Chapter VI
THE FIRST CIVIL WAR. THE MASSACRE OF VASSY (MARCH 1, 1562). THE SIEGE OF ROUEN
The progress of events had developed so rapidly as to bely the Edict of January almost as soon as it was passed. The continued absence of the Guises from the court made them open to suspicion, particularly as messengers were passing frequently between Joinville and St. Germain.[474] The nets of conspiracy woven by the Triumvirate were daily being drawn tighter around France. Directed by Chantonnay and the cardinal of Ferrara (who generally spoke in Spanish when together in public, that those near by might not understand),[475] the plans of the Triumvirate were concerted, the Spanish ambassador looking ahead to the day when force would supplant diplomacy.[476]
Ever since its formation, as we have seen, the Triumvirate had sought to win over the king of Navarre. As he was, therefore, sought by both parties, he was much inflated with a sense of his own importance. Antoine still lived in hope of compounding with Philip for the kingdom of Navarre, and to that end still negotiated both with the Vatican and with Spain.[477] But he was getting very tired of the procrastination of the Spanish king, so that there was danger of the thread of his patience being snapped.[478] If war broke out in France and found him in such a mood, an attempt might possibly be made to overrun Navarre.[479] In consequence, it became necessary to make a more tangible proposition to the Bourbon prince. It took the form of a demand and a promise. The demand was that every Huguenot should be banished from court and the Protestant clergy expelled from the country together with the prince of Condé, the Châtillon brothers, the chancellor, and Montluc, the bishop of Valence. In return Antoine was to receive the “kingdom of Tunis” as a reward. This was the new prize used by Spain to bait the hook, and gradually Antoine was drawn over to the side of Spain and the Triumvirate. The amusing feature of this proffer was not so manifest to the men of that day as to us. Geographical knowledge, even of the Mediterranean coast, was hazy. The constable, for example, thought that Tunis was an island! But Antoine knew more history and geography than Montmorency; he knew that Tunis was a Turkish possession which Charles V had vainly tried to seize, and had to be beguiled with visions of oriental splendor and large plans for its conquest before he became passive. Pending its acquisition, Philip II renewed the offer of Sardinia. Meanwhile Antoine received instruction in the Catholic faith from a teacher recommended to him by the general of the Jesuits,[480] and quarreled with Jeanne d’Albret because she would not let the future Henry IV be taken to mass, or permit him to be present at the christening of the infant son of the Spanish ambassador.[481] By March (1562) it was evident that the king of Navarre was “never so earnest on the Protestant side as he was now furious on the other.”[482]
But if the Spanish ambassador used smooth words to the king of Navarre, his language was quite otherwise toward Catherine de Medici. In the name of his sovereign he demanded the banishment of Jeanne d’Albret from court, the compulsory education of Henry of Navarre in the Catholic religion, and so soundly rated her for harboring Coligny and D’Andelot at court that the outraged queen mother demanded his retirement,[483] ordered the marshal St. André back to his government,[484] and the constable to retire to Chantilly, and contemplated doing the same with the old cardinal Tournon. This procedure offended Antoine who imputed her conduct to Coligny and his brother, and in consequence he inclined more than ever toward the Triumvirate.[485] Finally on Palm Sunday (March 22) Antoine cast the die and went to mass, coming from the service with the emblem of the celebration in his hand.[486]
A superficial aspect of peace still prevailed at court, but in the provinces a state of war already prevailed. Sens,[487] Abbeville,[488] Tours, Toulouse, Marseilles, Toul in Lorraine,[489] and most of all Cahors and Agen,[490] where the terrible Montluc figured, were all scenes of riot and bloodshed during the winter months, in which the Huguenots were generally worsted.[491] In Agen it was so bad that the government had to take more than ordinary notice of the situation. Charles IX called upon the governor of Guyenne to repress “les excès, forces, violences, sacagements d’églises, séditions et escandalles advenus en nôtre pays d’Agenais,” and ordered the consuls of the city to send him the names of those who disturbed the peace.
In this condition of things only a spark was needed to throw the whole country into flames. Force alone could settle the irreconcilable conflict, and it was soon to be invoked. War was certainly anticipated by both parties. But contrary to expectation it was not precipitated by Spanish intervention, but by outbreak within France. It was the massacre of Vassy on March 1, 1562, that threw the country into civil war.
The duke of Guise had spent the winter, as we have seen, working in the interest of the Triumvirate. On February 15, 1562, he had a conference at Saverne with the duke of Württemberg, whom he adroitly persuaded into the belief that the Calvinists were aiming to involve the German Protestants in their own quarrel, thereby securing his neutrality in event of civil war. Shortly after his return to France the duke left Joinville with the intention of rejoining the court. As he was passing through Vassy,[492] his retinue encountered a Huguenot congregation worshiping in a barn outside of the town. Though the service was strictly in conformity with the Edict of January, the sight angered the duke, whose followers fell upon the company, and the famous massacre ensued. It was March 1, 1562. How much provocation was made by the Protestants for this attack is a matter of dispute. The duke himself and Catholic partisans ever since have asserted that stones were first thrown at him. Probably the absolute truth will never be known. Ranke, perhaps, sums up the verdict of history best in the statement that “whether the duke intended the massacre or not, it is enough that he did not prevent it.”[493] Two weeks later, on March 16, the duke of Guise, accompanied by the chief members of his house, save the cardinal of Lorraine and the duke of Elbœuf, arrived in Paris. The capital, which long since had learned the news of Vassy, received him joyfully.[494] At the St. Denis gate he was met by the constable and his four stalwart sons, the eldest of whom was governor of the city, the four marshals of France, and twenty-one knights of the Order. Having arrived at his hotel, the provost of the merchants, who was syndic of Paris, accompanied by many of the chief merchants, visited him, “testifying his joyful welcome,” which was further attested by the proffer of two millions of gold in favor of the Catholic cause. The duke made an adroit reply, assuring them that the queen mother and the king of Navarre, with the aid and advice of the King’s council, would pacify the realm; that he, as a faithful and loyal subject, must abide where the King commanded, and that he hourly expected a summons to court. On the same day the prince of Condé, returning from the court to Paris with the intention of going to Picardy, finding the duke of Guise in the capital, changed his plans and tarried in Paris, though offering to leave the town by one gate if the duke, the constable, and the marshal St. André would leave by the other.[495] When the Guises perceived that the Huguenots were undismayed by the events, they began to increase their adherents in the city, so that in a short time, it was thronged with nearly ten thousand horsemen. It was impossible, on the other hand, for the Huguenots to concert measures of defense in Paris, and accordingly the prince of Condé soon quitted the capital (March 23) “like another Pompey,”[496] going to Meaux, where Coligny and D’Andelot soon joined him.[497]
Meanwhile Catherine de Medici, fearful lest the person of the King would be forcibly seized by the Guises, and recognizing that the king of Navarre had surrendered completely to the Triumvirate, endeavored to remove the King to Blois. But Antoine hotly protested against so overt a move in favor of the Huguenots and Spain’s ambassador fulminated so strongly against “the evil reputation” of L’Hôpital,[498] that the court was compelled to go to Fontainebleau instead.[499] Even this place met with small favor on the part of the Guises, who would have preferred keeping the court in Paris. But when they urged the necessity of the queen’s presence in the council in consideration of the grave state of affairs, Catherine caustically rejoined that she thought “it more meet to have regard to the health of the King than to inform so many wise men what was necessary to be done.” This speech of the queen mother, however, was not said altogether in sarcasm. For instead of following the advice of the constable, who showed signs of resenting the Guise ascendency, that the crown repudiate and condemn the massacre of Vassy and announce its determination to maintain the Edict of January,[500] Catherine in her alarm lest the rising of the Huguenots sweep the Valois dynasty from the throne began to incline toward Spain.[501] For the time being the Triumvirate professed itself satisfied, intending after Easter to compel the court to repair to Bois de Vincennes, in order to have the King in their midst and thus strengthen with his name the authority of their actions.[502] Great was the alarm, therefore, when the prince of Condé, accompanied by the admiral Coligny and D’Andelot, appeared before the gates of Paris on March 29 with three thousand horse.[503] Immediately all the bridges were drawn up and preparations made to meet an attack.[504] Already extraordinary arrangements had been made for the defense of Paris. Strangers were compelled to leave the city; no persons except gentlemen were permitted to wear arms and these were limited to sword and dagger; only six gates were open and these were under double guard.[505] Failing to enter the city, the prince quartered his troops at St. Cloud and took possession of the highroad from Paris to Orleans at Longjumeau, while in Paris the duke of Guise, the king of Navarre, and the constable hastened forward the preparations for war.[506] But the prince of Condé refrained from the use of force. He gave out that he had as much right to enter the city under arms as had Guise, and complained of the fact that Guise and his following, on March 27, which was Good Friday, had visited the King and Queen at Fontainebleau, where the latter “made them strange countenance because the train came in arms to the court.”[507] The apparent purpose of the prince of Condé was to cut Fontainebleau off from Paris, for the admiral lay at Montreuil, but four leagues distant, and thus force a reasonable settlement, or push matters to an extremity by making himself master of the Loire, thus cutting France in twain and having all Guyenne and Poitou and much of Languedoc at his back. Color was lent to this belief by the fact that so many men from the northern and eastern provinces were passing southward that a special body of troops was set to guard the line of the Seine.[508]
But the Catholic leaders guessed Condé’s purpose and by a coup de main seized the King and his mother and carried them off from Fontainebleau to Melun, a town strong enough to be withheld against any sudden enterprise. Thereupon the prince, perceiving that he had been outreached, marched toward Orleans[509] in spite of an order sent from the King, and undoubtedly inspired by Guise, that he should lay down his arms. An attempt to prevent him from reaching Orleans was blocked by a rapid advance of D’Andelot.
Meanwhile the constable had assumed the direction of affairs in Paris, where on April 5 the Huguenot house of worship near the Port St. Antoine was torn down, the pulpit, forms, and choir burned, and fragments carried away as souvenirs by the mob. Troops patrolled the streets, arresting suspects, and a house to house visitation was made in search of Calvinist preachers. The same day the court came to Bois de Vincennes. During the next few days vain overtures were made to the prince. Coligny and D’Andelot offered to meet the queen mother at such a place as she would appoint, provided the prince of Navarre, the future Henry IV, Damville, the constable’s second son, and one of the Guises, were given into Orleans as hostages for them. Catherine was willing to accept the offer, but was overruled by Antoine of Bourbon, the duke of Guise, and Montmorency.[510] Those who were least alarmed still looked for settlement at the hands of the General Council. But there were serious political difficulties, as well as those religious, in the way of this, the three principal ones being: (1) the summons of the council, which many Catholics even wished to be convoked by the Emperor, and not by the Pope; (2) the place of the council; (3) the authority of the council, which many Catholics wished to be above the Pope.[511]
On April 12, 1562, at Orleans, the prince of Condé formally assumed command of the Huguenot forces,[512] his chief lieutenants being the admiral Coligny and D’Andelot.[513] The first civil war was a reality. The city on the Loire for some years to come was destined to be the capital of the Protestants, dominating all the surrounding country. Blois and its château, Tours and its castle, Amboise, Saumur, Angers, and many other towns on the Loire and in Maine, were occupied by the Protestants. Orleans was reputed to have bread and wine enough in store to withstand a two years’ siege,[514] and the Huguenots seemed to have plenty of money for immediate necessities, thanks to their despoilment of the churches of the region, especially the rich abbey of Marmoutier.[515] Although the purposes of the Huguenots were clandestinely more political than religious, it was expedient to cloak them under a mantle of faith.[516] The political organization of the Huguenots was effected through the medium of an association, a form of organization of which there are many examples, both Protestant and Catholic, during this troubled period. The preamble of the instrument of government disclaimed any private motives or considerations on the part of those who were parties to the association, and asserted that their sole purpose was to liberate the King from “captivity” and punish the insolence and tyranny of the disloyal and the enemies of the church. Idolatry, blasphemy, violence, and robbery, were forbidden within the territory of the association, in order that all might know that it had “the fear of God before it.” The association was to expire after the King had attained his majority.[517]
The essential difficulties in the situation as it obtained at this time are manifest. The Huguenots declared the King to be a captive in the hands of the Guises and themselves claimed to be loyal subjects in rebellion against tyranny.[518] The Guises, on the other hand, branded the Huguenots as rebels and schismatics, although Catherine de Medici still had a lingering hope of restoring peace, and in official utterances carefully refrained from alluding to the prince of Condé as a rebel.[519] Neither side would agree to lay down its arms without the other doing likewise, and neither dared take the initiative in this matter. The situation, therefore, was an irreconcilable one, which nothing but war could settle. The political determinations of the Huguenots were quite as fixed as their religious convictions, for part of their platform was the article agreed upon by the estates at Orleans to the effect that the cardinal of Lorraine, the duke of Guise, the constable, and the marshals Brissac and St. André, should render an account of their stewardship.[520] How far politics governed the situation is evidenced by the fact that late in April the king of Navarre and Montmorency began to weaken in their attitude when it was known that Condé dominated the middle Loire country, Touraine, Maine, Anjou, and much of Normandy; when it was learned that the cities of Lyons,[521] Toulouse, Caen, Rouen,[522] Dieppe, Troyes, Bourges,[523] and the provinces of Dauphiné, Provence, and Poitou, had declared for the Huguenot cause; and when troops were pouring into Orleans by thousands.[524]
If the Guises and the marshals Brissac and St. André could have acquitted themselves with so little discredit as Antoine of Bourbon or the constable, it is possible that a compromise might have been made even yet.[525] But such an issue was impossible under the circumstances. The guilt of Vassy still hung over the duke, for he had not yet been absolved either by the Court of Parlement or by the peers of France. Having appealed to force, force remained the only method of settling the great dispute that divided France, and Guise daily assembled horse and foot in Paris in expectation of battle.[526]
The formidable nature of the Huguenot rising by this time had so increased the fear of Catherine de Medici that she completely surrendered to the Triumvirate and resolved to appeal to Spain for help. On April 19 she sent for Antoine of Navarre, the duke of Guise, the constable, and the two marshals, Brissac and St. André, to whom she declared that she had been badly advised hitherto, and that she now trusted to their support. Montmorency at once proposed to ask the nuncio to petition His Holiness to send money and troops to the help of Catholic France. But Spain, not Rome, was the political cornerstone of the Catholic world, and it was now that the momentous resolution was taken to invite Philip II to lend assistance. Catherine de Medici, who shortly before this time had looked upon the prospect of Spanish intervention with apprehension, was now in favor of it. At Catherine’s instance the Triumvirate formally invited Spain’s support in a joint letter which was accompanied by Antoine of Navarre’s written profession of the Catholic faith.[527] Two weeks later, May 8, Charles IX himself formally solicited military assistance of Philip II.[528] Catholic Switzerland,[529] Catholic Germany,[530] Savoy, the Pope,[531] and other princes of Italy were also looked to.[532] The queen mother did not know that already the Triumvirate had anticipated her request by asking the Spanish King to instruct the regent of Flanders to hold the troops there in readiness “because Madame de Parma would not let a single horse go out of Flanders without orders.”[533] By the end of June these troops were ready. They were almost all Spaniards and Italians, then universally regarded as the best soldiers in the world.[534] Philip II, though, was actuated by other motives besides zeal for Catholicism.[535] He feared lest the south of France might attack Navarre, owing to the identification of Jeanne d’Albret with the Huguenot cause, and so sent reinforcements to Fontarabia and Pampeluna; a movement which weakened the prince of Condé by preventing Grammont’s Gascon troops from going to Orleans.[536]
The war went forward in spite of lack of funds on both sides. In order to pay the expenses of the war in Brittany Catherine authorized the seizure of the plate in the churches. But the duke of Etampes, who was governor of Brittany, was cautious about carrying out this order. “The people are so religious and scrupulous in these things,” he wrote, “that if they found out that we wanted to take it, they would not readily endure it, especially in Lower Brittany.” Instead he advised that the plate of the churches be deposited in some principal town in each bishopric, “under color of retaining and guarding it there, and that a tax of from 15 to 20 livres be imposed upon each person for this purpose,” figuring that this expedient would produce from 15 to 20,000 livres.[537] The Huguenots let no money pass from the provinces under their control, even going so far as to destroy the government registers in the towns they took.[538]
Every day increased the interest of the populace in the struggle.[539] “If the prince of Condé should come to Paris,” wrote an Englishman in Paris, “they could not tarry there, on account of the fury of his soldiers and the populace.”[540] In Dauphiné, De la Mothe Gondrin, lieutenant of the duke of Guise, was slain at Valence by the Protestants. It is just to say, however, that he was the aggressor. Accompanied by sixty or eighty gentlemen he went out into the country and came upon a worshiping company of Calvinists “and left not one of them alive.” A Huguenot nobleman, Des Adresse who styled himself “lieutenant of the King in Dauphiné,” acquired a reputation in the region as sinister as that of Montluc in Gascony. The whole southeast of France seemed up in arms.[541] Grenoble, Macon in Burgundy, Châlons in Champagne, Moulins in Bourbonnais, where they destroyed the tombs of Antoine’s ancestors,[542] were taken by the Huguenots. Lyons, by reason of its proximity to Geneva, was radically Huguenot, and this sentiment was stimulated still more by the great discontent that prevailed among the lower classes, engaged in silk manufacturing and other industries.[543] In Normandy it was even worse. At Rouen the Huguenots routed the Catholics and seized the government.[544] On May 14 Maligny took Havre-de-Grace, which astonished and affrighted the Catholics because it stood at the mouth of the Seine and made open communication between the Huguenots and the English easy. At Caen,[545] Bayeux, and most places in Lower Normandy, the inhabitants defaced the images in the monasteries and parish churches, and arrested the King’s revenues coming to Paris.[546] Caudebec, which revolted on May 15, was besieged by the Guisards, but had placed men in it previously and so saved itself. In Dieppe, where the revolt followed hard upon news of Vassy, a conflict between Protestants and Catholics resulted in the death of 150 persons.[547] Terrible cruelties were committed at Angers[548] by the Protestants.
Amid this almost spontaneous insurrection involving provinces widely separated from one another, the Ile-de-France and Burgundy adhered to the crown and the Catholic cause, the former wholly from inclination, the latter in part because of the adroitness of Tavannes, the brilliant captain, who foiled the Huguenot assault upon Dijon,[549] and saved Châlons-sur-Saône.[550]
In spite of these occurrences, however, abortive negotiations for peace filled the ten days between the 18th and the 28th of May.[551] In Paris it was expected that Condé would attack the city. The government’s force was not sufficient to take the field, and twenty-five pieces of artillery were paraded through the streets to make an impression and to induce the clergy and Parisians to contribute money for this religious war-making.[552] Popular opinion in Paris was bitterly hostile to the Huguenots, but the bourgeois were not inclined to go down into their pockets and so, when the cowardly king of Navarre published a proclamation on May 26[553] expelling all Protestants from Paris and leaving their goods at the mercy of their adversaries, it was hailed with delight by the capital. Mobs of Catholics forcibly expelled Huguenots from the city and destroyed their goods. The city was so full of men-at-arms, highwaymen, and robbers at this time that every householder was required to keep a light in his street window until daybreak.[554] Risings in many parts of the country continued to be heard of;[555] Vendôme, La Charité, Auxerre, Montargis, Poitiers, together with most of the towns of Saintonge and Angoumois,[556] either declared for the prince of Condé or were taken by him. But at Toulouse the Huguenots suffered heavily.[557] In Normandy, there was great fear of English intervention.[558]
Overtures for peace came to nothing because the Huguenots made the withdrawal of the Triumvirate a condition precedent to their laying down of arms.[559] The prince contended that he could not be secure unless the duke of Guise, the constable, and the marshal St. André retired from the court. The queen mother in reply represented that it was not right, during the King’s minority, to remove from him such important personages; that the Catholics in Paris had taken up arms to oppose the Edict of January, and that if the Huguenot soldiery would retire to their homes they might live there as they liked, while a council (of which he should be a member) considered some better means of settlement.[560] Gradually the hostile armies—the prince of Condé at the head of the Huguenots and the duke of Guise, the constable, the marshal St. André and the recreant king of Navarre with the Catholic host—drew near to each other.[561] An attempt was made to take Jargeau, eight miles from Orleans; but fearing lest its capture would cut supplies off from Orleans, Coligny and D’Andelot destroyed the bridge there. This forced the Catholic captains to change their intention, and they traversed the Beauce so as to surprise Beaugency, fourteen miles from Orleans, midway between Orleans and Blois, where there was a bridge across the river. On June 15 the two forces arrived near the bridge at almost the same time and a fight seemed imminent. The two armies were about five miles apart, and about the same distance from Orleans. Both being south of the Loire, there was no river to hinder an engagement. There were many vineyards between them, which was an advantage to the prince, who had more infantry than cavalry, while Guise had 7,000 horse, D’Aumale having come from Normandy with his force. The Catholic forces were divided: Guise lay north of the river, beyond Beaugency, Paris-ward; D’Aumale’s detachment was on the other side of the river at Clerie, midway between Orleans and Beaugency, having the town and the bridge in his hands; while Navarre was established at Vernon, a league from Beaugency.[562]
The condition of the country around Orleans at this time, considering that a state of war existed, was not bad. Condé had plenty of money for the moment, having secured the riches of the churches of Bourges. Food was good and plentiful in Orleans and bread was cheap. Everything the Huguenots took they paid for, as a matter of policy,[563] although large funds were not in sight and they looked anxiously to England for 100,000 crowns, offering the notes of the leaders as security or else the bonds of some of the most notable Reformed churches, as Rouen and Lyons. The Huguenot army made a brave display. Many of the gentlemen were rich and wore long white coats (casaque blanche) of serge, kersey, or stramell, after the old manner, with long sleeves over their armour.[564] The truce expired on June 21 (Sunday), but only light skirmishing was indulged in while specious negotiations were continued by Montmorency.[565] But the Catholic leaders offered such hard conditions that Condé would not accept them. Among others it was demanded that all preachers should be banished from France, together with the prince himself, the brothers Châtillon, and the other Huguenot leaders, until the King was of age.
