[Sidenote: Character of Anne de Montmorency.]

The battle of Saint Denis was indecisive, and the victory was claimed by both sides. The losses of the Huguenots and the Roman Catholics were about equal—between three and four hundred men—although the number of distinguished Huguenot noblemen killed exceeded that of the slain belonging to the same rank in the royal army. If the possession of the field at the end of the day, and the relief of Paris, be taken as sufficient evidence, the honor of success belonged to the Roman Catholic army. But the loss of their chief commander far more than counterbalanced any advantage they may have gained. Not that Anne de Montmorency was a general of remarkable abilities. Although he had been present in a large number of important engagements ever since the reign of Louis the Twelfth, and had proved himself a brave man in all, he was by no means a successful military leader. The late Duke of Guise had eclipsed his glory, and in a much briefer career had exhibited much more striking tactical skill. The battle of Saint Denis, it was alleged by many, had itself been marred by his clumsy disposition of his troops. Proud and overbearing in his deportment, he alienated even those with whom his warm attachment to the Roman Catholic Church ought to have made him popular. Catharine de' Medici, we have seen, had long been his enemy. In like manner, even the bigoted populace of Paris forgot the pious exploits that had earned him the surname of "le Capitaine Brulebanc," and remembered only his suspicious relationship to Cardinal Chatillon, Admiral Coligny, and D'Andelot, those three intrepid brothers whose uncompromising morality and unswerving devotion to their religious convictions made them, even more than the Prince of Conde, true representatives of the dreaded Huguenot party.[464]

But the loss of the principal general at this important juncture in military affairs dealt a severe blow to the Roman Catholic cause. There was no other leader of sufficient prominence to put forth an indisputable claim to succeed him. Catharine, not sorry to be relieved of so formidable a rival, was resolved that he should have no troublesome successor. Accordingly she induced the king to leave the office of constable vacant, and to confer upon her second surviving son, Henry, Duke of Anjou, whose unscrupulous character had already made him her favorite, the supreme command of the army, with the less ambitious title of royal lieutenant-general.[465]

The death of the constable, who survived his wound only a single day, and the subsequent divisions of the court, furnished the Prince of Conde with an immunity from attack, of which, in view of his great inferiority in number of troops, he deemed it most prudent to take advantage by promptly retiring from his exposed position. Besides this, he had now an imperative summons to the eastern frontier of the kingdom.

[Sidenote: The Protestant princes of Germany determine to aid the Huguenots.]

At the very commencement of the war the Protestants had sent a deputation to the German princes to solicit their support in a struggle in which the adherents of the Augsburg Confession were no less vitally interested than the reformed. But Bochetel, Bishop of Rennes, the envoy of Charles the Ninth, had so skilfully misrepresented the true character of the contest, that the Landgrave of Hesse, and the Electors of Saxony and Brandenburg, persuaded that political motives, rather than zeal for religion, were the occasion of the revolt, had refused to assist the Huguenots, while permitting William of Saxony and the Marquis of Baden to levy troops for the king. To the Elector Palatine, Frederick the Third, surnamed "the Pious," who from a Lutheran had become a Calvinist, a special ambassador was despatched in the person of M. de Lansac. This gentleman, by more than usually reckless misstatements, sought to persuade the elector to abandon the enterprise of assistance which he had intended to intrust to his second son, John Casimir. But his falsehoods were refuted by the straightforward expose of the prince's agents,[466] and Lansac was only so far successful that the elector consented to delay the departure of the troops until he had sent a messenger to France to acquaint himself with the true state of the case. It needed no more than this to determine him; for the minister whom the elector had intrusted with the commission, after visiting successively the court of the king and the camp of the prince of Conde, returned with certain proofs that the representations of Bochetel and of Lansac were altogether false.[467] Consequently the army which John Casimir had gathered was speedily despatched to furnish Conde the support the Huguenots so much needed.

In the letter which the elector palatine sent about the same time to the King of France, the motives of this apparently inimical action are vividly set forth. His envoy, the Councillor Zuleger, says the elector, has made a careful examination. Lansac and his companion have industriously circulated throughout Germany the report that the Edict of Toleration is kept entire, that Conde and the Protestants have no other object in view but a horrible rebellion against Charles to deprive him of his crown, and that the prince has had money struck as if he were king himself.[468] But Zuleger has, on the contrary, reported that when, in the presence of the royal council, he asked for proofs of Conde's intention to make himself king, Catharine de' Medici replied that it was a "mockery," and that, though Conde had struck money, both in the late and in the present troubles, it was with the king's inscription and arms, and not as though he were himself king. So far from that, Zuleger declares that, during the eleven days of his stay in the prince's camp, he heard prayers offered morning and night for the preservation of the state and for the king's safety. As to the maintenance of the edict, the constable before his death openly affirmed that Charles would not permit a free exercise of religion, and never intended the Edict of Orleans to be other than provisional. Indeed, the queen-mother remarked to Zuleger that it is a privilege of the French monarchs never to make a perpetual edict; to which Charles, who was present, promptly responded, "Pourquoi non?"[469]

It was to form a junction with the force brought by John Casimir that the prince now raised the siege of Paris, two or three days subsequently to the battle of Saint Denis,[470] and after that D'Andelot, disappointed in having had no share in the engagement, had scoured the field, driving back into Paris an advanced guard of the enemy, and burning, by way of bravado, some windmills in the very suburbs.[471]

[Sidenote: The Huguenots go to meet the Germans.]

[Sidenote: Treacherous diplomacy.]

The purpose of the Huguenot leaders could not be mistaken, and Catharine was determined to frustrate it. The chief object at which all her intrigues now aimed was to delay the Protestant army in its march toward Lorraine, until the Duke of Anjou, at the head of a force which was daily gaining new accessions of strength from the provinces, should be able to overtake Conde and bring on a general and decisive action. From Saint Denis the Huguenots had first followed the course of the upper Seine to Montereau. Crossing the stream at this point, Coligny, as usual commanding the vanguard, had, at Pont-sur-Yonne, received a powerful detachment, under the Count of La Rochefoucauld, which had made its way from the provinces of Poitou, Saintonge, and Guyenne, across the valley of the Loire, to reinforce the Prince of Conde's army.[472] Having effected a junction, the united body had changed its course, recrossed the Seine, and countermarched to the river Marne, at Epernay and Chalons. Coligny's skilful manoeuvre had disappointed the queen's plan, and she resorted to her accustomed arts of negotiation. So flattering, indeed, were her promises, that Conde, had he not been restrained by the more prudent counsels of his associates (among whom the Vidame of Chartres was most urgent in his protests against so suicidal a policy), would instantly have relaxed the sinews of war.[473] A petty act of treachery served to open his eyes, and to prevent the Protestants from involving themselves in more serious disaster; for the Count de Brissac took advantage of a three days' armistice to fall unexpectedly upon an outpost of the prince's army and gain an advantage, which was duly magnified by report at Paris into a brilliant victory.[474] Unabashed by this incident, Catharine soon after renewed her seductive offers (on the twentieth of December, 1567). She invited a conference with the Cardinal of Chatillon and other Protestant leaders, and herself went so far as Chalons to meet them. Thence the scene of the negotiations was transferred to Vincennes, in the vicinity of Paris, and for a time the prospect of reconciliation was bright and encouraging. The king's envoys consented to the re-establishment of the Edict of Amboise, without any past or future restrictions, until the decision of the religious question by that mythical assembly which, like a mirage of the desert, ever and anon arose to entrance and disappoint the longing eyes of thoughtful men in this century—a free, universal, and legitimate council of the Church. But the hopes founded on these promises were as illusory as any previously conceived. Instead of a formal and unambiguous ratification of the terms by Charles himself, the Cardinal of Chatillon was treated only to complaints about the causeless rising of the Protestants, and expressions of astonishment that Conde had not instantly countermanded the approach of the German auxiliaries on receiving the king's gracious proffers.[475]

[Sidenote: Catharine implores Alva's assistance.]

