THE HUGUENOTS
AND
HENRY OF NAVARRE
THE HUGUENOTS
AND
Henry of Navarre
BY
HENRY M. BAIRD
PROFESSOR IN THE UNIVERSITY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK ; AUTHOR OF THE HISTORY OF
THE RISE OF THE HUGUENOTS OF FRANCE
WITH MAPS
VOL. I.
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1903
3x
in
COPYRIGHT, 1886, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
' ^^ry
957840
TROWS
PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY,
NEW VORK.
PREFACE
In the History of the Rise of the Huguenots I attempted to
trace the progress of the Protestant party in France from the
feeble and obscure beginnings of the Reformation to the close
of the reign of Charles the Ninth ; when, by reason of heroic
struggles, and of the fortitude wherewith persecution and treach-
ery had been endured, the Huguenots had gained an enviable
place in the respect and admiration of Christendom. In the
present work I have undertaken to portray the subsequent fort-
unes of the same valiant people, through a period not less
critical and not less replete with varied and exciting incident,
down to the formal recognition of their inalienable rights of
conscience in a fundamental law of the kingdom, declared to be
perpetual and irrevocable. As the Massacre of St. Bartholo-
mew's Day constituted the most thrilling occurrence related in
the former volumes, so in the volumes now offered to the public
the promulgation of the Edict of Nantes is the event toward
which the action throughout tends, and in relation to which even
transactions of little weight in themselves assume importance.
A conflict persistently maintained in vindication of an essential
principle of morals is always a noble subject of contemplation.
But when the matter at issue is nothing less than the claim to
VI PREFACE.
liberty of religious thought and expression, the assertion of the
indefeasible title of all mankind to absolute freedom in the wor-
ship of Almighty God, the strife becomes invested with the
highest interest ; and the men who, for a long series of years,
have stood forth as champions of a doctrine once ignored, or
denied, receive the homage due to such as have benefited their
race. The fact that their exertions were crowned with success
adds lustre to their bravery and perseverance. Nor does it de-
tract from the glory of their deeds or the interest of the recital
that, possibly in a strange and wholly unlooked-for way, the
general course of events was shaped to further their designs, so
that the very steps taken by their opponents conduced marvel-
lously to hasten the advance of the cause which those opponents
sought to retard and overthrow.
During the greater part of the period of thirty-six years cov-
ered by these volumes (1574-1610), the history of the Hugue-
nots was so closely interwoven with the general history of
France that it would be impracticable to narrate the one with-
out the other. The wars by which France was convulsed were
waged for the purpose of constraining the Protestant minority
in the kingdom to a conformity with the creed and rites ap-
proved by the Roman Catholic majority. The " Holy League "
found the pretext for its existence in the popular belief that the
ancestral religion was in danger of decline and ultimate ruin
because of the lukewarmness of the reigning monarch and the
heterodoxy of his prospective successor. The historian of the
Huguenots is consequently compelled to be to some extent
the historian of the war against the League. For the elected
" Protector of the Churches " is the same Henry of Bourbon,
King of Navarre, whose sword is to slay the hydra-headed
monster of rebellion against the crown of France. More than
PREFACE. vii
this, the Huguenot noblemen and burgesses are the followers
without whose support that sword would have been powerless
to perform such prodigies of valor. The figure of Henry is
not, it is true, the only heroic figure that comes upon the stage
of action. His cousin Conde was even more devoted to Hugue-
not interests ; and Francois de Chatillon, Count of Coligny, a
worthy son of the famous admiral, bade fair, had not his life
been cut short, to rival the fame, as he already emulated the
manly courage and Christian virtues, of a father upon whose
greatness the crime of Catharine de' Medici and the Guises had
irrevocably set the seal of history. Yet the chivalrous form of
Henry of Navarre is that of the chief actor upon whom the eye
naturally and unavoidably rests, with the expectation that his
words and his actions will exercise an influence leading if not
decisive. Next in interest, therefore, to the edict by which he
gave liberty of conscience and of worship to the Huguenots of
France, stands the act of defection to the faith in which he had
been reared — the Abjuration at Saint Denis, which must ever
remain the great blot upon his fame as a man and a ruler, be-
cause based upon no conscientious convictions, but solely on
motives of political expediency. To trace the decadence that
led to an act as disastrous to public morality as disgraceful to
the king himself must form a portion of my task in the follow-
ing pages.
The marginal notes will, for the most part, furnish the neces-
sary information regarding the authorities consulted. I have
aimed to make conscientious use of every available source of
accurate knowledge, whether Protestant or Roman Catholic.
The extended historical works of De Thou and his continuator
Rigault, of Agrippa d'Aubigne, of Jean de Serres, of Davila,
of Benoist, and others, have afforded the means of comparison
Vlll PREFACE.
with the precious collection of fugitive papers and pamphlets
contained in the " Memoires de la Ligue," the " Memoires de
Nevers," and the " Archives curieuses " of Cimber and Danjou ;
with the immensely extended correspondence of Duplessis Mor-
nay ; with the Memoires of Sully, and the less familiar Memoires
of Saint- Auban, Bouillon, Groulart, etc.; and with the letters of
Hubert Languet, Busbecq, Pasquier, and other contemporaries.
I have made constant use of the " Bulletin " of the French Prot-
estant Historical Society, and the " France Protestante " of the
brothers Haag, to both of which I expressed my indebtedness
in the preface to my previous work. Without referring in
detail to the collections of State Papers long known to the
public, I desire to state the great benefit I have derived from
the invaluable " Lettres missives de Henri IV," and from the
//despatches of the Florentine agents resident at the court of
France (Petrucci, Alamanni, Cavriana, Rucellai, etc.), published
under the title of " Eegociations diplomatiques avec la Tos-
cane ; " as well as from Professor A. Kluckhohn's collection of
the letters of Frederick the Pious, and his monograph, " Zwei
pfalzische Gesandschaftsberichte," in the Transactions of the
Bavarian Royal Academy, and from the correspondence of the
Guises with the ambassadors of Philip the Second and the Duke
of Parma, edited by De Croze. Among the more recent con-
tributions to historical science that have afforded me important
assistance, I shall confine myself to a simple mention of Poirson,
on the Reign of Henry the Fourth; of Picot, on the States
General ; of Anquez, on the Political Assemblies of the Hu-
guenots; of Morikofer, on the Refugees in Switzerland; of
Professor Loutchitzky's " Documents inedits pour servir a l'his-
toire de la Reforme et de la Ligue ; " of M. Henri Fazy's
" Geneve, le Parti huguenot et le Traite de Soleure ; " of the
PREFACE. iX
Memoires of Gaches, on the Keligious "Wars at Castres and in
Languedoc; of the Memoires of La Huguerye; of Daval, on
the History of the Reformation at Dieppe; of Count Dela-
borde, on Francois de Chatillon ; of Read, on Daniel Chamier ;
of Stahelin, on the Abjuration of Henry the Fourth; and of
Nicolas and Bourchenin, on the Protestant Academies, or
Universities of France.
In the publication of the present volumes I carry out in part
the plan I proposed for myself in the preface to the Rise of
the Huguenots. Should they be received with the measure of
favor extended, on both sides of the ocean, to that work, I hope
at some future time to bring the historical series to its natu-
ral conclusion in a History of the Revocation of the Edict of
Nantes, a theme to which new attention has been drawn by the
commemoration, in many countries and in both hemispheres, of
the Bicentenary of the promulgation of Louis the Fourteenth's
proscriptive ordinance.
Univeksity op the City of New Yobk,
August 24, 1886.
CONTENTS
OF
VOLUME FIRST
BOOK I.
CHAPTER I
1574-1576.
Page
The Accession of Henry of Valois, and the War against the
Huguenots 3
Growth of the Huguenots in the Preceding Reigns .... 3
Catharine de' Medici's Letter 8
Mourning of " La Reine Blanche " ....... 9
Henry's Anxiety 10
The Huguenots in Arms ......... 11
Revival of Feudalism 12
Perplexity of the King of Poland ....!.. 13
Escape from Cracow .......... 14
Henry at Venice 14
Huguenot Leaders 15
The Prince of Conde 15
Losses in Normandy . . . ...... 16
Marshal Damville and the Parliament of Toulouse .... 17
Capture of Castres 17
First Siege of Livron 16
Conde's Declaration 19
Political Assembly at Milhau 21
Opposition to Alliance with the Politiques 22
The Alliance a Necessity 23
The Question of Religious Toleration 23
Henry's Tastes pacific 24
His first Intentions .......... 25
Good Advice of the Emperor and the Doge 26
Xli CONTENTS.
Page
Of the Elector 26
And of the Prince of Orange 27
Special Instructions of Lord North ....... 27
Intolerant Counsels of the Pope and the Queen Mother ... 28
Catharine's Influence 29
Damville's Interview at Turin ........ 30
The Royal Council deliberates 31
Paul de Foix's Plea for Peace 31
Villequier's Reply 32
Henry resolves to Prepare for War jt, 33
Official Declaration .......... 35
Huguenot Operations 35
Montbrun's courageous Answer 36
Henry at Avignon >*. 37
He joins the Flagellants 38
Death of the Cardinal of Lorraine ....... 39
His Character k. . .40
His Claim to have caused the Massacre ...... 41
His Responsibility .......... 41
The Huguenots of Livron 42
Capture of Fontenay and Lusignan ....... 43
The Fairy Melusine . 44
Henry's Coronation and Marriage * 45
His growing Devotion to Pleasure 47
His Lavishness and Penury ........ 47
Conference of Nismes . 47
Negotiations for Peace (April, 1575) 48
Beza's broad Statesmanship ........ 49
Speech of Arenes 51
The Huguenot Demands 52
Surprise and Indignation 54
The Demand for Religious Liberty 55
Maximilian's Example ......... 56
Catharine urges a better Offer ........ 58
Punishment of the Authors of the Massacre demanded ... 59
Henry asseverates his Innocence k/ 60
Coligny's Memory vindicated ........ 60
Unpalatable Propositions 61
The Envoy of the Politiques derided . . . . * . . .62
Henry offers unacceptable Terms </ 63
He substitutes better Conditions .... «... 63
End of the Negotiations 64
" The prodigious Demand for the Edict of January " .... 64
Intercessions of Foreign States ....... 65
Treacherous Disguises ......... 66
Capture of Montbrun (July, 1575) -67
CONTENTS.
Xll\
Page
Henry is resolved that Montbrun shall die ...... 68
Montbrun's Execution 69
Lesdiguieres . . . . . . . . . .69
Alen9on's Escape and Proclamation (September, 1575) ... 70
The Huguenots dupedv 71
Catharine's Grief genuine 71
Wretched Condition of the Tiers Etat . 72
" Le Manant paye tout " 74
Corruption of the Court ......... 74
Puerile Extravagance and Lewdness ...... 75
Henry and his Dogs <s. 75
Foreign help for the Huguenots4' 77
Defeat of Thore i/< 79
A hollow Truce 80
Vain Efforts of the King to raise. Money . . . . . .81
Henry's whimsical Revenge 1/ . ....... 81
General Confusion 82
The Truce of Vivarais '^ 82
The honorable Observance . . ./ 85
Henry of Navarre escapes from Court * ..... 85
Entrance of the Germans into France ^ 87
Excesses of the Reiters^/ . ' . / 88
Stout Demands of the Protestants/ ....... 90
The Points which Catharine will not yield 91
Impatience of Henry and of the People K/ 92
Edict of Pacification (Beaulieu, May, 1576) f/ 93
Fourquevaulx's Description of the Condition of Languedoc
95
CHAPTER II.
1576-1577.
The States General of Blois and the Sixth Ctvil War
Unpopularity of the "Paix de Monsieur"
Henry insists on carrying out the Provisions
Private Sentiments of the King
Alencon won from the Huguenots . .
Henry and Catharine indignant at the Guises'1' .
Royal Instructions to Montpensier
Humieres resists the Edict at Peronne
The Origin of the League ^/. . • / •
Revival of the League after the Massacre V
The Fraternities of Penitents contri bute thereto
Manifesto of the League of Peronne
97
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
106
106
107
XIV CONTENTS.
Page
Oath of the League 107
Conde and Navarre \S ^ 108
Caution of La Rochelle 108
Cardinal Bourbon and the Huguenots of Rouen . . . . 110
Threatening Indications 112
Extension of the League ......... 114
A Roman Catholic Reaction 115
Suspicions of the Huguenots aroused 115
Henry's ignoble Pursuits v . . . . . . . . .116
A Portrait of Henry of Valois 118
A Pasquinade against the King 118
Elections for the States General 119
Revolution in the Royal Policy . . . , . . . .120
How to be accounted for 120
The Memoire of Nicholas David 122
Was the Paper genuine ? . . 126
Henry determines to become Head of the League .... 127
The King's "Little Council" 127
Henry's Letters of December 2, 1576 128
Opening of the States General (December 6) 128
Henry's Speech n/. 129
Address of Chancellor Birague 130
Bold Demands of the States . . . . . . 131
Henry's Activity 133
His Vacillation 134
The Proscriptive Declaration (December 29, 1576) . . . . 134
Henry asks the Written Opinions of his Council 136
Candor of Morvilliers and Bellievre 137
The Duke of Anjou entrapped 138
Politic Course of Guise and Montpensier 130
Deputies of the Three Orders before the King (January 17, 1577) . 140
The Tiers Etat consents to the Repeal of the Edict .... 141
Huguenot Preparations \/ . . . / 141
Envoys sent by the States to Henry of Navarre .... 142
Reply of the King of Navarre J 144
Henry's Significant Assurance ........ 145
Conde refuses to recognize the Delegates 146
His Protest . 146
Marshal Dam ville's Reply to the States and to the King . . .147
Progress of Religious Toleration 1 48
Opposition to Signing the League in Paris . . . . . .149
In Amiens and in Provins 149
Distress of the People 150
The Tiers Etat in Favor of Peace 151
Intercession of the Germans . 152
The Protestant Counter-League v 152
CONTENTS. XV
Page
The King's Failure to obtain Funds 153
Fresh Consultation respecting the War 154
Nevers proposes a Crusade 154
Catharine speaks out i'or Peace 155
Henry declares his Change of Purpose 156
Catharine's Raillery 157
The Italian Comedians 157
The Sixth Civil War J 158
Huguenot Reverses and bad Discipline 159
The Reformation and Democracy 159
Contrast with revived Feudalism , . 160
Misunderstanding between Damville and the Huguenots • . . 161
Surprise of Montpellier 162
Charges against Damville 162
The Marshal's Reply 163
Navarre attempts to mediate^/. ....... 164
Thore becomes Leader in Languedoc ....... 164
End of the Sixth Civil War ^ 165
Edict of Poitiers (September, 1577) 165
CHAPTER III.
1577-1580.
The Conference of Nerac, and the Seventh Civil War . . 168
Contrast between the Edict of Poitiers and the Edict of January . 168
The Situation accepted ........ . 169
Calumnies against the Huguenots 170
Accused of spreading the Plague . . . . . . .170
The Peace only partially observed 171
Ninth National Synod (Sainte Foy, 1578) 173
Dispute between Conde and the Consistory of La Rochelle . . 176
Degeneracy of Henry the Third \S 177
New Favorites and old Feudal Lords . . . . . . 178
Penury and Prodigality of the Court ....... 180
The Provincial States protest 181
Debts of Henry of Guise S 183
The Duke of Anjou 183
Singular Compact in the Comtat Venaissin 184
Papal Inconsistencies ....... . 185
The Conference of Nerac 187
" Langage de Canaan " 187
A Huguenot Retort 188
Henry of Navarre's Revenge \J. 188
The Articles of Nerac 190
XVI
CONTENTS.
Henry the Third becomes Protector of Geneva \ •
The King of France's Devotions ....
He institutes the " Ordre du Saint Esprit"
Popular Superstition .... .
The People's Vengeance on the Lazy Priest
The Clergy reluctant to help the King
Tenth National Protestant Synod (1579) .
Continuance of the Peace threatened .,
Preparations of the King of Navarre V .
Growing Discontent and Violent Measures .
Outbreak of the Seventh Civil War (April, 1580)
The King of Navarre justifies his Course \J *
Was the War unavoidable ? V .
"La Guerre des Amoureux" . . .
Most of the Huguenots take no Part
The Huguenots at Montaigu ....
Surprise of Cahors (May, 1580)
Kavages of the Plague in Paris ....
General Success of the Royal Arms .
The Treaty of Fleix (November-December, 1580)
Conclusion of the Seventh Civil War
Page
190
192
193
193
193
195
196
19G
198
198
200
200
203
204
204
205
205
208
209
210
210
CHAPTER IV
1580-1584.
The Uncertain Peace, Protestant Federation and the Paris-
ian League 212
Return of Comparative Quiet 212
Henry of Navarre's Justification ^y/ 213
His own Court ... . . ..... 214
Political Assembly of Montauban (April, 1581) 215
Checks upon the Authority of the " Protector of the Churches " . 215
National Synod of La Rochelle (June, 1581) 217
Conflict of Civil and Ecclesiastical Authority 218
Ministerial Support ... ....... 221
National Synod of Vitre (May, 1583) 222
Infractions of the Peace 223
The Duke of Mayenne in Dauphiny ...... 224
St. Bartholomew's Massacre commemorated ..... 225
Henry and his Mignons ......... 226
Joyeuse and Epernon ......... 226
The King attempts to remove Montmorency ..... 227
The Nuns of Poissy 228
Infamy of the Royal Morals 229
CONTENTS. Xvii
Page
Financial Embarrassment and Dangerous Expedients . . . 230
Institution of the Fraternity of the Annunciation .... 231
The King s Waning Devotion 232
His Superstition 233
Discontent of the Guises 233
Conspiracy between the Guises, Savoy, and Spain .... 234
Doubtful Loyalty of Montmorency 235
Philip attempts to seduce the King of Navarre .... 235
Henry's Irresolution 236
He still leans to the Guises 237
Discourages the Advances of Navarre ....... 237
The Affront to the King of Navarre 238
The Jesuits promote the League ........ 241
Proposed Universal League among Protestants .... 243
The " Formula Concordiae " 245
Scheme of Henry of Navarre \/l . . . . . . 245
Mission of Segur Pardaillan 247
The Envoy's Instructions 248
The Justification of the King of Navarre r 250
His reply to the Threats of Henry III. (December, 1583) . . . 251
Segur's Mission misrepresented 252
Ungracious Letter of the German Princes (March, 1585) . . . 253
The Scheme receives its Death-Blow . . .• . . . 255
Henry's Disappointment ......... 255
His tardy Reply to the Princes (February 15, 1585) .... 255
Contemporary View of Henry's Resources1^ . . . . . 257
The Protestant Cities and Regions \S . . . . . . . 260
Death of the Duke of Anjou (June 10, 1584) 262
Disastrous Results of this Event ......... 265
The Thought of a Huguenot King repulsive to the Roman Catholics 265
Authorship of the League 266
Philip the Second and the Jesuits 267
Henry of Valois recognizes Henry of Navarre as his Successor \y. . 268
Duplessis Mornay's sound Advice ....... 270
Navarre is entreated to abjure Protestantism V . . . . . 271
His noble Reply 271
Reports of his "incorrigible Obstinacy" . ..... 271
Hostile Rumors . . . . 272
A pretended Protestant Confederacy v 272
A clumsy Forgery .......... 273
The League in Paris the Result of a systematic Plan .... 274
Scheme of Charles Hotman 275
The Council and the " Five " 275
Florimond de Raemond's Account of the Huguenot Worship . . 277
XV111 CONTENTS.
CHAPTER V.
1584-1585.
Page
The Holy League and the Edict op Nemours .... 281
The King's cordial Hatred of the Huguenots 281
His Plan for the Extinction of Protestantism ..... 282
Ambition of the Duke of Guise 288
Designs upon England 284
Dissension between the Conspirators 284
The Plot laid bare 285
Bernardino de Mendoza 286
The Huguenots and the Cities of Refuge . . . . . . 287
Reasons for the Retention of the Cities 288
The King reluctantly prolongs the Term of the Protestant Possession 290
The League circulates alarming Rumors ...... 290
Narrative of Nicholas Poulain . . . . . . . 291
Pretended Huguenot Conspiracy 292
Offer of the Sovereignty of the Netherlands to the King . . . 294
A Royal Declaration against the League (November 11, 1584) . 295
Conference of the League at Joinville (December, 1584) . . . 290
Terms of the Alliance . . . . . . . 297
Designs of Philip II 298
Duplicity of the Duke of Guise 299
The Duke of Nevers resolves to consult the Pope .... 300
Gregory's Caution as to committing his Views to Paper . . . 301
His Displeasure at the Duke's Pertinacity 302
Consecrated Rosaries in Place of Advice ...... 303
Death of Pope Gregory 303
Sixtus V. censures the League 304
He bitterly condemns Gregory's Course 304
Ambition the Motive of the League ....... 305
Unworthy Treatment of the Dutch Envoys 306
Mendoza tries to prevent an Audience 307
His reported Insolence 307
Magnanimous Reply ascribed to the King 308
Meanness of his real Speech 309
Insincerity of the King and Queen Mother 309
Failure of the Embassy 310
The Loss to France 310
Queen Elizabeth sends Earl Derby to France 311
Reported Atrocities of the English Persecution 312
New Edict against the League (March 28. 1585) . . . . 313
Declaration of Cardinal Bourbon (Peronne, March 31, 1585) . . 314
Henry of Valois publishes a Counter Declaration (April, 1585) . 317
An undignified Answer . . 318
CONTENTS.
XIX
The King's spasmodic Activity
His Hatred of the Guises
The Guard of the " Forty-five "...
His Unconcern
He desires to leave Matters of State to his Mother
General Success of the League ....
Philip the Second's Assurances . . *.
Henry of Valois writes to Henry of Navarre \S .
He fails to call in his Assistance
Navarre's Offer declined \J .
His Letters ....
The War to sift out true Frenchmen
Navarre's renewed Offers is
Forcible Plea of the Bishop of Acqs
Remonstrances of Queen Elizabeth
And of the German Princes
The King's Evil Counsellors
His moral Turpitude ....../
Navarre holds a Conference of Huguenot Chiefs "
Advice of the Viscount of Turenne
Reply of Agrippa d'Aubigne . . . .
Henry of Navarre adopts D'Aubigne's View '
Arrogance of the League •.
Its pretended Petition (June 9, 1585) .
Insincerity of its Offer
Manifesto of Navarre, Bergerac (June 10, 1585)
Navarre challenges Guise
Favorable Impression produced .
Guise declines the Challenge .
Navarre's Willingness to be instructed arouses Suspi
His Letter to the King (July 10, 1585) ^ .
The Conference of Nemours .
Intolerant Edict of Nemours (July 18, 1585)
Conduct of the Guises approved ...
Practical Advantages secured by the League
The Guises renounce all Associations .
The King orders Parliament to register the Edict
^
/.
P&pe
319
320
821
321
322
323
325
326
326
327
327
328
328
329
330
331
331
331
332
333
334
335
33G
336
337
337
340
341
341
342
343
344
345
345
346
346
347
CHAPTER VI.
1585-1586.
Proscription of the Huguenots. — Henry op Navarre excommuni-
cated by the Pope \f 349
A difficult Problem confronts the Huguenots . ■ / • • ■ '^9
Joint Declaration of Navarre, Conde, and Montmorency / . . 350
XX CONTENTS.
. Page
Secret Correspondence of Henry of Navarre, 352
Should Colonies be settled in France ! 353
Contrast between the two Kings v/ 353
Henry of Valois demands Money from the City of Paris and the Clergy 354
Who excuse themselves ......... 355
Henry's significant Observation 355
The King of France and the Pope . . / 356
Royal Embassy to seek Navarre's Conversion V. . . 356
His Readiness to submit to a Council 357
His Message to the Duke of Montpensier 358
Intrigue of Guise with the Spanish Ambassador .... 359
Margaret of Valois an Ally of the League . . . . ^. 360
Guise impatient for the Excommunication of Henry of Navarre . . 361
Alliance with Montmorency essential to the Success of the League 362
Guise bids Mayenne avoid attacking Montmorency .... 363
Philip of Spain procrastinates ........ 363
Protestation of Marshal Montmorency/ ...... 364
Sixtus V. still opposes the League -/ .... . . 365
He excommunicates and deposes the King of Navarre^ . . . 366
Indignation and Ridicule in France 367
.Navarre challenges the Pope to appear before a General Council . 368
Hotman's " Brutum Fulmen " . ; 369
Royal Declaration of October 7, 1585 370
Remonstrance of the Parliament of Paris ..... 370
Forcible Plea for Liberty of Conscience 370
Crime of Proscription ......... 371
Parliament's Opinion of the Papal Bull 372
Displeasure of Catharine de' Medici 373
The Printer punished . . / y ^ 374
Henry of Navarre retaliatesX^A^xX 374
The Enterprise of Angers 374
The Castle of Angers 374
A Plot to surprise it . . j ...... 375
The Castle in Huguenot Hands ^ 377
Conde advances to Anjou ......... 377
Peril and Escape of his Army 378
General Discouragement of the Huguenots 380
Numerous Apostacies ...... 382
Flight into foreign Lands /. ....... . 382
The Huguenots in Savoy v ....... 383
A general Roll of the Protestants made ^ 384
Perplexity of the Roman Catholic Bishops .... * 385
A Confession of Faith imposed on Converts 386
Additional Guarantee of Sincerity ....... 386
Pastoral Remonstrances 387
Jealousy among the Huguenot Leaders 387
CONTENTS. XXI
/ Page
Henry of Navarre writes to the City of Paris C/ 388
His Appeal to the Clergy 389
His Remonstrances addressed to the Nobles and Commons . . . 390
Indecisive Warfare ^\ ......... 391
The King's Levies in Germany and Switzerland 392
Guise's Anxiety lest Peace should ensue ...... 392
His Entry into Paris (February, 1586) . . . . . . .393
Procrastination of the Duke of Mayenne . *. . . . 394
Huguenot Sarcasm .......... 396
Conde returns to France (January, 1586) 396
Death of D'Andelot's Sons 397
Henry of Valois's Diversions C^ 397
His injudicious financial Edicts ........ 398
Intercession of the Protestant Cantons of Switzerland . . . 399
Appeal of the German Princesv'" 400
Conference of Montbeliard (March, 1586) . . . . 400
The Embassy reaches Paris . 401
Speech of Duke Casimir's Envoy ....... 402
The King's rough Answer ........." 404
The Guises determined not to disarm 405
Conference of the League at Ourcamp ...... 405
The League apprehensive 406
Conference between Catharine and Navarre, at Saint Bris (December,
1586) y^ 407
Catharine refuses to grant religious Liberty 411
The Possibility of Navarre's Conversion ...... 413
Huguenot Distrust of Garrisons v^ 415
Francois de Chatillon and Milhau-en-Rouergue .... 415
Mutual Jealousy between Citizens and Soldiers ..... 416
The Citizens become Masters of the Place ..... 416
The " Citadel " demolished 417
CHAPTER VII.
1587.
The Battle of Coutras, and the Army op the Reiters . 418
The War accomplishes nothing 418
Zeal of the League at Paris ** . ..... 419
Annoyance of the Duke of Guise ....... 420
Huguenot Successes in Poitou ^/ 420
Lesdiguieres in Dauphiny , . . . . . . . . . 420
Rout of Swiss Auxiliaries v 422
Irresolution of the King 423
Parties at Court 423
The Queen Mother's Interview with Guise (May, 1587) . . - 424
XX11 CONTENTS.
Page
Meeting of the King and Guise (July, 1587) . ... . . 425
The Duke's Debts 420
Jcyeuse marches toward Guyenne 420
The Count of Soissons and the Prince of Cpnty join Navarre . . 428
Navarre marches toward the Dordogne K 428
He takes position at Coutras ........ 429
The Huguenot Line %/ . . . 430
Battle of Coutras (October 20, 1587) ^ 431
Gabriel d' Amours offers Prayer ....... 431
A Huguenot Battle Psalm \/j 433
Rout and Death of Joyeuse * 434
Navarre's Bravery S/. . ■ . ....... 434
Prayer and Psalm after Battle -J ...... . 435
The first Pitched Battle gained by the Huguenots V . . . . 436
The Fruits of Victory lost 437
Navarre's Justification ,\/ ......... 438
Queen Elizabeth renders Assistance 440
The Army of the Reiters 441
John Casimir's Compact 441
Baron Dohna 442
The Reiters enter Lorraine ........ 442
Route taken by the Germans 444
They are joined by Francois de Chatillon 445
Want of Discipline and Losses ....... z 445
The Germans disregard Navarre's Orders, and push on to the Loirev 446
They insist on going westward 447
Guise's Correspondence with the Spaniards 447
He attacks the Reiters at Vimory . . %J .... 440
He publishes glowing Accounts of his Victory ..... 449
The Germans involved in increasing Difficulty . 450
The Swiss send Deputies to the King ^ 451
They determine to return to Switzerland 451
The Germans begin a Retreat 452
They are surprised by Guise at Auneau ...... 453
Guise accuses the King of throwing Obstacles in his Way . . 453
The Reiters accept a Safe-conduct to Germany 454
Indignation of the League 455
Guise and Du Pont lay waste the County of Montbeliard . . . 455
Magnanimity of Francois de Chatillon 457
His daring Retreat to Languedoc 457
MAP.
Southern France at the Accession op Henry the Third. 1574.
At end of volume.
BOOK FIRST.
FROM THE ACCESSION OF HENRY THE THIRD (1574) TO
THE BATTLE OF COUTRAS (1587).
BOOK FIRST.
FROM THE ACCESSION OF HENRY THE THIRD (1574)
TO THE BATTLE OF COUTRAS (1587).
CHAPTER I.
THE ACCESSION OF HENRY OF VALOIS, AND THE WAR AGAINST
THE HUGUENOTS.
At the date of the accession of the last Yalois to the throne
of France, more than fifty years had elapsed since the first ap-
pearance of that religions and patriotic party whose adherents,
after bearing the names of Lutherans, Christaudins, and Cal-
vinists, had finally come to be commonly known as
theHugue- Huguenots. A movement begun in weakness had
preceding gained strength in face of formidable opposition. The
short-lived favor of Francis the First was succeeded
by persecution of the most cruel type. For nearly forty years
the gallows, and the " estrapade " with its protracted torture,
did their worst, but all in vain. During the short reign of
Francis the Second the forces hitherto latent burst forth, and
men discovered for the first time that the " new doctrines," as
they were called, had enlisted under their banner not only the
greater part of the intelligent classes of the population, but a
considerable proportion of the nobility and gentry of the realm.
It was not, however, until the beginning of the reign of Charles
the Ninth that an opportunity was afforded to the Huguenots,
4 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. I.
at the Colloquy of Poissy, to set forth before the king and his
assembled court the true nature of their doctrines and purposes.
All France, at this time, was inflamed with the desire to know
for itself the merits of the new reformation. Whole provinces
in the South seemed to have embraced Protestantism. The
children of many districts "learned religion only in Calvin's
catechism ; " and vast congregations flocked to the Huguenot
preaching. The ferment extended to Central France. The
very ecclesiastics of the established church were affected.
Bishops left their mitres, priests gave up their cures, monks
threw off the cowl. Many of those who had not as yet taken
any decided step were asking for more light upon the subject
of their duty. When it was proposed to establish a Protestant
theological school in Orleans, the canons of the church of the
Holy Pood applauded the project and promised to come and
listen to the lectures of the professors. Some parts of the
North were not behind the fervid South in their excitement.
In the great fair of Guibray, in Normandy, no wares sold more
rapidly than the books and pamphlets wherein the doctrines of
the Reformation were inculcated. A quarter of a century be-
fore (in 1534) the appearance of a placard against the papal
mass, affixed to the door of the king's chamber, had created
unparalleled consternation at court and throughout France.
In his first transports of anger Francis even went to the
length of abolishing the art of printing. When his inflamed
passions had had time to cool down he still thought it incum-
bent upon him, as the Very Christian King, to appease Heaven
for the sacrilege by a pompous procession, during the course of
which six Lutherans were publicly burned to death on different
squares of the capital. In the banquet held at its close, in the
episcopal palace, he had professed such detestation for the Prot-
estant doctrine as to boast that, if one of his arms were infected
with the poison, he would cut it off, if his children were con-
taminated, he would immolate them. But now, in the first year
of his grandson's reign, this very placard, whose original pub-
lication had cost the lives of printers and readers, was openly
distributed by boys who with a loud voice made known the
hand-bill by its striking title : " True Articles respecting the
1574. ACCESSION OF HENRY OF VALOIS. 5
Horrible, Great, and Insupportable Abuses of the Papal Mass."
So much had the times changed.1
In the very tribunals of law, accustomed to take cognizance
of the Huguenots only when sentencing them to imprisonment
or death, they now found advocates or apologists. The Bishop
of Paris took occasion, in Parliament (1561), to allude to the
friendly arbitration by means of which the Huguenots settled,
in their church sessions and otherwise, the disputes arising be-
tween members of their own communion, and declared that it
was an evidence of the impudence of the Reformers that they
thus interfered with the prerogative of the royal courts. But
his words were ably answered by the highest judicial officer of
France, grave Chancellor L'Hospital. He marvelled, he said,
at the effrontery and malice of those who blamed men for set-
tling their disputes and controversies among friends. " As if,"
he added, with pardonable contempt for his reverend objector,
" as if the whole system of law had not been enacted, and forms
of trial had not been instituted for this very purpose — that men
at variance with one another might be brought into concord,
and induced to live lovingly together ! Whoever he be that
brings about this result deserves reward and not punishment." Q
It was at this favorable conjuncture, and through the efforts
of such enlightened men as Michel de l'Hospital, that the
"Edict of January" (1562) was published. Based on equita-
ble principles, this law recognized liberty of conscience as the
right of all, and permitted the Huguenots to worship Almighty
God, according to the rites of the Reformed religion, every-
where throughout France, outside of the walls of the towns and
cities. If not a perfect law, it was so well adapted to the cir-
cumstances of the case that, perhaps, nothing better, short of
absolute religious equality, could have been desired. Under
this ordinance, well and faithfully executed, Roman Catholics
and Protestants might have lived together long years, until the
fuller development of the sense of natural justice should have
1 MS. Geneva Library, published in Bulletin de la Societe de l'histoire du
Protestantisme francjais, xxviii. (1879) 457.
2 Letter of Hubert Languet, Paris, July 13, 1561, Epistolae secretae, ii. 125,
126.
6 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. L
abrogated its provisions only to establish in their place a free-
dom having its sure sanction in universal charity.
Unhappily the age of brotherly love had not yet dawned.
There were those who were not inclined to leave the Edict of
January to mature its kindly fruits. Within six weeks the
massacre of Vassy, perpetrated upon an unoffending congrega-
tion of Protestant worshippers in a Champagnese town (March,
1562), kindled a flame which burned with little intermission to
the close of the reign of Charles the Ninth. To open warfare
were added the further horrors of treacherous assassination.
The massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day came as the sequel of
three distinct civil wars, and as the precursor of two other wars,
all instituted within the brief compass of a reign of little more
than twelve years. It was a legacy of bloodshed and confusion
that Charles left to his brother, Henry. Thirty thousand Hugue-
nots may have fallen victims to the conspiracy of Catharine de'
Medici, the Duke of Anjou, and the Guises ; but the Huguenots
were not all dead. For every one that had perished by sword
there remained fifty of his comrades ready to maintain the
cause whose interests he had fonght to defend. Admiral Co-
ligny was no more, and many other leaders had been assassinated
with him ; but the experience of the two years intervening be-
tween the massacre and the close of the reign of Charles proved
conclusively that all the military genius of the Huguenots had
not been buried in their graves. Many of the new command-
ers— some of them destined soon to distinguish themselves in
the art of warfare — were very young. Henry, King of Na-
varre, was but twenty years of age. His cousin, Henry of
Conde, was just a year older. Francois de Chatillon, Admiral
Coligny's son, was a stripling of seventeen. Frangois de la
Noue was almost the only survivor of the older Huguenot
chieftains of prominent rank. The mantle was certainly fall-
ing upon shoulders unaccustomed to bear such weighty respon-
sibility ; but the sequel would prove that the men whom cir-
cumstances, strange and unexpected, called to the front line of
action were by no means unworthy to be trusted with its de-
fence. The crisis was grave, the matters to be settled were of
unsurpassed importance. Not the fortunes of the combatants
1574. ACCESSION OF HENRY OF VALOIS. 7
alone were at stake, but the cause of religious liberty must be
sustained. With what fluctuations of success and defeat that
cause was prosecuted until the final enactment of the edict of
Henry the Fourth, placing Protestantism under the aegis of the
public law of the land, is the inquiry that furnishes the main
theme of the present volumes.
On Sunday, the thirtieth of May, 1574, Charles the Ninth
expired in the Castle of the Bois de Yincennes. Two weeks
later, the messenger of Catharine de' Medici succeeded, by
almost incredible diligence, in reaching Cracow, and brought to
Henry of Yalois the grateful intelligence that he had fallen
heir to the crown of France.
The queen mother had promptly taken every step necessary
to secure the peaceful succession of her favorite son. Unmoved
by the approaching end of Charles, she had, on his death-bed,
prudently procured from him, or in his name, letters patent
conferring upon her the regency until Henry's return from
Poland. With more composure than could have been expected
from a mother in her fresh bereavement, she had authorized an
examination of the late monarch's body, and the next day was
careful to despatch letters to all the governors of France, assur-
ing them that a sufficient natural cause had been found by the
physicians for the fatal termination of his malady. She begged
them to write to the new king, and inform him of their purpose
to render him the same faithful service that they had displayed
to his predecessors.
Nor were the Duke of Alengon and the King of Navarre
overlooked, at a moment when maternal grief is wont to induce
forgetfulness of everything save its own bitterness. The two
state prisoners were summoned into Catharine's presence.
They were told that their fate hung upon their submission.
" Promise to make no attempt to escape from me, and I will
leave Yincennes for Paris ; otherwise I shall remain in the
castle until my son's return from Poland." The youths not
only yielded a most humble assent, but made no objection to
signing letters addressed to the governors of all the provinces,
commending the queen mother's course, and advocating a loyal
8 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OP NAVARRE. Ch. I
recognition of her authority.1 But on reaching the Louvre,
the princes scarcely found their condition improved. Catha-
rine kept her son and the King of Navarre within the castle,
with guard upon guard. She had the chamber-windows grated
like a prison, and stopped all the back passages into the town.
" There is marvellous misliking at this dealing amongst all men,"
exclaims the indignant English ambassador. None the less did
the queen mother maintain with effrontery to all with whom
she conversed, that she would not have accepted the regency
except at the request of the princes, and that whatever was
done was done by their consent. At this very moment every-
body knew that in truth Alencon did not dare to speak to any-
one and no one dared speak to him. It was a curious com-
mentary upon the queen's hypocritical assurances, that, directly
after the audience at which she gave utterance to them, Alencon
and Navarre sent a messenger to the favored Englishmen, to
state that they had been constrained to use the speeches they
had made. They desired Queen Elizabeth to continue her good
friendship, and asked that she be informed when the Prince of
Conde should be ready to start from Germany. Indeed, they
entreated the prudent Queen of England to effect a landing on
the coasts of Normandy, and entered into details of so perilous
a character that the envoys deemed it the dictate of prudence
not to commit them to paper.2
M. de Chemerault, Catharine's messenger to Poland, was en-
trusted with a long letter to the absent king. This production
— no formal state paper, the work of the pen of her
letter to her secretaries, but bearing on every line the impress of
the queen mother's own mind — reveals the existence
of a certain kind of grief, and of a cool calculation that seems
never to have forsaken her. The grief is natural enough, but
thoroughly selfish in its origin and manifestation, and quite
1 Recueil des choses memorables, 508 ; Jean de Serres, Commentarii de
statu religionis et reipublicae, pars v., Henrico tertio rege (Leyden, 1580),
fols. 2, 3 ; Vincenzo Alamanni to Fr. de' Medici, Paris, June 2, 1574, Negocia-
tions diplomatiques avec la Toscane, iii. 931.
2 " News from Paris," sent by Dr. Dale to Lord Burleigh, June 7, 1574 ;
Dr. Dale to Smith and Walsingham, June 21 ; Dr. Dale to Lord Burleigh,
same date. State Paper Office.
1574. ACCESSION OF HENRY OF VALOIS. . 9
under the control of the writer's will. It is a piteous sorrow,
she says, that has befallen a mother called so often to wit-
ness the successive deaths of her children. She has but one
consolation — the hope of seeing Henry soon return to enjoy his
new honors. She warns him that if she were to be called upon
to lose him too, she would not consent to survive him. " In
that case," she says, " I should cause myself to be buried alive
with you ! " She begs him to select the safest road returning
— rather the way through the dominions of the Emperor and
through Italy, than the way through the lands of the German
princes, who have too many grounds of quarrel with France.
She entreats him above all to make no delay in setting out, to
accede to no requests from his Polish subjects who might wish
to detain him until he had introduced order into the affairs of
their country. At the same time she suggests, with her usual
forethought, that it may be well to leave some one to govern
temporarily in his place, in order that the crown of Poland may
either be retained by him, or secured for his younger brother,
or for the second of his own prospective sons. As for France,
she counsels him to govern wisely and prudently, for the honor
of God and the welfare of his subjects ; to protect and reward
the well-disposed, but to renounce faction, party spirit, and in-
timacies. " You are no longer Monsieur .... you are
a King who must be served, revered, and loved by all." 1
Meantime, while the parent who subscribed herself " your
good and affectionate mother, if ever there was one on earth,
Catharine," was pouring forth her measured grief
- La Reine and politic advice into the ears of her best loved son,
the young wife of Charles the Ninth indulged in os-
tentatious manifestations of sorrow for the untimely death of
a prince respecting whom the pope declared that his remark-
able piety and singular virtue had been seen in the midst of the
greatest dangers and the most trying emergencies.2 In a dark
1 Catharine to Henry III., Bois de Vincennes, May 31, 1574, Groen van
Prinsterer, Archives de la maison d'Orange -Nassau, v. 13-16.
2 "Cujus insignem pietatem, singularemque in maximis periculosissimisque
ejus regni motibus difficillimisque temporibus virtutem perspexeramus." Greg-
ory XIII. to Fred, de' Medici, June 11, 1574, Negociations avec la Toscane,
iii. 932.
10 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. I.
room whence every ray of the light of heaven was carefully
excluded, Maximilian's daughter shut herself from the world
for forty days to bewail her husband's death. The walls, the
ceiling, the floor, were draped in black ; the only light came
from two small candles that rather revealed than dispelled the
darkness. Elizabeth herself — " La reine blanche " ' — was clad
from head to foot in white, the immemorial badge of mourning
of a widowed qneen. Her ladies wore dresses of the same
color, in startling contrast with the funereal garb of the gentle-
men-in-waiting. " The mixture of black and white, with the
faces pale as death in the deep gloom," says one that witnessed
the scene, " produced a very touching and painful sight." 2
The announcement of his brother's fatal illness had created
in Henry of Anjou a restless and expectant condition of mind
Henry's which he could not conceal from the eyes of his at-
ansiety. tendants ; the tidings of that brother's death occa-
sioned a joy that gleamed in every feature. How to get back
to France as speedily as possible, was the problem which he set
about solving with the help of the little company of his coun-
trymen that formed the inner circle of his confidants. All
were agreed that no time must be lost. Delay might be disas-
trous to the claims of the absent prince upon his ancestral
throne. There was a powerful party that alleged that Henry's
acceptance of the Polish crown involved a virtual renunciation
of the French crown in favor of his brother, the Duke of Alen-
con. True, Alengon was in safe custody, and had paid for his
cowardice by the sacrifice of his accomplices. So far so good.
1 The name was derived from Queen Blanche, mother of Saint Louis, a
model ruler, according to Etienne Pasquier, " laquelle s'y comporta avec telle
sagesse, que tout ainsi que les Empereurs de Rome se faisoient appeller Au-
gustes en commemoration de l'heur qui s'estoit trouve au grand Empereur
Auguste, aussi toutes les Roynes Meres anciennement, apres le deces des Roys
leurs maris vouloient estre nommees Roynes Blanches, par une honorable
memoire tiree du bon gouvernement de cette sage Princesse." Recherches de
la France, chap. 18, book 2, p. 142.
2 " II che faceva, con la mistione del color neroe bianco, e con le faccie loro
del color della morte in questa obscurita grandissima, un molto acerbo e
doloroso spettacolo a riguardare.'' Alamanni to the Grand Duke, June 14,
1574, Negociations avec la Toscane, iv. 12.
1574. ACCESSION OF HENRY OF V ALOIS. 11
" If ever I felt joy," Henry had written to one of his intimate
friends, " it was when I learned that La Mole and Coconnas
were well caged, but I shall never be fully satisfied till they
dance with the rope about their necks." ' But the further wish,
which he had confined himself to hinting — that the same fate
might also overtake others, doubtless referring to the King of
Navarre, the Prince of Conde, and above all, the Duke of Alen-
con— had not been fulfilled. Alencon still lived, and might at
any moment be supported as a candidate for the crown, if not
by French arms, at least by the arms of the troublesome neigh-
bors and allies of France. Indeed, no sooner had William of
Orange heard that Charles was dead than he wrote that it was
now time that the German princes should put forth every exer-
tion to secure the crown for the Duke of Alencon.2
The ambition of his brother was not the only, nor, perhaps,
the chief danger to be apprehended by Henry. All France
The Hugue- was in commotion. The Huguenots were in arms.
notsmarms. rpj^ bloody massacre of two years before, beginning
in Paris, and repeating itself throughout the provinces, had not
crushed them. The perfidy of the court had made them more
wary, the evident determination of their enemies to compass
their destruction had made them more resolute than ever to
stand for their defence. Their recent struggle had been insti-
tuted rather with the desperation of men determined to sell
their lives as dear as possible, than with any distinct hope of
success ; the favorable issue of many of their enterprises had
converted the conflict into a war for the recovery of the rights
pledged by solemn royal edicts. They were not crouching at
the feet of a conqueror, and suing for their lives ; but demand-
ing liberty of religious worship in their sanctuaries, and satis-
faction for the treachery practised upon their brethren in the
1 " Si jamais j'eus joye, c'a este quand j'ay sceu que La Mole et Coconas sont
en caige, mais jusques a ce que le Seigneur qui les traictoit si doucement a la
Rochelle ou un sien compaignon les hait fait dancer avecque la corde la [votte],
je ne seray pas bien satisfait." Henry of Anjou to M. de Nancay, May 16,
1574, Groen van Prinsterer, iv. 375.
4 "Et seroit maintenant temps que les Princes d'Allemaigne fissent tout
debvoir possible pour faire donner la Couronne au Due d Alencon." Letter of
the Prince of Orange, June, 1574, Groen van Prinsterer, v. 12.
12 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. I
faith. Either their demands must be granted, or their armed
forces must be met in the field, and their strongholds carried at
the point of the sword. And the problem was complicated by
Kevivai of the remarkable revival of the feudal spirit which the
feudalism. iatter half of the sixteenth century was destined to
witness — a revival which, if it obtained its full development
only in the reign that was just beginning, must be regarded as
deriving its first powerful impulse from the reign of Charles
the Ninth. The king that undertook to wage war with a por-
tion of his subjects, found himself compelled to purchase the
support of the leading nobles in each province by the tacit
acknowledgment of privileges which, when once conceded, as-
sured to them a species of local independence. The vicious
system of the transmission of civil and military offices from
parent to child received a dangerous corroboration. The son
was trained from his earliest days to regard the dignities and
territorial authority of his father as his own just inheritance;
and any attempt or threat of the crown to confer them upon
another, no matter how much more competent he might be for
the discharge of the functions connected therewith, was re-
sented as an insult, and was sure to lead to open resistance.
The great nobles were almost sovereign princes in their gov-
ernments or provinces, the original gift of the ancestors of the
reigning monarch ; ' they could be removed only by a war that
might convulse the kingdom. And the consideration which
they demanded from their lord paramount was exacted of them
in turn by the members of the inferior nobility, to whom had
been entrusted the administration of dioceses, cities, or castles.
1 "Many of the greatest lords, some secretly, some openly, were alienated,"
says Davila, in speaking of this period ; " and divers of those who had most
experience in affairs, most authority with the people, and most reputation in
war, were already (if I may use that word), cantonized in their several prov-
inces and governments.'' Eng. trans, (hook vi.), p. 203. Cf. Lestoile's desig-
nation, in 1583 ( i. 162), of Montmorency, formerly Damville, as "gouverneur
ou pour mieux dire roy de Languedoc." So, too ( i. 63), when speaking of
the refusal of the Baron de Ruffec, Governor of Angouleme, to admit Alencon
(1575), despite repeated orders of the king and of Catharine de' Medici, " des-
quelles les gouverneurs faisoient fort peud'estat en ce temps de' guerre, estans
rois eux-mesmes."
1574. ACCESSION OF HENRY OF VALOIS. 13
Insubordination was rapidly becoming not the exception but
the rule. Soon Henry the Third would have occasion to make
the bitter remark : " See what civil wars come to ! Formerly
it would have puzzled a constable, a prince of the blood, to
make a party in France ; now the very varlets make one." ! It
was almost a necessary consequence of this relaxation of the
bonds of the central government that disorder often ran riot,
with few to stop its progress/
Evidently Henry must lose no unnecessary time in returning
to France, in accordance with the entreaties of his mother.
But how should he accomplish his object, in view of
the King of the obstacles which the Poles would certainly inter-
pose ? The king's most candid and prudent advisers,
Bellievre and Pibrac, counselled him to adopt the manly course.
Let him consult with his Polish nobles ; let him establish order,
and impart that confidence which Poland, so long a prey to dis-
cord and confusion, greatly needed ; and then let him, with the
consent of his subjects, and followed by their good wishes, re-
visit France. At the price of a delay which might, indeed, be
tedious, and extend over months, but which would save him the
loss of a crown for the acquisition of which much trouble and
money had been expended not a year ago, Henry would render
himself beloved, and gain a power that might be of great im-
portance to his own ancestral dominions. On the other hand,
Villequier, Souvre, and others — ministers of the king's pleas-
ures— recommended an instant retreat from a region distasteful
to Henry under any circumstances, and now doubly repulsive.
Since this step could not be taken openly, let it be accomplished
in secrecy. The disgrace sure to attach Jo the cowardly act was
set forth by Pibrac, but all in vain. It was a part of the mis-
fortune that always seemed to cling to the last Valois king of
1 Lestoile (November, 1575), i. 62.
2 The incident related by Claude Haton (ii. 770-773), although in some re-
spects characteristic of the period, can scarcely be regarded as directly trace-
able to the source indicated in the text. The leader of the band of several
hundred marauders who, for some days or weeks, struck terror into the in-
habitants of the towns and villages of Brie, and killed, plundered, and rav-
ished with little armed opposition, had raised his robber-soldiers under the
warrant of forged letters of the king.
14 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. L
France that he gave a more ready hearing to bad than to good
advice.1
There is no need that the details of the precipitate and un-
kingly flight from Cracow to Vienna should here be repeated.
Never did monarch begin his reign by a more inauspicious act,
His escape or glve clearer proof to the world that pusillanimity
from cracow. may easjiy coexist with exalted station. If the bril-
liancy of his entertainment by the emperor could have com-
pensated for the ignominy of his own course, Henry might
have recovered his self-respect when once he had gotten be-
yond the reach of his pursuers. But it may well be doubted
whether all the imperial courtesies, accompanied by the sug-
gestion that Henry should marry his brother's widow, were
sufficient to obliterate from his mind the contrast between the
circumstances attending his advent to Poland and those of his
departure.
From Yienna the French king proceeded after a short stay
to Venice, where he was received with every mark of profound
Henry at respect, and entertained with a pomp that dazzled
Venice. ^G eyes 0f a^ spectators. " As Venice surpasses all
other cities of Italy," says a contemporary, " so during his
sojourn of ten days did Venice seem to have outdone itself in
the magnificence of its banquets and spectacles."2 It was,
however, but sorry fruit of so much splendor, if, as his own at-
tendants asserted, Henry became, from the moment of his
visit to the luxurious republic of the Adriatic, a changed per-
son, appearing to have lost all manhood, and to have become
weakly and effeminate.3 If Henry had been in haste to start
for his native land, he now showed no disposition to hurry
away from the enchantments of Italy. Accompanied by the
Duke of Savoy, who had come to do him honor, he leisurely
made his progress, stopping successively at Ferrara, at Mantua,
1 De Thou, v. 55, 56 ; Jean de Serres, v. fols. 18-20.
2 " Tanta conviviorum et spectaculorum magnificentia, ut Venetia, quae
omnes Italiae urbes superat, seipsam tunc superasse omnino videatur." Jean
de Serres, v. fol. 24.
3 Ibid., v. fol. 25. The lascivious displays to which Henry was treated
were as unworthy of the doge who afforded them as they seem to have been
enervating to the young prince by whum tliey were witnessed.
1574. ACCESSION OF HENRY OF VALOIS. 15
and at Turin. It was not until the second anniversary of the
massacre of St. Bartholomew's day (the twenty-fourth of Au-
gust, 1574), that he reached the capital of the Duke of Savoy,
whose devoted services to the French monarch were amply re-
warded by the impolitic cession of Pignerol and Savillian, with
the Yalley of Perouse. These places had been left in the
hands of the French, according to the terms of the Treaty of
Cateau Cambresis, as security for the restitution of those pos-
sessions of France which were still in the power of the Duke
of Savoy. They were now given up without an equivalent, con-
trary to the advice of the best generals of France.1
It is time, however, that we should turn to the operations of
the Huguenots during the months that elapsed between the
Huguenot death of Charles and the arrival of Henry in French
leaders. territory. When the luckless " Enterprise of Saint
Germain " came to an inglorious end, through the treachery or
cowardice of Alencon, about three months before the conclu-
sion of the last reign, the Prince of Conde, more fortunate
than his cousin, the King of Navarre, succeeded in making
good his escape from Picardy into Germany. The younger
Montmorencies, the Sieurs de Thore and Meru, joining him in
his exile, added to his authority the prestige of the name of
the oldest noble family in France. Conde, in view of the in-
voluntary restraint of Alencon and Navarre, assumed the dig-
nity of the first prince of the blood.
With the restless activity characteristic of that impetuous
prince, Henry of Conde wrote or sent messengers in every di-
The Prince section, whence help for the persecuted Huguenots
of conde. might be expected. Again and again, feeling the
need of good advice, he begged the magistrates of Geneva to
" lend " him Theodore Beza, their most prominent religious
teacher, scarcely less highly valued as a prudent counsellor in
political affairs than prized as a learned theologian and an elo-
quent preacher. In fact, so frequent and inconvenient did his
calls become that at last even the self-denying Genevese grew
tired, and suggested that Conde should henceforth obtain the
desired counsel from the pen rather than from the lips of the
1 De Thou, v. 100, 116-118 ; Jean de Serres, v. fol. 27.
16 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. 1.
reformer. On one occasion the prince came in person to
Geneva, and there received a flattering welcome. The Coun-
cil, whose notions of the sanctity of the Lord's Day seem to
have been somewhat lax, among other tokens of good will,
voted to " feast " Conde and his principal attendants ; and the
banquet, at which, we are told with great precision, six tables
were spread, was set down for Sunday, the third of October.1
Thore, by letters and messages, aroused the dormant energies
of his brother, Marshal Damville, and impressed upon him the
necessity of instituting a vigorous struggle to rescue from life-
long imprisonment, if not from death, the captive head of the
family, Marshal Montmorency, the Constable's oldest son.3
From Strasbourg and Basle, as from a centre, went forth the
influences that for two years maintained the Huguenots in the
field, enlisted in their behalf the sympathy and substantial sup-
port of the Protestant Princes of Germany, and finally secured
very favorable terms of peace. The importance of the Prot-
estant court on the banks of the Rhine may best be gauged by
the care taken by Catharine de' Medici to maintain a body of
salaried spies about Conde and his Huguenot companions, to
keep her well informed respecting all their movements. She
could scarcely have exhibited more solicitude to learn the
secrets of a rival capital.3
The Huguenot arms fared differently in the North and in the
South. Everything went ill with the Protestants in Normandy
Losses in since the capture of Count Montgomery at the sur-
Normandy. renc[er 0f Domfront, three days before the decease
of King Charles. In her glee at having finally gotten posses-
sion of the unfortunate knight who had been the instrument
of the death of her husband, Catharine de' Medici did not
wait for Henry's return from Poland, but hastened Montgom-
1 Henri Fazy, Geneve, le Parti Huguenot et le Traite de Soleure, 16, 28.
2 Jean de Serres, v. fol. 8.
3 " Neque obscuri rumores serebantur, Politicorum illorum non paucos pri-
marise notse, Reginse opere et artibus succenturiatos, ad Condaeum in eum finem
accedere, ut illius consilia explorarent." Jean de Serres, v. fols. 17, 18.
Agrippa d' Aubigne (Hist. univ. , ii. 176, 177) pretends to give tbe number of
the paid spies kept by Catharine about her son Alencon and Navarre as exactly
twenty-six.
1574. ACCESSION OF HENRY OF VALOIS. 17
ery's trial, and had the satisfaction of seeing him beheaded for
treason on the Place de Greve, while Henry was still in Vi-
enna.1 Deprived of their leader, and overwhelmed by superior
numbers, the Norman Huguenots lost one place after another.
Saint-L6 was taken by assault, and two hundred men of its
garrison were put to the edge of the sword ; Carentan obtained
honorable terms and surrendered without a blow.2 It was
otherwise in Languedoc and Dauphiny. Marshal Damville,
Governor of Languedoc, although he apprehended that he
might soon be compelled to make common cause with the Hu-
guenots, at first merely concluded a truce with them :
Marshal .
Damviiie and for, if he distrusted the Roman Catholic party, he
ment of had certainly no affection for the Protestants. Even
the truce, however, displeased the bigots of Toulouse ;
especially as the truce was to be followed by a convocation of
the three estates of the province at Montpellier. So the Par-
liament of Toulouse ventured upon the bold step of defying
the marshal's authority by two public declarations. By the
one the judges declared the truce to be null and void ; while
by the other they forbade all persons, of whatever rank or sta-
tion, from attending an assembly called by the marshal without
the king's permission, on pain of being declared rebels and
transgressors of the laws of the realm.3 It was not long, how-
ever, before the judges had more substantial reasons for solici-
tude in the capture of the important city of Castres, situated
capture of less than forty miles eastward of the seat of their
jastres. parliament. Four times had the Protestant exiles
from Castres sought to recover their homes from the hands of
the enemy, and four times had they signally failed. Now, on
the eve of a day of mournful associations for French Protes-
tants (the twenty-third of August, 1574), a fifth attempt,
planned and carried out with equal shrewdness and daring,
proved altogether successful. The chronicler of the exploit has
noted as worthy of everlasting remembrance the humble but
glorious names of the thirteen braves, who, under the leader-
1 Rise of the Huguenots, ii. 631-634. 2 De Thou, v. 63.
* Recueil des choses memorables, 511 : Jean de Serres, v. fols. 5, 6 ; De
Thou, v. 65.
Vol. L— 2
18 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE Ch. L
ship of the gallant Jean de Bouffard, Sieur de la Grange, forced
their way in, through dangers that might well have appalled less
determined men. It was one of the most glorious enterprises
of a time abounding in venturesome undertakings.1 In Dau-
phiny, where the experienced Huguenot Montbrun was con-
fronted by the Roman Catholic Prince Dauphin, eldest son of the
Duke of Bourbon-Montpensier,2 success perched alternately on
the one and the other standard. Here a town of small size and
of no previous or subsequent importance suddenly acquired celeb-
rity in consequence of the two sieges which it underwent. Li-
First siege of vron, a place scarcely deserving a more pretentious
Lwron. designation than that of a simple village, was situated
on the northern bank of the river Drome near its confluence
with the Rhone, not more than ten or twelve miles south of
the episcopal city of Yalence. Its very proximity to Yalence,
1 See the long and interesting account in Jacques Gaches, ' ' Memoires sur les
guerres de religion a, Castres et dans le Languedoc " (first published by Charles
Pradel in 1879), 174, etc. Among the most conspicuous of the thirteen were
two brothers Jacques and Antoine Mascarenc, or Mascarene, one of whom may
have been the progenitor of the Huguenot confessor and refugee for religion's
sake, Jean Mascarene, whose story is told, and whose remarkable letters are
printed, in the History of the Huguenot Emigration to America, by Charles
W. Baird, ii. 124-127, and Appendix, 344-377.
2 Frangois de Bourbon, Prince Dauphin d'Auvergne (such was the terri-
torial designation of the eldest son of the Duke of Montpensier), was a half-
brother of the Princess Charlotte de Bourbon, whom, about a year subsequent
to these occurrences (June 12, 1575), the Prince of Orange married after the
divorce of the unhappy Anne of Saxony. (See Groen van Prinsterer, v. 312 ;
Motley, Dutch Republic, iii. 21.) Charlotte had been secretly brought up by
her mother, Jacqueline de Longwy, in the Protestant faith. This faith she
never renounced. In 1559, an aunt having resigned in her favor the rich
abbacy of Jouarre, Charlotte was forced to obey her father and enter the con-
vent ; not, however, before she had signed before a notary a protest against
the act as one of constraint. The abbess embraced, in 1572, the first oppor-
tunity to escape from the convent and from France, taking refuge at the
court of the elector palatine in Heidelberg. The elector refused to give her
up to her father, unless the promise were first given that she should enjoy
her religious liberty. De Thou, iv. 533, 534 ; Haag, La France protestante
(2nd edit.), art. Bourbon-Montpensier, ii. 1088, 1089. Her brother became
Duke of Montpensier on the death of his father (Louis), in September, 1582
(De Thou, vi. 205). He was, like his father, a devout Roman Catholic ; but,
unlike him, he was fair and conciliatory in his sentiments toward the Protes-
tants. His son, Henry, died without male heirs in 1608.
1574. ACCESSION OF HENRY OF V ALOIS. 19
while causing it to be overlooked by the Roman Catholics,
added to its attractions for the adventurous Montbrun. This
sagacious general, finding that Livron had become the refuge
of many of the Huguenots of the neighborhood, labored to
strengthen its weak fortifications, and worked to such good pur-
pose that, when the Prince Dauphin undertook the siege, the
Huguenots not only held their own, but sallying forth captured
an ensign, spiked a large cannon brought to bear against their
1 walls, and compelled the assailants to suspend for the time
their offensive operations.1 In the West of France tranquillity
seemed for a time to be secured. A truce was effected by La
Noue between the Roman Catholics and the Huguenots of
Poitou, Saintonge, and Angoumois, according to the terms of
which the Protestant garrisons were to receive a considerable
monthly subsidy. It was stipulated that the truce should last
for two months, by which time the return of Henry was ex-
pected ; scarcely had a month elapsed when Catharine had set
on foot a powerful army to overwhelm the Huguenots taken
at unawares.2 It was fortunate that the eye of La Noue had
descried the danger from afar, and that he had adopted meas-
ures accordingly.
Meanwhile, before engaging in active hostilities, the Prince
of Conde published to the world a statement of the causes which
conde's had led him to retire from the French court with a
eciaration. b0(jy 0f nobles and gentlemen of both religions. The
" Declaration " was an impeachment of the house of Guise for
all the high crimes and misdemeanors of which it had been
1 Recueil des choses memorables, 512 ; De Thou, v. 65, 66 ; Jean de Serres,
v. fol. 9. The first siege of Livron began June 23, and lasted only a few days.
3 Recueil des choses memorables, 514, 518 ; De Thou, v. 64, 69 ; Inventaire
general de l'Histoire de France (Geneva, 1619), ii. 472. Although the name
of Jean de Serres is upon the title-page of the " Inventaire," it must be re-
membered that Serres is the author of the work only so far as page 598 of the
first volume (to the death of Charles VI.). The continuation was written by
the inferior hand of Jean de Montlyard (Anquetil, Esprit de la Ligue, i. p.
lxvi.), who drew, however, so largely upon the "Recueil," and the " Com-
mentarii " — genuine works of Serres— that the "Inventaire,'' in the period
now under consideration, is substantially the production of the voluminous
and invaluable historian to whom we are so greatly indebted for our close
knowledge of the events of the reigns of Charles IX. and Henry III.
20 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Cu. L
.guilty during the last fifteen years. Every feature of the course
•of the duke and his brothers was passed in review. The
survey began with the abuse of their power over their nephew
Francis the Second, to secure the total extinction of the royal
family. It was God, not man, said Conde, that saved the Bour-
bons from destruction. Next came the massacre of Yassy,
whereby Francis of Guise paved the way for every subsequent
outrage. Four successive wars had been ended by as many
edicts of pacification, each edict perfidiously violated at the in-
stigation and by the acts of the Guises. The massacre of St.
Bartholomew's day, not limited to the murder of Admiral
Coligny nor confined to the capital, deluged the whole of France
with innocent blood. It was a crime perpetrated in the king's
name, after the commission of which letters, as from him, were
despatched in every direction to princes and to commonwealths,
letters infamous both for France and for Charles himself. The
climax of crime was reached when the memory of Gaspard de
Coligny was branded as that of a traitor, when Navarre and Conde
were compelled to abjure the purer faith in which they had been
educated, and when, afterward, they were forced against their
will to take part at the siege of La Rochelle in a warfare against
their fellow-believers. Before this city the Guises had, in fact,
entered into a plot to assassinate Alencon, Navarre, and the
writer himself — a plot that would have been carried into execu-
tion had not Anjou, the present King of Poland and the legiti-
mate successor to the French crown, interfered to save him.
At length, when Alengon found himself not only the object of
the murderous attacks of the Guises, but defrauded of the posi-
tion of lieutenant-general of the kingdom lawfully belonging to
him on Anjou's departure, and treated with studied indignity,
the duke resolved to withdraw from France and to seek refuge
with old and tried allies of the realm. The plan having been
discovered, Alengon had been thrown into confinement, as
though he had plotted to take the life of his own brother,
Charles the Ninth. Conde alone had succeeded, by the kind
providence of the Almighty, in making his escape, and avoiding
the still more terrible fate in preparation against himself.
While distinctly recognizing Henry the Third as his rightful
1574. ACCESSION OF HENRY OF VALOIS. 21
sovereign, the prince declared the demands of the Huguenots
to be briefly comprehended in three : The provisional conces-
sion of universal religious liberty ; the satisfaction of the honor
of the victims of the massacre of St. Bartholomew's day ; and
the convocation of the states general of the kingdom in a
free and legitimate manner. Such, with sundry complaints,
somewhat stale it must be confessed, respecting the prevalence
of immorality, blasphemy, and dissoluteness of dress, the op-
pressive taxation of the people, and kindred topics, constitute
the chief contents of a paper which may well be regarded as
the most authoritative declaration of the principles for which
the Huguenots were in arms.1
At the very moment when the prince was giving to the world
this public announcement of his designs, the Huguenots held in
the city of Milhau-en-Rouergue a political assembly
sembiy at of more than ordinary importance. The South of
France alone was directly represented — Languedoc,
Dauphiny, and Guyenne ; from the North and West no delegates
were able to come on account of the desolations of war. In the
deliberations now held, the terms of alliance with Marshal
Damville were settled, subject only to the acceptance of the
latter ; while, on the other hand, the Prince of Conde was
recognized as generalissimo, on condition that he should appear
before the elector palatine, his son John Casimir, and the
deputies of the churches, at the close of divine worship, and
there take a solemn oath of fidelity to the Protestant cause.
The prince was to promise in particular to live and die in the
faith of the Reformed churches, and to exert all his powers for
the defence of that faith and for the procuring of a public peace
without religious distinctions. He was to engage never to lay
down his arms without the consent of his co-religionists. He
was to labor assiduously for the liberation of Alencon, Navarre,
and Marshals Montmorency and Cosse, for the removal of
foreigners from office, and for the appeasing of all controversies
by the convocation of the states general.2
1 Jean de Serres, v. fols. 11-14 ; Recueil des choses memorables, 515. The
latter gives the date, July 12, 1574.
2De Thou, v. 68 ; Recueil des choses memorables, 516, 517 ; Jean de Serres,
22 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. I
It cannot be said that the new relations into which the
Huguenots were on the point of entering were altogether satis-
factory to the maiority of the adherents of the party.
Opposition to J » • , . i
alliance with JLhe struggle which they had carried on with com-
the Politiques. . °° . . / .
paratively brief intermissions tor the past fourteen
years was a struggle not so much to defend civil rights as to
maintain religious life. Reluctant as the Protestants had been
to draw the sword in so holy a cause, they had been recon-
ciled to this wretched necessity by the hope that they might be
able to maintain, in the midst of the horrors of warfare and the
temptations of the camp, a discipline so strict and exemplary as
to elicit the approval of the most prejudiced of their opponents.
For a time, under really devout and conscientious leaders, the
Huguenot armies had in some measure realized this exalted
ideal. The lapses from the religious and moral standard had,
however, been deplorably numerous ; and if it might still be
asserted with truth that the Huguenot soldiers could generally
be distinguished from the Roman Catholic troops by a higher
tone of morals, by a closer adherence to truth, by an absence of
profane oaths and blasphemous expressions, and by the fact
that they were less addicted to the crying sin of the times, a
foulness of speech and of writing almost beyond conception —
if all this might be asserted with truth, yet it must be admitted
that the contrast, altogether honorable to their faith, was at-
tained only by the application of ecclesiastical laws and regula-
tions whose severity the Roman Catholics derided as absurd
and tyrannical. What, then, could be expected from an alliance
with Damville and the Roman Catholics of his suite who made
no pretence of affection for Protestantism ? It is true that the
marshal was to pledge his word not to introduce the Romish
service into any town of which the Huguenots were masters ; but
could he promise that his soldiers would not introduce Roman
Catholic manners and practices into Huguenot armies ? Among
warriors fighting under the same colors how could different
standards of discipline be established for the different corps ?
v. fols. 8, 14-17. In complaining of the unlawful participation of foreigners
in the public administration, the Huguenots stated that they did not mean to
include the queen mother.
1574. ACCESSION OF HENRY OF V ALOIS. 23
Besides, the marshal himself was not above reproach, and his
dissolute life, even if temporarily veiled by an appearance of
decency and self-control, could not be forgotten by those ac-
quainted with his past history.1
And yet we cannot be astonished, nor can we condemn with
severity the Huguenot leaders if they accepted the proffered
help of the great Montmorency of the South. Huguenot and
The alliance Politique had a common enemy and, partly, common
a necessity, grievances. Both denied the legitimacy of the system
under which France had been governed for many years ; both
demanded that foreigners be deprived of the undue share of
the administration which they held, and that the will of the
nation be consulted through the states general ; both were in-
dignant that a regent should pretend to detain in confinement
the nearest princes of the blood and the noblest subjects of the
crown. Those that are smarting under the same injuries read-
ily join in measures for mutual defence, and often scan each
other's character with less particularity than might really be
advisable.
Meantime, while the confederates were justifying themselves
by a public manifesto declaring their reasons and designs, and
while the success of the Eoman Catholic army under Mont-
pen sier in the West was balanced by the surprise of Castres, in
the South, all France looked with eager anxiety for the young
king's decision.
It was early in autumn (the sixth of September) when Henry
reached Lyons. In the vicinity he had been met by his
mother.2 Now that he was once more on his native
The question .
of religious soil it was time that he should adopt some defi-
toleration. , , ■ *
nite policy respecting the government of his ancestral
kingdom. Peace or war, the toleration of dissent from the
established Church, or the continuation of the old course of
1 " Et ipso et ipsius comitatu nihil erat libidinosius neque effoeminatius,
ipse spurcis amoribus deditissimus," etc. Jean de Serres, v. fol. 37. I quite
agree with Ranke (Civil Wars and Monarchy in France, Amer. ed. 291) that
Jean de Serres, or Serranus, is probably the best authority for this period.
2 " The king came to this town on the sixth, the queen mother, the Dukes of
Alencon and Savoy being with him in the coach, and the King of Navarre
24 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Cii. I
persecution ; the liberation of Marshal Montmorency, or a re-
lentless conflict with the younger sons of the late constable —
with Thore now engaged in collecting forces in Germany ;
above all, with Damville, the most powerful governor of South-
ern France, having under control the resources of the rich pro-
vince of Languedoc from the gates of Toulouse to the banks
of the river Rhone — such were the alternatives confronting
the returning king, and between them he must make a prompt
decision.
What Henry desired is not doubtful. The last Yalois was
no lover of warfare. Not that he was either deficient in a cer-
tain sort of bravery or altogether insensible to the attractions of
military distinction. His campaign against the Huguenots had
won him glory, when acting as his brother's lieutenant-general,
and at the siege of La Rochelle he had exposed himself to dan-
ger to an extent that raised the apprehensions of his mother.
Now, however, martial aspirations were altogether a thing of
Henry's tastes tne Past- H*8 tastes were all pacific. If he had
pacific. sighed when forsaking the delights of the French
court and turning his reluctant steps toward the frozen north,
his sojourn among the rough and uncultivated Poles had not
tended to make Paris less dear. His escape from his late un-
congenial surroundings appeared to be a true emancipation
from bondage. Every stage in his homeward progress had con-
firmed these impressions. Vienna, Venice, Turin had only
been stations on the way to the terrestrial paradise awaiting
him in France. For its fruition, however, peace was an indis-
pensable condition. War was too expensive. War would des-
olate the country, and render whole provinces incapable of fur-
nishing their accustomed tribute. War swallowed up the
treasure which royal luxury demanded for its own use. War
distracted the minds of men from pleasure, the only proper
pursuit of rational beings, and especially of kings and courtiers.
on horseback by the coach. The queen mother and most of the court went
to meet him twelve leagues in his way. He keeps far greater state than has
been used heretofore." Dr. Dale to Sir Thomas Smith and Francis Wal-
singham, Lyons, September 11, 1574. State Paper Office.
1574.
ACCESSION OF HENRY OF VALOIS.
25
His first in
tentions.
Accordingly, no sooner had Henry collected his thoughts and
begun to realize the wonderful piece of good fortune that had
befallen him in his accession to the throne, though only the
fourth son and the sixth child of his father,1 than he resolved
to have peace at any cost. "Use every exertion," he had .writ-
ten to Catharine de' Medici, " to find the means of coming to
an arrangement with the rebels, and, if possible, to quiet my
kingdom." 2 In fact, if we may credit implicitly the king's own
statements made in a very remarkable letter to Yilleroy, writ-
ten just ten years later, Henry had found time, on his jour-
ney, to reflect maturely upon the real wants of France, and
had, from a consideration of these, and independently
of his own personal preferences, reached the very
same conclusions. It was with deep regret that he afterward
recognized the mistake he had made in permitting himself to
follow a different course. The pivotal point in his plan was the
immediate convocation of the states general of the kingdom.
This body would naturally devise the best measures for the
interests of France entire, and its determinations would com-
mand obedience both from Huguenot and from Roman Cath-
olic ; or, if defied, could easily be enforced by royal authority.
By the States, too, arrangements could be made for the pay-
ment of the debt, and for the thorough reform of the financial
system. Finally, when the domestic affairs of the kingdom,
both religious and civil, had been placed on a firm and equita-
ble basis, Henry would himself demand of foreign nations so
definite a settlement by treaty of their mutual relations as to
preclude future interference in the concerns of France on the
part of any of its neighbors.3
1 Besides Francis and Charles he had another elder brother, Louis, who died
in infancy. His sisters, Elizabeth (Isabella), who married Philip the Second,
and Claude, wife of Charles the Third, Duke of Lorraine, were also older than
Henry.
2 "II Re ha scritto alia Regina, madre sua, che si faccia ogni opera, per tro-
var modi di accordarsi con li ribelli. e per quietare, si e possibile, questo
regno." Alamanni to Grand Duke, Paris, August 5, 1574, Negociations di-
plomatiques avec la Toscane, iv. IS.
3 Henry III. to Villeroy, Lyons, August 14, 1584, Groen van Prinsterer,
Archives de la maison dOrange-Nassau, Premiere serie, Supplement, 233.
26 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. I
If, indeed, Henry really devised so wise a plan, his good reso-
lutions ought to have been confirmed by the advice he received.
Good advice At Vienna the emperor warned him that there is no
perorVnS" sm s0 great as tnat °f treating with violence the con-
doge, victions of others. " Those who undertake to make
themselves masters of men's consciences," Maximilian signifi-
cantly added, " while they think to conquer heaven, often lose
the earth." ' So, too, at Venice the doge, Mocenigo, had not
confined himself to congratulating Henry in the presence of the
senate, upon his accession to the throne, and wishing him a
happy return to his native land ; he also added a suggestion to
the effect that the most appropriate manner of restoring peace
to France was to abolish the unfortunate memory of the crimes
and errors committed on both sides, by an edict not more sol-
emnly given than scrupulously observed by the king. This
politic course, he said, would conduce both to the dignity and
to the safety of the monarch himself. That was not all. When
the public services of Henry's reception by the senate were over,
and all witnesses were removed, Mocenigo proceeded to give the
young king, in the name of the senate, the advice to apply his
mind seriously to peace, and to disregard the warlike counsels
given to Henry, as he had learned, by the papal legate.2 More-
over, long before the king reached France, an envoy of the
of the elector elector palatine was in Paris on his way to meet
paiatme, Henry and inform him that unless certain conditions
were granted — the liberation of marshals, the restoration of
Damville, his brothers, and the Prince of Conde, to favor, etc. —
it would be impossible to keep back the reiters ; an invasion of
France from the side of Germany was inevitable.3 William of
1 Recueil des choses memorables, 523.
2 This incident is vouched for by Jean de Serres, an unimpeachable author-
ity. He states that he had the account directly from a very illustrious person-
age who was in Venice at the time and was acquainted with the most intimate
affairs of state. Commentarii de statu rel. et reipubl., v. fol. 24. Agrippa d'Au-
bigne also (ii. 132) makes the doge give good counsel as to keeping faith with
subjects.
3 Alamanni to the Grand Duke, August 5, 1574, ubi supra. The elector pala-
tine, had, in fact, given virtually this advice in the last days of Charles IX.
*' Le dit Sr. Electeur a mande a S. M. par le dit Fregouse qu'il ne voit que
1574. ACCESSION OF HENRY OF VALOIS. 27
Orange joined in the advice so unanimously given by the most
trusty allies of the king, and gave to the bearer of a letter con-
gratulating Henry upon his accession special instruc-
Andofthe °. t « • > n i • r -i •
prince of tions to urge him to rollow the promptings 01 a dispo-
sition kindly by nature, and, remembering that he was
now the " father of his country," to use all clemency and ten-
derness toward his subjects. The prince even went so far as to
hint that thus Henry might, in time, reach the Imperial dignity
to which his ancestors and predecessors had so long aspired.1
To these advocates of peace must be added Henry's late host,
the Duke of Savoy, who was one of the most urgent.2 Nor did
Queen Elizabeth, slowly as she was apt to move in such matters,
refrain from giving the young king some good advice. She
sent Lord North on a special embassy to influence Henry to
pacific and tolerant measures. "If he say" — so ran
Special In- f. , . . , tip
structions of .North s instructions — " it is not honorable tor princes
Lord North. . . , _ , . , . .
to capitulate with their subjects, or permit diversity
of religion, or that large offers have been made to ' them of the
religion' which they refuse to accept, he is to declare to him
how much more honorable it would be for him to remit part of
that worldly respect of honor for the benefit of his realm and of
all Christendom, and to think that the true honor of a loving
prince is to recover his subjects rather by mildness than the
sword." And the queen not only fortified her position by his-
torical examples, but boldly combated prevailing misapprehen-
sions by asserting " that the permission of diversity of religion
leads not to the unquietness that is pretended." She even de-
fended the Huguenots from the charge of unreasonable suspi-
cion, and frankly told Henry that " why they of the religion
deux moyens de bien composer toutes choses, s^avoir une liberte d'exercice de
la religion generalement partout, et apres quon sera retire, chacun chez soy,
une convocation d'Estatz pour entendre les plaintes des subjects et les y pour-
voir. " La Huguery e to the Prince of Orange, May, 1574, Groen van Prinsterer,
Archives de la maison d'Orange-Nassau, Supplement, 165*.
1 Instruction accompanying a letter of the Prince of Orange to Henry III.,
September 27, 1574, Groen van Prinsterer, v. 61.
2 " The Duke of Savoy is a great furtherer of the peace, and the queen mother
and her chancellor the greatest persuaders to war.'' Dr. Dale to Smith and
Walsingham, September 11, 1574, State Paper Office.
28 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. I.
refuse without greater assurance such offers as he made to them,
she takes to proceed for that the edicts of the late king were
not as well observed as was his intention." 1 It was an excellent
state paper. Dr. Dale declared to Walsingham that he never
had seen a thing better done in his life than his penning of
Lord North's instructions ; significantly adding that, " if it
would please the queen to wrork somewhat in deeds withal, it
might work some good effect." 2
Unfortunately, these were not Henry's only counsellors.
Others beset his ears who were all for war; and these had
both greater facilities for reaching him, and sufficiently specious
intolerant reasons to allege. If the papal legate urged the old
pcS^antTthe arguments against any compacts made with heretics,
queen mother. reminding Henry of the sanguinary precepts so often
reiterated by Pius the Fifth, there were plenty besides to call
his attention to the dishonor which, they said, would attach to
a peace conceded by a sovereign to subjects in rebellion. Before
Henry reached Lyons, it was known by well-informed diploma-
tists that Catharine de' Medici and Chancellor Birague, above
all, were leaving no stone unturned to prevent the conclusion
of peace with the Huguenots and Politiques. J^or were their
motives obscure. The chancellor, as the author of the arrests
of the marshals, had good reason to fear that, with the end of
the war and the restoration of the Montmorencies to power,
would come his own disgrace and fall. The queen mother,
alarmed for her own ascendency, had again resigned herself to
the direction of the Cardinal of Lorraine. It is quite true that
the prelate avoided all parade of his influence, and employed
the chancellor as the instrument of accomplishing his designs ;
but the latter never ventured to take a step without consulting
him. As for Catharine, " she trusted the cardinal more than
she trusted herself," and made little account of the general dis-
satisfaction created by her course. It was only a few days after
the meeting of mother and son that the Florentine envoy wrote
home that Henry professed to be desirous of doing everything
1 Instructions to Lord North, in special embassage to the French king, Oc-
tober 5, 1574, State Paper Office.
2 Dr. Dale to Walsingham, November 3, 1574, State Paper Office.
1574. ACCESSION OF HENRY OF VALOIS. 29
that Catharine might want. But to this statement he added
another not less significant, which may serve to throw light on
much of this unhappy king's subsequent mistakes and errors.
" If he were disposed to do otherwise, I know not whither he
could turn for counsel." '
An intelligent agent of Queen Elizabeth gave much the
same account. The queen mother's authority he declared to
be as ample as ever. Henry's travels had added little to his
knowledge, and, though " more in show and countenance " than
his late brother, he was in reality "far more simple" than
Charles. The greatest matters of state were " carried away "
by Catharine and Chancellor Birague, with Chiverny support-
ing whatever they chose to agree upon. The rest of the coun-
cil, indeed, advocated peace, but these three were urgent for
war, so that the poor king " floated between the storm and the
rock." Though appalled by the present misery of himself and
of his country, the queen mother's " pestiferous " advice had
cast a spell over him.2
Catharine had not waited for Henry's arrival to begin to
exert over him that nefarious influence of which it seemed
Catharine's fated that each of her sons successively should be the
influence. victim. Fearful of the effect of the tolerant counsels
he had received from foreign princes, alarmed at the influence
which Pibrac and other advocates of toleration among the
French themselves were acquiring, apprehensive of a mutation
amounting to little less than a revolution should her son return
and repudiate the policy pursued by his mother during the re-
gency, Catharine had despatched to Turin, Chiverny, Ville-
quier, and others, agents well adapted to the work of prejudic-
ing Henry's mind against the best class of his subjects.8 And
the task imposed upon them was not a difficult one. Henry
had been nurtured in hatred and jealousy of the Montmorencies
and of their cousins the Chatillons. He had been a boon com-
1 See the important letters of Alamanni to the Grand Duke, Septemher 6,
and September 18, 1574, Negociations avec la Toscane, iv. 18, 25.
2 Thomas Wilkes to Walsingham, Lyons, November 4, 1547, State Paper
Office.
3 De Thou, v. (book 58) 98, 99.
30 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. I
panion of Henry of Guise. True, all three of the Chatillons —
the married cardinal, the indomitable admiral, and the " fear-
less knight" — were in their graves. But the Montmorencies
still lived. What Henry of Guise — the former comrade of
Anjou's mad antics — was to prove himself to be, did not yet
appear. A year's absence from France had not lifted Henry
of Yalois above the petty factions of the court. Besides, wThen
his very mother had forgotten the sound advice she had given
him only a few weeks before, was it astonishing that his maj-
esty should take sides in a quarrel of which he ought to have
been content to be the umpire ? On the morrow of that Sun-
day on which his brother died, Catharine had written him, as
we have seen, a letter full of maternal solicitude, and had
begged him not to permit himself to be led by the passions of
his servants. A few short weeks had passed, and the mother
was advocating the very partisanship which she had previously
condemned. Damville, ruler with almost viceregal powers of
one of the fairest parts of the kingdom, had been urged to
visit the king and by personal interview to seal the much de-
sired pacification.1 The marshal was not desirous of war, least
of all of a war with the Huguenots for allies ; and, in
interview at the hope of securing the release of his elder brother,
he consented to go to meet Henry at Turin. Before
leaving Languedoc he did, indeed, use ordinary prudence by
committing the reins of government to a faithful follower of
his house, in preference to Joyeuse, a man of more than doubt-
ful loyalty, whom the court had suggested as a proper depos-
itory of the trust. He had been equally careful to travel only
by the sure roads, in order to avoid the possible pitfalls pre-
pared by his enemies. But his reception by the king, when at
last he reached his destination, scarcely rewarded him for the
pains he had taken. While Henry professed an earnest desire
for peace, he declared that it was below his dignity to treat re-
specting it with his own subjects; and his demeanor was in all
respects so unsatisfactory, if not positively unfriendly, that the
1 See Damville's message, received by Henry at Ferrara, and Henry's flatter-
ing reply conveying an invitation, as well as Duke Emmanuel Pliilibert's pledge
of safety, in Jean de Serres, v. fol. 25.
1574. ACCESSION OF HENRY OF VALOIS. 31
marshal deemed it best to make a hasty retreat to his own gov*
ernment. It was fortunate for him, some said, that he discov-
ered the preparations made to attack him on his return through
the Alps, and was able to find a vessel sailing directly to a
port of Languedoc.1 The unsuccessful result of his visit to
court decided the position of Damville. He threw in his lot
with the Protestants, and signed the articles of agreement.
Still the court had not committed itself irrevocably to the
policy of war. The question was first definitely submitted for
The royai discussion in the royal council and in the king's own
emefon6115" presence, upon the arrival of Henry at Lyons. But
peace or war. tiie deliberation was rather for show than for real
utility. Two champions had been selected, and to them the
opportunity to speak wras restricted. Paul de Foix was the
spokesman for peace and toleration — Paul de Foix, said to be
a scion of the noble house that once exercised sway over broad
territories at the foot of the Pyrenees, and enjoying more sub-
stantial claims to consideration because he had been one of the
bold advocates of milder measures in the famous " Mercuriale "
of 1559, and because since then he had consistently followed the
counsels of Chancellor Michel de l'Hospital.8 His carefully
Paul de Foix's prepared argument was worthy of its author and of
piea for peace. ^ie occasion. By unanswerable proofs he showed
that a civil war — the most disastrous of all wars — was neither
desirable nor necessary ; that its success was more than doubt-
ful. " Granting," said he, " that the Huguenots lack money,
the sinews of war, how faithfully and well have they handled
the little they have hitherto had. Besides, they have allies
that wTill not desert them, and, as for themselves, they spare
neither life nor property. They are men inured to the hard-
ships of wTar, and bound together by the indissoluble chain of
necessity. Among them reign order and discipline ; licence
and debauchery are unknown. In the armies of the king, on
the contrary, what jealousy, what avarice, what ambition, what
disunion prevail ! Even the loss of a sanguinary battle, of two
or three sanguinary battles, will not dishearten the Huguenots.
1 Jean de Serres, v. fols. 26, 27, 28 ; De Thou, ubi supra.
8 See his eulogy in the Memoires de la vie de De Thou, liv. i. pp. 13-15.
32 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. I
Experience has taught that they are less sensible to the most
cruel torture, to the most appalling dangers, than to the fear of
the loss of liberty of conscience and the dread of incurring the
contempt of their fellow-believers. Such a faction has never
been so thoroughly extinguished but that from the ashes of
those that were driven into banishment or butchered a new
conflagration has arisen more terrible than the first. After all,
what have the Protestants always demanded ? Liberty of con-
science. That was first provided for by the Edict of January,
an edict too soon violated by an incident which, far from recall-
ing to memory, I would that I could bury in eternal oblivion.
Thence arose, not in a few provinces, but throughout the entire
state and in every family, a most cruel and disastrous war."
In glowing terms the orator proceeded to depict the horrors of
which France had for ten or twelve years been the victim, hor-
rors that culminated in a massacre on St. Bartholomew's day,
which he preferred to regard as rather the result of necessity
or chance than of premeditated design. He begged the king
to wait for the coming of the deputies sent by the Protestants,
and daily expected, and when they should have arrived to grant
them those reasonable concessions with which they would be
satisfied. " May your prudence, Sire, guard you against stum-
bling on the first step you take in ascending the throne of your
ancestors."
To this harangue the champion of war made a brief and
brutal reply. Affecting to disdain any attempt to refute the
viiiequier's arguments brought forward by his opponent — he was
reply. no karrister, he said, but a man nurtured in arms,
and knew better how to act than how to speak — Yillequier
loudly asserted that to establish peace with heretics was to
declare war with God, and to pronounce rebels those who had
devoted their lives and means to so holy a war. The conflict
had been well begun ; a single blow would suffice to prostrate
the enemy. Instead of waiting for the deputies to arrive, he
counselled instant action. He bade Henry gather the laurels
of which an untimely death had robbed his brother Charles,
and, after two crowns so legitimately obtained, to earn the third
crown now offered to him, by giving peace to the Church through
1574. ACCESSION OF HENRY OF VALOIS. 33
the overthrow of the enemies of God. " Either your Majesty,"
said he, " must perish, with the entire State, or the Protestants
must be utterly destroyed."
Rene de Yillequier was as little a match for Paul de Foix in
argument as in purity of morals, but the easy composure with
which he had borne himself, and the sneer with which he treated
the emotion betrayed by his predecessor, showed plainly enough
that he understood full well that the king had already made up
his mind. And, in truth, no sooner had Yillequier ended, than
Henry and his mother rose without giving any other member
of the council an opportunity to express his sentiments. The
next day the council was again assembled, but only to hear
the announcement of the absurd determination which
solves to pre- Henry had been persuaded to adopt. He would lis-
ten to the propositions of the Protestant delegates,
should they come, but meantime he would prepare for war and
prosecute it with vigor.1
After this there was evidently little prospect of peace. Henry,
indeed, gave audience to the envoys of the elector palatine and
other German princes whom Conde had interested in the cause
of his fellow Huguenots, and heard their intercessions that the
Protestants should have permission to exercise their religion and
should have their property and dignities restored to them. But
he replied that as his predecessors had always maintained the
name and character of " Very Christian," he intended to live
and die in the Catholic, Apostolic, and Homan religion, which
1 I follow the detailed account given by De Thou, v. 105-115. Although
Ranke seems to question whether any such consultation was held (Civil Wars
and Monarchy in France, Amer. ed., 289), I deem the authority of De Thou
conclusive. The future historian, then a young man, had just returned from
an extensive and very instructive journey through Italy, in the suite of the vet-
eran jurist and diplomatist, Foix, with whom he was in the most intimate rela-
tions. A very full account of the trip is given in the Memoires de la vie de De
Thou, liv. i., pp. 14-27. In this work, written, it is well known, by De Thou
himself, he explicitly states (p. 27) that he was at court in Lyons when the dis-
cussion took place. ' ' II [De Thou] y resta quelque terns pour apprendre la
resolution de la cour. On y deliberad'abord de la guerre contre les Protes-
tans. De Foix, daus le Conseil, eut une dispute avec Villequier sur ce sujet;
mais en secret cette guerre etoit resolue. De Thou disoit avoir vu de Foix en
soupirer de regret," etc.
Vol. I.— 3
34 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch I.
he expected to be accepted by all his subjects. He would,
however, pardon the sins of the past, should the Huguenots
restore to him the arms and the cities which they had ap-
propriated, and return to the religion of the state ; or, should
they prefer so to do, he would freely permit them to leave
the kingdom, taking their goods with them, and would pro-
vide them with letters to secure their safety.1 To the Hu-
guenots themselves that came from Provence and Dauphiny
Henry gave a sharp answer, telling them that he would not
speak of peace until his cities and castles should have been re-
stored to his hands.3
The conclusions thus reached were set forth in official form.
By letters patent of the tenth of September, Henry announced
1 Lestoile, under date of September 10, 1574, i. 42. The documents pub-
lished by Kluckhohn are of great interest. Henry, it appears, had written to the
elector palatine from Cracow, soliciting his good offices in the discovery of the
means of pacifying France (Letters of June 15, in Briefe Friedrich des From-
men, ii. 694, 695), and Frederick the Pious had accordingly despatched Dr.
Weyer. The envoy made his way to Paris, but failed to obtain any satisfac-
tion as to the plans of the government from the queen mother, who urged him
to see the new king himself. Of the results of his interviews with the latter,
whom he met coming Horn Turin to Lyons Dr Weyer has left us a full rela-
tion. (Published by Kluckhohn in his " Zwei pfalzisohe Gesandtschaftsberichte
liber den franzosichen Hof und die Hugenotten," Abhandlungen der kon.
bayer. Akad. der Wissenschaften, xi. Bd. ii. Abth. , Munich, 1870.) Henry did
indeed declare to the ambassador that he did not intend to be the ' hangman '
of his subjects (" Ich will meiner underthonen henker nicht sein "), but lie
gave no assurances of toleration to be extended to the Huguenots. He even
showed his annoyance at the elector's interference in their behalf in a letter
to Frederick, of October 26 (Briefe, etc., ii. 727, 728). This drew forth a noble
reply from the palatine (November 27, ibid., ii. 760-762). In the course of it he
reminded Henry that in the promise of liberty of conscience which he made
to the Protestants he granted them nothing at all, since he had no power over
the souls of men, that power being reserved by God for Himself alone ; while,
as to the permission to retire to their houses and enjoy their temporal goods,
the Huguenots derived no security therefrom, inasmuch as, not to speak of
past massacres, even at the present moment the same humors and desires en-
tertained by the royal council and the royal governors and officers, in every
province and place, held them in fear and distrust. Besides, how could they
subsist without worship of God, without baptism, without the sacrament of the
Lord's Supper, without burial, without discipline ?
2 Alamanni to the Grand Duke, September 13, 1574, Negociations avec la
Toscane, iv. 24.
1574. ACCESSION OF HENRY OF V ALOIS. 35
his " paternal " purpose to pardon all his subjects who had
borne arms against the will of their sovereign, or who, in disobe-
officiai decia- dience to his commands, had left the kingdom. The
ration. single condition was that they should lay down
their arms and return and live peaceably in their homes. Not
a word was said about liberty of conscience or religious rights.
It was not until about a month later (the thirteenth of Oc-
tober), that, finding that his first assurances had produced
little effect, Henry wrote another letter, in which he promised
the returning Huguenots that their consciences and religion
should not be interfered with. Still there was no hint of the
toleration of their worship, or of the convocation of a national
council, or of the states general, for which they had called.1 It
was clear that Henry was determined upon a resort to the
arbitrament of war. Catharine had persuaded herself and him
that the campaign would be easy, short, and decisive.3
It cannot be said that the Huguenots were unprepared for
the issue. In Dauphiny and Vivarais they had not suspended
Huguenot op- their military operations. Insignificant towns were
erations. iiQ\^ ^y sman garrisons at fearful odds. Le Pouzin,
little more than a village, but advantageously situated on the
western bank of the Rhone,3 was bravely defended for ten days
against an army of twelve, or, as others assert, of eighteen
thousand men — French, Swiss, Germans, and Piedinontese —
abundantly furnished with artillery, according to the ideas of
the times, and fighting under the colors of the Prince Dauphin.
The small Huguenot garrison first repulsed a general assault so
decisively that all hope of taking the place save by the slower
methods ,of a siege was abandoned ; and when no longer able
to maintain itself in the shattered walls against the enemy, ef-
1 Jean de Serres, v. fols. 29, 32 ; Recueil des choses memorables, 521, 522 ;
De Thou, v. 119.
2 Jean de Serres, v. fol. 28.
3 "The Protestants have fortified themselves in Livron, a strong place on
the Rhone, and in Pouzin, upon the other side of the river, inaccessible but
in one place, and that not above four men in front. They in Dauphiny have
fortified themselves in the mountains very strongly." Dr. Dale to Smith and
Walsingham, Lyons, September 29, 1574. State Paper Office.
36 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OP NAVARRE. Ch. L
fected a safe retreat by night to the neighboring city of Privas.1
Brave Montbrun, who was in command, received calmly, almost
defiantly, the king's summons to lay down his arms and retire
to his home, if he wished to enjoy the benefits of the royal
grace. He boldly vindicated the justice of his cause, and ex-
pressed his confident hope that God would not desert His own
servants. " Whatever result, however, may follow," he added,
"we shall put forth every endeavor, God willing,
Montbrun's £ J ,' &'
courageous that the perfidious and degenerate Italians who abuse
the royal and the French name may in deed acknowl-
edge that they have to do with true Frenchmen, who regard a
glorious death as the most excellent recompense of their faith
and valor." 2
The final arrangements for an offensive and defensive al-
liance with Marshal Damville were effected not long after. In
answer to a summons of the latter, the States of Languedoc
convened in Montpellier, on the sixth of November. Of the
twenty-three districts into which the extensive province was
divided, the greater number were represented by Protestants,
but not a few Roman Catholics were also there. Toulouse,
union with however, sent no delegates. The union being formed,
Damvme. Marshal Damville was recognized as royal governor,
and it was resolved, under his leadership, to make common
-cause against a common foe. In the long and not inappropriate
declaration which the marshal thereupon published, only a
single sentiment deserves especial notice, as indicative of the
world's progress toward the recognition of the rights of man —
" Religious controversy cannot be settled by arms, but by a free
council, be it general or national." 3 It was well understood by
the whole nation that Damville repudiated the name of reli-
1 De Thou, v. 110, gives a brief, Jean de Serres, v. fols. 29-31, a much
more circumstantial account of this brilliant affair, which lasted from the 5th
to the 15th of October.
2 Jean de Serres, v. fol. 33.
3 " Perspiciens controversiam religionis non armis sed libero Concilio, sive
generali sive nationali, compoui posse." Jean de Serres, v. fols. 34-36. Of
course, Damville, as a Montmorency, made much of the fact that he was
" vere et genuine Gallus, et e primis Christianis et baronibus Francise.''
1574. ACCESSION OF HENRY OF VALOIS. 37
gion, and styled himself " Liberator of the Commonwealth ; "
or, as others said, " Reformer of the King's Council." ' Yet,
for a time, the politic marshal seemed himself to have under-
gone a moral reformation which, he was acute enough to per-
ceive, brought him into closer sympathy with the religious
party whose interests he espoused.8 *
It was the middle of November when the king, instead of
pressing on toward the capital whither the great interests of
Henry at n^s kingdom called him, again turned southward to
Avignon. spend the season of Advent in the city of Avignon.
The finances of his state were in extreme confusion, the ex-
chequer was empty, the very pages of the king, it was said, were
driven to the necessity of pawning their cloaks to get food, and,
but for a timely advance of five thousand francs which she
obtained from a royal officer of the treasury, Catharine her-
self could not have provided for the wTants of her own maids
of honor.3 None the less, however, did Henry and his court
dismiss the wearisome consideration of the means of restor-
ing prosperity to France, that they might engage in a form
of devotion whose absurdity would create amusement did
not its puerility awaken disgust. This most inconstant and
profligate of princes was destined, at various stages of his reign,
to hold forth hopes of a personal reformation of morals, only
to disappoint his subjects by relapses into the most shameless
debauchery. One of these spasmodic and short-lived changes
was witnessed about this time. " At his being at Avignon,"
quaintly writes a correspondent of Lord Burleigh, " certain
Jesuits came unto him, and persuaded him to leave that loose
life of his, and to forsake such dames as he brought with him
out of Yenice, otherwise God would not prosper him. And
hereupon he, being touched, hath confessed his sinful life to
1 Alanianni to the Grand Duke, Lyons, November 9, 1574, Negociations
avec la Toscane, iv. 29.
2 "Inito fcedere, ipse quidem quasi sempiternum voluptati indixisset bel-
lum, mulierculas amandat, severe autem interdicit suis ne secum habeant
scorta, ne cui impune liceat blasphemare," etc. Jean de Serres, v. fol.
37.
3 Lestoile, i. 47.
38 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OP NAVARRE. Ch. L
those Jesuits, with full purpose to live better, and so hath given
himself to marry.'' '
But Henry's improvement in external morality was less strik-
ing and more transient than his newly conceived passion for the
Flagellants. The " Flagellants " of the thirteenth, fourteenth,
and fifteenth centuries, had been in turn held up for popular
admiration by the clergy, anathematized by papal authority,
and committed to the flames by the Inquisition. The supersti-
tion for which they had received such opposite treatment was
subsequently discovered to be a profitable delusion, and under
the name of u Penitents " the new flagellants were associated,
with the Church's sanction, in confraternities which attracted,
by reason of their singularity, not a little attention and surprise.
It was in the papal city of Avignon that the Penitents first
made their appearance on French soil. Clothed in long gowns
reaching from head to foot, with no part of the face visible save
the eyes, they paraded the streets, sometimes by day but more
frequently by night, chanting lustily the mournful verses of the
" Miserere." To express the idea of sorrow for sin more forcibly,
each penitent was provided with a whip well knotted or fur-
nished with metal points, by means of which he lashed the ex-
posed back and shoulders of the brother whom he followed. It
was a weird but loathsome spectacle, from which sensible men
turned away with mingled shame and indignation. But Henry
He joins the °^ Valois was both interested and pleased. The
Fiageiiants. n0Vel practice might prove a pleasant diversion, and
if it could atone for moral delinquencies, the pain endured
would be a cheap price to pay for the purchase of absolution.
Was it not likely that the whip, in the hands of courtiers,
would be more tolerable than the scourge of his own con-
science? However this may be, the frivolous monarch no
sooner saw the performance than he expressed a desire to take
part in it. His example was at once followed by the courtiers.
The king having become a member of that part of the confra-
ternity which clothed itself in white — the " Blancs Battus " — ■
1 Thomas Wylson to Lord Burleigh, February 14, 1575 ; Wright, Queen
Elizabeth and her Times, ii. 5.
1574. ACCESSION OF HENRY OF VALOIS. 39
Catharine made herself the patron of the " black penitents,"
and the Cardinal of Armagnac joined the " blue." It was not
long before every seigneur or gentilhomme of the court was
enrolled in one of the confraternities, whose cause he espoused
with an ardor that would have done no discredit to the parti-
sans of the factions of the circus in the imperial times of
Rome or Constantinople.1
To one person the silly farce proved of tragic importance. Car-
dinal Charles, of Lorraine, had the imprudence to take a prom-
inent part in the show, walking with bare, or nearly
cSdinai ofe bare feet through the cold and wintry streets. The
exposure brought on a fever to which he soon suc-
cumbed.2 Whether the prelate died in the odor of sanctity,
having discoursed, during his last hours, most learnedly and
piously respecting religion — as his friends and adherents gave
out — or passed away from the scene of his restless and nefarious
activity after having spent whole days and nights, without sleep
and uttering furious outcries — as his enemies asserted with equal
positiveness — is a point which it is useless to discuss.3
And so this bustling actor passed off the stage upon which he
1 Lestoile, i. 47 ; Recueil des choses memorables, 533 ; De Thou, v. 124.
The Florentine envoy Alamanni, writing from Lyons, December 14, 1574,
stands in admiration of the French king's piety : '' £ entrato in una com-
pagnia di Battuti, che e in Avignone, e va agli uffizi sacri. vestito pare da Bat-
tuto, dando a ciascuno de' suoi popoli un ottimo esempio di se, e monstrandosi
in ogni cosa sua religioso e molto cattolico principe." Negociations diploma-
tiques avec la Toscane, iv. 33.
2 If the date December 23, 1574, as given by Jean de Serres, were correct,
Cardinal Lorraine would have died on the day of the month upon which his
nephew, Henry of Guise, was murdered at Blois fourteen years later. But the
true date was Sunday, December 26th. See Jean de Serres, v. fols. 45, 46 ;
Jehan de la Fosse, Journal d'un cure ligueur, 172; Lestoile, etc., ubi supra.
3 Agrippa dAubigne, ii. 143 ; Recueil des choses memorables, 535 ; Languet,
Epistolae secretae, i. 68. As if his imprudent exposure did not sufficiently
account for Lorraine's fatal illness, De Thou, Agrippa dAubigne, Olhagaray,
and others discuss the absurd story of the cardinal's assassination by poison, ad-
ministered, as some said, in a purse that was presented to him. For a con-
temporary account of his furious death and the fierce storm that raged through-
out France at the time (" et l'appelle-t-on le vent du cardinal "), see Beza to
Gabriel Schlusselberger, March 25, 1575; Berne MS., apud Bulletin de la
Societe de 1'histoire du Prot. franc., xvi. (1867), 270.
40 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. I.
had long played a leading part. Was it because the world had
learned to know him so thoroughly, or because new characters so
soon engrossed the undivided attention of the specta-
' tors, that his removal produced less commotion, to use
the expressive words of a contemporary, than would have fol-
lowed the death of a simple village curate ? ' Of the person and
work of Charles of Lorraine there is no need to speak at length.
What he was is more clearly shown in the events of the quarter
of a century preceding his death than could be set forth in any
portrait, however skilfully delineated. That he was possessed
of eminent abilities not even his enemies could deny. If neither
profound nor learned, he was certainly shrewd, polished, versa-
tile, and capable of turning to his own advantage every op-
portunity that presented itself for acquiring distinction or for
amassing wealth. With the help of others, cleverly appropri-
ated, he had on more than one occasion contrived to present a
good appearance both for scholarship and for eloquence, iit
the Colloquy of Poissy no orator upon the Roman Catholic side
had acquitted himself so creditably ; it had proved no difficult
thing to persuade the multitudes that had not been present at
the discussion that he had carried off the palm in a contest with
the elegant and courtly Theodore Beza himself. He was the
most plausible man in France. Until the refutation came, no
one's assertions seemed more like the very truth than his.
Presently, however, it was discovered that a man could be safe
only when he believed just the opposite of what the cardinal
said.2 It made no matter whither he went ; everywhere he
practised the same arts of deception. What the Venetian am-
bassador Suriano had depicted him as being in his earlier years,3
he was to the very end of life. When the news of the Massacre
of St. Bartholomew's Day reached Rome, the cardinal, who had
not had the slightest knowledge of the impending blow, and
had, of course, taken no part either in the plan or in the execu-
1 Memoires de Henry III., 12.
2 The tree is known by its fruit — remarks Lestoile — and in his case the
fruit was, according to the testimony of his own adherents, "que pour n'estre
jamais trompe il faloit croire tousjours tout le contraire de ce qu'il voue
disoit." Memoires de Henry III., 11.
3 See Rise of the Huguenots, i. 270.
1»Y4. ACCESSION OF HENRY OF V ALOIS. 41
tion, at once began to state that the destruction of the Huguenots
was mainly due to his activity. The Tuscan agent at the
French court visited Catharine de' Medici and informed her of
the boast. Catharine was indignant at the unwar-
His claim to .. . _. ~ _
have caused ranted assumption, "lne Cardinal of Lorraine,'
she said, u knew no more about the massacre than
you did. But for me nothing would have been done. In con-
sequence of certain advices I resolved upon it suddenly. Lor-
raine and the admiral are on a par for lies, inventions, and
malignity." ' " Perhaps it would be well, since he has an
uneasy brain, to recall him to France," suggested Petrucci.
" Oh, no ! " Catharine promptly replied, " let us leave him
there. If he were here, he would turn the world upside
down."2 Before the interview was over the queen and the
ambassador showed that they were of one mind : this conduct
of the cardinal was hateful in the extreme. " At Pome," said
Petrucci, " he wishes to give the impression that, though ab-
sent, he governs the kingdom. In France, he pretends that he
is the greatest favorite of the pope." 3
It is not possible to determine the precise share which be-
longed to the cardinal in the disasters of France during this
Hisresponsi- eventful period. Other hands besides his were em-
fcuity. brued in the blood of the persecuted reformers;
other tongues were busy in defence of the sanguinary doctrine
that heresy must be exterminated by exterminating its profes-
sors. Many a clergyman advocated the use of faggot and gal-
lows, with no such attempts as Lorraine more than once put
forth to shield himself from the imputation of inhumanity.
And yet, despite his disclaimers at Saverne and elsewhere, the
Huguenots held him, above all others, directly responsible for
that relentless system of persecution which had its legiti-
mate outcome in the civil wars that filled the latter half of
1 "Ella mi disce che non ne sapeva [sc. Lorraine] piil che ne sapessi io, e
che seriza lei non se ne faceva altro ; ma che per certi avvisi se ne risolve
subito, e che Lorena e l'Ammiraglio andavono al pari di bugie e d'invenzioni
e di malignita." Petrucci to Fr. de' Medici, September 29, 1572, Negociations
diplomatiques de la France avec la Toscane, iii. 842.
3 " Lasciamolo pure star la, perche qua metterebbe sotto sopra il mondo."
Ibid., ubi supra. 3 Ibid., ubi supra.
42 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. L
the sixteenth century. In this estimate they were not alone.
It will be remembered that a secretary of state, who had often
met him at the council-board, and who belonged to the same
religious communion, had long since associated his name with
that of the bloodthirsty Diana of Poitiers, exclaiming, with
reference to these two partners in infamy : " It were to be de-
sired that this woman and the cardinal had never been born :
for they two alone have been the spark that kindled our mis-
fortunes." ' Chary of his own life, Lorraine had been lavish
of the lives of others ; a consequently, few bewailed his loss.
Such a man, in an age much given to plain-speaking, was likely
to be handled with uncomplimentary frankness. Ten years be-
fore the cardinal's death, the reformer Farel expressed, in his
private correspondence, the estimate which his fellow Protes-
tants had formed of their arch -persecutor. He described him
as " the man who surpasses all other men on the face of the
earth in wickedness and malice." And, more forcibly than
politely, he declared it to be his opinion that the prelate had
usual recourse for counsel and help, not to a single evil spirit —
he was never without one or more imps ready to come to him at
his call — but to the prince of fiends himself, from whom he
received all aid and comfort in his efforts to serve Satan effec-
tually and to destroy the whole work of God.3
Soon after the beginning of the new year the court left
Avignon for the north. If the audacity of the Huguenots in
TheHugue- taking Saint Gilles almost within hearing of the
?on8ofLiv" king,4 and surprising Aigues-mortes before Henry
had gotten well under way,5 had been an annoyance,
the rebuff he now received at Livron — " but a very little up-
1 Claude de l'Aubespine. See Rise of the Huguenots, i. 271.
2 Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. 143. " Tres chiche et craintif de sa vie, prodigue
de celle d'autrui, pour le seul but qu'il a eu en vivant, assavoir d'eslever sa
race a une demesuree grandeur."
3 Farel to Christopher Fabri, Neuchatel, June 6, 1564. in the letters of the
reformer appended to Fick's edition of " Du Vray Usage de la Croix," 315.
4 Jean de Serres, v. fol. 47.
5 The surprise of Aigues-mortes occurred January 12. The licence of the
Protestant soldiers in plundering the place for the next seven days furnished
a dangerous precedent, of which it would seem that advantage was soon taken.
Jean de Serres, v. fols. 52, 53.
1575. WAR AGAINST THE HUGUENOTS. 43
landish town " 1 — was still harder to be borne with equanimity.
The Protestant inhabitants of Livron had again been forced to
take refuge behind their strengthened works ; they soon showed
themselves true Huguenots, better acquainted with the art of
defence than with the art of assault.2 Henry was tempted to
stop before the presumptuous town that had dared to deny ad-
mission to the royal troops. But his presence only incited the
garrison to greater displays of courage. He was saluted at his
approach by a discharge of artillery, and when the deafening
report had ceased there succeeded a still more startling shout
from the throats of hundreds of soldiers whom the Huguenot
officers strove in vain to repress. " You will not butcher us in
our beds, as you butchered the admiral ! " was a cry that fell
upon Henry's ears, mingled with other derisive words that told
too clearly the depth of contempt to which the crown had fallen
in the popular estimation.8 A few days after the king's departure
the siege of Livron was for a second time abandoned in disgust.
Meanwhile in the west the royal arms had purchased success
at a heavy cost. The powerful army of the Duke of Mont-
pensier captured the important city of Fontenay after
Fontenay and a short but vigorous resistance ; but the loss of the
assailants in dead and wounded much exceeded that
of the garrison. The castle of Lusignan was next attacked, but
proved a more difficult place to master. The massive walls,
1 Dr. Dale to Lord Burleigh, Lyons, January 16, 1575, State Paper Office.
2 " Monstrerent bien qu'ils estoient vrais huguenos, qui scavoient mieux le
mestier de se deffendre que d'assaillir," Lestoile, i. 48. The second siege
of Livron, begun December 17, 1574, and prosecuted with marked steadfast-
ness of purpose by a powerful army under the direct command of Marshal
de Bellegarde, is described at great length by Jean de Serres, v. fols. 42-52.
3 " Hgec vero frequentius increbescebant : • Haudquaquam nos in lecto,
sicuti Amiralium, mactabis : educito in aciem cincinnatos illos tuos, veniant
ad nostras uxores, et intelligent quam facile sui copiam sint facturae.' '' Jean
de Serres, v. fol. 55. This writer contrasts the unfortunate licence then prev-
alent with the strict discipline of the Protestant armies in the time of Coligny
and Louis de Conde ; when a disrespectful word respecting the king would
have cost a soldier his life. The Recueil des choses memorables, p 538, and
the Inventaire general, ii. 481, give a very similar form to the taunts of the
Huguenot garrison : " Hau, massacreurs, vous ne nous poignarderez pas dedans
nos licts, comme vous avez fait rAmiral,'' etc. See De Thou, v. 122, 184.
44 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OP NAVARRE. Ch. L
which had defied for centuries the strength of successive assail-
ants, were commonly reputed to be guarded by the spell of the
most potent fairy of mediaeval fable. The beautiful but unfor-
The fairy Me- tunate Melusine, fated by her mother's curse to as-
lusme. sume the form of a serpent every Saturday until the
Day of the last Judgment, unless she should find a husband too
generous to pry into the awful secret of her life, had miracu-
lously caused the fabric to arise for the abode of Raymondin,
son of the Count of Forez. When her spouse broke his
pledged faith, she fled from his embrace with a piercing wail,
and, issuing from a window, was seen to fly through the air in
monstrous shape. Thrice did she circle round the fated castle,
then disappear forever from human sight. Only when Lusig-
nan changed its masters, or when some member of the lordly
family was about to die, did the occupants of the castle hear
her piteous cry, repeated on three successive nights, sure pre-
sage of coming disaster.1 This fortress had in the Middle
Ages given title to a distinguished family. In the twelfth cen-
tury Guy de Lusignan, after wearing the thorny crown of Je-
rusalem, had obtained the more substantial sovereignty of the
kingdom of Cyprus. In the thirteenth century Hugues de Lu-
signan took part in the first crusade of Saint Louis and lost his
life on the banks of the Nile. In the fourteenth century,
Pierre de Lusignan was among the most strenuous advocates of
the renewal of the effort to rescue the Holy Sepulchre from the
hands of the infidel.2 The fortress from which these stout war-
riors derived their name, although seized by the Huguenots in
1 The story of the fairy is most fully told in the tale "Melusine," written hy
Jehan d' Arras for the delectation of the Count of Berry and Auvergne, in
1387, and recently edited afresh by M. Brunet (Paris, 1854). Brantome vou-
ches for the statement that divers washerwomen at the fountain below the
tower had heard Melusine's cries, and that many soldiers and "men of
honor '' could testify to her loud lament when the castle was besieged. The
name of Melusine is supposed to be an abbreviation of " Mere des Lusignans,"
"Mere Lusigne," or simple " Merlusine." The fairy had the credit of having
built a number of other castles (among them Parthenay, Issoudun, and Sou-
bise), from whose ruinous walls spectral apparitions or hideous cries issued
from time to time.
2 Michaud, Histoire des Croisades, ii, 439 ; iv. 125, 176 ; v. 184.
1575. WAR AGAINST THE HUGUENOTS. 45
1569,1 during the course of the third civil war, had the reputa-
tion of being nearly, if not quite impregnable. Besides, the
garrison had the advantage of being commanded by Rene de
Rohan, Sieur de Frontenay, who, on the approach of the royal
army, threw himself into the place, with forty gentlemen and
six hundred picked troops. Well did general and soldiers
prove the wisdom of the movement and exhibit their own
valor. One assault after another was bravely met and foiled.
It was not until the siege had lasted nearly four months, that
the Huguenots could be brought to surrender Lusignan, and
then they secured the most honorable terms. On the twenty-
fifth of January, 1575, the small garrison that had so long held
at bay a large army commanded by a prince of the blood,
marched out with arms and baggage. The Protestants only
lost twenty-five gentlemen and two hundred soldiers. Mont-
pensier's loss was variously estimated at eight hundred or
twelve hundred men. He satisfied his resentment against the
castle that had so long detained him by razing the walls to the
ground. Not even the famous " tour de Melusine " was spared.2
While his armies in Poitou and in Dauphiny were meeting
with such indifferent success, Henry the Third was preparing
to receive the rite of anointing and coronation at the hands of
the Church. The ceremony took place, according to custom, in
the city of Rheims. There, too, Henry was married to
Henry's coro- *
nation and Louise de Vaudemont, a princess of the family of
marriage. x x , •
Lorraine. JN either event was altogether auspicious.
Henry, whose mistake it was that he generally attended to sec-
ular affairs while he should have been absorbed in the offices of
religion, and gave himself up to superstitious observances just
as the claims of his kingdom were most imperative, exhibited
the utmost irreverence when the time came for the acts that
1 Rise of the Huguenots, ii. 323. The castle of Lusignan, described by
Froissard (Johnes's trans, i. 489) as "very grand and handsome," defied the
arms of the Earl of Derby in his victorious expedition from Bordeaux soon
after the battle of Crecy (ibid. i. 171).
'2 Recueil des choses memorables, 524-527; Lestoile, i. 51 ; De Thou, v. 128-
132; Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. 147-157, whose account is very full, and who
gives the text of the articles of capitulation.
46 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. I.
were to set the approval of the Roman Catholic Church upon
his succession to the throne. He slept instead of keeping vigil
during the night preceding the coronation. He spent, in at-
tending to his own attire and in inspecting the jewels to be
worn by his bride, so large a portion of the day, that, contrary
to all ecclesiastical precedent, the mass was necessarily deferred
until afternoon, and the solemn Te Deum was either forgotten
or purposely omitted. When the crown was placed upon his
head, .he interrupted the officiating prelate by impatient and ill-
omened exclamations — that the crown hurt him, that it was
slipping off. At the close of the service he had no time to per-
mit the archbishop to divest him of garments consecrated by
contact with the holy oil, but passed with perfect unconcern
from the cathedral to the supper-room, and took part in the fes-
tivities dressed in his coronation robes.' The marriage of
Henry with a princess of Lorraine, a relation of the Guises — a
family already far too powerful in French affairs — was more in-
auspicious than the violation of churchly usage. Henry had
broken off negotiations for the hand of a daughter of the
good Gustavus Yasa, King of Sweden, to espouse a portionless
girl belonging to a younger branch of a hated and dangerous
race.2 The match was unequal ; the accession of power it was
likely to bring to Henry of Guise and his brother could not be
viewed by calm observers without serious apprehension. True,
the restless Cardinal of Lorraine was dead, and it was not yet
suspected that the eldest son of Francis of Guise had inherited
the ambition both of his father and of his uncle. Yet it might
have been supposed that the perils attaching to matrimonial al-
1 For this last incident see Miss Freer, Henry III., ii. 17. Cf. also De Thou
(who was an eye-witness of the coronation), v. 186, 187 ; Recueil des choses
memorables, 540 ; Lestoile, i. 51.
1 Miss Freer, ubi supra, ii. 5, 6. According to the author of the Recueil des
choses memorables, 541, Catharine was a warm supporter of the Lorraine mar-
riage alliance, by means of which she hoped to confirm her authority in
France. And, indeed, Henry was profuse in his declarations to foreign am-
bassadors to that effect. " Elle me fit et elle me maria," he said. But com-
mon report made it quite otherwise, and the English envoy called attention to
the king's own contradictory statements. See Dr. Dale's letters to Lord
Burleigh, March 5 and 18, 1575, State Paper Office.
