Chapter IV: Part 4

For, of all heretics, none have been more cruel, or more foul-mouthed, than the Calvinists; none have revenged themselves of their pretended enemies more barbarously, either by open arms, or private mischiefs, when the power was in their hands; or more impudently with their pens, and by their libels, when they had no other way to shew their malice; murdering their reputations with all sorts of injuries and impostures, who have once declared themselves against their party.

In effect, what have they not said to defame the memory of Monsieur de Sponde, lieutenant-general in Rochelle; of Salette, counsellor to the king of Navarre; of Morlas, counsellor of state and superintendant of the magazines of France; as also of Du Fay, Clairville, Rohan, and a hundred others of their most celebrated ministers, who, after having been esteemed amongst them for good men, and looked on as the leaders of their consistory, are, by a strange sort of metamorphosis, become, on the sudden, profligate wretches, and the most infamous of mankind, only for renouncing Calvinism? By how many forgeries and calumnies have they endeavoured to ruin the repute of all such Catholics as have the most vigorously opposed their heresy, history will furnish us with abundant proofs: and we have but too many in the fragments which Monsieur le Laboreur has given us of their insolent satires, where they spare not the most inviolable and sacred things on earth, not even their anointed sovereigns.

For which reason, that writer, in a certain chapter of his book, wherein he mentions but a small parcel of those libels, after he has said, “that the most venomous satirists, and the greatest libertines, were those of the Huguenot party,” adds these memorable words: “I should have been ashamed to have read all those libels, for the blasphemies and impieties with which they are filled, if that very consideration had not been aiding to confirm me in the belief, that there was more wickedness, than either error or blindness, in their doctrine; and that their morals were even more corrupt than their opinions.”

He assures us in another place, that these new evangelists have made entire volumes of railing, of which he has seen above forty manuscripts; and that there needed no other arguments to decide the difference betwixt the two religions, and to elude the fair pretences of these reforming innovators.

So that all they have scribbled, with so much (I will not say violence, but) madness, against the Sieur Cayet, immediately upon his conversion, cannot do him the least manner of prejudice, no more than their ridiculous prediction, wherein they foretold, that it would not be long before he would be neither Huguenot nor Catholic, but that he would set up a third party betwixt the two religions. For he ever continued to live so well amongst the Catholics, that, after he had given on all occasions large proofs, both of his virtue and of his faith, he was thought worthy to receive the order of priesthood, and the degree of doctor in divinity, and was reader and professor royal of the Oriental tongues.

Now seeing, in the year 1605, ten years after his conversion, he had published his “Septennary Chronology,” of the peace which was made at Vervins in the year 1598; some of the greatest lords at court, who understood his merit, and had seen him with the king, (by whom he had the honour to be well known, and much esteemed,) obliged him to add to the history of the peace, that of the war, which that great prince made during nine years after his coming to the crown, till the peace of Vervins; which he performed in the three tomes of his “Nine Years Chronology,” printed at Paris in the year 1608; in which, before he proceeds to the reign of Henry the Fourth, he makes an abridgment of the most considerable passages in the League, to the death of Henry the Third. And it is partly from this author, and partly from such others as were eye-witnesses of what they wrote, whether in printed books, or particular memoirs, that I have drawn those things, which are related by me in this history. I am not therefore myself the witness, nor as an historian do I take upon me to decide the merit of these actions, whether they are blameable or praiseworthy; I am only the relater of them: and since, in that quality, I pretend not to be believed on my own bare word, and that I quote my authors, who are my warrantees, as I have done in all my histories, I believe myself to stand exempted from any just reproaches, which can be fastened on me for my writing.

On which subject I think it may be truly said, that if, instead of examining matters of fact, and enquiring whether they are truly or falsely represented, that consideration be laid aside, and the question taken up, whether such or such actions were good or bad, and matter of right pleaded, whether they deserved to be condemned or praised; it would be but loss of time in unprofitable discourses, in which an historian is no way concerned. For in conclusion, he is only answerable for such things as he reports, on the credit of those from whom he had them; taking from each of them some particulars, of which the rest are silent, and compiling out of all of them a new body of history, which is of a quite different mould and fashion from any of the authors who have written before him.

And it is this, in which consists a great part of the delicacy and beauty of these kinds of works, and which produces this effect; that, keeping always in the most exact limits of truth, yet an author may lawfully pretend to the glory of the invention; having the satisfaction of setting forth a new history, though, writing only the passages of a former age, he can relate almost nothing, but what has been written formerly, either in printed books, or manuscripts; which, though kept up in private, and little known, are notwithstanding, not the work of him who writes the history.

