Thornton & Son 
 
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THE 
 
 FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION 
 
 Cljeir political aispcrte 
 
 AN EXPANSION OF THREE LECTURES 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY EXTENSION 
 
 SUMMER MEETING OF AUGUST, 1892 
 
 BY 
 
 E. ARMSTRONG, M.A. 
 
 FELLOW OF queen's COLLEGE 
 
 HonHan 
 PERCIVAL & CO. 
 
 1892 
 

 (^/^^aW ^ISlQt (3.^ M,) 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Genealogy Showing Connection of the Houses of 
 Valois and Bourbon . 
 
 Genealogy Showing Connection of the Houses of 
 Montmorenci, Chatillon, and Conde . 
 
 Genealogy of the Houses of Lorraine and Guise 
 
 Chronological Summary 
 
 I. The Huguenots . 
 
 II. The League 
 
 III. The Crown 
 
 Index 
 
 Vll 
 
 ix 
 I 
 
 45 
 
 84 
 
 125 
 
 788501 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2008 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
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 CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY 
 
 FIRST PERIOD. 
 
 1559- Treaty of Cateau Cambresis between France and Spain (April). 
 Death of Henry II. at a Tournament. Accession of Francis II. 
 Supremacy of the Guises, uncles of the Queen. 
 
 1560. La Renaudie's Conspiracy, the Tumult of Amboise (March). Edict 
 
 of Romorantin against the Huguenots. Arrest and sentence of 
 Conde. Death of Francis II (Dec). Accession of Charles IX. 
 under guardianship of Catherine di Medici and Anthony of 
 Navarre. 
 
 156 1. Estates General of Orleans (Jan.). The Catholic triumvirate— Guise, 
 
 Montmorenci, S. Andre. Estates of Pontoise (Aug.). Colloquy 
 of Poissi between Catholic and Calvinist divines (Sept.). 
 
 1562. The tolerant Edict of January. Navarre joins the Catholics. 
 
 Massacre of the Congregation of Vassi by Guise's followers 
 (March). Conde and Coligni seize Orleans (April). English at 
 Havre. Capture of Rouen by Catholics (Oct.), and death of 
 Navarre, Defeat of Huguenots at Dreux. Capture of Conde 
 and Montmorenci. Death of S. Andre. 
 
 1563. Murder of Guise before Orleans by Poltrot (Feb.). Peace of 
 
 , Amboise (March). Capture of Havre from English (July). 
 
 1564. Peace of Troyes with English. Tour of Catherine and Charles. 
 
 1565. Their interview with Elizabeth of Spain and Alva at Bayonne 
 
 (June). 
 
 1566. Troubles in the Netherlands. 
 
 1567. Second War. Attempt of Conde to seize the Court at Meaux 
 
 (Sept.). Conde attacks Paris. Battle of S. Denis." Death of 
 Montmorenci (Nov.). 
 
 1568. John Casimir's Germans join Conde. Peace of Longjumeau or 
 
 Chartres (March). Flight of Conde and Coligni (Aug.). Third 
 War, Orange driven into France. 
 
X FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 1569. Defeat of Huguenots at Jarnac (March). Death of Conde. Invasion 
 
 of Deux Fonts. Defeat of Cohgni at Moncontour (Oct.). Defence 
 of S. Jean d'Angely. Louis of Nassau at Rochelle. 
 
 1570. Peace of S. Germain (Aug.). 
 
 1571-2. French schemes on Netherlands. Anglo-French alliance. Louis 
 of Nassau with French aid seizes Valenciennes and Mons. 
 Marriage of Navarre and Margaret. Massacre of S. Bartholo- 
 mew (Aug.). 
 
 SECOND PERIOD. 
 
 1572. Navarre and Conde abjure Reform. Local resistance of Huguenot 
 
 towns. The Fourth War, 
 
 1573. Sieges of Rochelle and Sancerre. Negotiations of the Crown with 
 
 Orange. The Fair of Frankfort. Election of Anjou to throne of 
 Poland (May). Peace of Rochelle (June). 
 
 1574. Fifth War. Conspiracy of Navarre and Alen9on— its discovery. 
 
 Execution of La Mole and Cocoftas. Arrest of Marshals Mont- 
 morenci and Cosse. Death of Charles IX. (May). Negotiations 
 for marriage of Alen^on with Elizabeth ( 1573-4)- Confederation 
 of Huguenots and Politiques under Damville in Languedoc. 
 Return of Henry HI. from Poland (Sept.). Death of Cardinal of 
 Lorraine (Dec). 
 
 1575. Escape and revolt of Alencon. Invasion of John Casimir (Sept.). 
 
 1576. Escape of Navarre (Feb.). Alencon, John Casimir, and Conde 
 
 march on Paris. Peace of Monsieur (April). Its favourable terms 
 for the Huguenots. Catholic League of Picardy (June). Estates 
 General of Blois and Catholic revival. 
 
 1577. The Sixth War (March). Peace of Bergerac (Sept.). 
 
 1578. Alencon in the Netherlands, Growing antagonism to the Crown. 
 
 1579. Alencon in England. French occupation of Cambrai and La Fere. 
 
 1580. Seventh or Lovers' War (Feb.). Peace of Fleix (Nov.). Treaty of 
 
 Plessis between Alen9on and United Provinces. Henry recognises 
 Alencoii's expedition to Netherlands. France to annex Artois. 
 
 1 581. Alencon lord of the Netherlands ; his visit to England and betrothal 
 
 to Elizabeth. 
 
 1582. Alen9on in the Netherlands. Catherine interferes for independence 
 
 of Portugal. Defeat of French fleet off Azores. 
 
 1583. Alengon's treacherous attempt on Antwerp (Jan.). 
 
 1584. Alengon's death (June). Assassination of Orange (July). 
 
CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY. xi 
 
 THIRD PERIOD. 
 
 1584. The League of Paris (Dec). 
 
 1585. The Pact of Joinville between Guises, Cardinal Bourbon, and 
 
 Spanish agents (Jan.). Henry III. refuses tlie sovereignty of 
 the Netherlands (Feb.). 
 
 1587. War of the 'Three Henries.' Navarre defeats Joyeuse at Coutras 
 
 (Oct.). The King makes terms with the German auxiliaries who 
 are cut to pieces by Guise (Nov.). Remarkable retreat of the 
 Huguenot horse. 
 
 1588. The day of the Barricades (May). The King forced to fly from 
 
 Paris. His capitulation to the League. The Estates General of 
 Blois. Murder of Henry of Guise and the Cardinal of Guise by 
 the King (Dec). 
 
 1589. Death of Catherine di Medici (Jan.). The Revolution at Paris. 
 
 League of the King and Navarre. Their march on Paris. Murder 
 of Henry HI. by Clement (Aug.). 
 
 FOURTH PERIOD. 
 
 1589. Two Bourbon Kings, Henry IV. and Charles X. Henry's retreat 
 
 from Paris to Normandy. His victory over Mayenne at Arques. 
 Differences between Mayenne and the Sixteen at Paris. Spanish 
 influence in Paris, 
 
 1590. Henry's victory at Ivry (March). Siege and starvation of Paris. 
 
 Death of Charles X. (May). The Duke of Parma relieves the 
 town (Sept.). 
 
 1 59 1. The Royalists capture S. Denis, blockade Paris, and take Chartres. 
 
 Terrorism of the Sixteen and their suppression by Mayenne. 
 
 1592. Siege of Rouen and its relief by Parma. His retreat to the 
 
 Netherlands and death (Dec). 
 
 1593. Estates of the League. Who is to be the Catholic King ? Struggle 
 
 against Spanish influence. Henry IV. 's abjuration of heresy (July). 
 
 1594. Henry IV. enters Paris (March). Gradual extinction of the League. 
 1 595- War declared against Spain (Jan.). The King's absolution by 
 
 Clement VIII. (Sept.). 
 
 1596. Submission of Mayenne. The Spaniards surprise Calais (April). 
 
 1597. The Spaniards surprise Amiens (March). Its re-capture (Sept.). 
 
 1598. Brittany conquered from Mercoeur. The last of the League. Edict 
 
 of Nantes (April). Peace of Vervins with Spain (May). 
 
ERRATA, 
 
 Page 15, line 9, for "subjecting" read "submitting." 
 16 „ 33, „ "it" read "Reform." 
 22 „ 24, „ "separations" read "separatism.'' 
 26 „ 22, „ "them" read "them not." 
 30 „ 17, „ " nobilty " read " nobihty, " 
 52 „ 30, „ ", or to," read "it to." 
 
I. 
 THE HUGUENOTS 
 
 EVERY great religious or spiritual movement is likely, 
 r sooner or later, to take a political direction. It will 
 associate with itself the aspirations and the grievances of 
 classes which are on the rise or which are oppressed ; it will 
 serve sometimes as a help, more often as a hindrance to the 
 actual government. The movement will frequently begin by 
 combating and counteracting pre-existent political tendencies, 
 but will as a rule in the end accentuate and stimulate them, 
 hastening the decline of the falling and the ascent of the 
 rising, providing a programme and a war cry, bringing forces, 
 long sullenly adverse, to the fighting point. 
 
 If this principle is true of any religious movement, it is 
 certainly true of the Reformation, which left its political 
 traces on every country in Europe where it obtained a footing. 
 These are not to be ascribed to the characteristics of this 
 religion or of that, but to the mere fact of a great religious 
 struggle which brought all disputed questions to an issue. It ' 
 was antecedently probable that the Reformation would be 
 absorbed by a people so peculiarly receptive as the French, 
 and it had great political opportunities in the malaise result- 
 ing from more than half a century of foreign w^ars, and in 
 the discontent with the absolutism of a monarchy at once 
 omnipotent and incompetent. It is of interest, therefore, to 
 trace the effects of the Wars of Religion upon the political 
 system of France, to estimate their influence upon the elements 
 
 B 
 
?. THE PEENCH wars OF RELIGION. 
 
 which formed the State, upon the Crown, the Church, the 
 nobility, the towns, the people, upon the great constitutional 
 institutions, the Estates General, and the Law Courts or so- 
 called Parliaments ; upon political theory, that is, upon the 
 opinions held as to the relations of Crown to People. 
 
 The development of Huguenotism as a form of religious 
 belief is beyond our purpose. Nor is it possible to dwell 
 upon the persecutions of Francis I., though it may be remem- 
 bered that in suppressing religious heterodoxy, the King 
 believed that he was stampmg out social and political dis- 
 affection, into which the more orthodox cruelty of his son 
 Henry II. rapidly transformed it. Some points, however, in 
 the early formative religious period require consideration, 
 especially the affiliation to the Genevan system, and the class 
 distribution of Reform. The dissentients were long called 
 Lutherans, but had French Reform been Lutheran it could 
 hardly have culminated in revolt against the State. Since the 
 Religious Peace of Augsburg, Lutheranism was so entirely 
 part and parcel of the State system, that a split was well-nigh 
 impossible. In France, Lutheranism could only have been 
 practicable if the Crown had placed itself at the head of the 
 Reforming movement ; if it had enlarged its conception of 
 Galilean liberties so far as to embrace dogma ; if it had trans- 
 lated in a Protestant sense its maxim, Uiie foi, une lot, un 
 Rot, which was after all the counterpart of the Lutheran 
 principle, Cujus regio, ejus religio. 
 
 It was of importance also that French Reform was too late 
 to be seriously affected by the Socialistic theories of Ana- 
 baptism, which in their extreme form had been crushed out 
 at Miinster. Anabaptism indeed of an indigenous and in- 
 determinate character was seething in the great commercial 
 centres of the Netherlands, but even here it was being at 
 once modified and organized by the importation of Calvinist 
 teaching. This left wing of Reform was, moreover, geographi- 
 cally, socially, and ethnologically separated from the French 
 
THE HUGUENOTS. 3 
 
 districts upon which the new doctrines gained hold. Artois 
 and Hainault, which were mainly Catholic, rural, and aristo- 
 cratic, separated the Flemish sectaries from Picardy and 
 Champagne, which also were among the less impressionable 
 and less commercial of French provinces. The unemployed 
 proletariate of Ghent and Antwerp, starving from bad financial 
 administration and English competition, had little in common 
 with the prosperous bourgeoisie of France, or even with the 
 handicraftsmen of the riverain towns. If we except Arras, 
 Valenciennes, and Lille, the early sectaries of the Netherlands 
 were of Flemish origin, and looked rather to Germany or 
 England than to France. Thus French Reform grew up un- 
 fettered by the trammels of Erastianism, and untinged except 
 in isolated instances by the socialistic theories of the Ana- 
 baptists. The latter indeed attempted to utilize the early 
 disturbances, but were suppressed with the full sympathy of 
 the Reformers themselves. 
 
 For purposes of resistance, the Genevan system had 
 peculiar advantages. The congregations, the consistories, the 
 synods — could, as they stood, be easily converted into political 
 sections ; they could readily form the cadres of a military 
 organization ; they were peculiarly adapted to tap or to drain 
 the financial resources of the party. The material strength 
 of Calvinism is proved by the resistance offered in France to 
 an overwhelming Catholic majority, backed by the resources 
 of the Crown, whereas in Bavaria and Austria a nobility and 
 people almost entirely Lutheran succumbed to governments 
 possessed of small resources. 
 
 The Reformation in France seems first to have affected 
 mainly the lowe^ classes, and the religious orders, precisely 
 as was the case in Germany. We possess the official registers 
 of the sentences passed by the Chambre Ardente of Henry 
 II,* which generally give the profession of those convicted. 
 
 * La Chambre Ardente, by N. Weiss, Paris, 18S9. For a notice of 
 this book see English Hist. Rev. , vol. v. 
 
4 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 They are drawn chiefly from the small tradesman, or artisan 
 class, from domestic servants, or petty officials. Several of 
 the religious orders were deeply infected, more especially the 
 Franciscans ; it was found necessary to subject many monas- 
 teries to a rigorous visitation. On the other hand, the 
 parochial clergy were stoutly orthodox, one of the few 
 exceptions being the incumbent of Bray, who, unlike the 
 English vicar of his name, suffered for his faith. It is 
 
 / possible that persecution was successful among these classes, 
 for when the war had broken out, dissent was not as a rule 
 found among the populace, while the monks and friars proved 
 the corps d' elite of Catholicism. It must be remembered, 
 moreover, that, in the winter of 1548-9, many of the gentry 
 and men of means were able to take refuge at Geneva ; 
 among them the handsome and aristocratic prior Deode de 
 
 I Beze. Moreover, both civil and ecclesiastical officials seem 
 to have shrunk from attacking men of recognized position.*' 
 
 The methods by which the Crown attempted to enforce 
 persecution had an immediate political effect. The Govern- 
 ment largely increased the powers of the Ecclesiastical Courts, 
 and, pari passu, detracted from those of the regular Law 
 Courts called the Parliaments. The Parliament of Paris 
 protested not only against the infringement of its privileges, 
 but against conversion by persecution, and the same feelings 
 existed at Rouen, where several members had to be excluded 
 for heretical opinions. The introduction- of the Spanish form 
 of inquisition, under a Bull of Paul IV., in 1557, still further 
 exasperated the profession. The Inquisitors were directed to 
 appoint diocesan tribunals, which should decide without 
 appeal. The Parliament of Paris flatly refused to register the 
 
 * The registers of the Chambre Ardente only concern the ressort of 
 
 the Parliament of Paris. It is probable that in the south, and perhaps in 
 
 I Normandy, Reform was from the first more common among the wealthier 
 
 i classes. Cognac was nearly the southernmost town of the ressort of Paris. 
 
 and the victims from here were merchants. 
 
THE HUGUENOTS. 5 
 
 royal edict, and continued to receive appeals. The finale was 
 the celebrated ^^'ednesday meeting of the assembled chambers, 
 the Mercuriale, where the King in person interfered with the 
 constitutional freedom of speech, and ordered the arrest of the 
 five members, thus giving his verdict for the ultra Catholic 
 minority of Parliament against the moderate majority. 
 Marshal Vielleville, himself a sound Catholic, strongly dissuaded 
 this course of action. Its result was that one of the most^ 
 influential elements of the State was not indeed brought into 
 connection with Reform, but was placed in an. attitude of . 
 hostility to the Government, and as the grievance was the 1 
 consequence of the religious policy of the Crown, it had at all 
 events a tendency to bring about a rapprochement between the 
 Reformers and the judicial classes. 
 
 The growth of Reform was, however, more directly affected 
 by the foreign wars. They made it difficult for the executive 
 to deal efficiently with the evil ; the local authorities were 
 often indisposed to act up to their orders. Moreover, though 
 the French troops were carefully kept from direct contact with 
 their Lutheran allies, yet the fact that the national enemy was 
 the great Catholic power must have had its weight."^ 
 
 If the war favoured the growth of Reform, the Peace of 
 Cateau Cambresis brought the movement to a head. From a 
 territorial point of view it was not so disadvantageous to 
 France as was thought at the time. But its significance was 
 that it was thef close of the national wars which had begun 
 with Charles VIII. , and thebeginning of the religious wars, 
 which were not to be completely laid but by the spell of 
 Richelieu. The celebrated tale of William of Orange, con- 
 
 * Dissent had early outgrown the possibilities of persecution. Whole 
 towns, wrote a Tuscan ambassador in 1546, lived completely in Protestant 
 fashion, not, of course, openly, but in private by tacit consent, and among 
 them were Caen, Rochelle, and Poitiers. In 1558 the Venetian Soranzo 
 wrote that the Lutherans numbered 40,cx)o, with such a perfect system of 
 organization and communication that it would be extremely hard to 
 find any means of checking the evil. 
 
6 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 cerning the definite understanding between the two kings for 
 mutual aid in suppressing heresy, is probably apocryphal. It 
 appears first long after the event in William's Apologia^ and is 
 contradicted by strong contemporary evidence. Yet both 
 kings unquestionably had heresy in view, and the military 
 classes, who considered the peace in itself dishonourable, 
 disliked the object of the peace. But its effect was even more 
 direct than this. The great men who had Court ofilices or 
 / Crown benefices suffered little, but the military class was 
 ruined by peace. The smaller nobility"^ found their estates 
 crippled by war, they had long lived upon pay or plunder, the 
 younger sons had no profession but arms, for even ecclesiasti- 
 cal benefices were more and more confined to the Court 
 circle. They in vain applied to the Government for employ- 
 ment. Hence universal discontent with the administration, 
 especially with the Cardinal of I^orraine its chief, the most 
 formidable enemy of Reform. 
 
 Meanwhile the Reformers had become more powerful, and 
 were in more immediate peril. The reign of Henry H. had 
 been the period of organization. In 1555 churches had been 
 established in many towns of Central and Southern France on 
 the Geneva model. 
 
 Coincident with the Mercuriale of 1559 was the organization 
 of the union of the churches, with full machinery of local 
 consistories, provincial synods, and a national meeting, all 
 on the elective system, and all containing -a lay and a clerical 
 element in equal proportions. This organization in the face 
 
 J of danger became political, and even military. The smaller 
 nobles went over'in large numbers to Reform, and transformed 
 
 * English readers are apt to be misled by the phrase "nobility." 
 Among the French nobility the eldest son received the bulk of the 
 family estates. The lesser country nobles in wealth or mode of life 
 hardly differed from the small farmers among whom they lived, and with 
 whom they associated on easy terms. All that separated them from their 
 neighbours was "jDrivilege," and to this they clung the more desperately. 
 
THE HUGUENOTS. 7 
 
 its character. From being a long-suffering and patient sect, it 
 became political, aggressive, at times oppressive. 
 
 It was of service to the Huguenots that the Peace of Cateau 
 Cambresis was immediately followed by the fatal tournament 
 which cost Henry H. his life. Politically a puppet, he was 
 physically a man, and a fine man. His successor was a boy, 
 and a feeble boy, under the influence of his wife Mary Stuart, 
 who was under the influence of her uncles, the Guises. 
 Discontent found its voice because the demoralisation of the 
 Monarchy, if not more real, was more obvious. 
 
 Personal monarchy, if weak, becomes a prey to personal 
 faction. The favour of Henry and his mistress Diana had 
 been divided between two families, the House of Montmorenci, 
 and the House of Guise. The former belonged to the highest 
 rank of non-royal French nobility, and its head, the Duke, 
 possessed the highest official rank as Constable. He had 
 capable sons, and equally capable nephews, his sister's three 
 sons, the Chatillons. Of these, Gaspard Coligni was Admiral 
 of France, D'Andelot commanded the infantry within the 
 limits of France, while Odet obtained a Cardinal's hat. With 
 them were associated members of the Royal House of 
 Bourbon, the sons of the Duke of Vendome. Antony, the 
 eldest, was first Prince of the Blood, and by his marriage 
 with Jeanne d'Albret won the title of King of Navarre. 
 Conde, the youngest, had married the Constable's great-niece, 
 Eleanor of Roye. On the defection of the Constable 
 Bourbon, the line of Vendome had remained unswervingly 
 faithful to the Crown, but had been treated with ill-disguised 
 disfavour, and such slight rewards as it obtained it owed to its 
 connection with the Constable. 
 
 The house of Guise was a cadet branch of that of Lorraine. 
 Of royal and French origin, on the female side, its connection 
 with the Duchy of Lorraine caused it to be regarded as foreign 
 to France. The Lorrainer and the foreigner became con- 
 vertible terms. The Duke of Guise had endeared himself to 
 
8 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 the nation by his great services and his personal attractions, 
 but the Cardinal's great abilities had not made him the more 
 popular. 
 
 The rivalry was rather one of" place-hunting than of 
 principle, yet in foreign policy there had been hitherto an 
 intelligible difference, the house of Montmorenci desiring 
 peace and alliance with the Catholic powers, the Duke of 
 Guise being ready to welcome Turk or heretic as allies in the 
 struggle with Spain. The Guises had contrived the marriage 
 / of their niece, Mary Stuart, with Henry's heir, and the 
 i accession of Francis gave them the supremacy. 
 
 Thus the discomfort which resulted from the breakdown of 
 the monarchy was attributed, as had often been the case in 
 England, to the government of foreigners, and the exclusion of 
 the national and constitutional advisers from the royal council. 
 The Cardinal of Lorraine was regarded with the same hostility 
 by Frenchmen as was the Franche-Comtois Granvelle by 
 the nobility and townsfolk of the Netherlands. In addition 
 to their foreign blood both Cardinals were subject to charges 
 of ultramontane tendencies and financial maladministration. 
 The Montmorenci party now went into open opposition, the 
 Constable into political opposition, while the Bourbons, the 
 I Admiral, and the Cardinal Chatillon joined the religious 
 I opposition, which had already found a convert in D'Andelot. 
 * Yet outwardly the policy of uncle and nephews was yet one. 
 x^lthough in the provinces Catholics and Reformers were 
 beginning to break heads, the Reformers and discontented 
 Catholics could hardly be politically distinguished. 
 
 Early in 1560 occurred the rising named the "Tumult of 
 Amboise." Its' aims were most variously stated. Enemies 
 said that it was intended to assassinate King and Council, and 
 establish a Federal Republic on the Swiss model. Friends 
 asserted that the only object was to present a petition. There 
 seems little doubt that it was designed to remove the King 
 from Guise's influence, and that there would have been slight 
 scruple as to means. 
 
THE HUGUENOTS. 9 
 
 The plot was betrayed, and was barbarously suppressed. It 
 was not an exclusively Huguenot movement. Many Catholics 
 were engaged in it, and even the Constable was suspected. It 
 was a premature attempt. But the unpopularity caused by 
 the brutal executions, and the open Huguenot revolt in districts 
 of Southern France, led to the Assembly of Notables at 
 Fontainebleau. Here the more moderate and solid minds of 
 the Opposition, L'Hopital and Coligni, Bishop Montluc and 
 Archbishop Marillac, gave out-spoken expression to the general 
 discontent, whether political or religious, while the Government 
 took its stand on the principles of Catholicism and absolutism, 
 for it was easy to prove that the Tumult of Amboise was an 
 attack upon royalty by the heretical party. The King, it was 
 urged, could summon to Council whom he pleased, and the 
 Crown was pledged to Catholicism. The Opposition, however, 
 was too strong to be silenced, and a meeting of the Estates 
 General was conceded. The Government hoped to intimidate 
 the deputies by crushing the heads of the Opposition before 
 their organisation was complete. The Guises now, as again in 
 1585, deliberately attempted to remove the Bourbons from 
 their path. Had it not been for the young King's death, 
 Conde, and probably Navarre, would have lost their heads, and 
 the other Bourbons were out of the question as party leaders. 
 The backbone would have been taken from the opposition. 
 To modern students it is clear that either panacea was but a 
 quack remedy. Neither the expulsion of the foreigner, nor the 
 judicid murder of the heads of the opposition, would have 
 healed a disease too inveterate for remedial measures. 
 
 The breakdown of personal government had occurred before, 
 and it was to occur again. The French Monarchy was a 
 strong-growing plant, which starved all else, and finally lacked 
 sustenance. The land required much stirring and much blood 
 before it could once more bear it. Disorganisation of a highly 
 organised system is the worst form of anarchy. Contem- 
 poraries, especially Italians, realized how the monarchy had 
 
10 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 deteriorated since the days of Louis XII. Machiavelli had 
 lauded it as the model of a well-knit constitutional monarchy, 
 resting on its perfect system of justice which controlled the 
 Crown, while the Church advised the Crown, and a numerous 
 and patriotic nobility, no longer seeking isolation, fenced it 
 round. Comines, more prophetic, had foreseen that popular 
 control of legislation and judicature is less important than 
 control of finance, and now we find Italian observers con- 
 trasting French liberties unfavourably with those of England 
 under the Tudors, and Spain under Philip II. Taxation, nov/ 
 as afterwards, had ruined the country first, and then the 
 Crown. Louis XL had compared the kingdom to a fair 
 prairie, which he mowed at will. Maximilian likened the 
 French King to a shepherd of sheep with golden fleeces, which 
 they allowed to be shorn at his pleasure. Francis L, when 
 asked by Charles V. how much he took, replied, "As much as 
 I want." 
 
 The jiobility which in war was the admiration of all Europe 
 in time of peace had no raison d'etre, and no means of living. 
 It was excluded from trade and the bar, and excluded itself 
 from municipal employ. Either it must revolt against the 
 King, or the peasants must revolt from it. The King must 
 make war to find employment for the nobles. The boasted 
 system of anti-feudal centralisation had broken down before 
 the civil war began. On the one hand the magnates were 
 trying, with success, to make their provincial governments 
 hereditary; on the other the real rulers, the lieutenant- 
 governors, were making themselves independent of both 
 Crown and governor. 
 
 T^e_,.Church_had, since the Concordat, become part and 
 parcel of the monarchy, and had deteriorated with it. It had 
 almost ceased to be a clerical body, and had entirely ceased to 
 be a constitutional body. Its revenues amounted to about 
 one third of those of France ; but they were liable to taxation 
 almost at the King's pleasure. Benefices themselves were but a 
 
THE HUGUENOTS. ii 
 
 form of royal revenue ; it was by them that services in war, 
 or diplomacy at court, merit in art or literature or dancing, 
 were rewarded. Non-residence was almost universal. Benefices 
 were dealt in, says a Venetian ambassador, like stock at 
 Venice. Friends of Catholicism agreed that this was the 
 chief cause of the troubles. Correr speaks of the admirable 
 organization, the ^^ diligenza esquisitissima" of the Huguenot 
 ministers : " If our own cures had done half what they do, 
 Christianity would not be in its present state of confusion . , . 
 Huguenotism must go out by the same gate at which it came 
 in ; it is due to the abolition of the election of the clergy. 
 The Concordat was the source of all evil, the non-residents 
 and their bad substitutes." 
 
 The evil was aggravated by the indifferent character of the 
 Papal envoys. The Florentine Tornabuoni implores his 
 master to remonstrate with the Curia, whose greedy nuncios 
 were hated both in France and Spain. "This country has 
 proved how much better it would have been to send legates 
 and nuncios who could edify than falconers of bishoprics and 
 abbeys who have brought it to pass that the seed of Geneva 
 and Germany has ruined the greatest kingdom of the world, 
 with manifest danger to the rest of Christendom.'' (March 25, 
 1568.) 
 
 The judicature which Machiavelli had regarded as the 
 safeguard of the Constitution had lost its character. This 
 was due, writes Correr, partly to the universal practice of 
 purchasing appointments, partly to religious prejudice. The 
 lawyers had to pay highly for their seats, and were forced to 
 recoup themselves by corrupt practices. It was the golden 
 age of the French legists, but scientific jurisprudence does not 
 necessarily imply an incorrupt judicature. The lawyers, 
 added the Venetian, made so much money that they did not 
 know what to do with it. Moreover, the purchase system was a 
 temptation to the Crown to increase the number of officials, 
 and this entailed more complication in suits, longer delay, and 
 
12 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 higher fees. Religious passion was yet more harmful to the 
 character of the judicature. Catholic authorities testify that 
 some judges were carried away by excess of zeal, while others 
 could not be relied on to punish a Huguenot. Rightly or 
 wrongly, the Parliaments no longer commanded respect. 
 
 The towns, the mercantile classes, were rich, and fre- 
 quently continued rich throughout the wars. But this seemed 
 of little benefit to the country at large. The French towns 
 rarely had the sense of a common interest. They never 
 <Cformed an united estate ; they were units without an unity. 
 This separation finds expression in the vague fear, so common 
 at the beginning of the troubles, that the towns would form 
 themselves into separate republics. French prosperity, more- 
 over, then as now, depended less upon urban than upon rural 
 prosperity, and this upon petite culture. Sulli's maxim is of 
 universal application, '•^ Laboiwage et patitrage sont les deux 
 mamjnelles de la France.''' The burden of foreign war and 
 domestic extravagance had fallen upon the small cultivator. 
 In Normandy and Picardy the peasants were deserting their 
 holdings, because the profits would no longer meet the taxes. 
 " The clergy overburdened with imposts, the nobles discon- 
 tented and disunited, the people ill-affectioned"; such is the 
 refrain of the Italian ambassadors' despatches to their Courts. 
 
 There was, then, universal demoralization and universal 
 discontent. What was the cure ? Then, as always, men said, 
 " Revert to the past, return to the institutions which we have 
 abandoned, reassemble the Estates General, which have had 
 no serious meeting for eighty years, recall to the Royal 
 Council the King's national advisers, the Princes of the Blood, 
 restore to the Church the freedom which it occupied previous 
 to the Concordat." Mutatis mutajidis., the schemes for reform 
 before the great Revolution were very similar. But in both 
 cases the currents of thought political and spiritual had 
 changed, the old landmarks were untrustworthy. Long ago 
 they had proved of little service. The Galilean Church at 
 
THE HUGUENOTS. 13 
 
 the mercy of the nobles had been httle purer than it was when 
 at the mercy of the King. The greatest national disasters 
 had arisen from the quarrels of the Princes of the Council. 
 By outside observers the coming wars were attributed to this 
 rather than to any one other cause. The feud between the 
 great official house of Montmorenci and the house of Guise 
 divided the country, the Council, the royal family. It was, in 
 a Venetian's phrase, "the nursery-garden of the war." In 1560 
 the Florentine Envoy prophesied that civil war would break 
 out between Guise and Montmorenci, and that this would 
 spread into religious war. The Estates General had never 
 shown business capacity, nor inspired respect. Their lapse 
 had been due as much to their own inefficiency as to abso- 
 lutist intention. They had been exploited before, and they 
 would be exploited again, by royalty and revolution in turn. 
 But the new ideas were powers pushing men knew not where, 
 the old machinery must needs be tried, and when it failed the 
 new forces must clash, and the result be left to apparent 
 chance. 
 
