave France the moment he should perceive that the heretics were treated with. "Quod si ipse summus copiarum Dux, vel de pace vel de rerum compositione quidquam Catholicae religioni damnosum praesentiret; [Pius V.] imperavit e vestigio aut converso itinere in Italiam remearet, aut ad Catholicum exercitum in Belgio cum haereticis bellantem sese conferret et adjungeret."

[697] De Thou, iv. 192; Vie de Coligny, 364; Gasparis Colinii Vita, 81; Jean de Serres, iii. 331. Charles IX. in a letter to La Mothe Fenelon, from St. Germains des Pres, July 27, 1569, alludes to the successes of the Huguenots, whom Anjou cannot resist, "ayant donne conge a la pluspart de sa gendarmerye de s'en aller faire ung tour en leurs maisons." Corresp. diplom., vii. 35, 36. The furlough, which was to expire on the 15th of August, was afterward extended by Anjou to the 1st of October.

[698] See Vie de Coligny, 364; De Thou, iv. 192; Jean de Serres, iii. 345, 346.

[699] Yet the "Guisards" were never tired of asserting the contrary. Sir Thomas Smith tells us that Cardinal Lorraine maintained to him that "they [the Huguenots] desired to bring all to the form of a republic, like Geneva." Smith records the conversation at length in a letter to Cecil, wishing his correspondent to perceive "how he had need of a long spoon that should eat potage with the Devil." The discussion must have been an earnest one. Sir Thomas was not disposed to boast of being a finished courtier. In fact, he declares that, as to framing compliments, he is "the verriest calf and beast in the world," and threatens to get one Bizzarro to write him some, which he will get translated (for all sorts of people), and learn them by heart. He managed on this occasion to speak his mind to Lorraine pretty freely respecting the real origin of the war (the conversation took place in 1562), and told the churchman the uncomplimentary truth, that his brother's deed at Vassy was the cause of all the troubles. Smith to Cecil, Rouen, Nov. 7, 1562, State Paper Office.

[700] Not to speak of Noyers, belonging to Conde, Coligny's stately residence at Chatillon-sur-Loing fell into the hands of the enemy. In direct violation of the terms of the capitulation, the palace was robbed of all its costly furniture, which was sent to Paris and sold at auction. Chateau-Renard, which also was the property of Coligny, was taken by the Roman Catholics, and became the nest of a company of half-soldiers, half-robbers, under an Italian—one Fretini—who laid under contribution travellers on the road to Lyons. De Thou, iv. 198, 199; Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 292.

[701] How deeply the Guises felt the taunt that they were strangers in France, appears from a sentence of the cardinal's to the Bishop of Rennes (Trent, Nov. 24, 1563), wherein, alluding to the recent birth of a son to the Duke of Lorraine and Catharine de' Medici's daughter, he says that he is "merveilleusement aise ... pource que sera occasion aux Huguenots de ne nous dire plus princes estrangers." Le Laboureur, ii. 313.

[702] "Copie d'une Remonstrance que ceulx de la Rochelle ont mande avoyr envoyee au Roy, apres l'arrivee du duc de Deux Ponts." La Mothe Fenelon, ii. 179-188. In Latin, Jean de Serres, iii. 333-345. Gasparis Colinii Vita, 80.

[703] Mem. de Castelnau, liv. vii., c. 6; Jean de Serres, iii. 345, 346; De Thou, ubi supra.

[704] "Lusignan la pucelle." De Thou, iv. 197; Jean de Serres, iii. 331; Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 290.

[705] Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 294; De Thou, iv. (liv. xlv.) 200-202; Jean de Serres, iii. 347.

[706] Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 298: "Presse par les interests et murmures des Poictevins, il sentit en cet endroit une des incommoditez qui se trouve aux partis de plusieurs testes; sa prudence donc cedant a sa necessite," etc.

[707] Letter of Sept. 8, 1569, Wright, Queen Elizabeth, i. 323.

