Volume II Part 20 (2/2)
The news, however, being soon confirmed from other sources, a spy was sent to Chatillon-sur-Loing to report upon the admiral's movements. He brought back word that he had found Coligny at home, and apparently engrossed in the labors of the vintage--so quietly was the affair conducted until within forty-eight hours of the time appointed for the general uprising.[437] It was not until hurried tidings came from all quarters that the roads to Chatillon and to Rosoy--a small place in Brie, where the Huguenots had made their rendezvous--were swarming with men mounted and armed, that the court took the alarm.
[Sidenote: Flight of the court to Paris.]
It was almost too late. The Huguenots had possession of Lagny and of the crossing of the river Marne. The king and queen, with their suite, at Meaux, were almost entirely unprotected, the six thousand Swiss being still at Chateau-Thierry, thirty miles higher up the Marne. Instant orders were sent to bring them forward as quickly as possible, and the night of the twenty-eighth of September witnessed a scene of abject fear on the part of the ladies and not a few of the gentlemen that accompanied Charles and his mother. At three o'clock in the morning, under escort of the Swiss, who had at last arrived, the court started for Paris, which was reached after a dilatory journey that appeared all the longer because of the fears attending it.[438] The Prince of Conde, who had been joined as yet only by the forerunners of his army, engaged in a slight skirmish with the Swiss; but a small band of four or five hundred gentlemen, armed only with their swords, could do nothing against a solid phalanx of the brave mountaineers, and he was forced to retire. Meanwhile Marshal Montmorency, sent by Catharine to dissuade the prince, the admiral, and Cardinal Chatillon from prosecuting their enterprise, had returned with the message that ”the Huguenots were determined to defeat the preparations made to destroy them and their religion, which was only tolerated by a conditional edict, revocable by the king at his pleasure.”[439]
[Sidenote: Cardinal Lorraine invites Alva to invade France.]
The Cardinal of Lorraine did not share in the flight of the court to Paris. Never able to boast of the possession of overmuch courage, he may have feared for his personal safety; for it was not impossible that he might be sacrificed by a queen rarely troubled with any feelings of humanity, to allay the storm raging about the s.h.i.+p of state; or he may have hoped to be of greater service to his party away from the capital.[440] However this may be, the Cardinal betook himself in hot haste to the city of Rheims, but reached his palace only after an almost miraculous escape from capture by his enemies.[441] Once in safety, he despatched two messengers in rapid succession[442] to Brussels, and begged Alva to send him an agent with whom he might communicate in confidence.
The proposals made when that personage arrived at Rheims were sufficiently startling; for, after calling attention to Philip's rightful claim to the throne of France, in case of the death of Charles and his brothers, he offered in a certain contingency to place in the Spanish monarch's hands some strong places that might prove valuable in substantiating that claim.
In return, the Cardinal wished Philip to a.s.sume the defence of the papal church in France, and particularly desired him to undertake the protection of his brothers and of himself. The message was not unwelcome either to Alva or to his royal master. They were willing, they said, to a.s.sist the King of France in combating the Huguenots,[443] and they made no objection to accepting the cities. At the worst, these cities would serve as pledges for the repayment of whatever sums the King of Spain might expend in maintaining the Roman Catholic faith in France. With respect to the propriety of Philip's becoming the formal guardian of the Guises, Alva felt more hesitation, for who knew how matters might turn out? And Philip, never quite ready for any important decision, praised his lieutenant's delay, and inculcated further procrastination.[444] But the succession to the throne of France was worthy of deep consideration. As Alva intimated, the famous Salic law, under which Charles's sister Isabella was excluded from the crown, was merely a bit of pleasantry, and force of arms would facilitate the acknowledgment of her claims.[445]
[Sidenote: Conde at Saint Denis.]
The blow which the Huguenots had aimed at the tyrannical government of the Cardinal of Lorraine had missed its mark, through premature disclosure; but they still hoped to accomplish their design by slower means. Shut up in Paris, the court might be frightened or starved into compliance before the Roman Catholic forces could be a.s.sembled to relieve the capital. With this object the Prince of Conde moved around to the north side of the city, and took up his quarters, on the second of October, in the village of Saint Denis. With the lower Seine, which, in one of its serpentine coils, here turns back upon itself, and retreats from the direction of the sea, in his immediate grasp, and within easy striking distance of the upper Seine, and its important tributary the Marne--the chief sources of the supply of food on which the capital depended--the Prince of Conde awaited the arrival of his reinforcements, and the time when the hungry Parisians should compel the queen to submit, or to send out her troops to an open field. At the same time he burned the windmills that stretched their huge arms on every eminence in the vicinity. It was an ill-advised measure, as are all similar acts of destruction, unless justified by urgent necessity. If it occasioned some distress in Paris,[446] it only embittered the minds of the people yet more, and enabled the munic.i.p.al authorities to retaliate with some color of equity by seizing the houses of persons known or suspected to be Huguenots, and selling their goods to defray part of the expense incurred in defending the city.[447]
[Sidenote: The Huguenot movement alienates the king.]