During this delay the prince lost the advantage he had possessed. For the duke of Guise, the constable and Marshal St. André returned from Chartres to the camp again, which was between Beaugency and Blois, which lends color to the theory that it was they who overruled Antoine of Navarre and Catherine. After the rupture of the truce, the Catholic army marched to Blois, which they battered for a day and a night, assaulted and entered, although the inhabitants offered to let them in at the gates. When the magistrates of the city offered the keys to the duke of Guise, he pointed to the cannon with him, saying they were the keys he would enter by. At the same time St. André took Poitiers and Angoulême and drove La Rochefoucauld into Saintonge with the aid of Spanish troops.[566] When informed of the duke’s proceedings at Blois, Condé marched to Beaugency, which, after bombardment, was entered on July 3, the most part of those who were left to guard it being killed.[567] Then seeing his own fortunes diminishing daily, he retired to Orleans, with scarcely 3,000 horse and 6,000 footmen. The prince was in doubt what next to do; whether to retire to Lyons and join with the baron des Adresse,[568] who had acquired Grenoble, Valence, and Châlons in Burgundy, despite Tavannes who kept the field with his forces,[569] and was reputed to have 8,000 foot and 1,500 horse besides 6,000 Swiss sent from Bern and Lucerne, or to retire to Gascony where the queen of Navarre was, or thirdly to go to Rouen and thereby keep Normandy. In the end, however, he and Coligny stayed in Orleans. The remainder of his force was either dispersed in the various towns or dismissed.
The Protestants stood in dire need of outside aid during this summer.[570] A few days after Condé had retired within Orleans, D’Aumale took Honfleur (July 21). In Paris mobs killed almost hourly men, women, and children, notwithstanding an edict to the contrary under pain of death. Arms were in the people’s hands, not only in Paris but in the villages. Neither the King nor the queen mother had the means to rule them, for the king of Navarre and the duke of Guise were then at Blois, with the result that Paris did much as it pleased. The leaders contemplated the recovery of Touraine, Anjou, and Maine, and all the towns upon the Loire, and then proposed to go into Normandy and recover Havre-de-Grace, Dieppe, and Rouen. In pursuance of this project the duke of Guise took Loudon and Chinon in Touraine. In the same month Mondidier was entered by the Catholics upon assurance that all the Protestants therein should live safely; but notwithstanding the promises they were all cut to pieces, robbed, or driven forth. Numbers of men, women, and children were drowned in the night with stones about their necks, at Blois, Tours, and Amboise, and those towns which surrendered to the king of Navarre.
While these events were taking place in the Loire country, the duke of Aumale again approached Rouen on the 29th of June, and planted his batteries before St. Catherine’s Mount, but succeeded in doing little in spite of his long battery. He hoped to recover Havre-de-Grace after Guise had seized the towns upon the Loire. The great fear of the French was lest Havre-de-Grace should be given by the Huguenots into the hands of the English, and the atrocious practice of D’Aumale was likely to further such conduct on the part of the Huguenots,[571] for he promised the peasantry not only the privilege of sacking the châteaux of the nobles, but also to relieve them of all taxes. As a result of this vicious policy, trade was dead and whole families of the nobility retired to Dieppe, abandoning their homes.[572]
Violence increased both in the cities and in the provinces. In the southeast Somarive committed great cruelties in Orange, killing men, women, and children wherever he went.[573] But the achievements of Montluc, “the true creator of the French infantry”[574] were the conspicuous feature of the war in the south. By his own confession this famous soldier “rather inclined to violence than to peace, and was more prone to fighting and cutting of throats than to making of speeches.”[575] The war in the southern provinces, it is plain, was one of both politics and religion. The practices of the Huguenots penetrated the whole administrative machinery. The sieur de Burie, king’s lieutenant in Guyenne, was old and overcautious, and not without suspicion of Calvinism,[576] while Duras, the Huguenot leader was so active that the crown had sent the veteran of the siege of Sienna into Guyenne in January, 1560, with a special commission.[577] The Huguenots tried to buy Montluc off through one of their captains formerly with him before Sienna, who came to him saying that the church at Nérac had made him their captain. Montluc’s reply nearly took the captain off his feet. “What the devil churches are those that make captains?” was his fierce question.[578] He speedily began to make his name formidable by hanging six Huguenots without process of law “which shook great fear into the whole party.”
Montluc’s arrival was in the nick of time for the Catholics of the south. He thought that if the Huguenots had been more led by soldiers and not so “guided by ministers, they had not failed of carrying Bordeaux and Toulouse. But God preserved those two forts, the bulwarks of Guyenne, to save all the rest.” Montluc was everywhere at once, never resting long in any place, holding his foes in suspense everywhere, and not only was himself in continual motion, but also with letters and messages perpetually solicited and employed all the friends he had.[579] His troops were few in numbers and so ill-paid that he sometimes was reluctantly compelled to ransom his prisoners. “We were so few that we were not enough to kill them all,” he comments. “Had the King paid his companies I should not have suffered ransom to have been in use in this quarrel. It is not in this case as in a foreign war where men fight for love and honor. In a civil war we must either be master or man, being we live as it were, all under a roof.” He was as good as his word and “shook a great terror into the country everywhere.” When he appeared before Agen he “wondered that the people should be so damnably timorous and did not better defend their religion.” Instead “they no sooner heard my name but they fancied the rope already about their necks.” Yet terrible as the old war-dog was, he still waged war according to the rules of the game. He is outspoken in condemnation of the conduct of the Spanish companies sent by Philip II which joined him before Agen.[580] The importance of Montluc’s services in the south was great. He helped save Toulouse and Bordeaux to the government and the subsequent capture of Lectoure, and the notable battle of Vergt in Périgord (October 9, 1562) prevented the Huguenots south of the Loire from joining the forces of the prince of Condé, who thus narrowly lost the battle of Dreux.[581]
As the Catholic cause mended, the situation of the Huguenots darkened. Four thousand Swiss in June had joined Tavannes in Burgundy and thereby Dijon, Macon, and Châlons-sur-Saône were made safe. Late in July 6,000 lansquenets passed through Paris toward the camp at Blois. Pope Pius IV sent his own nephew to the aid of Joyeuse with 2,500 footmen, one thousand of whom were “Hispainolz.”[582] The Huguenots impatiently awaited the coming of German pistoleers and footmen, to be brought by Casimir, the second son of the count palatine, accompanied by D’Andelot who had been sent into Germany for assistance. But the German princes were slow in responding, especially to the demand for money,[583] so that the prince of Condé actually promised to give them the pillage of Paris![584] D’Andelot passed the Rhine on September 22, 1562—three weeks too late to relieve Bourges—with 2,000 German horse and 2,000 musketeers, who figured in the battle of Dreux in the next December.[585] France had seen nothing like these reiters in days heretofore. Their coming created both consternation[586] and curiosity. Claude Haton in vain sought the meaning of the word.
The word reiter had never had vogue in France within the life of the oldest of men, and one had never used the word until the present, although the kings of France had been served in all their wars by Germans, Swiss, and lansquenets, who are included under this word and name of Germany or Allemaigne. I have taken pains to inquire of numerous persons, who are deemed to know much what was the signification of this word “reiter,” but I have not found a man who has been wise enough to tell me what I wished to know.[587]
In order to pay the reiters and to find money, a taille was imposed upon the Huguenots of all classes, in all towns and villages under their control, upon nobles, priests, merchants, bourgeois, and artisans. But as this means was very tedious, the prince had recourse to the gold and silver vessels, chalices, and crosses of the churches which the Huguenots had pillaged. He also seized upon the government receipts from the gabelle and other taxes of the King in all the villages and élections controlled by the Huguenots, even the moneys of the royal domain, and the revenues of the churches.[588]
Meanwhile on August 19 the siege of Bourges had begun. The city was defended by about 3,500 soldiers, but the circuit of its walls was very great. It was well provisioned for a time, and had considerable munitions and artillery of an inferior sort, but neither cannon nor culverin. Half the town was protected by a great marsh near by; the other half was fortified. It was the plan of D’Andelot, who had entered Lorraine with 2,000 horse and 4,000 foot, commanded by the duke of Deuxponts, feeling he could do nothing in time for Bourges, to cut off Paris by securing the passages of the river at St. Cloud and Charenton.[589] Accordingly the constable and the duke of Guise, learning of the approach of the reiters, dispatched D’Aumale with a commission to levy all men of war in Champagne, Brie, and Burgundy, both foot and horse, and to sound the tocsin for the purpose of raising new levies for the King if those which he first raised should not suffice, and to make a great camp of all these men for the purpose of combating the reiters.[590] But D’Aumale dallied so long,[591] to the intense chagrin of his army, which clamored to “frapper dessus les lif-lof de reistres,”[592] that the German troopers were able to cross the river Seine at Chanceaux, whence they took the road above Auxerre, crossed the Yonne, and so joined the prince of Condé at Orleans.
It would have been much better for France, and especially for the provinces of Champagne, Brie, and Burgundy, if D’Aumale had attempted to repulse the reiters, for his soldiers were the ruin of the villages where they lodged, and any action, even defeat, would have been better than license and idleness. When it was known that the reiters had evaded the force sent against them, the King, seeing new villages of France taken every day, sent orders to all those who still adhered to the crown to the effect that they should be on their guard night and day, for fear of being taken by surprise. For greater security commissions were dispatched authorizing the election of a gentleman of honor and credit to be town-captain in every town.[593]
The Catholic and Huguenot position with reference to each other between Paris and the Loire was now somewhat as follows: the former held Chartres, Bonneval, Chateaudun, Blois; the latter St. Marthurin, Montargis, and Gien. On August 31, 1562, the surrender of Bourges took place. The crown guaranteed life, property, and liberty of conscience to the commandant and soldiers and inhabitants of the town, in consideration of an indemnity of 50,000 livres “pour avoir été si gracieusement traités.”[594] But the Catholic leaders were in doubt what next to do, for all the Huguenots were within the towns, neither occupying the open country nor having a camp outside the walls. The king of Navarre urged the siege of Orleans, but the council was not in agreement with him for two reasons: first, on account of the plague which was there; secondly because they had hopes that Navarre might prevail upon his brother to desert the Huguenot cause, and so spare them the exercise of force. For these reasons it was resolved not to push the siege of Orleans and to attack Rouen instead, where the duke of Aumale was already.[595]
The Guises were now fully aware of the formidable nature of the revolt of Normandy, there being danger of their also losing western Normandy, where the duke de Bouillon held Caen castle, but was disposed to be neutral. They planned, therefore, to send the greater portion of their new forces, Germans and Swiss, to the aid of D’Aumale, who had advanced against Rouen after D’Andelot gave him the slip, for they were little needed in the Loire country. Roggendorf, Guise’s chief German agent, at this time arrived in Paris with 1,200 German pistoleers, well armed and mounted; the Swiss captain, Froelich had brought fifteen ensigns of Swiss, and the Rhinegrave was in Champagne with two regiments of foot and three hundred pistoleers.[596]
The constable and the duke of Guise in fear of English support, resolved to concentrate the greatest part of their force against Rouen and Havre-de-Grace. Another motive lay in the fact that Paris was in want; for the Huguenots recognized that if Rouen, Havre-de-Grace and Dieppe were well held, coercion of Paris was not impossible. The condition at Dieppe and Havre-de-Grace was the source of more anxiety to the government than any other matter. These towns, owing to their situation, were the chief keys to France, without which neither Paris nor Rouen could be free. Havre-de-Grace was of more use to France than Calais as a port of supply, and daily all those who escaped from Pont Audemer, Honfleur, Harfleur, and the Protestants between Dieppe[597] and Rouen were flocking thither.
The chief hope of the French Protestants was based upon the expected aid of England. Early in April, 1562, the prince of Condé and the admiral had solicited her support.[598] But the anxiety of Elizabeth in the welfare of Protestantism beyond sea was not disinterested, any more than Philip II’s catholicism. The legality of her position as queen required her adherence to everything anti-Catholic, to which may be added the influence of the political aims of Philip II with reference to England, especially his interest in the doings of Mary Stuart and Spanish tyranny in the Low Countries, both of which jeopardized England. Her ambassador in France observed truly when he wrote her: “It standeth Your Majesty, for the conservation of your realm in the good terms it is in, to countenance the Protestants as much as you may.”[599] Another practical end to be gained by English support of the Huguenots was the possibility of recovering Calais.[600] Yet in spite of their deep religious animosity and their political hostility to one another, England and Spain were in so peculiarly complicated a relation that neither state wished to go to war. Philip II assured Charles IX that although Elizabeth would squirm at sight of Spanish assistance given to France, she dared not strike back in aid of the Huguenots, and would have to compel herself to view things from afar.[601] The key to this extraordinary situation is to be found in the commerce of the Low Countries. The duke of Alva flatly said that his master could not afford to break with the English because of the commercial injury he would sustain in the Netherlands.[602] The same proposition, reversed, was in like stead true of England; her commercial interests in Holland and Flanders were too great to be risked.
But the good prospect of regaining Calais coupled with the fear lest the reduction of France to Spanish suzerainty would entail greater danger to England in the long run than the loss of her commerce beyond sea, at last persuaded Elizabeth to support the Huguenots, upon certain conditions, the ultimate one being restoration of Calais to England.[603] Accordingly, in September, 1562, the queen offered to land 6,000 men to guard the towns in Normandy, to take Havre and Dieppe under her protection, and receive into them the refugees of the Reformed church, and promised not to abandon Havre without the prince’s consent, nor receive Calais from the opposite party. The vidame of Chartres agreed to deliver the custody of Havre-de-Grace to the queen’s lieutenant on condition that the latter would recompense him and Condé by annual pensions or assigned lands, because of the loss of their estates and goods in France. In pursuance of this compact, on September 24, 1562, the English proclamation for the expedition into Normandy was published. It was time, if success were to crown the enterprise, for in Havre troubles and enemies multiplied and patience with the English was on the point of breaking. “No prey happens to a sleeping fox,” wrote the vidame impatiently to the English admiral. On October 1, 1562, the English sailed from Portsmouth for Havre, and on Sunday, October 4, entered the roadstead of Havre at three in the afternoon, and immediately landed as many men as they could with the tide.
The English occupation of Havre-de-Grace startled the government into new activity before Rouen, and the King determined to take it before English assistance could be afforded.[604] The town was well supplied with provisions and had plenty of small arms, but was short of artillery and gunpowder. The garrison numbered about 4,000, under command of Montgomery, the guardsman who had accidentally killed Henry II in tournament, for Morvilliers, the former chief in command in Rouen, had hesitated about the introduction of English soldiers and had been replaced.
In the first week of October the attack of the royal forces upon Rouen was renewed with fury and the fortress on St. Catherine’s Mount was taken by them. Desperation soon prevailed in the beleaguered city and there was talk of conditional surrender if that could be effected, until the arrival of a few companies of English revived the courage of the Rouennais and the fight was renewed. But the procrastinating caution of the English by this time overreached itself. In spite of the importunities of Throckmorton,[605] the English government was reluctant to venture its arms beyond the seaboard,[606] although Throckmorton’s arguments were reinforced by every other English agent in France, Rouen being represented as “such a jewel for them that by no means is it sufferable to become an enemy.”[607] All urgency was in vain. The instructions to the earl of Warwick, the English commander in Havre-de-Grace, were to the effect that if requested to send aid to Rouen or other places he should make some “reasonable delay,” without offending them.[608] It is easy to see from such instructions and the policy pursued by the English government in France that its interest was purely practical and in no sense sentimental or religious. England wanted to hold Havre-de-Grace in pawn for Calais, under cover of pretending to support the Huguenots.
By mid-October, however, it had become plain that this narrow policy could not be so rigidly adhered to. The success of the Catholic armies in Normandy was even endangering Havre-de-Grace, and Havre-de-Grace was not nearly so favorable a point of vantage for the English as Calais had been, for there the pale protected the city proper; in the city at the Seine’s mouth the fortifications were weak and, worst of all, the location was a poor one for defense.[609] With the coming of winter, it would be possible for the French with slight effort to prevent much intercourse by sea between Havre and the English ports, while already the country roundabout was being devastated by the German reiters. D’Aumale was reported to have said—and there was justification of the statement—that the English garrison might make merry as it pleased, the winter and famine would cause them to pack homeward faster than they had come. Too late the English at last determined to succor Rouen after the fall of St. Catherine’s Mount,[610] and relief troops were sent forward to Rouen from Havre-de-Grace and Dieppe. An intrepid English captain named Leighton (he was afterward made governor of Guernsey), with a handful of men, made his way into the city, but substantial assistance did not come until the middle of October. Even then misfortune overtook the English. The approach was made by the river in six small ships, but one of them struck on a sand bar near Caudebec and was intercepted by Damville, so that only 600 English got into the town.[611]
On the morning of the 16th, Montgomery and two of the chief men of the city came out of Rouen, under a flag of truce, and spoke with the queen, returning a second time with fresh proposals, but nothing resulted. The Huguenots demanded, first of all, liberty of preaching, and of living according to their religion. Besides this, they insisted that the King should not put a garrison in Rouen, and as security for the observance of these conditions they required hostages from the King, to be kept by them at Havre-de-Grace. In the second interview they enlarged the conditions; namely, that the Edict of January might be observed and that they might preach freely in the cities, although by the edict preaching was permitted only outside of cities.[612] Moreover, they insisted on this agreement being extended to all towns of France; and in order to give this convention a general effect, the prince of Condé was to confirm it. For the observance of all these conditions they demanded as hostages the prince de Joinville, eldest son of the duke of Guise, and brother of the marshal Brissac,[613] superintendent of the King’s revenues.
Although Montgomery was unaware of it, the government already, alarmed by the English intervention, had made overtures to the prince of Condé in Orleans. But in each case, a condition required would not be yielded. The demand of the Rouennais that the Edict of January be revised so as to permit Protestant worship in all towns broke off negotiations with them. In the overtures made to Condé and Coligny, restitution of all in rebellion to their estates and offices was promised, as also the assurance to the Huguenots that they might enjoy their religion peaceably in their houses, but public worship, even without the towns, was not to be permitted. The Protestant leaders seem to have been inclined to yield to these terms, although they implied a reduction of their religious privileges, but insisted that the crown should assume the payments due to Condé’s German auxiliaries. The government balked at this proposal, and the prince and the admiral themselves balked when the king of Navarre declared that D’Andelot’s German troopers and the Huguenots should unite to expel the English from France, so that in the end neither set of negotiations was successful.[614]
During the successful assault upon Fort St. Catherine which followed the rupture of these negotiations both Antoine of Navarre and the duke of Guise were wounded, the former by an arquebus-shot in the joint of the shoulder, as it proved, mortally, because mortification of the wound could not be stayed.[615] Montgomery fought furiously in the assault, which lasted seven hours, and threatened to use his sword upon any who might seek to yield. It was a desperate and vain battle, however.[616] The King’s forces mined clear to the walls of the town, and the havoc of their explosions could not be remedied. The breach in the walls made by both mine and shot was so wide that some of the royal force rode through on horseback.[617] On Monday, October 26, the besiegers fought their way through and over the walls. In this supreme movement the English and the Catholic Germans came sharply together. No quarter was given the English in the town, the command being given “that they should all pass the sword.” Many of them were stripped naked by the victors. The wounded English who were found had their throats cut; the rest were sent to the galleys. The King entered Rouen the day after its capture, making his way over dead bodies which had been spoiled by the soldiers.[618] The royal forces now had unlimited control of the Seine below Rouen; at Caudebec they staked half the river, so that ships and boats were compelled to pass close under their guns.
