BOOK II.

FROM THE OPENING OF THE CONFERENCE OF POISSY TO THE EDICT OF NANTES.

(1561-1598.)

I.

All the recent statutes upon matters of religion were only provisional. They announced the approaching reunion of a council, which was to close the controversies definitively; and this was soon a general cry throughout France.

The idea was not new. From the moment of the Reformation, Germany had demanded the convocation of an Œcumenical and altogether free council. The popes had long refused; they remembered the great gatherings of Constance and Bâle, and feared to find themselves face to face with these States-General of the Church. Overcome at last by the urgent demands of the princes and people, they had chosen an Italian town for the place of meeting; they had filled the council with their creatures; and had suspended or reopened the sessions, now at one point, now at another, according to the calculations of their policy. Protestants could not recognise this vain semblance of an universal council, and they kept away. The enlightened (Roman) Catholics of France were themselves offended, and it was determined to have a national council.

Most of the French cardinals and bishops were opposed to this. “To what purpose is it, to dispute with such obstinate people,” said the old Cardinal de Tournon; “if they wish to show their means of defence, let them go to the council of Trent; they will have safe conduct, and they may justify themselves if they can.” However, the Cardinal de Lorraine, who was better acquainted with the temper of the court, and counted a good deal upon his eloquence to overthrow the Huguenots, as the writers on their side reproach him, was of a different opinion. He proposed to authorize, not a council, but a simple theological conference, and he obtained the consent of the chiefs of the clergy by the help of this compromise.

The whole affair, however, was full of equivocations and misunderstandings, and that is enough to make us understand the character and issue of the conference of Poissy.

The Reformed pastors, remembering what had happened at Zurich, at Geneva, and other places of Switzerland and Germany, wished to treat with the priests as equals, taking the Bible as the supreme arbiter of the controversy, and giving to the chiefs of the state the right to decide finally between the two parties.

The cardinals and bishops meant quite otherwise. [They would admit] no equality. They held themselves to be the only true representatives of the Church, and looked upon the doctors of the Reformation as men who had gone astray, and whom they listened to out of pure condescension. They did not accept the Bible as the sole arbiter of the debate. In fact, they reserved to themselves the right of being judges in their own cause, and of themselves deciding what should be admitted or condemned.

The (Roman) Catholic clergy, in one sense, were in the right, because it does not belong to the civil power to resolve religious questions; but in another sense, they were altogether wrong, for in consenting to discuss these matters before the depositaries of political authority, they appeared to give up that, which in reality they would not concede. The conference of Poissy then could only be a simple theological passage of arms, or rather, as it afterwards turned out, an empty mockery. The priests were sure, whatever happened, to win their cause, since they reserved to themselves the right of bringing it to a close.

The pastors, convoked to the number of twelve, came accompanied by twenty-two lay deputies. The most eminent amongst them was Theodore de Bèze; he came to fill the place of Calvin, for whom the magistrates of Geneva had in vain demanded hostages of high rank.

Theodore de Bèze was born, in 1519, at Vézelay, a little town of Burgundy, of a noble family. He had been confided to the care of the celebrated professor Melchior Wolmar, who made him read the Scriptures, and by his example, as much as by his lessons, planted in his heart the first seeds of piety. Thirty years later, Bèze testified his gratitude to his instructor, and greeted him as his father, when he sent him his confession of faith.

These pious instructions at first appeared to have been stifled beneath the passions of youth. Surrounded in Paris by all that could lead him astray, amiable, rich, and witty, he lived as a man of the world, published a volume of light poetry under the name of _Juvenilia_, and contracted a secret marriage. He kept it secret, because one of his uncles, who was in orders, had made over to him the revenues of some ecclesiastical benefices.

A serious illness awakened his conscience. “As soon as I had strength to raise myself,” he writes to Wolmar, “I broke all my chains, packed up my travelling effects, and left my country, my parents, my friends, to follow Christ. I went into voluntary exile, and retired to Geneva with my wife.” He caused his marriage to be sanctioned by the Church, and condemned all the errors of his youth. This was in the month of November, 1548; he was then twenty-nine years and four months old.

The Jesuits Garasse and Maimbourg, and, which more astonishes us, the Cardinal de Richelieu, have seized upon the poems of a student of twenty, to attack the austere Memoirs of the Reformer. Could they not understand the sacred duties of repentance?

Become poor, since he had given up all to his convictions, Theodore de Bèze, the man who had been the ornament of the saloons of Paris, determined to make himself a printer, joining with him Jean Crispin, the author of the _History of the Martyrs_. But if he had humility enough to accept this position, he had too much merit to remain in it. He was made professor of theology, rector of the Academy, and pastor at Geneva.

Then he contracted intimate relations with Calvin. Both lived in the same faith, and in the same hope; both brought the same zeal to the propagation of the doctrines of the Reformation in France. Calvin was gifted with a broader and more masculine genius, a severer logic, a more penetrating vision, a science more profound, and a stronger will. He was the genius and the master of Theodore de Bèze. But Bèze had an easier and more flowing eloquence, and more amiable manners, which were better suited to the relations of social life. The one was more fitted to stir up and govern men, the other to negotiate with them. It has been said that Bèze was the Melancthon of the new Luther. There is truth in the comparison. But the Reformer of Germany seems to have needed Melancthon more than the Reformer of Geneva required Theodore de Bèze. Melancthon was the counsellor, the support of Luther, and finished his work; Bèze was but the most illustrious of the disciples of Calvin.

It is pleasant to see with what modesty he placed himself beneath Calvin, listening with deference, and seeking no other glory, if indeed he sought any, than that of reproducing the image of his master. “He attached himself so strongly to Calvin,” says his biographer, Antoine de la Faye, “that he scarcely ever left him. The conversation of this great man was of such advantage to him, that he made incredible progress, both in the doctrine and in the knowledge of ecclesiastical discipline.”[39]

He composed many works, of which the greater part have a polemical character. His most considerable works are Commentaries upon the New Testament, collections of sermons, the translation into French verse of a part of the Psalms, and the History of the Reformed Churches of France up to the year 1562.

Bèze went to preach at Nérac and Béarn in 1560, on the invitation of the king of Navarre. He had scarcely returned to Geneva, before he was summoned to the conference of Poissy, being esteemed, next to Calvin, as the most capable of upholding the cause of the Reformation in that assembly. “He was,” says his biographer, “of ordinary height, he had a handsome face, an agreeable bearing.... God had given him an understanding above the vulgar, an exquisite judgment, a marvellous memory, a rare eloquence, and an affability so engaging that he won the hearts of all who saw him.”

From the moment of his arrival at Poissy, he preached publicly at the court, before an attentive and select assembly. This was on the 24th of August, 1561. Eleven years later, to the very day, Charles IX. and Catherine de Medicis caused the tocsin of the [massacre of] Saint Bartholomew to knell. The inconstancy of human things! O profound mysteries of the future!

The same evening, meeting the Cardinal de Lorraine in the apartments of the king of Navarre, they held a conversation upon the articles of doctrine, and especially upon the Communion. The cardinal appeared to hold little to the dogma of transubstantiation, provided that the real presence could be in someway maintained, and after having listened to Bèze to the end, said to him: “I am glad to have seen and heard you, and I beseech you, in God’s name, to confer with me, that I may hear your reasons, and you mine, and you will find that I am not so black as I am represented.”

Thereupon Madame de Crussol, who was _free-spoken_, cried: “You are a good man to-day, but what will you be to-morrow? Bring ink and paper, and make the cardinal sign what he has said and confessed; for he will soon say the reverse.” She had guessed right. The rumour went, the day after, that at the very first blow the cardinal had closed the mouth of the professor of Geneva. The constable expressed his joy to the queen at dinner. “I was there,” coldly replied Catherine de Medicis, “and I can assure you that you are not rightly informed.”

The pastors presented requests, in which they demanded that the bishops should not be their judges, since they were hostile parties; that the conference should be presided over by the king and the great persons of the state; that all the differences should be decided solely by the Word of God, and that secretaries, equal in number on either side, should draw up minutes of the proceedings, which should not be held to be authentic until they were approved and signed. This was putting the finger upon the knot of the question; but the bishops would have broken up twenty conferences rather than consent to such arrangements. The queen-mother knew this well; she gave an indefinite answer, or she invited the pastors to content themselves with her simple word, that the prelates should not be the judges of the discussion; but she refused to promise anything in writing.

On the eve of the conference, twelve doctors of the Sorbonne arrived at Saint Germain, with a sorrowful air, and entreated Catherine not to let the heretics speak, or at least only to grant them this favour with closed doors. “The (conference) will bring no edification,” they said; “and the king is so young, that he may be infected by this doctrine.” “I have engaged myself for good reasons,” answered the queen, “and cannot go back; but be quiet, all will go well!”

II.

The conference of Poissy opened on the 9th of September, 1561. This was the great spectacle of the moment for Christianity. The pope trembled lest he should lose the finest of his provinces, and had sent in haste the cardinal of Ferrara with the general of the Jesuits, to hinder its taking place. The king of Spain, partly from policy, partly from fanaticism, feared the reconciliation of the two religions in France. The (Roman) Catholic and the Protestant states awaited with equal impatience the issue of the debate.

On the appointed day, they met in the refectory of the nuns of Poissy. The king Charles IX., a child of eleven years, seated himself on his throne, having on his right and left the princes and princesses of his family, the chevaliers of the order, and the officers and ladies of the court. On the two lateral sides of the oblong apartment, were the cardinals de Tournon, de Lorraine, de Châtillon, de Bourbon, de Guise, and d’Armagnac; below them a crowd of bishops and doctors. The deputies of the Reformed Churches had not yet been introduced. This [was the] first mark of inequality.

The young king rose, and recited a discourse, in which he exhorted those present to divest themselves of all passion, and to discuss only for the honour of God, the discharge of their own conscience, and the re-establishment of the peace of the kingdom. The Chancellor Michel de l’Hospital, was the next to speak. “You are assembled,” he said, “to proceed to the reformation of manners and doctrine. It is not expedient to wait for a general council, because several princes decline to send representatives, others will have none of it, and it will be composed chiefly of strangers, who are ignorant of our affairs. As to what is said, that we ought not to hold two councils at the same time, this is not the first time that such has been the case. The best way to arrive at an understanding, is to proceed with humility, laying aside subtle and curious disputes. There is no occasion for many books, but to thoroughly understand the Word of God, and to conform to that as closely as possible. Do not esteem them enemies, who are said to be of the new religion, who are Christians, and baptized like yourselves, and do not condemn them through prejudice. Receive them as a father receives his children.”

The prelates were out of temper at this discourse. The idea of a reformation in _doctrine_, and the advice to take the Word of God for their standard, seemed to be to yield to the demands of the Reformed. The Cardinal de Tournon called for a copy of the chancellor’s speech, in order to deliberate with his colleagues, because it contained, he said, several matters of great consequence, which had not been mentioned in the letters of convocation. The conference was threatened to be broken up before the proceedings had been commenced, but L’Hospital refused, and they went on.

At last Theodore de Bèze was introduced by the Duke de Guise, with ten other pastors (Pierre Martyr had not yet arrived), and twenty-two lay deputies. Their sober and simple costume formed a strange contrast to the insignia of the prelates and of the people of the court. Nevertheless, they presented themselves with confidence; for they knew that they had God above them, and behind them a great part of the nation.

They offered to pass the balustrade, and to seat themselves by the side of the (Roman) Catholic doctors. They were stopped—a fresh mark of inequality. It pleased the priests that the disciples of the Reformation should be detained at the bar, like persons accused. With uncovered heads they bowed respectfully, and Theodore de Bèze, kneeling with the pastors, made a solemn confession of the sins of the people, and implored the benediction of Heaven upon the assembly. He was listened do with emotion and astonishment.

Having thanked the king for the favour which he had accorded to the Reformed, of being enabled to justify themselves before him, Bèze addressed himself to the prelates, and supplicated them, in the name of the great God, who would be Judge of all, to unite with him, not in giving way to sterile discussions, but to discover truth. He would not attack what he knew to be eternal,—the true Church of the Lord. He promised to correct himself, and his brethren, if any error should be found in them. “And would to God,” cried he, “that without going further, instead of opposing arguments, we might all sing a canticle with one voice, and hold out our hands to one another.”

Then Bèze unfolded the leading doctrines of the Reformation; and upon points of discipline, declared, among other things, that the Reformed professed to obey their kings and superiors, with this only reservation, that their first obedience was due to God, the King of kings, and Lord of lords. Having finished his discourse, he again knelt down with his brethren, and presented to Charles IX. the confession of faith of the French churches.

A deep silence had reigned throughout the assembly up to the passage when he said, in speaking of the sacrament of the communion, “If any one asks us if we hold Jesus Christ to be absent from the Holy Supper, we answer, no. But if we look to the distance between places, as we must do, when the question of His corporal presence and his manhood is distinctly considered, we say that His body is as far removed from the bread and the wine, as the high heaven is distant from the earth....”

At these words, deep murmurs broke out in the ranks of the bishops. Some exclaimed: “_He has blasphemed!_” Others rose, and would have left. The Cardinal de Tournon however, interrupted the speaker, and prayed the king to impose silence upon him, or to permit them to retire. But the king, the queen, the princes, remained quietly in their places, and Bèze was enabled to explain his thoughts, which amounted to this: that on the one hand, the body of Jesus Christ is in heaven, and not elsewhere; that on the other hand, the faithful are made the recipients of His body and of His blood by faith, after a spiritual manner.

He had hardly done speaking, when the Cardinal de Tournon, trembling and stammering with rage, said to the king: “We thought rightly that these new evangelists might utter things unfit for the ear of a most Christian king. But we beseech you to give no heed, and to withhold your judgment until an answer has been made. We hope that you will be brought back....” (but immediately correcting himself), “not brought back, but preserved in the true path.”

It is well to consult the discussion, which arose, more than a century later, upon this singular incident, between Bossuet, Basnage, and Bayle. That the Cardinal de Tournon, the dean of the French cardinals, an old man of seventy-two, should be carried away, may be excused from his great age. But how explain the clamours of the other chiefs of the clergy? Bèze had only reproduced, in measured terms, the doctrine of the Reformed upon the Eucharist. The prelates must have known it; they must also have foreseen that Bèze would maintain it. What, then, was the meaning of this sudden anger? Either it was feigned, or it was insane. Did they only seek a pretext to break up the conference? Admitting, even, that the bishops saw in their adversaries only accused men, still an accused man has, at least, the right to set forth his convictions, and to interrupt him by the cry of blasphemy, was the most flagrant of contradictions.

After the sitting, the prelates held council with their theologians, to determine what they should do. “Would to God,” the Cardinal de Lorraine said to them, “he had been dumb, or we deaf!” Their embarrassment was extreme; but it was necessary to answer, not again by supplications, but by reasons. They agreed to confine themselves to the justification of the two points of the Church and of the Supper; and Claude d’Espence, the most learned of their doctors, was instructed to prepare the materials of the discourse, which the Cardinal de Lorraine was to deliver.

In the meanwhile, the bishops resolved to draw up a confession of faith, which all should sign, and which they should afterwards present for the signature of the pastors. If they should refuse, an anathema was to be instantly fulminated against them, and the discussion to be closed. It was thus that the Roman clergy pretended to confer with their adversaries! It is but right to say that some (Roman) Catholic theologians had the candour to oppose the resolutions of the majority.

The deputies of the churches, informed of this, complained to the king, saying that it was contrary to every law, human and divine, if even the bishops were to be their judges, to condemn them unheard. “We declare,” added they, “that if, in consequence of having heard us, disturbances cannot be allayed, or that greater should, to our regret, arise, we are guiltless of them, because we have sought and followed every means of concord.” The chancellor promised them justice, and compelled the bishops to desist.

On the 16th of September, in the same refectory of Poissy, and before the same assembly, the Cardinal de Lorraine delivered his discourse upon the two articles agreed upon. He declared that the Church could not err, and that if a part should fall into error, they ought to have recourse to the throne of Rome, admitted from ancient times to be the first of Christendom. As to the Holy Supper, he insisted upon the real presence, and deplored that what had been given us as a means of union, should have become a subject of discord. Finally, he addressed a pathetic appeal to the king, beseeching him to remain in the religion his ancestors had handed down to him from the time of Clovis.

Theodore de Bèze asked leave to reply upon the spot; but the prelates had already risen in confusion, and the Cardinal de Tournon said to the king: “If those, who have separated, are willing to subscribe to what has been said by Monsieur de Lorraine, they shall be heard at greater length upon the other points. If not, let all hearing be denied them; let your majesty send them back, and purge your kingdom of them! This is what the assembly of prelates humbly asks of you, in order that in this most Christian kingdom there may be but one faith, one law, and one king.”

The doctors of the Reformation then understood what a wretched mockery was meant by the prelates in this conference of Poissy. No free debate, not even the show of deliberation, not even the patience of a tribunal, which hears the accused to the end, [was to be permitted to them]. An unconditional, absolute adhesion upon the two points of the Church and the Supper, which logically included all the other points, [must be given]; if not, anathema and exile [were to be their lot].

They again made bitter, but useless complaints. To say the truth, from this moment there was no longer a conference; and the cardinal of Ferrara, who arrived at this juncture, confirmed the clergy in their resolutions, by saying that the pope had learned with extreme displeasure of the holding of this kind of national council. Nothing further took place than some private discussions, in the presence of persons carefully selected; and the lay deputies could not even obtain permission to attend.

On the 24th of September, in the little priory-chamber of Poissy, Theodore de Bèze discussed the two contested articles with the Cardinal de Lorraine, the doctor Claude d’Espence, and a certain Claude de Saintes, a _little white monk_, half-theologian, half-clown, who treated his adversary as an Anabaptist for having said he had received the Holy Ghost.

The Cardinal de Lorraine had prepared a surprise, from which he expected great results—to make the Lutheran doctors dispute against the Calvinists. From the commencement of the conference, he had written to the governor of Metz to send him some theologians of the Confession of Augsburg, learned, and above all, very obstinate, in their opinions. The theologians came; but one of them having died of the plague on arriving at Paris, they were afraid to summon the others immediately to the court.

But the cardinal was unwilling to lose all the fruit of his ingenious contrivance; so drawing from his breast a paper, which he had received from the Counts Palatine, he called upon the ministers to declare, yes or no, if they would sign the three or four principal articles. They asked time to reflect.

On the 26th of September they went before the queen, who had near her the chiefs of the clergy, and said they desired to know if the Cardinal de Lorraine and the other prelates, renouncing the dogma of transubstantiation, would themselves attach their signature to the extract of the Confession of Augsburg. “If it is wished that we should sign something,” continued Theodore de Bèze, “it is reasonable that the Cardinal de Lorraine should also sign what he presents to us in the name of his party.”

The cardinal was excessively nettled at this proposition. “We are not equal, and far from being so,” he said. “For my part, I am not called upon to sign on the word of any master; I subscribe neither to those, who made this confession, nor to you.” “Since you will not,” answered Bèze, “sign yourselves, it is not just to call upon us to do so.” Bossuet pretends that Theodore de Bèze only escaped by a subtlety. It may be so; but his antagonist had set him the example.

Jacques Lainez, the general of the Jesuits, who had just arrived with the legate, assisted at this conference. He delivered so ridiculous and insolent a discourse in Italian, that it astonished even the most impetuous (Roman) Catholics. After comparing the heretics to foxes and wolves, he said they ought not to discuss with them, but to send them before the Council of Trent, and that it did not belong to laymen or to women to judge of these matters. This last arrow hit Catherine de Medicis, who showed how deeply it offended her.

Passing to the question of the Supper, the general of the Jesuits wished to explain it by saying that Jesus Christ is present in the Sacrament, as a king who played his own part in the feasts celebrated to his honour. He dwelt at length upon this comparison, heaving deep sighs, and at the end of his discourse he wept. Bèze scornfully replied that “he had made a farce of the Supper, in which Jesus Christ was the harlequin, a remark foolish and unworthy to be spoken, or heard.” Then quitting the Jesuit, he entered upon a more serious debate with Claude d’Espence.

Such was the first appearance of the Jesuits in France: but it scarcely indicated the important part they were to play in after-times. It was the prelates, assembled at Poissy, who authorized them to establish themselves in France; so that, according to the judicious remark of an historian, the assembly from which an equitable arrangement was expected between the religions, only served to introduce those into the kingdom, who stopped at nothing to prevent it.

The conference was reduced to still narrower limits. The queen-mother charged certain theologians on either side to draw up a common formulary upon the doctrine of the Supper. The five (Roman) Catholic delegates, who had been chosen from amongst the more moderate, succeeded in agreeing with the Reformed by the assistance of those vague expressions, which every one can interpret as he pleases. The news having spread at court, many rejoiced, and Catherine de Medicis sent for Theodore de Bèze to express to him her satisfaction. The Cardinal de Lorraine, after reading the formula, seemed contented. But the assembly of the clergy and the doctors of the Sorbonne protested that this document was insufficient, captious, erroneous, and heretical; and, to put it aside, they presented to the queen a confession drawn up in the most strictly (Roman) Catholic sense, demanding that the ministers, if they refused to sign it, should be pronounced obstinate, separated from the Church, and driven out of the most Christian kingdom.

After this there was nothing more to be discussed, and the conference terminated on the 9th of October. One thing alone was made clear:—that the hope of bringing the two communions together by mutual concessions was illusory, and that nothing remained but either to let one exterminate the other, or to allow them to live side by side. This last idea, so little understood at that time, began to dawn upon a few superior intellects, and especially in that of the Chancellor l’Hospital, as we shall presently see.

III.

Notwithstanding the unhappy issue of the conference of Poissy, the courage of the Reformed party rose greatly, because they had had the advantage of setting forth their faith before the chiefs of the kingdom and the princes of the Roman (Catholic) Church. It was no longer possible to accuse them of infamous crimes, or to give them up without form of law to the sword of the executioner. The timid and the undecided flew to the standard of the Reformation, and a movement, like those we have already described on other occasions, was once more seen.

Some important towns, Milhau, Sainte Foy, Lacaune, and hundreds of villages cut themselves off at one stroke from (Roman) Catholicism. One pastor named Beaulieu announced to Farel that three hundred parishes of L’Agenois had _put down the mass_. “I have heard persons worthy of belief say,” he wrote, “that if there could be found on this very day four thousand, or even six thousand ministers of the Lord, they would all be employed.” Admitting that there is some exaggeration in this, the progress would still have been considerable.

The aged Farel returned for some time to his native country, and passing by Grenoble, exhorted the faithful to hold their meetings in the open air. Another preacher of great reputation at Geneva, Pierre Viret, came to Nismes in the month of October, 1561, and the day after his arrival, eight thousand auditors crowded round the foot of his pulpit.

He was suffering from the effects of two attempts at assassination. A female domestic, gained by some monks, had tried to poison him at Geneva; and a priest of the Pays de Vaud, having attacked him on the highway, had so beaten him that he had been left for dead upon the spot. “To look at me,” he wrote at a later period, referring to his first sermon at Nismes, “I appeared like a dry anatomy covered with skin, who had taken my bones there to be buried; so much so, that even those who were not of our religion, but strongly opposed to it, pitied me and said: ‘What is this poor man come to do in our country? Has he come here to die?’ And I have even heard that, when I ascended the pulpit for the first time, many seeing me feared that I should faint before I could finish my sermon.”

He however rendered important services to the Reformation at Nismes, Lyons, Montpellier, and Orthez. He preached, according to the testimony of his contemporaries, with a sweetness and a charm which were peculiarly his own. It was not the vehemence of Farel, nor the depth of Calvin, but something unctuous and penetrating, which never wearied his hearers. Pierre Viret presided in 1563 at the national synod of Lyons. He has left some controversial writings in a lively and ingenious style, copies of which appear to have been well thumbed by the hands of the people.

In this great religious movement, new Catholic churches were invaded; for in several places there no longer remained either priests to celebrate the old worship, or believers to attend. And as crucifixes, images of saints, relics, and other objects, which the Reformation regarded as monuments of idolatry, were found in these churches, they were broken or cast into the fire. These devastations are to be deplored; Pierre Viret and all wise men opposed them. But how could it be otherwise? The Reformers but imitated the early Christians without knowing it, and from the mere force of circumstances. “On every side,” says M. de Châteaubriand in his narrative of the fourth century, “temples were demolished, a loss ever to be lamented for the arts; but the material monument fell, _as it always will_, beneath the intellectual force of an idea, which has made its way into the conviction of the human race.”[40]

Meetings of eight thousand, fifteen thousand, some historians say forty thousand, were held at Paris. To avoid tumults, they were held outside the town. The people went out and came back by several gates. One of the usual preachers was Theodore de Bèze, whom the queen-mother had invited to stay in France, since his presence might be required. He blessed a court marriage between M. de Rohan and Mademoiselle de Barbançon, in the presence of the queen of Navarre and of the prince of Condé, which inspired greater confidence in the faithful of Paris. The Reformation was decidedly taking a hold in public and official acts.

The meetings were divided into two great sections. The one celebrated its worship outside the gate of Saint Antoine, at Popincourt; the other in the faubourg Saint Marceau, in a place called _Le Patriarche_. Several ministers preached at the same time before multitudes of hearers. The women placed themselves in the centre, then came the men on foot, next some men on horseback, and lastly, soldiers or bowmen, who protected the unarmed crowd.

It is difficult, on account of the contradictory testimony of contemporaries, to calculate exactly the respective forces of the two communions. Theodore de Bèze says, that if the Reformed had determined either at Paris or in the provinces to employ all their means of action, they could have maintained the contest with a prospect of success. The Cardinal de Sainte Croix, a sort of titled spy entertained by Rome in France from 1561 to 1565, reports in his letters that even the members of the council were uncertain as to the numerical force of the parties, and concluded his last letter by saying that the kingdom was half Huguenot.

Admiral Coligny, on the invitation of the queen-mother, presented her with a list of more than two thousand five hundred churches, which demanded liberty of religion, and placed the persons and the wealth of the Reformed at the disposal of the king. He referred to flocks united in congregations, and administered to by regular pastors. To arrive at an exact estimate, it would be necessary to add the great mass of new believers, who had not yet been able to organize themselves according to the rules of discipline.

