[Sidenote: The elder D'Aubigne and his son.]

On others, and especially upon those whose hearts throbbed with patriotic devotion, a less transient impression was made. Some months after, the young Agrippa d'Aubigne, then a mere child of ten years, was traversing the city of Amboise with his father. The impaled heads of the victims were still to be recognized. The barbarous sight moved the elder D'Aubigne's soul to its very depths. "They have beheaded France, hangmen that they are!" he cried out in the hearing of the hundreds that were present at the fair. Then, spurring his horse, he scarcely escaped the hands of the rabble who had caught his words. Afterward, when his young son had rejoined him, he placed his hand on Agrippa's head, and exclaimed, full of emotion: "My child, you must not spare your head after mine, to avenge these chieftains full of honor, whose heads you have just seen! If you spare yourself in this matter, you will have my curse."[841]

[Sidenote: Peril of the Prince of Conde.]

[Sidenote: He is summoned by the king.]

[Sidenote: Conde's defiance.]

[Sidenote: Guise's offer.]

The Prince of Conde had set out for the court about the time of the discovery of the conspiracy. If the coldness of the courtiers whom he met on the way did not convince him that he was suspected, the position in which he soon found himself at Amboise left him no doubts. Surrounded by spies, he was viewed more as a prisoner than as a guest. The Guises even counselled Francis to stab him with his dagger while pretending to sport with him. The crime was averted both by the caution of the prince and by a reluctance on the part of the young king to imbrue his hands in the blood of his kinsman—a sentiment which the Guises interpreted as cowardice.[842] But, unable to resist the urgency of those who accused Conde of being the true head of the conspiracy, and maintained that the testimony of many of the prisoners rendered the fact indubitable, Francis at length summoned the young Bourbon to his presence. He informed him of the accusations, and assured him that, should they prove true, he would make him feel the difficulty and the danger of attacking a king of France. At Conde's request an assembly of all the princes, and of the members of the Privy Council and of the Order of St. Michael, was summoned, that he might return his answer to the charges laid against him.[843] In the midst of the august gathering, Louis of Bourbon arose and recited the conversation which he had had with the king. He knew, he said, that he had enemies about him who sought his entire ruin and that of his house. He had, therefore, solicited to be heard in this company, and his answer was: that, excepting the person of the king, his brothers, and the queens, his mother and wife—and he said it with all respect to their presence—whoever had asserted to the king that Conde was the chief of certain seditious individuals who were said to have conspired against his person and estate, had "falsely and miserably lied." To prove his innocence he offered to waive for the time the privileges of his rank as prince of the blood, and in single combat force his accuser at the point of the sword to confess himself a poltroon and a calumniator. As Conde looked proudly around, no one ventured to accept the gauntlet he had thrown down. On the contrary, the Duke of Guise, his most bitter enemy, promptly stepped forward to offer him his services as second in the single combat proposed! Hereupon Conde begged the king to esteem him hereafter a faithful and honorable man, and entreated his Majesty to lend no ear to the authors of such calumnies, but to regard them as common enemies of the crown and of the public peace.[844]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: An alleged admission of disloyal intentions by La Renaudie.]

It is well known that the Huguenots were accused by their enemies of intending to remodel the government of France. According to some, the king was to be retained, but shorn of his authority; according to others, he was to be dispensed with altogether. Under any circumstances, the Swiss confederation was to be imitated or reproduced in France. That which gave the pretended scheme most of its air of probability, in the eyes of the unreflecting, and compensated for the entire absence of proof of its substantial reality, was the familiarity of many of the Huguenots—both religious and political—with Geneva, Basle, Berne, and other small republican states. These were fountains of Protestant doctrine; these had afforded many a refugee shelter from persecution in France. It was notorious that the free institutions of these cities were the object of admiration on the part of the Calvinists.[845]

I believe that no contemporary writer has brought forward a particle of evidence in support of this view, and impartial men have rejected it as incredible. But a history of the Parliament of Bordeaux, lately published,[846] contains an extract from the records of that court, which, if trustworthy, would go far to establish the reality of treasonable designs entertained by the Huguenots. Under date of Sept. 4, 1561, the following entry appears:

"Ledit jour, M. Geraut Faure, official de Perigueux, a dit: qu'il y a deux ans que le feu Sieur de La Renaudie fust a la maison dudit official, a Nontron, lui dire que c'estoit grande folie qu'un tel royaume fust gouverne par un roi seul, et que si l'official vouloit l'entendre, qu'il lui feroit un grand avantage; car on deliberoit de faire un canton a Perigueux, et un autre a Bordeaux dont il esperoit avoir la superintendance. Et lors luy tenant de tels propos, retira a part ledit official sans qu'autre l'entendist. Ainsi signe: Faure."

The late M. Boscheron des Portes, giving full credit to the assertion of the "official" of Perigueux, believed that the party of which La Renaudie was a prominent leader contemplated, in 1559-1560, the formation of "a federative republic broken up into cantons, the number and situation of which were already, it would appear, determined upon by the authors of the project." And he deplores the blind sectarian spirit which could induce Frenchmen to acquiesce in a plan designed to destroy the unity and consequent power of a realm whose consolidation every successive king since the origin of the monarchy had unceasingly pursued.

I imagine that few unbiassed minds will follow this usually judicious historian in his singularly precipitate acceptance of the "official's" statement. It is in patent contradiction with well-known facts respecting the constitution of the Huguenot party. The noblemen who gave this party their support had everything to lose, and nothing to gain, by the change from a monarchical to a republican form of government. Conde, the "chef muet," was a prince of the blood, not so far removed from the throne as to regard it altogether impossible that he or his children might yet succeed to the crown. The main body of the party had had no reason to entertain hostility to regal authority. The prevailing discontent was not directed against the young king, but against the persons surrounding him who had illegally usurped his name and the real functions of royalty. If persecution for religion's sake had long raged, the victims had never uttered a syllable smacking of disloyalty, and continued to hope, not without some apparent reason, that the truth might yet reach the heart of kings.

But, independently of the gross inconsistency between the design ascribed to La Renaudie and the known sentiments of the Huguenots at this time, there are other marks of improbability connected with the statement of Geraut Faure. It was not made at the time of the pretended disclosure, or shortly after, when, if genuine, it would have insured the informer favor and reward; but, after the lapse of "two years," when Francis the Second had been dead nine months, and when under a new king fresh political issues had arisen. In fact, if the term of two years be construed strictly, it carries us back to September, 1559, when Francis the Second had been barely three months on the throne, and the plans of the Huguenots had, to all appearance, by no means had time to assume the completeness implied in Faure's statement. Not to speak of the great vagueness and the utter absence of circumstantial details in the announcement of the conspiracy and in the promised advantages, it should be remarked that the confidant selected by La Renaudie was a very unlikely person to be chosen. The "official," an ecclesiastical judge deputed by the Bishop of Perigueux to take charge of spiritual jurisdiction in his diocese, could scarcely be regarded by La Renaudie as the safest depositary of so valuable a trust.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 729: Davila, p. 20.]

[Footnote 730: "Lancea sanctorum tunc inopina salus." Epigram apud Le Laboureur, Additions aux mem. de Castelnau, i. 276.]

[Footnote 731:

Sic cruce detractum fixit tua lancea Christum, Per latus illorum quos sua membra vocat. At Deus omnipotens, Christi justissimus ultor, Sanguine, dixit, erit lancea tincta tuo. Ib., ubi supra. ]

[Footnote 732: "O que si ce bon roy eusse vescu," says Montluc, "ou si ceste paix ne se fust faite, qu'il eust bien rembarre les Lutheriens en Allemagne." Memoires, Petitot ed., ii. 483.]

[Footnote 733: Davila, Civil Wars of France, p. 6. Hist. du tumulte d'Amboise, Recueil des choses memorables, in initio; Mem. de Conde, i. 320.]

[Footnote 734: Yet Catharine herself, in a letter written in 1563 to her son Charles IX., just after he had declared himself to be of age, admits the full truth of her opponents' assertion, that Francis II. was a minor!—"que l'on cognoisse les desordres qui out este jusques icy par la minorite du Roy vostre frere, qui empeschoit que l'on ne pouvoit faire ce que l'on desiroit." Avis donnez par Catherine de Medicis a Charles IX., pour la police de sa cour, etc., printed in Cimber et Danjou, Archives curieuses, v. 245-254.]

[Footnote 735: "Di natura benignissima, e cerca di gratificare ciascuno, e massime gl' Italiani quanto piu gli e possibile, ed e tanto amato, non solamente da tutta la corte, ma da tutto il regno che e cosa incredibile." Rel. del clar^mo Giovanni Soranzo, 1558, Relaz. Ven., ii. 429, 430.]

[Footnote 736: "La Royne mere, ambitieuse et craintive." Mem. de Tavannes, ii. 256.]

[Footnote 737: Relaz. di Giovanni Michiel (1561), Tommaseo, i. 426.]

[Footnote 738: La Planche, 204, 205: "The Duchesse of Valentinoys and Duches of Buillon are commaunded, that neither they nor any of theirs shall resort to the courte.... The yong Frenche Quene hath sent to the Duches of Valentinoys, to make accompt of the French King's cabenet and of all his jewels." Throkmorton to Queen, July 13, 1559, Forbes, State Papers, i. 158, 159.]

[Footnote 739: Regnier de la Planche, p. 203: "Lequel (Henry) ... avoit entierement resolu, apres avoir acheve ces mariages, et renvoye les estrangers, de les dechasser arriere de soy, comme une peste de son royaume." So Hist. eccles., liv. iii. I can scarcely agree with De Thou (ii., 681, liv. xxiii.) in supposing Catharine deceived in the character of the Guises: "Comme elle ne connoissoit pas encore le caractere de ces Princes, elle crut qu'ils se soumettroient en tout a ses volontes," etc. This statement does injustice to the perspicacity of Catharine, who for so many years had been quietly, but none the less carefully, studying these courtiers and all others that figured on the stage of French politics. La Planche, with his usual acumen, makes much of the advantage which this circumstance conferred upon her (ubi supra): "La royne mere, italienne, florentine, et de la race des Medicis, et qui plus est, ayant depuis vingt-deux ans [rather, for twenty-five years] eu tout loisir de considerer les humeurs et facons de toutes ces gens, regardoit ce jeu, et sceut si bien empoigner l'occasion, qu'elle gaigna finalement la partie."]

