History of the Rise of the Huguenots

CHAPTER XIV.
THE PEACE OF AMBOISE, AND THE BAYONNE CONFERENCE

The restoration of Havre demanded.

Fall of Havre.

Scarcely had the Edict of Amboise been signed when a demand was made upon the English queen for the city of Havre, placed in her possession by the Huguenots, as a pledge for the restoration of Calais in accordance with the treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis, and as security for the repayment of the large sums she had advanced for the maintenance of the war. But Elizabeth was in no favorable mood for listening to this summons. Instead of being instructed to evacuate Havre, the Earl of Warwick was reinforced by fresh supplies of arms and provisions, and received orders to defend to the last extremity the only spot in France held by the queen. A formal offer made by Condé to secure a renewal of the stipulation by which Calais was to be given up in 1567, and to remunerate Elizabeth for her expenditures in the cause of the French Protestants, was indignantly rejected; and both sides prepared for open war.²⁶⁵ The struggle was short and decisive. The French were a unit on the question of a permanent occupation of their soil by foreigners. Within the walls of Havre itself a plot was formed by the French population to betray the city into the hands of their countrymen; and Warwick was forced to expel the natives in order to secure the lives of his own troops.²⁶⁶ But no vigilance of the besieged could insure the safety of a detached position on the borders of so powerful a state as France. Elizabeth was too weak, or too penurious, to afford the recruits that were loudly called for. And now a new and frightful auxiliary to the French made its appearance. A contagious disease set in among the English troops, crowded into a narrow compass and deprived of their usual allowance of fresh meat and wholesome water. The fearful mortality attending it soon revealed the true character of the scourge. Few of those that fell sick recovered. Gathering new strength from day to day, it reigned at length supreme in the fated city. Soon the daily crowd of victims became too great to receive prompt sepulture, and the corpses lying unburied in the streets furnished fresh fuel for the raging pestilence. Seven thousand English troops were reduced in a short time to three thousand, in a few days more to fifteen hundred men.²⁶⁷ The hand of death was upon the throat of every survivor. At length, too feeble to man their works, despairing of timely succor, unable to sustain at the same moment the assault of their opponents and the fearful visitation of the Almighty, the English consented to surrender; and, on the twenty-eighth of July, a capitulation was signed, in accordance with which, on the next day, Havre, with all its fortifications and the ships of war in its harbor, fell once more into the hands of the French.²⁶⁸

How the peace was received.

The pacification of Amboise, a contemporary chronicler tells us, was received with greater or less cordiality in different localities of France, very much according to the number of Protestants they had contained before the war. "This edict of peace was very grievous to hear published and to have executed in the case of the Catholics of the peaceable cities and villages where there were very few Huguenots. But it was a source of great comfort to the Catholics of the cities which were oppressed by the Huguenots, as well as of the neighboring villages in which the Catholic religion had been intermitted, mass and divine worship not celebrated, and the holy sacraments left unadministered – as in the cities of Lyons and Orleans, and their vicinity, and in many other cities of Poitou and Languedoc, where the Huguenots were masters or superior in numbers. As the peace was altogether advantageous to the Huguenots, they labored hard to have it observed and published."²⁶⁹

Vexatious delays in Normandy.

But to secure publication and observance was not always possible.²⁷⁰ Not unfrequently the Huguenots were denied by the illiberality of their enemies every privilege to which they were entitled by the terms of the edict. At Troyes, the Roman Catholic party, hearing that peace had been made, resolved to employ the brief interval before the edict should be published, and the mayor of the city led the populace to the prisons, where all the Huguenots that could be found were at once murdered.²⁷¹ The vexatious delays, and the actual persecution still harder to be borne, which were encountered at Rouen, have been duly recorded by an anonymous Roman Catholic contemporary, as well as in the registers of the city hall and of the Norman parliament, and may serve as an indication of what occurred in many other places. From the chapter of the cathedral and the judges of the supreme provincial court, down to the degraded rabble, the entire population was determined to interpose every possible obstacle in the way of the peaceable execution of the new law. Before any official communication respecting it reached them, the clergy declared, by solemn resolution, their intention to reserve the right of prosecuting all who had plundered their extensive ecclesiastical domain. The municipality wrote at once to the king, to his mother, and to others at court, imploring that Rouen and its vicinity might be exempted from all exercise of the "new religion." Parliament sent deputies to Charles the Ninth to remonstrate against the broad concessions made in favor of the Protestants, and, even when compelled to go through the form of a registration, avoided a publication of the edict, in order to gain time for another fruitless protest addressed to the royal government.