A letter which, it is said, was written by the Chancellor l’Hospital, some days before the conference of Poissy, and sent to the pope Pius IV. from the king, contained the following curious indications: “The fourth part of this kingdom is separated from the communion of the Church; and this fourth part is composed of gentlemen, of the principal citizens, and of those of the lower classes, who have seen the world, and are accustomed to bear arms, so that the separated lack not for strength. Neither are they deficient in counsel, for they have with them more than three-fourths of the men of letters. They have no want of money to carry on their affairs, having on their side a great proportion of the large and good houses, both of the nobility and of the Third Estate.”

In raising the number of the Reformed, in this document, to a fourth of the population, it is probable that the discontented and undecided were included, in order to render the pontiff more tractable as to projects of accommodation. But those historians, who pretend that the Calvinists formed at this time but a tenth of the population, must fall into a far more serious error, if we reflect that this minority sustained long and bloody wars against the (Roman) Catholics in every part of the kingdom, and always compelled them to consent to peace. The tenth part of the kingdom could not have held out so long against the other nine.

At Paris, the markets, the brotherhoods, the workmen, all the smaller classes, in a word, preserved their attachment to the old worship. The better order of citizens were divided; but the majority continued to profess (Roman) Catholicism. The greater number of the gentry, on the contrary, had adopted the Reformed faith, or were inclined to favour it. After the Guises and the court, it was Paris that saved the Romish church in France.

The position of the Reformed had become false and insupportable in every way, under the control of the Edict of July. This edict, which tolerated domestic gatherings and forbade public meetings, could not be carried into effect. The new believers, wherever they were numerous, necessarily overturned the barrier of the law; and on the other hand the (Roman) Catholic populace, excited by the priests, or carried away by their own fanaticism, were committing the greatest atrocities. They bathed in blood at Tours, Sens, and Cahors. Even at Paris, a conflict—known as the mutiny of Saint Médard—broke out. Order, rule, and authority were at an end.

Measures of restraint became necessary. The cardinals and bishops, true to their spirit of persecution, counselled the expulsion of all the preachers from the kingdom, and the extermination of those who should resist; but Catherine de Medicis and L’Hospital answered that such a course would instantly lead to civil war. Only one thing appeared feasible to the chancellor—namely, to give a legal sanction to the public meetings of the Calvinists, under certain conditions.

Hence the Edict of January, 1562, was deliberated and adopted in a solemn assembly of the Notables. L’Hospital then, for the first time, developed the idea of the co-existence of the two communions. He declared that if the king should side entirely with one party, he must at once raise an army to crush the other, and that it would be difficult to make the soldiers fight against their fathers, brothers, sons, or dearest friends. “The question is not,” he said, “about settling religion, but the common weal; for many may be citizens, who are not Christians. Even an excommunicated person does not cease to be a citizen, and we may live at peace with those who are of different opinions, as we see in the same family, where those who are (Roman) Catholics do not the less live in peace with, and love those, who are of the new religion.”

These were the principal provisions of the Edict of January. Those of the Reformed, who had seized churches and ecclesiastical property, were ordered to restore them without delay. It was forbidden to destroy the images, to break the crosses, or to commit any other act, which might give occasion for scandal. It was also forbidden to meet in the interior of towns by night or by day, but authority was given to assemble outside the gates, and to preach, pray, and perform other religious exercises. No one was allowed to go armed to the assemblies, gentlemen excepted, whilst officers of the government were to be admitted whenever they chose to be present.

One clause, which marks the spirit of the epoch, was to the effect, that the ministers were ordered to swear before the civil magistrates, that they would preach in conformity to the Word of God and the Nicene Creed, “_in order_” said the edict, “_not to fill our subjects with new heresies_.” The pastors did not complain of this; for they saw a barrier in this obligation against the invasion of doctrines opposed to their own confession of faith.

The Edict of January answered better to the wants of Paris and of the northern or central provinces, than to those of the south. How could whole cities go and worship outside their walls? and to what purpose was it to restore churches, which, for want of (Roman) Catholics, must remain closed? However, Theodore de Bèze and his colleagues, while confessing that more might have been expected, invited the faithful, in the name of God, to observe the edict, and their advice was generally listened to. The religious edifices were given up; the tithes were paid to the priests; and the Reformed now busied themselves only in peacefully organizing their flocks under the protection of the laws.

Not so was it, however, in the opposite camp. The Guises had refused to assist at the assembly of the Notables; and Anne de Montmorency only went to protest against the new decree. The Parliaments of Bordeaux, of Toulouse, Rouen, and Grenoble, registered the edict without difficulty. The Parliament of Dijon, on the contrary, under the influence of the Duke d’Aumale, brother of the Cardinal de Lorraine, met it with a formidable refusal. The Parliament of Paris gave way only after several letters of command had been issued, and added this clause: “In consideration of the urgent necessity, without approving the new religion, and until it be otherwise ordered!” This was in effect, while accepting a law of toleration, to announce the return of persecution.

Notwithstanding this resistance, matters had become more endurable, and the public peace might have been gradually restored, but that the defection of Anthony de Bourbon, lieutenant-general of the kingdom, opened the gate to civil war and the most frightful disasters.

IV.

The intrigue was not intended to bring over the Prince de Condé, and still less Coligny: it was well known that their hearts were too noble, and their will too strong for this to take effect. But the king of Navarre offered an easier prey to seduction, and the legate of the pope, the cardinals, the Lorraines, the ambassador of Spain, concerted together for this purpose. The details which follow, are attested even by the defenders of the Church of Rome: it is necessary to remember this, in order that they may be believed.

In the first place, they played upon the jealousy of the king of Navarre, by telling him that, in spite of his title of lieutenant-general, he was only the second, or even the third, person of the Calvinist party. Abandoned women were placed in his way, because his passions were known to incline him towards ignoble pleasures. Above all, they flattered his dream of the restitution of the kingdom of Navarre, or of an equivalent. Philip II., without binding himself in writing, as we may readily believe, offered him, by his ambassador, sometimes a kingdom in Africa, at one time that of Tunis, and at another the island of Sardinia, of which he was to have the sovereignty on condition of paying a moderate tribute. The memoirs of the time record the fantastic and marvellous descriptions made to him of this country: it was represented to him as one of those fortunate isles that exist only in fables. The pope, taking part in this comedy, promised his good offices to secure such a magnificent kingdom for Anthony de Bourbon.

The historian Davila, favourable as he is to the (Roman) Catholic party, cannot help sneering at the credulity of the king of Navarre: “The ambassador Mauriquez,” he says, “renewed his negotiations by his usual arts; the clauses and conditions were discussed as seriously as if a treaty were to be signed.”[41] The Cardinal de Sainte Croix, with the same frankness, lays open the secrets of this bargain. Anthony de Bourbon consented to separate himself from _the others_ (the Calvinists); but he wished first of all to re-enter into possession of his property, or to obtain a fair equivalent. Thus we may perceive his conscience truckled for a kingdom in the clouds.

The Guises laid another trap. They insinuated to the king of Navarre that he might marry their niece, Mary Stuart, when the pope had annulled his marriage with Jeanne d’Albret, on account of heresy; and thus they held the crown of Scotland before his eyes!

Anthony de Bourbon, dazzled, seduced, won, profited by a conference between the theologians of the two communions, to declare that the Calvinist ministers, after all their boasting, had not been able to withstand the (Roman) Catholic doctors; and full of violence, like a man who has just sold himself, he treated them as charlatans and impostors, with whom he would have nothing more to do. On learning this, the Cardinal de Lorraine cried out, with an air of triumph, “See what truth has gained by those conferences, for which I have been so much reproached!”

Theodore de Bèze, who had been called to France by the king of Navarre, went to him several times to beseech him not to abandon the cause of (the Reformed) religion. He was coldly received: and in a letter to Calvin, dated the 26th of February, 1562, he said, “Never was there witnessed such an example of treachery and wickedness. In an audience which he gave me, he was not ashamed to treat me as if I were ignorant of things, of which even children were cognizant.”

Calvin wrote pressing letters to the king, but in vain. Jeanne d’Albret herself employed both tears and prayers without success. “She excited pity in all who beheld her,” says Bèze, “except in her husband, the king, so besotted was he!” Anthony de Bourbon was, in fact, so enraged against her, as positively to maltreat her; and Jeanne d’Albret, losing all hope, retired to Béarn.

She was born at Paris, in 1528, and was the only daughter of Margaret of Valois: she had all the brilliant qualities of her mother, combined with a firmer piety, and a more decided character. Her education was solid and well directed. She understood Greek, Latin, and Spanish, and wrote verses with facility in a poetical contest with Joachim du Bellay.

In 1548 she married Anthony de Bourbon, and in 1555, on the death of her father, she took the name of queen of Navarre. Jeanne d’Albret was slower than her husband in embracing the Reformed faith; she only decided in 1560; but she was unalterably constant to it; and when Catherine de Medicis advised her to fall in with the altered humour of the king of Navarre, she made this answer, which marks the fervour of the newly-converted: “Madame, rather than ever go to mass, if I had my kingdom and my son in my hand, I would cast them both into the depths of the sea.”

At the moment of her departure for Béarn, she clasped her son Henry in her arms, bathed him with her tears, and beseeched him to preserve the faith, in which he had been educated. One day Henry IV. had to forget both the prayers and the farewell of his mother.

When she was once more in her kingdom, Jeanne d’Albret, taking up the work of Margaret of Valois, opened schools, colleges, and hospitals, and published a new code—a precious monument of good sense and wisdom—which bears the name of _Stil de la reine Jehanne_. Soon there was not a beggar in Béarn. The children of the poor, who showed any aptitude for sciences and literature, were educated at the expense of the treasury. Drunkenness, usury, and games of hazard were severely repressed. All the arts flourished with the new faith; and even now, at the end of three centuries, the people of Béarn pronounce the name of the _good queen_, who so greatly raised the prosperity of their country, with an affectionate veneration.

Jeanne d’Albret had many struggles to sustain, and many perils to encounter. The Cardinal d’Armagnac reproached her, in the name of the pope, with having introduced into her dominions a heresy which had committed so many excesses. “You make me blush for you,” she answered him: “Take out the beam from your own eye, to see the mote in your neighbour’s; cleanse the earth from that just blood which you and yours have shed.”

In 1563, Pius IV. cited the queen of Navarre to appear before the tribunal of the Inquisition within six months, under pain of forfeiting her crown and her possessions. Jeanne d’Albert complained of this (insult) to all the sovereigns of Europe; and Charles IX., on the advice of the Chancellor l’Hospital, told the pontiff that he was singularly offended at this attempt to withdraw a subject and vassal of the crown of France from her natural judges. Once again the pope gave way. The times of Gregory VII. no longer existed!

Escaped from this peril, Jeanne d’Albret encountered another. The historian De Thou relates that the project was conceived at the court of Madrid, of carrying her off with her children, in order to hand her over to the Spanish Inquisition. The wife of Philip II., Elizabeth, a daughter of France, informed her of this intention, and the plot failed.

If Jeanne d’Albret had been placed on a larger theatre, she might have been the greatest woman of her age. “She was,” says the Abbé de Laboureur, in his notes on the Mémoires de Castelnau, “the wisest, most generous, most learned princess of her time; she had in her heart the source of every virtue, and of every great quality.” Agrippa d’Aubigné says also: “Of woman she had nothing but the sex, her whole soul belonged to manly things, her powerful spirit to vast affairs, and her unconquerable heart to great adversities.”

Whatever excellence Henry IV. possessed of a chivalrous character, or of love for his people, he inherited from his noble mother, and France must ever associate the name of Jeanne d’Albret with that of the most popular of her kings.

V.

The defection of the king of Navarre, lending weight to the triumvirate, bore the fruit which the (Roman) Catholic party expected. Coligny and his brothers, seeing that they were treated with mistrust, withdrew from court. The prince of Condé, who had hitherto been kept at a distance, went and fixed himself at Paris; and the Guises thus had full liberty to commit acts, which in more settled times would have been esteemed as high treason against the chief of the state. They concluded an alliance with the king of Spain and the duke of Savoy, and undertook to open to them the gates of the kingdom for the extermination of heretics. At the same time, they tore up the Edict of January at the sword’s point, by the massacre of Vassy.

Vassy was a small, but strong town in the county of Champagne. It contained about three thousand inhabitants, the third of whom, without counting the surrounding villages, professed the Reformed faith. This change of religion irritated the Lorraines, who were established near the town, in their dominion of Joinville, and in particular a very aged lady, the dowager-duchess of Guise, who could not understand why the Huguenots had not already been put an end to. She pretended that the inhabitants of Vassy had no right, as vassals of her grand-daughter Mary Stuart, to choose a new religion without her permission. She therefore threatened them with a terrible vengeance, and as they gave no heed to her violence, she invited her son, the duke Francis of Guise, to make a striking example of such insolent rebels.

On the 28th of February, 1562, the duke, having received from the king of Navarre an invitation to return to Paris to suppress the Huguenots, left the Château of Joinville with an escort of several gentlemen, and two hundred horsemen. Arriving the next morning at Brousseval, a village a quarter of a league distant from Vassy, he heard the sound of the bells. “What is that?” he asked of one of his attendants. “That is for the service of the Huguenots.” “By the mort-Dieu!” exclaimed the duke, “we will Huguenot them presently after a different fashion.”

On Sunday, the 1st of March, on entering Vassy, he was joined by sixty horsemen and bowmen. He dismounted in front of the hall, and sent for the prior and the provost—both bitter enemies of the new doctrine. During this time the Reformed had assembled, to the number of about twelve hundred, in a barn, and were celebrating their worship under the protection of the Edict of January. Not one of them was armed, with the exception of two strangers, probably gentlemen, who had their swords.

The soldiers of the duke, placed at the head of the escort, approaching the barn, commenced crying out: “_Huguenots, heretics, dogs, rebels against the king and God!_” The faithful hastened to close the doors, but the assailants leaped from their horses, crying: “_Kill, kill, mort-Dieu! kill these Huguenots!_” The first they met with was a poor hawker of wine. “In whom do you believe?” they demanded. “I believe in Jesus Christ,” answered the man; and he was instantly speared upon the spot. Two others were killed near the door, and those who showed themselves at the openings of the barn were fired at from the outside. The Calvinists had collected stones to defend themselves.

On hearing the tumult, Guise hastened to the spot, and threw himself into the conflict. He received a blow in the face from a stone; his blood flowed. His men became exasperated, and he was beside himself. No pity was shown for age or sex: a horrible butchery ensued. Some fell on their knees, their hands clasped, calling for mercy in the name of Jesus Christ. The answer was: “You call upon your Christ, where is He now?” Others lifted up the roof, and sought to escape over the walls of the town. “They were shot down,” says an old historian, “like pigeons on a roof.”

The pastor, Leonard Morel, was on his knees in his pulpit, calling upon the God of Mercies. He was fired at when he sought to fly; but when near the door he tripped over a corpse, and instantly received several sword-cuts on his right shoulder, and on his head. Thinking himself fatally wounded, he cried out: “Lord, into Thy hands I yield my spirit, for Thou hast redeemed me.”

Two gentlemen, who were near, exclaimed, “This is the minister; let us take him before M. de Guise.” They dragged him, for he was not able to walk, and the duke thus addressed him: “Minister, come here; are you the minister here? What makes you so bold as to seduce these people?” “I am no seducer,” answered Morel, “I have preached the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” “Mort-Dieu,” replied the duke, “does the Gospel preach sedition? Thou art the cause of the death of all people; thou shalt be hanged. Provost, up with a gibbet to hang him!” Happily, out of these hundreds of cut-throats, no one could be found to fill the office of executioner. Morel was kept under strict guard, and the delay saved him.

Sixty persons were left upon the floor after this butchery, and two hundred more were wounded, several fatally. The corpses were stripped, and some days after, the footmen of the duke sold their property in open market, “crying them aloud,” says Crespin, “as a bailiff would who had taken furniture in execution.”

During this carnage, the Bible of the Calvinists was brought to the duke. He gave it to his brother the Cardinal Louis de Guise, who had remained on the walls of the cemetery. “Here,” said he, “see the titles of the books of these Huguenots.” “There is no harm in this,” answered the cardinal; “it is the Holy Scriptures.” “How, sang-Dieu! the Holy Scriptures! It is fifteen hundred years and more since they were made, and these books have only been printed a year. By the mort-Dieu! it is good for nothing.” The cardinal could not help saying: “My brother is wrong.”

This circumstance is not unworthy of history: it exhibits, once more, how profound and degrading was the ignorance in religious matters of the principal defender of the Romish church.

The duke was walking up and down, biting his beard, a sign with him of furious anger. He summoned the judge of the district, and upbraided him for having suffered these conventicles. The judge pleaded the Edict of January. “The Edict of January!” said Guise, laying his hand upon his sword; “this steel shall speedily cut asunder this edict, however tightly bound.”

The following day, being at Eclairon, his people informed him that the Huguenots of Vassy had sent complaints to the king. “Let them go,” he said with scorn; “they will find neither their admiral, nor their chancellor.”

Reflection, however, made him understand that it was no trifling matter to have authorized this butchery in a time of perfect peace, and he therefore sent a lawyer to Vassy to commence a sort of inquiry. A tale that the Huguenots had been the aggressors was invented, as if it were likely that such an extravagant notion could be believed, that people unarmed, assembled at the foot of the pulpit with women and children, should be the first to attack the numerous escort of François de Guise!

In the following year, when upon his death-bed, the duke protested that he had neither premeditated, nor ordered the massacre of Vassy. We are willing to take him at his word, notwithstanding the overwhelming remarks of Bayle; it would grieve us to witness an ignoble leader of a band of assassins in this brave and valiant captain, the defender of Metz, the conqueror of Renty. But had he not a firm resolve to use at least some violence against the Huguenots of Vassy? What did he do to prevent the massacre? Was he the man to be disobeyed? Towards the end of the affair, he ordered, at the request of the duchess of Guise, that the women with child should be spared, but nothing more. Moreover did he prosecute, did he so much as disclaim any one of the murderers? Even the charge of premeditation he set aside; his consent to the massacre cannot be denied. The blood of Vassy is on his head: it has been visited upon him, his son, and his race. “All they who take the sword, shall perish by the sword.”

The news of the massacre of Vassy created an extraordinary impression throughout the kingdom; it roused all the Reformed to indignation and horror. This was not the crime of a vile populace led on by some contemptible priests, or abject monks. Here was one of the greatest lords of France, who had, in contempt of the law, shed the blood of the faithful in torrents. If this offence were to go unpunished, where would justice be henceforth, and who could be secure against assassination?

At Paris the agitation was so great that an immediate resort to arms was apprehended, and the Marshal de Montmorency, the governor of the town, invited the faithful to suspend their assemblies. But they answered that this would be to give up the cause to their enemies, and to acknowledge that there existed a power superior to that of the law in the kingdom. They, however, restricted themselves to demanding from the marshal the compulsory observance of the edict.

The prince of Condé and the principal members of the party addressed themselves to Catherine de Medicis. They represented to her the insolence of the triumvirate, the league of the Lorraine princes with the king of Spain, the growing audacity of their enterprises, the dangers which threatened the royal authority, and protested that they were ready to sacrifice their possessions and their lives for the cause of the throne, which was now linked with the Reformed faith. Catherine employed her usual dissimulation, gave evasive answers, and tried to penetrate the secrets of the Calvinists, in order to turn them to her own account, as occasion might serve, for or against them.

The consistory of Paris resolved to exhaust every legal means before opposing force to force, and sent Theodore de Bèze to the court to demand the exemplary punishment of the murderers. The king of Navarre, who was present at the audience, and who wished to give some testimony of his zeal to his new allies, exclaimed: “They threw stones at my brother, the duke of Guise; he could not restrain the fury of his people; and mark me, whosoever shall touch but the end of his finger, shall touch my whole body.” “Sire,” Bèze answered, “it is indeed the part of the Church of God, in whose name I speak, to endure blows and not to give them; but you will also please to remember that it is an anvil, which has used up many hammers.”

Theodore de Bèze spoke the truth. Anthony of Bourbon and his have fallen; the persecutors rest in their sepulchre, but the French Reformation still lives.

VI.

We now come to the wars of religion. The history of the Reformed at this juncture becomes the general history of France, and as that is related in writings without number, which are in everybody’s hands, we shall only give a rapid summary of the principal facts, directing our especial attention to whatever may serve to depict the private life of the oppressed party.

The duke of Guise made a triumphal entry into Paris. The priests urged on the multitude to crowd the path of the man of Vassy, whilst comparing him to Judas Maccabæus, and awarding to him the glorious name of _defender of the faith_. Catherine de Medicis was offended at this triumph both in her pride as queen-mother, and in her right as regent; but the duke left her no time to concert a league with the Calvinists. Encouraged by the support of the king of Navarre, of Anne of Montmorency, and of the Marshal de Saint André, he carried off Charles IX. and Catherine herself, and dragged them from Fontainebleau to Melun, from Melun to Vincennes, and from Vincennes to Paris. These were the days of the 5th and 6th October of the triumvirate.

Where legitimate authority now rested was unknown. The sovereignty was floating about at hap-hazard. The Reformed were in some sort placed beyond the law by the enterprises of the man, who had recently massacred their brethren; they found themselves thrown into an attitude of personal defence. So, from one end of France to the other, without preliminary concert, they flew to arms, just as one would do when he sees his house broken into at midnight by a band of robbers.

“It is ever to be remembered,” says an historian of the sixteenth century, “that so long as the Reformed were put to death under any form of justice, however iniquitous and cruel, they held out their necks, and offered no resistance. But when public authority, in the person of the magistracy, wearied of burnings, flung the knife into the hands of the people, and the tumults and enormous massacres of France had torn away the venerable aspect of justice, and had made neighbour to slaughter neighbour at the sound of trumpet and drum, who could forbid the wretched to oppose arm to arm, steel to steel, and to catch from a fury without justice the contagion of a just fury?... Let foreign nations judge which of the two parties have their foreheads stained with the crime of war!”[42]

The queen-mother seemed to authorize the Huguenots’ resort to arms, and even to solicit it in the name of Charles IX. “My cousin,” she wrote to the prince of Condé, “you will take care to preserve the children and the mother, and the kingdom for him whom it concerns, by whom you may rest assured it will never be forgotten. If I die before I have an opportunity of showing my gratitude, as I wish to do, I will leave instructions to my children. I see so many things which grieve me, that were it not for the confidence I feel in you, that you will aid me in preserving this kingdom and the authority of the king, my son, in spite of those who would lose all, I should be yet more grieved.” These letters, communicated to the gentry of the religion, strengthened them in their projects: for they believed they were upholding not only their own cause, but that of the crown.

Both sides invited foreign aid into the kingdom. The (Roman) Catholics set the example; the Roman pontiff preached a crusade in Italy and Spain similar to that of Simon de Montfort against the Albigeois, and the Huguenots, in their turn, claimed the assistance of every Protestant nation. Under one or the other banner, Spaniards, Swiss, Germans, and Englishmen were speedily ranged. So will it ever be in the great wars of religious or political principles. Men then separate themselves, not people from people, but faith from faith, because something is at stake more powerful than nationality itself, and because country is only dear when it realizes the mighty convictions, which have taken possession of their souls. If a struggle were to break out in Europe to-morrow for the fundamental principles of politics, what occurred in the sixteenth century would be seen again; the only difference would be in the device of the colours and the watchword of the combatants.

Each party published long manifestoes, another inevitable occurrence in a war of principles. The Calvinists demanded the strict execution of the Edict of January, the restoration to liberty of the king and queen-mother,—who, they declared, were prisoners,—the punishment of the authors of the crime of Vassy, or at least, the withdrawal of the duke of Guise, and of the two other triumvirs, to their houses. The (Roman) Catholics answered, respecting the Edict of January, by equivocal phrases; as to the liberation of the king and queen, they asserted that they were perfectly free; as to the punishment of the authors of the affair of Vassy, that there was no one to punish; and with regard to the retreat of the members of the triumvirate, that their presence was essential to the public good.

The most remarkable document of these preliminary discussions is the act of association, which was concluded between the prince of Condé and the Calvinist lords, on the 11th of April, 1562, after the celebration of the communion. All avowed that they had only in this alliance the honour of God before their eyes, the liberation of the king and of the queen, the maintenance of the edicts, and the punishment of those who had violated them. They solemnly swore to prevent blasphemy, violence, pillage, all that is forbidden by the law of God, and to establish good and faithful ministers, who should teach them to do His will. They appointed the prince of Condé the chief and leader of their enterprise, as being of the blood royal and protector of the crown of France. Lastly, they promised, on their hope of Paradise, to fulfil their duty with unshrinking fidelity.

Their first deeds of arms were fortunate. Orleans, Tours, Bourges, Poitiers, Rouen, Le Hâvre, Lyons, Montauban, Nismes, and the greater number of the strong castles of Normandy, of Poitou, of Saintonge, of Guienne, of Languedoc, and of Dauphiné, fell into their hands almost without a blow, towards the end of April.

The triumvirate, on their side, acted with vigour. They dictated at their discretion the resolutions of the Council and the decrees of the Parliaments. They strove especially to bind the people of Paris, without reservation, to their fortunes. The (Roman) Catholic citizens were armed and formed into regiments. Fifty thousand men were counted upon at the first sound of the tocsin. The commune sat _en permanence_. Chains were placed at the corners of the streets, to barricade them, in case of attack. Certificates of (Roman) Catholicism were required from all the procureurs, receivers, constables, and other public officers. The churches were the clubs of the time; they were still more so under the League.

The Huguenots received orders to quit Paris in twenty-four hours under pain of death. The infamous accusations of former years were again brought against them. Coarse prints were constantly circulated, representing the heretics tearing out the bowels of the monks, and casting their victims before swine. The fanaticism of the populace was raised by these provocations to the blindest pitch of frenzy, and it was enough to pass for a Huguenot in the streets to be instantly slaughtered. Theodore de Bèze cites many instances of these facts.

The triumvirs and the priests knew very well what they would gain by seizing upon the opinion of this powerful city. “Paris,” says the historian Davila, “alone gave more credit, and more weight, than one-half of the kingdom could have given.”[43]

Coligny felt this. He advised the prince of Condé to march direct upon Paris, urging that the triumvirs had as yet no army, and that a multitude without discipline might be easily overcome. Condé refused. Brother of the king of Navarre, and looking forward to be one day lieutenant-general of the kingdom, he was obliged to act with circumspection even towards his most violent adversaries. A prince of the blood is not the man to lead a party in those critical moments, when all must be hazarded to conquer all. Would the English Puritans have triumphed, if they had chosen a member of the royal family for their chief instead of Cromwell?