[Footnote 740: For a full and not uninteresting account of the obsequies, see the pamphlet already referred to: "Le Trespas et l'Ordre des obseques," etc. Paris, 1559. Reprinted in Cimber et Danjou, iii. 307, etc.]

[Footnote 741: Regnier de la Planche, Hist. de l'estat de France sous Francois II., 206. "The French King," wrote Throkmorton to his royal mistress, "alredy hathe geven him (the constable) to understande, that the Cardinal of Lorrain and the Duke of Guise shal manage his hole affairs." Throkmorton to the Queen, July 18, 1559, Forbes, State Papers, i. 166.]

[Footnote 742: "Ut re vera sit conestabilis." Beza to Bullinger, Sept. 12, 1559, apud Baum, ii. App. 1. The title of constable was for life. Of the tenure of the office, the memoirs of Vieilleville make Henry II. say: "Vous scavez que les estats de connestable, mareschaux et chancelliers de France sont totalement collez et cousus a la teste de ceulx qui en sont honnorez, que l'on ne peut arracher l'un sans l'autre." Mem., i. 207.]

[Footnote 743: Huguenot and papist agreed in this, if they could agree in nothing else. "Guisiani fratres," said Beza, "ita inter se regnum sunt partiti ut regi nihil praeter inane nomen sit relictum." Beza, ubi supra. Cardinal Santa Croce used almost the same expression: "Eo devenerat ut regi solum nomen reliquisse, alia omnia sibi sumsisse videretur." Commentarii, v. 1440.]

[Footnote 744: The poor fellow's wit was recompensed with a public flogging. The incident is told in the recently published Journal d'un cure ligueur (Jehan de la Fosse), 37. It need scarcely be said that the Crescent referred to Diana of Poitiers.]

[Footnote 745: "Nam cum ... regem de more salutatum venisset ... Lotharingii suasu ne respicere hominem voluit." Santa Croce, Comment., v. 1439.]

[Footnote 746: La Planche, 206.]

[Footnote 747: In a remark which he was accused of once making to Henry II., "that he was surprised that the king had no child resembling him, save his illegitimate, but acknowledged daughter, Diana, married to the constable's son!" La Planche, 204, 207; De Thou, ii. 685.]

[Footnote 748: Blaise de Montluc, a trusty agent, kept Guise well posted respecting the King of Navarre's words and disposition. "Encores que M. le Connestable luy ayt escript plusieurs lettres, neantmoins il m'a toujours dict qu'il ne se fieroit jamais de luy, ayant bien cogneu que ce semblant d'amitie qu'il luy portoit n'estoit que pour l'attirer de son coste, affin de ruiner ses cousins," etc. Instruction donnee par le seign. de Montluc a M. de la Tour, 22 juillet, 1559, Mem. de Conde, i. 307; Mem. de Guise, 450.]

[Footnote 749: The wealth and power of the Montmorency family were proverbial; their palaces were among the most magnificent in France. Of one of them the English ambassadors wrote, four years earlier, a long description for the benefit of Queen Mary, beginning: "We saw another house which the said constable had but lately built, called Ecouen, which was praised for the fairest house in France." The Journey of the Queen's Ambassadors to Rome, Anno 1555 (Hardwick, State Papers, i. 63).]

[Footnote 750: See the Livre des marchands, Paris, 1565, ascribed to Louis Regnier de la Planche, the reputed author of the most authentic history of this reign (Ed. Pantheon litt., 429, 453, et passim).]

[Footnote 751: De la Planche, 207.]

[Footnote 752: De la Planche, p. 208.]

[Footnote 753: Ibid., p. 205, 206; De Thou, ii. 683, whose account, as in so many other instances during this reign, is almost exclusively based upon the invaluable history of Regnier de la Planche.]

[Footnote 754: La Planche, p. 208; Tumulte d'Amboise, ubi supra; Languet, Epist. secretae, ii. p. 2.]

[Footnote 755: La Planche, p. 212; La Place, 26; De Thou, ii. 684.]

[Footnote 756: "Rex Navarrorum animum in corpore virili gerit muliebrem." J. C. Portanus, Oct. 30, 1559, Languet, Epist. secretae, ii. 4.]

[Footnote 757: The Bishop of Mende was to become a member of the privy council; D'Escars to be made a knight of the order of St. Michael, and to command fifty men-at-arms. La Planche, 213.]

[Footnote 758: The Guises did not fail, however, to take precautions against a surprise. If Throkmorton was well informed, the duke had "caused two thousand corselets to be laid up in the house of Burbone (Bourbon), nere to the court, to serve in case of innovacion; if that any such matter shuld happen upon the arrivall of the King of Navarre." Desp. of Aug. 8, 1559, Forbes, State Papers, i. 194.]

[Footnote 759: La Planche, ubi supra.]

[Footnote 760: Idem, 213, 214.]

[Footnote 761: Throkmorton to the queen, Aug. 15, 1559, Forbes, i. 202.]

[Footnote 762: "Qu'il n'est point petit compagnon en France."]

[Footnote 763: Instruction of Montluc to La Tour, already cited, Mem. de Guise, 450.]

[Footnote 764: Antoine did, indeed, continue his protestations of his firm intention "not to fail to do the best he could to advance God's true religion and cause." He made secret appointments with the English ambassador, at one time about eleven o'clock at night, near the abbey of St. Denis, at another time in disguise in the cloisters of the Augustinian friars, and had much to say about his satisfaction "that he had so good a colleague" as Elizabeth "in so good a cause." But the diplomatic correspondence does not show a single step which Navarre ever ventured to take in behalf of that "good cause." See Throkmorton's despatch of Aug. 25th, Forbes, State Papers, i. 213, 214.]

[Footnote 765: "Navarrus ad quem jure ipso et more majorum hactenus inviolata pertinebat regni administratio, quamvis a plerisque Ecclesiis salutatus et rogatus ne tam praeclaram et divinitus oblatam occasionem negligeret, quamvis summo et aperto ludibrio a Guisianis exceptus, tamen omnibus annuit et suo exemplo confirmavit Christi dictum; Difficile est divitem ingredi in regnum coelorum." Beza to Bullinger, Sept. 12, 1559, apud Baum, ii., App., 1, 2; La Place, 27; La Planche, 213-216; De Thou, ii. 686, 687.]

[Footnote 766: Held Sept. 18th. See a description in Forbes, State Papers, i. 232. Navarre, as one of the six temporal peers, represented the Duke of Burgundy; Guise represented the Duke of Normandy; Nevers, the Duke of Guyenne, etc.]

[Footnote 767: La Planche, 218; De Thou, ii. 688. That the promise of assistance was only given in order to frighten Navarre was patent to all who were cognizant of Philip's projected African campaign.]

[Footnote 768: De Thou (ii. 722, 723) gives an account apparently correct, save in one or two particulars, of these two missions. The slavish letter of Antoine to D'Audoz or D'Odoux, as De Thou writes the name of the second messenger, may be read in the Negociations relatives au regne de Francois II. (drawn from the papers of the Bishop of Limoges, French ambassador to Philip, and published by the French government, under the editorial care of M. Paris, 1841), pp. 164-166. Compare Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 91.]

[Footnote 769: La Planche, 209.]

[Footnote 770: Throkmorton to Cecil, July 13, 1559, Forbes, State Papers, i. 161.]

[Footnote 771: La Planche, 221; Beza to Bullinger, Sept. 12, 1559, Baum, ii., App., 3.]

[Footnote 772: La Planche, 221; Mem. de Castelnau (Eng. tr. of 1724, p. 23), bk. i. c. 5; Declarations of Sept. 4th and Nov. 14, 1559, in the Memoires de Guise, 450, 451. These declarations were registered by parliament, with the proviso that no house should be razed unless the owners were privy to the crime or guilty of inexcusable negligence. Memoires de Conde, i, 310.]

[Footnote 773: La Planche, ubi supra.]

[Footnote 774: Arret du parlement, of September 6, 1559, in Memoires de Conde, i. 308, 309.]

[Footnote 775: In August there were nineteen Protestants in Parisian dungeons, sentenced to be executed for heresy, some in one place, some in another. A man and a woman were rescued, on the twenty-first of this month, while on their way to execution at Meaux. Forbes, State Papers, i. 211, 212.]

[Footnote 776: La Planche, 221, 223; Hist. eccles., i. 144—147, where the account is taken word for word from La Planche; De Thou, ii. 691, 692; Felibien, Hist. de Paris, ii. 1069; Mem. de Castelnau, liv. i., c. 4.]

[Footnote 777: "La royne Catherine de Medicis, florentine, nation desireuse de nouvellete ... haissoit, comme belle mere, la Royne sa fille, qui l'esloignoit des affaires et portoit l'amitie du Roy son fils a MM. de Guise, lesquels ne luy deportoient du gouvernement qu'en ce qu'ils cognoissoient qu'elle ne pouvoit nuire, luy donnant credit en apparence sans effect," Mem. de Tavannes, ii. 260.]

[Footnote 778: La Planche, 211; Hist. eccles., i. 141, seq.; Beza to Bullinger, Sept. 12, 1559; Baum, ii., App., 3.]

[Footnote 779:

"Vers l'Eternel, des oppresses le pere, Je m'en iray, luy monstrant l'impropere Que l'on me fait; et luy feray priere," etc. ]

[Footnote 780: "Coppie de lettres envoyees a la Royne Mere par un sien serviteur apres la mort du feu Roy Henri deuxieme." Cimber et Danjou, Archives curieuses, iii. 349, etc. The substance of Villemadon's letter, which is dated August 26th, 1559, is given by La Planche, 211, 212, and, after him, by Hist. eccles., i. 141, 142.]

[Footnote 781: La Planche, 219; Hist. eccles., i. 143; cf. Forbes, State Papers, i. 226.]

[Footnote 782: La Planche, 220; Hist. eccles., ubi supra. It is not at all improbable that those who endeavored to influence Catharine showed too little discretion in their zeal, and needlessly provoked her displeasure by reference to the judgment of God upon her husband. So, at least, thought the judicious Frenchman Languet, who added, with some bitterness, that whoever urged upon them moderation was rewarded for his pains by being called a traitor to the faith. Epist. secretae, ii. 41.]

[Footnote 783: Or, Trouillard, according to Castelnau, ubi supra.]

[Footnote 784: La Planche, 223-225; Castelnau, liv. i., c. 4; De Thou, ii. 691.]

[Footnote 785: La Planche and De Thou, ubi supra.]

[Footnote 786: Epistolae secretae, ii. 30.]

