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 I I I I I I I ! I I I I I I

 
 THE NE W PL UTA R CH 
 
 GASPARD de COLIGNY
 
 GASPARD DE COLIGNY.
 
 ^GASPARD de COLIGNY/ 
 
 (MARQUIS de CHATILLON) 
 
 Admiral of France ; Colonel of French Infantry ; Governor of 
 plcardy, ile de france, paris, and havre 
 
 BY 
 
 WALTER BESANT, M.A. 
 
 ) V 
 
 1 Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends ' 
 
 r^\ 
 
 SLontfOtt: 
 
 MARCUS WARD & CO., 67, 68, CHANDOS STREET 
 
 And ROYAL ULSTER WORKS, BELFAST 
 1879
 
 1/2- 
 
 )17<f 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THE murder of Admiral Coligny, on the day of 
 Bartholomew, 1572, proved the death-blow to the 
 French Reformation. Other things, of course, con- 
 tributed to this failure. I advanced the opinion four 
 years ago, in a paper published in the British Quarterly, 
 that one great cause was the fact that the scholars 
 and divines of France did not take part in the move- 
 ment. On the contrary, they held themselves aloof 
 or condemned it. While in England the great scholars 
 and eminent divines all came over to the new Faith, 
 in France we see them either openly hostile or else 
 indifferent, coldly waiting to see the event of the 
 struggle. 
 
 There is, in the history of every religious persecu- 
 tion, a dreadful monotony of enthusiasm, patience, 
 and perseverance. All can endure who believe ; but 
 the blood of English martyrs bore fruit in English 
 freedom, while that of their French brethren would 
 seem to have been spilt in vain. The little volume 
 which follows tries to show how one man, a man of 
 indomitable patience, steadfastness, and clearness of 
 brain, brought together the Protestantism which lay 
 scattered loosely over the whole country, and which, 
 had it not been for him, would have been stamped out 
 in detail, as it was in Spain and Italy ; how he fought 
 a losing fight, but never gave way ; and how, when
 
 6 Preface. 
 
 the cause seemed actually won, he was struck down 
 by an act of treachery the like of which there is none 
 in history, nor will be, let us hope, while the world 
 lasts. 
 
 I believe I am right in stating that no life of Coligny 
 has yet been published in England. My materials have 
 been gathered from various sources, most of which 
 are well known to all readers in that period — such as 
 
 ^the memoirs of La Noue, Tavannes, and others ; 
 Haag's La France Protestante; the works of Sismondi, 
 De Thou, Prince Caraman Chimay, Tessier, Bran- 
 tome, and many others. I trust that this record of 
 the great Admiral may help forward the cause for 
 which, as it seems, we shall never cease to struggle, 
 however often it is won — that of religious and political 
 liberty. 
 
 I have endeavoured in this little volume to present 
 faithfully the record of a life whose greatness is 
 such that words of mine are unequal to the task of 
 adequately pourtraying it. Surely, one feels who 
 has dwelt long upon this portrait, there is no one, in 
 all the long list of French worthies, like unto the 
 Admiral, worthy to stand beside him. Other great 
 men adorned that age of struggle and upheaval : he 
 overshadows them all. It is in the earnest hope that 
 his history may serve at once as an encouragement 
 and an example that I send it forth. 
 
 W. B. 
 
 United University Club, 
 
 February, 1879.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Chap. I. — Chatillon-sur-Loing, . . .9 
 
 II.— Birth, Boyhood, and Education, . 20 
 
 III.— First Essay of Arms, . . -36 
 
 IV.— The Colony of Brazil, ... 52 
 
 V. — Conversion, . . . . -74 
 
 VI. — Francis II., .... 95 
 
 VII. — The Colony of Florida, . . . 120 
 
 VIII.— First Civil War, .... 150 
 
 IX.— Second Civil War, . . . .172 
 
 X. — St. Bartholomew, . . . 206 
 
 XL— Conclusion, . . . . .215 
 
 Appendix I.— Descendants of the Chatillons, 224 
 
 II.— Genealogical Tables, . . . 228
 
 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 CHATILLON-SUR-LOING. 
 
 'PHE sleepy little town of Chatillon-sur-Loing stands 
 *■ alone, and well separated from any neighbours, 
 about one hundred miles south-east of Paris, in the 
 Department of Loiret. Its nearest railway station 
 is Nogent-sur-Vernisson, a country-side station, where 
 few trains stop and few passengers descend. One 
 or two visitors, chiefly from America, alight here 
 in the course of the year, and look about for some 
 conveyance which will take them to see the town 
 and castle of the great Coligny. 
 
 Between Nogent and Chatillon a broad level 
 road, well kept up, runs, nine miles long, through 
 a rich and highly-cultivated country. It is an 
 open road. There are no gracious hedge-rows 
 smiling with luxuriance of wild flowers, as in 
 England, nor does the thrift of the cultivators
 
 io Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 allow the useless waste of umbrageous trees. The 
 level land stretches away on either hand, unbroken 
 in its flatness, save for the low line of trees 
 on the horizon which seems never wanting in 
 a French landscape. Scattered over its face are 
 patches of corn, patches of vines, patches of vege- 
 tables. There are also, planted at irregular intervals 
 along the road-side, apple-trees laden with fruit, pro- 
 tected partly by the loneliness of the way, and partly 
 by the sourness of the fruit, which is destined to make 
 cider. Along this great length of white road only 
 one or two houses break the monotony. One of 
 them is a gentleman's country-seat, the others are 
 farm-houses of antique type — bare, gaunt, with high 
 gables, large court-yards, and ancient barns. All the 
 way there is no village, no church, no other sign of 
 human habitation than these few houses. Here and 
 there in the fields you may see a single labourer, 
 bending over his vines and weeding his potatoes. 
 One wonders how far he has walked to reach his 
 patch. Here and there, too, one notices a rude hut 
 built with clay and roughly thatched, or else a mere 
 hole dug out in a bank of earth, in which a garde 
 champetre may take refuge, or a belated traveller 
 sleep on the straw which lies ready for his pillow. 
 A hot dazzling road, with no beauty of slope or hill, 
 no affectionate shading of trees, no soft wayside turf; 
 a level country ; a strange absence of life and move-
 
 Chatillon. 
 
 n 
 
 ment ; a feeling that the seed is sown, the plants 
 tended, the harvest reaped, by invisible hands. 
 
 All these broad acres, and many more than we can 
 see, belonged once to Gaspard de Coligny, Marquis 
 de Chatillon. In his day they were mostly covered 
 with the forest and jungle which had spread over 
 nearly the whole of France during the hundred years 
 of war, when everybody sought refuge beneath the 
 walls of some strong castle, and meadows more than 
 a bow-shot beyond the ramparts of a town were left 
 uncultivated. Things were growing better at the 
 beginning of the sixteenth century. The roads 
 had been cleared of the routiers. Gangs of disbanded 
 soldiers no longer roamed up and down the country, 
 driving the villagers to take refuge in the towns, 
 lifting the cattle, pillaging the cottages. The bands 
 of brigands who, a generation before, shared the 
 forests with the wolves, were broken up. The 
 sentinel stood on the walls, but he slept. The 
 ploughman had returned to clear the fields ; there 
 was once more tolerable security for his crops ; 
 there was no necessity, save that of habit, for lock- 
 ing up the town-gates and posting the guard at 
 nightfall. The religious wars had not begun, and 
 were not even threatening. France was internally 
 prosperous and peaceful. 
 
 Chatillon was then, and is now, a very quiet 
 little town. To keep itself awake, it makes pre-
 
 12 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 tence at some kind of cloth mystery ; yet it is, 
 in spite of this make-believe, more sleepy and 
 quiet than any English town that one can think 
 of. There are, to begin with, none of the indications 
 of a better class which are seen in English towns 
 of similar size ; no pretty villas and pleasant houses 
 standing among shrubs and flowers, where maiden 
 ladies, retired officers, and successful tradesmen pass 
 the placid evening of their days : the houses at Chatil- 
 lon consist entirely of small shops or small cottages. 
 The town has several streets. In the broadest stands 
 a hotel, whose only visitors are the commis voyageurs. 
 Here, too, are the better shops — here one beholds 
 the only signs of life which the town has to offer. 
 Look up the street. What you see to-day, you would 
 see every day : a boy in a blouse leading a horse to 
 the stable ; the cook in the hotel kitchen — which is, 
 for the sake of company, open to the street on one 
 side, and the salle a manger on the other — cutting up 
 carrots, while his wife, the landlord's daughter, is 
 volubly cheapening a melon at the door ; the owner 
 of the draper's shop over the way yawning audibly 
 and stretching his arms, and in the road a bevy of 
 geese disputing in angry tones. 
 
 Turning off the broad and empty main street, we 
 pass into a narrow lane paved with cobbles, and as 
 full of unsavoury smells as if it was ambitious, and 
 wished to be thought connected with a great city.
 
 The Church. 13 
 
 Here are the work-people — the shoemaker, the 
 tailor, the tinsmith, and the dressmaker — all busy at 
 their trades, with open doors and windows, so that they 
 can, and do, converse with one another. It is ten 
 o'clock in the morning, and, distinguishable among the 
 smells which hang all the year round about a narrow 
 street in a French town, is a certain mingled fragrance 
 of fried onions, fried potatoes, burning fat, and broiled 
 meat, which means the approach of a substantial 
 breakfast. Passing through this street, we emerge 
 upon the Place, a mean and squalid square. On the 
 west side stands a tumbledown Hotel de Ville, one 
 of those buildings which, like some old men, inspire 
 no respect by reason of their age. It is old without 
 being venerable. Its roof is lofty, however, and its 
 plain windows are of ancient date ; they may belong 
 to the sixteenth century. In the centre of the Place 
 stands a small pillar, which tells the traveller nothing 
 at all. High up the street, now rising with a gentle 
 ascent, we come to an old gate, on the right of which is 
 the church. The church stands on the site (it may be 
 the same church) of that in which Coligny's ministers 
 once preached. Over the gate is a clock-tower. 
 Both gate and tower once formed part of the outer 
 wall which defended the great Castle of Chatillon. 
 We pass through it and find, first of all, a small 
 round tower, a detached keep, an outlying Peel, 
 surrounded on three sides by water. A few steps
 
 14 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 farther on, and we are at the modern entrance of 
 the castle itself. 
 
 Standing here, before we pass through the gate into 
 the castle, we are high enough to look down upon the 
 whole town. We see now why it is called Chatillon- 
 sur-Loing. The little river Loing, about twenty feet 
 wide, runs winding in and out among the houses, 
 half of which stand upon its banks. The town could 
 never have been much larger, nor, apparently, much 
 smaller. There are no new houses, everything is 
 old, and, seen from this monticule, everything looks 
 tranquil and happy : a town whose pleasures are 
 simple, in which the landmarks of life are few : 
 a town whose people grow old imperceptibly, being 
 always engaged in the same pursuits and the same 
 talk, so that when they are fain to lie down at length, 
 they are not yet tired, and wonder at man's span 
 being limited to three-score years and ten : a town 
 full of flowers and fruit. The sun-flowers and the 
 hollyhocks are flaunting in front of the cottages and 
 beside the banks of the river. There, too, flourish 
 the tall flag and the meadow-sweet. The apples 
 are rosy and bright in the little orchards behind 
 the houses ; peaches and plums hang upon the walls, 
 and everywhere the bounteous vines, already purple 
 with the clusters of late August, spread their abundant 
 leaves and stretch their prolific branches, to enrich 
 and beautify what else might be a mean and squalid
 
 Past and Present. 15 
 
 homestead. As we see the place now, so it was in 
 the time when the great Admiral came in his rare 
 days of leisure to stay in his castle. The streets 
 were the same of aspect ; the houses were the 
 same. The difference is not so much in externals 
 as in the inner life. The soul has gone out 
 of the place. The people whom Coligny en- 
 couraged to talk and think of things high and 
 spiritual, talk now and think only of the thrifty 
 franc. All the difference, external and internal, 
 which time has wrought is to the disadvantage 
 of Chatillon. When it was the seat of a great 
 lord, it was bright and splendid with the knights, 
 the pages, the men-at-arms, and the retinue of the 
 Seigneur. Now, a garde diampctre is nearly the only 
 man in the street who does not wear a blouse. When 
 the great lord was also the head and chief of those 
 who looked to regenerate France, yon old church, 
 now decked with its tawdry dolls, its tinsel altar, its 
 tall candles, and its daubs of saint and martyr, 
 stood stripped of its symbolical trappings, ready to 
 hear, with all severity of external aspect, the naked 
 truth, such as the foremost men of the country 
 could discern it. In that time, too, yon grey old 
 building by the bridge, the Hotel Dieu, founded 
 and maintained by the seigneur, was a college of 
 free thought and noble learning- Thought and 
 learning have been banished. Where the young
 
 1 6 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 men were taught wisdom and liberty of reason, little 
 children now learn from nuns — poor things ! — to lisp 
 by rote a dogma on the fear of priests. 
 
 Looking upon Chatillon-sur-Loing of the present, 
 and thinking of the past, one is tempted to ask 
 whether there is any assurance that the human race 
 shall not be driven backward in its course. Here was 
 once liberty — here was once a spot from which, for a 
 brief time, the priest had to withdraw his presence. 
 Will it ever come to pass that some traveller in Eng- 
 land will be able to stand as we stand here, and say, 
 " Here, in the brave days of old, was once freedom — 
 here men would push aside the priest and his bag of 
 pretensions, and stand face to face with God"? 
 
 The church, the gate and clock-tower, the Place, 
 the broad street, the winding lanes, and the river, 
 make up the town of Chatillon-sur-Loing. They 
 still show two old houses — one called le Paradis, 
 where the orthodox are supposed to have met in 
 order to sustain their faith ; the other called VEnfer, 
 where the Calvinists met to preach and pray. No 
 visitors are expected to journey thither ; there are 
 not even any photographs of the place to be bought ; 
 it all lies out of the way — quiet, forgotten, and 
 dreamy. 
 
 But there is plenty to see besides the town — for 
 close to us there is the Castle which once belonged to 
 Coligny. We may enter by permission of its owners
 
 The Castle. 17 
 
 — a permission generously accorded. The Castle 
 itself, now entirely destroyed, was once one of the 
 most splendid fortresses in Eastern France; not so 
 magnificently placed or so strong by position as that 
 of Chinon, Angouleme, or Blois ; not so grim as black 
 Angers ; but capable of holding a garrison of many 
 thousand men, and strong enough to resist a siege 
 conducted on mediaeval methods as long as men and 
 provisions held out. It consists of a vast enclosure, 
 round which runs a fosse, now dry. The external wall 
 is still standing in parts. On the south side, where 
 only the supporting walls of the fosse remain, are 
 gardens and shady walks in terraces ; one of these 
 terraces lies along the very line of the old wall. There 
 is, within the enclosure, an old deep well for the 
 supply of the garrison ; and at the north of the 
 enclosure, which is now a kind of park for the 
 modern house of the present owner, Count Dorrien, 
 there stands, almost alone, the old donjon keep 
 of the Castle. Nothing else remains of the buildings, 
 except, on either side of the tower, walls and 
 foundations which show the original plan of this 
 the earliest and most important part of the Castle 
 buildings. It was in one of these chambers, the 
 original position of which can still be traced out, 
 that Coligny was born. And it is in this unconse- 
 crated and yet most sacred ground, that the remains 
 of the most noble of all Frenchmen still repose. The
 
 1 8 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 tower, about sixty feet high, is a remarkable build- 
 ing, probably of the twelfth century. It is octagonal, 
 and strengthened by narrow buttresses, like pillars, 
 running up to the top of the tower. The walls would 
 seem to need no additional strength, for they are ten 
 feet thick. Near the top is a curious projecting slab 
 of stone, with under supports and a sort of stone 
 canopy, the use of which I do not know : the 
 people call it Caesar's chair. The stone staircase 
 is pratique in the wall. The tower consists of 
 two chambers, the stone floor of the upper one 
 supported on a vast pillar and a vaulted roof in the 
 lower; on the top is a gallery, running completely 
 round the tower, six feet wide. From this gallery 
 the Seigneur de Chatillon could look out upon the 
 forest, some of which still remains, and upon the 
 town at his feet, every man in which was subject to 
 himself, and upon the court-yard of his Castle, where 
 his soldiers were exercising, and his boys and pages 
 learning the use of weapons. Life to such a great 
 lord as the Seigneur de Chatillon meant, in those 
 days, command, sovereign power, and responsibility. 
 He did not reign — he ruled. 
 
 Here Coligny lies buried. 
 
 On a stone slab, eight feet high by twenty inches 
 broad, is an inscription which is here reproduced in 
 full. The preamble contains the history of the 
 precious bones which lie beneath.
 
 Epitaph. 19 
 
 LES PRECIEUX RESTES DE 
 
 L'AMIRAL GASPARD DE COLIGNY, 
 
 Receuillis apres le Saint Barthdlemy 
 par les soins du Mardchal de 
 Montmorency, son cousin, furcnt 
 lors de la rehabilitation de 
 l'Amiral, qui eut lieu par lettres 
 patentes du Roi Henry IV., donndes 
 le 10 Juin, 1599, successivement deposds 
 a Chantilly, a Montauban, puis a 
 Chatillon-sur-Loing, duchd dependant 
 de l'apanage de la Maison de Coligny 
 transferds en 1786 a Maupertuis 
 dans un monument dlevd en son 
 souvenir par M. le Marquis de 
 Montesquieu relevds ensuite de ce 
 monument en 1793 ils ont dtd conserves 
 par sa famille jusqu'a 185 1, dpoque 
 ou M. le Comte Anatole de 
 Montesquieu en a fait la remise a 
 M. C. Emmanuel Sigismond de 
 Montmorency Luxembourg, Due 
 de Luxembourg, de Piney, et de 
 Chatillon-sur-Loing, ancicn 
 pair de France, Capitaine des Gardes 
 du Corps des Rois Louis XVIII. 
 et Charles X., qui, pour honorer la 
 mdmoire d'Amiral de Coligny, 
 a depose - le 29 Sept., 1851, les 
 ddpouilles mortelles dans les ruines 
 du Chateau (Duchd de Chatillon- 
 sur-Loing) a l'endroit meme ou 
 l'Amiral a pris naissance dans le 
 sdjour objet de son affection. 
 
 Ici reposent 
 les restes de 
 Gaspard de Coligny, 
 Amiral de France, 
 tud au Saint Barthelemy 
 le 24 Aout, 1572.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 BOYHOOD. 
 
 THE French Reformation dawned with every 
 promise of a successful and triumphant career. 
 Scholars, not ignorant enthusiasts, began the teaching 
 which would lead to separation from Rome. Nobles, 
 princes, gentle ladies, all the best hope and flower 
 of France, threw the strength of their hearts into the 
 cause. Wherever, in France, a man was induced to 
 think and read for himself, he came over from the 
 opposite camp. It seemed, at the outset, as if 
 ignorance and stupidity alone would remain in the 
 old faith. 
 
 The Reformed Church of France was founded 
 neither by Luther nor Melancthon, nor by any of 
 the Swiss and German preachers. Calvin, the most 
 illustrious of her sons, was received into her com- 
 munion, then already formed : he did not create it. 
 The new Church grew quite spontaneously and 
 naturally, with no violent break-out of the new 
 learning. Had not Lefevre preached a doctrine in
 
 Birth of the Reformation. 21 
 
 accordance with the New Testament, some other 
 would ; had there been no Farel, some other would 
 have taken his place. For reformation was in the air. 
 Men, when they learned to read Greek, to compare 
 the ideal Church with the real, to question the 
 doctrines and pretensions of Rome, had already com- 
 menced the journey of which the inevitable end was 
 schism, radical reform, or repression. 
 
 France, the mother of ideas, always leads. It was 
 in 1512, four years before Martin Luther affixed to the 
 door of the Cathedral of Wittenburg the ninety-five 
 theses which emancipated Germany, that Lefevre 
 began preaching on justification by faith. It was 
 in 1 52 1 that he published the four Gospels in French. 
 At the same time, encouraged by Briconnet, Bishop 
 of Meaux, and assisted by Farel, Michel d'Arande, 
 Gerard Roussel, and Vatable, he scattered abroad 
 copies of his translation, and proclaimed the new 
 doctrines, without secession from the Church — first 
 in private houses, and then, encouraged by the 
 Bishop, in the cathedral and churches of the diocese 
 of Meaux. 
 
 It was in Picardy that the movement began ; it 
 was carried thence all over France. Roussel taught 
 the new doctrines in the extreme south-west, as 
 Bishop of Oleron, until he was murdered by a fanatic 
 in the very pulpit. Farel, the most fiery of the 
 Reformers, preached in Dauphiny ; Caturce taught
 
 22 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 in Toulouse ; Michel d'Arande at Macon ; Maigret at 
 Lyons ; Melchior Wolman at Orleans. Everywhere 
 the common people, especially those who had learned 
 to read and possessed the Gospels, followed the new 
 teaching. Meaux was full of the reformed ; the 
 priests were deserted. One district of Normandy 
 grew to be so full of heretics, that it was called 
 Little Germany. To all observers, it seemed that 
 the logical mind of France was seizing on the 
 doctrine of these new preachers. 
 
 But, while the new ideas began not only to 
 penetrate into the lower strata, but also to possess 
 the minds of the higher classes, the Doctors of 
 the Sorbonne, unfortunately, remained hostile to the 
 movement. Their most formidable antagonist was 
 a gentleman named Louis de Berquin, the translator 
 of Luther. Presently it became known that Mar- 
 guerite, the King's sister, favoured the new opinions. 
 Many ladies of the Court, notably Louise de Mont- 
 morency, wife of the Marquis de Chatillon, studied 
 the Gospels, and listened to the new expounders. 
 The King himself was suspected of a leaning to 
 heresy. Political reasons seemed to recommend an 
 alliance with the German princes which would lead 
 to the toleration, at least, of the new religion. Day 
 after day, letters were passed from hand to hand, 
 with good news from here and there, holding out the 
 hope of the conversion of the King, encouraging the
 
 Influence on Coligny. 23 
 
 faithful to stand fast, and recording the triumphant 
 march of the Reformation. 
 
 To a boy born in the earliest years of this move- 
 ment, brought up by a woman of great intellectual 
 strength and strong natural piety, who was friendly 
 to the Reformers, and ready, if necessary, to acknow- 
 ledge her opinions ; educated by a man whose scorn 
 for the priests was as intense as that of Farel himself; 
 who was taught to see on the one hand superstition 
 and ignorance, and on the other a small band of 
 apostles preaching better things, and an ever-increas- 
 ing army of scholars and students who seemed only 
 waiting the opportunity to declare themselves ; who 
 was perpetually hearing of the progress of "the 
 Religion ;" who was perpetually exhorted by his 
 tutor to admire the fortitude of those who were 
 martyred — the new faith, when his mind became fully 
 prepared to consider it, would naturally appear not 
 only the highest expression of truth attainable, but 
 also the form of religion to which the nation was 
 certainly gravitating — the religion of future France. 
 To such a lad, hope would become the natural pre- 
 decessor and ally of faith ; he would, ever after, in 
 spite of all reverses and difficulties, regard the future 
 of the Reformation as assured. A man with such a 
 training could never be brought to believe that 
 Protestantism in France was doomed to perish. 
 Such a boy was Gaspard de Coligny. Among
 
 24 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 such influences he was brought up ; he became, in 
 consequence, when circumstances placed him in the 
 front, not only a Captain of the Faith, but the one 
 Captain whose courage never quailed, whose hope 
 never faltered. 
 
 The key-note of Coligny's character is this un- 
 doubting and steadfast hope. 
 
 The House of Coligny was, next to those of 
 Montmorency, Rohan, Laval, and a few others, and 
 always excepting the semi-royal House of Lorraine, 
 one of the first in France. The ancestry of the 
 family was traced to the first Duke of Burgundy. 
 In the sixteenth century, they had been a great 
 House for four hundred years and more. They 
 founded the Abbey of Le Mireur, in 1121; those 
 of Montmerle and Ceillon, in 1202. Humbert de 
 Coligny is said to have followed Conrad III. in the 
 second Crusade, but the name does not occur in the 
 Cartulary of Jerusalem or in the lists of the Families 
 & Outre Mer. After the manner of the vaunting- 
 
 o 
 
 mediaeval ignorance, some head of the House assumed 
 the eagle as their crest, and pretended that it marked 
 descent from one of the Gallic ambassadors who 
 received Julius Caesar. The place from which they 
 took their name is a small town, or village, in the 
 Department of Ain, on the line from Lyons to 
 Strasbourg, some forty miles west of Geneva and
 
 The House of Coligny. 25 
 
 twenty-five north-east of Macon. About a hundred 
 years before the birth of the future Admiral, the 
 family removed from Coligny to Chatillon-sur-Loing, 
 from which place they took their title. 
 
 The House of Coligny, in the same way as 
 hundreds of families in England, lived for centuries 
 upon their paternal acres, and sent their sons, with 
 the best advantages, wherever fighting or the Church 
 might win for a cadet honour and fortune. For 
 generations, the tenacity of the family seems wholly 
 occupied in keeping what they have got. Yet, out 
 of these ranks of gentle blood, once in a while there 
 arises a Cromwell, a Pitt, or a Wellington. There 
 had been men distinguished, if not great, in the 
 Coligny family before Gaspard. Jean de Chatillon 
 fought at Montlhery against Charles the Bold, and 
 won great honour. Jacques de Chatillon, the Ad- 
 miral's uncle, was friend and favourite of Charles VIII. 
 Of him it was said — 
 
 Chatillon, Bourdillon et Bonneval, 
 Gouvernent le sang royal. 
 
 And the Admiral's father, high in favour with Francis 
 the First, was Marshal of France, Governor of Picardy, 
 Lieutenant of the Principality of Orange and the 
 County of Guienne. Not much is known of this 
 Marshal de Chatillon. Brantome says that he was a 
 man "whose counsel the King greatly used, as was 
 but right, seeing that he had a good head as well
 
 26 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 as a stout arm." He married Louise de Mont- 
 morency, sister of the Constable, Anne de Mont- 
 morency, and widow of Frederic de Mailly, Baron 
 of Conty, by whom she had one daughter, Madeleine. 1 
 The issue of her second marriage consisted of four 
 boys — Pierre, Odet, Gaspard, and Francois. Of Pierre, 
 who died in 1 534, nothing is said. Following the dates 
 generally received, Odet was born in 15 15, Gaspard 
 in 15 17, and Francois in 1521. The Marshal died at 
 Dax, in the year 1522, as he was marching south 
 to relieve Fontarabia. He was then only thirty- 
 seven years of age. His widow, left with four boys, 
 of whom the youngest, Francois, was only one year 
 old, betook herself wholly to the care of the great 
 Chatillon property and the education of her sons, 
 according to her idea of what a gentleman's educa- 
 tion should be. 
 
 It is not difficult to understand what was this 
 idea. Louise de Montmorency — a grande dame de 
 par le monde — a daughter of the greatest of French 
 Houses — one of those who boasted for their ancestor 
 the first Frank who stepped after King Clovis into 
 the baptismal font — the "Premier Chretien" — a 
 woman who could look back upon a roll of warriors 
 
 1 Madeleine married Charles de Roye, Count of Rosny. Her 
 daughter, Eleanore, married Louis Prince de Conde, who was thus 
 nephew to the Admiral.
 
 Louise de Montmorency. 27 
 
 as illustrious as any royal line — the disciple of those 
 good ladies, Anne of Brittany and the gentle Queen 
 Claude — the guardian of the pious Marguerite — a 
 grave, religious lady, who read and thought for 
 herself — was not content with any but the highest 
 standard of excellence. Her sons were the inheritors 
 of a noble name ; they were born to take their place 
 in the front — to bear the brunt of battle, the burden 
 of responsibility, perhaps the odium of defeat. They 
 must be trained to take their stations without pride 
 and without fear. They must, therefore, first be 
 taught the manners which then, far more than now, 
 separated gentle from simple, noble from bourgeois, 
 bourgeois from villain ; they must be drilled in 
 military exercises, daily practised in tilt and tourney, 
 taught the use of arms and the art of war ; because 
 they would afterwards be called upon to command, 
 they must first learn to obey ; because they would, 
 in after life, administrate justice, they must learn 
 what was meant by law and order ; they must be 
 taught to be stern and hard where pity to one meant 
 mischief to many. As regards books, it was the 
 time of the new learning. The boys' fathers had been 
 ignorant ; they were content to sign their names to 
 documents, to read or hear read the " Romance of 
 the Rose," the sweet, monotonous ditties of Charles 
 of Orleans, or the gentle pastorals of Rene. Things 
 were changed. It was now becoming a shame for
 
 28 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 a youth of gentle blood to be unlearned. Her sons 
 must be clerks as well as knights. In the matter 
 of morals, a woman of such a school held a creed 
 no lower than that which contents the noblest and 
 highest mind of the nineteenth century. Her sons 
 would be soldiers, but not comrades in evil with 
 every roystering barrack companion. Truth, chastity, 
 courage, and justice were the virtues which Louise 
 taught her boys. And as for religion ? I have said 
 that Gaspard de Coligny grew up in a time and 
 amidst events which made him, through all his life, 
 hopeful of the future. Yet his mother did not force 
 the new opinions upon him, nor was it till after many 
 years that he saw his duty plainly marked — to profess 
 openly the religion with which he had been led from 
 boyhood to sympathise. 
 
 A word more on the progress and prospects of 
 that religion during his early years. 
 
 Between the year 15 12, when Lefevre's Gospels 
 were published, and 1538, when the interview between 
 Francis and Charles decided the former to adhere 
 to Catholicism, the balance seemed evenly held 
 between the two parties. The great scholars of 
 France — Bude, Poncher, Delvine, Parvi, Cop, and 
 others, who enjoyed the favour and protection of the 
 King — ardently desired an unforced reform of the 
 Church ; and not only did they desire it, but they 
 believed that it was coming. France anticipated
 
 Hopes of Reform. 29 
 
 England in theory. The French scholars hoped, in 
 15 1 5, that Francis would do exactly what Henry 
 did twenty years later. Lefevre d'Etaples, writing 
 to Zwingle, declared that God would renew the world, 
 and that he should live to see the divinely-wrought 
 reform. In 15 18, the anonymous author of " Le 
 Triumphe des Vertus," dedicated to the Queen- 
 mother, Louise, openly attacks the ultramontane 
 despotism. In 1520, Loret (Glareanus) writes to 
 Zwingle, that " no books are asked for more eagerly 
 than those of Luther, especially that ' De Captivitate 
 Babylonica.' " The King, Marguerite his sister, and 
 the Queen-mother heard with attention the exhorta- 
 tions of Michel d'Arande, who, in 1522, writes to 
 Briconnet, that " le roi et Madame ont bien delib^re 
 de donner a connaitre que la ve>ite de Dieu n'est 
 point heresie." The Queen-mother herself writes in 
 her journal of the same year — " In December, my 
 son and I, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, began 
 to understand and to know the hypocrites — white, 
 black, grey, and all colours. From such may God, 
 by His clemency and infinite goodness, preserve and 
 defend us ! for, since Jesus Christ cannot lie, there 
 is no more dangerous generation in the whole human 
 race." At the same time, the persecution was stayed. 
 Simon de Colines and Robert Estienne issued cheap 
 and handy New Testaments in French. Early in 
 1523, Francis Lambert of Avignon wrote to the
 
 30 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 Elector of Saxony that the whole of France was in 
 movement, and that, before long, news would arrive 
 which would fill his heart with joy. Berquin went 
 on publishing Luther's books, undeterred by the 
 threatenings of the Sorbonne. Caroli preached the 
 Gospel in Paris unmolested: "enseignant que Dieu 
 n'a pas besoin de vicaire sur terre, que Jesus Christ 
 seul, et non la Vierge, est notre foi et notre esperance, 
 qu'il n'y a point de purgatoire, que le culte doit etre 
 celebre dans la langue du peuple." 
 
 Then came the reaction which followed the disaster 
 of Pavia. Yet that seemed nothing more than a 
 temporary check, and the hearts of the Reformers 
 were still full of courage. 
 
 So much for the outer world. As regards the 
 little world of Chatillon, the boys were favourably 
 inclined to "the Religion" by the two persons who 
 had the greatest influence over them — their mother 
 and their tutor — and from them would learn how 
 the cause progressed. Louise de Montmorency, for 
 her part, corresponded with Marguerite, with Renee 
 of Ferrara, and with Bishop Briconnet. She read 
 the new translation of the Gospels. Her daughter, 
 Madeleine, led the way in seceding from Rome. 
 She herself, at her death-bed, showed her true opinions 
 by refusing to see a priest. So much for her own 
 tendencies. But she gave the boys as tutor Nicolas 
 Berault, who, like his friends Bude and Erasmus,
 
 Early Training. 3 1 
 
 never openly deserted the old religion, yet possessed 
 in full measure the desire for liberty of thought which 
 animated the Reformers. Religion, in the mind of 
 Louise de Montmorency, was a matter of authority 
 for the common herd, of private opinion for the 
 well born ; according to Nicolas Berault, the dogmas 
 of the Church were to be weighed and considered by 
 scholars and accepted by the ignorant. Both from 
 their mother and their tutor, the boys were inspired 
 with that most valuable gift — that of questioning, 
 the habit of inquiry, and the courage of independent 
 investigation. The self-reliance which they took into 
 the camp remained with them in the study. It seems 
 to me that the most valuable boon bestowed upon 
 mankind in these latter days is the gift of question- 
 ing. When men accept, the world stands still ; when 
 they begin to question, progress is possible. 
 
 A word more upon their tutor, Nicolas Berault. 
 He was a man of great eloquence, grave bearing, 
 and courtly manners. " Even now," says Erasmus, 
 " methinks I hear that tongue, explanatory and 
 voluble — that voice, sweetly musical and blandly 
 eloquent — that discourse, fluent and yet measured — 
 that face, so friendly, so full of goodness, so void 
 of pride — those manners, polished, easy, graceful, 
 and winning." He was one of the best scholars of 
 that early time, when the school of Scaliger and 
 Dolet had not yet arisen. It is noticeable that,
 
 2,2 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 though he remained nominally in the old faith, his 
 two sons both left it, and joined the new. 
 
 There was another tutor, whose duty it was to 
 train the boys in manly arts. He was provided 
 by Anne de Montmorency, the great Constable, who 
 never ceased to manifest the greatest interest in his 
 nephews, and caused a report to be sent to him 
 week by week of their progress and conduct. It 
 was discerned by Berault, we are told, that of the 
 three boys, all of whom were apt scholars, the 
 strongest and most active nature belonged to Gaspard, 
 while to Odet, the eldest surviving, belonged a large 
 measure of the contemplative character. Needs must, 
 in those times, that the head of a great House be 
 strong. Odet, with his own consent and by the 
 advice of Berault, was passed over ; in order that 
 Gaspard might be made the chief, he consented to 
 become a Churchman. At sixteen, the Pope made 
 the boy a cardinal — a fact which clearly illustrates 
 the position of the Chatillons in France. At the 
 same time, he was made Archbishop of Toulouse ; 
 a little later, Bishop of Beauvais ; as we shall pre- 
 sently see, he became ultimately a politician, wary, 
 persuasive, and far-seeing. Like his two brothers, 
 Odet de Chatillon had the singular power of making 
 himself loved and trusted by all alike. " It seems 
 to me," says Brantome, "that the King never had 
 a more discreet, courteous, and generous man. I
 
 The Head of the House. 33 
 
 have heard those who were at the Courts of Francis I. 
 and Henry II. say, that the disgrace of his friends 
 never shook his favour with them ; nor could his 
 very enemies choose but love him, so frank was his 
 face, so open his heart, so gentle his manner." 
 
 It is a small objection to raise, but I have 
 not been able to satisfy myself about the truth 
 of this story of passing over Odet in favour of 
 Gaspard, though I have related it as all historians 
 give it. If Odet was a cardinal at sixteen — in 
 1 53 1 — and the eldest brother, Pierre, died in 1534, 
 there would have been no passing over at all, 
 and Gaspard simply became the head of the 
 House because his elder brother had become a 
 Churchman. One is not, however, certain about the 
 date of Pierre's death, and so the story must remain, 
 subject to this objection. 
 
 It was not until the year 1539, when Gaspard 
 was already twenty-one, and Francois, known as 
 the Sieur d'Andelot, seventeen, that the two boys 
 were brought to Court by their mother, then newly 
 appointed gonvernante to Jeanne d'Albret, daughter 
 of her former pupil, Marguerite, Queen of Navarre. 
 