Catherine de Medicis proposed to open conferences between the two parties. It was the only plan, by which she could still make any figure. In the struggles of warriors she could do nothing; in negotiations she relied upon her genius, and flattered herself that she could entangle the heads of the (Roman) Catholics, as well as of the Reformed, in her intrigues.

A first conference was held on the 2nd of June, at Thoury, in Beauce. It was agreed that each party should meet, with an equal escort of gentlemen, who should keep aloof, at a distance of eight hundred paces from each other. But whilst the chiefs debated, the gentlemen drew near together; in fact, they yearned towards each other. On a sudden, old friendships rekindled; party quarrels were forgotten; there were no longer Papists and Huguenots, but mingling embraces and tears; they only remembered that they had spent their childhood together, had drunk out of the same cup, and slept under the same roof. Sacred instinct of the heart! It inspired better emotions than the science of theologians, or the politics of statesmen!

The queen-mother had conceived, with the bishop Montluc, her private counsellor, a strange expedient. It was to engage the chiefs of the two parties to impose on themselves a voluntary exile. The triumvirs were to withdraw from the court; the prince of Condé, the admiral, and the principal Calvinists, were to leave the kingdom until the majority of Charles IX., that the religious differences might be peaceably arranged. Such an idea was but a court stratagem, which could settle nothing.

Much time had been lost. The Calvinist gentlemen, who had to maintain themselves at their own expense, were beginning to return home, and the army of the triumvirs was increasing. This was perceived by the increase of persecution. The Parliament of Paris passed a decree, at the end of June, commanding heretics to be set upon, and to be killed, wherever they should be met, like madmen, who were enemies of God and man. Every Sunday the curates were to read this dreadful decree from the pulpit. The peasants, the workmen, armed themselves with whatever weapon came to hand, and began to scour the country, as if to rid it of wild beasts. The monks, in their hideous language, called this “letting slip the great greyhound.”

A new decree of the Parliament, passed on the 18th of August, declared all the gentlemen of the new religion, with the exception of the prince of Condé, traitors to God and the king, and summoned them to appear in three days, in default of which they were to be punished by the confiscation of their bodies and their goods.

It was then that the Calvinists determined to press D’Andelot to bring some lansquenets from Germany, and to conclude a treaty with Elizabeth, queen of England, by which she undertook to furnish a force of six thousand men. Three thousand were to land at Havre-de-Grâce, and three thousand were to serve for the defence of Dieppe and Rouen, which were in the hands of Condé. This treaty was signed on the 20th of September, 1562, and Queen Elizabeth published a manifesto, in which she affirmed before heaven and before the world, that she had no other object, but to defend the loyal subjects of King Charles IX., her brother, against the tyranny of their oppressors.

VII.

The duke of Guise and his confederates hastened to lay siege to the town of Rouen. The count of Montgomery, the same who had mortally wounded Henry II. in a tournay, took the command, and had with him a devoted population, and a strong garrison.

Between the besiegers and the besieged a contrast might be observed, which was to be reproduced eighty years later, between the Puritans of Cromwell and the royalist cavaliers. In the (Roman) Catholic army licentiousness reigned. Catherine de Medicis, who had turned to the strongest side, had brought with her her maids of honour. The trenches were opened to the sound of serenades, and the damsels of the court, constituting themselves the judges of the camp, awarded prizes to the cavaliers. In the interior of the town all was sober and severe. Here were no games or spectacles, but only sermons, prayers, and psalms; and after the religious service, the women went to the ramparts to fight by the side of their husbands.

After a siege of five weeks, Rouen was taken by assault, and given up for eight days to the fury of the soldiery. The Parliament, which had retired to Louviers, came to complete the work by judicial murders. Several of the principal inhabitants were condemned to death, among others Jean de Mandreville, president of the “cour des aides,” and the pastor Augustin Marlorat.

This last had figured at the conference of Poissy. He was versed in science, and possessed piety and moderation of character, and enjoyed the esteem of the faithful. The constable wished to see Marlorat, and accused him of having seduced the people. “If I have seduced them,” answered the minister of Christ, “God first seduced me; for I have preached to them the simple Word of God.” While they were dragging him on a hurdle to the gibbet, he exhorted his fellow-sufferers to glorify God to their last breath.

Anthony de Bourbon was mortally wounded during this siege, and licentious passions, which he could not subdue, hastened his end. After having received the viaticum, on the entreaty of a court-bishop, he appeared in his last moments to return to the Reformed faith; for he requested his physician to read the Bible to him, and with his eyes full of tears he prayed to God for pardon, declaring that if he recovered, he would cause the Gospel to be preached throughout the kingdom. But it was too late. Anthony de Bourbon died at the age of forty-four, and the only funeral oration that can be made over him is that of Etienne Pasquier: “The king of Navarre is dead, from a gun-shot; he is regretted neither by one party, nor the other!”

On the 19th of December the battle of Dreux was fought. The Calvinist army consisted of four thousand cavalry and five thousand infantry; the (Roman) Catholic army of sixteen thousand foot and two thousand horse. These forces were but small for an encounter, which might produce most important results; but, even of these, the foreign mercenaries of the triumvirs amounted to two-thirds, and to one-half in those of the Huguenots. But the war was at that time carried on from one end of France to the other; every province, every town, and, in some sort, every hamlet, had its soldiers; so that the troops encamped near Dreux formed but the smallest number of the combatants.

For more than two hours, the armies gazed at each other in sullen stillness. “Each one thought within himself,” as relates the honest Lanoue, “that he had relations, friends, and comrades before him.” At length the battle began, and was kept up for seven hours with excessive ferocity. Eight thousand dead bodies encumbered the plain at the end of day.

The Calvinists had at first the advantage, and some runaways having carried the news to Paris, Catherine de Medicis coolly replied: “Well, we must pray to God in French.”

But the duke of Guise, having charged with the reserve, changed the face of the combat. Coligny tried in vain to bring his men back to the attack; all he could effect, was to retreat in good order. The chiefs of the two armies, the prince of Condé and the Constable de Montmorency, were taken prisoners. The Marshal de Saint André, one of the triumvirate, fell upon the field. “Die, traitor,” said a Calvinist officer, in discharging a pistol at his head, “die by the hand of one whom thou hast despoiled.”

The winter did not suspend hostilities. Coligny again took the field in Upper and Lower Normandy. The duke of Guise went to besiege Orleans, the principal place, and the centre of the war-operations of the Calvinists. “Once take the burrow, when the foxes have retreated,” said he, “and we will chase them all over France.”

Already, in spite of the heroic defence of D’Andelot and the citizens, two suburbs had been taken, and the tower of the bridge had been carried, when the duke of Guise was wounded on the evening of the 18th of February, 1563, by Jean Poltrot de Méré, who fired a pistol close to his breast. He died six days after, bitterly regretted by the (Roman) Catholic party. They gave him at Paris the funeral of a king, and Catherine de Medicis assumed great grief, which she did not feel.

Several historians,—Mézeray among others,—assure us, that in his last moments he advised the queen-mother to make peace as quickly as possible; adding, that whosoever prevented it would be an enemy to the king and to the state. This was to counsel toleration, since peace could not be firmly established, except on this condition. Did François de Guise better understand his duty at the hour of death, than he had done throughout his life? Perhaps he did. Ambition no longer led him astray, and the thought of the judgment of God might have inspired him with the words of truth.

The murderer of the Duke de Guise was a gentleman of Angoumois, at that time twenty-five or twenty-six years old. An ardent (Roman) Catholic in his youth, Poltrot had served in Spain, and had so far adopted the language and manners of that country, as to have been called by the nickname of _Espagnolet_. Having embraced the Reformed faith, he was compelled to fly to Geneva, and to follow the trade of an artisan for a livelihood. His temper was soured and his imagination excited. Returned to France, he heard on every side loud complaints against the duke of Guise, whom the Huguenots called the _butcher of Vassy_, and the destruction of the murderer of his brethren appeared to him an act of legitimate reprisal. Such were the deplorable effects of these wars of religion, which distorted all ideas of justice, and depraved the soul—abyss only leading to abyss!

The death of the duke of Guise changed the face of affairs. Anne de Montmorency being a prisoner, there was no longer in the (Roman) Catholic army any chief of renown, and Catherine de Medicis resumed the negotiations, which she had never entirely abandoned. She tried to seduce Condé by the promise of the lieutenancy-general of the kingdom. This prince, who had fallen into the hands of the (Roman) Catholics at the battle of Dreux, had lived for three months apart from the austere men of the Calvinist party; “_he already breathed_,” says Mézeray, “_the soft air of the court, and of the gaieties of the ladies_.” Won over by the artifices of the queen, he asked leave to go and treat for peace at Orleans.

As soon as he arrived, he addressed these two questions to the pastors: Whether it were reasonable to exact that the Edict of January should be restored in all its articles? or, on the other hand, if that could not be obtained, whether it would not be desirable to enter into arrangements with the queen to quell the disorders of the kingdom? The pastors, to the number of seventy-two, seeing him hesitate, addressed a remonstrance to him in writing, asking for a fair and safe exercise of their religion, both in the places where it already existed, and in such places where the inhabitants might claim it.

The prince paid no heed to this remonstration, and despairing of overcoming the resistance of the ministers, turned to the gentlemen, who he knew were tired of war, and communicated to them certain clauses, which accorded to the nobility religious privileges. The pastoral body was neither heard nor received in this conference, and the majority of the gentlemen accepted the proposed articles.

The queen-mother vehemently urged on the conclusion; she feared to lose a single day, because she foresaw that if the Admiral Coligny had time to come up, the entire edifice of her intrigues would fall at a blow. Therefore, as soon as the prince of Condé had returned, she signed the articles, and this treaty, drawn up under the form of an edict of pacification, was published at Amboise on the 19th of March, 1563.

It contained the following points: Free exercise of religion in those towns, which were in the power of the Calvinists at the date of the 7th of March, 1563; permission to the lords _haut-justiciers_ to hold assemblies throughout the whole extent of their domains; permission to the nobles of the second rank to celebrate their worship in their own houses, but only for their households; finally, in each bailiwick pertaining directly to the Parliaments, the concession of a single place of worship. To all the other members of the Reformed faith, it accorded only private worship: “Every one,” said the treaty, “shall be permitted to live at liberty in his own house, without search or molestation, and without being forced or constrained for conscience’ sake.”

Truly, there was a wide difference between the articles of Amboise and the Edict of January. Instead of a general right, the mass of the Reformed had now but the toleration of their domestic hearths. The nobles alone, and the faithful who dwelt in the neighbourhood of a bailiwick-town, could hold assemblies. This was separating the disciples of the Reformation like persons sick with the plague in a lazaretto.

When the Admiral learned the contents of this treaty, he felt the most lively indignation. “This stroke of the pen,” said he, “ruins more churches than the enemy could have pulled down in ten years.”

He returned to Orleans by forced marches, and arrived on the 23rd of March, hoping still to find the means of obtaining better conditions. He presented himself before the council, and explained his dissatisfaction to the prince. He said that the affairs of religion were in a favourable state; that two of the principal authors of the war were dead, and the third a prisoner; that, in confining the assemblies to one town in a bailiwick and to the lords _haut-justiciers_, the poor, who had nevertheless set the example to the rich, were sacrificed; and lastly, that the gentlemen themselves who wished to do their duty, would soon feel what heavy chains they had accepted.

This discourse made so strong an impression, that many, who had taken the advice of Condé, would have wished that the whole matter were to be done over again. But the prince answered that he had received private promises, and that when he was lieutenant-general of the kingdom, all would go on well. Coligny had to give way. Orleans was restored to the king’s troops, and the Huguenots aided them in retaking Hâvre from the English.

Such was the end of the first religious war, if such a word can be used to designate a simple suspension of arms, adopted on each side with mental reservations. No one was or could be satisfied. The ardent (Roman) Catholics complained no less than the Calvinists. Politicians could not understand those categories, which surrendered to a few what was refused to the masses. No principle had dictated the Edict of Pacification, and France, covered with blood, had not even time to apply the first dressing to her grievous wounds.

VIII.

Having set forth the course of general affairs, it is now necessary to cast a glance at what had been going on in the provinces. War was waged not only between party chiefs and regular armies; it also broke out in a thousand forms throughout the kingdom. It was a great and fearful struggle of province against province, town against town, house against house, and man against man. Never was it so clearly seen that the worst of all wars are civil wars, and of all civil wars the wars of religion.

The excesses of the revolution would convey but a faint idea [of the then state of things]. Fanaticism had converted France into a band of cannibals, and the gloomiest imagination may be defied to conceive all the kinds of refined, revolting, execrable, and obscene punishments which were then practised. But there is in this spectacle a great lesson to be learned: it is that the principle of religious liberty is one of the most precious possessions of humanity.

A detailed recital of these horrors is not here to be expected. They fill a volume of Theodore de Bèze. Jacques de Thou devotes to them several books of his history. Crespin, Jean de Serres, the memoirs of Montluc, of Tavanes, of Condé, of Lanoue, and of fifty others are full of them. Whoever wishes to investigate the details may seek for them there. Were we to attempt the task, the pen would again and again fall from our hand.

The Huguenots had observed a rigid discipline at the outset of the campaign. Having newly taken up the cross and risen at the call of their conscience, they wished to absolve their arms by the austerity of their lives. There were no women in their camps; no cards or dice; no blasphemy; no profane discourse; no maurauding or pillage. The nobles paid in money for all that they took for themselves or for their followers. Those who committed violence were punished. A lord of Dammartin, who had outraged the daughter of a villager, narrowly escaped execution. Another was hanged at Orleans for adultery; and this, much more than any differences of doctrine had done, aroused the dissolute court of Catherine de Medicis.

At morning and evening, public prayers were said. The ministers, distributed by companies, maintained good order by their exhortations. A prayer has been preserved which was repeated in the army. The Calvinists addressed supplications to God for the king, the queen-mother, the princes of the royal blood, and the members of the council.

The same discipline prevailed at Orleans. “Besides the ordinary sermons and the prayers to the _corps de garde_,” says Theodore de Bèze, “extraordinary general prayers were said at six o’clock in the morning, after which, the ministers and the people without exception went to work at the fortifications with all their strength, each one returning at four o’clock in the evening to prayers; a place was also set apart for the wounded, who were most humanely tended by the most distinguished ladies of the town, who spared neither their money nor their labour.”[44]

Unfortunately this lasted only for a few months; Coligny had foreseen it. “This discipline is indeed a noble thing,” said he, “as long as it lasts; but I fear these people will throw down all their goodness at once. I have commanded infantry, and I know them; they often fulfil the proverb which says: ‘_out of a young hermit grows an old devil_.’”

Religious passions, added to the want of money, drove the Huguenots to carry off the ornaments of the churches. They broke the sacred vessels, mutilated the statues of the saints, and dispersed the relics. These excesses excited in the hearts of the (Roman) Catholics a rage impossible to be described. “You knock down the images,” they said; “you destroy the relics of the dead; well! we will knock down as many living images as fall into our hands.”

The decrees of the Parliaments added fuel to the popular fury, by giving it a semblance of justice. The peasant left his plough, the artisan his trade. The [Roman Catholic bands] consisted of people of no calling, vagabonds, and beggars, and free companies armed with reaping-hooks, knives, and pikes. They chose a captain at hazard, some famous brigand, or else a monk, or curate; sometimes even a bishop; and these bands, drunk with fanaticism and revenge, respected neither law, modesty, nor pity. In Champagne they were called “_naked-feet_” (_pieds-nus_).

They fell upon the Calvinists by surprise, massacred the men, outraged the women, demolished the houses, tore down the vines, rooted up the trees, and desolated entire cantons. “There are too many people in France,” cried out a leader of these ruffians, “I will kill a sufficient number to make provisions cheap.”

The Huguenots, it may be believed, also resorted to reprisals; but being less numerous, and mostly belonging to the more cultivated classes, they did less harm than they suffered.

The excesses, serious everywhere, were especially so to the south of the Loire, on account of the great number of the Reformed, and the ardent character of the population. At Cahors, five hundred Huguenots were attacked one Sunday while they were at service, and the bishop, Pierre Bertrandi, had them all butchered to the last man. At Montauban the inhabitants had quitted their town at the approach of the (Roman) Catholic bands; but having been massacred in crowds, the survivors returned within their walls, and sustained three sieges with heroic constancy.

The events which happened at Toulouse in May, 1562, will serve to characterize what was passing throughout the whole extent of the southern provinces.

This town contained from twenty-five to thirty thousand of the Reformed, for the most part, burghers, merchants, professors of the university, men of letters, students, and magistrates. They had chosen municipal officers of their own persuasion. “Toulouse,” says an old chronicle, “is governed by a mixture of magistrates of three kinds: Catholics, Huguenots, and Temporizers—people, however, of elevated minds, adorned with many graces, rich and opulent; and there is even a fourth kind, namely, that of the ancient heresy (probably that of the Albigeois), which had already taken root.”[45]

After the publication of the Edict of January, the Reformed had built a wooden church outside the gates of the town, which would hold from five to six thousand persons. They went there in open day, and the women were not less zealous than the men. “They had laid aside with their prayer-books and the beads which they had worn at their girdles,” says our chronicler, “their ample robes, and dissolute garments, dances, and worldly songs, as if they had been guided by the Holy Ghost: all of which our preachers could not obtain from the Catholics with all their holy admonitions.”[46]

The majority of the Parliament continued to protect the ancient worship; and the people, goaded by the imprecations of the monks, attacked the Calvinists on the least pretext and pillaged their houses. All was violence, disorder, anarchy!

Driven to extremes, and headed by some of their municipal magistrates, the Reformed took possession of the _Maison-de-Ville_, or Capitol, on the night of the 11th or 12th of May.

The councillors of the Parliament immediately passed a sentence of arrest against the magistrates who had taken part in this affair, and sent round to demand the armed assistance of all the captains and gentlemen of the surrounding country. Then they presented themselves to the people in red robes, commanding them to take arms and seize the heretics dead or alive. “Pillage, kill boldly, with the approval of the pope, of the king, and of the court,” cried out five or six frenzied councillors, whilst traversing the streets.

The struggle became horrible. The Calvinists who had not been able to take refuge in the Hôtel de Ville were seized in their houses, thrown out of the windows, or dragged to the Garonne. Wretches, whom the constables were taking to prison, were massacred on their way, whilst no mercy was shown to well-dressed passengers! It was taken for granted that every one, who was not a labouring man, a member of the Parliament, a monk or a priest, must be a heretic.

Another characteristic circumstance of the struggle, was that the people, imagining all cultivation of the mind to be a commencement of heresy, crowded at once around the shops of the booksellers, and burned all the books they contained in the public places. These wretched men, who could not read, thought they were thus doing the work of good (Roman) Catholics.

The tocsin rang from all the churches, for five or six leagues round. Bands of peasantry poured into the town, attracted by the hope of plunder. The Reformed, besieged in the Capitol, had cannon, and defended themselves, from the Monday to the Saturday, with all the courage of despair.

Reduced at length to the last extremity, without food for their wives and children, or powder to load their arms, the people having also fired the whole quarter near the Capitol, they demanded a parley, crying: _Vive la Croix! Vive la Croix!_ They were promised their lives, on condition of leaving their arms and effects in the _Maison-de-Ville_. Before, however, they departed, they celebrated the Holy Communion with many prayers and tears, and began, between eight and nine in the evening, to retreat by the gate of Villeneuve. But the labourers and peasants, whom the priests had taught that it was not binding on them to keep faith with heretics, fell on them, and it is reckoned that three thousand five hundred persons perished in these conflicts.

The Parliament next proceeded to judicial executions. They first mutilated their own body, by excluding twenty-two councillors, who, without being Huguenots, had allowed their wives, or other members of their families, to frequent the sermons. Up to the month of March, 1563, the provost of the town and three hundred other heretics had been put to death, and four hundred persons were also condemned to the same penalty for contumacy. The clergy had published a monition enjoining, under pain of excommunication and eternal damnation, not only the denunciation of heretics, but even of those, who had given them counsel, help, or favour.

Acts of atrocious fanaticism were committed. It is related that a boy of twelve or thirteen years, who had come from Montauban to Toulouse, was called upon to recite the _Ave Maria_. He answered that it had not been taught him, and for that reason alone he was taken to the gallows.

In the midst of so many frightful crimes, Blaise de Montluc and the Baron des Adrets had still the frightful honour of distinguishing themselves by their cruelty. The first, a rude and ignorant soldier, was the most ferocious of all the (Roman) Catholic chiefs of the south. He seemed to enjoy a wild and insatiable delight in spectacles of blood, and he has himself related in his _Commentaries_, with the utmost coolness, all the executions he had ordered. He was constantly attended by two executioners armed with hatchets well sharpened, who were called his _laquais_. He ordered the Huguenots to be hanged or beheaded without interrogation; “_for they_,” he said, “_have a golden tongue_.” The roads, by which he passed, were known by the bodies hanging on the trees. Nor did he neglect to take care of his fortune; he knew how to pick up gold out of blood. “He who, heretofore, had but little mercy,” says Brantôme, “found himself at the end of the war possessed of a hundred thousand crowns.”[47] He was rewarded for his exploits by the bâton of a marshal of France.

But pitiless as he was, he once encountered men who surpassed him. They were Spaniards, whom Philip II. had sent to the assistance of the (Roman) Catholic party. Having taken a little town in Agenois, Montluc put all those to the sword who had defended the castle, and sent back the women by a staircase hollowed out of the wall. The Spaniards, who were waiting for them in the court, butchered them all together, with the little children they carried in their arms. When Montluc reproached them for this, they answered with _sang-froid_, “We thought they were Lutherans in disguise (_todos Luteranos tapados_).”

The Baron des Adrets, who led some of the Huguenot bands, showed himself no less barbarous than Montluc. He had embraced the new religion on account of an action, which he accused the duke of Guise of having caused him to lose. He spread terror in the Lyonnais, Dauphiné, Provence, and the county of Avignon. But the chiefs of the Calvinist party were soon ashamed of, and shocked at his crimes, and sent Soubise to Lyons to restrain him. They even made him prisoner at Valence, and he was only set at liberty at the conclusion of the peace, which he resented so much, that he returned to the Romish communion and died a Papist.

IX.

Catherine de Medicis did not, as she had promised, make the prince of Condé lieutenant-general of the kingdom. She caused her son to be declared to have attained his majority, in a _lit de justice_ held at the Parliament of Rouen, on the 17th of August, 1563. Charles IX. was then thirteen years and two months old. This prince was not deficient in natural intelligence; he was fond of literature, and, under better discipline, might have prepared himself to have worn the crown worthily. But his mother had early trained him to be treacherous, dissimulating, suspicious, and eager for bloody spectacles. She had given him for his preceptor a man from her town of Florence, Albert Gondi, afterwards named Marshal de Retz, who, according to Brantôme, was cunning, cautious, corrupt, lying, a great dissembler, swearing, and denying God like a porter.

The Edict of Pacification was not executed. Several Parliaments would only consent to register it after long resistance. The governors of the provinces relaxed or tightened the clauses of the edict at their pleasure; and the states of Burgundy, directed by the Duke d’Aumale, even dared to declare that they could no more endure two religions, than heaven could bear two suns.

In the districts where the (Roman) Catholics were the strongest, they represented themselves as defiled by the neighbourhood of heresy, and gave themselves up to shameful acts of violence against the faithful, who went to the assemblies. They violated even the sanctity of the domestic hearth, maltreating those who sung psalms, compelling the Huguenots to furnish bread for the parochial masses, and to give money to the church societies. When the oppressed appealed to the laws, they were answered by blows, sometimes by assassinations. More than three thousand of them perished by a violent death after the signing of the peace.

Where, on the other hand, the Calvinists were in the majority, they did not obey the Edict of Amboise, nor could they have done so, had they wished; for this treaty had been made rather for the north, than for the south of France. Imagine fifty to a hundred thousand persons compelled to take a journey of several leagues to celebrate their worship in a privileged town!

(Roman) Catholics and the Reformed were not united in the same society: they were encamped face to face, erect, and with arms in their hands. The (Roman) Catholics began, from the year 1563, under the influence of the cardinals and bishops, to form themselves into leagues or private associations for the extirpation of heresy. They bound themselves to devote their persons and their goods, without reservation, [to their cause]. The Calvinists, on their side, had their battle-fields, their rallying-signs, watchwords, and plans of campaign. They were two great armies, who were engaged in constant skirmishes, while waiting for the hour and the place of battle.

In 1564, Catherine de Medicis made Charles IX. traverse the provinces of his kingdom, in order to rekindle the affection of the (Roman) Catholics, and to intimidate the Huguenots. When she arrived at Roussillon, a little town of Dauphiné, she published, on the 4th of August, an _interpretative_ declaration of the Edict of Amboise. The lords _haut-justiciers_ were no longer to admit any but the members of their families, and their immediate vassals, to their assemblies. It was forbidden to the churches to hold synods, and to make collections of money. The pastors had no longer the right to leave their place of residence, or to open schools. The priests, monks, and nuns who had married, were commanded instantly to separate themselves from their consorts, or to quit the kingdom with the least possible delay. Thus was the iron circle which surrounded the Huguenots, tightened until they should be stifled by it.

The queen-mother held a conference at Bayonne, with the Duke d’Albe, in the month of June, 1565. This interview has been celebrated, because, according to the testimony of several historians, the plot of the Saint Bartholomew massacre was there laid down. The ferocious envoy of Philip II. told Catherine that a sovereign could do nothing more damaging to his interests, or more degrading to his subjects, than to give them liberty of conscience, and he counselled her to cut down the highest heads of the Huguenots, for then the rest might be easily managed. “Ten thousand frogs,” he continued in his coarse language, “are not worth the head of a salmon.”

We are assured that the plot was to have been carried out in 1566, during the session of the assembly of Notables at Moulins. But Coligny and the other chiefs came well attended, and the bloody deed was adjourned to a better opportunity.

The court having brought six thousand (Roman) Catholic soldiers from Switzerland, the Huguenots saw they had to fear the worst, and the prince of Condé held a council with the chiefs of his party. The Admiral was of opinion that they should still have patience, and wait till things had come to the last extremity. “I see very well,” he said, “how we may light up the fire, but not where to find water to quench it.”