[Sidenote: Alva's view of accommodations with heretics.]

Meantime Catharine was not idle in soliciting foreign aid. The Duke d'Aumale—who had also marched to Lorraine, in order to meet the Germans coming to the assistance of the Roman Catholics, under command of the Marquis of Baden—not being strong enough to block the passage of Conde's troops, Catharine wrote to Alva, begging him to send to the duke, in this emergency, two thousand arquebusiers. She warned him that if, through the failure to procure them, the German reiters of John Casimir should be permitted to enter the kingdom, she would hold herself exonerated, in the sight of God and of all Christian princes, from the blame that might otherwise attach to her for the peace which she would be compelled to make with the heretics.[476] Alva, in reply, declined to send the Spanish arquebusiers, who, he said, were needed by him, and could do little good in France; but he added that, if Aumale, who was a soldier, would guarantee with this accession to stop the reiters, he would let them go, useful as they were in the Netherlands. As to the accommodation with the Huguenots, which Catharine suggested, he viewed it as a frightful evil, and exclaimed "that it was better to have a kingdom ruined in preserving it for God and the king, than to retain it whole, but without religion, for the advantage of the devil and his partisans, the heretics."[477]

[Sidenote: Conde and John Casimir meet in Lorraine.]

[Sidenote: Generosity of the Huguenot troops.]

About the beginning of the new year the foot-sore Huguenot army, after nearly two months of tedious marches through a hostile country, and no less tedious negotiations, reached Lorraine, only to find that their German allies had not yet arrived. Sick at heart, with a powerful enemy hanging on their rear, and seeking only an opportunity to make a sudden descent upon them, many of the Huguenots were disposed to take advantage of the proximity of the German cities to disperse and find a refuge there. But Conde, with his never-failing vivacity and cheerfulness, and Coligny, with his "grave words," succeeded in checking their despondency until the welcome news of John Casimir's approach was announced. He brought six thousand five hundred horse, three thousand foot, and four cannon of moderate size. His arrival did not, however, prove an occasion of unmingled satisfaction. The reiters, serving from purely mercenary motives, demanded the immediate payment of one hundred thousand crowns, promised as a first instalment on account of their wages, and were resolved to go no farther without receiving it. The Prince of Conde had but two thousand crowns to meet the engagement. In this new perplexity the Huguenots, from the leaders down to the very lowest, gave a noble illustration of devotion to their religion's cause. Conde and Coligny set the example by giving up their plate to replenish the empty coffers of the army. The captains urged, the ministers of the gospel preached, a generous sacrifice of property in the common interest. Their exhortations did not fall upon dull ears. Money, gold chains, silver, articles of every description, were lavishly contributed. An unpaid army sacrificed its own private property, not only without a murmur, but even joyfully. The very camp-servants vied with their masters, and put them to shame by their superior liberality.[478] In a short time a sum was raised which, although less than what had been pledged, contented the reiters, who declared themselves ready to follow their Huguenot fellow-soldiers into the heart of the kingdom.[479] Well might an army capable of such heroic contempt for personal gain or loss be deemed invincible!

[Sidenote: The march toward Orleans.]

And now, with feelings widely different from those which had possessed them in the journey toward Lorraine—a movement too nearly akin to a flight to inspire anything but disgust—the Huguenot soldiers, over twenty thousand strong, turned their faces once more westward. Their late pursuers, no longer seeking an engagement where the result might be worse than doubtful, confined themselves to watching their progress from a safe distance. As all the cities upon their route were in the hands of the Roman Catholics, the Huguenots were forced to take more circuitous and difficult paths through the open country. But the dispositions made by Coligny are said to have been so thorough and masterly, that they travelled safely and in comfort.[480] Not that the soldiers, dispersed at night through the villages, were freed from the necessity or the temptation to pillage;[481] for the poor farmers, robbed of the fruits of their honest toil, frequently had good reason to complain that those who had recently dispensed their own treasure with so liberal a hand were even more lavish of the property of others. But they were far more merciful and considerate toward their enemies than the Roman Catholic army to its friends. Even a curate of Brie—no very great lover of the Huguenots, who relates with infinite gusto the violation of Huguenot women by Anjou's soldiers[482]—admits that, excepting in the matter of the plundering of the churches and the distressing of priests, the Roman Catholics were a little worse than the heretics.[483]

[Sidenote: The "Michelade" at Nismes.]

Leaving the Huguenot army on its march toward Orleans, let us glance at the operations of the party in other quarters of the kingdom. Southern France, where the Protestants were most numerous, and where the excitable character of the people disposed them more easily than elsewhere to sudden outbreaks, was not behind the north in rising at the appointed time (September, 1567). At Nismes, indeed, a furious commotion broke out—the famous "Michelade," as it was called, because it immediately followed the feast-day of St. Michael—a commotion whose sanguinary excesses gave it an unenviable notoriety, and brought deep disgrace upon the Protestant cause. Here the turbulent populace was encouraged by the report that Lyons was in friendly hands, and maddened by the intelligence that, besides the common dangers impending over all the Huguenots of France, the Huguenots of Nismes had more particular occasion for fear in the troops of the neighboring Comtat Venaissin. These troops, it was said, had been summoned by the bishop and chapter of the cathedral of Nismes. The mob accordingly took possession of the city, closing the gates, and imprisoning a large number of persons—consuls, priests, and other obnoxious characters. That night the cathedral and the chapter-house witnessed a wild scene of destruction. Pictures of the saints, and altars, including everything associated with Roman Catholic worship, were ruthlessly destroyed. But the most terrible event occurred in the episcopal palace. The bishop was saved from capture and certain death by the intervention of a courageous man, himself a Protestant; but others were less fortunate. No fewer than eighty prisoners, brought in detachments to the court of the palace, were butchered in rapid succession, and their corpses thrown promiscuously into a well. The next morning the Protestant pastors and elders assembled, and, sending to the ringleaders a minister and a deacon, begged them to discontinue their horrible work. Already, however, had returning shame made everybody unwilling to avow his complicity in the crime. Quiet was restored. The Protestant seneschal and council released such prisoners as had escaped the fate of their comrades, and the bishop himself was sent away under an escort to a place of safety, by order of the very judge whom the clergy had, a year before, sought to deprive of his office as a heretic.[484] Nismes remained in the hands of the Protestants through the war.

[Sidenote: Huguenot successes in the south and west.]

[Sidenote: La Rochelle secured for Conde.]

Meanwhile more important movements took place. Rene of Savoy, son of the Count de Tende, but better known as Cipierre, was Conde's agent in assembling the Huguenots of Provence; but Paul de Mouvans, whom we have met with before in this history, was the real hero of the region. In Dauphiny, Montbrun commanded. In Bourbonnais and the neighboring provinces west of the Rhone, Parcenac and Verbelai raised three thousand foot and five hundred horse, but sustained so severe a loss while passing through Forez, that the number was soon reduced to barely twelve hundred. Nearer the Pyrenees, seven thousand men were assembled, known as "the army of the viscounts," to which further reference will shortly be made. Lyons, one of the Huguenot strongholds in the first war, the Protestants failed to capture.[485] But Orleans was secured by the skill of Francois de la Noue, a young champion whose name was destined long to figure in the most brilliant deeds of arms of his party, both in France and in the Low Countries.[486] In the west, too, the Huguenots made the most important gain of the war in the city of La Rochelle, for the next half-century and more their secure refuge on approach of danger.