When it came to the execution of the law, the affair assumed a more threatening aspect. The Roman Catholics had resolved to resist the return of the "for-issites," or fugitive Huguenots. At first they excused their opposition by alleging that there were bandits and criminals of every kind in the ranks of the exiles. Next they demanded that a preliminary list of their names and abodes should be furnished, in order that their arms might be taken away. Finally they required, with equal perverseness, that, in spite of the express stipulation of the king's rescript, the "for-issites" should return only as private individuals, and should not venture to resume their former offices and dignities. Meantime the "for-issites," driven to desperation by the flagrant injustice of which they were the victims, began to retaliate by laying violent hands upon all objects of Roman Catholic devotion in the neighboring country, and by levying contributions upon the farms and villas of their malignant enemies. The Rouenese revenged themselves in turn by wantonly murdering the Huguenots whom they found within the city walls.

Protest of the Norman parliament.

The embittered feeling did not diminish at once after the more intrepid of the Huguenots had, under military compulsion, been readmitted into Rouen. There were daily complaints of ill-usage. But the insolence of the dominant party rose to a still higher pitch when there appeared a royal edict – whether genuine or forged has not as yet been settled – by which the cardinal demands of the Huguenots were granted. The alleged concessions may not strike us as very extraordinary. They consisted chiefly in disarming the Roman Catholics equally with the adherents of the opposite creed, and in erecting a new chamber in parliament to try impartially cases in dispute between the adherents of the two communions.²⁷² This was certainly decreeing but a small measure of the equality in the eye of the law which the Protestants might claim as a natural and indefeasible right. The citizens of the Norman capital, however, regarded the enactment as a monstrous outrage upon society. Charles the Ninth, happened at this time to be passing through Gaillon, a place some ten leagues distant from Rouen, on his way to the siege of Havre; and Damours, the advocate-general, was deputed to bear to him a protest drawn up by parliament. The tone of the paper was scarcely respectful to the monarch; it was positively insulting to the members of the royal council who professed the Protestant faith. It predicted the possible loss of Normandy, or of his entire kingdom, in case the king pursued a system of toleration. The Normans, it said, would not submit to Protestant governors, nor to the return of the exiles in arms, nor to their resumption of their former dignities. If the "for-issites" continued their excesses, they would be set upon and killed. The Roman Catholic burgesses of Rouen even proclaimed a conditional loyalty. Should the king not see fit to accede to their demands, they declared themselves ready to place the keys of their city in his hands to dispose of at his pleasure, at the same time craving permission to go where they pleased and to take away their property with them.

A rude rebuff.

Truly the spirit of the "Holy League" was already born, though the times were not yet ripe for the promulgation of such tenets. The advocate-general was a fluent speaker, and he had been attended many a weary mile by an enthusiastic escort. Parliamentary counsellors, municipal officers, clergy, an immense concourse of the lower stratum of the population – all were at Gaillon, ready to applaud his well-turned sentences. But he had chosen an unlucky moment for his oratorical display. His glowing periods were rudely interrupted by one of the princely auditors. This was Louis of Condé – now doubly important to the court on account of the military undertaking that was on foot – who complained of the speaker's insolent words. So powerful a nobleman could not be despised. And so the voluble Damours, with his oration but half delivered, instead of meeting a gracious monarch's approval and returning home amid the plaudits of the multitude, was hastily taken in charge by the archers of the royal guard and carried off to prison. The rest of the Rouenese disappeared more rapidly than they had come. The avenues to the city were filled with fugitives as from a disastrous battle. Even the grave parliament, which the last winter had been exhibiting its august powers in butchering Huguenots by the score, beginning with the arch-heretic Augustin Marlorat, lost for a moment its self-possession, and took part in the ignominious flight. Shame, however, induced it to pause before it had gone too far, and, putting on the gravest face it could summon, it reappeared ere long at Gaillon with becoming magisterial gravity. Never had there been a more thorough discomfiture.²⁷³ A few days later the Marshal de Bourdillon made his entry into Rouen with a force of Swiss soldiers sufficient to break down all resistance, the "for-issites" were brought in, a new election of municipal officers was held, and comparative quiet was restored in the turbulent city.²⁷⁴

Commissioners to enforce the edict.