His brother D’Andelot thought differently. “If you wait,” he said, “until we are banished into foreign lands, bound in prison, pursued by the people, despised by the soldiers, what will our patience or our past humility have availed us? What will our innocence profit us? Who will so much as listen to us? Those have already declared war, who have thrust in amongst us six thousand foreign soldiers. If we also give them the advantage of striking the first blow, our misfortune will be without a remedy.”

The prince of Condé went once more with the admiral to the queen, to entreat her to be more just to the Reformed. They were badly received. Seeing that their complaints were useless, they resolved to follow the example given them five years before by the duke of Guise, and to seize the young king, who was then in the castle of Monceaux, in Brie (September, 1567).

The plot was discovered, and the court fled precipitately to Meaux. The Chancellor l’Hospital, always favourable to measures of justice and moderation, proposed to send the Swiss home, to carry out the Edict of Amboise faithfully, and promised that on these conditions the Huguenots should lay down their arms. “Eh! Monsieur le Chancelier,” said the queen, “will you answer that they have no other end than to serve the king?” “Yes, madame,” answered L’Hospital, “if I am assured that there is no intention to deceive them.” But the Cardinal de Lorraine and the Constable were of opinion that no concession should be made.

Nevertheless it was necessary to gain time; for the Swiss had not yet arrived. Catherine therefore cajoled the chiefs of the Calvinists by negotiations; she sent the Marshal de Montmorency to them, as a man of the Third Party. He was well received. The Reformed repeated to him the cry, which was uttered in all their complaints: “The free exercise of our religion!” While this was going on, the Swiss arrived; the conference was broken off, and the opportunity lost. A (Roman) Catholic historian of our own time expresses astonishment at “_the credulity of these country gentlemen who were ready to disperse upon the faith of a simple promise_.” It appears to us, that this remark does as much honour to the good faith of the Calvinist party, as it does little credit to that of the (Roman) Catholic court of Charles IX.

After this undertaking, nothing was left but to resort to the hazard of arms. Condé encamped in the environs of Paris, with one thousand infantry and fifteen hundred cavalry. The Constable offered him battle in the plain of Saint Denis, on the 10th of November, 1567. He had eighteen thousand infantry and three thousand cavalry, but they were for the most part recruits of Parisian volunteers.

A crowd of idlers, and ladies dressed as Amazons, wished to enjoy the spectacle of the fight. Monks distributed beads, and chanted litanies. The action commenced towards the end of the day. At the first shock, the Parisians, who were known by their embroidered dresses and brilliant armour, gave way. The Constable, with the Swiss and the cavalry, defended himself vigorously. At the end of two hours, the Huguenots retreated in good order, and their adversaries dared not pursue them further than a quarter of a league from the field of battle.

Anne de Montmorency, covered with wounds, had been summoned by a Scottish gentleman to surrender. “Dost thou know me?” the Constable asked. “It is because I know thee, that I bring thee this,” answered the other, and fired a pistol at him. Montmorency, the last of the triumvirate, died of his wound a few days after. He obtained from Catherine de Medicis nothing but feigned tears, from the bigoted (Roman) Catholics a cold indifference, and from the Reformed a well-deserved resentment. The accident of his birth had placed his fortune too high. In all his great employments he wanted one quality, for which nothing can compensate—a breadth of understanding.

A man of sense, the Marshal de Vielleville, spoke, indeed, truly [to the king] of the affair of Saint Denis. “It is not your majesty who has gained the battle, and still less the prince of Condé.” “And who then?” asked Charles IX. “Sire, it is the king of Spain.”

On the very day following, the Calvinist army presented itself before the faubourgs of Paris, but no one came out to encounter them. They then retired on the side of Lorraine, to meet the auxiliaries, which were led by Jean Casimir, the son of the Elector Palatine. The two armies united at Pont-à-Mous-son, on the 11th of January, 1568. Here an event, probably without example in military annals, happened. The German Protestants claimed a hundred thousand crowns as their arrears of pay, and Condé had not two thousand. What was to be done? To whom apply? It was then that one army, which had itself received nothing, mulcted itself to pay another.

The historian Jean de Serres relates this singular incident in energetic terms: “The Prince and the Admiral influenced great and small by their example; the ministers in their sermons moved the men, and the captains prepared their people. Every one contributed, one from zeal, another from love; one from fear, another for shame of reproach; they collected in money, plate, chains and rings of gold, about eighty thousand francs, and by this voluntary liberality they subdued the first and pressing avidity of the mercenaries.”[48]

The war was rekindled all over France. Montluc recommenced his ravages in Guienne and Saintonge, and, after having failed before the walls of La Rochelle, put almost the whole of the Calvinist population of the island of Ré to the sword. An army of seven thousand Huguenots overran Gascony, Quercy, and Languedoc, and traversed the entire kingdom as far as Orleans. It was called _the army of the Viscounts_, because it had for leaders the viscounts Monclar, Bruniquel, Caumont, Rapin, and other gentlemen.

The towns of Montauban, Nismes, Castres, Montpellier, Uzès, remained or fell into the power of the Calvinists, who were then in a great majority. At Nismes, from the beginning of the war the Huguenot populace had committed, in spite of the exhortations of the pastors and notables, a frightful massacre of seventy-two prisoners. The following day forty-eight more (Roman) Catholics were slaughtered in the fields. This crime bore the name of _Michelade_, because it took place on the day of Saint Michel, 1567.

The prince of Condé commenced his march across Burgundy, Champagne, Beauce, and began the siege of Chartres, one of the granaries of Paris. The affairs of the Huguenots now assumed a favourable turn. The queen-mother, who was accustomed to say she could do more with three sheets of paper and her tongue than the soldiers with their lances, recommenced negotiations. The chiefs of the Calvinists, who had learned to their cost the value of Catherine’s word, wished for guarantees. But the queen had it published in the army that the Edict of Pacification should be re-established without interpretations or reservations, that a full amnesty should be given to all who had had recourse to arms, and that the chiefs alone refused this equitable arrangement from ambitious motives.

This trick succeeded. Whole companies of Calvinists, without the leave of their chiefs, took the road to their homes; and the prince of Condé, seeing his entire army thus melting away, signed, on the 20th of March, 1568, the peace of Longjumeau. It was named “_the lame and badly-seated peace_,” because, of the two negotiators of the queen, one was the lord of _Malassise_ and the other was lame. Frenchmen like to be merry upon everything; but truly there was little cause for merriment at that moment. “That peace,” says Mézeray, “left the Huguenots at the mercy of their enemies, with no other surety than the word of an Italian woman.”[49]

X.

The treaty of Longjumeau lasted but six months, or rather it never existed but on paper. Whilst the Calvinists were sending home their foreign troops, Catherine de Medicis kept hers. She took possession of the strong places, had the bridges and passes guarded, and took every measure to crush the Huguenots.

The (Roman) Catholic pulpits still thundered imprecations and anathemas against them. “They boldly advanced,” says the Abbé Anquetil, “those abominable maxims, that they ought not to keep faith with heretics, and that it is a just, pious, and useful act, leading to salvation, to massacre them. The fruits of these discourses were either public riots, or assassinations, for which no justice could be obtained.”[50]

There is a sort of frightful monotony in these scenes of murder, which stained peace no less than war with blood. Lyons, Bourges, Troyes, Auxerre, Issoudun, Rouen, Amiens, and other towns were strewed with the corpses of Huguenots. Nearly ten thousand perished in three months. At Orleans two hundred had been cast into prison. The mob set fire to the prison, and drove back those who tried to escape, into the flames: “A part of them were seen,” says Crespin, “joining hands in the fire, and were heard to call upon the Lord with a loud voice.”[51]

The Chancellor de l’Hospital made loud complaints of the impunity accorded to these butchers. He was not listened to; and seeing that he could no longer usefully serve the state, he withdrew to his property at Vignay. Catherine de Medicis gave the seals to Jean de Morvilliers, a creature of the Cardinal de Lorraine. The Marshal de Montmorency, suspected of moderation and humanity, was also superseded from his office as governor of Paris.

Even those sacred rights, which savages would blush to infringe, were no longer respected. The Baron Philibert de Rapin, _maître d’hôtel_ to the prince of Condé, having been sent to Languedoc to carry out the treaty of peace, was seized by order of the Parliament of Toulouse, and beheaded three days afterwards.

Condé, Coligny, and D’Andelot, threatened with ruin and death, fled to La Rochelle. They left the Château of Noyers in Burgundy with their wives and children at midnight, on the 25th August, 1568, and travelled a hundred leagues in twenty-four hours through bands of enemies.

The queen of Navarre, Jeanne d’Albret, went to join them with four thousand men. As many more came from Normandy, the Maine, and Anjou. The most famous captains of the party hastened thither with their companies, so that these fugitives of yesterday found themselves at the head of the strongest army they had yet commanded, and Coligny repeated the saying of Themistocles: “My friends, we had perished, if we had not been lost.” Thus commenced the third religious war.

Catherine de Medicis put forth edicts which annulled that of January; she also forbade the exercise of the pretended Reformed religion under pain of death, and ordered all its ministers to depart from the kingdom in fifteen days. At the same time the duke of Anjou, the next brother of Charles IX., and the favourite son of Catherine, afterwards known as Henry III., was placed at the head of the (Roman) Catholic army; but although he had twenty-four thousand infantry and four thousand cavalry under his command, he dared not offer battle. The very severe winter of 1568 was passed in marches and countermarches, without any decisive event taking place.

On the 16th of March following, the two armies met at Jarnac. It was less a battle than a surprise. The different bodies of the Calvinists fell into line successively, and were cut to pieces one after the other. The prince of Condé performed prodigies of valour; but, being thrown from his horse, and carrying his arm in a sling from the beginning of the affair, he surrendered to a (Roman) Catholic gentleman. At the same instant Montesquieu, one of the officers of the duke of Anjou, coming up behind him, fired a pistol at his head. “This action, which might have passed in the affray for a splendid feat of arms,” says Mézeray, “being done in cold blood, appeared to all good men as an execrable parricide.”[52] The duke of Anjou caused the corpse of Condé to be carried upon an ass, whilst he himself joined in the infamous jestings of the soldiers, and wanted to have a triumphal column raised on the spot where the prince had been assassinated. He acted as a worthy son of Catherine.

The news of the death of Condé and the victory of Jarnac, raised transports of joy amongst the (Roman) Catholics, and Charles IX. sent to the pope the standards that had been taken from the Huguenots.

Michel Ghisleri then occupied the pontifical throne under the name of Pius V. He had entered a convent of Dominicans when only fifteen years of age, and had afterwards been intrusted with the office of Inquisitor-General in the Milanais, whence he had been expelled on account of his implacable severity. He only knew Luther under the name of “the ferocious beast” (_bellua_), and saw in heresy the summary of every crime. His letters were printed at Antwerp in 1640, and are a standing monument of infuriate madness against heretics. Pius V. wrote to Charles IX. to be deaf to every prayer, to stifle every tie of blood or affection, and to extirpate the roots of heresy to the very last fibres. He cited the example of Saul slaying the Amalekites, and represented every feeling of clemency as a snare of the devil. At such moral aberrations it is impossible to feel anger; we are rather moved by a feeling of deep and sad compassion.

Pius V. and Charles IX. had been too precipitate in regarding the position of the Huguenots as desperate. Coligny still remained to them. He was seconded by Jeanne d’Albret, who, holding in her hand her son, Henry of Béarn, then fifteen years of age, and her nephew Henry, son of the prince of Condé, came to Saintes to “_offer to the cause_,”—an expression in vogue among the Calvinists—and prayed to God never to suffer them to swerve from their duty. The young Béarnais was proclaimed _generalissimo_ and _protector_ of the churches. “I swear,” said he, “to defend the religion, and to persevere in the common cause, until either death or victory has restored to us the liberty we seek.”

On the 23rd June, 1569, Coligny gained the advantage in the fight of the Roche-Abeille; but he lost many of his men at the siege of Poitiers, which he had been forced to undertake at the instance of the gentlemen of the province. On the 3rd of October following, he was beaten at Moncontour. The German soldiers had mutinied, and the Admiral could not avoid a conflict with the enemy, as he had intended. The battle lasted but three-quarters of an hour, and the disaster was terrible. Out of twenty-five thousand soldiers, only six or eight thousand remained under his standard. Entire companies had been put to the sword. The lansquenets cried for mercy, saying, “_I am a good Papist! I am a good Papist!_” but no one was spared.

Coligny received three wounds at the commencement of the action, and the blood which flowed under his visor was nigh choking him. He had to be carried off the field. In the evening, when some officers proposed to embark, he roused their courage by his calm and decisive words. Never was Coligny so great as in misfortune; he had always calculated the consequences beforehand.

Another trait of his character deserves to be recorded. “As the Admiral was carried in a litter,” says Agrippa D’Aubigné, “Lestrange, an old gentleman, and one of his principal councillors, also wounded and borne in a similar equipage, had it brought up in front of the other at a point where the road widened, and then putting his head out of the curtain, he looked intently upon his chief, and parted from him with tears in his eyes, with these words: ‘_God is very good_.’ They then bade each other farewell, united in thought, but unable to say more. This great captain confessed to his intimate friends that this little word from such a friend had raised him up, and turned him into the path of good thoughts and firm resolutions for the future.”[53]

Every misfortune seemed to fall at once upon Coligny. He had lost his brother D’Andelot. The Parliament of Paris had just declared him guilty of _lèse-majesté_, a traitor and a felon, inviting any one to attack him, with a promise of fifty thousand crowns to any one who should deliver him up, dead or alive; in fact, he had been exposed to several attempts at assassination. Bands of miscreants had burned his château and devastated his domains. Lastly, as if to overwhelm him with a final blow, Pius V. had addressed letters to the king and queen-mother, in which he described him as “_a detestable, infamous, and execrable man, if indeed he deserved the name of man!_”

Behold, then, this great unfortunate, outlawed by the government of his country, and, in a manner, by the human and divine law, by the chief of (Roman) Catholicity, covered with wounds, despoiled of all he possessed, with mutinied mercenaries, an army struck down by defeat, abandoned by many of his friends, blamed by a great number, and having to contend against adversaries without mercy and without faith! Behold him thus, and then read this letter, so pious and so calm, which he wrote to his children on the 16th of October, 1569, thirteen days after the disaster of Moncontour: it is one of the most beautiful pages of the history of humanity:—

“We must not count upon what is called property, but rather place our hope elsewhere than on earth, and acquire other means than those which we see with our eyes, or touch with our hands. We must follow Jesus Christ, our Chief, who has gone before us. Men have taken from us all they can; if such is always the will of God, we shall be happy, and our condition good, since this loss has happened to us through no injury that has been done to those who caused it, but simply for the hatred borne to me, because it has pleased God to make use of me to help His Church.... For the present, it is enough for me to admonish and conjure you, in the name of God, to persevere with courage in the practice of virtue.”

Coligny did not confine himself to writing: he collected together another army. At his voice, from every mountain of Béarn, of Cevennes, of Dauphiné, of Vivarais, of the county of Foix, there came down intrepid gentlemen, and warlike peasants, who promised to defend their faith and their liberty to the death. He traversed the half of France, passed the Loire, defeated the (Roman) Catholics near Arnay-le-Duc, and marched towards Paris, saying, “The Parisians would incline to peace when they found the war at their gates.”

The court was seized as much with astonishment as with fear, at finding Coligny at the head of a third army, as numerous as those he had lost, and better disciplined. It once more offered conditions of peace, and a treaty was signed at St. Germain-en-Laye, on the 8th of August, 1570. It was more favourable to the Reformed than the preceding ones. It gave them liberty of worship in all the places which were in their possession; in addition, two towns for every province for the celebration of service, an amnesty for the past, equal right of admission to public offices, permission to reside in any part of the kingdom without being molested on account of religion, and four hostage-towns,—La Rochelle, La Charité, Cognac, and Montauban.

The queen Catherine showed herself generous. The (Roman) Catholic historian Davila, who well knew the secrets of this court, assures us that she was agreed with the Cardinal de Lorraine and the duke of Anjou about the project of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew. “It was determined,” he says, “to return to the project already formed so many times, and so often abandoned, to free the country of foreign troops, and then to employ artifices to get rid of the chiefs, in the hope that the party would yield of itself, as soon as they saw themselves deprived of this support.”[54]

The Admiral, who suspected nothing, signed the peace with joy. “Rather than again fall back into these disorders,” he said, “I would die a thousand deaths, and be dragged through the streets of Paris.” And so, in effect, he was; but the disorders, far from ceasing, recommenced with fury, and lasted twenty-five years.

XI.

This is the proper place to point out the changes, which had been effected since the wars of religion had begun, both in the position and character of the Reformed, and in their relations with the (Roman) Catholics.

Although still numerous on the south of the Loire, the Reformed had lost much ground. Paris, henceforth, belonged exclusively to the Romish church. Picardy, Normandy, Orleanais, Champagne, all the north, and a considerable portion of the centre of France, now possessed only scattered and timid flocks. The boldest had perished; the least courageous had returned to the dominant communion. A crowd of those who filled public offices, gentlemen and rich citizens, had done the same. The women, also, in order to escape from the brutal violence to which they were subjected, had taken refuge in great number in (Roman) Catholicism, as the last asylum for their chastity.

Another difference, equally important, must be related. At the States-General of Orleans, and at the conference of Poissy, the Reformed might hope to draw the masses to themselves, the Parliaments, even royalty itself; in 1570 they could do so no longer. Every one had clearly chosen his side for the one church or for the other; opinions had become sharply defined and matured; the floating population had disappeared.

Before the wars, proselytism was wholesale; it embraced towns and entire provinces; afterwards, proselytes were rare, being only made one by one, and with infinite trouble: so many were the corpses piled up between the two communions! So many were the bitter enmities and cruel remembrances around the two camps, forbidding communication!

The destiny of the Reformed in France was truly strange and deplorable. Had they not taken arms, they would probably have been exterminated like the Albigeois. In taking up arms, they kindled the fiercest hatred, and dug a pit, which no longer permitted the (Roman) Catholics to approach them.

But even these calamities might have become the source of good for both communions. The Reformed had been instructed by misfortunes. They now understood and proclaimed that two religions might exist in the same state. Resigned to being only a minority, they cited in their writings the arrangements concluded between the rival churches in Germany. They went so far as to invoke the toleration of the Roman pontiff for the Jews, and of the Turks for the Christians. They had renounced the pretension to reign; they only asked for the right to live, and (Roman) Catholicism might have given them that, without putting its ancient prerogatives in danger.

A respected modern historian says upon this subject: “The experience of the edicts of toleration during the peace, and of the mutual efforts of the two parties during the war, had extinguished in them (the Reformed) many illusions as to their strength. They could no longer believe that they were the more numerous, and that fear alone held the masses in apparent conformity with the Romish church. They had, on the contrary, become convinced, that progressive opinions, which called for the exercise of the understanding and of judgment, could only be dominant among the _élite_ of the nation.”[55]

It is therefore a grave error to advance either religious or political necessity in justification of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew. Rome had no longer anything to fear for her supremacy, nor the crown for the maintenance of its political power. It was fanaticism, it was the resentment of the past struggles, which led to the crushing of the minority in 1572: it was no state reason.

The piety and the manners of the Reformed had also suffered much from the misfortunes of the time. Without having fallen into the hideous corruption of the court of Catherine, and without giving themselves up to the irregularities, which defiled the (Roman) Catholic clergy, they had lost much of their fervid and simple faith, and of the pious severity of conduct of their earlier years. In surrendering themselves to the spirit of party, religion had been degraded; they adhered, perhaps, the more strongly to their sect; they belonged less to Christianity.

Some Huguenots, who had been incessantly under arms for eight years, could not again settle quietly under their own roofs. They only lived, they only breathed in freedom, in the tumult of camps and the madness of battles. For this reason, Coligny wished to employ them in the war of Brabant. Others, who had only assumed the trade of the soldier for the moment, had learned from it less of brotherly love, and more of the thirst for revenge. Avarice and ambition had returned with the rest. “The consciences of several,” says a contemporary, “began to shake, and there were few who evinced a strong affection for religion; both great and small already thought much of the world, and built many castles in the air.”[56]

The pastors applied themselves to cure these wounds by means of the pious men of their consistories and synods; unhappily the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, and the fresh wars which it excited, left them but little leisure for so great a work.

We have made no mention of the national synods which were convoked after that of 1559, because their acts had no reference to general affairs, and because they were exclusively directed to points of discipline or to private matters, which have no interest for the present time. The second national synod was held at Poitiers, in 1561; the third at Orleans, in 1562; the fourth at Lyons, in 1563; the fifth at Paris, in 1565; the sixth at Verteuil, in 1567. These assemblies were properly severe concerning the preservation of the faith and good order of their flocks.

The seventh national synod, held at La Rochelle, in April, 1571, under the presidency of Theodore de Bèze, was the first of those great assemblies which took place with the full consent of the king. It deserves to be distinguished from the rest from its importance and the extraordinary solemnity, by which it was surrounded. The queen of Navarre, the princes Henry of Béarn and Henry of Condé, the Admiral de Coligny, and the Count Louis of Nassau, were present, and several of these distinguished personages took a direct part in the deliberation in their capacity as deputies of the churches.

The confession of faith of 1559 was then sanctioned and reduced to a uniform text: “Inasmuch as our confession of faith is printed in different ways,” said the members of the assembly, “the synod declares that that is the only true one which was drawn up at the first national synod.” It was determined to make three copies on parchment, of which one should be kept at La Rochelle, the second in Béarn, and the third at Geneva, after being signed by the members, ecclesiastic and lay, of the synod. The two copies of Béarn and La Rochelle were lost during the religious wars.

XII.

An illustrious magistrate of the sixteenth century said, in speaking of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew: “Let it be blotted out from the memory of man!” This wish has not been fulfilled, nor should it ever be; the great crimes of mankind are great lessons!

So far from this event being forgotten, a vast library might be filled with the books which have been written upon it. Authors of every nation—French, Italian, English, German—have devoted long and patient research to this subject. Every word has been weighed, every act commented on; and they have striven to assign to each person his due share of responsibility.

These are questions, which in our day are exhausted in the estimation of the enlightened and honest men of every opinion. Thus no one would now dare to maintain the fable of a plot by Coligny against the king’s life. The thesis of the Abbé de Caveyrac upon _salutary rigours_, will not be reproduced. The premeditation of the massacre can be no longer seriously denied. The (Roman) Catholic French historians, De Thou, Mézeray, Péréfixe, Maimbourg, all admit it; the Italian historians, Davila, Capilupi, Adriani, Catena, these confidants of Catherine de Medicis, or of the Roman conclave, do more; they admire and extol the premeditation, and see in it a marvellous effect of the blessing of heaven. These, then, are settled points.[57]

But there is another question, which, as it concerns the honour of the French name, as well as the rights of truth, must be considered. Who were the first, and the real authors of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew? We make answer, from researches, of which we will here give a short analysis.

The popes and the king of Spain, who never ceased to demand by their legates, their ambassadors, their public and secret agents, the extermination of the chiefs of the Huguenot party;

Catherine de Medicis, the niece of Clement VII., the woman of Florence, who had been nurtured in the precepts of Machiavel;

The Cardinal de Lorraine, doubly a foreigner by his birth, and in his quality of prince of the Roman church;

His nephew, Henry of Guise, a Lorraine, a young man of twenty-two, who sought to persuade himself that the Admiral was guilty of the death of his father, in order to incite himself to assassinate him, and to become, after his death, the first person in the state;

Albert de Gondi, the Florentine, whom we have already named, who cited the murder of the duke of Orleans, by the duke of Burgundy, as an example to Charles IX., and said it was necessary not to do things by halves, but to kill all, even the young Bourbon princes, the sin being as great for a small as for a great crime;

René Birago, or de Birague, a Milanese adventurer, whom Francis I. had brought to France; he had risen by climbing to the highest offices of the magistracy, and received a cardinal’s hat, as a reward for the part he took in the massacre of Saint Bartholomew. It was this Birago, who went about repeating the atrocious phrase, that to terminate the religious wars “_cooks were needed more them soldiers_;”

Lastly, Louis de Gonzague, a native of Mantua, and duke of Nevers, a skilful courtier, an indifferent captain, and one of the most eager of his day in promoting assassinations.

Up to this point there was not a single Frenchman [connected with the plot]. But besides Spain and the Papacy, there were two Lorraines, three Italian men, and one Italian woman[58] [engaged in it]. Albert de Gondi was the most intimate of the confidants of Catherine de Medicis. The duke of Guise, Birago, and Louis de Gonzague, formed a second secret council, which decided everything.

There remains, however, three Frenchmen [to be named]: the Marshal de Tavannes, the duke of Anjou, and Charles IX. These alone, with the Lorraines and the Italians, had any influence in the deliberations; the other Frenchmen were but creatures and tools.

The Marshal de Tavannes authorized the crime and helped in its consummation; he even showed himself, after the affair was begun, extremely violent; but in the councils he had spoken with more moderation than his accomplices, and had rejected the proposal to kill the two Bourbon princes.

The duke of Anjou, then in his twentieth year, had been brought up, like his brother, by Gondi, who had taught him to violate faith and to feast himself with spectacles of blood. He was already given up to those unbridled debaucheries, and to those ignoble superstitions, which made him a modern Heliogabalus, and the most abject prince ever seen upon the throne of France. “As for me,” said Charles IX. to Coligny, “I am a Frenchman and king of the French; my brother, the duke of Anjou, speaks only with his head, his eyes, and his shoulders; he is an Italian.”

Charles IX. was the last [to give his adhesion]. The execration of the human race has fallen upon his head, because he held the sceptre on the fatal day, and because, as soon as he smelt the odour of blood, he was maddened to become the executioner of his subjects. But he was not the most guilty. He had moments of candour and generosity; he alone hesitated, and was the only one of this infamous court who felt the pangs of remorse.

“Will there be no pity,” asks M. de Châteaubriand in his _Etudes historiques_, “for this monarch of twenty-three years of age, born with good talents, with a taste for literature and the arts, a character naturally generous, whom a detestable mother had delighted to deprave by all the abuses of debauchery and power?” Yes, there will be pity for him, even amongst those Huguenots whose fathers he caused to be slaughtered, and with a pious hand they will wipe off the blood which covers his face, to discover in it something that is human.

