Chapter XI…

Chapter XI

THE TOUR OF THE PROVINCES (Continued). THE INFLUENCE OF THE REVOLT OF THE NETHERLANDS UPON FRANCE. THE AFFAIR OF MEAUX

From the field of Philip II’s empty victory the court resumed its pilgrimage, crossing the Loire and traversing Guyenne which was “in good repose,” visiting Angoulême, Cognac, Saintes, La Rochelle, and Niort en route to Nantes. The country was the veritable dominion of Calvinism in France, but as yet the Huguenots let their hopes belie their fears.[984] The progress through the western provinces was purposely slow, for Catherine still hoped against hope that Fourquevaux, who had succeeded St. Sulpice at the Spanish court, might persuade Philip II to think more favorably of her matrimonial schemes,[985] until finally, late in December, the bitter truth came out; only the younger daughter of the Hapsburgs might marry a Valois, even though he was king of France. The queen mother had been weighed in the balance by Catholic-Hapsburg Europe and had been found wanting. Then it was that Catherine turned her eyes toward eastern Europe in the hope of finding in Poland a recompense for the fondled and despicable Henry of Valois. Strange are the vicissitudes of history! The effect of Philip II’s resolution was to put a mountebank on the throne of Poland and cast Marguerite of Valois into the arms of the son of Jeanne d’Albret.[986]

Long before this time, however, Spain had begun to be impatient for the fulfilment of the compact of Bayonne. But procrastination was Catherine’s trump suit. She averred that the plague was too prevalent to make it safe for the court to return to Paris until winter,[987] and when the cold weather diminished the danger from that source, pleaded the poverty and famine of the realm as an excuse.[988] It was an excuse the validity of which was everywhere manifest. France truly had been in the dire pangs of hunger and intense cold during the celebrated winter of 1564-65.[989] Claude Haton, the priest-historian of Provins, who was a close observer of meteorological phenomena has given a graphic description of this season.

The winter at its commencement in November [he says] was very mild and was so until December 20, the vigil of St. Thomas the apostle, without either cold or frost in the mornings. The rain was so warm that it was thought that the winter would be mild and open, but on the vigil of St. Thomas there came a great cold, accompanied in the morning by a cold rain, which by midday turned into snow, and which fell all the rest of the day in so great abundance that the earth, which was very wet, was covered on the morrow to the depth of a foot, king’s measure, and more, with snow. With this snow came a northeast wind, which froze everything under a coating of thick ice. This cold continued down to the last day of December. The ice was so thick that a man could cross the river without breaking through. The snow lay so heavy upon the fields that in the open places the drifts were as high as a man. After the snow-storm had passed the cold redoubled, so that even the best clad suffered whenever they went out doors. There was not a house in the village where the water did not freeze, if it was not set close by the fire; and I do not exaggerate when I say that in many good and well-built houses wine froze before the great chimney, though the latter was heaped up with wood. I saw in many houses iron pots suspended above the fire with icicles hanging over the edge. Every night and morning when the people got up there was frost upon the coverlet, from the evaporation of the bodies of the sleepers. There was not a wine-cellar where the wine did not freeze in the casks, unless care was taken to keep charcoal fires burning there. In some wine-cellars it was necessary to close every aperture in order to prevent the wine from freezing. It frequently froze so hard that it was necessary to pierce the bung-hole with a red hot poker in order to draw it out. On the night of the 23-24 December, as also on Christmas night, the ice was so heavy upon the trees that the boughs were broken. These things had not been seen in France since the year 1480.[990] The greatest cold was on the day of the feast of the Innocents (December 28). Many men who were exposed died in the roads. The crests of cocks and poultry were frozen and fell off some days afterwards, and many were found dead under their roosts. The sheep also died.

Early in January the ice began to melt. It grew uncommonly warm for the season, so that fire became unnecessary. On the day following the edict of the king, about noon, a soft warm rain began to fall, which caused the snow to vanish rapidly. This lasted for five days, so that the earth was covered with water. And then came a second cold for three entire weeks, until the 28th of the month, and snow with a high wind came, which drove the snow everywhere and piled it in great drifts. The winter grain was frozen in the furrows. God knows how much the poor people who had no wood suffered. Most of them stayed in bed night and day without getting up except to eat once in twenty-four hours. The poor of Paris and others who had no means, were compelled to burn their furniture. Those who had made no provision for the winter, chiefly of wood, were compelled to purchase at high prices, for it was not possible to do carting because of the condition of the roads; in many cases, moreover, the bridges were destroyed. When the thaw came, the high waters penetrated houses and churches in Provins to the depth of three, four, and even five feet, washing out the very dead in the cemetery.[991] At Paris the flood damaged the Pont-au-Change and caused many houses to topple. Vine-growers found themselves in great difficulty. Those who were wise cut their vines back to the root, in order that they might sprout better again, and were repaid for so doing, for they were the only ones that bore.

The spring was fair and mild, so that barley and oats were sown. Yet much ground lay bare because in the fields sown with winter wheat the roots were all killed, so that no grain grew. The walnut trees seemed to be dead through all the month of April and half of May, for they did not put forth their buds. Pear and apple trees bore a few blossoms. In some places there were plums and cherries, but not everywhere.[992]

The winter was just as bad in Gascony, Provence, and Languedoc. On the day of the Feast of St. John the Baptist (June 24) it snowed![993] Even the poor people were compelled to build fires, though they could not afford the fuel. The vines throughout central France were so badly injured that not a third part of the crop remained. The grain likewise was destroyed. Water courses were swollen and overflowed their banks, and in the meadows of the Seine people had to take care lest they be drowned. As a result of the cold spring, the harvest of 1565 failed over almost all the realm to such an extent that it was necessary to abolish the tolls between provinces and to permit free trade in grain. Paris imported wheat from Champagne, Picardy, Anjou, Lower Brittany, Burgundy, and Auvergne, the least stricken of the provinces.[994] The Parlement of Paris passed an ordinance forbidding speculation in foodstuffs and compelled those possessed of a surplus of grain to throw what was not needed for their own necessity upon the market.[995] A measure (boisseau) of wheat, from January to April cost from 12-15 sous (= 1½ pecks at from 36 to 45 cents), and after April the price rose every week until harvest time, to the sum of 25 sous tournois (approximately 75 cents). Wheat was very dear in Paris and throughout all Brie, the Ile-de-France, Valois, Soissonais, and Picardy; less so in Champagne, Burgundy, and Lorraine, where there was rye and barley enough for the people. The stock starved because the grain was consumed by the people. Many people went over into Champagne in order to purchase rye and barley to make bread with until the harvest came. Fortunately grain was plentiful in Champagne, and wheat fell to 7 and 6 sous per measure (from 19 to 22 cents), and corn in like proportion after the harvest. Because of the hard times which they had experienced, many accumulated great stores in the expectation that in a short time there would again be a dearth.

Wine was very dear until the vintage. In the months of August and September before the grapes were gathered, it was not possible to purchase wine by the cup at taverns, even for silver; it was with great difficulty that sufficient wine was procurable for church service. But after the vintage the price dropped to 14 livres tournois ($8.70) la queue du creu, whereas it had been as high as 80 before ($49.60).[996]

As so often appears elsewhere in history, the economic distress and strain of poverty was followed by psychological manifestations of a religio-sociological sort, among the lower and poor classes. In 1565, in the villages of Champagne and Brie and especially in the bailiwicks of Sens, Melun, Montereau, Nogent, Troyes, Châlons, Rheims, Epernay, Château-Thierry, Meaux, and Provins, the belief spread among the peasantry that in honor of the Virgin they ought to refrain from working in the fields on Saturday after midday, and that this Saturday rest had been formally ordered by the Virgin in revelations and apparitions. A young girl of Charly-sur-Marne, near Epernay, boasted of having received these confidences, and showed miraculous signs of her mission. But the cardinal of Lorraine caused her to be arrested and questioned, and she was burned alive as a witch.[997]

Instead of going to Paris, the court passed the winter at Moulins in Bourbonnais,[998] where the famine was most slightly felt. By this time the expectations of the Catholics and the fears of the Huguenots were beginning to bear their bitter fruit, and in the state of public tension every incident was magnified. At Angers, in November, the Rohans, having forbidden Catholic worship upon their domains, the King had had to compel them to reinstate it by threatening to dispossess them of their châteaux; at Blois the cardinal Bourbon reproached the queen mother for suffering the edict to be violated by permitting the queen of Navarre and the prince of Condé to maintain court-preachers in their entourage. The Catholics of Dijon demanded that in future Calvinist ministers be forbidden to attend the last hours of the dying, a petition which the cardinal of Lorraine supported in order to make the chancellor L’Hôpital commit himself. The answer of the latter sustained the edict’s grant of the right of selection in the matter of religion. Of greater anxiety still was the influx of Huguenots into the town of Moulins, Montgomery among the rest, who for the first time since the fatal tournament of June 30, 1559, looked upon the court.[999]

The memory of the conspiracy of Amboise haunted the queen like a specter, and was the more vivid because of the rapprochement between the leaders of the Huguenots and the Montmorencys, who had met together at Paris in November at the marriage of the amorous prince of Condé to Mlle. de Longueville. The incident was sharp enough to strike fire between the Catholic-Guisard and the Huguenot-Montmorency party. For when the papal nuncio indignantly demanded the cardinal of Beauvais’ renunciation of the purple, the constable bluffly said: “I am a papist. But if the Pope and his agents still seek to trouble the kingdom, my sword will be Huguenot. My nephew will never renounce his dignity. The edict gives him the right to it.” It is no wonder Catherine de Medici was anxious to hear of the report of these words at Madrid and what Philip II would say.[1000] The interdiction of the Protestant worship at Moulins on January 9, 1566, on the very day that Coligny returned from the wedding festivities, was her own reply.

The very next day she guarded against new fire being struck between the factions by compelling at least outward reconciliation between the admiral and the cardinal of Lorraine. On January 10, 1566, in the presence of the court, she addressed the cardinal, saying that the repose of the kingdom was destroyed by private quarrels and especially by two of his, the one with the marshal Montmorency, the other with the admiral for the murder of the duke of Guise.[1001] At the same time the queen mother, in order to preserve peace between the rivals, hit upon the novel scheme of lodging the cardinal and the admiral in the same house, so that each had to use the same stairway in order to reach his apartments, telling both that each was keeper of the other, and that if either of them experienced any injury it would be imputed to the other.[1002] The cardinal of Lorraine, for fear of losing all his influence, accepted the situation (he did not stir from the side of the queen),[1003] and was compelled to abide by the situation telle quelle, as Sir Thomas Smith wrote to Cecil.[1004] But nothing could mollify the anger of the constable against the Guises, and when the duke of Guise at length came to court in February, Montmorency left it forthwith.[1005]

While the factional feeling thus grew more embittered, serious and noble effort was yet made to carry out the demands of the States-General of Orleans and Pontoise—demands which were principles of the political Huguenots. This programme was supported by the queen mother, who seems in this way to have sought to placate the fears of the Huguenots for their faith. The year 1566 is notable for the fact that greater recognition was then accorded the political demands of the Huguenots than at any time hitherto, so that large progress was made in the betterment of the administrative system of France.

The King in his address to the council said that at his accession he had wanted to travel through all the provinces desolated by the late civil wars, in order to hear the complaints of his subjects and to remedy conditions in the best manner possible; that it was for this cause that he had convoked the assembly and so enjoined them, in virtue of the royal authority, to apply themselves diligently to affairs.

Then the chancellor spoke: after dwelling upon the general evils of the state, he asserted that the root of all the evils was the bad administration of justice; that the King had become convinced of this in the course of the tour of the provinces; that for himself he could not refrain from calling things by their right name and from speaking as he thought; that those who were appointed to administer justice were guilty of great excesses; that these evils had increased owing to the impunity and the license which obtained.

I do not deny [he added] that there are too many laws and ordinances in France and that the multitude of the laws and the number of the judges is the cause of much unnecessary and tyrannical litigation. But it is no less true that when new evils arise there is a necessity of new remedies, and that when the ancient laws have been abrogated either by inobservance or by license, it is necessary to make new ones in order to cure current evils and to arrest the course of public calamity. The public welfare requires new legislation. If the new laws are not observed, on account of the venality and avarice of the ministers of justice, they must be punished severely and these public pests who fatten upon the blood of a miserable people must be driven from office. Superfluous offices, moreover, must be abolished and the ruinous multiplication of legal causes stopped.

The justice of the last charge was particularly manifest. Since the time of Francis I it had been the practice of the crown to sell offices and even to create them for purposes of revenue only.

The chancellor further asserted that the King could not suffer those who had not the right to make laws to attribute to themselves the power to interpret them; he proposed to diminish the excessive number of the courts, and raised the question whether the demands of justice would not be better met if the Parlement ceased to be so sedentary and became ambulatory instead—a suggestion which, it is interesting to observe, found a partial realization in the seventeenth century in the establishment of the Grands Jours d’Auvergne. He insinuated that it was advisable to subject the judges to censure and to compel them to render account of the manner in which they exercised their office, and that it might be better to establish judges for two or three years than to permit the holding of office in perpetuity.

After longer deliberation, in February, 1566, the famous ordinance of Moulins was framed. It contained eighty-six articles, and dealt radically with the evils of the time and imposed drastic reform, especially in the administration of justice.

This act declared the royal domain inalienable, limited and regulated the right of remonstrances of parlement, organized circuits of inspection by magistrates especially appointed to go throughout the realm, instituted certain changes in the judicial administration, and pledged the word of the crown to appoint capable and honest magistrates.[1006]

It profoundly modified both the public and private law of France. In the former sphere the ordinance strengthened the legislative power of the crown by laying down the principle that the King’s ordinances must be observed in spite of remonstrances on the part of the parlements, and even if the latter refused to register them; the maîtres des requêtes were enjoined to punish severely any infraction or failure to observe the ordinances. The powers of the governors in the provinces were much reduced; they were forbidden to exercise the right of pardon, to levy taxes, or to institute fairs and markets. The judicial power of the great villes was almost entirely suppressed. The communal judges were deprived of all civil jurisdiction and retained cognizance only of petty offenses; at the same time, the attempt was made to restrain seigneurial jurisdiction. The right of written proof was recognized in cases involving 100 livres or more.[1007] No less than 1,500 superfluous offices, treasurerships, secretaryships, etc., were abolished. In the matter of religion some of the articles were a confirmation of the edict of 1563. Another article abolished entirely all confraternities, and prohibited the formation of all leagues.[1008]

The financial administration came in for a most searching investigation. The flaunting arrogance of some of the King’s treasurers is remarkable. Numbers of them had had houses, and even châteaux which rivaled the King’s own in elegance, the means to purchase and furnish which they had secured by plundering the people and robbing the government. One treasurer—among four who were hanged at Montfaucon—was found to owe the crown over three million livres.[1009]

The young duke of Guise, who had refused to be a party to the farcical reconciliation between his house and the Châtillons soon found means to leave the court. In May the duke of Nemours and the duchess of Guise were married at St. Maur-des-Fosses. It was a match which sowed dragon’s teeth once more. For Nemours forsook his wife, who was a Rohan, having induced the Pope to nullify the marriage. The Huguenots murmured indignantly against the insult done the Rohan clan whose powerful family influence was now joined with the Châtillons and Montmorencys.[1010]

Catherine de Medici was not the ruler to govern France with a firm yet facile hand under the circumstances that existed in 1566. Irrespective of foreign influences, which we shall presently come to, the economic distress[1011] of the country, the rivalry of the great houses, and the religious acrimony prevailing made a combination of forces that needed another sort of ruler to reconcile them—a ruler such as Henry of Navarre was to be. The queen mother, while a woman of force, was so deficient in sincerity that no one could have confidence in her; so jealous of power that she would brook no other control of the King, whose sovereignty she confounded with her maternal oversight of him, making no distinction between Charles IX the ruler and Charles IX the son. Catherine time and again marred or ruined the progress she had made with the aid of one party’s support by her own envious fear of that party’s predominance. Her “bridge policy,”[1012] instead of uniting France, kept it divided. To maintain the balance of power—an immemorial Italian policy—her Italian nature resorted to duplicity and deception continually. Accordingly, suspicion prevailed at court and suspicion prevailed in the provinces, the more so in the latter because of the Huguenots’ uncertainty about what was done at Bayonne, and doubt as to Philip II’s course. Men were doubtful of their neighbors; towns were fearful of other nearby towns. “All the way of my coming hither,” reported Sir Thomas Hoby, the new English ambassador to France, “I found the strong towns marvelously jealous of strangers, insomuch that only by the sound of a bell they discovered a number of horsemen or footmen before they come; but also, after they are entered they have an eye to them.”[1013]

When the court finally moved to Paris, the great nobles came thither with such numerous trains[1014] that the queen sent four companies of the King’s guard ahead of his coming, and ordered the marshal Montmorency to require the retirement from the city of all those who were not of the ordinary household of each nobleman and gentleman. In vain the marshal, anxious to protect his party against the Guisards, resisted the order and complained that the queen was interfering with his authority. The King ordered Lansac and De la Garde to accomplish what Montmorency was unwilling to do.

If choice must be made as to who were the worst offenders in this respect, the greater blame lies with the Protestants. It was not only impolitic, it was insolent on their part to permit Montgomery to swagger around Paris as he did, “booted and spurred with all his men.”[1015] Apparently the queen had not the daring to compel his withdrawal, as she did that of the Guises’ recruiting sergeant, Roggendorf.[1016] Her policy for the time being was to favor the Châtillon-Montmorency faction.[1017] Backed by the joint support of the admiral and the constable, the queen accordingly undertook to bring certain unsettled or indefinite matters of religion and the church to a conclusion. On May 31, 1566, Charles IX sent a series of articles to the cardinal Bourbon for consideration by the clergy of Paris, then sitting at St. Germain des Près. Two of these had to do with the baptism of infants where one of the parents was a Catholic, and the maintenance of Protestants schools. Three concerned church temporalities, namely, the redemption of the fourth part of the temporals of the church, given to the King during the late civil war; the subsidy which was to expire in eighteen months; and the preparation of an edict defining the privileges and jurisdiction of the church. The residue of the articles dealt with infractions of the Edict of Amboise, such as restraint of preaching according to the edict, and the molestation of former Protestants who had returned to the church of Rome by the Huguenots. By an awkward coincidence, the sending of these articles exactly coincided with the arrival of the papal legate in Paris, who came to request the promulgation of the decrees of Trent in conformity with the agreement made with the cardinal de Santa Croce at Bayonne.[1018]

Catherine de Medici’s policy at this time was that of the political Huguenots. She hoped that the question of religion would settle itself with time, and to divert attention from that issue, and also because there was great need of it, she energetically continued the administrative and economic reforms begun at Moulins. L’Hôpital began so searching an investigation of the conduct of the King’s treasurers that some of them were hanged and others banished. The constable was of service here, although his notorious avarice tarnished the honesty of his work.[1019] Yet there was peril even in a policy so just and so much needed by France. Sooner or later such a course would unearth the dishonesty of bigger thieves than the small collectors of the revenue who, in many cases undoubtedly suffered for the peculation of their superiors. The administration was full of “grafters” such as St. André had been, who would not scruple to conceal their thievery behind the smoke of another civil war. The queen mother knew this only too well from former experience, not being unaware of the fact that one of the causes of “the late unpleasantness” was the demand of the estates that the Guises should make an accounting and be forced to disgorge their ill-gotten gains. The government resorted to various devices to raise money and an imposition was laid upon inn-keepers. The most singular expedient, though, was the offer of a Genoese syndicate to pay the King a lump sum for the privilege of taxing dowry gifts and for a license to endure eight years to levy a crown on every first-born infant, and after, for every boy born into a family five sous, and for every girl babe, three sous.[1020] This preposterous measure actually passed the council, and was only prevented from becoming law by the good sense of the Parlement.[1021]

But the events happening in the Netherlands were of greater importance to France at this time than anything within her borders. From the beginning of the insurrection there the Huguenots had recognized the important bearing of that struggle upon their own movement, and as the shadow of Philip II fell in greater length each year across France, the interest of the French Protestants in the rebellion of the Low Countries increased.[1022] As Huguenot preachers in Flanders sowed the double seed of Calvinism and revolt, so Protestant preachers exiled from the Low Countries sought refuge in France.[1023] This intercourse became a formidable historical issue by 1566. The issue was understood from the beginning by all parties concerned, and Philip II and his ministers were determined to profit by the lesson of France and to prevent similar trouble by crushing all opposition in the bud. The Turkish attack upon Malta[1024] had been very favorable to the Protestant cause, and the raising of the siege in September, 1565, probably influenced the King of Spain in his resolution to extirpate heresy in the Low Countries.[1025] The Flemish government suspected William of Orange who by July was openly allied with the Gueux[1026] and his brother, Louis of Nassau, of direct intercourse with Condé and Coligny,[1027] and sent Montigny—the faithless member of the patriotic quartette composed of Orange, Egmont, Hoorne, and himself—to Paris in the spring to pick up information.[1028] The fear lest Montgomery might come to Flanders, which Granvella had once laughed at, by the summer of 1566 had some basis of reality, although the braggadocio character of this adventurer discounted alarm.[1029]

Knowledge of the solidarity existing between his revolted subjects in Flanders and the Huguenots[1030] which Montluc had warned Philip of even two years before,[1031] coupled with information concerning the dealings of Louis of Nassau with Protestant Germany[1032] and France, stirred the Spanish King’s habitual indecision into action. He sounded Charles IX as to the possibility of sending Spanish troops directly across France to the Low Countries and asked him to restrain his subjects from coming thither with arms,[1033] crowds of whom went to Flanders disguised as merchants.[1034] Simultaneously Margaret of Parma begged the Emperor to take the same course.[1035] But the government of France could not have honored Philip II’s request, even if it had been so minded, without risking an immediate rising of the Huguenots. As a matter of fact, it had no desire to do so. The resentment felt by France toward Spain on account of past scores at Trent, Rome, and in Switzerland, was now all eclipsed in her rancor because of the massacre by the Spaniards of her ill-fated colony in Florida in September, 1565.[1036]

Alexander VI’s bull had divided the western hemisphere between the Spanish and the Portuguese. Florida belonged to Spain. France had built Fort Caroline on Spanish territory. As peace existed in 1565, France argued that the massacre by Menendez was a violation of international law. To this Spain replied that Florida belonged to her by discovery and as all treaties between Spain and France were silent as to any change of ownership, there really had been no such change in law. Consequently the French settlers were intruders and heretics to boot. The answer was crushing, Fourquevaux was heavily handicapped, for he could not openly espouse the cause of Frenchmen who were heretics. Before news of the massacre reached France, Philip II, knowing the facts, inquired if the French expedition had been commanded or sanctioned by the French King. The only answer possible was a negative. An affirmative answer would have been tantamount to a declaration of war. “Then the incident is closed,” was the Spanish reply. This was followed by a demand that Coligny, under whose sanction the expedition had sailed, should be punished.