As to what remains, none ought to wonder, that I make but one single volume on this subject, though the matter of it is of vast extent. I take not upon me to tell all that has been done, on occasion of the League, in all the provinces, nor to describe all the sieges; the taking and surprising of so many places, which were sometimes for the king, and at other times for the League; or all those petty skirmishes, which have drawn (if I may have liberty so to express myself) such deluges of blood from the veins of France. All these particulars ought to be the ingredients of the general history of this nation, under the reigns of the two last Henries, which may be read in many famous historians; and principally in the last tome of the late Monsieur de Mezeray, who has surpassed himself, in that part of his great work.

I confine my undertaking within the compass of what is most essential in the particular history of the League, and have only applied myself to the discovery of its true origin, to unriddle its intrigues and artifices, and find out the most secret motives, by which the heads of that conspiracy have acted, to which the magnificent title of the Holy Union has been given with so much injustice; and, in consequence of this, to make an exact description of the principal actions, and the greatest and most signal events, which decided the fortune of the League; and this, in short, is the model of my work.

As for the end which I proposed to myself, in conceiving it, I may boldly say, that it was to give a plain understanding to all such as shall read this history, that all sorts of associations which are formed against lawful sovereigns, particularly when the conspirators endeavour to disguise them under the specious pretence of religion and piety, as did the Huguenots and Leaguers, are at all times most criminal in the sight of God, and most commonly of unhappy and fatal consequence to those, who are either the authors or accomplices of the crime.

THE HISTORY OF THE LEAGUE.

LIB. III.

If I intended to follow the example of Livy, the prince of Latin historians, who never suffers a prodigy to escape him, and describes it perhaps with as much superstition as exactness, I should here make long narrations how the sun was obscured on the sudden, without the interposition of any cloud appearing in the sky, with a flaming sword shooting out from the centre of the body; palpable darkness, like that of the Egyptians at noon-day; extraordinary tempests, earthquakes, fiery phantasms in the air, and an hundred other prodigies, which are said to have been produced and seen in this unhappy year of one thousand five hundred and eighty-eight, and which were fancied to be so many ominous presages of those horrible disorders that ensued in it.

But because I am not of the opinion, that much credit ought to be given to those sorts of signs, which are commonly the effects of natural causes, though very often unknown to us; nor to the predictions of astrologers, some of which verily believed they had found in the stars, that this year should be the conclusion of the world, I will only say, that the most sure presage of so many misfortunes then impending, was the minds of men too much exasperated on both sides, to live in peace with each other; and not rather to be searching out for means of making sure of those whom they suspected, and disposing of them according to their jealousies.

In order to this, the Duke of Guise, after he had made an end of ruining the county of Montbelliard, took his way to Nancy, whither he had invited all the princes of his house to assemble in the month of January, there to take their resolutions, in reference to the present condition of affairs; and of that happy success which they had in the war against the Reyters. Some of them there were, as it is reported, so swollen with that victory, and so blinded with their prosperity, that they proposed, in this conference, the most dangerous and most violent expedients; to which the Duke of Lorraine, a moderate and wary prince, would by no means listen. Howsoever it were, (for I find nothing to confirm these relations, not even in the memoirs of their greatest enemies, who have written most exactly of that assembly,) it is most undoubted, that if they proceeded not so far as to those terrible extremities, yet what was then concluded, passed in the world for a most unjust and unlawful undertaking, and was condemned by all those who were not blindly devoted to the League.

It was, that a request should be presented to the king, containing articles, which, under the ordinary pretence of their desire to preserve in France the Catholic religion, tended manifestly to despoil him of his authority and power, and to invest the heads of the League in both. For those scandalous articles bore this substance in them, that, for the service of God, and the maintenance and security of religion, the king should not only be most humbly petitioned, but also summoned, to establish the Holy Inquisition in his realm; to cause the council of Trent to be there published, suspending nevertheless that article which revokes the exemption pretended by some chapters and abbeys against the bishops; to continue the war against the Huguenots, and to cause the goods both of them and of their associates to be sold, with which to defray the charges of that war, and to pay the debts in which the heads of the League had been constrained to involve themselves for the prosecution of it; to refuse quarter to all prisoners who should be taken in that war, unless upon condition of paying the full value of their goods, and giving caution of living afterwards like good Catholics.

Behold here a most specious appearance of zeal for religion; but, in the next place, observe the venom which lies hidden under all these fair pretences: That the king shall unite himself more cordially, and more openly than before, to this holy League; thereby to keep exactly all its laws, to which men are obliged by this the most solemn and most inviolable of all oaths: That, besides the forces which he shall be obliged to set on foot to wage that war against the Huguenots, he shall maintain an army on the frontiers of Lorraine, to oppose the German Protestants, if they should determine once again to enter France: That, besides those places which the Leaguers already held for their security, there should be delivered to them other towns of more importance, which should be specified to him, where they might establish for governors those of their heads which they shall name, with power of introducing such garrisons, and making such fortifications, as they shall think fit, at the charges of the provinces in which they are situate: And, in conclusion, to secure them, that they shall be no more hindered, as till this present they have always been, in the executing of those things which have been promised them for the safety of religion, his Majesty shall displace from his council, and from the court, and shall deprive of their governments and offices, those who shall be named to him, as patrons of heretics, and enemies to religion and the state.