Alienation of a profligate court.

Profanity a test of Catholicity.

So far as a character so undecided could frame any fixed purpose, Catharine de' Medici was resolved to cement, if possible, a stable peace. The Chancellor, Michel de l'Hospital, still retained his influence over her, and gave to her disjointed plans somewhat of the appearance of a deliberate policy. That policy certainly seemed to mean peace. And to prove this, commissioners were despatched to the more distant provinces, empowered to enforce the execution of the Edict of Amboise.²⁷⁵ Yet never was the court less in sympathy with the Huguenots than at this moment. If shameless profligacy had not yet reached the height it subsequently attained under the last Valois that sat upon the throne of France, it was undoubtedly taking rapid strides in that direction. For the giddy throng of courtiers, living in an atmosphere that reeked with corruption,²⁷⁶ the stern morality professed by the lips and exemplified in the lives of Gaspard de Coligny and his noble brothers, as well as by many another of nearly equal rank, could afford but few attractions. Many of these triflers had, it is true, exhibited for a time some leaning toward the reformed faith. But their evanescent affection was merely a fire kindled in the light straw: the fuel was soon consumed, and the brilliant flame which had given rise to such sanguine expectations died out as easily as it sprang up.²⁷⁷ When once the novelty of the simple worship in the rude barn, or in the retired fields, with the psalms of Marot and Beza sung to quaint and stirring melodies, had worn off; when the black gown of the Protestant minister had become as familiar to the eye as the stole and chasuble of the officiating priest, and the words of the reformed confession of sins as familiar to the ear as the pontifical litanies and prayers, the "assemblée" ceased to attract the curious from the salons of St. Germain and Fontainebleau. Besides, it was one thing to listen to a scathing account of the abuses of churchmen, or a violent denunciation of the sins of priest and monk, and quite another to submit to a faithful recital of the iniquities of the court, and hear the wrath of God denounced against the profane, the lewd, and the extortionate. There were some incidents, occurring just at the close of the war, that completed the alienation which before had been only partial. The Huguenots had attempted by stringent regulations to banish swearing, robbery, and other flagrant crimes from their army. They had punished robbery in many instances with death. They had succeeded so far in doing away with oaths, that their opponents had paid unconscious homage to their freedom from the despicable vice. In those days, when in the civil struggle it was so difficult to distinguish friends from foes, there was one proof of unimpeachable orthodoxy that was rarely disputed. He must be a good Catholic who could curse and swear. The Huguenot soldier would do neither.²⁷⁸ So nearly, indeed, did the Huguenot affirmation approach to the simplicity of the biblical precept, that one Roman Catholic partisan leader of more than ordinary audacity had assumed for the motto on his standard the blasphemous device: "'Double 's death' has conquered 'Verily.'"²⁷⁹ But the strictness with which theft and profanity were visited in the Huguenot camp produced but a slight impression, compared with that made by the punishment of death inflicted by a stern judge at Orleans, just before the proclamation of peace, on a man and woman found guilty of adultery. Almost the entire court cried out against the unheard-of severity of the sentence for a crime which had never before been punished at all. The greater part of these advocates of facile morals had even the indiscretion to confess that they would never consent to accept such people as the Huguenots for their masters.²⁸⁰

Admiral Coligny accused.

His defence espoused by Condé and the Montmorencies.