The Guises now anticipated a swift collapse of the Huguenot cause. All the chief towns in France save Orleans[619] and Lyons were either by inclination or compulsion obedient to the crown, which found powerful support from the property-owning and lawyer class. Politically and financially the government was stronger, although the court was in want of money at this time. The duke of Guise, the most notable captain and soldier in France, the constable and veteran marshals like Brissac and St. André, had made a combination too strong to be overcome. In this strait, the Huguenot leaders grasped at the last straw—the hope that the prince of Condé might succeed the king of Navarre as lieutenant of the realm by winning the support of liberal Catholics and the anti-Guisard element.[620] There was ground for this hope if the Calvinists could be persuaded to be a little less radical, and if the Catholic religion would be suffered without criticism to be and remain the religion of France, and the Huguenots would make no further alteration in their form of worship than the English Reformation had done.[621]
Antoine of Bourbon, since sustaining the wound received at Rouen, had been gradually sinking, and died on board a boat on his way to Paris, October 26, after prolonged suffering.[622] Condé now, by virtue of the arrangement made at the meeting of the States-General at Orleans, legally succeeded to his brother’s office as lieutenant of the realm, and proceeded forthwith to send out commissions to the constable, marshals, and to all the governors of provinces and places, to repair to him as the King’s lieutenant-general and governor of France. But in spite of the regulation of the estates, the court and Catholic party, by the advice of the cardinals of Ferrara, Lorraine, and Guise, the duke of Guise, the constable, and marshal St. André, with the special solicitation of the Spanish ambassador who voiced his master’s wishes with “a lusty swelling tongue,” resolved to establish the cardinal of Bourbon in the authority the king of Navarre had held.[623]
Chapter VII
THE FIRST CIVIL WAR (Continued). THE BATTLE OF DREUX (DECEMBER 19, 1562). THE PEACE OF AMBOISE (MARCH 19, 1563)
After the fall of Rouen, the chief military design of the Guises seems to have been to protract the war, without giving battle, until the Germans with D’Andelot and Condé either deserted for lack of pay or were corrupted by them. Catherine’s wish, on the other hand, was to end the war by composition and not by the sword, fearing to have either party become flushed with success. In pursuance of this policy numbers of the soldiers were permitted to go home, the war being considered to be practically at an end until the spring, except that garrisons of horse and foot were kept in the towns round about Orleans after the manner of a flying siege (siège volante). But the rapid advance of the prince toward Paris from Orleans, where he had been waiting for D’Andelot, who mustered his German horse in Lorraine in the middle of September, after he learned of his brother’s death, required the duke of Guise to change his plans. Passing by Etampes, which the Guises abandoned at his approach,[624] the prince of Condé marched toward Corbeil in order to win the passage of the Seine, where 4,000 footmen and 2,000 horse of the enemy lay in order to keep the Marne and the Seine open above Paris for provisioning the capital. The Huguenot army numbered about 6,000 footmen; 4,000 of them Germans, and nearly 3,000 horsemen. Most of the Germans were well armed and mounted, and all “very Almain soldiers, who spoil all things where they go.”[625]
The duke of Guise, having received word of the approach of the Huguenots upon Paris, abandoned his purpose of going to Havre, in order to return to the succor of the city. Great difficulty was experienced in accomplishing the return of the army, because it was the depth of winter and the days were short and the roads heavy. “Nevertheless everyone in camp took courage, because he was returning to the good French wines and no more needed to drink the cider of Normandy.”[626]
To combat the Protestant force, Guise and the constable had not over 6,000 footmen and 1,000 horsemen at Paris, though this force could be somewhat enlarged by drawing in the troops around Rouen and before Havre-de-Grace. It was fully expected that the prince of Condé would march upon the capital or else take the straight road to Normandy in order to unite with the English and with their help attempt to regain possession of Rouen and Dieppe. Paris was in the greatest alarm. All the people living in the faubourgs were compelled to abandon their houses. The state of the royal army was bad; the soldiers were scattered and disorganized, for the spoil of Rouen had induced every kind of license and debauchery. Moreover, the plague was raging everywhere. In this exigency the duke of Guise abandoned the country roundabout, within two or three leagues of Paris, to the pillage of the Protestants, withdrew his scattered forces within the walls, and feverishly employed every available person in the erection of fortifications, principally upon the side toward Orleans, for which certain unfinished erections of Francis I were utilized. The city was so crowded with people even before the appearance of the troops of the prince that it seemed to be in a state of siege. If Condé at this time could have seized the river above and below the capital by which provisions were received into Paris, the city could have been speedily reduced to famine, as there was even at this time a scarcity of food.[627]
But Louis of Condé was not a man of good judgment and, while personally brave, he lacked political daring. To gain time for the arrival of reinforcements, Catherine and the Guises wheedled him with empty overtures for peace and sent the marshal Brissac’s brother to the Protestant camp near Etampes to propose a plausible settlement, saying that the Huguenots might have what they desired if they would aid in expelling the Germans, and especially the English. The last possibility was what the English agents in France had most feared, the more because of the undeniable strength of the Catholic crown party, which had won to itself a great number of the nobility, and because of the approaching winter, the lack of money among the Huguenots, the scarcity of food, and the weariness of the country. Such abandonment of the English by the prince of Condé could hardly have been construed as a breach of faith, seeing the apathy of the English participation after the seizure of Havre-de-Grace and Elizabeth’s slowness in sending him financial assistance. But the prince refused to treat with an agent and continued his march toward Paris. On November 25 his cavalry appeared in sight of the city and the queen mother and the constable went out to parley further. The prince of Condé demanded the post of lieutenant-general of the realm; for the Huguenots the right to have churches in all towns except Paris and its banlieue and frontier towns; the right of all gentlemen to have private worship in their own houses, and the retirement of the foreign troops. To these demands, the queen replied that no one should have her authority, adding that the government was already well made up of gentlemen, officers, and ministers, among whom the responsibilities of state had been divided, so that the government was capable of being well conducted until the King had attained his majority. As to toleration, she declared that to grant it would only be to encourage civil war.[628]
Too late Condé found that he had been trifled with[629] in order to give the government time to bring up reinforcements[630] and that the terms he offered had not even been considered. The blame for this unfortunate turn in the war must rest, not upon the queen mother, but upon the Guises. For the duke of Guise and his brother, with the constable, could not but fear, that in the event of peace they would be ruined, and the duke used his own popularity with the masses and the enmity felt by the Parisians toward the queen to gain his ends. When duplicity failed, then Catherine’s adversaries used intimidation, and the Spanish ambassador at their instigation was sent to her, “either threatening or protesting, or promising and offering aid, and thus upsetting everything.”[631] When Paris was full of soldiers negotiations were broken off, the prince of Condé declaring defiantly that the Huguenots would sharpen their swords as they would have need of them.
The only advantage the prince had gained was that he had been able to draw his force close in toward Paris, so that in the last week in November he was camped near the Pont de Charenton. On the 26th he planted his camp on the left bank, a mile from the faubourgs. If the prince of Condé had attacked Paris at once, instead of wasting time at Corbeil in vain pourparlers, the whole Huguenot cause might have triumphed, for the government would have been forced to yield almost everything. He might have won the suburbs with little loss, although in want of heavy artillery, and the city could not then have held out long. But now the case was such that he either had to fight—with small hope of winning, let alone of taking Paris—or else come to an accord upon his enemy’s terms.[632]
The prevailing opinion was that the prince would not be able to keep his army together for want of provisions and money, especially in mid-winter.[633] This proved to be true. On December 9 he broke camp and marched off crestfallen, toward Normandy, after burning the camp, to effect a juncture with the English.[634] By this time he had barely 7,000 men, the time of the year telling hard upon the army, for it was compelled to live in the open, while his adversaries had 15,000 or 16,000 men of all nations, one-quarter of whom were mounted. The difficulty of his position was the greater because he was on the left bank of the Seine, with no prospect of passing the river, for the duke of Guise lay at Poissy,[635] while the Rhinegrave and Villebonne were guarding Pont de l’Arche lower down. Warwick was unwilling to venture forth from Havre to the prince’s assistance, but hoped, by stopping the shipment of salt and other merchandise up the Seine, to be able to compel the towns of Normandy, as Honfleur, Harfleur, Caudebec, and Rouen, for necessity’s sake to come to terms.[636] Being unable to pass the Seine, Condé drew off toward Chartres, followed at the distance of about five leagues by the duke of Guise and the constable, and came to a halt near Montfort not far from Evreux, while Guise lay at a point about ten leagues west of St. Denis, from whence, including Paris, he drew his supplies.[637] All around the two armies the country was destroyed.
The prince’s inability to secure provisions, combined with the failure of English support, finally compelled him to give battle to the duke of Guise near Dreux on December 19, the engagement being precipitated by his attempt to force the passage of the Eure, although the odds were against him in every particular, for the duke of Guise was posted at a point so chosen that he could fall back on Dreux if compelled to do so; his flank was protected by a stream and a wood; and his artillery was more numerous than that of Condé.[638] The advance guard of the Huguenots was commanded by the admiral; the “battle,” in which were the German reiters, by D’Andelot; the rear guard by the prince of Condé himself. The Huguenot ministers and preachers, armed and mounted, moved about among the men, who sang their psalms in such a loud voice that the camp of the King could easily hear them. On the Catholic side the marshal St. André was pitted against D’Andelot; the constable Montmorency commanded the rear guard, with instructions to hold off until the Huguenot rear guard entered the fight; while the duke of Guise himself commanded the advance guard against the admiral.[639]
The battle was begun about noon by a victorious charge of the Huguenot horse, headed by Condé and Coligny, which drove back the Catholic Swiss and resulted in the capture of six pieces of cannon and the constable Montmorency who was slightly wounded in the mouth. His captors “sent him to Orleans with such speed, that he drank but once by the way and that on horseback.”[640] The second charge was less effective owing chiefly to the slowness of the prince’s German reiters who had to have their orders interpreted to them, and partly to the effective artillery fire of the enemy, and culminated in the capture of Condé, whose horse was shot under him. Too late to save the prince of Condé the admiral made a partial rally of the French and German cavalry, in the course of whose attack the marshal St. André was killed.[641] Even then the issue might have been different if the Huguenot footmen had not behaved like cowards.[642] The Protestant loss included about 800 of the noblesse, and nearly 6,000 footmen and reiters according to those who buried the dead.[643] The Catholic loss was about 2,000, the most conspicuous among the fallen being the marshal St. André and Montbrun, the youngest son of the constable Montmorency.[644]
The battle of Dreux was fought on the day of the feast of St. Thomas—almost the shortest day of the year—and the Huguenots had to thank the oncoming of darkness for saving them from pursuit. Under its cover Coligny drew off toward Auneau where he pitched camp, but some of the Huguenot horse galloped all night toward Orleans. Fortunate was the Calvinist who could find a cross to put upon his clothing on the morrow.[645] Twenty-two standards of the prince of Condé were found upon the ground, which were sent to the King and hung in the cathedral of Notre Dame. Almost all Condé’s German footmen were taken prisoners, about 2,000, three-quarters of whom were sent back to Germany on parole, without weapons, and bearing white rods in witness of their abdication; the rest entered the service of the King and were joined with the Rhinegrave’s forces under command of Bassompierre, an Alsatian in the service of Charles IX.[646]
The battle of Dreux, while not a complete rout of the Huguenots, was no less a disaster, because it foiled the efforts of Coligny to effect a junction with the English in Havre and compelled him to fall back on Orleans. Even Spain breathed easier, for anxiety lest the English get Calais was dispelled.[647] Moreover, the French Protestants were in need of money, both Coligny’s and D’Andelot’s troops being in arrears of pay, the latter’s reiters having gone three months without wages.[648] On the other hand the government was in better financial condition through the efforts of the cardinal of Lorraine, who collected some money at the Council of Trent[649] in order to continue the war, and the active efficiency of the Spanish ambassador and the papal legate, who were excellent coworkers.[650] Yet, in spite of defeat, Coligny was resolved to continue the fight, though uncertain what policy to follow. At first he was inclined to go into Dauphiné and join forces with Des Adresse against the duke of Nemours,[651] but the prospect of Catholic relief from Germany in the early spring made it advisable to abandon this plan.
The military situation was much as follows in mid-January, 1563: the Huguenot center was at Orleans, where D’Andelot lay, in control of the middle line of the Loire above Blois and as far northward as Chateaudun and the vicinity of Chartres;[652] Coligny lay at Villefranche (January 12); Montgomery was in Dieppe and the English in Havre. But communication between the Protestant coreligionists was prevented by the way in which the Catholic troops were disposed. Etampes, which the duke of Guise recovered in January, restored the necessary connecting link between Blois and Paris, and the whole line of the Seine was in the hands of the Catholics; Warwick was being besieged in Havre by Vieilleville (he had succeeded the Marshal St. André and was also governor of Normandy), who lay at Caudebec.[653] The marshal Brissac was at Rouen with seventeen ensigns. The marshal Bourdillon who had been given the bâton of the late marshal Termes was in Piedmont. Paris of course was in the government’s hands. In Berry where the upper waters of the Loire and the Seine flow close together the lines of the two hostile parties came in contact. The admiral in the second week in January, 1563, passed the Loire at Beaugency and distributed his men at St. Aignan, Celles, and Montrichard, which lay on the right bank of the stream.[654] At the same time Guise had been minded to cross the river the other way and attack Orleans. This move on the part of each commander brought about a collision of forces near Cléry, in which Guise was repulsed. The condition of the country at the time was terrible, especially for the duke, whose troopers were so pressed that they had to forage twelve leagues from camp.[655] Everywhere the reiters were held in terror, for these raiders frequently made long and rapid marches and fell suddenly upon places, carrying death and destruction with them.
In the meanwhile, the constable had been kept in light captivity at Orleans,[656] a treatment in contrast with that experienced by Condé, who was first kept under strong guard by Damville in the little abbey of St. Pierre at Chartres, both the windows and the street being barred, and later, on January 24, 1563, brought to Paris.[657] Ever since Dreux, the queen mother and the constable had been constantly employed in the endeavor to make a settlement.[658] In the case of the constable, self-interest was the chief motive: he chafed under confinement and was envious of the duke of Guise.[659] On the other hand, Catherine’s anxiety was of a political nature. She was fearful lest England permanently acquire Havre-de-Grace. Her purpose was to make peace with the Huguenots and then unite the parties in a war for the recovery of Havre.[660] But the mistrust of the Huguenots that the overtures of peace were meant to be an accord in appearance only; the ambition of the Guises who saw their power thrive in the struggle; the opposition of Paris, and perhaps above all, the opposition of Spain, were difficulties in the way.[661] Philip II’s joy over Dreux was tempered by his anxiety, and he secretly aimed to thwart any terms of peace at all favorable to the Protestants.[662] Catherine probably would have preferred to abide by anything rather than have the Guises gain greater profit.[663] The queen mother urged the necessity of peace on account of lack of funds to carry on the war.[664] But her arguments were cast to the winds by the triumphant Guises when money began to pour into France from Spain, Venice, the duke of Tuscany, and from some of the Catholic German princes.[665]
On the other hand, the penury of the Protestants increased from day to day. Coligny was in daily fear lest the reiters would desert him on account of the delay in paying them.[666] In vain he wrote to Elizabeth, urging the speedy remittance of money. The cautious procrastination and niggardly policy of Elizabeth in the end was fatal to his purpose. In vain her ambassador in France, the faithful Throckmorton, urged immediate and liberal action. Warwick also added his plea, informing the home government and the queen that the admiral would be “ruined and unable to hold up his head without her aid in men and money.”[667] Elizabeth’s notorious parsimony led her to deceive the French Protestants with vague promises, a policy so short-sighted that it ultimately lost England the support of the Huguenots and compelled the evacuation of Havre-de-Grace, which otherwise they might have made another Calais. By February the admiral’s patience was well-nigh exhausted, and his troops in mutiny, the reiters raiding the country to such an extent that the court and the foreign ambassadors were compelled to retire from Chartres to Blois, not daring to try to go to Paris. As his position became more desperate from want of funds, Coligny determined to strike northward, if possible to effect a juncture with the English on the coast of Normandy, and so while his agents parleyed for peace in order to gain time and deceive the enemy, the admiral, leaving his wagons and baggage behind him in order that his reiters might ride unimpeded, stole away from Jargau on the night of February 1 with 2,000 reiters, 1,000 mounted arquebusiers, and 500 gentry. His purpose was to join Warwick, but when he reached Dreux, where the battle had been fought six weeks earlier, he discovered that it was impossible for him to cross the Seine, and hence, after sending word to the earl that he was in hard straits for money to pay his men and had “much ado to keep them together,” he drew off toward Caen.[668]
While Coligny lay at Dives, Throckmorton—it must have been against his own convictions—was sent to confer with him, informing him that if the admiral counted that the payment of his army and the support of the war depended upon Elizabeth alone, he was to understand that the people of England would not willingly contribute to such an expense, since the war was of little profit to them. Therefore Elizabeth advised the Huguenots not to refuse reasonable conditions of peace, the English queen including in the sphere of “reasonable conditions” Huguenot insistence that Calais be restored to England.[669]
In the meantime, while Coligny’s position was growing worse and worse, the position of D’Andelot in Orleans had also become serious. The duke of Guise invested the city on February 4, and got possession of Portereau (February 6), a faubourg of Orleans across the river, which had been fortified during the previous summer. But the Huguenots still held the town at their end of the bridge and broke several of the arches down. A tiny island lay in the stream and this the duke planned to reach by filling thousands of sacks with sand and gravel and throwing them into the river between the banks at Portereau and the island from whence he would be more able to attack Orleans with cannon.[670] But it being winter time, the river was too deep and the current too strong. Failing this, he planned to cut the river above Orleans in order to let the water into the meadow lands.[671] The spirited siege lasted many days. Every kind of metal was impressed into service by those of Orleans, including shells made of brass, “which was a new device and very terrible,” and their ammunition seemed likely to outlast that of their enemy. The Catholic position around Orleans was by no means an enviable one. Food, money, and ammunition were lacking. All Guise’s men-at-arms and light horsemen lived at discretion—that is, they quartered themselves on the surrounding villages and forced the poor people of the country to feed them and their horses. The court was doing the same at Blois to the “marvellous destruction” of the country. The lack of powder bade fair to be fatal to the duke’s success, for the government’s powder factories at Chartres, Chateaudun, and Paris were all blown up, accidentally or otherwise, about this time, that of Paris having occurred on January 28, 1563, with great destruction of property and some lives.[672] In consequence of these disasters, the Catholic artillery had to send all the way to Flanders for gunpowder. Although some breaches were made in the wall by the Catholics, the duke of Guise delayed final assault, for two reasons: first, because the queen mother hoped to take the city by composition, secondly, because Catholic reinforcements were looked for late in March out of Germany, Switzerland, and Gascony, to the number of ten thousand.
No such silver lining lightened the cloud on the Huguenot horizon. D’Andelot from Orleans, the princess of Condé, Eleanor de Roye, from Strasburg, her imprisoned husband, and Coligny all implored the English queen in vain for speedy relief. The admiral’s position by the end of February was desperate. He had been compelled to move into the western part of Normandy, for his 5,000 reiters were “in such rage for their money that he could scarce keep them together,” and were being so corrupted by the enemy that he might otherwise have lost them utterly.[673] Powder also was wanting.[674] The condition of Montgomery[675] in Dieppe and of Warwick in Havre was quite as bad. In Havre food was so scarce that rations were reduced to a two-penny loaf to four persons; wood was unprocurable; the water was bad.[676] The spoiling of Normandy from the devastation of Coligny’s reiters who were levying upon the country without law or order, and burning and destroying villages without regard to religion, was terrible. “If the reiters understand that another messenger has arrived here (Caen) from the queen and the money not come,” wrote the admiral, “it will be impossible to save our throats from being cut.” Fortunately the very next day the English ambassador arrived in Caen with word for Coligny to the effect that eight thousand pounds in English sovereigns, French crowns, angels, and pistolets were on the way from Portsmouth to Caen.[677] Fire opened on Caen castle on March 1, and the next day the marquis D’Elbœuf surrendered it. Bayeux also capitulated.[678] The fall of these two places and the fearful state of the country,[679] might have broken the resolution of the crown to continue the war.[680] But another fate intervened.
Henry of Guise was mortally wounded on the night of February 18, 1563, by a Huguenot assassin named Poltrot[681] and died on Ash Wednesday following, February 24. The death of the duke of Guise was a heavy blow to the Catholics. His following, because of his personal magnetism, was greater than that of any other Catholic leader, for many noblemen and gentlemen adhered to the Catholic cause more for love of him than for loyalty to the established religion. Moreover, he was an able general uniting quickness of intelligence, determination, experience, popularity, and physical endurance in his talented person. Immediately after Guise was hurt, the queen mother went to the camp with the desire to see the constable. The prince of Condé and the constable were obviously the men of the hour, and as they could not conduct negotiations while they were prisoners, they were both liberated on March 8, and held a conference together on that day.[682] On March 19 the King, with the assent of his council, formally decreed religious toleration and appointed the prince of Condé lieutenant-general of the realm with exemption for seizure of any of the royal revenues by him during the troubles.[683] It was high time for peace to be made, for the revolt of the provinces was increasing. In La Rochelle, Poitou, Guyenne, and Picardy the “Howegenosys” had again rebelled in February, and the lieutenants of these provinces sent to Blois for aid.[684]
The terms of Amboise are interesting because they mark the triumph of the aristocratic element in the Huguenot party, whose interests were identified with their political purposes and their feudal position, over the “Geneva party,” who were austere Calvinists, and who had an eye single to religion only.[685] D’Andelot, and to a less degree the admiral, were representatives of this latter group.[686] The terms of peace provided that the prince of Condé was to succeed to the place of the late king of Navarre; that the Huguenot army was to be paid by the government; that in all towns where the Reformed religion prevailed, save Paris, it was to be protected; that in every bailiwick the King was to appoint one town where the gospel might be preached; that all gentlemen holding fiefs in low or mean justice might have preaching in their houses for the benefit of their families; that all nobles enjoying high justice might have preaching on their estates; that property confiscated from either church was to be restored.[687] Paris firmly refused at first to tolerate any terms of peace,[688] its Catholic prejudices being aggravated by desire to revenge the murder of the duke of Guise; but the King replied to the demur of the Parlement that the city must make up its mind to accept the conditions.[689] On the other hand, Lyons as obstinately refused to receive the mass, so that the country round about it remained turbulent well into the autumn.[690] Rouen, Dijon, Toulouse, encouraged by the opposition of the Parlement, refused to recognize the edict.[691] The roads were filled with robbers, and the continued presence of the reiters, to whom an enormous sum in wages was due, was a perpetual menace.