These were those extravagant demands which began to open the eyes of many good Catholics, who had suffered themselves to be innocently seduced by the appearances of true zeal, which being little illuminated, was not “according to knowledge,” as the apostle speaks. For they now more clearly saw into some of those articles; that the League to engage the Pope and the king of Spain in their interests, would be content to abandon those privileges and liberties, which our ancestors have always maintained with so much vigour and resolution; and to subject to the yoke of a Spanish inquisition, the French, who have never been able to undergo it. And in others of them, that they designed to bereave the king of all the solid and essential parts of royalty, to leave him only the shadow and appearance of it, and afterwards to dispose even of his person, as the heads of their party should think fit.

And accordingly when the request was presented to the king on the part of the associated princes, and the cardinal of Bourbon, whose simplicity and whose name they abused, and made it a cloak to their ambition, he conceived an extreme indignation against it, which immediately appeared in his eyes and countenance. Yet he thought it necessary at that time to dissemble, not finding himself then in a condition of returning such an answer to it, as was becoming a king justly provoked against his subjects, who stood on terms with him like lords and masters. For which reason, and withal to gain farther time, he contented himself to say, that he would examine those articles in his council, in order to his answer; which should be in such sort, that all good Catholics should have reason to be satisfied.

But in the mean time, the Duke of Guise, who took not fair words for payment, well understanding the king’s design, and resolving not to give the Duke of Espernon the leisure to conjure down that tempest which was raised against him, and to infuse into his master those vigorous resolutions which were necessary for him to take, pressed the king continually to give a precise answer to every particular in those articles. For he doubted not, that, in case it proved favourable, he should ingross all power in himself; and if it were otherwise, that it would be thought the king resolved to maintain the Huguenots, and that by consequence the Catholics would enter into a war against him.

On which considerations, being then retired into his government of Champaigne, to which place he went after the conference at Nancy, he plied the king incessantly with messages sent by gentlemen, one after another, to urge him to a speedy and punctual answer. And this he did with the more eagerness and importunity, because, on the one side, he found himself more powerful than ever, having a great part of the gentry, and almost all the people, and especially the Parisians, for him; and, on the other side, he observed the party of the Huguenots to be very low, and infinitely weakened, by the defeat of their great German succours, and by their late loss of the Prince of Conde, a person of all others the most strictly tied to their religion, and on whom they more relied than any man, not excepting the King of Navarre himself.

He deceased on the 5th of March, at St Jean de Angely, of an exceeding violent distemper, with which he was suddenly seized one evening after supper, and which carried him off in two days time. The sixteen, with infamous baseness, made a great rejoicing for it; and their preachers failed not to roar out in their sermons, that it was the effect of the excommunication, with which he had been thunderstruck by Pope Sixtus. But besides that the King of Navarre, who had been struck in the same manner by the bull, had his health never the worse for it, the king, to whom that poor creature the Cardinal of Bourbon had been telling the same story, and making wonderful exclamations in relating it, answered him with a smile, that it might very well be the occasion of his death, but withal there was something else which helped him on his journey. And truly the matter was put beyond all doubt, after the attestation of four physicians, and of two master chirurgeons, who deposed upon their oaths, that they had manifestly seen, in almost all the parts of his body, all the most evident signs and effects of a caustic poison, burning and ulcerating. A most execrable action, which could not be too rigorously punished; and yet the laws inflicted what was possible on the person of one of his domestic servants, who was drawn in pieces by four horses in the place of St Jean de Angely.

As to the rest, he was a prince, who, excepting only his obstinate adhering to a religion in which he was born, and whose falsehood he might have known in time, if he had not been too much prepossessed, had, at the age of five-and-thirty years, at which he died, all the perfections which can meet together in one man, to render him one of the greatest and most accomplished persons in the world; if at least there might not possibly be discerned in his carriage and customs some of those little failings, from which the most wise are not exempted, and which may easily be pardoned, without lessening the esteem which we have for them. And if fortune, which is not always propitious to merit, was not favourable to him on some occasions, wherein he had need of her assistance, yet in this she was his friend, that she gave him the greater opportunity of shewing his invincible courage in his adversities, in which he raised himself infinitely above her, by the vigour and greatness of his soul.

