Bravery of the women.
It does not enter into the plan of this history to detail the progress of the siege. Let it suffice to say that the enemy was met at every point and repulsed. Not content with simply defending their walls, the Huguenots made sorties, in which many of Anjou's followers were slain. Sometimes dressing in the uniform of those they had killed or taken prisoners, they returned and penetrated into the hostile camp, learned the plans of the assailants, and cut off more than one man of note. The presence of women among them became an element of strength; for these, surmounting the weakness of their sex, did good service in the mines, or, donning armor, defended the breach and drove the enemy into the ditch.1284 It was remarked that, as the supply of fresh provisions diminished, the lack was in some degree compensated by such an abundance of cockles on the sands as had never before been known. If the Protestants regarded this incident as a providential interposition in their behalf,1285 the Roman Catholics sought to account for it by supposing that the operations of the siege had permitted the fish to multiply undisturbed.1286 However this might be, the women of La Rochelle sallied forth to husband this new resource; but their imprudence in straying beyond the range of the guns was rewarded with insolent outrage on the part of such of the enemy as were in the vicinity. Even this circumstance the Huguenots knew how to turn to advantage. Disguising themselves in feminine attire, a troop of Huguenot soldiers, a day or two later, issued from the city when the tide was out, apparently bent on the same errand. It was not long before the royalists undertook to repeat a diversion which seemed to offer little danger to them. Scarcely, however, had they approached when the clumsy costume was hastily thrown aside, and the assailants discovered too late the trap into which they had fallen. Many a hot-headed soldier of Anjou atoned for his temerity with his life.1287
La Noue retires. Failure of diplomacy.
The ordinary wiles of Catharine were not left untried; but she effected little or nothing by negotiation. The people were not so easily cajoled and duped as their leaders had often been, and would accept no terms except such as the court utterly refused to offer – the restoration of the privileges conferred by the edict, its confirmation by oath, and the interchange of hostages, to be kept in some neutral state in Germany, with entire liberty of worship and exemption from royal garrison in and around La Rochelle, Montauban, Nismes, and Sancerre.1288 Even François de la Noue became impatient at the excessive caution which the Huguenots seemed to him to display, and, redeeming the promise he had given the king before he took command, retired from the city (on the eleventh of March) when all hope of reconciliation had apparently disappeared. With wonderful prudence he had managed to forfeit the confidence of neither party. Yet on some occasions, it must be admitted, his self-control was sorely tried. For example, at one time a minister – not long after deposed from the sacred office – so far forgot himself in the heat of angry discussion as to give La Noue a sound box upon the ear. Even then the great captain refused to order the offender's punishment, and confined himself to sending him, under guard, to his wife, with directions to keep him carefully until he should recover his reason.1289
English aid miscarries.
The assistance which La Rochelle had counted upon receiving from England never came. Count Montgomery was a skilful negotiator. If he was unable to prevail upon Elizabeth to give open countenance to the Huguenots, on account of the league recently entered into, which Retz had been specially sent by Charles to confirm, he at least succeeded in obtaining a sum of forty thousand francs from various English, French, and Flemish sympathizers, with which he was permitted, notwithstanding protests from Paris, to fit out a fleet. Elizabeth, indeed, so far overcame her scruples as to allow a large vessel of her own to follow. But when Montgomery's squadron reached the roads of La Rochelle, the fifty-three ships of which it was composed, and which carried eighteen hundred or two thousand men, were so small and badly-appointed – in short, so inferior in strength to the fewer vessels of the king standing off the entrance – that they avoided coming to close quarters, stood off to Belle Isle, and finally returned to England. Queen Elizabeth, at all times very doubtful respecting the propriety of assisting subjects against their monarch, had meantime disowned the enterprise as piratical, and expressed the hope the culprits might be destroyed. It was not, in this case, merely her customary dissimulation. The plundering by some French and Netherland sailors of the vessel on which the Earl of Worcester was proceeding, in the queen's name, to stand as sponsor at the baptism of Charles's infant daughter, had greatly incensed her.1290 Not, however, that Elizabeth lost any of that remarkable interest which she had always taken in Count Montgomery, or felt at all inclined to give him up to the French government for his breach of the peace. For when, a little later, a demand was made for the culprit, she assured the ambassador of Charles that she could swear she was ignorant that the count was in her dominions. "But," she added, "were he to come, I would answer your master as his father answered my sister, Queen Mary, when he said, 'I will not consent to be the hangman of the Queen of England.' So his Majesty, the King of France, must excuse me if I can no more act as executioner of those of my religion than King Henry would discharge a similar office in the case of those that were not of his religion."1291
Huguenot successes in the south.
