On either side the loss had been severe. Marshal Saint Andre, Montberon—one of the constable's sons—and many other illustrious Roman Catholics, were killed. Montmorency was a prisoner. The Huguenots, if they had lost fewer prominent men and less common soldiers, were equally deprived of their leading general. What was certain was, that the substantial fruits of victory remained in the hands of the Duke of Guise, to whom naturally the whole glory of the achievement was ascribed. For, although Admiral Coligny thought himself sufficiently strong to have attacked the enemy on the following day,[213] if he could have persuaded his crestfallen German auxiliaries to follow him, he deemed it advisable to abandon the march into Normandy—difficult under any circumstances on account of the lateness of the season—and to conduct his army back to Orleans. This, Coligny—never more skilful than in conducting the most difficult of all military operations, a retreat in the presence of an enemy—successfully accomplished.[214]

The first tidings of the battle of Dreux were brought to Paris by fugitives from the constable's corps. These announced the capture of the commanding general, and the entire rout of the Roman Catholic army. The populace, intense in its devotion to the old form of faith, and recognizing the fatal character of such a blow,[215] was overwhelmed with discouragement. But Catharine de' Medici displayed little emotion. "Very well!" she quietly remarked, "then we shall pray to God in French."[216] But the truth was soon known, and the dirge and the miserere were rapidly replaced by the loud te deum and by jubilant processions in honor of the signal success of the Roman Catholic arms.[217]

[Sidenote: Riotous conduct of the Parisian mob.]

Recovering from their panic, the Parisian populace continued to testify their unimpeachable orthodoxy by daily murders. It was enough, a contemporary writer tells us, if a boy, seeing a man in the streets, but called out, "Voyla ung Huguenot," for straightway the idle vagabonds, the pedlers, and porters would set upon him with stones. Then came out the handicraftsmen and idle apprentices with swords, and thrust him through with a thousand wounds. His dead body, having been robbed of clothes, was afterward taken possession of by troops of boys, who asked nothing better than to "trail" him down to the Seine and throw him in. If the victim chanced to be a "town-dweller," the Parisians entered his house and carried off all his goods, and his wife and children were fortunate if they escaped with their lives. With the best intentions, Marshal Montmorency could not put a stop to these excesses; he scarcely succeeded in protecting the households of foreign ambassadors from being involved in the fate of French Protestants.[218] Yet the same men that were ready at any time to imbue their hands in the blood of an innocent Huguenot, were full of commiseration for a Roman Catholic felon. A shrewd murderer is said to have turned to his own advantage the religious feeling of the people who had flocked to see him executed. "Ah! my masters," he exclaimed when already on the fatal ladder, "I must die now for killing a Huguenot who despised our Lady; but as I have served our Lady always truly, and put my trust in her, so I trust now she will show some miracle for me." Thereupon, reports Sir Thomas Smith, the people began to murmur about his having to die for a Huguenot, ran to the gallows, beat the hangman, and having cut the fellow's cords, conveyed him away free.[219]

[Sidenote: Orleans invested.]

[Sidenote: Coligny returns to Normandy.]

Of the triumvirs, at whose instigation the war had arisen, one was dead,[220] a second was a prisoner in the hands of the enemy, the third—the Duke of Guise—alone remained. Navarre had died a month before. On the other hand, the Huguenots had lost their chief. Yet the war raged without cessation. As soon as the Duke of Guise had collected his army and had, at Rambouillet, explained to the king and court, who had come out to meet him, the course of recent events, he followed the Admiral toward Orleans. Invested by the king with the supreme command during the captivity of the constable, and leading a victorious army, he speedily reduced Etampes and Pithiviers, captured by Conde on his march to Paris. Meantime, Coligny had taken a number of places in the vicinity of Orleans, and his "black riders" had become the terror of the papists of Sologne.[221] Not long after Guise's approach, fearing that his design was to besiege the city of Orleans, Coligny threw himself into it. His stay was not long, however. His German cavalry could do nothing in case of a siege, and would only be a burden to the citizens. Besides, he was in want of funds to pay them. He resolved, therefore, to strike boldly for Normandy.[222] Having persuaded the reiters to dispense with their heavy baggage-wagons,[223] which had proved so great an incumbrance on the previous march, he started from Orleans on the first of February with four thousand troopers, leaving his brother D'Andelot as well furnished as practicable to sustain the inevitable siege. The lightness of his army's equipment precluded the possibility of pursuit; its strength secured it an almost undisputed passage.[224] In a few days it had passed Dreux and the scene of the late battle, and at Dives, on the opposite side of the estuary of the Seine from Havre, had received from the English the supplies of money which they had long been desirous of finding means to convey to the Huguenots.[225] The only considerable forces of the Guise faction in Normandy were on the banks of the river, too busy watching the English at Havre to be able to spare any troops to resist Coligny. Turning his attention to the western shores of the province, he soon succeeded in reducing Pont-l'Eveque, Caen, Bayeux, Saint Lo, and the prospect was brilliant of his soon being able, in conjunction with Queen Elizabeth's troops, to bring all Normandy over to the side of the prince.[226] Meanwhile, however, there were occurring in the centre of the kingdom events destined to give an entirely different turn to the relations of the Huguenots and papists in France. To these we must now direct our attention.

Francois de Guise, relieved of the admiral's presence, had begun the siege of Orleans four days after the departure of the latter for Normandy (on the fifth of February), and manifested the utmost determination to destroy the capital city, as it might be regarded, of the confederates. Indeed, when the court, then sojourning at Blois, in alarm at the reports sent by Marshal de Brissac from Rouen, respecting Coligny's conquests and his own impotence to oppose him, ordered Guise to abandon his undertaking and employ his forces in crushing out the flames that had so unexpectedly broken forth in Normandy, the duke declined to obey until he should have received further orders, and gave so cogent reasons for pursuing the siege, that the king and his council willingly acquiesced in his plan.[227] From his independent attitude, however, it is evident that Guise was of Pasquier's mind, and believed he had gained as much of a victory in the capture of the constable, his friend in arms, but dangerous rival at court, taken by the Huguenots at Dreux, as by the capture of the Prince of Conde, his enemy, who had fallen into his hands in the same engagement.[228]

[Sidenote: Capture of the Portereau.]

The city of Orleans, on the north bank of the Loire, was protected by walls originally of no great worth, but considerably strengthened since the outbreak of the civil war. On the opposite side of the river, a suburb, known as the Portereau, was fortified by weaker walls, in front of which two large bastions had recently been erected. The suburb was connected with Orleans by means of a bridge across the Loire, of which the end toward the Portereau was defended by two towers of the old mediaeval construction, known as the "tourelles," and that toward the city by the city wall and a large square tower.[229] Against the Portereau the duke directed the first assault, hoping easily to become master of it, and thence attack the city from its weakest side. His plan proved successful beyond his expectations. While making a feint of assailing with his whole army the bastion held by the Gascon infantry, he sent a party to scale the bastion guarded by the German lansquenets, who, being taken by surprise, yielded an entrance almost without striking a blow. In a few minutes the Portereau was in the hands of Guise, and the bridge was crowded with fugitives tumultuously seeking a refuge in the city. Orleans itself was nearly involved in the fate of its suburb; for the enemy, following close upon the heels of the fleeing host, was at the very threshold of the "tourelles," when D'Andelot, called from his sick-bed by the tumult, posting himself at the entrance with a few gentlemen in full armor, by hard blows beat back the troops, already sanguine of complete success.[230] A few days later the "tourelles" themselves were scaled and taken.[231]

After so poor a beginning, the small garrison of Orleans had sufficient reason to fear the issue of the trial to which they were subjected. But, so far from abandoning their courage, they applied themselves with equal assiduity to their religious and to their military duties. "In addition to the usual sermons and the prayers at the guard-houses, public extraordinary prayers were made at six o'clock in the morning; at the close of which the ministers and the entire people, without exception, betook themselves to work with all their might upon the fortifications, until four in the evening, when every one again attended prayers." Everywhere the utmost devotion was manifested, women of all ranks sharing with their husbands and brothers in the toils of the day, or, if too feeble for these active exertions, spending their time in tending the sick and wounded.[232]

[Sidenote: "A new and very terrible device."]

Not only did the Huguenots, when they found their supply of lead falling short, make their cannon-balls of bell-metal—of which the churches and monasteries were doubtless the source—and of brass, but they turned this last material to a use till now, it would appear, unheard of. "I have learned this day, the fifteenth instant, of the Spaniards," wrote the English ambassador from the royal court, which was at a safe distance, in the city of Blois, "that they of Orleans shoot brass which is hollow, and so devised within that when it falls it opens and breaks into many pieces with a great fire, and hurts and kills all who are about it. Which is a new device and very terrible, for it pierces the house first, and breaks at the last rebound. Every man in Portereau is fain to run away, they cannot tell whither, when they see where the shot falls."[233]

[Sidenote: Huguenot reverses.]

It could not, however, be denied that there was much reason for discouragement in the general condition of the Protestant cause throughout the country. Of the places so brilliantly acquired in the spring of the preceding year, the greater part had been lost. Normandy and Languedoc were the only bright spots on the map of France. Lyons still remained in the power of the Huguenots, in the south-east; but, though repeated assaults of the Duke of Nemours had been repulsed, it was threatened with a siege, for which it was but indifferently prepared.[234] Des Adrets, the fierce chieftain of the lower Rhone, had recently revealed his real character more clearly by betraying the cause he had sullied by his barbarous advocacy, and was now in confinement.[235] Indeed, everything seemed to point to a speedy and complete overthrow of an undertaking which had cost so much labor and suffering,[236] when an unexpected event produced an entire revolution in the attitude of the contending parties and in the purposes of the leaders.