Accordingly, the death of this great prince was lamented, not only by those of his own party, who loved him passionately, but also by the Catholics, and even by the Duke of Guise himself; who, head as he was of an infamous and wicked faction, which he made subservient to his ends, had of his own stock, and the excellency of his nature, which was infinitely noble, all the generosity which is requisite to love and respect virtue, even in the person of his greatest and most formidable enemy.

All which, notwithstanding, he was content to make what advantage he could of so lamentable an accident, towards the compassing of his designs: And as he observed, not only by this, but by a multitude of concomitant accidents and misfortunes, that the Huguenot party decreased in strength and reputation, and his own grew more bold and undertaking, he set himself more vigorously to push his fortune, and to demand an entire satisfaction to all the articles of his request; which had so puffed up the spirits of the sixteen, that they forgot all manner of moderation, and grew daily more and more insupportable. It happened also at the same time, that the king received several advertisements of the resolution which had been taken in their council to seize his person, and to inclose him in a monastery. And the same lieutenant of the provost-ship of the Isle of Paris, Nicholas Poulain, who had formerly discovered the like conspiracy, to which belief was not given, told him so many particular circumstances in relation to this, that though he was very diffident of that double-dealing man, whose integrity he much suspected, yet his evidence concurring with the extreme insolence of the sixteen, which rendered his report more credible, could not but leave a strong impression on his soul; insomuch, that at last following the counsel of those who had so long advised him, to employ his power and justice against those mutineers, he took up a resolution, once for all, to take that thorn out of his side, to reduce Paris into that state of submission and obedience which belongs to subjects; and to extinguish the faction of sixteen, by the exemplary chastisement of the most seditious amongst them.

The preparations which of necessity he was to make to secure the success of this undertaking; the three thousand Swissers, whom he caused to be quartered at Lagny; the companies of guards, which were reinforced; the troops which were sent him from the Duke of Espernon, who was gone into his government of Normandy; and all the passages of the river, both above Paris and below it, being possessed by him,—were so many alarms to those mutineers, who, believing themselves already lost, implored the assistance of the Duke of Guise. That prince, who had advanced from Rheims as far as Soissons, in favour of the Duke of Aumale, his cousin, who met with trouble and resistance in his government of Picardy, satisfied himself at first with sending them some of his most experienced captains, to regulate and manage their militia in case of need. But some few days after, finding himself still pressed more eagerly by the solicitations of those people, who were now driven to despair, and believing that this foundation of the League, on which he had built his hopes, being once shaken, he himself must perish under its ruins, (for that being destroyed, the next design was certainly to fall on him, who was the head and protector of it;) he gave immediate notice to his friends and creatures to get into Paris, one after another, at several gates, and ordered some to assure the sixteen in his name, that he would suddenly be there in person to live and die with them.

The king, who was advertised of this resolution, and who was under great apprehensions of his coming, lest his presence might hinder the execution of his enterprise, and arm with a word speaking that great city, which was entirely at his devotion, sent the President de Bellievre, a man of great authority and known prudence, to tell the duke from him, that, in the present juncture of affairs, and just apprehension which he had, that his coming would produce great troubles in Paris, he thought good he should not come till he received new orders from him, for otherwise he would render himself guilty of all those disorders which might thence ensue.

To this the duke, who was never to be beaten off from any resolution which he had once taken, answered calmly, but in doubtful terms, that he was ready to obey the king; that he had never intended to go to Paris, but in the condition of a private man, and without a train; that he desired to justify himself from those aspersions with which he knew his enemies had basely charged him in his absence; that he had reason to believe there was a design on foot to oppress the good Catholics, whose protector he had declared himself; and that he humbly besought his Majesty to give him some security against so just an apprehension. Bellievre, who well knew that the king would stick at no manner of verbal satisfaction, in case that would prove sufficient to break his journey, promised he should have all the security he could possibly desire. In effect, the king was fully resolved to have given him all manner of assurances; but, as ill luck would have it, this was not done at the same time it was determined; insomuch that, without more delay, he got on horseback, and, crossing the country out of the common roads, that he might avoid the messengers which he knew would be sent with new orders to him, entered Paris on Monday the 9th of May, with eight more in his company, just about noon, by the gate of St Denis.

It may be said in one sort of meaning, that this day was the most unfortunate, and yet the most glorious of all his life. For whether it were that the people, who were made to believe by the sixteen that the city was to be sacked, were advertised by them of his arrival, or that the report was spread at an instant, when he was first seen to approach the Fauxbourg, it is most certain that he had no sooner passed it, but the whole town running together from all parts of it, crowded up the street, and all the rest through which he passed; the windows were filled, and even the tiles of houses; the air echoed with a thousand sorts of acclamations, and the loud cries of _Vive Guise!_ were repeated with far higher peals than had been formerly of _Vive le Roy!_ for those loyal shouts were grown out of date, and the League in a manner had abolished them.