 Conde's execution was fixed for December loth, 1560 ; on 
 December 5th the young King died from an abscess in 
 the ear. 
 
 The death of Francis II. gave the malcontents, whether^ 
 personal, political, or religious, the fairest chances of reform.' 
 For the Crown itself was in alliance with the old Opposition. 
 Catherine di Medici had, during the last two reigns, more\ 
 cause than any other to be a malcontent, and she now 
 represented the Crown. Navarre shared the regency with her, 
 and Conde, Montmorenci, and the Chatillons were on th^ 
 same side. If the three elements, personal, political, and 
 religious, could harmonise in government as in opposition, a 
 radical reform seemed possible. Political reform was almost 
 inseparable from religious, for it was based upon financial 
 readjustment, and this upon partial disendowment and the 
 cessation of payments to Rome. This implied a break with 
 
14 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION, 
 
 Ultramontanism, a connection with Protestant powers, and a 
 possible sympathy with the doctrinal side of the Reformation. 
 Opposition to the clergy was distinct from attachment to 
 Reform, but the limits as yet were far from clear. The Crown 
 tirew with it a section of the higher clergy, apart from those 
 who, like the Cardinal Chatillon, and the Bishop of Troies, 
 became professed Huguenots."^ So closely were the religious 
 and political aspects connected, that it was intended that a 
 religious compromise should be effected by the Colloquy of 
 Poissl, while deputies of the two secular estates should mean- 
 while decide the external form of the Galilean Church at 
 Pontoise. Here the new ideas flowed freely. Nobles and 
 towns demanded the exclusion of ecclesiastics from Council 
 and all secular employ, on the ground of their cross allegiance 
 to the Pope. The discussion of religion was referred to a 
 National Council, pending the arrangement for a free General 
 European Council.! Both Estates held that it was a crime 
 to interfere with conscience, and were ready to concede liberty 
 of worship ; the Protestant assemblies should be protected by 
 royal officers. As the Church was to be merged in the State, 
 so the State had a right to nationalize Church property. The 
 nobility proposed that two thirds of the State debt should be 
 paid by the sale of Church estates, while the Third Estate 
 advised entire resumption and a State-paid clergy, J part of 
 the surplus to be applied to the extinction of the national 
 debt, part granted on loan to the pjincipal towns for the 
 advancement of commerce. 
 
 The demands of the Estates were by no means exclusively 
 religious. The extravagance of the Court was attacked, and 
 
 * Besides those [mentioned, the Bishops of Aix, Valence, Pamiers, 
 Chartres, Usez, Lescar, were summoned before the Inquisition by the 
 Pope. 
 
 t This was a direct attack upon the legality and impartiality of the 
 Council of Trent. 
 
 X Their demand for a State-paid clergy remained on the programme of 
 the Huguenot party throughout and beyond the Wars of Religion. 
 
THE HUGUENOTS, 15 
 
 retrenchment imperatively demanded. It was unfortunate for 
 the prospects of Reform that the legislative body attacked the 
 judicial, criticising- the delay and corruption of the Law Courts, 
 the scandalous sale of judicial and financial offices, and 
 threatening the abolition of the newly-appointed bodies. The ^ 
 Parliament of Paris, which had already lost its more advanced 
 members, turned wholly against Reform, and its irritation was 
 increased^u the contemptuous action of the Executive in not 
 su^ecting tlie Edict of Pacification for registration. The 
 Parliament felt that in the presence of the Estates it was losing 
 its boasted veto on legislation. The Judicature could not 
 forget its original connection with the National Council, it 
 would not forego its claims to legislative functions, nor be 
 content with the special department of State consigned to it. 
 
 Immense as was the activity of the great French lawyers in 
 jurisprudence at this period, the feverish desire to play a 
 leading part in politics also pervaded the profession from 
 highest to lowest. On the other hand there was a chronic 
 dislike for the lawyers among French laymen, which, except at 
 intermittent moments, finds no parallel in English history. 
 The jealousy between judicature and legislature has been : 
 a prominent rock of offence in the pathway of French 
 constitutional liberty. 
 
 More open and more immediate was the breach with the 
 Clergy. Their conference with the Huguenot representatives, 
 eleven ministers and twenty-two laymen, was not so har- 
 monious as were the Estates of Pontoise. The divergences 
 proved to be greater than had been expected, and Poissi was 
 the watershed from which the two religions parted. 
 
 Accord being impossible, the Crown, by its edict of January,-- 
 1562, adopted the alternative of toleration. But this was^i- 
 more than the administration, owing to religious and political I 
 disintegration, could effect. The Crown could not quite \ 
 control the higher clergy, still less could the higher clergy/ 
 control the parochial cures, and the religious orders. The? 
 
l6 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 more eager Huguenots could not be restrained by their more 
 prudent leaders, who counselled a waiting game. The Crown 
 could not rely on its officials, and the officials could not secure 
 the obedience of the people. The Parliaments desperately 
 resisted toleration of heretical worship. Comparative harmony 
 still existed at Court, but in the provinces the two religions 
 were frequently at open war. At Carcassonne and Cahors 
 Huguenots were massacred. At Nimes, MontpeUier, Mont- 
 auban, and Foix, in the Cevennes and the Pyrenees, there 
 were expulsions of priests, and wholesale iconoclasm. 
 Huguenotism had been transformed by the addition of the 
 fighting element, and was by no means always acting on 
 the defensive. Religion became more and more the one 
 absorbing topic, political reforms became subordinate, and the 
 parties which had been acting together on political grounds 
 began to split upon religious. War was becoming certain, 
 and the massacre of the congregation of Vassi by the followers 
 of the Duke of Guise was the occasion, and not the cause. 
 It differed from a dozen other massacres only in the fact that 
 it was committed by one of the great party leaders, and 
 transferred the struggle from the country to the Court. The 
 Cardinal of Lorraine at Poissi had made union impossible. 
 His brother, the Duke, at Vassi had made war inevitable ; 
 whether his action was intentional or no it had all the effect 
 of a fine political move, it struck the blow while Catholicism 
 was still numerically superior, before Huguenotism had 
 reached its full growth. Languet had written that Reform 
 would be universal unless the Catholics provoked an 
 immediate rupture. Nevertheless, the Huguenots were very 
 strong, stronger than ever before or since. They all, with the 
 one exception of Coligni, expected to win. Reform had in a 
 measure become the national cause. Ultramontanism was 
 the cause of the foreigner, the Guises, lifc- was also the 
 constitutional cause. In the Estates General of Orleans, 
 among the nobility there had been four shades of opinion. 
 
THE HUGUENOTS. 17 
 
 and the extreme Huguenots had outnumbered the extreme 
 Catholics. In the Third Estate, notwithstanding the inter- 
 ference of the Guise government in the elections, the 
 Huguenots and their partisans had a large majority. The 
 Court was known to give its sympathy, if not practical aid, to 
 the party, and the Bench and the Bar could not have long 
 separated themselves from it. The failure of the Huguenots 
 and the success of the Catholics in securing the persons of 
 the King and his mother, was rightly regarded as of momentous 
 importance. 
 
 The different elements of which the Huguenot party was-^ 
 composed were strongly marked from the first. It had been 
 long expected that any religious movement would connect 
 itself with the old feud between Guise and Montmorenci, and 
 between the Valois government and the discontented 
 Bourbons. 
 
 This expectation was at once fulfilled and disappointed. 
 The results of the Colloquy of Poissi divided each of the great 
 discontented families. Feeling that war was inevitable, 
 Montmorenci, who from political motives had acted with 
 the Huguenots, cast in his lot with his own religion, while 
 Antony of Navarre, who had carried Reformed doctrines and 
 practices to their limits, was induced by political bribes to 
 desert his co-religionists. Vain, unstable, indebted as he was, 
 the loss to his party was sensible. His position as first Prince 
 of the Blood after the royal family, his personal courage, his 
 spendthrift generosity, the frank open manner, so often the 
 outward sign of lack of honesty of purpose, made him the 
 darling of the ladies, the nobility, and the troopers. Divorce 
 from Jeanne d'Albret, with a prospect of Mary Stuart and the 
 crown of England and Scotland, were among the bribes which 
 tempted him. His wife remained the staunchest friend of 
 Reform until her death in 1572. Her little kingdom of Be'arn 
 became a Huguenot principality, all Catholic priests being 
 expelled. It formed an invaluable nucleus for the Huguenot 
 
 c 
 
i8 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 military power, possessing as it did a small highly-trained 
 standing army. 
 
 The real leader, however, of the Huguenots was Antony's 
 ^brother Conde. An ideal chief for a discontented nobiHty; 
 he had both military and political courage, a fascinating per- 
 sonality, and a high capacity for intrigue. His aims were 
 probably in the main political, and his chieftainship might not 
 improve the morale of his party. Yet he was more reliable 
 than his brother, and would not desert either his political 
 or religious associates, nor would he forswear his religious 
 convictions, though inclined to make them subservient to his 
 ambition. Except during his imprisonment after the battle 
 of Dreux, he was the undoubted leader of the movement 
 until his death at Jarnac in 1569. Frorxi the first he was 
 accused of wishing to supplant the Valois. A medal with 
 the inscription Ludovicus XIII. Dei gratia Francoriim rex is 
 said to have existed, but was believed to be a Catholic forgery. 
 His son was a forced convert after St. Bartholomew, but 
 escaped and served with the Huguenots until his death in 
 1588.* He was the favourite chief of the distinctly religious 
 section. Yet his secretary. La Huguerye, states that he was 
 influenced mainly by political motives. The secretary, how- 
 ever, became a pervert, and was not unbiassed. Among the 
 non-royal nobility were distinguished the three Chatillon 
 brothers. Their military or diplomatic talents, their relation- 
 ship to the Constable, their burning zeal for the cause, and 
 Coligni'sf position as admiral, gave them a leading position. 
 Of the greater nobles most perhaps stood by the Crown, but 
 
 * Henri Conde was very generally believed to have been poisoned by 
 his young wife, and she was long imprisoned. The gravest doubts have 
 existed as to the legitimacy of her posterity. 
 
 t Coligni's somewhat sullen temper made him at times a difficult 
 colleague for his equals, but his character inspired unbounded respect 
 among his inferiors. He was felt to be superior to personal or class con- 
 siderations, and hence almost alone served to weld together the antagonistic 
 elements of the nobles and Third Estate. 
 
THE HUGUENOTS. 19 
 
 among the Huguenots were found La Rochefoucauld, the 
 greatest man of Poitou, Rohan from Brittany, Grammont 
 from Gascony, Montgomery, who had accidentally killed 
 Henry II., from Normandy, the Prince of Porcian, from the 
 Franco-Flemish frontiers. The lesser nobility flocked in large 
 numbers from the south and west, and even from Picardy and 
 Champagne there must have been many, judging by the force 
 which gathered round Conde at Meaux. Yet Tavannes states 
 that some of these were Catholics encouraged to join Conde 
 by the queen. Montluc writes that there was scarce an honest 
 mother's son who did not taste of heresy, especially, adds the 
 Venetian Michiel, among those under forty. Yet Montluc's 
 forces in the first war consisted mainly of the Catholic nobility 
 of Guyenne. The composition of the party differed in fact \ 
 infinitely according to locality. La Huguerye points out that / 
 in Languedoc few nobles were Huguenot, in Dauphine many, 
 while the English ambassador Smith found the gentry from 
 Bayonne to Nantes mostly Huguenot. Of these many were 
 zealous religionists, others disappointed soldiers, disgusted 
 with peace and the Guises. Others were the personal 
 adherents of the great houses, while many expected to find 
 freedom from confession and fasting, and the discipline of a 
 religious system whose dogma they no longer believed. All 
 were united in common opposition to the clergy. So too in 
 the great Albigensian movement of the south, the same rough 
 division had been found, the bourgeois and a part of the 
 nobility religious zealots, the majority of the nobles simply 
 anti-sacerdotal. 
 
 The third section of Reform consisted of the upper bour-\ 
 geoisie.* It was noticed that there seemed some relation/ 
 between Huguenotism and success in commerce. The lower 
 
 * The Venetian Correr thus describes the motives of the several sections. V 
 The grandees adopted reform for ambition, the middle classes (the gentry) \ 
 for church property, the lower classes for paradise. The latter, he adds,/ 
 furnished the contributions on which the two former lived. ' 
 
20 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 I classes usually were faithful to their clergy, and La Noue 
 ! mentions Rochelle, where the smaller people led by the 
 ministers were more zealous than the richer citizens, as ex- 
 ceptional. At Toulouse a desperate struggle occurred between 
 the Capitouls, the heads of the municipal magistracy, the 
 upper bourgeoisie assisted by the University against the clergy, 
 the lower magistracy, the people and the Parliament. In 
 Normandy, the smaller people took arms against the nobles ; 
 at Dieppe it was the wealthier citizens who built a magnificent 
 temple, at the destruction of which the populace looked on 
 without sympathy. Marshal Tavannes states in his letters 
 that at Dijon the common people were Catholic, and in such 
 thoroughly Huguenot towns as Chalons and Macon he 
 reckons the Catholics as two-thirds of the lower classes. At 
 Troyes, the most Huguenot town of Champagne, the populace 
 broke into the meeting-house, wrought havoc on what little 
 furniture the Reformed service allowed, and parodied its rites. 
 
 In some few districts of France, however, whole populations 
 rose for Reform. This was the case in the Pyrenees, and in 
 the mountainous districts of the east of France, the Cevennes, 
 Dauphine', and the north of Provence."^ In Guyenne occurred 
 a rising of the peasantry, which was social and political rather 
 than religious. Chateaux were burnt, and the peasants refused 
 to pay either tax, tithe, or rent, and scoffingly renounced the 
 monarchy. 
 
 Numbers are necessarily untrustworthy. In 1561 the 
 V Huguenots reckoned themselves as from 300,000 to 400,000 
 men, capable of bearing arms, and previous to the first war 
 they have been stated as one-tenth of the population. This 
 figure is probably largely exaggerated. The moderate Catholic 
 Castelnau, writes, that it was unnecessary on the part of the 
 
 * Here the dualism between town and country stereotyped the Catholi- 
 cism of the towns. Le Puy, for instance, the municipal centre of the 
 Velai and the Vivarais, became the Catholic stronghold of the neighbour- 
 hood. The same phenomena are, niutaHs mutandis, curiously reproduced 
 in the great Revolution. 
 
THE HUGUENOTS. 2i 
 
 government to get foreign aid, for the Catholics in the first 
 war were a hundred to one. At the close of this war the 
 Huguenots were estimated as one-third of the nobility, and 
 one thirtieth of the population, which seems a not unreason- 
 able calculation. 
 
 It was of great advantage to the Huguenots that they had 
 ample opportunities for enlisting professional soldiers. During 
 the foreign wars the regular cavalry had become, on the 
 evidence of a Tuscan envoy, deeply tainted with heresy.* 
 But apart from religious sympathy, the soldiers took service 
 where they found pay. Before the war broke out, the churches 
 busily enrolled troops. Montluc found that all the good 
 soldiers had joined the Huguenots, for the ministers promised 
 not only pay but Paradise. In 1562 the ministers offered him 
 4,000 men to keep the peace. An old soldier of his own 
 told him that he was captain of the Church of Nerac. " Et 
 quel diable d'eglises sont cecy, qui font les capitaines !" was. 
 the fiery old Gascon's reply. Marshal Tavannes finding that 
 all the ablest officers had joined the Huguenots, laughed at 
 their religious pretexts, and offered them service in the royal 
 forces. Thus, he writes, he separated the noble from the 
 bourgeois element, and had no more trouble ; his successor 
 neglected this method, and revolt was the result. 
 
 Geographically Huguenotism found its stronghold in the 
 square roughly formed by the Rhone and Saone, the Loire, 
 the Bay of Biscay, and the Pyrenees, the northern boundary 
 running from Chalons to the mouth of the Loire. Its outlying 
 fortresses were Normandy to the north-west, and Dauphine to 
 the south-east. In Normandy there was a congregation 
 in almost every town and village. In Poitou and Guyenne 
 in some towns the Huguenots formed a majority. At 
 
 * "The most deeply infected class in the whole kingdom is the 
 Gendarmerie ; it does not seem in the least likely that they can be relied 
 on." — A. Tornabuoni, June 15th, 1560. This regular cavalry was largely 
 composed of the poorer gentry, who served even in its lower ranks. 
 
22 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 Rochelle Catholicism almost ceased to exist. Lower Langue- 
 doc, with its most important cities Nimes, Montpellier, 
 Beziers, and Castres, was in Huguenot hands ; and here they 
 fought with their backs against the parallel mountain walls 
 which ran through the Velai, the Vivarais, and the Forez. 
 Outside these limits Reform could obtain no firm footing. In 
 Provence the massacre of the Vaudois had proved effective, 
 and it was confined to the extreme north. In Burgundy and 
 Champagne there were a few important congregations, while 
 the Norman Huguenots kept touch with their co-religionists 
 on the Loire by the agency of influential bodies in Maine 
 and in Anjou. In Brittany the fact that the great nobles 
 were for Reform was sufificient to set the people on the 
 other side. Picardy was stoutly Catholic, and in the neigh- 
 bourhood of Paris it was only found at its original seat in 
 Meaux, and here it appears to have been endemic until the 
 close of the wars."^ 
 
 It was of momentous import that the citadel, the Vatican 
 of Reform, was outside France, and, above all, at Geneva, for 
 the jealousy between the two great Catholic powers guaranteed 
 its safety. Geneva was practically a French republic, con- 
 stantly recruited by raw refugee material,! and circulating in 
 return trained ministers and money, giving unity to measures 
 which local se^aratiorrs was likely to dissolve. Hence came 
 the propagandism, the organisation for victory, the re-organisa- 
 tion after defeat, the esp7'it de corps, the religious zeal which 
 
 * How constant were the geographical proportions of Reform is found 
 by a calculation of the number of Huguenots at the time of the Revolution 
 of the edict of Nantes. The great square of, territory described (exclusive 
 of Lyons and Orleans) comprised 357,000 Huguenots, Normandy 50,000, 
 and Dauphine 75,000, whereas the numbers given for the whole of the 
 rest of France are 133,000. 
 
 t In 1558 Geneva had, in a single day, admitted 279 foreigners to 
 citizenship. The siege by the Duke of Savoy from 1589 to 1598 was a 
 greater danger to Protestantism than was the siege of Paris to Catholicism. 
 Cf. M. Pattison's Casaubo7i, 2nd ed., 1892, ch. ii. 
 
THE HUGUENOTS. 23 
 
 whipped up flagging political or military energies. Genevan 
 indeed preached submission, but it gave the organization and ' 
 the verve which rendered resistance possible. 
 
 The first war proved that the Huguenots had miscalculated 
 their strength. They had lost Rouen, been beaten at Dreux, and 
 Orleans was only saved by the assassination of Guise. Theyf 
 had been rescued, in fact, not by their own efforts, but by the ■ 
 decisive mediation of the Crown. Huguenotism had been 
 driven south of the Loire. Here it might well defend itself 
 for a lengthened period, but it could no longer be an active 
 aggressive power, controlling the religious and constitutional 
 principles of the nation. To what causes was the failure due ? 
 
 The apparent majority as represented in the Estates was 
 fallacious ; religious questions had been intermingled with 
 political, with the unpopularity of the foreigner, with demands "^ 
 for financial reform, for more constitutional methods of 
 government. The Estates themselves were not really repre- 
 sentative of general opinion. The town representation was^i 
 usually in the hands of the municipalities, of the upper ! 
 bourgeoisie, which was frequently Huguenot, whereas the bulk 
 of the population was Catholic. The rural classes were almost / 
 universally Catholic, rendering combined action between^ 
 Huguenot centres extremely difficult. The outbreak of war 
 and the first reverses sifted the party. The fact that the 
 Huguenots, whether on compulsion or no, had begun the war, 
 and the iconoclastic excesses by which the rank and file dis- 
 graced themselves, alienated the moderates hitherto inclined 
 to tolerance. This was the class which probably decided") 
 the first three wars against the Huguenots, as it decided the j 
 final campaigns against the ultra-Catholics. It is difficult to I 
 overrate the effect of massacres, expulsions, and forced con- 
 versions. A Huguenot town once taken, a clean sweep was 
 made of Reform. Thus Rouen and Orleans, which had been 
 strongholds of the party in the north and centre, ended by being 
 christened the eyes of the League. In Picardy, Champagne, 
 
24 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 and Burgundy there was hardly a Huguenot in the field by 
 the end of the war. Heresy disappeared from most of the 
 towns on the Loire, where it had at first been peculiarly 
 inveterate. In Toulouse Catholic accounts report a week's 
 massacre of 3,000 heretics, including 18 preachers.* If the 
 Huguenots were expelled they ran every chance of being cut to 
 pieces by the Catholic country people, among whom Catholics, 
 worsted in civil conflict, found a refuge. It was, indeed, only 
 
 f in Eastern Languedoc and Dauphine that the Huguenots 
 solidly held their own. It was of consummate importance 
 that the Catholics secured the two great permanent institu- 
 
 •vtions of France — the Crown and the Law Courts. The 
 Huguenots fully realised the value of the Crown, and hence 
 Conde tried to seize the Queen-mother and the King, both 
 before the first and the second war. All the governmental 
 machinery was and had long been worked by the Guises. 
 Either the provincial governers or their lieutenants were their 
 creations. Catholic leaders, such as Tavannes in Burgundy, 
 and Montluc in Guyenne, had all the force of legal position 
 combined with that of personal fanaticism. Governors like 
 Etampes in Brittany, who strove to keep the Edict, and the 
 Comte de Tende in Provence, who protected the Huguenots, 
 iwere exceptions. The bureaucra cy was in favour of the 
 Crown, on which its position depended. The Crown had 
 ^command of the regular revenues, while the Huguenots were 
 
 V dependent on voluntary contributions. Above all, the con- 
 tract with the Swiss Cantons for troops was with the Crown, 
 and it was by pressing this point that Tavannes neutralized 
 the action of the first Swiss troops which the Huguenot agents 
 
 J levied. The Parliaments had by this time completely turned 
 
 I against Reform. Their idea of toleration had extended only 
 to liberty of conscience ; public recognition of two forms of 
 worship was opposed to the unity of the State, of which the 
 
 * To cast reflection upon the character of Huguenot divines, Catholic 
 authorities stated that these 18 preachers had only 15 ears between them. 
 
THE HUGUENOTS. 25 
 
 Parliaments were the guardians. Moreover, the interests of 
 the lawyers had been threatened. They had usurped the 
 functions of the Estates General, the revival of which filled 
 them with jealousy and alarm ; the wholesale reform of the 
 judicature was eagerly pressed by the deputies. The fact- 
 that the Estates were on the side of the Reformation was 
 sufficient in itself to throw the Parliaments on the side of 
 Catholicism. There was, moreover, a jealousy of long 
 standing between the noblesse de robe and the two chief ; 
 elements of Huguenotism, the noblesse d^epee, and the gens de 
 commerce. Jealousy, too, between the standing Courts of Law 
 and the legal representative of what they regarded as the 
 irregular judicial power of the King's Council, the Chancellor, 
 and L' Hopital passed for a Huguenot. The Edict of January 
 had been registered by the Parliaments with reluctance or 
 resistance, and they now gave the Huguenots publicly up to 
 massacre. The Parliament of Rouen, expelled from its seat, 
 established itself at Louviers ; that of Toulouse was prominent 
 in the annihilation of the elite of the bourgeoisie. Its action 
 was so notorious, that, by the Peace of St. Germain, it was 
 excluded from hearing any case in which Huguenots were 
 engaged. 
 
 The Parliaments, in their own phrase, " sat upon the lilies," 
 and were justified in refusing to leave their seat. Equally 
 natural was the hesitation of most of the Liberal Churchmen, 
 the diplomatists, the men of letters. IModern writers have 
 attributed to their defection the failure of the cause. But it 
 was the sword that turned the scale, and not the pen. Literati 
 are too ready to think that in times of revolution the action of 
 their predecessors was the motive power. It was in this case 
 merely the feather which showed the direction of the wind. 
 
 The bulk of the upper classes was, as future events proved, : 
 essentially royalist in sympathy. There was in the left wing of 
 Huguenotism a decided savour of republicanism, or of revolt 
 from the legitimate succession. Montluc may, or may not, 
 
26 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 have been true in stating that in 1561 the Huguenots of 
 Guyenne debated the replacement of the Valois by a " roi des 
 
 Jldeles." It is certain that the first outbreak was disgraced by 
 anti-royahst exctises. The head of Francis 11. was broken into 
 dust, and thrown into the river at Orleans. The bones of 
 Louis XL at Notre Dame de Clery were given to the dogs, 
 while at Angouleme the sepulchres of the ancestors of Francis 
 I. were desecrated. 
 
 Of the importance of Paris to the Catholic cause it will be 
 well to speak elsewhere. Suffice it to say here that it was fully 
 realized by all the Huguenot leaders. It was directly or 
 indirectly the object of all Coligni's or Navarre's attacks. 
 Either they would move on the town itself, or they would 
 starve it out by the possession of its food avenues, Normandy 
 and the lower Seine, or the streams which flowed from eastw'ard 
 and southward into the Parisian basin. 
 
 Finally the Huguenot party was not sufficiently organized 
 nor sufficiently homogeneous. As soon as the war broke out 
 
 I jealousy appeared between the noble and the bourgeois 
 
 I elements, and between the religious and the secular. Tavannes 
 states that in 1563 he saw letters from Geneva to the towns, 
 warning them Jto trust to the nobility. Calvinism was equally 
 intolerant with Catholicism, and more self-sufficient. The 
 disciples of toleration, and the libertines who had left 
 Catholicism on account of the severity of its discipline, found 
 that they had changed for the worse.. With many the new- 
 doctrines had signified merely a revolt against the clergy ; it 
 was no gain to pass from the domination of the priest to that 
 of the minister. 
 
 The Huguenot nobility were excellent military material, but 
 
 \ were not yet an army. They went lightly into the war, as they 
 raced helter-skelter into Orleans, and many went lightly out of it. 
 Conde' had to disperse the bulk of his forces after he had taken 
 Orleans. He could not keep them in the field. Many were poor, 
 their families were in real danger, their interests were provincial. 
 
THE HUGUENOTS. 27 
 
 It was long before they formed a thoroughly reliable force. 
 Their want of discipline lost Jarnac, their inconsiderate eager- 
 ness to fight lost Moncontour. The issues of the war^ 
 depended mainly on the following of the chiefs, and were ; 
 decided far away from the Huguenot civic centres. The 
 nobility only were found in the first line ; the townspeople 
 were fully occupied with local warfare. From abroad the 
 Catholics received more aid than the Huguenots. The \y 
 Spanish auxiliaries were more valuable than the English, and 
 at this time more disinterested. 
 
 It was a shock to the national conscience that the Huguenot 
 chiefs had handed Havre and Dieppe to the old national./ 
 enemy; it was well known that the English price was the 
 recovery of Calais. The Calvinism of the Huguenots barred 
 to them the mercenary resources of the greater part of 
 Germany. If a Palatine prince raised reiters for their service, 
 a Saxon prince levied his Lutherans for the Crown. 
 Throughout the wars no German Catholic fought in the 
 Calvinist lines, but the Catholic agents recruited freely from 
 Protestant states. The great recruiting-sergeant of the French 
 Crown, Schomberg, was himself a Protestant. 
 
 The first war decided, once and for all, that France should 
 not be a Protestant nation. How was it that the two next did 
 not decide its exclusive Catholicism ? In the second war the 
 Huguenots rather gained than lost. They were strong enough 
 to besiege Paris, to get the better in a battle outside its walls. 
 The third peace was yet more favourable than the first and 
 second, notwithstanding the defeats of Jarnac and Moncontour. 
 This was due, in some degree, to the altered condition of the 
 party ; other causes, and perhaps the more weighty, were 
 external. 
 
 In the two latter wars the light-heartedness had disappeared ; 
 the party was purged of its less satisfactory elements, it was 
 now a matter of grim earnest, of life and death. Technically 
 the Huguenots again took the offensive, but even if, as seems 
 
28 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 probable, they were mistaken, they had every reason to fear 
 surprise. 
 
 The Venetian ambassador, Correr, believes that in 1566 they 
 only anticipated attack, and so unimpeachable an authority as 
 Marshal Tavannes explicitly states this of 1568. The 
 Huguenots were now more concentrated in their own provinces 
 of the south-east and south-west. The towns which had 
 remained Huguenot were the most stubborn, and had been 
 reinforced by the exiles from other congregations. The royal 
 armies broke themselves again and again against their walls. 
 The resistance of St. Jean d 'Angeli after Moncontour probably 
 saved the cause. Undisciplined as they still were, the small 
 fighting nobility were after all the flower of France ; they were 
 well horsed, and had great rapidity of movement. The 
 Turkish envoy, who was no mean critic, spoke in terms of 
 unqualified praise of their conduct at St. Denis."^ 
 
 The Moderates even before St. Bartholomew were swinging 
 back to the weaker party. The Constable's death at St. Denis, 
 as will be seen, contributed to this. The professional soldiers, 
 such as Vielleville and Cosse', detested the mutual throat-cutting 
 for the benefit of Spaniards and Lorrainers. When Vielleville 
 was asked who won the battle of St. Denis he replied, " The 
 king of Spain." 
 
 In the Catholic ranks there was a general unwillingness to 
 fight. L'Hopital vouches for the jealousies and divisions irt 
 the royal camp. The Crown was unwilling to push matters to 
 extremities ; the state of its finances rendered the continuance 
 of war impossible, unless it would accept the proffered 
 , subsidies of Philip and of Paris. But a more decisive cause 
 was the revolt in the Netherlands. Cateau Cambresis had 
 turned attention inwards. The rising of the Gueux turned it 
 again outwards. 
 
 Could France let slip the opportunity of reverting to the 
 
 * The operations of seven small potentates of Southern France, 
 familiarly termed the Viscounts, are well worthy of a military monoj^raph. 
 
THE HUGUENOTS. 29 
 
 anti-Spanish policy, the abandonment of which had caused all 
 her troubles ? Could she suffer her fighting material to be 
 annihilated when the losses of Francis I, might be recovered? 
 
 "We always won by arms," wrote the Catholic Gascon 
 Montluc, " they by those confounded writings." He attributes 
 the excellent terms which the Huguenots obtained at the 
 second Peace to their influence on the Royal Council. The 
 Council indeed could not adopt a purely sectarian attitude. 
 
