Anxiety of Cardinal Châtillon.
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 assuring him that she feared "marvellously" that these well-known mischief-makers would lure him into "a patched-up-peace" —une paix fourrée– 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 Châtillon, when sounded by the French ambassador 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 associates 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
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 Téligny 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 document the usual stipulations respecting amnesty, the prohibition of insults and recriminations, and kindred topics. The liberty of religious profession was guaranteed. Respecting worship according to the Protestant rites, the provision was of the following character. All nobles entitled 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 nobles, 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 principal 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 worship 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 Condé 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 restitution 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 Grenoble; 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 Rochelle, Montauban, Cognac, and La Charité – to serve as places of refuge; and the Princes of Navarre and Condé, 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
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 astonishing, 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 ambassador were indignant. Both Pius and Philip had bitterly opposed the negotiations of the early part of the year. Now their ambassadors made a fruitless attempt to put off the evil day of peace; the Spanish ambassador 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
"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 circumstance 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 Malassise, conferred upon the new compact the ungracious appellation of "the limping and unsettled peace" – "la paix boiteuse et mal-assise."791
CHAPTER XVII.
THE PEACE OF SAINT GERMAIN
Sincerity of the peace.
A problem of cardinal importance here confronts us, in the inquiry whether the peace which had at length dawned upon France was or was not concluded in good faith by the young king and his advisers. Was the treaty a necessity forced upon the court by the losses of men and treasure sustained during three years of almost continual civil conflict? Were the queen mother and those in whose hands rested the chief control of affairs, really tired of a war in which nothing was to be gained and everything was in jeopardy, a war whose most brilliant successes had been barren of substantial fruits, and had, in the sequel, been stripped of the greater part of their glory by the masterly conduct of a defeated opponent? Or, was the peace only a prelude to the massacre – a skilfully devised snare to entrap incautious and credulous enemies?
The latter view is that which was entertained by the majority of the contemporaries of the events, who, whether friends or foes of Charles and Catharine, whether Papists or Protestants, could not avoid reading the treaty of pacification in the light of the occurrences of the "bloody nuptials." The Huguenot author of the "Tocsin against the murderers" and Capilupi, author of the appreciative "Stratagem of Charles the Ninth" – however much they may disagree upon other points – unite in regarding the royal edict as a piece of treachery from beginning to end. It was even believed by many of the most intelligent Protestants that the massacre was already perfected in the minds of its authors so far back as the conference of Bayonne, five years before the peace of St. Germain, in accordance with the suggestions of Philip the Second and of Alva. This last supposition, however, has been overthrown by the discovery of the correspondence of Alva himself, in which he gives an account of the discussions which he held with Catharine de' Medici on that memorable occasion. For we have seen that, far from convincing the queen mother of the necessity for adopting sanguinary measures to crush the Huguenots, the duke constantly deplores to his master the obstinacy of Catharine in still clinging to her own views of toleration. It seems equally clear that the peace of St. Germain was no part of the project of a contemplated massacre of the Protestants. The Montmorencies, not the Guises, were in power, and were responsible for it. The influence of the former had become paramount, and that of the latter had waned. The Cardinal of Lorraine had left the court in disgust and retired to his archbishopric of Rheims, when he found that the policy of war, to which he and his family were committed, was about to be abandoned. Even in the earlier negotiations he had no part, while the queen mother and the moderate Morvilliers were omnipotent.792 And when Francis Walsingham made his appearance at the French court, to congratulate Charles the Ninth upon the restoration of peace, he found his strongest reasons of hope for its permanence, next to the disposition and the necessities of the king, in the royal "misliking toward the house of Guise, who have been the nourishers of these wars,"793 and in the increase of the royal "favor to Montmorency, a chief worker of this peace, who now carrieth the whole sway of the court, and is restored to the government of Paris."794
At home and abroad, the peace was equally opposed by those who could not have failed to be its warmest advocates had it been treacherously designed. We have already seen that both Pope Pius the Fifth, and the King of Spain insisted upon a continuance of the war, and offered augmented assistance, in case the government would pledge itself to make no compact with the heretical rebels. The pontiff especially was unremitting in his persuasions and threats; denouncing the righteous judgment of God upon the king who preferred personal advantage to the claims of religion, and reminding him that the divine anger was wont to punish the sins of rulers by taking away their kingdoms and giving them to others.795 The project of a massacre of Protestants, had it in reality been entertained by the French court while adopting the peace, could scarcely have been kept so profound a secret from the king and the pontiff who had long been urging a resort to such measures, nor would Pius and Philip have been suffered through ignorance to persist in so open a hostility to the compact which was intended to render its execution feasible.
