Volume IV Part 15 (2/2)

pp. 164-177.]

And what was Henry III., King of France, doing whilst two great parties and two great men were thus carrying on, around his throne and in his name, so pa.s.sionate a war, on the one side to maintain the despotic unity of Catholic Christianism, and on the other to win religious liberty for Christian Protestantism? We will borrow here the words of the most enlightened and most impartial historian of the sixteenth century, M. de Thou; if we acted upon our own personal impressions alone, there would be danger of appearing too severe towards a king whom we profoundly despise.

”After having staid some time in Bourbonness, Henry III. went to Lyons in order to be within hail of his two favorites, Joyeuse and Epernon, who were each on the march with an army. Whilst he was at Lyons as unconcerned as if all the realm were enjoying perfect peace, he took to collecting those little dogs which are thought so much of in that town.

Everybody was greatly surprised to see a King of France, in the midst of so terrible a war and in extreme want of money, expending upon such pleasures all the time he had at disposal and all the sums he could sc.r.a.pe together. How lavish soever this prince may have been, yet, if comparison be made between the expenditure upon the royal household and that incurred at Lyons for dogs, the latter will be found infinitely higher than the former; without counting expenses for hunting-dogs and birds, which always come to a considerable sum in the households of kings, it cost him, every year, more than a hundred thousand gold crowns for little Lyonnese dogs; and he maintained at his court, with large salaries, a mult.i.tude of men and women who had nothing to do but to feed them. He also spent large sums in monkeys, parrots, and other creatures from foreign countries, of which he always kept a great number.

Sometimes he got tired of them, and gave them all away then his pa.s.sion for such creatures returned, and they had to be found for him at no matter what cost. Since I am upon the subject of this prince's attachment to matters anything but worthy of the kingly majesty, I will say a word about his pa.s.sion for those miniatures which were to be found in ma.n.u.script prayer-books, and which, before the practice of printing, were done by the most skilful painters. Henry III. seemed to buy such works, intended for princes and laid by in cabinets of curiosities, only to spoil them; as soon as he had them, he cut them out, and then pasted them upon the walls of his chapels, as children do. An incomprehensible character of mind: in certain things, capable of upholding his rank; in some, rising above his position; in others, sinking below childishness.”

[_Histoire universelle de F. A. de Thou,_ t. ix. p. 599.]

A mind and character incomprehensible indeed, if corruption, la.s.situde, listlessness, and fear would not explain the existence of everything that is abnormal and pitiable about human nature in a feeble, cold, and selfish creature, excited, and at the same time worn out, by the business and the pleasures of kings.h.i.+p, which Henry III. could neither do without nor bear the burden of. His perplexity was extreme in his relations with the other two Henries, who gave, like himself, their name to this war, which was called by contemporaries the war of the three Henries. The successes of Henry de Guise and of Henry de Bourbon were almost equally disagreeable to Henry de Valois. It is probable that, if he could have chosen, he would have preferred those of Henry de Bourbon; if they caused him like jealousy, they did not raise in him the same distrust; he knew the King of Navarre's loyalty, and did not suspect him of aiming to become, whilst he himself was living, King of France. Besides, he considered the Protestants less powerful and less formidable than the Leaguers. Henry de Guise, on the contrary, was evidently, in his eyes, an ambitious conspirator, determined to push his own fortunes on to the very crown of France if the chances were favorable to him, and not only armed with all the power of Catholicism, but urged forward by the pa.s.sions of the League, perhaps further and certainly more quickly than his own intentions travelled. Since 1584, the Leaguers had, at Paris, acquired strong organization amongst the populace; the city had been part.i.tioned out into five districts under five heads, who, shortly afterwards, added to themselves eleven others, in order that, in the secret council of the a.s.sociation, each amongst the sixteen quarters of Paris might have its representative and director.Thence the famous Committee of Sixteen, which played so great and so formidable a part in the history of that period. It was religious fanaticism and democratic fanaticism closely united, and in a position to impose their wills upon their most eminent leaders, upon the Duke of Guise himself.

