History of the Rise of the Huguenots

"What, then, would Philip have me do?" asks Catharine. "Apply a prompt remedy," answers Alva; "for sooner or later your enemies will, by their own action, compel you to accept the wager of war, and that, probably, under less favorable circumstances than at present. All Philip's thoughts are intent upon the expulsion of that wretched sect of the Huguenots, and upon restoring the subjects of the French crown to their ancient obedience, and maintaining the queen mother's legitimate authority." "The king, my son," responds Catharine, "publishes whatever edicts he pleases, and is obeyed." "Then, if he enjoys such authority over his vassals," breaks in Isabella, "why does he not punish those who are rebels both against God and against himself?"

That question Catharine did not choose to answer. Instead of it she had some chimerical schemes to propose – a league between France, Spain, and Germany, that should give the law to the world, and a confirmation of the bonds that united the royal houses of France and Spain by two more marriages, viz.: of Don Carlos to Margaret, her youngest daughter, and of the Duke of Anjou to the Princess of Portugal. Alva, however, making light of such projects, which could, according to his view, effect nothing more than the bond already connecting the families, was not slow in bringing the conversation back to the religious question. But he soon had reason to complain of Catharine's coldness. She had already expressed her mind fully, she said; and she resented, as a want of the respect due to her, the hint that she was more indifferent than previously. She would not fail to do justice, she assured him. That would be difficult, rejoined Alva, with a chancellor at the head of the judiciary who could not certainly be expected to apply the remedy needed by the unsound condition of France. "It is his personal enemies," promptly replied Catharine, "who, out of hatred, accuse L'Hospital of being a bad Catholic." "Can you deny that he is a Huguenot?" asked the Spaniard. "I do not regard him as such," calmly answered the French queen. "Then you are the only person in the kingdom who is of that opinion!" retorted the duke. "Even before I left France, and during the lifetime of my father, King Henry," said Isabella, interrupting with considerable animation, "your Majesty knows that that was his reputation; and you may be certain that so long as he is retained in his present office the good will always be kept in fear and in disfavor, while the bad will find him a support and advocate in all their evil courses. If he were to be confined for a few days only in his own house, you would at once discover the truth of my words, so much better would the interests of religion advance."[376 - Cartas que el Duque de Alba scrivió, etc. Papiers d'état du card. de Granvelle, ix. 315.] But this step Catharine was by no means willing to take. Nor, when again pressed by Alva, who dwelt much on the importance to Philip of knowing her intentions as to applying herself in earnest to the good work, so as to be guided in his own actions, would she deign to give any clearer indications. Yet she avowed – greatly shocking the orthodox duke thereby[377 - "Yo me alteré terriblemente de oírselo, y le dixe que me maravillava mucho." Ibid., ix. 317.]– that she designed, instead of securing the acceptance of the decrees of Trent by the French, to convene a council of "good prelates and wise men," to settle a number of matters not of divine or positive prescription, which the Fathers of Trent had left undecided. Alva expressed his extreme astonishment, and reminded her of the Colloquy of Poissy – the source, as he alleged, of all the present disgraceful situation of France.[378 - "La junta passada de adonde començáron todas las desverguenças que al presente ay en este reyno." Ibid., ix. 317.] But Catharine threw the whole blame of the failure of that conference upon the inordinate conceit of the Cardinal of Lorraine,[379 - "En la otra el cardenal de Lorena havia sido el que avia hecho todo el daño, pensando poder persuadir á los ministros." Ibid., ubi supra.] and persisted in the plan. The Spaniard came to the conclusion that Catharine's only design was to avoid having recourse to salutary rigor, and indulged in his correspondence with his master in lugubrious vaticinations respecting the future.[380 - "Parécenos que quiere con esta semblea (i.e., assemblée), que ellos llaman, remendar lo que falta en el rigor necessario al remedio de sus vasallos, y plega á Dios no sea," etc. Ibid., ix. 318.]

Catharine rejects all violent plans.

Cardinal Granvelle's testimony.

So far, then, was the general belief which has been adopted by the greater number of historians up to our own days from being correct – the belief that Catharine framed, at the Bayonne conference, with Alva's assistance, a plan for the extermination of the Protestants by a massacre such as was realized on St. Bartholomew's Day, 1572 – that, on the contrary, the queen mother refused, in a peremptory manner that disgusted the Spanish fanatics, every proposition that looked like violence. That we have not read the correspondence of Alva incorrectly, and that no letter containing the mythical agreement of Catharine ever reached Philip, is proved by the tone of the letters that passed between the great agents in the work of persecution in the Spanish Netherlands. Cardinal Granvelle, who, in his retreat at Besançon, was kept fully informed by the King of Spain, or by his chief ministers, of every important event, and who received copies of all the most weighty documents, in a letter to Alonso del Canto expresses great regret that Isabella and Alva should have failed in their endeavor to induce Catharine de' Medici to adopt methods more proper than she was taking to remedy the religious ills of France. She promised marvels, he adds, but was determined to avoid recourse to arms, which, indeed, was not necessary, if she would only act as she should. He was persuaded that the plan she was adopting would entail the ruin of religion and of her son's throne.[381 - Letter of Granvelle, Aug. 20, 1565, Papiers d'état, ix. 481.]

Festivities and pageantry.

While the policy of two of the most important nations on the face of the globe, in which were involved the interests, temporal and eternal, of millions of men, women, and children, formed the topic of earnest discussion between two women – a mother and her daughter, the mother yet to become infamous for her participation in a bloody tragedy of which she as yet little dreamed – and a Spanish grandee doomed to an equally unenviable immortality in the records of human suffering and human crime, the city of Bayonne was the scene of an ephemeral gayety that might well convey the impression that such merry-making was not only the sole object of the conference, but the great concern of life.[382 - "Depuis l'arrivée n'y eust mention que de festins, récréations et passe-temps de diverses manières." Relation du voyage de la reine Isabelle d'Espagne à Bayonne, MSS. Belgian Archives, Compte Rendu de la commission royale d'histoire, seconde série, ix. (1857) 159. This paper was drawn up by the Secretary of State Courtewille, and sent to President Viglius.] Two nations, floundering in hopeless bankruptcy, yet found money enough to lavish upon costly but unmeaning pageants, while many a noble, to satisfy an ostentatious display, made drafts which an impoverished purse was little able to honor. The banquets and jousts, the triumphal arches with their flattering inscriptions, the shows in which allegory revelled almost to madness – all have been faithfully narrated with a minuteness worthy of a loftier theme.[383 - Over the first triumphal arch was a representation of Isabella (or Elizabeth) trampling Mars under foot, with the mottoes Sacer hymen pacem nobis contulit and Deus nobis hæc otia fecit, and below the lines:Élizabeth, de roy fille excellente,Vous avez joint ung jour deux rois puissans;France et l'Espaigne, en gloire permanente,Extolleront voz âges triumphans, etc.Over a second arch at the palace gate, which was reached by a street hung with tapestry and decorated with the united arms of France and Spain, was suspended a painting of Catharine with her three sons and three daughters, and the inscription:C'est à l'entour de royalle couronneQue le jardin hespérien floronne:Ce sont jardins de si belle féconde,Qui aujourd'huy ne trouve sa seconde;Ce sont rameaux vigoureux et puissans;Ce sont florons de vertu verdissans.Royne sans per (paire), de grâce décorée,Vous surmontez Pallas et Cythérée.Catharine's portraits scarcely confirm the boast of her panegyrist that she surpassed Venus, however well she might match Minerva in sagacity.] This is, however, no place for the detailed description which, though entertaining, can be read to advantage only on the pages of the contemporary pamphlets that have come down to us.

