Volume II Part 31 (2/2)
Catharine de' Medici, also, from the advocate of war, had become anxious for peace--tardily returning to the conviction which she had often expressed in former years, that the attempt to exterminate the Huguenots by force of arms was hopeless. After two years she was no nearer her object than when the Cardinal of Lorraine persuaded her to endeavor to seize Conde at Noyers. Jarnac had accomplished nothing; Moncontour was nearly as barren a victory. A great part of what had been so laboriously effected by Anjou's army in the last months of 1569, La Noue had been undoing in the first half of 1570.[778] The Protestants, who were, a few months since, shut up in La Roch.e.l.le, had defeated their enemies at Sainte Gemme, near Lucon, and had retaken Fontenay, Niort, the Isle d'Oleron, Brouage, and other places. The Baron de la Garde, who had lately, in the capacity of ”general of the galleys,” been infesting the seas in the neighborhood of La Roch.e.l.le, was compelled to retire to Bordeaux.[779]
Saintes had been besieged and captured, and the Huguenots were advancing to the reduction of St. Jean d'Angely, not long since so dearly won by the Roman Catholics.[780] Montluc had, it is true, met with success in Bearn, where Rabasteins was taken and its entire garrison ma.s.sacred.[781] But what were these advantages at the foot of the Pyrenees, when an army under Gaspard de Coligny, after sweeping four hundred leagues through the southern and western provinces, was now in the immediate vicinity of Paris? His forces, indeed, were small in numbers, but would speedily grow formidable. The French amba.s.sador sent from London the intelligence that letters of credit had been sent from England to Hamburg in order to hasten the entrance into France of some twelve or fifteen thousand Germans under Duke Casimir; that twenty-five hundred men were to be despatched from La Roch.e.l.le to make a descent on some point in Normandy or Brittany, in conjunction with the s.h.i.+ps of the Prince of Orange; and that the English were to be invited to co-operate.[782] If it had proved impracticable to prevent the Duc de Deux Ponts from marching across France to join the confederates near the ocean, what hope was there that the king would be able to hinder the union of Coligny and Casimir? Or, why might not both be reinforced by the troops of La Noue, who had been accomplis.h.i.+ng such exploits in Aunis and Saintonge?
The princes of Germany added their intercessions to the stern logic of the conflict. During the festivities in Heidelberg, attending the marriage of John Casimir, Duke of Bavaria, and Elizabeth, daughter of the Elector of Saxony, in June, 1570, the Elector Palatine, the Elector of Saxony, the Margraves George Frederick of Brandenburg and Charles of Baden, Louis, Duke of Wurtemberg, the Landgraves William, Philip and George of Hesse, and Adolphus, Duke of Holstein, wrote a joint letter to Charles the Ninth of France, in which they drew his attention to the injury which the long war he was carrying on with his subjects was inflicting upon the states of the empire, and to the necessity of speedily terminating it if he would retain their good-will and friends.h.i.+p. And they a.s.sured him that there was no way of accomplis.h.i.+ng this result except by permitting the exercise of the reformed religion throughout the kingdom, and abolis.h.i.+ng all distinctions between his Majesty's subjects of different faiths.[783]
[Sidenote: Anxiety of Cardinal Chatillon.]
When the war had so signally failed, it is not strange that the king and his mother should have turned once more to the advocates of peace, with whose return to favor the retirement of the Guises from court was contemporaneous. Yet the Protestants, who knew too well from experience the malignity of that hated family, could not but shudder lest they might be putting themselves in the power of their most determined enemies. The Queen of Navarre wrote to Charles urging him to use his own native good sense, and a.s.suring him that she feared ”marvellously” that these well-known mischief-makers would lure him into ”a patched-up-peace”--_une paix fourree_--like the preceding pacifications. The object they had in view was, indeed, the ruin of the Huguenots; but the first disaster, she warned him, would fall on the monarch and his royal estate.[784] Cardinal Chatillon, when sounded by the French amba.s.sador in England, expressed his eagerness for peace. On selfish grounds alone he would be glad to exchange poverty in England for his revenues of one hundred and twenty thousand a year in France. But he had his fears. ”Remembering that the king, the queen, and monsieur (the Duke of Anjou), to confirm the last peace, did him the honor to give him their word, placing their own hands in his, and that those who induced them to break it were those very persons with whom he and his a.s.sociates now had to conclude the proposed peace,” he said, ”his hair stood upon end with fear.” All that the Protestants wanted was security. They would be glad to transfer the war elsewhere--a thing his brother the admiral had always desired; and, if admitted to the king's favor, they would render his Majesty the most notable service that had been done to the crown for two hundred years.[785]
[Sidenote: Royal Edict of pacification, St. Germain, August 8, 1570.]
The terms of the long-desired peace were at last decided upon by the commissioners, among whom Teligny and Beauvoir la Nocle were most prominent on the Protestant side, while Biron and De Mesmes represented the court. On the eighth of August, 1570, they were officially promulgated in a royal edict signed at St. Germain-en-Laye.
There were in this doc.u.ment the usual stipulations respecting amnesty, the prohibition of insults and recriminations, and kindred topics. The liberty of religious profession was guaranteed. Respecting wors.h.i.+p according to the Protestant rites, the provision was of the following character. All n.o.bles ent.i.tled to ”high jurisdiction”[786] were permitted to designate one place belonging to them, where they could have religious services for themselves, their families, their subjects, and all who might choose to attend, so long as either they or their families were present.
