[Sidenote: Fifteen cities in one province receive ministers.]

[Sidenote: The children learn religion in the Geneva catechism.]

These were but the beginnings of evil. Three days passed, and the Lieutenant-Governor of Languedoc sent a special messenger to the king, to inform him of the rapid progress of the contagion. Fifteen of the most considerable cities of the province had openly received ministers.[915] Ten thousand foot and five hundred horse would be needed to reduce them, and, when taken, they must be held by garrisons, and punished by loss of their municipal privileges.[916] A fortnight more elapsed. Three or four thousand inhabitants of Nismes had retired in arms to the neighboring Cevennes.[917] When they descended into the plain, a larger number, who had submitted on the approach of the soldiery, would unite with them and form a considerable army. "Heresy, alas, gains ground daily," despondingly writes Villars; "the children learn religion only in the catechism brought from Geneva; all know it by heart." The cause of the evil he seemed to find in the circumstance—undoubtedly favorable to the Huguenots—that, of twenty-two bishops whose dioceses lay in Languedoc, all but five or six were non-residents.[918]

To all which lamentations the answer came back after the accustomed fashion: "Slay, hang without respect to the forms of law; send lesser culprits, if preferable, to the galleys."[919]

In Normandy, too, it began to be impossible for the Huguenots to conceal themselves. At Rouen, in spite of the severe penalties threatened, seven thousand persons gathered in the new market-place, on the twenty-sixth of August, "singing psalms, and with their preacher in the midst on a chair preaching to them," while five hundred men with arquebuses stood around the crowd "to guard them from the Papists." A few days before, at the opening of the great fair of Jumieges, a friar, according to custom, undertook to deliver a sermon; but the people, not liking his doctrine, "pulled him out of the pulpit and placed another in his place."[920]

[Sidenote: Elections for the States General.]

Nor was the courage of the Huguenots less clearly manifested a little later in the elections preparatory to the holding of the States General. In spite of strict injunctions issued by the Cardinal of Lorraine to the officers in each bailiwick and senechaussee, to prevent the debate of grievances from touching upon the authority of the Guises or that of the Church, and especially to defeat the election of any but undoubted friends of the Roman Church, his friends were successful in neither attempt. The voice of the oppressed people made itself heard in thunder-tones at Blois, at Angers,[921] and elsewhere. Even in Paris—the stronghold of the Roman faith—the reformed ventured, in face of a vast numerical majority against them, to urge in the Hotel-de-Ville the insertion of their remonstrances in the "cahiers" of the city. Of thirteen provinces, ten addressed such complaints to the States General.[922]

[Sidenote: Clerical demands at Poitiers.]

But the clerical order did not forget its old demands, even where the Tiers Etat leaned to toleration. The provincial estates of Poitou, meeting in the Dominican convent of Poitiers, presented a contrast of this kind. The delegates of the people, after listening to the eloquent appeal of an intrepid Huguenot pastor, determined to petition the States General for the free exercise of the reformed religion. The representatives of the church made its complaints regarding the "ravishing wolves, false preachers, and their adherents, who are to-day in so great numbers that there are not so many true sheep knowing the voice of their shepherds." The "mild and holy admonitions" of the church having been thrown away upon these reprobates, the clergy proposed to open a register of all that should neglect to receive the sacrament at Easter, and to attend the church services with regularity. And it made the modest demand that all persons honored with an entry in this book should, as heretics, be deprived of all right to make contracts, that their wills be declared hull and void, and that all their property—in particular all houses in which preaching had been held—be confiscated. Of course, the aid of the secular arm was invoked, in view of "the great number and power of the said heretics."[923]

[Sidenote: Theodore Beza invited to Nerac.]

[Sidenote: Jeanne d'Albret.]

On the twentieth of July, at the urgent request of the King and Queen of Navarre, the "Venerable Company of the Pastors of Geneva" had sent the eloquent Theodore Beza to Gascony "to instruct" the royal family in the word of God.[924] In the dress of a nobleman he had traversed France and reached Nerac in safety. Here he at once exercised a powerful influence upon the king. The fickle mind of Antoine was susceptible of no deep impressions; but it was very easily affected for the time. His queen, Jeanne d'Albret, was his very opposite in mental and moral constitution. Whereas the very first blast threw him into a fervor of enthusiastic devotion to the purer faith, the heart of the queen—a woman not made to be led, but to lead—yielded slowly to the melting influences of the Gospel. But it never lost its glow. Jeanne came very reluctantly to the determination to cast in her lot with the Reformation. She hesitated to risk the loss of her possessions, and regretted to abandon the attractions of the world. When, however, the decision was once made, the question was never reopened for fresh deliberation.[925]

[Sidenote: Antoine's short-lived zeal.]

[Sidenote: New pressure upon Navarre and Conde.]

[Sidenote: Navarre's concessions.]

At this time, Antoine, we are told, renounced the mass, and was supposed to think, as he certainly spoke, of nothing but the means of advancing the cause in which he had embarked. Beza preached before him in one of the churches, and all signs pointed to the rapid establishment of the Reformation on a firm basis. The eloquent orator added his persuasion to the entreaties of the representatives of the Protestant churches of France and the exhortations of Constable Montmorency. All had urged Antoine to make his appearance at Fontainebleau with a powerful escort. We have seen the ill-success with which the joint effort was attended. The spies whom the Guises kept in pay around the King of Navarre, in the persons of his most intimate advisers, deterred him from a movement which they portrayed as fraught with peril. A few days after the conclusion of the assembly came the king's summons. To this Antoine at first replied that, if the accusers of his brother, of whose innocence he was fully persuaded, would declare themselves, and if he were assured that impartial justice would be shown, he would come to the court in company with few attendants. Conde wrote, at the same time, and expressed perfect confidence in his ability to disprove all the allegations against him, provided a safe access to the court was afforded him. On this point the suspicions of the Bourbon princes were soon set at rest by new letters from the king and his mother, assuring them that they would find not only security, but an opportunity to refute charges which Francis and Catharine professed themselves unwilling to credit.[926] To these reassuring words were joined the solicitations of their own brother, the shallow Cardinal of Bourbon,[927] and of the Cardinal of Armagnac. The princes, already discouraged by tidings of the failure of the projects of Montbrun, Mouvans and Maligny in the east, lent too ready an ear to these suggestions. The first open manifestation of weakness was when the King and Queen of Navarre, with their son, young Prince Henry of Bearn, consented to hear mass in the presence of many of their courtiers. But the extent of Antoine's concessions was, for a time, kept concealed from his followers. At the very moment when Beza was diligently visiting the well affected nobles, and urging them to lend prompt assistance, the Guises were exulting, with joy mingled with fear, over the promise given by Antoine to the Count of Crussol, that he would come, with an insignificant escort to Orleans, whither Francis had advanced. The tidings appeared too good to be true.[928] For, although the French king had received assurances of assistance from Philip—who was reported by the French envoy at Toledo to be favorable to the exercise of any severity against the Bourbon princes,[929] so great was his personal enmity toward them—yet the same ambassador had not failed to inform Charles that the troops ostensibly prepared for a French campaign were really intended for Italy and to make good the Spanish monarch's losses in Africa. On the other hand, unless Philip could send six hundred thousand or seven hundred thousand crowns to Flanders to pay arrearages and debts, he could not move a soldier across the lines from that quarter.[930]

[Sidenote: The Huguenot gentry offer him aid.]

[Sidenote: He dismisses his escort.]

The strictest orders had been given to the commandants of important points, such as Bordeaux and Poitiers, through which Antoine might intend passing, to guard them against him, in case of his showing any inclination to come otherwise than peaceably.[931] These precautions, however, proved unnecessary. Antoine intended to abide by his engagement. When by slow stages he had at length reached Limoges, he found a number of friendly noblemen awaiting him. In a few days more seven or eight hundred gentlemen had come in, well equipped and armed. They begged him at once to declare for the liberation of France, according to his previous promises. The nobility, they said, were only waiting for the word of command. Meanwhile Gascony, Poitou, and the coasts offered six or seven thousand foot soldiers, already enrolled under captains, and prepared to defend him against present attack. Provence and Languedoc would march to his assistance with three or four thousand horse and foot. Normandy would raise as many more. He would at once become so formidable that, without a blow, he could assume the guardianship of the king. Bourges and Orleans would fall into his hands, and the States General be held free of constraint. The very forces of the enemy would desert the sinking cause of the hated Guises. As for the necessary funds, with the best filled purses in France at his command, he could scarcely feel any lack. The suggestions of the Huguenot lords, backed by the entreaties of Beza, were, however, overborne by the secret insinuations of his treacherous counsellors. At Verteuil—a few leagues beyond—Navarre clearly announced his intentions, and dismissed his numerous friends with hearty thanks for their kind attentions. He would ask the king's pardon for those who had accompanied him thus far in arms. "Pardon!" replied one of the gentlemen, "think only of very humbly asking it for yourself, who are going to give yourself up as a prisoner with the halter around your neck. So far as I can see, you have more need of it than we have, who have determined not to sell our lives at so cheap a rate, but to die fighting rather than submit to the mercy of those detested enemies of the king. And since we are miserably forsaken by our leaders, we hope that God will raise up others to free us from the oppression of these tyrants."[932] This retort proving futile, as did also the warning of the Princess of Conde, who wrote and sent a messenger to her husband to escape from the toils of his enemies while it was still possible, the Huguenot gentry retired in disgust; and Beza seized the first opportunity (on the seventeenth of October) to steal away from the King of Navarre, and undertake his perilous return to Geneva, which he succeeded in reaching after a series of hair-breadth escapes.[933]

[Sidenote: Infatuation of the Bourbons.]