1575. WAR AGAINST THE HUGUENOTS. 47
liances with any branch of the House of Lorraine would readily
suggest themselves, in view of the troubles introduced by the
marriage of Francis the Second and Mary of Scots. Mean-
while, for the present, the marriage made little change in
Henry, unless it were that he became even more averse to seri-
ous occupations ; more engrossed alternately in puerile
His growing .-. r , „ \ , ° J.r
devotion to devotion and invoJous pleasures, and more impecu-
nious because of his lavish gifts.1 During the whole of
the Lenten season immediately following upon his coronation
and marriage he went daily to mass and listened to sermon
after sermon, each day in a new church. At the same time he
resorted to every petty device to relieve his poverty. .New
taxes were imposed ; new offices were put up for sale ; money
was raised by giving the privilege of cutting down two trees in
every " arpent " of all the forests of France. One day Henry
was reported not to have enough money to purchase
His penury , . * . _ , . ° , ,
and lavish- a dinner, and the king actually sent to beg a loan
from all the counsellors, advocates, and procureurs of
the Parliament and Chatelet of Paris, obtaining from each a
few hundred francs. Some days later the public, including the
king's reluctant creditors, were treated to the information that
Henry had turned the whole of this collection to account in the
way of making a present of over fifty thousand livres to satisfy
the rapacity of a single ravenous favorite.2
The Huguenots, while ably conducting their military opera-
tions in Dauphiny and Languedoc, had been drawing more close
the bands of their alliance with Damville and the
Huguenots60 Politiques. At a conference held in Nismes, about
and Politiques . i -i n . -i ,i .i ,
atNismes. the beginning or the year, another perilous step was
taken in the course to which the Protestants seemed
driven, as by a fatal necessity, of establishing a commonwealth
of their own, with its organized forms and its laws of action.
1 On his way from Avignon to Rheims, Henry was in such straits for
money that he had to compel one '* Ludovico da Diagetto, a Florentyne,"
much against his will, to loan him one hundred thousand francs, " or else the
king could not have gone from Avignon to be sacred at Rheims, nor yet to be
married." Thomas Wylson to Lord Burleigh, February 14, 157£, Wright,
Queen Elizabeth and her Times, ii. 5. 2 Lestoile, i. 52.
48 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. 1.
The union was signed by Damville, in the name of the Roman
Catholics, and by Yiscount Paulin and Baron Terrides, on the
part of the Protestants. The marshal engaged upon oath to
abstain from every act contrary to the laws and statutes adopted
by the allies, and promised, in any sudden emergency render-
ing it impossible to obtain their opinion, to obey implicitly the
advice of the council with which he had been provided.1
Meantime, in the spring of 1575, negotiations were in prog-
ress at the French court which, although they have received
scanty notice from historians, throw a brilliant light upon the
purposes and the temper of the various parties in the State.2
From the pursuit of war or of pleasure the court now seemed
disposed to turn its attention for a little while to the methods
of obtaining the peace so ardently desired by the un-
Negotiations T « i • i
for peace. fortunate classes or the population upon whom the
burdens of the state rested most heavily. The queen
mother, not many months since an advocate of war, had, with
her usual variableness, veered round and become anxious for
the restoration of peace. She had discovered to her great an-
1 De Thou, v. 185 ; Jean de Serres, v. fols. 53, 54, where a portion, and
Vaissete, Histoire du Languedoc, v. 241-244, where the whole of Damville's
proclamation, dated January 12th, 1575, is given. It is interesting to note
that as Marshal Damville had, from an enemy, become the leader of the Prot-
estants of Languedoc, so the royal army with which the Protestants were con-
fronted was commanded by the Due d'Uzes, one of their best generals in former
wars. In changing sides the duke was also accused of having developed a
character for inhumanity previously unperceived in him. It was he that gave
the disastrous example of mercilessly burning the gathered crops of the un-
happy peasants of Languedoc. Jean de Serres, v. fols. 105, 113.
- The peace negotiations of 1575 are briefly described or referred to by Les-
toile, i. 53 ; the Recueil des choses memorables, 542-544 ; Inventaire general,
ii. 483 ; De Thou, v. 186-188 ; Davila, 212 ; also by Agrippa d'Aubigne', ii.
173-175, whose sketch, if short, is very graphic. In comparison with these
writers, however, Jean de Serres gives, in the concluding volume of his in-
valuable Commentarii de statu religionis et reipublicae (v. fols. 63-101) a far
more trustworthy and detailed account of this highly interesting episode in the
history of the fifth civil war. In the Memoires de Nevers (Paris, 1665), a work
of almost equal rarity, the long report of the Protestant envoys themselves is
inserted (i. 308-434), under the title " Negotiation de la paix faite par les
deputez du Prince de Conde, en la pr'sence du Roy Henry III. et de la Reine
sa mere," etc. The two narratives supplement and corroborate each other.
1575. THE PEACE NEGOTIATIONS. 49
noyance that her influence over the king was much diminished,
and that " many things passed by her mill more than were
wont." Besides, even her restless spirit was appalled by the
indescribable jealousy and confusion reigning at court, and now
she declared that she would have an end of the struggle with
the Huguenots, cost what it might. In the words of an eye-
witness of the deplorable scene : " They were all bent to prep-
arations of war, but these domestic discords do tame them.
It is a very hell among them, not one content or in quiet with
another — not mother with son, nor brother with brother, nor
mother with daughter." '
The king, too, professed a desire for reconciliation with his
subjects of Southern France. He had gone so far as to permit
both Damville and the Protestants to send deputies to the Prince
of Conde at Basle, with the view of deliberating with him re-
specting the terms they ought jointly to insist upon.
On their way the deputies stopped at Geneva and, under
pledge of strict secrecy, consulted the council of that faithful
city respecting the propriety of their proposed demands, "for,
gentlemen," said they, " the Protestants of Languedoc trust you
as much as they trust themselves." 2 Nor was this all. The
Prince of Conde sought and again secured permission that The-
Beza-s broad °^ore Beza should be present at the conference, and
Btatesman- much did the reformer's sturdy good sense and clear
perceptions contribute to the adoption of the manly
course that was ultimately adopted. A statesman of large and
liberal views, Beza, notwithstanding his long period of residence
on the banks of the Leman, had not forgotten that he was the
citizen of a larger commonwealth than the little republic of
Geneva, or even the extensive kingdom of France. For him
the whole of Christendom, at least the whole of that part of
Christendom which had espoused the Reformation, constituted
his greater country, whose interests were to be preferred far
above the interests of any one city or state ; while, as for Geneva,
1 Dale to Walsingham, two letters, both dated March 23, 1575, State Paper
Office.
8 "Parce que, disaient ils, ils se fient en Messieurs comme en eux mesmes."
Fazv, Geneve, le Parti Huguenot, etc. 25.
Vol. I.— 4
50 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Cn. I.
to her belonged, in the truest sense, the honor of being the holy
city, with the high privilege of serving as the secure refuge of
all that were persecuted in other parts for righteousness' sake.
The broad policy of the reformer might make Beza a somewhat
unsafe adviser for a place in itself so weak and so beset with ene-
mies as Geneva ; ' it certainly adapted him in a singular degree
to comprehend the larger diplomacy of European Protestantism.
It commended him above all others to the sympathy and the
esteem of so chivalrous a prince as Conde, with whom duty out-
weighed considerations of danger, and who always preferred a
boldness that might be confounded with rashness to a prudence
verging upon cowardice. So it was that, when at length the
duties which twice called Beza to Basle in the spring of 1575
were fully discharged, and he was able to return to the scene of
his accustomed labors, he was followed by letters from Conde
to the magistrates of Geneva, full of expressions of thanks for
having permitted their eminent theologian to take part in an
enterprise so necessary for the glory of God and the quiet of
poor France, wherein the Huguenots had need of the prudence
which he so well displayed. " I assure you, gentlemen," said
the grateful prince, in conclusion, " that besides the general es-
teem which his rare virtues have engraven on the hearts of all
good men, I entertain a more special esteem for him on my own
account, in accordance with which I shall make known to any
person that may be so venturesome as to attack him, that he has
assailed one of my greatest friends." 2
1 With all their deep reverence for his character and resplendent merits, the
magistrates occasionally found it necessary to remonstrate with Beza for con-
duct which they deemed imprudent and likely to involve their city in trouble.
It would appear, for example, that in December, 1574, some Huguenot exiles
undertook a fruitless enterprise of a military character in the direction of
Macon and Chalons. Discovering, upon the return of the refugees to Geneva,
that Beza had been privy to the undertaking, the council commissioned the
eminent Michel Roset kindly to set forth to him that he ought not to consent
to such things, still less take part in them — ''qu'il ne doit consentir a telles
choses, moins s'en mesler.'' Fazy, 21. See, also, this author's valuable re-
marks, ibid. 11.
8 " Qu'il se sera adresse a un de mes plus grands amis." Conde to the Coun-
cil, Basle, June 22, 1575, MS. Geneva Archives, in Fazy, 135, 136.
1575. . THE PEACE NEGOTIATIONS. 51
At the conference the debate was long and earnest. What
measure of religious liberty should be deemed sufficient ? What
satisfaction required for the late massacre ? What security ex-
acted to avoid the possibility of being cheated in the future as in
the past ? No wonder that the resolution was finally reached " to
make good and stout demands on all these points, and to persist
in them to the very end." For the Huguenots had excellent
grounds of encouragement. Since the renewal of the war they
had been almost uniformly victorious. " Never," wrote Beza,
" even when we had large armies in the field, had we one-tenth
part of the success which God has vouchsafed to us as against
Ills enemies since the beginning of these last troubles." '
Early in the month of April the deputies from Languedoc,
together with other delegates commissioned by Conde himself,
found themselves in Paris. A few days later (on the eleventh
of April) an audience was granted them at the Louvre. Henry
of Yalois was attended by his wife and mother, by his brother
Alencon, by the King of Navarre, and by the members of the
royal council, among whom figured Cardinal Bourbon, the Duke
of Montpensier, Marshal Retz, Morvilliers, Sebastian de l'Aubes-
pine, Bishop of Limoges, and others, drawn to the queen mother's
apartments not merely by the duty of their office, but by curi-
osity to learn the conditions which the confederates would pro-
pose. One of the secretaries of state was present to make an
official record of the proceedings.
In behalf of the little knot of envoys, some deputed by the
prince, others by Damville, and still others by the Protestant
churches — they may have been eight or ten in all — a former
speech of member of the Parliament of Paris, the courageous
<r Irenes. Sieur d' Arenes, was put forward to speak. Beauvoir
la Node and such "fronts d' airain" as Yolet, Duchelar, and
Clausonne stood by in silence. The long speech of Arenes was
1 " Mais quant a nos freres des Eglises de France, la guerre va tousjours en
avant, et vous puis dire que lorsque nous avons eu grosses armees, nous n'a-
vions point la dixiesme partie de ce que Dien a fait contre ses ennemys depuis
les derniers troubles." Beza to Gabriel Schlusselberger Geneva, March 25,
1575, Bulletin de la Societe de l'histoire du Protestantisme francais, xvi. (1867)
269.
.52 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. I.
in every way worthy of a man distinguished alike for his elo-
quence and for his learning.1 He expressed an earnest longing
for peace, but warned the king that if France now presented
the mournful spectacle of irreligion, discord, and insubordina-
tion to constituted authority, if the French name had come to
be covered with opprobrium, as Henry might himself testify
from his personal experience on his way to Poland, the cause
was to be sought in no fatal conjunction of heavenly constella-
tions or influences, but in the violation of " Piety and Justice "
— his deceased brother's motto. The royal faith had been
prostituted in the butchery of St. Bartholomew's Day, a butch-
ery of which Charles the Ninth had proclaimed his detestation
in public letters, but which he had been impotent to prevent ;
for young and reckless advisers, like those whom Rehoboam
trusted, had prescribed remedies repudiated by older and wiser
counsellors. To re-establish " Piety and Justice," those two
pillars of the monarchy, was the object of the Prince of Conde
and Marshal Damville in their present attempt.
Hereupon Arenes handed to the king a document in which
the prince and the marshal had distinctly set forth their views.
Henry, after assuring the envoys that he fully reciprocated the
desire for peace so eloquently expressed by Arenes, bade them
retire to the adjoining antechamber, and there await his an-
swer to their demands.2
It was no ordinary letter that M. de Fizes, the secretary,
now proceeded to read, nor was it altogether calculated to
The Hugue- please the ears that listened. Conde and Damville
not demands. Degan \yy the usual complimentary phrases, but soon
came to sober and unpalatable truths. They assured Henry
that both Protestants and Roman Catholics had been driven to
take up arms by the same violence. As to the former, the
chief cause of war was that they had not been suffered to en-
joy the benefits of the Edict of January, so solemnly enacted
and promulgated. Hence had arisen conflicts that culminated
1 "Arennius, Condaei legatorum unus, vir cumprimis eruditus et eloquens."
Jean de Serres, v. fol. 73.
2 Negotiation de la paix, Mem. de Nevers, i. 308-313.
1575. THE PEACE NEGOTIATIONS. 53
in the horrible massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day. As to
the latter, the pernicious counsels which had been followed,
and in accordance with which the first princes of the blood and
the chief nobles were either to be executed or to be consigned
to perpetual imprisonment, sufficiently explained their action.
To put an end to this state of things, the prince and the mar-
shal, in the name of their confederated followers, had reduced
to writing their demands. The document that followed began
by an article in which the king was requested to permit the
free and public exercise of the Reformed religion throughout
the entire extent of the French dominions, without distinction
of persons or places, and including the celebration of Divine
worship, prayers, the administration of the holy sacraments and
of marriage, the visitation of the sick, the burial of the dead in
the common cemeteries, schools, the printing and sale of books,
the discipline of the Church, the holding of consistories, col-
loquies, and synods, collections for the poor, and, in general,
all else necessary to the proper observance of the rites of the
Reformed religion. So much for the first article. The re-
maining sixty-seven articles were not inferior in boldness.
They stipulated for the right to build and own churches, for
safe residence in every part of the kingdom, for the application
of the tithes paid by Protestants to the support of their own
ministers, for the re-establishment of the salutary ordinances of
Jeanne d'Albret in the Kingdom of Navarre, and for the
punishment of blasphemy. They did not, however, forget to
suggest that the toleration sought for must not be extended to
Epicureans and atheists, for these should be visited with all
forms of punishment.
After providing for an equality in religion, the confederates
proposed a plan for securing the impartial administration of
justice. So far as possible the same number of judges ought
to be appointed from both religions. But as that result could
not at once be attained, a temporary expedient was recom-
mended. It was proposed that the greater royal council be in-
creased by adding to its members, on Conde's nomination, as
many Protestants as it now contained Roman Catholics ; and
that forty judges chosen from this entire college and taken
54 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. L
equally from the two religions should sit, one-half at Montpel-
lier and one-half at Cadours, to entertain appeals from the par-
liaments. Among many other provisions all tending to the
same end, we need only notice two demands — the one for
the punishment of the perpetrators of the Paris massacre, as the
most satisfactory proof of the king's detestation of that crime,
and as the firmest basis of a lasting peace ; ' the other for the
annulling of all sentences for religion's sake pronounced since
the time of Henry the Second, and especially the sentences of
Admiral Coligny and Count Montgomery. As a pledge for
the execution of the edict of pacification, the confederates
begged to be allowed not only to retain the cities now in their
possession, but to add to this number two other cities in each
province of the kingdom. There were other demands, of a
scarcely less startling character, which must be passed over for
the sake of brevity.2
When the articles had been read, the envoys were recalled
into the royal presence. Neither Henry nor Catharine wore
the benignant looks of a brief hour ago. " I am amazed," ex-
surpriseand claimed the former, "at the new and strange con-
ofH^ry'Sid tents of your articles, and that you have dared to
Catharine. bring them to me ; 3 for you must have been present
when they were concocted and have known what they were.
This leads me to think that you do not by any means care so
much for peace as you professed. Well ! what else is there
that you wish ? " In vain did Arenes excuse himself and his
comrades as ambassadors confined by their instructions to the
tenor of the articles they had presented. Henry insisted that
1 The Southern Huguenots had been in favor of even stouter demands.
" They of Languedoc would have had put in that the authors of the slaughter
of Paris should he put in their hands to be executed, and the death of the
admiral revenged ; but this was thought by common assent to be an impossi-
ble thing, and therefore without purpose to be asked." R. Stafford to Bur-
leigh, Basle, March 29, 1575. State Paper Office.
2 Jean de Serres, v. fols. 65-73. The text of the Protestant articles is not
given in the relation in the Memoires de Nevers.
3 " Lesquels il trouvoit fort estranges et s'esbahissoit comment nous les avions
ose presenter." Mem. de Nevers, i. 313.
/
1575. THE PEACE NEGOTIATIONS. 55
Arenes was a leader in the councils of the confederates.1 The
Huguenot turned to Catharine de' Medici to entreat her kind
offices with her son, and she graciously promised to employ
them, meanwhile protesting that she would be far from advis-
ing Henry to grant unreasonable demands. "I know full well,"
she added, "that your Huguenots are cats that always alight on
their feet ; but even had they fifty thousand men in the field,
with the admiral alive and all their leaders at their head, they
could not talk more arrogantly than they do now." a
Two days later, in a second audience, the king's ministers
undertook to explain the reasons why Henry could not grant
the first and chief article of the demands of the con-
fer religious federated Politiques and Huguenots. u The king, be-
ing a Roman Catholic," said Morvilliers, " wishes all
his subjects to belong to that faith. It is only right that the
Protestants should renounce a religion that has been the cause
of tumults and discord." " The Protestants," replied Arenes,
" will obey the king in everything, save in religion, where God
prefers obedience rather than sacrifice. Events have proved our
loyalty ; for so often as King Charles accorded us religious lib-
erty, we laid down our arms and restored the cities that had
fallen into our hands. The charge of insubordination is a stale
calumny, long since refuted. The Protestants, indeed, teach
that, so far as religion is concerned, we must simply follow the
voice of God. If, therefore, the authority of the Roman re-
ligion rest on an antiquity of five hundred, or even a thousand
years — a thing utterly out of the question — we shall appeal to
the authority of centuries much more remote. We shall turn
back to the times of Christ and his apostles, upon whose teach-
ing our religion is founded. Against the Truth there is no pre-
scription of antiquity." 3 " We do not demand the actual exer-
1 " Que je scai estre de leur conseil et des plus avant." Lestoile, i. 53.
s Ibid., ubi supra.
3 "La coustume generale du royaume de France," said Arenes, "est que le
seigneur ne present point contre le vassal, ny le vassal contre le seigneur, et
moins contre le roy. Done a plus forte raison les hommes ne peuvent ac-
querir ny prescription ny possession contre le Roy des Rois, et Seigneur des
Seigneurs, mesmement au droit de vassalite, qui est le droit de legitime ser-
56 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Cir. I.
cise of our religion all over France ; for that we must abide a
more opportune time. But there can be no firm concord where
distinctions are made between citizens ; for if the one class be-
come more fierce and overbearing, the other will become more
distrustful."
The arguments of Arenes were reinforced by those of Clau-
sonne, who in the matter of toleration adduced the example of
the Emperor Charles the Fifth, and showed that Henry's con-
science could scarcely interfere with his grant of religious
liberty to the Huguenots, in view of the engagements into
which he had entered for the purpose of obtaining the crown
of Poland. So, too, another ambassador, Beauvoir la Node,
pointed to the liberality of the Emperor Maximilian who
Maximilian's granted religious liberty in his hereditary dominions,
example. an(j even m Vienna itself, upon receiving a payment
of one hundred thousand crowns of gold. " Would to God,
Sire," he added, turning to the king, " that we had paid you a
million crowns at a time when we could have furnished them !
We should have saved a far greater sum of money than that,
and the lives of a hundred thousand of our brethren ! " 1
Thus it was that, the Parisian Matins being yet recent, their
scenes of carnage could not be effaced from the minds of the
Protestants, whose delegates seemed forced as by some uncon-
trollable impulse, to call up the unwelcome apparition even in
the presence of royalty itself. A little while after the occur-
rence of the episode that has just been narrated, another in-
cident happened, no less striking in character. The Huguenot
demand for the exercise of the .Reformed worship everywhere
throughout France was under consideration. Holy Baptism,
the king was reminded, is a divine ordinance, administered in
vice que devons a Dieu, regie par regie de fief, qui est sa volonte expresse, et
non parnos inventions et traditions depuis survenues." Mem. de Nevers, i.
318.
1 " Pleust a, Dieu (dit-il) que nous en eussions "bailie un million, Sire, du
temps que nous le pouvions faire, pour espargner cent mil de nos freres, qu'on
a depuis tuez et meurtriz pour la religion.'' Mem. de Nevers, i. 324. "At
utinam tibi (inquit) Rex, C X M dependissemus, eo tempore quum nobis fa-
cultas praestandi erat. Longe majorem summam et C M fratrum necem re-
demise m us." Jean de Serres, v. fol. 82. .
1575. THE PEACE NEGOTIATIONS. 57
the Protestant churches only at public service and at the con-
clusion of the preaching. Great, therefore, said the deputies,
are the dangers to which the infant children of the faithful are
exposed, when they have to be taken long distances, often in
the dead of winter or through inclement rains, to the " tem-
ple," that they may receive the sacred rite. Henry of Yalois
whose ignorance of the religious usages of a considerable body
of his southern subjects was as profound as was his indifference
to their interests, remembered only the easy method by which
a similar difficulty could be met in the Church of Rome.
" Comment," he asked in some astonishment, " comment ne les
ondoyez-vous pas, comme icy ? " The majority of the delegates,
uninitiated into such refinements, in place of answering the
king's question, were compelled to turn to one another and ask
in some perplexity the meaning of the strange verb " ondoyer "
which his majesty had been pleased to use ; while M. de Beau-
voir, for all reply, exclaimed in a tone loud enough to be heard
in every part of the room : " We have been only too much
deluged both with blood and with water "— " On ne nous a que
trop ' ondoyes ' en sang et en eau." '
The theme was undoubtedly an exciting one both for the king
and for his mother ; and presently Henry of Yalois, warming
with the debate, called for wine, and, when he had drunk it,
urged the Huguenots to trust him. " If I be not compelled,"
he said, " I will give you peace and see that it be observed."
" That," replied Beauvoir la Node, " will be very necessary ;
for hitherto your ministers have acted as if their instructions
were simply to harry us by every means, in utter contempt for
your edicts."
1 Memoires de Nevers, i. 325. Littre (Dictionnaire de laLangue franchise, s.
v.) defines " ondoiement " as Baptism which is administered in case of necessity
and in which the ceremonies of the church are omitted. Du Cange (Glossarium
ad Scriptores Mediae et Infimse Latinitatisj gives the equivalent in the Latin of
the thirteenth and subsequent centuries — " undeiare,'' " undaizare," and " un-
dare ; " and quotes certain letters that passed between French bishops re-
specting the validity of an " ondoiement" in which the application of water,
possibly by a mother or by a layman, was accompanied simply by the formula,
"In nomine Patris," etc. Among the instances cited is this one, from the
fifteenth century : "La suppliant enfanta d'un fils, lequel, incontinent qu il
fut ne, elle print et umdea."
58 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. I.
Again the wily Queen Mother urged the envoys to produce
their supplementary instructions. When they repeated that
Catharine tneJ ^ia^ Deen entrusted with none, she informed
SSSdoreto1" tiiem that they ought not to have come with con-
tefirmSbetter ditions which they knew they could not obtain. To
which they pertinently replied : " We came in answer
to the repeated commands of the king to lay before him our
complaints." When Henry again insisted that they should
offer terms more in accordance with justice, since he was re-
solved not to concede these, Catharine exclaimed : " My son,
dismiss these men. I believe that it is God's will that we make
no peace with them, in order that they may pay the penalty
they deserve. All foreign princes will learn the terms which
you have offered and they have refused. All will aid you in
inflicting punishment upon them." She added in a lower voice :
" You know what they wrote to you. God favors kings. No
one will approve this obstinacy of your subjects." " Not the
Pope, nor the King of Spain," interjected Beauvoir. " Well,"
retorted Catharine, " will any Catholic prince regard the peace
you demand as a just one ? " " Yes," said Beauvoir, " the Em-
peror will." And so the discussion proceeded ; the king vehe-
mently protesting that should he make the concessions asked
by the Huguenots, he would deeply offend the Papists, and the
envoys as resolutely maintaining that, in the universal desire of
the people for peace, even the holders of ecclesiastical benefices
would gladly acquiesce.1
The question of "justice" was scarcely less knotty than the
question of " piety." The Huguenots declared that, as matters
now stood, there could be no expectation that their rights would
be respected. "How can we hope for justice," said they, " at
the hands of judges that hate us worse than they do Turks ? " 2
1 Negotiation de la paix, Mem. de Nevers, i. 327 ; Jean de Serres, v. fol. 83.
2 Two points in the demands of the confederates, it should be noted, failed
to obtain the approval of the most candid and fair-minded among the Hugue-
nots themselves. The first was a provision (in Article 25) for the relief of those
Protestants who having bought judicial positions had, on account of their
faith, been arbitrarily deprived of tbem ; the second was the stipulation (in
Article 26) that those ecclesiastics who, when embracing Protestantism, had
1575. THE PEACE NEGOTIATIONS. 59
The most intense interest was manifest when the thirty-fourth
article was reached, in which the Huguenots had called for the
punishment punishment of the authors of the massacre of St.
of the authors Bartholomew's Day. The court was ready with an
of the massa- « # J
ere demanded. answer, and Morvilliers was its mouthpiece. "Great
sins have been committed on both sides," he said, with an air of
impartiality ; " let them all be buried in oblivion.1 It will be
but a poor augury of a firm peace if we undertake to investigate
and punish the many injuries inflicted upon each other by
Catholics and Protestants." But Arenes repudiated the amnesty
so suavely suggested. " This massacre was no sudden outburst
of anger, but a premeditated plot ; it was not a sudden attack,
but a treacherous destruction of those who at the time of a
feast suspected anything else rather than hostility. The
Huguenots were slain when they had come to Paris by the
king's express invitation. So were eight hundred slain at
Lyons, after they had been summoned to the citadel, in accord-
ance with the command of the king's governor. So were eigh-
teen hundred butchered in Rouen. This blood cries aloud to
God for vengeance. The king, to whom God has given su-
preme command next to Himself, cannot refuse to hear it nor
excuse himself from inflicting condign punishment because of
the multitude of culprits. The ancient Romans decimated
whole legions. Those who think that no satisfaction ought to
be exacted for this crime do the greatest indignity to the
memory of King Charles and to the reputation of your Majesty
and of the queen your mother. You yourself know, Sire, from
been permitted by Charles the Ninth, to resign their benefices in favor of their
friends, in order, under their name, to enjoy the revenues of the same, should
be enabled to carry out the arrangement. It was justly urged that the first
demand gave countenance to the pernicious abuse of venality of judicial
offices and the second to the yet more reprehensible practice of simony.
Morvilliers had good reason to tell the Huguenot envoy that the latter was a
demand unworthy of the religion they professed. Jean de Serres, v. fols. 69,
86, 87.
1 When a little while before, Catharine de' Medici said to one of the envoys,
1 ' Beau voir, il f aut oublier et ne parler plus des choses passees ; " the latter
aptly retorted, "Madame, il nous faudroit bailler quelque charme pour les
nous faire oublier, les choses passaes." Memoires de Nevers, i. 326.
60 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OP NAVARRE. Ch. I.
what occurred upon your journey to Poland, how strongly
foreign princes detest so great a crime. Should a new edict
forbid any investigation into the misdeeds committed at the
time of the massacre, they will believe that the assurances given
by your brother that he detested the crime were a mere pre-
tence. The royal majesty ought to be clear not only of crime,
but of the very suspicion of crime." To this one of the real
authors of the massacre answered by asseverating his innocence.
" That crime," said Henry, u occurred contrary to my will, and I
detest it with all my heart. Nor can it be in any way
erateJhi8Sin" imputed to my brother, King Charles." Catharine
de' Medici was a little more guarded in her assertions.
She granted that grave sins had been committed by her ad-
herents, but she thought that the faults on the one side must be
weighed against the faults on the other. The Huguenots, too,
she said, had slain three or four hundred Roman Catholics at
Nismes, and thrown the bodies into the wells. To which Clau-
sonne replied that the slaughter at Nismes had been greatly
exaggerated, and that it happened in time of war and contrary
to the will and efforts of the magistracy. It were absurd to
compare with this a massacre perpetrated in time of peace.1
If the king and his mother had been reluctant to promise a
judicial investigation for the purpose of discovering and punish-
ing the authors of the massacre, they showed even more unwil-
lingness to do justice to the memory of the great hero
memory8 vin- of the Huguenots. When the envoys pronounced
Gaspard de Coligny worthy of everlasting praise,
Henry remarked that they ought, as loyal subjects, to be more
solicitous for the good name of King Charles than for that of the
admiral. " The king, my brother, pronounced the admiral's
sentence of condemnation with his own lips. If the admiral
be declared innocent, it will redound to my brother's very great
1 Minor discrepancies in numbers between the accounts in Jean de Serres
(v. fol. 89) and the Memoires de Nevers (i. 341) need no special attention. If
the queen mother exaggerated, the Huguenot envoy undoubtedly underrated
the victims of the " Michelade " of 1567. They numbered not "seven or
eight,1' nor '* scarcely a score," but eighty souls. See the Rise of the Hugue-
nots, ii. 224, 225.
1575. THE PEACE NEGOTIATIONS. 61
ignominy." In vain did Arenes reply that the sentence was
precipitate, and dictated by persons who had imposed upon
Charles the Ninth ; his royal auditors, and especially the queen
mother, exhibited their extreme vexation in word and in look ;
none the less because the Huguenots would not hear of a pardon
to be granted to the admiral's children — a pardon which would
in itself have been an admission of guilt.1
These were not the only unpalatable propositions. Henry
not unnaturally objected to the article by which he would
be made to recognize everything done by Conde
unpalatable and Damville as having been done by dutiful sub-
to the king. . . . tiii ii nr.
jects in his service ; although the envoys had no diffi-
culty in finding precedents for this somewhat inconsistent dec-
laration in the pacificatory edicts of Charles the Ninth. He
was still more incensed when mention was made of the states
general, and it was proposed to reduce the taxes to the scale of
the times of Louis the Twelfth. The demand of towns as
pledges for the execution of the royal edict of peace met with
no greater favor in Henry's eyes ; even when he was reminded
that, for lighter reasons than the Huguenots might allege, God
had granted the Jews cities of refuge.2 But the king was pro-
voked above measure when his attention was called to the re-
quest of the Protestants that foreign princes — the Queen of
England, the elector palatine, and the Duke of Savoy, not to
speak of the Swiss cantons — should take part in the contract,
and that a copy of it should be placed in their hands with all
due solemnity. "What is the object of this demand? "said
Henry with unusual irritation. " If the edict should be vio-
lated by me, what will these princes undertake to do against
me ? I have no authority over their dominions, nor have they
any in turn over mine. Let them attend to their affairs, and
command their subjects ; I shall manage my own kingdom and
my own people." 3
1 Negotiation de la paix, Mem. de Nevers, i. 354 ; Jean de Serres, v. fol. 94.
2 Mem. de Nevers, i. 358-365 ; Jean de Serres, v. fols. 95, 96.
3 Jean de Serres, v. fol. 98. " Sembla que le roy s'esmeut aucunement ;
demandant par deux ou trois, que luy feroient ceux-la, s il contrevenoit a la
paix ? Qu'ils n'avoient que voir sur luy, ni a se mesler de ses affaires, non
plus qu'il ne se mesloit en tel cas des leurs." Mem. de Nevers, i. 365.
62 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. L
Through the long discussion the envoys of Conde and of the
Huguenots had, day after day, defended the articles entrusted
to their charge, and, unwelcome at every point as
JieeiS?ques were the terms proposed, the king and his court had
deriSon.™*11 listened with respectful attention. It was otherwise
when Monsieur de Saux, the deputy of Marshal Dam-
ville, undertook to dilate upon the necessity of reforming the
abuses of the Church. The drama had been serious enough, in
places even pathetic ; it now turned into a broad farce. It was
one thing to listen to those brave, scarred Huguenots, whose
right arms had often dealt on the battle-field blows as steady
and crashing as the arguments that now dropped from their
lips ; it was quite another to sit quietly and hear a studied and
insincere harangue on the trite subject of church reformation
from the representative of one of the most dissolute of Roman
Catholic noblemen. The orator had not advanced far before
the company began to fidget and yawn. Old Cardinal Bourbon
muttered some indignant exclamation. Then Catharine de'
Medici, whom no one could surpass in bitter raillery, broke out
upon the deputy of the Politiques. " Those are fine words,
Saux ! You want to make a speech, forsooth. As if you could
instruct us ! We know all that you know. We are of the
same religion as you. We listen patiently to ' those of the re-
ligion,' because from them we can learn something; but can
any one endure you with quietness ? " In vain poor Saux en-
deavored to secure a hearing, demanding it in the name of
Damville and his associates ; as often as he opened his lips he
was greeted by the jeers of the entire company.1
1 Jean de Serres, v. fol. 99 ; Mem. de Nevers, i. 368. It must be confessed
that the envoys of the Politiques found themselves more than once in an em-
barrassing situation ; especially when it appeared by the statement of one of
their own number (in spite of Saux's denial) that they had not only approved
but signed with their own hands the Huguenot " cahier, ' including, among
other things, a stipulation for the liberty of nuns to marry. " What ! " said
Henry, who had an inherited taste for sarcasm. " You wish and demand, on
the one hand, that the Catholic Church be reformed, and, on the other, that
the nuns may be suffered to marry." And both the king and his mother
laughed heartily at the discomfiture of the Politiques. Mem. de Nevers, i.
385.
1575. THE PEACE NEGOTIATIONS. 63
About a fortnight had been spent in negotiation, profitless
save as exhibiting the aims and temper of the parties. Both
sides were quite ready to conclude a bargain ; the
fers unaccept- difficulty was that they were too far apart in their
able terms. . . - . ,. . .
views to give much hope or an amicable agreement.
At last on the twenty- third of April, the king offered his
terms : The Protestants to have sixteen cities — eight in Lan-
gnedoc, six in Guyenne, and two in Dauphiny — and, in turn, to
restore to the king the cities now in their possession in the state
in which they were before the war. The king to appoint four
new judges in the Parliament of Paris and select sixteen from
the existing body, who should together administer justice for the
benefit of the Huguenots. So, also, at Montpellier. Elsewhere
the Huguenots to have the right to challenge peremptorily four
judges.2 These conditions the Protestant envoys promptly de-
clared to be inadmissible, Beauvoir la Node begging Henry to
remember that the people must be satisfied. Thereupon the
He substitutes monarch deigned, the next day, to enlarge the terms,
better terms. jje consented that the Huguenots should enjoy liberty
to reside unmolested in any part of the kingdom, and to worship
in all places now in their possession, excepting the four cities
of Montpellier, Castres, Aigues-mortes, and Beaucaire. Besides
this, the same right was to be enjoyed by all noblemen holding
fiefs of the first rank, for themselves and for all visitors ; while
nobles of inferior jurisdiction were allowed the same privilege
for themselves and their families, but not in walled cities and
their suburbs, especially cities belonging to the queen mother
or to Anjou, nor within ten leagues of Paris or two leagues of
the court.3
1 To Jean de Serres, v. fol. 99, the whole transaction was wonderfully like
the haggling of shrewd hucksters, " making a small offer at first, then adding
a little, asking, detaining, throwing in vague hints of threats, feigning to go
away, returning."
8 Jean de Serres, v. fol. 100 ; Mem. de Nevers, i. 368, 369.
3 The written answer given hy Henry to the Huguenot demands, article hy
article, was dated Paris, May 5, 1575. To this he appended, under date of
May 18th, two short sentences slightly enlarging his concessions. The only ad-
ditional point of importance was that the Protestants should have in each baili-
64 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. L
These were almost the concluding scenes of the negotiations.
The envoys would neither accept nor refuse the proposals of
End of the the court. They could only promise to report the
negotiations. ^^ ^ ^^ wh() j^ gent ^^ Jj. wag with YQ_
luctance that they obtained permission to withdraw from
Paris. But, if the wrangle between Henry and Catharine,
on the one hand, and the Huguenots and their allies, on the
other, had proved fruitless of good so far as the immediate re-
sults aimed at were concerned, it had not been without its
moral effect. It was something, within the very walls of the
Louvre, and a stone's throw from the window from which
Charles amused himself, less than three years before, with fir-
ing his arquebuse at the miserable Huguenots, as though they
had been game — it was something, I say, for Huguenot envoys
The " rodi unblushingly to make " a strange and prodigious de-
f0lr8thee EdTct mand for the Edict of January." It was proof posi-
of January. ^[ve that the boy-king's advisers and instigators had
failed to fulfil their part of the bargain ; more than one Hu-
guenot remained, if not to reproach, at least to require satis-
faction for the crime perpetrated on that wretched Sunday of
August. The Protestant ranks had been thinned by the assas-
sin's dagger, but their spirit was not broken. They exacted
neither more nor less than they had claimed as their right in
previous negotiations. There were, indeed, those among them
that doubted the expediency of insisting at this time so strenu-
ously upon terms which they could scarcely hope by any possi-
bility to obtain ; but the judgment of the leaders was vindicated
by the issue ; the very rigidity of the conditions from which
they declined to recede determined the wavering and strength-
ened the party.1 Even La Eochelle, in the vicinity of which
Huguenot arms had met with little success, holding scarcely
wick of the kingdom an enclosed place, and that among these places should be
one city in each of the ancient governments, to be selected by his majesty.
The document in full is printed at the end of the narrative of the Huguenot
envoys, Mem. de Nevers, i. 425-433.
1 " Comme plusieurs interpretoient la durete des articles avoir este telle
pour monstrer leur fermete, et par la tirer a soi ceux qui marchandoient en-
cores ; comme il avint.'' Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. 170.
1575. THE PEACE NEGOTIATIONS. 65
an inch of ground on the mainland, and scantily supplied with
bread, was now induced, through brave La Noue's persuasive
words, to assume a bold front.1 Just as the Huguenot envoys
were on the point of returning to their homes, with the excep-
tion of Arenes and a companion, left behind to avoid the appear-
ance of relinquishing all hope of peace, there ap-
Intercessions -i • -r» • r -ij* ^ r
of foreign peared m Paris ambassadors from several foreign
states
states, sent to enforce upon Henry the wholesome coun-
sel that he should come to an understanding with his subjects
and quench the flames of war. The Swiss legation was specially
imposing, with a magistrate of Berne, not less eminent in sta-
tion than distinguished for eloquence, at its head. Almost the
same day came the ambassador of Duke Emmanuel Philibert,
of Savoy. Both urged Henry to grant the petitions of his
Protestants for religious liberty, and the Savoyard pointed as
an example to the partial toleration he had accorded in his own
dominions. Queen Elizabeth added her intercessions to those
of the continental allies of France, using her ambassador, Dr.
Dale, as her mouthpiece. All these efforts, however, proved
as abortive as those of the Huguenots themselves.2 Not long
after, the Prince of Orange, to whom it would seem that Henry
had himself sent an envoy, about the end of April, requesting
his good offices in allaying the commotions in France, in turn
despatched one Dr. Junius, Governor of Yeere, to Paris, with
instructions to gratify the king's laudable desire. Dr. Junius
arrived too late to be of much service, for the Protestant dep-
uties were gone. But he elicited at least a frank avowal from
his majesty. " Thereupon," says the governor, " the king ex
tempore gave me this answer . . . that he saw distinctly
from the results that nothing has been gained by the attempt
to take from the Protestants of his kingdom of France the exer-
cise of their religion, and that he has consequently made up his
mind to govern his subjects with all gentleness and fatherly af-
1 Ibid. , ubi supra.
2 The Huguenot envoys give a very minute and circumstantial account of
the Swiss and Savoyard efforts in their long narrative of their mission.
" Negotiation de le paix," Mem. de Nevers, i. 388-424. See also Jean de
Serres, v. fols. 102, 103 ; Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. 175 ; De Thou, v. 188.
Vol. I.— 5
66 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. L
fection, and to give them reason to love and obey him." To
all which, and to the king's request that he should labor with
the Prince of Conde to bring him to his way of thinking, the
worthy governor doubtless listened with courtesy and appar-
ently with implicit confidence. None the less, however, did he
express to Conde, with pardonable scepticism, his suspicion re-
specting peace negotiations, of whose progress the Pope was
said to be kept advised, and which met with approval at Rome.
The horrible acts were yet fresh in men's memories by which
former edicts of pacification had been violated.1
Throughout the summer, uninterrupted by the progress of
the fruitless negotiations to which we have been attending, the
Treacherous desolating plague of war continued its ravages. Not
disguises. that the conflict was without its exciting adventures.
In the struggle, which often narrowed itself down to an attempt
to take city by city, treachery and stratagem had a rare op-
portunity for display. Many were the disguises adopted, many
the cunning plans devised. Mont Saint Michel, commonly
called " Mont Saint Michel au peril de la mer," in the extreme
southwestern corner of Normandy, was a stronghold much cov-
eted by the Huguenots of that province. The prospect of
gaining those massive walls by open warfare was not encour-
aging. But a party of five- and-t wen ty Protestants, dressed in
the rough garb of pilgrims, found ready admission at the gates.
Slowly and with well-simulated devotion they climbed the
six- score steps that led to the abbey church, situated on an em-
inence commanding the town. Here, after paying for a mass,
and buying consecrated candles, they concluded the solemn
farce by stabbing the priest when he turned to present the
plate for their offerings, and made themselves masters of the
holy place.2
But whatever military advantages the Huguenots obtained
1 Dr. J. Junius to the Prince of Conde, June, 1575, Groen van Prinsterer,
v. 237-243.
2 De Thou, v. 192, 196 ; Lestoile, i. 56 ; Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. 158-160 ;
Claude Haton, ii. 895. The latter refers the incident to a date about two
years later.
1575. THE WAR CONTINUED. 67
in various parts of the realm were more than outweighed by
the death of " the brave Montbrun." This daring and ener-
getic leader, the terror of the enemy in Dauphiny,1
Montbrun, had just defeated a large body of Swiss auxiliaries,
upon whom he inflicted a loss of eight or nine hun-
dred men and eighteen ensigns, while that of the Huguenots
scarcely amounted to half a dozen men. But his brilliant suc-
cess in this and other engagements had made Montbrun and
his soldiers more incautious than usual. They attacked a
strong detachment of men-at-arms, and mistaking the con-
fusion into which they threw the advance guard for a rout of
the entire body, dispersed to gather the booty and offered a
tempting opportunity to the Roman Catholics as they came up.
Montbrun, who, too late, discovered the danger of his troops,
and endeavored to rally them, was at one time enveloped by
the enemy, but would have made good his escape had there
not been a broad ditch in his way. Here his horse missed its
footing, and in the fall the leader's thigh was broken. In this
pitiable plight he surrendered his sword to a Roman Catholic
captain, from whom he received the assurance that his life
would be spared.2
The king and his mother had other views. Henry, on re-
ceiving the grateful news of Montbrun's capture, promptly gave
orders that the prisoner be taken to Grenoble and tried by the
Parliament of Dauphiny on a charge of treason. Yain were
the efforts of the Huguenots, equally vain the intercession of
the Duke of Guise, who wished to have Montbrun exchanged
for Besme, Coligny's murderer, recently fallen into Huguenot
hands. Henry and Catharine de' Medici were determined that
Montbrun should die. They urged the reluctant judges by
reiterated commands ; they overruled the objection that to put
the prisoner to death would be to violate good faith and the laws
of honorable warfare. Catharine had not forgotten the honest
1 " Ex prsecipuis ducibus Huguenotorum, qui multa f ortiter et f eliciter in
his bellis civilibus fecit." Languet, Epistolas secretse. i. 114.
2 Jean de Serres, v. fols. 106, seq. ; Recueil des choses memorables, 546,
etc. ; De Thou, v. 203 ; Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. 137.
68 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. L
Frenchman's allusion to her " perfidious and degenerate " coun-
trymen.1
As for Henry, an insult received at Montbrun's hands ran-
kled in his breast and made forgiveness impossible. Some
Henry res- months bef ore, the king had sent a message to him in
Monettoun a somewhat haughty tone, demanding the restoration
must die. 0£ tjie r0yai baggage and certain prisoners taken by
the Huguenots. " What is this ! " exclaimed the general.
" The king writes to me as a king, and as if I were bound to
obey him ! I want him to know that that would be very well
in time of peace ; I should then recognize his royal claim. But
in time of war, when men are armed and in the saddle, all men
are equal." On hearing this, we are told, Henry swore that Mont-
brun should repent his insolence. In his glee over the Hugue-
not's mishap he recalled the prophecy and broke out with the
exclamation, " Montbrun will now see whether he is my equal." 2
Under these circumstances there was little chance for a Hu-
guenot, were he never so innocent, to be acquitted by a servile
1 See above, page 36. Catharine and the knot of Italians whom she had
gathered about her were very sensitive on the point of nationality. Lestoile
( i. 57) tells us that, Tuesday, July 5, 1575, a captain La Vergerie was hung
and quartered by order of Chancellor Birague and some maitres de requetes
named by the queen mother, for merely saying, in a conversation respecting
a quarrel between the University students and some Italians at Paris, that his
friends ought to espouse the side of the former " et saccager et couper la gorge
;a tous ces b. d'ltaliens qui estoient cause de la ruine de la France." The
popular indignation vented itself in a multitude of sonnets and pasquinades
against Catharine de' Medici.
2 " Estant en Avignon, il [Henry III.] escrivit une lettre audit Monsieur de
Montbrun, un peu brave, haute et digne d'un roy, sur quelques prisonniers
qu'il avoit pris, et sur l'insolence faite. II respondit (si) outrecuydemment
que cela luy cousta la vie. ' Comment,' dit-il ; • le Roy m'escrit comme Roy,
et comme si je le devois reconnoistre ! Je veux qu'il scache que cela seroit
bon en temps de paix, et qu'alors je le reconnoistray pour tel ; mais en temps
de guerre, qu'on a le bras arme, et le cul sur la selle, tout le monde est com-
pagnon.' Telles paroles irriterent tellement le Roy, qu'il jura un bon coup,
qu'il s'en repentiroit. " Brantome, Mestres de Camp Huguenots de l'lnfan-
terie Francoise, (Euvres, xi. 151. Brantome was at court when, over a year
later, news came of Montbrun's capture. Henry, he tells us, was greatly
pleased, and said : " Je sqavois bien qu 'il s'en repentiroit, et mourra ; et verra
bien a cette heure s'il est mon compagnon." Ibid., p. 152.
1575. THE WAR CONTINUED. 69
parliament. Accordingly Montbrun was condemned to be be-
headed as a rebel against the king and a disturber of the public
peace. The execution was hastened lest natural death from the
injury received should balk the malice of his relentless enemies.
A contemporary, who may even have been an eye-witness,
describes the closing scene in words eloquent from their unaf-
fected simplicity. " He was dragged, half dead, from the prison,
Montbrun's and was carried in a chair to the place of execution,
execution. exhibiting in his affliction an assured countenance ;
while the Parliament of Grenoble trembled and the entire city
lamented. He had been enjoined not to say a word to the peo-
ple, unless he wished to have his tongue cut off. Nevertheless
he complained, in the presence of the whole parliament, of the
wrong done to him, proving at great length his innocence and
contemning the fury of his enemies who were attacking a man
as good as dead. He showed that it wTas without cause that he
was charged with being a rebel, since never had he had any
design but to guarantee peaceable Frenchmen from the violence
of strangers who abused the name and authority of the king.
His death was constant and Christian. He was a gentleman
held in high esteem, inasmuch as he was neither avaricious nor
rapacious, but on the contrary devoted to religion, bold, moder-
ate, upright ; yet he was too indulgent to his soldiers, whose
license and excesses gained him much ill-will and many enemies
in Dauphiny. His death so irritated these soldiers that they
ravaged after a strange fashion the environs of Grenoble." *
The death of so prominent and energetic a Huguenot captain
was likely to embolden the Roman Catholic party, not only in
Dauphiny but in the rest of the kingdom.2 In reality
LesdiguiOsres. .
it only transferred the supreme direction in warlike
affairs to still more competent hands. The young lieutenant of
Montbrun, who shortly succeeded him in command, was Francis
de Bonne, better known from his territorial designation as Sieur
1 Recueil des choses memorables, 547, 548. See Jean de Serres, Commen-
tarii, v. fols. 113-115 (I need not remind the reader that the two accounts are
from the same hand). Also De Thou, v. 203, 204 ; Davila, 212 ; Lestoile, ii.
58 ; Languet, i. 129 ; Inventaire general, ii. 485, 486.
2Languet, i. 114.
70 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OP NAVARRE. Ch. L
de Lesdiguieres, a future marshal of Henry the Fourth. Al-
though the resplendent military abilities of Lesdiguieres had
not yet had an opportunity for display, it was not long before
the Roman Catholics discovered that they gained nothing by
the exchange. Lesdiguieres was as brave as his master in
arms, and he was his master's superior in the skill and caution
with which he sketched and executed his military plans. The
discipline of the Huguenot army at once exhibited marked im-
provement.1
Meanwhile an event occurred elsewhere that checked the
exultation of Henry, and threw his court into a paroxysm of
confusion and alarm. The intelligence reached the Louvre
that Alencon, the puny brother of the king, the disturber of
well-laid schemes, had escaped from Paris, and was on his way
Aienfon'ses- to j0m tne malcontents.2 Under pretext of an amor-
coSr/lnd ous intrigue he had been allowed to visit a house in
5o°nC,las?ptem- tne suburbs ; but one day while his escort patiently
ber, 1575. waited for his return at the front door of the resi-
dence of his mistress, the prince quietly took horse on the op-
posite side of the house and rode off southward at full speed.
A day or two later, when quite beyond reach of his pursuers,
he sat down and indited a manifesto, or at least published such
a paper to the world, in which he declaimed with violence
against his brother's favorites, and, while professing the inten-
tion to maintain the rights of the nobles and the clergy, prom-
ised to secure those of the people, and demanded the convoca-
tion of the states general. Nothing was more specious than
were these assurances. The only difficulty was in the character
of him that uttered them. Could the selfish boy, who, tired
of the monotony and insignificance of his position at court, fled
'Recueil, De Thou, etc., ubi supra.
2 The king had, some weeks earlier, received warning of such a plan, and
had brought the matter before the royal council ; but Catharine expressed
her incredulity, and advocated that Henry should rather assure himself of
his brother by winning his heart. His Majesty was not pleased at this.
"Well," quoth the king, " it is you, mother, that do hold him up by the chin,
and without you he would not be so bold as he is ; but I will have my reason
of him." Memorandum, in Dr. Dale's handwriting, without date, but sent
from Paris in the summer of 1575, State Paper Office.
1575. THE WAR CONTINUED. 71
to the arms of the Protestants and Politiques, be really in ear-
nest ? Strange as it may appear, many of the best citizens
imagined it to be so. Both Huguenots and upright Roman
The Hugue- Catholics, ignorant of Alengon's true nature, suffered
nots duped, themselves to be amused by a sheet of paper. Some
ministers of religion went further, and, in the churches of La
Rochelle and Montauban, public thanksgiving was made to
God over the happy escape of the prince from imprisonment.
At that very moment, we are told, Alencon was excusing him-
self at Rome and trying to persuade the Pope that he had taken
the step only from necessity.
The time was to come when the instincts of Catharine's
youngest son would be fully understood, the time when the
pseudo-patriot would turn out to be an arrant coward, with no
solicitude save for his own petty interests, with no aptitude ex-
cept an inherited capacity of no stinted measure for dissimu-
lation and deceit. When that time arrived it was not unnat-
ural for the Huguenots to pass from credulous trust to the
opposite extreme of unreasonable suspicion, nor was it strange
that they came to believe the escape of Alencon from court to
be but a subtle device of Catharine to lure the Protestants on
to their ruin. The queen mother's agitation they insisted was
assumed only for the moment ; in her heart she rejoiced that
Alencon would soon be at the head of the German army which
Conde and Casimir were bringing, at so great a cost
Catharine's
grief gen- of trouble and treasure, to dictate peace at the gates
of Paris. In truth, however, this conclusion was as
ill-founded as the first hasty rejoicing was premature. Cath-
arine's grief was sincere. The Florentine envoy was no heretic
to be hoodwinked, and there was no profit to be derived from
deceiving his master the Grand Duke of Tuscany. We may,
therefore, conclude with safety that Catharine was altogether
unprepared for Alengon's escape and, at first, utterly cast down
by it. Alamanni declared that, on calling upon the queen
mother, he found her marvellously depressed. He had never
seen her so disheartened by any occurrence since his arrival in
France. She spoke in few and broken words, as if fearing to
touch the wound, and, almost with tears in her eyes and appar-
72 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. L
ently forgetful of her royal dignity, declared that she never
would have thought such a thing possible.1 Meantime the
court did not waste its time in useless regrets. The union of
Alencon with Damville and the Huguenots made a formidable
combination. It was important to avoid driving the younger
Montmorencies to extremities. So Marshal Francis, the head
of the family, was formally liberated (on the second of October)
from the imprisonment in which he had been languishing for
over a year. After a few days more of hesitation, the king
gave him audience, greeted him with warmth, and begged him
to forget past injuries.2
Happy had been the lot of France if selfishness had been
the supreme characteristic of Alencon alone. Unfortunately
this weak prince was but a type of the nobleman of the period.
In the incessant contests waged between the privileged classes,
wretched xt was tne wretched " tiers e tat " that was forced to
Sg^Sm* bear tne brunt of all the misfortunes befalling the
etat." land. " It will be found in the end," says the cure
of Mcriot, " that the seigneur will come to an agreement with
the king, without giving himself any further solicitude for the
1 Alamanni to the Grand Duke, September 22, 1575, Negociations avec la
Toscane, iv. 45. Dr. Dale says almost the same thing. " The king was very
heavy and sorrowful and the queen mother as one dismayed. They spake
both very lowly for their degree." Letter to Smith and Walsingham, Septem-
ber 28, 1575, State Paper Office. Recueil des choses memorables, 550-553 ;
Lestoile, i. 60 ; De Thou, v. 214, 215 ; La Fosse (Journal d'un cure ligueur),
174; Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. 177, 178; Jean de Serres, v. fols. 116, seq. ;
Davila, 214. The correspondence of the English ambassador gives a vivid im-
pression of the " marvellous perplexity" at Paris— the court amazed, the king
tormenting himself upon his bed, the chancellor and others going home to
utter laments over the untoward incident among their familiars, all men find-
ing fault with the queen mother, because she was the let that Monsieur was
not stayed, almost all the kings' followers booted in the court, and those that
were not noted as not ready to do loyal service. The king knew not what to
do, fearing that his troops would refuse to obey any of the generals that he
might send to reduce Alencon by force of arms ; fearing, also, that should he
go in person, his troops would desert him. He concluded, however, promptly
to send to his fugitive brother the plate, jewels, apparel, household stuff, and
servants he had left behind him in his precipitate flight. Dr. Dale to Smith
and Walsingham, September, 1575, State Paper Office.
2 Alamanni to the Grand Duke, November, 1575, Negociations, iv. 47.
1575. THE WAR CONTINUED. 73
general weal, especially in what concerns the interest of the
poor people of the towns and villages. Such is the condition
of the princes of France that they always put forward the
public welfare when they desire to avenge their quarrels upon
each other, but they force the miserable commoner to endure
the discomfort of the war, under the burden of which he is
overwhelmed, and in return he gains nothing from the fine
promises made by the princes. Instead of the relief which
they promise the people, they open the door to all sorts of
brigandage, to theft, robbery, and assassination. So it hap-
pened at this time, by reason of Alencon's declaration and pro-
testation. In consequence of the prince's withdrawal from
court, for the security, as was alleged, of his own person, the
war was rendered worse by the half than it was in previous
years for the poor laborers and villagers, by larceny, theft,
extortion, rape, murder, and every other form of outrage, with-
out rebuke or interposition of law or justice. And it cannot be
otherwise ; for, if one of the princes that are at war with each
other were to undertake to punish the armed men of his
party for the injuries they commit, instantly all his followers
would leave him and go over to his enemy, and he would thus
remain alone and without support." '
Claude Haton spoke only of what he had seen with his own
eyes in the fertile province of Champagne. For had he not
witnessed with indignation the perfect unconcern with which,
for example, the Duke of Aumale, when on his way to join the
Duke of Guise and help to repel the German reiters, had
stopped in Provins and spent a day in playing tennis with the
nobles of the place, while his followers scoured the neighbor-
hood and devoured the scanty property of the villagers, depriv-
ing them even of the very necessaries of life ? 2 But the cu-
rate's bitter words were equally true of a great part of France.
The reckless prodigality of the upper and ruling classes was
1 Memoires de Claude Haton, ii. 782.
'2 Ibid., ii. 779. The reader curious to know the heart-rending details of
popular suffering may study the document printed in the appendix to the
same work (pages 1141-4), entitled "Remonstrances tres humbles des villes
de Troyes, Reins, Chaalons," etc.
74 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. L
every day increasing the load under which the peasantry stag*
gered. Not a linger was raised to lighten the crushing burden.
"Lemanant ^"he scornful exclamation had passed into a proverb,
payetout." a j^e manant paye tout."1 None dreamed that the
rustic clown had a long memory, in which the full budget of
his grievances, through the centuries, was faithfully stored up,
and that he would one day importunately demand his reckon-
ing at a time and in a manner very distasteful to his chronic
debtor. " Le manant paye tout," said every member of the
privileged orders, from the king down to the most insignificant
baron who had contrived to avoid the forfeiture of his pre-
scriptive rights, that would have resulted from engaging in the
plebeian pursuits of trade or manual labor. In vain did the
general distress call forth murmurs from all parts of the king-
dom, cries to the effect that the king must do something to re-
lieve the universal distress, loud protests from Roman Catho-
lics that those under the protection of the Huguenots were
better treated than the subjects of the king that had not taken
up arms.2 Never had the court been more thoughtless of the
welfare of the nation, more wholly given up to riotous excess.
Serious- minded men stood aghast, superstitious men thought
corruption of *hey saw m ^ie unbridled licentiousness of the times
the court. signs of the approaching end of all things. " It had
seemed," said they, " in the time of Charles the Ninth, that the
dissoluteness of the court could go to no greater lengths ; but
since the accession of Henry the Third, and especially since his
marriage, it has passed all bounds and become so outrageous
that all that was once practised under those ancient Roman
emperors, masters of corruption and detestable lasciviousness,
appears now to be revived. To specify would be to rehearse
each most shameful statement contained in Suetonius, Herodian,
Lampridius, and other similar historians of antiquity." 3
1 Dialogue du maheustre et du manant, in Satyre Menippee (Ratisbon, 1726),
iii. 551.
2 " Allegande che quelli che stanno sotto la protezione delli ugonotti sono
meglio trattati." Alamanni to the Grand Duke, 1575, Negociations avec la
Toscane iv. 37.
3 The language is substantially that of the author of the Recueil des choses
meniorables (Dordrecht, 1598), 541.
1575. THE WAR CONTINUED. 75
A modern may well beg to be excused from giving a detailed
account of enormities from a recital of which the chronicler of
the sixteenth century drew back in horror : especially
Puerile ex- * •
travagance in view of the fact that the reference to the strange
and lewdness. , _ _ °
mixture or puerile extravagance, ioul lewdness, and
absurd devotion to which the king and his favorites were ad-
dicted is only germane to the theme of this history in so far as
light may be thrown upon the motives of the policy exercised
toward the Huguenots. Prudent counsellors had no standing
with the young king. Their place had been usurped by the
wild ministers to his pleasures. Among such bastard statesmen
loud and angry disputes passed for an equivalent of rational
discussion. Low broils and even assassination of rivals, whether
in political or in amorous intrigue, abounded. M. du Gast, one
of the chief participators in the bloody scenes of St. Bartholo-
mew's Day, was found dead in his bed, six weeks after Alen-
9on's escape. Although the instigator of the murder was
shrewdly suspected, no attempt was made to discover and pun-
ish the culprit. None the less did the king indulge in extrava-
gant displays of sorrow at the death of his favorite, bury him
with great pomp by the grand altar in the church of Saint Ger-
main l'Auxerrois, and assume the dead man's debts, said to
amount to more than one hundred thousand francs.1 A few
days later, the monarch so recently plunged in grief was seen
in his " coche," traversing the streets of Paris, in company with
Henry and ms voimg queen, visiting private houses and especially
his dogs. convents, and laying his hands on all the little dogs
of a certain prized breed that he could find.2 Great was the
annoyance of the nuns and the ladies thus robbed of their pets ;
still greater the indignation of the more sober part of the popu-
lation at the ridicule which was sure to attach to the royal name
in the estimate of foreigners. For it was not a passing whim
that led Henry to lavish upon his dogs the care that might
advantageously have been expended upon his miserable sub-
jects. Ten years later, when Chancellor Leoninus and his asso-
1 Lestoile (October 31, 1575), i. 61.
2 Ibid. (November, 1575), i. 62.
76 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. L
ciates came to the Louvre, bringing with them a magnificent
offer to Henry — nothing less than the sovereignty of the Low
Countries, quite equal by themselves to a kingdom — even, as one
diplomatist dryly remarks, to the kingdom of Poland ' — the as-
tonished envoys, at their solemn reception, found the monarch
of France standing in the midst of his minions with " a little
basket, full of puppies, suspended from his neck by a broad
ribbon." 2 Devout Roman Catholics were still more shocked
when they beheld Henry nonchalantly come up to the altar to
receive the consecrated wafer, after having frolicked all through
the service of the mass with his canine companions ; while the
sick who presented themselves to be touched for the king's evil
scarcely ever saw nim go through the mystic ceremonial without
a dog resting upon his arms.3
Meanwhile, if Henry of Valois was sinking into effeminacy,
surrounded by favorites who from men seemed to have been
changed into women, in another part of France at least one of
his subjects, laying aside the natural timidity of her sex, had
seized the sword and was battling for her faith in right manly
fashion. The virtuous Madeleine de Miraumont, sister of the
Bishop of Le Puy, was a young widow of large possessions in
Auvergne and as ardent a partisan of the reformed as her
brother was of the papal cause. It was not a difficult matter
for a woman of remarkable beauty, who betrayed no marked
preference for any one i of her many admirers, to gather about
her a band of gallant young noblemen. When she took horse
1 Morillon to Cardinal Granvelle, December 11, 1575, Groen van Prinsterer,
v. 326.
* See the graphic account of the interview in Motley, United Netherlands,
i. 96.
3 " II recevoit Dieu, qui scait en quelle conscience ! Car, ou tout affuble, ou
tenant un chien, ou ayant folastre, tout durant la messe, quelquef'ois avec des
chiens, il s'y presentoit hardiment. Aussi touchoit-il les escrouelles presque
toujours charge d'un chien sur un bras." Les moeurs, humeurs et com-
portemens de Henry de Valois (1589), Cimber et Danjou, Archives curieuses,
xii. 468. Henry's irreverence on such occasions was of less importance if, as
the writer of another libellous tract asserts, this monarch, in consequence of
the fact that, at his anointing, the " sainte ampoule " was not " disposed " as
usual, never acquired the inestimable prerogative of curing the king's evil.
La vie et faits notables de Henry de Valois, Archives curieuses, xii 482.
1575. THE WAR CONTINUED. 77
in person, armed cap-a-pie, full sixty knights gladly enrolled
themselves under her banner, which, to use the expression of an
appreciative historian, they esteemed to be no less the standard of
love. With such a following, the exploits of the fair Amazon
were as extraordinary as her warfare was novel. Not only did
she repeatedly defeat superior forces of the enemy, but when
besieged in her own castle by M. de Montal, royal lieutenant
for Lower Auvergne, she boldly charged the Roman Catholics
with scarce two score cavaliers, turning them into flight and
mortally wounding their leader. No wonder that, in after
times, as often as the Huguenot gentlemen from other parts of
the kingdom wTould undertake in playful banter to reproach
their comrades of Auvergne with having been soldiers of the
Lady of Miraumont, the Auvergnese accepted the intended
taunt as a compliment and bewailed the misfortune of those
whom fortune had denied the privilege of so honorable a
service.1
To add to the confusion reigning throughout France there
came the report of the approach of foreign arms. The Prince
of Conde had prevailed upon the elector palatine and
for the hu- his son again to give the Huguenots a much-needed
support.2 Duke John Casimir promised to enroll
a considerable force, consisting of eight thousand reiters (two
thousand in his own name and the rest in the name of Conde)
and eight thousand Swiss foot soldiers. The invading army was
to be provided with a supply of artillery, regarded, according to
the notions of the sixteenth century, as quite sufficient — four
large cannon, and twelve or fifteen field-pieces, and an abun-
dant store of ammunition. On his side, the prince engaged that
Marshal Dam ville would raise and bring from Languedoc a
force of twelve thousand foot and two thousand horse. The
treaty now signed included provisions to the effect that John
Casimir should be consulted upon all questions of peace and
war, and that the claims of his German troops for wages should
1 Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. 164.
2 See Conde's long letter to John Casimir respecting the causes of the war,
Jean de Serres, v. fols. 123-127.
78 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. I.
be paid in full before their final discharge. It was also stipu-
lated that John Casimir should sign the compact existing be-
tween Damville and the Protestants, and that an essential arti-
cle of any future treaty of peace with the King of France
should be that John Casimir be placed in command of the three
bishoprics — Metz, Toul, and Yerdun — as royal governor.1
It was always the misfortune of the Huguenots that their
geographical distribution was such as to separate them from
their allies by wide distances. Between the German frontier
and the provinces in which the Protestants were numerous, in-
tervened other provinces in which the Protestants had little
or no foothold. In its consternation at the sudden flight of
Alencon, the court had not forgotten to take measures for pre-
venting that prince, so far as possible, from obtaining the sup-
port of the nobility, and had renewed its efforts to intercept
any assistance from abroad. Unfortunately, the leaders of the
Huguenot army of reinforcement made the capital mistake of
dividing their troops. Since John Casimir was not yet ready
to march with the main body, they permitted Thore-Montmo-
rency to lead a detachment to the help of his brother, Dam-
ville. Thore's entire force consisted of only twelve or fifteen
hundred German horse, with a few mounted French gentlemen,
and five hundred arquebusiers. It was sheer madness to attempt,
with such insignificant numbers, to penetrate so far through
1 Recueil des choses memorables, 554 ; Jean de Serres, v. fols. 127-129 ; De
Thou, v. 217. See the text of the treaty, published for the first time in full,
from that one of the two extant copies which was sent by the elector palatine
to the magistrates of Geneva, by Henri Fazy, Geneve, le Parti Huguenot et le
Traite de Soleure, 146-157. The treaty is dated November 27, 1575 ; the
elector palatine's letter four days later. The Duke of Aumale (Histoire des
Princes de Conde, ii. 110), with true French pride, stigmatizes the agreement
as odious, and its provisions as both absurd and impossible of execution. He
hardly knows which to admire most — the extravagance of the palatine's
claims, or the simplicity wherewith he seems to accept the chimerical en-
gagements of his Huguenot allies. Without going to this length, we may
certainly be permitted to deplore the necessity to which the French Protest-
ants were driven by the fury of their enemies, of calling in, like their Ro-
man Catholic fellow citizens, the help of foreign troops, and of exposing
themselves to the taunt of caring less for the integrity of their country's
territory than for their religious privileges.
15<~5. THE WAR CONTINUED. 79
a region in which defensible elevations abounded, which was
intersected by rivers, and whose population was in arms to pre-
clude the passage.1 When to these difficulties was added the
fact that, while the Germans had an inexperienced leader, and
soon were mutinous for the payment of their wages, the court
had collected a greatly superior force 2 to oppose their entrance,
under such skilled captains as Henry of Guise, his brother, the
Duke of Mayenne, Armand de Biron, and Philip Strozzi, no
wonder that the expedition ended in disaster. After having
suffered great annoyance from the skirmishing attacks of the
enemy, Thore was met and signally defeated, on the tenth of
October, upon the banks of the Marne, not far from Chateau
Thierry. It was with difficulty that the incompetent young
Defeat of man, with a handful of his reiters, succeeded in ex-
Thor6. tricating himself from the meshes of his enemies and
joining Alengon at La Chatre, after a break-neck ride of
seventy leagues. On the other hand, Henry of Guise fought
bravely, received a severe wound in the cheek, and fell to the
ground half dead. The honorable scar (balafre) borne by
him to the day of his death was the occasion of the epithet of
" Le balafre," by which his followers gloried in designating
him.3 The loss on the Protestant side, if small in killed, was
great in the number of wounded.
1 So it appeared to Hubert Languet, himself a Bungundian by birth, when
he first heard of the design. "Via est adeo longa et adeo impedita montibus
et fluminibus, ut putem poene esse impossible ut eo perveniant quo constitue-
runt, cum prsesertim dicantur esse tantum duo millia et paucos pedites sint se-
cum habituri et forte duces imperitos. Nam audio ipsorum ducem praecipu-
um fore Thoraeum, filium connestabilis natu minimum." Epistolse secretae,
i. (2) 124. It would appear, however, that Languet was misinformed respect-
ing the route Thore was to take, and supposed he would traverse Burgundy
instead of Champagne.
* 10,000 to 12,000 foot, and 1,200 horse, besides the troops sent by the Dukes
of Uzes and Montpensier.
3 Lestoile (under date of October 11th), i. 61 ; Memoires de Claude Haton,
ii. 789; Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. 179-183; Jean de Serres, v. fols. 140. 141;
De Thou, v. 221, 222 ; Recueil des choses memorables, 556. See also the ac-
count of the "Skirmish between the Reiters and Guise," sent by Dale to Bur-
leigh, October 11, 1575, State Paper Office. Agrippa d'Aubigne devotes an
entire chapter to this engagement, which he calls " Deffaitte de Dormans" —
80 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Cii. L
Meanwhile, Catharine de' Medici had forgotten none of the
arts by means of which she had, single-handed, more than once
frustrated the well-devised counsels of statesmen and the care-
fully-laid schemes of war. In carrying into execution her in-
trigues she had never been sparing of time, fatigue, or expos-
ure. She now left Henry to his puerile occupations and his
dogs, while she posted to Touraine to confer with Alengon, and
was rewarded by her success in patching up a hollow truce. It
a hoiiow was to *ast a"bout seven months,1 and the conditions
truce. were very favorable to her youngest son — among
other things, payment to the Germans, and the transfer of six
places of security — Angouleme, Niort, Saumur, Bourges, and
La Charite to the Duke of Alengon, and Mezieres to the
Prince of Conde.2 But, after all, the truce amounted to little
or nothing. Conde and John Casimir refused to ratify the ar-
rangements, and neither the court nor Alengon took the trouble
to observe it. As the queen-mother had had no other end in
view than to prevent or delay the entrance of John Casimir into
France, there remained nothing to be done for the present but
to oppose him with an armed force of mercenary troops. For
by December the army of John Casimir, which recognized the
Prince of Conde's joint authority, had swollen in size, and in-
cluded ten thousand horse, six thousand Swiss, two thousand
lansquenets, and three thousand French arquebusiers. It was
only waiting in the neighborhood of Saverne to receive tidings
of the advance of Damville with troops and ready money.3
Hereupon Henry ordered a levy of six thousand Swiss and
made arrangements for a suitable number of Germans. But a
levy required money, and of money he had none. So the king
Dormans is ten or twelve miles east of Chateau Thierry— and remarks, some-
what hyperbolically, that the battle is " presque inconnue a tousceux qui ont
escrit, et de ceux qui l'ont veue estimee plus digne du nom de bataille que
plusieurs a qui on a donne ce titre."
1 November 22, 1575, to June 25, 1576.
2 Recueil des choses memorables, 558 ; De Thou, v. 222 ; Jean de Serres, v.
fols. 143, 144; Davila, 216 ; Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. 178, 179 ; "Accord be-
tween Monsieur and the Queen Mother," Magny, November 8, 1575, State Pa-
per Office.
3 Recueil des choses memorables, 559.
X5T5. THE WAR CONTINUED. SI
betook himself to the Hotel de Yille, and begged the city of
Paris to furnish him with two hundred thousand livres where-
with to hire the troops that might defend the citi-
Vain efforts , i -i -1 -i tt -r-»
of the king to zens against the dreaded Huguenots. But the pru-
dent merchants of the capital were more suspicious of
the king, who seemed to have instituted from close at hand an
irreconcilable war against their purses,1 than afraid of Conde
and John Casimir, who were yet a good distance off. Instead of
money came an answer in the form of a vexatious array of
figures. The burghers broadly hinted that the king wanted
their hard-earned gold for his favorites rather than for his
armies, and they very distinctly pointed out the bottomless
abyss of the king's prodigality, which no wealth of theirs could
hope to fill. Paris had, in the past fifteen years, furnished the
crown with thirty-six millions of livres, besides the sixty millions
contributed by the clergy. What was there to show for an
enormous expenditure which, rightly applied, might have se-
cured the extension of the kingdom by lawful conquest ?
France had gained no honors ; it had only incurred the ridicule
of strangers. Other remarks there were, equally distasteful to
the king, on the universal corruption of clergy and judiciary,
and the wastefulness pervading every branch of the administra-
tion.2 It is not surprising that Henry was provoked beyond
endurance. He adopted, however, a strange method of revenge.
Bringing the royal troops to the immediate vicinity,
whimsical he posted Guise with his division at Saint Denis,
Biron at Montmartre, Retz at Charenton, and so on,
encircling the city in every direction, and compelled the citizens
who had refused him ready money for his levies — or his favor-
ites—to loosen their close-drawn purse-strings for the payment
of the beleaguering forces.3
1 u Ita peroratio semper de pecunia erat et Parisiorum crumenis bellum in-
dicebatur." Jean de Serres, v. fol. 165.
2 Recueil des clioses memorables, 560 ; Jean de Serres, v. f ols. 153, 158 ;
Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. 217-219 ; De Thou, v. 223, 224.
3 The incident is detailed by Jean de Serres, v. 159 ; Recueil des choses
memorables, 561, and Inventaire general, ii. 491. It is not mentioned by De
Thou.
Vol. I.— 6
82 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. 1.
Never had France presented a scene of greater inconsisten
cies and more widespread confusion than it did about this time.
General con- Everywhere deceit and contradictory purposes seemed
fusion. £0 rejgn> The king had made a truce, and was pre-
paring for war. Alencon chose almost the same moment for
the publication of the armistice in his court and for the con-
firmation of the agreements entered into by Conde with John
Casimir ; x and, while he assured the Pope of his unimpeach-
able orthodoxy and upright intentions, was begging the Prot-
estant city of La Rochelle to furnish him money, and assever-
ating his purpose to espouse the quarrels of the Reformed
Church of France.2 Meanwhile, this excellent prince and
worthy son of Catharine de' Medici took possession of such of
the cities pledged to him as consented to admit his troops, and
accepted the substitutes offered for the other cities whose au-
dacious governors defiantly refused to obey the king's com-
mands, troubling himself little about the failure of the court to
fulfil its engagement to entrust Mezieres to the Prince of
Conde.3
In fact, the only compact about whose honest observance
any solicitude was exhibited was an agreement made, not by
The truce of kings or princes, but by the untitled inhabitants of a
vivarais. small province. The people of Yivarais — that frag-
ment of Languedoc, on the right bank of the Rhone, of which
Yiviers was the most considerable town — were wearied of the
relentless progress of a conflict raging at their very hearths.
Here had the misery of the civil war become most conspicuous
because the drama was seen enacted on so contracted a stage.
There were two governors of Languedoc, both claiming royal
appointment : the Protestants respected the authority of Mar-
shal Damville, the Roman Catholics the authority of the Due
d'Uzes. Under the governor of Languedoc, the Protestants
1 The truce was proclaimed in Alencon' s court, December 23, 1575, according
to De Thou, v. 227, 228. Alencon confirmed Conde's engagements, December
22, 1575, according to Jean de Serres, v. fol. 152, 153.
8 The self-reliant and prudent city reluctantly made Alencon a present of
10,000 francs. Lestoile, 63 ; De Thou, v. 228, 229.
3 Ibid., v. 227, 228.
1575. THE WAR CONTINUED. 83
obeyed two lieutenants, Pierregourde and Cugieres, governors
of the upper and lower divisions of Yivarais respectively ;
while the Roman Catholics recognized Du Bourg as governor
of the whole district. Each party had its own provincial
estates. Some of the towns held for the Protestants, some for
the Roman Catholics. Four thousand soldiers, living in idle-
ness, not only consumed the scanty resources of the inhabi-
ants, but inflicted on them a thousand insolences such as troops
are wont to indulge in when unrestrained by strict discipline.
Agriculture and trade were suspended. Townsmen and vil-
lagers alike groaned under their burdens, while the military
leaders alone made light of grievances in which they found a
source of profit for themselves. Under these circumstances the
people took the matter into their own hands. Men of both re-
ligious communions, deputed by the two provincial estates,
came together, and, after mature deliberation, entered into a
compact for mutual protection. The document setting forth
this agreement is so singular, and has been so little noticed by
historians, that its contents must be alluded to. It began by a
joint profession of loyalty. Both parties declared that they
persevered constantly in their obedience to Henry, and recog-
nized as his representatives, the Roman Catholics the Due
d'Uzes, the Protestants Marshal Damville. They maintained
that their sole aim in taking the present step was to ward off
disaster from their common country. The Protestants, in par-
ticular, solemnly affirmed that, in the new league into which
dire necessity had driven them to enter, they had no intention
of forsaking the common alliance of the Reformed Churches of
France. After this preamble the terms of the truce were
given. " All hostile attempts, either by open force of arms or
by secret counsels, shall henceforth cease within the bounds
of Yivarais. No one, whether native-born or stranger, shall
be exposed to any danger. No injury shall be done by any
one, whosoever he be, to agriculture or commerce, to persons
or property. No hostile attack shall be made against the
cities ; there shall be no hostile gatherings, no inroads into the
country. Discord having been allayed, there shall be free in-
tercourse between the towns and the country. Whoever shall
84 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. L
do otherwise, shall be held an enemy, and shall be punished as
a plunderer and a disturber of the public peace, according to
the severity of the laws, with the unanimous consent of all the
orders." There were other provisions, respecting the remission
of unpaid taxes, the release of prisoners, the restoration of
cattle, and the diminution of garrisons. The treaty was to be
submitted for approval by both sides to the governors whom
they recognized, and indeed to the king himself ; but, even
should it ultimately be found impossible to secure their sanc-
tion, no recourse was to be had to arms until the expiration of
at least a month's interval after due notice of the failure. As
to any nobles or cities that might decline to endorse the com-
pact, both Protestants and Roman Catholics agreed to proceed
against them in arms, as enemies of their common country and
unworthy of the common alliance.1
Great as was the delight of the wretched burghers and peas-
ants of Yivarais ; equally great was the indignation of the king,
of both governors, in fact of every captain and scheming pub-
lic man interested in the war. Even some of the neighboring
Protestant churches complained of the irregularity of the action
of their brethren, in thus providing for their own safety. As
for the royalists, they saw in the movement a dangerous inno-
vation, the introduction of an " imperium in imperio," threat-
ening the royal authority. It was from such beginnings, for-
sooth, that the Swiss cantons had thrown off the yoke of their
princes, claimed popular liberty, and founded commonwealths
of their own. There was an end to all possibility of carrying
on war, if money could be refused by the people. Meanwhile
the truce of Yivarais bore wholesome fruit in the relief of the
impoverished inhabitants, now freed from the presence of the
greater part of the late garrisons, and in the revival of trade
and husbandry.2
If the compact between the Protestants and the Roman Catho-
lics had been remarkable for its origin, it was still more notable
for the honorable observance of its conditions. Geydan, a neigh-
1 Jean de Serres, v. fols. 167-170 ; De Thou, v. 304, 305.
2 Jean de Serres, ubi supra.
1576. THE WAR CONTINUED. 85
boring Huguenot captain of great activity, much given to bold
enterprises, conceived the notion of taking advantage of the
security felt by the Roman Catholic garrison of Vi-
able observ- viers, and made a sudden and successful attack upon it.
The Roman Catholics at once carried to the Protes-
tants their complaints because of this infraction of the treaty.
The Protestants disclaimed all complicity in a movement
which had originated beyond the boundaries of the province,
but promised to execute their engagements to the letter. They
summoned Geydan to surrender his prize and withdraw from
Yivarais ; and, when he returned an insolent answer and vindi-
cated his action as legitimate, they promptly began prepara-
tions, in conjunction with the Roman Catholics, to expel him by
force. Happily, however, Geydan was persuaded by his friends
to recede from his position, and the town of Viviers was re-
stored to the Roman Catholics. It was, indeed, a signal instance
of good faith in a perfidious age.1
Henry of Navarre chose this time of general confusion to
make his escape. For nearly four years had he been detained
The king of at tne royal court. Ever since his bloody nuptials he
oaesrrfrom nac* Deen> to a^ appearance, a sufficiently devout Ro-
court. man Catholic. Yet, if he occasionally attended mass
and exhibited no very great desire again to listen to Huguenot
preaching, he was as loose in his ideas of morality as most of
the young nobles of the day. In ignoble rivalry with Alencon
and Guise for the good graces of Madame de Sauve, the Bear-
nese seemed utterly to have forgotten the quarrel of the religion
of his mother, and of his own childhood, as well as the interests
of the party of which he was the natural head. " The King of
Navarre was never so merry nor so much made of," wrote the
English ambassador, just after Alencon's stealthy withdrawal
from Paris.2 His neglect of his Huguenot comrades in arms
was, however, more apparent than real. He was only abiding
1 Jean de Serres (who gives the date of the restoration as Fehruary 27, 1576),
v. fols. 172, 173 ; Recueil des choses memorables, 565, 566 ; De Thou, v. 306,
307.
8 Dale to Burleigh, September 28, 1575, State Paper Office.
86 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. L
the time to break his prison bars and seek more congenial asso-
ciations. The opportunity he sought at last arrived. Henry of
Navarre had prudently dissembled his indignation at the hu-
miliating position he was forced to occupy at court. Little fear
was entertained that he might venture on the dangerous attempt
to make his way to his distant friends. He was therefore per-
mitted to indulge in his favorite pastime of the chase with the
less suspicion, because, as he customarily resorted in the direc-
tion of Senlis and Chantilly, places north of Paris, the capital
lay between him and the only practicable line of flight. Of the
freedom thus obtained he made good use. Early in February,
1576, having contrived to rid himself of those who had been
placed about him to watch his movements, he suddenly started
with a few trusty horsemen, and making a wide circuit to avoid
Paris, crossed the Seine near Poissy. So prompt had been his
actions that, before his enemies were fully aware of his design,
he was beyond pursuit. Avoiding the highways on which he
might have been stopped, he reached the city of Alencon, and
thence made his way with little delay to Saumur and placed the
Loire between himself and the court.1 Once safe and within
easy distance of his Protestant allies, Henry, who had thus far
been taciturn beyond his wont, raised his eyes to heaven and
exclaimed : " Praised be God who has delivered me ! They killed
the queen, my mother, in Paris. There, too, they slew the ad-
miral and all my best servants, and they intended to do the
same by me. Never shall I return unless I be dragged thither."
U And then, resuming his usual cheery tone, he assured his suite,
with a good-natured laugh, that he had left in Paris only
1 Dale to the secretaries, February 6, 1576, State Paper Office. Agrippa
cTAubigne, who both planned and accompanied Henry's flight, gives by far
the fullest account in his Histoire universelle, ii. 183-189, supplemented by
hisMemoires, 482, 483. See also Memoires de Sully, chap. vii. ; Davila, 217,
218 ; Jean de Serres, v. fol. 166; Recueil de choses memorables, 564, 565;
De Thou, v. 304. Alamanni's letter announcing to the Tuscan court the es-
cape of Navarre "yesterday" (Negociations avec la Toscane, iv. 46) must have
been dated February 4th, and not 1st. The account of a recent writer (Miss
Freer, Henry III., ii. 83), who makes Henry, in his escape, first cross the Seine
and subsequently flee to La Fere and thence to Vendome, is singularly in-
volved.
1576. THE WAR CONTINUED. 87
two things that he regretted — the mass and the queen his wife
— the latter he would have again, the former he would try to
do without.1 The King of Navarre had not waited to reach the
Loire before renouncing the outward profession of the faith that
had been forced upon him. At Alencon he stood godfather
for a Protestant child,2 and the little court of Henry at Saumur
and Thouars resounded once more with the sermons of Hugue-
not preachers. If Henry himself and his chief adherents showed
little evidence of fervent religious feeling, and were not seen at
the solemn celebration of the Lord's Supper, according to the
rites of the Reformed Church, the reason may be found with
quite as great probability in the worldly engrossments of the
king himself as in any alleged intrigue of the Duke of Alencon
to prevent Navarre from supplanting him in the esteem of the
Huguenot party.3
Meantime the auxiliaries whom the Prince of Conde had
been at such pains to collect were steadily making their way
into the heart of the kingdom, in perfect contempt for the
truce concluded between Catharine de' Medici and
Entrance of , . . . . . . . n
the Germans her youngest son, and giving not the slightest heed
into France. i , , a i n-i -. n ,.
to the letters that Alencon pretended to despatch for
the purpose of preventing their march. The expedition, John
Casimir informed the king, in most polite terms, was not in-
tended against his Majesty's person. " It is directed," said he,
" against the murderers and persecutors of our true religion,
and in general against those who create commotion and work
1 Lestoile, i. 66.
2 Ibid., i. 6G ; Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. 188. The latter mentions the coin-
cidence that, at the Huguenot preche, on the morrow after Henry's arrival, the
21st Psalm was sung in regular course, much to the king's surprise, beginning
with the lines,
Seigneur, le Roy s'esjouira
D'avoir eu delivrance.
3 See the tempting offers of the younger brother of the King of France to
secure as an irrevocable appanage the whole of Guyenne, with ample securi-
ties, Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. 190. Agrippa asserts that only two gentlemen of
the court, including himself, presented themselves at the Holy Communion.
Compare the passage just cited of his Histoire universelle with his Memoires,
p. 483.
88 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. 1.
folly in your kingdom." ! The forces under the joint com*
mand of the prince and Duke John Casimir had become a
formidable army. Henry in vain attempted to hinder its ad-
vance by promising the leaders a good and stable peace, and
the German reiters a handsome sum of money in the way of
wages, while endeavoring to secure the recall of the Swiss by
their own cantons. Conde, John Casimir, and the Germans
rejected his offers, and, though Berne consented to issue a sum-
mons to its subjects to return, the mercenaries paid no atten-
tion to the order. The Germans entered France through the
upper part of Champagne, and passing by Langres, penetrated
into Burgundy and Bourbonnois. Everywhere their course
was marked with bloodshed and pillage. The environs of
Langres were laid waste ; the movable goods of the poor peas-
ants were heaped up in the wagons which the reiters insisted
on taking with them wherever they themselves went ; the vil-
lages were then set on fire. Near Dijon they captured the
venerable abbey of Citeaux, the original home of the monks
hence called Cistercians, and in a few hours had stripped the
monastery of everything valuable that had not previously been
carried away for safety to Dijon. At Citeaux the reiters had
Excesses of defied the express commands of the Prince of Conde,
the reiters. wjtjj wnom the monks had entered into a compact
and from whom they had obtained a promise of immunity ; at
Nuits, a small town but a few miles farther on, they acted with
equal insolence and with more flagrant inhumanity. The place
had the temerity to deny admission to the invaders, but had
yielded after a brief cannonade. Duke John Casimir promised
the inhabitants that their lives should be spared and their prop-
erty respected, and Conde not only ratified the terms of sur-
render but introduced a small body of nobles and of his own
troops to preclude the danger he apprehended from the Germans.
Even then the reiters rose in open meeting and demanded the
pillage of Nuits as their due. When it was refused by the
prince, they attacked and dispersed or killed the guard which
1 John Casimir to Henry III., Heidelberg, November 17, 1575, Kluckhohn,
Briefe Friedrich des Frommen, iii. 913.
1576. THE WAR CONTINUED. 89
he had set, and then ruthlessly put to the sword every man,
woman, and child that came in their way. The town was thor-
oughly sacked.1 It was a butchery, the report of which carried
terror far in advance of the army which it disgraced. A little
later the reiters again became clamorous for money, and threat-
ened Conde that unless their demands were met they would
elect a new leader.2
At length the invading army and the forces commanded by
the Duke of Alencon effected a junction, and the latter was
proclaimed general-in-chief of the combined troops. His united
army, reviewed on the plain of Soze, numbered thirty thousand
men.3 Catharine, at no time idle since the escape of Alencon
from court, now saw that no time must be lost in breaking the
force of the great preparations of the Huguenots. Henry
trembled for his sluggish repose. Paris, whose citizens would
have preferred to see their king in arms rather than engaged
in processions to supplicate Heaven for the restoration of peace,4
trembled for its walls. The tortuous paths of diplomacy must
again be tried, and this time with more real earnestness. An-
other year of war had proved how fruitless the attempt was
likely to be to coerce the Huguenots into submission. Not
only were they as strong as ever, but a large army of strangers
had entered France, and the king was powerless to check or to
expel them. The treasury was empty ; the taxes were wrung
from the impoverished people with extreme difficulty. Henry
was resolved to have peace at any cost. True, he would put on
1 John Casimir to Frederick the Pious, Argilly, January 26, 1576, Kluck-
hohn, Briefe, etc., iii. 943 ; Jean de Serres, v. fols. 163, 164 ; De Thou, v. 303,
304 ; Recueil des choses memorables, 563.
2 Recueil, ubi supra.
3 Recueil des choses memorables, 566 ; Jean de Serres, v. fols. 174, 175 ;
De Thou, v. 307 ; Wilkes to Burleigh, Vichy, February 13, 1576, State Paper
Office.
4 "The people of France," says Claude Haton, "would have been more
grateful to the king had he gone to the war in person than it was when it
saw him go or heard, that he went in the procession ; for his presence in the
war would have been worth a thousand men. But he would not hear of such
a thing, and he had greatly changed since he became king," etc., Memoires,
ii. 825.
90 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OP NAVARRE. Ch. 1
a bold face, and scout the terms they suggested as absurd ; but
he had no serious intention of holding out.
From Moulins the confederates sent their demands to the
king. The Protestants made about the same requests as they
had made a year before, with a special provision that
The stout de- J ' r r
mands of the the tithes they paid should go to the support of their
Protestants
own ministers. The count palatine would have had
them stipulate that the churches should be used in common by
the Roman Catholics and the Protestants. The King of Navarre
set forth his claims to a restitution of his rights, to the dower of
Margaret of Yalois, and to possible support in reconquering his
kingdom beyond the Pyrenees.5 The Duke of Alencon's chief
aim was to secure for himself an appanage worthy of his rank.
Duke John Casimir sought to be put in possession of the
" Three Bishoprics " — Metz, Toul, and Yerdun — as royal gov-
ernor ; and the Protestants supported him in the application.
The three fortresses would be substantial guarantees of the
stability of the coming peace.
I may be excused from entering with detail into the story of
negotiations in which " the ingenuity of a single woman proved
more than a match for the calm judgment of the most illustrious
men, supported by the weapons of powerful armies." 2 There
were the usual eloquent pleas for toleration, and the usual in-
consistencies in urging them. There was also a full proportion
of sensible suggestions, which, had they been acted upon, might
have changed the history of France for the next three centuries.
Again the Sieur d' Arenes spoke eloquently and forcibly. " A
single religion in a state is, indeed, desirable ; but, when a re-
ligion cannot be exterminated without public offence, prudent
men agree that it must be tolerated until the minds of men be
1 The remarks of Jean de Serres (v. fol. 185) respecting the surprise gener-
ally felt at the character of the King of Navarre's first demands are worthy of
notice : " Hasc erant Navarrsei postulata longe di versa quam et rumor dissemi-
nasset et complures rerum aulicarum non imperiti arbitrarentur, qui nervo-
siora et magis virilia expectabant a Navarraeo. "
2 "Mulieris versutia plus potuit quam clarissimorum virorum sobrium con-
silium, ingentibus etiam viribus armatum." Jean de Serres, v. fol. 175.
The course of this protracted and important negotiation is traced at great
length by this author, v. fols. 175-202.
1576. THE WAR CONTINUED. 91
changed by a Power superior to the power of man." ' Beutrich,
the envoy of John Casimir, declared that the Protestant religion
not only exacts obedience to legitimate authority, but seeks to
restore to the king the authority usurped by the Roman Pon-
tiffs. And he added, in explanation of the demand for the
three cities for his master : " We distrust, Sire, not you, but the
counsellors about you, who, because the lion's tail is not long
enough, would add the wolfs." 2 Count Yentadour, brother-
in-law of Marshal Damville, and an ally whose accession to the
ranks of the confederates had added great moral weight, pro-
posed, through a special embassy, that only two religions should
be authorized, while all others should be proscribed as before.
And he advocated several reforms, including regular meetings
of the states general every two years, the application of one-
fourth of all ecclesiastical revenues to the support of hospitals,
and the abolition of the system of purchase of judicial offices.
" Yor" said he, " what has been purchased at wholesale will in-
fallibly be sold again at retail." 3 The negotiations had also
their ludicrous side. The Protestant envoys were still so de-
ceived regarding the character of Alencon and the attitude of
Catharine de' Medici toward him, that they exhibited an anxiety,
amounting almost to apprehension, lest the poor prince's rights
should be overlooked ; and Catharine assured the envoys, with
becoming gravity, that she would pledge her word that Alencon
should be satisfied.4 It may be affirmed with safety that rarely
did Catharine keep her word so well as in the present instance.
One point after another was conceded by the court at the ur-
gent pressure of the confederates, till it seemed that everything
The two would be yielded. But there were two petitions
catharineich Catharine would not concede. One respected the
wm not yield. titlies . glie was resoiute that the Huguenots should
not be relieved of their financial embarrassments. The other
was the confiding of Metz, Toul, and Verdun to Duke John
Casimir : the Huguenots could not be suffered to obtain such
security against future assaults, or the favorable edict now to
1 Jean de Serres, v. fol. 179. 2 Ibid., v. fols. 183, 184.
3 Ibid., v. fol. 187. 'Ibid,, v. fols. 188, 189.
92 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. I.
be put forth might in very deed become irrevocable, not from
the unwillingness, but from the inability of the king to repeal
it. Every art of diplomacy was, therefore, employed to per-
suade the envoys to recede from their position. I^or was the
effort in vain. The envoys were finally induced to write a
letter to the Duke, begging him to renounce his claim, on the
ground that otherwise the treaty would fail, and France would
again be plunged in the horrors of civil war. Reluctantly, and
only, it would seem, because of his excessive sensitiveness to
the unjust aspersion of his motives — as though he were in quest
of private gain rather than the general good of his co-religion-
ists— did John Casimir consent to receive the promises which
took the place of the " Three Bishoprics." *
The queen mother's shrewdness had won the day, not with-
out the assistance of that bevy of court beauties on whose
Henry's im- charms she was wont on such occasions to place great
thaienoCfetne dependence.2 Even thus, however, she had had diffi-
peopie. culty in restraining Henry's eagerness. He would have
the peace, he exclaimed, if it cost him half his kingdom.3 As
for the people, its impatience knew no bounds. Between the
Roman Catholic and the Huguenot armies the unhappy in-
habitants of the towns and villages had little chance of saving
any of their scanty possessions. The Huguenot leaders levied
large sums of money on the provinces of Central France, which
were reluctantly paid to secure immunity from invasion. Au-
vergne was assessed one hundred and fifty thousand livres,
Berry, forty thousand ; the single city of .Dijon is reported to
have paid two hundred thousand livres, and Nevers thirty thou-
sand. The Roman Catholic troopers, on the plea that they
wTere unpaid, indulged in the usual excesses, not against those
1 Jean de Serres, v. fol. 201. According to Hubert Languet, who appears
to have been well informed, the King of France, finding that John Casimir
could not be moved from his position, resorted to the Swiss Protestant Cantons.
He begged them to use their intercessions with the elector palatine to induce
him to overcome his son's obstinate determination, the only remaining im-
pediment to the conclusion of peace. The scheme succeeded but too well
Epistolse secret*, i. 186.
2 Jean de Serres, v. fol. 201. 3 Lestoile, i. 67, 68.
1576. PAIX DE MONSIEUR. 93
who opposed them, but against the villages that had espoused
the defence of the king — " pillaging, robbing, ravaging, plun-
dering, killing, burning, violating, exacting ransoms." The
poor people was devoured by both sides. If there was an
abundance of thieves in the one party, there was no lack of
robbers in the other.1 The Protestant army was not far from
Paris ; the exaggerated fears of the terrified inhabitants made
it even nearer than it really was. " They of the faubourgs gen-
erally," wrote an eye-witness, " remove their goods into this
town with such diligence that a man can scant enter the gates
for the press of people, carriage, and cattle." 2
In the beginning of May the peace that marked the conclusion
of the Fifth Religious AYar was given to the world in a royal
edict of pacification, known as the " Edict of Beaulieu "
The Edict of r 7
pacification from the spot where it was concluded, a village near
May. 1576.
Loches, in Touraine. The chief points in the " Paix
de Monsieur," as the accommodation was popularly called, were
these : Henry ordained entire oblivion of the past. He granted
to the Protestants universal freedom of worship throughout
France, without exception of time or place, unless the particular
lord should object to its exercise upon his lands.3 The Protes-
tants were, moreover, guaranteed the liberty to instruct their
children, to administer the sacraments, to celebrate marriage, to
establish schools, and convene consistories and synods, the latter
in the presence of a royal officer. They wTere promised ad-
mission to offices and the establishment of u chambres mi-
parties " in each of the parliaments of the kingdom, wherein
cases affecting them should be tried by an equal number of
judges of the two religions. Henry declared his intention to
assemble the states general at Blois within six months. He
disowned all participation in the horrors of the massacre of
St. Bartholomew's day, repealed the sentences pronounced
against Admiral Coligny and other Huguenot leaders, and ap-
proved of the acts performed and the alliances entered into by
1 Lestoile, i. 68. See Claude Haton, ii. 849.
2 " News from France," inclosed in Dale's letter to Burleigh, April 17, 1576,
State Paper Office.
3 Paris alone was excepted.
94 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. L
the Protestants. In token of sincerity he conceded to them eight
cities in pledge.1 The Huguenot leaders were not forgotten.
The Prince of Conde was appointed governor of Picardy, with
the city of Peronne as his residence. His brother, the Marquis
of Conty, received a military command. Duke John Casimir
was promised a large annual subsidy and a force commensurate
with his rank. As to Alencon, the prince about whom the Hu-
guenot envoys had displayed so much anxiety, and for whom
they had had so much misplaced sympathy, the queen mother
was as good as her word. If the youth was not satisfied with
the magnificent appanage that was granted him — the rich prov-
inces of Berry, Touraine, and Anjou, together with the annual
revenue of one hundred thousand crowns of gold — he must in-
deed have been a difficult person to please.2
In the general exultation over the return of peace and the
concession of a larger religious liberty than had ever before been
granted to them, the Huguenots may be pardoned for making
little account of the mode in which their recent ally, the young-
est Valois, had contrived to secure a lion's share of the real fruits
of the war. They had yet to discover respecting the " Paix de
Monsieur," that if the most specious pacification, it was also the
least useful of all compacts to the adherents of the Reformed
faith.3
1 These were : In Languedoc, Beaucaire and Aigues-mortes ; in Guyenne,
Perigueux and Mas de Verdun ; in Dauphiny, Nyons and Serres ; in Auvergne,
Issoire ; and in Provence, Seine-la-grand-tour.
2 The text of the edict of pacification is given in full in the Memoires de
Nevers, i. 117-135, and Haag, France protestante, x. 127-141. See also Re-
cueil des choses memorables, 569, 570, Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. 214, etc., Da-
vila, 219, 220, etc. Jean de Serres, gives a Latin summary of the edict, v.
fols. 202-207. His invaluable Commentarii de statu religiouis et reipublicae
(1580), I regret to say, end at this point. Nor does the circumstance that the
works of this writer have been honored with a special mention in the ''Index
Librorum Prohibitorum '* (I have before me the edition of Eome, 1841), in
company with much other good literature, fully reconcile me to the necessity
of henceforth threading the intricate maze of the events of the period now
under consideration deprived of the assistance of a well-informed, clear-sighted,
and conscientious guide.
3 " La paix la plus specieuse et la moins utile aux Refformez." Agrippa
d'Aubigne, ii. 194.
1576. CONDITION OF LANGUEDOC. 95
The scene of the struggle in which the Huguenots found themselves plunged
upon the return of Henry the Third from Poland was restricted so much to
Languedoc that the condition of that extensive province is a
description of* matter of more than ordinary interest to him that would under-
time condition stand the ensuing events. We are fortunately in possession of a
curious report made by M. de Fourquevaulx, governor of Nar-
bonne, an upright and well-informed man, respecting that important portion
of Languedoc which was comprised in the two " St-nechaussees " of Toulouse
and Lauragais. The document, which is in the form of a series of answers to
questions propounded to the writer in a letter of Charles the Ninth, despatched
in the course of the preceding autumn, is dated on the twenty-third of Janu-
ary, 1574. (It is inserted among the "preuves" of Dom Vaissete's Histoire
de Languedoc, v. 224-239.) Replying to an inquiry respecting the Roman
Catholic ecclesiastics, Fourquevaulx stated that the bishops, archbishops, and
other prelates of the two senechaussees, with a single exception, made it a rule
to reside in their dioceses as little as possible. Motives of convenience, or
expense, or proximity to hunting-grounds, or pleasure determined the place of
their abode ; for it would be a miracle were one of them found possessed of
but a single prelature. It was fifty-seven years since Narbonne had laid eyes
upon her archbishop. It was about as long since the archbishop of Toulouse
had been at his see for over a week at a time. The suffragan bishops acquitted
themselves little or no better. The bishop of St. Papoul was in Rome, the
bishop of Lavaur in Paris, the bishop of Montauban at court ; the bishop of
Comminges (St. Bertrand de Comminges) was the solitary instance of an
ecclesiastic of this dignity abiding by his own fold, doing the office of a
good pastor and teaching his flock by precept and example. In the whole
province of Languedoc there were twenty-two archbishoprics and bishoprics.
Of these, four — Alais. .Lodeve, Nismes, and Uzes — were in the power of the
Huguenots The holders of fourteen of the remaining eighteen were ab-
sentees. At least one of the four who resided in their dioceses led a life that
scandalized rather than edified the people under his charge. Following the
example of their superiors, the abbots, priors, and curates shunned residence
on a great variety of excuses, putting their benefices in charge of men of no
account, some of whom dared not remain through fear of the Huguenots,
while others could not, because their churches or monasteries had been
burned during the wars or were occupied by soldiers. Consequently the
people were left without religious instruction, the treasure of the district went
abroad, almsgiving ceased, the ecclesiastical edifices not already destroyed went
to ruin. Holy orders were conferred without discrimination, the sacraments
administered without reverence or devotion, by priests and vicars unable to
comprehend what they said or did. As the result, the laity held the sacra-
ments and those that administered them in equal contempt.
In reply to the question, " whether the ecclesiastics enjoyed their posses-
sions or were disturbed in them," Fourquevaulx gave a sorry exhibit of the
number of towns and villages that were in the hands of the Protestants
and from which no income could be expected. If the dioceses of Rieux
and Comminges were exclusively held by Roman Catholics, it was otherwise
9G THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. I.
with the diocese of Lavaur, where out of eight considerable towns (villes
maitresses), including Lavaur itself in the number, the enemy held five, and
all the four-score smaller places, castles and villages.
Nor was the picture brighter when the governor of Narbonne came to de-
scribe the nobles, and their dealings with one another and with the people.
The common opinion was that, had the Roman Catholic nobles chosen to exert
themselves, the civil wars would long since have been over. But those who
styled themselves Catholic played into the hands of those who belonged to the
other party. " The one set of nobles hold the lamb, the others flay it ; the
rebels plunder (font les voleurs), and the Catholics find purchasers for them."
Greed ruled both parties. Of the Huguenots, the governor of Narbonne, who
had, some time since, violently expelled them from the city, draws no flatter-
ing portrait. "Little mention is made among the rebels of living as Chris-
tians ; for it is only in name that they embrace their religion. They blas-
pheme, they plunder, they indulge in lewdness, they kill in combat and in
cold blood, and do everything the Gospel forbids ; alleging in justification
that war permits them to act thus, especially against ' idolaters ' as they style
the Catholics." As to the latter, with them, too, everything was perverted.
Between the two religions the numerical disparity was great. Nine-tenths
of the people were Roman Catholics, disposed to live and die in obedience to
the king. From these must be excepted men of the long robe (of the legal
profession), the bourgeoisie, the tradespeople, the men who had tasted of
letters, and the young men who were friends of liberty. Little reliance could
be reposed even upon those that had not openly gone over to Protestantism.
So, too, such of the artisans as were of a somewhat sprightly turn of mind
were either declared Calvinists or suspected to be such. The most trust-
worthy Catholics were " the simple folk and good peasants."
The statements of Fourquevaulx respecting the non-residence of the epis-
copate of Languedoc are illustrated by the circumstance that the Acts of the
Council of the ecclesiastical province of Narbonne, which opened December
10, 1551, show that not a single bishop was present at its sessions. The absent
prelates were represented by vicars. (Histoire de Languedoc, v. 169.)
1576. THE HOLY LEAGUE. 97
CHAPTEK II.
THE STATES-GENERAL OF BLOIS, AND THE SIXTH CIVIL WAR.
However grateful may have been the return of peace to the
inhabitants of those extensive regions of France that had suf-
fered most severely from the ravages of war, never
of the "Paix had an edict of pacification been published whose
de Monsieur." . l
concessions were so offensive to the enemies of the
Huguenots as those of the " Paix de Monsieur. " A toleration
coextensive with the limits of the kingdom was guaranteed to
the Protestant worship by a solemn law declared to be perpet-
ual and irrevocable. To the heretics lately in arms, to heretics
supposed to have been all but annihilated in the Parisian matins,
to heretics stripped of their property by judicial process, not
only was restitution promised, but courts were to be granted in
each of the parliaments of France, from which impartial decis-
ions might henceforth be expected. No wonder that monks
stormed from the pulpits, that bigoted judges protested against
the innovation. When the queen mother, accompanied by her
daughter, the Q'aeen of Navarre, proceeded to the great church
of Sens and requested that the canons be assembled and a Te
Deum be sung in gratitude for the return of peace, an old
ecclesiastic, the spokesman of the clergy, replied, " Madam,
according to what I hear of the terms upon which the peace
has been concluded, it is the Huguenots that ought to sing the
' Te Deum laudamus ' and not the Catholics. It would be more
becoming for us to chant, 4 Requiem geternam dona nobis, Do-
mine.' " * The chapter of Notre Dame in Paris was not less
insolent to the king himself ; for the members refused to ring
their bells and to sing the church's jubilant hymn, proposing to
1 Memoires de Claude Haton, ii. 833.
Vol I.— 7
98 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch IL
substitute in its place the psalm, " Circumdederunt me viri
mendaces," with the appropriate introit, " Circumdederunt me
dolores mortis." Henry was compelled to wait a whole day and
then employ his own singers to perform the task declined
by the canons of the cathedral. The latter paid for their dis-
obedience by a fine imposed upon them by the parliament ; but
this did not daunt the people of Paris, who stoutly refused to
light the customary bonfires in the streets or indulge in any
outward demonstration of joy.1 The king, however, made show
of a firm determination to carry the edict into effect. On the
fourteenth of May he proceeded to parliament, accompanied by
Henry insists tne Prmces °f the blood, and not only ordered the
oSt theryi?c? registration of the edict, but swore to its observance
visions. an(j directed all that were present to take a similar
oath. About three weeks later he again met the judges, and
commanded them to acknowledge the erection of the " chambre
mi-partie," an institution so odious that only the royal presence
deterred parliament from rejecting it.2 Even then the refrac-
tory counsellors resolutely refused to recognize the appointment
of that eloquent and learned Huguenot, the Sieur d' Arenes,
whom the king had named as presiding judge of the mixed tri-
bunal. He gained his seat only after repeated orders and
threats from the king and his mother, and through the personal
insistence of Chancellor Birague and other members of the
royal council.3
The peace, thus declared and established with all the forms
calculated to give it effect, was in reality little more than a hol-
1 La Huguerye to the Prince of Orange, May 19, 1576, Groen van Prinsterer,
Archives, Supplement, 188*. Mem. de Claude Haton, ii. 848. Mem. d'un
cure ligueur (Jehan de la Fosse), 175, 176.
8 June 7, Lestoile, i. 72. " It was much to be noted," wrote Dr. Dale to
Lord Burleigh, May 11, 1576, " that the king caused the Duke of Guise, the
Duke of Maine, the Duke d'Aumale, and the Marshal de Retz to be at the pub-
lication of the peace, and to swear to it, although it was very coldly done on
the part of the Guises. They had the oath ministered unto them, and were
willed to hold up their hand, which is the manner of taking an oath in this
country." State Paper Office.
8 Lestoile (under dates of July 16 and 30), i. 72, 73, 75. See, however,
Davila, 220, and Claude Haton, ii. 866.
1576. THE HOLY LEAGUE 99
low truce. It was absurd to suppose that either Henry or his
mother had any serious intention of maintaining a compact so
honorable for the king's revolted subjects, so dishonor-
ments of the able for the king himself.1 Henry had not disguised,
during the negotiations of the past year, his indigna-
tion at the boldness of the Protestants. In the execution of
the unfortunate Montbrun he had obtained revenge for the
insult received from one Huguenot leader who, with fatal bold-
ness of speech, had laid claim to equality with his monarch in
time of war. Would his majesty be likely to forget the wound
his self-respect had received from the whole body of the Hugue-
nots when they compelled him to accept peace on terms dic-
tated by them ? 2 Precisely how he would obtain release from
the humiliating engagements he had entered into — substituting
another " perpetual and irrevocable edict " of more agreeable
character for the " perpetual and irrevocable edict " which he
had just promulgated 3 — it is by no means certain that as yet he
imagined. Yet, even from the first, it is not improbable that
he foresaw the useful end to which the states general, so anx-
iously and urgently demanded by the Huguenots, might be
turned. In case, as was likely to be the issue, the enemies of
the reformers should secure a clear majority in the great national
convocation, Henry could as easily retract his engagements with
his subjects as Francis the First had dispensed with the humil-
iating terms of his release from captivity under the Treaty of
Madrid. Only, the grandson must be as careful as had been his
grandfather to secure all the advantages afforded by his breach
of faith before publishing to the world that his promises were
null and void because of the force employed by his opponents.
Some of these advantages had already been gained. The Duke
1 In fact Henry did not hesitate so to inform Duplessis Mornay, in August,
1583. He told him, without any apparent shame, '* qu'il n'eut jamais voulloir
de tenir la paix de 76, mais quaussi ne le cela il poinct, pour la facon dont
elle avoit este faicte." Memoires de Duplessis Mornay, ii. 374.
2 See Ranke's remarks, p. 293.
8 The edict of pacification of 1576 and that of 1577 were declared, each, to be
ucettuy nostre edit perpetuel et irrevocable." Texts in Memoires de Nevers,
i. 117, 291.
100 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Cn. II.
of Alencjon, who now assumed the title of Duke of Anjou, was
effectually weaned from the Huguenot party. He had sided
with the Protestants only from motives of self-inter-
Alenpon won •«••#»
from the Hu- est. As to any real affection for them or for their
ETUGIlCfts
doctrine, those who knew him well asserted that they
had heard him say frequently that " in his heart he hated the
Protestants as he hated the devil." 1 Moreover, his sister, the
Queen of Navarre, a pretty keen judge of character, described
him to the life when she made the unamiable remark that " if
all treachery were to be banished from the face of the earth,
Alencon would be able to repeople it." 2 Now that the duke had
been gratified with an establishment rivalling in splendor that
of the king himself,3 he was at no pains to conceal his perfect
indifference to the fate of his late associates in arms. He not
only forbade the Huguenots of Provins and Troyes to hold
public services for the preaching of the Gospel, but used the
most opprobrious language respecting them. " That Protestant
canaille," he said, " is not worth the drowning." 4 " One needs
only to know the Huguenots to hate them. I have never known
any man of worth among them except Francois de la Noue." 5
Not only had the king's younger brother been detached from
the party of the " malcontents," but the German reiters in the
service of the Protestants had been induced to leave the interior
of the country. Thus the capital was freed from the danger-
ous proximity of the turbulent and unruly followers of John
1 " Je scjay pour luy avoir ouy dire plusieurs fois, qu'il les liait comme le
diable dans le coeur." The words are those of the King of Navarre to Sully.
Memoires de Sully, c. xv. (i. 102).
2 Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. 412: "Que si toute l'inndelite estoit bannie de la
terre, son f rere la pourroit repeupler. "
3 See "Estat des gages des seigneurs, gentilshommes, et autres officiers de la
maison de Monseigneur Fils de France, Frere unique du Roy " This docu-
ment, signed by the duke at Bourges, August 5, 1576, and occupying twenty-
three folio pages of the Memoires de Nevers, i. 577-599, is of interest in more
points than one. It disposed of the sum (immense for the time) of 263,710
livres in annual salaries, apportioned among about 1,600 persons. The duke
had the plentiful supply of fifteen almoners and seven chaplains, but only a
single preacher. The chamberlains numbered 108, and the gentlemen of the
bedchamber, 148.
4 Mem. de Claude Haton, ii. 859. 6 Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. 233.
1576. THE HOLY LEAGUE. 101
Casimir ; and if, according to the statement of a resident diplo-
matist, the Germans, while waiting on the borders for the first
instalment of the promised payment, daily inflicted damage to
the extent of twenty thousand crowns upon their unwilling
hosts,1 there was at least this consolation, that the court was
undisturbed by their violence in its continual round of pleasure.
Whatever Henry's ulterior designs might be, he was not yet
ready for a renewal of the war with the Huguenots, and he
was therefore resolved that no one should by ill-timed zeal pre-
cipitate the outbreak of the conflict. The lavish concessions of
the edict of pacification fostered the rapid institution of the
Roman Catholic associations of which I shall soon have occa-
sion to speak. But the rumors of these events that reached
the king's ears, instead of producing gratification, greatly dis-
quieted him. It was reported that the Guises were secretly
instigating the people of Burgundy and Champagne, as well as
the inhabitants of the strongly papal provinces of Normandy
Henry and and Picardy, to refuse a recognition of the right of
d£naantneiat worship accorded to the Protestants.2 Neither Cath-
the Guises. arjne de> Medici nor her son attempted to conceal
their irritation. To Henry of Guise and his brother the Duke
of Mayenne they gave on one occasion such open marks of
displeasure as to attract the notice of the entire court. On the
next day, indeed, a reconciliation was effected through the
instrumentality of the Cardinal of Este ; but the king insisted
that the Guises should solemnly subscribe certain articles pledg-
ing their faith that they would enter into no league with any
persons to contravene the terms of the peace. It is almost
1 " E ogni giorno fanno danno per circa venti rnila scudi." Saracini to the
Grand Duke, July, 1576, Negotiations avec la Toscane, iv. 75, 76. See, also,
Languet's letter of August 16, in which he observes : " Ita tandem net ut istis
militum direptionibus Gallia non solum ad egestatem, sed etiam ad vastitatem
redigatur.'' Epistolse secretae, i. 215. John Casimir's reiters were said to
bring with them from France four thousand wagons laden with the spoil of
the miserable peasants. The animals at their command proving too few to
draw the booty, the German captains compelled their chaplains to dismount
and put into the service the horses they rode on. Languet, letter of Septem-
ber 8, ibid., i. 223.
2 See Dale's letter of May 23, 1576, State Paper Office.
102 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. II.
needless to say that the Lorraine princes displayed extreme
repugnance to the assumption of this obligation, protesting that
the death of their father and their own wounds received in the
king's service were sufficient evidence of the devotion of the
House of Guise to the interests of the French crown.1 A few
weeks later (on the thirty-first of August) Henry took vigorous
measures to put an end to the formation of Roman Catholic
associations in Brittany. The letter of instructions which he
wrote to the Duke of Montpensier, governor of the
Eoyal instruc- .. -i -i -i t
tionstoMont- province, leaves no room to doubt that even so late as
the end of summer, the king was heartily opposed to
the fanatical counsels which he afterward thought it advisable
to adopt. He ordered the duke to undertake the justification
of the course taken by the crown as a course dictated by neces-
sity, and dwelt much upon the labor and trouble cheerfully
undertaken by his mother in order to put an end to a war
that must, if continued, entail the ruin of the kingdom. More
than this, he warned the three orders of Brittany that who-
ever, without the express permission or command of the sov-
ereign, should venture to form a league with any other per-
sons, whomsoever, would render himself liable to the charge
of treason. He declared his own great displeasure at the
formation of the leagues in question, and ordered his mis-
1 The incident is referred to both, by Lestoile, under date of August 2, 1576
( i. 75), and by Sar acini, in his letter to the Grand Duke of August 5 (Nego-
ciations avec la Toscane, iv. 77, 78). This seems to be the same matter to
which Dale refers. Learning that Guise was holding an animated discussion,
lasting nearly two hours, in the king's outer chamber with a gentleman from
Picardy, the queen mother, after repeatedly sending " to see whether they were
through," at length lost patience, and, coming out, boldly charged the duke
that "he would never leave to trouble the peace of the realm,'' and called
him into the royal cabinet where the dispute began afresh. The accusation
was precisely that by which Chancellor l'Hospital had aroused Cardinal Lor-
raine's anger at Moulinsten years before (Rise of the Huguenots, ii. 186). The
duke was very "malapert " with Catharine. He declared "that he had never
done anything but for the king's service,'' and that if he and his friends
were to forsake Henry, as others had done, his majesty " should have no man
with him. '' As this was understood to be a thrust at Catharine's youngest son,
she was naturally very angry. Dale to the Secretaries, July 28, 1576, State
Paper Office.
157G. THE HOLY LEAGUE. 103
guided subjects, with all the power and authority God had
conferred upon him, instantly to abandon these "sinister"
associations, whatever oath they might have taken, since no
oath could be of force in opposition to the oath that bound
them to their king and sovereign lord. By such impotent
remonstrances did Henry oppose, or pretend to oppose, the
progress of that portentous movement before which, when
once it should have developed its full strength, his own author-
ity was destined to meet a disgraceful fall.1
The earliest symptoms of resistance to the royal commands
were shown on the northern borders. The edict accorded to
the Prince of Conde the government of Picardy, with
sisTSdict Peronne as his residence. Religious zeal and private
feud conspired to nullify the concession. The gov-
ernor of Peronne was Jacques d'Humieres, the head of the
most illustrious noble house of Picardy, a determined enemy of
Protestantism. He was, moreover, a personal foe of the Mont-
morencies ; for M. de Thore had successfully asserted in the
courts of law his claim to a great part of the property of his
deceased wife, an heiress of the family of Humieres. The
governor found no difficulty in enlisting in his support many
gentlemen of the neighborhood. Soon a league was formed
the object of which was ostensibly the prevention of the spread
of Protestant influence in Picardy. One hundred and fifty
persons, writes a contemporary Italian diplomatist, took part.
Among them were dependants of the dukes of Guise and
Aumale. They took pains to inform the king that they and
the whole nobility of the region believed themselves to be
doing his majesty a most grateful service in preventing a place
of such importance from falling into the hands of his enemies,
his majesty's commands to the contrary notwithstanding.2
Xot a little obscurity invests the origin of the formidable
association which, under the name of the League, was, during
1 " Instruction baillee par le Roy a Monsieur le due de Montpensier, gouver-
neur de Bretagne, pour s'opposer aux ligues et associations qui se faisoient
contre l'Estat." Memoires de Nevers, i. 110-114.
2 Alamanni to the Grand Duke, June 11, 1576, Negotiations avec la Toscane,
iv. 72.
104 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. IL
the next quarter of a century, to measure its strength against
that of the king, and to shake the very foundations of the
The origin of throne. The combination of extreme men among the
the League. Roman Catholics for the protection of the supposed
interests of their faith was not a new tiling. Nothing was more
natural than concerted action for such an end. When Jacques
Lefevre, in the very dawn of the Reformation, descried with
prophetic eye the rapid progress of the purer doctrines, and
gave expression to his expectation that " the inventions set up
by the hand of man would speedily be cast down," the monk
who heard him replied, without one moment's hesitation, with
the threat of a " crusade " to be preached by himself and by his
brother ecclesiastics. He did not even forget to add the doom
of the monarch who might dare to espouse the side of heresy.1
Accordingly, with the first reluctant concession of a limited
toleration to Protestantism — with the first edict of the crown
that seemed to admit that Protestantism had the barest right
to live — came symptoms of the active principle that wrould per-
mit no terms to be made with dissent from the established
church, or with dissenters. Submission or death, was the only
choice offered by the clergy to " those of the new religion."
The Roman pontiff never tired of reiterating the necessity of
enforcing this alternative, both in his letters to the kings of
France and in his communications with such other persons as
might be supposed to have an influence in shaping the policy
of the government. Monks and parish priests repeated the
cruel lessons to the people from ten thousand pulpits, from the
steps of ten thousand altars, and doubtless dropped hints, not
obscure, of possible co-operation between the more zealous of
their followers. How early the idea of a union of the " better
Catholics " for the defence of their imperilled faith took definite
form, and became a practical reality, is uncertain. It could not,
however, have been long after the publication of the edict of
Amboise (1563). The provisions of that edict, far short as they
came of the privileges granted by the January edict of the
previous year, savored, in the opinion of the ecclesiastics and
1 See the Rise of the Huguenots, i. 76.
1576. THE HOLY LEAGUE. 105
their faction, as truly, if not as strongly, of impious connivance
with the crime of heresy. Hence the " Fraternities of the Holy
Ghost," that made their appearance in Burgundy, within a year
or two after the conclusion of the first peace, having it for their
avowed object to wage perpetual war against the Huguenots.1
Hence, too, " the Christian and Royal League," of Champagne,
a few years later, for the maintenance of the true Catholic and
Roman Church of God — an association which, like its predeces-
sors, aroused the jealousy and incurred the condemnation of the
monarch. 2
In its germ, therefore, the League had a domestic origin. It
sprang from the suggestions of the French clergy. There
seems to be no necessity for seeking its source outside of the
kingdom. Yet the fact cannot be overlooked that the name
and authority of the king of Spain begin very early to be as-
sociated with the patronage and growth of the institution.