 Nearly all the future actors in the great drama 
 which was about to be acted were then present 
 together at Paris. Little Jeanne d'Albret was eleven 
 years of age ; Anne de Montmorency was forty-five, a 
 year older than the King ; Tavannes was thirty ; the
 
 34 Gaspard de Coiigny. 
 
 Dauphin Henry, Catherine di Medici, his wife, the 
 Duke of Guise, the Cardinal of Lorraine, and the 
 Chatillon brothers, were all within two or three years 
 of the same age ; the Bourbon Princes, Antoine, 
 Louis, and Charles, were a few years younger. As 
 regards religious opinion, the first burst of persecu- 
 tion had died away after the burning of many poor 
 creatures of the meaner sort, who dared, having 
 acquired the art of reading, to think for themselves. 
 The nobles, of course, went on holding their own 
 opinions either openly or in secret. Clement Marot, 
 anxious to demonstrate beyond a doubt his suspected 
 orthodoxy, was translating the Psalms into French 
 verse. The poet's orthodoxy was not re-established 
 — one cannot, after being charged with eating meat 
 in Lent, cleanse one's reputation for saintliness 
 by translating Psalms — but his reputation was 
 increased. The Court was beginning, with one 
 consent, to sing Psalms, each one selecting his 
 favourite — the Dauphin chose the 128th, "How 
 blessed is he that fears the Lord ;" Catherine 
 selected the 6th, " O Lord, in wrath rebuke me not." 
 History shows no improvement in religion or in 
 morals to correspond with this newly-born ardour 
 for psalmody. The chief obstacle to the success 
 of "the Religion," indeed, was the immorality and 
 license of the Court. Like Charles the Second in 
 Scotland, like Mary Queen of Scots, King Francis,
 
 Authority. 35 
 
 who would, for curiosity, listen to the arguments of 
 Michel d'Arande, and even acknowledge that he 
 must be right, could never face the austerity of 
 morals and the gravity of responsibility imposed by 
 these downright and thorough men. On the other 
 side, the tempter whispered — "We are Authority; we 
 hold the keys of Heaven ; to us is delegated power 
 to absolve or to condemn ; do what you please — 
 enjoy, lavish, waste, revel, roll in luxury and animal 
 pleasures, give no thought for the after world — as for 
 your soul, it is in our keeping, and we will send it, 
 by virtue of our supernatural power, and whatever 
 your manner of life has been, after a brief Purgatorial 
 interval, straight to happy Heaven."
 
 T 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 FIRST ESSAY OF ARMS. 
 HE sons of the Marshal de Chatillon and Louise 
 
 de Montmorency, once the friend of good Queen 
 Claude, and the gonvemante of Marguerite, could 
 not be otherwise than well received by Francis. 
 The former splendour of the Court was now greatly 
 dimmed. The increasing age of the King, dis- 
 appointment, defeat, religious hesitation, excess, and 
 indulgence, had changed for the worse that once 
 chivalrous spirit. The tone of the Court was lower 
 than when Francis and Montmorency and all of 
 them were young, and hopes ran high. Of any 
 personal distinction shown to the two boys by the 
 King, we hear nothing ; but they were honourably 
 received, in spite of the disgrace of the Constable. 
 
 Then, for a brief space, Gaspard enjoyed the 
 sunshine of youth, friendship, and the pleasures of 
 what was still outwardly the most refined and 
 splendid Court in Europe. Tournaments, dances, 
 hunting, tennis, the bravery of dress, manly exercises,
 
 Sunshine and Spring. 37 
 
 and feats of arms, occupied his time. For com- 
 panions, he had the Dauphin and the younger men 
 who naturally gathered round the heir. It is hard to 
 realise that Coligny, the man in whom personal gravity 
 is the one characteristic most strongly insisted upon 
 by his biographers, was ever a young man, frolic- 
 some and light-hearted — that there was once a time 
 when he cared nothing for religious controversy, and 
 played, with his fellows, his part in freak and folly. 
 Yet nothing is more natural — nothing more certain 
 to have happened to a lad of sound and healthy 
 disposition, thus thrown into such a society at such 
 an age. For him whose life was to be a long 
 series of disappointments, this time of gaiety seems 
 like a single hour of sunshine in a day of untimely 
 sleet and wind. One need not inquire too closely 
 into the youthful extravagances of the young lord ; 
 no doubt they were such as to cause disquietude to 
 his severe and pious mother ; certainly they were 
 not such as to call for apology from a biographer, 
 because'in after years, when the hatred of the priests 
 to the Admiral was like unto the hatred of Guelf to 
 Ghibelline, no scandal of youth could ever be raked 
 up against him such as was raked up against De 
 Beze — no single story to his discredit could ever be 
 invented by his foes, or whispered among his friends, 
 because none would have been believed. Chatillon, 
 and Andelot his brother, were above reproach.
 
 38 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 Among the young nobles about the Court was 
 one, of about the same age as Coligny, towards whom 
 he was at once attracted, and became speedily 
 attached by the strongest tie of personal affection 
 and friendship. He was the most gallant, the most 
 handsome, the most noble of all. Never was so 
 brave a youth — never was one with so courtly a 
 presence, so royal a bearing, so genial a manner, so 
 winning a tongue. All loved this young man alike, 
 from the King, who yet suspected him and all who 
 bore his name, to the meanest gamin in the street, 
 who ran and shouted in irrepressible exuberance of 
 admiration when this young Prince passed by, 
 radiant in splendid apparel, in the smiles and 
 sunshine of his youth and comeliness. Absalom was 
 not more loved — Galahad was not more knightly, 
 than this young Francis de Joinville, eldest son of 
 Claude de Lorraine. 
 
 Hardly five-and-twenty years before, his father, 
 the fifth son of Ferry de Vaudemont and Yolande, 
 daughter of the good King Rene\ being turned out 
 of Lorraine, took refuge in Paris, where he appeared 
 with a valet and a walking-stick for all his worldly 
 wealth. But he prospered. His descent, which was 
 worth to him a great deal more than many walking- 
 sticks, procured him the hand of an heiress, Antoinette 
 de Bourbon. He was presented with posts of dignity 
 and profit. He lived to see his brothers and his
 
 The Lorraine House. 39 
 
 sons advancing the House. 1 As he grew older, 
 however, he grew more ambitious, and there was 
 one thing which he ardently desired, but which he 
 never obtained. He bequeathed this ambition to 
 his sons. The Lorraines never abandoned the hope, 
 and never succeeded in their desire. They aimed, 
 being, by the female line on both sides, descendants 
 of the royal House, at being styled Princes of the 
 Blood-Royal. As such, they might have claims 
 upon the succession. In troubled times, there was 
 no telling what would happen. Their claims, later 
 on, were actually and seriously brought forward, 
 though never maintained, in the hope of excluding 
 Henry of Navarre. 
 
 All the sons of Claude de Lorraine were rich, 
 splendid, and handsome ; all were prodigal and free- 
 handed ; all were eloquent of speech, easily accessible, 
 and apparently of kind disposition ; all were ostenta- 
 tious ; all loved to court the favour of the multitude. 
 And, among them all, none possessed the virtues 
 and the defects of the race more eminently than 
 Francis, the eldest son. 
 
 1 How rich the Lorraines became is illustrated by the list of 
 dignities and benefices held by Claude's brother, the Cardinal de 
 Lorraine. He was Archbishop of Lyons, Rheims, and Narbonne; 
 he was Bishop of Metz, Toul, Verdun, Theroanne, Lucon, and 
 Valence ; he held the Abbeys of Gorze, Fecamp, Cluny, Marmoutiers, 
 and He Barbe. This was pretty well for one Churchman.
 
 40 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 He dazzled the young provincial Seigneur, fresh 
 from his Castle of Chatillon ; he seemed to the 
 quiet and reserved Gaspard the type of all knightly 
 virtues — the home of all noble aspirations. Coligny 
 believed in him with all the sincerity of a young 
 man's nature. How should he suspect that, behind 
 the frank sunshine of that face, the laughing eye, the 
 warm hand, lurked the latent possibility of all that 
 ferocity and bigotry and self-seeking on which his 
 own fortunes were to be wrecked ? Who could 
 guess that the massacre of Vassy and the first idea 
 of St. Bartholomew were to spring from the brain 
 of this fearless and peerless chevalier ? 
 
 It was a time when young men cultivated friend- 
 ship after the supposed manner of the ancients. 
 These friendships were, like the Latin verses of the 
 scholars, to be the wonder and delight of future 
 ages. Guise and Coligny proposed to figure in the 
 lives of some new Plutarch, another pair of friends as 
 illustrious as Damon and Pythias. After a few years 
 we look for Damon and Pythias, and we find their 
 friendship cooled ; yet a little while, and we find 
 their friendship turned to hatred. Many stories 
 have been told — many stupid fables have been 
 invented to account for this change of feeling. 
 Nothing is clearer than the plain truth. The minds 
 of young men are often attracted by opposites. 
 He who is naturally sober is dazzled by the bright
 
 Friend and Foe. 41 
 
 colours of him who is splendid ; he who tends to 
 carefulness by him who is lavish. A young man is 
 not certain about himself; he requires time and 
 the opportunity for observation to confirm him in 
 his own unknown tendencies. The thing may be 
 witnessed every day in our universities, where young 
 men of exactly opposite tendencies contract the 
 closest friendships, which last for a while and sud- 
 denly die out. The minds of these two were entirely 
 opposed to each other ; their feet — though this they 
 did not know — were set in curves which were destined 
 to cross and clash with each other. They could be 
 friends so long as these lines did not meet: the moment 
 the meeting took place, friendship was at an end. 
 For, in religion, Guise inclined to authority, Coligny 
 to independent judgment. Guise loved the pomp 
 and splendour which belonged to his position, and 
 aspired to higher dignities than those which he 
 possessed ; Coligny cared nothing for the splendour, 
 but loved the power. Both desired ardently — what 
 Guise obtained — the reputation of being the greatest 
 captain in France. Guise was profuse and splendid, 
 careless of what he said, avid of pleasure, easily 
 moved to mercy, except in the case of a heretic ; 
 Coligny was the very reverse of all these things. 
 Guise had every quality which attracts the mob ; 
 Coligny had only a few, and those not always 
 certain to prove attractive — he was strong, he
 
 42 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 was truthful, and he was just. All classes of 
 men, except Huguenots, loved Guise ; his own 
 class only, and of that but a few — namely, the 
 men who came to know him intimately — loved 
 Coligny. As we shall presently see, the young men 
 were friends at first on account of the very qualities 
 in which they differed. Their friendship turned to 
 enmity when their paths crossed. 
 
 Very shortly arrived the time of action. Of course, 
 the only career for a young man of good birth was 
 then the career of arms, unless, like Odet de Chatil- 
 lon, he entered the Church to be made a Bishop 
 or a Cardinal in early youth. In semi-barbarous 
 Russia, and in half-emancipated Germany, the same 
 mediaeval custom holds. In these countries, all 
 distinction for a noble still lies through the profession 
 of arms. 
 
 Coligny's first campaign was in Luxembourg, in the 
 year 1541. At the siege of Montm^dy, a ball pierced 
 his hat, and inflicted a contusion on his head. In 
 1543, he and his friend Francis de Joinville fought 
 side by side in the army of the Netherlands, and 
 were present at the siege of Landrecy. After the 
 taking of Mauberge, the French, deceived by the 
 false information of certain prisoners, thought to 
 surprise the fortress of Binche. " Those," says Du 
 Bellay, in his memoirs, " who conducted the assault, 
 having no real knowledge of the fortress, planted
 
 First Campaign. 43 
 
 the artillery against the part in best repair, and most 
 easily defended, so that the battery did no great 
 harm. Then it was that several young men, in the 
 presence of the Dauphin, hazarded their lives by 
 venturing into the moat ; many of them were killed 
 or wounded, among others the Sieur de Chatillon, 
 a young man of great courage, had an arquebusade 
 in the throat, of which, in time, he was healed." 
 
 As soon as Coligny was cured of this wound, he 
 distinguished himself by cutting to pieces a corps of 
 cavalry, and taking its captain prisoner. 
 
 At the battle of Cerisolles (April 13th, 1544), we 
 find the Seigneur de Chatillon among the corps of a 
 hundred gentlemen who volunteered under the flag 
 of the Duke d'Enghien. It is stated by some that 
 he and his brother Francois were both knighted on 
 the field. This is possible, but Du Bellay, who 
 enters into full details of this day, does not mention 
 the fact. One would like to know if it was still 
 common to confer knighthood on the field of battle. 
 If it was, no doubt a good many of these volunteers 
 may have received the distinction, which would 
 appear to Du Bellay a circumstance too trivial to 
 be noted. It is a fact, however, that Andelot, as 
 Coligny 's younger brother Francis was always called, 
 was present at Cerisolles. The two brothers were 
 together also at the siege of Carignan. 
 
 In 1545, Coligny had the command of a regiment
 
 44 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 of infantry, under the Dauphin, at the siege of 
 Boulogne. 
 
 In 1547 came the death of King Francis. For 
 some time before this event, the Constable de Mont- 
 morency had been in disgrace, and distinction seemed 
 difficult to the Chatillon brothers, save such as was 
 to be acquired by any officer on the field. We must 
 remember that the ambition with which some French 
 writers charge Coligny, as if it was a vice, was with 
 him a part of his position — a quality belonging to 
 him as a great noble. It was his duty to be ambitious. 
 Without ambition he would have been no better than 
 any country hobereau a little richer than his neigh- 
 bours. However, the King being dead, Montmorency 
 returned to Court and to favour. He at once 
 endeavoured to use his influence for his nephews. 
 For Gaspard, he asked the command of the army of 
 Italy — a great thing to ask for so young a man. 
 Nothing for the moment could be asked for Andelot, 
 who was taken prisoner at Parma. Henry the Second 
 refused to give Coligny the command in Italy, and 
 the Constable then proceeded to find an heiress 
 for him to marry. He thought of Mdlle. de Rieux, 
 Countess of Laval and Montfort, a lady of illustrious 
 birth and very great wealth, and proposed her to 
 his nephew. But Gaspard had other views. In the 
 suite of Mdlle. de Rieux was a cousin of hers, Char- 
 lotte de Laval, daughter of Guy de Laval and
 
 Marriage. 45 
 
 Antoinette de Daillon, on whom, and not on her 
 rich cousin, Coligny fixed his affections, and whom 
 he married. Never had any man a more noble help- 
 meet. It is pleasant to record that Andelot married 
 the rich heiress, and was equally happy in his wife. 
 Both ladies subsequently embraced the Reformed 
 faith. 
 
 It was in 1547 that Coligny married, being then 
 thirty years of age. As yet he had done little to 
 distinguish himself, having, indeed, found no oppor- 
 tunity of showing other qualities beside that of 
 courage on the field. Let us see, meanwhile, how 
 it fared with his rival, Francis of Lorraine. 
 
 At first he fought side by side with Coligny, at 
 Montmedy (1542), at Landrecy (1543), Saint Dizier 
 (1544), and Boulogne (1545). Up to the death of 
 King Francis, the two were equal in reputation and 
 distinction. It was later — to anticipate coming events 
 — in 1552, that Guise first displayed that military 
 ability which at once placed him in the very first 
 rank as a soldier. Then it was that he defended 
 Metz, holding the place for two months against 
 an enormous force, Charles the Fifth being compelled, 
 after losing 30,000 men, to raise the siege. He gained 
 fresh distinction at the battle of Rentz, in 1554; and 
 in 1556 was appointed to the command of the army 
 of Italy. Here he failed completely, and probably 
 would have never recovered the blow to his reputation
 
 46 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 but for the disaster of St. Quentin and the imprison- 
 ment of Coligny, after which he was created Lieu- 
 tenant-General of the Kingdom, and took, in less 
 than a month, Calais, Ham, and Guines. We have to 
 hear more about him in the sequel. Let us own, with- 
 out the trouble of comparison, that he showed more 
 strategic ability than his rival, with equal tenacity 
 and resolution. He was a man of fiery temper and 
 narrow views, incapable of the broad political schemes 
 of the Admiral, but a better soldier; having no 
 sympathy with the new religious opinions, or with the 
 new doctrines of personal virtue which they involved ; 
 always a courtier of the school which postpones 
 everything to personal ambition ; always eager after 
 pleasure, always ready to fight, always unscrupulous 
 about means, always an aristocrat to the backbone, 
 always angrily disdainful of those who, like the 
 Huguenots, rejected authority. 
 
 A word on the progress of the other two Chatillon 
 brothers. Odet, we have seen, was a Cardinal at 
 sixteen. In the same year he was made Archbishop of 
 Toulouse, and abbe commanditaire of a large number 
 of abbeys. He assisted at the conclave which elected 
 Paul III. In 1 53 1, he was made Bishop of Beauvais, 
 one of the richest benefices in the kingdom. In 
 1 544, being thus enriched, he ceded all his rights in 
 the Chatillon succession to his two brothers. In 
 1550, he was again in Italy, at the conclave which
 
 A tide lot. 47 
 
 resulted in the election of Pope Julius III. In 1554, 
 he promulgated his Constitntiones Synodales, with a 
 view to remedy the abuses of his diocese. It is 
 evident that then, and, in fact, for five years longer, 
 he continued in the belief that the Church could 
 be reformed without any schism. 
 
 As for Andelot, we have seen him fighting with 
 Gaspard at Landrecy, Carignan, and Cerisolles. In 
 1547, he married Claude de Rieux. In the same 
 year, he was made Inspector-General of Infantry. 
 In 1548, he took part in the expedition sent to 
 Scotland in order to conduct Mary to France. In 
 Scotland, he fought at the battle of Haddington. 
 In 1 55 1, he was sent to Italy with reinforcements 
 for the Duke of Parma. While in this service, he 
 was taken prisoner, and confined for four years in 
 the Castle of Milan. It was during this captivity that 
 he read the works of Calvin, and became a Protestant. 
 No doubt his conversion was greatly assisted by the 
 liberal tendencies of his early education. It is a fact 
 to be observed, that both he and his brother embraced 
 Protestantism as the result of the first opportunity 
 afforded in an active life for examination and 
 reflection. 
 
 Coligny's next service, after a year of tranquillity 
 in his Castle of Chatillon — where a son was born, 
 who died in infancy — was again before Boulogne. 
 The English, who held the place in accordance with
 
 48 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 a treaty, were violating the terms by building forts 
 which commanded the harbour. Coligny erected a 
 strong place on the other bank, called Chatillon, 
 remains of which are still to be seen, in answer to 
 their demonstrations. In the same year, 1549, he 
 received the office of Lieutenant-General of Mont- 
 reuil, Selaque, Blacquay, and the whole country 
 round Boulogne. And in 1552, after receiving the 
 Collar of the Order, he was made Colonel and 
 Captain-General of French Infantry — a post of almost 
 as great renown and importance as that of Admiral, 
 which he afterwards obtained. 
 
 The French infantry was principally composed of 
 Swiss mercenaries, who might be hired to fight for 
 any cause. They were commanded by their own 
 officers, the principal commands only being in the 
 hands of French nobles. There never had been, 
 up to that time, any pretence at discipline among 
 these rude and lawless soldiers. Such as they were 
 when they followed Charles VIII. tumultuously 
 across the plains of Italy, so they were now, fighting 
 Spaniards and English in Picardy, Flanders, and the 
 Low Countries. Wherever they went, they pillaged, 
 murdered, and destroyed without restraint. In time 
 of peace, when they were disbanded, they roamed 
 over the country in small troops, living like brigands. 
 When, for instance, Rend of Anjou fought for his 
 Duchy of Lorraine with the Count of Vaudemont,
 
 The French Infantry. 49 
 
 the two combatants, on the cessation of hostilities, 
 united their forces in order to clear the country 
 of these murderous gangs of unattached soldiers. 
 Clearance was effected by hanging all they could 
 catch. Coligny had already made an attempt to 
 introduce discipline into the one regiment which he 
 commanded under the walls of Boulogne. Perhaps the 
 success of this experiment stimulated him to extend 
 it to the whole French army. In any case, we may 
 claim for him the honour of being the first general 
 in modern times who perceived the enormous advan- 
 tage of having a disciplined instead of a disorderly 
 infantry. Perhaps a reminiscence of his Latin reading 
 inspired him to emulate the severity of a Roman 
 camp. One can understand the astonishment and 
 disgust caused by the promulgation of rules which 
 forbade, in a camp where the soldiers were perpetually 
 quarrelling, any quarrels at all — where the officers 
 fought duels on the smallest provocation, any fighting 
 of duels — which ordered, where nothing had hitherto 
 been paid for, that not the smallest thing in future 
 should be taken without payment — that the honour of 
 women was to be respected — and that henceforward 
 even the simple amusement and relief of swearing 
 was to be abolished. And the penalties in case of 
 infraction were such as could not be contemplated 
 without misgiving. A soldier who insulted or 
 attacked a woman was to be hanged or strangled ; 
 
 D
 
 50 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 if a man indulged in what the Colonel-General called 
 ''enormous and execrable blasphemies" — the mere 
 common garnish and decoration of conversation — he 
 was to have, for a first offence, eight days in prison 
 on bread and water ; for a second, he was to make 
 the amende honorable in shirt upon his knees ; and 
 for a third, to have his hand struck off. For almost 
 all other military offences, he was to be passe par les 
 picqties. Perhaps the soldiers thought at first these 
 penalties were only threats. Alas ! some poor wretches 
 found that Coligny was not one to threaten. He en- 
 forced his new rules with so much rigour as to gain at 
 first the character of cruelty. " But they saved," says 
 Brantome, "the lives of millions of persons. . . . 
 For before there was nothing but pillage, robbery, 
 plunder, ransoming, murders, quarrels, and ravishing 
 among the bands, so that they resembled rather com- 
 panies of Arabs and brigands than noble soldiers." 
 
 This was Coligny's first and perhaps his greatest 
 achievement. He introduced the modern military dis- 
 cipline. The first rough model, from which has been 
 developed the present machinery of drill, of discipline, 
 of enforced obedience, of routine which makes the 
 soldier of to-day an intelligent machine, was con- 
 structed by Coligny. He is the inventor of discipline. 
 
 He intended, and would have carried out his 
 project but for the disaster of St. Quentin, to supple- 
 ment the establishment of military discipline by the
 
 Made Admiral. 51 
 
 formation of a surgical service, and the establishment 
 of a military hospital provided with carts for the 
 wounded, to follow the camp. He was, therefore, 
 the inventor of the modern ambulance corps. 
 
 In 1552, he was nominated to the great and 
 important post of Admiral of France. Andelot was 
 to receive the appointment of Colonel of Infantry, 
 but, as he was then a prisoner in Italy, Coligny held 
 both offices for a time, signing himself in official 
 documents, "Admiral Couronnel-General de l'lnfan- 
 terie Francais." 
 
 In 1556, he was selected to negociate with Philip 
 the Treaty of Vaucelles. A most curious and 
 interesting account remains of his embassy, and of 
 his interview with Charles V., then living in retire- 
 ment, but still directing the course of events. 
 
 We see him, now, rapidly arrived at the highest 
 point of Court favour. He is Admiral of France ; 
 he has reformed the infantry ; he has concluded a 
 truce, the terms of which seem to make an honour- 
 able peace probable ; he has gained the confidence 
 of the King and of the nation ; he is happily married ; 
 he has not yet lost the friendship of Francis de 
 Joinville ; and he has already set on foot the first 
 attempt at realising a dream which, for complete- 
 ness, originality, and audacity, no other statesman 
 in history has ever yet surpassed. This enterprise, 
 however, requires a chapter to itself.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE COLONY OF BRAZIL. 
 
 A THEORY has been recently advanced, which is 
 not without plausibility, that long before the 
 voyage of Columbus, the Eastern shores of Brazil 
 were known to the sailors of Dieppe. It is quite 
 possible that, among the many voyages undertaken 
 by these hardy and adventurous seamen, a ship may 
 have been driven westward, and sighted, or even 
 touched at, the Brazilian shores. In the same way, 
 no one doubts that sailors from Iceland may have 
 visited the coasts of Greenland and Labrador, or 
 even sailed up the great river St. Lawrence. It is 
 open to everybody to accept a theory which is 
 probable, and yet cannot be proved. 
 
 One set of facts, however, is certain. 
 
 In 1504, very early in the history of American 
 discovery, a French ship entered the port of Bahia. 
 In 1509, savages were brought from Brazil and 
 exhibited at Rouen, to the delight and wonder of 
 the people. During the next forty years, a most
 
 Ango and Son. 53 
 
 remarkable firm of traders and shipbuilders, Ango 
 and his son, built, just like a firm such as Allan and 
 Co. at the present day, a whole fleet of vessels, which 
 traded backwards and forwards between Dieppe, 
 Honfleur, Havre, Rouen, and Brazil. The elder Ango 
 had been a common sailor ; he had the ability to 
 raise himself from that position, and to become the 
 greatest shipowner, the most adventurous trader, the 
 most daring buccaneer, and the most successful 
 merchant in all Europe. He, with his son, employed 
 a regular service of officers. His captains waged 
 war on their own account with the Portuguese, once 
 going so far as to sail up the Tagus and to threaten 
 Lisbon. In spite of Portuguese and Spanish preten- 
 sions, they traded openly with the natives, and held 
 their own upon the ocean. Every merchantman was 
 a man of war ; every ship, whether bark or galleon, 
 carried mounted cannon; every sailor looked daily 
 for a fight as more than possible ; every captain 
 was a pirate. 
 
 During these early years, French enterprise was 
 mostly occupied with Brazil. Many accounts remain 
 of the voyages of Ango's captains — notably that of 
 Jean Parmentier — and of the perils which they 
 encountered. Not the least of these was the cruelty 
 of the Portuguese to any French prisoners who might 
 fall into their hands. For those of Portugal, after 
 torturing their luckless captives, had a trick of
 
 54 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 handing them over to the Brazilian natives, who were 
 reported to tear them to death and eat them ; at 
 least, the French always said so. There was endless 
 war. In 1530, a French galleon surprised and sacked 
 Pernambuco. In 1532, Portuguese cruisers sailed 
 along the Brazilian coast, and picked up many French 
 prizes. In 1538, Francis I. forbade these expeditions 
 outre mer; in the same year, he revoked his decree. 
 In 1 541, he listened to the complaints of Portugal, 
 and was with difficulty dissuaded from another pro- 
 hibition. In 1543, he declared the sea free and 
 open to all his subjects. In 155 1, when the younger 
 Ango died, there was left, among other brave sea- 
 dogs in the service of the house, Jean Alfonse de 
 Saintonges, who wrote a description of Brazil, and 
 was chief pilot in the third expedition to Canada 
 conducted by the illustrious Jacques Cartier. 1 
 
 Brazil, therefore, was well known in France for 
 forty years before Coligny made his first attempt at 
 colonisation. His post of Admiral would make him 
 familiar with what had been done by the Norman 
 and Breton sailors ; his active intellect suggested 
 what might be done. 
 
 Unfortunately for France, the instrument by which 
 he proposed to carry out his plans proved unequal 
 to the charge. 
 
 1 His first expedition, the most fertile in discovery, was in 1534.
 
 Villegagnon. 55 
 
 Nicolas Durand de Villegagnon, son of a house 
 belonging to the petite noblesse, was born at Provins 
 in the year 15 10. He was nephew of the Grand- 
 Master of the Knights-Hospitallers, Villiers de l'lsle 
 Adam, the same who defended Rhodes, removed 
 with the Order to Malta, and now lies buried in the 
 stately Basilica of Valetta, where they show his tomb. 
 
 The young man was educated at the University 
 of Paris, where he formed a friendship, or acquaint- 
 ance, with Calvin. At the age of one-and-twenty, 
 he entered the Order of St. John. Ten years later, 
 in 1 541, he formed one of the great expedition 
 against Algiers. Early in the day he was wounded 
 and carried off the field, which probably saved his 
 life. Guillaume du Bellay gave him protection in 
 Rouen until he recovered — a kindness which Ville- 
 gagnon repaid by dedicating to his patron an account 
 which he afterwards wrote of the expedition. It 
 may be remarked that this soldier-monk was an 
 excellent scholar, and that the Latinity of his account 
 of the expedition is easy and correct. It would have 
 been well for France had he been less learned. 
 In 1542, he was fighting the Turks in Hungary. 
 He is next found fighting at Cerisolles, where 
 Coligny may have made his acquaintance in the 
 camp. 
 
 Little by little, the reputation of this adventurer 
 increased. He was chosen to carry a small auxiliary
 
 56 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 force of French soldiers to Scotland, and, while there, 
 was so fortunate as to perform a service of the most 
 signal kind to the French Crown. It was this. He 
 landed his soldiers safely at Edinburgh, and lay off 
 Leith, waiting for further instructions. He then 
 found that the North Sea was swarming with 
 English vessels anxious to prevent the passage of 
 the young Queen of Scots to France, which Mary 
 of Lorraine, the Regent, was as anxious to accom- 
 plish. Villegagnon proposed to deceive the English 
 by sailing round the north of Scotland, then considered 
 a most perilous enterprise, and afterwards to take 
 his Royal passenger on board at Dumbarton. This 
 he actually accomplished. He evaded the English 
 cruisers, sailed in safety round the north of Scotland, 
 passed southward through the Isles, put in at Dum- 
 barton, received the Queen with her four Maries, 
 and, after a voyage of six days, landed her in safety 
 at Brest. For this service, the King made him Vice- 
 Admiral of Brittany. 
 
 So far, Villegagnon's life was successful beyond 
 his most ambitious hopes. The sequel goes to show 
 how the wrong-headedness of one man was to ruin 
 as fair a scheme as ever was devised for the honour 
 and welfare of his country. 
 
 The next two years of his life were spent, first, 
 in a quarrel with the Grand-Master of the Order, 
 in which he appears to have been right ; and next, in
 
 Project of a Colony. 57 
 
 a quarrel with the Governor of Brest, in which the 
 King pronounced him wrong. It was then that, 
 believing his chances of future advancement were 
 gone, he began to turn his thoughts to America. 
 His project at first was to head such an expedition 
 as that of Cortes or Pizarro. What Spaniards had 
 done, Frenchmen could do. Eldorado was not yet 
 acquired. He, too, would go a-conquering. Naturally, 
 he brought this scheme first to Coligny, without whose 
 consent nothing could be done. The Admiral listened 
 to the project, and immediately perceived that here 
 was a chance of a far wider enterprise than a mere 
 filibustering occupation. Could there not be estab- 
 lished, by the help of this man, whose courage was 
 beyond a doubt, another France beyond the ocean, 
 where religious opinion should be free ? The idea 
 shows that Coligny had already begun to sympathise 
 with the persecuted Reformers. 
 
 Perhaps Villegagnon pretended a leaning towards 
 the Reformers ; perhaps, at the time, he really felt 
 inclined to their tenets. Most probably the Admiral 
 looked chiefly for a man strong enough to lead and 
 rule the infant colony, and stipulated for nothing 
 more than freedom of conscience. However that 
 may be, the scheme obtained his approval from the 
 beginning, and he lost no time in obtaining from the 
 King, then at war with Spain and England, authority 
 to despatch an expedition to America, and a grant
 
 58 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 of two ships, provisioned, armed, and fully manned, 
 with ten thousand francs for the first expenses, the 
 title of Viceroy of these new conquests, if any should 
 be made, for the leader of the expedition, and power 
 to recruit labourers, workmen, and artisans of all 
 kinds. 
 
 Everything was ready for the leader of the new 
 colony except colonists. These were difficult to 
 find. First, Villegagnon hoped to persuade Pro- 
 testants to enlist. But he was a Chevalier of 
 Malta. With what face could he propose to 
 protect and encourage Protestants ? A few, how- 
 ever, cadets of country families belonging to the 
 new faith, were induced to join him. They were, 
 compared with the Catholics who joined, a small 
 minority. Among the latter were two priests, one 
 a doctor of the Sorbonne, whose opinions were at 
 the moment fluctuating between the two religions, 
 and the other an honest fellow, who joined with the 
 sole view of seeing and describing the wonderful 
 continent of America. There were next a small 
 body of Scotch soldiers, who had followed Villegag- 
 non from Scotland, and were attached to him per- 
 sonally. But there were as yet no rank and file 
 whatever. 
 
 It must be remembered that France, never at any 
 time a colonising nation, was, in the sixteenth 
 century, like all other countries, entirely ignorant of
 
 No Colonists. 59 
 
 the idea of a colony. To sail away to the Brazilian 
 coasts, trade with the natives, fight the Portuguese, 
 and bring home the spoil, was an adventure familiar 
 with the Norman and Breton sailors ; but to go away 
 altogether, without wife and children, never to see 
 France again, to make a new home elsewhere, even 
 under the most promising conditions, was a thing 
 which they did not understand. 
 
 There were, therefore, no colonists forthcoming. 
 Villegagnon ordered proclamation to be made in 
 the streets of Paris that he would receive any who 
 wished to escape the consequences of profligacy and 
 extravagance, who were " slaves fugitive from their 
 country" (what does this mean ?), or who were 
 stimulated by a desire of adventure. A few were 
 enrolled, but these were recruits of a low and 
 dangerous class. 
 
 Villegagnon was in despair. Everything was 
 ready except the men — the sailors were on board, 
 the ships laden and provisioned. He made another 
 and more overt attempt upon the Protestants, but 
 with no success. Then he begged the King's per- 
 mission to take the criminals, and such as were 
 under sentence of death, from the prisons. All the 
 sturdy rogues in the gaols of Paris, Rouen, and other 
 great towns were swept off to form colonists ; and 
 so, at last, the ships were filled with as many 
 passengers as could be carried.
 
 60 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 It was a strange crew with which to form a new 
 France across the ocean : a handful of Protestants, 
 chiefly of the petite noblesse, who, doubtless, looked 
 for adventures as well as liberty of religion ; a few 
 fighting Scotsmen ; a scattering of broken-down 
 spendthrifts, versed in all the vice of great cities ; 
 and a collection of criminals who would otherwise 
 have been hanged or sent to the galleys. The man 
 who commanded this motley gathering was a fiery, 
 headstrong soldier, who was also a scholar, half a 
 monk, and who added to his personal preparations 
 a carefully-selected library of science and theology. 
 
 Two grave omissions were made. He forgot, 
 being a monk, that the foundation of all society is 
 the family. He proposed to make a new France 
 with only half of mankind. No women at all sailed 
 with him. That was the first mistake. The second 
 was that he did not take enough provisions. Grain 
 of all kinds he had, but he forgot that, during the 
 first few years of his settlement, there would be little 
 chance of quiet cultivation. 
 
 After a series of tempests, and twice putting back 
 to refit, the open sea was reached, and the voyage 
 fairly commenced. It occupied nearly three months. 
 On Nov. ioth, 1555, the French vessels entered the 
 Bay of Rio Janeiro. Here the chief selected an 
 island, which he called Coligny — it is now called 
 Villegagnon Island — for the first settlement. They
 
 Discontent. 61 
 
 landed, and at once, with infinite enthusiasm, began 
 to build a fort. Had English settlers, a generation 
 later, contented themselves with an establishment on 
 an island, what would have become of Virginia and 
 the Eastern States ? There was no water on their 
 rock ; there was no ground in which corn could be 
 sown ; there was, indeed, no thought of providing for 
 the exigencies of the future. Meanwhile — a fatal 
 error — they depended on the natives for supplies. 
 Then they alienated the people by forcing them to 
 assist in the construction of their fort. The Brazilians 
 refused to bear the harshness of their new masters, 
 and disappeared in the forests. 
 
 Famine, thereupon, began to be felt. The supplies 
 brought from France were exhausted. There was 
 no longer bread or wine ; roots of all kinds were 
 devoured for food. Grievous diseases broke out, 
 and the medicines were exhausted. But the hard 
 and austere man who commanded would allow no 
 relaxation in the labours of the colony. Before all, 
 he would have his fort completed. 
 
 It cannot be wondered at if the convict gangs 
 who made up a large part of his settlement began 
 to murmur. Better to languish in the filthy dungeons 
 of Paris — better to be hanged at once — better to be 
 broken on the wheel, and gibbeted at Montmartre, 
 than to starve on a barren rock, toiling all day at 
 earth and stone works under a tropical sun. They
 
 62 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 conspired — they resolved to murder Villegagnon. 
 Their plot — as generally happens to all conspiracies 
 — was confided to one too many. He was a member 
 of the Scottish guard, and he revealed it to the chief. 
 Four of the leaders were arrested and hanged. But 
 the principal in the conspiracy, a Norman interpreter, 
 managed to escape, and to take with him five-and- 
 twenty of his companions, all interpreters. They 
 took to the woods and lived with the Brazilians, filling 
 the natives with hatred against the new-comers. An 
 epidemic, which broke out among those natives who 
 still worked at the fort, exasperated the savages 
 beyond measure. They were convinced — being, no 
 doubt, assisted by the runaways in this conviction — 
 that their friends had been murdered by Villegagnon 
 himself. It is remarkable that it never occurred 
 to this man to conciliate the natives, or to use their 
 internal dissensions for his own purposes. Like 
 a Spaniard, he treated them as creatures whose only 
 use was to fetch and carry. Who could expect 
 human sympathy from a man who was at once a 
 ferocious soldier and a monk ? 
 
