Volume II Part 12 (1/2)

[242] Poltrot's pretended confession of Feb. 26th, at Camp Saint Hilaire, near Saint Mesmin, with the replies signed by Coligny, la Rochefoucauld, and Beza to each separate article, is inserted in full in Mem. de Conde, iv. 285-303, and the Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 176-186. Coligny's letter to Catharine, ibid., ii. 186, 187, Mem. de Conde, iv. 303.

[243] That Catharine de' Medici was no very sincere mourner for Guise is sufficiently certain; and it is well known that there were those who believed her to have instigated his murder (See Mem. de Tavannes, Pet.

ed., ii. 394). This is not surprising when we recall the fact that almost every great crime or casualty that occurred in France, for the s.p.a.ce of a generation, was ascribed to her evil influence. Still the Viscount de Tavannes makes too great a draft upon our credulity, when he pretends that she made a frank admission of guilt to his father. ”Depuis, au voyage de Bayonne, pa.s.sant par Dijon, elle dit au sieur de Tavannes: 'Ceux de Guise se vouloient faire roys, je les en ay bien garde devant Orleans.'” The expression ”devant Orleans” can hardly be tortured into a reference to anything else than Guise's a.s.sa.s.sination.

[244] I entirely agree with Prof. Baum (Theodor Beza, ii. 719) in regarding ”this single circ.u.mstance as more than sufficient to demonstrate both the innocence of Coligny and his a.s.sociates, and the consciously guilty fabrication of the accusations.”

[245] Besides the authorities already referred to, the Journal of Bruslart, Mem. de Conde, i. 123, 124; Davila, bk. iii. 86, 87; Claude Haton, i. 322, etc.; J. de Serres, ii. 343-345; and Pasquier, Lettres (OEuvres choisies), ii. 258, may be consulted with advantage. Prof. Baum's account is, as usual, vivid, accurate, and instructive (Theodor Beza, ii.

706, etc.). Varillas, Anquetil, etc., are scarcely worth examining. There is the ordinary amount of blundering about the simplest matters of chronology. Davila places the wounding of Guise on the 24th of February, his death three days later, etc.

[246] Mem. de Conde, i. 124; Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 164.

[247] Claude Haton, i. 325, 326.

[248] See Riez's letter to the king, reprinted in Mem. de Conde, iv.

243-265, and in Cimber and Danjou's invaluable collection of contemporary pamphlets and doc.u.ments, v. 171-204; Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 164.

[249] Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., _ubi supra_. There is extant an affecting letter from the aged Renee of Ferrara to Calvin, in which she complains with deep feeling of the reformed, and especially their preachers, for the severity with which even after his death they attacked the memory of her son-in-law, and even spoke of his eternal condemnation as an ascertained fact. ”I know,” she said, ”that he was a persecutor; but I do not know, nor, to speak freely, do I believe that he was reprobated of G.o.d; for he gave signs to the contrary before his death. But they want this not to be mentioned, and they desire to shut the mouths of those who know it.” Cimber et Danjou, v. 399, etc. Calvin's reply of the 24th of January, 1564, is admirable for its kind, yet firm tone (Bonnet, Lettres franc. de Calvin, ii. 550, etc., Calvin's Letters, Am. edit., iv. 352, etc.). He freely condemned the beatification of the King of Navarre, while the Duke of Guise was consigned to perdition. The former was an apostate; the latter an open enemy of the truth of the Gospel from the very beginning. Indeed, to p.r.o.nounce upon the doom of a fellow-sinner was both rash and presumptuous, for there is but one Judge before whose seat we all must give account. Yet, in condemning the authors of the horrible troubles that had befallen France, and which all G.o.d's children had felt scarcely less poignantly than Renee herself, sprung though she was from the royal stock, it was impossible not to condemn the duke ”who had kindled the fire.” Yea, for himself, although he had always prayed G.o.d to show Guise mercy, the reformer avowed, in almost the very words of Beza, that he had often desired that G.o.d would lay His hand upon the duke to free His Church of him, unless He would convert him. ”And yet I can protest,” he added, ”that but for me, before the war, active and energetic men would have exerted themselves to destroy him from the face of the earth, whom my sole exhortation restrained.”

Some of the composers of Huguenot ballads were bitter enough in their references to Guise's death and pompous funeral; see, among others, the songs in the Chansonnier Huguenot, pp. 253 and 257.