Even after the publication of the Edict of Amboise, there was one matter left unsettled that threatened to rekindle the flames of civil war. It will be remembered that the murderer of the Duke of Guise, overcome by terror in view of his fate had charged Gaspard de Coligny with having instigated the perpetration of the foul crime; that, as soon as he heard the accusation, the admiral had not only answered the allegations, article by article, but had written, earnestly begging that Poltrot's execution might be deferred until the return of peace should permit him to be confronted with his accuser. This very reasonable demand, we have seen, had been rejected, and the miserable assassin had been torn into pieces by four horses, upon the Place de Grève, on the very day preceding that which witnessed the signing of the Edict of Amboise. If, however, the queen mother had hoped to diminish the difficulties of her position by taking this course, she had greatly miscalculated. In spite of his protestations, and of a second and more popular defence which he now made,²⁸¹ the Guises persisted in believing, or in pretending to believe, Coligny to be the prime cause of the murder of the head of their family. His very frankness was perverted into a proof of his complicity. The admiral's words, as an eminent historian of our own day observes, bear the seal of sincerity, and we need go for the truth nowhere else than to his own avowals.²⁸² But they did not satisfy his enemies. The danger of an open rupture was imminent. Coligny was coming to court from his castle of Châtillon-sur-Loing, with a strong escort of six hundred gentlemen; but so inevitable did a bloody collision within the walls of Paris seem to the queen, that she begged Condé to dissuade him for the present from carrying out his purpose. Meantime, Condé and the two Montmorencies – the constable and his son, the marshal – espoused Coligny's cause as their own, by publicly declaring (on the fifteenth of May) his entire innocence, and announcing that any blow aimed at the Châtillons, save by legal process, they would regard and avenge as aimed at themselves.²⁸³ Taking excuse from the unsettled relations of the kingdom with England and at home, the privy council at the same time enjoined both parties to abstain from acts of hostility, and adjourned the judicial investigation until after arms had been laid down.²⁸⁴

Petition of the Guises.

At length, on the twenty-sixth of September – two months after the reduction of Havre – the Guises renewed their demand with great solemnity. Charles was at Meulan (on the Seine, a few miles below Paris), when a procession of mourners entered his presence. It was the family of Guise, headed by the late duke's widow, his mother, and his children, coming to sue for vengeance on the murderer. All were clad in the dress that betokened the deepest sorrow, and the dramatic effect was complete.²⁸⁵ They brought a petition couched in decided terms, but making no mention of the name of Coligny, and signed, not only by themselves, but by three of the Bourbons – the Cardinal Charles, the Duke of Montpensier, and his son – and by the Dukes of Longueville and Nemours.²⁸⁶ Under the circumstances, the king could not avoid granting their request and ordering inquisition to be made by the peers in parliament assembled.²⁸⁷ But the friends of the absent admiral saw in the proposed investigation only an attempt on the part of his enemies to effect through the forms of law the ruin of the most prominent Huguenot of France. It was certain, they urged, that he could expect no justice at the hands of the presidents and counsellors of the Parisian parliament. Nor did they find it difficult to convince Catharine that to permit a public trial would be to reopen old sores and to risk overturning in a single hour the fabric of peace which for six months she had been laboring hard to strengthen.²⁸⁸ The king was therefore induced to evoke the consideration of the complaint of the Guises to his own grand council. Here again new difficulties sprang up. The Duchess of Guise was as suspicious of the council as Coligny of the parliament, and challenged the greater number of its members as too partial to act as judges. In fact, it seemed impossible to secure a jury to settle the matter in dispute. After months spent to no purpose in wrangling, Charles determined to remove the question both from the parliament and from the council, and on the fifth of January, 1564, reserved for himself and his mother the duty of adjudication. At the same time, on the ground that the importance of the case demanded the deliberations of a prince of greater age and of more experience than he as yet possessed, and that its discussion at present might prove prejudicial to the tranquillity of the kingdom, he adjourned it for three full years, or until such other time as he might hereafter find to be convenient.²⁸⁹

Embarrassment of Catharine.

The feud between the Châtillons and the Guises was not, however, the only embarrassment which the government found itself compelled to meet. Catharine was in equal perplexity with respect to the engagements she had entered into with the Prince of Condé. It was part of the misfortune of this improvident princess that each new intrigue was of such a nature as to require a second intrigue to bolster it up. Yet she was to live long enough to learn by bitter experience that there is a limit to the extent to which plausible but lying words will pass current. At last the spurious coin was to be returned discredited to her own coffers. Catharine had enticed Condé into concluding a peace much less favorable to the Huguenots than his comrades in arms had expected in view of the state of the military operations and the pecuniary necessities of the court, by the promise that he should occupy the same controlling position in the government as his brother, the King of Navarre, held at the time of his death. We have seen that he was so completely hoodwinked that he assured his friends that it was of little consequence how scanty were the concessions made in the edict. He would soon be able, by his personal authority, to secure to "the religion" the largest guarantees. If we may believe Catharine herself, he went so far in his enthusiastic desire for peace as to threaten to desert the Huguenots, if they declined to embrace the opportunity of reconciliation.²⁹⁰

The majority of Charles proclaimed.