 But other ships came out from France, and brought 
 supplies in men and provisions. The affairs of the 
 colony looked more promising. If the residents were 
 not real colonists, they did their work while they stayed 
 in the place. We may fairly assume that the weaker 
 men — those whose constitutions had been undermined
 
 Hopefulness. 63 
 
 at home by profligacy — were speedily killed off when 
 famine and disease made their appearance. We hear 
 nothing of religious dissensions ; so that at first, 
 it is clear, the Viceroy kept his promise, and allowed 
 freedom of opinion. And presently a rumour of this 
 new colony, where religious thought was free, began 
 to run through France, and thousands of Protestants 
 considered whether it would not be well to seek in 
 another country the liberty of conscience which they 
 could not obtain at home. At this time, too, it 
 seems certain that Villegagnon honestly thought that 
 there was no other plan possible, if his colony was 
 to have a durable existence, than that contemplated 
 by Coligny — to induce those of the Religion to 
 emigrate in large bodies. With this object in view, 
 he took a very singular step. He wrote a letter to 
 Calvin, asking that Protestant ministers might be 
 sent from Geneva who should minister to the spiritual 
 wants of his Protestant colonists. Calvin, rejoiced 
 at so promising a chance, sent two zealous and 
 learned ministers, Richier and Chartier, with whom 
 was an old French gentleman, named Dupont de 
 Corguillcray, appointed to take charge of any who 
 wished to go with them. Only eleven volunteered, 
 among whom was Jean de LeVy, the future historian 
 of the expedition. Fourteen resolute and active men, 
 however, would alone form a valuable addition to 
 the forces of the little colony ; but, on their way
 
 64 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 through France, they were joined by so many that, 
 when they set sail from Honfleur, they numbered, 
 with the crews of the three vessels which conveyed 
 them, no fewer than 290 men and five young girls, 
 destined to be married in the colony. They were 
 the first French women to land in Brazil. Lery gives 
 an account of the voyage, which curiously illustrates 
 the general lawlessness at sea. After many adven- 
 tures, which greatly astonished the Genevese ministers, 
 the little squadron arrived safely at Rio Janeiro. 
 
 Now Villegagnon either lied to Calvin when he 
 pretended zeal for the Reformed Church, or his 
 views, when the new-comers arrived, were wavering. 
 At first, however, he showed signs of sincerity. He 
 appointed a Council of State. He informed the 
 ministers that he should not oppose their preaching. 
 He looked on, apparently well pleased, while frequent 
 conversions rewarded their zeal. He presided at a 
 controversy between them and one of the priests, 
 Cointa. He even presented himself at the table of 
 the Lord's Supper, and communicated after the 
 Reformed rite. What could they think but that the 
 Viceroy was another convert ? 1 In after years, Ville- 
 gagnon denied these facts ; none the less were they 
 true. But his conversion lasted a very little time. 
 The priest, Cointa, who had also been converted, 
 married one of the girls newly imported from France. 
 In a few days he repented either of his conversion
 
 Change of Front. 65 
 
 or of his marriage, and repaired, not to the Genevese 
 pastors, but to Villegagnon himself, as to a spiritual 
 superior, with fresh doubts. The Viceroy, meantime, 
 had perhaps begun to think that, for a Chevalier of 
 Malta, he had gone a little too far — that partaking of 
 the Lord's Supper according to Genevese rite might 
 turn out serious. Acts less rash had compromised 
 other officers of the Crown. His Viceregal position 
 was in danger. A new controversy began, in which 
 Villegagnon completely changed front, and showed 
 himself as hostile to the Religion as he had been 
 favourable. Nothing was heard in the unhappy 
 colony but theological disputes. The doubly apostate 
 priest, Cointa, returned to the old faith ; no one says 
 what became of his wife. The Viceroy threw himself 
 with ardour into the task of defeating the ministers 
 in argument. All the affairs of the infant colony 
 were neglected, while its chief shut himself up among 
 his books, forging new weapons for the discomfiture 
 of the Protestants. Meantime, the Genevese ministers 
 were prohibited from preaching for more than half- 
 an-hour. Naturally, the new-comers — the Protestant 
 contingent — finding matters so different from what 
 they had expected — constantly harassed with religious 
 disputes, made to work at fortifications where they 
 had come out to settle on the land, living hardly 
 on boitavi, bread made from roots, and bad water 
 from the cisterns — began to murmur. Villegagnon
 
 66 Gaspard cie Coligny. 
 
 endeavoured to suppress the growing discontent 
 by measures worthy only of a chiourme on board 
 a Maltese galley. Discontent grew louder, the 
 Viceroy more determined ; while always there lurked 
 in the woods the fugitive Norman interpreters, 
 ready to receive fresh deserters, urging the Bra- 
 zilians to rise against their enemy. The natives 
 whom Villegagnon had kept in the fort and 
 treated like slaves, ran away in a body, and 
 gained the safety of the forests, where they were 
 joined by a number of the Protestants. Then 
 Villegagnon became suspicious of a conspiracy ; he 
 thought that he discovered one, and caused the 
 supposed chief delinquent to be beaten to death 
 with a stick. The wretched man's friends, enraged at 
 this act of cruelty, joined the deserters in the woods. 
 After this, the Viceroy seems to have been pursued 
 by a fury of suspicion. The men whom he had 
 betrayed were always present, following him with 
 reproachful eyes. He multiplied severities and 
 punishments. Finally, he crowned all, faithless to 
 his agreements with the Admiral and with Calvin, 
 by prohibiting altogether the Protestant form of 
 worship. 
 
 This was more than the new immigrants, who had 
 come over on his solemn assurance, could endure. 
 They sent their chief, Dupont de Corguilleray, to 
 inform the Viceroy that they would obey him no
 
 Revolt of the Ministers. 67 
 
 longer, and intended, as soon as possible, to return 
 to France. 
 
 They were too strong for the Governor, hot-headed 
 as he was, to risk an appeal to force. He contented 
 himself with saying that if they did not obey, they 
 should not eat. The Protestants replied that, if they 
 received no rations, they would do no work. They 
 therefore ceased to labour at the fortifications, and 
 entered into negociations with the natives, who 
 brought them abundance of food. The ministers went 
 on preaching in spite of the Governor's prohibition. 
 
 This state of things was intolerable. Villegagnon 
 — who had broken his most solemn pledges — who 
 had deceived Calvin, Coligny, and the whole Pro- 
 testant party — who, in a few weeks, changed from 
 Catholic to Protestant and back again, and lacked 
 the strength, but not the will, to crush his victims — 
 could no longer endure even to see them on his 
 island. He persuaded them, therefore, to leave the 
 fort and take up their stay, until they could be con- 
 veyed back to Europe, on the mainland. Here the 
 Genevese remained for two months in great danger 
 of starvation. It is almost incredible that, during 
 the whole of their stay in Brazil, the French colonists 
 never attempted to cultivate the fertile soil. The 
 reason of this neglect was not carelessness, but pre- 
 judice. They had no peasants among them — none 
 but a peasant could possibly dig — they were gentle-
 
 68 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 men, preachers, soldiers, the meanest of them were 
 artisans, the most contemptible were gaol-birds and 
 criminals. Not one of these, even of the last and 
 lowest class, but was too proud to cultivate the soil. 
 We shall see, later on, how this prejudice was fatal 
 to a second enterprise. 
 
 Then a French ship, the Jacques, arrived in the 
 bay. The Captain brought the news, which a few 
 weeks before would have been welcomed with 
 acclamations, that vessels were being got ready in 
 every port of France for the conveyance of thousands 
 — Protestant refugees — who were longing to come 
 over and take possession of this glorious land of 
 liberty — this holy soil, where they might worship 
 without fear of priests. 
 
 Land of liberty ! On a little barren rock, the 
 Viceroy gnashing his teeth ; beside him, the apostate 
 Cointa ; before him, the Catholic emigrants sullenly 
 labouring at fortifications destined to be useless. 
 No provisions and no wine ; every man conscious 
 that the colony was doomed. On the mainland, 
 those of the Protestants who had not deserted to the 
 woods, idle, bitter, and revengeful, waiting to carry 
 home the news of the Viceroy's perfidy. In the 
 forests, the French deserters, living among the naked 
 Brazilians, some of them ready to go on living among 
 them — savages like them — in the shadows of the 
 giant forests.
 
 Departure of Calvinists. 69 
 
 Those thousands of Protestant immigrants must, 
 clearly, never come over. What use, should they 
 come ? And yet, unless they came, the colony was lost. 
 One can imagine the rage of the Viceroy, reflecting 
 on the ruin of his scheme, for which he had no one 
 but himself to blame. He tried to temporise with 
 the Genevese ; he interposed vexatious delays ; yet 
 he could not stop them ; they embarked and sailed, 
 and, after a long voyage, in which they suffered 
 the last extremity of famine, the Calvinists landed 
 in France. 
 
 At first, no one would believe their story. To 
 the end, the Catholics refused to believe it. Even 
 in those days of religious bigotry, the story appeared 
 too incredible. 
 
 Before the Jacques was fairly started on her voyage, 
 but when she was already eighteen leagues from the 
 shore, five of the Genevese changed their minds, and 
 asked to be allowed to return. Their request was 
 granted. A boat was lowered, into which they 
 descended, and were cut adrift, without provisions, 
 sails, oars, or masts. For four days a perfect calm 
 kept them motionless ; on the fifth, a tempest cast 
 them ashore. A few days later, they made their way 
 to Fort Coligny, where they at once sought an inter- 
 view with the Viceroy, fell on their knees, and 
 implored his clemency. It was one of Villcgagnon's 
 merciful days. He promised them protection and
 
 70 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 pardon, provided they did not preach or teach their 
 religion. 
 
 The Genevese went quietly to work, hoping to be 
 forgotten. But a dreadful suspicion entered the 
 head of their tyrant. He thought that these men 
 had been sent back for some secret service — 
 they were to instigate a rising — the Genevese 
 themselves were not, he suspected, actually gone, 
 but only lying at anchor in some neighbouring 
 port. This idea possessed the man's mind, and filled 
 him with terror and anxiety. He slept no longer 
 at night, but wandered alone round the fortifica- 
 tions, vaguely expecting some nocturnal alarm. He 
 raged and cursed all day, distributing his punish- 
 ments with redoubled severity. He trusted no one. 
 And all for the presence of five innocent Protestants 
 whom he had betrayed. This could not last; he 
 must end it somehow. He determined to put into 
 force the royal proclamation against heretics. He 
 interrogated the unhappy men, who had plenty of 
 time for flight, and were advised to fly by all the 
 colonists. But they remained, to their destruction. 
 Their replies were bold and true. They were all 
 Protestants. Villegagnon caused them all, except 
 one, to be hurled from a high rock into the sea. 
 That one was condemned for life to tj'avaux forces. 
 Then, at last, the murderer could repose. 
 
 But this act was nearly the last in his career as
 
 End of the Colony. j\ 
 
 Governor of "la France Antarcticque." Terrified 
 and exasperated, half of the remaining colonists 
 deserted him, as one flies from a madman. Some 
 took refuge in the woods ; others roamed along the 
 coasts, looking for a French ship to take them off. 
 All knew, at length, that the colony was ruined. 
 There was no longer any hope of reinforcements from 
 Protestant France. It was now only a question of 
 time till the unfortunate colonists should die off or 
 be killed. 
 
 Villegagnon, knowing that he would have to defend 
 himself against Catholic and Protestant alike, resolved 
 on returning to France. He placed the government 
 of the colony in charge of his nephew, Bois le Comte, 
 and embarked without making any preparations for 
 the defence of the miserable colonists. The rest of 
 his active life, divided between the writing of ran- 
 corous books against the Huguenots and fighting 
 them, belongs to the history of the religious wars. 
 It suffices to say, that he showed himself as able 
 a soldier as he was an eager and subtle theologian. 
 To the Protestants, he remained a perjured traitor 
 and a murderer ; to those of the Catholics who 
 knew the truth, he was an object of loathing and 
 contempt. 
 
 The remaining days of the colony were few and 
 sad. There is a consent among all writers — Catholic, 
 Protestant, and Portuguese — that the new Governor,
 
 72 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 Bois le Comte, was utterly unfit to cope with the 
 difficulties of the situation. There were men enough 
 left to defend the colony — probably four or five 
 hundred. Then, many of the refugees were ready 
 to return when Villegagnon was known to have 
 quitted the colony ; but the new Governor was mad 
 enough to send them word that he regarded them 
 as worse enemies than the Portuguese themselves. 
 The Protestants were ready to serve faithfully, but 
 he continued his uncle's prohibition of their religious 
 services. He even alienated the Catholics themselves. 
 And yet he was cut off from all help from Europe. 
 The Huguenots had naturally ceased to hope any- 
 thing from the colony ; the Catholics had never 
 regarded it with favour. 
 
 Very shortly, the Portuguese found the time 
 favourable for a general attack. The Jesuits' 
 settlement near San Vicente had acquired an extra- 
 ordinary influence over the minds of the natives. 
 The Fathers promised the Portuguese Governor an 
 overwhelming force of native auxiliaries. In fact, 
 he was enabled, by the assistance of the Fathers, 
 to get together twenty-six ships of all sizes, with 
 about six thousand men. Bois le Comte, who was 
 in the forests chasing hostile natives when the fleet 
 arrived, was cut off by the landing of a force on 
 the mainland, and prevented from getting back to 
 the fort. The main body of the Portuguese troops
 
 End of the Colony. jt, 
 
 were then disembarked on the mainland, and at 
 once erected earthworks for artillery. The ships 
 co-operated from the sea. The native auxiliaries 
 prevented the junction of those French colonists 
 who were on the continent. A midnight attack 
 carried the fort. A few of the French succeeded 
 in getting to the mainland in boats ; seventy-four 
 remained prisoners in the hands of the victors.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 HIS CONVERSION. 
 
 'TVHE colony of Fort Coligny lasted for four years. 
 -»■ They were years of disaster to its founder — 
 the one man who might have led its destinies to a 
 happier issue. 
 
 Hitherto, as we have seen, fortune had been pro- 
 pitious. At the age of forty, Gaspard de Chatillon was 
 one of the foremost men in France. Had he died at 
 this period, he would have been remembered in French 
 chronicles as one of the lesser worthies — a man who 
 had deserved well of his country — the founder of 
 military discipline — the first to attempt a French 
 colony. And he had been rewarded in his life with 
 great offices of State, and the confidence of the King. 
 It would have been the business of no one to inquire 
 more deeply into the character of the man. It 
 might be remembered of him, that he had always 
 favoured the followers of the new religion without 
 ever leaving the ranks of the old. 
 
 Let us enumerate the successive steps of his
 
 His Rapid Rise. 75 
 
 advancement. He received, in 1547, the Collar of 
 the Order, and the command of the French infantry. 
 He acted against the English at Boulogne, and 
 negociated the treaty which restored the place to 
 the French in 1550. In 1557, he commanded the 
 infantry in the campaign of Lorraine, and was 
 engaged in the taking of Metz, Toul, Verdun, and 
 the sieges of Rodemack, Damvilliers, Ivry, and Mont- 
 medy. Fighting under the Duke of Vendome in 
 Picardy, he carried by assault Hesdin and Terouanne. 
 All these actions, though not equal to Guise's single 
 exploit at Metz, made up a creditable record. 
 Coligny was known as a soldier who could be trusted. 
 In 1 55 1, he was appointed Governor of Paris and of 
 the Isle de France. In 1552, he was made Admiral. 
 In 1553, he served again in Picardy, this time under his 
 uncle first and the Duke de Nevers afterwards, and 
 signalised himself especially at the battle of Renty. 
 
 In 1555, by the marriage of Antoine de Bourbon 
 to Jeanne d'Albret, the Governorship of Picardy, 
 one of the most important commands, fell vacant, 
 and was given to Coligny. In the autumn of the 
 same year, he was appointed ambassador to conclude 
 the Treaty of Vaucelles. 
 
 An account of the negociation of this truce, and 
 of the reception accorded to the Admiral by the 
 retired Emperor, Charles the Fifth, was written by 
 Claude de l'Aubepine, who accompanied the mission.
 
 j6 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 The following is an extract from this curious and 
 interesting history: — 
 
 " On the following Sunday, being Palm Sunday, the 
 Emperor received us at his small house in the Park of 
 Brussels, whither he had retired for some time in order to be 
 freed from worldly affairs — of which, however, he always pre- 
 served the cognisance and disposition — having, for all his 
 Council, the Bishop of Arras, who conveyed his opinion 
 to his son and the Lords. 
 
 "The Admiral, with his suite, repaired to this place, at 
 the entry of which, from the bottom of the staircase to 
 the antechamber of the Emperor, stood a double line of 
 gentlemen, the youngest being not less than thirty-five, 
 and the oldest not more than about forty-five, dressed in 
 black, of grave and venerable countenance, and all bare- 
 headed while the French Embassy passed. 
 
 " The Emperor awaited the Admiral in his chamber, 
 seated in a chair by reason of the gout, the chair being 
 draped in black cloth ; before him a table six feet long, 
 covered with black cloth, the chamber and the antechamber 
 tapestried in the same colour. The room was immediately 
 filled with French, and no others, because the gentlemen 
 who formed the line of honour retired to the bottom of 
 the staircase, to allow more room. The Emperor's dress 
 was a short citizen's coat, made of Florence serge, cut 
 below the knees ; his arms passed through the sleeves ; a 
 pourpoint of black German buckram; a Mantua hat, sur- 
 rounded by a little silk band, this simplicity serving to 
 illustrate the character of a Prince who would indeed have 
 been called great, had he been able — a thing which he 
 never attempted — to restrain his excessive ambition."
 
 Charles the Fifth. 77 
 
 The Emperor received the official letter with 
 great affability, and, after reading it, began to 
 converse familiarly. 
 
 " How is the King, my fair brother?" he asked. 
 
 " He is well, sire," replied the Admiral. 
 
 "Ha! Glad am I to hear it, believe me! My heart 
 laughs to hear it. And not without cause ; for I hold it a 
 great honour to have sprung, by the maternal side, from 
 that stock which bears and supports the most illustrious 
 crown in the world. But I am told," he continued, " that 
 he begins to grow grey. Why, nobody is so young as he. 
 It seems but three or four days since he was in Spain, a 
 little prince, without a hair in his beard." 
 
 The Admiral, wishing to explain that away, said — "Sire, 
 in truth the King has two or three white hairs already; but 
 so have many younger than himself." 
 
 " Oh ! do not trouble about it," replied the Emperor. 
 " That is less than nothing. I ask after his condition, and 
 I must tell you of my own. When I was about the same 
 age, and being on my journey to Naples — M. l'Admiral, you 
 know the loveliness of the town, the beauty and the grace 
 of the ladies in it — I am but a man, and would deserve their 
 favours like the rest — the day after my arrival, in the morn- 
 ing, I called my barber to shave, curl, and perfume me. I 
 am given a mirror. I see myself in the same state as the 
 King, my brother. Astonished, I ask, 'What is that?' 
 Says the barber, ' Two or three white hairs.' There were 
 more than a dozen. 'Take them away,' I said to the 
 barber; 'do not leave one.' Now, would you guess what 
 happened?" addressing himself to the French gentlemen — 
 "a little while afterwards, looking at myself again in the
 
 78 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 mirror, I found that, for one white hair I had taken out, 
 three more had come." 
 
 A most affable and entirely amiable old King. 
 Who could believe that a treaty concluded with so 
 much good-will was only made to be broken ? 
 
 By this time, the friendship of Guise and Coligny 
 had turned to hate. Why ? Several stories have 
 been invented, and believed in, to account for this 
 change. We are gravely told that the Admiral told 
 Guise that he valued honour above riches ; whereat 
 the latter flew into a rage, and never forgave his 
 old friend. The tale is too silly for any but those 
 who can only see in Coligny the meek and femininely 
 pious Christian, which he never was. Then we hear 
 that the Admiral tried to deprive Guise of his share 
 in a gallant exploit, or that Guise performed a 
 similar friendly action for Coligny. No need for 
 any story. The ways of the two men were different ; 
 their ways of thinking were different ; their counsels 
 to the King were diametrically opposite ; their 
 political aims were irreconcilable with each other. 
 
 No need, again, to decry Guise in order to 
 magnify his rival. He was, as the event proved, a 
 better general ; he was a gallant soldier and a 
 generous friend. If he was unscrupulous in the 
 means he employed, we must remember that he 
 belonged to the school of which Charles V., Philip 
 the Second, Catherine, and all the diplomatists of
 
 Treaty Broken. 79 
 
 that bad time were masters or scholars. If he was 
 ambitious, we may remember how near he stood to 
 the Crown, and how, on both sides, he was an 
 offshoot of the Royal line. It was his birth, his 
 education, the traditions that encompassed him, which 
 made him what he was — the type and representative 
 of the orthodox, the Conservative party. 
 
 The Treaty of Vaucelles was signed in February, 
 1556. It was broken in the same year, and by the 
 King of France. He was urged to this act of treason 
 by the Pope, acting through his legate and through 
 Guise. The latter received command of the army of 
 Italy, where he reaped such laurels as were conveyed 
 to him in the farewell words of the Pope — "You 
 have acquired little honour for your King, less for 
 me, and none for yourself." To Coligny, instructions 
 were sent to prepare immediately for war. It was, 
 indeed, on the frontiers of Picardy that the chief 
 brunt of battle was to be borne. 
 
 It was with a heavy heart that the Admiral saw 
 the work of his hands torn to pieces, and war begin- 
 ning again. " God," he cried, thinking of the solemn 
 compact into which he had entered in the name 
 of his perjured King — " God is the certain avenger 
 of perjuries." It seemed, a little later, as if the 
 sufferer by these perjuries was not the King, their 
 author, but he himself, their victim. And then he 
 began his preparations, throwing his whole heart into
 
 80 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 the present work which lay before him. " Since," 
 he writes, "it pleases the King that I should serve 
 him in the government of Picardy, it is right for me 
 to forget everything else, to accommodate myself, and 
 follow his will." 
 
 His headquarters, in 1556, were at Abbeville, where, 
 almost single-handed, he multiplied himself, provided 
 for everything, studied economy of expenditure, and — 
 a thing which he alone of all the captains in his time 
 looked after — took precautions to protect the poor, 
 so that none should be robbed or despoiled. It was 
 by forethought of this kind that the Admiral built 
 up a name the like of which had never been known 
 in France before. In peace or war, he was a just 
 man — a man on whose word reliance could be placed 
 — a man who, in all worldly matters, placed honesty 
 first. 
 
 The limits of this work forbid any detailed account 
 of the campaigns which belong to the history of 
 France. Suffice it to say that, at the beginning 
 of 1557, Coligny commenced hostilities by an attack 
 on Douay, which failed, and another on Lens, which 
 succeeded. Then the battle of St. Quentin was 
 fought by the Constable de Montmorency, and lost. 
 Coligny, with his brother Andelot, who brought him 
 some small reinforcements, held the town for three 
 weeks against an overwhelming force. The delay 
 saved Paris ; for there was absolutely nothing, except
 
 St. Quentin. 8 1 
 
 the Admiral's small force in St. Quentin, to prevent 
 the Spaniards from marching direct upon the capital. 
 The holding of this place was a greater service than 
 that which Guise had rendered in the defence of 
 Metz. But the fortune of war was against Coligny. 
 Guise succeeded — he failed. Yet the merit was no 
 greater in one case than in the other. Guise per- 
 formed a splendid exploit, which all the world 
 applauded ; Coligny another, but its importance was 
 lost on those Parisians whose lives and fortunes it 
 saved. Because the place fell, Coligny was ranked 
 as unsuccessful. 
 
 Briefly, the city was taken ; the Admiral and 
 Andelot made prisoners. The latter escaped, wading 
 breast-deep through the marshes ; Coligny failed to 
 get away. 
 
 It was one Francisque Diaz who made him prisoner. 
 He disarmed his prize, and led him through a mine, 
 in order to avoid the German soldiers, who would 
 probably have murdered him. On the way, they 
 met Philibert Emanuel, Duke of Savoy, the 
 Imperialist General, who refused to believe that it 
 was the Admiral. That doubt, however, was soon 
 solved, and the next day the Duke gave proof of a 
 certain unexplained personal animosity in the treat- 
 ment of his illustrious prisoner. Perhaps, ignorant 
 of the truth, he held Coligny responsible for the 
 breaking of the truce. For, while he set La Roche-
 
 82 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 foucauld, also a prisoner, opposite to himself at table, 
 the Admiral was placed at the lower end, among 
 the captains and gentlemen — a curious illustration 
 of the manners of the period, there being not the 
 least doubt of the Admiral's rank and position. One 
 might expect the same sort of thing, at the present 
 day, from a Grand Duke of Russia. The Spaniards 
 took their prisoner first to Lille, then to Sluys, 
 and lastly to Ghent. 
 
 During his captivity, the Admiral had, for the 
 first time in his busy life, the leisure, first, to write a 
 memoir of the siege of St. Quentin, which we may 
 fairly consider as his apology, and, secondly, to 
 consider his religious position. 
 
 We have seen that, in his boyhood, he was exposed 
 to influences directly hostile to the old order of 
 things. His mother's friends had leanings towards 
 reform. She herself, the brave woman, courageous 
 in her convictions, died refusing to see a priest at 
 her death-bed. He had been accustomed to hear 
 contempt and scorn poured upon the unreformed 
 Catholic Church. His brother, the Cardinal, had 
 been steadfastly labouring to abolish the abuses of 
 his diocese. His brother, Andelot, had already gone 
 over. His nephew, Conde, was ready to go over. 
 His own wife was ready. Andelot's wife was ready. 
 All the men and women whom he had learned to 
 respect were either gone over or were ready to go
 
 Conversion. 83 
 
 over. He had been prepared, by his education and 
 by his surroundings, to consider during his whole life 
 the possibility of the step. We have seen that he 
 had not regarded unmoved the sufferings of "ceux 
 de la Religion." He was already more than half a 
 Huguenot. 
 
 And now the opportunity came to him, as it had 
 already come to his brother Andelot, to meditate in 
 quiet on the pretensions of Authority and the claims 
 of Free-thought. 
 
 He became, as was inevitable in those days for a 
 scholar who accepted the Bible, as a whole, as the 
 inspired Word of God, a Protestant, and a Presby- 
 terian. Apart from early Christian history and 
 tradition — apart from modern criticism — no other 
 conclusion seems possible from the New Testament 
 than that which commended itself alike, and indepen- 
 dently, to logical Frenchmen and logical Scotchmen. 
 
 Attempts have been made to show that his con- 
 version was dictated by political motives. Nothing 
 can be more absurd. In becoming a Huguenot, 
 the Admiral lost the favour of the King, the interest 
 of the Constable, all that he had acquired. It seemed 
 as if he would have to retire to the obscurity of his 
 own castle — happy, if he could be allowed to lead the 
 rest of his life in peaceful practice of his own 
 religion. What his grandfather had been to Charles 
 VIII., he had aspired to become to Henry II. — his
 
 84 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 general, his adviser, his minister, his ruler. Such a 
 position was within his reach. Montmorency's eldest 
 son was not ambitious. Henry, inspired by the 
 dying words of his father, entertained a suspicion of 
 Guise. The King knew what was the nature of the 
 service rendered at St. Quentin. He knew, too, the 
 solid services already rendered by the Admiral, and 
 the wisdom of his counsels. And these counsels, too, 
 would always be thrown into the scale of moderation, 
 toleration, favour for the oppressed Huguenots. 
 
 Consider, again, the other side. He might fairly 
 assure himself that his name, his position, even his 
 body-guard of gentlemen, would protect him from 
 such persecution as befel the poor tailors and cobblers 
 whom they hung up in chains to roast at slow fires. 
 But he would pass over to the minority ; he would 
 disappear out of possible future courtly distinction ; 
 he would lose all that he had hitherto striven for. 
 As for his new co-religionists, no one knew how many 
 there were of them — how many would stand the test 
 of persecution. There was as yet no thought of 
 rebellion, no hope of anything but present suffering 
 and future triumph. 
 
 Another thing must have been clear to him. In 
 becoming a Protestant, he would become the head and 
 chief of the Protestants. Louis de Conde was of the 
 blood-royal, like his brother Antoine. These princes 
 would be the nominal leaders ; but he, and no one
 
 New Responsibilities. 85 
 
 else, would be the real leader. And he knew not 
 yet what following he would have. 
 
 We must remember, then, that, in passing over to 
 the Reformed Church, Coligny began by losing all — 
 influence, future favour, everything. What did he 
 gain ? The headship of a party which as yet was 
 no party, but an unorganised mob — thick in one 
 place, sparse in another — as yet with no thought of 
 resistance, cowering under persecution, reading the 
 Bible furtively, trembling at the thought of the stake, 
 and yet resolute to die rather than give up their faith 
 — but a mob, only a mob, and, in the eyes of the Court, 
 only a few pestilent agitators : once they were buried 
 and done with, the thing itself called Calvinism would 
 quickly disappear out of France. It was just exactly 
 as if Judas Maccabaeus had been General-in-Chief 
 of the Greek forces in Syria, before he seceded to the 
 Jewish national party, in order to become chief of 
 guerillas, who as yet had no thought of fighting, did 
 not know their own strength, and were cowering 
 in separate bands among the highlands of Judea. 
 
 Hitherto, Coligny had made a compromise. He 
 seems to have believed, with Erasmus, that the 
 Church might be reformed from within. He looked 
 for acts of liberalism and progress, and dreaded 
 revolt. All his sympathies as a soldier and a great 
 noble were naturally on the side of authority and 
 order. He was not alone in this attitude. The best
 
 86 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 French scholars either did not leave the Church, or, 
 if they secretly disbelieved her doctrines, did not 
 join the Reformers. His own mother, although she 
 died without a priest, an example to all, never joined 
 the ranks of the Religion. Queen Marguerite and 
 her followers, Roussel, Brigonnet, and the venerable 
 Lefevre, never left the Church. Now, he saw that 
 the time for compromise was gone. He must come 
 out of the false and corrupt Church. It was his 
 imprisonment which gave him leisure for study and 
 reflection, and this was regarded afterwards by his 
 own party and by himself as a special interposition 
 of Providence to bring about his conversion. He 
 went into prison with a mind full of doubts — he 
 came out of it with those doubts resolved. 
 
 The religious creed which satisfied the soul of 
 Coligny, and has ever since been professed by French 
 Protestants, is a form of Presbyterianism. He held, 
 with all the wisest and most of the best men of his 
 and later times, that the Christian priesthood is of 
 human, not Divine, ordinance ; that its pretensions 
 to supernatural powers are based on no foundations 
 in the Bible, his only authority ; that every man 
 must work his own way by the grace of God to the 
 Kingdom of Heaven ; that the ecclesiastical structure 
 which had grown up little by little in the fifteen 
 hundred years of Christian history ought to be swept 
 clean away, with Pope, cardinals, bishops, priests,
 
 French Protestantism. 87 
 
 monks, nuns, and masses. He would not be satisfied 
 with such a compromise as the English accepted : he 
 would have a Reform more radical, a creed more 
 logical. 
 
 The ministers and pastors of the Reformed flock 
 were, according to the Admiral's ideas, purely teachers. 
 Their sermons occupied the place of books to people 
 who could not read, or who had but one book, the 
 Bible. It was their special work to teach how to 
 read and interpret the Bible ; to keep their hearers, 
 mostly ignorant men, in the way of good doctrine, 
 as they understood it ; and to guard them from 
 falling into those excesses which occurred in Eng- 
 land and in Germany, but never in sober France. It 
 is remarkable to observe that, until late years, there 
 has been perfect unanimity of doctrine among French 
 Protestants. The good sense of the French is 
 singularly illustrated by this circumstance. One 
 section of the nation, starting with the premise that 
 the Bible is to be the only foundation of faith, and 
 that it is not only lawful but necessary for every man 
 to read and study it for himself, came unanimously 
 to what seems to me the only logical outcome 
 possible on such assumptions — a Presbyterian creed 
 of what we now call a narrow order. It must be 
 remembered that the modern methods of Biblical 
 criticism and interpretation have widened the bounds 
 of the Christian creed.
 
 88 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 There could be, however, no question of toleration, 
 as we understand it now. Coligny knew well, when 
 he joined the Reform, that he was about to engage 
 in a gigantic struggle, the issue of which it was 
 impossible to foretell. There was, it is true, the 
 example of England ; but there was little chance that 
 Henry the Second would carry out what Francis had 
 been afraid to undertake. The Catholics and the 
 Protestants could not live side by side ; that, Coligny 
 thought at first, was impossible. On the one side, 
 there was the memory of burnings and murders with 
 the conviction of truth j^on the other, the anger and 
 astonishment of men, quietly in possession, who saw 
 their good things wrested from them, and their ease 
 of mind disturbed. And the latter, being in power, 
 used it with all the brutality which has ever distin- 
 guished the stronger in religious matters. Yet there 
 were found, even among Catholics, some who cried 
 out against persecution. " Never," says Tavannes, 
 "was malady of the brain worse treated than Cal- 
 vinism. The patients ought not to have been 
 burned and treated with such extraordinary remedies, 
 because the more a thing is prohibited, the more it is 
 desired. Cruelty supported with constancy confirmed 
 them in their obstinacy. It was enough to deprive 
 them of places and benefices, to condemn them to 
 fines, and to amend the lives of our own ecclesiastics. 
 We have angered God by the cruelty of their punish-
 
 Guise in Power. 89 
 
 ments, and there was no reason for making them 
 pretend to be martyrs. Many of these perverted 
 persons believed that they were dying for Jesus 
 Christ. Religion lies in belief, which can be influenced 
 by reason, but not by flames." 
 
 These remarkable and noble words are written by 
 a soldier, and not a priest. 
 
 Note that, while the Admiral was in his prison 
 revolving these difficulties, his rival, Guise, was 
 advancing rapidly in reputation and in power. He 
 took Calais — from plans prepared by Coligny, his 
 enemies say, but this is not certain. He was appointed 
 Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom. His brother, 
 the Cardinal, was made Minister of Finance, and 
 their niece, Mary Queen of Scots, was married to 
 the Dauphin. 
 
 It should be observed that the rivalry of Guise 
 and the Admiral did not prevent the former from 
 speaking in the highest praise of Andelot's services 
 at Calais. Guise was hot-headed, arrogant, and 
 aggressive, but he was not ungenerous. 
 
 Andelot, after the taking of Calais, was accused 
 by the King himself of being a Huguenot. " Sire," 
 said the fiery soldier, " in matters of religion, I cannot 
 use concealment, or deceive God. Dispose as you 
 please of my life, my goods, my offices ; but my soul 
 is only subject to the Creator, from whom I have 
 received it. Him alone I must obey as the Almighty
 
 90 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 Master. In one word, I would rather die than go to 
 mass." 
 
 He did not die, but he had to go to prison, and 
 his office of Colonel-General of Infantry was taken 
 from him. Nor did he receive his liberty until his 
 uncle, the Constable, obtained it for him. 
 
 Peace with Spain was signed on the second of 
 April, 1559. The Admiral obtained his release for 
 a ransom of 50,000 crowns, and came back to France, 
 but not to his former position of influence. 
 
 Nevertheless, the prospects of the Chatillon party 
 were not desperate, in^ spite of the conversion of the 
 two brothers. Tavannes balances the hopes and 
 fears of both parties as follows — " Friendship was on 
 the side of the Constable ; the marriage of the 
 Dauphin, the sagacity of the Lorraines, the taking 
 of Calais, the loss of the battle of St. Quentin, made 
 for the Guise faction ; the charge against Guise of 
 having violated the treaty of Vaucelles, the fruitless 
 campaign in Italy, supplanted the favour of the 
 King." After the peace, which was a disgraceful 
 ending to a disgraceful war, and which disgusted the 
 Lorraines, who had brought about the war, the 
 Admiral retired to his Castle of Chatillon, where, 
 for the next three months, he enjoyed a brief repose 
 with his family, and followed his favourite pursuits 
 of collecting books, pictures, and objects of art, while 
 he strengthened himself in his new faith.
 
 The Admiral at Home. 91 
 
 It must not be forgotten that Coligny was a 
 scholar, taught by the best teacher in all France, 
 and trained, besides, in all the culture possible, at a 
 time in which culture, in the modern sense, was a 
 distinguishing mark of nobility. Rabelais, for 
 instance, was a scholar, but he was not acquainted 
 with Art. Dolet was a scholar, but he had no know- 
 ledge of sculpture or pictures. Coligny — whose 
 scholarship stopped short at his twentieth year, and 
 cannot therefore be compared with that of the colossal 
 students of his time — added to his love of books a 
 love of things artistic. He surrounded his home, this 
 gloomy old castle, with a modern memoir, after the 
 fashion invented by Rene of Anjou, and enriched 
 it with all things precious to the men who love 
 things beautiful. This gloomy ascetic, as his enemies 
 paint him, lived in his home bathed in the love of 
 wife and children, in the midst of pictures, gardens, 
 statues, books, arms, armour, carriages, painted glass, 
 and all the bric-a-brac of the sixteenth century, which 
 delights the heart of the nineteenth. 
 
 All the world knew by this time that he had 
 joined the Religion. Those of the faith thanked 
 God publicly and in private. The hearts of the 
 persecuted revived. Every man felt that though he, 
 and others like him, small and insignificant, and of 
 no account, might look to be roasted alive, yet that 
 so great a seigneur was safe from Sorbonne and from
 
 92 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 priest. And his safety made the safety of many. 
 The arm of the Lord had been stretched out indeed, 
 and a mighty man of war was on their side. Coligny 
 was to be the Joshua of the chosen people. 
 
 The time, indeed, was near at hand when the Re- 
 formed would need all the protection they could get. 
 The King, waxing daily more incensed against them, 
 threatened new and more vigorous punishments. Full 
 arrangements were made for introducing the Inquisi- 
 tion. No one suspected the real strength of the Pro- 
 testants ; yet rumours ran abroad that they were no 
 longer counted by hundreds, but by tens of thousands. 
 Fears were entertained in the Louvre that, should 
 they rise, they would bring across the frontier swarms 
 of their co-religionists. Calvin was at Geneva, waiting, 
 it was said, to launch his hosts of avenging zealots. 
 Everywhere there were threatening symptoms of 
 discontent. The Psalms of Marot were raised again 
 in the Pre aux Clercs. Moderate men among the 
 Catholics said openly that there had been enough 
 of burning. The Lorraines alone advised the King 
 that there was no safety except in the assertion of 
 authority. 
 
