Chapter XI: Book I (4)

But the Cardinal de Lorraine rejected this request without consideration. “Is it reasonable,” he asked, “that we should be of the opinion of these people rather than of that of the king? And as to concede to them churches or places of assembly, this would be to approve of their heresy, which the king could not do without being everlastingly damned.” The Cardinal saw no greater necessity for convoking a council, since all that was required was to reform the manners of the churchmen, which could be done by general or private admonitions.

Nevertheless the Guises, being unsupported in the meeting at Fontainebleau, both by the Chancellor and by the Constable, consented to the convocation of the States-General for the following December, and announced that preparatory steps would be taken for holding a national council.

Pope Pius IV. was exceedingly disturbed by the mere idea of this council, being apprehensive of seeing either a schism result from it, or at least the re-establishment of the Pragmatic Sanction. He wrote to the king of France to tell him that his crown would be in danger, and to the king of Spain to beg him to intervene. But meeting with no satisfactory answer, he resolved to reopen the sessions of the Council of Trent, which had been for a long time suspended. The pontiff of Rome preferred an assembly, the majority of which was Italian, and under his control, to a national Council of France, which could deliberate without him, and perhaps against him.

It will be remarked that the most enlightened men of both communions,—Montluc, Marillac, L’Hospital, Coligny,—were of the same opinion about convoking a national council. We must not deceive ourselves as to what was really at the bottom of this project. It was not religious liberty, as we understand it in our day; it was simply the hope that by mutual concessions, (Roman) Catholicism and the Reformation might unite upon a common ground. The principle that two religions might not exist in one state, still held sway over the best minds.

XIII.

In joining hands with the convocation of the States-General, the Lorraines entertained more than one secret thought. They flattered themselves that they should come to a conclusion with the Bourbons, envelop the Huguenots in the ruin of their chiefs, and win the majority in the States by seduction or intimidation.

Antoine de Bourbon and the Prince de Condé were invited to take their seats as princes of the blood royal. They were aware that great dangers awaited them, but a refusal would have been represented as an open rupture with the regal authority. The opposite characters of the two princes also concurred in inducing them to accept the invitation. The king of Navarre was too weak to brave the crown in so evident a manner; Louis de Condé was of too bold a nature to expose himself to the imputation of fear. The one started on the journey because he was not daring enough, the other, because his daring was too great.

Hardly had Condé entered Orleans, before he was arrested on a charge of high treason, and commissioners were appointed to try him. He refused to answer, on the plea that a prince of the blood royal could be tried only by the king and his peers, with all the assembled houses of Parliament. The Lorraines showed him an ordinance, by which he was declared guilty of lese-majesty, if he, persisted in his refusal. “We must not tolerate,” said the Duke de Guise, “the bravadoes of this young gallant, prince though he be; we must crush the head of heresy and rebellion at one blow.”

The chief of the house of Bourbon humbled himself before the duke and the cardinal, to solicit the pardon of his brother. They received him with lofty coldness, and had a strict watch kept over him. All historians relate that they conceived the project of assassinating him. As they dared not bring him to trial, it was resolved to summon him before Francis II., and so to induce a quarrel, by which the king should be led to draw his sword upon him. At this signal the courtiers were to throw themselves upon Antoine de Bourbon, and poniard him.

When informed of the plan, the extent of the danger inspired him with a degree, of courage, and he said to the Captain Rente: “I am going to a place where my death has been sworn. If I perish, take the shirt I now wear; carry it to my wife, since my son is not yet old enough to take vengeance for my death; and let her send it to the Christian princes, who will avenge me.” He then entered the king’s chamber, and the Cardinal de Lorraine shut the door behind him. The king made some insulting observations to him; but either from the timidity of youth, or from pity, he was afraid to give the signal. “The coward! the poltroon!” murmured Francis de Guise, who was hidden behind the door. A king of seventeen commissioned to assassinate his uncle! What manners! What a reign! What a court![35]

The Cardinal de Lorraine had also conceived a plan for the extermination of heretics, resembling those executed against the Albigeois of Languedoc, or the Moors of Spain. Would that for the honour of the human race, it were possible to deny such detestable designs; but they are attested by (Roman) Catholic writers, and even by the Jesuit Maimbourg.

