Volume I Part 49 (2/2)

Comprehending the motive of his visit, Conde begged him to inform those who had sent him, ”that he had received so many outrages at their hands that there remained no path of reconciliation, save at the point of the sword; and that, although he seemed to be at their mercy, he still had confidence that G.o.d would avenge the injury done by them to a prince who had come at the command and relying on the word of his king, but had been shamefully imprisoned at their suggestion, in order to make in him a beginning of the destruction of the royal blood.”[948]

[Sidenote: Conde tried by a commission.]

[Sidenote: He is found guilty and sentenced to be beheaded.]

A commission, consisting of Chancellor L'Hospital, President De Thou, Counsellors Faye and Viole, and a few others, was appointed, on the thirteenth of November, to conduct the trial. Conde refused to plead before them, taking refuge in his privilege, as a prince, to be tried only before the king and by his peers.[949] His appeals, however, were rejected by the privy council, and he was commanded, in the king's name, to answer, under pain of being held a traitor. In view of the known desire and intention of the king and his chief advisers, the trial was likely to be expeditious and not over-scrupulous.[950] The most innocent expressions of disapproval of the violent executions at Amboise were perverted into open approval of a plot against the king. The prosecution sought to establish the heresy of the prince, in order to furnish some ground for finding him guilty of treason against Divine as well as royal authority. Nor was this difficult. A priest, in full officiating vestments, was introduced, as by royal command, to say ma.s.s in Conde's presence. But the young Bourbon drove him out with rough words, declaring ”that he had come to his Majesty with no intention of holding any communion with the impieties and defilements of the Roman Antichrist, but solely to relieve himself of the false accusations that had been made against him.”[951] Before so partial a court the trial could have but one issue. Conde was found guilty, and condemned to be beheaded on a scaffold erected before the king's temporary residence, at the opening of the States General.[952] The sentence was signed not only by the judges to whom the investigation had been entrusted, but by members of the privy council, by the members of the Order of St.

Michael, and by a large number of less important dignitaries, without even a formal examination into the merits of the case--so anxious were the Guises to involve as many influential persons as possible in the same responsibility with themselves. Of the privy councillors, Du Mortier and Chancellor de l'Hospital alone refused to append their signatures without a longer term for reflection, and endeavored to ward off the blow by procrastination.[953]

[Sidenote: Danger of the King of Navarre.]

Navarre was himself in almost equal danger. An attempt to poison him was frustrated by its timely revelation; a plot to a.s.sa.s.sinate him on leaving the king's residence, by the strength of his body-guard. A still more atrocious scheme was concocted. Francis was to stab his cousin of Navarre with his dagger, leaving his attendants to despatch him with their swords. Such murderous projects can rarely be kept secret. Even Catharine de' Medici is said to have attempted to dissuade Antoine from going to the palace by warning him of the danger he would incur. At the door of the king's chamber a friendly hand interposed, and a friendly voice asked: ”Sire, whither are you going to your ruin?” But the prince, with a resolution which it had been well had he manifested at an earlier period, paused only a moment to say to his faithful Renty: ”I am going to the spot where a conspiracy has been entered into to take my life....

If it please G.o.d, He will save me; but, if I die, I entreat you, by the fidelity I have ever known in you, ... to carry the s.h.i.+rt I wear, all covered with blood, to my wife and son, and to conjure my wife, by the great love she has always borne me, and by her duty (since my son is not yet old enough to avenge my death), to send it, torn by the dagger, and b.l.o.o.d.y, to the foreign princes of Christendom, that they may avenge my death, so cruel and treacherous.”[954] These gloomy forebodings were not destined to be realized. Francis's anger evaporated in words, or was restrained by his mother's secret injunctions,[955] and Antoine of Navarre was suffered to go away unharmed. The duke and cardinal, who witnessed the scene from the recess of a window, are said to have muttered half audibly as they left the room, ”That is the most cowardly heart that ever was!”[956]

[Sidenote: A plot for the utter destruction of the Huguenots.]

The a.s.sa.s.sination of the King of Navarre was, however, but a part of a larger plot for the utter destruction of the Huguenots and of Protestantism in France, the details of which are but imperfectly known.[957] It is alleged that preliminary lists of those infected by heresy had been obtained from all parts of France, and that a more exact knowledge was to be obtained by compelling all cla.s.ses--from the n.o.bility and members of the Order of St. Michael down to the simple citizen--to subscribe to the articles of faith drawn up eighteen years before by the Sorbonne.[958] At the close of the sessions of the States General, the full forces at the command of the court were to be set on foot, and four armies, under the Duke of Aumale and Marshals St. Andre, Brissac, and Termes, were to serve as the instruments of destruction.