Yet, in the discussion of the more serious concerns of a great religious and political party, we may for a moment pause to gaze at a single show, neither more magnificent nor more dignified than its fellows; but in which the youthful figure of a Bearnese destined to play a first part in the world's drama, but up to this time living a life of retirement in his ancestral halls, first makes his appearance among the pomps to which as yet he has been a stranger. The pride of the grandfather whose name he bore, Henry of Navarre had been permitted, at that whimsical old man's suggestion, to strengthen an already vigorous constitution by athletic sports, and by running barefoot like the poorest peasant over the sides of his native hills. "God designed," writes a companion of his later days who never rekindles more of his youthful fire than when descanting upon his master's varied fortunes, "to prepare an iron wedge wherewith to cleave the hard knots of our calamities."[384 - Agrippa d'Aubigné, Histoire universelle, i. 1.] Later in childhood, when both father and grandfather were dead, he was the object of the unremitting care of a mother whose virtues find few counterparts or equals in the women of the sixteenth century; and Jeanne d'Albret, in a remarkable letter to Theodore Beza, notes with joy a precocious piety,[385 - "Le feu bon homme Monsieur de La Gaucherie y marchoit en rondeur de conscience, et mesme mon filz lui doibt et aux siens cette rasine (racine) de piété qui lui est, par la grasse de Dieu, si bien plantée au cueur par bonnes admonitions, que maintenant, dont je loue ce bon Dieu, elle produit et branches et fruitz. Je lui suplie qu'il luy fasse ceste grasse qu'il continue de bien en mieulx." Letter of Dec. 6, 1566, MSS. Geneva Library, Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. français, xvi. (1867) 65.] which, there is reason to fear, was not hardy enough to withstand the withering atmosphere of a court like that with which he was now making his first acquaintance.

One evening there was exhibited in a large hall, well lighted by means of blazing torches, a tournament in which the knights fought on foot.[386 - "Ung tournoy a pied."] From a castle where they held an enchanted lady captive, the knights challengers issued, and "received all comers with a thrust of the pike, and five blows with the sword." Each champion, on his arrival, endeavored to enter the castle, but was met at the portal by guards "dressed very fantastically in black," and repelled with "lighted instruments." Not a few of the less illustrious were captured here. The more exalted in rank reached the donjon, or castle-keep, but as they thought to set foot within it, a trap-door opened and they too found themselves prisoners. It fared better with the princes; for the success of each champion was measured by a rigid heraldic scale. These passed the donjon, but, on a bridge leading to the tower where slept the enchanted lady, a giant confronted them, and in the midst of the combat the bridge was lowered, and they were taken, as had been their predecessors. "The Duke of Vendôme,[387 - It will be remembered that the Spaniards never acknowledged the claim of Antoine or his wife to the title of sovereigns of Navarre. In all Spanish documents, therefore, such as that which we are here following, their son Henry is designated only by the dukedom of Bourbon-Vendôme which he inherited from his father.] son of the late duke, whom they call in France the Prince of Navarre – a boy apparently ten or eleven years of age – crossed the bridge, and the giant pretended to surrender; but he too was afterward repulsed like the rest." The Duke of Orleans – whom the reader will more readily recognize under the title of Duke of Anjou, which he, about this time, received – next entered the lists. Naturally he penetrated further than his namesake of Navarre, and "the giant showed more fear of him than of the other;" but a cloud enveloped them both, and "thus the duke vanished from sight." King Charles was the last to fight, and for his prowess it was reserved for him to defeat the giant and deliver the lady.[388 - Relation du voyage de la reine Isabelle à Bayonne, MSS. Belgian Archives, ubi supra, ix. 161, 162.]

The confraternities.