There was a kind of madness in this transport, or rather in this furious torrent of their joy, which was so extravagant, that it passed even to idolatry. They haled and tore each other to get nearest to this prince; those who were borne off by the throng to a farther distance, stretched out their arms to him, with their hands clasped over their heads; they thought themselves happy, who could crowd so near as to touch any part of his cloak or boots. Some there were amongst them who kneeled to him, when he was passing by; and others who, when they could not reach him with their hands, endeavoured to touch him with their chaplets, which they kissed when they had received that honour, as the custom is in adoration at the shrines of saints. A thousand praises were given him, and a thousand blessings. He was called aloud the pillar of the church, the prop of faith, the protector of the Catholics, the saviour of Paris; and from all the windows, there fell upon him a shower of flowers and of greens, with redoubled acclamations of _Vive Guise!_

To conclude, no imaginable demonstrations and testimonies of love, honour, and veneration, but were shewn to the height at this tumultuous entry, by that sudden overflow of joy; and that wonderful dilatation of hearts and affections, which was to him a sort of triumph, more pleasing than any of the Cæsars. Accordingly he enjoyed the full gust of it, with all the satisfaction of extreme pleasure; passing on horseback very leisurely through that infinite press of people, bare-headed, beholding them with a smiling countenance, and with that courteous and engaging air, which was so natural to him; saluting on the right and on the left, bowing to those below in the streets, and to those above in the windows, not neglecting the very meanest, holding out his hand to the nearest, and casting his obliging glances on the more remote, he passed in this manner to the queen-mother’s palace, near St Eustache, where he alighted, and from thence to the Louvre, following her on foot, who had taken her chair to conduct him to the king, and was witness to those incredible transports of public joy, and acclamations of that innumerable herd of people, which beat her ears incessantly with the name of Guise, bellowed from more than an hundred thousand mouths.

In the mean time, the king, who had heard, with infinite rage, of this sudden arrival of the duke, was shut up in his closet, where he was in consultation on that prince’s life or death; who had been so blindly rash, as to precipitate himself, in his single person, into inevitable danger, from whence only his good fortune (of which he was not master) could deliver him. Some there were, and amongst others the Abbot d’Elbene, and Colonel Alphonso d’Ornano, with the most resolute of those Gascons, whom the Duke of Espernon had placed amongst the five-and-forty, to be always near the king’s person, who counselled that irresolute and wavering prince to dispatch him on the spot, having so fair a pretence, and the means so ready in his hand, to punish a rebellious subject; who, in opposition to his express orders, had audaciously presumed to come to Paris, as it were on purpose to let him know, that he was absolute master of it. The rest more moderate, and amongst them the Chancellor de Chiverny, and the Sieurs de Bellievre, de la Guiche, and de Villequier, governor of Paris, dissuaded him from that attempt, laying before him, besides the dangerous consequences which this terrible action might produce in such a juncture, that it always concerned him, both for his reputation, and for the maintenance of the most inviolable laws of natural equity, before he passed to extremities, to hear a man who came to put himself so freely into the hands of his king, and to be answerable for all that was alleged against him.

While these things were in debating, and the king in suspense betwixt his anger and his fear, uncertain which way to resolve, the duke (who had passed through the French guards commanded by Grillon, who loved him not, and through the Swissers, which stood ranked on both sides of the great stair-case, and afterwards had traversed the hall and the antichamber filled with people, who made no very ceremonious returns to his salutations and civilities) entered into the presence chamber, disguising a sudden fright which seized him, intrepid as he was, with the best face he could set upon the matter, which yet he could not act so well, but that it was easy to discern through that affectation of bravery, that he could have been well contented to have been in some other place, and not to have engaged himself so far, especially when a certain princess whispered him in the ear to have a care of himself, and that his life and death were under consideration in the closet. Yet immediately after, as his courage was usually raised at the sight of the greatest dangers, he resumed his wonted boldness, and was not able to hinder himself, perhaps by a sudden motion purely natural, and arising from the magnanimity of his heart, from laying his hand on the pommel of his sword, without his own perceiving it, and from stepping hastily two or three paces forward, with a haughty walk, as if he were putting himself into a posture of selling his life as dear as he was able to his enemies. But the king at that instant coming out of the closet with Bellievre, he changed posture suddenly, made a low reverence, and threw himself almost at his feet; protesting to him, that not believing his presence ought to be displeasing to him, he was come to bring him his head, and fully to justify his carriage against the calumnies of his enemies; and withal to assure his majesty, that he had not a more faithful servant than himself. But the king demanding, in a grave and serious tone of voice, who had bid him come, and if he had not received an express prohibition from him? the business was then brought to a scanning, and some little contest there was betwixt him and Bellievre, the last maintaining that he had delivered him the king’s commands, and the former, instead of answer, asking him if he had not engaged himself to return, with all possible speed, to Soissons, which he had not done, and protesting that he had never received those letters, which Bellievre justified he had written to him.