[Footnote 787: See ante, c. viii., p. 275. The authority of the Memoires de Tavannes (ii. 258)—"Les chambres ardentes sont erigees pour persecuter les Huguenots, et ce d'autant plus que les princes du sang et les freres de Coligny favorisoient la religion nouvelle"—cannot weigh against the positive statement of the preamble of Henry II.'s edict of Paris, Nov. 19, 1549, ante, c. viii., p. 275. Yet Drion, Hist. chron. de l'eglise prot. de France, i. 63, places the original institution here.]

[Footnote 788: Drion, i. 64; Hist. eccles., i. 151. On the other hand, Protestant sympathizers sometimes interfered with the course of law in the interest of their brethren in the faith. "Since our arrivall to this towne," wrote Killigrew and Jones from Blois, Nov. 14, 1559, "there were xvii persones taken for the worde's sake, and committed to the sergeaunts to be conveyed to Orleauns, and other places therabouts, to be prosecuted. Notwithstanding, it hathe so happened, as the prisoners in the way betwene this towne and Orleans were rescued, and taken from the sergeaunts who had charge of them, by sixty men on horsebacke, and so were conveyed away." Forbes, State Papers, i. 261. At Rouen, Jan. 29, 1560, a bookbinder was snatched from between two friars, as he was being led in a cart to be burned alive, a cloak thrown over him, and he conveyed out of the hands of his enemies. Unfortunately, the gates having been closed, he was recaptured the same night, and the cruel sentence was executed the next day, with a guard of 300 men-at-arms, for fear of the people. Memorandum of Feb. 8th, State Paper Office.]

[Footnote 789: La Planche, 236, 337; De Thou, ii. 705, 706.]

[Footnote 790: "Comme d'abus." La Place, 19; Crespin, Gal. chretienne, ii. 304.]

[Footnote 791: La Planche, 209, 210; La Place, 20; Hist. eccles., i. 138, 139; Crespin, Galerie chretienne, ii. 305-318; Forbes, State Papers, i. 185. The Memoires de Conde, i. 217-304, reprint entire a contemporary pamphlet entitled, "La vraye histoire, contenant l'inique jugement et fausse procedure faite contre le fidele serviteur de Dieu Anne du Bourg, conseillier pour le Roy, en la Cour du Parlement de Paris," etc. (Paris) 1561. It contains in full the interrogatories and replies, Du Bourg's confession, etc., and will amply repay a careful reading. It concludes with a pregnant sentence: "Voila l'issue et fin de l'histoire que j'avoye propose d'ecrire, pour un commencement de beaucoup de troubles, guerres et divisions: car d'injustice procede tout mal." Significant and prophetic words to be written and published the year before the outbreak of the first civil war! The editor of 1743, p. 217, well observes that the execution of Du Bourg may be regarded as one of the chief causes of the conspiracy of Amboise, which broke out soon after, and, consequently, of the troubles agitating France for nearly forty years.]

[Footnote 792: La Planche, 227-235; Hist. eccles., i. 153-155.]

[Footnote 793: There was no proof that Antoine Minard's murder was wrought by a Protestant hand. An address of Du Bourg, in which he reminded the unrighteous judge of the coming judgment of God, was, after the event, perversely construed as a threat of assassination. A Scotchman, Robert Stuart, a kinsman of the queen, was charged with firing the fatal pistol-shot, but even under the torture revealed nothing. Public opinion was divided, some attributing the catastrophe to Minard's well-known immorality ("d'autant," says La Planche, "qu'il y estoit du tout adonne, et qu'il ne craignoit de seduire toutes les dames et damoiselles qui avoyent des proces devant luy," etc.), others to his equally flagrant injustice, others still to the "Lutherans." La Planche, 233, 234.]

[Footnote 794: Not, as La Planche, 235, and the Hist. eccles., i. 154, state, Otho Henry, but his successor, Frederick III. Baum, Theodor Beza, ii. 35, 36; Languet, Epistolae sec., ii. 36.]

[Footnote 795: So the English agents, Killigrew and Jones, wrote from Blois, Dec. 27, 1559: "Bourg was not executed, till about the xx of this present: who before his deathe made suche an oration to the Lords of the parliament, as it moved as many of them as were there to shede teares," Forbes, State Papers, i. 290.]

[Footnote 796: La Place, 22, 23; Crespin, Galerie chretienne, ii. 318-322.]

[Footnote 797: La Place, 23; Crespin, Galerie chretienne, ii. 322, 323; Hist. eccles., i. 155, 156; De Thou, ii. 700-703.]

[Footnote 798: La Planche, 236. "Inter quos," writes Jean Crespin in the colophon to the edition of his Actiones et Monimenta Martyrum of 1560, "egregie cordatus Dei Martyr Annas a Burgo supremae Parisiensis Curiae senator, xxiij. die mensis Decemb. anni M.D.LIX. admirabilem martyrii coronam accepit." In the preface dated Feb. 26th—two months after Du Bourg's death—he is styled "senator innocentissimus, integerrimus, sanctissimus."]

[Footnote 799: Florimond de Raemond, Historia de ortu, progressu, et ruina haesreseon hujus saeculi (Col. 1613), lib. vii, c. vi., p. 411. We have La Planche's testimony to the somewhat extraordinary statement that the judges themselves declared Du Bourg happy in suffering in behalf of so just a cause, and excused themselves for their own conduct by alleging the pressure of the Guises (p. 228). "Stulte fecerunt gubernatores Gallici, quod eum publice supplicio affecerunt," wrote Languet, a few months later; "ejus enim supplicium est una ex non minimis causis horum tumultuum." Epist. sec., ii, 47.]

[Footnote 800: Florimond de Raemond, ii. 410, 411. Let not the humane reader mistake. Policy, not pity, dictated toleration. The same Florimond de Raemond, presiding as the oldest counsellor, read an arret of the Parliament of Bordeaux, not only ordering the disinterment of a child buried in the cemetery of Ozillac in Saintonge, but that of all the bodies of Huguenots that had been placed in any other cemetery within ten years. Plaintes des eglises reformees de France, etc., 1597; apud Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. fr., xi. (1862), 145.]

[Footnote 801: Compare La Planche, 242.]

[Footnote 802: The singular details of these trials, which strikingly illustrate the horrible corruption of the French judiciary in the sixteenth century, are given by La Planche, 242-245; Hist. eccles., i. 160-164; De Thou, ii. 703, 704; La Place, 24, who remarks upon the singularly different judgments in the five cases, and attributes the variety to the change in the state of the kingdom, and to the diversity of the interrogatories addressed to the prisoners. The sentences against Du Faur and De Foix were subsequently annulled and erased from the records of the parliament, on the ground of irregularity.]

[Footnote 803: De Thou, ii. 699; Agrippa d'Aubigne, Histoire universelle (Maille, 1616), i. 89.]

[Footnote 804: Recueil gen. des anc. lois franc. (July 23, 1359), xiv. 1; (Dec. 17th), xiv. 14; and (Aug. 5, 1560), xiv. 46.]

[Footnote 805: La Planche, 218. Cf. Histoire du tumulte d'Amboise.]

[Footnote 806: "In Gallia omnia sunt perturbatissima," wrote Languet (Jan. 31, 1560), "et scribitur esse omnino impossibile, ut res diu eo modo consistant." The Cardinal of Lorraine, he added, has dissipated the single church of Paris, but during this very period there have been established more than sixty churches in other parts of the kingdom; nor are the Genevese able to supply so many ministers as they are asked to furnish. Meantime many are defending themselves against the royal officers. The Gascons lately drove off the commissioners sent by the Parliament of Bordeaux to make inquisition for Lutherans. The same has happened in the district of Narbonne, not far from Marseilles. Epistolae sec., ii., pp. 32, 33.]

[Footnote 807: Beza to Bullinger, Sept. 12, 1559 (Baum, ii., App., p. 3). Calvin, in his letters to Bullinger and Peter Martyr, both dated May 11, 1560, by the expression "eight months ago," points back to the same period. Calvin's Letters (Bonnet), Eng. tr., iv. 104-106.]

[Footnote 808: Beza, ubi supra.]

[Footnote 809: Calvin's Letters, iv. 107. So the ministers of Geneva declare before the council: "que pour les troubles arrives en France, ils n'en sont nullement coupables; qu'il ne doit pas etre inconnu au Conseil qu'ils ont detourne, autant qu'ils ont pu, d'aller a Amboise, ceux qu'ils ont sceu avoir quelque dessein d'y aller." Registers, Jan. 28, 1561, apud Gaberel, Histoire de l'egl. de Geneve, i., pieces justif., 203.]

[Footnote 810: La Planche, 237.]

[Footnote 811: De Heu was a man of great influence. He had been echevin at Metz, and the chief mover in introducing Protestantism into that city. In 1543 he invited Farel to come thither. Persecution drove him to Switzerland. He returned from exile upon the fall of Metz into the hands of the French, in 1552. When he found that the change had only aggravated the condition of the Protestants, he became prominent in the effort to enlist the sympathy and support of the German princes in behalf of the French reformation. Bulletin de l'hist. du prot. fr., xxv. (1876), 164.]

[Footnote 812: The whole affair remained involved in impenetrable obscurity until the recent fortunate discovery of the "Proces verbal" (or original minute) "de l'execution a mort de Caspar de Heu, S^r. de Buy" among the MSS. of the Bibliotheque Nationale, 22562, 1re partie, pp. 110-113. It is now printed in the Appendix to "Le Tigre," 103-108, and Bulletin de l'hist. du prot. fr., xxv. (1876), 164-168. The very date (which proves to be Sept. 1, 1558) was previously unknown.]

[Footnote 813: "Ce pendant," says the royal lieutenant, in the interesting document just described, "aurions fait faire une fosse dans les fosses du donjon dudit chasteau, soubz les arches du pont de la poterne, comme nous semblant lieu le plus cache et secret d'alentour dudit chasteau, d'autant que l'on ne va souvent ny aysement esdits fossez, et que les herbes y sont communement grandes," etc. Le Tigre, 108.]

[Footnote 814: The author of that terrible invective, "Le Tigre," reminds the cardinal of this crime in one of the finest outbursts of indignant reproach: "N'oys-tu pas crier le sang de celuy que tu fis estrangler dans une chambre du boys de Vincennes? S'il estoit coupable, que [pourquoi] n'a il este puny publiquement? Ou sont les tesmoingts qui l'ont charge? Pourquoy as-tu voulu en sa mort rompre et froisser toutes les loix de France, si tu pencoys que par les loix, il peut estre condemne?" Also in the versified "Tigre," lines 315-326. It is only just to La Renaudie to add that, according to La Planche, those who knew him best acquitted him of the charge of being much influenced by these and other personal considerations. Hist. de l'estat de France, 238, 316-318.]