The author of the pompous show had made a serious mistake. The giant "League," before whom so many a champion failed, it was the lot not of Charles, nor of Henry of Valois, but of the other Henry, of Navarre, to overcome. That giant was already in existence, although still in his infancy. For some time past the zealous papists, impatient of the sluggish devotion of the court, had been forming "confréries," or fraternities, whose members, bound together by a common oath, were pledged to the support of the Roman Catholic religion.[389 - See Jean de Serres, iii., 53, for the fraternities of the Holy Ghost in Burgundy. Blaise de Montluc's proposition of a league with the king as its head had been declined; the monarch needed no other tie to his subjects than that which already bound them together. Agrippa d'Aubigné, Hist. univ., liv. iv., c. v. (i. 206.)] The plan was a dangerous one, and it shortly excited the apprehension of the king and his mother. "I am told," Charles wrote in July, 1565, to one of his governors, "that in a number of places in my realm there is a talk of establishing an association amongst my subjects, who invite one another to join it. I beg you to take measures to prevent that any be made for any purpose whatsoever; but keep my subjects so far as possible united in the desire to render me duty and obedience."[390 - Letter of Charles IX. to M. de Matignon, July 31, 1565, apud Capefigue, Hist. de la Réforme, de la Ligue, etc., ii. 419, 420. The same letter stipulated for the better protection of the Protestants by freeing them from domiciliary visits, etc.] And to prove the sincerity of his intentions, the French king ordered the late Edict of Pacification again to be proclaimed by public crier in the streets of the seditious city of Paris – a feat which was successfully performed under Marshal Montmorency's supervision, by the city provost, accompanied by so strong a detachment of archers and arquebusiers, as effectually to prevent popular disturbance.[391 - Maniquet to Gordes, August 1, 1565, Condé MSS. in Aumale, i. 528.] Already there were restless spirits that saw in another civil war fresh opportunity for the advancement of their selfish interests. Months ago Villegagnon, the betrayer of the Brazilian colony of Coligny, had written to Cardinal Granvelle, telling him that he had resigned his dignities and offices in the French court, and had informed Catharine de' Medici, "that until Charles was the declared enemy of the enemies of God and of His church, he would never again bear arms in his service."[392 - Letter of Villegagnon to Granvelle, May 25, 1564, Papiers d'état, vii. 660. The Huguenots figure as "les Aygnos, c'est-à-dire, en langue de Suisse, rebelles et conjurés contre leur prince pour la liberté."] The vice-admiral, of whom modesty was never a conspicuous virtue, went so far as to draw a flattering portrait of himself as a second Hannibal, vowing eternal enmity to the Huguenots.[393 - Letter of May 27, 1564, Ibid., vii., 666.] And Nicole de St. Rémy, whose only claim to honorable mention was found in her oft-paraded boast that, as a mistress of Henry the Second, she had borne him a son, and who held in France the congenial post of a Spanish spy, suggested the marriage of the Cardinal of Bourbon in view of the possible contingency of the death of all Catharine's sons.[394 - Letter of N. de St. Rémy, June 5, 1564. Ibid., viii. 24, 25. "Le peuple l'aymeroit trop mieulx pour roy que nul aultre de Bourbon."] The centre of all intrigue, the storehouse from which every part of France was supplied with material capable of once more enkindling the flames of a destructive civil war, was the house of the Spanish resident envoy, Frances de Alava, successor of the crafty Chantonnay, the brother of Granvelle. It was he that was in constant communication with all the Roman Catholic malcontents in France.[395 - Catharine never forgave Ambassador Chantonnay for having boasted that, with Throkmorton's assistance, he could overturn the State. "Jusqu'à dire que Trokmarton, qui estoit ambassadeur d'Angleterre au commencement de ces troubles, pour l'intelligence qu'il a avec les Huguenots, et luy pour celle qu'il a avec les Catholiques de ce royaume, sont suffisans pour subvertir cet Estat." Letter to the Bishop of Rennes, Dec. 13, 1563, La Laboureur, i. 784.] Catharine endeavored to check this influence, but to no purpose. The fanatical party were bound by a stronger tie of allegiance to Philip, the Catholic king, than to her, or to the Very Christian King her son. Catharine had particularly enjoined upon the Cardinal of Lorraine to have no communication with Granvelle or with Chantonnay, but the prelate's relations with both were never interrupted for a moment.[396 - Granvelle to Philip II., July 15, 1565. Papiers d'état, ix. 399, 402, etc.]

Siege of Malta, and French civilities to the Sultan.

The fact was that, so far from true was it that a cordial understanding existed between the courts of France and Spain, such as the mythical league for the extirpation of heresy presupposes, the distrust and hostility were barely veiled under the ordinary conventionalities of diplomatic courtesy. While Catharine and Philip's queen were exchanging costly civilities at Bayonne, the Turks were engaged in a siege of Malta, which has become famous for the obstinacy with which it was prosecuted and the valor with which it was repelled. Spain had sent a small detachment of troops to the assistance of the grand master, Jean de la Valette, and his brave knights of St. John, and the Pope had contributed ten thousand crowns to their expenses.[397 - See Alex. Sutherland's Achievements of the Knights of Malta (Phila., 1846), ii. 121, which contains an interesting popular account of this memorable leaguer.] Yet at this very moment an envoy of the Sultan was at the court of the Very Christian King of France, greatly to the disgust of the Spanish visitors and pious Catholics in general,[398 - Papiers d'état du card. de Granvelle, ix. 545, etc.] and only waited for the departure of Isabella and Alva to receive formal presentation to the monarch and his mother.[399 - Giovambatista Adriani, Istoria de' suoi tempi (Ed. of Milan, 1834), ii. 221.]

The constable espouses Cardinal Châtillon's defence.

Meantime, although the queen mother continued her policy of depriving the Huguenots of one after another of the privileges to which they were entitled, and replaced Protestant governors of towns and provinces by Roman Catholics, her efforts at repression seemed, for the time at least, to produce little effect. "The true religion is so rooted in France," wrote one who accompanied the royal progress, "that, like a fire, it kindles daily more and more. In every place, from Bayonne hither, and for the most part of the journey, there are more Huguenots than papists, and the most part of men of quality and mark be of the religion." If the writer, as is probable, was over-sanguine in his anticipations, he could not be mistaken in the size of the great gathering of Protestants – full two thousand – for the most part gentlemen and gentlewomen, which he witnessed with his own eyes, brought together at Nantes to listen to the preaching of the eloquent Perucel.[400 - Sir Thomas Smith to Cecil, Nantes, Oct. 12, 1565, State Paper Office, Calendar.] And it was not an insignificant proof of the futility of any direct attempt to crush the Huguenots, that Constable Montmorency pretty plainly intimated that there were limits which religious proscription must not transcend. The English ambassador wrote from France, late in November, that the Pope's new nuncio had within two days demanded that the red cap should be taken from the Cardinal of Châtillon. But the latter, who chanced to be at court, replied that "what he enjoyed he enjoyed by gift of the crown of France, wherewith the Pope had nothing to do." The old constable was even more vehement. "The Pope," said he, "has often troubled the quiet of this realm, but I trust he shall not be able to trouble it at this time. I am myself a papist; but if the Pope and his ministers go about again to disturb the kingdom, my sword shall be Huguenot. My nephew shall leave neither cap nor dignity which he has for the Pope, seeing the edict gives him that liberty."[401 - Sir Thomas Smith to Leicester, Nov. 23, 1565, State Paper Office.]

The court at Moulins.

Early in the following year, Charles the Ninth convoked in the city of Moulins, in Bourbonnais, near the centre of France, an assembly of notables to deliberate on the interests of the kingdom, which had not yet fully recovered from the desolations of the first civil war. The extensive journey, which had occupied a large part of the two preceding years, had furnished him abundant evidence of the grievances under which his subjects in the various provinces were laboring, and he now summoned all that was most illustrious in France, and especially those noblemen whom he had dismissed to their governments when about to start from his capital, to assist him in discovering the best mode of relief. If the Florentine Adriani could be credited, there were other and sinister designs in the mind of the court, or, at least, in that of Catharine. According to this historian, the plan of the second "Sicilian Vespers," resolved upon at Bayonne, was to have been put into execution at Moulins, which, from its strength, was well suited for the scene of so sanguinary a drama; but, although the Huguenot chiefs assembled in numbers, their actions betrayed so much suspicion of the Roman Catholics, and it seemed so difficult to include all in the blow, that the massacre was deferred until the arrival of a more propitious time, which did not come until St. Bartholomew's Day, 1572.[402 - "Al qual tempo si riservò tale esecuzione per alcuni sospetti, che apparivano negli Ugonotti, e per difficoltà di condurvegli tutti, e ancora perchè più sicuro luogo era Parigi che Molino." Giovambatista Adriani, Istoria de' suoi tempi (lib. decimottavo), ii. 221.] I need not stop to refute a story which presupposes the adoption of resolutions in the conference of Bayonne, which we now know, from documentary evidence, were never for a moment entertained by Catharine and her son the king.

