Aid sought from England.
Generous response of the English people.
Bishop Jewel's noble plea.
The Prince of Condé received more immediate and substantial assistance from beyond the Channel. When Tavannes undertook to capture Condé and Coligny at Noyers, it was in contemplation to seize Odet, Cardinal of Châtillon, the admiral's elder brother,630 in his episcopal palace at Beauvais. He received, however, timely warning, and made his escape through Normandy to England, where Queen Elizabeth received him at her court with marks of distinguished favor.631 His efforts to enlist the sympathies and assistance of the English monarch in behalf of his persecuted countrymen were seconded by Cavaignes, who soon arrived as an envoy from Condé. Cavaignes was instructed to ask material aid – money to meet the engagements made with the Duke of Deux-Ponts, and ships with their armaments to increase the small flotilla of privateersmen, which the Protestants had, for the first time, sent out from La Rochelle. Soon after appeared the vice-admiral, Chastelier-Pourtaut de Latour, under whose command the flotilla had been placed, bearing a letter from the Queen of Navarre to her sister of England, in which she was entreated to espouse a quarrel that had arisen not from ambition or insubordination, but from the desire, in the first place, to defend religion, and, next, to rescue a king who was being hurried on to ruin by treacherous advisers.632 To these reiterated appeals, and to the solicitations for aid addressed to them by other refugees from papal violence who had found their way to the shores of Great Britain, the subjects of the queen returned a more gracious answer than the queen herself. The exiled Huguenot ministers were received with open arms by men who regarded them as champions of a common Christianity,633 and some Protestant noblemen had in a few weeks after their arrival raised for their relief, the sum – considerable for those days – of one hundred pounds sterling. Not only the laity, but even the clergy of the Church of England, took a tender pride in receiving the "few servants of God" – some three or four thousand – whom Providence had thrown upon their shores. They welcomed them to their cities, and resented the attempts of Pope and king to secure their extradition. Could the Pope, who harbored six thousand usurers and twenty thousand courtesans in his own city of Rome, call upon the Queen of England to deny the right of asylum to "the poor exiles of Flanders and France, and other countries, who either lost or left behind them all that they had – goods, lands, and houses – not for adultery, or theft, or treason, but for the profession of the Gospel?" "It pleased God," wrote Bishop Jewel, "here to cast them on land: the queen of her gracious pity hath granted them harbor. Is it become so heinous a thing to show mercy?" "They are our brethren," continued their noble-minded advocate, "they live not idly. If they have houses of us, they pay rent for them. They hold not our grounds but by making due recompense. They beg not in our streets, nor crave anything at our hands, but to breathe our air, and to see our sun. They labor truly, they live sparefully. They are good examples of virtue, travail, faith, and patience. The towns in which they abide are happy, for God doth follow them with His blessings."634
Misgivings of Queen Elizabeth.
Her double-dealing and effrontery.
Queen Elizabeth was less decidedly in their favor. Her court swarmed with creatures of the Spanish king, who openly gloried in the victories of the Guises. The ambassadors of Charles and Philip strove to the utmost to render the Huguenots odious to her mind, and to give a false coloring to the war raging in France. Her jealousy of the royal prerogative was appealed to, by the repeated declaration that the Protestants of France were turbulent men, who, for the slightest occasion and upon the most slender suspicion, were ready to have recourse to arms – enthusiasts, who could not be dissuaded from rash enterprises; sectaries, who employed their consistories and their organized form of church government to levy men, to collect arms, munitions of war, and money – rebels, in fine, who could at any moment rise within an hour, and surprise his most Christian Majesty's cities and provinces. The abrogation of religious liberty was, therefore, not merely advisable, but absolutely necessary. Elizabeth was reminded, also, of her own intolerant measures toward the Roman Catholics of her dominions; and she was assured that her fears of a combined attack on all the Protestants were devoid of foundation – that Charles had neither taken up arms, nor revoked the edicts of toleration at the desire of any other prince, still less because of the instance of any private individuals, but of his own free will, in order to secure his kingdom.635 These arguments, if they did not convince Elizabeth, gave her a fair excuse for trying to maintain an appearance of non-intervention, which the perilous position of England seemed to her to dictate. With the problem of Scotland and Mary Stuart yet unsolved – with a very considerable part of the lords and commons of her own kingdom scarcely concealing their affection for the Romish faith – she deemed it hazardous to provoke too far the enmity of Philip the Second, her brother-in-law, and a late suitor for her hand. As