 The Huguenot leaders used the advantages offered by the' 
 Peace of St. Germain to the full. They hoped once more to 
 control the Crown, as they had hoped to control it on the 
 death of Francis 11. 
 
 Coligni's personality stamped itself on the impressionable 
 imagination of the young King. The union between the 
 Catholic Crown and the Huguenot Princes of the Blood was to 
 be cemented by the marriage of the king's sister with Henry of 
 Navarre, son of Jeanne d'Albret, the staunchest and stiffest of 
 Calvinist ladies. The result would be immediate war upon , 
 Spain, a war national and political, but entaihng, as all 
 Catholics saw, the triumph of Reform in both France and the 
 Low Countries. 
 
 Tavannes, not unjustly from the ultra-Catholic point of view, 
 describes the stages of the Huguenot revolt. 
 
 (i) It was stimulated by Catherine di Medici, in order to 
 strengthen her position and eject the Guises. (2) The 
 Huguenots themselves expected to control King and State. 
 (3) They were compelled to fight for bare life. (4) They were 
 slaughtered at St. Bartholemew for wishing to force the 
 Catholics to take up their quarrel against Spain, and suffer all 
 the loss, while the Huguenots would harvest the gains. 
 
 That the Catholics would be forced into the Spanish war 
 seemed certain, for they had lost their leaders, and could offer 
 no organized resistance, while the Moderates were only too 
 willing to wipe their blood-stained swords on Spanish bodies. 
 But it was at this crisis that the loss of Conde was appreciably 
 
H^' 
 
 30 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 felt. His undoubted position, his gaiety and courtesy, the 
 absence of religious exclusiveness, his favour with Catherine, 
 all these qualities might, in the temporary obscurity of the 
 House of Guise, have won the Catholic nobility to a war 
 which, in his hands, would have assumed a less religious 
 complexion. 
 
 Coligni, soldier and statesman as he was, was no diplomat.- 
 He had acquired somewhat of the masterful roughness of his 
 creed. He was too uncompromising to conceal his feelings; 
 above all, he could not get on with women. His inconsiderate 
 monopoly of her son now wounded Catherine in her tenderest 
 point. Thus the final tragedy had, as might have been 
 expected, its political and its religious side. The resolve of 
 the Queen to free the crown from the great official who 
 controlled it was combined with the feud between Guises and 
 the Huguenot branch of the Montmorenci, and with the 
 hatred of the Parisian democracy for the nobilty of Southern 
 France. 
 
 St. Bartholemew w^as, in a measure, the re-enactment of the 
 great Armagnac slaughter, which preceded the English war. 
 'The Parisian bourgeois believed that he had been freed, not 
 only from heresy, but from a feudal reaction, and curiously the 
 Catholic noble of Northern France believed that his country 
 hid been saved a disruptive and republican Federalism which 
 ' would have taken the Swiss Confederacy for its model. 
 
 These beliefs, apparently contradict-ory, have been con- 
 tinuously transmitted to Catholic writers of modern days. It 
 will be worth while therefore, before proceeding to the second 
 stage of the Religious Wars, to consider the first of these 
 accusations, while the second will be more conveniently treated 
 hereafter. 
 
 The question of a feudal reaction can be best tested by a 
 
 yy^^ reference to the demands of the Estates of Orleans, and the 
 
 I Deputation of Pontoise, which apparently had Huguenot 
 
 I majorities, to the manifesto of Conde (which gave the professed 
 
THE HUGUENOTS. 3' 
 
 object of the war), and to the concessions claimed in the 
 Peaces which terminated the three first wars. 
 
 The conclusion of such an enquiry will probably be, that 
 this period shows an all round reaction against the pressure of > 
 modern monarchy. Every organization that had, to all 
 appearance, been stifled or absorbed, gave signs of fresh and 
 independent life. The Church cried for the revival of Galilean 
 liberties, for National Councils, for the replacement of the 
 Concordat by the Pragmatic Sanction. The Estates General 
 demanded periodical sittings, control over taxation, the 
 subordination of the Judicature, municipal liberties. Among 
 such demands feudal elements naturally reappeared. The 
 nobility demanded baronial jurisdiction, as did the bourgeoisie 
 municipal. They claimed the exclusive right of hunting, a 
 sharper line between noble and roticrier. 
 
 Such claims are more or less feudal, and were pressed by^y 
 nobles more or less Huguenot. But the Third Estate, als^ 
 more or less Huguenot, made demands of a distinctly anti- 
 feudal character, protection for the peasant against oppressive 
 corvees and cruel usage, against the abuses of such seignorial 
 jurisdiction as remained, the intervention of royal judicial 
 officers between the lord and his subjects. 
 
 Thus there was no precise coincidence between Huguenotism ^ 
 and Feudalism. Many or most of the same demands were ( 
 made in the Estates General of the League. 
 
 The objects of Conde's manifesto, and of the three Peaces, 
 are partly political, partly religious ; on the one hand the 
 liberation of the king from a clique of foreign favourites, and 
 the restoration of the Princes of the Blood to their proper 
 influence ; on the other, the toleration accorded by the Edict 
 of January. Here the political object is not feudal ; it is not 
 independence but influence ; it is to bring the princes nearer 
 to, not to take them further from, the Crown. Conde and his -^ 
 partisans insisted on rehabilitation, on recognition that they 
 had acted loyally in the Crown's interest. They never had : 
 
32 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 regarded themselves as fighting against the Crown. The 
 King, they held, was an involuntary prisoner in the hands 
 of the Loiraitt^. 
 ^^^iSut, curiously enough, it is from the religious side that the 
 ■■—feudal element emerges. The strongest restriction is imposed 
 upon the worship of the non-feudal element. The right of the 
 burghers to differ from the king's religion is a matter not 
 of class, but of local privilege. The noble in his castle may 
 do as he pleases, he is to be as religiously independent as he 
 was of old judicially and politically. The nobles had here 
 been the gainers, they had made the most show in the wars, 
 and had the making of the peace. Thus but for St. 
 Bartholomew it is possible that the wars might have favoured 
 a return towards Feudalism. As Feudalism had been based in 
 the past partly on decentralisation of justice, partly on 
 decentralisation of military service, so now it might have 
 found a new foundation in decentralisation of religion. In 
 Germany this had been the case. The principle, Cujus ?'egio, 
 <C ejus religio, had been the last word of feudalism. 
 
 The Venetian Barbaro compared the Bourbons leading the 
 Huguenots for political reasons against the Guises, to the 
 German houses leading the Lutherans against the House 
 of Hapsburg. Reform had been brought to the fighting 
 point by the discontent of the military classes. It was natural 
 that peace should depend on their contentment. 
 
 The power of the Huguenots was profoundly modified by 
 the great massacre. It was criticised at the time as being 
 perhaps a crime, but certainly a blunder ; the number of the 
 slain was either too many or too few. Tavannes, however, 
 points out, that whereas, notwithstanding the defeats of Jarnac 
 and Moncontour, the Huguenots could previously keep the 
 I field, they could never, after 1572, bring an army into action 
 I unless aided by the Catholics of South France. 
 
 Catholic writers of recent years have thought it worth while 
 to minimise the number of the victims of St. Bartholomew. 
 
THE HUGUENOTS. 33 
 
 If, however, to those killed at Paris be added those who were 
 slaughtered in the provinces, the total is very considerable."^ 
 But it is no matter of counting noses. The massacre cut off") 
 the dominant element of the Huguenots, the fighting,/ 
 aggressive class, the class which necessarily had political 
 influence. Those who were killed at Paris were the more 
 important, the more adventurous, both militarily and politically. 
 The party as a whole, and each province separately, lost its 
 natural leaders. Coligni was never replaced. The Huguenots 
 never again possessed a leader in whom his great military 
 qualities, his high official position, his prudence, and his stead- 
 fastness were combined.! That Navarre and Conde were forced 
 to pervert was perhaps more injurious than their death. It was 
 a bad example. Many of the Huguenot nobility, whose"] 
 religion had throughout been somewhat colourless, definitely ( 
 reverted to Catholicism. % The remainder were scattered, 
 disabled for combined action. On the other hand the-- 
 bourgeois element in the towns and districts where it had \ 
 been strongest was intact. The result was a complete j 
 transformation of the party. The ministers and the bourgeois / 
 and the lesser local gentry assumed the lead, the purelv ' 
 
 * The numbers slain in Paris were variously computed from ro,oco 
 to 1,000, the latter figure being probably more correct. But to this 
 figure provincial massacres would add at least 10,000. For information on 
 the Massacre, see North British Reviezv, October, 1869 (Lord Acton) ; 
 Proceedings of the Huguenot Society, January, 1887, (Sir H. Austen 
 Layard) ; and the Cte. de la Ferriere's Avant et aprcs le St. Barthelemy, 
 1892. 
 
 t The loss, indeed, was not only that of the party, but of the nation. 
 Fi-ance has, perhaps, never reproduced the type of Coligni and Teligni. 
 No nation can afford to ostracise or massacre the flower of its nobility. Of 
 all the excuses and explanations for the agony of 1870, " C'est le St. 
 Barthelemy qui nous tue aujourdhuy " was possibly the truest. 
 
 X Priuli, writing in 1 582, states that Huguenotism had decreased by 
 70 per cent. He dwells also on the religious indifference of the higher 
 classes in France, as contrasted with the fervent, if somewhat exoteric, zeal 
 of the lower. His remarks are applied to the Catholic party, but are 
 probably true of both. 
 
 D 
 
34 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 I religious element was forced to the front, for it was for 
 
 /religious existence, not for political control, that the struggle 
 was continued. 
 
 The fourth war was no longer a war of movement, of 
 forced marches by noble cavalry, but essentially a war of 
 sieges. The unity of the party had hitherto consisted in the 
 persons of the great leaders. This it was now attempted to 
 replace by a representative federal system, by utilising to the 
 full for defensive purposes the machinery which the Con- 
 gregational system suggested or supplied. It may almost be 
 I said that the ministers took the place of the nobles, and that 
 I they substituted for a military aristocracy a democratic 
 ' theocracy. The organization proposed in a synod at Be'arn 
 is practically a federal republic. Each town should annually 
 elect a mayor for military and civil command, and two councils 
 of twenty-four and sixty-five members respectively for legisla- 
 tion, coinage, taxation, the decision in peace and war. The 
 mayors and councils should elect a general chief and council 
 for the province on a similar model. In 1573 this suggestion 
 was adopted in the Estates of the party at Nimes and 
 Montauban. Languedoc and Upper Guyenne formed two 
 governments, each with its elective chief acting under the 
 control of the Estates. Within the Government each diocese 
 held its separate Estates. It was determined to sequestrate 
 all ecclesiastical property, to levy taxation on Huguenots and 
 Catholics alike. More than this, the system was to be 
 extended over the whole of France, with the progress of 
 Reform. 
 <^ Here was Revolution. The governmental system of the 
 country was entirely set aside, and a party, non-official 
 organization substituted for it. Nor was the practice without 
 its theory. It was no longer possible to pretend that the 
 Huguenots were fighting for the Crown, that the Queen- 
 mother and her son were in durance vile, and must be 
 delivered. It is possible that from the first revolutionary 
 
THE HUGUENOTS, 35 
 
 theories had existed among the townspeople and the ministers, 
 but the official programme of the party was eminently loyal. 
 The Synod of La Ferte' sous Jouarre had indeed been accused 
 of an approach to the revolutionary doctrine of the Dominion 
 of Grace, of holding that all the magistrates in France had 
 forfeited their office by sin, and were no true magistrates. 
 This accusation, however, had been indignantly and authorita- 
 tively denied. Political pamphlets had originally been mere 
 personal invectives, directed against the House of Guise, and 
 the improper influence of foreigners. But the foreigner is 
 now not the Lorrainer, but the Italian, that is, the Queen- 
 mother. The Genevan preacher had little respect for the 
 King, and less for his mother. From the days of Knox the 
 maladministration of women had been a favourite theme with 
 the ministers. Hence the massacre was followed by a swarm 
 of political pamphlets, some mere passing satires, others 
 of permanent interest in the history of political thought. 
 Models were ready to hand in the brochures directed by the 
 Marian exiles against the Catholic government. Of these 
 pamphlets, the two most remarkable are the Fj'imco Gallia of^ 
 Hotman, and the Vindicice Contra Tyrranos, by Languet orj-^ 
 Du Plessis Mornay. The former, adopting the historical 
 method, attempts to prove that the absolutism of the 
 monarchy was a breach in the continuity of French history, 
 that its true basis was a nation of freemen with an elective 
 and constitutional monarchy, that the fountains of freedom, 
 Gallic and Teutonic, had been tainted by the influx of Italian 
 ideas, Roman domination, Imperial law, Italian women and 
 politicians ; France, to be free, must revert to the original 
 principles, the official elective kingship, the national Estates, 
 the exclusion of the women and the foreigner. The Vindicice, 
 on the other hand, arguing on the deductive method, adopts 
 as its postulate an original compact between king and people. 
 Each contracting party had its engagements to fulfil, and the 
 Crown, from its failure to execute the contract, had released 
 
36 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 the people from its obedience. These books are merely, 
 however, good examples of a considerable literature, in which 
 the same arguments, the same illustrations, frequently the 
 same words reappear."^ It is important to observe that these 
 pamphlets almost exclusively belong to the years between 
 1572 and 1576, by which time, as will be seen, the party was 
 again transformed. 
 
 There was probably no moment when Huguenot was so 
 sharply distinguished from Catholic as during the short period 
 which elapsed between St. Bartholomew and the Treaty of 
 Rochelle. There could be no common bond to tie together 
 the shattered and scattered relics of the party but religion. 
 It offered no scope for the ambitious, no redress for the 
 malcontent. Resistance was confined to isolated localities. 
 The existence of Huguenotism as a political element in the 
 State seemed to be closed. Yet, within two years from the 
 Treaty of Rochelle, the party was more political and more 
 powerful than ever, and in 1576 extracted the extraordinarily 
 favourable Peace of Monsieur, which may be regarded as the 
 
 i high-water mark of Huguenot success. This sudden turn of 
 fortune was due to two causes of an almost exclusively 
 political character — the union with the Politiques of the South 
 H of France, and the re-union with the Princes of the Blood. 
 The former w\as closely connected with the family factions 
 of the reign of Henry II. The expectation that any religious 
 conflict would become merged in tlie feud between the 
 houses of Guise and Montmorenci had been deceived owing 
 to the zealous Catholicism of the Constable, which at the last 
 moment caused his alliance with his enemy. Yet the breach 
 with the Guises w^as never closed, the old Constable was more 
 than once on the point of breaking from them, his son, the 
 Marshal, Governor of Paris, fired upon the Cardinal of Lorraine 
 when he entered with an escort, and was consistently just in 
 
 * I have treated this subject at length in the English Historical Revitriv 
 1889. 
 
THE HUGUENOTS. 37 
 
 his dealings towards the Huguenots. After the death of the 
 Constable at St. Denis the breach became complete. The 
 Marshal was in 1574 imprisoned, and in danger of his head, 
 for complicity with the malcontent Princes of the Blood. The 
 two youngest brothers became active Huguenots, while 
 Marshal Damville, Governor of Languedoc, became in effect 
 king of Southern France, ruling alike over Catholic and 
 Huguenot. 
 
 The Politiques were, in the happy phrase of their enemy 
 Tavannes, " those who preferred the repose of the kingdom or 
 their own homes to the salvation of their souls ; who would 
 rather that the kingdom remained at peace without God, than 
 at war for Him." There were naturally Politiques throughout 
 the length and breadth of France, but they only became an 
 organized party in the South, precisely there where the two 
 creeds had been most evenly balanced, and most closely 
 intermingled, where passions had been hottest, where blood 
 had flowed most freely. It was here that the continuance 
 of the war had become intolerable, and the Southern 
 Catholics were perhaps horrified at a crime in which they 
 had not shared."^ Of such a party ^Marshal Damville, himself 
 a Catholic, but the opponent of the Catholic leaders, was the 
 natural head. As early as 1573 the Politiques of Poitou are 
 found sending deputies to a Huguenot assembly. But in 1574 
 the Politiques of Languedoc, under Damville, formed a definite 
 alliance, and in 1575, at the great assembly of Nimes, a regular 
 Constitution was drawn up for the union of the two parties. 
 Damville, in the absence of Conde, appointed head of the 
 Huguenots as well as of the Politiques, or, as they called 
 themselves, the Peaceable Catholics. The districts affected 
 were administered in complete independence of the Crown — • 
 
 * To this was attributed the conversion of the young Vte. de Turenne to 
 Protestantism, a gain which counterbalanced many losses ; for, apart from 
 his talents, his estates lying in the centre of Southern France, helped to 
 connect the western, southern, and eastern sections of the Huguenots. 
 
38 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 Estates were annually held and taxes collected. These latte^ 
 the administration professed to be willing to hand over to the 
 Crown as soon as political reform was inaugurated, and 
 political grievances redressed. It was constantly reported 
 that this district was more regularly administered and more 
 lightly taxed than any part of royalist France. It is clear, 
 however, that the objects of this League were purely defensive, 
 its character strictly local, and its tendencies separatist. It is 
 to be reckoned among the many instances of the non-homo- 
 geneity of the South of France. 
 
 The condition of affairs was materially altered by the escape 
 of the Princes of the Blood. A movement which had as its 
 chiefs Conde, Henry of Navarre, and Alen^on, the King's 
 brother and heir presumptive, must necessarily affect the whole 
 kingdom. The party, indeed, took the offensive with the aid 
 of John Casimir and his Palatinate reiters. To him was 
 promised first the possession, and then the occupation of the 
 three Bishoprics, the important acquisition of Henry II. 
 Thus again the Huguenot party was disgraced by the 
 incurable tendency of the great nobles to seek foreign aid in 
 revolt against the Crown at the expense of the national 
 territory. The terms wrung from the Queen-mother included 
 the surrender of the Governorship of Picardy, a stout Catholic 
 province, to Conde, which would at last bring the French 
 Calvinists into touch with their co-religionists in the Nether- 
 lands. The treaty provoked a sharp Catholic reaction ; so 
 sharp indeed that Damville and the Southern Politiques, who 
 regarded the offensive Huguenot action as a breach of faith, 
 were for a moment found upon the royalist side.* The war 
 was, however, but of a moment's duration, and the peace of 
 Bergerac was patched up to leave Alen9on's hands free for his 
 Netherland adventures. The period which lies between this 
 
 * On the one hand the Crown used every effort to whi Damville, on the 
 other the Huguenots injudiciously threatened him, accusing him both of 
 religious favouritism and political absolutism. 
 
THE HUGUENOTS. 39 
 
 and the outbreak of the League has a very peculiar character, 
 and does Httle credit to the Huguenot party, or at least to its 
 leaders. Personal considerations and court intrigue take the 
 place of religious zeal. Henry of Navarre and Conde were 
 too jealous to act in concert, and the stricter Huguenots 
 looked to the latter as their leader, suspecting, not without 
 reason, the genuineness or permanency of Henry's re-conver- 
 sion. Many others believed that a very tolerable modus vivendi 
 had been disturbed by the intrusion of the Princes of the Blood, 
 and looked to Damville as their constitutional leader. Catholic 
 as he was. They refused to take part in the Lovers' War, 
 which they regarded as unwarrantable aggression adopted for 
 improper personal motives. Religious zeal seemed to have 
 burnt itself out, and there were signs that the reHgious parties 
 would give place to fresh combinations, based on personal or 
 constitutional affinities. Henry of Navarre was drawing 
 near to the king ; Conde to xMen^on. The gallant Huguenot 
 Captain, La Noue, proposed that all mention of religious 
 differences should be dropped, and that Huguenots and 
 Catholics should combine in an attack upon the abuses of the 
 royal administration. It was not merely the moderates who^ 
 were disposed to combine for the peace and reform of the \ 
 nation, but mysterious agents were constantly on the move 
 between the extreme left-wings of the two religions, the houses 
 of Guise and Conde'. In these intrigues John Casimir was 
 concerned, and there were grounds for believing that they 
 might result in a sudden attack upon the Crown, or that both 
 parties, ashamed of the brutalities of civil war, might strive to 
 forget the past in an onslaught upon the weaker neighbours of 
 France along the Rhine. But the most peculiar phenomenon 
 of this period is to be found in the strongly Protestant 
 province of Dauphine. This, it will be remembered, was one 
 of the few districts where the lower classes were devoted to 
 Reform. But here the religious conflict had given place to, ■ 
 or become merged in, a social conflict. The people became 
 
40 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 imperceptibly engaged in a desperate struggle against the 
 gentry, in which religious distinctions seem to have dropped 
 entirely out of sight, and the people, Huguenot as in the main 
 they were, received support from the house of Guise, disposed 
 at this time to rely upon the masses, of whatever creed. 
 
 It seemed not unlikely that this social war might spread 
 over France. The Venetian Badoer, writing in 1582, regarded 
 the hostility between nobles and people as of more importance 
 than religious differences. The causes which he assigns are 
 of permanent weight, and form one of the many interesting 
 links between the Wars of Religion and the Revolution. 
 "There is extremely bad feeling between nobles and people, 
 who are much oppressed by the large quantities of poor 
 gentry, who pfay the tyrant, and expect to live, dress, and take 
 their pleasure at the people's expense. This lawlessness of 
 the nobles has enormously increased, especially in places 
 distant from the Court, and there is little hope of remedy, for 
 these poor gentlemen are, owing to the eldest son inheriting 
 the greater portion of the family property, forced to live in 
 this way. Partly the means of supporting themselves in the 
 gendarmerie has failed them, for this force no longer receives 
 pay ; partly they have become accustomed in the civil war to 
 live with much license and extravagance on the shoulders of 
 the poor." 
 
 Had Alen^on succeeded to the throne, or had Henry of 
 Navarre earlier abjured his professed' faith, the Wars of 
 Religion might have died a natural death. As it was, the 
 somewhat sudden death of Alen^on produced a startling 
 change. Henry HI.'s life was notoriously a bad one, and he 
 had no hope of issue. Henry of Navarre was heir presumptive, 
 and the sense of Catholic France revolted against a heretic 
 king. Keen observers even now recognized that his ultimate 
 acceptance of Catholicism was a certainty, but if not too 
 spiritual he w^as at least too spirited to be converted at dicta- 
 tion. Hence the great Catholic uprising, which will be 
 
THE HUGUENOTS. 41 
 
 treated hereafter. The first effect of this was to rallys. 
 Huguenots of whatever class, and of whatever principles, round / 
 him who was now their natural leader. It might be expected ' 
 that the dividing line would once more be purely religious, 
 that the political aspect of the movement would be at least 
 obscured. Yet this was far from the case. It was recognized 
 that the Catholic League implied not merely the suppression 
 of heresy, but the extinction of the house of Bourbon in 
 favour of the house of Guise. Hence Damville and his 
 southern Politiques were almost without hesitation on Henry's! 
 side. The King himself, and the handful of professional 
 soldiers who adhered to him, were known to resent his ex- 
 clusion from succession. The Catholic members of the house 
 of Conde, Soissons and Conti, fled to join Navarre, and the 
 old Duke of Montpensier, nothwithstanding the influence of 
 his beautiful virago, Catherine of Guise, was avowedly opposed 
 to the action of his wife's house. A large proportion of the"\ 
 nobility in the centre and south declared for the Bourbons. ( 
 This added enormously to the mobility of the party, to its 
 power of taking the offensive, yet it also accentuated internal 
 difficulties of long standing. The ministers and citizens, who 
 for a moment after St. Bartholomew had almost monopolized 
 resistance, were disinclined to be once more ousted by the 
 noble element, whose religion was of a somewhat shifting hue. 
 Nor did they ever thoroughly trust Navarre. It was fortunate 
 for him that his rival, Conde, was removed in 1588. It is 
 true that the Huguenot political theory was forced to execute \ 
 a complete volte face. The fundamental character of the ' 
 Salic Law of legitimate succession was now enforced by press 
 and pulpit, with as much energy as had been the original 
 compact, and the right of deposition. But in practice the) 
 Republican Federalist spirit survived. It showed itself at the 
 great assembly of Rochelle in 1588. There were protests 
 against over-centralisation, against the tyrannical protectorate. 
 It was demanded that each province should have its separate 
 protector. Henry felt the pulse of his party and anticipated 
 
42 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 the federalist scheme. He insisted that he would only be 
 president by virtue of election. He instituted provincial 
 chambers of justice to check his officers, and a controlling 
 council of twelve members, his Chancellor, six elected 
 annually by the provinces (Upper and Lower Languedoc, 
 Dauphine, Guyenne, Poitou, Rochelle), and five by the 
 General Assembly every other year. The united Catholic 
 party was invited to adopt a parallel constitution. Every 
 governor of province or town was subjected to a similar check. 
 The bourgeois held the purse, and they meant to hold the 
 reins. Constitutional questions were forced into the back- 
 ground by the tragedies of 1588 and 1589, by the constant 
 military movement now of an essentially offensive character, 
 by the fact that the murder of Henry HI. gave Navarre a 
 position which it would be suicidal for his party to deny. Yet, 
 
 / that the old class jealousies subsisted is proved by the later 
 
 I history of the Huguenot party. 
 
 The last act of Huguenotism as a political element opens 
 with the recognition of Henry as king of France by the bulk 
 of the Catholic party, and with his reconciliation with his 
 Papacy. Henry's gain was the Huguenot loss. The resist- 
 ance of the ultra-Catholics he had partly fought down and 
 partly bought out. But the bribes had consisted in rehgious 
 as well as in pecuniary engagements. Leaguer towns and 
 
 J governors had pledged him to the exclusion of Huguenot 
 worship from the area of their influence ; whereas in the early 
 war Huguenot defeats had led to the expansion of their privi- 
 leges, their final victory appeared to threaten shrinkage. Even 
 before the King's abjuration, the party had threatened to look 
 elsewhere for a Protector ; it had negotiated independently 
 with England and Holland. After the abjuration, the first 
 formal demand of the southern Huguenots was, that they 
 should be allowed to choose both a foreign and a native 
 Protector. This was to give a foreign prince a recognised 
 right of interference in French politics, and a native prince 
 the right of revolt against the crown. The party was profoundly 
 
THE HUGUENOTS. 43 
 
 disaffected. It disliked the King's ideal of a Gallican patri- 
 archate, of a scheme of unity which would act as a solvent 
 of the party organization, and water down its doctrines. The 
 more religious section comprising such men as d'Aubigne, 
 was scandalized at the divorce, at the King's obvious desire to 
 place his mistress on the throne. The political section, headed 
 by Bouillon and La Tremouille aimed at securing provincial 
 independence or national importance, by utilising the organiza- 
 tion which the King had neither the power nor the will to 
 break. The obvious danger wrung from the Council a 
 re-enactment of the favourable Edict of 1577. But the 
 Huguenots were again becoming a separatist anti-governmental 
 party. They threatened to renounce governmental guarantees, 
 to re-organize their military and financial system, and to occupy 
 their strong places in defiance of the Court. The nation's 
 misfortune was their opportunity. Open war with Spain had 
 followed Henry's recognition, and the Spaniards had surprised 
 Amiens and were astride upon the Somme. The more royalist 
 section of the Huguenots, headed by Mornay, would give 
 aid to the King, and trust to his liberality, but the bulk of the 
 party held back, and few marched to the recovery of Amiens. 
 The extremists wished even to seize Tours and to hold the 
 Loire as the Spanish held the Somme. But Henry's success, the 
 peace with Spain, the submission of the last Leaguer stronghold 
 in Brittany, convinced the Huguenots of the danger of isola- 
 lation. Hence the Edict of Nantes, which was to permanently 
 regulate the relations of the two parties, to be the standard 
 of reference in France, as the Peace of Augsburg was in 
 Germany. Catholicism was henceforth the State religion ;"^ 
 it was universal, where it had ceased to exist it was restored ; j 
 it recovered its lost estates, its tithes. But to the Huguenots j 
 liberty of conscience was universally conceded, and extensive \ 
 local privileges as to liberty of worship. On the political side, 
 they demanded three guarantees for their security: (i) places 
 of security; (2) the right of holding royal offices; (3) a 
 proportion of members in the Courts of Justice. Thus only 
 
44 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 could they be protected from surprise, from political nonentity, 
 and from judicial persecution. 
 
 The Edict of Nantes was no general legalization of tolera- 
 tion. It did not admit the principle that a citizen's form of 
 worship was indifferent to the State. It was rather a treaty 
 between two powers comparatively equal. Privileges were 
 accorded to a certain class generally, and to certain localities 
 
 - individually. Huguenotism was not absorbed in the State 
 system. Nay, rather its independence was accentuated. 
 
 ^ Even in Henry's lifetime the pseudo-feudal element had to 
 receive a lesson in the punishment accorded to Turenne, now 
 Duke of Bouillon. Yet it was far from extinct, and was 
 dangerous from the support which it might draw from religious 
 associations. The municipal element had all the sturdiness 
 of long years of independent administration. Moreover, in 
 the south, Huguenotism possessed a large measure of local 
 solidarity. In this party the representative element was long 
 lived. While the estates of the realm dropped into disuse, 
 those of the Huguenots were regularly held every three years, 
 consisting of thirty gentlemen, twenty ministers and ten mem- 
 bers of the third estate. Their deputies watched their interests 
 at Court, their agents acted as ambassadors with foreign powers. 
 The Spaniards treated with them separately, offering them 
 Dauphine and the south and west of the Loire as an indepen- 
 dent state. With their eight strong towns, and their garrison 
 of 4,000 men, they possessed a force which was independent 
 of the Crown, even though partly paid by it. But their danger 
 
 I lay in the dualism between the noble and the municipal 
 elements, between the political and the religious. Moreover, 
 their privileges 'were held in the teeth of the majority of the 
 nation ; they depended upon a strong king, who subsidised 
 their ministers, and paid their garrisons ; their continuance 
 was only secure until a monarch arose who had the will and 
 the power to withdraw them. Richelieu had the power to 
 terminate the political existence of the party, and Louis XIV. 
 the will to proscribe its religion. 
 
11. 
 THE LEAGUE 
 
 W^HEN the religious struggle broke out Catholicism had, 
 in point of dead-weight, the undoubted advantage. 
 Its divisions, its disorganization and demoralisation, could 
 alone have given the Huguenots a reasonable hope of victory. 
 The Church was, in the phrase of Tavannes, like a nation 
 which had been long at peace, and which had no generals ; 
 necessity gave her leaders. 
 
 Finding the Crown inactive or unsympathetic the old religion ^ 
 gradually learnt to place its confidence in the house of Guise, j 
 The fortunes of French CathoHcism were wedded to those of 
 a family scarcely French. Claude of Guise, the second son " 
 of Rene', Duke of Lorraine, had, after the great disaster of 
 Paris, beaten back the German advance on the eastward, and 
 in all probability saved Paris from the English. His six sons 
 were all richly endowed in France. The eldest was closely 
 connected with the Crown by his marriage to the daughter of 
 Renee, Duchess of Ferrara, and granddaughter of Louis XH. 
 His one daughter was married to James V. of Scotland, and 
 their child to King Henry's son Francis. 
 
