[Sidenote: Unavailing intercessions.]

The best efforts of Beza and Viret were put forth in their behalf. A long succession of attempts to secure their release on the part of the canton of Berne individually, and of the four Protestant cantons of Switzerland collectively, was the result. One letter to Henry received a highly encouraging reply. An embassy from Zurich, sent when the king's word had not been kept, was haughtily informed that Henry expected the cantons to trouble him no further with the matter, and to avoid interfering with the domestic affairs of his country, as he himself abstained from intermeddling with theirs.[585] Subsequent letters and embassies to the monarch, intercessions with Cardinal de Tournon, Archbishop of Lyons, who would appear to have given assurances which he never intended to fulfil, and all the other steps dictated by Christian affection, were similarly fruitless. In fact, nothing protracted the term of the imprisonment of the "Five Scholars" but the need in which Henry felt himself to be of retaining the alliance and support of Berne. Yet when, as a final appeal, that powerful canton begged the life of its "stipendiaries" as a "purely royal and liberal gift, which it would esteem as great and precious as if his Majesty had presented it an inestimable sum of silver or gold," other political motives prevented him from yielding to its entreaties. The fear lest his compliance might furnish the emperor and Pope, against whom he was contending, with a handle for impugning his devotion to the church, was more powerful than his desire to conciliate the Bernese. The Parliament of Paris decreed that the death of the "Five" by fire should take place on the sixteenth of May, 1553, and the king refused to interpose his pardon.[586]

Their mission to France had not, however, been in vain. It is no hyperbole of the historian of the reformed churches, when he likens their cells to five pulpits, from which the Word of God resounded through the entire city and much farther.[587] The results of their heroic fortitude, and of the wide dissemination of copies of the confession of their Christian faith, were easily traced in the conversion of many within and without the prison; while the memory of their joyful constancy on their way to the place of execution—which rather resembled a triumphal than an ignominious procession—and in the flames, was embalmed in the heart of many a spectator.[588]

[Sidenote: Activity of the canton of Berne.]

The Bernese were not discouraged by the ill-success of their intercessions. Three times in the early part of the succeeding year (1554) they begged, but with no better results, for the release of Paris Panier, a man learned in the civil law.[589] With equal earnestness they took the part of the persecuted reformers against the violence of their enemies on many successive occasions. It was all in vain. The libertine king, who saw no merit in the purity of life of the professors of the "new doctrines," and no mark of Antichrist in the profligacy of Paul the Third or of Julius the Third, but viewed with horror the permission granted by the latter to the faithful of Paris to eat eggs, butter and cheese during Lent,[590] maintained his more than papal orthodoxy, and stifled the promptings of a heart by nature not averse to pity.

[Sidenote: Progress in Normandy.]

More than three years had passed away since the publication of the Edict of Chateaubriand, but none of the fruits which its authors had predicted were visible. The number of the reformed brought to trial, and especially of those condemned to the flames, gradually diminished, whilst it was notorious that the opponents of the dominant church were rapidly multiplying. In some provinces—in Normandy, for example—their placards were mysteriously posted on the walls, and their songs deriding the Franciscan monks were sung in the dark lanes of the cities. Once they had ventured to interrupt the discourse of a preacher on the topic of purgatory, by loud expressions of dissent; but when on the next day the subject was resumed, numbers of hearers left the church with cries of "au fol, au fol," and forced those who would have arrested them in the name of the Cardinal Archbishop of Rouen, to seek refuge from a shower of stones in an adjoining monastery.[591]

[Sidenote: Proposal to establish the Spanish Inquisition.]

The zealous friends of the church, as well as those who were enriched by confiscations, represented to the king that this state of things arose from the fact that the higher magistrates, themselves tainted with heresy, connived at its spread, and that the "presidial" judges abstained from employing the powers conferred by the edict, through fear of compromising themselves with the sovereign courts. Nor could ecclesiastical courts accomplish much, since the secular judges, to whom an appeal was open, found means to clear the guilty. They insisted that the only remedy was the introduction of the Inquisition in the form in which it had proved so efficacious in Spain and Italy. This, it was said, could be attained by taking away the appeal that had hitherto been allowed from the decisions of the church courts, and compelling the nearest secular court to enforce their sentences. It was, furthermore, proposed to confiscate, for the king's benefit, all the property of fugitives, disregarding the claims even of those who had purchased from them without collusion.[592]

[Sidenote: Opposition of parliament.]

In secret sessions held at the house of Bertrand, keeper of the seals, at which were present several of the presidents of parliament known to be least friendly to the Reformation, the necessary legislation was matured at the instance of the Cardinal of Lorraine.[593] But, when the edicts establishing the Spanish inquisition were submitted, by order of the king, to the Parliament of Paris, it soon became evident that not even the intrigues of the presidents who were favorable to them could secure their registration. In the hope of better success, the edicts were for the time withdrawn, and submitted, a few months later, to the part of parliament that held its sessions in summer,[594] accompanied by royal letters strictly enjoining their reception (lettres de jussion). Twice the gens du roi were heard in favor of the new system, pleading its necessity, the utility of enlarging the jurisdiction of the church courts, especially in the case of apostatizing monks and fanatical preachers, and the fact that parliament itself had testified that it was not averse to an inquisition—not only by recording the edicts of St. Louis and Philip the Fair, but also by two recent registrations of the powers of the Inquisitor of the Faith, Matthieu Ory.[595] After many delays and a prolonged discussion, parliament decided by a large majority that it could not comply with the king's commands, and would indicate to his Majesty other means of eradicating heresy more consistent with the spirit of Christianity.[596]

The president, Seguier, and a counsellor (Adrien du Drac) were deputed to justify before the monarch the course taken by parliament. The royal court was at this time at Villers-Cotterets, not far from Soissons, and the commissioners were informed on their arrival that Henry, displeased and scandalized at the delays of parliament, had begun to suspect it of being badly advised respecting religion and the obedience due to the church. He had said "that, if twelve judges were necessary to try Lutherans, they could not be found among the members of that body." The deputies were warned that they must expect to hear harsh words from the king's lips. Admitted, on the twenty-second of October, into Henry's presence, President Seguier delivered before the Duke of Guise, Constable Montmorency, Marshal St. Andre, and other dignitaries civil and ecclesiastical, an address full of noble sentiments.[597]

[Sidenote: Speech of President Seguier in opposition.]

"Parliament," said Seguier, "consists of one hundred and sixty members, who, for ability and conscientious discharge of duty, cannot be matched. I know not any of the number to be alienated from the true faith. Indeed, no greater misfortune could befall the judicature, than that the supreme court should forfeit the confidence of the monarch by whom its members were appointed. It is not from personal fear that we oppose the introduction of the Inquisition. An inquisition, when well administered, may not, perhaps, always be injurious. Yet Trajan, an excellent emperor, abolished it as against the early Christians, persecuted as the 'Lutherans' now are; and he preferred to depend upon the declarations of those who revealed themselves, rather than to foster the spread of the curse of informers and sow fear and distrust in families. But it is as magistrates that we dread, or rather abhor, the establishment of a bloody tribunal, before which denunciation takes the place of proof, where the accused is deprived of the natural means of defence, and where no judicial forms are observed. We allege nothing of which we cannot furnish recent examples. Many of those whom the agents of the Inquisition had condemned have appealed to parliament. In revising these procedures, we found them so full of absurdities and follies, that, if charity forbids our suspecting those who already discharge this function among us of dishonesty and malice, it permits and even bids us deplore their ignorance and presumption. Yet it is to such judges that you are asked, Sire, to deliver over your faithful subjects, bound hand and foot, by removing the resource of appeal."

Is it politic, the orator proceeded to ask, for the king to introduce an edict standing in direct contradiction to that by which he has given to his own courts exclusive jurisdiction in the trial of the laity and simple clerks, and thus initiate a conflict of laws? Or has the monarch—by whose authority, as supreme head of justice, the decisions of parliament are rendered, whose name stands at the beginning, and whose seal is affixed to the termination of every writ—the right to cut off an appeal to himself, which his subjects, by reason of their paying tribute, can justly claim in return? Rather let the sovereign remedy be applied. In order to put an end to heresy, let the pattern of the primitive church be observed, which was established not by sword or by fire, but which, on the contrary, resisted both sword and fire through long years of persecution. Yet it endured, and even grew, by the doctrine and exemplary life of good prelates and pastors, residing in their charges. At present the prelates are non-residents, and the people hunger for the Word of God. Now, it is every man's duty to believe the Holy Scriptures, and to bear testimony to his belief by good works. Whoever refuses to believe them, and accuses others of being "Lutherans," is more of a heretic than the "Lutherans" themselves.[598] The remonstrance of parliament, said Seguier, in fine, is in the interest of the poor people and of the courtiers themselves, whom others more needy will seek to strip of their possessions by means of the Inquisition and a brace of false witnesses.[599]

The speech was listened to with attention by Henry, and its close was applauded by his courtiers, who appreciated the truth of the warning conveyed. Two days later the king informed the deputies that he had determined to take the matter into further consideration; and, after their return, not only Henry, but also Guise and Montmorency, sent letters to parliament in which the mission of Seguier and Du Drac was referred to in complimentary terms.[600]

[Sidenote: Villegagnon sent with Protestant emigrants to Brazil.]