[Footnote 815: "Homme, comme l'on dit, de grand esprit, et de diligence presque incroyable." Hist. du tumulte d'Amboise, in Recueil des choses memorables (1565), and Memoires de Conde, i. 324.]

[Footnote 816: According to De Thou, ii. 762, March 15th. So Davila, 22, and La Place, 33. Calvin (Letter to Sturm, March 23, 1560, Bonnet, iv. 91) says "before March 15." Castelnau, i. 6, says March 10th.]

[Footnote 817: The uniform statement of the contemporary authorities from whom our accounts of the "Tumult" are derived, is to the effect that the blow was to be struck at Blois, but that, on discovering their peril, the Guises hastily removed the court, for greater safety, to the castle of Amboise. And yet the correspondence of the English commissioners discloses the fact that the time of the removal had been decided upon on the 28th of January, several days before the Nantes assembly. See Ranke, Am. ed., 176. "The Frenche King, as it is said, the 5th of February removeth hens towardes Amboise; and will be fifteen dayes in going thither." Despatch of Killigrew and Jones, from Blois, January 28, 1559/60, Forbes, State Papers, i. 315. In fact, the general outline of the royal progress was indicated by the Spanish ambassador, Perrenot Chantonnay, to Philip II., so far back as December 2, 1559: "La cour, lui avait-il ecrit, a le projet de passer le cureme a Amboise, de se rendre en Guyenne au printemps, en passant par Poitiers, Bordeaux, Bayonne, d'aller ensuite a Toulouse, de demeurer l'hiver suivant en Provence et en Languedoc, et d'agir vigoureusement contre les heretiques." Mignet, Journal des Savants, 1857, 419, from Simancas MSS. The Spanish ambassador saw so much that appalled him in the rapid progress of the Reformation in every part of France, that he feared alike for the North and the South, when the king was not present to check its growth.]

[Footnote 818: La Planche, 238, 239; Hist. eccles., i. 158, 159; De Thou, ii. 754-762 (where La Renaudie's harangue is given at length); Castelnau, liv. i., c. 8; Davila, 22; La Place, 33. Hist. du tumulte d'Amboise, ubi supra.]

[Footnote 819: De Thou, ii. 762, 763.]

[Footnote 820: Castelnau, 1. i., c. 8; La Planche, 245, 246; Hist. eccl., i. 164; La Place, 33; De Thou, ii. 763. The Histoire du tumulte d'Amboise, apud Recueil des choses memorables (1565), i. 5, and Mem. de Conde, i. 329, describes Des Avenelles as "prest de se donner a louage au premier offrant;" adding "estant ambitieux et necessiteux tout ensemble, il pensa avoir trouve le moyen pour se rendre riche et memorable a jamais." For a favorable view of Des Avenelles's motives, see De Thou, ii. 775. The 12th of February was the date when these tidings reached the Guises, as appears from the speech of Morage or Morague, sent in March to deliver to parliament for registry the edict of amnesty for past religious offences. Mem. de Conde, i. 337. The king, who had started on his hunting tour from Blois on the 5th of February, was, when the news came, between Marchenoir and Montoire (places north and northwest of Blois). The first intimations must, however, have been very vague and general, since, on the 19th of February, the Cardinal of Lorraine wrote to Coignet, French ambassador in Switzerland, directing him to set one or two persons to watch La Renaudie ("a la queue de la Regnaudie pour l'observer de loin, n'en perdre connaissance ni jour, ni nuit"), and seize him the moment he entered the French territories—evidently supposing him to be still in Switzerland and far from Amboise. Letter of Card. Lorraine from Montoire, Feb. 19, 1560, Imp. Lib. Paris, Mignet, Journal des Savants, 1857, 420, 421. It was, doubtless, the receipt of more definite warnings that led the Guises to hasten the termination of the king's pleasure excursion. On the 22d of February, Francis arrived at Amboise, "which was two dayes sooner then was loked for." Throkmorton to the queen, Feb. 27, 1560, Forbes, State Papers, i. 334.]

[Footnote 821: Castelnau, ubi supra.]

[Footnote 822: La Planche and Hist. eccles., ubi supra. I need not call attention to the gross absurdity into which Jean de Tavannes falls (Mem. ii. 260, 261), when he makes Catharine, through policy and hatred of Mary of Scots and of the Guises, whom the Scottish queen supported, favor the malcontents! Can the younger Tavannes have been misled by the hypocritical representations with which she once and again attempted ineffectually to deceive the reformers when they appealed to her to put an end to the persecutions?]

[Footnote 823: See the synopsis of Coligny's speech in La Planche, 247, 248. Tavannes ascribes Coligny's impunity throughout this reign to Catharine's interposition, revealing the plans of his enemies, etc. (Memoires, ii. 264). It was much more probably owing to his powerful family alliances, and particularly to the fear of throwing the weight of the enormous influence of his uncle, Constable Montmorency, into the opposite scale. Yet it must be confessed that Catharine displayed for the admiral, on more than one occasion, that respect which integrity always exacts from vice, and which is most likely to be manifested in the hour of danger. Early in this reign the court faction had endeavored to sow discord between the two principal men of the Protestant party, by intimating to Coligny that Conde was seeking to obtain the governorship of Picardy, which the former held. The calumny, however, failed of its object.]

[Footnote 824: Recueil des anc. lois franc, xiv. 22-24; La Planche, 248; La Place, 37; Hist. eccles., i. 166, 167; De Thou, ii. 764; Forbes, i. 877. A Latin version, but out of its chronological position in Languet, Epist. sec., ii. p. 15. The date of the publication of this important document at Paris is indicated in a letter of Hubert Languet: "Certum est undecima Martii Lutetiae propositum esse edictum, in quo Rex condonat suis subditis quidquid hactenus peccatum est in religione." Epist. sec., ii. 44.]

[Footnote 825: "Car aucuns conseillers disoyent que c'estoit un attrape-minault." La Planche, 248.]

[Footnote 826: Beza to Bullinger, June 26, 1560; in Baum, ii., App. 13.]

[Footnote 827: Throkmorton's Correspondence in Forbes, State Papers, i. 353, 354, 374-378.]

[Footnote 828: Hist. du tumulte d'Amboise, ubi supra; La Planche, 251, 252; La Place, 34, 35; De Thou, ii. 767, 768; Mem. de Castelnau, liv. i., c. 8; Throkmorton to the queen, March 21, 1560, Forbes, State Papers, i. 376, 377. Vieilleville, if we may credit Carloix, foresaw the impossibility of keeping his honor in this mission, and refused to take it. Mem. de Vielleville, ii. 420, etc.]

[Footnote 829: La Planche, ubi supra.]

[Footnote 830: La Planche, 254; La Place, 35; De Thou, ii. 769; Davila, 25. Sir Nich. Throkmorton, March 21, 1560, Forbes, State Papers, i. 380. M. Mignet has shown (Journal des Savants, 1857, 477, note) that the death of La Renaudie cannot have taken place before the evening of the 19th, or the morning of the 20th.]

[Footnote 831: Even in their letter to their sister, the Queen Dowager of Scotland (April 9, 1560), the Cardinal of Lorraine and the Duke of Guise had the assurance to speak of the affair of Amboise as "a conspiracy made to kill the king, in which we were not forgotten." Forbes, State Papers, i. 400.]

[Footnote 832: Cf. the commission in the Recueil des choses memorables (1565), 19-24; La Planche, 252, 253; De Thou, ii. 768; Davila, 24.; Agrippa d'Aubigne, liv. ii., c. 15.]

[Footnote 833: Recueil des anc. lois fr., xiv., 24-26; La Planche, 253, 254; Languet, ii. 48, 49; De Thou, ii. 769. It need scarcely be added that the aim of the insurgents is misrepresented to be, "under veil of religion, to ravage all the rich cities and houses of the kingdom."]

[Footnote 834: La Planche, 257, 262.]

[Footnote 835: "The 17th of this present there were twenty-two of these rebellis drowned in sacks, and the 18th of the same at night twenty-five more. Among all these which be taken, there be eighteen of the bravest captains of France." Throkmorton to the queen, March 21st, Forbes, i. 378.]

[Footnote 836: La Planche, 257, 263.]

[Footnote 837: Throkmorton, ubi supra.]

[Footnote 838: La Planche, 263, 265; La Place, 34, 35; Hist. du tumulte d'Amboise, apud Mem. de Conde, i. 327; D'Aubigne, ubi supra.]

[Footnote 839: Ibid., 254-258; La Place, 35; Hist. du tumulte, ubi supra; Throkmorton, ubi supra, i. 380.]

[Footnote 840: La Planche, 258.]

[Footnote 841: Memoires de Theodore Agrippa d'Aubigne (Ed. Pantheon lit.), 472.]

[Footnote 842: La Planche, 267.]

[Footnote 843: I have followed in the text the account of La Planche. La Place, 36, represents Conde as voluntarily making his appearance and declaration before the king and the princes and knights that were present, on hearing that the ambassadors of several foreign princes had named him in their despatches as the author of the enterprise.]

[Footnote 844: La Planche, 268, 269; La Place, 36; Hist. eccles., i. 171; De Thou, ii. 773, 774; Mem. de Castelnau, liv. i., c. 11. The Cardinal of Lorraine, however, was deeply mortified and vexed. "El cardenal estava presente teniendo los ojos en tierra, sin hablar palabra, mostrando solamente descontentemiento de lo que passava." MSS. Simancas, apud Mignet, Journal des Savants, 1857, 479.]

[Footnote 845: The accusation referred to occurs, for instance, in a private diary, part of which has recently come to light, begun by one Friar Symeon Vinot, Sept. 10, 1563. He notes: "L'an 1561 "—an error for 1560—"commenca a, s'elever en France la secte des Hugguenotz, ou (a mieulx dire) Eygnossen, pour ce qu'il [ils] vouloient fayre les villes franches, et s'allier ensemble, comme les villes des Schwysses, qu'on dict en allemand Egnossen, cest a dire Aliez," etc. Bulletin de l'hist. du prot. fr., xxv. (1876) 380.]

[Footnote 846: Histoire du parlement de Bordeaux, depuis sa creation jusqu'a sa suppression (1541-1790), oeuvre posthume de C. B. F. Boscheron des Portes, president honoraire de la cour d'appel de Bordeaux, etc. (Bordeaux, 1877), i. 130.]



