CHAPTER X.

THE ASSEMBLY OF NOTABLES AT FONTAINEBLEAU, AND THE CLOSE OF THE REIGN OF FRANCIS THE SECOND.

Rise of the name "Huguenots."

Various explanations given.

The tempest which had threatened to overwhelm the Guises at Amboise had been successfully withstood; but quiet had not returned to the minds of those whose vices were its principal cause. The air was still thick with noxious vapors, and none could tell how soon or in what quarter the elements of a new and more terrible convulsion would gather.⁸⁴⁷⁸⁴⁷ Reaching Paris early in May, 1560, Hubert Languet wrote that suspicion was everywhere rife; men of any standing scarcely dared to converse with each other; some great calamity seemed on the point of breaking forth. The king's ministers evidently feared the great cities; so the court proceeded from one provincial town to another. Disturbances in Rouen and Dieppe had frightened the Guises away from Normandy, whither they had intended leading their royal nephew. Letter from Paris, May 15th, Epistolæ secr., ii. 50. The recent commotion had disclosed the existence of a body of malcontents, in part religious, in part also political, scattered over the whole kingdom and of unascertained numbers. To its adherents the name of Huguenots was now for the first time given.⁸⁴⁸⁸⁴⁸ "En ce temps (Mars, 1560) furent appellés Huguenots." Journal d'un curé ligueur (Jehan de la Fosse), 36. What the origin of this celebrated appellation was, it is now perhaps impossible to discover. Although a number of plausible derivations have been given, it is not unlikely that all are equally far removed from the truth, and that the word arose from some trivial circumstance that has completely passed into oblivion. It has been traced back to the name of the Eidgenossen or confederates, under which the party of freedom figured in Geneva when the authority of the bishop398 and duke was overthrown;⁸⁴⁹⁸⁴⁹ Soldan, Geschichte des Prot. in Frankreich, who, in an appendix, has very fully discussed the whole matter (i. 608-625). There is some force in the objection that has been urged against this view, that, were it correct, Beza, himself a resident of Geneva, could not have been ignorant of the derivation, and would not, in the Histoire ecclésiastique, prepared under his supervision, if not by him, have given his sanction to another explanation. or to the Roy Huguet, or Huguon, a hobgoblin supposed to haunt the vicinity of Tours, to whom the superstitious attributed the nocturnal assemblies of the Protestants;⁸⁵⁰⁸⁵⁰ La Planche, 262; Hist. ecclés., i. 169, 170; De Thou, ii. (liv. xxiv.) 766. This is also Étienne Pasquier's view, who is positive that he heard the Protestants called Huguenots by some friends of his from Tours full eight or nine years before the tumult of Amboise; that is, about 1551 or 1552: "Car je vous puis dire que huict ou neuf ans auparavant l'entreprise d'Amboise je les avois ainsi ouy appeller par quelques miens amis Tourengeaux." Recherches de France, 770. This is certainly pretty strong proof. or to the gate du roy Huguon of the same city, near which those gatherings were wont to be made.⁸⁵¹⁸⁵¹ La Place, 34; Davila, i. 20; Agrippa d'Aubigné, i. 96. See also Pasquier, ubi supra. Some of their enemies maintained the former existence of a diminutive coin known as a huguenot, and asserted that the appellation, as applied to the reformed, arose from their "not being worth a huguenot" or farthing.⁸⁵²⁸⁵² Mém. de Castelnau, liv. ii., c. 7. A somewhat similar reason had, in Poitou, caused them, for a time, to be called Fribours, the designation casually given to a counterfeit coin of debased metal. Pasquier, 770. And some of their friends, with equal confidence and no less improbability, declared that it was invented because the adherents of the house of Guise secretly put forward claims upon the crown of France in behalf of that house as descended from Charlemagne, whereas the Protestants loyally upheld the rights of the Valois sprung from Hugh Capet.⁸⁵³⁸⁵³ Advertissement au Peuple de France, apud Recueil des choses mémorables (1565), 7. Also in the Complainte au Peuple François, ibid., p. 10. Both of these papers were published immediately after the Tumulte d'Amboise. The eminent Pierre Jurieu—"le Goliath des Protestants"—tells us that, having at one time accepted the derivation from "eidgenossen" as the most plausible, he subsequently returned to that which connects the word Huguenot with Hugues or Hugh Capet. The nickname confessedly arose, so far as France was concerned, first in Touraine, and became general at the time of the tumult of Amboise, nearly thirty years after the reformation of Geneva. "Qui est-ce qui auroit transporté en Touraine ce nom trente ans après sa naissance, de Genève où il n'avoit jamais esté cognu?" Histoire du calvinisme et celle du papisme, etc. Rotterdam, 1683, i. 424, 425. In the diversity of399 contradictory statements, we may perhaps be excused if we suspend our judgment of their respective merits, and prefer to look upon this partisan name as one with whose original import not a score of persons in France besides its fortuitous inventor may have been acquainted, and which may have had nothing to recommend it to those who so readily adopted it, save novelty and the recognized need of some more convenient name than "Lutherans," "Christaudins," or the awkward circumlocution, "those of the religion." Be this as it may, not a week had passed after the conspiracy of Amboise before the word was in everybody's mouth. Few knew or cared whence it arose.⁸⁵⁴⁸⁵⁴ J. de Serres, i. 67; Pasquier, 771: "Mot qui en peu de temps s'espandit par toute la France."

Its sudden rise.

A powerful party, whatever name it might bear, had sprung up, as it were, in a night. There was sober truth conveyed in the jesting letter of some fugitives to the Cardinal of Lorraine. Twenty or thirty Huguenots succeeded in breaking the bars of their prison at Blois, and, letting themselves down by cords, escaped. Some others at Tours, a few days later, were equally fortunate. Scarcely had the latter regained their liberty when they wrote a letter to the prelate who was supposed to take so deep an interest in their concerns, informing him that, having heard of the escape of his prisoners at Blois, they had been so grieved, that, for the love they bore him, they had immediately started out in search. And they begged him not to distress himself on account of their absence; for they assured him that they would all soon return to see him, and would bring with them not only these, but all the rest of those that had conspired to take his life.⁸⁵⁵⁸⁵⁵ La Planche, 270. At Amboise, too, so soon as the court had departed, the prisons were broken open, and the prisoners—both those confined for religion and for insurrection—released. The gallows in various parts of the place were torn down, and the ghastly decorations of the castle, in the way of heads and mutilated members, disappeared. Languet, letter of May 15th, Epist. secr., ii. 51.

How to be accounted for.

No feature of the rise of the Reformation in France is more400 remarkable than the sudden impulse which it received during the last year or two of Henry the Second's life, and especially within the brief limits of the reign of his eldest son. The seed had been sown assiduously for nearly forty years; but the fruit of so much labor had been comparatively slight and unsatisfactory. Much of the return proved to be of a literary and philosophical, rather than of a religious character, and tended to intellectual development instead of the purification of religions belief and practice. Much of the seed was choked by relentless persecution. Bishops and preachers, the gay poet, and the time-serving courtier, fell away with alarming facility, when the blight of the royal displeasure fell upon those who professed a desire to abolish the superstitious observances of the established church.

A sudden harvest.

But now, within a few brief months, the harvest seemed, as by a miracle, to be approaching simultaneously over the whole surface of the extended field. The grains of truth long since lodged in an arid soil, and apparently destitute of all vitality, had suddenly developed all the energy of life. France to the reformers, whose longing eyes were at length permitted to see this day, was "white unto the harvest," and only the reapers were needed to put forth the sickle and gather the wheat into the garner. There was not a corner of the kingdom where the number of incipient Protestant churches was not considerable. Provence alone contained sixty, whose delegates this year met in a synod at the blood-stained village of Mérindol. In large tracts of country the Huguenots had become so numerous that they were no longer able or disposed to conceal their religious sentiments, nor content to celebrate their rites in private or nocturnal assemblies. This was particularly the case in Normandy, in Languedoc, and on the banks of the Rhône.

The progress of letters

and of intelligence.

It may be worth while to pause here, and inquire into some of the causes of this rapid spread of the doctrines of the Reformation after the long period of comparative stagnation preceding. One of these was undoubtedly the astonishing progress of letters in France during the last forty years. From being neglected and rough, the French language, during401 the first half of the sixteenth century, became the most polite of the tongues spoken in Western Europe—thanks to a series of eminent prose writers and poets who graced the royal court. The generation reaching manhood in the latter years of the reign of Henry the Second were far better educated than the contemporaries of Francis the First. The public mind, through the elevating tendencies of schools fostered by royal bounty, was to a considerable degree emancipated from the thraldom of superstition. It repudiated the silly romanese, passing for the lives of the saints, with which the public had formerly been satisfied. It scrutinized minutely every pretended miracle of the papal churches and convents, and exposed the trickery by which a corrupt clergy sought to maintain itself in popular esteem. Thus the growing intelligence and widening information of the people prepared them to appreciate the merits of the great doctrinal controversy now occupying the attention of enlightened minds. Interest in the discussion of the most important themes that can occupy the human contemplation was both stimulated and gratified by a constant influx of religious works from the teeming presses of Strasbourg, Basle, Lausanne, Neufchâtel, and especially Geneva. And the verdict of the great majority of readers and thinkers was favorable to the Swiss and German controversialists.

Calvin's Institutes.

Marot and Beza's Psalms.

Next to the Bible, translated originally by Olivetanus, and in its successive editions rendered more conformable to the Hebrew and Greek texts, the "Christian Institutes" exerted the most powerful influence. The close logic of Calvin's treatises, speaking in a style clear, concise and nervous, and touching a chord of sympathy in each French reader, made its deep impress upon the intellect and heart, while captivating the ear. Calvin's commentaries on the sacred volume rendered its pages luminous and familiar. Other works exerted an influence scarcely inferior. The "Actions and Monuments" of the martyrs, by Jean Crespin, printer and scholar, not only perpetuated the memory of the witnesses for the truth, but stimulated others to copy their fidelity. Marot and Beza's metrical versions of the Psalms, wafted into popularity, even among those402 who at first little sympathized with the piety of the words, by the novelty and beauty of the music to which they were sung, were powerful auxiliaries to the arguments of the theologian. They entered the house of the peasant and invested its homely scenes with a calm derived from the contemplation of the bliss of a heaven where the fleeting distinctions of the present shall melt away. They nerved the humble artisan to patience and to the cheerful endurance of obloquy and reproach. They attracted to the gathering of persecuted reformers in the by-street, in the retired barn, or on the open heath or mountain side, the youth who preferred their melody and intelligible words to the jargon of a service conducted in a tongue understood only by the learned. In the royal court, or rising in loud chorus from a thousand voices on the crowded Pré-aux-Clercs, they were winged messengers of the truth, where no other messengers could have found utterance with impunity.

Morals and martyrdom.

The blameless purity of life of the men and women whom, for religion's sake, the officers of the law put to death with every species of indignity and with inhuman cruelty, when contrasted with the flagrant corruption of the clergy and the shameless dissoluteness of the court, openly fostered for their own base ends by cardinals themselves accused of every species of immorality and suspected of atheism, deeply affected the minds of the reflecting. One Anne Du Bourg put to death by a Charles of Lorraine made more converts in a day than all the executioners could burn in a year.

Character of the ministers from Geneva.

But, if the rapid spread of Protestant doctrines at this precise date is due to any one cause more than to another, that cause may probably be found in the character and numbers of the religious teachers. Converts from the Papal Church, principally priests and monks, were the first apostles of the Reformation. Few of them had received systematic training of any kind, none had a thorough acquaintance with biblical learning. Many embraced the truth only in part; some professed it from improper motives. The Lenten preachers whose leaning towards "Lutheranism" was sufficiently marked to attract the hatred of the Sorbonne, were generally orators,403 more solicitous of popularity than jealous for the truth—fickle and inconstant men whose apostasy inflicted deep wounds upon the cause with which they had been identified, and more than neutralized all the good done by their previous exertions. But now a brotherhood of theologians took their place, not less zealous for the faith than disciplined in intellect. Geneva⁸⁵⁶⁸⁵⁶ M. Archinard, conservator of the archives of the Venerable Company of Pastors of Geneva, has compiled from the records a list of 121 pastors sent by the Church of Geneva to the Reformed Churches of France within eleven years—1555 to 1566. Many others have, doubtless, escaped notice. Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. fr., viii. (1859) 72-76. Cf. also Ib., ix. 294 seq., for an incomplete list of Protestant pastors in France, probably in 1567, from an old MS. in the Genevan library. was the nursery from which a vigorous stock was transplanted to French soil. The theological school in which Calvin and Beza taught, moulded the destinies of France. The youths who came from the shores of Lake Leman were no neophytes, nor had they to unlearn the casuistry of the schools or to throw off a monastic indolence which habit had made a second nature. They embraced a vocation to which nothing but a stern sense of duty, or the more powerful attraction of Divine love, could prompt. They entered an arena where poverty, fatigue, and almost inevitable death stared them in the face. But they entered it intelligently and resolutely, with the training of mind and of soul which an athlete might receive from such instructors, and their prayerful, trustful and unselfish endeavor met an ample recompense.⁸⁵⁷⁸⁵⁷ The high moral and intellectual qualifications of the Protestant ministers were eulogized by the Bishop of Valence, Montluc, in his speech before the king at Fontainebleau, to which I shall soon have occasion to refer again. "The doctrine, sire," he said, "which interests your subjects, was sown for thirty years; not in one, or two, or three days. It was introduced by three or four hundred ministers, diligent and practised in letters; men of great modesty, gravity, and appearance of sanctity; professing to detest every vice, and, particularly, avarice; fearless of losing their lives in confirmation of their preaching; who always had Jesus Christ upon their lips—a name so sweet that it gives an entrance into ears the most carefully closed, and easily glides into the heart of the most hardened." "Harangue de l'Evesque de Vallence," apud Recueil des choses mémorables (1565), i. 290; Mém. de Condé, i. 558; La Place, 55. The eloquent Bishop of Valence must be regarded as a better authority than those persons who, according to Castelnau, accused the Calvinist ministers of Geneva of "having more zeal and ignorance than religion." Mém. de Castelnau, liv. iii., c. 3.404

The Huguenots of Valence

seize the church of the Franciscans.