Feigned reconciliation of the Guises and Coligny.

So far from having any such treacherous design, in point of fact the assembly of Moulins was intended in no small degree to serve as a means of healing the dissensions existing among the nobles. The most serious breaches were the feud between the Châtillons and the Guises on account of the suspected complicity of Admiral Coligny in the murder of the late duke, and that between Marshal Montmorency and the Cardinal of Lorraine, arising out of the affray in January, 1565. Both quarrels were settled amicably in the king's presence, with as much sincerity as generally characterizes such reconciliations. Coligny declared on oath, in the royal presence, that he was guiltless of Guise's murder, neither having been its author nor having consented to it; whereupon the king declared him innocent, and ordered the parties to be reconciled. The command was obeyed, for Anne d'Este, Guise's widow, and Cardinal Charles of Lorraine in turn embraced the admiral, in token of renewed friendship. How much of meaning these caresses contained was to be shown six years later by the active participation of the one in the most famous massacre which the annals of modern history present, and by the exultant rejoicings in which the other indulged when he heard of it. Young Henry of Guise, less hypocritical than his mother and his uncle, held aloof from the demonstration, and permitted the beholders to infer that he was quietly biding his time for vengeance.[403 - De Thou, iii. (liv. xxxix.) 660-664; Castelnau, liv. vi., c. ii.; Jehan de la Fosse, 76; Davila, bk. iii. 98.]

The chancellor introduces a measure for the relief of the Protestants.

A new altercation between Lorraine and the chancellor.

An event of principal importance that occurred during the stay of the court at Moulins was a fresh altercation between Lorraine and L'Hospital. A tolerant but apparently unauthorized act of the chancellor furnished the occasion. The Edict of Pacification had made provision for the worship of the Huguenots in but a small number of places through the kingdom. If living out of reach of these more favored localities, what were they to do, that they might not be compelled to exist without the restraints of religion during their lifetime, and to die without its consolations, nor leave their children unbaptized and uninstructed in the articles of their faith? L'Hospital proposed to remedy the evil by permitting the Protestants, in such cases, to institute a species of private worship in their houses, and had procured the royal signature to an edict permitting them to call in, as occasion might require, ministers of the Gospel from other cities where their regular ministrations were tolerated by the law of Amboise.[404 - The edict, of course, is not to be found in Isambert, or any other collection of French laws; but a letter in Lestoile (ed. Michaud, p. 19), to whom we are indebted for most of our knowledge of the event, refers to the very wording of the document ("ce sont les mots de l'édict"). The letter is entitled "Mémoire d'un différend meu à Moulins en 1566, entre le Cardinal de Lorraine et le Chancellier de l'Hôpital," and begins with the words: "Je vous advise que du jour d'hier," etc. M. Bonnet has discovered and published, in the Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. franç., xxiv. (1875) 412-415, a second and fuller account, dated Moulins, March 16, 1566 (MS. French Nat. Library, Dupuy, t. lxxxvi., f. 158). As was seen above (p. 155), this altercation has been generally confounded with that of two years earlier. The letter given by Lestoile (see above) is also published in Mém. de Condé, v. 50, but is referred to the wrong event by the editor. Prof. Soldan (Gesch. des Prot. in Fr., ii. 199), follows the Mém. de Condé in the reference.] This edict he had sent forthwith to the different parliaments for registration. The Parliament of Dijon, in Burgundy, however, instead of obeying, promptly despatched two counsellors with a remonstrance to the king.[405 - Not many months before this occurrence a guest at the Prince of Orange's table told Montigny that there were no Huguenots in Burgundy – meaning the Spanish part, or Franche-Comté. "If so," replied the unfortunate nobleman, "the Burgundians cannot be men of intelligence, since those who have much mind for the most part are Huguenots;" a saying which, reported to Philip, no doubt made a deep impression on his bigoted soul. Pap. d'état du card. de Granvelle, vii. 187, 188. The Burgundians of France were equally intolerant of the reformed doctrines.] On arriving at court, the delegation at first found it impossible to gain the royal ear. In such awe did the "maîtres de requêtes" – to whom petitions were customarily entrusted – stand of the grave and severe chancellor – that venerable old man with the white beard, whom Brantôme likened to another Cato – that none was found bold enough to present the Burgundian remonstrance. At last the delegates went to the newly-arrived cardinal, and Lorraine readily undertook the task. Appearing in the royal council he introduced the matter by expressing "his surprise that the Catholics had no means of making themselves heard respecting their grievances." The objectionable edict was read, and all the members of the council declared that they had never before seen or heard of it. Cardinal Bourbon was foremost in his anger, and declared that if the chancellor had the right to issue such laws on his own responsibility, there was no use in having a council. "Sir," said L'Hospital, turning to the Cardinal of Lorraine, "you are already come to sow discord among us!" "I am not come to sow discord, but to prevent you from sowing it as you have done in the past, scoundrel that you are!" was the reply.[406 - "Je ne suis venu pour troubler; mais pour empescher que ne troubliez, comme avez faict par le passé, belistre que vous estes." Lestoile and Mém. de Condé, ubi supra.] "Would you prevent these poor people, whom the king has permitted to live with freedom of conscience in the exercise of their religion, from receiving any consolation at all?" asked L'Hospital. "Yes, I intend to prevent it," answered the cardinal, "for everybody knows that to suffer such things is to tolerate secret preaching; and I shall prevent it so long as I shall have the power, in order to give no opportunity for the growth of such tyrannical practices. And," continued he, "do you, who have become what you now are by my means, dare to tell me that I come to sow discord among you? I shall take good care to keep you from doing what you have done heretofore." The council rose in anger, and passed into the adjoining apartment, where Catharine, who had not recovered from a temporary illness, strove to appease them as best she could. Charles ordered a new meeting, and, after hearing the deputies from Dijon, the king, conformably to the advice of the council, revoked the edict, and issued a prohibition of all exercise of the Protestant religion or instruction in its doctrines, save where it had been granted at Amboise. The chancellor was strictly enjoined to affix the seal of state to no papers relating to religious affairs without the consent of the royal council.

Protestantism on the northern frontier.

Progress of the reformation at Cateau-Cambrésis.