While the influence of the royal court was exerted, in the manner just indicated, to obtain entrance for the Spanish Inquisition, two events occurred equally deserving our attention—an attempt at the colonization of the New World with emigrants of the reformed faith, and the organization of the first Protestant church in France. Through the countenance and under the patronage of an illustrious personage whose name will, from this time forward, frequently figure on these pages—Gaspard de Coligny, Admiral of France—a knight of Malta named Villegagnon, Vice-admiral of Brittany, obtained from Henry "two large ships of two hundred tons burthen," fully equipped and provided with the requisite armament, as well as a third vessel carrying provisions.[601] Having embarked with a large number of gentlemen, artisans, and sailors, and having lost some time by being driven back into port to refit after a storm, he at length set sail for America, and anchored in the bay of Rio de Janeiro on the thirteenth of November, 1555. Most of the colonists were adherents of the religion at this time violently persecuted in France; and it is said that Coligny's support had been gained for the enterprise by the promise, on the part of Villegagnon, that in America the reformed should find a safe asylum.[602]

[Sidenote: Fort Coligny founded.]

No sooner, therefore, had the small company effected a lodgment on a small and rocky islet, opposite the present city of Rio de Janeiro, than Villegagnon conferred on the fort he had erected the name of Coligny, and wrote to the admiral, as he did subsequently to Calvin, requesting that pastors should be sent from Geneva.[603] The petition being granted, Pierre Richier and Guillaume Chartier were despatched—the first Protestant ministers to cross the Atlantic. They were received by the vice-admiral with extravagant demonstrations of joy. A church was instituted on the model of that of Geneva; and Villegagnon recognized the validity of its rites by partaking of the holy communion when for the first time administered, on the shores of the Western Continent, according to the reformed practice.

[Sidenote: Villegagnon becomes an enemy to the Protestants,]

[Sidenote: and brings ruin to the expedition.]

Before long, however, a complete revolution of sentiment and plan was disclosed. The pretext was an animated discussion touching the eucharist, between the Protestant pastors, on the one hand, and Villegagnon, supported by Jean Cointas, a former doctor of the Sorbonne, on the other.[604] The solicitations of the Cardinal of Lorraine, together with a keener appreciation of the danger of harboring the "new doctrines," may have been the cause.[605] Chartier was put out of the way by being sent back to Europe, ostensibly to consult Calvin. Richier and others were so roughly handled that they were glad to leave the island for the continent, and subsequently to return in a leaky vessel to their native land.[606] But the infant enterprise had received a fatal blow. Nearly all the deceived Protestants carried home the tidings of their misfortunes, and deterred others from following their disastrous example. Three, remaining in Brazil, were thrown into the sea by Villegagnon's command. A few suffered martyrdom after the fall of the intended capital of "Antarctic France" into the hands of the Portuguese. As to Villegagnon himself, he returned to Europe the virulent enemy of Coligny, and turned his feeble pen to the refutation of Protestantism.[607]

[Sidenote: The first Protestant church organized in Paris.]

But if ruin overtook an enterprise from which French statesmen had looked for new power and wealth for their country, and the reformers had anticipated the rapid advance of their religion in the New World, the founding of the first Protestant church in Paris proved a more auspicious event. More than thirty years had Protestantism been gradually gaining ground; but, up to the year 1555, it had been wanting in organization. The tide of persecution had surged too violently over the evangelical Christians of the capital to permit them to think of instituting a church, with pastors and consistory, after the model furnished by the free city of Geneva, or of holding public worship at stated times and places, or of regularly administering the sacraments. "The martyrs," says a contemporary writer, "were, properly speaking, the only preachers."[608] But now, the courage of the Parisian Protestants rising with the increased severity of the cruel measures devised against them, they were prepared to accept the idea of organizing themselves as an ecclesiastical community. To this a simple incident led the way. In the house of a nobleman named La Ferriere, a small body of Protestants met secretly for the reading of the Scriptures and for prayer. Their host had left his home in the province of Maine to enjoy, in the crowded capital, greater immunity from observation than he could enjoy in his native city, and to avoid the necessity of submitting his expected offspring to the rite of baptism as superstitiously observed in the Roman Catholic Church. On the birth of his child, he set before the little band of his fellow-believers his reluctance to countenance the corruptions of that church, and his inability to go elsewhere in search of a purer sacrament. He adjured them to meet his exigency and that of other parents, by the consecration of one of their own number as a minister. He denounced the anger of the Almighty if they suffered his child to die without a participation in the ordinance instituted by the Master whom they professed to serve. So earnest an appeal could not be resisted. After fasting and earnest prayer the choice was made (September, 1555). John le Macon, surnamed La Riviere, was a youth of Angers, twenty-two years of age, who for religion's sake had forsaken home, wealth, and brilliant prospects of advancement. He had narrowly escaped the clutches of the magistrates, to whom his own father, in his anger, would have given him up. This person was now set apart as the first reformed minister of Paris. A brief constitution for the nascent church was adopted. A consistory of elders and deacons was established. In this simple manner were laid the foundations of a church destined to serve as the prototype of a multitude of others soon to arise in all parts of France.[609] It was not the least remarkable circumstance attending its origin, that it arose in the midst of the most hostile populace in France, and at a time when the introduction of a new and more odious form of inquisition was under serious consideration. Nor can the thoughtful student of history regard it in any other light than that of a Providential interposition in its behalf, that for two years the infant church was protected from the fate of extermination that threatened it, by the rise of a fresh war between France and Spain—a war originating in the perfidy of the Pope and of Henry the Second, the two great enemies of the reformed doctrines in France—and terminating in a peace ignominious to the royal persecutor.

[Sidenote: The example followed in the provinces.]

[Sidenote: The fagot still reigns.]

The signal given by Paris was welcomed in the provinces. In rapid succession organized churches arose in Meaux, Angers, Poitiers, Bourges, Issoudun, Aubigny, Blois, Tours, Pau, and Troyes—all within the compass of two years.[610] The Protestants, thirsting for the preaching of the Word of God, turned their eyes toward Geneva, Neufchatel, and Lausanne, and implored the gift of ministers qualified for the office of instruction. Hitherto the awakening of the intellect and heart long stupefied by superstition had been partial. Now it seemed to be general. Three months had scarcely elapsed since the foundation of the church at Paris, before it was asking of the Swiss reformers a second minister.[611] A month later, Angers already had a corps of three pastors. "Entreat the Lord," writes the eminent theologian who has left us these details, "to advance His kingdom, and to confirm with the spirit of faith and patience our brethren that are in the very jaws of the lion. Assuredly the tyrant will at length be compelled either to annihilate entire cities, or to concede someplace for the truth.[612]" Meanwhile the fires of persecution blazed high in various parts of France, but produced no sensible impression on the growth of the Reformation.[613]

[Sidenote: Henry II. breaks the truce of Vaucelles.]

[Sidenote: Cardinal Caraffa.]

On the fifth of February, 1556, Henry concluded with Charles the Fifth, who had lately abdicated the imperial crown, and with Philip the Second, his son, the truce of Vaucelles, which either side swore to observe for the space of five years.[614] In the month of July of the same year Henry broke the truce and openly renewed hostilities. Paul the Fourth, the reigning pontiff, was the agent in bringing about this sudden change. The inducement held out to Henry was the prospect of the investiture of the duchy of Milan and the kingdom of Naples; and Paul readily agreed to absolve the French monarch from the oath which he had so solemnly taken only five months before. Constable Montmorency and his nephew, Admiral Coligny, opposed the act of perfidy; but it was advocated by the Duke of Guise, by the Cardinal of Lorraine, and by one whose seductive entreaties were more implicitly obeyed than those of all others—the dissolute Diana of Poitiers.[615] And the negotiation had been intrusted to skilful hands.[616] Cardinal Caraffa, the pontiff's nephew, was surpassed in intrigue by no other member of the Sacred College. No conscientious scruples interfered with the discharge of his commission. For Caraffa was at heart an unbeliever. As his hand was reverently raised to pronounce upon the crowds gathered to witness his entry into Paris the customary benediction in the name of the triune God, and his lips were seen to move, there were those near his person, it is said, that caught the ribald words which were really uttered instead: "Let us deceive this people, since it wishes to be deceived."[617]

[Sidenote: Fresh projects to introduce the Spanish Inquisition.]