 The family held three Duchy peerages, and wore two 
 Cardinal's hats. Already under Francis L they were josthng^ 
 for power with the Montmorencis, and had shouldered out j 
 the Bourbons ; already they posed as leaders of the ultra- i 
 Catholics. 
 
 It was in the family Duchy of Lorraine that the first 
 
46 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 Reformers of French race were brought to the stake. Francis 
 I., before his death, is said to have distrusted them as 
 dangerous to monarchy. The women were as fascinating and 
 as capable as the men. Mary, Regent of Scotland, Mary 
 Stuart, and Catherine, Duchess of Montpensier, may be 
 regarded as the three stars among the ladies of the Catholic 
 reaction. 
 
 The defence of Metz and the capture of Calais by Duke 
 Francis had made him the first man in France. He represented 
 the anti-Imperial war policy, holding out a hand to the Papacy 
 on the one hand, and to German Protestants on the other. 
 He hoped with the Pope's aid to realize, at the expense of 
 Spain, the old pretensions of his house to the kingdom of 
 Naples. His ambitions were to be served by foreign war, and 
 Spain and the Emperor were the natural enemies. Thus, 
 zealous Catholic as he was, he would welcome the aid of 
 foreign Protestants. It was the natural policy of France, that 
 to which Henry IV. returned. 
 
 Courageous in action, in policy Duke Francis was lethargic, 
 if not timid. This deficiency was supplied by his brother, the 
 Cardinal of Lorraine, who was at once fearless in design, and 
 physically a coward. Sceptical, or at least indifferent, he made 
 religion the pathway to his ambition, combatting the Reformers 
 with their own weapons, utilising the new learning in the 
 service of the Catholic reaction, professing appreciation of 
 Reform, that he might penetrate its secrets, skilfully widening 
 the gap which separated Lutheranism from Calvinism. His 
 aim was to stand at the head of a revived Catholicism, to be 
 spread by Spanish arms and Spanish fires. Here then he and 
 his brother parted company. The Cardinal joined Mont- 
 morenci in the pressure put upon the King for the Treaty 
 of Cateau Cambresis. National was to be exchanged for 
 religious war. 
 
 The Duke was indignant, but it was the key to the Guise 
 policy of the future — religious unity at the expense of national 
 
THE LEAGUE. 47 
 
 dismemberment. This was the work of the one member of 
 the Guise family who probably had no religion. Yet the 
 Cardinal did not realize its full effects. He was rather a 
 diplomat than a statesman. His eloquence secured his 
 immediate ends ; he had not foresight of their ultimate 
 results. 
 
 The House of Guise had many advantages, and some 
 drawbacks. The family possessions lay on the borderland of 
 France, the Spanish Netherlands, and the Empire. Lorraine 
 cut the Spanish possessions in half, separating Franche 
 Comte from the I-ow Countries. It was on the regular line of 
 march from France to Germany, and was a convenient 
 recruiting ground for German mercenaries. The Guises had 
 French possessions ; they could pose as representatives of the 
 nobility, as having rights as against the Crown, claims to the, 
 great offices and governments; or they could fall back on their 
 position as foreigners, disclaim responsibilities and duties, levy 
 war upon the King, with a lesser show of treason. The Crown 
 had reasons for favouring them ; they were made by itself, and 
 could, to all appearance, be unmade; they had no strong 
 inherited provincial backing. Jealous of the lords of the , 
 lilies, the monarchy liked to balance the old French nobility 1 
 by foreign importations. Thus the Duchy of Nemours had 
 been given to a Savoyard ; the Duchy of Nevers was in the 
 hands of a Gonzaga. The Strozzi and the Gondi were also 
 on the rise. 
 
 On the other hand, there was much dislike of this mushroom \ 
 Court nobility, which was ousting the Princes of the Blood,/ 
 and this set many of the Catholic orthodox nobility againsti 
 the Guises. The Parliament of Paris refused to recognise] 
 them as Princes. There was general discontent that the 
 foreigners, "the Lorraines," should occupy the benefices and 
 great offices of France. Shortly before the outbreak of war 
 the Catholic Parisians, on whom the power of Guise ultimately 
 rested, attacked their urban and surburban palaces. Granvelle, 
 
48 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION: 
 
 watching French poHtics from the Netherlands, as early as 
 1558 told the Cardinal that they could not stand alone, that 
 
 fthey must find friends abroad. Consequently they acted as 
 foreigners, and found support in foreign aid. But this would 
 not have been enough. They had no nationality, and could 
 not head a national movement, and so they threw themselves 
 at the head of the religious movement. When the national 
 I feeling revived they necessarily fell. 
 
 It is improbable that the Guises began with any idea of the 
 Crown ; but it is certain that they ended at reaching towards 
 it, though they were afraid to grasp it. Yet as early as 1560 
 the Huguenots accused the Duke of aiming at the throne. 
 Tavannes relates that the Queen-mother told his father that 
 she issued the Edict of Toleration for fear of the Guises, who 
 were aspiring to the throne. But it was impossible then, and 
 the Duke was too practical to aim at the impossible. His 
 ambition was under Henry H. by military fame to occupy the 
 first place under the Crown, under Francis H. to monopolise 
 the State by help of the Crown, under Charles IX. to domineer 
 over both State and Crown by means of an organisation 
 formed outside of the Crown circle. How impossible an 
 attempt on the throne was is proved by the universal dis- 
 content, by the wide ramifications of the affair of Amboise. 
 The Guises felt that the control was slipping from their 
 hands ; they must recover their monopoly by the annihilation 
 of the rival houses, then they would hav-e packed the Estates, 
 and ruled through them, then they might have aspired to the 
 succession of the Valois. Conde was on his trial, Coligni and 
 Navarre in their hands, when Francis II. died, and the control 
 of the State through the Crown must cease. It was then that 
 the Duke accepted his brother's ideas of seeking a powpr out- 
 side the Crown, of leading the French Catholics in alliance 
 with the European Catholic system, of using this organisation, 
 if necessary, in disobedience to the Crown. This entailed 
 reconciliation with the orthodox Catholics like Montmorenci, 
 
THE LEAGUE. 49 
 
 even in the face of long-standing personal hostility, alliance 
 with Spain against all previous foreign feeling. The massacre 
 of Vassi committed him to the cause, the capture of the 
 Constable at Dreux, the deaths of S. Andre and Navarre, 
 gave him the sole command of the cause, and his murder at 
 Orleans consecrated his family to the cause. 
 
 It was of undoubted service to Catholicism to have found 
 so capable a family at its front. Yet but for the adhesion of 
 Montmorenci and Navarre it is doubtful if the Guises could 
 have carried the majority with them. A yet more important and 
 reliable element in the party was the capital. Paris was a 
 national capital in a sense that could be used of no other town 
 in Europe. It already attracted and re-distributed all the 
 ambition and intellect of France. Italian observers rated its 
 population at 400,000. The French themselves placed the 
 number higher.* In 1546, Marino Cavalli reckons persons 
 connected with the University at from 16,000 to 20,000; those 
 attached to the Parliament and Chambre des Comptes at 
 40,000. Apart from this it was, he writes, " the Shop of all 
 France." Paris fashions and Paris restaurants already had a 
 European reputation. Paris was, according to Michieli, 
 writing in 1572, the first town in Europe, probably in the 
 world, and Frenchmen did not think life possible if they were 
 prevented from going to Paris. It was their long enforced 
 absence that tempted the Huguenot nobility to the capital in 
 1572, notwithstanding the notorious danger. " Young widows," 
 writes Tavannes, " made business matters a pretext to rush to 
 Paris to find new husbands, at the risk of their children's 
 health." The Crown and Paris were, in the phrase of La 
 
 * These numbers were probably exaggerated. A careful official com- 
 putation at the outset of the siege reckoned the number of persons to be 
 fed at something over 200,000, The population had, however, by that 
 time undoubtedly decreased. Mendo9a reckons the normal population at 
 550,000, reduced to 400,000 during the siege. 
 
 For an interesting account of Paris under the later Valois, see Eng. 
 Hist. Roj. 1886. 
 
50 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 Noue, the Huguenot captain, the sun and moon of France. 
 The possession of Paris almost impHed the possession of 
 Northern and Central France. 
 
 There had indeed been discontent in the capital, and the 
 Tuscan envoy believed that an outbreak would have occurred 
 before the war, but that the bourgeois were so rich, and that 
 leaders were lacking. Yet this discontent was probably rather 
 political than religious, and when religion became the dividing 
 line there was no doubt on which side Paris would be found, 
 especially when the Parliament had definitely declared itself 
 against Reform. The Government with difficulty protected 
 the lives of Huguenots against the University students and the 
 lower classes. Intellectually the Parliament and the Sorbonne 
 led the town, and there was no difference of opinion until they 
 split. In the first war the fire at the arsenal, which was 
 attributed to Huguenots, was followed by a massacre of from 
 800 to 900 heretics. It was enough to say "Voila ung 
 Huguenot," and the person pointed at was hunted down. 
 Then the Parliament interfered and forbade massacre, but 
 hung, strangled, or broke all the rest. "By these means," 
 concludes Claude Haton, "was the city of Paris so well 
 cleared of Huguenots, that the boldest could not have said 
 that there were any." No wonder that La Noue sorrowfully 
 confessed that the novices of the convents and the priests' 
 chambermaids could have swept all Huguenots out of Paris 
 with their brooms. 
 
 In the south, as has been seen, Toulouse took the same 
 I violent line as Paris, and, generally speaking, the Catholicism 
 of the masses m the large towns was of great service to the 
 party. At Marseilles, at Bordeaux, at Rennes, it required 
 courage to confess the faith amid the cries of " Au feu, au feu, 
 brMe, brtile." Yet it cannot be said that in the early wars the 
 Catholics were often organized, or their full strength utilised. 
 This was mainly due, no doubt, to the non-residence of the 
 higher clergy, and their lack of influence with their flocks. 
 
THE LEAGUE. 51 
 
 The Provincial and Municipal governments were, moreover, 
 jealous of independent organisations. Thus at Bordeaux a\ 
 Catholic syndicate, with a staff of elective officers and a 
 common chest, was formed upon the model of the Huguenot 
 bodies, but was immediately broken up as unconstitutional, 
 the zealous Catholic governor Montluc taking a leading part 
 in its suppression. Nevertheless, an established religion is 
 generally stronger than it seems. It is hard to move, and easy 
 to encroach upon, yet there is always a reaction which gives 
 the force of a new religion, Catholicism had not merely 
 religious, but deep social roots in France. It was connected 
 with all the traditions and the pleasures of the people. Every 
 town had its patron saint; from the King downwards every 
 institution seemed founded on Catholicism. The iconoclasm,' 
 the abolition of feast days, the ugly side of Calvinism roused 
 the dormant feeling.* Catholicism had, as well as Reform, its 
 organization, which might easily become political and military, 
 wuder indeed, and taking longer to set in motion, yet valuable 
 from the first in civil warfare. The number of clergy, and of 
 laymen professionally dependent on the clergy, was enormous, 
 apart from which every town had its guilds or brotherhoods, 
 under clerical control. 
 
 There are, however, only two distinctly-marked movements 
 in the history of the Catholic party previous to the formation 
 of the League of 1585, and these are the massacre of St. / 
 Bartholomew, and the Catholic reaction of 1576. It has been 
 argued that the great massacre is not to be ascribed to 
 religious motives ; that the Court was prompted by policy, 
 the Parisians by pillage. But the mob was provided and ' 
 organised by the Catholic municipal authorities ; it had always 
 thirsted for the blood of Huguenots ; the Government had 
 merely to withdraw the controlling hand. In the other towns 
 
 * This accounted for the violent outbreak of Catholicism at Orleans, 
 where the Huguenots had desecrated some fifty churches in and around 
 the towns which originally had much sympathy with Reform. 
 
52 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 of France where massacres took place the reHgious motive was 
 yet more prominent — the attack was led by the high Catholic 
 classes. In many others the well-known Huguenots were 
 saved by being temporarily imprisoned or confined in their 
 houses to keep them safe. Plunder was but an insepar- 
 able accessory to all religious strife. The fever heat of 
 St. Bartholomew was followed by a period of stupor. Partly 
 the Catholic party was shocked and morally disorgani;:ed by 
 its own crime ; pardy it could for the moment find no leaders 
 to carry out the movement to its logical consequences. The 
 Crown was forced from political reasons to withhold its hand, 
 and the House of Guise was neither ready nor willing to take 
 the sole responsibility of universal bloodshed. Thus the only 
 immediate result was that many flourishing Huguenot bodies 
 were exterminated, and that Paris was henceforth pledged to 
 revolutionary means. Thej;eaction which made itself felt in 
 
 ithe Estates of 1576 bears more immediately on our subject. 
 It was directed almost as much against the Crown as against 
 the Huguenots. It was caused partly by the conditions which 
 the Crown had granted to the heretics at the Peace of 
 Monsieur ; but partly by the growing system of favouritism at 
 
 , the Court. The Guises had carefully manipulated the 
 elections, and the Huguenot or Politique population of the 
 south, from fear of the royal mercenaries and Guisard 
 levies, was practically unrepresented. The movement, more- 
 over, was rather revolutionary than constitutional in form, 
 for the assembly of the Estates was merely a convenient 
 vehicle for giving expression to an association which had 
 been organised in entire independence of the Crown, which 
 had rejected the terms granted by, & to, the Huguenots, and 
 had entered into negotiations with Spain. Leagues of the 
 Catholic nobiUty had not been uncommon. In 1565 the 
 Association of Guyenne had been formed, in the name of the 
 Provincial Estates, by the governor Montluc and the bishops, 
 and had treated separately with the king of Spain. The 
 
THE LEAGUE, 53 
 
 Confrerie du St. Esprit, a secret association, had been founded 
 in Burgundy by Tavannes, and La Sainte Ligue existed in 
 Champagne, of which the Duke of Guise was governor — this 
 latter, it is noticeable, was pledged to the preservation of the 
 Crown for the Valois only so long as they remained Catholic. 
 The League of Picardy of 1576 — originally formed to exclude 
 Conde from the stronghold of Peronne — was intended to 
 extend over all Catholic France. Its elective chief was to be 
 obeyed in all and against all ; the resolutions of the elective 
 council were to be kept secret. The League was militarily 
 organised, and agents were accredited to foreign Courts to 
 receive and promise assistance, and to the French Court to 
 forward information. The articles of association subordinated \ 
 the King to the Estates, which should receive all the privileges) 
 of the reign of Clovis, or better, if better could be found. Allf 
 who refused to join were to be treated as enemies ; all 
 Catholics to furnish money and arms ; to swear never to 
 desert nor disobey it, whosoever might order them to do so. 
 The significance of the movement was that the Catholic"^ 
 nobility pledged itself to revolt from the monarchy if itl 
 declined to subscribe to its conditions, and threatened to I 
 ally itself with the national enemy. Had not the Crown 
 surrendered, the revolt of the nobles in the War of the Public 
 Weal, and the Huguenot rising of 1563 would again have 
 been repeated. The house of Guise was playing the part 
 previously allotted to the house of Burgundy and the house of 
 Bourbon. 
 
 Yet the League did not prosper, and the cause of its failure ^ 
 was the antagonism between the nobles^and the peopje. A ( 
 similar association was indeed formed in Paris, but the towns 
 were tired of fighting, and distrusted the aristocracy. The 
 Third Estate clamoured at once for the suppression of heresy 
 and the reduction of taxation, and these two objects were 
 incompatible ; several provinces refused a subsidy for the war, 
 and when operations began the Picard towns shut their gates 
 
54 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 against the neighbouring nobles. The only immediate prac- 
 tical effect of the League was that it excluded Conde from the 
 government of Picardy, and so prevented the chances of 
 concerted action between the Huguenot leader and his 
 co-religionists in the Netherlands. 
 
 More important, however, was the position which the 
 League was to give to Henry Duke of Guise. He had had, 
 indeed, his full share in St. Bartholomew, but it had hardly 
 brought him to the front. His uncle the Cardinal's death in 
 1574, left him the most prominent member of his house, and 
 i had removed from it the burden of dislike. The family had 
 rnot been idle, for in 1576 it could control five governments 
 and fifteen bishoprics, while the magistrature, the department 
 of finance, and the municipalities, were full of its creatures. 
 From this moment the Guises never took their eyes from off 
 the Crown. And this ambition directly connects itself with 
 the reaction of 1576. 
 
 At the opening of the Estates the papers of one David were 
 produced by the enemies of the Duke. They spoke of the 
 usurpation of the Capets, of the existence of the true 
 descendants of Charlemagne, faithful to the Church, whereas 
 the House of Capet was abandoned to a reprobate sense. 
 The elevation of the Duke of Guise as the head of all leagues 
 would be followed by the annihilation of heresy, and the 
 exclusion of the disobedient Princes of the Blood ; the victory 
 would be followed by the seizure of Jthe King, and his 
 confinement in a monastery. Henry of Guise would govern a 
 kingdom consecrated by the abolition of Galilean liberties. 
 These papers were said to have been found in an old box at 
 Lyons upon David's death, but the Catholics professed that 
 they were a Huguenot forgery. Such, however, was not the 
 view of the French minister at Madrid, who had got scent of 
 David's scheme from an independent source. 
 
 Of more undoubted authenticity was the genealogical 
 pamphlet of Rosieres, a priest of considerable position, who 
 
THE LEAGUE. 55 
 
 had long enjoyed the intimacy of the Guises. He proved 
 that even Merovius, the successor of Clodio, was an usurper. 
 From the rightful heir sprang Itta, who brought her title to 
 Eustace of Boulogne, a descendant of Charlemagne, whence 
 it descended to the House of Lorraine.* 
 
 The constant harping on the female line is to be remarked ; 
 the Cardinal of Lorraine had openly confessed his contempt 
 for the Salic Law. Returning to Capetian times the Guises 
 stood before the Valois, and as descendants of the House of 
 Anjou, by the female line, they stood before the Bourbons. Very 
 remarkable is the importance of their marriages, all depending 
 on ultimate rights of succession through females. The Duke 
 of Lorraine married the daughter of Henry H. ; Francis of 
 Guise the granddaughter of Louis XH. Henry of Guise 
 wished to marry Margaret, the younger daughter of Henry H. 
 
 Mary of Guise had been married to James V. of Scotland, 
 and her daughter to the young king Francis IL Mercoeur, a 
 cousin, married the heiress of the Penthievres, who had claims 
 to the Duchy of Brittany by the female line. Henry of 
 Guise's sister married the Duke of Montpensier, who, as a 
 Catholic, might have supplanted the elder Bourbons, and 
 upon his death she was proposed to the old Cardinal Bourbon, 
 the Catholic Charles X. Mary Stuart was definitively intended 
 for Don Carlos. 
 
 Thus it was within the bounds of possibility that the posterity 
 of the Guises should sit on the thrones of France, England, 
 Spain, and Scotland. All this can hardly have been 
 accidental. What is more definite is that the League of 
 Picardy, 1576, substituted in the articles of succession the 
 phrase "a toute la posterite de la maison de Valois" for 
 " maison royale," thus implicitly excluding the Bourbons. 
 
 It is yet more remarkable that in 1573, after St. Bartholomew, 
 the Huguenots appear to have contemplated the displace- 
 
 * Rosieres was imprisoned in the Bastille for this work. He deserved 
 his fate, if only for its dullness. 
 

 56 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 ment of the Valois by the Guises, not altogether with 
 aversion."^ 
 
 f In 1578 the well-informed Tuscan agent Saracini wrote that 
 / the hostility of Henry III. to the Guises had grave reasons ; 
 I that seeing himself and his brother childless they had set eyes 
 I on the succession; hence the King's repressive measures, which 
 [ the Guises met by courting the favour of the people, and by 
 stimulating rebellion against the Crown. 
 
 Since the formation of the League of Picardy the Duke 
 became the unquestioned leader of the Catholic party. 
 Realising the causes of failure, he now took the democratic 
 direction which he was to pursue beyond the limits of 
 revolution. While still keeping touch with the nobility, 
 especially with its younger members, he stimulated and 
 organised discontent in the towns, giving emphasis to the 
 constitutional grievances which found their vent in the 
 Provincial Estates. His activity was marked in Normandy 
 and Brittany, in Burgundy and Champagne, in Guyenne and 
 Dauphine. The Crown was ere long plied with outspoken 
 deputations, and threatening remonstrances. It was with 
 difficulty that the Estates of Normandy were induced to erase 
 
 * '• What is to prevent the House of Lorraine, which is known to be 
 descended from Charlemagne, and to have been deprived of the Crown, 
 from recovering it now ? It is merely a matter of a clever stroke. For if they 
 care to resort to open force they will put twice as many troops in the field 
 as the King can. They have more friends, and more towns in their favour, 
 than he. For my own part, having seen the httle security there is under 
 the present reign, I would much sooner see the Crown in the House of 
 Lorraine than where it is. The Huguenots, permanently disaffected and 
 thoroughly disgusted with the House of Valois, would be very glad, nay 
 more, would lend their aid, to see the House of Lorraine recover what 
 belongs to it, being well assured that it would give them freedom of 
 conscience, and free exercise of religion, and would keep any promise that 
 might have been made, remembering the misfortune that breach of faith 
 has brought upon their master. They have already given the Huguenots 
 some reason to believe that they are not so violent against them, as was said. 
 They have saved many, and secretly save more every day." — Revdl Matin 
 of 1573. 
 
THE LEAGUE. 57 
 
 the parallel of Rehoboam from their memorial. In this 
 province there was an actual rising. The current complaints 
 turned on the alienation of domain, the constant increase in 
 taxation, and the enforced purchase of salt far beyond the 
 needs or means of the purchaser. There were signs of a yet 
 more revolutionary movement. The Estates of Aunis 
 demanded that the payments due to nobles and clergy should 
 be reduced by one-third. In Dauphine, as has been seen, 
 Guise stimulated a rising against both King and nobles. 
 
 From 1576 to 1584 political discontent was smouldering; it 
 only needed a fresh breath of religious fanaticism to fan it into 
 flame. At this moment the King's brother died. Navarre 
 now became heir-presumptive. It was impossible that the 
 Catholic party should recognise a heretic. Hence arose a\ 
 very genuine Catholic reaction, and the union of the different I 
 political elements of the party; above all, the partnership of^ 
 the Guises and the capital. 
 
 In the winter of 1584-5 was organised in the greatest 
 secrecy the League of Paris, originated by the lawyer Hotman, 
 cousin of the Huguenot publicist, and three popular preachers. 
 The propaganda was conducted through the agency of the") 
 various professional and trade corporations. The objects were 
 the suppression of heresy and tyranny ; in other words, the 
 exclusion of Navarre, and the expulsion of the King's 
 favourites. It was the work of the ultra-Catholic clergy and 
 laity, alarmed by the prospect of a heretic successor. 
 
 In January, 1585, a secret compact for the same objects 
 was formulated by the heads of the House of Guise, the 
 Spanish Commissioners Tassis and Moreo, and the Cardinal 
 of Bourbon. The articles included the exclusion from the 
 Crown of a heretic, or of any who gave indemnity to heretics, 
 the annihilation of heresy, the full acceptance of the Council 
 of Trent. Philip II. offered large subsidies, in consideration 
 of which the Cardinal, who was recognised as heir to the ' 
 throne, engaged to renounce the Turkish Alliance, to forbid 
 
58 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 \ illicit trade with the Indies, to aid Spain in the recovery of 
 I Cambrai, now nominally held for the Queen-mother by the 
 ! adventurer Balagni, to surrender Don Antonio, the pretenda?it 
 
 for Portugal, and to cede to Spain the inheritance of Henry, 
 
 Lower Navarre and Beam, thus giving to the national enemy a 
 
 foothold to the north of the Pyrenees. 
 j-j The effect of these parallel movements was to galvanise 
 
 into fresh life the old League of the Catholic aristocracy. 
 
 I\ Here, then, in this Catholic reaction are found the three 
 ' elements of which the original Huguenot party was composed, 
 the princes as represented by the Cardinal of Bourbon, and 
 the Guises, now closely connected with the royal family, the 
 fighting nobility represented by the old League of Picardy, 
 and the bourgeoisie. To the Huguenot ministers may be 
 compared the lower Catholic clergy, both forming as they 
 did a Fourth Estate, and that the most extreme of either 
 party. To complete the parallel, Catherine di Medici, from 
 jealousy of her son's favourites, and dislike of Navarre, is 
 found to give much the same measure of secret support to 
 Henry of Guise as she had originally given to Louis of 
 Conde."^ 
 
 The League was as much the outcome of political as of 
 religious fermentation, though it was no doubt the religious 
 crisis that brought it to the fighting point. The Cardinal's 
 manifesto might on the political side well be taken for a 
 
 i Huguenot document previous to the -opening of the wars. 
 It demanded the reinstatement of the nobility and the Parlia- 
 ments in all their privileges, the irremovability of all officials 
 
 , by other than- judicial means, the appropriation of supplies, 
 and Triennial Estates. Here, then, provision was made for 
 
 * Catherine's natural instinct never allowed her to forgive Henry for 
 the unhappy relations with her daughter. She had vainly tried to reconcile 
 the equally guilty pair. Henceforth she is believed to have coveted the 
 succession for the Marquis de Pons, the son of her daughter Claude and 
 the Duke of Lorraine. 
 
THE LEAGUE. 59 
 
 the feudal and constitutional interests which the early Hugue- 
 nots had pressed, while for the republican and federal elements 
 we must look to the attitude of the towns. Just as thef- 
 Huguenot movement had been from one aspect the revolt . 
 of the Bourbons and the Chatillons from the present power of i 
 the Guises, so was the League the revolt of the Guises from J 
 the future power of the Bourbons. Italian writers regarded/ 
 the movement as a purely dynastic struggle between these| 
 houses, religion being but a flimsy pretext. 
 
 The geographical distribution was naturally almost, but not 
 quite reversed. The League extended over the Isle of France, 
 Burgundy, Champagne and Picardy, Normandy and Brittany, 
 and the Central Provinces. The Loire was again the main 
 dividing line, but the League now held the chief towns on 
 tlie great separatist river and its northern affluents, .Orleans, 
 Bourges, and Angers. Southwards the possession of Lyons, 
 the old Huguenot stronghold, thrust a wedge into enemies' 
 territory, while the Catholics controlled also the greater part 
 of Provence, and in Languedoc rested on the southern citadel 
 of Catholicism, Toulouse. The League commanded, according 
 to the calculation of Tavannes, some two-thirds of France 
 No great geographical section was left to royalty. Here and. 
 there a town stood firm from jealousy of a Leaguer neighbour. 
 Here and there a governor proved loyal, though rather to the 
 King's favourites than the King. Royalty was forced to choose 
 between League and Huguenot. Intermittent Catholic exalta- 
 tion and continuous y^r^^ ?/iaJeure pulled in the same direction. 
 Henry III. was driven to war, and it was fought out at his 
 expense. It was again a three-cornered war, the royal forces 
 and those of the League both acting against Huguenots and 
 Politiques, but quite independently of each other, and, indeed, 
 the Leaguers took towns from royal officers. Naturally enough 
 the extremists won. Henry of Navarre crushed and killed the 
 royal favourite Joyeuse at Coutras, while Henry of Guise 
 broke up the formidable force of German auxiliaries, notwith- 
 
6o THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 standing the terms conceded to them by the King. Peace was 
 the natural result, but peace to the King was more dangerous 
 than war. His action or apparent inactivity had increased 
 his unpopularity; he had neither the courage nor the disloyalty 
 to surrender his favourite, the Duke of Epernon, and Catholic 
 excitement was raised to its pitch by the execution of Mary 
 Stuart, which the King was unjustly suspected of having 
 favoured. 
 
 The outcome of discontent was the day^of the Barricades, 
 next to St. Bartholomew the most interesting of all days in 
 this rehearsal of the Revolution. The day has at once its 
 political, its dramatic, and its prophetic aspects. It con- 
 summated the union between Henry of Guise and the Parisian 
 mob. On the other hand it transports us from the closing 
 scenes of the Valois dynasty to the final tragedy of the 
 Bourbons. Should an historian of the French Revolution 
 transcribe the Tuscan ambassador's report of the Barricades, 
 he might with the majority of readers escape detection. 
 " Guise had sent to Paris over ten thousand men, who, under 
 various pretexts, carried on a propaganda throughout the town, 
 waiting, however, for the Duke's arrival, and watching for a 
 favourable opportunity to secure the King. His Majesty, 
 warned of this large number of strangers who had privily 
 entered Paris, and were secreted in the Leaguers' houses, sent 
 for twelve companies of Swiss, and six of French, to protect 
 him against their plots, and to hunt out these people. Seeing 
 the Swiss posted on guard in the public squares, the Duke 
 suspected that they had entered Paris to thwart him, and 
 perhaps to kill him. He began therefore to arm the populace, 
 and to send his emissaries hither and thither, persuading the 
 townsfolk that the King intended to place a garrison in the town, 
 I and take cruel measures against the citizens. Everyone then 
 armed, and barricades were raised across the streets, preventing 
 the Swiss and French companies from advancing. Thus 
 matters stood until midday. The Duke then sent to the Queen- 
 
THE LEAGUE. 6i 
 
 mother, advising her to take steps to allay the disturbance, for 
 on his side he was resolved to die with honour, and if anyone 
 wanted his skin he should sell it very dear. The Queen did 
 what she could — spoke to the King, begged the captains of the 
 quarters to quiet the riot, and get the people to disarm, wrote 
 to some, gave promises to others. She was unable, however, 
 to obtain any result ; the riot continually increased, and at last 
 it came to blows between the Swiss and the citizens. Many 
 shots were fired on both sides, and those of the enemy never 
 missed the Swiss, who had no cover, and no practice in street 
 fighting. They were forced to retire from their posts, and give 
 way before the people and the Duke's soldiers, who, covered 
 by the barricades, and firing from windows with great rapidity, 
 and in complete security, despised all the royalists' efforts. Had 
 not the Duke gone in person to allay the tumult, all the Swdss 
 would have been killed. Our people retreating, the enemy 
 gained \hQ. place which they had evacuated. . . . The King 
 then ordered the Swiss to retire within the palace called the 
 Louvre. The poor King was here practically besieged. So 
 cast down and miserable that he looked the image of death. 
 When night came the troops stood to their arms, while the 
 King bitterly bemoaned his fortunes, bewailing the general 
 treachery. Guise insisted that all the foreign companies cf 
 Royal Guards should be dismissed, and that the King should 
 only retain the ordinary guard. Then he expressed a wish to 
 come to terms, and to present a petition. (Ah ! what a petition 
 that was.) Herein everything was contained which tended to 
 his own aggrandisement, and the King's abasement. The poor 
 King, not knowing what to do with himself, not wishing to fall 
 into his enemies' hands, nor even to send for Guise to make 
 his entreaties, as many wished, told his mother to go and find 
 the Duke, and try and quiet the people. While she was gone 
 the King passed out in a coach by a gate near the Louvre, 
 telling his guards to follow. As soon as he was out he raised 
 his head, and shook it, crying, 'God be praised! the yoke is off.' 
 
