Volume II Part 23 (2/2)
[Sidenote: The flight of the prince and the admiral.]
[Sidenote: Proves wonderfully successful.]
Having despatched ”this testimony of the innocence, integrity, and faith”
of himself and of his a.s.sociates, ”to be transmitted to posterity in everlasting remembrance,” the Prince of Conde set out on the same day (the twenty-third of August) from Noyers. Coligny had joined him, bringing from Tanlay his daughter, the future bride of Teligny--and, after that n.o.bleman's a.s.sa.s.sination on St. Bartholomew's Day, of William of Orange, the hero of the revolt of the Netherlands--and his young sons, as well as the wife and infant son of his brother D'Andelot. Conde was himself accompanied by his wife, who was expecting soon to be confined, and by several children. His own servants and those of the admiral, with a few n.o.blemen that came in from the neighborhood, swelled their escort to about one hundred and fifty horse.[582] With such a handful of men, and embarra.s.sed in their flight by the presence of those whom their age or their s.e.x disqualified for the endurance of the fatigues of a protracted journey, Conde and Coligny undertook to reach the friendly shelter of the walls of La Roch.e.l.le. It was a perilous attempt. The journey was one of several hundred miles, through the very heart of France. The cities were garrisoned by their enemies. The bridges and fords were guarded. The difficulties, in fact, were apparently so insurmountable, that the Roman Catholics seem to have expected that any attempt to escape would be made in the direction of Germany, where Casimir, their late ally, would doubtless welcome the Protestant leaders. This mistake was the only circ.u.mstance in their favor, for it diminished the number and the vigilance of the opposing troops.
The march was secret and prompt. Contrary to all expectation, an unguarded ford was discovered not far from the city of Sancerre,[583] by which, on a sandy bottom, the fugitive Huguenots crossed the Loire, elsewhere deep and navigable as far as Roanne.[584] If the drought which had so reduced the stream as to render the pa.s.sage practicable was justly regarded as a providential interposition of Heaven in their behalf, the sudden rise of the river immediately afterward, which baffled their pursuers, was not less signal a blessing.[585] Other dangers still confronted them, but their prudence and expedition enabled them to escape them, and on the eighteenth of September[586] the weary travellers, with numbers considerably increased by reinforcements by the way, entered the gates of La Roch.e.l.le amid the acclamations of the brave inhabitants.
[Sidenote: The third civil war opens.]
The escape of the prince and the admiral rendered useless all further attempt at the concealment of the treacherous designs of the papal party; and the third religious war dates from this moment.
[Sidenote: The city of La Roch.e.l.le and its privileges.]
The city of La Roch.e.l.le, said to have become a walled place about 1126, had received many tokens of favor at the hands of its successive masters before the accession of Queen Alienor, or eleonore, last d.u.c.h.ess of Aquitaine. It was by a charter of this princess, in 1199, that the munic.i.p.ality, or ”commune,”
was established. (Arcere, Hist. de la Roch.e.l.le, ii., Preuves, 660, 661.) The terms of the charter are vague; but, as subsequently const.i.tuted, the ”commune” consisted of one hundred prominent citizens, designated as ”pairs,” or peers, in whom all power was vested. The first member in dignity was the ”maire” or mayor, selected by the Seneschal of Saintonge from the list of three candidates yearly nominated by his fellow-members. The historian of the city compares him, for power and for the sanct.i.ty attaching to his person, to the ancient tribunes of Rome. Next were the twenty-four ”echevins,” or aldermen, one-half of whom on alternate years a.s.sisted the mayor in the administration of justice. Last of all came seventy-five ”pairs” having no separate designation, who took part in the election of the mayor, and voted, on important occasions, in the ”a.s.semblee generale.” (See a historical discussion, Arcere, i. 193-199.)
From King John Lackland, of England, the Roch.e.l.lois are said to have received express exemption from the duty of marching elsewhere in the king's service, without their own consent, and from admitting into their city any troops from abroad. (P.
S. Callot, La Roch.e.l.le protestante, 1863, p. 6.) When, in 1224, after standing a siege of three weeks, La Roch.e.l.le fell into the hands of Louis VIII. of France, its new master engaged to maintain all its privileges--a promise which was well observed, for not only did the city lose nothing, but it actually received new favors at the king's hands. (Arcere, i.