The course of events in many cities of Southern France is illustrated by the occurrences at Valence, which the most authentic and trustworthy historian of this reign has described at length. This episcopal city, situated on the Rhône, about midway between Lyons and Avignon, had for some time contained a small community of Huguenots. When, in order to avoid persecution, their minister, who had become known to their enemies, was replaced by another, a period of unexampled growth began. The private houses in which the Protestants met were too small to contain the worshippers. They now adjourned to the large schools, but at first held their services by night. Soon their courage grew with the advent of a second minister and with large accessions to their ranks. The younger and more impetuous part of the Protestants, disregarding the prudent counsels of their pastors and elders, ventured upon the bold step of seizing upon the Church of the Franciscans, and caused the Gospel to be openly preached from its pulpit. The people assembled, summoned by the ringing of the bell; and it was not long before the reformed doctrines were relished and embraced by great crowds. A goodly number of armed gentlemen simultaneously took possession of the adjoining cloisters, and protected the Protestant rites. The co-religionists of Montélimart and Romans, considerable towns not far distant, emboldened by the example of Valence, resorted to public preaching in the churches or within their precincts.⁸⁵⁸⁸⁵⁸ Calvin, in a letter sent by François de Saint Paul, a minister whom he induced to accept the urgent call of the church of Montélimart, dissuaded that church from this step which was already contemplated. Better is it, said he, to increase the flock, and to gather in the scattered sheep, meanwhile keeping quiet yourselves. "At least, while you hold your assemblies peaceably from house to house, the rage of the wicked will not so soon be enkindled against you, and you will render to God what He requires, namely, the glorifying of His name in a pure manner, and the keeping of yourselves unpolluted by all superstitious observances, until it please Him to open a wider door." Lettres françaises (Bonnet), ii. 335, 336. The author of the Histoire ecclés. des églises réf., i. 138, expresses a belief that had such wise counsels been followed, incomparably the greater part of the district would have embraced the Reformation.405

A public assembly of citizens.

An impressive scene.

The public morals.

On receiving the intelligence of the sudden outbreak of Protestant zeal in his diocese, the Bishop of Valence—himself at one time possibly half-inclined to become a convert—despatched thither the Seneschal of Valentinois with the royal Edict of Forgiveness published at Amboise for all who had taken arms and conspired against the king. The citizens were summoned to a public assembly, in which the magistrates, the consuls, the clergy, and the chief Huguenots were conspicuous. After reading and explaining the terms of the royal clemency, the seneschal turned to the Protestants, who stood by themselves, and demanded whether they intended to avail themselves of its protection. Mirabel, their chief spokesman, replied that it was the custom of the reformed churches to offer prayer to God before treating of so important affairs as this, and proffered a request that they be allowed to invoke His presence and blessing. Permission was granted. A citizen of Valence, who was also a deacon of the Reformed Church, thereupon came forward, and uttered a fervent prayer for the prosperity of the king and his realm, and for the progress of the Gospel. The Protestant gentlemen reverently uncovered their heads and knelt upon the ground, and their Roman Catholic neighbors imitated their example. But it was noticed that the clergy stood unmoved and refused to join in the act of worship. The prayer being ended, a Huguenot orator delivered the answer of his brethren. It was, that they rejoiced and rendered thanks for the benignity of their young prince; but that they could not avail themselves of the pardon offered. They had never conspired against their king. On the contrary, they professed a religion that enjoined the most dutiful obedience. As for bearing arms, it had only been resorted to by the Huguenots in order that they might protect themselves against the unauthorized insults and violence of private persons. The citizen was followed by a procureur, who, for eight years, had kept the criminal records of Valence. He bore public testimony to a wonderful change that had come406 over the city since the introduction of the preaching of the Gospel. The acts of violence which formerly rendered the streets so dangerous by night that few dared to venture out of their houses, even to visit their neighbors, had almost disappeared. The fearful story of crime which used to confront him every morning had been succeeded by a chronicle of quiet and peace. It would seem that with a change of doctrine had also come a transformation of life. The speaker challenged the other side to gainsay his statements; and when not a voice was heard in contradiction, he administered to the Papists a scathing rebuke for the calumnies which some of them had forged against the Protestants behind their backs. With this triumphant refutation of the charges of disorder, the assembly broke up.⁸⁵⁹⁸⁵⁹ La Planche, 284-286.

The Huguenots of Dauphiny to be exterminated.

The province of Dauphiny, within whose limits Valence, Romans and Montélimart were comprehended, was a government entrusted to the Duke of Guise. Moved with indignation at finding it become the hotbed of Protestantism, he determined to crush the Huguenots before impunity had given them still greater boldness. The governors of adjacent provinces were ordered to assist in the pious undertaking. King Francis, in a paroxysm of rage, wrote to Tavannes, acting governor of Burgundy, to take all the men-at-arms under his command and march to the assistance of Clermart, Lieutenant-Governor of Dauphiny, in cutting to pieces those who had taken up arms under color of religion. They were, he heard, three or four thousand men, and had instituted public preaching "after the Geneva fashion," with all other insolent acts conceivable. He begged him to punish them as they deserved, showing no pity or compassion, since they had refused to take advantage of the forgiveness of past offences which had been sent them. He was to extirpate the evil.⁸⁶⁰⁸⁶⁰ Letter of Francis II. to Gaspard de Saulx, Seign. de Tavannes, April 12, 1560, apud Négotiations relatives au règne de François II., etc. (Collection de documents inédits), 341-343.

These and other equally brutal instructions were obeyed with alacrity; but their execution was effected rather by treachery407 than by open force. The Huguenots of Valence were first induced by promises of security to lay aside their arms, then imprisoned and despoiled by a party consisting of the very dregs of the population of Lyons and Vienne. Two of the ministers were put to death⁸⁶¹⁸⁶¹ With a label attached to their necks bearing this inscription: "Voicy les chefs des rebelles." in company with three of the principal men, one being the procureur who had given such noble testimony to the morals of the Protestants. More would have been executed had not the Bishop of Valence been induced to intercede for his episcopal city, and obtain amnesty for its citizens. Romans and Montélimart fared little better than Valence.⁸⁶²⁸⁶² La Planche, 286-289.

Concourse at Nismes.

At Nismes, in Languedoc—destined periodically, for the next three centuries, to be the scene of civil dissension arising from religious intolerance—as early as in Holy Week, three Protestant ministers had been preaching in private houses and administering baptism. On Easter Monday a large concourse from the city and the surrounding villages publicly passed out into the suburbs—armed, if we may believe the cowardly Vicomte de Joyeuse, with corselets, arquebuses, and pikes—and celebrated the Lord's Supper "after the manner of Geneva." Neither the presidial judges nor the consuls exhibited much disposition to second the efforts of the provincial government in suppressing these manifestations.⁸⁶³⁸⁶³ Letter of the Vte. de Joyeuse to the king, April 26, 1560, apud Nég. sous François II., 361-363.

Mouvans in arms in Provence.

His message to Guise.

In Provence the commotion assumed a more military aspect, in immediate connection with the conspiracy of Amboise. Mouvans, an able leader, after failing in an attempt to gain admission to Aix, long maintained himself in the open country. Keeping up a wonderful degree of discipline in his army, he allowed his soldiers, indeed, to destroy the images in the churches and to melt down the rich reliquaries of gold and silver, but scrupulously required them to place the precious metal in the hands of the local authorities. At length, forced to capitulate to the Comte de Tende, the royal governor, he obtained the promise of security of person and408 liberty of worship. New acts of treachery rendered his position unsafe, and he retired to Geneva. It was thence that he returned to the Duke of Guise, who professed to be eager to secure for himself the services of so able a commander, a noble answer: "So long as I know you to be an enemy of my religion and of the public peace, and to be occupying the place of right belonging to the princes of the blood, you may be assured you have an enemy in Mouvans, a poor gentleman, but able to bring against you fifty thousand good servants of the King of France, who are ready to endanger life and property in redressing the wrongs you have inflicted on the faithful subjects of his Majesty."⁸⁶⁴⁸⁶⁴ La Planche, 293.

A popular awakening.

It was impossible to ignore the fact: France had awakened from the sleep of ages. The doctrines of the Reformation were being embraced by the masses. It was impossible to repress the impulse to confess with the mouth⁸⁶⁵⁸⁶⁵ Hence the festival of Corpus Christi witnessed in some places serious riots, especially in Rouen, where a number of citizens of the reformed faith refused to join in the otherwise universal practice of spreading tapestry on the front of their houses when the host was carried by. Houses were broken into, at the instigation of the priests, and near a score of persons killed. Languet, Paris, June 16th, Epist. sec., ii. 59, 60. what was believed in the heart. At Rouen, the earnest request of the authorities, seconded by the prudent advice of the ministers, might prevail upon the Protestant community still to be content with an unostentatious and almost private worship, upon promise of connivance on the part of the Parliament of Normandy. But Caen, St. Lô, and Dieppe witnessed great public assemblies,⁸⁶⁶⁸⁶⁶ La Planche, 294; Hist. ecclés., i. 194; Floquet, Hist. du parl. de Normandie, ii. 284, 288, 294, 302-306, etc. At Dieppe the Huguenots had gone so far as to erect, with the pecuniary assistance afforded by Admiral Coligny, an elegant and spacious "temple," as the Protestant place of worship was styled. Vieilleville, much to his regret, felt compelled to demolish it (Aug., 1560), for it stood in the very heart of the city. I quote a part of his secretary's appreciative description: "C'estoit ung fort brave édifice, ressemblant au théatre de Rome qu'on appelle Collisée, ou aux arênes de Nysmes. On fut trois jours à le verser par terre, et ne partismes de Dieppe que n'en veissions la fin." Mém. de Vieilleville, ii. 448, etc.; Floquet, ii. 318-336. and Central and Southern France copied the exam409ple of Normandy. The time for secret gatherings and a timid worship had gone by. They were no longer in question. "When cities and almost entire provinces had embraced the faith of the reformers," a recent historian has well remarked,⁸⁶⁷⁸⁶⁷ De Félice, liv. i., c. 12 (Am. ed., p. 111). "secret assemblies became an impossibility. A whole people cannot shut themselves up in forests and in caverns to invoke their God. From whom would they hide? From themselves? The very idea is absurd."

Pamphlets against the usurpers.

The queen mother consults La Planche.