The attempt ”to seize the person of the king”--for such the movement was understood to be by the Roman Catholic party--was even more unfortunate.
It produced in Charles an alienation[448] which the enemies of the Huguenots took good care to prevent him from ever completely forgetting.
They represented the undertaking of Meaux as aimed, not at the counsellors of the monarch, but at the ”Sacred Majesty” itself, and Conde and Coligny, with their a.s.sociates, were pictured to the affrighted eyes of the fugitive boy-king as conspirators who respected none of those rights which are so precious in the view of royalty.
[Sidenote: Negotiations opened. The Huguenots gradually abate their demands.]
[Sidenote: Constable Montmorency the mouthpiece of intolerance.]
Meantime Catharine was not slow in resorting to the arts by which she was accustomed to seek either to avert the evil consequences of her own short-sighted policy, or to gain time to defeat the plans of her opponents.[449] The Huguenots received a deputation consisting of the chancellor, the Marshal de Vieilleville, and Jean de Morvilliers--three of the most influential and moderate adherents of the court--through whom Charles demanded the reason of the sudden uprising which causelessly threatened his own person and the peace of the realm. The Huguenot leaders replied by denying any evil design, and showing that they had armed themselves only in self-defence against the manifested malice of their enemies.[450] Subsequent interviews between Conde and the envoys of Charles seemed to hold forth some hopes of peace. The king declared himself ready to furnish the Protestants with proofs of the uprightness of his intentions, and L'Hospital even exhibited the draft of an edict in which their rights should be guaranteed. As this proved unsatisfactory, the prince, at the chancellor's suggestion, submitted the requests of his a.s.sociates. These related to the banishment of the foreign troops, the permission to come and present their pet.i.tions to the king, the confirmation and maintenance of the past edicts, with the repeal of all restrictive interpretations, the a.s.sembling of the states general, and the removal of the burdensome imposts under which the people groaned, and which were of advantage only to the crowd of Italians and others enjoying extraordinary credit at court.[451] If the first of these demands were sufficiently bold, the last demand was little calculated to conciliate Catharine, who naturally conceived herself doubly insulted by the covert allusion to her own prodigality and by the reference to her countrymen.
She found no difficulty in inducing Charles to answer through a proclamation sent by a herald to the confederates, commanding Conde, Coligny, D'Andelot, La Rochefoucauld, Genlis, and the other leaders, by name, to lay down the arms which they had taken up without his consent.[452] Perceiving the mistake they had committed in making requests which, although just and appropriate, were in part but ill-suited to the times, the Protestants began to abate their demands. Confining themselves to the matter of religion, they now pet.i.tioned only for an unrestricted liberty of conscience and wors.h.i.+p, confirmed by the repeal of all ordinances or parliamentary decisions conflicting with it. Their moderation inspired fresh hopes of averting the resort to arms, and a new conference was held, between the Huguenot position and the city of Paris, at the hamlet of La Chapelle Saint Denis. It was destined to be the last.
Constable Montmorency, the chief spokesman on the Roman Catholic side, although really desirous of peace, could not be induced to listen to the only terms on which peace was possible. ”The king,” he said, ”will never consent to the demand for religious toleration throughout France without distinction of persons or places. He has no intention of permanently tolerating two religions. His edicts in favor of the Protestants have been intended only as temporary measures; for his purpose is to preserve the old faith by all possible means. He would rather be forced into a war with his subjects than avoid it by concessions that would render him an object of suspicion to neighboring princes.”[453]
[Sidenote: Insincerity of Alva's offers of aid.]
The simultaneous rising of the Huguenots in every quarter of the kingdom, and the immediate seizure of many important cities, had surprised and terrified the court; but it had also stimulated the Roman Catholic leaders to put forth extraordinary efforts to bring together an army superior to that of their opponents. Besides the Parisian militia and the troops that flocked in from the more distant provinces, it was resolved to call for the help repeatedly promised by Philip of Spain and his minister, the Duke of Alva, when urging Charles to break the compacts he had entered into with his reformed subjects. But the a.s.sistance actually furnished fell far short of the expectations held forth. When Castelnau, after two efforts, the first of which proved unsuccessful,[454] reached Brussels by a circuitous route, he found Alva lavish of good wishes, and urgent, like his master, that no arrangement should be made with the rebels before they had suffered condign punishment. But the envoy soon convinced himself that all these protestations meant little or nothing, and that the Spaniards were by no means sorry to see the French kingdom rent by civil war.