 The portrait of the Admiral prefixed to this 
 volume belongs to this period. None exists of an 
 earlier time. One would have liked to see Coligny 
 as a young man, when he was yet the friend of 
 Guise, and both were happy lads, living in the
 
 Portrait. 93 
 
 sunshine of the hour, flaunting their colours about 
 Paris, and riding side by side in every tilt. 
 
 This is the portrait of a man in middle life — from 
 forty to fifty. He has a thin spare figure, with 
 narrow and sloping shoulders ; his head is small, 
 fairly shaped, and proudly poised ; thin, straight 
 hair, closely cut, lies over a lofty forehead, square, 
 not narrow ; his eyes are full, clear, and sad — there 
 are no smiles lurking in their depths, but a great 
 capacity for sorrow ; the nose is long and straight, 
 with delicate nostrils ; the face is oval and thin, with 
 sunken cheeks, ending in a small rounded beard, cut 
 to the shape of a pointed chin, which one may 
 perceive, in spite of the beard, to be long and firm ; 
 the lips are closely set, but mobile, and the upper 
 lip is too thin. In the corners of the eyes are crows- 
 feet, and across the brow are long wrinkles which tell 
 of many a sleepless night. The face is surrounded 
 by a high stiff ruff, which adds to the set sadness 
 of its expression ; it has little external beauty, and 
 nothing except the steady eye to show why thousands 
 upon thousands waited in patience to be pillaged and 
 murdered, because the Admiral told them the time 
 was not yet come, or why, at his bidding, they rushed 
 upon an enemy three times as strong, in faith as 
 mighty as that which filled the hearts of Gideon's 
 three hundred. The face is that of a grave man, 
 stern at all times, just even to harshness, and trusted
 
 94 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 because of his justness — the face of a man for whom 
 this world had few pleasures — who loved power for 
 what he could do with it — who had pushed the priest 
 aside, and stood, solemnly, face to face with God. 
 
 The Admiral's manner of living was extremely- 
 abstemious. He drank little wine, and ate little 
 meat. He slept, at most, six hours. To complete 
 his portrait, let us add the words of his servant, 
 Cornaton — " He was of middle height, with well- 
 proportioned limbs ; of a calm and serene counte- 
 nance ; he had a voice soft and pleasing, yet rather 
 slow and hesitating ; his complexion was clear ; his 
 demeanour was grave, yet full of grace and kindness." 
 
 The lance of Montgomery produced the first of 
 those dramatic effects which abound in the history 
 of the Huguenots. Henry the Second died, killed 
 by the splint of a broken spear. There could, for 
 the moment, be no question of the Inquisition. The 
 Protestants breathed again. Respite, with them, 
 meant time for development. Their strength lay in 
 waiting.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 FRANCIS II. 
 
 THE last twelve years of Coligny's life are the last 
 three acts of a tragedy in which the stage is 
 crowded with figures, every one of which merits a 
 special study. But the central figure is that of the 
 Admiral. 
 
 Let us briefly study the situation at the accession 
 of Francis the Second. 
 
 The country was impoverished by war. The 
 treasury was empty. The roads were crowded with 
 disbanded soldiers, fain to pillage from sheer neces- 
 sity, and eager for some new war. At Court there 
 were three parties. The first of these was the 
 Lorraine family, headed by the Duke of Guise, 
 uncle of the King. With them was the whole power 
 of the Church in France. They were backed, as well, 
 by the Pope and the King of Spain. By means of 
 their niece, Mary Queen of Scotland as well as of 
 France, they did what they pleased with the frail 
 and sickly boy of sixteen.
 
 g6 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 The second party was headed by Montmorency 
 and the Chatillons. With them were nearly the 
 whole of the French nobility, especially the lesser 
 nobles. Many of these had embraced the new 
 Religion. All of them were jealous of the influence 
 of the Lorraine foreigners. The nominal leaders 
 of this party were the Bourbon princes. 
 
 Lastly, there was the Queen-mother. 
 
 The judgment of the world upon this woman has 
 been hard indeed. No other name of woman in the 
 history of the world is more loathed and execrated 
 than that of Catherine. Nor would I seek to remove 
 the monument of hatred which makes her tomb con- 
 spicuous. But one is compelled to pity her. From 
 the time when she lived, neglected by her husband, to 
 the day when she died, just before the last of her sons 
 completed by a violent death the history of her brood, 
 no rest, or ease, or cessation from anxieties ever came 
 to her. Trouble was heaped on trouble, and each, as it 
 came, found her more afraid than ever ; each, by reason 
 of her cowardice, duplicity, and treachery, became 
 the parent of new and ever-increasing troubles. Of 
 all women who have ever been queen, she was, 
 perhaps, the most mischievous ; of all women who 
 ever lived, she must have been the most miserable. 
 
 The elder branch of the House of Bourbon became 
 extinct by the death of the Constable de Bourbon, 
 killed at the siege of Rome. The descendants, there-
 
 The House of Bourbon. 97 
 
 fore, of Robert de Clermont, brother of Louis IX., 
 and founder of the House of Bourbon, were now 
 represented by the three sons of Charles de Bourbon, 
 Duke of Vendome. The eldest of these, Antoine, 
 was married to Jeanne d'Albret, and bore the title 
 of King of Navarre. He was a feeble and fickle 
 prince, unstable in his engagements, alternately 
 swayed by his wife and by some one of Catherine's 
 sirens, the ladies of her Court, by whom she caught, 
 and betrayed to their destruction, great lords, like 
 Antoine, of uncertain policy. He was alternately 
 Catholic and Protestant. It is characteristic of him 
 that he died in a state of uncertainty as to his 
 religion. 
 
 The next brother, Louis de Conde, was of very 
 different character. He was that typical Frenchman 
 in whom his countrymen always delight — of gay and 
 mirthful temperament, always cheerful, always hope- 
 ful, always ready to fight, loyal and faithful to all 
 his engagements. No vacillator like Antoine, he 
 adhered firmly to the religion which he had once 
 embraced. But he was by no means austere, his 
 morals leaving, it must be owned, much to be desired. 
 He had married Eleonore de Roye, daughter of 
 Coligny's half-sister, and was therefore a kind of 
 nephew to the Chatillons. 
 
 The new reign began with a general feeling among 
 all parties that there had been too much persecution
 
 98 Gaspard de ColigJiy. 
 
 for opinion. The country had been already once 
 threatened with the Inquisition ; perhaps an attempt 
 might again be made to establish that detestable 
 institution. ' Although the times were hard and cruel 
 — although breaking on the wheel, boiling in oil, slow 
 burning at the stake, were punishments considered as 
 part of the necessary framework of society, it was one 
 thing to smash the limbs of a murderer with a heavy 
 iron, or to plunge him into flames, and another to 
 hang up over the fire some poor innocent wretch, 
 whose only fault was that he had read the New 
 Testament, and dared to have opinions. 
 
 But then, while men looked for moderate counsels, 
 there came the affair of Anne du Bourg. 
 
 Anne du Bourg, at this time thirty-eight years 
 of age, nephew of the late Chancellor of France, 
 was a magistrate and juris consult of the highest 
 reputation. He lectured on law at Orleans, and was 
 afterwards appointed conseiller clerc to the Parliament 
 of Paris. Early in 1559, Henry II., then brimful 
 of zeal against the Huguenots, and incapable of seeing 
 anything better than to make short work of them 
 by establishing the Inquisition, repaired to the Parlia- 
 ment, and invited the advice of the House upon this 
 measure. He met with an expression of opinion which 
 he scarcely expected. Louis Dufaur gave the King a 
 solemn warning. " Look that they say not to thee 
 as Elijah said to Ahab, ' It is thou that troublest
 
 Anne du Bonrg. 99 
 
 Israel!'" Du Bourg spoke even more plainly. He 
 complained that, while blasphemers, adulterers, mur- 
 derers, and criminals of all kinds escaped justice, the 
 House was asked to assist in devising fresh tortures 
 for folk against whom no crime could be reproached. 
 " Can we," he said, " impute treason to men who make 
 no mention of princes save in their prayers ? Why are 
 they regarded as seditious, save because, by the light 
 of Holy Scripture, they have revealed the turpitude 
 of that Church of Rome which is tottering to its 
 fall?" 
 
 Dufaur and Du Bourg were both committed to 
 prison. During their trial, the King died. Yet they 
 were not set at liberty. Then the Elector Palatine 
 asked for the release of Du Bourg, whom he designed 
 to place at the head of the newly-founded Heidelburg 
 University. As an act of policy he would have 
 been released, but for the murder of his bitterest 
 enemy, Menard, a judge in Paris, and a creature of 
 the Cardinal de Lorraine. The act, probably com- 
 mitted by some mistaken or fanatic zealot, sealed the 
 fate of the prisoner. Three days afterwards, Anne du 
 Bourg was hanged, and his body burned. 
 
 Thus, at a time when all were hoping for milder 
 measures, one more martyr was added to the list. 
 The Huguenots were exasperated by this act of 
 savage and needless ferocity. What had been done 
 to Du Bourg might be done to every man among
 
 ioo Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 them if the Guises had their own way. Then the 
 eyes of all turned to the Bourbon Princes and to the 
 Admiral, uncle of the second and the best loved. 
 
 The death of Du Bourg took place in December, 
 1559, five months after the accession of Francis. 
 But in those five months a great deal had happened. 
 
 Antoine of Navarre lost the opportunity of seizing 
 the person of the young King, and proclaiming 
 himself Regent. Montmorency w r as dismissed from 
 his office of Constable. The Guises assumed 
 the whole control of affairs, ruling the King by 
 means of Mary Queen of Scots, his young wife. 
 They formed a plan of honourably removing 
 the Chatillons from France altogether, by offering 
 them employment in Scotland, which both refused. 
 Catherine, seeing her own influence entirely gone, 
 began to court the other party, and even held out 
 hopes to the Admiral that she might join the new 
 religion. He wrote her a letter, full of confidence 
 that she would prove a second Esther. Alas ! already 
 the second Esther was arranging with Philip for the 
 succour of 40,000 men, in case of need. Then the 
 persecution was renewed in earnest. A vast reign 
 of terror was commenced in all the great towns. In 
 Paris, one Mouchy (whose name has been handed 
 down to execration in the word moiidiard, a spy) 
 got together a band of spies, whose object was to 
 detect heretics in the act of eating meat on Fridays,
 
 First Meeting. 101 
 
 or holding assemblies. Houses were sacked, their 
 inhabitants murdered, the little children sent out 
 into the streets, to starve and perish with cold. 
 Engravings, rude but effective, were prepared and 
 plastered on the walls, showing heretics engaged in 
 torturing priests, or throwing monks into the water. 
 The nobles came to the Court to complain of 
 the general lawlessness and disorder ; they received 
 orders to quit the placs within twenty-four hours — 
 a gibbet was actually erected at the gates of the 
 Castle as a menace to those who remained. Never 
 before had such an insult been offered by a King 
 to his nobility. 
 
 The first tentative step of the Reformers was a 
 meeting held at Vendome by Conde. The fiery 
 Prince proposed an immediate appeal to arms. His 
 uncle, the Admiral, counselled patience. He always 
 advised patience. Not even the bitterest personal 
 wrongs seemed able to make this long-suffering man 
 cease to trust in patience. "Let us fly to arms!" 
 cried Conde. Andelot seconded the advice. The 
 Admiral pointed out that the King had attained 
 his majority — that he had a right to appoint his 
 own ministers — that it would be well first to let the 
 Queen-mother understand the discontent and com- 
 plaints of the people. 
 
 Then came the martyrdom of Du Bourg, and fresh 
 insults offered to Antoine de Bourbon by the Guises.
 
 102 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 Conde called another assembly at La Ferte, and again 
 proposed a general insurrection. Again the Admiral 
 spoke against it. This time he made no mention of 
 Catherine : that hope was for the moment destroyed. 
 But he had a policy, still of patience, which pro- 
 mised better than civil war. "We are agreed," he 
 said, answering the possible suspicions of the party 
 against Conde, and perhaps himself — " we are agreed 
 that those who hope for the downfall of the Guises 
 are influenced by no personal ambition, and have 
 nothing in view but the interests of religion. Is it 
 necessary to have recourse to arms, in order to put 
 an end to this sanguinary persecution of the Church 
 of Christ, which dishonours and compromises the 
 kingdom ? Where the Bourbons have failed, where 
 I have failed, who knows if the intervention of 
 foreign powers might not succeed ? Why not invoke, 
 in favour of their victims, the sympathies of the Pro- 
 testant powers — the German princes, for example ?" 
 
 The adoption of this prudent advice suspended 
 civil war for the moment. It has been suggested 
 by Coligny's enemies that this speech masked some 
 secret design of personal ambition. The only reply 
 to such a suggestion is that, in his lifetime, 
 Catherine, her sons, the Lorraines themselves, never 
 suspected the Admiral of the slightest treachery or 
 double-dealing. In their eyes, as in the eyes of his 
 own party, his word was always trusted. In that
 
 Communion with the Calvinists. 103 
 
 age of deceits and treacheries, the Chatillon brothers 
 seemed, even to their enemies, to be the only truthful 
 men. And at that very moment, when the country 
 was staggering to a civil war, when Paris was in a 
 tumult of rage, not only the Huguenots alone, but 
 all the bourgeois, on account of the murder of Du 
 Bourg, it was the Admiral, Governor of Paris, whom 
 the Court proposed to send into the city in order to 
 allay the general indignation. 
 
 During the first half of this miserable reign, the 
 Admiral lived entirely — save for the two meetings 
 of Vendome and La Ferte — in his Castle of Chatillon- 
 sur-Loing. He had offered to resign his government 
 of Paris and the Isle of France in favour of his 
 cousin, son of the Constable, and that of Picardy in 
 favour of Conde, his nephew. 
 
 It would seem that it was not until this time that 
 he entered fully into communion with the Calvinists. 
 One evening, it is related in Cornaton's Memoirs — 
 the date of the memorable evening is not, unfor- 
 tunately, stated — the Admiral, being at a meeting of 
 Protestants, rose, and, having invited the congrega- 
 tion not to take offence at his infirmity, besought the 
 ministers to answer him as to certain points concern- 
 ing the celebration of the Lord's Supper. No doubt he 
 was already convinced in his own mind, but proposed 
 by these questions to emphasise in the minds of all 
 the important step he was about to take. "The
 
 104 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 Admiral, instructed by his discourse, returned thanks 
 to God, and resolved to participate in this sacred and 
 holy mystery on the first day of its celebration. The 
 news of this having been spread throughout France, 
 it is impossible to describe the joy and consolation 
 which the churches thereby received." 
 
 He was in all things open to the influence of a wife 
 whose character seems strongly to have resembled that 
 of his mother, Louise de Montmorency. Charlotte 
 de Laval anticipated her husband in the formal 
 adoption of the Religion ; she encouraged and aided 
 him in his attempt not only to convert his household, 
 but also to show them how the profession of a 
 Reformed faith should be accompanied by the 
 practice of the Christian life. 
 
 The Admiral's retinue at Chatillon was very large. 
 Wherever so great a lord moved, he was accompanied 
 by a troop of gentlemen in his service, and a small 
 army of soldiers, servants, and miscellaneous follow- 
 ing. He caused the Scriptures to be read to all 
 this retinue, invited ministers to preach daily, and 
 educated his children in the strictest manner of the 
 most rigid Protestants. 
 
 His own manner of life was austere. Early in the 
 morning, immediately after rising, he conducted 
 prayers for the household, according to the form 
 of the French Protestant Church. Remark that 
 Coligny, in his own house, like his mother, would
 
 Manner of Life. 105 
 
 not recognise the necessity of a priest. Every 
 second day there was a sermon, with psalm-singing. 
 The sermon in those days occupied the place of 
 reading. Though most could read, books were few ; 
 and if Coligny's household possessed the New Testa- 
 ment, there were accessible none of the simple rules 
 of interpretation which are familiar with most men 
 of these latter days, and keep them from extrava- 
 gances in doctrine. The minister was a teacher who 
 instructed the people from day to day in the history 
 and dogmas of a Church — based on the earliest forms 
 of Christianity — previously unknown to them. How 
 much teaching they required is manifest from some 
 of the madnesses of German, Dutch, and English 
 enthusiasts. 
 
 Public and private business occupied the Admiral 
 till dinner-time — that is, till noon. A psalm was 
 sung and grace said, either by himself or some 
 minister, before and after dinner, whether at his own 
 castle or in camp. The same custom was observed 
 at supper, after which prayers were said and another 
 psalm sung. And in his own house, it was his custom 
 to call together the people before supper, and, after 
 admonishing them that they would one day have to 
 render an account of themselves to God, to reconcile 
 any who had quarrelled during the day. Considering 
 what a quarrelsome time this was, one may fairly 
 conclude that the Admiral's hands were pretty full.
 
 106 Gaspai'd de Coligny. 
 
 There can be no doubt, although the fact is 
 charged against Coligny as if it were a crime, that, 
 in joining the Protestants and assuming the real 
 leadership of the party, he began immediately to 
 organise them, to ascertain their strength, and to 
 prepare for the inevitable struggle. 
 
 As yet, he shared in the delusion that the voice 
 of sense and reason would prevail. Men who have 
 arrived at a conviction after long and earnest thought 
 must, in the nature of things, believe that all other men 
 will be drawn along the same ways as themselves. 
 We who live in an age when doubt and hesitancy 
 have sapped all faith, cannot understand the joy, the 
 passionate ardour, the enthusiasm, the steadfastness, 
 the hope which filled the hearts of the Protestants. 
 In every age there is a height which seems, to the 
 faith of those who have attained to it, the summit of 
 the mountain, the level of absolute truth. Coligny and 
 his brethren stood upon that height Below them lay 
 fair France, like the Promised Land, darkened now 
 by the murderous bands of Guise. They gazed with 
 longing eyes, praying that to them, as to Joshua and 
 his host, might be allowed the grace of conquest and 
 possession. But — if not — to them, as to all in every 
 age who stand on those lofty peaks, the Heavens were 
 opened, and they heard the voice of God. 
 
 Coligny found the strength of the party far 
 greater than he had any reason to hope. Lists came
 
 Strength of the Party. 107 
 
 to him from every part of France. He found that 
 three-fourths of the lesser nobles, especially those 
 whose rank corresponded with that of our class of 
 country gentry, belonged to the Faith ; it was not 
 among these, however, that the priests sought their 
 victims. A small proportion of magistrates and 
 lawyers were among the converted. It is remark- 
 able to observe how, in all religious crises, the 
 tendency of lawyers is to remain on the orthodox 
 or legal side. In every town was one congregation, 
 at least, composed of the most respectable bourgeois 
 and artisans. The women were everywhere eager for 
 martyrdom, for revolt, and for armed demonstration. 
 Converts were daily made to the cause. The priests 
 were trembling ; the bishops dismayed. Truly, it 
 must have appeared to those who held this intelli- 
 gence in their hands, that, in spite of the Court and 
 the Lorraines, the struggle was well-nigh finished, and 
 the victory at hand. 
 
 In looking for the causes of the failure of the 
 French Reformation, in spite of all this goodly 
 promise, it must be remembered that the French 
 bishops, the best French scholars, the best French 
 lawyers — though many of them viewed Catholicism 
 with contempt, with pity, or with hatred — did not, 
 except in isolated cases, cross over to the other camp. 
 One understands the political difficulties which made 
 Francis I. hesitate before establishing a Gallican
 
 io8 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 Church. These difficulties, though they still existed 
 under Francis II. and Charles IX., were by no means 
 so formidable. One cannot but perceive that, had 
 the bishops and doctors been as ready as their 
 brethren in England to shake off allegiance to Rome, 
 some compromise might have been formed, which 
 could have satisfied at the same time the pastors 
 from Geneva and the reformed doctors of the 
 Sorbonne. 
 
 The Reformers were not, however, equally spread 
 over the whole of the country. They were strongest 
 in the Provinces of Normandy, Poitou, Saintonge, 
 Angoumois, Guyenne, part of Gascony, Beam, Lan- 
 guedoc, Provence, and Dauphine\ They were more 
 thinly scattered in the other provinces. In other 
 words, they preponderated over a good third of 
 France, and were in a minority in the remaining 
 two-thirds. Nowhere were they entirely wanting in 
 representation, and everywhere they were eager to 
 spread their doctrine. 
 
 Then came the conspiracy of Amboise. 
 
 This was an attempt, headed by a gentleman 
 named La Renaudie, to seize on the King, who, with 
 his uncles, was at the Castle of Amboise. The 
 attempt failed ; but it nearly succeeded, and it 
 opened the eyes of the Guises to the danger of the 
 situation. All the conspirators agreed in stating that 
 they obeyed the orders of a chief whose name was
 
 The Conspiracy of Amboise. 109 
 
 unknown to them except as the Captauie muct, the 
 Dumb Captain. All agreed, likewise, in stating that 
 the Admiral knew nothing of the plot. 
 
 If anything is certain, it is the fact that the con- 
 spirators feared to take the Admiral into their 
 confidence. If anything is probable, it is that the 
 Captaine mtiet was none other than Conde\ But La 
 Renaudie was killed in the fray, and no one but 
 himself knew the truth. Perhaps there was no Dumb 
 Captain at all. 
 
 The executions after the conspiracy roused the 
 deepest feelings of indignation over the whole of 
 France. Twelve hundred were butchered. To save 
 time, the victims were tied back to back, and flung 
 into the Loire. Gentlemen were brought forth to be 
 hung after the King had taken dinner, as a pleasant 
 and refreshing sight for himself, his Queen, the Queen- 
 mother, and the ladies of the Court. They still show 
 the balcony, overlooking the river, in which Mary 
 Queen of Scots, a child of fifteen, sat beside her 
 husband, Francis II., to gaze upon the death-struggles 
 of the victims, the Guises exhorting the royal boy to 
 rejoice in the death of his enemies. Let us pity these 
 children. They were only what they were taught to be. 
 
 Brantdme says that, although the conspiracy of 
 Amboise was not popular, these cruelties effected 
 a revulsion of feeling, so that many " who yesterday 
 would not have been in it for all the universe,
 
 1 10 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 would join in it to-day for the smallest coin, and 
 now declare that the enterprise was good and holy." 
 
 To strengthen his own party, the Duke of Guise now 
 caused himself to be appointed Lieutenant-General of 
 the Kingdom ; and his brother, the Cardinal, relying 
 on Spanish support, pressed forward the project of 
 establishing the Inquisition in France. He procured 
 the consent of the Privy Council, and that of the 
 Queen-mother. But the Chancellor, Michel de 
 l'Hospital, succeeded in warding off the blow by pro- 
 curing, in place of the Inquisition, a new Edict, that 
 of Remorantin, by which cognizance of the crime of 
 heresy was restored to the bishops. Now the bishops, 
 one is pleased to record, were, as a rule, disposed to 
 try the mildest measures of conciliation. 
 
 The Admiral, after the Amboise business, repaired 
 to Havre, where he occupied himself with the naval 
 armaments ; and he wrote to Catherine, pointing out 
 that religious intolerance and the presence of the 
 Lorraines were the only causes of the troubles at 
 home. Happily, he found himself supported by the 
 Chancellor, Michel de l'Hospital. Thanks to his 
 persuasion, an assembly of Notables was summoned 
 to Fontainebleau for the twenty-first August. 
 
 It was time for the convocation of the States 
 General. The Edict of Remorantin was too late. 
 Everywhere the Protestants, so far from hiding their 
 opinions, were beginning to hold their public worship
 
 The Assembly of Notables. 1 1 1 
 
 openly. All through the " infected provinces," the 
 Reformers came forth without disguise ; in some 
 places they seized Roman Catholic churches for their 
 own use ; and when the Guises gave orders to hang 
 the preachers without trial, and to sweep clean " all 
 the rabble who lived like the Genevese," the arm 
 of the Executive was too weak to carry out their 
 instructions, and attempts were everywhere followed 
 by murderous reprisals. 
 
 It became evident that the time had gone by for 
 edicts, and that the Inquisition, if established, would 
 have to be supported by arms. The advice of Guise, 
 as impetuous as Conde, was to proceed at once to 
 open war. It was by war, and war alone, that his 
 own supremacy could be maintained. He and his 
 brothers were regarded by nobles and bourgeois 
 alike with the jealousy which always attaches to 
 foreigners, though they were born on French soil, 
 and were sons of a French princess. And they were 
 justly regarded as the cause of those persecutions 
 which outraged and disgusted every moderate man. 
 
 The Assembly of Notables was called for the 21st 
 August. It was presided over by the King, in the 
 Great Hall at Fontainebleau. With him were the 
 Queen, the Queen-mother, and his brothers. Among 
 the lords present were the Dukes of Guise and 
 Aumale, the Cardinal de Lorraine, the Cardinal de 
 Chatillon, the Constable de Montmorency, the Ad-
 
 ii2 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 miral, and the Chancellor Michel de l'Hospital. The 
 Bourbon Princes did not attend, fearing some treachery. 
 This was against the advice of the Admiral. They 
 were, no doubt, guided by the belief that, as he was 
 himself about to bell the cat, the other leaders of 
 the party, for the safety of the cause, had better 
 keep away. 
 
 The conference began with certain formal state- 
 ments, by Guise and the Cardinal, on the administra- 
 tion of the army and the finances. 
 
 Then the Admiral rose, and, to the consternation 
 of everybody, advanced to the throne with two 
 petitions, which he presented — the one to the King, 
 the other to the Queen-mother — each bearing the 
 inscription, " The supplication of those who, in divers 
 provinces, invoke the name of God, according to 
 the rule of piety." The King, taken by surprise, 
 received the document and handed it to his Secretary, 
 L'Aubepine, who read it aloud. It had been care- 
 fully and soberly prepared. The petitioners declared 
 that they were no favourers of disturbance and sedition. 
 "The Gospel which we profess teaches us the con- 
 trary, and we do not hesitate to say that we never 
 understood so well our duty towards your Majesty 
 as we have understood it by means of the holy 
 doctrine that is preached to us." The petition con- 
 cluded by asking permission to practise their religion 
 without disturbance, and to meet in open day.
 
 The Admiral's Petition. 113 
 
 Guise called attention to the fact that the petition 
 was unsigned. 
 
 " I will get fifty thousand signatures in Normandy 
 alone," said the Admiral. 
 
 "And I," cried Guise, "will get five hundred thousand 
 who will sign the reverse with their blood." 
 
 The House proceeded to deliberate on the general 
 religious question. Two bishops, Jean de Montluc, 
 Bishop of Valence, and Charles de Marillac, Arch- 
 bishop of Vienne, spoke words of great moment on 
 the condition of the Church, and proposed measures 
 of conciliation. The bishops, they said, had been 
 non-resident, careless about their dioceses, sometimes 
 mere children, often leading scandalous lives. The 
 cures were ignorant and greedy ; many of them had 
 been valets, lackeys, <;ooks, or barbers. They pro- 
 posed that sermons should be daily heard by the 
 King ; that the Psalms of Marot should be restored 
 to the Court ; and that no benefice of the Church 
 should be sold or bought. 
 
 Then Coligny rose. 
 
 His manner was slow and hesitating, but he spoke 
 of things which demand consideration ; his utterance 
 was clear ; he gave way to no invective ; his discourse, 
 sustained and yet sober, carried conviction to all 
 who heard it. He set forth that the only method 
 of pacifying the kingdom was the calling of the 
 States General. He claimed for his friends the right 
 
 H
 
 ii4 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 of worshipping in their own way ; and he pointed 
 out, as foreign to the traditions and institutions of 
 the country, the recent formation of a Royal Guard, 
 which was little short of an army, ostensibly for the 
 protection of the King. What King of France, he 
 asked, had ever before needed other protection than 
 that of a couple of lackeys ? 
 
 The Guises, of course, opposed the calling of the 
 States General ; but they were overruled, and orders 
 were given that the preparatory steps should be 
 taken towards holding a national council on matters 
 of religion. The hope of moderate men, such as 
 the two Bishops of Valence and Vienne, was that, 
 while any who chose might continue to hold the 
 Calvinistic creed, such a compromise might be formed 
 with the Catholic party, such a -reform effected in the 
 old faith, as might lead to a Gallican Church capable 
 of holding within its arms, like that which had been 
 created in England, Calvinist and Sacerdotalist — the 
 man who believed in Apostolical succession, con- 
 fession, and absolution, side by side with him who 
 would acknowledge no priest, who stood on his right 
 to read, examine, and learn for himself the founda- 
 tions of his faith. 
 
 This project, which failed, must be added to the 
 long list of benefits which the wisdom of the Admiral 
 would have conferred upon France. A separation 
 from Rome : a strong confederation with the other
 
 Protestantism. 1 1 5 
 
 Protestant states, England, Holland, and Germany ; 
 religions leading naturally to political liberty; per- 
 mission to the whole nation to think — what would 
 not France have become had the Admiral's dream 
 been realised ? 
 
 We who have been brought up, happily, under a 
 Protestant form of faith, are apt to forget the mighty 
 privileges really involved in any one of the various 
 forms of Protestantism. The creed may be narrow ; 
 we may have small sympathy with its exclusiveness ; 
 we may pass out of it and beyond it : but it must 
 be remembered that the possibility of this passage 
 is the essential part of all Protestantism. Those who 
 are born Protestants are born free — liberi, not liberti. 
 They are encouraged to exercise the most precious 
 right of freedom — that of private judgment; they 
 are taught that it is a duty to examine and to 
 criticise for themselves. This right, claimed by Pro- 
 testants for the most important of all subjects, extends 
 also over the less important It brings with it the 
 ready and fearless acceptance of personal responsi- 
 bility, the spirit of enterprise, the practice of honour, 
 the duty of morality. When each man stands by 
 himself, his life should be a long personal struggle 
 with ignorance, apathy, servility, and self-indulgence, 
 the eternal enemies of the human race, the actual 
 existing devils which hold us down and would 
 keep us down. When he depends upon a priest,
 
 n6 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 this fighting is done for him ; he is taught from 
 infancy to submit his judgment in things spiritual 
 to authority. The line of demarcation between things 
 spiritual and things temporal can never be drawn 
 with precision ; if it were so drawn, ambitious priests, 
 and feeble men who cannot stand alone, would speedily 
 pass it. Authority extends her domain till the whole 
 of life is subjected. Then personal responsibility, 
 self-respect, dignity, enterprise, all vanish. It can 
 never be too strongly insisted that, in Catholic 
 countries, intellectual and scientific progress is only 
 possible in proportion as religion is neglected. Let 
 it be remembered to the praise of Coligny, that he 
 was one of that noble army of reformers who have 
 toiled to remove from the neck of mankind the 
 intolerable yoke of sacerdotalism. 
 
 The Guises began to take the preliminary steps, 
 without the least intention of holding the States 
 General. They had conceived another plan more in 
 harmony with their own ideas of government. They 
 would decoy the Bourbon Princes into their power, 
 and then either coerce them into submission or 
 murder them. 
 
 This plot was commenced with great success. 
 Antoine de Bourbon and the Prince de Conde were 
 invited to the Court to take their places at the 
 meeting. At the moment of entering Orleans, the 
 latter was arrested, and the former placed under
 
 CondS Arrested. wj 
 
 strict watch. Conde, on being questioned by com- 
 missioners, refused to reply, pleading that a prince 
 of the blood-royal could only be tried by the King 
 and his peers, before the assembled House of Parlia- 
 ment. This plea was overruled, and he remained 
 in prison, waiting for the mockery of a trial which 
 was to end in certain execution. As for Antoine, 
 his brother, it was resolved to murder him in the 
 presence of the King, who was to give the signal. 
 Francis, from some reason — let us hope a feeling of 
 honour — did not give the signal. The King of 
 Navarre, therefore, escaped. 
 
 Coligny, to whom had just been confided the 
 government of Havre, hastened with his brother, 
 the Cardinal, to join the Bourbon Princes. They 
 found Conde" imprisoned, and Antoine under surveil- 
 lance. They alone, of all the nobles at the Court, 
 had the courage to stand by the threatened King 
 of Navarre, and to pay him openly their accustomed 
 court and deference. At the same time, there can 
 be little doubt that they used all their influence with 
 Catherine to prevent the execution of Conde. In 
 this they would be joined by Montmorency, who 
 was also at the Court. We must not forget that 
 Catherine always showed, even when she might have 
 been expected to be the most hostile to the Admiral, 
 a most remarkable respect for his judgment, his 
 loyalty, and his ability. It seems as if she turned,
 
 u8 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 with true womanly instinct, from the atmosphere of 
 duplicity in which she lived, to breathe the fresh- 
 air which surrounded the one man of true words 
 whom she knew. 
 
 Much more, however, was determined upon. It 
 was resolved that not only the Princes should be 
 put out of the way, but that every heretic in the 
 kingdom should, in one day, be murdered. In other 
 words, to Guise and his brother, the Cardinal, belongs 
 the honour of inventing this idea of a general 
 massacre, which Catherine, later on, successfully 
 carried out. Let everyone have credit for his own 
 works. Catherine did not devise the scheme of St. 
 Bartholomew ; it was due to her two ministers. 
 
 The scheme, a very notable one, was to be carried 
 out in this way. On a certain day, every Frenchman 
 in the country was to be called on to sign a formula 
 of doctrine. The formula was drawn up by the 
 Cardinal Jrimsclf. It was such as no Protestant could 
 accept. This day of general murder was to be that 
 on which Christ was born. On Christmas day, the 
 King was to present this "rat-trap of Huguenots," 
 as the Cardinal called it, to all the princes, officers, 
 and knights of his Court ; the Queen was to present 
 it to all the ladies ; the Chancellor to the deputies 
 of the States General, and the maitres des requctes; 
 the chiefs of Parliament and the bailiwicks to their 
 subordinates ; governors of provinces to the gentry ;
 
 Death of Francis II. 119 
 
 cures to every inhabitant of their parishes ; heads 
 of houses to their servants. Whoever should refuse 
 to sign was to be executed. 
 
 Everything was ready for the execution of this 
 diabolical scheme. Condc was in prison ; he could 
 be slaughtered at any moment. Antoine was under 
 watch and ward ; he could not escape. The Chatillons 
 were at the Court, cajoled by Catherine. The terms 
 of the " rat-trap " were decided upon. And then 
 occurred the second of those dramatic surprises which 
 abound in this history. The young King, not yet 
 seventeen years of age, and always feeble, was attacked 
 by an abscess in the ear. He rapidly grew worse. 
 Public processions were made in Paris for his recovery. 
 In his despair, the poor boy called upon the Virgin 
 and all the saints for help, promising that, should 
 he be restored, he would spare no one — neither wife 
 nor mother nor brothers, should they be tainted with 
 heresy. 
 
 One is tempted to believe that the Virgin and the 
 saints must have heard his vows, and resolved, with 
 one accord, that so dangerous a boy could not be 
 permitted to live. He died, and was huddled into 
 his grave at St. Denis, unattended and unlamcnted. 
 And the rat-trap was never set, and therefore caught 
 no one.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE COLONY OF FLORIDA. 
 
 WE have seen how, in a time when there seemed 
 to lie no hope anywhere for the Protestants 
 of France save in exile, Coligny essayed to establish 
 a Land of Refuge across the Atlantic. He failed, 
 through the folly, the obstinacy, and the bad faith 
 of the soldier-monk whom he was persuaded to put 
 in command. Yet, had the first attempt been fol- 
 lowed up, even after the defection of Villegagnon 
 and the defeat of Bois-le-Duc, Brazil might still have 
 been made French. We have now to record a 
 second and more serious effort made by the Admiral 
 in the same direction, and to tell how Florida was 
 nearly wrested from the hands of the Spaniard. 
 
 This attempt belongs to the reign of Charles the 
 Ninth. Its history is inserted here because it is a 
 separate chapter in the life of Coligny — because it has 
 never before, I believe, been told in English — and 
 because it has nothing to do with the history of the 
 twelve years' civil war which makes up the melancholy 
 conclusion of this volume.
 
 Accession of C/mr/es. 121 
 
 If things looked threatening on the accession of 
 Francis II., they looked no less black at his death. 
 True, the Guises were for a time out of power, and 
 Catherine was Regent. Yet there was no obedience 
 anywhere, and no authority. After the slaughter 
 of Amboise, a stream of blood separated the two 
 religions. Every town was divided into hostile camps. 
 Every country gentleman saw in his nearest neigh- 
 bour either a brother partisan or an implacable 
 enemy. The churches were schools of fanatic 
 revenge ; the temples, where lately only the gentle 
 gospel of patience had been preached, were begin- 
 ning to resound with the doctrine of armed resist- 
 ance. The nation, in the reign of Francis, had lost 
 its self-respect. An Italian woman, or the brothers 
 of the Lorraine House, ruled the King, who 
 was but a boy. A fashion foreign to the spirit of 
 the nation surrounded the monarch with a small 
 army. The country owned no army, while every 
 great noble had, like the King, his camp of followers. 
 There was no money to maintain the fleet. The 
 influence of Spain and Austria was dominant in 
 Italy and the Netherlands. And it was humiliating 
 to know that Philip kept 40,000 men ready to be 
 launched upon France in support of orthodoxy. 
 