[Sidenote: Henry's letter to the Pope.]

It was fitting that to such a legate should be committed the task of making a fresh effort to introduce the Spanish Inquisition into France. The Cardinal of Lorraine had been absent in Italy the year before, when the first attempt failed through the resolute resistance of parliament. He was now present to lend his active co-operation. Yet with all his exertions the king could not silence the opposition of the judges,[618] and was finally induced to defer a third attempt until the year 1557, and to give a different form to the undertaking. In the month of February of this year, Henry applied to the Pontiff, begging him to appoint, by Apostolic brief, a commission of cardinals or other prelates, who "might proceed to the introduction of the said inquisition in the lawful and accustomed form and manner, under the authority of the Apostolic See, and with the invocation of the secular arm and temporal jurisdiction." He promised, on his part, to give the matter his most lively attention, "since he desired nothing in this world so much as to see his people delivered from so dangerous a pestilence as this accursed heresy."[619] And he solicited the greatest expedition on the part of the Pope, for it was an affair that demanded diligence.

[Sidenote: The papal bull.]

[Sidenote: The three inquisitors-general.]

[Sidenote: Odet, Cardinal of Chatillon.]

[Sidenote: His Protestant proclivities.]

Paul, who was in the constant habit of saying that the inquisition was the sole weapon suited to the Holy See, the only battering-ram by means of which heresy could be demolished,[620] did not decline the royal invitation. On the twenty-sixth of April he published a bull appointing a commission consisting of the Cardinals of Lorraine, Bourbon, and Chatillon, with power to delegate their authority to others. Of the three prelates, the first was the real instigator of the cruelties practised during this and the subsequent reigns. The Cardinal of Bourbon was known to be as ignorant as he was inimical to the Reformation, and could be depended upon to support his colleague. The Cardinal of Chatillon, brother of Admiral Coligny and of D'Andelot, was added, it is not improbable, from motives of policy. He was already suspected of favoring the reformed doctrines, which subsequently he openly espoused. Indeed, nearly six years before, the English ambassador, Pickering, after alluding to new measures of persecution devised against the Protestants, wrote: "Cardinal Chatillon, as I hear, is a great aider of Lutherans, and hath been a great stay in this matter, which otherwise had been before now concluded, to the destruction of any man that had almost spoken of God's Word. Nevertheless, the Protestants here fear that it cannot come to a much better end, where such a number of bishops and cardinals bear the swing."[621] Chatillon's enemies hoped, by placing him on this inquisitorial commission, where his vote would be powerless in opposition to that of the other two cardinals, to compel him either to enter the rank of persecutors, or declare himself openly for the Reformation, and thus destroy his own credit and that of his powerful family.[622]

[Sidenote: The bull confirmed by Henry II.]

The papal bull was promptly confirmed by the king, who, in a declaration given at Compiegne, on the twenty-fourth of July, 1557, permitted "his very dear cousins," the three cardinals, to exercise the office of inquisitors-general throughout the monarchy. From sentences given by their subalterns, this document permitted an appeal to be taken, but it was to a body appointed for the purpose by the inquisitors themselves.[623] Parliament, however, again interposed the prerogative it had assumed, of remonstrance and delay, and the king's declaration, as well as the papal bull, remained inoperative.[624]

[Sidenote: Judicial sympathy with the victims.]

[Sidenote: Edict of Compiegne, July 24, 1557.]

It is not surprising, perhaps, that the institution of the sacred office, with its bloody code and relentless tribunal, was pressed so repeatedly upon the French monarch and parliament for their acceptance. The number of the Protestants was not only increasing in a most alarming manner,[625] but the very judges before whom, when discovered, the Protestants were brought, began to show signs of compassion, if not of sympathy. So it happened that, in one provincial town, two persons caught with the packages of "Lutheran" books they had brought into France, after they had made an explicit confession of their faith, were condemned, not to the flames, but to the trifling punishment of public whipping; and scarcely had the blows begun to fall upon the backs of the pedlers, when some of the magistrates themselves threw their cloaks around the culprits, whose confiscated books were afterward secretly returned to them, or bought and paid for.[626] To such a formidable height had this irregularity grown, that, on the very day upon which the confirmation of the three proposed inquisitors-general was made, Henry published a new edict (at Compiegne, on the twenty-fourth of July, 1557) intended to secure an adherence to the penalties prescribed by previous laws. The reader of this edict, remembering the frequency with which the estrapade had done its bloody work for the last quarter of a century, will not be astonished to read that the punishment of death is affixed to the secret or public profession of any other religion than the Roman Catholic. But he will rejoice, for the sake of our common humanity, to learn that "it very frequently happens that our said judges are moved with pity by the holy and malicious words of those found guilty of the said crimes;" and that, to secure the uniform infliction of the extreme penalty upon the professors of the reformed faith, it was now necessary for the king to remove from the judges the slightest pretext or authority for mitigating the sentence that condemned a Protestant to the flames or gallows.[627]

[Sidenote: Defeat of St. Quentin, Aug. 10, 1557.]

Under cover of the war during three years, Protestantism made rapid strides in France. But the contest itself was disastrous to its originators. The constable, having, when hostilities had once been undertaken contrary to his advice, been unwilling to resign the chief command to which his office entitled him, assumed the defence of Paris from the north, while to his younger rival in arms, the Duke of Guise, was assigned the more brilliant part in the enterprise—the conquest of the kingdom of Naples. Montmorency's success, however, fell far short of the reputation he enjoyed for consummate generalship. Not only did he fail to relieve his nephews Coligny and D'Andelot, who had shut themselves up with a handful of men in the fortress of St. Quentin; but he himself (on the tenth of August, 1557) met with a signal defeat in which the flower of the French army was routed, and many of its leaders, including the constable himself, were taken prisoners.[628]

[Sidenote: Rage against the "Lutherans."]

The French capital was thrown into a paroxysm of fear on receipt of the intelligence. The road to Paris lay open to the victorious army. The king, not less than the people, expected to hear the Spaniards within a few brief days thundering at the very gates of the city. Charles the Fifth, from his retirement at Yuste, is said to have asked the courier with impatience, whether his son was already in Paris.[629] In the minds of the populace, disappointment and fear were mingled with rage against "the accursed sect of the Lutherans"—the reputed authors of all the public calamities. Every prediction which the priests had for a generation been ringing in the ears of the people seemed now to be in course of fulfilment. In the startling defeat of a large and well-appointed army of France, led by an experienced general, all eyes read tokens of the evident displeasure of the Almighty, not because of the ignorance and immorality of the people, or the bad doctrine and worse lives of its spiritual leaders, or the barbarous cruelty, the shameless impurity, and unexampled bad faith of the court; but because of the existence of heretics who denied the authority of the Pope, and refused to bow down and worship the transubstantiated wafer. The popular anger was the more ready to kindle because the harsh measures of the government had confessedly failed of accomplishing their object, and because—to use the expressive language of the royal edict—the fire still burned beneath the ashes.[630] An incident which happened little more than a fortnight after the battle of St. Quentin disclosed the bitter fruits of the slanderous reports and violent teachings disseminated among the excitable inhabitants of Paris.

[Sidenote: The affair of the Rue St. Jacques, Sept. 4, 1557.]

[Sidenote: Assault upon the worshippers.]

The Protestants of the capital, far from rejoicing over the misfortunes of the kingdom, as their adversaries falsely asserted, met even more frequently than before to offer their united prayers in its behalf. On the evening of the fourth of September, 1557,[631] three or four hundred persons, of every rank of society, quietly repaired to a house in the Rue St. Jacques, almost under the very shadow of the Sorbonne, where the sacrament of the Lord's Supper was to be administered according to previous appointment. Their coming together had not been so noiseless, however, as to escape the attention of some priests, residing in the College du Plessis, on the other side of the way, whose suspicions had for some time been fixed upon the spot.[632] The reformed were not disturbed during the exercise of their worship. But when, toward midnight, they prepared to return to their homes, the fury of their enemies discharged upon them the full force of its pent-up energies. A fanatical crowd blocked the street or filled the opposite windows, ready to overwhelm with a shower of stones and missiles of all descriptions any that might leave the protection of the house. Continual accessions were made of those whom the cries of "Thieves!" "Robbers!" "Conspirators against the realm!" attracted to the place. The discovery of the fact that it was a company not of robbers, but of "Lutherans," only inflamed the rage of the new-comers. The cry was now for blood. Every avenue of escape was guarded, and bonfires lighted here and there dispelled the friendly darkness. Carts and wagons were drawn across the streets, and armed men occupied the street-corners, or, if too cowardly to expose themselves to any danger, stood ready at doors and windows to thrust the fugitives through with their pikes.