[708] Jean de Serres, iii. 348, etc.; Castelnau, liv. vii., c. 7; De Thou, iv. 205-214; Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 297, etc.

[709] Journal d'un cure ligueur (Jehan de la Fosse), 109.

[710] Jean de Serres, iii. 332; Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 292; De Thou, etc.

[711] Agrippa d'Aubigne, liv. v., c. 13 (i. 293); De Thou, iv. (liv. xlv.) 204; Jehan de la Fosse, 108.

[712] That Renee was, like all the other prominent Huguenots, from the very first opposed to a resort to the horrors of war, is certain. Agrippa d'Aubigne goes farther than this, and asserts (i. 293) that she had become estranged from Conde in consequence of her blaming the Huguenots for their assumption of arms: "blasmant ceux qui portoient les armes, jusques a estre devenus ennemis, le Prince de Conde et elle, sur cette querelle." I can scarcely credit this account, of which I see no confirmation, unless it be in a letter to an unknown correspondent, in the National Library (MSS. Coll. Bethune, 8703, fol. 68), of which a translation is given in Memorials of Renee of France (London, 1859), 263, 264. It is dated Montargis, Aug. 20, 1569: "Praying you ... to employ yourself, as I know you are accustomed to do, in whatsoever way shall be possible to you, in striving to arrive at a good peace, in which endeavor I, on my part, shall put forth all my power, if it shall please God. And if it cannot be a general one, at least it shall be to those who desire it, and who belong to us." Who, however, was the correspondent? The subscription, "Your good cousin, Renee of France," would appear to point to Admiral Coligny or some one of equal rank. Louis de Conde was no longer living.

[713] Letter of Villegagnon to the Duchess of Ferrara, Montereau, March 4, 1569, apud Mem. de Claude Haton, ii. Appendix, 1109.

[714] It must be remembered that this was a different place from Chatillon-sur-Loing, Admiral Coligny's residence, which was not more than fifteen miles distant. The places are frequently confounded with each other. The Loing is a tributary of the Seine, into which it empties below Montereau, after flowing by Chatillon-sur-Loing, Montargis, and Nemours.

[715] The fullest and most graphic account of this interesting incident I find in Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 293 (liv. v., c. 13). See De Thou, iv. (liv. xlv.) 204, and Memorials of Renee of France (London, 1859), 261-263. The Huguenot horsemen numbered not eight hundred, as the author last quoted states, but about one hundred and twenty—"six vingts."

[716] The "Discours de ce qui avint touchant la Croix de Gastines, l'an 1571, vers Noel" (Memoires de l'etat de France sous Charles IX., and Archives curieuses, vi. 475, etc.), contains the quaint decree of the parliament. See Journal d'un cure ligueur (Jehan de la Fosse), 107. As actually erected, the monument consisted of a high stone pyramid, surmounted by a gilt crucifix. Besides the decree in question, there were engraved some Latin verses of so confused a construction that it was suggested that the composer intended to cast ridicule both on the Roman Catholics and on the Huguenots. M. de Thou, who was a boy of sixteen at the time—and who, as son of the first President of Parliament, and himself, at a later time, a leading member and president a mortier of that body, enjoyed rare advantages for arriving at the truth—declares (iv. 488) that the elder Gastines was a venerable man, beloved by his neighbors, and, indeed, by the entire city; and that the execution was compassed by a cabal of seditious persons, who, by dint of soliciting the judges, of exciting the people, of inducing them to congregate and follow the judges with threats as they left parliament, succeeded in causing to be punished with death, in the persons of the Gastines, an offence which, until then, had been punished only with exile or a pecuniary fine.

[717] Jehan de la Fosse, 107, 108.