The political ferment was not less active than the religious. The pamphlets and the representations made by the emissaries of the Guises to foreign powers, in which the movement at Amboise was branded as a conspiracy directed against the king and the royal authority, called forth a host of replies vindicating the political Huguenots, and setting their project in its true light, as an effort to overthrow the intolerable usurpation of the Guises. The tyrants were no match for the patriots in the use of the pen; but it fared ill with the author or printer of these libels, when the strenuous efforts made to discover them proved successful.⁸⁶⁸⁸⁶⁸ See La Planche, 312, 313, and the "Histoire des cinq rois" (Recueil des choses mém), 1598, p. 99, for the punishment of the possessor of a copy of a virulent pamphlet against the cardinal, entitled Le Tigre (see the note at the end of this chapter); and Négociations sous François II., 456, for a letter from court ordering search to be made for the author and publisher of the "Complaincte des fidèles de France contre leurs adversaires les papistes." "En ung lundy après Pasques, 15e du moys, fut affiché devant S. Hilaire un papier estant imprimé d'autre impression de Paris, et y avoit à l'intitulation: Les Estats opprimez par la tyrannie de MM. de Guise au roy salut." Journal de Jehan de la Fosse, 37. The piece referred to is inserted in the Mémoires de Condé, i. 405-410. The politic Catharine de' Medici, fearing a new and more dreadful outburst of the popular discontent, renewed her hollow advances to the Protestant churches,⁸⁶⁹⁸⁶⁹ La Planche, 299-302. The remonstrance, signed Theophilus, which they addressed her, insisted on the ill-success of the persecutions to which for forty years they had been subjected; for one killed, two hundred had joined their assemblies; for ten thousand open adherents, the Reformation had one hundred thousand secret upholders. The Edict of Forgiveness answered no good purpose: "c'estoit bien peu d'oster pour un instant la douleur d'une maladie, si quant et quant la cause et la racine n'en estoit ostée." held a long consultation with Louis Re410gnier de la Planche (the eminent historian, whose profoundly philosophical and exact chronicle of this short reign leaves us only disappointed that he confined his masterly investigations to so limited a field) respecting the grounds of the existing dissatisfaction,⁸⁷⁰⁸⁷⁰ La Place, 41-45; La Planche, 316, 317; Mém. de Castelnau, l. ii., c. 7; De Thou, ii., liv. xxv. 788-791. I confess, however, that the careful perusal of La Planche's bold speech has nearly convinced me that the ascription of the anonymous "Hist. de l'estat de Fr. sous François II." to his pen is erroneous. I shall not insist upon the fact that the description of La Planche as "homme politique plustost que religieux" is inappropriate to the author of this history. But I can scarcely conceive of La Planche correcting errors in his own speech, and not only expressing an utter dissent from the account which he himself gave the queen of the motives that led La Renaudie to engage in the enterprise that had for its object the overthrow of the Guises, but even accusing himself of falling into a grave mistake with regard to the importance of the differences of creed between the Protestants and the Roman Church: "s'abusant en ce qu'il meit en avant des différends de la religion." La Planche had suggested a conference of theologians—ostensibly to make a faithful translation of the Bible, in reality to compare differences—and had expressed the opinion that there would be found less discord than there appeared to be. The condemnation of this view certainly does not mark a man of political rather than religious tendencies! I fear that we must look elsewhere for the author of this excellent history. and despatched Coligny to Normandy for the purpose of finding a cure for the evil.

Edict of Romorantin, May, 1560.

No abatement of rigor.

The Guises, on the other hand, resolved to meet the difficulties of their situation with boldness. The opposition, so far as it was religious, must be repressed by legislation strictly enforced. Accordingly, in the month of May, 1560, an edict was published known as the Edict of Romorantin, from the place where the court was sojourning, but remarkable for nothing save the misapprehensions that have been entertained respecting its origin and object.⁸⁷¹⁸⁷¹ It has been ascribed to the virtuous and tolerant Chancellor L'Hospital, who, it is said, drew it up in order to defeat the project of the Guises to introduce the Spanish Inquisition. (La Planche, 305; cf. also De Thou, ii. 781.) But the edict was published before the appointment of L'Hospital, and while Morvilliers, a creature of the Guises, provisionally held the seals after Chancellor Olivier's death; and the spiritual jurisdiction it established differed little in principle from an inquisition. In fact, three of the French prelates, the Cardinals of Lorraine, Bourbon, and Châtillon, had, as we have seen, been constituted a board of inquisitors of the faith; and, soon after the publication of the Edict of Romorantin, the Cardinal of Tournon was set over them as inquisitor-general. The subject has been well discussed by Soldan, Geschichte des Prot. in Frankreich, i. 338-342. The Duc d'Aumale, in his usually accurate Histoire des Princes de Condé (i. 113), repeats the blunder of La Planche and De Thou. It restored411 exclusive jurisdiction in matters of simple heresy to the clergy, excluding the civil courts from all participation, save to execute the sentence of the ecclesiastical judge. But it neither lightened nor aggravated the penalties affixed by previous laws. Death was still to be the fate of the convicted heretic, to whom it mattered little whether he were tried by a secular or by a spiritual tribunal, except that the forms of law were more likely to be observed by the former than by the latter. A section directed against the "assemblies" in which, under color of religion, arms were carried and the public peace threatened, declared those who took part in them to be rebels liable to the penalties of treason.⁸⁷²⁸⁷² Recueil des anc. lois fr., xiv. 31-33; La Planche, 305, 306; La Place, 46, 47. It is, of course, "an edict holily conceived and promulgated," in the estimation of Florimond de Ræmond, v. 113. The only redeeming feature I can find in it is the article by which malicious informers made themselves liable to all the penalties they had sought to inflict on others.

Death of Chancellor Olivier.

A remarkable figure now comes upon the stage of French affairs in the person of Chancellor Michel de l'Hospital. Chancellor Olivier, who had merited universal respect while losing office in consequence of his steadfast resistance to injustice under the previous reign, had forfeited the esteem of the good by his complaisance when restored to office by the Guises at the beginning of the present reign. Overcome with remorse for the cruelties in which he had acquiesced since his reinstatement, he fell sick shortly after the tumult of Amboise. When visited during his last illness by the Cardinal of Lorraine, he coldly turned his back upon him and muttered, "Ah! Cardinal, you have caused us all to be damned."⁸⁷³⁸⁷³ La Place, 36 (who states that the burning of Du Bourg was an occasion of deep remorse in Olivier's last hours); La Planche, 266; J. de Serres, De statu rel. et reip., i., fol. 35; De Thou, ii. (liv. xxiv.), 775; Hist. du tumulte d'Amboise, ubi supra. He died not long afterward, and was buried412 without regret, despised by the patriotic party on account of his unfaithfulness to early convictions, and hated by the Guises for his tardy condemnation of their measures.

Chancellor Michel de l'Hospital.

Of L'Hospital, because raised to the vacant charge by the Lorraine influence, little good was originally expected.⁸⁷⁴⁸⁷⁴ La Planche, 305. But the lapse of a few years revealed the incorruptible integrity of his character and the sagacity of his plans.⁸⁷⁵⁸⁷⁵ If we may credit that professed panegyrist, Scævola de St. Marthe, L'Hospital was of an august appearance, of a dignified and tranquil countenance, and, if his intellectual constitution had a philosophic stamp, his features bore a not less remarkable resemblance to the head of the Stagirite as delineated on ancient medals. Elogia doctorum in Gallia virorum qui nostra patrumque memoria floruerunt (Ienæ, 1696), lib. ii., p. 95. Elevated to the highest judicial post at a critical juncture, he accepted a dignity for which he had little ambition, only that he might the better serve his country. What he could not remedy he resolved to make as endurable as possible. It was not within the power of a single virtuous statesman to allay the storm and quiet the surging waters; but by good-will, perseverance, and nerve, he might steer the ship of state through many a narrow channel and by many a hidden rock. An ardent lover and earnest advocate of toleration, he yet considered it politic to consent to urge the Parliament of Paris, in the king's name, to register the Edict of Romorantin, in accordance with which the system of persecution was for a while to be continued. One of the original conspirators of Amboise, according to the explicit statement of a writer who saw his signature affixed to the secret papers of the confederates,⁸⁷⁶⁸⁷⁶ This remarkable statement is made by Agrippa d'Aubigné, Mémoires, 478 (Ed. Panthéon Lit.). He tells us that he had inherited from his father, himself one of the conspirators, the original papers of the enterprise of Amboise. The suggestion was made by a confidant, that the possession of the proof of L'Hospital's complicity would certainly secure him 10,000 crowns, either from the chancellor or from his enemies; whereupon the youth threw all the papers into the fire lest he might in an hour of weakness succumb to the temptation. In his Hist. universelle, i. 95, D'Aubigné makes the same assertion with great positiveness: "L'Hospital, homme de grand estime, luy succeda, quoyqu'il eust esté des conjurez pour le faict d'Amboise. Ce que je maintiens contre tout ce qui en a esté escrit, pource que l'original de l'entreprise fut consigné entre les mains de mon père, où estoit son seing tout du long entre celuy de Dandelot et d'un Spifame: chose que j'ai faict voir a plusieurs personnes de marque." he made no413 opposition to the article that pronounced the penalties of treason upon those who assembled in arms to celebrate the rites of religious worship. Yet he dissembled not from timidity, treachery, or ambition, but solely that by unremitting labor he might heal the unhappy dissensions of his country. "Patience, patience, tout ira bien," were the words he always had in his mouth for encouragement and consolation.⁸⁷⁷⁸⁷⁷ La Planche, 305; La Place, 38; De Thou, ii. 776; Davila, p. 29. I cannot refrain from inserting La Planche's worthy estimate of his course and its results: "Car pour certain, encores que s'il eust prins un court chemin pour s'opposer virilement au mal, il seroit plus à louer, et Dieu, peut-estre, eust bény sa Constance, si est-ce qu'autant qu'on en peut juger, luy seul, par ses modérés déportemens a esté l'instrument duquel Dieu s'est servy pour retenir plusieurs flots impétueux, où fussent submergés tous les François." Ubi supra.

Perplexity of the ruling family.

As the summer advanced the perplexities of the Guises increased. Every day there were new alarms. The English ambassador, not able to conceal his satisfaction at the perplexity of his queen's covert enemies, wrote to Cecil: "If I should discourse particularly unto you what these men have done since my last letters ... you would think me as fond in observing their doings as they mad in variable executing. But you may see what force fear hath that occasioned such variety.... They be in such security, as no man knoweth overnight where the king will lodge. Tomorrow from all parts they have such news as doth greatly perplex them. Every day new advertisements of new stirs, as of late again in Dauphiny, in Anjou, in Provence; and to make up their mouths, the king being in the skirts of Normandy, at Rouen, upon Corpus Christi Day, there was somewhat to do about the solemn procession, so as there was many slain in both parts. But at length the churchmen had the worse, and for an advantage, the order is by the king commanded, that the priests for their outrage shall be grievously punished. What judge you when the Cardinal of Lorraine is constrained to command to punish the clergy, and such as do find fault with others' in414solence, contemning the reverent usage to the holy procession!"⁸⁷⁸⁸⁷⁸ Throkmorton to Cecil, June 24, 1560, State Paper Office; printed in Wright, Queen Elizabeth, i. 32, 33.

Montbrun in the Comtât Venaissin.

Universal commotion.

New commotions had indeed arisen in the south-east, where Montbrun, a nephew of Cardinal Tournon, the inquisitor-general, had entered the small domain of the Pope, the Comtât Venaissin, as a Huguenot leader.⁸⁷⁹⁸⁷⁹ La Planche, 338-343. Condé had dexterously escaped the snares laid for him, and had taken refuge with his brother, Navarre.⁸⁸⁰⁸⁸⁰ Ibid., 315; De Thou, ii. 787, 788. Their spies reported to the Guises a state of universal commotion; and deputies from all parts of France rehearsed in the ears of the Bourbon princes the story of the usurpations of the Guises and the Protestant grievances, and urged them, by every consideration of honor and safety, to undertake to redress them.⁸⁸¹⁸⁸¹ The long address delivered to the two brothers at Nérac, and reproduced verbatim by La Planche (318-338), is a very complete summary of the views of the Huguenots at this juncture. The Guises had for some time been pressing the King of Spain and the Pope to forward the convening of a universal council, without which all would go to ruin.⁸⁸²⁸⁸² Letter of Cardinal Lorraine to the Bishop of Limoges, French ambassador to Philip the Second, July 28, 1560. The council "we hold to be the sole and only remedy for our ills," is the minister's language. Although the state of affairs was better than it had been, yet "so many persons were imbued with these opinions, that it was not possible to find out on whom reliance could be placed." Négociations sous François II., 442-444. In view of the great apathy displayed both by Philip and by Pius—perhaps, also, with the secret hope of enticing Navarre and Condé to come within their reach⁸⁸³⁸⁸³ Ibid., ubi supra; La Planche, 349; De Thou, ii. 782.—they consented to the plan which Catharine de' Medici, at the suggestion of L'Hospital and Coligny, now advocated, of summoning a council of notables to devise measures for allaying the existing excitement.⁸⁸⁴⁸⁸⁴ La Planche, ubi supra. An assembly of notables was, as the term imports, a body consisting, not of representatives of the three orders, regularly summoned under the forms observed in the holding of the States General, but of the most prominent men of the kingdom, arbitrarily selected and invited by the crown to act as its advisers on some extraordinary emergency. "Telles assemblées," says Agrippa d'Aubigné, "ont esté appelées petits estats." Hist. univ., i. 96.415

Assembly of notables at Fontainebleau, August 21, 1560.