[Sidenote: Assassination of Francois de Guise.]

This event was the assassination of Francois de Guise. On the evening of the eighteenth of February, 1563, in company with a gentleman or two, he was riding the round of his works, and arranging for a general attack on the morrow. So confident did he feel of success, that he had that morning written to the queen mother, it is said, that within twenty-four hours he would send her news of the capture of Orleans, and that he intended to destroy the entire population, making no discrimination of age or sex, that the very memory of the rebellious city might be obliterated.[237] At a lonely spot on the road, a man on horseback, who had been lying in wait for him, suddenly made his appearance, and, after discharging a pistol at him from behind, rode rapidly off, before the duke's escort, taken up with the duty of assisting him, had had time to make any attempt to apprehend the assassin. Three balls, with which the pistol was loaded, had lodged in Guise's shoulder, and the wound, from the first considered dangerous, proved mortal within six days. The murderer had apparently made good his escape; but a strange fatality seemed to attend him. During the darkness he became so confused that, after riding all night, he found himself almost at the very place where the deed of blood had been committed, and was compelled to rest himself and his jaded horse at a house, where he was arrested on suspicion by some of Guise's soldiers. Taken before their superior officers, he boldly avowed his guilt, and boasted of what he had done. His name he gave as Jean Poltrot, and he claimed to be lord of Merey, in Angoumois; but he was better known, from his dark complexion and his familiarity with the Spanish language, by the sobriquet of "L'Espagnolet." He was an excitable, melancholy man, whose mind, continually brooding over the wrongs his country and faith had experienced at the hands of Guise, had imbibed the fanatical notion that it was his special calling of God to rid the world of "the butcher of Vassy," of the single execrable head that was accountable for the torrents of blood which had for a year been flowing in every part of France.

After having been a page of M. d'Aubeterre, father-in-law of the Huguenot leader Soubise, Merey, at the beginning of the civil war, had been sent by the daughter of D'Aubeterre to her husband, then with Conde at Orleans. Subsequently he had accompanied Soubise on his adventurous ride with a few followers from Orleans to Lyons, when the latter assumed command in behalf of the Huguenots. Soubise appears to have valued him highly as one of those reckless youths that court rather than shun personal peril, while he shared the common impression that the lad was little better than a fool. True, for years—ever since the tumult of Amboise, where his kinsman, La Renaudie and another relative had been killed—Merey had been constantly boasting to all whom he met that he would kill the Duke of Guise; but those who heard him "made no more account of his words than if he had boasted of his intention to obtain the imperial crown."[238]

He had given expression to his purpose at Lyons, in the presence of M. de Soubise, the Huguenot governor, and again to Admiral Coligny before he started on his expedition to Normandy. But the Huguenot generals evidently imagined that there was nothing in the speech beyond the prating of a silly braggart. Soubise, indeed, advised him to attend to his own duties, and to leave the deliverance of France to Almighty God; but neither the admiral nor the soldiers, to whom he often repeated the threat, paid any attention to it. In short, he was regarded as one of those frivolous characters, of whom there is an abundance in every camp, who expect to acquire a cheap notoriety by extravagant stories of their past or prospective achievements, but never succeed in earning more, with all their pains, than the contempt or incredulity of their listeners. Still, Poltrot was a man of some value as a scout, and Coligny had employed him[239] for the purpose of obtaining information respecting the enemy's movements, and had furnished him at one time with twenty crowns to defray his expenses, at another with a hundred, to procure himself a horse. The spy had made his way to the Roman Catholic camp, and, by pretending to follow the example of others in renouncing his Huguenot associations, had conciliated the duke's favor to such an extent that he excited no suspicion before the commission of the treacherous act.

[Sidenote: Execution of Poltrot.]

But, if Poltrot was a fanatic, he was not of the stuff of which martyrs are made. When questioned in the presence of the queen and council to discover his accomplices, his constancy wholly forsook him, and he said whatever was suggested. In particular he accused the admiral of having paid him to execute the deed, and Beza of having instigated him by holding forth the rewards of another world. La Rochefoucauld, Soubise, and others were criminated to a minor degree. During his confinement in the prisons of the Parisian parliament, to which he was removed, he continually contradicted himself. But his weakness did not save him. He was condemned to be burned with red-hot pincers, to be torn asunder by four horses, and to be quartered. Before the execution of this frightful sentence, he was, by order of the court, put to torture. But, instead of reiterating his former accusations, he retracted almost every point.[240] To purchase a few moments' reprieve, he sought an interview with the first president of the parliament, Christopher de Thou; and we have it upon the authority of that magistrate's son, the author of an imperishable history of his times, that, entering into greater detail, Poltrot persisted constantly in exculpating Soubise, Coligny, and Beza. A few minutes later, beside himself with terror and not knowing what he said in his delirium, he declared the admiral to be innocent; then, at the very moment of execution, he accused not only him, but his brother, D'Andelot, of whom he had said little or nothing before.[241]

[Sidenote: Beza and Coligny are accused, but vindicate themselves.]

Coligny heard in Normandy the report of the atrocious charges that had been wrung from Poltrot. Copies of the assassin's confession were industriously circulated in the camp, and he thus became acquainted with the particulars of the accusation. With Beza and La Rochefoucauld, who were with him at Caen, he published, on the twelfth of March, a long and dignified defence. The reformer for himself declared, that, although he had more than once seen persons ill-disposed toward the Duke of Guise because of the murders perpetrated by him at Vassy, he had never been in favor of proceeding against him otherwise than by the ordinary methods of law. For this reason he had gone to Monceaux to solicit justice of Charles, of his mother, and of the King of Navarre. But the hopes which the queen mother's gracious answer had excited were dashed to the earth by Guise's violent resort to arms. Holding the duke to be the chief author and promoter of the present troubles, he admitted that he had a countless number of times prayed to God that He would either change his heart or rid the kingdom of him. But he appealed to the testimony of Madame de Ferrare (Renee de France, the mother-in-law of Guise), and all who had ever heard him, when he said that never had he publicly mentioned the duke by name. As for Poltrot himself, he had never met him.

The admiral himself was not less frank. Ever since the massacre of Vassy he had regarded Guise and his party as common enemies of God, of the king, and of the public tranquillity; but never, upon his life and his honor, had he approved of such attacks as that of Poltrot. Indeed, he had steadfastly employed his influence to deter men from executing any plots against the life of the duke; until, being duly informed that Guise and Saint Andre had incited men to undertake to assassinate Conde, D'Andelot, and himself, he had desisted from expressing his opposition. The different articles of the confession he proceeded to answer one by one; and he forwarded his reply to the court with a letter to Catharine de' Medici, in which he earnestly entreated her that the life of Poltrot might be spared until the restoration of peace, that he might be confronted with him, and an investigation be made of the entire matter before unsuspected judges. "But do not imagine," he added, "that I speak thus because of any regret for the death of the Duke of Guise, which I esteem the greatest of blessings to the realm, to the Church of God, to myself and my family, and, if improved, the means of giving rest to the kingdom."[242]

The admiral's frankness was severely criticised by some of his friends. He was advised to suppress those expressions that were liable to be perverted to his injury, but he declared his resolution to abide by the consequences of a clear statement of the truth. And indeed, while the worldly wisdom of Coligny's censors has received a species of justification in the avidity with which his sincere avowals have been employed as the basis of graver accusations which he repelled, the candor of his defence has set upon his words the indelible impress of veracity which following ages can never fail to read aright. That Catharine recognized his innocence is evident from the very act by which she endeavored to make him appear guilty. He had begged that Poltrot might be spared till after the conclusion of peace, that he might himself have an opportunity to vindicate his innocence by confronting him in the presence of impartial judges. It was Catharine's interest, she thought, to confirm her own power by attaching a stigma to the honor of the Chatillons, and so depriving them of much of their influence in the state.[243] Accordingly, on Thursday, the eighteenth of March, Poltrot was put to death and his mouth sealed forever to further explanations. The next day the Edict of Pacification was signed at Amboise.[244] After all, it is evident that Coligny's innocence or guilt, in this particular instance, must be judged by his entire course and his well-known character. If his life bears marks of perfidy and duplicity, if the blood of the innocent can be found upon his skirts, then must the verdict of posterity be against him. But if the careful examination of his entire public life, as well as the history of his private relations, reveals a character not only above reproach, but the purest, most beneficent, and most patriotic of all that France can boast in political stations in the sixteenth century, the confused and contradictory allegations of an enthusiast who had not counted the cost of his daring attempt—allegations wrung from him by threats and torture—will not be allowed to weigh for an instant against Coligny's simple denial.[245]

[Sidenote: Various estimates of Guise.]