In vain did Henry III. attempt to resume some sort of authority in Paris; his government, his public and private life, and his person were daily attacked, insulted, and menaced from the elevation of the pulpit and in the public thoroughfares by qualified preachers or mob-orators. On the 16th of December, 1587, the Sorbonne voted, after a deliberation which, it was said, was to be kept secret, ”that the government might be taken away from princes who were found not what they ought to be, just as the administration of a property from a guardian open to suspicion.” On the 30th of December, the king summoned to the Louvre his court of Parliament and the faculty of theology. ”I know of your precious resolution of the 16th of this month,” said he to the Sorbonne; ”I have been requested to take no notice of it, seeing that it was pa.s.sed after dinner. I have no mind to avenge myself for these outrages, as I might, and as Pope Sixtus V. did when he sent to the galleys certain Cordeliers for having dared to slander him in their sermons. There is not one of you who has not deserved as much, and more; but it is my good pleasure to forget all, and to pardon you, on condition of its not occurring again. If it should, I beg my court of Parliament, here present, to exact exemplary justice, and such as the seditious, like you, may take warning by, so as to mind their own business.” At their exit after this address, the Parliament and the Sorbonne, being quite sure that the king would not carry the matter further, withdrew smiling, and saying, ”He certainly has spirit, but not enough of it” (_habet quidem animum, sed non satis animi_). The Duke of Guise's sister, the d.u.c.h.ess of Montpensier, took to getting up and spreading about all sorts of pamphlets against the king and his government. ”The king commanded her to quit his city of Paris; she did nothing of the kind; and three days after she was even brazen enough to say that she carried at her waist the scissors which would give a third crown to brother Henry de Valois.” At the close of 1587, the Duke of Guise made a trip to Rome, ”with a suite of five; and he only remained three days, so disguised that he was not recognized there, and discovered himself to n.o.body but Cardinal Pelleve, with whom he was in communication day and night.” [_Journal de L'Estoile,_ t. i. p. 345.] Eighteen months previously, the cardinal had given a very favorable reception to a case drawn up by an advocate in the Parliament of Paris, named David, who maintained that, ”although the line of the Capets had succeeded to the temporal administration of the kingdom of Charlemagne, it had not succeeded to the apostolic benediction, which appertained to none but the posterity of the said Charlemagne, and that, the line of Capet being some of them possessed by a spirit of giddiness and stupidity, and others heretic and excommunicated, the time had come for restoring the crown to the true heirs,” that is to say, to the house of Lorraine, which claimed to be issue of Charlemagne. This case was pa.s.sed on, it is said, from Rome to Philip II., King of Spain, and M. de Saint-Goard, amba.s.sador of France at Madrid, sent Henry III. a copy of it. [_Memoires de la Ligue,_ t. i. pp. 1-7.]

Whatever may have been the truth about this trip to Rome on the part of the Duke of Guise, and its influence upon what followed, the chiefs of the Leaguers resolved to deal a great blow. The Lorraine princes and their intimate a.s.sociates met at Nancy in January, 1588, and decided that a pet.i.tion should be presented to the king; that he should be called upon to join himself more openly and in good earnest to the League, and to remove from offices of consequence all the persons that should be pointed out to him; that the Holy Inquisition should be established, at any rate in the good towns; that important places should be put into the hands of specified chiefs, who should have the power of constructing fortifications there; that heretics should be taxed a third, or at the least, a fourth of their property as long as the war lasted; and, lastly, that the life should be spared of no enemy taken prisoner, unless upon his swearing and finding good surety to live as a Catholic, and upon paying in ready money the worth of his property if it had not already been sold. These monstrous proposals, drawn up in eleven articles, were immediately carried to the king. He did not reject them, but he demanded and took time to discuss them with the authors. The negotiation was prolonged; the ferment in Paris was redoubled; the king, it was said, meant to withdraw; his person must be secured; the Committee of Sixteen took measures to that end; one of its members got into his hands the keys of the gate of St. Denis. From Soissons, where he was staying, the Duke of Guise sent to Paris the Count of Brissac, with four other captains of the League, to hold themselves in readiness for any event, and he ordered his brother the Duke of Aumale to stoutly maintain his garrisons in the places of Picardy, which the king, it was said, meant to take from him.