Sommières.
Villeneuve.
In other parts of France it had fared no better with the attempt to crush the Huguenots. Montauban and Nismes still held out. Various places in the south-east fell into Huguenot hands. The siege of Sommières, near Nismes, by the Roman Catholics, was so obstinate, and the garrison capitulated on such favorable terms, that the Protestants were rather elated than discouraged. Marshal Damville had assailed it only in order to save his credit, and the little town detained him nearly two months, – from the eleventh of February to the ninth of April. Every device was employed to retard his success. Streams of boiling oil were poured upon the heads of the assailants, and red-hot hoops of iron were dexterously tossed over their shoulders. In the end the garrison marched out with all the honors of war.1292 The Huguenots surprised Villeneuve, near the Rhône, by effecting an entrance, much as they had entered Nismes in 1569, through the grated opening by which the waters of a sewer issued from the walls.1293
Beginning of the siege of Sancerre.
But it was Sancerre which, next to La Rochelle, occasioned the court the greatest annoyance, both because of its central position1294 and because of its comparative proximity to Paris. Here the Protestants of Berry and the adjacent provinces had found a welcome refuge. Citizens and refugees refused to admit a royal garrison, and foiled the attempt to capture the place by escalade. Treachery was at work, and, as usual, it was most rife among the richer class. By their connivance the citadel or castle was surprised by the troops sent by the governor of the province, M. de la Chastre; but it was retaken on the same day.1295 Notwithstanding this warning, the people of Sancerre took none of the precautions which their situation demanded, apparently unable to believe that, when such a city as La Rochelle was in revolt, the king would undertake to subdue so small a place as Sancerre. There were no stores of provisions, and the buildings in proximity to the walls, from which an enemy could incommode the city, had not been torn down, when, between the third and ninth of January, 1573, a force of five thousand foot and five hundred horse, under La Chastre, besides many nobles and gentlemen of the vicinage, made its appearance before the walls. The inhabitants now discovered their capital mistakes, but it was too late to remedy them. Hunger began almost immediately to make itself felt, while the places they had neglected to destroy or preoccupy proved very convenient to the royalists for the next two or three months, during which it was attempted to take Sancerre by assault. Yet the direct attack proved a failure, and, on the twentieth of March, the siege was changed to a blockade. Forts were erected in the most advantageous spots, and a wide trench was dug around the entire city.1296 Sancerre was to be tried by the severe ordeal of hunger; and certainly the most frightful among ancient sieges can scarcely be said to have surpassed in horror that of this small city.1297
The incipient famine.
Did not the sufferings of the heroic inhabitants claim our sympathy, we might read with entertainment the singular devices they resorted to in grappling with a terrible foe whose insidious advances were more difficult to oppose than the open assaults of the enemy. For the famine of Sancerre boasts of a historian more copious and minute than Josephus or Livy. In reading the narrative of the famous Jean de Léry1298– the same writer to whom we are indebted for an authentic account of Villegagnon's unfortunate scheme of American colonization – we seem to be perusing a great pathological treatise. Never was physician more watchful of his patient's symptoms than Léry with his hand upon the pulse of famishing Sancerre. It would almost seem that the restless Huguenot, who united in his own person the opposite qualifications of clergyman and soldier, desired to make his little work a useful guide in similar circumstances, for a portion of it, at least, has been appropriately styled "a cookery book for the besieged."1299
Early in the siege, not without some qualms, the inhabitants made trial of the flesh of a horse accidentally killed. Next an ass, and then the mules, of which there was a considerable number, were brought to the shambles. The butchers were now ordered to sell this new kind of meat, and a maximum price was fixed. For a fortnight the supply of cats held out, after which rats and mice became the chief staple of food. Dog-flesh was next reluctantly tasted, and found, as our conscientious chronicler observes, to be somewhat sweet and insipid.1300 And so the spring of 1573 passed away, and summer came; but no succor arrived for the beleaguered city. On the contrary, there came the disheartening tidings from the west that a peace had been concluded by the Huguenots of La Rochelle, in which no mention was made of Sancerre.
