Volume I Part 39 (1/2)
[Footnote 670: Cf. Calvin's letter to the Marq. of Vico, July 19, 1558.
Bonnet, Lettres franc., ii. 213, 214: ”Sa femme luy monstrant son ventre pour l'esmouvoir a compa.s.sion du fruict qu'elle portoit.”]
[Footnote 671: Among the many important services which the French Protestant Historical Society has rendered, the rescue from oblivion of the interesting correspondence relating to D'Andelot's imprisonment merits to be reckoned by no means the least (Bulletin, iii. 238-255).
Even the graphic narrative of the Histoire ecclesiastique fails to give the vivid impression conveyed by a perusal of these eight doc.u.ments emanating from the pens of D'Andelot, Macar (one of the pastors at Paris), and Calvin. The dates of these letters, in connection with a statement in the Hist. eccles., fix the imprisonment of D'Andelot as lasting from May to July, 1558. A month later Calvin wrote to Garnier: ”D'Andelot, the nephew of the constable, has basely deceived our expectations. After having given proofs of invincible constancy, in a moment of weakness he consented to go to ma.s.s, if the king absolutely insisted on his doing so. He declared publicly, indeed, that he thus acted against his inclinations; he has nevertheless exposed the gospel to great disgrace. He now implores our forgiveness for this offence....
This, at least, is praiseworthy in him, that he avoids the court, and openly declares that he had never abandoned his principles.” Letter of Aug. 29th, Bonnet, Eng. tr., iii. 460; see also Ath. Coquerel, Precis de l'histoire de l'egl. ref. de Paris, Pieces historiques, pp.
xxii.-lxxvi.; twenty-one letters of Macar belonging to 1558. If the reformers condemned D'Andelot's concession, Paul the Fourth, on the other hand, regarded his escape from the _estrapade_ as proof positive that not only Henry, but even the Cardinal of Lorraine, was lukewarm in the defence of the faith! Read the following misspelt sentences from a letter of Card. La Bourdaisiere, the French envoy to Rome, to the constable (Feb. 25, 1559), now among the MSS. of the National Library of Paris. The Pope had sent expressly for the amba.s.sador: ”Il me declara que cestoit pour me dire quil sebayssoit grandement comme _sa mageste ne faysoit autre compte de punyr les hereticques de son Royaume et que limpunite de monsieur dandelot donnoit une tres mauvayse reputation a sadicte mageste_ devant laquelle ledict Sr. dandelot avoit confesse destre sacramentayre et _qui leust_ (qu 'il l'eut) _mene tout droit au feu comme il meritoit_ ... que _monsieur le cardinal de Lorrayne_, lequel sa Sainctete a fait son Inquisiteur, ne se sauroit excuser quil nayt _grandement failly_ ayant laysse perdre une si belle occasion dun _exemple si salutayre_ et qui luy pouvoit porter tant dhonneur et de reputation, mais _quil monstre bien que luy mesme favorise les hereticques_, dautant que lors que ce scandale advynt, il estoit seul pres du roy, sans que personne luy peust resister ne l'empescher duser de la puyssance que sadicte Sainctete luy a donnee.” Of course, Paul could not let pa.s.s unimproved so fair an opportunity for repeating the trite warning that subversion of kingdoms and other dire calamities follow in the train of ”mutation of religion.” The punishment of D'Andelot, however, to which he often returned in his conversation, the Pontiff evidently regarded as a thing to be _executed_ rather than _spoken about_, and he therefore begged the French amba.s.sador to write the letter to the king in his own cipher, and advise him ”to let no one in the world see his letter.” Whereupon Card. La Bourdaisiere rather irreverently observes: ”Je croy que le bonhomme pense que le roy dechiffre luy mesme ses lettres!” a supposition singularly absurd in the case of Henry, who hated _business_ of every kind. La Bourdaisiere conceived it, on the other hand, to be for his own interest to take the first opportunity to give private information of the entire conversation to the constable, D'Andelot's uncle, and to advise him that it would go hard with his nephew, should he fall into Paul's hands (”quil feroit un mauvais parti sil le tenoit”). Soldan, Gesch. des Prot. in Frank., i.