France was likewise at odds with the Emperor. The reason for this is to be found in the strong attitude the empire had lately taken on the question of Metz.[1037] Understanding of this question entails a glance backward. In 1564 the baron Bolwiller, a native of upper Alsace, but at that time bailiff of the Emperor in the grand bailiwick of Haguenau, revived the plan he had conceived in 1558, of recovering Metz by a surprise.[1038] Bolwiller represented that no time was to be lost if France was to be prevented from fixing her hold upon the Three Bishoprics forever. Philip II favored the enterprise and offered 20,000 sous cash, and the assignment of 8,000 écus annual revenue of the territory, “pour celluy ou ceulx qui’lz luy rendroyent la ville du dict Metz.”[1039] For with Metz in the hands of the Hapsburgs once more, the chain of provinces connecting the Netherlands with Spain through mid-Europe would have been practically complete, lying as Metz, Toul, and Verdun did, between Franche-Comté and Luxembourg.[1040] This was at the time when Condé was recreant to his people and was dallying with the widow of the marshal St. André, and the idea was conceived and abandoned of buying the prince over and bribing him to betray Metz to Spain.[1041] Spain, however, in order to avoid a rupture with France wished to conceal her own participation in the plot to recover Metz, and urged the Emperor Maximilian to undertake the venture.[1042] The plot was to tempt Metz to revolt against France by offering to convert it into a free imperial city, it being expected that the Lutherans in the city would support the movement.[1043] The alertness of the French government, however, foiled the project’s being undertaken in April. In August Bolwiller renewed his plan, alleging to Chantonnay that the people of Metz were ready to provide 20,000 écus, and that there were arms in plenty stored in secret. He urged prompt action now for the French government had begun the erection of a citadel in the city.[1044]

By this time Philip II was so anxious to see France despoiled of Metz and so impatient at Maximilian’s delay, that it was even considered advisable by some to take advantage of the check given the Turks at Malta and have the Emperor make peace with them in order to have his hands free in the Three Bishoprics.[1045] As for himself, Philip II dared not make an overt move against France, lest in the event of war with Spain, Charles IX appeal to the Huguenots, with the result that Protestantism would profit by the diversion.[1046]

But meanwhile things in Metz had got beyond control of either Spain or the empire. The Calvinists in both France and the Netherlands had been quick to see the advantage afforded, for the former by gaining possession of the territory could connect France and the Palatinate, thus aiding themselves and their coreligionists at one and the same time, since by so doing the land route of Spain through Central Europe, via Milan, Besançon, and Luxembourg, would be cut in half. Matters came to a head in May and June, 1565, in what is known as the “Cardinal’s War.” On May 5 the Emperor Maximilian had issued a decree affirming his suzerainty over Metz, Toul, and Verdun. The cardinal of Lorraine at once recognized the validity of this decree, which was equivalent to treason to France. Thereupon, in the name of Charles IX Salzedo an ex-Spaniard[1047] and leader of the French party in Metz assumed the title of governor of Metz and appealed to the French King for support against the cardinal. The issue was really one between France and Spain. The Guises naturally supported the cardinal. The “war” which followed was not formidable, although the issue as stake was of great importance. But the cardinal soon discovered that discretion was the better part of valor and yielded to the King, more especially as neither Philip II nor Maximilian raised a hand for fear of betraying themselves, for the cardinal feared that if he resisted longer Charles IX would refuse to pardon his treasonable conduct. He was not unaware of the fact—he did not even deny it—that it was known that he had been in treasonable communication with Bolwiller and the archbishop of Trèves.[1048]

If Charles IX and the queen mother had known the full extent of the cardinal of Lorraine’s treasonable conduct at this time they might not have been so lenient toward him. For he was guilty not only of treasonable intercourse with the empire, but directly with Spain also. The one supremely important result of this petty war over Metz is that at this time the cardinal—and with him the whole Guise house—began those secret negotiations with Philip of Spain which culminated in the establishment of the Holy League. Shortly after the end of his ignominious war around Metz, burning with anger and shame, the cardinal sent a secret agent to Franche Comté, who found Granvella at Beaudencourt in July, 1565, to whom he recited the cardinal’s grievances, saying that owing to the death of his brother the duke of Guise and the insolence of the marshal Montmorency, he had no hope in the justice of Charles IX. The agent then went on to point out the great danger threatening Catholic Europe by reason of what had recently happened at Metz, and, speaking for the cardinal of Lorraine, expressed the wish that Philip II would enter into a league with the house of Guise, the duke of Montpensier—Alva’s convert at Bayonne—and certain others for the protection of the Catholic faith in France and the overthrow of the Châtillons, the prince of Condé, “Madame de Vendôme,” and other Huguenots. This formidable overture was made under the seal of secrecy. The cautious Granvella listened but refrained from committing his master to the proposition.[1049] Again, Philip II hesitated to implicate himself so directly in French affairs, as the cardinal of Lorraine urged, just as he had hesitated the year before with Montluc, and while he waited events in the Low Countries went from bad to worse.

In August, 1566, a furious outburst of iconoclasm swept through the churches of Flanders.

Commencing at St. Omer, the contagion rapidly spread, and in a fortnight 400 churches were sacked in Flanders alone, while in Antwerp the cathedral was stripped of all its treasures. Images, relics, shrines, paintings, manuscripts, and books shared a common fate.[1050]

The event stirred Philip to action. He determined to send the duke of Alva to Flanders to repress things with an iron hand.[1051]

On November 18, 1566, the duke of Alva formally requested the French ambassador at Madrid to secure Charles IX’s permission for a Spanish army to cross France.

The remedy has become little by little so difficult [said the duke] that deeds not words and remonstrances, are now necessary. Having exhausted all good and gracious means to reduce things in the Low Countries, the King is constrained, to his great regret, to have recourse to force. Public assemblies, preaching, the bearing of arms, and violence prevail in the land and the King’s ministers amount to nothing.

The duke then outlined the plan. Ten thousand new Spanish recruits under three ensigns were to be sent to Luxembourg, Naples, Sardinia, and Sicily to take the places of as many veteran troops there, for the King was unwilling to use Italian infantry. A thousand heavy-armed footmen and three or four hundred mounted arquebusiers, all Spanish, were to be drawn from Milan, the most loyal of Spain’s Italian dependencies. An indefinite number of reiters and other mercenaries could be had for the asking. These troops would proceed to the Netherlands through Savoy by way of Val d’Aoste or Mt. Cenis, Montmélian, Chambéry, and La Bresse, into Franche Comté and Lorraine, unless—and this was the crux of Alva’s interview with Fourquevaux—the winter season made it impossible to traverse the mountain passes, in which case His Catholic Majesty desired leave of France to take them by sea to Marseilles or Toulon and thence to march them northward up the Rhône to La Bresse and so reach Franche Comté.

No one knew better than Alva the formidable nature of this proposition to France and he used all his artifice to conceal its danger, dwelling on the mutual connection between the Huguenot and the Flemish movement and the benefit that France would derive from the crushing of the rebellion in the Low Countries. Fourquevaux in reply declared that the Huguenots would fly to arms again, if a Spanish army should enter France, to which the duke rejoined that the presence of a Spanish army would so overawe them that they would not dare to do so. The ambassador then inquired whether the Emperor could support Philip, seeing that he was engaged in a war with the Turks[1052] and was incapable of raising funds in his behalf. Alva told him that the German princes would perceive that the Flemings were merely rebels and that “no prince or soldier in Germany, even were he a Lutheran, would refuse to take the pay of Spain.”[1053] But Fourquevaux refused to be convinced by Alva’s smooth words. He had information that Spain was borrowing ships from Malta, Genoa, and the papacy and Savoy and warned Charles IX to strengthen the garrisons in Languedoc and Provence.[1054]

This information threw the court of France into great excitement. Catherine de Medici declared that the heretics would take up arms immediately, under such circumstances.[1055] The King wrote to Fourquevaux on December 24 not to spare any efforts to penetrate the designs of Spain.[1056] Sixteen thousand troops were sent into the Lyonnais at once.[1057] The marshal Vieilleville returned to Metz.[1058] The government began the erection of a great citadel in Verdun and to fortify the frontier against Luxembourg.[1059] D’Andelot was sent to Switzerland to make new enrolments.[1060] An agent was sent into Normandy with instructions to pass along the coast and take the names of master-mariners and sailors.[1061] The queen of Navarre began to mobilize forces in Béarn.[1062] All this time the duke of Alva kept endeavoring to quiet French alarm by reiterating that he would use all means in his power to avoid troubling France and that the army destined for Flanders, now increased by 1,500 light horse composed of Spaniards, Italians, and Albanians, would go by the valley of the Rhône only as a last recourse.[1063]

Finally, in the middle of February, the duke of Alva’s preparations were made. Don Juan de Acuna, who had been sent to Savoy to make arrangements with the duke for the transit of the Spanish army, returned, after having made a satisfactory settlement. The army was to go through Savoy, via the Mt. Cenis and Chambéry, cross the Rhône at Yenne, and so proceed to Besançon in Franche Comté, where it was to be joined by German contingents. This averted the danger threatening Languedoc and Dauphiné, but threw it upon French Burgundy and Champagne.[1064] It was a roundabout route for the Spanish troops in the Milanais, but it was impossible to send them directly through Switzerland by way of the Grisons, Constance, Basel, and Strasburg without inflaming these localities; above all, Geneva would thereby have been menaced, and any movement imperiling that city would have fired the entire Calvinist world.[1065]

In the face of common peril Bern, Freiburg, and Valais concluded a defensive league on February 20, while Basel and Zurich took up arms with French approval. Fear of a joint attack of Spain and Savoy upon Geneva prevailed throughout Switzerland, which was divided into two camps, the five cantons of the center favoring designs upon Geneva and the Vaud. Spain aimed to profit by the impression produced by the passage of her troops close to the Swiss frontier to force certain military advantages and dispossess France from the exceptional situation she had lately secured in the Alps. The western cantons were offered cheap salt from Franche Comté, and those of the center grain from the Milanais. The duke of Lorraine also offered salt at a low price from his duchy. As a result Bern found herself deserted by western Switzerland and apparently single-handed about to be called upon to protect Geneva from Spanish attack. Perhaps if Spain had been certain of the support of Savoy at this juncture, this might have happened, but the duke of Savoy was content to profit by the fear of the Bernois to compel them to restore the three bailiwicks which they had formerly agreed to do in the treaty of Lausanne, October 30, 1564, but had delayed to fulfil. Charles IX himself advised Bern to yield in this particular and in August the settlement with the duke of Savoy was made.[1066]

All that Philip now requested of France was leave for French subjects to provide the army with supplies in its course. Again Fourquevaux urged his sovereign to be cautious; the fact that France was just recovering from a year of famine and could ill spare sustenance for others was not so important as the necessity of avoiding every occasion of civil war.[1067]

On May 10, 1567, the duke of Alva sailed from Cartagena and arrived at Genoa on May 27. St. Ambroise at the foot of the Alps was the point where his munitions and provisions were concentrated. Here on June 2 the duke had a grand review of his troops. There were 19 ensigns (3,230 men), from Naples, under the command of Alonzo de Uloa; 10 ensigns from Sicily (1,620 men) under command of Julian Romero; 10 ensigns of Lombard troops (2,200 men) under command of Don Sancho de Londono; 10 Sardinian ensigns with four companies of recruits in addition (1,728 men) under command of Don Gonzalo de Bracamonte, making a total of 49 ensigns of Spanish infantry (8,778 men). The duke’s cavalry was composed of five companies of Spanish light horse and three Italian and two Albanian companies and two companies of Spanish arquebusiers on horseback, in all 1,200 horses.[1068] On the march a company of 15 musketeers was placed between each ensign. This was the first instance in modern warfare when muskets were used in the field. Hitherto this weapon had been so enormously heavy that it was used in siege work only, balanced upon a triangle of wood or iron.[1069]

The route lay via Alessandria de la Paille, St. Ambroise, Aosta, Turin, the Mont Cenis, St. Jean de Maurienne, and the valley of the Arve through Savoy. In spite of his small array it was necessary to divide the army into three parts, the advance guard, the “battle,” and the rear guard. The “battle” each day occupied the place abandoned by the advance guard and was itself in turn replaced by the rear guard, the three divisions of the army marching one day apart. The duke of Alva commanded the advance guard, his son Don Ferdinand Alvarez de Toledo the “battle;” while the rear guard was under the command of the Italian, Ciappin-Vitelli, Marquis of Cetona formally in the service of the Grand Duke of Tuscany. The army thus divided occupied fourteen days in traversing Savoy. It was a long and toilsome journey through a wild and mountainous country, where the difficulties of the march were increased by constant dread of famine. In many places the country was completely sterile. In Burgundy the march was easier and twelve days brought the army via Dôle and Gray to Fonteney near Toul, whence twelve days more brought Alva by Thionville to Luxembourg (July 29), where he was joined by new forces.[1070]

In spite of the length of the march and the hardships of it, the duke retained his traditional iron discipline and the soldiers were not allowed to forage upon the country or to break ranks.[1071]

On August 12, 1567, the duke of Alva entered Brussels. General terror prevailed in the Low Countries upon his arrival. The Prince of Orange left the land. Count Egmont, naïvely declaring that he had done nothing wrong, remained; his friend Hoorne imitated his example. Alva at once sent away all the Flemish soldiers and quartered the city with the new troops. In order to facilitate his policy the duke created a special tribunal, not composed of lawyers “because they would not condemn without proofs.” This was the famous Council of Troubles which the people called the “Council of Blood.” The members of it held no commissions from the King, but were the simple agents of the duke of Alva. The most celebrated of them was a certain Vargas, a criminal himself, against whom action had been suspended in return for his infamous services.

If the policy of the Spanish government in Flanders took a new and different form with the coming of Alva, the revolution there was no less changed. The cardinal Granvella some months before this time had written to Philip II: “It is a general rule, in matters of state, that popular enterprises, if they do not terminate in the first outburst, generally vanish in smoke if the remedy for them be applied before they have time to follow up the movement.”[1072] He added that contemporary history afforded some striking examples of the truth of this observation. But the provinces he had lately governed were not of this category. For it is clear that a change had taken place in the nature of the Flemish revolt in the years 1565-67. The revolution by this time had passed through the earlier stages of defiance and rebellion and developed an organization with a definite, set purpose before it. The formation of the Gueux was the clearest manifestation of this change. In its inception this famous group was an aristocratic body, composed solely of nobles, and the Spanish government had little fear then of its becoming a popular association.[1073] Granvella saw the similarity of the Gueux to the Huguenot association formed at Orleans in 1562, but he did not anticipate the popular nature it was soon to develop.[1074]

He was soon disillusioned. What was believed by the Spanish government to be a somewhat close political and aristocratic combination of nobles before long became a popular confederation of congregations having a religious propaganda, as well as a political purpose.[1075] Despite this change, however, Philip’s minister did not yet believe the Gueux to be formidable. As Alva had declared at Bayonne that all that was necessary to destroy the Huguenot party in France was to kill the “big fish,” so he now believed that if the leaders of the Gueux were cut off, their movement would die too.[1076] But Alva soon discovered that the Gueux were hardly ever weakened by the detachment of certain of the nobles either by bribery or intimidation.[1077] By the time of his arrival, under Brederode’s able leadership, the Calvinists of the Flemish provinces had worked out a scheme of union in which every congregation was at once a parish, a rating precinct, a military hundred, and a political unit. Antwerp, whose population was so large and so cosmopolitan that police scrutiny could be easily evaded, and from which it was easy to make one’s escape, was the capital of the association, as Orleans first, and later La Rochelle, was for the Huguenots.[1078]

The Flemish government was soon alive to the necessity of breaking the power of this confederation.[1079] Membership in the confederation, if proved, was heavily punished. The retirement of the prince of Orange from the land was believed by the government to be due to a prudent effort to avoid being so compromised. It was certainly true of Brederode. But Egmont and Hoorne remained, declaring they had done nothing, and renewed their oath of allegiance to the King.[1080] Nevertheless Granvella sarcastically quoted Lycurgus that neutrals were more odious than enemies. “After the towns have been cleared out,” wrote the provost Morillon, “it will be time to attack the garden in order to destroy the weeds and roots there,” and Spain’s agent at Amsterdam at the same time wrote: “God may pardon those who are the cause of one and the other league; but I assure you, unless I am much mistaken, that those who have made others to dance, have some other purpose than we know. Time will discover it.”[1081]

This somewhat long dissertation upon the nature and development of the confederation formed by Philip’s II revolted subjects in Flanders is not a digression beside the mark. The number of Huguenots to be found in the Low Countries in 1566-67, intriguing with their coreligionists against Spain was very great. The duke of Bouillon and the prince of Porcien were the most prominent of these.[1082] In the aggregate the number was so great and their participation so serious a matter for the government, that the maintenance of the frontier against the French was urged upon Alva as the first necessity, immediately after his arrival at Brussels.[1083] France for her own part began to erect a citadel at Verdun and to strengthen the Picard frontier, whose towns received new troops in June, and when word came that there were German troops in Luxembourg awaiting Alva’s arrival, D’Andelot was sent to the frontier of Champagne with 6,000 Swiss which the government had levied.[1084] This action ruffled Philip II’s temper, for to him it was flaunting his failure to break the alliance of the Swiss with France in his very face. His ambassador in France protested energetically and charged the queen with duplicity.[1085] At Madrid the nuncio inquired with curiosity of Fourquevaux, in what spirit Philip II—who had had an audience with the ambassador the day before—received the news of France’s activities in Switzerland. “I told him,” wrote the ambassador to Charles IX, “that it was the usage and custom of great kings and princes whenever they saw their neighbors arming, to assure themselves also of their realms and states.”[1086] Calais was a double source of anxiety, first because Spain, in pursuance of Alva’s recommendation, had not been content with fortifying Gravelines, but had actually built a fort of earth only five paces from the turnpike which marked the French limit; secondly, because at this embarrassing time Elizabeth of England had conceived the thought of reviving the English claim to Calais.[1087] With the purpose of fathoming her son-in-law’s designs Catherine sent the younger L’Aubespine to Madrid.[1088] War with Spain was already on the lips of some in France.[1089]

In spite of the wisdom of these military precautions on the part of the French crown, the Huguenots grew alarmed lest there was a movement on foot to repress the edict.[1090] There was designed intention in the unadmirable conduct of the prince of Condé, and perhaps some in that of Coligny too. The prince craved chief command of the army, and a war with Spain was in a direct line with his aspirations. He had been well treated since the peace of Amboise, having been given the government of Picardy and the county of Rotrou, which was erected into a duchy under the name of Enghien-le-François. But his appetite for power was insatiable. In July, after angry speech with the King, Condé had retired from court, and was followed by the admiral, who gave out that he had discovered “some practice that wholly tended to his confusion.”[1091]

It was small politics. In this time of external danger from the furtive designs of Philip II and the blustering enmity of England, the honorable course of every subject of France was to stand by the King and the nation. The Huguenot leaders compromised the cause at large by indulging their personal vanity, their petty spite, their pique at such an hour. Friction there was, disagreement there was over the interpretation and the working of certain parts of the edict of Amboise. The Catholics, for example, complained that the intention of the edict was evaded by the Huguenots, asserting that in cases where the right of preaching was permitted to all barons and high justiciars only for themselves and their tenants, and for others of lower degree for their household only, congregational worship was held under cover thereof.[1092]

The bigotry of Paris and its vicinity, though, was the worst source of disaffection. In the city district captains were chosen by the populace to watch against Protestant activity—the nucleus of the famous Sixteen (Seize) of Paris in 1589-94. It would have been the height of political inexpediency, under such circumstances, to have tried to enforce the letter of the edict in the Ile-de-France. The July amendment of the edict of Amboise prohibiting exercise of Protestant worship throughout the Ile-de-France except in such places as should be licensed by the King, and the further one prohibiting Protestants from filling public offices in the cities,[1093] I believe was framed for the purpose of avoiding conflict and not with any reactionary purpose. It is certainly of significance that the liberal chancellor L’Hôpital favored them.[1094] Patience and experience would have worked out the solution of such difficulties as these. It was criminal in the prince of Condé to fan the ashes of the late civil war into flame once more. For in this tense state the prince deliberately exaggerated and misrepresented things for his own purpose and a spark from Flanders—Alva’s arrest of the counts Egmont and Hoorne on September 9—kindled France into flame again.