[718] Journal d'un cure ligueur, 110; Mem. de Castelnau, liv. vii., c. 8; De Thou, iv. (liv. l) 216; Gasp. Colinii Vita (1569), 87; Memoirs of G. de Coligny, 140, etc. The arret of the parliament is in Archives curieuses, vi. 377, etc. The Latin life of Coligny (89-91) inserts a manly and Christian letter, in the author's possession, written (Oct. 16, 1569) by the admiral to his own children and those of his deceased brother, D'Andelot, who were studying at La Rochelle, shortly after receiving intelligence of this judicial sentence and of the wanton injury done to his palace at Chatillon-sur-Loing. "We must follow our Head, Jesus Christ, who himself leads the way," he writes. "Men have deprived us of all that it was in their power to take from us, and if it be God's will that we never recover what we have lost, still we shall be happy, and our condition will be a good one, inasmuch as these losses have not arisen from any harm done by us to those who have brought them upon us, but solely from the hatred they bear toward me for the reason that it has pleased God to make use of me in assisting His Church."

[719] Jean de Serres, iii. 356, 357; Mem. of Coligny, 136; De Thou, iv. 216, 217; Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 302.

[720] Jean de Serres, iii. 363; De Thou, iv. (liv. xlvi.) 221; Castelnau, vii., c. 8.

[721] De Thou, iv. 216; Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 302. The place was also known by the name of Foie la Vineuse.

[722] Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 305.

[723] In the heat of the engagement, the excited imaginations of the combatants even saw visions of celestial champions, as Theseus was fabled to have appeared at Marathon. A renegade Protestant captain afterward assured the Cardinal of Alessandria that on that eventful day he had seen in mid-air an array of warriors with refulgent armor and blood-red swords, threatening the Huguenot lines in which he fought; and he had instantly embraced the Roman Catholic faith, and vowed perpetual service under the banners of the pontiff. There were others, we are told, to corroborate his account of the prodigy. Joannis Antonii Gabutii Vita Pii Quinti Papae (Acta Sanctorum, Maii 5), Sec. 125, pp. 647, 648.

[724] Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 307. "Ne se trouva oncques gens plus fidelles au camp catholicque que lesditz estrangers, et singulierement les Suisses, lesquelz ne pardonnerent a ung seul de leur nation germanique de ceux qui tomberent en leurs mains." Mem. de Claude Haton, ii. 582.

[725] "Che non avesse il comandamanto di lui osservato d'ammazzar subito qualunque heretico gli fosse venuto alle mani." Catena, Vita di Pio V., apud White, Mass. of St. Bartholomew, 305, and De Thou, iv. (liv. xlvi.) 228. With singular inconsistency—so impossible is it generally to carry out these horrible theories of extermination—the Roman pontiff himself afterward liberated D'Acier without exacting any ransom. De Thou, ubi supra. "Si Santafiore lui avoit obei," says an annotator, "Jacques de Crussol (D'Acier) ne se seroit pas converti, et n'auroit pas laisse une si illustre poterite."

[726] On the battle of Moncontour, consult J. de Serres, iii. 357-362; De Thou, iv. 224-228; Castelnau, liv. vii., c. 9; Agrippa d'Aubigne, liv. v., c. 17; a Roman Catholic relation in Groen van Prinsterer, Archives de la Maison d'Orange Nassau, iii. 324-326.

[727] "Nihil est enim ea pietate misericordiaque crudelius, quae in impios et ultima supplicia meritos confertur." Pius V. to Charles IX., Oct. 20, 1569. Pii V. Epistolae (Antwerp, 1640), 242. The French victories of Jarnac and Moncontour were celebrated by a medal struck at Rome, with the legend, "Fecit potentiam in bracchio suo, dispersit superbos," and a representation of Pius kneeling and invoking the aid of heaven against the heretics. In the distance is seen a combat, and above it appears the Divine Being directing the issue. Figured in "Le Tresor de Numismatique et de Glyptique, par Paul Delaroche" (Medailles des Papes, plate 15, No. 5), Paris, 1839.