”If the king leaves Paris,” the duke wrote to Bernard de Mendoza, Philip II.'s amba.s.sador in France, ”I will make him think about returning thither before he has gone a day's march towards the Picards.” Philip II. made Guise an offer of three hundred thousand crowns, six thousand lanzknechts, and twelve hundred lances, as soon as he should have broken with Henry III. ”The abscess will soon burst,” wrote the amba.s.sador to the king his master.

On the 8th of May, 1588, at eleven P. M., the Duke of Guise set out from Soissons, after having commended himself to the prayers of the convents in the town. He arrived the next morning before Paris, which he entered about midday by the gate of St. Martin. The Leaguers had been expecting him for several days. Though he had covered his head with his cloak, he was readily recognized and eagerly cheered; the burgesses left their houses and the tradesmen their shops to see him and follow him, shouting, ”Hurrah! for Guise; hurrah! for the pillar of the church!” The crowd increased at every step. He arrived in front of the palace of Catherine de' Medici, who had not expected him, and grew pale at sight of him.

”My dear cousin,” said she to him, ”I am very glad to see you, but I should have been better pleased at another time.” ”Madame, I am come to clear myself from all the calumnies of my enemies; do me the honor to conduct me to the king yourself.” Catherine lost no time in giving the king warning by one of her secretaries. On receipt of this notice, Henry III., who had at first been stolid--and silent, rose abruptly from his chair. ”Tell my lady mother that, as she wishes to present the Duke of Guise to me, I will receive him in the chamber of the queen my wife.”

The envoy departed. The king, turning to one of his officers, Colonel Alphonso Corso, said to him, ”M. de Guise has just arrived at Paris, contrary to my orders. What would you do in my place?” ”Sir, do you hold the Duke of Guise for friend or enemy?” The king, without speaking, replied by a significant gesture. ”If it please your, Majesty to give me the order, I will this very day lay the duke's head at your feet.” The three councillors who happened to be there cried out. The king held his peace. During this conversation at the Louvre, the Duke of Guise was advancing along the streets, dressed in a doublet of white damask, a cloak of black cloth, and boots of buffalo-hide; he walked on foot, bareheaded, at the side of the queen-mother in a sedan-chair. He was tall, with fair cl.u.s.tering hair and piercing eyes; and his scar added to his martial air. The mob pressed upon his steps; flowers were thrown to him from the windows; some, adoring him as a saint, touched him with chaplets which they afterwards kissed; a young girl darted towards him, and, removing her mask, kissed him, saying, ”Brave prince, since you are here, we are all saved.” Guise, with a dignified air, ”saluted and delighted everybody,” says a witness, ”with eye, and gesture, and speech.” ”By his side,” said Madame de Retz, ”the other princes are commoners.” ”The Huguenots,” said another, ”become Leaguers at the very sight of him.” On arriving at the Louvre, he traversed the court between two rows of soldiers, the archers on duty in the hall, and the forty-five gentlemen of the king's chamber at the top of the staircase. ”What brings you hither?” said the king, with difficulty restraining his anger.

”I entreat your Majesty to believe in my fidelity, and not allow yourself to go by the reports of my enemies.” ”Did I not command you not to come at this season so full of suspicions, but to wait yet a while?”

”Sir, I was not given to understand that my coming would be disagreeable to you.” Catherine drew near, and, in a low tone, told her son of the demonstrations of which the duke had been the object on his way. Guise was received in the chamber of the queen, Louise de Vaudemont, who was confined to her bed by indisposition; he chatted with her a moment, and, saluting the king, retired without being attended by any one of the officers of the court. Henry III. confined himself to telling him that results should speak for the sincerity of his words.