The arrival of the news in France unfortunately coincided with the session of two synods of the Huguenots, one at Châtillon-sur-Loing, the other at Valéry.[1095] Dismay prevailed in them. The preachers cried out that the arrest of Egmont and Hoorne[1096] was the proof of a secret alliance between Spain and France for the overthrow of Calvinism. The truth of Bayonne was out at last! Coligny’s iron will might still have kept them in order, however, if in the midst of this excitement word had not also come that 6,000 Swiss whom Charles IX had enrolled to cover the French frontier against the duke of Alva had entered France. The double news was too much for the excited minds of the Huguenots. The admiral and the prince who had failed to perceive the true policy of France in Switzerland, in desperation turned to the constable for a word of truth and comfort. But the old Montmorency, who desired to have his son, the marshal Montmorency, succeed him in the office of constable[1097] (which the prince of Condé coveted for himself), roughly rejoined: “The Swiss have their pay; don’t you expect them to be used?”[1098] The words were brutally and thoughtlessly said. They merely imported anger. The Huguenots interpreted them to mean that they were to be overcome by military force, and Protestantism coerced, if not extinguished. The synod of the Huguenots at Valéry[1099] resolved upon war. The conference was held in the admiral’s château at Châtillon under the outward guise of a banquet. There were present the prince of Condé, La Rochefoucault, the cardinal of Châtillon, D’Andelot, Bricquemault, Teligny, Mouy, Montgomery, and other nobles of mark, besides some Huguenot ministers. The conference lasted the entire week, at the end of which it was resolved that all the Huguenots in France should be notified in every bailliage and sénéschaussée, by the deacons and other officers of their congregation; that they should be called upon to furnish money according to the means which they had, for the payment of reiters from Germany, which the count palatine of the Rhine was to levy; and that all the young men of the religion capable of bearing arms were to be enrolled for military service.[1100]

The plan was as bold as it was simple. It was to gain possession of the King’s person by a sudden coup de main, for which purpose a force of 1,500 horse was to be brought secretly to Valéry. The court at this time was residing at the Château de Monceaux near Meaux, and was without more than nominal military protection.[1101] On the evening of September 24, the queen learned of the rendezvous at Rosay-en-Brie. A midnight council was called. The Swiss, who had reached Château Thierry, were hastily summoned. The Lorraine party and the duke of Nemours advised immediate return to Paris. The chancellor and Montmorency endeavored to persuade the King against so doing.[1102] The former pointed out that to go to Paris would be for the King to commit himself to the most bigoted of his subjects and destroy the possibility of an amicable settlement, while the constable argued that Meaux was a fortified city capable of withstanding a siege, and that to leave it might be to court defeat in the open country. In the dilemma the Swiss colonel Pfiffer cast the die.

“May it please your Majesty,” cried he, “to entrust your person and that of the queen mother to the valor and fidelity of the Swiss. We are 6,000 men, and with the points of our pikes we will open a path wide enough for you to pass through the army of your enemies.”[1103]

“Enough,” Charles rejoined. “I would rather die free with you than live a captive among rebels.”[1104]

The return to Paris began at four o’clock in the morning. “When the Swiss arrived at Meaux,” wrote Correro, “I vow they were the most villainous looking gang I have ever seen. Yet in battle array they were admirable. Three times they turned upon the enemy and lowering their pikes charged upon them like savage dogs in serried ranks and in good order, without one being a pace in advance of another. Thus the King was able with his suite to get to Paris.”[1105] He reached the Louvre that night, travel-worn, hot, famished, and so angry that his fierce disposition never lost the memory of that humiliation.[1106]

The affair of Meaux came like a thunder-clap to most of France. The suddenness of the Huguenot action and the all but complete success of it astonished men. “This movement,” wrote the Venetian ambassador, “of which several thousand men had knowledge, was conducted with such precaution that nothing leaked out until it was all but an accomplished fact. This could not possibly have been done without the perfect intelligence that exists among the Huguenots, and is a striking manifestation of their organization throughout the realm.”[1107]

In the light of this judgment, it remains to describe the Huguenot form of government.

The ecclesiastical—and political unit—of French Calvinism was the congregation. Congregations were grouped “according to number and convenience” into colloquies or classes which met from two to four times each year, the division being made by the authority of the provincial synod.[1108] In church matters, no church had any primacy or jurisdiction over another, nor one province over another.[1109] Ministers brought with them to local classes or provincial synods one or two elders chosen out of their consistories.[1110] Elders who were deputies of churches had an equal power of voting with the pastors.[1111] The authority of a provincial synod was subordinate to that of the national synod,[1112] and whatever had been decreed by provincial synods for the government of the churches in their province had to be brought before the national synod.[1113] The grand lines of division followed the historic provincial divisions of France, but smaller provinces and parts of the larger ones, as Guyenne and Languedoc, were associated together. The national synod of 1559 divided France into sixteen Protestant provinces, as follows: (1) The Ile-de-France, Chartrain, Picardy, Champagne and Brie; (2) Normandy; (3) Brittany; (4) Orleans, Blesois, Dunois, Nivernais, Berry, Bourbonnais, and La Marche; (5) Touraine, Anjou, Loudunois, Maine, Vendôme, and Perche; (6) Upper and Lower Poitou; (7) Saintonge, Aunis, La Rochelle, and Angoumois; (8) Lower Guyenne, Périgord, Gascony, and Limousin; (9) Upper and Lower Vivarais, together with Velay, and Le Forêt; (10) Lower Languedoc, including Nîmes, Montpellier, and Beziers; (11) Upper Languedoc, Upper Guyenne, Toulouse, Carcassonne, Quercy, Rouergue, Armagnac, and Upper Auvergne; (12) Burgundy, Lyonnais, Beaujolais, Bresse, Lower Auvergne, and Gex; (13) Provence; (14) Dauphiné and Orange; (15) Béarn; (16) the Cevennes and Gévaudan.[1114]

This administrative partition, however, did not remain fixed. Some provinces, like Brittany, had so few Protestants in them, that the Huguenots therein could not stand alone, and the first civil war brought out the weakness of this system. Accordingly, in 1563, the map of France was partitioned anew, and the former sixteen “provinces” were reduced to nine. Some of the changes made are interesting. For example, the Chartrain was cut off from the Ile-de-France and attached to the “province” of Orleans, manifestly in the endeavor to keep a connecting link between Normandy and the Loire country. Brittany was strengthened by the annexation of Anjou, Maine, and Touraine which formerly constituted an independent “province,” which obviously drew it into closer connection with the stronger Calvinistic provinces. The “province” of Upper and Lower Poitou was combined with Saintonge, Aunis, and Angoumois, thus knitting together all the country watered by the Charente, the Clain, and lesser streams. Burgundy, Lyonnais, Beaujolais, Bresse, Lower Auvergne, and Gex absorbed the small Huguenot province composed of Vivarais, Velay, and Le Forêt. But the most interesting consolidation was in the south of France. Formerly Upper Languedoc, in which were Nîmes, Montpellier, and Beziers; Lower Languedoc, comprising Upper Guyenne, Toulouse, Carcassonne, Quercy, Rouergue, Armagnac, and Upper Auvergne; Provence; Dauphiné, and Cevennes-Gévaudan had each formed separate “provinces.” But in 1563 this immense territory was all united to form the great Huguenot province of Languedoc. The only ancient provinces which remained unchanged in 1563 were Normandy,[1115] Béarn, and Lower Guyenne, with Périgord and Limousin.

The Huguenot ecclesiastical organization and its political organization were one and the same. The congregations, the “colloquia,” the synods, constituted both taxation units and military cadres.[1116] The strength of the Huguenot organization, however, before the massacre of St. Bartholomew, I believe has been exaggerated, except in Guyenne where, in the vicinity of Nérac especially, Montluc early came in contact with a powerful combination of the Huguenots.[1117] The strong elements in the Protestant organization were its simplicity and the vigilance of all, from provincial chiefs to simple pastors, who made up for scarcity of numbers by the most zealous activity.[1118] “If our priests,” wrote the Venetian Correro in 1569, “were half so energetic, of a certainty Christianity would not be in danger in this country.”[1119] It was not until after 1572 that the Huguenot organization reached a high point of military and political development, when a solid federation of the Reformed churches was formed at Milhaud in 1574, with rating precincts, military hundreds and civil jurisdictions.[1120]

Exactly as the early organization of the Huguenots has been overemphasized, so has the republican nature of the early Huguenot movement been exaggerated. Apart from whatever religious motives may have actuated them, the Protestant nobles were influenced by political ambition; the bourgeoisie by the hope of administrative and economic reform; the masses by the general spirit of discontent. The Huguenots did not present a united front until after St. Bartholomew, when the fusion of the political Huguenots with the Politiques reduced the “religious” Huguenots to a left-wing minority. Before 1572 the political ideas of the Reformed, if not still inchoate, were not harmonized into one homogeneous cause, backed up by a compact and highly organized political system. Individual political theorists or fanatic devotees, of course, were to be found in the Huguenot ranks, but there was no systematic political philosophy to guide their conduct before the massacre of St. Bartholomew. It was this catastrophe that crystallized Huguenot opinion and organized combination on a large scale.[1121] In Guyenne, alone, where, as has been said, the Huguenot organization was most completely developed at an early date, does any clear republican idea seem to have early obtained.[1122]

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XII. THE SECOND CIVIL WAR (1567-68)

In this wise, after a respite of four years, the second civil war was precipitated. There was an exodus of Huguenots at once from Paris, some repairing to the prince of Condé, some to the duke de Rohan, others to Montgomery in Lower Normandy where a war of the partisans began at once.[1123] The capital was in a furious mood and the King’s presence alone prevented the Parisians from massacring the Protestants there and the Montmorencys.[1124]

The chief effort of the Huguenots was to seize the towns on the Seine above and below Paris, in order to stay provisions, and so to compel the government to submit.[1125] The capture of the Pont de Charenton[1126] by Condé’s forces was a heavy blow to the government, as Charenton chiefly supplied Paris with wheat and flour. The Parisians fully expected to be attacked and made preparations therefor by breaking up the stones in the streets and piling them in heaps for ready service or taking them into their houses; at the same time they destroyed pent-houses and other similar insignificant structures in order that they might the better hurl their missiles.[1127] So suddenly had the war been begun that the blockade of Paris for the time being was almost complete. Lagny on the Marne,[1128] Charenton, Porchefontaine, Busanval, Argenteuil, St. Ouen, Ambervilliers, and St. Denis constituted the inner zone of Huguenot control while farther out Montereau on the highroad to Sens, Etampes on the road to Orleans and in the heart of the wheat district that supplied the capital,[1129] Dourdan at the junction of the Blois-Chartres roads, and Dreux on the road toward Normandy, formed an outer circle. So closely was Paris invested that the windmills in the faubourgs of St. Denis, St. Honoré, and Port St. Martin were burned by the Huguenots. The churches for leagues around were plundered of copes, chasubles, tunics, and other rich silk and satin garments. The Huguenot gentry made shirts and handkerchiefs out of the lace and linen of the clergy. But all gold and silver taken, as altar-vessels, crosses, chalices, were turned into the general spoil for the sake of the cause.[1130] Forced loans were imposed upon small merchants and even the peasantry were constrained to forced labor,[1131] so that the latter fled by hundreds to Paris.

The ravages of the Huguenots were so great that they defeated the very purpose they had in mind. For thousands of the peasantry, under cover of a liberal ordinance intended to provision Paris,[1132] drove their cattle into the city and carted thither the grain and provisions they had stored up against the winter, where they sold it cheap, rather than see it destroyed by “volleurs quilz pillent et brulent granges, maisons, moulins et font tout le mal qu’ilz peullent faire.”[1133] Wine, meat, and bread were not dear in Paris; beechnut oil and oats were at a reasonable price.

The queen mother, who looked to Alva for the most immediate aid,[1134] sent the chancellor L’Hôpital, the liberal marshal Vieilleville, and Jean de Morvilliers, bishop of Orleans, to confer with the prince of Condé in order to gain time. But the prince was so elated with his successful blockade of Paris that his demands rose in degree, and could not be accepted by the government. Yet the nature of these demands is to be observed, for it is evidence of the fact that the conflict was becoming more and more a political one, and that the religious issue, if not a minor issue, at least was but an element in the programme of the Huguenots. Moreover, these demands are interesting for the reason that they represent a new stage in the evolution of the struggle and that henceforth they are a permanent contention of the Huguenots and ultimately are embodied in the Edict of Toleration. The prince, whose chief object was to overthrow the Guises and get the government of the King and the management of affairs into his own hands[1135] insisted on the free exercise of religion throughout the realm without limitation or distinction of places or persons; that all taxes lately authorized should be remitted and all new forms of taxation imposed since the reign of Louis XII abolished; that an accounting be made of the money granted for defraying the King’s debts; that all those who had been deposed from their offices on account of religion should be reinstated; and that four fortified towns be placed in his hands as security for the good intentions of the crown. Furthermore, the prince demanded the dismissal of the Swiss and Spanish regiments.[1136]

In due time the prince of Condé discovered that delay was disastrous. Although his force had daily increased by new accessions from the south,[1137] nevertheless the Huguenot position was not so strong as it appeared. Paris rallied to the cause of the King and gave him 400,000 écus, while the clergy advanced 250,000.[1138] The duke of Guise was in Champagne with troops of Champagne and Burgundy, besides eight companies of men-at-arms.[1139] Moreover, recruits were pouring in to help the King, some from the duke of Savoy,[1140] some from Piedmont under command of Strozzi, whose approach the admiral and De Mouy tried to prevent, and some from Pope Pius V, who bestirred himself in behalf of France as soon as he was informed of the renewal of hostilities once more.[1141] The Huguenots made strenuous efforts to break the Swiss alliance and to persuade the Protestant Swiss cantons to withdraw. But fortunately for the French crown, the cantons remained firm, for without the assistance of Swiss troops, Charles IX would have been hard put to it for an army, for he dared not accept the all too interested offers of Philip II.[1142] As in the first civil war, both parties looked to Germany for assistance[1143] and the queen mother sent Lignerolles “to practice the stay of the reiters, and on his return, to the count palatine to desire him not to succor the prince and his associates, affirming that their rising was not of any zeal of religion, but only to rebel against their prince.”[1144] The Huguenots also made overtures to Philip II’s revolted subjects.[1145]

By the middle of October the prince of Condé discovered that he was lying between two enemies, Paris and the new troops coming up, and every day added to his peril. There can be little doubt but that the queen mother purposely protracted the negotiations, knowing that by so doing Condé’s security would be diminished. Signs were not wanting to indicate that matters were coming to a head. On October 7 the King sent a herald to the prince to proclaim that all who were with him should unarm and repair to Paris, whereby they might save their lives and goods, which, if they refused to do so, should be confiscated.

The same day the constable declared how the King, trusting to bring certain of his subjects to good conformity by his clemency, had sent his chancellor to assure them that his edicts made for religion and pacification should be inviolably kept, and that no man should be molested for the same; and that touching other small articles he was in full mind to have satisfied them. Notwithstanding, they would not submit themselves to any reason; wherefore the King was fully resolved to declare them rebels and prosecute them accordingly, for the maintenance whereof he would venture both body and goods. On October 8 proclamation was made that if the prince with his associates would submit themselves to the King within three days he would freely pardon all that was past; but if they refused, they were to be accounted as rebels and it was to be lawful to all the King’s subjects to kill all such as they should find armed. In expectation of battle, the constable was made lieutenant-general of the King’s army.[1146]

Yet despite the precariousness of his situation the prince was still confident. His pride was hardened by the capture of Orleans by La Noue on September 28,[1147] and of Soissons.[1148] He enlarged the Protestants’ demands, requiring that Calais, Boulogne, and Metz[1149] be delivered to them as surety, that the King disarm first and that one church of every “good town” in France be permitted to those of the religion; and that 300,000 francs be granted the prince to pay his troops, “whereby they may return hence without pillage.”[1150] The crown scornfully rejected the terms and assumed a rapid offensive. On the night of November 6 Strozzi’s band destroyed a bridge of boats planked together which the prince had made in order more effectually to cut off Paris; on the following day another point on the river which threatened Paris was captured by the duke of Nemours, and on the 9th Condé was compelled to withdraw from Charenton after breaking the bridge and firing the town. On November 8 the prince had made the blunder of weakening his main force by sending D’Andelot to seize Poissy and Montgomery to get possession of Pontoise, the two open places in the inner zone of steel drawn around Paris.[1151] The crisis of real battle came in their absence, on November 10, the battle of St. Denis. It was a fierce and bloody fray beginning about 3 o’clock and lasting till dark, in which both sides suffered severely. Montmorency, “more famous than fortunate in arms,” was twice slashed in the face by a cutlass and then shot in the neck and the small of his back by pistol bullets fired by the Scotch captain named Robert Stuart[1152] serving with the Huguenots. The old veteran, thinking his assailant did not recognize him, cried out: “You do not know me. I am the constable.” But the Scot, as he fired, replied: “Because I know you, I give you this!”[1153] Though the white-liveried horsemen of Condé passed through and through the King’s soldiery and though the constable was mortally wounded the battle was not won by the prince.[1154] On November 14 the Huguenot army filed out of St. Denis “without sound of trumpet or stroke of drum.” The prince established temporary headquarters at Montereau toward Sens, but later moved up the Marne to the vicinity of Troyes with the duke of Guise following slowly after him, in order to effect a junction with the reiters of duke Casimir of the Palatinate, which the government was unable to prevent.[1155]

[Illustration: THE BATTLE OF ST. DENIS

From photograph of the original sketch, probably made by the son of Sir Henry Norris, English ambassador in France. Original in Public Record Office, State Papers, Foreign, Elizabeth, Vol. XCV, No. 1813. It is dated November 10, 1567, and measures 31½ × 23⅛

The presence of the Huguenot forces seemed like the return of the reiters to the folk in Champagne, who hid their treasures in stables, gardens, chimneys, and the like. Some concealed their money and jewels in crannies in the walls; others hid them in the swaddling clothes of babes. But even this was to no purpose, for the soldiers plucked the children from the very breasts of their mothers and stripped them in order to find what was hidden upon them.[1156]

After the battle of St. Denis two opinions divided the King’s council. Some urged the queen, who was at Fontainebleau, to make new overtures; others, who reflected the opinion of Paris, were for pursuing the war. The queen mother acted upon the first suggestion, but nothing came of the overtures because the King insisted upon disarmament of the Huguenots before considering their terms.[1157] Active preparations were therefore made to push the war in the provinces, somewhat to the surprise of the Catholic gentry who had thought it was finished on the field of St. Denis.[1158] Camps of artillery, the infantry, and the Swiss were established at Voulton, St. Martin-des-Champs, Gymbrois, and other points in Champagne and Brie, while the cavalry was lodged in other parishes. Garrisons were also posted in the châteaux and maisons fortes of the Huguenots in the region. Without counting the territory covered by the advance guard of the King’s army, a strip of territory was occupied over ten miles long and six wide, and containing more than fifty thousand persons.[1159] For the feeding of this host, an ordinance of the master of the camp ordered the seizure of all the local bakeries, the necessary grain being commandeered from the merchants and farmers of the locality. Besides these provisions the soldiery, since they were quartered on households, freely consumed bread, meat, wine, and other food where they were, without payment.

