Volume II Part 29 (1/2)
The Duke of Anjou entered Jarnac in triumph. With him was brought the corpse of the Prince of Conde, tied to an a.s.s's back, to be afterward exposed by a pillar of the house where Anjou lodged--the b.u.t.t of the sneers and low wit of the soldiers.[663] In the first glow of exultation over a victory, the real credit of which belonged to Gaspard de Tavannes,[664] Anjou contemplated erecting a chapel on the spot where Conde fell. The better counsels of M. de Carnavalet, however, induced him to abandon a design which would have confirmed all the sinister rumors respecting his complicity in the a.s.sa.s.sination.[665] The prince's dead body was given up for interment to the Prince of Navarre, and found a resting-place in the ancestral tomb at Vendome.[666]
[Sidenote: Exaggerated bulletins.]
Henry of Anjou was not inclined to suffer his victory to pa.s.s unnoticed.
Almost as soon as the smoke of battle had cleared away, a careful description of his exploit was prepared for circulation, and it was no fault of the compiler if the account he gave was not sufficiently flattering to the young prince's vanity. Conde's body had not been four days in the hands of the Roman Catholics, before Anjou wrote to his brother, the King of France, announcing the fact that he had already despatched messengers with the precious doc.u.ment to the Pope and the Duke of Florence, to the Dukes of Savoy, Ferrara, Parma, and Urbino, to the Republic of Venice and the Duke of Mantua, and to Philip of Spain; while copies were also under way, intended for the French amba.s.sadors in England and Switzerland, for the Parliaments of Paris, Bordeaux, and Toulouse, the ”prevot des marchands,” and the ”echevins” of the capital, and others.[667]
[Sidenote: The Pope's sanguinary injunctions.]
The exaggerated bulletins of the Duke of Anjou were received with great demonstrations of joy by all the Roman Catholic allies of France. Pope Pius the Fifth in particular sent warm congratulations to the ”Most Christian King” and to Catharine de' Medici. But he was very careful to couple his expressions of thanks with an earnest recommendation to pursue the work so auspiciously begun, even to the extermination of the detested heretics. ”The more kindly G.o.d has dealt with you and us,” he promptly wrote to Charles, ”the more vigorously and diligently must you make use of the present victory to pursue and destroy the remnants of the enemy, and wholly tear up, not only the roots of an evil so great and which had gathered to itself such strength, but even _the very fibres_ of the roots.
Unless they be thoroughly extirpated, they will again sprout and grow up (as we have so often heretofore seen happen), where your Majesty least expects it.” Pius pledged his word that Charles would succeed in his undertaking, ”if no respect for men or for human considerations should be powerful enough to induce him to spare G.o.d's enemies, who had spared neither G.o.d nor him.” ”In no other way,” he added, ”will you be able to appease G.o.d, than by avenging the injuries done to G.o.d with the utmost severity, by the merited punishment of most accursed men.” And he set as a warning before the eyes of the French monarch the example of King Saul, who, when commanded by G.o.d, through Samuel the Prophet, so to smite the Amalekites, an infidel people, that none should escape, neither man nor woman, neither infant nor suckling, incurred the anger and rejection of the Almighty by sparing Agag and the best of the spoil, instead of utterly destroying them.[668]
Two weeks later the pontiff received the unwelcome tidings that some of the Huguenot prisoners taken in the battle of Jarnac had been spared. La Noue, Soubise, and other gentlemen had actually been left alive, and were likely to escape without paying the forfeit due to their crimes. At this dreadful intelligence the righteous indignation of Pius was kindled. On one and the same day (the thirteenth of April) he wrote long letters to Catharine, to Anjou, to the Cardinal of Lorraine, to the Cardinal of Bourbon, as well as to Charles himself.[669] Of all these letters the tenor was identical. Such slackness to execute vengeance would certainly provoke G.o.d's patience to anger; the king must visit condign punishment upon the enemies of G.o.d and the rebels against his own authority. To the victor of Jarnac he was specially urgent, supplicating him to counteract any leanings that might be shown to an impious mercy. ”Your brother's rebels have disturbed the public tranquillity of the realm. They have, so far as in them lay, subverted the Catholic religion, have burned churches, have most cruelly slain the priests of Almighty G.o.d, have committed numberless other crimes; consequently they deserve to receive those extreme penalties (_supplicia_) that are ordained by the laws. And if any of their number shall attempt, through the intercession of your n.o.bles with the king your brother, to escape the penalties they deserve, it is your duty, in view of your piety to G.o.d and zeal for the divine honor, to reject the prayers of all that intercede for them, and to show yourself equally inexorable to all.”[670]
[Sidenote: The sanguinary action of the Parliament of Bordeaux.]
Was it in consequence of the known desire of the occupant of the Holy See that the policy of the French courts of justice became more and more sanguinary? We can scarcely doubt that the Pope's injunctions had much to do with these increasing severities. Beginning in March, 1569, the Parliament of Bordeaux issued a series of decrees condemning a crowd of Protestants to death. The names that appear upon the records within the compa.s.s of one year number not less than _twelve hundred and seventeen_.