The King of Navarre had disregarded the counsels of Calvin and other prudent advisers, who believed that, if he presented himself with a powerful escort at the gates of Orleans, the Guises would yield without a blow.[934] Antoine felt confident that his enemies would never venture to lay hands on a prince of the royal blood. His blind infatuation seemed to infect Conde also. Their presumption was somewhat shaken when the royal governor of Poitiers forbade their entrance into that city. But the depth of the ruin into which they had plunged was more clearly revealed to their eyes as they began to approach Orleans. Friendly voices whispered the existence of a plan for their destruction; friendly hands offered to effect their escape to Angers, and thence into Normandy.[935] But the die was cast. Hostile troops enveloped them, and they resolved to continue their journey.

[Sidenote: They reach Orleans.]

[Sidenote: Conde arrested.]

Navarre had figured upon the journey much as a provost-marshal leading his brother to prison.[936] Now the imaginary resemblance was turned into a sad reality. On Thursday, the thirty-first of October, the Bourbons reached Orleans.[937] Their reception soon convinced them that they had placed their heads in the jaws of the lion. None of the courtiers save the cardinal, their brother, and La Roche-sur-Yon, their cousin, deigned to do them honor. That very day, after a few angry accusations from Francis, and a courageous vindication of his conduct by the chivalrous prince, Conde was arrested in the king's presence and by his order.[938] The King of Navarre also was, indeed, little better than a prisoner, so closely did he find himself watched.[939] In vain did Navarre remonstrate and plead the royal promise of security, offering himself to become a surety for his brother; the king denied redress. Then it was that Conde turned to the Cardinal of Bourbon, one of the few that had come to do him honor and said: "Sir, by your assurances you have delivered up your own brother to death."[940] Others shared in Conde's misfortune. Madame de Roye, his mother-in-law and a sister of Admiral Coligny, was brought a prisoner to St. Germain, and a careful search was made among her papers and elsewhere for the purpose of obtaining proofs of Conde's guilt.[941]

[Sidenote: Return of Renee of Ferrara.]

It was at this inauspicious moment that a distinguished princess reached Orleans, after an absence of thirty-two years from her native land, and was received with marked honors by the king and all the court, who went out to meet her and escort her to the city.[942] This was the celebrated Renee, younger daughter of Louis the Twelfth, and widow of Ercole, Duke of Ferrara, now returning, after the death of her husband, to spend her declining years at her retreat of Montargis on the Loing. The scene which she beheld awakened in her breast regret and indignation which she was not slow in expressing. To the Duke of Guise, who had married her daughter, Anne d'Este, she administered a severe rebuke. "Had I been present," she said, "I would have prevented this ill-advised step. It is no trifling matter to treat a prince of the blood in such a manner. The wound is one that will long bleed; for no man has ever yet attacked the blood of France but he has had reason to regret it."[943]

[Sidenote: Conde's courage.]

[Sidenote: His wife repulsed.]

The courage of the imprisoned prince rose with his misfortunes. The house in which he was incarcerated was flanked by a tower whose embrasures commanded the approach, the windows were newly barred, and the door was half-walled up to preclude the possibility of escape.[944] But Prince Louis stoutly maintained that it was not he that was a captive, since, though his body was confined, his spirit was free and his conscience clean and guiltless; but rather they were prisoners, who, with the freedom of their body, felt their conscience to be enslaved and harassed by a ceaseless recollection of their crimes.[945] His wife, the virtuous Eleonore de Roye, fruitlessly applied for admission in order to minister to his wants. She was rudely repulsed by the king, at whose feet she had thrown herself in a flood of tears, with the bitter remark that her husband was his mortal enemy, who had conspired not only to obtain his crown, but his life also, and that he could do no less than avenge himself upon him.[946] It was only by special effort that the few who dared avow themselves friends of the disgraced Bourbons, succeeded in obtaining for Conde legal counsel, and that these were allowed to hold brief interviews with the prince in the presence of two officers of the crown.[947] No others were admitted, save a pretended friend, to sound his disposition toward the Guises. Comprehending the motive of his visit, Conde begged him to inform those who had sent him, "that he had received so many outrages at their hands that there remained no path of reconciliation, save at the point of the sword; and that, although he seemed to be at their mercy, he still had confidence that God would avenge the injury done by them to a prince who had come at the command and relying on the word of his king, but had been shamefully imprisoned at their suggestion, in order to make in him a beginning of the destruction of the royal blood."[948]

[Sidenote: Conde tried by a commission.]

[Sidenote: He is found guilty and sentenced to be beheaded.]

A commission, consisting of Chancellor L'Hospital, President De Thou, Counsellors Faye and Viole, and a few others, was appointed, on the thirteenth of November, to conduct the trial. Conde refused to plead before them, taking refuge in his privilege, as a prince, to be tried only before the king and by his peers.[949] His appeals, however, were rejected by the privy council, and he was commanded, in the king's name, to answer, under pain of being held a traitor. In view of the known desire and intention of the king and his chief advisers, the trial was likely to be expeditious and not over-scrupulous.[950] The most innocent expressions of disapproval of the violent executions at Amboise were perverted into open approval of a plot against the king. The prosecution sought to establish the heresy of the prince, in order to furnish some ground for finding him guilty of treason against Divine as well as royal authority. Nor was this difficult. A priest, in full officiating vestments, was introduced, as by royal command, to say mass in Conde's presence. But the young Bourbon drove him out with rough words, declaring "that he had come to his Majesty with no intention of holding any communion with the impieties and defilements of the Roman Antichrist, but solely to relieve himself of the false accusations that had been made against him."[951] Before so partial a court the trial could have but one issue. Conde was found guilty, and condemned to be beheaded on a scaffold erected before the king's temporary residence, at the opening of the States General.[952] The sentence was signed not only by the judges to whom the investigation had been entrusted, but by members of the privy council, by the members of the Order of St. Michael, and by a large number of less important dignitaries, without even a formal examination into the merits of the case—so anxious were the Guises to involve as many influential persons as possible in the same responsibility with themselves. Of the privy councillors, Du Mortier and Chancellor de l'Hospital alone refused to append their signatures without a longer term for reflection, and endeavored to ward off the blow by procrastination.[953]

[Sidenote: Danger of the King of Navarre.]

Navarre was himself in almost equal danger. An attempt to poison him was frustrated by its timely revelation; a plot to assassinate him on leaving the king's residence, by the strength of his body-guard. A still more atrocious scheme was concocted. Francis was to stab his cousin of Navarre with his dagger, leaving his attendants to despatch him with their swords. Such murderous projects can rarely be kept secret. Even Catharine de' Medici is said to have attempted to dissuade Antoine from going to the palace by warning him of the danger he would incur. At the door of the king's chamber a friendly hand interposed, and a friendly voice asked: "Sire, whither are you going to your ruin?" But the prince, with a resolution which it had been well had he manifested at an earlier period, paused only a moment to say to his faithful Renty: "I am going to the spot where a conspiracy has been entered into to take my life.... If it please God, He will save me; but, if I die, I entreat you, by the fidelity I have ever known in you, ... to carry the shirt I wear, all covered with blood, to my wife and son, and to conjure my wife, by the great love she has always borne me, and by her duty (since my son is not yet old enough to avenge my death), to send it, torn by the dagger, and bloody, to the foreign princes of Christendom, that they may avenge my death, so cruel and treacherous."[954] These gloomy forebodings were not destined to be realized. Francis's anger evaporated in words, or was restrained by his mother's secret injunctions,[955] and Antoine of Navarre was suffered to go away unharmed. The duke and cardinal, who witnessed the scene from the recess of a window, are said to have muttered half audibly as they left the room, "That is the most cowardly heart that ever was!"[956]

[Sidenote: A plot for the utter destruction of the Huguenots.]

The assassination of the King of Navarre was, however, but a part of a larger plot for the utter destruction of the Huguenots and of Protestantism in France, the details of which are but imperfectly known.[957] It is alleged that preliminary lists of those infected by heresy had been obtained from all parts of France, and that a more exact knowledge was to be obtained by compelling all classes—from the nobility and members of the Order of St. Michael down to the simple citizen—to subscribe to the articles of faith drawn up eighteen years before by the Sorbonne.[958] At the close of the sessions of the States General, the full forces at the command of the court were to be set on foot, and four armies, under the Duke of Aumale and Marshals St. Andre, Brissac, and Termes, were to serve as the instruments of destruction. Termes was to effect a junction with a Spanish force entering France through Bearn; and the Governor of Bayonne was instructed to surrender that important city into the hands of Philip. The expenses of the crusade were to be defrayed by the clergy, who, from cardinal down to chaplain, were to retain of their income only the amount necessary for their bare subsistence.[959] The recent publication of the Pope's bull, renewing the Council of Trent, meanwhile served as a good excuse for forbidding the discussion of religious questions by the States General, then about to meet, by the king's direction, at Orleans instead of Meaux.[960]

[Sidenote: Illness of the king.]

The moment for the execution of this widespread plan of destruction was approaching, when its devisers were startled by the sudden discovery that the health of their nephew, the king, was fast failing. Francis's constitution, always frail, and now still further undermined, was giving way in connection with a gathering in the ear, which resisted the efforts of the most skilful physicians.[961] "This King," wrote the English ambassador, on the twenty-first of November, giving to his fellow-envoy at Madrid the first intimation of Francis's illness, "thought to have removed hence for a fortnight, but the day before his intended journey he felt himself somewhat evil disposed of his body, with a pain in his head and one of his ears, which hath stayed his removing from hence."[962] But the rapid progress of the disease soon made it clear that the trip to Chenonceau, "the queen's house," whence the king "was not to return hither until the Estates are assembled," would never be taken by Francis. The sceptre must pass into other hands even more feeble than his.

[Sidenote: The queen mother rejects the advances of the Guises,]

[Sidenote: and makes terms with Navarre.]