[250] Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 285, 286. The story is well told in Memorials of Renee of France, 215-217. De Thou (liv. x.x.x.), iii. 179, has incorrectly placed this occurrence among the events of the first months of the war. During the second war Brantome once stopped to pay his respects to Renee, and saw in the castle over 300 Huguenots that had fled there for security. In a letter of May 10, 1563, Calvin speaks of her as ”the nursing mother of the poor saints driven out of their homes and knowing not whither to go,” and as having made her castle what a princess looking only to this world would regard almost an insult to have it called--”G.o.d's hostelry” or ”hospital” (ung hostel-Dieu). G.o.d had, as it were, called upon her by these trials to pay arrears for the timidity of her younger days. Lettres franc., ii. 514 (Amer. trans., iv. 314).

[251] Despatch to the queen, Blois, February 26, 1562/3, Forbes, State Papers, ii. 340. ”Of the thre things that did let this realme to come to unity and accorde,” adds Smith, ”I take th' one to be taken away. How th'

other two wil be now salved--th' one that the papists may relent somwhat of their pertinacie, and the Protestants have som affiaunce or trust in there doengs, and so th' one live with th' other in quiet, I do not yet se.”

[252] Mem. de Castelnau, liv. iv., c. xii.; Davila, bk. iii. 88; Journal de Bruslart, Mem. de Conde, i. 124; Letter of Catharine to Gonnor, March 3d, ibid., iv. 278; Hist. eccles., ii. 200.

[253] Rascalon, Catharine's agent, proffered the dignity in a letter of the 13th of March, and the duke declined it on the 17th of the same month.

At the same time he gave some wholesome advice respecting the observance of the Edict, etc. Hist. eccles., ii. 165-168.

[254] ”La Royne ... y a si vivement procede, que ayant ordonne que sur la foy de l'un et de l'autre nous nous entreveorions en l'Isle aux Bouviers, joignant presque les murs de ceste ville, dimenche dernier cela fut execute.” Conde to Sir Thomas Smith, Orleans, March 11, 1563, Forbes, ii.

355.

[255] Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 170, 171. Coupled with demands for the rest.i.tution of the edict without restriction or modification, the prohibition of insults, the protection of the churches, the permission to hold synods, the recognition of Protestant marriages, and that the religion be no longer styled ”new,” ”inasmuch as it is founded on the ancient teaching of the Prophets and Apostles,” we find the Huguenot ministers, true to the spirit of the age, insisting upon ”the rigorous punishment of all Atheists, Libertines, Anabaptists, Servetists, and other heretics and schismatics.”

[256] The text of the edict of Amboise is given by Isambert, Recueil des anc. lois franc., xiv. 135-140; J. de Serres, ii. 347-357; Hist. eccles.

des egl. ref., ii. 172-176; Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. (liv. iii.) 192-195. See Pasquier, Lettres (OEuvres choisies), ii. 260.

[257] Smith to the queen, April 1, 1563, in Duc d'Aumale, Princes de Conde, i. Doc.u.ments, 439.

[258] Smith to D'Andelot, March 13, 1563, State Paper Office.

[259] Journal de Bruslart, Mem. de Conde, i. 125: ”de expresso Regis mandato iteratis vicibus facto.” Claude Haton is scarcely more complimentary than Bruslart: ”elle (la paix) estoit faicte du tout au desavantage de l'honneur de Dieu, de la religion catholicque et de l'authorite du jeune roy et repos public de son royaume.” Memoires, i.

327, 328.

[260] Elizabeth of England was herself, apparently, awakening to the importance of the struggle, and new troops subsidized by her would soon have entered France from the German borders. ”This day,” writes Cecil to Sir Thomas Smith, amba.s.sador at Paris, Feb. 27, 1562/3, ”commission pa.s.seth hence to the comte of Oldenburg to levy eight thousand footemen and four thousand horse, who will, I truste, pa.s.se into France with spede and corradg. He is a notable, grave, and puissant captayn, and fully bent to hazard his life in the cause of religion.” Th. Wright, Queen Elizabeth and her Times, i. 125. But Elizabeth's troops, like Elizabeth's money, came too late. Of the latter, Admiral Coligny plainly told Smith a few weeks later: ”If we could have had the money at Newhaven (Havre) _but one xiii daies sooner_, we would have talked with them after another sorte, and would not have bene contented with this accord.” Smith to the queen, April 1, 1563, in Duc d'Aumale, i. 439.