March of the viscounts to meet Condé.
During the first few months after the assumption of arms, the Huguenots of southern France, surrounded by domestic enemies, had confined themselves to attempting to secure their own safety and that of their neighbors, by taking the most important cities and keeping in check the forces of the provincial governors – an undertaking in which they met with more success in the districts bordering upon the Mediterranean than in those adjoining the Bay of Biscay. These events, although in themselves important and interesting, would usurp a disproportionate place in this history. While Condé was absent from the vicinity of the capital, however, a body of six thousand troops, drawn from the army of the viscounts, under Mouvans and other experienced southern leaders, undertook a hazardous march from Dauphiny, intending to join the prince's army at Orleans.495 The cities were in the possession of the enemy, the fords were carefully guarded, the entire country was hostile. But the perils which might have deterred less resolute men only enhanced the glory of the success of the gallant Huguenots. Abandoned by a considerable number of their comrades, who preferred a life of plunder to a fatiguing journey under arms, they met (on the eighth of January, 1568) and defeated, with a force consisting almost exclusively of infantry, the cavalry which the governor of Auvergne and the local nobility had assembled near the village of Cognac496 to dispute their passage. Continuing their march, they reached Orleans in time to relieve that city, to whose friendly protection against the Roman Catholic bands of Martinengo and Richelieu that infested its neighborhood and threatened its capture Condé and the other Huguenot leaders of the north had entrusted their wives and children.497
Siege of Chartres.
Having stopped a brief time to rest the soldiers after the protracted march, the viscounts turned their victorious arms against the city of Blois. After the surrender of this place, they had proceeded down the valley of the Loire, and were about to take Montrichard, on the Cher, when recalled by Condé. The prince had by forced marches anticipated the army of Anjou, resolving to strike a blow which should be felt at the hostile capital itself, and had selected Chartres, an important city about fifty miles in a south-westerly direction from Paris, as the most convenient place to besiege.498 Rapid, however, as had been his advance – and a part of his army had travelled sixty miles in two days – the enemy had sufficient notice of his intention to throw into the city a small force of soldiers; and when Condé arrived before the walls (on the twenty-fourth of February, 1568), he found the place prepared to sustain an attack, in which the courage of the assailants was equalled by the skill and resolution of the defenders. As usual, the Huguenots were badly off for artillery; the united armies could only muster five siege-pieces and four light culverines. "For, although the Catholics esteem the Huguenots to be 'fiery' men," says a quaint old writer, who was as ready with his sword as with his pen, "they have always been poorly provided with such implements. Nor have they, like the former, a Saint Anthony, who, they say, presides over the element in question."499
The operations of the siege of Chartres were interrupted by fresh negotiations for peace. Half a year had the flames of war been desolating the fairest parts of France; yet the court was no nearer the attainment of its ends than at the outbreak of hostilities. If the Roman Catholic forces had been swollen to about forty thousand men, they were confronted by a Huguenot army of twenty-eight or thirty thousand men in the very neighborhood of the capital. The voice of prudence dictated an immediate settlement of the dispute before more lives were sacrificed, more towns and villages destroyed, more treasure squandered. Catharine, reigning supreme under her son's name, with her usual inconstancy of purpose, was ready to exchange the war, into which she had plunged France by lending too willing an ear to the suggestions of Philip of Spain, as they came to her through the Cardinal of Lorraine and others, and which had produced only bloodshed, devastation of the kingdom, and deeper depression of the finances, for the peace to which Michel de l'Hospital, her better genius, was constantly urging her by every consideration of policy and justice.
Chancellor Michel de l'Hospital's memorial.