The Guises in consternation proposed to Catharine to hasten the death of Navarre and Conde,[963] and perhaps to put into immediate execution their ulterior projects. But Catharine de' Medici little relished an increased dependence[964] upon a family she had good reason to distrust. Instead of accepting the advances of the Guises, she hastened to make terms with the King of Navarre. In an interview with that weak prince, a compact was made which proved the source of untold evils. He had been forewarned by ladies in Catharine's interest, as he valued his life, to oppose none of her demands; but the wily Florentine scarcely expected so easy a triumph as she obtained. To the amazement of friend and foe, Antoine de Bourbon ceded his right to the regency, without a struggle, to the queen mother, a foreigner and not of royal blood. For himself he merely retained the first place under her, as lieutenant-general of the kingdom. He even consented to be reconciled to his cousins of Guise, and, after publicly embracing them, promised to forget all past grounds of quarrel.[965]

[Sidenote: Death of Francis II., Dec. 5, 1560.]

The vows which Francis made "to God and to all the saints of paradise, male and female, and particularly to Notre-Dame-de-Clery, that, if they should grant him restoration of health, he would never cease until he had wholly purged the kingdom of those wicked heretics,"[966] proved unavailing. On the fifth of December, 1560, he died in the eighteenth year of his age and the seventeenth month of his reign. "God, who pierced the eye of the father, had now stricken the ear of the son."[967]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: "Epitre au Tigre de la Prance."]

The most annoying of the anonymous pamphlets against the Guises was a letter bearing the significant direction: Au Tigre de la France. Under this bloodthirsty designation every one knew that the Cardinal of Lorraine alone could be meant, and the style of the production showed that a master-hand in literature had been concerned in the composition. The Guises were furious, but it was impossible to discover the author or publisher of the libel. Both succeeded admirably in preserving their incognito. Yet, as victims were wanted to appease the anger of the ruling family, two unhappy men expiated by their death a crime of which they were confessedly innocent. The incident, which comes down to us attested not only by the best of contemporary historians, but by the records of the courts, recently brought to light, may serve to illustrate the prevalent corruption of the judges and the occasional whimsical application of the so-called justice wherein they were given to indulging. Diligent search on the part of the friends of the Guises led to the detection of only a single copy of the "Tigre," and this was found in the house of one Martin Lhomme, or Lhommet, a printer by trade, and miserably poor. There was no evidence at all that he had had any part in printing or publishing it. None the less did the judges of parliament, and particularly M. Du Lyon, to whom the case was specially confided, prosecute the trial with relentless ardor. On the 15th of July, the unfortunate Lhomme, after having been subjected to torture to extract information respecting his supposed accomplices, was publicly hung on a gibbet on the Place Maubert, in Paris. The well-informed Regnier de La Planche (p. 313) is our authority for the statement that Du Lyon having, at a supper, a few days later, been called to account for the iniquity of his decision, made no attempt to defend it, but exclaimed: "Que voulez-vous? We had to satisfy Monsieur le Cardinal with something, since we had failed to catch the author; for otherwise he would never have given us any peace (il ne nous eust jamais donne relasche)." Still more unreasonable was the infliction of the death-penalty upon Robert Dehors, a merchant of Rouen, who had chanced to ride into Paris just as Lhomme was being led to execution. Booted as he still was, he became a witness of the brutality with which the crowd followed the poor printer, and seemed disposed to snatch him from the executioner's hands in order to tear him in pieces. Indignant at this violation of decency, Dehors had the imprudence to remonstrate with those about him, dissuading them from imbruing their hands in the blood of a wretched man, when their desire was so soon to be accomplished by the minister of the law. The Rouen merchant little understood the ferocity of the Parisian populace. The mob instantly turned their fury upon him, and but for the intervention of the royal archers he would have met on the spot the fate from which he had sought to rescue another to whose person and offence he was an utter stranger. As it was, he escaped instant death only to become a victim to the perverse ingenuity of the same judges, and be hung on the same Place Maubert, "for the sedition and popular commotion caused by him, at the time of the execution of Martin Lhomme, by means of scandalous expressions and blasphemies uttered and pronounced by the said Dehors against the honor of God and of the glorious Virgin Mary, wherewith the said prisoner induced the people to sedition and public scandals." (See Registres du parlement, July 13, 15, and 19, 1560, reprinted by Read in "Le Tigre.")

It is not, perhaps, very much to be wondered at that a pamphlet so dangerous to have in one's possession should have so thoroughly disappeared that a few years since not a copy was known to be in existence. It doubtless fared with the "Tigre" much as it did with another outspoken libel—"Taxe des parties casuelles de la boutique du Pape"—published a few years later, of which Lestoile (Read, p. 21) tells us that he was for a long time unsuccessful in the search for a copy, to replace that which, to use his own words, "I burned at the St. Bartholomew, fearing that it might burn me!"

By a happy accident, M. Louis Paris, in 1834, discovered a solitary copy that had apparently been saved from destruction by being buried in some provincial library. The discovery, however, was of little avail to the literary world, as the pamphlet was eagerly bought by the famous collector Brunet, only to find a place in his jealously guarded cases, where, after a fashion only too common in these days, a few privileged persons were permitted to inspect it under glass, but not a soul was allowed to copy it. Fortunately, after M. Brunet's death, the city of Paris succeeded in purchasing the seven printed leaves, of which the precious book was composed, for 1,400 francs! Even then the singular fortunes of the book did not end. Placed in the Hotel-de-Ville, this insignificant pamphlet, almost alone of all the untold wealth of antiquarian lore in the library, escaped the flames kindled by the insane Commune. M. Charles Read, the librarian, had taken it to his own house for the purpose of copying it and giving it to the world. This design has now been happily executed, in an exquisite edition (Paris, 1875), containing not only the text, illustrated by copious notes, but a photographic fac-simile. M. Read has also appended a poem entitled "Le Tigre, Satire sur les Gestes Memorables des Guisards (1561), "for the recovery of which we are indebted to M. Charles Nodier. Although some have imagined this to be the original "Tigre" which cost the lives of Lhomme and Dehors, it needs only a very superficial comparison of the two to convince us that the poem is only an elaboration, not indeed without merit, of the more nervous prose epistle. The author of the latter was without doubt the distinguished Francois Hotman. This point has now been established beyond controversy. As early as in 1562 the Guises had discovered this; for a treatise published that year in Paris (Religionis et Regis adversus exitiosas Calvini, Bezae, et Ottomani conjuratorum factiones defensio) uses the expressions: "Hic te, Ottomane, excutere incipio. Scis enim ex cujus officina Tigris prodiit, liber certe tigride parente, id est homine barbaro, impuro, impio, ingrato, malevolo, maledico dignissimus. Tu te istius libelli auctorem ... audes venditare?" While an expression in a letter written by John Sturm, Rector of the University of Strasbourg, July, 1562, to Hotman himself (Tygris, immanis illa bellua quam tu hic contra Cardinalis existimationem divulgari curasti), not only confirms the statement of the hostile Parisian pamphleteer, but indicates Strasbourg as the place of publication (Read, pp. 132-139).

The "Epistre envoyee au Tigre de la France" betrays a writer well versed in classical oratory. Some of the best of modern French critics accord to it the first rank among works of the kind belonging to the sixteenth century. They contrast its sprightliness, its terse, telling phrases with the heavy, dragging constructions that disfigure the prose of contemporary works. Without copying in a servile fashion the Catilinarian speeches of Cicero, the "Tigre" breathes their spirit and lacks none of their force. Take, for example, the introductory sentences: "Tigre enrage! Vipere venimeuse! Sepulcre d'abomination! Spectacle de malheur! Jusques a quand sera-ce que tu abuseras de la jeunesse de nostre Roy? Ne mettras-tu jamais fin a ton ambition demesuree, a tes impostures, a tes larcins? Ne vois-tu pas que tout le monde les scait, les entend, les cognoist? Qui penses-tu qui ignore ton detestable desseing et qui ne lise en ton visage le malheur de tous tes [nos] jours, la ruine de ce Royaume, et la mort de nostre Roy?" Or read the lines in which the writer sums up a portion of the Cardinal's villainy: "Quand je te diray que les fautes des finances de France ne viennent que de tes larcins? Quand je te diray qu'un mari est plus continent avec sa femme que tu n'es avec tes propres parentes? Si je te dis encore que tu t'es empare du gouvernement de la France, et as derobe cet honneur aux Princes du sang, pour mettre la couronne de France en ta maison—que pourras-tu repondre? Si tu le confesses, il te faut pendre et estrangler; si tu le nies, je te convaincrai."

A passage of unsurpassed bitterness paints the portrait of the hypocritical churchman: "Tu fais mourir ceux qui conspirent contre toy: et tu vis encore, qui as conspire contre la couronne de France, contre les biens des veuves et des orphelins, contre le sang des tristes et des innocens! Tu fais profession de prescher de saintete, toy qui ne connois Dieu que de parole; qui ne tiens la religion chretienne que comme un masque pour te deguiser; qui fais ordinaire trafic, banque et marchandise d'evesches et de benefices: qui ne vois rien de saint que tu ne souilles, rien de chaste que tu ne violes, rien de bon que tu ne gates!... Tu dis que ceux qui reprennent tes vices medisent du Roy, tu veux donc qu'on t'estime Roy? Si Caesar fut occis pour avoir pretendu le sceptre injustement, doit-on permettre que tu vives, toy qui le demandes injustement?"