Philip the Second was so much in the mouth of Jean Begat, the
councillor in the Parliament of Dijon to whom the Burgundian
confraternities owed their institution, as to excite general as-
tonishment and indignation that he was permitted to make
such insolent reference to a king dangerous to France from the
very proximity of his dominions. And certainly Philip and
his minister, Cardinal Granvelle, were not slow to perceive the
immense advantage that might accrue from the impression now
beginning to gain ground, that his Catholic majesty was the
natural defender of the orthodox faith, a faith to which Charles
the Ninth and his mother were represented as lukewarm. It
was not without significance that the cardinal was said to have
caused the intolerant address of Jean Begat, in which he tried
to prove the existence of two religions in France an insult to
God and dangerous to public tranquillity, to be printed and
published at Antwerp.3
With the massacre of Saint Bartholomew's day, and the sup-
1 "Ineuntur . . . sodalitates quas Sancti Spiritus confraternitates vo-
cant, de sempiterno adversus Huguenotos bello indicendo." Jean de Serres
(edit, of 1571), iii. 53.
•*' See the Rise of the Huguenots, ii. 179, 180, 246.
3 Jean de Serres. ubi supra, and De Thou, iii. 502, who is here, as in many
other places, greatly indebted to this excellent author.
106 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. U.
posed annihilation of the Huguenots throughout France, the
Roman Catholic associations fell into neglect and were aban-
doned. There seemed to be no foe against whom to defend
the faith. But the fourth, and especially the fifth, religious
Revival of war roughly awakened the zealots from their dream
afte^thf16 °f fancied security. And now a pacification had
massacre. come conceding everything to the detested heretics —
a peace which could artfully be represented as even more fav-
orable to the Huguenots than to the followers of the king. For
were not the most humiliating distinctions made between the
two parties ? Was not provision made for the prompt payment
of the reiters of the Prince of Conde, while the king's reiters
bade fair to wait long for their wages ? Were not the Hugue-
not peasantry declared exempt of all impositions levied during
the war, while the Roman Catholics were compelled to pay up
all arrears even so far back as four years ? " l
To the facility with which associations were henceforth
formed Henry the Third had unconsciously contributed greatly,
by the favor he had in the past shown to the religious frater-
nities. The fantastic superstition of the Penitents,
ties of Peni- clad in white, blue, or black, furnished the pretext
utetothere- for meetings having quite another object than self-
humiliation. Under the skilful guidance of ghostly
advisers, the farce became sober earnest, and, in the end, the
lash that had been so lightly laid upon the king's shoulders,
became a very scourge, drawing forth from the miserable mon-
arch real sighs and tears. The zealots, whom the devotional
meetings of the fraternity permitted to assemble without excit-
ing suspicion, soon passed from lamentations over the sins and
misery of the age to a free discussion of political measures and
a censure of the government. From this to a regular organiza-
tion, for purposes of active warfare in the interest of shrewd
leaders, the step was short and easy.2
1 " Et qui plus est, quand ce vient au traite de paix, ceux qui ont suivy leur
party, sont declarez exempts de toutes impositions faites durant la guerre, et
les nostres sont contraints de payer les arrerages jusqu'a quatre annees."
Letter of Montluc, Bishop of Valence, remonstrating against a renewal of the
war, Memoires de Nevers, i. 472. 2 Davila, 221.
1576. THE HOLY LEAGUE. 107
" The Prelates, Lords, Gentlemen, Captains, and Soldiers in-
habiting the cities and flat country of Picardy " — so they styled
themselves — set forth a manifesto and an oath. In the former
they justified their action by alleging that their ene-
Manifestoof . J -i _ tf . . . . . * ° _°. . _
the League mies had " hitherto had no other end in view than to
establish errors and heresies in this kingdom, from
all time very Christian and Catholic, to annihilate the ancient
religion, to exterminate those who make inviolable profession
of it, to undermine gradually the power and authority of the
king, to change his state in everything and everywhere, and to
introduce another and novel form of government." After these
general grounds for their "common accord and holy union,"
the writers proceeded to state its particular occasion to be the
information, obtained from some of the gentlemen and soldiers
of Conde's suite, of that prince's intention, so soon as the city
of Peronne should be entrusted to his hands, to make it the
Protestant capital, with prospective results of ruin, not only to
the province of Picardy, but to Paris itself. Against such dis-
aster they expressed the hope that they might receive the help
of all the princes, prelates, and noblemen of the realm, in view
of the fact that the " rebels " had plotted the death of their
majesties and of the Duke of Anjou, the annihilation of the
holy faith, and the ruin of the French people. A holy and
Christian union and perfect intelligence and co-operation be-
tween all the good, faithful, and loyal subjects of the king, was
declared to be the true and only means reserved by God for
the restoration of religion and of the realm. The document
contained other provisions for securing the efficiency and ex-
tension of the league ; but these need not detain us.
The oath accompanying the manifesto became the form
which, with slight modifications, was adopted by every simi-
oathofthe lar association throughout France. Three objects
League. were set forth as the great ends contemplated : To re-
establish the Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church ; to pre-
serve Henry, by the grace of God, third of the name, and his
successors, very Christian kings, in the state, splendor, author-
ity, service, duty, and obedience due to him by his subjects, as
contained in the articles that should be presented to him at the
108 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. II.
states ; and to restore to the provinces of the realm their an-
cient rights and liberties such as they were in the time of Clo-
vis, the first Christian king. To this and to promises of faith-
ful and unswerving obedience to the constituted head of the
League every member gave in his adhesion by calling on the
name of God his Creator, by laying his hand upon the Gospel,
and by invoking the pains of excommunication and everlasting
damnation in case of disobedience.1
Such were the beginnings of the new association that was
within a few months to spread over a great part of France, and
for which its friends prepared the way by assurances boldly
given that although the king was compelled to disavow and
condemn it, he secretly wished the project good success.
Meanwhile the Prince of Conde in vain demanded the ful-
filment of the stipulations of the treaty made in his favor.
cond6and Obtaining, however, the promise of the towns of
Navarre. Saint Jean d'Angely and Cognac, in Poitou, in lieu
of unattainable Peronne, he secured possession of them by a
prompt and sudden movement, to the surprise and possibly to
the regret of those who had desired merely to quiet his impor-
tunity.2 Henry of ^Navarre, equally cautious with his cousin
not to trust his person to the doubtful faith of his late enemies,
preferred La Rochelle to the allurements of the royal court.
But the independent and pardonably suspicious character of
the inhabitants again manifested itself. They neither would
admit him with his Roman Catholic suite (for they recognized
caution of among his followers some who had played a bloody
La Rocheiie. part jn ^he parisian matins),3 nor would they allow
him to sit on a dais, which they maintained to be the preroga-
tive of the sovereign alone. But when the Roman Catholics
had been left outside of the walls, when Henry and his sister
1 The manifesto of the League of Peronne is given by Agrippa dAubigne,
ii. 223-228. The oath may be found ibidem, ii. 228-230 ; in the Recueil des
choses memorables, 579-581 ; in Davila, 222, 223 ; and, with some errors of
transcription, in Loutchitzky, Documents inedits pour servir a l'histoire de la
Reforme et de la Ligue, 39-42.
2 Davila, etc.
3 ': Gens qui avoient joue du cousteau a la S. Barthelemi."
1573. THE HOLY LEAGUE. 109
Catharine had made all due public recognition of their fault in
attending the papal mass, under compulsion, and had shown
much sadness of countenance and shed tears, we are told that
even the unimpressionable Rochellese received the culprit with
something approaching their former good-will.1
Xone the less, however, did La Rochelle, a few months later,
take alarm when Conde made himself master of the neighbor-
ing port of Brouage. A serious division of sentiment arose in
the city, and the prince, who had been invited to enter the
Huguenot capital in the same quiet manner as the King of
Navarre, was soon after requested to defer his coming until a
more propitious time. When at last he was again requested to
visit La Rochelle, he came (on the fourth of December) only
to accuse the mayor and his party of a treacherous scheme to
betray the city to the king upon a guarantee that its municipal
privileges should be formally acknowledged and its anomalous
claim of a virtual independence receive the express sanction of
his majesty. It would seem probable that the prince and the
sturdy champions of La Rochelle were equally in the wrong,
and that the treason of the mayor was as much a creation of
the imagination as were the alleged ambitious designs of
Conde. At any rate, it was fortunate that the rapid approach
of more real dangers proved sufficient to dissipate suspicions on
both sides that may have been groundless, and to unite the
Rochellese and the Bourbons in a common struggle for the
defence of their faith.2
1 Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. 219 ; Memoires de Sully, chap. vii. Letters of
Henry of Navarre to the "maire, echevins et pairs de La Rochelle,'' Niort,
June 16, and Surgeres, June 26, 1576, in Dussieux, Lettres intimes de Henri
IV. (Paris, 1876), 39, 41. 42, and in Arcere, Histoire de La Rochelle, ii. 18.
In the second communication, he assures the Rochellese that he desires no
solemn entry as governor and royal lieutenant-general, and does not aim at
establishing any one else as governor, but wishes to come in simply with his
household attendants, according to the list that he has handed in, and bring-
ing with him no suspected persons.
8 The view of the quarrel taken by De Thou, v. 326-8, and by Agrippa
d'Aubigne, ii. 231, 232, is very favorable to the prince. See also Languet's
letter of February 3, 1577, Epistolae secretae, i. 277. Arcere gives, ii. 22-29,
from La Popeliniere, a representation more creditable to the citizens.
110 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. II.
An incident that occurred in Eouen about this time revealed
very clearly the spirit animating the clergy and no inconsider-
able part of the Roman Catholics of France. At the conclusion
of the peace, the Parliament of Normandy, having received ex-
CardinalBourplicit orders from the court to abstain from remon-
hu uenotshe strances? nad entered the edict upon its registers and
of Rouen. }ia(j solemnly sworn its observance. This was on the
twenty-second of May. " Nothing," dryly observes the his-
torian of the parliament, " was more frequent at the time than
oaths." At heart all the judges were beside themselves with
indignation at the very thought of harboring Protestant
worship inside of the walls of a city that prided itself upon its
orthodoxy. However, old Cardinal Bourbon, Archbishop of
Eouen, in response to an appeal addressed to him to use all his
influence with the king for the purpose of inducing his Majesty
to remove the hated " preche," sent comforting messages to
his flock. " After I have accompanied his majesty on his
contemplated visit to the sea-ports of Normandy, I shall come
to Rouen and spend some time there, expelling the heretics
and taking all necessary steps." ' A few days later, the prelate
repeated these assurances, and promised the canons, when they
came to meet him at the abbey of Jumieges, that he would
soon be at his archiepiscopal see and try every means to put an
end to the preaching which had been introduced into the city.2 A
fortnight passed and the pledge was redeemed. One July day
the Huguenots were peaceably assembled in the place of
worship assigned to them in accordance with the recent treaty,
when the news reached them that a pompous procession was
approaching. It was the cardinal archbishop, accompanied by
Claude de Sainctes, Bishop of Evreux, and an ample train of
canons and other ecclesiastical dignitaries, and preceded by the
great cross of the cathedral. It was not strange that the
Huguenot minister thought it advisable to consult his own
safety in prompt flight. As for the laity, having no time to
1 " Pour en expulser les hereticques et faire ce qui sera necessaire." Reg.
capit. ecclesise Rothom., June 26, 1576, apud Floquet, Histoire du parlement
de Normandie, iii. 164.
'2 Reg. capit. ecclesiae Rothom., July 11, 1576, ibid., iii. 165.
1576. THE HOLY LEAGUE. HI
withdraw, they waited in some trepidation to see what the
result would be. Happily it fared better with them than it had
fared, fourteen years before, with the Huguenot worshippers of
Vassy. Cardinal Bourbon was not famous as a preacher, but
on this occasion he took the pulpit and delivered a long sermon
not much to the taste of his unwilling hearers. It cannot be
said that the discourse contained anything novel, but its state-
ments were strange enough in such a place. The speaker
mingled invitations with threats. He assured the Protestants
that he reached forth his arms to receive them into his em-
brace. He ridiculed the idea that the truth had not been
known, and that there had been no church, for fifteen hundred
years and over, nor, indeed, until the reformers made their
appearance, some sixty years since. If we may credit the
doctor of theology to whom we are indebted for the preserva-
tion of Cardinal Bourbon's first and greatest oratorical effort,
the results were so striking that they might have turned a head
less well balanced. That very day the cathedral was thronged
by a pious crowd, which, as counted by a knight of the Holy
Sepulchre, numbered about twenty-one thousand persons. The
church, we are told, seemed to be the city and only home of all
— so empty were the streets. It was a kind of new creation
for the city of Rouen, and it sealed the fate of the Huguenot
preaching in the Norman capital. Forty of the Protestant
worshippers of the morning congregation were heard to declare
that they had done forever with the Reformed worship.1
Such was the story of what the cardinal was accustomed to
call his " inspiration " — an act which the Huguenots denounced
as a flagrant outrage and an insolent defiance of the royal au-
thority, an act which the cardinal's admirers applauded as a
justifiable assertion of his duty as a shepherd toward his erring
flock.2 As for the king, when informed of the prelate's exploit,
1 " La saincte et tres chrestienne resolution de Monseigneur l'illustrissime et
reverendissime Cardinal de Bourbon, pour maintenir la religion catholique et
l'eglise romaine. Par T. J. B. (Berson) Parisien, docteur en theologie et
frere mineur." Paris, 1586. Archives curieuses, xi. 63-87. See, also,
Lestoile, ii. 73 ; Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. 230.
2 Claude Haton tells us that the cardinal, when forbidding the Protestants
112 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. II.
he did not pause in his right royal pastime of frolicking with
his dogs. One feature of the incident, however, struck him as
sufficiently singular to merit a jest. When informed howT the
cardinal had succeeded in scattering the Huguenots of Rouen by
means of his cross, Henry quietly observed : " I wish that it
were as easy to put to flight the rest of the Huguenots, even
if the basin of holy water and all had to be brought into
requisition." '
This incident was a straw that indicated the drift of things.
That an archbishop should thus dare to violate decency and
brave the indignation of a little knot of Protestant worshippers,
Threatening in an intensely Eoman Catholic city, by an unseemly
indications, interruption of a solemn religious service, was not in
itself a very singular circumstance. That his impudent and
lawless act should remain unpunished, despite the complaints of
those whom he had insulted and their partisans, was a more
significant fact full of menace to the Huguenots. But Cardinal
Bourbon's exploit did not stand alone. Other disquieting in-
telligence came from various quarters. It was esteemed good
ground for suspicion that the king had sent Gondy, Bishop of
Paris, to the papal court, and, through his instrumentality, had
secured from the pontiff a bull authorizing a considerable aliena-
tion of church property. The concession, it wras thought,
looked to a speedy renewal of war.2 The claims of the late
ally of the Huguenots, Duke John Casimir, appeared to receive
very little consideration, when once he had, by the promise of
the payment of a part of what was owed him, been induced to
remove his hungry reiters to the borders of the land.3 More
ominous infractions of the edict were the insults to which the
from assembling again for worship, asserted "that the right appertained to
him, and not to the king, to preach or authorize preaching in his diocese."
Memoires, ii. 861.
1 " A la charge qu'on y deust porter le benoistier et tout." Lestoile, i. 73.
2 None the less did the bull excite the anger of the clergy and call forth an
unusual amount of denunciation from the pulpits of Paris. The alienation
permitted the sale of property producing an annual income of 50,000 crowns.
Lestoile, under date of August 13, 1576, i. 75.
3 Saracini to the Grand Duke, July, 1576, Negociations avec la Toscane, iv.
75, 76 ; De Thou, v. 322-4.
1576. THE HOLY LEAGUE. 113
Protestants of Paris were exposed as they went to or returned
from Noisy-le-sec, the place which had been grudgingly accorded
them for their religious services. On two successive Sundays,
the twenty-third and thirtieth of September, the Huguenot
worshippers, as they neared the city or entered its streets, were
greeted with a shower of stones. Swords were drawn, and
some persons were killed and many wounded.1 From other
places where the edict permitted the Protestants to meet for
worship their ministers were driven away. The " chambre
mi-partie " was not established in most of the parliaments ; in
several of these courts of law the edict of pacification itself had
not been recognized and published, and decisions contrary to its
spirit and letter had been made.2 As time advanced it became
more and more clear that the states general, for the convocation
of which the Huguenots had been so urgent, were to be employed
as an instrument in their destruction. The representatives of
the entire nation, it was distinctly announced by the enemies of
toleration, would have the power to release the king from the
engagements into which he had entered. That the coming
assembly should contain a vast preponderance of those who
favored a repeal of the royal edict, was the evident aim of the
Guises and of all who sympathized with them. The marriage
of the Duke of Aumale to the sister of the Marquis of Elbeuf
furnished the occasion for a meeting of the different members
of the powerful Lorraine family at Joinville ; but it was matter
of public notoriety that the gathering had more significance
than its festive character imported, and that shrewd men there
1 Lestoile, i. 78 ; Claude Haton, ii. 867. Noisy-le-sec was about two leagues
distant from the walls of Paris, in an easterly direction ; it is scarcely half
that distance from the present walls, and gives its name to a neighboring out-
work, one of the cordon of forts by which the capital is encircled. See, also,
the letters of Dr. Dale, of October 2, 1576, and of Dr. Dale and Sir Amias
Paulet (who came to succeed Dale as English ambassador at the French court),
October 13, 1576, which show the gravity of the attack and the supineness of
the Roman Catholic autborities. State Paper Office.
2 See the summary as set forth by Casimir's envoy, Doctor Weyer, De Thou,
v. 322-324, and Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. 222. Among the places from which
Protestant ministers were driven away, Lyons, Gien, Rouen, Metz, and Saint
L6 were particularly mentioned.
Vol. I.— 8
114 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. II
discussed the means of collecting money and massing forces in
view of the assembly of Blois.1
Meantime, in Poitou and other provinces similar associations
to the League of Peronne were industriously formed. In Paris
Extension of ^se^ the agents endeavored to shelter themselves
the League. under the pretended favor of the king, and main-
tained that Christopher De Thou, the first president of parlia-
ment, was cognizant of Henry's secret intentions. But De
Thou, if we may believe his son's representations, firmly and,
for the time, successfully opposed the institution of the League
in the capital.2 Elsewhere the true and loyal servants of the
king were less active or less able to cope with the nefarious
scheme that seemed so suddenly to have sprung into existence.
For to the energy of the Guises the far-reaching influence of a
new and vigorous religious society had allied itself. The Jesuit
fathers, if not the authors of the League, as some asserted,
are credited with the doubtful honor of having been its chief
promoters and preachers.3 Where their own numbers were
not sufficient to enable them to act directly, the Franciscan
monks became their instruments in moving the people.
It was under such circumstances that the royal summons was
issued (on the sixth of August) for the convocation of the states
general at Blois, on the fifteenth of November following.
While the Huguenots were industriously exerting themselves to
restore their churches overthrown by war, while it was even
asserted by men worthy of confidence that more than five hun-
dred churches had been re-established, especially in Dauphiny
and Languedoc, since the conclusion of peace, and that the num-
ber might be greatly increased but for the lack of ministers of
the gospel 4— the enemies of Protestantism were leaving no stone
1 Saracini to the Grand Duke, September 22, 1576, Negotiations avec la
Toscane, iv. 82.
2 De Thou, v. 316, 317.
3 Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. 223, 230.
4 Languet, letters of August 16 and 26, 1576, Epistolae secretse, ii. 215, 218.
The veteran diplomatist, although at this time writing from Ratisbon, kept him-
self admirably well informed respecting France. In fact, so much did he have
to do with his countrymen, and especially the French ambassador, that he in-
curred the displeasure of some persons at the imperial court He took pains
1576. THE HOLY LEAGUE. 115
unturned to frustrate the reasonable hopes of the reformers.
Protestant worship had not yet been instituted in the larger
and more powerful cities of the realm. The plea for delay was
that only by delay could dangerous tumults be avoided. The
Protestants expected that the coming states would remedy the
entire difficulty.1 The papal party, on the contrary, were re-
solved that, so far from being admitted into the
A Roman • • ti i i i -i
Catholic re- cities, Protestantism should not have a place anywhere
within France. The intentions of the Guises became
more and more evident. New articles of association between
the Roman Catholics were concocted, and printed at court so
secretly that a copy could hardly be secured by any one not be-
longing to the circle most interested in the proscriptive work.
The very violence of the seditious pamphlets and broadsheets
made the envoy Saracini doubt whether they were in reality
the production of Guisard emissaries, and did not rather, as
seemed more likely, emanate from the facile pen of unscrupu-
lous Huguenots or scarcely less dangerous Roman Catholics of
the faction of the " Politiques," being intended to generate sus-
picion and alarm in the ranks of the followers of the King of
Navarre.2 At least they pointed unmistakably to war, and
tended to render the convocation of the states general a futile
expedient, should indeed the states be convoked at all.
If the Huguenots were suspicious of treachery where none
was really plotted, their opponents could scarcely deny that few
The suspi- men nad ever had so good reason as they for enter-
HuguenotT taining distrust. Calm men of affairs might weigh
aroused. j.jie motiVes of the king with moderation, and balanc-
ing Henry's known impecunious state against his hatred of
Protestantism, might conclude that the preponderance of prob-
liowever, to justify his course, first by alleging the necessity of gaining accu-
rate information for his master, the Elector of Saxony, and, secondly, by
acknowledging that he still retained such affection for his native land as to be
eager to learn the events daily occurring there, and especially in a time of
such mutation and uncertain hope of peace. Ibid., i. 228.
1 Languet, ubi supra.
2 " Per generare sospetto nella parte del re di Navara e di altri di quella
fazione." Saracini to the Grand Duke, October 10 and November 5, 1576,
Ntgociations avec la Toscane, iv. 83, 85, 86.
116 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. II
ability was in favor of the sincere purpose of the monarch to
maintain the edict he had lately sworn to preserve inviolate.
They might urge that no clearer proof could be found of the
straits to which Henry was reduced than the fact that, when four
months had passed since the restoration of peace, his German
mercenaries still remained unpaid and could not therefore be
disbanded ; although their wages were running up at the rate
of half a million francs a month, not to speak of the immense
loss inflicted upon the country by their daily exactions. They
might consequently scout the popular interpretation of the con-
tinued presence of the reiters as an evidence of the king's in-
tention to overwhelm the Huguenots in due time.1 But the
King of Navarre, the Prince of Conde, and Marshal Damville,
having had very large experience of Medicean arts, and being
tolerably well instructed as to the necessity of caution, took
quite another view of the situation, and, as the time approached
for the meeting at Blois, sent a gentleman to wait upon the king
and protest against the validity of the states general, in view
of the retention of the German reiters.2 And they very clearly
announced their determination to stand upon their defence
should any one attempt to deprive them and their allies of the
rights and privileges tardily conceded to them in the late edict
of pacification.3
Meanwhile, how was the fortunate youth occupied to whom,
according to the law of primogeniture, the supreme power be-
longed ; the last monarch of Yalois race who, not content with
one crown, still claimed, as his chosen device showed, the
crown of Poland, not to speak of another crown
nobie pur- which, his admirers said, awaited him in heaven ?
What were the lofty pursuits of Henry, by the grace
of God third of the name, on whose faithful observance of his
oath or perjured violation of his edict the political and spiritual
destinies of millions of anxious subjects seemed to depend ?
The sprightly diary of a well-informed contemporary informs
1 Languet, letter of September 28, Epistolse secretse, i. 232, 233.
2 Saracini, letter of October 30, Negociations avec la Toscane, iv. 84.
3 Recueil des clioses meinorables, 583, 584.
1576. THE HOLY LEAGUE. 117
us with considerable detail. Had the pleasure-loving king ap-
plied himself to the search of the best methods for earning the
contempt of all classes of the people, he could scarcely have dis-
covered any course more appropriate than that which he
adopted. One day he returns from Normandy to Paris, with
the queen his wife, bringing a great quantity of apes, parrots,
and little dogs, bought at Dieppe. A few weeks pass, and
Henry is seen devoutly engaged in the effort to gain the ad-
vantages of the jubilee proclaimed by the pope. Attended by
only two or three persons, he walks through the streets of his
capital barefooted, holding a rosary of large beads in his hands,
and mumbling the accustomed prayers. The people, wTho have
recently had some experience of his devices for relieving a
chronic depletion of purse, interpret this unkingly devotion as a
new plan, suggested by the queen mother, to extract money
from the pockets of the Parisians ; but the Parisians only close
their pockets the more resolutely, and write pasquinades in place
of very loyal addresses. When not in the streets, Henry is in
the congenial company of his favorites, to whom now the
name of "mignons" begins to be opprobriously applied — men,
if they deserve the name of men, as hateful to the outside
world for their arrogance and for their effeminacy, as they were
dear to his majesty for the fertility of their imagination in in-
venting new kinds of diversions — nien for whom amusement
has become the staple occupation of life — men that wear their
hair, redolent of perfumes, and curled with consummate art,
rising above their little velvet caps much like that of common
women of doubtful reputation — men that encircle their necks
with stiff- starched ruffs of linen a half-foot in length, above
which their heads look for all the world like the head of Saint
John the Baptist on a charger.1 As for Henry himself, he
does not show himself unworthy of his chosen associates.
When the Protestants came to complain of the outrage to which
their brethren in the faith, returning from worship, have been
subjected at the very gates of Paris, they find the king riding
on horseback, dressed as an Amazon, and learn that he is every
1 Lestoile, i. 74.
118 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. II
day planning new dances and banquets, as if his realm were
the most peaceful kingdom in the world.1
A portrait of Henry sent by an English ambassador to his
royal mistress, about this same time, has been preserved. " The
king is of good stature," he writes, " and has an indifferently
good presence. The hair of his head is black and something
long, but turned and rolled up, as I think, with some
HePn°ryoaf v°a- hot iron like a very roll round about his head, and
from the roll to the crown is very smooth. His cap
was black, with only one jewel, and so little that it covered lit-
tle more than the crown of his head, and all the rest of his
garments were also black." It may be remarked that the
patriotic Englishman had evidently no intention to paint any
member of the French court in too glowing colors. " There
were besides," he gallantly wrote the virgin queen, " other
ladies, young and old, fair and foul, to the number of nine or
ten, but this I do assure your majesty of my faith that there is
more beauty in your majesty's little finger than there is in any
one lady that there was, or in them all." '
A year or two ago it was the Huguenot soldiers alone who
from the walls of defiant Livron taunted Henry with his par-
ticipation in the massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Day. Now
. Roman Catholic pens were busy deriding the un-
figainst the manly king and his childish or womanish occupations.
So Pasquin wrote his titles : " Henry, by the grace of
his mother useless King of France and of Poland imaginary,
Doorkeeper of the Louvre, Warden of Saint Germain l'Auxer-
rois, Buffoon of the Churches of Paris, Son-in-law of Colas,
Starcher of his wife's collars, and Curler of her hair, Haber-
dasher of the Palace, . . . Superior of the Four Orders of
Mendicant Friars, Conscript Father of the White Flagellants,
and Protector of the Capuchins." 3
1 Lestoile, i. 78.
2 Sir John Smith to Queen Elizabeth, St. Die, December 16, 1576, State
Paper Office.
3 Journal du regne de Henry III. p. 19. "Colas" is, of course, the nick-
name of Henry's father-in-law, Nicholas de Vaudemont. A different reading
makes Henry " incert roi de France."
1576. THE STATES GENERAL OF BLOIS. 119
Meanwhile the elections were in progress in every bailiwick
and senecbaussee, and the three orders were busy with the
Elections for preparation of the statement of their particular griev-
tener5tof ances. The time for the meeting of the states gen-
Biois. erai was approaching, but long before it arrived the
Huguenots discovered that the measure about which they had
been so strenuous was likely to prove an occasion of oppression,
if not of ruin. A representative body formed out of the most
intelligent and upright men of the nation might initiate reforms
of inestimable importance to the French people ; but what
could be expected from the delegates of such constituencies as
most of the districts into which France was subdivided ? Had
Conde and his associates mistaken their strength, and imagined
that the Protestants could command a numerical majority in
any considerable portion of the country ? Be this as it may,
they soon awoke to the unpleasant truth that their enemies
were fully resolved to make good use of the opportunity.
Often in the local elections the Huguenots were practically ex-
cluded from a participation in the choice of deputies, by the se-
lection of a time or place that precluded all voters but such as
were Roman Catholics from making their appearance. If he
presumed to come to the polls held in the parish church, and in
connection with the service of the mass, the Huguenot gentle-
man or artisan might pay dearly for' his temerity.1 Sometimes
the Protestant candidate if elected was arbitrarily set aside sim-
ply because of his religion.*' In most cases, however, there was
no need either of intimidation or of exclusion ; the Roman
Catholics, as at Provins, outnumbered the Protestant gentry in
the ratio of ten to one. What use under such circumstances of
much debate ? The first and chief article in the documents
drawn up to be sent to the states general was, of course, the
article of religion. On this, indeed, there was, if we may be-
lieve Claude Haton, perfect agreement up to a certain point :
1 Agrippa dAubigne. ii. 235. " Les convocations particulieres n'ont este
convoquees qu'anx Messes et paroisses des Catholiques, et partant les Reffor-
mez privez de leurs voix aux elections, lesquelles leur ont este a haute voix
deffendues contre la liberte."
2 E.g., in the territory of Vendome and at Etampes. Ibid., ubi supra.
120 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. IL
every speaker was quite willing that there should henceforth be
but one religion tolerated in France — provided only that the
religion tolerated be that which the speaker professed.1 In the
end the Romish party was sure to carry the day and demand the
exclusion of every religion but the " Catholic, Apostolic, and
Roman," and the Protestants, at best, were allowed to append
to the official document an article favoring the toleration of
Protestantism, to which they subscribed their own names.2
Early in December the states general, originally summoned
for the middle of the preceding month, convened in the ancient
city of Blois. It was notorious that the Roman Catholic party
had secured an overwhelming majority of the deputies. This
information, and the fact of which it was a clear indication, that
the large concessions to the Protestants made by the
in the royai edict of pacification had awakened a powerful and
unexpected Roman Catholic reaction, apparently pro-
duced a radical change in the king's plans. Early in the spring
Henry had declared that he would have peace, even at the price
of half his kingdom. In midsummer he had written energetically
to denounce the formation of Roman Catholic associations in
Brittany as closely akin to treason. About the same time he
had insisted that the Guises should pledge themselves by oath
to the maintenance of the peace. Now the same monarch be-
came an advocate of the proscription of the Reformed faith, and
was ready to repeal his own " perpetual and irrevocable edict,"
and engage in a course of action that could end only in open war !
This rapid and complete revolution has perplexed many stu-
dents of the period under consideration ; it ought not, however,
how to be ac- ^° surPrise any that have familiarized themselves with
counted for. ^he characters of the king and his mother. The at-
tempt to discover a well-defined and consistent plan, steadily
pursued by Catharine de' Medici or by her son the reigning
1 " Sur lequel poinct chascun s'accordoit, pourveu que ce fust celle que chas-
cun tenoit." Claude Haton, ii. 865.
2 Claude Haton, ii. 862-66, gives an interesting account of the angry disputes
(which came near having a "bloody termination) at the meetings of the noblesse
of the western part of Champagne held in the Gray Friars at Provins, Sep-
tember 17th and October 8th and 9th.
157G. THE STATES GENERAL OF BLOIS. 121
prince, will always prove abortive. Consistency of policy was
the one element in which they were conspicuously deficient.
For principle, political or moral, they cared nothing. Whether
they had any real religious convictions was a question which
contemporaries, even their most intimate associates, answered
differently. It was currently reported that the mother was an
atheist ; many deemed the son, despite his fantastic devotions,
to be little better. Both, it is true, had a desperate hatred of
Protestantism ; not, it would seem, because of its abstract tenets,
but because Protestantism was the religion of free and untram-
melled thought, the ally of liberty, the enemy of despotism.
Because, also, Protestantism was the adversary of the papacy,
which, in every concordat with civil powers, knew how to make
its material support valuable. Both Catharine and Henry knew
well enough that, while the loyalty of the Reformed was unim-
peachable, their system of doctrine as well as of ecclesiastical
government comported better with a monarchy under which
the people had rights that were recognized, or even with a repub-
lican system like that of the cantons of Switzerland, than with
an absolute and tyrannical regime. They knew equally well that
the scheme of morality professed and advocated by the reformers
was a severe censure upon the lax manners practised by the
court with their full approval. But even Protestantism, al-
though cordially detested, was not pursued with consistent en-
mity ; for Protestantism might on occasion become serviceable.
While, however, the queen and her son had no well-ordered
political or moral plan, according to which their actions were
shaped, there was, nevertheless, one point that was never lost
sight of. Not for a moment did they forget their own per-
sonal advantage. To reach this haven they were willing to tack
as often as the wind shifted, with little regard for the opinions
of the world, with no solicitude for truth or honor. The pur-
suit of self-gratification, uninterruptedly and relentlessly main-
tained, constituted the only unity of their lives, and this fact
explains much that otherwise would prove inexplicable. If, af-
ter heading for a while in the direction of toleration, Henry the
Third was seen abruptly to veer toward proscription and inevi-
table war, the secret of his apparently contradictory manoeuvres
122 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. IL
is to be found in the circumstance that in both cases he was only
beating in the direction of a self-indulgence in comparison with
which both toleration and proscription were in reality matters
of supreme indifference to him.
It is of some interest and importance, however, to ascertain,
if possible, any event that determined or confirmed the king's
sudden change of attitude to the Huguenots, on the eve of the
assembly of the states of Blois. One such event was perhaps
found in the publication by the Protestants of a very startling
document revealing alleged designs of the Guises upon the
crown of France itself.1
One Nicholas David — so the story ran — a counsellor in the
Parisian Parliament, but a man of as little reputation for abil-
ity as for probity, having thrown himself into the party of the
League from motives of revenge, had accompanied the Bishop
of Paris in his recent mission to Rome. On his return, David
fell sick and died in the city of Lyons. In a trunk, opened
after his death, was found the paper which the Huguenots took
pains to publish to the world, under the title of " Extract of a
secret council held at Pome shortly after the arrival of the
Bishop of Paris." It contained a summary of the views and
purposes of the Guisard party.
The shameful peace lately entered into, says the writer,
demonstrates that, although the race of Hugh Capet has suc-
ceeded to the temporal administration of the king-
of Nicholas dom of Charlemagne, it has not inherited the apos-
tolic blessing conferred by the pope. On the contrary,
Capet's rash usurpation of the crown has brought upon him
and all his descendants a perpetual malediction, rendering him
and his successors disloyal and disobedient to the Holy Church.
To insure the ruin of that church, they have introduced the
damnable error which the French style the "Liberty of the
Gallican Church," which is nothing else than the refuge of
1 It is probable, though not certain, that the memoire of David reached the
king's eyes before the opening of the states general. The Protestant preface
to the translation was dated, as mentioned below, November 15, and since the
document was brief, this was likely also to be the date of publication. If so. it
is quite likely that a copy was in Henry's hands within a week from that time.
1576. THE STATES GENERAL OF BLOIS. 123
the Waldenses, the Albigenses, the Poor Men of Lyons, the
Lutherans, and at present the Calvinists. No wonder that
the victories of the kings who for the last sixteen years have
battled in defence of the faith have been fruitless. There will
never be success so long as the crown remains in this line.
God has by this last peace prepared the way for the restora-
tion of the crown to the true successors of Charlemagne, against
whom, inasmuch as they were despoiled of their rights by force
and violence, no prescription holds. The race of the Capets is
clearly seen to be given over to a reprobate mind. Whereas
some of its kings have been smitten with folly, and have been
men stupid and of no account, the rest have been rejected of
God and men, because of their heresy, and proscribed and cast
forth from the holy communion of the Church. On the con-
trary, the scions of Charlemagne are green and flourishing, lov-
ing virtue, full of vigor in body and intellect, qualified to exe-
cute high and praiseworthy enterprises. Wars have served
to exalt them in station, honor, and pre-eminence, but peace
will reinstate them in their ancient inheritance, the kingdom,
with the consent and by the choice of the whole people. Un-
questionably, therefore, the favorable terms accorded to the
heretics by the edict of pacification must be viewed as proceed-
ing from God and not from men ; in order that the honor of
having overthrown heresy may remain to the only true God
and to the benediction of His holy vicar.
To this end the inhabitants of all Catholic towns ought,
through salutary preaching, to be stirred up to prevent, by force
of arms, the introduction of the public services of the abomin-
able sect of the Huguenots. Meantime the king should be
urged to give himself no concern, but to commit all authority
to the Duke of Guise, who may thus become the sole and ab-
solute head of the leagues formed with the connivance of the
king himself. By Guise's orders the parish priests, both in
town and in country, will then draw up a complete roll of all
men capable of bearing arms, and will issue to each of their
male parishioners, at the confessional, directions respecting the
arms with which they are to provide themselves, for service
under captains to be assigned by Guise himself.
124 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. II.
The states general are the pit into which the heretics will
fall. To this meeting those deputies must be sent who are
most trusted by his holiness because of the oath of fidelity they
have given to him and because of their obligations to the Catholic
King. The queen mother will induce her misguided son Anjou to
attend the states, in company with his brother the reigning
monarch ; and the King of Navarre and the Prince of Conde
are to be enticed to the same place and threatened with being
declared rebels in case they do not come. To disarm their
suspicions, Guise will for the time absent himself. As the
time shall approach, the troops of the parishes must be reviewed
and kept in readiness for a prompt march under command of
their chosen captains.
When once the states shall have met, the members, from the
highest to the lowest, shall bind themselves by a solemn oath
to observe everything agreed upon by the body, and the pope
will be called upon to give to its conclusions the full force of a
Pragmatic Sanction, and make them as binding as the Con*
cordats between the Holy See and the French kingdom. Next,
the states shall declare all heretical princes of the blood to have
forfeited their rights to the succession, and shall renew their
oath of fidelity to the successor of Saint Peter and to the Cath-
olic faith, as laid down in the decrees of the Council of Trent.
The edicts of toleration shall be repealed, and the edicts order-
ing the extirpation of heresy shall be restored to full force,
the king being expressly relieved of all his promises made to
the heretics. In order to overthrow all opposition encountered
in the prosecution of the good work from any rebellious
princes, the king shall be petitioned by the states to appoint, as
lieutenant-general, a competent and experienced prince, strong
in body and in mind, able to undergo the toil and to take
counsel of himself, a man who has never had part, communica-
tion, or alliance with heretics — in other words, to select the
Duke of Guise, who alone possesses all the qualities required in
a great captain worthy of such a trust.
Having thus seized the power, the states shall set forth to the
king's brother the enormity of his offence in abandoning the
king and joining the heretics, in declaring himself their head,
1570. THE STATES GENERAL OF BLOIS. 125
in raising an army, and finally in constraining his majesty not
only to give him an excessive and unreasonable appanage, but also
to permit and authorize the practice of that abominable impiety
of heresy. This crime being the highest kind of treason,
divine and human, and not in the competence of the king to
remit and pardon, the states shall demand the appointment of
judges to take cognizance thereof, after the very holy and pious
example of the Catholic King in the case of his only son and
of himself.1 The demand shall be enforced by the simultane-
ous appearance of a portion of the parish militia and other
troops, by whom the arrest of the Duke of Anjou and of all his
associates shall be effected. At the same time the remainder
of the parish troops shall take the field and attack the heretics,
putting them to the sword and selling their goods to defray the
expenses of the war. The Duke of Guise, finding himself now
at the head of a powerful army, shall enter the provinces held
by the rebels, whom he will easily subdue, laying waste the
country, and slaying all that offer resistance, without losing his
time in sieges like that of La Rochelle.
Having gained so glorious and complete a victory, and
thereby acquired the unbounded affection and favor of all the
cities of the kingdom and of the noblesse, the Duke of Guise
will provide for the exemplary punishment of the king's
brother and his accomplices, and thereafter conclude the whole
matter, with the consent of his holiness, by imprisoning the
king and the queen in a monastery, as Pepin, his ancestor,
did Childeric. Having thus reunited the temporal heritage
of the crown to the apostolic benediction which he already
possesses, for the advantage of all the future descendants of
Charlemagne, he will cause the Holy See to be fully recognized
by the states of the kingdom, without restriction or modifica-
tion, by abolishing the privileges and liberties of the Gallican
Church. This he will beforehand pledge himself on oath to do.2
1 "A l'exemple tressaint et pientissime du Roy Catholique en l'endroit
de son propre fils unique, et de soy-mesme." The allusion is, of course, to
Philip II. and Don Carlos.
2 This document constitutes the first of the long series of important contem-
porary tracts reproduced in the invaluable collection gathered and saved from
126 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. IL
I have not hesitated to insert this important document,
somewhat abridged, but essentially in the words of the original
paper. For important the document is, whether it be regarded
as genuine or fabricated. The view given of the designs enter-
was the Pa- Gained by the Guises and their adherents may not be
per genuine? authentic, but, in the light of the history of France
during the next thirteen years, it must be accepted as a truth-
ful representation. If a Huguenot and not a Guisard hand
was employed in drawing it up, the Huguenot writer betrays
an admirable acquaintance with designs whose fulfilment was
delayed, but not wholly defeated, by premature publicity.
Under such circumstances, it is not easy, nor is it altogether
essential, to ascertain the authorship. Yet there is much that
seems to render it probable that the story of its discovery
among Nicholas David's effects is no myth. The document
first saw the light as a pamphlet, provided with a preface written
by a Protestant, and dated at Lyons, on the fifteenth of No-
vember. A few days later it found its way to the Louvre, and
was read by Henry with more incredulity than fear. It was
believed to be a forgery, and this opinion the historian Davila
adhered to many years after.1 All authorities, indeed, agree
that the king took alarm only when similar warnings of his
peril reached him, a little later, from the French ambassador at
Madrid. But the fact which Davila did not know — a fact
which De Thou had from the lips of M. de St. Goard himself
— is significant : the paper sent by the patriotic ambassador
which produced such commotion at the French court was a copy
of the same document as that found in David's trunk. It had
been forwarded to Spain for the information of Philip the
Second.2
The great reaction of public sentiment in condemnation of
oblivion by Simon Goulart, and published under the title of Memoires de la
Ligue sous Henri III. et Henri IV. , Rois de France. The preface to the first
of the six octavo volumes is dated 1587.
1 Davila, 224, 225. See Recueil des choses memorables, 581.
2 De Thou, v. 341. Mr. Smedley, History of the Reformed Religion in
France, ii. 152, has already insisted on this circumstance which he considers
as establishing the authenticity of the memoire of David.
1576. THE STATES GENERAL OF BLOIS. 127
the edict of toleration, the wonderful success of the projectors of
the Roman Catholic leagues, the disquieting discovery of thegrow-
Henry deter- ing popularity of the Guises as champions of doctrinal
TOmeheadtf orthodoxy and of the claims of the church — all con-
the League. gpjre(] to determine Henry's course. He felt himself
too weak to attempt to crush the ambitious duke and his allies by
a direct assault. It was more prudent, and more congenial to
his tastes, to disappoint their expectations by an indirect, but not
less effectual movement. He had entered upon the peace because
weary of war, and had made lavish concessions to the Hugue-
nots whom he cordially detested. The peace, which he never
intended honorably to respect, and the unwilling concessions his
enemies had wrung from him, having bred a new and formidable
party in the League, he did not hesitate to renounce the one and
retract the other, in the hope of undoing the mischief he had
wrought. He determined to become himself the head of the
League, to constitute himself the chief whom some of the mani-
festoes of the associations obscurely designated, to write " Henry
of Yalois " in the space purposely left blank for the insertion,
in due time, of the name of " Henry of Lorraine."
On Sunday evening, the second day of December, that ardent
Roman Catholic nobleman, Louis de Gonzagues, Duke of Severs,
reached Blois, expecting that the formal opening of the states
general would take place on the morrow. He found that a
"little council," as it was called, had that day been
The king's ... *
" little coun- held in the royal apartments. There were present,
besides the king and the queens, his wife and mother,
the Duke of Anjou, Cardinal Bourbon, the Duke of Montpensier,
the chancellor, and one or two others. The object was to con-
sider " what steps the king ought to take to secure that there
should be but one religion in his kingdom." Severs informs
us that the council was held expressly on that day in order that
his majesty might begin the holy work before the arrival at
court of the delegates of any province, through fear lest it should
be said that they had incited him to it. The result of the de-
liberations was a decision that when the orders, each in its
assembly, should proffer a request for the exclusive establish-
ment of a single religion, the king should signify his acceptance
128 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. IL
of the petition.1 It would seem to have been upon this same
day — no day of rest for Henry — that he sent out letters to the
Hen 's let- royal governors throughout France, enclosing certain
berS2dDecem" articles respecting the associations which, said he, "I
have ordered to be instituted in all the provinces of
my realm." The governors were commanded to have copies of
these articles promptly made, and to use great diligence that
these copies should be signed and forwarded to the king, together
with the lists of members, within a month or six weeks at the
farthest, and before the close of the sessions of the states.2 It
was clear that Henry had little thought of maintaining his
tolerant edict for the benefit of the Protestants.
The formal opening of the states general took place in a spa-
cious hall of the castle, with all the pomp craved by an age de-
The states lighting in startling pageants. The assemblage itself
Tened De- outnumbered former gatherings of the kind ; for since
cember 6th. tne fam0us States of Tours, not far from a century
before, several new senechaussees had been created, each en-
titled to representation in all the three orders. Henry presided,
seated on a throne of violet velvet sprinkled with the typical
lilies wrought in gold. On his right sat Catharine de' Medici,
now a portly dame of fifty-seven years, considerably changed
from the proud princess who, on another December day, sixteen
years ago, brought before a similar convocation at Orleans the
boy-king Charles, in whose name she was to reign supreme.
Yet the Florentine Grand Duke's daughter was still in the
vigor of her womanhood, with eye keen and penetrating, with
unbroken resolution, with brow betraying no indications of
regret or remorse for the misdeeds of the past. Beyond her,
in another arm-chair, was puny Alencon, the mis-called Her-
cules, scarred not in war, but by disease, to whose insignificance
no change of name to Anjou, no extravagant appanage could
lend dignity, the impersonation of Medicean treachery without
1 "Journal de M. le due de Nevers, pendant les Estats tenus a, Blois, es
annees 1576 et 1577." Memoires de Nevers, i. 166.
2 Text of the letter, dated Blois, December 2, 1576, in Memoires de Claude
Haton, ii. Appendix, 1154.
1576. THE STATES GENERAL OF BLOIS. 129
the shrewdness that had made the fortune of the great mer-
chant house of Tuscany. Louise, the younger queen, occupied a
place upon her husband's left. On either side of the hall the
secular and ecclesiastical peers were arranged in order of dig-
nity, while immediately in front of the monarch, sat the chan-
cellor, the highest judicial officer of the crown.1
Henry opened the session by courteously raising his cap from
his head and bowing to the assembled deputies, and then pro-
ceeded to address them with a grace peculiarly his own.2 The
Henr •■ speech was a model of temperateness and conciliation,
speech. jje deplored the ruinous change that had come over
a kingdom once the most flourishing in Christendom, and de-
clared himself and his late brother absolved of all responsibil-
ity for disasters occurring during their childhood. He praised
the queen his mother for the incredible toils and labors she had
undergone to prevent those disasters, and asserted that to her,
after God, was due the preservation of the realm. " All true
lovers of France," said he, " are bound to give her immortal
praise for the vigilant care, the magnanimity and prudence with
which she held the helm, and piloted this kingdom through the
boisterous waves and fierce winds of faction and division that
assailed it on all sides." Coming next to speak of himself,
Henry dwelt much upon the pacific intentions of his accession,
and the intense sorrow it had caused him to see the misery en-
tailed upon his subjects by war. " Often," he piously exclaimed,
" have I been moved to pray to God that He would be pleased in
His mercy to deliver my people speedily from their misfortunes,
or, in this the flower of my age, to put an end to my reign and
to my life, that I might close both with the reputation becom-
ing a prince descended from a long line of magnanimous kings.
Much rather this, than that I should be suffered by heaven to
grow old, a witness of calamities which I could not remedy, or
1 Boullee, Histoire complete des Etats-G-eneraux et autres assemblies repre-
sentatives de France, i 279, etc.
2 " En la premiere seance d iceux, le Roy apres avoir leve le bonnet et salue
l'assemblee, comment avec une grace et action bien seante sa harangue sur
la commiseration des afflictions de son royaume." Recueil des choses memor-
ables, 584.
Vol. L— 9
130 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE Ch. IL
that the memory of my rule should be handed down to pos-
terity as the example of an unfortunate reign." Recognizing
a good peace to be the sole cure for prevailing evils, he conjured
his hearers, by their love and fealty, to assist him in removing
even the very roots of discord, and assured them that he knew
both the reasons for which he had been placed in so exalted a
position, and the solemn account he must one day render for
his conduct at the divine tribunal. " I have no other object in
view but the welfare of my subjects," said Henry. " For this
I shall labor night and day. To accomplish this I will use all
my intelligence, care, and toil, not sparing even my blood and
my life, if need be. Moreover, be assured that I promise you,
on the word of a king, that I shall cause to be kept and ob-
served inviolably all the regulations and ordinances that may
be made by me in this assembly, and that I shall neither give
any dispensation to the contrary, nor permit those regulations
and ordinances to be in any wise infringed." 1
Of the speech of the chancellor, whom, according to custom,
the king requested more fully to explain his intentions, little
need be said. The speaker was not the grave Michel de
Blague's ad- l'Hospital, the stately jurist whose calm and persua-
sive voice had so often been raised to still the discord-
ant waves of passion, the ardent patriot in whose breast even
the greatest reverses and old age itself never quenched the
spark of hope nor caused him to despair of the republic. L'Hos-
pital had been dead these three years and more. In his place
sat Rene de Birague, one of the brood of Italians that had come
in to hasten the destruction of France, a foreigner of whom no
friend ever had the effrontery to assert that he, like his immor-
tal predecessor, " had the lilies of France graven upon his
heart." One half of those present could not hear the harangue
which he uttered with cracked voice ; the other half were an-
noyed at his indiscriminate and blundering censures, or dis-
gusted that a chancellor of France should be obliged to apologize
1 Text of Henry's speech in Memoires de Nevers, and Agrippa dAubigne,
ii. 242-5 ; i. 440-3. Summaries in Recueil des choses memorables, 584 ; De
Thou, v. 334, 335 ; etc.
1576. THE STATES GENERAL OF BLOIS. 131
to the representatives of the nation for a want of familiarity
with the duties of his office.1
Henry had won golden opinions, in contrast with his chan-
cellor. However, it is always unsafe to accord much praise to
royal eloquence. In the present case it was well understood
that the fine phrases and highly edifying and patriotic senti-
ments, of which Henry was the mouthpiece, had been supplied
to him by the facile pen of Jean de Morvilliers, Bishop of Or-
leans.2 This circumstance may help to account for the tone of
exalted self-devotion of an address to the composition of which
Henry, in the midst of his "mignons" and dogs, might have
found it an irksome task to apply himself. It may also explain
the incongruity between Henry's ardent expressions of a desire
for a good and stable peace, and his letter, but four days old,
ordering associations to be formed in all the provinces, the
only result of which must be the overthrow of the edict of May,
and a new resort to arms.
If the king had counted upon the plausible words of his har-
angue to obliterate the memory of two years of financial and
Bow demands political misrule, and to inspire his subjects with con-
of the states. g(jence either in his integrity, or in his patriotism
and prudence, he had certainly made a gross miscalculation.
He had ostentatiously promised, on his kingly word, to main-
tain inviolate, and to cause to be respected, whatever ordinances
might be made by himself in the present assembly ; the depu-
ties, with a dawning consciousness of the rights of the people
as superior to the king, went a step farther. One of their very
first conclusions was to request his majesty to appoint a certain
number of judges, to whom the states would add delegates
1 "Ce qui etoit honteux dans un premier magistrat comme lui." De Thou,
v. 336. M. de Blanchefort, a deputy for the nobles of Nivernois, says: uPar-
lant de la Noblesse, il ne contenta pas tout le monde ; puis blasmant les me-
dians qui contreviennent aux ordonnances, il n'en fit aucune distinction . . .
De ma part je n'ouys pleinement ce discours pour en bien juger, attendu que
M. le chancellier estoit aucunement loin, et parce qu'il a la voix fort cassee."
Memoires de Nevers, i. 443, 444.
1 Lestoile, i. 80 ; Memoires de Nevers, ubi supra. De Thou (v. 334), is our
authority for the last statement.
132 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OP NAVARRE. Cii. IL
from each province of the kingdom. The joint commission
thus constituted was to be invested with absolute power to pass
upon all general or particular propositions made by the three
orders ; its decisions were to be executed as laws of the realm.1
The king's astonishment at this suggestion, offered to him by
the delegates with the tiers etat at their head, had not sub-
sided, when the Archbishop of Lyons, Pierre d'Espinac, pre-
siding officer of the clergy, presented to the assembly an un-
signed paper, found by him, he said, under the table at which
he was seated. This turned out to be a petition to the king,
requesting him to pledge himself to cause whatever resolutions
might be unanimously adopted by the three orders to be forth-
with recognized as of legal force, and binding himself, where
the orders disagreed, to make no decision without the advice
and consent of the queen mother, the princes of the blood, the
peers of the realm, and twelve deputies of the states. It must
be admitted that Henry answered with more calmness and dis-
cretion than might have been expected from him, a proposal
that would, by a single dash of the pen, have changed the con-
stitution of the kingdom, and effectually tied the hands of a
monarch who claimed to be absolute in the exercise of his au-
thority. However interesting and important in the civil history
of France, these and other questions of constitutional law that
came up in the States of Blois, must be dismissed, as irrelevant
to the special subject of the present work. Yet this must be
noticed in passing : the spirit of inquiry showed signs of hav-
ing passed from the domain of religion into that of government.
For half a century men had been questioning the authority of
the established church, and requiring its advocates to substan-
tiate its claims by an appeal to the Word of God as the ulti-
1 De Thou, v. 336. It is worthy of notice that, after all, the tiers etat, in
this as in other respects, showed itself more moderate than the other orders ;
for it urged, until overborne by them, that the thirty-six commissioners that
were to act with the royal council should have only a consultative voice. It
also demanded that, in all cases affecting a single order, the twelve commis-
sioners of that order should possess a single vote with weight equal to the vote
of the commissioners of the other two orders put together. See Boullee, i.
286, 287.
1576. THE STATES GENERAL OF BLOIS. 133
mate and only proper criterion. Within the last few years
daring thinkers had turned their attention to the foundations
of civil government, and had begun to demand the reasons for
the anomalies of its present constitution. The investigation au-
gured trouble in future for the despotic possessors of thrones,
inasmuch as those who pursued it were no longer exclusively
adherents of the reformatory school in theology. If Francois
Hotman, author of the treatise " Franco-Gallia," ' was a Hugue-
not, the famous Jean Bodin, the most learned expounder of the
spirit of the French monarchy in the States of Blois, the writer
whose great work on the " Republic " was soon to be the
subject of the praise of all men, was undoubtedly a Roman
Catholic.2
Meantime Henry did not suffer his new zeal to grow cold.
If any credit were to be gained by the advocacy of a proscript-
Henry's ac- iye policy, he was resolved not to lose the opportunity
to acquire it. His very rivals in public esteem took
alarm lest he should rob them of their sole chance of making a
strong party in the state; and Guise, who had purposely re-
mained away, hastened to Blois to look after his interests. The
king would not suffer the states, strongly imbued as they were
with the sentiments of the League, to express themselves as
they had purposed doing. Discovering that the Baron de Sen-
necey,3 whom the nobles had chosen to be the spokesman for
their order, had omitted from the draft of his formal address
to the crown any demand for the sole establishment of the
Roman Catholic religion, Henry was very indignant at this
exhibition of a natural fear lest war should inevitably be re-
newed. The nobleman must be gained over by friendship or
by fear. In the end, the form of words he was to use, when
1 See the Eise of the Huguenots, ii. 615.
2 Von Polenz arrives at this conclusion after a long and exhaustive examina-
tion. Geschichte des franzosischen Calvinismus, iii. 364-372. Bodin's own
command, in his will, that his body should be buried in the church of the
Cordeliers at Laon, is a very clear indication that the great jurist was no Prot-
estant. With good reason does Bayle, in his extended article on Bodin, style
him " one of the most learned men in France in the sixteenth century."
3 Otherwise written Senece and Sennes^ay.
134 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE Cn. II.
touching on the knotty question of religious toleration, was
•drawn up by Catharine de' Medici herself, and submitted for
iinal correction to Henry himself, before Sennecey was permit-
ted to speak.1 At about the same time the king was writing to
distant provinces, approving the articles of associations sub-
mitted to him, and granting to the confederates the dangerous
authority to levy money to carry them into execution.2
There are extremes of vacillation that to men of ordinary stead-
fastness of purpose appear nearly if not quite incredible. Can
The king's ^ ^e DeHeveci that, by the time the fourth week of
vacillation. ^\ie assembly of the states was well begun, Henry
was in the greatest perplexity as to what course it was best for
him to pursue ? Yet such, we are assured, on what appears to
be unimpeachable authority, was the case. The three orders
were ready for the declaration of " the one religion ; " it was
now the king who showed painful hesitation and real fear of
the renewal of hostilities. " He seems inclined now to one
side and now to the other," wrote the Florentine envoy in his
confidential despatches to his master, even so late as the twenty-
eighth day of December.3 Yet three more days passed, and
the same pen could write an account of very positive declara-
tions on the part of Henry and his mother. The king had at
last published in an open council his will to tolerate none but
the Catholic religion in his dominions, asserting that he had
Declaration of always been devotedly attached to the faith, but had
mothei^Dehis hitherto been prevented by certain good reasons from
cember 29th. testifying his affection. Now, however, in view of
the good intentions of his subjects, whose deeds, he promised
himself, would be conformable to their professions, he was
fully resolved, with the forces God had given him, to defend
the true Christian League. Catharine de' Medici followed with
1 The Duke of Nevers vouches for this singular circumstance in his diarj,
under the dates of December 12 and 14, 1576. Memoires, i. 167.
2 See the Articles of the League of Champagne and Brie, with Henry's in-
dorsement, dated Blois, December 11, 1576. Ibid., i. 117.
3 "Ed ora si mostra inclinato da una banda e ora dall' altra." Saracini to
the Grand Duke, Blois, December 28, 1576, Negociations avec la Toscane,
iv. 96.
ijt:. the states general of blois. 135
similar utterances and still stronger excuses for past action or
inaction, based upon the minority and the disunion of her sons.
Seeing that these impediments had been removed, she would
show herself most constant and obstinate in defending the
Catholic religion, and in permitting no exercise whatever of the
Huguenot worship.1 The words had been received with such
great delight that a league was formed which had already
secured the subscriptions of the delegates of five provinces.
Nay, the campaign against the heretics was at once mapped
out — the Duke of Anjou to command the vanguard, Henry in
person the " battle," or main body, Guise, Mayenne, Severs and
others, the rear. An irresistible force of ten thousand horse
and thirty thousand foot would pour into Poitou, and carry
discomfiture into the haunts of the Huguenots.2
It may have occurred to some who heard, as it occurs to
those who now read, the story of these proceedings, that the
word of a king who could, without a blush, explain to his
hearers that he had made his edict of pacification " solely that
he might have his brother again, and drive the reiters and other
foreigners from his kingdom," and fell back upon the superior
and binding force of his coronation oath to excuse all sub-
sequent perjury, was not likely to be of much account. It
really added little weight to his statement that he asseverated
that " this was his final resolution," and that " he wished no
advice on the subject," and with hypocritical cant expressed
himself as " hoping that God would grant him help." 3
Even now, however, the utter faithlessness of Henry, worthy
son of his Italian mother, was fully understood by few, if by
any, of those who thought they knew him best. If his royal
council did not believe implicitly his extravagant assurances
of piety, the majority of its members certainly had little sus-
picion that his policy was at present aimed solely at establish-
1 Saracini to the Grand Duke, December 31, 1576, ibid., iv. 98. See, also,
Journal de Nevers, under date of December 29, apud Memoires, i. 168, 169 ;
and Lestoile, i. 80, 81.
2 Saracini, ubi supra, iv. 99.
3 " Que c'estoit sa derniere resolution : qu'il ne vouloit sur ce aucun advis ;
qu'il esperoit que Dieu l'aideroit.'' Memoires de Nevers, ubi supra.
130 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. II
ing the royal authority at the expense both of the League and
the Huguenots, and that possibly he loved the Roman Catholic
association about as little as he did the " heretics" themselves.
The king, after declaring his purpose to tolerate no second
religion in the realm, requested each member of his council to
Henry asks Slve nnn a written opinion concerning the best method
opinionsfctof °^ carrying this purpose into effect, either by peace-
his council. able means or? if the worst should come to pass, by
war. The answers have come down to us.1 Whoever will sum-
mon the patience to plod through this mass of neglected doc-
uments, not deterred by the inelegance and barrenness of style
constituting their most striking characteristic, will find himself
in the end amply rewarded for his pains. In only one point do
all the opinions agree : violent Leaguer and friend of more
pacific devices unite in desiring that the end may be compassed
without a resort to arms, and suggest the propriety of first en-
deavoring to gain over Navarre, Conde, and Damville. If there
be any difference, the conversion of the Montmorency to loyalty
is regarded as the most important. In other respects the views
of the writers, and their treatment of the question, differ widely.
Louis, Cardinal of Guise, last survivor of Duke Claude's six
sons, abettor of the massacre of Vassy and author of the massa-
cre of Sens — amiable prelate whose convivial habits had earned
him the distinctive cognomen of " le cardinal des bouteilles " 2 —
illustrated his reputation for dense ignorance respecting matters
of church and state by making provision for the possibility of
any Protestants desiring, " through a divine inspiration," to
join the " Holy League." 3 Such persons ought to be welcomed
1 They occupy one hundred and ten folio pages of the Memoires de Nevers
(i. 179-288), under the heading, " Advis donnez au roy, par escrit, par son
commandement, par la reine sa mere, les princes et autres seigneurs et les
principaux de son conseil, s'il estoit expedient pour le bien de son estat, de
faire la guerre a. ceux de la religion pretendue reformee, ou de traitter avec
eux. Au mois de Janvier, 1577." The date of the answers that bear any
particular date is January 2.
2 See the Rise of the Huguenots, ii. 13, 46, 170.
s "Que si quelques uns de la nouvelle opinion, par une inspiration divine,
se veulent liguer, s'unir et associer a la sainte ligue, les associez les y rece-
vront," etc. Memoires de Nevers, i. 246.
1577. THE STATES GENERAL OF BLOIS. 137
to every privilege of the association — that of contributing to
its funds not being forgotten — on condition, of course, that they
indulge in no act of their religious worship, public or private.
Seeing that the Holy League was pretty well understood to
have been founded expressly for the destruction of Protestant-
ism, we must confess that the cardinal gave himself unnecessary
trouble in providing for an improbable contingency.
In the midst of the lavish praise accorded to the king's most
laudable plan of exterminating Protestantism, or at least that
external practice of its rites without which Protestantism could
not subsist, one or two things claim attention. Morvilliers and
Bellievre, two of the king's most experienced counsellors, did not
hide their candid belief in the quixotic character of
Morviiners an enterprise whose justice they felt themselves, under
the circumstances, precluded from discussing. Mor-
villiers dwelt much upon the proverbial fickleness of the French,
ever ready to undertake, but disinclined to persevere in difficult
labors. And coming to the money indispensably necessary for a
fresh war, he exclaimed : " As to the means of providing it, I
swear in good faith that I do not know them, although for ten
years I have concerned myself with such thoughts, and perhaps
as much as any man of my profession. I see the affairs in this
kingdom in such confusion, the whole people so impoverished,
that I know not what we can promise ourselves. Meantime, your
majesty can expect help only from your subjects. You can
hope for nothing from friends, from credit, or from the mer-
chants." ' Bellievre was even more outspoken in his disapproba-
tion of the mad venture upon which Henry seemed to be driven.
" Sire," said he, " when I consider the resoluteness of your
subjects, who, after having been beaten consecutively in two
great battles, like those of Jarnac and Moncontour, and having
lost the greater number of their military men, with their leader
himself, a prince of your blood, and the bravest combatants
ever in their ranks, nevertheless refused after such great pun-
ishment to abandon their obstinacy — when I consider, too, that
it was not in the power of the late king, your brother, to make
1 Memoires de Nevers, i. 265.
138 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. II
them consent to peace, save by granting them the exercise of their
religion, I tremble so often as I think of the resolution adopt-
ed by your majesty to interdict that exercise. Your majesty
knows that they showed a like stubbornness after the siege of
La Rochelle, and that having scarcely any forces or places left
them in the kingdom, they have not failed to continue in the
same pertinacity until the present hour. Taking all this into
view, Sire, I cannot easily persuade myself that they will change
opinion, for all your declarations, nor that words, or even arms,
will be potent enough to heal a disease so inveterate as that which
has possession of their minds." If the wTar must come, how-
ever, Bellievre was clear that its authors must be its supporters.
" It seems," said he, " that these gentlemen of the states general
who gave you the advice, and, as it were, compelled your majesty
by their very pressing requests to break this last edict of paci-
fication, are bound to guarantee in their own names the issue of
it, and to furnish you with everything necessary for the success-
ful prosecution of the war." '
The Duke of Anjou, now to all appearances fully reconciled
to his brother, was persuaded to write a reply to Henry's request
for counsel which not only breathed as much hostilitv
The Duke
of Anjou en- to the Huguenots as did any of the other papers, but
indulged in open contempt of the resources at their
command. He advised Henry to remonstrate courteously with
Navarre on his folly in undertaking to cope with a monarch
that had a hundred times as much money at command and
more than a hundred times the number of troops to draw upon.
He advised that Damville be plied with arguments based upon
loyalty and religion. " As to the Prince of Conde," said he,
" inasmuch as he has less means than the King of Navarre, and
is more obstinate, it seems to me that you ought to speak more
roughly and make him feel the rod with which he will be
beaten should he be so unfortunate as to oppose your will in
anything." 2 Dull-witted Anjou did not awake, until it was too
1 Memoires de Nevers, i. 285, 287.
2 Ibid., i. 235. "Luy faire sentir les verges dont il seroit fouette, s'il estoit
si miserable de contrarier en quelque chose a vos volontez."
1577. THE STATES GENERAL OF BLOIS. 139
late, to a realization of the mortifying truth that his treacher-
ous brother had had no other view in urging him to an expres-
sion of sentiments similar to his own for the time being, than
to destroy any lingering confidence which the Huguenots might
still have in the puny prince. Nor had Henry miscalculated.1
Two members of the council proved themselves shrewd enough
to avoid the trap laid for them. Greatly to the surprise, and
not a little to the chagrin, of Henry, the Duke of
Politic course , «• f rr tt i
of Guise and Guise, arch-enemy or the Huguenots, replied to the
Montpensier. ' . *7 . ° i j
royal summons in the briefest manner, and excused
himself from giving advice in so momentous an affair, on the
ground of his youth and inexperience. Since the king had
insisted on acquiring all credit with the Roman Catholics as
head of the League, Henry of Guise was resolved that Henry
of Valois should also have all the odium with the Huguenots.8
In fact, the only sentences in the whole note that could possi-
bly be construed as advice were a plea for justice to the heretics
in case they behaved themselves quietly. "It is true, Sire,"
said the duke, " that there is no one that does not say that, in
order not to create distrust among your subjects belonging to
the new religion, you ought to give them all the assurances they
shall ask or be able to imagine, as, indeed, you promise them
through the associations which it has pleased you to command
to be formed in your kingdom. Wherefore, Sire, it appears to
me that you ought not to fail in this matter in a single point ;
provided always that they remain quietly in their houses, with-
out contravening your will or intention in any respect." 3 The
young duke had never made a more politic stroke — not even
when, in the midst of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew's
1 "Mais ayant veu le changement du roy, il a pense que sa Majeste l'a fait
parler ainsi pour le mettre en mauvais menage avec les Huguenots, et il en a
este fasche. Aussi estoit-ce le seul dessein de S. M." Journal du due de
Nevers, ibid., i. 178.
2 The Duke of Nevers says in his diary (January 4) : "Le roy s'est estonne
des advis de Montpensier et de Guise, pour estre courts. Mais ils les ont ainsi
faits, de peur que le roy ne les monstrast aux Huguenots, comme M. de Guise
Fa dit a ma femme." Ibid., i. 169.
3 Memoires de Nevers, i. 247.
140 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. II.
Day, he ostentatiously rescued some Huguenots from the death
awaiting them in the bloody streets of Paris.1 The Duke of
Montpensier was equally prudent.
A fortnight passed, and the states, after despatching those
embassies to the Huguenot leaders to whose fortunes I shall
soon have occasion to refer, were admitted to the royal
the three or- presence, and addressed Henry through their chosen
ders before °
the king — spokesmen. The Archbishop of Lyons, in behalf of
the clergy, insisted much upon the religious question,
urging that no other faith be tolerated in France than the ances-
tral faith of the Romish Church. Baron de Sennecey, for the
nobles, followed much in the same strain, but urged that, when
all exercise of the Protestant religion should have been removed,
no inquisition be made into the tenets of the individual Hugue-
nots, but that these be left undisturbed in their consciences, each
being suffered to believe what he would, so long as no perni-
cious example were set to others. As for Versoris, deputed to
speak for the tiers etat, he had received strict instructions from
his order to insert the words " without war " in the plea for the
enforcement of religious uniformity. But the orator, noted
though he was for his eloquence, lost his self-possession, became
1 The Rise of the Huguenots, ii. 491, note. The writer of the pamphlet
"Response aux Declarations et Protestations de Messieurs de Guise, faictes
sous le nom de Monseigneur le Cardinal de Bourbon, pour justifier leur injuste
prise des armes,1' published in 1585, asserts that the Guises are moved in their
entire course not by religion but by ambition. In proof of this assertion, he
lays stress upon the incident referred to in the text. " Et de fait fut par
aucuns zelateurs Catholiques remarque qu'a la S. Barthelemy, apres avoir in-
duit le feu Roy Charles a se deffaire de ceux de la religion, ils se contenterent
de se depescher sous ceste ombre des ennemis particuliers de leur maison, et
venger leurs querelles propres, et firent les doux et les pitoyables, en tous les
lieux de leur authorite faisant profit en toutes sortes de la rigueur et severite
de ce prince, qui selon la vigueur de son esprit s'en scent tres bien apperce-
voir." Memoires de la Ligue, i. 92. It ought not to be forgotten, however,
that other instances of Henry of Guise's humanity can be alleged which need
not be interpreted as due to selfish motives. For example, at the capture of
La Charite, when the Duke of Anjou would have violated the terms of the
capitulation, Guise would not consent, and rescued the Huguenots. In Agrippa
d'Aubigne's words, "La parut le Due de Guise conservateur de la foi et du
droit des gens." Histoire universelle, ii. 282.
1577. THE STATES GENERAL OF BLOIS. 141
confused, and forgot — so he maintained — to introduce the im-
portant qualification of his demand.1
It was the seventeenth of January, 1577 — just fifteen years
from the day upon which Charles the Ninth signed the famous
Edict of January, the charter of the Protestant liberties. The
coincidence is startling, as indicative of the revulsion of the
popular feeling from that which found expression in the states
general of Orleans and Pontoise. The clergy, indeed, had
learned nothing, forgotten nothing. But a radical change had
come over the other orders of the state, since Rochefort and Ad-
miral Coligny presented petitions for the concession of churches
to the adherents of the purer faith, and the memorial (" cahier ")
of the third estate demanded the absolute repeal of all intolerant
legislation, the cessation of all persecution, and declared that
" the diversity of opinion entertained by the king's subjects pro-
ceeds from nothing else than the strong zeal and solicitude they
have for the salvation of their souls." 2 Thus much had civil
war accomplished. So completely had the disastrous and ap-
parently unavoidable resort to arms stifled the spirit of inquiry,
and sealed beyond question the religious condition of France.
Two days later the upper estates succeeded in bringing the
tiers etat to sanction the repeal of the edict of pacification.
But the maiority was small, since it comprised the
The Tiers ' *
etat consents representatives of only seven out of the twelve gov-
to the repeal r * • • js •
of the edict— ernments or France, and the remaining five were
January 19. . . . . . . . ,
loud in their protest against the proposed action.
Meantime, the Huguenots had not been idle. From the
moment that they had descried the unmistakable portents of
Huguenot approaching danger, their leaders had been making
preparations. ^oge preparations which previous experience of like
perils rendered to some extent natural to them. Towns were
garrisoned and fortifications repaired ; castles were manned and
1 Recueil des choses memorables, 587 ; Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. 246-251
(where Sennecey's speech is given at great length). Saracini, in his letter of
January 23, makes Versoris utter the qualifying clause which we know from
other sources that he omitted. Negociations avec la Toscane, iv. 104, 105.
2 See the Rise of the Huguenots, i. 492.
8 Namely : Burgundy, Brittany, Dauphiny, Lyonnais, and Guyenne. Re-
142 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. II
provisioned. The situation was tacitly accepted as all but open
war. In fact, the promptness of the measures adopted amazed
not only the king and the states, but even wary Catharine de'
Medici herself.1 Bent upon carrying out their determination
to have but one religion in France, yet reluctant to plunge at
once into a costly and sanguinary struggle so soon after the
return of much-desired peace, the states general resolved to
try again the paths of diplomacy. On what grounds, moral or
probable, they imagined that the King of Navarre, the Prince
of Conde, or even Marshal Damville could be induced to acqui-
esce in the proscription of the Protestant faith does not appear.
Certain, however, it is that the states gravely made a selection
of deputies, carefully drew up instructions for their guidance,
and sent them out on their whimsical mission.2
The three orders were represented, in the delegation to the King
of Navarre, by the Archbishop of Vienne, Chevalier Rubempre,
and Monsieur Mesnaigier . Loner and ably did they labor
Envoys sent , , ° ° J . J
by the states with the king, whom they round at Agen just returned
Henry of from the siege of the town of Marmande. They told
Navarre.
him of the regret the states experienced at his fail-
ure to come to Blois. They tried to persuade him that ancient
and modern history alike teach that a diversity of religion
is alone sufficient to unsettle a nation. " The states general,"
said they, " have, to their great sorrow, learned by experi-
ence that the toleration of the exercise of a religion contrary
to the true religion, which is no other than the Catholic,
Apostolic, and Roman Church, can but bring a perpetual war,
and the final ruin of both parties." The states therefore
begged the King of Navarre to acquiesce in the petition which
they had made to his most Christian Majesty to suffer no
other religion than the Roman Catholic throughout France.
cueil des choses memorables, 587, 588 ; De Thou, v. 343 ; Agrippa d'Aubigne,
ii. 251, 252. ' Lestoile, i. 80, 81.
2 The envoys were selected before the close of the old year. See Saracini
to the Grand Duke, December 28, 1576, Negociations avec la Toscane, iv. 96.
Their instructions were read January 2d, and adopted on the 4th of the same
month, and the envoys started for Gascony on the 6th. Memoires de Nevers,
i. 452 ; De Thou, v. 344.
1577. THE STATES GENERAL OF BLOIS. 143
That the recent edict of pacification could not be executed
was the point which the deputies next attempted to prove, by
reference to the disturbances alleged to have resulted from it
in various places, to the annoyances inflicted upon the " poor
Catholics " residing in the neighborhood of the cities pledged
to the Protestants, and to the disappointment connected with
the " chambre mi-partie." A more serious matter was broached
when the deputies came to defend the violation of the solemn
oath given by the monarch to maintain the edict of 1576 ; and
the ground was distinctly taken that the king cannot pledge his
word to the prejudice of his entire state and of the ancient
customs of the kingdom. Now, the profession of the Catholic
religion, they argued, is not merely an ancient custom ; it is the
chief and fundamental law of the realm, and the essential form
that gives to the kings of France the name and title of " Chris-
tian." The oath upon the crucifix taken by the king at his cor-
onation, and by all royal officers at their assumption of office, is
as unchangeable as the Salic law, being even more fundamental ;
and neither king nor officer can henceforth depart from it for any
reason, occasion, or pretext whatsoever. That oath cannot be
superseded by any edict, much less by such an edict as that now
in question, the very reading of which proves that it was ex-
torted by force and by the violence of the times. The deputies
assured the King of Navarre, however, that they were expressly
authorized to promise the adherents of the new opinion — " ceux
de la nouvelle opinion " — that they would not be molested. In
fact, the states— such was their " extreme desire to see a good
and immortal peace" in France — had not only commissioned
them to offer to take the necessary oath to maintain it, but to
state that they would petition the king to take a like oath and to
impose it upon all princes, lords, and gentlemen whom it might
concern. Nothing seems to have been said respecting any
means to be taken for rendering the new oath any more bind-
ing than the oath given to maintain the " perpetual and irrev-
ocable " edict which it was now proposed to repudiate.1
1 '? Instruction des gens des trois estats du royaume de France. . . .
baillee icelle instruction a Monsieur l'archevesque de Vienne, a Monsieur
144 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. IL
Henry of Navarre listened respectfully to the message from
Blois. He is even recorded to have shed tears as the eloquent
Archbishop of Yienne hinted at the disasters likely to befall
him, should he turn a deaf ear, as the archbishop
Navarre^ re- suggested that possibly the states general might con-
clude to declare all that should hereafter take arms
against the king or come to an understanding with foreigners
incapable of holding office or of succeeding to any dignities
and especially to the crown.1 But his written reply, although
perhaps more conciliatory than was required by the circum-
stances of the case, was a distinct declaration that Henry cast
in his lot with the Protestants. Although he praised the
states general for their zeal, Navarre frankly expressed his
fear that their request for the toleration of but one religion
would entail new disturbances more pregnant with disaster
than any previous struggle ; for now, the view having once
been formally sanctioned that the king is powerless to plight
his faith, no secure accommodation with the Huguenots could be
made. Henceforth the struggle must go on to the bitter end.
Besides, it is one thing to deprive men of what has been given
them and quite another not to have granted it to them at first.
If it cuts to the heart the Koman Catholics, who have always
enjoyed unmolested exercise of their religion, merely to see
the Protestants enjoy the right of worship, it will irritate the
Protestants far more to attempt to rob them of the right so
often and so long permitted. Moreover, be it remembered
that the oftener and the more vigorously it has been under-
taken to abolish the reformed faith in France, the greater has
been the decadence of the Catholic Church and its ecclesiastical
order. And, in fact, the experience of France has been but
the counterpart of that of Hungary, Bohemia, Germany, Scot-
Rubempre, Chevallier de l'Ordre du Roy, et a Monsieur Mesnaigier, General
des finances de Languedoc, envoyez vers le Roy de Navarre." Blois, January
4, 1577. Memoires de Nevers, i. 445-452.
1 " Que peut-estre ils concluront a declarer que tous les biens de ceux qui
prendront les arrnes contre le roy a l'advenir, ou qui auront intelligence avec
les estrangers, seront confisquez, et eux incapables de toutes successions, dig-
nitez et offices, et mesmement de la couronne.'' Ibid., i. 457.
1577. THE STATES GENERAL OF BLOIS. 145
land, and other countries. Everywhere Protestantism has baf-
fled the attempt to annihilate it. Even if this religion were an
error and a heresy —which it is not — it ought to be and can be
removed by no such political gathering as that of the states
general, but rather by an oecumenical council, free and lawfully
assembled, or by a national council, in which all sides will gain
a hearing. To the particular request addressed to him by the
states general that he should aid them in securing the exclusion
of every form of worship except the Romish, and consequently
that he should forsake the religion he now professes, Henry of
Navarre makes the following reply, significant in the light
of subsequent events : " I am accustomed to pray to God every
day, and I pray to Him now, in accordance with my
nificantas- belief, that He may be pleased to confirm and assure
me in the grace of holding it inviolable ; and that,
if it be bad, He may be pleased to enlighten my understanding,
to show me the good, and give me the will to follow and em-
brace it, and to live and die in it, and after expelling from my
spirit all errors, to grant me the strength and the means to help
in expelling it from this kingdom, and, if possible, from the
whole world." '
In striking contrast with Navarre's studied politeness and
conciliatory words was the determined attitude of the Prince of
1 ' • Et apres avoir chasse de son esprit tous les erreurs, luy donner force et
moynn pour 1' aider a la chasser de ce royaume, et de tout le monde, s'il est
possible." Response du royde Navarre a l'instruction des deputez, Memoires
de Nevers, i. 453-457. Hereupon Mr. Browning (History of the Huguenots,
ii. 68) aptly remarks: "This declaration is highly characteristic of the
epoch. He was at the time in arms for liberty of conscience, and yet declared
his readiness to become a persecutor if a change took place in his opinions.1'
— That the reader may fully understand the case, he ought to be put in pos-
session of two additional facts : 1st. That Henry of Navarre took pains, in the
course of his answer, to clear himself of all responsibility for the proscription
of the Roman Catholic religion in the principality of Beam by his mother,
Jeanne d'Albret. 2d. That, although the Protestant ministers disapproved
and erased from the draft of the answer the sentence in which the king al-
luded to a possible conversion to the Romish faith, Henry insisted upon re-
inserting the objectionable passage. Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. 259. This histo-
rian adds that the archb'shop made Navarre's submissive words even more
humble in his report than they were in the written reply.
Vol. I.— 10
14G THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE Ch. U.
Conde. The two cousins were of different natures. It must.
indeed, be remembered that, while Henry of Navarre was, as lie
never failed to remind the deputies of the states and
to recognize all others with whom he had dealings, the " third per-
sonage in the kingdom," ' the other Henry stood too
far removed to entertain any expectations of succeeding to the
crown of France. But history will not permit us to forget the
constancy of the prince and the moral weakness of the Navar-
rese king at the massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Day, when
not the possible attainment of a crown, but preservation of life,
was in question.2 On the present occasion, while Navarre
bandied compliments with the Archbishop of Yienne, Conde,
at Saint Jean d'Angely, absolutely refused to recognize the
Bishop of Autun and his companions coming in the name of
the states. The letter of which they were the bearers was re-
turned to them unopened. The prince declared to the envoys
that he would rather be buried in the depths of the earth than
yield consent to the pernicious projects of those who had al-
lowed themselves to be bribed by the sworn enemies of the
crown. He honored and loved the clergy, he would do every-
thing in his power to maintain the noblesse, and he pitied the
members of the third estate because of the ruin impending over
their heads ; for these pretended states general were going to
cut their throats. But he refused to acknowledge the convo-
cation at Blois as a body representing the three orders of
the kingdom.3 About the same time (on the twenty-third of
January) Conde put forth a printed protest, at La Rochelle,
conde's ro- agamst the action of the " suborned and corrupted
test- states that have been held in Blois." In this docu-
ment the attempted suppression of the reformed religion was
described as a breach of the public faith and of sacred oaths,
and attributed to the king's evil counsellors, pensioners of the
King of Spain — the same unpatriotic men that sought to pro-
1 " Ayant cet honneur d'estre la troisieme personne de France." Response du
roy de Navarre, Memoires de Nevers, i. 456. See Stahelin, Der Uebertritt
Konig Heinrichs des Vierten, 57.
2 Rise of the Huguenots, ii. 468, 469.
s Recueil des choses memorables, 589 ; De Thou, v. 352, 353.
1577. THE STATES GENERAL OF BLOIS. 147
long their tenure of power by plunging their native land in
discord and wretchedness, and by causing the monarch to reject
the proffer of the protectorate of Flanders and Artois, and de-
cline the gift of the seigniory of Genoa. Under these circum-
stances the prince announced his resumption of arms, "by
command and under the authority of the King of Navarre,
prince primate of France, protector of the Reformed Churches
and the associated Catholics, and royal lieutenant in Guyenne."
He swore not to lay down his arms until he had re-established
the kingdom in its full splendor and dignity, restored liberty to
the states and authority to the edicts, and delivered the poor
people from the insupportable tributes invented by the Italians.'
If Marshal Damville's reply to the message of the states was
less belligerent, his representations of the disastrous results
likely to follow the repeal of the edict of pacification were
equally strong. Both in his communication to the
Marshal i • i
Damviiie's re- states and m a document written, soon after, in an-
Btatesandto swer to an announcement from the king himself,2 the
the king.
marshal, while laying great stress on the piety of the
Montmorencies as descendants of " the first Christian baron,"
frankly set forth his conviction that recent events in his own
province of Languedoc had disproved the old fallacy that
diversity of religious faith necessarily entails enmity. " Since
the so happy peace granted by God and by his majesty — a
peace supposed by everyone to be perpetual, the hearts of
men, especially in this government, had rid themselves of the
veil of passion, and had become convinced that it is easy for
persons of two different religions to bear with each other in a
friendly fashion as true compatriots." 3 And this fact the mar-
1 " Les Protestations de M. le Prince de Conde, estant lors a la Rochelle,
apportes en ce lieu de Blois, le deuxieme de Fevrier.'' Memoires de Nevers,
i. 470, 471. Also in Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. 236-8.
! For a summary of the former see Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. 260, 261 ; for the
text of the latter, " Instruction du Mareschal de Dampville au Sieur Doignon,
chevalier de l'ordre du Roi, envoye vers ledit mareschal en febvrier, 1577."
J. Loutchitzky, Documents inedits pour servir a l'histoire de la Reforme et de
la Ligue (1875), 56-60.
3 " Avoient juge et conneu quil est aise de se compatir amiablement en
deux religions comme vrais compatriottes. " Loutchitzky, 57.
148 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. IL
shal established by a reference to the recent agreement entered
into by the provincial states of Languedoc, meeting at Beziers,
which had sworn, before Damville and Joyeuse, to live accord-
ing to the provisions of the royal edict of pacification — an
agreement all the more significant, because, of those that made
it, more than two hundred were of the old faith, and not six
were of the reformed religion.
Surely the idea of religious toleration had made good and
substantial progress when a marshal of France, a son of the
grim constable Anne de Montmorency, could feel it
Progress of . , .
religious toi- necessary to " discharge his conscience," as he affirmed,
both to the states general and to his king, by the ad-
vocacy of such views. But Damville went further. He plainly
told Henry the Third and the states that, though their desire
for one single religion in France was good, the method proposed
for the attainment of the end was bad. Ill- success in the past,
he urged, has taught us this. "It is to be believed that this
diversity of religion is a matter which God has to do with, and
that He has reserved the cure of it to Himself alone. We
must, therefore, resign everything to His providence and good-
ness, and heal this disease by the good and holy conduct of
churchmen, or by a good council, which is the true remedy for
religious maladies, without resorting to idle means and aggra-
vating it still further by violence." '
Meanwhile, the associations for the defence of the Roman
Catholic faith had been spreading with more rapidity, now that
the king had himself given them formal sanction and had em-
powered his own officers to engage in the work of obtaining
signatures to the roll of their members.2 Henry indeed seemed
1 " II a a croire que ceste diversite de relligion touche a Dieu et luy seul
s'est retenu le remede dicelle," etc. Loutchitzky, 58.
2 See the articles of several associations, e.g., of Moulins (Bourbonnois), dated
January 22, 1577 ; of Dijon (Burgundy) ; and of Troyes (Champagne) dated
March 22, 1577, in Loutchitzky, Documents inedits pour servir a l'histoire de
la Reforme et de la Ligue, 34, 35-37, 37-39. From the minutes of the coun-
cil of the city of Toulouse, from December 23, 1576, to March 20, 1577, the
gradual spread of the League by the confederation of other cities and districts
— Verdun, Quercy, etc. — may be traced. Ibid., 25-29.
1577. THE STATES GENERAL OF BLOIS. 149
to count upon the troops which the associations could set on foot
as an important element of his military forces, and his trusty
counsellors were carefully considering whether these men could
most advantageously be employed in the field or in defending
their own homes.1 Not everywhere, however, was it easy to
disarm the apprehensions of the citizens, grown pardonably sus-
o osition to pici°us through their past experience. In Paris, when
signing the ^e copies of the manifesto of the League were car-
League in r »
Paris, rje(j around from house to house to receive the signa-
tures of the burgesses, the best citizens either signed with re-
strictions or absolutely declined to have anything to do with the
paper, and denounced it as a new device of oppression and ex-
tortion. As for the authorities of the city itself, upon whom
Henry had called for a sum of money to pay five thousand foot
and two thousand horse to be employed in this sacred cause,
they positively refused to accede to his plan, denouncing it as
an absurdity to hope in so summary a way to do away with a re-
ligion that had outstood sixteen years of war, and they prophesied
that the League would prove a detriment rather than an advan-
tage to the royal cause.2 At Amiens the people re-
pelled by force a troop of Picard gentry and soldiers,
with M. d'Humieres at their head, who wished to compel them
to subscribe to the League. Afterwards Amiens sent deputies
to Henry, offering the king six thousand livres to be exempted
from signing the obnoxious compact ; and his majesty, who asked
nothing better than such refusals if he might obtain such offers,
readily consented.3 In the little town of Provins, whither the
And in Prov- king nad sent M. de Rosne, the three orders of the
ins- bailiwick deliberated maturely upon the proposition
submitted to them, and came to a very sensible conclusion. " The
League," said they, " is a novelty. We have never seen or
heard the like in France. Our deputies are yet at Blois, and
whether they have accepted or refused the League we know not.
1 The latter was the view of L'Aubespine, Bishop of Limoges. Memoires de
Nevers, i. 271.
2 Lestoile, under date of February 1st, ii. 83 ; Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. 253-56 :
Saracini to the grand duke, January 30, 1577, Negociations avec la Toscane,
iv. 107. 3 Lestoile, February 15th, i. 83.
150 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. IL
There is no need of our taking an oath to maintain the only
religion practised in this region, nor of binding the three orders
by their signatures to furnish the king with money which they
have never refused to give him. We cannot sign the League
without knowing what the other cities of France have done,
and especially Paris, the capital of the realm and the nursing
mother of kings." ' Great was the disgust of the royal envoy,
who had confidently expected to reap a rich harvest in the man-
agement of the funds to be raised by the poor inhabitants for
the support of the new " crusade." But for want of a better
way of venting his vexation, he confined himself, when next he
desired to enter Provins, to climbing deliberately over the in-
significant walls and making his way in, followed by his suite —
a derisive act that called down upon his unfortunate head much
impotent wrath.2
In point of fact the " Sacred League " was by no means in
a very sound or healthy state. With all the efforts put forth
Distress of in its behalf, the people, utterly exhausted by the
the people. wejght of their present burdens, refused to bend
their necks to the fresh yoke. What they longed for was
peace— peace at any price. Everywhere throughout France
despair seemed to have seized the laboring classes. In Poitou
and Guyenne it assumed a startling shape. As the nobleman
whom the king had sent to confer with Henry of Navarre was
passing through the region, the peasants flocked by hundreds
to the roadside. They threw themselves on their knees or
prostrated themselves in the dust before him. " If the king
intends to continue the war," they cried, "we very humbly
beg him to be pleased to cut our throats at once and put us out
of our misery."3 The harmony of the deputies at Blois was
1 Claude Haton's account is, as usual, long and circumstantial. Memoires,
ii. 881-887.
2 The curate of Meriot saw in the contemptuous act of M. de Rosne nothing
less than sheer treason, and the Provinois punsters of the day, playing upon
his name, took occasion to predict the total ruin of the city, now that so great
a river had come all the way from Lyons to overflow their fortifications. Ibid.,
ii. 888.
3 " Si le roy vouloit continuer la guerre, qu'il lui pleust leur faire couper
la gorge, sans tant les faire languir.'' Lestoile, i. 84. It is a suggestive com-
1577. THE STATES GENERAL OF BLOIS. 151
more apparent than real. The members of the third estate had
never been fully reconciled to the ideas of the two upper orders.
They grumbled at the blunder of Versoris in neglecting to fol-
low his instructions. Eot content with their first ineffectual
The tiers etat attempts to induce the clergy and the nobles to unite
for peace. ^^ them in reopening the matter and seeking the
re-enactment of the despised edict, they took advantage of the
pacific report of the Duke of Montpensier to which reference
will shortly be made. After thanking the duke for his hu-
mane and sensible advice, they left the church of Saint Sauveur
and proceeded in a body to the hotel de ville. Here they
promptly took action, begging Henry to reunite his subjects
peaceably, and, in proof of their assertion that this had been
their original desire, appended to their petition a copy of their
grossly misrepresented action of the fifteenth of January. In
vain did the advocates of war place obstacles in the way, alleg-
ing, among other things, that the states general had lost too
many members, by the return of deputies to their homes, to be
competent to transact business ; Jean Bodin was more than a
match for the objectors in legal erudition, and proved that a
quorum of two-thirds of a deliberative assembly was possessed
of all the powers of the entire body. Moreover, drawing upon
that favorite treasury of illustration, the laws and customs of
the ancients, he showed that the Romans had not suffered war
to be declared without the formal consent of the largest repre-
sentation of the state, whereas they permitted the conclusion
of peace in the easiest way. The end of the whole matter
was that the third estate drew up and presented to the king,
on the twenty-seventh of February, a petition wherein the
policy of peace was distinctly and forcibly enunciated.1
mentary upon this touching incident that some of the king's counsellors delib-
erately recommended his laying waste the provinces of Guyenne and Langue-
doc, burning the crops, and reducing the inhabitants to the last straits, in order
that the people in their despair might rise against Navarre and Damville !
Saracini, in his letter of February 13, 1577, records both the fact that the
diabolic counsel was given, and the fact that Henry (be it said to his honor)
rejected it. Negociations avec la Toscane, iv. 109.
1 Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. 262, 263, states the facts at length, and inserts the
whole of the petition.
152 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. H.
Other causes contributed to dampen the warlike zeal which
Henry and his mother had lately affected. Too much stress
ought not perhaps to be laid upon the arguments of the Prot-
estant deputies, of whom two bodies had for some weeks been
at Blois, and who, although they took good care not to recog-
nize the validity of the pretended states general, were unremit-
ting in their efforts to further the interests of their brethren. A
intercession of deeper impression was apparently made by the words
the Germans. 0f jjuke John Casimir, in whose name Beutrich, a
bold and experienced ambassador, again made his appearance.
For the blunt envoy was not careful to measure his words accord-
ing to the rule of over-mild and courteous diplomacy. He re-
monstrated against the bad faith of the French court, and asked
what likelihood there was that promises which the exhausted
condition of the kingdom had not permitted Henry to keep in
time of peace would be fulfilled when he should once more
plunge into a new and needless war. Not content with this,
Casimir's ambassador presented to the king a document where-
by he renounced, in his master's name, all the personal honors
and privileges conferred upon the duke by the late treaty, and
intimated that Casimir held himself relieved of any reciprocal
obligations. In fact, while asking for his passports, Beutrich
made no attempt to disguise his intention of crossing the
Channel in furtherance of the projected Protestant counter-
league.1 The covert threat was not without effect ; especially
when Henry received from his own agents informa-
The Protest- . , * _ , •■ • _ _ , % - no
ant counter- tion that the duke had taken his defiant course m
consequence of promises from Queen Elizabeth that
he should be appointed to the command of all the troops here-
after brought into the field by the Protestant confederates.2
1 De Thou, v. 358, 359 ; Recueil des choses memorables, 591 ; Languet, i.
290. The text of Peter Beutrich's letter to Henry III., dated March 7, 1577,
is given by Groen van Prinsterer, vi. 56. " Son excellence ma commande,"
he wrote, " de reinettre entre les mains de V. M. , avant mon depart de vostre
cour, toutes les terres et estats desquels il vous a pleu le gratifier puis
nagueres." The reason assigned was the circulation of rumors, both in Ger-
many and in France, that these personal advantages prevented him from a
manly advocacy of the rights of the troops that had followed him into France.
'-' Gaspard de Schomberg to Htmry III., April 8, 1577, Groen van Prinsterer,
1577. THE STATES GENERAL OF BLOIS. 153
But what influenced the king more than Huguenot remon-
strances or German threats — more even than the poor success
attending the studied misrepresentations of his tool Villequier
with the Langrave of Hesse and the other princes beyond the
Rhine1 — was the impossibility his majesty encountered of ex-
tracting money from the already depleted purses of
fans to ob- his subjects. That war cannot be carried on without
tain funds. » 1 i *• »i«
the means for the purchase or military stores and for
the payment of soldiers, was an axiom none could have been
found bold enough to deny. That Henry even in time of peace
was always in want of money was equally notorious. He was
ready to borrow on the right and on the left, of his own sub-
jects or of foreigners. His penury led him from time to time
to have recourse to the most impolitic and ruinous expedients.
In July, this same year, he signed an edict by which he author-
ized the sale to one person in every parish of the kingdom of
perpetual exemption from the burdens of taxation, from all
forms of " tailles," as well as from other " imposts." a Little
cared this degenerate king for the next generation, foreseeing —
if, indeed, he foresaw anything — that with him the race of Yalois
on the throne of France would become extinct. Happily there
were in the states general men who did care. So when Henry,
having lost all hope of procuring new taxes, desired the sanction
of the states to a sale of a portion of the royal domain, the dele-
gates of the people, with the unterrified Bodin again at their
head, refused to permit the alienation of property which did
not belong to any one man, but to the nation as such.3 It was
evident that the people had learned something ; they would
not pour their resources into the leaky treasury of a monarch
whose prodigality predestined him to impoverish not only him-
self but his subjects.
ubi supra. The rumor of tlie Protestant counter-league, it was reported,
dampened the zeal of many persons who were on the point of joining the
Roman Catholic League. Memoires de Henry III., 20, 21.
1 See Von Polenz, iv. 91-102 ; De Thou, v. 360-64 ; Recueil des choses
memorables, 591, 592.
- Isambert, Recueil des anciennes lois franqaises, xiv. 337, where the title
of the edict alone is given. 3 De Thou, v. 347, 348, 355.
154: THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. IL
Another royal council was held, ostensibly to obtain advice,
in reality to obtain a pretext for undoing everything that had
been done. The occasion was the return of the Duke
Fresh consul- _ _ _ , _ ,
tation about or JVLontpensier from a mission to Henry of .Navarre,
the war. x . , »
more than ever convinced of the absurdity of a new at-
tempt to crush the Huguenots. The three cardinals — Bourbon,
Guise, and Este — with a few laymen, were still eager for the
suppression of heresy by force of arms, if need be. The Duke
of Severs, always a fiery advocate of the Roman Catholic
Church, distinguished himself for his urgency. " What will
men think, Sire," said he, " but that your zeal toward God has
grown cold, if you are seen to change your purpose
poses a cru- without any new necessity. And as to the divine
side of the matter, do what you can, and God will do
the rest. So did your predecessor, Saint Louis, who when he
had lost one battle in Holy Land, fighting against the enemies
of God's name, did not lose courage, but returned thither again."
But the partisans of pacific measures — Morvilliers, Cosse,
Biron, Montpensier, and his son the Prince Dauphin, and others
— were not less outspoken ; especially as it was no secret that
Catharine was now quite as resolved to have peace as she had
been, a few weeks before, to have war. For had she not of
late hinted that it might be well to allow a little latitude in
religion, until such time as a general council might be convened
— a tolerant suggestion which the amiable Cardinal of Bourbon
met with the truculent remark that he would himself be happy
to act as the hangman of his two Huguenot nephews.1 Had she
not by her intercessions with the king called down upon her
head his hot displeasure ? " This is the third time you have
spoken to me of peace," he had said. " If you loved my inter-
ests you would not seek to persuade me. Do not speak to me
again about the matter." 2 The queen-mother's speech on the
present occasion deserves attention on many accounts.
" My son," said Catharine, who had listened impatiently to
1 Diary of Nevers, under date of February 9, 1577 ; Memoires, i. 172.
2 This interesting incident is related by Saracini, in his letter of February
13, 1577 ; Negociations avec la Toscane, iv. 110.
1577. THE STATES GENERAL OF BLOIS. 155
Severs' plea, " you know that I was among the first to advise
you to permit but one religion in your realm, and that I told
Catharine be- you that you must make use to this end of the states
spSkenaadv^ general which are here met. You know, moreover,
cite of peace. wnat practices, what dealings, I have had with the
deputies of the three orders ; especially with the Archbishop
of Lyons, who at first was opposed to action.1 So, too, with
many others of the church, the noblesse, and the tiers etat,
to whom, by your command, I spoke, and whom I brought to
this resolution. And, to tell the truth, they could never have
gone so far, but for your command, since most of them alleged
that they had no such powers conferred upon them by their
instructions. Thereby it may be seen that my intention has
always been that there should be but one Catholic and Roman
religion in your kingdom. Accordingly, the maintenance of
that religion has been my aim ever since your brother's acces-
sion to the throne, sixteen years ago. This will enable me to
speak with the greater boldness.
" I am a Catholic, and have as good a conscience as anyone
else can have," the queen mother proceeded. " Many a time,
during the reign of the late king, have I exposed my life against
the Huguenots. That is not what I fear. I am ready to die,
for I am fifty-eight years old, and I hope to go to paradise.
What I do not desire is to outlive my children, which would
give me a cruel death indeed.
" I feel compelled to say, however, that until you have the
means of executing this resolution to tolerate but a single relig-
ion, you ought not to declare yourself. If your predecessors
went on a crusade to Constantinople, it was because the king-
dom was at peace. Had they been situated as you are, they
would have done as you do. You see what the King of Spain
has done to his subjects in Netherlands, to whom he has granted
the exercise of their religion in Zealand, Friesland, and Hol-
land. It would be no novel thing for you to permit the exer-
cise of the * religion ' in places where you cannot prevent it.
Foreign princes, and even the Pope, will rejoice at learning this
1 " Qui du commencement n'y vouloit pas mordre."
156 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. II.
declaration, and will be glad that matters have been settled
without a resort to arms. As to myself, I do not wish to gain
credit among the Catholics for having destroyed this kingdom.
I have no object but to preserve it. In its destruction the de-
struction of religion also is involved. On the contrary, if this
kingdom be preserved, religion will also be preserved.
" We have scant means for carrying on war ; we have scarcely
the means of subsistence. The Prince of Conde will take the
cities and all the open country. Hitherto nothing has been able
to resist him. So far as I am concerned, because of the inter-
est I have in them, I crave not to see the state nor the person
of the king thus endangered. There may be others who care
nothing for the loss of this commonwealth, provided they can
say, 'I have faithfully maintained the Catholic religion,' or
who hope to profit by its overthrow. I have nothing to say
about them; but, for myself, I do not desire to resemble them.
I advise you, therefore, to preserve your kingdom and your own
person also ; hoping that God may so favor you as that some
day you may succeed in uniting the two religions in one."
Such was the speech of Catharine de' Medici, as it has been
handed down to us by one who seems to have written it down
afterward from memory. Insincere and unprincipled as was the
woman that made it, false to her own conscience and to her God
as was the tongue that uttered such professions of piety and de-
votion, while the hands were yet gory with the blood of ten thou-
sands of murdered innocents, the address itself illustrates, better
than any words of comment could illustrate, the singular charac-
ter of that vacillating princess, with whose ambition and with
whose fears the fates of the Huguenots were so closely linked.
Henry's speech was more brief, but clearly revealed that his
mind was fully made up. " Gentlemen," said he, " everybody
Henry de- nas seen now zealously I embraced what was for
changed God's honor, and how ardently I desired to see but
purpose. one re]jgjon jn my kingdom. I have even sued, if so
I must speak, for the support of the members of the three es-
tates, who were but lukewarm, urging them to ask for a single
1 Journal de Nevers, Memoires, i. 175, 176.
1577. THE STATES GENERAL OF BLOIS. 157
religion, in the belief that they would aid me in carrying out
so holy a resolution. But the sight of the slender means they
have given me has enlightened me as to the little hope there is
that I shall be able to execute my first intention. However,
as Monsieur de Nevers says, one may change one's opinions
when there is occasion. For myself, I do not think I fail in
my duty if I do not now declare that I will suffer only one re-
ligion in my realm, since I have not the means to execute such
a declaration. I desire my intention to be known, so that it
may not be misrepresented outside of the council. I regard my-
self as more attached than anyone else to my religion ; though
there are those who, in order to be called pillars of the church,
say everything that comes into their heads. It is my will, there-
fore, that this article of religion be left till after the conclusion
of all the rest."
Delay under the circumstances was equivalent to defeat.
The council broke up. Catharine de' Medici did not disguise
her satisfaction. She went out, making light of the discom-
catharine's fiture °f the belligerent party, and exclaiming to poor
raillery. Severs, with her accustomed raillery : " How so,
cousin, did you want to send us to Constantinople ? " A jest
that she laughingly repeated to all whom she met.1
The time for the "crusade" had not come, and certainly
neither Catharine de' Medici nor Henry of Yalois was exactly
another Saint Louis. None the less, however, had the French
court a war upon its hands that must drag its slow length along
for the coming six months, and could not be dismissed with
as little ceremony as the now hateful states general of Blois.
Meantime, both the queen-mother and king were disposed not
to forego their wonted delights. Henry had secured from
The Italian Italy a company of comedians, known as "I Gelosi,"
comedians. men unsurpassed for skill in lewd song and play,
actors whose indecencies had even incurred the reprehension
of the Parliament of Paris.2 He prided himself upon the ac-
1 "Comment, mon cousin, vous nous vouliez envoy er a Constantinople ? *
Journal de Nevers, Memoires, i. 177.
2 Memoires de Henry III., 23.
158 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ca. IL
quisition, we are informed, as much as upon the conquest of a
new kingdom, and Catharine was almost equally delighted.
So when Cardinal Bourbon tried to induce the king to forbid
the performances during Lent, the queen mother requested the
prelate to forbear any further attempts to persuade his majesty
to renew "his devotions of Avignon where he never left the
Jesuits for a single moment." '
The short conflict to which the designation of the sixth
civil or religious war has been given presents fewer incidents of
The sixth note tnan anv °f the preceding contests in which the
civil war. Huguenots were forced to engage. Of the two great
armies set on foot for their destruction, the eastern descended
upon the city of La Charite, and aimed to cut off all possible com-
munication between the Protestants and their former allies be-
yond the Rhine. The western army was intended to overwhelm
Poitou and Saintonge, and to wrest La Rochelle itself from
the hands of those who tightly held it as their best place of
refuge on the coasts of the ocean. The command of the east-
ern army was confided to the Duke of Anjou, as nominal leader.
For the young prince had now obtained, as the seal of recon-
ciliation with his mother and his brother, the coveted rank and
title of lieutenant-general of the kingdom. Under him served
the Dukes of Guise, Aumale, and Nevers, with Biron in charge
of the artillery, making up by their own military skill and ex-
perience for Anjou's incompetence. The fruits of the cam-
paign were seen in the important captures of La Charite on
the Loire, and of Issoire and Ambert, in Auvergne. Nor
was the Duke of Mayenne, younger brother of Guise, less fort-
unate in the conduct of the western forces. Brouage, next to
La Rochelle itself the most important maritime post of the
Huguenots, and the He d'Oleron, were the rewards of his well-
directed assaults and superior numbers. Everywhere the Prot-
estants lost ground. Henry of Navarre accomplished little or
nothing ; his adventurous dash upon Marmande turned out
disastrously. So uniform was the ill-success attending the
efforts of the Huguenots, that they long remembered and dis-
1 Journal de Nevers, Memoires, i. 173.
1577. THE SIXTH CIVIL WAR. 159
tinguished this as "the year of evil tidings" — "l'annee des
mauvaises nouvelles." '
Much of this ill-success was indeed the natural result of their
own faults. Dissension and division were rife in their ranks.
The old discipline had of late suffered a grievous decline. The
Huguenot m- Huguenot soldiers, to use Agrippa d'Aubigne's ex-
isackecf Sci- pressive words, from u reformed " had become " de-
pime. formed."2 In the King of Navarre's court there
were open quarrels between Henry's Roman Catholic follow-
ers and his stanch Huguenot followers, and the latter were
not a little disgusted, and in part alienated, as they noticed
that the Bearnese was more anxious to make sure of the Roman
Catholics, by the display of extraordinary favor, than to satisfy
the just expectations of the Protestant noblemen who espoused
his cause from affection.3
The most sensible loss sustained by the Huguenots was the
withdrawal of Marshal Damville, who not long after his brave
answer to the States of Blois renounced the alliance which for
more than two years had subsisted between the Protestants of
Languedoc and himself.
The disputes that led to this unhappy result would scarcely
deserve special mention did they not obtain importance as bring-
ing into prominence certain tendencies of the period and of
the Huguenot party.
In its early stages, the Reformation had been accused of
aiming at the subversion of the constituted order of govern-
ment. A change of religion, said the Romish prel-
mationand ates, necessarily involves mutation in the state.
Francis the First had been taught this as an axiomatic
truth. Somewhat later, it was maintained, with more precision
of calumny, that the Huguenots, full of admiration for Swiss
institutions, would be content with nothing short of substitut-
1 Lestoile, i. 87. — On the campaign in the east, see Recueil des choses me-
morables, 593 ; De Thou, v. 370-373 ; Claude Haton, ii. 889-894 ; Agrippa
d'Aubigne, ii. 281-283. On the western operations, see Recueil, 593-596 ; De
Thou,v. 382-391, etc.
2 Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. 273.
3 Ibid., ii. 284,285.
160 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. IL
ing for the existing monarchical system an association of cantons
modelled on the pattern of Berne and Zurich. No valid proof
was brought to substantiate the charge, nor is there any reason
to believe that the thought of revolution was ever entertained.
Yet, while the loyalty of the French Protestants must be re-
garded as having been above just suspicion, it is equally certain
that the religious doctrines they had espoused were adapted to
awaken in the breast of the people the consciousness of innate
and indefeasible rights. This consciousness was sure, ulti-
mately, to overthrow the entire fabric of despotism, both in
state and in church, involving in the general destruction the
prescriptive claims of the privileged classes and much-prized
exemptions from burdens of taxation and service. The Infor-
mation knew not that it was laying the foundations of democ-
racy, and would have resented the imputation as slanderous ;
none the less did the Reformation lead inevitably to a recog-
nition of the natural claim of the humblest citizen to the equal
protection of the law, and to a share in the government of the
state. So far it was true that the Reformation tended of ne-
cessity to the development of democratical institutions.
There was another equally unmistakable tendency in the age
— the tendency toward the revival of feudalism in France, to
which allusion had already been made. If the un-
Contrast with . , J
revived feu- conscious aspirations of the Reformation could meet
their fulfilment only in the political freedom and
equality of the nineteenth century, the re-establishment of great
feudal lords, with their inferior and dependent barons, in every
part of the country, recalled the ideas of the Middle Ages, and
aggravated the oppressive yoke resting upon the neck of the
people. Manifestly the Reformation and feudalism were natu-
ral enemies, and must, sooner or later, come into collision.
Marshal Damville had, indeed, become a confederate of the
Protestants of the South, but the alliance was the fruit of
political exigencies, and was too abnormal to last. The gov-
ernor of Languedoc, little less than a king in his extensive prov-
ince, could no more look with complacency upon the reformed
churches, with their popular organization and well -graduated
representative government, than the consistories and synods,
1577. THE SIXTH CIVIL WAR. 161
provincial and national, of the Huguenots could heartily sub-
mit to the control of the dissolute and arbitrary Montmo-
rency.
Misunderstandings and suspicions arose from the very first.
Damville was an undisguised Roman Catholic, and made no pre-
tence of sympathy with the religious views of his allies.
Misunder- n- 1 • -i • i j i i • • i i . r. i
standing be- He did, indeed, afreet much interest in the relief by the
vine and the tiers etat, and proclaimed himself the " liberator of
the commonwealth ; " but he never forgot that he
was descended from the " first Christian baron," or overlooked
the wide gulf separating a nobleman of his rank from the
plebeian inhabitants of the Huguenot towns and villages of
Languedoc. On the other hand, the Huguenots felt by no
means sure that the marshal's high birth could make him a
judicious governor, or that a man noted for his lavishness of
his own property would administer the common funds with
strict integrity and in the most economical way. They insisted,
therefore, that he should do nothing without consulting a coun-
cil which they themselves had given him, and they kept strict
watch over the treasury. As time advanced, the mutual dis-
trust grew. It was currently reported among the Protestants
that the marshal, anxious to enter again into the king's good
graces, had lately sent his wife to court, and had easily obtained
forgiveness, on the condition of breaking away from his allies
and turning his arms against them. At first, however, few
thought that Damville wTould carry his new plans into execution
without giving formal notice of his intentions to his late asso-
ciates.1
It is not unlikely that the Huguenots of Languedoc, and their
brethren in other parts of France, were inclined to be too sus-
picious. Perhaps, however, an impartial observer will pardon
them if, after the Parisian matins and some kindred surprises,
a childlike trust in Roman Catholic allies was not a leading
feature in their character. Be this as it may, it was not many
days after Marshal Damville had despatched his trusty messen-
ger to the king witli a noble plea in favor of toleration 2 before
1 Memoires de Jacques Gaches, 239. 2 Ante, p. 147.
Vol. L— 11
162 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. II.
he received the unwelcome intelligence that the Huguenot in-
habitants of Montpellier had risen, one Sunday night, the seven-
surprise of teenth of February, had made themselves masters of
?n°dntPothCT the city, and had elected young Francois de Chatil-
piaces. jon g0vernor 0f the city and district.1 The town of
Lunel, with its neighbors, Aimargues and Marsilargues, Aigues-
mortes and Alais, followed the example of Montpellier. What
rendered the act more vexatious was that the marshal's wife was
at Montpellier, and his children had been left at Alais, so that
his whole family appeared to have been made prisoners. Ten
days later, a political assembly of the Huguenots of lower Lan-
guedoc, meeting at Lunel, approved the coup-de-main,
against Dam- and gave the reasons of it in thirty formidable arti-
cles. The sum was that the provisions of the com-
pact of union had been disregarded, the decisions of the coun-
cil reversed or nullified, and the finances grossly mismanaged.
Protestants had been neglected, and Roman Catholics placed in
office. The marshal had held communications with Rome and
Savoy which he had not made known to the Protestants. He
had retained traitors in his employ, had shown too little dis-
pleasure at the invitations of the king and the states general,
and too much sluggishness in making his preparations for a war
seen to be imminent, as though he had no intention to oppose
the suppression of Protestantism resolved upon at Blois. To
close the list of Damville's iniquities, he was held responsible
for the imprudent or insolent reply of certain Roman Catholics
of the " union," when deliberating on the answer to be returned
to the deputies from Blois. " We are all in the same boat," 2
said the Protestant deputies. " Not so ! " answered their Roman
Catholic allies. " It is only ' those of the religion ' that the king
1 Francois de Coligny, Sieur de Chatillon, was born April 28, 1557, and was
therefore at this time but twenty years of age. See the transcript of the en-
tries of the births of the various members of the family (two generations') in
the " livre d heures" of the Princess of Orange, made by her father. Admiral
Coligny, and her grandmother, Louise de Montmorency. Bulletin de la Soci-
ety de l'histoire du Protestantisme frangais, ii. 5-7. See, also, Count Jules
Delabordes biography, " Frangois de Chastillon'' (Paris, 1886).
2 " Que nous estions tous embarquez dans ung mesme navire."
1577. THE SIXTH CIVIL WAR 163
and states mean to attack." ' The Lunel assembly dictated the
only conditions upon which the " union " could be continued.
There must be a council at Montpellier or Nismes, and the mar-
shal must obey its decisions. The council alone must give com-
missions and pay out money. The cities must all have Protes-
tant governors, and the Protestant cities must have Protestant
consuls in addition.
It must be confessed that the Huguenot demands were great,
and that some of the complaints appeared at first sight weak
The marshal's or frivolous. The marshal's answer made the most
reply. 0£ fljggg advantages. He accused his late allies of
ingratitude, and maintained that, but for his timely aid, their
cause would have been desperate. He dwelt with great effect
upon the proofs he had given of confidence in their devotion
to him, and made a frank and plausible reply to each successive
article of the indictment. Having disposed of the charges as
best he might, it was now the marshal's turn to comment upon
what he termed the insufferable insolence displayed by the
allies, not only in rising for such insufficient reasons and taking
his wife and children prisoners, but in demanding the establish-
ment of a council with sovereign powers. " In a word," said
Damville, " they intend to assume the chair of state, and will
issue their commands to the gentlemen, captains and soldiers,
for the maintenance of their authority — a procedure tending
to a republic rather than to any other form of government." 2
It was not the only time that the proud son of the constable
indulged in a fling at the assuming burghers. But his supreme
indignation was reserved for the head of " a little syndic" who
had been so presumptuous as to call upon the marshal to take
an oath to observe the Protestant articles at his hands.
" Everybody knows," said Damville, " that, excepting the king,
there is no one in France that can administer the oath to me."
1 " N'en vouloient qu'a ceux de la Religion."
2 "Somme ilz seront dans une chaize et commanderont les gentilzhommes,
cappitaines et soldats pour le soustien de leur auctorite, tendant plustost a la
republicque qu'a autre domination." Le discours faict par Mr. le Mareclial
de Damville sur la rupture de l'union en Tan 77 respondant a tous les articles
de ceulxde la religion. French Nat. Libr., MSS. Brienne. (Loutchitzky, 85.)
16± THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. IL
Clearly a partnership in which the persons interested enter-
tained such conflicting notions of their respective positions and
rights must be dissolved straightway. And this,
Navarre at- o « J
tempts to however much Henry of Navarre and other cool
mediate. # *
heads might deplore the result. For the Bearnais
was both surprised and pained — so he sent word to the Hugue-
nots of Languedoc — at the discord that had sprung up in that
part of France which had hitherto been a pattern of union and
the chief strength of the Protestant cause. Suspicion might
well be directed against enemies, but ought not to be encour-
aged in the case of friends like Damville, whose course had been
so honorable that he dared pledge his own integrity for him.
And he begged the Huguenots, in God's name and for the
general good, not utterly to alienate their late ally, and thus
play into the hands of the enemy, who now rejoiced as though
seeing signs of the coming overthrow of the Protestant side.1
Meantime the Huguenots of Languedoc, having broken with
Marshal Damville, turned their eyes toward his younger brother,
Thorebe- Guillaume de Montmorency, better known by his
nTTeadefTn territorial designation as Seigneur de Thore. The
i^anguedoc. cnoice was a judicious one, suggested or approved by
La Noue and Turenne, whom the King of Navarre had sent in
haste to prevent Languedoc from falling into the power of the
enemy. Thus did France behold the strange spectacle of two
brothers at the head of armies and disputing with each other
the possession of the most important province of the south — of
another Roman Catholic of a most ancient family styling him-
1 The defection of Marshal Damville is briefly referred to by the historians
of the period, e.g., Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. 273, etc., but much the most satis-
factory view of it can be obtained from the important original documents in
the National Library of France, and published by Professor Loutchitzky in his
Documents inedits pour servir a l'histoire de la Reforme et de la Ligue (Paris,
1875), pages 60-91. These consist of (1) the reasons set forth by the Assembly
of Lunel, February 27, for breaking the union with Marshal Damville and
seizing the cities ; (2) the articles to be presented to him as conditions for re-
newing the union, adopted by the assembly on the same date ; (3) Marshal
Damville's answer, February ; and (4) Henry of Navarre's instructions to the
Seigneur de Segur sent to the Protestants of Languedoc, dated at Aiguillon,
May 25, 1577.
1577, THE EDICT OF POITIERS. 165
self " general commandant for the protection and defence of
his Majesty's subjects making profession of the Reformed relig-
ion in the land and government of Langnedoc, under the au-
thority of the King of Navarre and Monseigneur the Prince of
Conde." 1 As for brave Chatillon, whom his youth alone pre-
cluded from receiving an appointment which might have seemed
more appropriate for him than for his cousin, the rescue of
Montpellier from the overwhelming forces of Marshal Belle-
garde constituted for him a new title of distinction. His ex-
ploit in breaking through the enemy's lines and returning within
little more than a fortnight with a relief of five thousand men
was the concluding event of the war.2
The struggle in which, since his disappointment in obtaining
funds for carrying it on, Henry had lost all interest, was termi-
nated, after the usual delays and diplomatic intrigues, by the
sixth edict of pacification, known as the Edict of Poitiers, in the
month of September, 1577.
In this document the liberal concessions made by the preced-
ing Edict of Beaulieu were much curtailed. The Protestants
The Edict of were suffered to dwell unmolested in every part of
tembe™ 157?) *ne kingdom, but the public exercise of their worship
6°xnthUdeciv5 was restricted to certain places. First, all noblemen
war- possessed of the right of "haute justice" were per-
mitted to have Protestant worship, for themselves and for all
that chose to attend, in such place as they might designate as
their chief residence. Second, the same noblemen could have
worship open to all comers upon any of their other lands, but
only so long as they themselves were present. Third, noblemen
1 Thore takes this designation (in addition to his customary titles of privy
counsellor, etc.) in a very interesting commission issued by him at Nismes,
July 7, 1577, appointing a captain to raise troops for the purpose of checking
the bands of ruffians that were laying waste the Protestant towns and villages
of the Cevennes. The document is published in the Bulletin de la Societe de
l'histoire du Protestantisme fran^ais, vii. (1859) 398, 399.