Of the Duke of Guise the estimates formed by his contemporaries differed as widely as their political and religious views. With the Abbe Bruslart he was "the most virtuous, heroic, and magnanimous prince in Europe, who for his courage was dreaded by all foreign nations." To the author of the history of the reformed churches his ambition and presumption seemed to have obscured all his virtues.[246] The Roman Catholic preachers regarded his death as a stupendous calamity, a mystery of Divine providence, which they could only interpret by supposing that the Almighty, jealous of the confidence which His people reposed rather in His creature than in Himself, had removed the Duke of Guise in order to take the cause of His own divinity, of His spouse the Church, of the king and kingdom, under His own protection.[247] The Bishop of Riez wrote and published a highly colored account of the duke's last words and actions, in the most approved style of such posthumous records, and introduced edifying specimens of a theological learning, which, until the moment of his wounding, Guise had certainly never possessed, making him, of course, persist to the end in protesting his innocence of the guilt of Vassy.[248] The Protestants, while giving him credit for some compunctions of conscience for his persecuting career, and willingly admitting that, but for his pernicious brother, the Cardinal of Lorraine, he might have run a far different course, were compelled to view his death as a great blessing to France.[249]

[Sidenote: Renee de France at Montargis.]

A famous incident, illustrating the perils to which the Huguenots of the central provinces were subjected during the siege, is too characteristic to be passed over in silence. More than once, in the course of the war, the town and castle of Montargis, the Duchess of Ferrara's residence, had been threatened on account of the asylum it afforded to defenceless Protestants flocking thither from all quarters. When the minds of the Roman Catholics had become exasperated by nine or ten months of civil war, they formed a settled determination to break up this "nest of Huguenots." Accordingly the Baron de la Garde—Captain Poulain, of Merindol memory—brought an order, in the king's name, from the Duke of Guise, at that time before the walls of Orleans, commanding Renee to leave Montargis, which had become important for military purposes, and to take up her abode at Fontainebleau, St. Germain, or Vincennes. The duchess replied that it was idle to say that so weak a place as Montargis could, without extensive repairs, be of any military importance; and that to remove to any place in the vicinity of Paris would be to expose herself to assassination by the fanatical populace. She therefore sent Poulain back to the king for further instructions. Meantime, Poulain was followed by Malicorne, a creature of the duke's, at the head of some partisan troops. This presumptuous officer had the impertinence to demand the immediate surrender of the castle, and went so far as to threaten to turn some cannon against it, in case of her refusal. But he little understood the virile courage of the woman with whom he had to do. "Malicorne," she answered him, "take care what you undertake. There is not a man in this kingdom that can command me but the king. If you attempt what you threaten, I shall place myself first upon the breach, that I may find out whether you will be audacious enough to kill a king's daughter. Moreover, I am not so ill-connected, nor so little loved, but that I have the means of making the punishment of your temerity felt by you and your offspring, even to the very babes in the cradle." The upstart captain was not prepared for such a reception, and, after alleging his commission as the excuse for the insolence of his conduct, delayed an enterprise which the wound and subsequent death of Guise entirely broke off.[250] Montargis continued during this and the next civil wars to be a safe refuge for thousands of distressed Protestants.

A great obstacle to the conclusion of peace was removed by Guise's death. There was no one in the Roman Catholic camp to take his place. The panegyric pronounced upon the duke by the English ambassador, Sir Thomas Smith, may perhaps be esteemed somewhat extravagant, but has at least the merit of coming from one whose sympathies were decidedly adverse to him. "The papists have lost their greatest stay, hope, and comfort. Many noblemen and gentlemen did follow the camp and that faction, rather for the love of him than for any other zeal or affection. He was indeed the best captain or general in all France, some will say in all Christendom; for he had all the properties which belong [to], or are to be wished in a general: a ready wit and well advised, a body to endure pains, a courage to forsake no dangerous adventures, use and experience to conduct any army, much courtesy in entertaining of all men, great eloquence to utter all his mind. And he was very liberal both of money and honor to young gentlemen, captains, and soldiers; whereby he gat so much love and admiration amongst the nobility and the soldiers in France, that I think, now he is gone, many gentlemen will forsake the camp; and they begin to drop away already. Then he was so earnest and so fully persuaded in his religion, that he thought nothing evil done that maintained that sect; and therefore the papists again thought nothing evil bestowed upon him; all their money and treasure of the Church, part of their lands, even the honor of the crown of France, they could have found in their hearts to have given him. And so all their joy, hope, and comfort one little stroke of a pistolet hath taken away! Such a vanity God can show men's hope to be, when it pleaseth Him."[251]

Of the four generals on the Roman Catholic side under whose auspices the war began, three were dead and the fourth was in captivity. The treasury was exhausted. The interest of old debts was left unpaid; new debts had been contracted. Less than half the king's revenues were available on account of the places which the Huguenots held or threatened. The alienation of one hundred thousand livres of income from ecclesiastical property had been recently ordered, greatly to the annoyance of the clergy. The admiral's progress had of late been so rapid that but two or three important places of lower Normandy remained in friendly hands. After the reduction of these he would move down through Maine and Anjou to Orleans, with a better force than had been marshalled at Dreux;[252] the English would gain such a foothold on French soil as it would be difficult to induce them to relinquish. And where could competent generals be secured for the prosecution of hostilities? The post of lieutenant-general, now vacant, had, indeed, been offered to the Duke Christopher of Wuertemberg; but what prospect was there that a Protestant would consent to conduct a war against Protestants?[253]

[Sidenote: Deliberations for peace.]

Catharine was urgent for an immediate conclusion of peace. For the purpose of fixing its conditions, Conde was brought, under a strong guard, to the camp of the army before Orleans, and, on the small "Isle aux Bouviers" in the middle of the Loire, he and the constable, released on their honor, held a preliminary interview on Sunday, the seventh of March, 1563.[254] At first there seemed little prospect of harmonizing their discordant pretensions; for, if the question of the removal of the triumvirs had lost all its practical importance, the old bone of contention remained in the re-establishment of the Edict of January. On this point Montmorency was inflexible. He had been the prime instrument in expelling Protestantism from Paris, and had distinguished himself by burning the places of worship. It could hardly be expected that he should rebuild what he had so laboriously torn down. And, whatever had been his first intentions, Conde proved less tenacious than might have been anticipated from his previous professions. The fact was, that the younger Bourbon was not proof against the wiles employed with so much success against his elder brother. Flattered by Catharine, he was led to suppose that after all it made little difference whether the full demands of the Huguenots were expressly granted in the edict of pacification or not. The queen mother was resolved, so he was assured, to confer upon him the dignity and office of lieutenant-general, left vacant by Navarre's death. When this should be his, it would be easy to obtain every practical concession to which the Huguenots were entitled. So much pleased was the court with the ardor he displayed, that he was at last permitted to go to Orleans on his own princely parole, in order to consult his confederates.

The Huguenot ministers whose advice he first asked, seeing his irresolution, were the more decided in opposing any terms that did not expressly recognize the Edict of January. Seventy-two united in a letter (on the ninth of March, 1563), in which they begged him not to permit the cause to suffer disaster at his hands, and rather to insure an extension, than submit to an abridgment of the liberty promised by the royal ordinance.[255] From the ministers, however, Conde went to the Huguenot "noblesse," with whom his arguments of expediency had more weight, and who, weary of the length and privations of the war, and content with securing their own privileges, readily accepted the conditions reprobated by the ministers. The pacification was accordingly agreed upon, on the twelfth of March, and officially published in the form of a royal edict, dated at Amboise, on the nineteenth of March, 1563.

[Sidenote: Edict of Pacification, March 12, 1563.]

Charles the Ninth, by advice of his mother, the Cardinal of Bourbon, the Princes of Conde and La Roche-sur-Yon, the Dukes of Montmorency, Aumale, and Montpensier, and other members of his privy council, grants, in this document, to all barons, chatellains, and gentlemen possessed of the right to administer "haute justice," permission to celebrate in their own houses the worship of "the religion which they call reformed" in the presence of their families and retainers. The possessors of minor fiefs could enjoy the same privilege, but it extended to their families only. In every bailiwick or senechaussee, the Protestants should, on petition, receive one city in whose suburbs their religious services might be held, and in all cities where the Protestant religion was exercised on the seventh of March of the present year, it should continue in one or two places inside of the walls, to be designated hereafter by the king. The Huguenots, while secured in their liberty of conscience, were to restore all churches and ecclesiastical property which they might have seized, and were forbidden to worship according to their rites in the city of Paris or its immediate neighborhood. The remaining articles of the peace were of a more personal or temporary interest. Foreign troops were to be speedily dismissed; the Protestant lords to be fully reinstated in their former honors, offices, and possessions; prisoners to be released; insults based upon the events of the war to be summarily punished. And Charles declared that he held his good cousin, the Prince of Conde, and all the other lords, knights, gentlemen, and burgesses that had served under him, to be his faithful subjects, believing that what they had done was for good ends and for his service.[256]

[Sidenote: Sir Thomas Smith's remonstrance.]

Such was the Edict of Amboise—a half-way measure, very different from that which was desired on either side. The English ambassador declared he could find no one, whether Protestant or papist, that liked the "accord," or thought it would last three weeks. And he added, by way of warning to Coligny and Conde: "What you, who are the heads and rulers, do, I cannot tell; but every man thinketh that it is but a traine and a deceipt to sever the one of you from another, and all of you from this stronghold [Orleans], and then thei will talke with you after another sorte."[257] He urged the Huguenots to learn a lesson from the fate of Bourges, Rouen, and other cities which had admitted the "papists," and to consider that these fine articles came from the queen mother, the Cardinals of Bourbon, Ferrara, and Guise, and others like them, who desired to take the Protestants like fish in a net. And he gave D'Andelot the significant hint—very significant it was, in view of what afterwards befell his brother Gaspard—that the report spread by the enemy respecting Poltrot's confession was only a preparation that, in case any of the Huguenot noblemen should be assassinated, it might be said that the deed had been done in just revenge by the Guises, who would not hesitate to sacrifice them either by force or by treason.[258]

[Sidenote: Coligny's disappointment.]