Losses of the royal army before La Rochelle.
Roman Catholic processions.
So successful had been the defence of the citadel of Protestantism on the shores of the ocean, so unexpectedly large the royal losses, that the court was only waiting for a decent pretext to abandon the unfortunate siege. Pestilence added its victims to those of the sword, and it was currently reported that forty thousand of the besiegers were swept away by their combined assaults.1301 A more careful enumeration, however, shows that, while the Rochellois, out of thirty-one hundred soldiers, lost thirteen hundred, including twenty-eight "pairs," the king, out of a little more than forty thousand troops, had lost twenty-two thousand, ten thousand of whom died in the breach or in engagements elsewhere. Nor was the loss of officers trifling; two hundred had died, including fifty of great distinction, and five "maîtres de camp."1302 And, with all this expenditure of life, and with the heavy drafts upon the public treasure, little or nothing had been accomplished. Meanwhile, in other parts of France there existed a scarcity of food amounting almost to a famine; nor had the solemn processions to the shrines of the saints – processions for the most part rendered contemptible by the irreverent conduct both of the clergymen and the laity that took part in them1303– averted the wrath of heaven. The poor suffered extremely. Selfishness gained such ascendancy in some towns, that cruel ruses were adopted to remove the destitute that had taken refuge within their walls. It was not strange that the extraordinary mortality which soon fell upon the well-to-do burghers was viewed by many as a direct punishment sent by the Almighty.1304
Election of Henry of Anjou to the crown of Poland.
The event which came just in time to free the court from its embarrassment was the election of Henry of Anjou to the vacant throne of Poland. We have already witnessed the perplexity of Bishop Montluc when the tidings of the massacre first reached him.1305 If he could have denied its reality, he would have done so. This being impossible, he was forced to content himself with misrepresenting the origin of the slaughter, slandering the admiral and the other victims, and circulating the calumnies of Charpentier and others who prated about a Huguenot conspiracy. A judicious distribution of French gold assisted his own eloquent sophistry; and the Duke of Anjou, portrayed as a chivalric prince and one who was not ill-affected to religious liberty, was chosen king over his formidable rivals. Charles and Catharine were alike delighted. The former could scarcely find words to express his joy1306 at the prospect of being freed from the presence of a brother whom he feared, and perhaps hated; while the queen mother's gratification was even more intense at the peaceful solution of the prophecy of Nostradamus, than at the elevation of her favorite son.
Edict of Pacification, Boulogne, July, 1573.
The peace between the king and the Rochellois was concluded in June, and was formally promulgated in July, 1573, in a royal edict from Boulogne. The chief provision was that the Protestants in the cities of La Rochelle, Montauban, and Nismes should enjoy entire freedom of public worship, while their brethren throughout the kingdom should have liberty of conscience and the right to sell their property and remove wherever they might choose, whether within or without the realm. Only gentlemen and others enjoying high jurisdiction, who had remained constant in their faith, and had taken up arms with the three cities, were to be allowed to collect their friends to the number of ten to witness their marriages and baptisms, according to the custom of the Reformed Church. Even this privilege could not be exercised within the distance of two leagues from the royal court or from the city of Paris; nor did the edict confer the right to preach or celebrate the Lord's Supper.1307 La Rochelle, Nismes, and Montauban gained their point, and were to be exempted from receiving garrisons or having citadels built, with the condition that they should for two years constantly keep four of their principal citizens at court as pledges of their fidelity. All promises of abjuration were declared null and void. Amnesty was proclaimed, and, to cap the climax of absurdity, the brave Huguenots who had defended their homes for months against Charles were solemnly declared to be held the king's "good, loyal, and faithful subjects and servants."