The presence of the King’s troops was a heavy drain upon the resources of the region, more especially since the summer had been so dry that the crops were thin. Indeed so great was the drought that even swamps grew dry and there were public prayers and processions for rain in all the parishes of France. Fortunately rain fell in time to save the vines so that the wine did not fail, else the condition of France would have been one of great distress.[1160]

On November 20 two thousand horsemen arrived in Paris from Flanders. The hope of the French Protestants was chiefly pinned upon John Casimir of the Palatinate, son of the elector Frederick, and a force of German reiters, the expectation of whose coming had induced Condé to move eastward toward Troyes. The count palatine drew a sharp line in his own mind between religion and politics. He would have been quick to resent any invasion of his rights as a ruler. But he did not understand French politics, and looked upon the Huguenot movement as a purely religious one to which he felt bound to give support because he was a zealous Protestant.[1161] The French government sent the bishop of Rennes and Lignerolles to endeavor to dissuade the count palatine; they affirmed that the rebellion of Condé was not for any zeal of religion but for political advantage. But the prince’s emissary outmatched the bishop and his colleague, assuring the count palatine that the sole cause of the Huguenot insurrection was the preservation of the free exercise of religion, together with their honor, lives, and goods.[1162] The argument of Charles IX that the estate of himself and realm was so intermingled with that of religion that the count palatine could not touch one without offense to the other, was not convincing to Casimir.[1163]

To add to Catherine’s anxiety the Emperor revived the old project to seize the Three Bishoprics,[1164] a project made doubly dangerous by the new machinations of the cardinal of Lorraine. For, in order to safeguard the Catholic cause in France and to save Metz from being lost entirely after the Huguenots had captured the citadel in October, the cardinal of Lorraine, had resumed his secret negotiations with Spain. Instead, however, of writing direct to Philip II he wrote to Alva, for time was pressing and the danger great. On November 1, 1567, a chaplain of the cardinal appeared before the duke in Antwerp bearing a letter imploring Alva to come to the assistance of the French crown and offered to put him in possession of certain places in France. At first Alva was so incredulous that he imprisoned the bearer[1165] until he was satisfied of the verity of his mission. Nevertheless he immediately sent 3,000 horsemen into the country of Seyn (between Wied and Bas-Isenberg) whose ruler was a pensioner of Spain, ordered count Mansfeldt to go to Luxembourg, and dispatched a message to the margrave of Baden for 1,000 horsemen with the object of preventing Germans going to France or the war there from spreading to the Spanish provinces. Finally, when persuaded of the truth of the cardinal’s overtures, Alva said that if circumstances so developed as to make such action on his part an imperative duty before the King of France could be apprised, he would do so; and that if the King were overwhelmed by the Huguenots, he would believe it his duty for the sake of protecting the Catholic faith to occupy the places offered by the cardinal, which might be held in pawn by Spain as collateral for French repayment of her services.[1166] But the treasonable designs of the cardinal of Lorraine went even farther than an offer to surrender some of the border fortresses of France into Spanish hands. As early as this time the possible deposition of the house of Valois was contemplated by the Guises in favor of the Spanish-Hapsburg dynasty. For the cardinal went on to say that in event of the early death of Charles IX and his brothers Philip II of Spain would be heir to the throne of France through his wife, Elizabeth of Valois. “The Salic law is a pleasantry,” he added, “and force of arms could overcome any opposition”![1167] “This last,” wrote Alva to Philip, “is a different matter and I cannot risk taking a hand in it without express instructions from your Majesty.”

The habitual self-control of the Spanish monarch must have been heavily taxed to subdue his emotion when he learned of this astonishing negotiation. But he was true to his second-nature. Without apparent excitement he endorsed the document thus: “This point is one upon which more time is needed to reflect, because it would be difficult to do what the cardinal asks without compromise. On the other hand, it is hard to decline for such a cause what is thrown into my arms. However, I think that a decision in this matter is not urgent. Let the duke inform me what he thinks about it, according to the state of things there.”[1168] Was it caution, or hesitation, or procrastination?

As an intermediate course, one less compromising and perhaps quite as effective in the long run, Alva suggested, although with some misgiving, to the cardinal of Lorraine that he come in person to the relief of the French crown.[1169] While he was debating this question with himself, news came of the battle of St. Denis and of the approach of the reiters; and hard upon this, word from Catherine de Medici asking for the aid of 2,000 Spanish arquebusiers against the reiters.[1170] The duke of Alva, in reply, after chiding Catherine for not accepting the offers of assistance he had made immediately after Meaux,[1171] offered to send 2,000 arquebusiers and 2,000 cavalry—he could not now spare the great force he had proffered earlier—to the assistance of the duke of Aumale against the reiters,[1172] although admitting, with grim pleasantry, that there was a certain humor in casting firebrands into a neighbor’s house when one’s own was burning.[1173] But the offer came too late to be of service, thus fortunately sparing Catherine from the humiliation of having introduced in France a power whose purpose was the overthrow of France.[1174]

In the meantime, while Condé was encamped between Sens[1175] and Troyes, the reiters had entered Lorraine to the number of about six thousand.[1176] Their coming thwarted the plans of the duke of Guise, who was on the frontier with the marshal Tavannes, for it prevented the French commanders from joining with Count Mansfeldt and the duke of Lorraine and compelled them to fall back.[1177] The junction of Condé and the reiters was effected on December 28, and a camp established at Dessay. The King’s army of all sorts comprised 30,000 footmen and half as many horse.[1178] Nevertheless, despite the adverse prospect, the government did not waver. The capital was intensely loyal. In response to a call of the King, the Parisians made a general muster of 30,000 and offered 1,200,000 francs for the maintenance of the war.[1179]

Tentative efforts, however, were even yet made to make peace, to the indignation of the Parisians.[1180] The insistence of Charles IX, though, upon an immediate laying-down of arms was an effective obstacle to any cartel that might have been arranged. In reply to the articles sent by the King to the prince of Condé, the latter responded that the Protestants had no intention to prescribe the law to the King, but only humbly to require such things as were necessary for the liberty of their consciences and the preservation of their lives and goods, namely, that the edict of Orleans should be observed without any alterations; that bailiwicks should be appointed for the free exercise of religion; that they should be preserved in the enjoyment of their estates and offices; that those of Lyons should have the same liberty as the rest of the subjects of the realm; that synods should be permitted, and that the Edict of Pacification should be declared irrevocable.[1181]

In his answer Charles IX declared that he would never agree to treat with the prince of Condé or any other subject as with an equal; he promised to pardon what had passed if the Protestants would lay down their arms within three days and retire to their houses and give up the places taken by them; that where certain gentlemen complained of having been prosecuted for exercising their religion in their houses, he was content that this should cease, provided that there were not more than fifty persons present exclusive of their families; that he intended to keep his forces in his hands and to dispose of and govern towns as he pleased; that the town of Lyons, being full of strangers, should not be allowed the exercise of religion; that all enrolment of men, associations, and synods, must cease; and finally, that the King would immediately dispatch his letters-patent to assure the prince and his company of their lives, goods, and the liberty of their consciences, if these conditions were complied with.[1182]

The truth is, the French government prepared for war with great reluctance. Philip II’s anxiety lest the queen would come to terms with her adversaries was a just one.[1183] The King’s expenses amounted to nearly a million livres per month,[1184] and he had “to quiet such storms as daily arose in his camp amongst his nobility, partly for religion and partly for ambition.”[1185] Unless Spain came strongly to the relief of the Catholic cause in France, it was apparent that Condé could go almost wherever he pleased in the country, his force was so great.[1186] Many of the King’s soldiers were ill-minded to fight against their countrymen and many deserted. The Swiss were wearied by travel and the inclemency of the season and there was much disease among them.[1187] The leaders wrangled for the command.[1188] There was mutiny and desertion in the ranks of the Scotch Guard, thirty of whom deserted to the prince, or rather to their old commander Montgomery.[1189] All along the line of the King’s forces there was opposition to the war. The chevalier Battres told Charles IX that many of the nobles were determined to hazard the King’s displeasure rather than to stain their hands in their kinsmen’s blood.[1190] The marshal Cossé showed unwonted courage in his advocacy of moderation[1191]—a policy which he openly admitted and approved in the Council meeting (February 10). The germ of the Politique party is thus early discoverable.[1192]

The duke of Anjou, who had been made commander-in-chief of the Catholic forces,[1193] seeing the Protestant army considerably augmented and that they had crossed the Seine and controlled the passages over the Yonne and the Loire, sent most of his troops back to Paris, and scattered the rest along the banks of the Seine, to guard the road between Troyes and Paris. The Catholic camp in Paris was established in the faubourg St. Marceau, where were lodged all the gendarmerie, both foot and horse, the artillery and the Swiss. But most of the cavalry was quartered in the villages, where the horses could get better grazing, to the detriment of the country round about, for the soldiers amused themselves by pillage, so that the better towns and châteaux were compelled to fortify themselves as though against the enemy.[1194] Strenuous efforts were made to provision Paris against a future siege, and to establish magazines of provisions and ammunition in the towns of the Ile-de-France and Champagne. To this end the government bought up grain in the early spring of 1568, paying 50 livres per muid, or 10 sous, 5 deniers, per bichet.[1195]

As the prince drew nearer to the city, the conduct of Paris became a matter of anxiety. Although bigotedly Catholic, the populace of the capital had no mind to experience another siege in the cause of religion, and the popular rage against the government, especially toward Catherine de Medici, became so intense that she dared not go abroad without being heavily guarded. The popular voice claimed that the queen mother nourished the quarrel and consumed the revenues of the King,[1196] a belief which the Guises cleverly fostered, if they were not the immediate authors of it.[1197]

“The money of the kingdom today is in the hands of a single class,” wrote the Venetian ambassador. “The clergy is ruined. Without counting the property of the church which has been mortgaged or sold with the authorization of the Pope, the church since 1561 has paid out 12,000,000 écus for the King. This would be immaterial, for it is but a seventh of its annual revenue, if the church had not suffered so much from the civil war. The nobles are at their wits’ ends and have not a sou on account of the war. The country folk have been so pillaged by the soldiery, whose license is frightful, that they are reduced to beggary. Only the bourgeoisie and the gens de robe longue still have money. It is difficult for the King to obtain money without force. In addition to these troubles with his subjects the King has lost all his credit with foreign merchants and cannot raise an écu outside the kingdom without giving collateral. But good may come out of this calamitous state, for the King and his subjects have come to such a dead stop that peace may result.”[1198]

Under these circumstances the crown earnestly renewed negotiations for peace. Even astrology was invoked by the superstitious Catherine and the signs of the zodiac were sagely said to point toward peace. For the queen, walking one day in her garden, discoursing of the peace, called unto her Messire Nonio, an Italian famed for his knowledge of astrology, of whom she asked what he found by the stars touching peace; to which he presently answered that the heavens did not promise it, nor was the earth yet ready to receive it; since the effect of the eclipse of the sun was then in its greatest force, and likewise the virtue of the conjunction of Saturn and Mars which was in Aries last year; but the wise man concluded with the oracular statement that the heavens did not constrain the inferior powers but only disposed them.[1199]

On February 28 the King sent the marshal Montmorency, Morvilliers, the bishop of Limoges, and D’Allny, one of his secretaries, to confer with representatives appointed by the prince of Condé, the cardinal Châtillon, the bishop of Valence, and Teligny at Longjumeau. The prince made two notable conditions to the demands already outlined—that all the articles, agreements, and capitulations should be confirmed by all the Parlements of the realm, and that certain cautionary towns—he named Boulogne or La Rochelle[1200]—be given to the Protestants as guarantees of the just purposes of the government. These two demands are of interest because they became invariable demands of the Huguenots in the future and foreshadowed important terms in the edict of Bergerac (1576) and that of Nantes of 1598. Those of the King replied that to make such demands impugned the King’s honor, that the prince of Condé ought to trust the crown without requiring guaranties of assurance. As to the particular demands, Charles IX declared he did not think it meet to make the edict of 1563 perpetual[1201] and protested against the political and military organization of the Protestants, “insomuch as this liberty remaining, the King shall never be assured in his realm.” On March 4 the commissioners of the prince, tired of the parleying and vexed at the diversion the King tried to introduce by proposing a double alliance between the warring houses in the marriage of the duke of Guise with the prince’s eldest daughter, and of D’Andelot’s eldest son to the duke’s sister, demanded express answer regarding church edifices; better observance of the edict by the King’s officers; Huguenot schools, etc. To these Charles IX assented and the Huguenots waived the matter of confirmation by provincial Parlements and the surrender of certain cautionary places for the time being. It remained to settle the question of the reiters’ pay. Five hundred thousand livres in the royal chest at Amboise were appropriated by the crown and the balance of the obligation was provided for by the cardinal of Bourbon and the dukes of Montmorency and Longueville, who went security for it.[1202]

As finally concluded on March 26 the terms of Longjumeau were in reality a confirmation of the edict of March, 1563, which was not enlarged as the prince of Condé had at first demanded, except that the edict in its new form also applied to Provence.[1203] The terms of Longjumeau were suppressed for a short time and the army not dismissed, however, because it was thought perilous to disarm until the reiters had taken their leave. These marauders, who followed war as a trade and with whom faith and piety were not virtues, had not ceased their depredations during the course of the negotiations. The people “being everywhere environed both with their own or foreign enemies, dared not approach town or village, all being replenished with reiters or those who entreated them as ill, whereby they miserably died in the fields.”[1204]

The publication of the edict encountered bitter opposition throughout the country.[1205] At Toulouse the King’s messenger who brought the royal order for its registration by the Parlement was actually tried, condemned, and executed for the “offense,” so inflamed was the public mind.[1206] At Rouen a furious multitude assailed the magistrates and mobbed the dwellings of those of Huguenot inclination. The same thing happened at Bourges. At Orleans the soldiers murdered several at the gates of the city, with impunity. In Languedoc there were commotions and slaughters.[1207]

The strife in the south of France, in Provence, Languedoc, and Guyenne, had never entirely ceased since the inception of the first civil war. The King’s tour of the provinces had overawed the combatants to a certain extent and in Languedoc Damville, who had succeeded his father on April 28, 1563,[1208] managed to keep things with a pretty even hand, enforcing the edict of Amboise throughout his jurisdiction.[1209] But the hostility of Montluc, whose government of Guyenne adjoined Languedoc, toward Damville, was a serious bar to pacification, for Montluc not only sought to diminish Damville’s authority by complaining to the King of him, but also secretly connived with the doings of ultra-Catholic partisans in Toulouse and elsewhere.[1210]

So intense was the hatred in the south of France between the Catholics and the Huguenots that there was scarce any intermission of hostilities at all after the peace of Longjumeau, especially in Provence. The duke of Joyeuse, who commanded the royal forces here, was a man after Montluc’s own heart. Early in 1568 he had passed up the Rhone for the purpose of aiding the counts of Tende and Suze. He had with him 2,000 foot and from five to six hundred horse, and easily overcame the little fortresses until he reached Pont St. Esprit in February. Failing to take this, the army was divided. Joyeuse crossed the Rhone at Avignon on March 7, took Loudun, Orsenne, and Tresques, then, retracing his steps, he again joined the count of Tende and renewed the siege of Pont St. Esprit. The Protestants under the command of Montbrun gave battle in the plains of Montfran near Aramon, and were badly defeated May 24, 1568. When peace was made Joyeuse returned to Avignon. Most of the towns of lower Languedoc were carefully garrisoned by him, but Montauban, Castres, and Montpellier resisted. Everywhere he exacted disarmament and the oath of fidelity.[1211]

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Chapter XIII

THE THIRD CIVIL WAR (1568). NEW CATHOLIC LEAGUE. THE BATTLE OF JARNAC

The peace of Longjumeau, more than any treaty of the civil wars, was a tentative settlement, an armistice merely. It was chiefly compelled by the lack of funds of both parties and from its signature was more openly opposed and protested against than any other of the treaties. Suspense over the probability of a third and worse war prevailed from the beginning. For while many on each side returned to their homes, there were many others who had no place to which to retire, for whom vagabond life had attractions and who preferred war to peace and plundering to honest labor.[1212] Both sides were too suspicious and too fearful to lay down their arms. So many of the Huguenot captains kept their troops in the fields that the King wrote to no less than 212 places charging the governors thereof to scatter these bands. Many known to have been in arms hid them in secret places and were, in consequence, not permitted to return to their native places until such arms were given up. The Catholic resentment seems to have been strongest in Paris[1213] and Burgundy, though in the former the provost of the merchants made the singularly sane plea to the King to have an especial regard for justice lest its denial might stir the Protestants to new strife. In general, though, wherever the King’s garrisons were stationed there was trouble.

It was not long before the Guise opposition organized. Failing of their hold upon Charles IX, the Guises directed their efforts upon his brother, Henry, duke of Anjou, whose Catholic sentiments[1214] were less impeachable than those of Charles and who began to “show some tokens of an ambitious heart,” was a sworn Catholic, and showed great offense at his royal brother’s action in “very courteously” entertaining the cardinal Châtillon, the count Rochefoucauld, and Brocarde, the Protestant governor of Orleans.[1215] On the night of March 29 a secret conference was held at the Louvre of the leaders among the Guise party, in which it was proposed that a pacific attitude be pretended until the disarming of the prince of Condé’s forces and the withdrawal of the reiters had taken place, and then suddenly to seize Orleans, Soissons, Auxerre, and La Rochelle—the Huguenot strongholds—for which duty Lansac, Martigues, Chavigny, and Brissac were to be appointed, reinforce the garrison of Paris, and send the ferocious Montluc into Gascony to subjugate the strongest Protestant provinces, seize the sea-ports, and drive a Catholic wedge in between Poitou and the territories of the queen of Navarre, who already had taken the precaution to strengthen her defenses. By some means, perhaps through the marshal Cossé, who was a Politique at heart, the cardinal Châtillon learned of the plot the very next day, and straightway informed the marshal Montmorency, another moderate, of it. At the same time the plan was discovered from another source to the prince of Condé. When Charles IX was taxed with information of it, he swore that the whole thing was done without his knowledge, accused the cardinal of Lorraine of treasonable practice, and calling for pen and ink wrote to Condé promising “good and sincere” observation of all that had been agreed upon at Longjumeau.[1216]

It will be observed how completely this plan of the Guises for the subjugation of Guyenne and Gascony is in alignment with the views of Montluc which he had expressed to Philip II.[1217] Hitherto the King of Spain had been sustaining two separate lines of secret correspondence, one with Montluc direct; the other with the cardinal of Lorraine through the duke of Alva. These two lines now are fused into a larger whole, at least so far as the Spanish king is concerned.[1218] Montluc is the military, the cardinal of Lorraine the diplomatic, agent of Philip’s purposes.

The development of the Holy League has now advanced another stage in its evolution. The old warrior had not discontinued his secret relations with Spain, in spite of his warm denial of the fact to the queen mother, who taxed him with it,[1219] but through Bardaxi still kept in communication with Philip II. We find him writing twice to the King in February 1567 and Philip responding in terms of encouragement in the following month.[1220] Guyenne was peculiarly vulnerable to such an attack as was now contemplated, and Montluc was certainly the best captain to execute it. The army of the Huguenots there was in a bad state.[1221]

The instrument was already forged to Philip II’s hand in the local Catholic leagues in France. His interest in these was one of the silent activities at Bayonne. The instructions to the duke of Alva and to Bardaxi were almost identical. “As the queen mother lacks either fixity of ideas or honesty of purpose”—the words are those of the procès-verbal framed in the Spanish council-chamber, it is necessary to encourage the practices of Montluc and the Catholics.[1222] It must have been a source of delight to the Spanish king to observe the rapid increase of these associations. There are two changes to be noticed in these provincial leagues: their increasingly popular character, and their tendency to fuse together. Hitherto they had been local in their operations. Now a process of federation is to be observed by which the provincial leagues are gradually welded into one whole—in a word the mighty Sainte Ligue of 1576 potentially exists now.[1223] The federative tendency of these associations was a natural result of their increase in number and membership. It was not a haphazard development at all. Design is evident throughout.[1224]

The renewal of civil war in 1567 had given a great impulse to this spirit of association.[1225] Nowhere was it more pronounced than in Burgundy. Tavannes, who was governor of Burgundy, in the year 1567 (July 18), formed a league under the name of the Confrérie du St. Esprit. Churchmen, the nobility of Burgundy, and wealthy bourgeois who wished to preserve the Catholic religion were united together in the service of the King. The version of its origin in the Mémoires de Tavannes is so interesting that I venture to quote it:

Seeing so much discontent and so many threatening enterprises among the Huguenots, the queen, for safety’s sake, in the beginning of the year 1567 caused a levy of 9,000 Swiss [the actual number was 6,000] to be made under pretext that they were to be for the service of the duke of Alva in the Flemish War. The prevailing unrest and the rumors of insurrection gave the sieur de Tavannes, who penetrated the designs of the queen and the purpose of the Huguenots, the thought that a prudent man might also take precautions of his own. He reasoned that the Huguenots did not have more zeal for their cause than the Catholics for the old religion, and that those who would preserve it would give their lives and employ their last sou to succor the King; in a word, oppose league to league. He therefore organized the Confrérie du St. Esprit, which in reality was a league of the ecclesiastics and the nobility of Burgundy, with rich men from the towns, who voluntarily swore to serve in the interest of the Catholic religion against the Huguenots, sacrificing both person and property for the sake of the King. Without using coercion he gave orders for the enrolment of men-at-arms and the collection of money, created warders, spies, and messengers, in imitation of the Huguenots, in order to discover their machinations. The oath subscribed to justified this design. Each parish of Dijon paid its men for three months, and each town contributed 200 horse and 250 footmen. Burgundy could furnish 1,500 horse and 400 men on foot, paid for three months of the year. The sieur de Tavannes summoned an assembly in the Maison du Roi, ... and there caused the oath to be read.