How to get rid of the troublesome obligation she had assumed, was now the problem; since to fulfil her promise honestly was, for a person of her crooked policy and inordinate ambition, not to be thought of for an instant. The readiest solution was found in abolishing the office of lieutenant-general. This could be done only by declaring the termination of the minority of Charles. For this an opportunity presented itself, when, on the seventeenth of August, 1563,²⁹¹ the queen and her children, with a brilliant retinue, were in the city of Rouen, on their return from the successful campaign against Havre. That day Charles the Ninth held a "lit de justice" in the palace of the Parliament of Normandy. Sitting in state, and surrounded by his mother, his younger brothers, and a host of grandees, he proceeded to address the assembled counsellors, pronouncing himself of full age, and, in the capacity of a major king, delivered to them an edict, signed the day before, ordering the observance of his Edict of Amboise and the complete pacification of his kingdom by a universal laying down of arms.²⁹² True, Charles was but a few days more than thirteen years of age; but his right to assume the full powers of government was strenuously maintained by Chancellor L'Hospital, upon whom devolved the task of explaining more fully the king's motives and purposes. Then Catharine, the author of the pageant, rising, humbly approached her son's throne, and bowed to the boy in token that she resigned into his hands the temporary authority she had held for nearly three years. Charles, advancing to meet her, accepted her homage, saying, at the same time, in words that were but too significant and prophetic of the remainder of his reign: "Madame ma mère, you shall govern and command as much or more than ever."²⁹³

Charles and the refractory Parliament of Paris.

The Parliament of Rouen, flattered at being selected for the instrument in so important an act, published and registered the edict of Charles's majority, notwithstanding some unpalatable provisions. Not so the Parliament of Paris. The counsellors of the capital were even more indignant at the slight put upon their claim to precedence, than at the proposed disarming of the Roman Catholics – a measure particularly distasteful to the riotous population of Paris.²⁹⁴ The details of their opposition need not, however, find a record here. In the end the firmness of the king, or of his advisers, triumphed. At Mantes²⁹⁵ Charles received a deputation from the recalcitrant judges, with Christopher de Thou, their first president, at its head. After hearing their remonstrances, he replied to the delegates that, although young and possessed of little experience, he was as truly king of France as any of his predecessors, and that he intended to make himself obeyed as such. To prove, however, that he had not acted inconsiderately in the premises, he called upon the members of his council who were present to speak; and each in turn, commencing with Cardinal Bourbon, the first prince of the blood, declared that the edict of Amboise had been made with his consent and advice, and that he deemed it both useful and necessary. Whereupon Charles informed the parliamentary committee that he had not adopted this course because he was under any obligation to render to them an account of his actions. "But," said he, "now that I am of age, I wish you to meddle with nothing beyond giving my subjects good and speedy justice. The kings, my predecessors, placed you where you are, in order that they might unburden their consciences, and that their subjects might live in greater security under their obedience, not in order to constitute you my tutors, or the protectors of the realm, or the guardians of my city of Paris. You have allowed yourselves to suppose until now that you are all this. I shall not leave you under the delusion; but I command you that, as in my father's and grandfather's time you were accustomed to attend to justice alone, so you shall henceforth meddle with nothing else." He professed to be perfectly willing to listen to their representations when modestly given; but he concluded by threatening them that, if they persisted in their present insolent course, he would find means to convince them that they were not his guardians and teachers, but his servants.²⁹⁶ These stout words were shrewdly suspected to come from "the shop of the chancellor,"²⁹⁷ whose popularity they by no means augmented. But Charles was himself in earnest. A fresh delegation of counsellors was dismissed from the royal presence with menaces,²⁹⁸ and the parliament and people of Paris were both finally compelled to succumb. Parliament registered the edict; the people surrendered their arms – the poor receiving the estimated value of the weapons, the tradesmen and burgesses a ticket to secure their future restoration. As a matter of course, the nobles do not appear at all in the transaction, their immemorial claim to be armed even in time of peace being respected.