Then the queen, who, though she seemed to be in much affliction for the duke’s arrival, yet held a private correspondence with him, broke off the discourse, and, taking aside the king her son, she managed his mind so dexterously, that, whether she made him apprehend a general revolt of Paris, which she had seen so openly to own the Duke of Guise, or whether he himself were mollified by the submissive humble way of speaking which that prince had used, he contented himself for that time to tell him, that his innocence, which he was so desirous to prove, would be more manifest if his presence should cause no stirs in Paris; and thereupon he sate down to table, remitting till the afternoon what he had farther to say to him, and appointing the queen’s garden for the place. Then the duke bowing very low, retired, without being accompanied by any of the king’s servants, but as well attended by all the town, to the Hotel de Guise, as he had been from the gate of St Denis to the Louvre.

When he had made reflection on the danger into which he had so rashly thrown himself, and which now appeared more formidable, by considering it with cooler thoughts, than he could possibly in that agitation of spirits, and that anxiety wherein he was in spite of all his courage, when he found himself so far engaged; he resolved he would never hazard his life in that sort again, and took such order concerning it, that from the next day, and so onward, he had in his palace four hundred gentlemen, who assembling there from all parts of Paris, according to his orders, never afterwards abandoned him. Neither would he adventure to go that afternoon to the queen’s garden, but well accompanied by the bravest of his officers, amongst whom Captain St Paul, seeing that after his master was entered, he who kept the door was going to shut it on him, thrust him back roughly, and entered by force, followed by his companions, protesting and swearing, that if the game was there to be played, he was resolved to have his stake in it.

So that if the king had designed to have him murdered in that garden, which I believe not, though some have written it, it is easy to see that the presence of those brave men, who were fully resolved to defend their master, that of the queen, who made the third in this interview, the daring countenance of the duke, who from time to time was casting his eyes towards his sword, and to sum up all, that infinite multitude of Parisians which encompassed the queen’s palace, and many of which were got upon the walls, had hindered the execution of such a purpose.

For that which passed betwixt them at this conference, since I find nothing of it in the most exact memoirs of those times, I shall not offer to relate it, as Davila has done by a certain poetical licence which he and some other historians have used, to make men think and speak without their leave, whatever they please to put into their thoughts and mouths. What I can deliver for undoubted truth is this, that there was nothing concluded at this interview; and that the king, who had resolved beforehand to chastise the most seditious of the sixteen, and to make himself master of Paris, after a long consultation taken by night, with those in whom he most confided, continued firm to the same resolution, and set up his rest to stand by it, in spite of the arrival of the duke.

With this determination, he sent the next morning for the prevost of the merchants, and the sheriffs, and commanded them, in company of the lords De Villequier and Francis d’O. to make an exact search for all those strangers who were come to Paris some few days since, without any urgent occasion to call them thither, and to cause them forthwith to depart the town, without respect of persons. This was a manifest endeavour to weaken the Duke of Guise; to reduce him to those seven or eight gentlemen, who attended him into Paris; and consequently to give him occasion of believing, that after they had rid themselves of the others, they would attack him.

Perhaps the design was so laid, as some have conjectured with probability enough; but if this were really their intention, there are others, who believe that, according to the advice which was given by the abbot of Elbene, they had done more wisely to have begun with the Duke of Guise, when they had him single, and at their mercy, coopt up in the Louvre: and they ground this opinion on the meaning of that abbot’s words, who quoted the scripture to this purpose, “It is written, I will strike the shepherd, and the flock shall be scattered.” However it was intended, the Parisians immediately took the alarm, perceiving clearly that those strangers who were to be sent out of the city, were no others but those very men whom the Duke of Guise had conveyed into the town for their defence, and for his own. Insomuch that when they went about to execute that order, and to search their houses, every one opposed them; and the citizens set themselves with so much obstinacy to conceal their lodgers, that the deputies and commissaries, fearing a general insurrection through all the quarters, durst proceed no farther. And in the mean time, the Duke of Guise, who was the soul that actuated this great body, forbore not going to the Louvre, but well accompanied; and the very evening before the barricades he presented the napkin to the king.

But, as after the flashes of the lightning, and the rattling of the thunder, comes a furious tempest and lays waste the field; so after those mutual fears and jealousies, those nightly meetings, those murmurs and menaces, and those preparations which were made on both sides with so much tumult, either for assaulting or for defence, they came to the fatal day of the barricadoes, which was followed by that horrible deluge of misfortunes, with which all France was overflowed.

