Volume I Part 47 (2/2)
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 pa.s.sed 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.[863]
[Sidenote: Mouvans in arms in Provence.]
[Sidenote: His message to Guise.]
In Provence the commotion a.s.sumed 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 and liberty of wors.h.i.+p. 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 n.o.ble 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 a.s.sured 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.”[864]
[Sidenote: 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 ma.s.ses. It was impossible to repress the impulse to confess with the mouth[865] 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 wors.h.i.+p, upon promise of connivance on the part of the Parliament of Normandy. But Caen, St. Lo, and Dieppe witnessed great public a.s.semblies,[866] and Central and Southern France copied the example of Normandy. The time for secret gatherings and a timid wors.h.i.+p 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,[867] ”secret a.s.semblies became an impossibility. A whole people cannot shut themselves up in forests and in caverns to invoke their G.o.d. From whom would they hide? From themselves? The very idea is absurd.”
[Sidenote: Pamphlets against the usurpers.]
[Sidenote: 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.[868] The politic Catharine de' Medici, fearing a new and more dreadful outburst of the popular discontent, renewed her hollow advances to the Protestant churches,[869] held a long consultation with Louis Regnier 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,[870] and despatched Coligny to Normandy for the purpose of finding a cure for the evil.
[Sidenote: Edict of Romorantin, May, 1560.]
[Sidenote: 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.[871] It restored exclusive jurisdiction in matters of simple heresy to the clergy, excluding the civil courts from all partic.i.p.ation, 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 ”a.s.semblies”
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.[872]
[Sidenote: 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 d.a.m.ned.”[873] He died not long afterward, and was buried 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.
[Sidenote: Chancellor Michel de l'Hospital.]
Of L'Hospital, because raised to the vacant charge by the Lorraine influence, little good was originally expected.[874] But the lapse of a few years revealed the incorruptible integrity of his character and the sagacity of his plans.[875] 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 s.h.i.+p 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,[876] he made no opposition to the article that p.r.o.nounced the penalties of treason upon those who a.s.sembled in arms to celebrate the rites of religious wors.h.i.+p. 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.[877]
[Sidenote: Perplexity of the ruling family.]
As the summer advanced the perplexities of the Guises increased. Every day there were new alarms. The English amba.s.sador, 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 advertis.e.m.e.nts 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' insolence, contemning the reverent usage to the holy procession!”[878]
[Sidenote: Montbrun in the Comtat Venaissin.]
[Sidenote: 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 Comtat Venaissin, as a Huguenot leader.[879] Conde had dexterously escaped the snares laid for him, and had taken refuge with his brother, Navarre.[880] Their spies reported to the Guises a state of universal commotion; and deputies from all parts of France rehea.r.s.ed 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.[881] 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.[882] In view of the great apathy displayed both by Philip and by Pius--perhaps, also, with the secret hope of enticing Navarre and Conde to come within their reach[883]--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.[884]
[Sidenote: a.s.sembly of notables at Fontainebleau, August 21, 1560.]
On the twenty-first of August this celebrated a.s.sembly was convened by royal letters in the stately palace at Fontainebleau.[885] Antoine of Navarre and the Prince of Conde 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 Chatillons, followed his example, and shared his protection. At the appointed hour a brilliant company was gathered in the s.p.a.cious 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.[886] Four cardinals, in their purple--Bourbon, Lorraine, Guise, and Chatillon--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. Andre 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.[887]
[Sidenote: Chancellor L'Hospital's speech.]
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