62 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 Then he laughed aloud, and cried, 'Come along, a la bonne 
 heure.'' Then he sent word to his wife thflat he was safe and free, 
 and bade her to be calm. Upon hearing this, the cries and the 
 shouts of the ladies rose high as heaven, and they wept for 
 the live King as though he were dead." 
 
 Henry, more fortunate than Louis XVI., had no Varennes 
 
 J but his own weak will. Hesitating as yet to join his cousin, 
 
 I he capitulated to the League on its own conditions, which 
 
 I were to be legalised by the Estates-General of Blois. But 
 
 Guise, and not Henry, was now practically king, and the 
 
 Duke's assassination may be regarded as an act of tyrannicide, 
 
 the last resource of the oppressed. Democracy, however, is 
 
 hundred-headed, and the devoted Gascon guards, who hewed 
 
 down Guise in the King's Chamber, did as little service as the 
 
 girl who stabbed Marat in the bath^^ 
 
 The Revolution may be saia to have opened with the 
 Barricades, but the murder of the Duke of Guise was a yet 
 more critical moment in its history. What the murder of 
 
 IColigni was to the Huguenots, that was the assassination of its 
 idol to the Catholic party. The lead passed definitely from 
 the nobles and the politicians to the preachers. In the early 
 periods of the war the Huguenots had had the advantage in 
 this respect, there was no Catholic preaching comparable to 
 that of the ministers. But the demand at length produced 
 the supply. The two schools, the scholastic and the 
 grotesque, were fused, the one contributed the trained 
 eloquence of the Catholic revival, the other the ferocity of the 
 Revolution. The Parisian L'Estoile well marks the distinc- 
 tion between the polished eloquence of Panigarola, Bishop of 
 Asti, and the comic gestures and gross indecency of Rose and 
 Boucher. The Jesuits, esprits choisis, as they are called by 
 D'Aubigne, provided the most modern intellectual tools. 
 They *had too this advantage over the Huguenots, that they 
 preached to the most susceptible congregations of all France, 
 the Catholic masses of the biggest towns. Of all the parochial 
 
THE LEAGUE. 63 
 
 clergy of Paris, only three were not Leaguers. How influential 
 they were is proved by the fact that among the Forty, which 
 was the supreme military and political Council of the party, 
 there were no less than seven popular preachers, men of no 
 political training whatever. As the Revolution developed, 
 the practice of exacting oaths, and of issuing certificates of 
 orthodoxy, put an additional engine of terrorism into the 
 hands of the clergy. On New-year's day, 1589, Lincestre, 
 Cure of St Barthelemy, after his sermon called upon the 
 congregation to raise their hands and swear to employ their 
 last drop of blood, and the last penny in their purse, to avenge 
 the Guises. To the President de Harlay, who sat in front of 
 him, he twice cried out, "Raise your hand, M. le President, 
 raise it very high ; higher still, that the people may see it 1 " 
 This practice of marking out for popular vengeance suspected 
 members of the congregation became a common artifice with 
 the extreme preachers of the Leagu^^-'"^ 
 
 It was through the preachers that, in the towns at least, the 
 Catholic party at last realised its full strength. Not only did 
 they provide the cadres of an urban Catholic organization, but 
 the revolutionary exaltation, and the political theory. For, 
 dramatic interest it is difficult to surpass the tragedy of Blois, 
 but for the future of the French monarchy the development of 
 the League at Paris had a yet deeper significance. Every 
 revolution will sooner or later search for its philosophical 
 justification, for action cannot permanently be divorced from 
 thought. Hitherto, if we except the fugitive utterances of 
 obscure preachers, any attack upon the Valois dynasty had 
 been directed against deficiency of the genealogical title. 
 Now, however, the very principle of hereditary right was 
 impugned. Kings, it was urged, do not rule by nature or 
 by hereditary right, but by the grace of God, and the visible 
 sign of this is the consecration. The origin, therefore, of the 
 monarchy is religious, and its chief duty religious — the 
 upholding of the Catholic faith. Thus, not the Salic law, as 
 
64 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 the Parliaments held, but the Holy Union as the League held, 
 was the one fundamental law of the kingdom. Yet it was 
 hardly likely that the attractive and fruitful theory of an 
 original compact should be overlooked by the Catholic 
 ;■ publicists, and it became, therefore, necessary to weld together 
 '•the contractual and the divine elements of monarchy. The 
 people, argued Boucher, make kings, the right of election 
 is superior to inheritance, though a king has been elected the 
 people reserves its power ; the people have the right of life 
 and death over kings ; the Monarchy is but the result of a 
 mutual contract ; in this form it passed from the Merovings 
 to the Carolings, and thence to the Capets. The original 
 contract, it was argued, was framed not merely between king 
 and people, but between God, king, and people ; if the king 
 broke his terms with either God or people, the latter was 
 absolved from its allegiance. Here it is easy to trace the 
 religious and the political aspect of the movement. The League, 
 however, did not at once adopt the full conclusions to be 
 drawn from its premises. It at first admitted that hereditary 
 right is not barred by taint of heresy, and thus the nearest 
 Catholic Bourbon, the Cardinal, was accepted. By his death 
 
 I the theory had advanced. Right to the throne consists not in 
 proximity to the old line, but in fervour of Catholicism. 
 Thus one party would take a Guise as being the most Catholic 
 of Frenchmen, another was willing to accept Philip H. as the 
 most Catholic of the world. For what was nationality com- 
 pared with Catholicism ? The Crown becomes elective, the 
 only qualification being orthodoxy. 
 
 The logical result of the theory would have been the old 
 Papal view, that all kings held of the Pope as being God's 
 representative, and that of a king's sin the Pope was the sole 
 judge. This indeed had been the earliest form in which the 
 extreme Catholic opposition had manifested itself, for as early 
 as 1 56 1 Jean Tanquerel had written a thesis to prove that it 
 was the Pope's right to depose kings and emperors. But the 
 
THE LEAGUE. 65 
 
 democracy of the League had little in common with the 
 monarchism of Sixtus V. The Pope had hesitated at first to 
 confirm the League. He might conceivably absolve Henry 
 HI. ; he might even recognise Navarre. Who therefore is 
 judge ? Not Pope, but people. The Pope may absolve from 
 sin, but not from the penalties imposed by the people. The 
 reigning monarch might sit in heaven ; but not upon the 
 throne of France. It is then for the people and not the Pope 
 to declare the will of God, for Vox PopuH is Vox Dei. Hence 
 the transition is easy to the theory of the extreme Huguenots, 
 whose arguments and illustrations were borrowed. The king- 
 dom was not hereditary, but elective ; the people could elect 
 and the people could depose ; the people was above the king. 
 The king and his officers were the ministers of the people ; the 
 people was the king, and not the king the people. And who 
 is the people ? Not the representatives of the nation assembled 
 at Blois, but the congregations of the faithful at Paris. 
 Urgency required that the Estates should be superseded ; the 
 people must rise and rid the country of the King by war or 
 by assassination. It is curious to note how the revolutionist 
 publicists cling to the past while clutching at the future. 
 The old arguments of the Papal-Imperial struggle are again 
 applied — the two swords and the two elements of man. But 
 for Emperor is substituted people, for the Pope frequently the 
 Church, and the Church is regarded not from a monarchical 
 but from a democratic point of view, as being the con- 
 gregation of the faithful, and thus again the extreme left of 
 Catholicism joins hands with the revolutionary section of 
 the Huguenots. 
 
 Such theories were well calculated to stir the masses. Taken 
 up by a more radical section of the nation, and unrestrained 
 by the political views of Calvin, they were carried farther than by 
 the Huguenots. The popular side of the theory soon outgrew \ 
 the Ultramontane. It threatened a revolution in Church as well i 
 as in State. Anti-Leaguers were driven from their benefices.^' 
 
66 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 and vacancies in the Parisian churches were filled by popular 
 election, in defiance of the right of patrons. The Bishop of 
 Auxerre was expelled from his diocese. The Pope was 
 threatened and disobeyed. Panigarola refused to retire to 
 his diocese of Asti : Gaetani the legate acted in known 
 opposition to the Papal wishes. Sixtus V. on his death 
 was consigned by the Parisian preachers to the nethermost 
 hell.* Even the more zealous Leaguer bishops found no 
 obedience when they attempted to check the excesses of 
 their flocks. 
 
 In its practise the League was no whit less revolutionary 
 than in its theory. Even before the Barricades the lead of the 
 party had passed to a body named the Sixteen, because it was 
 recruited from the sixteen districts of Paris, in each of which 
 was established a revolutionary committee. Thus in its 
 political form the League was a Parisian club, formed by the 
 private influence of private persons. Its members were by no 
 means men of recognised position. They comprised chiefly 
 I lower legal officials, tradesmen, and the more violent popular 
 'preachers. The party was roughly estimated at some three 
 hundred. The next step was to form corresponding clubs in 
 the other Catholic towns of France. To unite these was soon 
 framed a general council, to which the corresponding clubs 
 sent delegates. But these clubs were in their origin entirely 
 independent of any recognised or constitutional organisation, 
 whether royal, provincial, or municipal.. The League more- 
 over possessed the most peculiar characteristic of an extreme 
 revolutionary movement. As soon as the club had by 
 prescription obtained a quasi-constitutional position, other 
 clubs are formed inside it containing the more violent elements, 
 and they ultimately drive the club, even as the club had 
 
 * ''God has delivered us from a wicked and politique Pope," preached 
 Aubry. " Had he lived longer, people would have had a fine surprise in 
 Paris in hearing us preach against the Pope, for we should have had to 
 do it." 
 
THE LEAGUE. 67 
 
 driven the party. The Confrerie du Nom de Jesus were the 
 " Mountain " or '' the Invincibles " of the League.* 
 
 Thus the history of the League is that of the absorption or -^ 
 the aboHtion of every constitutional organization of France; ] 
 the municipaUty, the Estates, the ParUament, the King ; what \ 
 it cannot use it destroys. From the first the League had its 
 army, its chest, even before the Barricades it had its plots to 
 seize the King and his councillors, the Barricades themselves 
 were planned a year before the event. From the first it had 
 the intention of ruling the kingdom through its nominees ; 
 when Guise appeared before the people on the day of the 
 Barricades, they cried "a Rheims," the Lorrainer should be 
 the consecrated king of democracy. If the Club could not 
 at once do away with the King, he must be a member of the 
 Club, the Club should utilise what force was left to monarchy. 
 
 After the Barricades, the League absorbed the municipality. > 
 The municipal constitution, as it had existed since 1380, was 
 overthrown, and a principle of so-called free election re-intro- 
 duced ; members of the lower ranks of the judicature replaced 
 the old municipal families, the League obtained a more or 
 less constitutional position by identifying itself with the 
 municipality of Paris ; the town government had in fact fallen 
 from the hands of monarchy into those of the League. It 
 then absorbed the civic militia, replacing the King's officers 
 by its own, occupying the forts of Paris, placing its own 
 governor and garrison in the Bastille. It absorbed also the 
 royal jurisdiction of the Chatelet, one of the oldest and most 
 monarchical institutions of France, the very representation in 
 fact of the monarchy in the capital, dealing with its food 
 supplies and its police. Spreading far beyond Paris, the 
 
 * So too Orleans had its "Confrerie du St. Nom de Jesus" in direct 
 opposition to the Bishop and more respectable inhabitants, Leaguers 
 though they were. A similar association at Le Puy ere long exercised a 
 reign of terror over the Catholic upper classes of the Veiai. Most Leaguer 
 towns could, in fact, provide a parallel. 
 
 ^ 
 
6S THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 Strong organization of the League had enabled it to manipu- 
 late the Estates General of 1588, to make them practically 
 a committee of the League, which carried the elections, and 
 made the towns adopt its ticket. These Estates, if not of 
 much practical value, are of considerable speculative interest. 
 They contained, as always, a large legal and bureaucratic 
 element, nearly one-half of the Third Estate were lawyers, 
 the rest were chiefly officials. There was the usual lack of 
 genuine, unprofessional. Unprejudiced public opinion ; the 
 Jack-in-office has ever had an irresistible fascination for the 
 French electorate. The vital question debated by the Estates 
 was, whether they should proceed by resolution or by petition ; 
 that is, was the royal legislative prerogative, unquestioned in 
 France, still to exist, or was the Crown merely to ratify and 
 execute the injunctions of the Estates ? In home and foreign 
 affairs the King was subordinated to the people's deputies, no 
 peace or war should be made without their consent, no taxes 
 raised, no gifts granted, no Crown influence on elections to 
 be suffered, for the Estates should decide contested elections. 
 The judicature is abased before the legislature. In each 
 sovereign court a permanent Committee of the Estates should 
 receive the complaints of the people, and guard against 
 breaches of their resolutions. 
 
 The ecclesiastical and judicial and financial systems, and 
 the royal favourites, were the special objects of attack. It was 
 demanded that pluralism, non-residence, and the holding of 
 benefices by laymen, ladies, and Huguenots, should be 
 abolished. All financial officials should be subjected to a 
 rigid audit, and forced to disgorge ill-gotten gains. Those 
 who had received excessive gifts from the Crown must return 
 two-thirds of the amount. The number of officials, judicial 
 and financial, was stated to be from two thousand to three 
 thousand per cent, above the normal and necessary number, to 
 which they should by both gradual and immediate measures 
 be reduced. 
 
THE LEAGUE. 69 
 
 To remove temptation from the Crown in future, the 
 purchase system must be swept away. To remove the excuse 
 for plundering by the troops, and to provide a UveHhood for 
 the poorer gentry, it was suggested that the regular cavalry 
 should again be paid by the State. For this purpose the 
 Estates were prepared to grant a taille^ but they would not 
 trust it to the Crown ; it must be raised and expended by a 
 committee of their own. 
 
 These demands, however reasonable, threatened the interests k 
 of numerous and influential classes. If benefices and Crown ' 
 gifts were to be taken from the nobles, upon what were they to 
 live? The Crown had already dismissed some six thousand 
 officials, and thus added this number to its enemies. Whole- 
 sale reduction of offices was equivalent to repudiation ; for, as 
 the Venetian envoys observed, if any one in France had 
 money to invest, an office was the almost invariable investment. 
 The huge fees and gratuities paid for all legal business might ' 
 indeed be regarded as a tax to meet the interest on the capital 
 invested with the State. 
 
 Whatever the Estates might have effected was nullified byS 
 the murder of Guise and his brother the Cardinal. The King / 
 dismissed the deputies, and the capital again became the / 
 centre of revolution. The Sorbonne released the people from / 
 its allegiance ; the royal arms were torn down ; the names of 
 streets w^hich reminded passers-by of the treacherous- Valois 
 were changed. Monarchy was provisionally placed in com- 
 mission. 
 
 This naturally led to the abolition or absorption of'i 
 Parliament, which had, as far as it dared, resisted the League I 
 as it had originally resisted the Huguenots. 
 
 Bussi le Clercq, once a petty lawyer, now soul of the 
 League and governor of the Bastille, entered the Chamber and 
 arrested several of the most prominent members. The rest 
 followed them out. Others belonsjino; to the two financial 
 courts, the Cour des Aides and the Chambre des Comptes, 
 
70 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 were arrested in their houses. But Parliament was a useful 
 instrument for judicial tyranny, and therefore the more weak- 
 knee-ed members were restored under the presidency of Brisson. 
 They promised to assist the town of Paris in all things, to 
 contribute to the war, to recognise no treaty except with 
 consent of princes, prelates, towns, and communes. Several 
 members ostentatiously signed the engagement with their 
 blood. Parliament had ceased to be a royal Court ; the royal 
 / seal was broken, and new seals were made. Of the Provincial 
 Parliaments that of Aix alone voluntarily joined the League. 
 At Toulouse Duranti premier president, and Daffis advocate- 
 general, were murdered ; the royal portrait was hung behind 
 Duranti on the gallows, and then suspended in jest from his 
 aquiline nose. Both were zealous Catholics. Duranti had 
 been prominent in the massacre of the Huguenots, and was 
 responsible for the establishment of the Jesuits and Capuchins 
 in his town. They resisted, however, the overthrow of 
 royal authority. Already a separate mi-pariie chamber existed 
 at Castres. Before long the less revolutionary section . of the 
 Parliament of Toulouse was forced from the town and set up 
 a separate court. At no town did the Revolution so rapidly 
 devour its own children. Until the final submission each 
 
 (successive party of violence found itself in turn behind the 
 times.* At Rouen the Parliament which resisted the extremists 
 was broken up and likewise split into two halves. In Brittany 
 a Royalist ParHament continued to sit at Rennes, while a 
 Leaguer Parliament was established at Nantes. 
 
 It was at this time also that the executive system of the 
 
 League, the Council of Sixteen, was generally adopted in the 
 
 provincial towns, the principle of formation being, however, 
 
 i by class rather than by district. Thus in Toulouse the 
 
 * It is characteristic that in the French Revolution the two towns which 
 chiefly distinguished themselves by indigenous massacre were Paris and 
 Toulouse, the scenes of the Red Terror, and the White. It is hard to 
 decide which of the two was the more constant to the principles adopted 
 in 1589. 
 
THE LEAGUE. 7» 
 
 Parliament was forced to assent to the surrender of all 
 municipal authority to the Eighteen ; at Le Puy all powers 
 civil and military were committed to the Twenty Four; the 
 pettiest League town had its Twelve or Six. It was a golden 
 age for the professional politician of the lowest class, and 
 frequently the gentry, however Catholic, as in the Velai, had 
 to suffer dearly for their resistance to the wildfire of revolution. 
 Southern Catholic France was as definitely withdrawn from all"^ 
 contact with monarchy as had previously been the Huguenot 
 and Politique section of Languedoc. The Catholic Estates of 
 Languedoc elected its governor from the house of Joyeuse, 
 raised its taxes, levied war upon Damville, and contracted its 
 alliance with neighbouring Leaguer governors. The Provincial^ 
 Estates were the one ancient institution which seemed destined 
 to be strengthened by the struggle. On the plea of urgency, 
 the revolutionists of Paris had set aside the sovereignty of the 
 Estates General, which had hitherto headed the programme of 
 the party. The real ruling body of Catholic France was now 
 the Council of Forty, at the head of which stood the 
 Duke of Mayenne as lieutenant-general. It claimed all the-| 
 prerogatives of the Crown, the right of pardon, the receipt of < 
 royal revenues, the appomtment to all State offices and Crown 
 benefices. It made a bid for popularity by lessening the 
 burden of taxation, and abolishing purchase in the judicature. 
 Immediate necessities were supplied by Spanish subsidies, and 
 by the organised ransack of the houses of suspected royalists. 
 Yet the revolution had reached its zenith, it contained the 
 germs of destruction within itself. To outward appearance 
 indeed the murder of the King was the culminating triumph, 
 Paris went wild with joy. Mme. de Montpensier and her 
 mother, Mme. de Nemours, harangued the people from the 
 steps of the Cordeliers, and hung green scarves, " the livery of 
 idiots," round the necks of rejoicing citizens. The assassin 
 Cle'ment became a St. Thomas of Canterbury to revolutionary 
 France. No shrine was so frequented as his tomb. Those 
 who were drowned in returning from the pilgrimage were also 
 
12 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION: 
 
 martyrs. To die for the faith deUvered the soul from 
 purgatory, until it was realized that it delivered the pockets 
 of the living from providing masses. France had now a king 
 of its own election — Charles X., the Cardinal of Bourbon. 
 Navarre was in full retreat from the neighbourhood of Paris. 
 
 Yet the League had a dangerous enemy in its own lieutenant- 
 general. The fighting element could not permanently have 
 sympathy with the semi-clerical, semi-democratic element. As 
 long as Henry III. had lived the two sides were tolerably 
 united, their common aim was negative — the King's suppres- 
 sion. But the positive question, that of the succession^ was 
 soon to divide them, for the elected King was a prisoner, and 
 in the course of 1590 died. 
 
 The death of Henry of Guise had seemed to bring his family 
 nearer to the throne ; yet to the fortunes of the Revolution 
 his loss was irreparable. He alone could lead both nobles 
 and people, he alone dared utilise the strength of numbers. 
 The King's violent act had perhaps saved the monarchy, though 
 at the expense of his own life. It was a misfortune that the 
 Duke's son was a prisoner in Henry's hands. His successor, 
 Mayenne, was not the character to lead a Revolution, for he 
 saw obstacles too clearly. Duke Henry had been a born 
 demagogue, rapid in conception and action, yet patient and 
 prudent; his combination of sweetness and strength won alike 
 the soldier and the populace. Free from all scruple, he delighted 
 in an atmosphere of trouble. Mayenne was no demagogue ; 
 he had many of the feelings of the noble class, and disliked 
 the Sixteen and its democracy. He was a sound but indolent 
 soldier, and a cautious politician ; too cautious, perhaps too 
 honest, for his place. The Parisians never wearied of satirising 
 the free -living general, who could make war only upon his 
 border, and who hampered his military movements by a harem. 
 A warrior indeed who, on falling from his horse, required 
 four soldiers to replace him, was no match for Navarre, who 
 would not spare the time to undress or wash. 
 
THE LEAGUE, 73 
 
 There was as yet no open conflict between Mayenne and" 
 the Parisians, but each side became conscious of coming 
 strife. For Mayenne were the statesmen, the Leaguer nobiUty, 
 the higher judicial and municipal families. Against him were 
 the Sixteen, the clergy, the friars, the mob, and above all the 
 King of Spain, represented by Mendo^a, and later by Ybarra, 
 who became the almost ex officio leaders of the ultra-democratic 
 party. 
 
 Mayenne took the offensive. He had already modified the 
 Council by introducing an aristocratic and Parliamentary 
 element. He now practically abolished it by establishing a 
 Privy Council, attached to his person. The Forty, he urged, 
 represented a form of republic neither customary nor good in 
 a kingdom. The name of the Council was henceforth omitted 
 in all documents. The Council was the factor in the^ 
 unconstitutional Constitution which made the Revolution 
 national as well as Parisian ; for it was attended by the 
 provincial delegates, and could speak in the name of France. 
 Its abolition was the end of federalism ; each town had now 
 to provide for its own defence, and the. war would be decided 
 by the soldiers. The questions of the future were rather 
 religious and personal than constitutional. 
 
 Yet the Revolution had its hour of reaction. The siege 
 of Paris resulting from the battle of Ivri again made the 
 capital the centre of all France, and in Paris the extreme 
 no-surrender party came to the front, led by the Duchess of 
 Montpensier, the Spanish Ambassador, and the Papal Legate 
 Gaetani. Paris endured a famine, to which that of 1570 was 
 child's play. For some time rations of bread, with a piece of 
 cat or dog, were served to the poor ; but cats, dogs, rats, and 
 mice rapidly disappeared. • The hide of every beast in Paris 
 was devoured. Candle grease became a luxury. The Duchess 
 of Montpensier advised the people to dig up bones from the 
 cemeteries and grind them into flour, but death was found to 
 result from the Duchess of Montpensier's bread. Mme. de 
 
74 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 Montpensier was asked for her pet dog to feed the poor. She 
 replied that she was keeping it for her last meal. Noble 
 ladies declared that they would eat their children rather than 
 admit the heretic, and the more suffering classes took them 
 at their word. The German mercenaries chased the children 
 down the streets, as the children had chased the dogs. Every- 
 thing, sarcastically wrote L'Estoile, was ruinous except sermons, 
 of which starving people could have their bellyful. The 
 defence indeed was organised rather from the pulpit than the 
 barrack. The clergy denounced the Politiques day by day, 
 and this marked them out for murder. The Legate received a 
 regiment of thirteen hundred priests and monks, all marching^ 
 with arms on their shoulders, and their frocks tucked up. The 
 Scotch cure Hamilton acted as sergeant-major, halting them at 
 intervals to sing a psalm and fire a volley. Yet they had to 
 admit the growing discontent ; one of the cures declared that 
 if the members of his congregation were vivisected, a big 
 Bearnois would be found in every heart. Armed mobs 
 clamoured for bread or peace (Pain ou Paix). Blank walls 
 were scrawled with charcoal pasquinades against the Sixteen 
 and the Spaniards. 
 
 The Duke of Parma with his Spanish troops arrived only 
 just in time to save the town. With his arrival the Sixteen 
 regained their spirits and their power, they demanded from 
 Mayenne the restoration of the Council General, the sole 
 and sovereign body of the party, thus implicitly renouncing the 
 sovereignty of the Estates General. They claimed that an 
 extraordinary tribunal should practically supersede Parliament. 
 They forced him to admit a Spanish and Neapolitan garrison."^ 
 
 * These troops Were lodged in the deserted colleges, and their horses 
 stabled in the chapels. The Revolution was a permanent blow to the 
 University of Paris. It may be called the dividing line between the old 
 and the new system. Out of forty colleges only one continued in residence. 
 Some were occupied by peasants from the environs, the quadrangles of 
 others became choked with briar and bramble. {Of. Pattison's Casatcbon, 
 2nd ed., p. 159.) 
 
THE LEAGUE. 75 
 
 They now called upon him to purge the Parliament, to restore 
 to Paris the Grand Council and the seal, to destroy all castles 
 and forts round the Capital. The reign of terror began. 
 The cure Pelletier preached that no justice could be expected 
 from Parliament, it was time to play the knife. "A dose of 
 Politique blood " had long been the specific recommended by 
 his party. Boucher's sermons were full of "blood and 
 butchery." He cried that they must kill all Politiques, that 
 with his own hands he would strangle the dog of a Bearnois. 
 The death of Politiques is the Hfe of Catholics, preached 
 Commolet. " Another bleeding of St. Bartholomew," shrieked 
 Rose, " and cut the throat of our disease." 
 
 A secret committee of ten was appointed to act as the 
 executive of the extremists. In each quarter there was a 
 " red list " of the future victims. Opposite each name was 
 written C for Chasse, D for dague, or P for pendu.* There 
 was to be a St. Bartholomew for the Politiques. The Parlia- 
 ment was naturally struck first ; even during the siege the j 
 Sixteen would have made short work with them but for the 
 governor Nemours. Now the first president Brisson and two 
 others were strangled, and their bodies exposed upon the 
 gibbet. For this Paris was not ripe ; the Spanish and Neapo- 
 litan garrisons refused to carry out the proscription. The 
 Neapolitan Colonel, when asked for aid, said that he wished 
 all heretics in the Inquisition, all traitors in the Seine, and 
 significantly added, all scoundrels on the gallows. De Maistre 
 was invited to return to Parliament. He replied that he 
 would only come to get the murderers hung. La Rue, one 
 of the foremost and least reputable of the Sixteen, left the 
 party, protesting against its cruelty. The populace, far from 
 being stimulated by the crime, looked with stupefied horror 
 on the hanging bodies. The Archbishop Gondi thought it 
 prudent to leave the town. Even Mme. de Montpensier 
 broke away from the Terrorists, and summoned Mayenne to 
 * Oar authority, L'Ebtoile, saw his own name marked D. 
 
76 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 Paris. Mayenne entered the town, and forced Bussi to 
 surrender the Bastille. Four leaders of the Sixteen were 
 hung without trial, and its council forbidden to meet. All 
 secret clubs were prohibited. Parliament was re-organized, 
 the upper bourgeoisie armed against any possible reaction, and 
 even negotiated with the King. Mayenne treated the clergy 
 roughly, told them not to dabble in politics, but to confine 
 themselves to their theology; "he knew," it was reported, 
 how to destroy "leur petit empire de Sorbonne." In vain 
 the preachers strove to flog the party into life. Divisions 
 arose even among themselves. Panigarola had denounced 
 the bloodthirsty vindictiveness of the French, directed even 
 against the dead. Rose, the most violent and grotesque, 
 showed signs of compromise. In the Estates of 1593 the 
 party of the Sixteen hardly survived except among the clergy ; 
 in the Third Estate, out of twelve Parisian deputies eight 
 were Politiques. The League still existed as a Catholic union 
 for the election of a Catholic Prince, but the revolution was 
 over, the dynastic question alone remained. 
 
 There was indeed no lack of constitutional grievances. 
 The cause of financial reform, originally championed by the 
 Estates of Orleans and Pontoise, was now taken up by 
 provincial Catholic Estates, and were re-echoed in the cahie7-s, 
 or instructions given to their deputies by the Leaguer towns. 
 The Estates of Burgundy refused to increase the tax on salt, 
 or to find any fresh supplies even for the payment of their 
 own representatives. They would grant ito taxes beyond those 
 which had been levied thirty years ago. When Tavannes, the 
 son of the old marshal, represented that they were exposing 
 themselves to certain invasion., they replied that they would 
 meet the enemy at home, but would incur no fresh charges. 
 Many deputies in the Estates General declined a proposal for 
 a fresh subsidy for the purpose of raising lanzknechts. The 
 deputies of Rouen were instructed to repeat the complaint, 
 well-worn even in the reign of Louis XL, of the oppression 
 
THE LEAGUE. 77 
 
 of the regular soldiery. They called for due protection for the 
 peasants and their crops. Their Parliament was indeed to be 
 purged of heretics ; but, on the other hand, all supernumerary 
 offices must be extinguished, and the purchase of judicial and 
 financial offices abolished. They protested that no additional 
 failles or subsidies should be raised without the consent of 
 the provincial Estates of Normandy. So too the town of 
 Rheims demanded that the excesses of the gendarmerie should 
 be suppressed, and that the old national infantry force, the 
 legionaries, an experiment of Francis L, should be re-organised ; 
 that the taxes should be reduced to the standard of Louis 
 XII. Yet more radical were the views of the Third Estate at 
 Troyes. It suggests a scheme for a representative executive ; 
 the elected king should have an elective council, consisting of 
 Catholic princes and great officials, checked by a standing 
 committee of three deputies from each Estate in every 
 Province, to be elected every three years in the several Pro- 
 vincial Estates. To these latter belongs in the last resort the 
 sovereignty of France, for no tallies should be raised but by 
 their consent. The town of Amiens would deprive the King 
 of his legislative authority, which as yet had scarcely been 
 questioned, except by the Judicature, for the future no edict 
 should be issued without consent of the Estates. There are 
 signs too of the old alliance between the clergy and the Third 
 Estate. The clergy of Auxerre complain indeed of the 
 unconstitutional taxation of their order ; but they also demand 
 the suppression of judicial offices created in recent reigns, and 
 the reduction of general taxation to its normal limits. In all' 
 quarters is to be traced the jealousy of the Third Estate for 
 the nobles, the captains, and the governors. It is demanded 
 that all fortresses and chateaux not absolutely necessary for 
 national defence should be demolished ; that the gentry should 
 be forbidden to keep garrisons ; that governors should have no 
 right of levying money, supplies, or forced labour; and that they 
 should cease from interference in matters of justice and finance. 
 