2 A glowing account in Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. 311-313. The historian claims
for himself that, having been sent to sound the disposition of Damville, al-
though too late to prevent the marshal's defection, he was in time to prevent
him from carrying over with him to the royal side any Protestant cities as
helps to a reconciliation with his former foes. Ibid. , ii. 267-273.
166 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. II.
<of lower jurisdiction were allowed worship at their residences
for themselves and their families only. Fourth, the Protestants
were authorized to continue the exercise of their religion in all
'cities and boroughs where it had been publicly practised at the
date of the signature of the edict. Fifth, Protestant worship
was granted in the suburbs of some one town or village in each
bailiwick and senechaussee of the kingdom. So much for the
most essential matter of the celebration of the rites of religion.
Paris was, of course, excepted, with its neighborhood to the dis-
tance of ten leagues in every direction. So, too, the court of
the king must not be polluted by the preaching of Protestant
doctrine, by whatever else it might be polluted. Here the limit
was fixed at two leagues only. The provision for the protec-
tion of the Protestants in the courts of law was also narrowed
down. Instead of a " chambre mi-partie," composed of an equal
number of judges of the two religions, and established in each
of the eight parliaments, there were to be only four mixed tri-
bunals (there were to be no mixed tribunals in Paris, Rouen,
Dijon, and Rennes), and, instead of one-half, two-thirds of the
judges were to be Roman Catholics.1 On the other hand, Prot-
estants were guaranteed admission into the universities and
schools, and their poor and sick were promised assistance, on
the same terms as Roman Catholics. As in the preceding
pacification, eight cities were intrusted to the Protestants as
pledges for their safety. The King of Navarre, the Prince of
Conde, and twenty Protestant gentlemen were to swear, singly
1 Michelet is, therefore, quite wrong in saying (La Ligue et Henri IV., p. 85)
that there was to he "achaque parlement une chambre protestante." The
courts established for the protection of the Protestants in the four parliaments
named in the text were not to be composed of Protestants (see article 21) ; and
Agrippa d'Aubigne is correct in his brief statement (ii. 327) : " Les chambres
mi-parties biffees pour Paris, Rouen, Dijon, et Rennes. Aux autres quatre
parlements des chambres ordonnees avec un des presidents reforme et le tiers
des conseillers de mesme." Von Polenz well remarks (iv. 126, note) the dif-
ficulty and ungrateful character of the task of describing the edicts of pacifi-
cation ; as well as the difficulty arising from the vagueness and positive errors
of the statements even of contemporaries. The circumstance that the edicts
were never fairly carried out makes them a very unsatisfactory topic of discus-
sion.
1577. THE EDICT OF POITIERS. 167
and collectively, to restore these cities to the king at the expi-
ration of six years from the date of the edict.1 A secret treaty
signed at Bergerac treated of the marriage of priests and monks,
of marriage within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity,
and of other matters which it was thought prudent not to bring
prominently to the public notice.2
France was sick of war. Everywhere there were rejoicings.
Conde and the Rochellois were not more delighted than were
the Parisians and the Roman Catholics, who had feared that the
Protestants might be still better treated in the edict.3 The King
of France and the King of Navarre each styled the document
" his own edict." 4 The poor people said little or nothing that
contemporary chroniclers have thought it worth while to trans-
mit to posterity, but doubtless thanked God devoutedly for a
little rest from bloodshed and rapine. Even the priests were
glad that the war was over. One of their number could not
suppress the observation that, seeing the terms of the edict of
pacification were so similar to those of its predecessor, it would
have been far better not to renew the war.5 As to the League,
the king thought that he had very cleverly given it a death-blow
by enacting in the fifty-sixth article of his edict that " all leagues,
associations, and confraternities made or to be made, on any
pretext whatsoever, to the prejudice of the present edict, be an-
nulled," and by strictly forbidding the enrolling of men and the
levy of money. It remained to see how much vitality the pro-
scribed institution might still possess.
1 Six of the eight cities were the same as in the former list, hut Montpellier
was substituted for Beaucaire, and La Reolle for Issoire, Art. 59. Text in
Du Mont, Corps diplomatique, v. 302-308 ; Memoires de Nevers, i. 290-307 ;
Isambert, Recueil des anciennes lois francaises, xiv. 330, etc.
2 Du Mont, Corps diplomatique, v. 308, 311 ; Isambert. Haag, etc.
3 Saracini to the grand duke, October 4, 1577, Negociations avec la Toscane,
iv. 131.
4 See, as to Henry III. , Recueil des choses momorables, 596, and De Thou,
v. 393 ; as to Henry of Navarre, Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. 328.
5 Memoires de Claude Haton, ii. 900.
168 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OP NAVARRE. Ch. III.
CHAPTEK III.
THE CONFERENCE OF NERAC, AND THE SEVENTH CIVIL WAR.
Conclusions based upon abstract justice and deductions from
expediency are wont to differ widely from each other. Wise
men cannot always come to an agreement in deciding the knotty
question whether it be not often advisable, in war as in matters
of law, to accept much less than one is entitled to, rather than,
by obstinately insisting upon the concession of one's full rights,
run the risk of losing everything. In the present instance,
some of the Huguenots, with Theodore Beza in the number,
significantly pointed to the absurdity of making a distinction of
places and permitting the Protestants to meet for worship in
one spot while excluding them from another, as though God
ought not equally to be adored in every part of the kingdom.1
But others, perhaps not less zealous but possibly more practical
in their views, maintained that the Peace of Bergerac was as
favorable a compact as could be hoped for in the circumstances,
contrast be- The edict of pacification did, indeed, restrict materially
peace ofBer- tne toleration extended by the famous "Edict of
Eo? jane January," 1562, and by the more recent Peace of
uary. Monsieur. The "Edict of January" excluded the
Huguenot religious assemblies from the walled cities, but sanc-
tioned them everywhere else. The Peace of Monsieur, appar-
ently more lavish in its concessions, granted the Protestants
permission to hold their services wherever they pleased, with
the single exception of the capital and its suburbs to a distance
of two leagues, and required only the consent of the feudal lord
within whose territorial jurisdiction the place of meeting might
1 De Felice, History of the Protestants of France, Amer. ed. , p. 235.
1577. THE CONFERENCE OF NERAC. 169
fall.5 But, in the tumult of excited passion surging through
France, neither stipulation had been executed. It was clear to
every eye that, for the present, neither could be honestly car-
ried into effect. When men were engaged in a desperate
struggle, with passions inflamed by the strife, the excesses, and
the calumnies of the past fifteen years, it was futile to think of
settling the mutual relations of the professors of the two creeds
upon a permanent basis. By and by, with the return of calm-
ness and reason, this might be done. For the moment it was
enough if some temporary adjustment of differences might be
effected, some " modus vivendi " settled upon, to serve as a
bridge to span the chasm between the existing confusion and
the stable ground of a true and abiding peace.
Whether the treaty just made would answer the purpose,
remained to be seen. But whatever the result might be, cer-
tain it was, that it offered a better prospect than any of its
predecessors. It did not, indeed, recognize the right of Protes-
tantism to universal toleration ; but this very circumstance,
while disappointing the just claims of the Huguenots, disarmed,
in some measure, the malice of their most inveterate enemies.
The situation Whatever might be said of the Peace of Monsieur, it
accepted. could not be asserted by the priests that the Peace
of Bergerac countenanced the spread of the Reformed faith
through the whole of France. The royal edict merely accepted
the situation of affairs as it was. It admitted the existence of a
second form of Christianity without endorsing it. Protestant-
ism might be an evil the prevalence of which was to be greatly
deplored ; but Protestantism, as a form of faith and as a power
in the state, could not be ignored. If the masses of the peo-
ple could be disabused of their prejudices, if they could be set
well on the way to learn the lesson that a diversity of religious
tenets need not necessarily tend to discord and confusion, there
might be some hope that the new pacification might either be
1 If I mistake not this last provision more than countervailed the superior
advantages held forth in the later arrangement. It was better to be put to the
inconvenience of going outside of the city walls, than to be left to the mercy
of a capricious or unfriendly nobleman. The Huguenots had good reason
still to regard the " Edict of January 'as the great charter of their rights.
170 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. IIL
of lasting duration or give place only to some more perfect and
equitable reconciliation. Unfortunately this was the darkest
point in the horizon. The people could not unlearn in an
hour the pestilent lessons sedulously taught them these many
years, and there were those who had no thought of permitting
the process, had the people been ever so ready to enter upon
it. The same accusations that had been sown broadcast from
the pulpits and confessionals, and by means of the
notscaiumni- printed handbill and placard, in the hour of the birth
of the Reformation, were still disseminated among
those credulous enough to believe them. The Huguenot name
was still a bugbear held up to frighten not only children, but
full-grown men and women. It was boldly maintained that the
new heretics were enemies of the human race. If they did not
worship the devil and eat little children at their nocturnal orgies,
as had been reported twenty years earlier, in the time of the
affair of the Rue Saint Jacques, they were undoubtedly, said
their enemies, the willing agents in the spread of the plague.
In the course of the very year of the Peace of Bergerac, there
appeared at Lyons a pamphlet purporting to give a truthful ac-
count of the scourge that had just visited that city. The au-
thor was an envenomed enemy of Protestantism, Claude de
Rubys, a man who played an important part in bringing about
the provincial massacre following the Parisian matins.1 The
story he told bears a singular resemblance to the unfortunate
incident rendered famous by the most fascinating of Italian
novelists, in his historical record of the origin of the " Colonna
Infame " of Milan. The Huguenots, not unlike the victims
They are °^ popular malice and ignorance at Milan, were rep-
spread?ngfthe resented by Rubys as spreading the contagion by
plague. means of " certain infected pastes " which they had
imported from Italy concealed in packages of silk. Nor was
this the first offence of the kind, if we credit the accuser ; for
1 " Discours sur la contagion de peste qui a este ceste presente annee en la
ville de Lyon. ... A Lyon, 1577." Cimber et Danjou, Archives cu-
rieuses, ix. 237-262. The passage referred to in the text is on pages 257-259.
Respecting Rubys, see the Rise of the Huguenots, ii. 504, 514.
1577. THE CONFERENCE OF NERAC. 171
the same accursed sect had introduced the plague in similar
nauseous drugs thirteen years before (1564), when they wished
to prevent the erection of a citadel at Lyons, and, therefore, to
destroy the Roman Catholics. Only, in the last-mentioned in-
stance, the poison had come from Basle hidden in bales of
other merchandise, and it had been carried into the very houses
in which King Charles the Kinth and the lords of his court
were lodging. It was well for the Huguenots that they lived
under more enlightened forms of law, and that French juris-
prudence did not, like the statutes of Milan, tolerate the appli-
cation of torture at the mere caprice of the most petty judge,
with the view of extracting the truth from a witness whenever
his first answers did not appear altogether probable. Other-
wise, it is to be feared that history would be compelled on this
page to record the name of many a Huguenot victim, torn with
pincers, maimed of a hand, with arms and legs broken, and left
to languish full six hours upon the wheel before so-called "jus-
tice " would suffer the executioner mercifully to cut the wretch-
ed man's throat ; as history is compelled to record the names of
a Mora, a Piazza, a Migliavacca, and other unfortunates who
suffered such barbarities at the time of the great plague that
raged in Milan in the summer of the year of grace 1630.1
The Prince of Conde had so warmly welcomed the peace
that he had ordered the announcement of it to be made in his
camp by torchlight the very evening on which the tidings reached
him. But the words of the proclamation had no magical
effect to quiet inflamed passions or compel obedience. In
defiance to the royal edict, Marshal Biron laid violent hands
upon Villeneuve d'Agenois and upon Agen itself,
The peace r
only partial- the virtual capital of Henry of JSavarre. In Langue-
ly observed.
doc Marshal Damville treated with supreme disdain
the provisions relative to the return of the fugitives. The
Huguenots of Beziers, Carcassonne, Castelnaudary, and other
1 Alessandro Manzoni's "Storia della Colonna Infame " is well supplemented
by Pietro Verri s " Osservazioni sulla tortura," in which (chapter vii.) there is
a transcript of the singular inscription on the column erected at Milan in com-
memoration of the punishment of the supposed culprits.
172 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OP NAVARRE. Ch. IIL
cities, finding admission denied to them, took the field perforce,
and kept up the forms, with something of the reality of war,
in a time of nominal peace. It was a novel sight to see two
companies of about four hundred men each living off the dis-
trict which they laid under contribution, and occasionally taking
prisoners the most violent of their enemies. Still more singu-
lar was the discipline and the spirit of equality that reigned.
Purchasing a full quantity of cloth with the proceeds of their
plunder, the whole troop arrayed itself in precisely the same
dress, with a gold chain about the neck or a red cord on the
cap for the sole mark to distinguish the leaders. All ate to-
gether at commons in the spacious market-houses, where the
captain and the minister who served as chaplain sat at the head
of the long and rambling tables, and two lieutenants sat at
the foot. The rest of the officers were mingled with the simple
privates. It was not so much the weak fortifications behind
wrhich they were entrenched as the report of their courage and
the rumor that they stood in favor with Chatillon, that long
secured these bands of Huguenot soldiers immunity from
hostile assault.1 In Dauphiny the state of confusion was not
less marked. Here Lesdignieres was able so to impress upon
the mind of the royal governor the dangers to which his co-
religionists were exposed from the implacable resentment of
their enemies, that he actually obtained from him an arrange-
ment allowing the Huguenots, until such time as the edict of
pacification should be put into complete execution, to retain
possession of all the strongholds they had in Dauphiny, and to
draw upon the king a monthly sum of two thousand crowns for
the support of the garrisons.2
1 "Tant y a," says Agrippa d'Aubigne (ii. 333), to whom we are indebted
for the quaint account, "que cette petite guerre dura autant que la petite paix
que nous traittons maintenant. ''
2 De Thou, v. 530-536. The compact was made by Laurent de Maugiron,
who had just obtained the post of governor of Dauphiny (left vacant by the
death of M. de Gordes) through the influence of his son, the well-known fa-
vorite of Henry III. It was very displeasing to the queen mother, and no
stone was left unturned to induce the Protestants of Dauphiny to renounce
the advantages it conferred upon them.
1578. THE CONFERENCE OF NERAC. 173
Meanwhile, not deterred by the troubled state of a great
part of France, the Reformed Church convoked, at Sainte Foy
la Grande,1 its Ninth National Synod (February, 1578). It
™v xT- «. was the first time that the highest ecclesiastical court
Ine Ninth °
National sy- 0f the Huguenots had met since the massacre of
nod. Sainte D
Foy. 1578. St# Bartholomew's Day. For nearly six years the
Protestants of France, proscribed, the objects alternately of
secret conspiracy and assassination or of the most sanguinary of
open wars, had scarcely enjoyed a moment's respite from the
assaults of their enemies. Self-preservation had engrossed
their thoughts and withdrawn their attention from the con-
sideration of the discipline and doctrine of the church. It was
now time that they should devote the first opportunity, snatched
from the pursuit of war, to the pressing claims of their inter-
nal organization and the care of their most vital interests.
The acts of deliberative bodies, however important in their
results, rarely afford in themselves matters of interest for the
general reader. But there are some points in the transactions
of the present synod that are too characteristic to be passed
over in silence.
The Huguenots, faithful subjects of the crown of France in
all civil relations, were ever loyal to a republican theory of
ecclesiastical government that admitted no earthly hierarchy,
and recognized no lordship but that of Jesus Christ, the su-
preme head of the Church. On the present occasion they took
pains to enunciate, at the very beginning of their proceedings,
the principle that " no province can lay claim to possess any
superiority or pre-eminence over the rest, either in general or
in particular.2 As an intelligent understanding of the religion
taught by the Holy Scriptures is the indispensable foundation
of Protestantism, the synod insisted much upon the necessity of
a suitable education of the young. It was made the special duty
of each province to search out every method proper for the in-
stitution of schools where young men might be trained to serve
1 Ou the river Dordogne, in the extreme eastern part of the present depart-
ment of Gironde.
* Art. 1. Aymon, Tous les sy nodes, i. 126.
17tt THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. IIL
the church some day in the exercise of the functions of the
holy ministry. Ministers of the gospel were themselves urged
to a very faithful and skilful use of the catechism in the in-
struction of their flocks. And parents were warned against the
perilous practice of sending their children to schools under
priestly or monkish influence, or permitting them to become
pages or servants in the families of great lords or other persons
" of some religion opposed to our religion." '
The synod gave its attention both to public and to family
worship, and endeavored to define the proper relation between
the two methods of approaching the Almighty. It prescribed
the character of the preaching that should obtain in the French
Protestant churches. The minister, it said, ought to aim at
expounding as much of the sacred text as possible, avoiding dis-
play and long digressions ; he should not cite a multitude of
passages, heaping one quotation upon another, nor bring for-
ward a number of different interpretations ; it is his duty to
use great moderation in referring to the ancient Doctors of the
Church, and, above all, to profane histories and other works,
"in order to leave to Scripture all its authority."2 On the
other hand, that it might not detract from the importance of
the religion of the home, the synod distinctly set the mark
of its disapproval upon the custom of holding public services
for daily prayer in the Protestant churches. The churches that
had adopted the practice were exhorted to conform to the usage
of those churches that had no custom of the kind. In taking
this action the Synod of Sainte Foy was only confirming the
decisions of the National Synod of Paris, in 1565, which had
discouraged the holding of services in church upon certain other
days besides those on which there was preaching, or daily, upon
the ground that the custom was calculated to promote super-
stition and to create contempt of the preaching of God's Word,
and tended greatly to interfere with the duty incumbent upon
every head of a family to institute daily worship for the mem-
bers of his own household.3
1 Arts. 2, 7, 23. 2 Art. 7.
3 Compare Art. 11 of the Synod of Paris and Art. 12 of the Synod of Sainte
Foy. Aymon, i. 65, 66, 128.
1578. THE CONFERENCE OF NERAC. 175
It seems to have been.in view of the recent publication of the
great Protestant epic of Du Bartas on the Wonderful Work of
Creation,1 that the synod, fearful lest the fashion of adapting
the language and figures of paganism to scriptural events should
gain the ascendancy in the literature of the Reformed churches,
recorded its desire that " those that shall hereafter take pen in
hand to write the stories of the sacred Scripture in verse shall
be notified not to mingle therewith poetical fables, nor attribute
to God the names of false divinities, nor add anything to or
take anything from Scripture, but confine themselves to the
strict terms of the sacred text." 2 Among the less important
provisions were those that reiterated the importance of execut-
ing the church's decrees against " dissoluteness " in dress, and
especially in the wearing of the hair, and forbade a minister of
the Gospel from practising the art of medicine.3 The experience
of conflicts in which the Protestants had been forced to engage
dictated the propriety of a declaration prohibiting the faithful,
in any future war, from separating themselves from the union
of the churches, and agreeing to any private peace, upon pain
of ecclesiastical censure.4 More important than all was the
lively interest testified by the Synod of Sainte Foy in the proj-
ects which, under the zealous patronage of that old and tried
friend of the Huguenots, Jean Casimir, had taken shape, in
September, 1577, in a conference held at Frankfort on the
Main, for the purpose of devising, in company with the repre-
sentatives of the other Reformed churches of Christendom, a
plan for the close and hearty union of all Protestantism, and
for thus silencing the calumnious reports to which the divisions
of Protestantism daily gave plausible grounds.5
The most difficult matter upon which the synod was called to
1 "La Semaine,"of Guillaume de Saluste, Seigneur du Bartas, first appeared
at Paris, in 1578, and ran through seventeen editions within four years. In
all there were not less than thirty editions published. Haag, France protes-
tante (first ed.), ii. 131.
2 Art. 20. 3 Arts. 21, 22. 4 Art. 26.
5 " Projet de reunion entre toutes les Eglises Reformees et Protestantes du
Monde Chretien," appended to the Acts of the Synod of Sainte Foy, Aymon,
i. 131-133.
176 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Cii. I1L
act was an appeal — apparently the first appeal brought before a
national synod from an inferior ecclesiastical court. The Prot-
estant vessels, hovering as was their wont about the
tween condd shores of the Bay of Biscay, had succeeded in taking a
and the Con- . i i • i ii-it i • •
sistory of La prize upon the nigh seas, and had brought it into port.
The act had been approved by the Prince of Conde.
The Consistory of La Rochelle declared the seizure unlawful, as
having been made since the edict of pacification, and requested
the prince not to approach the Lord's Table. They maintained
that the whole church, indeed the whole city of La Rochelle,
wras suffering in consequence of this violation of good faith, and
was denounced as a refuge of pirates and brigands. The prince,
on the contrary, defended himself upon the plea that the capt-
ure had been made before the expiration of the forty days al-
lowed for the publication of the peace, and from the sworn
enemies of the King of Navarre and himself. Moreover, he
plainly intimated to the consistory that he regarded the whole
transaction as belonging to the province of those " affairs of
state " which, for some mysterious reason, political leaders and
kings are accustomed to ask the rest of the world to believe lie
beyond the range of conscience and the laws of ordinary moral-
ity. The Synod of Sainte Foy, while by no means sharing in
this remarkable view of public ethics, and while distinctly ap-
proving the zeal of the church and Consistory of Rochelle in
its courageous opposition to scandalous vice, expressed regret
that, in a matter of such moment, more time had not been taken,
with the view of removing all suspicion and animosity. At the
same time, it begged the prince to take in good part the remon-
strance of the consistory, dictated by justice and necessity, and
founded upon the Word of God, to remove the occasion of stum-
bling, and become reconciled to the church. This being done,
it decreed that his highness be received to partake of the holy
communion with his brethren.1
It is the misfortune of the historian of this period that he is
1 For this entire affair, so creditable to the manly courage and Christian con-
sistency and candor of the persons that took part in it, see the minute of Feb-
ruary 14, 1578, Aymon, i. 133, 134.
1578. THE CONFERENCE OF NERAC. 177
so frequently compelled to turn aside from the more congenial
task of chronicling the incidents affecting the progress of the
Huguenots, either in their interior life or in their struggle for
the acquisition of full religious liberty, and forced to touch upon
the disgraceful manners and morals of a king who, in the ex-
pressive words of a bitter contemporary pamphleteer, of all the
inheritance left him by his predecessors had retained only their
vices.1 The digression, however unwelcome, is extremely im-
portant ; since without a clear understanding of the recklessness
and extravagance of the monarch, and the consequent burden of
crushing taxes and hopeless debt imposed upon the people, it
would be impossible to comprehend the circumstances that modi-
fied, if they did not altogether shape, the course of the adher-
ents of the Reformed faith in France.
Some writers have represented the conclusion of the peace of
1577 as coincident with a notable change in the character of
Henry the Third. Doffing in an instant all martial
o/nSTry^he aspirations and manly enterprises, this prince, we are
assured, resigned himself henceforth to a life of slug-
gish ease, with an evident alacrity which some interpreted as
arising from inordinate love of pleasure, while others ascribed
its origin to excessive devotion. Sudden mutations of the
kind here indicated, however, are apt to be more apparent
than real. The phenomenon is generally due to the more
favorable opportunity enjoyed by the observer for obtaining a
correct estimate of the true state of the case, or to the new
freedom of the person observed in displaying those tendencies
of his nature which fear or policy has led him until now to
conceal. In Henry the adage was fully verified, that no one
ever becomes a villain at a single stroke. The prince, young
though he was, who, five years before, had been a principal
conspirator in devising and executing the cowardly assassi-
nation of Admiral Coligny, and had both instigated and profited
by the subsequent massacre and pillage, was no novice in crime.
1 "Remonstrance a tous bons Chrestiens et fideles Catholiques a maintenir la
saincte Union . . . contre les efforts duty ran, "etc. Memoiresde laLigue,
iii. 553.
Vol. I.— 12
1 < 8 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. III.
The period intervening between his departure for Poland and
the conclusion of the sixth civil war was, indeed, a time of
political commotion and of extreme anxiety to every patriotic
soul. But it witnessed in Henry the gradual but sure descent
to still lower depths of moral corruption, and was the natu-
ral precursor of a state of shameless vice that astonished and
repelled an age of unparalleled depravity. It was that he
might give loose reins to his passions that Henry had longed
for peace, that he was determined to have it at any cost. And
the moment that the edict of peace was signed and registered by
his parliaments, he plunged into excesses such as the world had
not dreamed of his being capable of committing. Now it was
that the government of France fell into the hands of the per-
sonal favorites of the king. The road to- distinction was found
no longer to run through the battlefield or the honest and skil-
ful administration of public trusts. The brave and successful
general and the statesman of wisdom and tried integrity were
thrust aside, to give place for the cunning ministers of the
monarch's pleasures. To have invented a new form of diver-
sion, to know a pastime that aroused the king's curiosity, to be
able to recollect or invent at will the tales of amorous intrigue
and court scandal that constituted Henry's choicest table-talk —
these were sure passports to favor. By the side of the fortunate
The new fa- possessors of these rare accomplishments, even the
they'd feu- representatives of the oldest and most powerful fam-
dai lords. j]jes 0f feudal France stood at the greatest disad-
vantage. The new favorite was secure in the consciousness of
a hold upon the king which no mere scion of an illustrious stock
could dispute. Here, indeed, wTas a danger threatening the
peace of France more serious than any perils that might come
from abroad. Henry brought himself into direct opposition to
a tendency of the times that had assumed portentous dimen-
sions. The new feudalism, since the beginning of the century,
had, as we have seen, been entrenching itself in the great
provincial governments. It was with extreme jealousy that the
great nobles beheld the rise of new aspirants to honor and to
the confidence of the sovereign, and they could not but band
together to resist the counsels and influence of men whom they
1573. THE CONFERENCE OF NERAC. 179
regarded as upstarts and usurpers. But when it came to dis-
tributing among the king's " mignons " the government of
provinces regarded by the present holders as hereditary posses-
sions, the old nobles rose in rebellion against so flagrant an
outrage upon all right and decency. They could be dislodged,
it was evident, only after a prolonged and desperate struggle.
The king's attempt to weaken the exorbitant influence of the
old nobility by robbing it of its immense territorial privileges,
and to substitute for the representatives of the Montmorencies
and other ancient families young noblemen of a comparatively
obscure lineage, has been interpreted as a sagacious stroke of
policy intended to exalt the monarchy by freeing it of its
present entanglements. If the view be correct, it must be ad-
mitted that the brilliancy of the conception is all that entitles
the plan to respect. Assuredly in the execution it resembles a
senseless blunder. Without adding to the number of his friends
and supporters, Henry aroused the hostility of a large and
powerful class, not less formidable than the Huguenots of whom
he had long been confessedly an implacable enemy.
Meanwhile, distrust and violence characterized the royal court.
The king's inordinate gifts and extravagant favors, instead of
contenting, only excited the cupidity and stimulated the envy
of those who wished to engross for themselves the fruits of
Henry's reckless prodigality. In every direction reigned jeal-
ousy and dissension. Henry discovered that not even the semi-
regal appanage he had conferred upon his younger brother was
sufficient to establish fraternal sentiments between them. The
old sore of deadly hatred broke out afresh in February, 1578,
when the Duke of Anjou again fled from the vicinity of the
court, alleging the insecurity of his person from the malice of
his royal brother. In imitation of the king and the duke, the
favorites had their own quarrels, which they settled by open
combat or by secret assassination. When an unlucky wound
received in a duel or in the street laid the king's minion upon
a bed of sickness, Henry did not fail to show his extreme friend-
ship by waiting upon the sufferer, and performing the common
offices of friendship, with little regard for his own dignity or
the claims of his station. When one of the favorites died the
180 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. Ill
corpse became the recipient of such costly honors as were
customary only in the case of kings, or princes of the royal
blood.1
Upon the unworthy objects of the king's favor the treasure
of France was lavished without stint, but no treasure could ever
have satisfied Henry's desire to enrich them, or their
prodigality of own thirst for wealth. The shrewd counsellors of
his majesty might rack their brains to discover new
taxes, the collectors of the royal revenues might exercise their
ingenuity in devising methods to exact more money from the
poor peasantry, the queen mother might use her influence with
old creditors to secure an extension of the time of their loans 2
— all might look about for fresh financial aid from credulous
bankers. Everybody was at his wits' end to replenish a treas-
ury that was in so leaky a condition that, no matter what was
poured in, there was never any reserve on hand. Prodigality
and penury walked hand in hand. To celebrate the Duke of
Anj ou's capture of La Charite, in the course of the recent war,
the king gave a grand banquet in his honor at Plessis-les-Tours,
at which all the ladies in attendance were dressed in green silk,
a material so scarce as to cost the sum, enormous for the times,
of sixty thousand francs. Not to be outdone, the queen mother
followed with a still more exquisite and luxurious festival in
her castle of Chenonceaux, at an expense of one hundred thou-
sand livres.3 But the money was all raised by borrowing from
the king's most affluent subjects, and especially from the Ital-
ians, of whom it is significantly stated that they knew well how
to reimburse themselves twice over.
1 De Thou, v. 539-544. See, also, Lestoile, i. 98, 99, for Henry's absurd
manifestations of sorrow at the death of Maugiron, Queylus, and Saint-Megrin.
2 So Catharine, in 1576, begged the ambassador Saracini to write to the
Grand Duke of Tuscany, requesting him by no means to insist upon the repay-
ment of the sum of 45,000 crowns which he had advanced. Yet in the very
letter in which Saracini complies with the request he estimates the yearly in-
come of the Duke of Anjou at 860,000 francs. Letter of August 14, 1576,
Negociations avec la Toscane, iv. 79.
3 "En ce beau banquet les plus belles et honnestes de la cour, estans a
moitie nues, et ayans leurs cheveux espars comme espousees, furent employees
a faire le service." Memoires de Henri III. (Cologne, 1693), 21.
157a THE CONFERENCE OF NERAC. 181
The resources of ecclesiastical patronage placed at the king's
disposal by the Concordat were exhausted. Benefices had been
sold, or given away as a recompense for real or pretended ser-
vices, and without the slightest reference to the religious inter-
ests of the people, until the greater part were held by women
and married gentlemen. The abuse, indeed, had gone to such
a length that not infrequently the revenues of these churchly
endowments were conferred, in consequence of the efforts of
parents, upon their infant offspring yet unborn.1
There was no way to raise money but by recourse to the pro-
vincial states and to the clergy. But the provincial states, in-
stead of augmenting the contributions, loudly pro-
The provin- r
ciai states tested against the burdens already resting on the
poor people's neck. The Guises, greatly displeased
at the superior favor shown by the king to his minions, had
retired in disgust from Paris to their home.2 They now took
their revenge by stirring up the spirit of discontent, and thus,
while rendering the monarch unpopular, earned the reputation
of being the true friends of the oppressed.3 The States of
Burgundy, meeting at Dijon, were induced, through their ex-
ertions, to send deputies to court, and demand the reduction
of the taxes to the scale of the good old times of Louis the
Twelfth. The demand was certainly unreasonable, since it
took no account of the altered state of affairs in Europe, since
the great influx of the precious metals from America, and the
consequent rise of the price of all commodities, and ignored
the great increase in the necessary expenses of war and of the
civil administration. None the less was the cry a very popu-
lar one. It came also from the deputies of the States of Nor-
mandy ; and here it was accompanied by a terrible indictment
of the cruel system under which the wretched victims of op-
! " Jusques aux enfans ausquels lesdits benefices se trouvoient le plus sou-
vent affectes, estans encores en la matrice de leurs meres.'' Lestoile, i. 97.
2 Ibid., i. 100.
3 See the very important letter of Saracini, July 7, 1578, Negociations avec
la Toscane, iv. 175, 176. " Poi die con questa arte e invenzione per loro si
acquistano la benevolenza de' popoli, e Sua Maesta il sollevamente e la ribel-
lione."
182 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OP NAVARRE. Ch. IIL
pression were ground into the very dust. The representative
of the three orders drew a vivid picture of the villagers, bare-
headed and prostrate, half famished, without a shirt for the
back or shoes on the feet, looking more like corpses dragged
from their graves than like living men, and in their desperation
raising their hands and their voices to ask what must be the
term of patient submission to the intolerable load. " How
long," said they, " shall the licentious soldier, with the knowl-
edge and under the eyes of the officers of justice, after having
devoured and dissipated our entire substance, and stolen and
carried off our household stuff, insult with impunity our wives
and daughters, and maltreat our children in our very presence ?
How long shall evil counsel persuade the king that he can
endlessly and beyond all bounds levy taxes in defiance of the
privileges and laws of this province, and without asking the
consent of the people ? How long shall flattery have such
weight as to give him to understand that he is holden to no
laws, and owes no respect to his coronation oath or to compacts
made with his subjects, against the law of nations and the
constitutions of the emperors ? Will not the inventors of
edicts pernicious to the king's estate and the public repose
remember that God, who is superior to kings, can hurl them
into the abyss, as He knows well how, when it pleases Him,
to remove kingdoms and monarchies wherein iniquity abounds
and justice is buried out of sight? according as He threatens
in Hosea, chapter twelfth, ' Auferam regem, inquit, in indig-
natione mea.' " !
There was much sober sense in these complaints ; there were
hints of possible dangers impending over the monarchy which
1 The sentences translated in the text are but a few of the striking passages
occurring in Clerel's address, in behalf of the three orders of Normandy, to
M. de Carouges. The address is appended to a letter purporting to give to a
gentleman of Burgundy a detailed account of the proceedings of the provincial
estates of Normandy, held at Rouen in November, 1578. Cimber et Danjou,
Archives curieuses, ix. 263-283. Whether from modesty or from fear, Clerel
resolutely refused to accede to the desire of his fellow deputies that he should
put his burning words upon paper ; so that the reporter was forced to draw
upon his memory.
1578. THE CONFERENCE OF NERAC. 183
Henry would do well to heed. But in his anxiety for money —
money which he must have from some source or other to lav-
ish upon his dogs and his favorites — his ears were deaf to the
growing murmurs of the people ; or if he heard them at all,
it was some consolation to him to know that his former boon
The Duke of companion — Henry of Guise — that insidious rival
Guise's debts. wj1Q wag R0W biding so high for popularity, was
even more hopelessly embarrassed than his majesty. His
debts already amounted to scarcely less than a million livres,
and were rapidly increasing. In his frantic effort to diminish
the crushing load, he had lately sold to a frugal German soldier
of fortune one of his choicest possessions.1
As if to aggravate the misery of the kingdom, the Duke of
Anjou had assumed the support of the Dutch in their struggle
against Philip the Second, arrogating to himself the high-
sounding title of " Defender of the Liberty of the Nether-
lands." 2 Now it was a characteristic of the fortunes of this
most unlucky of princes, that he never by any chance touched
The Duke of a thing but he spoiled it, or drew a person to his
Anjou' party without involving him in ruin. Under pre-
tence of levying troops to serve in the Low Countries under
his banner, great bands of " vagabonds, robbers, and mur-
derers " now took the field in Champagne and pillaged on the
right and on the left. The wretched villagers declared that
the very Turks would not have treated them worse. "Were
the Duke of Anjou," wrote one of the witnesses of these dis-
orders, " to live a hundred years, he would never have so many
happy days as he has had curses from the people of France.
I pray God that he may not reap disaster for the imprecations
which the desperate people of his nation have uttered against
him by reason of the evil done by those who held the country
under his authority." 3
1 Gaspard de Schomberg, whom we shall meet later as one of the chief ne-
gotiators of the Edict of Nantes, purchased for 380,000 livres the duke's earl-
dom of Nanteuil-le-Haudouin. Lestoile, under date of September 15, 1578, ii.
103.
2 Motley, Dutch Republic, iii. 344.
3 Memoires de Claude Haton, ii. 937, etc., 961.
184 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OP NAVARRE. Ch. III.
About this time an incident occurred that brings into strong
relief the incongruities resulting unavoidably from the absurd
attempt of the Roman pontiff to occupy at the same moment
singular com- the two positions of head of the papal church and
comtat1 ve- temporal prince of territories acknowledging his juris-
diction. With the return of peace to France in gen-
eral, no peace had come to the Comtat Venaissin, where the
reluctance of the vice-legate to make any concessions to Prot-
estants threatened to postpone indefinitely the close of the war.
At length, however, the Protestants and the Roman Catholics,
tired of the endless confusion, came to a parley at Nismes, in
November, 1578. Thore and Francois de Coligny were the
representatives of the Protestants, while Guillaume de Patris,
the vice-legate's deputy, and the Cardinal of Armagnac appeared
for the Roman Catholics. The agreement that was reached
accorded to all persons complete religious liberty. No one was
to be molested on account of any religious views he might
hold. The Protestants were guaranteed the enjoyment of all
the property, offices, or dignities of which they had been de-
prived. It was even stipulated that the inhabitants of Cabri-
eres, and other victims of the murderous attacks which had
rendered the names of the villages on the banks of the Durance
famous for all time, should be regarded as included in the treaty,
and permission was granted them to prosecute their claims for
the restitution of their goods before referees appointed by both
parties to arbitrate between them. Provision was made for an
equitable sale of the property of any Protestants that might;
desire to emigrate, while those who preferred to remain were
expressly exempted from the jurisdiction, both civil and crimi-
nal, of the pope's judges, as of persons of doubtful impartiality.
Their cases of law were to be tried before the Chamber of
Nismes, in the first instance, and by the " Chambre tri-partie "
of Languedoc, on appeal, the judges in both chambers acting
in the name of his holiness, and not in that of the King of
France. But the most remarkable article of all wTas one in
which it was conceded that, in case any Protestant should be
disturbed in the enjoyment of his property situated in the
Comtat, he might apply to any of the judges of the French
1578. THE CONFERENCE OF NERAC. 185
king, and, upon a simple requisition, be placed in possession of
whatever lands belonging to a papal subject might lie within
the bounds of the court's jurisdiction.1 Strange as it may seem,
this singular compact was ratified not only by the three estates
of the Comtat and by Henry the Third, but even by the pope
himself. For Gregory the Thirteenth published, on the seventh
of February, 1579, a bull expressly approving all that had been
done. Thus did the same pontiff that had exhibited extrava-
gant glee at the news of the wholesale massacre of St. Bartholo-
mew's Day, and authorized Yasari to paint its bloody scenes on
the walls of the Vatican palace, with a record of the explicit
approval of the pope, the same pontiff that had urged Charles
the Ninth to pursue his pious work of murder even to the de-
struction of the last Huguenot in the realm, now suffer the
claims of expediency to outweigh the demands of a consistent
but sanguinary theory. Such were the results of the attempt
of the Bishop of Home to exercise, at one and the same time, a
universal episcopate and a secular lordship. The pope, acting
as the pretended vicegerent of God, might demand of the kings
of the earth that they should wage unrelenting warfare against
the enemies of the Almighty, and endeavor to frighten them
into compliance by holding up the punishment incurred by
Saul because he spared the Amalekites as a fearful warning
against disobedience. But the pope, acting as master of a
petty district, was careful not to put into practice the lessons
1 This article is, however, as De Thou observes, only a repetition of the
forty-fourth of the secret articles of Bergerac adopted in the previous year,
wherein the King of France promised to any Protestants of the Comtat that
might be hindered in the enjoyment of their property within that district,
"leur pourvoir sur les biens que les autres sujets de ladite ville d1 Avignon et
Comtat ont es terres et pais de son obeissance, par lettres de marque et repre-
Piille, lesquelles seront a cette fin adressees aux juges ausquels de droit la con-
ii tissanee en appartient " Du Mont, Corps diplomatique, v. 311. It is inter-
esting to notice that this singular feature in French jurisprudence was even
perpetuated in the Edict of Nantes (1598). The fifty-first of the secret articles
of Nantes directly refers to and confirms the forty-ninth (forty-fourth) secret
article of 1577, and merely provides that no "letters of marque" shall be
issued by way of reprisal, save by letters patent of the king, sealed with his
great seal. Text ia Weiss, Histoire des Refugies Protestants de France, pieces
justificatives, ii. 377, and Anquez, Histoire des Assemblies Politiques, 495.
186 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. III.
he had given to others, and not only spared the lives of the
" accursed heretics," but even gave guarantees of an extraordi-
nary kind for the protection of their property. What would a
scoffing world say respecting papal sincerity on discovering that,
besides the sufficiently scandalous articles of the public compact,
there was a secret article that bound the burgesses of Roman
Catholic Avignon to pay yearly to the burgesses of Huguenot
Orange the sum of six thousand crowns, partly as a compensa-
tion for the injuries the latter city had received, partly as relief
in view of the garrison which Orange was compelled to main-
tain ? J
Meanwhile the unsettled condition of Southern France, a re-
gion to which treaties the most solemnly drawn up seemed im-
potent to restore tranquillity, called for new efforts of diplomacy.
These Catharine de' Medici, never more in her element than
when engaged in a conflict of cajolery and intrigue, did not
hesitate to put forth. She found a good pretext for a journey
to Guyenne in the maternal duty of conducting Margaret of
Valois to her husband, from whom she had been separated ever
since Henry made his memorable escape from court. Although
it may well be believed that the King of Xavarre, to whom the
morals of his frail spouse were no secret, had little disposition
to take her back, the possible advantages to be derived from a
conference were too obvious to permit him to decline the meet-
ing. Mother-in-law and son now saw each other again, after
an absence of more than three years (August, 1578). Both
came well prepared for the encounter of shrewdness and wit.
Henry brought his good native sense, his cheerful and light-
hearted disposition, which often concealed sober truth under
the guise of the flippant remark or scoffing jest. Catharine,
in addition to a keen intellect, fertile in devices to suit every
emergency, brought with her that galaxy of youthful beauty
which she was accustomed to call her flying squadron, and
upon the effectiveness of whose charms she counted scarcely
less than upon the learning and persuasiveness of Pibrac and
other clever diplomatists of her suite.
1 De Thou, v. 544, 545.
1578. THE CONFERENCE OF NERAC. 187
Next to the conversion of Henry of Navarre to the Roman
Catholic faith, the queen mother had nothing more at heart
than to induce him to consent to the restoration of the cities
conference ne^ by tne Huguenots as pledges before the expira-
ofNerac. tjon 0f tne appointed term. She was as likely to
fail of the one as of the other object. Henry, with all his
profuse expressions of willingness to receive instruction, cer-
tainly had no intention of forsaking Protestantism again until
he could secure some greater prize than Catharine could offer
at the present time. As to the cities he was equally deaf to
entreaty. It would be sheer madness to give up the only secu-
rities the Huguenots possessed for the execution of the treaty,
when the frequent and persistent violations of its provisions
demonstrated how little their late enemies were inclined to
respect their own promises or to permit the king to keep his.
Catharine and her nymphs forgot no art to break down the
resolution of the outspoken and somewhat obstinate soldiers,
who, having struck and borne hard blows in the fight to win
liberty to worship God, were in no mood to throw away such
advantages as they might possess in the not improbable con-
tingency of a new war forced upon them by treacherous foes.
Catharine and her maids of honor had spent hours in labori-
ously training their tongues to counterfeit the biblical phrase-
ology in which they supposed these religious men by preference
indulged — " consistorial " turns of expression, as the queen
mother styled them. They could talk glibly of " the counsel
of Gamaliel ; " they could exclaim with mock fervor, " How
beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace ! "
They called the king with effusion, " the Lord's anointed, the
image of the living God ; " and had at their tongues' end vari-
ous passages from St. Peter's epistles in favor of the powers
that be. Their very ejaculations were scriptural: "The Lord
judge betwixt me and thee ! " "I call the everlasting God to
witness." " Before God and His angels." It was all very well,
only the pupils were too eager to display their proficiency in
the lessons they conned, not without bursts of laughter, every
evening in Catharine's bedchamber. They found that the
" language of Canaan," as they called it, imposed upon no one ;
188 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. IIL
least of all upon men who read more of the Bible every day
of the week than these fine ladies had read in their entire
lives.
One day M. de Pibrac was brought out to make an oration
of the kind wherewith he had once cheated the credulous Poles.
With consummate art he strove to convince the Huguenots of
the beauty of such an implicit confidence in their king as the sur-
render of their cities of refuge would evidence. His illustra-
tions were profuse, drawn from Muscovy, Turkey, Persia, and
whatever other quarter might furnish examples of subjects that
joyfully laid down their lives for their so verign. It was grand ;
it was pathetic. The ladies wiped their eyes, and Catharine
dramatically cried : " Ah, my friends, let us give God the glory !
Let us cause the rod of iron to fall from His hands ! " But
when she turned to the group of Huguenot veterans sitting
calm and motionless before the orator, and triumphantly asked
them, " What can you say in reply? " the governor of Figeac,
one M. La Meausse, upon whom she happened to rest her eyes,
promptly answered : " I say, madam, that the gentleman over
there has conned his lessons well ; but to pay for his studies
with our throats is a thing of which we cannot understand the
reasonableness." '
The discussions were long and lively. The negotiation
dragged through some months. When it threatened to become
monotonous, variety was occasionally supplied by messengers
announcing some new act of treachery or of retaliation. One
evening a month or two after Catharine's arrival, a grand ball
was given in her honor in the city of Auch. Henry of Navarre,
Viscount Turenne, and young; Sully were among the
Henry of Na- . • . ° * °
varre surpris- dancers. The king's enjoyment of the festivities was,
es Fleurance. , ° J j , r- • j i
however, somewhat marred by a mend who came
and whispered in his ear a piece of news just received. It was
to the effect that La Reolle, an important place on the northern
1 " Je dis, ma dame, que monsieur que voila a bien estudie ; mais de paier
ses estudes de nos gorges nous n'en pouvons comprendre la raison." Agrippa
d'Aubigne, ii. 337. It must be admitted that La Meausse's retort well deserved
an honorable place in the celebrated chapter of the " Confession catholique du
Sieur de Sancy," entitled " de l'lmpudence des Huguenots "
1579. THE CONFERENCE OF NERAC. 189
bank of the Garonne, and one of the cities pledged to the Prot-
estants in the Edict of Poitiers, had been betrayed to the Ro-
man Catholics by its Huguenot governor — an absurd old man who
had fallen in love with one of the queen mother's maids. Con-
cealing his vexation, Henry of Navarre managed to withdraw
from the crowd, and, hastily gathering about him his most
trusty companions, took horse that very hour. His band was
not large, but it was well mounted, and, long before that October
night was past, he had reached and taken by surprise the walled
town of Fleurance, or Florence, twelve or fourteen miles farther
down the Gers. The only loss of the Huguenots was of a fa-
vorite page of the king. The next morning, Catharine de' Med-
ici, who had not missed the Huguenot party, was not a little as-
tonished to hear of its exploit. " Ah ! " she said, laughing and
shaking her head, " I see that this is Navarre's revenge for La
Reolle. He wished to pay me for wThat I have done, but I have
made more than he has by the exchange" — or, in her own
words, for wThich the English furnishes no exact equivalent,
" Le roi de Navarre a voulu faire chou pour chou ; mais le mien
est mieux pomme." '
The court, and the foreign diplomatists too, held up their
hands in amazement at the " exorbitant " demands of the Hu-
guenots, who went so far as to claim for Henry of Navarre per-
fect freedom in the government of the province of Guyenne,
with no interference on the part of Marshal Biron.2 But in
1 Memoires de Sully, i. 73 (chap. 10) ; Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. 334, 335. The
correspondence of Henry himself, contained in the first volume of Xivrey,
Lettres missives de Henri IV., shows that the romantic adventure of the text
occurred not in August, but in October, 1578, between the 17th and 28th. A
brief note to M. de Batz, apparently written on the morning of the day of the
attack upon Fleurance, proves that Henry had for some time contemplated
the movement, and had carefully made his preparations for it. The note itself
presents to view the most attractive side of the writer's character. " C'est mer-
veille," he says, "que la diligence de vostre homme et la vostre. Tant pis que
n'ayez praticque personne du dedans a, Florence, la meilleure place m'est trop
chere du sang d'un de mes amis. Ceste mesme nuict je vous joindray et y
seront les bons de mes braves. Henry.'' Lettres missives, i. 202.
2 Saracini to the grand duke, March 2, 1579, Negociations avec la Toscane,
iv. 247.
190 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. IIL
the end the Huguenots carried most of their points. Catharine,
it is said, saw the necessity of making friends of them in order
Results of the to counterbalance the growing power of the Guises
conference. an(j 0f Spain# Another treaty was arranged in twenty-
seven articles, embodying a more favorable interpretation of the
preceding treaties, and granting the Protestants the right to build
churches and raise funds for the support of their ministers.
Instead of their being compelled to give up the places already
held as a pledge for their security, the number of places was
actually increased. Fourteen cities — three in Guyenne and the
remainder in Languedoc — were intrusted to them to keep until
the autumn of the same year ; and Henry of Yalois engaged to
pay to them thirty-six thousand livres tournois monthly for the
Huguenot garrisons, that so the inhabitants might be spared
from the exactions of the soldiery.1
This was not the only instance in which the King of France
was forced to make concessions. Much as Henry hated the
Protestants, it was his lot to see his own real interests
Geneva under f or the most part bound up with the fortunes of those
his protection. . ,.. . -iii-i i
whose religious views he had been taught to detest.
The great errors of his reign are, with few exceptions, traceable
to the neglect or violation of the self-evident necessity of mak-
ing friends and allies of the Huguenots. In the matter of the
city of Geneva, Henry found himself not a little embarrassed
how to act. If he looked at the question from the religious
side, the little republic on Lake Leman seemed to be the very
embodiment of everything from which his soul revolted. The
home of Calvin had lost, since the great reformer's death, none
of its singular pre-eminence as the virtual capital of continental
1 Text in Du Mont, Corps diplomatique, v. 337-341. The articles of Nerac
were signed by Catharine and Navarre in February, and were ratified by Henry
III. March 19, 1579. The instructions given to royal commissioners now de-
spatched throughout the kingdom, to inquire into and apply a remedy to the
prevailing malversations and disorders, are printed in theMemoires de Nevers,
i. 605, etc. The cities of Bazas, Puymirol, and Figeac, in Guyenne, were to
be held by the King of Navarre until the last day of August, and no longer ;
the cities of Revel, Briatexte, Alet Sainte Agreve, Baix, Bagnols, Alais, Lunel,
Sommieres, Aimargues, and Gignac, in the province of Languedoc, were to be
held a month longer. See article xvii.
1579. PROTECTION EXTENDED TO GENEVA. 191
Protestantism. Inferior to Calvin in intellectual endowments
Beza might be, but he was more of a man of the world, and,
with the reputation of elegant literary accomplishments and elo-
quence, he was regarded, both by friends and by foes, as having
justly fallen heir to the marvellous influence of his great pred-
ecessor. The theological school under his care wTas the most
celebrated institution of its kind. It was still from Geneva
that France was supplied with those reformed preachers whose
instructions had as magic an effect in nerving the arms of
Huguenot soldiers to deeds of valor as in implanting heroic
endurance in the hearts of weak women and children. Geneva,
in short, was, in the eyes of the pope and of the fanatical clergy
of France, the nest of heresy which it behooved the Yery Chris-
tian kings and all other Roman Catholic princes, above every-
thing else, to destroy. " It were to be desired," wrote Henry of
Yalois himself, three years later, " that the city of Geneva had
long since been reduced to ashes, because of the seed of bad
doctrine which it has scattered abroad through many parts of
Christendom, whence have ensued infinite evils, ruins, and ca-
lamities, and more in my kingdom than in any other place." '
But from a political point of view the safety and independ-
ence of Geneva concerned the French crown intimately. Ge-
neva in the hands of the Duke of Savoy would be a perpetual
menace to the French frontier. The city held the key to the
most practicable passage for the Swiss mercenaries upon whose
aid the crown principally depended, now that the armed sup-
port of feudal dependants had become so insufficient and un-
certain. Besides, the Swiss themselves recognized in Geneva
an indispensable bulwark of their own cantons ; and Roman
Catholic Soleure, not less than Protestant Berne, stoutly refused
to approve of any plan that did not include Geneva in the
ancient alliance between the Swiss and the French monarchy.
The king himself was forced to take the same ground. " Ge-
neva," he wrote in the letter which has just been quoted, "is so
situated that it could not be reduced to obedience by any prince
1 Henry III. to Mandelot and Hautefort, March 13, 1582, in Henri Fazy,
Geneve, le Parti Huguenot et le Traite de Soleure, 122.
192 THE HUGUENOTS AKD HENRY OF NAVARRE. Cu. Ill
among ray neighbors but that he would hold in subjection the
Swiss confederates and place them at his mercy ; for it would
be in his power — if he held the Pas de l'Ecluse, which he
would incontinently fortify — to prevent my rendering aid to the
Swiss in their need, or their coming to my succor and service
when I might summon them." '
Long and anxiously did Henry debate the matter with him-
self, setting over against the advantages to be expected from
the alliance the denunciations in which the preachers of the
League would be sure to indulge of a king that made himself the
champion of obstinate heretics. In the end, he concluded, on
the eighth of May, 1579, the memorable treaty in accordance
with which he formally took Geneva under his protection.
His apprehensions were fully realized in the loud outcry raised
by the parish priests and monks.2 A king that threw the mantle
of his guardianship around Geneva, a king whose brother was
supposed by everyone to be as good as married to Queen Eliza-
beth,3 could not expect to escape the censure of the bigoted.
For Henry the Third was now reaping, in merited distrust
and contempt, the ordinary fruit of insincerity and duplicity ;
while so clumsv were his attempts to purchase the
The devotions ", -i i • i
of Henry of favor of the priesthood, and atone by his devotions
Valois. r
for the baseness of a life more and more suspected
of infamous excess, that he rarely failed to create opposition
and hatred where he sought to conciliate friendship. The
1 Henry III. to Mandelot and Hautefort, ubi supra, 122, 123. The preamble
of the Treaty of Soleure itself sets forth the importance of Geneva — " pour
estre icelle ville de Geneve l'une des clefs et principal boulevart du pays des-
dictes villes, et qui peult tenir le passage libre et ouvert entre sadicte Majeste
et lesdicts Seigneurs des Ligues." Ibid., 190.
2 Traite perpetuel fait par Henri III., roi de France, avec les villes de Ge-
neve, Berne et Soleure. Du Mont, Corps diplomatique, v. 347-349 ; and Fazy,
190-206. De Thou, v. 619, 620. The Duke of Nevers defends Henry's
catholicity in the transaction in his "Traite des causes et des.raisons de la
prise des armes," Memoires, ii. 38. (Cimber et Danjou, xiii. 65.)
3 In this same month the Florentine agent wrote to his master that the Duke
of Alencon said : " Che era per la Dio grazia maritato ; e che ne restava molto
contento, poiche questo gli avveniva con satisfazione della Maesta, del Re e
della Regina sua madre." Saracini to grand duke, May 31, 1579; Negocia-
tions avec la Toscane, iv. 257.
1579. PROTECTION EX I ENDED TO GENEVA. 193
priests laughed in their sleeves when he sent to Chartres for a
shirt for himself, and a similar garment for his wife, upon
which the Holy Yirgin's blessing had been conferred,1 and
when, a few days later, the young queen herself went in pil-
grimage to the same famous shrine to supplicate that Our Lady
would deign to grant her the long-desired boon of a son to be
heir to the kingdom.2 The same ecclesiastics applauded when,
on the first of January, 1579, the king instituted the new Order
of the Holy Ghost (Ordre du Saint-Esprit) ; for, if one cause of
the institution was the circumstance that the insignia of the
Order of Saint Michael had been so lavishly conferred as to be-
come " a collar for all manner of beasts," 3 another was un-
doubtedly the desire to strengthen the hold of the Eoman
Catholic religion upon the courtiers by rigidly excluding all
heretics from the circle of the king's favorites.4 Yet even here
Henry contrived to offend the clergy by proposing to assign to
each member an income of ten thousand crowns a year to be
taken from the revenues of the church — a plan to which Pope
Gregory the Thirteenth refused his consent, and which called
forth murmurs of disapprobation from the preachers.5
If the king's devotions were received with suspicion or de-
rision by the people, it was certainly not because of any lack of
popular superstition in the lower classes of society. A violent
superstition, earthquake occurring about this time in Central
France was at first believed by many to be the sign of the
approaching end of the world. At once various pilgrimages
were set on foot in town and in country. Among other public
demonstrations, a notable procession took place in the city of
Tours, under the auspices of the whole body of the clergy and
the civil judges. The people were all there, says a contem-
1 Lestoile, under date of January 23, 1579, i. 113.
2 Saracini to grand duke, February 3, 1579, Negociations avec la Toscane,
iv. 240.
3 " Collier a toutes bestes," Lestoile, i. 110, 111.
4 See "Les Ceremonies observees a ^institution de l'ordre du Saint-Esprit,"
apud Cimber et Danjou, Archives curieuses, ix. 289-302.
5 One of them, Dr. Bruslart, was put in the Bastile. Journal d'un cure
ligueur (Jehan de la Fosse), 152, 153.
Vol. I.— 13
194 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. Ill
porary chronicler, without exception of age or sex, and even
to young children. All assembled in their parish churches,
whence they proceeded to the great church of Saint Martin of
Tours. Here the procession formed, with the priests carrying
the bones of the patron saint and other relics held in scarcely
less reverence, and marched out of the city. " In it," to use
the words of the appreciative cure of Meriot, " there were more
'than three hundred persons with body, head, feet, and hands
naked, having before them but a simple sheet or cloth to cover
their parts of shame. Some, by way of penance, carried great
bars of iron upon their shoulders, others thick pieces of wood.
The priests all walked barefoot and very simply clad." This
was in midwinter — the twenty-sixth of January.1 So far from
being likely to undervalue any sincere act of devotion, the peo-
ple seemed sometimes to outdo even their priests in zeal. Of
this the inhabitants of the village of Courlons, not far from
Provins, gave a signal proof. Desirous of obtaining from
heaven a cessation of the destructive frosts that threatened their
vineyards, the peasants petitioned their priest to order a pro-
cession, after vespers, to a chapel in a remote part of his
parish. The indolent curate granted the request, but substi-
tuted a somewhat nearer place of worship, to which, after
vespers were said, he led the way with his vicar. But scarce
was the procession out of the village, when the people, turning
their backs upon their chief ecclesiastic, directed their steps
toward the place which they had themselves originally chosen.
In the quarrel that ensued the parish priest was severely han-
dled for his laziness ; indeed, a few of the more enthusiastic
members of his flock at length lost all patience, and deliber-
ately seizing him, carried him to the bank of the neighboring
Yonne, and threw him into the stream, where he nearly lost
his life.2
The summer of 1579 witnessed important convocations of
both of the religions, now and long marshalled with so hostile
a front in France. The Roman Catholic clergy, suspicious, not
J Memoires de Claude Haton, ii. 973, 974.
8 Ibid., ii. 977.
1579. PROTECTION EXTENDED TO GENEVA. 195
without fair reasons, of the intentions of the king in conven-
ing them, had absolutely declined to meet in the capital, and
had made out a list of places, all of them, it was
the clergy to hoped, sufficiently removed from court influences to
permit them to exercise some independence of action.
They also insisted that no cardinal or archbishop should have
a seat in the assembly, because these dignitaries had had too
much to do with those previous levies made upon the church,
in which great abuses had been experienced. The king selected
Melun for the seat of the clergy's deliberations, whence he sub-
sequently brought them to Paris. But in neither place did he
find the members very tractable. They complained that not
less than twenty-eight of the French bishoprics had been left
vacant in order that laymen might enjoy the revenues. As to
other ecclesiastical benefices, if we can place any reliance upon
the statements made by the Bishop of Bazas in a remonstrance
addressed to the monarch in the name of his order, France
would seem to have bid fair soon to rival Germany and Eng-
land in the secularization of the property of religious institu-
tions. In certain families abbacies and benefices had come to
be regarded as among the chattels which father handed down to
son, and the royal council itself had lately adjudged a bishopric
to a woman of rank. The clergy declared that the road to reform
lay in the adoption of the decrees of the Council of Trent. Not
content with this, they enraged the king by demanding the repeal
of that profitable Concordat of Leo the Tenth and Francis the
First which had thrown almost the whole patronage into the hands
of the crown ;* while they infuriated the people by deliberately
resolving that the clergy had already paid enough of the state's
debts, in accordance with the contracts of Poissy (1561). 2 "When
the news of the refusal to assist the king in his desperate straits
reached the populace of Paris, the tiers etat, having no mind
to receive upon its neck the burden which the priests coolly
proposed to transfer thither from their own shoulders, nearly
brought on a riot in the streets of the capital. It was averted
by the prompt and somewhat arbitrary action of the Parliament
1 See the Rise of the Huguenots, i. 35-41. s Ibid., i., 543.
196 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. IIL
of Paris in summoning to its bar all the members of the convo-
cation then within reach, and threatening with arrest any who
should attempt to flee. In the end, Henry secured a renewal of
the ecclesiastical tithes for the term of ten years, and thus ap-
peased the people.1
While the convocation protracted its sessions through the
summer and autumn, the Tenth ^National Synod of the Re-
formed Churches met at Figeac in Quercv on the
Tenth Na- "
tionai synod, second of August, and adjourned six davs later. Its
Fig6ac, 1579. . , J n /
deliberations, however, except so far as they respected
the constant solicitude of the Huguenots for the thorough edu-
cation of candidates for the sacred ministry, and the effort to
secure regular yearly meetings of the highest ecclesiastical court
of the Reformed Church, contained little of permanent inter-
est. How ineffectual any provision for periodical sessions of
the national synods must prove, in the unsettled condition of
France, appears from the circumstance that the plan was de-
feated from the very first by the outbreak of the war of which
I must soon speak.2
The preludes of these new hostilities now claim our atten-
tion. The Treaty of Nerac, we have seen, had conceded to the
Huguenots fourteen places in Guyenne and Langue-
Preludes of ° *■
newhostiii- doc as securitv for the faithful fulfilment of the
(ties.
promises made to them. These places, unlike those
granted by the peace of Poitiers and Bergerac, were to be
restored at the end of six months. By that time it was pre-
sumed that tranquillity might be completely established. As
the term approached, the question as to the conduct of the
Huguenots became more and more difficult. Clearly the ob-
ject for which the cities had been put in their custody was not
1 Saracini to the grand duke, October 5, 1579, Negociations avec la Toscane,
iv. 269 ; Memoires de Claude Haton, ii. 980-983 ; De Thou, v. 616-619 ; also,
see Ranke (Amer. edit.), 311.
5 See the acts of the National Synod of Figeac, Aymon, i. 138-145. The
numerous prescriptions regarding marriage, and the repeated prohibitions of
dancing (a practice that would seem, from the thirty-second article of the suc-
ceeding Synod of La Rochelle, 1581 , to have been rather increasing than di-
minishing), need not be inserted in these pages.
1579. APPROACH OF WAR. 197
attained. The peace was no better observed since than before
the convention of Nerac. In no province of the kingdom, in
scarcely a point of the compact, was there an attempt to carry
out the provisions conscientiously. Fresh places belonging to
the Huguenots had been lawlessly captured by the court.
Everywhere justice was denied to the Huguenots by the ordi-
nary tribunals, while tedious delays had attended and, thus
far, frustrated the institution of the " chambres tri-parties "
which should have been erected for their special protection.
Liberty of worship was denied to them ; and if their children
were sent to the schools to which they were guaranteed admis-
sion on equal terms with the children of Roman Catholics,
they found the doors closed to them unless they would consent
to abjure the faith of their parents. The peace was only an
" appearance," an " imagination," a " fantasy," an exemplifica-
tion of hope long deferred.1 Almost at the very moment when
their national synod was calmly deliberating upon matters of
doctrine and practice at Figeac, the Huguenots had called at
Montauban, scarcely more than fifty miles distant, one of their
national political assemblies, to consult respecting the grave
crisis in their affairs. The deputies were much excited. There
were not wanting those that counselled an instant rising in
arms, should the king attempt to recover by force the towns
intrusted to the Protestants. But the majority was more tem-
perate, and agreed that the King of Navarre be requested to
resort to war only in case fresh remonstrances addressed to the
crown failed to bring redress of Protestant grievances. All
were of one mind regarding the impossibility of restoring the
pledged cities. The court wits, never loath to make the Prot-
estant ministers of the gospel responsible for any unpopular
advice, would have it that the preachers had persuaded the Hu-
guenot chiefs to this course of action by reminding them of the
old maxim that it is the worst of symptoms when the sick man
no longer retains the food he requires for his nourishment.2
1 Anquez, Histoire des assemblies politiques des reformos de France, 28, 29.
2 " Dicono clie i loro ministri o predicatori li abbiano dissuasi. adducendo
che era pessimo segno nell' infermo, quando non mostrava vista di ritenere
198 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. III.
In vain did the king send Damville, who, since the death of
his excellent brother Francois, in May, 1579, had succeeded to
the honored name of Montmorency. Henry of Navarre came
to meet him at Mazeres, on the borders of the old principality
of Foix, but in view of the little attention paid by the Roman
Catholics to the prescriptions of the recent treaties, declined to
surrender the small security which the Protestants still held
against the sudden attacks of their enemies. Indeed, convinced
that the outbreak of war could not long be postponed, the
King of Navarre took measures to render the conflict prompt
and decisive. "With this end in view, he broke a number of
gold coins in equal pieces, and gave or sent a fragment to Fran-
cois de Coligny in Languedoc, to Lesdiguieres in Dauphiny,
and to other Protestant chieftains in the provinces, bidding
them to receive and act without hesitation upon any command
respecting the time and manner of conducting hostilities that
might hereafter be brought from him by messengers accred-
ited by the possession of the fragments of the corresponding
coins.1
The expected signal was not long deferred. In times of in-
tense feeling even a slight provocation suffices to fire the train
long since laid, and, when once the explosion has taken place, it
becomes difficult, if not impossible, to apportion with accuracy
the amount of responsibility belonging to the respective parties.
The Huguenots had given the King of France many occasions
for entertaining anger. The important city of Mende, capital
of the district of Gevaudan, had been surprised by a Huguenot
partisan leader on Christmas night, and, although the King of
Navarre promptly disowned the act, the place had not been re-
quel cibo clie doveva sostentarlo. " Saracini to the grand duke, August 16,
1579, Negotiations avec la Toscane, iv. 263.
1 De Thou, v. 612, 613, is to be corrected by the more exact researches of
the industrious Benedictine author of the ponderous Histoire general de Lan-
guedoc, v. 643. The meeting of Mazeres was not, as the French translator of
De Thou makes it, an assembly of the Protestant churches, and it took place
in December, not a month earlier. The incident of the distribution of the
broken coins occurred not at Mazeres, as De Thou relates, but at a political
assembly of the Huguenots held in Montauban, in January or February, 1580.
Agrippa dAubigne's account, ii. 338, 339 (liv. iv. c. 3), is accurate.
1580. THE SEVENTH CIVIL WAR. 199
stored to the royal officers. Moreover, the Prince of Conde,
tired of his retreat at Saint Jean d'Angely, had by a bold
movement thrown himself into La Fere, and thus secured at
least a small part of Picardy — that refractory province with the
titular government of which he had so long been forced to remain
content. Great had been the indignation of the French king
on hearing of the audacious blow struck by the younger Bour-
bon, and he had scarcely been prevented from proceeding at
once to open hostilities by the entreaties of his mother, re-en-
forced by the plausible justification of the culprit and the in-
tercession of the King of Navarre. Indeed, the latter, not
without reason, gave Henry to understand that nothing could
have occurred more likely to prove advantageous to the lasting
interests of the crown than his cousin's presence in the heart of
that very province where, four years before, had been laid the
first foundations of the pernicious Catholic League.1 But,
more than anything else, the King of France and his counsel-
lors resented the persistent refusal of the Huguenots to restore
the fourteen cities of security placed in their hands for six
months only, in accordance with the articles of Nerac. On the
other hand, the Huguenots declared that, to their great regret,
it was impossible for them to satisfy the king's requisition
without exposing themselves to manifest ruin; for they had
gathered none of those fruits of quiet and safety of which the
cities pledged to them were intended to be the earnest. " Inas-
much," said they, " as these cities have been intrusted to the
guardianship of men that are no other than your very faithful
and natural French subjects, your majesty ought not to take the
matter to heart as though they were kept back by Spaniards,
1 "Prevoyant qu'en ceste province, en laquelle se sont jectez les premiers
f ondemens de ligue, il pourroit advenir par leur accroissement beaueoup de de-
sordre a, l'Estat, je m'asseure, Monseigneur, que pour en arrester le cours, rien
ne pourroit tant servir que la presence de mon diet cousin." Henry of Navarre
to Henry III., Nerac, January 24, 1580, Lettres missives, viii. (Supplement)
158. It is not a little significant of the real position of Catharine de' Medici,
as still swaying the destinies of France, that in a letter to her, of the same
date and on the same topic, the Kins: of Navarre inadvertently uses the ex-
pression " voz edictz, Madame." Ibid., viii. 159.
200 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. III.
Englishmen, or other foreigners. And in acting as we have
done, it is our belief that we have not failed of keeping our
engagements, since these were conditioned upon your majesty's
promise to carry your edict into operation." l
In the war that ensued the King of Navarre took the initia-
tive. The fifteenth of April was appointed as the time for a
general rising, and for a few days before this date the Bearnese
and his cousin were busy preparing and despatching letters in-
tended to vindicate their course in the eyes of the world.2
A long " declaration " published by the King of Navarre on
this occasion merits more than a passing notice ; for it sets in
a clear light the intolerable grievances to which the
Justification D ° .
of the King Jrrotestant churches, or whom he claimed to be the
of Navarre.
" protector, were subjected.
The Huguenots, said Henry, have not taken arms against
the person of their monarch, but have risen simply because, by
reason of continual infractions, the royal edict of pacification
has become illusory, and their condition worse than that of the
Jews in any land on the face of the globe, worse, indeed, than
that to which, as Protestants, they would be reduced in Mo-
hammedan Turkey or in the most barbarous of empires. In
the matter of public worship, the edict grants them a place for
their services in every bailiwick and senechaussee ; but, despite
frequent petitions, the provision remains unexecuted in most
instances. No places have been assigned in the four bailiwicks
of Champagne, none in Picardy, Anjou, Touraine, and other
provinces. In some cases the Huguenots have been silenced by
threats of massacre should they persevere in their demands.
1 u V. M., Monseigneur, ne le doibt prendre a desplaisir, comme sy elles
estoient detenues par Espaignols, Anglois ou aultres estrangers, et en cela ne
pensons non plus avoir manque a, nostre foy lyee a la precedente promesse
d'effectuer vostre edict, ainsi qu'elle est contenue aux articles de la confe-
rence." Henry of Navarre to Henry III., Maz?res, January 10, 1580, Lettres
missives, viii. (Supplement) 153.
1 See the letter of Conde to Lord Burleigh, from La Fere, April 12, 1580,
printed by the editors of the Journal of Lestoile (Collection Michaud et
Poujoulat\ i. 122, 123 ; and the letters of Henry of Navarre to the Earl of
Sussex (April 13). to the Noblesse of France (April 15), and to Henry III.
(April 20) in Lettres missives, i. 287-298.
1580. THE SEVENTH CIVIL WAR. 201
Where their enemies have deigned to concede a place for the
Protestant " preche," it has been purposely selected because of
its inconvenient situation. In the Pays de Caux, it is Cany— a
village that has not a single Protestant inhabitant ; for Meaux,
it is Moissard — a village five leagues distant, deep in the forest
of Crecy ; for Rouen, Caen, and Bourges, it is some hamlet so
remote as to preclude the attendance of the aged, as well as of
the women and the children ; as for Metz, the perils of floods
are added to the other difficulties. In short, if, after long and
vexatious delays, a place has been grudgingly granted, the
choice has always fallen upon some sorry and distant village,
near to a seditious population ready to massacre the poor Hu-
guenots, on some river to drown them, or in recesses of the
forests where their throats may be cut.1 Under these circum-
stances the worshippers are forced to fall back upon those
churches that may be established, not without hinderances of
every imaginable kind, in the houses of such nobles a6, under
the edict, enjoy the right to hold religious services on their
estates.
Nor are these the only annoyances to which the Huguenots
are exposed. They are pestered by the curates and the vicars
to bring their children to be baptized, to take, when near their
end, the sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church, to contribute
to the repair of ecclesiastical buildings. If advocates in Parlia-
ment or Chatelet, they are compelled to pay for masses and aid
the religious fraternities. In almost every city they must drape
their houses at the feast of Corpus Christi. The preachers are
permitted to indulge in violent and seditious counsels to their
hearers, whom they assure that fresh massacres are necessary,
that the Huguenots must be exterminated, that such acts of blood
are an agreeable sacrifice to God. No burial-grounds are granted
according to the prescriptions of the edict. The bodies of the
dead already buried are unearthed. So unjust are the officers
of the law, that even where the mixed chambers are established,
1 " On a tousjours choisi quelque mauvais village ecarte, pres des seditieux
pour massacrer les pauvres gens, sur quelque riviere pour les noyer, ou dedans
les bois et forests pour leur couper la gorge."
202 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. III.
the Roman Catholics who constitute two-thirds of the court
uniformly outvote the Protestant one-third. Cities that held
for the Huguenots in the late war have, from revenge, been
deprived of the exercise of justice. Protestants are excluded
from office ; their widows and orphan children can obtain no
satisfaction for the murder of the dearest of relations. " In
the city of Orleans, where by massacre, fire, and the greatest
and most barbarous of cruelties one of the finest and most
flourishing churches that ever existed in France has been re-
duced to ruin, the enemy still has his foot so firmly upon the
throats of those who, through weakness or fear, have returned
to the Romish religion, that they dare not say a word, or have
a single religious book in their possession." The Protestants
are caught and treated like brigands ; their cities are the objects
of lawless attack ; their property is pillaged ; their women are
shamefully insulted. As to their cities of refuge, they con-
tented themselves with the eight that were intrusted to their
keeping for six years, and the fourteen that they were to restore
in six months. But none of the engagements made with them
have been kept. Excluded from some of the cities to which
they sought to return, any Huguenots that have borne arms are
in perpetual danger. Leagues, fraternities, processions, intim-
idate them and remind them of possible massacres awaiting
them in the future.
Such was the picture drawn by Henry of Navarre of the in-
juries done to his fellow Huguenots — injuries to which they could
no longer submit without the prospect of entire ruin. His own
private wrongs and the wrongs of his cousin, the Prince of Conde,
in the retention of cities belonging to them of right, and in the
exclusion of the prince from his government of Picardy, were
set forth in detail, but the particulars need not be repeated here.1
1 ' ' Declaration et protestation du roy de Navarre, sur les justes occasions
qui l'ont meu de prendre les armes, pour la defense et tuition des Eglises
reformees de France. Imprime nouvellement, 1580." The document is
given in full in Cimber et Danjou, x. 1-52. A counter declaration of Henry
III., intended to weaken the King of Navarre, and promising protection to all
Protestants that might remain quietly at home, was issued June 3, 1580. Text
in Isambert, Recueil des anciennes lois frangaises, xiv. 478.
1580. THE SEVENTH CIVIL WAR. 203
Were these complaints well grounded ? There seems to be
no reason to doubt it. Was the oppression of the Protestants
so remediless as to make a resort to arms unavoidable ?
Wog a HGW
wamnavoid- Here opinions differed widely. The Huguenot no-
bles, with brave Chatillon among them, declared it
impossible longer to maintain the forms of a peace that secured
none of the rights so solemnly pledged by royal edicts, secret
articles, and supplementary compacts. No sooner had the mes-
sengers of Henry of Navarre arrived, bringing with them the
broken coins that were to accredit them, than they leaped into
the saddle and hastened to the scene of action. Not so the
ministers of the gospel, not so the people. Above all, the great
province of Languedoc showed marked reluctance. Tired of
conflicts, from the blasting effects of which they had not yet
recovered, the cities — Nismes, Montpellier, and other places
scarcely less important — positively declined to take up again
the weapons of civil war ; and it was not until more than three
months had elapsed that " the city of antiquities " overcame its
scruples. Aigues-mortes, Lunel, and Sommieres were for a
time the only towns of the lower part of the province whose
Protestant population forsook their peaceful pursuits. La Bo-
chelle and her old champion, Francois de la Noue, he of the
Iron Arm, openly expressed their detestation of the war so
lightly begun by the King of Navarre, and denounced it as un-
just.1 There were, indeed, not wanting those who denied that,
so far as the Bearnese was concerned, the outbreak of hostili-
ties had any other than personal motives.
It is no part of my province to describe at length the circum-
stances that had transformed the peculiarly strong tie of frater-
nal affection once subsisting between Margaret of Yalois and
Henry the Third into intense hatred. It is enough for the pur-
poses of this history to say that the fair but frail Queen of
Navarre was fully resolved to condone all the moral delin-
quencies of her husband, could she but move him to renew the
struggle against her brother. If we may credit the gossip of
contemporaries only too likely to be well informed, she did not
1 Lestoile, i. 128 ; Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. 348 ; De Thou, vi. 14.
204 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. Ill
even disdain to call in the assistance of her own rivals in the
affections of her husband, and to employ timid Mademoiselle
La Fosseuse, scarcely more than a child in years, to help in in-
volving the wretched kingdom in new broils.1 Be this as it may,
there can unfortunately be no doubt respecting the loose morals
which the unlucky bride of Saint Bartholomew's Day brought
with her from the Louvre and made a current feature of the
court at the foot of the Pyrenees, once distinguished by the
virtues of Queen Jeanne d'Albret. Whether justly or not, the
seventh civil war in which the Huguenots became involved
received the sobriquet of " La Guerre des Amoureux " — " the
Lovers' War." 2
The conflict was fortunately of comparatively short duration,
being well likened by a contemporary to a fire kindled in straw, so
suddenly did it burst forth into flame, so uncertain was
Most of the . J . .
Huguenots its progress, so completely did it die out at last, lhe
take no part. • r i tt it •
better part or the Huguenots had remained peaceably
at home, and the leaders had, consequently, at their disposal
only the feebler portion of those who might have followed them
in a war respecting whose necessity and justice there was less
doubt.3 In some places, too, the Huguenots who took part
1 u Cela fit que pour lui remettre la guerre sur les bras, a quelque pris que
ce fust, cette femme artificieuse se servit de l'amour de son mari envers Fo-
9euse, jeune fille de quatorze ans, et du nom de Montmorenci . . . fille
craintive pour son age." Agrippa dAubigne, ii. 345 (liv. iv. c. 5). This chap-
ter has a painful interest for the student of the public morals.
2 Ibid., ii. 346 : " Ainsi fut resolue la guerre, qui pour les raisons susdits fut
nommee la guerre des Amoureux." Henri Martin, Histoire de France, x. 600,
is justifiably severe in criticising the blunder of a modern writer of some pre-
tensions : " M. Capefigue, avec sa legerete ordinaire, impute a Anquetil d'avoir
invente le nom de ' Guerre des amoureux,' aux temps des marquis de Louis
XV. II est facheux que M. Capefigue n'ait pas mieux lu les historiens de
l'epoque dont il ecrivoit 1' histoire. ''
3 Lestoile's remarks ( i. 128) are striking enough to be quoted : " Ceste petite
guerre fust un petit feu de paille allume et esteint aussi soudain, la meilleure
et plus forte partie de ceux de la religion n'aiant bouge de leurs maisons. et y
aians este conserve soubs l'auctorite du Roy. Le reste qui ne remua qua
regret et par force (et par 1 artifice, comme on disoit, de la roine-mere, que
vouloit ung peu exercer son gendre ; qui l'avoittrop proumene a son gr''0, fust
incontinent appaise, et anssi tost que le Roy voulust, lequel aiant en cest
1580. THE SEVENTH CIVIL WAR 205
committed for a while the military blunder of following timid
counsels. So the Poitevin nobles who made themselves mas-
ters of Montaigu attempted to carry on a mode of warfare that
honorably respected the rights of peasants and non-combatants,
and found, at the end of six weeks, that for their pains they had
not become forty strong. But when, altering their tactics, they
boldly struck in one direction after another, penetrating by their
raids even to Pirmil (or Pillemil), in the very suburbs of Nantes,
the capital of Brittany — when, in short, " they exchanged their
ruinous discretion for an insolent and needful rashness," their
numbers grew so rapidly that in ten days they counted fourteen
hundred followers.1
In the absence of any signal battle, the most noteworthy
incident of the war was the assault and capture of Cahors.
This town, skirted on three sides by the river Lot,
vape sur- is situated about as far to the north of Montauban as
Driscs C&hors
Toulouse is to the south. It had been given, together
with the province of Quercy, of which it was the capital, in
dower to the Queen of Navarre, despite the altogether politic
custom that limited the marriage settlements of female mem-
bers of the royal family to donations of money, and avoided
the alienation of the territorial rights of the crown. But
Margaret had never been placed in the actual possession of
Cahors, and the unwillingness of Henry of Yalois to fulfil his
engagements constituted another of the causes of the inveter-
ate hatred entertained by that relentless princess against her
brother. It was not difficult for her to induce her husband to
espouse her quarrel. The King of Navarre, disgusted that
two-thirds of the Huguenots should have declined to heed his
endroit une intention couverte, contraire a celle de sa mere, les faisoit crier et
taire comme il lui plaisoit." See the Memoires de Gaclies, 283, 284, as to the
divided counsels of the Protestants of Languedoc.
1 The graphic account of Agrippa d'Aubigne (Hist, univ., ii. 346-349), who
was an active participant in this adventurous campaign, calls forth a well-
merited eulogium of the gallant Huguenot's book from the pen of M Henri
Martin, in his great history, x. 600, 601: " C'est presque toujours dans ce
beau livre qu'il faut chercher les traits characteristiques qui mettent en lumiere
la vraie physionomie du temps. "
206 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. IIL
summons to war, and anxious at last to strike some blow by
which he might win the martial distinction for which he had
begun more than ever to thirst, gathered a force and undertook
an attack which was condemned in advance by his most judi-
cious advisers as rash and foolhardy. The issue, however, justi-
fied his boldness. The garrison of Cahors was, indeed, fully
as strong as the following of the Bearnese ; the city boasted, in
the person of Monsieur de Vezins, a governor as distinguished
for his bravery and good conduct as he had showed himself
eight years before illustrious for his magnanimity toward the
personal enemy whom, at much pains, he rescued from butchery
in the Parisian matins.1 The burgesses of Cahors, especially
such as had participated in a local massacre of the small body
of Protestants nearly twenty years before,2 were violently op-
posed to Huguenot domination, and were quite ready to fight
against it. But Henry of Navarre was rapid in his movements.
At the very instant that he was reported to be at Montauban,
engaged in earnest discussion of new terms of peace, he pre-
sented himself at the walls of Cahors, and found the garrison
unsuspicious of the intended attack. The king was so fortunate
as to make his attack under cover of an extraordinarily severe
storm. The very explosion of the petards 3 by which an open-
ing was effected through the gates defending one of the bridges
1 The Rise of the Huguenots, ii. 480, 481.
2 The French translator of De Thou, in undertaking to correct the historian's
statement, himself blunders ; for the massacre referred to was not connected
with the events of St. Bartholomew's Day, as he erroneously supposes, but oc-
curred on Sunday, November 16, 1561 ; see Languet's letter of December 11,
1561, Epistolae secretas, ii. 185, and Histoire ecclesiastique des eglises reformers,
i. 536-538. About forty-two Protestants were murdered. De Thou gives an
account of the occurrence (iii. book 32, 284, 285,) evidently based upon the
Histoire ecclesiastique, but misplaces it.
3 This new implement of warfare was so strange as to lead the historian De
Thou to describe it at considerable length (yi. 5), and it has been asserted that
the petard was first used at the siege of Cahors. But Jacques Gaches, in his
" Memoires sur les guerres de religion a Castres et dans le Languedoc,"
245, 246, claims that the first petard ever used in his native province was em
ployed, with terrific effect, three years earlier, at the attack made by a Hugue-
not band under Jacques and Antoine Mascarene, upon Lisle-sur-Tarn, May
23, 1577. It was, he tells us, " un reveille-matin diabolique.'1
1580. THE SEVENTH CIVIL WAR 207
across the Lot was mistaken by many of the inhabitants for a
succession of claps of thunder. But when once the entrance
had been gained into the interior of the city, the Huguenots
found enemies not inferior to themselves in courage and reso-
lution. Had not brave Yezins been mortally wounded early in
the struggle, it is probable that the final issue might have
proved quite different. Henry and his companions exhibited
prodigies of valor. They wrested the ground inch by inch
from the besieged. They entrenched themselves in the streets,
and laid siege to the public buildings in which large bodies of
the enemy had shut themselves up. They went out boldly to
meet and repulse such fresh troops as came to the relief of the
town. At length, after a combat lasting for several days,
Cahors belonged to the King of Kavarre. It had cost him the
lives of some of his best officers and men, but the exploit was
the greatest triumph he had yet won. If the declaration of a
friend, that the surprise of Cahors, lasting six days and six
nights, was the most honorable of the century,1 be regarded as
too strong a panegyric, it must be conceded that few pitched
battles have ever more firmly established the reputation of a
military leader for skill and personal courage. The effect was
great and instantaneous. Henry of Yalois was beside himself
with rage, most of all against his sister by whose machinations
he had been deluded into supposing that nothing was farther
from the thoughts of her husband, now deep in deliberations
for peace, than so daring a hostile movement. As for the city
of Toulouse and the whole region, the inhabitants gave them-
selves over for lost, and expected nothing less than that their
fair fields would become a prey to the victorious Huguenots.2
1 Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. 350. This writer exaggerates the duration of the
struggle, while Davila, 379, 380, who makes it last but three days, understates
it. M. Berger de Xivrey, who gives a letter of Henry written before the
smoke of battle was well over (Lettres missives, i. 302, 303), shows from Fau-
rin's journal, that it extended four days, from Saturday, May 28th, to Tuesday,
May 31st, inclusive. See also Lestoile, i. 124; Sully, i. 76, etc. ; De Thou, vi.
(book 72) 5, 6.
2 An interesting letter of Montmorency (Damville) to the king, written from
Pezenas, June 12, 1580, gives a vivid impression of the amazement and con-
sternation of the Roman Catholic party at this brilliant affair. All efforts to
208 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. HI.
When experienced generals surveyed the whole field of opera-
tions in Southern France, and reflected upon the straits to
which the royal troops were reduced through lack of that
money which Henry of Valois chose to expend upon his pleas-
ures rather than in carrying on the war, they trembled for the
future. It seemed, indeed, as if the misery of France could go
to no farther length. In addition to the curse of war, heaven
Ravages of had sent another scourge not less difficult to bear,
the plague. The plague, which so frequently made its appearance
about this time, raged in different parts of the kingdom, but
had chosen Paris for its especial seat. The number of vic-
tims for the year was, as usual, variously estimated. A news-
letter carried it as high as one hundred and twenty to one
hundred and forty thousand persons. A more moderate and
probably more correct account made it reach the figure of
thirty thousand for the capital and its suburbs. All that could
leave deserted the doomed city. For the space of six months
the profitable stream of strangers from all parts of Christendom
which was wont to pour in altogether failed. The poverty-
stricken artisans, cut off from their ordinary means of gaining
a livelihood, were likely to die of hunger A sight never be-
fore seen attracted the notice of the curious — numbers of work-
men, upon whom time hung heavily because they had absolutely
nothing to do, playing at games of quoits on the Pont Notre
Dame and in other places most noted for the busy transactions
of commerce.1
Despite, however, the brilliant success of the King of Xa-
relieve Cahors were futile. u Tousjours ce a este en vain, et ceste ladite ville
prise, perdue, saccagee et ruynee. Elle est de si grande importance que en-
cores qu'elle ne soit en ce gouvernement, ains en celle de Mr. de Mar. de
Biron, la ville de Thoulouse, du ressort de laquelle elle est, et tout ce quartier
la en [est] devenu si effraye qu'ilz pensent que tout est perdu et en prove."
Loutchitzky, Documents inedits, 135.
J Lestoile (under date of July, 1580). i. 125. See, too, Memoires de Claude
Haton, ii. 1013 ; and " Copie d'une missive envoyee de Paris a Lyon, par un
Quidam a son bon amy. contenant nouvelle de la sante et du nombre des
morts de la contagion, audict lieu et cite de Paris. A Lyon, 1580,*' reprinted
in Cimber et Danjou, Archives curieuses, ix. 321-326. Haton notes, two
years later (ii. 1081), that in a certain village near Provins almost one-half
of the population had died of the plague.
158D. THE PEACE OF FLEIX. 209
va ire's attack upon Cahors, and notwithstanding the inroads
of destructive pestilence, the affairs of the Protestants did not
prosper. The king's counter declaration, of the third of June,
wherein he professed his firm purpose to maintain his edicts,
and promised protection to all Protestants that should remain
quietly in their homes, had its desired effect of weakening those
that had taken arms under Henry of Navarre.1 Moreover,
each of the three armies set on foot by the king obtained great
advantages. The army which was intrusted to Marshal Biron
success of the reduced a number of Huguenot strongholds in Guy-
royai arms. enne5 and surprised the town of Mont de Marsan, a
place of importance belonging to the King of Navarre. The
second army, under Charles, Duke of Mayenne, was so fortu-
nate as to check the progress of Lesdiguieres in Dauphiny, and
to take by assault the town of Mure (in the present department
of Isere), the sole remaining place in Lesdiguieres's possession.
The third army, under command of the newly created Marshal
Matignon, after a vigorous siege, reduced La Fere, in Picardy,
in the absence of the Prince of Conde, who had gone to Ger-
many in the vain hope of obtaining fresh assistance from the
Protestant princes of the empire.2
In these circumstances there was little to encourage the
King of Navarre to continue the war he had so rashly be-
gun, and in the prosecution of which he had met with little
support from his fellow Huguenots. It was time that the voice
of those that insisted upon peace should make itself heard. The
peace confer- resu^ was a conference held at Fleix, a castle of Peri-
enceatFieix. g0rd, conveniently situated between the territories
held by the contending parties. The King of France, him-
self by no means averse to peace, welcomed the suggestions
1 Supra, p. 202, note.
2 See a sketch of these military operations in De Thou, vi. (book 72) 11,
etc. I cannot forbear expressing my profound astonishment at M. Drion's
remark (Histoire chronologique, i. 152) : "C'est en vain que le roi de France
oppose trois armies, commandees par ses mignons, aux Huguenots, victorieux
sur tous les points." De Thou (vi. 20) characterizes the struggle in these few-
words: "Les armes des Protestants ayant ete malheureuses presque partout."
Moreover, what does M. Drion mean by the term "mignons," as applied to
Marshals Biron and Matignon, and the Duke of Mayenne, Guise's brother ?
Vol. L— 14
210 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. III.
of his brother Anjou. This fickle prince had been, in connec-
tion with Margaret of Valois, a principal instigator of the need-
less war. Now that his mind had become inflamed witli the
desire to obtain a crown in the Netherlands, lie was even more
anxious to allay than he had been to promote civil discord in
his native land. lie came in person to Fleix, to hasten the de-
liberations which, so far as the royal side was concerned, were
entrusted to the Duke of Montpensier, to M. de Bellievre, and
to Marshal Cosse.
The treaty of Fleix, which was the issue of the conference,
was, in the main, little more than a re-affirmation of the treaty
of Poitiers, as modified by the secret articles of Bergerac and
the provisions agreed upon at Nerac. If adding oath to oath
could effect anything in the way of securing the perpetuity of
the compact between the crown and its Huguenot subjects,
then certainly this treaty, containing detailed prescriptions that
all the most important personages of the realm should swear
to observe it, from the reigning monarch, his mother, and his
brother, the King of Navarre and the Prince of Conde, through
all the gradations of dignity down to the seneschals, the pro-
vosts and maires of towns and cities, would have stood a fair
chance of enduring for all time. And if threats directed
against the partisans of unlawful associations and fraternities
could avail in opposition to the active efforts of secret conspira-
tors, the " Holy League " must have died beyond the possibility
of future resurrection. And if words and assurances were suf-
ficient to meet the case of the distressed Huguenots, their
chronic complaints seemed likely to be silenced for many a year
to come. They were guaranteed the liberty to reside anywhere
in France without molestation. The Romish clergy were en-
joined from indulging in discourses from the pulpit tending to
create sedition and disturbance. Nowhere were Protestants to
be compelled to contribute to the expense of repairing churches
belonging to an opposite faith, or when ill, to listen to the ex-
hortations of ecclesiastics whom they detested. The Gordian
knot of the tapestry and decorations on Corpus Christi day and
other great festivals of the Church of Rome was cut by an arti-
cle limiting the obligation of the Huguenot householder to a
1580. THE PEACE OF FLEIX. 211
passive consent should the public authorities choose to place
the hated emblems of joy upon the front of his residence.1 The
rights of the Protestants to certain places for public worship,
to convenient grounds for the burial of their dead, and to impar-
tial courts of justice, were solemnly re-affirmed. Even in the
matter of the cities of refuge little change was made. The
cities temporarily intrusted to the Huguenots by the articles
of Nerac were to be restored to the king — those in Guyenne,
within two months, those in Languedoc thirty days later. In
case of the other towns, which the King of Navarre engaged
to give up at the expiration of the stipulated term of six years,
no modification of the existing agreement was made save the
substitution of Figeac and Monsegur for La Reolle.3
1 "Et ne seront contraints tendre et parer le devant de leurs maisons aux
jours et fetes ordoimez pour ce f aire : mais seulement souffrir qu'ils soient ten-
dus et parez par l'autorite des officiers des lieux."
2 The articles of Fleix, described in the title as " le lieu de Flex pres de la
ville de Sainte-Foy," are given in Du Mont, Corps diplomatique, v. 381-4, in
Benoist, Histoire de l'Edit de Nantes, i. (preuves) 54, etc. The first forty-
six articles were signed by Anjou and Navarre, at Fleix, November 26, 1580,
and the forty-seventh article at Coutras, December 16. Henry III. ratified
them by his signature, at Blois, ten days later.
212 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OP NAVARRE Ch. IV.
CHAPTER IV.
THE UNCERTAIN PEACE, PROTESTANT FEDERATION AND THE
PARISIAN LEAGUE.
For nearly eighteen years had France been a prey to civil
contention. For so long a time the Protestants had stood with
arms in their hands for the defence of the lives of their wives
and children, and had struggled to win a boon more precious
than any human life — the undisputed right to worship God
comparative according to the prescriptions of a Word regarded by
quiet returns, them as of supreme authority. There had, indeed,
been intervals of nominal peace, but they had been brief,
treacherous, and often more dangerous than the periods of open
hostilities. The fitful dream had generally been disturbed by
rude alarms of coming war, by portents of approaching dis-
aster, or by tidings of murderous assaults actually perpetrated
upon unoffending men and women engaged in divine service.
The hope of quiet and of justice at the hands of the king and
his ministers had been so frequently disappointed as almost to
give place to a settled feeling of despair. Now, at last, the
prospect seemed to brighten. Peace was secured for a time.
Neither party would be likely to disturb it. The monarch's
Roman Catholic advisers had learned from the incidents of the
past few years that it was vain to expect the extermination of a
religious party that had long since taken form and consistency,
and had been welded together by the very force of the hard
blows received — a party that was even beginning to accept as
a badge of honor the designation first given as a term of insult,
and whose members were proud to designate themselves as
Huguenots because the name recalled glorious scenes in their
heroic and protracted struggle.1 The Protestants, on their
1 One of the earliest evidences of attachment to the name once strongly re-
pudiated is found in a letter of Henry of Navarre, July 24, 1580, wherein he
1580. THE UNCERTAIN PEACE. 213
part, had about reached the conviction that any attempt to secure
universal toleration for their religion was, under the present
circumstances, a hopeless undertaking. Moreover, they were
thoroughly exhausted by the expense and fatigue of war.
There were, indeed, complaints against the precipitancy of the
King of Navarre in concluding a struggle which he had as pre-
cipitately begun. But Henry had much to say in
Henry of Na- .r J . " _. , * , . . . J
varres justi- his own justification. It he had acted in the matter
with the co-operation of merely a few deputies from
the Protestants of Southwestern France, it was because his
associates in Dauphiny and Lower Languedoc, as well as in the
north of the kingdom, had neglected to send envoys after re-
ceiving timely notice, or had been prevented by the dangers of
the way. As to the treaty itself, so far from being ruinous,
it was the very salvation of the Protestant churches. " This
peace," he wrote to his old friend and counsellor the reformer
Beza, "is not to our disadvantage. It ought to be received
and welcomed by all for the re-establishment of our religion. I
have been warned by many of our ministers that it would be
better for us to return again to the fires of persecution, which
would tend more to our upbuilding, than that through a con-
tinuance of war we should see all piety and discipline tram-
pled under foot. We should, they say, have been satisfied with
far less than the terms conceded to us rather than not secure
peace." '
True, the objection was in everyone's mouth, in answer to the
complaints of the Bearnese prince, that his own court afforded
the most signal instances of irregularity, and that a reformation
of manners and morals could begin nowhere more appropri-
ately than in his own life. The candid reformer to whom he
recommends a Protestant gentlemen as one "that is a very zealous servant of
mine and an old Huguenot— qui m'est fort affectionne serviteur et ancient
huguenot." Lettres missives, i. 309.
1 Ceste paix n'est point desavantageuse ; il est hesoing que chascun la re^oive
et embrasse pour le restablissement de nostre religion ; estant adverty de plusi-
eurs de nos ministres, qu'il vaudroit mieulx retourner encore aux feux qui
servoient plus a edification, que, par une continuation de guerre, voir toute
piete et discipline mise dessoubs les pieds '' etc. Henry of Navarre to Beza,
end of November, 1580. Lettres missives, i. 330-333.
214 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. IV.
had written appears not to have been slow in calling his atten-
tion to this important fact; for although his letter does not
His own seem to have been preserved, we have Henry's reply
court. f-0 j^ an(j can form a tolerably correct idea of the
wholesome but unpalatable truths it contained. However, it
was a part of the easy good nature of the King of Navarre that
he rarely resented sound advice, even (as, it must reluctantly
be admitted, was generally the case) when he took good care
not to act upon it. In the present instance his amiable and
flattering assurances to Calvin's successor were characteristic
enough to deserve a place here. " I beg you," he said, " to
notify me on all occasions, and to speak to me frankly and
freely. If I do not profit, as I should, by the holy admonitions
given to me, at least you will know that I do not reject them."
As to his household, Navarre confessed, in the same letter, that,
like everything else, it shared in " the perversity of the times,"
and he declared that it was one of his objects in securing peace
that he might be able to give his attention to setting it right.
It is almost needless to say that this seems to have been the last
the king thought of the worthy reformer's suggestion.1 The
court of Henry remained about what it had been. Henry him-
self was neither more nor less addicted to the pursuit of pleas-
ure and to the gallantry that had for some time been nearly
as much in fashion in Nerac as in Paris.
For almost five years from the conclusion of the treaty of
Fleix the Huguenots enjoyed an immunity from open attacks
on the part of their enemies, which, if it did not constitute so
profound a peace as the remarks of the historian De Thou
would lead the casual reader to imagine,2 yet presented a de-
1 Letter of Henry of Navarre to Beza, February 1, 1581, Lettres missives,
i. 351-354. Both from this letter and from that quoted above it is clear that
Navarre highly valued the reformer's friendship, and earnestly desired his
good offices with the French Protestants as well as with the count palatine
and others. In the postscript he wrote: "Je vous prie m'aimer tousjours,
vous asseurant que ne sgauriez despartir de vostre amitie a prince qui en soit
moings ingrat, et continuer vos bonnes admonitions comme si vous esties mon
pere."
2 " L'edit ayant done ete publie, la France jouit pendant pres de cinq ans
d'une paix profonde, soit parce que la guerre etrangere avoit detourne la cause
1581. THE UNCERTAIN PEACE. 215
cided contrast to their previous condition. Into the causes of
this calm and of the political movement tending to a new and
more dangerous outbreak, which took place under cover of peace,
we must presently inquire. Meanwhile, it will be well to glance
for a moment at the internal concerns of the Huguenots.
The fair promises of the monarch, even with the guarantee
of the great seal of state affixed to them, did not throw the vet-
erans of so many years off their guard, or induce them to relax
their preparations for the possible contingency of renewed hos-
tilities. It was among the first steps of the King of
Political as- » _ . r °
sembiy of Navarre to convene at Montauban, in April and May,
1581, one of those political assemblies of the Protes-
tants of France, which, indeed, must be carefully distinguished
from their ecclesiastical bodies or synods, but which became more
and more important, as time elapsed, in determining their re-
ligious as well as their civil interests. The Assembly of Mont-
auban had been summoned without the consent of the King of
France ; but Henry the Third through M. de Bellievre, a mem-
ber of his privy council, as well as by letter, gave his approval
of the meeting, upon the condition that its energies should be
directed to a firm establishment of peace. Nor did the assem-
bly decline the condition. It is certainly significant of the
situation of the Huguenots at this time, that the thirty-four
deputies of whom the body was composed were not chosen,
according to custom, by the provincial political assemblies, but
by the provincial synods, and that nearly one-third of the whole
number were ministers of the gospel. Nor is it less worthy of
notice that the assembly betrayed, in respect to the King of
Navarre, a certain degree of distrust, by confirming and elab-
orating a system of checks upon his authority. The
Checks upon
the authority " Protector of the Churches " — for so was he offi-
tector of the dally designated — was provided with a body of four
" ordinary " counsellors, each of whom was to be
selected and supported by a well-defined constituency. If he
thought fit to add two more counsellors, these were likewise
de nos maux, soit parce que la cour n'etoit occuqee que de ses plaisirs. " De
Thou, vi. (book 72) 116.
216 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. IV.
to be chosen by the churches.1 Thus were the Protestants not
only to enjoy the best means of information respecting the
conduct of affairs, but by their representatives to exercise an
important influence in shaping the course of events. The pru-
dent men who devised the scheme were pardonable if they re-
membered that Henry of Navarre not only had shown unmis-
takable evidence of a self-will that might some day give trouble
to his associates in anus, but had once changed his religion.
It is possible, moreover, that the ease with which he could, on
occasion, publish to the world his willingness to be " instructed,"
in case he were in error in matters of religion, had not alto-
gether escaped the notice of shrewd men, victims of repeated
acts of treachery, in whose characters a consequent suspicious-
ness was perhaps a venial fault.
In the Assembly of Montauban the Huguenots adopted a
form of oath by which Henry of Navarre and his namesake
Conde, as well as the deputies of the churches, while professing
their loyalty and subjection to the king, bound themselves to
remain united u not only in the same doctrine and ecclesiastical
discipline, conformably to the general confession of faith of the
churches long since published, but also in all that might de-
pend upon their mutual and lawful preservation." They prom-
ised, moreover, to do nothing save by command of the King of
Navarre, with the counsel and advice of the churches, " so as
to refer all matters to the authority that is due to him and to
the common consent of all." In signal contrast with the fear-
ful imprecations of excommunication and eternal damnation
contained in the oath of the " Holy League," the Protestant
oatli confined itself to the simple declaration : " Those that
shall do otherwise will be disavowed." 3
1 Anquez, 30-33. As indicative of the distribution of the Protestants in
France, I notice that the first counsellor was to be elected by those of Lan-
guedoc, the second by Dauphiny and Provence ; while Brittany, Touraine,
Maine, Vendomois, La Rochelle, Poitou, Saintonge, Aunis, and Angoumois
united in choosing the third, and fourteen provinces of the north, east, and
centre of the kingdom joined in the selection of the fourth. The two addi-
tional counsellors were to represent Guyenne alone.
2 " Formulaire du serment d' union adopte par l'assemblee de Montauban,
Mai, 1581." Anquez, App., 452, 453.
1581. THE UNCERTAIN PEACE. 217
A few weeks only had elapsed since the adjournment of the
Political Assembly of Montauban when the Eleventh National
National syn- Synod met in the city of La Kochelle. If that nation
chene Ljwt *s naPPy wnose annals are brief and monotonous, this
i58i. ecclesiastical gathering, in whose minutes no record
occurs of serious differences of opinion and no hints are given
of acrimonious debate, must be regarded as indicating a goodly
prevalence of harmony and concord.1 The deputies reported,
and praised God for the fact, that there was no one in the
churches they represented that rejected or combated the doc-
trines of the Confession of Faith. The canons adopted were
few and of slight importance. The change that has come over
public opinion respecting the wisdom of church laws regulating
the style of dress in which a member can innocently indulge
may lead some readers to condemn as puerile the detailed pro-
hibition not only of immodest apparel, but of such garments as
" bear marks of a too ostentatious and indecent novelty." 2 Oth-
ers may be amused at the evident futility of the ban laid by
successive synods upon the irrepressible and ever-increasing
tendency even of the Protestants of France to indulge in the
frivolous diversion of the dance. But every candid and im-
partial person must look with admiration at the clauses which
in simple language provide for the careful preservation of the
records of the memorable events in the fortunes of the churches
since the first of the cruel wars waged against them, and not less
at the provisions that exhibit the interest felt in the promotion
of sound and thorough education by enjoining upon every " col-
loque " or presbytery to maintain at least one "poor scholar"
during his studies for the sacred ministry.3 Rarely has a per-
secuted people, long harassed by the enemies of its faith, made
1 The only thing approaching asperity is a memorandum of the surprise of
the synod that the deputies from Dauphiny, Provence, Forot, and Auvergne,
having all failed to be present, " have not even had the civility to make any
excuse by letters."
9 " Ceux qui ont quelques marques notoires d impudicite, de dissolution
ou de nouveaute trop fastueuse et indecente, comme sont les Fards, Plissures,
Houpes. Lardoires, Guiquerolets, Seins ouverts, Vertugalins, et autres choses
semblables."
3 Aymon, Tous les Synodes, i. 146-154.
21 S THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch IV.
greater sacrifices to secure for itself the unspeakable blessing of
competent religious instructors.
It must not be supposed that the strenuous discipline laid
down by the synods was enforced without opposition, nor that
there was an entire absence of conflict between the
tween the civil and ecclesiastical authorities within the bosom
ciesiasticai of the Huguenot party itself. In Montauban itself,
authorities. . i «■> • i • • i -i
pre-eminently a Protestant city, the municipal records
show that the ministers and the consuls had, this very year, a
decided struggle in which both parties insisted strenuously upon
their rights. The ministers from the pulpit denounced a book
printed in Montauban as unsound in its teachings, and bade the
faithful neither to purchase nor to read it. The consuls, doubtless
upon the complaint of the printer, declared the act of the min-
isters illegal and in direct violation of the fourteenth article of
the treaty of pacification, which confided the duty of superintend-
ing the matter of printing simply to the magistrates. It would
appear that the consuls found other grounds of complaint be-
sides this. The ministers had taken occasion to denounce in
round terms the prevalent extravagance in clothing and head-
dress ; and when called upon to justify their conduct had ap-
pealed to the canons of the National Synod of La Rochelle.
Thereupon the consuls commanded that the ministers be sum-
moned, censured, and forbidden from henceforth encroaching
upon the functions of the civil magistrates. Moreover, they
were to be required to produce the record of the action of the
synod, in order that, after an inspection thereof, "the magis-
trates and the church might keep step together and not infringe
on each other's rights." What further came of this particular
dispute does not appear.1
It is certain, however, that the ministers never renounced, in
1 " Les articles ducinode " were to be exhibited " pour veoir si les retranche-
me.ns des chevelures et abilhemens y est contenu " and "pour veoir ce qu'a
est6 arreste par iceluy sur la police ecclesiasticque, afin que les Magistratz et
l'Eglise marchent de mesme pied, sans entreprendre rien l'ung sur l'autre."
Deliberations du conseil de la ville de Montauban, October 28, 30, 31, et No-
vember 7, 1581, in Loutchitzky, Documents inedits pour servir a l'histoire de
la Reforme et de la Ligue, 177-180.
1581. THE UNCERTAIN PEACE. 219
favor of the civil authorities, the right, believed by them to be
inherent in the consistory, or church session, of exercising a
wholesome restraint over the tendency of the gentler sex to in-
dulge in sinful conformity to the frivolous pomps and vanities
of the world. It made little difference who the culprit was ;
the noble fared no better than the peasant. Three years later
a notable struggle took place, in which the parties were no other
than Charlotte Arbaleste, the pious wife of Henry of Navarre's
learned and trusty counsellor, Duplessis Mornay, on the one
side, and the distinguished Huguenot pastor of Montauban,
Michel Berauld, on the other.
The divine was the same who was elected moderator of the
Thirteenth National Synod of the French Protestant Church, at
Montauban, in 1594, the first ecclesiastical convocation of the
kind held during the reign of Henry the Fourth.1 But long
before that time he had come to be regarded as the leading
theologian of the southern part of the kingdom. Catharine de'
Medici, being at Nerac in 1579, expressed some curiosity to
see him, and, when Berauld was presented to her, informed
him that she was delighted to find him quite different in appear-
ance from what she had been led to expect. She had been
told, she said, that his face was black and hideous as that of a
devil, and that he and his colleagues were denounced as the ac-
cursed cause of all the disorder reigning in the province. To
which the intrepid Huguenot, without changing countenance,
replied : " Madam, I am such in body and in looks as it has
pleased God to make me — not hideous nor terrible, as I have
been pictured to your majesty. And since you have done me
this honor to send for me, I have not been willing to fail in my
duty, being quite ready to answer the calumnious reports set in
circulation by my enemies against my colleagues and myself, who
pray to God night and day for the health and prosperity of your
majesties, and who in our churches preach only the respect and
obedience that is due to them, according to God's command." 2
It so happened that Michel Berauld had felt himself called
upon, shortly before the coming of the family of Duplessis
1 Aymon, Tous les Synodes, i. 173.
2 Memoires de Jacques Gaches, 264, 265.
220 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. IV.
Mornay to Montauban, to denounce from the pulpit the fantastic
mode of wearing the hair lately introduced by the ladies, and,
in particular, the extravagant use of an elaborate head-dress,
much in vogue elsewhere, wherein a frame-work of wire was
employed for the purpose of giving greater effect. Some ladies
had even been excluded from the Lord's Supper because they
would not take an oath never again to indulge in such finery,
nor to permit their daughters to commit the like indiscretion.
It may well be imagined that the arrival of so prominent a
family as that of Duplessis Mornay, known to dress according
to the prevailing fashion, was looked upon with some inter-
est by the female population of Montauban. But Berauld was
equal to the emergency. In fact, not only did he refuse to fur-
nish to Madame Duplessis and her household the " marreaux "
with which, according to a usage long observed in the Huguenot
churches, every communicant was required to provide himself
before approaching the holy table,1 but he induced the consistory
of his church to make a formal demand that the lady should
"remove her hair." Charlotte Arbaleste, however, was as
determined as her husband, and scarcely less ready with her
pen. Accordingly she declined to accede to the summons, al-
leging that her attire was no novelty. She had worn it with-
out reproach for the past fifteen years. During this time she
had resided within the bounds of many of the chief churches of
Germany, England, and the Netherlands, as well as of France.
She favored her opponents, moreover, with a long and detailed
confession of her faith, and a protest wherein she dwelt much
1 The "marreaux" or " mereaux " (sometimes called "marrons") were
tokens distributed a few days in advance of the celebration of the Lord's Sup-
per to all who, in view of their correctness of belief and consistency of life,
were regarded as prepared worthily to commune. They were usually rourjd
pieces of metal, almost always of lead, much resembling small medals or coins,
and generally bore, on the one side, the initial or abbreviated name of the
church by which they were given and a chalice, and, on the other, a reference
to some verse of the Holy Bible. A number of marreaux have been described,
and a few reproduced by wood-cuts, in the Bulletin de la Societe de l'histoire
du Protestantisme francais. See i. 139, etc., ii. 13. xxxii. 182. Apparently
the oldest of the extant marreaux do not go back of the seventeenth century ;
many of them belong to the period of the " Desert."
1581. THE UNCERTAIN PEACE. 221
npon the danger of imitating the Church of Home by teaching
for doctrines the commandments of men, triumphantly calling
attention to the circumstance that in no passage of Holy Script-
ure could any reference be found to wire, the fruitful source
of the present dispute. But neither Madame Duplessis Mornay's
cogent arguments nor the moderate advice of such distinguished
fellow-ministers as La Roche Chandieu and Serres could bend
Berauld's inflexible views of a pastor's duty to his flock. The
practical solution of the trouble was found in the step taken by
Madame Duplessis Mornay of going, two days before Easter
Sunday, to a town, three leagues distant from Montauban,
where the Huguenot minister believed, with her, that the mode
of wearing the hair is not an essential of religion.1
In the church of Cuq-Toulza a somewhat similar commotion
had a different result. In this case the bone of contention was
not a lady's coiffure, but the no less obnoxious farthingale.
Here, too, the offender belonged not only to the higher ranks
of society, but to the most pious portion of the community.
The family of u Madonne " de Lamy had been one of the main-
stays of Protestantism in the district, and among its earliest ad-
herents. None the less did M. de Rogier, when he undertook
a crusade against the current infractions of church discipline,
call for exemplary censure of the objectionable article of apparel.
In the end, after a valiant defence of her rights, " Madonne "
de Lamy, less courageous, or less sure of support, than Madame
Duplessis Mornay, saw herself compelled to yield the point, and
the farthingale was consigned to merited obscurity.2
More frequently, however, the complaints came from the
other side. Repeatedly the municipal records attest that the
Ministerial ministers of Montauban called attention to the fact
support. th^ their salaries, very modest in amount at best,
were many months in arrears.3 At length they inform us
that Monsieur Berauld, minister of the Word of God, at the
1 See the long account of this incident in a fragment published in the
Memoires de Duplessis Mornay, ii. 487-514.
s Notice sur l'Eglise reformee de Cuq-Toulza, in Bulletin, xxxi. (1882) 123.
Cuq-Toulza is a small town forty miles southeast of Montauban.
8 E. g., under the dates of September 13, 1585, and April 17, 1586, Loutch-
itzky, 183, 187.
222 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. IV.
consistory meeting, on "Wednesday last, reproached the church
for its ingratitude in not paying him his salary, and took formal
leave. The consistory offered to pay him, hut the indignant
pastor persisted in his determination. It fared no better with
the council of the King of Navarre, which represented to him,
but in vain, the scandal which his abrupt departure would cause.
Finally, the municipal council of thirty took the decisive step
of deputing Monsieur de Noalhons, one of the consuls, with
three other persons of influence. They were commissioned to
wait upon Monsieur Berauld and beg him not to abandon his
flock, nor to deprive it of the spiritual nourishment he had been
wont to give to it. If he should still persist, they were to draw
up a protest, with all due formality, and strive in every way to
detain him.1 He must certainly have been of a very obdurate
disposition whom such manifold supplications could not move.
Once more a National Synod of the Protestants was held
in the city of Yitre, in Brittany (May, 1583). The only impor-
tation *ant fruit of its deliberations was that the Reformed
vSSl °May, Churches of France and the Netherlands were drawn
1583. more closely together by the institution of a system
of mutual recognition and representation. In token of perfect
accord, the members of the synod signed their names to the
copy of the Confession of Faith and the Discipline of the Low
Countries which was submitted to them, and the Dutch delegates
in turn subscribed the formularies of the French Churches.2
1 Deliberations du conseil, etc., June 1, 1586, Loutchitzky, 188, 189.
Michel Berauld was no common man. He was of the best representatives of that
part of the Huguenots that would be satisfied with nothing short of the most
complete recognition of their religious rights. It has been truly said of him
that, from 1583 forward, scarcely an event of importance occurred in which
he did not take part. He remained in Montauban as pastor, and, from the
date of the foundation of the Academie of that city (1600), as theological pro-
fessor, till his death (1611), an event which was regarded as a public bereave-
ment. He enjoyed, with the celebrated Daniel Chamier alone, the signal dis-
tinction of having been called to be moderator of not less than three National
Synods— Montauban (1594), Montpellier (1598), and La Rochelle (1607). See
Haag, La France protestante, i. 304-311 ; Aymon, Tous les Synodes, i. 173,
213, 296.
8 Aymon, i. 157.
1583. THE UNCERTAIN PEACE. 223
It was the last time for many a year that the Huguenots were
destined to meet to deliberate respecting questions of doctrine
and practice. The succeeding eleven years were to be a blank
in their ecclesiastical annals. The clouds of war were already
gathering, and the times would soon call, not for synods, but
for military councils hastily summoned to devise measures of
common self-defence.
If, since the convention signed at Fleix, the Huguenots had
not been the object of a general war, it was, nevertheless, only
too true that they were still disquieted by the vexatious neglect
infractions of °^ tne king and his ministers to execute the articles
the peace. 0f peace. The clergy begrudged the Protestants even
the common rights of humanity, and found in the lowest class
of the population a willing ally. The cure of Saint Barthelemi
grumbled that the edict of pacification went to the length of
permitting the heretics to have ministers of their own faith to
accompany criminals to the place of execution.1 No wonder,
then, that priests similarly inclined interposed every obstacle
to the equitable execution of the compact of Fleix. The abbe
de la Trinite instigated the royal council, upon a frivolous pre-
text, to prevent the services of Protestant worship from being
held in Vendome, an original fief of Henry of Navarre, from
which his branch of the Bourbon family derived its designa-
tion.2 Enterprises were set on foot, with the connivance, in
some cases, of royal judges, to surprise the places left by the
edict in Protestant hands. In Picardy no Protestant worship
was tolerated. Where places of worship were granted, the
same ingenuity was exhibited as of old to render the conces-
sion nugatory. For the Protestants of Lyons and Rouen the
most useless of conceivable places were assigned, at the distance
of a dozen leagues, in the heart of the forests, and where there
were no Protestants in the neighborhood. With malicious per-
versity Roman Catholic magistrates interfered with the execu-
tion of wills drawn up for the benefit of the Protestant poor and
1 Journal d'un cure ligueur ( Jehan de la Fosse), 186.
8 " Ma principalle maison et celle dont je suis extraict." Henry of Navarre
to Henry III., June 19, 1581, Lettres missives, i. 374, 375.
224: THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. IV.
sick. These unfortunates were thus deprived of the help offered
them by their compassionate fellow-believers, while, at the
same time, they were refused admission to the public hospitals
and poor-houses on the score of their religion. For the burial
of the Protestant dead no cemeteries were provided. The
Huguenot fugitives of many towns and villages of Languedoc
dared not approach their former homes, now pillaged or in
ruins. In Dauphiny, when the Huguenots, yielding to Navarre's
persuasions, admitted the Duke of Mayenne, that
The Duke of r ' . , . - i
Mayenne in nobleman paid no respect to the stipulations or the
Dauphiny. _ . . _ _ * _ * _ _ . _
edict, but proceeded at once to destroy the fortifica-
tions of Livron, Loriol, and other towns which had stoutly de-
fended themselves in the past wars.1 In Guyenne the Roman
Catholics even seized the important city of Perigueux, one of
the places of surety accorded to the Protestants by the peace of
1576, and confirmed to them by subsequent treaties, and re-
fused to restore it to the proper owners.2
Such complaints and others not very different in character
1 We learn from the MS. Journal of Lesdiguieres, first published by Pro-
fessor Loutchitzky, that the Protestants of Dauphiny complained that the treaty
of Fleix was made without their knowledge and approval, and sent first to the
Duke of Anjou, and then to the king, to request that Gap and Livron be given
them as places of safety, in lieu of Serres and Nyons, assigned by the treaty of
1577. The king refused to make the substitution, and sent Mayenne with an
army to reduce the Protestant Dauphinese. A part of the Protestant noblesse
dishonorably submitted, and, at length, Lesdiguieres, after having stood out
for a time, also consented to the peace, upon the engagement of Mayenne to
execute "the edict and the declarations following thereupon." When May-
enne subsequently proceeded to dismantle Livron and put garrisons under
governors that favored the League in Embrun and other towns, in distinct
violation of the edict, he justified his perfidy by interpreting the "declara-
tions " in question to mean, not the declarations of Nerac and Fleix, but certain
commands in writing to act after this fashion which he alleged that he had re-
ceived from the king. See the interesting documents in Loutchitzky, 113-126.
-The king, indeed, offered in lieu the insignificant "bicoque" of Puy-
mirol, near Agen, and 50,000 crowns, payable in instalments within two
years, but Henry of Navarre denied that this was any adequate reparation of
so signal an outrage. The correspondence of Navarre with Henry III., M. de
Bellievre, Marshal Montmorency, and Marshal Matignon, from June to Decem-
ber, 1581, is my authority for the statements of the text. See Lettres mis-
sives, i. 374-459.
1583. THE UNCERTAIN PEACE. 225
continued to be made to the king for several years in the formal
papers drawn up by the political assemblies of the Huguenots,
and by the mouth of envoys sent to court for the purpose of
securing the royal attention.1 And it cannot be said that, so
far as verbal or written assurances went, they were altogether
fruitless. The declarations of the king that he intended to have
his compacts with his Huguenot subjects executed to the letter,
and that all violations of them should be punished, would have
been eminently satisfactory, had any vigorous steps been taken
to give the declarations effect. As it was, at the very moment
the monarch was threatening to prosecute any persons that
should stir up strife, the priests and monks were preaching
against the Protestants, and no attempt was made by the gov-
ernment to hinder them. In fact, the means were adopted best
calculated to keep up the memory of the most savage cruelties
which that or any other age ever witnessed. " Upon Saint
commemora- Bartholomew's Day," wrote William Cecil, from Paris,
Bartholomew's m 15S3, " we had here solemn processions and other
Day- tokens of triumphs and joy, in remembrance of the
slaughter committed this time eleven years past. But I doubt
they will not so triumph at the Day of Judgment." 2
It is time, however, that we should again glance at the po-
litical events which were only too soon to precipitate the king-
dom into a new and sanguinary struggle, with religion for the
convenient pretext. Again are we compelled to look at the
condition of the court, and to view the despicable personage to
whose feeble hands, by the strange order of things, the destiny
of France was intrusted. The contemplation is, certainly, not
a pleasant one, and we shall not dwell, beyond the absolute re-
quirements of the case, upon a scene better calculated to create
astonishment and inspire disgust than gratify a laudable curi-
osity. The wild freaks of insanity are at all times repulsive to
the intelligent spectator ; but the mad antics of a youth upon
whom, for his own misfortune, and the misfortune of millions
1 Memoires de Duplessis Mornay, ii. 320, etc.
5 William Cecil to Lord Burleigh, Paris, August 25, 1583. Ellis, Original
Letters, Second Series, iii. 23.