Of the other party, Catharine de' Medici alone was jubilant over the edict. On the contrary, the Roman Catholic people of Paris regarded it as an approval of every sort of impiety and wicked action, and the parliament would register it only after repeated commands (on the twenty-seventh of March), and then with a formal declaration of its reluctance.[259] But no one was so much disappointed as the admiral. Hastening from Normandy to Orleans, he reached that city on the twenty-third of March, only to find that the peace had been fully concluded several days before. In the council of the confederates, the next day, he spoke his mind freely. He reminded Conde that, from the very commencement of hostilities, the triumvirs had offered the restoration of the Edict of January with the exclusion of the city of Paris; and that never had affairs stood on a better footing than now,[260] when two of the three chief authors of the war were dead, and the third was a prisoner. But the poor had surpassed the rich in devotion; the cities had given the example to the nobles. In restricting the number of churches to one in a bailiwick, the prince and his counsellors had ruined more churches by a single stroke of the pen than all the forces of their enemies could have overthrown in ten years. Coligny's warm remonstrance was heard with some regret for the precipitancy with which the arrangement had been made; but it was too late. The peace was signed. Besides, Conde was confident that he would soon occupy his brother's place, when the Huguenots would obtain all their demands.

But while the prince refused to draw back from the articles of peace to which he had pledged himself, he consented to visit the queen mother in company with the admiral, and endeavor to remove some of the restrictions placed upon Protestant worship. And Catharine was too well satisfied with her success in restoring peace, to refuse the most pressing of the admiral's requests. However, she took good care that none of her promises should be in writing, much less be incorporated in the Edict of Pacification. "The prince and the admyrall," wrote the special envoy Middlemore to Queen Elizabeth, "have bene twice with the quene mother since my commynge hyther, where the admirall hath bene very earnest for a further and larger lybertye in the course of religion, and so hath obtayned that there shall be preachings within the townes in every balliage, wheras before yt was accordyd but in the suburbs of townes only, and that the gentylmen of the visconte and provoste of Parys shall have in theyr houses the same libertye of religion as ys accordyd elzwhere. So as the sayd admyrall doth now seame to lyke well inoughe that he shewyd by the waye to mislyke so muche, which was the harde articles of religion concludyd upon by the prince in his absence."[261]

On Sunday, the twenty-eighth of March, 1563—the anniversary of that Sunday which they had kept with so much solemnity at Meaux, on the eve of their march to Orleans—the Huguenot nobles and soldiers celebrated the Lord's Supper, in the simple but grand forms of the Geneva liturgy, within the walls of the church of the Holy Rood, long since stripped of its idolatrous ornaments, and on the morrow began to disperse to the homes from which for a year they had been separated.[262] The German reiters, at the same time, set out on their march toward Champagne, whence they soon after retired to their own country.

[Sidenote: Results of the war.]

The war that had just closed undoubtedly constituted a turning-point in the Huguenot fortunes. The alliance between the persecuted reformers, on the one hand, and the princes of the blood and the nobility of France, on the other, had borne fruit, and it was not altogether good fruit. The patient confessors, after manfully maintaining their faith through an entire generation against savage attack, and gaining many a convert from the witnesses of their constancy, had grasped the sword thrust into their hands by their more warlike allies. In truth, it would be difficult to condemn them; for it was in self-defence, not against rightful authority, but against the tyranny of a foreign and hostile faction. Candidly viewing their circumstances at the distance of three centuries, we can scarcely see how they could have acted otherwise than as they did. Yet there was much that, humanly speaking, was unfortunate in the conjuncture. War is a horrible remedy at any time. Civil war super-adds a thousand horrors of its own. And a civil war waged in the name of religion is the most frightful of all. The holiest of causes is sure to be embraced from impure motives by a host of unprincipled men, determined in their choice of party only by the hope of personal gain, the lust of power, or the thirst for revenge—a class of auxiliaries too powerful and important to be altogether rejected in an hour when the issues of life or death are pending, even if by the closest and calmest scrutiny they could be thoroughly weeded out—a process beyond the power of mortal man at any time, much more in the midst of the tumult and confusion of war. The Huguenots had made the attempt at Orleans, and had not shrunk from inflicting the severest punishments, even to death, for the commission of theft and other heinous crimes. They had endeavored in their camp to realize the model of an exemplary Christian community. But they had failed, because there were with them those who, neither in peace nor in war, could bring themselves to give to so strict a moral code any other obedience than that which fear exacts. Such was the misery of war. Such the melancholy alternative to which, more than once, the reformed saw themselves reduced, of perishing by persecution or of saving themselves by exposing their faith to reproach through alliance with men of as little religion or morality as any in the opposite camp.

[Sidenote: It prevents France from becoming Huguenot.]

The first civil war prevented France from becoming a Huguenot country. This was the deliberate conclusion of a Venetian ambassador, who enjoyed remarkable opportunities for observing the history of his times.[263] The practice of the Christian virtue of patience and submission under suffering and insult had made the reformers an incredible number of friends. The waging of war, even in self-defence, and the reported acts of wanton destruction, of cruelty and sacrilege—it mattered little whether they were true or false, they were equally credited and produced the same results—turned the indifference of the masses into positive aversion. It availed the Huguenots little in the estimate of the people that the crimes that were almost the rule with their opponents were the exception with them; that for a dozen such as Montluc, they were cursed with but one Baron des Adrets; that the barbarities of the former received the approbation of the Roman Catholic priesthood, while those of the latter were censured with vehemence by the Protestant ministers. Partisan spirit refused to hold the scales of justice with equal hand, and could see no proofs of superior morality or devotion in the adherents of the reformed faith.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Huguenot ballads and songs.]

Besides their psalms, hallowed by so many thrilling associations, the Huguenots possessed a whole cycle of song. The meagre portion of this that has come down to us is among the most valuable of the monuments illustrative of their modes of thought and their religious and political aspirations. At the same time it brings vividly before us the great crises of their history. M. Henri Bordier has done a service not easily estimated at its full worth, by the publication of a considerable collection of the popular songs of the Protestants, under the title, "Le Chansonnier Huguenot du XVIe Siecle" (Paris, 1871). These songs are grouped in four divisions: religious songs, polemic and satirical songs, songs of war, and songs of martyrdom.

The three oldest Huguenot songs known to exist belong to the first two divisions, and have been saved from destruction by the enemies of their authors, in the very attempt to secure their suppression. They have recently been found upon the records of the Parliament of Paris, where they obtained a place, thanks to the zeal of the "lieutenant general" of Meaux in endeavoring to ferret out the composers of anti-papal ballads. They were entered, without regard to metre, as so much prose. A stanza or two of the song entitled Chanson nouvelle sur le chant: "N'allez plus au bois jouer," and evidently adapted to the tune of a popular ballad of the day, may suffice to indicate the character of the most vigorous of these compositions. It is addressed to Michel d'Arande, a friend of Farel, whom Bishop Briconnet had invited to preach the Gospel in his diocese of Meaux, and begins:

Ne preschez plus la verite, Maistre Michel! Contenue en l'Evangille, Il y a trop grand danger D'estre mene Dans la Conciergerie. Lire, lire, lironfa.

Il y a trop grand danger D'estre mene Dans la Conciergerie Devant les chapperons fourrez Mal informez Par gens plains de menterie. Lire, lire, lironfa.

The "chants religieux," of which M. Bordier's collection reproduces twenty-five, are partly poetical paraphrases of the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, etc., and partly original compositions on a variety of themes, such as patient endurance of insult, etc. They display great familiarity with the Holy Scriptures, and sometimes not a little poetic fire.

The "chants polemiques" treat of a number of subjects, prominent among which are the monks and nuns, and the doctrines of the papal church. In one the expiring papacy is represented as summoning to her bedside cardinals, bishops, and other members of the clergy, to witness her last struggles. In another the Sorbonne is held up to ridicule, in company with all the mediaeval doctors of theology. In a third the poet more seriously combats the belief in purgatory as unscriptural. But it is the mass that bears the brunt of attack. The Host figures under the designation, current in the literature of the sixteenth century,[264] of Le Dieu de Pate, or Le Dieu de Farine. The pompous and complicated ceremonial, with its repetitions devoid of meaning for the illiterate spectator, is, on the whole, the favorite object of satire. In strict accordance with the spirit of the rough controversy of the times, little mercy is shown to religious antagonists. There is a good specimen of this style of treatment in an interesting song dating from about 1564, entitled "Noel nouveau de la description ou forme et maniere de dire la Messe, sur ce chant: Hari, bouriquet." Of the fifteen stanzas of which it is composed, two or three may serve as samples. The preliminary service over, the priest comes to the consecration of the wafer:

Un morceau de paste Il fait adorer; Le rompt de sa patte Pour le devorer, Le gourmand qu'il est. Hari, hari l'asne, le gourmand qu'il est, Hari bouriquet!

Le Dieu qu'il faict faire, La bouche le prend; Le coeur le digere, Le ventre le rend, Au fond du retrait! Hari, hari l'asne, au fond du retrait, Hari bouriquet!