The assembled Protestants, awakened to their danger, at first expected a general massacre. But the exhortations of their pastors and elders gave them new courage. In the midst of the storm raging without, they betook themselves to prayer. At length the necessity was recognized of coming to a prompt decision. To await the coming of the civil authorities, for whom their enemies had sent, was to give themselves up to certain death. Nothing remained but to force their way out—a course recommended, we are told, by those who knew the cowardice of a Parisian mob. The men who were provided with swords were placed in the front rank, the unarmed followed in their wake. Again and again small companies issued into the street and faced the angry storm. Each successive company reached a safe refuge. In fact, of all that adopted the bolder course of action, only one person was knocked down and left upon the ground to be brutally murdered and suffer the most shameful indignities. There were, however, many—one hundred and twenty or more women and children, with a few men—whom fear prevented from following the example of their companions. Around them the rabble, balked of the greater part of its expected victims, raged with increased fury. At one moment they presented themselves at the windows to the view of their enemies, in the vain hope that the sight of so much innocence and helplessness would secure compassion. When only blind hatred and malice were exhibited in return, they withdrew and quietly awaited the fate which they believed to be in store for them at the hands of the mob. From this they were delivered by the sudden arrival of Martine, the king's "procureur" belonging to the Chatelet, with a strong detachment of commissaries and sergeants.

With great difficulty restraining the impetuosity of the mob, the magistrate made on the very spot an examination into the services that had been held. The whole story was told him in simple terms. He found that, while the Protestants had been assembling, the Scriptures had for a long time been read in the French language. The minister had next offered prayer, the whole company kneeling upon the floor. He had afterward set forth the institution of the holy supper as given by St. Paul, had exhibited its true utility and how it ought to be approached, and had debarred from the communion all seditious, disobedient, impure, and other unworthy participants, forbidding them to come near to the sacred table. Then those who had been deemed to be in a fit frame to receive the sacrament had presented themselves, and received the bread and the wine from the hands of the ministers, with the words: "This is the communion of the body and blood of the Lord." Prayers had followed for the king and the prosperity of his kingdom, for all the poor in their affliction, and for the church in general. The services had closed with the singing of several psalms.

[Sidenote: Treatment of the prisoners.]

So clear a confession was amply sufficient to justify the arrest of the entire company. Men, women, and children were dragged at early dawn to the prison. But their escort was too small, or too indifferent, to afford protection from the insults and violence of the immense throng through the midst of which they passed.[633] Not content with applying alike to men and to women the most opprobrious epithets, the rabble tore their clothing, covered them with mud and filth, and dealt many a blow—especially to those who from their long robes or age were suspected of being preachers.[634] Into these outrages no judicial investigation was ever instituted, so prevalent was the persuasion that the zeal of the people in defence of the established faith must not be too narrowly watched.

[Sidenote: Malicious rumors.]

The blame for these excesses must not, however, be laid exclusively to the account of the populace. There were rumors afloat that owed their origin to the deliberate and malicious invention of the better instructed, and that were firmly believed by the ignorant masses. The nocturnal meetings, to which the Protestants were driven by persecution, were represented as devoted to the most abominable orgies. The Protestants were accused of eating little children. It was boldly stated that a luxurious banquet was spread, and that at its conclusion the candles were extinguished, and a scene of the most indiscriminate lewdness ensued.[635] One of the judges of the tribunal of the Chatelet was found sufficiently pliant to declare, in contradiction to the unanimous testimony of the accused, that preparations for the repetition of similar crimes had been discovered in the rooms of the house in the rue St. Jacques, where the Protestants had been surprised. These infamous accusations even found their way into print, and were disseminated far and wide by the priestly party.

[Sidenote: Trials and executions.]

While the poor prisoners were confined in the most loathsome cells—highwaymen and murderers being removed to better quarters to make room for Christians[636]—a judicial investigation was set on foot. The king himself expedited the trials.[637] Within little more than three weeks from the time of their apprehension, three Protestants were put to death (on the twenty-seventh of September). Both sexes and the extremes of youth and old age were represented in these victims. To one, a beautiful young lady of wealth and rank, barely twenty-three years old, the favor was granted of being strangled before her body was consigned to the flames. Yet even in her case the cruel executioner had not abstained from first applying a firebrand wantonly and indecently to different parts of her person.[638] Her companions were burned alive. One of them was an advocate in parliament; both were elders of the reformed church. Five days later a physician and a solicitor met the same fate, but endured greater sufferings, as the wind blew the flames from beneath them, prolonging their torture; and these were quickly followed by two students at Paris, both of them from the southern part of the realm (on the twenty-third of October).[639]

[Sidenote: Intercession of the Swiss cantons and others.]

[Sidenote: Calvin's interest.]

Meanwhile the wretched prisoners were not deserted by their brethren. Their innocence of the dreadful crimes laid to their charge was maintained in pamphlets, which showed that these accusations were but repetitions of slanders invented by the heathen to overwhelm the early Christians. Their doctrinal orthodoxy was proved by citations from the early church fathers.[640] The Protestants of Paris found means to introduce a long remonstrance into the very chamber of the king. Unfortunately, it had as little influence upon him as similar productions had had with his predecessor. In Switzerland and in a portion of Germany the tidings made a deep impression. Less than two weeks after the blow had been struck at the small community of Parisian Protestants, Calvin wrote the first of a series of letters calculated to sustain their drooping courage, and suggested some of the wise ends Providence might have in view in permitting so severe a discipline.[641] Meantime he applied himself vigorously to arouse in their behalf an effective intervention. "My good brethren," he wrote to the people of Lausanne, "though all the rest should not suffice to move the hearts of those brethren to whom an appeal is made, yet this emergency admits of no delay. It can scarcely be but that, amid so many tortures, first one and then another be involved in them, until the number of sufferers become an infinite one. In short, the whole kingdom will be in flames. The question no longer is how to satisfy the desire of the poor brethren, but, if we have a single spark of humanity within us, to succor them in such extremity.... Though money be not promptly obtained elsewhere, yet shall I make such efforts, should I be obliged to pledge my head and my feet, that it be forthcoming here."[642]

Beza, with his associates, Carmel, Farel, and Bude, at the same time, by Calvin's request, took active steps to induce the Protestant cantons and princes to intercede with Henry, and their exertions were not in vain.[643] It was the object of the reformers to enlist the intervention of those Protestant powers, in particular, whose alliance and assistance might be deemed indispensable by the French king in his present straits.[644] The four "evangelical" Swiss cantons, encouraged by the success of a recent mission in behalf of the Waldenses of Piedmont, sent to Paris a deputation, whose appearance was greeted by the Protestants with the utmost joy. The ambassadors, however, allowed themselves to be cajoled and deceived by the Cardinal of Lorraine, to whom they had the imprudence to intrust their petition. In reply to their address to the king, they were told (on the fifth of November), in the name of his Majesty, that he invited the confederates in future to trouble themselves no further with the internal affairs of his kingdom, especially in matters of religion, since he was resolved to follow in the steps of his predecessors.[645] Discouraged by this rebuff, they did not even attempt to press the matter upon the king's notice, or by a personal interview endeavor to mitigate his anger against their brethren. It had been better never to have engaged in the intercession than support it so weakly.[646] The German princes could not be induced to give to the affair the consideration it merited; but a letter of the Count Palatine seems to have somewhat diminished the violence of the persecution.[647]

[Sidenote: Constancy of most of the prisoners.]

The constancy of the victims, by disconcerting the plans of their enemies, doubtless contributed much to the temporary lull. No one attracted in this respect greater attention than the most illustrious person among the prisoners—the daughter of the Seigneur de Rambouillet and wife of De Rentigny, standard-bearer of the Duke of Guise—who resolutely rejected the pardon, based on a renunciation of her faith, which her father and husband brought her from the king, and urged her with tears to accept.[648] Others, who, on account of their youth, were expected to be but poor advocates of their doctrinal views, proved more than a match for their examiners. The course was finally adopted of distributing the prisoners, about one hundred in number, in various monastic establishments, whose inmates might win them back to the Roman Catholic Church, whether by argument or by harsher means. The judges could thus rid themselves of the irksome task of lighting new fires, and the energies of the religious orders were put to some account. But the result hardly met the expectations formed. If a few Protestants obtained their liberty, and incurred the censures of their brethren, by unworthy confessions of principle,[649] many more were allowed to escape by the monks, who soon had reason to desire "that their cloisters might be purged of such pests, through fear lest the contagion should spread farther," and found it "burdensome to support without compensation so large a number of needy persons."[650]

[Sidenote: Controversial pamphlets.]