CHAPTER X.

THE ASSEMBLY OF NOTABLES AT FONTAINEBLEAU, AND THE CLOSE OF THE REIGN OF FRANCIS THE SECOND.

[Sidenote: Rise of the name "Huguenots."]

[Sidenote: Various explanations given.]

The tempest which had threatened to overwhelm the Guises at Amboise had been successfully withstood; but quiet had not returned to the minds of those whose vices were its principal cause. The air was still thick with noxious vapors, and none could tell how soon or in what quarter the elements of a new and more terrible convulsion would gather.[847] The recent commotion had disclosed the existence of a body of malcontents, in part religious, in part also political, scattered over the whole kingdom and of unascertained numbers. To its adherents the name of Huguenots was now for the first time given.[848] What the origin of this celebrated appellation was, it is now perhaps impossible to discover. Although a number of plausible derivations have been given, it is not unlikely that all are equally far removed from the truth, and that the word arose from some trivial circumstance that has completely passed into oblivion. It has been traced back to the name of the Eidgenossen or confederates, under which the party of freedom figured in Geneva when the authority of the bishop and duke was overthrown;[849] or to the Roy Huguet, or Huguon, a hobgoblin supposed to haunt the vicinity of Tours, to whom the superstitious attributed the nocturnal assemblies of the Protestants;[850] or to the gate du roy Huguon of the same city, near which those gatherings were wont to be made.[851] Some of their enemies maintained the former existence of a diminutive coin known as a huguenot, and asserted that the appellation, as applied to the reformed, arose from their "not being worth a huguenot" or farthing.[852] And some of their friends, with equal confidence and no less improbability, declared that it was invented because the adherents of the house of Guise secretly put forward claims upon the crown of France in behalf of that house as descended from Charlemagne, whereas the Protestants loyally upheld the rights of the Valois sprung from Hugh Capet.[853] In the diversity of contradictory statements, we may perhaps be excused if we suspend our judgment of their respective merits, and prefer to look upon this partisan name as one with whose original import not a score of persons in France besides its fortuitous inventor may have been acquainted, and which may have had nothing to recommend it to those who so readily adopted it, save novelty and the recognized need of some more convenient name than "Lutherans," "Christaudins," or the awkward circumlocution, "those of the religion." Be this as it may, not a week had passed after the conspiracy of Amboise before the word was in everybody's mouth. Few knew or cared whence it arose.[854]

[Sidenote: Its sudden rise.]

A powerful party, whatever name it might bear, had sprung up, as it were, in a night. There was sober truth conveyed in the jesting letter of some fugitives to the Cardinal of Lorraine. Twenty or thirty Huguenots succeeded in breaking the bars of their prison at Blois, and, letting themselves down by cords, escaped. Some others at Tours, a few days later, were equally fortunate. Scarcely had the latter regained their liberty when they wrote a letter to the prelate who was supposed to take so deep an interest in their concerns, informing him that, having heard of the escape of his prisoners at Blois, they had been so grieved, that, for the love they bore him, they had immediately started out in search. And they begged him not to distress himself on account of their absence; for they assured him that they would all soon return to see him, and would bring with them not only these, but all the rest of those that had conspired to take his life.[855]

[Sidenote: How to be accounted for.]

No feature of the rise of the Reformation in France is more remarkable than the sudden impulse which it received during the last year or two of Henry the Second's life, and especially within the brief limits of the reign of his eldest son. The seed had been sown assiduously for nearly forty years; but the fruit of so much labor had been comparatively slight and unsatisfactory. Much of the return proved to be of a literary and philosophical, rather than of a religious character, and tended to intellectual development instead of the purification of religions belief and practice. Much of the seed was choked by relentless persecution. Bishops and preachers, the gay poet, and the time-serving courtier, fell away with alarming facility, when the blight of the royal displeasure fell upon those who professed a desire to abolish the superstitious observances of the established church.

[Sidenote: A sudden harvest.]

But now, within a few brief months, the harvest seemed, as by a miracle, to be approaching simultaneously over the whole surface of the extended field. The grains of truth long since lodged in an arid soil, and apparently destitute of all vitality, had suddenly developed all the energy of life. France to the reformers, whose longing eyes were at length permitted to see this day, was "white unto the harvest," and only the reapers were needed to put forth the sickle and gather the wheat into the garner. There was not a corner of the kingdom where the number of incipient Protestant churches was not considerable. Provence alone contained sixty, whose delegates this year met in a synod at the blood-stained village of Merindol. In large tracts of country the Huguenots had become so numerous that they were no longer able or disposed to conceal their religious sentiments, nor content to celebrate their rites in private or nocturnal assemblies. This was particularly the case in Normandy, in Languedoc, and on the banks of the Rhone.

[Sidenote: The progress of letters]

[Sidenote: and of intelligence.]

It may be worth while to pause here, and inquire into some of the causes of this rapid spread of the doctrines of the Reformation after the long period of comparative stagnation preceding. One of these was undoubtedly the astonishing progress of letters in France during the last forty years. From being neglected and rough, the French language, during the first half of the sixteenth century, became the most polite of the tongues spoken in Western Europe—thanks to a series of eminent prose writers and poets who graced the royal court. The generation reaching manhood in the latter years of the reign of Henry the Second were far better educated than the contemporaries of Francis the First. The public mind, through the elevating tendencies of schools fostered by royal bounty, was to a considerable degree emancipated from the thraldom of superstition. It repudiated the silly romanese, passing for the lives of the saints, with which the public had formerly been satisfied. It scrutinized minutely every pretended miracle of the papal churches and convents, and exposed the trickery by which a corrupt clergy sought to maintain itself in popular esteem. Thus the growing intelligence and widening information of the people prepared them to appreciate the merits of the great doctrinal controversy now occupying the attention of enlightened minds. Interest in the discussion of the most important themes that can occupy the human contemplation was both stimulated and gratified by a constant influx of religious works from the teeming presses of Strasbourg, Basle, Lausanne, Neufchatel, and especially Geneva. And the verdict of the great majority of readers and thinkers was favorable to the Swiss and German controversialists.

[Sidenote: Calvin's Institutes.]

[Sidenote: Marot and Beza's Psalms.]

Next to the Bible, translated originally by Olivetanus, and in its successive editions rendered more conformable to the Hebrew and Greek texts, the "Christian Institutes" exerted the most powerful influence. The close logic of Calvin's treatises, speaking in a style clear, concise and nervous, and touching a chord of sympathy in each French reader, made its deep impress upon the intellect and heart, while captivating the ear. Calvin's commentaries on the sacred volume rendered its pages luminous and familiar. Other works exerted an influence scarcely inferior. The "Actions and Monuments" of the martyrs, by Jean Crespin, printer and scholar, not only perpetuated the memory of the witnesses for the truth, but stimulated others to copy their fidelity. Marot and Beza's metrical versions of the Psalms, wafted into popularity, even among those who at first little sympathized with the piety of the words, by the novelty and beauty of the music to which they were sung, were powerful auxiliaries to the arguments of the theologian. They entered the house of the peasant and invested its homely scenes with a calm derived from the contemplation of the bliss of a heaven where the fleeting distinctions of the present shall melt away. They nerved the humble artisan to patience and to the cheerful endurance of obloquy and reproach. They attracted to the gathering of persecuted reformers in the by-street, in the retired barn, or on the open heath or mountain side, the youth who preferred their melody and intelligible words to the jargon of a service conducted in a tongue understood only by the learned. In the royal court, or rising in loud chorus from a thousand voices on the crowded Pre-aux-Clercs, they were winged messengers of the truth, where no other messengers could have found utterance with impunity.

[Sidenote: Morals and martyrdom.]

The blameless purity of life of the men and women whom, for religion's sake, the officers of the law put to death with every species of indignity and with inhuman cruelty, when contrasted with the flagrant corruption of the clergy and the shameless dissoluteness of the court, openly fostered for their own base ends by cardinals themselves accused of every species of immorality and suspected of atheism, deeply affected the minds of the reflecting. One Anne Du Bourg put to death by a Charles of Lorraine made more converts in a day than all the executioners could burn in a year.

[Sidenote: Character of the ministers from Geneva.]

But, if the rapid spread of Protestant doctrines at this precise date is due to any one cause more than to another, that cause may probably be found in the character and numbers of the religious teachers. Converts from the Papal Church, principally priests and monks, were the first apostles of the Reformation. Few of them had received systematic training of any kind, none had a thorough acquaintance with biblical learning. Many embraced the truth only in part; some professed it from improper motives. The Lenten preachers whose leaning towards "Lutheranism" was sufficiently marked to attract the hatred of the Sorbonne, were generally orators, more solicitous of popularity than jealous for the truth—fickle and inconstant men whose apostasy inflicted deep wounds upon the cause with which they had been identified, and more than neutralized all the good done by their previous exertions. But now a brotherhood of theologians took their place, not less zealous for the faith than disciplined in intellect. Geneva[856] was the nursery from which a vigorous stock was transplanted to French soil. The theological school in which Calvin and Beza taught, moulded the destinies of France. The youths who came from the shores of Lake Leman were no neophytes, nor had they to unlearn the casuistry of the schools or to throw off a monastic indolence which habit had made a second nature. They embraced a vocation to which nothing but a stern sense of duty, or the more powerful attraction of Divine love, could prompt. They entered an arena where poverty, fatigue, and almost inevitable death stared them in the face. But they entered it intelligently and resolutely, with the training of mind and of soul which an athlete might receive from such instructors, and their prayerful, trustful and unselfish endeavor met an ample recompense.[857]

[Sidenote: The Huguenots of Valence]

[Sidenote: seize the church of the Franciscans.]

The course of events in many cities of Southern France is illustrated by the occurrences at Valence, which the most authentic and trustworthy historian of this reign has described at length. This episcopal city, situated on the Rhone, about midway between Lyons and Avignon, had for some time contained a small community of Huguenots. When, in order to avoid persecution, their minister, who had become known to their enemies, was replaced by another, a period of unexampled growth began. The private houses in which the Protestants met were too small to contain the worshippers. They now adjourned to the large schools, but at first held their services by night. Soon their courage grew with the advent of a second minister and with large accessions to their ranks. The younger and more impetuous part of the Protestants, disregarding the prudent counsels of their pastors and elders, ventured upon the bold step of seizing upon the Church of the Franciscans, and caused the Gospel to be openly preached from its pulpit. The people assembled, summoned by the ringing of the bell; and it was not long before the reformed doctrines were relished and embraced by great crowds. A goodly number of armed gentlemen simultaneously took possession of the adjoining cloisters, and protected the Protestant rites. The co-religionists of Montelimart and Romans, considerable towns not far distant, emboldened by the example of Valence, resorted to public preaching in the churches or within their precincts.[858]

[Sidenote: A public assembly of citizens.]