Le peuple regarde L'yvrongne pinter Qui pourtant n'a garde De luy presenter A boire un seul traict. Hari, hari l'asne, a boire un seul traict, Hari bouriquet!

Acheve et despouille Tous ses drapeaux blancs, En sa bourse fouille Et y met six blancs. C'est de peur du frais. Hari, hari l'asne, c'est de peur du frais, Hari bouriquet!

A somewhat older song (written before 1555) purports to be the dirge of the Mass uttered by itself—Desolation de la Messe expirant en chantant. The Mass in perplexity knows not how to begin the customary service:

Spiritus, Salve, Requiem, Je ne scay si je diray bien. Quel Introite, n' Oremus Je prenne; Sancti, Agimus. Feray-je des Martyrs ou Vierges? De ventre ad te clamamus! Sonnez la, allumez ces cierges: Y a-t-il du pain et du vin?

Ou est le livre et le calice Pour faire l'office divin? Ca, cest autel, qu'on le tapisse! Helas, la piteuse police. Ame ne me vient secourir. Sans Chapelain, Moine, Novice, Me faudra-il ainsi perir?

Pope and cardinals are summoned in vain. No one comes, no one will bring reliquary or consecrated wafer. The Mass must finally resign all hope and die:

Helas chantant, brayant, virant, Tant que le crime romp et blesse Puis que voy tost l'ame expirant, Dites au moins adieu la Messe. A tous faisant mainte promesse Ore ai-je tout mon bien quitte Veu qu'a la mort tens et abaisse Ite Missa est; donc Ite, Ite Missa est.

The "chants de guerre" furnish a running commentary upon the military events of the last forty years of the sixteenth century, which is not devoid of interest or importance. The hopeful spirit characterizing the earlier ballads is not lost even in the latest; but the brilliant anticipations of a speedy triumph of the truth, found before the outbreak of the first civil war, or immediately thereafter, are lacking in other productions, dating from the close of the reign of Henry the Third. In a spirited song, presumably belonging to 1562, the poet, adopting the nickname of Huguenots given to the Protestants by their opponents, retaliates by applying an equally unwelcome term to the Roman Catholics, and forecasting the speedy overthrow of the papacy:

Vous appellez Huguenots Ceux qui Jesus veullent suivre, Et n'adorent vos marmots De boys, de pierre et de cuyvre. Hau, Hau, Papegots, Faictes place aux Huguenots.

Nostre Dieu renversera Vous et vostre loy romaine, Et du tout se mocquera De vostre entreprise vaine. Hau, Hau, Papegots, Faictes place aux Huguenots.

Vostre Antechrist tombera Hors de sa superbe place Et Christ partout regnera Et sa loy pleine de grace. Hau, Hau, Papegots, Faictes place aux Huguenots.

The current expectation of the Protestants is attested in a long narrative ballad by Antoine Du Plain on the siege of Lyons (1563), in which Charles the Ninth figures as another Josiah destined to abolish the idolatrous mass:

Ce Roy va chasser l'Idole Plain de dole Cognoissant un tel forfait: Selon la vertu Royale, Et loyale, Comme Iosias a fait.

It is noticeable that the words "va chasser l'Idole" are an anagram of the royal title Charles de Valois—an anagram which gave the Huguenots no little comfort. The same play upon words appears with a slight variation in a "Huictain au Peuple de Paris, sur l'anagrammatisme du nom du tres-Chrestien Roy de France, Charles de Valois IX. de ce nom" (Recueil des Choses Memorables, 1565, p. 367), of which the last line is,

"O Gentil Roy qui chassa leur idole."

But after the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day the hopes of the Huguenots were blighted. If the king is not referred to by name, his mother figures as the guilty cause of all the misfortune of France. She is a second Helen born for the ruin of her adopted country, according to Etienne de Maisonfleur.

Helene femme estrangere Fut la seule mesnagere Qui ruina Ilion, Et la reine Catherine Est de France la ruine Par l'Oracle de Leon.

"Leon" is Catharine's uncle, Pope Leo the Tenth, who was said to have predicted the total destruction of whatever house she should be married into. See also the famous libel "Discours merveilleux de la vie de Catherine de Medicis" (Ed. of Cologne, Pierre du Marteau, 1693), p. 609.

The massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day naturally contributes a considerable fund of laments, etc., to the Huguenot popular poetry of the century. A poem apparently belonging to a more remote date, discovered by Dr. Roullin, and perhaps the only Breton song of the kind that has come down to us, is as simple and unaffected a narrative as any of the modern Greek moerologia (Vaurigaud, Essaie sur l'hist. des eglises ref. de Bretagne, 1870, i. 6). It tells the story of a Huguenot girl betrayed to the executioner by her own mother. In spite of a few dialectic forms, the verses are easily understood.

Voulz-vous ouir l'histoire D'une fille d'espit Qui n'a pas voulu croire Chose que l'on lui dit.

—Sa mere dit: "Ma fille, A la messe allons donc!" —"Y aller a la messe, Ma mere, ce n'est qu'abus.

Apportez-moi mes livres Avec mes beaux saluts. J'aimerais mieux etre brulee Et vantee au grand vent

Que d'aller a la messe En faussant mon serment." —Quand sa tres-chere mere Eut entendu c' mot la,

Au bourreau de la ville Sa fille elle livra. "Bourreau, voila ma fille! Fais a tes volontes;

Bourreau, fais de ma fille Comme d'un meurtrier." Quand elle fut sur l'echelle, Trois rollons ja montee,

Elle voit sa mere Qui chaudement pleurait. "Ho! la cruelle mere Qui pleure son enfant

Apres l'avoir livree Dans les grands feux ardents. Vous est bien fait, ma mere, De me faire mourir.

Je vois Jesus, mon pere, Qui, de son beau royaume, Descend pour me querir. Son royaume sur terre Dans peu de temps viendra, Et cependant mon ame En paradis ira."

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The nuncio alone seems to have thought that the edict would work so well, that "in six months, or a year at farthest, there would not be a single Huguenot in France!" His ground of confidence was that many, if not most of the reformed, were influenced, not by zeal for religion, but by cupidity. Santa Croce to Card. Borromeo, Jan. 17, 1562, Aymon, i. 44; Cimber et Danjou, vi. 30.

[2] Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., i. 428, 429. The letter is followed by an examination of the edict, article by article, as affecting the Protestants. Ib. i. 429-431.

[3] Abbe Bruslart, Mem. de Conde. i. 70. Barbaro spoke the universal sentiment of the bigoted wing of the papal party when he described "the decree" as "full of concealed poison," as "the most powerful means of advancing the new religion," as "an edict so pestiferous and so poisonous, that it brought all the calamities that have since occurred." Tommaseo, Rel. des Amb. Ven., ii. 72.

[4] Claude Haton, 211. "Et longtemps depuis ne faisoient sermon qu'ilz Acab et Hiesabel et leurs persecutions ne fussent mis par eux en avant," etc. In fact, Catharine seemed fated to have her name linked to that of the infamous Queen of Israel. A Protestant poem, evidently of a date posterior to the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, is still extant in the National Library of Paris, in which the comparison of the two is drawn out at full length. The one was the ruin of Israel, the other of France. The one maintained idolatry, the other papacy. The one slew God's holy prophets, the other has slain a hundred thousand followers of the Gospel. Both have killed, in order to obtain the goods of their victims. But the unkindest verses are the last—even the very dogs will refuse to touch Catharine's "carrion."

"En fin le jugement fut tel Que les chiens mengent Jhesabel Par une vangeance divine; Mais la charongne de Catherine Sera differente en ce point, Car les chiens ne la vouldront point."

Appendix to Mem. de Claude Haton, ii. 1, 110.

[5] Ante, i. 477.

[6] Mem. de Claude Haton, 211, 212.

[7] Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., i. 431.

[8] Abbe Bruslart, Mem. de Conde. i. 70, 71.

[9] Declaration of Feb. 14, 1561/2, Du Mont, Corps diplomatique, v. 91, 92.

[10] And, indeed, with modifications which were to render it still more severe. Letter of Beza to Calvin, Feb. 26, 1562, Baum, ii., App., 167.

[11] The registry took place on Friday, March 6th. Isambert, xiv. 124; La Fosse, 45, who says "Ledict edict fut publie en la salle du palais en ung vendredy, 5e [6e] de ce moys, la ou il y eut bien peu de conseillers et le president Baillet qui signerent."

[12] The same prelate to whom Cardinal Lorraine doubtless referred in no complimentary terms, when, at the assembly of the clergy at Poissy, he said, "qu'il estoit contrainct de dire, Duodecim sumus, sed unus ex nobis Diabolus est, et passant plus outre, qu'il y avoit ung evesque de la compagnie ... qui avoit revele ce qui se faisoit en laditte assemblee," etc. Journal de Bruslart, Mem. de Conde, i. 50.

[13] See the document in Schlosser, Leben des Theodor de Beze, App., 359-361; Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., i. 436, 437.

[14] Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., i. 436-450; Baum, ii. 512-545. In connection with Prof. Baum's long and thorough account of the colloquy, Beza's correspondence, printed in the appendix, is unusually interesting.

[15] "Cardinalium intercessione ac precibus mox soluta sunt omnia." Beza to Bullinger, March 2, 1562. Baum, ii., App., 169.