This privilege, in the case of other n.o.bles, was restricted to their families and their friends, not exceeding ten in number. To the Queen of Navarre a few places were granted in the fiefs which she held of the French crown, where service could be celebrated even in her absence. In addition to these, there was a list of cities, designated by name--two in each of the twelve princ.i.p.al governments or provinces--in which, or in the suburbs of which, the reformed services were allowed; and this privilege was extended to all those places of which the Protestants had possession on the first of the present month of August. From all other places--from the royal court and its vicinity to a distance of two leagues, and especially from Paris and its vicinity to the distance of ten leagues--Protestant wors.h.i.+p was strictly excluded. Provision was made for Protestant burials, to take place in the presence of not more than ten persons. The king recognized the Queen of Navarre, the prince her son, and the late Prince of Conde and his son, as faithful relations and servants; their followers as loyal subjects; Deux Ponts, Orange, and his brothers, and Wolrad Mansfeld, as good neighbors and friends. There was to be a rest.i.tution of property, honors, and offices, and a rescission of judicial sentences. To protect the members of the reformed faith in the courts of justice, they were to be permitted to challenge four of the judges in the Parliament of Paris; six--three in each chamber--in those of Rouen, Dijon, Aix, Rennes, and Gren.o.ble; and four in each chamber of the Parliament of Bordeaux. They were to be allowed a peremptory appeal from the Parliament of Toulouse. To defend the Huguenots from popular violence, four cities were to be intrusted to them for a period of two years--La Roch.e.l.le, Montauban, Cognac, and La Charite--to serve as places of refuge; and the Princes of Navarre and Conde, with twenty of their followers, were to pledge their word for the safe restoration of these cities to the king at the expiration of the designated term.[787]
[Sidenote: Dissatisfaction of the clergy.]
Such were the leading features of the edict of pacification that closed the third religious war, by far the longest and most sanguinary conflict that had as yet desolated France. That the terms would be regarded as in the highest degree offensive by the intolerant party at home and abroad was to be expected. The Parisian curate, Jehan de la Fosse, only spoke the common sentiment of the clergy and of the bigoted Roman Catholics when he said that ”it contained articles sufficiently terrible to make France and the king's faithful servants tremble, seeing that the Huguenots were reputed as faithful servants, and what they had done held by the king to be agreeable.”[788] It was not astonis.h.i.+ng, therefore, that, although the publication of the edict was effected without delay under the eyes of the court at Paris, it gave rise in Rouen to a serious riot.[789] The Papal Nuncio and the Spanish amba.s.sador were indignant. Both Pius and Philip had bitterly opposed the negotiations of the early part of the year. Now their amba.s.sadors made a fruitless attempt to put off the evil day of peace; the Spanish amba.s.sador not only offering three thousand horse and six thousand foot to extirpate the Huguenots, but affirming that ”there were no conditions to which he was not ready to bind himself, provided that the king would not make peace with the heretics and rebels.”[790]
[Sidenote: ”The limping and unsettled peace.”]
For the first time in their history, the relations of the Huguenots of France to the state were settled, not by a royal declaration which was to be of force until the king should attain his majority, or until the convocation of a general council of the Church, but by an edict which was expressly stated to be ”_perpetual and irrevocable_.” Such the Protestants, although with many misgivings, hoped that it might prove. It was not, however, an auspicious circ.u.mstance that the popular wit, laying hold of the fact that one of the Roman Catholic commissioners that drew up its stipulations--Biron--was lame, while the other--Henri de Mesmes--was best known as Lord of Mala.s.sise, conferred upon the new compact the ungracious appellation of ”_the limping and unsettled peace_”--”la paix boiteuse et mal-a.s.sise.”[791]
FOOTNOTES:
[587] Memoires d'Agrippa d'Aubigne (Ed. Buchon), 475.
[588] Jean de Serres, iii. 247.
[589] Mem. de Claude Haton, ii. 541; De Thou, iv. (liv. xliv.) 145.
[590] The text of the edict is given by Jean de Serres, iii. 272-281. See also De Thou, iv. (liv. xliv.) 145, 146; Castelnau, liv. vii., c. ii. La Fosse (Journal d'un cure ligueur, 98), gives the correct date: ”Septembre.
_La veille du Saint Michel_ (i.e., _Sept._ 28th) fut rompu l'esdict de janvier, et publie dedans le palais esdict au contraire;” while the amba.s.sador La Mothe Fenelon alludes to it in a despatch to Catharine as ”votre edict du x.x.xe de Septembre.” Correspondance diplomatique, i. 28.
[591] J. de Serres, iii. 281, 282; De Thou and Castelnau, _ubi supra_, Recordon, Le protestantisme en Champagne, 158, 159.
[592] Zway Edict, u. s. w., _ubi infra_, p. 38.
[593] Castelnau, _ubi supra_.
[594] I have before me this interesting publication, of which the first lines of the t.i.tle-page (inordinately long and comprehensive, after the fas.h.i.+on of the times) run as follows: ”Zway Edict, sampt einer offnen Patent der Koniglichen Wurden in Franckreich, durch welche alle auffrurische Predigten, versamblungen und ubung der newen unchristlichen Secten und vermainten Religion gantz und gar abgeschafft und allain die Romische und Bapstische Catholische ware Religion gestattet werden sollen.... 1568.”
[595] De Thou, iv. (liv. xliv.) 160, 161.
[596] ”Notre sang nous sera ung secong bapteme, par quoy sans aucun empeschement, nous irons avec les autres martyrs droit en paradis.”
Publication de la croisade, Hist. de Languedoc, v. (Preuves) 216, 217. See the account, ibid., v. 290.
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