In a paper, wherein about this time the chancellor committed to writing the arguments he had often ineffectually employed to persuade the king and his mother, he combats with patriotic indignation the flimsy pretexts of which the priests and the Spaniard made use in pressing the continuance of hostilities. "'The king has more men than the Huguenots.' True, but we find twice as many battles on record gained by the smaller as by the greater number; in consequence of which fact all princes and nations have recognized the truth that victory is the gift of God. 'The king's cause is the more just.' Grant it – yet God makes use of such instruments as He wills to punish our iniquities – the Babylonians, for instance, of old, the Turks in our own days. The Huguenots have thus far succeeded beyond all expectation. They have little money, but what they have they use well, and they can get more. Their devotion to their cause is conspicuous. They are not a rabble hastily gotten together, which has risen imprudently, in disorder, without a leader, without discipline. They are experienced, resolute, desperate warriors, with plans formed long ago – men ready to risk everything for the attainment of their matured designs. Necessity and despair render them docile and wonderfully subject to discipline; and with this cooperates the high esteem they have conceived of their leaders, whose ambition is restrained, whose union is cemented by the same necessity which the ancients called 'the bond of concord.' On the contrary, the king's camp is rent by quarrels, envy, and rivalry; ambition is unbridled, avarice reigns supreme. With the termination of so wretched a war, there will shine forth a joyous and blessed peace, which I can justly term a 'precious conquest,' since it will render his Majesty redoubtable to all Europe, which has learned the greatness of the two powers which the king will restore to his own subjection.
"The true method of breaking up the leagues of the Huguenots is to remove the necessity for forming them. This must be done by treating the Huguenots no longer as enemies, but as friends. For, if we examine carefully into the matter, we shall find that hitherto they have been dealt with as rebels; and this has compelled them to resort to all means of self-preservation. This has placed arms in their hands; this has engendered the horrible desolation of France. For the intrigues set on foot against them in all quarters were conducted with so little attempt at secrecy – the disfavor was so evident, the disdain was so apparent, the threats of the rupture of the Edict of Pacification and of the publication of the decrees of the Council of Trent were so open, and the injustice of their handling was so manifest, that they had been too dull and stupid, had they not avoided the treachery in store for them.500 Even brute beasts perceive the coming of the storm, and seek the covert; let us not find fault if men, perceiving it, arm themselves for the encounter. Our menaces have been the messengers of our plots, as truly as the lightning is the messenger of the thunderbolt. We have shown them our preparatives; let us, therefore, cease to wonder that they stand ready to start on the first intimation of danger.501 When they see that they have no longer anything to fear, they will certainly return to their accustomed occupations."502
Edict of Pacification, Longjumeau, March 23, 1568.
L'Hospital was right. The Huguenots wanted nothing but security of person and conscience – the latter even more than the former. And they were ready to lay down their arms so soon as the court could bring itself to concede the restoration of the Edict of Amboise, without the restrictive ordinances and interpretations which had shorn it of most of its value. On this basis negotiations now recommenced. The more prudent Huguenots suggested that the party ought to receive at the king's hands some of the cities in their possession, to be held as pledges for the execution of the articles of the compact. But Charles and his counsellors resented the proposal as insulting to the dignity of the crown,503 and the Huguenots, not yet fully appreciating the fickleness or treachery of the court, did not press the demand – a fatal weakness, soon to be atoned for by the speedy renewal of the war on the part of the Roman Catholics.504 After brief consultation the terms of peace were agreed upon, and were incorporated in the royal edict of the twenty-third of March, 1568, known, from the name of the place where it was signed, as the "Edict of Longjumeau." The cardinal provisions were few: they re-established the supremacy of the Edict of Amboise, expressly repealing all the interpretations that infringed upon it; and permitted the nobles, who under that law had been allowed to have religious exercises in their castles, to admit strangers as well as their own vassals to the services of the reformed worship. Condé and his followers were, at the same time, recognized as good and faithful servants of the crown, and a general amnesty was pronounced covering all acts of hostility, levy of troops, coining of money, and similar offences. On the other hand, the Huguenots bound themselves to disband and lay down their arms, to surrender the places they held, to renounce foreign alliances, and to eschew in future all meetings other than those religious gatherings permitted under the last peace. The new edict was not a final and irrevocable law, but was granted "until, by God's grace, all the king's subjects should be reunited in the profession of one and the same religion."505
Condé favors and Coligny opposes the peace.