 As for the leaders, the ruling passion was personal 
 ambition. It may have already occurred to the 
 Guises that, were the sickly Valois Princes removed,
 
 122 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 they might themselves, by a lucky coup, seize on the 
 throne as descendants from the good King John. 
 Mostly, however, they seemed to have played, like 
 Catherine, the game of the hour, contented with 
 winning for a day the little stake of personal power 
 which they played for. Of the Bourbon Princes, 
 Antoine was of little account ; Conde, more ambitious 
 and of more generous mould, was yet incapable of 
 becoming a statesman. Of the nobles, Montmorency, 
 now old, was prejudiced and obstinate : there only 
 remained the Admiral, the one man in France 
 who, in this black hour, yet dared to hope, and to 
 plan for, her future greatness. Looking out upon 
 the wretchedness of the country, he could say, with 
 Ronsard — 
 
 No law, no rule : all at the strongest word 
 Directed so : the workman leaves his board ; 
 The carpenter his shop; the shepherds keep 
 No watch or ward o'er their forsaken sheep ; 
 Lawyers forget their briefs ; the sailors leave 
 Their ships ; hands, honest once, rejoice to thieve ; 
 The student, turned to vice, forsakes his book ; 
 Yon sword was erst a farmer's reaping-hook ; 
 That pike was headed from a garden rake ; 
 And that long lance was once a hedge-row stake. 
 Dead is authority ; and all, at will, 
 Live as they please, for misrule or for ill. 
 
 He saw that this state of things could not last.
 
 Florida. 123 
 
 Civil war, unless some compromise could be effected, 
 would destroy what anarchy had left. If, six years 
 before, a Land of Refuge was desirable, it seemed 
 doubly so now ; and in the anxiety which preceded 
 the first outbreak of religious war, he devised and 
 arranged his next attempt to establish a permanent 
 French settlement on the shores of America. 
 
 This time he turned his eyes to Florida. 
 
 There were several reasons why Florida seemed 
 fitter for his purposes than Brazil. First of all, it was 
 reported to be a country of surpassing fertility and 
 mild climate. Its native tribes — the Natchez, Semi- 
 noles, and Apalaches — were perpetually at war with 
 each other — a fact which made them less dangerous. 
 Then it was reported not only to possess the fountain 
 of perpetual health and youth — which the Admiral 
 might be disposed to set down as a fable — but also 
 inexhaustible mines of silver and gold. Again, the 
 Spaniards, by their cruelties, had excited the most 
 intense hatred among the Indians ; and, lastly, the 
 country was still claimed by Spain — Florida meaning 
 the whole coast now occupied by the Southern States 
 — and to effect a settlement there, would be to make 
 war upon Spain. 
 
 War with Spain, Frenchman standing by French- 
 man, not Frenchmen longing to tear one another's 
 throats while Philip launched upon the Huguenots 
 his threatened 40,000 men — this was the dream
 
 124 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 of the Admiral. Coligny had been brought up, 
 like Sir Walter Raleigh, his junior by thirty years, to 
 hate the Spaniards. Spain, to him, was the natural 
 enemy of France. To carry the war into the enemy's 
 country, was to create a diversion ; to claim a portion 
 of America, was to establish permanent war with 
 Spain, to change that army of orthodox succour into 
 an army of invasion, and to enrage the people against 
 the Lorraines, who were capable of inviting a foreign 
 foe to help them against their own countrymen. A 
 very short time, and, by the irony of fate, the Admiral 
 was fain to do the very same thing. 
 
 It was thus with mixed motives that he designed his 
 Florida colony. The Protestants were to have a place 
 where freedom of thought would be conceded to them 
 without dispute. The Spaniards were to be braved 
 on their own soil. The King of Spain was to be pro- 
 voked to become an enemy to the whole, instead of 
 an ally to the half, of France. The Admiral under- 
 stood the advantage of fighting Spain at a distance, 
 where the French might get, what the Spaniards never 
 could, native auxiliaries ; and where the difficulties 
 of ocean transport might be increased by the multi- 
 plication of French privateers. 
 
 The chief of the first expedition was Jean Ribaut, 
 a sailor of proved daring and skill, and a Huguenot — 
 there must be no more confidence in Catholics or 
 Knights of Malta. Ribaut was a man after the
 
 Ribaut. 125 
 
 Admiral's own heart — firm, with the habit and the 
 ability to command, faithful and trustworthy. 
 
 Ribaut sailed from Havre in February, 1562. He 
 had under his command two " roberges," heavy solid 
 vessels, slow sailers, with rounded poops. On board 
 these ships were gathered together a good number 
 of soldiers and workmen, with a few gentlemen. All 
 were Protestants. One or two had been in Brazil 
 with Villegagnon. The sailors were all from Dieppe. 
 After avoiding the most frequented line, Ribaut 
 sighted land two months after starting. It was the 
 coast of Florida, most probably near the modern town 
 of St. Augustine. He followed the shore, and dis- 
 covered to the north a magnificent river, whose wooded 
 banks and clear waters, coupled with the splendour 
 of the climate and the beauty of the vegetation, 
 induced him to land and to take possession after the 
 French fashion. Every nation had its custom of 
 taking possession. The Northmen lit a beacon-fire, 
 and claimed as their own all the land from which its 
 rays could be seen. The Spaniards sprang ashore, 
 waving a sword to the four cardinal points. The 
 French erected a stone on which were engraved the 
 arms of France. 
 
 Ribaut proceeded to name the river — at the mouth 
 of which were two islets — the Chenonceaux, after the 
 charming Royal country-house of that name built over 
 its little river ; the port he called Port Royal ; the islets
 
 126 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 he named Libourne and Charlesfort. The fish were 
 plentiful, and of excellent quality. The Floridans, 
 who came to meet their visitors, received them with 
 friendliness. The forests were full of game. 
 
 Here Ribaut resolved on leaving the nucleus of a 
 settlement. He collected his men, and made them 
 an oration, which has been preserved by Laudon- 
 niere, his first lieutenant. The gallant sailor's harangue 
 reads as if it had been dressed up for him either 
 before or after delivery ; most likely his historian 
 improved it for him when he came to write the story. 
 Anyhow, his men appreciated it, and with general 
 enthusiasm welcomed the proposal. A selection of 
 twenty-eight was made, and a small fort of earthwork 
 was erected for their defence on Isle Charlesfort. 
 Everything being completed, Albert de la Pierria was 
 chosen captain of the new settlement, and Ribaut set 
 sail, leaving the adventurous band behind him. He 
 continued his course northwards, for some time 
 exploring the coast, but attempting no new settle- 
 ments. Then, his provisions beginning to fail, he was 
 constrained to steer homewards, and arrived at 
 Dieppe exactly five months after his departure. 
 
 He found France in full civil war. It was no time 
 to collect recruits and money for the new settlement. 
 Besides, he wanted to take his share of the fighting, 
 with the Admiral. After the conclusion of peace, he 
 crossed over to England, where he collected his recollec-
 
 The Colony. 127 
 
 tions of travel, and published them in a single volume, 
 which was speedily translated, and had a great success. 
 Meantime, the little French colony, left entirely to 
 themselves, enjoyed, at the beginning, a pleasant time. 
 It was an agreeable change from the salt pork of the 
 "roberge" to the game and fruits which the Floridans 
 heaped upon their new friends. It was pleasant to be 
 feted and caressed by the friendly natives — to take 
 part in their rejoicings — to be invited to their cere- 
 monies. Unluckily, they thought that the abundance 
 of summer would last through the winter. The 
 Floridans willingly brought them food so long as they 
 had food to bring, and could gather it, so to speak, 
 from the soil. When the rains of winter began to fall, 
 they retired to their own villages, and began con- 
 tentedly to live on their own accumulated stores, 
 which consisted of a little grain, chiefly millet, smoked 
 fish and venison, with dried slices of cayman. Such 
 as it was, this food too was to a certain extent shared 
 by the generous natives with the French ; but pre- 
 sently their resources began to fail. Then the starving 
 colonists had to gather acorns, berries, and roots in 
 the forest ; to depend on casual supplies of fish and 
 venison, the latter growing daily more scarce. The 
 Captain entered into relations with tribes at a greater 
 distance, and for a while staved off starvation by their 
 help. Just as in the Brazilian colony, it never occurred 
 to anyone that the tillage of a few fields would be
 
 128 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 better than dependence on the charity of the natives. 
 Presently internal troubles attacked the unfortunate 
 colony. Their settlement on Charlesfort was destroyed 
 by fire, and they had to rebuild their wooden houses. 
 The men became mutinous and insubordinate. Their 
 Captain, instead of calming the angry mood of his little 
 band, attempted severity ; sentenced one of them to 
 death, and, when no one else would become his execu- 
 tioner, hanged the man with his own hands. Another, 
 for an alleged breach of discipline, he banished to a 
 little island three leagues from Charlesfort, where he 
 proposed to let him die of hunger. Finally, the little 
 troop mutinied, murdered Albert de la Pierria, and 
 considered what to do next. The second winter of 
 their settlement was approaching. They dreaded a 
 repetition of the first year's starvation ; they looked in 
 vain for help from France. Day after day, month 
 after month, they gazed across the wide and sailless 
 ocean. Had Ribaut, then, forgotten them ? Had he 
 himself been wrecked, so that they were left there, 
 forgotten by the world, to starve ? 
 
 They resolved on building a vessel for themselves, 
 and on endeavouring to get across the ocean back to 
 France. It was a desperate undertaking. They had 
 no tar, no nails, no bolts, no cordage, no tow. The 
 Floridans came to their aid. They cut trees for 
 them ; they gave them gum for tar, and ropes manu- 
 factured out of long shoots of creepers ; for sails, they
 
 Escape. 129 
 
 used their sheets and their linen. They were so eager 
 to get away, that they calculated on the wind being 
 favourable, and actually did not load their craft 
 with more provisions than would suffice for the 
 quickest passage possible. 
 
 Half-way across the Atlantic, they encountered 
 a calm, during which, in three weeks, they made no 
 more than five-and-twenty leagues. They devoured 
 their last morsel of grain, and when, at length, a 
 breeze sprung up, there was neither food nor water 
 left. They did what sailors always do under such 
 circumstances — they cast lots. The lot fell on one 
 Lachere. He was the poor wretch whom Captain 
 Albert had exiled to the islet, and had stayed there 
 alone and half-starved till his companions relieved 
 him. Fortune rescued him from starvation, in order 
 that he might die a more dreadful death, and make a 
 hideous meal for his companions. 
 
 This one victim sufficed. At last land appeared : it 
 was the coast of England. A ship picked them up, 
 treated them humanely, and brought them all to 
 London. It happened to be at the moment when 
 Ribaut had just published his account of Florida, 
 when everybody was talking about this land of flowers. 
 These half-starved refugees appeared in time to satisfy 
 the popular curiosity, and to fan the awakening spirit 
 of enterprise. France sowed that England might reap. 
 
 It will be remarked that the first attempt at
 
 130 Gaspard de Coligny 
 
 colonising Florida failed through the improvidence 
 and incapacity of the colonists. Had they tilled the 
 ground, they might have lived comfortably and at 
 their ease until Ribaut, or some one else, could bring 
 them reinforcements. 
 
 In 1564, the Admiral found himself once more 
 free to renew his favourite project. This time he 
 prepared a more important expedition. Three ships, 
 the largest of which, however, was of only 120 
 tons, were loaded with gentlemen, soldiers, young 
 volunteers, and workmen. They were under the com- 
 mand of the same Laudonniere who had previously 
 formed part of Ribaut's first expedition. The sailors 
 were selected with care. Everything was provided 
 for, including an artist to sketch the country and its 
 people. Fortunately, some of these sketches have 
 been preserved, and are now in Paris. 
 
 They sailed in May, 1564. In June, they arrived 
 off the coast of Florida. They found the Riviere de 
 May, with the stone set up by Ribaut, on which were 
 the Royal arms of France. The natives had begun 
 to worship this monument, setting before it baskets 
 of honey, and kissing it with great reverence. 
 
 After sailing along the shore for a few days, Lau- 
 donniere held a council, and resolved that it would 
 be best to return to the first spot, the Riviere de 
 May, and there constitute their settlement. The 
 natives were friendly ; the climate was good ; the
 
 Fort Caroline. 131 
 
 place fertile ; it was far from any Spanish settlement. 
 In this beautiful river, this Riviere de May, there was 
 a small triangular island, which, he thought, would 
 furnish an excellent spot for a fortress. He proceeded 
 at once with his construction, and called it Fort 
 Caroline. 
 
 The history of the colony began with a series of 
 alternate friendships and enmities with the neigh- 
 bouring confederations, which were at war with each 
 other. The French, unwilling to attach themselves to 
 the weaker side, hesitated between one and the other. 
 The contest really was between the Cacique Satouriona 
 and the Cacique Outina. It seems to us that it would 
 have been far better in the long run had Laudonniere 
 loyally supported the former, his first friend, and 
 made him the stronger by the addition of his troops, 
 armed with the terrible musket. The natural result of 
 this wavering policy was distrust and suspicion on the 
 part of both these savage monarchs. At the beginning, 
 protestations of affection, offers of service, presents on 
 both sides ; speedily, coldness, followed by hostility. 
 It is the history of the French in America, Africa, Asia, 
 and the Pacific. No country, however, can afford to 
 throw stones in the matter of the treatment of natives. 
 
 We have seen in Brazil and at Charlesfort that a 
 want of discipline was one of the chief difficulties. 
 The same defect soon became the chief danger in the 
 settlement of Caroline. The heads of the gentlemen
 
 132 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 who had joined the expedition were full of the great 
 exploits of Pizarro and of Cortes. They looked for 
 another Mexico in Florida. They expected to find 
 another Palace of the Incas in those tangled woods 
 and pathless swamps. Instead, they found them- 
 selves on a barren rock, compelled to bear a hand in 
 the fortifications of the island. Laudonniere, for his 
 part, lacked the power of conciliation ; he lived too 
 much with his own favourites. The Protestants, for 
 their part, complained of the religious indifference of 
 their Captain, and lamented that they had no minister. 
 There is no space here to narrate the little intrigues, 
 the plots, and the jealousies which began to trouble 
 the colony. There was a conspiracy, in which more 
 than half of the colonists engaged. It succeeded in 
 seizing the Governor and his lieutenants. The 
 mutineers offered them no violence ; but, after wasting 
 and consuming the provisions of the colony, they 
 equipped the two ships which lay in the stream, and 
 loaded them with all the provisions which remained. 
 Then they too went a-pirating. They had at first a 
 considerable share of success. Trouble fell upon 
 them ere long. They were surrounded by a fleet of 
 Spanish ships, and all, save twenty-six, were killed. 
 These managed to board a small vessel, cut the 
 anchor, and to escape. In their want and misery, 
 there was nothing possible but to get back to Fort 
 Caroline, whither they repaired, and implored for
 
 No Food. 133 
 
 mercy. Four were executed ; the rest fell back to 
 their old work. 
 
 Meantime, Laudonniere had not neglected the 
 Admiral's principal injunction — to make himself 
 acquainted with the coast and the island. Nothing 
 is more curious than the account of the colonists' 
 journeys, and their visits to the Caciques. 
 
 Then the same accident befell them as happened 
 to the previous settlement under the unfortunate 
 Albert de la Pierria : they forgot to sow any seed, 
 and, consequently, reaped no harvest. The truth 
 is, that they were all too proud to cultivate the 
 soil. " The French," says a contemporary writer, 
 " and nearly all modern nations, have this bad quality, 
 that they esteem it derogatory to their quality to 
 address themselves to the cultivation of the earth, 
 which is, nevertheless, nearly the only occupation in 
 which innocence still resides. Hence it comes that 
 every one avoiding this noble kind of labour seeks to 
 make himself a gentleman at the expense of others ; 
 they will either learn the art of deceiving other people, 
 or they will sit scratching their heads in the sun." 
 The story of Charlesfort was repeated. The famine 
 became so great that they had to pound boiled roots 
 in a mortar to make bread. Yet the river was full of 
 fish. And it is incredible to relate that they did not 
 even condescend in this their extremity to catch the 
 fish for themselves, but bought them of the natives.
 
 134 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 A Cacique sent them a few bags of acorns and some 
 fruit. When they found a small bag of wheat, instead 
 of sowing it for the next year, they devoured it. Then 
 they procured some grain in a village, but, in bringing 
 it back, they were attacked by the natives, who killed 
 two and wounded twenty-two, so that they only suc- 
 ceeded in bringing home a couple of sacks. 
 
 Starved into submission, Laudonniere began to 
 think about retreating from so hostile a country. He 
 set to work repairing the one small ship left ; cast 
 about in every direction for provisions, at last suc- 
 ceeding in laying his hands on enough, at least, to last 
 them, if the wind were only favourable ; and was on 
 the point of embarking, when sails appeared in the 
 port. They were the ships of John Hawkins, the 
 English explorer. Hawkins, commiserating their 
 distress, offered them such help as was in his power. 
 The greatest help, the Frenchmen declared, that he 
 could render them, was to get them out of the country. 
 Hawkins undertook either to give them one of his 
 ships, or to take them on board his own ship. Perhaps 
 he was not sorry to facilitate the return of the dis- 
 tressed colonists, knowing well that the story they 
 would spread of their own sufferings would grow in the 
 telling, until Florida should appear, in the eyes of all 
 France, the most savage and inhospitable of countries. 
 
 Hawkins stayed with the French for four days. On 
 his departure, the colonists began with furious activity
 
 Ribald Arrives. 135 
 
 to convert the flour which they had received of him 
 into biscuits ; got ready their casks for water, and 
 began to stow all away. Everything was at length 
 ready for departure, when more sails were signalled, 
 and a French fleet appeared in the river. 
 
 It was no other than Ribaut himself. 
 
 Coligny had not forgotten his colony. This time 
 he sent out seven vessels, with something like 600 
 soldiers. There was no longer any question of flight. 
 The fleet contained provisions, powder, and arms, 
 besides the reinforcements of numbers. 
 
 Meantime, the suspicions of Philip were fairly 
 awakened. It would seem as if he had only to make 
 the retention of the Huguenot colony in Florida a 
 casus belli with France ; but that was not in accord- 
 ance with his devious policy. He declined to recog- 
 nise the existence of the colony as an act of the 
 French Government at all : it should be considered 
 as an independent nest of heretical pirates. He would 
 give one of his own subjects the command of a fleet, 
 with authority to suppress and exterminate this and 
 every other nest of heresy in America. But he would 
 not fight the colonists as Frenchmen. 
 
 The King selected one Menendez, a man who had 
 seen a considerable amount of military service, and 
 had fallen into temporary disgrace, probably on 
 account of his brutalities in America. 
 
 The great preparations which followed could not
 
 136 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 be made without giving the alarm in France. A long 
 diplomatic correspondence followed. Nothing need 
 be said about it, except that Philip was the stronger, 
 and that Catherine, as usual, feared to take a decided 
 line. It was understood that an attempt would be 
 made to destroy the French colony. What one cannot 
 readily comprehend is that, considering the advantage 
 already acquired by the French in a strong fortified 
 place and a large garrison, reinforcements were not 
 sent out to them. 
 
 The expedition under Menendez consisted of an 
 army of 2600 soldiers and officers. 
 
 He sailed straight for Florida, intending to attack 
 Fort Caroline with no delay. In fact, he sighted the 
 mouth of the port two months after starting ; but, 
 considering the position occupied by the French 
 ships, he judged it prudent to defer the attack, and 
 make it, if possible, from the land. 
 
 A council of war was held in Fort Caroline, pre- 
 sided over by Ribaut. Laudonniere proposed that, 
 while Ribaut held the fort with the ships, he, with his 
 old soldiers, who knew the country well, aided by the 
 Floridans as auxiliaries, should engage the Spaniards 
 in the woods, and harass them by perpetual combats 
 in labyrinths to which they were wholly unaccustomed. 
 The advice was good, but it was not followed. Ribaut 
 proposed to follow the Spanish fleet with his own — 
 lighter and more easily handled — fall on the enemy
 
 Disaster. 137 
 
 when the soldiers were all disembarked, and, after 
 taking and burning the ships, to attack the army. 
 
 In the face of remonstrances from all the officers, 
 he persisted in this project. Disaster followed the 
 attempt. A violent gale arose. The French ships 
 were wrecked upon the Floridan coast ; the men lost 
 their arms, their powder, and their clothes ; they 
 escaped with their bare lives. There was no longer 
 the question of conquering the Spaniards, but of 
 saving themselves. The garrison of Caroline con- 
 sisted of 150 soldiers, of whom forty were sick. 
 The rest of the colony was composed of sick and 
 wounded Protestant ministers, workmen, " royal com- 
 missioners," and so forth. Laudonniere was in 
 command. They awaited the attack for several days, 
 yet the Spaniards came not. They were wading 
 miserably through the marshes in the forests, under 
 tropical rains, discouraged, and out of heart. Had 
 Laudonniere's project been carried out, not one single 
 Spaniard would have returned to the fleet to tell the 
 tale. Day after day the soldiers toiled, sometimes 
 breast-high, through these endless marshes, under 
 the rain which never ceased. The provisions were 
 exhausted. Many of the soldiers remained behind or 
 returned to Saint Augustine, pretending to have lost 
 their way. The officers asked each other loudly 
 whether they were all to be killed in a bog through 
 the ignorance of an Asturian, who knew no more
 
 138 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 about war than a horse. Menendez pretended not to 
 hear, and they plodded on, mutinous and discontented, 
 till their leader suddenly pointed out, through the 
 branches of the trees, the earthworks and cannon of 
 Fort Caroline. He invited his officers to make up their 
 minds to an immediate attack or a retreat. Seven of 
 them proposed a retreat ; they would live on palmistes 
 and roots on the way. But the majority declared for 
 advance, and the attack was resolved upon. 
 
 For some reason unexplained, the French sentinels 
 chose this fatal moment to leave their posts. There 
 was actually no watch on the ramparts. Three com- 
 panies of Spaniards simultaneously rushed from the 
 forest, and attacked the fortress on the south, the 
 west, and the south-west. There was but little resist- 
 ance from the surprised garrison. There was hardly 
 time to grasp a sword. About twenty escaped by 
 flight, including the Captain, Laudonniere ; the rest 
 were every one massacred. None were spared except 
 women and children under fifteen ; and, in the first 
 rage of the onslaught, even these were murdered with 
 the rest. 
 
 There still lay in the port three ships, commanded 
 by Jacques Ribaut, brother of the unfortunate 
 Governor. One of these was quickly sent to the 
 bottom by the cannon of the fort ; the other two cut 
 their cables, and slipped out of reach into the road- 
 stead, where they lay, waiting for a favourable wind,
 
 Flight and Escape. 139 
 
 for three days. They picked up the fugitives who 
 had been wandering half-starved in the woods, and 
 then set sail from this unlucky land. One of the 
 refugees, Le Challeux by name, and a carpenter by 
 trade, wrote an account of the voyage. " Let him go 
 to Florida who will," he wrote. " Never will I confess 
 that it is the duty of a pere de famille to leave his 
 calling, and go off to strange countries in search of 
 adventures. 
 
 Qui veut aller a la Floride, 
 
 Qu'il aille, j'y ai este ; 
 
 Et revenu sec et aride 
 
 Et abbatu de pourete." 
 
 Landonniere himself wrote a history of the voyage 
 to Florida, which has been translated and published 
 in Hakluyt's Voyages. 
 
 There remained, however, the little army, under 
 Ribaut, which had lost most of its arms in the wreck, 
 and was now wandering along the Floridan shore. 
 They were fifty miles from Fort Caroline. Ribaut 
 cheered up his men, made them a speech, and exhorted 
 to patience : fifty miles would soon be got through. 
 But they were fifty miles of marsh, under an immense 
 forest of cypress trees. 
 
 When arrived within five miles of Caroline, Ribaut 
 sent on in advance one of his officers, Valnot, with 
 five or six men, in an Indian pirogue. Valnot came 
 back with tears in his eyes. The Spanish flag was
 
 140 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 flying over the fort, and Spanish sentinels were keep- 
 ing guard on the ramparts. There was nothing for it 
 but to retreat again. The unfortunate Frenchmen 
 began miserably to retrace their steps through the 
 wet and gloomy forest, eating leaves, herbs, and roots. 
 Their last misfortune was that they knew nothing of 
 the new Spanish settlement, and so directed their 
 course as exactly to arrive at it. 
 
 Menendez saw from a distance the arrival of the 
 first band of 200. They were like a crowd of ship- 
 wrecked sailors, destitute of the power of resistance, 
 feeble from long fasting, fatigued with their long 
 march. He had with him a troop of forty men. A 
 river ran between the French and the Spaniards. A 
 Basque swam across the stream, and asked for a safe- 
 conduct for Ribaut, who had not yet arrived, and four 
 gentlemen. Menendez would accord, he said, an 
 audience to an officer. One Vasseur, accompanied 
 by two or three soldiers, crossed over the river, and 
 was brought to the Spanish commander. Menendez 
 began by apprising him of the capture of Caroline, 
 and the massacre of the garrison. He confirmed the 
 truth of his story by causing two prisoners, spared as 
 Catholics, to relate it themselves. He coldly told 
 Vasseur that all those who were Protestants should 
 suffer the same fate, or at least that he would not 
 promise otherwise. 
 
 There was but one alternative. The French could
 
 Massacre. 141 
 
 trust to the possible clemency of Menendez, or they 
 could take to the woods. In the latter case they would 
 certainly starve ; in the former, they might escape 
 with their lives. It seemed incredible that a man 
 should, in cold blood, resolve to massacre 200 
 unarmed men. They laid down their arms. They 
 were brought across the river in small companies, and 
 their hands tied behind their backs. 
 
 On landing, they were asked if they were Catho- 
 lics. Eight out of the 200 professed allegiance to 
 that religion ; the rest were all Protestants. Menen- 
 dez traced out a line on the ground with his cane. 
 The prisoners were marched up one by one to the 
 line ; on reaching it, they were stabbed. 
 
 Next day, Ribaut arrived with the rest of the army. 
 
 The same pourparlers began. But this time a 
 blacker treachery was adopted. Menendez did not 
 himself receive the officer sent to treat. He deputed 
 a certain Vallemonde. This creature received the 
 French deputy with unexpected civility. His captain, 
 he said, was a man of extraordinary clemency. It 
 was true that Caroline had fallen, but the garrison, 
 women, and children, were all put on board ship, with 
 provisions, and were now on their way to France. 
 Finally, if the French laid down their arms, he, 
 Vallemonde, would pledge his word of honour on the 
 sacred cross, which he kissed devoutly, that all their 
 lives should be spared.
 
 142 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 It is not clear how many of the French accepted 
 the conditions. A certain number refused them, and 
 escaped into the woods. What is certain is, that 
 Ribaut, with nearly all his men, were tied back to 
 back, four together. Those who said they were 
 Catholics, were set on one side ; the rest were all 
 massacred as they stood. A rage for slaughter — the 
 blood-thirst — seized the Spanish soldiers. They fell 
 upon their victims, and stabbed and hacked both the 
 living and the dead. The air was horrible with their 
 oaths and cries. The work of murder was soon over. 
 In a very few moments, there was not a cry, nor a 
 sound, nor a movement among the whole 400 prisoners 
 now lying upon the ground, the maddened soldiers still 
 stabbing their lifeless bodies. Outside the circle of 
 the slaughtered and the slaughterers stood the priest, 
 Mendoza, encouraging, approving, exhorting the 
 butchers. With him, calm, serene, and joyful, with a 
 prayer of thanksgiving on his lips, stood the murderer, 
 Menendez. 
 
 The slaughter completed, they set up enormous 
 piles of wood and burned the bodies on them. On 
 the trees near the scene of the massacre, Menendez 
 caused to be inscribed, " Slaughtered not as French- 
 men, but as Lutherans." As for the corpse of Ribaut, 
 he had it flayed, and sent the skin to Europe, with 
 cuttings from the beard, as gifts to his friends. 
 
 Those of the French who had escaped into the
 
 Privateers. 143 
 
 woods resolved to sell their lives dearly. They con- 
 structed a little fort on the shore, and then awaited 
 the attack. Menendez led an overwhelming force 
 against the place, but whether his men were sick of 
 murder, or whether he had some private compunctions, 
 he actually offered terms. They laid down their arms, 
 and were all sent to the galleys, where they dragged 
 out the rest of their miserable lives. 
 
 Let us pass over the reception of this intelligence 
 in France and Spain, the indignation of the Pro- 
 testants, the exultation of the Catholics, the compul- 
 sory remonstrances of the feeble woman who held the 
 reins. The action of Menendez, one records with 
 joy, became fruitful of disasters to the Spanish cause 
 in America. Though Courts and diplomatists agreed 
 to forget the massacre, the French sailors took revenge 
 into their own hands. Speedily there issued from 
 the port of Dieppe light, fast-sailing vessels, well 
 armed, well found, well manned, which fell upon the 
 rich Spanish galleons and inflicted enormous losses. 
 The example of Dieppe was followed by Rochelle, 
 Havre, and Bordeaux. No doubt, too, the example 
 of the French encouraged the English buccaneers, so 
 that from the blood of these murdered colonists 
 sprang for Spain evils unnumbered. " Do we not 
 know," writes a Spaniard, "how much mischief is 
 done to us by these French corsairs, and how they 
 brave us in our islands every day ? After all our
 
 144 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 labours, we have to render an account on the way 
 home to these cursed robbers, who have done nothing 
 but toss about at sea, waiting for us at their pleasure, 
 and make it their business to discharge all our gold 
 and silver into their own holds, having no more 
 respect for our sovereign Prince, to whom we are 
 taking it, than a wisp of straw." Here the story of 
 Coligny's attempt properly ends. But one cannot 
 forbear from relating the sequel — the special revenge 
 taken by Dominique de Gourgues. 
 
 He was a man of noble birth, and a soldier by pro- 
 fession. He signalised himself in Italy by holding a 
 fort with thirty men against a whole corps. The 
 Spaniards showed their chivalrous appreciation of 
 valour by putting the little garrison to death, and send- 
 ing its captain to the galleys. Toiling on the bench 
 half naked, beneath the lash of the keepers, this French 
 gentleman naturally conceived a vehement and inex- 
 tinguishable hatred for the Spaniards. His ship was 
 taken by the Turks ; but the only difference in his lot 
 was that he had the consolation of seeing his former 
 masters rowing beside him in chains. The vessel, how- 
 ever, was recaptured from the Turks by Mathurin de 
 Lescont, the commander of a Maltese galley, and De 
 Gourgues regained his liberty. 
 
 He spent some years in voyages to Brazil, to the 
 coast of Africa, and to the West Indies. What 
 he did in these voyages, how many Spanish vessels
 
 De Gourgnes. 145 
 
 he took, how many Spanish throats he cut, does not 
 appear. But on learning the news of the Floridan 
 massacres, he resolved, being but a single private 
 gentleman, unable to command any Court support, 
 on an expedition of revenge. 
 
 He was not rich. He sold all that he had, borrowed 
 from his brother, the head of the family, what was 
 necessary in addition, and equipped three small ships, 
 the heaviest being of no more than 250 tons. Eighty 
 sailors and 100 arquebusiers formed the equipage. No 
 one except the captains of the ships knew the secret of 
 the expedition. They were going to Benin in Africa, 
 it was given out. With three small ships and less than 
 200 men, Gourgues was going to chastise the murdering. 
 Spaniards. No single feat of English heroism can 
 compare with this audacious, this unrivalled exploit. 
 
 In order to allay suspicion, he sailed southwards, to 
 the coast of Africa. Then, altering his course, he 
 made straight for Spanish-American waters. A 
 tempest off Porto Rico sprung a leak in his largest 
 vessel, and spoiled his provisions. The Spaniards 
 refused to sell him any more, and tried to prevent his 
 taking in water. He landed an armed force, and 
 helped himself. After another tempest, he sighted 
 the coast of Florida, and then, calling his men together, 
 he exhorted them to aid him in his enterprise, and to 
 avenge their slaughtered countrymen. 
 
 On passing the now Spanish fort of Caroline, De 
 
 K
 
 146 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 Gourgues ordered the soldiers below, so that none but 
 a few sailors were visible. The Spaniards took him 
 for a countryman, and fired a salute, which he returned, 
 and continued his course. Fifteen leagues north of 
 Caroline he resolved to disembark. 
 
 Crowds of the Indians, thinking they were Spanish, 
 rushed to the shore, brandishing their arrows with 
 threatening gestures. By great good luck, they had on 
 board a man who had been trumpeter to Ribaut, and 
 was well known to the tribe of the Cacique Satouriona. 
 They put him on shore, and he was received with 
 transports of joy, particularly when he told the 
 Cacique that his friends were French, not Spaniards, 
 and that they were come to avenge their wrongs. 
 
 The Spanish had succeeded already in awaking the 
 bitterest hatred among the Floridans. As soon as the 
 news spread that French soldiers had landed to fight 
 their enemies, an immense army, from all quarters, 
 gathered together round the French camp. 
 
 What difficulties they at first encountered, how they 
 reconnoitred, how they marched, with thousands of the 
 savages eager to witness, if not to share in, the fight, how 
 they passed the last night up to their knees in water, 
 in a deluge of rain, would take too long to tell. 
 
 The Spaniards were extending their fortifications 
 outside Caroline itself. At one place the lines had 
 only been drawn, and the works as yet were only 
 just commenced. Here the attack was to take place.
 
 Victory. 147 
 
 The story reads almost exactly like that of the 
 Spaniards when they took the fort by surprise. 
 Entirely without suspicion, the garrison were taking 
 their dinner. Suddenly, a musket shot, and the cry of 
 "The French! the French!" There were sixty men 
 in this, the outwork. They were all killed. But there 
 remained the second fort. De Gourgues turned the 
 cannon upon it, and a lively artillery fight began. 
 The Floridans, at this moment, emerged from the 
 woods. A detachment of French attacked the fort 
 in the rear. The Spaniards, ignorant of the number 
 of the enemy, lost their heads. The second fort was 
 taken with a rush, and all the Spaniards killed except 
 fifteen, whom De Gourgues ordered to be bound and 
 kept in safety for the moment. There yet remained 
 Fort Caroline itself. Here there were 300 com- 
 batant men. De Gourgues surrounded the fort with 
 his Indians, and prevented any spy from coming out, 
 so that the besieged had no notion of the numbers 
 of their assailants. The Commandant, in surprise and 
 indecision, allowed two days to pass before doing 
 anything. Then he sent out a spy disguised as an 
 Indian. He was caught, and, being brought before 
 De Gourgues, he had the imprudence to confess that 
 the garrison was horribly discouraged, believing the 
 French to be 2000 strong. Thereupon De Gourgues 
 resolved on an immediate attack. 
 
 The Spaniards thought that his little army, all of
 
 148 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 which was now in sight, was only an advance-guard. 
 The French, thinking the moment inopportune, retired 
 into the wood again to watch. The Spaniards sent 
 out a body of sixty, with the view of drawing them 
 out into the open. De Gourgues detached twenty of 
 his own men, to place themselves in ambush between 
 the fort and the sortie, so as to cut off their retreat. 
 Then, before the Spaniards had time to form them- 
 selves, he poured a murderous fire into their ranks, 
 and rushed upon them, sword in hand. They turned 
 to fly, and were met by the ambuscade. Not one 
 returned to the fort. The rest of the French rushed 
 tumultuously out of the wood, and all together, headed 
 by De Gourgues, they crowded into the citadel. 
 
 A panic seized the Spaniards. They allowed them- 
 selves to be cut down almost without resistance. Out 
 of the whole force of 300, De Gourgues only managed 
 to save sixty. 
 
 He would have saved more, to make his revenge 
 more complete. As it was, he wrote an inscription, 
 which he placed so that all could see — " I do this not 
 to Spaniards, but to traitors, thieves, and murderers." 
 
 Then he hanged them up, every one, the Floridans 
 looking on aghast. This done, he destroyed the fort, 
 and returned to France. He was received with 
 enthusiasm at Rochelle, an entirely Protestant town. 
 
 Philip demanded that he should be arrested, and 
 handed over to the mercies of the Spanish law. So
 
 Coligny > /'voted ion . [49 
 
 3 the Spanish influence, that De Gourgu 
 was ordered not to present himself at Court, and the 
 Spanish Ambassador was informed that he would be 
 
 arrested. This would actually have been done, but 
 for the remonstrance of the Admiral. The greater 
 part of the Council, carried away by the advice of the 
 ' ardinal de Lorraine, who made out this 1 :ploit to 
 be a declaration of war against Spain, would have 
 voted for his extradition, "had it not been that 
 M. de Chatillon, in his own manner, severe and full of 
 gravity, pointed out that if De Gourgues had had .0 
 much courage as to undertake alone what all France 
 should have done, he 1 eat recompen e 
 
 d of punishment ; and that those who condemned 
 him for an act S< ro IS, seemed to wish us already 
 
 imefully subject to our chief enemy. . . . And 
 you would hardly believe how much the resolution 
 which followed brought honour and glory to the 
 Admiral, as was manifest by the declaration of I 
 foreign ambassadors who were at Court." 
 