The Germans who had been in the service of the King and those of the prince of Condé fraternized on the road home. They made a great troop to the number of 10,000 or 12,000, taking the road from Orleans by way of Pluvières and Etampes to Paris, and arrived there in Easter week, where they stayed for five weeks at least. When they left they were an entire day crossing the bridge over the Seine, because of the enormous amount of baggage which they had. After having crossed the Seine, the reiters divided into two bands for better living, one of them skirting the right bank of the Seine, the other crossing Brie to the Marne, in order to find better provisions for themselves and their horses. These latter traversed Champagne to the River Aube and encamped at Montier-en-Der near Vassy for six entire weeks, marauding the country for five or six leagues about. Their depredations drove the peasantry to such despair that protective associations composed of the peasantry and nobles were formed to resist their aggressions, and these fell upon stragglers whenever they found a little group of them, and cut their throats. Gradually, however, these despoilers were drawn off out of the land, being accompanied to the frontier by the French infantry under the command of the prince de Porcien, who was then at Metz, where he had been stationed to foil any effort the Emperor might make for its recovery.[692] The priest-historian of Provins has graphically depicted the depredations of the reiters:
At the beginning of this war [he says] the people of the villages were so rich and well provided for, so well furnished in their houses with all kinds of furniture, so well provided with poultry and animals, that it was noble to see.... But the soldiers destroyed their beautiful tables, their shining brass-bound chests, and killed a great quantity of poultry without paying for it, or else offering a paltry sum in proportion to the number of soldiers who were lodged in the house. It was all one whether one man or many were so lodged, because the soldier who had a house to himself seized everything to his own profit. The wives and daughters of the peasantry were compelled to defend their honor. Property was seized and every sort of villainy was done by the soldiers, within the space of the three or four days that they might remain at a place.[693]
Not since the Hundred Years’ War had France beheld a people more fearful and formidable than were these reiters. They plundered the wretched people of all their goods, loading their horses and wagons therewith. Amid their equipment they carried winnowing fans to winnow the grain, flails to beat it in the granges, and sacks to bind it up in. They had with them mills to grind the grain and little ovens to bake bread in. Wherever they lodged they tore up floors, broke into closets, and ransacked gardens, courts, and chimneys, in order to find booty. They even fell upon the houses and châteaux of the nobles, where they passed, if they saw they were not strong or well defended.[694] For this reason those living in poorly fortified houses vacated them and fled to the towns. Those who owned strong and well-fortified houses levied soldiers for their defense. What happened at Provins happened, doubtless, in many other places, too.
In the carrefours of Provins, it was proclaimed that no inhabitant of the town, under pain of a fine of one hundred livres tournois and imprisonment, should leave it, and that every man at the hour of ten in the morning must report with his arms before the house of his sergeant (dizainier) for the purpose of mounting guard upon the walls, each in his own part of the city. Everybody in the surrounding country began to vacate their houses and to drive their cattle into the town. On the evening before Easter messengers of Provins reported that the reiters were near. At this news watchers were set upon the wall of the town, and a corps de garde posted by the town authorities. On the morning of the morrow, which was Easter Sunday, the gates of the town were not opened until eight o’clock, upon which there poured into the town an infinite number of wagons and pack-animals laden with the possessions of the villagers round about. There was hardly room to bestow so many people and so many animals. Divine service was celebrated in the parish churches, for it was expected that the reiters would take their course toward the town, and the people were resolved not to let them enter, but to resist to the very last drop of blood.
In order to ascertain what was the equipment and the arms of each inhabitant of the town, a general meeting was called at midday for a view of arms, but it was not possible to hold the meeting because all the streets and squares were packed with the refugees and their animals. In consequence of this, local meetings were held in each of the quarters of the city. Thus the day wore on and consternation abated only when it was learned that the reiters had gone off toward the Marne, which they crossed above Coulumiers On the morrow, Easter Monday, there was no procession in the streets as usual, for fear of a surprise, and it was not until evening that the people who had found refuge within the town, began to depart.[695]
But the undisguised hostility of Spain to the Edict of Amboise was a greater source of danger to France than protests of the Parlement or popular violence. “If the heretics obtain their demands with the aid of the English queen,” Chantonnay had threatened on March 6, “the Catholics in their turn will rise, and they will be sustained by the King my master and by all the Catholic princes.”[696] But Catherine was in no mood to be intimidated. She openly told him that he treated her as if he governed the country, and charged him with wilful fabrication, sarcastically adding that she could excuse him for so doing in some degree because she knew from whom he derived his opinions, meaning the constable and the two deceased members of the Triumvirate.[697] Philip II’s religious convictions were outraged by the toleration of Calvinism allowed in the Edict of Amboise, the more so because the queen mother, in justification of the course of the government, compromised the church at large by declaring that the sole practical solution of the difficulty could be accomplished by a true general council of the church, and not by the one sitting at Trent, in defiance of whose conclusions she asserted the legality and inviolability of the edict.[698]
Catherine de Medici was deeply concerned over the conduct of the Council of Trent. For the programme of zealous advocates of the counter-Reformation there aimed at church consolidation and the enlargement of papal authority to such an extent that the immemorial liberties of the Gallican church, confirmed by the great concordat of 1516, and the rights of the crown over the temporalities of the church in France were seriously threatened. The complication of the Huguenots with England and the murder of the duke of Guise had brought this issue to a head. In the month in which the duke was assassinated there was a significant meeting of the ambassadors of the ultra-Catholic powers resident at the French court, in which it was resolved to support the Council in matters of religion; to prevent future appropriation of church revenues by the state under pain of excommunication; to stamp out heresy; and to avenge the murder of the duke of Guise.[699] The cardinal of Lorraine was the chief representative of France at Trent and perhaps the most conspicuous prelate there. He was bitter against the policy of Charles IX, advocating utter suppression of the Huguenots. His continuance at Trent, therefore, became a danger to France and Catherine de Medici dexterously found means to remove him by sending him on special errands to Vienna and Venice, leaving the case of France at Trent in the hands of the sieur de Lansac, whose loyalty to the Catholic faith did not subvert his patriotism.[700]
Aside from his religious antagonism, Philip II regarded his own political interests as also jeopardized by the French situation. He was alarmed at the possible recovery of Calais by England,[701] and the progress of heresy and rebellion in the Netherlands, especially at Valenciennes and Tournay, was certain to be encouraged by the example of France, while a common effort of the Huguenots of Picardy and those of the religion across the Flemish border was seriously feared.[702]
VIII. THE WAR WITH ENGLAND—THE PEACE OF TROYES[703] (1563-64)
The closure of the civil war was a necessary condition precedent to the war France now planned to wage with her “adversary of England” for the recovery of Havre-de-Grace. Catherine de Medici had paid Coligny’s reiters in order to close the chasm as soon as possible. The keen-witted representatives of Queen Elizabeth in France—Throckmorton and Smith—had done all in their power to diussade the Protestants from making peace.[704] Too late Elizabeth perceived the result of her procrastination. War between England and France over Havre was inevitable,[705] though in March the French government dissembled its real intention, giving the English to understand that the last portion of the fourth article of the peace, which referred to putting strangers out of the realm, applied to the German reiters.[706]
The English declared that if the French would restore Calais to the queen, Elizabeth would surrender Havre-de-Grace and Dieppe, with all that was held by the English in Normandy.[707] But the French contended that the English, having occupied Havre-de-Grace, were deprived of all right to Calais,[708] and declined to entertain such a proffer, hoping to recover Havre-de-Grace by force[709] and also to remain masters of Calais by virtue of the treaty of 1559, which provided that if, during the term of the treaty, which was to endure for the space of eight years, the English acquired other possessions in France, they would immediately lose their right to Calais. To this England replied that France had been the first offender, when French troops were sent into Scotland in aid of Queen Mary; and that thereby the treaty was broken and Calais was due her. Elizabeth refused to see that her own selfish conduct had compelled the Huguenots to make terms, and bitterly upbraided the Huguenot leaders for their “desertion.”[710]
The determination to push the war proceeded entirely from the queen, the chief members of the government having opposed it both because of the strength of the fortress, which they thought difficult to take, and also because of the confusion which still prevailed in the kingdom. On April 7 the prince of Condé was established in the lieutenantship. Marshal Brissac, who was chief military commander, a week later quitted Paris for Normandy in company with the Swiss, and the whole artillery lately used before Orleans was sent forward.[711] Artillery and ammunition were sent by the river, and provisions also were forwarded. The campaign was delayed until this time for two reasons: first, to ascertain whether the internal disturbances could be quelled and the reiters gotten out of the kingdom, as otherwise it would have been perilous to make any movement in the direction of the coast; secondly, all the territory of Normandy had been so devasted by the war that the army could not be maintained except at very great cost and inconvenience. Fortunately for the French government anxiety with reference to the Emperor’s designs regarding Metz was now removed, the cardinal of Lorraine having persuaded Ferdinand that if the Three Bishoprics were restored they would become a refuge for the heretics from Lower Germany and Luxembourg.[712]
The queen mother appealed to Paris to obtain 200,000 crowns, and a royal edict commanded the clergy to contribute 100,000 écus de rentes annual revenue.[713] At the same time a government octroi upon wines was laid for six years, to the dismay of many towns, which opposed the execution of the edict, claiming that the vine and wine were their sole means of livelihood.[714] The King also went to Parlement to obtain pecuniary supplies there against England, saying that the 200,000 crowns from the city was to be used to pay the reiters of the Rhinegrave, who had mutinied for their pay in Champagne, to quit the kingdom.[715] Paris readily responded, “the Parisians caring not what they gave to recover Newhaven;” it had been “a scourge and loss to them of many millions of francs” during that year.[716]
Meanwhile the position of Warwick in Havre had grown so bad that he had expelled all strangers from the town.[717] Anticipating a siege, a new fosse 30 feet wide, 10 feet broad, and 8 feet deep had been constructed outside of the old ditch around the town. The delay of the English government, however, was fatal to the success of Warwick. All his labors went for naught.[718] On May 22 the French assault upon Havre began in earnest.[719] In the midst of the tedium and the anxiety Catherine de Medici dominated all, having no regard for her own convenience, but being in vigorous action at all hours, and under great mental strain most of the time. Yet her patience, her address, and her assiduous attention during the time of the siege to the councils of the government, and to her continual audiences, were remarkable. “Her Majesty,” wrote the Venetian ambassador, “exceeds all that could be expected from her sex, and even from an experienced man of valor, or from a powerful king and military captain.” She insisted on being present at all the assaults, and even in the trenches, where cannon-balls and arquebus-bullets were flying.[720]
The character of Catherine de Medici from this time forth, throughout her long and varied career, continued to fill her subjects with astonishment. Not even the most consummate courtier could have praised her beauty. She had big eyes and thick lips, like Leo X, her great-uncle.[721] She possessed, too, the characteristics of her family. She loved to erect public edifices; to collect books. She made a profession of satisfying everybody, at least in words, of which she was not saving. Her industry in public business was the subject of astonishment. Nothing was too small for her notice. She could neither eat nor drink without talking politics. She followed the army without regard to her health or even her life. Her physical characteristics, if not the admiration, were certainly the wonder of all. She was fond of good-living, eating much and irregularly, and was addicted to physical exercise, especially hunting, which she also followed for the purpose of reducing her weight. With this design, incredible as it may seem, she often rode clad in heavy furs.[722] When fifty years of age she could walk so fast that no one in the court was willing to follow her.
The difficulties of the French in the siege of Havre-de-Grace were very great. The locality was surrounded for the distance of a mile by marsh and by the waters of the sea, which were cut by inaccessible canals. There was a strand of sand on the seaside only about thirty yards distant from the wall at low tide. The besiegers passed along the shore, somewhat concealed by the sand and gravel cast up by the sea, and wedged themselves and their artillery between this strand and the sea, and opened fire. By the end of July the French had approached so near the walls of Havre-de-Grace that they were almost able to batter them point-blank, and the besieged went out to parley and demanded four days’ time to communicate with England.[723]
The garrison was reduced to a sorry plight, for the French were about to storm the place, as they had already battered effectually and dismantled a bulwark and several towers of the fort and filled up the whole moat, so that with but a little more work they would have opened a road for themselves securely with a spade. They had, moreover, a battery of forty cannon, so that while only twenty or thirty shots each day formed the usual feature of a siege at this time, the French now fired more than a hundred and twenty shots.[724] At last on July 28 Warwick agreed to surrender Havre-de-Grace, and to embark in four days. Two days later the English admiral Clinton appeared in sight, with thirty ships and five galliots. The French artillery was then directed toward the sea, so the admiral set sail the next evening with the fleet, and the French army entered on Sunday, August 1, 1563.[725]
The capture of Havre was of immense immediate advantage to France, especially to Normandy, Havre being the door through which all the traffic and commerce entered, not only to Rouen, but also to Normandy, and to a great part of France. Without this commerce Normandy-of-the-Seine suffered greatly.[726]
But Elizabeth was reluctant to believe that she had been beaten, and the autumn of the year witnessed tedious negotiations.[727] The chief difficulty between the two crowns turned on the restitution of Calais. The French insisted that they were absolved from the terms of Cateau-Cambrésis through the action taken by England in the matter of Havre-de-Grace; that thereby forfeiture of the English right to Calais was made.[728] Elizabeth, on the other hand, would not make peace unless her pretensions were recognized.[729]
In the meanwhile, in the seas of Flanders, France, and England thousands of acts of piracy were committed, and trade in the Channel was quite interrupted.[730] A partial agreement at last was patched up. On April 11, 1564, the treaty of peace was signed at Troyes,[731] the articles yielding Havre-de-Grace to France, in return for 120,000 gold crowns, a sum which the English grudgingly took, though they had demanded a half million, the terms also providing for property indemnifications and freedom of commerce between the two nations.
Nothing was specified as to Calais. After three years of negotiations the question still remained unsettled. In June, 1567, Sir Thomas Smith, Elizabeth’s ambassador, demanded the restitution of Calais. Charles was evasive, saying that the messenger must be content to wait till the King had obtained the consent of his council, before whom the King told Smith openly that he would not restore Calais, but would hold it as the possession of his ancestors, to which the queen of England had no just right. When the ambassador replied, citing the word of the treaty, the chancellor answered that the promise had been given under the express conditions that the English queen should not in any way molest the subjects or territory of France or Scotland, but from what had taken place at Havre-de-Grace it appeared manifest that she had forfeited all claims which she might have had to Calais. The King’s rejoinder was notable in that it is so excellent an example of the French doctrine of “natural frontiers,” Charles IX replying to the effect that the queen ought not to regret the loss of Calais, knowing that of old it was the possession of the crown of France, and that God had willed it to return to its first master, and that the two realms ought to remain content with the frontiers created for them by nature and with a boundary so clearly defined as the sea.[732]
IX. EARLY LOCAL AND PROVINCIAL CATHOLIC LEAGUES
Thanks to her own enterprise in pushing the war which had culminated with so much honor to France, and partly also to her skilful handling of the factions at court, Catherine de Medici was now in enjoyment of supreme power. The entire weight of the government rested on her shoulders, there being no longer any other person who controlled public affairs. The Guises and Châtillon factions were full of animosity toward one another, for Madame de Guise refused to recognize the admiral’s acquittal for the murder of her husband;[733] Montmorency was deeply offended because the young duke of Guise received the grand-mastership and the gift of the duchy of Châtellerault, and so feigned to have the gout in order to avoid service before Havre; Condé was doubly angry at the queen, both because she withheld the promised lieutenant’s commission and because the daughter of Marshal St. André, who left a great fortune, was not permitted to marry his son. The parties were, therefore, in a triangular relation toward one another and Catherine’s art was bent upon maintaining the balance in order to hold her own.[734]
The population of the wittiest city in Europe was quick to perceive the animosities and paradoxes that existed. “The Parisians have three things to wonder at,” the saying went, “the constable’s beads, the chancellor’s mass, and the cardinal Châtillon’s red cap. One is ever mumbling over his beads and his head is ever occupied with other affairs; the other hears mass daily and is the chief Huguenot in France; the third wears a cardinal’s cap and defies the Pope.”[735] The queen mother had hoped that religious animosities would be forgotten in the course of the war with England. But she was disappointed. The peace of Amboise could not be enforced. Even in Paris armed troops and armed guards had to patrol the streets to prevent outbreaks of violence.[736] It was impossible to disarm the Catholics, who made house-to-house searches to ferret out Huguenots.[737] Under the terms of pacification the Protestants were permitted to return to Paris, but who dared avail himself of so precarious a liberty? Instead, they were compelled to sacrifice their property.[738] In the provinces the same condition of things prevailed—in Languedoc, in the Orléannais, in the Lyonnais.[739] In Languedoc the association of the Huguenots maintained its organization, raised money, levied troops.[740] Yet in spite of its failure to enforce pacification, the government required the demolition of the walls of towns known to be Huguenot strongholds, as Orleans, Montauban, and St. Lô, a procedure which the Protestants strongly resisted; so that a condition of petty civil war existed throughout much of France, the Edict of Amboise notwithstanding.[741] Summarized, the troubles of France at this time may be said to have been the feud between the house of Guise and that of Châtillon—a feud which compromised the crown and most of the other great families of the kingdom; the queen’s ambition to govern, which led her to nourish the quarrel; religious intolerance; the poverty of the crown; the uncertainty of its foreign relations; and finally the detriment to its commerce on account of the war with England, which deprived France of four or five millions of gold.[742]
Even before peace was made between France and England it had been decided that the King should make a tour of the provinces for the better pacification of the country.[743] A programme of administrative and financial reform was developed at the same time. The army was to be reduced; in place of the royal garrisons there was to be a “belle milice” of forty ensigns of footmen, ten each in Picardy, Normandy, Languedoc, and Dauphiné. These troops were to be supported partly by the crown, partly by the provinces. The Scotch Guard was to be cut down. Through the church’s aid twelve millions of the public debt, including the unpaid balance of the dowries of Elizabeth of Spain and the duchess of Savoy, were to be paid off within six years and the alienated domains of the crown redeemed.[744] Already Charles IX’s majority had been declared at Rouen, during the course of the siege of Havre[745]—a dexterous stroke of the queen mother to thwart the ambitions of the factions.[746]
In the early spring of 1564 the court set out from Fontainebleau, and thence went to Sens and Troyes, where the peace was signed; from Troyes the way led to Bar-le-Duc and Nancy. But the journey of the King, instead of allaying the disquietude of the Huguenots, alarmed them still more. For the strongest overtures were made to the King to break the peace of Amboise, not only by provincial authorities[747] but also through the ambassadors of certain of the Catholic powers.
The Council of Trent had finished its labors with somewhat unseemly haste on December 4, 1563, on account of the anticipated decease of Pius IV,[748] and strong pressure was brought upon the French and Spanish governments to accept its findings.[749] The Pope, in consistory, accepted them in their integrity, on January 26, 1564.[750] But various European governments, especially France, strongly objected to the findings as prejudicial to the interests of monarchy.[751] On the first Monday in Lent the cardinal of Lorraine presented the decrees of Trent to the King in council and others of the Parlement, urging that their adoption was necessary for the repose of the kingdom. The debate which followed, in a certain sense was a test of strength between the moderate Catholic party, led by the chancellor L’Hôpital and the Guises. Much objection was made to the findings, especially by the chancellor, who asserted that they were contrary to the privileges of the Gallican church, and that the cardinal’s party was now trying to compass by craft what they had failed to do by force of arms. The cardinal rejoined with words to the effect that L’Hôpital was unmindful of the benefits he had received of them (the Guises), using the word “ingrate” (ingrat). To this the chancellor haughtily returned that he had never received any benefits from the cardinal or his family, that he had only filled the post of maître de requêtes, which was not a high office, and that he did not desire to pay his debts at the expense of the King’s sovereignty by voting in favor of the decrees. In the end, France refused to accept all of the findings.[752]
With the closing of the Council of Trent, the representatives of the ultra-Catholic powers, notably Spain and Savoy, intimated to Charles IX that their sovereigns would assist him in the extirpation of heresy in France. The offer was both a promise and a menace, the implication being that the Catholic world at large would not tolerate the recognition of Protestantism accorded by France and that a joint action of the powers most concerned might compel the king of France to live up to his title of Most Christian King. The cardinal of Lorraine had carried the idea of the Triumvirate to Trent with him,[753] and on the floor of the Council had proposed the formation of an association to be called “The Brotherhood of Catholics in France.” He offered to secure the co-operation of his nephews, relatives, and friends, and returned to France with the consent of the Pope for that purpose.[754] The Triumvirate, as we have seen, had already made overtures to Spain, to which Philip II had responded with cordial, if no very definite sentiments, and from the time of the promulgation of the Edict of January and the formation of the Triumvirate, the idea of a Catholic league in which the Pope and the king of Spain were to be the chief pillars, begins to take shape.[755] The mission of Louis de St. Gelais, sieur de Lansac, to Trent and Rome in this month, was partly to prevent the formation of such a league, and partly to persuade the Pope to approve the French government’s appropriation of the property of the church. Granvella was not unfavorable to the idea, though in his eyes such a league should be formed, not for the purpose of intervening in France, but as a defensive measure, lest Catherine endeavor to profit by the critical situation prevailing in the Spanish Netherlands and interfere there in order to divert the discontent of the French from home affairs, and to prevent the Protestants of the Netherlands from assisting their coreligionists in France.[756]
The outbreak of civil war after the massacre of Vassy and the seizure of Havre-de-Grace by the English had convinced Philip II that the time to act had come in France, and Spanish troops and Spanish money were put at the disposal of the Guises, although Philip denied to England that he was giving succor to Catholic France.[757] In May, and again in August of 1562, the Triumvirate appealed to Philip II,[758] and on June 6 the Spanish King wrote to the regent in the Netherlands to send the Triumvirate assistance. But the order was easier to give than to execute, and exactly a month later (July 6) both Margaret and Granvella replied, asserting the impracticability of carrying out Philip’s wishes on the ground that no money could be procured from the estates for such a purpose.[759] In the meantime, the cardinal-legate in France, convinced that “in order to lay the ax at the root of the evil, there was no shorter way and no better expedient than recourse to arms,”[760] and impatient of Spain’s slow reply to the petition of the Triumvirate,[761] stirred up both the Vatican and the court of Madrid to livelier action.[762] As a result, although it was against their better judgment, Margaret and Granvella prevailed upon the Council of State in August to appropriate 50,000 écus for the war in France, and in September 3,000 Italians were sent from Franche Comté to the aid of Tavannes in Burgundy.[763]
The elements of the future Holy League are here manifest as early as 1561-62. But apart from the course being followed out in high political circles, at the same time, popular associations for the maintenance of the Catholic religion were being formed within France. The years 1562-63 witnessed the formation of several provincial leagues and town associations, which were the real roots of the Holy League.