While the Protestants were thus demonstrating, by the fortitude with which they encountered severe suffering and even death, the sincerity of their convictions and the purity of their lives, their enemies were unremitting in exertions to aggravate the odium in which they were held by the people. An inquisitor and doctor of the Sorbonne, the notorious De Mouchy, or Demochares, as he called himself, wrote a pamphlet to prove them heretics by the decisions of the doctors. A bishop found the signs of the true church in the bells at the sound of which the Catholics assembled, and marks of Antichrist in the pistols and arquebuses whose discharge was said to be the signal for the gathering of the heretics. A third controversialist went so far as to accuse the Protestants not only of impurity, but of denying the divinity of Christ, the immortality of the soul, the resurrection of the body, and even the existence of God.[651]

[Sidenote: Capture of Calais, January, 1558.]

Meanwhile, public affairs assumed a more encouraging aspect. Francis of Guise, recalled from Italy, where his ill-success had been the salvation of the poor Waldenses in their Alpine valleys,[652] had assumed command of a large force, consisting partly of the troops he had taken to Italy, partly of noblemen and gentlemen that flocked to his standard in answer to the king's summons for the defence of the French capital. With this army he succeeded in capturing, in the beginning of January, 1558, the city of Calais, for two hundred years an English possession.[653] The achievement was not a difficult one. The fortifications had been suffered to go to ruin, and the small garrison was utterly insufficient to resist the force unexpectedly sent against it.[654] But the success raised still higher the pride of the Guises.

[Sidenote: Registry of the inquisition edict.]

[Sidenote: Antoine of Navarre, Conde, and other princes favor the Reformation.]

The auspicious moment was seized by the Cardinal of Lorraine to induce Henry, on the ninth of January, to hold in parliament a lit de justice, and compel the court to register in his presence the obnoxious edict of the previous year, establishing the inquisition.[655] But the engine which had been esteemed both by Pope and king the only sure means of repressing heresy, failed of its end. New churches arose; those that previously existed rapidly grew.[656] The Reformation, also, now, for the first time, was openly avowed by men of the first rank in the kingdom. Its opponents were filled with dismay upon beholding Antoine de Bourbon, King of Navarre, his brother Louis, Prince of Conde, and Francois d'Andelot, brother of Admiral Coligny, at the head of the hitherto despised "Lutherans." Antoine de Bourbon-Vendome was, next to the reigning monarch and his children, the first prince of the blood. Since his marriage with Jeanne d'Albret—in consequence of which he became titular King of Navarre—he had resided for much of the time in the city of Pan, where his more illustrious son, Henry the Fourth, was born. Here he had attended the preaching of Protestant ministers. On his return to court, not long after the capture of Calais, he took the decided step of frequenting the gatherings of the Parisian Protestants. Subsequently he rescued a prominent minister—Antoine de Chandieu—from the Chatelet, in which he was imprisoned, by going in person and claiming him as a member of his household.[657] Well would it have been for France had the Navarrese king always displayed the same courage. Conde and D'Andelot were scarcely less valuable accessions to the ranks of the Protestants.

[Sidenote: Embassy from the Protestant Electors of Germany.]

Other causes contributed to delay the full execution of the plan of the Inquisition. A united embassy from the three Protestant Electors of Germany—the Count Palatine, the Duke of Saxony, and the Marquis of Brandenburg—and from the Dukes of Deux Ponts and Wurtemberg, bearing a powerful appeal to Henry in behalf of his persecuted subjects, arrived in Paris.[658] Such noble and influential petitioners could not be dismissed—especially at a time when their assistance was indispensable—without a gracious reply;[659] and, in order that the German princes might not have occasion to accuse Henry of too flagrant bad faith, the persecution was allowed for a short time to abate.

[Sidenote: Psalm-singing on the Pre aux Clercs.]

An incident of an apparently trivial character, which happened at Paris not long after, proved very clearly that the severities inflicted on some of those connected with the meeting in the Rue St. Jacques had utterly failed of accomplishing their object. On the southern side of the Seine, opposite the Louvre, there stretched, just outside of the city walls, a large open space—the public grounds of the university, known as the Pre aux Clercs.[660] This spot was the favorite promenade of the higher classes of the Parisians. It happened that, on a certain afternoon in May,[661] a few voices in the crowd began to sing one of the psalms which Clement Marot and Theodore de Beze had translated into French. At the sound the walks and games were forsaken. The tune was quickly caught up, and soon the vast concourse joining in the words, either through sympathy or through love of novelty, the curious were attracted from all quarters to listen to so strange an entertainment. For many successive evenings the same performance was repeated. The numbers increased, it was said, to five or six thousand. Many of the chief personages of the kingdom were to be seen among those who took part. The King and Queen of Navarre were particularly noticed because of the pleasure they manifested. By the inmates of the neighboring College of the Sorbonne the demonstration was interpreted as an open avowal of heresy. The use of the French language in devotional singing was calculated to throw contempt upon the time-honored usage of performing divine service in the Latin tongue.[662] To the king, at this time absent from the city, the psalm-singing was represented as a beginning of sedition, which must be suppressed lest it should lead to the destruction at once of his faith and of his authority. Henry, too ready a listener to such suggestions, ordered the irregularity to cease; and the Protestant ministers and elders of Paris, desirous of giving an example of obedience to the civil power in things indifferent, enjoined on their members to desist from singing the psalms elsewhere than in their own homes.[663]

[Sidenote: Conference of Cardinals Lorraine and Granvelle.]

The visit of the Dowager Duchess of Lorraine, who was permitted to meet her son upon the borders of France, afforded a good opportunity for an informal discussion of the terms of the peace that was to put an end to a war of which both parties were equally tired. There, in the fortress of Peronne, the Cardinal of Lorraine held a conference with Antoine Perrenot, Cardinal of Granvelle; and a friendship was cemented between the former and the Spanish court boding no good for the quiet of France or the stability of the throne.

[Sidenote: D'Andelot, Coligny's younger brother, denounced.]

Little was effected in the direction of peace. But Cardinal Lorraine received valuable hints touching the best method for humbling the enemies of his house. Of these no one was more formidable than D'Andelot, who had distinguished himself greatly in the war on the Flemish borders. This young nobleman, the Bishop of Arras affirmed, had been found, during the captivity from which he had recently escaped, to be infected with the contagion of the "new doctrines." Since his return to France, he had even ventured to send a heretical volume to console his brother, the admiral, in prison. The cardinal, jealous of the houses of Chatillon and Montmorency, promptly reported to the king the story of D'Andelot's defection from the faith. His brother, the Duke of Guise, loudly declared that, although he was ready to march to the siege of Thionville, he could entertain no hope of success if D'Andelot were suffered to accompany him, in command of the French infantry.[664]

[Sidenote: D'Andelot in Brittany.]

The sympathy of the younger Chatillon was daily becoming more openly avowed. On a recent visit to Brittany (April, 1558), he had taken with him Fleury and Loiseleur, Protestant ministers. For the first time, the westernmost province of France heard the doctrines preached a generation before in Meaux. The crowd of provincial nobles, flocking to pay their respects to D'Andelot and his wife, Claude de Rieux, heiress of vast estates in this region, were both surprised and gratified at enjoying the opportunity of listening to preachers whose voice had penetrated to almost every nook of France save this. So palpable were the effects, that D'Andelot's brief tour in Brittany furnished additional grounds for Henry's suspicions respecting the young nobleman's soundness in the faith.[665]

[Sidenote: D'Andelot summoned to appear before the king.]

[Sidenote: His manly defence.]

D'Andelot was summoned to appear before the king and clear himself of the charges preferred against him. Henry is said, indeed, to have sent previously D'Andelot's brother, the Cardinal of Chatillon, and his cousin, Marshal Montmorency, the constable's eldest son, to urge him to make a submissive and satisfactory explanation. But their exertions were futile. Henry began the conversation by reminding D'Andelot of the great intimacy he had always allowed him and the love he bore him. He told him that he had expected of him anything rather than a revolt from the religion of his prince and an adherence to new doctrines. And he announced as the principal points in his conduct which he condemned, that he had allowed the "Lutheran" views to be preached on his estates, that he had frequented the Pre aux Clercs, that he absented himself from the mass, and that he had sent "books from Geneva" to his brother, the admiral, in his captivity. D'Andelot replied with frankness and intrepidity. He professed gratitude for the many favors he had received from the monarch, a gratitude he had never tired of making known by perilling life and property in that prince's cause. But the doctrine he had caused to be preached was good and holy, and such as his forefathers had held. He denied having been at the Pre aux Clercs, but avowed his entire approval of the service of praise in which the multitude had there engaged. As for his absence from the mass, he thanked God for removing the veil of ignorance that once covered his eyes, and declared that, with the Almighty's favor, he would never again be present at its celebration. In fine, he begged Henry to regard his life and property as being entirely at the royal disposition, but to leave him a free conscience. The Cardinal of Lorraine, who alone of the courtiers was present, here interposed to warn the speaker of the bad way into which he had entered; but D'Andelot replied by appealing to the prelate's own conscience in testimony of the truth of the doctrines he had once favored, but now, from ambitious motives, persecuted.