The Pope's bull against princely heretics.

Cardinal Châtillon.

Pope Pius the Fourth had been as indignant as Philip the Second himself at the conclusion of peace with the Huguenots. He avenged himself as soon as he received the tidings, by publishing, on the seventh of April, 1563, a bull conferring authority upon the inquisitors general of Christendom to proceed against heretics and their favorers – even to bishops, archbishops, patriarchs and cardinals – and to cite them before their tribunal by merely affixing the summons to the doors of the Inquisition or of the basilica of St. Peter. Should they fail to appear in person, they might at once be condemned and sentenced. The bull was no idle threat. Without delay a number of French prelates were indicted for heresy, and summoned to come to Rome and defend themselves. The list was headed by Cardinal Odet de Châtillon, Coligny's eldest brother, who had openly espoused the reformed belief, and St. Romain, Archbishop of Aix. Caraccioli, who had resigned the bishopric of Troyes and had been ordained a Protestant pastor, Montluc of Valence, and others of less note, figured among the suspected.²⁹⁹ As they did not appear, a number of these prelates were shortly condemned.³⁰⁰ Not content with this bold infraction of the Gallican liberties, the Roman pontiff went a step farther, and, through the Congregation of the Inquisition, cited Jeanne d'Albret, Queen of Navarre, to appear at Rome within six months, on pain of being held attainted of heresy, and having her dominions given in possession to the first Catholic occupant.³⁰¹

The council protests against the papal bull.

In other words, not only Béarn, the scanty remnant of her titular monarchy, but all the lands and property to which the Huguenot queen had fallen heir, were to follow in the direction the kingdom of Navarre had taken, and go to swell the enormous wealth and dominion of the Spanish prince,³⁰² who found his interest to lie in the discord and misfortunes of his neighbors. Surely such an example would not be without significance to princes and princesses who, like Catharine, were wont occasionally to court the heretics on account of their power, and whose loyalty to the papal church could scarcely be supposed, even by the most charitable, to rest on any firmer foundation than self-interest. Nor was the lesson thrown away. Catharine and Michel de l'Hospital, and many another, read its import at a glance. But, instead of breaking down their opposition, the papal bull only forearmed them. They saw that Queen Jeanne's cause was their cause – the cause of any of the Valois who, whether upon the ground of heresy or upon any other pretext, might become obnoxious to the See of Rome. The royal council of state, therefore, promptly took the matter in hand, in connection with the recent trial of the French prelates, and replied to the papal missive by a spirited protest, which D'Oisel, the French ambassador at Rome, was commissioned to present. In his monarch's name he was to declare the procedure against the Queen of Navarre to be not only derogatory to the respect due to the royal dignity, which that princess could claim to an equal degree with the other monarchs of Christendom, but injurious to the rights and honor of the king and kingdom, and subversive of civil society. It was unjust, for it was dictated by the enemies of France, who sought to take advantage of the youth of the king and his embarrassments arising from civil wars, to oppress a widow and orphans – the widow and orphan children, indeed, of a king for whom the Pope had himself but recently been endeavoring so zealously to secure the restoration of Navarre. The malice was apparent from the fact that nothing similar had been undertaken by the Holy See against any of the monarchs who had revolted from its obedience within the last forty years. Sovereign power had been conferred upon the Pope for the salvation of souls, not that he might despoil kings and dispose of kingdoms according to his caprice – an undertaking his predecessors had engaged in hitherto only to their shame and confusion. Finally, the King of France begged Pius to recall the sentence against Queen Jeanne, otherwise he would be compelled to employ the remedies resorted to by his ancestors in similar cases, according to the laws of the realm.³⁰³ Not content with this direct appeal, Catharine wrote to her son's ambassador in Germany to interest the emperor and the King of the Romans in an affair that no less vitally affected them.³⁰⁴ So vigorous a response seems to have frightened the papal court, and the bull was either recalled or dropped – at least no trace is said to be found in the Constitutions of Pius the Fourth – and the proceedings against the bishops were indefinitely suspended.³⁰⁵