The people of the capital had begun to manifest their prejudices in an organized military form as early as 1562, and the government, instead of suppressing this tendency, encouraged it. On May 2, 1562, the Parlement of Paris passed an ordinance ordering the échevins and all loyal Catholics in each quarter of the city to organize under arms, with captains, corporals, and sergeants.[764] But the preponderance of Paris in the formation of the Holy League has been exaggerated. When it became a national affair, Paris, as the capital and most Catholic city of France, seized hold of it and made it her own. But it is inverting things to say that Paris gave the League to the provinces. Rather Paris identified herself with their interests, and reflected their passions and their character, “fierce in Languedoc, sullenly obstinate in Brittany, everywhere modified in its nature and its devotion by the politics of the towns.”[765]
The south of France was far more aggressive than the north in this particular, and anti-Protestant associations were formed in many provinces to the disquietude of the government, which knew not how to control them.[766] The earliest of such local associations formed by the Catholics seems to have been one of Bordeaux, where the people were organized after the Protestant attempt to gain possession of the Château Trompette in Francis II’s reign.[767] This association formed in Bordeaux is the germ of the Catholic League which later expanded over the Bordelais and Gascony. Other portions of France followed suit. In November, 1562, the Association of Provence was formed at Aix and terrorized the Huguenots.[768] Toulouse was notoriously Catholic, and street wars between Catholics and Protestants were of common occurrence. A more than usually violent outburst of popular fury here culminated on March 2, 1563, in the formation of a Catholic League, of which the cardinals Armagnac and Strozzi, lieutenants of the King in the sénéschaussées of Toulouse and Albi, the president of the Parlement, Du Faur, who was advocate-general of the crown, certain eminent knights of the Order, and the famous Montluc, were sponsors. The immediate occasion of this outbreak at Toulouse seems to have been the combination of fury and fear of a plot which the Catholics felt when they learned of the duke of Guise’s assassination. When the outbreak began, the president of the Parlement of Toulouse hastily dispatched a messenger to Montluc entreating him to come to their assistance. Upon Montluc’s arrival at Toulouse the leaders prayed him to put himself at the head of the troops in the province against the Huguenots.
Montluc at first made some difficulty about consenting to this request, because he had no permission from Damville, the governor of Languedoc, in which province Toulouse was located, and who, moreover, was not one of his friends.[769] Finally, however, he yielded to their request, and measures were taken to put an army on foot in thirty days. Those who composed this assembly drew up the compact of a league or association on March 2, 1563, which was to be observed by the clergy, the nobility, and the third estate in the towns and dioceses within the jurisdiction of the parlement of Toulouse, both in Languedoc and Guyenne. According to the articles of this association the members engaged to bear arms, and to make oath between the hands of those commissioned by the Parlement, or by the King’s lieutenant in the country, to march whenever required for the defense of the Catholic religion. The parlement of Toulouse approved and authorized this association on March 20, provisionally and without charges, “subject to the good pleasure of the King.” In the name of this league taxes were laid, men were levied, and an inventory of arms made in every généralité and diocese.[770]
Montluc had come to Toulouse, fresh from the formation of another and earlier league for the preservation of the Catholic faith, in Agen, which had been organized on February 4, 1563. This league was a direct consequence of the siege of Lectoure and the battle of Vergt. Montluc had received orders to report, with the marshal Termes, to the King in the camp before Orleans. But the Agenois was not quite pacified and the gentry of the country were so filled with alarm, that they concluded, so Montluc naïvely says, “that in case I should resolve to go away to the King, as his Majesty commanded, and offer to leave them without a head, they must be fain to detain me in the nature of a prisoner.”[771] The upshot of things was that the “Confederation and Association of the town and city of Agen and other towns and jurisdictions of Agen” was formed and organized on February 4, 1563, with a captain, lieutenant, sergeants, corporals, and other necessary officers, in order to extirpate the Huguenots from the region. It was an oath-bound covenant.[772]
The examples of Agen and Toulouse were contagious, and the popular hatred of the Huguenots, on account of the assassination of the duke of Guise, induced the spread of these local leagues. On March 13, 1563, the Catholic lords of Guyenne also entered into a league at Cadillac on the same plan and for the same object as that of the Catholics of Agen and Languedoc.[773] Like the earlier ones, the league of Guyenne was organized by parishes, districts, sénéschaussées and provinces, under the direction of one supreme chief assisted by a council chosen from the third estate. In the north of France, as has been observed, the tendency of the Catholics to associate was not so strong as in the south. There is evidence of a weak association of the Catholics in the towns of the Rouennais and the lower part of the Ile-de-France in 1563,[774] and of a town league in Anjou and Maine.[775] But no formidable Catholic association was formed north of the Loire, until the appearance of the Confrérie du St. Esprit in 1568, under the marshal Tavannes.
The nucleus of many of these Catholic associations, before they expanded into provincial leagues, in most cases seems to have been a local guild or confraternity[776] of some nature. These were closely connected with the body of tradesmen, each trade having its patron saint, its sacred banner, and devoted bands; but some of the more aristocratic people were joined with the artisans. The members had fixed places of meeting and certain days on which to assemble, common exercises, and often a common meal. They swore to use their wealth and their life, if need be, for the defense of their faith.[777]
The new rôle now begun to be played by these ancient guilds is an interesting phase of the religious wars. If France in the sixteenth century was laboring in the throes of a religious revolution, she was also in a state of industrial transformation. In origin the economic revolution was independent of the Reformation, yet so influential were its social and economic effects upon the Reformation that in a very true sense the religious movement may be said to have been the subordinate one.[778] The identity and fulness of this change in the old order of things coincides with the Reformation, which in large part became the vehicle of its expression. The crisis coincides with the reign of Charles IX and Henry III, although the beginnings of it are very manifest in the time of Louis XI (cf. the ordinances of 1467, 1474-76, 1479). The change particularly involved the guilds, whose traditional practices had now reached the point of an industrial tyranny. More and more, from the middle of the fifteenth century, control of the guilds had tended to fall into the hands of a few. This growth of a social hierarchy within the guilds had serious political and economic results. For inasmuch as city government was so largely an out-growth of guild life, this exclusiveness threw political control of the cities into the hands of a “ring” composed of the upper bourgeoisie, who formed an oligarchy and gradually squeezed the lower classes out of all participation in the government. The general body of the commonalty everywhere, in France, in Germany, in England, tended to disappear or to be replaced by a select group from the inner circle of the guild. The lower bourgeoisie was shut out of the council at Nevers in 1512, at Sens in 1530, at Rheims in 1595.
But the economic revolution implied in this change was of far greater importance than the political. The gens de métier became a monopolist, a capitalist class, controlling the “hoards” of the guilds as well as being the ruling class in local politics. The old guild was transformed into a mercantile association, operated in favor of a few rich families who were possessed of capital and regulated wages and fixed the term of apprenticeship to their own advantage. In order to secure cheap labor the masters increased the number of apprentices, lengthened the time of service, raised the requirements of the chef-d’œuvre, made membership in the guild increasingly difficult, and reduced wages by employing raw, underpaid workmen in competition with skilled labor. The result was that the distance widened continually between the upper and lower working classes.[779] The social democracy and honorable estate of guild life, as it had been in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, passed away and was replaced by a strife between labor and capital, between organized labor and free labor, which brings the sixteenth century, remote as it is in time, very near to us in certain of its economic conditions.
To be sure there were some things which partially neutralized this antagonism, such as better facility in communication, the increase of production, the activity of exchange, the invention of new industrial processes, and the opening of new industries, notably printing and silk manufacture.[780] But nothing compensated the workman for the rise in the price of necessities of life due to the influx of gold and silver from America, for his wages did not rise in proportion. In consequence the cleavage grew more and more sharp. The result of this tendency was that poor workmen, despairing of getting economic justice from the guilds, took to working in their own quarters. So common was this practice in the sixteenth century that a new word was coined to define this unapprenticed class—- chambrelons. These plied their trades in their own houses and sold the product of their handicraft anywhere. As early as 1457, and again in 1467, the masters complain of this practice.[781] It is easy to understand the disastrous influence of this new form of industry upon guild labor, since the new class of workmen was not subject either to the same money charges or to the same restrictive regulations. It was “unfair” competition for the old order of things which reposed upon the maintenance of an economic equilibrium between demand and supply, between labor and capital, was upset by the new tendencies.
To the toiling masses trodden down by the masters and economically tyrannized over, the Reformation came as the first organized movement of discontent, and hosts of dissatisfied workmen throughout Germany and France hastened to identify themselves with Protestantism, not for religious reasons, but because the Reformation constituted exactly that for which they were seeking—a protest. The situation was further aggravated by the influx of foreign workmen, chiefly from Germany, where this economic revolution was earlier and more fully developed than elsewhere in Europe, in great industrial centers like Nürnberg, and where small German workmen were more completely shut out than was the case in France or England. These men—such as cobblers, shoemakers, carpenters, wool-carders, and other simple artisans—wandered over the country from one province to another, carrying the economic gospel of free labor and the religion of Lutheranism with them. Naturally they imbued their French fellow-workmen with their sentiments—and to such an extent that for years, during the early course of the civil wars, the Huguenots were commonly called “Lutherans.” Before 1560, the greater portion of the Protestant party was made up of woolcombers, fullers, drapers, weavers, shoemakers, hosiers, dyers, tailors, hatters, joiners, glaziers, bookbinders, locksmiths, cutlers, pewterers, coopers, etc.[782] Even as late as 1572, when the Huguenot movement had for twelve years been led by noblemen like the Châtillons and the Rohans, the Venetian ambassador still characterized the Huguenots as “a sect which consists for the most part of craftsmen, as cobblers, tailors, and such ignorant people.”[783]
Coupled with this religious and economic revolution, went also a change in the manners of society, which pervaded all classes—a change which began in the reign of Francis I and was continued under Henry II. The new internationalism of France, due to the Italian wars, was probably the initial cause of this. Returned soldiers, laden with the pay of booty of warfare, brought back into France the manners and customs of Italy, which commingled with the manners and customs introduced by wandering workmen from Germany and Switzerland.[784]
The revision of the statutes of the guilds was one of the minor features of the reform programme of the political Huguenots in the States-General of Orleans, and the Cahier-général of the third estate which was compiled from the local cahiers presented by the deputies shows traces of the interest of France at large in the issue. Unfortunately these fuller local records are lost.[785] But this revision only looked to a modernizing of the mediaeval language of the ordonnances, which chiefly dated from the fourteenth century, and did not contemplate an entire recasting of them, so as to make them harmonize with the new industrial conditions. Only one man in the assembly seems to have appreciated the real condition of things. This was the chancellor L’Hôpital. Not content with the mild reorganization of the guilds recommended by the third estate, on the last day of the session, January 31, 1561, the chancellor drew up the famous ordinance of Orleans.[786] The intent of this statute was indirectly to restrain the enlarged economic tyranny of the guilds, to lessen the burden of apprenticeship, and to establish freer laboring conditions. This purpose the government aimed to attain by dissolving the confraternities, for by striking at these it really struck the guilds, since many of these associations were one and the same. No distinction was made between associations whose character was religious or charitable, and those composed of patrons and workingmen; all the confraternities were grouped together and governmental supervision was provided for. They were not legislated out of existence by the new action, but reduced to a partial dissolution. Their accumulated hoards of capital were ordered to be expended for the support of schools and hospitals and similar institutions in the towns and villages where these various guilds were, and only a limited amount of money was left in their hands. The municipal officers, in co-operation with those of the crown were made personally responsible for the execution of this measure in every bailiwick. It is important to notice the significance of this course. The government, in fact, was pursuing a policy of partial secularization of the property of these confraternities for the benefit of the people at large, and compelling distribution of the great sums locked up in the hands of the guilds in much the same way that the church had come to possess enormous sums in mortmain. This legislation, if it had really been effective, would have destroyed the guilds.
The guilds thus put upon the defensive, owing to the reforming policy of the crown and the political Huguenots, sought to save themselves by pleading that they were religious associations. By this adroit movement they gained the support of the Catholic party. But the crown refused to yield, and we find the Confréries de métiers directly supervised in letters-patent of February 5, 1562, and December 14, 1565. Coupled with these measures, we find others forbidding banquets, festivals, and like celebrations (edicts of December 11, 1566, and of February 4, 1567) which by this time had become centers of religious agitation among the Catholics. But the government could not maintain its course. The identification of the guilds and confraternities with the Catholic party gave them great and unexpected support. Under the new order of things they became the nuclei of local and provincial Catholic leagues.[787] In other words, the labor party became identified with the Huguenots, while the upper bourgeoisie, controlling the guilds, adhered to the Catholic cause—at Rouen in 1560 the merchants actually declared a lock-out against workmen who attended preachings[788]—and became the nuclei of the provincial leagues, exactly as in France in 1793 every Jacobin club became an arm of the Terror government.
It was said at the time, and has often been asserted since, that these local Catholic leagues were but protective associations in the beginning and formed to repel Huguenot violence.[789] The Huguenots practiced as violent methods as their religious opponents and their offenses were as numerous; but with the exception of the Huguenot association in Dauphiné, there is no early example of a Protestant association similar to the leagues of the Catholics in the provinces. The Protestant local organizations were not so highly developed, in a military sense, as early as this, nor were they of the same form as those of the Catholics. Montluc himself, than whom there is no better judge, testifies that in the war in Guyenne in 1562 “they showed themselves to be novices, and indeed they were guided by their ministers.” The Protestants had a sort of triumvirate, it is true, in the two Châtillon brothers, and the prince of Condé, but their work only remotely partakes of the policy of the real Triumvirate; even their appeal to Elizabeth did not contemplate such radical conduct as the Triumvirate displayed.[790]
No Huguenot leader ever thought of subordinating the government of France to a foreign ruler for the maintenance of the faith he believed in,[791] as the Guises, Montmorency, and St. André did. Condé’s declaration that the civil war was caused by the Triumvirate’s action had much truth in it. The rules of the association which the Huguenots formed at Orleans, on April 11, 1562, were as much a body of military regulations for the discipline of the army as they were a political compact, as a reading of the articles will prove.[792] There was little of the politico-military character of the Catholic leagues about it. It is not until after the Bayonne episode that we find a solid federation of the Reformed churches beginning to form, and the first test of the Protestant organization was made at the beginning of the second civil war.[793] This is not the place, however, to dwell upon its development. In due time the subject will be taken up.
The edict confirming the act of pacification (March 19, 1563) in its sixth article forbade the formation of any leagues in the future, and ordered the dissolution of those already in existence.[794] This prohibition was a dead letter from the beginning. The government not only was unable to prevent the formation of new leagues; it was even unable to suppress those already in existence.[795] When the first civil war ended, there were three well-organized Catholic leagues in southern France, namely those of Provence, of Toulouse, and of Agen. Catherine de Medici, who, for some months to come, continued to give substantial manifestation of her desire for peace,[796] in announcing the act of Amboise to Montluc, demanded the dissolution of these associations. Instead of so doing, however, Candalle, Montluc’s chief agent in Guyenne, continued his activities. On March 13, 1563, as has been noticed, in defiance of the impending edict of pacification (which was completed and only awaited promulgation) the Catholic seigneurs of Guyenne, at Cadillac (near Bordeaux) entered into a league identical in purpose and in form with those of Agen and Languedoc.[797] This league, which is the germ of that which spread over Gascony, seems to have been denounced to the government by Lagebaston, the president of the parlement of Bordeaux, between whom and Montluc there was friction, partly because of Montluc’s preference for Agen as a working capital for the region, partly because of his notorious dislike of the lawyer class, whose disposition to regard forms of law and vested right interfered with Montluc’s high-handed and arbitrary management of affairs.[798] This new league in such glaring violation of the edict, called forth a sharp letter of rebuke from the queen mother to Montluc on March 31. After alluding in a general way to “les maulx” due to the existence of “les partialitez et les associations, qui se sont faictes” she says:
J’ay esté advertye qu’il s’en est faicte une autre en la Guyenne dont est chef Monsieur de Candalle, laquelle encores qu’elle ayt esté faicte à bonne intention durant la guerre, si n’est-ce que, cessant la dicte guerre et se faisant la paix, elle n’est plus nécessaire et ne la peult ung roy trouver bonne, ny que ceulx qui veullent estre estimez obéyssans ne peuvent soustenir sans encourir le mesme cryme de rebellion dont ilz ont accusé leurs adversaires. Et pour ceste cause, et que le Roy monsieur mon filz n’est pas délibéré d’en souffrir plus aucun, de quelque costé qu’elle procedde ny permectre plus à ses subjectz, de quelque religion qu’ilz soient, d’avoir autre association qu’avec luy et selon son obéyssance, il fault, Monsieur de Monluc, que, pour le bien de son service, comme il le vous commande expressément par ses lettres, que vous, qui estes son lieutenant-général par delà, faciez rompre celle qui s’est faicte sans permectre qu’ilz ayent aucune force, puissance ou authorité que celle que vous leur baillerez, ny aucune volunté que d’obéyr à ce que par vous, pour le bien du service du Roy monsieur mon filz, leur sera commandé; pour lequel effect j’en scriptz, comme faict le Roy monsieur mon filz, une lectre audit s^[r] de Candalle et à tous ceulx qui y sont comprins, comme nous en avons esté bien amplement advertiz.[799]
Until the ambition of the Guises created an opposition to them among the old-line nobility, and so identified the Huguenot movement with the interests of the aristocracy,[800] the French Reformation found its chief support among the lower bourgeois class in the towns. The proportion naturally varied from place to place. Lyons, partly from its proximity to Geneva, but more because of its strong commercial position and its great manufacturing interests, among which the silk industry was of most importance, was the greatest Huguenot city in France.[801] Where we find Protestantism prevailing in feudal districts, it is largely to be ascribed to the influence of Protestant gentleman-farmers, often retired bourgeois, who purchased the county estates of the older nobility who had been bankrupted by the wars in Italy and Flanders, or else preferred to live at court. The strongholds of French Protestantism were the river towns, on the highways of trade, or sea-ports like Rouen and La Rochelle. Dauphiné, which fattened on the commerce out of Italy through the Alpine passes, and Provence which bordered the Mediterranean, both of which “cleared” through Lyons; Lower Poitou, where La Rochelle was, and Normandy on the Channel were the chief Protestant provinces of France. Normandy was probably the most Protestant province of all, for here Calvinism not only obtained in the ports and “good” towns, but in the country areas as well.[802]
But there are evidences of the penetration of Protestantism into the country districts elsewhere as well—in Orléannais, Nivernais, Blésois, the diocese of Nîmes and even in isolated parts of Champagne and Gascony.[803] In general, however, the French peasantry were strongly Catholic.