(appendix), 607, 608; Bulletin de l'histoire du prot. francais, xxvii.
(1878), 103, 104.]
[Footnote 672: Letter of Calvin, Aug. 29, 1558, Bonnet, Eng. tr., iii.
460.]
[Footnote 673: De Thou (liv. 20), ii. 568, etc., 576, etc.]
[Footnote 674: Prescott, Philip II., i. 268-270, has described the straits in which Philip found himself in consequence of the deplorable state of his finances. Henry was compelled to resort to desperate schemes to procure the necessary funds. As early as February, 1554--a year before the truce of Vaucelles--he published an edict commanding all the inhabitants of Paris to send in an account of the silver plate they possessed. Finding that it amounted to 350,000 livres, he ordered his officers to take and convert it into money, which he retained, giving the owners twelve per cent. as interest on the compulsory loan. They were informed, and were doubtless gratified to learn, that the measure was not only one of urgency, but also precautionary--lest the necessity should arise for the _seizure_ of the plate, without compensation, it may be presumed. Reg. des ordon., _apud_ Felibien, H. de Paris, preuves, v. 287-290.]
[Footnote 675: Prescott, Philip the Second, i. 270.]
[Footnote 676: De Thou, ii. 584, 585, 660, etc.]
[Footnote 677: More than one hundred thousand lives and forty millions crowns of gold, if we may believe the Memoires de Vieilleville, ii. 408, 409. ”Quod multo sanguine, pecunia incredibili, spatio multorum annorum Galli acquisierant, uno die _magna c.u.m ignominia_ tradiderunt,” says the papal nuncio, Santa Croce, De civil. Gall. diss. com., 1437. See, however, Ranke, Civil Wars and Monarchy in France, Am. tr., p. 127.]
[Footnote 678: Mem. de Vieilleville, _ubi supra_. The text of the treaty is given in Recueil gen. des anc. lois francaises, xiii. 515, etc., and in Du Mont, Corps diplomatique, v. pt. 1, pp. 34, etc.; the treaty between France and England, with scrupulous exactness, as usual, in Dr.
P. Forbes, State Papers, i. 68, etc.]
[Footnote 679: The prevalent sentiment in France is strongly expressed by Brantome, by the memoirs of Vieilleville, of Du Villars, of Tavannes, etc. ”La paix honteuse fut dommageable,” says Tavannes; ”les a.s.sociez y furent trahis, les capitaines abandonnez a leurs ennemis, le sang, la vie de tant de Francais negligee, cent cinquante forteresses rendues, pour tirer de prison un vieillard connestable, et se descharger de deux filles de France.” Mem. de Gaspard de Saulx, seign. de Tavannes, ii.
242. Du Villars represents the Duke of Guise as remonstrating with Henry for giving up in a moment more than he could have lost in thirty years, and as offering to guard the least considerable city among the many he surrendered against all the Spanish troops: ”Mettez-moy dedans la pire ville de celles que vous voulez rendre, je la conserveray plus glorieus.e.m.e.nt sur la bresche, etc.” (Ed. Pet.i.tot, ii. 267, liv. 10). But the duke's own brother was one of the commissioners; and Soldan affirms the existence of a letter from Guise to Nevers (of March 27, 1559) in the National Library, fully establis.h.i.+ng that the duke and the cardinal understood and were pleased with the substance of the treaty (Soldan, Gesch. des Prot. in Frankreich, i. 266, note).]
[Footnote 680: ”Henricus rex se propterea quac.u.mque ratione pacem inire voluisse dicebat, 'quod intelligeret, regnum Franciae ad heresim declinare, magnumque in numerum venisse, ita ut, si diutius diferret, neque ipsius conscientiae, neque regni tranquillitati prospiceret: ... se propterea ad quasvis pacis conditiones descendisse, ut regnum haereticis ac malis hominibus purgaret.' Haec ab eo satis frigide et c.u.m pudore dicebantur.” Santa Croce, De civil. Gall. diss. comment., 1437.]
[Footnote 681: Ibid., _ubi supra_.]