The victims were taken out of all grades of society--from n.o.blemen, military men, judges, priests and monks, down to humble mechanics and laborers. The lists made out by their enemies prove at least one fact which the Huguenots had long maintained: that they counted in their ranks representatives of the first families of the country, as well as of every other cla.s.s of the population. Happily sentence was p.r.o.nounced generally upon the absent, and the barbarous punishment of beheading, quartering, and exposing to the popular gaze, remained unexecuted. But the incidental penalty of the confiscation of the property of reputed Huguenots, which, so far from being a mere formal threat, was in fact the princ.i.p.al object contemplated by the prosecution, proved to be sober reality, and the goods of the banished Protestants afforded rich plunder to the informers.[671]
[Sidenote: Queen Elizabeth becomes colder.]
Upon Elizabeth of England the first effect of the reported victory at Jarnac was clearly marked. Her favorite, the Earl of Leicester, a.s.sured the French amba.s.sador that, although the queen was sorry to see those professing her religion maltreated, yet, as queen, she would arm in behalf of Charles when fighting against his own subjects.[672] Her own declarations, however, were not so strong, or perhaps, after a little reflection, she took a more hopeful view of the fortunes of the Huguenots.
For, although she exhibited curiosity to hear the ”true” account, which a special messenger from Charles the Ninth was commissioned to bring her, and received the tidings in a manner satisfactory to the French amba.s.sador, she would not rejoice at the death of Conde, whom she held to be a very good and faithful servant of his Majesty's crown, and deplored a war which, whether victory inclined to one side or the other, must lead to the diminution of Charles's best forces and the ruin of his n.o.blesse.[673]
[Sidenote: Spirit of the Queen of Navarre.]
In point of fact, however, the defeat which the royalists had flattered themselves would terminate the war, and over which they had sung Te Deums, weakened the Huguenots very little.[674] The Queen of Navarre, on hearing the intelligence, hurried to Cognac, where she presented herself to the army, and reminded the brave men who heard her voice that, although the Prince of Conde, their late leader, was dead, the good cause was not dead; and that the courage of such good men ought never to fail. G.o.d had provided, and ever would provide, fresh instruments to uphold His own chosen work. Her brief address restored the flagging spirits of the fugitives. When she returned to La Roch.e.l.le, to devise new means of supplying the necessities of the army, she left behind her men resolved to retrieve their recent losses. They did not wait long for an opportunity.
The Roman Catholics, advancing, laid siege to Cognac, confident of easy success. But the garrison, which included seven thousand infantry newly levied, received them with determination. Sallies were frequent and b.l.o.o.d.y, and when, at last, the siege was raised, the army of Anjou had sacrificed nearly as many men before the walls of a small provincial city as the Huguenots had lost on the much vaunted field of Jarnac.[675]
[Sidenote: The Huguenots recover strength.]
The events of the next two or three months certainly exhibited no diminution in the power or in the spirit of the Huguenots. St. Jean d'Angely, into which Count Montgomery had thrown himself, defied the entire army of Anjou, and the siege was abandoned. Angouleme, an equally tempting morsel, he tried to obtain, but failed. At Mucidan, a town somewhat to the south-west of Perigueux, he was more successful. But he effected its capture at the expense of the life of Brissac, one of his bravest officers--a loss which he attempted to avenge by murdering the garrison, after it had surrendered on condition that life and property should be spared.[676] Within a month or two after the battle of Jarnac the Protestants at La Roch.e.l.le wrote, for Queen Elizabeth's information, that they were more powerful than ever, that Piles had brought them 4,000 recruits, that D'Andelot was soon to bring the viscounts with a large force.[677]
[Sidenote: Death of D'Andelot.]