212; Callot, 6.) In 1360, the disasters of the French, consequent upon the battle of Poitiers, compelled the monarch to surrender the city of La Roch.e.l.le to his captors in order to regain his liberty. The concession was reluctantly made, with the most flattering testimony to the past fidelity of the inhabitants (see letters of John II. of France, to the Roch.e.l.lois, Calais, Oct., 1360, Arcere, ii, Preuves, 761), and it was with still greater reluctance that the latter consented to carry it into effect. ”They made frequent excuses,” says Froissard, ”and would not, for upwards of a year, suffer any Englishman to enter their town. The letters were very affecting which they wrote to the King of France, beseeching him, by the love of G.o.d, that he would never liberate them of their fidelity, nor separate them from his government and place them in the hands of strangers; for they would prefer being taxed every year one-half of what they were worth, rather than be in the hands of the English.” (Froissard, i. c.
214, Johnes's Trans.) When compelled to yield, it was with the words: ”We will honor and obey the English, but our hearts shall never change.” Edward the Third had solemnly confirmed their privileges (Callot, 8).
But La Roch.e.l.le's unwilling subjection to the English crown was of brief duration. By a plot, somewhat clumsily contrived, but happily executed (Aug., 1372), the commander of the garrison, who did not know how to read, was induced to lead his troops outside of the castle wall for a review. The royal order that had been shown him was no forgery, but had been sent on a previous occasion, and the attesting seal was genuine. At a preconcerted signal, two hundred Roch.e.l.lois rose from ambush, and cut off the return of the English. The latter, finding their antagonists reinforced by two thousand armed citizens under the lead of the mayor himself, soon came to terms, and, withdrawing the few men they had left behind in the castle, accepted the offer of safe transportation by a s.h.i.+p to Bordeaux. (See the entertaining account in Froissard, i. c. 311.) The wary Roch.e.l.lois took good care, before even admitting into their city Duguesclin, Constable of France, with a paltry escort of two hundred men-at-arms, to stipulate that pardon should be extended to those who immediately after the departure of the English had razed the hateful castle to the ground, and that no other should ever be erected; that La Roch.e.l.le and the country dependent upon it should henceforth form a particular domain under the immediate jurisdiction of the king and his parliament of Paris; that its militia should be employed only for the defence of the place; and that La Roch.e.l.le should retain its mint and the right to coin both ”black and white money.” (Froissard, _ubi supra_, corrected by Arcere, i. 260.) Not only did the grateful monarch readily make these concessions, and confirm all La Roch.e.l.le's past privileges, but, for its ”immense services,” by a subsequent order he conferred n.o.bility upon the ”mayor,” ”echevins” and ”conseillers” of the city, both present and future, as well as upon their children forever. (Letters of January 8, 1372/3, Arcere, ii., Preuves, 673-675.)
The extraordinary prerogatives of which this was the origin were recognized and confirmed by subsequent monarchs, especially by Louis the Eleventh, Charles the Eighth, Louis the Twelfth, and Francis the First. (Callot, 11.) The resistance of the inhabitants to the exaction of the obnoxious ”gabelle,” or tax upon salt, did indeed, toward the end of the reign of the last-named king (1542), bring them temporarily under his displeasure; but, with the exception of a modification in their munic.i.p.al government, made in 1530, and revoked early in the reign of Henry the Second, the city retained its quasi-independence without interruption until the outbreak of the religious wars.
As we have seen (_ante_, p. 227), La Roch.e.l.le was in 1552 the scene of the judicial murder of at least two Protestants. The constancy of one of the sufferers had been the means of converting many to the reformed doctrines, and among others Claude d'Angliers, the presiding judge, whose name may still be read at the foot of their sentence. (Arcere, i. 329.) So rapidly had those doctrines spread, that on Sunday, May 31, 1562, the Lord's Supper was celebrated according to the fas.h.i.+on of Geneva, not in one of the churches, but on the great square of the hay-market, in a temporary enclosure shut in on all sides by tapestries and covered with an awning of canvas. More than eight thousand persons took part in the exercises. But if the morning's services were remarkable, the sequel was not less singular. ”As the disease of image-breaking was almost universal,” says an old chronicler, ”it was communicated by contagion to the inhabitants of this city, in such wise that, that very afternoon about three or four o'clock, five hundred men, who were under arms and had just received the same sacrament, went through all the churches and dashed the images in pieces. Howbeit it was a folly conducted with wisdom, seeing that this action pa.s.sed without any one being wounded or injured.” (P. Vincent, _apud_ Callot, 34, and Delmas, 61.) As usual, the whole affair was condemned by the ministers.