The Cardinal had therefore resolved to make all Frenchmen sign a formula of faith drawn up by the Sorbonne in 1542; a formula which, says Jean de Serres, “_no man of the religion would for a thousand livres have approved or signed_.”

The king was to present this document on Christmas-day to all the princes, officers, and chevaliers of the court; the queen was to present it to all the ladies of the palace; the Chancellor to the deputies of the States-General and to the _maîtres des requêtes_; the chiefs of the Parliaments and of the bailiwicks to their subordinates; the governors of the provinces to the gentry; the curates to all the inhabitants of their parishes; the heads of houses to their servants. Whosoever should refuse to sign, or who should even request time, was to be put to death on the following day; or, according to the milder version of Maimbourg, to be despoiled of all his goods and banished from the kingdom. Four marshals were to scour the provinces with their troops, to assist by force of arms in carrying out this law of extermination. The Cardinal adding burlesque to atrocity, called this formula of faith the rat-trap of the Huguenots.

Never before had those of the reformed faith in France been reduced to such a terrible extremity: when suddenly Francis II. was taken dangerously ill. The Cardinal de Lorraine had public processions made in Paris for his recovery. The young prince called upon the Virgin and the saints, saying, with the imbecile fanaticism in which he had been tutored, that if it pleased God to restore him to health, he would spare neither wife, nor mother, nor sisters, nor brothers, if they were ever so little suspected of heresy. These vows were fruitless. Francis II. died in his seventeenth year, after a reign of seventeen months, on the 5th December, 1560.

No one cared for his burial, so much were the queen-mother, the Bourbons, the Guises, the cardinals, and the courtiers engrossed by their own affairs. Francis II. was escorted to Saint Denis by an old blind bishop and two ancient servitors of his house.

Before he had given up his last breath, the Lorraines had barricaded themselves in their dwelling; and there they remained for thirty-six hours, until they were reassured as to the intentions of the queen-mother and of the king of Navarre. Their governments and dignities were preserved to them, but they were no longer masters of the state. Charles IX, ten years and a half old, was proclaimed king, Catherine de Medicis regent, and Anthony de Bourbon lieutenant-general of the kingdom. He might, as first prince of the blood, have claimed the regency; but he lost his opportunity for want of vigour. The prince of Condé came out of prison; the Constable Anne of Montmorency resumed his office of grand master near the new king; and Admiral Coligny, asking nothing for himself, endeavoured to secure the free exercise of religion. The whole aspect of affairs was changed. The faithful (once more) breathed.

The States-General opened at Orleans on the 13th December. The Chancellor Michel de l’Hospital, the first to speak in the name of the infant king and the regent, declared that the disorder of the Church had given birth to heresy, and that a good reformation alone could extinguish it. He advised the (Roman) Catholics to _adorn themselves with virtues and a good life_, and to attack their adversaries with the arms of charity, of prayer, and of persuasion. “The knife” he said, “avails but little against the mind; gentleness will do more than severity. Give up those fiendish names—the symbols of parties, factions, and seditions—Lutherans, Huguenots, Papists. Let us not change the name of Christian.” He ended by proposing the reunion of a national council for the settlement of all religious differences.

The orator of the Third Estate, Jean Lange, advocate of the Parliament of Bordeaux, keenly attacked three vices of the (Roman) Catholic clergy—ignorance, avarice, and luxury—intimating that troubles would cease when these abuses should be corrected.

Jacques de Silly, lord of Rochefort, spoke for the nobility, and did not spare the priests any more than did the orator of the Third Estate. He complained of their meddling in the administration of justice, of their enormous possessions, of the non-residence of the bishops, of their want of zeal for the instruction of their flocks, and finished by asking for churches for the gentlemen of the reformed religion.

Some months later, at the meeting of the States at Saint Germain, another orator of the Third Estate, the first magistrate of Autun, went so far as to propose the alienation of the goods of the Church, which he estimated at one hundred and twenty millions of livres; that the king should sell these possessions, and reserve forty-eight millions, which at an interest of one in twelve, would yield a yearly revenue of four millions, sufficient for the support of the priests; that then seventy-two millions would remain, of which forty-two millions might be employed in paying off the debts of the crown, and the remainder might be spent in the encouragement of agriculture and commerce. As to religious differences, the same orator proposed to discuss them in a national council, legalized and free, to and from which, safe access and return should be guaranteed.