78 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 The people of Catholic France realised that the election of 
 a new dynasty gave an opportunity for imposing capitulations 
 which might have reduced the power of the monarchy to the 
 level of that of Poland. But unfortunately for the prospects 
 of Reform, the question of the election itself was so absorbing 
 that all other demands passed out of sight. The Revolution 
 and the Monarchy were really incompatible, and France was 
 not as yet prepared altogether to forego the latter. The 
 continuance of opposition to Navarre was impossible without 
 Spanish subsidies, and these Philip was not disposed to grant 
 unless his own claims or that of his daughter were recognized. 
 The Extremists were indeed prepared to meet his views. The 
 Sorbonne declared that the country must be saved from 
 heresy whether by preserving or dividing the monarchy. The 
 old party of the Sixteen was ready to hand over the kingdom 
 to Philip, who should no longer be styled King of Spain, but 
 *' le grand Roi " ; the decrees of Trent should be recognized ; 
 the Spanish Inquisition introduced ; Philip would anticipate 
 Louis XIV. in levelling the Pyrenees ; a Spanish king should 
 rule a republican France, with its quadrennial Estates, its free 
 judicature, and its reduced imposts ; Paris should be but the 
 
 I French Madrid. But the nation at large refused to surrender 
 its nationality to its religion. The Leaguer towns almost 
 unanimously clamoured for a French Catholic king. The 
 anti-national character of the extremists was at length fully 
 realised. The unceasing satire of the Huguenots and Politiques 
 on Spanish doubloons had at last struck home. The scrawl 
 which was always reappearing on the blank walls of Paris 
 became the motto of all France — "Pereat Societas Judaica 
 cum tota gente Ibera." The wars were to end as they began, 
 with the cry against the foreigner. The Spaniard succeeded 
 the Italian and the Lorrainer. 
 
 But where should a French king be found? Candidates 
 seemed to spring only from the hybrid houses of the Border- 
 land. The Duke of Savoy and his relative, the Duke of 
 
THE LEAGUE. 79 
 
 Nemours, relied on their connection with Francis I."^ From 
 the House of Lorraine five candidates at least were in the ■ 
 field — the Duke of Lorraine, the Duke of Guise, Mayenne, his 
 son, and Mercoeur. The House was divided against itself. 
 Its head had struck the first note of discord when he had 
 discouraged the League at its outset. It became evident that 
 the Lorrainers had no genuine love for France, that every 
 member was playing for his own hand. Mercoeur, the most 
 consistent and the most resourceful, was neglected and dis- 
 couraged by his house, and yet he alone succeeded in kindling 
 the enthusiasm of the lower rural classes. His resistance in 
 Brittany was the most creditable feature in Leaguer military 
 records, it went far to close the century of union between 
 Brittany and France. 
 
 The League in its extreme form had proved the solvent of" 
 the Catholic party, and Mayenne had been the solvent of the/ 
 League. The real force of the great revival rested on the union 
 of Paris and the capable house of Lorraine, on the combination 
 of the revolutionary religious with the personal political element. 
 Mayenne had divided his own house, and broken 
 union ; he had reduced Catholic France to a system of 
 munal defence. Town after town fell away to royalty 
 doubtful whether the majority in the towns had ever been really 
 Leaguer any more than they had been Huguenot. Religious 
 enthusiasm had for a moment welded together political 
 elements whose antagonism had hitherto hampered religious 
 or constitutional reform. But the closer the temporary union 
 the wider was the ultimate breach. The nobility was fast 
 breaking from the Revolution. Its patriotism revolted against / 
 Spanish domination, its interests were irreconcilable with ' 
 
 * If the Duke of Savoy could not gain the monarchy, he was dangerous 
 enough to aid in its dismemberment. He was formally recognized in 
 Provence as Count. Had he retained his hold Provence would have 
 fallen away from France, and been nominally re-united to the Empire. 
 He had already wrested from France Saluzzo, the last of her Italian 
 possessions. 
 
 element, 
 up thisl 
 of com- \ 
 y ; it is -^ 
 
8o THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 those of the Third Estate. In the Estates of 1593 only two 
 possible noble candidates could be found in all Paris and its 
 viscounty. From other districts only a single noble representa- 
 tive appeared. There is abundant evidence of the fear among 
 
 f the nobles of a yet lower depth of democracy than had yet 
 been sounded^^,^-^^ 
 
 As the Eieague resembled the Huguenot revolt in the 
 political elements out of which it was composed, and in the 
 political theory which it ultimately formulated, so was it also 
 reproducing some of its more extreme provincial manifestations. 
 
 ' There was a tendency both towards communal disintegration 
 and towards a social rising of the lowest classes. There were 
 fears that these two tendencies, the one urban and the 
 other rural, might combine, as had been the case in the 
 days of the Jacquerie, and as had been threatened in the 
 German peasants' revolt of 1525. Peasant revolts actually 
 occurred. Under the priests of the League, the peasants 
 rose against the nobles in Normandy. "We went in," 
 writes Tavannes, " and burnt their villages ; but where a 
 hundred were acting a thousand were looking for the result." 
 With the slightest success the flame would have run over the 
 whole of France. But the peasants lacked leaders. The 
 House of Guise alone dared rely upon the rural democracy. 
 Henry of Guise had encouraged the Calvinist peasantry of 
 Dauphine; his cousin Mercoeur, in Brittany, led the lower 
 classes against the Catholic but royal nobility. 
 
 "Their idea," states Tavannes, "was to live after the 
 manner of the Swiss — to be exempt from taxation, to pay no 
 rents, and perform no services for their lords." Land for 
 
 I nothing, and another class to pay the taxes, is the invariable 
 programme of rural revolution. The Swiss confederation had 
 often nearly split upon the dualism between town and country, 
 the French Revolution was in its early days endangered by the 
 traditional feuds, and the same difficulty of combination 
 existed now. But, above all, the French peasantry lacked the 
 
THE LEAGUE. 8l 
 
 practice of arms. The reasons which had prevented the'^ 
 French from forming a national infantry was a safeguard / 
 against revolution. The German peasants, wdth their strong- 
 lanzknecht element, had been far more dangerous. 
 
 It had been all along the weakness of the Catholic party V 
 that it could not utilize its numerical strength. The League J 
 indeed had brought the lower urban classes into the struggle. « 
 Tavannes believes that it failed because it dared not arm the 
 peasants ; he would have armed them with pikes on the Swiss 
 model. They would have exterminated Huguenotism, and 
 with it the nobility of France. 
 
 The 7iobIesse de robe had been threatened by the Estates 
 General, persecuted by the mobocracy; their importance w^as 
 lost, whether in war or in revolution. Their sympathies had 
 always been with the Crown ; their patriotism took the form 
 of Constitutionalism ; the Salic law, they urged, was the one 
 fundamental law of the country. Their example was followed 
 by the diplomatists who found no sure footing in a democracy, 
 who were the natural rivals of the Spanish corps diplomatique, 
 and by the upper bourgeoisie, who had been deprived of the 
 command of the municipalities, and whose trade was ruined. 
 A large proportion of the Episcopate had early rallied round : 
 the throne. The League had been founded by the parochial ; 
 clergy, forwarded by the friars. The tendency of the former • 
 was towards democratic Gallicanism, towards popular election 
 of the clergy, that of the latter towards democratic Ultra- 
 montanism. Both were destructive of the Episcopate, which 
 had been treated as non-existent. Once again it was proved 
 that in France the Church could not divorce itself from the 
 Crown ; the hierarchy had been threatened as much by the 
 Leaguer cures as by Huguenot ministers. 
 
 The position of the League became ridiculous ; its political 
 life was closed. Yet its religious vitality was still strong, and 
 at this moment, just as the political question had divided the 
 party of the League, the religious question was threatening the 
 
 G 
 
82 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 unity of the Bourbons. The Cardinal of Vendome and his 
 brother the Count of Soissons were forming a third party, 
 cleaving to the inalienable right of the Bourbons, but following 
 the dictates of the nation in insisting on a Catholic branch of 
 the house. 
 
 Navarre grasped both the opportunity and the danger. His 
 conversion could not now be attributed to fear of Guise or 
 Spaniard. He recognised the Estates as uttering the deliberate 
 sense of the majority. To delay was dangerous. The Estates 
 of 1593 did little else, but they forced Henry to renounce his 
 creed. 
 
 ! The King's conversion and absolution unloosed the tongues, 
 land untied the hands, of the Politiques of Paris. The risk 
 was great, for the revolutionists still controlled the municipality, 
 and the foreign troops were still quartered in the capital. It 
 was with fear and trembling that the first white scarves showed 
 themselves in the shivering dawn, but their numbers gradually 
 swelled, and with the admission of Henry at the Porte Neuve 
 the long-brooding danger of a St. Bartholemow for the 
 Politiques was at an end. 
 
 The mass gave Henry Paris, and Paris gave Henry France. 
 Again to quote Tavannes : " The capture of Paris or the King 
 is half the victory in civil war." The King had taken Paris, 
 and Catholicism had captured the King. With which lay the 
 victory ? 
 
 I The failure of the League implied the defeat of democracy, 
 and of the greatest of the princely -houses, in which the 
 Crown had long found its antagonists. But for Catholicism it 
 was a gain ; for the League already contained the disruptive 
 forces which • were ultimately to break up the Church of 
 France. To a system of authority the popular preacher of 
 the sixteenth century was as dangerous as the philosophe of 
 the eighteenth ; indeed in the revolution of the future the 
 successors of the preacher of the League and of the 
 Huguenot minister were to reappear, shoulder to shoulder. 
 
THE LEAGUE. 83 
 
 Neither ultramontane Leaguers nor Huguenots had now 
 triumphed, but the national Catholics. They insisted on a 
 Catholic king, and the King must needs be Catholic. They 
 obtained the universal restoration of the mass, and of the 
 Church property. They secured the exclusion of Huguenot 
 worship from the districts where Catholicism was most zealous. 
 Catholicism was henceforth without dispute the national 
 religion. In the religious conflict the more conservative 
 element had won. 
 
III. 
 
 THE CROWN 
 
 THE humiliating position of the Crown throughout the 
 Wars of Rehgion was as much the result of misfortune 
 as of fault. It was a necessity of nature that the lustre of 
 monarchy should be temporarily obscured. The Capetian 
 dynasty had been founded on foreign war, and developed by 
 foreign war. It was the symbol of French unity against the 
 foreigner. The advent of peace had always been a danger- 
 signal. The natural turbulence of the French nobility, which 
 had found its vent in war, whether defensive or offensive, was 
 turned into less patriotic channels. War had brought the 
 nobles out of their feudal isolation, and gathered them closely 
 round the Crown, but this was not all gain. Being so near 
 the Crown they must needs control it for personal or class 
 interests, and were this impossible they would fall back on 
 their previous independence. It was likely that under any 
 circumstances the close of the Spanish wars would have been 
 followed by the same internal troubles which at the close 
 of the English wars had strained all the resources of the 
 governments of Charles VII., Louis XL, and the Regency of 
 Anne of Bealijeu. The Constable Bourbon, the greatest 
 nobleman in France, deserting in time of war, had found no 
 following, notwithstanding the existence of general discontent. 
 It was certain that in time of peace every malcontent grandee 
 would beckon to any foreign power that had access to his 
 province. 
 
THE CROWN, 85 
 
 The difficulties of the Crown were increased tenfold by the 
 introduction of the religious factor. Hitherto the bureaucracy 
 and the middle classes had on the whole stood by the 
 monarchy in its conflict with the nobles. Now, however, they 
 failed to recognise the factious element in the great party 
 leaders, it saw in them only the champions of their own/ 
 religion, whether Catholic or Reformed. Religion, moreover^ 
 was becoming more than nationality. The Chancellor 1 
 L'Hopital opened his speech to the Estates General of j 
 Orleans by saying that there was now more love between 
 an Englishman and Frenchman of the same religion, than 
 between two Frenchmen of different forms of faith. The 
 Huguenots brought the English to Havre, and promised 
 Calais ; they deluged France with reiters and lanzknechts ; 
 they agreed to surrender to the Palatinate the one great 
 conquest of Henry's reign, the Three Bishoprics, the military 
 keys of Lorraine. The Catholic grandees from the first 
 intrigued with Spain, and ended by well-nigh dismembering 
 France. The monarchy could not hold the nation tog 
 when religion was set against religion. The more genui^r^ 
 eager minds, without being intentionally disloyal, turned to 
 their party chiefs, to Guise or Coligni. Coligni once said that 
 he could raise a better army in four days than the King in four 
 months. The same was certainly true of the Duke of Guise. 
 The Crown was left face to face with two parties, each stronger 
 than itself. 
 
 But if the principle of monarchy was for the moment weak, 
 its persofinel was weaker when the storm burst upon it. 
 " What," replied Henry IV. to a critic of Catherine di Medici, 
 "could a poor woman have done with her husband dead 
 and five small children upon her hands, and two families who 
 were scheming to seize the throne, our own and the Guises. . . . 
 I am astonished that she did not do even worse." Catherine's 
 chief adversary has been among Frenchmen, her most generous 
 apologist. The French of all ages seem to have a singular 
 
86 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 antipathy to the Itahan character, and Catherine was eminently 
 Itahan. Her evil reputation has been due to French sources ; 
 she has been the scapegoat for the sins of the French nation. 
 Both creeds and all classes disgraced themselves, and the 
 shame of all was cast upon the foreigner, who perhaps of all 
 most consistently strove to guard the interests of France. 
 No treason can be imputed to the Italian as to Coligni or 
 to Guise. Catherine's name is vulgarly associated with shame- 
 less immorality and wholesale poisoning. The libels of 
 Huguenot pamphleteers and Guisard popular preachers have 
 been handed down through generations, and yet they were 
 hardly intended to be believed. There is every reason to 
 think that she was entirely faithful as wife and widow to a 
 husband who did not deserve her affection. If it be true that 
 after the death of Eleonore de Roye she wished to marry 
 Conde, it was a wish innocently shared by many other ladies. 
 There is not the slightest evidence for attributing to her a 
 single case of poisoning. In the sixteenth century everyone 
 lived too freely. Sanitation was neither natural nor scientific. 
 To die of natural causes was unfashionable, a sign of unim- 
 portance, and consequently, in the upper ten thousand, every 
 death that was not of violence, was liable to be ascribed to 
 poison. Yet Catherine perhaps deserves to suffer for her 
 one great crime, the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and the 
 cruelties which completed it. 
 
 Catherine was not attractive. Frenchmen regarding the 
 marriage as a mesalliance thought her vulgar. Her prominent 
 eyes, and projecting lips recalled her great uncle. Pope 
 Leo X. She was not tall, but largely made, and grew unduly 
 stout. To correct this tendency, she took constant exercise 
 on foot, tiring out all her suite. " Constant movement," wrote 
 Lippomano, "gives her a good appetite, and if she takes exercise 
 enough for two, she eats in proportion." Hence she suffered 
 much from indigestion, and as time went on from gout. At 
 her meals she loved incessant chatter, and was an immoderate 
 
THE CROWN. 87 
 
 laugher, enjoying especially the libels on herself. Genuinely 
 good-natured, she never sought out nor punished the authors 
 of the scandalous pamphlets ; her one continued feeling of 
 vindictiveness was against Montgomery, who had accidentally 
 killed her husband, and afterwards flaunted the broken spear 
 upon his scutcheon. Lavish alike in gifts and alms she had 
 no faculty of saying no. If she could not content an appli- 
 cant with substantial grants, she would dismiss him laden 
 with promises. As a girl she had been well educated, and 
 had literary tastes ; but her troubled life gave no scope for 
 study, though she retained to the end the passion of her 
 family for building and art collections. Her naturally joyous 
 and easy nature could alone have supported her through the 
 great trials of her life. She was never known but once, states 
 Lippomano, to be really angry. On the other hand, she was 
 tortured by jealousy, a natural result of her early married life, 
 and of her being shelved both under her husband and her 
 eldest son. She had a craving to be important, to have a 
 hand in all state business, she loved to hear all good results 
 ascribed to herself, all evil consequences to bad advisers. 
 Her efforts indeed were vain, for, in Correr's words, " If any- 
 thing is refused it is put down to her ; if there are failures, to 
 her they are ascribed." 
 
 Notwithstanding her love of flattery she trusted no one, and 
 rightly, for she had been much deceived. She placed more 
 reliance in her Italian followers than in the French, and this 
 added to her unpopularity. Her religion was of the formal 
 Medicean type, with a strong taint of superstition, of belief in 
 amulets and prophecies, an almost universal feature of the 
 Court. She respected the established, and despised enthusiasm; 
 she could not understand the real force of the religious motive, 
 thinking that questions could be settled by diplomacy and 
 compromise, beHeving with Machiavelli that religion should be \ 
 utilised as an engine of Government, using, in the phrase of 
 Tavannes, the Huguenots as men use leeches to draw bad 
 
88 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 blood. Thus her usual policy consisted in Edicts of Pacifica- 
 tion, followed by small continuous encroachments. She told 
 Alva that the results had been very good; and Henry III. 
 pursued the same method with success, making orthodoxy the 
 qualification for Court favour. It was, after all, the policy of 
 Richelieu, and the earlier period of Louis XIV. The financial 
 factor in the Huguenotism of the upper classes was worth 
 reckoning with. 
 
 While not personally vicious Catherine had not a high moral 
 standard. Passionately fond of her children, she spoilt them 
 by indulgence. The ladies of her Court bore no good 
 reputation, and she was believed to utilise their charms for 
 political ends. Frenchmen ascribed the vices of the age to 
 her instruction, but the Italian could now teach them nothing 
 that they did not know too well. The French Court under 
 her regime was certainly no worse than under her predecessors, 
 and her loss of influence was marked by a far lower pitch of 
 degradation. 
 
 Catherine's abilities are somewhat hard to gauge. French- 
 men probably overrated them for evil, and Italians for good. 
 Of her industry there can be no doubt. No French monarch 
 has worked harder for his country, and none perhaps, except 
 Louis XL, has personally visited so much of France. She 
 thought lightly of a journey from Paris to Nerac, and with every 
 piece of work and every journey grew younger and more jovial. 
 But industry is not ability. Among the numerous critics of 
 Catherine's faculties the Venetians are probably the least 
 prejudiced. "An intellect acute and genuinely Florentine," 
 wrote Barbaro early in her career; "a clear and intelligent 
 business woman." " Perhaps too conceited," adds Correr, 
 " and I do not say that she is a Sybil, but there is no prince 
 who w^ould not have lost his head amid these troubles, much" 
 more a woman and a foreigner without trusty friends, con- 
 stitutionally timid, never hearing the truth. Nevertheless all 
 the respect that is still given to monarchy is due to her." 
 
THE CROWN. 89 
 
 These views are in substantial agreement with that of Henry 
 IV., who ascribed it to her prudence and her cunning that 
 the schemes of both great houses were defeated, and that 
 her three sons reigned in turn. That France needed a 
 masculine genius, and not a business woman, was no fault 
 of Catherine's. 
 
 The Queen's personal political failures were due in part to 
 the hereditary policy of a weak but absolute Italian power. 
 She disliked at once the great princely houses which tem-' 
 porarily overshadowed the Crown, and the permanent con- 
 stitutional checks. The part that Clement VII. had played 
 between France and Spain, Catherine revived as between 
 Guise and Bourbon. She hoped to balance one against the 
 other, wishing to support the weaker, yet not daring ; forced 
 to follow the stronger, and consequently getting no thanks. 
 As to Clement were attributed the two great tragedies of Italy 
 ■ — the sack of Rome, and the fall of Florence ; so to Catherine 
 were ascribed the two great tragedies of France — the Massacre 
 of St. Bartholomew, and the murder of Henry of Guise. The 
 latter accusation was indirectly true. She had overrated her 
 influence with her son, and this proved fatal to her friends. 
 She believed that Henry would do nothing without her advice, 
 but, as Tavannes remarks, " Un sage entrepreneur ne se fie en 
 sa mere propre." For years indeed she had struggled against 
 the conviction that the darling of all her children had broken 
 from her leading-strings ; and indeed Henry's indolence and 
 frivolity left her a large residuum of power. From his accession 
 until the Barricades she had reconciled all the party chiefs in 
 turn. She had even reconciled Henry and his brother, her 
 daughter Margaret and Navarre. But for her, wrote the 
 Tuscan envoy more than once, the Seine would long ago have 
 run with blood. She wrongly believed that she could 
 reconcile the King and his tyrant. 
 
 Characteristically enough her passion for compromise, her 
 physical energy, and her kindly heart, together caused her death. 
 
90 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 The tale is best told in the Tuscan agent Cavriana's letter 
 of January 6th, 1589. He writes that, on the preceding day 
 the Queen was taken to a better life owing to a pleurisy which 
 passed into another malady called peri-pneumonia, which 
 meant inflammation of the lungs, and ended in apoplexy, 
 "She caught the disease by exposing herself to a chill on 
 New-year's day, which was extremely cold and blusterous, 
 against the doctor's advice, and after having wept copiously 
 over the harsh words which the Cardinal Bourbon addressed 
 to her when at the King's request she went to see him and 
 announce his liberation. ' Madame,' he said, ' if you had not 
 deceived us, and lured us here with fair words, and under a 
 thousand guarantees, the two would not be dead, and I should 
 be at liberty.' She was so wounded by these words that she 
 returned to her room and had a relapse of the complaint of 
 which she was hardly quit, much less thoroughly cured." 
 Here the worthy Tuscan quite broke down. "Pray pardon 
 me. I can write no more for grief, and for the tears that keep 
 a-flowing when I call to mind the merits of that great Queen, 
 my own kind mistress, and if you should not find my letter all 
 that it ought to be, pray take my passionate sorrow for excuse. 
 Another day I will give better satisfaction." "With her," in 
 another line he cries, "is dead all that kept us in life." 
 Better women and more glorious queens have had less 
 touching epitaphs. 
 
 Of Catherine's three royal sons, the only self-subsistent 
 figure is Henry HI., at once pathetic and contemptible. By 
 nature gifted with taste and talent, he was cursed by 
 hereditary disease and a predisposition to premature vice. 
 Zealously Catholic, even to his disadvantage, naturally chival- 
 rous and honest, all his good qualities were nullified by lack 
 of will. He was everything by turns and nothing long. It is 
 hard to believe that the abnormal effeminacy, the hanging 
 earrings, the frizzed head, the puppy dogs, the girl-like admira- 
 tion for his favourites, were not the result of constitutional 
 
THE CROWN. 91 
 
 ill-health. Yet he had fought at Jarnac and Moncontour, and 
 he never faltered when Guise had to be struck down. When 
 Clement stabbed him he tore the dagger from the wound and 
 plunged it in the assassin's jaw. No one realized more clearly 
 that he was unfit to be a king. Retirement and pleasant 
 society* were his ideal. Yet, when forced to business, he 
 showed intelligence. Twice he thwarted the Estates General 
 of France, twice he out-manoeuvred Guise. Under the most 
 humiliating circumstances he showed a readiness and a 
 dignity which recovered his position. His contemporaries 
 dwelt with curiosity upon this embodiment of contrasts. 
 Temperate in eating and drinking, he was immoderate in 
 all else — in vice, in dancing, in penitential exercises. The 
 lavish expenditure on his pleasures was aggravated by the 
 equally expensive craze for introducing and endowing ascetic 
 religious orders. His misfortunes were his fault ; yet it is 
 hard not to pity the least creditable of French kings, with 
 his genuine agonies of remorse, and the constitutional 
 impossibility of a better life. Estranged by his own act 
 from his mother, hating his brother almost from birth, 
 trusting not even his own favourites, he sat alone towards his 
 end, day after day, constantly working and writing, striving 
 to save his throne when it was too late ; with his hair 
 and beard turned white, and his teeth gone, though he 
 was barely thirty-six. The energy and skill with which he 
 lured Guise to his fate, the imperturbability with which he 
 announced his crime, his expressed resolve to be a king at last, 
 all betokened a re-awakening of the will. Had he followed up 
 his blow, half France would have applauded. But he relapsed 
 into listless change of purpose, and within a week his well- 
 wishers realized that he was lost, and foretold his coming 
 murder. Such were the persons on whom it devolved to pilot 
 the monarchy through the Scylla and Charybdis of confront- 
 
 * "The position of a private gentleman," writes Tavannes, "with an 
 income of;^io,ooo, was Henry's idea of happiness." 
 
92 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 ing religions. It remains to consider what possibilities of 
 action lay before them. 
 
 There were four alternatives which the Crown might take 
 in relation to the religious struggle, and which from time to 
 time it actually adopted. Of these the first two may be 
 called professional, the latter unprofessional. The king might 
 act purely as judge and mediator, make terms between the 
 two religions and enforce them. Or he might act as military 
 leader of the nation, turn thoughts away from religious strife 
 back to national glory, and unite Catholics and Huguenots 
 against the foreigner. 
 
 On the other hand, the Crown might become a faction 
 leader, and either gain command of the most dangerous party, 
 and thus neutralize the danger to itself, or by joining the 
 weaker establish a balance between the two. Finally it might 
 adopt a perversion of the first alternative, and raise a third 
 party to a position of equal independence with the other two. 
 The history of the Crown throughout the Religious Wars 
 consists in the ringing of the changes on these alternatives. 
 The first was the view of L'Hopital, the second that of 
 Coligni. The Crown itself unfortunately was driven or dis- 
 posed to adopt the latter two, though not without many 
 genuine impulses towards a more professional policy. Before 
 the outbreak of civil war, L'Hopital stated in the assembly 
 of St. Germain, that it was odious and absurd to advise the 
 King to put himself at the head of one party, and to exter- 
 minate the other, and this view he never ceased to urge upon 
 the Queen-mother. Catherine seems honestly to have adopted 
 it. It was no fault of hers that the Edict of January, the 
 basis of all f"uture arrangements, was not preserved. After 
 the Peace of Amboise, she reverted to the Chancellor's policy. 
 She sent the most moderate royalists into the provinces to 
 enforce the terms of pacification. She took the young King 
 on a progress throughout France, and seems to have struggled 
 to attain to the judicial conception of the monarchy. But 
 
THE CROWN. 93 
 
 the Crown required both a judicial staff to give expression to 
 its wishes, and an executive to enforce them. For the former 
 task the Parhaments were most unfitted. Seated in the heart 
 of the great CathoUc cities, or in the ring of frontier provinces, 
 they were subject to local passions, and had not the unity 
 which might enable them to adopt a professional standpoint. 
 When religious troubles came upon England, the judicature"^ 
 also fell into disrepute, but the cause of this was its subser- / 
 vience to the monarchy. In France its failure was due first ; 
 to its insubordination, and finally to its weakness. In the ' 
 religious crisis, the pride of France, the great judicial institu- 
 tion for which she paid so dearly, lost its credit. No Huguenot 
 could hope for justice in the ordinary tribunals, and hence 
 the constant demand for vii-partie chambers in which each 
 religion should be represented. Political abstention added to 
 the difficulties of the Crown, for the calmer and more judicial 
 t-emperaments shrank from office and resigned. Henri de 
 Mesme tells how Catherine visited his house by night closely 
 veiled, and dragged him back to public life. " It was time," 
 she said, "to aid his country. It sat not well on a good citizen 
 to be seated at his ease, shut up in his garden and his study 
 during the hurricane of a nation's storm." 
 
 The Crown had little more control over its executive. A 
 few soldiers and statesmen, such as Vielleville and Castelnau, 
 were ready to carry out their orders. Even bigots like Montluc 
 and Tavannes hung disturbers of the peace from either side, 
 but when fighting once began, they were not proof against 
 religious party feeling. Everything depended upon the 
 individual character of governors and lieutenant governors, 
 and minor officials ; there was no common custom of obedience. 
 Thus it was that after St. Bartholomew the orders of the 
 Crown, whether for extermination or for pacification, received 
 a different measure of obedience in every province and in 
 every town. Throughout the wars the King was well served 
 by some of the more professional soldiers, but their livelihood 
 
94 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 depended upon the continuance of the struggle, they could 
 not be sufficiently disinterested to help the nation to peace. 
 
 The judicial attitude was thus probably impracticable. 
 Catherine, in marrying her son to the daughter of the 
 emperor Maximilian, may well have hoped to introduce into 
 France the judicial and mediatory policy which the emperor 
 long maintained, and which he earnestly pressed upon 
 Henry III. upon his accession to the throne. Maximilian, 
 however, had the most powerful prince in Germany, the 
 Elector of Saxony, to support him, whereas the Queen-mother 
 had but her Chancellor. The outbreak of the second war may 
 have been due to Huguenots or Catholics ; the Crown showed 
 a complete consciousness of innocence which all but entailed 
 its capture. After this it deserted professional for personal 
 feelings, and the change is marked by the retirement of 
 L' Hopital in 1568. His principles were afterwards urged from 
 the philosophical side by Bodin, but the Crown never really 
 again adopted the purely judicial theory. The nearest 
 approach hereafter was the conduct of Henry IH. before and 
 after the Peace of Fleix in 1580. He had real volitions 
 towards peace, but peace with him meant leisure for amuse- 
 ment, and the nation by this time was out of hand. 
 
 The second alternative is the history of the international 
 politics of these wars. Under Henry H. France had fought a 
 drawn game against the united powers of Spain and England. 
 It was clear that internal division would render her weaker 
 than the national enemies, and it was natural that soldiers of 
 both confessions should wish to heal internal wounds by the 
 outbreak of external war. It was the Catholic Vielleville who 
 said that the "only side which had won at the desperate and 
 doubtful combat of St. Denis was the side of the King of Spain. 
 To the Queen-mother is due the credit of initiating this policy 
 of union. After the first w^ar she cemented the peace by 
 leading both Catholics and Huguenots to turn the English out 
 of Havre. This, however, was an act of merely defensive 
 
THE CROWN. 95 
 
 warfare, and could lead to no permanent result. Catherine 
 had no desire for a breach with England, for she had many 
 interests in common with Elizabeth. Chief of these was the 
 dislike of Mary Stuart, grounded in both cases partly on 
 personal jealousy, partly on political dangers. To both it was 
 essential to traverse the negotiations for a marriage between 
 the Queen of Scodand and Don Carlos, heir to the Spanish 
 monarchy. The union of Spain and Scotland must have 
 been infallibly followed, it was thought, by the absorption of 
 England. France would have become a mere enclave in 
 Spanish lands and Spanish waters; and, more than this, the 
 Queen-mother would have been, within her own dominions, at 
 the mercy of the House of Guise. Thus a national war against 
 England was suicidal to both parties, and the Treaty of Troyes 
 re-established friendly relations with the English Court. 
 
 This peace by no means implied hostility with Spain. The 
 Court had been assisted by Spanish auxiliaries against the 
 Huguenots. The celebrated interview of Bayonne, between 
 Catherine and the King on one side, and her daughter, the 
 Queen of Spain, and the Duke of Alva on the other, seemed 
 likely to lead to a closer intimacy. Catherine's objects in this 
 interview have always been a subject of dispute. She probably 
 wished to propitiate Philip, alienated by the recent peace with 
 the heretics, to obviate any dangerous connection between him 
 and the more extreme French Catholics, and, above all, to 
 further the dynastic interests of her children — to marry her 
 second daughter Margaret to Don Carlos, and her son Henry 
 to Philip's widowed sister, the Queen of Portugal. The direct 
 result, however, of these relations with Spain was a fresh 
 outbreak of civil war, because the Huguenots were convinced 
 that measures had been concerted at Bayonne for their 
 suppression, and indeed such measures had taken a very 
 prominent place in the debates. 
 