if any better way could be found of warding off from her island the assaults of Philip than by rendering efficient aid to Condé and Orange! As if England's dissimulation and refusal to support the "Huguenots" and the "Gueux" in any other than an underhand way were likely to retard the sailing of the great expedition that was to turn the Pope's impotent threats against the "bastard of England" into fearful realities! As if Protestantism, everywhere menaced, could hope for glorious success in any other path than a bold and combined defence!636 Unfortunately Elizabeth was fairly launched on a sea of deceitful diplomacy, and not even Cecil could hold her back. She gave La Mothe Fénélon, the French envoy, assurances that would have been most satisfactory could he have closed his eyes to the facts that gave these assurances the lie direct. At one time, with an appearance of sincerity, she told the Spanish ambassador, it is true, that she could not abandon the family of Châtillon, who had long been her friends, whilst she saw the Guises, the declared enemies of her person and state, in such authority, both in the council and the field; that she could not feel herself secure, especially since a member of the French council had inadvertently dropped the hint that, after everything had been settled at home, Charles would turn his arms against England. She had rather, consequently, anticipate than be anticipated.637 But to La Mothe Fénélon himself she maintained unblushingly that, so far from helping the French Protestants, "there was nothing in the world of which she entertained such horror as of seeing a body rising in rebellion against its head, and that she had no notion of associating herself with such a monster."638 And again and again she protested that she was not intriguing in France – that she had sent the Huguenots no assistance.639 At the same time Admiral Winter had been despatched with four or five ships of war and a fleet of merchantmen, to carry to La Rochelle, in answer to the request of Condé and of the Queen of Navarre, 100,000 "angelots" and six pieces of cannon and ammunition.640 When the ambassador was commissioned to lay before the queen a remonstrance against this flagrant breach of neutrality, and to demand an answer, within fifteen days, respecting her intentions,641 Elizabeth, in declaring for peace, had the effrontery to assert that the assistance in cannon and powder (for she denied that any money was left at La Rochelle) was involuntary, not only with her, but even with the admiral himself. Having dropped into the harbor to obtain the wine and other commodities with which his fleet of merchantmen were to be freighted, Admiral Winter was approached by the governor of the city, who so strongly pressed him to sell or lend them some pieces of artillery and some powder, which they could not do without, that, considering that he, as well as the ships, were in their power, he thought it necessary to comply with a part of their requests, although it was against his will.642 Such were the paltry falsehoods to which Elizabeth's insincere course naturally and directly led. La Mothe Fénélon was well aware that Admiral Winter, besides his public commission, had been furnished with a secret order, authorizing him to assist La Rochelle, signed by Elizabeth's own hand, without which the wary old seaman absolutely refused to go, doubtless fearing that he might be sacrificed when it suited his mistress's crooked policy. What the order contained was no mystery to the French envoy.643 Neither party in this solemn farce was deceived, but both wanted peace. Catharine would have been even more vexed than surprised had Elizabeth confessed the truth, and so necessitated a resort to open hostilities.644 As the honor of the government was satisfied, even by the notoriously false story of Winter's compulsion, there was no necessity for pressing the question of its veracity to an inconvenient length.
Fruitless sieges and plots.
The cold winter of 1568-1569 passed without signal events, excepting the great mortality among the soldiers of both camps from an epidemic disease – consequent upon exposure to the extraordinary severity of the season – and the fruitless siege of the city of Sancerre by the Roman Catholics. Five weeks were the troops of Martinengo detained before the walls of this small place, whose convenient proximity to the upper Loire rendered it valuable to the Huguenots, not only as a means of facilitating the introduction of their expected German auxiliaries into central France, but still more as a refuge for their allies in the neighboring provinces. The bravery of the besieged made them superior to the forces sent to dislodge them. They repulsed, with great loss to their enemies, two successive assaults on different parts of the works, and, at last, gaining new courage from the advantages they had obtained, assumed the offensive, and forced Martinengo and the captains by whom he had been reinforced to retire humiliated from the hopeless undertaking.645 Meantime, in not less than three important cities which the Huguenots hoped to gain without striking a blow, the plans of those who were to have admitted the Protestants within the walls failed in the execution; and Dieppe, Havre, and Lusignan remained in the power of the Roman Catholic party.646
Growing superiority of Anjou's forces.