For several years the Protestants in the northern provinces of France had been busily communicating the religious views they had themselves embraced to their neighbors in Artois, Flanders, and Brabant. This intercourse became exceedingly close about the beginning of the year 1566; and its result was a renunciation of the papal church and its worship, which was participated in by such large numbers, and effected so instantaneously, that the friends and the foes of the new movement were almost equally surprised. The story of this sudden outburst of the reformatory spirit in Valenciennes, Tournay, and other places, accompanied – as are all movements that take a strong hold upon the popular feelings – with a certain amount of lawlessness, which expended itself, however, upon inanimate images and held sacred the lives and honor of men and women, has been well told in the histories of the country whose fortunes it chiefly affected.[407 - See Prescott, Philip II., and Motley, Rise of the Dutch Republic.] I may be permitted, therefore, to pass over these indirect results of Huguenot influence, and glance at the fortunes of a border town within the present bounds of France, and closely connected with the history of France in the sixteenth century, of which little or no notice has been taken in this connection.[408 - M. Charles L. Frossard, of Lille, discovered the MSS. on which the following account is wholly based, in the Archives of the Department du Nord, preserved in that city. As these papers appear to have been inedited, and are referred to, so far as I can learn, by no previous historian, I have deemed it proper to deviate from the rule to which I have ordinarily adhered, of relating in detail only those events that occurred within the ancient limits of the kingdom of France. However, the reformation at Cateau-Cambrésis received its first impulses from France. Mr. Frossard communicated the papers to the Bulletin de la Société de l'histoire du protestantisme français, iii. (1854), 255-264, 396-417, 525-538. They are of unimpeachable accuracy and authenticity.] Cateau-Cambrésis, famous for the treaty by which Henry the Second bartered away extensive conquests for a few paltry places that had fallen into the hands of the enemy, was, as its name – Chastel, Château or Cateau – imports, a castle and a borough that had grown up about it, both of them on lands belonging to the domain of Maximilian of Bergen, Archbishop and Duke of Cambray, and Prince of the Holy Roman Empire. It was smaller, but relatively far more important three hundred years ago than at the present day. For several years a few "good burgesses," with their families, had timidly studied the Holy Scriptures in secret, restrained from making an open profession of their faith by the terrible executions which they saw inflicted upon the Protestants in the Netherlands. But, encouraged by the toleration prevailing in France, they began to cross the frontier, and to frequent the Huguenot "assemblées" at Crespy, Tupigny, and Chauny. The distance was not inconsiderable, and the peril was great. The archbishop had not only written a letter, which was read in every parish church, forbidding the singing of Marot's psalms and the frequenting of French conventicles, but he had sent his spies to the conventicles to discover cases of disobedience. The Huguenots of Cateau multiplied in spite of these precautions. "The eyes of the aforesaid spies," writes a witness of the events, "were so holden that they did not even recognize those with whom they conversed." Yet, although the Huguenots met at home to read the Bible and to "sing the psalms which were most appropriate to the persecution and dispersion of the children of God," the town was as quiet as it had ever been. A slight incident, however, revealed the intensity of the fire secretly burning below the surface. A Huguenot minister was discovered on Whitsunday, in an adjoining village, and brought to Cateau. His captors facetiously told the suspected Protestants whom they met, that they had brought them a preacher, and that they would have no further occasion for leaving the town in quest of one. But the joke was not so well appreciated as it might have been by the adherents of the reformed faith, who seem by this time to have become extremely numerous. The excitement was intense. When the bailiff of Cambrésis was detected, not long after, stealing into the place by night, accompanied by some sixty men, with the intention of carrying the preacher off to Cambray, he met with unexpected resistance. A citizen, on his way to his garden outside the walls, was the first to notice the guard of strange arquebusiers at the gate, and ran back to give the alarm. The tocsin was rung, and the inhabitants assembled in arms. It was now the turn of the bailiff to be astonished, and to listen humbly to the remonstrances of the people, indignant that he should have presumed to seize their gates and usurp the functions of the local magistrates. However, the intruders, after being politely informed that, according to strict justice, the whole party might have been summarily put to death, were suffered to beat a hasty retreat; not that so perfect a control could be put upon the ardor of some, but that they "administered sundry blows with the flat of their swords upon the back of the bailiff and a few of his soldiers."

Interference of the Archbishop of Cambray.

The incident itself was of trifling importance, for the Huguenot minister was promptly given up to the baron of the village where he had been captured, and was taken by his orders to Cambray. But it led to serious consequences. Threatened by the archiepiscopal city, the Protestants of Cateau, afraid to go to the French preaching-places, sent for Monsieur Philippe, minister of Tupigny, and held the reformed services just outside of their own walls. Alarmed at the progress of Protestant doctrines in his diocese, the Archbishop convened the estates of Cambray, and, on the eighteenth of August, 1566, sent three canons of the cathedral to persuade his subjects of Cateau to return to the Papal Church, and to threaten them with ruin in case of refusal. Neither argument nor menace was of any avail. The Protestants, who had studied their Bibles, were more than a match for the priests, who had not; and, as for the peril, the Huguenots quaintly replied: "Rather than yield to your demand, we should prefer to have our heads placed at our feet." When asked if they were all of this mind, they reiterated their determination: "Were the fires made ready to burn us all, we should enter them rather than accede to your request and return to the mass." These were brave words, but the sturdy Huguenots made them good a few months later.

The images and pictures overthrown.

Scarcely a week had passed before the news reached Cateau (on the twenty-fifth of August) that the "idols" had been broken in all the churches of Valenciennes, Antwerp, Ghent, Tournay, and elsewhere. Although stirred to its very depths by the exciting intelligence, the Protestant population still contained itself, and merely consulted convenience by celebrating Divine worship within the city walls, in an open cemetery. Unfortunately, however, the minister whom the reformed had obtained was ill-suited to these troublous times. Monsieur Philippe, unlike Calvin and the great majority of the ministers of the French Protestant church, was rash and impetuous. Early the next morning he entered the church of St. Martin, in company with three or four other persons, and commenced the work of destruction. Altars, statues, pictures, antiphonaries, missals, graduals – all underwent a common fate. From St. Martin's the iconoclasts visited in like manner the other ecclesiastical edifices of the town and its suburbs. Upon the ruins of the Romish superstition the new fabric arose, and Monsieur Philippe preached the same day in the principal church of Cateau, to a large and attentive audience.

The Protestant claims.