We are astonished at finding, in 1560, thoughts which were not fulfilled till 1789. It was the great voice of the people which was (then) heard. Civil wars had not yet fanaticised their minds and rendered their hearts inaccessible to pity. It was one of those short moments when the Reformation might have obtained the ascendant in France. Three-fourths of the nobility was gained over; the _bourgeoisie_ was prepared; the magistracy was waiting; and would not the lower orders, already favourable to the new ideas in one part of the kingdom, have communicated an impulse to the other? What then was it that arrested this vast movement, whence a new France, a new Europe, might have sprung? First let us look to the Almighty, whose ways are wrapt in mystery. But in looking to men, what do we find? Among many, no doubt, sincere convictions, the weight of ancient traditions, respect for old recollections and customs. Let us not attribute to selfish motives the great events of mankind; but we must not omit to point out the tortuous policy of Catherine de Medicis, the ambition of the Guises, the intrigues of the king of Spain, the designs and the cupidity of the clergy.

The position of the priests at the States-General of Orleans was a difficult one, and the more they felt their weakness, the greater was the violence they displayed. The orator they had chosen, Jean Quintin, professor of Canon Law, began by regretting that the nobility and the Third Estate had thought proper to speak on their own behalf, when the States-General formed a body, of which the king was the head, and of which _the Church was the mouth_. He accused the heretics of having no other Gospel than that of destroying altars, of evading ecclesiastical obedience, and of overthrowing the civil laws. Upon the strength of this, he invited his majesty to persecute them to the uttermost, as the sword was in his hand for no other purpose. He added, that since they were excommunicated, it was unlawful to dwell with them, to converse with them, to deal with them; but it was lawful to beat them, and to put them to death, for fear of sharing in their sin.

“Sire,” said he, in conclusion, “all the clergy of your kingdom, on their bended knees, body and heart, humbly prostrate before your majesty, beseech you to be their protector and defender. They pray that if any excavator of dead and buried heresies should take upon him to revive a sect already condemned, and should to this end present a request, and demand churches and leave to inhabit the kingdom (here all eyes were turned upon Coligny, who sat opposite to the orator), we supplicate that he be held and declared a heretic, and proceeded against with all the rigour of the law, canon and civil, in order that the wicked wretch be driven from amongst us.”

Although not unaccustomed to the declamations and invectives of the priests, this harangue, prompted by a savage fanaticism, astonished the States-General. The admiral demanded satisfaction from the queen-mother for the insult to himself, and Jean Quintin was compelled to offer him an apology. “A few days after,” says Jean de Serres, “he died of mortification, on finding himself exposed by several published replies to his harangue, in which his calumnies and falsehoods were clearly refuted.”[36]

XIV.

The States-General had served the cause of the Reformation. The Cardinal de Lorraine, annoyed at having played only a secondary part, withdrew to his archbishopric at Rheims. The Duke de Guise retired from the court; and the queen-mother, seeing that the two orders of the laity disapproved of religious persecutions, manifested, in concert with the Chancellor L’Hospital, a favourable disposition towards the Calvinists.

Coligny caused the reformed faith to be preached in his apartments, and Catherine de Medicis opened the pulpit of the palace of Fontainebleau to the bishop Montluc, the same who had so forcibly exclaimed against the abuses of the Roman church in the assembly of Notables. The courtiers, ever ready to range themselves on the side of fortune and power, flocked around the new preachers, and left a Jacobin monk to preach the Lent sermon to himself.