The designs of Catharine de' Medici.
If the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day, as enacted on the fatal Sunday of August, was not premeditated in the form it then assumed – if the peace of St. Germain was not, as so many have imagined, a trick to overwhelm the Huguenots taken unawares – are we, therefore, to believe that the idea of such a deed of blood was as yet altogether foreign to the mind of Catharine de' Medici? I dare not affirm that it was. On the contrary, there is reason to believe that the conviction that she might some day find herself in a position in which she could best free herself from entanglement by some such means had long since lodged in her mind. It was not a strange or repulsive notion to the careful student of the code of morality laid down in "Il Principe." Alva had familiarized her with it, and the civil wars had almost invested it in her eyes with the appearance of justifiable retaliation. She had gloated in secret over the story of the Queen Blanche, mother of Louis the Ninth, and her successful struggle with her son's insubordinate nobles, telling her countryman, the Venetian ambassador Correro, with a significant laugh such as she was wont occasionally to indulge in, that she would be very sorry to have it known that she had been reading the old manuscript chronicle, for they would at once infer that she had taken the Castilian princess as her pattern.796 More unscrupulous than the mother of St. Louis, she had revolved in her mind various schemes for strengthening her authority at the expense of the lives of a few of the more prominent Huguenot chiefs, convinced, as she was, that Protestantism would cease to exist in France with the destruction of its leaders. But, despite pontifical injunctions and Spanish exhortations, she formed no definite plans; or, if she did, it was only to unravel on the morrow what she had woven the day before. What Barbaro said of her at one critical juncture was true of her generally in all such deliberations: "Her irresolution is extreme; she conceives new plans from hour to hour; within the compass of a single day, between morning and evening, she will change her mind three times.797"
Charles the Ninth in earnest.
He tears out the record against Cardinal Châtillon.
While it is scarcely possible to believe Catharine to have been more sincere in the adoption of this peace than in any other event of her life, we may feel some confidence that her son was really in favor of peace for its own sake. He was weary of the war, jealous of his brother Anjou, disgusted with the Guises, and determined to attempt to conciliate his Huguenot subjects, whom he had in vain been trying to crush. Apparently he wished to make of the amnesty, which the edict formally proclaimed, a veritable act of oblivion of all past offences, and intended to regard the Huguenots, in point of fact as well as in law, as his faithful subjects. An incident which occurred about two months after the conclusion of peace, throws light upon the king's new disposition. Cardinal Odet de Châtillon, deprived by the Pope of his seat in the Roman consistory, had, on motion of Cardinal Bourbon, been declared by the Parisian parliament to have lost his bishopric of Beauvais, on account of his rebellion and his adoption of Protestant sentiments. All such judicial proceedings had indeed been declared null and void by the terms of the pacification, but the parliaments showed themselves very reluctant to regard the royal edict. In October, 1570, Charles the Ninth happening to be a guest of Marshal Montmorency at his palace of Écouen, a few leagues north of Paris, sent orders to Christopher de Thou, the first president, to wait upon him with the parliamentary records. Aware of the king's object, De Thou, pleading illness, sent four of his counsellors instead; but these were ignominiously dismissed, and the presence of the chief judge was again demanded. When De Thou at last appeared, Charles greeted him roughly. "Here you are," he said, "and not very ill, thank God! Why do you go counter to my edicts? I owe our cousin, Cardinal Bourbon, no thanks for having applied for and obtained sentence against the house of Châtillon, which has done me so much service, and took up arms for me." Then calling for the records, he ordered the president to point out the proceedings against the admiral's brother, and, on finding them, tore out with his own hand three leaves on which they were inscribed; and on having his attention directed by the marshal, who stood by, to other places bearing upon the same case, he did not hesitate to tear these out also.798
His assurances to Walsingham.