On the twenty-first of August this celebrated assembly was convened by royal letters in the stately palace at Fontainebleau.⁸⁸⁵⁸⁸⁵ "This house is both beautiful and larger than any I had before seen in France or England. I may resemble the state thereof to the honour of Hampton Court, which as it passeth Fontainebleau with the great hall and chambers, so is it inferior in outward beauty and uniformity," etc. The Journey of the Queen's Ambassadors to Rome, Anno 1555, Hardwick, State Papers, i. 67. Antoine of Navarre and the Prince of Condé declined, on specious pretexts, the king's invitation. Constable Montmorency accepted it, but came with a formidable escort of eight hundred attendants. His three nephews, the Châtillons, followed his example, and shared his protection. At the appointed hour a brilliant company was gathered in the spacious apartments of the queen mother. On either side of the king's throne sat Mary of Scots, and Catharine de' Medici, and the young princes—Charles Maximilian, Duke of Orleans, Edward Alexander, and Hercules.⁸⁸⁶⁸⁸⁶ Charles Maximilian, now a boy of ten, was the successor of Francis, known as Charles the Ninth. Edward Alexander, Duke of Alençon, had his name changed in 1565 to Henry, and became Duke of Anjou. He was at this time not quite nine years of age. He was subsequently king, under the title of Henry the Third. Hercules became Francis of Alençon in 1565, and was the only one of the brothers that never ascended the throne. He was now a little over six years old. Four cardinals, in their purple—Bourbon, Lorraine, Guise, and Châtillon—sat below. Next to these were placed the Duke of Guise, as lieutenant-general of the kingdom; the Duke of Montmorency, as constable; L'Hospital, as chancellor; Marshals St. André and Brissac; Admiral Coligny; Marillac, Archbishop of Vienne; Morvilliers, Bishop of Orleans; Montluc, Bishop of Valence; and the other members of the privy council. In front of these, the members of the Order of St. Michael, and the rest of the notables, occupied lower benches.⁸⁸⁷⁸⁸⁷ La Place, 53; La Planche, 350, 351; De Thou, ii. 706; Mém. de Castelnau, 1. ii., c. 8; Davila, 29. Minor discrepancies between these accounts need not be noted.

Chancellor L'Hospital's speech.

The session opened with brief speeches delivered by Francis and his mother, setting forth the object of this extraordinary416 convocation, but referring their auditors to the chancellor and to the king's uncles for further explanations. Chancellor L'Hospital was less concise. He entertained the assembly with a lengthy comparison of the political malady to a bodily disease,⁸⁸⁸⁸⁸⁸ "As if," says Calvin to Bullinger, "finding himself at his wits' end, he had called in a consultation of state doctors." (Bonnet, iv. 135.) pronouncing the cure to be easy, if only the cause could be detected. He closed by assigning a somewhat singular reason for summoning but two of the three orders of the state. The presence of the people, he said, was in no wise necessary, inasmuch as the king's sole object was to relieve the third estate. Because, forsooth, the poor people—bowed down to the earth with taxes and burdens, which the noblesse would not touch with one of their fingers—was the party chiefly interested in the results of the present deliberations, it was quite unessential that its complaints or requests should be heard! The Duke of Guise and his brother, the cardinal, next laid before the assembly an account of their administration of the army and finances; and the first day's session ended with the pleasant announcement that the royal revenues annually fell short of the regular expenses by the sum—very considerable for those days—of two and one-half millions of livres.

Coligny speaks and presents two petitions.

When next the notables met, two days later, the king formally proposed a free discussion of the subject in hand. The youngest member of the privy council was about to speak, when Gaspard de Coligny arose, and, advancing to the throne, twice bowed humbly to the king. By the royal orders, he said, he had lately visited Normandy and investigated the origin of the recent commotions. He had satisfied himself that they were owing to no ill-will felt toward the crown; but only to the extreme and illegal violence with which the inhabitants had been treated for religion's sake. He had, therefore, believed it to be his duty to listen to the requests of the persecuted, who offered to prove that their doctrines were conformable to the Holy Scriptures and to the traditions of the primitive church, and to take charge of the two petitions which they had drawn up and addressed to his Majesty and the417 queen mother. They were without signatures; for these could not be affixed without the royal permission previously granted the reformed to assemble together. But, with that permission, he could obtain the names of fifty thousand persons in Normandy alone. In answer to Coligny's prayer that the king would take his action in good part, Francis assured him that his past fidelity was a sufficient pledge of his present zeal; and commanded L'Aubespine, secretary of state, to read the papers which the admiral had just placed in his hands.

The petitions are read.

They ask for liberty of worship.

The petitions,⁸⁸⁹⁸⁸⁹ "Deux requestes de la part des Fideles de France, qui desirent viure selon la reformation de l'Euangile, donnees pour presenter au Conseil tenu à Fontainebleau au mois d'Aoust, M.D.LX." Recueil des choses mémorables faites et passees pour le faict de la Religion et estat de ce Royaume, depuis la mort du Roy Henry II. iusques au commencement des troubles. Sine loco, 1565, vol. i. 614-619. addressed, one to the king, the other to the queen mother, purported to come from "the faithful Christians scattered in various parts of the kingdom." They set forth the severity of the persecutions the Huguenots had undergone, and were yet undergoing, for attempting to live according to the purity of God's word, and their supreme desire to have their doctrine subjected to examination, that it might be seen to be neither seditious nor heretical. The suppliants begged for an intermission of the cruel measures which had stained all France with blood. They professed an unswerving allegiance, as in duty bound, to the king whom God had called to the throne. And of that king they prayed that the occasion of so many calumnies, invented against them by reason of the secret and nocturnal meetings to which they had been driven by the prohibition of open assemblies, might be removed; and that, with the permission to meet publicly for the celebration of divine rites, houses for worship might also be granted to them.⁸⁹⁰⁸⁹⁰ La Place, 54, 55, and La Planche, 351, are, as usual in this reign, our best authorities in reference to Coligny's address and the presentation of the petition; see also Hist. ecclés., i. 173, 174; De Thou, ii. 797; Castelnau, liv. ii., c. 8; Davila, bk. ii., p. 30. La Place and Jean de Serres, De statu, etc., i. 96 (who are followed by De Thou, etc.), seem to be more correct in assigning the address to the second session, than La Planche, the Hist. ecclés., etc., who place it at the very commencement of the first. Calvin, in a letter to Bullinger, Oct. 1, 1560 (Bonnet, iv. 135) describes the scene in the same manner as La Place. Vita Gasparis Colinii (1575), 27, etc.; Vie de Coligny (Cologne, 1686), p. 213, etc. Mr. Browning (Hist. of the Huguenots, i. 29) erroneously attributes the authorship of the last mentioned work to Francis Hotman (who died in 1590); whereas the author wrote after Maimbourg and Varillas, whose statements he controverts. (Pref., p. ii., and p. 86.) Hotman, as noticed elsewhere, was the author of the preceding and much more authentic book.418

It was a perilous step for the admiral to take. By his advocacy of toleration he incurred liability to the extreme penalties that had been inflicted upon others for utterances much less courageous. But the very boldness of the movement secured his safety where more timid counsels might have brought him ruin. Besides, it was not safe to attack so gallant a warrior, and the nephew of the powerful constable. Yet the audible murmurs of the opposite party announced their ill-will.

Speech of Montluc, Bishop of Valence.

The remedy prescribed.

The fearlessness of the admiral, however, kindled to a brighter flame the courage of others. Strange as it may appear, toleration and reform found their warmest and most uncompromising advocates on the episcopal bench.⁸⁹¹⁸⁹¹ Not, however, precisely in the ranks of the clergy. Marillac was a layman, whose success in negotiation had been rewarded with the archiepiscopal see of Vienne. In his youth he had been suspected of composing an apology for a "Lutheran" burned at the stake in Paris; and he died broken-hearted, seeing the ruin to which both church and state were tending, two months after the Assembly of Fontainebleau. La Place, 72, 73; La Planche, 360, 361. Neither was Montluc of Valence a clergyman. Paris, Négotiations sous François II., Notice, p. xxxvii. Montluc, Bishop of Valence, drew a startling contrast between the means that had been taken to propagate the new doctrines, and those by which the attempt had been made to eradicate them. For thirty years, three or four hundred ministers of irreproachable morals, indomitable courage, and notable diligence in the study of the Holy Scriptures, had been attracting disciples by the sweet name of Jesus continually upon their lips, and had easily gained over a people that were as sheep without a shepherd. Meanwhile, popes had been engrossed in war and in sowing discord between princes; the ministers of justice had made use of the severe enactments of the kings against heresy419 to enrich themselves and their friends; and bishops, instead of showing solicitude for their flocks, had sought only to preserve their revenues. Forty bishops might have been seen at one time congregated at Paris and indulging in scandalous excesses, while the fire was kindling in their dioceses.⁸⁹²⁸⁹² It was not unfrequently recommended, as a species of panacea for the evils in the church, that the bishops should all be sent off to their dioceses. An edict to that effect had recently been promulgated, and it was supposed that the parish curates would soon be directed to follow their example. (Languet, ii. 68.) "What else will result from this I know not," quietly adds the sensible diplomatist, "but that they will betray their ignorance and baseness, and that the contempt and hatred already entertained for them by the people will be augmented." Elsewhere, in expressing the same view of the absurdity of the order, he gives this unflattering description of the prelates: "cum plerique sint plane indocti et præterea luxu, libidinibus, et aliis sceleribus perditissimi," etc. (Ibid., ii. 73.) The inferior clergy, who bought their curacies at Rome, added ignorance to avarice.⁸⁹³⁸⁹³ "Autant de deux escus que les banquiers avoyent envoyés à Rome, autant de curés nous avoyent-ils renvoyés," adds Montluc. La Place, 56. The ecclesiastical office became odious and contemptible when prelates conferred benefices on their barbers, cooks, and footmen. What must be done to avert the just anger of God? Let the king, in the first place, see that God's name be no longer blasphemed as heretofore. Let God's Word be published and expounded. Let there be daily sermons in the palace, to stop the mouths of those who assert that, near the king, God is never spoken of. Let the singing of psalms take the place of the foolish songs sung by the maids of the queens; for to prohibit the singing of psalms, which the Fathers extol, would be to give the seditious a good pretext for saying that the war was waged not against men, but against God, inasmuch as the publication and the hearing of His praises were not tolerated. A second remedy was to be found in a universal council, or, if the sovereign pontiff continued to refuse so just a demand, in a national council, to which the most learned of the new sect should be offered safe access. As to punishments, while the seditious, who took up arms under color of religion, ought to be repressed, experience had taught how unavailing was the persecution of those who embraced their views from conscientious motives, and history420 showed that three hundred and eighteen bishops at the Council of Nice, one hundred and fifty at Constantinople, and six hundred and thirty at Chalcedon, refused to employ other weapons, against the worst of convicted heretics, than the word of God. Montluc closed his eloquent discourse by opposing the proposition to grant the right of public assembly, because of the dangers to which it might lead; but advocated a wise discrimination in the punishment of offenders, according to their respective numbers and apparent motives.⁸⁹⁴⁸⁹⁴ The harangue of Montluc is contained word for word, though with erroneous date, in the Recueil des choses mémorables (1565), pp. 286-305; also in La Place, 55-58; Mém. de Condé, 557-562. Summary in De Thou, ii. 797-800; Jean de Serres, De statu rel. et reip. (1571), i. 99-106.

Address of Archbishop Marillac.

The Archbishop of Vienne, the virtuous Marillac, an elegant and effective orator, made a still more cogent speech. He regarded the General Council as the best remedy for present dissensions; but it was in vain to expect one, since, between the Pope, the emperor, the kings, and the Lutherans, the right time, place, and method of holding it could never be agreed upon by all; and France was like a man desperately ill, whose fever admitted of no delay that a physician might be called in from a distance. Hence, the usual resort to a national council, in spite of the Pope's discontent, was imperative. France could not afford to die in order to please his Holiness.⁸⁹⁵⁸⁹⁵ "Et qu'en tout événement nous ne voulons périr pour luy complaire." La Place, 60; La Planche, 354. Meanwhile, the prelates must be obliged to reside in their dioceses; nor must the Italians, those leeches that absorbed one-third of all the benefices and an infinite number of pensions, be exempted from the operation of the general rule.⁸⁹⁶⁸⁹⁶ "Et sur ce, ne fault espargner les Italiens qui occupent la troisiesme partie des bénéfices du royaume, ont pensions infinies, succent nostre sang comme sangsues," etc. La Place and La Planche, ubi supra. Would paid troops be permitted thus to absent themselves from their posts in the hour of danger? Simony must be abolished at once, as a token of sincerity in the desire to reform the church. Otherwise Christ would come down and drive his unworthy servants from His church, as He once drove the money-changers from the temple. Especially must church421men repent with fasting, and take up the word of God, which is a sword, "whereas, at present," said the speaker, "we have only the scabbard—in mitres and croziers, in rochets and tiaras." Everything that tended to disturb the public tranquillity, whether from seditious leaders, or from equally seditious zealots, must be repressed.

The States General must be called.

Nor was the advice given by Marillac for securing the continued obedience of the people less sound. He regarded the assembling of the States General as indispensable, in view of the great debts and burdens of the people. He warned the king's counsellors lest the people, accustomed to have its complaints of grievances unattended to, should begin to lose the hope of relief, and lest the proverbial promptness and gentleness which the French nation had always shown in meeting the king's necessities should be so badly met and so frequently offended as at last to turn into rage and despair.⁸⁹⁷⁸⁹⁷ La Place, 64; La Planche, 359. Both historians give the speech verbatim. J. de Serres, i. 106-126; Letter of Calvin to Bullinger, Oct. 1, 1560, ubi supra; Hist. ecclés., i. 174-178. Would that these words of wholesome advice and sound philosophy had not been left unheeded by royalty and noblesse! The course of politic humanity to which they pointed might have saved a monarch his head, the noblesse countless lives and the loss of large possessions, and France a bloody revolution.

