Volume II Part 1 (2/2)
and ”lansquenets” be kept at home--it would, thought the Guises, be easy, with the help of the German Catholics, perhaps of Spain also, to render complete the papal supremacy in France, and to crush Conde and the Chatillons to the earth. Accordingly, the Guises extended to Duke Christopher of Wurtemberg an invitation to meet them in the little town of Saverne (or Zabern, as it was called by the Germans), in Alsace, not far from Strasbourg.[28] The duke came as he was requested, accompanied by his theologians, Brentius and Andrea; and the interview, beginning on the fifteenth of February,[29] lasted four days. Four of the Guises were present; but the conversations were chiefly with Francis, the Duke of Guise, and Charles, the Cardinal of Lorraine; the Cardinal of Guise and the Grand Prior of the Knights of St. John taking little or no active part. Christopher and Francis had been comrades in arms a score of years back, for the former had served several years, and with no little distinction, in the French wars. This circ.u.mstance afforded an opportunity for the display of extraordinary friends.h.i.+p. And what did the brothers state, in this important consultation, respecting their own sentiments, the opinions of the Huguenots, and the condition of France?
Happily, a minute account, in the form of a ma.n.u.script memorandum taken down at the time by Duke Christopher, is still extant in the archives of Stuttgart.[30] Little known, but authentic beyond the possibility of cavil, this doc.u.ment deserves more attention than it has received from historians; for it places in the clearest light the shameless mendacity of the Guises, and shows that the duke had nearly as good a claim as the cardinal, his brother, to the reputation which the Venetian amba.s.sador tells us that Charles had earned ”_of rarely telling the truth_.”
[Sidenote: Lying a.s.surances.]
Duke Christopher made the acquaintance of Charles of Lorraine as a preacher on the morning after his arrival, when he heard him, in a sermon on the temptation in the wilderness, demonstrate that no other mediators or intercessors must be sought for but Jesus Christ, who is our only Saviour and the only propitiation for our sins. That day Christopher had a long conversation with Guise respecting the unhappy condition of France, which the latter ascribed in great part to the Huguenot ministers, whose unconciliatory conduct, he said, had rendered abortive the Colloquy of Poissy. Wurtemberg corrected him by replying that the very accounts of the colloquy which Guise had sent him showed that the unsuccessful issue was owing to the prelates, who had evidently come determined to prevent any accommodation. He urged that the misfortunes that had befallen France were much rather to be ascribed to the cruel persecutions that had been inflicted on so many guiltless victims. ”I cannot refrain from telling you,” he added, ”that you and your brother are strongly suspected in Germany of having contributed to cause the death, since the decease of Henry the Second--and even before, in his lifetime--of several thousands of persons who have been miserably executed on account of their faith. As a friend, and as a Christian, I must warn you. Beware, beware of innocent blood! Otherwise the punishment of G.o.d will fall upon you in this life and in the next.” ”He answered me,” writes Wurtemberg, ”_with great sighs_: 'I know that my brother and I are accused of that, and of many other things also. But _we are wronged_,[31] as we shall both of us explain to you before we leave.'”
The cardinal entered more fully than his brother into the doctrinal conference, talking now with Wurtemberg, now with his theologian Brentius, and trying to persuade both that he was in perfect accord with them. While pressing his German friends to declare the Zwinglians and the Calvinists heretics--which they carefully avoided doing--and urging them to state the punishment that ought to be inflicted on heretics, there seemed to be no limit to the concessions which Lorraine was willing to make. He _adored_ and _invoked_ only Christ in heaven. He merely _venerated_ the wafer. He acknowledged that his party went too far in calling the ma.s.s a sacrifice, and celebrating it for the living and the dead. The ma.s.s was not a sacrifice, but a commemoration of the sacrifice offered on the altar of the cross (”non sacrificium, sed memoria sacrificii praest.i.ti in ara crucis”). He believed that the council a.s.sembled at Trent would do no good. When the Romish hierarchy, with the Pope at its head, as the pretended vicar of G.o.d on earth, was objected to, he replied that that matter could easily be adjusted. As for himself, ”in the absence of a red gown, he would willingly wear a black one.”
[Sidenote: The Guises deceive no one.]
He was asked whether, if Beza and his colleagues could be brought to consent to sign the Augsburg confession, he also would sign it. ”You have heard it,” he replied, ”I take G.o.d to witness that I believe as I have said, and that by G.o.d's grace I shall live and die in these sentiments. I repeat it: I have read the Confession of Augsburg, I have also read Luther, Melanchthon, Brentius, and others; I entirely approve their doctrines, and I might speedily agree with them in all that concerns the ecclesiastical hierarchy. _But I am compelled still to dissemble for a time_, that I may gain some that are yet weak in the faith.” A little later he adverted to Wurtemberg's remarks to Guise. ”You informed my brother,” he said, ”that in Germany we are both of us suspected of having contributed to the execution of a large number of innocent Christians during the reigns of Henry and of Francis the Second. Well! I swear to you, in the name of G.o.d my Creator, and pledging the salvation of my soul, _that I am guilty of the death of no man condemned for religion's sake_.