This place, strong by nature, surrounded by low, marshy grounds, rendering it almost unapproachable from the land side, save by the causeways over which the roads ran, with a large and convenient harbor and with easy access to the sea, was already rich and populous. The citizens of La Rochelle were noted for their independent spirit, engendered or fostered by their maritime habits. Although the great importance of the city dates from the civil wars, when its wharves received the commerce driven from older ports, and when its privateers swept the shores of Brittany and the bosom of the English channel, it had long boasted extraordinary privileges, among which the most highly prized was the right to refuse admission to a royal garrison.[487] Besides this, the citizens were accustomed to choose three candidates for the office of major, from whom the king or the royal governor made his selection; and the magistrate thus appointed enjoyed an authority which the Rochellois would scarcely concede to their monarch.[488] La Rochelle—whose former orthodoxy Father Soulier attempts to establish by instancing the sentence which the "presidial" of the city pronounced in 1552 against some Protestants, condemning them to be dragged on a hurdle with a fagot of sticks bound to their backs, and afterward to be burned, one of them alive[489]—had been so far affected by the progress of the Reformation, that it was perhaps only the fear of losing its trade and privileges that prevented it from openly siding with Conde in the first religious war.[490] By this time, however, Protestantism had struck such deep roots, that one of the three candidates for the mayoralty, at the Easter elections of 1567, was Truchares, a political Huguenot. The king was, indeed, warned of his sentiments; but the royal governor, M. de Jarnac, supported his claims, and Truchares received the requisite confirmation.[491] Still La Rochelle hesitated to espouse the Protestant side. It was not until midwinter,[492] that Conde, returning from Lorraine, commissioned M. de Sainte-Hermine to assume command of the city in his name; and on the tenth of February, 1568, the mayor and echevins of La Rochelle opened their gates to their new friends, with protestations of their purpose to devote their lives and property to the advancement of the common cause. "The sequel proved only too clearly," writes a Roman Catholic historian, "that they were very sincere in their promises; for, having soon after demolished all the churches, they employed the materials to fortify this city in such a manner that it served from this time forward as a citadel for the Protestants, and as a secure retreat for all the apostates and malcontents of the kingdom until it was reduced by Louis the Thirteenth."[493]

[Sidenote: Spain and Rome oppose the negotiations for peace.]

Meantime the irresolute queen mother, always oscillating between war and peace, had again begun to treat with the Huguenots. Between the fifth and twentieth of January she held repeated interviews with Cardinal Chatillon, D'Esternay, and Teligny. The bigots took the alarm. The Papal Nuncio and the ambassadors of Spain and Scotland did their utmost "to impeach the accord." A post arrived from Philip the Second, offering a hundred thousand crowns of gold if Charles would continue the war. The doctors of the Sorbonne remonstrated. All united in a common cry that "it was impossible to have two religions in one realm without great confusion." Poor Charles was so moved by the stale falsehood, as well as by the large promises made him, that he sent the Protestant envoys word that he would treat no further unless Conde and his "complices" would send the reiters back to Germany, and, wholly disarming, come to him with their ordinary retinues to purge themselves of the attempt made at Meaux.

[Sidenote: Cardinal Santa Croce demands that Cardinal Chatillon be surrendered to the Pope.]

[Sidenote: Retort of Marshal Montmorency.]

Even this amount of complaisance on the part of the weak monarch, however, did not satisfy Cardinal Santa Croce, who, on one occasion entering the council chamber (on the twentieth of January), boldly demanded the fulfilment of the queen mother's promise to surrender Cardinal Chatillon into the Pope's hands. Catharine did not deny the promise, but interposed the plea that the present was a very unsuitable time, since Chatillon had come to court upon the king's safe-conduct. To this the churchman replied that no respect ought to be had toward the Cardinal, for he was "an excommunicate person," condemned of schism, and dead in the eyes of the law. Up to this point the Duke de Montmorency, who was present, had kept silence; but now, turning to the queen mother, he is reported by the English ambassador to have made a pungent address. "But, madam," he said, "is it possible that the Cardinal Chatillon's delivery should come in question, being warranted by the king and your Majesty to the contrary, and I myself being made a mean therein? Wherefore this matter is odious to be talked of, and against the law of arms and all good civil policy; and I must needs repute them my enemies who go about to make me falsify my promise once made." After these plain words Santa Croce "departed without attaining his most cruel request."[494]

[Sidenote: March of the viscounts to meet Conde.]

During the first few months after the assumption of arms, the Huguenots of southern France, surrounded by domestic enemies, had confined themselves to attempting to secure their own safety and that of their neighbors, by taking the most important cities and keeping in check the forces of the provincial governors—an undertaking in which they met with more success in the districts bordering upon the Mediterranean than in those adjoining the Bay of Biscay. These events, although in themselves important and interesting, would usurp a disproportionate place in this history. While Conde was absent from the vicinity of the capital, however, a body of six thousand troops, drawn from the army of the viscounts, under Mouvans and other experienced southern leaders, undertook a hazardous march from Dauphiny, intending to join the prince's army at Orleans.[495] The cities were in the possession of the enemy, the fords were carefully guarded, the entire country was hostile. But the perils which might have deterred less resolute men only enhanced the glory of the success of the gallant Huguenots. Abandoned by a considerable number of their comrades, who preferred a life of plunder to a fatiguing journey under arms, they met (on the eighth of January, 1568) and defeated, with a force consisting almost exclusively of infantry, the cavalry which the governor of Auvergne and the local nobility had assembled near the village of Cognac[496] to dispute their passage. Continuing their march, they reached Orleans in time to relieve that city, to whose friendly protection against the Roman Catholic bands of Martinengo and Richelieu that infested its neighborhood and threatened its capture Conde and the other Huguenot leaders of the north had entrusted their wives and children.[497]

[Sidenote: Siege of Chartres.]

Having stopped a brief time to rest the soldiers after the protracted march, the viscounts turned their victorious arms against the city of Blois. After the surrender of this place, they had proceeded down the valley of the Loire, and were about to take Montrichard, on the Cher, when recalled by Conde. The prince had by forced marches anticipated the army of Anjou, resolving to strike a blow which should be felt at the hostile capital itself, and had selected Chartres, an important city about fifty miles in a south-westerly direction from Paris, as the most convenient place to besiege.[498] Rapid, however, as had been his advance—and a part of his army had travelled sixty miles in two days—the enemy had sufficient notice of his intention to throw into the city a small force of soldiers; and when Conde arrived before the walls (on the twenty-fourth of February, 1568), he found the place prepared to sustain an attack, in which the courage of the assailants was equalled by the skill and resolution of the defenders. As usual, the Huguenots were badly off for artillery; the united armies could only muster five siege-pieces and four light culverines. "For, although the Catholics esteem the Huguenots to be 'fiery' men," says a quaint old writer, who was as ready with his sword as with his pen, "they have always been poorly provided with such implements. Nor have they, like the former, a Saint Anthony, who, they say, presides over the element in question."[499]

The operations of the siege of Chartres were interrupted by fresh negotiations for peace. Half a year had the flames of war been desolating the fairest parts of France; yet the court was no nearer the attainment of its ends than at the outbreak of hostilities. If the Roman Catholic forces had been swollen to about forty thousand men, they were confronted by a Huguenot army of twenty-eight or thirty thousand men in the very neighborhood of the capital. The voice of prudence dictated an immediate settlement of the dispute before more lives were sacrificed, more towns and villages destroyed, more treasure squandered. Catharine, reigning supreme under her son's name, with her usual inconstancy of purpose, was ready to exchange the war, into which she had plunged France by lending too willing an ear to the suggestions of Philip of Spain, as they came to her through the Cardinal of Lorraine and others, and which had produced only bloodshed, devastation of the kingdom, and deeper depression of the finances, for the peace to which Michel de l'Hospital, her better genius, was constantly urging her by every consideration of policy and justice.