The reason for this is, first, a social one: while the revolution of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was ruinous for the artisan, it was profitable to the peasant. The rent paid to the landlord, immutably fixed in the twelfth or thirteenth century, represented under the new values of money a very light burden, while the fall in the price of silver considerably raised the nominal worth of the products of the soil, when the villein sold them. The price of land was falling rapidly at the very time when the French gentry, ceasing to be an aristocracy of gentlemen-farmers and becoming a court-nobility, were compelled to sell their estates to meet their expenses and, as was said, to put their mills and meadows on their shoulders. When a lord wished to sell at any price a part of his estates, there was always, in the parish, a countryman who had been, as one may say, saving money for centuries, and who, realizing at last the dream of bygone generations, bought land. Thus did the French villein become a landowner. The reign of Louis XII and the beginning of that of Francis I was for the French peasants an epoch of real prosperity; his situation presented a striking contrast with that of the German peasant who, at the same date, was in danger of relapsing into bondage. We may easily understand why there was not in France, as in Germany, a peasants’ revolution both social and religious.[804]
But there are other reasons for the religious growth of the Huguenot cause among the people not so hard to find. Their ministers preached in the French language and avoided the use of Latin, which tended to mystery and obscurity; after sermons the service was continued with prayer and the singing of psalms in French rhyme, with vocal and instrumental music in which the congregation joined. In their church polity, the Huguenots had carried changes farther than had the Reformation elsewhere in Europe. In Germany and England the Reformation still adhered to many of the institutions of the mediaeval church, retaining the episcopate and inferior clergy, as deacons, archdeacons, canons, curates, together with vestures, canonical habits, and the use of ornaments.[805]
No reliable estimate can be made of the proportion between Catholics and Huguenots in the sixteenth century. A remonstrance of 1562 to the Pope declared that one-fourth of France was separate from the communion of Rome.[806] The Venetian ambassador thought “hardly a third part of the people heretical” in 1567.[807] The échevins of Amiens declared three-quarters of the inhabitants of Amiens were Protestant in the same year.[808] Charles IX in a remonstrance to Pius IV asserted that a fourth part of France was Protestant.[809] Montluc, no mean observer, estimated that one-tenth of the population of Guyenne was Protestant.[810] If this proportion be applied to France at large, the Huguenots would have numbered something like 1,600,000. Beza, who presided over the synod of La Rochelle in 1571, claimed that the Huguenots had 2,150 congregations, some of them very large, as in the case of the church of Orleans, which was said to have 7,000 members. At the time of the Colloquy of Poissy, Normandy was said to have 305 pastors, Provence 60.[811] But the number of Huguenots in Normandy, Provence, or the Orléannais was exceptionally large. The average congregation must have been small. If we assume that the population of France was sixteen millions[812] and that one-tenth of the people were Calvinist, we would have a total of 1,600,000 Protestants for all France, which would give an average of about 750 members to each congregation on the basis of Beza’s statement as to the number of the Huguenot churches. This is certainly much too high a figure. Personally I believe the average was less than half of this. If the congregation averaged 400 members each, on Beza’s calculation there would have been 860,000 Huguenots in France. A Venetian source of the year 1562 sets the number at 600,000.[813] This may be too low, but all things considered, I believe it not far from the truth. The total Protestant population of France I do not believe to have exceeded three-quarters of a million before 1572, and after that date it is often difficult to distinguish between Huguenots and Politiques.
Such was the state of things when the first civil war came to an end.
X. THE TOUR OF THE PROVINCES.[814] THE BAYONNE EPISODE
“I am always en voyage,” wrote the Venetian ambassador to the senate. “Since the beginning of my embassy the King has not staid more than fifteen days in any one place. He goes from Lorraine to Poitou, and then to Normandy and the edge of Belgium, back again to Normandy, then to Paris, Picardy, Champagne, Burgundy.”[815] Dr. Dale wrote in the same strain to Lord Burghley: “The Spanish ambassador has a saying that ambassadors in France are eaten up by their horses, since they are constrained to keep so many because of the habit of the court of moving from place to place continually.”[816]
But there was point to Charles IX’s famous tour of the provinces in 1564-66. The unsettled condition of the country, if no other reason, accounts for Catherine’s great design of completing the pacification of the kingdom by having the King tour the realm. The route lay through Sens[817] (March 15) to Troyes (March 23)[818] where the peace with England was signed on April 13; thence to Châlons-sur-Marne, Bar-le-Duc, Dijon (May 15), Macon (June 8), and thence to Lyons, where the court arrived on June 13. The King traveled with his ordinary train, that is, with his mother, his brother, the duke of Anjou, the constable, and the archers of the guard, in order to spare the people the burden of great entertainment, and those princes and nobles who wished to follow were accompanied only by their ordinary servants.[819] If the Huguenots viewed the King’s sojourn at Bar-le-Duc with apprehension,[820] it was not without anxiety that his Catholic subjects saw Charles IX visit the great city located at the junction of the Rhone and the Saône rivers.[821] Lyons seems to have imbibed something of Calvinism from the very waters of the arrowy river whose source was the lake of the citadel of Calvinism.[822] The rumor was current that a greater conspiracy than that of Amboise was on foot; that the King and queen were to be deposed and slain, and that Lyons would unite with Geneva to form a greater Calvinistic republic.[823]
But Lyons welcomed the King graciously, and gave him sumptuous accommodation.[824] Charles was charmed with the reception given him and amazed at the wealth and commercial prosperity of the city.[825] Situated at the confluence of the Rhone and the Saône rivers, the wines and grain of Burgundy came to Lyons for market, while it was the natural entrepôt of the commerce out of Italy, besides much that came from Spain and Flanders. There were four fairs there each year. The great industry of the city was silk manufacturing. In 1450 Charles VII had granted it the monopoly in this. Francis I in 1536 relieved the silk operatives of all taxes and military service. The bulk of the commerce was in the hands of Italians, of whom there were said to be above twelve thousand in the city—chiefly Florentines, Genoese, and Milanese.[826] There were also many Germans and Swiss, whose presence gave the governor, the duke of Nemours,[827] great anxiety, because large quantities of arms were smuggled into the city in the guise of merchandise.[828]
The court had not been long upon its tour through the provinces before Catherine de Medici discovered that the petition of the estates of Burgundy for the abolition of Protestant worship was not merely a local prejudice, but the sense of the provinces.[829] The elements of this public opinion were various: The clergy—not all, however—wanted the findings of the Council of Trent accepted in toto; all of them were dissatisfied with the recognition of the rights of the Protestants; the alienation of their lands was a grievance to the clergy, the more so because speculators had bought them at a low price because of the doubt as to the validity of the title.[830] The Guises were angry that the prosecution of Coligny for the murder of the duke had been abandoned.[831] Among high and low alike there were unprincipled folk who had hopes of profiting by confiscations and forfeitures imposed upon the Huguenots.[832]
The queen mother was too good a politician not to pay heed to these signs of popular feeling, more especially as the voice of the provinces chimed with those in high authority, who not only urged that the war be renewed against the Protestants but also hinted broadly of foreign support in aid of the crown. At first Catherine answered graciously, yet guardedly, to the effect that a peace which had been so solemnly made, by the advice of the princes of the blood and the council, could not be too lightly cast aside.
The miserable effects of the war were everywhere evident. Agriculture had almost ceased in a country famous for its fertility, and the whole country had been so plundered and harassed by both parties that the poor people, being stripped of all their substance, often preferred to fly to the forests rather than to remain continually exposed to the mercy of their enemies. Wandering soldiers and dissolute women, with stolen goods in their possession, infested the roads.[833] As to trade and manufacturing, the mechanic arts still were plied only in the largest and strongest towns; even here merchants and tradesmen had shut up shop and gone off to war, not always out of religious zeal, but in the hope of enriching themselves by spoliation. The nobility were divided; the clergy incensed. The civil war had been accompanied by the attendant aids of violence, robbery, murder, rape, and justice had not been administered in the courts for months. The very methods resorted to for the preservation of religion rendered it hateful in the eyes of many men of both parties. Both parties were bigoted in belief and in practice. The iconoclasm of the Protestants, who tore down church edifices hoary with age and sanctified by tradition, expelling the inmates, both male and female, if doing them no worse injury, familiarized society with changes wrought by violence and made the people callous to one of the most precious possessions of a nation—a reverence for tradition.[834]
To all these difficulties the prevalence of the plague must be added. Since the century of the Black Death Europe had not so suffered from this scourge as in the sixteenth. It recurred intermittently, being especially violent in the years 1531, 1533, 1544, 1546, 1548, 1553, 1562-64, 1568, 1577-80.[835] No part of Europe was spared. France, England, Spain, the Low Countries, Germany, and Italy, all suffered. But certain portions of France suffered more than others, as Bas-Languedoc, Provence, the Lyonnais, Burgundy, Champagne, the Ile-de-France, and Normandy. The west and especially the southwest were relatively exempt. Apparently the disease followed the trades-routes along the river valleys, for Toulouse, Lyons, Châlons-sur-Saône, Macon, Châlons-sur-Marne, Langres, Bourges, La Charité, Orleans, Tours, Moulins, Sens, Melun, Dijon, Troyes, Château-Thierry, Soissons, Beauvais, Pontoise, Paris, Rouen, and the Norman ports suffered most.[836] As always, Italy was the immediate source of the epidemic, which was communicated from place to place by the movements of trade. Lyons paid dearly for its commercial pre-eminence, for the ravages of the plague were terrible there.[837] It was at its height when the court was there in July, 1564. The English ambassador, Smith, gives a fearful picture of the state of the city. Men died in the street before his lodgings. His servant who went daily for his provisions sometimes saw ten and twelve corpses, some naked, lying in the streets where they lay till “men clothed in yellow” removed them. A great many bodies were cast into the river, “because they will not be at the cost to make graves. This day,” he writes on July 12, “from break of day till ten o’clock there laid a man naked in the street, groaning and drawing his last breath, not yet dead. Round the town there are tents of the pestiferous, besides those which are shut up in their houses.”[838] Almost every third house was closed because of the plague. The city authorities vainly tried to combat the disease by providing that visits were to be made twice a day by those appointed; but as there were but five “master surgeons” in the whole city, medical attention must have been slight. Persons affected with the plague were to be removed to the hospital—the oldest and one of the best in Europe at that time. Corpses were to be buried at night and the clothes of the dead burned.[839] “About the Rhone men dare eat no fish nor fishers lay their engines and nets, because instead of fish they take up the pestiferous carcasses which are thrown in.” New sanitary regulations were made. All filth was to be cast into the river and not allowed to pollute the streets or the river banks. Fires of scented wood were kept burning between every ten houses in the street. Pigs and other animals were not allowed at large. Meat, fish, and vegetable stalls were to be inspected and all decayed provisions destroyed.[840]
It is interesting to observe the efforts made by local authorities to prevent the spread of the disease and the relief measures that were taken. As soon as the plague was discovered, the town authorities usually set guards to watch the houses of those stricken and appointed barbers and gravediggers to treat ill and to inter the dead. These attendants were supported and paid by a tax laid upon the town. Those who were ill were sent to a house of isolation appointed to be a hospital, which was often upon the walls of the town, remote from the people. In Provins the church and cemetery were immediately adjacent to the hospital! The mortality was great. In Provins in 1562 there were eighty persons stricken, of whom sixty died, among them four of the attendants. Two of the barber-surgeons refused to serve and were proceeded against by the town bailiff and were hanged in effigy because the principals in the case had made their escape. Diseased houses were sprinkled with perfumes and aromatic herbs were burned in them in order to purify them.[841] As always, the dislocation of society and the depravation of morals worked havoc in the community. Crimes of violence were common.[842]
Little by little, however, this picture of misery faded into the background of the queen’s mind and the question of political expediency, which was always the lodestar of her policy, became her primary consideration.[843] The Catholics plucked up courage as the court progressed[844] and Huguenot suspicion of the queen’s course was early aroused. Shortly after the tour of the provinces had begun, and while the court was still at Troyes pending the signature of the treaty of peace, there was a jar between D’Andelot and the queen mother, who would not permit him to choose his own captains and other officers as was customarily permitted to colonels. Partially in consequence of this affront, and partially to avoid being compromised more with Queen Elizabeth, D’Andelot, the prince of Condé, and the cardinal Châtillon all remained away from the sessions of the council while the terms of peace were under consideration, and when the court resumed its migration, no one of these attended it.[845] Indeed, after the court left Châlons-sur-Marne, so wide was the breach between the prince of Condé, the admiral and all of that faction, and the court, that the chancellor L’Hôpital was the only official who continued to treat them with deference.[846] The consideration shown Jeanne d’Albret only partially relieved the suspicions of the Protestants.[847]
We find the anxiety of the Protestants over the situation reflected in the proceedings of the provincial synod of the Reformed churches of the region through which the court had been traveling during this season, namely the churches of Champagne, Brie, Picardy, the Ile-de-France, and the French Vexin.[848] This synod assembled on April 27, 1564, at La Ferté-sous-Jouarre, and was composed of forty-five ministers. Letters were read from many parts of France and abroad, among which was one from Beza bidding the Huguenots to be on their guard as the priests were contributing money for the purpose of rooting out the truth. It was agreed by the body to reply that the Protestants were suspicious of the intentions of the queen mother.[849] In its resolutions the synod condemned the policy of the magistrates who cloaked their religious animosity under the guise of the law,[850] and complained that the Catholics were carrying the King about the country in order to show him the ruin of their churches.[851] The moderate La Roche even went so far as to declare that the Reformed church never could have peace while the queen mother governed.
Justice and historical accuracy, however, require that it be said that the Huguenots’ own conduct was sometimes in violation of the privileges granted them by the Edict of Amboise. Their iconoclasm toward the images and the pictures which the Catholics considered sacred was outrageous; they failed to confine their worship to authorized places, so that the magistrates were acting within their rights in so far repressing Protestant worship; their provincial synods not infrequently were inflammatory political assemblies.[852] On the other hand, the Catholics wilfully molested the Huguenots, interfering in their congregations, and compelling them to pay tithes and other dues for the support of the Catholic poor and even—Castelnau says—to support their provincial leagues.[853]
But the Huguenots went too far in their suspicion of the government. Beza, at the synod of La Ferté-sous-Jouarre had been apprehensive of a joint attack of France and Savoy upon Geneva, not knowing that the French aim was to renew the alliance with the Catholic cantons in order to prevent Spanish ascendency there.[854] Bern and Zurich were the pillars of French ascendency in the Alpine country. France counted upon them more than upon all else to prevent Spanish recruiting, and to close the Alpine passes to Spain’s army. To this end Bellièvre, the marshal Vieilleville, and the bishop of Limoges, who had returned from Madrid, where he was succeeded by St. Sulpice, were sent into Switzerland in the early spring of 1564 to penetrate the designs of Spain, and to promise an early payment of the French debts due to the cantons in return for their military support in the wars of Henry II.[855] Bellièvre’s particular mission was to the Grisons. The position of the Grisons was a precarious one, for Spain could attack them from the Valteline, or starve them by prohibiting the exportation of grain into the country from Lombardy. By using such threats the Spanish governor of Milan hoped to compel the adherence of the Grisons to a treaty which would open to Spanish and imperial arms the great Alpine routes of the Splügen, the Bernina, and the Stelvio, thus connecting the territories of the two branches of the Hapsburg house and shutting France out from eastern Switzerland. Bellièvre fraternized with the popular element, and by May, 1564, had almost completely neutralized the success of his Spanish rival in spite of Spanish gold. Fortunately for France the Ten Jurisdictions declared in her favor and the Grisons, though very Spaniardized, luckily had a French pensioner as its chief magistrate, the Swiss captain Florin.
Meanwhile the negotiations of the bishop of Limoges and the marshal Vieilleville had progressed so far that the treaty of alliance was all but signed. Late in October Bellièvre received from Freiburg the text of the articles of alliance which the bishop of Limoges and the marshal Vieilleville proposed to submit to the Swiss diet. Encouraged by this success, he went to Glarus in order to overcome the influence of the Zurich preachers who were outspoken enemies of the French alliance, and if possible to settle the difference between that state and Schwytz. By great dexterity he prevailed upon the two cantons to accept a uniform treaty. But he could not push negotiations to a conclusion until hearing from his colleagues.
Spain made a supreme effort to secure the opening of the passages between the Tyrol and the Milanais, but failed because the Grisons promised France that they would accept the principle of a renewed alliance, leaving the settlement of details pending, so that although the supremacy of France in Switzerland was not absolutely assured, at least the adherence of the three leagues to her seemed assured.
But the Escurial and the Vatican were leagued to destroy French influence in Switzerland. Spain gave up hope of compelling the cantons to make a direct alliance with her, but by means of commercial threats and commercial inducements counted on still keeping the Alpine passes open to her arms. Her maxim was, where the grain of Lombardy goes, there Spain’s armies may go, too. To neutralize this danger the French energetically opposed any renewal of an alliance between the Vatican and the Swiss cantons. The Grey League, later won by the commercial promises of Spain, separated from the other two in the end, but its defection was not so serious as it might have been, since according to the joint constitution the vote of two leagues in matters of foreign policy compelled the adherence of the third. But in order further to strengthen the hold of France, the French ambassadors had recourse to a sort of referendum in order to secure an approval of the majority of all the Swiss towns in favor of the French alliance, in addition to the official action of the three leagues. The success of this stroke was complete and the general diet of the three leagues gave its adherence to the treaty of Freiburg concluded by the bishop of Limoges and the marshal Vieilleville on December 7, 1564.[856] The poverty of France, however, seriously endangered the continuance of this alliance. When it was concluded, France tried to stave off payment of her debts, which amounted to more than 600,000 livres, yet demanded the execution of the articles of Freiburg. Glarus, Lucerne, Schwytz, Appenzell, Valais, the Grisons, Schaffhausen, and Basel bitterly complained, the last also because of the burdens laid upon the importations of her commerce into France through Lyons.
In this conflict which France carried on against Spain and the Holy See in Switzerland, Charles IX was supported by the German Protestants, who of course were hostile to both houses of Hapsburg, and France may be credited with considerable address in smoothing the ruffled feelings of Basel and Schaffhausen, and softening the Protestant prejudices of Zurich. This is simply another way of saying that the foreign policy of France in Switzerland was a Protestant policy. Even Bern yielded and joined the general treaty of alliance instead of insisting upon a particular treaty, as she had at first done.[857]
The Huguenots, however, suspicious of the impending reaction at home and misreading the diplomacy of France in Switzerland, grew more and more fearful and began to turn their eyes again toward the prince of Condé as a leader. But fortune and the craft of Catherine had lured the prince away from his own; he had become a broken reed, dangerous to lean upon. In July, 1564, Eleanor de Roye, the brave princess of Condé, died.[858] The Guises and the queen mother, who were now in co-operation,[859] at once began to practice to lure Condé away forever from his party, and the former at the same time, in order to make the alliance between France and Scotland more firm, conceived the idea of marrying the prince of Condé to Mary Queen of Scots.[860] As another possibility the Guises cherished the hope of marrying their niece to Charles IX and thus recovering the ascendency they had enjoyed under Francis II.[861] The corollary of such a plan was the reduction of the Protestants of France. To these ideas Philip II, was stoutly opposed, though he concealed his opposition thereto; Mary was too valuable for his projects to be suffered to become a tool of the Guises. Their purposes were limited to France; his purposes embraced Christendom.[862]
In 1575 the Venetian ambassador wrote, à propos of one of the courtships of Queen Elizabeth: “Princes are wont to avail themselves of matrimonial negotiations in many ways.”[863] These words sagely summarize the efforts of much of the diplomacy of the sixteenth century. By a singular combination of events and lineages, Mary Stuart was necessarily almost the cornerstone of the universal monarchy Philip II dreamed of forming in Europe; her possession of the Scottish crown, her claims to England, her relationship with the Guises, united with the religion she professed, made the furtherance of her power the most practicable means to that end. Whether Mary’s future husband were Don Carlos or the Austrian archduke was a matter of detail in Philip’s plan—the end remained constant. Mary Stuart was of too much value to Philip II’s political designs to risk such a marriage as the Guises contemplated.[864] Her hand might be disposed elsewhere with greater advantage.
Those intense religious convictions of the Spanish King which made him believe he was the divinely ordained instrument of the counter-Reformation, united with his political purposes and ambitions, required him to keep a watchful eye upon France.[865] The Netherlands, France, Italy, England, Scotland were like so many squares of a vast political chessboard upon which he aimed so to move the pieces he was in command of as ultimately to seize possession of those countries, and redeem them from heresy. Mary Stuart was an important personage in Philip’s purposes. He wanted to put her on the throne of Elizabeth and thus unite Scotland and England under a common Catholic rule. For a time he dreamed of marrying her to his own son, Don Carlos, until Catherine interfered and offered her daughter Marguerite as a less dangerous alternative to France. The death of Don Carlos,[866] the eternal irresolution of the Spanish King, the development of new events, continually altered the details of Philip’s purposes, but his essential aim never varied an iota.[867]
The subjugation of France, not in the exact terms of loss of sovereignty, perhaps, but no less in loss of true national independence was a necessary condition of Philip’s purposes. The kingdom of France was situated in the very center of those dominions whose consolidation was to be the Spanish King’s realization of universal rule. Spain bordered her on the south; the Netherlands on the north; in the east lay Franche Comté. Besides these territories which were directly Spanish, the Catholic cantons of Switzerland and Savoy were morally in vassalage to Spain. Beyond Franche Comté lay the Catholic Rhinelands, bound to the other branch of the house of Hapsburg. Beyond Switzerland and Savoy lay Italy, save Venice entirely, and Rome in part, a group of Spanish dominions.
Catherine de Medici combated Philip II both at Madrid and Vienna. But by the side of the negative purpose to thwart Philip’s proposed alliances, Catherine de Medici had purposes of her own of the same sort. The daughter of a house made rich by banking and which never lived down the bourgeois tradition of its ancestry in spite of all its wealth and power, even though popes had come from its house, Catherine was fascinated by the thought of marrying Charles IX to the eldest daughter of the Hapsburgs, and her favorite son, the future Henry III, then known as the duke of Orleans-Anjou, to the Spanish princess Juana, sister of Philip, hoping to see some of Spain’s numerous dominions pass to France as part of Juana’s dowry.