Vol. I. —15
226 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. IV.
of his fellow-men, the happiness of an entire country is depend-
ent constitute a theme which the sensitive would be particu-
larly glad to pass over in silence.
With Henry of Valois everything was going from bad to
worse. His recklessness no longer knew any bounds. Nothing
was bought at too high a price that contributed to
Henry III. & P L , .
andhismin- the monarch's own enjoyment, or to the advancement
of those whom he had selected to be the purveyors
of his pleasures. All France was impoverished to provide for
the support of the royal minions. Even death did not lighten
the burden resting on the poor people ; for a deceased favorite,
however humble in his origin, must be honored with funeral
obsequies so grand and sumptuous that a former generation
would have regarded them as too extravagant for a member
of the royal house itself. Anne de Joyeuse and Jean Louis
de la Yalette were the minions upon whom Henry had fixed
jo euse and n^s principal affection, and with regard to whom he
£Pernon. seemed only to have one remaining solicitude— lest
he should not succeed in apportioning lands, revenues, and dig-
nities in exactly equal measure to each. In his infatuation for
these striplings, he rated his good fortune above that of Alexan-
der the Great because he had found such excellent friends. They
were the two pillars upon which the prosperity of France was
to rest.1 There had been, indeed, a great disparity between the
favorites ; for while La Yalette, the grandson of a notary, had
begun life in obscurity, the possessor of an income of barely
four hundred crowns, Joyeuse was at least the scion of a race
that had achieved some distinction and boasted noble extraction.
With regard to both, however, their royal admirer could not
rest content until he had by letters patent assigned them a rank
superior to that of any others of his subjects, of however an-
cient a pedigree, save only the princess of the blood and the
members of the houses of Savoy, Lorraine, Cleves, and Orleans-
Longueville. Anne de Joyeuse, from a simple count, found
himself transformed into a duke and a peer of France ; while,
a few months later, the same honor was conferred upon his rival
1 Busbecq to the Emperor, May 2, 1583. Epistolse, fol. 35.
1583. THE UNCERTAIN PEACE. 227
in the king's affections. In order to provide the latter with an
estate appropriate to his rank, the king himself purchased for
him the title to an important fief, and young La Yalette appears
in history henceforth as the Duke of Epernon. To bind his
favorites still closer to himself in the bonds of extraordinary
intimacy, Henry resolved to provide them with brides from the
same family from which he had taken his own wife. Joyeuse
was married to Margaret, daughter of the Duke of Yaudemont,
the queen's younger sister. The monarch bestowed upon her a
dowry of 300,000 crowns, just as if she had been a king's daugh-
ter, and made a present of an equal amount of money to the
fortunate bridegroom. The banquets, jousts, and other festivi-
ties in honor of the marriage cost France the round sum of over
a million crowns. The queen's remaining sister, Christine, was
not yet marriageable, but she was betrothed to Epernon, and her
dowry of 300,000 crowns was at once paid to him. It was more
difficult to find provinces of the kingdom whose control might
be intrusted to the upstart grandees. A royal command was
likely to be of little avail in such case, and might meet with
a positive refusal. It seemed more advisable to purchase the
consent of the present holder than to undertake to compel his
acquiescence in the transfer. Epernon had cast longing eyes
upon the important province of Guyenne, and the king offered
Henry of Navarre the sum of two hundred thousand crowns to
relinquish it. But the Bearnais would hear of no smaller price
than a million francs, to which extravagant figure his debts ap-
pear to have amounted, and so the negotiation fell through.1
For Joyeuse his royal master resolved to make provision from
The king at- tne st^ more extensive province of Languedoc. In
tempts to re- vam however, did he order the old constable's son to
move Marshal " "
Montmorency. resign his office in f avor of Joyeuse, offering him the
government of the lie de France instead. Montmorency abso-
lutely refuse to make the exchange, and took such prompt meas-
ures to defend his rights that the king dared not wage war
1 " Harisposto volerlo fare, sempre vogli pagare li suoi debiti, che sono circa
un milione di franchi." Renieri to the grand duke, Paris, July 30, 1582,
Negotiations avec la Toscane, iv. 421.
228 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. IV.
with him " lest worse might befall him." ' And when, a year
or more later, Joyeuse undertook to stir up a revolt in Langue-
doc so as to gain a foothold there, the full anger of the descend-
ant of the first Christian of France burst out. Having taken
at Clermont a number of Joyeuse's partisans with arms in their
hands, he put them all to death. He was about to do the same
to other rebels against his authority captured at Lodeve, when
he received a message from the king declaring his displeasure
that the cities of his realm should be sacked simply because of
a quarrel between two of his marshals, and confirming Montmo-
rency as governor of Languedoc.2 To so low an ebb had the
royal authority fallen ; and so much was gained by resolute re-
bellion. In other undertakings, however, Henry was more suc-
cessful. The necessitous Duke of Mayenne was easily prevailed
on to sell the admiralty to Joyeuse for one hundred and twenty
thousand crowns, two-thirds of the purchase money being paid
down and good security given for the balance ; and for eight
thousand crowns, a minor favorite, Alphonso the Corsican, ob-
tained the post of colonel of the Italian infantry. In short, the
king exhibited himself, in the eyes of an astonished world, in
the capacity of a shrewd broker, driving bargains for the pur-
chase of the offices of state once bestowed as rewards of merito-
1 Lestoile (May, 1583), i. 162, 163.
s Lestoile (October, 1584), i. 179. The disgraceful dissensions of the court
had their parallel in the cloister. Sir Edward Stafford, in his letter of Decem-
ber 13, 1583 (Murdin State Papers, 384), gives us an amusing description of a
"battell" that took place among the nuns of Poissy, in whose refectory the
famous colloquy had been held more than a score of years before. On the
death of the abbess, seventy-five of the sisters voted for an old woman as h^r
successor, the other twenty-five for Madame du Perron, sister of Marshal
Retz. Thereupon, Catharine de' Medici went to Poissy to persuade the nunrs
to receive the last-named lady ; but the nuns barred the entrance, and the
queen mother's servants were compelled to dig under the wall to get the
gate open. Shutting themselves in their rooms, the nuns informed Cath-
arine from the windows that they would starve "afore theie would loose
their accustomed liberties." The next day they fell upon Madame du
Perron, and beat her until she could no longer stand, as the author of their
'harme." The king's guards had to arrest two or three of the " heddyest"
of the nuns and put them in other religious houses before the commotion
could be quelled.
1583. THE UNCERTAIN PEACE. 220
rious services, and paying the purchase money out of his own
pocket.1
There is another side of the royal character and life at which
fortunately we are not compelled here to look. Rumors were
infamy of the afloat of excesses too gross to be put upon paper —
royai morals. gtories were told of unnatural crime with too much
circumstantial detail to be rejected as apocryphal. Prudent
men abstained from saying more than that if the king was
childless, it was the direct result of his lewd practices. The
Florentine agent wrote in his secret despatches to his own
government : " I shall describe to you by word of mouth the
king's mode of the life, albeit his majesty asserts his intention
to change it. Anyone that understands what it is must doubt
whether God will delay overmuch to take vengeance." 2 A
few months later he writes that the prince, wmom he contempt-
uously designates, from the strange mixture of religious per-
formances with his orgies, as " the bishop " — " il vescovo " —
seems no longer to have a concern for anything, and gives
everyone the impression that, inasmuch as he has no children,
he is quite willing that the kingdom should come to an end
with his life.3 Now and then a wit, more audacious than the
rest of his kind, ventured to hint even to the king himself
what the world thought of the moral atmosphere surrounding
ihe throne ; as when, on one occasion, Henry having remarked
to his companions after dinner that he had always heard it said
that, whenever the royal court stopped for ten days or a fort-
night in any place where the plague was raging, the pestilence
was sure to disappear, Rucellai promptly rejoined : " Yes, Sire,
one devil drives the other away." 4
What with an effeminate king who shunned everything
1 Albortani to the grand duke, May 1, 1582. Negociations avec la Toscane,
442, 443.
2 " Chi la sa, dubita che Dio tardi troppo a risentirsene. '' The same to the
same, July 15 and 22, 1582, ibid., iv. 443, 444.
3 Ibid., iv. 456.
4 Henry felt 'he home-thrust, for he afterward expressed his wonder that
he had not incontinently thrown Rucellai out of the window. Ibid., iv.
541.
'230 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Cn. IV.
manly, who cared more for the dogs in the basket which he
carried suspended from a ribbon about his neck than for his
Financial em- unhappy subjects, and could never wring money
and^dan^ous fast enough from those unhappy subjects to bestow
expedients. Up0n ^jg msatiate favorites, France was wretched
enough. When his resources ran low, when financiers stood
aghast, and even Catharine de' Medici was driven almost to
despair ; when the tried counsellors of the crown attempted to
resist the creation of new offices entailing fresh burdens for
the people, Henry took the matter into his own hands. One
day he went to parliament, and, utterly disregarding the remon-
strance of the judges, compelled that venerable body to register
not less than twenty-seven edicts whose obnoxious character it
had pointed out.1 And so the load of taxation went on receiv-
ing almost daily additions to its weight, despite the fact that the
king himself received but a small part of what was drawn from
the purses of the unfortunate tax-payers. It was the English
ambassador's opinion, " that there were so many officers in
France, that what sum soever the king received, either Taille,
1 Demayne,' or any way else, the officers being paid, there came
to the king, of every French crown that was received for him,
but seven ' sous,' which is not above two groats of our money."'
The people might murmur, but no account was made of the
discontent ; the people was a beast that had lost its teeth and
its claws.3 In place, however, of blind devotion to its king,
once a proud distinction of the tiers etat, there was now in
men's hearts a deep-set hatred of a prince whose sympathies
could not be touched by the sight of the general distress. When
Henry and his wife were seen making pilgrimages to Our Lady
of Chartres, and the faithful throughout France were exhorted
to join in the processions set on foot in every city, to suppli-
cate heaven for the boon of an heir to the throne, the miser-
able victims of royal prodigality were more inclined to invoke
1 De Thou, vi. (liv. 74) 130.
2 Sir Edward Stafford to the secretary, December 22, 1583. Murdin State
Papers, 387, 388.
3 Lestoile, i. 154.
1583. THE UNCERTAIN PEACE. 231
curses than blessings upon the head of their king, and desired
rather the extinction than the preservation of his race.1 The
sovereign, as though deaf to the popular murmurs, continued
his untimely efforts to induce his subjects, instead of suing for
relief from existing taxes, to consent to assume new obligations.
Commissioners were sent out with this object in view, but they
soon returned reporting the entire failure of the effort. No
money could be raised without the immediate prospect of open
resistance and bloodshed. " If," said the people, " the king
were in pressing need, we should know our duty and do it ; but
his majesty asks for money only that he may, as is his wont,
enrich a few young men by his ill-timed liberality. The de-
mand is out of all reason." 2
Meanwhile, this spendthrift king, this inventor of orgies too
foul for pen to describe, had his moods of devotion, and con-
institution of tinued to practise ceremonials for the most part as
tyoJth^An- puerile, and frequently leading to as lavish an expen-
nunciation. diture 0f the hard earnings of the people, as his un-
manly amusements. Early in 1583 a new order of penitents
was instituted, under the express sanction of Henry III. It
took the name of the Fraternity of " the Annunciation," and
on the day upon which the Roman Catholic Church celebrated
that event (the twenty-fifth of March) a grand procession was
held, through a pouring rain, in the streets of Paris, much to
the disgust of the intelligent men and women of the capital.
The procession was repeated on Good Friday, but, for greater
respectability, by torchlight. The Parisians, who had heard of
the king's affection for the Flagellants of Avignon eight or nine
years before, now for the first time had the opportunity of wit-
nessing the strange rites of these devotees, and the more singu-
lar conduct of a monarch who did not hesitate to put off his
ordinary garb in order to assume the rough sack worn by the
penitents, and to go on foot carrying the great cross. There
was no doubt as to the orthodoxy of the statutes of the order ;
1 Memoires de Claude Haton, ii. 1080.
2 Busbecq to the Emperor Kudolph II., March 20, 1583. Epistolse, fols.
I, 129.
232 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OP NAVARRE. Ch. IV
for among the grounds assigned for the adoption of the name
of the Annunciation of the Virgin was this : " The third reason
has been our common hope of one day seeing in this kingdom,
through the ardent requests of the very holy Virgin, all the
heresies, errors, and false opinions that ravage and trouble it
overturned and destroyed, according as the Church has been
wont to sing in her lauds : ' Gaude, Maria virgo ; cunctas hse-
reses sola interemisti in universo mundo.' " ' None the less did
many of the clergy, despite the expressed approval of pope and
nuncio, denounce from the pulpit a new superstition under the
cloak of which courtiers attempted to screen shameful excesses
from popular scrutiny and reprobation. Even Catharine de'
Medici, who had once given her sanction to the Flagellants of
Avignon, was alarmed when she heard from many quarters the
prophecy that Henry was about to exchange his crown for a
cowl, and violently reproached the Jesuit Auger, whom she
held responsible for having induced her son to neglect the af-
fairs of state, and from a king become a monk. The very lack-
eys that followed their masters to court caught the infection of
the general contempt for the new devotion, and set on foot in
the courtyard of the Louvre a mimic procession of penitents ; for
which insult Henry, when he heard of it, ordered eighty of the
culprits to be flogged in good earnest. Evidently the monarch's
great device for winning the reputation of sanctity
The king's ° or J
waning devo- had proved a complete failure. The people preferred
to judge of his character from the reported incidents
of his daily life rather than from the hypocritical displays of
his assumed devotions.2 However, for a time Henry kept up
1 " Les statuts de la congregation des penitens de l'Annonciation de Nostre
Dame." Reprinted in Cimber et Danjou, Archives curieuses, x. 443. Beside
a very full confession of faith, the statutes contain a pledge on the part of each
member, if possible, to attend mass daily, and to repeat, on getting out of bed
and on going to bed, three pater-nosters and three ave-marias, kneeling and
kissing the ground at each repetition. I find only one act of benevolence in-
culcated : Every year, at the beginning of Lent, the rector was empowered to
make an inquiry for poor young girls of marriageable age. On Lady's Day the
members of the fraternity were to contribute toward their dowry, and hus-
bands were to be found for them after Easter.
2 See De Thou, vi. 294, 295 ; Lestoile, i. 159, 160 ; Jehan de la Fosse, 194 ;
1583. THE UNCERTAIN PEACE. 233
the farce — wore the penitent's dress, partook of the holy com-
munion every fortnight, fumbled with a necklace of ebony with
death's heads in ivory, frequented the Capuchins' church, sang
daily for two or three hours with the monks, dismissed his
musicians, refused to have dancing at court, and excited general
wonder by the practice of his self-imposed austerities. Never-
theless, it was not many months before his devotion, as observed
by the attentive eyes of foreign diplomatic agents, had sensibly
diminished, and he had returned again to his old pleasures.1
Meantime, superstitious fears never relinquished their hold upon
and supersti- the king, prone, like his mother, to place implicit con-
fidence in signs and portents. One night he had a
remarkable dream. He fancied that he was attacked, torn in
pieces, and devoured by the lions, bears, and other wild ani-
mals, of which he kept a number in the Louvre for use in
mock combats. On awaking, Henry was so impressed with
the idea that some disaster impended over him, that he sent
and had the entire collection of beasts shot by his arquebusiers.2
An enemy more to be dreaded than any that his imagina-
tion could conjure up was stealthily gathering its forces and
preparing a blow which the king would prove impotent to
parry. The ambitious family of Lorraine had never lost its
Discontent of longing for the power of which it had enjoyed a
the Guises, brief taste during the reign of Francis the Second.
Henry of Guise and his brothers, the Cardinal and the Duke of
Mayenne, had inherited the traditions of their father and of
Busbecq, fols. 36-39; Busini to the grand duke, March 31, 1583, Negotia-
tions avec la Toscane, iv. 459. Friar Maurice Poncet, who distinguished him-
self by his denunciations, made bold to style the king's institution, in his ser-
mons, "confrairie des hipocrites et atheistes." Lestoile, ubi supra.
1 The bulletins of the kings spiritual health, as despatched to the Grand
Duke of Tuscany by his agent about this time, are sufficiently grotesque.
According to Busini (letter of June 27, 1583), it was the nuncio that advised
Henry to renounce the penitent's dress. The record closes, at the end of a
little over a half-year, with the discouraging entry that the king is well enough
in body, it is true, but " sendo ritornato a suoi soliti piaceri, sendo declinato
assai dalla devozione." Letter of October 13, 1583, Negociations avec la Tos-
cane, iv. 475.
* Lestoile, January 21, 1583, i. 156.
234 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. IV.
the Cardinal Charles of Lorraine. They could scarcely be ex-
pected to submit with good grace to the eclipse of their greatness
through the sudden elevation of such upstarts as Joyeuse and
Epernon. An excuse for resistance to the royal plans must be
found, and the search was neither long nor difficult. In the
good old days of their absolute authority under the name of their
nephew Francis, the elder Guises had certainly never exhibited
over-much solicitude for the welfare of the oppressed people ;
indeed, the great demand of the people had been for an ac-
counting on the part of this grasping family for the immense
sums of money that had passed through their hands. As to
religion, Duke Francis and his brother Charles had assured
the Duke of Wiirtemberg, at the conference of Saverne, of
their virtual agreement with the doctrinal views of the Ger-
man Reformers, and the churchman had volunteered the state-
ment that in default of a red gown he would willingly wear a
black one. Now, however, it was very convenient to assume
the attitude of defenders of the faith, and to simulate a deep
solicitude for the woes of a nation staggering under a load of
inordinate taxation. At the very same moment, however, the
members of this highly patriotic family were in close commu-
nication with the King of Spain and the Duke of Alva, the
more or less openly declared enemies of France, and were
Conspiracy plotting to open the gates of the kingdom and allow
^uiseiTsavo a f°reigner to invade the soil for which they pro-
and Spain, fessed so much interest. Such conspiracies can rarely
be kept secret, and it was not long before vague intimations
reached the king. The first authoritative statements came to
him through a messenger sent by Henry of Navarre. The
partisans of the League were to rise in Champagne and
Burgundy, so soon as the Duke of Savoy should make his
appearance on the frontier. Meanwhile Charles Emmanuel
was providing stores of ammunition and massing his forces
in Bresse, whence, as from a centre, he might conveniently
strike a decisive blow either northward or southward. Nor
had the emissaries of Philip and the Duke of Savoy been idle
in France itself. The Duke of Montmorency, disgusted with
the policy of the king, angry at the preference given to per-
l.,S4. THE UNCERTAIN PEACE. 235
sonal favorites over the representatives of the oldest families
of the kingdom, especially indignant that Henry should
persist, as he believed that Henry still persisted, in the in-
tention of giving the province of Languedoc to
Disloyalty of _ , ? . f .,f. , & _
the Marshal Joyeuse, had lent a willing ear to those that sug-
Montmorency. , , , , r -—
gested a practical method or revenge. He was to
await the invader at Pont Saint Esprit on the Khone, and
to be aided by the Spanish king and the Duke of Savoy, from
whom he had already received pecuniary help. Philip, who,
when the occasion offered, knew well enough how to subor-
dinate religion to policy, had even approached the King of
phiii at- Navarre, and endeavored to seduce him from his
duoetheEn loyalty by flattering offers. The Bearnese, falling in
of Navarre. wjt}1 the customs of the insincere diplomacy of the
period, had for some time been maintaining negotiations with
the occupant of the Escorial, which were purposely invested
with an air of close secrecy. Neither of the parties, bitter and
irreconcilable enemies as they were at heart, had any other in-
tention than to outwit the other ; but Philip could scarcely
have been aware of the fact that Henry of Bourbon from time
to time transmitted to the King of France a full account of
what had been said and done.1 Of late the Spaniard had made
more definite and tempting offers. " If your master will con-
sent," said the plenipotentiaries of Philip to Duplessis Mornay,
Navarre's representative, " the King of Spain will furnish him
with the means to make war against Henry of Valois, and will
continue his support until he shall have placed the crown of
France upon his head. But your master must make up his
mind at once ; our king has other customers in France who are
ready to strike a bargain with him." 2
1 Duplessis Mornay reported to the King of Navarre the substance of an in-
terview with Henry III., in which he had said : ''Qu'on lui avoit diet que
vous traictiez avec le roy d'Espaigne, par certaines personnes interposees : ce
qui estoit vrai ; mais que sa majeste se pouvoit ressouvenir qu'elle l'avoit
trouve bon, et que de fois a aultre on l'avoit advertie de ce qui s'y estoit
passe." Duplessis to the King of Navarre, February 20, 1584, Memoires, ii.
527.
2 " Particulierement que vous ne lui voulliez celer que, depuispeu, vous auroit
este declare, de la part du roy d'Espaigne, que, si vous voulliez, on vous don-
236 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. IV.
The tidings of such serious designs upon the peace and integ-
rity of his kingdom, and even upon the possession of the crown
Henr *s it self, made for the moment an impression upon
irresolution. the mmd 0f the king and of Catharine de' Medici.
It seemed at one time as if the feeble and irresolute prince
would awake from his dream of securing peace at any price,
and adopt decisive measures that might forestall all future
attempts of his insidious enemies. He authorized levies of
troops in Switzerland, and sent powder and gensdarmes to
Lyons, the most vulnerable point of his territory — precautions
that evidently excited the suspicions of the Guises lest their
plans were discovered. He went further, and calling to him
the Dukes of Severs and of Mayenne, one Saturday, in the
Tuileries, consulted them as to how conspirators should be
handled. " The ambassador of Venice," said he, " came to see
me this afternoon. I am greatly indebted to the Venetians be-
cause of the excellent reception they gave me on my return
from Poland, and now they ask my opinion in respect to a
matter in which I should wish to give them sound advice.
They have discovered a conspiracy of some of the chief senators
against the state. The truth of the matter is ascertained be-
yond a question, but they know not how to manage it. What
think you 1 " Mayenne and Severs were, doubtless, not slow
in discovering an analogy between the case of the inculpated
neroit le moyen de lui faire la guerre, et qu'on le vous eontinueroit jusques a
vous mettre la couronne sur la teste. Mais qu'il estoit temps de vous ressou-
dre, sinon qu'il avoit son marchand prest en France. Et lui dis que ces propos
m'avoient este tenues a moi mesmes." Ibid., ubi supra. " Les negociateurs
du roi d'Espagne sur les difficultes que je leur faisois traitant avec eux, me di-
rent en partant, ' He bien vous refusez ce parti, nos marchands sontprets,' en-
tendant ceux de Guise." Note of Duplessis Mornay to De Thou, v. (liv. 79)378.
The offers were made through the Viscount of Chaux and one Undiano, his
brother-in-law. What Henry III. asserted of the readiness of Guise to join
forces with Navarre, or with any other Protestant, inside or outside of the
kingdom, " provided only he were promised friendship and help for his estab-
lishment," was equally true of Philip II. s disposition. " The alliances which
he sought with those whom he condemned most before men as the favorers
of: heresy are unknown to those alone who do not wish to know." Declara-
tion of the king against the Dukes of Mayenne and Aumale, Blois, February
1589, Isambert, xiv. 638.
1584. THE UNCERTAIN PEACE. 237
Venetians and their own. Yery naturally they recommended
mature deliberation and the fullest information before any step
should be taken. The apprehension aroused by the king's in-
terrogatory was not lessened when, on leaving his presence,
Nevers ascertained by careful inquiry from the ambassadors
of the Italian states, and from the envoy of Venice in particu-
lar, that there was not the slightest basis of truth for the al-
leged plot against the doge.1 Yet, after all, Henry stopped
short of any manly resolution such as the occasion and his own
peril demanded. It is true that he thanked his cousin of
Navarre heartily for his expedition in acquainting him with the
conspiracy, and repeated his declarations of good will to his
Protestant subjects. " I shall maintain peace with them ; I
shall show that I am well disposed to them," said he to Duplessis
Mornay. Nor did he decline Navarre's offices in seeking to
win Marshal Montmorency back to his duty. It was impossi-
ble, however, in a day to remove the impressions sedulously
fostered by his most intimate counsellors through
leans to the long years. He still thought, because thus he had
been instructed to think, that the only perils to which
he was exposed came from the dreaded Huguenots. The
Guises might be troublesome at times, but they certainly meant
no great injury.2 As for the League, had he not first absorbed
it by proclaiming himself its head, and then ordered it out of
existence by expressly stipulating, in the edict of pacification
of 1577, that all such associations should forthwith cease? In
his present frame of mind, it was to no purpose that Henry of
Navarre might offer him his sword, as he had offered it, months
before, to attack Philip the Second in the very heart
and discour- , , . . r
ages Navarre's or bpam, as a diversion to further the attempt of
advances. * • • i x r-i • a t ii i
Anjou in the Low Countries. It was equally useless
to try to persuade him that the patriotism of the Protestants
was beyond question, or, to use their own words, that there was
1 Duplessis Mornay to the King of Navarre, March 9, 1584, Memoires, ii.
546.
2DeThou, vi. 211,391.
3 Justification des actions du roy de Navarre (July 6, 1583), Memoires de
Duplessis Mornay, ii. 301.
238 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Cu. IV.
not a Frenchman in France more French than were the Hugue-
nots.1 Only the stern logic of subsequent events could convince
him that his life-long views were altogether false.
Yet the loyalty of the King of Navarre, the head of the
Huguenots, had recently been put to a severe test. For much
less important grounds had a constable of Bourbon, early in
the century, renounced his allegiance to Francis the First,
and gone over to the side of the enemies of his coun-
The affront °
to the King try. When the emissaries of Philip came to the
friends of Henry of Navarre with the offer of two
hundred thousand ducats to be paid to him upon his promise to
wage war against the King of France, and with the promise of
four hundred thousand more when four cities should have been
captured, and six hundred thousand for every year the war
might last2 — when, I say, these tempting inducements were
held forth to the owner of the little kingdom at the foot of the
Pyrenees, he was still smarting from a recent and cruel affront.
" Never was Africa so fruitful of novelties but that France
to-day surpasses it/' Thus wrote an ambassador to his imperial
master.3 The incident that elicited the remark was the strange
treatment just received by Margaret of Navarre at the hands
of her brother the king. The bride of Saint Bartholomew's
Day had apparently resolved that all the infamy should not
fall to the share of the male members of the house of Valois,
and had made her married life as notorious for its irregulari-
ties as her nuptials had been distinguished by bloody massacre.
For many years brother and sister had cordially hated one an-
other. Now there was new cause of hostility. Henry had
written to his favorite Joyeuse at Rome, detailing with mali-
cious particularity the story of his sister's most recent lapses
IUH est asses evident qu'il n'y a Francois plus Francois en France qu'
eulx." Raisons pour induire le roya accorder la prolongation des places, etc.
(August 12, 1583). Ibid., ii. 362.
2 Agrippa d'Aubigne's figures (Histoire universelle, ii. 457) differ some-
what from those of Sully, i. c. 18 ; while Duplessis Mornay (in his note to De
Thou, ubi supra) makes the immediate offer to have been 300,000 crowns,
with 100,000 crowns monthly.
3 Busbecq to the emperor, September 20, 1583. Epistola 24.
1583. THE UNCERTAIN PEACE. 239
from virtue ; and Margaret, hearing of the contents of the royal
letters, had been so audacious as to send a body of armed men
to waylay the bearer, whom they wounded and robbed of his
bundle of despatches.1 Incensed beyond measure at the insult
to his authority, Henry resorted to a measure of retaliation as
coarse as it was cowardly. At a public ball in the Louvre,
where, in the absence of the queens, his wife and his mother,
Margaret of Navarre occupied the first rank in honor, the king
approached her, and without a word of warning began to re-
count, in the hearing of the assembled crowd of courtiers and
ladies, the shameful course of her recent amours. He gave the
names of her numerous lovers, and described their unlawful
visits with such minuteness as might have been expected only
from an eye-witness. He even charged her with having re-
cently given birth to a child, the fruit of adulterous connection
with the grand equerry of the Duke of Anjou ; and concluded
the taunting speech by ordering her to free the court of her
contaminating presence by leaving Paris on the morrow. Nor
was this all. When the Queen of Navarre had hastily started,
with such escort as she could obtain, in the direction of Gas-
cony, she was overtaken, at the distance of a few miles from
the capital, between Palaiseau and Sainte Claire, by a troop of
arquebusiers under command of a captain of the king's guard.
The very litter in which Margaret travelled was stopped, and
the queen was roughly ordered to unmask, while some of her
companions were arrested and taken to Ferrieres and even to
the Bastile, there to be subjected to a judicial examination.2
It had long been well known that between Henry of Navarre
and his wife little love was lost ; none the less, however, did
the prince feel himself called upon to demand an explanation
of the insult offered to his house, and a reparation of his
1 The story is detailed in Miss Freer's Henry the Third, ii. 334, etc., at
greater length than is here necessary. The scandalous life of Margaret of
Navarre is told, and exaggerated, in Le Divorce Satyrique, ou Les Amours de
la Reyne Marguerite, Memoires de Henry III., 187, etc.
8 Busbecq. ubi supra ; Busini to the grand duke, August 22, 1583, Negocia-
tions avec la Toscane, iv. 468 ; Lestoile, i. 164 ; Negotiation de M. Duplessis
vers le roy Henry III , Aoust, 1583, Memoires de Duplessis Mornay, ii. 364, etc.
240 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. IV.
honor. But no satisfactory answer could the king give. In
fact, heartily sorry and somewhat ashamed of the length to
which his passion had carried him, he assured Duplessis Mornay
and Agrippa d'Aubigne, Navarre's envoys, that he had since
learned the falsity of the charges made against his sister. But
when the Huguenot gentlemen insisted upon some positive
atonement in place of dilatory promises and vague generalities,
and called his attention to the fact that he had done either too
much or too little — too much, if his sister were innocent, too
little, if she wTere guilty — they found that they had to deal with
a monarch whose ideas were those of an eastern tyrant rather
than the sentiments of a Christian and magnanimous ruler.
How, they asked, shall it be said that the King of Navarre has
received his wife, taking her at the hands of her brother thus
foully smirched — " tout barbouillee ? " " How ? " he re-
sponded. " As the sister of a king." " Yes, but a just king,"
was their quiet retort. And when Agrippa d'Aubigne, in his
excitement, accounting delay the equivalent of a denial of jus-
tice, proposed, on his master's behalf, to renounce the honor
of the king's alliance and friendship, the latter exclaimed :
" Go home and tell your master, since thus you dare to style
him, that should he take that course, I shall place upon his
shoulders a load under which the shoulders of the Grand Seign-
ior himself would bend. Tell him that, and be off ; he needs
such men as you." "Yes, sire," the intrepid Huguenot an-
swered, "he has been brought up and has grown under the
load with which you threaten him. If you do him justice, he
will do homage to your majesty for his life, his lands, and the
men he has gained ; but his honor, sire, he will enslave
neither to you nor to living prince, so long as he has a bit of a
sword in his grasp." '
While maintaining, despite affront and neglect, unswerving
loyalty to their sovereign, and turning a deaf ear to the seduc-
1 Agrippa d'Aubigne, Histoire universelle, ii. 415 ; Memoires, 493, 494 ;
Confession catholique de Sancy, 421 ; Negotiation de M. Duplessis, Memoires,
ii. 371, 372. See, also, Harangue au roi Henri III., faite par M. de Pibrac
pour le roi de Navarre, etc., Cimber et Danjou, Archives curieuses, x. 187-
200.
1580. THE UNCERTAIN PEACE. 241
tions of the Spanish king, the Huguenots were not neglectful
of the means of self-defence. Peace, indeed, prevailed, and the
rights of the professors of the purer faith were, within certain
circumscribed limits, recognized by royal edicts having every
sanction known by the law. But no prudent man could help
foreseeing trouble in the near future. Protestantism had to
do in France, as elsewhere, with an undying enemy. The
king might seek peace through love for quiet and repose ;
Catharine de' Medici might deprecate a renewal of hostilities as
unlikely to result in any accession to her influence in the state ;
the great majority of the nation might denounce war as the
certain precursor of ruin to countless homes ; but the Roman
Catholic clergy remained unmoved in its fixed determination to
suffer no lasting agreement to subsist with the heretics who de-
spised its authority and refused obedience to its commands. In
the recent introduction of the Society of Jesus this intolerant
spirit had received a marked accession of strength,
and th|m ! for, if the last to enter the kingdom, the Jesuits bade
fair soon to outstrip all their ecclesiastical competitors
in the race for wealth and power.1 The League was by no
means dead, whatever the king might say or think. The thought
of new wars, of fresh massacres, was never permitted to fade
from the minds of devotees ; it furnished the staple of count-
less sermons in every part of France. As for the Guises and
their confederates, it was matter of public notoriety that a close
correspondence was maintained between them and the courts
of Spain and Pome, looking to the renewal of the strife with
the Protestants under more favorable circumstances. The pope,
moreover, through his nuncio, again applied, and with more
1 Jehan de la Fosse chronicles, in February, 1580, that this grasping order
had involved itself in a quarrel with the curates of the capital by erecting a
house near the Porte Saint Antoine, in which they installed some of their
brethren, authorized by a pretended papal bull to administer the sacraments
in any parish of the city. " Lesdicts Jesuites," he adds. " entrerent en ceste
vi\le comme pauvres, toutefois tost apres devinrent riches." Journal d'un
cure ligueur, 184. " Les Jesuites, qui sont les boutefeux de l'inquisition,
croissent de jour en jour en auctorite." Raisons pour induire le roy a ac-
corder la prolongation des places, etc. Memoires de Duplessis Mornay, ii. 361.
Vol. L— 16
242 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE Cn. IV
urgency than had been displayed on any previous occasion, for
the reception of the decrees of the Council of Trent. Although
the project again failed (not so much because of any zeal of
the king in defence of the liberties of the Gallican Church as
because its success would be interpreted as a sure prelude of the
introduction of the Inquisition, so held in horror that the very
prospect would create fresh commotions), it was significant that
the present moment should have been selected for the attempt.1
Under these circumstances it was not strange that Henry of
Navarre should espouse the plan of uniting all the Protestant
princes and states of Christendom in a confederation for mutual
protection against the assaults of their common enemies. To
this course he was perhaps the more encouraged by the knowl-
edge of an incident of recent occurrence across the British
Channel.
If Queen Elizabeth was generally cold and irresponsive, if
in her island home she often seemed selfishly indifferent to
the claims of the Protestants on the continent, exposed as they
were to the rude bufferings of cruel fortune, there were those
among her subjects, and even at her council-board, who more
correctly estimated the services of what might properly be
styled the advance-guard of the Reformation, and who sin-
cerely desired that the heroism it displayed should be duly re-
quited. When Geneva was again made the victim of Romish
plots, when its revenues were diminished, and its very exist-
ence was imperilled, a chord of sympathy was touched which
thrilled every truly patriotic soul in the great commonwealth
of Reformed States. Then did the queen's best and most
trusted advisers send forth an appeal to "the wealthier clergy
and other godly, to contribute of that blessing that God hath
bestowed upon them toward the relief of that poor afflicted
1 Busbecq, under date of July 3, 1583, Epistola 21. "Cepandant, c'est de
lors qu'on commence de plus belle a brasser avec le pape une ligue generale a
V extermination de tous ceulx de la relligion ; que le nonce faict plus grande
instance qu'il n'avoit mesmes faict apres les massacres de la reception et pub-
lication du Concile de Trente et introduction de l'inquisition." Justification
des actions du roy de Navarre (July 6, 1583), Memoires de Duplessis Mornay,
ii. 302. Cf., also, ii. 361.
1577. PROTESTANT FEDERATION. 243
town ; 'vhich," said they, " in some part may seem to have de-
served the fruits of Christian compassion, by former courtesies
and favors shewed to sundry her majesty's subjects, in the
time of the late persecution in Queen Mary's reign." The
royal treasury could not be called upon, such were the drafts
rnade upon the queen's resources by the troubles of Ireland ;
but Burleigh and Walsingham, Warwick and Leicester, with
their associates, whose names are signed to the charitable ap-
peal, felt themselves fully warranted in urging the English
bishops to interest themselves in securing from their dioceses
a generous assistance for the city of Calvin, and this, not
merely as a Christian duty, but as a mark of personal respect.
" So," wrote they to the Bishop of Chester, " shall you give us
cause to think that you not only care, as in Christian compas-
sion you are bound, to relieve the present distress of that poor
town, which, through God's goodness, hath served in this lat-
ter age for a nursery unto God's church, but also to satisfy
this our request." '
The idea of opposing the designs of the papacy, now sup-
posed to have succeeded in banding all the forces of the Roman
Catholic world for the destruction of Protestantism, by means
proposed uni- of a universal league of the professors of the re-
ImotgPtS formed doctrines was not a new one. We have seen
tents- that the National Synod of Sainte Foy, in 1578, had
expressed its hearty approval of the conference held at Frank-
fort, during the course of the preceding autumn, under the
patronage of a tried friend of the Huguenots, John Casimir,
count palatine — a conference in which, to use the words of
the official record of the synod, " there were proposed several
very expedient means, and some very appropriate and effectual
remedies, for uniting closely together the reformed churches of
the Christian world, as well as for suppressing and putting an
end to all the differences and contests which our enemies have
called forth between them, and preventing a few fanatical and
1 Lords of the Council to the Bishop of Chester, Richmond, January 28,
158$-. Printed in Francis Peck's Desiderata Curiosa ; or, a Collection of di-
vers scarce and curious Pieces relating chiefly to Matters of English History
(London, 1779\ i. 132.
244 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. IV.
bigoted theologians from condemning, as they have threatened
and declared their intention to condemn and anathematize,
the largest and soundest part of the reformed churches which
are at a distance." '
Nor would it seem that the Queen of England had at this
time been less deeply impressed than Casimir himself with the
importance of coming to the succor of the French and other
Protestants menaced with destruction, for she sent to Heidel-
berg a special messenger, a member of her own privy council,
the chief part of whose instructions was to express her maj-
esty's vehement desire that a union might be formed between
all those princes that had shaken off the papal yoke.2
These were, however, but vague desires and attempts, prose-
cuted with too ill-defined a plan to secure their end. Unfortu-
nately, if a few of the German princes appreciated its importance,
there were others — and they were among the most powerful —
to whom the trifling differences of faith between Lutheran and
Reformed seemed almost as momentous as the differences be-
tween the common creed of both and the doctrines of the Church
of Rome. Although posted in the very forefront of the battle,
and awaiting only the signal that should bring on a general en-
gagement between the marshalled forces of the despotic system
of the papacy and the champions of the Reformation, there were
leaders upon the latter side who dared to insist upon settling the
minor disputes subsisting in the Protestant ranks, even in face
of the enemy — leaders who seemed not to dream that in so doing
they were playing false to their principles and jeoparding the
sacred cause of liberty and truth. Who shall say that with a
different appreciation of the claims of loyalty to their allies,
with a higher and more disinterested view of the mutual rela-
tions of the several divisions of the one great Protestant host,
1 Aymon, Tous les synodes, i. 131. See supra, c. iii. p. 175.
2 So the veteran diplomatist, Hubert Languet, had been informed by the
Englishman. ' ' Nondum satis intellexi quaenam habeat mandata a sua regina,
nisi quod in genere mihi dixit suam reginam valde cupere, ut ineatur con-
cordia inter eos principes qui jugum pontificium excusserunt, eamque esse
prsecipuam causam suae legationis. " Letter from Frankfort, September 23,
1577, Epistolse secret*, i. 320.
1583. PROTESTANT FEDERATION. 245
the Elector of Saxony and the princes that sympathized with
his narrow views might not have rendered the long struggle of
the League an impossibility, by preventing Philip the Second
from pouring into France the treasures of Spain and ravaging
her fair territory by means of troops paid with Spanish gold ?
Who can even maintain confidently that such a Protestant con-
federation as that which they were ineffectually begged to join
might not have forestalled the carnage and the unspeakable
misery of a Thirty Years' War ?
It was at the very moment when the minds of Queen Eliza-
beth and the French Huguenots had begun to turn to the im-
The "Formu- portance, or, rather, the absolute necessity, of a good
ia concordiae." understanding among all the members of the Prot-
estant family (1577), that the great champion of Lutheran or-
thodoxy, James Andrese, with the aid of divers other theolo-
gians, completed, in the old Benedictine cloisters of Bergen,
near Magdeburg, the famous " Formula of Concord " — " For-
mula Concordiae." The document that had been so carefully
and satisfactorily prepared to harmonize the views of both
wings of the adherents of the Augsburg Confession, and unite
" Lutherans " and " Philippists " in one common confession,
proved the apple of discord for the greater Protestant world.
The " formula " not only settled for Germany the doctrines of
the ubiquity of Christ's body, and the presence of that body
with the bread and wine in the Lord's Supper, but condemned
in no measured terms the views of the rest of the Protestant
world.1 Such a work was well calculated to widen and render
lasting the breach between the two confessions.
Undismayed by this untoward incident, Henry of Navarre
had resolved to convert into a reality the vision of a great
Protestant union that had hitherto seemed to recede
Henryof V- in proportion to the ardor with which it was pursued.
If we may credit his own assurances, it had been his
first intention, so soon as peace was once more firmly secured
to the Huguenots, himself to undertake a journey that should
1 Such expressions as the following can scarcely be regarded as conciliatory :
"Prorsus rejicimus atque damnamus capernaiticam rnanducationem corporis
246 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. IV.
include a visit to the courts of all the monarchs and to the
dominions of all the states making profession of the Protestant
faith. He would have crossed to Great Britain and made the
personal acquaintance of Queen Elizabeth and young James
the Sixth of Scotland. Thence he would have pursued his way
to the Netherlands, to Denmark, to Sweden, to Germany.
Such a visit would have been fruitful of good, for it might have
bound the Protestant princes in a friendship secured by Gor-
dian knots.1 Unable, on account of the continued state of dis-
turbance prevailing in France, to engage in person in this im-
portant undertaking, the King of Navarre brought his proposal
of a general Protestant union before the National Synod of
Yitre (May, 1583), where the first steps toward a practical solu-
tion of the difficult problem were taken. It was an auspicious
moment when the representatives of two independent churches
of the Reformation — the churches of France and of the Nether-
lands— solemnly affixed their signatures to each other's Confes-
sion of Faith and Book of Discipline, in attestation of their
perfect harmony.2 By this synod the King of Navarre was
unanimously begged to pursue the project which he had
explained, and to employ as envoys to all the Protestant
princes and states of Christendom men of authority, piety, and
sound doctrine.3 It would appear that the synod suggested
as the most proper person for conducting this delicate mission
the learned and versatile Duplessis Mornay, to whose rapid and
animated pen we owe so large a portion of the striking corre-
Mission of s6- spondence of this period going under the name of
:gurPardaiiian.njs master, Henry of Navarre. It was, therefore, not
without a tinge of disappointment that the churches and Du-
plessis Mornay himself saw the negotiation intrusted to Mon-
Christi, quam nobis Sacramentarii contra suae conscientise testimonium post tot
nostras protestationes malitiose affingunt, quasi videlicet doceamus, ' etc.
1 Henry of Navarre to John III. of Sweden, July 15, 1583, Lettres missives,
i. 532. See also his letter to the Elector Augustus of Saxony, ibid., i. 535.
2 " Ou nous eusmes cest heur de voir les Eglises de Flandres, par l'envoy de
leurs depputez, unies en doctrine et confession avec les nostres." Henry of
Navarre to the churches (about the end of 1583). Lettres missives, i. 616.
3 Ibid. , ubi supra.
1583. PROTESTANT FEDERATION". 247
sieur de Segur Pardaillan, who, as superintendent of the king's
house and finances, at this time exercised a controlling influence
in the management of affairs. The selection was regarded as
injudicious by that portion of the Huguenots known as the " con-
sistorial party " — men with whom the religious element greatly
predominated over the political ; men whom we must regard as
the very heart of the movement, because their devotion to it
depended not upon attachment to the person of their master,
but upon their conscientious conviction of duty. Segur was a
man of restless activity, but impulsive and even violent in his
conduct, and more likely to offend by his roughness than con-
ciliate by his address.1 Besides, he was not inaccessible to the
approaches of flattery. On one occasion, after sturdily oppos-
ing the acceptance by the King of Navarre of an invitation of
Henry the Third to visit the French court, Segur disgusted his
friends by as strongly advocating the journey. The change in
his sentiments was the result of the attentions shown to him
during a trip to Paris which he was induced to take. And he
would probably have succeeded in persuading Henry to go, had
not blunt Agrippa d'Aubigne interposed. Taking Segur one
day to a window of the castle of Nerac overlooking the waters
of the Bayse, he quietly pointed to the precipitous rocks below,
and told him : " I am commissioned by all the good people
here to tell you that this is the leap you will have to take the
day our master starts for the court of France." And when
Segur, surprised, as may be imagined, at such a suggestion,
asked who would dare to make him take it, D'Aubigne, una-
bashed, replied : " I shall do it, and if I cannot do it alone, here
are those that will assist me." Segur turned his head only to
see ten or twelve of the most determined Huguenot captains,
1 The Life of Duplessis Mornay styles Segur "homme violent, vehement
et "brusque de son naturel," and says that the churches desisted from the
farther prosecution of the matter, "la voians en main d'une personna turbu-
lente, qui n'estoit pas pour la faire reussir, parcequ'il avoit en luy plus de
zele que de science " Duplessis Mornay expresses himself in similar terms in
a note to De Thou, vi. (liv. 79) 355, from which we learn the interesting fact
that, although Segur received the appointment as envoy, Duplessis Mornay
drew up the greater part of the documentary papers — "j'en dressay nean-
moins toutes les depoches."
24:S THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE Ch. IV
who had drawn down their hats over their eyes, as, the faith-
ful chronicler tells us, they were accustomed to do when any-
one looked them too steadily in the face without knowing what
was the matter in hand. Needless to say, Segur did not fur-
ther urge the journey of Navarre to Paris.1
Was it because of any mistakes on the part of the envoy that
the mission of Segur did not realize all the success that had
been hoped for, or were the intrinsic difficulties of the case too
great to be surmounted by even greater abilities than he pos-
sessed ? I am inclined to believe the latter supposition to be
correct. In justice to Segur, it must be said that Henry of
Navarre never seems to have entertained any sentiments but
those of unlimited confidence in the sagacity and fidelity of his
ambassador, and certainly his extant letters furnish ample testi-
mony to the complete satisfaction of the monarch with the mode
in which the instructions given were carried out.
The document embodying these instructions, and especially
that part which refers to England, deserves more than a pass-
ing notice. It dwells at length upon the dangers to which the
Protestants, not only of France, but of all Europe, are exposed.
The envoy's Since the scandalous attempt of the Duke of Anjou
instructions. to Decome master of Antwerp, says the writer, the
Huguenots have lost the last spark of hope based upon the pro-
mised succor of that prince. Indeed, the duke would have liked
to sell to the Spaniards the places held by him in the Nether-
lands, and has sent Giulio Birago (Birague) to the pope to ex-
press his devotion to the Roman See, and request his holiness
to bring about a marriage between him (Anjou) and a daughter
of the King of Spain. His desire is to conquer a kingdom for
himself in England. Great, therefore, is Queen Elizabeth's
peril, especially from the quarter of Scotland, for whose youth-
ful monarch she would do well, as speedily as possible, to provide
a suitable marriage. No more appropriate bride could be found
than the sister of the King of Navarre. Meanwhile Queen
Elizabeth should exert her influence to incline the Protestant
princes of Germany to favor an alliance of all the adherents of
1 Memoires de Theodore Agrippa d Aubigne, 494.
1583. PROTESTANT FEDERATION. 249
the Reformation. These princes were formerly insensible, but
have now awakened to the dangers threatening them from the
direction of Austria. Besides, now that the Archbishop of
Cologne has become a Protestant, they can control the future
settlement of the empire, since they have four out of the seven
electors on their side. The only obstacle to the alliance is the
divergence of views between the Lutherans and the Reformed
respecting the Lord's Supper. Let the decision of this question
be referred to a general council or synod of the churches of the
Reformation ; and, until this be convened, let all unite in good
friendship and silence useless contentions. The King of Den-
mark has already used his kind offices with the Elector of
Saxony, his brother-in-law, and the elector has moderated his
rigor toward those professing the views held by Calvin, and has
begun to show less favor to certain theological doctors long act-
ing as firebrands in Germany. Queen Elizabeth's influence
would be great with the Saxon prince, and he would, doubtless,
be ready to join her in a Protestant confederation, seeing the in-
trigues daily fomented against him by the Jesuits. An English
nobleman of prominence, Philip Sidney, for example, ought to be
despatched to Denmark and Germany. After this the princes,
the imperial cities, and the Swiss, not to speak of the inhabitants
of the Netherlands, could easily be persuaded to throw in their
lot with England and Protestant France. In case of hostilities
each state would be expected to contribute according to its means.
The plan of a league sketched many years since, between Henry
the Eighth, the queen's father, and the Protestant princes, might
serve as a model for the new alliance. In this Henry Tudor
offered to contribute to the common fund as much as should be
given by any two of the electors. Queen Elizabeth, it is suggested,
may deposit in Germany a sum of two or three hundred thousand
crowns, to be employed in the defence of any part of the Protest-
ant world that may be attacked. The King of Navarre will
also send money to Germany, as well as a great quantity of
jewellery, the avails of which can be used for the good cause.1
1 ' ' Instruction pour traicter avec la royne d' Angleterre et aultres princes
estrangers protestans, baillee par le roy de Navarre au sieur de Segur, y allant
250 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. IV.
Besides the document of which this summary of the most im-
portant part may suffice, Segur was provided with a "justifica-
The"justift- tion"of the King of Navarre's actions in the past,
tteKingof and of the step now taken. The grievances of the
Navarre. Huguenots therein set forth are already in great part
familiar to the reader. Especially does the writer emphasize
the evidence of the existence of a general league for the exter-
mination of all French Protestants, found in the urgency of
the papal nuncio for the publication of the decrees of the
Council of Trent and the introduction of the Inquisition, in the
favor shown to the Jesuits, and in the systematic attempts to
abase the King of Navarre and cut off his means of maintain-
ing his authority.1
It must not, however, be supposed that in an age in which, if
the means of communication were less direct than at present,
and the channels of information, consequently, far more diffi-
cult, compensation was made by the extraordinary activity of
salaried spies, the King of France could long remain ignorant
of the undertaking of his cousin of Navarre. Nor was the
latter much surprised to receive, within a few months, vigorous
remonstrances from the court of Paris, with no obscure intima-
tions that his boldness in undertaking to send out ambassadors
was interpreted as an offence falling little short of the crime of
treason.2 But to complaints and threats, whether by letter or
by voice of messenger, the Bearnese replied with right kingly
dignity and honest pride. " Besides the fact," he wrote on one
de sa part en juillet 1583 ; dressee et minutee par M. Duplessis. " Memoires de
Duplessis Mornay, ii. 272-294.
1 "Justification des actions du roy de Navarre, baillee au sieur de Segur,
pour le mesme voyaige que dessus, le 6 juillet, 1583." Ibid., ii. 295-303.
2 When Bellievre, Henry III. 's envoy, urged the King of Navarre to take
back Margaret of Valois, he refused to see her again until the French garrisons
should have been withdrawn from ten leagues around Nerac (i.e., from Agen,
Condom, and Bazas), on the ground that he was menaced in his principal
abode, and, to use Henry III. s own words, " considerant le mescontentement
que j'avois de la negociation de Segur, il estime que je le tiens pour criminel
de leze majeste, et partant qu'il avoit d'autant plus a se garder et penser a la
conservation de sa vie." Henry III. to Bellievre, January 4, 1584, Lettres
missives, i. 625.
1583. PROTESTANT FEDERATION. 25 L
occasion, " that Segur has no commission whatever to say or do
anything against your state and the obedience I owe to your
majesty, I have always believed, monseigneur, that
piy to the having been born in my own kingdom and sovereignty,
pialnte and and holding the title and right by succession to that
kingdom of mine, which is one of the most ancient,
and which I have lost, or more than three-fourths of it, for the
service of your crown, I had not, nevertheless, forfeited the right
and power to entertain friendship and alliance, like the other
kings and princes of Christendom, for the good of my affairs and
the union of the confessions of the religion I profess. Many of
your subjects who are not of my rank are left unreproved for
similar acts, or, at least, do not cease to treat with strangers re-
specting any matter it may seem good to them to treat of." '
In similar terms was Chassincourt, a special envoy for the
purpose, instructed to explain Segur' s mission. " The Dukes
of Lorraine and Longueville," he was to say, " and even the
seigneurs de la Marck, who have fiefs in French territory, are
not found fault with because of their undertaking to send to
foreign states ; while the Dukes of Nemours and Guise are seen
daily treating of their affairs in Italy, Savoy, and Scotland,
without rebuke from their sovereign lord. Much more, on ac-
count of his rank, may the King of Navarre assume the right
to act in like manner. But if it be against the plan proposed
that objection is made, let it be remembered that the chief
purpose is to invite all Protestant princes to a synod that shall
adjust differences in the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures.
This, which is a purely ecclesiastical matter, cannot be viewed as
just ground of suspicion. Besides, the princes to be visited are
old friends of France, of all men the least likely to disturb its
peace. As to the fund of money which the King of Navarre
is said to have intrusted to Segur for deposit in Germany, he
has long desired to place half a million of crowns in that coun-
try to draw against, and, as the French monarch is well aware,
for lack of that sum he has been compelled more than once
to renounce divers great enterprises. Such an arrangement is
1 Henry of Navarre to Henry III., February 8, 1584, ibid., i. 637.
252 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. IV.
certainly unobjectionable, if the end contemplated be a good
one. And the King of Navarre has ample ground of complaint
that fault is found with his course in this regard, whereas none
was found with the late Cardinal of Lorraine for the treasure
he kept in Venice, or with the present members of the house
of Guise who, as everybody knows, have a store of money in
Germany. Yet the projects of the house in question ought,
in the judgment of the wise, to be looked upon with far more
mistrust, in their bearing upon the King of France and his
estate, than those of the King of Navarre. The King of
Navarre is naturally great only in the greatness of that estate,
while the Guises can acquire greatness only from its ruin." '
However complete the vindication of Henry of Navarre, it
cannot be denied that the mission of Segur, purposely distorted
in its aims and exaggerated in its importance by the
S6gur'smis- . && r J .
Rion misrep- enemies of the Huguenots, supplied a very convenient
instrument to the advocates of the " Holy League"
in their desperate effort to rally the fanatical portion of the
Roman Catholic population to the defence of their church and
the struggle to annihilate French Protestantism. Of this more
will appear in the sequel.
Upon the incidents of the embassy of Segur itself it is not
necessary to dwell at length, especially since no practical results
followed the protracted and wearisome negotiation. As might
have been anticipated, the plan proposed by the King of Navarre
met the hearty approval of the enlightened Walsingham and
the warm concurrence of the Prince of Orange ; while Frederick
the Second of Denmark, John Casimir in the Palatinate, and a
few other princes were anxious to see it promptly carried into
effect. There were those, however, even among the Protestant
rulers of Germany, who, like the Elector John George of Bran-
denburg, if not positively hostile, were too lukewarm, in view
of the ill-success of previous conferences for the settlement of
theological differences, to lend it any hearty support. And there
were others who, if they did not imitate the Elector of Saxony
1 Instruction de ce que le sieur de Chassincourt dira au roy sur le voyaige du
sieur de Segur," etc., Dec. 25, 1583. Memo-ires de Duplessis Mornay, ii. 398-401.
1585. PROTESTANT FEDERATION. 253
in positively refusing to grant Segur an audience, were never-
theless resolved to have nothing to do with the Calvinists of
France until these should have renounced their views regarding
the Lord's Supper as a preliminary step toward rendering a
union possible. The issue of the whole matter was that, after
Letter of keeping Segur waiting an entire year, the German
proSta^t13 Protestant princes of the more extreme type, on the
princes. first 0f March, 1585, addressed to the King of Navarre
a reply to the letters and instructions laid before them by his
representative. This extraordinary paper was signed by Au-
gustus, Elector of Saxony, by John George, Elector of Branden-
burg, by Joachim Frederick, Administrator of Magdeburg, by
Philip Lewis, Count Palatine and Duke of Zweibriicken (Deux-
ponts), by Julius and William, Dukes of Brunswick-Luneburg,
by William, Duke of Wiirtemberg, and Ulrich, Duke of Meck-
lenburg— in short, by all the princes who had approved the
" Formula Concordiae " and enforced its adoption in their do-
minions. After a somewhat lame attempt to explain their long
delay in answering the king's polite invitation, the German
princes entered upon a discussion which, if in form it partook
of the character of a request, was in reality nothing short of a
lecture addressed to their royal correspondent. They conceded
that the Swiss reformer Zwingle had, at the Colloquy of Marburg
in 1529, retracted many of his errors ; but he had to the end
retained many traces of his original mistakes. As to Calvin and
his followers, the German theologians had discovered in their
works perversions of Scripture, and even blasphemies, so numer-
ous, and errors of such magnitude respecting the person of
Christ and kindred topics, that the strife about the Lord's
Supper had almost fallen into oblivion. In reply to the sug-
gestion made by the King of Navarre that Protestants ought to
imitate the cunning of the papists, who suppress their mutual
disputes in order that unitedly they may wage a more success-
ful and ruinous war upon Luther and the rest of the reformers,
the princes declare that the policy recommended is equally dis-
pleasing in God's sight and pernicious to the churches. Recon-
ciliation of the kind indicated by the King of Navarre is wont
to be of short duration. So the history of the past and present
254 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. IV.
experience combine in testifying. The princes themselves have
found that the best way of promoting concord within the church
is by explicitly rejecting and condemning erroneous views, and
thus proving to all men that they have no intention that every-
body should persist in his own view, cherish false doctrines in
his own home, and cloak them from external observation with
the mantle of concord. On the contrary, it is their desire that
all submit themselves to God's Word, which alone is truth, and
according to it believe, decide, and instruct others. The king's
proposal that, in anticipation of the convening of a universal
council, all disputes be left unsettled and the wrangles of theo-
logians be checked, would, if put into execution, only inflame
the righteous indignation of the preachers of the Word of God
against princes who sought to transform them into dumb dogs
that dare not bark at the wolves laying waste the fold of Christ.
So far from endeavoring to reduce to its smallest dimensions
the difference of doctrine between Lutherans and Reformed,
the princes seem intent rather to dwell with satisfaction on the
impossibility of a reconciliation. For they take pains to recall
the startling declaration of Theodore Beza, at the Colloquy of
Poissy, " that the body of Jesus Christ is as far removed from
the bread and wine as the highest heaven is from the earth,"
and, with a positiveness that would have seemed more suitable
in the mouth of Cardinal Tournon and his brother prelates than
in the mouth of Protestants, assert that it is clearer than the
noonday sun that between Beza, Duplessis, and Segur, on the
one side, and themselves on the other, no agreement respecting
the points at issue could be found. It was quite in keeping with
the rest of the communication, that, at its close, the princes
offered to the King of Xavarre a copy of the Formula Con-
cordise, which they evidently believed might, if he would take
the trouble to read it and compare it with the Holy Scriptures,
prove the means of his conversion. His subscription to the
work of Andrese and his associates, it was hinted, would give
some hope of future peace to Christendom.1
1 " Responsio Principum Electorum, etc., ad RegemNavarrae," apud G. von
Polenz, iv. 402-405.
1589. PROTESTANT FEDERATION. 255
So ungracious an answer to the united efforts of Henry and
his indefatigable envoy gave a death-blow to the scheme. Prot-
estantism must go on suffering all the baleful results
The scheme
receives its of disunion, because of the narrowness of theologians
and the stubborn wilfulness of princes who would
subordinate no doctrinal statement, however little it might
affect the great and fundamental truths of Christianity, to the
surpassing importance of a union demanded by the external
relations of all the opponents of the Roman Catholic system.
The Protestant counter-league must be abandoned as chimerical,
because, forsooth, of the impracticability of persuading the in-
habitants of France and England that the inhabitants of Ger-
many were right in ascribing ubiquity to the material body of
Christ.
As for Henry of Navarre, he was in no great haste to acknowl-
edge the receipt of the condescending epistle and the precious
volume accompanying it. Not particularly drawn to literary
Henry's dis- pursuits or interested in doctrinal discussions, the
appointment, king, who felt himself to be, more than any other
man living, the champion of the faith, engaged in a desperate
struggle, hand to hand, with an enemy that had already slain
thousands of his fellow-believers, looked with pardonable dis-
gust upon the theological treatise thrust into his hand on the
eve of battle. He had asked bread, and his good and kind
friends beyond the Rhine had offered him a stone. The soldier,
abandoned at his post by the allies upon whose help he had a
good right to count, postponed to some more convenient time
and place, when the smoke of battle and the roar of cannon
should have ceased, the reading of their polite invitation to be
converted to their peculiar tenets.
Nearly four years later, after the stirring events which we
shall soon be called to contemplate, after the King of France's
craven submission to the dictation of the Guises and the League,
after the revocatory edict of Nemours, after the
His tardy re- -In i -i i • r
piytotheGer- victory ot Coutras, and that long tram or events
man princes. i • -i -i i i . . .7 i p t>i •
which led to the assassinations in the castle ot J^lois,
Henry of Navarre vouchsafed a reply to the German princes.
It was dignified and courteous, betraying in every line, as do so
256 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. IV.
many important state papers of the period, the masterly hand
of Duplessis Mornay. While praising the zeal of the princes, it
objected to the mode by which they strove for concord. There
was much, Henry said, that he approved in the book which they
had sent him ; much also, however, that was obscure or could
have been better expressed. There were many subtilties of
expression and bitter phrases. lie gave it as his opinion that
more could be hoped from a general council than from condem-
nations of doctrine emanating from princes and therefore rather
royal than theological in their nature. Meantime his own delay
in subscribing the " Formula Concordise " would not surprise
anyone, in view of the fact that such a devoted adherent of the
Augsburg Confession as the King of Denmark had absolutely
refused to affix his name to it ; while it was known that of the
theologians who had originally endorsed it some would now act
quite differently were they called on to do so again. This, and
a few sentences contrasting the asperity with which many of
the Lutheran theologians attacked the "churches under the
cross " with the kindliness and charity with which the French
uniformly spoke of their German brethren, constituted the
substance of the reply.1
Among the numerous documents connected with the nego-
tiations just described there is one that deserves more than a
passing notice, because of its bearing upon the remarkable man
around whom cluster the most interesting events of the re-
mainder of the sixteenth century. At a moment when Henry
of Navarre is shortly to be called to enter the lists almost
single-handed against the collected forces of Roman Catholic
France, I make no excuse for pausing in the narrative of
events to transfer to these pages the most essential particulars
1 Letter of Henry of Navarre to the German princes, Feb. 15, 1589. Let-
tres missives, ii. 437-443. G. von Polenz has given (Geschichte des fran-
zosischen Calvinismus, iv. 356-429) a long and exhaustive account of the at-
tempt of the King of Navarre to secure union by the promotion of a Protestant
counter-league. Compare the account in De Thou, vi. (liv. 79) 353-363. It
may be noticed that in the interval between the letter of the German princes
and Navarre's reply the Elector August of Saxony had died and had b~en suc-
ceeded by his son Christian, who was favorably disposed to the Reformed.
1583. PROTESTANT FEDERATION. 257
of a contemporary statement, drawn up for the purpose of en-
lightening Queen Elizabeth respecting the power and mate-
rial resources of the prince who sought intimate alliance with
her. Such being the avowed object of the writer, it will not
surprise the reader that the account gives the most favorable
view of the situation. In most points, however, it may be un-
reservedly accepted as accurate.
The King of Navarre, says this writer, stands in high reputa-
tion as the probable successor both of the King of France and
of his brother, the Duke of Anion, because the one
The posses- • -i • i i i • i i
sions and re- has been so long married without having children
sources of the 1 .. t • • i mi -r»
King of Na- and the other is not yet married. Ine rrotestants,
of whom he is the acknowledged head, have used
the peace with so much moderation that they have caused the
people to forget, to some extent, the wounds inflicted by war.
Moreover, the nation has suffered so much, during the preva-
lence of the peace, either from the new taxes imposed by the
king, or from the devouring of its means by the troops of his
highness the duke, that the two brothers have succeeded to
the hatred previously entertained against the Huguenots, and
the King of Navarre has, after a fashion, inherited the kindly
feeling in which they were held, inasmuch as there is found
reason to complain of everybody save him. His popularity
would increase still further could he draw near to the centre
of the kingdom. On the contrary, the popularity of the Guises
is waning. As evidence of this, it may be noted, they recently
came to Paris well accompanied and in the midst of their
friends, but never did they venture to speak a single earnest
word in behalf of the reformation of the government. And
yet this was the very time when iniquitous and burdensome
edicts were issued, and when the authority of the parliaments
was infringed. Yet the Guises bowed before Epernon and
Joyeuse as reeds bow before a water-spaniel. They have put
up with a thousand insults, in order to gain some vile advan-
tage. They have begged for favor, basely accommodating
themselves to all vices, to all enormities, to every kind of freak ;
acquiescing especially of late in that confraternity which the
parliaments, the Sorbonne, the university, the convents, the
Vol. I.— 17
258 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Cn. IV.
preachers, all in general condemned and loudly and clearly de-
nounced. Such conduct has shown everybody that theirs is
only a mask of excellence, that they seek only to profit by the
public calamities, and that, were they to be raised up to au-
thority, the inn would indeed have changed its sign, but only
to offer men still poorer wine to drink.
The King of Navarre's possessions are extensive. He holds
in sovereignty a part of the old kingdom which gives him
his title — Lower Navarre, in which lie all the passages lead-
ing from France into Spain, and Beam, a district about two
days' journey square, with such towns as Oleron, Pau, Lescars,
Orthez, and Navarreins — territories that together can furnish
three hundred horse and six thousand arquebusiers.1 Besides
these provinces, which he holds in his own right, he does hom-
age to the King of France for the following fiefs : The County
of Foix, stretching from the territory of Toulouse to the Span-
ish border, including the towns of Pamiers, Foix, Mazeres,
Saverdun, and Mas d'Azil, containing a population mostly Prot-
estant, and capable of furnishing a body of six thousand arque-
busiers. For this fief he is bound to the king only in the sim-
ple acknowledgment made by kissing the hand, and himself
possesses every right of sovereignty covered by the term " re-
gale." In like manner he holds of the king the County of
Bigorre, with Tarbes for its capital, a large city but greatly in-
jured in the course of the civil wars ; the Viscounty of Marsan,
with Mont de Marsan, Roquefort, and Villeneuve ; the Duchy
of Albret, reaching from Bayonne to Bordeaux and even be-
yond the Garonne and Dordogne, wherein are situated Albret,
Tartas, Casteljaloux, Nerac, and other places of note; the
County of Armagnac (upper and lower), with sixteen hundred
noble fiefs holding of it, and the archiepiscopal city of Auch,
the episcopal cities of Condom and Lectoure, and the towns of
1 It is characteristic of the Huguenot writer that, in the midst of this cata-
logue of possessions and warlike resources, he does not forget the new univer-
sity and its theological students : "En ce diet pays y a une Universite en la
ville d'Orthes, bien pourveue de gens doctes, en laquelle il entretient tous-
jours 50 escoliers en theologie, chacung lespace de dix ans, pour servir au
ministere de l'Evangile.''
1583. PROTESTANT FEDERATION. 259
L'Isle en Jourdain, Grenade, etc. ; the County of Rouergue,
with Rhodez, Milhau, and Yabres ; the County of Perigord,
with the important city of Perigueux ; and the Viscounty of
Limoges. In sum, with the exception of a very few cities, the
lands of the King of Navarre extend all the way from the
Spanish frontier to the river Dordogne, and from the Bay of
Biscay eastward to Languedoc and Auvergne. Now, those who
have read the histories of France and England, and especially
the chronicles of Froissart, know what was the might of a
Count of Foix, a Count of Armagnac, a Duke of Albret, in
the times of Edward the Third, a period when these districts
were not so rich and highly cultivated as they now are. Hence,
they can conjecture the resources at the command of the prince
who holds in his hands all their single possessions. Besides
this, all the provinces referred to are subject to the King of
Navarre in the further capacity of governor and lieutenant-
general for the king in Guyenne. In each province there are
certain gentlemen of note who, either with or without the title
of governors, are charged with the duty of watching over the
safety of the most important places. Of such, in the County
of Foix, are the Viscount of Paillez and the Seigneur de Mios-
sens, Grand Seneschal ; and in Rouergue the four viscounts of
Panat, Monclar, Bourniquet, and Paulin. In Limousin, it may
be mentioned, is situated the Viscounty of Turenne, with its
castle bearing the same name, strong in situation, surrounded
by six or seven neighboring cities, and by a great number of
castles of nobles capable of holding in subjection all Limousin
and a part of Auvergne. In the absence of Viscount Turenne,
Chouppes, who defended Lusignan after the massacre of Saint
Bartholomew's Day, commands as his lieutenant. North of the
Loire the King of Navarre has extensive possessions ; for ex-
ample, the Duchies of Vendome and Beaumont, the County of
Marie, the Viscounty of Chateauneuf, and the District of
Thymerais. In these districts most of the nobles persist in the
profession of the Protestant religion, although in the late wars
they had no place of refuge in their vicinity, and all are de-
votedly attached to the King of Navarre. Each fief has its
own governor appointed by him.
260 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Cn. IV
For the general administration of this wide domain, four
courts — " chambres de comptes " — have been instituted : in
Beam, for the King of Navarre's sovereign possessions ; at
Nerac, for his lands held of the French crown between the Loire
and the Pyrenees ; at Yendome, for those between the Seine
and the Loire ; and at Fere in Picardy, for such as lie in that
province and for his rich possessions in the Netherlands. Each
court has its president and counsellors, and all the courts re-
port to the privy council of the king, in which Grateins sits as
his chancellor, Segur as superintendent of the royal house and
finances, together with Guitry, Duplessis, and other gentlemen
" de robe courte." Besides which, the King of Navarre has a
salaried counsellor in each of the three parliaments of Paris,
Toulouse, and Bordeaux, within whose jurisdiction his posses-
sions lie.
In addition to his own estates, many noblemen and cities
give to the King of Navarre their support as acknowledged
head and protector of the Protestants ; while other cities, be-
longing to the French crown, are so mixed up with his patri-
monial estates that they have always held for him — such, for
instance, as Bazas, Puymirol, Montsegur, and le Mas de Yerdun.
The resources of the Protestants are at his command.
These, in Lower Languedoc, hold Nismes, Montpellier, Aigues-
mortes, Uzes, Lunel, Aimarjmes, Marsillargues,
The Protes- ^ 7 « ^ -i i mi ^ '
tant cities Jiagnols, bommieres, and other towns. Ine (Je-
vennes, Yivarais, Yelay, and Gevaudan are theirs.
Enjoying again the close friendship of Marshal Montmorency,
to whom their own friendship is equally necessary, they can
assure themselves, with the exception of two or three places,
of all Languedoc, the richest and most important province of
all France. These Protestants of Languedoc can bring into
the field six thousand arquebusiers, but not more than four
hundred horse, because their province is less provided with
nobles than the other provinces. M. de Chatillon, a noble-
man of high hopes, and son of the late Admiral Coligny, in
conjunction with his brother, D'Andelot, has the conduct of the
affairs of the Huguenots in Languedoc.
In Provence, the Protestant churches are visibly multiply-
1583. PROTESTANT FEDERATION. 261
ing under protection of the peace ; even in such places as Aries
and Aix, with hostile prelates and parliaments, or Marseilles,
where, four years ago, there was not an avowed Protestant, but
now there are more than two hundred Protestant families.
Although but one city — La Tour de Seine — was conceded to
the Huguenots in this province by the edict of 1577, there are
several other places devoted to the King of Navarre. Matters
have gone badly in Dauphiny, chiefly through the bad faith of
the Duke of Mayenne; yet the Protestants hold Nyons and
Serres, by consent of the King of France, and some other
cities covertly, while they have to fall back upon, in case of
need, the active support of the principality of Orange, in their
immediate vicinity. They can furnish four hundred mounted
gentlemen who have served in all the past wars, and four thou-
sand arquebusiers. In short, one could cross the entire breadth
of France, from the Pyrenees to the borders of Savoy, and put
up only in friendly places not more than three leagues apart,
all of them either belonging to the patrimony of the King of
Navarre or under his protection.
Going northward from the duchies and counties which are
his by inheritance, we find between the Garonne and Dordogne
the district known as "the two seas" — "les deux mers," with
a population almost wholly Protestant, which has been known
in four days to raise a force of four thousand arquebusiers — a
district wherein are situated Bergerac, Sainte Foy, and Castil-
lon, all of them commanding passages across the Dordogne.
Beyond this, again, are the regions of Angoumois, Saintonge,
Poitou, and Aunis, all of which will send out at least five hun-
dred gentlemen of the Protestant religion and six thousand
arquebusiers. Here it is that the Prince of Conde commands,
with his residence at Saint Jean d'Angely, and supported by
such Protestant nobles as the Count de La Rochefoucault and
the barons of Montandre, Montguion, and Montlieu. North of
the Loire, the Huguenot party is less conspicuous ; but there is
no province of the kingdom where it cannot boast a goodly
number of adherents among the nobles and high gentry. In
Brittany, for example, Rohan, Laval, and his brother Rieux
are the most prominent leaders ; in Normandy, young Count
262 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. IV.
Montgomery has succeeded to the rank of his father, the un-
fortunate instrument of the death of Henry the Second.1
It is impossible to conjecture with any degree of accuracy
how long the address of statesmen, and the known aversion of
the Yalois king for anything calculated to disturb his sluggish
Death of the ease, might have postponed the fresh crusade against
Duke of Anjou. ^ne uUgUenots incessantly preached by priests and
monks in almost every parish of the land, had not the outbreak
of hostilities been precipitated by the decease of one of the
most worthless of Frenchmen. For it was part of the miser-
able lot of the Duke of Alencon and Anjou that he was fated,
after having been the bane of the land which had a thousand
times been ashamed to confess having given him birth, to do
more damage by the end of which he was guiltless than by the
whole course of his perjured and contemptible existence. He
had never, indeed, demonstrated by any labors performed the
appositeness of his baptismal name of Hercules, but there was
this much of resemblance between his exit from the world and
that of the Grecian hero's Hebrew prototype, that he ended his
career by effectually pulling down upon him the mighty fabric
of the French state, and by slaying more unfortunates at his
death than he had slain in his life.
The death of the Duke of Anjou, the king's brother, was the
life of the League, and thus the prolific source of countless dis-
asters for France.2
The fatal termination of the prince's lingering illness, which
had for some time been looked for, came on Sunday, the tenth
of June, 1584. It was just a month to a day before the pistol
of the assassin, Balthazar Gerard, robbed the young Dutch re-
public of its founder and most brilliant and patriotic defender.
In the case of the Duke of Anjou, his contemporaries char-
1 "Discours envoye a M. de Valsingham, secretaire d'estat d'Angleterre,
pour induire la royne Elizabeth aembrasser 1 union du roy de Navarre et des
princes protestans d'Allemaigne," May, 1583, Memoires de Duplessis Mor-
nay, ii. 235-241 ; with the accompanying " Estat du roy de Navarre et de
son parti en France," sent to Walsingham, ibid., ii. 241-256.
2 M La mort du due d' Anjou, frere du roy, est la vie de la Ligue." Recueil
des choses memorables, 602, margin.
1584. DEATH OF THE DUKE OF ANJOU. 263
itably expressed themselves as doubtful whether the catastrophe
so fatal to France was the result of his excessive debauchery in
the Low Countries, or of regrets for the overthrow of his am-
bitious designs, or of ordinary illness, or of some u bad morsel "
administered to him, or of other strange and execrable devices,
such as Salcede had many months before been accused of having
attempted to practise.1
Less than three years had elapsed since the duke, then at the
height of his hopes, flattered himself that he was the most fort-
unate of younger sons. Accepted suitor for the hand of Queen
Elizabeth, and sovereign-elect of a good part of the Nether-
lands, there seemed to be no reason that the youngest Yalois
might not equal in prosperity, if he did not surpass, any other
member of a family which had enjoyed more than its due share
of royalty. Catharine de' Medici might henceforth lay aside
as idle her superstitious fears based upon the prognostications
of Nostradamus; for had she not seen all her sons become
kings ? But the promise of unmixed happiness had proved a
phantom without reality or substance. The prospective bride-
groom visited England and was greeted with loud acclamations,
but in due time he returned to the mainland no nearer the ac-
complishment of his hopes than before he set out on his jour-
ney. The story of the prince's experiences as Duke of Brabant
was no less unsatisfactory. The prudent Netherlanders had
taken good care to restrict the authority of the sovereign they
called in by very definite stipulations, and Anjou, though to
Brabant had been added the County of Flanders, the Duchy of
Guelders, and the Lordship of Friesland, found his influence
upon the conduct of public affairs, and especially his control of
the state's treasury, far different from what a " son of France "
and a descendant of the autocratic Francis the First naturally
claimed as his due. But when the faithless child of Catharine
undertook to put into practice the lessons of perfidy he had
learned from early infancy, he only succeeded in investing his
name with a loathing not unmingled with contempt and ridicule.
So far from making himself master of the hospitable city of
1 Recueil des choses memorables, ubi supra.
264 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. IV.
Antwerp, with Bruges, Dunkirk, Ghent, and other places of im-
portance, and placing them in the hands of his French followers,
it was but a few hours after the outbreak of the " French Fury "
before the prince was a fugitive from the city he had attempted
to betray, unable by his most audacious falsehoods to convince
the world that he had acted otherwise than as the most un-
trustworthy and ungrateful of men.1 Some five months later
(June, 1583), he left the Netherlands never to return. At
Chateau Thierry, on the banks of the Marne, fifty miles east-
ward from the capital, he breathed his last. From his bedside
frequent bulletins had for weeks been sent out, giving an ac-
count of the slow but certain progress of his disease. The King
of France, more than half glad at the prospect of being relieved
of a troublesome brother, was secretly less anxious than the
Guises, who saw in his death the removal of the greatest im-
pediment in the way of enlisting the popular interest in the
revival of the " Holy League." Henry of Navarre, more reti-
cent and apparently engrossed in his own concerns, wratched from
afar the event that would bring him a step nearer to the throne
of France. By a singular coincidence, the malady to which Anjou
succumbed presented the same extraordinary symptoms as wrere
seen in the last illness of his brother, Charles the Ninth. Great
quantities of blood in the most corrupt state issued from every
outlet of his body, and exuded from every pore. The strange
phenomenon perplexed physicians and baffled the medical sci-
ence of the day.2 To complete the resemblance in the end of
the two brothers, Francis of Anjou died a single day after the
tenth anniversary of the death of Charles, on the same day of
the week, and almost at the very same hour and minute.3
1 Motley, Dutch Republic, iii. 561-580.
2 Duplessis Mornay to the King of Navarre, Paris, May 2, 1584, Memoires,
ii. 594. Agrippa d Aubigne, ii. 423 : " Le sang, comme il estoit advenu au
roi Charles, lui jaillissant par tous les pores."
3 " Concessit fato die hujus mensis decimo, eodem pene tempore et momento
quo superioribus annis f rater ejus Carol us; eodem certe morbo, nimirum e
pulmonis ulcere." Busbecq to the emperor. June 18, 1584, Epistola 38.
Busini to the grand duke, June 11, Negociations avec la Toscane, iv. 511. De
Thou, vi. (liv. 79) 378. It is worth while to note that the Gregorian Calendar
1584. DEATH OP THE DUKE OF ANJOU. 265
" It may be said with truth that the death of the Duke of
Alencon was the ruin of France." Thus wrote the Florentine
Cavriana four years later, looking back upon the
Disastrous re- . _ . ., p . ° _ , *
suits of An- desolations of civil war from the standpoint of the
assassination of the Guises at Blois.1 So, too, thought
and wrote other dispassionate observers, the learned Pasquier
among the number. Henry thought otherwise. "Was he not
well rid of a restless brother, who had long been disturbing his
sluggish repose by erratic and ill-considered enterprises ? Were
not his resources greatly increased, now that the inordinately
great appanage conceded to the duke, eight years before, was
once more reunited to the possessions of the crown ? Could
the short-sighted king imagine that the turbulent youths with
whom Anjou had consorted would now betake themselves to
the Guises, and lend new strength to a formidable party inimi-
cal to the royal family ? Or, that the material gain occasioned
by the absorption of Anjou's territories would be far more than
counterbalanced by the loss of a person next in the succession,
whom fanatical hatred of Protestantism could not denounce as
a heretic, and therefore incapable of mounting the throne of
France % 2
The passions, as well as the events, of the age with which we
are now concerned can be understood only so far as we succeed
in transporting ourselves to it, and, for the time, as-
The thought \ & mi
of a Huguenot summg its ideas as our own. lo us, who are accus-
kiii£f rcDiilsivc
to the Roman tomed to look on the State as entirely distinct from
the Church ; who, in repudiating the claim of the civil
power to inquire into the conscientious belief of the individual
man, have almost gone to the extreme of denying its right to
went into operation, so far as France was concerned, in December, 1582, the
tenth day of that month being called the twentieth, and Christmas being cele-
brated on the fifteenth. De Thou, vi. (liv. 76) 218 ; Memoires d'un cure ligueur
(Jehan de la Fosse), 193 ; Journal du regne du roi Henri III. , 62. Charles
IX. died on Sunday, May 30, Old Style, or June 9, New Style, 1574.
1 "Si pud dire con ragione che la morte del duca di Alen£on sia stato la
rovina di Francia." Cavriana to Serguidi, Blois, December 31, 1588, Negocia-
tions avec la Toscane, iv. 850.
- See Etienne Pasquier's letter on the origin of the League, QSuvres (edit
Feugere), ii. 292 ; De Thou, vi. (liv. 80) 390.
266 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. IV.
strengthen the sanctions of its legislation, and guarantee the
sacred ness of testimony by a solemn appeal to the Creator of
all things — to us, I say, it may seem almost incredible that the
notion of the possibility that a heretic might one day sit on the
throne of Clovis and Charlemagne should be so abhorrent to the
sentiments of the masses of the French people as to make them
an easy prey to the orators of the League. Yet it must be
confessed, by every person who has familiarized himself with
the pamphlet literature of the last quarter of the sixteenth cen-
tury, that the apprehension was wide-spread, and, in many
cases, based upon conscientious convictions. The " Most Chris-
tian King " a Huguenot, a Protestant, a heretic ! The idea was
preposterous. " We have seen in our own times that the here-
tics have, in pursuance of law, been confined in prison, con-
demned to death, ignominiously dragged in a filthy tumbrel to
the public square, there to be burned alive, and, as an indica-
tion of horror for their deeds, reduced to ashes ; and you dare
to say that a heretic is the legitimate heir to the throne — a
heretic who, according to law, ought to be consumed by fire ! Is
there any law that calls a criminal from execution to the sceptre ?
And your king, who is worse than a heretic and a relapsed
heretic to boot, alone of his kind has this power ! Though, as
a relapsed person, he has voluntarily renounced his right to
succeed even to his patrimonial estates, and has given himself
over to the pains of execution ! Yet you boast that he is the
legitimate heir ! " These were the words of zealous Roman
Catholics ; not phrases put in their mouths by their leaders, but
the honest speech of their hearts.1
The question, however, as to the true authorship of the League,
as it was now about to reappear in a new and more formidable
shape, is not a simple one, nor is it probably possible
ship of the to give a perfectly satisfactory answer. It is un-
doubtedly true that the League was not the creation
of the Guises alone, nor indeed the creation of any other leaders.
1 The speech is that of the " manant" in a famous pamphlet entitled " Dia-
logue du Maheustre et du Manant," published ten years after this time, and
therefore subsequently to the accession of Henry IV. Reprinted in the Ratis-
bon edition (1726) of the Satyre Menippee, iii. 379.
1584. THE PARISIAN LEAGUE. 267
There is ample ground for the assertion that, even without them,
there would have been found other noblemen of prominence
only too willing to assume the direction of the movement.1
Never could the secular clergy or the monastic orders have
resigned themselves without a struggle to the loss of the hold of
the Roman Catholic Church upon the State. If the aversion
of the people for a Protestant prince as next heir to the throne
of his " Yery Christian Majesty " had seemed likely to prove
too weak to answer their purpose, certainly the priests and
monks of France would have discovered other instruments, per-
haps nearly as serviceable, to give that aversion new strength
and direct its manifestation. Yet the fact is undeniable that
the popular hatred of Protestantism, fostered as it was by the
seditious sermons of preachers in Lent and Advent, and by the
more private influence of the clergy throughout the year, con-
stituted only one of several factors entering into the complicated
problem. Besides the more palpable agency of the princes of
the house of Lorraine, there are traces more and more distinct
of the insidious influence both of Philip the Second and of the
Jesuits. All the personages in the drama now about
Philip the . * ° . .
second and to be enacted m h ranee had for the motive which they
the Jesuits. . 1 . ^
gave out to the world the preservation of the Eoman
Catholic religion and the destruction of the Protestant faith. But
it would be a serious mistake to suppose that this ostensible unity
of purpose secured a perfect accord in their sentiments, or freed
them from the jealousies that are wont to reign in the breasts
of confederates in causes less abundantly provided with the in-
signia of religion and piety. When the King of Spain took the
Guises into his pay, he took good care that the wages which he
agreed to give them month by month, and never pretended to
remit punctually, should not be large enough to enable them to
crush their opponents and render them too independent of their
1 M. de Lezeau insists ' ' que les princes lorrains n'ont este que les accessoires
de ce party, et que sans iceux on n'eust pas laisse de trouver d'autres chefs
pour commander, estant une condition qui n'est toujours que trop affectee et
recherchee." De la religion catholique en France, MS. first published in Cim-
ber et Danjou, Archives curieuses, xiv. 86, 89.
268 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. IV.
employer. Fifty thousand crowns every thirty days, and this
promised only for six months, was certainly a paltry allowance
for the maintenance of an army in the field. It was sufficient,
however, to encourage the Guises to borrow on the right hand
and on the left, and involve themselves in hopeless bankruptcy.1
On the other hand, the Guises had their own plans, quite irre-
spective of the interests of Philip ; and even the Jesuits, for-
getful of their Spanish origin, occasionally preferred the ad-
vancement of the Lorraine princes to the extension of the power
of the Catholic King.2
Henry of Navarre was now the most conspicuous person in
France, scarcely excepting Henry of Yalois himself ; and upon
him and his actions was seen to depend in the highest
vaiois recog- degree the future of the kingdom. The kins; was by
nizes Henry & . ■ . & *? J
ofNavarreas no means unfriendly to his Bourbon cousin, ror
his successor. *, _ , ' . , _• . _ _
once he was clear-sighted. At the death ot her
youngest son, Catharine de' Medici seems to have devoted her
energies to secure an end quite as chimerical as the fantastic
design she cherished about this time on the crown of Portugal.
She would use the Guises and the League to thwart the pre-
tensions of Henry of Navarre. Indeed, she ridiculed these pre-
tensions. A relationship so distant as his with the reigning
monarch she regarded as about as close as with. Adam and Eve ;
beyond the sixth degree of remove, she said, there is virtually
no tie of blood.3 But after securing her Huguenot son-in-law's
1 We shall see that the confidential correspondence of the Tuscan agents at
the French court, a fresh and inestimable source of information, is full of
references to the straits to which Philip's parsimony drove the Guises. The
duke will not have peace on any terms, writes Cavriana, February 11, 1588,
because so advised by the King of Spain, from whose bounty he gets just
enough to keep him alive, but not enough to satisfy his hunger— "dellagrazia
del quale egli vivotta piutosto che vive. non tirando di la tanto che si possa
sfamare," etc. In the same letter, Cavriana estimates the debts of the Duke
of Guise at more than one-third of his entire property, and the debts of his
cousin, the Duke of Aumale, at more than one-half of his property. He pre-
dicts that one must become a Catiline, the other a Cethegus. Negociations
avec la Toscane. iv. 750, 753.
2 See Michelet, La Ligue et Henri IV., 100, 121.
3 Lettres missives, i. 674.
1584. THE PARISIAN LEAGUE. 269
rejection, she firmly intended to discard the instruments she
had employed, and secure the coveted crown for the representa-
tive of the elder branch of the Lorraine family, for the duke
who had married her daughter, and for her daughter's children.1
Her son had no sympathy with this plan, and saw its utter im-
practicability. Before Anjou's death, but when the serious
character of his disease left no room for doubt as to the issue,
Henry the Third, as he stood one day before the fire after din-
ner, had been heard by Mayenne and many other gentlemen
of the court to exclaim : " Now I recognize the King of Na-
varre for my sole and only heir. He is a prince of high birth
and good parts. My disposition has always been to love him,
and I know that he loves me. He is a little hasty in temper
and sharp ; but at bottom he is a good man. I am sure that
my humors will please him, and that we shall get along well
together." To the prevot des marchands, Henry had ex-
pressed himself in a similar way : " I am greatly pleased with
the actions of my cousin of Navarre. There are those that are
trying to supplant him, but I shall take good care to prevent
them from succeeding. I find it, moreover, a very strange
thing that any dispute should arise as to who is to be my suc-
cessor, as if that were a question admitting of doubt or discus-
sion." 2 A little later, on hearing that old Cardinal Bourbon
said that the King of Navarre was not his nephew but a bastard,
and, moreover, a heretic, so that the succession would be his in
case of Henry's death, his " Yery Christian Majesty" contempt-
uously remarked that the cardinal was a fool.3
1 " Jay receu nouvelles certaines, " writes the King of Navarre to the Prot-
estant counsellors of the chamber of justice at L'Isle en Jourdain, July 13,
1584, "que la royne, mere du roy mon seigneur, avoit traicte et resolu avec
messieurs de Guyse la revocation de leedict de pacification, et qu'elle y avoit
faict condescendre le diet seigneur roy. Touteffois sa Majeste, ayant despuis
receu une declaration que j'ay faicte, auroit suspendu la dicte revocquation et
estoit apres a prendre quelque aultre deliberation. " Lettres missives, i. 674.
The queen mother s action is explicable only on the ground stated in the
text.
2 Duplessis Mornay, Clervant and Chassincourt to the King of Navarre,
Paris, April 14, 1584, Memoires de Duplessis Mornay, ii. 575, 576.
3 Busini, June 25, 1584, Negociations avec la Toscane, iv. 515, 516. Com-
pare Lestoile, September, 1584, ii. 176.
270 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Cn. IV.
Meanwhile Henry of Navarre himself received from his
faithful servants some candid advice. Duplessis Mornay and
the other envoys sent by their master to warn the King of
France of the plots against his eastern provinces, from
Duplessis Mor- #• o it-» t , ' ,
nay's sound the side or feavoy and Burgundy, were still in Fans
advice to the «• a . • i . •
King of Na- when the news or Anjou's approaching death arrived.
Too rincere friends to be consummate courtiers, the
three Huguenots did not confine themselves to congratulating
the Bearnais upon having obeyed the inspiration of God, and
having from Pan sent messengers to Paris to give timely in-
formation, thus turning his majesty's heart toward him. They
embraced the occasion to remind him that the eyes of all France,
and of a good part of Christendom, would henceforth be upon
him ; that his court would be the resort of foreign nations, and
especially of the afflicted, whether princes or peoples. Until
now he had been content with the testimony of his own con-
science or the care of his private concerns ; he must henceforth
live for others. And they added these significant sentences :
" Pardon your faithful servants, sire, one word more. These
love affairs which are so open, and to which you give so much
time, seem no longer to be in season. It is time, sire, that you
make love both to all Christendom and particularly to France,
and that by all your actions you render yourself agreeable in
her eyes. And, believe us, sire, you will not have thus spent
many months, seeing what we read in her countenance, before
you will have gained her good grace and have secured the honor-
able and lawful favors that are within your reach, to enjoy them
at your ease and contentment, when God, justice, and order
shall call you thereto." 2 This was sound advice for a prince
before whose eyes a magnificent destiny was unfolding ; it re-
mained to be seen how far he would profit by it.
There was, in the view of the King of France, one way, and
only one, whereby the Bearnese could, at a stroke, defeat the
projects of his enemies. Let him renounce his Protestantism,
and few would venture to contest his right to style himself
1 See above, p. 234.
2 Duplessis Mornay, Clervant and Chassincourt, Paris, April 14, 1584,
Memoires de Duplessis Mornay, ii. 574-578.
1584. THE PARISIAN LEAGUE. 271
heir presumptive to the crown, even on the ground of apostasy
after his forced conversion of Saint Bartholomew's Day. With
Navarre is en- the intention of inducing him to take this politic
jure^protes^ step, the Duke of iCpernon, one of the king's prin-
cipal minions, took occasion to visit Henry's court,
then sojourning at Pamiers, in the county of Foix. But the
duke's arguments availed nothing.1 The son of Jeanne d'Al-
bret had not yet forgotten his mother's instructions, and could
not at present be persuaded to barter his convictions against
temporary advantages. It was so that, a year before, he had
met the solicitations of his cousin, the young Archbishop of
Rouen,2 when that stripling — the prelate was not yet twenty-
one years of age — requested him to change his religion in order
to win favor with the nobles. " Tell those who make such pro-
posals, my cousin,'' said he, " that religion — should they chance
His nobie to know what religion is— is not stripped off like a
reply. shirt ; for it has its home in the heart, and, thank
God, is so deeply impressed upon mine that it is as little in my
power to rid myself of it as it was at the beginning to enter
upon it, this grace being of God alone and coming from no
other source. . . . Believe me, cousin, the course of your life
will teach you that the only true plan is to commit one's self to
God, who guides all things, and who never punishes anything
more severely than He does the abuse of the name of religion." 3
Much as the stout refusals of the King of Navarre to change
his religion under the pressure of political expediency com-
Reportsof mended him to the esteem of every upright and in-
SrTgTbie ob- tell igent observer, certain it is that his " obstinacy " —
stinacy. for gucj1 fa was styled by the Roman Catholic clergy
— contributed greatly to the rapid spread of the League. Care
was taken to spread the new proofs of Henry's incorrigible
1 De Thou, vi. (book 80) 391, 392, as modified by Duplessis Mornay's note.
8 Subsequently Cardinal of Vendome, and, after his ancle's death, Cardinal
of Bourbon.
8 Henry of Navarre to the Archbishop of Rouen, March 6, 1583, Lettres
missives, i. 502, 503 ; Memoires de Duplessis Mornay, ii. 230, 231. The reader
needs however, continually to remember that this and similar letters really
emanated from the pen of Duplessis Mornay.
272 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. IV.
heresy far and wide among the people. Every Frenchman, it was
said, must now expect to see a detested Huguenot upon the
throne. The anger of heaven, so clearly manifested in denying
to the reigning king the long-desired boon of a son and heir, de-
spite vows and prayers at the shrines of Our Lady of Clery, the
Virgin " pariturse " at Chartres, and elsewhere, despite all popu-
lar litanies and processions in every part of the realm, is now
revealed even more unmistakably by this sure prospect of disas-
ter. And lest this should not suffice to move the ignorant peas-
antry and the bigoted burgesses, the story of Segur's mission,
grossly exaggerated and perverted, was circulated as proof posi-
tive that nothing short of extermination was in store for the
Hostile ru- faithful Catholics. Similar rumors of bloody inten-
morR- tions on the part of the adherents of the Reformation
had prevailed almost from the time of its birth. It was re-
ported more than once in the reigns of Francis the First and Hen-
ry the Second that the Lutherans were deeply involved in con-
spiracies to cut the throats of their orthodox neighbors. The
massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Day had been preceded, if not
precipitated, by wild accounts of the approach of an overwhelm-
ing force of cavalry under Francis of Montmorency, which was
to avenge Coligny's wound and destroy countless numbers of the
Parisians. Three years later the capital had been terrified by
another fiction of the same sort, in which Henry of Damville,
now Marshal Montmorency, figured much as had his elder
brother on the previous occasion.1 But now the enemies of the
Huguenots added forgery to calumny. A document was fabri-
cated purporting to be a solemn compact entered into by a
Protestant confederacy. It wras represented that at Magdeburg
— others said Middleburg in Zealand — a meeting had been held,
on the sixteenth of December, 1584, at which there
Protestant had been present the ambassadors of the Queen of
confederacy. j]ngjan(j? t^e Xing of Navarre, the Protector of Scot-
land, the Count Palatine, Prince Casimir, the Duke of Pome-
rania, the Landgrave of Hesse, the Rhinegrave, the Duke of
Wiirtemberg, the Prince of Orange, and the Swiss Cantons.
1 The matter is well put in Michelet, La Ligue et Henri IV., 71, 72.
1584. THE PARISIAN LEAGUE. 273
In the paper adopted there was but one great object distinctly
stated, namely, to summon the King of France to observe his
last edict of pacification and require him not only to swear to it
publicly, but to pledge the faith of his states and affix his own
signature to the solemn declaration. In case of his refusal,
war was to be proclaimed against him. It was even stipulated
how large should be the contingent of troops to be furnished to
the common army by each of the parties. Queen Elizabeth en-
gaged to bring into the field five thousand reiters and four
thousand Swiss, in addition to the twelve thousand Englishmen
who were to make a landing upon the French coast. Navarre
and Conde promised twenty-five thousand arquebusiers and
fourteen thousand horse. The rest of the high contracting
parties stood pledged for smaller numbers, down to the Rhine-
grave and the Scotch Protector, against each of whom only two
thousand men were put down. The entire force of eighty-
three thousand five hundred men was to be ready by the
fifteenth of the coming month of April, and no truce or
peace was to be concluded without the consent of all the con-
federates.1
The paper was a clumsy fabrication, and could easily be ex-
posed. Segur, represented in the document as having appeared
as Navarre's ambassador, was not in Germany at the time re-
ferred to. The Elector Palatine and the Prince of Orange, both
a clumsy for- °f whom, forsooth, engaged, through their plenipo-
gery- tentiaries, to appear in the field at the head of their
troops in the coming spring, had been in their graves, the one
for more than a year, the other for five months. The Elector
Palatine had left only a minor heir, and his dominions were in
the hands of Casimir as administrator. Besides, there was an
absurd disproportion between the contingents allotted to the
several princes and their well-known resources ; not to insist
1 "Protestation des liguez, faicte en l'assemblee de Mildebourg, au mois de
decembre dernier passe, 1585." Reprinted in Cimber et Danjou, Archives
curieuses, xi. 1-6. Among the other stipulations of this paper is one provid-
ing that a demand be made at the next German diet for the reunion to the em-
pire of the domain " detenue a f aux de 1 evesque de Rome et autres." See
Recueil des choses memorables, 607, 608.
Vol. I. —18
274 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. IV.
upon the singular blunder of the forger in choosing Magdeburg
for the seat of the fictitious meeting, and yet not representing
the Elector of Brandenburg, within whose territories the city
was situated, as having taken part in the adoption of the com-
pact either in person or by deputy. Well might the King of
JSavarre allege the fabrication to be an imposture worthy of
emanating from the bench of a charlatan, and point to the cir-
cumstance that its author set the month of May following for
the assembling of the Protestant confederates at Basle as being
a revelation of the purpose of the managers of the League to
resort to arms, ostensibly for the purpose of meeting the invad-
ing force, before that date.1
Whether true or false, however, the stories circulated by the
League met with abundant credence among the people, and pro-
duced the desired effect.
Respecting the history of the origin of the League in the
capital we happen to have a few particulars, though by no
means all the information that could be desired. Fragmentary
The League in as *s ^ie account, it deserves careful study ; for, in
St'ofa^yt" the midst °f much that is obscure or doubtful, it
tematic plan. places beyond dispute the fact that, instead of having
been in its beginnings a spontaneous, popular impulse, as it has
sometimes been portrayed, the powerful movement with which
not the Huguenots alone, but the crown itself, was soon to be
called into conflict, was the result of a systematic and carefully
laid plan, intelligently devised and patiently carried into opera-
tion. Such a scheme presupposed, indeed, as indispensable to its
success, a very ignorant and bigoted populace, intense in its devo-
tion to the name and the forms of the Roman Catholic Church,
easily stirred to frenzy by plausible, if unfounded, rumors, and
already, as I have said, much disturbed at the prospect of a
Huguenot successor to the throne of the Very Christian King.
1 Henry of Navarre exhibited the inconsistencies of the supposed •' con-
cordat," in the 23d section of his important manifesto, dated Bergerac, June
10, 1585, entitled "Declaration du roy de Navarre contre les calomnies pub-
liees contre luy es protestations de ceux de la Ligue, qui se sont eslevez en ce
royaume." Reprinted in the Memoires de la Ligue, i. 133-163, and Memoires
de Duplessis Mornay, iii. 89-126.
1584. THE PARISIAN LEAGUE. 275
But it was in itself no offspring of the people's hate of heresy,
and the secret of its appearance at this particular time must be
sought not in the obscure homes of the Parisian rabble, but in
ducal palaces, in ecclesiastical houses, and in the Escorial it-
self.
Realizing the importance of Paris in any such struggle as all
saw was impending over France, the Guises are said to have
chosen one Charles Hotoman or Hotman, known also
of Sharies as M. de la Roche-Blond, to organize the strongly
Roman Catholic party and bring all its latent energies
into play. A man of considerable means and great activity, a
burgess of the city and boasting of a good pedigree, Hotman
seemed to be just the instrument demanded by the emergency.
His mind had been inflamed by artful diatribes against the mis-
fortune of the times, the ambition of courtiers, the corruption of
the judges, the dissoluteness of all ranks of society, and the utter
indifference of the king to the religious welfare of his subjects
evidenced by his concession of the cities now pledged to the
Huguenots. Liberal promises of personal advancement were
also added. At first Hotman called but three persons into his
counsels. All three were ecclesiastics : Jean Prevost, curate of
Saint Severin ; Jean Boucher, curate of Saint Benoist ; and
Matthieu de Launoy, canon of Soissons. After mature con-
sideration, the number of counsellors was increased, each one of
the four naming one or two persons more whose zeal and pru-
dence were beyond question. Next, others were gradually and
cautiously admitted to a participation in the scheme — curates, ad-
vocates, maitres de comptes, and the like. To prevent discovery,
the management of affairs was at first confided to a small council
of nine or ten members, partly ecclesiastics, partly laymen ; and
five persons were intrusted with the duty of carrying
The coun- % , , , * , . .,.-,. .
cii and the out the decisions or tins council m the sixteen quarters
of the city and the faubourgs. Compans attended to
the whole of the "Cite" — the island to which Paris was origi-
nally confined. Cruce was charged with oversight of the two
quarters of the "Universite" — or the southern part of the
town — and its faubourgs of Saint Marcel, Saint Jacques, and
Saint Germain. La Chapelle, Louchard, and Le Clerc Bussy had
!276 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Cn. IV.
similar functions in all the quarters of the"Ville" — as the
growing portion of Paris on the northern bank of the Seine
was popularly designated. Everything was done with an eye
to secrecy, expedition, and safety. Not a living man was ad-
mitted by the "five" into the new society until his character
and previous history had been thoroughly canvassed by the
council, and his devotion to the Roman Catholic religion, or,
as it was more succinctly expressed, his "zeal for the mass,"
had been fully established. By the same " five " everything
that occurred in any part of the capital was daily reported to
the council, and the decisions of the council were in turn com-
municated to all the faithful. The latter, for the most part,
obeyed implicitly without seeking to discover the source whence
the command emanated. From the obscure room of curate
Boucher, first in the college of the Sorbonne, and afterward in
the "college de Forteret," true cradle of the League, issued
mandates which even the king upon his throne soon learned to
fear. So well was the affair managed that neither Henry nor
his agents were able for a long time to obtain any trustworthy
information respecting the secret organization, and could only
conjecture the source of the marvellous power that thwarted
their chosen designs. Among the members, carefully selected
and trained to submit to arbitrary rule, a spirit of self-sacrifice
supplied the place of military discipline, while even the money
necessary for carrying on the League's operations was con-
tributed by the wealthy families that privately countenanced
the movement, until such time as the treasures of the Indies,
supposed to repose in the coffers or to be subject to the drafts
of the Catholic King, should be directed toward France. It
would be anticipating too much the history of succeeding years,
were I to record, in this place, the part taken by the Parisian
League, especially the later " Council of the Sixteen," in the
subsequent wars under Henry the Third and Henry the Fourth.
For the present let it suffice to notice that the example of Paris
was gradually imitated in the great provincial towns, and that
an engine, originally contrived, it is said, for local purposes and
for defensive operations, was found so well adapted to aggres-
sive warfare that, in the end, the fortunes of the great nobles
Oh. IV. THE HUGUENOT WORSHIP. 277
at whose instigation it had been constructed, indeed, the destinies
of France itself, were dependent, to no inconsiderable extent,
upon it.1
The usages of a people are often depicted most vividly by those to whom,
by reason of novelty and contrast with their own customs, they appear strange
or absurd. The unfriendly pen of Florimond de Raemond,
ReemOTd's ac- author of a virulent " History of the Origin, Progress, and Ruin
count of the 0f the Heresies of our Times, " has drawn a sketch of the mode of
Huguenot wor- ,.-,._. , .
ship. conducting divine worship that was in vogue among the Huguen-
ots (Latin edition, Cologne, 1614, ii. 589-626) ; and information
derived from other and less inimical sources may enable us to fill in some of
the details that have been omitted.
Rude barns had been among the earliest resorts of the persecuted Protes-
tants, and it was a common reproach brought against their successors that
they continued of choice to meet in barns, even after the necessity of con-
sulting safety had passed away. The case was not, however, very different
from that of the early Christians of Rome, for whom the dark recesses of
the catacombs long possessed a singular fascination. Unlike the old parish
churches, the Protestant places of worship were provided with benches,
against which apparently no objection could be urged, save that they bore
too close a resemblance to the forms of the schools. This was not the only
particular wherein the Huguenots studied the comfort of the people, or set
themselves against traditional practice. They went to the length of declining
to kneel down in prayer on entering the hallowed precincts, and based the
refusal upon a determination to avoid everything that savored of idolatry.
While the minister is expected, or while he is preparing for his sermon,
says Raemond, a plain man will come forward and, from the pulpit, read
a chapter of the Holy Scriptures. If the minister be for any reason pre-
vented from coming, the same person may, indeed, go on and read to the
assembled hearers a sermon written by John Calvin himself. At least this
was frequently done until a synod put an end to the practice, for fear, as
it said, lest Calvin's writings should seem to be substituted for the Word
of God. The Roman Catholic writer, however, suggests, as the true reason,
that the Protestant divines apprehended a diminution of the willingness of
the laity to submit to the superfluous expense of supporting living teachers,
1 The story of the institution of the League in Paris is told appreciatively
by the "manant" in the famous " Dialogue du maheustre et du ma nan t '
(reprinted in full in the appendix to the Ratisbon edition of the Satyre menip-
pj'e, iii. 434, etc., and in part in Cimber et Danjou, Archives curieuses. xiv.
30-39) It is told, for the most part in the same words, but from a royalist
point of view, in the Memoires de la Ligue, v. 641, etc. See Recueil des
choses memorables, 603, etc.
278 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OP NAVARRE. Ch. IV.
when the works of the dead could be turned to such good account. But if
Florimond de Raemond is shocked that a simple artisan be permitted, though
merely a deacon or reader, to take so important a place, he is even more sur-
prised at the occasional disregard of conventional usages by the minister him-
self, who next enters. Instead of the rich vestments of the priest, the
Huguenot pastor is clothed in simple dress, differing little from that of every-
day life. It may even be that, like M. de Fay, the chaplain of Henry the
Fourth's sister, he will (in time of war), conduct the services wearing his
sword, or possibly, like some others, with spurs and greaves on.
Even the most ornate "temples" of the Calvinists strike our Roman Catho-
lic visitor as bare and unattractive. Moreover, he charges the Reformers with
having turned into " a house of preaching" what Christ himself declared to be
" a house of prayer."
On ascending the pulpit, the minister, having removed his hat, begins the
service, if it be a Lord's day, by the repetition of the Confession of Sins :
"Seigneur Dieu, Pere eternal et tout puissant." On other days, he uses no
set form, but composes his prayer according to his pleasure. The worshippers
either stand or kneel, and many turn their backs to the minister. After a
very brief prayer (which the Roman Catholic contrasts with the prayer with-
out ceasing enjoined by St. Paul), a section of some one of the psalms, trans-
lated by Marot and Beza into the vernacular, is sung. Under the guidance of
a leader, all join in this part of worship — men and women, old and young. In
those vast assemblages that used to come together in the city of Paris, when
all France seemed, as with one impulse, to be madly following the new
teachers of religion, it sometimes happened that the most strenuous exertions
of the minister or leader could not keep so many voices in harmony, and that
in one part of the edifice the people were singing one verse, in another a dif-
ferent one But, if there be only a few gathered, the clear, sweet voices of
the girls are heard entrancing all that listen. "It may easily be conjectured,"
cynically remarks Rsemond, ' ' whether the girls have their heart more fixed
upon God than the young men have both heart and eyes fixed upon the girls."
And then, this is all done in spite of St. Paul's words : " Let your women keep
silence in the churches " !
Next, the minister in a few words invokes the aid of the Holy Spirit, and
reads from the Holy Scriptures, which he always has at his hand, a text
which he then proceeds to expound. The sermon is followed by a short
prayer, this by the singing of the psalms, and then all retire from the church.
Of the external manifestations of devotion upon which the Roman Catholics
lay great stress there are none. No hands are stretched out toward heaven.
Smiting upon the breast passes for pure idolatry. Nor is it only on Sunday
that preaching is practised. On Thursday, too, the Huguenots flock to their
places of worship with as great alacrity as on the Lord's Day, upon the latter
of which days they not unfrequently fast.
The same simplicity, we are assured, characterizes other occasions of wor-
ship. In camp, when the soldiers are about to be assigned to their quarters
for the night, a deacon standing before them utters a brief prayer. When
the rite of Baptism is administered, which is always in church and at the
principal service of the Lord's Day, the ceremony consists of an address, a
Ch. IV. THE HUGUENOT WORSHIP. 279
prayer or admonition, and the sprinkling of a little water, with, the use of the
words, '* I baptize thee," etc. Great latitude is allowed in the matter of god-
fathers and godmothers, even the parents themselves being permitted to
present their children at the font.
The administration of the Lord's Supper is even more noteworthy for its
contrast with the pompous ceremonial of the Romish Mass. It takes place
only four times a year. That is at Easter, at Pentecost, on the first Lord's Day
in September, and on the Lord's Day nearest to Christmas. (See the notice at
the end of the various editions of the Huguenot psalter. ) It was, however,
the opinion of Calvin and Farel that the Lord's Supper ought to be celebrated
far more frequently— if possible, on every Lord's Day. "II seroyt bien a
desirer que la communication de la Saincte Cene de Jesucrist fust tous les
dimenches pour le moins en usage quant l'esglise est assemblee en mul-
titude, veu la grand consolation que les fideles en recoipvent, etc. . . .
Mays pource que l'infirmite du peuple est encore telle qu'il y auroit dangier
que ce sacre et tant excellent mistere ne vint en mespris s'il estoyt si souvent
celebre, ayant esgard a cela, il nous a semble bon que en attendant que le
peuple qui est encores au cunement debile sera plus conferme, ceste saincte
Cene soyt visitee une foys chascung moys en l'ung des troys lieux ou se font
maintenant les predications," etc. Memoire de Calvin et Farel sur l'organisa-
tion de l'Eglise de Geneve, 16 Janvier, 1537, in Archives of Geneva, and printed
in Gaberel, i., pieces justificatives, 103, 104. The bread used is leavened.
There is no altar, but instead a simple table spread with a cloth. The min-
ister comes down from the pulpit and breaks the bread, using, for the most
part, these words from Calvin's liturgy, • ' The bread which we break is the
communion of the body of Christ." He then gives a \ iece of the bread to the
member of the consistory who stands nearest to him, saying, " Remember that
Christ endured death and passion for thee," or, "This is the body that suf-
fered for thee." The communicants successively come up, and to each the
minister, as he gives him a piece of the bread, repeats a different verse from
the Word of God. The communicant, says Raymond, kisses the hand of the
minister in token of honor, or, if the communicant be more honorable, the
minister kisses, or makes as if he would kiss the bread he gives. At the other
end of the table a deacon hands the cup — no jewelled chalice, but a plain
vessel, even, it may be, of glass — to each communicant, with the words,
" The cup of blessing which we bless is the communion of the blood of
Christ," or, " Remember that the blood of Christ was shed for thee." In some
places the civil magistrates, according to Rsemond, approach the table even
before the consistory. Each communicant, on retiring, places a piece of
money on a plate or upon the table, for the relief of the poor. The "coena
peripatetica," as the writer is pleased to style it, of the Huguenots is strik-
ingly different, not only from the mode of communing practised in the
Roman Catholic Church, but from the customs observed in the Reformed
churches of other countries. In some of these the communicants kneel in
their places, while the consecrated elements are brought to them by the min-
ister and deacons, while in others, as in those of Scotland, Belgium, and Hol-
land, the communicants observe the primitive usage of sitting down at the
table.
280 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OP NAVARRE. Ch. IV.
Nothing impressed itself upon the adherents of the Romish Church as so
remarkable as the great use of the psalms. The early Huguenots, we are told,
carried their Bibles and psalm-books even to their meals, and brought them
out at the end, as a sort of dessert, wherein persons of both sexes and every
age vied in partaking. They chaunted ihem on the way to their places of
worship. It was a pleasant sight to see ten or a dozen boats full of Huguenot
men, women, and children gliding over the peaceful waters of some river
toward the spot where the great assembly of worshippers was to meet, and fill-
ing the banks on either side with the melody of their song. Artisans made
their work-rooms, merchants thoir shops, to resound with the music of their
favorite hymns ; nor were they deterred by the fact that priests and monks
held up their hands in holy horror at the profanation of transferring the
psalms of David from the church to the private house, or stopped their ears
when they passed by the cobbler at his bench singing the divine Miserere, or
caught the strains of the Be profundis rising above the din of the smithy.
1584. THE HOLY LEAGUE. 281
CHAPTEE V.
THE " HOLY LEAGUE," AND THE EDICT OF NEMOURS.
If any conflict be more pitiful than a war sincerely waged
for religion's sake, it is a conflict in which religion serves merely
as a convenient pretext to cloak private and selfish ends. Of
such a conflict the Huguenots were about to become the un-
willing witnesses, without the ability, by taking an active part,
to secure the triumph of the side upon which their interest lay.
Both Henry the Third and the Guises were by profession
devout Roman Catholics. Between the two, if there were any
The king's question of relative sincerity, Henry was entitled to
Sae staple! be regarded as the more sincere. The Guises might
nots. choose to dissemble. They had on occasion pre-
tended to have leanings toward the Reformation. Even the
bloody Cardinal of Lorraine had more than once made his or-
thodoxy suspicious in the eyes of rigid churchmen. But Henry
of Yalois, brought up to hate the Protestants with a perfect
hatred, never feigned the slightest affection for them, even
when most desirous of entrapping them in a false security. On
the other hand, at a time when his heart might have been ex-
pected to be touched with gratitude for their signal fidelity to
the crown, the king's assurances went no further than vague
promises of peace and good treatment.1 Meanwhile he gave
the most practical proof of hearty detestation for the Hugue-
nots and their faith. He rigidly excluded the adherents of the
Reformed doctrines from all posts of trust, from all civil and
military offices, from all judicial seats. The monarch set his
1 " Je leur entretiendrai la paix, et leur monstrerai que je leur veuhr du
bien." Duplessis Mornay to the King of Navarre, Paris, February 20, 1584,
Memoires de Duplessis Mornay, ii. 528.
282 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. V.
face resolutely against their preferment. Ambitious men among
the Huguenots were privately informed by Henry's minions,
His plan for J°yeuse ar,d Epernon, that religious constancy was
ofProSsSn" tne onty obstacle in the way of their obtaining the
ism. coveted prize. To such inducements to apostasy
many an aspirant for power fell an easy prey. At the same
time, if in any city of the kingdom a Protestant happened to
have secured some magistracy, there were not wanting persons
ready to avail themselves of the slightest pretext of irregularity
in his appointment, or of error committed by him in an official
capacity. It went hard with his enemies, enjoying, as they did,
the all but open support of the king and his advisers, if they did
not involve the Huguenot in costly litigation or even secure his
removal.1 So shrewdly devised, so systematically pursued, was
the scheme of repression, that worldly wise men, politicians judg-
ing of others by themselves, and statisticians who had implicit
faith in their arithmetical processes and were confident that the
fate of the Protestants could be safely calculated according to
the rule of simple proportion, predicted the speedy extinction of
heresy in France. But for the interference of this meddlesome
League, " Huguenotry," Cavriana positively affirms, would, in
the course of four years, have become so obsolete as to leave no
memory of itself, so complete would have been the effect of the
determination of Henry the Third to tolerate no Huguenot near
him or in any public office.2
1 De Thou, vi. (book 81) 444, 445.
2 Letter of Filippo Cavriana, August 4, 1585, Negociations avec la Toscane,
iv. 619. The Venetian ambassador, Lorenzo Priuli, in his relation of Juno 5,
1582, maintained that the number of Huguenots in France had already dimin-
ished seventy per cent. Ranke, History of the Popes, bk. v., p. 204. The
absurdity of such affirmations and prognostications lay in the fact that they
made no account of the people. Instead of diminishing, the number of Prot-
estants in France was steadily and even rapidly increasing at the very period
of the civil wars, when political wiseacres, judging from the occasional defec-
tion of courtiers and men ambitious of place, were foretelling the annihilation
of the Huguenot party. For instance, so soon as the peace of 1577 was signed,
the Reformed religion received a notable impulse in the city of Pons in Sain-
tonge, now that protection was secured by a Protestant garrison. The church, or
" temple," erected in 1575, became too contracted for the multitude of Prot-
estants nocking to it. As it was impracticab^ to erect a now church, the
1584. THE HOLY LEAGUE. 283
Were the Guises desirous of such a consummation ? The
question may confidently be answered in the negative. The res-
toration of doctrinal unity to France would have removed the
chief excuse of which an ambitious family could avail itself for
taking up arms against the sovereign — an excuse which it would
have been loath to renounce.
For many years the mind of Henry of Guise had been the re-
ceptacle of the wildest hopes, and had harbored the most extrav-
agant schemes. Enjoying unlimited credit with the
Ambition of & ,« . •» i • r -r*
the Duke of people as the self-constituted champion or Koman
Guise.
Catholicism, the idol of a clergy that viewed his ad-
vancement as a pledge of the overthrow of heresy, a prince still
in his early prime, whose manly beauty was scarcely marred by
the honorable scar securing him the epithet of "Le balafre,"
and an adept in all the arts that conciliate favor and confirm
friendship, Guise was quick to discern the possibilities of his
situation. Chafing under the fate that decreed him birth as a
subject, he never for a single instant forgot that a king of Scot-
land married a daughter of Duke Claude of Guise, and that
Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland and of France, was his cousin.
Nor did the voice of sycophantic followers tire of repeating the
suggestion that to him, as a lineal descendant of Charlemagne, not
to Henry of Yalois, much less to his apostate cousin of Navarre,
belonged of right the crown of France. True, the ducal House
of Lorraine had, of necessity, a superior title to the succession ;
but the Guises gave themselves little solicitude on this score,
well assured that ample grounds would in due time be discovered
for setting aside the possible claim of a branch that made no
pretence of being French in character or in past history.
Pending an opportunity to put forth a serious effort to wrest
the French sceptre from the grasp of a monarch confessedly one
of the feeblest of his line, Henry of Guise had not resigned
himself to inaction. Naturally the island of Great Britain,
both because of its proximity to France and by reason of the
Huguenots converted the " hallo du minage " into a place of worship. Here,
too, they met on any emergency of a secular character, to discuss measures of
self-defence. A. Crottet, Histoire des eglises reformees de Pons, Gemozac et
Mortagne en Saintonge (Bordeaux, 1841), 93.