These were the real authors of the Saint Bartholomew massacre, and this is the manner in which they prepared and accomplished it.

The court saw with displeasure that the chiefs of the Reformed, Jeanne d’Albret, Henry of Bourbon, Henry of Condé, Coligny, Larochefoucauld, Lanoue, Briquemant, and Cavagnes, had retired to La Rochelle, or to their provinces. It was necessary to draw them out, in order to get them into their power. Men of the third party were sent to them, who, without raising their distrust, might induce them to approach nearer to Paris. The Calvinist deputies positively went to court, where they experienced the most favourable reception. Charles IX. behaved not only as a king, who forgets and pardons, but as a prince who was anxious to gratify his discontented subjects. He gave much and promised more; he especially heaped favours upon Téligny, son-in-law of the Admiral, a young man of frank and amiable character, who almost thought that he had found a friend in his master.

However, these chiefs of the second rank were not enough; those of the first rank were necessary, and in order to succeed, the marriage of Margaret of Valois, the sister of Charles IX., with Henry of Béarn was brought forward, a brilliant alliance for the poor house of Navarre, but one which dazzled Jeanne d’Albret but little, because she balanced the vices of the Valois against their fortune. “I would rather,” she said, “descend to be the most humble maiden of France, than sacrifice my soul and that of my son to grandeur.”

The envoys of the court set before her and the chiefs of the party, considerations of another kind. They represented that this marriage would be the best guarantee of a solid peace between the two religions. Coligny allowed himself to be deceived,—he came to believe, in the simplicity of his great heart, that the entire kingdom would be united at the same time as the royal family. Charles IX. indeed declared that he married his sister not only to the prince of Navarre, but to the whole party. “It will be,” he said, “the strongest and the closest bond of peace between my subjects, and a sure testimony of my good-will towards those of the religion.”

Jeanne d’Albret dared resist no longer, she went to Blois in the month of May, 1572, leaving her son behind her, out of a lingering feeling of distrust. “On the day of her arrival,” says L’Estoile, “the king and the queen-mother caressed her with much [apparent tenderness], especially the king, who called her his great-aunt, his all, his best-beloved, and never left her side, and entertained her with so much honour and respect, that every one was astonished.” In the evening, on retiring, he said to the queen his mother, laughing, “And now, madam, what do you say, do I not play my part well?” “Yes,” she answered, “very well; but nothing is well which is not kept up.” “Leave me alone,” said the king, “and you shall see how I will put the bit on them.”[59]

Jeanne d’Albret set out on her journey for Paris on the 15th May. On the 4th June she fell ill; on the 9th she was dead. Had she been poisoned? Many believed so. It was said that a Florentine perfumer, Master René, known by the name of the queen’s poisoner, had sold her some poisoned gloves.

She showed in her last days the same consistent piety, which had adorned her life. She uttered neither complaints nor murmurs in the most cruel accessions of pain; a faith resigned and serene shone through all her sufferings. Her tranquil heroism astonished that court, when in dying they could laugh, but knew not how peacefully to collect themselves before God. She had no regret for her life, but in reflecting on the youth of her son and of her daughter Catherine. “In any case,” she said, “my trust is that God will be to them a father and protector, as He has been to me in my greatest afflictions; I commit them to His Providence to provide for them.” She died at the age of forty-four.

The Admiral Coligny had already gone to court in the autumn of 1571; he returned in July, 1572, in spite of the warnings of many of his friends. “I trust,” he answered them, “to the sincerity and the oath of his majesty.”

In his first interview, Coligny knelt before the king. Charles IX. raised him up, called him his father, and embracing the illustrious old man thrice, said to him, “We have got you now; you shall not escape when you wish; this is the happiest day of my life.”

He opened his councils to the Admiral, and seemed to listen to him with the deference of a son. Coligny laid before him the political plans which had long occupied his thoughts, and which were afterwards adopted by Henry IV. and Cardinal Richelieu—humiliation of the house of Spain; aid to the insurgents of the Low Countries; alliance with the Protestant princes of the empire and of Sweden, in order to become the arbiter of peace and war in Europe. The conquest of the Low Countries was then easy; for the Belgians, out of hatred to Philip II. and the duke of Alba, would have joyfully offered to become an integrant part of the kingdom. If the Admiral’s plan had been followed, France from the sixteenth century would have become the first power in the world, and the entire pages of modern history would have been changed. But the popes, the queen-mother, her advisers, and the Guises prevented it, in spite of Charles IX., who felt at last the instinct of national honour.

The marriage of Margaret of Valois with Henry of Béarn, who had just taken the title of king of Navarre, was celebrated on the 18th August, 1572, and four days were spent in games, festivals, masquerades, and ballets.

On Friday, the 22nd August, Coligny was returning from the Louvre, accompanied by twelve or fifteen gentlemen. He was walking slowly, being engaged in reading a petition, when passing in front of the cloister of Saint Germain, he was struck by three balls shot from an arquebuse, which shattered the forefinger of his left hand, and wounded his left arm. The door of the house whence the arquebuse had been fired, was burst open, but only a laquais and a female servant were found. The murderer had had time to escape: it was Maurevel, formerly a page of the dukes of Guise, and one of their intimates; “_the slayer on the king’s wages, the common assassin_,” as he is styled by the historians of the epoch.

The surgeon Ambrois Paré examined the Admiral’s wound. It was feared that the copper balls had been poisoned, and Coligny believed he was approaching his last hour. “My friends,” he said, “why do you weep? as for me, I hold myself happy to have received these wounds for the cause of God; pray to Him to strengthen me.”

The news of the crime was spread in a moment throughout Paris, and excited the greatest agitation. The sheriffs (_échevins_) ordered the captains of the militia to assemble their companies, and to guard the Hôtel de Ville. The king was playing at tennis when he heard of the event, and angrily throwing down his racket, exclaimed, “Shall I never have any peace? Must I witness fresh troubles every day?” This first utterance of his conscience tends to clear his memory; the assassination was the work of the duke of Guise, supported by Catherine and her confidants; it had not been ordered by Charles IX.

The Calvinists gathered in consternation at the dwelling of the Admiral, and held counsel together. They wished to remove him instantly from Paris, but the physicians would not permit it.

The marshals Damville and De Cossé, men of the third party, also came to offer their services to the Admiral. “I have no other regret for what has happened to me,” he said, “but that of being deprived of the opportunity of showing the king the affection I bear to his service. I could have wished,” he added, “to converse a while with the king upon things of great moment for him to know, and which I think there is no one who would dare to tell him.”

In the afternoon, Charles IX. came with the queen-mother, the duke of Anjou, and other personages of the court, to see him. The occurrences at this interview are variously related. Coligny spoke to the king concerning the war of the Low Countries, and the Edict of Pacification; then he discoursed with him for some minutes, in a low voice. Charles IX. and his mother wished to see the ball, which had been extracted from the wound. “You bear the wound,” said the king, “and I the perpetual pain; but, by God’s death, I will take such terrible revenge, that it shall never be forgotten!”

Was his indignation sincere? From the manner in which he addressed the duke Henry of Guise, and from the order given him to quit the court without delay, it may be supposed to have been so. But Catherine and the duke of Anjou represented to the king that the accusation of the murder of the Admiral would certainly ascend to him, notwithstanding anything he might do; that civil war was about to be renewed; and that it was better to fight the battle in Paris, where all the chiefs were assembled, than to encounter the risk of a new campaign. “Well,” said Charles IX., in a fit of frenzy, “since you think the Admiral must be killed, I am willing; but it must be with all the Huguenots, so that there be not one left to reproach me.”

The day of Saturday was spent in preparations, and secret councils. The duke of Guise, who had speedily returned after feigning to depart, arranged matters with the sheriffs, the captains of the _quartiers_, and the Swiss. “Let every good Catholic,” he said to them, “tie a strip of white linen round his arm, and wear a white cross in his hat.”

The hour drew nigh. Catherine declared to Charles IX. that it was too late to go back; that the moment had come to lop off the gangrened limbs; and, recurring to the language of her cradle, as will happen under the dominion of powerful emotions: “_E pietà_,” she said, “_lor ser crudele, e crudeltà lor ser pietoso_ (it is pity to be cruel to them, and it would be cruelty to show them pity).”

Charles still hesitated; a cold sweat stood upon his forehead. His mother struck a blow upon the point, on which he was most sensitive. She asked if by his irresolution he would have his courage called in question. The king was indignant at the thought of a suspicion of cowardice. He rose, and cried out: “Well, begin!” It was then half-past one in the morning.

In the king’s chamber there were now only Catherine, Charles IX., and the duke of Anjou. All three preserved a sullen silence. The report of the first pistol was heard. Charles started, and sent word to the duke of Guise to precipitate nothing. It was too late. The queen-mother, distrusting the hesitation of her son, had commanded that the hour for the signal should be anticipated. The great bell of Saint Germain l’Auxerrois began to toll between two and three in the morning of Sunday, the 24th of August. At the sound of the tocsin, armed men rushed out from every door, shouting, “For God and the King!”

The duke of Guise, accompanied by his uncle, the Duke d’Aumale, the Chevalier d’Angoulême, and three hundred soldiers, hastened to the dwelling of the Admiral. They knocked at the first gate in the king’s name. A gentleman opened it: he fell stabbed. The inner gate was then burst in. At the noise of firing Coligny and all his people got up. They attempted to barricade the entry to the apartments; but this feeble rampart crumbled before the onset of the aggressors.

The Admiral had invited his minister Merlin to pray with him. A servant hurried to him terror-stricken: “Sir,” cried he, “the house is broken into, and there are no means of resistance.” “I have long been prepared to die,” answered Coligny. “As for you, save yourselves if you can; for you cannot secure my life. I commend my soul to the mercy of God.”

All reached the upper part of the house, except Nicolas Muss, his German interpreter. Coligny rested against the wall; his wound prevented him from standing upright. The first who entered the room was a Lorraine, or German, named _Behem_, _Besme_, a servant of the duke of Guise. “Are you not the Admiral?” he demanded. “Yes, I am,” replied Coligny; and looking without discomposure upon the naked sword of the assassin, [he added]: “Young man, you ought to consider my age and my infirmity; but you will not make my life shorter.” Besme plunged his sword into his breast, and gave him a second blow upon the head. The others finished the murder with their daggers.[60]

Guise was waiting impatiently in the courtyard. “_Besme_, hast thou done it?” [he shouted]. “It is done, my lord,” [was the reply given]. Monsieur le Chevalier would not believe it unless he saw it with his eyes; “Throw him out of the window,” [was, therefore, the command]. _Besme_ and one of his companions lifted up the body of the Admiral, who still breathing, clutched the window-frame. They flung him into the courtyard. The duke of Guise, wiping off the blood from his face with a handkerchief, said: “I know him, it is he;” and kicking the dead body with his foot, he hastened into the street, exclaiming: “Courage, comrades; we have begun well—now for the rest; the king commands it.”

Sixteen years and four months afterwards, on the 23rd of December, 1588, in the castle of Blois, the corpse of this same Henry of Guise was lying before Henry III., who, in like manner, kicked it in the face. Sovereign justice of God!

Coligny was fifty-five years and a half old. Since the peace of 1570, he every morning and evening read the sermons of Calvin upon the book of Job, saying that this history was his help and consolation in all his troubles. He also spent several hours of the day in writing his memoirs. These papers having been brought to the council after the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, were burned by the king’s order, lest they might increase regret for his death.

Some time after this event, when the English ambassador expressed his grief for the murder of Coligny, Catherine made answer to him: “Do you know that the Admiral recommended the king, as a matter of the last importance, to keep under the king of Spain, and also your mistress (Queen Elizabeth), as much as possible?” “Very true, madam,” replied the ambassador; “he was a bad Englishman, but a good Frenchman.”

Let us also cite a saying of Montesquieu: “The Admiral Coligny was assassinated, having only had the glory of the state at heart.”

XIII.

We are willing, whilst fulfilling our task, to abridge as far as possible the details of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew.

When the sun of the 24th of August rose upon Paris, all was tumult, disorder, and carnage; rivers of blood flowed in the streets; corpses of men, women, and children blocked up the doorways; on all sides groans, blasphemies, death-cries, and imprecations, were heard; ruffians by thousands insulted their victims before butchering them, and then loaded themselves with the spoils; the poniard, the pike, the knife, the sword, the arquebuse, every weapon of the soldier and the brigand, were brought into the service of this execrable slaughter; and the vile populace running after the murderers, finished the Huguenots, by mutilating them and dragging them in the mire, by a cord round the neck, to have their share also in this feast of cannibals.

At the Louvre, the Huguenots, brought up one after another between a double line of halberts, fell bleeding before they reached the end; and the ladies of the court, well worthy to be the mothers, the wives, and the sisters of assassins, came to gloat over the bodies of the victims.

It has been remarked that of so many brave men, who had a thousand times faced death on the field of battle, there was but one, Taverny, who sought to defend himself; and even he was a lawyer. The rest presented their throats to the poniard like women. A crime so monstrous overwhelmed their minds, and paralyzed their hands; and before they could recover themselves, they were no more.

Some, however, who lived on the other side of the Seine, in the faubourgs Saint Germain, Montgomery, Rohan, Ségur, and La Ferrière, had time to comprehend their position and to escape. It was then that the king, maddened with fury, seized an arquebuse and fired at Frenchmen. Two hundred and twenty-seven years afterwards, Mirabeau picked the arquebuse of Charles IX. out of the dust of centuries, to turn it against the throne of Louis XVI.

On the same Sunday morning, the king sent for Henry of Navarre and Henry of Condé. He said to them in a ferocious tone: “_The mass, death, or the Bastille_.” After some resistance, the princes consented to make profession of the Romish faith; but neither the court nor the people believed in the sincerity of their abjuration.

The massacre lasted four days. It was necessary to clothe it with a pretext before France and Europe. At first it was endeavoured to throw the burthen upon the Guises, but they refused [to bear it]. Next a pretended conspiracy of the Huguenots against Charles IX. and his family was invented. There were tergiversations of every kind, fabrications, which could not be maintained for an hour, confessions, which were retracted on the following day, orders and counter-orders to the governors in the provinces: a miserable play of the actors after the tragic scene.

On Thursday, when the blood of the victims deluged the streets of Paris, the clergy celebrated an extraordinary jubilee, and made a general procession. They even determined to consecrate an annual feast to a triumph so glorious; and whilst the (Roman) Catholic pulpits re-echoed with thanksgivings, a medal was struck with this legend: “_Piety has awakened Justice!_” The massacre of Saint Bartholomew was renewed in the provinces, and horrible to say, it lasted more than six weeks.

We would collect with a religious care the names of those governors who refused to imbrue their hands in these massacres. The Viscount d’Orte, at Bayonne; the Count de Tende, in Dauphiné; Saint Héran, in Auvergne; Chabot Charny and the President Jeannin, at Dijon; La Guiche, at Mâçon; de Rieux, at Narbonne; Matignon, at Alençon; Villars, at Nismes; the Count de Carce, in Provence; and the Montmorencys in their demesnes and governments.

We delight also, to be able to inscribe in this list the name of a priest, Jean Hennuyer, bishop of Lisieux. When the lieutenant of the king imparted to him the order for the massacre of the Huguenots, he answered: “No, no, sir, I oppose, and will always oppose the execution of such an order. I am the pastor of Lisieux, and these people, whom you command me to slaughter, are my flock. Although they have at present strayed, having quitted the pasture which Jesus Christ, the Sovereign Shepherd, has confided to my care, they may still come back. I do not see in the Gospel that the shepherd can permit the blood of his sheep to be shed; on the contrary, I find there, that he is bound to give his blood and his life for them.” Upon this the governor asked him for his own acquittance for a refusal in writing, and this the bishop Hennuyer gave him.[61]

The blow fell upon the provinces with a variable force. In those where the Reformed were few in number, as in Brittany, Picardy, Champagne and Burgundy, no great excesses were committed. In certain cantons of the provinces, on the contrary, where they were very numerous, as in Saintonge, and in Lower Languedoc, they did not dare to attack them. It is important also to observe, that in general, Saint Bartholomew’s day was nowhere so kept, but in the towns. This explains why so many Calvinists escaped death.

The faithful of Meaux were butchered in the prisons during several days, and the sword being too slow, iron hammers were employed. Four hundred houses, in the most handsome quarter of the town, were pillaged and devastated.

At Troyes, the executioner had more humanity than the governor, who gave him the command to massacre the prisoners. “It is against my duty,” said he, “for I have not learned to execute any one without a sentence of condemnation being first passed.” There were other executioners, who, finding their hearts fail them in the midst of the butchery, sent for wine to strengthen them for their work.

At Orleans, where there still remained three thousand Calvinists, men on horseback cried throughout the streets: “Courage, friends, kill all, and then you shall pillage their goods.” The most ruffianly were those who had abjured in the last wars; they parodied the psalms, whilst they immolated those whose faith they had forsworn.

At Rouen, many Huguenots took to flight; the rest were cast into prison. The massacre began only on the 17th September, and lasted four days. The prisoners were called over by their names, from a list given to the murderers. There perished, according to the relation of Crespin, near six hundred persons.

At Toulouse, the events of Paris were made known on Sunday, the 31st August. The gates of the town were instantly closed, and the Reformed, who had gone to celebrate their worship at the village of Castanet, were only admitted one by one, by little posterns. They were taken to the prisons and the convents. There they remained a month. It was not till the 3rd October that they were executed, by order of the chief president Dafis. Three hundred perished, amongst whom were five councillors, who after they were killed, were hanged in their robes on the great elm, which stood before the court of the palace.

The massacre of Bordeaux was delayed like that of Toulouse, and during these hesitations, a Jesuit named Augier declaimed every day from his pulpit against the pusillanimity of the governor. At length, companies of assassins were organized: they had the name of “_the red_, or _cardinal band_,” bestowed upon them.

The towns of Bourges, Angers, and many others, witnessed similar scenes. But these were trifling by the side of the massacres of Lyons: here there was a second Saint Bartholomew, more frightful still than that of Paris, because it was conducted with a sort of regularity. The governor Mandelot gave orders that the Calvinists should be shut up in the prisons of the Archbishoprics, of the Cordeliers, and of the Célestins, and be slaughtered in detachments. The executioner of Lyons, like his brother of Troyes, refused to lend his hand to the work. “After sentence,” said he, “I will do what I have to do; there are but too many such executioners as are needed residing in the town.” A writer says upon this subject: “What a re-establishment of order it would have been, if in this unhappy city the governor had been the executioner, and the executioner the governor!”[62]

There perished at Lyons, according to some, eight hundred, according to others, thirteen hundred, fifteen hundred, or eighteen hundred, Huguenots. The dwellers on the borders of the Rhone, in Dauphiné, and in Provence, stood aghast at the sight of so many corpses floating on the waters, or thrown up on the banks of the river; many were tied to long poles, and horribly mutilated. “At Lyons,” says Capilupi, a gentleman attached to the court of the pope, “thanks to the excellent order and singular prudence of M. de Mandelot, governor of the town, all the Huguenots were taken one after the other like sheep.”[63]

The correspondence of Mandelot has recently been published. He expressed his deep regret to Charles IX. that a few Huguenots had escaped, and supplicated his majesty to grant him a share of the spoils of the dead. Lyons has witnessed other massacres, but we have not learned that the proconsuls of the Convention held out their hands to clutch the wages of blood.

What was the number of victims throughout France? De Thou says 30,000; Sully, 70,000; the bishop Péréfixe, 100,000. This last figure is probably exaggerated, if we reckon those only who met with a violent death. But if there be added those who died of misery, hunger, grief, the aged, who were helpless and abandoned, women without shelter, children without bread, the many wretched beings, whose lives were shortened by this great catastrophe, it will be confessed that the number given by Péréfixe is still below the truth.

The sensation produced by the massacre of Saint Bartholomew throughout Europe was immense. Men were unwilling to believe the first accounts. When they were confirmed, all the courts, all the churches, all the public places, every house resounded with acclamations; and there was not a hut, into which the deeds done on that day did not carry, according to the sentiments of the inhabitants, the exultations of joy, or the stupor of overwhelming grief.

Many thought, at first, that it was only the first scene of a vast conspiracy, and that the (Roman) Catholic powers had resolved to exterminate all the Protestants of Europe. The Papacy, Philip II., and the court of Charles IX., in fact never ceased to talk of the complete extirpation of heretics: the power, not the will, was wanting.

At Rome, the news of the massacre, which Charles IX. had announced in ambiguous words to the legate, was expected, and received with transports of joy. The messenger was gratified with a present of a thousand pieces of gold. He brought a letter from the nuncio Salviati, written on the very day, the 24th August, in which this priest said to Gregory XIII., that “he blessed God to see his pontificate commence so auspiciously.” The king Charles IX., and the queen Catherine, were praised for having shown so much prudence in extirpating this pestilent race, and for having so well chosen their time that all the rebels had been secured under lock and key, as in a dovecot (_sotto chiave, in gabbia_).

After having offered up solemn thanksgivings with the college of cardinals, the pope caused the guns of the castle of Saint Angelo to be fired, declared a jubilee, and struck a medal in honour of the great event. The Cardinal de Lorraine, who had gone to Rome on the election of the new pontiff, also celebrated the massacre by a great procession to the French church of Saint Louis. He caused an inscription to be written on the gates in letters of gold, in which he said that “the Lord had granted the prayers, which he had offered to Him for twelve years!”

Madrid shared in the rejoicings of Rome. Philip II. wrote to Catherine that this was the greatest and best news that could ever be announced to him. This prince, who has been surnamed “the Demon of the South,” had other reasons for his joy besides fanaticism.

In the Low Countries, the duke of Alba cried out, on learning the assassination of Coligny: “The Admiral is dead; there is a great captain the less for France, and a great enemy the less for Spain.”

But how shall we relate the impression produced by the massacre of Saint Bartholomew in Protestant countries? It may be seen in the letters of Theodore de Bèze, and others of his contemporaries, that, for more than a year, they could not chase from their minds that bloody and horrible image, and that they spoke of it with a trembling, which attested the profound shock which their souls [had sustained].

Germany, England, Switzerland, in witnessing the arrival of a multitude of fugitives appalled and half-dead, and on hearing from their mouth the narrative of the massacres, cursed the name of France. At Geneva, a day of abstinence and prayer was instituted, which has been kept up to this day. In Scotland, all the pastors preached upon the massacre of Saint Bartholomew; and the aged Knox, borrowing the language of the prophets, pronounced in a church at Edinburgh the following words: “The sentence is gone forth against this murderer, the king of France, and the vengeance of God will not be withdrawn from his house. His name shall be held in execration by posterity; and no one who shall spring from his loins, shall possess the kingdom in peace, unless repentance come to prevent the judgment of God.”

The ambassador Lamothe-Fénélon, charged to justify the massacre at the court of London, on accusing the Admiral of having conspired against Charles IX., cried out in the bitterness of his spirit that he blushed to bear the name of a Frenchman. “Never,” says Hume, “was there a spectacle more terrible and more touching than that of the solemnity of this audience. A gloomy grief sat on every countenance; the profound silence of night seemed to reign in all the apartments of the queen. The lords and ladies of the court, in long mourning apparel, suffered the ambassador to pass between them without saluting him, or deigning to give him so much as a look.”[64] On coming near the queen, Lamothe-Fénelon stammered out his odious apology, and retired in confusion.

The justification of the massacre was not an easier matter in Germany. The ambassador Schomberg did what he could to support the fable of the plot of Coligny. They refused even to treat with him otherwise than in writing, so much did they mistrust an envoy of Charles IX.; so deeply degraded was the word, the honour, and the name of France! When the duke of Anjou traversed Germany in 1573, the Elector Palatine led him into his cabinet, and showing him the portrait of Coligny, said to him, “You know this man; you have killed the greatest captain of Christendom, and you ought not to have done it; for he had rendered great services to you and the king.” The duke of Anjou answered that it was the Admiral who had sought to destroy them all. “We know that tale, sir,” was the cold reply of the Elector.

If all the circumstances of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew be well weighed,—the premeditation, the intervention of the court and of the councils of the king, the snares that were laid to entrap the Calvinists, the solemn oaths which had drawn them to Paris, the royal marriage ceremony stained with blood, the dagger put into the hands of the people by the chiefs of the state, the hecatombs of human victims immolated at a time of universal peace, the carnage prolonged for two months in the provinces, and lastly, the priests and the princes of the priests, ankle-deep in blood, lifting their hands to heaven to thank God,—if, we say, we ponder upon all these circumstances, we cannot escape the conviction that the slaughter of Saint Bartholomew is the greatest crime of the Christian era since the invasion of the men of the North. The Sicilian Vespers, the extermination of the Albigeois, the tortures of the Inquisition, the murders committed by the Spaniards in the New World, odious though they be, do not unite in the same degree the violation of all laws, human and divine. And frightful calamities have sprung from this monstrous crime. Individuals may indeed commit crimes, which remain unpunished in this world; but dynasties, castes, and nations, never go unrewarded.

The race of the Valois was exterminated by the poniard, and nearly every actor in the massacre of Saint Bartholomew perished by a violent death.[65]

In France, the detestable reign of Henry III. followed, together with ignoble and brutal manners, laws despised, the madness of the League, and twenty-five years of civil war. Abroad, every old and natural alliance was broken off; Protestant Switzerland, Germany, England, were against France, or wrapped themselves in a suspicious neutrality; the country was at length reduced to a depth of opprobrium, submitting to the tutelage of the king of Spain, and of humbly begging for an army at Madrid. The great reigns of Henry IV. and of Richelieu could scarcely restore her to that place in Europe which she had lost, and they only restored her by a policy diametrically opposed to that of Saint Bartholomew’s day.

Where then was the compensation for so much disgrace, and so many misfortunes? One there was, if any chose to invoke it. Without the deeds of Saint Bartholomew’s day, the French Reformation, notwithstanding the losses it had suffered, would still have constituted an imposing minority; half the nobility of the kingdom would have remained in the new communion. It is doubtful whether Henry IV. would have abjured. In any case, the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes would have been impossible, and there might have been, in our time, with the progress of population, five or six millions of the Reformed in France. The massacre of that day, by murder, emigration, and abjuration, inflicted a wound, from which France has never recovered. Is this a justification of the crime?