“It seems to me,” said the Jesuit Maimbourg bitterly of the queen-mother, “that, on the most favourable construction, it may be fearlessly said, that if all she did upon this occasion was but a pretence, she did ill to feign so well as to give ground to believe that she belonged to the new sect. For she not only allowed the ministers to preach in the apartments of the prince, where all the world crowded to hear him, whilst a poor Jacobin, who preached the Lent sermon at Fontainebleau, was deserted; but she went so far as to take part herself with all her ladies at the sermons of the bishop of Valence, who preached openly, in one of the rooms of the château, the new dogmas he had drawn from the heresies of Luther and Calvin. So sudden and so strange a change took place at court, that one would have said she was quite a Calvinist. Although it was Lent, meat was publicly sold, and spread upon every table. They talked no more of attending Mass, and the young king, who was still taken there to keep up appearances, went almost alone. They scoffed at the authority of the Popes, at the worship of the saints and of images, at indulgences, and at the ceremonies of the Church, which they treated as superstitions.”[37]

If the Jesuit was right in saying that the queen-mother’s going to the sermon was only a feint, he might have added, that it was also a feint on her part when she went to Mass. Sceptical, as for the most part were the upper classes of Italy in her time, Catherine de Medicis still perhaps believed in magic and sorcery, although not in Christian truth. Instead of serving God, she turned God to her service.

At any rate, the impulse spread to the provinces. How was it possible to interdict the public gatherings of the religious, when they could point to the example of the court? The timid grew bold, temporizers made up their minds. The enthusiasm was general. Controversial writings inundated the land. We possess an ample collection, under the titles of “Apologetic Complaint of the Churches,” “Christian Exhortation to the King of France,” “Remonstrances to the Queen and to the King of Navarre,” and many others of a similar kind.

In these days of fervour and of hope, the faithful believed that the triumph of the Reformation was completely in the hands of the leaders of the state. “It rests with you alone,” they wrote to Catherine de Medicis and Antoine de Bourbon, “that Jesus Christ be known and worshipped throughout the kingdom, in all truth, righteousness, and holiness. For if you ordain that all superstitions and idolatries be extirpated, it will be done without let or hindrance. A single word from your lips will banish all those, who have been guilty of malversation in the Church. This single word will deprive them of strength, virtue, and power.”

There were now not pastors enough. Switzerland was written to for more. Geneva, the Pays de Vaud, the canton of Neufchâtel, supplied as many as they could. They even deprived themselves of those, whose services were most useful to them, in order to satisfy wants more pressing than their own. Many young men, instructed under the eye of Calvin, and others of mature age, of different professions, were consecrated to the ministry of the Gospel. All saw, in the ardour of their faith, a great nation to be conquered.

On their side, the priests, it may easily be believed, were not asleep; and as they found no support at court, they turned their attention to the people. Disturbances arose at several towns,—at Pontoise, at Amiens, and particularly at Beauvais. The Cardinal Odet de Châtillon, who was accused of having celebrated the communion of the Lord’s Supper, on Easter-day, 1561, after the fashion of Geneva, was assailed by the populace, and Marshal de Montmorency had to come from Paris, with a numerous escort, to quell the sedition.

L’Hospital sent to the bailiffs and seneschals letters patent commanding them to liberate all prisoners on account of religion, and not again to visit the interiors of houses under the pretext of illicit meetings. But the Parliament of Paris, angry that the letters had been despatched before they had been registered, and ill disposed to the Reformation, since, by a stroke of authority, Anne Dubourg and six or seven other counsellors had been removed, demanded that the preexisting statutes should be rigidly observed.

But this opposition would have been impotent, had not another arisen out of it, under the name of the triumvirate. This was composed of the Duke de Guise, of the Constable de Montmorency, and of the Marshal de Saint André. Behind this association was the Cardinal de Lorraine with the mass of the clergy; above them, the pope and Philip II.; beneath them the people, especially those of the north and west. The triumvirate, which succeeded in winning over even the king of Navarre, was the most serious obstacle to the progress of the Reformation in France: it is essential, therefore, to explain its origin and character.

The Duke de Guise, kept at a distance by Catherine de Medicis, and hated by the princes of the blood, could not by himself recover the authority, of which the death of Francis II. had deprived him. He, therefore, sought assistance abroad, and formed a close alliance with the Spanish ambassador, who had received from Philip II. instructions to keep up troubles in the kingdom, in order to weaken it, and hand it over to his mercy. This ambassador, as is correctly observed by the Abbé d’Anquetil, acted the part of a French minister of state; he gave his advice in all matters of business, praised, blamed, and corrected; whilst the Guises in all things were with him.