[Sidenote: An impressive scene.]

[Sidenote: The public morals.]

On receiving the intelligence of the sudden outbreak of Protestant zeal in his diocese, the Bishop of Valence—himself at one time possibly half-inclined to become a convert—despatched thither the Seneschal of Valentinois with the royal Edict of Forgiveness published at Amboise for all who had taken arms and conspired against the king. The citizens were summoned to a public assembly, in which the magistrates, the consuls, the clergy, and the chief Huguenots were conspicuous. After reading and explaining the terms of the royal clemency, the seneschal turned to the Protestants, who stood by themselves, and demanded whether they intended to avail themselves of its protection. Mirabel, their chief spokesman, replied that it was the custom of the reformed churches to offer prayer to God before treating of so important affairs as this, and proffered a request that they be allowed to invoke His presence and blessing. Permission was granted. A citizen of Valence, who was also a deacon of the Reformed Church, thereupon came forward, and uttered a fervent prayer for the prosperity of the king and his realm, and for the progress of the Gospel. The Protestant gentlemen reverently uncovered their heads and knelt upon the ground, and their Roman Catholic neighbors imitated their example. But it was noticed that the clergy stood unmoved and refused to join in the act of worship. The prayer being ended, a Huguenot orator delivered the answer of his brethren. It was, that they rejoiced and rendered thanks for the benignity of their young prince; but that they could not avail themselves of the pardon offered. They had never conspired against their king. On the contrary, they professed a religion that enjoined the most dutiful obedience. As for bearing arms, it had only been resorted to by the Huguenots in order that they might protect themselves against the unauthorized insults and violence of private persons. The citizen was followed by a procureur, who, for eight years, had kept the criminal records of Valence. He bore public testimony to a wonderful change that had come over the city since the introduction of the preaching of the Gospel. The acts of violence which formerly rendered the streets so dangerous by night that few dared to venture out of their houses, even to visit their neighbors, had almost disappeared. The fearful story of crime which used to confront him every morning had been succeeded by a chronicle of quiet and peace. It would seem that with a change of doctrine had also come a transformation of life. The speaker challenged the other side to gainsay his statements; and when not a voice was heard in contradiction, he administered to the Papists a scathing rebuke for the calumnies which some of them had forged against the Protestants behind their backs. With this triumphant refutation of the charges of disorder, the assembly broke up.[859]

[Sidenote: The Huguenots of Dauphiny to be exterminated.]

The province of Dauphiny, within whose limits Valence, Romans and Montelimart were comprehended, was a government entrusted to the Duke of Guise. Moved with indignation at finding it become the hotbed of Protestantism, he determined to crush the Huguenots before impunity had given them still greater boldness. The governors of adjacent provinces were ordered to assist in the pious undertaking. King Francis, in a paroxysm of rage, wrote to Tavannes, acting governor of Burgundy, to take all the men-at-arms under his command and march to the assistance of Clermart, Lieutenant-Governor of Dauphiny, in cutting to pieces those who had taken up arms under color of religion. They were, he heard, three or four thousand men, and had instituted public preaching "after the Geneva fashion," with all other insolent acts conceivable. He begged him to punish them as they deserved, showing no pity or compassion, since they had refused to take advantage of the forgiveness of past offences which had been sent them. He was to extirpate the evil.[860]

These and other equally brutal instructions were obeyed with alacrity; but their execution was effected rather by treachery than by open force. The Huguenots of Valence were first induced by promises of security to lay aside their arms, then imprisoned and despoiled by a party consisting of the very dregs of the population of Lyons and Vienne. Two of the ministers were put to death[861] in company with three of the principal men, one being the procureur who had given such noble testimony to the morals of the Protestants. More would have been executed had not the Bishop of Valence been induced to intercede for his episcopal city, and obtain amnesty for its citizens. Romans and Montelimart fared little better than Valence.[862]

[Sidenote: Concourse at Nismes.]

At Nismes, in Languedoc—destined periodically, for the next three centuries, to be the scene of civil dissension arising from religious intolerance—as early as in Holy Week, three Protestant ministers had been preaching in private houses and administering baptism. On Easter Monday a large concourse from the city and the surrounding villages publicly passed out into the suburbs—armed, if we may believe the cowardly Vicomte de Joyeuse, with corselets, arquebuses, and pikes—and celebrated the Lord's Supper "after the manner of Geneva." Neither the presidial judges nor the consuls exhibited much disposition to second the efforts of the provincial government in suppressing these manifestations.[863]

[Sidenote: Mouvans in arms in Provence.]

[Sidenote: His message to Guise.]

In Provence the commotion assumed a more military aspect, in immediate connection with the conspiracy of Amboise. Mouvans, an able leader, after failing in an attempt to gain admission to Aix, long maintained himself in the open country. Keeping up a wonderful degree of discipline in his army, he allowed his soldiers, indeed, to destroy the images in the churches and to melt down the rich reliquaries of gold and silver, but scrupulously required them to place the precious metal in the hands of the local authorities. At length, forced to capitulate to the Comte de Tende, the royal governor, he obtained the promise of security of person and liberty of worship. New acts of treachery rendered his position unsafe, and he retired to Geneva. It was thence that he returned to the Duke of Guise, who professed to be eager to secure for himself the services of so able a commander, a noble answer: "So long as I know you to be an enemy of my religion and of the public peace, and to be occupying the place of right belonging to the princes of the blood, you may be assured you have an enemy in Mouvans, a poor gentleman, but able to bring against you fifty thousand good servants of the King of France, who are ready to endanger life and property in redressing the wrongs you have inflicted on the faithful subjects of his Majesty."[864]

[Sidenote: A popular awakening.]

It was impossible to ignore the fact: France had awakened from the sleep of ages. The doctrines of the Reformation were being embraced by the masses. It was impossible to repress the impulse to confess with the mouth[865] what was believed in the heart. At Rouen, the earnest request of the authorities, seconded by the prudent advice of the ministers, might prevail upon the Protestant community still to be content with an unostentatious and almost private worship, upon promise of connivance on the part of the Parliament of Normandy. But Caen, St. Lo, and Dieppe witnessed great public assemblies,[866] and Central and Southern France copied the example of Normandy. The time for secret gatherings and a timid worship had gone by. They were no longer in question. "When cities and almost entire provinces had embraced the faith of the reformers," a recent historian has well remarked,[867] "secret assemblies became an impossibility. A whole people cannot shut themselves up in forests and in caverns to invoke their God. From whom would they hide? From themselves? The very idea is absurd."

[Sidenote: Pamphlets against the usurpers.]

[Sidenote: The queen mother consults La Planche.]

The political ferment was not less active than the religious. The pamphlets and the representations made by the emissaries of the Guises to foreign powers, in which the movement at Amboise was branded as a conspiracy directed against the king and the royal authority, called forth a host of replies vindicating the political Huguenots, and setting their project in its true light, as an effort to overthrow the intolerable usurpation of the Guises. The tyrants were no match for the patriots in the use of the pen; but it fared ill with the author or printer of these libels, when the strenuous efforts made to discover them proved successful.[868] The politic Catharine de' Medici, fearing a new and more dreadful outburst of the popular discontent, renewed her hollow advances to the Protestant churches,[869] held a long consultation with Louis Regnier de la Planche (the eminent historian, whose profoundly philosophical and exact chronicle of this short reign leaves us only disappointed that he confined his masterly investigations to so limited a field) respecting the grounds of the existing dissatisfaction,[870] and despatched Coligny to Normandy for the purpose of finding a cure for the evil.

[Sidenote: Edict of Romorantin, May, 1560.]

[Sidenote: No abatement of rigor.]

The Guises, on the other hand, resolved to meet the difficulties of their situation with boldness. The opposition, so far as it was religious, must be repressed by legislation strictly enforced. Accordingly, in the month of May, 1560, an edict was published known as the Edict of Romorantin, from the place where the court was sojourning, but remarkable for nothing save the misapprehensions that have been entertained respecting its origin and object.[871] It restored exclusive jurisdiction in matters of simple heresy to the clergy, excluding the civil courts from all participation, save to execute the sentence of the ecclesiastical judge. But it neither lightened nor aggravated the penalties affixed by previous laws. Death was still to be the fate of the convicted heretic, to whom it mattered little whether he were tried by a secular or by a spiritual tribunal, except that the forms of law were more likely to be observed by the former than by the latter. A section directed against the "assemblies" in which, under color of religion, arms were carried and the public peace threatened, declared those who took part in them to be rebels liable to the penalties of treason.[872]

[Sidenote: Death of Chancellor Olivier.]

A remarkable figure now comes upon the stage of French affairs in the person of Chancellor Michel de l'Hospital. Chancellor Olivier, who had merited universal respect while losing office in consequence of his steadfast resistance to injustice under the previous reign, had forfeited the esteem of the good by his complaisance when restored to office by the Guises at the beginning of the present reign. Overcome with remorse for the cruelties in which he had acquiesced since his reinstatement, he fell sick shortly after the tumult of Amboise. When visited during his last illness by the Cardinal of Lorraine, he coldly turned his back upon him and muttered, "Ah! Cardinal, you have caused us all to be damned."[873] He died not long afterward, and was buried without regret, despised by the patriotic party on account of his unfaithfulness to early convictions, and hated by the Guises for his tardy condemnation of their measures.

[Sidenote: Chancellor Michel de l'Hospital.]

Of L'Hospital, because raised to the vacant charge by the Lorraine influence, little good was originally expected.[874] But the lapse of a few years revealed the incorruptible integrity of his character and the sagacity of his plans.[875] Elevated to the highest judicial post at a critical juncture, he accepted a dignity for which he had little ambition, only that he might the better serve his country. What he could not remedy he resolved to make as endurable as possible. It was not within the power of a single virtuous statesman to allay the storm and quiet the surging waters; but by good-will, perseverance, and nerve, he might steer the ship of state through many a narrow channel and by many a hidden rock. An ardent lover and earnest advocate of toleration, he yet considered it politic to consent to urge the Parliament of Paris, in the king's name, to register the Edict of Romorantin, in accordance with which the system of persecution was for a while to be continued. One of the original conspirators of Amboise, according to the explicit statement of a writer who saw his signature affixed to the secret papers of the confederates,[876] he made no opposition to the article that pronounced the penalties of treason upon those who assembled in arms to celebrate the rites of religious worship. Yet he dissembled not from timidity, treachery, or ambition, but solely that by unremitting labor he might heal the unhappy dissensions of his country. "Patience, patience, tout ira bien," were the words he always had in his mouth for encouragement and consolation.[877]

[Sidenote: Perplexity of the ruling family.]