[Sidenote: Henry orders him to be imprisoned.]

[Sidenote: Embarrassment of the court.]

Greatly displeased with so frank an avowal of sentiments that would have cost one less nobly connected his life, Henry now pointed to the collar of the "Order of St. Michael" around D'Andelot's neck, and exclaimed: "I did not give you this order to be so employed; for you swore to attend mass and to follow my religion." "I knew not what it is to be a Christian," responded D'Andelot; "nor, had God then touched my heart as He now has, should I have accepted it on such a condition."[666] Unable any longer to endure the boldness of D'Andelot—who richly deserved the title he popularly bore, the fearless knight[667]—Henry angrily commanded him to leave his presence. The young man was arrested and taken by the archers of the guard to Meaux, whence he was subsequently removed to Melun.[668] The position of the court was, however, an embarrassing one. Henry manifested no desire to retain long as a prisoner, much less to bring to the estrapade, the nephew of the constable, and a warrior who had himself held the honorable post of Colonel-General of the French infantry, and was second to none in reputation for valor and skill. The most trifling concession would be sufficient to secure the scion of the powerful families of Chatillon and Montmorency. Even this concession, however, could not for a considerable time be gained. D'Andelot resisted every temptation, and his correspondence breathed the most uncompromising determination.

[Sidenote: D'Andelot's constancy.]

[Sidenote: His temporary weakness.]

In a long and admirable letter to Henry, it is true, he humbly asked pardon for the offence his words had given. And he begged the king to believe that, "save in the matter of obedience to God and of conscience," he would ever faithfully expose life and means to fulfil the royal commands. But he also reiterated his inability to attend the mass, and plainly denounced as blasphemy the approval of any other sacrifice than that made upon the Cross.[669] To the ministers of Paris he wrote, expressing a resolution equally strong; and the letters of the latter, as well as of the great Genevese reformer, were well calculated to sustain his courage. But D'Andelot was not proof against the sophistries of Ruze, a doctor of the Sorbonne and confessor of the king. Moved by the entreaties of his wife,[670] of his uncle the constable, and of his brother the Cardinal of Chatillon, he was induced, after two months of imprisonment, to consent to be present, but without taking any part, at a celebration of the mass. By the same priest D'Andelot sent a submissive message to the king, to which the bearer, we have reason to believe, attributed a meaning quite different from that which D'Andelot had intended to convey. The noble prisoner was at once released; but the voice of conscience, uniting with that of his faithful friends, soon led him to repent bitterly of his temporary, but scandalous weakness. From this time forward he resumes the character of the intrepid defender of the Protestant doctrines—a character of which he never again divests himself.[671]

[Sidenote: The bloody decemvirate.]

[Sidenote: Anxiety for peace.]

Meanwhile, Henry and his adviser, the Cardinal of Lorraine, who really little deserved the reproaches showered on them by the Pope, took steps to encounter the new assaults which the reformed doctrines were making on the established church in every quarter of the kingdom. If the Parliament of Paris began to exhibit reluctance to shed more innocent blood, it was far otherwise with the decemvirate to whom the three cardinals had delegated their inquisitorial functions, and whose power was supreme.[672] But, to the prosecution of the work of exterminating heresy in France, the continuance of the war with Spain offered insurmountable obstacles. It diverted the attention of the government from the multiplication of "Lutheran" churches and communities. It hampered the court, by compelling it to mitigate its severities, in consequence of the importunate intercessions of its indispensable allies, the Protestant princes across the Rhine and the confederated cantons of Switzerland. Besides, the war had borne no fruit but disappointment. If Calais had been recovered, St. Quentin and other strongholds, which were the key to Paris, had been lost. The brilliant capture of Thionville (on the twenty-second of June, 1558) had been more than balanced by the disastrous rout of Marshal de Thermes at Gravelines (on the thirteenth of July).[673]

The almost uninterrupted hostilities of the last twelve years had not only exhausted the few thousand crowns which Henry had found in the treasury at his accession to the throne, but had reduced the French exchequer to as low an ebb as that of the Spanish king.[674] His antagonist was as anxious as Henry to reduce his expenditures, and obtain leisure for crushing heresy in the Low Countries and wherever else it had shown itself in his vast dominions. Constable Montmorency, too, employed his powerful influence to secure a peace which would restore him liberty, and the place in the royal favor likely to be usurped by the Guises, if his absence from court were to last much longer. And Paul the Fourth was now as earnestly desirous of effecting a reconciliation between the contending monarchs—that they might unitedly engage in the holy work of persecution—as he had been a few years before to embroil them in war.[675]

[Sidenote: The treaty of Cateau-Cambresis, April 3, 1559.]

The common desire for peace found expression in the appointment of plenipotentiaries, who met, about the middle of October, in the monastery of Cercamps, near Cambray. France was represented by Montmorency, the Cardinal of Lorraine, Marshal St. Andre, Morvilliers, Bishop of Orleans, and Claude de l'Aubespine, Secretary of State. The Duke of Alva, William of Orange, Ruy-Gomez de Silva, the Bishop of Arras, and Viglius appeared on the part of Philip. England and Savoy were also represented by their envoys. After preliminary discussions, the conference adjourned, to meet in February of the succeeding year at Cateau-Cambresis.[676] Here, on the third of April, 1559, was concluded a treaty of peace that terminated the struggle for ascendancy in which France and Spain had been engaged, with brief intermissions, ever since the accession of Francis the First and Charles the Fifth.

So far as France was concerned, it was an inglorious close. By a single stroke of the pen Henry gave up nearly two hundred places that had been captured by the French from their enemies during the last thirty years. In return he received Ham, St. Quentin, and three other strongholds held by Philip on his northern frontier. All the fruits of many years of war and an infinite loss of life and treasure[677] were surrendered in an instant for a paltry price. The Duke of Savoy recovered states which had long been incorporated in the French dominions. The jurisdictions of two parliaments of France became foreign territory. The inhabitants of Turin were left to forget the language they had begun to speak well. The King of Spain could now come to the very gates of Lyons, which before the peace had stood, as it were, in the middle of the kingdom, but was now turned into a border city.[678]

[Sidenote: Sacrifice of French interests.]

Such were the concessions Henry was willing to make for the purpose of obtaining peace abroad, that he might turn his arms against his own subjects. Philip, if equally zealous, was certainly too prudent to exhibit his eagerness so clearly to his opponent. The interests of France had been sacrificed to the bigotry of her monarch and the selfishness of his advisers. When the terms of the agreement were made known, they awakened in every true Frenchman's breast a feeling of shame and disgust.[679] Henry himself manifested embarrassment when attempting to justify his course.[680] Abroad the improbable tidings were received with incredulity.[681]

[Sidenote: Was there a secret treaty for the extermination of the Protestants?]

The treaty of Cateau-Cambresis contained but one article on the subject of religion—that which bound the monarchs of Spain and France to put forth their united exertions for securing a "holy universal council." But common report had it that the omission of more detailed reference to the subject lying so near to the heart of both kings was fully compensated by a secret treaty taken up exclusively with this subject.[682] That treaty was represented as developing a plan which contemplated nothing less than the entire and violent destruction of heresy by the united efforts of their Catholic and Very Christian Majesties. By a single concerted massacre of all dissidents, the whole of Europe was to be brought back to its allegiance to the see of St. Peter.[683] Unfortunately, the secret treaty, if it ever existed, has never come to light; nor have we the testimony of a single person who pretends to have seen it, or to be acquainted with its contents. Indeed, the circumstances of the case seem to render such a united effort as the conjectural treaty supposes either Quixotic or superfluous—Quixotic, if the two monarchs, without the concurrence of the empire, whose crown had passed from Charles, not to his son Philip, but to his brother Ferdinand, should institute a scheme for a general crusade against the professors of the doctrines that had already gained a firm foothold in one-half of Germany, in Great Britain, and the Scandinavian lands of Northern Europe; superfluous, if it respected only the dominions of the high contracting powers. For the purpose of Henry was no less clearly and repeatedly proclaimed than that of Philip. No subject of either crown could ignore at whom the first blow would be struck, after the pressure of the foreign war had been removed.[684] Nor, in the execution of their plans, could either monarch imagine himself to stand in need of the assistance of his royal brother; for it was not an open war to be carried on, but as yet a struggle with persons, numerous without doubt, but, nevertheless, suspected rather than convicted of heresy, and discovered, for the most part, only by diligent search.

[Sidenote: The Prince of Orange learns Henry's and Philip's designs.]