With which terribly severe denunciation the reader may compare the statements of a pasquinade, unsurpassed for pungent wit by any composition of the times, written apparently about a year later. Addressing the cardinal, Pasquin expresses his perplexity respecting the place where his Eminence will find an abode. The French dislike him so much, that they will have him neither as master nor as servant; the Italians know his tricks; the Spaniards cannot endure his rage; the Germans abhor incest; the English and Scotch hold him to be a traitor; the Turk and the Sophy are Mohammedans, while the cardinal believes in nothing! Heaven is closed against the unbeliever, the devils would be afraid to have him in hell, and in the ensuing council the Protestants are going to do away with purgatory! "Et tu miser, ubi peribis?" Copy in State Paper Office (1561).

The peroration of "Le Tigre" is worthy of the great Roman orator himself. The circumstance that, on account of the limited number of copies of M. Read's edition, the "Tigre" must necessarily be accessible to very few readers, will be sufficient excuse for here inserting this extended passage, in which, for the sake of clearness, I have followed M. Read's modernized spelling:

"Mais pourquoi dis-je ceci? Afin que tu te corriges? Je connais ta jeunesse si envieillie en son obstination, et tes moeurs si depravees, que le recit de tes vices ne te scauroit emouvoir. Tu n'es point de ceux-la que la honte de leur vilainie, ni le remords de leurs damnables intentions puisse attirer a aucune resipiscence et amendement. Mais si tu me veux croyre, tu t'en iras cacher en quelque tanniere, ou bien en quelque desert, si lointain que l'on n'oye ni vent ni nouvelles de toy! Et par ce moyen tu pourras eviter la pointe de cent mille espees qui t'attendent tous les jours!

"Donc va-t'-en! Descharge-nous de ta tyrannie! Evite la main du bourreau! Qu'attends-tu encore? Ne vois-tu pas la patience des princes du sang royal qui te le permet? Attends-tu le commandement de leur parolle, puisque leur silence t'a declare leur volonte? En le souffrant, ils te le commandent; en se taisant, ils te condamnent. Va donc, malheureux, et tu eviteras la punition digne de tes merites!"

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 847: Reaching Paris early in May, 1560, Hubert Languet wrote that suspicion was everywhere rife; men of any standing scarcely dared to converse with each other; some great calamity seemed on the point of breaking forth. The king's ministers evidently feared the great cities; so the court proceeded from one provincial town to another. Disturbances in Rouen and Dieppe had frightened the Guises away from Normandy, whither they had intended leading their royal nephew. Letter from Paris, May 15th, Epistolae secr., ii. 50.]

[Footnote 848: "En ce temps (Mars, 1560) furent appelles Huguenots." Journal d'un cure ligueur (Jehan de la Fosse), 36.]

[Footnote 849: Soldan, Geschichte des Prot. in Frankreich, who, in an appendix, has very fully discussed the whole matter (i. 608-625). There is some force in the objection that has been urged against this view, that, were it correct, Beza, himself a resident of Geneva, could not have been ignorant of the derivation, and would not, in the Histoire ecclesiastique, prepared under his supervision, if not by him, have given his sanction to another explanation.]

[Footnote 850: La Planche, 262; Hist. eccles., i. 169, 170; De Thou, ii. (liv. xxiv.) 766. This is also Etienne Pasquier's view, who is positive that he heard the Protestants called Huguenots by some friends of his from Tours full eight or nine years before the tumult of Amboise; that is, about 1551 or 1552: "Car je vous puis dire que huict ou neuf ans auparavant l'entreprise d'Amboise je les avois ainsi ouy appeller par quelques miens amis Tourengeaux." Recherches de France, 770. This is certainly pretty strong proof.]

[Footnote 851: La Place, 34; Davila, i. 20; Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 96. See also Pasquier, ubi supra.]

[Footnote 852: Mem. de Castelnau, liv. ii., c. 7. A somewhat similar reason had, in Poitou, caused them, for a time, to be called Fribours, the designation casually given to a counterfeit coin of debased metal. Pasquier, 770.]

[Footnote 853: Advertissement au Peuple de France, apud Recueil des choses memorables (1565), 7. Also in the Complainte au Peuple Francois, ibid., p. 10. Both of these papers were published immediately after the Tumulte d'Amboise. The eminent Pierre Jurieu—"le Goliath des Protestants"—tells us that, having at one time accepted the derivation from "eidgenossen" as the most plausible, he subsequently returned to that which connects the word Huguenot with Hugues or Hugh Capet. The nickname confessedly arose, so far as France was concerned, first in Touraine, and became general at the time of the tumult of Amboise, nearly thirty years after the reformation of Geneva. "Qui est-ce qui auroit transporte en Touraine ce nom trente ans apres sa naissance, de Geneve ou il n'avoit jamais este cognu?" Histoire du calvinisme et celle du papisme, etc. Rotterdam, 1683, i. 424, 425.]

[Footnote 854: J. de Serres, i. 67; Pasquier, 771: "Mot qui en peu de temps s'espandit par toute la France."]

[Footnote 855: La Planche, 270. At Amboise, too, so soon as the court had departed, the prisons were broken open, and the prisoners—both those confined for religion and for insurrection—released. The gallows in various parts of the place were torn down, and the ghastly decorations of the castle, in the way of heads and mutilated members, disappeared. Languet, letter of May 15th, Epist. secr., ii. 51.]

[Footnote 856: M. Archinard, conservator of the archives of the Venerable Company of Pastors of Geneva, has compiled from the records a list of 121 pastors sent by the Church of Geneva to the Reformed Churches of France within eleven years—1555 to 1566. Many others have, doubtless, escaped notice. Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. fr., viii. (1859) 72-76. Cf. also Ib., ix. 294 seq., for an incomplete list of Protestant pastors in France, probably in 1567, from an old MS. in the Genevan library.]

[Footnote 857: The high moral and intellectual qualifications of the Protestant ministers were eulogized by the Bishop of Valence, Montluc, in his speech before the king at Fontainebleau, to which I shall soon have occasion to refer again. "The doctrine, sire," he said, "which interests your subjects, was sown for thirty years; not in one, or two, or three days. It was introduced by three or four hundred ministers, diligent and practised in letters; men of great modesty, gravity, and appearance of sanctity; professing to detest every vice, and, particularly, avarice; fearless of losing their lives in confirmation of their preaching; who always had Jesus Christ upon their lips—a name so sweet that it gives an entrance into ears the most carefully closed, and easily glides into the heart of the most hardened." "Harangue de l'Evesque de Vallence," apud Recueil des choses memorables (1565), i. 290; Mem. de Conde, i. 558; La Place, 55. The eloquent Bishop of Valence must be regarded as a better authority than those persons who, according to Castelnau, accused the Calvinist ministers of Geneva of "having more zeal and ignorance than religion." Mem. de Castelnau, liv. iii., c. 3.]

[Footnote 858: Calvin, in a letter sent by Francois de Saint Paul, a minister whom he induced to accept the urgent call of the church of Montelimart, dissuaded that church from this step which was already contemplated. Better is it, said he, to increase the flock, and to gather in the scattered sheep, meanwhile keeping quiet yourselves. "At least, while you hold your assemblies peaceably from house to house, the rage of the wicked will not so soon be enkindled against you, and you will render to God what He requires, namely, the glorifying of His name in a pure manner, and the keeping of yourselves unpolluted by all superstitious observances, until it please Him to open a wider door." Lettres francaises (Bonnet), ii. 335, 336. The author of the Histoire eccles. des eglises ref., i. 138, expresses a belief that had such wise counsels been followed, incomparably the greater part of the district would have embraced the Reformation.]

[Footnote 859: La Planche, 284-286.]

[Footnote 860: Letter of Francis II. to Gaspard de Saulx, Seign. de Tavannes, April 12, 1560, apud Negotiations relatives au regne de Francois II., etc. (Collection de documents inedits), 341-343.]

[Footnote 861: With a label attached to their necks bearing this inscription: "Voicy les chefs des rebelles."]

[Footnote 862: La Planche, 286-289.]

[Footnote 863: Letter of the Vte. de Joyeuse to the king, April 26, 1560, apud Neg. sous Francois II., 361-363.]

[Footnote 864: La Planche, 293.]

[Footnote 865: Hence the festival of Corpus Christi witnessed in some places serious riots, especially in Rouen, where a number of citizens of the reformed faith refused to join in the otherwise universal practice of spreading tapestry on the front of their houses when the host was carried by. Houses were broken into, at the instigation of the priests, and near a score of persons killed. Languet, Paris, June 16th, Epist. sec., ii. 59, 60.]

[Footnote 866: La Planche, 294; Hist. eccles., i. 194; Floquet, Hist. du parl. de Normandie, ii. 284, 288, 294, 302-306, etc. At Dieppe the Huguenots had gone so far as to erect, with the pecuniary assistance afforded by Admiral Coligny, an elegant and spacious "temple," as the Protestant place of worship was styled. Vieilleville, much to his regret, felt compelled to demolish it (Aug., 1560), for it stood in the very heart of the city. I quote a part of his secretary's appreciative description: "C'estoit ung fort brave edifice, ressemblant au theatre de Rome qu'on appelle Collisee, ou aux arenes de Nysmes. On fut trois jours a le verser par terre, et ne partismes de Dieppe que n'en veissions la fin." Mem. de Vieilleville, ii. 448, etc.; Floquet, ii. 318-336.]

[Footnote 867: De Felice, liv. i., c. 12 (Am. ed., p. 111).]

[Footnote 868: See La Planche, 312, 313, and the "Histoire des cinq rois" (Recueil des choses mem), 1598, p. 99, for the punishment of the possessor of a copy of a virulent pamphlet against the cardinal, entitled Le Tigre (see the note at the end of this chapter); and Negociations sous Francois II., 456, for a letter from court ordering search to be made for the author and publisher of the "Complaincte des fideles de France contre leurs adversaires les papistes." "En ung lundy apres Pasques, 15^e du moys, fut affiche devant S. Hilaire un papier estant imprime d'autre impression de Paris, et y avoit a l'intitulation: Les Estats opprimez par la tyrannie de MM. de Guise au roy salut." Journal de Jehan de la Fosse, 37. The piece referred to is inserted in the Memoires de Conde, i. 405-410.]