The oath began:

We swear by the most holy and incomprehensible name of God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in whose name we have been baptized, and we promise on our honor and the peril of our lives that, henceforth, at all times, through the chiefs and those who shall be named by the King under these articles, we will make known any enterprise that may work contrary to our said law and faith of which we have made profession in our baptism, and which we have maintained by the grace of God to the present, and also to make known every enterprise, which may clothe itself in hatred of the maintenance of the said faith, against the said royal Majesty, madame his mother, and messieurs his brothers, who rule over us by divine permission.

And further on in the oath:

We swear and promise in the present writing to render all friendship and fraternity the one to the other, to aid each other reciprocally against all phases of the opposite party, if they shall undertake any enterprise against any one of the signatories to the cause of this party; and for the sake of said aid we promise respectively, the one and the other, to employ all our persons, our credit, and our favors without sparing anything. And we promise to observe all the articles above sworn to without regard to friends, parents, or any relationship which we may have with those who undertake the contrary.[1226]

In the following year, on April 2, 1568, “La Fraternité des Catholiques de Châlons-sur-Saône” emerged.

A l’imitation de la majesté du Roy nostre sire [so runs the instrument], et soubs sa protection et bon plaisir ... nous avons faict entre nous et pour tous autres Catholiques qui adjoindre se vouldront une fraternité qui s’appellera Confrairie et Société des Catholiques.

And it is added—sign of omen—

Et au cas qu’il advint que Dieu ne veuille que les persones de sa majesté et de messieurs ses frères ... fussent oppressés de sorte que ne sceussions avoir advertissement de leurs volontez, promettons rendre toute obeissance au général chef qui sera esleu.[1227]

Six weeks later, on May 18, 1568, through the activity of Tavannes, a similar association was formed in Berry and was confirmed at Bourges by the archbishop, Jacques le Roy.[1228] A month later La Ligue Chrétienne et Royale, “for the defense of the Catholic church in France and for maintaining the royal authority in the House of Valois,” to which was appended the significant proviso, “so long as it shall govern in the Catholic and Apostolic religion” appeared in Champagne under the auspices of Henry of Guise, then eighteen years of age and governor of the province. The nobility, the bishop, and the clergy, in a meeting at Troyes, concluded, signed, and took an oath to this league on June 25.[1229] Exactly a month later, on July 25, the Beauvaisis followed the lead of Burgundy, Berry, and Champagne, and formed an “Association Catholique” for the same purpose.[1230] The movement also spread west of the Seine, into Maine and Anjou, where the clergy, the nobility, and the third estate, on July 11, 1568, established an association whose members swore “de vivre et mourir en la religion catholique et de nous secourir les uns et les autres contre les rebelles et hérétiques sectaires de la nouvelle religion.” Forty persons signed the oath.[1231]

In Toulouse, the former league was revived in September, 1568, with new energy under the patronage of the cardinal of Armagnac and actual leadership of a secular priest who preached war upon the Protestants with a crusader’s zeal. On September 12 the latter gathered those desirous of reviving the association in the cathedral of St. Etienne where a solemn oath was taken by all, who promised to devote life and property to the support of the catholic religion. The league thus formed was officially entitled La Croisade, with the motto: “Eamus nos, moriamur cum Christo.” All its members wore a white cross.[1232] Even some of the smaller towns followed the example of the provinces and large cities. At Anduze in Lower Languedoc at this same time the churches formed a Catholic union.[1233] The movement actually spread into Lower Navarre where in the same month, September, the sieur de Luxe and some others, at the instigation of the cardinal of Lorraine, perhaps, formed a league at St. Palais for the purpose of driving out the Calvinist preachers in St. Palais. They seized La Rive, the pastor at St. Palais, Tarde, pastor at Ostabanès, both of whom were imprisoned in the house of De Luxe. But the prompt conduct of Jeanne d’Albret and the prince of Navarre, who won his spurs in the siege of Garris, speedily crushed this association.[1234]

In view of this spontaneous organization of the Catholics everywhere, it was inevitable that the peace of Longjumeau would be of short duration, even if there had been no special circumstances to bring it to an end.[1235] The Guises, after the discovery of their secret conference of March 29, for the time being sought to dissemble their feelings and purposes, and not to offend the King’s anger. When it was observed in the royal presence that great inconvenience was likely to arise in France for want of obedience to the edict, the cardinal of Lorraine, hearing the remark, replied “Sur ma conscience, il n’y a rien plus necessaire.”

The feud between the Guises and Montmorencys seemed likely to involve the state in war before very long.[1236] The quarrel between the two houses was the more intense at this time owing to the fact that the duke of Anjou’s retention of the lieutenantship, in which office the Guises supported and maintained him for their own purposes, gave offense to the marshals, Montmorency, Damville, and Vieilleville; the more so because they were all moderate Catholics and were dissatisfied with the duke’s bigoted Catholic leanings and affiliation with the Guises; they argued that “it had not been seen heretofore, that the King should have a lieutenant,” that the continuance of such a title, especially in time of peace, was a prejudice to their station,[1237] adding significantly that they “being marshals knew what appertained to their charges.” The strife between the factions soon became so severe as to dismay some, especially the cardinal of Bourbon, who threatened “that in case the King would take no better order than he had done, he would depart the court and give the world to understand how he had at heart the honour of his house and the welfare of his friends.” The chancellor L’Hôpital, having vainly endeavored to soften the strife, asked leave to be discharged of his office—an event which the cardinal of Lorraine would have hailed with delight. As it was, the Guises used Anjou to abuse the position of the chancellor.[1238]

The continued presence of the reiters and the Swiss also added to the anxiety of those who were peaceably inclined, for “there was not a town or a village in the Ile-de-France that was not furnished with soldiers,” the country indeed teeming so much with them that traveling now was more perilous even than during the wars.[1239] The 6,000 Swiss still remained within four leagues of Paris at the last of May. The reiters of the prince stopped in Burgundy and plundered the country; while the prince of Condé vainly demanded that they be paid at once.[1240] At Dijon five of them were slain by the desperate populace and a massacre of thirteen of the inhabitants followed.[1241] Many thought that the war would be renewed the moment the harvest was gathered.[1242]

Late in May the duke of Montmorency left Paris for Chantilly, while his brother Damville stayed in the capital. The action of each was significant. At Chantilly the cardinal Châtillon and other Protestant nobles deliberated, while in Paris Damville’s house was frequented by those hostile to the cardinal of Lorraine’s authority, notably the four marshals, all of whom inveighed against him and were popularly believed to be forming a new opposition to him.[1243] The Huguenot leaders, Condé, Coligny, D’Andelot, all lay in various castles throughout the Ile-de-France, with captains, soldiers, and gentlemen around them, and so distributed that no river separated them one from the other, while one ford between Paris and Rouen was kept open to enable those of the religion in Picardy to keep in touch with the prince.[1244] So skilfully was the distribution made that the leaders could have been able to unite within a day and a half if necessary.[1245]

The strain upon Charles IX soon began to tell. He was heard to say that he would rather lose his crown outright than live in continual fear, and as the feud became intenser, the King yielded and finally showed his hand by displacing the marshal Montmorency as governor of Paris, though he dared not go quite so far as to put Henri d’Anjou in his room, but chose his youngest brother, the duke of Alençon.[1246]

We discover at this time the germ of the Politique party.[1247] If the Guises had been aware of the astonishing diplomatic stroke Montmorency had conceived in his retreat at Chantilly and which he had communicated to the Huguenot leaders, they might not have pressed the case of Anjou so insistently. This scheme was to separate the King’s brother from his attachment to the Guises and at the same time enlist English aid in support of religious toleration in France—the aim of the Politique party—by nothing less than bringing about the marriage of the Valois prince with Queen Elizabeth. At the same time Montmorency, by gaining the favor of the duke, would work the cardinal out of power. To this end the duke approached the English envoy in France.[1248]

Day by day the animosity of the parties grew. In a certain sense the peril of the times was greater than during a state of war. Daily murder by dagger and by drowning, and violation of property took place throughout France, to such an extent that it was said more had been murdered since the publication of the peace than were in the war which it was supposed to have concluded.[1249] But although the animosity of the parties was strong enough to incite them to war, the renewal of hostilities was yet very dependent upon the fluctuation of events in the Netherlands,[1250] and at this moment the balance there was inclined in Spain’s favor.[1251]

William of Orange, while not in alliance with the French, nevertheless sought to avail himself of the services of the 4,000 reiters which John Casimir had raised for the French Protestants, whose use was no longer required by the Huguenots after the peace of Longjumeau. A horror of Spanish cruelty was beginning to pervade Germany and brought him sympathy and support.[1252] Calvinist Europe built high hopes upon this assistance for the Dutch.[1253] But Orange was straitened for money[1254] and it was not until the middle of August that he was ready to return to give Alva battle with an army of 6,000 horsemen and four regiments of foot, besides the Lorrainers and Gascons who were all gunners. According to the plan of the prince, three armies were to enter the Netherlands at once, the French under a Huguenot leader named Cocqueville, through Artois; the Count of Hoogstraeten between the Rhine and the Meuse, and Louis of Nassau through Groningen.

But the whole plan failed. Cocqueville raised seven or eight hundred men with the intention of provoking Artois to revolt.[1255] Failing to take Doulens by surprise, Cocqueville pillaged the abbey-town of Dammartin. The duke of Alva energetically protested to Charles IX against this violation of the Spanish provinces by French subjects, and the marshal Cossé was sent into Picardy. The foreigners in Cocqueville’s band were summarily beheaded at St. Valéry, the leader himself was sent to Abbeville for trial for treason and executed, and the whole expedition came to naught.[1256] The enforced delay of the prince of Orange, united with this repulse, was fatal to the Netherland project. On July 21, 1568, Louis of Nassau was defeated at Jemmingen by Alva, Spanish tyranny was fixed more firmly in the Low Countries, and Egmont and Hoorne were shortly afterward sent to the scaffold.[1257]

Everything was now out of joint. The success of the Dutch would have emboldened their French coreligionists to renew the struggle with some hope of success.[1258] But the Catholic victory in the Low Countries hardened the resolution of the French government. Hitherto chiefly the lesser nobility of France had been successfully coerced by the French crown. Now the cardinal of Lorraine intended to do the like with the higher nobles, compelling them either to abandon their religious and political contentions or to take up arms.[1259] At the same time military preparations began to be made which could not but be viewed with alarm by the Huguenots. The crown was stronger in cavalry, in infantry, in artillery, and in munitions. The country as a whole was with the King, and the chief cities were in his hands. “The great cities,” said Coligny mournfully, “are the tombs of our armies.”[1260]

So carefully were the preparations made that the King remained armed while the Huguenots were scattered and unarmed,[1261] saving large numbers of individual nobles who yet stood upon their guard. In northern and central France, La Rochelle excepted, the government controlled all the towns. In Provence and Languedoc, however, many of the towns were governed by the Protestants.[1262] In order to prevent the communication of intelligence between the various parts of France under Protestant control, Charles IX even had refused to permit Condé to levy money upon the Huguenots for payment of the reiters, notwithstanding the governments’ own poverty, although the prince cunningly suggested such an action.[1263] The outlook was dark indeed. The Huguenots nowhere save in the south seemed strong enough to take the field, and it seemed hopeless for them to expect to join with their coreligionists of the north owing to the vigilance of Montluc in Languedoc and Tavannes in Burgundy and to the fact that the whole course of the Loire was patrolled by forces of the government. Moreover, the general contribution being stopped, both resources and communication were at an end; the gentry too were impoverished by the late war to a very great extent, having “consumed as much in eight months as they had gathered in four years before,”[1264] so that the wisest of the Huguenot leaders were of the opinion that the religion was not in a state to attempt anything by open arms.

While he tried to augment his forces Condé sought to remedy matters by appeal to the King,[1265] complaining of the outrages inflicted on the Huguenots[1266] (Montluc had even hanged seven gentlemen of the entourage of the queen of Navarre, in Languedoc), being careful not to impute these wrongs, however, to the King, but reprobating the malignancy of the cardinal of Lorraine and accusing him of secret intelligence with Spain.[1267] The cardinal, thus assailed, parried through the King, who two days later issued a proclamation, which after reciting the complaints of murder, robberies and other wrongs alleged by those of “the pretended Reformed religion,” declared that the King, having sent his maîtres des requêtes into the provinces where these acts of violence had been perpetrated, was satisfied of the substantial justice of the administration, and asserted that the complaints had either been manufactured by the Huguenot leaders, or else grossly exaggerated. The proclamation closed by commanding all judges and other officers, on pain of deprivation, to search out and punish wrong-doers, so that those of the religion might not have ground for complaining that justice was not done them.[1268]

Such a proclamation was mere verbiage, however, and was intended to lull the anxiety of the Huguenots while the government’s preparations went forward. It deceived none of the Protestant leaders. The signs of the times were too plain to be concealed. Arms were secretly levied and stored in La Rochelle, Saintes, Châtellerault, St. Jean-d’Angély.[1269] To these signs was now added another unmistakable indication. In August, 1568 the concentration of fourteen companies of gendarmes and several bands of infantry in Burgundy, where the two most conspicuous of the leaders of the Huguenots then were—the prince of Condé and Coligny[1270]—ostensibly to prevent the prince from delivering his German reiters to the prince of Orange, precipitated civil war anew.

Protestant historians have contended that the government of Charles IX was wholly to blame for the renewal of war. But it may be fairly said that Charles IX acted not only according to his right, but according to policy in seeking to prevent the union of the Huguenot and Dutch interests. France was not yet prepared to espouse an open anti-Spanish policy, though she was already secretly so inclining,[1271] and the projected alliance of the prince of Condé and the prince of Orange[1272] would have been certain seriously to compromise her with Spain. Finally, it may be added, that there was not a little of self-ambition in Condé’s action.[1273]

This attempted co-operation of the prince of Condé and the prince of Orange drew the French government into close association with the duke of Alva. But the diplomatic relations now established between the courts of Paris and Madrid were of much greater importance and the negotiations were energetically forwarded by the cardinal of Lorraine, who on November 21, sent the cardinal of Guise into Spain charged to treat of marriage between Philip II and Marguerite of Valois,[1274] or if that proved unacceptable, to suggest Philip’s marriage with one of the daughters of the Emperor, while Charles IX was to marry the other. At the same time Alva proposed that the duke of Anjou—the future Henry III—should marry the queen of Portugal.[1275] The far-reaching effect of such a series of alliances is manifest. The two houses of Hapsburg would become dynastically united again in a common family and politico-religious purpose, into which association France would be woven.

The government had secretly prepared for the sudden investment of La Rochelle, intending to “spring” the war suddenly at that point, but had been compelled to alter the plan. This change of plan induced the resolution to attempt to capture the prince and Coligny,[1276] the purpose of the Guises (with whom the King and his mother were not acting) probably being to send them to the scaffold, as Alva had done with Egmont and Hoorne.

But the deception and duplicity which they used to allay the suspicions of the prince and the admiral offended the bluff, soldierly honor of Tavannes, who, though a bigoted Catholic, would not stoop to such a dishonorable course of action.[1277] While feigning to obey the orders to capture the two leaders, he contrived to apprise them of their danger by managing so as to have his letters intercepted by them.[1278] Thanks to this timely warning, escape was made possible. On August 23, 1568 Condé and Coligny, accompanied by the members of their families and D’Andelot’s—the princess of Condé being pregnant—crossed the Loire in sudden flight, guarded on the road by a hundred horsemen. The fugitives were bound for La Rochelle, which was safely reached without mishap, though not without peril.

From the safe retreat of this famous port and stronghold the prince of Condé issued a manifesto protesting that he and his followers intended nothing prejudicial to the King, but only to protect those of the religion from the tyranny and oppression of their enemies. A form of oath was adopted, to be taken by the nobility, officers, and others of the prince’s army, regulations were issued for the maintenance of discipline in the army, for the prevention of desertion, private plundering, and avoidance of excess of baggage, camp-followers, disorders, and quarrels.[1279]

The government at once took up the gage of battle and prepared to push the war. On September 25, 1568, an edict proscribed the Reformed faith, exiled the pastors thereof, and excluded Protestants from public offices and from the universities.[1280] As far back as July the government had begun negotiations with the Pope to secure license to alienate from the lands of the church 200,000 crowns per annum. This had failed when first petitioned,[1281] but the cardinal of Lorraine by the end of August had managed to raise 1,200,000 francs, although half of it had to go to pay old debts to the Parisians.[1282] The holy father, having at last been persuaded of the good of the cause, consented to the alienation of 100,000 crowns annual rent of the clerical lands, upon condition that the money be strictly employed for the compulsion of those who denied the authority of Rome and the revocation of the Edict of Toleration.[1283] The debate upon the measure pertaining to the church lands brought about a clash in the King’s Privy Council between the cardinal of Lorraine and the chancellor L’Hôpital, on September 19. The latter protested against the withdrawal of the Edict of Toleration, on the ground that it would induce the war at once and lead to the overrunning of the country again by the reiters, and refused to affix the royal seal to the proposed ordinance, without which the papal writing was of no force in France. The cardinal retaliated by taunting the chancellor with being a hypocrite and asserted that his wife and daughter were Calvinists. L’Hôpital retorted by sarcastically alluding to the notorious administrative practices of the Guises, at which the cardinal became so angry that he would have seized the venerable chancellor by his great white beard if the marshal Montmorency had not stepped between them. In his rage the cardinal, turning to the queen mother, declared the chancellor’s vicious policy of toleration was at the bottom of the evils of France and that if he were in the hands of the Parlement of Paris his head would not tarry on his shoulders twenty-four hours longer.[1284] The issue of this episode was not long in forthcoming. On September 28 Michel de l’Hôpital was dismissed from office[1285] and the seal given to the archbishop of Sens, Biragues, a pupil of the Guises and a henchman of Philip of Spain.[1286] It was he who rescinded the Edict of January and the other two edicts of pacification and exiled all Huguenot preachers from France within twenty days, forbade all exercise of the Reformed religion on pain of death, and dismissed from office and the universities all those who were Protestants.

The new civil war was represented as a war of religion; indeed as a crusade, the King going to evensong at La Sainte-Chapelle, on Michaelmas Eve, where the heart of St. Louis was interred, and on the morrow marching in procession with the relics of St. Denis, as did the former kings of France before they took the road of the cross. The duke of Anjou, the King’s brother, was appointed lieutenant-general of the realm on September 1, and proclamation made to the companies of gendarmerie and the bands of archers, to assemble at Orleans, now become the Catholic headquarters.[1287]

Charles IX, in October, went in person to Orleans, in order by his presence, to enlarge the enlistments, and also to overcome the suspicion that the whole movement was made at the instigation of the Guises. The government of Paris was left to the King’s youngest brother, the duke of Alençon, assisted by the duke of Montmorency. In the meantime the prince of Condé had remained in the vicinity of La Rochelle during September, while his army was gathering.[1288] When the army was massed, he moved up the Loire with his forces.

The emulation that had characterized the Huguenot nobility in the last war now served Condé well. The provinces were alive with activity during this autumn. The young prince of Navarre, the future Henry IV, was to win eminence in the coming struggle, and at this time was at Bergerac where forces were assembled to assist Condé.[1289] The Catholic and governmental forces were no less alert. The King’s captains were employed in all parts of the realm to levy men. Montluc, discovering a plot in Bordeaux to deliver the town to those of the Reformed religion, executed the greater part of those so accused. At Toulouse, Auxerre, and Lyons all men were constrained to go to mass. In Provence and Languedoc the peasantry even rose against the Protestants. To crown all both sides levied reiters in Germany.[1290]

The lower course of the Loire was the fighting-line, for command of which both sides aimed.[1291] The tactics of Anjou were to avoid an engagement, if possible, and to prevent Condé’s forces from crossing, which he succeeded in doing through a stratagem.[1292] The passage of the Loire being stopped, and the river towns being all garrisoned, especially Saumur, the prince of Condé, after taking the castle of Champigny which belonged to the duke de Montpensier, fell back on Loudun. The country was so wet that neither horse nor foot could do much. The prince excelled in cavalry, the Catholic army in infantry.[1293] In the provinces the Catholic preponderance was marked. The duke of Aumale in Champagne had 18 companies of men-at-arms and 25 ensigns of footmen, awaiting the coming of the reiters; Marshal Cossé was in Picardy with 15 companies of men-at-arms and 2,000 footmen. The reason for the presence of so many troops so far from the actual seat of the war is to be found in the fact that the movements of the prince of Orange, who had entered France in December,[1294] gave great anxiety to the government. The prince was now on the borders of Picardy, but his horsemen rode as far as Compiègne and Rheims, to the amazement of the court and the consternation of the Guises, who dispatched the cardinal of Guise to Madrid for the help of Philip II.[1295] If the two princes could have effected a junction in the meantime, Paris would have been between hammer and anvil. As it was, the danger was so great that the King hastily began to raise an additional army in December, calling out ban and arrière-ban, and in order that the capital might be able to withstand a siege, if worst came to worst, drew all the provisions of the country roundabout Paris for a space of ten miles into the city.