[Sidenote: Chancellor Michel de l'Hospital's memorial.]

In a paper, wherein about this time the chancellor committed to writing the arguments he had often ineffectually employed to persuade the king and his mother, he combats with patriotic indignation the flimsy pretexts of which the priests and the Spaniard made use in pressing the continuance of hostilities. "'The king has more men than the Huguenots.' True, but we find twice as many battles on record gained by the smaller as by the greater number; in consequence of which fact all princes and nations have recognized the truth that victory is the gift of God. 'The king's cause is the more just.' Grant it—yet God makes use of such instruments as He wills to punish our iniquities—the Babylonians, for instance, of old, the Turks in our own days. The Huguenots have thus far succeeded beyond all expectation. They have little money, but what they have they use well, and they can get more. Their devotion to their cause is conspicuous. They are not a rabble hastily gotten together, which has risen imprudently, in disorder, without a leader, without discipline. They are experienced, resolute, desperate warriors, with plans formed long ago—men ready to risk everything for the attainment of their matured designs. Necessity and despair render them docile and wonderfully subject to discipline; and with this cooperates the high esteem they have conceived of their leaders, whose ambition is restrained, whose union is cemented by the same necessity which the ancients called 'the bond of concord.' On the contrary, the king's camp is rent by quarrels, envy, and rivalry; ambition is unbridled, avarice reigns supreme. With the termination of so wretched a war, there will shine forth a joyous and blessed peace, which I can justly term a 'precious conquest,' since it will render his Majesty redoubtable to all Europe, which has learned the greatness of the two powers which the king will restore to his own subjection.

"The true method of breaking up the leagues of the Huguenots is to remove the necessity for forming them. This must be done by treating the Huguenots no longer as enemies, but as friends. For, if we examine carefully into the matter, we shall find that hitherto they have been dealt with as rebels; and this has compelled them to resort to all means of self-preservation. This has placed arms in their hands; this has engendered the horrible desolation of France. For the intrigues set on foot against them in all quarters were conducted with so little attempt at secrecy—the disfavor was so evident, the disdain was so apparent, the threats of the rupture of the Edict of Pacification and of the publication of the decrees of the Council of Trent were so open, and the injustice of their handling was so manifest, that they had been too dull and stupid, had they not avoided the treachery in store for them.[500] Even brute beasts perceive the coming of the storm, and seek the covert; let us not find fault if men, perceiving it, arm themselves for the encounter. Our menaces have been the messengers of our plots, as truly as the lightning is the messenger of the thunderbolt. We have shown them our preparatives; let us, therefore, cease to wonder that they stand ready to start on the first intimation of danger.[501] When they see that they have no longer anything to fear, they will certainly return to their accustomed occupations."[502]

[Sidenote: Edict of Pacification, Longjumeau, March 23, 1568.]

L'Hospital was right. The Huguenots wanted nothing but security of person and conscience—the latter even more than the former. And they were ready to lay down their arms so soon as the court could bring itself to concede the restoration of the Edict of Amboise, without the restrictive ordinances and interpretations which had shorn it of most of its value. On this basis negotiations now recommenced. The more prudent Huguenots suggested that the party ought to receive at the king's hands some of the cities in their possession, to be held as pledges for the execution of the articles of the compact. But Charles and his counsellors resented the proposal as insulting to the dignity of the crown,[503] and the Huguenots, not yet fully appreciating the fickleness or treachery of the court, did not press the demand—a fatal weakness, soon to be atoned for by the speedy renewal of the war on the part of the Roman Catholics.[504] After brief consultation the terms of peace were agreed upon, and were incorporated in the royal edict of the twenty-third of March, 1568, known, from the name of the place where it was signed, as the "Edict of Longjumeau." The cardinal provisions were few: they re-established the supremacy of the Edict of Amboise, expressly repealing all the interpretations that infringed upon it; and permitted the nobles, who under that law had been allowed to have religious exercises in their castles, to admit strangers as well as their own vassals to the services of the reformed worship. Conde and his followers were, at the same time, recognized as good and faithful servants of the crown, and a general amnesty was pronounced covering all acts of hostility, levy of troops, coining of money, and similar offences. On the other hand, the Huguenots bound themselves to disband and lay down their arms, to surrender the places they held, to renounce foreign alliances, and to eschew in future all meetings other than those religious gatherings permitted under the last peace. The new edict was not a final and irrevocable law, but was granted "until, by God's grace, all the king's subjects should be reunited in the profession of one and the same religion."[505]

[Sidenote: Conde favors and Coligny opposes the peace.]

The Huguenots gained by this peace all their immediate demands, and so far the edict might be deemed satisfactory. But what better security had they for its observance more than they had had for the observance of that which had preceded it? Coligny, prudent and far-sighted, had shown himself as averse to concluding it without sufficient guarantees for its faithful execution, as he had been opposed to beginning the war a half-year before. The peace, he urged, was intended by the court only as a means of saving Chartres, and of afterward overwhelming the reformers;[506] and he attempted to prove his assertions by the signal instances of bad faith which had provoked the recourse to arms. But Conde was impatient. If we may believe Agrippa d'Aubigne, his old love of pleasure was not without its influence;[507] but he covered his true motives under the specious pretext afforded him by the Huguenot nobles, who, fatigued with the incessant toils of the campaign, reduced to straits by a warfare which they had carried on at their own expense, and longing to revisit homes which had been repeatedly threatened with desolation, had abandoned their standards and scattered to their respective provinces at the first mention of peace.[508] Francois de la Noue, more charitable to the prince, regards the universal desire for peace, without much concern respecting its conditions, as the wild blast of a hurricane which the Huguenot captains could not resist if they would.[509] When whole cornets of cavalry started without leave, before the siege of Chartres was actually raised, what could generals, deserted by volunteers who had come of their own accord and had served for six months without pay, expect to accomplish?

[Sidenote: Was the court sincere?]

[Sidenote: A treacherous plot detected. The king indignant.]

Was the peace of Longjumeau—"the patched-up peace," or "the short peace," as it was called; that "wicked little peace," as La Noue styles it[510]—a compact treacherously entered into by the court? This is the old, but constantly recurring question respecting every principal event of this unhappy period; and it is one that rarely admits of an easy or a simple answer. So far as the persons who had been chiefly instrumental in forwarding the negotiations which ended in the peace of Longjumeau were concerned, they were Chancellor L'Hospital and the Bishops of Orleans and Limoges—the most moderate members of the royal council,[511] whose fair spirit was so conspicuous that for years they had been exposed to insult and open hostility as supposed Huguenots. Nothing is clearer than that the purpose of these men was the sincere and entire re-establishment of peace on a lasting foundation. The arguments of L'Hospital which I have laid before the reader furnish sufficient proof. This party had, through the force of circumstances, temporarily obtained the ascendancy in the council, and now had the ear of the queen mother. But there were by the side of its representatives at the council-board men of an entirely different stamp—advocates of persecution, of extermination; a few, from conscientious motives, preferring, with Alva, a kingdom ruined in the attempt to root out heresy, to one flourishing, with heresy tolerated; a larger number—and Cardinal Lorraine, who had now resumed his seat and his influence, must be classed with these—counting upon deriving personal advantage from the supremacy of the papal faction. It is equally manifest that this party could have acquiesced in the peace, which again formally acknowledged the principle of religious toleration, only with the design of embracing the first favorable opportunity for crushing the Huguenots, when scattered and disarmed. Their desires, at least, deceived no one of ordinary perspicacity. Indeed, the peace came near failing to go into effect at all, in consequence of the discovery of the fact that a "privy council" had been held in the Louvre, to which none but sworn enemies of the Huguenots were admitted, "wherein was conspired a surprise of Orleans, Soissons, Rochelle, and Auxerre," to be executed by four designated leaders, while the Protestants were laying down their arms. In an age of salaried spies, it is not astonishing that by ten o'clock the next morning the whole plot was betrayed to Cardinal Chatillon, who immediately sent word to stay the publication of the peace. When Charles heard of it, we are told that he swore, by the faith of a prince, that, if there had been any such conspiracy, it had been formed wholly without his knowledge, and, laying his hand on his breast, said: "This is the cardinal and Gascoigne's practice. In spite of them, I will proceed with the peace;" and, commanding pen and ink to be brought, he wrote Conde a letter promising a good and sincere observance of the articles agreed upon.[512]

[Sidenote: Short-sightedness of Catharine.]