[16] "Nihil hoc consilio gratius accidere potuit nostris adversariis quibus iste ludus minime placebat, adeo ut ipse Demochares ... pene sui oblitus in meos amplexus rueret, et ejus sodales honorifice me salutarent!" Beza to Calvin, Feb. 26, 1562, ibid., 165. The Venetian Barbaro represents this second conference as an extremely efficient means of spreading heresy: "La qual [in San Germano] apporto un grandissimo scandalo e pregiudizio alla religion nostra, e diede alla loro, reputazione e fomento maggiore." Rel. des Amb. Ven., ii. 74.

[17] Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., i. 432.

[18] "Qu'il ne s'y mettroit si avant qu'il ne s'en pust aisement tirer." Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ubi supra.

[19] See the frank letter of Calvin, written to him about this time, in Bonnet, Lettres franc., ii. 441; Calvin's Letters, Amer. ed., iv. 247.

[20] "That pestilent yle of Sardigna!" exclaimed Sir Thomas Smith, a clever diplomatist and a nervous writer, "that the pore crowne of it should enter so farre into the pore Navarrian hed (which, I durst warraunt, shall never ware it), [as to] make him destroy his owen countrey, and to forsake the truth knowen!" Forbes, State Papers, ii. 164.

[21] Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ubi supra; De Thou, iii. (liv. xxviii.), 96-99.

[22] Letter of Beza to Calvin, Feb. 1, 1562, Baum, ii., App., 163.

[23] Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., i. 433.

[24] Letter to Calvin, Feb. 26, 1562, apud Baum, ii., App., 167, 168.

[25] Ibid., ubi supra.

[26] Recordon, Le protestantisme en Champagne (Paris, 1863), from MSS. of Nicholas Pithou, p. 105. This learned jurist, the equal of his more celebrated brothers in ability, and their superior in moral courage, has left his testimony respecting the beneficent influence of the reformed doctrines upon his fellow-citizens: "A la verite la ville de Troyes en general fit une perte incroyable en la rupture de cette Eglise. Car c'etait une grande beaute et chose plus que emerveillable de la voir si bien fleurie. Il se voyoit en la jeunesse, touchee par la predication de la parole de Dieu, qui auparavant etait si depravee que rien plus, un changement si subit et si etrange que les catholiques memes en etoient tout etonnes. Car, tels qui au precedent se laissaient aller du tout a leurs voluptez et s'etaient plongez en gourmandises, yvrogneries et jeux defendus, tellement qu'ils y passaient la plus grande et meilleure partie du temps, et faisaient un fort mauvais menage, depuis qu'ils etaient entres dans l'Eglise quittaient du tout leur vie passee et la detestaient, se rangeant et se soumettant allegrement a la discipline ecclesiastique, ce qui etait si agreable aux parents de tels personnages, que, quoiqu'ils fussent catholiques, ils en louaient Dieu." Ibid., pp. 107, 108.

[27] "Nous avons esperance que non seulement la jeunesse d'icy se faconnera par la main d'un si excellent ouvrier qui nous est venu; mais que les chanoines mesmes de Sainte-Croix le viendront ouyr en ses lecons, ce qu'ils ont desja declare. De quoy sortiront des fruicts surmontant toute expectation." Gaberel, Hist. de l'egl. de Geneve, i., Pieces justificatives, 168.

[28] The archives of Stuttgart contain the instructive correspondence which the Duke of Guise had, ever since the previous summer, maintained with the Duke of Wuertemberg. From the letters published in the Bulletin of the French Protestant Historical Society (February and March, 1875), we see that Francois endeavored to alienate Christopher from the Huguenots by representing the latter as bitter enemies of the Augsburg Confession, and as speaking of it with undisguised contempt. (Letter of July 2, 1561, Bull., xxiv. 72.) Christopher made no reply to these statements, but urged his correspondent to a candid examination of religious truth, irrespective of age or prescription, reminding him (letter of Nov. 22, 1561) that our Lord Jesus Christ "did not say 'I am the ancient custom,' but 'I am the Truth.'" (Ibid., xxiv. 114.) And he added, sensibly enough, that, had the pagan ancestors of both the French and the Germans followed the rule of blind obedience to custom, they would certainly never have become Christians.

[29] Guise's original invitation was for Saturday, January 31st, but Christopher pleaded engagements, and named, instead, Sunday, Feb. 15th. (Ibid., xxiv. 116, 117.)

[30] The relation was first noticed and printed by Sattler, in his Geschichte von Wuertemberg unter den Herzoegen. I have used the French translation by M. A. Muntz, in the Bulletin, iv. (1856) 184-196.

[31] In a letter of Wuertemberg to Guise, written subsequently to the massacre of Vassy, he reminds him of the advice he had given him, and of Guise's assurances: "Vous savez aussi avec quelle asseurance vous m'avez respondu que l'on vous faisoit grand tort de ce que l'on vous vouloit imposer estre cause et autheur de la mort de tant de povres chrestiens qui ont espandu leur sang par ci-devant," etc. Memoires de Guise, 494.

[32] There are some characters with whom mendacity has become so essential a part of their nature, that we cease to wonder at any possible extreme of lying. It was, however, no new thing with the cardinal to assume immaculate innocence. Over two years before this time, at the beginning of the reign of Francis II., when bloody persecution was at its height, Sir Nicholas Throkmorton wrote to Queen Elizabeth, Sept. 10, 1559: "I am enformed that they here begin to persecute againe for religion more than ever they did; and that at Paris there are three or four executed for the same, and diverse greate personages threatened shortly to be called to answer for their religion. Wherin the Cardinal of Lorraine having bene spoken unto, within these two daies, hathe said, that it is not his faulte; and that there is no man that more hateth extremites, then he dothe; and yet it is knowne that it is, notwithstanding, alltogither by his occasion." Forbes, State Papers, i. 226, 227.

[33] Bulletin, iv. 196. De Thou's account of the Saverne conference (iii. (liv. xxix.) 127, 128) is pretty accurate so far as it goes, but has a more decidedly polemic tone than the Duke of Wuertemberg's memorandum.

[34] Throkmorton to the Queen, Paris, Feb. 16, 1562. State Paper Office. I have followed closely the condensation in the Calendars.

[35] Same to Cecil, of same date. State Paper Office.

[36] Discours entier de la persecution et cruaute exercee en la ville de Vassy, par le duc de Guise, le 1. de mars, 1562; reprinted in Memoires de Conde, iii. 124-149, and Cimber et Danjou, iv. 123-156. This lengthy Huguenot narrative enters into greater details respecting the early history of the church of Vassy than any of the other contemporary relations. The account bears every mark of candor and accurate information.

[37] "Que son cas estoit bien sale s'il eust este ministre."

[38] The "Destruction du Saccagement" has preserved the names of forty-five persons who died by Tuesday, March 3d; the "Discours entier" has a complete list of forty-eight that died within a month, and refers to others besides. A contemporary engraving is extant depicting in quaint but lively style the murderous affair. Montfaucon reproduces it. So does also M. Horace Gourjon in a pamphlet entitled "Le Massacre de Vassy" (Paris, 1844). He gives, in addition, an exterior view of the barn in which the Huguenots were worshipping.

[39] Besides a brief Latin memoir of minor importance, there were published two detailed accounts of the massacre written by Huguenots. The one is entitled "Destruction du Saccagement, exerce cruellement par le Duc de Guise et sa cohorte, en la ville de Vassy, le premier jour de Mars, 1561. A Caens. M.D.LXII.," and having for its epigraph the second verse of the 79th psalm in Marot's poetical version, "The dead bodies of thy servants have they given to be meat unto the fowls of the heaven, the flesh of thy saints unto the beasts of the earth." (The year 1562, it will be remembered, did not commence in France until Easter Sunday, March 29th.) The account seems to have been composed on the spot and within a very few days of the occurrence. This may be inferred from the list of those who died being given only up to Tuesday, March 3d. The other narrative: "Discours entier de la persecution et cruaute exercee en la ville de Vassy," etc., enters into much greater detail, and is preceded by a full account of the early history of the Church. It was written and published a little later in the spring of 1562. Both memoirs are reprinted in the invaluable Archives curieuses of Messrs. Cimber et Danjou, iv. 103-110, and 123-156, as well as in the Memoires de Conde, iii. 111-115, 124-149 (the former document with the title "Relation de l'occasion"), etc. Another contemporary account was written in Guise's interest, and contains a long extract of a letter of his to the Duke of Wuertemberg: "Discours au vray et en abbrege de ce qui est dernierement aduenu a Vassi, y passant Monseigneur le Duc de Guise. A Paris. M.D.LXII.... Par priuilege expres dudict Seigneur." (Cimber, iv. 111-122; Mem. de Conde, iii. 115-122). To these authorities must be added Guise's vindication in parliament (Cimber, iv. 157, etc., from Reg. of Parl.; Mem. de Guise, 488, etc.), and his letter and that of the Cardinal of Lorraine to Christopher of Wuertemberg, March 22 (Ib. 491, 492). Compare J. de Serres, De statu rel. et reip. (1571), ii. 13-17; De Thou, iii. 129, etc.; Jehan de la Fosse, 45. Davila, bk. iii. in init., is more accurate than Castelnau, iii., c. 7. Claude Haton's account (Memoires, i. 204-206) may be classed with the curiosities of literature. This veracious chronicler would have it that a crowd of Huguenots, with stones in their hands, and singing at the top of their voices, attempted to prevent the passage of the duke and his company through the outskirts of Vassy, where they were apparently worshipping in the open air! Of course they were the aggressors.