But we would deprive those, who would dare appeal to it, of even this resource. “The execrable day of Saint Bartholomew,” says Châteaubriand, “only made martyrs; it gave to philosophical ideas an advantage over religious ideas, which have never since been lost.”[66]

Thus there have been some millions of Protestants the less, and several millions of philosophers or atheists the more; that is the balance of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew. What then did the priests gain by diminishing the number of the disciples of Luther and Calvin, in order to increase that of the followers of Montaigne and Voltaire? They gained the anti-Catholic reaction of the eighteenth century, the hostility of the Constituent Assembly, the massacres of the Abbaye, the proscriptions of 1793; and what besides?—the spirit of our own epoch. This spirit, which has passed from France into Italy, has not yet said its last word to (Roman) Catholicism!

XIV.

The Calvinists, who had survived the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, now only thought of organizing their means of defence. In Cevennes, Rouergue, Vivarais, and Dauphiné, they had the refuge of their mountains. In the plains of the south, fifty towns, large and small, Aubenas, Anduze, Milhau, Sommières, Privas, closed their gates, and resolved to oppose a desperate resistance to the king’s troops. At Nismes, the inhabitants were summoned to admit a garrison, but they refused, notwithstanding they were most vehemently threatened. A councillor, M. de Clausonne, “_a man of great credit in the district_,” says Jean de Serres, “had made them understand that firmness alone could save them.”

Some gentlemen and pastors, gathered together at Montauban, even drew up a project of religious and political federation, “_until it should please God to change the heart of the king, or to raise up a liberator for this poor afflicted people_.” Every town was to appoint a council of one hundred persons, without distinction of nobles, citizens, or peasants, to direct all affairs of justice, police, taxes, and war, and these councils were to elect a general chief. The utmost severity was recommended to be employed towards the seditious in arms; but they were to exercise moderation and gentleness towards peaceable (Roman) Catholics.

Catherine de Medicis and Charles IX. were then in a condition to become convinced that they were egregiously deceived in supposing that all would be at an end when the principal Calvinist leaders were no more. They had reckoned too much upon the strength of the old principle of vassalage, and not enough on the power of religious principle. The Reformation had given the feeling of a personal conscience to the humblest, which could but emanate from God, and this new sort of independence prepared the way for the advent of modern right.

Wheresoever resistance was possible, it showed itself, more decisively and obstinately than before; for in the prince they now saw only an enemy. The siege of Sancerre has remained famous. This little town held out for more than ten months against the royalist army, although the inhabitants, wanting fire-arms, were compelled to defend themselves with simple slings, which were called the arquebuses of Sancerre. It endured a famine, which brought back the recollection of that of Jerusalem, in the time of Titus and Vespasian. An eyewitness, the pastor Jean de Léry, has written the details of this siege, day by day. The inhabitants were reduced to feed upon snails, moles, and wild herbs, upon bread made with the flour of straw, mixed with slate-dust, harness of horses, and even the parchment of old books and title-deeds, which were steeped in water. “I have seen some served up,” says Léry, “on which the printed and written characters were still visible, and one might read from the pieces placed upon the table to be eaten.”

Moreover, from hour to hour the besieged fell from inanition. The war killed but eighty-four; hunger destroyed more than five hundred. “The young children under twelve years,” says Jean de Serres, “almost all died. It was lamentable to hear the wailings of the poor fathers and mothers, of whom nevertheless the greater part fortified themselves by the assurance of the grace of God. A boy of ten years old, drawing nigh unto death, seeing his parents weeping near him, and handling his arms and legs, which were as dry as wood, said to them: ‘Why do you weep to see me die of hunger? I do not ask you for bread, mother. I know you have none. But since God wills that I must thus die, we must be content. The holy Lazarus, did he not suffer hunger? Have I not read that in the Bible?’ Saying these words, he gave up his soul to God.”[67]

The inhabitants had resolved to perish to the last man, sooner than give themselves up to the cut-throats of Saint Bartholomew’s day. “Here we fight,” they said; “go and assassinate elsewhere.” An unexpected event delivered them. Deputies, who came from Poland to offer the crown of Jagellons to the duke of Anjou, interceded in their behalf, and the sureties they demanded were granted to them.

It was the same at La Rochelle. This town, which by its ancient municipal franchises, formed a kind of republic, and by its numerous vessels, equalled the forces of the royal navy, refused to receive a garrison. Fifty-five pastors of Poitou and of Saintonge, and a multitude of gentlemen, citizens, and peasants, had, on the first news of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, sought an asylum behind its lofty walls, all of whom were determined to defend themselves to the death. The proposals made to the people of La Rochelle having ended in nothing, and the besieging army having lost many men, Charles IX. took the strange course of sending a Calvinist negotiator and governor into the town, the upright Lanoue.

François de Lanoue, surnamed _Bras-de-Fer_, who had only figured in the second rank in the Huguenot armies, became their most distinguished chief after the death of Coligny. He was a man of a wise and penetrating mind, of a generous character, and of perfect loyalty. He was ever seen in these unhappy wars, forgetful of danger, intrepid without boasting, modest in victory, calm and serene under reverses. He was the Catinat of the sixteenth century.

From the peculiarity of his military life, Lanoue was four or five times made a prisoner. He bore this misfortune like a soldier who had deserved a better fate, and the (Roman) Catholics had learned to esteem him. Not one of the Reformed, without excepting even Coligny, has obtained from them so much praise. Two Jesuits, Maimbourg and Daniel, do homage to his rare virtues; they regret nothing in him but his heresy. The ferocious Montluc calls him as valiant and prudent a man as any captain in France; the frivolous Brantôme says it was impossible to grow tired of recounting his virtues, his valour, and his merits; the sceptic Montaigne praises his constancy as well as the gentleness of his manners. Lastly, when Lanoue died, Henry IV. pronounced over him, in a few words, the most beautiful of funeral orations: “He was a great warrior, and a still better man!”

During one of his long captivities, he composed some _political and literacy discourses_, of which a part form what are called his _Memoirs_. They are written in a terse, nervous style, in the language of a soldier and of an honest man, who speaks to do good, not to acquire applause.

Lanoue was a prisoner of the duke of Alva during the days of the Saint Bartholomew slaughter: it was this that saved him. Restored to liberty, he was charged by the king with the duty of offering conditions of peace to La Rochelle. He was personally well received, but his mission was rejected, and the inhabitants defended themselves until the arrival of the Polish deputies.

The duke of Anjou, who commanded the royal army, was annoyed at losing his troops and his reputation in this long siege, and waited impatiently for an opportunity of withdrawing without excessive disgrace. This was offered him by his election to the crown of Poland.

A new edict, published the 11th August, 1573, authorized the public exercise of the Reformed religion, but in three towns only—La Rochelle, Montauban, and Nismes. The lords high-justices were only allowed to celebrate marriages, baptisms, and sacraments, at private meetings, which were not to exceed ten persons. For all other Calvinists, nothing but the simple liberty of household worship was permitted. It was in this edict that the expression of “_pretended Reformed religion_,” was first used.

This was but one of those half-measures, contradictory in principle, and impracticable in action, which only served to exasperate the minds [of the persons concerned], and to augment the embarrassments of the case. If the worship of the Reformed religion was a crime, it ought to have been everywhere forbidden; if not, it should have been nowhere forbidden. And what was this arbitrary limitation of certain assemblies to ten persons? How could Calvinists be prevented from meeting together in places where they were in power? Did they purpose to place a garrison in every town and every village of the south, and post soldiers in all the gorges of the mountains?

The Reformed of Montauban drew up, on the 24th August, a year after the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, energetic remonstrances, day by day, in which they re-demanded all that had been accorded them by the treaty of 1570, and three noblemen undertook to present this petition to Charles IX. The king, whom they met at Villers-Coterets, contrary to his usual habit, listened to the reading of the memorial without giving utterance to a word. But Catherine exclaimed, in an irritated tone of voice, “If your prince Condé were still alive, and if he were in the heart of France with twenty thousand cavalry and fifty thousand infantry, he could not demand one-half of what these people have the insolence to propose to us.”

This was haughty language; but pride tells badly after infamous assassinations, and Catherine de Medicis was in no position to speak in so high a tone. There was nothing but trouble and anarchy throughout the kingdom; and even in the royal family division and disorder prevailed. The queen-mother feared the eldest of her sons, despised the youngest, loved only the second, who was on the point of starting for Poland, and was distrusted by all of them.

The three brothers were enemies, and their sister Margaret of Valois was stained with adultery and incest.

The party of the _Politicians_, or the Third Estate, was growing. It was composed of those, who had retained some remembrance of ancient national honour, and who felt profound disgust for a court filled with hired assassins, poisoners, astrologers, and prostitutes. The three sons of the Constable, François de Montmorency, Damville, and Thoré, the marshals Cossé and Biron, several provincial governors, magistrates, and members even of the privy council, were among the number of these politicians or malcontents. Their chief was the Duke d’Alençon, since known under the name of Duke d’Anjou, the last of Queen Catherine’s sons. His position as the king’s brother gave him credit; but this prince, then in his twentieth year, was wanting both in mental and bodily vigour, he was fickle, presumptuous, faithless to his word, and ready to throw himself into great enterprises, which he was incapable of carrying out to a successful issue.

He even circulated among the citizens new maxims of law and political liberty. It was at this period that La Boëtie published his treatise on _Voluntary Servitude_, which even now astonishes us by its boldness; and François Hotman his _Franco-Gallia_, in which he maintained that the States-General might depose bad princes, and appoint their successors.

These malcontents opened negotiations with the Calvinists, who had strengthened their bond of union at Milhau, on the 16th of December, 1573, by promising _fraternity, mutual, perfect, and eternal, in all things, civil and religious_. They had provided in their act of union for the regular convocation of their assemblies every six months, a new judicial code, and the course to be adopted in raising men and money. This was a state within the state; a sad but inevitable consequence of the overthrow of all law by the massacre of Saint Bartholomew. Charles IX. died in the midst of these troubles, beset by vague and sombre terrors, believing that he heard groans in the air, starting up out of his sleep at night, and affected with a strange malady, which caused his blood to ooze through every pore.

“Two days before his death, he had near him,” says D’Estoile, “his nurse, whom he much loved, _although she was a Huguenot_. As she was seated upon a box, and was just beginning to doze, she heard the king murmur, weep, and sigh, which induced her softly to approach his bed, when, drawing aside the curtains, the king, heaving a profound sigh, and weeping so much that his sobs interrupted his utterance, began to say to her: ‘Ah! my nurse, my nurse, what blood and what murders! Oh! that I should have followed such wicked counsel! O my God! pardon me, and have mercy upon me, if it please Thee; I know not where I am. What shall I do? I am lost, I see plain enough.’ The nurse replied to him: ‘Sire, these murders are upon those, who have caused you to commit them! And since you did not give your consent, and you now regret them, believe that God will not impute them to you, but will cover them with the mantle of His Son’s righteousness, in which alone you must take refuge.’ After this, she having fetched him a pocket-handkerchief, because his own was wet with tears, and his majesty having taken it in his hand, he signed her to retire and leave him to repose.”[68]

Charles IX. died on the 30th of May, 1574, not having yet attained the age of twenty-four years, and rejoicing, he said, that he left no male heir of tender age, inasmuch as he would have had too much to suffer.

XV.

Catherine de Medicis resumed the regency, which she had never really abdicated, and endeavoured to negotiate with the Calvinistic party and the malcontents, until the arrival of her second son, whom we shall now call Henry III. He escaped from Poland as from a prison. During his journey he received some good advice from the Emperor Maximilian, the doge of Venice, and even from the dukes of Savoy, who recommended him to re-establish peace in his kingdom by equitable edicts, which should be faithfully observed; but he derived no profit from these counsels.

Arrived in France in the month of September, 1574, Henry III. was joined by his mother at Bourgoin, and made with her a triumphal entry into Lyons. The Duke d’Alençon and the king of Navarre, who were free in appearance, but in reality captives, followed them. It was there that the course of conduct to be pursued towards the Calvinists and the politicians was discussed. Several members of the council,—Pibrac, Bellegarde, Christophe de Thou, Paul de Foix,—inclined to the side of moderation and compromise; but Catherine and her Italian confidants, Retz, Nevers, and Birague, held opposite views, and their opinion biassed that of Henry III. This prince, who was but twenty-three years of age, had shown some marks of courage before the treaty of 1570. He did not want for ability in business, nor for dignity and grace when he appeared in public. Unhappily, he had been corrupted by the voluptuousness of the court. He passed long hours in bedecking himself like a woman, and dishonoured the dignity of his manhood, and the majesty of a king, by riotous debauchery. The creatures by whom he was surrounded, led him into a contemptible and shameful indolence, and the baseness of his vices was only equalled by the extravagance of his superstition.

On his return to France, he joined the brotherhood of the Flagellants or _Frères-Battus_ of Avignon; and in a solemn procession, he led the white, Catherine the black, and Cardinal d’Armagnac the blue order of these _Frères-Battus_. They went through the city with naked feet, uncovered heads, with chaplets of death-bones at their girdles, and making blood spirt from their shoulders with cords. Some historians have been desirous of discovering political reasons under these ignoble masquerades. What is the use of going so far to seek for what is so near? Between the excess of depravity and the extreme of bigotry, there is a singular and close relationship.

In the month of December, the Cardinal de Lorraine caught a fever, from the effects of which he died. The queen-mother, whom history accuses of having been on too intimate terms with him, could not assume on this occasion her habitual dissimulation. On seating herself at table the same evening, as they handed her a glass, she began to tremble so much that it had almost fallen from her hands, and she exclaimed, “Jesus! it is the cardinal that I see.” During the night, for more than a month, she would not remain alone, being incessantly followed by this melancholy apparition, and saying to her women, “Drive away that cardinal; do you not see that he beckons me with his finger?” What was it that had passed between her and this priest that a woman like Catherine de Medicis should have been so terrified at his death?

At Paris Henry III. continued his devotional practices; his was the religion not of a king, but of a besotted monk. He caused oratories (otherwise called _paradis_) to be erected in the churches, where he took his place every day during Lent. He also followed the processions dressed in a false wig and ridiculous costume, and in the company of a fool called Sibillot, “the greatest scoundrel,” says Jean de Serres, “that could be found in France, who walked between his master and Cardinal de Ferrara; and whilst the priests sang the burden of their hymn _Ora pro nobis_, this fool was grinning and uttering silly jests, and playing ridiculous antics.” After this, Henry III. would proceed in his carriage with the queen his wife, through the streets, and by the houses of Paris, purchasing little dogs, monkeys, and other rare animals, for which he was made to pay their weight in gold.

At the end of six months he was despised even by the dregs of the people, and by his domestics. A placard in the following terms was distributed throughout the city: “Henry, by the grace of his mother, inert king of France, porter of the Louvre, churchwarden of Saint Germain l’Auxerrois, harlequin of the churches of Paris, plaiter of his wife’s collars, and her hair-dresser, guardian of the four mendicants, conscript father of the Blancs-Battus, and protector of the Capuchins.”

The number of malcontents still increased, and made more direct proposals of alliance to the Calvinists. They were divided as to the course which they ought to adopt. On one side were the Consistorial Reformed, as they were called, on the other, the nobles, great personages, magistrates, and councillors of the towns. This distinction had already been made in the first wars, and it became more marked in those which followed.

The Consistorials, composed mostly of clergymen, principally occupied themselves with the interests of the faith, and only wished to perform their duties quietly. Tradesmen and merchants, for the most part considering these questions under their most simple aspect, and deciding upon them in a religious point of view, felt more repugnance than the others to taking up arms, and only did so at the last extremity, when they were absolutely prevented from serving God according to their conscience; nevertheless when they were once on the battle-field, they would not accept peace without a sufficient guarantee for the liberty of the church. The nobles, on the contrary, always on the alert to raise levies, were more ready to compromise religious differences, and looked mainly to their personal position in the state. The Consistorials were the strongest in number, but the weakest in rank; they were habitually compelled to submit to the domination of the Calvinist nobility, and to share their fortunes.

This was the result of their alliance with the malcontents. It was concluded in Languedoc, notwithstanding the opposition of the Consistorials, and the consequences of it were soon apparent. “The dissoluteness and strange scandals of the politicians, who were mixed with the religious orders,” says a contemporary, “finished by extinguishing whatever warmth of affection for piety and discipline remained to them. Marshal Damville cared but little to observe the conditions promised by him, and included in the association. However, he made use of fair expressions to the clergy and others; but debauchery advanced, and flowed along far and wide, like a torrent. Exactions and brigandage perceptibly increased.”[69] The war continued with varying results, and without any decisive battle being fought. The heroic defence of the small town of Livron, in Dauphiné, has been related. When Henry III. presented himself before its gates in the month of January, 1575, the besieged called out from the ramparts, “Ah! murderers, you shall not stab us in our beds, as you did the Admiral and others. Bring out these bedaubed and perfumed favourites; let them see if they can hold up their heads, even against our women!” Henry III. was compelled to swallow this insult; two-thirds of his little army perished before the town, and the siege was raised. The prince of Condé and the king of Navarre, who had been retained at court since the events of Saint Bartholomew’s day, succeeded in making their escape, and abjured (one at Strasbourg, the other at Tours) the (Roman) Catholic faith, which, under fear of assassination, had been imposed upon them. The Duke d’Alençon himself took refuge in his appanage of Dreux, and published a manifesto, in which he took the French of both religions under his safeguard.

Having no longer either men or money wherewith to oppose the confederates, who threatened to march on Paris, the court endeavoured to gain over the chiefs of the Third Estate, by offering them personal advantages, and submitting very favourable articles of peace to the Calvinists—free exercise of their religion throughout the kingdom, except at Paris, and within a circle of two leagues; admission to all public offices; equal numbers in the Parliaments: eight places of surety; the right to open schools and convoke synods; the restoration of the memory of Coligny; and, in short, the re-establishment of the king of Navarre, of the prince of Condé, and of the nobles of the religion in their appanages and governments. This treaty, called the _Peace of Monsieur_, because it had been concluded under the guarantee of the king’s brother, was signed at Chastenoy, on the 6th of May, 1576.

Catherine and Henry III. only proposed, in putting their signatures to this treaty, to dissolve the alliance of the politicians with the Calvinists. This accomplished, it was treated as void. The (Roman) Catholics of Picardy were secretly authorized to repulse the prince of Condé, who had come to take possession of his government, and persecution did not cease for a single day.

The Reformed of Paris, to adduce only one example, in obedience to the edict, which enabled them to worship at two leagues from the city, held a meeting at Noisy-le-Sec. The populace, on their return, killed several of them, and wounded a larger number. Complaint was made to the king, who at this moment was playing at the ring, dressed as an Amazon (says d’Estoile), but he took no more notice of them than if these murders had been committed in another part of the world.

One article of this treaty had decreed the early convocation of the States-General. They eventually assembled at Blois, in the month of December, 1576; but no longer with the spirit of the States of Orleans. A great part of the nobility had again joined the (Roman) Catholic church, and the misfortunes of the kingdom had ulcerated the heart of the citizens. The deputies of the three orders agreed to demand the unity of religion. They prayed the king to command the ministers, deacons, superintendents, schoolmasters, and other teachers, to quit the kingdom, in default of which they should be proceeded against as guilty of a capital crime.

Unity, thus expressed, was nothing else than war. But to make war, money was necessary; and when this was alluded to, each of the three orders excused itself. The clergy declared that they had been very much impoverished by the disorders of the kingdom, and could give nothing; the nobility only offered their swords; and the Third Estate commissioned its speaker to say, that it contemplated the reunion of all the king’s subjects by gentle means, without war—a great and puerile mockery.

The Calvinists, however, at the news of these resolutions, had again recourse to arms; but, deprived of the aid of the malcontents of the (Roman) Catholic party, and disunited among themselves, their plans did not prosper. The Consistorialists, this time, were the most determined, because with them it had become a question of losing all, or saving all, in the exercise of their religion. Earnest remonstrances were therefore addressed to the nobles by the consistory of La Rochelle. Theodore de Bèze wrote from Geneva: “I cannot in good conscience see how we can consent to limit the spirit of God to certain places; above all, to shut it out from the towns, which do not die and change, like the hearts and houses of princes. I cannot bring my mind to believe that God either can or will bless such agreements, and I would counsel you to place your heads on the block, and to suffer everything without resistance, if it must come to that, rather than approve of such conditions.” These complaints of the Consistorials were disregarded, and the nobles of the party signed a peace at Bergerac, in the month of September, 1577. On the 8th of October following, appeared the Edict of Poitiers, which only granted to the mass of the Reformed the simple liberty of conscience, with admission to public offices. The exercise of religion was limited to the places, in which it was professed when the treaty was under signature. Henry III. boasted of this edict as his own work; he liked to say, “_My edict, my treaty_;” but it was no better observed than those which had preceded it.

XVI.

Catherine de Medicis had conceived a method of overcoming the Huguenot nobles, during the peace, whom it had been found impossible to vanquish by arms; and this was by debauching them. She passed through the provinces with a numerous troop of maids of honour (sometimes to the number of one hundred and fifty), who were called her flying squadron. Everywhere throughout her progress, balls, _fêtes_, gallantries, and intrigues took place, in the midst of which the former austerity of the companions of Coligny was lost.

It was thus, under the pretext of conducting Margaret of Valois to the house of her husband, the king of Navarre, that Catherine set out, in the month of July, 1578, for the southern provinces. The Béarnese king, who had too soon forgotten the lessons of his mother during his long residence at the Louvre, could not resist the seductions with which he was surrounded. “The court of the king of Navarre,” says Agrippa d’Aubigné, “was renowned for its brave nobility and virtuous ladies. Idleness attracted vice to it, as heat draws serpents. The queen of Navarre took the rust off their wits, and let it gather on their arms. She taught the king her husband that a cavalier was without a soul when he was without an amour.”[70]

The same historian relates that Catherine de Medicis affected a style of language borrowed from the Bible. She had composed a vocabulary of expressions in use among the most rigid of the Reformed, and made use of them, sometimes as a matter of policy, and sometimes in derision. “She had learned by heart,” says he, “several phrases, which she termed Consistorial; as, _to approve of the counsel of Gamaliel_; or, _beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace_; to call the king, _the anointed of the Lord, the image of the living God_, with several sentences of the Epistle of St. Peter, in favour of dominion; she would often exclaim, _Let God judge between you and us! I call the Eternal to witness! Before God and his angels!_ This style, which the ladies called among themselves the _language of Canaan_, was studied in the evening, when the queen retired to rest, and not without merriment.”[71]

Before and after the _fêtes_, conferences were held, from which resulted the explicative Treaty of Nérac, signed on the 28th of February, 1579. It added nothing essential to the Edict of Poitiers. The king of Navarre obtained only some fresh places of safety in Guienne and Languedoc, on condition that he should only retain them for six months.

An intrigue of the court caused arms again to be taken up, and this ridiculous quarrel was named _the war of the amorous_; but the great body of the Reformed took no part in it. It terminated by the signing of a peace at the castle of Fleix, in Périgord, on the 26th of November, 1580, which treaty confirmed the Edict of Poitiers; the Béarnese king, however, conquered, the appanage being given as a dowry to his wife in Agenois and Quercy.

Four or five years elapsed without war being declared, but they passed neither with security nor repose. Upon different occasions, the Reformed sent whole volumes of grievances and remonstrances to the court. Promises of reparation were made, but the next day the council troubled themselves no more about them.

Another means was invented of weakening the Calvinist party, and it had better success than all its predecessors. This was to remove or leave out the Huguenots from public appointments. Although the Edict of Pacification accorded to them an equal right of admission to all public offices, a thousand pretexts were made use of to elude this article. It was an indirect and underhand persecution, but it was both systematic and constant.

Mézeray pretends that these proceedings converted more of the Reformed in four years than either the executioner or war had done in forty. This is saying too much. It is certain, however, that many nobles yielded to the temptation of holding offices or court favours. Some, according to the historian Elie Benoît, ashamed of abandoning their religion themselves, made their children renounce it on the score of affection and paternal foresight. Others, on the contrary, declared themselves (Roman) Catholics, that they might enter upon offices, and caused their children to be brought up in the Reformed communion, in order, as they said, to tranquillize their conscience. Has the human heart ever been found deficient in sophisms when desirous of gratifying its passions?

But the more ardent (Roman) Catholics again complained, and also accused the leniency of Henry III. and Queen Catherine. Their spirit of opposition was increased by the death of the duke of Alençon or Anjou, which took place in 1584. Henry III. had no children, and his physicians feared that he would not survive the year. The race of Valois then would become extinct. Who would succeed him? Henry of Bourbon, according to the ancient laws of the kingdom. He was the nearest heir male, and no one could contest with him the title of first prince of the blood. But a heretic, an apostate, one who had relapsed (for they affected to look in a serious light at the abjuration, which had been imposed upon him at the massacre of Saint Bartholomew), one, in short, excommunicated by the Holy See, should he mount the throne of the most Christian kings? This single thought shocked three-fourths of the nation, and the League experienced an immense augmentation.

The _League_ or _Holy Union_ had existed since the year 1576. It even dated further back, and extended beyond the French frontier. The Cardinal de Lorraine formed the plan at the Council of Trent; the Jesuits had adopted and enlarged it; Philip II., the popes, and Duke Henry of Guise, had successively put their hand to it, and by degrees the association became developed to such an extent as to aspire to rouse (Roman) Catholic Europe in order that it might crush Protestantism. It was in France that the first blow was struck.

After having exterminated the Huguenots, the new crusaders would have overthrown the rebels of Holland, then they would unitedly have invaded England, and afterwards Germany and the north, never stopping until they had either brought back the last of the disciples of Luther and Calvin to the Church of Rome, or drowned them in their own blood.

Philip II. was the principal leader of this vast conspiracy. In his retreat of San-Lorenzo he incessantly revolved, as the published correspondence of our times attests, these great and dark thoughts. He understood but two things in the world,—the sovereign power of the prince in political matters, and the popes infallibility in questions of religion. The right of resistance to the temporal power, and the privilege of search on points of faith, were in his eyes the most detestable of crimes. All authority, in his idea, was concentrated in the hands of a few chiefs, and there was no liberty beyond or beneath them. The two swords were to strike together, to keep the people enslaved and trembling; and he added the axe of the executioner, with the fire of the inquisitor, and even the poniard of the assassin; for this (Roman) Catholic king descended to such a depth of infamy as to confer letters of nobility on the relations of Balthazar Gérard, the murderer of the prince of Orange. Philip II. had conceived this execrable system of terrorism, that it might redound to the profit of royalty and the pontificate. But it only resulted in the downfall of Spain and the execration of posterity.