Guise returned to his house in the Faubourg St. Antoine, still accompanied by an eager and noisy crowd, but somewhat disquieted at heart both by the king's angry reception and the people's enthusiastic welcome.

Brave as he was, he was more ambitious in conception than bold in execution, and he had not made up his mind to do all that was necessary to attain the end he was pursuing. The committee of Sixteen, his confidants, and all the staff of the League, met at his house during the evening and night between the 9th and 10th of May, preparing for the morrow's action without well knowing what it was to be, proposing various plans, collecting arms, and giving instructions to their agents amongst the populace. An agitation of the same sort prevailed at the Louvre; the king, too, was deliberating with his advisers as to what he should do on the morrow: Guise would undoubtedly present himself at his morning levee; should he at once rid himself of him by the poniards of the five and forty bravoes which the Duke of Epernon had enrolled in Gascony for his service? Or would it be best to summon to Paris some troops, French and Swiss, to crush the Parisian rebels and the adventurers that had hurried up from all parts to their aid? But on the 10th of May, Guise went to the Louvre with four hundred gentlemen well armed with breastplates and weapons under their cloaks. The king did nothing; no more did Guise.

The two had a long conversation in the queen-mother's garden; but it led to no result. On the 11th of May, in the evening, the provost of tradesmen, Hector de Perreuse, a.s.sembled the town-council and those of the district-colonels on whom he had reliance to receive the king's orders. Orders came to muster the burgher companies of certain districts, and send them to occupy certain positions that had been determined upon. They mustered slowly and incompletely, and some not at all; and scarcely had they arrived when several left the posts which had been a.s.signed to them. The king, being informed of this sluggishness, sent for the regiment of the French Guards, and for four thousand Swiss cantoned in the outskirts of Paris; and he himself mounted his horse, on the 12th of May, in the morning, to go and receive them at the gate of St. Honord. These troops ”filed along, without fife or drum, towards the cemetery of the Innocents.” The populace regarded them as they pa.s.sed with a feeling of angry curiosity and uneasy amazement. When all the corps had arrived at the appointed spot, ”they put themselves in motion towards different points, now making a great noise with their drums and fifes, which marvellously astonished the inhabitants of the quarter.”

Noise provokes noise. ”In continently,” says L'Estoile, ”everybody seizes his arms, goes out on guard in the streets and cantons; in less than no time chains are stretched across and barricades made at the corners of the streets; the mechanic leaves his tools, the tradesman his business, the University their books, the attorneys their bags, the advocates their bands; the presidents and councillors themselves take halberds in hand; nothing is heard but shouts, murmurs, and the seditious speeches that heat and alarm a people.” The tocsin sounded everywhere; barricades sprang up in the twinkling of an eye; they were made within thirty paces of the Louvre. The royal troops were hemmed in where they stood, and deprived of the possibility of moving; the Swiss, being attacked, lost fifty men, and surrendered, holding up their chaplets and exclaiming that they were good Catholics. It was thought sufficient to disarm the French Guards. The king, remaining stationary at the Louvre, sent his marshals to parley with the people ma.s.sed in the thoroughfares; the queen-mother had herself carried over the barricades in order to go to Guise's house and attempt some negotiation with him. He received her coldly, demanding that the king should appoint him lieutenant-general of the kingdom, declare the Huguenot princes incapacitated from succeeding to the throne, and a.s.semble the states-general. At the approach of evening, Guise determined to go himself and a.s.sume the conqueror's air by putting a stop to the insurrection. He issued from his house on horseback, unarmed, with a white wand in his hand; he rode through the different districts, exhorting the inhabitants to keep up their barricades, whilst remaining on the defensive and leaving him to complete their work. He was greeted on all sides with shouts of ”Hurrah! for Guise!” ”You wrong me, my friends,” said he; ”you should shout, 'Hurrah!

for the king!'” He had the French Guards and the Swiss set at liberty; and they defiled before him, arms lowered and bareheaded, as before their preserver. Next morning, May 13, he wrote to D'Entragues, governor of Orleans, ”Notify our friends to come to us in the greatest haste possible, with horses and arms, but without baggage, which they will easily be able to do, for I believe that the roads are open hence to you.