 After the deaths of Coligny (in 1 572, and of Montluc 
 ^' n '577;. this poor patriot had no more protectors. 
 He retreated to England, where Elizabeth gave him 
 a refuge and, when opportunity came, employment. 
 And he died in 1583, while, characteristically, 
 ig a new expedition against Florida.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 FIRST CIVIL WAR. 
 
 WE have arrived at the last and the most unhappy- 
 period of Coligny's career — the twelve years of 
 civil war. It was the most unhappy, because to one 
 trained as he had been in the unflinching loyalty which 
 has always been a characteristic of great houses, rebel- 
 lion against the King's authority could only be justified 
 by the gravest reason ; and because, in these tumults 
 which rent the kingdom asunder, destroyed the fairest 
 provinces, and covered the soil of France with the 
 blood of her own children, he saw the enemies of his 
 country taking advantage of her weakness, and work- 
 ing their will, unchecked and undisturbed. And then 
 there seemed no end to the struggle. A victory here, 
 a defeat there, was nothing. They could arrive at no 
 decisive conclusion : no treaty, truce, or peace was 
 observed. Even the simple claim for toleration which 
 the Admiral put forward at every pause in the war, 
 though admitted by the terms of the treaty, was 
 broken the very next day. Nor was it a small thing
 
 Contrast. 1 5 1 
 
 for him, the man of culture and artistic tastes — the 
 simple, home-loving man, who desired nothing more 
 than to enjoy in peace the companionship of wife and 
 children — that he should see, as he lived to see, his 
 castle sacked of all his treasures. And his heart would 
 be crushed by seeing his wife sink sadly into a pre- 
 mature grave with two of her children, one brother 
 poisoned, and the other killed by hard work and 
 fatigue. 
 
 We have seen the Admiral slowly arriving at the 
 conviction that it was his duty to take openly the 
 side on which his faith lay ; we have seen him, at 
 Vendome and La Ferte, counsel patience ; we have 
 seen him again, at the Assembly of Fontainebleau, 
 present a petition in the name of the Protestants, 
 asking for a redress of grievances : we have, in this 
 chapter, to see him at the head of an armed host, 
 resolved to seize liberty of conscience at the sword's 
 point. 
 
 Let us remember that the history of France might 
 have been that of England. We can picture to our- 
 selves a king less strong-willed than Henry, oscillating 
 between fear of Rome and desire of independence. 
 We may think what might have happened if the 
 learned doctors of England — Cranmer, Latimer, 
 Ridley, Cheke, Tyndal, and the rest — had either held 
 aloof, like Bude, Rabelais, Dolet, and Desperiers, or 
 had flung themselves fanatically into the opposite side.
 
 152 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 We may suppose a reign of reaction, like that of 
 Queen Mary, succeeded by the reign of a vacillating 
 woman like Catherine, always afraid, always uncertain 
 which party was the stronger, always ready to receive 
 advice, help, or influence from some foreign power. 
 What would have been the result in English history ? 
 With the death of Francis, the prospects of the 
 Huguenots brightened. The Guises lost their power, 
 and the voice of the Chatillons was once more heard 
 at Court. Catherine surrounded herself with ladies 
 who were devoted to the new religion. Among these 
 were Madeleine de Mailly, Coligny's half-sister, and 
 Renee, Duchess of Ferrara, 1 both staunch Protestants. 
 With Catherine, too, were the wise and moderate 
 Michel de l'Hospital and Jean de Montluc, Bishop of 
 Valence, who leaned to Reform, and preached modera- 
 tion ; and there were the three Chatillon brothers and 
 the Prince of Conde. Renee, of these, had the greatest 
 hold on Catherine's mind, because, in addition to her 
 theological studies, she had learned and practised the 
 
 1 The following genealogical note will be useful : — 
 Louis XII. = Anne de Bretagne. 
 
 Claude — Francis I. Renee = Ercole II., D. of Ferrara. 
 
 I J 
 
 Henry II. = Catherine di Medici 
 
 I Alfonso. Anna d'Este = 
 
 Francis, D. of Guise. 
 Francis II. Charles IX. Henry III. Marguerite. 
 
 &c.
 
 The Admiral's Influence. 153 
 
 art of astrology. Now Catherine, as was said, " had 
 no faith in God, but trusted implicitly in the stars." 
 
 Under their influences, all persons imprisoned for 
 religious opinions were ordered to be released. The 
 Admiral rejoiced the hearts of the Huguenots by 
 publicly christening his new-born son after the Gene- 
 van rite ; and the Cardinal, his brother, partook of 
 the communion in the same rite, and laid down his 
 ecclesiastical dignities. The reputation of the Ad- 
 miral at this time is shown by the fact that the 
 Provincial States, assembled at Paris in March, 1 561, • 
 asked that governors and tutors might be appointed 
 for the young King — " such as, from the integrity and 
 the sincerity of their lives, he and his brothers might 
 receive good and religious instruction." And they 
 especially named the Admiral. 
 
 He made use of his influence to lead Catherine 
 further along the path of conciliation. He endeavoured 
 to strengthen her power ; he pressed on the illusory 
 colloquy of Poissy, in the hope of showing how reason 
 and logic were on the side of Geneva. The colloquy 
 failed, of course ; such discussions always break down. 
 How can argument be carried on with men who begin 
 with the fatal falsehood of authority ? The colloquy 
 doubly failed : it was a political as well as a theologi- 
 cal failure. Instead of showing Catherine how strong 
 was the simple Protestant creed, it showed her how 
 numerous were its assailants. And then occurred the
 
 154 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 powerful coalition of Guise, Montmorency, and St. 
 Andre, behind whom stood arrayed two-thirds of 
 France and the whole of Spain. Catherine was dis- 
 mayed.- What force could the Admiral bring to meet 
 these hosts ? He showed her, first, that one-third of 
 the country was Huguenot — that behind the Pro- 
 testants stood England and Germany. 
 
 The Queen-mother compromised. She convoked, 
 at the commencement of the year 1562, an assemblage 
 of deputies from the eight Parliaments of France. 
 The result was the " Edict of January," which gave 
 permission to Protestants to hold meetings for public 
 worship outside the towns, and placed their meetings 
 under the protection of the law. 
 
 This is not the place to write afresh the history of 
 the religious wars in France ; but we may be allowed 
 to show exactly how they began, if only to justify 
 Coligny, and lay the blame on those who were the 
 originators of them. 
 
 The Edict promised the protection of the lav/. 
 But who would ensure the execution of the law ? 
 
 The Parliament of Paris refused to register the 
 Edict until after repeated orders from the Queen- 
 mother. The Parliament of Dijon refused to register it. 
 The Province of Burgundy was under the governor- 
 ship of the Duke d'Aumale, brother of Guise. The 
 Parliament of Aix refused. Next, Antoine de 
 Navarre, bribed by a promise of the restoration of the
 
 Massacre of Vassy. 155 
 
 Spanish part of his little kingdom, announced that 
 the colloquy of Poissy had converted him, dismissed 
 Beza and the reformed preachers, sent Jeanne back 
 to Beam, demanded the dismissal of the Chatillons 
 from the Court, and invited the Duke of Guise and 
 his brother, the Cardinal, who were at their chateau 
 of Joinville, to return to Paris. 
 
 Then occurred — it was only six weeks after the 
 Edict of January — the massacre of Vassy. 
 
 Nine hundred out of 3000, the population of that 
 little town, were Protestants. Rejoicing in the per- 
 mission granted them by the new law, they were 
 assembled on the Sunday morning, in a barn out- 
 side the town, for the purpose of public service. 
 The Duke of Guise and the Cardinal, with their 
 armed escort of gentlemen and soldiers, riding on 
 their way to Paris, heard the bells which summoned 
 the people, and asked what they meant. Being told 
 that it was a Huguenot " preche," the Duke swore 
 that he would Huguenot them to some purpose. 
 He rode straight to the barn and entered the place, 
 threatening to murder them all. The people, relying 
 on the law, barred the doors. Then the massacre 
 began. The soldiers burst open the feeble barrier, 
 and began to fire among the perfectly unarmed and 
 inoffensive people. Sixty-four were killed — men, 
 women, and children ; 200 were wounded. 
 This was the signal for war.
 
 156 Gasparci de Coligny. 
 
 Conde, on the intelligence, immediately retired from 
 the Court to Meaux, whence he issued a proclamation, 
 calling on all the Protestants of the country to take 
 up arms. Coligny was at Chatillon, whither Catherine 
 addressed him letter after letter, urging upon him, in 
 ambiguous terms, the defence of the King. It seems, 
 though this is obscure, that at one time Conde might 
 have seized the royal family and held them. But if 
 he had the opportunity, he neglected it, and the chance 
 never came again. Henceforward, however, we hear 
 no more talk about Catherine becoming a Protestant. 
 That pretence will serve her no more. 
 
 Before the clash of arms, there was silence for a 
 space. Men waited till the last man in France, who 
 had not yet spoken, should declare himself. The 
 Huguenots looked to the Admiral, and not to Conde. 
 It was on him that the real responsibility lay of 
 declaring civil war. It was a responsibility from 
 which the strongest man might shrink. Murder, 
 treachery, and persecution, on the one hand ; on the 
 other, for himself the sin of rebellion, if that were sin 
 to fight and die in defence of the helpless, and for 
 his people devastated homes, ruined provinces, all the 
 horrors of religious war. In the night, as he lay 
 awake and sadly pondered these things, he heard his 
 wife sobbing by his side, and knew the cause. 
 
 " Sound your conscience," he said. " Are you pre- 
 pared to face general disorders, to bear the reproaches
 
 The Admiral 's Decision. 157 
 
 of your own partisans as well as your enemies, to hear 
 of treasons of your friends, to bear exile into foreign 
 lands, shame, nakedness, hunger, not for yourself only, 
 but, which is worse, for your children, to expect your 
 death at the hands of an executioner after that of your 
 husband ? I give you three weeks to consider." 
 
 " They are gone already," she replied. " Do not 
 bring upon your head the deaths of those three weeks, 
 or I will myself bear witness against you before the 
 judgment-seat of God." 
 
 There were, indeed, already deaths enough. The 
 massacre of Vassy did not stand alone. As if by 
 consent, the Catholics rose at Cahors, Pons, Amiens, 
 Noyes, Abbeville, Chalons, Tours, Marseilles, and 
 Auxerre, killing and destroying. 
 
 The woman's instinct was right : there was no 
 remedy but in war. But her husband knew better 
 than she what was meant by war. She saw only the 
 righteous cause ; he foresaw the ruined homesteads, 
 the murders and robberies of an unrestrained soldiery. 
 Perhaps he knew already, by the prescience of a 
 general, the hopelessness of the struggle. You cannot 
 conquer and convert a country by the minority of its 
 people. Such a conquest could only be effected by 
 means of foreigners. English and Germans might 
 help French Protestants against French Catholics and 
 Spain, the battle-field being France. And what a 
 conquest would that be !
 
 158 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 Let it be remembered that the Admiral had tried 
 every means to protect those of the Religion ; that he 
 succeeded at length, when all else failed, in obtaining 
 liberty of worship ; that this concession was wrested 
 from his party, not by the Queen-mother, who would 
 have been glad enough, could that have insured peace, 
 to let the Huguenots pray after their own fashion, 
 but by the lawlessness of his enemies. It was Guise, 
 not Coligny, who began the civil war in which they 
 were both destined to meet their death. 
 
 The Admiral, having once made up his mind, 
 hesitated no longer, and, with a heavy heart, set off 
 the next day to join Conde\ He wrote to Catherine 
 that he took up arms, not against the King, but 
 against those who held him captive. He wrote also 
 to his old uncle, the Constable. 
 
 " I would rather do wrong to myself than enter into any 
 opposition with you. . . . But I entreat you to consider 
 into whose hands you have placed yourself — are they not 
 those who have sworn your own ruin and that of all your 
 House? I beg you to think that the greatest regret of my 
 brothers and myself is to see you of that party." 
 
 The Constable replied. There was no bitterness 
 between uncle and nephew. The former was fighting 
 to prevent the "universal ruin" of his country, and 
 for his petits maitres, the boys, the sons of his old 
 friend, Henry the Second. Montmorency joined the 
 Guises in perfect loyalty, and with the firm conviction
 
 Discipline. 159 
 
 that it was the right thing for him to do. The 
 Chatillons fought in the name of law and justice, and 
 to prevent the universal massacre of his people. 
 
 Of course the Admiral began at once with the dis- 
 cipline of the camp. The old rules were revived, and 
 vigorously enforced. Each regiment had its minister ; 
 and night and morning there were public prayers, the 
 soldiers praying first for the King, and secondly for 
 themselves, that God would keep them " in all sobriety 
 and modesty, without disturbance, mutiny, blasphemy, 
 or lewdness." Blasphemy was severely punished. 
 The violation of the rules about plunder was punished 
 by hanging the thieves in the camp, and with them 
 the things they had stolen — women's dresses, linen, 
 hams, and poultry. There were no dice or cards in 
 the camp at all ; no private foraging was allowed ; no 
 women were permitted in the camp. " Many," says 
 La Noue, " were astonished to see such fair behaviour, 
 and on one occasion my brother Teligny and myself, 
 discoursing with the Admiral, fell to praising it highly, 
 on which he said, ' Truly, it is a fine thing while it 
 lasts ; but I fear that these gentry here will throw all 
 their goodness to the wind, and that in two months' 
 time we shall find nothing but wickedness. I have 
 commanded infantry a long time, and I know the 
 service. It generally fulfils the proverb which says, de 
 jeane Jiermite vieux diable.' " And so the event proved. 
 Most of the cruelties and murders were certainly
 
 160 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 committed by the Catholics, because they were the 
 stronger party, and also because their leaders gave the 
 rein to their ferocity ; but not all. Wherever the 
 Huguenots were strong enough, they showed that the 
 role of martyrs was no more to their taste than to that 
 of their enemies, and retaliated in the manner common 
 to civil wars, by destroying churches, killing priests, 
 shattering shrines and relics, and turning the costly 
 vessels of the Church to their own use. Brantome 
 enters upon a defence of the civil war, which is most 
 quaint and remarkable. The first good effect, he says, 
 was the conversion into coin of the gold ornaments in 
 the churches. One seigneur coined the silver vessels 
 and ornaments presented by Louis XI. to St. Martin 
 de Tours into a great caskful of testons. Another was 
 the enrichment of the gentlemen who, in a foreign 
 war, would have impoverished themselves by borrow- 
 ing money. 
 
 " The merchants, usurers, bankers, and other racquedeniers, 
 down to the very priests, who keep their crowns hidden away 
 in their coffers, would have lent nothing without great interest 
 and excessive usury, either by purchase or mortgages of land, 
 goods, and houses at low price ; but this bonne guerre civile 
 repaired all their fortunes, so that I have seen a gentleman, 
 who before it rode through the country with one pair of horses 
 and a single lackey, ride with six or seven good horses ; and 
 this with both parties, so much did they augment their fortunes, 
 especially by the ransoms of the fat usurers when once they 
 caught them, making their lovely crowns drop out of their
 
 Distribution of Wealth. 161 
 
 purses whether they liked it or not, even if they were hidden 
 in the bones of their legs." 
 
 The King himself, who was deeply in debt, cleared 
 his liabilities by the confiscation of Church monu- 
 ments, the Pope giving special permission ; and even 
 the priests enriched themselves by selling their treasures 
 secretly, and then pretending that the Huguenots had 
 pillaged them. All this led to the multiplication of 
 coin, and therefore, Brantome thinks, of wealth. " So 
 that we now see in France more doubloons than fifty 
 years ago there were little pistolets." As to the cities 
 which were pillaged, they recovered their misfortunes, 
 and five years later were richer than those which 
 escaped — a very remarkable statement. Brantome 
 points to Havre, which, sixteen months after it 
 was sacked, was found to show no trace of the mis- 
 fortune ; while Angouleme, which was sacked twice, 
 remained the richest city in Guienne next to La 
 Rochelle. 
 
 " We can say of France as that great captain, Prosper 
 Colonna, said of the Duchy of Milan — that it resembled a fat 
 goose — the more you pluck it, the faster its feathers grow. 
 The cause, then, is due to that excellent civil war, so well 
 invented and introduced by the great Admiral." 
 
 The events of the civil war belong to the history 
 of France. Let us review them with reference mainly 
 to the Admiral's share in them. 
 
 Coligny held in his possession — Tavannes says he 
 
 L
 
 1 62 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 himself saw them — lists and rollsof all the men on whom 
 he could count — their property, their influence, with the 
 signals which were to be used in case of a rising. 
 They belonged, as we have said before, in a very large 
 proportion to the noblesse — that is, to the country 
 gentry. It is one of the most strongly marked points 
 of difference between the French and the English 
 Protestants, that the latter were strongest in the great 
 towns, and especially in London ; while in Paris, 
 Bordeaux, and most of the important places in France, 
 the Protestants formed a small minority. The fact 
 helps, too, to explain the unwillingness to rise. The 
 gentlemen of the party hesitated to rebel against the 
 King, and were only encouraged at last by the pre- 
 sence among them of a prince of the royal blood, and 
 by' the example of the Admiral, " on account of his 
 good and great qualities, and especially because he 
 kept his religion more narrowly than any other, and 
 held in check and moderation the young seigneurs and 
 Protestant gentlemen by a certain severity of manner 
 which was natural to him and became him well." 
 
 Then the first civil war began with a gallant 
 exploit, the taking of Orleans. Conde" rode into it 
 at the head of 2000 cavalry, all shouting like school- 
 boys, and racing for six miles who should get into the 
 city first. They pillaged the churches, and turned 
 out the Catholics. " Those who were that day turned 
 outside the city wept catholicly that they were dis-
 
 Events of the War. 163 
 
 possessed of the magazines of the finest wines in 
 France." Truly a dire misfortune, for the Catholics, 
 to lose all the best claret districts. 
 
 Orleans taken, the Huguenots proceeded to issue 
 protestations and manifestoes, in all of which the 
 hand of the Admiral is visible. They are not fighting 
 against the King, who is a prisoner : the war was 
 begun by the Guises. What right has a Guisard to 
 lord it in the realm of France ? Nor are they the 
 first to contract foreign alliances — witness the Swiss 
 infantry engaged by Guise. They might have added, 
 truly enough, that Conde" and the Admiral held in 
 their hands letters from Catherine, urging them to 
 carry on the contest for the sake of the young King. 
 The fall of Orleans was quickly followed by that 
 of Rouen, Tours, Blois, Bourges, Vienne, Valence, 
 Montauban. The civil war was fairly begun. 
 
 The party was now well organised. Conde" was 
 commander-in-chief by right of his birth ; Coligny was 
 real leader by right of his reputation and wisdom. It 
 was by him that a Solemn League and Covenant was 
 drawn up, to be signed by every one of the Calvinist 
 chiefs. These were, besides Conde" and the Chatil- 
 lons, Larochefoucauld, who had married the second 
 daughter of Madeleine de Mailly, and was therefore 
 Coligny's nephew and Conde's brother-in-law — he 
 was the greatest seigneur in Poitou ; Rohan, from 
 Dauphiny, who was Conde's cousin ; the Prince of
 
 164 Caspar d de Coligny. 
 
 Porcian, who was the husband of Conde's niece. Each 
 of these lords came with a following worthy of his 
 name. Montgomery, who had slain Henry the Second, 
 brought his Normans ; Genlis, the Picards — we have 
 seen that it was in Picardy that the Reformation first 
 began ; with Andelot came a troop of Bretons ; with 
 the Count de Grammont came 6000 Gascons. Good 
 news poured in every day. Not only Rouen, but 
 Havre, Caen, and Dieppe submitted in the north. 
 Angers and Nantes followed. The road was open in 
 the end for bringing troops from Germany. The 
 country in the south-west was altogether in their 
 hands. 
 
 Meantime, the enemy were not idle. They began 
 with massacres. In Paris, they murdered 800 Hugue- 
 nots in that first summer of the war. From every 
 side fugitives poured into Orleans, which became the 
 city of refuge. There were massacres at Amiens, 
 Senlis, Cahors, Toulouse, Angouleme, everywhere. 
 Coligny advised a march upon Paris, where, he urged, 
 the Guises had but a rabble at their command. His 
 counsels, when war was once commenced, were always 
 for vigorous measures. Conde preferred to wait. 
 Andelot was sent to Germany, where he raised 3000 
 horse. Calvin despatched letters in every direction, 
 urging on the Churches and the Protestant princes to 
 send help to France. Many of Coligny's old soldiers of 
 St. Quentin came to fight under his banner. Eliza-
 
 Conferences. 165 
 
 beth of England offered to send an army if Calais 
 were restored ; when she saw that no Frenchman 
 would give up that place again, she still sent men and 
 money, though with grudging spirit. 
 
 At length both armies took the field. The Duke 
 of Guise had under him 8000 men ; Conde 7000. 
 They advanced, and met at the little town of Vasso- 
 dun, where a conference was held between the 
 Queen-mother and Navarre on the one hand, and 
 Cond^ and Coligny on the other. Catherine proposed 
 that all the chiefs of both sides — Guise, the Cardinal 
 de Lorraine, St. Andrd, Montmorency, Navarre, 
 Conde, and the Chatillon brothers — should all alike 
 go into voluntary exile. Condd was nearly persuaded 
 to accept this absurd proposal. Another conference 
 was held at Talcy. 
 
 These conferences were only delays. An attempt 
 was made by Catherine to entrap Conde, which was 
 defeated by the Admiral's prompt rescue. The Par- 
 liament of Paris issued a decree commanding all 
 Romanists in every parish to rise in arms at the 
 sound of the bell, and to slay every Huguenot. It was 
 said that 50,000 were thus murdered. No doubt the 
 numbers were grossly exaggerated, but we may observe 
 that the massacre of St. Bartholomew was no new thin°- 
 suddenly devised by Catherine, but an old device, long 
 meditated, frequently set in practice. 
 
 These cruelties naturally provoked retaliation. The
 
 1 66 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 lesson of ferocity is one easily learned. Des Adrets, 
 the Protestant, rivalled Montluc in cruelty. It was 
 he who invented the punishment of "walking the 
 plank," which in this case was run out from the battle- 
 ments, the wretched victims being made to walk upon 
 it and off it. As for what the Protestant soldiers did 
 in destruction of churches, images, and ecclesiastical 
 art, that may be easily guessed. Cromwell's soldiers 
 were not more destructive. " There was quickly born," 
 says La Noue, " Madame Pillage, who has since risen 
 to such dignity. She is now madame, and, if things 
 continue, she will soon become a princess." 
 
 An English army occupied Havre. English troops 
 set out for Rouen. Some few managed to get within 
 the walls. The town was taken by the Catholics, and, 
 for eight days, plundered. Needless to say that Guise 
 hanged every Huguenot he could find. Here the 
 King of Navarre was killed. 
 
 The loss of Rouen, coupled with other disasters, 
 greatly discouraged the Huguenots. Their spirits 
 rose, however, when news came that Andelot, with 
 4000 reiters, was on his way to join them. He 
 brought them in safety across France, being himself 
 carried in a litter, sick with ague and fever. The 
 Huguenots advanced upon Paris, but did not attack 
 the city. At Dreux, they met the army of Guise. 
 
 Protestant historians endeavour to show that the 
 battle was drawn. In fact, both sides sustained
 
 Coligny in Normandy. 167 
 
 immense losses. St. Andre was killed, Montmorency 
 and Conde were taken prisoners. Yet Coligny had to 
 retire from the field — his rival had out-generalled him. 
 
 It was characteristic of Coligny that he never lost 
 heart. A battle lost was not the loss of a cause. He 
 at once endeavoured to restore the spirit of his 
 followers. Andelot should fall back upon Orleans, 
 and hold the place against Guise, while he went north 
 and formed a coalition with the English. 
 
 With his German cavalry, a handful of his own 
 infantry, and a small troop of English soldiers, 
 Coligny swept over nearly the whole of Normandy. 
 It is true that Guise was not there to oppose him. 
 Everything looked well. He was arranging for a 
 "splendid alliance" with England, when news came 
 which stayed his hand. 
 
 Guise marched southwards to Orleans, swearing 
 that he would take the burrow where the foxes had 
 retreated, and chase the vermin over all France. As 
 for resistance, "since the sun found entrance into 
 Orleans, he could." It was a braggart speech, but he 
 nearly did get in, and most certainly would have got 
 in — Andelot being ill with his ague — but for another 
 of those surprises which for a time altered the course 
 of events. 
 
 There was in Orleans a young Huguenot soldier 
 named Jean Poltrot de Mere. He was a fanatic. He 
 talked wildly about murder and assassination ; but he
 
 1 68 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 was a good spy. He could play the part of a Catholic, 
 and was so employed by the Admiral, who gave him 
 money to buy a horse. This man conceived the idea 
 which in times of trouble, distress, or confusion always 
 occurs to some poor half-witted wretch : he would 
 kill the man who was the cause of all the suffering. 
 He waited for an opportunity, worked himself into 
 the good graces of the Duke, and then shot him, with 
 three balls, in the shoulder. Guise died three days 
 later, denying that he had premeditated the massacre 
 of Vassy. It is good to learn that this man of blood 
 and violence could feel remorse. 
 
 Consider what an event this death was. There was 
 no man in France like Guise. He was a better general 
 than Coligny ; he was on the stronger side ; he was 
 utterly without restraint of law, religion, or morality ; 
 he was personally idolised by his followers ; he was 
 the one man who seemed to stand between the 
 Huguenots and the peace which they desired. Guise 
 out of the way, there was no single man whom the 
 Catholics could put forward with any chance of his 
 taking the place of that great soldier. 
 
 Poltrot was treated much as Damiens a hundred 
 and fifty years later was treated : he was pinched with 
 red-hot pincers, and racked and tortured in every way 
 to make him confess who were his accomplices. In 
 the agony of his torture he stated that the Admiral, 
 Beza, La Rochefoucauld, Soubise, and others were
 
 Acctisation of Coligny. 169 
 
 the accomplices and advisers of the act. But he 
 never for a moment abandoned the pretence that he 
 acted under Divine inspiration. At the last, when 
 the horses were rending him limb from limb, he 
 shrieked, as if even then he might receive some pity, 
 that his accusations were true. But, during his trial, 
 his statements varied from day to day, and he retracted 
 in one day what he had stated the day before. 
 
 No one pretended to believe that Beza and the 
 others named had anything to do with the murder. 
 But it suited Coligny's enemies to fix the crime upon 
 him. Historians are almost unanimous in acknow- 
 ledging that he had, and could have, nothing whatever 
 to do with it. The whole life of the man is against it. 
 His own defence is complete. First, he asked that 
 Poltrot should not be executed until he himself could 
 examine him. This was refused. Then he showed 
 that certain conferences spoken of by the assassin 
 were impossible ; next, it was well known that he had 
 always steadily endeavoured to warn those who were 
 threatened with such attempts, and had actually 
 warned the Duke, a few days before, that he had heard 
 that a man was hired to murder him. Latterly, he 
 said, he had taken less trouble in hunting up and so 
 preventing such enterprises, because so many had been 
 attempted against himself. This was frank. What he 
 added was still more frank. 
 
 " Do not think," he says, " that I speak in regret of Mon-
 
 170 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 sieur de Guise, for I think his death the greatest good that 
 could happen to this kingdom and to the Church of God, 
 and particularly to myself and to my House. . . . I have 
 looked for my enemy on the field of battle ; if I could have 
 pointed a cannon at him I would have done it. I would 
 have spared no means allowed by the laws of war to rid 
 myself of so great an enemy, but I have not armed the hand 
 of a murderer." 
 
 This rejoicing at the death of an enemy jars upon 
 modern ears, and yet if any man had reason to rejoice 
 at the death of another it was the Admiral. Guise it 
 was who brought about this war ; Guise was the man 
 who made him chargeable with rebellion and Use 
 majeste; Guise stood between him and his great aims 
 — the humiliation of Spain, the greatness of France, 
 the toleration of free-thought ; Guise it was who 
 robbed him of the favour of Henry, and kept him 
 from the favour of Charles. Nor were the Huguenots 
 the only folk who rejoiced. Catherine rejoiced. "The 
 man," she said, " is dead whom I hated most of all the 
 world." Cecil in England rejoiced. 
 
 And then a peace was signed. Conde\ won over 
 and seduced by the sirens of the Court, signed it. It 
 was a humiliating and disastrous peace. Huguenots 
 were to be considered loyal subjects ; foreign soldiers 
 should be sent out of the country ; churches and 
 temples should be restored to their original uses ; the 
 suburbs of one town in every bailiwick were to be
 
 Disastrous Peace. 171 
 
 used for Protestant worship (this was a great reduc- 
 tion on the Edict of January, which allowed the 
 suburbs of every town) ; and the nobility and gentry 
 were to hold worship in their own houses after their 
 own opinions. 
 
 The Admiral was furious at this weakness. " You 
 have ruined," he said to Conde, "more churches by 
 one stroke of the pen than the enemy could have 
 done in ten years of war. What of the poor, who 
 have fought as bravely as the nobles ? They must 
 walk many miles — women, children, the feeble and 
 the aged — or have no public worship at all."
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE SECOND CIVIL WAR. 
 
 THE peace, such as it was, lasted for three years 
 and a-half. Every effort was made by the Guises 
 to bring Coligny to a trial on the charge of complicity 
 in the murder of the Duke. The Admiral himself 
 wrote three careful and elaborate defences ; the 
 Huguenots asked only that there might be a fair trial, 
 and at a meeting of the Council, Conde pointed out 
 that the hostility of the Guises towards the Chatillons 
 was notorious, and should not be made the means 
 of persecuting the Admiral. Montmorency, for his 
 part, declared his intention of employing all his power 
 in the cause of his nephew. A formal inquiry was 
 ordered to be opened, and, at the end of three years, 
 the King pronounced Coligny's innocence to be 
 established, and ordered a reconciliation to be publicly 
 celebrated between him and the widow of the murdered 
 man. This was done. The Cardinal was there, 
 embracing his enemy with lying lips ; but Henri and 
 Claude, the sons, refused to be present, and would 
 take no part in the sham.
 
 Home Life. 173 
 
 This widow, the Duchess of Guise, was the daughter 
 of Renee de France, and had been educated in the 
 principles of the Reformed religion. Yet, as became 
 a renegade, there was now no more fanatic Romanist 
 in France, and no more revengeful woman. She 
 never ceased to regard the Admiral, her mother's best 
 and most trusted friend, as her husband's murderer. 
 So far as she was concerned, it was a false and hollow 
 reconciliation. She nourished the hope of vengeance, 
 and became afterwards an accomplice in the Bartho- 
 lomew conspiracy. 
 
 Meantime, the Admiral lived chiefly at his own 
 Castle of Chatillon-sur-Loing, occupied with his 
 domestic affairs, the education of his children, the 
 reception and entertainment of artists, the preparation 
 of memoirs — those which were subsequently burned, 
 to the great loss of history — correspondence with 
 Calvin and other Protestant leaders, and the further- 
 ance of the Huguenot cause. Three boys were left 
 to him, Gaspard, Francis, and Odet — one more was 
 to be born to him, the only one of the second 
 generation of Huguenot Chatillons who would disgrace 
 the family name — and two daughters, Louise, who 
 afterwards married William the Silent, and became 
 the mother of a long line of kings, queens, 
 electors, and grand-dukes ; and Renee, still an infant, 
 whose death was to be one more blow to the long- 
 suffering father. With them his wife, Charlotte de
 
 174 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 Laval, fresh from nursing the wounded soldiers in 
 the hospital of Orleans, full of all womanly virtues, 
 steadfast in her faith, fit helpmeet for one on whom 
 was laid, in a manner, the burden of all the nation's 
 sins. 
 
 The Admiral was thoughtful for his household first, 
 for his own people next. He procured a worthy- 
 tutor, one Le Gresle, for his boys, and enjoined on 
 them the strictest reverence and respect for their 
 master, never ceasing to admonish them to continue 
 steadily in the study of those good books " which lead 
 you in the path of virtue." Then, as he often main- 
 tained that universal education would be an incom- 
 parable benefit to the world, " seeing that ignorance 
 of letters brings to Church and State many evils," 
 he founded in Chatillon a college where professors of 
 Greek, Hebrew, and Latin taught all comers. He was 
 therefore the first to conceive the idea, as he was the 
 first to attempt its realisation, of universal education. 
 We have seen already the manner in which his house- 
 hold was regulated, with prayers, sermons, and the sing- 
 ing of psalms. Stories abound, which we need not quote 
 here, of the Admiral's continual and patient charity. 
 Some of them are probably invented ; but they all point 
 to one certain fact — that, in an age greatly wanting in 
 sympathy, accustomed to the sight of suffering, and 
 therefore callous, this man practised the Christian 
 virtue of charity in the highest sense comprehended
 
 Stories of the Admiral. 175 
 
 by the nineteenth century, and perhaps in a spirit 
 more lofty than anything we can understand. For 
 the knowledge of goodness, the appreciation of a 
 higher life, grows with the growth of each individual 
 man. He who would fairly set forth the worth of a 
 great man should be himself possessed of the same 
 qualities, even if not to the same degree. One 
 remembers that legend of the statue of Jesus, which 
 was always taller than the tallest man who stood 
 before it. It seems to me, humbly endeavouring to 
 picture to myself this man as he actually was, as if he, 
 too, thus continually towers above the heads of all who 
 approach him. I fail to find in any gallery of worthies, 
 in any country or any century, any other man so truly 
 and so incomparably great. 
 
 As for these stories, there is one which tells how 
 the Admiral once detected a servant in a plot to 
 poison him. He pardoned him, and dismissed him 
 with the permission to take service under those who 
 would have made him a poisoner — the Guises. He 
 was always, indeed, in danger of being poisoned or 
 assassinated. Men lurked in the forests when he 
 went hunting, hired, as they said when caught, by 
 one or other member of the Lorraine House. There 
 was no day when he could feel safe. If, for his 
 own part, he rejoiced at the death of Guise, his 
 enemies of that family ardently desired his death, 
 and secretly compassed it. The very virtues of the
 
 176 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 man, the trust which he inspired in all alike, a trust 
 so great that the Pope never ceased to wonder why so 
 good a man could be in the Genevese camp ; the 
 absence of any evil charge to throw against him ; all 
 these things were so many incentives to hatred. 
 
 He was, however, no blind partisan of Calvin. He 
 would recognise no Protestant Pope, and refused to 
 allow any spiritual preeminence to the Church of 
 Geneva. He remained a friend to the different parties 
 of the French Protestants, represented whether by 
 Beza or by Ramus, exhorting the ministers above all 
 to live the life, to show an example of the Christian 
 virtues, and especially that of charity. He gave, for 
 his own part, an example of how the Catholics 
 ought to be tolerated by Protestants, by restoring their 
 church at Chatillon to the priests, so that it was said 
 everywhere that there was no place in France where 
 priests could live in greater safety than at Chatillon. 
 For his own part, he confessed that he thus gave up his 
 church, not for his own pleasure, but in obedience to 
 the law. To enforce obedience to the law, to watch 
 for breaches, and to procure redress, was one of his 
 most important occupations during these years. He 
 wrote perpetually to the Queen-mother, urging her to 
 take action in one case and another. " I implore 
 you, Madam, in the name of God," he concludes one 
 letter, " to see to this matter, and you will be the cause 
 that the King shall be served and obeyed."
 
 Goes to Paris. 177 
 
 In 1565, he was invited by his cousin, Francis de 
 Montmorency, to repair to Paris, in order to assist in 
 repressing disturbances which the Cardinal of Lor- 
 raine had attempted to foment. The Admiral rode 
 in state, with 600 gentlemen, to the capital. He 
 invited the Archbishop and the principal clergy to 
 meet him, and pointed out in what mutual tolerance his 
 own people at Chatillon lived. He called the Provost 
 and principal bourgeois, lectured them on the neces- 
 sity of maintaining order, and pointed out — this man 
 of ideas and resource — the best means of improving 
 and developing the industries and trade of Paris. Of 
 the Parliament he asked that those of the Reformed 
 faith might enjoy the liberty granted by the Edicts. 
 He had already acquired the trust of all : it seemed 
 now as if he had even won the affections of the fanatic 
 Parisians. 
 
 Then he returned to Chatillon. 
 
 Troubles came upon him through the behaviour of 
 Conde. This Prince remained at Court, cajoled and 
 deceived by Catherine, carrying on amours with her 
 ladies. Calvin wrote to him, urging watchfulness, 
 action, a better life. " Labour more than ever for the 
 Gospel. Prove yourself worthy." His wife, the 
 admirable Eleanore de Roye, Coligny's niece, lay 
 meanwhile dying, deserted and forgotten. Nor was 
 it till Conde fully realised that he was becoming the 
 standing joke of the Court, as a more easily beguiled 
 
 M
 
 178 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 dupe than even his brother of Navarre, that he retired 
 sullenly to his newly-acquired Castle of Valery, and 
 bethought him again of the responsibilities he had 
 assumed. 
 
 It was during these years of comparatively quiet 
 work that Coligny matured his great project of aggran- 
 dising France, humiliating Spain, and advancing the 
 Protestant cause by means of the revolted Netherlands. 
 It was a scheme which he never ceased to cherish. 
 It was the dream of those last days when his death 
 was already determined. It was the project of which 
 he spoke to the King in his last interview. 
 