But, if we have reason to think that the treaty of Cateau-Cambresis was accompanied by no secret and formal stipulations having reference to a combined assault upon Protestantism, we at least know that the negotiations it occasioned gave rise to a singular disclosure of the policy of Philip the Second in the Netherlands—a policy which he deemed applicable to Christendom entire. Among the ambassadors of Philip and the hostages for the execution of the treaty was William of Orange, the future deliverer of the United Provinces. Henry, supposing that the nobleman to whom so honorable a trust had been committed enjoyed the confidence of his master to an equal extent with the Duke of Alva, his colleague, imprudently broached the subject of the suppression of heresy. The prince wisely encouraged the misapprehension, in order to avoid incurring the contempt in which he would have been held had the discovery been made that Philip had not taken him into his confidence. Henry, waxing earnest on the theme, revealed the intention of Philip and Alva to establish in the Netherlands "a worse than Spanish Inquisition." Thus much the prince himself published to the world.[685] The learned President De Thou adds that Philip's subsequent design was to join his arms to those of France, to make a joint attack upon the "new sectaries."[686] This is not altogether impossible. But the plan was general and vague. Its execution was still in the distant future. Its details were probably but little elaborated. If, outside of the dominions of the two monarchs, any points of attack were proposed with distinctness, they were the free city of Strasbourg, the Canton of Berne with its dependency, the Pays de Vaud—but, above all, Geneva.

[Sidenote: Danger menacing the city of Geneva.]

That small republic, insignificant in size, but powerful through the influence of its teachers and the books with which its presses teemed, was the eyesore of Roman Catholic France. It was the home of French refugees for religion's sake; and the strictest laws could not check the stream of money that flowed thither for their support. It was the nursery of the reformed doctrines; and the death penalty was ineffectual to cut off intercourse, or to dam up the flood of Calvinistic books which it poured over the kingdom.

Calvin himself and his friends momentarily expected the blow to fall upon their devoted heads.[687] But the same hand that so often in the eventful history of Geneva interposed in its behalf, by a signal occurrence warded off the stroke.

[Sidenote: A joint expedition against Geneva proposed by Henry,]

[Sidenote: but declined by the Duke of Alva.]

The apprehensions of the Genevese were well founded. In June, 1559, and but a few days before the date of Calvin's letter, Philip the Second made the offer to the French king, through the Duke of Alva, then in Paris, to aid him in exterminating the Protestants of France. Henry declined for the moment to avail himself of the assistance, which he regarded as unnecessary; but he sent the Constable Montmorency to propose that both monarchs should make a joint expedition against Geneva, and declared himself ready to employ all his forces in the pious undertaking. It may surprise us to learn that the prudent duke in turn rejected the crusade against the Protestant citadel. Even Philip and his equally bigoted agents could close their ears to the call to become the instruments in the extirpation of heresy. While they could see neither reason nor religion in the temporizing policy occasionally manifested by other Roman Catholic sovereigns in their dealings with Protestant subjects, Philip and Alva never suffered their hatred of schism to be so uncompromising as to interfere with what they considered a material interest of the state. Unfortunately for Philip, the quarrel of Geneva would inevitably be espoused by the Bernese and the inhabitants of the other Protestant cantons of Switzerland; and it was certainly undesirable to provoke the enmity of a powerful body of freemen, situated in dangerous proximity to the "Franche Comte"—the remnant of Burgundy still in Spanish hands. It was no less imprudent, in view of future contingencies, to render still more difficult the passage from his Catholic Majesty's dominions in Northern Italy to the Netherlands. So Alva, as he himself reports to his master, rejected the constable's proposition, contenting himself with a few empty phrases respecting the great profit that would flow to the cause of God and of royalty from an exclusion of Roman Catholic subjects from that pestilent city on the shores of Lake Leman.[688]

[Sidenote: Parliament suspected of heretical leanings.]

Henry had deemed the progress of the reformed doctrines in France so formidable[689] as to dictate the necessity of making peace with Philip, even upon humiliating terms. But where should he begin the savage work for which he had made such sacrifices? His spiritual advisers pointed to the courts of justice, which they accused of being lukewarm, and even infected with heresy. For years they had been dwelling upon the same theme. In 1556 the Sorbonne had denounced the parliament itself as altogether heretical;[690] and, although Henry showed some indignation at the suggestion, and sarcastically asked whether the theologians aspired to become the supreme judges of the kingdom, it was notorious, two years later, that they had succeeded in sowing in his breast a general distrust respecting the orthodoxy of the entire body.[691] Nor was the suspicion groundless. Chosen from among the most highly educated of French jurisconsults, belonging to a court upon which high prerogatives had been conferred, holding for life a post of enviable distinction, and regarded as the supreme guardians of law and equity, it was in accordance with the very nature of things that the counsellors of the Parisian parliament should so far participate in the progress of ideas in the sixteenth century as to begin to look with abhorrence upon the bloody task imposed on them by the royal edicts. Into what profession would liberal views gain an earlier admission than that of the appointed expositors of the rules of right?

Some recent occurrences not only seemed to demonstrate the fact that the principles of clemency had penetrated into the halls of parliament, but pointed out the very chamber which was most influenced by them. In the Tournelle, or criminal chamber of parliament—before which those accused of Protestantism most naturally came—under the presidency of Seguier,[692] the majority of the counsellors had recently conducted a trial of four youths, on a charge of "Lutheranism," in so skilful a manner as to avoid asking any question the answer to which might compromise the prisoners. And when the bigots insisted on propounding a crucial inquiry, and elicited a decided expression of Protestant sentiments, some of the judges showed unmistakable sympathy, and the chamber, to save appearances in some slight degree, condemned them to leave the country within a fortnight, instead of instantly confirming the sentence of death which had been pronounced against three of their number by the inferior courts.[693] Other "Christaudins" had been sent to their bishops for trial, although their guilt was patent to all.[694] In fine, the Cardinal of Lorraine laid to the account of parliament the spread of the new doctrines throughout France.[695]

[Sidenote: The Mercuriale.]

In order to discover the truth of the charges, a convocation of the members of all the chambers was ordered for the last Wednesday of April, Such a gathering for inquiry into the sentiments and morals of the judges was called, from the day of the week on which it was held, a Mercuriale.[696] The object of the convocation was announced by the royal procureur-general, Bourdin, to be the establishment of an understanding between the "Grand' chambre" and the "Tournelle"—the former of which relentlessly condemned the "Lutherans" to the flames, while the latter, to the great scandal of justice, had let off several with simple banishment. The wily adversary of the "new doctrines," therefore, called upon the judges to express their opinions respecting the best method of effecting a return to uniformity. The snare was not laid in vain. For in the free declaration of sentiment, in which the members according to custom indulged, several judges were bold enough to call for the assembling of the Oecumenical Council promised by the lately ratified treaty of peace, as the sole method of extirpating error, and to propose meanwhile the suspension of the capital penalties ordained by the royal edicts.[697]

At his admission into parliament each judge had taken an oath to maintain inviolable secrecy in reference to the deliberations of the court. This was rightly supposed to relate in particular to the expressions of opinion before any formal decision. Nevertheless, the king was at once acquainted by the First President, Le Maistre, and by Minard, one of the presidents a mortier, with the entire proceedings of the Mercuriale. He was told that the "Lutheranism" of certain judges was now manifest. They had spoken in abominable terms of the mass, of the ecclesiastical ordinances, and of prevailing abuses. It would be the ruin of the church if such daring were suffered to pass by unrebuked.[698]

The representation of these enormities inflamed Henry's anger. His courtiers took good care not to suffer it to cool. What if, emboldened by impunity, the Protestants, of whose rapid growth in all parts of France such startling reports were brought to him, should attempt to carry out the plan that was talked of among them, and seize the opportunity of the wedding festivities solemnly to present to his Majesty, by the hands of one of the nobles, the confession of faith of their churches? What punishment of the audacious agent employed would remove from the minds of the orthodox foreign princes present at court the sinister impression that heresy had struck deep root in the realm of the Very Christian King?[699]

[Sidenote: Henry goes in person to listen to the deliberations, June 10, 1559.]

If a candid gentleman of the bed-chamber, like Vieilleville, privately urged Henry to reject the advice of prelates in secular matters, and respectfully decline the assumption of the post of theologian or inquisitor-general of the faith, his remonstrances were overborne by the suggestions of Diana and the Guises, who hoped to reap a rich harvest from new confiscations.[700] The king was entreated to go in person to listen to the discussions in parliament. Early on the morning of the tenth of June, his chamber was visited by a host of ecclesiastics—among them four cardinals, two archbishops, two bishops, and several doctors of the Sorbonne, with De Mouchy, the inquisitor, at their head. They urged him to follow out their suggestion, and were so successful in overcoming his reluctance that, as a contemporary wrote, he thought himself consigned to perdition if he failed to go.[701]

[Sidenote: Parliament meets in the Augustinian monastery.]