Speech of Admiral Coligny.

Such was "the learned, wise, and Christian harangue," as the chronicler well styles it, of "an old man eloquent," whom, like another Isocrates, "the dishonest victory" of his country's real enemies was destined to "kill with report." The profound impression it made was deepened by the speech of Admiral Coligny, whose turn it was, on the next day (the twenty-fourth of August), to announce his sentiments, he declared himself ready to pledge life and all he held most dear, that the hatred of the people was in no wise directed against the king, but against his ministers, whom he loudly blamed for surrounding their master with a guard, as though he needed this protection against his loyal subjects. Supporting the proposition of the Archbishop of Vienne for assembling the States General, the admiral advocated, in addition, the im422mediate dismissal of the guard, in order to remove all jealousy between king and people, and the discontinuance of persecution, until such time as a council—general or national—might be assembled. Meanwhile, he advised that the requests of the reformed, whose petitions he had presented, be granted; that the Protestants be allowed to assemble for the purpose of praying to God, hearing the preaching of His word, and celebrating the holy sacraments. If houses of worship were given them in every place, and the judges were instructed to see to the maintenance of the peace, he felt confident that the kingdom would at once become quiet and the subjects be satisfied.⁸⁹⁸⁸⁹⁸ La Planche, 361; La Place, 66; De Thou, ii. 802; Mém. de Castelnau, liv. ii. c. 8; Hist. ecclés., i. 178; Jean de Serres, i. 127.

Rejoinder of the Duke of Guise.

The Guises spoke on the same day. The duke made a short, but passionate rejoinder to Coligny, and gave little or no attention to the question proposed for deliberation. He bitterly retorted to the proposal for the dismissal of the body-guard, by saying that it had been placed around the king only since the discovery of the treasonable plot of Amboise, and he indignantly maintained that a conspiracy against ministers was only a cover for designs against their master. As for the announcement of the admiral that he could bring fifty thousand names to his petitions, which he construed as a personal threat, he angrily replied that if that or a greater number of the Huguenot sect should present themselves, the king would oppose them with a million men of his own.⁸⁹⁹⁸⁹⁹ La Planche, 361, 362; La Place, 67. The latter and J. de Serres, i. 129, are certainly wrong in attributing this passionate menace to the Cardinal of Lorraine. De Thou, ii. 802; Castelnau, 1. ii., c. 8. The question of religion he left to be discussed by others of more learning; but well was he assured that not all the councils of the world would detach him from the ancient faith. The assembling of the States he referred to the king's discretion.⁹⁰⁰⁹⁰⁰ La Planche, etc., ubi supra. Calvin to Bullinger, Oct. 1, 1560 (Bonnet, iv. 136).

The Cardinal of Lorraine is more politic.

The cardinal was more politic, and suppressed the manifestation of that deadly hatred which, from this time forward, the423 brothers cherished against Coligny. He declared, however, that, although the petitioners laid claim to such loyalty, their true character was apparent from the affair at Amboise, as well as from the daily issue of libellous pamphlets and placards, of which he had not less than twenty-two on his table directed against himself, which he carefully preserved as his best eulogium and claim to immortality. He advocated the severe repression of the seditious; yet, with a stretch of hypocrisy and mendacity uncommon even with a Guise, he expressed himself as for his own part very sorry that such "grievous executions" had been inflicted upon those who went "without arms and from fear of being damned to hear preaching, or who sang psalms, neglected the mass, or engaged in other observances of theirs," and as being in favor of no longer inflicting such useless punishments! Nay, he would that his life or death might be of some service in bringing back the wanderers to the path of truth. He opposed a council as unnecessary—it could not do otherwise than decide as its predecessors—but consented to a convocation of the clergy for the reformation of manners. The States General he thought might well be gathered to see with what prudence the administration of public affairs had been carried on.⁹⁰¹⁹⁰¹ La Planche, 362, 363; La Place, 67; J. de Serres, De statu rel. et reip., i. 128-131; De Thou, ii. 802, 803. After seeing the head instigator of persecution, still gory with the blood of the recent slaughter, assume with such effrontery the language of pity and toleration, we may be prepared for his duplicity at the interview of Saverne. The compiler of the Hist. ecclés. (i, 179) explains the consent of the Guises to the convocation of the estates by supposing them to have hoped by this measure not merely to take away the excuse of their opponents, but, by obtaining a majority, to secure the declaration of Navarre and Condé as rebels, whether they came or declined to appear. Calvin (letter to Bullinger, ubi supra, p. 137) gives the same view. So does Barbaro: "Forse non tanto per volontà che s'avesse d'esseguirle quanto per adomentare gli risvegliati, et guadagnar, come si fece." The Pope and Philip violently opposed the plan "perchè nè l'uno nè l'altro sapeva il secreto." "By the plan of the council, ... they succeeded in feeding with vain hopes (dar pasto) those who sought to make innovations in the faith." Rel. des Amb. Vén., i. 524, etc.

Results of the Assembly of Fontainebleau.

The States General to be convened.

With the Cardinal of Lorraine the discussion ended. All the knights of the order of St. Michael acquiesced in his opinions,424 but indulged in no farther remarks. On the twenty-sixth of August the decision was announced. The States General were to convene on the tenth of December, at Meaux, or such other city as the king might hereafter prefer. A month later (on the twentieth of January) the prelates were to come together wherever the king might be, thence to proceed to the national, or to the general council, if such should be held. Meanwhile, in each bailiwick and "sénéchaussée," the three orders were to be separately assembled, in order to prepare minutes of their grievances, and elect delegates to the States General; and all legal proceedings and all punishment for the matter of religion were to be suspended save in the case of those who assembled in arms and were seditious.⁹⁰²⁹⁰² La Planche, 363, 364; La Place, 68; De Thou, ii. 803 (liv. xxv). Cf. the edict in full apud Négociations sous François II., 486-490; also a letter of Francis in which he explains his course to Philip II., ib. 490-497.

Such was the history of this famous assembly, in which, for the first time, the Huguenots found a voice; where views were calmly expressed respecting toleration and the necessity of a council, which a year before had been punished with death; where the chief persecutor of the reformed doctrines, carried away by the current, was induced to avow liberal principles.⁹⁰³⁹⁰³ The cardinal had, however, made a somewhat similar discourse, just about six months before, to Throkmorton, much to the good knight's disgust. He had expressed a recognition of the faults prevalent in the church, and pretended to be desirous of reforming it in an orderly manner. "I am not so ignorant," he said, "nor so led with errors that reigne, as the world judgeth." He declared himself in favor of a general council, and spoke with satisfaction of an edict just despatched to Scotland, "to surcease the punishment of men for religion." "And of this purpose," adds the ambassador with pardonable sarcasm, "he made suche an oration as it were long to write, evon as thoughe he had bene hired by the Protestants to defend their cause earnestly!" Despatch to the queen, Feb. 27, 1559/60, Forbes, State Papers, i. 337, 338. This was progress enough for a single year. The enterprise of Amboise was not all in vain.

New alarms.

Antoine and Condé summoned to court.

The Assembly of Fontainebleau had not dispersed when the court was thrown into fresh alarm. An agent of the King of Navarre, named La Sague, was discovered almost by accident,425 who, after delivering letters from his master to various friends in the neighborhood of Paris, was about to return southward with their friendly responses. He had imprudently given a treacherous acquaintance to understand that a formidable uprising was contemplated; and letters found upon his person seemed to bear out the assertion. The most cruel tortures were resorted to in order to elicit accusations against the Bourbons from suspected persons.⁹⁰⁴⁹⁰⁴ Sommaire récit de la calomnieuse accusation de M. le prince de Condé, Mémoires de Condé, ii. 373; Languet, ii. 66. Among others, François de Vendôme, Vidame of Chartres, one of the correspondents, was (on the twenty-seventh of August) thrown into the Bastile.⁹⁰⁵⁹⁰⁵ Throkmorton to Cecil, Sept. 3, 1560, State Paper Office; La Place, 68, 69; La Planche, 345, 346; De Thou, ii. 804-806; Castelnau, 1. ii., c. 7. Three days later a messenger was despatched by the king to Antoine of Navarre, requesting him at once to repair to the capital, and to bring with him his brother Condé, against whom the charge had for six months been rife, that he was the head of secret enterprises, set on foot to disturb the peace of the realm.⁹⁰⁶⁹⁰⁶ La Planche, p. 375. Instructions to M. de Crussol, going by order of the king to the King of Navarre, Aug. 30, 1560, apud Négoc. sous François II., pp. 482-486. The beginning of this paper, directing Crussol to express regret that Navarre had not come to the council of Fontainebleau, and to announce the result of its recommendations, is sufficiently conciliatory. If, however, Navarre should hesitate to obey the summons, the agent was bidden to frighten him into compliance. On the first show of resistance, Francis would collect his own troops, consisting of thirty thousand or forty thousand foot, and seven hundred or eight hundred horse, expected levies of ten thousand Swiss, and six thousand or seven thousand German lansquenets. Philip had assured him of the assistance of all his forces, foot and horse, both from the side of Netherlands and of Spain. The Dukes of Lorraine, Savoy, and Ferrara would bring fourteen thousand to sixteen thousand foot and one thousand five hundred horse. The king's arrangements were complete, and he was resolved to make an example. The arrest of La Sague was, however, not to be mentioned. Letter of Francis to the King of Navarre, Aug. 30, in Recueil des choses mém. (1565), 75, 76, and Mém. de Condé, i. 573. At the same time an urgent request was sent to Philip the Second for assistance.⁹⁰⁷⁹⁰⁷ See the message in cipher appended to a despatch to the French ambassador at Madrid, Aug. 31, 1560, apud Nég. sous François II., pp. 490-497. The discovery is said to have been made within five or six days. Condé is implicated. Against Navarre there is as yet no proof. The Queen of England, is suspected of complicity, despite the recent treaty (of July 23d, by which Mary, Queen of Scots, renounced her claims upon the crown of England). The affright of the Guises may be judged from the circumstance that two copies of the despatch were forwarded—one by Guyenne, the other by Languedoc—so that at least one might reach its destination.426

Philip adverse to a national council.

Projects to crush all heresy and its abettors.

Nor was his Catholic Majesty reluctant to grant help—at least on paper. But he accompanied his promises with advice. In particular, he sent Don Antonio de Toledo to dissuade the French government from holding a national council in Paris for the reformation of religion, as he understood it was proposed to do during the coming winter. This, he represented, would be prejudicial to their joint interests; "for, should the French alter anything, the King of Spain would be constrained to admit the like in all his countries." To which it was replied in Francis's name, that "he would first assemble his three estates, and there propone the matter to see what would be advised for the manner of a calling a general council, not minding without urgent necessity to assemble a council national." As to the Spanish help, conditioned on the prudence of the French government, the Argus-eyed Throkmorton, who by his paid agents could penetrate into the boudoirs of his fellow-diplomatists and read their most cherished secrets,⁹⁰⁸⁹⁰⁸ Thomas Shakerly, the Cardinal of Ferrara's organist, sent him budgets of news not less regularly than the secretary of the Duke of Savoy's ambassador at Venice supplied the English agent copies of all the most important letters his master received. See the interesting letter of John Shers to Cecil, Venice, Jan. 18, 1561, State Paper Office. wrote to Queen Elizabeth that a gentleman had reported to him that he had seen "at the Pope's nuncio's hands a letter from the nuncio in Spain, wherein the aids were promised, and that the King of Spain had written to the French king that he would not only help him to suppress all heresy, trouble, and rebellion in France, but also join him to cause all such others as will not submit to the See Apostolic to come to order." In fact, Throkmorton was enabled to say just how many men were to come from Flanders, and how many from Spain, and how many were to enter by way of Narbonne, and how many by way of Navarre.427 Quick work was to be made of schism, heresy, and rebellion in France. "This done, and the parties for religion clean overthrown," added the ambassador, "these princes have already accorded to convert their power towards England and Geneva, which they take to be the occasioners and causers of all their troubles."⁹⁰⁹⁹⁰⁹ Throkmorton to queen, Poissy, Oct. 10, 1560, State Paper Office.

Navarre's irresolution embarrasses Montbrun.