And now began an animated interchange of proclamations on the one hand, and of petitions on the other. The archbishop demanded the unconditional submission of his subjects, and gave no assurances of toleration. The Protestants declared themselves ready to give him their unqualified allegiance, as their temporal sovereign, but claimed the liberty to worship God. Maximilian referred to the laws and constitutions of the Empire of which they formed an integral part. The burgesses answered by showing that they had always been governed in accordance with the "placards" issued by the King of Spain for his provinces of the Netherlands, and that, whenever they had appealed in times past to the chamber of the Empire, as for example at Spires, they had not only been repelled, but even punished for their temerity.[409 - Lille MSS., ubi supra, 403.] They claimed, therefore, the benefit of the "Accord" made by the Duchess of Parma at Brussels a few days previously, guaranteeing the exercise of the reformed religion wherever it had heretofore been practised;[410 - "De sorte qu'ils espèrent que lesdits de la requeste et du compromis les adsisteront suyvant leur promesse, à ce qu'ils puissent jouyr de la mesme liberté accordez à Bruxelles, asçavoir, que l'exercise de la religion aye lieu par tout où il a esté usité auparavant, comme ceulx du Chastel en Cambrésis ont eue aussy, et ce seulement par manière de provision, jusques à ce que aultrement il y soict pourveu par le Roy avec l'advis des estatz, estimans que le Roy ne souffrira rien en son pays qui ne soict conforme ausdites ordonnances de l'empire." Lille MSS., ubi supra.] while the archbishop, when forced to declare himself, plainly announced that he would not suffer the least deviation from the Roman Catholic faith. In their perplexity, the Protestants had recourse to the Count of Horn, at Tournay, by whom they were received with the utmost kindness. The count even furnished them with a letter to the archbishop, entreating him to be merciful to them.[411 - Letter of P. de Montmorency, Sept. 11, 1566, Lille MSS., ubi supra.]

The Archbishop's vengeance.

But nothing was further from the heart of Maximilian than mercy. He was the same blind adherent of Cardinal Granvelle and his policy, whom, a year or two before, Brederode, Hoogstraaten, and their fellow-revellers had grievously insulted at a banquet given to Egmont before his departure for Spain; the same treacherous, sanguinary priest who wrote to Granvelle respecting Valenciennes: "We had better push forward and make an end of all the principal heretics, whether rich or poor, without regarding whether the city will be entirely ruined by such a course."[412 - Motley, Dutch Republic, i. 458-462.] On Monday, the twenty-fourth of March, 1567, the troops of the archbishop appeared before Cateau, and the same day the place was surrendered by the treachery of some of the inhabitants. At once Cateau became a scene of bloody executions. All that had taken part in the Protestant worship were brought before a tribunal, which often tried, condemned, and punished with death upon one and the same day. Monsieur Philippe, the rash preacher, and one of his deacons seem to have been the first victims. There was no lack of food for the gallows. To have been present at the "preachings," to have partaken of the communion, to have maintained that the Protestant was better than the Roman Catholic religion, to have uttered a jest or drawn a caricature reflecting upon the Papal Church and its ceremonies – any of these was sufficient reason for sending a man to be hung or beheaded. The duchess's "moderation" had effected thus much, that no one seems to have been burned at the stake. And so, at last, by assiduous but bloody work, the Reformation was completely extirpated from Cateau Cambrésis. It was, at least, a source of mournful satisfaction that scarce one of the sufferers failed to exhibit great constancy and pious resignation in view of death.[413 - Lille MSS., ubi supra.]

The idea of toleration is not understood.

Let us return from the Flemish borders to France proper, where, notwithstanding attempts at external reconciliation, the breach between the Protestants and their Roman Catholic neighbors was daily widening, where, in fact, the elements of a new war were gathering shape and consistency. It was becoming more and more difficult – especially for a government of temporary shifts and expedients – to control the antagonistic forces incessantly manifesting themselves. The idea of toleration was understood by neither party. The Roman Catholics of Provins were so slow to comprehend the liberty of conscience and religious profession of which the Huguenots had wrung a concession in the last edict by force of arms, that they undertook to prosecute the Protestants for eating roast lamb and capons during Lent. With little more appreciation of the altered posture of affairs, the Archbishop of Sens (Cardinal Guise) initiated a trial against a heretical curate of Courtenay, according to the rules of canon law, and the latter might have stood but a poor chance to recover his freedom had not the Huguenot lord of Courtenay seized upon the archbishop's "official" as he was passing his castle, and held him as a hostage to secure the curate's release.[414 - Mémoires de Claude Haton, i. 416, 417.]

Huguenot pleasantries.

It would be asserting too much to say that the Protestants were innocent of any infraction upon the letter or spirit of the Edict of Amboise. They would have been angels, not men, had they been proof against the contagious spirit of raillery that infected the men of the sixteenth century. Where they dared, they not unfrequently held up their opponents to ridicule in the coarse style so popular with all classes.[415 - The satirical literature of the period would of itself fill a volume. The Huguenot songs in derision of the mass are particularly caustic. See M. Bordier, Le Chansonnier Huguenot, and the note to the last chapter. The Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. franç., x. (1861), 40, reprints a "dizain" commencing —"Nostre curé est un fin boulanger,Qui en son art est sage et bien appris:Il vend bien cher son petit pain léger,Combien qu'il ait le froment à bon prix."] Thus a contemporary Roman Catholic recounts with indignation how Prince Porcien held a celebration in Normandy, and among the games was one in which a "paper castle" was assaulted, and the defenders, dressed as monks, were taken prisoners, and were afterward paraded through the streets on asses' backs.[416 - "Chose indigne d'un prince tel qu'il se disoit." Journal d'un curé ligueur (Jehan de la Fosse), 73.] But these buffooneries were harmless sallies contrasted with the insults with which the Protestants were treated in every town where they were not numerically preponderating; nor were they anything more than rare occurrences in comparison with the latter. This page of history is compelled to record no violent commotion on the part of the reformed population, save in cases where, as at Pamiers (a town not far south of Toulouse, near the foot of the Pyrenees), they had been goaded to madness by the government deliberately trampling upon their rights of worship, at the instigation of the ecclesiastical authorities.[417 - See the moderate account of the dispassionate Roman Catholic De Thou, iii. (liv. xxxix.) 666-670. Also Agrippa d'Aubigné, liv. iv., c. vi. (i. 208), and Discours des troubles advenus en la ville de Pamiers, le 5 juin 1566, Archives curieuses (Cimber et Danjou), vi. 309-343. The massacre of Protestants at Foix was caused by an exaggerated and false account of the commotion at Pamiers, carried thither by a fugitive Augustinian monk.] A trifling accident might then, however, be sufficient to cause their inflamed passions to burst out; and in the disturbances that were likely to ensue, little respect was usually paid to the churches or the monasteries. Such are wont to be the unhappy effects of the denial of justice according to the forms of established law. They would have been a hundred-fold more frequent had it not been for the persistent opposition interposed by the Huguenot ministers – many of them with Calvin carrying the doctrine of passive submission to constituted authority almost to the very verge of apparent pusillanimity.

Alarm of the Protestants.

Attempts to murder the admiral and Prince Porcien.