At the opening of the spring campaign the Prince of Condé found his position relatively to his opponents by no means so favorable as at the close of the previous year. His loss by disease equalled, his loss by desertion exceeded, that of the Duke of Anjou; for it was impossible for troops serving at their own expense, however zealous they might be for the common cause, to be kept together, especially during a season of inaction, so easily as the forces paid out of the royal treasury. Besides this, the Duke of Anjou had received considerable reinforcements. Two thousand two hundred German reiters, under the Rhinegrave and Bassompierre, had arrived in his camp. They were the first division of a force of five thousand six hundred men who had crossed the Rhine, near the end of December, under Philibert, Marquis of Baden, and others. The young Count de Tende brought three thousand foot soldiers from Provence and Dauphiny, and smaller bodies came in from other parts of France.647 Condé, on the contrary, had received scarcely any accessions to his troops. The "viscounts," whose arrival had turned the scale at the conclusion of the last war, lingered in Guyenne, with an army of six thousand foot soldiers and a well-appointed cavalry force, preferring to protect the Protestant territories about Montauban and Castres, and to ravage the lands of their enemies, as far as to the gates of Toulouse, rather than leave their homes unprotected and join Condé. A dispute respecting precedence had not been without some influence in causing the delay, and M. de Piles, who had been twice sent to urge them forward, had only succeeded in bringing a corps of one thousand two hundred arquebusiers and two hundred horse.648 It was now expected, however, that realizing the vital importance of opposing to Anjou a powerful Protestant army, the viscounts would abandon their short-sighted policy; and it was the intention of Condé and Coligny, after effecting a junction, to march with the combined armies to meet the Duke of Deux-Ponts. Anticipating this plan, the court had despatched the Dukes of Aumale and of Nemours to guard the entrance into France from the side of Germany. There seemed to be danger that the precaution would prove ineffectual through the jealousy existing between the two leaders; but this danger Catharine attempted to avert by removing the royal court to Metz, where she could exert her personal influence in reconciling the ambitious rivals.649 In order to prevent the threatened union of Condé and the viscounts, the Duke of Anjou now left his winter quarters upon the Loire and moved southward. On the other hand, the Prince of Condé left Niort, and, pursuing a course nearly parallel, passed through St. Jean d'Angely to Saintes, thence diverging to Cognac, on the Charente.650
The armies meet on the Charente.
The Charente, although by no means one of the largest rivers of France, well deserves to be called one of the most capricious. For about a quarter of its length it runs in a northwesterly direction. At Civray it abruptly turns southward and flows in a meandering course as far as Angoulême, receiving on the way the waters of the Tardouère (Tardoire), and with it almost completely inclosing a considerable tract of land. At Angoulême, the old whim regaining supremacy, the Charente again bends suddenly westward, and finally empties into the ocean below Rochefort, through a narrow arm of the sea known as the Pertuis d'Antioche. The tract of country included between the river and the shores of the Bay of Biscay, comprising a large part of the provinces of Aunis and Saintonge, was in the undisputed possession of the Huguenots. They held the right bank of the river, and controlled the bridges. Here they intended to await the arrival of the viscounts. Jarnac, an important town on this side, a few miles above Cognac, Admiral Coligny with the advance guard of the prince's army had wrested from the enemy. They had also recovered Châteauneuf, a small place situated higher up, and midway between Jarnac and Angoulême.
In pursuance of his plan, the Duke of Anjou, after crossing the Charente near Ruffec, had moved around to the south side, determined to prevent the junction of the two Huguenot armies. Once more Châteauneuf fell into his hands; but the garrison, after retreating to the opposite bank, had destroyed the bridge behind them. This bridge the Roman Catholics set themselves at once to repair. At the same time they began the construction of a bridge of boats in the immediate vicinity. While these constructions were pushed forward with great vigor, the royal army marched down as far as Cognac and made a feint of attack, but retired after drawing from the walls a furious cannonade. It was now that prudence demanded that the Protestant army should withdraw from its advanced position with only the Charente between its vanguard and the far superior forces of the enemy. This was the advice of Coligny and of others in the council of war. But Condé prevented its prompt execution, exclaiming: "God forbid that it should ever be said that a Bourbon fled before his enemies!"651
Battle of Jarnac, March 13, 1569.
