Volume I Part 41 (2/2)
Meanwhile, to De Russanges other informers were added. One was a weak and unstable man whom persecution had once before--in the famous year of the Placards--driven to the basest of offices. Among others two apprentices, brought forward to testify against the Protestant employers who had dismissed them, were pliant instruments in the hands of the heretic-hunters. By a well-concerted movement a simultaneous descent was made, and entire families were put under arrest.[775] In some places, however, an unexpected resistance was encountered. The guests of one Visconte, with whom travellers from Switzerland and Germany frequently lodged, supposed the house to be attacked by robbers, and defended themselves with such bravery against their a.s.sailants, that they effected their retreat in safety. Their host's wife and his aged father alone were taken into custody. A dressed capon and some uncooked meat found in the larder--it was on a Friday that the incursion was made--graced the triumph of the captors. ”Little Geneva,” as that portion of the Faubourg St. Germain-des-Pres most frequented by Protestants was familiarly called, became a scene of indiscriminate pillage. The valuables of those who, through fear, had absented themselves, were greedily appropriated by the officials of the Chatelet and other courts, or fell into the hands of an unorganized force of robbers who gleaned what the others had left behind. In a day the rich became poor and the poor became rich. The depredations extended to other parts of the city where the existence of heresy or wealth was suspected.
Paris, we are told, resembled a city taken by a.s.sault. Everywhere armed men on foot or on horseback were leading to prison men, women, and children of all ranks. The thoroughfares were clogged by wagons laden with furniture and other spoils. The street-corners were filled with plunder offered for sale. Never before, even when the inhabitants had fled panic-stricken from Paris in time of war, had the price of such commodities been so low. Numbers of little children, roaming the streets and ready to die of hunger, formed a pitiful accompaniment to the scene.
But the tender mercies of the populace were cruel, and few dared to give a ”Lutheran” shelter through fear of incurring extreme danger. The most incredible tales of midnight orgies were studiously circulated among the simple-minded people, and served to inflame yet more the l.u.s.t of cruelty and gain.[776]
[Sidenote: The Protestants appeal to the queen mother.]
[Sidenote: She gives them encouragement.]
In this emergency the Protestants had recourse to the queen mother.
Afraid to trust herself entirely to the Guises, the crafty Italian had, from the very commencement of the reign, sought to leave open a retreat in case a change should become necessary. And, in truth, jealousy of the cardinal and his brother, who seemed disposed to keep all the power in their own hands, while giving Catharine only a semblance of authority, was combined in her mind with hatred of Mary of Scots, their niece,[777]
whose influence was as powerful with her son and as adverse to herself as that of Diana of Poitiers had been with her husband. Scarcely had the reformers perceived, by the zeal with which Du Bourg's trial was pressed, that the death of Henry had not bettered their condition, when they implored the Prince of Conde, his mother-in-law, Madame de Roye, and Admiral Coligny, to intercede in their behalf with Catharine. At the suggestion of the latter, they even addressed her a letter, in which they informed her of the great hopes they had in the preceding reign founded upon her kind and gentle disposition, and the prayers they had offered to G.o.d that she might prove a second Esther. They entreated her to prevent the new reign from being defiled with innocent blood, and to avert the anger of Heaven, which could only be appeased by putting an end to persecution. The crafty queen, desirous of retaining an influence that might one day be of great service, and solicitous, at any rate, of obtaining their confidence, at first a.s.sumed an offended tone. ”With what am I menaced?” she said. ”For what greater evil could G.o.d do me than He has done, removing him whom I loved and prized the most?” But presently becoming more gracious, she promised the n.o.ble suppliants to cause the persecution to cease, if the Protestants would intermit their conventicles and live quietly and without scandal.[778] A private letter of remonstrance, written by a gentleman formerly in the service of Queen Margaret of Navarre, is said to have had some weight in extorting this pledge. He reminded her that her present evil advisers were the same persons who had, in the first years of her married life, been advocates of her repudiation; that then in her affliction she had recourse to G.o.d, whose word she had read, choosing as her favorite psalm the 141st, albeit not of Marot's translating.[779] Her prayers had been answered in the birth of her children. But the cardinal had banished the psalm-book from the palace, and introduced the immodest songs of Horace and other lewd poets; and from that time there had come upon her a succession of misfortunes. Finally, he begged her to drive away the usurpers of the place that rightfully belonged to the princes of royal blood, and to bring up her children after the example of good king Josiah.[780]
[Sidenote: A second and more urgent address.]