 The project possessed every conceivable advantage, 
 from the Admiral's point of view. It would send to 
 the front all the turbulent and impatient Huguenots ; 
 it would employ all those gentlemen, soldiers and 
 mercenaries, who might otherwise be ranged under 
 the Catholic flag ; it would convert Spain into an 
 open enemy ; it would, once and for all, put an end to 
 the plotting between the Guises and Philip. When the 
 Low Countries revolted, Coligny was forbidden, it is 
 true, to send them men ; but French Huguenot money 
 raised for them a force of 4000 horse and thirty 
 companies of foot. 
 
 Disquieting rumours, meantime, reached the Admiral 
 of the interview between Catherine and Alva, during 
 her Royal progress with Charles. It was bruited 
 abroad that there was a secret understanding between
 
 War. 179 
 
 the treacherous Florentine and the Spanish Court. It 
 was known, because young Henry of Navarre heard 
 him say it, that Alva recommended the destruction of 
 one salmon rather than that of ten thousand frogs. 
 Jeanne d'Albret cautioned the Admiral ; Calvin 
 cautioned him. Catherine; in some alarm, allayed the 
 disquiet by forbidding the passage of the Spaniards 
 through Provence and Dauphine. It was Coligny who 
 applauded this act of firmness, and recommended the 
 raising of 6000 Swiss troops for the better safety of 
 the kingdom. The troops came, but it soon appeared 
 that they were intended for other work than to fight 
 the Spaniard. 
 
 Then the Huguenot chiefs met hurriedly. Andelot, 
 as usual, raised his voice for war. The Admiral, as 
 usual, counselled patience, watchfulness, persuasion. 
 " Better," he said, " to endure the first violence of the 
 enemy than to begin it ourselves. To us would be 
 imputed all the evils which are the fatal consequences 
 of civil war." 
 
 Peace, always peace, was the Admiral's policy. It 
 was peace which strengthened the Huguenots ; peace 
 which brought them fresh recruits ; peace which gave 
 them organisation and enthusiasm ; peace which 
 enabled Coligny to stretch into every corner of the 
 country his electric wires of secret intelligence. By his 
 secrecy, by his careful organisation, he was too strong 
 even for the Court. Catherine, who suspected what was
 
 180 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 coming, sent spies to report on the Admiral's move- 
 ments. They could only report, on the 26th of Septem- 
 ber, that he was gathering in his vintage; yet on the 
 28th fifty towns were in the power of the Protestants, 
 and the war was begun. It was this rapidity and 
 secrecy which made the Admiral so formidable. The 
 Huguenots began with an attempt to seize the King. 
 There were two special reasons why Coligny wished 
 this attempt to be successful. In the first place, the 
 Catholics were accustomed to say that he wished to 
 place the crown on Conde's head ; and in the second, 
 he knew already something of Charles's nature, and 
 his own influence over that strangely-constituted mind. 
 The attempt, most unfortunately, failed. Then fol- 
 lowed the battle of St. Denys, fought against immense 
 odds, which was perhaps the most skilful of Coligny's 
 battles. Nothing impressed the Parisians more than 
 the spectacle of 3000 men fighting against 18,000, hold- 
 ing their ground for two hours, and retreating foot by 
 foot. If these things could be done by so small a 
 force, what might not be expected when the Admiral 
 was at the head of the hosts who were hurrying to join 
 him ? If Catherine introduced Swiss soldiers, Coligny 
 engaged Germans, through Jean Casimir, the son of the 
 Elector Palatine, who brought him an army of reiters. 
 These mercenaries began by clamouring for pay ; they 
 asked for 100,000 crowns. There were not 2000 crowns 
 altogether in the military chest. Then a remarkable
 
 Death of Wife and Son. 181 
 
 thing happened. All, from the chiefs and princes to 
 the common men, united in subscribing money, rings, 
 chains, and plate, till enough was raised to satisfy their 
 allies. Two Huguenot armies — one under Conde and 
 Coligny, another under Viscount Montclar, and others 
 — marched over France, everywhere successful. Conde 
 besieged Chartres. To save that place, Catherine 
 signed the Peace of Lonjumeau, and the Calvinists 
 dispersed. It was a peace which was signed without 
 any guarantees, and intended only to cause the dis- 
 persion of the Huguenots. 
 
 But the Admiral was not at the moment in a 
 position to advise or to protest. For his eldest son, 
 Gaspard, a boy of the highest promise, had been taken 
 from him. He was fourteen years of age, and was 
 already affianced to Catherine de Parthenay. The 
 Admiral looked to see him begin immediately a 
 career which he hoped would lead to honour, not in 
 civil, but in foreign war. He was at Orleans with his 
 mother, who was attending to the wants of the 
 wounded. The plague which had been hovering 
 about France for some time, following the Court on 
 the Royal progress, broke out in Orleans, and the boy 
 died. The father writes to his wife, in words which 
 do not try to conceal the anguish of his soul. 
 
 " Remember, ma bien aimee, that he is happy in dying 
 at an age when he is free from crime. . . . God has 
 willed it. I offer Him all the rest, if it be His will. Do
 
 1 82 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 thou the same, if thou wishest for His blessing, for in Him 
 alone is all our hope. Adieu. I hope to see thee soon, 
 which is now my only joy." 
 
 This joy, alas ! will not be realised, for his wife is to 
 leave him too. Worn out by grief, by fatigue, and by 
 fever contracted in the hospitals, the noble Charlotte 
 de Laval wrote from her dying bed a last letter of 
 farewell and admonition to the man with whom, for 
 twenty years, she had toiled to lead the higher life — 
 with whom she had acquired as strong a faith as ever 
 was reached by man or woman. 
 
 She writes from her death-bed that she is unhappy 
 indeed, in dying far from the sight of him whom she 
 has always loved better than herself — that she is con- 
 soled by the thought of the Judge who wills it so — 
 that she conjures him by herself, if he has ever loved 
 her, and by the children whom she leaves behind as 
 pledges of her love, to fight to the last extremity in 
 the service of God and the advancement of religion — 
 that, as she knows the peculiar affection he entertains 
 for the King, she begs him to remember that God is 
 the first Master, and that He must first be served to 
 the prejudice of any other. 
 
 With these last words of love and solemn warning, 
 Charlotte de Laval expired. " Mon Dieu ! " cried the 
 Admiral — " Mon Dieu ! que t'ai je fait ? Quel peche 
 ai je commis pour estre si rudement chastie' et accable" 
 de tant de maux ?" His wife died on the 3rd of
 
 ,Fresh Robberies. 183 
 
 March. On the 27th was signed the Peace of 
 Lonjumeau. 
 
 Peace, but no rest. Coligny retired to Chatillon, 
 protesting to Catherine his undiminished loyalty, and 
 expressing his hope that this time the edicts may be 
 enforced. Then he had difficulties about the payment 
 of the reiters. A sum of 50,000 francs was raised, and 
 sent by the Admiral within the promised time. His 
 messengers bearing the money were set upon by 
 soldiers from Auxerre, a town about twenty miles 
 east of Chatillon, garrisoned by troops belonging to 
 the Duke of Anjou, and were robbed of the whole 
 amount. Coligny wrote to Charles, to Catherine, to 
 the Duke of Anjou, indignantly asking for justice. 
 No justice was to be obtained. He was put off with 
 promises. He was rebuked for carrying on cor- 
 respondence with the insurgents in the Low Countries. 
 He was ordered to reduce his personal following from 
 a hundred to fifty lances. To insults were added acts 
 of violence. One of his gentlemen was murdered by 
 soldiers of the same garrison of Auxerre which had 
 robbed his messengers. Shots were fired at himself; 
 and the President of Dijon refused to investigate the 
 matter on the pretence of being otherwise occupied. 
 Similar indignities were practised on Conde, then at 
 his Castle of Noyers, whither Coligny repaired in 
 order to take counsel. From Noyers he again wrote 
 to the King, bitterly complaining that some one was
 
 184 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 blinding his eyes to the real state of the kingdom. 
 Catherine answered the letter by renewed promises of 
 justice, giving immediate proofs of her honesty by the 
 appointment of Tavannes, the Admiral's bitter enemy, 
 to investigate the affair. Coligny's letters show his 
 appreciation of her intentions. " Madame," he writes, 
 " it is not possible to express better, in tvriting, a 
 disposition to do justice. . . . But I should like 
 to ask when the first justice has been done for the 
 infinite number of murders we have complained of." 
 Then came certain and secret intelligence that Conde 
 and Coligny were both to be arrested. The Admiral 
 hastened again, this time with his family, to Noyers, 
 and they resolved on escaping at once across the Loire. 
 There was, indeed, no time to be lost. Troops were 
 already in movement to invest the Castle and arrest 
 the two great Huguenot chiefs. There were forty 
 miles of country to traverse ; it was covered with 
 enemies and spies ; and they were encumbered with 
 women and children. On the night of the twenty- 
 fifth of August, five months after the Peace of Lon- 
 jumeau, the journey was begun. They started at 
 sunset, with a feeble escort, and succeeded, under cover 
 of the darkness, in eluding the troops whom the young 
 Duke of Guise was hurrying forwards ; for it was 
 ascertained that they had started, and pursuit was 
 resolved upon. In the morning, they arrived at the 
 river. It was impossible to wait. The river must be
 
 La Roche He. 185 
 
 forded. While they hesitated, a single voice was raised 
 — " When Israel came out of Egypt." All joined in 
 the psalm, and, so singing, the ford was crossed. 
 Fortunately, the waters were low. Protestant his- 
 torians loved afterwards to tell how a miracle was 
 wrought, and how, when the enemy appeared on the 
 banks, the water rose and flooded the ford so that 
 they could not get across. 
 
 On the 20th of September, the fugitives rode into 
 La Rochelle. 
 
 Here they found that La Rochefoucauld had already 
 concluded an agreement with the townspeople, nearly 
 all Protestants, by which their city was appointed the 
 capital of French Protestantism, and Conde was 
 named Chief and Protector of all French Churches. 
 On the 29th of September, Jeanne d'Albret appeared 
 with her boy, happily rescued from the Court and the 
 evil influences of Catherine. Andelot came with his 
 Bretons. Odet, who could not get across the country, 
 was fain to seek refuge with his wife, Elizabeth 
 d'Hauteville, in England, where Elizabeth received him 
 favourably, and where he continued to serve the cause. 
 
 The position of La Rochelle as a capital for the 
 Protestants was in many respects superior to that of 
 Orleans. The town was well defended by forts and 
 strong walls, its harbour was impregnable, and by 
 keeping open a communication with English ports, 
 reinforcements might be received there.
 
 1 86 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 The old town still preserves many buildings which 
 were there in the sixteenth century. Foremost 
 among them is the Hotel de Ville, with its rich and 
 delicate tracery, standing within its own walls, 
 jealously guarded, a miracle of mediaeval work. In 
 its great hall have been heard the voices of Coligny, 
 Conde, Jeanne d'Albret, Andelot, Rohan, La Roche- 
 foucauld, Porcien, and all the leaders of the great 
 revolt. Here they met in grave council, when the 
 cause seemed almost lost, and nothing remained but 
 to sell their lives as dearly as they could. 
 
 The Protestant Temple, where is still held the lecture 
 and the preche, is a modern structure which stands 
 upon the site of that wherein Coligny and the early 
 confessors met to pray and hear the Word. As you 
 wander about the narrow streets of the town, you pass 
 under cool cloisters and corridors of stone, which 
 make side-walks. Look up at the stone roof from 
 time to time ; you will read there many an old 
 Huguenot legend, many a pious ejaculation, many a 
 word of faith, carved and painted in those days when 
 the women and children remained within the walls, 
 while the men went out to fight under the brave 
 Admiral. At the harbour mouth still stand the 
 two great towers which command the entrance, 
 and once gave safety to Coligny's fleet. The walls 
 of the town are those of the last century, the old 
 walls being all pulled down ; they are of earth, with
 
 Huguenot Fleet. 187 
 
 sloping scarp and counterscarp, moat and curtain, 
 angle and bastion. 
 
 Coligny fitted out a fleet of thirty ships, the com- 
 mand of which was given to Chastelier Portant, by 
 means of which he kept the communication open with 
 the English ports, and waged implacable war on the 
 ships of all Catholic countries. Like his infantry, his 
 sailors were subjected to a discipline the rules of 
 which may be gathered from those adopted, in imita- 
 tion of Coligny's rules, by the Prince of Orange in his 
 fleet of the Gueux. Only men of good reputation 
 were received into the service ; a minister was to sail 
 with every vessel ; and a third of the spoil was to go 
 to the cause. The little Huguenot fleet of Coligny 
 was thus the model of the great Dutch navy. 
 
 As regards the land forces, the Huguenots had 
 never before been able to raise so powerful an army. 
 For the first time it seemed as if they were to meet the 
 enemy on equal terms. Twenty thousand men, without 
 counting the Germans, were in the field, fully armed 
 and well disciplined. Opposed to them was the 
 Catholic army, equal in strength but inferior in dis- 
 cipline, commanded nominally by the Duke of Anjou, 
 really by Tavannes. All through a long and excep- 
 tionally severe winter, a war of skirmishes went on, in 
 which the skill and daring of the Admiral inspired 
 the enemy, as Tavannes himself tells us, with an 
 increasing dread and admiration. These hostilities
 
 1 88 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 took place in the flat country lying between Chatel- 
 lerault and Poitiers, and, later on, further north, the 
 Catholics being slowly driven back, between the rivers 
 Loiret and Vienne. With the spring, these tem- 
 porary advantages were lost ; the Catholics, largely 
 reinforced, pushed southwards, driving the Huguenots 
 back upon the Charente, and on the 13th of March, 
 1569, the battle of Jarnac was fought, the Protestants 
 defeated, and Conde killed. The defeat itself was 
 nothing ; the Huguenot soldiers retired in good order, 
 and the enemy did not follow up the victory ; but 
 the death of the Prince was a blow which seemed 
 at first fatal to the cause. Even Coligny, the man of 
 so many reverses, did not dare at first to send the 
 news to La Rochelle. Jeanne d'Albret it was who 
 raised the soldiers from despair : she came to the 
 camp, and rode along the ranks with her son Henry 
 on her right, and Conde's son on her left. She 
 addressed the men in words which burned with 
 enthusiasm and maternal love ; she gave them her 
 dominions, her treasures, her life, her son. All should 
 be sacrificed to the sacred cause of religious liberty. 
 Jarnac was forgotten in the shouts that greeted her in 
 reply, and Coligny was the first to swear fidelity to 
 Henry of Navarre, thus proclaimed general of the 
 Huguenot army in his fifteenth year. 
 
 It was with a heart heavy for other reasons that the 
 Admiral entered upon his last campaign. His little
 
 Death of Andelot. 189 
 
 daughter, the Renee whom he loved so tenderly, was 
 taken from him, and, a few weeks after, his brother, 
 the impetuous and gallant Andelot, died at Saintes, 
 either of fever or of poison. Andelot did not possess 
 the military genius of the Admiral, but he was a good 
 soldier, rapid and impetuous, brave to rashness, and a 
 Protestant with as much conviction as the Admiral, 
 and perhaps more fervour. His last words were pro- 
 phetic, " La France aura beaucoup de maux. . . . 
 mais tout tombera sur l'Espagnol. Je ne reve point, 
 mon frere, l'homme de Dieu me l'a dit." On the 
 death of his brother, Coligny writes to his own 
 children and Andelot's in the following terms : — 
 
 "Although I doubt not that the death of my brother 
 Andelot has caused you deep affliction, I have nevertheless 
 thought it well to bring before your minds the fact that you 
 are happy in being the sons, or nephews, of so great a man, 
 who, I dare to affirm, was the very faithful servant of God, 
 as well as a most excellent and renowned captain. These are 
 virtues whose memory and example should be always before 
 your eyes, so that you may imitate them as much as possible. 
 And I can say with truth that no one has surpassed him in 
 the profession of arms, not doubting that foreigners will 
 render the same testimony, especially those who have proved 
 his valour. Now, so great a reputation was not acquired by 
 indolence and sloth, hut by severe toils and hardships endured 
 for his country. And certainly I have never met with 
 any man more just, or a greater lover of piety. I know that 
 it would not be becoming in us to publish these praises 
 among strangers, but I impart them to you more freely in
 
 190 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 order to excite and stimulate you to the imitation of such 
 great virtues, which I propose to myself for my own 
 example, beseeching God that I may depart from this 
 life as piously and as humbly as I have seen him die. 
 And so much as I regret his loss with an exceedingly great 
 sorrow, do I ask of you, in consolation of my grief, to let me 
 see his virtues revive and shine in you ; and, with this aim, 
 that you give yourselves up with all your hearts to piety and 
 the true religion, and that you employ yourselves, while you 
 are yet young, in the study of those good books which con- 
 duct you in the paths of virtue." 
 
 Conde's death and the youth of Henry made the 
 Admiral, for the first time, absolute master. It is 
 chiefly in this, the last period of his military career, 
 that we ever see his real genius. Crushed at Jarnac, 
 he is ready a week later to take the field again. 
 He wins the battle of Roche Abeille, he overruns 
 Poitou, and the spirits of the Huguenots rise again. 
 
 Among the gentlemen volunteers of his army was 
 one, a youth of eighteen, of special interest to our- 
 selves. Walter Raleigh fought his first battle in the 
 ranks of the Huguenot army, under the banners of 
 Conde and Coligny. He was one of the defeated 
 side at Jarnac. 
 
 Six months later, on the third of October, Raleigh 
 was again among the Huguenots at the village of 
 Montcontour, where they again stood face to face with 
 the enemy. The disastrous day began badly. On 
 the very morning of the battle the men mutinied for
 
 The Darkest Hour. 191 
 
 pay : they went into action with half a heart. The 
 Huguenot army would have been destroyed as well 
 as routed but for the desperate courage of Louis of 
 Nassau, who broke through the enemy's line at the 
 head of 1000 horse. Perhaps young Raleigh rode 
 with them. Two days after Montcontour, arrived Sir 
 Henry Champernoun with 100 English gentlemen 
 volunteers — a welcome reinforcement, though for 100 
 we would fain read 10,000. 
 
 Coligny, defeated but not cast down, was ready in a 
 week with a new plan of action — if his men would only 
 follow him — more audacious, more unexpected than 
 any he had yet tried. But the men would not follow 
 him. Worn out by so many defeats, overpowered by 
 numbers always superior, they were only anxious for 
 peace to be made — peace at any price, on any terms 
 that could be obtained. Coligny was determined that 
 there should be no peace until religious liberty was 
 obtained. Once more he wrote to Jeanne d'Albret 
 for assistance. Once more that incomparable woman 
 came to the camp, bringing with her the proceeds of 
 all her jewels, which she had sold and pawned, and 
 again harangued the soldiers. Her eloquence, coupled, 
 no doubt, with the arrears of pay, revived the courage 
 of the soldiers. 
 
 This was the blackest hour in Coligny's fortunes. 
 Andelot, his brother and his dearest friend, dead ; Odet 
 a refugee in England ; a price set upon his head, pro-
 
 192 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 claimed a traitor by his King, described by Pope 
 Pius V., though this mattered little, as a " detestable, 
 infamous, and execrable man," blamed by his own 
 friends for the defeats of Jarnac and Montcontour 
 and the death of the Prince, commander of a beaten 
 and dejected army — there seemed no gleam of hope. 
 Why not give up a useless struggle ? Why not, as 
 his soldiers wished, make such terms as a victorious 
 enemy would grant, and then, with his children and 
 nephews, with Jeanne d'Albret, Henry of Navarre, 
 young Conde, and Louis of Nassau, embark on board 
 one of his own ships and set sail for England ? Had 
 he done so, he would have found apologists. He had 
 done enough for honour, we should have said ; he had 
 sacrificed all — fortune, name, and ambition — to the 
 cause. These were all gone. He left, the apologist 
 would say, his country when he could give it nothing 
 more. There is one thing more a man always has to 
 give ; it is the last thing — it is his life. 
 
 In the midst of these troubles, he heard that his 
 splendid Castle of Chatillon had been pillaged, and 
 all his treasures^his art collections, his books, every- 
 thing — had been destroyed or dispersed. 
 
 "We must not," he writes to his boys after this intelli- 
 gence, " count upon what is called property, but rather place 
 our hope elsewhere than on earth, and acquire other means 
 than those which we see with our eyes or touch with our 
 hands. . . . Men have taken from us all they can. If
 
 His Great March. 193 
 
 such is always the will of God, we shall be happy. . . . 
 Persevere with courage in the practice of virtue." 
 
 Behind his fortresses of Angouleme and St. Jean 
 d'Angely, he re-formed the wreck of his forces, and 
 then started southwards by long and rapid marches, 
 intent upon accomplishing one of the greatest military 
 exploits on record. While the enemy believed him 
 to be still lurking in the south, cowed by defeat, he 
 would gather fresh troops as he went, and march 
 from Languedoc due north, right across the country, 
 to fall upon Paris itself. That was always in his 
 mind. Paris his, the cause was won. Paris was the 
 home of fanaticism ; but Parisians are fickle. He 
 had been their Governor, and knew them. He could 
 silence the preachers, and, their voices stilled, the rest 
 would be easy. Later events — when the Parisians 
 shouted and gave thanks for the murder of Henry III., 
 and afterwards received with Noels, Henry IV. — 
 showed that the Admiral knew his people. 
 
 The great march began. The soldiers, cheered 
 with the prospects of more fighting, sang as they 
 marched — 
 
 " Le Prince de Conde 
 II a et6 tue; 
 
 Mais Monsieur 1' Admiral 
 Est encore a cheval, 
 Avec La Rochefoucauld, 
 Pour chasser tous ces papaux, papaux, papaux."
 
 194 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 Besides his Frenchmen, Coligny had with him on 
 this great adventure 3000 reiters and the little band 
 of Englishmen, who started 100 strong, and of whom 
 twelve only were left at the end of the campaign. In 
 Navarre, Montgomery, with the "army of the Vis- 
 counts," had gained a signal advantage over the 
 Catholics. The Admiral intended first to effect a 
 junction with his forces. Strengthened by the acces- 
 sion of numerous arquebusiers in Gascony, Coligny 
 passed the last month of the year at Montauban. 
 Quite early in the next year, while the mountain 
 passes were yet dangerous with the winter snows, 
 he set out, in pursuance of his plan, to meet 
 Montgomery, and turned his face northwards. The 
 Court, in profound ignorance of his movements, 
 believed him to be in the south, quiet and inactive. 
 They were deceived : from every hamlet, from every 
 hill of Beam, the Vivarais, the Cevennes, the Hugue- 
 nots poured forth from their hiding-places to join 
 the Admiral's army, as snow gathers on the rolling 
 snowball. Fighting his way through a hostile 
 country, crossing swollen rivers whose bridges were 
 broken, camping in villages whose people had fled, 
 leaving, perforce, his wounded behind him, to be 
 reckoned with the dead, he lost 6000 men between 
 Nismes and St. Etienne ; but the spirits of his men 
 were high, as those should be whose all is risked upon 
 a single chance. Among the men rode young Henry
 
 Sickness and Recovery. 195 
 
 of Navarre, the boy general, whose strength and spirits 
 never failed ; with him was the little Prince of Conde ; 
 and with Coligny, his right hand, was Louis of Nassau. 
 The first and only check was at St. Etienne, where 
 Coligny fell ill. For a week his life was despaired of, 
 and already the chiefs had their eyes fixed on Louis 
 of Nassau as a probable successor, when the Admiral 
 recovered unexpectedly and suddenly, and sprang into 
 the saddle again. Two messengers from Catherine, who 
 was trying her usual Fabian policy, were waiting his 
 recovery. They would treat with no one else. " The 
 Huguenot cause," said one of the chiefs, "does not 
 depend on the illness or death of the Admiral." " If 
 he were dead," replied Goutant Biron, the ambassador, 
 "we would not offer you a cup of water." It was 
 true : there were others, gallant captains, soldiers as 
 brave as Andelot, statesmen as wise as Odet, beaux 
 sabreurs like Montgomery and La Rochefoucauld ; 
 but there was no leader of the Huguenots beside 
 Coligny. One other there had been — Conde — but he 
 was dead ; one other there might have been — Jeanne 
 d'Albret — but she was a woman. It was Coligny who 
 thought for all, worked for all, provided for all. It 
 was Coligny who disciplined the unruly soldiery, trying 
 to maintain among them, even in civil war, the virtues 
 of the Christian life ; only for Coligny would the 
 jealous chiefs work in concert ; to the common sense 
 of Coligny only would the fanatic ministers defer
 
 196 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 their zeal ; he it was, and none other, whom 
 his party trusted. And — which has been given to 
 few men — it was Coligny alone whom the Catholics 
 trusted. There can be no stronger tribute to his 
 worth than the fact that even Catherine, the Queen 
 of Lies, trusted implicitly the word as well as 
 the strength of the Admiral. "Were the Admiral 
 dead, she would not offer the Huguenots a cup of 
 water." 
 
 He did not die ; he recovered, and pushed on. 
 Fresh messengers came to parley ; the Court was 
 panic-stricken. At Arnay-le-Duc, in Burgundy, he 
 met Corse with 12,500 men, and beat him with 7000; 
 he pushed on to La Charite, and was within forty 
 miles of Paris before the Catholics could realise the 
 fact that he was not still hiding behind St. Jean 
 d'Angely. Catherine gave way, as she always did, 
 trusting once more, like her ally, Philip, to time. On 
 the 8th of August, 1570, a treaty was signed at St. 
 Germain-en-Laye, which gave the Reformed liberty 
 of religion in every town they then held, complete civil 
 equality, freedom from all disabilities in the universi- 
 ties, schools, and hospitals, and, as guarantees of good 
 faith, the towns of La Rochelle, Cognac, Montauban, 
 and La Charite. It was a peace that granted more 
 than any previous one, because it was the doing of 
 Coligny alone. There were real guarantees this time, 
 besides the perjured faith of Catherine ; and Coligny's
 
 Peace, with Trouble. 197 
 
 work, for the first time in his life, so far as the 
 Huguenot cause, seemed accomplished. 
 
 Peace was signed. If Coligny had reason to rejoice 
 over the unqualified success which terminated his 
 struggle, he rejoiced still more at the fact that the 
 King had himself pushed forward the business against 
 the advice of his mother and that of the young Duke 
 of Guise. But the flames of rage and violence were not 
 so easily trampled out. With the best intentions, the 
 King was too weak to enforce order : that must come 
 in time. Meanwhile, the Admiral could recover nothing 
 of his dispersed treasures. His brother the Cardinal's 
 houses were still occupied by usurpers. Two of his own 
 people were murdered. Yet he has hope. He writes 
 to Elizabeth that the peace will be a lasting one. He 
 writes to Geneva, asking the ministers to rejoice with 
 him, " for that it hath pleased God finally to convert 
 the pain and travail in which we have been into a 
 peace and tranquillity, for the duration and continua- 
 tion of which I am assured that you will aid us to 
 pray that He will maintain it, and grant that we may 
 long enjoy it." 
 
 All through the autumn of 1570, he toiled inces- 
 santly at the task of enforcing order. In spite of the 
 hopefulness with which he spoke, his anxieties were 
 very great. There were troubles and murders at Rouen 
 and Orange. He had to repress the intolerance of the 
 ministers assembled at La Rochelle. He knew that
 
 198 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 the Pope, Philip, Catherine, Anjou, Guise — all were 
 conspiring, intriguing, neglecting no opportunity of 
 breaking the treaty. In February, 157 1, he heard the 
 black news that his brother Odet was dead, the wise 
 and patient Odet, so long his adviser and his main- 
 stay. In Andelot he lost a hand ; in Odet, half his 
 wisdom. The Cardinal, who had been well received 
 by Elizabeth, was living with his wife in the Savoy. 
 Here he fell suddenly ill, with symptoms which 
 pointed to poison, and died. 
 
 So now the Admiral was left quite alone — wife, 
 brothers, eldest son, Conde\ all taken from him. Now 
 he stood unsupported, save for the advice and help of 
 Jeanne d'Albret. As regards his relations with the 
 Court, he had entirely ceased to trust in the promises 
 of Catherine. There was but one person he could 
 t m st — it was the King himself. From him he hoped 
 everything. 
 
 His chief negociator was a young noble, brought 
 up by himself, in whom he had great reliance, named 
 Teligny. This youth added to a charming and 
 winning manner, which entirely overcame the King, 
 the art of "carrying through" diplomatic schemes, 
 and awakening in the mind of Charles ambitions and 
 hopes which had hitherto been dormant. After the 
 Edict of St. Germain, Teligny, called " le porte paix," 
 continually went backwards and forwards between the 
 Court and La Rochelle, smoothing difficulties, and
 
 Jacqueline. 199 
 
 taking care that the King was kept acquainted with 
 the truth. 
 
 Other things at this moment helped to throw 
 Charles into the arms of the Admiral. He was 
 irritated against his mother and brother. He had 
 sworn the death of Guise for presuming to aspire to 
 marry his sister Marguerite. It was rumoured that 
 his elder sister, Elizabeth, Queen of Spain, had been 
 poisoned by her husband. 
 
 From March to July, 1571, Charles was disposed to 
 come to an understanding with Coligny. Louis of 
 Nassau had come from La Rochelle to talk over the 
 proposed alliance between France and the revolted 
 Flemings. Charles wished his sister to marry Henry 
 of Navarre. There was talk of marriage between 
 Elizabeth of England and the Duke of Anjou. 
 
 Other things of quite a different kind happened, in 
 the spring of 1 571, to rejoice the Admiral. Jacqueline 
 d'Entremont, a young and beautiful lady of Savoy, won 
 by admiration and respect, brought to him herself and 
 her wealth, wishing, she said, to be the " Martia of this 
 new Cato." In May, two months after his own mar- 
 riage, he gave his daughter Louise to his friend and 
 disciple, Teligny. " I counsel her," he says, in his 
 grave and solemn style, " to marry M. de Teligny for 
 the excellent disposition and other noble and rare 
 qualities which I have found in him. And if she does 
 so, I shall esteem her very happy. But in this thing
 
 200 Gaspard dc Coligny. 
 
 I wish not to use any authority or paternal command ; 
 only I let her know that, loving her as she very well 
 knows that I do love her, I give her this counsel 
 because I think it will be for her welfare and content- 
 ment, which in such matters one ought to look for 
 rather than great wealth and riches." 
 
 Teligny, whose patrimony had been squandered by 
 his father, had nothing. The hand of Louise, the 
 dearly loved daughter of the great Admiral, was 
 sought by many of the German Princes. Yet he 
 chose rather to give her to a penniless gentleman, 
 for the " bonnes conditions " he had marked in him. 
 
 In September, he obeyed the King's invitation, 
 and repaired to Blois. His reception was strange. 
 Catherine pretended to be sick ; the Duke of Anjou 
 pretended to be sick. The King received the Admiral 
 in his mother's chamber. They had made no provision 
 for the fifty gentlemen who accompanied their leader, 
 and who were fain to huddle together in two or three 
 rooms near that of the Admiral. 
 
 He stayed at Blois for a month, but made little 
 headway with the King, and saw clearly that Catherine 
 would never consent to break with Spain. In October, 
 he returned to Chatillon, where he occupied himself 
 with his young wife and his children. A letter remains 
 written by the little ones to Renee, the aged Duchess 
 of Ferrara, during these days. 
 
 It was the last time that the Seigneur of Chatillon
 
 The Admiral's Project. 201 
 
 would look upon wife and children, castle and gardens. 
 We may picture him visiting his college, taking 
 account of the behaviour of the students, watching the 
 education of his sons, cheered by the love of his wife, 
 wondering, perhaps, how long he will be allowed to 
 enjoy these things, of which he has enjoyed so little. 
 
 It is soon over, the breathing time. 
 
 In March, Jeanne d'Albret came to the Court, 
 after repeated invitations. Good news arrived from 
 Flanders. Louis of Nassau, on whom the King has 
 conferred a pension of 12,000 livres, departed for the 
 frontier. Charles wrote to his ambassador at Con- 
 stantinople that he was firmly resolved to oppose the 
 greatness of Spain. The Admiral came to the Court, 
 and for a time all seemed to go well. 
 
 There can be no doubt, none whatever, in spite of 
 the incredible subsequent treachery of the King, that 
 at this time he had grown to admire and trust the 
 Admiral above all other men. From no other had he 
 ever heard the truth — how Spain was the implacable 
 and hereditary enemy of France ; how the Spanish 
 policy was the exact opposite of all that was dear to 
 French traditions, and the Spanish institutions would 
 be impossible for Frenchmen to endure. The Admiral 
 recalled the history of Charles VIII. and his triumphal 
 march, that of Francis and his dreams; he pointed out 
 the glory that might be won in war against Spain ; he 
 awakened in the young King the warlike spirit of the
 
 202 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 Valois ; he offered a splendid addition to the realm, 
 the whole of the Low Countries ; he showed how his 
 Huguenot sailors would sweep the sea of Spanish 
 men-of-war, plunder the Spanish colonies, capture the 
 Spanish galleons laden with plate ; he made the King 
 participate for a moment in his own ambitions. France 
 should be united once again, and each should follow 
 his own religion. There should be French colonies in 
 America ; French influence should be felt again in 
 Europe ; French commerce should be extended ; a 
 great French navy should be founded ; the royal power 
 should be strengthened ; the lawlessness of great 
 nobles suppressed. 
 
 Lastly, the Admiral put everything frankly and 
 trustfully into the hands of the King. He gave up all 
 the guarantees, the strongholds of the Huguenots, and 
 placed them in the hands of Charles. Loyalty could 
 go no farther. 
 
 He threw himself into these projects with all the 
 ardour of his nature. " Qui empesche la guerre 
 d'Espagne n'est pas bon Frangais et a une croix rouge 
 dans le ventre," he said to Tavannes, who was in the 
 opposite interest ; and to Strozzi and Brantome he 
 said, "Praise God, all goes well ; before long we shall 
 have driven out these Spaniards from the Netherlands 
 and made our own King the master, or died in the 
 attempt, and I the first." There can be little doubt 
 that, in his eagerness to promote this war, in which
 
 His Last Ca7'd. 203 
 
 alone he saw the chance of lasting peace, he fairly 
 offered the King his choice between it and a renewal 
 of civil war. Nor can there be any doubt which the 
 King would have chosen, but for Catherine. She was 
 afraid ; she thought that fanaticism would prove 
 stronger than patriotism. She was afraid ; it is the 
 sad refrain that runs through the history of three 
 reigns — the Queen-mother was afraid. Like all 
 cowardly natures, Catherine hated those whom she 
 feared. She hated the Guises all through ; she hated 
 Philip ; she hated the Constable ; and now, for the 
 first time, she hated Coligny. When her hatred of 
 him was greater than her hatred of the Guises, she 
 compassed his death. 
 
 Coligny drew up a memoir : the time for peace with 
 Spain, he said, was past. Philip would never forgive 
 the reception given to Louis of Nassau : no time like 
 the present for inevitable war : honour called for 
 reprisals for the French subjects murdered in America. 
 Every Protestant power would aid, and the wounds of 
 France would be healed when her soldiers were once 
 more fighting on a foreign soil. And then the 
 Admiral played his last card. The deception of the 
 Queen-mother was at last patent to him ; all her lies 
 and treacheries lay unrolled before him like a map. 
 Who were the real enemies of his policy ? Who 
 betrayed the secret of the Court to Philip ? Who 
 were the traitors to France? Those nearest and
 
 204 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 dearest to the King, his mother and his brother. He 
 told the King the truth, and proved it. " What have 
 you learned," asked Catherine, " in your long inter- 
 view with the Admiral ?" " I have learned, madam," 
 replied her son furiously, " that the two greatest 
 enemies I have are you and my brother." 
 
 It was then that Catherine finally resolved to destroy 
 Coligny, and with him his party. Men sent warning 
 letters to the Admiral, but he laughed at them, for his 
 influence was greater than ever with the King. On 
 the 7th of August he wrote to La Rochelle, thanking 
 God that the King's mind was turned to the preserva- 
 tion of the peace : " vous n'avez, Dieu merci, nulle 
 occasion de craindre." On the nth, William of 
 Orange prayed him to hasten his departure for the seat 
 of war. On the 18th, they celebrated in great amity 
 the marriage of Henry of Navarre and Margaret at the 
 Cathedral of Notre Dame. The Admiral pointed to 
 the flags which had been captured at Jarnac and 
 Montcontour, promising soon to replace them by 
 others more worthy of France. These others were 
 never to be hung there, because the Admiral had now 
 but a week to live. To his young wife he wrote, 
 betraying a certain uneasiness, though all seemed well. 
 
 Meantime, one Maurevel, a hired assassin, the 
 servant of the young Duke of Guise, a prince who 
 inherited his father's courage and strength of will, 
 without any of the chivalrous qualities which had
 
 The Admiral Shot. 205 
 
 commended him to young Gaspard de Coligny, was 
 already taking his measures. 
 