[728] La Mothe Fenelon, vii. 65, etc., from Simancas MSS. So Claude Haton, who is rarely behindhand in such matters, makes the Protestants lose fifteen thousand or sixteen thousand men. Memoires, ii. 582. Admiral Coligny was for a time believed by the court to be dead or mortally wounded, "mais ne fut rien." Ibid., ubi supra.

[729] If we may credit the curate Claude, Catharine de' Medici alone was vexed at the completeness of the rout and the number of Huguenots slain, "inasmuch as she gave them as much support as possible, and encouraged them in rebellion, that the civil wars might continue, in which she took pleasure because of the management of affairs they threw into her hands"—"pour le maniment des affaires qu'elle entreprenoit et manioit." Memoires, ii. 583.

[730] Journal d'un cure ligueur (Jehan de la Fosse), 110.

[731] Jehan de la Fosse, 112. The date is stated as "about Oct. 17th."

[732] Ranke, Civil Wars and Monarchy in France, i. 241.

[733] De Thou, iv. 230; Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 310. The murderer's name is variously written Maurevel, Moureveil, Montrevel, etc.

[734] This letter, respecting which I confess that I find some difficulties, possesses a history of its own. On the 13th of Ventose, in the second year of the republic, the original was sent to the national convention, which, the next day, ordered its insertion in the official bulletin, and its preservation in the national library, as emanating "from one of the Neros of France." See App. to Journal de Lestoile, ed. Michaud, pt. i., p. 307, 308, and the revolutionary bulletins.

[735] "Ut sese Montalbani cum Vicecomitibus conjungerent, et sperantes Andium, dum se persequeretur, ab San-Jani oppugnandae instituto destiturum." De statu rel. et reip., iii. 365.

[736] See Soldan, iii. 372, 373; Anquetil, Esprit de la ligue, i. 317, etc.

[737] With his usual inaccuracy, Davila speaks of Saint Jean d'Angely as "excellently fortified" (Eng. trans., p. 166).

[738] This number, given by Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 313, and by De Thou, iv. (liv. xlv.) 242, seems the most probable. La Popeliniere swells it to near 10,000 (Soldan, ii. 375), while Castelnau, liv. vii., c. 10, reduces it to "over 8,000." Strange to say, Jean de Serres, who, writing and publishing this portion of his history within a year after the conclusion of the third civil war, almost uniformly gives the highest estimates of the Roman Catholic losses, here makes them about 2,000, or lower than any one else.

[739] Agrippa d'Aubigne, who was generous enough to appreciate valor even in an enemy, calls him "celui qui entamoit toutes les parties difficiles, a qui rien n'estoit dur ny hazardeux, qui en tous les exploits de son temps avoit fait les coups de partie" (i. 312). Lestoile in his journal (p. 22, Ed. Mich.) affirms that he was killed just as he had uttered a blasphemous inquiry of the Huguenots, where was now their "Dieu le Fort," and taunted them with his having become "a ceste heure leur Dieu le Faible." "Le Dieu, le Fort, l'Eternel parlera," was the first line of a favorite Huguenot psalm.

[740] On the siege of Saint Jean d'Angely, see J. de Serres, iii. 369, 370; Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 311-313; De Thou, iv. 238-242; Castelnau, liv. vii., c. 10. It scarcely needs to be mentioned that Davila, bk. v., p. 166, knows nothing of any treachery on the part of the Roman Catholics, but duly mentions that De Piles did not observe his promise.

[741] Davila, bk. v. (Eng. tr., p. 163 and 167); De Thou, iv. (liv. xlvi.) 250. Gabutius, in his life of Pius V., transcribes the exultant inscription, dictated by the pontiff himself (Sec. 126, p. 648), and claims for the canonized subject of his panegyric the chief credit of the victory. According to him the Italians were the first to engage with the heretics, and the last to desist from the pursuit.

[742] Davila, bk. 5th (Eng. tr., p. 167); Mem. de Claude Haton, ii. 591.