Those who were then privy to the deliberations of state can testify in my favor. On the contrary, whenever crimes of a religious character were under discussion, I used to say to King Henry or to King Francis the Second, that they did not belong to my department, that they had to do with the secular power, and I went away.”[32] He even added that, although Du Bourg was in orders, he had begged the king to spare him as a learned man. ”In like manner,” says Wurtemberg, ”the Duke of Guise with great oaths affirmed that he was innocent of the death of those who had been condemned on account of their faith. 'The attempt,' he added, 'has frequently been made to kill us, both the cardinal and myself, with fire-arms, sword, and poison, and, although the culprits have been arrested, I never meddled with their punishment.'” And when the Duke of Wurtemberg again ”conjured them not to persecute the poor Christians of France, for G.o.d would not leave such a sin unpunished,” both the cardinal and the Duke of Guise gave him their right hands, promising on their princely faith, and by the salvation of their souls, that they would neither openly nor secretly persecute the partisans of the ”new doctrines!” Such were the barefaced impostures which this ”par n.o.bile fratrum” desired Christopher of Wurtemberg to publish for their vindication among the Lutherans of Germany. But the liars were not believed. The shrewd Landgrave of Hesse, on receiving Wurtemberg's account, even before the news of the ma.s.sacre of Va.s.sy, came promptly to the conclusion that the whole thing was an attempt at deception.
Christopher himself, in the light of later events, added to his ma.n.u.script these words: ”Alas! It can now be seen how they have kept these promises!
_Deus sit ultor doli et perjurii, cujus namque res agitur._”[33]
[Sidenote: Throkmorton's account of the French court.]
Meanwhile events of the greatest consequence were occurring at the capital. The very day after the Saverne conference began, Sir Nicholas Throkmorton wrote to Queen Elizabeth an account of ”the strange issue” to which affairs had come at the French court since his last despatch, a little over a fortnight before. His letter gives a vivid and accurate view of the important crisis in the first half of February, 1562, which we present very nearly in the words of the amba.s.sador himself. ”The Cardinal of Ferrara,” says Throkmorton, ”has allured to his devotion the King of Navarre, the Constable, Marshal St. Andre, the Cardinal of Tournon, and others inclined to retain the Romish religion. All these are bent to repress the Protestant religion in France, and to find means either to range [bring over to their side] the Queen of Navarre, the Prince of Conde, the Admiral, and all others who favor that religion, or to expel them from the court, with all the ministers and preachers. The queen mother, fearing this conspiracy might be the means of losing her authority (which is as dear to her as one religion or the other), and mistrusting that the Constable was going about to reduce the management of the whole affair into the King of Navarre's hands, and so into his own, has caused the Constable to retire from the court, as it were in disgrace, and intended to do the like with the Cardinal of Tournon and the Marshal St.
Andre. The King of Navarre being offended with these proceedings, and imputing part of her doings to the advice of the Admiral, the Cardinal Chatillon, and Monsieur D'Andelot, intended to compel those personages to retire also from the court. In these garboils [commotions] the Prince of Conde, being sick at Paris, was requested to repair to the court and stand her [Catharine] in stead. In this time there was great working on both sides to win the house of Guise. So the Queen Mother wrote to them--they being in the skirts of Almain--to come to the court with all speed. The like means were made [use of] by the King of Navarre, the Cardinal of Ferrara and the Constable, to ally them on their part. During these solicitations the Duke D'Aumale arrived at the court from them, who was requested to solicit the speedy repair to the court of the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine.
”The Prince of Conde went from hence in a horse litter to the court of St.