I have defeated the Swiss, and cut in pieces a part of the king's guards, and I hold the Louvre invested so closely that I will render good account of whatsoever there is in it. This is so great a victory that it will be remembered forever.” That same day, the provost of tradesmen and the royalist sheriffs repaired to the Louvre, and told the king that, without great and immediate concessions, they could not answer for anything; the Louvre was not in a condition of defence; there were no troops to be depended upon for resistance, no provisions, no munitions; the investment was growing closer and closer every hour, and the a.s.sault might commence at any instant. Henry III. sent his mother once more to the Duke of Guise, and himself went out about four o'clock, dressed in a country suit and scantily attended, as if for a walk in the Tuileries. Catherine found the duke as inflexible as he had been the day before. He peremptorily insisted upon all the conditions he had laid down already, the lieutenant-generals.h.i.+p of the kingdom for himself, the unity of the Catholic faith, forfeiture on the part of the King of Navarre and every other Huguenot prince as heir to the throne, perpetual banishment of the king's favorites, and convocation of the states-general. ”The king,” he said, ”purposes to destroy all the grandees of the kingdom and to harry all those who oppose his wishes and the elevation of his minions; it is my duty and my interest to take all the measures necessary for my own preservation and that of the people.” Catherine yielded on nearly every point, at the same time, however, continually resuming and prolonging the discussion. One of the duke's most trusty confidants, Francis de Mainville, entered and whispered in his ear. ”Madame,” cried the duke, ”whilst your Majesty has been amusing me here, the king is off from Paris to harry me and destroy me!” Henry III., indeed, had taken horse at the Tuileries, and, attended by his princ.i.p.al councillors, unbooted and cloakless, had issued from the New gate, and set out on the road to St.

Cloud. Equipping him in haste, his squire, Du Halde, had put his spur on wrong, and would have set it right, but, ”That will do,” said the king; ”I am not going to see my mistress; I have a longer journey to make.” It is said that the corps on guard at the Nesle gate fired from a distance a salute of arquebuses after the fugitive king, and that a crowd a.s.sembled on the other bank of the river shouted insults after him. At the height of Chaillot Henry pulled up, and turning round towards Paris, ”Ungrateful city,” he cried, ”I have loved thee more than my own wife; I will not enter thy walls again but by the breach.”

It is said that on hearing of the Duke of Guise's sudden arrival at Paris, Pope Sixtus V. exclaimed, ”Ah! what rashness! To thus go and put himself in the hands of a prince he has so outraged!” And some days afterwards, on the news that the king had received the Duke of Guise and nothing had come of it, ”Ah, dastard prince! poor creature of a prince, to have let such a chance escape him of getting rid of a man who seems born to be his destruction!” [_De Thou,_ t. x. p. 266.]

When the king was gone, Guise acted the master in Paris. He ordered the immediate delivery into his hands of the Bastille, the a.r.s.enal, and the castle of Vincennes. Ornano, governor of the Bastille, sent an offer to the king, who had arrived at Chartres, to defend it to the last extremity. ”I will not expose to so certain a peril a brave man who may be necessary to me elsewhere,” replied the king. Guise caused to be elected at Paris a new town-council and a new provost of tradesmen, all taken from amongst the most ardent Leaguers. He at the same time exerted himself to restore order; he allowed all royalists who wished to depart to withdraw to Chartres; he went in person and pressed the premier president of Parliament, Achille de Harlay, to resume the course of justice. ”It is great pity, sir,” said Harlay, ”when the servant drives out the master; this a.s.sembly is founded (seated) on the fleur-de-lis; being established by the king, it can act only for his service. We will all lose our lives to a man rather than give way a whit to the contrary.”