The Huguenots gained by this peace all their immediate demands, and so far the edict might be deemed satisfactory. But what better security had they for its observance more than they had had for the observance of that which had preceded it? Coligny, prudent and far-sighted, had shown himself as averse to concluding it without sufficient guarantees for its faithful execution, as he had been opposed to beginning the war a half-year before. The peace, he urged, was intended by the court only as a means of saving Chartres, and of afterward overwhelming the reformers;506 and he attempted to prove his assertions by the signal instances of bad faith which had provoked the recourse to arms. But Condé was impatient. If we may believe Agrippa d'Aubigné, his old love of pleasure was not without its influence;507 but he covered his true motives under the specious pretext afforded him by the Huguenot nobles, who, fatigued with the incessant toils of the campaign, reduced to straits by a warfare which they had carried on at their own expense, and longing to revisit homes which had been repeatedly threatened with desolation, had abandoned their standards and scattered to their respective provinces at the first mention of peace.508 François de la Noue, more charitable to the prince, regards the universal desire for peace, without much concern respecting its conditions, as the wild blast of a hurricane which the Huguenot captains could not resist if they would.509 When whole cornets of cavalry started without leave, before the siege of Chartres was actually raised, what could generals, deserted by volunteers who had come of their own accord and had served for six months without pay, expect to accomplish?
Was the court sincere?
A treacherous plot detected. The king indignant.
Was the peace of Longjumeau – "the patched-up peace," or "the short peace," as it was called; that "wicked little peace," as La Noue styles it510– a compact treacherously entered into by the court? This is the old, but constantly recurring question respecting every principal event of this unhappy period; and it is one that rarely admits of an easy or a simple answer. So far as the persons who had been chiefly instrumental in forwarding the negotiations which ended in the peace of Longjumeau were concerned, they were Chancellor L'Hospital and the Bishops of Orleans and Limoges – the most moderate members of the royal council,511 whose fair spirit was so conspicuous that for years they had been exposed to insult and open hostility as supposed Huguenots. Nothing is clearer than that the purpose of these men was the sincere and entire re-establishment of peace on a lasting foundation. The arguments of L'Hospital which I have laid before the reader furnish sufficient proof. This party had, through the force of circumstances, temporarily obtained the ascendancy in the council, and now had the ear of the queen mother. But there were by the side of its representatives at the council-board men of an entirely different stamp – advocates of persecution, of extermination; a few, from conscientious motives, preferring, with Alva, a kingdom ruined in the attempt to root out heresy, to one flourishing, with heresy tolerated; a larger number – and Cardinal Lorraine, who had now resumed his seat and his influence, must be classed with these – counting upon deriving personal advantage from the supremacy of the papal faction. It is equally manifest that this party could have acquiesced in the peace, which again formally acknowledged the principle of religious toleration, only with the design of embracing the first favorable opportunity for crushing the Huguenots, when scattered and disarmed. Their desires, at least, deceived no one of ordinary perspicacity. Indeed, the peace came near failing to go into effect at all, in consequence of the discovery of the fact that a "privy council" had been held in the Louvre, to which none but sworn enemies of the Huguenots were admitted, "wherein was conspired a surprise of Orleans, Soissons, Rochelle, and Auxerre," to be executed by four designated leaders, while the Protestants were laying down their arms. In an age of salaried spies, it is not astonishing that by ten o'clock the next morning the whole plot was betrayed to Cardinal Châtillon, who immediately sent word to stay the publication of the peace. When Charles heard of it, we are told that he swore, by the faith of a prince, that, if there had been any such conspiracy, it had been formed wholly without his knowledge, and, laying his hand on his breast, said: "This is the cardinal and Gascoigne's practice. In spite of them, I will proceed with the peace;" and, commanding pen and ink to be brought, he wrote Condé a letter promising a good and sincere observance of the articles agreed upon.512
Short-sightedness of Catharine.