From month to month the conviction grew upon the Protestants that their destruction was agreed upon. There was no doubt with regard to the desire of Philip the Second; for his course respecting his subjects in the Netherlands showed plainly enough that the extermination of heretics was the only policy of which his narrow mind could conceive as pleasing in the sight of heaven. The character of Catharine – stealthy, deceitful, regardless of principle – was equally well understood. Between such a queen and the trusted minister of such a prince, a secret conference like that of Bayonne could not be otherwise than highly suspicious. It is not strange that the Huguenots received it as an indubitable fact that the court from this time forward was only waiting for the best opportunity of effecting their ruin; for even intelligent Roman Catholics, who were not admitted into the confidence of the chief actors in that celebrated interview, came to the same conclusion. Those who knew what had actually been said and done might assure the world that the rumors were false; but the more they asseverated the less they were believed. For it is one of the penalties of insincere and lying diplomacy, that when once appreciated in its true character – as it generally is appreciated in a very brief space of time – it loses its persuasive power, and is treated without much investigation as uniform imposture.[418 - The good policy of straightforward dealing on the part of an ambassador is set forth in a noble letter of Morvilliers, Bishop of Orleans, from which I permit myself to quote a few sentences: "Il y en a toutesfois qui pensent que, pour estre habille homme, il fault tousjours aller masqué, laquelle opinion j'estime du tout erronée, et celluy qui la suit grandement dêceu. Le temps m'a donné quelque expérience des choses; mais je n'ay jamais veu homme, suivant ces chemins obliques, qui n'ait embrouillé les affaires de son maistre, et, luy, perdre beaucoup plus qu'acquérir de réputation; et au contraire ceux, qui se sont conduits prudemment avec la verité, avoir, pour le moins, rapporté de leur négotiation ce fruict et l'honneur d'y avoir faict ce que les hommes, avec le sens et jugement humain, peuvent faire." Correspondance diplomatique de Bertrand de Salignac de la Mothe Fénélon, vii. 97.] With a suspicious vigilance, bred of the very treachery of which they had so often been the victims, the Huguenots saw signs of dangers that perhaps were not actually in preparation for them. And certainly there was enough to alarm. Not many months after the assembly of Moulins a cut-throat by the name of Du May was discovered and executed, who had been hired to murder Admiral Coligny, the most indispensable leader of the party, near his own castle of Châtillon-sur-Loing.[419 - Journal de Jehan de la Fosse, 79, 80; Vie de Coligny (Cologne, 1686), 321-323; Gasparis Colinii Vita, 1575, 55; Agrippa d'Aubigné, Hist. univ., 1, 207.] The last day of the year there was hung a lackey, who pretended that the Cardinal of Lorraine had tried to induce him to poison the Prince of Porcien; and, although he retracted his statements at the time of his "amende honorable,"[420 - Journal d'un curé ligueur (Jehan de la Fosse), 81.] his first story was generally credited. The rumor was current that in December, 1566, Charles received special envoys from the emperor, the Pope, and the King of Spain, warning him that, unless he should revoke his edict of toleration, they would declare themselves his open enemies.[421 - "December (1566.) Au commencement vinrent plusieurs ambassades à Paris, tant de la part de l'Empereur, que du Pape, que du roy d'Espagne, lesquels mandèrent au roy de France, qu'il eust à faire casser l'esdict de janvier, ou autrement qu'ils se déclareroient ennemys." Ibid., 80. The fanatical party affected to regard the Edict of Amboise, March, 1563, as a mere re-establishment of the edict of January 17, 1562.] This was certainly sufficiently incredible, so far as the tolerant Maximilian was concerned; but stranger mutations of policy had often been noticed, and, as to Pius the Fifth and Philip, nothing seemed more probable.

Alva in the Netherlands.

The Swiss levy.

With the opening of the year 1567 the portentous clouds of coming danger assumed a more definite shape. In the neighboring provinces of the Netherlands, after a long period of procrastination, Philip the Second had at length determined to strike a decisive blow. The Duchess of Parma was to be superseded in the government by a man better qualified than any other in Europe for the bloody work assigned him to do. Ferdinando de Toledo, Duke of Alva, in his sixtieth year, after a life full of brilliant military exploits, was to undertake a work in Flanders such as that which, two years before, he had recommended as the panacea for the woes of France – a work with which his name will ever remain associated in the annals of history. The "Beggars" of the Low Countries, like the Huguenots in their last war, had taken up arms in defence of their religious, and, to a less degree, of their civil rights. The "Beggars" complained of the violation of municipal privileges and compacts, ratified by oath at their sovereign's accession, as the Huguenots pointed to the infringement upon edicts solemnly published as the basis of the pacification of the country; and both refused any longer to submit to a tyranny that had, in the name of religion, sent to the gallows or the stake thousands of their most pious and industrious fellow-citizens. The cause was, therefore, common to the Protestants of the two countries, and there was little doubt that should the enemy of either prove successful at home, he would soon be impelled by an almost irresistible impulse to assist his ally in completing his portion of the praiseworthy undertaking. It is true that the Huguenots of France were not now in actual warfare with the government; but, that their time would come to be attacked, there was every reason to apprehend. Hence, when the Duke of Alva, in the memorable summer of 1567, set out from Piedmont at the head of ten thousand veterans, to thread his way over the Alps and along the eastern frontiers of France, through Burgundy and Lorraine, to the fated scene of his bloody task in the Netherlands, the Protestants of France saw in this neighboring demonstration a new peril to themselves. In the first moments of trepidation, their leaders in the royal council are said to have acquiesced in, if they did not propose, the levy of six thousand Swiss troops, as a measure of defence against the Spanish general; and Coligny, the same contemporary authority informs us, strongly advocated that they should dispute the duke's passage.[422 - Mémoires de Castelnau, liv. vi., c. ii. Castelnau was certainly in a favorable position for learning the truth respecting these matters; and yet even he speaks of the "holy league," formed at Bayonne, as of something beyond controversy. According to a treaty and renewal of alliance between Charles the Ninth and the Roman Catholic cantons of Switzerland, entered into Dec. 7, 1564, for Charles's lifetime, and seven years beyond, the Swiss were to furnish him, when attacked, not less than six nor more than sixteen thousand men for the entire war. The success of the negotiation occasioned great rejoicing at Paris, and corresponding annoyance in the Spanish dominions. Du Mont, Corps diplomatique, v. 129-131; Jehan de la Fosse, 70; Papiers d'état du card. de Granvelle, viii. 599.] Even if this statement be true, they were not long in detecting, or believing that they had detected, proofs that the Swiss troops were really intended for the overthrow of Protestantism in France, rather than for any service against the Duke of Alva. Letters from Rome and Spain were intercepted, we learn from François de la Noue, containing evidence of the sinister designs of the court.[423 - Mém. de Fr. de la Noue, c. xi.] The Prince of La Roche-sur-Yon, a prince of the blood, a short time before his death, warned his cousin of Condé of the impending danger.[424 - He did more than this, according to the belief of the times, as expressed by Jean de Serres; for, "having been present at the Bayonne affair," he brought him irrefragable proof of the "holy league entered into by the kings of France and Spain for the ruin of the religion." Comment. de statu. rel. et reip., iii. 126.] Condé, who, within the past few months, had repeatedly addressed the king and his mother in terms of remonstrance and petition for the redress of the oppression under which the Huguenots were suffering, but to no purpose, again supplicated the throne, urging in particular that the levy of the Swiss be countermanded, since, if they should come, there would be little hope of the preservation of the peace;[425 - Yet so much were intelligent observers deceived respecting the signs of the times, that only a little over two months before the actual outbreak of the second civil war (July 4, 1567), Judge Truchon congratulated France on the edifying spectacle of loving accord which the court furnished. "I have this very day," he writes, "seen the king holding, with his left hand, the head of my lord, the prince [of Condé], and with his right the head of my lord the Cardinal of Bourbon, and playfully trying to strike their foreheads together. The Duke d'Aumale was paying his attentions to Madame la Mareschale [de Montmorency.] … The Cardinal of Châtillon was not far off. In short, all, without distinction, seemed to me to be so harmonious that I wish there may never be greater divisions in France. It was a fine example for many persons of lower rank," etc. Letter to M. de Gordes, MS. in Archives de Condé, Duc d'Aumale, Princes de Condé, i. 540, Pièces inédites.] while Admiral Coligny, who found Catharine visiting the constable, his uncle, at his palace of Chantilly, with faithful boldness exposed to them both the impossibility of retaining the Protestants in quiet, when they saw plain indications that formidable preparations were being made for the purpose of overwhelming them. To these remonstrances, however, they received only what they esteemed evasive answers – excuses for not dismissing the Swiss, based upon representations of the danger of some Spanish incursion, and promises that the just requests of the Huguenots should receive the gracious attention of a monarch desirous of establishing his throne by equity.[426 - Jean de Serres, iii. 128, 129. See, also, Condé's letter of Aug. 23, 1568. Ibid., iii. 201.]