For at last the king, more incensed than ever by the resistance which was made to his orders, and fully resolved to make himself be obeyed one way or other, caused the French guards to enter Paris, with some other companies, and the Swissers, which in all made up six thousand men: this was done on Thursday the twelfth of May, just at day break; he being present himself to receive them on horseback, at the gate of Saint Honoré. And after having given out his orders to their officers, to post them according to his direction, he enjoined them above all things, to be no ways injurious to the citizens, but only to repress the insolence of such, who should go about to hinder the search for strangers: after which himself retiring to the Louvre, the marshals d’Aumont and Biron, who were at the head of the troops, went to post them with beat of drum, in the church-yard of St Innocent, and the adjoining places, on the Pont Notre Dame, on that of St Michael, on the Pont Au Change, at the town-house, at the Greve, and at the avenues of the place Maubert.

It appeared immediately by what followed, that this was in effect to give the signal of a mutiny and general revolt to all Paris. For a rumour being spread, that the king had determined to put to death a great number of the principal of the League, and a list being also forged of their names who were to be executed, and shewn openly to the people, the citizens, according to the order of their captains and overseers of their wards, were in a readiness to put themselves into a posture of defence, at the least motion that was made. For which reason, so soon as they heard the drums and fifes, and that they beheld the Swissers and the guards advancing through the street of Saint Honoré, they doubted not but the report, which was noised about by the sixteen, was true; and farther believed, (as they had been also assured,) that the town would be sacked and exposed to pillage. The alarm therefore was given round the city: they began by shutting up their shops, and the church doors on that side of the town: they rang the tocsin (or alarm, bell) first in one parish, and then in another; and immediately afterwards through all Paris, as if the whole city had been on fire.

Then the citizens came out in arms, under the overseers of their wards, and their captains, and other officers of the Duke of Guise, who had mingled themselves amongst them, to encourage and to marshal them. The Count of Brissac, who had placed himself at the quarter of the university towards the place Maubert, (where Crucè, one of the most hot-headed of the sixteen, caused the alarm to be sounded,) being himself encompassed with a multitude of students, a rabble of porters, watermen, and handicraftsmen, all armed, who waited only for the signal to assault the Swissers, was the first who gave orders to chain the streets, to unpave them, and erect the barricades, with great logs of timber, and barrels filled with earth and dung, at the avenues of the palace: and this word of barricades passing in a moment from mouth to mouth, from the university into the city, and from the city into the town, the same was done every where, and that with such exceeding haste, that before noon, these barricades, which were continued from street to street, at the distance of thirty paces from each other, well flanked and manned with musqueteers, were advanced within fifty paces of the Louvre; insomuch that the king’s soldiers found themselves so encompassed on every side, that they could neither march forward nor retreat, nor make the least motion, without exposing themselves unprofitably to the inevitable danger of the musquet shot, (which the citizens could fire upon them without missing, from behind their barricades,) or of being beaten down with a tempest of stones, which came pouring upon their heads from every window.

The marshals d’Aumont and Biron, and Villequier the governor of Paris, gained little by crying out to the citizens, that they intended them no harm, for they were too much enraged to give them the hearing; and were possessed with a belief of what Brissac, Bois Dauphin, and the other creatures of the Duke of Guise, had told them; who roared out, on purpose to envenom them against the royalists, that those troops which were entered into Paris were sent for to no other end, than to make a general massacre of all good Catholics, who were members of the Holy Union, and to give up to the soldiers, their houses, their money, and their wives. Upon this the musquet shot, and the stones from above, were redoubled on those miserable men, and more especially upon the Swissers, to whom the citizens were most inexorable.

More than threescore were either slain, or dangerously hurt, as well in St Innocent’s church-yard, as below on the place Maubert, without giving quarter, till Brissac (who with his sword in his hand was continually pushing forward the barricades) arriving there, and beholding those poor strangers, who cried out for mercy, with clasped hands, and both knees on the ground, and sometimes making the sign of the cross, in testimony of their being Catholics, stopped the fury of the citizens, and commanding them to cry out _vive Guise!_ which they did as loud as they could for safe-guard of their lives, he satisfied himself with leading them disarmed and prisoners into the Boucherie of the new market, by the bridge of St Michael, which he had already mastered.

It cannot be denied, but that this count was he, amongst all the Leaguers, who acted with the most ardour against the royalists on that fatal day; as being infinitely exasperated, because the king had refused him the admiralty, and refused it in a manner so disobliging, as to say openly he was a man that was good for nothing either by sea or land, accusing him at the same time, that he had not done his duty in the battle of the Azores, where the navy of Philippo Strozzi was defeated by the marquis of Santa-Cruz, he burned inwardly with desire of revenge. And when he saw the soldiers inclosed on all sides, by the barricades, which were of his raising, and the Swissers at his mercy, it is reported, that he cried out, as insulting on the king, with a bitter scoff, and magnifying himself at the same time; “At least the king shall understand to day, that I have found my element; and though I am good for nothing, either at sea or land, yet I am some body in the streets.”