But, besides the two parties, and wavering between them – fluctuating in her own purposes, as false to her own plans as she was to her promises, with no principles either of morality or of government, intent only on grasping power, the enemy of every one that stood in the way of this, even if it were her son or her daughter – was that enigma, Catharine de' Medici, whose secret has escaped so many simply because they looked for something deep and recondite, when the solution lay almost upon the very surface. Was Catharine sincerely in favor of peace? She was never sincere. Her Macchiavellian training, the enforced hypocrisy of her married life, the trimming policy she had thought herself compelled to pursue during the minority of the kings, her two sons, had eaten from her soul, even to its root, truthfulness – that pure plant of heaven's sowing. Loving peace only because it freed her from the fears, the embarrassments, the vexations of war – not because she valued human life or human happiness – she embraced it as a welcome expedient to enable her to escape the present perplexities of her position. It is improbable that Catharine distinctly premeditated a treacherous blow at the Huguenots, simply because she rarely premeditated anything very long. I am aware that this estimate of the queen is quite at variance with the views which have obtained the widest currency; but it is the estimate which history, carefully read, seems to require us to adopt. Catharine's plans were proverbially narrow in their scope, never extending much beyond the immediate present. After the catastrophe, which had perhaps been the result of the impulse of the moment, she was not, however, unwilling to accept the homage of those who deemed it a high compliment to her prudence to praise her consummate dissimulation. She probably entered upon the peace of Longjumeau without any settled purpose of treachery – unless that state of the soul be in itself treachery that has no fixed intention of upright dealing. But she had not, in adopting the advice of Chancellor de l'Hospital, renounced the policy of the Cardinal of Lorraine, in case that policy should at some future time appear to be advantageous; and it was much to be feared that the contingency referred to would soon arrive. Catharine, not less than Charles himself, resented "the affair of Meaux" of the preceding September. It was studiously held up to their eyes by the enemies of the Huguenots as an attempt upon the honor, and indeed even upon the personal liberty and life of their Majesties. Might not Catharine and Charles be tempted to retaliate by trying the effect of a surprise upon the Huguenots themselves?
Imprudence of the Huguenots.
The Huguenots had certainly been grossly imprudent in putting themselves at the mercy of a woman whom they had greatly offended, and whose natural place, according to those mysterious sympathies which bind men of similar natures, was with their adversaries. They had been warned by their secret friends at court, some of them by Roman Catholic relatives.513 But the caution was little heeded. It was not long514 before those who had been the most strenuous advocates of peace began to admit that the draught they had put to their own lips, and now must needs drink, was likely to prove little to their taste.515
Judicial murder of Rapin, at Toulouse.
The parliaments made serious objections to the reception of the edict. Toulouse was, as usual, pre-eminent for its intolerance. The king sent Rapin, a Protestant gentleman who had served with distinction under Condé in Languedoc, to carry the law to the parliament, and require its official recognition. The choice was unfortunate, for it awakened all the hatred of a court proverbial for its hostility to the Reformation. An accusation of matters quite foreign to his mission was trumped up against Rapin, and, contrary to all the principles of justice, and notwithstanding the privileged character he bore as the king's envoy, he was arrested, condemned to death, and executed. So atrocious a crime might perhaps have been punished, had not the new commotions to which we shall soon be obliged to pay attention, intervened and screened the culprits from their righteous retribution.516 Not content with murdering Rapin, the Parliament of Toulouse still refused to register the edict, and not less than four successive orders were sent by the king before his refractory judges yielded an unwilling consent, even then annexing restrictive clauses which they took care to insert in their secret records.517
Seditious preachers and mobs.
Again Roman Catholic pulpits resounded, as they did whenever any degree of toleration was accorded the Protestants, with denunciations of Catharine, of Charles, of all in the council who had advocated such pernicious views. Again Ahab and Jezebel appear; but while Catharine is always Jezebel, it is Charles that now figures, in place of poor Antoine of Navarre, as Ahab.518 Again, in the struggle of royalty with priests and monks breathing sedition, it is the churchman who by his arrogance carries off the victory with the common people, while from the sensible he receives merited contempt.519 So fine a text as the edict afforded for spirited Lenten discourses did not present itself every day, and the clergy of France improved it so well that the passions of their flocks were inflamed to the utmost.520 Except where their numbers were so large as to command respect, the Protestants scarcely dared to return to their homes.