Meagre results of the war.
The results of the war on the king's side were certainly very meagre. To have fought for the greater part of a year with the miserable Huguenots that had escaped the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day, and then to conclude the war by such a peace, was certainly ignominious enough for Charles and his mother. For the Huguenot party was now, more than ever, a recognized power in the state, with three strongholds – one in the west and two in the south. Into no one of these could a royal garrison be introduced. La Rochelle, in particular, having repulsed every assault of the best army that could be brought against it, was acknowledged invincible by the exemptions accorded to it in common with Nismes and Montauban. It was hardly by such expectations that Charles had been prevailed upon to throw down the gage of war to his subjects of the reformed faith.
The siege and famine of Sancerre continue.
Meanwhile, the inhabitants of Sancerre, not even named in the edict,1308 had been sustained under appalling difficulties by the confident hope of assistance from the south. But the hope was long deferred, and they grew sick at heart. The prospect was already dark enough, when, on the second of June, a Protestant soldier, who had made his way into the city through the enemy's lines, brought the depressing announcement that no aid must be expected from Languedoc for six weeks. As but little wheat remained in Sancerre, the immediate effect of the intelligence was that liberty was given to some seventy of the poor to leave the city walls. At the same time the daily ration was limited to half a pound of grain. A week later it was reduced to one-quarter of a pound. Not long after only a single pound was doled out once a week, and by the end of the month the supply entirely gave out. The beginning of July reduced the besieged to the necessity of tasking their ingenuity to make palatable food of the hides of cattle, next of the skins of horses, dogs, and asses. The stock of even this unsavory material soon became exhausted; whereupon, not very unnaturally, parchment was turned to good account. Manuscripts a good century old were eaten with relish. Soaked for a couple of days in water, and afterward boiled as much longer, when they became glutinous they were fried, like tripe, or prepared with herbs and spices, after the manner of a hodge-podge. The writer who is our authority for these culinary details, informs us that he had seen the dish devoured with eagerness while the original letters written upon the parchment were still legible.1309 But the urgent necessities of their situation did not suffer the half-famished inhabitants to stop here. With the proverbial ingenuity of their nation, they turned their attention to the parchment on old drums, and subjected to the skilful hands of cooks the discarded hoofs, horns, and bones of animals, the harness of horses, and even refuse scraps of leather. There seemed to be nothing they could not lay under contribution to furnish at least a little nutriment.
And yet ghastly hunger little by little tightened her relentless embrace. Almost all the children under twelve years of age died. In the universal reign of famine there were at last found those who were ready to repeat the horrible crime of feeding upon the flesh of their own kindred. It was discovered that a husband and wife, with a neighboring crone, had endeavored to satisfy the gnawings of hunger by eating a newly dead child. Their guilt came speedily to light, and was punished according to the severe code of the sixteenth century. The father was sentenced by the council to be burned alive; his wife to be strangled and her body consigned to the flames; while the corpse of the old woman who had instigated the foul deed but had meanwhile died, was ordered to be dug up and burned. But the feeling of the great majority of the besieged was far removed from that despair which prompts to an inhuman disregard of natural decency and affection. Near the close of July a boy of barely ten years, as he lay on his death-bed, said to his weeping parents: "Why do you weep thus at seeing me die of hunger? I do not ask bread, mother; I know you have none. But since God wills that I die thus, we must accept it cheerfully. Was not that holy man Lazarus hungry? Have I not so read in the Bible?"1310
The catastrophe could not much longer be deferred. Within the city speedy death stared every man in the face. Permission had, we have seen, been accorded to the poor, early in June, to go forth from the city walls; but the besieging force had mercilessly driven them back when they attempted to gain the open country. Numbers, unwilling to accept a second time the fatal hospitality of the city, preferred to remain in their exposed situation, miserably dragging out a precarious existence by subsisting upon snails, buds of trees and shrubs – even to the very grass of the field.
