Part 15 (1/2)
[1] Remy Belleau: _La Reconnue_, act 4, scene 2.
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Charles, Duke of Bourbon, Constable of France, d. 1527 | | +-------------------------+-----+------------------+ | | | Anthony, Duke of Vendome Charles, Cardinal Louis, Prince ==Joan d'Albret, Queen of of Bourbon of Conde | Navarre, d. 1562 | | _Henry IV_ _1589-1610_ ==(1)Margaret of France ==(2)Mary de' Medici
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Claude, Duke of Guise, d. 1527 | | +------------------------+--+------------+ | | | | | | Francis, Duke of Guise Charles, Cardinal Mary==James V d. 1563 of Lorraine | of Scotland | | | Mary, Queen | of Scots | +-----------------------+--------------------+ | | | Henry, Duke of Guise Charles, Duke of Louis, Cardinal of d. 1588 Mayenne Guise, d. 1588
[Transcriber's note: ”d.” has been used here as a subst.i.tute for the ”dagger” symbol (Unicode U+2020) that signifies the person's year of death.]
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SECTION 3. THE WARS OF RELIGION. 1559-1598
[Sidenote: Francis II, 1559-60]
Henry II was followed by three of his sons in succession, each of them, in different degrees and ways, a weakling. The first of them was Francis II, a delicate lad of fifteen, who suffered from adenoids.
Child as he was he had already been married for more than a year to Mary Stuart, a daughter of James V of Scotland and a niece of Francis of Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine. As she was the one pa.s.sion of the morose and feeble king, who, being legally of age was able to choose his own ministers, the government of the realm fell into the strong hands of ”the false brood of Lorraine.” Fearing and hating these men above all others the Huguenots turned to the Bourbons for protection, but the king of Navarre was too weak a character to afford them much help. Finding in the press their best weapon the Protestants produced a flood of pamphlets attacking the Cardinal of Lorraine as ”the tiger of France.”
A more definite plan to rid the country of the hated tyranny was that known as the Conspiracy of Amboise. G.o.dfrey de Barry, Sieur de la Renaudie, pledged several hundred Protestants to go in a body to present a pet.i.tion to the king at Blois. How much further their intentions went is not known, and perhaps was not definitely formulated by themselves. The Venetian amba.s.sador spoke in a contemporary dispatch of a plot to kill the cardinal and also the king if he would not a.s.sent to their counsels, and said that the conspirators relied, to justify this course, on the {211} declaration of Calvin that it was lawful to slay those who hindered the preaching of the gospel. Hearing of the conspiracy, Guise and his brother were ready. They transferred the court from Blois to Amboise, by which move they upset the plans of the pet.i.tioners and also put the king into a more defensible castle.
Soldiers, a.s.sembled for the occasion, met the Huguenots as they advanced in a body towards Amboise, [Sidenote: The tumult of Amboise, March 1560] shot down La Renaudie and some others on the spot and arrested the remaining twelve hundred, to be kept for subsequent trial and execution. The suspicion that fastened on the prince of Conde, a brother of the king of Navarre, was given some color by his frank avowal of sympathy with the conspirators. Though the Guises pressed their advantage to the utmost in forbidding all future a.s.semblies of heretics, the tumult of Amboise was vaguely felt, in the sultry atmosphere of pent-up pa.s.sions, to be the avant-courier of a terrific storm.
The early death of the sickly king left the throne to his brother Charles IX, a boy of nine. [Sidenote: Charles IX, 1560-74] As he was a minor, the regency fell to his mother, Catharine de' Medici, who for almost thirty years was the real ruler of France. [Sidenote: Policy of Catharine de' Medici] Notwithstanding what Brantome calls ”ung embonpoint tres-riche,” she was active of body and mind. Her large correspondence partly reveals the secrets of her power: much tact and infinite pains to keep in touch with as many people and as many details of business as possible. Her want of beauty was supplied by gracious manners and an elegant taste in art. As a connoisseur and an indefatigable collector she gratified her love of the magnificent not only by beautiful palaces and gorgeous clothes, but in having a store of pictures, statues, tapestries, furniture, porcelain, silver, books, and ma.n.u.scripts.