Although La Roch.e.l.le had steadily refused, during the earlier part of the first religious war, to declare for the Prince of Conde, and had maintained a kind of neutrality, the court was in constant fear lest the weight of its sympathies should yet draw it in that direction. It was therefore a matter of great joy when, in October, 1562, the Duke of Montpensier succeeded, by a ruse meriting the designation of treachery, in throwing himself into La Roch.e.l.le with a large body of troops. With his arrival the banished Roman Catholic ma.s.s returned, and the Protestant ministers were warned to leave at once. (Arcere, i.
339.)
For two months after the restoration of peace, the Huguenots of La Roch.e.l.le, embracing almost the entire population, held their religious services, in accordance with the terms of the Edict of Pacification, in the suburbs of the city. But, on the 9th of May, 1563, Charles the Ninth was prevailed to give directions that one or two places should be a.s.signed to the Huguenots within the city. This gracious permission was ratified with greater solemnity in letters patent of July 14th, in which the king declared the motive to be the representations made to him of ”the inconveniences and eminent dangers that might arise in our said city of La Roch.e.l.le, if the preaching and exercise of the pretended reformed religion should continue to be held outside of the said city, being, as it is, a frontier city in the direction of the English, ancient enemies of the inhabitants of that city, where it would be easy for them, by this means, to execute some evil enterprise.” (Commission of Charles IX., to M. de Jarnac. This valuable MS., with other MSS., carried to Dublin at the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, by M. Elie Bouhereau, and placed in the Marsh Library, has recently been restored to La Roch.e.l.le, in accordance with M. Bouhereau's written directions. Delmas, 369.)
Two years later, Charles and his court, returning from their long progress through France, came to La Roch.e.l.le, and spent three days there (Sept., 1565). A noteworthy incident occurred at his entry. The jealous citizens had not forgotten an immemorial custom which was not without significance. A silken cord had been stretched across the road by which the monarch was to enter, that he might stop and promise to respect the liberties and franchises of La Roch.e.l.le. Constable Montmorency was the first to notice the cord, and in some anger and surprise asked whether the magistrates of the city intended to refuse their sovereign admission. The symbolism of the pretty custom was duly explained to him, but for all response the old warrior curtly observed that ”such usages had pa.s.sed out of fas.h.i.+on,” and at the same instant cut the cord with his sword.
(Arcere, i. 349; Delmas, 80, 81.) Charles himself refused the request of the mayor that he should swear to maintain the city's privileges. After so inauspicious a beginning of his visit, the inhabitants were not surprised to find the king, during his stay, reducing the ”corps-de-ville” from 100 to 24 members, under the presidency of a governor invested with the full powers of the mayor; ordering that the artillery should be seized, two of the towers garrisoned by foreign troops, and the magistrates enjoined to prosecute all ministers that preached sedition; or banis.h.i.+ng some of the most prominent Protestants from La Roch.e.l.le.
It was characteristic of the government of Catharine de'
Medici--always dest.i.tute of a fixed policy, and consequently always recalling one day what it had done the day before--that scarcely two months elapsed before the queen mother put everything back on the footing it had occupied before the royal visit to La Roch.e.l.le.
FOOTNOTES:
[430] The most authentic account of these important interviews is that given by Francois de la Noue in his Memoires, chap. xi. It clearly shows how much Davila mistakes in a.s.serting that ”the prince, the admiral, and Andelot persuaded them, without further delay, to take arms.” (Eng.
trans., London, 1678, bk. iv., p. 110.) Davila's careless remark has led many others into the error of making Coligny the advocate, instead of the opposer, of a resort to arms. See also De Thou, iv. (liv. xlii.) 2-7, who bases his narrative on that of De la Noue, as does likewise Agrippa d'Aubigne, l. iv., c. vii. (i. 209), who uses the expression: ”L'Amiral voulant endurer toutes extremitez et se confier en l'innocence.”
[431] ”Ains avec le fer.”
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