"The queene returned answer by letters," wrote the English ambassador, Norris, to Elizabeth, "assuringe him" – Condé – "by the faythe of a princesse et d'une femme de bien (for so she termed it), that so long as she might any waies prevayle with the Kinge, her sonne, he should never breake the sayd edicte, and therof required him to assure himselfe; and if he coulde come to the courte, he shoulde be as welcome as his owne harte could devise; if not, to passe the tyme without any suspect or jealousie, protesting that there was nothing ment that tended to his indempnitie, what so ever was bruted abrode or conceyved to the contrary, as he should perceyve by the sequele erst it were long."[427 - Norris to Queen Elizabeth, Aug. 29, 1567, State Paper Office, Duc d'Aumale, Pièces inédites, i. 559.]

Shall we blame those sturdy, straightforward men, so long fed upon unmeaning or readily-broken promises of redress, if they gave little credit to the royal assurances, and to the more honeyed words of the queen mother? Perhaps there existed no sufficient grounds for the immediate alarm of the Huguenots. Perhaps no settled plan had been formed with the connivance of Philip – no "sacred league" of the kind supposed to have been sketched in outline at Bayonne – no contemplated massacre of the chiefs, with a subsequent assembly of notables at Poitiers, and repeal of all the toleration that had been vouchsafed to the Protestants.[428 - "Sed ne frustra laborare viderentur, de Albani consilio, 'Satius esse unicum salmonis caput, quam mille ranarum capita habere,' ineunt rationes de intercipiendis optimatum iis, qui Religionem sequerentur, Condæo, Amiralio, Andelotio, Rupefocaldio aliisque primoribus viris. Ratio videbatur præsentissima, ut a rege accerserentur, tanquam consulendi de iis rebus quæ ad regnum constituendum facerent," etc. Jean de Serres, iii. 125. It will be remembered that this volume was published the year before the St. Bartholomew's massacre. The persons enumerated, with the exception of those that died before 1572, were the victims of the massacre.] All this may have been false; but, if false, it was invested with a wonderful verisimilitude, and to Huguenots and Papists it had, so far as their actions were concerned, all the effect of truth. At all events the promises of the king could not be trusted. Had he not been promising, again and again, for four years? Had not every restrictive ordinance, every interpretation of the Edict of Amboise, every palpable infringement upon its spirit, if not upon its letter, been prefaced by a declaration of Charles's intention to maintain the edict inviolate? In the words of an indignant contemporary, "the very name of the edict was employed to destroy the edict itself."[429 - "Ita Edicti nomen usurpabatur, dum Edictum revera pessundaretur." Jean de Serres, iii. 60.]

The Huguenot attempts at colonization in Florida.

The Huguenot expeditions to Florida have been so well sketched by Bancroft and Parkman, and so fully set forth by their latest historian, M. Paul Gaffarel, that I need not speak of them in detail. In fact, they belong more intimately to American than to French history. They owed their origin to the enlightened patriotism of Coligny, who was not less desirous, as a Huguenot, to provide a safe refuge for his fellow Protestants, than anxious, as High Admiral of France, to secure for his native country such commercial resources as it had never enjoyed. "I am in my house," he wrote in 1565, "studying new measures by which we may traffic and make profit in foreign parts. I hope shortly to bring it to pass that we shall have the best trade in Christendom." (Gaffarel, Histoire de la Floride française, Paris, 1875, pp. 45, 46). But, although the project of Huguenot emigration was conceived in the brain of the great Protestant leader, apparently it was heartily approved by Catharine de' Medici and her son. They certainly were not averse to be relieved of the presence of as many as possible of those whom their religious views, and, still more, their political tendencies, rendered objects of suspicion. "If wishing were in order," Catharine (Letter to Forquevaulx, March 17, 1566, Gaffarel, 428) plainly told the Spanish ambassador, on one occasion, "I would wish that all the Huguenots were in those regions" ("si c'estoit souëter, ie voudrois que touts les Huguenots fussent en ce pais-là"). In the discussion that ensued between the courts of Paris and Madrid, the queen mother never denied that the colonists went not only with her knowledge, but with her consent. In fact, she repudiated with scorn and indignation a suggestion of the possibility that such considerable bodies of soldiers and sailors could have left her son's French dominions without the royal privity (Ibid., 427).

1562.

The first expedition, under Jean Ribault, in 1562, was little more than a voyage of discovery. The main body promptly returned to France, the same year, finding that country rent with civil war. The twenty-six or twenty-eight men left behind to hold "Charlesfort" (erected probably near the mouth of the South Edisto river, in what is now South Carolina), disheartened and famishing, nevertheless succeeded in constructing a rude ship and recrossing the Atlantic in the course of the next year.

1564.