[Footnote 869: La Planche, 299-302. The remonstrance, signed Theophilus, which they addressed her, insisted on the ill-success of the persecutions to which for forty years they had been subjected; for one killed, two hundred had joined their assemblies; for ten thousand open adherents, the Reformation had one hundred thousand secret upholders. The Edict of Forgiveness answered no good purpose: "c'estoit bien peu d'oster pour un instant la douleur d'une maladie, si quant et quant la cause et la racine n'en estoit ostee."]

[Footnote 870: La Place, 41-45; La Planche, 316, 317; Mem. de Castelnau, l. ii., c. 7; De Thou, ii., liv. xxv. 788-791. I confess, however, that the careful perusal of La Planche's bold speech has nearly convinced me that the ascription of the anonymous "Hist. de l'estat de Fr. sous Francois II." to his pen is erroneous. I shall not insist upon the fact that the description of La Planche as "homme politique plustost que religieux" is inappropriate to the author of this history. But I can scarcely conceive of La Planche correcting errors in his own speech, and not only expressing an utter dissent from the account which he himself gave the queen of the motives that led La Renaudie to engage in the enterprise that had for its object the overthrow of the Guises, but even accusing himself of falling into a grave mistake with regard to the importance of the differences of creed between the Protestants and the Roman Church: "s'abusant en ce qu'il meit en avant des differends de la religion." La Planche had suggested a conference of theologians—ostensibly to make a faithful translation of the Bible, in reality to compare differences—and had expressed the opinion that there would be found less discord than there appeared to be. The condemnation of this view certainly does not mark a man of political rather than religious tendencies! I fear that we must look elsewhere for the author of this excellent history.]

[Footnote 871: It has been ascribed to the virtuous and tolerant Chancellor L'Hospital, who, it is said, drew it up in order to defeat the project of the Guises to introduce the Spanish Inquisition. (La Planche, 305; cf. also De Thou, ii. 781.) But the edict was published before the appointment of L'Hospital, and while Morvilliers, a creature of the Guises, provisionally held the seals after Chancellor Olivier's death; and the spiritual jurisdiction it established differed little in principle from an inquisition. In fact, three of the French prelates, the Cardinals of Lorraine, Bourbon, and Chatillon, had, as we have seen, been constituted a board of inquisitors of the faith; and, soon after the publication of the Edict of Romorantin, the Cardinal of Tournon was set over them as inquisitor-general. The subject has been well discussed by Soldan, Geschichte des Prot. in Frankreich, i. 338-342. The Duc d'Aumale, in his usually accurate Histoire des Princes de Conde (i. 113), repeats the blunder of La Planche and De Thou.]

[Footnote 872: Recueil des anc. lois fr., xiv. 31-33; La Planche, 305, 306; La Place, 46, 47. It is, of course, "an edict holily conceived and promulgated," in the estimation of Florimond de Raemond, v. 113. The only redeeming feature I can find in it is the article by which malicious informers made themselves liable to all the penalties they had sought to inflict on others.]

[Footnote 873: La Place, 36 (who states that the burning of Du Bourg was an occasion of deep remorse in Olivier's last hours); La Planche, 266; J. de Serres, De statu rel. et reip., i., fol. 35; De Thou, ii. (liv. xxiv.), 775; Hist. du tumulte d'Amboise, ubi supra.]

[Footnote 874: La Planche, 305.]

[Footnote 875: If we may credit that professed panegyrist, Scaevola de St. Marthe, L'Hospital was of an august appearance, of a dignified and tranquil countenance, and, if his intellectual constitution had a philosophic stamp, his features bore a not less remarkable resemblance to the head of the Stagirite as delineated on ancient medals. Elogia doctorum in Gallia virorum qui nostra patrumque memoria floruerunt (Ienae, 1696), lib. ii., p. 95.]

[Footnote 876: This remarkable statement is made by Agrippa d'Aubigne, Memoires, 478 (Ed. Pantheon Lit.). He tells us that he had inherited from his father, himself one of the conspirators, the original papers of the enterprise of Amboise. The suggestion was made by a confidant, that the possession of the proof of L'Hospital's complicity would certainly secure him 10,000 crowns, either from the chancellor or from his enemies; whereupon the youth threw all the papers into the fire lest he might in an hour of weakness succumb to the temptation. In his Hist. universelle, i. 95, D'Aubigne makes the same assertion with great positiveness: "L'Hospital, homme de grand estime, luy succeda, quoyqu'il eust este des conjurez pour le faict d'Amboise. Ce que je maintiens contre tout ce qui en a este escrit, pource que l'original de l'entreprise fut consigne entre les mains de mon pere, ou estoit son seing tout du long entre celuy de Dandelot et d'un Spifame: chose que j'ai faict voir a plusieurs personnes de marque."]

[Footnote 877: La Planche, 305; La Place, 38; De Thou, ii. 776; Davila, p. 29. I cannot refrain from inserting La Planche's worthy estimate of his course and its results: "Car pour certain, encores que s'il eust prins un court chemin pour s'opposer virilement au mal, il seroit plus a louer, et Dieu, peut-estre, eust beny sa Constance, si est-ce qu'autant qu'on en peut juger, luy seul, par ses moderes deportemens a este l'instrument duquel Dieu s'est servy pour retenir plusieurs flots impetueux, ou fussent submerges tous les Francois." Ubi supra.]

[Footnote 878: Throkmorton to Cecil, June 24, 1560, State Paper Office; printed in Wright, Queen Elizabeth, i. 32, 33.]

[Footnote 879: La Planche, 338-343.]

[Footnote 880: Ibid., 315; De Thou, ii. 787, 788.]

[Footnote 881: The long address delivered to the two brothers at Nerac, and reproduced verbatim by La Planche (318-338), is a very complete summary of the views of the Huguenots at this juncture.]

[Footnote 882: Letter of Cardinal Lorraine to the Bishop of Limoges, French ambassador to Philip the Second, July 28, 1560. The council "we hold to be the sole and only remedy for our ills," is the minister's language. Although the state of affairs was better than it had been, yet "so many persons were imbued with these opinions, that it was not possible to find out on whom reliance could be placed." Negociations sous Francois II., 442-444.]

[Footnote 883: Ibid., ubi supra; La Planche, 349; De Thou, ii. 782.]

[Footnote 884: La Planche, ubi supra. An assembly of notables was, as the term imports, a body consisting, not of representatives of the three orders, regularly summoned under the forms observed in the holding of the States General, but of the most prominent men of the kingdom, arbitrarily selected and invited by the crown to act as its advisers on some extraordinary emergency. "Telles assemblees," says Agrippa d'Aubigne, "ont este appelees petits estats." Hist. univ., i. 96.]

[Footnote 885: "This house is both beautiful and larger than any I had before seen in France or England. I may resemble the state thereof to the honour of Hampton Court, which as it passeth Fontainebleau with the great hall and chambers, so is it inferior in outward beauty and uniformity," etc. The Journey of the Queen's Ambassadors to Rome, Anno 1555, Hardwick, State Papers, i. 67.]

[Footnote 886: Charles Maximilian, now a boy of ten, was the successor of Francis, known as Charles the Ninth. Edward Alexander, Duke of Alencon, had his name changed in 1565 to Henry, and became Duke of Anjou. He was at this time not quite nine years of age. He was subsequently king, under the title of Henry the Third. Hercules became Francis of Alencon in 1565, and was the only one of the brothers that never ascended the throne. He was now a little over six years old.]

[Footnote 887: La Place, 53; La Planche, 350, 351; De Thou, ii. 706; Mem. de Castelnau, 1. ii., c. 8; Davila, 29. Minor discrepancies between these accounts need not be noted.]

[Footnote 888: "As if," says Calvin to Bullinger, "finding himself at his wits' end, he had called in a consultation of state doctors." (Bonnet, iv. 135.)]

[Footnote 889: "Deux requestes de la part des Fideles de France, qui desirent viure selon la reformation de l'Euangile, donnees pour presenter au Conseil tenu a Fontainebleau au mois d'Aoust, M.D.LX." Recueil des choses memorables faites et passees pour le faict de la Religion et estat de ce Royaume, depuis la mort du Roy Henry II. iusques au commencement des troubles. Sine loco, 1565, vol. i. 614-619.]

[Footnote 890: La Place, 54, 55, and La Planche, 351, are, as usual in this reign, our best authorities in reference to Coligny's address and the presentation of the petition; see also Hist. eccles., i. 173, 174; De Thou, ii. 797; Castelnau, liv. ii., c. 8; Davila, bk. ii., p. 30. La Place and Jean de Serres, De statu, etc., i. 96 (who are followed by De Thou, etc.), seem to be more correct in assigning the address to the second session, than La Planche, the Hist. eccles., etc., who place it at the very commencement of the first. Calvin, in a letter to Bullinger, Oct. 1, 1560 (Bonnet, iv. 135) describes the scene in the same manner as La Place. Vita Gasparis Colinii (1575), 27, etc.; Vie de Coligny (Cologne, 1686), p. 213, etc. Mr. Browning (Hist. of the Huguenots, i. 29) erroneously attributes the authorship of the last mentioned work to Francis Hotman (who died in 1590); whereas the author wrote after Maimbourg and Varillas, whose statements he controverts. (Pref., p. ii., and p. 86.) Hotman, as noticed elsewhere, was the author of the preceding and much more authentic book.]