But the course of that indefatigable warrior was now run. D'Andelot's excessive labors and constant exposure had brought on a fever to which his life soon succ.u.mbed. There were not wanting those, it is true, who ascribed his sudden death, like most of the deaths of important personages in the latter part of this century, to poison; and Huguenot and loyal pamphleteers alike laid the crime at the door of Catharine de'
Medici.[678] But there is no sufficient evidence to substantiate the accusation, and we must not unnecessarily ascribe this base act to a woman already responsible for too many undeniable crimes.[679] The death of so gallant and true-hearted a n.o.bleman, a faithful and unflinching friend of the Reformation from the time when it first began to spread extensively among the higher cla.s.ses of the French population, and who had amply atoned for a momentary act of weakness, in the time of Henry the Second, by an uncompromising profession of his religion on every occasion during the reigns of that monarch's two sons, was deeply felt by his comrades in arms. As ”colonel-general of the French infantry,” he had occupied the first rank in this branch of the service,[680] and his experience was as highly prized as his impetuous valor upon the field of battle. The brilliancy of his executive abilities seemed to all beholders indispensable to complement the more calm and deliberative temperament of his elder brother. It was natural, therefore, that the admiral, while pouring out his private grief for one who had been so dear to him, in a touching letter to D'Andelot's children,[681] should experience as deep a sorrow for the loss of his wise and efficient co-operation. He might be pardoned a little despondency as he recalled the prophetic words that had dropped from D'Andelot's lips during a brief respite from his burning fever: ”France shall have many woes to suffer with you, and then without you; but all will in the end fall upon the Spaniard!”[682] The prospect was not bright. Peace was yet far distant--peace, which Coligny preferred a thousand times to his own life, but would not purchase dishonorably by the sacrifice of civil liberty and of the right to wors.h.i.+p his G.o.d according to the convictions of his heart and conscience. The burden of the defence of the Protestants had appeared sufficiently heavy when Conde, a prince of the blood, was alive to share it with him. But now, with the entire charge of maintaining the party against a powerful and determined enemy, who had the advantage of the possession of the person of the king, and thus was able to cloak his ambitious designs with the pretence of the royal authority, and deprived of a brother whom the army had appropriately surnamed ”le chevalier sans peur,”[683] the task might well appear to demand herculean strength.
[Sidenote: New responsibility imposed on Admiral Coligny.]
Henry of Navarre had, indeed, just been recognized as general-in-chief, and he was accompanied by his cousin, Henry of Conde; but Navarre was a boy of little more than fifteen, and his cousin was not much older.
Nothing could for the present be expected from such striplings; and the public, ever ready to look upon the comical side of even the most serious matters, was not slow in nicknaming them the ”admiral's two pages.”[684]
Coligny, however, was not crushed by the new responsibility which devolved upon him. No longer hampered by the authority of one whose counsels often verged on foolhardiness, he soon exhibited his consummate abilities so clearly, that even his enemies were forced to acknowledge that they had never given him the credit he deserved. ”It was soon perceived,” observes an author by no means friendly to the Huguenots, ”that the accident (of Conde's death) had happened only in order to reveal in all its splendor the merits of the Admiral de Chatillon. The admiral had had during his entire life very difficult and complicated matters to unravel, and, nevertheless, he had never had any that were not far below his abilities, and in which, consequently, he had no need of exerting his full capacity.
Thus those qualities that were rarest, and that exalted him most above others, remained hidden, through lack of opportunity, and would apparently have remained always concealed during the lifetime of the Prince of Conde, because the world would have attributed to the prince all those results to whose accomplishment it could not learn that the admiral had contributed more than had the former. But, after the battle of Jarnac had permitted the admiral to exhibit himself fully on the most famous theatre of Europe, the Calvinists perceived that they were not so unhappy as they thought, since they still had a leader who would prevent them from noticing the loss they had experienced, so many singular qualities had he to repair it.”[685]
[Sidenote: The Duke of Deux Ponts comes with German auxiliaries.]
Wolfgang, Duke of Deux Ponts, had at length entered France, and was bringing to the Huguenots their long-expected succor. He had seven thousand five hundred reiters from lower Germany, six thousand lansquenets from upper Germany, and a body of French and Flemish gentlemen, under William of Orange and his brother, Mouy, Esternay and others, which may have swelled his army to about seventeen thousand men in all.[686] In vain did his cousin, the Duke of Lorraine, attempt to dissuade him, offering to reimburse him the one hundred thousand crowns he had already spent upon the preparations for the expedition. Even Conde's death did not discourage him. He came, he said, to fight, not for the prince, but for ”the cause.”[687] When about entering his Most Christian Majesty's dominions, he had published the reasons of his coming to a.s.sist the Huguenots. In this paper he treated as pure calumnies the accusations brought by their enemies against Conde, Coligny, and their a.s.sociates, and proved his position by quoting the king's own express declaration, in the recent edicts of pacification, ”that he recognized everything they had attempted as undertaken by his orders and for the good of the kingdom.”[688] The point was certainly well taken. Charles's various declarations were not remarkably consistent. In one, Conde was ”his faithful servant and subject,” and his acts were prompted by the purest of motives. In the next, he and his fellow-Huguenots were incorrigible rebels, with whom every method of conciliation had signally failed. But Charles did not trouble himself to attempt to smooth away these contradictions. He is even said to have replied to the envoy whom Deux Ponts sent him (April, 1569), demanding the rest.i.tution of the Edict of January and the payment of thirty thousand crowns due to Prince Casimir, that ”Deux Ponts was too insignificant a personage (_trop pet.i.t compagnon_) to undertake to dictate laws to him, and that, as to the money, he would deliberate about _that_ when the duke had laid down his arms.”[689]
The secret of this arrogant demeanor is found in the fact that the court believed it impossible for the Germans to join Coligny. Even so late as the middle of May, when Deux Ponts had penetrated to Autun in Burgundy, Charles regarded the attempt as well nigh hopeless. The fortunes of the Huguenots were desperate. ”There remains for them as their last resort,”