In this manner it was, that the people, making use of their advantage, still pushed their fortune more and more and seemed to be just upon the point of investing the Louvre; while the Duke of Guise, by whose secret orders all things were regularly managed amidst that horrible confusion, was walking almost unaccompanied in his own house, and coldly answering the queen, and those who came one on the neck of another, with messages to him from the king, intreating him to appease the tumult, that he was not master of those wild beasts which had escaped the toils; and that they were in the wrong to provoke them as they had done.

But at last, when he perceived that all things were absolutely at his command, he went himself from barricade to barricade, with only a riding switch in his hand, forbidding the people who paid a blind obedience to him, from proceeding any farther; and desiring them to keep themselves only on the defensive. He spoke also very civilly to the French guards, who at that time were wholly in his power, to be disposed of as he thought good, for life or death. Only he complained to their officers, of the violent counsels which his enemies had given the king to oppress his innocence, and that of so many good Catholics, who had united themselves on no other consideration than the defence and support of the ancient religion. After which, he gave orders to captain St Paul, to reconduct those soldiers to the Louvre; but their arms were first laid down, and their heads bare, in the posture of vanquished men, that he might give that satisfaction to the Parisians, who beheld the spectacle with joy, as the most pleasing effect of their present victory. He also caused the Swissers to be returned in the same manner by Brissac, and gave the king to understand, that, provided the Catholic religion were secured and maintained in France, in the condition it ought to be, and that himself and his friends were put in safety from the attempts of their enemies, they would pay him all manner of duty and service, which is owing from good subjects to their lord and sovereign.

This, in my opinion, makes it evident, that the duke had never any intention to seize the person of the king, and to inclose him in a monastery, as that Nicholas Poulain, who gave in so many false informations, and many writers, as well of the one religion as of the other, have endeavoured to make the world believe. For if that had been his purpose, what could have hindered him from causing the Louvre to be invested; as he might easily have done the same day, by carrying on the barricades close to it, while the tumult was at the height; and for what reason did he return the French guards and Swissers to the king, if his intention had been to have attacked him in the Louvre? This was not his business, nor his present aim, but to defend and protect his Leaguers with a high hand, and to avail himself of so favourable an opportunity, to obtain the thing which he demanded; and which, doubtless, had put him into a condition of mounting the throne after the king’s decease, and becoming absolute master of all affairs even during his life.

In effect, the queen having undertaken to make the reconcilement, as believing that thereby she might re-enter into the management of business, from which the favourites had removed her, and having asked him what were his pretensions, he proposed such extravagant terms, and with so much haughtiness and resolvedness, speaking like a conqueror, who took upon him to dispose, at his pleasure, of the vanquished, that, as dexterous as she was in the art of managing men’s minds, from the very beginning of the conference she despaired of her success. For, enhancing upon the articles of Nancy, he demanded, that, for the security of the Catholic religion in this realm, the king of Navarre, and all the princes of the house of Bourbon, who had followed him in these last wars, should be declared to have forfeited for ever their right of succeeding to the crown: That the duke of Espernon, La Valeite his brother, Francis d’O., the marshals of Retz and of Biron, colonel Alphonso d’Ornano, and all others who, like them, were favourers of the Huguenots, or were found to have held any correspondence with them, should be deprived of their governments and offices, and banished from the court, without hope of ever being restored again: That the spoils of all these should be given to the princes of his house, and to those lords who had engaged with him, of whom he made a long list: That the king should cashier his guard of five-and-forty, as a thing unknown in the time of his predecessors; protesting that otherwise he could place no manner of confidence in him, nor ever dare to approach his person: That it would please his majesty to declare him his lieutenant-general through all his estates, with the same authority which the late Duke of Guise his father had, under the reign of Francis the Second; by virtue of which he hoped to give him so good an account of Huguenots, that in a little time there should remain no other but the Catholic religion in all his kingdom. To conclude, that there should be called immediately an assembly of the three estates, to sit at Paris, where all this should be confirmed, and to hinder for the future, that the minions, who would dispose of all things at their pleasure, should not abuse their favour; that there should be established an unchangeable form of government, which it should not be in the power of the king to alter.

It is most evident, that demands so unreasonable, so arrogant, and so offensive, tended to put the government, and the power of it, into the duke’s hands, who, being master of the armies, the offices, and the governments of the most principal provinces, in his own person, by his relations, his creatures, and the estates, where he doubted not of carrying all before him, especially at Paris, would be the absolute disposer of affairs; insomuch that there would be nothing wanting to him but the crown itself, to which it is very probable that at this time he pretended, in case he should survive the king, to the exclusion of the Bourbons, whom he would have declared incapable of succeeding to it.