Volume I Part 49 (1/2)
Of course, the aid of the secular arm was invoked, in view of ”the great number and power of the said heretics.”[923]
[Sidenote: Theodore Beza invited to Nerac.]
[Sidenote: Jeanne d'Albret.]
On the twentieth of July, at the urgent request of the King and Queen of Navarre, the ”Venerable Company of the Pastors of Geneva” had sent the eloquent Theodore Beza to Gascony ”to instruct” the royal family in the word of G.o.d.[924] In the dress of a n.o.bleman he had traversed France and reached Nerac in safety. Here he at once exercised a powerful influence upon the king. The fickle mind of Antoine was susceptible of no deep impressions; but it was very easily affected for the time. His queen, Jeanne d'Albret, was his very opposite in mental and moral const.i.tution.
Whereas the very first blast threw him into a fervor of enthusiastic devotion to the purer faith, the heart of the queen--a woman not made to be led, but to lead--yielded slowly to the melting influences of the Gospel. But it never lost its glow. Jeanne came very reluctantly to the determination to cast in her lot with the Reformation. She hesitated to risk the loss of her possessions, and regretted to abandon the attractions of the world. When, however, the decision was once made, the question was never reopened for fresh deliberation.[925]
[Sidenote: Antoine's short-lived zeal.]
[Sidenote: New pressure upon Navarre and Conde.]
[Sidenote: Navarre's concessions.]
At this time, Antoine, we are told, renounced the ma.s.s, and was supposed to think, as he certainly spoke, of nothing but the means of advancing the cause in which he had embarked. Beza preached before him in one of the churches, and all signs pointed to the rapid establishment of the Reformation on a firm basis. The eloquent orator added his persuasion to the entreaties of the representatives of the Protestant churches of France and the exhortations of Constable Montmorency. All had urged Antoine to make his appearance at Fontainebleau with a powerful escort.
We have seen the ill-success with which the joint effort was attended.
The spies whom the Guises kept in pay around the King of Navarre, in the persons of his most intimate advisers, deterred him from a movement which they portrayed as fraught with peril. A few days after the conclusion of the a.s.sembly came the king's summons. To this Antoine at first replied that, if the accusers of his brother, of whose innocence he was fully persuaded, would declare themselves, and if he were a.s.sured that impartial justice would be shown, he would come to the court in company with few attendants. Conde wrote, at the same time, and expressed perfect confidence in his ability to disprove all the allegations against him, provided a safe access to the court was afforded him. On this point the suspicions of the Bourbon princes were soon set at rest by new letters from the king and his mother, a.s.suring them that they would find not only security, but an opportunity to refute charges which Francis and Catharine professed themselves unwilling to credit.[926] To these rea.s.suring words were joined the solicitations of their own brother, the shallow Cardinal of Bourbon,[927] and of the Cardinal of Armagnac. The princes, already discouraged by tidings of the failure of the projects of Montbrun, Mouvans and Maligny in the east, lent too ready an ear to these suggestions. The first open manifestation of weakness was when the King and Queen of Navarre, with their son, young Prince Henry of Bearn, consented to hear ma.s.s in the presence of many of their courtiers. But the extent of Antoine's concessions was, for a time, kept concealed from his followers. At the very moment when Beza was diligently visiting the well affected n.o.bles, and urging them to lend prompt a.s.sistance, the Guises were exulting, with joy mingled with fear, over the promise given by Antoine to the Count of Crussol, that he would come, with an insignificant escort to Orleans, whither Francis had advanced. The tidings appeared too good to be true.[928] For, although the French king had received a.s.surances of a.s.sistance from Philip--who was reported by the French envoy at Toledo to be favorable to the exercise of any severity against the Bourbon princes,[929] so great was his personal enmity toward them--yet the same amba.s.sador had not failed to inform Charles that the troops ostensibly prepared for a French campaign were really intended for Italy and to make good the Spanish monarch's losses in Africa. On the other hand, unless Philip could send six hundred thousand or seven hundred thousand crowns to Flanders to pay arrearages and debts, he could not move a soldier across the lines from that quarter.[930]
[Sidenote: The Huguenot gentry offer him aid.]
[Sidenote: He dismisses his escort.]
The strictest orders had been given to the commandants of important points, such as Bordeaux and Poitiers, through which Antoine might intend pa.s.sing, to guard them against him, in case of his showing any inclination to come otherwise than peaceably.[931] These precautions, however, proved unnecessary. Antoine intended to abide by his engagement. When by slow stages he had at length reached Limoges, he found a number of friendly n.o.blemen awaiting him. In a few days more seven or eight hundred gentlemen had come in, well equipped and armed.
They begged him at once to declare for the liberation of France, according to his previous promises. The n.o.bility, they said, were only waiting for the word of command. Meanwhile Gascony, Poitou, and the coasts offered six or seven thousand foot soldiers, already enrolled under captains, and prepared to defend him against present attack.