Ostensibly, Alva was liberal above measure in his offers. He wished to come in person at the head of five thousand horse and fifteen thousand foot, and make short work of the destruction of Conde and his followers--a proposition which Castelnau, who knew that Catharine was quite as jealous of Spanish as of Huguenot interference in her schemes, felt himself compelled politely to decline; especially as the very briefest term within which Alva professed himself ready to move was a full month and a half.
For seven or eight days the duke persisted in refusing the Spanish troops that were requested,[455] and in insisting upon his own offer--precious time which, had it been husbanded, might have changed the face of the impending battle before the walls of Paris. When, at length, pressed by the envoy for a definite answer or for leave to return, the duke offered to give him, in about three weeks' time, a body of four or five thousand German lansquenets--troops that would have been quite useless to Charles, who already had at his disposition as many pikemen as he needed, in the six thousand Swiss. All that Castelnau was finally able to bring home was an auxiliary force of about seventeen hundred horse, under Count Aremberg.
Even now, however, the officer in command was bound by instructions which prevented him from taking the direct road to the beleaguered capital of France, and compelled him to pa.s.s westward by Beauvais and Poissy.[456]
[Sidenote: Battle of Saint Denis, Nov. 10, 1567.]
[Sidenote: The constable is mortally wounded.]
The impatience of the Parisians, who for more than a month had been inactive spectators, while their city was besieged by an insignificant force and they were deprived of the greater part of their ordinary supplies of food, could scarcely be restrained. They were the more anxious for battle since they had received encouragement by the recapture of a few points of some military importance along the course of the lower Seine.
Unable to resist the pressure any longer, Constable Anne de Montmorency led out his army to give battle to the Huguenots on the tenth of November, 1567. Rarely has such an engagement been willingly entered into, where the disproportion between the contending parties was so considerable. The constable's army consisted of sixteen thousand foot soldiers (of whom six thousand were Swiss, and the remainder in part troops levied in the city of Paris) and three thousand horse, and was provided with eighteen pieces of artillery. To meet this force, Conde had barely fifteen hundred hastily mounted and imperfectly equipped gentlemen, and twelve hundred foot soldiers, gathered from various quarters and scarcely formed as yet into companies. He had not a single cannon. Of his cavalry, only one-fifth part were provided with lances, the rest having swords and pistols. The greater number had no defensive armor; and not a horse was furnished with the leathern _barbe_ with which the knight continued, as in the middle ages, to cover his steed's breast and sides. The constable had wisely chosen a moment when the prince had weakened himself by detaching D'Andelot, with five hundred horse and eight hundred arquebusiers, to seize Poissy and intercept the Count of Aremberg.[457] In the face of such a disparity of numbers and equipment, the Huguenots exhibited signal intrepidity.[458]
With Coligny thrown forward on the right, in front of the village of Saint Ouen, and Genlis on the left, near Aubervilliers, they opened the attack upon the overwhelming numbers of the enemy, who descended from higher ground to meet them. Marshal de Montmorency, the constable's eldest son, commanding a part of the royal army, alone was successful, and had the valor of his troops been imitated by the rest, the defeat of the Huguenots would have been decisive; but the ”Parisian regiment,” despite its gilded armor,[459] yielded at the first shock of battle and fled in confusion to the walls of Paris. Their cowardice uncovered the position of the constable, and the cavalry of the Prince penetrated to the spot where the old warrior was still fighting hand to hand, with a vigor scarcely inferior to that which he had displayed more than fifty years earlier, in the first Italian campaign of Francis the First.[460] A Scottish gentleman, according to the most probable account--for the true history of the affair is involved in unusual obscurity--Robert Stuart by name, rode up to Montmorency and demanded his surrender. But the constable, maddened at the suggestion of a fourth captivity,[461] for all reply struck Stuart on the mouth, with the hilt of his sword, so violent a blow that he broke three of his teeth. At that very moment he received, whether from Stuart or from another of the Scottish gentlemen is uncertain,[462] a pistol-shot that entered his shoulder and inflicted a mortal wound. At a few paces from him, Conde, with his horse killed under him, nearly fell into the hands of the enemy. At last, however, his partisans succeeded in rescuing him, and, while he retired slowly to Saint Denis, the dying constable was carried to Paris, whither the Roman Catholic army returned at evening.[463]
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