But, besides the two parties, and wavering between them—fluctuating in her own purposes, as false to her own plans as she was to her promises, with no principles either of morality or of government, intent only on grasping power, the enemy of every one that stood in the way of this, even if it were her son or her daughter—was that enigma, Catharine de' Medici, whose secret has escaped so many simply because they looked for something deep and recondite, when the solution lay almost upon the very surface. Was Catharine sincerely in favor of peace? She was never sincere. Her Macchiavellian training, the enforced hypocrisy of her married life, the trimming policy she had thought herself compelled to pursue during the minority of the kings, her two sons, had eaten from her soul, even to its root, truthfulness—that pure plant of heaven's sowing. Loving peace only because it freed her from the fears, the embarrassments, the vexations of war—not because she valued human life or human happiness—she embraced it as a welcome expedient to enable her to escape the present perplexities of her position. It is improbable that Catharine distinctly premeditated a treacherous blow at the Huguenots, simply because she rarely premeditated anything very long. I am aware that this estimate of the queen is quite at variance with the views which have obtained the widest currency; but it is the estimate which history, carefully read, seems to require us to adopt. Catharine's plans were proverbially narrow in their scope, never extending much beyond the immediate present. After the catastrophe, which had perhaps been the result of the impulse of the moment, she was not, however, unwilling to accept the homage of those who deemed it a high compliment to her prudence to praise her consummate dissimulation. She probably entered upon the peace of Longjumeau without any settled purpose of treachery—unless that state of the soul be in itself treachery that has no fixed intention of upright dealing. But she had not, in adopting the advice of Chancellor de l'Hospital, renounced the policy of the Cardinal of Lorraine, in case that policy should at some future time appear to be advantageous; and it was much to be feared that the contingency referred to would soon arrive. Catharine, not less than Charles himself, resented "the affair of Meaux" of the preceding September. It was studiously held up to their eyes by the enemies of the Huguenots as an attempt upon the honor, and indeed even upon the personal liberty and life of their Majesties. Might not Catharine and Charles be tempted to retaliate by trying the effect of a surprise upon the Huguenots themselves?

[Sidenote: Imprudence of the Huguenots.]

The Huguenots had certainly been grossly imprudent in putting themselves at the mercy of a woman whom they had greatly offended, and whose natural place, according to those mysterious sympathies which bind men of similar natures, was with their adversaries. They had been warned by their secret friends at court, some of them by Roman Catholic relatives.[513] But the caution was little heeded. It was not long[514] before those who had been the most strenuous advocates of peace began to admit that the draught they had put to their own lips, and now must needs drink, was likely to prove little to their taste.[515]

[Sidenote: Judicial murder of Rapin, at Toulouse.]

The parliaments made serious objections to the reception of the edict. Toulouse was, as usual, pre-eminent for its intolerance. The king sent Rapin, a Protestant gentleman who had served with distinction under Conde in Languedoc, to carry the law to the parliament, and require its official recognition. The choice was unfortunate, for it awakened all the hatred of a court proverbial for its hostility to the Reformation. An accusation of matters quite foreign to his mission was trumped up against Rapin, and, contrary to all the principles of justice, and notwithstanding the privileged character he bore as the king's envoy, he was arrested, condemned to death, and executed. So atrocious a crime might perhaps have been punished, had not the new commotions to which we shall soon be obliged to pay attention, intervened and screened the culprits from their righteous retribution.[516] Not content with murdering Rapin, the Parliament of Toulouse still refused to register the edict, and not less than four successive orders were sent by the king before his refractory judges yielded an unwilling consent, even then annexing restrictive clauses which they took care to insert in their secret records.[517]

[Sidenote: Seditious preachers and mobs.]

Again Roman Catholic pulpits resounded, as they did whenever any degree of toleration was accorded the Protestants, with denunciations of Catharine, of Charles, of all in the council who had advocated such pernicious views. Again Ahab and Jezebel appear; but while Catharine is always Jezebel, it is Charles that now figures, in place of poor Antoine of Navarre, as Ahab.[518] Again, in the struggle of royalty with priests and monks breathing sedition, it is the churchman who by his arrogance carries off the victory with the common people, while from the sensible he receives merited contempt.[519] So fine a text as the edict afforded for spirited Lenten discourses did not present itself every day, and the clergy of France improved it so well that the passions of their flocks were inflamed to the utmost.[520] Except where their numbers were so large as to command respect, the Protestants scarcely dared to return to their homes.

[Sidenote: Riot when the edict is published at Rouen.]

The very mention of the peace, with its favorable terms for the Protestants, was enough to stir up the anger of the ignorant populace. When the Parliament of Rouen, after agreeing to the Edict of Longjumeau in private session, threw open its doors (on the third of April, 1568) to give it official publication, a rabble that had come purposely to create a tumult, interrupted the reading with horrible imprecations against the peace, the Huguenots, the edicts, the "preches," and the magistrates who approved such impious acts. The presidents and counsellors fled for their lives. The populace, as though inspired by some evil spirit, raged and committed havoc in the "palais de justice." The mob opened the prisons and liberated eight or ten Roman Catholics; then flocked to the ecclesiastical dungeons and would have massacred the Protestants that were still confined there, had these not found means to ransom their lives with money. It was not until six days later that the royal edict was read, in the presence of a large military force called in to preserve order.[521]

[Sidenote: Treatment of the returning Huguenots.]

In spite of the provisions of the edict, the Huguenots wandered about in the open country, avoiding the cities where they were likely to meet with insult and violence, if not death. The Protestants of Nogent, Provins, and Bray hesitated for three months, and then we are told that each man watched his opportunity and sought to enter when his Roman Catholic friends might be on guard to defend him from the insolence of others.

[Sidenote: At Provins.]

But the sufferings of the Huguenot burgess were not ended when he was once more in his own house. He was studiously treated as a rebel. Every movement was suspicious. A Roman Catholic chronicler, who has preserved in his voluminous diary many of the details that enable us to restore something of its original coloring to the picture of the social and political condition of the times, vividly portrays the misfortunes of the unfortunate Huguenots of Provins. They were not numerous. One by one, thirty or forty had stealthily crept into town, experiencing no other injury than the coarse raillery of their former neighbors. Thereupon the municipal government met and deliberated upon the measures of police to be taken "in order to hold the Huguenots in check and in fear, and to avoid any treachery they might intend to put into practice by the introduction of their brother Huguenots into the city to plunder and hold it by force." The determination arrived at was that each of the four captains should visit the Huguenot houses of his quarter, examine the inmates, and take all the weapons he found, giving a receipt to their owners. This was not the only humiliation to which the Protestants were subjected. A proclamation was published forbidding them from receiving any person into their houses, from meeting together under any pretext, from leaving their houses in the evening after seven o'clock in summer, or five in winter, from walking by day or night on the walls, or, indeed, from approaching within two arquebuse shots' distance of them—all upon pain of death! They could not even go into the country without a passport from the bailiff and the captain of the gate, the penalty of transgressing this regulation being banishment. No wonder that the Huguenots were irritated, and that most of them wished that they had not returned.[522] Since, however, a royal ordinance of the nineteenth of May expressly enjoined upon all fugitive Huguenots to re-enter the cities to which they belonged, and in case of refusal commanded the magistrates to raise a force and attack them as presumptive robbers and enemies of the public peace,[523] they were perhaps quite as safe within the walls as roaming about outside of them.