The Holy See entertained implacable resentment at the sight of heresy raising itself up so pertinaciously, and was desirous of establishing at any cost, the one faith, under one single spiritual chief. Cardinals, bishops, priests, Jesuits, and monks of all orders, went about spreading these maxims of extermination, at the courts and in the bosom of the people, from the pulpits and in the confessional.

In France, Henry of Guise, _le Balafré_, was the soul of the League. Keeping himself at first in obscurity, he at length came more prominently forward, and made himself esteemed by the masses, in proportion to the contempt which Henry III. inspired. He endeavoured to be affable to wards the lower orders, was a sure friend, an inexorable enemy, generous towards those who were serviceable to him, prodigal of gold to the covetous, and never wanting in promises to the ambitious; he also showed attentions to the citizens and artisans of Paris, which were very flattering to their vanity. Capable of profound dissimulation, he yet assumed the frank and open air of a soldier. As a great captain he understood still better the art of gaining victories at the proper time, than that of merely achieving them. He evinced much zeal for the church of Rome, but without falling into the abject devotions of Henry III.; and, always watchful of his fortunes, he thought nothing more of religion than as a means of improving them.

One of the dependants of his house, Jacques d’Humières, was employed in 1576 to recruit in the cities of Picardy for adherents to the League, and that association soon spread through all the provinces. There was some difference in the articles which were presented for them to swear to, and to sign, but their ultimate object was the same—a mutual understanding between the members of the union; absolute obedience to the secret chief of the League; and an engagement to sacrifice everything, body and goods, in order to exterminate heretics and to re-establish the unity of religion.

The association was composed of very different elements. For the Guises, it was a question of aggrandizement and power; for one portion of the citizens and magistrature, a means of establishing public order; for another part, a precautionary measure against the reprisals, which the Calvinists might adopt towards the murderers and spoliators of Saint Bartholomew’s day; for the tradespeople, a manifestation of antipathy against the Huguenots; and for the priesthood, an affair of religious domination. Among these, as it always happens, there were conscientious men, who devoted themselves to the prosecution of an idea; and ambitious or hypocritical individuals, who thrived upon the sincerity of others. The most moderate were made to figure in the advance-guard, for fear of frightening the well-disposed; but those who were high in rank were resolved to reap all the advantages of the conspiracy.

At Paris, the prebendary Launoy, the curates Prévôt and Boucher, and adventurers of every description, addressed themselves to the very lowest orders,—the men of the slaughter-houses, mariners, horse-dealers, and street-porters,—and told them that the Huguenots were watching their opportunity to cut the throats of all good (Roman) Catholics, and that ten thousand of them were concealed in the faubourg Saint Germain, ready to commence the massacre. The most violent clubs assembled in the churches, and the preachers, monks, or doctors of the Sorbonne, hounded on the people to the most bloody excesses, invoking the will of Heaven. The same provocatives were repeated throughout the kingdom, and the League became a formidable combination.

Henry III., not daring openly to oppose the League, thought that he should perform a master-piece of policy by signing the articles of the union with his own hand; but he only emboldened the League and disgraced himself. From being king, he became the second among the conspirators, and a conspirator despised by his accomplices.

The League demanded that he should declare the king of Navarre disinherited, and name the Cardinal de Bourbon as his heir, an old man of upwards of sixty years of age, of limited capacity, of feeble character, and a priest of little reputation, since he had lived in habits of effeminate and dissolute luxury. This cardinal would have made way for the duke of Guise. Henry III. was aware of this, he knew also that the Lorraines only awaited an opportunity of making him turn monk, and shutting him up in a cloister, as other do-nothing kings had been treated in times gone by.

At this critical moment Henry III. displayed some courage, and refused. The kingdom was then a prey to the greatest anarchy; neither authority, government, nor law any longer existed. The Leaguers published manifestoes in the name of the Cardinal de Bourbon, and by treachery or force obtained possession of Toul, Verdun, Lyons, Châlons, Bourges, and other important towns. Henry III., who had no army to oppose to them, contracted a peace with the duke of Guise, at the expense of the Huguenots. He engaged by the treaty of Nemours, signed in 1585, to deprive them not only of the public exercise of their religion, but also of liberty of conscience. It was ordered that all the Calvinist clergy should quit the kingdom at the expiration of a month, and that all the Reformed should abjure or emigrate at the end of six months, under penalty of death and confiscation of their property. This term was shortly afterwards reduced to fifteen days, as if it were intended to take away from these abjurations even the appearance of good faith.

In thus putting an end to war on one side, it again broke out on the other. It no longer originated in some wretched court quarrel, but it became a war of liberty, of religion, of fortune, and for existence itself.

The Edict of Nemours was apparently intended to be so rigorously executed, that the king rejected the request of some poor women, who prayed to be permitted to live with their children in some corner of France, which it might please his majesty to assign to them. Henry III. would only promise to have them conveyed without injury or insult to England. Some women were even burned at Paris after the treaty,—the atrocious laws of Henry II. were again reverted to.

Some timid Calvinists endeavoured to find refuge by the use of equivocal terms, such as: “Since it pleases the king,” &c., and in that manner they subscribed, not an abjuration, but an act of obedience to the royal will. The bishops perceived this, and were most rigorous with those whom they admitted. One of them, the Bishop d’Angers, gave directions that none of the Huguenots should be received until they had undergone a lengthened course of instruction, and a strict examination on points of faith. Thus the prince enjoined their conversion in fifteen days, and the bishops repulsed those, who were not minutely versed in all the details of the Romish doctrines. Thus there was nothing but contradictions.

Henry III. did not, however, wish to crush the Calvinist party entirely; he feared lest too much power should be given to the League, and to the duke of Guise. His most ardent desire was to ruin each of the two parties by means of the other, and he was frequently heard to mutter: “I will be revenged upon my enemies by my enemies.”

Seeing that the king was deficient in energy in the prosecution of the heretics, Pope Sixtus V. lost patience, and fulminated a bull of excommunication against the Bourbons, which twenty-five cardinals signed with him. It stated that Henry of Bourbon, formerly king of Navarre, and Henry, also of Bourbon, Prince de Condé, being heretics, having relapsed into heresy, and not having repented, were deprived of all their principalities, they and their heirs for ever. If any one again dared to obey “this bastard and detestable race of Bourbons,” and to recognise as his sovereign this former king of the pretended kingdom of Navarre, he should incur the same excommunication. Never, even in the most violent invectives against “the _ci-devant_ king, Louis Capet,” did the Convention of 1793 so completely fail in decency and modesty.

The Béarnese king replied to this insolent bull, by causing a protest to be posted up, on the 6th of November, 1585, in all the public resorts of Rome, commencing thus: “Henry, by the grace of God, king of Navarre, sovereign prince of Béarn, first peer and prince of France, protests against the declaration and excommunication of Sixtus V., calling himself pope of Rome, declares that it is false, and appeals against the same as slanderous to the court of the Peers of France. And in that, which touches the crime of heresy, of which he is falsely accused by the declaration, he says and maintains that Sixtus, calling himself pope in that behalf, hath falsely and maliciously lied, and that he is himself a heretic, as shall be made manifest in full council freely and lawfully assembled.” It is said that Sixtus, astonished by so bold an act, began from that time properly to appreciate the character of his adversary.

XVII.

The prince of Condé was first in the field; still young and full of zeal for religion, he was impatient to vindicate his claim to the high place, to which his birth entitled him. But he possessed less military talent than courage; he passed the Loire upon false intelligence, and having advanced too far, lost at the gates of Angers the first army, which was raised against the Leaguers.

In Languedoc, the Duke de Montmorency (formerly Marshal Damville) renewed his alliance with the Calvinist party, and nothing took place in this province but the encounters of partisans. Lesdiguières, at the head of the Huguenots of Dauphiny, took possession of several strong places, and managed to keep all that country quiet. The king of Navarre maintained his position in Guienne. Henry III. courted him, and proposed that he should change his religion, in order to deprive the League of its most formidable argument; and Catherine de Medicis, always ready to open negotiations, visited and conferred with the Béarnese king, towards the end of the year 1586, at the castle of Saint Bris, near Cognac. But her Italian _finesse_ this time met with no success.

The war continued without any important engagement until the battle of Coutras. The two armies met on the 20th of October, 1587. They presented a striking contrast. On the side of the Calvinists there were from five to six thousand men, badly attired, with buffalo-skins in tatters, and having no other ornaments than their faithful swords and good cuirasses. On the side of the (Roman) Catholics, who were commanded by the Duke de Joyeuse, there were from ten to twelve thousand men, the flower of the courtiers, dressed in silk and velvet, with arms chased with silver and enamel, their lances adorned with large streamers, floating plumes, and bearing on their scarfs the mottoes of their mistresses. The former were soldiers fashioned in trouble and hardship; the latter elegant cavaliers, who seemed as if they had assembled to assist at a tournament.

Some days before the battle, at the instance of the faithful Mornay, Henry publicly expressed his repentance for having brought dishonour upon a family of La Rochelle. Upon being told that the clergy were very severe towards him, “A person cannot,” said he, “humiliate himself too much before God, nor too boldly brave mankind.”

At the commencement of the battle the Reformed kneeled down, and sang the 118th Psalm:—“This is the day that the Lord hath made,” &c. “S’death,” cried the nobles in Joyeuse’s camp, “they tremble—the poltroons—they confess!” “Gentlemen,” said an old officer, “when the Huguenots are in this vein they are ready to fight well.”

They fought bravely, in truth, and the rout of the (Roman) Catholics was complete. The Duke de Joyeuse fell, together with half his army. The Béarnese king showed great humanity after the victory; he gave orders that the wounded should be cared for, dismissed nearly all the prisoners without ransom, and deplored that so much French blood had been shed.

At the news of this defeat, the indignation of the League was redoubled against Henry III., and the doctors of the Sorbonne decided at a conventicle, that the crown might be taken from an incapable prince, as a worthless guardian is deprived of the charge intrusted to him. All eyes were now turned towards the duke of Guise, who had just cut in pieces a numerous army of German troopers that had been sent to aid the Huguenots.

In consequence of this success, the popularity of the Balafré had greatly increased. The pope sent him a sword which he had blessed; Philip II. and the duke of Savoy congratulated him; and the Parisians, excited by the voice of the priesthood, proclaimed him the saviour of the Church.

He showed himself grateful for the assistance of the clergy; for, at a meeting held at Nancy, it was by his means decided that a proposal should be made to the king to publish the canons of the Council of Trent, and to institute the Holy Inquisition in France;—“a worthy means,” said the manifesto, “of exterminating heresy, provided the officers of the Inquisition be strangers.”

From the enthusiasm of the priests and people sprung the day of the Barricades, the 12th of May, 1588. Henry of Guise was carried in triumph to the Louvre; and the king, whose personal liberty was endangered, fled disguised as a countryman, accompanied by some footmen, swearing in his heart, death to him whom he called “_the king of Paris_.”

Five months afterwards, he opened the second States-General of Blois, which were entirely composed of Leaguers. He protested by the most solemn oaths that he was desirous of labouring to accomplish the total extirpation of heresy, and that no one should be more ardent in the work than himself. But he was not believed. The duke of Guise alone possessed the confidence of the States, and had only another step to ascend in order to seat himself upon the throne of France.

Henry III. prevented this by causing him to be assassinated on the 23rd of December, by some of his nobles. “Ah! my friends, ah! my friends,” exclaimed the Balafré, when he felt that he was pierced by a dagger, “have mercy!” When all was over, the king came out of his closet, and asked one of the murderers, “Do you think that he is dead, Loignac?” “I believe that he is, sire; he has the hue of death upon him,” was the answer. Henry having for a moment looked at his victim, kicked him in the face. Had the duke retained a last breath of life, he could but then have remembered the murdered Coligny.

Henry III. left the room and visited his mother, who was ill in bed. “The king of Paris exists no longer, madam,” said he; “henceforth I shall reign alone; I have now no rival.” “It is a clean cut, my son,” replied Catherine, “but it must be sewn up again; have you taken proper precautions?”

Twelve days after this event Catherine died, leaving her last son with an insecure crown, the kingdom inflamed, and the whole nation discontented. She descended to the tomb amid the execration of the Calvinists, and the disdain of the (Roman) Catholics. “There were none to care for her, her malady, or her death,” says L’Estoile, “and no more notice was taken of her than of a dead she-goat.” Lincestre, one of the preachers of the League, in announcing this news to the people, said, “A difficulty presents itself to-day, and that is whether the Church should pray for one, who has lived so ill, and so often countenanced heresy; upon which I would say, that if you should think it worth while to venture upon giving her a _Pater_ or an _Ave_, as an act of charity, it will be as useful to her as it can be.” Here then were the fruits of thirty years of intrigue, treason, and crime.

The murder of the duke of Guise interposed an abyss between the king and the Leaguers. Seventy theologians of the Sorbonne, after having attended mass, absolved the people from their oath of fealty. The priests formed a procession of one hundred thousand children, who carried lighted tapers, and extinguished them by trampling them underfoot, whilst repeating, “God grant that the race of Valois may soon become utterly extinct!” From the pulpits, dreadful imprecations were denounced against Henry III.; the duty of regicide was openly proclaimed, and one of the preachers declared that France could only recover from its malady by a potion of French blood.

Reduced to the greatest extremity, and compelled to shut himself up in the city of Tours as a last resource, Henry III. made advances to the Calvinists, who were in possession of the country on the other side of the Loire.

The latter had undertaken no enterprise of importance. They had lost, in the month of March, 1588, Henry of Condé, their second chief in rank, but the first perhaps in the confidence with which he inspired them. This prince died at Saint Jean d’Angély, at the age of thirty-four years. His early death, and the mysterious circumstances attending it, gave rise to suspicion that he had been poisoned, which was confirmed after the body had been opened. His wife, Princess Charlotte de la Trémoille, a recent convert, and surrounded by a (Roman) Catholic family of high rank, was accused of the crime. This affair, however, which was subsequently brought before the Parliament of Paris, has never been properly cleared up.

Whilst the League held its States-General at Blois, the Calvinists convoked a political assembly at La Rochelle. It was opened on the 14th of November, 1588, in the town-hall. The king of Navarre attended with Viscount de Turenne, Prince de la Trémoille, and the other nobles of their party. There was more order and respect for authority displayed in this assembly than at that at Blois. Rules were determined upon in reference to the administration of justice, the finances, the levy of soldiers, military discipline, and to all those objects, which were of interest to the common weal. Before separating, the deputies addressed a memorial to Henry III., in which they prayed for the re-establishment of the Edict of January.

After the death of the duke of Guise, the Béarnese king addressed a manifesto to the three estates of France, in which he protested his fidelity to the crown, and invited the French nation to put an end to their differences. “I conjure you all, then,” said he, in conclusion, “Catholics, servants of the king, as well as those who are not so; I appeal to you as Frenchmen; I beseech you to have pity on this state and on yourselves. We have all committed and suffered evil enough. We have been intoxicated, senseless and furious, for four years. Is not this sufficient? Has not God visited all enough to make us wise now, and to appease our wrath?”

Although the two kings had a common interest in coming to an understanding, long hesitation was manifested on both sides. Could Henry tender his hand to his oldest enemies? Would he not, in calling them to his aid, justify all the reproaches of the Leaguers, who accused him of never having ceased to hold secret correspondence with the Huguenots? And the Calvinists on their side, did they not know that the hatred of Henry III. against heresy was inveterate, and that he could never become sincerely reconciled to the brothers and sons of those, whom he had massacred on Saint Bartholomew’s day? Could they so forget that inconceivable, that shameful speech of Henry III. before the Estates of Blois, that even when he promised by the most sacred oaths to spare the heretics, he was not to be believed? But notwithstanding these mutual dislikes, they were forced to yield to necessity.

On the 30th April, 1589, the two kings had a first interview at the castle of Plessis-les-Tours, an old manor of Louis XI. The Béarnese king caused a portion of his nobility to cross the water, and entered the boat with his guards. During the passage, he only said to Marshal d’Aumont, who had been sent to him by the king, “Marshal, I go upon your word.” Arrived at the other bank, he kneeled before Henry III., who raised and embraced him.

On the same day he wrote to Mornay: “The ice has been broken, not without numerous warnings, that if I ventured, I was a dead man.” His faithful minister replied to him, “Sire, you have acted as you should, but as no one ought to have counselled you.”

From this period the affairs of Henry III. took a favourable turn. The Leaguers were defeated in several encounters. An army of forty-two thousand men, commanded by the two kings, advanced to the gates of Paris and prepared to commence a general assault. The Duke de Mayenne had only eight thousand disheartened troops. The leaders of the League began to lose all hope, the priests were cast down; the Reformed looked forward to a better future, when the knife of a Dominican monk, Jacques Clément, disconcerted at the same time the hopes and the fears of each party.

Henry III. died of his wound, at the end of eighteen hours, on the 10th August, 1589. With him the race of Valois became extinct. Francis I. met with a shameful death; Henry II. was mortally wounded in a tournament; Francis II. did not attain the age of manhood; Charles IX. expired in the convulsions of an unknown malady; the Duke d’Alençon prematurely expired in debauchery and disgrace; and Henry III. perished by the knife of an assassin. The Valois carry on their forehead the ineffaceable brand of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew.[72]

If history ought not to be a mere object of curiosity, it is still desirable to tell what were the ideas of religion and the manners of this court, where such fanatic intolerance was paramount.

After the celebration of mass, astrologers were visited at their houses, in order to procure philtres and poisons. All the magic arts, all the witchcraft imported from Italy by Catherine de Medicis, were in vogue. The courtiers kept small wax figures in their cabinets, and pierced their hearts with pins, pronouncing at the same time cabalistic words, in order, as they believed, to cause the death of their enemies.

Religious ceremonies were made use of to rouse the vilest and most sanguinary passions. The sermons of priests connected with the League, like torches, inflamed the whole kingdom. Processions were projected to excite the ferocity of the populace, and frequently presented spectacles of indecency and impiety. At Chartres, after the day of the barricades, a Capuchin represented before Henry III. the Saviour ascending Calvary. He had painted drops of blood, that appeared to ooze from his head, which was crowned with thorns; he seemed to drag along with difficulty a cross of painted cardboard, and fell down at intervals, uttering piercing cries. At Paris, after the assassination of the duke of Guise, men, women, and young girls, covered only with a chemise or sheet, formed night-processions; and in the midst of sacred songs gave themselves up to Saturnalia, worthy of the pagan world in its most vicious days.

The soldiers of the League, who bore arms which had been blessed by the priests, committed acts of infamy, even on the steps of altars. The atrocities perpetrated in the churches of Saint-Symphorien, in that of D’Arquenay, and in a crowd of others, cannot be related.

Religion of the king, religion of the court, religion of the clergy, religion of the people and of the soldiers,—what wretched mockery was it all! Manners were on the same level; the cardinal of Lorraine, and the greater part of the prelates, impudently violated all the laws of chastity. The Balafré was leaving a night debauch when he was assassinated. Margaret of Valois, the princess of Condé, the duchesses of Nemours, of Guise, of Montpensier, of Nevers, led a life of the foulest immorality. Two of them having caused the heads of their lovers to be cut off, kissed and embalmed them, and each kept that of her own lover among her love-tokens. It is well known in what manner the duchess of Montpensier, sister of Henry of Guise, nerved the arm of Jacques Clément.

Everywhere there was a hideous admixture of blood and superstition. The great nobles employed hired assassins and duellists, who killed each other as a pastime, without remorse or pity; every day two were pitted against two, four against four, a hundred against a hundred; and the address of an assassin or poisoner could then be as easily procured as that of an hotel-keeper in the present day.

As a last instance, the assassin, the regicide, Jacques Clément, was canonized from all the pulpits as “_the most blessed child of Dominique, the holy martyr of Jesus Christ_.” His portrait was placed on the altars with these words: “_Saint Jacques Clément, pray for us._” When his mother came to Paris, the nuns addressed her in the language of the Evangelist: “Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked.” And Pope Sixtus V., more infamous still, declared in full consistory, that the action of the martyr Jacques Clément might be compared, as regarded the safety of the world, to the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus Christ.[73]

A church that has uttered such blasphemies by the mouth of its chief, should for ever seek pardon both from God and man. It should moreover bless that principle of tolerance, which has imposed upon it both the Reformation and philosophy; for it is this alone, which prevents its relapse into the degraded condition of former times.

XVIII.

Religion was but a secondary matter in the war between Henry IV. and the League, and in the other events of this epoch. We need not relate them, since they belong to the general history of the country, and not to our special subject.

Thirty years earlier, the advent of a Calvinist prince to the throne of France would perhaps have made the Reformed the dominant religion; but in 1589 all was changed. Far from deriving advantage, the affairs of the Reformed were compromised by the event. Henry of Navarre, as lieutenant of Henry III., could dictate his own conditions; it was necessary that as king, he should accept those of the (Roman) Catholics. He had their desertion to dread, whilst he did not fear that he should be abandoned by his co-religionists. He therefore did little for his own party, but much for that of his adversaries, according to that old court maxim, that “enemies should be gratified at the expense of those friends whose support may be depended upon.”

Before taking an oath of fidelity, the (Roman) Catholic nobles demanded that he should again enter the communion of the Romish church. It was the Marquis d’O, superintendent of the finances, who conveyed to him this message—a singular choice for a religious mission! This former creature of Henry III., one of the most contemptible and despised of men, had disgusted the courtiers themselves by the barefaced double-dealing of his language and conduct. He, however, protested in the name of the nobility, that he would rather throw himself upon his sword than allow (Roman) Catholicism to be ruined in France.

Henry IV. refused to change his religion all at once. “Would it be more agreeable to you,” said he to the (Roman) Catholic nobles, “to have a king without a God? Could you place confidence in the faith of an atheist? And in the day of battle would you follow the banner of a perjurer and an apostate with alacrity?” After long discussions he only promised that he would seek instruction during the next six months.

These words were regarded in two very different ways. The promise of seeking instruction seemed to the (Roman) Catholics equivalent to his re-entering the pale of the church of Rome; to the Reformed, on the contrary, it appeared that they only related to the duty of examining anew the points of controversy and the sincere adoption of the side of truth. As to Henry IV. it appears that he had already determined to become instructed, not by the doctors, but by the course of events.

At the end of some weeks, his army was almost dissolved. Of forty thousand men he only retained from six to seven thousand, and was compelled to fall back upon Normandy. The Duke d’Epernon and other (Roman) Catholic chiefs, retired with their troops, on the ground that they could not serve under a Huguenot chief. Those who remained, demanded that their aid should be paid for by great personal favours. The Calvinist chiefs were more faithful and less exacting. Among them were the Duke de Bouillon, sovereign of the principality of Sédan; François de Châtillon, son of the Admiral Coligny; the Duke Claude de la Trémoille, Jacques Caumont de la Force, Agrippa d’Aubigné, Lanoue, Rosny, and Mornay. The last held a high position in the confidence of his master.

Philippe de Mornay, lord of Plessis, was born at the castle of Buhi, in the old French Vexin, in 1549, and was brought up by his mother in the doctrines of the Reformation. He had not attained the age of twelve years, when he replied to a priest who cautioned him against Lutheran opinions: “I am determined to remain firm in what I have learned in the service of God, and when I shall have doubts upon any point, I will diligently read the Evangelists and the Acts of the Apostles.”

His uncle, the bishop of Nantes, and afterwards archbishop of Rheims, advised him to study the Fathers of the Church, and offered him, with the revenue of a rich abbey, the prospect of becoming his successor. Mornay read the Fathers, who, far from estranging him from his faith, confirmed him in it; and he said to his uncle on refusing the abbey: “I trust in God for what I shall want.”

In after-life he did not belie the disinterestedness of his youth. Animated by strong and firm convictions, modest in prosperity, patient in adversity, always ready to risk his property and his life in the service of his faith, Duplessis-Mornay has displayed to the world one of the greatest and most upright characters that ever honoured the Christian church. He has been called the pope of the Huguenots; it would have been better to have said that he was their model.

His talents equalled his piety. A warrior, a doctor of theology, a counsellor, diplomatist, orator and author, a skilful writer, working fourteen hours a day, and displaying an equal superiority in the most opposite pursuits, it would be difficult to indicate one order of merit, in which he did not excel, if we except the talent of advancing his own fortunes.

Escaped as by a miracle from the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, Mornay took refuge in England, where he met with a gracious reception from Queen Elizabeth. The Duke d’Anjou, on becoming king of Poland, wishing to give a proof of his tolerant intentions towards the Polish Protestants, offered Mornay a place in his council; but he answered: “I will never enter the service of those, who have shed the blood of my brethren.”

The invitation of the Béarnese king was better responded to. Mornay joined this prince, who was then poor and weak, at his small court at Agen; and these two men, so different in character, habit, and conduct, contracted a friendship, which was on more than one occasion interrupted, but never entirely destroyed. Henry stood in need of Mornay, of his prudence, his devotion, and even of his severity; and Mornay, notwithstanding his reproaches, saw in his master a man who had been raised by Heaven to defend the cause of the Reformation.

His functions at the court of Agen and Nérac were as multifarious as his genius was versatile. During the less important wars, which were continually springing up between Henry III. and the Béarnese king, he acted at different times as captain, engineer, camp-master, and chief financier of the army; and instead of gaining by these employments, he more frequently contributed to the cause. When in the tent, he would take his pen and draw up diplomatic notes, memorials, manifestoes, replies to the (Roman) Catholics, and remonstrances to the Reformed, with admirable promptitude. In council he prepared the speeches of the king of Navarre, and furnished him with suitable arguments to satisfy men of jealous or suspicious temperament.

He visited the court of France in order to defend the interests of his co-religionists. Henry III. asked him one day, how a man of his science and capacity could be a Huguenot; “Have you never read,” he asked, “the Catholic doctors?” “I have not only read the Catholic doctors,” was Mornay’s reply, “but I have read them with earnestness; for I am flesh and blood, like another man, and was not born without ambition. I should have been very glad to have discovered what would have quieted my conscience, in order that I might have participated in the wealth and honours which you distribute, and from the enjoyment of which my religion excludes me. But everywhere I have found arguments to fortify my belief; and worldly considerations should always yield to those of conscience.” Noble words, and passing strange to have been spoken at the court of the Valois, and of Catherine de Medicis!