Sancerre capitulates.
Happily for Sancerre, the political exigencies of the royal court insured for the besieged Protestants, in the inevitable capitulation, more favorable terms than they might otherwise have obtained. As early as the eighteenth of July, Léry had been informed at a parley, by a former acquaintance on the Roman Catholic side, that a general peace had been concluded, and that Henry of Anjou had been elected to the throne of Poland. This first intimation was discredited by the cautious Protestants, not unused to the wiles of the enemy. But when, some twenty days later (on the sixth of August), the statement was confirmed, and the Sancerrois received the additional assurance that they would be mildly treated, their surprise knew no bounds. The terms of surrender were easily arranged. A ransom of forty thousand livres was to be exacted from the city. On the thirty-first of August, M. de la Chastre made his solemn entry into Sancerre, accompanied by a band of Roman Catholic priests chanting a Te Deum over his success. As was too frequently the case, the promise of immunity to the inhabitants was but poorly kept. Scarcely had two weeks passed before the "bailli" Johanneau,1311 summoned from his house by the archers of the prévôt, on the plea that M. de la Chastre desired his presence, was treacherously murdered on the way to the governor's house. Besides assassination, other infractions of the capitulation were committed; the gates of the city were burned, the walls dismantled, many of the houses torn down. In fact, so unmercifully was Sancerre harried, partly by the troops, partly by the peasantry of the neighborhood, and by the "bailli" of Berry, that the reformed church of this place seems to have been, for the time, completely dispersed.1312
Thus ended a siege which had lasted some eight months. The besieged had lost only eighty-four men by the direct effects of warfare; but more than five hundred persons perished during the last six weeks of sheer starvation.1313
Sancerre owed its release from the horrors of the siege in great part to the same causes that had powerfully contributed to the conclusion of the peace. The Polish ambassadors, coming to proffer the crown to the king's brother, Henry of Anjou, were about to reach the French court. They were already not a little surprised at the discovery that the statements and promises made in the king's name by that not over-scrupulous negotiator, Montluc, Bishop of Valence, were impudent impostures, fabricated for no other purpose than to secure at all hazards the success of the French candidate for the Polish throne. To exhibit to them at this critical juncture the edifying spectacle of a royal governor of the province of Berry engaged in the reduction of a city the only crime of which was its desire to enjoy religious liberty – this would have been a dangerous venture. Consequently it was no fortuitous coincidence that Sancerre capitulated the very day the Polish ambassadors made their appearance.
Reception of the Polish ambassadors.
We shall not dwell upon the pomp attending their reception. The banquet held in the new palace of the Tuileries was brilliant. In the pageant succeeding it was displayed a massive rock of silver, with sixteen nymphs in as many niches, personating the provinces of the French kingdom. When, after some verses well sung but indifferently composed, these nymphs descended from their elevation, and took part in an intricate maze of dance, the Polish spectators remarked, in the excess of their admiration, that the French ballet was something that could be imitated by none of the kings of the earth. "I would rather," dryly adds a contemporary historian, "that they had said as much respecting our armies."1314
Discontent of the south with the terms of peace.
The Protestants of Southern France had been included in the Edict of Pacification. In fact, Nismes and Montauban were as distinctly referred to by name as La Rochelle.1315 But the terms of peace were not to the taste of the enterprising and self-reliant Huguenots of Languedoc and Guyenne. They had learned, during the last ten years, to distrust all assurances emanating from the court, even when claiming the authority of the king's name. Experience had taught them that previous edicts were framed simply to secure the destruction of those whom open warfare had failed to destroy.1316 Without, therefore, either definitely accepting or rejecting the terms offered them, the Protestants of Nismes applied to Marshal Damville, who, at the conclusion of the peace, found himself with the royal troops at the hamlet of Milhaud, a league or two from their gates,1317 for a fortnight's suspension of hostilities. The request being granted, a truce was established which was extended by successive prolongations beyond the beginning of the next year.1318
Assembly of Milhau and Montauban.