Termes was to effect a junction with a Spanish force entering France through Bearn; and the Governor of Bayonne was instructed to surrender that important city into the hands of Philip. The expenses of the crusade were to be defrayed by the clergy, who, from cardinal down to chaplain, were to retain of their income only the amount necessary for their bare subsistence.[959] The recent publication of the Pope's bull, renewing the Council of Trent, meanwhile served as a good excuse for forbidding the discussion of religious questions by the States General, then about to meet, by the king's direction, at Orleans instead of Meaux.[960]

[Sidenote: Illness of the king.]

The moment for the execution of this widespread plan of destruction was approaching, when its devisers were startled by the sudden discovery that the health of their nephew, the king, was fast failing. Francis's const.i.tution, always frail, and now still further undermined, was giving way in connection with a gathering in the ear, which resisted the efforts of the most skilful physicians.[961] ”This King,” wrote the English amba.s.sador, on the twenty-first of November, giving to his fellow-envoy at Madrid the first intimation of Francis's illness, ”thought to have removed hence for a fortnight, but the day before his intended journey he felt himself somewhat evil disposed of his body, with a pain in his head and one of his ears, which hath stayed his removing from hence.”[962] But the rapid progress of the disease soon made it clear that the trip to Chenonceau, ”the queen's house,” whence the king ”was not to return hither until the Estates are a.s.sembled,”

would never be taken by Francis. The sceptre must pa.s.s into other hands even more feeble than his.

[Sidenote: The queen mother rejects the advances of the Guises,]

[Sidenote: and makes terms with Navarre.]

The Guises in consternation proposed to Catharine to hasten the death of Navarre and Conde,[963] and perhaps to put into immediate execution their ulterior projects. But Catharine de' Medici little relished an increased dependence[964] upon a family she had good reason to distrust.

Instead of accepting the advances of the Guises, she hastened to make terms with the King of Navarre. In an interview with that weak prince, a compact was made which proved the source of untold evils. He had been forewarned by ladies in Catharine's interest, as he valued his life, to oppose none of her demands; but the wily Florentine scarcely expected so easy a triumph as she obtained. To the amazement of friend and foe, Antoine de Bourbon ceded his right to the regency, without a struggle, to the queen mother, a foreigner and not of royal blood. For himself he merely retained the first place under her, as lieutenant-general of the kingdom. He even consented to be reconciled to his cousins of Guise, and, after publicly embracing them, promised to forget all past grounds of quarrel.[965]

[Sidenote: Death of Francis II., Dec. 5, 1560.]

The vows which Francis made ”to G.o.d and to all the saints of paradise, male and female, and particularly to Notre-Dame-de-Clery, that, if they should grant him restoration of health, he would never cease until he had wholly purged the kingdom of those wicked heretics,”[966] proved unavailing. On the fifth of December, 1560, he died in the eighteenth year of his age and the seventeenth month of his reign. ”G.o.d, who pierced the eye of the father, had now stricken the ear of the son.”[967]

[Sidenote: ”Epitre au Tigre de la Prance.”]

The most annoying of the anonymous pamphlets against the Guises was a letter bearing the significant direction: _Au Tigre de la France_. Under this bloodthirsty designation every one knew that the Cardinal of Lorraine alone could be meant, and the style of the production showed that a master-hand in literature had been concerned in the composition. The Guises were furious, but it was impossible to discover the author or publisher of the libel. Both succeeded admirably in preserving their incognito. Yet, as victims were wanted to appease the anger of the ruling family, two unhappy men expiated by their death a crime of which they were confessedly innocent. The incident, which comes down to us attested not only by the best of contemporary historians, but by the records of the courts, recently brought to light, may serve to ill.u.s.trate the prevalent corruption of the judges and the occasional whimsical application of the so-called justice wherein they were given to indulging. Diligent search on the part of the friends of the Guises led to the detection of only a single copy of the ”Tigre,” and this was found in the house of one Martin Lhomme, or Lhommet, a printer by trade, and miserably poor. There was no evidence at all that he had had any part in printing or publis.h.i.+ng it. None the less did the judges of parliament, and particularly M. Du Lyon, to whom the case was specially confided, prosecute the trial with relentless ardor. On the 15th of July, the unfortunate Lhomme, after having been subjected to torture to extract information respecting his supposed accomplices, was publicly hung on a gibbet on the Place Maubert, in Paris. The well-informed Regnier de La Planche (p. 313) is our authority for the statement that Du Lyon having, at a supper, a few days later, been called to account for the iniquity of his decision, made no attempt to defend it, but exclaimed: ”Que voulez-vous? We had to satisfy Monsieur le Cardinal with something, since we had failed to catch the author; for otherwise he would never have given us any peace (il ne nous eust jamais donne relasche).” Still more unreasonable was the infliction of the death-penalty upon Robert Dehors, a merchant of Rouen, who had chanced to ride into Paris just as Lhomme was being led to execution. Booted as he still was, he became a witness of the brutality with which the crowd followed the poor printer, and seemed disposed to s.n.a.t.c.h him from the executioner's hands in order to tear him in pieces. Indignant at this violation of decency, Dehors had the imprudence to remonstrate with those about him, dissuading them from imbruing their hands in the blood of a wretched man, when their desire was so soon to be accomplished by the minister of the law. The Rouen merchant little understood the ferocity of the Parisian populace. The mob instantly turned their fury upon him, and but for the intervention of the royal archers he would have met on the spot the fate from which he had sought to rescue another to whose person and offence he was an utter stranger. As it was, he escaped instant death only to become a victim to the perverse ingenuity of the same judges, and be hung on the same Place Maubert, ”for the sedition and popular commotion caused by him, at the time of the execution of Martin Lhomme, by means of scandalous expressions and blasphemies uttered and p.r.o.nounced by the said Dehors against the honor of G.o.d and of the glorious Virgin Mary, wherewith the said prisoner induced the people to sedition and public scandals.” (See Registres du parlement, July 13, 15, and 19, 1560, reprinted by Read in ”Le Tigre.”)