The King of Navarre had, even before the receipt of the royal summons, discovered the mistake he had committed in not listening to the counsel, and copying the example of the constable, who had come to Fontainebleau well attended by retainers. Unhappily, the irresolution into which he now fell led to the loss of a capital opportunity. The levies ordered by Francis in Dauphiny, for the purpose of assisting the papal legate in expelling Montbrun from the "Comtât," enabled the Sieur de Maligny to collect a large Huguenot force without attracting notice. It had been arranged that these troops should be first employed in seizing the important city of Lyons for the King of Navarre. A part of the Huguenot soldiers had, indeed, already been secretly introduced into the city,⁹¹⁰⁹¹⁰ In a despatch to his ambassador at Madrid, Sept. 18, 1560 (Négoc. sous François II., 523, etc.), Francis states that 1,000 or 1,200 armed soldiers had been posted in sixty-six houses, ready to sally out by night, capture the city, and open the gates to 2,000 men waiting outside. Of course, according to the king or his ministers, the object was plunder, and the enterprise a fair specimen of Huguenot sanctity. when letters were received from the irresolute Antoine indefinitely postponing the undertaking. After having for several days deliberated respecting his best course of conduct in these unforeseen circumstances, Maligny decided to withdraw as quietly as he had come; but a porter, who had caught a glimpse of the arms collected in one of the places of rendezvous, informed the commandant of the city. In the street engagement which ensued the Huguenots were successful, and for several hours held possession of the city from the Rhône to the Saône. Finding it impossible, however, to collect the whole force to carry out his original design, Maligny retired under cover of the night, and was so fortunate as to suffer little loss.⁹¹¹⁹¹¹ La Planche, 365-368; La Place, 69; Nég. sous François II., ubi supra; Mém. de Castelnau, 1. ii., c. 9; Languet, ii. 70; De Thou, ii. 806. Calvin, in a letter to Beza (Sept. 10, 1560), seems to allude, though not by name, to Maligny, and to condemn his rashness; but the passage is purposely too obscure to throw much light upon the matter. Bonnet, iv. 126, etc.428

The people not discouraged.

"The fashion of Geneva."

Books from Geneva destroyed.

Maligny's failure disconcerted Montbrun and Mouvans, with whom he had intended to co-operate, but had little effect in repressing the courage of the Huguenot people. Of this the royal despatches are the best evidence. Francis wrote to Marshal de Termes that since the Assembly of Fontainebleau there had been public and armed gatherings in an infinite number of places, where previously there had been only secret meetings. In Périgord, Agenois, and Limousin, an infinite number of scandalous acts were daily committed by the seditious, who in most places lived after the fashion of Geneva. Such canaille must be "wiped out."⁹¹²⁹¹² Letter of the king, apud Négoc. sous François II., 580, 581. A month later those pestilent "books from Geneva" turn up again. Count de Villars, acting for Constable Montmorency in his province of Languedoc, had burned two mule-loads of very handsomely bound volumes, much to the regret of many of the Catholic troopers, who grudged the devouring flames a sacrifice worth more than a thousand crowns.⁹¹³⁹¹³ The curious reader may task his ingenuity in deciphering the somewhat remarkable spelling in which the count quaintly relates the occurrence in question: "Aytant o Pont-Sainct-Esperit, je trouvis entre les mains de Rocart, capitayne de là, deux charges de mulles de livres de Genaive, fort bien reliez: toutefoys cela ne les en carda que je ne les fice toux brûler, comensent le prumier à les maytre o fu; de coe je fu bien suivi de monsieur de Joyeuse, vous asseurent qu' ill i en avoet beocoup de la copagnie qu'il les playnoet fort, les estiment plus de mille aycus: pour sayte foys-là je ne les voullus croere." Letter of Villars to the constable, Oct. 12, 1560, apud Négoc. sous François II., p. 655. But he quickly followed up the chronicle of this valiant action with a complaint of his impotence to reduce the sectaries to submission. The Huguenots of Nismes had taken courage, and guarded their gates. So, or even worse, was it of Montpellier⁹¹⁴⁹¹⁴ On Sunday, the 28th of July, a gathering composed almost entirely of women was discovered. Nothing daunted, 1,200 persons met the next night, with torches and open doors, in the large school-rooms, where their pastor, Maupeau, preached an appropriate sermon from Rev. vi. 9, on "the souls of them that were slain for the word of God." Soon the same place was resorted to by day. Summoned before the magistrates, judge, and consuls, the Huguenots declared their loyalty, but said that they had no idea that the king wanted to dictate to the conscience, which belongs to God. Presently the church of St. Michael was seized. Then the Cardinal of Lorraine (Oct. 14th) wrote to the bishop, telling him to call upon M. de Villars for aid in suppressing assemblies and the preaching. Hist. ecclés. des égl. réf., i. 207-210. and Pézénas. Other cities were about to follow their example.429

Fifteen cities in one province receive ministers.

The children learn religion in the Geneva catechism.

These were but the beginnings of evil. Three days passed, and the Lieutenant-Governor of Languedoc sent a special messenger to the king, to inform him of the rapid progress of the contagion. Fifteen of the most considerable cities of the province had openly received ministers.⁹¹⁵⁹¹⁵ They are Nismes, Montpellier, Montagnac, Annonay, Castres, Marsillargues, Aigues Mortes, Pézénas, Gignac, Sommières, St. Jean de Gardonnenches, Anduze, Vauvers (Viviers?), Uzès, and Privas. Ten thousand foot and five hundred horse would be needed to reduce them, and, when taken, they must be held by garrisons, and punished by loss of their municipal privileges.⁹¹⁶⁹¹⁶ Sommaire des instructions données à Pignan envoyé au roy par Honorat de Savoye, Cte. de Villars, Oct. 15, 1560, apud Négoc. sous François II., 659-661. A fortnight more elapsed. Three or four thousand inhabitants of Nismes had retired in arms to the neighboring Cevennes.⁹¹⁷⁹¹⁷ On hearing of the seizure of Aigues Mortes by treachery. Hist. ecclés. des égl. réf., i. 211. When they descended into the plain, a larger number, who had submitted on the approach of the soldiery, would unite with them and form a considerable army. "Heresy, alas, gains ground daily," despondingly writes Villars; "the children learn religion only in the catechism brought from Geneva; all know it by heart." The cause of the evil he seemed to find in the circumstance—undoubtedly favorable to the Huguenots—that, of twenty-two bishops whose dioceses lay in Languedoc, all but five or six were non-residents.⁹¹⁸⁹¹⁸ Letters of De Villars to the Guises, Oct. 27 and 29, 1560. Nég. sous François II., 671.

To all which lamentations the answer came back after the430 accustomed fashion: "Slay, hang without respect to the forms of law; send lesser culprits, if preferable, to the galleys."⁹¹⁹⁹¹⁹ Letter of the king to the Cte. de Villars, November 9, 1560. Ib., p. 673.

In Normandy, too, it began to be impossible for the Huguenots to conceal themselves. At Rouen, in spite of the severe penalties threatened, seven thousand persons gathered in the new market-place, on the twenty-sixth of August, "singing psalms, and with their preacher in the midst on a chair preaching to them," while five hundred men with arquebuses stood around the crowd "to guard them from the Papists." A few days before, at the opening of the great fair of Jumièges, a friar, according to custom, undertook to deliver a sermon; but the people, not liking his doctrine, "pulled him out of the pulpit and placed another in his place."⁹²⁰⁹²⁰ H. Barnsleye to Cecil, August 28, 1560, State Paper Office.

Elections for the States General.

Nor was the courage of the Huguenots less clearly manifested a little later in the elections preparatory to the holding of the States General. In spite of strict injunctions issued by the Cardinal of Lorraine to the officers in each bailiwick and sénéchaussée, to prevent the debate of grievances from touching upon the authority of the Guises or that of the Church, and especially to defeat the election of any but undoubted friends of the Roman Church, his friends were successful in neither attempt. The voice of the oppressed people made itself heard in thunder-tones at Blois, at Angers,⁹²¹⁹²¹ I know of no more scathing exposure of the morals of the clergy than that given by François Grimaudet, the representative of the Tiers État of Anjou, and inserted verbatim in La Planche, 389-396. It was honored by being made the object of a special censure of the Sorbonne! and elsewhere. Even in Paris—the stronghold of the Roman faith—the reformed ventured, in face of a vast numerical majority against them, to urge in the Hôtel-de-Ville the insertion of their remonstrances in the "cahiers" of the city. Of thirteen provinces, ten addressed such complaints to the States General.⁹²²⁹²² La Planche, 387-397; Hist. ecclés. des égl. réf., i. 199.

Clerical demands at Poitiers.

But the clerical order did not forget its old demands, even where the Tiers État leaned to toleration. The provincial431 estates of Poitou, meeting in the Dominican convent of Poitiers, presented a contrast of this kind. The delegates of the people, after listening to the eloquent appeal of an intrepid Huguenot pastor, determined to petition the States General for the free exercise of the reformed religion. The representatives of the church made its complaints regarding the "ravishing wolves, false preachers, and their adherents, who are to-day in so great numbers that there are not so many true sheep knowing the voice of their shepherds." The "mild and holy admonitions" of the church having been thrown away upon these reprobates, the clergy proposed to open a register of all that should neglect to receive the sacrament at Easter, and to attend the church services with regularity. And it made the modest demand that all persons honored with an entry in this book should, as heretics, be deprived of all right to make contracts, that their wills be declared hull and void, and that all their property—in particular all houses in which preaching had been held—be confiscated. Of course, the aid of the secular arm was invoked, in view of "the great number and power of the said heretics."⁹²³⁹²³ Remonstrances, plaintes, et doléançes de l'estat ecclés., MSS. Arch. du départ, de la Vienne, Hist. des Protestants et des églises réf. du Poitou, par A. Lièvre (Poitiers, 1856), i. 84, 85.

Theodore Beza invited to Nérac.

Jeanne d'Albret.

On the twentieth of July, at the urgent request of the King and Queen of Navarre, the "Venerable Company of the Pastors of Geneva" had sent the eloquent Theodore Beza to Gascony "to instruct" the royal family in the word of God.⁹²⁴⁹²⁴ Geneva MS., apud Baum, Theodor Beza, ii. 110. In the dress of a nobleman he had traversed France and reached Nérac in safety. Here he at once exercised a powerful influence upon the king. The fickle mind of Antoine was susceptible of no deep impressions; but it was very easily affected for the time. His queen, Jeanne d'Albret, was his very opposite in mental and moral constitution. Whereas the very first blast threw him into a fervor of enthusiastic devotion to the purer faith, the heart of the queen—a woman not made to be led, but to lead—yielded slowly to the melting influences of the Gospel. But it never lost its432 glow. Jeanne came very reluctantly to the determination to cast in her lot with the Reformation. She hesitated to risk the loss of her possessions, and regretted to abandon the attractions of the world. When, however, the decision was once made, the question was never reopened for fresh deliberation.⁹²⁵⁹²⁵ See the interesting passage in the Hist. ecclés. des égl. réf., i. 204.

Antoine's short-lived zeal.

New pressure upon Navarre and Condé.

Navarre's concessions.

At this time, Antoine, we are told, renounced the mass, and was supposed to think, as he certainly spoke, of nothing but the means of advancing the cause in which he had embarked. Beza preached before him in one of the churches, and all signs pointed to the rapid establishment of the Reformation on a firm basis. The eloquent orator added his persuasion to the entreaties of the representatives of the Protestant churches of France and the exhortations of Constable Montmorency. All had urged Antoine to make his appearance at Fontainebleau with a powerful escort. We have seen the ill-success with which the joint effort was attended. The spies whom the Guises kept in pay around the King of Navarre, in the persons of his most intimate advisers, deterred him from a movement which they portrayed as fraught with peril. A few days after the conclusion of the assembly came the king's summons. To this Antoine at first replied that, if the accusers of his brother, of whose innocence he was fully persuaded, would declare themselves, and if he were assured that impartial justice would be shown, he would come to the court in company with few attendants. Condé wrote, at the same time, and expressed perfect confidence in his ability to disprove all the allegations against him, provided a safe access to the court was afforded him. On this point the suspicions of the Bourbon princes were soon set at rest by new letters from the king and his mother, assuring them that they would find not only security, but an opportunity to refute charges which Francis and Catharine professed themselves unwilling to credit.⁹²⁶⁹²⁶ "As touching the occurrents of this Court, it may please your Majesty to be advertised, that the King of Navarre being on his way to this Court, hath had letters, as I am informed, written unto him, of great good opinion conceived of him by this King, with all other kind of courtesies, to cause him to repair thither." Despatch of Sir Nicholas Throkmorton, Orleans, Nov. 17, 1560, Hardwick, State Papers, i. 138. To these reassuring words were433 joined the solicitations of their own brother, the shallow Cardinal of Bourbon,⁹²⁷⁹²⁷ The portrait of this personage is painted in no flattering colors by Calvin in two letters, to Sulcer, Oct. 1, 1560 ("whose mind is more lumpish than a log, unless when it is a little quickened by wine"), and to Bullinger, of the same date ("one whom you might easily mistake for a cask or a flagon, so little has he the shape of a human being"). Bonnet, Eng. tr., iv. 131-135. and of the Cardinal of Armagnac. The princes, already discouraged by tidings of the failure of the projects of Montbrun, Mouvans and Maligny in the east, lent too ready an ear to these suggestions. The first open manifestation of weakness was when the King and Queen of Navarre, with their son, young Prince Henry of Béarn, consented to hear mass in the presence of many of their courtiers. But the extent of Antoine's concessions was, for a time, kept concealed from his followers. At the very moment when Beza was diligently visiting the well affected nobles, and urging them to lend prompt assistance, the Guises were exulting, with joy mingled with fear, over the promise given by Antoine to the Count of Crussol, that he would come, with an insignificant escort to Orleans, whither Francis had advanced. The tidings appeared too good to be true.⁹²⁸⁹²⁸ The despatches that passed between the court and the French ambassador in Spain reveal the general alarm. Oct. 4th, Cardinal Lorraine expects Navarre and Condé within the first half of the month, "dont je suis fort ayse." Oct. 5th, Francis writes that, within two days, he has heard that they intend carrying out their enterprise. Oct. 9th, the secretary of state complains of "fresh alarm daily." Négoc. sous François II., 604-607, 610, 650. Others were, in the end, as much astounded as the Guises at Navarre's pacific attitude. Throkmorton, writing to the privy council that this king was looked for shortly at Orleans, adds that all bruits of trouble by him were clean appeased, which caused great marvel. Despatch to privy council, Paris, Oct. 24, 1560, State Paper Office. For, although the French king had received assurances of assistance from Philip—who was reported by the French envoy at Toledo to be favorable to the exercise of any severity against the Bourbon princes,⁹²⁹⁹²⁹ Letter of Bishop of Limoges to the Cardinal of Lorraine, Sept. 26, 1560, apud Négotiations sous François II., 562: "Je vous supplie de croire que le roy et mes seigneurs de son conseil [i. e., Francis and the Guises] ne feront rien pour extirper un tel mal qui ne soit icy [in Spain] bien pris et receu à l'endroict de qui que ce soit [sc. Navarre and Condé]: tant ceux-cy craignent qu'il y ait changement en notre religion et estat." Cf. also pp. 551, 552. so great434 was his personal enmity toward them—yet the same ambassador had not failed to inform Charles that the troops ostensibly prepared for a French campaign were really intended for Italy and to make good the Spanish monarch's losses in Africa. On the other hand, unless Philip could send six hundred thousand or seven hundred thousand crowns to Flanders to pay arrearages and debts, he could not move a soldier across the lines from that quarter.⁹³⁰⁹³⁰ Négociations sous François II., 553, 554.