[Footnote 891: Not, however, precisely in the ranks of the clergy. Marillac was a layman, whose success in negotiation had been rewarded with the archiepiscopal see of Vienne. In his youth he had been suspected of composing an apology for a "Lutheran" burned at the stake in Paris; and he died broken-hearted, seeing the ruin to which both church and state were tending, two months after the Assembly of Fontainebleau. La Place, 72, 73; La Planche, 360, 361. Neither was Montluc of Valence a clergyman. Paris, Negotiations sous Francois II., Notice, p. xxxvii.]

[Footnote 892: It was not unfrequently recommended, as a species of panacea for the evils in the church, that the bishops should all be sent off to their dioceses. An edict to that effect had recently been promulgated, and it was supposed that the parish curates would soon be directed to follow their example. (Languet, ii. 68.) "What else will result from this I know not," quietly adds the sensible diplomatist, "but that they will betray their ignorance and baseness, and that the contempt and hatred already entertained for them by the people will be augmented." Elsewhere, in expressing the same view of the absurdity of the order, he gives this unflattering description of the prelates: "cum plerique sint plane indocti et praeterea luxu, libidinibus, et aliis sceleribus perditissimi," etc. (Ibid., ii. 73.)]

[Footnote 893: "Autant de deux escus que les banquiers avoyent envoyes a Rome, autant de cures nous avoyent-ils renvoyes," adds Montluc. La Place, 56.]

[Footnote 894: The harangue of Montluc is contained word for word, though with erroneous date, in the Recueil des choses memorables (1565), pp. 286-305; also in La Place, 55-58; Mem. de Conde, 557-562. Summary in De Thou, ii. 797-800; Jean de Serres, De statu rel. et reip. (1571), i. 99-106.]

[Footnote 895: "Et qu'en tout evenement nous ne voulons perir pour luy complaire." La Place, 60; La Planche, 354.]

[Footnote 896: "Et sur ce, ne fault espargner les Italiens qui occupent la troisiesme partie des benefices du royaume, ont pensions infinies, succent nostre sang comme sangsues," etc. La Place and La Planche, ubi supra.]

[Footnote 897: La Place, 64; La Planche, 359. Both historians give the speech verbatim. J. de Serres, i. 106-126; Letter of Calvin to Bullinger, Oct. 1, 1560, ubi supra; Hist. eccles., i. 174-178. Would that these words of wholesome advice and sound philosophy had not been left unheeded by royalty and noblesse! The course of politic humanity to which they pointed might have saved a monarch his head, the noblesse countless lives and the loss of large possessions, and France a bloody revolution.]

[Footnote 898: La Planche, 361; La Place, 66; De Thou, ii. 802; Mem. de Castelnau, liv. ii. c. 8; Hist. eccles., i. 178; Jean de Serres, i. 127.]

[Footnote 899: La Planche, 361, 362; La Place, 67. The latter and J. de Serres, i. 129, are certainly wrong in attributing this passionate menace to the Cardinal of Lorraine. De Thou, ii. 802; Castelnau, 1. ii., c. 8.]

[Footnote 900: La Planche, etc., ubi supra. Calvin to Bullinger, Oct. 1, 1560 (Bonnet, iv. 136).]

[Footnote 901: La Planche, 362, 363; La Place, 67; J. de Serres, De statu rel. et reip., i. 128-131; De Thou, ii. 802, 803. After seeing the head instigator of persecution, still gory with the blood of the recent slaughter, assume with such effrontery the language of pity and toleration, we may be prepared for his duplicity at the interview of Saverne. The compiler of the Hist. eccles. (i, 179) explains the consent of the Guises to the convocation of the estates by supposing them to have hoped by this measure not merely to take away the excuse of their opponents, but, by obtaining a majority, to secure the declaration of Navarre and Conde as rebels, whether they came or declined to appear. Calvin (letter to Bullinger, ubi supra, p. 137) gives the same view. So does Barbaro: "Forse non tanto per volonta che s'avesse d'esseguirle quanto per adomentare gli risvegliati, et guadagnar, come si fece." The Pope and Philip violently opposed the plan "perche ne l'uno ne l'altro sapeva il secreto." "By the plan of the council, ... they succeeded in feeding with vain hopes (dar pasto) those who sought to make innovations in the faith." Rel. des Amb. Ven., i. 524, etc.]

[Footnote 902: La Planche, 363, 364; La Place, 68; De Thou, ii. 803 (liv. xxv). Cf. the edict in full apud Negociations sous Francois II., 486-490; also a letter of Francis in which he explains his course to Philip II., ib. 490-497.]

[Footnote 903: The cardinal had, however, made a somewhat similar discourse, just about six months before, to Throkmorton, much to the good knight's disgust. He had expressed a recognition of the faults prevalent in the church, and pretended to be desirous of reforming it in an orderly manner. "I am not so ignorant," he said, "nor so led with errors that reigne, as the world judgeth." He declared himself in favor of a general council, and spoke with satisfaction of an edict just despatched to Scotland, "to surcease the punishment of men for religion." "And of this purpose," adds the ambassador with pardonable sarcasm, "he made suche an oration as it were long to write, evon as thoughe he had bene hired by the Protestants to defend their cause earnestly!" Despatch to the queen, Feb. 27, 1559/60, Forbes, State Papers, i. 337, 338.]

[Footnote 904: Sommaire recit de la calomnieuse accusation de M. le prince de Conde, Memoires de Conde, ii. 373; Languet, ii. 66.]

[Footnote 905: Throkmorton to Cecil, Sept. 3, 1560, State Paper Office; La Place, 68, 69; La Planche, 345, 346; De Thou, ii. 804-806; Castelnau, 1. ii., c. 7.]

[Footnote 906: La Planche, p. 375. Instructions to M. de Crussol, going by order of the king to the King of Navarre, Aug. 30, 1560, apud Negoc. sous Francois II., pp. 482-486. The beginning of this paper, directing Crussol to express regret that Navarre had not come to the council of Fontainebleau, and to announce the result of its recommendations, is sufficiently conciliatory. If, however, Navarre should hesitate to obey the summons, the agent was bidden to frighten him into compliance. On the first show of resistance, Francis would collect his own troops, consisting of thirty thousand or forty thousand foot, and seven hundred or eight hundred horse, expected levies of ten thousand Swiss, and six thousand or seven thousand German lansquenets. Philip had assured him of the assistance of all his forces, foot and horse, both from the side of Netherlands and of Spain. The Dukes of Lorraine, Savoy, and Ferrara would bring fourteen thousand to sixteen thousand foot and one thousand five hundred horse. The king's arrangements were complete, and he was resolved to make an example. The arrest of La Sague was, however, not to be mentioned. Letter of Francis to the King of Navarre, Aug. 30, in Recueil des choses mem. (1565), 75, 76, and Mem. de Conde, i. 573.]

[Footnote 907: See the message in cipher appended to a despatch to the French ambassador at Madrid, Aug. 31, 1560, apud Neg. sous Francois II., pp. 490-497. The discovery is said to have been made within five or six days. Conde is implicated. Against Navarre there is as yet no proof. The Queen of England, is suspected of complicity, despite the recent treaty (of July 23d, by which Mary, Queen of Scots, renounced her claims upon the crown of England). The affright of the Guises may be judged from the circumstance that two copies of the despatch were forwarded—one by Guyenne, the other by Languedoc—so that at least one might reach its destination.]

[Footnote 908: Thomas Shakerly, the Cardinal of Ferrara's organist, sent him budgets of news not less regularly than the secretary of the Duke of Savoy's ambassador at Venice supplied the English agent copies of all the most important letters his master received. See the interesting letter of John Shers to Cecil, Venice, Jan. 18, 1561, State Paper Office.]

[Footnote 909: Throkmorton to queen, Poissy, Oct. 10, 1560, State Paper Office.]

[Footnote 910: In a despatch to his ambassador at Madrid, Sept. 18, 1560 (Negoc. sous Francois II., 523, etc.), Francis states that 1,000 or 1,200 armed soldiers had been posted in sixty-six houses, ready to sally out by night, capture the city, and open the gates to 2,000 men waiting outside. Of course, according to the king or his ministers, the object was plunder, and the enterprise a fair specimen of Huguenot sanctity.]

[Footnote 911: La Planche, 365-368; La Place, 69; Neg. sous Francois II., ubi supra; Mem. de Castelnau, 1. ii., c. 9; Languet, ii. 70; De Thou, ii. 806. Calvin, in a letter to Beza (Sept. 10, 1560), seems to allude, though not by name, to Maligny, and to condemn his rashness; but the passage is purposely too obscure to throw much light upon the matter. Bonnet, iv. 126, etc.]

[Footnote 912: Letter of the king, apud Negoc. sous Francois II., 580, 581.]

[Footnote 913: The curious reader may task his ingenuity in deciphering the somewhat remarkable spelling in which the count quaintly relates the occurrence in question: "Aytant o Pont-Sainct-Esperit, je trouvis entre les mains de Rocart, capitayne de la, deux charges de mulles de livres de Genaive, fort bien reliez: toutefoys cela ne les en carda que je ne les fice toux bruler, comensent le prumier a les maytre o fu; de coe je fu bien suivi de monsieur de Joyeuse, vous asseurent qu' ill i en avoet beocoup de la copagnie qu'il les playnoet fort, les estiment plus de mille aycus: pour sayte foys-la je ne les voullus croere." Letter of Villars to the constable, Oct. 12, 1560, apud Negoc. sous Francois II., p. 655.]

[Footnote 914: On Sunday, the 28th of July, a gathering composed almost entirely of women was discovered. Nothing daunted, 1,200 persons met the next night, with torches and open doors, in the large school-rooms, where their pastor, Maupeau, preached an appropriate sermon from Rev. vi. 9, on "the souls of them that were slain for the word of God." Soon the same place was resorted to by day. Summoned before the magistrates, judge, and consuls, the Huguenots declared their loyalty, but said that they had no idea that the king wanted to dictate to the conscience, which belongs to God. Presently the church of St. Michael was seized. Then the Cardinal of Lorraine (Oct. 14th) wrote to the bishop, telling him to call upon M. de Villars for aid in suppressing assemblies and the preaching. Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., i. 207-210.]