It is not, perhaps, very much to be wondered at that a pamphlet so dangerous to have in one's possession should have so thoroughly disappeared that a few years since not a copy was known to be in existence. It doubtless fared with the ”Tigre” much as it did with another outspoken libel--”Taxe des parties casuelles de la boutique du Pape”--published a few years later, of which Lestoile (Read, p.

21) tells us that he was for a long time unsuccessful in the search for a copy, to replace that which, to use his own words, ”I burned at the St. Bartholomew, _fearing that it might burn me_!”

By a happy accident, M. Louis Paris, in 1834, discovered a solitary copy that had apparently been saved from destruction by being buried in some provincial library. The discovery, however, was of little avail to the literary world, as the pamphlet was eagerly bought by the famous collector Brunet, only to find a place in his jealously guarded cases, where, after a fas.h.i.+on only too common in these days, a few privileged persons were permitted to inspect it under gla.s.s, but not a soul was allowed to copy it. Fortunately, after M. Brunet's death, the city of Paris succeeded in purchasing the _seven printed leaves_, of which the precious book was composed, for 1,400 francs! Even then the singular fortunes of the book did not end. Placed in the Hotel-de-Ville, this insignificant pamphlet, almost alone of all the untold wealth of antiquarian lore in the library, escaped the flames kindled by the insane Commune.

M. Charles Read, the librarian, had taken it to his own house for the purpose of copying it and giving it to the world. This design has now been happily executed, in an exquisite edition (Paris, 1875), containing not only the text, ill.u.s.trated by copious notes, but a photographic fac-simile. M. Read has also appended a poem ent.i.tled ”Le Tigre, Satire sur les Gestes Memorables des Guisards (1561), ”for the recovery of which we are indebted to M. Charles Nodier. Although some have imagined this to be the original ”Tigre”

which cost the lives of Lhomme and Dehors, it needs only a very superficial comparison of the two to convince us that the poem is only an elaboration, not indeed without merit, of the more nervous prose epistle. The author of the latter was without doubt the distinguished _Francois Hotman_. This point has now been established beyond controversy. As early as in 1562 the Guises had discovered this; for a treatise published that year in Paris (Religionis et Regis adversus exitiosas Calvini, Bezae, et Ottomani conjuratorum factiones defensio) uses the expressions: ”Hic te, Ottomane, excutere incipio. Scis enim ex cujus officina _Tigris_ prodiit, liber certe tigride parente, id est homine barbaro, impuro, impio, ingrato, malevolo, maledico dignissimus. Tu te istius libelli auctorem ... audes venditare?” While an expression in a letter written by John Sturm, Rector of the University of Strasbourg, July, 1562, to Hotman himself (Tygris, immanis illa bellua quam tu _hic_ contra Cardinalis existimationem divulgari curasti), not only confirms the statement of the hostile Parisian pamphleteer, but indicates Strasbourg as the place of publication (Read, pp. 132-139).

The ”Epistre envoyee au Tigre de la France” betrays a writer well versed in cla.s.sical oratory. Some of the best of modern French critics accord to it the first rank among works of the kind belonging to the sixteenth century. They contrast its sprightliness, its terse, telling phrases with the heavy, dragging constructions that disfigure the prose of contemporary works.

Without copying in a servile fas.h.i.+on the Catilinarian speeches of Cicero, the ”Tigre” breathes their spirit and lacks none of their force. Take, for example, the introductory sentences: ”Tigre enrage! Vipere venimeuse! Sepulcre d'abomination! Spectacle de malheur! Jusques a quand sera-ce que tu abuseras de la jeunesse de nostre Roy? Ne mettras-tu jamais fin a ton ambition demesuree, a tes impostures, a tes larcins? Ne vois-tu pas que tout le monde les scait, les entend, les cognoist? Qui penses-tu qui ignore ton detestable desseing et qui ne lise en ton visage le malheur de tous tes [nos] jours, la ruine de ce Royaume, et la mort de nostre Roy?”

<script>