The position of the various armies was an interesting one. In east France the reiters of the duke of Deuxponts were endeavoring to join Orange who delayed his movement to await their coming,[1296] while Alva dogged his steps.[1297] In the west Condé was vainly striving to cross the Loire in order to join Orange and the Protestant reiters, while the duke of Anjou was straining every nerve to keep him back. In the midst of all, Paris lay calm but tense[1298]—the undisturbed center of the cyclone of war. Both armies suffered from the terrible weather of December. The soldiers of each side were dying of famine and privation.[1299]

The hope long deferred that Condé had cherished of Orange joining him made him heartsick at last; the latter could not come, for Alva, the duke of Aumale, and the Catholic reiters under a German colonel named Schomberg—a name destined to become illustrious—were too closely watching his movements.[1300] Even had these impediments been removed, the Seine and the Loire would have had to be crossed—an impossible feat.

The winter of 1568-69 was occupied with Huguenot and Catholic negotiations for foreign support and with preparations for a renewal of the war when the spring came. Meanwhile the delay of France to pay its debts in Switzerland had gradually provoked a change of public sentiment in the forest cantons, which pushed them a few years later into espousal of Spain. The loss of its ascendency in Switzerland was a particularly hard blow to France. For the policy of Spain had been to rouse a religious war in the Alpine lands, so that her intervention would find easy entrance. The five cantons of the center were the fulcrum of Spain’s diplomatic efforts. Day by day the tension became greater, the five cantons inclining more to Spain, their neighbors leaning to France, while between the two groups Bern and Zurich continued neutral, refusing to aid the prince of Condé with either men or money.[1301]

Military events were insignificant. Anjou remained with his army in Limousin, and the prince of Condé in Périgord. On December 23, 1568, there was a skirmish near Loudun. In January Condé marched to the relief of Sancerre. The town was of very strong situation and Brocbart, the Huguenot commandant, filled a great number of wine-vats with sand and earth and used them for gabions, and so managed to hold out against five assaults,[1302] although the place was so invested by the Catholic army that the prince could do nothing to relieve it. Failing this, he marched upon Saumur in the vain hope of forcing a crossing of the Loire at some point, on the way putting the garrison of 150 men in the abbey of St. Florens at Pont-de-Cé to the sword. Both armies suffered terribly from the weather and the condition of the country.[1303]

In the King’s council the Politique party still labored for peace, and in the interim made an unsuccessful effort to restore the Edict of Toleration.[1304] The cessation of hostilities, however, was complete enough to alarm the Pope, who feared another truce would be made and used exhortation and promise in order to prevent any compromise with heresy.[1305]

The Dutch and English were attentive observers of the movement in France, the former especially, for they felt that they and the French Protestants were engaged in a common cause. From England came numbers of English gentlemen to La Rochelle, in order to follow Condé in the war, and the Channel and the Bay of Biscay were thronged with English and Dutch privateers.[1306] Elizabeth, as the saying went, wanted “to throw the stone and hide the arm.” Although the English ambassador, Sir Henry Norris, protested the innocence of his government and the queen wrote with her own hand that she would not interfere in France, Englishmen were landed at La Rochelle and in Brittany and English vessels brought over gunpowder, shoes, and arms.[1307]

While Anjou held the line of the Loire, the French government established its military base at Château-Thierry on the Marne in order to prevent communication between the Protestant German princes, especially the elector palatine and the duke of Deuxponts; or between the Dutch and its own revolted subjects. To this end it was planned that the duke of Aumale, with a force of reiters sent by the margrave of Baden and the count of Westelburg, and some troops proferred by Count Mansfeldt[1308] should be sent against the prince of Orange, while the duke of Anjou was to go against the prince of Condé.[1309] But William of Orange effected a junction with the duke of Deuxponts[1310] in spite of D’Aumale’s effort to prevent him.[1311]

The attitude of the Lutheran princes had now become more definite in favor of the Huguenots.[1312]

The international Protestant plan was to drive its blows in on either side of Lorraine and thus sever the chain through central Europe by which Philip II held his dominions together, and to separate the two houses of Hapsburg.[1313] The conduct of the Emperor furthered this project, for when Charles IX sent La Forrest to the Emperor to protest against the action of the Lutheran princes of Germany and to continue the talk of his marriage with the Emperor’s daughter, Ferdinand, while expressing his regret at the troubled state of France, received the marriage proposition coldly and complained of the damage done by the French army under the duke of Aumale within the limits of the empire,[1314] and recommended that Charles try peaceful methods instead of force for the pacification of his kingdom.[1315] Parallel with the project to co-operate with the prince of Orange and the duke of Deuxponts, Coligny planned a revival of Huguenot activity in the south of France so that this diversion would weaken resistance to the other. The aim was, with the aid of the “viscounts” to break a way across the upper Loire, and so open the road to German assistance.[1316]

The combined array against D’Aumale was too great for him to make head.[1317] Nor was the adverse double military situation the sole anxiety of the French government. Montmorency and the duke of Bouillon were so disaffected that there was even expectation of their openly joining the Huguenots. The cost of the two armies amounted to 900,000 livres a month, besides the gendarmerie and artillery, which was about two million each quarter.[1318] There was owing to the gendarmerie 12,000,000 of livres for six quarters; to the 6,000 Swiss with the duke of Anjou 300,000 livres; to those with the duke of Aumale 100,000 livres besides what was owing to the French infantry. Both of the King’s commanders were so short of funds that they were forced to seize church-plate and even reliquaries.[1319]

In these extremities Charles IX viewed the renewal of war on the opening of spring with alarm and began to think of making peace for a term, with no intention of keeping it, but merely in order to avoid a catastrophe and with the hope that some of the Huguenots might be disarmed in the interim. But suddenly the cloud was lifted. The royal army under the nominal command of the duke of Anjou, but really commanded by the veteran Tavannes, who had orders to give battle at all cost before the duke of Deuxponts could arrive, won the decisive victory of Jarnac on March 13, 1569. It was a fierce and bloody battle.

The prince of Condé, after having been dangerously wounded and taken prisoner, suffered a foul death at the hands of some unknown assassin in the royal army, who shot him with a pistol-ball.[1320] In the engagement the Scotchman, Stuart, who had killed the constable at St. Denis, was taken and brought to the duke, who said to him: “So here you are, you traitor, you who have frequently boasted that you wished to kill the queen, my mother. Now you shall receive your deserts.” At that moment the marquis de Villars, the old constable’s brother-in-law, appeared, and with his own hands executed vengeance.[1321]

In Paris when news of the battle of Jarnac was brought a grand procession was authorized by the clergy and the Parlement. All the stores and shops were closed as though it were a holiday. The clergy, bearing the relics of the saints, marched first to the convent of the Cordeliers, and then to that of the Jacobins, where a fiery sermon was preached by a Jacobin of Auxerre named Mammerot. After the sermon the Te Deum was celebrated, and then the militia of the city assembled under the command of the four captains, and a grand review was held in the streets. The celebration ended by a great bonfire in front of the Hotel-de-Ville, and the firing of cannon.[1322]

The Pope took the victory of Jarnac as a direct answer to prayer.[1323]

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XIV. THE THIRD CIVIL WAR (Continued). THE PEACE OF ST. GERMAIN

By the death of Condé the Admiral Coligny became the actual leader of the Protestant cause in France,[1324] the more so when his brother d’Andelot died on May 7,[1325] although the young prince of Condé and his cousin, Henry of Navarre, were theoretically so regarded.[1326] In the nature of things, the leadership of two boys—the former was seventeen, the other sixteen years of age—could only be a nominal one.

After the first shock of dismay at the prince’s death had passed, the Huguenots were not dispirited. It is true that numbers of the Protestant gentry returned home.[1327] But the Huguenot position was strong in upper and lower Poitou, for the line of the Charente from Angoulême to Saintes was theirs, besides St. Jean-d’Angély, La Rochelle, and the islands of Marins and Oléron.[1328] The admiral rallied his forces at Tonnay-Charente,[1329] which he could do with impunity since the duke of Anjou raised the siege of Angoulême on April 12.[1330]

The hope of the court was to prolong the war, since the King controlled most of the towns and the river passages, “while the religion, their conquered country excepted, had but the fields,”[1331] until the resources of the Huguenots would at last become exhausted—money, men, munitions. But the queen of England loaned 20,000 livres to the Protestants, the jewels of Condé and Jeanne d’Albret being taken as security.[1332] Jeanne d’Albret in person directed the foreign negotiations of the Huguenots.[1333] The anxiety of the Huguenots was greatest over the effect which Condé’s death might have upon the foreign assistance which they were looking for, and letters from the prince of Navarre and the other leaders of the Huguenot army in Saintonge earnestly urged the reiters’ advance to the Loire.[1334] Coligny’s hope was by making a detour by way of Cognac and Chalais to reach the Loire and effect a junction with Deuxponts. To his great relief, the prince of Orange and the duke of Deuxponts wrote assuring the admiral of their continued adherence.[1335] As good as his word, Deuxponts, who was at Pont-à-Mousson on January 11, 1569, entered France near Langres, having passed by Joinville, the seat of the Guises in Lorraine, where the old duchess of Guise was then staying,[1336] and advanced upon Dijon where he arrived on April 26.[1337]

The real center of the government’s activity was Metz, which became the basis of operations against Deuxponts and Orange.[1338] Active efforts were made to repair the duke of Anjou’s losses and to strengthen his position.[1339] The offer of Spanish support which Alva had made was now formally accepted, for after the mission of Castelnau to the margrave of Baden to get relief, he was sent into Flanders to solicit the assistance of Alva, since it now had become the common interest of both crowns to crush the Protestants.[1340] The French commanders, the dukes of Nemours and Aumale, had received orders to prevent the approach of Deuxponts at all cost,[1341] but Aumale, partially on account of carelessness, partly because of misinformation, failed in his task, and by clever management Deuxponts at last succeeded in crossing the Saône above Bar into Auxerre and Berry, scaled the walls of Nevers, thereby shortening the road between him and the Huguenot army, and finally captured La Charité upon the Loire on May 20, after ten days of siege, and thus controlled the link which united Huguenots and reiters.[1342]

If the Huguenots had been dispirited after Jarnac, they had reason to feel elated after the capture of La Charité. Although the duke of Anjou kept the field in Saintonge, Angoumois, and Limousin, the army was so mutinous for want of pay, so depleted by desertion and disease, that it was far from formidable.[1343] Paris was in consternation after the capture of La Charité and anticipated seeing the high hats and great feathers of the reiters before long.[1344] The échevins of the city were ordered with all speed to make sale of the property of the Protestants to provide means for a new army, which had to be made up of peasant levies, “all their soldiers and men of the greatest value being already abroad.”[1345] The queen mother, having received letters complaining of lack of funds and mutiny in his army, bitterly reproached Aumale for negligence and cowardice in letting the duke of Deuxponts capture La Charité, and hastily started for the army in Saintonge, in company with the cardinals of Lorraine and Bourbon, where she went right among the soldiers with words of encouragement.[1346]

But mutiny of the army, and the capture of La Charité, with the prospective union of Coligny and the duke of Deuxponts, was not all that worried the queen and the cardinal. Casimir of the County Palatine was reported to be coming with 6,000 horse and as many foot; moreover, the Emperor was hostile.[1347] The extremity of the government was so great that compromise was necessary, and Catherine had in mind to patch matters up by offering her daughter Marguerite of France in marriage to the young Henry of Navarre—a plan whose consummation three years later precipitated the massacre of St. Bartholomew.[1348] Marshal Damville, the second son of the old constable, whose Politique leanings already had made him conspicuous, was significantly appointed the King’s lieutenant in Languedoc. Toleration was in the air once more.

But all of a sudden the Catholic cause revived for an instant.[1349] Coligny fell ill, and the progress of the Huguenot army was thereby impeded. Worse still, the duke of Deuxponts was stricken with a burning fever, so that he died the very day of his arrival in La Marche.[1350] Strozzi with some Italian forces attacked Coligny at La Roche-L’Abeille on June 25, when the rain was pouring in such torrents that the matchlocks of the Italians were useless, so that the soldiers on both sides clubbed their weapons—in the expressive words of D’Aubigné, “rompre croce sur cap”—that is, broke the crosses of their arquebuses over the heads of their antagonists.[1351] In the conflict Strozzi was taken prisoner. From this time forth the army of the King was simply a disorderly mass of men. Famine and fever so reduced it that the duke of Anjou was not able to defend himself, let alone invading the enemy’s territory. To increase his forces, he put arms in the hands of the peasantry of Limousin, with the result that a local jacquerie prevailed in the province. Lansac was repulsed in assaulting La Charité; Châtellerault (July 12) and Lusignan (July 20) were taken by the Huguenots.[1352] The Catholics failed before Niort, to whose relief the brilliant La Noue came after his own seizure of Luçon.[1353]

Under these circumstances the government was compelled to content itself with maintaining the line of the Loire save at La Charité, while it sought foreign succor.[1354] But the Swiss could not be expected until the middle of September, and Coligny sought to profit by the situation to take Saumur and thus secure a crossing on the lower Loire also, and Poitiers, for which purpose he divided the Protestant army,[1355] to the intense alarm of the government, which tried, through the queen mother, to delay action by drawing the admiral into an empty parley. This is the moment when the marriage of Henry of Navarre with Marguerite of France was first broached. But the admiral and Jeanne d’Albret were not to be deceived, and the siege of Poitiers was resolutely continued. (It lasted from July 25 to September 7, 1569.) The Catholic party fully appreciated that the importance of the war depended upon the success or failure of the Huguenots before this city, into which the young duke of Guise, then but nineteen years of age, had thrown himself on July 12 with all the ardor of his father before Metz. If Coligny took the town, some notable prisoners of war would have fallen into his hands, the dukes of Guise and Mayenne and the abbess of La Trinité, a sister of the cardinal of Bourbon[1356] and the ill-starred prince of Condé, the ransom of whom would have abundantly provided for the reiters in the service of the Protestants.

Poitiers was one of the most mediaeval towns in France. The remains of its towers and fortifications, its narrow bridges, the ruined palace of the ancient dukes of Aquitaine, everything recalled the life of a vanished past.[1357] The admiral’s guns soon made two breaches in the wall, but the fire from the castle and platform drove his men back and the breaches were repaired. The town, however, was too large in circuit for Guise to defend the whole,[1358] since many vineyards and fields were within its walls, in consequence of which the French had made a line of double trenches within the town. On August 19 the Huguenots made a furious assault, broke through the wall, and drove the Guisard forces back of the inside trenches. The enemy was “so straitly pent” that for sixteen days the soldiers had to live upon horse-flesh. The most remarkable incident of the siege was the driving-out of a great number of people, old men and women and children, who were unable to fight and could not be fed on account of the lack of provisions. So reluctant were they to go that they had to be whipped through the gates. Fortunately the duke of Guise took pity upon them at last, although in the city bread was so scarce that the food of one had to suffice for ten. All the horses and asses in the town were slain, the gentry out of honor to their position sating their hunger on the former. Of wheat, barley, and other grain there was none, nor was there a green thing left growing in the city. Even rats and mice were consumed.[1359]

The strength of Coligny (he had about 10,000 footmen and 8,000 to 9,000 horse) made it impossible for Anjou to dislodge him by direct attack. His own strength, as appeared by a general muster on September 3, consisted of 1,500 French gendarmes, 700 Italian horse, 1,000 Walloons, and 4,000 reiters, besides La Vallette’s regiment of 400 horse—it was much reduced during the siege—and the duke of Longueville’s and some other companies. Of footmen he had 6,000 French, 4,000 Swiss, 2,500 Italians, and 2,000 Walloons. Although this army in actual numbers excelled that of Coligny, in reality it was considerably inferior. The troops were many of them without officers, the 6,000 French were drafted peasantry unused to the use of arms; all of them were suffering from hunger and many from fever. The duke of Anjou, therefore, with the approval of his mother, determined to try to draw off Coligny from before Poitiers by a feigned attack upon Châtellerault.[1360] For this purpose he crossed the river Creuse on September 4 and planted his artillery before the town. The honor of the first assault was given to the Italians, which offended the French, who refused to support them.[1361] Nevertheless a breach 40 feet wide was made in the wall, so that the admiral, judging the place to be in great danger, sent 7,000 horse and 8,000 foot to the city’s relief, September 7. It was fatal impatience on Coligny’s part, for the action relieved Poitiers from the danger of being taken.

There was now no other recourse for the Huguenots except to give battle. But Coligny was unwilling to do this at once, desiring to wait until the devastation of the country round about still further reduced Anjou’s forces. In the interval he withdrew across the Vienne. But the mercenaries in both armies clamored for battle, for there was great want of money on both sides, the King’s Swiss being unpaid for three months, the reiters five, the admiral’s also being behindhand for three months’ wages.[1362]

On September 30, at Moncontour, the two armies clashed in a preliminary engagement. But three days later on Monday, October 3, 1569, the real battle was joined. It must have been an impressive and thrilling sight before the conflict began. In the Huguenot army the preachers moved about encouraging the men, who sang the solemn psalms of the Calvinist worship with fervor. Across the plain, the Swiss and Germans in the royal host, after the German fashion, knelt and kissed the ground.[1363]

At the first shock it seemed as if the Huguenots would win, and they cried in exaltation, “Victory, victory! The Evangel has won the victory and has vanquished the mass of the popes. Down with the Papists!”[1364] The admiral began the fray by charging Anjou’s center with 2,000 reiters and such French gendarmes as he had, but was himself attacked on the flank by the duke of Aumale and Villars so furiously that he was compelled to fall back. The Protestant infantry which had followed the horse into the battle, was thus left unsustained, and when the duke of Guise’s light horse charged, the lansquenets broke in flight, abandoning the artillery. In the midst of the melée various companies of reiters, seeing the battle lost, ran to their baggage, seized their most valuable effects, and decamped in haste. Mansfeldt’s reiters alone fought well; the others were of slight service. Matters were little better with the hirelings of the King. Many of the leaders on both sides were injured in the course of the battle; Guise in the hand and foot, Bassompierre, a German captain destined to become a very prominent man at court, in both arms; Anjou was borne to the ground off his horse but escaped injury; Coligny was hurt in the face by a pistol-ball. Among the Catholic dead was Montbrun, captain of the Swiss guard. He was haughty and cruel, and a despot with his men, but it is to his credit that he sought to prevent the soldiery from abusing the peasantry.[1365] The most of the Huguenot dead were the German reiters and lansquenets, many of whom were killed by their Catholic compatriots or the Swiss, who distinguished themselves by their ferocity.[1366] The fight endured for four hours, from 11 until 3 o’clock, at the end of which time the forces of Anjou overthrew the admiral, routed both his horse and foot, and captured his artillery and baggage. But for the good fortune that some of Coligny’s horse intercepted a treasurer of the King coming out of Limousin with 30,000 francs, the distribution of which among his reiters quieted their murmurs, Coligny might have been all but deserted by the German horse.[1367] As it was, he was able to fall back on Niort and thence make his retreat to the far south.[1368]

Fortunately for the Huguenots, the enemy did not attempt pursuit of them, but instead undertook the siege of St. Jean-d’Angély, which lay directly in the way southward, to the disgust of the liberal marshal Cossé and even Tavannes, who urged that the King, in the light of this great victory, might now make peace with good grace.[1369] Others, considering the strength of St. Jean-d’Angély thought that the war would be protracted into the depth of winter and that the capture of St. Jean-d’Angély would be of small importance while La Rochelle still remained. Instead of accepting the advice, the government hardened its policy. A reward of 50,000 crowns was offered for the head of Coligny,[1370] 600,000 francs were distributed among the soldiers and 300,000 sent into Germany to make a new levy against the spring.[1371]

On October 16 Charles IX arrived before St. Jean-d’Angély and beheld the greatest part of the royal troops ranged in order of battle. Anticipating a desperate resistance upon the part of those in the city, the King’s infantry requested to be equipped with the gendarmes’ cuirasses. One incident will illustrate the desperate valor of the besieged. On the night of October 21 they made a sortie, entered the enemy’s trenches, slew twenty men, took two ensigns prisoner, and all the arms they found in the corps de garde, and returned into the town. The Protestant garrison was not over 1,500 men, but in spite of the odds against him (he had no artillery except falconets and muskets, while Anjou had eleven guns, great and small), the Huguenot commander, Pilles, refused to surrender. Instead, when the governor of the town urged him to surrender rather than make resistance, the desperate captain had him hanged and his body cast into the river. The attack upon St. Jean-d’Angély opened on October 25, but although the wall was badly battered, no sufficient breach was made for days. The town resisted every attack until December 2, when it at last surrendered.[1372]

Yet in spite of the double victory of Moncontour and at St. Jean-d’Angély, hard experience was proving the wisdom of the course advised by Tavannes and Cossé. The King was without money to pay the Swiss and the reiters who threatened to mutiny at any minute. The country round about the army was so denuded that there was great misery for want of food and multitudes of the soldiers fell sick.[1373] Finally, on November 24, in a sitting of the King’s council, Charles IX was formally petitioned by certain of its members to make peace overtures to his revolted subjects,[1374] and expressed his willingness to comply with the request.