Gracious answer to the German electors.
To all with whom he conversed Charles avowed his steadfast purpose to maintain the peace inviolate. He called it his own peace. He told Walsingham, "he willed him to assure her Majesty, that the only care he presently had was to entertain the peace, whereof the Queen of Navarre and the princes of the religion could well be witnesses, as also generally the whole realm."799 And the shrewd diplomatist believed that the king spoke the truth;800 although, when he looked at the adverse circumstances with which Charles was surrounded, and the vicious and irreligious education he had received, there was room for solicitude respecting his stability.801 There was, indeed, much to strengthen the hands of Charles in his new policy of toleration. On the twenty-sixth of November he married, with great pomp and amid the display of the popular delight, Elizabeth, daughter of the Emperor Maximilian the Second. This union, far from imperilling the permanence of the peace in France,802 was likely to render it more lasting, if the bridegroom could be induced to copy the conciliatory and politic example of his father-in-law. Not long after Charles received at Villers-Cotterets an embassy sent by the three Protestant electors of Germany and the other powerful princes of the same faith. They congratulated him upon the suppression of civil disorder in France, and entreated him to maintain freedom of worship in his dominions such as existed in Germany and even in the dominions of the Grand Turk; lending an ear to none who might attempt to persuade him that tranquillity could not subsist in a kingdom where there was more than one religion. Charles made a gracious answer, and the German ambassadors retired, leaving the friends of the Huguenots to entertain still better hopes for the recent treaty.803
Catharine warned by the Huguenots.
Infringement on the edict at Orange.
It cannot be denied, however, that the Huguenots could see much that was disquieting and calculated to prevent them from laying aside their suspicions. There were symptoms of the old constitutional timidity on the part of Catharine de' Medici. She showed signs of so far yielding to the inveterate enemies of the Huguenots as to abstain from insisting upon the concession of public religious worship where it had been accorded by the Edict of St. Germain. No wonder that the Huguenots, on their side, warned her, with friendly sincerity and frankness, that, should she refuse to entertain their just demands, the present peace would be only a brief truce, the prelude to a relentless civil war. "We will all die," was their language, "rather than forsake our God and our religion, which we can no more sustain without public exercise than could a body live without food and drink."804 Not only did the courts throw every obstacle in the way of the formal recognition of the law establishing the rights of the Huguenots, but the outbreaks of popular hatred against the adherents of the purer faith were alarming evidence that the chronic sore had only been healed over the surface, and that none of the elements of future disorder and bloodshed were wanting. Thus, in the little city and principality of Orange, the Roman Catholic populace, taking advantage of the supineness of the governor and of the consuls, introduced within the walls, under cover of a three days' religious festival, a large number of ruffians from the adjoining Comtât Venaissin. This was early in February, 1571. Now began a scene of rapine and bloodshed that might demand detailed mention, were it not that at the frequent repetition of such ghastly recitals the stoutest heart sickens. Men, and even mere boys, of the reformed faith were butchered in their homes, in the arms of their wives or their mothers. The goods of Protestants were plundered and openly sold to the highest bidder. Of many, a ransom was exacted for their safety. The work went on for two weeks. At last a deputy from Orange reached the Huguenot princes and the admiral at La Rochelle, and Count Louis of Nassau, who was still there, wrote to Charles with such urgency, in the name of his brother, the Prince of Orange, that measures were taken to repress and punish the disorder.805
The Protestants at Rouen attacked, March 4, 1571.