[743] "L'hiver arriva, il fallut mettre les troupes en quartier; et le fruit d'une victoire si complette, l'effort d'une armee royale si formidable, fut la prise de quelques places mediocres, pendant que La Rochelle, la plus utile de toutes, restoit aux vaincus, et que les princes retablissoient les affaires, a l'aide d'un delai qu'ils n'avoient point ose se promettre." Anquetil, L'Esprit de la ligue, i. 317.

[744] J. de Serres, iii. 372; De Thou, iv. (liv. xlvi.) 234, 235, who makes the loss in the first siege 300 men, and in the second over 1,000 horsemen; Agrippa d'Aubigne, Hist. univ., l. v., c. 19 (i. 315, 316), who states the total at 1,400 foot and near 400 horse; while Castelnau, l. vii., c. 10, speaks of but 300 in all. Vezelay, famous in the history of the Crusades (see Michaud, Hist. des Croisades, ii. 125) as the place where St. Bernard in 1146 preached the Cross to an immense throng from all parts of Christendom, is equidistant from Bourges and Dijon, and a little north of a line uniting these two cities.

[745] De Thou, iv. (liv. xlvi.) 246, 247; Agrippa d'Aubigne, liv. v., c. 19 (i. 317); J. de Serres, iii. 370. About twenty prisoners were taken, to whom their captors promised their lives. Afterward there were strenuous efforts made, especially by the priests, to have them put to death as rebels and traitors. M. de la Chastre resisted the pressure, disregarding even a severe order of the Parliament of Paris, accompanied by the threat of the enormous fine of 2,000 marks of gold, which bade him send them to the capital. (Hist. du Berry, etc., par M. Louis Raynal, 1846, iv, 104, apud Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. fr., iv. (1856) 27.) Even Charles IX. wrote to him, but the governor was inflexible. His noble reply has come to light, dated Jan. 21, 1570, just one month after the failure of the Protestant scheme. After urging the danger of retaliation by the Huguenots of La Charite and Sancerre upon the prisoners they held, to the number of more than forty, and the inexpediency of accustoming the people of Bourges to bloody executions which they would not fail to repeat, he concludes his remonstrance in these striking words: "Nevertheless, Sire, if you should find it expedient, for the good of your service, to put them to death, the channel of the courts of justice is the most proper, without recompensing my services, or sullying my reputation with a stain that will ever be a ground of reproach against me. And I beg you, Sire, to make use of me in other matters more worthy of a gentleman having the heart of his ancestors, who for five hundred years have served their king without stain of treachery or act unworthy of a gentleman." Inedited letter, apud Bulletin, ubi supra, 28, 29. M. de la Chastre became one of the marshals of France. He conducted, three years later, the terrible siege of Sancerre, famous in history. He had the reputation among the Huguenots of being very severe, if not bloodthirsty—a reputation which he deserved, if he was, as Henry of Navarre styles him, "un des principaux executeurs de la Sainct Barthelemy." (Deposition in the trial of La Mole, Coconnas, etc. Archives curieuses, viii. 150.) La Chastre tried to clear himself of the imputation, by recalling the events of 1569. To Jean de Lery he maintained "qu'il n'est point sanguinaire, ainsi qu'on a opinion, comme aussi il l'avoit desja bien monstre aux autres troubles, lorsqu'il avoit en sa puissance les sieurs d'Espeau, baron de Renty, et le capitaine Fontaine, qui est en son armee: car encores que la cour du parlement de Paris luy fist commandement de les representer, a peine de 2,000 marcs d'or, il ne le voulut faire." Jean de Lery, "Discours de l'extreme famine ... dans la ville de Sancerre," Archives curieuses, viii. 67.

[746] De Thou, iv. (liv. xlvi.) 235-237; Agrippa d'Aubigne, liv. v., c. 19 (i. 316, 317); Jean de Serres, iii. 368, 369.

[747] "Si est-ce que Dieu est tres-doux."

[748] Agrippa d'Aubigne, l. v., c. 18 (i. 309). The words were, as M. Douen reminds us (Clement Marot et le Psautier huguenot, 1878, 13) the first line of the seventy-third psalm of the Huguenot psalter.