Provence and Languedoc would march to his a.s.sistance with three or four thousand horse and foot. Normandy would raise as many more. He would at once become so formidable that, without a blow, he could a.s.sume the guardians.h.i.+p of the king. Bourges and Orleans would fall into his hands, and the States General be held free of constraint. The very forces of the enemy would desert the sinking cause of the hated Guises. As for the necessary funds, with the best filled purses in France at his command, he could scarcely feel any lack. The suggestions of the Huguenot lords, backed by the entreaties of Beza, were, however, overborne by the secret insinuations of his treacherous counsellors. At Verteuil--a few leagues beyond--Navarre clearly announced his intentions, and dismissed his numerous friends with hearty thanks for their kind attentions. He would ask the king's pardon for those who had accompanied him thus far in arms. ”Pardon!” replied one of the gentlemen, ”think only of very humbly asking it for yourself, who are going to give yourself up as a prisoner with the halter around your neck. So far as I can see, you have more need of it than we have, who have determined not to sell our lives at so cheap a rate, but to die fighting rather than submit to the mercy of those detested enemies of the king. And since we are miserably forsaken by our leaders, we hope that G.o.d will raise up others to free us from the oppression of these tyrants.”[932] This retort proving futile, as did also the warning of the Princess of Conde, who wrote and sent a messenger to her husband to escape from the toils of his enemies while it was still possible, the Huguenot gentry retired in disgust; and Beza seized the first opportunity (on the seventeenth of October) to steal away from the King of Navarre, and undertake his perilous return to Geneva, which he succeeded in reaching after a series of hair-breadth escapes.[933]
[Sidenote: Infatuation of the Bourbons.]
The King of Navarre had disregarded the counsels of Calvin and other prudent advisers, who believed that, if he presented himself with a powerful escort at the gates of Orleans, the Guises would yield without a blow.[934] Antoine felt confident that his enemies would never venture to lay hands on a prince of the royal blood. His blind infatuation seemed to infect Conde also. Their presumption was somewhat shaken when the royal governor of Poitiers forbade their entrance into that city.
But the depth of the ruin into which they had plunged was more clearly revealed to their eyes as they began to approach Orleans. Friendly voices whispered the existence of a plan for their destruction; friendly hands offered to effect their escape to Angers, and thence into Normandy.[935] But the die was cast. Hostile troops enveloped them, and they resolved to continue their journey.
[Sidenote: They reach Orleans.]
[Sidenote: Conde arrested.]
Navarre had figured upon the journey much as a provost-marshal leading his brother to prison.[936] Now the imaginary resemblance was turned into a sad reality. On Thursday, the thirty-first of October, the Bourbons reached Orleans.[937] Their reception soon convinced them that they had placed their heads in the jaws of the lion. None of the courtiers save the cardinal, their brother, and La Roche-sur-Yon, their cousin, deigned to do them honor. That very day, after a few angry accusations from Francis, and a courageous vindication of his conduct by the chivalrous prince, Conde was arrested in the king's presence and by his order.[938] The King of Navarre also was, indeed, little better than a prisoner, so closely did he find himself watched.[939] In vain did Navarre remonstrate and plead the royal promise of security, offering himself to become a surety for his brother; the king denied redress.
Then it was that Conde turned to the Cardinal of Bourbon, one of the few that had come to do him honor and said: ”Sir, by your a.s.surances you have delivered up your own brother to death.”[940] Others shared in Conde's misfortune. Madame de Roye, his mother-in-law and a sister of Admiral Coligny, was brought a prisoner to St. Germain, and a careful search was made among her papers and elsewhere for the purpose of obtaining proofs of Conde's guilt.[941]
[Sidenote: Return of Renee of Ferrara.]
It was at this inauspicious moment that a distinguished princess reached Orleans, after an absence of thirty-two years from her native land, and was received with marked honors by the king and all the court, who went out to meet her and escort her to the city.[942] This was the celebrated Renee, younger daughter of Louis the Twelfth, and widow of Ercole, Duke of Ferrara, now returning, after the death of her husband, to spend her declining years at her retreat of Montargis on the Loing. The scene which she beheld awakened in her breast regret and indignation which she was not slow in expressing. To the Duke of Guise, who had married her daughter, Anne d'Este, she administered a severe rebuke. ”Had I been present,” she said, ”I would have prevented this ill-advised step. It is no trifling matter to treat a prince of the blood in such a manner. The wound is one that will long bleed; for no man has ever yet attacked the blood of France but he has had reason to regret it.”[943]
[Sidenote: Conde's courage.]
[Sidenote: His wife repulsed.]
The courage of the imprisoned prince rose with his misfortunes. The house in which he was incarcerated was flanked by a tower whose embrasures commanded the approach, the windows were newly barred, and the door was half-walled up to preclude the possibility of escape.[944]
But Prince Louis stoutly maintained that it was not _he_ that was a captive, since, though his body was confined, his spirit was free and his conscience clean and guiltless; but rather _they_ were prisoners, who, with the freedom of their body, felt their conscience to be enslaved and hara.s.sed by a ceaseless recollection of their crimes.[945]
His wife, the virtuous eleonore de Roye, fruitlessly applied for admission in order to minister to his wants. She was rudely repulsed by the king, at whose feet she had thrown herself in a flood of tears, with the bitter remark that her husband was his mortal enemy, who had conspired not only to obtain his crown, but his life also, and that he could do no less than avenge himself upon him.[946] It was only by special effort that the few who dared avow themselves friends of the disgraced Bourbons, succeeded in obtaining for Conde legal counsel, and that these were allowed to hold brief interviews with the prince in the presence of two officers of the crown.[947] No others were admitted, save a pretended friend, to sound his disposition toward the Guises.