Meantime the Protestants, notified by the Duke of Anjou of the conclusion of the peace, sent messengers to his camp requesting that as the matter was one vitally affecting the entire Protestant population, they might receive permission to meet, under protection of the royal authority, and deliberate respecting it. The king's consent having been obtained, Protestant deputies from almost all parts of the kingdom came together, late in the month of August, 1573, in the city of Milhau-en-Rouergue, from which they shortly transferred their sessions to Montauban.
Military organization of the Huguenots.
This important assembly resolved to accept no peace unless based upon equitable terms and secured by ample guarantees. In view of the possibility of the recurrence of war, provision was made for a complete military organization of the Huguenot resources in the south of France. For this purpose Languedoc was divided into two "généralités" or governments – the government of Nismes, or Lower Languedoc, placed under command of M. de Saint Romain, and that of Upper Languedoc, with Montauban for its chief city, to which the Viscount de Paulin was assigned as military chief. Both governments were in turn subdivided into dioceses or particular governments, each furnished with a governor and a deliberative assembly. It was provided that in Nismes and Montauban respectively a council should be convened consisting of deputies from all the dioceses of the government, and that to this council, together with the governor, should be intrusted the administration of the finances, with authority to impose taxes alike upon Protestants and Roman Catholics. The organization, it was estimated, could readily place twenty thousand men in the field.1319
Such were the first attempts to perfect a system of warfare forced upon the Huguenots by the treacherous assaults of their enemies – a fatal necessity of instituting a state within a state, foreboding nothing but ruin to France.
Petition to the king.
One of the chief results of the deliberations at Montauban was the preparation of a petition to be laid before the king. This paper, which has come down to us with the signatures of the viscounts, barons, and other adherents of the Huguenot party, was intended to be an expression not only of their own individual views, but also of the sentiments of the churches they represented.1320 The language is sharp and incisive, the demands are unmistakably bold. For a sufficient justification of their recent words and actions, the Huguenots of Guyenne point the monarch to his own letter of the twenty-fourth of August, 1572, by which constraint was laid upon them to assume arms. They call upon Charles, in accordance with the promise contained in that letter, to follow up the traces there alleged to have been found regarding the murder of Gaspard de Coligny, to appoint impartial judges for this purpose, and to execute exemplary justice upon the guilty. Not satisfied with claiming the annulling of all judicial proceedings, the destruction of all monuments erected to perpetuate the memory of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day, and the abolition of processions instituted by the parliaments of Paris and Toulouse with the same end in view, they call on Charles to make a declaration "that justly and for good reasons have 'those of the religion' taken arms, resisting and warring in these last troubles, as constrained thereto by the violent acts with which they have been assailed and driven to distraction." They next demand those concessions which alone can make the position of the Protestants in France secure and endurable – freedom of worship and church discipline established by perpetual provision, irrespective of place or time; the right of honorable burial; immunity from taxation for the support of Roman Catholic ceremonies; admission to schools and colleges; just regulations as to marriage; amnesty; the power to hold civil office, etc. They request permission to levy a sum of one hundred and twenty thousand livres among themselves to pay off the indebtedness incurred by them in past wars. And they go so far as not only to stipulate that the King of France shall renounce all leagues he may have contracted with the enemies of his Protestant subjects for their destruction, but even to propose that he shall conclude a defensive alliance with the Protestant states of Germany, Switzerland, England, and Scotland. Meanwhile, in order to prevent the recurrence of "a conspiracy and Sicilian Vespers," of which the Huguenots would be the victims, they ask to be permitted to hold forever the guard of those cities which they now have in their possession, and in addition some other cities in each of the provinces of the realm. The Protestant cities, it is stipulated, shall retain their walls and munitions, and the royal governors shall enter them accompanied only by a small retinue. The observance of these articles the Huguenots insist shall be solemnly sworn in privy and public council, and by the inhabitants of all places, the oath to be renewed every five years.1321