[749] De Thou, iv. (liv. xlvi.) 232; Jean de Serres, iii. 366.

[750] Ibid., iii. 372, etc.

[751] Even in December, Languet could scarcely imagine that Coligny would not return and winter at La Rochelle. Letter of Dec. 12, 1569, Epist. secr., i. 130.

[752] Mem. de Castelnau, liv. vii., c. 12.

[753] At least, so says Agrippa d'Aubigne, liv. v., c. 18 (i. 309).

[754] De Thou, iv. (liv. xlvi.) 233; Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 309, 318 (liv. v., cs. 18 and 20). The two authorities are not in exact agreement, De Thou stating that Coligny went to Montauban before his march to meet Montgomery, while D'Aubigne makes him follow the left bank of the Dordogne down to Aiguillon. Gasparis Colinii Vita (1575), 91, 92, supports De Thou.

[755] De Thou, iv. (liv. xlvi.) 249; Agrippa d'Aubigne, liv. v., c. 20 (i. 318); Gasparis Colinii Vita (1575), 94. The author of this valuable and authentic life of the admiral gives a full description of the bridge. Professor Soldan is mistaken in saying that the bridge was not yet completed (Geschichte des Prot. in Frank., ii. 377). It had been completed, and two days had been spent in taking over the German cavalry ("opere effecto, biduoque in traducendis Germanis equitibus consumpto") when the disaster occurred.

[756] Languet, Letter of January 3, 1570, Epist. secretae, i. 133.

[757] Gasparis Colinii Vita (1576), 91; Vie de Coligny (Cologne, 1686), 378, where the account of the expedition, however, is full of blunders. Mr. Browning, following this untrustworthy authority, makes Admiral Coligny cross the Garonne and pass through Bearn, on his way from Saintes to Montauban! A glance at the map of France will show that this would have required a much greater bend to the right than he in reality made to the left, since Bearn lay entirely south of the river Adour. To reach Bearn by land before crossing the Garonne, as the "Vie" evidently imagines he did, would almost have required Aladdin's lamp. In fact, the entire passage is a jumble of the exploits of Montgomery and Coligny.

[758] La Popeliniere, apud Soldan, ii. 378.

[759] De Thou, iv. (liv. xlvii.) 303-306; Agrippa d'Aubigne, liv. v., c. 20 (i. 319, 320); Davila, bk. v., p. 168; Raoul de Cazenove, "Rapin-Thoyras, sa famille," etc., 49, 50.

[760] La Mothe Fenelon, vii. 81.

[761] "L'imprudence des Catholiques, lesquels laissant rouler, sans nul empeschement, ceste petite pelote de neige, en peu de temps elle se fit grosse comme une maison." Mem. de la Noue, c. xxix.

[762] Of course, Davila (bk. v., p. 167, 168), who rarely rejects a good story of intrigue, especially if there be a dainty bit of treachery connected with it, adopts unhesitatingly the popular rumor of Marshal Damville's infidelity to his trust.

[763] St. Etienne possessed already, at the time the "Vie de Coligny" was written, that branch of industry which still constitutes one of its chief sources of wealth. It was described as a "petite ville fameuse par la quantite d'armes qui s'y fait, et qui se transportent dans les pais etrangers, en sorte que c'est ce qui nourrit presque toute la province." P. 381.

[764] Agrippa d'Aubigne, liv. v., c. 21 (i. 322).

[765] Gasparis Colinii Vita, 97, 98.

[766] Arnay-le-Duc, or Rene-le-Duc, as the place was indifferently called, is situated about thirty miles south-west of Dijon, on the road to Autun.

[767] De Thou, iv. (liv. xlvii.) 312-314; Agrippa d'Aubigne, liv. v., c. 22 (i. 321-325); Castelnau, liv. vii., c. 12; Davila, bk. v. 169.