A ”politique” to her fingertips, Catharine had neither sympathy nor patience with the fanatics who {212} would put their religion above peace and prosperity. Surrounded by men as fierce as lions, she showed no little of the skill and intrepidity of the tamer in keeping them, for a time, from each others' throats. Soon after Charles ascended the throne, she was almost hustled into domestic and foreign war by the offer of Philip II of Spain to help her Catholic subjects against the Huguenots without her leave. She knew if that were done that, as she scrawled in her own peculiar French, ”le Roy mon fils nave jeames lantyere aubeysance,” [1] and she was determined ”que personne ne pent nous brouller en lamitie en la quele je desire que set deus Royaumes demeurent pendant mauye.” [2] Through her goggle eyes she saw clearly where lay the path that she must follow. ”I am resolved,” she wrote, ”to seek by all possible means to preserve the authority of the king my son in all things, and at the same time to keep the people in peace, unity and concord, without giving them occasion to stir or to change anything.” Fundamentally, this was the same policy as that of Henry IV. That she failed where he succeeded is not due entirely to the difference in ability. In 1560 neither party was prepared to yield or to tolerate the other without a trial of strength, whereas a generation later many members of both parties were sick of war.
[Sidenote: December 13, 1560]
Just as Francis was dying, the States General met at Orleans. This body was divided into three houses, or estates, that of the clergy, that of the n.o.bles, and that of the commons. The latter was so democratically chosen that even the peasants voted. Whether they had voted in 1484 is not known, but it is certain that they did so in 1560, and that it was in the interests of the crown to let them vote is shown by the increase in {213} the number of royal officers among the deputies of the third estate. The peasants still regarded the king as their natural protector against the oppression of the n.o.bles.
The Estates were opened by Catharine's minister, Michael de L'Hopital.
Fully sympathizing with her policy of conciliation, he addressed the Estates as follows: [Sidenote: February 24, 1561] ”Let us abandon those diabolic words, names of parties, factions and seditions:--Lutherans, Huguenots, Papists; let us not change the name of Christians.”
Accordingly, an edict was pa.s.sed granting an amnesty to the Huguenots, nominally for the purpose of allowing them to return to the Catholic church, but practically interpreted without reference to this proviso.
But the government found it easier to pa.s.s edicts than to restrain the zealots of both parties. The Protestants continued to smash images; the Catholics to mob the Protestants. Paris became, in the words of Beza, ”the city most b.l.o.o.d.y and murderous among all in the world.”
Under the combined effects of legal toleration and mob persecution the Huguenots grew mightily in numbers and power. Their natural leader, the King of Navarre, indeed failed them, for he changed his faith several times, his real cult, as Calvin remarked, being that of Venus.
His wife, Joan d'Albret, however, became an ardent Calvinist.
At this point the government proposed a means of conciliation that had been tried by Charles V in Germany and had there failed. The leading theologians of both confessions were summoned to a colloquy at Poissy.
[Sidenote: Colloquy of Poissy, August, 1561] Most of the German divines invited were prevented by politics from coming, but the noted Italian Protestant Peter Martyr Vermigli and Theodore Beza of Geneva were present. The debate turned on the usual points at issue, and was of course indecisive, {214} though the Huguenots did not hesitate to proclaim their own victory.
[Sidenote: January, 1562]
A fresh edict of toleration had hardly been issued when civil war was precipitated by a horrible crime. Some armed retainers of the Duke of Guise, coming upon a Huguenot congregation at Va.s.sy in Champagne, [Sidenote: Ma.s.sacre of Va.s.sy, March 1, 1562] attacked them and murdered three hundred. A wild cry of fury rose from all the Calvinists; throughout the whole land there were riots. At Toulouse, for example, fighting in the streets lasted four days and four hundred persons perished. It was one of the worst years in the history of France. A veritable reign of terror prevailed everywhere, and while the crops were destroyed famine stalked throughout the land. Bands of robbers and ravishers, under the names of Christian parties but savages at heart, put the whole people to ransom and to sack. Indeed, the Wars of Religion were like h.e.l.l; the tongue can describe them better than the imagination can conceive them. The whole sweet and pleasant land of France, from the Burgundian to the Spanish frontier, was widowed and desolated, her pride humbled by her own sons and her Golden Lilies trampled in the b.l.o.o.d.y mire. Foreign levy was called in to supply strength to fratricidal arms. The Protestants, headed by Conde and Coligny, raised an army and started negotiations with England. The Catholics, however, had the best of the fighting. They captured Rouen, defended by English troops, and, under Guise, defeated the Huguenots under Coligny at Dreux. [Sidenote: December 19, 1562]
[Sidenote: February 18, 1563]
Two months later, Francis of Guise was a.s.sa.s.sinated by a Protestant near Orleans. Coligny was accused of inciting the crime, which he denied, though he confessed that he was glad of it. [Sidenote: Edict of Amboise March 19, 1563] The immediate beneficiary of the death of the duke was not the Huguenot, {215} however, so much as Catharine de'
Medici. Continuing to put into practise her policy of tolerance she issued an edict granting liberty of conscience to all and liberty of wors.h.i.+p under certain restrictions. Great n.o.bles were allowed to hold meetings for divine service according to the reformed manner in their own houses, and one village in each bailiwick was allowed to have a Protestant chapel.