 On the morning of the 22nd of August, the Admiral 
 was invited by the Duke of Anjou to settle a difference 
 between two of his gentlemen. The arbitration con- 
 cluded, he left the Louvre to return to his own hotel. 
 On the way he met the King going to play tennis 
 with the Duke de Guise, and accompanied him as far 
 as the tennis court, where he left him, and turned 
 homewards, followed by ten or twelve gentlemen. At 
 the corner of the Rue Betizy, a man offered the 
 Admiral a petition, which he received and began to 
 read, walking slowly along the road. 
 
 Suddenly, there was a report from a corner house. 
 The Admiral dropped the paper, one finger of his 
 right hand being broken and his left arm grievously 
 wounded. Maurevel's shot had wounded, but it had 
 not killed him. So far, for the Guises, it was a coup 
 manque, a bungling attempt at murder.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE DAY OF BARTHOLOMEW. 
 
 "The sentence is gone forth against this murderer, the King of France, 
 
 and the vengeance of God shall not be withdrawn from his house. His 
 
 name shall be held in execration by posterity, and no one who shall spring 
 
 from his loins shall possess the kingdom in peace." 
 
 John Knox. 
 
 THEY carried the Admiral to his own house, which 
 stood hard by, in the street then called the Rue 
 de Betizy, but afterwards the Rue des Fosses-Saint- 
 Germain. His hotel remained untouched until the 
 middle of the last century, at which time it was 
 called the Hotel de Lisieux. They then still showed 
 the Admiral's chamber : the house is now destroyed. 
 
 The King, hearing the news, threw down his racquet, 
 crying, "Am I never to have any peace?" and sent 
 his own physician, Ambrose Pare, to attend to the 
 wounds. Pare, the most remarkable surgeon of the 
 century, was the first who practised the tying up of 
 arteries and the modern treatment of wounds. Before 
 his time, all wounds were treated by pouring over them 
 boiling oil. He was an avowed Huguenot, and owed
 
 The King's Visit. 207 
 
 his life at the massacre to the personal intervention of 
 the King. 
 
 Pare" found the wound comparatively slight. One 
 finger of the right hand was broken, and there was a 
 flesh wound in the left arm ; it was a wound which, with 
 care, would heal up in a few days. There was, how- 
 ever, the danger that the bullets, which were of copper, 
 might have poisoned the arm. "My friends," cried 
 the Admiral to his friends, who stood round him in 
 lamentation and tears, " why do you weep for me ? I 
 hold myself happy to have received these wounds for 
 the cause of God." 
 
 In the afternoon, the King himself, accompanied 
 by Catherine, the Duke of Anjou, and all his Court, 
 called upon the wounded man. The accounts of 
 the interview are somewhat uncertain. It is, however, 
 tolerably clear that the Admiral conversed with the 
 King in a low tone upon the Low Countries and the . 
 Edict of Pacification. Presently, Catherine requested 
 to see the bullet. " You bear the pain," said Charles, 
 " for the moment ; but I bear a perpetual pain : par 
 la mort Dieu, I will take such revenge that it shall 
 never be forgotten." 
 
 I have always been inclined to disbelieve that 
 Charles, when he paid this visit, had actually resolved 
 upon the massacre. Not only does the character of the 
 King, his behaviour immediately before the attempted 
 assassination and immediately after it, refute that
 
 2o8 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 charge, but the balance of evidence — such evidence as 
 exists — seems to me against it. On the other hand, 
 there is everything to prove that the massacre of 
 Bartholomew had been already resolved upon, and 
 that Catherine, the Duke of Anjou, and Guise were 
 the authors of the plot. 
 
 In any case, it is not necessary for us here 
 to inquire into the origin of the thing : this 
 attempted assassination took the Court and every- 
 body, except Guise, entirely by surprise. After the 
 King's visit to the Admiral, a Council was hastily 
 called together; the King, Catherine, Anjou, Guise 
 were there. Tavannes, who was also present, has 
 described what passed. They saw nothing before 
 them but more civil war. Already the Huguenots 
 were mustering in the streets, loudly demanding 
 justice, and making demonstrations before the hotels 
 of Guise and d'Aumale ; already they named the real 
 murderer as Guise himself. More civil war ; the 
 country exhausted ; the blood of thousands spilled ; 
 France longing for peace : how was that peace to be 
 secured ? To the mind of Catherine, one course only 
 presented itself — the course recommended years before 
 by Alva : let them murder all the chiefs. Charles — 
 what can be said in adequate pity and loathing ? — 
 consented. Should they kill young Conde and Henry 
 of Navarre ? Tavannes dissuaded them. No doubt, 
 Catherine and Guise thought that they could be
 
 Council at the Louvre. 209 
 
 — » ■ — 
 
 murdered afterwards. Sufficient for the day would 
 be the murder of Coligny, La Rochefoucauld, and 
 all the rest of the Protestant chiefs in Paris. 
 
 While this Council was being held at the Louvre, 
 another was held in the Admiral's hotel. Pare" reassured 
 the assembled chiefs as to the wound. Should they 
 carry away the patient, and, all together, leave Paris ? 
 This course was debated, and relinquished only on the 
 persuasion of Teligny, who vouched for the King's 
 good faith. They decided to remain ; they would 
 trust once more in the word and honour of that 
 Italian woman who had so often betrayed them ; who 
 for thirteen years had ruled and troubled France. 
 They were to expiate the folly of that confidence 
 with their lives. 
 
 Let us concede that Charles did not realise what 
 
 was about to be done. The deaths of a few leaders 
 
 seemed to him the extent of the murderous plot. 
 
 Chateaubriand pleads for pity for the young King. 
 
 What pity, save that which is accorded to the worst 
 
 and most degraded of criminals — the pity that one man 
 
 should have been in a position to wreak such evil — the 
 
 pity that such a man had ever been born — the pity and 
 
 the shame which spring out of the sense of common 
 
 humanity ? One thing alone can be said of him — he 
 
 was not the worst. Catherine, his mother, was worse ; 
 
 the Duke of Anjou, his brother, was worse ; the Duke 
 
 of Guise was worse ; Philip of Spain, the Cardinal of 
 o
 
 210 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 — a 
 
 Lorraine, the Pope of Rome — all these were worse, 
 because they applauded in cold blood an act which 
 was permitted in haste and rage and frenzy. 
 
 It was Guise who arranged the details, and reported, 
 on Saturday evening, that all was ready. Every good 
 Catholic was to be known by a strip of white linen 
 round his arm and a white cross in his hat. 
 
 The Captains of the Quarters and the Swiss were 
 waiting the signal. 
 
 The only sure way to secure the success of a con- 
 spiracy is to limit the possession of the secret to as 
 few as possible. Probably none but the three chief 
 conspirators knew, until the last moment, the whole 
 meaning of the preparations. In spite of the secrecy 
 observed, an uneasy feeling grew among the Hugue- 
 nots. A few, alarmed at mere whispers in the air, 
 suspicious without reason, retired from Paris. The 
 Pope had been informed, perhaps by the Cardinal de 
 Lorraine, that something signal was intended. Philip 
 waited in eager expectation for news of treachery and 
 ferocity. 
 
 On that Saturday night, the King sat late in the 
 Louvre. With him were his mother and his brother. 
 He was pale, trembling, and agitated. She, cold, calm, 
 and resolute, urged him to give the signal. It was 
 already half-past one on Sunday morning. At that 
 moment, the thought of his treachery mounted to his 
 brain. He hesitated ; a cold sweat broke out upon
 
 The Massacre. 2 1 1 
 
 his forehead. Then that woman, the tigress, maddened 
 him. She knew how to madden men as well as to 
 corrupt and destroy them. She called him coward. 
 Charles sprang from his chair — " Begin, then," he 
 cried. 
 
 Then they waited for the signal to be given. The 
 sound of a pistol was heard. Charles started, and 
 would have sent word to Guise to precipitate nothing. 
 His mother told him it was too late. 
 
 The great bell of St. Germain l'Auxerrois began to 
 toll. It was after two o'clock in the morning. 
 
 And then the streets of the sleeping city, quiet in 
 the warm air of an August night, became suddenly 
 filled with armed men, crying, " For God and the 
 King." 
 
 The leader of them all was the Duke of Guise. 
 Followed by his uncle, the Duke d'Aumale, the 
 Chevalier d'Angouleme, and 300 soldiers, he rushed 
 to the Admiral's hotel. 
 
 They knocked at the outer gate, calling for admis- 
 sion in the King's name. It was opened. The man 
 who stood to receive them was immediately murdered. 
 The inner gate was forced open. The household was 
 by this time roused. They barricaded the passages — 
 a feeble defence, which served for the servants to 
 reach the upper part of the house. Coligny was 
 awake. His minister, Merlin, was praying with him, 
 A valet rushed into the room. " Sir," he cried, " the
 
 2i2 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 house is broken open, and there are no means of 
 resistance." " I have long been prepared to die," 
 answered the Admiral. " Save your lives, if you can : 
 you cannot save mine. I commend my soul to the 
 mercy of God." 
 
 Then, for a brief space, he was left alone, save for 
 his German interpreter, who remained with him. 
 
 During the last moments of life, it is said, men can 
 review, in a single flash of memory, every event of 
 the preceding years, from the days when they tottered 
 at their mother's knees, till this the last, when the 
 pain and passion of death are actually before them, 
 and the wings of Azrael are beating on their ears. 
 It seems to us, who know the actions but not the 
 thoughts of the man, as if this retrospect would be to 
 Coligny full of joy and happiness, because, whatever 
 the event, his own service had been well done. No 
 doubt, in that solemn moment, there would come over 
 the spirit of this good and faithful servant the sense, 
 inseparable from all human actions, of imperfection. 
 
 They found him — Guise's murderers — leaning 
 against the wall, being weak and feeble after his 
 wound, and unable to stand. The first who entered 
 was one Besme, a servant of the Duke's. " Are you 
 the Admiral ?" he asked. 
 
 " I am," replied Coligny. Then looking in the face 
 of his assassin, he said, calmly—" Young man, you 
 ought to consider my age and my infirmity. But
 
 Death of the Admiral. 213 
 
 you will not make my life shorter " — meaning that he 
 was already, by reason of his wounds, at the point of 
 death. 
 
 Besme plunged the sword into his breast, and gave 
 him a second blow upon the head. The other soldiers, 
 who had crowded into the room, despatched him with 
 daggers. 
 
 "Besme! Besme!" cried the Duke of Guise from 
 below, "is it done ?" 
 
 " It is done, my lord," answered the servant. 
 
 To satisfy his master, he threw the body out of the 
 window into the court-yard. The Duke of Guise, 
 wiping the blood from the dead man's face with his 
 handkerchief, looked upon the well-known features of 
 his enemy. " I know him," he cried, joyfully ; " it is 
 he." He kicked the dead body with his foot, and left 
 it there, calling on his companions to go on with the 
 good work in the name of the King. 
 
 Sixteen years later, the corpse of this same Henry 
 Duke of Guise was lying before another murderer, 
 Henry the Third, who, as Guise had treated the dead 
 body of Coligny, so treated the dead body of Guise, 
 with a brutal kick. 
 
 ****** 
 
 The rest of the story of Bartholomew may be told 
 by others. Sufficient for us to note that the Pope 
 rewarded the messenger who brought him the joyful 
 tidings with a thousand pieces of gold, offered up
 
 214 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 solemn thanksgiving with the College of Cardinals, 
 fired the cannon of Saint Angelo, and struck a medal 
 in honour of the event. The Cardinal de Lorraine, 
 who was in Rome at the time, celebrated the news by 
 a great procession to the French Church of St. Louis, 
 on whose gates he wrote an inscription in letters of 
 gold, thanking God for hearing his prayers, offered 
 daily for twelve long years. Philip the Second wrote 
 to Catherine that this was the best news she could 
 possibly have sent him. In Germany, Switzerland, and 
 England, the intelligence was received with amazement 
 and horror which belied the powers of language. 
 
 But the Admiral was dead ; and everywhere those 
 who were the enemies of Protestantism and the 
 enemies of France rejoiced.
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 IT remains to say a few words on the character of 
 the great man whose life I have endeavoured to 
 set forth. First, let us hear what a contemporary, 
 Brantome, says of his death. 
 
 "Unfortunate death I call it for all France, seeing the 
 evils which came of it and yet will come; for what could 
 the King wish for more than to get rid of a powerful enemy, 
 though he showed him a good face? Coligny was going 
 out of the kingdom with 20,000 of his own partisans, and, 
 God knows, the best. He was going to conquer a country 
 as large as a kingdom, and appropriate it for his King. For 
 himself, he wanted nothing. All the reports of that kind 
 are false. He no more wished to be the King of France 
 than I do. But he did wish to hold a great charge under 
 the King — to have the same rank as he had held under the 
 great King Henry — to be his lieutenant-general." 
 
 This is the testimony of a Catholic, not a Huguenot. 
 
 Coligny, at the time of his murder, was by no means 
 
 the venerable patriarch that we are accustomed to
 
 2i6 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 consider him. He was about fifty-seven years of age, 
 the only touch of time being shown in his grey hair ; 
 he was an extremely strong man, healthy, vigorous, 
 capable of any fatigue, and still fresh for every kind of 
 work. At a step in life's journey when the road still 
 stretches far ahead, and plenty of good work looms 
 yet before, Coligny seemed to himself to have spent 
 his life fruitlessly, save for one thing — the establish- 
 ment of religious liberty. All the rest was still to do. 
 Since this, too, failed, we may be tempted at first to 
 regard his whole life as a failure. This, as we shall 
 see, was not so. As regards his religion, Coligny 
 organised the Reform and disciplined the Reformers ; 
 he showed them their real strength. He was the first 
 to perceive clearly that, in his own life at least, Pro- 
 testantism could never become the religion of his 
 country. And then he proclaimed and practised, 
 himself the first, the principles of religious toleration. 
 He prepared the way, as he set the example, for his 
 pupil, Henry the Fourth. It was through the efforts 
 of Coligny, and no other, that the Protestants obtained 
 liberty of conscience until the revocation of the Edict 
 of Nantes. 
 
 His political programme, could it have been carried 
 out, included, as regards internal affairs, a kingdom 
 in which Catholic and Protestant would have lived 
 together side by side, at peace if not in friendship, as 
 they do in this realm of England.
 
 Foreign Policy. 217 
 
 As regards foreign affairs, he saw that France, 
 could the weak point of intolerance be removed, 
 had but one enemy — that enemy weakened by long 
 wars, by emigration to America, and by the great 
 extent of her empire. He would face that power 
 boldly ; he would meet her in her Transatlantic 
 possessions, on the Spanish frontier, and in the Low 
 Countries ; he would fight the common enemy of 
 progress with the aid of English and German allies. 
 
 A great France open to the teaching of emancipated 
 minds, extending her colonies far and wide, with a 
 powerful navy, a disciplined army, encouraging trades, 
 offering to all a free education — this was the dream, 
 the life-long dream, of the man. 
 
 His dream died with him. After many years, it 
 was revived in part by Richelieu, but only in part. 
 
 It is one great quality of noble dreams that they 
 bring with them the development and improvement 
 of those means by which alone they can be realised. 
 Coligny worked perpetually on the improvement of 
 the instruments by which he hoped to accomplish his 
 great and ambitious ends. It was he who first 
 reduced to discipline and order the unruly soldiers 
 who composed the French infantry. " More than a 
 million of lives," says Brantome, "saved by the 
 Admiral's rules !" What has the King, what have the 
 people, to offer as a reward to the man who saves a 
 million lives ? It was he who first made it possible
 
 2i8 Gaspai'd de Coligny. 
 
 for a camp to be orderly, quiet, and God-fearing, 
 anticipating Cromwell by a hundred years. It was 
 he who first introduced discipline into the fleet, as he 
 had already done for the army. William of Orange, 
 his son-in-law, founded the Dutch navy in imitation 
 of Coligny's wise rules. It was he who foresaw the 
 advantages of a colonial empire, and strove to estab- 
 lish settlements on the other side of the Atlantic, if 
 only for those of the Religion. The early history of 
 French Canada shows that the lesson was not lost. 
 The first settlements of the English were stimulated, 
 if not inspired, by the narrative of Ribaut's failure in 
 Florida. Again, anticipating the Scotch Puritans, he 
 wanted to see education universal and compulsory. 
 It was from education alone that he hoped to see the 
 accomplishment of religious emancipation. In all 
 these things Coligny was before his age. 
 
 In truth, there is no grander figure in the sixteenth 
 century than that of the great Admiral. One thinks 
 of him as grave, but not stern ; severe in speech, simple 
 in life, but no bigot ; sadly working at what lies before 
 him to be done, yet always hoping for better things ; 
 trusted by all alike, friend and foe ; trusting all in 
 turn, save when he could trust no longer ; always 
 believing the best of everybody ; never afraid, never 
 cast down, never losing his hold on hope, faith, and 
 charity ; his mind continually full of high and lofty 
 things.
 
 Home Life. 219 
 
 Again, one turns from the stern picture of Coligny 
 struggling with adverse fate, to that quiet home-life 
 which looks so fair and beautiful, but of which he could 
 enjoy so little. He and his two brothers lived un- 
 divided, actuated by the same motives, hopeful of the 
 same results. Their ambitions, their faith, their aims 
 were one. There exists a medallion which figures the 
 three brothers side by side ; but the Admiral is the 
 central figure of the three. I think the world has never 
 seen three brothers so remarkable. Or he is with his 
 wife and children, directing their studies, watching 
 them at their play ; talking with Charlotte de Laval 
 over the brave days that may come when the oppressors 
 are cast out ; seeking solace among his pictures, books, 
 and statuary, or quietly working out some plan of 
 relief for the Protestant Church. 
 
 Note again, that, in an age of treachery, dissimula- 
 tion, and universal bad faith, not one has a word to 
 say against any of these three brothers. Their lives 
 were acknowledged by their enemies to be absolutely 
 blameless ; their word was sacred. From the Pope to 
 the most fanatic monk, not one had a charge to make 
 against the Admiral, Andelot, or the Cardinal, except 
 that they were heretics. 
 
 Lastly, he had the rare and beautiful power of 
 attracting the love of all men alike. Not only his own 
 followers, men like Teligny, La Noue, and others — 
 not austere Puritans at all, albeit of the Religion —
 
 220 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 loved their chief; but Charles the Ninth himself, 
 brought up from infancy to regard him as the enemy 
 of the faith, learned to love and trust him. Conde, ce 
 joly petit homme qui ioiijours rit, loved him. Jeanne 
 d'Albret, the best woman of her age, knew the worth 
 of him who was its best man. Her son, Henry of 
 Navarre, cherished his memory all through his life. 
 William and Louis of Nassau were his disciples. 
 Englishmen came to fight under the banners of the 
 man who most commanded the attention, the respect, 
 and the admiration of the world. 
 
 These remained with him, in spite of the ill luck 
 which steadily attended him. Everything seemed to 
 fail except his courage. His death was the signal for 
 the destruction of what he had spent years in building 
 up. His life is like that of some hero of ancient 
 tragedy, in whom fate gradually closes more 
 darkly, with deeper and deeper shadows, though 
 with occasional gleams of sunshine, till the climax is 
 reached. 
 
 There was no one like him ; not one, even among 
 our Elizabethan heroes, so true and loyal, so religious 
 and so steadfast, as the great Admiral. He has 
 become a proverb for fidelity, honesty, and courage. 
 His name has sunk into the hearts of Frenchmen 
 more than that of any other man. He has earned 
 the gratitude of every one who can realise, even 
 imperfectly, what a great, what a priceless thing it is
 
 Liberty of Thought. 221 
 
 to be born beyond the power of priests — to live in a 
 land where ecclesiastical pretensions have no meaning 
 for the people, and are only paraded in idle show. The 
 deliverance of mankind from this pretence of authority 
 is as yet far from complete. Sometimes it seems 
 farther off than ever. Yet we cannot but believe that 
 it slowly advances. Not to believe this would be to 
 despair of humanity. Complete liberty of thought 
 can only dwell in the world when, for many genera- 
 tions, mankind has resolved to put into practice the 
 divine dreams of Coligny — when all shall be educated 
 alike, both rich and poor, men and women — when all 
 shall have thrown off for ever the yoke of authority, 
 and learned to regard the dreadful story of the past 
 as that of the long slow march of liberty. 
 
 For us, who cannot live to see the fulness of light, 
 it is something to stand in the ranks of Coligny's suc- 
 cessors. It is something to feel that, like that curve 
 which gradually and for ever approaches a certain 
 line which it never meets, humanity is always drawing, 
 however slowly, nearer and nearer to the perfect 
 freedom for which its greatest men have died. But that 
 freedom, like the asymptote, is a tangent at infinity. 
 
 For three days after St. Bartholomew, the populace 
 amused themselves with dragging the headless trunk 
 of Coligny through the streets of Paris. Then they 
 hanged it by the feet to the gibbet of Montfaucon,
 
 222 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 whither, according to some, the King and all the 
 Court rode to see their victim. But this does not 
 seem true. During the night, a faithful servant stole 
 the mutilated corpse, and placed it in a leaden coffin. 
 It was taken to Chantilly, the seat of Montmorency, 
 whence it was removed to Chatillon, where, for 
 greater security, it was built up in a recess in the wall. 
 Strange to say, the fact and place were quite forgotten 
 by the unworthy descendants of the great Huguenot. 
 In 1657, the last Coligny died, the family title and 
 possessions passing to the Montmorency Luxem- 
 bourgs. One day, a hundred years later, the Duke of 
 Luxembourg was at dinner in his chateau of Chatillon- 
 sur-Loing, when they came to tell him that certain 
 workmen, in executing repairs, had discovered in the 
 wall a leaden box, doubtless containing treasure. It 
 was opened, and found to contain the bones of the 
 Admiral. The Duke did not conceal his disappoint- 
 ment. What were the bones of a great man com- 
 pared to a box full of doubloons ? He actually gave 
 the coffin to the Marquis of Montesquieu, who built a 
 fitting tomb for them in his park of Maupertuis. On 
 one side of the tomb was a Latin epitaph — 
 
 " Magni illius Francise Admiralis Gaspardis a Coliniaco 
 hujusce loci domini ossa in spem resurrectionis hie sunt 
 deposita : anima autem apud Eum pro quo constantissime 
 pugnavit recepta est." 
 
 And on the other side a slab, on which was inscribed
 
 Conclusion. 223 
 
 Voltaire's account of the night of Saint Bartholomew. 
 Then came the Revolution. Once more the coffin 
 was removed, this time to Paris for safety. The Duke 
 of Luxembourg-, after the Restoration, asked the 
 Count of Montesquiou-Fezensac to give it back, and 
 finally the coffin was taken back to Chatillon, where, 
 as we have already seen, the bones of the great 
 Admiral lie resting at last and forever among the 
 ruins of his own castle.
 
 APPENDIX I. 
 
 TN the second Appendix will be found a genealogical table 
 * of the House of Chatillon. A few words of commentary 
 on the names which appear in it seem desirable. 
 
 The Admiral had, by his first wife, five sons — Henri, 
 Gaspard, Francis, Odet, and Charles — and two daughters — 
 Louise and Rene'e. By his second wife, he had a post- 
 humous daughter, Beatrix. The unfortunate Jacqueline, 
 this second wife, was thrown into prison by the Duke of 
 Savoy, and kept there till she died — Beatrix, her daughter, 
 being separated from her, and brought up in the Catholic 
 faith. 
 
 Of the sons, Henry died in infancy, and Gaspard at the age 
 of fifteen ; there remained Francis, Odet, and Charles. The 
 eldest of these was fifteen years old at the Bartholomew 
 massacre. The King sent a detachment of horse to 
 Chatillon to arrest Madame de Chatillon, her step-children, 
 and the children of Andelot. Francis, with his cousin, Guy 
 de Laval, Andelot's eldest son, escaped in disguise, and 
 managed to get to Geneva. Hearing that Madame d' Ande- 
 lot had escaped to Bale, with the rest of her family, they 
 joined her there. Jacqueline d'Entremont, the Admiral's
 
 Appendix I. 225 
 
 widow, being then far advanced in pregnancy, was unable 
 to escape. 
 
 In 1575, being then eighteen years of age, young Coligny 
 returned to France, and at once assumed a position as one 
 of the leaders of the Huguenots. For twelve years he led a 
 life of unceasing battle, showing himself rather a knight of 
 heroic courage than a general. In his hands, at least, the 
 reputation of the Chatillons for courage, skill, and loyalty 
 suffered no abatement. 
 
 Of his second brother, Odet, little is known, except that 
 he fought worthily, and died unmarried, or without issue. 
 
 The third, Charles, too young to have felt the influence 
 of his father, was brought up in a convent, and not restored 
 to his own people until the year 1577. During the first 
 siege of Paris, he abjured Protestantism, and joined the 
 party of Guise, his father's murderer. 
 
 Louise de Coligny was married twice — first to Teligny, as 
 we have seen, and, ten years after the murder of her young 
 husband in the massacre, to William the Silent. She saw 
 her second, like her first, husband murdered, so to speak, 
 in her very arms. This illustrious woman, worthy of her 
 father, should be made the subject of a special biography. 
 Here there is only room to say that, among the descendants 
 of her one son, Frederick Henry of Nassau, may be num- 
 bered the Count of Paris and the Emperor of Germany ; so 
 that the blood of the great Admiral is not extinct, but lives. 
 
 Her sister, Renee, died in childhood. 
 
 Francis de Coligny, who married Marguerite d'Ailly de 
 Pdquigny, left four children — (1) Henri, a young man of 
 infinite promise, in whom the Protestants loved to trace the 
 features as well as the character of his grandfather, the 
 Admiral; he was killed in his nineteenth year, at the 
 p
 
 226 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 defence of Ostend; (2) Gaspard, of whom we shall speak 
 immediately ; (3) Charles, and (4) Francois, who both died 
 without children. 
 
 Gaspard III., Marshal de Chatillon, born in 1584, proved 
 a lukewarm defender of the faith. His character was 
 indolent and gentle. He aimed at Court favour ; he raised 
 suspicions among his own party as to his loyalty to the 
 Reformed religion; and, in his latter days, he became 
 neutral in the affairs of the Protestant Church. No doubt, 
 he saw the hopelessness of further struggle. Nevertheless, 
 he never left the Church. 
 
 He had two sons and two daughters — 
 
 r. The eldest, Maurice, was killed in a duel by the 
 Duke de Guise, in his twenty-fifth year. 
 
 2. The second, Gaspard, abjured the Protestant 
 religion, and died at the age of twenty-nine, leaving 
 one son, Henri-Gaspard, who died in early manhood, 
 unmarried. 
 
 3. Henriette. She married, in 1643, Thomas Hamil- 
 ton, Earl of Haddington and en secondes noces, Gaspard 
 de Champagne, Count de la Suze. It is under the 
 name of the Countess de la Suze that this unworthy 
 descendant of the great Admiral is remembered. She, 
 too, abjured Protestantism. She was the author of a 
 quantity of verse, of mediocre quality, and of the 
 courtly amorous school. 
 
 4. Anne, who married the Count de Montbe'liard, and 
 died without children. 
 
 This terminated the elder line. 
 
 Andelot was twice married. By his first wife, Claude de 
 Rieux, he had two sons and two daughters. By his second, 
 Anne de Salmy, he had also two sons and two daughters.
 
 Appe7idix I. 227 
 
 The daughters all appear to have died without children. 
 
 The eldest son, Guy Paul de Chatillon, Comte de Laval, 
 was born in 1555. He escaped the massacre, and retired 
 into Switzerland, where he remained until 1576. With his 
 three brothers, he threw himself into the cause for which his 
 father had lived and died. One of these died of fever, at 
 St. Jean d' Angle ; the two others were cut down by his side 
 in a cavalry engagement at Taillebourg. Guy himself 
 followed them to the grave a week later, overcome with 
 grief. Thus the four sons of the gallant Andelot were all 
 cut off together. 
 
 He left one son, Guy de Coligny, who died of fever while 
 fighting against the Turks, at the age of twenty one. In 
 him the younger branch became extinct.
 
 APPENDIX II. 
 
 GENEALOGY OF THE CHATILLONS. 
 
 Frederic de Mailly = Louise de Montmorency = Gaspard, Marquis de 
 Baron de Conty | j Chatillon . 
 
 Ch. de Roye, = Madeleine | I • I 
 
 C. of Rosay. | Pierre. Odet. Gaspard. Francis. 
 
 Eleanore j d - "534 - 
 
 de Roye = Louis Prince of Conde. 
 
 I , 
 The Conde line. 
 
 . The Elder Line. 
 
 Charlotte de Laval = Gaspard = Jacqueline d'Entremont. 
 
 II I I I I I 
 
 Henri. Gaspard. Francis. Odet. Charles. Louise. Renee. Beatrix. 
 
 1557- ~ 
 
 d Kqi = Marguerite d'Ailly. 
 
 Henri. Gaspard. Charles. Francoise. 
 
 b. 1583. b. 1584. = Rene de Talmsac. 
 
 d. 1601. d. 1646. =^==^= 
 
 = Anne de Polignac 
 
 Maurice 0). Gaspard ( 2 ). Henriette = Earl of Haddington. Anne = 
 b. 1618. b. 1620. = Gaspard de Champagne, George de 
 
 d. 1643. = c - de la Suze - Montbeliard 
 
 (1) Killed in a zz. = 
 duel by the Due Henri Gaspard. 
 
 de Guise. , , J 
 
 (2) Abjured the d - Ib 57- 
 Protestant f.iith.
 
 Appendix II. 229 
 
 Descendants of Louise. 
 William of Nassau = Louise de Coligny. 
 
 Frederick Henry of Nassau = Emilie de Solmes. 
 
 Louise Henriette = Frederick William of Brandebourg. 
 
 Frederick I. of Brandebourg = Sophia Charlotte of Luxembourg. 
 
 Frederick William K. of Prussia = Sophia Dorothea of Hanover. 
 
 The Royal line of Prussia. 
 Philippine Charlotte — Charles of Brunswick Wolfenbiittel. 
 
 Anne Amelia= Auguste de Saxe Weimar. 
 
 Charles Auguste= Louise Auguste of Hesse Darmstadt. 
 
 Caroline Augusta of Saxe Weimar = Frederick Louis of Mecklenburg 
 j Schvverin. 
 
 Helena of Mecklenburg Schwerin^ Ferdinand, Duke of Orleans. 
 
 i 
 
 Count of Paris. 
 
 The Cadet Branch. 
 
 Francis de Chatillon = Anne de Salm. 
 Claude de Reaux = Sieur d'Andelot. | 
 
 1525— 1561. I j j j j 
 
 Francis. Benjamin. Anne= Suzanne = 
 Guy Paul. Francis. Claude. Marguerite. ■ d. is86. Jacqtie Guillaume 
 
 ' M. de de 
 
 C.de Laval = Anne d'Aligre. Mire beau. Pisuto. 
 
 1535— 1586. I 
 Guy 
 de Coligny (i). 
 1584— 1605. 
 
 (1) Abjured the Protestant faith.
 
 230 Gaspard de Coligny. 
 
 GENEALOGY OF THE GUISES. 
 Jean, K. of France. 
 
 Louis I., Due d'Anjou. 
 
 I 
 Louis II., D. d'Anjou. 
 
 Louis III., D. d'Anjou. Rene, D. d'Anjou. 
 
 = = I 
 
 Yolande = Ferry de Vaudemont. 
 Louis, D. de Calches. 
 
 Nicolas . I I I 
 
 Claude = Antoinette 
 Hercules = Renee de France de Bourbon. 
 
 d'Este I 
 
 Anne d'Este = Francis, D. of Guise. Charles, Marguerite = 
 
 Cardinal James V. of 
 
 de Lorraine. 
 
 Scotland. 
 
 Henri I., D. Ducde Louis, Cardinal Darnley = Mary = Francis II. 
 de Guise. = Mayenne. de Guise. | 
 
 Catherine de Cleves. 
 
 j James VI. 
 
 I I I I I I 
 
 Charles, D. de Guise Louis, Claude. Francis, Louise, „ 
 = Henriette de Joyense. Cardinal. Chevalier Princesse 
 
 de Guise, de Conte. 
 I Victoria. 
 
 I . I I 
 
 Henri II. Louis de Lorraine. Marie de 
 
 Lorraine. 
 
 Louis Joseph = Elizabeth d'Orleans. 
 
 I 
 Francis Joseph.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Amboise, conspiracy of, 108. 
 Andelot, 26, 33, 43, 81 ; conversion 
 
 of, 47; imprisoned, 89; death of, 
 
 189. 
 Ango, 53. 
 
 Anne du Bourg, 98. 
 Arnay-le-Duc, battle of, 196. 
 
 Berault, Nicolas, 31. 
 Bourbon, Antoine de, 97, ioo, 116, 
 
 154- 
 Brantdme's apology for civil war, 
 
 160. 
 Brazil, colony of, 52-73. 
 
 Catherine, 96, 207. 
 
 Charles V., 75. 
 
 Charles IX., 203-207. 
 
 Charlotte de Laval, marriage with 
 Coligny, 44, 176; death of, 182. 
 
 Chatillon-sur-Loing, 9; church of, 
 15; pillage of castle, 192. 
 
 Chatillon, the Marshal of, 25. 
 
 Civil war, 150-158, 160, 163, &c. 
 
 Coligny, tomb of, 18; epitaph on, 
 19; early influences on, 23; ances- 
 try of, 24; education, 27; friend- 
 ship with Francis de Guise, 38, 40; 
 first campaign, 42; marriage, 44; 
 reforms French infantry, 48 ; Ad- 
 miral of France, 51; enmity with 
 Guise, 78; prisoner, 81; conversion, 
 83; home life, 91, 104, 173; por- 
 trait of, 92 ; manner of life, 94, 
 104; presents petition, 112; dis- 
 cipline in camp, 159; organises the 
 Huguenots, 162; overruns Nor- 
 mandy, 167; reconciliation with 
 the Guises, 172; political schemes, 
 
 178 ; his swiftness, 180 ; loses his 
 son, 181, his wife, 182, and daugh- 
 ter, 189; flight with Condd, 184; 
 his fleet, 187; his great march, 193; 
 marries again, 199 ; wins confi- 
 dence of King, 201; shot at, 205; 
 murdered, 212; character of, 215. 
 Conde 1 , Louis de, 79, 116, 117, 162, 
 167, 184, 188. 
 
 Dreux, battle of, 166. 
 Du Bourg, Anne, 98. 
 Dufaur, Louis, 98. 
 
 Florida, colony of, 120, 123-127. 
 Fontainebleau, Assembly of, in. 
 Fort Coligny, 60. 
 France under Francis II., 95 ; 
 
 wretchedness of, 122. 
 Francis II., death of, 119. 
 
 Gourgues, De, revenge of, 144. 
 Guise, 38, 45, 116, 165, 167. 
 
 Hawkins, Sir John, 134. 
 Henry of Navarre, 188, 194. 
 Huguenot fleet, 187. 
 Huguenots, the, 106, 108, 162. 
 
 Jacqueline d'Entremont, 199. 
 jarnac, battle of, 188. 
 Jeanne d'Albret, 188, 191. 
 Joinville, Francis de, 38, 45. 
 
 La Fert£, meeting at, 102. 
 La Rochelle, 185. 
 Laudonniere, 130-137. 
 Lefevre d'Etaples, 21, 29. 
 Lorraine, Cardinal of, 113.
 
 232 
 
 Index. 
 
 Louise de Coligny, 173, 199. 
 Louis of Nassau, 195-199. 
 
 Madeleine de Mailly, 152. 
 Marguerite, 27-29. 
 Marot's psalms, 34, 92. 
 Massacre of Bartholomew, 206, 211. 
 
 Do. Huguenots, 164. 
 
 Do. French colonists, 142. 
 
 Do. Spaniards, 148. 
 
 Do. Vassy, 155. 
 Menendez, 135, 140, 143. 
 Michel de 1' Hospital, no. 
 Miraculous escape, the, 184. 
 Montcontour, battle of, 191. 
 Montmorency, 26, 32, 44, 158. 
 Montmorency, Louise de, 26, 30. 
 
 Odet de Chatillon, 26, 32, 46; 
 
 death of, 198. 
 Orleans, taking of, 162. 
 
 Pierria, Albert de la, 126. 
 Poltrot de Mere, 167, 168. 
 
 Protestantism, 115; in France, 86, 
 107, 108. 
 
 Raleigh, Walter, 190. 
 Rat-trap, the Cardinal's, 119. 
 Reformation, 20, 29. 
 Remorantin, edict of, no. 
 Renaudie, La, 108. 
 Renee de France, 152. 
 Ribaut, 124, 136. 
 Rochelle, La, 186. 
 Roche Abeille, battle of, 190. 
 
 St. Bartholomew, 211. 
 
 St. Denys, battle of, 180. 
 
 St. Germain-en-Laye, peace of, 196. 
 
 St. Quentin, battle of, 80. 
 
 Teligny, 198, 199. 
 
 Vassy, massacre of, 155. 
 Vaucelles, treaty of, 51, 75. 
 Vendome, meeting at, 101. 
 Villegagnon, 55. 
 
 Marcus Ward & Co., Royal Ulster Works, Belfast.
 
 THE NEW PLUTARCH, 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 Rev. W. J. BRODRIBB, M.A., and WALTER BESANT, M.A. 
 
 BIOGRAPHY is History teaching us by example. We 
 remember the movements of nations chiefly by the actions 
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 JUDAS MACCABEUS, and the Revival of the Jewish Nationality. 
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