A much more serious infringement upon the protection granted to the Protestants by the edict, took place at Rouen about a month later. Unable to celebrate their worship within the city walls, the Protestants had gone out one Sunday morning to the place assigned them for this purpose in the suburbs. Meantime a body of four hundred Roman Catholics posted themselves in ambush near the gates to await their return. When the unsuspecting Huguenots, devoutly meditating upon the solemnities in which they had been engaged, made their appearance, they were greeted first with imprecations and blasphemies, then with a murderous attack. Between one hundred and one hundred and twenty are said to have been killed or wounded. The punishment of this audacious violation of the rights of the Protestants was at first left by parliament to the inferior or presidial judges, and the investigation dragged. The judges were threatened as they went to court: "Si l'on sçavoit que vous eussiez informé, on vous creveroit les yeux; si vous y mectez la main, on vous coupera la gorge!" The people broke into the prisons and liberated the accused. The civic militia refused to interfere. It was evident that no justice could be obtained from the local magistrates. The king, however, on receiving the complaints of the Huguenots, displayed great indignation, and despatched Montmorency to Rouen with twenty-seven companies of soldiers, and a commission authorized to try the culprits. The greater part of these, however, had fled. Only five persons received the punishment of death; several hundred fugitives were hung in effigy. Montmorency attempted to secure the Protestants against further aggression by disarming the entire population, with the exception of four hundred chosen men, and by compelling the parliament, on the fifteenth of May, to swear to observe the Edict of Pacification – precautions whose efficacy we shall be able to estimate more accurately by the events of the following year.806
The "Croix de Gastines" again.
The strength of the popular hatred of the Huguenots was often too great for even the government to cope with. The rabble of the cities would hear of no upright execution of the provisions respecting the oblivion of past injuries, and resisted with pertinacity the attempt to remove the traces of the old conflict. The Parisians gave the most striking evidence of their unextinguished rancor in the matter of the "Croix de Gastines," a monument of religious bigotry, the reasons for whose erection in 1569 have been sufficiently explained in a previous chapter.807
More than a year had passed since the promulgation of the royal edict of pacification annulling all judgments rendered against Protestants since the death of Henry the Second; and yet the Croix de Gastines still stood aloft on its pyramidal base, upon the site of the Huguenot place of meeting. Several times, at the solicitation of the Protestants, the government ordered its demolition. The municipal officers of Paris declined to obey, because it had not been erected by them; the parliament, because, as they alleged, the sentence was just and they could not retract; the Provost of Paris, because he was not above parliament, which had placed it there.808 Charles himself wrote with his own hand to the provost: "You deliberate whether to obey me, and whether you will have that fine pyramid overturned. I forbid you to appear in my presence until it be cast down."809 The end was not yet. The monks preached against the sacrilege of lowering the cross. Maître Vigor, on the first Sunday of Advent, praised the people of Paris for having opposed the demolition, maintaining that they had acted "only from zeal for God, who upon the cross suffered for us." "The people," he declared, "had never murmured when they had taken down Gaspard de Coligny, who had been hung in effigy, and would soon, God willing, be hung in very deed!"810 Meantime, the mob of Paris exhibited its zeal for the honor of the cross by assailing the soldiers sent to tear down the "Croix de Gastines," and by breaking open and plundering the contents of several Huguenot houses. It was not until the provost had called in the assistance of Marshal Montmorency, and the latter had killed a few of the seditious Parisians who opposed his progress, and hung one man to the windows of a neighboring house, that the disturbance ceased. The pyramid was then destroyed, and the cross transferred to the Cimetière des Innocents, where it is said to have remained until the outbreak of the French Revolution.811 The "plucking down of the cross" was a distasteful draught to the fanatics. "The common people," wrote an eye-witness, "ease their stomacks onely by uttering seditious words, which is borne withal, for that was doubted. The Protestants by the overthrow of this cross receive greater comfort, and the papists the contrary."812
Projected marriage of Anjou to Queen Elizabeth.