As the summer advanced the perplexities of the Guises increased. Every day there were new alarms. The English ambassador, not able to conceal his satisfaction at the perplexity of his queen's covert enemies, wrote to Cecil: "If I should discourse particularly unto you what these men have done since my last letters ... you would think me as fond in observing their doings as they mad in variable executing. But you may see what force fear hath that occasioned such variety.... They be in such security, as no man knoweth overnight where the king will lodge. Tomorrow from all parts they have such news as doth greatly perplex them. Every day new advertisements of new stirs, as of late again in Dauphiny, in Anjou, in Provence; and to make up their mouths, the king being in the skirts of Normandy, at Rouen, upon Corpus Christi Day, there was somewhat to do about the solemn procession, so as there was many slain in both parts. But at length the churchmen had the worse, and for an advantage, the order is by the king commanded, that the priests for their outrage shall be grievously punished. What judge you when the Cardinal of Lorraine is constrained to command to punish the clergy, and such as do find fault with others' insolence, contemning the reverent usage to the holy procession!"[878]

[Sidenote: Montbrun in the Comtat Venaissin.]

[Sidenote: Universal commotion.]

New commotions had indeed arisen in the south-east, where Montbrun, a nephew of Cardinal Tournon, the inquisitor-general, had entered the small domain of the Pope, the Comtat Venaissin, as a Huguenot leader.[879] Conde had dexterously escaped the snares laid for him, and had taken refuge with his brother, Navarre.[880] Their spies reported to the Guises a state of universal commotion; and deputies from all parts of France rehearsed in the ears of the Bourbon princes the story of the usurpations of the Guises and the Protestant grievances, and urged them, by every consideration of honor and safety, to undertake to redress them.[881] The Guises had for some time been pressing the King of Spain and the Pope to forward the convening of a universal council, without which all would go to ruin.[882] In view of the great apathy displayed both by Philip and by Pius—perhaps, also, with the secret hope of enticing Navarre and Conde to come within their reach[883]—they consented to the plan which Catharine de' Medici, at the suggestion of L'Hospital and Coligny, now advocated, of summoning a council of notables to devise measures for allaying the existing excitement.[884]

[Sidenote: Assembly of notables at Fontainebleau, August 21, 1560.]

On the twenty-first of August this celebrated assembly was convened by royal letters in the stately palace at Fontainebleau.[885] Antoine of Navarre and the Prince of Conde declined, on specious pretexts, the king's invitation. Constable Montmorency accepted it, but came with a formidable escort of eight hundred attendants. His three nephews, the Chatillons, followed his example, and shared his protection. At the appointed hour a brilliant company was gathered in the spacious apartments of the queen mother. On either side of the king's throne sat Mary of Scots, and Catharine de' Medici, and the young princes—Charles Maximilian, Duke of Orleans, Edward Alexander, and Hercules.[886] Four cardinals, in their purple—Bourbon, Lorraine, Guise, and Chatillon—sat below. Next to these were placed the Duke of Guise, as lieutenant-general of the kingdom; the Duke of Montmorency, as constable; L'Hospital, as chancellor; Marshals St. Andre and Brissac; Admiral Coligny; Marillac, Archbishop of Vienne; Morvilliers, Bishop of Orleans; Montluc, Bishop of Valence; and the other members of the privy council. In front of these, the members of the Order of St. Michael, and the rest of the notables, occupied lower benches.[887]

[Sidenote: Chancellor L'Hospital's speech.]

The session opened with brief speeches delivered by Francis and his mother, setting forth the object of this extraordinary convocation, but referring their auditors to the chancellor and to the king's uncles for further explanations. Chancellor L'Hospital was less concise. He entertained the assembly with a lengthy comparison of the political malady to a bodily disease,[888] pronouncing the cure to be easy, if only the cause could be detected. He closed by assigning a somewhat singular reason for summoning but two of the three orders of the state. The presence of the people, he said, was in no wise necessary, inasmuch as the king's sole object was to relieve the third estate. Because, forsooth, the poor people—bowed down to the earth with taxes and burdens, which the noblesse would not touch with one of their fingers—was the party chiefly interested in the results of the present deliberations, it was quite unessential that its complaints or requests should be heard! The Duke of Guise and his brother, the cardinal, next laid before the assembly an account of their administration of the army and finances; and the first day's session ended with the pleasant announcement that the royal revenues annually fell short of the regular expenses by the sum—very considerable for those days—of two and one-half millions of livres.

[Sidenote: Coligny speaks and presents two petitions.]

When next the notables met, two days later, the king formally proposed a free discussion of the subject in hand. The youngest member of the privy council was about to speak, when Gaspard de Coligny arose, and, advancing to the throne, twice bowed humbly to the king. By the royal orders, he said, he had lately visited Normandy and investigated the origin of the recent commotions. He had satisfied himself that they were owing to no ill-will felt toward the crown; but only to the extreme and illegal violence with which the inhabitants had been treated for religion's sake. He had, therefore, believed it to be his duty to listen to the requests of the persecuted, who offered to prove that their doctrines were conformable to the Holy Scriptures and to the traditions of the primitive church, and to take charge of the two petitions which they had drawn up and addressed to his Majesty and the queen mother. They were without signatures; for these could not be affixed without the royal permission previously granted the reformed to assemble together. But, with that permission, he could obtain the names of fifty thousand persons in Normandy alone. In answer to Coligny's prayer that the king would take his action in good part, Francis assured him that his past fidelity was a sufficient pledge of his present zeal; and commanded L'Aubespine, secretary of state, to read the papers which the admiral had just placed in his hands.

[Sidenote: The petitions are read.]

[Sidenote: They ask for liberty of worship.]

The petitions,[889] addressed, one to the king, the other to the queen mother, purported to come from "the faithful Christians scattered in various parts of the kingdom." They set forth the severity of the persecutions the Huguenots had undergone, and were yet undergoing, for attempting to live according to the purity of God's word, and their supreme desire to have their doctrine subjected to examination, that it might be seen to be neither seditious nor heretical. The suppliants begged for an intermission of the cruel measures which had stained all France with blood. They professed an unswerving allegiance, as in duty bound, to the king whom God had called to the throne. And of that king they prayed that the occasion of so many calumnies, invented against them by reason of the secret and nocturnal meetings to which they had been driven by the prohibition of open assemblies, might be removed; and that, with the permission to meet publicly for the celebration of divine rites, houses for worship might also be granted to them.[890]

It was a perilous step for the admiral to take. By his advocacy of toleration he incurred liability to the extreme penalties that had been inflicted upon others for utterances much less courageous. But the very boldness of the movement secured his safety where more timid counsels might have brought him ruin. Besides, it was not safe to attack so gallant a warrior, and the nephew of the powerful constable. Yet the audible murmurs of the opposite party announced their ill-will.

[Sidenote: Speech of Montluc, Bishop of Valence.]

[Sidenote: The remedy prescribed.]

The fearlessness of the admiral, however, kindled to a brighter flame the courage of others. Strange as it may appear, toleration and reform found their warmest and most uncompromising advocates on the episcopal bench.[891] Montluc, Bishop of Valence, drew a startling contrast between the means that had been taken to propagate the new doctrines, and those by which the attempt had been made to eradicate them. For thirty years, three or four hundred ministers of irreproachable morals, indomitable courage, and notable diligence in the study of the Holy Scriptures, had been attracting disciples by the sweet name of Jesus continually upon their lips, and had easily gained over a people that were as sheep without a shepherd. Meanwhile, popes had been engrossed in war and in sowing discord between princes; the ministers of justice had made use of the severe enactments of the kings against heresy to enrich themselves and their friends; and bishops, instead of showing solicitude for their flocks, had sought only to preserve their revenues. Forty bishops might have been seen at one time congregated at Paris and indulging in scandalous excesses, while the fire was kindling in their dioceses.[892] The inferior clergy, who bought their curacies at Rome, added ignorance to avarice.[893] The ecclesiastical office became odious and contemptible when prelates conferred benefices on their barbers, cooks, and footmen. What must be done to avert the just anger of God? Let the king, in the first place, see that God's name be no longer blasphemed as heretofore. Let God's Word be published and expounded. Let there be daily sermons in the palace, to stop the mouths of those who assert that, near the king, God is never spoken of. Let the singing of psalms take the place of the foolish songs sung by the maids of the queens; for to prohibit the singing of psalms, which the Fathers extol, would be to give the seditious a good pretext for saying that the war was waged not against men, but against God, inasmuch as the publication and the hearing of His praises were not tolerated. A second remedy was to be found in a universal council, or, if the sovereign pontiff continued to refuse so just a demand, in a national council, to which the most learned of the new sect should be offered safe access. As to punishments, while the seditious, who took up arms under color of religion, ought to be repressed, experience had taught how unavailing was the persecution of those who embraced their views from conscientious motives, and history showed that three hundred and eighteen bishops at the Council of Nice, one hundred and fifty at Constantinople, and six hundred and thirty at Chalcedon, refused to employ other weapons, against the worst of convicted heretics, than the word of God. Montluc closed his eloquent discourse by opposing the proposition to grant the right of public assembly, because of the dangers to which it might lead; but advocated a wise discrimination in the punishment of offenders, according to their respective numbers and apparent motives.[894]

[Sidenote: Address of Archbishop Marillac.]