The bridges being now practicable, almost the whole army of Anjou was thrown across the Charente under cover of the darkness, during the night of the twelfth and thirteenth of March, only a small force remaining on the left bank to protect Châteauneuf and the passage. So skilfully was this movement effected that it escaped the observation even of those divisions of the Protestant army that were close to the point of crossing. When at length the admiral was advised that the enemy were in force on the northern bank, he at once issued the order to fall back toward Condé and the main body of the Huguenots. Unfortunately, the divisions of Coligny's command were scattered; some had been discontented with the posts assigned them, and had on their own responsibility exchanged them for others that better suited their fancy. The very command to concentrate was obeyed with little promptness, and the afternoon was more than half spent before Coligny, and D'Andelot, who was with him, could begin the retreat. Never was dilatoriness more ill-timed. The handful of men with the admiral, near the abbey and hamlet of Bassac, fought with desperation, but could not ward off the superior numbers of the enemy. La Noue, in command of the extreme rear, with great courage drove back the foremost of the Roman Catholics, but was soon overpowered and taken prisoner. His men were thrown in disorder upon D'Andelot, who, by an almost superhuman effort, not only sustained the shock, but retook and for a short time held the abbey. D'Andelot was, however, in turn forced to yield the ground.
Meantime Coligny had called upon Condé for assistance, and the prince, leaving his infantry to follow, had hurried back with the few horse that were within reach, and now took position on the left. But it was impossible for so unequal a struggle to continue long. The Huguenots were outflanked and almost enclosed between their adversaries and the Charente. It was a time for desperate and heroic venture. Coligny's forces had lost the ground which they had been contesting inch by inch about a raised causeway.
Condé himself had but three hundred knights. One of his arms he carried in a sling, because of a recent injury. To render his condition yet more deplorable, his thigh had just been broken, as he rode up, by a kick from the unmanageable horse of his brother-in-law, La Rochefoucauld. The prince was no coward. Turning to his little company of followers, he exclaimed: "My friends, true noblesse of France, here is the opportunity we have long wished for in vain! Our God is the God of Battles. He loves to be so called. He always declares Himself for the right, and never fails to succor those who serve Him. He will infallibly protect us, if, after having taken up arms for the liberty of our consciences, we put all our hope in Him. Come and let us complete what the first charges have begun; and remember in what a state Louis of Bourbon entered into the combat for Christ and for his native land!" Thus having spoken, he bent forward, and, at the head of his devoted band, and under an ensign bearing for device the figure of the Roman hero Marcus Curtius and the singularly appropriate motto, "Doux le peril pour Christ et le Pays," he dashed upon a hostile battalion eight hundred strong.652
Death of Louis, Prince of Condé.
The conflict was, in the judgment of that scarred old Huguenot warrior, Agrippa d'Aubigné, the sharpest and most obstinate in all the civil wars.653 At last Condé's horse was killed under him, and the prince was unable to extricate himself. The day was evidently lost, and Condé, calling two of the enemies' knights with whom he was acquainted, and the life of one of whom he had on a former occasion saved, raised his visor, made himself known, and surrendered. His captors pledged him their word that his life should be spared, and respectfully endeavored to raise him from the ground. Just at that moment another horseman rode up. It was Montesquiou, captain of Anjou's guards, who came directly from his master, and was charged – so it was said – with a secret commission. He drew a pistol as he approached, and, without inquiring into the terms of the capture, shot Condé in the back. The shot penetrated between the joints of his armor, and caused almost instantaneous death.
So perished a prince even more illustrious for his courage and intrepidity than for his exalted rank – a prince who had conscientiously espoused the reformed faith, and had felt himself constrained by his duty to his God and to his fellow-believers to assert the rights of the oppressed Huguenots against illegal persecution. "Our consolation," wrote Jeanne d'Albret a few weeks later, "is that he died on the true bed of honor, both for body and soul, for the service of his God and his king, and the quiet of his fatherland."654 So magnanimous a hero could not be insensible to the invasion of his claims as the representative of the family next in the succession to the Valois; but I cannot agree with those who believe that, in his assumption of arms in three successive wars, he was influenced solely, or even principally, by selfish or ambitious motives. His devotion to the cause which he had espoused was sincere and whole-souled. If his love of pleasure was a serious blot upon his character, let charity at least reflect upon the fearful corruption of the court in which he had been living from his childhood, and remember that if Condé yielded too readily to its fascinations, and fell into shameful excesses, he yet bore with meekness the pointed remonstrances of faithful friends, and in the end shook off the chains with which his enemies had endeavored to bind him fast.655 As a soldier, no one could surpass Condé for bravery.656 If his abilities as a general were not of the very first order, he had at least the good sense to adopt the plans of Gaspard de Coligny, the true hero of the first four civil wars. The relations between these two men were well deserving of admiration. On the part of Condé there was an entire absence of jealousy of the resplendent abilities and well-earned reputation of the admiral. On the part of Coligny there was an equal freedom from desire to supplant the prince either in the esteem of his followers or in military rank. Coligny was inflexible in his determination to accept no honors or distinctions that might appear to prejudice the respect due by a Châtillon to a prince of royal blood.657
The Prince of Condé was, unfortunately, not the only Huguenot leader murdered in cold blood at the battle of Jarnac. Chastelier-Pourtaut de Latour, who, having lately brought his flotilla back in safety to La Rochelle, had hastened to take the field with the Protestants, was recognized after his capture as the same nobleman who, five years before, had killed the Sieur de Charry at Paris, and was killed in revenge by some of Charry's friends. Robert Stuart, the brave leader descended from the royal house of Scotland, who was said to have slain Constable Montmorency in the battle of St. Denis, was assassinated after he had been talking with the Duke of Anjou, within hearing and almost in sight of the duke, by one of the constable's adherents.658
Henry of Navarre remonstrates against the perfidy.