But the promises of Catharine were given only to be broken. Finding the atrocious persecution still in operation, and seeing themselves hunted in their houses, the Protestants again approached her. They denounced the anger of G.o.d who would not leave Du Bourg unavenged. They warned her of the danger that over-much oppression would breed revolt--not on the part of those who had embraced the reformed doctrines as taught in the Gospel, from whom she might expect all obedience--but from others, a hundred-fold more numerous, whose eyes were open to the abuses of the papacy, but who, not having submitted themselves to the discipline of the church, would not brook persecution. The embankment, it was to be feared, might give way to the violence of the pressure, and the pent-up waters pour themselves abroad, carrying devastation and ruin to all the neighboring lands.[781] The implied menace aroused the affected indignation of Catharine; but, loth to lose her hold upon the Protestants, she again professed her pity for a sect whose adherents went to the most cruel torments as cheerfully as to a wedding feast, and she expressed a desire to have an interview with one of their ministers.
The Protestants did their part, but Catharine failed to keep the appointment; and all that the minister could effect was to convey to her a copy of the yet unpublished Confession of Faith of the French Churches, which, it is more than likely, she never read.[782]
[Sidenote: Pretended orgies in ”la pet.i.te Geneve.”]
The insincerity of the queen mother's professions was by this time sufficiently apparent; yet the Protestants may be excused for applying, in their distress, to any one in power who made even a _show_ of compa.s.sionate feelings. The outrages visited upon the inhabitants of ”la pet.i.te Geneve” were brought to her notice, and she deigned to inquire into their occasion. But Charles of Lorraine had a ready mode of quieting her curiosity. Some verses found among the effects of the Protestants made mention of the death of Henry as an instance of the divine retribution. Other lines condemned Catharine for her excessive complaisance to the cardinal. These were first placed in her hands. Then the two apprentices, after having been well drilled in their lesson, were brought into her presence. It was a fearful tale they told, and much did it shock the ears of the virtuous Catharine. They pretended to describe orgies at which they had been present. In particular they remembered a conventicle of Protestants in the house of one Trouillas,[783] an advocate, held on Thursday of Holy Week. A great number of men and women, married and unmarried, had been present. The hour was about midnight. The sectaries had first listened to their preaching. Then a pig had been eaten in lieu of the paschal lamb.
Finally the lamp had been extinguished, and indiscriminate lewdness followed.
[Sidenote: The device succeeds.]
The testimony of the boys--for such they were in years, if not in proficiency in vice--was enforced and embellished in the queen mother's hearing by the Cardinal of Lorraine. The trick had the desired effect.
Believing, or feigning to believe, the improbable story, Catharine consented that the persecution of the ”Christaudins” should proceed; while to some of her maids of honor, strongly suspected of leaning to the doctrines of the Reformation, she declared that she gave such full credit to this information, that, were she certain that they were Protestants, she would not hesitate, whatever favor or friends.h.i.+p she had hitherto borne them, to have them put to death. Fortunately, however, for the calumniated sect, there were among its adherents those who prized honor above life. Trouillas and his family, although among the number of those who had made good their escape, voluntarily returned and gave themselves into the hands of the civil authorities. When the latter would have put them on trial for their alleged heresy, they declined to answer to the charges on this point until the slanderous accusations affecting their personal morals had been investigated. The examination not only completely vindicated their character and revealed the grossness of the imposture of which they were the innocent victims, but exhibited the unpleasant fact that an attempt had been made to corrupt witnesses by representing to them that, against such execrable wretches as the accursed ”Lutherans,” it was a meritorious act to allege even what was false.[784] It is perhaps superfluous to add that Trouillas, in spite of his manly and successful defence, was unable to secure the punishment of his accusers. In fact, while the latter remained at large, both he and his family were kept in prison, until liberated, without satisfaction for the insult received, upon the publication of the edict of amnesty of March, 1560.[785]
[Sidenote: Cruelty of the populace.]