284 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. V.
religion professed by the ruler of the southern part, afforded
the most attractive field for intrigue. A heretical queen was
Designs upon W80 fac^° a deposed queen, and when to the taint of
England. heresy was added the express and formal excommuni-
cation of the pope, the dominions of Queen Elizabeth could be
regarded by a devout servant of the " Holy See " only as a law-
ful prize for the first comer who might be of orthodox sentiments
and of sufficient military prowess. In the city of Paris, at the
house of the papal nuncio, or at the house of the Jesuits, or at
the house of the ambassador Juan Baptista de Tassis, were held
those grave deliberations respecting the best method of freeing
the world from the presence and dominion of the indomitable
princess whom all the conspirators joined in styling the English
Jezebel. The Duke of Guise offered to lead an invading force,
and to effect a landing of four thousand troops of his own on
the coast of Northumberland; while his brother, Charles of
Mayenne, should conduct as many more to Sussex; and Duke
Albert of Bavaria, wTith five thousand Germans, should descend
upon Norfolk. These scanty forces were to be supplemented
by the retainers of the great Roman Catholic noblemen of Eng-
land, who had pledged themselves to rise in mass and join the
foreigners coming to effect their liberation. Happily, however,
the projectors of this magnificent scheme were not altogether
of one mind. The English Jesuits, jealous for the influence
of Philip the Second, insisted that the conduct of
Dissension x , • ' * * 1 -..., ^ii
between the the enterprise should be more distinctly connded to
conspirators. ~ * _ ., . » ^ .
the Catholic king, and that, even it Guise were per-
mitted to lead, the troops employed should not be Frenchmen
but Spaniards. And as for Philip himself , although the details
of the plot had been thoroughly discussed for months and even
for years, that prudent monarch found, as the moment for action
approached and everything turned upon prompt decision, fresh
reasons for caution, and scrupled about trusting any French
general with the chief command. Thus the last chance of suc-
cess slipped through the fingers of the impatient captains and
theologians who from Paris and Rheims had laid cunning plans
for the overthrow and death of Elizabeth. The Spanish vessels
essential for the transport of troops never arrived. Meanwhile
1584. THE HOLY LEAGUE. 2S5
the sagacious forethought of Walsingham, in providing her
majesty with a legion of spies, who, in the garb of priests, or of
members of the Order of Jesus, penetrated the inmost recesses
of religious houses and communicated to the English secretary of
state the most private resolutions of Pomish conspirators before
The plot laid ^ie m^ was fairty dry upon the paper to which those
bare. resolutions were consigned, was rewarded by ample
discoveries. At the right moment every feature of the plot
against Protestant England and its queen was laid bare, and
the precise part taken by Philip, by Gregory the Thirteenth, by
the Jesuits, by Guise, by the minor instruments employed, lay
open to the light of day. Francis Throkmorton — unworthy
nephew of the eminent statesman, Sir Nicholas, whose invalu-
able correspondence furnishes a clew to the intricacies of French
history at the time of the outbreak of the civil wars — disclosed,
when extended on the rack, even the places on the English
coast where the invading fleet was to land, and the names of
the English Roman Catholics that had promised their co-opera-
tion. And William Parry, a few weeks later, described the
manner in wmich the detestable plot to assassinate the English
queen was concocted, and reluctantly informed Walsingham
where he had hidden that remarkable letter in which the Car-
dinal of Como, in the pope's name, had conveyed his holiness's
strong desire that Parry should persevere in his laudable pur-
pose of murder, and had sent his pontifical blessing with a con-
cession of plenary indulgence and remission of all his sins.1
Gregory and Philip were out of the reach of the English
government, but upon one remarkable man the hand of the
executioner might justly have been laid. Bernardino de Men-
doza, Spanish ambassador at London,2 stood clearly convicted
1 For the plot against England in which Guise was concerned the reader
may consult, with profit, Froude, History of England, xi. (Reign of Elizabeth,
chapter 31) ; Michelet, La Ligue et Henri IV.,chapitre 10. The narrative of
Parry's plot, translated into French, is the second of the numerous documents
of the Memoires de la Ligue, a collection of which the first volume appeared
in 1587. The letter of the Cardinal of Como. dated Borne, January 30, 1584.
is given, i. 34, in the original Italian, with trifling mistakes, and in French
2 " One Bernardin Mendoza," wrote Walsingham to Dr. Dale, July 17, 1574,
"is sent from the King of Spain to use Spanish compliments to lull them
2S6 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. V.
by the testimony of Throkmorton — corroborated in all its parts
by the envoy's own correspondence with his master, first brought
Bernardino de to %llt in our own days— of having stimulated and
Mendoza. abetted the nefarious project. It was, of course,
impossible to permit him to remain at the English court, but,
fortunately for him, the royal council did not think fit to
punish his breach of the law of nations by sending him to the
scaffold. As it was, after having been unceremoniously expelled
from England, in January, 1584, he was sent to France by
Philip, a few months later, to condole with the king upon the
death of his brother. Before the close of the year he had taken
the place of Tassis as resident Spanish ambassador at Paris.
Few Frenchmen were destined to play so important a part in
the history of their own country, for the next ten years, as this
intriguing Spaniard, whose house became at once the centre of
all the sinister plots, directed not so much against the existence
of the Huguenots in France as against the crown itself. It was
not by accident that Mendoza had been assigned to so important
a post. No man could have been found in Spain better quali-
fied to discharge its responsible trusts. Of a family inferior in
distinction to no other of the peninsula, and himself boasting
of important military service in the Netherlands, he came to
France rich in the experience of years spent mostly in at-
tempting to deceive Queen Elizabeth respecting the intentions
of Philip and the Roman Catholic powers. Proud and im-
perious by nature, he was no novice in the art of dissimulation,
and few diplomatists could surpass him in the solemnity with
which he was in the habit of asseverating the truth of state-
ments false but profitable. Of regret that he was compelled
to stoop to such dishonorable expedients his secret despatches
betray not the faintest trace. On other points his sensibility
was, more keen. Threats of punishment for the treacherous
plots which he had countenanced against the person of a friendly
sovereign to whose court he had been deputed were hurled back
with contempt. For the most part, however, he preferred the
to sleep, until they have compounded their troubles in Flanders, when all
wise men think they will wake them." State Paper Office.
1584. THE HOLY LEAGUE. 287
path of conciliation, and, while fomenting discord and devising
the ruin of all with whose interests the policy of Spain was not
coincident, he maintained a gracious exterior. His lavish ex-
penditure of money both surprised and alarmed his fellow am-
bassadors, who knew well that neither the exchequer of their
states nor their own private purses could furnish them the
means of competing successfully with such magnificent but ru-
inous extravagance. " If it be the characteristic of a good am-
bassador," wrote Busbecq, u to make a great outlay of money, a
better envoy than Don Bernardino could not easily be found." '
The arrival of Bernardino de Mendoza in France marks the
date of the rapid development of the League, which, after a
period of about seven years of suspended animation, now be-
gan to show signs that its capacity for mischief had not been
destroyed, and only awaited the opportunity for a more terri-
ble manifestation. Mendoza had come with the commission to
employ this engine of war in the interests of the King of Spain
and of the Roman Catholic Church.
We have already noticed the use to which the enemies of
the Huguenots had turned the report of the efforts made by
the King of Navarre to unite all Brotestant princes and states
in a common profession and in a defensive alliance. We have
also witnessed the industry displayed in circulating the refusal
of that prince to abandon his religion without previous instruc-
tion in a free and legitimate council, as proof that, unless the
Roman Catholics of France should take decisive measures, they
would find themselves, on the death of the present monarch,
the subjects of a determined enemy of their faith. Fresh
ground for misrepresentation was now found in the just con-
cessions of Henry of Yalois. The cities pledged to the Hugue-
The Hugue- nots by the edict of pacification of 1577 had been
cSes&ofd ret- intrusted to them for six years only, and the King
uge- of Navarre, the Brince of Conde, and twenty other
Brotestant gentlemen had taken a solemn oath, collectively and
individually, to restore these places to the king at the expira-
1 In proof of which he alleged the report that Mendoza intended to spend
the enormous sum of sixteen thousand crowns a year upon his legation.
Busbecq to the emperor, December 10, 1584, Epistolse, i'ol. 82.
288 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. V.
tion of the term of time agreed upon.1 Since the edict bore date
of September, 1577, the cities were to be given up in the corre-
sponding month in 1583.2
As the time approached, however, for redeeming their prom-
ise, the Huguenots besought the king to prolong the period for
which they were permitted to retain the cities. Nor was the
demand altogether unreasonable. The eight cities had origi-
nally been conceded in view of the excited condition of France
resulting from the long prevalence of war. While command-
ing the Protestants at once to evacuate all the cities, towns,
and castles seized during the late hostilities, the edict gave a
satisfactory reason for leaving a few places of refuge in their
hands: "And nevertheless," said the king, "inasmuch as
many private individuals have received and suffered, during
the troubles, so much injury and damage in their property and
persons, that hardly will they be able to lose the memory there-
of so soon as would be requisite for the execution of our in-
tentions ; desiring to avoid all the inconveniences that might
thereby arise, until such time as the existing feelings of rancor
and enmity be allayed, we have committed to the custody of
those of the said pretended reformed religion, for the term of
six years, the following cities."
The conditions upon which the cities were given, said the
Huguenots, have not been fulfilled ; the object of the trust is
yet unaccomplished. The edict of pacification has
Reasons for * * . . _ . .
the retention been executed m scarcely any or its articles, save such
as depended on the obedience of the Protestants or
the interests of the Roman Catholics. When the king spoke
of six years, he evidently intended six proper or, in legal par-
lance, serviceable years — that is, years serviceable in allaying
the existing rancor and enmity. The king ought, therefore, to
imitate the intelligent physician who, although at first he ordered
the plaster to be kept on the wound for but six days, afterward
1 See above, chap, ii., p. 166.
2 The king's reply to the Protestants, of December 10, 1584, referred to
below, makes the precise date to be August 17, 1583. This is probably a
mere clerical error. The "secret articles" of Bergerac bear date of Septem-
ber 17, 1577.
1584. THE HOLY LEAGUE. 2b9
retains it as long as may be necessary. And, in this case, it is
not the impatience of the sufferer that has aggravated the sore
by meddling with it, but the inconsiderate temerity of the phy-
sician's assistant who, contrary to his master's will, has poisoned
the wound and destroyed the efficiency of the remedy applied.
When the results sought for by the edict shall be attained,
it will be time enough to restore the cities originally given as
safeguards to the Protestants. It is dangerous for them to re-
store them, as it would be cruel in the king to insist upon their
restoration, so long as there are many important cities in France,
such as Toulouse, Cahors, Castelnaudary, and others, that will
not allow a single Protestant to live within their walls ; so long
as the prescriptions respecting schools and cemeteries, respect-
ing patients in the public hospitals and worshippers in the
churches, are suffered to remain inoperative ; so long as some of
the chambers of justice established by the edict exist only on
paper, and the jurisdiction of others is impeded by vexatious
restrictions ; so long, above all, as, in spite of the prohibition of
insulting and seditious preaching, the Roman Catholic pulpits
everywhere resound with declarations that the time for the ex-
tirpation of the Protestant religion approaches, and some of the
preachers are so audacious as to indulge in bloodthirsty threats
from the sacred desk, lauding, in the hearing of your court, and
even in your majesty's presence, the murders and massacres
heretofore perpetrated, and instigating their hearers to fresh
acts of the same kind, as if inviting them to a participation in a
holy sacrifice.1
To say that Henry of Yalois was convinced by the Huguenot
arguments would be to assert too much. In fact, while pre-
tending to redress the wrongs of which the King of Navarre
and the Protestant churches complained, and making lavish
professions of a desire to act fairly, he continued for months to
1 "Cahier general dresse par M. Duplessis sur les Memoires envoyes au roy
de Navarre par les eglices de France, et presente au roy Henri III. par M.
de Clervant" (July 3, 1583), Memoires de Duplessis Mornay, ii. 320-344;
"Raisons pour induire le roy a accorder la prolongation des places pour
quelques ans a ses subjects de la relligion reformee " (August 12, 1583), ibid.,
ii. 358-362.
Vol. I.— 19
290 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Cn. V.
insist upon the letter of the compact, so far as his subjects of
the other faith were concerned. It was only when a Huguenot
The king re- assembly which, in answer to repeated requests, he
loSheterm nRd at length permitted to come together in the city
estante pSS" of Montauban, in August and September, 1584, urgent-
eion. ]y renewed the petition, that he consented to prolong
the term of the Protestant possession. Even then it is proba-
ble that the inability to secure their compliance with his sum-
mons for an instant surrender had much to do with the
concession. However this may be, the king, in order, as he
said, to show his desire to bring back his subjects to obedience
rather by gentle than by harsh measures, consented that the
cities heretofore granted to the Protestants be left in their
guard for one or two years, as he should hereafter deem ad-
visable.'
The repeated refusals of Henry of Navarre to abjure his re-
ligion, the exaggerated story of a great Protestant confederacy,
and the complaisance of the king toward heretics, evidenced by
The League n^s granting to the Huguenots prolonged possession
aiarmiig8 °^ tne cities oi refuge, were not the only sources of
rumors. popular alarm for the safety of the faith. With rare
skill the League summoned fresh spectres, unreal phantoms, the
creation of a disordered imagination, to frighten the masses of
the people into compliance with its suggestions. Living in a
day when knowledge is so generously diffused, when the im-
ponderable agents have been impressed into man's service, in
order to secure the instantaneous transmission of accurate in-
1 A condition was exacted that the Huguenots should give up certain other
towns which they had, it was alleged, seized of their own authority or by force.
Upon this matter the most important documents to be consulted are : " Cahier
general adresse par M. Duplessis sur les Memoires envoyes au roy de Navarre
par les eglises de France, et presente au roy Henry III. par M. de Clervant "
(dated July 3, 1583), Memoires de Duplessis Mornay, ii. 320-344 ; " Raisons
pour induire le roy a accorder la prolongation des places pour quelques ans a
ses subjects de la relligion reformee " (August 12, 1583), ibid., ii. 358-362;
and the long " Cahier au roy " drawn up at Montauban by the assembly of the
Protestant churches, September 7, 1584, and signed not only by all the dele-
gates, but by Henry of Navarre, with the reply of Henry III. at the end of
the separate articles and at the close of the whole document, ibid., ii. 606-
667.
1584. THE HOLY LEAGUE, 291
formation respecting events of the most recent occurrence at
the most distant points on the surface of the globe, we find it
well-nigh impossible to picture to ourselves the isolation and
consequent ignorance of the people in the sixteenth century.
Where communication between different parts of the country
was sluggish, infrequent, and irregular, the wildest rumors could
be set on foot with little immediate danger of detection and
contradiction. The peasantry and the small tradesmen of the
towns were the ready prey of designing men. Especially was
this the case in matters directly or remotely affecting religion.
The love of the marvellous, being re-enforced by the power of
sectarian hate, secured to the inventor of pious falsehoods an
immediate and almost unimpeded course for the most baseless
of fabrications. To believe anything and everything asserted to
the disadvantage of the enemies of the Roman Catholic Church
was the fashion ; while it was often as much as a man's life was
worth to express the slightest incredulity respecting their actual
or prospective misdeeds.
What wonderful fictions had been composed in order to raise
the enthusiasm of the populace to fever heat, we learn from
the narrative of one Nicholas Poulain, to which I
The narrative ,,,,,. . r m
of Nicholas shall have frequent occasion to refer hereafter. The
Poulain.
heads of the League in Paris, whose origin was traced
in a preceding chapter of this history, had set their hearts
upon securing the co-operation of Poulain, because, as lieuten-
ant of the provost of the province of lie de France (the pro-
vost himself being an old man and averse to labor), he had
virtual command of a good part of the troops, within the walls
of Paris, upon whom the king believed that he could count.
The lieutenant had been vouched for by friends who had known
him for more than a score of years, and was therefore accepted
without apparent distrust. He was first informed that a fine
opportunity now offered itself for him to gain a sum of money
that would enable him to live at his ease, as well as to obtain
the favor of certain lords and high personages of the city of
Paris who had it in their power to give him rapid advance-
ment. The only condition was fidelity to a cause which was
no other than the preservation of the Catholic, Apostolic, and
^92 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. V.
Roman faith. Having given the necessary promise, and taken
a solemn oath, Poulain was notified to come the next morning
to the house of Master Jean Le Clerc, a " procureur " of the
Parliament of Paris. Here he found assembled a number of
the members of the Parisian League, together with a gentle-
man by the name of Mayneville, sent, as he was informed, by
the Duke of Guise, to consult with them respecting their com-
mon enterprise.1 Le Clerc himself initiated the new member
into the secrets of the organization which he had joined.
" The Catholic religion is lost," said he, " unless prompt
measures be taken to succor it and forestall the prep-
Pretended . r r
Huguenot arations made for its ruin. Ihere are upward of
conspiracy. . _ _^ _ * •. _
ten thousand Huguenots in the r aubourg baint Ger-
main intent on cutting the throats of the Catholics, in order
to give the crown to the King of Navarre.2 There are many
others hired for the same purpose, as well in the city as in
its suburbs, one-half of them Huguenots and the other half
Politiques. A number of the members of the royal council
and of parliament favor the King of Navarre ; and provision
must be made to meet this difficulty. At the same time the
good Catholics must secretly take up arms, so as to get the
upper hand and defeat the plots of their enemies. They have
good princes and high noblemen ready to support them — the
Dukes of Guise, Mayenne, and Aumale, with the entire house
of Lorraine. The pope, the cardinals, bishops, abbots, and the
whole body of the clergy, with the Sorbonne, will help them,
and they will be backed by the King of Spain, the Prince
of Parma, and the Duke of Savoy. The king, we know of a
truth, favors the King of Navarre, and, for this reason, has
sent to him the Duke of Epernon to give him, by way of loan
or otherwise, the sum of two hundred thousand crowns, in
1 Mayneville, or Meneville, appears, from the Simancas MSS., to have been
one of the most customary agents of Guise in his communications with Men-
doza and with the Parisian League. See also De Thou, vi. 721.
2 This was the standard formula. Elsewhere, referring to the recruits
obtained from the various trades in the city, Poulain informs us : "a tous
lesquels Ton faisoit entendre que les Huguenots vouloient couper la gorge aux
Catholiques, et faire venir le roy de Navarre a la couronne." Memoires de
Henry III., 150, 151.
1584. THE HOLY LEAGUE. 293
order that lie may be in a position to wage war against the
good Catholics. But there are already secured secretly in
Paris a goodly number of men, all of whom have sworn to
die rather than suffer this outrage to be perpetrated. Nor
will they find any great difficulty in their way. They will
only have to overcome the king's forces in Paris, which are
feeble and small in number — some two or three hundred
guards at the Louvre, the provost of the hotel de ville and his
archers, and the provost of the Isle de France." The address
ended with a few hints as to how Poulain might render the
League good service, and himself derive great advantage, by
playing into the hands of the conspirators.1
Such were the horrors upon which the imagination and fears
of the " good Catholics " were fed. To " cut the throats of the
good Catholics" of the city of Paris, forsooth, was a project
very likely to enter the heads of the Huguenots. So seem
their opponents to have thought, since the accusation recurs
periodically — in 1572, in 1576, and now in 1581, not to speak
of other occasions at an earlier date. And each time the
credulous people swallows the absurd story without the least
objection, and, when it can, sets itself to murdering the sup-
posed plotters of so much mischief, never deigning or being
able to consider the improbability that the hated sect, so in-
significant in numbers in Northern France, should dream of
getting the better of its antagonists in the populous capital of
the realm.
Meantime, political considerations very vital to his own in-
1 " Le procez verbal d'un nomme Nicholas Poulain, lieutenant de la pre-
voste de l'Isle de France, qui contient l'histoire de la Ligue, depuis le second
Janvier 1585 jusques au jour des Barricades, escheues le 12 May 1588." Me-
moires de Henry III., 145, etc. Also in Cimber et Danjou, Archives
curieuses, xi. 289-323. Poulain, in disgust, revealed the secrets of the
League to the king, from time to time, and was particularly serviceable in
frustrating a scheme, matured in the house of the Jesuits near St. Paul s
Church, for treacherously seizing Boulogne-sur-mer, "quils disoient leur
estre fort necessaire, pour faire aborder et descendre l'armee qu'ils attendoient
d'Espagne." Memoires de Henry III , 153 Latterly, if not from the first,
Poulain was a spy in the king's pay as appears from the extracts of the ex-
pense accounts of the monarch (1588), published in the Archives curieuses,
x. 433.
I294 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. V.
terests warned Philip the Second that he must give the signal
to his French allies and future stipendiaries to bestir them-
selves.
The States- General of the Netherlands had finally, in Octo-
ber, 1584, resolved to offer to Henry the Third the sovereignty
of the United Provinces. Even Holland, long reluctant to take
this step, had finally acquiesced in the action of the sister re-
publics, and the last obstacle in the way of concerted action had
been taken out of the way. Rarely has monarch received so
rich a present as that which a deputation of Dutch
Offer of the r . . r .
sovereignty statesmen was now commissioned to place in the
lands to Hen- hands of Henry of Yalois ; never has kingdom en-
joyed the prospect of a more welcome accession to its
territory and resources. Rich in her broad fields and manifold
industries, France had now the promise of becoming the most
commercial state upon the face of the earth by the annexation
of the free provinces at the mouth of the Rhine, whose inhabi-
tants, not content with wresting the lands they inhabited from
the grasp of the ocean, had avenged the wrongs received at its
hands by daring and untiring efforts to compel every part of
the wide seas to render tribute to their growing wealth and
power.
The hearty acceptance of the gift by the very Christian king,
strong in the support of a united and patriotic people, there
could be little doubt, would have placed the hardly contested
war for Dutch independence beyond the possibility of failure.
Unfortunately, it was not in the power of the last Yalois to
rally to his standard, even in a conflict appealing so strongly to
national pride, the full resources of his kingdom, the first of
Christian states. Not the most sanguine advocate of the ac-
ceptance of Holland's magnificent offer could delude himself
into hoping that the " good Catholics " of Henry's dominions
would, with unanimity, flock to their king's support. But it
was of the utmost importance to Philip that the offer should
not be entertained at all, or if entertained be peremptorily de-
clined. To secure this result the surest plan seemed to be to
set at once in operation that powerful enginery with which the
League had furnished him, and again to plunge a land which had
1584. THE HOLY LEAGUE. 295
scarcely had time to breathe the invigorating air of peace into
the horrors of civil war.
Just now King Henry was beginning to awake from his
dream of security, and to realize that, after all, the chief dan-
ger was to be apprehended, not from liberty-loving Huguenots,
but from Spanish-minded Leaguers. Tidings came to him of
conferences between his subjects and those of Philip, obscure
hints of compacts made by Frenchmen with the natural enemies
of France, and of pledges of money for service yet to be ren-
dered ; vague accounts of associations formed in the heart of
the kingdom, nominally for the defence of the Roman Catholic
religion, but in reality for the overthrow of the royal authority.
When all this became so apparent that no one but a person wil-
fully blind to the truth could be in doubt of the approach of
serious trouble, Henry endeavored to conjure the storm with
a royai dec- words and threats. On the eleventh of November,
aagr£tn the 1584, a declaration was signed by the king at Saint
vember' n°" Germain en Laye, " against all persons making leagues,
1584- associations, enrolment of troops, intrigues and prac-
tices against the estate of the realm." It was carried in haste
to parliament, and was registered the same day. On the morrow
it was published by the crier on all the public squares of the
capital. Henry set forth in this document the earnestness with
which he had been laboring daily more and more to remove
every occasion for the disturbance of the peace and tranquillity
which he desired to be enjoyed by the subjects God had placed
under his care. He declared that nothing could therefore be
more displeasing to him than to hear, as he had heard, that
" certain evil spirits, enemies of the public tranquillity of his
kingdom," had been unable to restrain their propensity to work
all the mischief in their power, and had begun to solicit the
nobles, as well as members of the other orders in the state, to
enter into a league or association and to sign certain papers not
less prejudicial to the common welfare than insulting to the
royal dignity. For this reason the king announced that all
who solicited others to enter into such league or sign such paper
were guilty of treason, and also affixed the penalties of treason
to all compliance with their solicitations. At the same time
290 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE Ch. V.
he granted full and unconditional pardon to all persons who,
before the first day of the new year, should renounce the dis-
loyal engagements into which they might have entered.1
Had proclamations been sufficient to strike terror into the
hearts of the secret conspirators against the peace of France,
the threats of Henry of Yalois would have put an effectual end
to the League. As it was, the declaration, if it served any pur-
pose, only hastened the catastrophe.
Late in December, a council met in the famous castle of
Joinville, whose conclusions were to be fraught with as much
conference of misery and bloodshed for France as had been the
jolnriufTite- Sunday's assault of Francis of Guise upon the ILugrie-
cember, 1584. no^ worshippers in the rude barn in the neighboring
village of Vassy,2 nearly twenty-three years before. As if in
irony, the day chosen for signing a document so pregnant of
disaster to crown and people was the last day of the year ; the
last day, also, of the period of grace allowed by the terms of the
king's recent declaration.
There were present at Joinville: first and foremost, Juan
Baptista de Tassis, commander of the order of Saint James,
late ambassador at the court of France, the skilful workman to
whom had been intrusted by Philip the delicate task of ar-
ranging the parts of the fearful engine which was to bring glory
and power to Spain and deal ruin and death to countless souls
in France. His work done and well done, he was now, after
giving the last finishing touches and setting it well under way
on its destructive mission, to consign it to hands not less
scrupulous and perhaps equally able, the hands of his succes-
sor Mendoza. Juan Moreo, commander of the Knights Hos-
pitallers of Malta, was his assistant. Next came Francois de
Mayneville, the representative of the old cardinal, Charles of
Bourbon, now for the first time laying claim to the title of heir
presumptive of the crown of France. The third place was held
by the princes of Lorraine origin. Henry, Duke of Guise, and
1 Text of the Declaration in Memoires de Nevers, i. 633, 634. See De Thou,
vi. (book 80) 393.
2 Joinville and Vassy are not over ten or twelve miles apart.
1584. THE CONFERENCE OF JOINVILLE. 207
his brother Charles, Duke of Mayenne, appeared in person. The
former presented a paper giving him full power to act in be-
half of his brother, the Cardinal Louis of Guise, and his cousins,
the Dukes of Aumale and Elbeuf .
Between these few actors the terms of the definite alliance
entered into by Philip and the League were soon settled. They
The terms of were reduced to the following points :
alliance. ^he Cardinal of Bourbon was recognized as heir to
the crown, in case the present King of France should die child-
less, to the exclusion of all heretical or relapsed claimants.
The cardinal, on his accession to the throne, was to strengthen
the present union by ratifying the Treaty of Cateau Cambresis,
made in 1559, and pledging himself by oath to observe it.
No other religion than the Roman Catholic and Apostolic
would be tolerated in France, and all persons refusing to em-
brace it would be exterminated.
The decrees of the Council of Trent would be accepted and
published in France.
The future king was to renounce for himself and his successors
all alliance with the Turk.
No undertaking was to be permitted that might jeopard the
Spanish navigation and trade with the Indies.
To defray the expense of the war which was to be waged by
the princes of the League for the extirpation of the Huguenots,
Philip engaged to advance to them monthly fifty thousand
crowns of gold, beginning at the day on which war should be
declared.
These advances were to be repaid by the cardinal-king at
his accession.
The princes were to assist Philip in recovering the cities
belonging to him, now unlawfully held by the French, and es-
pecially the city of Cam bray.
For the mutual defence of France and of the Low Countries
there was to be an eternal and inviolable alliance between Philip
and his successors, on the one hand, and the Roman Catholic
princes and their successors, on the other ; and Philip, besides
the stipulated monthly allowance above provided, was to send
them as many men and as much money as they might need.
298 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. V.
All Roman Catholic nobles, gentlemen, cities, and universi-
ties, and, in short, all Roman Catholics of whatever station that
might ally themselves with the parties to this compact, were
to be regarded as comprehended in it; provision being par-
ticularly made for the Dukes of Mercoeur and Severs, of whose
sentiments, though they were absent, it was supposed that there
could be no doubt, and for the insertion of whose signatures
blanks were purposely left at the end of the document.
The compact was for the present to be kept a profound se-
cret, in view of the trouble which the heretics might create
were its contents to be divulged.
Such was the Treaty of Joinville, to which, consistently
with the reputation of all the high contracting parties for
sincerity, guilelessness, and disinterestedness, they prefixed a
" protestation " to the effect that no one of them was moved
in the premises by any other consideration than a pure desire
to preserve the Roman Catholic religion, imperilled, as it was,
by the open and covert attacks of heresy.1 In point of fact,
however, it may be doubted whether any two of the princes,
present in person or represented at the conference by others,
had the same ends in view, or cared very much for the interests
Designs of °^ eacn otner- So far as the King of Spain was
Philip ii. concerned, Bourbon, Guise, and Mayenne were simply
the convenient tools thrown in his way by fortune for sowing
discord in a neighboring kingdom, for diverting attention and
preventing interference with his Netherland provinces, and
for furthering his ambitious designs upon England and Eng-
land's queen ; not to speak of those other and more distant
plans of a world-monarchy in which France figured as an ap-
pendage of the Spanish peninsula. What matter to him whether
Henry of Yalois, or the decrepit voluptuary, Charles of Bourbon,
or the ambitious Guise, claiming descent from Charlemagne,
occupied, the throne which he hoped would one day belong to
1 De Thou, vi. (book 81) 445-447 ; Davila (Eng. trans, of 1678), bk. 7, 254,
255. The monthly receipts of the Duke of Guise, for 50,000 crowns, in the
name of all " comprised in our common league," appear in the Simancas MSS. ;
see, for instance, the document in J. de Croze, Les Guises, les Valois, et
Philippe II., i. 372.
1584. THE CONFERENCE OF JOINVILLE. 299
him or to a child of his ? What was said of the Spanish am-
bassador at Paris, a little later, by one of the cool lookers-on at
the frightful tragedy enacted on French soil, was pre-eminently
true of the ambassador's master, that crowned scribbler who,
from his closet in the Escorial, issued in secret his orders to set
on foot perfidious schemes of murder and rapine. His was the
part of the devil who, with truly Satanic craft, lures men into
danger and then abandons them to their fate and suffers them
to perish.1
Of Henry of Guise it may be said with truth that a more
perfect specimen of duplicity cannot be found, even in the an-
nals of a family by no means deficient in examples
the Duke of of double-dealing. Not only had the mantle of his
uncle, the Cardinal of Lorraine, fallen on his shoul-
ders, but in the distribution of that worthy's mental and moral
effects the eldest nephew had certainly secured fully the share
to which he was entitled by birthright. It was characteristic
of him that he worked by himself, confiding his inmost designs
to not a living soul. Under a brilliant mask of affability and
confidence he concealed the darkest plots. To everyone he
had a different story to tell. He assured the common people
and the world in general that he was laboring, in perfect con-
sistency with his duty to his king, only for the preservation of
the Roman Catholic faith. He filled Cardinal Bourbon's ears
with stories of future greatness, and seriously proposed that he
should obtain a dispensation from the pope to marry Guise's
widowed sister, the Duchess of Montpensier. He privately
told the queen mother that his sole design was the elevation of
the son of the Duke of Lorraine to the throne of France ; for,
at best, Bourbon could last but a few years, and then a grand-
son of Catharine — the offspring of her own daughter — would
succeed to the inheritance of her childless son, Henry. Mean-
time, he did not leave the King of Spain in ignorance respect-
ing the insincerity of his professions both to the cardinal and to
1 "Consigliato a cid dall' ambasciatore di Spagna, il quale, a guisa del de-
monio, accompagna gli uomini al pericolo poi ne gli lascia perire." Letter of
Filippo Cavriana, May 18, 1587, Negociations avec la Toscane, iv. 687.
300 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. V.
the queen mother, hinting that the advancement of his own im-
mediate family was naturally a matter of more concern to him
than the aggrandizement of a more distant branch of the same
house. But not even to his own brothers, the Duke of May-
enne and the Cardinal of Guise, much less to his cousins of
Aumale and Elbeuf, did the Balafre intrust the dangerous secret
of his designs upon the royal dignity.
It is needless to speak further of Cardinal Bourbon, who
really had no longer perception enough to see that his senile
aspirations were an object of covert ridicule to all his fellow-
conspirators.1
Provision had, as I have said, been made in the Treaty of
Join ville for the addition of the signature of Louis de Gonzagues,
Duke of Severs, a politic and cautious nobleman, who had
The Duke of doubtless been absent from the conference because
SvesStoecon- ne scarcely knew what to do. Half Italian and
suit the pope. half prench) the fiery advocate of the doctrine of
the " one religion " at the states general of Blois, he was yet
perplexed with doubts as to his duty, or, perhaps, rather his
interests, when devotion to the Roman Catholic Church and
loyalty to his king seemed to be drawing him in two opposite
directions. He had lost none of his intolerance during the
past eight years. He was as anxious as ever to proclaim a new
crusade. To use the expression of the scoffing queen mother,
he was quite ready to send the king off to Constantinople. But
how about taking up arms against the king, or, as the support-
ers of monarchy never tired of styling him, in biblical phrase,
" the Lord's anointed ? " There seemed to be but one way
out of the difficulty. The duke must send and get the pope's
opinion as to whether he might with a clear conscience engage
in the enterprises of the " Holy League." He found the Jesuit,
Claude Matthieu — popularly known, from his frequent Sittings
between France and Rome, as the courier of the League — not
averse to the task of sounding Gregory's sentiments. The
pontiff readily complied with the Jesuit's request to give his
opinion. Shortly before Matthieu's arrival, in November, 1584,
1 Compare De Thou, vi. (book 81) 441, 442.
1585. THE CONFERENCE OF JOINVILLE. 301
lie had come to the resolution to declare, by public sentence,
the King of Navarre and all other heretical princes of the
blood incapable of succeeding to the throne of France. Only one
thing still delayed him — his prudent counsellors, the cardinals,
insisted that he must wait until the " good Catholics " should
have gained the upper hand in the kingdom.1 Of course, then,
when consulted by Matthieu, Gregory highly approved the pro-
posed action of the League, and, in answer to the request of
the agent, did not hesitate to give him a memorandum of his
words of praise and encouragement. Inasmuch as the first and
principal end of the Catholic princes, in whose behalf he had
been consulted, was to take up arms against the heretics of
France, his holiness expressly relieved them of all scruples of
conscience they might have on this account, and bade them God
speed.2 True, there was not a word in the minute about tak-
Gregory's cau- mg arms against the king. Gregory had been too
nSinVhis0111" prudent to put anything of the kind upon paper.
vieW8 to paper- But in his oral remarks to the Jesuit he was out-
spoken. " The pope," Matthieu reported to Severs, " does not
think it at all well that any attempt be made on the king's life ;
for that cannot be done with a good conscience. Yet if his
person could be seized, and those removed from about him who
are the cause of the ruin of the kingdom, and if other men
could be assigned to keep him in check, and give him good
counsel, and compel him to follow it — this the pope would ap-
prove. For, under his authority, all the cities and provinces
of the kingdom could be secured, and everything that is good
could be established. Thus countless evils might be avoided
1 " S'il n'eust este empesche par la remonstrance d'aucuns Cardinaux, qui
luy dirent, qu'il n'estoit aucunement expedient qu'il fist la susdite declaration,
jusques a, ce que les Catholiques de ce Royaume fussent les plus forts, et eus-
sent les armes en main pour executer la sentence du Pape." Deciphered
letter of Claude Matthieu to the Duke of Nevers, February 11, 1585, Memoires
de Nevers, i. 655.
2 " Consente e lauda che lo facianno, e leva loro ogni scrupolo di con-
scienza, che per tal conto potessero havere e instando ch'el regno havera anco
esso per ben fatto : ma quando fosse altrimente, non per cio havevanno a re-
sistere, essendo l'animo loro, come e detto, di conseguire quello primo e prin-
cipale fine." Ibid., ubi supra, i. G56.
302 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. V.
which will come to pass should the king continue as he is and be
so ill-advised as to take sides with the heretics in opposing the
Catholic princes. This, apparently, he intends doing, in which
case he will be followed by a good part of the Catholics." !
The Duke of Nevers, however, was not so well satisfied by
these assurances as the pope evidently expected him to be.
Three or four months later (March, 1585), he again sought
relief for his oppressed conscience. He could not be at rest, so
he said, unless the pontiff should grant him a bull or a brief
expressly declaring the justice of the proposed course of the
League. Now, this was precisely what Gregory had no idea of
The pope's doing.2 He replied that his verbal assurances were
atTheadX's quite sufficient, and that the duke must content him-
pertinacity. gelf ^ ^^ He fofl ba(jk upQn hig judicial char_
acter, and declined appearing to become a party in interest.
Above all, he urged that, were he to follow the duke's sugges-
tion, he might set all Europe by the ears ; for he knew well
enough the jealous humors of the German Protestants, of the
Swiss, of the Dutch, and even of the French. He hinted that
if Severs would not rest satisfied with the pope's verbal state-
ments, it was a great pity, but nothing more could be done.
He even went so far as to suggest that the duke's squeamishness
must be the offspring of his fears for his person and his posses-
sions, or be the convenient excuse for his intention to desert
the body of " so zealous and Catholic princes." 3 As to a trip
which Severs had talked of taking to Italy in person, Gregory
promptly discouraged it as a very bad notion, and not likely to
1 Memoires de Nevers, ubi supra, i. 657.
2 Lestoile, recording in his journal ( i. 184) the arrival of the news of the
death of Gregory XIII. , under date of April 18, 1585, states that this pope had
never favored the League, and that, a few days before his end, he had de-
clared that the League should have no bull or brief from him until he saw
more clearly into its designs. It will be seen from the text just how much of
truth there was in Lestoile's representation of the pontiff s attitude. Sixtus
certainly did not regard his predecessor in any other light than as a decided
upholder of the seditious movement of Guise and his fellow-conspirators.
3 It must be confessed that Gregory's impressions on this score were shared
by many in France, especially when Nevers retracted his adhesion to the
League. See De Thou, vi. (book Sly 430.
1585. THE CONFERENCE OF JOINVILLE. 303
be productive of edification. The duke would do far better to
remain in France and jeopard his life for the protection of the
faith.
For this somewhat rough treatment, however, Gregory made
amends by sending a notable consignment of rosaries blessed
by his own hand, and intended for the special benefit of the
consecrated Cardinal of Bourbon, by whom they were to be dis-
p'ScTof aa? tributed among the Roman Catholic princes and chief
vice. men 0£ £jie League. Evidently the duke was deemed
an incorrigible grumbler if these consecrated trinkets would not
pass current with him as the equivalent of an honest avowal of
sentiment over the signature of the pontiff and authenticated
by the impress of the seal of the fisherman.1
Precisely at this juncture, on the tenth of April, 1585, Greg-
ory the Thirteenth died. It was fitting that a pope who had sig-
DeathofPo e nanze(l the first year of his reign by an enthusiastic
Gregory. approval of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Day
should illustrate the close of his pontificate by underhand efforts
to encourage the rebellious subjects of the King of France in
their traitorous projects.
Severs had not renounced his intended visit to Italy, and
now put his purpose into execution. Upon his arrival in Rome
Nevers visits he f ound Sixtus the Fifth already seated in the chair
Rome. vacated by Gregory. A marked change had come
over the relations of the papacy to the French League. The
new pope, to whom the very memory of his predecessor was
repugnant,2 had as little inclination to pursue Gregory's foreign
policy as to imitate the laxity of his domestic administration.
Of this Nevers had abundant proof in his first audience.
After graciously welcoming the nobleman with the compli-
mentary exclamation, " Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is
no guile ! " Sixtus could scarcely wait to enter upon a discus-
sion of French affairs. "I am convinced," said he, "that con-
1 Letter signed "Jacques La Rue, alias Martelli," to the Duke of Nevers,
March 30, 1585, with letters of Matthieu and Cardinal Pelleve on the same
subject, Memoires de Nevers, i. 651-654.
J Ranke, History of the Popes, 142.
304 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OP NAVARRE. Ch. V.
science is your only rule of conduct, and that, in your connection
with Cardinal Bourbon and the other princes of the Union, you
have no regard for anything else than the glory of God
Sixtus the & . J & < ft J
Fifth censures and the preservation or the Catholic, Apostolic, and
the League. _. -, . . -r> 1 ■ i • • i \
Koman religion. But, nevertheless, in what school
did you learn that you must form parties against the will of your
lawful prince ? "
" Most holy father," broke in the astonished Severs, in the
heat of excitement rising from his knees, " whatever has taken
place has been done with the king's consent."
" How now ! " rejoined Sixtus. " You warm up very fast. I
imagined that you came to me in order to hearken to the voice
of your father, to take his advice and follow it. Instead of
that, I see you have the same disposition as have all the mem-
bers of your association. You cannot endure correction. You
condemn all that do not agree with you. Believe me ! The
King of France has never cordially consented to your leagues
and your assumption of arms. He regards them as assaults upon
his authority. Although constrained to dissemble, through
fear of greater evils, it must be that he accounts you his en-
emies— enemies more to be dreaded and more cruel than the
Huguenots. I fear me that matters will be pressed so far,
that at length the King of France, Catholic though he be, will
be constrained to appeal to the heretics for aid that he may rid
himself of the tyranny of the Catholics."
The pope waxed hot as he thus pursued the theme. "O
Gregory the Thirteenth ! " he exclaimed again and again. " O
Gregory the Thirteenth ! What desolation of all Christendom
He wtteriy by fire and sword have you occasioned by approv-
predeoesror'B8 ing and fomenting the League and the Union of the
course. French Catholics ! " ' It was not the only time that
Sixtus gave vent to his resentment against the guilty authors
of the conspiracy which had involved France in bloodshed and
1 " De temps en temps il s'escrioit contre Gregoire XIII., et contre le cardinal
de Cosme, et leur reprochoit d' avoir mis le feu et le sang dans toute la Chres-
tiente," etc. Nevers to Cardinal Bourbon, Rome, July 31, 1585, Memoires
de Nevers, i. 667. M. de Gomberville gives the exclamation of Sixtus in this
form : " S'ecria plusieurs fois, ' O Gregoire XIII ! Qu'en voulant faire du bien,
1585. POPE SIXTUS AND THE LEAGUE. 305
laid waste her fair towns and villages. He held Gregory, above
all others, responsible before the bar of God, and he gave out no
obscure hints of his belief that the late occupant of Saint Peter's
seat might at that moment be suffering the torments of another
world for his complicity in the great crime that had been per-
petrated. " I bear the authors of the League great ill-will," he
said, a year later ; " and I do not think that God will ever for-
give them. Possibly the soul of Pope Gregory might have
something to tell us about this." '
The fact was that the shrewd pontiff saw through the flimsy
disguise of the Leaguers, and detected their real motives. He
maintained that there had never been a more pernicious con-
spiracy. He was convinced that not a man among all that cried
out so loudly against the heretics had the glory of
Ambition the , . r i c -^ .i ■ ■•
motive power God and the promotion or the true raith as the sincere
' object of his undertakings. " Each one of them," he
said, " wishes to become not a better Christian, but a greater
lord. A hundred ambitious men would like to be kings, and,
since they cannot be kings of the whole of a mighty state like
France, they try, at least, to rend it in pieces and find a frag-
ment on which they may settle and make themselves mimic
sovereigns." " Poor France ! " Sixtus used to say, " everybody
has designs upon her ; everybody racks himself to secure her
ruin. But I love France. The Holy See owes to her its splen-
dor and defence, and the popes cannot be too watchful in see-
ing to it that the first crown of Christendom shall remain en-
tire upon the head of those whom God has chosen to wear it."
" Tell Cardinal Bourbon," he said, on one occasion, " that he
ought to despise distinctions which it is beyond his power to
enjoy, since he has reached an age at which, if he already pos-
sessed them, he should think of resigning them to others. Let
vous avez fait du mal ! Vostre ame respond aujourd'huy devant le trosne de
Dieu.de la desolation de la France, et de l'effusion de tout le sang qui y sera
ropandu' " Ibid., i. 662.
1 " J' en veux grand mal aux autheurs, et je ne pense pas que Dieu leur par-
donne jamais. Peut-estre que Tame du pape Gregoire en scauroit bien que
dire." Pisani, French ambassador at Rome, to Henry III., September 11,
1586, ibid., i. 750.
Vol. I.— 20
306 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. V.
him remember that he is a bishop, and that he will have to give
an account before a judgment seat where a misimprovement
of opportunities will never pass for a right use of them." '
Had the conspirators of Joinville been able to shroud their
dark proceedings in secrecy so profound as to escape the no-
tice of the king and his agents in every part of the realm, the
attitude assumed by the Spanish ambassador on the occasion of
the advent of the Dutch envoys might have given the alarm to
a less suspicious prince.
It must be confessed that rarely have bearers of costly and
precious gifts been so shabbily treated as were the unlucky
unworthy deputies of the states bringing to Henry the prof-
theaDutch°£ fer of the sovereignty of some of the fairest prov-
envoys. inces of Europe. True, they were not, like their
countrymen, when sent on a similar mission, immediately af-
ter the Duke of Anjou's death, peremptorily forbidden by the
queen mother from proceeding to the capital, and detained at
Rouen for an entire month, almost in the guise of prisoners,
before the king deigned to give them a polite but none the
less positive refusal. More fortunate than their predecessors
in this ungracious work, Chancellor Leoninus and his grave
companions were allowed, after landing at Boulogne-sur-mer,
ultimately to go up to Paris, where no expense was spared to
do them honor. Yet, though they set foot in France on the
third day of January, it was not until more than six weeks
had elapsed that, on Wednesday, the thirteenth of February,
they were admitted into the royal presence in the Louvre. In-
credible as such puerile indecision may appear to us, the king
could not make up his mind exactly how to act in the premises.
For this reason it was that when the patient envoys had gotten
over five-sixths of their way, and hoped writhin a few hours to
see the towers of Notre Dame de Paris, they were stopped by
command of the monarch at the city of Senlis. Thence they
were subsequently brought to the capital by a secret royal order.
1 Letter of Nevers to Cardinal Bourbon, without date, Memoires de Nevers,
i. 673, 674. The duke himself gave to the historian De Thou some account of
his negotiations with the pope. Histoire universelle, vi. (book 81) 460, 461.
1585. SOVEREIGNTY OF THE NETHERLANDS. 307
But no secret could be so well kept at the court of Henry
the Third as not instantly to be reported to Bernardino de
Mendoza. The irascible ambassador of Philip at once took
fire, and made bold to protest against the reception of
Mendoza tries m • «.l -i i i« -i /•
to prevent the envoys. Iwice, it was reported, he applied for
curing an au- an audience, and twice Henry declined to see him.
A third request, accompanied by a judicious expen-
diture of Spanish ducats upon members of the royal council,
was successful.1 What was said and done on this occasion
only the king and the ambassador knew, for no others were
present. It is not strange, therefore, that the accounts of the
interview given by foreign diplomatists to their royal masters,
and accepted by contemporary historians generally well in-
formed, differ materially from the written statement of one of
the parties to the conversation, found in a document to which
a former age had no means of access.
It was generally reported that Mendoza was outspoken, even
to insolence. He demanded, forsooth, that Henry should grant
His re orted no ear *° men abandoned of God, as well as of their
insolence. fellows, proscribed by the Holy Inquisition, and
with nothing to hope for from their lawful prince. He pro-
fessed to feel no apprehension lest Henry should be so ill
advised as to listen to the unjust propositions of the Nether-
landers, and stated that, if he thus protested, it was only be-
cause of his official position and because the interests of all the
crowned heads of Christendom were involved in the matter.
The King of France, said Mendoza, ought not to give such
monsters an asylum within his dominions, but forthwith expel
them from the country without deigning to give them an audi-
ence ; just as the King of Spain had uniformly shut his ears
to every appeal addressed to him by the disloyal subjects of his
very Christian majesty. He closed by somewhat jauntily in-
forming Henry that, if he had thus spoken, it was not because
1 Froude, xii. 91, who, basing his account upon the despatches of Sir Ed-
ward Stafford, English ambassador at Paris, notices that Mendoza went so far
as to demand his passports, and that Catharine de' Medici recommended that
they should be given to him.
308 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Cii. V.
ihe had any fear that the King of France would take the rebel-
lious Dutch under his protection. Indeed, should any person
be found so lost to conscience and honor as to venture upon
such a course, he would soon discover that, instead of attack-
ing, he must take measures for self-defence ; for he would
learn, at his own cost, that time was not always left for repent-
ance over foolhardy undertakings, especially when one had to
do with so powerful and fortunate a monarch as the King of
Spain, whom no one had thus far insulted with impunity.
Henry the Third could on occasion play the magnanimous
prince. The reply to Mendoza, with which he has been tradition-
ally credited, was worthy of a better man than the
reply ascribed effeminate weakling with whom the Yalois name was
to become extinct. Briefly, but forcibly, even angrily,
we are told, he reminded the haughty Castilian that the Dutch
were not obstinate rebels against lawful authority, but oppressed
subjects whose just complaints of maltreatment had not been
listened to, and who were condemned to suffer the evils of war
because of the malignity of certain persons who preferred com-
motion to peace. He declared his intention to grant the envoys
an audience, and justified the act by the interest the French
had always felt in a country so near and so closely allied to
their own. No one, he said, ought to mistake for an insult
what was in reality a simple deed of generosity. France had
always enjoyed the reputation, above all other nations, of ex-
tending a kindly welcome to those who sought to escape from
the yoke of unjust domination. As for himself, he would take
good care that his kingdom should not see its most glorious
distinction obscured by ceasing to be the refuge of the un-
fortunate. Accordingly, he was happy to tell him and all the
world, that a king of France does not know what it is to
tremble ; and that neither threats nor dangers can prevent him
from exhibiting toward afflicted princes and peoples having
recourse to his protection, even to his latest breath, the same
generosity that earned such glory for his ancestors.1
1 De Thou, vi. (book 81) 447, 448. Walsingham in a letter to Davison,
January ^f, 1585, based on Stafford's report, gives a very similar account of
1585. SOVEREIGNTY OP THE NETHERLANDS. 300
It is an amazing pity that most of these good, blunt words
seem only to have existed in the imagination of the writers or
their informants. The letters of Henry himself to
The mean- . ~ i • i • -, • • «
ness of his his ambassador m bpain, which an eminent historian or
our own day ' has been the first to unearth, strip the
monarch of all this borrowed finery. They show that Mendoza
was, indeed, urgent in his demands, but scarcely insolent in de-
meanor ; while Henry would seem to have made not the slightest
allusion to any grand defence of France as the refuge of op-
pressed innocence. What he did say was, that he was determined
to hear the Dutch envoys, because he could not abandon his
mother, Catharine de' Medici, in her pretensions upon the crown
of Portugal, not only for the filial obedience which he owed her,
but because he was her only heir ! That Henry said anything
more than what he has himself recorded, anything approaching
the disinterested sentiments ascribed to him by others, is in
the highest degree improbable. And so we get at the true ex-
planation of the whole matter — both the determination of the
king and his mother that the envoys from the Netherlands
should be heard, and their almost incredible neglect to profit
by the offer the envoys brought. Insincerity reigned unbroken
from the beginning to the end of the transaction.
the king and Neither Henry nor Catharine had a thought of com-
passion for the country that had so long been the
theatre of war and carnage, and that now stretched out its arms
toward France for relief and protection. They only hoped, by
judiciously encouraging its advances, to compel Philip the
Second to make some large pecuniary offer for the renunciation
of Catharine's chimerical claim upon the throne of Portugal.
It was pitiful, but not strange, that the wretched monarch
Mendoza's reception : " He went presently to court and dealt very passionately
with the king and queen mother to deny them audience, who being greatly
offended with his presumptuous and malapert manner of proceeding, the king
did in choler and with some sharp speeches, let him plainly understand that
he was an absolute king, bound to yield account of his doings to no man, and
that it was lawful for him to give access to any man within his own realm.
The queen mother answered him likewise very roundly, whereupon he de-
parted for the time, very much discontented." Quoted in Motley, Ignited
Netherlands, i. 100. ] Ibid., i. 100- JOG.
310 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. V.
who, in a transaction calling for manliness and magnanimity,
had in reality displayed none but the most sordid motives and
Failure of the tne l°west aspirations, should have made such an ex-
embassy, hibition of himself to the Dutch deputies, when at
length they were brought to the Louvre, as disgusted everyone
not accustomed to the mad fashions of the French court — dressed
with elaborate care and an attention to details that might have
done credit to a professional beauty ; with hair as daintily
curled and heavily perfumed as that of a maid of honor of
Queen Louise ; his neck encircled with the famous ruff that gave
the wearer's head the appearance of the head of Saint John
Baptist on the charger ; and with a sash thrown over his
shoulders, from which hung a basket full of diminutive puppies.
It was still more pitiful that, after keeping the envoys of the
Netherlands a month longer in Paris, Henry sent them home
with a definite refusal of their magnificent gift.1 France had
The loss to missed an accession to her territory that would have
France. given her the " natural boundaries " for which, after
three centuries, she still longs, but with little prospect of ever at-
taining. Better than that accession of domain would have been
the extension and perpetuation of religious liberty, which could
not have failed to result from the union of the Low Countries
to France, even had no actual incorporation of lands ensued.
"With Holland under the protection of the French king, a pro-
scription of the Huguenots would have been impossible. Civil
wars might, indeed, again have broken out, but they must have
been conflicts in which all loyal Frenchmen would be found
fighting for the integrity of a magnificent realm — conflicts ne-
cessarily of short duration, because honor, national pride, and
the prospect of distinction would all be enlisted on the side of
the legitimate monarch.
1 De Thou, vi. (book 81) 475. Compare Motley, United Netherlands, i. 98,
99, and Froude, xii. 91, etc., the latter of whom finds Queen Elizabeth and
the Dutch respectively responsible for counselling the proffer and for offering
less than that absolute sovereignty which Henry the Third and Catharine de'
Medici presumably would have accepted. His view appears incorrect in the
light of the correspondence which Motley has published, and to which refer
ence has already been made in the text.
1585. SOVEREIGNTY OP THE NETHERLANDS. 311
Henry the Third had never seriously entertained the thought
of accepting the sovereignty of the Low Countries. With his
constitutional sluggishness and a love of repose that had become
with him a second nature, he instinctively shrank from a step
immediately involving him in a war with the foremost prince of
Christendom. That war might indeed be waged in the name
of the queen mother as mistress of Cambray, bequeathed to her
by the will of its late owner, the Duke of Alencon ; none the
less would it require for its successful prosecution all the re-
sources of the Very Christian King himself. Besides, to render
assistance to those that had revolted against their lord para-
mount, with however good excuse, might be esteemed a danger-
ous thing for a king who certainly had given to his own subjects
sufficient reason for dissatisfaction. Worst of all, the monarch
who prided himself on his immaculate orthodoxy, the hero of
Jarnac and Moncontour, the idol of the Roman Catholic party
at the time of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Day, could
not, without infinite reluctance, bring himself to take up arms
in behalf of Dutch heretics, who held precisely the sentiments
of the Huguenots of his own dominions — the Huguenots whom
he hated cordially, and whose very existence it was notorious
that he tolerated only by constraint.1
The advent of the envoys from the Netherlands was not the
sole incident calculated to alarm Philip of Spain, and to serve
Queen Eiiza- *ne pun30^ °^ tue authors of the League by arousing
Eari of 'Serby5 a popular fear of the approaching triumph of Protes-
to France. tantism in France. A magnificent embassy arrived in
France about the same time, sent by Queen Elizabeth to invest
Henry with the insignia of the Order of the Garter which she
had seen fit to confer upon him. The deputation was headed by
the Earl of Derby,2 who was met on his approach to Paris with
1 Busbecq to the emperor, January 25, 1585, Epistolse, fol. 83. If anyone
was in earnest, this writer believed it was Catharine de' Medici: " Certum
est regem non libenter in hanc causam descendere ; atque etiam desiderare
quaedam in mandatis Belgarum. Sed mater urget, cujus in nomen Hispanum
infinitum est odium." Ibid. (March 6, 1585), fol. 86.
8 It is difficult to recognize Lord Derby's name under the strange Latin dis-
guise of "Comiti de Herbei" with which Busbecq invests it, or the still more
312 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. V.
unsurpassed pomp. A house was assigned to him, during Lis
stay, in close proximity to the Louvre, and he and his suite were
provided for in the most luxurious manner, at an expense, it
was said, of two hundred crowns a day. A single masquerade
in his honor cost the king not less than thirty thousand crowns.
On the appointed day for the solemn reception of the decoration,
the twenty-eighth of February, the king and his court attended
the great shrine of Saint Augustine, where vespers were chanted.
Every member of the Order of the Holy Ghost was invited.
So also were the foreign ambassadors, among whom, much to
Mendoza's disgust, were all the envoys from the Netherlands.1
To the astonishment of all (except possibly those familiar with
the singular faculty which the Papal See and its representatives
has always displayed for adapting themselves to circumstances)
the nuncio graced the grand ceremonial with his presence, not
seeming to think that there was any incongruity in his partici-
pation in a celebration intended to lend dignity to the gift of
the excommunicate queen of England, the princess with whom
his pontifical master had forbidden all intercourse on pain of
incurring the censures of the church, the Protestant Jezebel for
whose assassination plots were daily laid.2
None the less, however, on account of the nuncio's com-
plaisance, did the Leaguers take occasion from the honors paid
to the ambassador of Queen Elizabeth to malign Henry of
Yalois. The respect shown to the English envoy, said they,
proves that the king is an abetter of heresy. Under him or
Reported atro- under his successor, should the Protestant Henry of
Engns0hfpere- Navarre be permitted to mount the throne, the old
sections. religion will be driven to the wall and the new errors
of Luther and Calvin will take its place. Then will the good
Catholics be forced to experience in their own persons all those
horrible persecutions to which the good Catholics of England
have been subjected within our own times, and at the hands of
the very queen whose ambassadors the king has so magnificently
remarkable form "le comte Herbert" of bis French translator. Cimber et
Danjou, Archives curieuses, x. 125.
1 Busbecq to the emperor, Marcb 6, 1585, Epistolae, fol 85.
'2 Letter of Busini, March 5, 1585, Nogociations avec la Toscane, iv. 548, etc.
1585. SOVEREIGNTY OF THE NETHERLANDS. 313
welcomed, at whose hands he has been proud to receive the
Order of the Garter. What those "horrible persecutions"
were, there was an attempt to show in a pamphlet that shortly
saw the light, emanating from the pen of a fiery lawyer, one
Louis d'Orleans, whom we find among the originators of the
League in Paris, and purporting to be a note of warning sounded
by the English Catholics to their brethren across the channel.1
The production was a dry and tedious one. Its falsehoods were
refuted in an answer that presently appeared, composed by Du-
plessis Mornay, a master of dialectics and a vigorous and skilful
writer as well in French as in Latin.2 But it was more difficult
to remove from the minds of the Parisian populace the im-
pression produced by prints and paintings representing the
atrocities inflicted by order of Queen Elizabeth upon the bod-
ies of unoffending priests and "religious" of both sexes. No
sooner had the rude placards been affixed to the walls of some
house in the capital, than a Leaguer was ready to step forward,
rod in hand, and point out to the gaping and horrified crowd
that pressed about him every actor and every harrowing detail
of the picture.3
A war of manifestoes and declarations ushered in, as usual,
the more serious war of arms. First, the king hurled at the
conspirators a fresh edict, in the vain expectation by
edict against such a missile to reduce the batteries which, too late,
March as,' he discovered had been directed against him. Again
his majesty sought to make capital of the marvellous
pains at which, as he alleged, he and his highly honored mother
had been, to restore quiet to his realm, and dwelt upon the re-
1 " Advertissement des Catholiques Anglois aux Frangois Catholiques du
danger ou ils sont de perdre leur religion, et d'experimenter, comme en Angle-
terre, la cruaute des ministres, s'ils regoyvent a la couronne un Roy qui soit
Heretique, 1586. " Reprinted in Cimber et Danjou, Archives curieuses, xi.
111-202. Well styled by De Thou, "un long et ennuyeux discours."
2 Duplessis Mornay's reply, " Lettre d'un gentilhomme Catholique Francois
contenant breve Response aux calomnies d'un certain pretendu Anglois,'' may
be read in the Memoires de la Ligue, i. 454-493, in the Memoires de Duplessis
Mornay, iii. 335, etc., and in Cimber et Danjou, xi. 203, etc.
3 De Thou, vi. (book 81) 443, 444, who himself had seen some of these
works of art.
314 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. V.
forms he had introduced with the view of lightening the bur-
dens under which the people groaned. He emphasized, in par-
ticular, the fact that he had, this very year, taken advantage of
the peaceful condition of France to relieve his subjects of taxes
amounting in all to seven hundred thousand livres, besides re-
pealing sundry ordinances of which he had discovered the per-
nicious results. Notwithstanding this, certain persons envious
of the public tranquillity had set themselves about raising troops,
ostensibly for the king's service, but in reality to foment discord.
Against these disturbers of the peace the king commanded his
faithful servants to proceed in a summary manner, by ringing
the tocsin to call the well-affected together, and by cutting in
pieces all that might be so bold as to venture upon resistance.1
It was but three days later that the secret compact of Join-
ville bore fruit in an open declaration of hostilities on the
part of the League. The affairs of Philip would admit of
no delay ; the success of the Prince of Parma's siege of Ant-
werp depended upon the promptness of the diversion made in
his favor by Spanish -minded Frenchmen. The document bore
for its title the words : " Declaration of the causes that have
moved my lord the Cardinal of Bourbon and the Catholic
princes, peers, prelates, lords, cities, and communities of this
kingdom of France to oppose those who are seeking by all
means to subvert the Catholic religion and the entire state." 2
For four-and-twenty years has France been plagued with a
sedition aiming to subvert the religion of our forefathers —
strongest bond of the state. So wrote a pen more
The declara- -, .-, » , ■, n i
tion of cardi- skilful than that of the lumpish prelate whose not
and the unwilling hand subscribed the treasonable paper.
The remedies applied, instead of curing, have only
rendered the evil more formidable, while the peace secured has
been only a name, which left undisturbed those alone that were
1 Edict of Henry III., Paris, March 28, 1585, De Thou, vi. (book 81) 451 ;
text in Memoires de la Ligue, i. 70, 71.
2 The declaration bears date of Peronne, March 31, 1585. Text in Memoires
de Nevers, i. 641-646 ; Memoires de la Ligue, i. 61-69 ; Cimber et Danjou,
Archives curieuses, xi. 7-19. See also Recueil des choses memorables, 607-
609 ; Lestoile, 182, 183 ; De Thou, vi. 454, etc.
1585. THE DECLARATION OF PERONNE. 315
causes of trouble. Despite the prayers of good men, there is
now the prospect that the king will die childless. Since the
death of the duke, his brother, the plans of those who have ever
persecuted the Catholic Church have rapidly matured ; witness
their great preparations within the kingdom, and their levies
outside of it, and their retention of the cities which they were in
duty bound long since to restore to the king. Evidently they
intend to overthrow the Catholic religion, in order to enrich
themselves with the patrimony of the church, thus following
the example set them in England. Moreover, certain persons,
insinuating themselves into the confidence of the sovereign
(whose majesty always has been and always will be sacred to
us), have possessed themselves of his authority, to the extent of
gaining sole access to his person and distancing not only the
highest princes and nobles, but even those nearest of kin to
him. They have engrossed the control of affairs. Governors
of provinces, captains in charge of strong places, and others,
have been constrained to part with their honorable trusts, con-
trary to their desire, in exchange for a sum of money paid to
them ; the novel example being thus set of purchasing back
with silver the distinctions originally conferred as rewards of
virtue. Meantime, the diversion of the public revenues to
these favorites has inflicted intolerable burdens. The hopes
raised by the convocation of the states general of Blois have
been frustrated by the bad advice of certain persons who, feign-
ing to be good political counsellors, were really possessed of
evil intentions respecting the service of God and the good of
the state ; for they persuaded the king to renounce his holy and
very useful determination, adopted at the request of all three
orders, to reunite his subjects in one single Catholic, Apostolic,
and Roman religion — a project which would, at that time, have
been carried into effect without peril and almost without re-
sistance. In place of which they have convinced his majesty
that he must weaken and diminish the authority of those Cath-
olic princes and lords who have often jeoparded life under his
banner, fighting in. defence of the faith and earning a claim to
honor and not suspicion. So far have these abuses gone that
every estate of the kingdom is xwell-nigh overwhelmed : the
316 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. V.
clergy is crushed by tithes and extraordinary subventions, the
nobles are degraded, enslaved, and reduced to villanage, and the
cities, the royal officers, and the common people are so hard
pressed by the frequency of fresh impositions, known as " in-
ventions," that there no longer remains anything to be invented,
always excepting the means of applying a good remedy.
For these reasons, pursues the declaration, we, Charles of
Bourbon, " first prince of the blood," and other princes, car-
dinals, governors, cities, etc., constituting the best and soundest
part of the realm of France, have sworn and solemnly promised
to take up arms for the restoration of the Holy Church of God
to its pristine dignity, for the maintenance of the nobility in its
rights, and for the relief of the people ; to which end, all new
impositions shall be abolished, all increased taxes reduced to
the standard of the times of Charles the Ninth ; parliaments
shall once more be made sovereign, governors be maintained in
office, the moneys raised from the people be employed for the
defence of the kingdom and for the other purposes for which
they were destined ; while the states general shall henceforth be
convened freely and without intrigue, so often as the needs of
the realm require, and with liberty extended to all men to offer
their complaints.
The accustomed protestations follow. The cardinal and his
associates profess their perfect readiness to shed the last drop
of their blood in defence of the king, and promise to disarm so
soon as his majesty shall be pleased to put an end to the peril
threatening the ruin of God's service and of so many good
people. Although they might with propriety call upon Henry
to name his successor, they abstain from so doing, " for fear,"
say they, " lest the wicked should take occasion from this to
calumniate our actions, as if we, Cardinal of Bourbon, in our
old age, were thinking of another kingdom than that whose en-
joyment is better assured, more desirable, and of longer dura-
tion." The queen mother is entreated to use her influence with
her son, and all nobles and cities are besought to prevent the
enemy from gaining an advantage by seizing important places.
It is only against armed forces, adds the declaration, that we in-
tend hostilities, and we assure everybody that our holy and just
1585. THE DECLARATION OF PERONNE. 317
armies will harass and oppress no one, either in their passage
or in their abode in any place whatsoever, but will live in good
disiipline, and take nothing without paying therefor. Then,
in a fine outburst of patriotism and piety, the confederates de-
clare that they will never lay down their arms until the accom-
plishment of their ends, desiring rather to perish and to be
buried in one common sepulchre devoted to the last Frenchmen
dying in arms for the cause of God and their native land.1
Finally, they beg all good Catholics to make sure of the Divine
favor by amendment of life, by holy processions, and by public
and private prayers.
Such were the reasons which the League saw fit to give to
the world in justification of the enormous crime against hu-
manity it was about to perpetrate, in plunging France in a civil
war destined to be more disastrous to civilization, morality, and
human happiness than any of the preceding conflicts. How
sincere was the interest affected by its leaders in the welfare of
the poor people, how truthful their professions of undying
loyalty to the king, how profound their regard for the main-
tenance of the Roman Catholic religion, how trustworthy their
assurances of a purpose to abstain from pillage, and to offer
violence to none but those found in arms, are questions that
can best be answered in the light of the events of the next ten
years.
To the manifesto of the League Henry of Yalois replied very
shortly by a declaration of his own,2 in which he endeavored,
Henry of not without success, to destroy the force of the argu-
byat'uE nients of his rebellious subjects. So far as religion
declaration. was concerned, it was no difficult matter for him to
show that both before and since his accession to the throne he
had given conclusive proof of unsurpassed devotion to the in-
terests of the Roman Catholic faith by exposing life and state
1 " Avec desir d'estre amoncelez en une sepulture consacree aux derniers
Francois morts en armes pour la cause de Dieu et de leur patrie." For the
proposed tomb, however, a witty Huguenot offered the epitaph: "Ce sont les
premiers Espagnols Francois." Memoires de la Ligue. i. 114.
* "Declaration de la volonte du roy sur les nouveaux troubles de ce roy-
aume." Ibid., i. 72-82.
318 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. V.
in its behalf. If he had not successfully carried out the pre-
scriptive policy requested by the states general of Blois (in
proffering which request the deputies had been prompted by
his majesty's own fervent attachment to the Catholic religion),1
the cause of the failure was to be found in the neglect of the
states themselves, despite royal entreaties, to provide the means
necessary for carrying on war against the heretics. The king
declared that the peace so roundly denounced by the League
was concluded with the advice of the Cardinal of Bourbon him-
self and other princes, and for the express purpose of seeing
whether that might not be effected by mild measures which
severity had been powerless to accomplish. In fact, under its
beneficent rule, the exercise of the Roman Catholic faith had
been reintroduced into many places from which it had been
banished during the prevalence of war, and great progress had
been made in the reformation of abuses in the administration
of justice, and in other departments of church and state. He
showed the unreasonableness of the fears expressed respecting
the succession of a king yet in his prime, and with a youthful
wife for his consort, and he ridiculed the hope of re-establishing
the Roman Catholic religion by means of a war and the intro-
duction of foreign troops. Strangers would then grow at the
expense of France, and triumph in its misfortunes. As for the
good discipline that was promised, the frightful excesses in
which the troops already enlisted had indulged sufficiently
demonstrated the futility of such expectations.
All this was very sound argument, and might under other
circumstances have been convincing enough. The trouble was
An undignified tna* throughout his counter-declaration Henry be-
answer. trayed a weakness of purpose even more deplorable
than the feebleness of the resources at his command. Where
he should have commanded, he condescended to argue. Al-
though the names of the conspirators against the peace of
France were matter of common notoriety, they were not men-
1 ' ' Que les deputes y estans, auroy ent requis sa Majeste (induits a ce f aire
de sa fervente affection a la Religion Catholique) prohiber du tout en ce Roy-
aune l'exercise de la dite Religion pretendue reformee."
1585. THE DECLARATION OF PERONNE. 319
tioned in the royal counter-declaration. Even Henry of Guise,
whose designs upon the crown of France were so little con-
cealed, and in favor of whose claims written treatises had been
industriously circulated, was not particularly referred to. So
cautiously and even coldly had the king expressed himself, that
the world at once compared his majesty to a poltroon who has
been well beaten but, while complaining of his bruises, dares
not tell who struck him.1
This does not mean, however, that Henry was not now in
some degree sensible of the danger of his situation. Indeed, the
violence of the blow by which he had been aroused
The king's , * . .
spasmodic from his accustomed torpor excited, in his yet drowsv
activity. _ . . . . r 1 « a "
faculties, irritation against those wrho had ventured to
interfere with his sluggish repose, not unmingled with fear for his
own person. While the old queen mother resorted again to her
former arts — setting out, one March evening, in her litter, very
weak in body, and suffering both with a severe attack of catarrh
and with gout in one leg, that she might reach Epernay, where
Guise was reported to be, and confer with him respecting the
present condition of affairs — Henry, in a spasm of activity, gave
himself up to a consideration of the best method of quelling the
disturbance. A diligent search was made of every house in
Paris, to find who had gone out to join the Duke of Guise ;
resulting, we are told, in the discovery that, within twenty
days, of artisans alone more than six thousand persons had ab-
sented themselves, all going to swell the numbers of the insur-
gents. Steps were taken to keep the capital in check ; the
captains of the quarters being changed, and new men, men of
property, who, the day before, had taken a solemn oath of
1 "Pour toutes armes il print la plume et fit une declaration, encore si froide-
ment, qu'on disoit qu'il n'avoit ose nommer son ennemi le due de Guise chef
de l'armee, et qu'il ressembloit un qui se plaind, sans dire qui l'a battu."
Recueil des choses memorables, 610. Henry, it is worthy of notice, was equally
careful not to mention the name of the Duke of Guise in his conference with
the Dutch envoys, even while muttering threats of vengeance, and these by
no means obscure. <k Jescay bien," said he, " qui est l'autheur de ces troubles,
mais si Dieu me donne vie. je luy rendrai pareille et Ten ferai repentir." Re-
port of Calvart, apud Motley, United Netherlands, i. 111.
320 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. V.
allegiance to the king in the presence of the parliament, being
substituted. Turning scribe, Henry wrote, it was said, with
his own hand, to all the governors of the realm and to a great
number of the gentlemen. Never had the Louvre presented
a more animated appearance. Couriers were coming and going
incessantly. One hundred and fifty or more were sent out within
the brief compass of a week. It looked almost as though the king
would at last summon resolution to act the man. He informed
the nuncio of the pope that if, as wras reported, his master had
entered the League, he would himself be constrained to take
measures to defend himself, and make such counter-demon-
strations as might not at all please his holiness and the Sacred
College. He professed the greatest indignation against the
Duke of Mercosur, who, after having been permitted to marry
the queen's sister, had displayed in return for countless favors
shown him by his royal brother-in-law such signal ingratitude
as to join hands with those who were in arms against him.1
But all Henry's resolution evaporated in complaints of ill
usage. That he hated the Duke of Guise and his brother the
His hatred of cardinal, with undying hatred, was no secret to any-
the Guises. one? jeas£ 0f aj]_ t0 those who were the objects of
that hatred.2 But, in his desperate desire to relapse again into
his wonted quiet, in his impatience once more to be pursuing
those degraded pleasures in which he found the chief end of
his creation, he soon made it evident to observing men about
him that, rather than sacrifice his selfish ease, he would con-
cede everything demanded of him.3 The day of vengeance
1 The letters of Busini are full of interesting details respecting the move-
ments day by day. Negociations avec la Toscane, iv. 554, and onward.
2 The envoys of England and of Florence use, about this time, almost the
very same words to describe Henry s feeling toward Guise and his brother.
"He hated the Guises," Sir Edward Stafford said, "with a hatred which
would never be quenched." Froude, xii. 104. "L'odio che ha il Re contro
il duca di Guise e il suo cardinale e immortale, visto che aspirano alia corona."
Letter of Cavriana, Negociations avec la Toscane, iv. 603.
s " E cosa certissima, che Sua Maesta vuole la pace, resoluta, per quello che
intendo, di concedere quanto vogliono." Busini, May 13, 1585, ubi supra,
iv. 573.
1585. THE HOLY LEAGUE. 321
would come in the due course of events. When it should come,
Henry of Valois would exact the full equivalent for the insults
received at the hands of Henry of Guise. Other old scores
would also be wiped off at the same time ; among the rest,
the reckoning against the wife of Marshal Retz, who, alluding to
the possibility that the last Valois might end his days in a cloister,
immured there by the Guises as Childeric had been compelled
by Pepin to receive tonsure and enter the conventual walls of
Saint Omer, had remarked that " the whole trouble could be set-
tled with a pair of scissors." 1 The day of requital, however, had
not yet dawned, the day when the Guises, intoxicated by past
impunity and lured into the lion's den, would suddenly, but
too late, discover that there were limits to the forbearance of
the most inert of kings. !Not that the monarch even now neg-
lected precautions against such a catastrophe as that which
Madame de Retz had hinted at. On the first of January,
1585, his majesty instituted a new and extraordinary guard,
which the public were not slow in concluding to be a band of
salaried assassins. " There is another order," wrote the Eng-
lish ambassador, " maketh men to fear a determination of a
very tyrannical intention, for besides his ordinary guard of
French in two sorts, Swissers and Scots, he hath erected Five
and Forty, which they that are acquainted with Italian terms
do term i Taillagambi.' These must never go from his person.
Whensoever he goeth out, they must be nearest to his person,
every one a cuirass under his coat, and to look at nothing but
the fulfilling of the king's will." 2 The world was to hear, be-
fore four years should have passed, of the murderous exploits
His uncon- °^ tne " Forty-Five." Meanwhile, Henry of Valois,
cem. drowsy and apparently irritated only at being com-
pelled to collect his wandering thoughts, did little to the pur-
pose, and rather played into the hands of the enemy than seri-
1 " Ancora, per dire, tutto s'accomodera poi con un paro forbici." Letter
of Busini, June 11, 1585, Negociations avec la Toscane, iv. 581.
2 Sir E. Stafford to Lord Burleigh, December 25, 1584, Murdin State Papers,
426. The Florentine agent Busini, under date of January 5, 1585, denom-
inates the guard '" Tagliagaretti" (i.e., " coupe -j arrets "). Negociations avec
la Toscane, iv. 545.
Vol. I. -21
322 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. V.
ously attempted to thwart them. Though compelled to take
up arms, his inclinations were all for peace. The immediate
present was all that he was concerned about, the more so that
he had no child, legitimate or illegitimate, and expected none.1
The last of his race, he cared nothing for the future of the
kingdom which, " by the grace of God," had been confided to
him, and from which his sole endeavor was to extract as much
treasure as possible to lavish upon himself and his favorites.
After him might come the deluge ; let those who aspired to be
his successors, and were ready to cut each other's throats to
clutch the sceptre, see to that. Two months had not gone by,
when a shrewd Italian at Paris wrote home that the king was
living as unconcernedly as in time of peace, giving himself lit-
tle solicitude for his troops. " These," said he, " are fresh
levies, undisciplined, licentious, disaffected, and, what is worse,
badly paid. You may judge what can be hoped from such sort
of men." 2 Before the recent inopportune outbreak had come,
disturbing all his calculations, Henry of Yalois, it was well
understood, had been meditating an entire retreat from the
conduct of public affairs. The lessons of Catharine de' Medici,
so sedulously instilled into the minds of all her children, had
not been wasted upon this, her last surviving and best loved
His desire to son* Henry, never destined to become a man, how-
oTItate toirs ever l°ng ne might live, or a true king, however
his mother. many the crowns that might be placed on his head,
loved private life so much that he intended to transfer the
whole burden of the state to the shoulders of his mother,3 who,
whatever else might be said of her, never shrank from assum-
ing fresh responsibilities, though she might be weakened by
approaching old age, racked by gout, harassed by occasional re-
turns of her constitutional timidity and indecision, and haunted
not infrequently by the ghosts of the tens of thousands of her
1 Letter of Cavriana, April 2, 1585, Negociations avec la Toscane, iv. 608.
2 Letter of Cavriana, May 27, 1585, ibid., iv. 611.
3 " E certo Sua Maesta andava a cammino di fare una ritirata da se stesso
dalle cose publiche, e lasciare la carica totale alia Reina Madre, amando egli
sopra modo la vita privata." Cavriana, July 9, 1585, ibid., iv. 615.
1585. THE HOLY LEAGUE. 323
victims in the Saint Bartholomew massacre. And what was the
present course of that mother ? Was she anxious to avert the
disaster impending over her unfortunate son ? Contemporary
writers, on the contrary, represent her as co-operating with the
Duke of Guise and furthering the design of the League, not
indeed so much to render Guise great, as in order to introduce
confusion and render it necessary that she should be called in
to restore order.1
It is, happily, not needful that the story of the disgraceful
scenes which followed should be recounted in these pages. The
League concerns us here only so far as it affected the fortunes
of the Huguenots, and a detailed account of the successive af-
fronts it was able to put upon the King of France
cess of the would be out of place. This dreary episode of French
history must be read in the pages of the contemporary
chroniclers, or, still better, in those letters and pamphlets in
which the righteous indignation of an outraged people vented
itself upon the miscreants who had dared, under cover of re-
ligion and piety, to plunge the nation into civil war ; upon the
traitors who, from cowardice or for money, surrendered the
posts they had taken to defend, and upon the pusillanimous
monarch who removed even the ordinary inducements which
encourage subjects to be faithful to their trusts and loyal to their
sovereign. Suffice it to say that almost everywhere the League
struck promptly and effectually ; scarcely resorting at all to
the pen, save in a few pasquinades and libels, wherein the
most infamous of the king's secret immoralities were held up
to popular detestation.2 In rapid succession all the towns of
Picardy, save only Boulogne, fell under the power of the
League. Guise's agents seized Verdun and Toul, but failed in
securing Metz, the third and most important of the " Three
Bishoprics." Lyons, under its notorious governor, Mandelot,
expelled from its citadel the loyal commandant, and razed the
citadel itself to the ground ; the soldiers of the garrison ex-
claiming, we are told, for all answer to the remonstrances
1 Recueil des chose s mamorahles, 613.
2 Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. (liv. 5, ch. 5) 424.
324: THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Cu. V.
of the superior officer, that " they had no idea of being damned
for the benefit of a favorer of heresy such as was the king, and,
as for the oaths they had taken, they had received a dispensa-
tion from the Jesuit Fathers." ' In short, throughout France
the only serious rebuff encountered by the adherents of the
League was experienced at Marseilles, where, after having ob-
tained possession of the city, under the authority of one of the
consuls, they were speedily expelled and their leader was hung,
when the inhabitants came to their senses.2 In general, to use
the expressive words of Agrippa d'Aubigne, " none were seen
arriving at the royal court except couriers coming from all parts
to announce the capture of cities taken without a combat, and
by means so shameful that history refrains from the recital,
for all the stratagems employed are reduced to two categories,
namely, great sums of money promised or paid, or else the dec-
lamations of the preachers, in public or in private, to move the
people to the agreeable pretexts of their new party." 3
In the midst of the general treachery, however, the fidelity
of a few governors of cities shone out resplendent. Aymar de
Clermont, Sieur de Chastes, who commanded at Dieppe, was
among the king's trusty servants. Interested, as a knight of the
order of Malta, in the prosperity of the established church, he
was nevertheless a man of exemplary fairness, loving the people
1 Agrippa d'Aubigne, ubi supra; De Thou, vi. (book 81) 477.
3 The fullest account of the attempt upon Marseilles is contained in a
pamphlet, reprinted in Cimber et Danjou, Archives curieuses, xi. 29-45, en-
titled " Lettres escrittes de Marseilles contenant au vray les choses qui s'y sont
passees les 8, 9, et 10 du mois d Avril dernier, 1585." There is a shorter ac-
count in Memoires de la Ligue, i. 85, etc. One of the first acts of the Second
Consul D'Aries was to throw all the Huguenots into the Tour Saint Jean, and
to write inviting M. de Vins, commanding for the League in Provence, to
come to the city. Subsequently two Huguenots were killed, and their bodies,
as usual, dragged by little children through the streets. The Duke of Nevers
was waiting at Avignon, on his way to Italy, for the welcome tidings of the
capture of Marseilles.
z Histoire universelle, ii. 424. See De Thou, vi. 452-477. Busini sums up
the triumphs of the League, in a letter of May 13, 1585: " Di maniera che,
come vostra signoria puo comprendere, questi della Lega hanno gia la maggior
parte del regno, cioe le principali terre, come Orleans, Bourges, Tours, Angers,
Nantes, Lyon, etc." Negociations avec la Toscane, iv. 573.
1585. THE HOLY LEAGUE. 325
committed to his charge, irrespectively of their religions tenets,
and in turn beloved by them ; determined to preserve the peace
despite the confusion of the times and the severity of the royal
edicts which he was called upon to execute. Reposing no con-
fidence in the Roman Catholic inhabitants of Dieppe, his own
fellow-believers, De Chastes summoned to his aid the Protes-
tants, whose loyalty was unimpeachable. Nightly were these
partisans of another faith quietly assembled, by the governor's
orders, in various houses throughout the city, with distinct in-
structions as to their duty in case of tumult. For months — in
fact, until the king's disgraceful surrender to the League, soon
to be narrated — the Protestants, whose public worship was only
tolerated outside of the walls, in the distant hamlet of Pal-
lecheul, were intrusted with the guard of Dieppe, their citizen
soldiers spending the day, we are told, in prayers, the night
watches in reading the Word of God. Rarely had clearer testi-
mony been given to Huguenot loyalty.1
While Henry of Yalois was feebly defending himself, per-
mitting his mother to negotiate with traitors who should have
been pursued and cut to pieces without mercy, and
second^ at- suffering Mendoza to hoodwink him and convince
titude. °
him by letters of Philip the Second, which he showed
him, that his Catholic majesty had no part at all in the League,3
other spectators, scarcely less interested than he in the issue
of the struggle, were curiously watching the course of events.
Not Philip himself, kept as well informed of the occurrences at
the French court as were the faithful servants of the crown in
the command of armies,3 scanned each item of news as it arrived
1 Histoire de la Reformation a Dieppe par Guillaume et Jean Daval (pub-
lished by the Societe Rouennaise de Bibliophiles), i. 132, 133. The same
writers inform us (ibid. , i. 138) that Governor De Chastes, three or four years
later, invited the Huguenot refugees home from England to defend Dieppe,
and prevent the city from following the example of all the rest of Normandy,
save Caen, by embracing the side of the Holy League, after the murder of the
Guises at Blois. 2 Busini, ubi supra, iv. 468.
3 " Et se rejouissent fort [les Espagnols] des troubles de France, desquels ils
sont si bien advertis que les nouvelles que jen ay de vostre court me sont
mandees toutes pareilles d'Espaigne." Joyeuse to Henry III., Narbonne,
April 23, 1585, Loutchitzky, Documents inedits, 169.
326 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. V.
with half the intensity of anxiety felt by the impetuous Henry of
Navarre from his far-distant domains at the foot of the Pyrenees.
The death of the Duke of Anjou, removing the only person
who stood between him and the king, had awakened in the
Henr of Bearnais for the first time the full consciousness of
toalHenwritof tne destiny f°r which he was reserved. The fact that
Navane, he }iac[ oeen able, as mentioned in a previous chapter,
to bring to the king's knowledge, and thus to thwart, the earlier
plot of the League against the royal authority, seemed to give
him an additional title to act in the present emergency as the most
important ally and supporter of his cousin of Valois. Nor did
the latter disallow the claim. As early as the twenty- third of
March, Henry of Navarre received this brief note from the king.
" My brother, I notify you that I have not been able, what-
ever resistance I have made, to prevent the evil designs of the
Duke of Guise. He is in arms. Be on your guard, and make
no move. I have heard that you are at Castres for the purpose
of conferring with my cousin the Duke of Montmorency. I am
very glad of this, so that you may provide for your own affairs.
I shall send you a gentleman to Montauban who will advise you
of my will. Your good brother, Henry." !
Impatiently, and not without grave misgivings as to the ful-
filment of the royal promise, did the King of Navarre await the
word that was to permit him, the much-abused Gascon
but fails to . TT . _ . . .
caii in his and Huguenot prince, to ny to the assistance or his
assistance. , 1 , . * , _^ .
hard-pressed sovereign, fast experience had made
him doubtful of the favor in which he stood. Still, he renewed
to Marshal Matignon his offer of service for the king as against
the League, " although," he mournfully added, " on similar oc-
casions that have presented themselves, within three or four
years, his majesty has not deigned to see or listen to those
whom I sent to him, and this through the artifice of his ene-
mies." 2 The King of Navarre's forebodings were destined to
be verified ; the summons never came. Henry might advance
1 Dom Vaissete, Histoire de Languedoc, v. 400, and Lettres missives de
Henri IV., ii. 38, taken from the Memoires de Gaches, 299.
2 Henri of Navarre to Marshal Matignon, April, 1585. Lettres missives,
ii. 26, 27.
1585. THE HOLY LEAGUE. 327
to the banks of the Dordogne, in order to be near at hand in
case of a sudden call ; the Valois was unwilling or afraid to
make a requisition upon him. In fact, it would seem that the
French king felt both fear and aversion. Earlier in the year,
before their departure for home, the Dutch envoys had de-
spatched their secretary, Calvart by name, to confer secretly with
Henry of Navarre. Calvart had found the great Protestant
leader full of hope and sympathy. Not content with the cold
Navarre's of- assurance of words, Henry had promised to send a
fer declined, body of two thousand soldiers, at his own expense,
to assist the states in the desperate struggle in which they were
engaged. He had merely stipulated that the consent of the
King of France should first be obtained for the passage of the
Gascon troops over the border. But, much to Calvart's disap-
pointment, Henry of Valois could not be induced to permit the
Bearnais to aid an enterprise in which he had himself so re-
cently declined to take part. Secretary Villeroy, acting as the
king's mouthpiece, justified the refusal by the declaration that,
should his majesty either openly or secretly assist the Netherlands,
or allow them to be assisted, he would give all the Catholics
now sustaining his party reason to go over to the Guise faction.1
From the moment his keen eyes had descried the coming
storm, the King of Navarre had been on the alert, ready to help
with his own arm, anxious also to enlist in behalf of
of Navarre's the unworthy monarch the co-operation and support
of others. For this purpose the skilled pen of his
faithful follower, Duplessis Mornay, was incessantly occupied.
Everyone at court whom Navarre could hope to influence for
good was plied with urgent letters. On a single day (the twenty-
ninth of March) the secretary wrote from Montauban to M.
d'Elbene, to Abbe Guadagny, to Bellievre, to Villeroy, to
Chancellor Chiverny, begging them, in view of the audacity of
the League, to act promptly and prudently, and encouraging
them with bright hopes of success. To each the language was
the same : " You have acquired great reputation for prudence ;
1 Report of Calvart, Hague Archives, apud Motley, United Netherlands,
i. 108, 111.
328 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. V.
do not suffer the kingdom, committed to the keeping of your
arms, to perish. Whatever the appearances may be, the patient
can weather the disease, if only his strength and his blood be
husbanded. Fevers that spend their force most quickly are
wont to have the severest beginnings." '
In a letter to the Duke of Montmorency, toward whom Na-
varre now turned as an old and natural ally, his secretary, in
his name, vividly sketched the present crisis. " In my estima-
tion," he wrote, " this war will be the sieve to sift out true
Frenchmen, for, while those that play upon the
Bift out true boards are dressed in French costumes, yet is it clear
that the author of the tragedy is a Spaniard. If
these actions depended upon the persons that seem to move,
we might expect the actors to draw back ; but, granting that
they have a higher source, they will apparently proceed in their
course. . . . My lord, in these great affairs there is no one
that can help this prince more by his advice than you can.
Preceding occurrences have only been play. Frenchmen were
pitted against Frenchmen — men who had long since measured
their strength against each other, and of whom the one party
was as impatient and as likely to grow weary as the other.
Now, French troops are indeed in the field, but marshalled and
led by a Spanish intellect, which is so much the more willing
to behold our sufferings, as we alone shall suffer, while it will
gain all the advantage. God most frequently laughs at such
devices, and makes the thunder end in smoke." 2
Meanwhile, the Bearnais did not cease to remind the king,
by letter and by the mouth of his agents at court, that the
person of his maiestv could not be defended more
Navarre's
continued of- faithfully than by a prince of his own blood, nor his
state than by those who could hope to be saved only
by its salvation.3 At the same time, he advanced to the
very northern borders of his government of Guyenne, keep-
1 Duplessis Mornay to Villeroy, March 29, 1585. Memoires de Duplessis
Mornay, iii. 8.
2 Duplessis Mornay to the Duke of Montmorency, March 30, 1585. Ibid., iii. 11.
3 "Ramenteves lui, M. de Chassincourt. que sa personne ne peult estre plus
fidelement defendeue que par son sang propre, ni son estat que par ceulx qui
1585. THE HOLY LEAGUE. 320
ing his soldiers busily at work repairing and fortifying the
cities intrusted to Protestant hands, so as to keep them out of
mischief until the moment when, by the permission of their
sovereign, they should cross the broad provinces of Angoumois
and Poitou, and hasten to meet him on the northern bank of
the Loire.1 His example was followed by his cousin the Prince
of Conde, who, from the walls of Saint Jean d'Angely, begged
to be allowed to enter the king's service with his company of
Protestant gentlemen, ail of whom had provided themselves
with horses and arms, and only awaited the word of command.2
If Henry of Yalois should follow the suicidal course suggested
to him by traitors in the royal council, if he should make
nominal friends of the enemies who had conspired against his
crown and authority, by breaking his compacts with the Hugue-
nots, dissolving the peace so often claimed as his own voluntary
act, and proscribing the Protestant religion, it would be from
no lack of wholesome advice either from within or from with-
out, from no want of proffers of assistance. The historian
De Thou has inserted in his great work the long,
of°the Bishop candid, and forcible plea for peace and toleration
made by Frangois de Isoailles, Bishop of Acqs, a
prelate who had acquired the greatest distinction as an ambassa-
dor to London, to Venice, and to Constantinople.3 From beyond
ne peuvent estre conserves qu'en le conservant." Henry of Navarre to Chas-
sincourt, ibid., iii. 15.
1 Henry of Navarre to Henry III., April 13, 1585, Lettres missives, ii. 38-
40; same to same. May 7, 1585, ibid., ii. 63-65. Mr. Motley makes Henry of
Navarre to have been " resident at Chartres" when visited by Calvart on his
secret mission (United Netherlands, i. 108). As the Bearnais never resided on
the north side of the Loire after his flight from the French court, in February,
1576 (see above, i. 85), until he came to the aid of Henry III., at his invita-
tion, thirteen years later, this is evidently a mistake. Probably, for "Char-
tres " we must read "Castres." The two cities are nearly three hundred and
fifty miles apart in a straight line. Henry of Navarre had a conference with
the Duke of Montmorency at Castres in March, 1585. See Memoires de
Gaches, 297-299.
! " Mais joze a cette heure men asseurer de tant plus qu'il est plus que ja-
mais necessaire au service de vostre dite Majesta par l'outrecuydee license de
ses ennemys." Henry of Conde to Henry III., May 22, 1585, Loutchitzky,
Documents inedits, 132. 3 De Thou, vi. (book 81) 465-473.
330 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. V.
the channel, Queen Elizabeth — not deterred by the unworthy
treatment of her envoy Wade, assaulted and beaten by the
Duke of Aumale, contrary to the law of nations, nor disgusted
even by the treacherous conferences of Secretary Yilleroy with
Mendoza respecting a proposed invasion of England, which had
been reported to her by Sir Edward Stafford ! — wrote a letter
The remon- °^ vigorous remonstrance. She expressed her amaze-
QueeTEnL- ment tnat a great king, contrary to all reason and
beth, honor, should sue for peace of traitors, instead of
forcing them to submit to authority. She warned him that it
was unlikely that the rebels would be content with ruling France
under his name; for princes conquered by their subjects are
rarely of long continuance. She offered her own assistance, and
declared that should he be pleased to accept it, the Leaguers
would be seen put to the greatest shame that ever rebels knew.
She bade him encourage his loyal subjects, now disheartened by
doubts engendered of his neglect to punish traitors. It were
better to lose twenty thousand men than reign at the pleasure
of rebels. " If a queen, in sixteen days, brought thirty thou-
sand men into the field, to chastise the vagaries of two fools,
excited thereto by another prince and not led by desire of pri-
vate gain, what ought a king of France to do against such
persons as claim descent in direct line (as they dream) from
Charlemagne — a line taking the precedence of that of Yalois —
and, in order the better to palliate their deed, protest that they
are the champions of the Catholic religion, to which you belong,
taunting you with not being so faithful a servant of the church
as they are ! For the love of God, indulge no more in this too
protracted sleep ! " 2
With this kind appeal came a substantial offer of four thou-
sand foot-soldiers whom the queen had ready for service,3 and
of liberal advances of money.
1 See Fronde, xii. 99, 100, and Motley, United Netherlands, i. 124-127.
2 Queen Elizabeth to Henry III. [May, 1585], Lettres missives, ii. 227, etc.
Translated in Froude, xii. 101. The letter was much admired by Henry of
Navarre, who wrote to the Countess of Grammont : tv Vous y verres un brave
langage et un plaisaut style." Lettres missives, ubi supra.
3 Letter of Busini, May 28, 1585. Negociations avec la Toscane, iv. 574.
1585. THE HOLY LEAGUE. 331
Other old and tried allies of the French crown sent envoys
bearing similar remonstrances and similar offers of help. To
Paris came in close succession the extraordinary embassies of
the Electors of Saxony, Brandenburg, and the Palatinate, of the
Landgrave of Hesse, and of the Dukes of Brunswick
and of the .. .5L. . . .
German and Wurtemberg. Among the members of these
princes. . /• i
deputations appeared some or the most distinguished
diplomatists of Germany.1 Meanwhile, the German princes in-
dicated unmistakably the drift of their sympathy, by strictly
forbidding any troops from leaving their territories without
license, and by threatening the Duke of Lorraine, both by the
mouth of messengers and in writing, with their severe dis-
pleasure, should that nobleman venture to war against the Hu-
guenots.2
But offers of assistance, protests, and entreaties were alike
useless. Henry, openly menaced by the League, had the mis-
fortune to have about him few faithful advisers. If
The king's
evil counsel- a Marshal d'Aumont was found to advocate stren-
lors.
uous resistance to the demands of Guise and his as-
sociates, he stood almost alone. The queen mother played upon
his fears, and exaggerated the perils of his situation. As for
his other advisers, their attitude showed clearly that Spanish
ducats had been judiciously expended upon them. And Henry
of Yalois had within himself no reserve of moral force to resist
their importunities.
It is always an unprofitable inquiry to ask why the coward
refuses to adopt the manly course of conduct which, although
ms moral attended with temporary discomfort and possible dan-
turpitude. ger^ infauji3iy ieacis to that very rest and security upon
which he sets a value far transcending all considerations drawn
from truth, honor, and integrity. There are problems in hu-
man nature beyond the power of men to solve. Above all, in
the analysis of motives in a character so depraved as that
of the man (scarcely worthy of the name of man) now seated
upon the throne of France, are we confronted with difficulties
1 Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. 459.
2 Letter of Busini, June 11, 1585. Negotiations avec la Toscane, iv. 580.
332 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. V
and contradictions so great as to defy satisfactory explanation.
Some points, however, are sufficiently clear. Henry of Yalois
was the most purely selfish, as he was in morals the most des-
picable monarch that ever wore the French crown. For not a
living soul did he sincerely care. Childless and without hope
of begetting an heir to the throne ; united in wedlock to a wife
to whom he was habitually false, and toward whom he fre-
quently did not pretend to offer even an outward show of
respect ; ' cursed with a mother as faithless to her own children
as she was treacherous to her kind and reckless of any higher
Power ; able to boast of no friends, of no comrades save the
necessary companions and accessories of his vices — this prince
gave himself no solicitude for the future, and plunged deeper
and deeper in the abyss of sensuality. Excesses had destroyed
the very tissue of his moral constitution, and left no room for the
hope that nature, always more benignant than men deserve to
find her, might reconstruct the original fabric. In so untoward
a soil as Henry's mind no seed of magnanimous resolve could
find a lodgement with the prospect of germinating and eventu-
ally bearing fruit in heroic accomplishment.2
Early in the progress of the struggle between the king and
the League, Henry of Navarre had held a conference of his
chief supporters to deliberate respecting the inipor-
Navarre con-
suits the hu- tant question, what attitude the Protestants should
take in this emergency. All the leaders of the party
were there, and the hall of the priory of Guitres (not far from
the field of Coutras, soon to attain world-wide fame) was
crowded with a company of Huguenot warriors of various ages.
Some were young men unused to scenes of conflict, others vet-
erans in the military art, but all were flushed with expectation,
and anxiously awaiting the decision of the Bearnais. There
may have been sixty persons present in all.
A contemporary historian, who himself took a leading part
in the discussion, has preserved for us a full and graphic ac-
1 See Busini's letter of Jane 11, 1585, ubi supra, iv. 581.
'2 The disgusting story of Henry s depravity is told with a plainness of speech
characteristic of the sixteenth century by Agrippa d Aubigne, ii. 424, 439.
1585. THE HOLY LEAGUE. 333
count of this momentous consultation. The picture well de-
serves to be reproduced here, so characteristic was the scene of
the sturdy Huguenot chiefs whose strong right arms sustained
an unpopular cause for a whole generation against all the attacks
brought to bear upon them by a hostile king and an over-
whelming majority of the French nation.
The proceedings began, according to the good old custom of
the Huguenots, who, whatever their faults may have been,
were at least a religious folk, with a solemn invocation of the
presence and blessing of the Almighty. The name of the
Protestant minister who officiated has not been transmitted to
us, but it is not improbable that to Gabriel d' Amours, who
offered prayer before the charge at Coutras, the honorable duty
was committed. Then the King of Navarre addressed those
present with that mixture of earnestness and cheerful good na-
ture which he could command on every occasion. He assured
them that, had the critical juncture in the affairs of France
been likely to affect his own life and interests alone, he would
not have troubled them to come to this conference. But now
the preservation or the ruin of all the Reformed churches was
in question, and the first point to be settled was a vital one.
u Shall we sit still," said Henry, " with crossed arms, while our
enemies are contending together, and shall we send all our
warriors into the king's armies, as some maintain that we ought
to do, without assuming a special name or setting up a distinct
banner ; or, shall we, according to the view advanced by others,
arm ourselves, but stand aloof, ready at any moment to help
the king or strike a blow to better our own condition ? Here
is the matter respecting which I beg each one to express his
opinion freely and without passion."
The Huguenot chiefs had seated themselves around the room
with little regard to form or precedence. The Yiscount of Tu-
renne, who chanced to be on the king's left hand, was
viscount of the first to reply to the invitation. He espoused the
policy of quiet inaction. " Our patience," said he,
" will cut the throat of our enemies' reasons ; our impatience
would justify their arms and their plans. As respects success,
I reason thus : If you take up arms, the king will fear you ; if
334: THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. V.
lie fear you, lie will hate you ; if he hate you, he will attack
you ; if he attack you, he will destroy you. My advice is that,
by our endurance, we should heap coals of fire upon the heads
of those who unjustly hate us. Let us permit our braves to
enter the royal armies. The King of France will then owe his
deliverance to our valor, and will sacrifice his past hatred to our
humility. Should he hereafter come to an agreement with his
adversaries and ours, our integrity will shine forth resplendent
as the mid-day sun in the sight of all mankind."
So convincing did the viscount's arguments appear, that as
man after man was called upon, each declared himself of the
same mind, none venturing to do more than, perhaps, to add
some historical illustration or parallel by way of corroboration.
A score had spoken, and Turenne's opinion seemed about to be
adopted as the unanimous sense of the meeting, when, the turn
of Agrippa d'Aubigne* coming, that ardent and blunt speaker
turned the tide of feeling.
" It would be to trample under foot the ashes of our martyrs
and the blood of our brave soldiers," said he ; " it would be to
erect the gallows over the tombs of our dead princes
Agrippa and great captains, and condemn to the like ignominy
d'Aubigne. . ° .. . j i i , -i i . t i
those who survive and nave devoted their lives to the
cause of their God, here to call in question the justice of their
magnanimous course. It is not ours to look behind us, where
we shall only see churches, cities, families, individual persons
ruined, partly by the perfidy of the enemy, partly by that of
men who sought excuses to exempt themselves from those
labors and dangers to which God calls us whenever so it seems
good to Him. t If you take up arms, the king will fear you.'
That is true. ' If the king fear you, he will hate you.' Would
to God that this hatred on his part were yet to begin ! ' If he
hate you, he will attack and destroy you.' "Would that we had
not yet experienced the power of that hatred, but rather the
power of that fear which prevents the effects of hatred ! Happy
those who by that fear forestall their ruin ! Wretched he who
shall draw down upon himself this ruin by making himself
contemptible. I say, therefore, that we alone ought not to re-
main unarmed, when all France is in arms, nor permit our sol-
1585. THE HOLY LEAGUE. 335
diers to take an oath to support captains who have taken an
oath to exterminate us, nor compel them to show respect for
the countenance of those whom they ought to slash with their
cutlasses ; much less force them to serve under the flag of the
white cross, which has always been, and must still be, the target
for our missiles. Shall we exhibit to our young nobles igno-
miny dwelling with us and honor with the other side ? What
will become of our princes of the blood and our great party
leaders, when they shall have given over to their enemies both
their followers and the credit purchased by so many benefits
conferred ? We must indeed manifest our humility, but let us
see to it that there be no cowardice mingled with it. Let us
remain in good condition, to be of service to the king in his
need, and to help ourselves in our own. Then, when the right
moment shall come, let us bend our knees before him fully
armed, take our oath of allegiance to him, drawing our right
hand from out of the knight's gauntlet, and bring our victories,
not our amazement, to his feet. The pretext which our ene-
mies have seized in order to escape from the authority of their
sovereign, is that they might fly at our throats. It is necessary,
since the royal sceptre cannot stop them, that respect for our
swords should produce that effect. I conclude thus : If we
disarm, the king will despise us ; contempt for us will give him
over to our enemies ; joined with them, he will attack us and
ruin us in our defenceless condition. On the other hand, if we
take up arms, the king will respect us ; respecting us, he will
summon us to his assistance ; united with him, we shall over-
throw all our enemies."
Scarcely had D'Aubigne ended his earnest remonstrance
when Henry of Navarre, forgetting, in his impatient ardor,
the proprieties of the occasion, which dictated silence
varre's deci- on liis part until all his advisers should have been
sion. . . , .. _,. .
given an opportunity to express themselves, audibly
exclaimed : " I am of his opinion ! " — " Je suis a lui." The rest
of the company was as much carried away by the fervid elo-
quence of D'Aubigne as was the king himself, and, as each
was consulted, all, including the Prince of Conde and the
prudent Duplessis Mornay, concurred in the view that the
336 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. V.
Protestants of France could not afford to stand by, unarmed
spectators of the conflict now raging.1
Meanwhile, the more timid Henry of Yalois showed himself
the more the courage and arrogance of the League increased.
Arrogance of Cardinal Bourbon knew enough of religion at least to
the League. use pjous phrases in his correspondence. So he wrote
to the Duchess of Kevers, with no attempt to conceal his
glee : " Our quarrel is for the honor of God, albeit the greater
part of men think it to be for our ambition ;" adding, " I will
tell you that, if it please God, there will be seen the finest
army that has ever been seen in this kingdom for five hundred
years. The queen speaks to us of peace, but we demand so
many things for the good of our religion, that I fear our de-
mands will not be granted." 2 Within a little more than a
fortnight after this, the cardinal and his associates presented
to the queen mother, one fine Sunday (the ninth of June,
1585), the modest requests they made of her son the king. The
It resents a ^e °^ tUe PaPer stated its object to be " to sllOW
thekuT to clearly that their intention is no other than the pro-
june i, 1585. motion and advancement of the glory and honor of
God, and the extirpation of heresy, without making any at-
tempt upon the State as the heretics falsely assert." The peti-
tion was not long, and after sundry protests of loyalty and
pure intentions, went directly to the matter in hand. The
League begged the king to issue an edict constraining all his
subjects to make profession of the Catholic religion, all other
worship being interdicted, and declaring heretics incapable of
holding any public office or dignity. His majesty was to swear
to observe this edict and require a similar oath of all others,
from the peers of the realm down to the lowest officer of the
crown. He was to demand and enforce the restoration of the
cities now withheld by the Protestants, and, in particular, to
cease from protecting the city of Geneva, " the fountain from
which heresy flows forth into his kingdom and throughout all
1 Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. 427-430 (liv. v., c. 5).
2 Cardinal Bourbon to the Duchess of Nevers, May 23, 1585, Memoires de
Nevers, i. 648.
1585. THE HOLY LEAGUE. 337
Christendom." Whereas they might with propriety demand
some security for their own persons and property, the petition-
ers declare that they are quite ready to divest themselves of all
safeguards, save those that depend upon his favor, their own
innocence, and the good-will of all good men. In fact, they
offer, if so it please the king, to resign into his hands all the
charges conferred upon them by him or by his predecessors,
and to retire into private life and end their days in their own
houses, content with having, under his name and authority,
aided so excellent a work.1
The sincerity of the offer, and, indeed, of the entire document
to which Charles of Bourbon and Henry of Guise affixed their
insincerity of signatures, could be gauged by the fact that the ac-
ita offer. cumulation of offices upon the Duke of Epernon and
other royal favorites not of the family of Guise had been again
and again avowed to be one of the standing grievances that had
provoked and rendered necessary the present appeal to arms.
It was but a single day after the Sunday which the League
had chosen to desecrate at Chalons, by the presentation of a
paper seeking to secure the undisturbed sway of religious
persecution throughout France, that one of the most striking
manifestoes ever published in that country saw the
Henry of Na- light in the city of Bergerac. Henry of Navarre had
geracj June thus far kept silence. It was now time that he
should publish to the world, and especially to the
French people, the falsity of the accusations set forth by the
League as a pretext for their treasonable acts.
The King of Navarre began by a distinct profession of his
belief in the Christian religion. He held, he said, the Script-
ures of the Old and New Testaments to be the infallible rule
1 " Requeste au roy, et derniere resolution des princes, seigneurs, gentils-
hommes, villes et communautez Catholiques, presentee a, la royne, mere de
saMajeste, le dimanche neufiesme juing, 1585. Pour montrer clairement que
leur intention n'est autre que la promotion et avancement de la gloire, hon-
neur de Dieu, et extirpation des heresies, sans rien attenter a l'etat, comme
faussement imposent les lieretiques malsentans de la foy, et leurs partizans. '
Meinoires de la Ligue, i. 184-7 ; Memoires de Nevers. i. 081-3 See De
Thou. vi. 483, etc. It may be noted that the date at the end oi the paper is
one day later ; "faict a Chaalons, le dixiesme jour de juin."
33S THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE (h. V.
of faith, he received the creeds of the early Church, and heartily
anathematized all the errors condemned by the most ancient,
celebrated, and lawful councils. As to the questions now in
dispute, he was neither the first nor the only person that had
insisted upon the necessity of reforming the abuses prevailing
in the Church. That necessity had been the burden of all re-
cent councils, the aspiration of all good men (who were not for
that reason reputed heretics), and the demand of the Yery
Christian kings of France. The refusal to grant a general
council for the purpose of reformation had led to a protest on
the part of a number of princes and states, and to the schism
which the writer now deplored. For himself, born since this
schism began, and brought up at a time when the exercise of
both religions was permitted by the king in the states general,
as it had been since confirmed by several royal edicts, he had
not only been taught from early infancy to believe that the
Romish Church was corrupt and needed reformation, but had
been confirmed in this opinion by the reading of God's Word and
by converse with learned men. This conscientious belief had
exposed him to many perils, and, to his great regret, deprived
him, on the present occasion, of the favor of his majesty and
of the opportunity to render him good service, as he might have
done, could he, with a clear conscience, have embraced the
same religious profession as the monarch. Nevertheless, in
order to show that his course was dictated not by obstinacy but
by constancy, not by ambition but by a single desire for his
own salvation, he begged his majesty to convene a free and
lawful council, such as had been promised in his edicts, and de-
clared himself ready and resolved to receive instruction from it
and to regulate his belief by what might there be decided on
the religious questions of the day.1 To the possible objection
that the Council of Trent had rendered unnecessary such a
council as he spoke of, he replied that no account could be taken
of a body against which the ambassadors of the King of France
1 " Estant ledit Seigneur Roy de Navarre tout prest et resolu de recevoir
instruction par iceluy, et regler sa creance par ce qui en sera decide sur les
differents de la religion."
1585. THE HOLY LEAGUE. 339
had been instructed to protest, and whose decrees neither they
nor the Parliament of Paris could ever be prevailed upon to
recognize and publish, even after Saint Bartholomew's Day,
when everything seemed to favor the demand of those who ur-
gently sought the acceptance.
It would, therefore, be as absurd to style the King of Navarre
a heretic, before the settlement of the matters in dispute by a
council to whose decisions he had offered to submit, as it would
be to hold a man guilty upon whose case a court of justice has
not yet passed. Nor was he contumacious or schismatic, since
he stood ready to appear, to give an account, to learn, even to
change for the better, so soon as the better should be taught
him. He complained that, up to the present time, he had seen,
through long years, an abundance of men zealous for his
destruction, not one man zealous for his instruction. Nor could
he be called a relapsed heretic, since he had never been con-
verted from his alleged heresy. If, indeed, it was true that,
after Saint Bartholomew's Day, he sent a messenger to the
pope and embraced the mass, yet no argument was needed to
prove the nullity of a conversion effected by such notorious in-
justice and violence.
Having thus vindicated his own religious attitude, Henry of
Navarre proceeded to vindicate himself from the charge of
being a persecutor of the Roman Catholic Church, and showed
that not only had he in his own patrimonial estates of Beam
conceded the largest liberty to the adherents of that church,
but even when, in other places, he might have been pro-
voked by the rigorous proscription exercised against the Prot-
estants of France to retaliate upon priests and monks, popu-
larly believed to be the advocates of the persecution, he had,
on the contrary, extended to them his full protection. For
example, in Agen, his own ordinary residence, the Romish
clergy had discharged their accustomed duties and the monks
had freely preached in the churches, even at the very height
of the troubles ; while at the same time he had been satis-
fied that the Protestants should hold their services for preach-
ing in houses whose use had been obtained for the pur-
pose.
MO THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. V.
After protesting his own affection for the reigning monarch
and sincere desire for his long life, Henry next exposed the
absurdity of the League in demanding of a young king, married
and in the flower of his age, that he should name a successor
to the throne, in the person of a Cardinal of Bourbon, a prince
sixty-six years of age, as unlikely to have posterity as he was
to marry.1
It is needless, in view of the attention already given to these
points in a previous chapter, to repeat the justification of the
King of Navarre's course in the mission of Segur to the Prot-
estant princes of Germany, or to notice his reference to the
pretended " Concordat " of Magdeburg, and his clear exposition
of the motives of the Huguenots in seeking, as absolutely neces-
sary to their self-preservation, the prolongation of the term for
which they held the cities of refuge. Those cities he now
offered to restore to the king, without awaiting the expiration
of the two additional years for which his majesty had consented
to leave them in Huguenot hands, provided the heads of the
League would restore the cities they had seized. Nay, he made
a similar offer with regard to the government of provinces
with which the King of France had been pleased to honor him.
Navarre He closed the long and important document by re-
challenges , ° \ . pi
Guise. questing the monarch not to be surprised at a further
offer which he now made to the Duke of Guise, with a desire
to stop the effusion of blood and prevent* the extreme im-
poverishment and desolation of France certain to follow in the
course of the war. This offer was that, without resorting to
domestic or foreign troops, whose participation would only entail
the ruin of the poor people, the Duke of Guise (who now com-
manded the army of the League) should settle the dispute by a
combat with the King of Navarre — either singly, or with two
on either side, or with ten, or twenty, or such other number as
the duke might prefer. The arms would be such as were usual
among honorable knights, and the place either such as his
1 "Comme si le Roy n'avoit plus qu'un an ou deux a vivre, pour lui susciter
semence, comme si d'un vieil estoc de celibat nous devoit plustost sortir lignee,
que dun marriage vigoureux et florissant de sa Ma:estc."
1585. THE HOLY LEAGUE. 341
majesty might designate within the kingdom, or a spot beyond
its borders of safe access to both sides. It is an honor, certainly,
said Henry of Navarre, which, in view of the disparity between
our persons and rank, known to all men, the Duke of Guise will
certainly embrace ; while, on the other hand, my cousin, the
Prince of Conde, and I shall esteem it a piece of good fortune
by our blood to redeem the king, our sovereign, from the toils
and troubles which the League is plotting against him, his State
from confusion, his nobles from ruin, and all his people from
calamity and extreme misery.1
Such was Henry's famous Declaration — another of the mas-
terly productions of the pen of Duplessis Mornay that have
Favorable im- added to the renown of the brave King of Navarre.
duS°byPtrh°e The PaPer was not meant for the royal court of Paris
paper. alone, nor even exclusively for France, but for the
civilized world entire. Extraordinary pains were therefore
taken to send copies to all the parliaments and other important
bodies of the kingdom, while beyond its bounds every prince
who might be supposed to sympathize with the Bearnais in
the struggle upon which he was entering received a formal
communication of the document that was to vindicate his course
in the eyes of the world. Upon their minds and upon the
public opinion of Christendom it exerted an influence which it
would be difficult to exaggerate.2 Nor was the favorable im-
Guise declines passion diminished when news arrived that the Duke
the challenge. 0f QQ[se \1Si& declined the single combat with the
King of Navarre, and that the futile attempt had even been
made to suppress the publication of a manifesto so damaging to
the Roman Catholic side.3
1 " Declaration du Roy de Navarre contre les calomnies publiees contre luy,"
etc. Text in Memoires de la Ligue, i. 133-163, and Memoires de Duplessis
Mornay, iii. 89-126. See also De Thou, vi. 479, etc. ; Agrippa d'Aubigne,
ii. 425, 426; Recueil des choses memorables, 611-3 ; letters of Busini, June 25
and July 9, 1585, Negociations avec la Toscane, iv. 583, 586.
* Memoires de Duplessis Mornay, iii. 87-89.
6 Despite the king's prohibition, all the foreign ambassadors soon had printed
copies of the manifesto in their possession. Letter of Busini, July 9, 1585,
Negociations avec la Toscane, iv. 586.
342 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. V.
In most of those that read it the conviction was deepened
of Henry of Navarre's inflexible devotion to the Reformed
Navarre's wii- faith. There were some, however, who interpreted
In'Scted'e? ifc otherwise, and saw in the prince's profession of
cites suspicion, willingness to be instructed by a legitimate council
of the Church only corroboration of their belief, based on other
considerations, that he would yet be converted to the faith of
the majority of the French nation. Henry of Navarre was am-
bitious. Catharine de' Medici was powerful and could procure
the means of gratifying his ambition, were he but willing to
sacrifice his religion. " Nothing is impossible to this princess,"
wrote an enthusiastic foreigner, " especially with the people
here. If there is anything that influences men in this world,
it is the longing to possess and to command. You may there-
fore hold it for a certainty that the King of Navarre, seeing
himself obliged, as he will be, will become a Catholic. God
grant that he may not be like those who from Jews have be-
come Christians, very few of whom are ever found to be of any
worth ! " 1 Now that Henry had gone out of his way to assev-
erate his teachableness in matters of theology, it was not un-
naturally concluded that it would be no difficult thing to induce
him to return to the bosom of Mother Church. Much was
looked for from the persuasions of the theologians, and of the
Bishop of Auxerre in particular, who had been, or was soon to
be despatched to hasten the much-desired consummation. Not
to speak of other arguments, there was one thought to be whis-
pered in his ear that would be likely to have great weight with
him : " It is much better to be King of France, eating fish on
Friday, than to be a poor Duke of Beam, with liberty to eat
meat when he pleases." 2 Should Henry take advantage of the
propitious moment to proclaim himself converted to the Romish
1 u E voglia Dio che non rassomigli a coloro che di giudei si sono f atti cris-
tiani, trovandosene molto pochi che buoni sieno." Letter of Cavriana, July 9,
1585, Negotiations avec la Toscane, iv. 614.
2 " E uno che li dira all' orecchio: ' ch' e molto meglio essere re di Francia
mangiando pesce il venerdi che povero duca di Beam con la licenza di man-
giar came a suo beneplacito."' Letter of Cavriana, August 4, 1585, ibid., iv.
623.
1585. THE HOLY LEAGUE. 343
faith, it was believed that he would reap all the advantages from
the present commotion. The seizure of arms by the League
had already raised the House of Bourbon from a position of
comparative neglect to the first place in the public attention.1
In case of Henry's conversion it would be found that the
Dukes of Guise and Mayenne had been at the pains of furnishing
the feast for the entertainment of the man whom of all men in
France they hated most.2
How much significance ought to be attached to the King of
Navarre's profession of willingness to be instructed, is a question
which can be more correctly and dispassionately considered at a
later stage of this history, when his words on the present occa-
sion will naturally come into comparison with similar language
employed at other critical junctures. It need only be observed
that whatever latitude may have been allowed to Duplessis
Mornay in shaping the declaration, there can be little or no
doubt that the form in which the King of Navarre expressed
himself in reference to the proposed instruction was prescribed
by Henry himself.3
So long as there was any hope, and even when incontroverti-
ble proofs came that the King of France had virtually sur-
Navarre's rendered his own convictions to the pressure of his
idnter Jul?6 unworthy mother, and the treacherous counsellors who
10, 1585. surrounded him, Henry of Navarre continued his un-
grateful task of remonstrance. So late as on the tenth of July,
in a letter more full of compassion for the wretched weakling
on the French throne than of apprehension for himself, he re-
minded the Yalois that the edict he was about to break was his
own cherished ordinance, and that the Guises and their con-
federates, with whom he was about to be reconciled, were the
same persons whom he had proclaimed rebels, the same persons
1 ' ' Credete che e miracolo di udire : ' Guise ha preso le armi contro il Re,
e la f amiglia di Bourbon, che era negletta e vilipesa, risorge.'" Ibid., ubi
supra.
2 Ibid., ubi supra.
3 I do not find that the words gave any dissatisfaction to the king's fellow-
Huguenots. Tbey took the alarm only when they observed the studied repe-
tition of the profession in subsequent papers and speeches.
344: THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OP NAVARRE Ch. V.
whose nefarious intentions against his person and estate he
had expressly recognized and denounced in his letters to Navarre
himself. He called the monarch's attention to the writer's own
offers of assistance which had been neglected, and to the chal-
lenge he had condescended to make to his inferiors in rank and
men guilty of treason. " If," he added, " I shall have this mis-
fortune (and I will not yet believe it) that your majesty proceed
to the conclusion of this treaty, despite such conditions and
submissions, breaking his edict, arming his rebels against his
state, against his own blood, and against himself, I shall deplore
with my whole heart your majesty's condition, seeing you
forced (in consequence of your unwillingness to make use of
my fidelity) to the entire ruin of your state. I shall deplore
the calamities of this realm, of which an end will in vain be
hoped for save in the end of the realm itself. But I shall con-
sole myself in my innocence, in my integrity, in my affection
for your majesty and your state, which I would gladly have
saved at my own peril from this shipwreck ; but especially in
God, the protector of my justice and loyalty, who will not
abandon me in my need, nay, will redouble my courage and my
resources against all my enemies, who are yours also." '
It was too late. Three days before the King of Navarre in-
dited his last letter of remonstrance, the terms upon which the
The confer- League would return to its allegiance had been agreed
mo°urs,f jufy upon in a conference between the queen mother, on
7, 1585. tne one s^e? an(j ^3 Cardinals of Bourbon and Guise
and the Dukes of Guise and Mayenne, on the other, held in the
little town of Nemours. From this circumstance the royal or-
dinance in which the results of the conference were legally set
forth, although signed and published in Paris, on the eighteenth
of July, 1585, has come down in history under the designation
of " the Edict of Nemours."