[Sidenote: Expedition and fate of De Cocqueville.]

Early in the summer an event occurred on the northern frontier, which, although in itself of little weight, augmented the suspicions which the Protestants began to entertain of the Spanish tendencies of the government. One Seigneur de Cocqueville, with a party of French and Flemish Huguenots, had crossed the northern boundary and invaded Philip's Netherland provinces. He had, however, been driven back into France. As he was believed to have acted under Conde's instructions, that prince was requested by Charles to inform him whether Cocqueville were in his service. When Conde disavowed him, and declined all responsibility for the movement, Marshal Cosse was directed to march against Cocqueville, and, on the eighteenth of July, the Huguenot chieftain was captured at the town of Saint Valery, in Picardy, where he had taken refuge. Of twenty-five hundred followers, barely three hundred are said to have been spared. In order to please Alva, the Flemings received no quarter. The leaders, Cocqueville, Vaillant, and Saint Amand, were brought to Paris and gibbeted on the Place de Greve.[524]

[Sidenote: Attitude of the government suspicious.]

[Sidenote: Garrisons and interpretative ordinances.]

The central government itself gave the gravest grounds for fear and suspicion. The Huguenots had promptly disbanded. They had lost no time in dismissing their German allies, who, retiring with well-filled pockets to the other side of the Rhine, seemed alone to have profited by the intestine commotions of France.[525] On the contrary, the Roman Catholic forces showed no disposition to disarm. It is true that, in the first fervor of the ascendancy of the peace party, Catharine countermanded a levy of five thousand Saxons, much to the annoyance of Castelnau, who had by his unwearied diligence brought them in hot haste to Rethel on the Aisne, only to learn that the preliminaries of peace were on the point of being concluded, and that the troopers were expected to retrace their steps to Saxony.[526] But the Swiss and Italian soldiers, as well as the French gens-d'armes, were for the most part retained. To Humieres, who commanded for the king in Peronne, Charles wrote an explanation of his course: "Inasmuch as there are sometimes turbulent spirits so constituted that they neither can nor desire to accommodate themselves so soon to quiet, it has appeared to me extremely necessary to anticipate this difficulty, and act in such a manner that, force and authority remaining on my side, I may be able to keep in check those who might so far forget themselves as to set on foot new disturbances and be the cause of seditious uprising."[527] Large garrisons were thus provided for those towns which had rendered themselves conspicuous in the defence of the Huguenots during the late war, and the sufferings of the Protestants, upon whom, in preference to their Roman Catholic neighbors, the insolent soldiers were quartered, were terrible beyond description.[528] The horrors of the "dragonnades" of the reign of Louis the Fourteenth were rivalled by these earlier military persecutions. Multitudes were despoiled of their goods, hundreds lost their lives at the hands of their cruel guests. France assumed the aspect of a great camp, with sentries posted everywhere to maintain it in peace against some suspected foe. The sea-ports, the bridges, the roads were guarded; the Huguenots themselves were placed under a species of surveillance. Nor were the old resorts of the court forgotten. Again interpretative ordinances were called in to abrogate a portion of the law itself. Charles declared in a new proclamation that he had not intended by the Edict of Longjumeau to include Auvergne, nor any district belonging as an appanage to his mother, to Anjou, Alencon, or the Bourbon princes, in the toleration guaranteed by the edict. And thus a very considerable number of Protestants were by a single stroke of the pen stripped of the privileges solemnly accorded to them but a few weeks before.[529] Other pledges were as shamelessly broken. The Huguenot gentlemen whom the court had attempted to punish by declaring them to have forfeited their honors and dignities, were not reinstated according to the terms of the edict.[530]

[Sidenote: Oppression by royal governors.]

The conduct of individual governors furnished still greater occasion for complaint and alarm. The Duke of Nemours, who, in marrying Anne of Este, Guise's widow, two years before, seemed also to have espoused all the hatred which the Lorraines felt for Protestantism, and for the family of the Chatillons, its most prominent and faithful defenders, was governor of the provinces of Lyonnais and Dauphiny. This insubordinate nobleman loudly proclaimed his intention to disregard the Edict of Longjumeau, as opposed to the Roman Catholic Church and to the king's honor. In vain did the Protestants, who were numerous in the city of Lyons, demand to be allowed to enjoy the two places of worship they had possessed, before the late troubles, within the city walls. The duke would not listen to their just claims, and the court, in answer to their appeals, only responded that the king did not approve of the holding of Protestant services inside of cities, and that a place would shortly be assigned for their use in the vicinity.[531] Unrebuked by the queen or her son for his flagrant disobedience, Nemours received nothing but plaudits from the fanatical adherents of the religion he pretended to maintain, and was honored by the Pope, Pius the Fifth (on the fifth of July, 1568), with a special brief, in which he was praised for being the first to set a resplendent example of resistance to the execution of an unchristian peace.[532]

Marshal Tavannes, in Burgundy, earned equal gratitude for his opposition to the concession of Protestant rights. Not content with remonstrance respecting a peace which had excited every one "to raise his voice against the king and Catharine," and with dark hints of the danger of handling so carelessly a border province like Burgundy,[533] he openly favored the revival of those "Confraternities of the Holy Ghost" which Charles had so lately condemned and prohibited. Being himself detained by illness, two of his sons were present at a meeting of one of these seditious assemblages, held in Dijon, the provincial capital, where, before a great concourse of people, the most inflammatory language was freely uttered.[534]

[Sidenote: The "Christian and Royal League."]

[Sidenote: Insubordination to royal authority.]

At Troyes, the capital of Champagne, a similar association assumed the designation of "the Christian and Royal League." The document, containing the oath taken by the clergy whom the king's lieutenant had associated with the nobility and the provincial estates in the "holy" bond, is still extant, with the signatures of the bishop, the deans, canons, and inferior ecclesiastics appended.[535] The primary object was the maintenance of "the true Catholic and Roman Church of God;" and after this the preservation of the crown for the house of Valois was mentioned. It was to be sustained "against all persons, without excepting any, save the persons of the king, his sons and brothers, and the queen their mother, and without regard to any relationship or alliance," and "so long as it might please God that the signers should be governed according to the Roman and Apostolic Church."[536] In less public utterances the spirit of insubordination to the regal authority made itself understood even more clearly. When the formation of such associations was objected to, on the ground of the king's prohibition, the response given by those who pretended to be better informed than the rest was that the Cardinal of Lorraine could make the matter agreeable to his Majesty. Others more boldly announced the intention of the Roman Catholic party, in case Charles should refuse to sanction its course, to send him to a monastery for the rest of his days, and elect another king in his place. Three months' time was all that these blatant boasters allowed for the utter destruction of the Huguenots in France. An end would be made of them as soon as the harvest and vintage were past.[537]

[Sidenote: Admirable organization of the Huguenots.]