The Huguenot leaders, rejoicing at any evidence of the royal favor, desired to strengthen it and render it more stable. For this purpose they found a rare opportunity in projecting matrimonial alliances. Queen Elizabeth, of England, was yet unmarried, a princess of acknowledged ability, and reigning over a kingdom, which, if it had not at that time attained the wealth of industry and commerce which it now possesses, was, at least, one of the most illustrious in Christendom. Where could a more advantageous match be sought for Henry of Anjou, the French monarch's brother? True, the Tudor princess was no longer young, and her personal appearance was scarcely praised, except by her courtiers. She had been a candidate for many projected nuptials, but in none had the disparity of age been so great as in the present case, for, being a maiden of thirty-seven, she lacked but a single year of being twice as old as Anjou.813 Besides these objections, and independently of the difference of creed between the queen and Anjou, she had the unenviable reputation of being irresolute, fickle, and capricious. And yet, in spite of all these difficulties, the match was seriously proposed and entertained in the autumn and winter succeeding the ratification of peace.
It is worthy of notice that the scheme originated with the French Protestants. Cardinal Châtillon, the admiral's brother, and the Vidame of Chartres, both of them zealous partisans of the Reformation, and at this time engaged in negotiations in England, were the first to make mention of the plan, and probably it took its rise in their minds. Their object was manifest: if France could be united to Protestant England by so distinguished a marriage, the permanence of the peace of St. Germain might be regarded as secure. Under such auspices, the Huguenots, long proscribed and persecuted, might hope for such favor and toleration as they had never yet enjoyed.
Catharine de' Medici, when approached on the subject, gave indications of hearty acquiescence. Of late there had been a growing estrangement between the French and Spanish courts. The selfishness and arrogance of Philip and his ministers had been particularly evident and offensive during the late war. It was sufficiently clear that the Catholic king opposed the peace less from hatred of heresy or of rebellion, than because of his scarcely disguised hope of profiting by the misfortunes of France. The queen mother was consequently quite inclined to tighten the bonds of amity and friendship with England, when those that had previously existed with Spain were loosened. The prospect of a crown for her favorite son was an alluring one – doubly so, because of Nostradamus's prophecy that she would see all her sons upon the throne, to which she gave a superstitious credence, trembling lest it should involve in its fulfilment their untimely death. It is true that, in view of Elizabeth's age, she would have preferred to marry the Duke of Anjou to some princess of the royal house of England, whom Elizabeth might first have proclaimed her heir and successor.814 However, as the English queen was, perhaps, even more reluctant than the majority of mankind to be reminded of her advancing years and of her mortality, Catharine's ambassador may have deemed it advisable to be silent regarding the suggestion of so palpable a "memento mori," and contented himself with offering for her own acceptance the hand of one whom he recommended as "the most accomplished prince living, and the most deserving her good graces."815 Elizabeth received the proposal with courtesy, merely alluding to the great difference between her age and Anjou's, but admitted her apprehension lest, since "she was already one whose kingdom rather than herself was to be wedded," she might marry one who would honor her as a queen rather than love her as a woman. In fact, the remembrance of the amours of the father and grandfather made her suspicious of the son, and the names of Madame d'Estampes and of Madame de Valentinois (Diana of Poitiers) inspired her with no little fear. All which coy suggestions La Mothe Fénélon, astute courtier that he was, knew well how to answer.816
Machinations to dissuade Anjou.
Soon, however, the difficulty threatened to be the unwillingness of the suitor, rather than the reluctance of the lady. Henry of Anjou was the head of the Roman Catholic party in France. Charles's orthodoxy might be suspected; there was no doubt of his brother's. His intimacy with the Guises, his successes as general of the royal forces in what was styled a war in defence of religion, were guarantees of his devotion to the papal cause. All his prestige would be lost if he married the heretical daughter of Henry the Eighth and Anne Boleyn. Hence desperate efforts were made to deter him – efforts which did not escape the Argus-eyed Walsingham. "The Pope, the King of Spain, and the rest of the confederates, upon the doubt of a match between the queen, my mistress, and monsieur, do seek, by what means they can, to dissuade and draw him from the same. They offer him to be the head and chief executioner of the league against the Turk, a thing now newly renewed, though long ago meant; which league is thought to stretch to as many as they repute to be Turks, although better Christians than themselves. The cause of the Cardinal of Lorraine's repair hither from Rheims, as it is thought, was to this purpose."817