It would be a task neither easy nor altogether agreeable to chronicle the executions of Protestants in various cities of the realm. ”Never,”
wrote Hubert Languet, ”have the papists raged so; never before was there a more cruel persecution. The prisons are full of wretched men. The woods and solitary places can scarce contain the fugitives.”[786] The Parliaments of Toulouse and Aix, as usual, vied in ferocity with that of Paris, where the Guises had not long since restored the ”chambre ardente.”[787] But the populace of Paris surpa.s.sed the judges in envenomed hatred. Not content with applauding the slow roasting of those whom the courts had condemned to this torture, they sought to aggravate the barbarity of other sentences. In August, 1559, a young carpenter was taken from prison to suffer death for his heretical views. He was to have been strangled and then burned. The mob, however, resented the leniency, or were indignant that a pleasant show should lose one-half of its attraction. They therefore resolved to defraud the hangman of his share in the work, and suspended the youth, yet living, above the roaring flames.[788]
[Sidenote: Traps for heretics.]
An ingenious method was devised for the detection of the reformers. At almost every street-corner a picture or image of the Virgin Mary, or of some one of the saints, was set up, crowned with chaplets of flowers, and with waxen tapers burning in its honor. Around this object of devotion were collected at all hours a crowd of porters, water-carriers, and the very dregs of the populace, boisterously singing the praises of the saint. Woe to the unlucky wight who, purposely or through negligence, failed to doff his hat or drop a coin into the box placed in convenient proximity! He was an impious man, a heretic, and fortunate was it for him if he escaped with his life. To refuse to swell the collection of the monk or nun that came to a man's own door to solicit funds for the trial of the Protestants, was equally perilous. In short, it was no unfrequent device for a debtor to get rid of the importunity of his creditor by raising the cry, ”Au Christaudin, an Lutherien!” It went hard with the former if he did not both free himself from debt and spoil his creditor.[789]
It is time, however, that we should turn to chronicle the fortunes of a more ill.u.s.trious victim--the most ill.u.s.trious victim, in fact, of the first period of French Protestantism.
[Sidenote: Trial of President Anne du Bourg.]
[Sidenote: His successive appeals.]
Among the five counsellors of parliament arrested by Henry's orders at the ”Mercuriale,” as related in a previous chapter, Anne du Bourg had incurred his special displeasure by his fearless harangue, and with Du Bourg the trials began. A special commission was appointed for the purpose, consisting of President St. Andre, a _maitre de requetes_ and two counsellors of parliament, Du Bellay, Bishop of Paris, and Demochares, Inquisitor of the Faith. Brought before it, Du Bourg refused to plead, a.s.serting his prerogative to be judged only by the united chambers of parliament. Letters-patent were therefore obtained from Henry, ordering the prisoner to acknowledge the authority of the commission, under pain of being declared guilty of heresy and of treason. Upon the results of the interrogatories, the Bishop of Paris declared Du Bourg a heretic, ordering him to be degraded from those holy orders which he had a.s.sumed, and then delivered over to the secular arm.
From this sentence Du Bourg appealed to parliament, on the ground that it was an abuse of ecclesiastical power.[790] The judges--among whom his most determined enemies, the Cardinal of Lorraine and Cardinal Bertrand (the latter as Keeper of the Seals) were not ashamed to take their seats--rejected his appeal, and declared that there had been no abuse.
From the sentence given by the Bishop of Paris, Du Bourg next appealed to the Archbishop of Sens, his superior; and when the latter had confirmed his suffragan's decision, Du Bourg again had recourse to parliament. He pleaded that it was a violation of the very spirit of the law that the same person, acting (as did Bertrand) as Archbishop of Sens, should adjudicate upon a case which he had already acted upon in the capacity of Keeper of the Seals and Chief Justice of France.
[Sidenote: His officious advocate.]
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