Riot when the edict is published at Rouen.
The very mention of the peace, with its favorable terms for the Protestants, was enough to stir up the anger of the ignorant populace. When the Parliament of Rouen, after agreeing to the Edict of Longjumeau in private session, threw open its doors (on the third of April, 1568) to give it official publication, a rabble that had come purposely to create a tumult, interrupted the reading with horrible imprecations against the peace, the Huguenots, the edicts, the "prêches," and the magistrates who approved such impious acts. The presidents and counsellors fled for their lives. The populace, as though inspired by some evil spirit, raged and committed havoc in the "palais de justice." The mob opened the prisons and liberated eight or ten Roman Catholics; then flocked to the ecclesiastical dungeons and would have massacred the Protestants that were still confined there, had these not found means to ransom their lives with money. It was not until six days later that the royal edict was read, in the presence of a large military force called in to preserve order.521
Treatment of the returning Huguenots.
In spite of the provisions of the edict, the Huguenots wandered about in the open country, avoiding the cities where they were likely to meet with insult and violence, if not death. The Protestants of Nogent, Provins, and Bray hesitated for three months, and then we are told that each man watched his opportunity and sought to enter when his Roman Catholic friends might be on guard to defend him from the insolence of others.
At Provins.
But the sufferings of the Huguenot burgess were not ended when he was once more in his own house. He was studiously treated as a rebel. Every movement was suspicious. A Roman Catholic chronicler, who has preserved in his voluminous diary many of the details that enable us to restore something of its original coloring to the picture of the social and political condition of the times, vividly portrays the misfortunes of the unfortunate Huguenots of Provins. They were not numerous. One by one, thirty or forty had stealthily crept into town, experiencing no other injury than the coarse raillery of their former neighbors. Thereupon the municipal government met and deliberated upon the measures of police to be taken "in order to hold the Huguenots in check and in fear, and to avoid any treachery they might intend to put into practice by the introduction of their brother Huguenots into the city to plunder and hold it by force." The determination arrived at was that each of the four captains should visit the Huguenot houses of his quarter, examine the inmates, and take all the weapons he found, giving a receipt to their owners. This was not the only humiliation to which the Protestants were subjected. A proclamation was published forbidding them from receiving any person into their houses, from meeting together under any pretext, from leaving their houses in the evening after seven o'clock in summer, or five in winter, from walking by day or night on the walls, or, indeed, from approaching within two arquebuse shots' distance of them – all upon pain of death! They could not even go into the country without a passport from the bailiff and the captain of the gate, the penalty of transgressing this regulation being banishment. No wonder that the Huguenots were irritated, and that most of them wished that they had not returned.522 Since, however, a royal ordinance of the nineteenth of May expressly enjoined upon all fugitive Huguenots to re-enter the cities to which they belonged, and in case of refusal commanded the magistrates to raise a force and attack them as presumptive robbers and enemies of the public peace,523 they were perhaps quite as safe within the walls as roaming about outside of them.
Expedition and fate of De Cocqueville.
Early in the summer an event occurred on the northern frontier, which, although in itself of little weight, augmented the suspicions which the Protestants began to entertain of the Spanish tendencies of the government. One Seigneur de Cocqueville, with a party of French and Flemish Huguenots, had crossed the northern boundary and invaded Philip's Netherland provinces. He had, however, been driven back into France. As he was believed to have acted under Condé's instructions, that prince was requested by Charles to inform him whether Cocqueville were in his service. When Condé disavowed him, and declined all responsibility for the movement, Marshal Cossé was directed to march against Cocqueville, and, on the eighteenth of July, the Huguenot chieftain was captured at the town of Saint Valéry, in Picardy, where he had taken refuge. Of twenty-five hundred followers, barely three hundred are said to have been spared. In order to please Alva, the Flemings received no quarter. The leaders, Cocqueville, Vaillant, and Saint Amand, were brought to Paris and gibbeted on the Place de Grève.524
Attitude of the government suspicious.