In this fatal decree, fruitful source of misery and bloodshed,
Henry was made to declare, by way of preamble, that the
J
'• Henry of Navarre to Henry III., Nerac, July 9, 1585, Memoires de la
Ligue, i. 192-5 ; Memoires de Duplessis Mornay, iii. 141-5, etc. ; De Thou, vi.
484.
1585. THE EDICT OF NEMOURS. 345
method of mildness which he had been trying had proved as
ineffectual for the restoration of unity in religion and of a stable
peace among his subjects, as the previous method of war and
The intoier- force ; wherefore he recognized that, if human fore-
Nemour6,of sight is feeble in all matters, especially is it so in every-
juiy is, 1585. thing that concerns religion. The cardinal prescrip-
tions of the edict were the following : That there should hence-
forth be no exercise of the " new so-called Reformed religion "
in France, on pain of death and confiscation of property ; that
all preceding edicts of pacification be abrogated ; that all Prot-
estant ministers leave the kingdom within one month after the
pubKcation of this law ; that all adherents of the " new " religion
either embrace the Roman Catholic religion before the expira-
tion of six months or leave the kingdom ; that all offices and
dignities be taken away from Protestants, the " chambres mi-
parties " and " tri-parties " be abolished, and the cities of secu-
rity be restored to the king. The edict forbade, however, any
resort to violence. It forgave the members of the League all
their recent acts of hostility, for the reason that those acts had
been the fruits of their zeal and affection for the maintenance
of the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion. It prescribed
that the present law should not only be published everywhere,
but be indorsed by the solemn oath of all classes of royal offi-
cers and judges. The proscriptive ordinance was to be " a
thing firm and stable forever," and, in unconscious irony, this
latest of enactments in the rapid succession of the contradictory
legislation of France was styled — as its predecessors had been
styled — " a perpetual and irrevocable edict." '
The Guises and their confederates of the Le?.gue had received
plenary pardon and absolution from the king in his public edict,
and all their deeds of verv questionable piety and
The conduct , " * r J
of the Guises pretty distinct treason had been "avowed" and set
approved. j • i
down in the category of praiseworthy acts of zeal for
the Roman Catholic faith. It was very convenient for conspir-
ators of such known selfishness to appear in the eyes of the
1 The text of the Edict of Nemours is given in the Memoires de Nevers, i.
689-692.
346 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. V.
world as the most disinterested of patriots and as paragons of
Christian self-abnegation ; there was, therefore, no provision
for any material advantage to be derived from the persecution
inaugurated against the Protestants — at least in the document
intended for the public eye. But forgiveness was not precisely
what the heads of the League wanted, and substantial fruits
would certainly give great zest to the victory just obtained,
practical ad- These fruits were secured in the protocol which had
cu?edgby the keen signed by Catharine de Medici and the Guises
League. ^ Nemours eleven days before. Each of the princes
who, a brief month earlier, had closed their " requeste " by of-
fering the king to resign into his hands all the offices and dignities
conferred upon them by him or his predecessors and to retire
into private life, content with the consciousness of having con-
tributed to an excellent work for France, now took good care to
stipulate for a fresh accession of power and military protection.
Cardinal Bourbon was to receive the City of Soissons for his
security and a hundred men, horse and foot, as his body-guard.
To Guise fell not less than four towns — Verdun, Toul, Saint
Dizier, and Chalons ; to Mayenne, Dijon and Beaune ; to Au-
male, Saint Esprit de Hue ; and so on through the list. More-
over, the king assumed the payment of the sums expended by
the heads of the League in bringing into France foreign troops
to assist them (these sums amounted to two hundred thousand
crowns), and released them from the obligation of restoring the
sums they had taken from the general receipts of the kingdom,
amounting to over one hundred thousand crowns more.1 It
was poor comfort to the king that these princes and noble-
men who had complained so bitterly of the detention of the
The Guises cities of ref uge by the Huguenots and were now so
Leaguesceand reacbT to demand cities for themselves, faithfully
associations, promised to restore these cities to the king in five
years.2 True, the signataries pledged themselves at the same
time to give up all leagues and associations within or without
1 Recueil des choses memorables, 615.
2 • ' Articles accordez a Nemours, au nom du Roi, par la Roine sa mere, aveo
les Princes et Seigneurs de la Ligue, en presence du Due de Lorraine." Me*
moires de Nevers, i. 686-9.
i085. THE EDICT OF NEMOURS. 347
the kingdom, if they had entered into any ; ' but the one en-
gagement was as honestly assumed as the other. The sequel
proved, at least, that no member of the League ever voluntarily
surrendered a single city which he could by any means retain,
and that the intrigues of Guise and his friends with each other,
and of Guise, in behalf of all, with the King of Spain and his
agents and governors in the Netherlands and elsewhere were
pursued without intermission and with no apparent qualms of
conscience.
On the eighteenth of July, the king proceeded in person to
the " Palais," to enjoin upon the Parliament of Paris to enter up-
on its registers the new ordinance. " My uncle," said
ders the par- he to Cardinal Bourbon, who joyfully accompanied
liament to ' J J J r^
register the him on this welcome errand, " against my conscience,
but very willingly, have I heretofore come to this
place to publish the edicts of pacification, because they were to
conduce to the relief of my people. JNow, I am about to pub-
lish the edict revoking them, and, in so doing, I shall act in ac-
cordance with my conscience, but contrary to my will, inas-
much as upon the publication of it depends the ruin of my
state and people."3 Meantime of external manifestations of
approval there was no lack. In the assembly of learned and
prudent judges, it is true that more than one dared to raise his
voice in fruitless opposition to an instrument which at one
stroke completely changed the relations of a very important
part of the population of France in the eyes of the law, and
converted a religion until now tolerated, if not protected, into
a proscribed faith.3 But the populace, thoughtless of the con-
1 " Et outre ce se sont departis et departent des a present de toutes ligues
et associations dedans et dehors le royaunie, si aucunesy en ont." Ibid., ubi
supra.
8 Lestoile, i. 187 ; Letters d'Estienne Pasquier (Ed. of Lyons, 1607), fols.
423, 424.
3 In the remonstrance which was offered, three months later, to the royal
declaration of October 7, and to which attention will be given in the next
chapter, the judges say : " S'il eust pleu a Dieu que les raisons qui furent
discourues en vostre presence sur la publication de l'Edict de Juillet passe,
eussent peu penetrer jusques a l'aureille de la patience et bonne affection que
348 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARhE. Ch. V.
sequences, and dreaming little of the torrents of blood which
were to flow, as well in Paris as in the provinces, greeted the
monarch on his return from the chambers of parliament with
loud cries of " Vive le roi ! " — cries to which his ears had not
been of late much accustomed. Henry of Yalois, on his part,
succeeded tolerably well in dissembling. The day of sweet re-
venge would some time come. For the present he was content
with having compelled the judges to come to the solemn
pageant of the registry of the Edict of ^Nemours dressed, con-
trary to custom, in red gowns. It was no crazy man's freak.
An act destined to be productive of the butchery of so many in-
nocent men, women, and children could most appropriately be
performed in clothing of the color of blood. Those were not
mistaken who interpreted the royal command as an evil omen,
and as indicative of settled animosity against the persons who
had constrained the king to embrace a distasteful policy.1
vostre Majeste avoit accoustumee de reserver a la voix de ceste compagnie,
nous ne serious maintenant en ceste extremite." Memoires de la Ligue, i. 245.
1 "Memoire trouve entre ceux de Monsieur de Nevers," Memoires de
Nevers, i. 639.
PROSCRIPTION OF THE HUGUENOTS. 349
CHAPTER VI.
PROSCRIPTION OF THE HUGUENOTS, AND EXCOMMUNICATION OF
HENRY OF NAVARRE.
The repeal of the Edicts of Pacification was no child's play.
Even should the Huguenots ultimately succeed in securing a re-
a difficult newal of these laws, or in extorting from the enemy the
fronts the°n" recognition of at least a part of their just claims, it
Huguenots. cou\^ not ke l10ped that the goal of their desires would
be reached without a protracted and bloody struggle. " If the
king has consented to the revocation of our edict," Henry of
Navarre exclaimed, on hearing a rumor of the approaching
catastrophe, "he has certainly given us enough work to do for
the rest of our lives." ' However fully the Bearnais and his
fellow Huguenots may have endeavored to prepare themselves
for the impending blow, the news of the actual surrender of the
French king to the exorbitant demands of the League produced
a marvellous effect upon them. The story that, in the single
night succeeding the announcement, the hair of the valiant
King of Navarre turned half white, may not be sufficiently at-
tested to claim our belief ; but there is no doubt that the tidings
appeared so terrible as to demand instantaneous action on his
part.
Happily the Huguenots were not destitute of powerful sym-
pathy even within the kingdom. Their former ally, Henry of
Montmorency, now completely reconciled, in view of the com-
mon danger threatening all true Frenchmen, had been more than
once consulted during the past few weeks. Now a more formal
conference took place between him and the King of Navarre, on
the confines of their respective provinces of Languedoc and
1 "Qui seroit bien nous tailler de la besogne pour le reste de nos vies.''
Henry of Navarre to Segur, June 10, 1585, Lettres missives, ii. 75.
350 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. VI.
Guyenne, in the little town of Saint Paul de Cade-jours.1 The
result of their deliberations was given to the world in a " Dec-
laration and Protestation," made in the name of the two
noblemen and of the Prince of Conde, " respecting the peace
made with the members of the House of Lorraine, heads and
principal authors of the League, to the prejudice of the House
of France." 2
Whatever uncertainty might attend the arms of the Hugue-
nots in the successive contests in which they were, for more than
thirty years, compelled to take part, no such doubt invested the
exploits of their pens in the discussions to which those con-
tests incidentally gave rise. Here the Protestants, whether
professed theologians or secular diplomatists, rarely failed to
exhibit their remarkable intellectual superiority to the antag-
onists with whom they had to deal.
Never had the good fortune of Henry of Navarre, in pos-
sessing so able an advocate as Duplessis Mornay, been more
conspicuous than upon the present occasion. The
Jointdeclara- x it. . i #• i
tionofNa- document drawn up by him in the name or the asso-
and Mont- ' ciated princes was one of that kind of papers which
opponents generally deem it more prudent to ignore
than attempt to answer. The intrigues of the ambitious family
of Guise, which never could conceive of peace even in the time
of the most profound external peace, wTere passed in review,
from the reign of the second Francis down to the present mo-
ment. The sum and substance of their designs was shown to
be the extinction of the royal House of France, and the appro-
priation of the crown by themselves ; and, as means to this end,
the division of the kingdom, the fostering of troubles, the en-
feebling of the nobles, the abasement of the greatness and au-
1 Saint Paul de Cade-jous. or Cap de Joux, is situated in the modern Depart-
ment of Tarn, three leagues above Lavaur on the river Agout.
'2 " Declaration et protestation du Roi de Navarre, de monseigneur le Prince
de Conde, et de Monsieur le Due de Montmorency, sur la paix faicte avecceux
de la maison de Lorraine, chefs et principaux autheurs de la Ligue, an pre-
judice de la maison de France." Memoiresde la Ligue, i. 201-219 ; Memoires
de Duplessis Mornay, iii. 159-182. See also De Thou, vi. 488, and Recueil
des choses memorables, 616.
1586. PROSCRIPTION OF THE HUGUENOTS. 351
thority of the princes. Meanwhile it was part of their plan to
manage always to retain arms in their own hands for the pur-
pose of gaining new partisans and oppressing their enemies.
The inconsistency and absurdity of the attitude the Guises had
assumed in the present crisis were particularly commented
upon. They spoke of exterminating heresy, whereas the primi-
tive Christians made war upon it by means of councils, and the
King of Navarre offered to submit to a council, and declared
his readiness to be instructed by it, and to acquiesce in its de-
cisions. They demanded certain reforms in the government of
the state, which, according to the ancient statutes of France, must
be referred to the states general ; and the King of Navarre had
proclaimed his willingness to be bound by the result of the de-
liberations of the three orders when convened by his majesty.
They demanded that the King of Navarre and the Huguenots
should give up the cities of security, despite the prolongation
of their term of tenure by express grant of the King of France ;
and the King of Navarre had replied, offering to restore the
cities to his majesty, provided only that the Guises would sur-
render the cities unlawfully seized by them.
The King of Navarre and the Prince of Conde, for them-
selves, declared that they had no intention to interfere with the
Roman Catholic religion or its professors, " having always been
of the opinion that men's consciences ought to be free ; " ' while
as to their own religion, they proclaimed that they were ready
to submit to a council of the church. They therefore invited
all good and true Frenchmen, both ecclesiastics and laymen, to
join their standards, and particularly exhorted all members of
the Roman Catholic Church to take as their guide and example
the Duke of Montmorency, a peer of France and the first officer
of the crown, himself a Roman Catholic, and a nobleman of
known prudence. As for the heads of the League, the three
associated princes held them for the enemies of the king, the
royal house, and the commonwealth, denounced by the king
himself in letters heretofore verified by the parliaments of the
realm. " As such," said Navarre, Conde, and Montmorency,
1 " Ayans tousjours este d'opinion que les consciences devoyent estre libres."
352 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. VI.
" we shall wage war with them to the utmost, and shall ex-
terminate them by all means in our power." '
Nor were these brave words spoken merely for effect. It is
evident that, taking in the gravity of the situation and wearied
secret corre- by tne lengtn °f tne period of uncertainty to which
Bpondenceof ^\1Q malice of their enemies condemned them, the
the King of '
Navarre. King of Navarre, at least, was resolved to invoke the
aid of all Protestant Christendom, and make one supreme effort
for the settlement of the religious dispute in France upon some
fair and equitable basis. In a remarkable letter which has come
down to us, sent on the very day after the publication of the
joint declaration, by Du Pin, secretary of the King of Navarre,
to Segur, who was still acting in his master's behalf in Ger-
many, we have some significant hints. The words are the more
striking because of the extraordinary pains taken to secure
secrecy ; the whole letter being written with sympathetic ink
between the lines of another letter written with ordinary ink.
The secretary, evidently writing at Henry's dictation, first bids
Segur to give no credit to any rumors that may reach him of
the probability that peace may be concluded by deputies sent
by the king, or even by the queen mother coming in person ;
" for," says he, " we are resolved with this blow to put an end
to our toils and to the perfidy of our enemies, and never to lay
down our arms until they shall have been exterminated, and to
conclude no peace save by the advice of the Christian princes
who shall join with us." Thereupon he proceeds to sketch a
1 " Leur feront la guerre a toute outrance et les extermineront par tous
moyens. " To this time belongs a letter of Henry of Navarre to Segur, evi-
dently written after the Edict of Nemours, to which the editor of the Lettres
Missives (ii. 20) has erroneously given the date of March 25, 1585. u Je suys
venu en ce lieu, ou mon cousin, monsieur de Montmorency, m'est venu trou-
ver, pour conferer ensemble de ce qu'il est besoing de faire sur ceste publica-
tion d'un nouveau et cruel edict revocatif de celui de pacification. . . . Ce
qui est cause que mon diet cousin et moy avons prins ensemble une resolution
de nous opposer a eux et de leur courir sus et exterminer, ou les reduire par
la voye des armes, et pour ce faire, appeler a nostre secours tous les princes
chrestiens . . . estant le diet edict une declaration de guerre ouvertement
contre tous ceulx qui font profession de la Religion et couverte contre 1 Estat
et maison de France," etc.
1585. PROSCRIPTION OF THE HUGUENOTS. 353
most decided policy. u They must be induced to embark in
the undertaking as fully as possible, and colonies must be set-
tled in this kingdom of those who shall consent to come, in
order that they may be rewarded and advantaged.1 We shall
have Catholic princes, our relations, to join us. There are many
Catholics, that have perceived the designs of our enemies and
their ambition and false dealings, who will help us. But our
trust is in God, who will bless our labors, and will favor the
justice of our cause." 2
Great at this moment was the contrast between the courts of
the two kinors. In the little court of the Bearnais, barren of
external pomp and poor in money, all was promptness
tweenthe and decision. From Navarre himself down to the
humblest retainer, not a man but was resolved to
win a way to victory though suffering and blood might lie
between. A common danger, impending over all, inspired all
with a courage which was a true presage of ultimate success.
At Paris, bitter hatred glowed beneath the surface, and a slight
accident might at any instant bring the burning embers into
open view. Henry of Valois could scarcely conceal his anger.
A second time he had been compelled to act in a manner dia-
metrically opposed to his purpose and desires. Once — nine
years ago — the Huguenots had forced him to grant them a peace
on conditions which he regarded as insupportable. Now it was
the professed friends of the Roman Catholic Church who had,
in the eyes of the whole world, imposed upon him a war of ex-
termination to be waged against the Huguenots, from which he
looked for no fruits but humiliation or ruin. Were success to
crown the royal arms, what could be expected but that all the
glory should be appropriated by Henry of Guise and his am-
bitious house ; if defeat, what but the complete ruin of the
royal family and the shameful loss of the last vestiges of a once
glorious patrimony ? If the king had never rested until the
1 "II les y fault embarquer le plus qu'on pourra et faire des colonies en ce
royaulme de ceux qui y voudront venir, afin qu'ilz soient recompensez et ac-
commodez."
1 Du Pin to Segur, August 11, 1585, Lettres missives de Henri IV., ii. 116.
Vol. I.— 23
354 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. VL
hateful provisions of the Peace of Monsieur were recalled, it
was certainly unlikely that he would forget the contempt with
which he had been treated by the heads of the Holy League.
Upon the very day on which the secretary of the King of
Navarre recorded the unalterable determination of the Hu-
guenots, once for all to make an end of the perfidy of their
treacherous enemies, and suggested as possible the
The king de- P°° , . . r -^ .
mandsmoney extreme resort to a system or colonization on Jbrench
risians and soil, the King of France invited three or four repre-
sentative men to meet him in the palace of the
Louvre. They were the Prevot des marchands, the principal
municipal officer of Paris, the first and second presidents of
the parliament, the Prevot de Notre Dame, and the Cardinal
of Guise. The cardinal had been specially requested to be
present. The royal guests were not long left in doubt respect-
ing the reason of the summons. Henry began by expressing
to them his great satisfaction with the step he had so recently
taken, by the advice of all his servants, and, in particular, of
those present, in repealing his edict of pacification. If he had
been slow to come to this decision, he confessed it was only
because he had entertained grave doubts whether the present
determination could be carried into effect with any more ease
than the previous attempt of the same kind. Now, however,
seeing himself assisted by so many persons, from whose fidelity
he felt the assurance that they would persevere in the execu-
tion, he rejoiced with them and begged them all to co-operate
with him in devising the best methods of carrying forward to
a happy issue the counsel which they themselves had given
him. He would lay before them his plan and his forces. He
designed to set on foot three armies, one for Guyenne, a second
to retain near himself, and the third to prevent the entrance of
the foreign auxiliaries of the Huguenots, whom, whatever might
be said to the contrary, he knew to be in readiness to march.
It was no time to think of the means of war when one had the
enemy upon one's hands, nor of making peace when one was
the stronger. He reminded them that it would be too late to
cry for peace when the windmills about Paris should be in
flames, and declared that, having accepted the advice of others
1585. PROSCRIPTION OF THE HUGUENOTS. 355
contrary to his own judgment, he intended not to spare him-
self, as he had in fact sufficiently proved already, by stripping
himself almost to his very shirt. Since they had not believed
him in the matter of maintaining the peace, it was only reason-
able that they should help him in maintaining the war. Next,
addressing each of the persons before him, he began with the
first president of parliament, whom he praised for the excel-
lence of the long harangue which he had recently delivered
in favor of the revocation of the edict, and calmly informed
him that, under the extraordinary circumstances in which
France was placed, the judges must expect no payment of their
salaries, as such a thing would be quite out of the question so
long as the war continued. Next the provost was quietly re-
minded that the city of Paris, having exhibited unusual demon-
strations of joy at the repeal, would be expected at once to
furnish two hundred thousand crowns ; and the provost was
commanded to call a meeting of the municipality, on the mor-
row, for the imposition of this sum. The expenses of the war
would, the king calculated, amount to four hundred thousand
crowns monthly. For the first month, he informed Cardinal
Guise, to whom he now turned with an expression indicative of
anger, he proposed to provide with the help of the purses of
private individuals. Hereafter he would look to the clergy to
aid him every month from the resources of the Church. In
taking this course he did not think that he did anything con-
trary to his conscience, nor did he intend to wait for the au-
thorization or consent of the pope. It was the heads of the
clergy that had been most active in pushing him to undertake
this war, and it was necessary that they should bear a part of
the expense. He had no mind to ruin himself alone in its
prosecution.
Here Henry paused to listen to the replies of his guests, who,
as may be imagined, were not slow in offering objections to the
demands made upon the classes they represented. In
The king's
significant the end, the king lost his assumed patience, and, with
observation. ° z. 1 . . .
more frankness than a due regard to policy might
have dictated, exclaimed: "It would, then, have been better to
believe me. I fear much that, in striving to ruin the ' Preche '
356 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. VI.
(meaning Protestantism), we shall greatly imperil the ' Mass.' "
And he added, " It would be better to make peace ; and yet 1
do not know whether the Huguenots will be willing to accept
it when we choose to make the offer." ]
Ordinarily the king was not so imprudent in his expressions,
and seemed resolved to derive the greatest advantage possible
from the position into which he had been forced against
France and his will. " I am resolved in every way," said he, " to
destroy the Huguenots ; else they will have to destroy
me." And the royal determination was strengthened by the papal
nuncio's promises of money to be furnished by his master to help
carry on the war. Not content with this, Sixtus the Fifth had
furnished the League with a brief, absolving the confederates
from the obligation of any oath which they might have taken ;
and it was reported that, by a second brief, sentence of excom-
munication was pronounced upon all persons that favored the
Huguenots, and the offer of plenary indulgence was made to
every man who should give the new enterprise his countenance
and support.2
Although war had now been formally declared, and the
Huguenots were to be destroyed from the face of the earth,
Boyai embassy tne solicitations of the court addressed to the King of
Navarre did not cease. On the twenty-fifth of August
there appeared at Kerac ambassadors from Paris —
Lenoncourt, formerly a favorite of Antoine of Bourbon, Hen-
ry's father, and soon to be made a cardinal by Sixtus the Fifth,
and two or three laymen of good standing and repute. The
arguments they offered and the replies of the Bearnais need
not here be recorded. They were much the same as those that
1 "II s'escria, 'II eust doncques mieulx valu me croire. J'ay grand peur
qu'en voulant perdre le Presclie nous ne hazardions fort la Messe ' ; adjoustant,
1 II vaudroit mieux faire la paix ; encores ne scay-je s'ils la voudront recepvoir
a nostre heure. ' " Harangue du roy f aicte a Messieurs de Paris, l'onziesme
d'Aoust mil cinq cents quatre vingts cinq, in Memoires de la Ligue, i. 219-21.
See, also, Recueil des choses memorables, 616, 617, and De Thou, vi. (book
81) 489-91.
'2 Letter of Busini, September 30, 1585, Negociations avec la Toscane, iv
594.
to seek Na
Carre's con
-version.
1585. PROSCRIPTION OF THE HUGUENOTS. 357
had come from the lips of Roman Catholics and Huguenots
respectively at previous junctures, and were likely to be repeated
in future as occasion might require. There was the same pro-
fuse assurance of the singular good-will of Henry of Yalois
toward his cousin of Navarre, and the same anxiety that the
latter should remove all obstacles in the way of the re-establish-
ment of peace by becoming a Roman Catholic. On the other
hand, there were declarations of the usual kind to the effect that
it would be unseemly in Henry of Navarre to abandon the
Reformed religion, in which he had been born and brought up,
and for the defence of which so much time had been consumed,
so much blood freely poured out, without having as yet learned
that he was in error on any point. Coupled with this assertion
came also the customary assurance of the prince that he would
always, in matters concerning his conscience, place in the back-
ground all considerations of honor, wealth, or possible favor
which the world might hold in prospect ; but that, nevertheless,
he was ready to have his errors pointed out to him and
uen to submit to submit to a free council of the Church. However,
to a Council. . 1 . . _ „
when the envoys asked for a suspension or rrotestant
worship during the six months covered by the prescriptions
of the royal edict, and requested that the cities of security
be given up and the foreign troops of the Huguenots be
countermanded, they met with a distinct refusal. The King
of Navarre said that he neither could nor would dampen the
ardor of the good friends who, at a time of his so great need,
had hastened to his assistance. Among other things, the
deputies brought an offer on the part of the queen mother to
meet the King of Navarre for a conference at Champigny
in Touraine, and meanwhile to have the royal armies re-
called to the northern bank of the Loire ; but the Huguenot
prince fell in with Catharine's proposal only so far as to
consent to come to Bergerac. Doubtless he deemed it, in
the circumstances, the part of prudence to make no unneces-
sary venture ; Catharine de' Medici could better afford to come
one hundred and fifty miles farther in her litter, old and
racked writh gout though she was, than could Heniy of Navarre
leave the safer confines of Guyenne and put the broad prov-
558 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. VI.
inces of Poitou and Angoumois between him and his place of
Tetreat.1
Precisely the same attitude did the King of [Navarre assume
in his more private communications with those who begged him
from motives of prudence, and certainly much more sincerely,
to avoid impending ruin by reconciliation with Home. When
Navarre's proposals of this kind were made to him by the Duke
S?5Se% °^ Montpensier — a prince whose father eight years
Montpensier. Defore was a principal cause of the temporary failure
of the proscriptive policy indorsed by the first states general of
Blois, and who himself now showed great disinclination to lead a
royal army against the southern Protestants — Henry of Navarre
answered courteously but firmly. He instructed his envoy to tell
the duke that a king who believed everything contained in the
Old and New Testaments, and held the primitive faith as enunci-
ated by the first four general councils, besides professing will-
ingness to receive instruction from a free and general council
to be held in the future, was no heretic, and that any papal ex-
communication that might be fulminated against him would be
a direct violation of the liberties of the Gallican Church. Hav-
ing imbibed the Reformed religion with his mother's milk, and
professing that religion in conformity with the established laws
of the realm, it would be good and honorable neither for him-
self, nor for his friends and relatives, nor for the king's subjects,
that he should lightly renounce it, whether from hope, or from
fear and constraint. He therefore pronounced the true object
of the League and conspiracy of the present year to be, not the
promotion of religion, but the overturning of the state and the
usurpation of the crown, or, to say the very least, the appro-
priation of the greater part of the French dominions.2 •
1 "Propositions des deputez du Roy, envoyez au Roy de Navarre, avec la
responce de leur legation," in Memoires de la Ligue, i. 233-5 ; De Thou, vi.
491-3. — Champigny, not far from Chinon, in the present Department of Indre
et Loire, is not over a dozen miles south of the river Loire ; Bergerac, in the
Department of Dordogne, is in the same latitude as Bordeaux, and ahout
sixty miles east of that port.
'2 Despatch of the King of Navarre to M. de Pechere, his ambassador to the
Duke of Montpensier, Lectoure, October 30, 1585, published for the first time
1585. PROSCRIPTION OF THE HUGUENOTS. 359
It is time, however, that we should turn to the conspirators
whose persistent efforts to involve in war a kingdom that had
enjoyed a brief respite from the horrors of carnage and desolat-
ing hostilities had at length been crowned with success. It
will be remembered that the Guises and their associated nobles
had pledged themselves to the king, in the secret articles of
Nemours, thenceforth to renounce any leagues or associations,
either within or without the realm, into which they might have
entered.1 It is worth while to notice how far these champions
of orthodoxy and paragons of Catholic virtue observed their
promise, or, indeed, intended from the beginning to observe it.
Not a moment did Henry of Guise desist from his disloyal
intercourse with Philip the Second, carried on through the in-
intrigues of strumentality of Bernardino de Mendoza, resident am-
S? spSSh bassador at Paris. Not for a single instant did he
ambassador. dream 0f suspending the operation of a compact that
recognized his relation as that of a stipendiary of the King of
Spain. Upon the very day on which Lenoncourt was endeavor-
ing to influence the Bearnais to renounce his religion, the Duke
of Guise was inditing a letter to the Spanish ambassador. His
object was to convey a piece of news and to proffer a request.
The news was stated in these words : " I have written a de-
spatch to Home to Cardinal Pelleve and Father Claude (Mat-
thieu) to solicit with diligence the completion of the trial,
already far advanced, of the Prince of Beam" — so these pa-
triotic Frenchmen always studiously designated the King of
Navarre in their correspondence with the Spaniard — "as a re-
lapsed heretic, and his proscription. It is a thing that is of
marvellous importance for the continuation of our designs, to
complete what we have begun for the extermination of their
religion and to prevent the designs of a deceitful peace." " The
in the Bulletin de la Societe de Phistoire du Protestantisme francais, i. 153,
154.
1 See above, chapter v., p. 346.
2 "Chose qui imports merveilleusement pour continuer noz desseings, pour
mectre a fin ce que nous avons commence pour l'exterminacion de leur reli-
gion," etc.
360 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. VI.
request was for fifty thousand crowns to be sent in all haste to
the " Princess of Beam " — Margaret of Yalois — who was ex-
Margaretof pected to attract the war into Gascony and thus add
SI'S the ^° *ne perplexities of the unfortunate brother-in-law
League. 0f fi1Q King 0f France.1 This last device seemed too
promising to be lost sight of ; so thought Guise, x^ccording-
ly, three weeks later, he wrote to Philip the Second himself,
extolling the prowess of Margaret, who, from the very com-
mencement of the troubles, had joined the League, with a good-
ly number of gentlemen, and had opposed her husband's plans.
It was this peculiar position of the princess, in the very midst
of the " heretics," which had suggested to Guise, so he said, the
plan of pursuing, under cover of her name, the realization of
the original designs of the League. He had therefore, until
now, borne all the expense, with the help of his associates,
hoping that his majesty the King of Spain would deign to
carry into execution the plan laid down in his last instructions
to Juan Baptista de Tassis.2 Happily, however, for the Hugue-
nots of Guyenne and for the quiet of Margaret's husband,
Philip the Second, or his ministers imitating his illustrious ex-
ample, displayed so much of the wonted Spanish dilatoriness
that the princess found herself bereft of men and of money,
and was compelled to retreat from Agen. In fact, in their im-
patience to get rid of her, the sturdy burghers came near
throwing her over the walls. Thereupon great was the grief
of Gnise and his associates, for now Guyenne was left to the
mercy of " those of the religion " who could boast that there
was no one within the bounds of the province to check any of
their enterprises.3 Meantime, Guise did not neglect to remind
his correspondents of the immense burden of indebtedness un-
der which he and his friends were groaning. The levy and
support of three thousand reiters, three thousand lansquenets,
1 Mucius (Henry of Guise) to Bernardino de Mendoza, Chalons, August 25,
1585, apud De Croze, i. 349, 350.
2 Mucius to Philip II., September 14, 1585, De Croze, i. 350, 351.
3 Mucius to Mendoza, Chalons, October 17, 1585, De Croze, i. 360 ; Lestoile,
October, 1585, i. 191.
1585. PROSCRIPTION OF THE HUGUENOTS. 3G1
and eight thousand Swiss, in addition to an army of thirty-
five or forty thousand French troops, had entailed an expendi-
ture of more than nine hundred thousand crowns. There
was no hope that any part of this vast sum would ever be re-
imbursed ; or if repaid, the time would be so distant that the
interest alone would consume the whole payment.1
As time passed, and Guise heard nothing more of the publi-
cation of the proposed brief or bull against Henry of Navarre
Guise impa- — ^he brief had, however, been published, although
exc^mmuiK tne tidings °f tne glad event had not reached the
He?" o°ffNa- C^J °^ Rheims, where the duke was — he became
varre. more and more impatient. He wrote to Mendoza on
the first of October, begging that Philip the Second should use
his influence with Sixtus to have " the Prince of Beam " and
his sister, together with the Prince of Conde, pronounced " here-
tics, relapsed persons, incapable and unworthy of possessing any
lands, with excommunication of those who might favor or treat
with them," and indulgence promised to all who, in order to ex-
terminate them, should attack them or contribute funds for the
purpose.2 By this brilliant stroke of policy all hope of re-
conciliation with the heretic was to be removed. All Roman
Catholics wTould be deterred from entering into the service of a
prince excommunicated by the head of their Church, and be
constrained, through fear of incurring ecclesiastical censures, to
wage war upon him. Then, in case the King of France should
be so ill-advised as to repeal the late edict against the heretics,
in contempt of the pope's declaration, there would be just oc-
casion given for openly taking up arms to resist him. Then,
too, Philip the Second would, it was hoped, help in the extinc-
tion of heresy, and indemnify himself for the trouble and ex-
pense by seizing what little remained of the former kingdom of
Navarre. So did Guise purpose that the troubles of France
should contribute to the aggrandizement of Spain, and that
Philip should gain a footing on the northern slope of the Pyr-
enees.3
1 Mucius to Mendoza, September 14, 1585, De Croze, i. 352, 353.
2 De Croze, i. 357. 3 Ibid., i. 358.
362 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. VI.
To the success of these designs but one thing more was neces-
sary : the Duke of Montmorency must, if possible, be detached
from the party of the Huguenots, where he did not
Alliance with r J & ' , .
Montmorency belong; and be converted from a friend into an enemy
essential to .. ,c ,, . »
the success of or his old associate, the King or JNavarre. Hence, it
happened that the Guises, ancestral and natural rivals
and foes of the house of the great constable, suddenly appear
playing a new part, and actually pleading the cause of him
whose greatness they had for years been attempting to pull
down. Lest a more direct effort to gain Montmorency over
should arouse suspicion, we find Henry of Guise, in his secret
correspondence with the Spanish ambassador, entreating that
worthy to induce his master, the Duke of Savoy, and the pope
to unite in bringing about this much-desired consummation.
Philip's activity was, apparently, to be limited to a strenuous
effort to persuade Sixtus and Charles Emmanuel to intercede
with Henry of Yalois to make such generous concessions to
Montmorency that the marshal would renounce the alliance
with the Huguenots. As for Philip, it was probably deemed
more prudent that his hand in the proceedings should not be
perceived.1 On this plan Guise counted much. With Mont-
morency on the side of the League, its leaders " would be strong
enough to give the law to others," and could prevent any other
road than the right one from being taken against heresy. That
road they would pursue to the end in spite of everybody. They
would never permit any enterprise to be undertaken against the
lands of any Catholic prince, and especially against any posses-
sion of his Catholic Majesty the King of Spain. " From him,"
significantly remarked Guise, " we should receive our com-
mands, and we should cause them to be executed." 2 Mean-
time, while awaiting the results of the pope's expected advocacy'
of Montmorency's interests, Guise was determined that nothing
1 Mucius to Mendoza, Rheims, October 1, 1585, in De Croze, i. 358.
■ M Et ne permettrions que Ton entreprist jamais chose contre aulcun cato-
lique, mesmement portant toute seurete qu'on ne oseroit regarder rien qui fust
au roy catolique, duquel nous recevrions le commandement et le ferions ex-
ecuter." Mucius to Mendoza, November 28, 1585, De Croze, i. 365, 366.
1585. PROSCRIPTION OF THE HUGUENOTS. 363
should be done by himself or by any other member of the Lor-
raine family that might imbitter the mind of the marshal.
Toward the close of the year the king gave orders to
Guise bids _ . . __. \ , °1°
Mayenne the Duke ot Mayenne to proceed at once against
avoid attack- , . . ,-, -r, T
mg Montmo- Montmorency s possessions in southern ± ranee. Let
it not be supposed for an instant that any junior mem-
ber of the family ever felt at liberty to obey the king, especially
in so important a matter, without consulting or receiving in-
structions from its head and leading spirit. " You have been
notified," the Duke of Guise wrote to Mendoza, " that the king
sent word to my brother to be pleased to take up his journey
without delay toward Languedoc. This was the reason that in
all diligence I despatched this courier to him, in order that he
might not in anywise, or whatever command were given him,
accept this charge, so that he should not offend Marshal Mont-
morency. At once, if possible, he is to sit down before some
place in Guyenne, so as not to lose time ; and then he is to in-
vent objections based upon the difficulty of obtaining provisions,
the season of the year, the strongholds, the roads — in short, on
all the impediments experienced by those previously sent in that
direction. While these difficulties are alleged, we shall, if pos-
sible, slip into Auxonne. Then Mayenne will demand his conge
outright, and he will certainly not go to Languedoc. Of that
you may assure the King of Spain, and his Highness the Prince
of Parma." l
Here again the sluggishness of Philip the Second would
seem to have been the best ally of Henry of Navarre and the
Huguenots. Not an inch would that prudent mon-
spainpro- arch move without due deliberation, and, happily for
those against wThose peace he was daily conspiring,
events did not tarry for his delay. Guise might repeat his peti-
tion to Mendoza, week after week, month after month, till the
duke's patience was quite exhausted, and his appeal became
almost pathetic. He had begged " so often " ! A year had
1 "Puis tout a plat il demandera son conge, et certainement il n'y ira, de
quoy vous pouvez advertir Sa Majeste et Son Altesse." Mucius to Mendoza,
Chalons, November 15, 1585, De Croze, i. 362, 363.
364 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. VI
passed since the matter was first proposed and agreed upon.
He had until now prevented his brother from attacking Mont-
morency, upon the assurances which he had received that the
Duke of Savoy, by means of his Catholic Majesty, would induce
the marshal to make common cause with the League and the
Catholic party. It was out of respect for this understanding
that Mayenne had delayed his approach to the city of Toulouse,
foreseeing that this would involve some encounter with the
marshal. But, as ill-luck would have it, he had not yet heard
that the slightest thing had been done. The King of Spain
had left the whole matter to the Duke of Savoy, the latter had
procrastinated, and there it had ended. Not a point of Guise's
just requests had been provided for, and so the danger was
great, not only for him, but for all Christendom. At last came
news that other powerful allies had thrown in their lot with the
King of Navarre, and now Montmorency, with this new acces-
sion of strength, would be able " infinitely to traverse all the
affairs " of the League.1
Meantime the marshal himself showed no symptoms of any
disposition to abandon his allies, and it is quite possible that his
constancy might have stood the test of all the temptations which
the united ingenuity of the pope, the King of Spain, and the
Duke of Savoy, reinforced by the cunning of the Guises, could
have brought to bear upon him. Be this as it may, the " Pro-
protestation testation " which he sent forth in his individual name
Mo^tm?al was as decided in tone as any Huguenot could have
rency. wished it to be. The marshal therein strengthened
his own position as an advocate of religious toleration by quot-
ing the death-bed counsel of his late father, Anne de Mont-
morency. The constable, in the vigor of health, and at the be-
ginning of the civil wars, had certainly been no friend of the
Huguenots, and it had fared ill with such of them as had the
misfortune to fall into his hands. But we have his son's word
for it that, after the fatal wound received in the battle of Saint
Denis, he gave Charles the Ninth and his mother the sound ad-
1 " Peult infiniment traverser noz afayres." See letters of Mucius to Men-
doza, January 29, and February 3, 1586, in De Croze, i. 368-371.
1585. PROSCRIPTION OF THE HUGUENOTS. 365
vice to compose existing troubles by a peace between the two
religions, while awaiting the convocation of a council of the
Church ; and that he tersely expressed his sentiments upon the
subject by the remark, which may well have come from his lips,
" that the shortest follies are the best, and an end must be put
to them as quickly as possible." ' In view of the disasters re-
sulting from the conspiracy of the foreign family of Lorraine,
who, failing in their object, the seizure of the king's person,
had brought into France troops paid by the King of Spain, and
reduced Henry to such perplexity that they had wrung from
him a peace deplorable to all good subjects of the realm, by
which war was diverted from rebels and directed against obe-
dient servants of the monarch — Montmorency demanded that
a council should be called, and declared his own intention to
maintain by force of arms the Edict of 1577, as being the
expression of the king's own will, and to hold the authors
of its pretended revocation to be enemies of the public tran-
quillity.2
The importunity of the Guises at last proved successful at
Koine. Sixtus the Fifth was brought to the decisive measure
of hurling the Church's thunderbolt at the devoted head of
Henry of Navarre. The pontiff had not ceased to
The pope still J r
opposes the watch with deep interest the progress or the conflict
of the King of France and the League, and had ex-
pressed great satisfaction when an apparent reconciliation was
effected between the parties. His only fear seemed to be that
trouble might again break out, and the Very Christian King
be compelled by the very perversity of the champions of ortho-
doxy to make an arrangement with the King of Navarre and
the Prince of Conde ; as a consequence of which France would
be deluged with Lutherans and Calvinists. He therefore
1 ' ' Qui conseilla tres bien a leurs majestes, au lict mesmes de la mort, et
mourant toutesfois des fruicts de ceste guerre, de composer ces troubles par
une paix des deux relligions, attendant ung Concile, en ces mots, que les plus
courtes folies estoient les meilleures, et qu'il estoit necessaire d'y mettre tost
une fin.''
2 " Protestation de M. le due de Montmorency," in Memoires de Duplessis
Mornay, iii. 186-196.
366 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. VI.
begged the heads of the League to join Henry of Valois in
good faith, and help him to devise plans for the extermination
of heresy. " I have had some experience in affairs," said Sixtus,
" and I think that I can see clearly enough into the future to
make a bold but true prophecy : the Huguenot will never be
undone till the League shall have been." Whereupon his holi-
ness broke down in tears over the prospective misfortunes of
that kingdom which was the flower of Christendom — tears
which his politic hearer took good care to accompany with
some show of emotion of his own.1 None the less did the
lachrymose pontiff pour out the vials of his wrath unsparingly
on the Huguenot Prince of Navarre.
The bull from which Henry of Guise looked for such excel-
lent results for the cause of Roman Catholicism in France was
dated the ninth of September. It began with a clear and un-
mistakable enunciation of the rights of the Holy See.
Sixtus ex- __ . . o • -r» -i -i •
communicates lhe authority given to feaint i eter and his successors
the King of by the infinite power of the Eternal King surpasses
all the powers of earthly kings and princes, and the
Holy See being founded upon the firm rock, and being never
shaken by any winds or storms, whether adverse or favorable,
it pronounces irrevocable decisions and judgments. With all
diligence does it watch over the observance of the divine laws,
and, when it finds any persons contravening the ordinance of
God, punishes them with grievous punishment, depriving them,
however great they may be, of their seats, and casting them
down as ministers of Satan. Such was the arrogant preamble ;
after which Sixtus proceeded to state that, in the discharge of
the care that had been confided to him over all churches and
nations, it became his duty to purge Christendom, and in par-
ticular the flourishing realm of France, of wicked and detesta-
ble monsters, and to restore peace to a country whose monarchs,
by their great piety and signal good services to the Roman
Church, had justly earned the title of Yery Christian. In or-
der, therefore, never to be accused before God of contempt of
1 The Duke of Nevers to the Cardinal of Bourbon, Rome, August 20, 1585,
Memoires de Nevers, i. 672, 673.
1585. EXCOMMUNICATION OF HENRY OF NAVARRE. 367
duty, the pope declared himself to be constrained to use the
arms of his warfare, which were not carnal, and proceeded not
from him, but from Almighty God, for the overthrow of the
power of the enemy, chiefly against two children of wrath —
against Henry, of Bourbon, formerly King of Navarre, and
against Henry also of Bourbon, formerly Prince of Conde.
Next were given in considerable detail the misdeeds of the two
cousins, especial emphasis being laid upon their conversion
from the heresy in which they were brought up to the true
faith, and upon their more recent apostasy, with all the hostile
acts since perpetrated by them. The conclusion of the whole
matter was that Pope Sixtus pronounced the King of Navarre
and the Prince of Conde to be relapsed heretics, guilty of
treason against heaven, and therefore to have forfeited all their
goods, honors, and dignities, and to be incapable, themselves
and their posterity, of succeeding to any principality or king-
dom, especially to the kingdom of France. The subjects of
the King of Navarre were pronounced to be absolved from their
oaths of allegiance, and the King of France was enjoined to
fulfil the engagement publicly taken at his coronation, and to
labor to carry into effect the present just sentence, as a deed
agreeable to God and a means of cancelling his obligations to
mother Holy Church. Twenty -five cardinals appended their
signatures, below the signature of the pope, to the terrible
document which was to annihilate the leaders of the Huguenot
party in France.1
The pretensions first put forth by Gregory the Seventh, and
more vigorously and successfully asserted by Innocent the Third,
were never more distinctly enunciated. But, for some
munication reason or other, the thunderbolt did not vindicate its
indignation traditional effectiveness. Neither the Bourbons, at
whom it was aimed, nor the adherents of the Roman
Catholic Church in France, who were expected to prostrate
themselves in fear at the mighty sound of the apostolic artil-
1 The bull may be found, in the French garb under which it was circulated
in France, in the Memo-ires de la Ligue, i. 236-242, and Cimber et Danjou,
Archives curieuses, xi. 47-55, with the title: "La declaration de Nostre
368 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Cii. VI.
lery, were seriously disturbed. In fact, the day of terror seemed
to have passed away, and fear of priestly excommunication to
have given place to indignation at priestly assumption. Henry
of Yalois, it is true, felt obliged to use moderation and hide his
displeasure when the papal nuncio requested an audience, and
placed in his hands the bull of excommunication, with the re-
quest that he should publish it and see to its execution. But
the moment the prelate had left the room, Henry scoffingly
exclaimed to his courtiers as they stood about him : " It seems
that the pope would like to have me act as his provost marshal
in France ! " '
As for Henry of Navarre, that cheerful prince made little of
the pope's impotent threats, but thought it not amiss to turn
the whole affair into ridicule. Under his name, and
N3V9.TT6 Ctl3,l-
lenges sixtus doubtless with his consent, a pungent reply was put
to appear be- _ . . . ." f A. ° « " •■ -f
fore a general forth, and not only put forth, but actually carried to
Rome, and as sedulously posted in all the public
places of the eternal city as the pontifical excommunication had
been. From the mutilated statue of Pasquin and elsewhere,
the astonished ecclesiastics of Rome read the sentences in which
Henry, by the grace of God King of Navarre and Sovereign
Prince of Beam, appealed from the bull, as abusive, to the
Court of Peers of France, of whom he had the honor to be the
first, and maintained that Mr. Sixtus, styling himself pope
(saving his holiness), had falsely and maliciously lied, and was
himself a heretic. This statement, the placard went on to say,
the king was ready to prove in a free and lawfully assembled
council of the Church, to which, if Sixtus refused to submit, he
denounced him as Antichrist. Meantime, he would proceed
Sainct Pere le Pape Sixtus cinquiesme, a l'encontre de Henry de Bourbon,
soy disant Roy de Navarre, et Henry semblablement de Bourbon pretendu
Prince de Conde, heretiques, contre leurs posteritez et successeurs : par
laquelle tous leurs sujects sont declarez absous de tous serments qu'ils leur
auroyent jure, faict ou promis." See also Recueil des choses memorables,
617-620, and De Thou, vi. 514-516.
' " Subito clie detto nunzio si parti, dicono che Sua Maesta dicesse : ' II
Papa vuole pare ch' io serva per suo prevosto in Francia.' " Letter of Busini,
October 29, 1585, Negociations avec la Toscane, iv. 594.
1386. EXCOMMUNICATION OF HENRY OF NAVARRE. 369
against him, in vindication of the honor of his house, as occa-
sion might offer, and would show himself not inferior to the
princes and kings, his predecessors, who had known full well
how to chastise the insolence of such gallants as this pretended
Pope Sixtus. For this end he called to his aid all Christian
princes and communities against the usurpation of the pope
and the conspirators of the League inimical to God, to the
king, and to the general peace of Christendom.1
Pope Sixtus, who always appreciated a brave action, made,
indeed, a strict but useless search for the persons who had had
the audacity to bring the King of Navarre's cartel ; but, failing
in this, ever after expressed warm admiration for the prince
who had challenged him to combat in the sight of the whole
wrorld. He used to say that he knew but two persons — a man
and a woman — who, apart from religion, deserved the throne,
and to whom he felt inclined to confide his own great designs ;
and that man and that woman were Henry of Navarre and
Elizabeth of England.2
Other pens than that of Lestoile busied themselves in holding
up to the light of day the absurdities of Sixtus's bull, and, in
particular, the " Brutum Fulmen " of Francis Hot-
Hotman's x i-ii i in ■,..-,.
"Brutum man added to the author s popularity in his own age,
Fulmen." r r * °
and to his celebrity in ages to come.3 For the pur-
poses of the present history, however, it is important only to
notice the calm and dignified attitude assumed by the Parlia-
ment of Paris.
About the same time that the papal bull was received in
France the king signed a second edict or declaration respecting
the Huguenots, at the dictation of the League. In the edict of
1 u Coppie de l'Opposition faite par le Roy de Navarre et Monseigneur le
Prince de Conde, contre l'Excommunication du Pape Sixte cinquiesme, a luy
envoyee et affichee par les cantons de la ville de Rome." Posted in Rome,
November 6, 1585. Memoires de la Ligue, i. 268, 269 ; Cimber et Danjou,
Archives curieuses, xi. 59-61 ; Lestoile, i. 190, who claims to have composed
the reply : " fait par l'aucteur des presens memoires "
2 De Thou, vi. 521.
3 Bayle, in his dictionary, has corrected the misapprehensions to which De
Thous statements respecting the " Brutum Fulmen " have given rise.
Vol. I.— 24
370 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. VI.
July — the so-called Edict of Nemours— the term of six months
had been set within which all Protestants were commanded
^ either to become Roman Catholics or to leave the
Royal declare- ,
ti°nof October kingdom. It now appeared that, instead of employ-
ing the time of grace for the purpose intended, many
of the Huguenots had availed themselves of the opportunity to
take the field or to render assistance to their companions in
arms. For this reason the king declared the property of such
persons to be forfeited to the state treasury, and ordered the
proceeds of its sale to be applied exclusively to the maintenance
of the present war. Moreover, he diminished the time for
which unoffending Protestants were suffered to remain in
France, from six months to fifteen days.1
To the king's new edict, and to the papal bull which the
monarch sent to them for registry, the parliament made reply
Theremon- m a remonstrance creditable alike to the intelligence
parliament116 and to the conscience of the judges. They confessed
of Paris. tjiat tiiey iia(j |jttie }10pej jn vjew 0f their late ill
success, of securing a favorable hearing from his majesty ; but
they must discharge their duty, and with the more boldness, as
they saw the license displayed by the enemies of the state to take
advantage of the king's piety and devotion in order to cover
their own impiety and rebellion. If the king had listened to
their remonstrances, made on occasion of the Edict of July, he
would have recognized the fact that the designs of the League
tended only to disunion among his subjects, and that, however
great and redoubtable its forces, in view of the ills they inflicted
on the people, past experience taught that they were too weak
a forcible to accomplish their purpose. Even could they accom-
erty of 'con- plish it, his majesty ought not to make use of them,
inasmuch as the crime which he wished to punish is
fixed in the consciences of men. Now, man's conscience is
beyond the power of chains and of fire, and can be reached by
1 "Declaration du Roy sur son Edict du mois de Juillet dernier, touchant
la Reunion de tous ses sujectz a l'Eglise Catholique, Apostolique et Romaine,"
October 7, 1585. Memoires de la Ligue. i. 251-6. The example of France
was followed by the Duke of Lorraine, who also commanded all Huguenots to
1585. EXCOMMUNICATION OF HENRY OF NAVARRE. 371
other means more befitting a king's affection for his subjects.1
Kings are but shepherds, edicts are but the staff wherewith they
guide the flock. The name of edict scarcely belongs to a bloody
proscription decreeing in express terms the massacre of the flock,
and the consequent destruction of the shepherd's authority.
" Were the entire Huguenot party reduced to a single person,
there is not among us one judge," said parliament, " that would
dare to render a sentence of death against it, unless its solemn
trial had first been held. And, therefore, were it not duly at-
tainted and convicted of a capital and enormous crime, in con-
demning the malefactor we should lament the loss of a good
citizen. Who, then, shall dare, without any form of justice
whatsoever, to depopulate so many cities, destroy so many pro-
The crime of vmces? and convert this entire kingdom into a tomb ?
proscription. Who shall dare to utter the word that is to expose so
many millions of men, women, and children to death, and that,
too, without apparent cause or reason ; seeing that no crime is
imputed to them save heresy, heresy as yet unknown, or, at
least, undecided, heresy which they have sustained in your
presence, against the most famous theologians of your king-
dom, in which they have been born and brought up for the
past thirty years by permission of your majesty and of the late
king, your brother of happy memory, and which they refer to
the judgment of a council, general or national."
What affection for the king's service can those entertain,
what loyalty to an old and decrepit state, who draw from it the
little of strength and vigor which remains, by so excessive a
bleeding, that those who perform the operation will run the
risk of being themselves drowned ? Thirty or forty thousand
Huguenots, fighting in defence of their lives and of everything
most dear to them, cannot be routed, but as many Catholics be
left on the field. Who will venture to promise himself the
leave his dominions within a fortnight. Mucius to Mendoza, Chalons, No-
vember 18, 1585, De Croze, i. 363.
1 " Le crime que vous voulez chastier est attache aux consciences lesqnelles
sont exemptes de la puissance du fer et du feu, et se peuvent manier par
autres moyens plus convenables a l'affection paternelle que vostre peuple a
tousjours trouvee en vous."
372 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Cu. VI.
victory after so wholesale a destruction as may be expected ;
or, rather, what will be left for Pestilence and for Famine,
which even now dispute with War the honor of effecting the
final ruin of his majesty's realm?
From the royal edict, parliament turned to the consideration
of the papal bull, the style of which was so novel, so far re-
pariiament's moved from the modesty of former popes, that the
the^apaf judges failed in any way to recognize the voice of a
bulL successor of the Apostles. And inasmuch as they
found neither from their registers nor from past history that
the provinces of France had ever been subject to the jurisdic-
tion of the pope, or that subjects had the right to take cognizance
of the religion of their princes, parliament refused to deliberate
respecting this document " until the pope " said they, " shall
first have shown upon what rights he bases his claim to transfer
kingdoms established and ordered of God before the name of
' pope ' was known in the world — until he shall have told us on
what ground he meddles with the succession of a prince, young
and vigorous, from whom offspring may naturally be looked
for — until he shall have informed us with what show of justice
or equity he refuses the common rights of man to persons ac-
cused of heresy — until he shall have taught us with what sort
of piety and holiness he gives away what does not belong to
him, takes from his neighbor what is lawfully his, incites
vassals and subjects to rebellion against their lords and sover-
eign princes, and overthrows the foundations of all justice and
political order.
u Inasmuch," added the judges, " as the new pope, instead of
instruction, breathes in his bull nothing but destruction, and
changes his pastoral crook into a frightful torch to serve for
the entire ruin of those whom he ought to lead back to the
fold of the Church, if they have strayed from it, the court
cannot further deliberate respecting the publication of a bull of
such a kind, so pernicious to the interests of all Christendom
and the sovereignty of your crown. For it judges from this
moment that the bull deserves no other reward than that
which one of your predecessors made us give to a similar bull
which a predecessor of this pope had sent to him, namely, to
15S5. EXCOMMUNICATION OF HENRY OF NAVARRE. 373
throw it into the fire in the presence of the whole Gallican
Church, while enjoining your ' procureur-general ' to make dili-
gent search for those who had urged the issue of it in the court
of Rome, for the purpose of inflicting such good and speedy
justice as should serve as an example to all future generations."
The judges therefore begged the king not to require them
to promulgate the bull of Pope Sixtus, and brought their re-
monstrance to a close with this suggestion : " It is therefore more
expedient for your majesty to be without a court of parliament
than to see it so useless as we now are ; and it is also far more
honorable for us to retire into private life in our houses and
weep over the public calamities in common with our fellow-
citizens, than to bring the dignity of your charges into slavery
to the mischievous inventions of the enemies of your crown." a
• These were brave words, worthy of the best days of the
Parliament of Paris, when Seguier, and Anne du Bourg, and
others like them, sat upon the benches in the "palais de
justice." But unfortunately the patriotic chancellor Michel
de l'Hospital no longer stood near the throne, to repel with
righteous indignation all attempts of the papacy to usurp
powers which the Gallican Church had always denied to it. So
it has happened that, whereas the bull of Pius the Fourth,
threatening Jeanne d'Albret with excommunication and de-
position, was, through very shame, dropped from the pontifical
constitutions and has left no trace of its existence, the document
hurled by Sixtus the Fifth against the son of Jeanne has been
audaciously permitted to occupy a place among the authoritative
declarations of the Church of Rome.2
Yet the discontent with the pope's action was almost universal.
Even the queen-mother was outspoken in condemnation. It
does not indeed appear that she sent word to Sixtus,
Displeasure -iii t-». t r 1
of Catharine as she had to Pius, twenty-two vears beiore, "that
de' Medici. . . ., ,.,..,. ". , ,
he had no authority and jurisdiction over those who
bear the title of king or of queen, and that it was not for
him to give their states and kingdoms as a prey to the first con-
1 "Remonstrance au Roy par la Cour de Parlement," in Memoires de la
Ligue, i. 244-250.
2 See the just remarks of De Thou, vi (book 82) 519, 520.
374 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Cn. VL
queror." ' But none the less was she vexed and astonished that
her relative, the Cardinal de' Medici, had consented to sign the
obnoxious document.2 In the end some decisive steps were taken
The inte to suPPress tne Du^ and prevent its circulation among
of the bun the people. It was forbidden to print it : and, greatlv
imprisoned. it r -r ' '
to the disgust of the nuncio and the League, one
adventurous man who had contravened the order was promptly
thrown into prison.3
Meanwhile the Huguenots had not been inactive. To the
Edict of Nemours and the Declaration of October Henry of Na-
varre answered by a Declaration of his own, wherein,
Henry of Na- , J ' '
varre re- after rehearsing the motives that had induced him
tahates. . in
to wait so long before a resort to arms, he ordered
that all the goods and chattels belonging to the inhabitants of
cities or towns in which the proscriptive edict and declaration
had been published, should be seized and sold to the highest
bidder.4 War had broken out in good earnest, and the West had
witnessed some successes for the Protestant arms. Most notable,
however, was the enterprise of Angers, the romantic history of
which seems to carry one back to the days of mediaeval knight-
hood, while the perils with which it was accompanied nearly in-
volved the death of a prince, next to Henry of Navarre, most
essential to the Protestant cause.
The important city of Angers, situated upon the river Maine,
about two miles below the spot where that stream is formed by
the confluence of the Sarthe and the Mayenne, and five miles
The castie of aDove tne place where, having run its short course,
Angers. i\ie ]\£aine empties into the Loire, was the former
capital of the dukes of Anjou. The city extended to a small
island, and there was a considerable quarter on the right bank ;
but the larger part was built upon the left or eastern side of
1 Catharine de' Medici to Bochetel, December 13, 1563, Le Laboureur, i. 783.
See Rise of the Huguenots, ii. 143.
■ Letter of Busini, November 12, 1585, Negociations avec la Toscane, iv. 599.
3 Letter of Busini, November 25, 1585, ibid., iv. 600.
4 ' k Declaration du Boy de Navarre sur les moyens qu'on doibt tenir pour la
saisie des biens des fauteurs de la Ligue et leurs adherens." Bergerac, No-
vember 30, 1585. ; Memoires de la Ligue, i. 298-300.
1585. ENTERPRISE OF ANGERS. 375
the Maine. Here, on a commanding elevation, overlooking the
surrounding country and frowning upon the humbler homes of
the burghers, stood a massive castle, long the residence and
safe retreat of the princes of the Angevine line. It was a
gloomy pile in the shape of a vast parallelogram. The walls,
strengthened at intervals by eighteen formidable round towers
jutting out from the general work, rose full one hundred feet
in height above the neighboring Maine, built of solid slate, of
which the blackness was rather intensified than relieved bv con-
trast with layers of a lighter stone running like ribbons around
the entire building. The castle was protected by a moat cut
out of the solid rock, thirty-five feet in depth and nearly thrice
as broad as deep. The original builder was unknown. There
were those that made it to be the happy thought of a queen of
Sicily who had it constructed in the absence and without the
knowledge of her husband. Others ascribed it to the English.
Moderns affirm that it was begun in the reign of Philip Au-
gustus and completed in that of his grandson, Louis the
Ninth. Whoever the builders may have been, however, it was
certain that they did their task well. Though often besieged,
the Castle of Angers had never been captured, and was justly
deemed, so far as force was concerned, quite impregnable.
Ample provision had been made against treacherous surprise.
There was but a single entrance to the keep, and this was so
well guarded, that, what with successive gates and draw-bridges,
the stealthy admission of an enemy might well have seemed
impossible.1
During the lifetime of Francis of Anjou, the king's brother,
his favorite Bussy d' Amboise had been intrusted with the guard
of Angers, and had placed one Captain Du Halot in command
a plot to sur- of the castle. Brissac, an undisguised partisan of
prise it. the League, who had succeeded Bussy d' Amboise,
upon the death of the duke, had dismissed Du Halot and given
the post to one Captain Grec. Du Halot was not the only
officer whose enmity Brissac had gained. A second captain,
1 Jodocus Sinoerus, writing about thirty years after the events here de-
scribed (the dedication of his " Itinerarium Gallias" is dated July 15, 1616),
376 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Cn. VI.
Fresne, had served under his colors so long as the League was
in open war with the king, but had been ignominiously turned
adrift as soon as the Edict of Nemours was signed. Both Du
Halot and Fresne swore that they would be revenged. It was
under these circumstances that the two Roman Catholics met,
in the neighboring town of Beaufort, a Huguenot soldier of the
same grade, who happened to have come north of the Loire
with a few men of the same religion, under command of one of
Henry of Navarre's followers, a Protestant nobleman named
M. de Clermont. The three agreed to make a common attempt
to seize the Castle of Angers ; yet each had his own ulterior
views. Du Halot intended, so he said, to hand over the castle
when gained to the king, from whom he maintained that he
had a commission. Fresne would have used the possession of
the castle to secure better terms from the League. Both be-
lieved that after taking advantage of what help in men the
Huguenot Rochemorte might bring them, it would be an easy
matter to get rid of him, should he prove a troublesome asso-
ciate. The joint plot was speedily executed. Captain Fresne,
who was on terms of intimacy with the commander of the small
garrison of scarce a dozen men, called upon him one day and
was hospitably invited to remain and dine with him. When he
pretended to excuse himself on the ground that he had asked
some friends of his own to dinner, Captain Grec urged him to
return to his house and bring them with him. Fresne desired
no better pretext, and came back in company with his fellow-
conspirators, attended by some of the Huguenot soldiers of
Rochemorte. The first guards met had been gained over and
easily let them pass, and when the second body of guards de-
murred at the entrance of so many armed men, the pretended
guests fell upon them and killed them. Fresne himself stabbed
his unfortunate host, when the latter came to the door of his
room to ascertain the cause of the uproar. In a word, almost
before the occupants were aware that they were threatened, the
says. p. 106: 'kIn arcem exteris facilior est aditus quam indigenis. Trans-
eundse aliquot portse et pontes antequam intus sis. Cumque unum pontem
superaris, ilium elevant atque egressum obserant, antequam ulterius intromit-
taris."
1585. ENTERPRISE OF ANGERS. 377
castle was taken. Meanwhile, however, Du Halot, intoxicated
by success, at the very moment when he might have safely shut
himself in with his companions, was so ill advised as to turn
aside into the town in order to try to get the citizens to espouse
his side as against the League ; but instead of persuading them
he was himself taken prisoner. Toward evening the towns-
men proposed a parley, and Du Halot was put forward to en-
tice the enemy into their hands. Under cover of the gathering
darkness, a body of thirty or forty arquebusiers had been posted
near the grating, to seize the person of Fresne when he should
come to the conference, or make themselves masters of the
draw-bridge before there should be an opportunity to raise it.
The imprudent discharge of one of the arquebuses gave prema-
ture warning of the plot, and the entrance was instantly closed.
Unhappily there was not time for Fresne himself to retreat
before the bridge had risen. In his despair he caught the
chains, but the enemy promptly using their swords cut off his
hands and he fell defenceless into the dry moat. Here a deer,
kept by the city for the amusement of the people, inflicted such
wounds upon him with its horns that he soon died. Du Halot
also was now executed. By a singular series of events one of
the strongest castles in France, in a region altogether Roman
Catholic, had come into the hands of a follower of the
The castle in T;r . _ __ TT _ .
Huguenot King or JNavarre. Unfortunately he had but seven
Huguenots with him, out of a total garrison of six-
teen men all told ; and the King of Navarre was far away in
Southern France. The nearest Huguenot general, the Prince
of Conde, then occupied with the siege of the seaport of
Brouage, was not less than one hundred miles distant.
The tidings were speedily carried to all the Boman Catholic
generals on the north of the Loire, and troops gathered from
every quarter. More tardily the news reached Conde,
Cond6ad- . n . -. , <• i i n
vancesto who, at nrst incredulous of the truth of so strange an
incident, was led by bad advice to come too slowly to
the rescue.1 The expedition, in truth, was sufficiently hazardous,
1 According to Agrippa d'Aubigne (ii. 442, 443), who was at first to command
the expedition for the relief of Rochemorte and the Huguenot handful in
378 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Cn. VI
for the Huguenots held not an inch of ground north of the
Loire, outside of the castle of Angers ; if, indeed, venturesome
Rochemorte perchance still held out against such odds. And
the Loire was a dangerous river, first to cross, and still more to
have between one's self and one's companions in arms. Still
Conde pushed forward with a force of seven or eight hundred
horse and ten or twelve hundred foot, and at Les Hosiers, be-
tween Saumur and Angers, effected a crossing to the northern
bank. But when he reached the neighborhood of Angers, and
skirmished even in the suburbs of the place, he found that he
had come too late. Iso friendly signal was held forth from the
castle, in answer to the clarion's inspiriting notes. Weeks had
elapsed, and Kochemorte had been compelled at length to
surrender to the enemy, in sheer despair of receiving any
reinforcement or provisions from his brethren in the faith.
And now the question pressed upon Conde and his army, How
should they extricate themselves from the net into which they
had been so eager to plunge ? Laval, indeed, and a
escape of ms part of the troops were so fortunate as to cross safely
again to the southern bank of the Loire at the same
place where Conde had a few days before been ferried over the
river ; but before the remainder of the army could follow their
example, two large covered boats made their appearance, laden
with cannon and armed men, and it was deemed too foolhardy
an undertaking to brave this fresh danger. While, therefore,
Laval pressed on southward toward Poitou, the prince was com-
pelled to turn in the opposite direction, and, leaving his peril-
ous position in the contracted tongue of land between the Loire
and the Authion, to make his way to the Loire, which he crossed
with difficulty at Le Lude. But an advance in this direction
was not promising. In front fipernon, Biron, and other nobles
from the court, and troops of horse and regiments of foot, were
coming to meet the Huguenots, and had proceeded as far as
Bonneval, midway from Paris. From Orleans came the alarm-
ing news that the Duke of Mayenne had crossed the Loire at
the castle of Angers, the prince made a fatal delay of eleven days before leav-
ing Brouage.
1585. ENTERPRISE OF ANGERS. 379
that point with fifteen hundred reiters and French horse, ready
to cut off the retreat of Conde should he succeed in reaching
the southern bank. Lest, however, he should have the oppor-
tunity to do so, La Chastre had seen to it that the Hugue-
nots should find no bridge, boat, or mill to serve their purpose.
The Duke of Joyeuse was behind the Huguenots. In every
direction the towns and villages were on the lookout, ready at
the first sound of the tocsin, to meet and aid in harassing them.
Under these discouraging circumstances, the prince was
spared the necessity of choice between the desperate alterna-
tive of making a stand against a far larger number of the
enemy, and permitting his army to break up into small bodies,
each of which should seek safety as best it could. The H ugue-
nots had quietly adopted the latter course of their own accord,
and nothing remained but to acquiesce in their decision. It
speaks well for the valor of these heroes of many past engage-
ments that their very name had spread such consternation
among their foes that none seemed anxious to come near
enough to watch their movements very closely. And so with
a uniformity which would scarcely be credited but for the un-
impeachable evidence by which it is sustained, the Huguenots,
although by the most various routes, succeeded, with scarcely
the loss of a man by the way, in reaching some point of safety.
The Duke of Rohan escaped to his great domains in Brittany,
and was out of danger among his ancestral retainers. The
Prince of Conde managed to reach the shores of the English
Channel, whence he sailed to the island of Guernsey, and soon
after accepted the hospitality of Queen Elizabeth of England.
Some of the minor chiefs owed their salvation to boldness and
the unexpected paths they chose. Thus Agrippa d'Aubigne,
with a band of thirty Protestant horsemen, first struck boldly
far in the direction of the capital, then suddenly turned, and,
reaching the Loire at Saint Die, between Blois and Beaugency,
succeeded, almost against hope, in crossing. Next following
the course of the river Cher for twenty-five leagues to Saint
Florent, in the neighborhood of Bourges, the little company,
although much farther from Brouage than when they first
started from the walls of Angers, easily made their way to the
380 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Cn. VI.
sea. Other captains rescued their followers by almost equally
circuitous routes, and met with adventures not less romantic.
The safe deliverance of the whole of Conde's army has scarcely
a parallel in history.1
The failure and dispersion of Conde's army thus proved less
serious in their consequences than might have been apprehended.
In fact, the Huguenots were probably better off than they would
have been had they succeeded in throwing themselves into the
castle of Angers and thus obtaining a foothold on the north of
the Loire ; since, but for the return of Laval to Saint Jean
d'Angely, the Protestants of the provinces of Aunis and
Saintonge would scarcely have had a competent leader or suf-
ficient troops to ward off the attacks of the enemy. There was
another respect, however, in which the result was less favorable
to the cause for which they were fighting. Exaggerated reports,
for some time left uncontradicted, magnified disappointment
into disaster, and timid men, already a prey to extreme fear,
could hardly be expected to look for the speedy reassembling
of the prince's army apparently scattered to the four winds of
heaven.
Bravely as had the King of Navarre and his followers en-
tered upon the war, strong as was the confidence they expressed
General dis- °^ ultimately achieving success, with the blessing of
ofthegement Heaven ever vouchsafed to oppressed innocence, the
Huguenots, autumn of the year of grace 1585 was certainly one
of the darkest hours of their history. In the prospect before
them there were few gleams of light. The most hopeful of
1 For the history of the enterprise of Angers see the detailed account en-
titled '"Discours du premier passage de Monsieur le Due de Mercure (Mer-
coeur) au bas Poictou, de sa deroute et fuitte. Du siege de Brouage par
Monseigneur le Prince de Conde et de son voyage d' Angers," reprinted in
Memoires de la Ligue, ii. 1-53. Also, the admirable narrative in the Recueil
des choses memorables, G28-638 ; De Thou, vi. (book 82) 523-536 ; Agrippa
d'Aubigne, who was not only an eye-witness, but an active participant, ii.
440-452. Busini, who had no love for the Huguenots, in his letter of Novem-
ber 4, 1585, expresses admiration of Conde's boldness, and repeats a remark
ascribed to the prince when remonstrated with : "I poltroni non mi segui-
ranno, come so fara che ara cuore." Negociations avec la Toscane, iv. 595.
Busbecq, in his letter of November 15, 1585 (fol. 97 verso), is less accurate in
r>oo. THE HUGUENOTS PROSCRIBED. 381
Huguenots could scarcely regard as extravagant the statement
of their leader, already referred to, that their enemies had, by
the infamous compact of Nemours, prepared them enough
trouble to last an entire lifetime. Protestantism had often
before been threatened with annihilation ; but never had the
plan been so calmly and resolutely laid, never had its projectors
adopted such precautions against the possibility that the king's
determination might give way, never before had his majesty been
so distinctly warned that an attempt to make peace with or to
spare heretics would infallibly cost him his crown. No wonder
that dejection fell like a pall upon great numbers of the Protes-
tants And now when, in the very first months of the war, came
tidings, false though they subsequently proved, of the complete
destruction of Conde's army, even those seemed for the moment
dazed who until now had retained full possession of their senses.
Their opponents took good care not to let the opportunity pass
by unimproved. Many of them believed that the hopes of
Protestantism were buried in the same grave with its most
daring champion.1 Nothing was therefore spared to hasten the
return of the Huguenots to the Romish Church. The king's
second edict " of reunion," shortening the term within which
all Protestants must either abjure or leave the kingdom, from
six months to a fortnight, and menacing all that refused with
dire punishment, came in good time to add to the general dis-
may.
Jesuit preachers, parish priests, and monks thundered from
every pulpit and every confessional in France against the Cal-
vinistic heretics. If they failed to persuade the Protestant to
abjure, they either excited the people to attack them or pressed
the civil magistrates, already more than usually inclined to rigor-
ous measures against the Huguenots, to pursue them with the full
describing Conde's movements, but adds an interesting rumor that the king
had ordered the destruction of the castle of Angers
1 "La fureur se renflamma par tout xiniversellement contre ceux de la
Religion : car ceux du party contraire estimans Monsieur le Prince perdu
(pource qu'on fut un fort long temps sans scavoir qu'il estoit devenu),
jugeoient que la foy et esperance de tous ceux de la Religion estoit aussi
avec luy ensevelie. " Memoires de la Ligue. ii. 174, 175.
3S2 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. VL
terrors of the law. Men and women who had, on some previous
occasion, apostatized from the Protestant faith, and persons sus-
pected of favoring that faith, were naturally distinguished for
the persecuting zeal which they exhibited, and whereby they
strove to prove their unimpeachable orthodoxy. To the threats
and malicious exertions of enemies were added the more insid-
ious and powerful suggestions of friends and relatives, of parents
and children, of brothers and sisters, all reinforcing the natural
instinct for self-preservation, and urging weak believers to the
cowardly but profitable step of submission to the authority of
a hated ecclesiastical system. Such is the picture of the deplor-
able state and of the mental conflict of great numbers of the
Protestants of France drawn by a contemporary writer.1 That
it is a faithful delineation, neither distorted by exaggeration nor
disfigured by excess of color, appears from the con-
A great num- ° J , \ r.r
ber of apos- iirmatory representations of Agnppa d Aubigne, who
assures us that the terror inspired by the proscriptive
edicts of Henry the Third drove three times as many Hugue-
nots to mass as the massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Day had
driven.3
Happily for the future of Protestantism in France, the timid
and wavering did not constitute the majority, nor, in fact, any-
thing but a comparatively unimportant part of those upon
whom the King of Navarre and the Prince of Conde relied.
Not to speak of the Huguenots who, while remaining in their
homes and exposed both to the assaults of hatred and the se-
Fiightinto ductions of friendship, successfully resisted the most
foreign lands, strenuous efforts to move them from their religious
convictions, there were many that early deemed it the part
of prudence to seek some safe refuge. Entire families tem-
porarily forsook their native land. From the north era prov-
inces Huguenots fled in great numbers to the principality of
Sedan or to contiguous parts of Protestant Germany. To the
1 Memoires de la Ligue, ii. 175.
2 " Ce coup non attendu, et bien tost redouble par un second Edit qui ac-
courcissoit les termes de moitie, donna un tel effroi par toutes les parts du
Royaume, qu'il fit aller a la messe trois fois plus de Refformez que n'avoit fait
la journee de S. Barthelemi." Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. 484.
1585. HUGUENOT DISCOURAGEMENT. oS3
inhabitants of the east, Switzerland, as usual, threw wide open
its hospitable doors. The Huguenots of the western seaboard
either pressed into La Rochelle and Saint Jean d'Angely or,
taking ship, passed over into England, to swell the already con-
siderable colony of French Protestant refugees that worshipped,
according to their accustomed rites, in the chapel in Thread-
needle Street, London, given to them by Edward the Sixth,
or with the Walloons in the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral.1
Dieppe, in Normandy, being specially favored by its situation
on the British Channel, within a few hours' sail of the southern
shores of England, witnessed the exodus of nearly its entire Prot-
estant population. Its Huguenot church, with the pastors, Car-
tault and de Licques, passed over almost in a body to Pye, in
Sussex, where it resumed its interrupted services, and main-
tained its worship until the advent of better times permitted a
return to France. Other Norman Huguenots, including some
from Dieppe, founded a new French Protestant church at Win-
chelsea, a few miles from Eye, with M. de la Touche as pastor.
It was a characteristic circumstance that the refugees from
Dieppe did not forget their fellow-believers who had remained
behind — even those wTho, to save their property, had been so
weak as to go to mass — but in the famine that visited France
in 1586, sent them not only grain, but even bread straight from
their ovens in a strange land.2 Nor were the Huguenot fugitives
treated with harshness untempered by humanity, even in some
The Huguenots quarters where little kindness was to be anticipated,
in savoy. About the middle of November, the Duke of Savoy,
having learned that divers French Protestants had come to
the city of Nice, with the intention of settling there or in the
vicinity, felt compelled to refuse them permission to remain,
1 See Ch. Weiss, Histoire des Refugies protestants, i. 257-265.
2 See the interesting account given in the Histoire de la Reformation a
Dieppe, par Guillaume et Jean Daval, first published by the Societe Rouen-
naise de Bibliophiles (Rouen, 1878), i. 135, 136. The editor has erroneously
read Winchester instead of Winchelsea. A glance at the map would have
shown him that the description, " distante de la Rye d'environ deux mille,"
would hardly apply to the city of Winchester, which is not far from one hun-
dred miles distant in a straight line.
3S4 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. VI.
but accompanied his refusal with kindly instructions. " Our
council of state," wrote the duke to the governor, " has learned
that his majesty the King of France has ordered the adherents
of the new religion to leave his realm. We know, moreover,
that some of them have crossed the borders and are preparing
to sojourn in our states. It seems proper for me to give you
some directions on this score. I desire you to see them, and to
tell them quietly, with all gentleness and modesty, that, for very
grave reasons, and through motives worthy of respect, we can-
not allow them to remain long in our dominions. They must
leave in three days ; but we command that not only they be
subjected to no annoyances while crossing our lands, but be
treated with all favor and receive all convenient help by the
way. You will see to the faithful execution of these instruc-
tions, in so far as concerns you, and thus doing will have our
approval." '
Meanwhile the clergy did not neglect the advantage which
the wide-spread fear of the Protestants put into their hands.
The king was induced to resort to measures more and
of Protestants more decided. A new order, issued just before Christ-
mas, strictly enjoined upon all bailiffs and seneschals
throughout the kingdom to draw up a general roll of the Prot-
estants within their respective jurisdictions. On this roll five
classes were to be carefully distinguished : all persons, of what-
ever profession, at present in arms against his majesty ; all that,
having borne arms, had consented to submit and be converted ;
all who had retired from France in obedience to the edict ;
such as had remained in their homes and had declared their
intention to live in a Catholic fashion ; and, lastly, such as
stayed at home but still persisted in their old opinions. Against
the first and last of these classes the procedure by confiscation
of property was laid down with great precision, while as for
those who professed a willingness to embrace the Roman Catho-
lic religion, it was declared that their abjuration of Protestant-
ism must be made, not before simple curates who had no power
1 Charles Emmanuel to the Count of Boglio, November 13, 1585, French
translation given by Gaberel, Histoire de l'Eglise de Geneve, i. 483, 484.
1585. HUGUENOT DISCOURAGEMENT. 3S5
to grant them absolution, but solely before bishops, archbishops,
or their vicars.1 The king's proclamation was industriously cir-
culated in every part of France, accompanied by episcopal re-
scripts and formulas of abjuration.
The authors and instruments of religious persecution can
never rid themselves of one formidable difficulty. The human
intellect is proof against violence ; it will yield only to per-
suasion. Men may be forced to make a profession of faith, but
it is always at the risk and often with the certainty of trans-
forming them into hypocrites. Between the ardent desire to
gain proselytes and the honest dread of multiplying insincere
members of their communion, conscientious persecutors have
frequently found themselves involved in hopeless embarrass*
ment.
Such a dilemma confronted the bishops of France, and vainly
did they strive to escape it. " We have been duly informed,"
says Bishop Buse, of Angers, in his preamble, " that certain
perplexity of Pers01is oi our diocese, following the new opinions of
catiuJuT11 tne heretics of our times, and being unwilling to ab-
bishopa. jnre m their souls, nevertheless intend to avail them-
selves of the king's edict, and, contrary to his majesty's inten-
tion, to profess with the mouth, and not from the heart, the
articles proposed by our holy Mother the Catholic, Apostolic,
and Boman Church, reserving for themselves in their assemblies
this excuse, that they conformed to the times, and obeyed the
king's edicts, in order to live in accordance with law. In proof
whereof they employ in their protestations these words, ' since
it is the king's pleasure,' etc., thinking by this means to cover
their professions which are altogether contrary." Thereupon
the bishop declares that such is not his majesty's purpose — his
desire being to invite those that have gone astray to come back
to the right way, not to furnish a mask for hypocrites. The
gift of such holy things as the sacraments of the Church to
false brethren not only redounds to the dishonor of God and is
1 " Reglement que le Roy veut estre observe par les Baillifs et Seneschaux
ou leurs lieutenans, pour 1 execution de Tedict de sa Majeste sur la reunion
de ses sujects a l'Eglise Catholique," etc., Paris, December 23, 1585. Memoires
de la Ligue, i. 301-306.
Vol. L— 26
386 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. VL
expressly forbidden by the Lord, but involves the perdition of
the unworthy recipients, who by lying against the Holy Ghost
incur the curse pronounced upon Ananias and Sapphira.
The confession of faith, which the bishop next laid down as
an indispensable prerequisite for the absolution of the new con-
vert, was certainly comprehensive enough to satisfy the most
a confession scrupulous Roman Catholic, though it might be hard
°osed on cSl- to see wnat precaution it afforded against insincere
verts. profession. In addition to the entire Nicene creed,
it comprehended a distinct recognition of the authority of tra-
dition, of the Church as the sole interpreter of the Holy Script-
ures, of the seven sacraments, of transubstantiation, of purga-
tor}r, of the worship of saints and images, of indulgences, of the
Church of Rome as the mother and mistress of all churches,
of the pope as true successor of Saint Peter and vicar of Jesus
Christ on earth, and of the authority of the Council of Trent.
The whole concluded with a formal rendering of thanks to the
king for his sovereign goodness in granting a term of grace
within which the subscriber might recognize his errors and re-
turn to the good path from which he had gone astray. And
(apparently lest the thanksgiving should be suspected of insin-
cerity) the unfortunate Huguenot was required to make the
following additional guarantee :
" I protest that herein I am not forced nor compelled by the
edict of the king or otherwise, but purely and frankly induced
Additional and brought back by a desire to emerge from the
shicSittee °f error in which I have until now been plunged, and
henceforth to pursue the path which I must follow
for the salvation of my soul. This I protest, with heart as well
as with mouth, praying God that if I dissemble in this matter,
and have aught in my heart but what I have said with my
mouth, He may put forth His vengeance upon me to the ever-
lasting damnation of my soul." '
In so puerile a fashion was the incongruous attempt made to
1 " Maniere de profession de foy que doivent tenir ceux du dioceze d' Angers,
qui se voudront remettre au giron de nostre S. Mere l'Eglise Catolique,
Apostolique, et Romaine. Laquelle maniere a este presque suyvie par tout
le Royaume." Memoires de la Ligue, i. 306-310.
1585. HUGUENOT DISCOURAGEMENT. 387
force the Huguenots to a sincere and voluntary acceptance of
every tenet of the Roman Catholic Church.
That a certain amount of apparent success rewarded the ef-
forts of the clergy, in securing at least an external conformity
pastoral re- witn tne practices of that church, is seen from letters,
monstrances. s^]j preserVed, jn which Protestant pastors strove to
recall to the path of duty the numerous members of their flocks
who had gone astray. Themselves forbidden by the Edict of
Nemours to hold any religious exercises, on pain of death, and
allowed but a single month to leave the kingdom, these faith-
ful ministers had for the most part sought some nearer refuge
than a foreign land would have afforded them. From the sea-
girt walls of La Rochelle or from Saint Jean d'Angely — that
plague-stricken Huguenot city which owed its safety less to its
strength than to the fear entertained by its enemies of the con-
tagion raging within — they raised loud voices of remonstrance,
and exerted themselves strenuously to resist a current of apos-
tasy which, if too strong for the moment to be successfully re-
sisted, was fortunately destined soon to spend its strength.1
It would have been well had weakness and dissension been
confined to the inferior ranks in the Huguenot party. TJnfort-
jeaiousy unately they reached even the leaders, and the King
Hu°ufnohte °^ Navarre and his cousin, the Prince of Conde, be-
leaders. gan to betray symptoms of mutual jealousy. The
courtiers of the Bearnais are said not to have been ashamed to
make the misadventure of Angers a subject for their ill-timed
jesting. Never before had Henry so distinctly shown that sel-
fish motives were more potent with him than religious con-
siderations. To those who saw him from near at hand he
1 See the letter of L. Blachiere to the Church of ISiort and Saint Gelais, from
La Rochelle, December 20, 1585, Memoires de la Ligue, i. 311-323 ; and that
of Jean de l'Espine to the Church of Angers, from Saint Jean d Angely,
February 25, 1586, ibid., i. 323-330. The former writes: " J entens que le
nombre est tres-grand entre vous de ceux qui ont apostate et renonce la veriti
de l'Evangile ;" the latter: "De jour en jour nous navons aucunes nouvelles
de vous sinon que la plus part se revoltent et se departent de la Religion, la-
quelle ils ne peuvent ignorer estre la vraye." Both expressions should proba-
bly be taken with some allowance for the excitement under which the writers
labored.
SS8 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. VI
appeared in an entirely new light. He seemed, said they, to
have forgotten the sufferings of the Huguenots whose defence
against an unjust proscription he had espoused, and prated only
of the necessity of preserving the state and making himself in-
dispensable to the King of France.1 Evidently some of Henry's
most intimate friends began to fear, as the Florentine Cavriana
began to hope, that sooner or later the great Protestant leader
would subordinate his personal predilections in matters of
faith to supposed political exigencies, and would infallibly aban-
don the doctrines which, in his own words, he had imbibed
with his mother's milk, rather than forfeit a possible claim to
the crown of the Yery Christian King. And yet, it must not
be forgotten that the expressions of Huguenot distrust, though
assigned to the period now under investigation, were not re-
corded until long after, at a date subsequent to the formal ab-
juration of 1593, and probably receive a very decided coloring
from events that were yet to come. For the present, if less
inclined to look at the situation in which the Huguenots were
placed from the stand-point of the " consistorial " party, Henry
of Navarre displayed to the world no hesitation in the main-
tenance of the good cause.
Of this the papers he published on the first day of the new
year sufficiently testified. Three were letters addressed re-
Henry of Na- spectively to the three orders of the kingdom ; the
totheCityeof fourth was a letter to the City of Paris in particular.
thethree *° ^n E^ ne &P°^G m tne ^0Ue °^ 0ne Wn0 *S we^ COn-
orders. vinced of the perfect justice of his position and the
unrighteousness of his opponents. In fact, Henry of Valois
had spared him the necessity of much argument on that score,
by his solemn and reiterated declarations to the world, not a
year since, to the effect that the authors of the League were
enemies of the crown and disturbers of the public peace and
tranquillity. After that, it was self-evident that any contrary
declarations of his majesty could only be the result of com-
1 "Joint que le roi de Navarre jouoit un persormage nouveau, ne parlant
plus que de conserver l'Estat, et aiant mis les passions Huguenottes en
crouppe," etc. Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. 453.
1586. HENRY OF NAVARRE'S APPEALS. 389
pulsion or fear. Under these circumstances, Henry adapted
each of his letters with great art to the character and attitude
His appeal to °^ eacn °f tne estates. To the clergy he spoke with
the clergy. mingled kindness and decision. He begged God to
open their eyes to the hypocrisy of the authors of the League,
who had not scrupled to light a fire at the four corners of the
kingdom, nor hesitated to seek private revenge for fancied in-
sults by originating a universal calamity. But he added : " I
do not fear (and God knows it) the evil that may befall me,
either from your money or from their arms. Both the one and
the other have already been employed often enough in vain. I
commiserate the poor, innocent people which suffers almost
alone from these acts of folly. I commiserate even a goodly
number of yourselves, who contribute to the ambition of these
disturbers — you giving of your poverty, they scarce from their
abundance. I bewail chiefly the fault you are all committing,
some from one motive, others from another, who will one day
have to answer to this kingdom and to your native land for the
misery into which you are plunging them." He remonstrated
with the clergy for neglecting the offers he had made in his
declaration, and assured them that the bolts hurled at him by
the pope gave him no solicitude. " It is God," said he, " that
disposes both of kings and of kingdoms, and your predecessors,
who were better Christians and better Frenchmen than the
promoters of this bull, have taught us sufficiently that the popes
have no supervision over this state." The writer did not hold
the entire body of the clergy responsible for the malicious per-
secution set on foot against him, preferring to believe it to be
" the plot of a few persons instigated from abroad, perhaps by
the inspiration of certain Jesuits, the seed of Spain, enemies
of the welfare of this kingdom. May God grant that they be
as prompt in abstaining from mischief in future, as I now feel
myself ready to pardon them." " What remains for me to say,"
added the Bearnais, by way of conclusion, " is this : God has
given me my birth as a Christian prince. I desire the strength-
ening, growth and peace of the Christian religion. We believe
in one God ; we acknowledge one Jesus Christ ; we receive one
and the same Gospel. If in the interpretation of the same
590 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Oh. VI
passages we have differed, I believe that the gentle means
which I proposed might have brought us to an agreement. I
believe the war you are so ardently prosecuting to be unworthy
of Christians, unworthy among Christians, unworthy above all
of those who pretend to be teachers of the Gospel. If war
pleases you so much, if a battle delights you more than a dis-
pute, a sanguinary conspiracy more than a council, I wash my
hands of it. The blood that may be spilled in it be upon your
heads ! I know that the curses of those who will be the suf-
ferers cannot fall upon me ; for my patience, my obedience, and
my reasons are well known. I look for the blessing of God
upon my just defence, "Whom I entreat, gentlemen, to give you
the spirit of peace and union, for the peace of this state and
the union of His church."
There is less necessity that we should pause to examine in
detail the other documents. To the nobles he appealed as men
of honor and as Frenchmen, protesting his love to
strancesad- them all, and a regret, into the poignancy of which
nobles and no stranger could enter, when their blood was shed.
" Do not think, gentlemen, that I fear the authors of
the League. I know what violence can do against me. My
enemies will sooner be weary of assailing me, than I shall be
of defending myself." To the commons, Henry reiterated his
deep sympathy with them, amid the disasters into which they
were hurried against their will. He ridiculed the pretence of
the Leaguers that they sought to lighten financial burdens, and
bring back the taxes to the scale of the time of Louis the
Twelfth.1 He called attention to the circumstance that the
gift of two hundred thousand crowns, or thereabouts, by the
clergy, wTas only a bait offered for the purpose of inducing
France to begin a war in which the poor people would be in-
volved to the amount of millions. Addressing himself to the
City of Paris, he spoke in more confident terms, reminding the
municipal authorities of their recent answer when appealed to
1 There was a touch of quiet sarcasm in the remark which he threw in :
" Et desja, qui leur eust voulu croire, ils se faisoyent surnommer Peres du
158G. HENRY OP NAVARRE'S APPEALS. 391
for money, that these troubles had not arisen through their
advice, and that it was for those who had caused the war, and
not for them, to bear the burden of it. " Such a reply," said
he, " you are not accustomed to make when you think the king's
service or the good of the kingdom to be in question ; for never
have subjects been more generous in this respect than you. It
is the answer you give when you perceive that your money goes,
not for the restoration of the kingdom, as you are told, but for
its ruin ; when you clearly see that your jewels are demanded,
not to furnish the ransom of a King Francis, or his children,
nor of a King John, but in order to extinguish the blood and
posterity of the House of France, and to reduce your king to
slavery and imprisonment." x
Public documents of the kind we have been examining are
chiefly valuable as an index of the prevailing sentiments of
parties ; for, however cogent their reasoning, they are wont
either not to be read at all by the persons whom they should
influence, or to be robbed of their weight by the passions and
prejudices of those who peruse them. Unfortunately the ap-
peals of Henry of Navarre were little heard or heeded amid the
tumult of active warfare.
As yet, however, though there was an abundance of local
conflicts, nothing significant or decisive had been done in
indecisive arms. Navarre was busily seeking recruits for the
warfare. Protestant cause in Germany, whither Clervant,
Segur, Guitry, and Montmarin had been sent, to take advan-
tage of the gathering of Casimir and many of the Protestant
princes and noblemen at Durlach, at the nuptials of the Mar-
grave Ernest of Baden and the daughter of the late elector
palatine.2 Henry of Yalois, indeed, despatched the Duke of
Mayenne in the direction of his namesake of Navarre, but,
what with the impediment of heavy rains and the nameless ter-
1 The four letters, all dated at Montauban, January 1, 1586, are printed in
Memoires de la Ligue, i. 331-342 ; Memoires de Duplessis Mornav, iii- 286,
etc. ; Lettres missives de Henri IV., ii. 165, etc. There can be no doubt that
they were composed by Duplessis Mornay. See Recueil des choses memo-
rabies, 621, and De Thou, vi. 659, etc.
* Mucius to Mendoza, November 28, 1585, De Croze, i. 364.
392 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. VI
rors of the plague, he had as yet no victories to report. The
king had little inclination to trouble himself about the war into
which he had so reluctantly entered. Again foreign ambassa-
dors wrote home that his majesty was wholly given up to his
new ceremonies and to a life of seclusion, so that men feared lest
his health might suffer, and, at any rate, lest he would plunge
into some new sort of hateful superstition.1 Guise, indeed, was
The king's so importunate in his demands that the king had at
many and^ ^ast despatched Schomberg for the levy of eight or
Switzerland. nine thousand " reiters " and six thousand Swiss. As
for the duke himself, his own letters paint a very vivid picture of
his mental perturbation and unrest. Constant were his fears
lest the boon of peace so longed for by bleeding France might
by some mischance be obtained by her ; harrowing his com-
plaints of the disastrous effects of the dilatoriness of the foreign
prince upon whose bounty he was a dependent. Notwithstand-
ing his success in wringing from the king the promise of a
German levy, he was in deep distress in view of what might
happen. Frenchmen pitted against Frenchmen might possibly
remember that one and the same blood coursed in
Guise's anx- -111
iety lest peace their veins, and thereupon stop to consider whether
should ensue. l-ii ■ 1 nit t r
they should engage in the unprofitable work or cut-
ting each other's throats. Such was the dreadful contingency
which the pious duke prayed that heaven might in mercy fore-
fend. " Yet," writes he to the Spanish ambassador, "I do not
cease from fearing lest, the forces of both parties being in the
field, some union may be made, by means of which, coming to
a general peace, which I know is desired above all things, the
whole may be made to fall upon his Catholic Majesty (Philip
the Second), and we be constrained by force to do what we do
not wish to do and never shall do of our own accord." a What
was deplorable was that, had the Spanish king only sent help
1 Letter of Busbecq, December 6, 1585, fol. 99.
2 "Mais pourtant je ne laisse a craindre que les forces des uns et des autres
estans aux champs, il ne se fasse quelque union moyennant laquelle venant a
une paix generale, que je scay que Ton d sire sur toutes choses, on ne fasse
fondre le tout sur le brasde Sa Magesti catholique," etc., Mucius to Mendoza,
November 28, 1585, De Croze, i. 364.
1586. PROSCRIPTION OP THE HUGUENOTS. 393
in time, and as he was asked to do, there would have been no
cause of solicitude. Instead of which, the prudent Philip per-
mitted four whole months — and we know not how much more
— to pass without vouchsafing an answer to the imploring call
of his good friends in France, and the League was at its wits'
end to discover upon what it could hereafter count.1
It was not long after this time that Henry of Guise resolved
to visit Paris, with the view of strengthening the power of the
Theduke'sen- League over the populace of that seditious city. His
try into Paris. entry resembled a triumph. Great was the desire of
the Parisians to see the nobleman who, forsooth, had become
the principal champion of orthodoxy, and had forced the Very
Christian King to engage in the work of destroying heresy.
Crowds of men, women, and children flocked to the street
through which he was to come, and on his appearance greeted
him with loud acclamations. The duke's hat was in his hand
almost all the while from the moment he entered the gate
until he reached his stately mansion. The nobles looked on
with little satisfaction at this popular demonstration, while the
judges could scarcely disguise their want of sympathy. fc They
perceive," wrote an observing stranger, " that this infamous
League is ruinous to France, and that, under the pretext of the
propagation of the Catholic faith, every man is seeking to sat-
isfy his greedy desires." Once within the walls of the capital,
Guise betrayed unmistakable signs of the anxiety preying upon
him. He went about with a body-guard of nearly two hundred
men. The cheerful and contented looks he formerly wore had
disappeared from his countenance. It was remarked that, al-
though he was only thirty-five years of age, the front part of
his hair had turned altogether white. " I know not what has
caused it to change," says our informant ; " whether it be mental
regret for the offence he has done to his king, or annoyance at
not having succeeded in the accomplishment of all his designs, or,
possibly, he may be meditating some new revolution." Mean-
while Catharine de' Medici was profuse in her demonstrations
of favor. She could not have lavished more caresses upon him
1 Mucius to Tassis, December 31, 1585, De Croze, i. 366, 367.
394 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. VI
had he been her son ; in fact, she assured him that she loved
him as much as if he had been her own offspring. It was the
current impression that this extraordinary kindness was proof
positive that the queen mother had been Guise's accomplice in
his conspiracy against Henry of Yalois. The physician Cavri-
ana — who, as a compatriot, better understood the character
of the great Florentine family — came to an entirely opposite
conclusion, and regarded the story as a base calumny.1 The
Duke of Guise prolonged his sojourn in the capital for full
three months, busily employing his time and energies in the
congenial work of undermining the royal authority and destroy-
ing the last vestiges of the good-will once entertained for the
king by the city which, above all his predecessors, Henry had
made. his favorite residence.2
The military exploits of the general who takes the field re-
luctantly, and only after interposing all manner of objections, are
The Duke of n0^ wont to prove very brilliant. Charles of Mayenne,
Mayennepur- as we nave seen, had been ordered to command in
posely pro- '
crastinates. the sou th of Fran ce, and to co-operate with Marshal
Matignon. Certainly no duty could have been more congenial
to a zealous Roman Catholic and a leader of the League second
in authority only to his brother, the Duke of Guise himself.
Here was a fine chance to display enthusiasm and energy in
suppressing heresy, by the overthrow of the King of Navarre
and his confederate, the Duke of Montmorency. But unfort-
unately there was an object nearer to the heart of the adherents
of the League than even the destruction of heresy, and that was
the destruction of the authority of Henry of Valois. It was
highly undesirable to defeat the Bearnais with the king's arms,
and indeed to do anything that might conduce to the restora-
tion of his majesty to public esteem and confidence. Above all,
Mayenne must not furnish the slightest help toward bringing
about that dreaded consummation, the return of a peace which,
if a priceless boon to the wretcned people, would sound the death-
1 Letter of Cavriana, March 3, 1586, Negotiations avec la Toscane, iv. 634-
636.
2 Lestoile, under date of May 18, 1586, i. 202.
1586. PROSCRIPTION OF THE HUGUENOTS. 395
knell of the ambitious hopes of the Guises, and might be little
less fatal to the interests of their employer, Philip the Second,
in the Netherlands.
Thus it happened that the Duke of Ma}Tenne delayed his de-
parture as long as he could, and, when at length he did start,
received his orders from his brother, not from the king. Set-
ting off about the month of November, he executed to the let-
ter the instructions which the Duke of Guise, in a letter to the
Spanish ambassador, written on the fifteenth of November, rep-
resents himself as having issued to him.1 He sat down before
Castillon and one or two other places of minor importance in
Guyenne. He " invented objections based upon the difficulty
of obtaining provisions, the season of the year, the strongholds,
the roads —in short, on all the impediments experienced by those
previously sent in that direction." So neatly was the pro-
gramme carried out that all he had to show for his year's work
was the capture of a few insignificant towns. The only exploit
of the campaign was one inuring to his own advantage : he
managed to carry oif by force young Mademoiselle de Caumont,
daughter of the Marechale de Saint Andre, a girl of twelve
years of age, hitherto brought up as a Protestant, intending, on
account of her great wealth, to give the heiress in marriage to
his own son, a boy of ten.2 It was sorry fruit to show from an
expedition whose achievements had been so boastfully set forth
in advance that one might almost have been pardoned for look-
ing to see all the walls of the strongholds in Guyenne shivered
to pieces or crumbling into dust at its approach.3
It was natural that the valorous duke should close his dilatory
warfare by publishing to the world a glowing account of the
great deeds he had accomplished ; while ascribing the failure to
1 See above, p. 363. 2 Lestoile (under October, 1586), i. 209.
3 " Et si vous voulez vous souvenir ou de leurs vanteries ou mesmes de vos
imaginations d'alors, toutes les murailles de Guyenne alloyent en esclas, ou
s'envoloyent en poudre." Remonstrance aux Trois Estats de France sur la
guerre de la Ligue ; reprinted in Memoires de la Ligue, i. 361. On the mili-
tary operations of the year 1586, "full of exceeding great machinations, but
of very few and weak executions touching the war," see Davila (book 8\ 292,
etc. ; De Thou, vi. (book 85), 667-676 ; Agrippa d'Aubigne, iii. 24, etc
896 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. VI.
do still more than he had done partly to the want of co-opera-
tion of Marshal Matignon, partly to the neglect of the king to
Huguenot furnish him more money. Whereupon a Huguenot
sarcasm. commentator remarked with scathing sarcasm that the
intention of the writer of Mayenne's " Declaration " was plainly
to give the duke by the pen that honor which he had not been
able to acquire by his arms. And he called attention to the
fact that the " small means" of which the duke complained were
the entire wealth of the clergy placed at his disposal ; the
" small forces," an army of fifteen thousand soldiers at his com-
mand ; the " annoyances and inconveniences," a few cold morn-
ings. As to the duke's assurances that the Huguenots were
now so scattered and astonished that, if his majesty should be
pleased to furnish the means promptly to make a second charge,
they could be brought to such a pass as never again to be able
to rise and make another war, the Huguenot writer replies : " I
see not whence comes this astonishment. I see that they were
never so strong in Dauphiny. They give battle in Provence.
They are the masters in Languedoc, and have lost nothing in
Guyenne. I fear me that these Leaguers easily find fright,
because they carry fear along with themselves. ... If the
Duke of Mayenne take only three towns a year, we have work
enough for many a long day. If Castillon made his army dis-
band, I believe that he will not tarry long before fifty places in
Guyenne which are stronger than Castillon." '
Meanwhile the Huguenots held their own in other parts
of France. The Prince of Conde had returned in safety to
conde returns France after his perilous adventure of Angers. Queen
to France. Elizabeth had not only entertained him very hand-
somely in England, but had sent him back to La Rochelle,
escorted by a goodly number of noblemen and soldiers, in well
equipped vessels. Nothing could exceed the joy of the Hugue-
nots, great and small, at his coming ; never were there more
1 " Fidele exposition sur la declaration du due de Mayenne, con tenant les ex-
ploits de guerre qu'il a fait en Guyenne ;" reprinted in Memoires de la Ligue, i.
493-515. The Huguenot expositor, who scarcely disguises his identity, answers
the duke's Declaration, paragraph by paragraph. See also Recueil des choses
memorables, 622-625 ; De Thou, vi.*676, 677; Agrippa d'Auhigne, iii. 17.
1586. PROSCRIPTION OF THE HUGUENOTS. 397
sincere congratulations than those that accompanied him when,
not long after, he contracted, at Taillebourg, his ill-fated marriage
with Catharine Charlotte de la Tremouille.1 One inauspicious
event, however, marred the rejoicing over this event and over
the general success attending the Protestant arms in
Death of , °_T_ _. , . . , » ■« . -,
D'Andeiot's the West. J3y a strange coincidence the Sieur de
Laval and three of his brothers fell victims to the
pitiless ravages of war — one of Laval's brothers dying of disease,
the others of the wounds they had received ; while that distin-
guished nobleman himself, unable to survive the loss of his
kindred, fell a prey to inconsolable grief and died after a brief
illness of scarcely a week. Within the compass of a few days
almost the entire family of the brave D'Andelot, "the fearless
knight," Admiral Coligny's youngest brother, had been cut off.2
But while Mayenne and other generals of the king justly or
unjustly complained that they were insufficiently supplied with
money for the successful prosecution of their plans,
Henry of J . ,r . ■,
vaioia'B Ins maiesty himself was in sore straits to meet the
diversions
demands made upon his purse. Not that the war
alone claimed his attention. His puerile fondness for collect-
ing dogs of choice breeds was unabated. The sums of money
expended upon these animals, and upon birds of prey, parrots,
monkeys, and the like, almost baffle computation. Year after
year more than one hundred thousand crowns were required for
the purchase of little dogs of the Lyons breed, and the main-
tenance of a large force of men and women whose sole occupa-
tion was to take care of them. To add to the expense, Henry
would from time to time become tired of his pets and give them
1 See the minute account of the events in the West given in the "Advertisse-
ment au lecteur par lequel est sommairement discouru ce qui se pas'saen divers
lieux de France, apres la rupture de l'arniee de Monsieur le Prince de Conde
de la Loire, a la fin de Tan mil cinq cens octantecinq et en 1 an suyvant 1586,"
Memoires de la Ligue, ii. 173-199 ; and the brief statements in Recueil des
choses memorables, 632, 636, etc. Conde landed at La Rochelle, Friday,
January 3, and was married, Sunday, March 16.
2 See the " Advertissement" above referred to, Memoires de la Ligue, ii.
191, 192 ; De Thou, vi. 664, 665 ; Recueil des choses memorables, 638, etc.
These events occurred in April 1586. The four brothers were known re-
spectively by their seigniorial designations of Laval, Rieux, Tanlay, and Sailly.
THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. VI.
all away, then, as capriciously, conceive the desire for them
again, and send out his agents in every direction to get together
a similar collection, whatever the price demanded by the owners
might be.1 Much of the people's hard-earned treasure was lav-
ished upon the purchase of costly manuscripts, which he accu-
mulated not because of the beauty of the handwriting, much
less that he might master their contents, but simply for the
sake of the miniature illustrations, often the work of skilful ar-
tists, with which they were embellished. Kor did this childish
prince hesitate for a moment to mutilate the rarest relics of a
past age, in order to have material wherewith to gratify a pass-
ing whim, and decorate the walls of his chapels and oratories.2
The Edict of Nemours and the subsequent declarative ordi-
nances had brought little or nothing into the public treasury.
Pretended creditors, for the most part, contrived by their
claims to forestall any possible funds to be derived from the
confiscation of the property of Huguenots.3 It may be doubted
whether a new and sharper prescription, contained in royal
letters patent of the twenty-sixth of April, 1586, produced much
more tangible results. Money, however, was necessary and
must be had, if not with his subjects' consent, the king thought,
then without it, and in defiance of their remonstrances. Espe-
cially was this the case when his favorite, the Duke of Eper-
non, lately appointed governor of Provence, wished to raise an
army in his new command. It was useless to ask the Parlia-
ment of Paris to sanction fresh taxes. That body had of late
persistently refused to register the monarch's iniquitous im-
posts. Accordingly, Henry of Yalois, provoked beyond endur-
ance, resolved to take the matter into his own hands,
His injudi- ,.. i it i • i i- « 1
ciousfinan- and, going in person to the Palais de Justice, on the
cial edicts. . , - T , , . , , . , ,
sixteenth or June, delivered to the astonished coun-
sellors not less than twenty-seven fresh edicts, all relating to the
levy of extraordinary taxes, which he compelled them to enter
upon their records without any deliberation as to the contents.
1 De Thou, vi. 681, 682. 2 De Thou, vi. (book 85) 682.
3 See the preamble of the Letters patent of April 26, 1586, in Memoires de
la Ligue, i. 343, etc.
1580. INTERCESSION OF FOREIGN PROTESTANTS. 399
The ill-advised act of arbitrary power bore speedy fruit in the
undisguised dissatisfaction and murmurs of all classes of the
population.1
The Protestants of the surrounding countries had not re-
mained unsympathetic witnesses of the new struggle forced
upon the Huguenots of France by the enemies of their com-
mon faith. The question with them was whether to resort
first to diplomacy or to arms ; and on all hands the former
course was deemed most proper.
The earliest envoys to arrive were those of the Protestant can-
tons of Switzerland. As soon as on the seventh of February,
intercession of 1586, at the solicitation of Berne, they had resolved to
^e Protestant senc[ an embassy to France, with the view of helping
Switzerland, to negotiate a peace between the crown and the Hu-
guenots. This they determined to do without waiting to see
whether the German princes would join them, well assured, as
they said, that both the king and the nobles of France wTould
look with a more friendly eye upon their intercessions than
upon those of the Germans, because of the close alliance between
Switzerland and the French crown. They were persuaded that,
should their exertions prove fruitless, they would, at least, have
adopted the most honorable course in interesting themselves in
behalf of the kingdom of France, and have given some con-
solation and encouragement to the Protestants of that country.2
The ambassadors were instructed to assume a position of neu-
trality, and not to act as though their kind offices had been
asked by the King of Navarre. While urging a general peace
rather than a peace for the Church alone, they were to remind
the king that there could be no thorough tranquillity without
provision for religious liberty. To force human consciences,
said the Swiss, is to aim at making hypocrites of them, or to
drive a great number to despair or atheism. The king will
never succeed in having but one religion in his realm ; he will
not be able to prevent his subjects from following the path
» De Thou, vi. 679, 680.
* J. C. Moerikofer, Histoire des refugies de la reforme en Suisse, 115.
have made use of the French translation by G. Roux of the German work.
400 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. VL
that suits them. This has been the experience of the Swiss
confederates. The Eeformed cantons are therefore of the
opinion that they will find it impossible to prevent a good
part of their population from lending help to the Protestants
of France, so much the more as it is generally believed among
them that these troubles and seditions tend to the extermination
of the first princes of the royal house of France.1
So kindly a remonstrance, accompanied, it is said, by the
exhibition of a letter of Francis the First, in which that prince,
the reigning monarch's own grandfather, had urged the Swiss,
at that time in arms, Koman Catholic warring against Protes-
tant, to come to terms of amity, was well calculated, if it did not
secure its object, at least to avoid irritating Henry of Yalois.
The Swiss ambassadors were honorably dismissed after a very
gracious reception.3
It was quite otherwise with the German deputation.
In response to the urgent solicitations of the King of Navarre,
through Segur and others, and in deference to the appeals of
the aged Theodore Beza, a large and influential bodv
Appeal of ° ill ^
the German of German rulers had agreed to send delegates to
France to plead for the restoration of the rights of
conscience and worship to the Huguenots, and, should those
rights be denied, had consented to a new resort to arms in their
behalf. True, every scheme hitherto proposed with the inten-
tion of a doctrinal reconciliation between the adherents of the
views of Calvin and the supporters of the Lutheran tenets had
signally failed. The most recent instance was seen in the issue
of the conference held in March, 1586, in the city of Mont-
beliard, in consequence of the exertions of Count Frederick of
Wiirtemberg, himself not a little disposed to favor the doctrines
of the Swiss reformers. Beza came in person, and
Conference of.. L 7
Montbeiiard, labored patiently and perse venngly to find common
March, 1586. _ r , \ . r , . , , ^
ground upon which to stand with the German theo-
logians. But he was again met by Andreae, tried champion of
Lutheran orthodoxy, in no conciliatory mood. The long and
earnest discussion has been preserved in the ex parte statements
1 Moerikofer, ubi supra. 2 De Thou, vi. 680.
1586. INTERCESSION OP FOREIGN PROTESTANTS. 401
of both of the able theologians ; for the Germans, in apparent
violation of the common understanding, gave to the world their
version of the proceedings, and claimed that Andrese had won
a notable victory over Beza — a pretension which the latter could
disprove only by himself resorting to the printing press. But
what concerns us here is not the comparative merit of Beza and
Andrese as dialecticians, nor the particular methods by which
they attempted to vindicate the belief of their respective
churches on the person of Christ or the elect for whom our
Saviour died. These things have been well related elsewhere.1
All that we need record is the fact that, at the conclusion of the
debates, Lutherans and Calvinists were farther away from each
other than at the beginning. It was indeed evident to every-
body that both were practically at one in their views upon
essential points, as opposed to the Roman Catholics, and Beza
was anxious to do away with all bitterness and party names.
But when the Genevese reformer was about to leave, and, in
token of cordial affection and trust, offered his hand to Andrese,
the latter repelied the advance. He could, he said, as little see
how Beza could regard him and the Wiirtemberg theologians,
to whom he had ascribed all sorts of errors, as brethren, as he
himself could recognize fraternal communion with Beza, who
had given evidence that he held the imaginations of men above
the Word of God. While, however, he could not greet him as
a brother, Andrese kindly offered to give Beza his hand as a
mark of his love toward him as a fellow-man — a condescen-
sion which, not unnaturally, the Genevese reformer at once de-
clined.2
Despite the failure of this new attempt to bring the two
branches of the Protestant Church into harmony of profession,
The embassy tne Germans seemed disposed to'make common cause
reaches Paris. wjtjx t}ie ]?rench Huguenots against the aggressive
policy of the Roman Catholics and the League. The embassy
now sent to Henry of Yalois appeared in the name of the three
1 See F. C. Schlosser, Leben des Theodor de Beza, 253-267, and especially
H. Heppe, Theodor Beza, 267-287.
2 Heppe, 287. Compare De Thou, vi. 687.
Vol. L— 26
402 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OP NAVARRE. Ch. VL
Protestant Electors of the Palatinate, Saxony, and Branden-
burg, of Marquis Joachim Frederick of Brandenburg, Julius
Duke of Brunswick and Luneburg, of the three brothers, Will-
iam, Lewis, and George, of Hesse, of Prince Joachim Ernest,
and of the four imperial cities of Strasbourg, Ulm, Nurembnrg,
and Frankfort. To give more influence and effect to the depu-
tation, Frederick of Wiirtemberg, Count of Montbeliard, and
"Wolfgang Count of Isenburg, had been placed at its head.
But the King of France was in no mood to listen to them, and
doubtless thought it a shrewd trick, the moment he heard that
they were well under way, to slip off to Lyons, leaving word for
the ambassadors to wait in Paris until his return. If the worst
should come to pass, the delay would secure him one years im-
munity from Protestant auxiliaries from beyond the Rhine.
On the other hand, the Germans, though chafing under their
enforced inactivity, had no resource but to tarry as patiently as
they might in the French capital, whose marvels, architectural
and of other kinds, were little to their taste. The two counts, in-
deed, thinking it beneath their dignity to be so put off, returned
to their homes without seeing the king. But the remaining
envoys, when at length Henry of Valois was pleased to direct
his steps northward once more, discharged their duty with all
the dignity which even the ostentatious Count of Montbeliard
could have assumed. Casimir's deputy was their spokesman.
They assured the king of the very great affection en-
Duke casi- tertained for him by the German princes in whose
name they appeared, and of the regret with which
the princes had watched the progress of the new war. " As
the king's faithful friends and good neighbors," said they, " our
masters have been moved with Christian compassion toward
your majesty ; especially in view of the fact that those who
have set on foot this injurious scheme have so far forgotten
themselves as to plot against the crown and the administration
of government, pressing you, nay, even constraining you by
force of arms to make war against and persecute with violence
your obedient subjects, and even those so nearly bound to you by
the ties of relationship, and breaking the Edict of Pacification
so solemnly made and resting upon the faith and word of your
1586. INTERCESSION OF FOREIGN PROTESTANTS. 403
majesty, a singular ornament and the most precious jewel of all
princes and potentates in the estimation of all peoples." Much
that followed was of the same frank character. The ambassa-
dors contrasted the king's more recent attempts to throw the
blame upon the Huguenots with his declarations of a few brief
days before, in which he had explicitly acknowledged them as
faithful and obedient subjects. They professed themselves un-
able to see what advantage could accrue to Henry from lending
an ear to those who would turn him aside from his royal prom-
ises, and from his faith and word pledged in the edict which
the king himself had been wont to style his own peace. They
warned him of the ruin of himself, and of his kingdom, certain
to arise from a breach of faith instigated by the pope, which
would of necessity inure merely to the benefit of the pope and
of the authors of these troubles. Not only would the king's con-
science be laden with a heavy responsibility in God's sight, but
his reign would be defiled with blood ; while, in place of confi-
dence, distrust would be engendered between the kings of France
and the princes, electors, and other states of the Holy Empire.1
This was plain speech, but Henry of Valois, for the mo-
ment, concealed his annoyance under an exterior of patient and
courteous attention. In reply he confined himself to a few
general declarations of his constant solicitude to prove himself
a good king toward his subjects, and of his earnest affection,
as very Christian prince, for the preservation of the Catholic
religion. He claimed for himself the sole right to modify the
laws and ordinances of his realm according to the exigencies
of the times, leaving to all other sovereign princes of Christen-
dom the care of governing their subjects as they might judge
reasonable. He was competent of himself, he said, to decide
what would be best for the interests of the nation which the
Almighty had committed to his charge by making him king of
the first realm of Christendom.2
1 "Harangue des Ambassadeurs des Princes Protestans d'Allemagne faicte
au Roy.v Memoires de la Ligue, i. 352-358.
2 " Response du Roy aux Ambassadeurs.'' Memoires de la Ligue. i. 358. 359.
At tbe end: "Faict a Sainct Germain en Laye, l'onziesme jour d'Octobre,
1586."
404 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Cii. VI.
Thus far Henry had maintained his apparent equanimity.
But in the evening, when, the interview being over, he was left
alone, the words of the Germans began to rankle in his breast.
He then remembered with indignation that again and again he
had been accused, by implication, if not in so many words, of
faithlessness, falsehood, and perjury. At the thought of the
insult his anger knew no bounds. He was disgraced forever in
the eyes of the world, should he let the accusation pass unchal-
lenged. In his inconsiderate fury, he adopted, as usual with
him, of all courses the most impolitic. Snatching a scrap of
paper from the table, he wrote a few lines upon it ; then told an
officer of the bedchamber to take it to the room where the Ger-
man ambassadors were gathered together. The words were fo
this effect : " Whoever has said that, in revoking his Edict of
Pacification, the king has violated his faith or stained
rough an- his honor, has lied." It was well on in the night
Bwer.
when the astonished envoys saw the royal officer en-
ter with his supplementary answer. As soon as they had some-
what recovered from the first effects of the undiplomatic an-
nouncement, they requested the messenger to furnish a copy of
it. The Frenchman, however, refused. He had been bidden
to read the paper and then destroy it. He told the Germans
that this was to be taken as their dismissal ; his majesty would
have nothing further to do with them.1
The envoys of the King of Denmark and of the Queen of
England were scarcely better treated by the French monarch,
when they came to remonstrate against the war
Action of . * , D
Denmark and waged with the Huguenots. "As the Queen of Eng-
England. . ^ & • t_ j • •
land will nave but one religion in her dominions, so
I will have only one religion in my kingdom," was the surly
answer of the angry prince.2
Henry of Yalois could have taken no step better calculated
to provoke the strong Protestant princes beyond the Rhine to
increase the number of the troops sent to the help of the King
1 DeThou, vi. 690; Davila (book 8), 299, 300; Journal d'un cure ligueur
(Jelian de la Fosse), 200.
2 Lestoile, under date of April 24, 1586, i. 202 ; Jehan de la Fosse, 200.
1586. INTERCESSION OF FOREIGN PROTESTANTS. 405
of Kavarre, none more certain to hasten the departure of the
auxiliary army. At the same time, if he had hoped by his con-
duct to win the Guises back to their allegiance, he failed sig-
nally. Never were they more busy with plots for the purpose
of thwarting him in every way, and of diminishing
determined his authority. A conference was held by the duke
down their and his chief adherents during the course of the very
month in which Henry returned his rough answer
to the German electors. The place was the ancient abbey of
Ourcamp near Noyon, Calvin's birthplace. One of the com-
confereuceof Points brought forward was that the king secretly
ourcamp. favored the Protestants. One of the points settled
was to call upon his majesty to observe the Edict of Union in
every particular; and, in case he should make any agreement
with the Huguenots, to oppose him as all true Christians ought
to do. Moreover, the conspirators agreed upon the seizure of
Sedan and Jametz, important places belonging to the Duke
of Bouillon.1 After the close of the conference, whose con-
clusions wTere duly reported by Guise to the ambassador of the
king whose true liege man he was, the duke pursued unremit-
tingly the policy marked out for him. He laid his plans so as
always to have as many pretexts as possible for remaining
in arms.2 When he must choose between loyal obedience to
Henry of Valois and fidelity to Philip the Second, he unhesi-
tatingly chose the latter. " Six days ago," he sent word to
Bernardino de Mendoza in Paris, " the king wrote to me that
he was informed of certain preparations going on in Luxem-
burg against Jametz, and ordered and very expressly com-
manded me to resist them in every way, even in person. I
openly replied to him that I was a Catholic, that he could not
disapprove of an enterprise of this kind unless by reason of a
little pardonable ambition, and that if my charge obliged me to
obey such commands, I had much rather resign it than, by op-
1 De Croze, i. 321.
2 ktAy clioisi de ceste faqon de traicter afin que me soit occasion et moyen de
demeurer arme le plus longtemps que faire se pourra, et que durant le sojour
de mon frere a la court, il puysse estre asseure de ces forces," etc. Mu-
cius to Mendoza, December 30, 1586, ibid. , i. 407.