[Footnote 915: They are Nismes, Montpellier, Montagnac, Annonay, Castres, Marsillargues, Aigues Mortes, Pezenas, Gignac, Sommieres, St. Jean de Gardonnenches, Anduze, Vauvers (Viviers?), Uzes, and Privas.]

[Footnote 916: Sommaire des instructions donnees a Pignan envoye au roy par Honorat de Savoye, Cte. de Villars, Oct. 15, 1560, apud Negoc. sous Francois II., 659-661.]

[Footnote 917: On hearing of the seizure of Aigues Mortes by treachery. Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., i. 211.]

[Footnote 918: Letters of De Villars to the Guises, Oct. 27 and 29, 1560. Neg. sous Francois II., 671.]

[Footnote 919: Letter of the king to the Cte. de Villars, November 9, 1560. Ib., p. 673.]

[Footnote 920: H. Barnsleye to Cecil, August 28, 1560, State Paper Office.]

[Footnote 921: I know of no more scathing exposure of the morals of the clergy than that given by Francois Grimaudet, the representative of the Tiers Etat of Anjou, and inserted verbatim in La Planche, 389-396. It was honored by being made the object of a special censure of the Sorbonne!]

[Footnote 922: La Planche, 387-397; Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., i. 199.]

[Footnote 923: Remonstrances, plaintes, et doleances de l'estat eccles., MSS. Arch. du depart, de la Vienne, Hist. des Protestants et des eglises ref. du Poitou, par A. Lievre (Poitiers, 1856), i. 84, 85.]

[Footnote 924: Geneva MS., apud Baum, Theodor Beza, ii. 110.]

[Footnote 925: See the interesting passage in the Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., i. 204.]

[Footnote 926: "As touching the occurrents of this Court, it may please your Majesty to be advertised, that the King of Navarre being on his way to this Court, hath had letters, as I am informed, written unto him, of great good opinion conceived of him by this King, with all other kind of courtesies, to cause him to repair thither." Despatch of Sir Nicholas Throkmorton, Orleans, Nov. 17, 1560, Hardwick, State Papers, i. 138.]

[Footnote 927: The portrait of this personage is painted in no flattering colors by Calvin in two letters, to Sulcer, Oct. 1, 1560 ("whose mind is more lumpish than a log, unless when it is a little quickened by wine"), and to Bullinger, of the same date ("one whom you might easily mistake for a cask or a flagon, so little has he the shape of a human being"). Bonnet, Eng. tr., iv. 131-135.]

[Footnote 928: The despatches that passed between the court and the French ambassador in Spain reveal the general alarm. Oct. 4th, Cardinal Lorraine expects Navarre and Conde within the first half of the month, "dont je suis fort ayse." Oct. 5th, Francis writes that, within two days, he has heard that they intend carrying out their enterprise. Oct. 9th, the secretary of state complains of "fresh alarm daily." Negoc. sous Francois II., 604-607, 610, 650. Others were, in the end, as much astounded as the Guises at Navarre's pacific attitude. Throkmorton, writing to the privy council that this king was looked for shortly at Orleans, adds that all bruits of trouble by him were clean appeased, which caused great marvel. Despatch to privy council, Paris, Oct. 24, 1560, State Paper Office.]

[Footnote 929: Letter of Bishop of Limoges to the Cardinal of Lorraine, Sept. 26, 1560, apud Negotiations sous Francois II., 562: "Je vous supplie de croire que le roy et mes seigneurs de son conseil [i. e., Francis and the Guises] ne feront rien pour extirper un tel mal qui ne soit icy [in Spain] bien pris et receu a l'endroict de qui que ce soit [sc. Navarre and Conde]: tant ceux-cy craignent qu'il y ait changement en notre religion et estat." Cf. also pp. 551, 552.]

[Footnote 930: Negociations sous Francois II., 553, 554.]

[Footnote 931: Instructions of the king to M. de La Burie, commanding in Guyenne, Sept., 1560, apud Negociations sous Francois II., 578-580; also Ib., 644.]

[Footnote 932: La Planche, 377.]

[Footnote 933: La Planche, 375; Baum, Theodor Beza, ii. 120-123, whose account of this episode in the reformer's life is well written and interesting. For the general facts above stated the best authority is, as usual, La Planche, 373-377; see also La Place, 71; De Thou, ii. 807, 827; Hist. eccles., i. 205; Castelnau, l. ii., c. 9; Davila, 34, 35; Calvin's Letters (Bonnet), iv., pp. 132, 137, 143, 147-151.]

[Footnote 934: Calvin to Bullinger, Dec. 4th, and to Sulcer, Dec. 11, 1560 (Bonnet, iv. 149 and 151).]

[Footnote 935: La Planche, 377; Agrippa d'Aubigne, liv. ii., c. 19.]

[Footnote 936: La Planche, ubi supra.]

[Footnote 937: Sommaire recit de la calomnieuse accusation de M. le prince de Conde, in the Recueil des choses mem. (1565), 722-754, and Memoires de Conde, ii. 373-395—a contemporaneous account by one who speaks of himself as "ayant assiste a la conduicte de la plus grand part de tout le negoce."]

[Footnote 938: "Nevertheless, upon his coming, being accompanied with his brethren, the Cardinal of Bourbon and Prince of Conde, after they have [had] done their reverence to the king and queens, the Prince of Conde was brought before the council, who committed him forthwith prisoner to the guard of Messrs. de Bresy and Chauveney, two captains of the guard, and their companies of two hundred archers." Despatch of Sir Nicholas Throkmorton, ubi supra.]

[Footnote 939: "The King of Navarre goeth at liberty, but as it were a prisoner." Despatch of Sir Nich. Throkmorton, ubi supra. "Tanquam captivus." Same to Lord Robert Dudley, same date, State Paper Office.]

[Footnote 940: La Place, 73; La Planche, 380, 381; Castelnau, 1. ii., c. 10.]

[Footnote 941: La Place, 74: La Planche and Castelnau, ubi supra; Sommaire recit, ubi supra. "Madame de Roy (Roye), the Admiral of France his sister ... is taken and constituted prisoner." Despatch of Sir Nich. Throkmorton, Orleans, November 17, 1560, Hardwick, State Papers, i. 139.]

[Footnote 942: "The Dutchess of Ferrara, mother to the Duke that now is, according to that I wrote heretofore to your Majesty, is arrived at this Court, the 7th of this present, and was received by the King of Navarre, the French King's brethren, and all the great Princes of this Court." Ubi supra.]

[Footnote 943: Brantome, Femmes illustres, Renee de France; La Planche, 381; La Place, 74; "que si elle y eust este, elle l'eust empesche, et que ceste playe saigneroit long temps apres, d'autant que jamais homme ne s'estoit attache au sang de France, qu'il ne s'en fust trouve mal." De Thou, ii. 830.]

[Footnote 944: "He remaineth close in a house, and no man permitted to speak with him; and his process is in hand. And I hear he shall now be committed to the castle of Loches, the strongest prison in all this realm." Sir Nich. Throkmorton, November 17, 1560, ubi supra, i. 138.]

[Footnote 945: La Place, 75, ubi supra; De Thou, ii. 832, 833 (liv. 26); Sommaire recit, ubi supra.]

[Footnote 946: La Planche, 402.]

[Footnote 947: Ib., 401; La Place, 75; Sommaire recit, ubi supra.]

[Footnote 948: La Planche, 400; Castelnau, liv. ii., c. 10.]

[Footnote 949: Sommaire recit, ubi supra. "For, being a prince of the blood, he said, his process was to be adjudged either by the Princes of the blood or by the twelve Peers; and therefore willed the Chancellor and the rest to trouble him no further." Throkmorton, Nov. 28, 1560, Hardwick, State Papers, i. 151. Castelnau (liv. ii., c. 11) has, by a number of precedents, proved the validity of this claim.]

[Footnote 950: Memoires de Conde, i. 619, containing the royal arret of Nov. 20th, rejecting Conde's demand; Sommaire recit. The (subsequent) First President of parliament, Christopher de Thou, was, after Chancellor L'Hospital, the leading member of the commission. His son, the historian, may be pardoned for dismissing the unpleasant subject with careful avoidance of details. La Planche makes no mention of the chancellor in connection with the case, but records Conde's indignant remonstrance against so devoted a servant of the Guises as the first president acting as judge.]

[Footnote 951: La Planche, 399.]

[Footnote 952: La Planche, 401; Davila, 37, 38; Castelnau, l. ii., c. 12. The unanimous voice of contemporary authorities, and the accounts given by subsequent historians, are discredited by De Thou alone (ii. 835, 836), who expresses the conviction, based upon his recollection of his father's statement, that the sentence was drawn up, but never signed. He also represents Christopher de Thou as suggesting to Conde his appeal from the jurisdiction of the commission, and opposing the violent designs of the Guises.]

[Footnote 953: La Planche, 401; Castelnau, liv. ii., c. 12.]

[Footnote 954: La Planche, 405, 406, has preserved this striking speech, which I have somewhat condensed in the text. Agrippa d'Aubigne, Histoire universelle, ubi supra.]

[Footnote 955: La Planche, it may be noticed, leans to this supposition. Ibid., 405.]

[Footnote 956: Ibid., 406; D'Aubigne, ubi supra.]