[40] And yet there is great force in M. Sismondi's observation (Hist. des Francais, xviii. 264): "Malgre leur assertion, il est difficile de ne pas croire qu'au moment ou ils se reunissoient en armes pour disputer aux protestans l'exercise public de leur culte que leur accordoit l'edit de janvier, c'etoit un coup premedite que l'attaque du duc de Guise contre une congregation de huguenots, composee, a ce qu'il assure, en partie de ses vassaux, et qui se trouvoit la premiere sur son passage a peu de distance de ses terres."

[41] It is extremely unfortunate that Mr. Froude should have based his account of French affairs at this important point upon so inaccurate and prejudiced a writer as Varillas. To be correct in his delineation of these transactions was almost as important for his object, as to be correct in the narration of purely English occurrences. If he desired to avoid the labor, from which he might well wish to be excused, of mastering the great accumulation of contemporary and original French authorities, he might have resorted with propriety, as he has done in the case of the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day, to Henri Martin's noble history, or to the history of Sismondi, not to speak of Soldan, Von Polenz, and a host of others. Varillas wrote, about a century after the events he described, a number of works of slender literary, and still slighter historical value. His "Histoire de Charles IX." (Cologne, 1686)—the work which Mr. Froude has but too often followed—begins with an adulatory dedication to Louis XIV., the first sentence of which sufficiently reveals the author's prepossessions: "Sire, it is impossible to write the history of Charles IX. without beginning the panegyric of your Majesty." No wonder that Mr. Froude's account of the massacre of Vassy (History of England, vii. 401, 402), derived solely from this source (Hist. de Charles IX., i. 126, etc.), is as favorable to Guise as his most devoted partisan could have desired. But where in the world—even in Varillas—did the English historian ever find authority for the statement (vii. 402) that, in consequence of the necessity felt by Guise for temporizing, a little later "the affair at Vassy was censured in a public decree"? To have allowed that would have been for Guise to admit that he was guilty of murder, and that his enemies had not slandered him when they styled him a "butcher of the human race." The duke never did make such an acknowledgment; on the contrary, he asseverated his innocence in his last breath. What was really done on the occasion referred to was to try to shift the responsibility of the war from the shoulders of the papists to those of the Huguenots, by pretending to re-enact the edict of January with restrictions as to the capital.

[42] Jean de Serres, ii. 17, 18; De Thou, iii. 132, 133.

[43] "Sire, c'est a la verite a l'Eglise de Dieu, au nom de laquelle je parle, d'endurer les coups, et non pas d'en donner. Mais aussi vous plaira-t-il vous souvenir que c'est une enclume qui a use beaucoup de marteaux." Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 1, 2; Pierre de Lestoile, Journal de Henri III. (ed. Petitot), i. 55; De Thou, iii. 132, 133.

[44] Journal de Jehan de la Fosse, 45, 46; Santa Croce to Borromeo, Aymon, i. 96, 97; Jean de Serres, ii. 18; Chantonnay, ubi supra, ii. 27; Hist, eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 2, 3; Throkmorton to the Queen, March 20th, State Paper Office; De Thou, iii. 133; etc. The date was the 15th of March, according to La Fosse; the 16th, according to Languet (ii. 212) and Throkmorton; the 18th, according to Santa Croce; the 20th, according to J. de Serres. I prefer to all the authority of a letter of one Chastaigner, written from Paris to a friend in Poitou on the very day of Guise's entry. It is dated March 17th. "Quant aux nouvelles de Monsieur de Guyse, il est arrive ce soir en ceste ville, Monsieur le connestable et Monsieur le marechal de Saint-Andre avec luy, et en tout avoient bien deux mil chevaulx, les ungs disent plus." (Archives of Poitiers, and printed in Bulletin, xiii. (1864), 15, 16.)

[45] This was not by accident. It had been planned by Conde, to show that the Huguenots were brave and determined, and it succeeded so well that it not only made an impression on the party of Guise, but also largely augmented the courage of his own men. Letter of Beza to Calvin, March 22, 1562, apud Baum, ii., App., 171. Conde had returned to Paris by the urgent request of the Protestants. Jean de Serres, ii. 19.

[46] Letter of Chastaigner, ubi supra.

[47] Throkmorton to the queen, March 6th, State Paper Office.

[48] "The King of Navarre was never so earnest on the Protestant side as he is now furious on the papists' part, insomuch as men suspect he will become a persecutor." Throkmorton to Cecil, March 9th, State Paper Office. Summary in Calendar.

[49] Throkmorton to the queen, March 6, 1562, State Paper Office.

[50] The same to Cecil, same date, State Paper Office.

[51] "Whilst these assemblies were in the town, the queen mother conceived great jealousy (the King of Navarre being allied to the said duke [Guise]), lest she should be put from the government and the king taken from her hands, to prevent which she left Monceaux, her own house, for Orleans, thinking they were secure there, because the Prince of Rochesurion (being governor of the king's person and also of Orleans) was not conjoined with the King of Navarre, the Duke of Guise, and the constable, in their purposes. The King of Navarre, perceiving this, would not consent to the king going to Orleans, and, after great disputes betwixt the queen mother and him, she, with the king, were constrained to reside all this Easter at Fontainebleau." Throkmorton to the queen, March, 20, 1562, State Paper Office, Summary in Calendar.

[52] "Combien que le Chancelier luy dict, qu'il n'y esperoit plus rien, qu'elle n'avoit point de resolution, qu'il la congnoissoit bien." Memoires de la vie de Jehan l'Archevesque, Sieur de Soubise, printed from the hitherto unknown MS. in the Bulletin, xxiii. (1874), 458, 459.

[53] Four of the seven letters that constituted the whole correspondence are printed in the Mem. de Conde, iii. 213-215. Jean de Serres gives two of them in his Comment. de statu rel. et reip., ii. 38, 39. They were laid by Conde's envoy before the princes of Germany, as evidence that he had not taken up arms without the best warrant, and that he could not in any way be regarded as a rebel. They contain no allusion to any promise to lay down his arms so soon as she sent him word—the pretext with which she strove at a later time to palliate, in the eyes of the papal party at home and abroad, a rather awkward step. The cure of Meriot, while admitting the genuineness of the letters, observes: "La cautelle et malice de la dame estoit si grande, qu'elle se delectoit de mettre les princes en division et hayne les ungs contre les aultres, affin qu'elle regnast et qu'elle demeurast gouvernante seulle de son filz et du royaume." Mem. de Cl. Haton, i. 269. The queen mother's exculpatory statements may be examined in Le Laboureur, Add. aux Mem. de Castelnau, i. 763, 764.

[54] Bruslart, in Mem. de Conde, i. 75, 76; J. de Serres, ii. 20; La Fosse, 46; De Thou, iii. 134. The date is variously given—March 17th or 18th.

[55] J. de Serres, ii. 21; De Thou, ubi supra; the Prince of Conde's declaration of the causes which have constrained him to undertake the defence of the royal authority, etc., ap. Mem. de Conde, iii. 222, etc.; same in Latin in J. de Serres, ii. 46.

[56] Throkmorton to the queen, March 20, State Paper Office.

[57] March 23d. "Ce meme jour (lundi xxiii.) le Prince de Conde s'en partit de Paris pour s'en aller a une sienne maison, combien qu'il avoit dict qu'il ne bougeroit de Paris que M. de Guise ne s'en fut parti." Journal anonyme de l'an 1562, ap. Baum, iii. App., 175, note.

[58] Letter of March 28th, Baum, ii., App., 175, 176.

[59] Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 3.

[60] Letter to Fonssomme, OEuvres choisies, ii. 248.

[61] One of the latest exploits of the populace was the disinterring of a Huguenot buried in the cemetery of the Holy Innocents, and throwing his body into a public sewer! March 15th, Journal de Jehan de la Fosse, 45.

[62] "Je cuide que si les novices des couvens et les chambrieres des prestres seulement se fussent presentez a l'impourveue avec des bastons de cotterets (cotrets) es mains, que cela leur eust fait tenir bride." Mem. de la Noue, c. ii.

[63] Circular letter dated Paris, March 25th, apud Baum, ii., App., 172.

[64] Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 132, 133 (liv. iii., c. 2). This striking incident rests on the sole authority of Agrippa d'Aubigne, who claims to have learned it "de ceux qui estoient de la partie." Hotman, who wrote his Gasparis Colinii Vita (1575) at the earnest request of the admiral's second wife, makes no allusion to a story throwing so much lustre upon the first.

[65] Throkmorton to the queen, April 10, 1562, State Paper Office.

[66] "Ou il faut que venez avec nous, ou nous emmenerons le Roy sans vous." Letter of Conde to the Emperor Ferdinand, April 20th, Mem. de Conde, iii. 305, etc.

[67] "Alors Leurs Majestez, ne pouvant mieux, eurent recours a quelques larmes." Mem. de Castelnau, liv. iii., c. 8.

[68] "Le Roy enfant de bonne nature et grande esperance, tesmoignoit non seulement par paroles, mais aussi avec abondance de larmes, extreme dueil et tristesse; et souventefois s'escriant, deploroit sa condition par telles paroles: 'Pourquoy ne me laissez-vous? Pour quelle raison me voy-je circuy et environne de gens armez? Pourquoy contre ma volonte me tirez-vous du lieu ou je prenoye mon plaisir? Pourquoy deschirez-vous ainsi mon estat en ce mien aage?'" Letter of Conde, ubi supra, iii. 306.