 It seemed inevitable that harmony in France should vary in 
 inverse proportion to union between France and Spain 
 
 y m I 
 ain. \ 
 
96 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION: 
 
 Philip's pressure upon the French court was caused by no mere 
 abstract zeal for Catholicism. He was aware of the discontent, 
 religious and political, that was smouldering in the Nether- 
 lands, he feared that any success of the Huguenots would set 
 it ablaze, and he wished to commit the French government 
 once for all to the Catholic cause, for otherwise it could not 
 fail to take advantage of Low-Country disaffection. Even 
 before the revolt, while Alva was urging Catherine at Bayonne 
 to crush the Huguenots, he was complaining of the reception 
 of a Turkish envoy at Marseilles. From the outbreak of the 
 revolt the mission of the Spanish minister at Paris was to 
 unravel the intrigues with the Protestants or the Turk. 
 Schomberg, the great "recruiting sergeant" of the Crown, 
 himself a Protestant, was as often employed in negotiating 
 Protestant alliances as in raising reiters for the Catholic cause. 
 The outbreak occurred in 1566, but so great was the distrust 
 of the Huguenots for the Crown, that not until 1570 could the 
 French seriously realize its importance to themselves. This, 
 however, was the secret of the Peace of St. Germain. The 
 opportunity had come for recovering the losses of Francis I.'s 
 reign, of again making French influence predominant over the 
 whole possessions of the House of Burgundy, of again entering 
 into relations with the lesser Italian powers to combat the 
 supremacy of Spain. French sailors as well as English cast 
 longing glances at the colonial wealth of Spain. The growing 
 French commerce could expand at the expense of the Spaniard, 
 and this, being chiefly in Huguenot- hands, it would give 
 them employment, and divert their attention from religious 
 strife. Subjects of dispute, both personal and national, were 
 not lacking. • The Spaniards in 1566 had massacred the 
 French settlers in Florida. Philip had perpetually thwarted 
 Catherine in her dynastic schemes ; he had refused his sister 
 to Henry, his son to Margaret ; he had prevented the latter 
 likewise from marrying the King of Portugal ; he had consoled 
 himself for the death of Elizabeth of France by filching from 
 
THE crown: 97 
 
 her brother Charles his intended bride, the elder daughter of 
 the emperor. He was threatening the absorption of Siena in 
 his Italian possessions ; he was attempting to detach the Swiss 
 from their traditional alliance with the French crown, 
 Charles IX., jealous of his brother's triumphs in the civil war, 
 had an access of warlike zeal, and was burning to eclipse them 
 on a more creditable field. The main points for consideration"! 
 were, How far could the French crown openly interfere in the [ 
 struggle between Philip and his subjects, and how far in so \ 
 doing would it be committed to the Huguenots in France? 
 What, moreover, would be the attitude of England towards a 
 French invasion of Flanders, and with what amount of favour 
 would the Catholic government of France be regarded by the 
 rebels in the Netherlands ? 
 
 There could at all events be no doubt as to the welcome 
 accorded by the Prince of Orange to the assistance of the 
 French crown. He had realised from the first that success 
 with a purely religious programme was impossible. The 
 elements of Protestantism were too scattered geographically, 
 and too divided ecclesiastically, to render possible a great 
 Protestant system of alliance. In the Netherlands themselves 
 the revolt comprised the most irreconcileable elements. In 
 Holland was an aristocratic commercial bourgeoisie with 
 Erastian principles, jealous of foreign interference, incapable of 
 combined action, yet acting with self-sacrifice in local self 
 defence. Beneath it were urban populations, sometimes 
 Catholic, sometimes Calvinist. The majority of the country 
 population, probably in Holland, and certainly in the inland 
 northern provinces, was Catholic. In Antwerp, the commercial 
 capital of the Netherlands, Catholics, Lutherans, Calvinists, 
 and Anabaptists were intermingled, the Lutherans tending to 
 unite with the Catholics, and the lower section of the 
 Calvinists with the Anabaptists. In the manufacturing centres 
 of Flanders and Brabant were urban democracies, violent in 
 political and religious proselytism, forming municipal fed- 
 
 H 
 
9S THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 erations, taking the offensive against noble and Catholic 
 elements, pressing at one moment for a centralised unity, at 
 another for a cantonal federation ; among them occasional 
 aristocracies, as at Bruges, or at all events an upper bourgeoisie 
 which was often Catholic, as in Holland it was Erastian. In 
 Hainault, Artois, Limburg, and Luxemburg, was a rural 
 population with a Catholic nobility, inclined to monarchy yet 
 resenting its exclusion under the Granvelle Government from 
 monarchical administration. Yet side by side with these 
 nobles were towns with a large Calvinist element, such as 
 Arras, Lille, and Valenciennes, backed by considerable 
 Reformed populations in territories geographically, but not 
 politically, Netherland— Maestricht, Liege, and Cambrai. 
 
 The only possible bond of union was resistance to Spanish 
 garrisons, and Spanish maladministration, and the only possible 
 resource a political rival of Spain, and a European war not 
 religious but political. 
 
 This was Orange's objection to the English alliance, 
 which his supporters, the Dutch, preferred. There was no 
 political jealousy between England and Spain ; it was with 
 difficulty that England broke away from its Spanish relations, 
 to which it was constantly returning. English intervention 
 implied that the more religious section of the government (the 
 Walsingham or Leicester section) had obtained the upper 
 hand, and intervention of a purely religious order he avoided. 
 Hence also he disliked a purely Huguenot connection, apart 
 from the geographical difficulties to its realisation. The 
 Crown of France was the natural rival of Spain, the traditional 
 non-Protestant ally of Protestant peoples ; a power which 
 might readily attach the provinces of the South, and not be 
 dangerous to those of the North ; which might bring with it 
 support from England of a not exclusively religious colour. If 
 
 i France could be made to break with Spain, the independence 
 of the Netherlands was possible. The whole question turned 
 upon the eHmination of the religious factor as far as possible 
 
THE CROWN. 99 
 
 from Netherland politics, and entirely from international 
 politics. 
 
 Naturally enough there were early negotiations between the 
 French Court and Orange, and his correspondents are 
 Catherine and the Constable, and not the Huguenots, unless 
 they are in favour at Court. 
 
 As early as 1563-4 Orange was corresponding with the 
 Queen. In January 1566 the King declared that he would 
 some day enforce his claims to Flanders. Throughout this 
 year, and the next, Orange was in constant communication 
 with the Queen-mother and the Constable, and D'Andelot 
 acted as agent for the Gueux at Court. The attempt of Genlis 
 on Cambrai was made with the cognisance of the French Crown. 
 
 On the outbreak of the war in 1567 Orange refused to join 
 Conde. Forced into France in 1568 by Alva, he was not 
 attacked by the royal troops, who might easily have annihilated 
 him. Catherine's negotiations with him were the subject of 
 constant representations from the Spanish minister Alava. The 
 aggressive Catholic policy of the Crown in 1568-9 forced 
 Orange indeed into alliance with the Huguenots, but he 
 submitted to the stigma of personal cowardice rather than 
 commit himself against the Crown, and he played an important 
 part in the Treaty of St. Germain, though out of favour with 
 the Huguenot party. 
 
 From this moment his connection with the royal family never- 
 ceased until his death. But it was his more adventurous 
 brother Louis who personally brought matters to a crisis. He 
 had for some time been carrying on depredations upon Spanish 
 commerce, in conjunction with the people of Rochelle. He 
 was now brought by Coligni's son-in-law Teligni to an interview 
 with the King. He unfolded a brilliant prospect before the/ 
 dazzled eyes of Charles. Flanders and Artois should be once/ 
 more incorporated with France ; the German princes would be 
 tempted by the promise of Brabant and Guelders, Luxemburg 
 and Limburg ; England by that of Holland and Zealand. 
 
100 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 The attitude of England was uncertain. France could not 
 engage in war with Spain without covering herself by an 
 English alliance, and yet nothing England dreaded more than 
 a French advance on Antwerp. Elizabeth plainly said that 
 she would sooner see the Spaniards there than the French, 
 the possession of Holland and Zealand would hardly have 
 compensated her for the dangers of the French command of 
 Flanders and the great city of the Scheldt. More favourable 
 to England was a proposal for an independent sovereignty of 
 the Netherlands for a French prince who should be wedded 
 to the English queen. Catherine had formerly proposed a 
 marriage between Elizabeth and Charles IX., she now offered 
 the Duke of Anjou, who should be sovereign of the Nether- 
 lands, and possibly the future emperor. But the negotiations 
 broke down on the insuperable objections of Anjou. An 
 arrangement was indeed arrived at in the treaty of Blois, but 
 this was of the nature of a merely defensive alliance, and did 
 not prevent the English government from listening to the 
 commercial overtures of Alva. 
 
 Meanwhile events moved rapidly. The rebel ships expelled 
 from Dover surprised Brill and Flushing. Louis of Nassau 
 left the Court, and with aid secretly supplied by the French 
 King seized Mons and Valenciennes. Elizabeth, not to be 
 outdone, allowed English volunteers to cross to Flushing. 
 French emissaries were busy in Italy and Germany, and a 
 common scheme of action was arranged with the Porte. The 
 eagerly desired vacancy in Poland occurred at this propitious 
 moment, and Anjou's candidature found favour both in 
 Poland and Germany. France seemed likely to head a com- 
 bination against the two branches of the house of Hapsburg. 
 The aid given by Charles to Louis of Nassau had been 
 discovered by the Spanish Court, and war was certain. Troops 
 were being openly levied in France and Switzerland, of which 
 Coligni was to take command. The French fleet under Strozzi 
 was preparing to sail for the Channel. The Huguenot nobility 
 
THE CROWN. loi 
 
 had flocked to Paris. Delay was only caused by the marriage 
 of Catherine's daughter, Margaret, to Henry of Navarre, and 
 it was significant that this was solemnized without waiting for 
 the Pope's dispensation. Then, of a moment, the attempt on 
 Coligni and the massacre of St. Bartholomew stopped the 
 pulse of war. The causes of this extraordinary tragedy wi^l 
 be for all time a source of dispute, and here they can be only 
 lightly touched. There were present three distinct factors, 
 the old feud between Guises and Chatillons, accentuated by 
 Coligni's supposed connivance at the murder of Duke Francis, 
 the bloodthirsty hatred of the Catholic populace of Paris for 
 the Huguenot nobility, which merely needed that the govern- 
 ment should withdraw its hand, and the personal feelings of 
 the Queen-mother. 
 
 How then was Catherine induced to surrender in a moment 
 the fruits of her elaborate diplomacy? She had at once a 
 constitutional liking for diplomatic intrigue, and a nervous 
 horror of war. Consequently more than once she shrank back 
 from the conflict which her aggressive policy had done much to 
 kindle. She had now perhaps rightly estimated the possibilities 
 of failure. La Noue had been driven from Valenciennes ; the 
 succour which was forwarded to Louis of Nassau, under 
 Genlis, was cut to pieces in an ambuscade. Letters which 
 compromised the French King came into Alva's hands. The 
 experienced governors of Picardy and Burgundy warned her 
 that they were in no condition to fight Spain. News arrived 
 from Genoa that Spanish troops were being massed in Italy, to 
 be thrown upon the southern provinces of France. Venice 
 sent her most experienced envoy, Michieli, to entreat the 
 French king not to break with Spain, and so baulk continued 
 success against the Turk ; and Catherine was peculiarly open 
 to the influence of Italian diplomats. Above all, the action of 
 Elizabeth, on whose co-operation everything depended, was 
 undeniably ambiguous ; it was believed that she was preparing 
 to betray Flushing to the Spaniards. But Catherine had more 
 
I02 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 personal motives than these. Her dominant passion was 
 influence, and in war the influence of a woman and a diplo- 
 matist was gone. It was in fact gone already ; for once her son 
 had broken away from her guidance ; Coligni was dragging 
 him into wars in defiance of his mother's counsels. Coligni 
 Catherine disliked above all the party leaders, and she believed 
 that since Conde's death the political existence of the 
 Huguenot party depended on him alone. Were he dead, these 
 wild schemes of war would drop, and the Queen would recover 
 her control. 
 
 The question of premeditation is very difficult. There is no 
 doubt that ever since the outbreak of the troubles the 
 possibility of sacrificing the chiefs of the Huguenots was 
 present to Catherine. Alva and the Duke of Montpensier 
 alike had at Bayonne urged upon her the laying low of four or 
 five heads, and there is evidence to prove that these words 
 were ever since ringing in her ears. Yet she had before this 
 missed opportunities, and but for sudden passion the floating 
 idea might never have been executed. Cool and skilful as she 
 was, she lost her head, overmastered by jealousy and fear, the 
 two surest incentives to bloodshed. Had the shot from behind 
 the curtain struck home, the tragedy might have closed with 
 the Admiral's death. But he stooped to adjust his stirrup, and 
 received a wound not likely to be fatal. The outspoken threats 
 of the Huguenots, the indignation of the King, his apparent 
 determination to track out the murderers, and the fear of 
 immediate discovery, converted the Queen's previous fears into 
 panic terror, and hence the resolve to drown her guilt in the 
 , blood of the whole party. 
 
 The personal hatred of the Guises, and the rabid Catholic 
 zeal of the Parisians, were instruments which Catherine, or any 
 other, could have employed at any moment. Her one 
 difficulty was to stifle the honour, and stimulate the fear, of the 
 unfortunate young King. 
 
 Such seems the most probable explanation of one of 
 
THE CROWN', 103 
 
 history's most pitiful tragedies. Yet the Huguenots have 
 ahvays beheved that St. Bartholomew was the fruit that had 
 been ripening since Bayonne, and throughout Europe, from 
 the moment of the advent of the Huguenots to Paris, there 
 was presentiment of some great horror. Of the two Venetian 
 envoys, the more experienced believed in premeditation, the 
 other thought that the execution was so imperfect, so ill-timed, 
 so bungling, that it was the work of momentary passion. It is 
 certain that the Court had never decided upon its future 
 course, and within a few days three contradictory statements 
 were put forth. The world was told that an hneute had 
 occurred between the Guises and the Chatillons which the 
 government had suppressed. Then secret orders were sent to 
 the provinces that the King was resolved to exterminate the 
 Huguenots. Finally it was published that the Crown had 
 been forced to forestall a political plot against itself, and that 
 no change would be made in its relations to the Admiral's 
 peaceful co-religionists. The effect upon foreign politics was\ 
 immediate. The Pope and the King of Spain naturally 
 believed that France was now pledged to Catholicism. Elizabethi 
 rejected Catherine's advances and turned towards Spain. The , 
 Emperor converted his genuine horror to diplomatic uses, 
 emphasizing to Poles and Germans the part played in the 
 tragedy by Henry of Anjou. Yet Catherine was not dis- 
 couraged ; she had never intended a total change of policy 
 either within France or without. She had recovered the reins. 
 She intended the direction to be the same, but the pace not. 
 so break-neck. Without France she succeeded. In a few 
 months Henry was elected to the throne of Poland ; was 
 received with honour, and escorted on his road by the most 
 uncompromising of German Calvinists. A Roman envoy had 
 in vain dangled his heels at Paris, and been finally dismissed 
 with marked discourtesy. Philip was again threatened by a 
 combination between France, England, and his revolted 
 subjects. Elizabeth had, after three months, consented to act 
 
104 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 as godmother to Charles' daughter, and was Hstening favour- 
 ably to Alengon's proposals. Within a week Orange had 
 renewed his negotiations with the French Crown, and was 
 receiving subsidies from the hand which he had declared 
 could never be cleansed from the blood of St. Bartholomew. 
 
 fYet the crime had brought its punishment, for this success 
 abroad was rendered futile by the_loss of unity at _home^ 
 France could be no longer an object of hope and fear, when 
 the Crown was breaking its strength against the walls of 
 Rochelle and Sancerre; when great part of the southern 
 provinces, Catholic as well as Protestant, were preparmg to 
 withdraw from practical allegiance. 
 
 The death of Charles and the return of Henry from Poland 
 further complicated the foreign policy of the Crown. Catherine, 
 though she still wielded enormous influence, was no longer 
 absolute, for the King took other counsellors than his mother. 
 Moreover, between Henry and his brother Alen9on-Anjou 
 there existed a jealousy amounting to hatred. The younger 
 brother had no deep religious convictions, but he turned 
 towards the Huguenots as being the more stirring military 
 party, their aid could give him an independent power within 
 ■ the state, and a self-sufficing sovereignty abroad. Affecting 
 to despise the luxury and effeminacy of the Court, he posed 
 as the military leader of the nation, and gladly sur- 
 rounded himself with its professional captains, independent 
 of creed. Jealousy, natural predilection, and self interest 
 all pointed to the frontiers. At once -headstrong, impatient, 
 and irresolute, he would adopt any scheme that appeared 
 adventurous, and on the first check exchange it for another. 
 The Queen-mother w^as ambitious to win a crown for her 
 younger son. She saw^ with anguish that the two brothers 
 could not live at peace, and that every quarrel might cause 
 a fresh breach between the two religious parties. Thus she 
 too pushed her son towards the Netherlands, while shrinking 
 from open conflict with the Spaniard. The King perpetually 
 
THE CROWN. IC5 
 
 wavered ; now jealous of his brother's success, now craving 
 to be rid of him, unable altogether to let slip the opportunities 
 which rebellion against Spain offered to the French monarchy, 
 yet revolting against a combination with Calvinist rebels 
 against a friendly Catholic power. Thus in the ten years 
 between 15 74- 15 84, it is difficult at any moment to estimate 
 the exact responsibility of the Crown in the intrigues with 
 the Netherlands. Alen^on at all events becomes the centre 
 of interest rather than the King. Religiously colourless, he 
 was characteristically French ; his very failings and incon- 
 sequences endeared him to diplomatic agents, he was the 
 golden calf set up for the golden age of diplomacy to worship. 
 To Orange, Alengon was indispensable. He hoped that 
 circumstances would force the French prince into the policy 
 of toleration, which he himself adopted from conviction, for 
 his importance in France rested solely on his command of a 
 combined Politique-Huguenot party. It was such a party 
 that Orange wished to create in the Netherlands. He had 
 in fact no alternative. The French would not have suffered 
 English presence in West Flanders and Artois, the Walloon 
 nobles would not have submitted to his own supremacy. The 
 Catholic majority in the southern provinces would not have 
 obeyed any but a Catholic chief. The influence of Orange | 
 was always in inverse proportion to that of the religious factor. | 
 This is true of his position within the Netherlands and without, 
 and it is this which indissolubly connects his fortunes with 
 those of Alengon. The connection between events in France 
 and in the Netherlands was closest when relio;ious considerations 
 and revolutionary principles were least prominent. 
 
 St. Bartholomew had caused only a momentary breach in 
 the relations of Orange with the French Crown. The terms 
 arranged at the Fair of Frankfort, by which the southern 
 provinces of the Netherlands were abandoned to French 
 conquest, marks the beginning of the second stage of negotia- 
 tions. The marriage of Orange with the Huguenot ex-abbess 
 
lo6 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 of Jouarre, Charlotte of Montpensier, is often regarded as the 
 sign of rapprochement towards the Huguenots. Yet it was 
 negotiated by the Queen-mother, who made herself responsible 
 for the dowry, and engaged to reconcile the bride's father. 
 The more nearly France was inclined to Spain, as in 1572 and 
 1576, the more ready was Orange to negotiate, and the higher 
 were his bids. English jealousy was still the difficulty. 
 Notw^ithstanding her negotiations for marriage with Alengon, 
 
 IEli^^abeth on the whole leant towards Spain from St. Bartholo- 
 mew until the end of 1576, or even 1578, especially during 
 the milder administration of Requesens. She believed that 
 the massacre would be followed by a Catholic movement 
 from France in favour of Mary Stuart, and indeed Henry HI. 
 returned from Poland with the avowed intention of restoring 
 her. Thus the English queen constantly intrigued not only 
 [ with Spain, but with the extreme Huguenots, and with the 
 adventurous son of the Elector Palatine, John Casimir, who 
 wished to assume the lead of an aggressive European Calvinist 
 combination. Her desire was to mediate in the Netherlands, 
 to reinstate a tolerant but weak administration under the mere 
 suzerainty of Spain, such as would not interfere with the 
 development of her own carrying trade, which she w^as 
 consciously striving to convert into a monopoly. But the 
 intrigues of Don John of Austria, the new governor of the 
 Netherlands, with Mary Stuart, and of Alen^on with Philip H., 
 alarmed Elizabeth, and in 1578 the negotiations began which 
 ended in her betrothal with the French prince. 
 
 If fear of England had checked a French advance upon the 
 Netherlands, the fear of Spain was also a deterrent. Alengon 
 thought that he might gain the sovereignty under Spanish 
 suzerainty by means of a Spanish marriage. This probably 
 accounted for his momentary outburst of Catholic zeal at the 
 Estates of Blois in 1576-7. He could only execute his 
 designs by a Spanish marriage, and with the help of the 
 zealous Catholics, or by sharing the spoil with Elizabeth. 
 
THE CROWN. 107 
 
 Till the day of his death he wavered between these alternatives. 
 Twice d id Alengon appear upon the Netherland stage. The 
 farce preceded the tragedy. In 1578 he entered the country 
 at the request of the Catholic nobility of Hainault disgusted 
 with the religious and political proselytism of the Flemish 
 sectaries, but disinclined as yet to revert to Spain. Orange 
 and the States-General stood aloof, for he brought no guarantee 
 of royal aid. Elizabeth in alarm subsidised John Casimir to / 
 act as a check upon the French. Thus there were three 
 forces all opposed to Spain, yet all secretly hostile to each 
 other. It was not known how far the French Crown was 
 involved, it was long doubted whether Alengon would not 
 combine with Don John against the Estates. Don John's 
 death relieved the pressure. Hostilities broke out between 
 Walloons and Flemings, and Alengon threatened to head the 
 former, and create an independent Walloon principality. But 
 his forces disbanded themselves, his Calvinist mercenaries 
 slipping over the lines to join Casimir, and his French 
 Catholics deserting to the Catholic malcontents. In 1579 
 Alengon and John Casimir both disappeared. The line of 
 division again became religious, it had proved impossible 
 to adopt at once a Catholic and an anti-Spanish programme. ,' 
 The more Protestant provinces consolidated themselves in the , 
 union of Utrecht, while Artois and Hainault coalesced in the 
 union of Arras, and renewed their allegiance to Spain. 
 
 More serious was the invasion of 1581. Parma's successes, O 
 and the union of Arras, had forced Orange again to revert to ) 
 France. By the Treaty of Plessis the sovereignty of the 
 Netherlands had 'been accorded to Alencon and his heirs, 
 subject to guarantees against their incorporation with France 
 by his succession to the throne, or with Spain by a Spanish 
 marriage. But Alengon must be no private adventurer ; he 
 must bring with him a definite pledge of support and recogni- 
 tion from the Crown, and this was given. 
 
 Henry recognised his brother's sovereignty, and secretly 
 
io8 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 engaged to furnish troops. As compensation the province of 
 Artois was promised to the Crown. France seemed definitely 
 to have started on the career of conquest. Elizabeth's 
 opposition was, it was hoped, disarmed ; the negotiations for 
 her betrothal with Alen9on were pushed to a conclusion. The 
 European Catholic system was to be shattered by the alliance 
 of the Protestant and the Politique powers, by the creation of 
 an independent Franco-English principality in the Netherlands. 
 With the view of a fresh invasion Cambrai had been occupied, 
 and the Peace of Fleix concluded. A French fleet sailed to 
 create a diversion against Spain, on the side of Portugal, 
 giving support to the shadowy Pretender, Antonio, Prior of 
 Crato. 
 
 Yet from the first Alengon tried to get from Philip recognition 
 of his title as Duke of Brabant. His attempt to raise 
 Huguenot levies failed ; the Estates of Holland and Zealand 
 never gave real recognition to a Catholic and a Frenchman. 
 The sectaries, after their first enthusiastic welcome, intensified 
 his Catholicism and that of his troops by their fanatical 
 insolence. He had lost his Catholic adherents in Hainault 
 and Artois, who now concurred in the recall of Spanish troops. 
 He was constantly baulked by English jealousy; hence his 
 design to fortify his position by violence, and his treacherous 
 attempt upon Antwerp and other towns. Of this, if not the 
 King, Catherine at least was cognisant, and pushed forward 
 large reinforcements. It was an attempt at the conquest of the 
 southern provinces, which would have 'forced Spain to effect a 
 compromise. 
 
 Alen^on's ignominious failure at Antwerp was the climax of 
 the endeavours to turn French arms abroad. Negotiations 
 indeed did not cease, and it was after the death both of Orange 
 and of Alengon that the sovereignty of the Netherlands was 
 offered to the French Crown itself. But Henry could not 
 accept this proposal, because the religious factor was again 
 becoming all important. The diversion towards the Nether. 
 
THE CROWN. 109 
 
 lands had indeed thrice stopped the course of war against the" 
 Huguenots ; to it had been due the Peace of Monsieur, that 
 of Bergerac, and that of Fleix. But the storm had gathered 
 in another quarter, and this tampering with the Protestant 
 rebels of a Catholic king was a main cause of the outburst of^ 
 the League. 
 
 The French royal family had failed in its timid and tentative 
 adoption of the second alternative — the lead of the nation 
 against the foreigner. The treacherous French aid had \ 
 apparently riveted the Spanish chains upon the Netherlands. ^ 
 Even had Orange lived he could not have saved the southern 
 provinces. Yet his failure was not so complete as that of his 
 ally. He had committed the French Crown to hostility with 
 Spain. Philip's manipulation of the League was the revenge 
 for the aid given to his rebels. The French Court dreaded a 
 more direct attack. It was paralysed with fear as it watched 
 the Armada off its coasts. It was very generally believed that 
 it was intended, with the aid of the League, to occupy French 
 ports. Great was the rejoicing of the royalists at the ruin of 
 the Spanish fleet. Even the very Catholic Parisians could not 
 forbear to jeer. Notices were placarded in the street — " Lost, 
 somewhere off the English coast, the magnificent Armada. 
 Anyone bringing information of its whereabouts to the Spanish 
 Embassy shall receive five crowns reward." 
 
 "God has deferred our ruin," wrote the Tuscan agent 
 Cavriana, " contenting Himself with our torments of civil war, 
 and suffering Philip's design to be frustrated, for his Armada, 
 cast upon the Orkneys, tattered and torn, has returned to 
 Spain without harming any one in the world except itself." 
 
 But the danger to the Crown was not over, although he who 
 wielded the sceptre was a king of different calibre. Parma's » 
 two invasions of France were in reality the counterblows for J 
 the invasions of Alengon. And it was these invasions that/ 
 saved the northern provinces of the Netherlands, by diverting/ \ 
 the Spanish troops when there were no means of substantiaU 
 
no THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 resistance left. They saved, moreover, the cause of Henry of 
 Navarre, and the existence of Reform in France, for the bulk 
 of the nation was at length brought to realize that it was 
 engaged in a foreign war, and that religious antipathy must for 
 the time give place to national sympathies. Before long the 
 French Crown would be again able to reassume the offensive. 
 The political system of Henry IV. was no new departure, but 
 I the natural and necessary outcome of thirty years of French 
 "^^ diplomacy, postponed only by furious outbreaks of civil 
 war. Henry differed from Alengon and Catherine not so 
 much in his aims as in his competency. It is due to the 
 despised Italian to remember that her ships were destroyed off 
 the Azores in the only attempt made to save Portugal from 
 Spain, and that, nervous, half-hearted, and treacherous as she 
 was, to her repeated efforts the humiliation of Spain in the 
 Netherlands was in some measure due. 
 
 It was not unnatural that the Crown should place itself at 
 the head of one or other of the religious parties. Kings and 
 queens have after all their personal religious feelings, and are 
 liable with their subjects to epidemics of intolerance. The 
 personal religion of Charles V., of Mary of England, even of 
 Elizabeth, had no inconsiderable bearing upon the fortunes of 
 the Reformation. Yet in France the Opinions of the Crown 
 had little effect upon the progress of events. It may be said 
 
 I that the Crown never voluntarily placed itself at the head of 
 f either religious party. Before the wars began, indeed, it 
 seemed as though Catherine would balance the power of the 
 Guises by assuming the lead of the new movement. Calvinist 
 hymns and doctrines became the fashion at the Court. The 
 sermons of the Court preacher Montluc were so unorthodox 
 that they are said to have driven the Constable over to the 
 Guises. The Queen herself advised the Pope to make con- 
 cessions, to order the removal of images from the altars, to 
 modify baptismal rites, to grant communion in two kinds, to 
 abolish private masses, to chant the Psalms in French, to 
 
THE CROWN. Ill 
 
 suppress thefefe of the Sacrament, It seems indubitable that 
 she gave encouragement to the Huguenots in their first rising, 
 and it was with the greatest reluctance that she and the young 
 King were dragged into the Catholic camp. The murder of 
 Duke of Guise delighted no one more than Catherine, for it 
 freed the Crown from the shackles of a religious party. She 
 stubbornly resisted Alva's pressure to place the Crown at the 
 head of the Catholics. Bitterly offended by the attempt of 
 the Huguenots to secure their persons in the second war, 
 Catherine and her son for a moment adopted a Catholic 
 attitude in the third war ; yet the Queen was soon willing to 
 grant the Huguenots better terms than they cared to accept, 
 that she might escape from her position. Apart from personal 
 motives, it was the fear that the Crown was associating itself 
 too closely with the Reformed party that drove Catherine to 
 St. Bartholomew. Yet she never admitted that this committed 
 her to the Catholic party, though she could for the moment 
 utilise it with the more safety because all the great Catholic 
 leaders had disappeared. She took the earliest opportunity 
 of dissociating the Crown from pure party leadership. The 
 Huguenots naturally disbelieved her, yet she was really anxious 
 again to assume a middle because an independent position. 
 