[Footnote 957: See Michele Suriano's account, Rel. des Amb. Ven., i. 528. The ambassador seems to have entertained no doubt of the complete success that would have crowned the movement had Francis's life been spared: "Il quale, se vivea un poco piu, non solamente averia ripresso, ma estinto dal tutto quell' incendio che ora consuma il regno." The Spanish ambassador, Chantonnay, writing to his master, Nov., 1560, confirms the statements of Protestant contemporaries respecting the plan laid out for the destruction of the Bourbons, and then of the admiral and his brother D'Andelot; but the wily brother of Cardinal Granvelle, much as he would have rejoiced at the destruction of the heads of the Huguenot faction, was alarmed at the wholesale proscription, and expressed grave fears that so intemperate and violent a course would provoke a serious rebellion, and perhaps give rise to a forcible intervention in French affairs, on the part of Germany or England. "Pero a mi paresce que seria mas acertado castigar poco a poco los culpados que prender tantos de un golpe, porque assi se podrian meter en desesperacion sus parientes, y causar alguna grande rebuelta y admitir mas facilmente las platicas de fuera del reyno ... o de Alemania o de Inglaterra." Papiers de Simancas, apud Mignet, Journal des Savants, 1859, p. 39.]

[Footnote 958: Mem. de Castelnau, liv. ii., c. 12; La Planche, 404; Memoires de Mergey (Collection Michaud and Poujoulat), 567. The Count of La Rochefoucauld, hearing through the Duchess of Uzes—a bosom confidant of Catharine, but a woman who was not herself averse to the Reformation—that Francis had remarked that the count "must prepare to say his Credo in Latin," had made all his arrangements to pass from Champagne into Germany with his faithful squire De Mergey, both disguised as plain merchants.]

[Footnote 959: La Planche, 404; De Thou, ii. 835 (liv. xxvi.). The latter does not place implicit confidence in these reports, while conceding that subsequent events would induce a belief that they were not destitute of a foundation. According to Throkmorton, also, writing to Cecil, Sept. 3, 1560, the chief burden was to rest with the clergy, who gave eight-tenths of the whole subsidy. State Paper Office.]

[Footnote 960: Ibid., 403; De Thou, iii. 82.]

[Footnote 961: Throkmorton's despatches from Orleans, several frequently sent off on a single day, acquaint us with the rapid progress of the king's disease, and the cold calculations based upon it. "The constitution of his body," he writes in the third of his letters that bear date Nov. 28th (Hardwick, State Papers, i. 156), "is such, as the physicians do say he cannot be long-lived: and thereunto he hath by his too timely and inordinate exercise now in his youth, added an evil accident; so as there be that do not let to say, though he do recover this sickness, he cannot live two years; whereupon there is plenty of discourses here of the French Queen's second marriage; some talk of the Prince of Spain, some of the Duke of Austrich, others of the Earl of Arran." No wonder that cabinet ministers and others often grew weary of the interminable debates respecting the marriages of queens regnant, and that William Cecil, as early as July, 1561, wrote respecting Queen Bess: "Well, God send our Mistress a husband, and by time a son, that we may hope our posterity shall have a masculine succession. This matter is too big for weak folks, and too deep for simple." Hardwick, State Papers, i. 174.]

[Footnote 962: Throkmorton to Chamberlain, Nov. 21, 1560. British Museum.]

[Footnote 963: De Thou, ii. 833, etc. (liv. 26); D'Aubigne, liv. ii., c. 20, p. 103.]

[Footnote 964: On the 17th of Nov. Throkmorton had written: "The house of Guise practiseth by all the means they can, to make the Queen Mother Regent of France at this next assembly; so as they are like to have all the authority still in their hands, for she is wholly theirs." Hardwick, State Papers, i. 140. D'Aubigne (ubi supra), who attributes to the sagacious counsel of Chancellor de l'Hospital the credit of influencing Catharine to take this course.]

[Footnote 965: I must refer the reader for the details of this remarkable interview and its results, which, it must be noted, Catharine insisted on Antoine's acknowledging over his signature, to the Histoire de l'Estat de France, tant de la republique que de la religion, sous le regne de Francois II., commonly attributed to Louis Regnier de la Planche (pp. 415-418)—a work whose trustworthiness and accuracy are above reproach, and respecting which my only regret is that its valuable assistance deserts me at this point of the history.]

[Footnote 966: Ibid., 413.]

[Footnote 967: The words in the text are those of Calvin, in a letter to Sturm, written Dec. 16, 1560, not many days after the receipt of the astonishing intelligence. "Did you ever read or hear," he says, "of anything more opportune than the death of the king? The evils had reached an extremity for which there was no remedy, when suddenly God shows himself from heaven! He who pierced the eye of the father has now stricken the ear of the son." Bonnet, Calvin's Letters, Am. ed., iv. 152.]



CHAPTER XI.

THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE NINTH, TO THE PRELIMINARIES OF THE COLLOQUY OF POISSY.

[Sidenote: The death of Francis saves the Huguenots.]

[Sidenote: Transfer of power.]

If the sudden catastrophe which brought to an end the bloody rule of Henry was naturally interpreted as a marked interposition of Heaven in behalf of the persecuted "Lutherans," it is not surprising that the unexpected death of his eldest son, in the flower of his youth, and after the briefest reign in the royal annals, seemed little short of a miracle. Had Francis lived but a week longer, the ruin of the Huguenots might perhaps have been consummated. Conde would have been executed at the opening of the States General. Navarre and Montmorency, if no worse doom befell them, would have been incarcerated at Loches and Bourges. The Estates, deprived of the presence of these leaders, and overawed by the formidable military preparations of the Guises,[968] would readily have acquiesced in the most extreme measures. Liberty and reform would have found a common grave.[969] But a few hours sufficed to disarrange this programme. The political power was, at one stroke, transferred from the hands of Francis and Charles of Lorraine to those of Catharine de' Medici and the King of Navarre; and the Protestants of Paris recognized in the event a direct answer to the petitions which they had offered to Almighty God on the recent days of special humiliation and prayer.[970]

[Sidenote: Alarm of the Guises.]

[Sidenote: Funeral obsequies of Francis II.]

The altered posture of affairs was equally patent to the princes of late complete masters of the destinies of the country. In the first moments of their excessive terror, they are said to have shut themselves up in their palaces, and to have declined to leave this refuge until assured that no immediate violence was contemplated.[971] Even after the immediate danger had passed, however, they were too shrewd to pay to the remains of their nephew the tokens of respect exacted of the constable in behalf of Henry's corpse,[972] preferring to provide for their own safety and future influence by being present at the meeting of the States. The paltry convoy of Francis from Orleans to the royal vaults of St. Denis presented so unfavorable a contrast to the pompous ceremonial of his father's interment, that it was wittily said, "that the mortal enemy of the Huguenots had not been able to escape being himself buried like a Huguenot."[973] A bitter taunt aimed at the unfaithfulness and ingratitude of the Guises fell under their own eyes. A slip of paper was found pinned to the velvet funereal pall, on which were written—with allusion to that famous chamberlain of Charles the Seventh, who, seeing his master's body abandoned by the courtiers that had flocked to do obeisance to his son and successor, himself buried it with great pomp and at his own expense—the words: "Where is Messire Tanneguy du Chastel? But he was a Frenchman!"[974]

[Sidenote: Navarre's opportunity.]

[Sidenote: His contemptible character.]

[Sidenote: Adroitness and success of Catharine.]

Never had prince of the blood a finer opportunity for maintaining the right, while asserting his own just claims, than fell to the lot of Antoine of Navarre. The sceptre had passed from the grasp of a youth of uncertain majority to that of a boy who was incontestably a minor. Charles, the second son of Henry the Second, who now succeeded his older brother, was only ten years of age. It was beyond dispute that the regency belonged to Antoine as the first prince of the blood. Every sentiment of self-respect dictated that he should assume the high rank to which his birth entitled him,[975] and that, while exercising the power with which it was associated, in restraining or punishing the common enemies both of the public liberties and of the family of the Bourbons, he should protect the Huguenots, who looked up to him as their natural defender. But the King of Navarre had, unfortunately, entered into the humiliating compact with the queen mother, to which reference was made in the last chapter. From this agreement he now showed no disposition to withdraw. The utopian vision of a kingdom of Navarre, once more restored to its former dimensions, still flitted before his eyes, and he preferred the absolute sovereignty of this contracted territory to the influential but dangerous regency which his friends urged him to seize. Besides, he was sluggish, changeable, and altogether untrustworthy. "He is an exceedingly weak person"—suggetto debolissimo—said Suriano. "As to his judgment, I shall not stop to say that he wears rings on his fingers and pendants in his ears like a woman, although he has a gray beard and bears the burden of many years; and that in great matters he listens to the counsels of flatterers and vain men, of whom he has a thousand about him."[976] Liberal in promises, and exhibiting occasional sparks of courage, the fire of Antoine's resolution soon died out, and he earned the reputation of being no more formidable than the most treacherous of advocates. Sensual indulgence had sapped the very foundations of his character.[977] It is true that his friends, forgetting the disappointment engendered by his recent displays of timidity, reminded him again of the engagements into which he had entered, to interfere in defence of the oppressed, of his glorious opportunity, and of his accountability before the Divine Tribunal.[978] But their appeals accomplished little. Catharine was able to boast, in a letter to the French Ambassador at Madrid, just a fortnight after the death of Francis, that "she had great reason to be pleased" with Navarre's conduct, for "he had placed himself altogether in her hands, and had despoiled himself of all power and authority." "I dispose of him," she said, "just as I please."[979] And to her daughter, Queen Isabella of Spain, she wrote by the same courier: "He is so obedient; he has no authority save that which I permit him to exercise."[980] The apprehensions felt by Philip the Second regarding the exaltation of a heretic, in the person of his hated neighbor of Navarre, to the first place in the vicinage of the French throne, might well be quieted after such reassuring intelligence.