”I have been in many battles,” said Guise, as he went out, ”in a.s.saults and encounters the most dangerous in the world; and I have never been so overcome as at my reception by this personage.” At the same time that he was trying to exercise authority and restore order, unbridled violence and anarchy were making head around him; the Sixteen and their friends discharged from the smallest offices, civil or religious, whoever was not devoted to them; they changed all the captains and district-officers of the city militia; they deposed all the inc.u.mbents, all the ecclesiastics whom they termed Huguenots and policists; the pulpits of Christians became the platforms of demagogues; the preachers Guiticestre, Boucher, Rose, John Prevost, Aubry, Pigenat, Cueilly, Pelletier, and a host of others whose names have fallen into complete obscurity, were the popular apostles, the real firebrands of the troubles of the League, says Pasquier; there was scarcely a chapel where there were not several sermons a day. ”You know not your strength,” they kept repeating to their auditors: ”Paris knows not what she is worth; she has wealth enough to make war upon four kings. France is sick, and she will never recover from that sickness till she has a draught of French blood given her.

. . . If you receive Henry de Valois into your towns, make up your minds to see your preachers ma.s.sacred, your sheriffs hanged, your women violated, and the gibbets garnished with your members.” One of these raving orators, Claude Trahy, provincial of the Cordeliers, devoted himself to hounding on the populace of Auxerre against their bishop, James Amyot, the translator of Plutarch, whom he reproached with ”having communicated with Henry III. and administered to him the eucharist;”

brother John Moresin, one of Trahy's subalterns, went about brandis.h.i.+ng a halberd in the public place at Auxerre, and shouting, ”Courage, lads!

messire Amyot is a wicked man, worse than Henry de Valois; he has threatened to have our master Trahy hanged, but he will repent it;” and, ”at the voice of this madman, there hurried up vine-dressers, boatmen, and marchandeaux (costermongers), a whole angry mob, who were for having Amyot's throat cut, and Trahy made bishop in his stead.”

Whilst the blind pa.s.sions of fanatics and demagogues were thus let loose, the sensible and clear-sighted spirits, the earnest and moderate royalists, did not all of them remain silent and motionless. After the appearance of the letters written in 1588 by the Duke of Guise to explain and justify his conduct in this crisis, a grandson of Chancellor de l'Hospital, Michael Hurault, Sieur du Fay, published a doc.u.ment, ent.i.tled Frank and Free Discourse upon the Condition of France, one of the most judicious and most eloquent pamphlets of the sixteenth century, a profound criticism upon the acts of the Duke of Guise, their causes and consequences, and a true picture of the falsehoods and servitude into which an eminent man may fall when he makes himself the tool of a popular faction in the hope of making that faction the tool of his personal ambition. But even the men who were sufficiently enlightened and sufficiently courageous to tell the League and its leader plain truths spoke only rather late in the day, and at first without giving their names; the doc.u.ment written by L'Hospital's grandson did not appear until 1591, after the death of Henry III. and Henry de Guise, and it remained anonymous for some time. One cannot be astonished at such timidity; Guise himself was timid before the Leaguers, and he always ended by yielding to them in essentials, after having attempted to resist them upon such and such an incidental point. His own people accused him of lacking boldness; and his sister, the d.u.c.h.ess of Montpensier, openly patronized the most violent preachers, whilst boasting that she wielded more influence through them than her brother by his armies. Henry III., under stress of his enemies' zeal and his own servants' weakness, Catherine de' Medici included, after having fled from Paris and taken refuge at Chartres to escape the triumph of the Barricades, once more began to negotiate, that is, to capitulate with the League; he issued at Rouen, on the 19th of July, 1588, an edict in eleven articles, whereby he granted more than had been demanded, and more than he had promised in 1585 by the treaty of Nemours; over and above the meas

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