The Archbishop of Vienne, the virtuous Marillac, an elegant and effective orator, made a still more cogent speech. He regarded the General Council as the best remedy for present dissensions; but it was in vain to expect one, since, between the Pope, the emperor, the kings, and the Lutherans, the right time, place, and method of holding it could never be agreed upon by all; and France was like a man desperately ill, whose fever admitted of no delay that a physician might be called in from a distance. Hence, the usual resort to a national council, in spite of the Pope's discontent, was imperative. France could not afford to die in order to please his Holiness.[895] Meanwhile, the prelates must be obliged to reside in their dioceses; nor must the Italians, those leeches that absorbed one-third of all the benefices and an infinite number of pensions, be exempted from the operation of the general rule.[896] Would paid troops be permitted thus to absent themselves from their posts in the hour of danger? Simony must be abolished at once, as a token of sincerity in the desire to reform the church. Otherwise Christ would come down and drive his unworthy servants from His church, as He once drove the money-changers from the temple. Especially must churchmen repent with fasting, and take up the word of God, which is a sword, "whereas, at present," said the speaker, "we have only the scabbard—in mitres and croziers, in rochets and tiaras." Everything that tended to disturb the public tranquillity, whether from seditious leaders, or from equally seditious zealots, must be repressed.

[Sidenote: The States General must be called.]

Nor was the advice given by Marillac for securing the continued obedience of the people less sound. He regarded the assembling of the States General as indispensable, in view of the great debts and burdens of the people. He warned the king's counsellors lest the people, accustomed to have its complaints of grievances unattended to, should begin to lose the hope of relief, and lest the proverbial promptness and gentleness which the French nation had always shown in meeting the king's necessities should be so badly met and so frequently offended as at last to turn into rage and despair.[897]

[Sidenote: Speech of Admiral Coligny.]

Such was "the learned, wise, and Christian harangue," as the chronicler well styles it, of "an old man eloquent," whom, like another Isocrates, "the dishonest victory" of his country's real enemies was destined to "kill with report." The profound impression it made was deepened by the speech of Admiral Coligny, whose turn it was, on the next day (the twenty-fourth of August), to announce his sentiments, he declared himself ready to pledge life and all he held most dear, that the hatred of the people was in no wise directed against the king, but against his ministers, whom he loudly blamed for surrounding their master with a guard, as though he needed this protection against his loyal subjects. Supporting the proposition of the Archbishop of Vienne for assembling the States General, the admiral advocated, in addition, the immediate dismissal of the guard, in order to remove all jealousy between king and people, and the discontinuance of persecution, until such time as a council—general or national—might be assembled. Meanwhile, he advised that the requests of the reformed, whose petitions he had presented, be granted; that the Protestants be allowed to assemble for the purpose of praying to God, hearing the preaching of His word, and celebrating the holy sacraments. If houses of worship were given them in every place, and the judges were instructed to see to the maintenance of the peace, he felt confident that the kingdom would at once become quiet and the subjects be satisfied.[898]

[Sidenote: Rejoinder of the Duke of Guise.]

The Guises spoke on the same day. The duke made a short, but passionate rejoinder to Coligny, and gave little or no attention to the question proposed for deliberation. He bitterly retorted to the proposal for the dismissal of the body-guard, by saying that it had been placed around the king only since the discovery of the treasonable plot of Amboise, and he indignantly maintained that a conspiracy against ministers was only a cover for designs against their master. As for the announcement of the admiral that he could bring fifty thousand names to his petitions, which he construed as a personal threat, he angrily replied that if that or a greater number of the Huguenot sect should present themselves, the king would oppose them with a million men of his own.[899] The question of religion he left to be discussed by others of more learning; but well was he assured that not all the councils of the world would detach him from the ancient faith. The assembling of the States he referred to the king's discretion.[900]

[Sidenote: The Cardinal of Lorraine is more politic.]

The cardinal was more politic, and suppressed the manifestation of that deadly hatred which, from this time forward, the brothers cherished against Coligny. He declared, however, that, although the petitioners laid claim to such loyalty, their true character was apparent from the affair at Amboise, as well as from the daily issue of libellous pamphlets and placards, of which he had not less than twenty-two on his table directed against himself, which he carefully preserved as his best eulogium and claim to immortality. He advocated the severe repression of the seditious; yet, with a stretch of hypocrisy and mendacity uncommon even with a Guise, he expressed himself as for his own part very sorry that such "grievous executions" had been inflicted upon those who went "without arms and from fear of being damned to hear preaching, or who sang psalms, neglected the mass, or engaged in other observances of theirs," and as being in favor of no longer inflicting such useless punishments! Nay, he would that his life or death might be of some service in bringing back the wanderers to the path of truth. He opposed a council as unnecessary—it could not do otherwise than decide as its predecessors—but consented to a convocation of the clergy for the reformation of manners. The States General he thought might well be gathered to see with what prudence the administration of public affairs had been carried on.[901]

[Sidenote: Results of the Assembly of Fontainebleau.]

[Sidenote: The States General to be convened.]

With the Cardinal of Lorraine the discussion ended. All the knights of the order of St. Michael acquiesced in his opinions, but indulged in no farther remarks. On the twenty-sixth of August the decision was announced. The States General were to convene on the tenth of December, at Meaux, or such other city as the king might hereafter prefer. A month later (on the twentieth of January) the prelates were to come together wherever the king might be, thence to proceed to the national, or to the general council, if such should be held. Meanwhile, in each bailiwick and "senechaussee," the three orders were to be separately assembled, in order to prepare minutes of their grievances, and elect delegates to the States General; and all legal proceedings and all punishment for the matter of religion were to be suspended save in the case of those who assembled in arms and were seditious.[902]

Such was the history of this famous assembly, in which, for the first time, the Huguenots found a voice; where views were calmly expressed respecting toleration and the necessity of a council, which a year before had been punished with death; where the chief persecutor of the reformed doctrines, carried away by the current, was induced to avow liberal principles.[903] This was progress enough for a single year. The enterprise of Amboise was not all in vain.

[Sidenote: New alarms.]

[Sidenote: Antoine and Conde summoned to court.]

The Assembly of Fontainebleau had not dispersed when the court was thrown into fresh alarm. An agent of the King of Navarre, named La Sague, was discovered almost by accident, who, after delivering letters from his master to various friends in the neighborhood of Paris, was about to return southward with their friendly responses. He had imprudently given a treacherous acquaintance to understand that a formidable uprising was contemplated; and letters found upon his person seemed to bear out the assertion. The most cruel tortures were resorted to in order to elicit accusations against the Bourbons from suspected persons.[904] Among others, Francois de Vendome, Vidame of Chartres, one of the correspondents, was (on the twenty-seventh of August) thrown into the Bastile.[905] Three days later a messenger was despatched by the king to Antoine of Navarre, requesting him at once to repair to the capital, and to bring with him his brother Conde, against whom the charge had for six months been rife, that he was the head of secret enterprises, set on foot to disturb the peace of the realm.[906] At the same time an urgent request was sent to Philip the Second for assistance.[907]

[Sidenote: Philip adverse to a national council.]

[Sidenote: Projects to crush all heresy and its abettors.]

Nor was his Catholic Majesty reluctant to grant help—at least on paper. But he accompanied his promises with advice. In particular, he sent Don Antonio de Toledo to dissuade the French government from holding a national council in Paris for the reformation of religion, as he understood it was proposed to do during the coming winter. This, he represented, would be prejudicial to their joint interests; "for, should the French alter anything, the King of Spain would be constrained to admit the like in all his countries." To which it was replied in Francis's name, that "he would first assemble his three estates, and there propone the matter to see what would be advised for the manner of a calling a general council, not minding without urgent necessity to assemble a council national." As to the Spanish help, conditioned on the prudence of the French government, the Argus-eyed Throkmorton, who by his paid agents could penetrate into the boudoirs of his fellow-diplomatists and read their most cherished secrets,[908] wrote to Queen Elizabeth that a gentleman had reported to him that he had seen "at the Pope's nuncio's hands a letter from the nuncio in Spain, wherein the aids were promised, and that the King of Spain had written to the French king that he would not only help him to suppress all heresy, trouble, and rebellion in France, but also join him to cause all such others as will not submit to the See Apostolic to come to order." In fact, Throkmorton was enabled to say just how many men were to come from Flanders, and how many from Spain, and how many were to enter by way of Narbonne, and how many by way of Navarre. Quick work was to be made of schism, heresy, and rebellion in France. "This done, and the parties for religion clean overthrown," added the ambassador, "these princes have already accorded to convert their power towards England and Geneva, which they take to be the occasioners and causers of all their troubles."[909]

[Sidenote: Navarre's irresolution embarrasses Montbrun.]

The King of Navarre had, even before the receipt of the royal summons, discovered the mistake he had committed in not listening to the counsel, and copying the example of the constable, who had come to Fontainebleau well attended by retainers. Unhappily, the irresolution into which he now fell led to the loss of a capital opportunity. The levies ordered by Francis in Dauphiny, for the purpose of assisting the papal legate in expelling Montbrun from the "Comtat," enabled the Sieur de Maligny to collect a large Huguenot force without attracting notice. It had been arranged that these troops should be first employed in seizing the important city of Lyons for the King of Navarre. A part of the Huguenot soldiers had, indeed, already been secretly introduced into the city,[910] when letters were received from the irresolute Antoine indefinitely postponing the undertaking. After having for several days deliberated respecting his best course of conduct in these unforeseen circumstances, Maligny decided to withdraw as quietly as he had come; but a porter, who had caught a glimpse of the arms collected in one of the places of rendezvous, informed the commandant of the city. In the street engagement which ensued the Huguenots were successful, and for several hours held possession of the city from the Rhone to the Saone. Finding it impossible, however, to collect the whole force to carry out his original design, Maligny retired under cover of the night, and was so fortunate as to suffer little loss.[911]

[Sidenote: The people not discouraged.]

[Sidenote: "The fashion of Geneva."]

[Sidenote: Books from Geneva destroyed.]

Maligny's failure disconcerted Montbrun and Mouvans, with whom he had intended to co-operate, but had little effect in repressing the courage of the Huguenot people. Of this the royal despatches are the best evidence. Francis wrote to Marshal de Termes that since the Assembly of Fontainebleau there had been public and armed gatherings in an infinite number of places, where previously there had been only secret meetings. In Perigord, Agenois, and Limousin, an infinite number of scandalous acts were daily committed by the seditious, who in most places lived after the fashion of Geneva. Such canaille must be "wiped out."[912] A month later those pestilent "books from Geneva" turn up again. Count de Villars, acting for Constable Montmorency in his province of Languedoc, had burned two mule-loads of very handsomely bound volumes, much to the regret of many of the Catholic troopers, who grudged the devouring flames a sacrifice worth more than a thousand crowns.[913] But he quickly followed up the chronicle of this valiant action with a complaint of his impotence to reduce the sectaries to submission. The Huguenots of Nismes had taken courage, and guarded their gates. So, or even worse, was it of Montpellier[914] and Pezenas. Other cities were about to follow their example.