These flagrant violations of good faith incurred severe animadversion. A letter is extant, written by young Prince Henry of Navarre, or in his name, to Henry of Anjou, on the twelfth of July, 1569, about four months after the battle of Jarnac. He begins by answering the aspersions cast upon his mother and himself, and by asserting that, if his age (which, however, is not much less than that of Anjou) disqualifies him from passing a judgment upon the present state of affairs, he has lived long enough to recognize the instigators of the new troubles as the enemies of the public weal. It is not Henry of Navarre, whose honors and dignities are all dependent upon the preservation of France, who seeks the ruin of the kingdom; but, rather, they seek its ruin who, in their eagerness to usurp the crown, have gone the length of making genealogical searches to prove their possession of a title superior to that of the Valois, "and have learned how to sell the blood of the house of France against itself,659 constraining the king, as it were, to make use of his left arm to cut off his right, so as more easily to wrest his sceptre from him afterward." In reply to the statement of Anjou that Stuart alone was killed in cold blood, Henry of Navarre affirms that he can enumerate many others.660 "But I shall content myself with merely reminding you of the manner in which the late Prince of Condé was treated, inasmuch as it touches you, Sir, and because it is a matter well known and free of doubt. For his death has left to posterity an example of as noted treachery, bad faith and cruelty as was ever shown, seeing that those, Sir, who murdered him could not be deterred from the perpetration of so wicked an act by the respect they owed to the greatness of your blood, to which he had the honor of being so nearly related, and that they dealt with him as they would have done with the most miserable soldier of the whole army."661
The Huguenot loss in the battle of Jarnac was surprisingly small in the number of men killed. It is probable that, including prisoners, they lost about four hundred men, or about twice as many as the Roman Catholics.662 But the loss was in effect much more considerable. The dead and the prisoners were the flower of the French nobility. Among those that had fallen into the enemy's hands were the bastard son of Antoine of Navarre, François de la Noue, Soubise, La Loue, and others of nearly equal distinction. Of infantry the Huguenot army lost but few men, as the regiments, with the exception of that of Pluviaut, did not enter the engagement at all. Coming up too late, and finding themselves in danger of falling into the hands of the enemy's victorious cavalry, they evacuated Jarnac, crossed to the left bank of the Charente, and, after breaking down the bridge, retreated leisurely toward Cognac. Admiral Coligny, meantime, upon whom the command in chief now devolved, diverged to the right, and conducted the cavalry in safety to Saintes. The Roman Catholic army, apparently satisfied with the success it had gained, made no attempt at pursuit.
The Duke of Anjou entered Jarnac in triumph. With him was brought the corpse of the Prince of Condé, tied to an ass's back, to be afterward exposed by a pillar of the house where Anjou lodged – the butt 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 Condé 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 assassination.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 Vendôme.666
Exaggerated bulletins.
Henry of Anjou was not inclined to suffer his victory to pass 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. Condé'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 document 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 ambassadors in England and Switzerland, for the Parliaments of Paris, Bordeaux, and Toulouse, the "prévôt des marchands," and the "échevins" of the capital, and others.667
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 God 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 God's enemies, who had spared neither God nor him." "In no other way," he added, "will you be able to appease God, than by avenging the injuries done to God 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 God, 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 God's patience to anger; the king must visit condign punishment upon the enemies of God 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 God, 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 nobles with the king your brother, to escape the penalties they deserve, it is your duty, in view of your piety to God 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