The support of Spain, however, would not have sufficed for the Lorraines. An abandoned woman, the former favourite of Henry II., Diana of Poitiers, who feared lest the spoils of the Huguenots should be demanded back from her, undertook to reconcile the old constable with the Duke de Guise.

Anne de Montmorency was at that time sixty-four years old. This companion in arms of Francis I., who had made him constable in 1538, was a brave cavalier, a loyal servant of the crown, and able to bear disgrace with courage; but of a narrow mind, rough in character, mistaking obstinacy for strength, and rudeness for dignity. In religion he only knew that he was the first Christian baron, and that the kings, his masters, were (Roman) Catholics. He concluded that he was bound to give no quarter to heresy.

Brantôme tells us what was the singular piety of Anne de Montmorency. He fasted with punctilious regularity on Friday, and failed not to repeat his _pater-noster_ morning and evening; but sometimes he broke off, saying, “Go and hang me such a one; hang up this one to a tree; set fire to everything for a mile round.” And then he would continue his devotions, as if nothing were the matter.

His hands were not quite clean in his conduct of the financial affairs under Henry II., and when he learned that the States-General were going to call upon him for his accounts, he conceived that it was an intrigue of the Bourbons, who had a design against his honour, as well as his purse. From that moment he kept aloof from them.

In vain did his eldest son, the Marshal de Montmorency, esteemed, says Mézeray, as _one of the wisest nobles of the kingdom_, represent to him that he could not, and ought not to separate himself from the princes of the blood, and from his nephews the Châtillons, to become the tool of the house of Lorraine; the obstinate constable always replied: “I am a good servant of the king and of my little masters (so he called the young brothers of Charles IX.), and for the honour of his majesty, I will not suffer the actions of the dead king to be impeached.”

The wife of the constable, Madeline of Savoy, who _was usually surrounded by priests and monks_, according to the history of Jean de Serres, _inflamed him by her outcries_. She pandered to his vanity as first Christian baron. “As the first officer of the crown,” she said to him, “and descended not only from the first baron, but from the first Christian of France, you are bound not to suffer the diminution of the Roman church: the ancient device of the house of De Montmorency is, ‘_Dieu aide au premier Chrétien!_’”

Diana of Poitiers, Madeline of Savoy, the Lorraines, the priests, and the ambassador of Philip II., managed so well, that the Duke de Guise and Anne de Montmorency took counsel together on Easter-day. The skilful contrivers of the affair took care to forget the conscience of the old man.

The third member of the triumvirate was Jacques d’Albon, Marshal de Saint André. Notwithstanding his great military command, he had no strength by himself, and sought for allies to acquire a position. He was an epicurean, who had wasted the goods confiscated from the Huguenots. Brantôme, so indulgent towards the vices of courtiers, says of him: “He was always given to consult his ease, to pleasures, and to excessive luxuries of the table. He was the first to introduce them at court, and truly they surpassed all bounds. He was a very Lucullus in ostentation and magnificence.”[38]

These were the authors of the triumvirate, and the pretended friends of the (Roman) Catholic religion. Worldly motives united them; religion was only their pretext.

The Guises had gathered confidence and courage. This clearly appeared in the language held by the Cardinal de Lorraine after the consecration of Charles IX., in the month of May, 1561. He uttered grave complaints of the meetings of the Huguenots, which went on growing, and he demanded that a new edict should be discussed and drawn up in full Parliament, before the princes, the lords, and all the members of the privy council.

The sittings lasted twenty days. An order resulted, which, while giving an amnesty for the faults committed on either side, and inviting the priests no longer to excite the people, forbade the public meetings of the religion until the reunion of a national council, under pain of confiscation and banishment. This order, which was only adopted by a majority of three voices, bore the name of the Edict of July.

The (Roman) Catholic party congratulated itself upon having obtained a great victory, and the Duke de Guise said, on coming out of the court of the Parliament: “To maintain this edict, my sword shall never be sheathed.” But was it not madness to hope that men, who for forty years had braved the scaffold and the stake, would hesitate before the pain of banishment? What followed will show; France had yet to go through many terrible catastrophes before the two parties were disposed to make peace on more equitable conditions.