After the death of Henry III. Mornay was, near Henry IV., as the organ of those whose faith was the most decided, and whose intentions were the purest of the Consistorial Reformed.

The Baron de Rosny, afterwards Duke de Sully, represented the political Calvinistic party, or those who advocated measures of compromise. A great minister of state, an able and upright financier, he repaired, more than any other person, the unhappy consequences of the civil wars under the reign of Henry IV.; and if the people measured glory by benefits, his should be immense. He would also display a manly courage when it became necessary, to hinder the king from compromising the dignity of his crown by his weaknesses. But in matters of religion his convictions were not strong, and without leaving the Reformed church himself, he powerfully contributed to its being abandoned by his king. “He was,” says a French historian, “one of those strong-minded men, who place themselves above all prejudices where the service of God is concerned; so that his religion consisted only of superficial forms.”[74]

The old Huguenot chiefs were assembled round Henry IV. at the battle of Ivry in large numbers, and he remembered in the hour of danger the lessons of his pious mother. Lifting up his eyes to heaven, he called God to witness his right: “But, O Lord,” said he, “if it has pleased Thee to order otherwise, or if I should be one of those kings whom Thou givest in Thy wrath, take my life with my crown, and may my blood be the last shed in this quarrel.”

The battle was gained. The Calvinists, nevertheless, remained in an unsettled and critical position. With no legal security, they maintained, in fact, simple possession of those places where they were strong enough to defend themselves, but they held nothing by law. No edict, given in regular form, had abolished the decrees of extermination pronounced against them. The Parliaments could, by the terms of these ordinances, decree that the Calvinists could be taken, judged, and condemned to banishment or capital punishment. The king celebrated the Reformed worship in his camp; at two leagues’ distance it was punished as a crime. Duplessis summed up their position in two words: “They had the halter always round their necks.”

Many complained of this; and seeing that their requests were received with disdain, they proposed, at a meeting convened at Saint Jean d’Angély, to choose another protector for the Church. Henry IV. was much distressed at this course; but the faithful Mornay replied to him by energetic representations: “What! is it not intended to revoke the edicts of proscription, and yet do they counsel the Reformed to be patient? Have they not been patient during fifty years? and does the service of the king require that they should be patient in things of this nature? Ought not children to be baptized? shall not marriages be consecrated? Each hour’s delay brings troubles and sufferings. If three families pray together for the prosperity of the king, if an artisan sings a psalm in his shop, or should a bookseller sell a French Bible, here are grounds for persecuting decrees. Our judges answer that such is the law. Well! let the law be changed. To such evils prompt remedies should be applied.”

The king knew that it would be doubly perilous for him to persist in his denial of justice; from within, because the Reformed at length sought other protection than his own; from without, because the Protestant powers would refuse him their aid. He therefore caused an edict of toleration to be adopted at his council, in the month of July, 1591, known as that of Nantes, which reinstated the Reformed in the same position which they held in 1577; a very meagre concession, since no more was granted than had been given by Henry III. Moreover, this ordinance did not pass without difficulty, and was never well observed, especially in those matters which related to admission to public employment.

We may judge from the following occurrence what was the amount of fanaticism which reigned in the camp even of Henry IV. Several Calvinists having been killed at the siege of Rouen, had been buried indiscriminately with the bodies of (Roman) Catholics, but the priests caused the bodies to be disinterred, and ordered that they should be thrown as food to the beasts of the field. Thus, men who had fought under the same banner were not permitted to sleep together in the same dust.

XIX.

The League, however, in proportion as it felt its strength decreasing, redoubled its violence. It had called to Paris bands of Spanish and Neapolitan soldiers and preachers, and with obscene or atrocious language, had demanded millions of heads. The prior of the Sorbonne, Jean Boucher, taught that it was necessary to take the knife in hand to kill and exterminate all; the bishop Rose argued that another bleeding like that of Saint Bartholomew was again necessary, and that by such means the disease would be cut short; the Jesuit Commolet said that the death of the politicians was life to the (Roman) Catholics; and the curé of Saint André asserted that he would march foremost to slay them.

Pope Gregory XIV. at the same time sent monitions to the (Roman) Catholics of France, threatening with severe pains those who had taken the oath of fidelity to Henry of Béarn, the heretic and the excommunicated. These bulls, which were worthy of the age of Robert the Devout, appeared so monstrous, that the Parliaments of Tours and Châlons, having declared them scandalous, seditious, and contrary to the rights of the Gallican church, caused them to be burned by the hands of the executioner.

But the six months, at the expiration of which Henry IV. had promised to make himself acquainted [with the difference of the two creeds], had long since expired. He had been in the field nearly four years without having made any sensible progress in this respect. All the (Roman) Catholics who had attached themselves to his fortunes, pressed him warmly to change his religion; the bishops, because they were blamed at Rome, and were desirous of freeing themselves from the reproach of infidelity; the nobility, because they were impatient to receive the reward of their services; the members of the Parliament, no less than those of the privy council, because they better understood state exigencies than conscientious scruples. The greater number of the other portions of society felt disposed to content themselves with form only; it was sufficient for them that they could tell the populace that the king of France attended mass.

The Abbé Duperron, afterwards bishop of Evreux and cardinal, an intriguing and cunning person, as well as an eloquent orator, spoke with these views to Henry IV., introducing into his arguments few theological, but many political considerations.

Gabrielle d’Estrées added to this the weight of a more direct and more intimate influence. She had no love for the Calvinists, who had frequently addressed severe expressions to her. The Béarnese, moreover, vanquished by fond passion, had led her to see in perspective the half of a throne. But to re-marry, it became necessary to be unmarried, and this, without exciting scandal, the pope alone could permit.

The king himself, whose “soul was steeped in voluptuousness,” according to the energetic expression of a contemporary, and who never had any solid religious principles, waited only for the proper time and opportunity. The single question for him, since his accession to the throne, was to abjure wisely, that is to say, that in gaining the (Roman) Catholics he might not lose the Reformed.

Among these, many of the nobility, wearied with war, showed themselves well disposed. Sully set them the example. “That I should advise you to attend mass,” said he to Henry IV., “is a thing you should not, as I think, expect from me, being of another religion; but I tell you frankly, that it is the most prompt and easy mode of overturning all these malignant projects. You will no longer have to encounter so many enemies, troubles, and difficulties in this world; as to the other,” he continued, laughing, “I will not answer for that.” On which the king laughed also.

Sully relates, in his “_Economies Royales_,” how he had conceived a theory, which admitted of passing in conscientious security from the Reformed communion to the Roman (Catholic) church. The king having caused him to be called very early one morning, requested him to sit down near his bed, and demanded his advice. Sully at first invoked political reasons, and as “the king was scratching his head in great perplexity,” he continued in these terms: “I hold it to be infallible, that of whatever kind of religion men make an external profession, if they die having observed the Decalogue, with a belief in the Apostles’ Creed, if they love God with all their heart, are charitable towards their neighbour, hope in the mercy of God, and to obtain redemption by the death, the merit, and the righteousness of Jesus Christ, they cannot fail to be saved.”

It was thus that Henry IV. became furnished with his famous argument of the most safe course, the (Roman) Catholics affirming that there was no safety out of their communion, and the Calvinists admitting that it is possible to be saved out of theirs. It will be seen at the first glance that the question had been improperly stated by Sully; it was a matter not of faith only, but of good faith; and when in speaking of dying in the observance of the Decalogue, which forbids us to bear false witness, he advised the king to commit an act of fraud and hypocrisy, one-half of his argument overturned the other half. Clearly it could only carry conviction to a mind already convinced by reasoning of a totally different nature.

Duplessis gave opposite advice, for he had seriously taken up the instruction of the king. He was desirous that the several points of religion should be discussed before him by the most celebrated doctors, and of recommencing in some manner the conference of Poissy. He invited each of the principal theologians of the Reformation to study one of the questions of controversy, in order that they might all come well armed before their adversaries. Henry IV., “the most cunning, and the most subtle prince in the world,” as Agrippa d’Aubigné, who had lived thirty years in his confidence, called him, permitted Mornay to take his own course, and enjoined him even to select his champions without delay.

The (Roman) Catholic nobles were deceived by this, and offered Mornay twenty thousand crowns on condition that he should not again awaken the king’s scruples. “The conscience of my master is no more to be sold,” said he to them, “than my own!” A beautiful reply, but unhappily only true on one side.

Despairing of being able to seduce Mornay, the politicians prayed Henry IV. to remove him from his person. But coming upon them unexpectedly at one of their meetings, “It is hard, gentlemen,” said he, “to prevent a master from speaking to a faithful servant. The proposals which I make to him are of such a nature that I can state them to him aloud, before you all. I propose to him that he should serve God with a good conscience, that he should have Him constantly before his eyes in every action, that he should appease the schism which is in the state, by a sacred reformation of the Church; that he should be an example to all Christians and to all posterity. Are these things to be said in secret? Would you wish that I should counsel him to attend mass? You do him wrong to imagine that he would profit by doing so. With what conscience can I advise him, if I do not first go there myself? and what religion is that which we may throw off like our shirts?”

Astonished by so much courage and virtue, Marshal d’Aumont cried, “You are more estimable than we are, Monsieur Duplessis; and if I said, two days since, that it was necessary to shoot you through the head, I say to-day, on the contrary, that you merit a statue.”

It will be surprising that the judicious Mornay, who had so closely and for so long a time observed the king, should have entertained so good an opinion of his firmness. But he had the sublime ingenuousness of men of great faith; and moreover, Henry IV. displayed in this matter—it is with regret that we say so of the most popular of the French kings—the most consummate duplicity. He went so far as to invite the Reformed of France to fast, and pray that God would bless the pretended conferences, which were about to be opened; and he said to the pastors assembled at Saumur, “If you learn that I have committed some excess, you may believe that there is some foundation in the report, for I am a man subject to great infirmities; but if they should tell you that I have been seduced from my religion, do not believe it; I would die first.” Three months afterwards he abjured at Saint Denis.

On the 22nd July, 1593, the archbishop of Bourges and other dignitaries of the (Roman) Catholic clergy, repaired to the king. It had been arranged that they alone should speak. We meet with a curious proof of this from a letter in which the bishop of Chartres was informed, that “he might come in full confidence, without troubling himself about theology.” For greater safety, Mornay had been sent away.

At a later period, Henry IV. explained the exclusion of the ministers by the following position. His mind was made up beforehand, he said. Why, then, expose the advocates of the Reformation to a certain defeat? Had they attended the conference, the bishops would have boasted of having vanquished them; in not attending, the ministers preserved the right of saying that they had not been heard. It is thus that sometimes the most serious matters are dealt with in this world.

On the 23rd July, the archbishop of Bourges delivered a discourse before the king, which lasted from six until eleven o’clock in the morning. The Béarnese only interrupted it from time to time, in order to ask for some explanation; or, if he raised an objection, he took care to add that he submitted himself entirely to the authority of the (Roman) Catholic church—conduct more worthy of a mocking philosopher than of a king. It was a ceremony arranged beforehand. Henry IV. had written to Gabrielle d’Estrées: “I commence this morning to speak to the bishops. It will be to-morrow that I shall make the perilous leap.”

An act of abjuration had been prepared, in which the king rejected, one after the other, all the doctrines of the Reformed faith. But he would not sign it, and they [the clergy] were contented with a vague adhesion in six lines to the articles of the Roman church. Nevertheless, by a cheat, very much resembling an act of forgery, and which paints the manners of the age, Loménie counterfeited the king’s signature on the first of the two formularies which it became necessary to send to the pope.

On Sunday, the 25th July, 1593, at eight o’clock in the morning, the king presented himself at the great gate of the church of Saint Denis, accompanied by the princes and the officers of the crown. At the entrance were the prelates, who awaited his arrival with the cross, the book of the Evangelists, and holy water. “Who are you?” said the archbishop of Bourges. “I am the king.” “What do you demand?” “I demand to be received within the pale of the Catholic, apostolic, and Roman church.” “Do you desire it _sincerely_?” “Yes, I wish it and desire it.” Then kneeling, he pronounced the formulary agreed upon, and the archbishop gave him absolution, and the benediction. The priests sang a grand mass, and at the termination of the ceremony, Cardinal de Bourbon carried to the king the book of the Evangelists to kiss.

This is what has been termed the conversion of Henry IV.—a matter of policy, through the influence of women, a lie of the priests, and a falsehood from beginning to end!

XX.

The act of abjuration did not immediately bring back the Leaguers to submission. The Spanish ambassador distributed gold with lavish hands. The legate pretended that to the pope alone belonged the right of reconciling one, who had been excommunicated by the Church, and the States-General of the League swore to obey the decrees of the Holy See. Boucher delivered nine sermons against the simulated conversion of the Béarnese, saying that the bishops of St. Denis were traitors, their prayers anathemas, and the mass sung before the heretics a miserable farce. All the preachers of the faction of the Sixteen (_de la faction des seize_) declared openly for regicide; and the fruit of their provocation was soon apparent. Jean Banière in 1593, and the year following Jean Châtel, attempted to assassinate the king. A decree of the Parliament drove the society of Loyola from the kingdom; it returned to give birth to Ravaillac.

But the mass of the nation accepted the abjuration of Henry IV. as real and sincere, because it thirsted for repose. The chiefs of the League, having lost all hope of vanquishing, now only thought of selling themselves as dearly as possible. It cost the king enormous sums, and the Reformed were nearly everywhere sacrificed in the capitulations. Rouen, Meaux, Poitiers, Agen, Beauvais, Amiens, Saint Malo, and many other cities, both large and small, stipulated, in making submission, that the preaching of the Huguenots should be banished from within their walls and their suburbs. Paris claimed an extension of the interdict to ten leagues from its gates. The king opposed some resistance to these demands, but he finished by granting all of them.

The least mark of attachment which the Béarnese might show towards his old co-religionists, was watched with an eye of jealousy, and he was unable openly to press the hand of those faithful servants, who had defended his crown at the expense of their blood.

A new _protector_ was again begun to be spoken of, notwithstanding the energetic expressions of Henry IV., who called himself the natural and legitimate protector of his subjects. Duplessis loyally supported the remonstrances of the king; however, he, in his turn, preferred to him heavy complaints: “See, sire,” he wrote to him, “by what steps you have been conducted to the mass. Those, who do not believe in God, have made you swear by images and relics, purgatory and indulgences. Your poor subjects see you go further still, by this same road. They see you send to make your submission to Rome. They know that there cannot be absolution without penance. The pope, on the first opportunity, will send you the sacred sword, and will impose upon you the law of making war against heretics; and under this name will be comprehended the most Christian and the most loyal of the French.”

Clement VIII., in truth, demanded as the price of absolution, the abrogation of the edicts of toleration, the exclusion of heretics from all offices, and the promise of exterminating them, so soon as peace should be concluded with the League and with Spain. On this occasion Henry IV. rebelled. He caused a reply to be returned by D’Ossat and Duperron, to the effect that he should be accused of indecency and ingratitude, if, after having experienced so many services from those of the (Reformed) religion, he reduced them to extremity, and forced them to take arms against his person.

The pope and the king, by the aid of equivocation, finished with a mutual understanding, and on the 16th September, 1595, the two ambassadors of Henry IV. were kneeling under the portico of Saint Peter. They sang the _Miserere_, and at each verse they received for their master blows from a rod or switch, on the shoulders. The Spaniards ridiculed them, and the more estimable of the French papists were indignant at this humiliation.

The king continued to give the Reformed nothing but fair words. He told them privately that he trusted in them more than in the others, and he endeavoured even to justify the privileges which he had granted to the (Roman) Catholics, by the parable of the prodigal son, for whom the father caused the fatted calf to be killed: “It is well,” replied the deputies of the churches, “but treat us also as the son who has always been faithful, and to whom the father said, ‘All my goods are thine.’ To despoil the obedient son of his legitimate rights, in order to give them to him who has trodden underfoot the paternal authority, is not the spirit of Christ’s parable.”

To this the king could only reply by new exhortations to patience. “You shall have satisfaction,” said he to them, “when I am master at home.” Truly it was very difficult to exercise patience in the unhappy condition of the Reformed. Excluded from all offices, maltreated, persecuted, without anywhere being able to invoke the Almighty in peace, without security in their own houses, having no longer their ancient protector, and forbidden to name another, they at length resolved, with the tacit authority of the king, to manage their own affairs, and convoked political assemblies. The first was held at Sainte Foy, in the month of May, 1594.

These assemblies must not be confounded with the synods. In the synods, the clergy and laity were equal in number, and were always occupied with the interests of the Church. In the political assemblies, the laity were greatly in the majority, and they treated also concerning state affairs.

Assemblies of this kind had been held during the religious wars, but they then took a more regular organization, and adopted the plan of uniting at periodical intervals.

France was divided into ten departments, each of which named a deputy to form the _General Council_. Their distinction of three orders was borrowed from the States-General. The General Council was to be composed of four noblemen, four members of the Third Estate, and of two pastors. When the number of members was raised to thirty, there were twelve delegates of the nobility, twelve representatives of the Third Estate, and six clergymen. The president was to be a layman, the vice-president an ecclesiastic. One half of the council was re-elected every six months. Dukes, lieutenant-generals, and other personages of high rank, took part in the deliberations without being deputies, provided they were not objected to by the assembly.

The provincial councils were next in authority to the General Council, and were composed of from five to seven members, chosen equally from the three orders. They were to include at least one resident governor and a clergyman.

These councils were to promote peace between those of their own religion, to levy rates for the necessities of the cause, and to regulate the disposal of them, to watch over the stores and munitions of fortified towns; in a word, to do everything that was necessary for the defence of their common interests. The deputies took the oath of obedience, and the members of the Church were obliged to respect the decisions of the general and private assemblies. A permanent fund of forty-five thousand crowns was supplied by the contributions of the faithful.

The General Council received memorials and complaints from the provincial councils, sent them to court, discussed the terms of the new edicts with the commissioners of the king, and sought to establish the free exercise of religion upon a more solid basis.

Judging according to present ideas, nothing could be more contrary to good order than this organization; it was, as we have already remarked, a state within a state. But to appreciate as we ought the institution of these political assemblies, we must recollect that the Reformed were excluded in France from the common right. The intolerant dogmas of (Roman) Catholicism did not recognise them as Frenchmen. They were looked upon as foreigners, or rather as enemies, and were treated as such. The king was obliged to capitulate with some of his subjects at the expense of the others. The pope demanded their extermination. The bishops had forced Henry to say at his coronation, “I will, in good faith, do all in my power to drive all heretics, denounced by the Church, out of my jurisdiction and territory;” and this was only a mitigated formula, that the priests had sanctioned after much hesitation. Public authority attacked and condemned the Reformed as malefactors. If then they established a distinct society amongst themselves, it is because they were cut off from society in general; and it would be absurd, as well as odious, to accuse those in the name of the law, who had been put out of its pale.

The Leaguers had also formed a state within the state, but with this difference, that they were associated together in order to oppress the Calvinists, whilst the latter united that they might not be oppressed; and cruel experience proved to them, under the reign of Louis XIV., that in losing their political organization, they were exposed to the loss of everything.

The council of the king heard with astonishment of the decision of the assembly of Sainte Foy. It had imagined that the great Calvinist body, deprived of its ancient protector, would be destroyed. Catherine of Medicis and Charles IX. fell into the same error after the massacre of Saint Bartholomew. Seeing the Reformed rise up under the strokes of persecution to take a firmer attitude than ever, statesmen began to think that it was necessary to temporize with them.

The king feigned to be discontented, but secretly encouraged the political assemblies. He preferred them to a protector, who might have made himself too conspicuous in the kingdom, and he made use of them with the Leaguers, and even with his advisers at Rome, to grant more favourable conditions to his former friends. The Edict of Nantes, one of the most glorious acts of Henry IV., would never have been agreed to in council, nor registered by Parliament, if it had not been for the assemblies of the Reformed.

The negotiations were long, laborious, and intermixed with incidents which would offer little or no interest [to be here related]. Political assemblies were held at Saumur, Loudun, and Vendôme, and again at Saumur and Châtellerault in the years 1595, 1596, and 1597. The court addressed them with menaces or words of encouragement, according to circumstances. Commissioners were appointed to treat with the Calvinists; but they only possessed limited powers, and even within these limits they were not authorized to conclude a definitive arrangement. There was a perpetual interchange of communications, much playing at cross-purpose, between the two parties; some were only willing to grant the Edict of Poitiers, with amendments of no importance; others demanded the full and free exercise of their religion; the former alleging state reasons, the latter principles of justice and conscience.

In the midst of these sterile disputes, persecution continued to be violent in some places, and vexatious in others. At Châtaigneraie, upon the confines of Poitou and Brittany, the Leaguers, encouraged by the Duc de Mercœur, had fallen suddenly upon the faithful, whilst they were at prayers, in 1595. Two hundred persons, of every age, men and women, had been cowardly butchered. It was a repetition of the massacre at Vassy.

Amongst the victims was an infant brought to be baptized A poor boy, eight years of age, in the simplicity of his heart, offered eightpence, the contents of his little purse, in the hope of ransoming his life; but the murderers loved his blood better; whilst the Lady of Châtaigneraie afterwards amused herself with the butchers in counting the dead.

This cold-blooded butchery revolted even the most violent of Henry IV.’s advisers, and the authors of the massacre were expressly exempted in cases of amnesty. Nevertheless, it may be seen in a publication of 1597, under the title, _Complaints of the Reformed Churches of France_, how much oppression, injustice, and violence, had to be submitted to. These grievances would alone fill a volume; but we will only cite a few examples.

The Reformed were forbidden the free exercise of their religion throughout such provinces as Burgundy and Picardy; they had but a solitary place of worship in Brittany, and two in Provence; they were ill-treated, stoned, or thrown into the river on their return from worship; cannons were fired against their meetings; the king’s own sister was constrained to set out for Rouen, to take the sacrament, because the legate disapproved of her receiving it in the city; Bibles and the Book of Psalms were burnt by the hand of the executioner; they were forbidden to comfort the sick; and at Saint Quentin, for example, a man was outlawed for having relieved one infected with the plague in the street; children were carried off or baptized by force in the houses by priests, accompanied by officers of justice. The curate of Saint Etienne starved an old man in prison to extort an abjuration, and forced him to sign a deed in the presence of a notary, by which he condemned himself to banishment if he renounced the (Roman) Catholic faith; cities, given as hostages, were taken away or ransacked; the poor were neglected and driven away, even where the Reformed contributed the most to the common fund; there was systematic exclusion from all appointments, even from the magistracy of the city, from the freedom of companies, from the offices of notary and attorney; there was no justice before the tribunals; exorbitant fines and imprisonments [were inflicted] for the slightest cause; [as well as] disinterment of the dead, even of those who had been buried in the tombs of their ancestors, &c. &c. &c.

In terminating this long list of grievances, the Reformed said to the king, “But, sire, we have amongst us neither Jacobins nor Jesuits, who aim at your life, nor Leaguers, who desire your crown. We have never presented the points of our swords instead of petitions. We are paid by political considerations. They tell us the time is not yet come for granting an edict. And this, great God, after thirty-five years of persecutions, ten years of banishment by the edicts of the League, eight years of the king’s reign, and four years’ entreaty. We only ask of your majesty an edict which would permit us to enjoy that which is common to all your subjects. The glory of God, the safety of our property and lives, would be the summit of our wishes and the end of our petitions.”

The king and his council were again for temporizing with them; however, the fresh dangers which menaced the kingdom, the surprise of Amiens by the Spaniards, the resolution of many Huguenot noblemen to remain inactive, instead of drawing their swords for a king who had abandoned them, the conscience of many of their most celebrated men, which at last began to trouble them, caused the Edict of Nantes to be granted in the month of April, 1598, which took its name from the place where it was first published.

In the preamble of this celebrated act, the king acknowledged that God is adored and worshipped by all his subjects, if not in the same form, at least with the same intentions, in such manner that his kingdom will always merit and preserve the glorious title of “very Christian.” The edict was declared perpetual and irrevocable, as being the principal foundation of the union and tranquillity of the state.

This great charter of the French Reformation briefly consisted of what follows under the ancient _régime_—entire liberty of conscience in the domestic circle; the public exercise of religion in all places where it was established in 1597, and in the suburbs of the towns; permission to lords of high rank to have service performed in their castles, and to noblemen of second rank, the right of admitting thirty persons to their private worship; the admission of the Reformed to public employment, of their children to the schools, of their invalids to the hospitals, of their poor to partake of the alms; the right of printing their books in certain towns; equal representation in some of the Parliaments; a chamber of the edict at Paris, entirely composed of (Roman) Catholics, except a single member, but offering sufficient guarantee by its particular object; four academies for scientific and theological instruction; authorization to convoke synods according to discipline; and lastly, a certain number of places of surety.

The (Roman) Catholic church had also its share in this edict. The property of the clergy was to be everywhere restored, tithes paid, and the exercise of (Roman) Catholicism re-established throughout the kingdom. This last article, which restored the mass in two hundred and fifty towns, and two thousand country parishes, narrowly missed exciting an insurrection at La Rochelle.

Yet this was not religious liberty, nor even simple toleration, as we understand it now; it was still a treaty of peace between two people juxtaposed upon the same soil. There was a twofold law; there were two armies, two judicial establishments, and each party had its places of hostage. Henry IV., the head of the whole state, had filled the office of arbitrator between the two camps. But this was already a great step in advance of the past.

The false maxim that there should be only one faith, as there are only one king and one government, had cost France three millions of actual money, and two millions of men. It had erected the scaffold and the stake during sixty years, kindled civil war during thirty-five years, provoked the massacres of Mérindol, of Vassy, and of Saint Bartholomew, and inspired spoliations and murders, and crimes without number. At the termination of the wars, half of the towns and castles were in ashes, commerce destroyed, and the country so devastated that thousands of the peasantry had resolved to emigrate, having no longer the wherewithal to live upon the soil which had nourished their forefathers.

Humanity has achieved the principle of religious liberty through rivers of blood and over heaps of ruins: it has been too dearly purchased to be lost.