If the Roman Catholics had resolved upon a renewal of the war, they certainly had reason to desire a better combination of their forces than they had effected in the late contest. They had been startled and amazed at the rapidity with which, although embracing but an inconsiderable minority of the population, the Huguenots had succeeded in massing an army that held at bay that of the king. They admired the completeness of the organization which enabled the Prince of Conde and the admiral to summon the gentry of the most distant provinces, and bring them to the very vicinity of the court before the movement was suspected even by Constable Montmorency, who believed himself to be kept advised of the most trifling occurrences that took place in any part of France. The triumph of the Huguenots—for was it not a triumph which they had achieved in securing such terms as the Edict of Longjumeau conceded?—was a disgrace to the papists, who had not known how to use their overwhelming preponderance in numbers. Never had a more signal example been given of the superiority of united and zealous sympathy over discordant and soulless counsels.[538] While their enemies, with nothing in common but their hatred of Protestantism, were hampered by the want of concert between their leaders, or cheated of their success by their positive jealousies and quarrels, the Huguenots had in their common faith, in their well-ordered form of church government, combining the advantages of great local efficiency with those of a representative union, and in their common danger, the instruments best adapted to secure the ends they desired. "They were so closely bound together by this order and by these objects," wrote the Venetian ambassador Correro, "that there resulted a concordant will and so perfect a union that it made them prompt in rendering instant obedience and in forming common designs, and most ready to execute the commands of their superiors."[539]

[Sidenote: Murder runs riot throughout France.]

With such associations as "the Confraternities of the Holy Ghost," and "the Christian and Royal League" springing up in various parts of France, under the express sanction of the provincial governors, and publishing as their chief aim the extirpation of heresy from the realm; with priests and monks, especially those of the new order of Jesus, inflaming the passions of the people by seditious preaching, and persuading their hearers that any toleration of heretics was a compact with Satan, it is not strange that murder held high carnival wherever the Protestants were not so numerous as to be able to stand on the defensive. The victims were of every rank and station, from the obscure peasant to the distinguished Cipierre, son of the Count de Tende and a relative of the Duke of Savoy, the orders for whose assassination were confidently believed to have issued from the court.[540] At Auxerre, which had been given up by the Huguenots in accordance with the provisions of the peace, one hundred and fifty Protestants paid with their lives the price of their good faith. Their bodies were thrown into the public sewers. In the city of Amiens one hundred and fifty persons were slaughtered at one time. Instead of punishment, the rioters obtained their object: the reformed worship was forbidden in Amiens, or within three leagues of the city.[541] At Clermont the assassins, after plundering the wares of a wealthy merchant, who had refused to hang tapestry before his house at the time of the procession on Corpus Christi Day—La Fete-Dieu—buried him in a fire made of furniture taken from his own house.[542] At Ligny, in Champagne, a Huguenot was pursued into the very bedchamber of a royal officer, and there killed. Troyes, Bourges, Rouen, and a host of other places, witnessed the commission of atrocities which it would be rather sickening than profitable to narrate.[543] In Paris itself the murders of Huguenots were frequent. "On Sunday last," wrote Norris, the English envoy, to his royal mistress, "the Prince of Conde sent a gentleman to the king, to beseech his Majesty to administer justice against such as murder them of the religion, and as he entered into the city there were five slain in St. Anthony's street, not far from my lodging."[544] The aggregate of homicides committed within the brief compass of this so-called peace was enormous. Jean de Serres and Agrippa d'Aubigne may possibly go somewhat beyond the mark when they state the number of victims in three months—April, May, and June, 1568—at over ten thousand;[545] but they are substantially correct in saying that the number far exceeded that of the armed Huguenots slain during the six months of the preceding war;[546] for the Venetian ambassador, who certainly had no motive for exaggeration, asserts that "the principal cities of the kingdom, notwithstanding the conditions of the peace, refused to readmit 'the preachings' to their territories, and slew many thousands of Huguenots who dared to rise and complain."[547]

[Sidenote: Rochelle and other cities refuse to receive garrisons.]

[Sidenote: Conde and Coligny retire.]

[Sidenote: D'Andelot's remonstrance.]

While the majority of the cities held by the Protestants had, as we have seen, promptly opened their gates to the king, a number, perceiving the dangers to which they were exposed, alarmed by the attitude of the Roman Catholics, and doubtful of the good faith of the court, declined to allow the garrisons to enter. This was the case with La Rochelle, which defended its course by appealing to its privileges, and with Montauban, Albi, Milhau, Sancerre, Castres, Vezelay, and other less important towns.[548] The events of a few weeks had amply vindicated the wisdom and justice of their refusal. La Rochelle even began to repair its fortifications, confident that the papal faction would never rest until it had made the attempt to destroy the great Huguenot stronghold in the west. Evidently there was no safety for a Protestant under the aegis of the Edict of Longjumeau. The Prince of Conde dared not resume the government of the province nominally restored to his charge, and retired to Noyers, a small town in Burgundy, belonging to his wife's dower, where he would be less exposed than in the vicinity of Paris to any treacherous attempt upon his person. Admiral Coligny was not slow in following his example. He abandoned his stately manor of Chatillon-sur-Loing, where, with a heart saddened by recent domestic affliction,[549] he had been compelled to exercise a princely hospitality to the crowds that daily thronged to consult with him and to do him honor,[550] and took up his abode in the castle of Tanlay, belonging to his brother D'Andelot, and within a few miles of the prince's retreat.[551] D'Andelot himself had recently started for Brittany, where his first wife, Claude de Rieux, had held extensive possessions.[552] Before leaving, however, he had written to Catharine de' Medici, a letter of remonstrance full of noble sentiments. The occasion was the murder of one of his gentlemen, whom he had sent to the neighboring city of Auxerre; but his letter embraced a complete view of "the calamitous state of the poor kingdom," whose misery "was such as to cause the hair of all that heard to stand on end." "Not only," said D'Andelot, "can we feel no doubt that God will not leave unpunished so much innocent blood, which continues to cry before Him for vengeance, as well as so many violations of women and maidens; so many robberies; so much oppression—in one word, every species of iniquity. But, besides this, we can look for nothing else than the near-approaching desolation and ruin of this state: for no one that has read sacred and profane history will be able to deny that such things have always preceded the overthrow of empires and monarchies. I am well aware, madam, that there will be those who, on seeing this letter, will ridicule me, and will say that I am playing the part of prophet or preacher. I am neither the one nor the other, since God has not given me this calling. But I will yet say, with truth, that there is not a man in the kingdom, of any rank or quality, who loves his king and his kingdom better than I do, or who is more grieved at seeing those disorders that I see, which can, in the end, result only in general confusion. I know full well that I shall be met with the taking up of arms, in which I participated, with so many others, on the eve of last St. Michael's Day, as if we had intended to attack the persons of your Majesties, or anything belonging to you, or this state, as was published wherever it was possible, and as is still daily asserted. But, not to undertake other justification, I will only say that, if such wickedness had entered into my heart, though I might conceal it from men, I could not hide it from God, from whom I never have asked forgiveness for it, nor ever shall I." D'Andelot proceeded to show that the movement in question had been caused by absolute necessity, and that this was rendered evident to all men by that which was now occurring in every part of France. He told her that it was sufficiently manifest that this universal oppression was only designed to provoke "those of the religion" to such a point that they would lose patience, and to obtain a pretext for attacking and exterminating them. He reminded her that he had often insisted "that opinions in matters of religion can be changed neither by fire nor by force of arms, and that those deem themselves very happy who can lay down their lives for the service of God and for His glory." He warned her of those who, unlike the Huguenots, would sacrifice the interests of the state to their own individual ends of ambition or revenge. In conclusion, after alluding to a recent sudden death which much resembled a mark of the divine displeasure upon the murderous assault that had called forth this letter, he exclaimed: "I do not mean to be so presumptuous as to judge the dealings of God; but I do mean to say, with the sure testimony of His word, that all those who violate public faith are punished for it."[553]

[Sidenote: Catharine takes side with the chancellor's enemies.]