The Huguenot gentry offer him aid.

He dismisses his escort.

The strictest orders had been given to the commandants of important points, such as Bordeaux and Poitiers, through which Antoine might intend passing, to guard them against him, in case of his showing any inclination to come otherwise than peaceably.⁹³¹⁹³¹ Instructions of the king to M. de La Burie, commanding in Guyenne, Sept., 1560, apud Négociations sous François II., 578-580; also Ib., 644. These precautions, however, proved unnecessary. Antoine intended to abide by his engagement. When by slow stages he had at length reached Limoges, he found a number of friendly noblemen awaiting him. In a few days more seven or eight hundred gentlemen had come in, well equipped and armed. They begged him at once to declare for the liberation of France, according to his previous promises. The nobility, they said, were only waiting for the word of command. Meanwhile Gascony, Poitou, and the coasts offered six or seven thousand foot soldiers, already enrolled under captains, and prepared to defend him against present attack. Provence and Languedoc would march to his assistance with three or four thousand horse and foot. Normandy would raise as many more. He would at once become so formidable that, without a blow, he could assume the guardianship of the king. Bourges and Orleans would fall into his hands, and the States General be held free of constraint. The very forces of the enemy would desert the sinking cause of the hated Guises. As for the necessary funds, with the best filled purses in France at his command, he could scarcely feel any lack. The suggestions of the Huguenot lords, backed by the entreaties of Beza, were,435 however, overborne by the secret insinuations of his treacherous counsellors. At Verteuil—a few leagues beyond—Navarre clearly announced his intentions, and dismissed his numerous friends with hearty thanks for their kind attentions. He would ask the king's pardon for those who had accompanied him thus far in arms. "Pardon!" replied one of the gentlemen, "think only of very humbly asking it for yourself, who are going to give yourself up as a prisoner with the halter around your neck. So far as I can see, you have more need of it than we have, who have determined not to sell our lives at so cheap a rate, but to die fighting rather than submit to the mercy of those detested enemies of the king. And since we are miserably forsaken by our leaders, we hope that God will raise up others to free us from the oppression of these tyrants."⁹³²⁹³² La Planche, 377. This retort proving futile, as did also the warning of the Princess of Condé, who wrote and sent a messenger to her husband to escape from the toils of his enemies while it was still possible, the Huguenot gentry retired in disgust; and Beza seized the first opportunity (on the seventeenth of October) to steal away from the King of Navarre, and undertake his perilous return to Geneva, which he succeeded in reaching after a series of hair-breadth escapes.⁹³³⁹³³ La Planche, 375; Baum, Theodor Beza, ii. 120-123, whose account of this episode in the reformer's life is well written and interesting. For the general facts above stated the best authority is, as usual, La Planche, 373-377; see also La Place, 71; De Thou, ii. 807, 827; Hist. ecclés., i. 205; Castelnau, l. ii., c. 9; Davila, 34, 35; Calvin's Letters (Bonnet), iv., pp. 132, 137, 143, 147-151.

Infatuation of the Bourbons.

The King of Navarre had disregarded the counsels of Calvin and other prudent advisers, who believed that, if he presented himself with a powerful escort at the gates of Orleans, the Guises would yield without a blow.⁹³⁴⁹³⁴ Calvin to Bullinger, Dec. 4th, and to Sulcer, Dec. 11, 1560 (Bonnet, iv. 149 and 151). Antoine felt confident that his enemies would never venture to lay hands on a prince of the royal blood. His blind infatuation seemed to infect Condé also. Their presumption was somewhat shaken when the royal governor of Poitiers forbade436 their entrance into that city. But the depth of the ruin into which they had plunged was more clearly revealed to their eyes as they began to approach Orleans. Friendly voices whispered the existence of a plan for their destruction; friendly hands offered to effect their escape to Angers, and thence into Normandy.⁹³⁵⁹³⁵ La Planche, 377; Agrippa d'Aubigné, liv. ii., c. 19. But the die was cast. Hostile troops enveloped them, and they resolved to continue their journey.

They reach Orleans.

Condé arrested.

Navarre had figured upon the journey much as a provost-marshal leading his brother to prison.⁹³⁶⁹³⁶ La Planche, ubi supra. Now the imaginary resemblance was turned into a sad reality. On Thursday, the thirty-first of October, the Bourbons reached Orleans.⁹³⁷⁹³⁷ Sommaire récit de la calomnieuse accusation de M. le prince de Condé, in the Recueil des choses mém. (1565), 722-754, and Mémoires de Condé, ii. 373-395—a contemporaneous account by one who speaks of himself as "ayant assisté à la conduicte de la plus grand part de tout le négoce." Their reception soon convinced them that they had placed their heads in the jaws of the lion. None of the courtiers save the cardinal, their brother, and La Roche-sur-Yon, their cousin, deigned to do them honor. That very day, after a few angry accusations from Francis, and a courageous vindication of his conduct by the chivalrous prince, Condé was arrested in the king's presence and by his order.⁹³⁸⁹³⁸ "Nevertheless, upon his coming, being accompanied with his brethren, the Cardinal of Bourbon and Prince of Condé, after they have [had] done their reverence to the king and queens, the Prince of Condé was brought before the council, who committed him forthwith prisoner to the guard of Messrs. de Bresy and Chauveney, two captains of the guard, and their companies of two hundred archers." Despatch of Sir Nicholas Throkmorton, ubi supra. The King of Navarre also was, indeed, little better than a prisoner, so closely did he find himself watched.⁹³⁹⁹³⁹ "The King of Navarre goeth at liberty, but as it were a prisoner." Despatch of Sir Nich. Throkmorton, ubi supra. "Tanquam captivus." Same to Lord Robert Dudley, same date, State Paper Office. In vain did Navarre remonstrate and plead the royal promise of security, offering himself to become a surety for his brother; the king denied redress. Then it was that Condé turned to the Cardinal of Bourbon, one of the few that had come to do him honor and said: "Sir, by your assurances you have delivered up your own437 brother to death."⁹⁴⁰⁹⁴⁰ La Place, 73; La Planche, 380, 381; Castelnau, 1. ii., c. 10. Others shared in Condé's misfortune. Madame de Roye, his mother-in-law and a sister of Admiral Coligny, was brought a prisoner to St. Germain, and a careful search was made among her papers and elsewhere for the purpose of obtaining proofs of Condé's guilt.⁹⁴¹⁹⁴¹ La Place, 74: La Planche and Castelnau, ubi supra; Sommaire récit, ubi supra. "Madame de Roy (Roye), the Admiral of France his sister ... is taken and constituted prisoner." Despatch of Sir Nich. Throkmorton, Orleans, November 17, 1560, Hardwick, State Papers, i. 139.

Return of Renée of Ferrara.

It was at this inauspicious moment that a distinguished princess reached Orleans, after an absence of thirty-two years from her native land, and was received with marked honors by the king and all the court, who went out to meet her and escort her to the city.⁹⁴²⁹⁴² "The Dutchess of Ferrara, mother to the Duke that now is, according to that I wrote heretofore to your Majesty, is arrived at this Court, the 7th of this present, and was received by the King of Navarre, the French King's brethren, and all the great Princes of this Court." Ubi supra. This was the celebrated Renée, younger daughter of Louis the Twelfth, and widow of Ercole, Duke of Ferrara, now returning, after the death of her husband, to spend her declining years at her retreat of Montargis on the Loing. The scene which she beheld awakened in her breast regret and indignation which she was not slow in expressing. To the Duke of Guise, who had married her daughter, Anne d'Este, she administered a severe rebuke. "Had I been present," she said, "I would have prevented this ill-advised step. It is no trifling matter to treat a prince of the blood in such a manner. The wound is one that will long bleed; for no man has ever yet attacked the blood of France but he has had reason to regret it."⁹⁴³⁹⁴³ Brantôme, Femmes illustres, Renée de France; La Planche, 381; La Place, 74; "que si elle y eust esté, elle l'eust empesché, et que ceste playe saigneroit long temps après, d'autant que jamais homme ne s'estoit attaché au sang de France, qu'il ne s'en fust trouvé mal." De Thou, ii. 830.

Condé's courage.

His wife repulsed.

The courage of the imprisoned prince rose with his misfortunes. The house in which he was incarcerated was flanked by a tower whose embrasures commanded the approach, the windows were newly barred, and the door was half-438walled up to preclude the possibility of escape.⁹⁴⁴⁹⁴⁴ "He remaineth close in a house, and no man permitted to speak with him; and his process is in hand. And I hear he shall now be committed to the castle of Loches, the strongest prison in all this realm." Sir Nich. Throkmorton, November 17, 1560, ubi supra, i. 138. But Prince Louis stoutly maintained that it was not he that was a captive, since, though his body was confined, his spirit was free and his conscience clean and guiltless; but rather they were prisoners, who, with the freedom of their body, felt their conscience to be enslaved and harassed by a ceaseless recollection of their crimes.⁹⁴⁵⁹⁴⁵ La Place, 75, ubi supra; De Thou, ii. 832, 833 (liv. 26); Sommaire récit, ubi supra. His wife, the virtuous Éléonore de Roye, fruitlessly applied for admission in order to minister to his wants. She was rudely repulsed by the king, at whose feet she had thrown herself in a flood of tears, with the bitter remark that her husband was his mortal enemy, who had conspired not only to obtain his crown, but his life also, and that he could do no less than avenge himself upon him.⁹⁴⁶⁹⁴⁶ La Planche, 402. It was only by special effort that the few who dared avow themselves friends of the disgraced Bourbons, succeeded in obtaining for Condé legal counsel, and that these were allowed to hold brief interviews with the prince in the presence of two officers of the crown.⁹⁴⁷⁹⁴⁷ Ib., 401; La Place, 75; Sommaire récit, ubi supra. No others were admitted, save a pretended friend, to sound his disposition toward the Guises. Comprehending the motive of his visit, Condé begged him to inform those who had sent him, "that he had received so many outrages at their hands that there remained no path of reconciliation, save at the point of the sword; and that, although he seemed to be at their mercy, he still had confidence that God would avenge the injury done by them to a prince who had come at the command and relying on the word of his king, but had been shamefully imprisoned at their suggestion, in order to make in him a beginning of the destruction of the royal blood."⁹⁴⁸⁹⁴⁸ La Planche, 400; Castelnau, liv. ii., c. 10.

Condé tried by a commission.

He is found guilty and sentenced to be beheaded.