Garrisons and interpretative ordinances.
The central government itself gave the gravest grounds for fear and suspicion. The Huguenots had promptly disbanded. They had lost no time in dismissing their German allies, who, retiring with well-filled pockets to the other side of the Rhine, seemed alone to have profited by the intestine commotions of France.525 On the contrary, the Roman Catholic forces showed no disposition to disarm. It is true that, in the first fervor of the ascendancy of the peace party, Catharine countermanded a levy of five thousand Saxons, much to the annoyance of Castelnau, who had by his unwearied diligence brought them in hot haste to Réthel on the Aisne, only to learn that the preliminaries of peace were on the point of being concluded, and that the troopers were expected to retrace their steps to Saxony.526 But the Swiss and Italian soldiers, as well as the French gens-d'armes, were for the most part retained. To Humières, who commanded for the king in Péronne, Charles wrote an explanation of his course: "Inasmuch as there are sometimes turbulent spirits so constituted that they neither can nor desire to accommodate themselves so soon to quiet, it has appeared to me extremely necessary to anticipate this difficulty, and act in such a manner that, force and authority remaining on my side, I may be able to keep in check those who might so far forget themselves as to set on foot new disturbances and be the cause of seditious uprising."527 Large garrisons were thus provided for those towns which had rendered themselves conspicuous in the defence of the Huguenots during the late war, and the sufferings of the Protestants, upon whom, in preference to their Roman Catholic neighbors, the insolent soldiers were quartered, were terrible beyond description.528 The horrors of the "dragonnades" of the reign of Louis the Fourteenth were rivalled by these earlier military persecutions. Multitudes were despoiled of their goods, hundreds lost their lives at the hands of their cruel guests. France assumed the aspect of a great camp, with sentries posted everywhere to maintain it in peace against some suspected foe. The sea-ports, the bridges, the roads were guarded; the Huguenots themselves were placed under a species of surveillance. Nor were the old resorts of the court forgotten. Again interpretative ordinances were called in to abrogate a portion of the law itself. Charles declared in a new proclamation that he had not intended by the Edict of Longjumeau to include Auvergne, nor any district belonging as an appanage to his mother, to Anjou, Alençon, or the Bourbon princes, in the toleration guaranteed by the edict. And thus a very considerable number of Protestants were by a single stroke of the pen stripped of the privileges solemnly accorded to them but a few weeks before.529 Other pledges were as shamelessly broken. The Huguenot gentlemen whom the court had attempted to punish by declaring them to have forfeited their honors and dignities, were not reinstated according to the terms of the edict.530
Oppression by royal governors.
The conduct of individual governors furnished still greater occasion for complaint and alarm. The Duke of Nemours, who, in marrying Anne of Este, Guise's widow, two years before, seemed also to have espoused all the hatred which the Lorraines felt for Protestantism, and for the family of the Châtillons, its most prominent and faithful defenders, was governor of the provinces of Lyonnais and Dauphiny. This insubordinate nobleman loudly proclaimed his intention to disregard the Edict of Longjumeau, as opposed to the Roman Catholic Church and to the king's honor. In vain did the Protestants, who were numerous in the city of Lyons, demand to be allowed to enjoy the two places of worship they had possessed, before the late troubles, within the city walls. The duke would not listen to their just claims, and the court, in answer to their appeals, only responded that the king did not approve of the holding of Protestant services inside of cities, and that a place would shortly be assigned for their use in the vicinity.531 Unrebuked by the queen or her son for his flagrant disobedience, Nemours received nothing but plaudits from the fanatical adherents of the religion he pretended to maintain, and was honored by the Pope, Pius the Fifth (on the fifth of July, 1568), with a special brief, in which he was praised for being the first to set a resplendent example of resistance to the execution of an unchristian peace.532