406 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. VI.
posing the destruction of the heretics, offend Catholics ; that I
was unwilling in any wise to stand in their way, and had rather
be dead than draw my sword for so detestable a cause. This
reply I am sure that he will consider a very bad one; as all my
actions are odious to him. But if only the truth be recog-
nized by good and honorable men, to whom I am willing to
give an account, I shall endure his displeasure gladly and pa-
tiently." x
Troublesome commands from Henry, which had to be dis-
regarded, were not the only causes of vexation to the Duke of
The League Guise. The queen mother's old fondness for negotiat-
apprehensive. jng wjfch the Huguenots gave him infinite uneasiness.
It would never do to let poor France regain the blessing of
peace. What, then, would become of the fine plan that was to
secure the crown of England to Mary Queen of Scots, with
Philip the Second as her adopted heir, in case of James's ob-
stinate refusal to become a Roman Catholic? Of what use the
proposed invasion of Britain by the Duke of Parma, to be put
into instant execution the moment the welcome news of the
assassination of Queen Elizabeth should be received, in case
that, the dissensions of France being healed, Henry of Navarre,
or even Henry of Valois, or possibly both these princes, sup-
ported by all loyal Frenchmen, were to interfere with the ac-
complishment of the first decisive move of the Catholic king
in the direction of a world-monarchy ? 2 "I am constantly in
alarm because of the designs of the queen mother," said Guise
to Mendoza. " Within a few days she is to have an interview
with the King of Navarre. I fear lest by what is there con-
cluded she means to disturb the peace of the Catholics of these
two crowns, which consists in union." Against such a con-
1 Mucius to Mendoza, February 6, 1587, De Croze, i. 417.
2 De Croze, i. 312. Besides the Guises, the papal nuncio protested against
the contemplated negotiations with Navarre, and the populace of Paris open jy
murmured at what was represented as a betrayal of the cause of religion. -
Davila, bk. 8, 397. According to Davila and others, Catharine seriously con-
templated tempting Henry of Navarre by the prospect of a divorce to be ob-
tained for him from her daughter Margaret of Valois and a marriage to Chris-
tina, daughter of Margaret's sister, the Duchess of Lorraine.
1586. CONFERENCE OF SAINT BRIS. 407
tingency he thought it necessary not only to hasten to secure
his control of Eastern France by the seizure of Lyons, but to
urge the Spaniard to be prepared for every emergency and to
make ready the English expedition before Catharine could by
any possibility conclude a peace.1
Nor did the queen mother, on her part, find it altogether an
easy matter to bring the Bearnais to a conference with her. It
is almost needless to say that the Huguenots had seen enough
of Medicean diplomacy to repose little confidence in its good
faith. It would have been no new or strange thing had the
Roman Catholics taken advantage of a conference to attempt
some surprise. At one time a hostile fleet hung out at sea op-
posite La Kochelle, and Henry would have nothing to do with
Catharine while the Huguenot capital was threatened. At an-
other, some Huguenot troops were attacked not without suspi-
cion of treachery. The King of Navarre was fully determined
to do nothing without consulting his associates, and to let every
advance come from the other side.2
It was the thirteenth of December when Catharine de' Medici,
having overcome a host of difficulties, at last succeeded in ef-
conference fectmg a meeting with her distrustful son-in-law at
arhTandCath" tne cast^e °f Saint Bris, not far from Cognac.3 Henry,
saintBriSat wno na(^ Deen ireful to come with a powerful retinue
December. 0£ Huguenot nobles, as a precaution against a treach-
erous surprise, was received by the queen mother in the presence
of her ladies of honor, at the first interview, with even more
1 "J'escrisa mon frere, que devant quelle puisse prendre conclusion, il
s'en revienne en diligence en son gouvernement, qui depuis Auxonne est tout
nostre, et quil s'asseure de Lyon, afin que nous soyons prests a empescher
leffect de telles men es." Mucius to Mendoza. September 22, 1586, De Croze,
i. 319, 320.
* See the contemporary account "Lettre d'un gentilhomme francois a un
sien ami estant a Rome contenant le discours du voyage de la Royne Mere du
Roy," in Memoires de la Ligue, ii. 85-98.
b Saint Bris Saint Brix, or Saint Brice as the name appears upon some maps,
is on the northern bank of the Charente, between Cognac and Jarnac in the
present Department of Charente. Catharine de' Medici had come to Cognac
attended by Nevers, Retz Lansac. and other noblemen. The King of Navarre
had advanced to Jarnac, with Turenne, La Force, and other Huguenot chiefs,
40S THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. VL
than her customary demonstrations of good will. After a lavish
display of embraces and caresses, however, the serious business
in hand was promptly entered upon, and a lively conversation
arose. . N
" Well, my son," said Catharine, " shall we accomplish any-
thing of advantage ? "
" It will not be my fault if we do not," answered Henry.
" That is what I wish."
" You must tell me, then, what you desire for that end."
" My desires, madam, are only the desires of your majesty."
" Let us drop this ceremony ; tell me what you demand."
"Madam, I demand nothing. I am come only to receive
your commands."
" So ! So ! Make some opening."
" Madam, there is no opening here for me." '
" What ! Do you wish to be the cause of the ruin of this
kingdom ? Do you not consider that, after the king, there is
no other person more interested in its preservation than you ? "
" Madam, neither you nor the king has believed this to be
the case ; for eight armies have been set on foot with the pur-
pose of ruining me."
" What armies, rny son ? You deceive yourself. Do you
think that, had the king wished to ruin you, he would not
have done it ? The ability has not been wanting, but he has
never had the will."
and a body of eight hundred horse and nearly two thousand foot — an escort
of such strength that the queen mother is said to have been somewhat ap-
prehensive lest her son-in-law intended to carry her off a prisoner to La
Rochelle. When the interview took place at Saint Bris, about midway be-
tween the two towns, a company of fifty Roman Catholics and a company of
the same number of Huguenots stood on guard at the gates, while squadrons
of horse of both parties kept the field. Davila, bk. 8, p. 305. Of the nobles
in Henry's suite one or more uniformly remained outside for fear of some plot.
We are not informed as to which of Catharine's ladies attended her ; but we
may conclude that they were neither better nor worse than those who graced
the Conference of Nerac with their presence.
1 " 'Madame il n'y a point icy d'ouverture pour moy.' Cet equivoque fut
incontinent remarque par les dames, pour un traict de la galanterie de ce
prince, qui en tout temps et en toute sorte de discours, faisoit voir la vivacite
de ses reparties."
1586. CONFERENCE OF SAINT BRIS. 409
" Pardon me, madam, my ruin does not depend upon men.
It is neither in the king's power nor in yours."
" Are you ignorant of the king's power, and of what he can
do?"
u Madam, I know well what he can do, and still better what
he could not do."
" What ! Will you not obey your king ? "
" I have always had the will to obey him, I have desired to
testify to him its effects, and I have often begged him to honor
me with his commands, in order that I might, under his author-
ity, oppose the adherents of the League, who had risen up in
his kingdom, in spite of his edicts, to disturb his rest and the
public tranquillity."
At this Catharine flew into a passion.
"Do not deceive yourself, my son. They are not in a
league against the kingdom. They are Frenchmen. They are
all the best Catholics of France, who are apprehensive of the
domination of the Huguenots ; and to tell you the whole matter
in one word, the king knows their intentions and approves all
they have done. But let us drop that subject. Talk only about
your own concerns. Ask all you want ; the king will grant
it."
" Madam, I ask you for nothing ; but if you ask anything of
me, I will submit it to my friends and to those to whom I have
promised to do nothing and treat of nothing without their par-
ticipation."
" Very well, my son, since you will have it so, I shall say
nothing farther, but that the king loves and honors you, and
wishes to see you by his side, and to greet you as his good
brother."
" Madam, I thank him very humbly, and I assure you that
never shall I be wanting in the duty I owe him."
" But what ! Will you not say anything more than that % "
" Is that not saying much ? "
" Do you, then, wish to continue to be the cause of the wretch-
edness and, in the end, the destruction of this realm ? "
" Madam, I am sure that it will never be so completely ruined
but that there will always remain some little corner for me."
410 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. VL
" But will you not obey the king ? Are you not afraid that
his anger may be enkindled against you ? "
" Madam, I must tell you the truth : it will soon be eighteen
months since I ceased obeying the king."
" Do not say that, my son ! "
" Madam, I may say so ; for the king, who is, as it were, my
father, instead of cherishing me as his child, has waged war
with me as a wolf, and as to you, madam, you have waged war
against me as a lioness."
" What ! Have I not always been a good mother to you ? "
" Yes, madam, but that was only in my childhood ; for the past
six years I have noticed that your disposition is greatly changed."
" Believe me, my son, the king and I seek only your good."
" Pardon me, madam, I perceive quite the contrary."
" Let that pass, my son. Do you wish that the trouble I have
taken during the past six months or thereabouts should prove
fruitless, after having so long kept trifling with me ? "
" Madam, I am not to blame for this. On the contrary, it is
you yourself. I do not prevent you from resting in your bed,
but it is you that for eighteen months have prevented me from
sleeping in mine."
" What ! Shall I always be put to this trouble — I who ask
only for rest ? "
" Madam, this trouble pleases you, and is your very food. If
you were at rest, you could not live long."
"How now ? Formerly I used to see you so gentle and tract-
able ; and now I see your ire flash from your eyes, and I hear
it in your words."
" Madam, it is true that repeated crosses and the annoying
treatment to which you have subjected me have induced a
change in me, and have made me lose my native disposition."
" Well, since you can do nothing of yourself, let us make a
short truce, during which you may confer with your associates,
so as to facilitate a good peace, under valid passports which will
be sent to you for this purpose."
" Well, madam, I will do so."
" Do not deceive yourself, my son ; you expect to have some
reiters, but you will have none."
1586. CONFERENCE OF SAINT BRIS. 411
" Madam, I did not come here to receive intelligence from
yon." '
Such were the first words of Catharine and Navarre, appar-
ently taken down at the time by someone that was present at
the singular interview. They show that the Gascon prince was
the equal of the cunning Italian woman in shrewdness, and not
much inferior to her in prompt repartee. Of his ready wit the
Duke of Eevers also had experience, when, at this same confer-
ence, he ventured to tell Henry of Navarre that he would find
it to his advantage to court the favor of the King of France
rather than of a mayor of La Rochelle, a city in which he had
not influence enough to make an impost of a single penny in
his necessity. " We understand nothing as to imposts," was
the swift retort ; " for we have not an Italian among us. Yet
I do what I will at La Rochelle, because I will to do only what
I ought." 2
But it was not for an opportunity to display his mother-wit
that the Huguenot leader had come to Saint Bris. -He sought,
Catharine re- with little prospect of obtaining it, some way of re-
J^R.^sgrant storing to his fellow-believers the civil and religious
liberty. rights unjustly denied to them by the compact of
Nemours. This, however, Catharine had not the slightest idea
of conceding. She prated only of the absolute necessity of
Navarre's conversion to the Roman Catholic Church, as the
sole means of putting an end to the miserable conflict now rag-
ing ; and she was very properly informed that she might well
have spared herself, ill with the gout as she was, the trouble
1 This interesting dialogue, given by Matthieu, Histoire de France soubs les
regnes de Francois I., etc., ii. 518, etc., and reproduced by the editor of the
Lettres missives de Henri IV., ii. 251-253, note, bears every mark of authentic-
ity. The account given by Mezeray, iii. 625, which Stahelin has made use of
(Der Ubertritt Konig Heinrichs des Vierten, 95, note), is drawn from this
source, but loses in vividness through the attempt to give a more modern form
to the phraseology.
"2 Agrippa d'Aubigne, iii. 23. uLe Due de Nevers osa dire, 'Sire, vous
seriez mieux a faire la cour au Roi qu'au maire de la Rochelle, ou vous n'avez
pas le credit d'imposer un sol en vos necessitez.' La response fut, 'Nous
n'entendons rien aux impositions, car il n'y a pas un Italien parmi nous ; je
fai a la Rochelle ce que je veux, en n'y voulant que ce que je doi.'"
4:12 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. VI.
of journeying so far in order to suggest an impossible solution
to the problem. It was trying to remove a difficulty by meai^s
of a difficulty. " How," exclaimed the indignant king, " with
so much intelligence as you possess, have you come from so
great a distance to propose a thing so detested, and one respect-
ing which I can deliberate with conscience and honor only
by means of a legitimate council, to which I and my followers
will submit ? " '
There was no danger that the Huguenot king would at pres-
ent make any imprudent concessions, least of all to Catha-
rine de' Medici. In fact, it is only by remembering the strange
fatuity oftentimes displayed by the most cunning of cheats, that
we can account for the almost childish simplicity of the queen
mother in her notion that she could again entrap the Protes-
tants into relaxing their military preparations and countermand-
ing levies in Germany and Switzerland, the fruit of so much
patient toil. But Henry of Navarre was, as he declared him-
self to be, resolved to do nothing that was not for the good of
the Protestant churches, and that wTas not by their advice and
consent.2 Smarting under the consciousness of the dishonorable
manner in which the king had treated him, not without his
mother's connivance and persuasions ; remembering how he
had remained inactive for long months in obedience to the
monarch's command, and ready to fly to his assistance, and this
only to be rewarded by being made the victim of a treacherous
union between that monarch and the deadly enemies of the
Huguenots, he could not resist the temptation to tell Catharine
some sober truths. She apparently expected the peace of the
state to be restored by a proscribed person, the prosperity of his
native land by a man driven into banishment ! 3 " Madam,"
said he, with pardonable bitterness, " you can accuse me of no
fault but an excess of fidelity. As for myself, I do not com-
1 " De laquelle je ne puis deliberer avec conscience et honneur, que par un
legitime Concile, auquel nous nous soumettrons moi et les miens." Agrippa
dAubigne, iii. 23.
2 Henry of Navarre to M. de Scorbiac, December 27, 1586. Lettres missives,
ii. 251.
3 Agrippa d'Aubigne, ubi supra.
1586. CONFERENCE OF SAINT BRIS. 413
plain of your faith, but I do bewail your age, which,' by weak-
ening your memory, makes you forget easily your promises to
me." '
Despite the King of Navarre's firm attitude with regard to a
change of religion, it cannot, however, be denied that he left
the impression upon Catharine de' Medici and upon
The possibility .
of Navarre's others that, but for certain difficulties in the way, the
Huguenot leader would very cheerfully make the
change demanded of him. It may well be that the sentiments
now to be recorded were really opinions gained from Catharine
herself ; for the writer, Filippo Cavriana, of Mantua, besides
being a secret agent of the Medicis, was a physician, apparently
in attendance upon the queen mother during her last illness,
two years after the period now under consideration.2 However
this may be, the observing writer, within sixty days from the
interviews at Saint Bris, wrote thus for the benefit of the Flor-
entine government : " The King of Navarre would like to be
a Catholic ; but he fears that, situated as he is, the Catholics
would ridicule his conversion, and that he would have to work
miracles before they would believe him to be a Catholic in very
deed. If then the present king were to die in this interval,
Navarre would not become king, and would find himself de-
prived of the support of many by means of wThom he can now
render himself formidable to his enemies. This is the most
1 " Lettre d'un gentilhomme francois," Memoires de laLigue, ii. 90. Besides
the authorities already quoted, see the Memoires de Sully, c. 22 ; Perefixe,
Histoire du Roy Henry le Grand (ed. of 1662), 61-63 ; Matthieu, Histoire des
derniers troubles, fols. 33, 34 ; Davila, bk. 8, 305-307; the articles of the truce
of fifteen days (December 19, 1586), Memoires de la Ligue, ii. 209, 210;
Henry of Navarre's circular account sent out to the Huguenots in the different
provinces, dated La Rochelle, December 29, 1586, ibid., ii. 211-215. Whether
Catharine was better pleased than most women would have been, to be re-
minded of her advancing years, does not appear. It will be remembered that,
having been born April 13, 1519, the queen mother was now in her sixty-eighth
year. See Comte de la Ferriere, Lettres de Catherine de Medicis (Paris, 1880),
1, introd., pp. i., ii.
2 Negociations avec la Toscane (remarks of the editor, M. Desjardins), iv.
602 Compare Cavriana s own account of Henry III. 's visit to his mothers
apartments after the murder of the Duke of Guise, ibid., iv. 842.
414 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. VI.
powerful reason that tends to make him hard and obstinate in
his opinion." ' *
Even such writers as applaud the subsequent defection of
the Bearnais from the faith in which he was reared, and style
his signal act of hypocrisy " a satisfaction given to France and
the earnest of a new compact between the nation and his race,"
are compelled to agree with the Florentine Cavriana that had
Henry yielded to the persuasions of the King of France, either
at this time or when, a year or two earlier, Epernon was sent to
solicit his conversion, that conversion would have been ill-timed
and perilous. And one of Xavarre's own descendants, who, in
our own days, has given to the world a history of the princes of
Conde, does not conceal his opinion that, if his great ancestor
had been induced by Henry the Third's threats abruptly and
prematurely to accomplish the great act that was hereafter,
forsooth, to put an end to the long prevailing discord in France,
he would only have reaped ruin and dishonor for his reward.
No disturbance would have been quieted, no hatred allayed,
not a soldier of his small army would have remained with
him.2
The heroic struggle in which the Huguenots were engaged
was well fitted to throw into bold relief a self-devotion that
knew no bounds to its sacrifices save the demands of the great
cause of religious liberty to which they had consecrated all their
power and all their material resources. It must not, however,
be forgotten that the followers of the holiest of standards are
after all but men, upon whose conduct, conscientious as may be
their motives, the circumstances of birth, station, and education
are wont to exert a notable influence. The Protestant soldier
looked upon the course of events from a very different point of
observation from the civilian, and the inhabitants of the south-
ern towns, bred to suspicion of their neighbors, and taught by
1 "II re di Navarre vorebbe essere cattolico ; ma teme che, come egli lo sia,
questi altri non se ne burlino, e che convenga far miracoli innanzi che si creda
da loro che lo sia da dovero ; e se in questo mentre il Re morisse, egli non
sarebbe re, e si troverebbe privo dell' appoggio di molti, coi quali pud dare da
fare ai suoi nemici." Letter of Cavriana, February 16, 1587, ibid., iv. 675.
'2 Due d'Aumale, Histoire des Princes de Conde, ii. 141-143.
1586. CHATILLON AT MILHAU. 415
the fortunes of war to look for protection mainly to their own
strong arms and to the massiveness of their fortifications, en-
tertained a distrust, which was far from being unnat-
distmstof ural, of garrisons composed even of soldiers of their
own party. The experience of Francois de Chatillon,
at Milhau, throws light upon the divergent views and the preju-
dices that might be entertained by fellow-combatants equally
interested in a common warfare.
No city of France was more thoroughly Protestant than
Milhau-en-Rouergue, situated on the upper waters of the river
Franfoisde Tarn. It was the same place which had declared, at
Sihiu-ennand the close of the first civil war, that there was not a
Rouergue. man? woman, or child within its walls desirous of the
restoration of the papal mass — the same Milhau that boasted
that, were the churches to be restored to the Roman Catholics,
in accordance with the terms of the Edict of Amboise, no one
could be found to take possession of them.1 More than once
had the political assemblies of the Huguenots been convened
within its friendly and hospitable enclosure. Such honors,
and, perhaps, a natural pride arising from the prolonged enjoy-
ment of security in the midst of prevailing disorder and vio-
lence, engendered a feeling of self-sufficiency, and fostered a
sensitiveness that would have been more appropriate in the case
of an independent republic. It is true that the citizens were
deeply moved by the tidings of the approach of the king's
forces, and urgently called upon Chatillon to grant them the
services of an engineer well versed in the important art of
building and strengthening fortifications. The consuls and other
leading inhabitants went even farther, and thrice despatched
envoys to beg the brave son of Admiral Coligny to accept the
post of governor of Rouergue, and to assure him of their hearty
esteem and confidence. But when once Chatillon had come in
the capacity of lieutenant-general of the King of Navarre, and
had brought with him the force of arquebusiers they had them-
selves solicited, the citizens speedily changed their minds. The
Huguenot soldier was a less inviting object near at hand than
1 Rise of the Huguenots, ii. 147.
41 6 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. VL
when seen at a distance. As this soldier, moreover, had to be
fed and lodged, enthusiasm gave place to coldness, and grati-
tude to disgust. Just in proportion to his wealth, the burgher
Mutual jeai- was reluctant to open his door to- the unwelcome
SSLdSSS* guest, and it was said that the well-to-do were quite
willing that the heaviest part of the burden of enter-
tainment should be borne by the poor. To Chatillon's sug-
gestion that, in view of the scarcity of provisions, the citizens
should be required to make a common store of the wheat in
their private granaries, the consuls returned an answer savoring
strongly of insolence. They informed him that they were no
minor wards in need of a guardian, but could manage their own
affairs without his assistance. But most was their ire aroused
when Chatillon, being unable to spare so large a part of his
forces for Milhau, now out of actual danger, undertook to put
the royal castle which stood in the place in a condition to resist,
with a diminished garrison, any sudden attack of the enemy.
The cry was heard on all sides that Chatillon was erecting a
" citadel " — that very instrument of tyranny against whose erec-
tion in other cities the Protestants of France had a^ain and a^ain
protested. Conjecture made way for certainty in the minds of
the people, when Chatillon politely declined, as a lieutenant act-
ing in Navarre's name, to intrust the guard of the stronghold
to a company of citizen soldiers, who, as he shrewdly suspected,
would be likely to take advantage of the first opportunity af-
forded by the temporary absence of the arquebusiers on duty
elsewhere, to close the gates of the city against their return.
At length, the popular ferment ran so high that one winter's
morning (the third of January, 1587), Chatillon himself being
away, the tocsin was violently rung. At the preconcerted signal
the whole city rose as one man. Workmen rushed into the
streets armed with what tools they could lay hands on. Women
The citizens brandished spits and other domestic utensils. Even
terTo/the*8* children provided themselves, as best they could, with
place- sticks and stones. In a moment the few straggling
soldiers found in the public thoroughfares were overpowered.
The mob, surging on toward the obnoxious castle, then de-
manded its surrender. The single officer in command and his
1587. CHATILLON AT MILHAU. 417
followers, numbering scarcely more than seven or eight, and
without store of provisions or hope of speedy relief, dared not
attempt to hold out. The evacuation was effected, however,
with as much formality as if the parties to the transaction had
been deadly enemies, instead of Huguenots battling for the
same great principles. Many hands now made light work of
The "citadel" tne destruction of all Chatillon's new works, and that
demolished. night the satisfied citizens of Milhau went to their
beds proud of the fact that no " citadel " any longer menaced
their freedom. A day or two later, a town meeting, called, ac-
cording to custom, by the ringing of the bells, resolved, after
due deliberation, that inasmuch as the thing had been accom-
plished, the King of Xavarre should be requested to approve
of the result and restore matters to their old condition. The
consuls of Milhau took great pains to impress upon Henry and
their fellow Protestants throughout the kingdom the justice of
their cause and the magnitude of the insults to which they had
been subjected. They failed, however, to convince impartial
men that the son of the great martyr of Saint Bartholomew's
Day had grievously erred ; and an assembly of the churches of
Languedoc, which met soon after in Kismes, gravely censured
the fault committed by the citizens of Milhau.1
1 See "Discours veritable des actions et comportemens de M. de Chastillon
pendant le temps qu'il a este a Milhau-en-Rouergue, et de la sedition que les
consuls et habitans auroient esmeue a l'encontre de lui," in Memoires de Du-
plessis Mornay, iii. 434-452. This account, which is altogether favorable to
Chatillon, may profitably be compared with a number of documents recently
brought to light by Loutchitzky, and printed in his Documents intdits pour
servir a l'histoire de la Reforme et de la Ligue, 195-216. These papers pre-
sent the strongest points of the case for the citizens. In particular, the docu-
ment entitled "Articles presentes par les consuls de Millau aux Estats de
Rouergue convoques par Mr. de Chastillon, gouverneur du pais pour le Roy
de Navarre, sur la citadelle qu il faisoit faire en ladite ville, 1586," denounced
the building of the citadel as a mark of dishonor, since it reduced the burgh-
ers to a servile condition, and as an evidence of Chatillon's disregard of the
oath he had taken to preserve their privileges, prerogatives, and accustomed
liberties under all preceding kings. See, also, Count Jules Delaborde's mono-
graph, Francois de Chastillon, 255, 256.
Vol. I.— 27
418 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. VIL
CHAPTER YII.
THE BATTLE OF COUTRAS, AND THE ARMY OF THE REITERS.
The first eighteen months of the war had been barren enough
of stirring incident. The great military demonstrations of Henry
and the League had come to nothing. The Hugue-
The war ac- ° i i T t i i
compiishes nots were f ullv as strong as they had been when the
nothing. . • t ° _
unrighteous Edict of JNemours was promulgated, and
certainly much less dispirited. Having lost by apostasy the
timid and wavering, those who remained constant were more
than ever determined to accept no peace save one that recog-
nized their religion and permitted its exercise. On the other
hand, had resolutions to the effect that there should be but one
religion in France been of any avail, the fate of Protestantism
would have been finally settled. At the beginning of the new
year, the knights of the Order of the Holy Ghost went through
the farce of passing such a resolution, prompted thereto by the
king, who himself promised to take horse and lead against the
heretics. Instead of which, for the present, his Very Christian
majesty confined his activity to making a round of the various
monasteries and other religious houses, in the course of which
the public was astonished, if, indeed, any puerile action on Henry's
part had longer the power to excite surprise, at seeing him suc-
cessively donning the costume of each community.1 Not to the
1 Journal d'un cure ligueur (Jehan de la Fosse), 204, under the date of
January 9, 1587. Davila, 308, concedes that the king's declaration appeared to
many persons, then and subsequently, absurd and contradictory, as coming
from a prince who, by means of the queen mother, was, or had been only a f ew
days before, treating with these same " heretics '" that were to be exterminated ;
but the Italian historian will have it that the declaration was opportune, since
thereby "he at once beat down all the complaints and calumnies of the heads
of the League, and appeased in great part, at least for a time, the minds of
1587. THE BATTLE OF COUTRAS. 419
knights of the order alone did the king give pious assurances.
Again he assembled in the Louvre a select company of some of
the presidents of parliament, the prevot des marchands, and
other officials, whom he informed of his intention to push the
war against the Protestants to the direst extremity, and of his
expectation to be able to crush them within the next two years.
His sentiments of loyalty to the Roman Catholic faith were
duly applauded by his hearers, who, despite their previous ex-
periences of the same kind, may not have been prepared on the
instant for the modest demand which the king proceeded at once
to make, of six hundred thousand livres for the purpose of pros-
ecuting the war.1
Meantime his majesty had gained nothing in the esteem and
confidence of the adherents of the League, who were convinced
— and they were quite right — that he was very willing to have
the power of his rebellious subjects broken, even if this had to be
done by means of an army of reiters such as John Casimir was
known to be getting ready in Germany for the benefit of the
Huguenots of France. In Paris the turbulent Roman Catholics
were prepared to adopt the most desperate measures :
The zeal of
the League and, much to the annoyance of the Duke of Guise,
at Paris. -
his brother, the Duke of Mayenne, encouraged them
in these inopportune and premature ventures. At one time it
was proposed to surprise the king as he should ride through the
Rue Saint Antoine, on his way from the Bois de Yincennes to
the Louvre. At another, the scene of the execution of the con-
spiracy was to be the dining- hall of the abbey in the faubourg
of Saint Germain, when the monarch should have repaired
thither to attend the fair. What was to be done with him when
his person should be secured, was the next question, and it was
answered in various ways. A king is a troublesome prisoner
to have in one's possession, and some were in favor of at once
falling upon him and killing him ; while others would have
the Parisians." Davila seems to have forgotten that, within the next sixty
days, the Parisians were, as we shall see presently, conspiring against the
kings liberty, if not against his life.
1 Lestoile, under date of January 10, 1587, i. 214 ; Memoires de Henry
III., 98.
420 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OP NAVARRE. £n. VII.
been content to shut him up in a monastery. But the conspira-
tors were, happily or unhappily, spared the trouble of deciding ;
for Henry's trusty spy, Nicholas Poulain, reported each plot in
ample time for his majesty to guard against it.1 As for Mayenne
and his fellow-conspirators, they found it no easy matter to ex-
cuse themselves to Guise for their breach of faith in not re-
maining quiet according to their engagement to him :
Annoyance of . b , , , , i • i i
the Duke of and were only too glad to beg his pardon and give
renewed assurances of their undying confidence in his
leadership, and of their hope of success under so brave a captain.2
The year opened well for the Huguenot arms. Success at-
tended the enterprises of the King of Navarre in the west, not
less than those of Lesdiguieres in the east. The for-
successes in mer, overcoming the timid counsels of the burghers
of La Rochelle — satisfied, for the most part, if they
could hold the neighborhood of their own walls — did not rest
content till he had extended the boundaries of the district in
which the Huguenots had the upper hand by the capture of
such important towns of Poitou as Fontenay-le-Comte, Saint
Maixent, and Talmont, not to speak of other places of less note.3
In Dauphiny, on the other hand, brave Lesdiguieres added yet
Lesdi uieres more to his well -earned laurels by a series of captures
in Dauphmy. stretching with little interruption through the sum-
mer, the natural result of the pains taken by that careful general
in spending the first three months of the year in a personal
inspection of the province.4 It is true that no vigilance of his
"'Le Procez verbal d'un nomme Nicolas Poulain," in Memoires de Henry
III., 155-165 ; Letter of Cavriana, March 3, 1587, in Negociations avec la Tos-
cane, iv. 676, etc. ; Lestoile, i. 215, 216. See De Thou, vi. 727, etc. ; De
Croze, ii. 3, etc.
2 "Monsieur de Guise," says Poulain (ubi supra, 165), " estant averty de
l'entreprise du Due de Mayenne, en fut fort courrouce contre ceux de la Ligue :
de faitil leur envoya le Sieur de Mayneville, pour scavoirqui les avoit meus de
ce faire . . . qu ils s^avoient ce qu*il leur avoit promis, s'ils ne s'asseuroient
pas assez sur sa foi ; et finaleinent qu'ils eussent a dire, s'ils estoient entrez en,
quelque soupcon et defiance de luy."
3 Lestoile, i. 225 ; Agrippa d'Aubigne, iii. 37-40.
4 Agrippa d'Aubigne, iii. 33, etc. ; De Thou, vii. 53, 54. See, especially,
the report sent to Henry of Navarre, entitled ' ' Memoires de ce qui s'est passe
en Daulphine, depuis le mois d'Avril, jusques au vingtiesme de Decembre,
1587. THE BATTLE OF COUTRAS. 421
could prevent the surprise of the important city of Monteli-
mart, on the left bank of the Rhone below Yalence, one Sun.
day morning in August ; but the Huguenots held the castle
of the place, and, instead of abandoning hope, promptly took
measures to recover what they had lost. On Wednesday
morning of the same week, a little force of two hundred Prot-
estant cuirassiers, and perhaps a thousand men carrying the
arquebuse, who had been gathered from far and near, at the
news of the disaster, made a furious assault upon the barricades
of the enemy. Nor did they prove unequal to the perilous en-
terprise. The works were carried, and the Huguenots did not
stay their impetuous valor before they had slain of their an-
tagonists almost twice their own number. The hero in this
action, if, indeed, all that took part were not entitled to be
termed heroes, was the Baron du Poet, to whose sagacious
planning and bold execution was due the success of the enter-
prise, with the capture of a large number of noblemen of dis-
tinction, at the loss of scarcely more than a score of killed
and one hundred and twenty wounded.1 But if the adventure
1587," reprinted in Memoires de la Ligue, ii. 221-227 ; as well as a royalist
account printed at Paris, by Guillaume Linocier, with privilege of the king,
September 21, 1587, ibid., ii. 227-229.
1 " Veritablement ce fut un ceuvre de Dieu, et toutesfois ne peut estre
desnie a. la valleur, diligence, et sage conduitte du sieur du Poet, gouverneur
de laditte place (comme a 1 instrument principal) cest heureux exploit : ay ant
avec si petit nombre de gens de guerre (a scavoir environ douze cens homines),
force plus de trois mil hommes de combat, preparez et logez avantageusement
dedans leurs barricades, flanquees et deffendues en front par trois pieces de
canon." Memoires de ce qui s'est passe en Daulphine, etc., ubi supra, ii. 224.
Du Poet, a noted Protestant leader of Dauphiny, during the greater part of
the second half of the sixteenth century, is a personage the more interesting
as the nobleman to whom are addressed two letters purporting to come from
the pen of the reformer Calvin, which, after having been quoted without ques-
tion as genuine originals by Voltaire, Audin, Capefigue, and others, M. Jules
Bonnet (Lettres franchises de Calvin, ii. 588-595) has proved to be the most
patent of forgeries. The handwriting is not Calvin's, nor that of his secretary ;
the style is as harsh and turgid as the style of the Genevese reformer was
graceful and forcible, and anachronisms abound. In short, these productions
have nothing to commend them to the acceptance of the most partial enemy
of Calvin, save that they represent him as truculently uttering the sentiment
respecting perverse Roman Catholic preachers that '"such monsters ought
422 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. VIL
of Montelimart proved that a small army of Huguenots might,
under good leaders, overcome and destroy a force of Roman
Catholics far superior in numbers, an incident, which is said to
have occurred on the very day of the recapture of the town,
Routof Swiss demonstrated with equal clearness that a handful of
auxiliaries. Roman Catholic soldiers might rout and cut to pieces
an entire battalion of Protestants. The scene of the defeat was
in Dauphiny, and the victims were a body of Swiss, variously
stated at three or at four thousand men, accompanied by an
escort of four or five hundred French troops, whom Yezins and
Cugy were bringing to the help of Lesdiguieres. The instru-
ments in their destruction were Bernard de la Yalette, brother
of the Duke of Epernon, and not more than five hundred arque-
busiers, supported by four companies of cavalry. Twelve hun-
dred prisoners sent to work on the fortifications of Valence, and
nine or ten standards forwarded to the king at Paris, testified to
the reality of the exploit of the royal troops, at a period when
many a victory loudly proclaimed at the capital existed only in
the imagination of romancers.1 What rendered the defeat of the
Swiss the more remarkable was that it took place on a spot in
every way favorable for infantry, and where the enemy could
scarcely have approached them with any more serious intent
than to reconnoitre. " Surely," writes the pious chronicler,
" God makes numbers and arms to be good for just so much as
it pleases Him." 2
Meanwhile the condition of things at Paris was such as to
to be smothered (etouffes) as I have done here, in the execution of Michael
Servetus, a Spaniard!"
1 The Protestant and Roman Catholic accounts agree remarkably well, al-
though there is some discrepancy in figures. See Memoires de la Ligue, ii.
224, 228. De Thou, vii. (book 88) 55, displays his usual impartiality. Agrippa
dAubigne's account (iii. 34) is too brief to be satisfactory.
2 "Dieu fait comme il lui plaist valoir le nombre et les armes." Memoires
de la Ligue, ii. 225. The defeat of the Swiss took place, according to Agrippa
d'Aubigne, iii. 34, "pres d Uriage ; " or, according to De Thou, following the
account in the Memoires de la Ligue, on the banks of the Isere and Drac — that
is, at the confluence of these two streams — near the city of Grenoble (Isere).
St. Martin d'Uriage is a village of over two thousand inhabitants five miles
east of Grenoble, and Uriage is at present a station upon the Lyons and Cham-
bery railway.
1587. THE BATTLE OF COUTRAS. 423
perplex the most clear-headed of statesmen ; not that they were
in doubt as to what ought to be done, but that they could not
divine what would be done. The great difficulty was
Irresolution 1 ' i_» j» j i 1 •
of Henry of that the king did not know his own mind for twenty-
four hours together. Whatever qualities of his
mother he had failed to inherit, there was no question that
her vacillation had been fully transmitted to him. With
two such unstable characters at the helm of state, it became
a matter of perfect uncertainty toward which point of the com-
pass the course would next be directed. To this it must be
added that Catharine was strongly suspected of perfidy to the
king, and of being as untrue to him as she was to the Guises.
"There are those that believe," wrote the Italian Cavriana,
employing an expressive proverb of his countrymen, " that in
her eagerness to have the control of affairs, the queen mother
slyly gives a blow now to the cask, now to the hoop." ' Under
these circumstances men knew not what to do. Those who
would have preferred to follow his service faithfully, seeing
so much irresolution in Henry of Valois, feared that when
they should have rendered themselves hateful to the Guises
by some open act of loyalty, they might be abandoned to the
mercy of these pitiless enemies by the shifting policy of the
monarch. And yet, had Henry chosen to pursue a manly
course, he had still a following strong enough to defeat the
intrigues of the League. As the picture is painted by a con-
The parties temporary, the king could count upon the support of
at court. three Bourbon princes — Soissons, Conty, and Mont-
pensier ; upon such great nobles as Nevers, Longueville, Biron,
Aumont, Matignon, and Epernon ; upon the public magistrates,
the parliaments, the Wealthy holders of lands, the old mili-
tary captains, the men of ripe thought and experience, and
even a part of the clergy — possibly a few among the Jesuits
themselves, who began to recognize the fact that the League
was likely to prove disastrous to France. On the other hand,
Guise had at his devotion the inferior people — the mob — the
1 " Anzi c'e chi crede ch'ella, per avere il rnaneggio delle cose, dia un colpo
alia botte e l'altro al cerchio."
424 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OP NAVARRE. Ch. VIL
needy part of the population and outlaws from society, the
inhabitants of the towns, some governors of strongholds, and,
as was believed, the king's mother and his wife, together with
almost the entire clergy. It was needless to add the Spanish
ambassador, wrho was the prime mover and counsellor of the
plot. What might not have been expected, was that it included
Brulart, one of the king's own secretaries of state, Villequier,
his former tutor, and Rene de Birague, L'Hospital's unworthy
successor in the office of chancellor. Such was the depth of
meanness to which some of the highest functionaries of state
had descended, encouraged thereto doubtless by the example of
Catharine. But there was good reason to expect that this prin-
cess, if not the imitators of her double-dealing, would come to
grief. She had lost none of her assurance; she was just as
confident as ever that she would be able by her intrigues to
make Huguenots and Leaguers take up arms and lay them down
again at her pleasure. " But the Huguenots, already cheated
three or four times by her words and artifices, are no longer
willing to believe her in any wise, and it is precisely so also
with Guise." '
Indeed, the duke had recently given conclusive proof of the
fact that he had passed beyond the reach of the influence both
of Catharine de' Medici and of her promising son and pupil in
the art of dissimulation.
One Saturday, toward the end of May, the queen mother had
had an interview with Guise at Fere-en-Tardenois.2 Catharine
began with her accustomed blandishments. Feigning
The queen . & .. „ , , . , , , i
mother's in- ignorance or the reasons or tne duke s discontent, she
Guise. May, assured him that her son the king was very strongly
disposed to advance him more than ever, knowing
that he had not a more faithful subject nor one that was more
worthy of being intrusted with great offices of state. " In
short," says the account which Guise sent to Mendoza, " she
1 See the instructive letters of Cavriana of June 24 and July 5, 1587, in
Negociations avec la Toscane, iv. 693-699.
8 In the southern part of the present department of Aisne, between Chateau-
Thierry and Rheims.
1587. THE BATTLE OF COUTRAS. 425
thrice addressed to him such language, and thrice resorted to
such artifices as are represented to us in the Gospel : \ Usee
omnia tibi dabo ' — ' All these things will I give thee, if thou
wilt fall down and worship me.' " The faithful chronicler does
not tell us that the redoubtable duke answered his tempter,
" Get thee hence, Satan ;" but none the less was he proof against
her seductions. *.• Madam," said he, " I have always been hon-
ored by the favors and gifts of the king. I have always tried
to respect his commands and employ my life in their execution.
1 have no cause of discontent for myself individually. But let us
come to the public interests, to which I protest I have altogether
devoted myself." When, however, the concerns of state were
taken up, an irreconcilable diversity of opinion was developed.
The seizure of the king's cities in Picardy and elsewhere, which
Catharine complained of, demanding their restitution, the duke
justified as a meritorious act which he stood ready to defend
with his own life. In fact, the queen mother had nothing for
her pains but the sorry privilege of listening to a repetition of
the old story of the grievances to which the good Catholics of
France were subjected, and the indignities shown to their religion. '
About a month later, the queen mother procured a meeting
between Henry of Yalois and Henry of Guise, at Meaux. The
Meeting be- king met his rival very graciously, and even conde-
andethehDukeg scended to entreat him to turn his mind only to peace,
of Guise. an(j to prevenfc the kingdom from becoming a prey
to the devastations of war. He told him that he was himself
resolved to tolerate but one religion in France, and yet that,
under the present necessity, he hoped to buy a good peace and
turn aside the foreign troops from entering his dominions. But
Guise would hear of no peace, and begged his majesty to re-
member only that religion was in its death-throes. He com-
plained of the maltreatment of good Catholic cities and leaders.
The king was able to meet these statements by counter re-
proaches of the usurpation of the royal prerogative and other
1 " Entrevue de la Reine Mere avec le Due de Guise a Reims," dated May
25, 1587 ; being an account drawn up at Guise's command, sent by him to
Mendoza, and by Mendoza to Philip II. in a despatch of June 9. De Croze,
ii. 284-286.
42G THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OP NAVARRE. Ch. VII
acts of insubordination. When the duke undertook to reply,
the king cut him short, and led him into another room, where
the farce ended with a pretended reconciliation between Guise
and Epernon, who embraced each other so affectionately that
they might have been mistaken for the best friends in the
world.1 Nor was it wonderful that Henry of Guise would not
listen to the suggestion of peace. Overwhelmed with debt, and
Theduke's ©very month becoming more and more involved, it
debts. was ouj. 0£ ^ne question for him to pause in the work
upon which he had been incited by Philip the Second to enter,
but for the prosecution of which that penurious monarch,
through his ambassador, furnished him very scantily the need-
ful funds.2 The treasuries of Yenice and Florence, with the
treasury of the pope superadded, would scarcely have been suf-
ficient to free the good duke from his load of obligations. 3
Meanwhile the war both in the east and in the west gave
signs of becoming more decisive than it had hitherto been. Early
in the spring the Duke of Joyeuse led a large army
marches to- in the direction of the King of Navarre, and the latter
ward Guyenne. ° , _
prudently retreated before the superior force to the
walls of La Rochelle. The duke thereupon proceeded to retake
certain places which had fallen into Huguenot hands— Saint
Maixent, Tonnay Charente, and Maillezais, but distinguished him-
self less by the brilliancy of his exploits than by the ferocity
in which he permitted his soldiers to indulge. A Protestant
minister, M. de la Jarriere, who was discovered among the sol-
diers of the garrison of Saint Maixent, as they were leaving the
place after the capitulation, was by his orders ignominiously
executed — a needless act of cruelty toward a person of recognized
excellence of character, which was far from conciliating the
favor of the Protestants to whom he had long been a faithful
1 Lestoile, i. 226, 227, gives the date of July 2 to the interview of Meaux ;
Cavriana, in his letter of July 5, makes it to have been held two days later,
ubi supra, iv. 703. See Guise to Mendoza, July 4, 1587, De Croze, ii. 295.
2 Mendoza gave him " danari assai scarsamente per intertenere il fuooo ac-
ceso gia in Francia " Ibid., iv. 691.
3 "II buon duca di Guise e talmente indebitato, che l'erario di Venezia, del
Papa e il vostro insieme gli sarebbe necessario." Ibid., ubi supra.
1587. THE BATTLE OF COUTRAS. 427
pastor, or from commending itself to the approval of the Roman
Catholics who heard his firm and Christian profession of his
faith and the touching prayer he offered before his death. Nor
was this all. On one occasion two hundred Huguenot soldiers
who, with their comrades, had been compelled to surrender,
were ruthlessly put to the sword ; on another, a number of pris-
oners were stripped naked, after the capture of the town they
had bravely defended, that the troops of Joyeuse might have
the exquisite pleasure of slashing their unprotected bodies with
sword and cutlass. It is by no means certain, in the conflict of
statements, that in either case there was a direct breach of faith
on the part of the victors ; there is, unfortunately, however, no
doubt that the massacre was in both cases without excuse and
perpetrated in cold blood. The incidents were not forgotten by
the Huguenot soldiers a few months later on the field of Coutras.1
It is true that the duke justified his savage action, when asked
by a Huguenot somewhat later for his reasons, by referring to
the demands of the times ; but most readers will consider the
justification as bad as the offence. "The object of as many of
us as want to have our share in the ruins of the kingdom," said
Joyeuse, " is, above all things, to be preached about in the pulpits
of Paris, and in other notable quarters in which the Duke of
Guise manages his business. Now this act, which I acknowledge
to you pained my heart, suits the taste of our preachers more
than a battle won with great peril in which some gentleness
might have been practised." 2
1 "Ce fut un article qui ne servit guere au due a Coutras." Recueil des
choses memorables, 640. See the account in the Memoires de la Ligue, ii. 72,
73 ; Agrippa d'Aubigne, iii. 41, 43 ; De Thou, vii. (hook 87)4-6. It is Agrippa
d'Aubigne (who always exhibits a soldier's unwillingness to give credit to
stories of treachery in war) that denies that there had been given to the gar-
rison of La Mothe Saint Heray, any promise that their lives would be spared,
and implies the same with reference to the band of Protestant soldiers at Croix
Chapeaux. The first-named place is not, as Browning erroneously states (ii.
139), the same as La Mothe Achard, in Vendee, but a small town near Saint
Maixent. The distance between the two places is fully seventy miles. Croix
Chapeaux is situated close to La Rochelle. See the map of the neighborhood
of La Rochelle in Arcere, Histoire de La Rochelle.
2 The authority for this strange admission is D'Aubigne (iii. 44), to whom it
was made.
428 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Cn. VIL
With such ignoble victories to boast of, Joyeuse thought it
best to hurry back to the capital, fearing lest too long an absence
from the monarch over whose mind he had gained such ascend-
ancy might endanger the permanence of his influence. A month
or two later, however, convinced that only by some exploit could
he make good his position at court, he returned to the south-
west, resolved, so he said, to bring on a general engagement
with the King of Navarre, and either conquer or die.1
The Bearnais had left the walls of La Rochelle and advanced
to the southern bank of the Loire. The movement was made
for the purpose of facilitating the escape of the Count
soiswns and of Soissons. This nobleman and the Prince of Conty
the Prince of »
conty join were younger brothers of Conde, but, unlike Conde,
Navarre. «/ o 7
had been brought up in the Roman Catholic faith,
and had long resided at court. Dissatisfied as they now were
with the course of events, their cousin, the King of Navarre,
had found it easy to induce them to abandon a side whose suc-
cess would inevitably lead to the ruin of the head of their house.
Conty, the elder but feebler of the two, contrived to make his
way to Strasbourg, where he was to discharge the important
functions formerly so well discharged by Conde ; while Soissons,
who wished to serve under Navarre's standard in the approach-
ing conflict, had advanced as far as Montsoreau, on the Loire.
Here, with the help of Turenne, he was able to cross the stream
and to bring a considerable body of Huguenots from the north
to re-enforce the King of Navarre's army.
It wras the purpose of the Huguenot leader, after having
formed this union, to turn his face once more toward Gascony,
Navarre there to strengthen himself by gathering fresh troops,
towarhdthe and then to march boldly in the direction of the great
Dordogne. auxiliary army of Germans and Swiss, wmose advent-
ures will soon have to be considered in detail. Marshal Mati-
gnon, commanding for the King of France in the neighborhood
of Bordeaux, had correctly read the Huguenot scheme, and, in
order to prevent its execution, entreated the Duke of Joyeuse
to press rapidly forward. He promised to meet him on the
1 De Thou, vii. (book 87) 8, 9.
1587. THE BATTLE OF COUTRAS. 429
banks of the Dordogne with an additional body of four thou-
sand men. The united forces would greatly outnumber the
army of Navarre, and effectually block his return to Gascqny.
The duke, having accepted the plan, hastened forward to put it
into execution. Thus it happened that while the King of Na-
varre, after tarrying at La Rochelle to mount the two cannon
that constituted his entire artillery, was pushing southward
through. Archiac and Montlieu, the Duke of Joyeuse, leaving
Poitiers far in the rear, found himself but a few miles east of
the Huguenot king, at Barbezieux and Chalais. The objective
point of both generals was the same. Both wished to arrive
first at Coutras, a small town between the little rivers Dronne
and Isle, just above their junction, through which Henry must
almost of necessity pass in order to reach Bergerac and the
rendezvous of the Gascon Huguenots.
Either because of its more compact form and smaller num-
bers, or because of the superior energy and sagacity of its
leader, the Protestant army outstripped its rival, and
position at late on the afternoon of the nineteenth of October
reached the northern bank of the Dronne. Before
night had set in, all Henry's troops, with the exception of a
part of his infantry, had safely crossed, and were quartered in
the town. Meanwhile Joyeuse had leisurely crossed the river
higher up, and stopped for the night at La lioche Chalais, in*
profound ignorance that Navarre had placed himself in front
of him with the intention of disputing his advance. Indeed,
the duke, somewhat to the surprise of his own officers, openly
expressed his contempt for Navarre and Conde, whose forces
he expected to swallow up in the first encounter. It was, there-
fore, with peculiar satisfaction that, having surprised a body of
four Huguenot guards, he received from one of the men, who
was taken alive, the following reply to his inquiries : " The King
of Navarre is so determined to fight that he will await an en-
gagement with firm foot ; and he is not far distant now."
•' Give me your hand," said the duke to the Huguenot soldier.
" You have brought me such welcome tidings that I cannot
thank you sufficiently save by giving you your liberty, as I now
do." Whereupon he dismissed him, but not before he had
430 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. VIL
made him sit down and eat with him, and had given him a
small sum of money.1
That night the Huguenots slept undisturbed in Coutras, or en-
camped about it; while the Duke of Joyeuse, apparently fear-
ing lest the heretics might steal away before affording him a
chance to attack them, set his army in motion at eleven o'clock,
having despatched his cavalry an hour earlier. The distance
to be traversed was about twelve miles; the darkness prevented
the column from advancing except by the highway, and the
road was muddy. It was daybreak before the Roman Catholic
troops appeared before Coutras, worn with a night march up-
on which they had been harassed by the small body of light
horse which Navarre had thrown forward about five miles, to
the hamlet of Les Pointures, to skirmish and fall back slowly
upon the main force.
After rejecting the spot which Turenne at first selected
for the engagement, Henry had assumed another somewhat
nearer Coutras. No position could have been more happily
chosen. Across a plain that might measure six or seven hun-
TheHugue- ^red Paces m breadth the Huguenot line was drawn
not line. jn t}ie form 0f a crescent, the centre somewhat in ad-
vance of the two wings. On the left was the Dronne and a
small wood marking the course of a tributary brook, the Pal-
lard. On the right were the park and warren of a stately cas--
tie built by Marshal Lautrec, that brave but unfortunate general
of Francis the First who had lost his life before Naples almost
sixty years before. Navarre himself held the centre with a
body of three hundred men-at-arms, with Conde on his right
and Soissons on his left in command of squadrons of nearly
equal size. Beyond Conde was the Gascon cavalry under Tu-
renne and the light horse of Tremouille. The infantry was
posted chiefly on the wings; but in every gap between the
different squadrons of horse stood a square of twenty-five ar-
quebusiers, with strict orders on no account to fire until the
enemy should come within twenty paces of them. The whole
1 1 take this incident from Cavriana's long and interesting letter of Novem-
ber 1, 1587, in Negociations avec la Toscane, iv. 725, 726.
1.087. THE BATTLE OF COUTRAS. 431
Huguenot army might number about five thousand five hun-
dred men. The army of the Duke of Joyeuse was seven thou-
sand strong. Here, too, the infantry occupied the wings, while
opposite to the three Bourbon princes were marshalled the
twelve hundred lancers of the duke himself and the five hun-
dred men-at-arms of Montigny — together constituting the flower
of the Roman Catholic nobles. Never, said an eye-witness, had
there been seen in France a body so resplendent with orna-
ments of gold and glittering tinsel. Lavardin's four hundred
light horse stood next, opposite to Turenne's position.
The action began with the artillery. Strange to say, the pieces
of the Huguenots, so contemptible in number, did great execu-
tion, mowing down whole lines of bedizened knights,
Battle of Cou- -. ' e to '
tras, October while the seven cannon of the enemy were so badly
20, 1587. : * J
situated that upon the 1 rotestant side scarcely a man
was struck. Then it was that, unable to keep his troops steady
under the murderous fire, Joyeuse gave Lavardin permission
to charge. The attack was successful. Turenne's Gascon cav-
alry were broken in a moment, and the victorious Roman
Catholics pursued their course unchecked even into the very
streets of Coutras. The infantry on their left was not so fort-
unate in an assault upon the regiments of Protestant foot
posted in the castle's grounds, and was easily repulsed. This
was, however, but the prelude of the main action. The Gas-
cons, so far as they could be rallied, and the troopers of Tre-
mouille took position behind Conde. What the day would ac-
complish was evidently going to depend upon the reception which
the Bourbon princes should give to Joyeuse and Montigny.
As the signal was sounded for the Roman Catholic lancers to
advance, the King of Navarre called upon the Huguenot minis-
ters who accompanied his army — Gabriel d' Amours, his own
favorite preacher, and the not less distinguished La Roche
Chandieu — to offer up a prayer for the blessing of Heaven
upon the royal cause. D' Amours stood near the
<r Amours of- Bearnais. At the sound of his voice, raised in fer-
f ers prayer. .. . ' t
vent petition according to the simple fashion of the
Church of Geneva, every soldier prostrated himself with as
much devotion as if he had been worshipping in the quiet of
432 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Cii. VIL
his own home, or with the company of his fellow Protestants in
the crowded " temple," and not upon the open field and in full
view of the scoffing enemies of his faith. The trooper had
leaped from the saddle and, with bridle in hand, knelt side by
side with the arquebusier. To the . noblemen in the opposed
ranks, men who, for the most part, had known little of Hugue-
not prayer or of Huguenot warfare, the spectacle was novel,
and admitted but of one explanation : it must be that the Prot-
estants, overcome with fright, were preparing for craven sub-
mission or for flight. " Par la mort Dieu ! " cried some of the
knights about Joyeuse. " The cowards are trembling ! They
are making their confession ! " " Monsieur," interposed one of
their own number who had enjoyed better opportunities for be-
coming acquainted with the characteristics of the foe, address-
ing his warning to the Duke of Joyeuse, " Monsieur, when the
Huguenots act after that fashion, they are prepared to fight
hard." The assertion was fully borne out by the sequel, and
the survivors of Coutras, flying to other parts of France, car-
ried with them wonderful stories of the magical effect pro-
duced by Gabriel d'Amours' potent petitions. Years after-
ward, when Henry of Navarre was seated upon the throne of
France, and when many of those who had fought against him
at Coutras were arrayed on his side in opposition to the League,
some of the loyal Roman Catholics desired to experience for
themselves the advantage of the charm employed to their detri-
ment on the banks of the Dronne. "Sire," said Montigny to
Henry the Fourth on the eve of the battle of Ivry, " permit us
to have at the head of your army to-morrow that minister who
cast a spell of enchantment over us on the day of Coutras, and
over the army of the League at Arques. We desire to hear
his prayer when in sight of the enemy." '
1 "Sire, aions demain a vostre teste ce Ministre qui nous charma a la journee
de Coutras, et l'armee de la Ligue a Arques. Nous desirons d'ouir sa priere
a la veue des ennemis." Agrippa d'Aubigne, iii. 229 (liv. iii., c. v.). Von
Polenz, iv. 667, has noticed this interesting little incident, but, strangely
enough, has misunderstood the word "charma," which he incorrectly renders
by "erfreute," instead of " bezauberte." It is probable that Montigny, in
1587. THE BATTLE OF COUTRAS. 433
Their devotions ended, the Huguenot men-at-arms threw
themselves upon their horses, ready to meet the fierce onslaught
a Huguenot of the opposed battalion. Then from many throats,
battie-psaim. as from the throat of one man, rose the solemn chant
of one of the grandest of exultant hymns — a part of Clement
Marot's quaint version of the one hundred and eighteenth
Psalm:1
" La voici l'heureuse journee
Que Dieu a faite a plein desir :
Par nous soit joye demenee,
Et prenons en elle plaisir.
" O Dieu Eternel, je te prie,
Je te prie, ton Roi maintien :
O Dieu, je te prie et reprie,
Sauve ton Roi, et Tentretien."
With the words still upon their lips, of gratitude that they
had at last been permitted to meet their enemies in a free and
open encounter, and of prayer for a prosperous issue, the Hu-
guenots met the charge of the Duke of Joyeuse.
The eager lancers, well mounted and resplendent in their cost-
ly armor, had dashed madly forward, as if to take part in some
holiday parade. Never had there been a pleasanter sight. The
ground seemed positively shaded by the profusion of banners
and streamers with which they and their weapons were adorned.
But the intervening space was considerable. Before long the
break-neck ride introduced confusion in the ranks ; here a horse-
man was a length ahead of his companions, there one lagged as
much behind. The first ardor diminished before the foot of
the gentle elevation occupied by Navarre was reached, and as
the horses began the ascent they fell from a gallop into a brisk
trot. To add to the disorder, the duke's troops now for the first
time perceived that they were opposed, not by a single corps,
but by the three distinct detachments under the command of
the three Bourbons, and a portion of the right and left diverged
command of the gendarmes on Joyeuse's left, was as little " delighted " with
D' Amours' performance at Coutras as were the partisans of the League, two
years later, at Arques.
1 Verses 24 and 25.
Vol. I.— 28
434 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. VIL
in the direction of Soissons and Conde. A wide gap was thus
created on either side of Joyeuse, which the Huguenots were
not slow in turning to good account, and, a few minutes later,
attacked the combatants in flank.
Meantime Navarre's arquebusiers restrained their impatience
until the duke's lancers were within the prescribed distance,
then fired with fatal precision, and sent many a rider
death of reeling from his seat. Just then the Huguenot men-
at-arms, who had been well held in hand, advanced,
quickening their pace as they came, and discharging with mur-
derous effect their pistols loaded with pieces of steel and other
destructive material. The struggle was soon decided. The
Huguenots bore down with terrific force ; the Roman Catholics,
out of breath from their long run, could scarcely deliver with
their lances a thrust sufficiently vigorous to do execution. En-
tangled by the very excess of the silken pennons they carried,
with scant room to use their weapons, they fought bravely but
hopelessly, and fell an easy prey to their enemies. The Duke
of Joyeuse himself, discovering the extent of the disaster in
which he had involved his army, after vainly imploring a friend
to kill him,1 found death at the hands of a Huguenot, who dis-
dained the ransom of one hundred thousand crowns he offered,
and remembered only the butchery the duke had permitted, a few
months since, at La Mothe Saint He ray. On all sides there were
prodigies of valor. Soissons fought as bravely as if he were a
born Huguenot, and had been bred to no other profession than
that of arms. Conde was not less determined, despite his being
so unfortunate as to be unhorsed by Saint Luc, who then judi-
ciously embraced the opportunity to surrender himself a prisoner
to the prostrate prince. But of all the combatants the King of
Navarre was undoubtedly entitled, on this occasion, to bear off
the palm for superior prowess. His brave speeches before and
Navarre's during the conflict were repeated from mouth to
bravery. mouth. To Conde and Soissons he remarked, as the
action was about to begin : " I shall say nothing to you but that
you are of the House of Bourbon, and I shall show you that I
1 Letter of Cavriana, November 1, 1587, Negociations avec la Toscane, iv. 727.
1587. THE BATTLE OF COUTRAS. 435
am your elder ; " to which Conde and Soissons replied : " And
we shall show you that we are your juniors." And when about
to plunge into the thickest of the fight, " My companions," he
exclaimed, " the glory of God, honor, and life are at stake.
"Whether to save ourselves or to conquer, the way lies before us.
Forward in the name of God, for whom we are fighting ! " Beset
by Roman Catholic knights, Henry contended with several single-
handed, and when he had shot one with his pistol, closed in with
another, at the same time crying out, " Yield thee, Philistine ! " '
It was nine o'clock when the battle began ; within an hour
the enemy were routed. The pursuit lasted for three hours,
the fugitives being followed almost to the very entrance of
Chalais. The Huguenot horse scoured the plain and cut to
pieces, with little show of mercy, the unfortunate regiments of
foot that had incurred their special enmity through participa-
tion in the butchery of the Protestants at La Mothe Saint Heray
and Croix Chapeaux.
As for Navarre and his cousins, they soon desisted from fol-
lowing the retreating foe. Even before the conflict was fully
over, the Bearnais had halted for a moment beneath a tree on
the battle-ground, and had asked that a prayer of
and psaim thanksgiving be offered to God for His mercv Now
after battle
that the enemy were routed, the king returned to the
scene of the beginning of the engagement, and bade the same
Huguenot minister — Gabriel d' Amours — conduct a more delib-
erate service of praise, who so short a time before had raised a
supplication to Heaven for assistance, and who, sword in hand,
had been among the most active of the combatants. Navarre
himself designated the psalm to be sung on this joyful occasion.2
1 The addresses to Conde and Soissons and to the captains and soldiers, as
given by Bap. Legrain in his " Decade con tenant la vie et gestes de Henry le
Grand" (Paris, 1614), and reproduced in the Lettres missives, ii. 308, differ
altogether from the speeches given in the text, but are, to say the least, of
suspicious authenticity.
2 "N'estoy-je pas pres de vous lorsque vous poursuiviez vos ennemis, que
vous me fictes faire la premiere action de grce soubs ung arbre, et, au retour
de la pourcuite, la seconde au champs de batailles entre les mortz, que vous
choisistes le ps. • Or peut bien dire Israel maintenant,' etc." Gabriel d'Amours
to Henry IV., June 20, 1593, ubi infra, i. 281.
436 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. VIL
Eight heartily did the Huguenot soldiers, dust-begrimed and
worn with the fierce encounter, sing in Beza's translation the
sacred poem so appropriate to their own case :
" If it had not been the Lord who was on our side,
Now may Israel say ;
If it had not been the Lord who was on our side,
When men rose up against us :
Then they had swallowed us up quick."
The losses of the two sides were out of all proportion. The
Roman Catholic army left upon the field four hundred noble-
men, many of them of high rank, including their general and
his brother, M. de Saint Sauveur, and two or three thousand
foot soldiers. So considerable a number of nobles had not been
cut off in three of the most bloody battles of the century taken
together. The Iving of Navarre, on the other hand, mourned
the loss of but twenty -five men in all.1
It was the first time, in a warfare extending over a quarter
of a century, that the Huguenots had gained a pitched battle.
The first Hitherto their enemies had been successful in every
gXneefby the considerable engagement ; but the Huguenots had
Huguenots. contrived to neutralize the effects of defeat at Dreux,
at Jarnac, and at Moncontour, by that practical sagacity which
often avails quite as much as the most brilliant generalship in
1 The best account of the battle of Coutras is unquestionably that of Agrippa
d'Aubigne, in his Histoire universelle, iii. 48-58 (book iii., cs. xiii., xiv.).
D'Aubigne, who was one of Navarre's squires, took place among the ' ' mare-
chaux de camp " previously to the battle, and was intrusted with the honor-
able commission of marking out the field. After receiving a sword wound in
the action, he led ten gentlemen in pursuit of the fugitives to the distance of
three leagues, and prevented the troops of Joyeuse from rallying. Memoires
de D'Aubigne, 499. Other valuable accounts are those given in the Memoires de
la Ligue, ii. 262-270 ; in Cimber et Danjou, Archives curieuses, xi. 257-265,
and. in great part verbatim, in Recueil des choses m^morables, 641-645 ; Mo-
moires de Sully, c. 23 (i. 194, etc.) ; De Thou, vii. (book 87) 10. etc. ; Davila,
320, etc. ; Lestoile, i. 232 ; Perefixe, Histoire de Henry le Grand, 66, etc. ;
the letter of Cavriana of November 1, 1587, ubi supra, iv. 725-731 ; the re-
markable letter of Gabriel d' Amours, of June 20, 1593, first published in the
Bulletin de la Societe de 1' histoire du Protestantisme francais, i. 280-285. On
D'Amours consult Haag, La France protestante, i. 175-179. The description
of the battle in the Due d'Aumale's Histoire des princes de Conde, ii. 163, etc.,
based on Agrippa d'Aubigne, is admirably clear and intelligible.
1587. THE BATTLE OF COUTRAS. 437
harvesting the fruits of military campaigns. It remained to be
seen whether Henry of Navarre would prove equal to the task
of securing as marked advantages from " the most signal victory
gained in France for the defence of the Reformed religion " as
Gaspard de Coligny had wrung from uniform defeat — in short,
whether the conqueror of Coutras would show to the world a
march to meet his German allies that would eclipse the glory of
the raid through one-half of France by means of which the ad-
miral, on the morrow of his defeat at Moncontour, carried ter-
ror to the royal court and made Paris itself tremble at the
prospect of seeing the heretic at the gates of the capital.
There was no doubt of the surprise and sorrow with which
the intelligence of the loss of the flower of the royalist nobles
was received at court. Henry of Yalois, however little he re-
gretted in his heart the loss of a favorite whom he had lately
learned to distrust as a secret partisan of the League, was con-
spicuous as a mourner. He gave to the dead Duke of Joyeuse
such a pompous burial as was customary only in the case of
princes of the blood — then turned and conferred upon the Duke
of Epernon the office of admiral and the government of Nor-
mandy, the two most important trusts the late favorite had
held.1 As for the Cardinal of Bourbon, he disgusted even his
majesty by volunteering the expression of a characteristic wish,
that it had been his nephew that had lost his life in place of
Joyeuse.2
It was for the purpose of preventing Henry of Navarre from
obtaining in Gascony those re-enforcements with which he
should march to the Loire and effect a junction with the Ger-
The fruits of man army> that Joyeuse had been despatched with
victory lost. suc}1 pressing orders on the expedition to which he
owed his death. Now that Joyeuse had been killed and his
army routed, it was to be expected that the Bearnais would
pursue with vigor and alacrity the plan previously laid down.
Instead of this, no sooner was the battle well over than he hur-
ried off to Pau, to lay the ensigns taken from the enemy at the
feet of his mistress, Corisande d'Andouins, Countess of Gram-
1 Cayet, Clironologie novenaire, 42. 2 Lestoile, i. 232.
438 THE HUCxUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Cu. VII.
mont. Such were the strange inconsistencies in the character
of this remarkable prince, that the same man who one day was
imperilling his life at the head of a religious party, in arms for
the defence of what it deemed the truth, the same man who
craved the public recognition of the sovereignty of the God of
battles before and after the bloody conflict, was seen, a few days
after, bringing the trophies of victory to gratify the vanity of
a woman whom he loved adulterously.
While there can be no question as to the flagrant indecency
of his action, views widely divergent have been entertained re-
specting the military expediency of the course which the King
of Navarre adopted on this occasion.
The " Army of the Reiters " was known to be on its way. It
would require the best guidance and all the help the Hugue-
nots of France could afford, to conduct the foreign troops across
the wide intervening spaces. The inhabitants of the regions
to be traversed were, almost to a man, Roman Catholics. The
rivers were numerous, and some of them deep. The bridges
were all in the hands of the enemy. Above all, should the rei-
ters conclude to take the shortest path from Germany to Gas-
cony, they must of necessity come within easy striking distance
of Paris.
Why did not Henry of Navarre instantly press forward to
prevent the occurrence of such a calamity as might well befall
an army freshly recruited, in a strange land of whose geography
-Navarre's ^ was scarcety less ignorant than of the language of
justification. flie pe0pie % It is by no means easy to attain certain-
ty upon this point. On the one hand, the king himself and such
a trusty and conscientious a servant of his as Duplessis Mornay
assert that it was impracticable for the victor of Coutras to do
otherwise than as he did. To .use their own expression, the
troops of Navarre had been " borrowed " for a few days only.
They had left home with little provision for a longer absence,
and must be allowed time to refit themselves. They were now,
moreover, encumbered by the very weight of the rich booty
which they had taken, and which they must deposit in their
houses before entering upon a long and perilous march. Besides,
where and how were they to meet and join their German allies,
15S7. THE BATTLE OF COUTRAS. 439
who, in place of coming toward the Upper Loire, had, it was
now known, contrary to the understanding which they had with
them, deflected their course toward Beauce and Chartres — with
what object in view it was difficult to surmise. How could
either Henry of Xavarre reach them or they reach Henry of
Navarre, with the bridges and fords all in the enemy's hands ?
In fact, should the Huguenots of the south venture to start out
in quest of the auxiliary army respecting whose plans since they
left the German borders they had been left in complete igno-
rance, it was less likely that they would succeed in their en-
deavor than that they would, before reaching them, be over-
whelmed by the army of the King of France. " Consider,"
wrote Duplessis Mornay, soon after the battle of Coutras, " that
the king will have the option of bringing on a combat with
whichever army he may please, and that his preference will
be to attack us rather than the reiters. Hence, we must act
cautiously ; hence, too, it is very reasonable that for every two
steps we take in the direction of our foreign army, it shall take
three steps toward us." '
Unfortunately the plausible excuses of the King of Navarre,
and of his conscientious but too partial advocate, are more than
counterbalanced by the candid admissions of other followers of
the Huguenot cause equally devoted and enjoying scarcely in-
ferior opportunities for the formation of a correct judgment.
Sully and Agrippa d'Aubigne, however much they may differ
on other points, agree in deploring the signal mistake which in
a brief week caused all the expected fruits of a great and sig-
nal victory to vanish into thin air. Both unite in ascribing
1 " Au moins auront ils bien apperceu que nous n'espargnons rien pour aller
a eulx.'' Duplessis Mornay to Morlas, November, 1587, Memoires de Duples-
sis Mornay, iv. 34 See, also, " Memoire envoye par le roy de Navarre en
l'armee estrangere qui le debvoit venir joindre au commencement de Novembre,
1587, faict par M. Duplessis," ibid., iv. 39-43 ; and " Instruction au sieur de
Monglat, retournant de la part du roi de Navarre vers l'armee estrangere,"
ibid., iv. 43-47. In the latter, p. 44, Henry expresses bis surprise at seeing
the reiters " descendre vers le bas, ou il cognoissoit, en la saison d hyver, et
veu la grossesse de la riviere, une impossibilite de parvenir a eulx." Compare,
also, " Instruction a M. des Reaux, allant de la part du roy de Navarre vers
MM. des cantons de Suisse," iv. 47-54.
440 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Cu. VIL
Henry's failure to march in all haste to extend a helping hand
to the reiters on the banks of the Loire, or, if that was impossi-
ble, at least to strengthen the Protestant cause by the capture
of all the important towns of Poitou and Saintonge, to the un-
fortunate sacrifice of duty at the altar of vanity or love.1 And,
if this testimony of sagacious captains be deemed insufficient,
we have the direct statements of one of the chief actors in the
drama of Coutras — no other than the brave Huguenot minister,
Gabriel d'Amours— to the effect that, even immediately after
the battle, the King of [Navarre had not been left without
faithful warning against the suicidal course which he seemed
resolved to take. " The next day, in the morning," writes this
frankest of servants to his royal master, " did not Monsieur
de Chandieu and I go and entreat your majesty to pursue
your victory and to make the most of it, as being the person
who had had this honor from God to be elected Protector of
the Churches in so notable an assembly as that of Montauban ?
Did we not tell you that if you should do otherwise, the victory
which God had given you would prove to be of no account in
future ? You broke up your army, you went into Beam ; you
understand me well." 2
Meanwhile the great auxiliary army, from which the Hugue-
nots anticipated so great advantage, and of whose advent their
enemies stood in undisguised fear, had for some weeks
beth renders been actually upon the march. Queen Elizabeth of
England, having been persuaded to lend the Hugue-
nots the material support of which they stood in need, had
advanced at Frankfort a sum of over thirty thousand pounds
sterling to be expended in the levy of German soldiers.3
1 Sully, c. 24 ; Agrippa d'Aubigne, iii. 58, 59.
2 " Le lendemain au matin Monsr. de Chandieu et moy u'allasmes-nous
pas supplier V. M. de pourcuivre votre victoire et la faire valoir comme celuy
qui avoit eu cest honneur de Dieu d avoir este esleu protecteur des Eglises en
une assemblee si notable qu'estoit celle de Montauban ? Que si vous faisies
aultrement, la victoire que Dieu vous avoit donnee seroit comme de nul effect
a l'advenir ? Vous rompistes vostre armee, vous alastes en Beam ; vous
m'entendez bien." Gabriel d'Amours to Henry IV., June 20, 1593.
* " Memoire des sommes de deniers que la Reyne d'Angleterre a prestez ou
desboursez pour le Roy Treschrestien," submitted to the Council of Henry
1587. THE ARMY OF THE REITERS. 441
Eight thousand reiters, or German horse, and twenty thou-
sand Swiss foot soldiers ' constituted a force which, added to
The Army of the French troops at the disposal of Henry of Na-
the reiters. varre, would perhaps enable the Huguenots to dictate
terras of peace.
The old ally of the French Protestants, Duke John Casimir,
had engaged either to lead the expedition in person or to
furnish it with a competent head. In a document of
John Cas- l .
imir'scom- great length he had promised never to lay down his
arms until the Huguenots should have secured all the
rights for which they were contending — the repeal of the entire
body of unfriendly legislation enacted since the death of Henry
the Second, complete equality of Protestants and Roman Cath-
olics in the sight of the law, free admission to all offices, the
w chambres mi-parties," three places of security in every province ;
in short, all that the most sanguine adherent of the Reformed
Church could desire. At the same time the rights of Navarre
as the legitimate heir to the crown of France were not forgotten.2
IV., May 21, 1599, O. S. The first item is : " An. 1587. Desbourse par les
mains du Seignieur Horace Pallavicini pour la levee de Parmee Allemande,
conduicte par le Baron d'D'aunau pour laquelle somme il y a obligation des
Ambassadeurs du Roy datee a Francfort, Lib. Sterl. 30,468 ; Scud. Franc.
101,560." Edmund Sawyer, Memorials of Affairs of State (London, 1725),
i. 29.
1 These are De Thou's figures, vii. 17 (book 87) ; but other accounts differ
widely. Guise, in a letter to the king, August 27, 1587, makes the army to
consist of 5,000 reiters (instead of the 9,000 expected), 4,000 or 5,000 lans-
quenets, 12,000 Swiss, and 2,000 or 3,000 French troops under the Duke of
Bouillon. See De Croze, ii. 23. The Recueil des choses memorables, 646,
agrees very nearly with the Duke of Guise, making the army consist of 5,000
reiters, 5,000 lansquenets, 12,000 to 15,000 Swiss, 2,000 French arquebusiers,
and 400 to 500 horse. Duplessis Mornay, in a letter to Morlas, January, 1588,
also makes one cause of failure to have been that but 4.000 reiters were sent.
Memoires, iv. 135. The account in the Memoires de la Ligue, ii. 233, does
not dilfer greatly from the above, but makes the total strength of the army,
after the union with Chatillon s troops, to have been about 35,000 men, with
nineteen pieces of artillery of various sizes.
8 k* Accord et capitulation faicte entre le roy de Navarre et le due de Cazimir,
pour la levee de Tarmee des Reysters veneus en France en l'an 1587," dated
" Fridelshem, le lle jour de Janvier, l'an 1587." Memoires de Duplessis
Mornay, iv. 56-81. Casimir is here styled " Count Palatine of the Rhine, Ad-
ministrator of the electorate and palatinate, Duke of Bavaria."
442 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. VIL
Unfortunately for the Huguenots, Casimir, who by this time
was certainly familiar, by reason of past expeditions, with the
French territory to be traversed, could not or would not go in
person,1 and deputed his authority to a nobleman far inferior
to himself in birth, and scarcely more than a simple gentleman,
the Baron Dohna — brave, upright, and conscientious,
Baron Dohna. . . • j . i i j» • r i
but utterly unacquainted with the affairs or the coun-
try. Destitute of the influence which high rank frequently con-
fers, he was equally lacking in that mysterious faculty which
enables some men sprung even from the lowliest station to
control great bodies of soldiers. It was only to be expected
that such a person should expose himself to misinformation,
and fall a prey to the evil counsels of injudicious or corrupt
counsellors.2
It was late in August before the army started from its ren-
dezvous in Alsace ; and the reiters, who had been re-enforced
by a small French contingent, would gladly have delayed fur-
The reiters ^ier until tn© arrival of Chatillon, known to be on his
raS Lor- way from Gascony. From the first, dissension pre-
vailed in the ranks. The French were dissatisfied
with the general assigned to the joint force, and insisted that,
in default of a German prince, the supreme control should be
intrusted to a French prince. It was only after much contro-
versy and some hard feeling that the nominal command was
reluctantly conceded to the Duke of Bouillon, whom youth
and inexperience prevented from being adequate to discharge
with credit the thankless and onerous duty. The Duchy of
Lorraine was reached after a toilsome march through the
woody passes of the Yosges near Pfalzburg, and the army,
experienced at once the inconvenience of having neither au-
thoritative leader nor settled plan of action. The Duke of
1 " Le due Casimir ne pouvant, a cause de ses occupations domestiques, ou ne
voulant, pour l'experience des peines passees, se faire chef de l'armee, " etc.
Agrippa d'Aubigne, iii. 77. This author's estimate of the Baron Dohna's
qualifications is fair and moderate : " homme de quelque experience, de grand
courage, parmi les reistres mestres (ma tres) d heureuse reputation."
2 "Le baron de Dono, son domestique, gentilhomme peu auctorise parmi
eulx." Duplessis Mornay to Morlas, Memoires, iv. 135.
1587. THE ARMY OF THE REITERS. 443
Bouillon and the French insisted upon the importance of tak-
ing advantage of the present opportunity to lay waste the pos-
sessions of the House of Lorraine, which, after having in pre-
vious wars pretended to be neutral, had now openly espoused
the cause of the League. There was no more certain method
of putting a speedy end to the present struggle, than by reduc-
ing the Duke of Lorraine and his kinsman the Duke of Guise
to the necessity of begging the King of France to negotiate a
peace with the Huguenots and their German allies. On the
other hand, nothing could be more ill-advised than to spare
the lands of the prime enemies of the Protestants, lying on the
very road between Germany and France, and leave Sedan, Ja-
metz, and the rest of the friendly Duchy of Bouillon exposed
to the attacks of its implacable neighbors. It was then sus-
pected, as it is now known, that Henry of Valois secretly hoped
that the invading army would take this course ; for that prince
had no desire to cross swords with the Germans, and only
longed for the quiet that must follow the humiliation of the
League. Moreover, the French declared that in carrying fire
and sword throughout Lorraine the army would only be exe-
cuting the instructions of the King of Navarre himself.1
For a moment it seemed that this plan would be pursued ;
but suddenly Dohna and his council of war declared for an-
other. They would march without delay to meet the King of
Navarre, and therefore direct their course toward the river
Loire. Dohna maintained that these were his instructions
from Casimir.2 His countrymen supported him from consid-
1 Duplessis Mornay expressly states that it had heen ordered that the army
should occupy itself for a time in Lorraine, " et y prendroit quelque pied,
afin d'y laisser une espine a ceulx de la Ligue, et de monstrer a la France
qu'on se prenoit aulx aucteurs de ses malheurs. " " Aucontraire," he adds, "on
dispute pour l'espargner ; on declare qu'on ne souffrira poinct que la guerre
s'y fasse ; on se bande pour la Lorraine contre tous." Memoires, iv. 135.
2 Nor was this improbable in itself. Casimir and the Duke of Lorraine
were closely connected by marriage, and both had been brought up together
in the court of Henry the Second. It was at that time that Constable Mont-
morency remarked of the young German prince : u That little fox will in his
youth find the hens of France so good, that he may very possibly return to
eat them some future time, with a much larger company." Memoires de la
Huguerye, iii. 3-5.
444 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Cu. VIL
erations of prudence. It was evidently safer for Germany to
have the friendship than the hostility of the border land of
Lorraine. As for the Duke of Bouillon, he deemed it best to
yield the point without too much opposition. What had in-
duced Dohna to adopt a decision which was the first of a long
series of blunders in which the " Army of the Eeiters " was
destined to involve itself ? Contemporaries for the most part
ascribe it to the pernicious suggestions of one Michel de la
Huguerye, who had been given to the baron, partly as counsel-
lor, partly, from his familiarity with both German and French,
as a convenient medium of communication between the troops
of the two nations. So uniformly bad was the advice given by
this person, that the story, whether true or a baseless surmise,
gained currency that he was a paid agent of the House of Lor-
raine.1
It was a long and tedious journey that confronted the rei-
ters, even before the formidable stream of the Loire could be
reached. Numerous rivers intervened — the Meurthe,
Koute taken 7
by the Ger- the Moselle, the Meuse, the Marne, the Aube, the
mans. ' '
Seine, the Armancon, the Serein, the Cure, the
Yonne. Upon the banks of any one of these their progress
might be disputed. The population of the region was hostile,
1 " Un nomme la Huguerie f ut suspect deslors et depuis a plusieurs, d'avoir
porte grand nuisance a toute l'armee, et rompu beaucoup de desseins tant
contre le due de Lorraine que contre ceux de Guise. II essaya de s'en ex-
cuser : neantmoins long temps depuis a este en reputation d avoir empli ses
cofres en ceste guerre." Recueil des clioses memorables, 647. See Agrippa
d'Aubigne, iii. 63, and Duplessis Mornay, ubi supra, iv. 136. Respecting La
Huguerye's calumnious statements about Jeanne d'Albret, etc., in his Me-
moires, see the Rise of the Huguenots, ii. 424. De Thou (vii 17, had seen
the man and weighed his character: '*Cet homme, qui avoit appris a, ne
rougir de rien, avoit autrefois ete precepteur a Paris, ou je 1 avois vu pendant
ma jeunesse. Du reste il 6toit vendu a la Ligue, et s'etoit, dit-on, laisse cor-
rompre par le Due de Lorraine, pour trahir ses allies." It is only just, however,
to say that this was not the opinion of Francois de Chatillon, who, in a letter
to Casimir, February 17, 1588, after deploring the unfortunate issue of the
expedition, remarks: " Quoi qu'on dise, M. de la Huguerye s'y est comporte
en homme de bien et en bonne conscience, pour le moins en tout ce que j'ay
vu et appercu de luy." See Count Delaborde, 324, and Baron de Ruble, in
the admirable introduction to the third volume of his edition of the Memoires
de la Huguerye, xxi., etc.
1587. THE ARMY OF THE REITERS. 445
and in the Duke of Guise and other leaders the German army
had watchful antagonists who did not, indeed, venture upon
general engagements, but who harassed it continually, and more
than once inflicted considerable loss. Meanwhile the general-
ship of the Germans was too incompetent to take advantage of
such opportunities as the reckless audacity of the other side
sometimes afforded. On the long march one notable accession
of strength was gained, when, at the abbey of Saint Urbain,
They are not ^ar from Joinville, Francois de Chatillon came
JSnJoSde *n' navmg safely accomplished, with the troops in-
chatiiion. trusted to him by the King of Xavarre, a long, diffi-
cult, and perilous circuit from the neighborhood of the Garonne,
through the whole length of Languedoc, Dauphiny, and Savoy,
to Geneva, and thence through Switzerland and the Spanish
Franche Comte to Lorraine. Fresh dangers awaited the little
band of scarcely one hundred men-at-arms and twelve hundred
mounted arquebusiers, at the very end of its pilgrimage ; for a
superior force of the enemy, having enveloped Chatillon and
his troops in the village of Gresille (Grizelle), compelled him to
retire for safety into the castle. Happily he was rescued within
a few hours by the timely arrival of friendly troops.1
The gain of Chatillon's troops was more than counterbalanced
by the losses sustained by the undisciplined army, which, after
the common fashion of the German soldiers of the
Want of dis- , ,
cipiine, and period, was more intent upon plundering such towns
losses. *■ l r r>
and villages as fell in its way, and exacting a ransom
from wealthy abbeys like that of Clairvaux, than careful of
health and life. Many of the reiters died because of their im-
prudence in feeding upon unripe and unwholesome fruit, and
many who lagged behind, half dead with disease, were de-
spatched by the peasants. Yet it must be confessed that the
Duke of Guise makes too great a draft upon our faith when, in
his letters to the King of France, he swears that on a single day
1 See the very full account of this expedition given by Count Jules Dela-
borde, in his life of Chatillon, pp. 264-283. based upon the letters of Chatil-
lon himself and the Memoires of his lieutenant, M. de Saint Auban. These
Meinoires may also themselves be consulted with profit (Petitot Collection,
vol. 43, pp. 472-482).
446 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. VII.
he has seen, in following them, more than eight hundred dead
bodies left in the wake of the army.1
Harassed by the Duke of Guise, who hung on their right, and
by his brother, the Duke of Mayenne, who was never far from
their left, the Germans and their allies at length found them-
selves approaching the centre of the kingdom. But, what with
the self-will of the troops and the weakness of their superiors,
little advantage was to be hoped from their coming. Scarcely
had the armv crossed the river Yonne when it was
The Germans " _ _ v— . . -»-,-
disregard Na- met by a messenger sent by the Jving of JNavarre —
v&rrc1s orders
and push on' Louis de Harlay, Sieur de Monglas. He bade Baron
Dohna, in his master's name, to discontinue his ad-
vance, and take the road to the left which, at this spot, branches
off in the direction of the upper waters of the Loire. In vain,
however, did the envoy insist ; the Germans were in no mood
to engage in a toilsome and circuitous march through the Mor-
van and other mountain districts, such as those through which
Francois de Chatillon had lately made his way and which he
was so soon again to traverse. It seemed much more pleasant
to push on to the Loire, where they were informed that a bridge
might easily be secured by the seizure of the town of La Char-
ite. This hope was destined soon to be crushed. The troops
sent forward to make themselves masters of La Charite arrived
before the place twenty-four hours too late. Another and a
more serious disappointment befell the Germans about the same
time. Knowing that the war with the Huguenots had been
undertaken by the king sorely against his will, the Baron Dohna
had confidently expected that his majesty would seize the ad-
vent of the reiters as a pretext for promptly concluding a peace
with Henry of Navarre ; in which event he might have re-
turned to the Rhine with little loss, and with all the substantial
fruits of a victorious campaign. Instead of this, he discovered
1 De Croze, ii. 27-29. The course taken by the Army of the Reiters may be
traced on the map, from Pfalzburg, through or near Saarbruck. Blamont, Lune-
ville, Bayon, Pont Saint Vincent. Saint Urbain. Chaumont en Bassigny,
Clairvaux, Chateau Vilain, Chatillon sur Seine, Laignes, Ancy le Franc,
Tanlay, Noyers, Vermanton, Mailly la Ville, to Neuvy, etc., on the river
Loire.
1587. THE ARMY OF THE BETTERS. 447
that the only practical result of the German irruption had thus
far been to shame Henry of Yalois into taking the field in per-
son, and thus bringing about an apparent community of purpose
between the royalists and the League. In fact, he found that,
to the two merciless enemies who still hung upon his flanks,
leaving him no rest by day or by night, he must now add a
third enemy in the king's own forces posted in his front at Gien
and guarding every crossing of the Loire.
Here again Monglas gave the Germans good but fruitless
advice. Since they had been unwilling to obey the Bearnais's
commands by taking the route of the Upper Loire, let them at
least not shrink from making a vigorous attempt to cross the
stream where they were. This, he assured them, was quite
practicable, for the fords were numerous and the
on going west- f orces of the enemy would not be likely to offer any
insurmountable obstacle. But ^Navarre's envoy was
as unsuccessful in persuading his intractable allies now as he
had been in the first instance. The reiters absolutely refused
to make the venture. Either they would turn westward along
the northern bank of the Loire, or they would go home by the
road they had come.
There was no help for it. The headstrong Germans must
be permitted to have their own way, plunging still farther into
the most populous districts of France, with no visible plan, and
with little likelihood of being able ultimately to extricate them-
selves from the pitfalls lying in their path. The Frenchmen in
their company, not being able to lead, were fain to content them-
selves with following their unruly associates, and diminishing,
if possible, the effects of the inevitable disaster in store for them.
The Duke of Guise, as has been seen, had never been far
away from the army of the reiters since it entered France. De-
Guise's cor- termined to inflict the utmost damage possible upon
wTth°theence the intruders, he was no less resolute that the King
Spaniards. 0£ ;prance should receive little assistance and no glory
at his hands. To the Spanish ambassador, with whom he main-
tained an unbroken correspondence, he revealed the intensity
of the hatred he entertained toward his lawful sovereign, and
the profound distrust with which he viewed every action of the
44.S THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OP NAVARRE. Ch. VIL
Yalois prince. It was to Philip of Spain that he turned for
help, pleading for the payment of those sums of money without
which he declared himself unable to meet his necessary ex-
penses. He could not see, he said, what difference there was
between the present condition of things and that contemplated
by the treaty of Joinville. If the house of Guise remained
under arms, it would compel the King of France to continue
the war, and so the tranquillity of the Netherlands and of
Philip's affairs, so far as the French were concerned, would be
assured. " So long as we keep the king thus busily employed,"
added the duke, with undisguised satisfaction, " it will not be
in his power to turn his thoughts elsewhere."1 Meantime, if
Philip should withhold his promised aid, save in case of the
declaration of open war between Henry of Yalois and the
League, that wily prince would continue to conduct his hos-
tilities in so covert a manner that the latter would never be able
to break the public peace without apparent injustice, and when
abandoned by all its supporters ; or else he would wait until six
times as large a sum of money would not raise the forces at its
command to their present degree of effectiveness.
But while thus patiently holding forth his hand for the alms
which his Catholic Majesty might be pleased to dole out to his
very humble petitioner and pensioner, the Duke of Guise took
good care to earn Philip's esteem and confidence by sedulously
disobeying Henry's commands. " The king," he wrote to Men-
doza, a few days before the events which we are next to con-
sider, " has sent me word to annoy the enemy as much as pos-
sible, and to make ready to join him. In order to find an
excuse for not doing so, therefore, I place the enemy between
him and myself; and I have sent to hasten the Duke of Lor-
raine. If he succeed in coming, we shall have an army stronger
than his and than that of the enemy. To-day I shall effect a
junction with my brother and cousins, so as to continue to do
them damage. After that I shall see what is to be done." 2
1 uTant que nous tiendrons le roy en ces exercices, il n'est possible qu'il
puisse penser ailleurs."
- Guise to Mendoza, from camp at Joigny, October 20, 1587, De Croze, Ap-
pendix, ii. 296-298.
1587. THE ARMY OF THE REITERS. 449
Just one week after the date of this remarkable letter, which
casts a flood of light upon the attitude of the parties in the
war that was desolating France, the first serious en-
He attacks
the reiters counter of arms occurred. The scene was the village
of Vimory, not far from Montargis, former abode of
Renee of France, Duchess of Ferrara, where, in previous wars,
a hospitality worthy of the daughter of Louis the Twelfth had
been dispensed to the poor Huguenots. Faithful to his policy
of keeping the enemy between himself and the monarch whom
he wished to avoid, Guise had advanced to Courtenay, and
thence to the vicinity of Montargis. The little river Loing in-
tervened between him and the reiters, protecting him from any
surprise on their part, but offering no impediment to him, com-
manding as he did all the passages. The Germans were barely
through their supper one evening — it was about seven o'clock
and already quite dark — when the Duke of Guise and his
brother, with a strong band of horse, suddenly dashed in among
them, confidently expecting to cut to pieces one of the divisions
of the Protestant army. But though there was some terror for
the moment and much loss of baggage, the Baron Dohna speed-
ily rallied his men and repulsed the assailants, with whom it
might have gone hard had not a violent rain and the consequent
darkness, together with the lack of familiarity of the strangers
with their surroundings, effectually prevented the pursuit. As
it was, the German general and Mayenne came into a personal
combat, in which the former received a sabre cut upon the fore-
head that might well have proved serious, while the latter was
stunned by two well-aimed pistol-shots that struck the chin-
He publishes piece °^ n^s helmet. It was clearly a very indecisive
ciuntsg0f ws action,1 as Guise virtually admitted on the morrow by
victory. sending the baron an offer to exchange the dead, and
the prisoners and banners taken on both sides. None the less
did the Lorraine prince, with whom neither modesty nor verac-
1 " Au reste cette attaque fut tres-sanglante, et ne couta pas moins cher au
Due de Mayenne qu'aux ennemis." De Thou, vii. (book 87) 34. Cayet makes
Guise and Mayenne lose 240 men and the reiters but 150. Chronologie Nove-
naire, 41.
Vol. 1.— ay
450 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. VIL
ity was a virtue held in high repute, publish far and wide sto-
ries of a signal victory. To Mendoza, in particular, who was
dispenser of Philip the Second's bounty, he reported, in a let-
ter written three days later, a marvellous success. Contrary to
the advice of everybody, he said, he had attacked a quarter of
the enemy containing twenty-two cornets of reiters, whom he
had defeated, cutting to pieces more than seven hundred of
their number, not to speak of the wounded, and capturing the
principal colonels and captains, and more than twelve hundred
horse, with an infinite quantity of booty and " chariots." '
However idle the boast, it accomplished its end in inflaming
still more the enthusiastic devotion of the silly populace of
Paris to the House of Guise, while sensible men, able to make
a liberal discount from the claims of the lying League, shook
their heads and felt sure of only one thing — that, whichever
side might gain, the king was sure to lose.2
As the army advanced farther, the difficulties from within
and from without multiplied from day to day. Bad as were the
The Germans roads through a district converted by copious rains
iScrelSng11 m^° a quagmire, so deep that the Swiss and German
difficulty. f00t soldiers lost their shoes, and even the horses
of the reiters,3 if we may believe the chronicles, were at every
step liable to suffer a similar disaster, the divisions and dis-
1 Guise to Mendoza, from camp on the Loire, October 30, 1587, De Croze, ii.,
pieces justificatives, 299.
2 Letter of Cavriana (who styles the affair a puny victory — " una vittorietta "),
November 1, 1587. Negociations avec la Toscane, iv. 731. See the accounts
in the Memoires de la Ligue, ii. 241, 242 ; Recueil des choses memorables, 649 ;
Agrippa d Aubigne, iii. 63, 64; De Thou, ubi supra; " Sommaire discours de
toutes les deffaictes des Reistres," etc., in Cimber et Danjou, Archives curieuses,
xi. 267-275. Lestoile, i. 233, caustically observes that more reiters by nearly
two thousand were reported to have been routed at Vimory than had entered
France altogether. As for Etienne Pasquier's panegyrical letter (Ed. Feugere,
ii. 300, 301), it is only less inaccurate than Davila's account (324, 325), which
makes Guises gain in horses captured more than twice as large as that claimed
by the duke himself. Almost the only loss of the German general on which
all parties were agreed, was of the strange present of two camels and two
kettledrums (such, says Cayet, as the Turkish bashaws are accustomed to have
carried in front of them when in command of armies), intended by Dohna for
the King of Navarre. 3 Cayet, ubi supra.
1587. THE ARMY OF THE REITERS. 451
sensions prevailing among the troops were still worse. Not in-
aptly does Sully liken the ponderous army in its uncertain prog-
ress to some huge hulk of a vessel left to drift at the mercy
of the waves.1 The Swiss, no such dullards as to be blind to
the ruin in which the incompetency of their leaders must infal-
libly end, had early taken the alarm. Under the circumstances
it is not altogether to be wondered at that, even before the in-
cident at Yimory, they fell in with an artful suggestion that
they should send deputies to the King of France, to inform
his majesty of the reasons for which they had entered his do-
minions. This step having been taken, the Duke of Nevers and
others had an opportunity for intrigue which they
Kend deputies were not slow in improving. The issue could not be
to the kin?
doubtful. It was not difficult to induce the Swiss to
believe that they had been enlisted under false pretences. Was
not the very monarch who, they had been assured, had been
compelled by the rebellious League, contrary to his will, to take
up arms against his Huguenot subjects, now himself at the head
of his forces, opposing the advance of the very army that had
come to espouse the Huguenot cause ? "Was he not contending
for the same objects as Guise and Mayenne ? Henry of Valois
himself, much as he would certainly have been delighted had
his old Swiss allies been employed in humbling the power of
Lorraine and the League, on the outskirts of France, could not,
save at the risk of manifest dishonor, treat as friends the per-
verse invaders who had ill-advisedly penetrated to the very
neighborhood of his capital. It is not surprising that, when the
envoys were admitted to his presence, the king showed them
" a very bad countenance," or that he reproached them with
some bitterness for violating their oath and taking arms against
him. " I am King of France," said he ; "I wear on my head
The deter- tne crown- I arn n°t a mere shadow." In short,
tu5Tti° "" after a fortnight or more, during which messengers
Switzerland. went to and fro between the royal camp and the
quarters of the Swiss, the latter adopted a resolution, which the
joint remonstrances of the Baron Dohna and of the French
1 (Economies royales, i. 201.
452 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Cn.
Protestants were unable to shake, to return to Switzerland un-
der the guarantee of the king's protection during the march.
The defection of the Swiss has naturally met on all sides with
severe and merited animadversion, as bearing unmistakable
marks of fickleness, if not of positive cowardice. Yet some
weight ought certainly to be given to the remark of the historian
Agrippa d'Aubigne, who, with all the facts of the case before
him, and fully understanding the difficulties of their situation,
charitably concedes that never had any Swiss mercenaries so
nearly a justification of their course in coming to a separate ar-
rangement with the enemy.1
Through the whole autumn the army of the reiters had been
aimlessly pushing westward. Now, near the end of ^November,
it found itself only two leagues short of the city of Chartres,
with what ulterior destination no one seemed to know. The
new resolution adopted by the Swiss, together with the evident
folly of persisting in a course that only took them farther from
all hope of meeting the friendly forces of the King of Navarre,
at length determined the Germans to retrace their steps, with
the possible purpose of seeking by the Upper Loire a passage
into Southern France. Even now, however, this un-
Tbe Germans ' '
begin a re fortunate army was not suffered to sro unharmed.
treat
Barely had it turned its face eastward when a new
disaster befell it. Baron Dohna lodged his guards in the lit-
tle walled town of Auneau, ten or twelve miles east of Char-
tres. The peasants of the neighborhood had shut themselves
up in the castle overlooking the town, and had not been mo-
lested, on their engagement to furnish the reiters with the pro-
visions the latter might require. Dohna was a careless general.
He had not informed himself of the fact that the Duke of
Guise, having marched all day toward Auneau, had secretly
thrown into the castle a body of arquebusiers, while he himself
1 " Je dirai pourtant a la descliarge de cette nation, qu'aiant oui alleguer
leurs raisons dans le conseil des Princes, estant bien connu combien ils estoient
mal conduits, jamais les Suisses n'ont fait capitulation a part (comme il leur
est arrive quelques fois) de laquelle ils puissent monstrer plus justifiantes rai-
sons. " Histoire universelle, iii. 65. The most full contemporary account of the
Swiss episode is found in the Memoires de la Ligue, ii. 239-245, 247, 248-250.
1587. THE ARMY OF THE REITERS. 453
waited outside of the town ready to fall on the Germans at day-
break. His bold plan succeeded in every point. Early on the
morning of the twenty-fifth of November, a simultaneous attack
was made from the castle and from the country side. The gates
were found open and unprotected, for no thought had
prised by been given to them at a moment when the army was
Guise at Au- ° J
neau. about to march out. The ponderous "chariots" or
wagons of the Germans encumbered the narrow streets ; the
reiters themselves were engaged in bringing out of the houses
the troublesome effects without which they never deigned to go
to war. When they had hastily thrown themselves into the sad-
dle, they knew not whither to go for combat or escape. Dohna
and seven or eight of his men, fortunate in reaching a gate early,
fought their way through and reached the open country. A
few others clambered to the walls, and thence threw themselves
into the moat. All the rest of the detachment of reiters that
had passed the night at Auneau were either killed or taken pris-
oners. The loss of the Germans was considerable, but it was not
irretrievable. Had the conduct of the" army been even passably
fair, the disaster might have been forgotten in the glory of sub-
sequent successes. As it was, the Germans lost all heart. It
is doubtful, indeed, whether had the king desired to effect the
utter destruction of the foreigners from the other side of the
Rhine, he might not have virtually accomplished it. But he
was too shrewd to press an advantage of which the glory would
inure altogether to the Duke of Guise and the League. As for
Guise, his secret correspondence with the Spanish
Guise accuses 7 * l , , L
the king of ambassador sufficiently testifies to the bitterness with
throwing ob- , 1 ■ • n • i i •
staciesinhis which he chafed at the impediments thrown in his
way by his royal master. To Mendoza he declared
that what induced him so promptly to resolve on making the
attack at Auneau was the certain advice he had received of the
intention of the King of France, " which was to pursue and
conclude treaties with the strangers, and bring under immediate
consideration a peace which this happy enterprise now averted." '
1 " Et faire parler a rinstant d'une paix que j'ay divertie par ceste heureuse
entreprise. "
454 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. VII.
He assured him that he had lost but four of his men, while the
enemy had lost the choicest part, the very soul of their army,
and the remainder had not dared even to come to the rescue.
Their flight had been disorderly, but the Duke of Epernon,
commanding the king's forces, though following them day by
day, and never more than from two to four leagues distant, had
not suffered an arquebuse to be fired or a lance to be broken.
Indignant at such evident cowardice and treachery, whole com-
panies of Epernon's soldiers had forsaken him with standards
flying and without leave. When the Dukes of Mercceur and
Nemours offered to join him with five or six hundred lances,
Epernon resolutely declined their assistance, and induced the
king to recall them ; and, on learning that Mandelot and other
friends of Guise were about to attack the retreating Germans,
the perfidious favorite of the king at once began to treat with
the enemy to prevent their entire discomfiture. " I rejoice,"
truculently added the Duke of Guise, " that if they pass through
my government (Champagne) or through Lorraine, I shall attack
them, at any cost, and without regard for any promise which
may have been given to them, and that I shall put an end to
them." »
The tidings conveyed by the duke to Philip the Second's
ambassador in Paris were only too true. Disheartened by the
The reiters mismanagement of their leaders and by the desertion
oraducfto"18" °^ *ne Swiss, the liters were not long in resolving to
Germany. avail themselves of the liberal offer of a safe-conduct
made to them in the king's name, provided they would return
to Germany.2 Thus did the great "Army of the Reiters,"
upon which such magnificent hopes had been founded, come to
an impotent conclusion.3 As an anonymous chronicler of the
1 See the instructive letters of Guise to Mendoza of December 5 and 11,
1587. De Croze (documents inedits), ii. 300-303. In the second letter Guise
significantly remarks : " Le roi pense que ces reistres dehors, il nous man-
quera beaucoup de subject d'entreprendre."
2 It is unnecessary to give in detail the articles of the "capitulation," which
the curious may read in the Memoires de la Ligue, ii. 260, 261. It is dated
December 8, 1587.
3 " La susditte armee s'estant ruinee," pithily observes brave Francois de la
Noue, Bras-de-fer, "plus par elle mesme que par Peffort de ses contraires."
1587. THE ARMY OF THE REITERS. 455
period piously remarks : " This army was in France the terror of
some and the hope of others ; howbeit, both parties were deceived
in their expectation. God made use of it as an example to teach
man, on the one hand, that He has many means of chastising
him when He pleases, and, on the other, that he is ill-assured
who trusts in man and makes an arm of flesh his strength." *
The disappointment of the Huguenots was only less than the
indignation of Guise. " Not merely," he wrote to Mendoza,
indignation " nas %>ernon placed himself between the reiters and
of the League. mGj jn orcier to f avor them during the fine treaty he
has concluded with them, but he has given them money, so as
to maintain the credit of the heretics with the strangers, and a
thousand arquebusiers of the king's own guard and ten com-
panies of gendarmes to accompany their retreat. It is strange
that the forces of the Catholics must be employed to recom-
pense the heretics for the evils they have inflicted upon France.
Every good Frenchman and true Catholic must feel himself
offended." '2 To these words the Duke of Guise added, in the
letter just quoted, the statement, which, but for the sequel,
might have appeared unimportant enough : "I have joined
the Marquis du Pont, as a simple soldier, having dismissed my
troops. But for the king's strange declaration, I should have
attacked the heretics and those who wished to preserve them."
Attended by the royal troops, and effectually guarded from
the assaults of the followers of the League, the remains of the
army that had marched so boldly into France, three or four
months before, made an ignominious exit by way of the ter-
ritories of the Duke of Savoy and of the free city of Geneva.
Balked of his prey, the Duke of Guise looked around for some
Guise and Du unprotected district upon which to vent his anger and
fh°encounJaofe disappointment. Such a district he found close at hand,
Montbeiiard. fa the county 0f Montbeliard, which at the period now
under consideration had not as yet been incorporated in the king-
dom of France. No better excuse was needed than that the cousin
Declaration de Monsieur de la Noue, sur la prise des armes pour la juste de-
fense des villes de Sedan, etc. Memoires de la Ligue, ii. 320.
1 Memoires de la Ligue, ii. 233.
2 Mucius (Guise) to Mendoza, December 16, 1587, De Croze, ii. 303.
456 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Ch. VII.
of the Duke of Wurtemberg, to whom Montbeliard belonged, was
in alliance with the Huguenots and had favored their enterprise.
Guise's troopers and those of his kinsman, the Marquis of Pont
a Mousson,1 had not received their pay ; it was convenient, and,
it would seem, not contrary to the religious or humane instincts
of their princely leaders, to sacrifice to them an unoffending
population in lieu of wages. What atrocities they perpetrated
I cannot here undertake to narrate ; and the reader curious of
such things must be referred to the contemporary account, in
which the recital fills more than a score of closely printed
pages.2 Suffice it to say that no savage device for extracting
money from reluctant peasants already burdened by oppres-
sive taxation, was wanting ; while of all the most repulsive
forms of lewdness and unnatural crime that history has unfor-
tunately been compelled from time to time to chronicle, scarcely
one can be imagined of which instances are not here recorded.
" It was necessary," wrote a Huguenot, some years later, by way
of apology for committing to paper so disgraceful a story, " that
our posterity should know how insane the adherents of the
League have been to desire for king one of a family that has
in so many different ways declared itself the sworn enemy of
honor, humanity, nature, and every form of religion."
There was one Frenchman who, indignant beyond measure
at the course of events, had absolutely refused to have anything
to do with the offers of the Duke of Epernon, and disdained to
take refuge beyond the Rhine from an enemy at whose hands
1 Henry II. , Marquis of Pont a Mousson, afterward Duke of Lorraine and
of Bar, was the eldest son of Charles III., reigning Duke of Lorraine. He was
born November 20, 1563. He married, January 31, 1599, Catharine of Bour-
bon, only sister of Henry IV. of France. On the present occasion he appears
as a merciless patron of murder and rapine. On a subsequent page of this
history he will be seen a slave of superstition and bigotry. The two phases of
his character were not inconsistent with each other.
2 " Histoire tragique des cruautez et meschancetez horribles commises en la
Comte de Montbeliard sur la fin de l'an 1587 et commencement de Tan 1588,
par les troupes des sieurs de Guise et Marquis de Pont, fils aisne du Due de
Lorraine. Nouvellement mise en lumiere." (Comprised in the Memoires de la
Ligue, iii. 705-732.)
3 Memoires de la Ligue, iii. 704.
1587. THE ARMY OF THE REITERS. 457
lie asked no favors. Chatillon had come many a mile to join
the auxiliary army, despising alike the dangers thrown in his waj
by nature and the greater perils that might await him
Magnanimity J & . \ °~ ,
ofFrangoisde from watchtul enemies. He now prepared to return
to Languedoc by a not less adventurous path. So long
as there had been any hope of bringing the Germans to a manly
course, he had remained with them. At Lancie, not far from
Macon, he made a last attempt to overcome their repugnance
against striking southward in the direction of the King of Na-
varre. He pointed in the distance to the hills of Yivarais, and
pledged to them his life that in four days, if they would but
follow his lead, he would place them beyond the reach of harm.1
He assured them that, acquainted as he was with the forces at
the disposal of the governor of Lyons and other neighboring
royal officers, they had nothing to fear from any attempts to
hinder their progress. But finding remonstrance and persua-
sion alike fruitless, and the Germans determined to
retreat to conclude the compact with the Duke of Epernon, to
which allusion has already been made, Chatillon
promptly retired from the camp of his timid associates. It was
quite another thing for a slender troop of horse to elude Man-
delot and his associates from what it would have been to march
through the same territories with an overwhelming force of
Germans and French combined ; yet Chatillon accomplished
the feat. In five days from his parting with the reiters, he
found himself safe and sound in a castle in Yivarais held by a
friendly garrison of Protestants.2
With Chatillon's safe arrival in Languedoc the story of the
Army of the Reiters reached its natural though unexpected con-
clusion. Most of the French nobles who had accompanied the
Germans had managed to escape, in various directions. The
young Duke of Bouillon had taken refuge in the city of Geneva
1 The details of his plan are given in the Memoires de la Ligue, ii. 257.
9 It is the judgment of competent military critics that Chatillon's retreat
was one of the most brilliant affairs of the kind known in history. Count
Jules Delaborde, in his life of Chatillon, 310-320, reproduces the whole of
Saint Auban's interesting account of the entire movement.
458 THE HUGUENOTS AND HENRY OF NAVARRE. Oh. VII.
only to die within a few days of disease brought on by fatigue
and exposure.1
1 On the Army of the Reiters, the following authorities, among others, may
be consulted with profit : Recueil des choses memorables, 646-654 ; De Thou,
vii. (book 87) 17-46 ; Pasquier's letter u sur l'arrivee des reiters," etc., QSuvres
choisies (Feugere), ii. 300 ; Sommaire discours, in Cimber et Danjou, Archives
curieuses, xi. 267-275 ; Memoires de la Ligue, ii. 232-262 ; Agrippa d'Au-
bigne, iii. 62-68 ; Davila, 318-328 ; Memoires inedits de Michel de la Hugue-
rye, publies d'apres les MSS. autographes, par le Baron A. de Ruble (vol. iii.
1880) ; Count Jules Delaborde, " Frangois de Chastillon, Comte de Coligny "
(Paris, 1886). The last gives, in an appendix, 469-491, the original narra-
tive of the expedition sent by Chatillon to Henry of Navarre, under date of
Montpellier, December 31, 1587, from the MS. in the National Library at
Paris. It had already been noticed by Baron de Ruble that the account in
the Memoires de la Ligue is in fact only a copy of this narrative, which the
editor (probably Simon Goulart) used without giving any clue as to the source
whence he derived his information.
END OF VOLUME I.
THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION
OF THE EDICT OF NANTES
In Two Volumes. Octavo. $7.50.
Uniform with the " Rise of the Huguenots" and the "Huguenots
and Henry of Navarre"
In this history, which concludes the historical series of which the two
works heretofore published form a part, the author treats a theme different
but not inferior in interest to the story told in those works. The scene opens
with the Edict of Nantes, the Magna Charta of Huguenot rights, in full
force, at the. death of its author, Henry IV. of France. Before long the
attempt to abridge the privileges guaranteed to the Huguenots is made.
The immediate consequence is seen in three successive wars, in which the
interest centers about the person of the brave and chivalrous Henry of Rohan
and the gallant defense of the city of La Rochelle. With the fall of La
Rochelle the Huguenots as a political party disappear from history ; but
under the tolerant regime of the two cardinal ministers, Richelieu and
Mazarin, they become as noted for their advance in the arts of peace as they
had previously been distinguished in war. Their prosperity is rudely inter-
rupted when Louis XIV., reaching his majority, begins his personal reign ;
and with that reign is inaugurated a petty, but unrelenting, persecution
which culminates in the formal recall of the Edict. The Dragonnades that
preceded and accompanied the recall, and the great emigration which was
one of its direct fruits, have attained a world-wide fame. Professor Baird
has depicted this period in its tragic detail. His work contains in particular
an account, fuller, perhaps, than has elsewhere been given in English, of
that romantic episode, the War of the Camisards — a struggle in itself worthy
of the treatment here accorded to it as a distinct and complete transaction.
It was not, however, by force of arms that the Huguenot cause was to be
resuscitated. That honor belongs to the more quiet but not less heroic
virtues of the preachers of the so-called "Desert" — Antoine Court, Paul
Rabant, and their associates. Their work receives, consequently, full recog-
nition at the hands of the author. It constitutes, in some regards, the most
fascinating part of the subject of the book. The reign of proscription ends
with the Edict of Toleration issued by Louis XVI., and the Declaration of the
Rights of Man at the beginning of the French Revolution. In the formal
acknowledgment of Protestantism as the religion of a considerable part of
the French nation, made by Napoleon Bonaparte as First Consul, in the second
vear of the nineteenth century, the history reaches its natural conclusion.
HISTORY
OF THE
RISE OF THE HUGDENOTS OF FRANCE
By HENRY M. BAIRD
PROFESSOR IN THE UNIVERSITY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
With Map. Two Volumes. Octavo. $5.00
The rise of the Protestants of Trance was one of the most important, as it was one
of the most brilliant and heroic, of those great struggles for civil and religious liberty
that followed the Reformation. But it has hitherto wanted a historian who could bring
to its treatment the peculiar talent which makes such a period fairly living to the
reader's mind. The intense action and striking scenes included in the half-century
which these volumes cover, are hardly surpassed in modern history. Professor Baird
has told the story with a vigor and force which make it stir the reader with the true
spirit and feeling of the time. The high praise may be given to his history, that,
accurate and judicial as it is, it cannot be read coldly.
CBITICAL UOTICES.
"A harmonious and symmetrical history of one of the most stirring and desperate struggles
for freedom of thought and liberty of opinion which the world has witnessed." — Boston Advertiser.
"Prof. Baird's *• History of the Rise of the Huguenots of France' is the most important and
original work of its class that has appeared in this country for several years." — Philadelphia Press.
" To the vital merit of fidelity— making no sacrifice of truth for dramatic effect — the book
adds the charm of an animated and lucid recital of the thrilling events of the period under con-
sideration."— New York Observer.
"With an accurate, clear, and calm judgment, the author has expressed himself in a style
most suitable for such a history — simple and attractive from its plain and unimpaired, and there-
fore most trustworthy statements." — Episcopal Register.
"Prof. Baird's narrative is founded on thorough researches, and is an accurate and impartial,
and at the same time vivid description of the progress of the Reformation in France, from its
beginning to the close of the reign of Charles IX." — Prof. Fisher in the New Englander.
"This book is written in a style clear and vigorous, spirited and very attractive ; the narrative
never flags in interest, and is all along enlivened by the most interesting personal details. Not
less noteworthy is the excellent balance of judgment in the estimate of character and events."—
Hartford Courant.
V Prof. Baird's work is so finely constructed and so perfectly put together that no hint as to
the nature of this or that part can present any fair idea of the whole. We regard it as, in some
respects, the best example of historical writing on foreign subjects which this country has yet
produced." — The Churchman.
"The two solid volumes of Prof. Henry Baird's 'Rise of the Huguenots of France' seem to
us likely to take a classical position among American historical writings. . . . Looking for a
word with which to characterize Professor Baird's work, we are tempted to use neatness. . . .
To find the results of clean, scholar-like investigation, expressed in a lucid, consecutive, and
sober narrative, gives a sense of positive satisfaction to the critical reader which the finest of fine
writing is powerless to bestow." — Nation.
"The fruits of the author's studious labors, as presented in these volumes, attest his diligence,
his fidelity, his equipoise of judgment, his fairness of mind, his clearness of perception, and his
accuracy of statement. . . . While the research and well-digested erudition exhibited in this
work are eminently creditable to the learning and scholarship of the author, its literary execution
amply attests the excellence of his taste, and his judgment and skill in the art of composition.
. . . The mort conspicuous features of his writing are purity and force of diction, with felicity
of arrangement ; but there are not infrequent passages in the narrative equally striking for their
simple beauty and quiet strength. His work is one of the most important recent contributions to
American literature, and is entitled to a sincere greeting for its manifold learning and scholarly
SDirit."— New York Tribune.
The Huguenots and Henry of Navarre
BY henry m. baird
PROFESSOR IN THE UNIVERSITY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK; AUTHOR OF "THE
HISTORY OF THE RISE OF THE HUGUENOTS OF FRANCE."
With Maps. Two Volumes. 8vo. $5.00.
Professor Baird gives an account of the persistent struggle of the Huguenots of
France to secure a fair degree of religious liberty, such as they finally attained in
the Edict of Nantes ; fifteen years of the struggle (1574-1589) falling in the reign of
their deadly enemy, Henry III., and nine more (1589-1598) in the reign of the friendly
Henry of Navarre, now known in history as Henry IV., of France. The book
narrates the story of the heroic and unflinching determination which finally secured
the Edict of Nantes, the last chapter giving a sketch of the halcyon days of
Protestantism in France under the Edict, and down to the death of Henry IV.
The work, while distinct in itself, is supplementary to the author's " The Rise of
the Huguenots of France."
CRITICAL NOTICES.
" Professor Baird, of New York, is the only living American author worthy to compare with
Irving, Prescott and Motley, as writers of the history of foreign countries."
— Philadelphia Evening Bulletin.
'• The narrative is written with a grace and finish which remind one of Motley, there is the
same ease of manner and the air of understanding the subject perfectly, the writer having studied
it diligently from many sides." — Brooklyn Union.
" Professor Baird has established for himself a high and secure position among American
historians His style is very clear and correct, his preparation is conscientious and
thorough ; he possesses great skill in the selection and arrangement of his material, and he has
given us a thoroughly interesting and valuable work." — Nation.
" The professor belongs to the advanced wing of the modern school of historians. His mind
is as free from prejudice as possible. His researches are minute and patient, omitting no details
which shed even the faintest light upon his great subject. His narrative style is animated, com-
paring favorably with that of Motley while differing from it. . . . Qualifications such as these
would make almost any history interesting. When the theme is the varying fortunes of the
Huguenots during the most critical epoch of their struggles for religious liberty, gifts like those of
Professor Baird shine to extraordinary advantage." — N. Y. Journal of Commerce .
" Professor Baird's ' History of the Rise of the Huguenots of France ' published some years ago,
was so well received on all hands, that to the writer was assigned a place by the side of the best
American historians. . . . The present volumes are a continuation of the story so well told and
so full of interest to the lovers of freedom in religion as well as in the State." — New York Times.
" It was indeed a stirring drama which was enacted in these two reigns, and the rapid succes-
sion of incidents and sudden development of unexpected situations offer a tempting subject for the
historical writer. Professor Baird has already made so distinguished a reputation by the closeness
of his researches into Huguenot records, his patient study of original and not very accessible
authorities, and the strength of his sympathies, that it is almost superfluous to call attention to the
fresh display of these qualities in the present volumes. He is entitled to a prominent place among
the American scholars who have treated history not as a mere literary exercise but as an exact
science." — New York Tribune.
PROF. BA1RD AND HIS WORK
"Several years ago Professor Baird published a 'History of the Rise of the
Huguenots in France,' which was characterized by judicial moderation of tone, and by
a rare faculty of seizing and emphasizing outstanding points in the history of the time.
. . . It was only natural that the author, whose success in depicting the period
of reverse had been acknowledged, should be encouraged by that success to continue
his labors in the same field. The result is seen in the work on ' The Huguenots and
Henry of Navarre.' It puts on the stage the second act in a great drama. . . .
Professor Baird indicates in the preface to the work a desire, if not an intention, to
complete his labors by writing the history of the Catholic reaction in France. There
is every reason to hope that he may be induced to fulfill this purpose. He has shown
capacity for historical investigation and he has alighted on an interesting period of
European history. It is an interesting, but not an unaccountable, fact that the
struggle for freedom of conscience both in the Netherlands and in France should have
strong attractions for American writers. The aim of Professor Baird is the same as
that of Mr. Motley, though in a different part of the field." — Scotsman, Edinburgh.
" Professor Baird is entitled to a place among the distinguished Americans who
take high rank among modern historians. Some of them, like Prescott, Motley, and
Bancroft, are become at least as popular abroad as with their countrymen. . . .
Much must depend, no doubt, on the choice of a subject, and so far as the selection Of
his subject goes, Mr. Baird has had everything in his favor. The story of the rise and
struggles of the Huguenots must enlist the sympathies not merely of earnest Protestants,
but of all the admirers of freedom and progress. Mr. Baird has undertaken to eluci-
date the history of an epoch that is rich in the many materials of romance. He has
to dilate on the serene constancy of martyrs and the chivalrous courage of soldiers and
gentlemen. He has succeeded in throwing new and original lights upon characters
who have been flattered or abused in the hottest spirit of partisanship, and whose way-
ward changes of conduct and policy have made them standing enigmas to students of
the times. He has studied his subject conscientiously. . . . Mr. Baird has done
justice to a theme which deserved a sympathetic and eloquent historian. His arrange-
ment is admirably lucid ; his style is clear, terse, and vigorous ; his facts are carefully
marshalled in chronological order, while they are made to converge towards the com-
mon center of interest at the Parisian Court ; the lights and shades of his characters
are dashed in with an assured hand, on a comparison of the most reliable contem-
porary evidence ; and the manners and the stirring scenes of the times are depicted
with a picturesqueness which leaves little to desire." — The London Times.
" Mr. Baird has proved himself an able and earnest champion of the French
Huguenots. . . . We thoroughly endorse his interesting narrative of their vicissi-
tudes and persecutions, their loyalty and courage, and their steadfast determination
to uphold and practice the tenets of their religion. The various stirring events that
culminated in the Edict of Nantes have been skillfully handled, and they either sue-
eeed or are fitted into one another in a masterly manner." — Spectator, London.
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