In the pursuance of this double marriage project, the queen early began to beset Philip II for a personal interview, and urged her daughter to persuade the king to the same end, using Pius IV’s cherished idea of a concert of the great Catholic powers to consider the condition and needs of Christendom with some adroitness as a screen to her own personal purposes.[868]
Much of her correspondence with St. Sulpice relates to an interview with Philip II for the purpose of arranging these matters, upon which she had set her heart, and the time of both the ambassador and the Spanish King was consumed with repeated interviews none of which was ever satisfactory, and all of which were tedious.[869] The natural reluctance of Philip II to commit himself to any positive course, united with the great aversion he felt toward the queen mother because of her wavering religious policy—for rigid adherence to Catholicism was Philip’s one inflexible feature—led the King to follow a course of procrastination and duplicity for months, during which, however, he never evinced any outward sign of impatience; his countenance remained as imperturbable as that of a Hindu idol, and never by any expression reflected his thought.[870]
Foolish pride and undue affection led Catherine even to use the Turk as a means of pressure upon Spain in order to accomplish this double marriage project. In the year 1562 an ambassador of the Sultan passed through France, having come by way of Venice to Lyons, and going thence via Dijon and Troyes to Paris.[871] Turkey, after crushing the revolt of Bajazet,[872] was seeking to avenge the accumulated grievances which she had suffered from Austria and Spain, especially the latter, for Philip II’s expedition to Oran and his capture of its fortress, which was regarded as impregnable, had been a bitter blow to the Porte.[873] Exasperated by Spain, Turkey whose war policy was guided by the able grand vizier, Mohammed Sokolli, prepared a vast expedition to expel her from all points which she occupied in Africa. But such a campaign was not possible until Malta, lying midway in the straits of the Mediterranean, was overcome.[874] Europe, which still preserved an acute memory of the protracted siege of Rhodes, looked forward with dismay to the prospective attack upon Malta, so that Catherine de Medici’s cordial reception at Dax of another Turkish ambassador—he was a Christian Pole in the employ of the Sultan—in the course of the tour of the provinces was a political act that was daring to rashness.[875] In order to force Philip II’s hand Catherine even intimated that Charles IX might marry Queen Elizabeth, although this proposition was too great a strain upon the credulity of Europe to be given any consideration.[876] Soon after St. Sulpice reached Spain, we find Toulouse suggested as the place for the desired interview,[877] and thereafter for thirty-eight months this conference was one of the dominant thoughts in Catherine’s mind.[878]
The queen mother’s original plan had been to avoid the heat of the south by passing the winter at Moulins, and visiting Languedoc and Guyenne in the next spring.[879] But the influence of impending change impelled her forward in the maze of tournaments, balls, and masques.[880] Although she was in “a country full of mountains and brigands,”[881] so that she feared “que cette canaille sacageassent quelques uns de sa cour,” and strengthened Strozzi’s band as a precaution, nevertheless Catherine’s resolution seems to have increased in degree as she moved southward. Probably the fact that the prince of Condé was in the toils encouraged her; certainly the necessity of exhibiting something positive that would please Spain, in view of the approaching interview, actuated her. But apart from her own motives, outside pressure had been brought to bear upon her to this end, when at Bar-le-Duc, where the King went to attend the baptism of the infant child of Charles III, duke of Lorraine, who had married Charles IX’s sister, Claudine, in March.[882] Later “when the court came to Lyons information was brought to it that if the King and his advisers should continue to resist the general rising against the Huguenots, it would be turned against itself.”[883] In this instance, however, the pressure came, not from Spain, but from Pope Pius IV whose agent, the Florentine Ludovico Antinori, was sent to France to urge the extirpation of Calvinism and to plead the cause of the findings of the Council of Trent.[884] Catherine obeyed the signs. But as a sudden rupture of the peace of Amboise would have been attended with dangerous consequences she proceeded cautiously.[885]
The first[886] definite intimation of the reaction was an edict issued on July 24, prohibiting Calvinist worship within ten leagues of the court, notwithstanding the fact that authorized places of Protestant worship were affected by it. A fortnight later, on August 4, came a more sweeping edict—the so-called Edict of Roussillon[887] which forbade all persons of whatever religion, quality, or condition to molest one another, or to violate or maltreat images, or to lay hands upon any sacred objects upon pain of death; magistrates were likewise enjoined to prevent the Huguenots from performing their devotions in any suspected places, but to confine them to such places as had been specified; finally, the Huguenots were forbidden to hold any synods or other assemblies except in the presence of certain of the King’s officers, who were appointed to be present at them.[888] The pretext of both of these edicts was the trespass upon the terms of Amboise by the Protestants, and fear of a Protestant conspiracy. But in reality the action of the government constituted a partial yielding to that Catholic pressure which already had made itself manifest at Nancy.
The Edict of Roussillon completely ignored a petition of the Huguenots presented to the King while at Roussillon, which shows the pernicious activity of the local Catholic leagues already. The complaint specified that infractions of the Edict of Amboise had been committed by the Catholics, especially in Burgundy; that Catholic associations everywhere were being formed against them; that the priests openly lauded the King of Spain from their pulpits; that their synods were broken up by the enemies of their religion.[889]
After a sojourn of a month at Roussillon, the pilgrimage of the court was again resumed. At Valence (August 22) Catherine received word that Elizabeth of Spain had given birth to still-born twin babes. On September 24 Avignon was reached, where a stay of two weeks was made during which Catherine consulted the famous astrologer Nostradamus. Hyères and Aix were stages on the road to Marseilles[890] (November 3-10), whence it led to Nîmes[891] (December 12), and Montpellier[892] (December 17), and thence to Agde and Beziers,[893] where progress for some time was blocked by heavy snow-falls. The snows irritated Catherine and to placate her impatience she was shown historical evidence that both Blanche of Castile and the queen of Charles VII had once been snowed-in in these parts for three months.[894] Unlike his mother, Charles IX enjoyed it, building a snow fort in which he and his pages withstood a siege by some of the gentlemen of the household.[895]
During this enforced sojourn Catherine de Medici received word of the famous conflict between the marshal Montmorency, who had been made governor of Paris,[896] when the court started en tour, and the cardinal of Lorraine. On January 8, 1565, the cardinal of Lorraine sought to enter Paris with a great rout of armed retainers. The marshal demanded the disarming of the company, in compliance with a royal ordonnance of 1564 forbidding the carrying of arquebuses, pistols, or other firearms,[897] not knowing that the cardinal had a warrant from the queen mother authorizing his men to wear arms if so desired. The cardinal haughtily refused to obey, and a fight took place in the street near the corner of St. Innocents, in which one man was killed.[898]
The reactionary policy of the government stimulated the local Catholic leagues in Languedoc during this winter of 1564-65.[899] The religious prejudice which these associations manifested was influenced by the bitter jealousy existing between the Guises and the Montmorencys. From the hour of the clash between the cardinal and the marshal, the Guises plotted to compass the ruin of the house of Montmorency, and sought to find support in the Catholic leagues of the southern provinces. The tolerant policy of the marshal Montmorency and his brother Damville was seized upon by the Guises to make them odious.[900] The secular clergy and still more the Jesuits and Capuchins were very active in this work, going from town to town and village to village, urging Catholics vigorously to defend their faith, and their fiery preaching materially advanced the tendency to union among the provincial leagues.[901]
Under the effective leadership of the sieur de Candalle, the league of Agen had had an astonishing spread over Guyenne, exhibiting a strength of organization and an audacity which foreshadows that of the Holy League of 1576, in whose genesis, indeed, it represents an evolutionary stage. What made the league of Guyenne so peculiarly formidable, however, was not so much its perfection of organization and its wide expansion, as the fact that it was organized and had existence without the knowledge or consent of the crown, and in transgression of the royal authority, which forbade such associations. This highly developed stage of existence was arrived at by the league of Agen in August, 1564, from which date it may properly be called the league of Guyenne.[902]
Naturally the Guises approached Montluc with their plan. While the court was sojourning at Mont-de-Marsan (March 9-24, 1565), waiting the arrival of the Spanish queen and the duke of Alva at Bayonne, an intimation was given to Montluc that a league was in process of formation in France “wherein were several great persons, princes and others,” and an agent of the Guises at this time endeavored to persuade Montluc to join the association.[903] But Montluc was cautious; he had no great affection for the Guises and, moreover, leagues and such associations were against the law, which he, as a crown officer, was pledged to support. Grammont who was opposed to Montluc had already complained of his conduct to the queen mother.[904] Besides, there were private reasons, whose nature will be soon developed, which made him hesitate. Montluc carried his information to Catherine de Medici, who, not yet perceiving that the ambition of the Guises was the chief motive, was not at once seriously alarmed, since the anti-Protestant policy of the government made it indifferent now to such associations. Accordingly, when the court reached Bordeaux (it arrived there on April 9) and the Huguenots renewed their complaints against Candalle and his associates, the King ignored the petition, recognizing that many of the nobles were members of the league of Guyenne. Instead, he gave the league a quasi-legal status by proclaiming that the crown would not listen to any more complaints against Candalle and his associates.[905]
But the queen mother was genuinely alarmed a few weeks later when the real purpose and scope of the proposed league were revealed to her through an intercepted letter which the duke of Aumale had written on February 27, 1565, to the marquis d’Elbœuf. The duke of Montpensier, the vicomte de Martigues, Chavigny, who was a Guise protégé, D’Angennes, and the bishop of Mans, were named in this letter as the chiefs of an association, which had for its avowed end the abasement of the house of Montmorency.[906] Catherine, apprehending the consequences certain to result from such an extension of the feud of the two houses, implored the King, at a large meeting of the council held on May 18, 1565, to divulge what had been ascertained—that a secret association had been discovered in defiance of the law, having political aims detrimental to the monarchy, and a system of government for the levying of men and money without the King’s authority. The counselors, with one accord, denied their knowledge or implication, and protested their devotion to the cause and the law. Catherine was thoroughly alarmed, and appealed to Montluc for advice. What followed may be told in his own words:
I heard then some whisper of a league that was forming in France, wherein were several very great persons, both Princes and others, whom nevertheless I have nothing to do to name, being engaged by promise to the contrary. I cannot certainly say to what end this League was contrived; but a certain gentleman named them to me every one, endeavoring at the same time to persuade me to make one in the Association, assuring me it was to a good end; but he perceived by my countenance that it was not a dish for my palate. I presently gave the Queen private intimation of it; for I could not endure such kind of doings, who seemed to be very much astonished at it, telling me it was the first syllable she had ever heard of any such thing; and commanding me to enquire further into the business, which I did, but could get nothing more out of my gentleman; for he now lay upon his guard.
Her Majesty then was pleased to ask my advice, how she should behave herself in this business, whereupon I gave her counsel to order it so that the King himself should say in public that he had heard of a League that was forming in his Kingdom, which no one could do without giving him some jealousy and offence; and that therefore he must require everyone without exception to break off this League, and that he would make an Association in his Kingdom, of which he himself would be the Head; for so for some time it was called, though they afterwards changed the name, and called it the Confederation of the King. The Queen at the time that I gave her this advice did by no means approve of it, objecting, that should the King make one, it was to be feared that others would make another; but I made answer and said that the King must engage in his own all such as were in any capacity of doing the contrary, which, however, was a thing that could not be concealed, and might well enough be provided against. Two days after, her Majesty being at supper, called me to her and told me that she had considered better of the affair I had spoke to her about, and found my counsel to be very good, and that the next day, without further delay, she would make the King propound the business to his Council; which she accordingly did, and sent to enquire for me at my lodging, but I was not within. In the evening she asked me why I did not come to her, and commanded me not to fail to come the next day, because there were several great difficulties in the Council, of which they had not been able to determine. I came according to her command, and there were several disputes. Monsieur de Nemours made a very elegant speech, remonstrating “That it would be very convenient to make a League and Association for the good of the King and his Kingdom, to the end, that if affairs should so require, every one with the one and the same will might repair to his Majesty’s person, to stake their lives and fortunes for his service, and also in case any one of what religion soever, should offer to invade or assault them, or raise any commotion in the state, that they might with one accord unite, and expose their lives in their common defence.” The Duke of Montpensier was of the same opinion, and several others saying that they could not choose but so much the more secure the peace of the Kingdom, when it should be known that all the Nobility were thus united for the defence of the Crown.
The Queen then did me the honor to command me to speak; whereupon I began, and said, “That the League proposed could be no ways prejudicial to the King, being that it tended to a good end for his Majesty’s service, the good of his Kingdom, and the peace and security of his People; but that one which should be formed in private could produce nothing but disorder and mischief; for the good could not answer for the evil disposed; and should the cards once be shuffled betwixt League and League, it would be a hard matter to make of it a good game; that being the most infallible way to open a door to let strangers into the kingdom, and to expose all things to spoil and ruin; but that all of us in general, both Princes and others, ought to make an Association, which should bear the title of the League, or the Confederation of the King, and to take a great and solemn oath, not to decline or swerve from it upon penalty of being declared such as the oath should import; and that his Majesty having so concluded, ought to dispatch messengers to all parts of the kingdom, with commission to take the oaths of such as were not there present, by which means it would be known, who were willing to live and die in the service of the king and state. And should anyone be so foolish or impudent as to offer to take arms, let us all swear to fall upon them; I warrant your Majesty I will take such order in these parts, that nothing shall stir to the prejudice of your royal authority. And in like manner let us engage by the faith we owe to God, that if any Counter-League shall disclose itself, we will give your Majesty immediate notice of it; and let your Majesty’s be subscribed by all the great men of your kingdom. The feast will not be right without them, and they also are easy to be persuaded to it, and the fittest to provide against any inconvenience that may happen.”
This was my proposition, upon which several disputes ensued; but in the end the King’s Association was concluded on, and it was agreed, that all the Princes, great Lords, Governors of Provinces, and Captains of Gens d’armes should renounce all Leagues and Confederacies whatsoever, as well without as within the Kingdom, excepting that of the King, and should take the oath upon pain of being declared rebels to the crown; to which there were also other obligations added, which I do not remember.... In the end all was past and concluded, and the Princes began to take the oath, and to sign the articles.[907]
The weakness of the crown’s position in these circumstances is evident. Recognizing its inability to crush these local associations and fearing lest control of them would pass over wholly to the Guises, the crown tried to save its power and its dignity by fusing them into a single confederation under the King and forbidding the formation of future associations without royal consent. But the power of the crown was not commensurate with its show of authority. The leagues continued to multiply and to remain independent of the crown’s coercion. In the year 1565 the situation is different in degree but not in kind from that which existed in 1576 when the Holy League was formed.
Even the Spanish affiliations of the Holy League existed potentially at this time through the treason of Montluc.[908] For the wily Gascon, whose character was a combination of daring determination, religious bigotry and envy, in recommending the measures he did was really taking steps to cover up his own tracks. Montluc, despite his professions of allegiance, was angry at the queen mother, and quite ready to knife her in the dark. His heart was filled with rebellious envy of Vieilleville, because the latter had been given a marshal’s bâton. Disappointed in this expectation he asked for the post of colonel-general which D’Andelot filled.[909] Instead Montluc had to be satisfied with the office of governor of Guyenne, which he regarded as ill compensation of his services.[910] In consequence of these grievances, even before the recovery of Havre, Montluc had entered into correspondence with Philip II, to whom he represented the necessity of Spanish intervention in France, on account of the double danger by which France was threatened through the purposes of the Protestants and Catherine de Medici’s toleration of them. The Spanish King at first hesitated, but soon availed himself of the opportunity thus afforded, for two strings were better than one to his bow. Profound secrecy covered the negotiations. Philip’s love of mystery and the delicacy of the matter led him to conceal the plan even from his ambassador in France, and operate through Bardaxi, a cousin of a Spanish captain of that name, who had been pursued by the Inquisition and had fled to France, where he sought service under Montluc in recompense of which he finally was rehabilitated.[911] Montluc proposed the formation of a league between the Pope, the Emperor, the Spanish King, and the leading Catholic princes of Germany and Italy to avert a union of the Huguenots with outside Protestant princes for the overthrow of the Catholic religion in France.[912] He enlarged upon the moral “benefit” of such a league to France, now ridden by the Huguenots to the imminent ruin of the monarchy, and pointed out to Philip II the peculiar interest he had in crushing Calvinism.[913] The plan was for Philip II to kidnap Jeanne d’Albret who was to be given over to the Inquisition, and to seize possession of Béarn, and thus accomplish two purposes at once—destroy the hearth of Calvinism in France, and establish Spanish power north of the Pyrenees.[914] Fortunately for France, the French ambassador at Madrid, St. Sulpice, was informed of the plan, though he did not know of Montluc’s treason, by a servant of the Spanish queen, and Catherine de Medici’s energetic steps in the protection of Béarn nipped the scheme in the bud.[915]
This joint plan of Montluc and Philip II for the seizure of Béarn and the capture of its queen telescoped with another plot against her to which Philip and Pope Pius IV were parties. On September 28, 1563, a papal bull excommunicated the queen for heresy, and she was cited before the Holy Office for trial.[916] To Catherine’s credit she at once took a firm stand in favor of the queen of Navarre.[917]
It was not in the nature of Philip II to be daring in daylight. Precaution was second nature to him. Lansac’s mission to Madrid to protest against the action of Pius IV coincided with Montluc’s overtures to the Spanish King. The discovery of part of the plan made Philip timid about pushing it at all until a more favorable time at least. Accordingly he gave Montluc little encouragement, save offering him an asylum in Spain if events should compel him to quit France on account of his treasonable correspondence,[918] while to Lansac he said that “what the Pope had done against ‘Madame de Vendôme’ was very inopportune and would be remedied.”[919] In a word, Philip II dissembled his participation in the Pope’s conduct, asserting that the procedure had been taken without his knowledge, and that while he deplored the queen of Navarre’s apostasy he could not be unmindful of the fact that she was kith and kin of the queen of Spain, his wife![920]
There probably was a certain amount of spite work in Philip’s repudiation of the Pope at this time. One of the important political issues raised at the Council of Trent was the question of precedence between the ambassadors of France and Spain. Lansac, Charles IX’s ambassador to the Council, claimed the honor of going before the count of Lara, Spain’s representative, at which Philip was “picqué oultre mesure.”[921] The papal party in vain implored Lansac to yield. Lansac replied that “la France ne pouvait renoncer aux droits qui lui avaient été reconnus dans tous les précédents conciles, et que, plutôt que de laisser rien innover sur ce point, ‘j’étais résolu, selon le commandement de mon maître, après avoir protesté de nullité de ce concile, de m’en aller incontinent avec tous les prélats de notre nation, sans entrer dans aucune dispute ne composition.’”[922] Philip II refrained from making any observation to France upon the disputed point[923] pending the decision of the Pope.[924] But such a course was impossible. The contest over the question became the absorbing topic of conversation at Rome.[925] The Pope was between Scylla and Charybdis.[926] Spain claimed precedence for Philip II through the crown of Castile—“chose peu véritable”—and argued that the services of Philip II to the church justified her pretension; to which France rejoined that her king was historically first son of the church, the Most Christian King, who “had bled and suffered for the preservation of the Catholic religion in his kingdom, for which he had combated to the hazarding of his entire state.”[927] Finally being compelled to decide, Pius IV made a choice in favor of France, to the immense chagrin of Philip II who actually fell sick of the humiliation and recalled his ambassador Vargas from Rome as a sign of his displeasure.[928]
The catalogue of Spain’s grievances against France, besides the question of religion, the dispute over precedence, and France’s refusal to accept the findings of Trent which Philip II had recognized[929] included still another complaint. This was the border difficulty between the Spanish provinces of Artois and Luxembourg, and France. It was a complex question, partly religious, partly political, partly commercial. Like the Huguenot rebellion, the growing insurrection in the Low Countries was of a double nature—religious and political. Each side looked to the other for sympathy and support and neither was disappointed. The Huguenots retaliated for the assistance afforded the government of France by Spain during the first civil war by aiding the revolt of the Netherlands. This intimate connection of events on each side of the line is an important fact to be observed.
It was in 1563, as Granvella had divined,[930] that the intrigues of the French Protestants in Flanders became a matter of serious apprehension. Valenciennes was the most aggressive city of the religion in Flanders, and Margaret of Parma actually was afraid of Montigny doing as Maligny had done at Havre. Already the prince of Orange was the recognized leader of those who sympathized with the Huguenots. To this class England’s support of the prince of Condé, and above all, the assassination of the duke of Guise, came as a real stimulus. Valenciennes, Tournay, Antwerp, even Brussels were stirred. In May, 1563, the demonstrations of the Calvinists at Valenciennes and Tournay became so bold that it required six companies of infantry to keep them overawed. But this measure, instead of accomplishing the result expected, aggravated the situation, for the marquis de Berghes, the commander, was so ostracized by the nobles, that he lost courage. Philip II grew alarmed and wrote to his sister on June 13, 1563, that the example of France counseled most drastic suppression. In reply the regent and the cardinal Granvella implored Philip to come to the Netherlands, but he pleaded ignorance of the language and poverty as excuse. Meanwhile the Orange party practiced so successfully with the duchess of Parma that she inclined toward conciliation instead of coercion. This threw the regent and De Berghes into alignment, who proposed to convoke the States-General to remedy the evils—a programme which the nobles enthusiastically advocated.