That salutary warning had been rung in Catharine's ears more than once, and was destined to be repeated again and again, with little effect: "All those who violate public faith are punished for it." L'Hospital had but a few months before been urging to a course of political integrity, and pointing out the rock on which all previous plans of pacification had split. There was but one way to secure the advantages of permanent peace, and that was an upright observance of the treaties formed with the Huguenots. But Catharine was slow to learn the lesson. Crooked paths, to her distorted vision, seemed to be the shortest way to success. Her Italian education had taught her that deceit was better, under all circumstances, than plain dealing, and she could not unlearn the long-cherished theory. Whether L'Hospital's views were originally the chief motives that influenced her in consenting to the peace of Longjumeau, or whether she had acquiesced in it as a cover to treacherous designs, certain it is that she now began to side openly with the chancellor's enemies, and that the Cardinal of Lorraine regained his old influence in the council. The fanatical sermons that had been a premonitory symptom of the previous wars were again heard with complacency in the court chapel; for, about the month of June, the king appointed as his preachers four of the most blatant advocates of persecution: Vigor, a canon of Notre Dame; De Sainte Foy; the gray friar, Hugonis; and Claude de Sainctes, whose acquaintance the reformers had made at the Colloquy of Poissy.[554]

[Sidenote: Remonstrance of the three marshals.]

[Sidenote: Catharine's intrigues.]

There had been a desperate struggle in the royal council ever since the conclusion of the peace. The extreme Roman Catholics, recognizing the instability of Catharine, had long since begun to base their hopes upon Henry of Anjou's influence. Their opponents accepted the issue, and resolved to circumscribe the duke's inordinate powers. Three of the marshals of France—Montmorency, his brother Damville, and Vieilleville—presented themselves at a meeting of the royal council held in the queen mother's sick-chamber (on the second of May, 1568), to remonstrate against Anjou's retaining the office of lieutenant-general. Even Cardinal Bourbon supported their movement, and, sinking for the time his extreme religious partisanship, threatened to leave the court, and give the world to understand how much he had at heart the honor of his house and the welfare of his friends. The object of the marshals could not be mistaken: it was nothing less than the overthrow of the Cardinal of Lorraine, who sought supreme power under cover of Anjou's name. The end of the war, remarked the ambassador, Sir Henry Norris, had brought no end to the mortal hatred between the houses of Guise and Montmorency. The prospect of permanent peace was dark. The king was easy to be seduced, his mother bent upon maintaining these divisions in the court, and Anjou so much under the cardinal's influence that it was to be feared that the Huguenots would in the end be forced to have recourse once more to arms. In the midst of these perils, the queen mother had been exercising her ingenuity in playing off one party against the other; now giving countenance to the Guises, now to the Montmorencies. At one time she used Limoges, at another Morvilliers or Sens, in her secret intrigues. Presently she resorted to Lorraine, and, when jealous of his too great forwardness, would turn to the chancellor himself, "undoing in one day what the cardinal had intended long afore." Besides these prominent statesmen, she had not scrupled to take up with meaner tools—men whose elevation boded no good to the commonwealth, and with whom she conferred about the imposition of those onerous taxes which had cost her the forfeiture of the good-will of the people. To add to the confusion, the jealousy between the king and his brother Anjou had reappeared, and the chancellor had lost his characteristic courage and avowed his utter despair of being able to stem the fierce tide of human selfishness and passion. Cardinal Lorraine was realizing his long-cherished hope: "for this one man's authority had been the greatest countermand of his devices."[555]

[Sidenote: The court tries to ruin Conde and Coligny.]

The Huguenot leaders had entered into engagements to repay to the king the nine hundred thousand francs advanced by him to the German reiters of Count Casimir. This sum—a large one for the times—Charles now called upon Conde and Coligny to refund, and he expressly commanded that it should not be levied upon the Protestant churches, but be raised by those who had taken up arms in the late contest.[556] It was a transparent attempt to array the masses that had suffered little pecuniarily in the war against the brave men who had not only impoverished themselves, but hazarded their lives in defence of the common cause. Nothing less than the financial ruin of the prince and the admiral, who had voluntarily become sureties, seemed likely to satisfy their enemies.

[Sidenote: Teligny sent to carry a reply.]

The Prince of Conde despatched young Teligny to carry his spirited reply to this extraordinary demand, and, not confining himself to the exhibition of its flagrant injustice, he recapitulated the daily multiplying infractions upon the edict. The Protestants were treated as enemies, he said, and were safe neither at home nor abroad. An open war could not be more bitter.[557] Besides countless general massacres, he complained of the recent assassination of two of his own dependants, and of the surveillance exercised over all the great noblemen "of the religion," who were closely watched in their castles by the commanders of neighboring forces. Against himself the unparalleled insult had been shown of placing a garrison in the palace of a prince of the blood. Nay, he had arrested a spy caught in the very act of measuring the height of the fortifications of Noyers, and sounding the depth of the moat, with a view to a subsequent assault, and the capture not only of the prince, but of the admiral, who frequently came there to see him. He rehearsed the grounds of just alarm which the Protestants had in the threats their indiscreet enemies were daily uttering, and in "the confraternities of the Holy Ghost," defiantly instituted with the approval of the king's own governors. What safety was there for the Huguenots when a counsellor of a celebrated parliament had lately asserted, in the presence of an assembly of three thousand persons, "that he had commands from the leading men of the royal council admonishing the Catholics that they ought to give no credence to any edicts of the king unless they contained a peculiar mark of authenticity." And he was induced to believe him right, by noticing the fact that, since the establishment of peace, no one had obeyed the royal letters. Finally, in decided but respectful language, he remonstrated against the pernicious precedent which the court was allowing to become established, when the express commands of the monarch were set at naught with impunity.[558]

[Sidenote: An oath to be exacted of the Huguenots.]

As the time approached for the blow to be struck that should forever put an end to the exercise of the reformed faith in France, the conspirators began to betray their anxiety lest their nefarious designs might be anticipated and rendered futile by such a measure of defence as that which the Huguenots had taken on the eve of Michaelmas. They resolved, therefore, if possible, to bind their victims hand and foot; and no more convenient method presented itself than that of involving them in obligations of implicit obedience which would embarrass, if they did not absolutely preclude, any exercise of their wonderful system of combined action. About the beginning of August, Charles despatched to all parts of his dominions the form of an oath which was to be demanded of every Protestant subject, and the royal officers and magistrates were directed to make lists of those who signed as well as of those who refused to sign it.[559] "We protest before God, and swear by His name"—so ran the oath—"that we recognize King Charles the Ninth as our natural sovereign and only prince ... and that we will never take up arms save by his express command, of which he may have notified us by his letters patent duly verified; and that we will never consent to, nor assist with counsel, money, food, or anything else whatsoever, those who shall arm themselves against him or his will. We will make no levy or assessment of money for any purpose without his express commission; and will never enter into any secret leagues, intrigues, or plots, nor engage in any underhand practices or enterprises, but, on the contrary, we promise and swear to notify him or his officers of all that we shall be able to learn and discover that is devised against his Majesty.... Moreover, we protest that we will not leave the city, whatever necessity may arrive, but will join our hearts, our wills, and our abilities with our fellow-citizens in defence of that city, to which we will always entertain the devotion of true and faithful citizens, whilst the Catholics will find in us sincere and fraternal affection: awaiting the time when it may please God to put an end to all troubles, to which we hope that this reconciliation will be a happy prelude."[560]

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

[Sidenote: The plot disclosed by an intercepted letter.]

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

[Sidenote: Isabella of France again her husband's mouthpiece.]

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

[Sidenote: King Charles entreats his mother to avoid war.]

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

[Sidenote: Catharine's animosity against L'Hospital.]

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

[Sidenote: Another quarrel between Lorraine and the chancellor.]

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

[Sidenote: The chancellor's fall.]

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

[Sidenote: The plot.]

[Sidenote: Marshal Tavannes its author.]

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