The hand of the government was forced by events; the courageous resistance of St. Jean-d’Angély, Montluc’s action in resigning his commission, and the growing strength of the Reformed among the southern “viscounts,” made the crown think eagerly of peace. As an earnest of this purpose, the King sent the liberal marshal Cossé in company with De Losses, the new captain of the Scotch Guard, to La Rochelle to confer with the queen of Navarre and La Rochefoucault. But Jeanne d’Albret was not minded to use haste, to which the marshal meaningly rejoined that “there were many of rank in the Protestant army who would not give her that advice.”[1375] Yet even if she had wanted to, the queen of Navarre could not have hastened a settlement. For at this time there was a real division of opinion existing between the Huguenot nobles and the people of the Huguenot towns like St. Jean-d’Angély and La Rochelle. The former class were weary of war and wanted to return to their homes and were in favor of peace and inclined to make their own terms, even to the extent of ignoring the claims of their coreligionists of the towns. The latter felt aggrieved at seeing themselves thus deserted, when they had done so much to maintain the general cause of the Huguenots, not merely in contributing money but by making such heroic resistance as that of the people of St. Jean-d’Angély, and Jeanne D’Albret sympathized with them. She would not listen to talk of peace, being firmly convinced that it was but another ruse, like that at Longjumeau, and resolutely declared that there would be time enough to consider terms of peace when their forces were more equal; that nothing short of the free exercise of the religion as granted by former edicts would avail; that even if all the Huguenot nobles consented to the terms, her own signature and that of Henry of Navarre would never be affixed to any half-way terms of pacification.[1376] But at last, after long debate, the queen of Navarre yielded, and sent the admiral’s future son-in-law, Teligny, who had conferred with Coligny, to the King to request “a good assured and inviolable peace,”[1377] probably being in part influenced by the treatment of St. Jean-d’Angély, whose garrison was suffered to march out, bag and baggage, with colors flying. The Huguenots demanded liberty of conscience, the restitution of their goods, estates, and offices to those of the religion, and the reversal of all sentences against them, together with guaranties for the observance of the articles.[1378]

The essential issue, and that which protracted the debate so long was the demand for chambres mi-parties,[1379] and that the crown give over certain cities into the hands of the Huguenots to be garrisoned and governed by them alone. On February 3, 1570, the King replied, promising to grant amnesty for the past, the restoration of their estates and offices to the Huguenots, the expulsion of the reiters, with liberty of the religion within private dwellings and in two towns which he would appoint.[1380] But Jeanne d’Albret, who conducted the negotiations for the Huguenots, refused to be satisfied. In a long letter to the queen mother a week later she recapitulated the former negotiations at great length and complained of the government’s want of good faith, especially alluding to the cardinal of Lorraine and the duke of Alva.[1381] As a matter of fact the government was not yet willing to give in. The cardinal of Lorraine still hoped to hasten forward a new levy of reiters in Germany when spring should open, and held out the vain hope of the restoration of the Three Bishoprics if the Emperor would lend France this assistance and stay the Protestant levies.[1382] But the Emperor himself had something to say about the matter and asserted that he would not consider the proposed marriage of his daughter with the French King until peace was concluded in France.[1383] Aware of the Emperor’s attitude, the queen of Navarre resolutely demanded terms of peace in conformity with the demands of the Huguenots.[1384]

The arguments of peace urged by the marshal Cossé and others who shared his thought had less influence upon the King and his counselors as the storm of war drove off toward the south,[1385] to the elation of Pius V, who overwhelmed Charles IX with protests against pacification.[1386] South of the Loire the principal interest of the third civil war is attached to the doings of that famous group of Huguenot warriors known as the “viscounts,” with whom Coligny had failed to connect before the battle of Jarnac. A brief account of the earlier achievements of this group, who sometimes fought together, sometimes separately, and had three or four thousand footmen and three or four hundred horsemen in their command,[1387] is necessary at this point. There were ten of these captains: Bernard Roger de Cominges, vicomte de Bruniquel; Bertrand de Rabastenis, vicomte de Paulin; Antoine de Rabastenis, vicomte de Montclaire; the vicomte de Montaigu; the vicomte de Caumont; the vicomte de Parat; Geraud de Lomagne, vicomte de Sevignac (near Beaucaire), a brother of Terride, who was a Catholic and implicated with Montluc in the project to deliver Guyenne to the King of Spain;[1388] the vicomte d’Arpajon; the vicomte de Rapin; and the vicomte de Gourdon.[1389] Three of these, and the most conspicuous, save Rapin, the viscounts of Paulin, Bruniquel, and Arpajon were natives of the diocese of Albi, a stronghold of heresy from mediaeval times; the first had seen service in Piedmont in the reign of Henry II, and the ancestors of all three of them had fought against Ferdinand of Aragon in 1495.[1390] The viscount of Rapin was a leader of the great Huguenot rising in Toulouse in 1562, and was made Protestant governor of Montauban in 1564 by the prince of Condé.[1391] He was so bitterly hated by the people of Toulouse that he was accused of wanting to destroy the city utterly and remove the very stones to Montauban. He had fought in the second civil war, but was betrayed into the hands of the magistrates of Toulouse and condemned and executed there on April 13, 1569, in defiance of the King’s orders to the contrary. The Huguenots took terrible reprisal for this outrage, devastating the environs of Toulouse for leagues around, even inscribing on the ruins “Vengeance de Rapin.”[1392]

These four viscounts were the nucleus of the group and began their career in the first civil war. But save Rapin, none became conspicuous then. During the second war the others were drawn to the standard. They operated in Languedoc and Quercy at first, aided by the peasantry who seem to have turned toward them as natural enemies of the higher nobles.[1393] In the summer and autumn of 1568 their united hosts made a mighty raid up the valley of the Rhone from Montauban through Rouergue and the Cévennes, where part of the troops crossed the Rhone under the viscount of Rapin and joined the Protestant army of Dauphiné and Provence under a former lieutenant of Des Adresse. The rest remained in Languedoc. Later Rapin recrossed the river into Vivarais with the hope of joining the prince of Condé. But the governor of Provence, the count of Tende, aided by the viscount of Joyeuse, the Catholic general in these parts, blocked his passage. In the midst of this plight relief came to the viscount of Rapin in the person of his former comrade in arms. But at least Joyeuse had prevented the union of the viscounts with the prince of Condé.

The people of Vivarais resented the occupation of the country by these guerrilla chieftains, much as their ancestors two hundred years before had risen against the Free Companies during the reign of Charles V. The towns organized an army of their own and distinguished themselves by routing the viscounts upon one occasion. In January, 1568, the viscounts succeeded in their early purpose, penetrated the Catholic army and crossed the Loire at Blois. The relief of Orleans and their union with the prince of Condé before Chartres hastened the peace of Longjumeau.[1394]

During the interim between the armistice of Longjumeau and the outbreak of the third war, the viscounts, in common with most of the Protestant forces of the south, seem not to have disarmed, but stayed in the vicinity of Montauban, the Huguenot capital of the far south. When war was renewed, Joyeuse and Gordes, governor of Dauphiné, unsuccessfully tried to keep the Huguenots east of the Rhone from joining them in Languedoc. At Milhaud in Rouergue a great council of war was held at which practically all the Protestant fighting forces of the south save Guyenne and Gascony were represented.[1395] In conformity with the plan there arranged, the viscounts remained in Quercy and Languedoc while the main army crossed the Dordogne with the purpose of joining the prince of Condé. But in Périgord it was met and scattered, on October 25, 1568, by the duke of Montpensier and Marshal Brissac. The viscounts continued to operate in Languedoc against Joyeuse and others. The success of their activities, especially the destruction of Gaillac (September 8, 1568) was what led to the revival of the league at Toulouse under the cardinal of Armagnac on September 12, in the cathedral of St. Etienne. The recall of Joyeuse with the Catholic troops of Languedoc to the north to assist the duke of Anjou, left a clear field in Provence and Languedoc. The loss of Jarnac, March 13, 1569, where the prince of Condé was killed, may in part be ascribed to the fact that the viscounts refused to respond to his orders for them to come to him, so that the united forces of Anjou and Joyeuse overwhelmed the Huguenots. A similar reverse befell the Protestants on June 8 following, in the Ariège near Toulouse, where Bellegarde, the seneschal of Toulouse, routed the viscounts and captured the viscount of Paulin, who would have suffered the fate of the viscount of Rapin, had not Charles IX, less for magnanimity’s sake than to rebuke the parlement of Toulouse for violating the royal orders before, refused to have him delivered up to it.[1396] The shattered bands of the viscounts joined Montgomery, a leader of their own kind, who had been detached by Coligny from his own army, in the same month.

The reason for Montgomery’s appearance in the south is to be found in the peril threatening Béarn and Navarre at this time. Montluc had conceived the idea that Béarn might be conquered while its ruler was absent. The parlement of Toulouse energetically favored the project and on November 15, 1568, had issued an arrêt placing Béarn under its jurisdiction.[1397] In the early months of 1569 efforts were made with some success to corrupt the captains in the Béarnais army.[1398] When the plan was broached to the duke of Anjou he enthusiastically approved it. The time was auspicious, for it so happened that the suggestion coincided with his victory at Jarnac. Exactly a week after the battle[1399] he detached the seigneur de Terride with instructions to report to Montluc, for the duke thought Montluc could not be spared from Guyenne.[1400] This order was a bitter disappointment to Montluc, who wanted to conquer Béarn himself, and he ever thereafter cherished a hatred against Marshal Damville[1401] who was away from his government at the time with the duke of Anjou, believing that Damville’s jealousy of him was responsible for it. This may very probably have been so, for, as will be seen later, the enmity between the two was extreme.

Terride’s campaign began well. One by one, in rapid order, the fortified towns of Béarn collapsed before him—Pontacq, Morlaas, Orthez, Sauveterre, and Pau—the birthplace of Henry of Navarre, while the country round about was wasted with fire and sword. The queen of Navarre’s lieutenant was driven to find refuge in Navarrens, whose château, reputed to be impregnable, had been built by Henri d’Albret during his enterprises against Spain. On April 27, 1569, Terride began the siege of the castle of Navarrens.[1402]

Montgomery, who arrived at Castres on June 21[1403] bearing the double commission of the two Protestant princes,[1404] in the course of four weeks found himself in the neighborhood of Toulouse and at the head of the united forces of the viscounts and some levies made in Albigeois. Montgomery’s energy amazed Montluc who was soldier enough to give his enemy credit for really wonderful achievement. He had never been in the country before and all the forces he had brought with him were three score and ten horses, and he had no other forces but those of the viscounts in the beginning. He had to cross the Garonne river, too, the entire length of which was watched by spies. The belief of the Catholic captains in Languedoc was that Montgomery intended to organize the defense of the places the Protestants were possessed of, and this erroneous opinion seems to have been given currency by the Huguenots themselves, “who had ever that quality to conceal their designs better than we,” testifies Montluc. “They are a people that rarely discover their counsels, and that is the reason why their enterprises seldom fail of taking effect.”

By rapid marching Montgomery reached Navarrens incredibly soon. Terride, his soldiers wearied out by a siege which had endured for three months and a half in midsummer, loaded with spoil, licentious and mutinous to an extent that shamed even the reiters, abandoned the siege and fell back on Orthez. But the city was not proof against the attacks of the viscounts. In broad daylight the walls were carried par escalade. On August 13, Terride, who had taken refuge in the castle with so much haste that he was without provisions or munitions, surrendered. He himself was spared by Montgomery for the purpose of being exchanged for the latter’s brother, but died before the transfer was made. His captains, almost to a man, were put to death. Some of these were former officers in the Béarnais army and were legally guilty of treason, but the real motive of Montgomery was reprisal for the ravages done by Terride’s army. At the beginning of the war the queen’s lieutenant, the heroic baron de Larboust, either in the hope of sparing Béarn, or anticipating what would be meted out again, had proposed to neutralize Béarn, putting it into the custody of the count de Grammont, even offering to oppose Montgomery if it were done. Terride refused and paid the price of his wilfulness and bigotry. Béarn was saved by Montgomery, in the most brilliant and most honorable campaign of his checkered career.[1405]

The Catholic failure to conquer Béarn goaded Montluc’s slumbering hatred of Damville to fury, for he believed the utter collapse of the Protestant cause would have followed the conquest.[1406] He blamed Damville for it, asserting that Terride’s overthrow was due to his slowness. But the marshal had had great difficulty in returning to his government. The Huguenots were in full possession of Quercy and the Albigeois, and the region around Toulouse was so much overrun by them that Damville was unable to reach Toulouse until the end of June.[1407] It took Montgomery even with the viscounts immediately at hand, nearly five weeks (June 21-July 27) to prepare for the relief of Navarrens, though the desperate condition of things there required haste, and with the entire civil as well as military burden of Languedoc upon him, a burden that necessarily had accumulated, too, during his absence, Damville could hardly be expected, with justice, to have got ready to go against Montgomery before the middle of August, by which time the siege of Navarrens was over. The truth is, Montluc and Damville radically disagreed as to the policy to be pursued in the south. Montluc’s patent covered the territory of Guyenne only. But Montluc, with a mere soldier’s disregard for forms of law, believed that it was a soldier’s duty to go where the need was greatest. He made the proposal that when Damville should have won a town in Languedoc he would come to attack another in Guyenne. To this the marshal demurred, asserting that it was his duty to attempt to recover what had been lost in his government and pointed to his commission. Montluc derided the plea and accused Damville of being so proud “a grand lord, son to a constable and a marshal of France,” that he would not work with a poor gentleman.[1408]

In the late summer (1569) Montgomery victoriously returned from Béarn, having reached the highest point of his reputation. Within six weeks he had gathered an army, marched leagues through a strange and hostile country, crossed the Garonne and raised a siege against equal forces, and turned the Catholic conquest of Béarn into defeat. It seemed a dream both to friend and foe. Nobly did his enemy say: “In all the wars there never was performed a more notable exploit.” If Montgomery had failed, Coligny would have had no place to retire to after the loss of Moncontour. For he came from that field of Protestant overthrow with the relics of an army only, mostly gentry and reiters, for the infantry was almost all cut to pieces or captured, without baggage, without money, even the horses needing to be reshod. It was well that the admiral could throw himself into the arms of Montgomery and the viscounts who enriched him with the spirit of their success and drew thousands, literally, to the Huguenot standard by the magic of their achievements. His following increased so rapidly that by the time he reached Montpellier he again had between ten and twelve thousand men.[1409] On January 3, 1570, Coligny and Montgomery united their forces. The dissension between Montluc[1410] and Damville gave them and the viscounts almost unrestrained freedom in Upper Gascony and Languedoc, where they grew enormously rich on the spoils of war, and carried their depredations to the very walls of Toulouse which was actually invested from January 22 to February 20, 1570.[1411]

When the news of Terride’s downfall was known to Montluc he made overtures to Damville in spite of his resentment. A council of war was held at Auch, but instead of coming himself the marshal sent Joyeuse to say that he thought it his duty to pass his time in his own government, considering the charge the country was under to sustain the war. It is interesting to observe the ancient ideas of provincial separation and autonomy asserting themselves at this time. In vain Montluc argued that the real enemy was in Guyenne and that the local hostility of the Huguenots in Languedoc was a little matter in comparison; that all Catholics were equally the King’s subjects and that the country was the King’s.[1412] Joyeuse answered that the estates of Languedoc would not pay for Montluc’s army unless he employed their money in recovering the places in their province. The decision abandoned Guyenne, leaving it alone and single handed, for the King’s forces were engaged in the protracted siege of St. Jean-d’Angély and could not come to its relief. “J’ay tousjours ouy dire que plus près est la chemise que la robbe,” said Montluc satirically.[1413]

The old man was on the point of discharging his army and retiring to Libourne or Agen, but the duty of a soldier forbade him. If he now abandoned the open country in so critical a condition, it would ever have been a reproach to him. He thought better of himself and attacked Mont-de-Marsan instead, where he placated his outraged feelings by refusing the petition of the garrison to capitulate and secretly gave orders for the massacre of the entire number save the captain, Favas.[1414] This feat of arms insured the future of Gascony and the Landes, for the city served as a granary for all the surrounding country from whence, however, to the detriment of France, much grain was exported to Spain.[1415] After this exploit, feeling the impossibility of maintaining his forces in the field, Montluc disbanded his army, sending his son to Lectoure and himself retiring to Agen. It goaded him to the quick that the crown approved throughout of Damville’s conduct and either ignored his own complaints, or criticized him for what he had done. “I was born under a planet to be ever subject to calumny,” he growled. “Age deprives a man of his heat: for in my younger days the greatest prince upon earth could not have made me swallow such a pill.”

It may have been that Damville had friends at court and Montluc none; it may have been that the marshal’s pride of long descent made him indifferent or even contemptuous of Montluc in some degree. But if we look closely at things it is evident that the spirit of provincial separation was the fundamental source of the difficulty between them. This spirit penetrated to the very bottom. Both Montluc and Damville were making war with men levied from the country in which they were—with militia instead of regular troops. The consequence of this was that every man in the host had an eye to the welfare of his family or his friends instead of to the King’s business; moreover, many had relatives or friends with the enemy, which made them fight reluctantly; finally, they were ill-paid and had to subsist on plunder, which debauched discipline. The true remedy would have been for Charles IX to have raised the useless siege of St. Jean-d’Angély and to have come in person into the southland, where the authority of the King might have overcome the local forces of separation; and where the regulars would have plied war as a trade, as the circumstances demanded.

The Catholics of the south had an example before their eyes in the reiters with the admiral, of the efficiency of regular troops over local forces. Coligny owed his future to them and Montgomery. The way the reiters made war excited the admiration of trained soldiers like Montluc. They so barricaded the villages in which they quartered themselves that nothing was to be got by assault and in the open country they were always mounted at the least alarm. It was very hard to surprise them. They were careful of their horses and arms and so terrible in action “that a man could see nothing but fire and steel.” The very grooms fought.[1416]

The reverses experienced at Poitiers, Moncontour, and St. Jean-d’Angély had not been fatal to the Protestants. In the middle of December Coligny wrote to the captain of La Charité that he felt ready to resume the offensive in the spring, having in La Rochelle, Cognac, Angoulême, Montauban, Castres, La Charité, and Montpellier a chain of impregnable fortresses extending from the seaboard clear to the heart of France, and controlling the Loire.[1417] A survey of the map will show the strength of the Huguenots in this part of France. All of Provence and Lower Languedoc was in full control of the Protestants, Montauban, Albi, and Castres, constituting a line of defense on the west. In Upper Languedoc they were not so strong and the condition of the Catholics was less precarious, since Toulouse, Auch, Agen, and Cahors, formed a quadrilateral in the very center. The Huguenots controlled many of the lesser towns, so that Montluc complained that time and again he had to pass through their hands “and for the least affair trot up and down with great trouble from city to city. Would to God that, as they do in Spain, we had made our constant abode in the good towns; we had then both more riches and more authority.”[1418]

Guyenne was safely Catholic if it could continue to hold its own; for this important fact Montluc richly deserves credit.[1419] But Guyenne, Gascony, and Upper Languedoc were isolated from the Catholic north by a broad Protestant strip running southeastward from La Rochelle to Montpellier through Saintes, Cognac, Angoulême, Chalais, Bergerac, Montauban, Albi, Castres, Béziers, and Montpellier, which united Saintonge on the seaboard with Provence and Dauphiné. But, on the other hand, Béarn was separated from the main trunk of Calvinism and was not yet safe, in spite of Montgomery’s success, unless it were bound to the main trunk. The Huguenot leaders realized this, and one of Coligny’s adroitest strokes, after Moncontour, was the seizure of Port-Ste. Marie, below Agen on the Garonne, with the aid of the German reiters.[1420] The capture of this place (November 29, 1569) insured the passage of the Garonne to the Huguenots[1421] and accomplished for those of the far south what the possession of La Charité insured to those of central France, for it bridged the Garonne. Later, when Bernard d’Astarac, baron de Martamot, early in the following January (1570) recovered Tarbes[1422] on the Adour, the Huguenots had a chain of fortresses running straight north from Béarn through Condom and Nérac to Bergerac and Angoulême, and Catholic Gascony and Guyenne were cut in twain.