The magnificent hall of the royal palace on the island of the "Cite," in which parliament was accustomed to meet, was in course of preparation for the festivities that were to accompany the marriages of Elizabeth, Henry's daughter, with Philip the Second of Spain, and of his only sister, Margaret, with the Duke of Savoy. Parliament was consequently sitting in the monastery of the Augustinian friars on the southern bank of the Seine.[702] Thither Henry proceeded in state with a retinue of noblemen, and accompanied by the archers of his body-guard. Taking his seat upon the elevated throne prepared for him, with the constable, the Guises, and the princes that had attended him, on his right and left, Henry made to the judges a short address indicative of his purpose to take advantage of the peace in order to labor for the re-establishment of the faith, and of his desire to obtain the advice of his supreme court.[703] When the king had concluded, Bertrand, Cardinal Archbishop of Sens and Keeper of the Seals, announced the command of his Majesty that the consideration of the religious questions undertaken in the Mercuriale should be resumed.

[Sidenote: Fearlessness of the counsellors.]

[Sidenote: Anne du Bourg.]

The counsellors could be in no doubt respecting the motives of this solemn and unusual audience; yet they entered upon the discussion with the utmost fearlessness.[704] Claude Viole boldly recommended the convocation of an oecumenical council. Du Faur declaimed against the flagrant abuses of the church. While admitting that the trouble of the kingdom arose from diversity in religion, he pointed out the necessity of a careful scrutiny into the true authors of those troubles, lest the accuser of others should himself be met with a retort similar to that of the ancient prophet to King Ahab—"It is thou that troublest Israel."[705] But Anne du Bourg, a nephew of a late Chancellor of France, and a learned and eloquent speaker, committed himself still further to the cause of liberty and truth. He gave thanks to Almighty God for having brought Henry to listen to the decision of so worthy a matter, and entreated the monarch to give it his attention, as the cause of our Lord Jesus Christ, which ought to be upheld by kings. He advocated a suspension of all persecution against those who were stigmatized as heretics, until the assembling of a council; and warned his hearers that it was a thing of no slight importance to condemn to death those who, in the midst of the flames, called on the name of the Saviour of men.[706] Another counsellor advocated the granting to all the "Lutherans" of the kingdom a term of six months, within which they might recant their errors, and at its close might withdraw from France. But there were others who recommended the employment of severe measures; and the first president recalled with approval the example of Philip Augustus, who, in one day, had burned six hundred heretics, and the fate of the Waldenses, suffocated in the houses and caves in which they had taken refuge.[707]

[Sidenote: Henry is displeased, and orders the arrest of two of the counsellors.]

At the conclusion of the deliberation, Henry summoned to him the noblemen who had accompanied him, and, after having consulted them, angrily declared his great displeasure at the discovery that many of his judges had departed from the faith, and his determination to inflict upon them an exemplary punishment. Then turning to Montmorency, he ordered him to arrest two of the counsellors that had spoken in his presence—Louis du Faur and Anne du Bourg. The constable at once obeyed, and gave them over into the custody of Gabriel, Count Montgomery, captain of the Scottish body-guard. Three other judges soon shared their rigorous imprisonment in the Bastile,[708] and as many more escaped only by flight. It was, however, with the boldness of Du Bourg that Henry was chiefly enraged. He swore that he would see him burned with his own eyes.[709]

[Sidenote: The first National Synod, May, 1559.]

But, whilst the enemies of the Reformation were devising new schemes of persecution, and were preparing to strike a blow at the more tolerant sentiments which had stolen into the breasts of the very judges of parliament, its friends took a step that was at once indicative of its progress and dictated by its necessities. A few days before Henry was persuaded to call for a continuation of the discussion commenced at the "Mercuriale"—on the twenty-sixth of May[710]—the first National Synod of the French Protestants convened in the city of Paris. It was a small assemblage in comparison with some others on the list of these national councils extending down for about a century, and its sessions were held with the utmost secrecy in a house in the Faubourg St. Germain. But it performed for French Protestantism the two important services of giving an authoritative statement of its system of doctrine, and of establishing the principles of its form of government. The confession of faith was full and explicit, as well on the points in which the Protestant and the Roman churches agreed, as respecting the distinctive tenets of the reformed. The "diabolical imaginations" of Servetus were equally condemned with the gross abuses of monastic vows, pilgrimages, celibacy, auricular confession, and indulgences. The pure observance of the sacraments was established, as well against their corrupt and superstitious use in the papal church, as against the "fantastic sacramentarians" who rejected them entirely. Nor need we be surprised to find the warrant of magistrates to interfere in behalf of the truth formally recognized. The right of the individual conscience was a right for the most part ignored by thinking men on both sides during the sixteenth century—covered and hidden by the fallacious application of the principle of universal obligation to the inflexible law of right and of God. The lesson of liberty based upon order was learned only in the school of long and severe persecution. Even after thirty-seven or eight years of violent suffering, the Protestant church of France admitted as an article in her creed, that "God has placed the sword in the hand of magistrates to repress the sins committed not only against the second table of God's commandments, but also against the first!"[711]

[Sidenote: Ecclesiastical discipline adopted.]

The "Ecclesiastical Discipline" laid the foundation of the organization of the Protestants in France. Thoroughly democratic and representative in its character, it instituted, or rather recognized, a court—the consistory—in each particular congregation, with its popular element in the superintendents (surveillants) or elders, who sat with the pastors to adjudicate upon the inferior and local concerns of the members. It provided for the more direct participation of the people in the control of affairs by making the offices of elder and deacon elective, and not perpetual. It provided a court of appeal in the provincial colloques or synods, to be held at least twice a year, in which each church was to be represented by its pastor and elder. Above all stood the National Synod, the ultimate ecclesiastical authority. The constitution strove to preclude the establishment of a hierarchy, by declaring all churches and ministers equal, and to secure correctness of teaching, not only by requiring the ministers to sign the confession, but by providing for the deposition of those who had lapsed from the faith.

Thus it was that, in the midst of a monarchy surpassed by none for its arbitrary and tyrannical administration, and not many hundred paces from the squares where for a generation the eyes of the public had been periodically feasted with the sight of human sacrifices offered up in the name of religion, the founders of the Huguenot church framed the plan of an ecclesiastical republic, in which the elements of popular representation and decisive authority in an ultimate tribunal, the embodiment of the judgment of the entire church, were perhaps more completely realized than they had ever before been since the times of the early Christians.[712] The few ministers that had met in an upper room, at the hazard of their lives, to vindicate the profession of faith of their persecuted co-religionists, and to sketch the plan of their churchly edifice, as noiselessly retraced their steps to the congregations committed to their charge. But they had planted the seed of a mighty tree which would stand the blasts of many a tempest—always buffeted by the winds, and bearing the scars of many a conflict with the elements—but proudly pre-eminent, and firm as the rock around which its sturdy roots were wound.

[Sidenote: Marriages and festivities of the court.]

Henry had sworn to behold with his own eyes the punishment of Anne du Bourg. But the grateful sight was not in store for him. From the Mercuriale and the persecution of heretics he turned his attention to the celebration of the marriages which were to cement the indissoluble peace that had at length been concluded between the kingdoms of France and Spain. The most splendid preparations were made for the entertainment of the brilliant train of noblemen who came to represent the dignity of the crown of Spain, and to claim the destined bride of Philip. The "Hotel des Tournelles"—a favorite palace of more than one king of France—was magnificently decorated; for in its great hall the nuptials were appointed to be celebrated. In the broad street of Saint Antoine, in front of this palace, the lists were erected, and the beauty and nobility of France viewed, from the windows on either side, the contest of the most distinguished knights, and applauded their feats of daring and skill. A few paces farther, and just inside the moat, stood a frowning pile, whose sombre and repulsive front might have struck a beholder as being as much out of place as the skeleton at the feast—the ill-omened Bastile.[713] Five prisoners, immured for their conscientious boldness in its gloomy dungeons, and awaiting a terrible fate, distinctly heard, day after day, as the tourney continued, the inspiriting notes of the clarion and hautboy, deepening by contrast the horrors of their situation.[714] There was the same incongruity between the king's pursuit of pleasure and his ferocity. From the festivities, it is said, he turned aside to order Montgomery to proceed, the very moment the tourney was over, to the Pays de Caux—a hot-bed of the "Lutheran" heresy—to destroy with the sword the resisting, to put out the eyes of the suspected, and to torture and burn the guilty.[715] It was believed, moreover, that he himself would then proceed to the southern parts of France, and set on foot a rigorous persecution of the Protestants, with whom those regions swarmed.[716]