The similarity between the Flemish movement and the programme of the political Huguenots in France is very close.[931] With the design of suppressing heresy in its two most active centers, Granvella proposed to imitate the method used at Paris, of exacting a profession of faith together with a pledge to observe the laws, of all citizens who wished to stay in the city. Recalcitrants were to be disarmed, compelled to sell their property, one-third of the proceeds of which was to be confiscated for the support of the soldiers and municipal expenses, and the culprits were then to be banished from the country. This drastic policy called forth a mingled protest and threat from the prince of Orange, whose wealth and German connections, aside from other qualities he possessed, gave him great influence. The government begged for money and troops, “como la liga va cresciendo.”[932] Orange’s tactics were to persuade the provincial estates to refuse to vote subsidies or to throw the weight of the finances upon the church much after the manner of things done at Pontoise. This he began to do in Brabant where the indefinite postponement of a grant of money provoked mutiny among the soldiers. In September De Berghes went out from office, having distinguished himself by not putting a single heretic to death. The change was immediately followed by the burning alive of a Protestant preacher and the protestations of the quartet, Orange, Hoorne, Egmont, and Montigny, became bolder.[933] Finally the nobles of Flanders resolved to protest to the King of Spain. Philip II, always hesitating and undecided, did not respond. To a petition which was sent him demanding the recall of the cardinal, he replied by a flat refusal. The nobles showed their offense by absenting themselves from the Council of State and used their influence to detach the regent from Granvella. At last, after months of negotiation, Philip II yielded. Granvella retired to his splendid palace at Besançon in Franche Comté and the nobles resumed their seats in the council. But the four were irritated at Philip II’s delay in responding to their demands for reform. It was evident, moreover, by November, 1563, that something like a common purpose actuated the chief provinces—Flanders, Artois, Holland, Zealand, and Utrecht.[934]
The Calvinists were especially numerous in the Walloon provinces, and preachers from Geneva and England were active among them. The government undertook to restrain their assemblies, and the conflict broke out. This conflict, it is important to remark, did not turn upon the question of religion in and of itself, but upon the manner of treating the heretics. Philip wanted to apply the edicts of his father, which required the death penalty for heresy; but the government and Spanish officials in the Low Countries, Catholics though they were, were opposed to so severe a penalty and would rather have treated those offending as criminals than as heretics. But with Philip the extirpation of heresy was a question of conscience.
Valenciennes still remained the most prominent place of disaffection,[935] but Brussels was much infected.[936] But more formidable than local spirit was the marked tendency toward a union of the provinces[937] and the growing interest of the Huguenots in the Dutch and Flemish cause,[938] so much so that Cardinal Granvella strongly hinted at Spanish pressure being forcibly exerted upon France for the reduction of the Huguenots.[939] The cardinal hoped to see Charles IX and his mother more docile in receiving the advice of Spain since the withdrawal of Chantonnay, who was made Philip II’s ambassador at Vienna. But the theft of Alava’s cipher by the Huguenots threw him into despair.[940] The reciprocal connection between politics and religion in France and the Low Countries made the Spanish government watch the movement of events in France with vigilance.[941] So acute was the situation owing to Huguenot sympathy with the cause of insurrection across the border,[942] that although Granvella ridiculed the wild rumor that Montgomery was coming to Flanders, he nevertheless apprehended the possibility of a rupture with France and was relieved to know that precautions had been taken against any chance enterprise of the Huguenots along the edge of Artois and Hainault.[943]
Margaret of Parma and the nobles sent ambassadors to Spain to ask concession on two points: (1) that the provinces be governed by native officials; (2) that the punishment of heresy be moderated. The King hesitated long. It was not until October 17, 1565, that he gave decisive pronouncement in dispatches issued from Segovia. In them he ordered the maintenance of the Inquisition, the enforcement of the edicts, and the impoverishment of those who resisted. In a word, Philip II would not yield. The discontent against the administration of the King of Spain now turned against the King himself. William of Orange used the notable words, “We are witnessing the beginning of a great tragedy.”
In the face of the growing resistance the duke of Alva strongly advised Philip II to convert the towns into fortresses.[944] For the Flemish cities were, as yet, commercial groups, not fortified burgs. With the possible exception of Gravelines, no one of them was capable of making a sustained defense.
This suggestion happened to coincide with the English occupation of Havre-de-Grace and the possible return of Calais to England in return therefor. Such a contingency could but be viewed with anxiety by Spain,[945] and this fact, coupled with the uncertainty of developments in France induced Philip to follow out Alva’s suggestion by strengthening Gravelines. France at once became alarmed over Calais and protested in the same breath against the building of fortifications at Gravelines and the duty upon her wines.[946] In retaliation the French government also strengthened the garrisons on the edge of Picardy, under the direction of the prince of Condé (who was governor of the province), to the immense indignation of Spain.[947] The Spanish erections around Gravelines reacted also upon the state of things in Flanders. For new and heavier taxation was the indispensable point of departure for carrying out such measures, “unless one were willing to see everything said upon the subject vanish in smoke.” The sole effective remedy for the state of things prevailing in the Flemish provinces was, of course, to reorganize the finances and the administration of justice in accordance with the demands made by the nobles. But instead of attempting to do this, the government aimed to weaken the opposition by dividing the leaders, and the long silence of Philip II covered an attempt to draw away Egmont, who was regarded as the ringleader of the Flemish nobles at this time.[948] The Spanish government dreaded to summon the estates, as Orange insisted should be done, for fear of things in Brabant and the other provinces going the road of things in France under like conditions.[949]
In order, therefore, to provide for funds without asking the estates to vote subsidies, over which there was sure to be a conflict, the Spanish government in the Netherlands undertook to raise the needed money by tariffs. The cloth trade of England and the wine trade of France were the two commodities so taxed. In 1563 a duty was laid on French wine.[950] In the case of England, the excuse given for the high duty placed on imported cloth was precaution against the plague.[951] France at once protested against the tariff and threatened to retaliate by taxing the herring and cod trade, though the Spanish ambassador at Paris represented that such action would entirely destroy the wine trade and would compel reprisal.[952]
Flemish merchants were doubly alarmed at the state of things, for England, too, threatened reprisal by removing the cloth market from Antwerp to Embden and imposing tonnage duties on merchant ships of Flanders driven by stress of weather into English ports for safety during storm.[953] But the government in Flanders was obdurate. Granvella declared England’s threat to remove the staple to Embden to be “puerile rhodomontade.” He believed that not only would the prohibition against the import of English cloth compel Elizabeth to redress the grievances of Spanish subjects against England, but that it might even make the English government more lenient toward the Catholic religion. Furthermore, he argued, the tax would operate like a protective tariff to stimulate the manufacture of cloth in the Low Countries. “If not a single bolt of English cloth ever comes into Flanders again,” he wrote “it will be to the permanent profit of the Pays-Bas. We saw this clearly last year during the plague when the prohibition having temporarily suspended the importation of this kind of goods, there was manufactured in the single county of Flanders 60,000 pieces of cloth, or more than the sum total of the three preceding years.”[954] In the case of French wines the Flemish government even established a maximum law for their sale which cut the throat of French merchants worse than ever.[955] The French government carried the action of the Flemish government up to Madrid, where for months the duty on wine and the buttresses of Gravelines were matters of repeated interviews between St. Sulpice and the King, and were still unsettled questions at the time of the conference at Bayonne.[956] Meanwhile the conflict of the Flemish reform party became more acute because it became complicated with the question of religion.
In the light of all these circumstances, it is no wonder that Philip II hesitated long before giving his consent to an interview with Catherine de Medici.[957] Even then he imposed a number of conditions and regulations. He would not go in person to Bayonne—the place appointed; his wife was to be accompanied by the duke of Alva; display was to be avoided by either side both for motives of economy and to prevent having undue political significance attached to an interview which was to be understood to be purely personal. Philip II’s most striking regulations, however, were those which had to do with the French entourage. No one in the least tainted with heresy was to accompany the court. The queen of Navarre, whom the Spanish King carefully alluded to as “Madame de Vendôme,” the prince of Condé, the admiral, and the cardinal Châtillon were specifically named with abhorrence. The queen mother acquiesced in this prohibition, save in the case of the prince of Condé, protesting that, on account of his rank, it would give great offense to forbid his presence, as well as create belief among the Huguenots that the meeting contemplated something disadvantageous to them. History has shown that Catherine’s instincts were perfectly right in this particular; since after the massacre of St. Bartholomew the Huguenots—indeed almost the whole Protestant world—jumped to the conclusion that that disaster was preconcerted at Bayonne. In vain St. Sulpice argued political expediency, saying France and Spain must not be judged alike, and that “experience had proved that the way of arms had resulted in more dangers than profit to France.” Philip II’s answer was metallically hard; he would not consent to the presence either of Jeanne d’Albret or the prince of Condé at Bayonne, because it would be a reproach to him and to Spain for his wife to have had converse with a heretic.[958]
The last stage of Charles IX’s long tour of the provinces was from Bordeaux[959] to Bayonne[960] where the French court arrived on May 22, 1565. But that indolence of spirit which is so much associated with Spanish character seems as early as the sixteenth century to have become habitual,[961] so that the Spanish queen was forced to travel in the heat (six soldiers of Strozzi’s band died with their armor on from heat prostration), which aggravated the plague prevailing in certain parts.[962]
In conferences of state, especially international conferences, things of importance are confined within four walls. The sixteenth century was par excellence the age of closet politics. The world upon the outside saw only the fêtes[963] that marked the interview at Bayonne. But these festivities were no more than the flecks or wreaths of glittering foam that float upon the bosom of the water for an instant and then are gone. The real business at Bayonne was politics. But the great importance for three hundred years[964] attributed to this famous interview is today proved to have had slight foundation in fact. The light of recent research has dissipated the traditional belief that Philip II and Catherine de Medici planned the massacre of the French Protestants at Bayonne, and finally consummated it on St. Bartholomew’s Day.[965] The truth is that not what was contemplated but what was imagined was contemplated at Bayonne became the important historical influence of the future. An assumed fact came to have all the force of reality. The principals in this unfortunate conference, in point of truth, were far apart from one another. Philip II’s interests were wholly political, and personalities were merely incidental to his main purpose. On the other hand, the queen mother’s interests were chiefly personal, being centered in plans to achieve brilliant marriage alliances for her children, for whose sake she ruinously compromised herself and France.
If Catherine had been less vain and less foolishly affectionate, she would have striven harder for the solution of things more vital to France. It is true she was far from ignoring these issues entirely, but she weakened the cause of France in respect to them by subordinating these to her main purpose, so that she awakened the greater suspicion of Spain by her attempts to avoid answering in those matters of most concern to Philip II and by her continual harping upon the things that were nearest to her heart, but not of most moment either to France or to Spain. When the duke of Alva drove her into a corner and compelled her to answer the questions he put to her concerning greater politics, Catherine’s replies were fatal to her aspirations. What were these matters?
Alva’s instructions were strict. He was to demand the expulsion of the Huguenot ministers from France within thirty days; the interdiction of Protestant worship; acceptance of the decrees of the Council of Trent; profession of the Catholic religion by all office holders.[966] This policy of suppression and compulsion outlined by his sovereign was wholly in keeping with his, the duke’s, own judgment. But with greater penetration and less hesitation than Philip II, Alva recognized clearly the intimate connection between the politics of Flanders and the politics of France, and favored the adoption of a parallel line of conduct at once in the Low Countries. He was convinced that France was incapable of managing her own affairs and was a menace to other states, politically and religiously.[967] The means of repression which Spain had often urged had not produced the results desired: they had only delayed the total ruin of the nation. Suggestion and insinuation must be replaced by a more drastic policy. Assassination was a recognized, perhaps a quasi-legitimate political recourse in the eyes of the men of the sixteenth century. The old generation of French Catholics upon whom Spain could rely, the cardinal de Tournon, the duke of Guise, the marshal St. André, had passed away—one of them assassinated at the hands of a Huguenot. Tavannes and Vieilleville were reluctant to sacrifice country to religion, especially when a rival nation would profit thereby. The constable was the only old-time figure of prominence remaining, and he could not be relied on since the conflict between the marshal Montmorency and the cardinal of Lorraine, for he favored the side of his nephews and so was believed to be not far distant from the party of the admiral.[968] Power had fallen into the hands of the Huguenots, whose leaders now excelled in personal force. “The shortest, the most expeditious way, is to behead Condé, the admiral, D’Andelot, La Rochefoucauld, and Grammont,” Alva told the duke of Montpensier[969] and Montluc, the two most earnest French converts to this policy.[970]
But it was yet a far cry from this cool advocacy of assassination of the Protestant leaders to the wholesale slaughter of August 24, 1572. There is really no positive connection between the conference of Bayonne and the massacre of St. Bartholomew.[971] The slaughter of the French Protestants as a sect was never advocated by any prince in Europe, not even Philip II. There is no evidence at the Vatican of any Catholic or papal league for the extirpation of the Protestants. Such a solution of the religious problem was not contemplated, save by one person in Europe at this time—Pope Pius V. It is this pontiff who has the sinister distinction of having advocated general destruction of the Protestants, rather than a discriminating assassination of the Huguenot leaders.[972] The most radical action touching the Huguenots at large, it may safely be said, that was regarded practicable in 1564-65 was to forbid and prevent future conversion,[973] or else the wholesale exile of the Huguenots from the realm.[974] The alternative of total destruction was not contemplated anywhere in Europe or at any time, except in the single case mentioned.
No such crime as the massacre of the Huguenots was planned at Bayonne, nor perpetrated as the result of that conference. The principals in the case were too far apart in intention and conviction for so gigantic a programme. The paramount purpose of the queen mother was to marry Charles IX to the elder daughter of the Emperor, Margaret of Valois to Don Carlos, and the duke of Orleans (the future Henry III) to Donna Juana, Philip II’s sister. But Alva was crafty. By a series of adroit questions which tantalized her hopes and preyed upon her fears, he compelled Catherine de Medici to commit herself upon the very political issues which she wished to avoid discussing, until she was hopelessly compromised. In vain she doubled like a fox pursued by the hounds and tried to throw the duke off upon a false scent.
“France must be cleared of this vicious sect,” said Alva. In order to avoid replying, Catherine attempted, by a question, to turn the conversation to the subject of a universal league, whether it should be against the Turk or against the heretic. Alva was not thrown off. The queen resorted to sarcasm.
“Since you understand the evil from which France is suffering so well,” she said, “tell me the remedy.”
Alva sidestepped the direct shot, by suavely rejoining:
“Madame, who knows better than yourself?”
“The King, your master,” said Catherine ironically, “knows better than I everything that passes in France. What means would he employ to overcome the rebellious Protestants?”
Alva resorted to the Socratic method, hoping to involve the queen in the toils of argument.
“Has the religion gained or lost since the peace of Amboise?” he inquired insidiously.
“It has gained,” replied she.
The answer, in Spain’s eyes, was a condemnation of the policy of France; it was a thorn in the road of the queen’s ambitious hopes of marriage alliance. In her exasperation, Catherine upbraided her daughter for out-Spaniarding the Spaniard.
“I am a Spaniard, I admit,” said Elizabeth. “ It is my duty.”[975]
Catherine broached anew the possibility of Philip II consenting to have his sister marry her Benjamin—Henry duke of Orleans—and conferring Artois as dowry upon the pair.
“The king would never consent to sacrifice one of his provinces,” said Alva brusquely.
“But to give a Spanish province to the duke of Orleans,” argued the queen mother, blinded by maternal affection, “would be the same then as giving it to his own brother.”
Alva taxed the queen with maintaining a heretic, L’Hôpital, in the chancellorship, and of opposing the Tridentine decrees. Catherine emphatically denied the first charge, although her daughter again supported Alva’s indictment by declaring that even during the life of her father, L’Hôpital had passed for a Huguenot; as to the second, she said the crown of France objected to the political application of certain findings of the Council of Trent, which she hoped to have adjusted. Alva saw the vulnerable point in her reply and inquired if she aimed to call another assembly like the Colloquy of Poissy.
“I recognize the danger of such assemblies,” said Catherine, “but the king, my son, is strong enough to compel discussion only of those subjects which he may designate.”
“Was it so at Poissy?” sneered Alva.
The queen’s reply was a tirade against the cardinal of Lorraine, whom she blamed for the failure of the colloquy.
In the end there was a promise given by the queen mother at Bayonne. But it was verbal, not written, and so governed by circumstances that the edge of Spain’s intentions was dulled. Compromising the agreement certainly was; convicting it is not, for, aside from the fact that its fulfilment was dependent upon an impossible condition of things, Catherine never permitted herself to express in writing what the terms of this promise were. Our knowledge of it is dependent upon Alva’s letters of June 15 and July 4; upon Philip II’s construction of it in a letter addressed by him to the cardinal Pacheco[976] on August 24, 1565, and the dispatch of the Venetian ambassador Suriano, who was with the French queen, to the senate on July 22, supplemented by what information St. Sulpice picked up during the last days of his mission in Spain.
It is evident from the careful reading of these documents that the real triumph at Bayonne was scored by the papacy; that Spain won a sterile victory, and France met an indecisive defeat. Spain and France, being unable to carry their own purpose through as each desired, compromised on a course which was an intermediate plane of agreement to them, but which, according to the letter, was a supreme triumph for Rome, and would have been a complete victory for Rome if the terms had ever been executed. The man of the hour was the cardinal Santa Croce, nuncio in France. His services are thus reported by the Venetian ambassador in France on July 2:
On the eve of departure, the queen, perceiving the discontent of the duke of Alva, summoned the nuncio, who was not far away, to Bayonne, in order to have him at hand. It is he who has found a solution; he has satisfied both parties. I shall be able to inform you shortly as to the nature of his solution.[977]
Three weeks later (July 22) the promised word was sent to Venice in the form of a cipher dispatch,[978] the information in which had been communicated to him in strictest secrecy.[979] This intensely important document reads as follows:
Now that I have received positive information, I shall tell everything to your Signory that has happened. Since his arrival, the duke of Alva has not ceased to urge the queen to give his master a manifestation of her good will toward the cause of religion by some manifest act, and he had urged her to cause the decisions of the Council of Trent to be observed throughout the whole realm of France, for which his Catholic majesty would show his satisfaction. The queen had yielded readily to this proposition and had told him that she was very inclined to convene an assembly of prelates, of theologians, and savants, to examine the decisions made at Trent, without occupying themselves with doctrine, but confining themselves to the reform of abuses. The duke had found this offer strange and had not concealed his discontent over it. According to him, this was to oppose a council to a council, which would be the worst of results and mightily displease the king his master. Since he urged the necessity of this measure, before passing to any other consideration, and was so obdurate, the queen, being very pained to see him depart so unsatisfied, and things being so desperate, notified the nuncio, who was not lodged at Bayonne like all the ambassadors, and ordered the mareschal de logis of the palace to prepare accommodation for him and to have him come immediately. He came at once and being informed by the queen, went to find the duke, but was very badly received by him. The duke blamed and reproached him for not remaining firm in his opinion. The queen holding to the idea of this assembly of prelates and theologians, and the duke opposing it, the nuncio found another expedient which seemed to give satisfaction to all. He broached it to the queen, and with her consent communicated it to the duke. This remedy, at the twelfth hour, was very opportune. It is this: This assembly shall be held: but under certain conditions. The first is that the persons chosen to participate in it shall be of such influence as to be able to demand that no Huguenot shall sit in it; secondly, the assembly must conform to that which the queen had at first proposed; that is to say, all disputes over dogma and doctrine shall be forbidden. The queen, having accepted this, authorized the nuncio to communicate her consent to the duke, who showed himself satisfied. Both of them then came together to find the queen again, and on the next day, in the presence of the queen of Spain, the cardinal Bourbon, the marshal Bourdillon, and the leading nobles, the whole was confirmed.
Great benefit can come from this: by eliminating everything that pertains to dogma, and avoiding doctrinal difficulties, all the other resolutions which are of less importance will be strengthened, especially as the Huguenots, the only ones who can give trouble will be excluded. There is no doubt about both the king and the queen being disposed to the Catholic religion, since they have given proofs of it. I am, moreover, assured by what the queen has said, that there is no intention to touch any of the privileges of the Holy See, nor, per contra, any of the concessions made by the popes to the kings who were predecessors of the king now reigning. The execution of this convention thus arranged is not to take place until the return of the king to Paris.
The King of Spain, in the letter cited to Cardinal Pacheco, expressed his contentment with this agreement,[980] not perceiving that the application of it was capable of a great amount of flexibility. In his blindness he thought that the nuncio had broken the loaf so as to give the greater portion to Spain; while in reality the greater part was in the hands of the Pope, Philip II having actually but the difference between a fragment and no bread. In fine, no plot was entered into at Bayonne; no crime was ever committed in pursuance of an agreement arranged there. The “plot” agreed upon at Bayonne between Catherine de Medici and Philip II of Spain consisted of an ambiguous promise, the fulfilment of which was dependent upon an impossible condition of things.[981]
The affair of Bayonne was not a crime; it was a colossal blunder. The destruction of the ambitious marriage expectations of the Valois was the least loss. The irreparable thing was that France forfeited the confidence of her Protestant subjects. The secrecy that enveloped the conference made the Huguenots apprehensive of the worst. They believed that a Franco-Spanish alliance was made at Bayonne for their overwhelming; and the second civil war was the outcome of their misgivings.[982] And when finally, for other reasons, the massacre of St. Bartholomew befell them, not merely Protestant France but Protestant Europe was convinced that the false hypothesis had been demonstrated. The count Hector la Ferrière admirably summarizes the situation:
To maintain and loyally to adhere to the edict of pacification; to open to the daring sailors of France the Indies and America, which Spain and Portugal were endeavoring to close to them; and finally to rally Catholics and Protestants under the same banner against the foreigner—this was the only true French policy. The Spaniard at this time was the enemy of France. She encountered him everywhere in her path; at Rome, at Vienna, at the Council of Trent he disputed her precedence; in Switzerland by gold and by the menaces of his agents he interfered with the renewals of the French treaties with the Catholic cantons; at the very time when Catherine and Elizabeth of Valois were exchanging false promises of alliance and friendship, Menendez was sailing for Florida, bearing orders for the massacre of all the French found there.[983]