[69] Charles the Ninth's entry into Paris was a sorry pageant compared with that of Guise only a few weeks earlier. "Only the merchants and a few counsellors of the city were present," says Jehan de la Fosse (p. 47). The king rode between the queen mother and the King of Navarre. According to Chamberlain, it was a sober, but not a solemn entry (C. to Chaloner, April 7, 1562, State Paper Office). Either when Guise returned to Paris from Fontainebleau, or on his previous entry into the city—it is difficult from Claude Haton's confused narrative to determine which was intended—the people sang: "Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord." Memoires, i. 245.

[70] The singular name of this building is explained by the sign that hung before it. "Apvril. En ung samedy. M. Anne de Montmorenssy, connetable de France, fut devant brasque en la maison ou pendoit pour enseigne la ville de Jerusalem, ou preschoient les huguenots, et fist mettre le feu dedans la maison." Journal de J. de la Fosse, 46.

[71] La Fosse, ubi supra; J. de Serres, ii. 27; Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 8; De Thou, iii. 136, 137; Bruslart, Mem. de Conde, i. 80; Santa Croce to Borromeo, April 5 (Aymon, i. 125); Throkmorton to the queen, ubi supra.

[72] Santa Croce to Borromeo, April 5th, Aymon, i. 126, and Cimber et Danjou, vi. 74.

[73] Chantonnay, ubi supra, ii. 32.

[74] Journal de Jehan de la Fosse, 46. The "Porte St. Honore," before which the Huguenots, after passing north of the city, presented themselves (Bruslart, Mem. de Conde, i. 78), was in Francis I.'s time near the present "Palais Royal," in the time of Louis XIII. near the "Madeleine." See the map in Dulaure, Histoire de Paris.

[75] Mem de la Noue, c. i. The letter of Beza to Calvin from Meaux, March 28, 1562, shows, however, that even before the prince left that city it was known that the triumvirs had set out for Fontainebleau. Beza, not apparently without good reason, blamed the improvidence of Conde in not forestalling the enemy. "Hostes, relicto in urbe non magno praesidio, in aulam abierunt quod difficile non erat et prospicere et impedire. Sed aliter visum est certis de causis, quas tamen nec satis intelligo nec probo." Baum, ii., App., 176.

[76] Yet, if we may credit the unambiguous testimony of Jean de Tavannes, Catharine did not cease to endeavor to favor the Huguenots. He assures us that, a few months later, during the summer, his father, Gaspard de Tavannes, intercepted at Chalons a messenger whom Catharine had despatched to her daughter the Duchess of Savoy ("qui agreoit ces nouvelles opinions") ostensibly as a lute-player. Among his effects the prying governor of Burgundy found letters signed by the queen mother, containing some rather surprising suggestions. "La Royne luy escrivoit qu'elle estoit resolue de favoriser les Huguenots, d'ou elle esperoit son salut contre le gouvernement du triumvirat ... qu'elle soupconnoit vouloir oster la couronne a ses enfans; et prioit madame de Savoye d'aider lesdits Huguenots de Lyon, Dauphine et Provence, et qu'elle persuadast son mary d'empescher les Suisses et levee d'Italie des Catholiques." Mem. de Tavannes (Petitot ed.), ii. 341, 342. Tavannes did not dare to detain the messenger, nor to take away his letters; and if, as his son asserts, the enmity of Catharine, which the discovery of her secret gained for him, delayed his acquisition of the marshal's baton for ten years, he certainly had some reason to remember and regret his ill-timed curiosity.

[77] Mem. de la Noue, c. iii.; De Thou, iii. 138; Letter of Beza, of April 5th, Baum, ii., App., 177; Jean de Serres, ii. 24, 25; Bruslart, Mem. de Conde, i. 79. Chamberlain (to Chaloner, April 7, 1562), who on his way from Orleans met the first detachment within a mile of that city—"a thousand handsome gentlemen, well mounted, each having two or three daggs, galloping towards him." State Paper Office.

[78] Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 7.

[79] April 7th. Mem. de Conde, iii. 221; Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii., 9; J. de Serres, ii. 58, 59; De Thou, iii. 139. The historian of the reformed churches, as well as Beza in his letter of March 28th (Baum, ii., App., 176), complains bitterly of the slowness and parsimony of the Parisian Protestants, who seemed to be unable to understand that war was actually upon them.

[80] April 8th. "Declaration faicte par M. le prince de Conde, pour monstrer les raisons qui l'ont contraint d'entreprendre la defence de l'authorite du Roy," etc. Mem. de Conde, iii. 222-235; Jean de Serres, ii. 42-57; Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 9, 10; De Thou, iii. 139-141.

[81] Traicte d'association, etc., April 11th. Mem. de Conde, iii. 258-262; J. Serres, ii. 31-37; De Thou, iii. 141.

[82] See Pasquier's letter to Fonssomme, already referred to, which contains a vivid picture of the confusion reigning in Paris, the surprise of the papal party, and the delight of the untrained populace at the prospect of war. OEuvres (ed. Feugere), ii. 246-250.

[83] Mem. de Castelnau, liv. iii., c. 8.

[84] Ibid., liv. iii., c. 9.

[85] Even so late as May 8, 1562, the English minister resident at the court, than whom probably no other person in France felt obliged to keep himself better informed, wrote to Cecil respecting the Prince of Conde's strength: "I can assur you att thys dyspatche he ys the strongest partie, and in suche state his matter standeth, that these men [the court] wold fayne have a reasonable end, thoughe yt were with some dishonnour." MSS. State Paper Office, Duc d'Aumale, Princes de Conde, Pieces justif., i. 370.

[86] It is strange that a historian at once so conscientious and generally so well-informed as M. Rosseeuw Saint-Hilaire should, in his Histoire d'Espagne, ix. 60, 61, have made the grave mistake of holding Calvin responsible for the excesses of the iconoclasts. See the Bulletin, xiv. 127, etc., for a complete refutation.

[87] Like the undeceived dupe in the old Athenian comedy, who mournfully laments that he had been led to worship a bit of earthenware as a god:

Oimoi deilaios, Hote kai se chutreoun onta theon hegesamen. (ARISTOPHANES, CLOUDS, 1473, 1474.)

On the other hand, the zealous Roman Catholic had his arguments for the preservation and worship of images, some of which may strike us as sufficiently whimsical. "I confess," says one, "that God has forbidden idols and idolatry, but He has not forbidden the images (or pictures) which we hold for the veneration of the saints. For if that were so, He would not have left us the effigy of his holy face painted in His likeness, on the cloth which that good lady Veronica presented Him, which yet to-day is looked upon with so much devotion in the church of St. Peter at Rome, nor the impression of His holy body represented in the 'saint suaire' which is at Chambery. Is it not found that Saint Luke thrice made with his own hand the portrait of Our Lady?... That holy evangelist ought certainly to have known the will of his Lord and Master better than you, my opponent, who wish to interpret the Scripture according to your sensuality." Discours des Guerres de Provence (Arch. curieuses, iv. 501, 502). Of course, the author never dreamed that his facts might possibly be disputed.

[88] Les Recherches et Antiquitez de la ville de Caen, par Charles de Bourgueville, sieur du lieu, de Bras, et de Brucourt. A Caen, 1588. Pt. ii. 170-172. From page 76 onward the author gives us a record of notable events in his own lifetime. So also at Clery, it is to be regretted that, not content with greatly injuring the famous church of Our Lady, the Huguenot populace, inflamed by the indiscretion of the priests, desecrated the monuments of the brave Dunois, and of Louis the Eleventh and his queen. Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 23. According to the author of the "Horribles cruautes des Huguenots en France" (Cimber et Danjou, vi. 304), they even burned the bones of Louis; nor did they respect those of the ancestors of the Prince of Conde.

[89] "Monsieur, ayez patience que j'aie abattu cette idole, et puis que je meure, s'il vous plait."

[90] "Comme etant ce fait plutot oeuvre de Dieu que des hommes." Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 20. "L'impetuosite des peuples etait telle contre les images, qu'il n'etait possible aux hommes d'y resister." Ibid. ii. 23.

[91] Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 20-22.

[92] "Ledict moys," says Jehan de la Fosse in his journal (p. 47), "des citoyens de Sens tuerent beaucoup de huguenots, voyant que monsieur le connetable avoict faict bruler Popincourt."

[93] Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 242-245; Jean de Serres, ii. 40; De Thou, iii. 144. The massacre commenced on Sunday, April 12th (not 14th, as the Hist. eccles. states), and was continued the next day or two. According to De Serres, the horrors of Sens seemed to efface those of Vassy itself. Read the really terrible paragraph on the subject in the contemporary "Remonstrance au Roy sur le faict des Idoles abbatues et dejettees hors des Temples" (Mem. de Conde, iii. 355-364), beginning "Ou sont les meurtres, les boucheries des hommes passes au fil de l'espee, par l'espace de neuf jours en la ville de Sens?" The address to the Cardinal of Guise is not less severe than the address to his brother in the famous "Tigre": "Te suffisoit-il pas, Cardinal, que le monde sceust que tu es Atheiste, Magicien, Necromantien, sans le publier davantage, et faire ouvrir en pleine rue les femmes grosses pour voir le siege de leurs enfans?" P. 360. White (Mass. of St. Bartholomew, 200) confounds in his account the two brother cardinals, and makes Lorraine to have been Archbishop of Sens.