[Footnote 682: ”Selon l'article secret de la paix,” says Tavannes (Mem., ii. 247, Ed. Pet.i.tot), ”les heretiques furent bruslez en France, plus par crainte qu'ils ne suivissent l'exemple des revoltez d'Allemagne, que pour la religion.” But, it may be asked, was there anything novel in this? It had needed no _secret article_, for a generation back, to conduct a ”Christaudin” to the flames.]
[Footnote 683: The English commissioners, Killigrew and Jones, in a despatch written eight or nine months later, express the current belief respecting the wide scope of the persecution: ”Wheras, upon the making of the late peace, _there was an appoinctement made betwene the late Pope, the French King, and the King of Spaine, for the joigning of their forces together for the suppression of religion_; it is said, that this King mindethe shortly to send to this new Pope [Pius IV.], for the renewing of the same league; _th' end wherof was to constraine the rest of christiendome, being protestants, to receive the Pope's authorite and his religion_; and therupon to call a generall counsaill.” Letter from Blois, January 6, 1559/60, Forbes, State Papers, i. 296.]
[Footnote 684: ”Voila,” says Agrippa d'Aubigne, ”les conventions d'une paix en effect pour les royaumes de France et d'Espagne, en apparence de toute la Chrestiente, glorieuse aux Espagnols, desaventageuse aux Francois, _redoutable aux Reformez: car comme toutes les difficultez qui se presenterent au traicte estoient estouffees par le desir de repurger l'eglise_, ainsi, apres la paix establie, les Princes qui par elle avoient repos du dehors, _travaillerent par emulation a qui traitteroit plus rudement ceux qu'on appeloit Heretiques_: et de la nasquit l'ample subject de 40 ans de guerre monstrueuse.” Histoire universelle, liv. i., c. xviii. p. 46.]
[Footnote 685: ”Mais quand estant en France j'eus entendu de la propre bouche du Roy Henry, que le Duc d'Alve traictoit des moyens pour exterminer tous les suspects de la Religion en France, en ce Pays et par toute la Chrestiente, et que ledit Sieur Roy (qui pensoit, que comme j'avois este l'un des commis pour le Traicte de la Paix, avois eu communication en si grandes affaires, que je fusse aussi de cette partie) m'eust declare le fond du Conseil du Roy d'Espaigne et du Duc d'Alve: pour n'estre envers Sa Majeste en desestime, comme si on m'eust voulu cacher quelque chose, je respondis en sorte que ledit Sieur Roy ne perdit point cette opinion, ce qui luy donna occasion de m'en discourir a.s.ses suffisament pour entendre le fonds du project des Inquisiteurs.”
Apologie de Guillaume IX., Prince d'Orange, etc., Dec. 13, 1580; _apud_ Du Mont, Corps diplomatique, v., pt. 1, p. 392.]
[Footnote 686: De Thou, ii. (liv. xxii.), 653.]
[Footnote 687: ”De nostre coste nous ne scavons pas si nous sommes loing des coups; tant y a _que nous sommes mena.s.sez par-dessus tout le reste_.” Calvin to the Church of Paris, June 29, 1559. Lettres franc., ii. 282, 283. On the next day the author of the threats was mortally wounded in the tournament.]
[Footnote 688: The Duke of Alva gives all the details of this remarkable negotiation in a letter to Philip, June 26, 1559, now among the Papiers de Simancas, ser. B., Leg. no. 62-140, which M. Mignet has printed in his valuable series of articles reviewing the Collection of Calvin's French Letters by M. Bonnet, published in the Journal des Savants, 1857, pp. 171, 172. An extract, without date, from a MS. in the Library at Turin, seems to refer to this time: ”Le roi (Henri II.) declare criminels de lese-majeste tous ceux qui auront quelque commerce avec Geneve, ou en recevront lettres. Cette ville est cause de tous les malheurs de la France, et il la poursuivra a outrance pour la reduire.
Il promet secours de gens de pied et de cheval au duc de Savoie, et vient d'obtenir du pape un bref pour decider le roi d'Espagne. Ils vont unir leurs forces pour une si sainte enterprise.” Gaberel, Hist. de l'egl. de Geneve, i. 442.]
[Footnote 689: And he did not exaggerate the importance of the crisis.