Montluc, having fortified Agen, the capture of which would have been another disaster to the Catholics, then set to work to contrive how to break the bridge of boats which Coligny had constructed. A mason who had once built a floating mill for the marquis de Villars above Port-Ste. Marie came to him and suggested loading the mill with stone, cutting it loose, and letting it float down stream with the hope of breaking the bridge. The Garonne at this time was swollen with winter rains. The leaders were skeptical of the scheme, as the bridge was known to be protected by heavy cables above stream. But the captain Thodeas, an engineer with Montluc, supported the mason, after secretly surveying the structure. The novel battering-ram accomplished the work intended. Shortly before midnight the mill was loosed from its moorings, one of the soldiers being drowned in unchaining it. Coligny’s artillery, when it loomed through the darkness, made a desperate attempt to sink it by fire from the batteries at either end of the bridge, but in vain. The mill struck the bridge with such a shock that cables, chains, and boats all went to pieces with a crash. Two of the boats went down as far as St. Macaire and some, it was said, were picked up as far down as Bordeaux.[1423]

The destruction of the bridge was a heavy blow to the Protestants for it cut their forces into two parts. Besides Montgomery, very many of the reiters were caught on that side of the river toward Gascony. But Coligny’s enterprise robbed adversity of its sting. He improvised a bridge of two boats, upon which five or six horses could be carried at once, the boats being hauled by cable, after the Italian manner. It required an hour and a half to go and return, yet at last, with great pains and difficulty the whole company of reiters was got across stream. Montluc had proposed to Candale and La Valette that an attack be made upon Montgomery who was quartered at Condom, south of Nérac. But they were so slow in responding that Montgomery, too, was able to pass over, first his horse and then his foot, one after the other, it requiring five or six days for all his forces to make the transit.[1424]

But the admiral and Montgomery followed up this clever deed by a blunder so bad that the Reformed suffered for it for years afterward, and were saved from losing Béarn, perhaps, as they had almost lost it before, by the intervention of the Peace of St. Germain. Coligny’s original plan was to pass the rest of the winter and until harvest in Gascony and Guyenne, with Port Ste. Marie as his base and to have heavy artillery brought from the fortresses of Béarn with which to take all the towns upon the Garonne as far as Bordeaux. The bridge assured them control of two of the richest provinces of France, for they were absolute masters of the field. By this means Bordeaux would have been at their mercy, for the sea power of the Huguenots at Blaye[1425] was sufficient to close the city upon the sea side. It could not have held out for more than three months, for already corn was selling there at ten livres per sack. Bordeaux itself was rich and strong but situated in a barren country, so that, deprived of the Garonne and Dordogne, it could presently be reduced to famine. As for the Protestant army it would have fared well. The lesser towns like Libourne and Lectoure must inevitably have succumbed with their stores, and the viscounts were in full possession of Comenge and Loumaigne, the most fertile counties of all Guyenne. There were numerous stores of grain here, for it was a practice of the dealers and even gentlemen, to accumulate three or four years’ store in anticipation of a dear year. Had the Huguenots once got Bordeaux in their clutches, they might have boasted that they had the best and strongest angle of the kingdom, both by land and sea, commanding five navigable rivers. The bridges over the Charente at Saintes and Cognac, being in their hands, no one could pass from Saintonge to Bordeaux where La Noue lay, “as valiant a man as any that ever was in France.” The river system of the southwest—the Charente, Ile, Dordogne, Lot, and Garonne—could have been made to bind the whole region into a compact whole if this plan had been carried out, and from behind these natural barriers the Protestants might have defied all the King’s armies.

Yet although Coligny’s army tasted of Bordeaux wine and his reiters watered their horses in the Garonne, he did not go on. He failed to see that the most vital need of the Huguenots was to gain complete mastery of the sea. This is what La Noue perceived and Coligny did not. After the loss of Rouen they had but one important port town at their command, La Rochelle, which the blunders of the government in the second civil war had permitted the Protestants to make their own, on which depended Brouage, reputed the fairest and most commodious haven in all the kingdom, and the chief staple for salt in all the southwest.[1426]

The sequel to such a course, it is true, must probably have been the erection of the southwest of France into an independent state. Such a result, looking at the France of today, is repugnant to our feelings. But we must look at things as they were then and judge accordingly and without prejudice. In the first place, it is to be remembered that in Béarn there was already the nucleus of such a state to build upon; and secondly that Guyenne and Gascony for centuries had been possessions of another sovereignty, and that their attachment to France was barely over a century old. In the sixteenth century it was impossible to divorce religion from politics and the only solution was the separation of those which disagreed on matters of religion, as the division between the Protestant Dutch and the Catholic Flemish provinces in 1578-79 proves. The Peace of Augsburg had laid down the principle cujus regio, ejus religio, and no other policy could have prevailed in Germany at that time. But France was trying to make a monarchy, institutionally and necessarily Catholic, adapt itself to two religions, which could not be done as long as politics and religion, church and state, were united. Even after twenty-eight years more of struggle, neither the trial and experience of all those years nor the genius of Henry IV ever made the Edict of Nantes anything more than a modus vivendi which first proved intolerable to the Huguenots because of their own political ambitions, and finally to the monarchy of Louis XIV, whose motto was as truly: “Un roi, une loi, une foi” as it was “l’état, c’est moi.” The French monarchy in the nature of things, in the sixteenth century, could not be one-half Catholic and one-half Protestant, any more than the United States, as Lincoln said, could exist one-half slave and one-half free. What France would have lost by the creation of an independent state in the southwest would have been compensated for by other gains in other ways. Such a state in southwest Europe would have been an effective agency for peace, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It not only would have relieved its Catholic neighbors of the religious dissidents within their borders; it would have been a checkmate upon the undue aggrandizement of either France or Spain, operating like Holland and Switzerland as a buffer state and for the maintenance of the balance of power. The Spanish marriages of France in the next century probably never would have been, with their attendant train of dynastic and territorial complications during the reign of Louis XIV. The Grand Monarque perhaps never would have conceived the thought of browbeating the rest of Europe, and certainly never would have been able to carry the idea out to the extent he did.

In abandoning his original plan in January, 1570, Coligny not merely altered the immediate future of France; perhaps he changed its destiny for centuries to come. Instead of securing peace and security for the Huguenots by cutting the Gordian knot and establishing an independent Huguenot state, with Béarn as its cornerstone, he threw the solution of the question back upon France. He had dreamed of a Huguenot France beyond sea. Why not one at home? Instead Coligny had become possessed with the idea that neither the King nor his ministers would seriously think of peace as long as the war could be kept confined to provinces remote from Paris and therefore, in order to force the hand of the King, it was necessary to force war upon him in the very heart of the kingdom. In other words, he conceived a new design, namely, to throw the war into the center of France once more, to march upon Paris, and, before its gates, dictate the terms he desired.

In pursuance of this new policy, the army of the admiral and the viscounts, with Montgomery, moved up the Garonne. Toulouse was invested for a month (January 22-February 20, 1570), as we have seen, without success and the country fearfully wasted.[1427] Want of provisions for men and horses at the end of this time compelled the host to move toward Carcassonne and Montréal.[1428] As the country between Montpellier and Avignon was almost totally in control of the Huguenots, Coligny soon moved thither, whence he followed up the right bank of the Rhone to Vivarais and Forez. Illness overtook him here and he was in great danger.[1429] For a time it seemed certain that fate would call Louis of Nassau who had joined him from Orange, to the leadership of the army.[1430] By the time of the admiral’s recovery, it was time for action if his design was to be executed, for things were in a greater state of doubt and uncertainty regarding the peace than ever.

The prospect of peace darkened as the winter began to break and preparations in both camps grew more active. In February the marshal Cossé prepared to expel the Huguenots from La Charité in order to deprive them of their only means of communication across the Loire River, by which assistance could be brought from Germany. This place had been one of the cities demanded from the government as pledge of good behavior, but the crown was determined not to yield in this particular. Queen Elizabeth had strongly assured the King that she had not directed nor licensed any of her subjects to carry arms or munitions to La Rochelle, but guarded herself against possible compromising evidence being discovered in future by adding that she “generally must permit merchants to resort indifferently to France.”[1431]

While the negotiations thus dragged on through March and April,[1432] a new element of excitement was introduced by the conduct of the reiters in the Catholic army. These adventurers, many of whom were Protestant in faith, tired of idleness and determined either to renew the war or secure their wages, on April 17 sent the King an address in which, in the same breath, they asserted their loyalty to Charles IX and their belief that those of the Reformed religion were only fighting for liberty of conscience and the preservation of their lives. Though guardedly put, reading between the lines, this memorial implied peace at once or immediate renewal of the war. Coincident with this manifesto the princes of Navarre and Condé joined in a note to the King declaring their resolution never to yield. To these causes of disaffection must be added the further one that many in the rank and file of the Huguenot party believed that the Protestant leaders were seeking to serve their own ends more than the common good; and accused them of being more anxious for the preservation of their privileges than for the free exercise of religion.

Matters continued thus to hang fire for several weeks. The King went to Mont St. Michel in the middle of May to keep the feast of Corpus Christi there, where, while professing his desire to conclude the peace, Charles IX nevertheless imposed a tax of 60,000 francs monthly upon those who had failed to bear arms in the late conflict. At the same time there was a large exodus of nobles from the court, many gentlemen, weary of long service in arms, soliciting and securing leave to retire. The talk of peace, too, continued to be current in the court,[1433] although Charles IX’s secret dealings with Montluc, the alienation of 50,000 écus de rente of the property of the church,[1434] and the fact that the marshal Cossé at this same time advanced out of Orleans with 2,000 horse and 4,000 French footmen and was soon joined by 8,000 Swiss and 30 companies of men-at-arms belied this.

Montluc had been on the point of resigning his commission for months past on account of the friction with Damville, but repented when there was prospect of the liberal marshal Cossé succeeding him, fearing lest, with another such as Damville, the Catholic cause throughout the south would be ruined.[1435] He still clung to the hope of seeing Béarn conquered notwithstanding Terride’s failure, and in June, 1570, the opportunity seemed to have come. With the aim of diverting the war from the Ile-de-France, and throwing it into the provinces once more—the farther the better—Charles IX grasped at a new expedition against Béarn. Montluc was given the commission.[1436] Notwithstanding his years and his infirmity and the penury of the government, which had neither munitions nor money to spare, Montluc managed to raise a considerable force.[1437]

He had resolved to besiege the little fortified town of Rabastens, near Tarbes, which he had chosen as the point of attack because he could draw upon Gascony for supplies from this place more easily than by beginning at St. Severs, which bordered on the Landes, “a country only fruitful in sands.”[1438] But the expedition came to an untimely end. In an unguarded moment Montluc exposed himself and “a harquebus-shot clapt into his face” with such force as to break his whole visage in, so that the cheek-bones were taken out in splinters. The town was taken, nevertheless. How it suffered may be read in the words of him who meted out its punishment.

My Lieutenant, who had marcht on the one hand of me when I went on to the Assault ... came to see if I was dead, and said to me: “Sir, cheer up your spirits, and rejoyce, we have entred the Castle, and the Soldiers are laying about them, who put all to the sword; and assure your self we will revenge your wound.” I then said to him, “Praised be God that I see the Victory ours before I dye. I now care not for death. I beseech you return back, and as you have ever been my friend, so now do me that act of friendship not to suffer so much as one man to escape with life.” Whereupon he immediately returned and all my servants went along with him, so that I had no body left with me but two Pages, Monsieur de Las, and the Chirurgeon. They would fain have sav’d the Minister, and the Governor, whose name was Captain Ladon, to have hang’d them before my Lodging, but the Soldiers took them from those who had them in their custody, whom they had also like to have kill’d for offring to save them, and cut them in a thousand pieces. They made also fifty or threescore to leap from the high Tower into the Moat, which were there all drown’d. There were two only saved who were hid, and such there were who offer’d four thousand Crowns to save their lives, but not a man of ours would hearken to any Ransom; and most of the women were kill’d who also did us a great deal of mischief with throwing stones. There was found within a Spanish Merchant whom the Enemy had kept prisoner there, and another Catholick Merchant also, who were both saved; and these were all that were left alive of the men that we found in the place, namely the two that some one help’t away, and the two Catholick Merchants. Do not think, you who shall read this Book, that I caused this slaughter to be made so much out of revenge for the wound I had received, as to strike terror into the Country, that they might not dare to make head against our Army. And in my opinion all Souldiers in the beginning of a Conquest ought to proceed after that manner, with such as are so impudent as to abide Canon; he must bar his ears to all Capitulation and Composition, if he do not see great difficulties in his Enterprize, and that his Enemy have put him to great trouble in making a Breach. And as severity (call it cruelty if you please) is requisite in case of a resolute opposition, so on the other side mercy is very commendable, and fit, if you see that they in good time surrender to your discretion.[1439]

Since his assumption of the command at La Rochelle La Noue had displayed an energy that drove the enemy to despair. On land and on sea he became a terror to them. Sometimes it was by arresting the King’s galleys and bringing them as prizes to La Rochelle or Brouage;[1440] sometimes it was by driving them out, as at Rochefort, by digging a trench which poured waters waist deep down upon them; sometimes it was by battle in the open field. La Noue outmatched Puygaillard at every point, notwithstanding that his antagonist had the King’s picked troops. In the plain of Ste. Gemme, near Luçon, their armies clashed in a fierce, stubbornly fought engagement. Nearly all the captains of his enemy’s two regiments and 500 arquebusiers were killed and as many more taken prisoner. The brilliant captain at last won, although he was so badly injured by an arquebus shot in the left arm that amputation was necessary. Yet in the hour of his own intense suffering he magnanimously lamented “the death of so many brave gentlemen.”[1441]

Much more decisive than this engagement, however, was Coligny’s action. The admiral had been lingering at Montbrison in Auvergne during May for the purpose of guarding the upper Loire.[1442] Alarmed by the formidable army under the marshal Cossé, Coligny now determined to strike suddenly and hard in order to preserve La Charité. This resolution precipitated the battle of Arnay-le-Duc on June 15, 1570.[1443] The result of this victory was startling. The government capitulated almost at once. All the essential terms of peace had been thrashed over during the spring and in less than a week after the battle Charles IX held in his hands the articles of pacification demanded by the Huguenots, chiefly stipulating for the free exercise of religion within three towns in every province and at Charenton, amnesty for the past and restitution of offices and estates. But the crown flatly refused the right within ten miles of Paris, or even for Protestant noblemen attending court in their own chambers and offered two towns in each province instead of three. When this was refused it was finally settled to adopt August 1, 1570, as an annus normalis, and permit Calvinist worship to be held in all towns in the possession of the Huguenots on that date. The two points of contention still unsettled were the payment of the reiters and determination of the surety-towns. The government at first proposed that the payment of the reiters be equally apportioned between the subjects of both religions, but finally shouldered the burden. As to the surety-towns—the most important point of all as far as practical politics was concerned—great difficulty was experienced before agreement was made. The King at first offered to yield La Rochelle, Angoulême, and Montauban, and to trade Perpignan or Lansac for La Charité.[1444] Later, Angoulême was withdrawn and Cognac substituted, to the displeasure of the Huguenots, and La Charité definitely yielded. As to other matters, namely, restitution of honors, offices, estates, privileges, equality of justice, amnesty, release of prisoners, and the like, these of course were provided for, and Protestant nobles enjoying “high justice” were to be permitted to enjoy free exercise of the Calvinist faith, including baptism in their houses, for their families, and all others in their dependence,[1445] an evidence that the feudal element in the Huguenot party was more considered than the bourgeoisie.[1446]

The papal nuncio, understanding that the Huguenots had demanded the exercise of their religion in the counties of Verre and Avignon, which belonged to the Pope, declared that no peace could be made with those who were outside of the church.[1447] At the same time the Spanish ambassador, being informed that it was part of the Huguenot programme to secure the restitution of William of Orange and his brother Louis of Nassau to their French possessions, also protested warmly against the peace. Spain offered direct assistance to France of men and money, and the city of Paris and the clergy offered to maintain the war at their own expense for eight months longer. But these protests were ineffectual. The Spanish ambassador’s mouth was stopped by the rejoinder that the French King had as much right to make a treaty of peace with his subjects as Philip of Spain had to make terms with the Moriscos,[1448] and so, though apprehensive of French and German Protestant assistance being given to Orange and fearful of an attack upon Franche Comté, the Spanish ambassador was forced to be content with the promise of France that no hostility was intended or would be permitted in France toward Spain.

The Peace of St. Germain was the broadest and most substantial body of privileges yet secured by the French Protestants. Antedating the Edict of Nantes by twenty-eight years, it might have been as great and as permanent an instrument as the latter, if the ambition of the Guises and the intervention of Spain in French affairs had not overthrown it. France itself, government and people, was tired of ten years of strife and disposed to peace. The economic interests of the country were anxious for peace. Only zealots for the religion and those who sought to fish in troubled waters reprobated the terms of St. Germain and sought to continue the struggle. It is true that mutual suspicion still prevailed. Some of the Huguenots anticipated new encroachments again, destructive of the peace, and that the King only aimed to disarm the Protestants in order to overwhelm them later. But time, in all probability, would have qualified this feeling. Religion, unless artificially exaggerated, had ceased to be the primary issue of France by 1570. The real issue was Spain. For all parties alike in France had begun to chafe because of the power acquired by foreign military influences, especially that of Philip—a feeling which ultimately was destined to unite the country on the basis of a national patriotism and embolden Henry of Navarre to expel the Spaniard and establish the Bourbon throne on a truly national basis.

An incident which took place at the court in mid-July, when the terms of peace were under consideration, illustrates this all but universal hatred of Spain. One day the Spanish ambassador entered the King’s chamber for audience. Soon afterward the marshal Tavannes came in, who was somewhat deaf and accustomed to speak in a loud voice. Perceiving the ambassador he gruffly remarked in a voice so audible as to be heard by Alava:

These Spaniards would do better to govern their own members and not interfere by trying to govern other people’s countries. For I well know that the Spaniards have no wish but to foment civil wars, so that both one party and the other may be weakened and they themselves become stronger than both. For my own part, I would rather see a hundred white capes [the Huguenot costume] than one red cross [the device the Spaniards wore]; because, after all, the first are our brethren and our kindred, while the latter are the natural enemies of our country.[1449]

It was an opportune time for France to undertake an anti-Spanish policy, and it was soon predicted that she would follow such a course.[1450] Aside from the discomfiture of the Guises owing to the peace, a condition which peculiarly discountenanced the cardinal of Lorraine, the duke of Guise was in disgrace also. For he was discovered to have made overtures of marriage to Madame Marguerite, the King’s sister, and the lady herself for whom a Portuguese match was being considered as a blow to Spain, was reputed to have expressed a preference rather to stay in France than “to eat figs in Portugal.” Guise, when the discovery was made that he had raised his eyes to the princess, hastily attempted to divert suspicion by marrying the princess of Porcien. But the episode injured the influence of the Guises, and brought Montmorency forward as the man of the hour.[1451]

Under the new régime, the government set about carrying out the terms of pacification, enforcement of which chiefly depended upon the upright and just conduct of the four marshals.[1452] By the end of September the camps were wholly broken up and the reiters either over or on their way across the frontier.[1453] To be sure, radical Protestants continued to complain of infractions of the edict.[1454] But the one serious infraction of the edict was in the fifteenth article, providing that all scholars, the sick and the poor, should be received in the universities, schools, and hospitals without difference or distinction on account of religion. The Catholic party, in the hope of abridging the development of the competing religion soon persuaded the King to nullify this provision. In compliance with a petition praying that the crown would forbid any of the Reformed religion from holding any post of authority in the University of Paris, and also that the university authorities might have power to search for and seize all heretical books, Charles IX on October 8, 1570, issued a proclamation forbidding any Calvinist from holding any office or teaching in the University of Paris and giving the authorities thereof the right of search for heretical books.[1455] On November 20, this was followed by a more sweeping decree forbidding any persons from keeping schools or holding office in any college, or lecturing on any art or science in public or in private unless recognized and approved by the Roman church.[1456] Nevertheless, these petitions, complaining of infractions of the edict, were more smoke than fire. The only internal issue of great importance was an economic one.

Apart from the destructiveness of the war, nature again dealt hardly with France in this year. There were heavy rains over all Europe which either rotted the grain in the fields or washed it out. A great inundation of the Seine occurred on June 2, 1570, and the plague began to grow more virulent once more.[1457] There was a certain amount of reason in the demand for a new session of the Estates to consider the economic distress of France, but the King was wise in refusing the request, for in event of its meeting, the enemies of Spain would have been sure to endeavor to fan the ashes of the late civil war into flames again. As a solace to those demanding economic relief Charles IX promised to abolish sundry superfluous offices and to tax the nobles instead of the commons for the relief of his debts which amounted to 37,000,000 francs. An earnest of this intention is manifest in an ordinance requiring parish wardens to keep accounts and to make a declaration of the revenue of their churches and to send this information to the royal bailiffs. Every parish was forced to obey this edict, which was a novelty indeed. But the parish authorities took advantage of the situation and not merely rendered an account of their incomes, but also gave the King a minute account of the ruin they had suffered at the hands of the Huguenots. The bailiffs received these declarations and sent them to the Privy Council of the King, where the evidence was reviewed and every church taxed accordingly. The churches which had been burned by the Protestants were lightly taxed, and those which were found to be incapable of payment were authorized to sell their possessions, their vessels, jewels, or lands, or else impose a tax on the parish.[1458]

But the thrifty bourgeoisie of France were too lucrative a source of income for the King to keep his promise not to tax them more. In March, 1571, an edict was issued providing that bolts of woolen cloth should be sealed with a leaden seal before sale, and that each bolt should be taxed 3 francs, 4 deniers. The new impost, which was very unpopular, was ascribed to the Italian influence at court.[1459]

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