Germain, where he found the Protestant preachers prohibited from preaching either in the King's house or in the town, and that the King of Navarre had solemnly vowed to retain and maintain the Romish religion, and had given order that his son should be instructed in the same. The Prince, finding the Queen of Navarre and the house of Chatillon ready to leave the court, fell again dangerously sick. Nevertheless his coming so revived them, as by the covert aid of the Queen Mother, they attempted to make the Protestant preachers preach again at the town's end of St. Germain, and were entreated to abide at the court, where there is an a.s.sembly which is like to last until Easter. The Cardinal of Ferrara a.s.sists daily at these disputes. The King of Navarre persists in the house of Chatillon retiring from the court, and it is believed the Queen of Navarre, and they, will not tarry long there.”[34]
Such was the picture drawn by the skilful pencil of the English envoy. It was certainly dark enough. Catharine and Navarre had sent Lansac to a.s.sure the Pope that they purposed to live in and defend the Roman Catholic religion. Sulpice had gone on a like mission to Spain. It was time, Throkmorton plainly told Queen Elizabeth, that she should show as great readiness in maintaining the Protestant religion as Ferrara and his a.s.sociates showed in striving to overthrow it. And in a private despatch to Cecil, written the same day, he urged the secretary to dissuade her Majesty from longer retaining candles and cross on the altar of the royal chapel, at a time when even doctors of the Sorbonne consented to the removal of images of all sorts from over the altar in places of wors.h.i.+p.[35]
From Saverne the Cardinal of Lorraine returned to his archbishopric of Rheims, while the duke, accompanied by the Cardinal of Guise, proceeded in the direction of the French capital. On his route he stopped at Joinville, one of the estates of the family, recently erected in their favor into a princ.i.p.ality. Here he was joined by his wife, Anne d'Este; here, too, he listened to fresh complaints made by his mother, Antoinette of Bourbon, against the insolence of the neighboring town of Va.s.sy, where a considerable portion of the inhabitants had lately had the audacity to embrace the reformed faith.
[Sidenote: Va.s.sy in Champagne.]
[Sidenote: Origin of the Huguenot Church.]
Va.s.sy, an important town of Champagne--though shorn of much of its influence by the removal of many of its dependencies to increase the dignity of Joinville--and one of the places a.s.signed to Mary of Scots for her maintenance, had apparently for some time contained a few professors of the ”new doctrines.” It was, however, only in October, 1561, after the Colloquy of Poissy, that it was visited by a Protestant minister, who, during a brief sojourn, organized a church with elders and deacons.
Notwithstanding the disadvantage of having no pastor, and of having notoriously incurred the special hatred of the Guises, the reformed community grew with marvellous rapidity. For the Gospel was preached not merely in the printed sermons read from the pulpit, but by the lips of enthusiastic converts. When, after a short absence, the founder of the church of Va.s.sy returned to the scene of his labors, he came into collision with the Bishop of Chalons, whose diocese included this town.
The bishop, unaccustomed to preach, set up a monk in opposition; but no one would come to hear him. The prelate then went himself to the Protestant gathering, and sat through the ”singing of the commandments”
and a prayer. But when he attempted to interrupt the services and a.s.serted his episcopal authority, the minister firmly repelled the usurpation, taking his stand on the king's edict. Then, waxing warm in the discussion, the dauntless Huguenot exposed the hypocrisy of the pretended shepherd, who, not entering the fold by canonical election, but intruding himself into it without consulting his charge, was more anxious to secure his own ease than to lead his sheep into green pastures. The bishop soon retired from a field where he had found more than his match in argument: but the common people, who had come to witness his triumph over the Huguenot preacher, remained after his unexpected discomfiture, and the unequal contest resulted in fresh accessions to the ranks of the Protestants.
Equally unsuccessful was the Bishop of Chalons in the attempt to induce the king to issue a commission to the Duke of Guise against the unoffending inhabitants, and Va.s.sy was spared the fate of Merindol and Cabrieres. At Christmas nine hundred communicants, after profession of their faith, partook of the Lord's Supper according to the reformed rites; and in January, 1562, after repeated solicitations, the church obtained the long-desired boon of a pastor, in the person of the able and pious Leonard Morel. Thus far the history of Va.s.sy differed little from that of hundreds of other towns in that age of wonderful awakening and growth, and would have attracted little attention had not its proximity to the Lorraine princes secured for it a tragic notoriety.[36]
[Sidenote: Approach of the Duke of Guise.]
On the twenty-eighth of February, Guise, with two hundred armed retainers, left Joinville. That night he slept at Dommartin-le-Franc. On Sunday morning, the first of March, he continued his journey. Whether by accident or from design, it is difficult to say, he drew near to Va.s.sy about the time when the Huguenots were a.s.sembling for wors.h.i.+p, and his ears caught the sound of their bell while he was still a quarter of a league distant.
The ardor of Guise's followers was already at fever-heat. They had seen a poor artisan apprehended in a town that lay on their track, and summarily hung by their leader's order, for the simple offence of having had his child baptized after the reformed rites. When Guise heard the bell of the Va.s.sy church, he turned to his suite to inquire what it meant. ”It is the Huguenots' preaching,” some one replied. ”_Par la mort-Dieu_,” broke in a second, ”they will soon be huguenotted after another fas.h.i.+on!” Others began to make eager calculations respecting the extent of the plunder. A few minutes later an unlucky cobbler was espied, who, from his dress or manner, was mistaken for a Huguenot minister. It was well that he could answer the inquiries of the duke, before whom he was hurried, by a.s.suring him that he was no clergyman and had never studied; otherwise, he was told, his case had been an extremely ugly one.[37]
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