A commission, consisting of Chancellor L'Hospital, President De Thou, Counsellors Faye and Viole, and a few others, was439 appointed, on the thirteenth of November, to conduct the trial. Condé refused to plead before them, taking refuge in his privilege, as a prince, to be tried only before the king and by his peers.⁹⁴⁹⁹⁴⁹ Sommaire récit, ubi supra. "For, being a prince of the blood, he said, his process was to be adjudged either by the Princes of the blood or by the twelve Peers; and therefore willed the Chancellor and the rest to trouble him no further." Throkmorton, Nov. 28, 1560, Hardwick, State Papers, i. 151. Castelnau (liv. ii., c. 11) has, by a number of precedents, proved the validity of this claim. His appeals, however, were rejected by the privy council, and he was commanded, in the king's name, to answer, under pain of being held a traitor. In view of the known desire and intention of the king and his chief advisers, the trial was likely to be expeditious and not over-scrupulous.⁹⁵⁰⁹⁵⁰ Mémoires de Condé, i. 619, containing the royal arrêt of Nov. 20th, rejecting Condé's demand; Sommaire récit. The (subsequent) First President of parliament, Christopher de Thou, was, after Chancellor L'Hospital, the leading member of the commission. His son, the historian, may be pardoned for dismissing the unpleasant subject with careful avoidance of details. La Planche makes no mention of the chancellor in connection with the case, but records Condé's indignant remonstrance against so devoted a servant of the Guises as the first president acting as judge. The most innocent expressions of disapproval of the violent executions at Amboise were perverted into open approval of a plot against the king. The prosecution sought to establish the heresy of the prince, in order to furnish some ground for finding him guilty of treason against Divine as well as royal authority. Nor was this difficult. A priest, in full officiating vestments, was introduced, as by royal command, to say mass in Condé's presence. But the young Bourbon drove him out with rough words, declaring "that he had come to his Majesty with no intention of holding any communion with the impieties and defilements of the Roman Antichrist, but solely to relieve himself of the false accusations that had been made against him."⁹⁵¹⁹⁵¹ La Planche, 399. Before so partial a court the trial could have but one issue. Condé was found guilty, and condemned to be beheaded on a scaffold erected before the king's temporary residence, at the opening440 of the States General.⁹⁵²⁹⁵² La Planche, 401; Davila, 37, 38; Castelnau, l. ii., c. 12. The unanimous voice of contemporary authorities, and the accounts given by subsequent historians, are discredited by De Thou alone (ii. 835, 836), who expresses the conviction, based upon his recollection of his father's statement, that the sentence was drawn up, but never signed. He also represents Christopher de Thou as suggesting to Condé his appeal from the jurisdiction of the commission, and opposing the violent designs of the Guises. The sentence was signed not only by the judges to whom the investigation had been entrusted, but by members of the privy council, by the members of the Order of St. Michael, and by a large number of less important dignitaries, without even a formal examination into the merits of the case—so anxious were the Guises to involve as many influential persons as possible in the same responsibility with themselves. Of the privy councillors, Du Mortier and Chancellor de l'Hospital alone refused to append their signatures without a longer term for reflection, and endeavored to ward off the blow by procrastination.⁹⁵³⁹⁵³ La Planche, 401; Castelnau, liv. ii., c. 12.

Danger of the King of Navarre.

Navarre was himself in almost equal danger. An attempt to poison him was frustrated by its timely revelation; a plot to assassinate him on leaving the king's residence, by the strength of his body-guard. A still more atrocious scheme was concocted. Francis was to stab his cousin of Navarre with his dagger, leaving his attendants to despatch him with their swords. Such murderous projects can rarely be kept secret. Even Catharine de' Medici is said to have attempted to dissuade Antoine from going to the palace by warning him of the danger he would incur. At the door of the king's chamber a friendly hand interposed, and a friendly voice asked: "Sire, whither are you going to your ruin?" But the prince, with a resolution which it had been well had he manifested at an earlier period, paused only a moment to say to his faithful Renty: "I am going to the spot where a conspiracy has been entered into to take my life.... If it please God, He will save me; but, if I die, I entreat you, by the fidelity I have ever known in you, ... to carry the shirt I wear, all covered with blood, to my wife and son, and to conjure my wife, by the great love she has always borne me,441 and by her duty (since my son is not yet old enough to avenge my death), to send it, torn by the dagger, and bloody, to the foreign princes of Christendom, that they may avenge my death, so cruel and treacherous."⁹⁵⁴⁹⁵⁴ La Planche, 405, 406, has preserved this striking speech, which I have somewhat condensed in the text. Agrippa d'Aubigné, Histoire universelle, ubi supra. These gloomy forebodings were not destined to be realized. Francis's anger evaporated in words, or was restrained by his mother's secret injunctions,⁹⁵⁵⁹⁵⁵ La Planche, it may be noticed, leans to this supposition. Ibid., 405. and Antoine of Navarre was suffered to go away unharmed. The duke and cardinal, who witnessed the scene from the recess of a window, are said to have muttered half audibly as they left the room, "That is the most cowardly heart that ever was!"⁹⁵⁶⁹⁵⁶ Ibid., 406; D'Aubigné, ubi supra.

A plot for the utter destruction of the Huguenots.

The assassination of the King of Navarre was, however, but a part of a larger plot for the utter destruction of the Huguenots and of Protestantism in France, the details of which are but imperfectly known.⁹⁵⁷⁹⁵⁷ See Michele Suriano's account, Rel. des Amb. Vén., i. 528. The ambassador seems to have entertained no doubt of the complete success that would have crowned the movement had Francis's life been spared: "Il quale, se vivea un poco più, non solamente averia ripresso, ma estinto dal tutto quell' incendio che ora consuma il regno." The Spanish ambassador, Chantonnay, writing to his master, Nov., 1560, confirms the statements of Protestant contemporaries respecting the plan laid out for the destruction of the Bourbons, and then of the admiral and his brother D'Andelot; but the wily brother of Cardinal Granvelle, much as he would have rejoiced at the destruction of the heads of the Huguenot faction, was alarmed at the wholesale proscription, and expressed grave fears that so intemperate and violent a course would provoke a serious rebellion, and perhaps give rise to a forcible intervention in French affairs, on the part of Germany or England. "Pero á mi paresce que seria mas acertado castigar poco á poco los culpados que prender tantos de un golpe, porque assi se podrian meter en desesperacion sus parientes, y causar alguna grande rebuelta y admitir mas facilmente las platicas de fuera del reyno ... o de Alemania o de Inglaterra." Papiers de Simancas, apud Mignet, Journal des Savants, 1859, p. 39. It is alleged that preliminary lists of those infected by heresy had been obtained from all parts of France, and that a more exact knowledge was to be obtained by compelling all classes—from the442 nobility and members of the Order of St. Michael down to the simple citizen—to subscribe to the articles of faith drawn up eighteen years before by the Sorbonne.⁹⁵⁸⁹⁵⁸ Mém. de Castelnau, liv. ii., c. 12; La Planche, 404; Mémoires de Mergey (Collection Michaud and Poujoulat), 567. The Count of La Rochefoucauld, hearing through the Duchess of Uzès—a bosom confidant of Catharine, but a woman who was not herself averse to the Reformation—that Francis had remarked that the count "must prepare to say his Credo in Latin," had made all his arrangements to pass from Champagne into Germany with his faithful squire De Mergey, both disguised as plain merchants. At the close of the sessions of the States General, the full forces at the command of the court were to be set on foot, and four armies, under the Duke of Aumale and Marshals St. André, Brissac, and Termes, were to serve as the instruments of destruction. Termes was to effect a junction with a Spanish force entering France through Béarn; and the Governor of Bayonne was instructed to surrender that important city into the hands of Philip. The expenses of the crusade were to be defrayed by the clergy, who, from cardinal down to chaplain, were to retain of their income only the amount necessary for their bare subsistence.⁹⁵⁹⁹⁵⁹ La Planche, 404; De Thou, ii. 835 (liv. xxvi.). The latter does not place implicit confidence in these reports, while conceding that subsequent events would induce a belief that they were not destitute of a foundation. According to Throkmorton, also, writing to Cecil, Sept. 3, 1560, the chief burden was to rest with the clergy, who gave eight-tenths of the whole subsidy. State Paper Office. The recent publication of the Pope's bull, renewing the Council of Trent, meanwhile served as a good excuse for forbidding the discussion of religious questions by the States General, then about to meet, by the king's direction, at Orleans instead of Meaux.⁹⁶⁰⁹⁶⁰ Ibid., 403; De Thou, iii. 82.

Illness of the king.

The moment for the execution of this widespread plan of destruction was approaching, when its devisers were startled by the sudden discovery that the health of their nephew, the king, was fast failing. Francis's constitution, always frail, and now still further undermined, was giving way in connection with a gathering in the ear, which resisted the efforts of the most skilful physicians.⁹⁶¹⁹⁶¹ Throkmorton's despatches from Orleans, several frequently sent off on a single day, acquaint us with the rapid progress of the king's disease, and the cold calculations based upon it. "The constitution of his body," he writes in the third of his letters that bear date Nov. 28th (Hardwick, State Papers, i. 156), "is such, as the physicians do say he cannot be long-lived: and thereunto he hath by his too timely and inordinate exercise now in his youth, added an evil accident; so as there be that do not let to say, though he do recover this sickness, he cannot live two years; whereupon there is plenty of discourses here of the French Queen's second marriage; some talk of the Prince of Spain, some of the Duke of Austrich, others of the Earl of Arran." No wonder that cabinet ministers and others often grew weary of the interminable debates respecting the marriages of queens regnant, and that William Cecil, as early as July, 1561, wrote respecting Queen Bess: "Well, God send our Mistress a husband, and by time a son, that we may hope our posterity shall have a masculine succession. This matter is too big for weak folks, and too deep for simple." Hardwick, State Papers, i. 174. "This King," wrote the443 English ambassador, on the twenty-first of November, giving to his fellow-envoy at Madrid the first intimation of Francis's illness, "thought to have removed hence for a fortnight, but the day before his intended journey he felt himself somewhat evil disposed of his body, with a pain in his head and one of his ears, which hath stayed his removing from hence."⁹⁶²⁹⁶² Throkmorton to Chamberlain, Nov. 21, 1560. British Museum. But the rapid progress of the disease soon made it clear that the trip to Chenonceau, "the queen's house," whence the king "was not to return hither until the Estates are assembled," would never be taken by Francis. The sceptre must pass into other hands even more feeble than his.

The queen mother rejects the advances of the Guises,

and makes terms with Navarre.

The Guises in consternation proposed to Catharine to hasten the death of Navarre and Condé,⁹⁶³⁹⁶³ De Thou, ii. 833, etc. (liv. 26); D'Aubigné, liv. ii., c. 20, p. 103. and perhaps to put into immediate execution their ulterior projects. But Catharine de' Medici little relished an increased dependence⁹⁶⁴⁹⁶⁴ On the 17th of Nov. Throkmorton had written: "The house of Guise practiseth by all the means they can, to make the Queen Mother Regent of France at this next assembly; so as they are like to have all the authority still in their hands, for she is wholly theirs." Hardwick, State Papers, i. 140. D'Aubigné (ubi supra), who attributes to the sagacious counsel of Chancellor de l'Hospital the credit of influencing Catharine to take this course. upon a family she had good reason to distrust. Instead of accepting the advances of the Guises, she hastened to make terms with the King of Navarre. In an interview with that weak prince, a compact was made which444 proved the source of untold evils. He had been forewarned by ladies in Catharine's interest, as he valued his life, to oppose none of her demands; but the wily Florentine scarcely expected so easy a triumph as she obtained. To the amazement of friend and foe, Antoine de Bourbon ceded his right to the regency, without a struggle, to the queen mother, a foreigner and not of royal blood. For himself he merely retained the first place under her, as lieutenant-general of the kingdom. He even consented to be reconciled to his cousins of Guise, and, after publicly embracing them, promised to forget all past grounds of quarrel.⁹⁶⁵⁹⁶⁵ I must refer the reader for the details of this remarkable interview and its results, which, it must be noted, Catharine insisted on Antoine's acknowledging over his signature, to the Histoire de l'Estat de France, tant de la république que de la religion, sous le règne de François II., commonly attributed to Louis Regnier de la Planche (pp. 415-418)—a work whose trustworthiness and accuracy are above reproach, and respecting which my only regret is that its valuable assistance deserts me at this point of the history.

Death of Francis II., Dec. 5, 1560.

The vows which Francis made "to God and to all the saints of paradise, male and female, and particularly to Notre-Dame-de-Cléry, that, if they should grant him restoration of health, he would never cease until he had wholly purged the kingdom of those wicked heretics,"⁹⁶⁶⁹⁶⁶ Ibid., 413. proved unavailing. On the fifth of December, 1560, he died in the eighteenth year of his age and the seventeenth month of his reign. "God, who pierced the eye of the father, had now stricken the ear of the son."⁹⁶⁷⁹⁶⁷ The words in the text are those of Calvin, in a letter to Sturm, written Dec. 16, 1560, not many days after the receipt of the astonishing intelligence. "Did you ever read or hear," he says, "of anything more opportune than the death of the king? The evils had reached an extremity for which there was no remedy, when suddenly God shows himself from heaven! He who pierced the eye of the father has now stricken the ear of the son." Bonnet, Calvin's Letters, Am. ed., iv. 152.

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