 Henry IH. might more naturally have taken up the 7^die of 
 party leader. He was a zealous, at times a fanatic. Catholic. 
 He had as Duke of Anjou won great successes as a party 
 chief, had been under the guidance of one of the great party 
 men, Tavannes. He might naturally hope to be the first 
 man among the Catholics, especially as the Cardinal of Lorraine 
 died almost immediately after his accession. It was suspected, 
 indeed, that Catherine intended to control both parties by 
 putting one brother at the head of each. But just at this 
 moment party feeling seemed almost worn out ; the party of 
 compromise was to all appearance the strongest at Court, and 
 it may be said that the Peace of Monsieur forced Henry out 
 of the position of a party chief. Then came the awakening of 
 
112 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 the Catholic masses which cuhninated in the League. Henry 
 must either head and direct the League himself, or must show 
 himself so zealous a Catholic that there is no reason for a 
 League, he must outbid the League. This he attempted to 
 do at the Estates of Blois. He wished the Estates to give a 
 formal sanction to his position as head of the Catholics for 
 the express purpose of crushing the Huguenots. He succeeded 
 in so far that he prevented the League from completely 
 controlling the Estates, as it had expected. But he failed, 
 because while the Catholics could find money for the war, the 
 State could find none, and because while Henry had lost all 
 credit with the zealots, the Duke of Guise was captivating the 
 Catholic masses. Hence Henry was forced to join the League 
 in the vain hope of leading it. He did indeed see the other 
 alternative, that of leaving the platform of party leader, and of 
 adopting the middle position, and towards this he made some 
 effort, which is marked by the Peace of Fleix. When, however, 
 this course necessitated the recognition of Navarre as heir, he 
 felt that it would cost him the crown. The day of the Barricades 
 compelled him to throw in his lot with the League ; but this 
 implied the abeyance of the Crow^n, it was no longer a free 
 agent. From this thraldom Henry hoped to escape by the 
 murder of the Duke of Guise and his brother. The assassina- 
 tion drove him into his professional position, and it is 
 characteristic that the most Catholic of French kings was 
 murdered while leading a combined host of Catholics and 
 Huguenots in the cause of toleration and legitimate succession. 
 The creation of a third or Royalist party to balance those 
 of the Bourbons and the Guises, w^as a natural resource of the 
 afflicted Monarchy. It had been urged upon Catherine from 
 the first by Marshal Tavannes. It had been the policy, in 
 similar emergencies, of Charles V., of Charles VII., and of 
 Louis XL It was the key to the policy of Henry HI., being 
 partly the cause and partly the effect of his favouritism. The 
 old marshal, however, had believed that the Monarchy might 
 
THE CROWN. 113 
 
 find support in nobility just under the first rank, possessing 
 great provincial influence, as yet uncorrupted by Court life, 
 still able to produce the first soldiers and statesmen of France. 
 Henry's favourites were, on the other hand, recommended 
 purely by their personal beauty, their taste in dress, or at most 
 by their skill in duelling, which became the mania of the 
 Court. They brought to the King no talent, no provincial 
 support. Moreover this third party rested on a false principle ; 
 it was based upon attachment to the king as a man, rather 
 than on loyalty to the King as a ruler. The favourites stood 
 in an entirely different relation to Henry to that held by 
 the few professional generals and statesmen who adhered 
 to him. 
 
 The King instead of gathering fresh force into his own 
 hands was giving what was left to him away. Most of the 
 favourites were unimportant from a political point of view, 
 except as bringing to a blaze all the smouldering odium 
 against the Coiirt. But the powers conferred on La Valette, 
 Duke of Epernon, and Arques, Duke of Joyeuse, formed a 
 deliberate attempt to create fresh magnates, whose power 
 might exceed that of the leaders of the Catholic and 
 Huguenot parties. 
 
 No mere subject had ever possessed the powers Avhich 
 Epernon amassed after the death of his rival Joyeuse at 
 Coutras. Duke of Epernon and Peer of France, Admiral and 
 Colonel-General of Infantry, he controlled the governments of 
 Normandy, Provence, Angouleme, Saintonge, Boulogne, and 
 Metz, holding, it was observed, the keys of P>ance, for the 
 King held him to be their safest keeper. Sole gentleman of 
 the Chamber, sole governor of his master's opinions and 
 caprices, he was as absolute at Court as in his provinces — 
 every ambassador must interview Epernon before he was 
 granted audience. 
 
 It is clear that even if Henry III. could depend on the 
 personal attachment of these favourites, and the result proved 
 
114 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 that this was not certain, they would necessarily be as 
 dangerous to his successors as were the older magnates to 
 himself. It was the last resource of a disintegrating monarchy. 
 'Moreover the favourites, selected on personal rather than on 
 professional grounds were themselves apt to be engulfed by 
 the religious or political parties. Thus Joyeuse drifted from 
 the King's side toward the League, of which his family 
 became among the most extreme supporters. Epernon, on 
 the other hand, was rightly suspected of intimate relations 
 with the Huguenots and Politiques of the South, especially 
 with Damville. That the relationship was purely personal, 
 and not professional, is proved by the fact that in the royal 
 family itself there were several groups of such favourites. The 
 Queen -mother had her separate party, whilst Alengon lived 
 within his vast appanage in more than royal state, surrounded 
 by favourites nearly as objectionable as were the King's. Each 
 group moreover had frequent dissensions within itself. In 
 this " Court of silk and blood " duelling was draining the hot 
 blood of France. It was costing more lives, writes Tavannes, 
 than many a pitched battle. One of the dangers of the 
 system was its apparent resemblance to the formation of a 
 royal party properly so called. Yet the difference was clearly 
 recognised. A union between Catholics and Huguenots to 
 crush the Politiques was inconceivable, but La Noue did 
 recommend a combination of the two religions to crush the 
 favourites, and Henry of Guise made a similar proposal ta 
 the Huguenots. Even in Paris a distinction was preserved. 
 When the Revolution broke out the Politiques were watched, 
 but the King's friends were imprisoned. From Provincial 
 Estates and Estates General alike came the cry for the 
 humiliation of the favourites. Even Damville's enemies would 
 have regarded his governorship of Languedoc as resting on a 
 different basis to Epernon's rule in Normandy and Provence. 
 Finally the death of Henry HI. made the position of the 
 favourites yet more obvious, for not a few, and among them 
 
THE CROWN. 115 
 
 Epernon, deserted the Crown and joined their rehgious party. 
 This for a PoHtique would have been impossible. Yet it is 
 not always easy in individual cases to draw a line between the 
 Politique and the member of the Court party. "By their 
 fruits ye shall know them." After Henry of Navarre's 
 accession the Politique was his surest adherent, the member of 
 the Court party his most troublesome opponent. The crime 
 and error of Henry HI. had been not to extend a welcome to 
 the moderate Catholics, who already in the South formed 
 an organised party. This was the natural Royalist party 
 which was forced by the action of the Crown into opposition. 
 So also the floating m.ass of Royalist opinion in Northern and 
 Central France found no solid ground to which to adhere, 
 until it was gradually concentrated by the outburst of the 
 Revolution. Thus when the crisis came the Monarchy was 
 desolate, it could help neither itself nor others. "All the 
 kingdom is in arms," wrote the Tuscan Cavriana in June, 1588, 
 " the peasants are desperate, close their villages, fortify them- 
 selves against the troops of both parties, and die of famine ; 
 they will pay no taxes direct or indirect. The cities form 
 themselves into republics, and gather round the Guises. The 
 nobility is divided, and passes now to this faction, now to that. 
 Justice is completely dead. France is parted into two — the 
 Leaguers, and the adherents of the House of Bourbon. The 
 former have complete command of this side of the Loire, the 
 latter of the other. The King is naked and alone, and can 
 give us no redress.""^ 
 
 With the death of Henry HL the shilly-shally of the/ 
 Crown was at an end. Whatever might be the case with the 
 nation the legitimate monarch was at all events at open war 
 with the foreigner, though it w^as not technically declared until 
 1595. The patriots must with time inevitably gather round 
 the King. It was equally clear that Navarre was no mere 
 leader of a religious party ; his forces consisted as much of 
 * Desjardins, IV. 744. 
 
ii6 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 Catholics as Huguenots. He was believed to be indifferent as 
 to doctrine. Keen observers had long foreseen that his 
 abjuration of heresy was merely a matter of opportunity. 
 Coming though he did from the Huguenot ranks, Henry was 
 the Politique par excellence^ the natural leader of all who 
 *' preferred the safety of their country to the salvation of their 
 soul." 
 
 Mr. Besant has said that the Reformation failed because it 
 was deserted by the Renaissance, by the philosophers, the 
 scholars, the divines, the men of broad modern views. In 
 Henry of Navarre they could once more find a rallying point. 
 The more serious could have had no sympathy with the 
 loathsome morals, the aimless bloodshed, the senseless frivolity 
 of the Valois Court ; while the more intellectual were disgusted 
 by the fits of repentant bigotry of the King, and yet more by 
 the uneducated fanaticism of the League. But Navarre's 
 formal orthodoxy covered a tolerance as wide as their own. 
 He was no scholar, but he could talk and write as well as he 
 fought. He combined the dignity of the Bourbon with the 
 witty banter of the Gascon. His despatches, his manifestos, 
 his letters, were so many victories. His impudent reply to his 
 excommunication had won the sympathies of Sixtus V. himself. 
 Long before his entry into Paris his witticisms at the expense of 
 the League were the delight of the street corner. Satire was a 
 real power, and satire, which had turned against royalty, against 
 Catherine and Henry HL, had no hold upon a King who could 
 give more than he received. Satire turned against the League. 
 The moment had perhaps come at last when opinion was 
 outweighing the sword. Yet the sword had necessarily been 
 Navarre's chief instrument. He was incomparably the best 
 French general in the field, and his lieutenants, Biron and 
 Lesdiguieres, probably stood next. The Duke of Parma had 
 proved himself tactically Henry's superior, but not strategically. 
 He had driven Henry from both Paris and Rouen, yet Henry 
 closed upon them again as soon as he had turned his back. 
 
THE CROWN. 117 
 
 His iron grasp upon Paris with but scanty forces did as much 
 credit to his tactics as discredit to the passive cowardice of 
 the citizens. Henry had an instinct for the vital points, the 
 seizure of which was all important ; and hence on many an 
 occasion his apparent and much-criticised audacity. He must 
 secure the gastronomic keys to Paris,"^ Chartres, Rouen, and the 
 Marne ; and its military keys, Orleans and the Loire, Amiens 
 and the Somme. Nor was the credit all his own. The old 
 French troops were by this time excellent, and these, whether 
 Huguenot, United Catholic, or professional, were mostly upon 
 Henry's side. The bourgeois militia of the League made a 
 poor show, except when behind walls. On the last German 
 invasion the march and escape of the Huguenot horse was 
 regarded as a model of military pluck and skill. While the 
 Germans were cut to pieces, the Huguenots made a circuit of 
 the w^hole of France, and got through unhurt. Paris, with 
 60,000 fighting men, preferred to be starved, to marching out 
 against Henry's 15,000, bivouacked in detachments in the 
 environs. 
 
 Henry, if he could wield the sword, the pen, and the tongue 
 showed full appreciation of the purse. He was not scrupulous 
 as to means ; while strangling with one hand he would bribe ' 
 with the other. He bought his enemies in detail. He would 
 not treat with any official representative of the League, for it 
 would have left him face to face with a power equal to himself. 
 His system was longer, but it was more effectual. He bought 
 his political opponents at the expense of the treasury or the 
 State, by governorships or assignations on the taxes. " Render 
 unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's" was the cynical 
 remark of the Leaguer governor of Paris, as the Leaguer 
 Prevot des Marchands brought the keys to Henry. " Render, 
 but not sell," was the more zealous Catholic's reply. Religious 
 opponents Henry bought at the expense of the Huguenots by 
 
 * Thus after Ivry, L'Estoile writes of the capture of Melun, Corbeil, 
 Montereau, and Lagni, " les clefs des vivres de Paris." 
 
ii8 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 religious concessions, excluding Huguenot worship from the 
 district. He would promise everything to the Frenchman, 
 but nothing to the foreigner ; he would give nothing that he 
 believed to be the nation's, but everything that he considered 
 to be his own, down to his own conscience. The better men 
 of the Catholic party blamed him but were grateful. 
 
 The acceptance of the mass gave Henry Paris, and Paris 
 gave him France. Yet what a France it was to rule ! Mayenne 
 with Spanish troops occupied Burgundy and many of the 
 eastern fortresses. Champagne was held by Guise, and coveted 
 by Lorraine, who already was in possession of the Three 
 Bishoprics, the conquest of Henry H. The Duke of Savoy 
 was threatening Dauphine, and was accepted by part of 
 Provence. Marseilles was an independent republic coquetting 
 with Spain, Lyons an independent principality under the 
 Savoyard Duke of Nemours. The Duke of Tuscany held in 
 mortgage the islands off Provence, and was threatening to 
 extend his security to the mainland. The Pope was advised 
 that Provence would be a useful appendage to Avignon. 
 Joyeuse exercised independent sway in Catholic Languedoc, 
 Villars in Guyenne. Mercoeur, resting on Spanish aid, was 
 establishing an independent Duchy of Brittany. The Spaniards 
 surprised Amiens and Calais, the landward and seaward gates 
 of northern France. It cost four years to evict the foreigner, 
 and to receive the submission of the grandees ; and the latter 
 too often meant that de facto was exchanged for de jure in- 
 dependence ; the Leaguer Joyeuse for instance was left as 
 governor in Languedoc, side by side with the staunch royalist 
 Damville. The reconciliation of enemies implied the estrange- 
 ment of allies ; Epernon was driven into revolt by the grant 
 of Provence to Guise. The towns, writes Tavannes, were 
 aiming at republican separatism, the nobles at independent 
 tetrarchies. The ambition of the grandees was proved by 
 the proposal of one of the faithful, when French resources 
 were strained to the uttermost by the Spanish capture of 
 
THE CROWN. 119 
 
 Calais ; the governments held under commission should be 
 converted into hereditary properties, the Crown reserving only 
 ho7nage lige^ and abandoning the national for the feudal 
 military system. The Huguenots formed a republic within a 
 monarchy, half hostile to it, and wholly hostile to its supporters. 
 The recognition of Henry by the Leaguers took the form of^ 
 a bundle of treaties between the King and individual nobles f 
 and individual towns. The monarchy was compared to a ripe 
 pomegranate of which one could see all the grains. And 
 worse than all the State was bankrupt, the revenue wholly 
 inadequate to the expenditure, while an enormous debt had 
 been piled up by the Valois, and increased by subsidies to 
 English, Dutch, Swiss, and Germans, and by the sums for 
 which Leaguer towns and nobles had been bought. 
 
 Nevertheless the hour had come for the revival of the 
 French Monarchy, and the hour had brought the man. It 
 was of especial importance that the new King came of a fresh 
 stock, that he had not the heritage of hate and contempt 
 incurred by the extravagance and incapacity of the later 
 Valois. Royalism became the fashion. The anti-monarchical 
 theory had been discredited, abandoned by the Huguenots, 
 stamped out with the League. The Monarchy had fought its 
 last great round with reaction, and tried its first fall with revo- 
 lution. In both conflicts it had been triumphant. Vanity and 
 fear both bound the nobility to the Crown. They were con- 
 scious that to them were mainly due the restoration of the 
 Monarchy and the expulsion of the foreigner; they were 
 enthusiastically royalist and patriotic. Imminent pauperism 
 had mainly driven the gentry to revolt. Secularisation and 
 brigandage had brought more blows than profit. The cry for 
 the revival of worn-out privilege Avas answered by menaces of 
 extinction. They were lured back to loyalty by the patronage 
 of the Crown, they were frightened to its shelter by the 
 realities of urban democracy and the spectre of agrarian 
 revolt. 
 
120 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 The two great rival constitutional institutions of France — 
 the Estates General and the Parliaments — were now silenced 
 before the Crown. The representative system had lost its 
 magic. It was noticed that never had the Estates been so 
 frequently held as during the troubles, and yet the result was 
 nought. "It is a foolish old idea," wrote Pasquier, "that 
 is current among the wisest Frenchmen, that there is nothing 
 which has such power to relieve the people as these 
 assemblies ; on the contrary, there is nothing that does them 
 greater mischief, and that for an infinity of reasons." 
 Pasquier indeed was a professional opponent of the Estates ; 
 but their champion and apologist, Tavannes, confesses that if 
 a change ever took place in France, it would be effected, not 
 by representative government, but by revolution. Henry, 
 when urged to summon the Estates to meet his financial 
 difiiculties, preferred an assembly of notables, which had no 
 constitutional position. 
 
 The Judicature indeed proved more long-lived than its 
 rival, yet its strength was sorely shaken. Pasquier noticed 
 that on the same day the King closed the Estates at Blois, and 
 the Revolution closed the State, for such he conceived the 
 Parliament to be, at Paris. The great central Court had 
 suffered terrible indignity ; it had been opened and closed at 
 the will of an unauthorised authority ; it had been twice 
 purged by the agency of a handful of subordinate ofificials. 
 One first president had been imprisoned, another hung, and^ 
 what was yet more humiliating, the latter had held ofifice 
 while he had protested in secret before two notaries that he 
 regarded his actions as invalid. Repeatedly Parliament had 
 been forced by the Revolution to register edicts against which 
 its conscience and its interest revolted. Its fits of undeniable 
 heroism had availed it as little as its accesses of undoubted 
 cowardice. Its very unity had been broken. As in the days 
 of the English occupation, France saw the royal, judicial, and 
 financial courts in opposite camps, at Paris and at Tours.. 
 
THE CROWN. 121 
 
 The Provincial Parliaments had no less suffered. At Dijon, 
 on the news of Guise's murder, the royalist members had 
 been imprisoned as at Paris. In Normandy and Brittany 
 there were rival courts, each claiming exclusive powers. The 
 Parliament of Toulouse had shamefully surrendered to the 
 mob, had seen the royal arms struck down, had suffered its 
 first president and Advocate-General to be murdered, had 
 been split, not into two, but into three independent courts,* 
 had undergone the stigma of being incapable to preserve a 
 judicial attitude. Henry indeed ultimately owed much to 
 the judicial classes ; but the debt was due as much to their 
 fears as to their love. From Huguenots and Catholics alike") 
 no cry had been louder than the clamour against the lawyers / 
 and their gains. Very apt was the new King's bantering bon 
 motj that his ancestors had feared the Parliaments but did not 
 love them, while he loved them well but did not fear them. 
 This principle was translated into practice, for the Parliaments 
 were forced against their will to register the Edict of Nantes, 
 and the edict establishing the tax upon their incomes did not 
 pass through Parliament at all, but through the Chancery, f 
 
 A source of daily annoyance to more loyal and more 
 professional members must have been the daily association 
 with the political upstarts now holding high office under royal 
 commission, as the price of their betrayal of the Revolution. 
 
 The Gallican Church at least might seem to have gained by 
 the result of the religious conflict. It had beaten both 
 Huguenot and Pope. It had insisted on a Catholic king, and 
 
 * At one moment the Royalist section was sitting at Beziers, the 
 Moderate Leaguer at Castel Sarasin, and the Extreme Leaguer at 
 Toulouse. In addition to these was the Mi-partie Chamber, with its 
 complement of Huguenots. 
 
 * The establishment of the Paulette, or annual tax, on official incomes, 
 in consideration of which the Crown surrendered the right of sale and 
 the holders acquired an hereditary estate in their offices, is the most curious 
 satire on the grievance which had contributed in no slight degree to bring 
 about the recent troubles. 
 
122 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 it had forced Henry to abjuration. On the other hand the 
 French Episcopate, the Catholic Parliaments, even the ultra- 
 Catholic Sorbonne, had all acted in express disobedience to 
 the Pope. Henry reigned by virtue of a title directly opposed 
 to the Papal theory of sovereignty. The dream of an 
 independent Galilean Church was almost realised. There was 
 talk of a French Patriarchate, of the revival of the Pragmatic 
 Sanction. A royal commission made ecclesiastical appoint- 
 ments, and regulated ecclesiastical finance. It was even hoped 
 that a National Council might devise a scheme of doctrine and 
 discipline to reconcile the two religions. But in France 
 Gallicanism was bound up with Constitutionalism. The 
 Pragmatic Sanction tied the hands of the King as fast as it did 
 those of the Pope. 
 
 ■ ' GaUicanism implied the predominance of the Estates, or at 
 least of the ecclesiastical and secular nobility. Moreover 
 hostility to the Pope gave the irreconcileable Leaguers an 
 excuse for fighting with the Spanish armies, a respectable cover 
 for poUtical disloyalty. Thus Henry, as Napoleon, found his 
 interest, not in antagonism to the Papacy, but in a Concordat. 
 But Henry still felt constrained in the presence of the 
 Galilean Church, as he did in that of the Huguenot party. To 
 . both he applied the same principle. i\s he sought to detach a 
 royal party from the more uncompromising Huguenots, and as 
 he hoped to control their ministers by his scheme of concurrent 
 endowment, so he would attach to the Constitutional and 
 National Church an element depending upon royal favour. 
 He recalled the Jesuits, who had been expelled after his 
 attempted assassination by Chastel. Their position in France 
 depended upon royal grace ; they had no national support. 
 Parliament, the Sorbonne, the Episcopacy, were all against 
 them. They were to be the religious police of the Bourbon 
 monarchy. To this they were no longer dangerous. Their 
 expulsion had been due to their Spanish sympathies ; now they 
 were out of favour with Spain, even threatened with the 
 
THE CROWN. 123 
 
 Inquisition by their Dominican rivals. Their theocratic- 
 democratic theories were harmless against a King who reigned 
 by Papal and by popular consent, and in their extremest form 
 they had been discouraged. 
 
 Thus if Henry IV. was the most national of kings it was not 
 on the religious side. As in politics he played the national 
 factor against the Catholic, so in religion he protected himself! 
 against the National Church by the aid of the Castor and: 
 Pollux of universal Catholicism — the Pope and the Society of' 
 Jesus. 
 
 The ground then was levelled for personal monarchy. 
 Parties could be disregarded as well as principles. The 
 grandees, even the Bourbons, were to become an ornament 
 to the Court, not a factor in the Government. Henry's 
 counseller Villeroy said that when there were two parties in a 
 land the King must attach himself to the stronger. Henry 
 replied. No, that he must rule them both. The King's 
 ministers were chosen irrespective of party or antecedents, 
 ability and devotion were the sole qualifications. Of the three 
 chief Sulli was Huguenot, Villeroy an old royalist who had 
 turned Leaguer, Jeannin the chief adviser of Mayenne, and 
 they were never changed. Even the last check on monarchy, 
 the Royal Council, can scarcely be said to have survived, for 
 Henry would ask the advice of its ministers separately, and 
 frequently not take it. Personal government was complete at 
 the centre. In the South alone religious independence, "J 
 fortified by hardy local privilege and obstinate personal I 
 ambition, formed a breach in the absolutism of the Crown. 
 
 The League and the Huguenots had run the self-same 1 
 course. In each there had been the same union between \ 
 aggrieved towns, pauperised nobles, and ambitious princes, 
 the same jealousy between the several orders, the same ; 
 programme of constitutional reform, the same pretence of 
 upholding the monarchy, the same levying of war against the ■ 
 King. Each party could be traced far back in the history of . 
 
124 THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 the faction fights of the Princes of the LiUes, each had its 
 feudal and its democratic aims, each sacrificed France to the 
 interests of its foreign aUies. Neither party deserted its 
 religious principles ; but both surrendered their political 
 claims, because both ran counter to the current of national life. 
 
 The religious struggle had after all not changed the forces 
 of the constitution, it had but given additional momentum to 
 pre-existing tendencies. The apparent weakness of the 
 monarchy, and the apparent strength of other classes and 
 other institutions, were equally fallacious. How strong the 
 Crown was is proved by the fact that the hated Catherine kept 
 her three despicable sons upon the throne, and that the death 
 of the fourth was regarded as a public calamity that justified 
 revolution. The first of the Bourbons reigned by a title 
 which each party in turn rejected. The new armed prophet 
 of absolutism was one whom the vast majority of France had 
 bound itself by individual oaths never to accept. 
 
 Men were not indeed content, but they were weary; they 
 turned languidly to the oldest of all political theories — that the 
 end of government is peace. The sense of all France was 
 expressed in the phrase of the disillusioned Leaguer and 
 Constitutionalist Tavannes, "C'est heur de vivre sous un grand 
 roy, non tyran." 
 
INDEX 
 
 Admiral, The. See Chatillon, Coligni. 
 
 Aix, Bishop of, 14. 
 
 Alava, 99. 
 
 Alengon, Duke of, afterwards Anjou, 38-40, 
 
 104-110, 114. 
 Alva, Duke of, 88, 95, 96, 99-102, iii. 
 Amboise, Peace of, 92. 
 Amboise, Tumult of, 8, 9, 48. 
 Amiens, 43, 77, 117, ti8. 
 Angers,^59. 
 Angouleme, 26, 113. 
 Anjou, 22. 
 Anjou, Duke of. See Henry III. and 
 
 Alen5on. 
 Anne of Beaujeu, 84. 
 
 Antonio of Portugal, Prior of Crato, 58, 108. 
 Antony, King of Navarre, 7, 9, 13, 17, 
 
 48, 49. 
 Antwerp, 3, 97, 100, 108. 
 Armada, The, 109. 
 Arras, 3, 98. 
 Arras, Union of, 107. 
 Artois. 3, 98, 99, 105, 107, 108. 
 Aubry, Cure, 66. 
 Augsburg, Peace of, 2, 43. 
 Aunis, Estates of, 57. 
 Auxerre, Bishop of, 66. 
 Auxerre, Clergy of, 77. 
 Azores, The, no. 
 
 Badoer, 40. 
 
 Balagni, 58. 
 
 Barbaro, 32, 88. 
 
 Barricades, Day of, 60, 62, 66, 67, 89, 112. 
 
 Bastille, The, 67, 69, 76. 
 
 Bayonne, 19. 
 
 Bayonne, Interview of, 95, 102, 103. 
 
 Beam, 17, 34, 58. 
 
 Bergerac, Peace of, 38, 109. 
 
 Beze, Deode de, 4. 
 
 Beziers, 22, 121. 
 
 Biron, Marshal, 116. 
 
 Blois, 63. 
 
 Blois, Treaty of, 100. 
 
 Bodin, 94. 
 
 Bordeaux, 50, 51. 
 
 Boucher, Cure, 62, 64, 75. 
 
 Bouillon, Duke of, 43, 44. 
 
 Boulogne, 113. 
 
 Bourbon, Cardinal, "Charles X.," 55, 57, 
 
 58, 64, 72, 90. 
 Bourbon, The Constable, 84. 
 
 Bourbon, House of, 7-9, 17, 32, 41, 45, 53, 
 55) 59) 60) 82, 89, 112, 115, 123, 124. 
 
 Bourges, 59. 
 
 Brabant, 97, 99. 
 
 Bray, Cure of, 4. 
 
 Brill, 100. 
 
 Brisson, 75. 
 
 Brittany, 19, 22, 24, 43, 55, 56, 59, 70, 79 
 80, 118, 121. 
 
 Bruges, 98. 
 
 Burgundy, 22, 24, 53, 56, 59, 76, 96, loi, 
 iiS. 
 
 Bussi le Clercq, 69, 76. 
 
 Caen, 5. 
 
 Cahors, 16. 
 
 Calais, 27, 46, 85, 118, 119. 
 
 Cambrai, 58, 98, 99, 108. 
 
 Capuchins, The, 70. 
 
 Carcassonne, 16. 
 
 Carlos, Don, 55, 95. 
 
 Castelnau, 20, 93. 
 
 Castel Sarasin, 121. 
 
 Castres, 22, 70. 
 
 Cateau Canibresis, Peace of, 5, 7, 28 46. 
 
 Catherine di Medici, 13, 29, 30, 38, 58, 85 
 
 88-90, 92-96, 99-102, 104, 106, 108, no, 
 
 III, 116, 124. 
 Cavalli, Marino, 49. 
 Cavriana, 90, 109, 115. 
 Cevennes, The, 16, 20. 
 Chalons, 20, 21. 
 Chambre Ardente, 3, 4. 
 Chambre des Comptes, 49, 69. 
 Champagne, 3, 19, 20, 22, 23, 53, 56, 59, 118 
 Charles V., Emperor, 10, no. 
 Charles V. of France, 112. 
 Charles VII., 84, 112. 
 Charles VIII., 5. 
 Charles IX., 48, 97, 99, 100, 104. 
 Charles X. See Bourbon, Cardinal. 
 Chartres, 117. 
 Chartres, Bishop of, 14. 
 Chastel, 122. 
 Chatelet, The, 67. 
 
 Chatillon, House of, 7, 13, 18, 59, loi, 103. 
 Chatillon, Coligni, 7, 8, 16, 18, 26, 30, 33, 
 
 48, 62, 85, S6, 92, 99, 100-103. 
 Chatillon dAndelot, 7, 8, 99. 
 Chatillon, Odet, Cardinal, 7, 8, 14. 
 Clement VII., Pope, 84. 
 Clement, J., 71, 91. 
 
126 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Cognac, 4. 
 
 Comines, Philip de, 10. 
 
 Concordat, 10-12, 31, 122. 
 
 Conde, Henri, 18, 33, 37-39, 41, 53. 
 
 Conde, Louis, 7, 9, 13, iS, 19, 24, 26, 29- 
 
 31, 48, 58, 86, 99, 102. 
 Constable, The. See Montmorenci, Anne. 
 Conti, 41. 
 Corbeil, 117. 
 Correr, 11, 19, 28, 87, 83. 
 Cosse, Marshal, 28. 
 Cour des Aides, 69. 
 Courmolet, Cure, 75. 
 Coutras, Battle of, 59, 113. 
 
 Daffis,_7o. 
 
 D'Aubigne, 43, 62. 
 
 Dauphine, 19-22, 24, ^o, 4?, 44, 56, 57, 80, 
 
 118. 
 David, 54. 
 Diana of Poitiers, 7. 
 Dieppe, 20, 27. 
 Dijon, 20. 
 
 Dominicans, The, 123. 
 Dreux, Battle of, 18, 23, 49. 
 Du Plessis Mornay, 35. 43. 
 Duranti, 70. 
 
 Elizabeth of England, 95, 100, loi, 103, 
 
 106-108, no. 
 Elizabeth of Spain, 95, 96. 
 Epernon, Duke of, 59, 63. 113-115, 118. 
 Estates General, 2, 9, 12, 13, 15, 23, 25, 
 
 31. 35. 48, 58, 65, 67, 71, 74, 77, 78, 81, 
 
 90, 114, 120, 122. 
 Estates General of Blois, 1576, 52, 54, 106, 
 
 112. 
 Estates General of Blois, 1588, 62, 65, 68, 
 
 69, 120. 
 Estates General of the League, 1593, 76, 
 
 80, 82. 
 Estates General of Orleans, is6i, 16, 30, 
 
 73, 76, 85. 
 Estates of Pontoise, 14, 15, 30, 76. 
 Etampes, 24. 
 
 Flanders, 97, 99, 100, 105. 
 
 Fleix, Peace of, 94, 108, 109, 112. 
 
 Florida, 96. 
 
 Flushing, 100, loi. 
 
 Foix, 16. 
 
 Fontainebleau, Assembly of, 9. 
 
 Forez, The, 22. 
 
 Forty, Council General of, 71, 73-75. 
 
 Franche-Comte, 47. 
 
 Francis I., 26, 29, 45, 46, 77, 79, 96. 
 
 Francis IL, 8, 13, 26, 29, 45, 48, 55. 
 
 Franciscans, The, 4. 
 
 Franco-Gallia, The, 33. 
 
 Frankfort, Fair of, 105. 
 
 Gaetani, Legate, 66, 73. 
 Gascony, 19. 
 
 Gendarmerie, The, 21, 77. 
 Geneva, 4, 22, 26. 
 Genlis, 99, 101. 
 Genoa, 101. 
 
 Ghent, 3. 
 
 Gondi, The, 47. 
 
 Gondi, Archbishop of Paris, 75. 
 
 Gonzaga, 47. 
 
 Grammont, 19. 
 
 Granvelle, 8, 47, 98. 
 
 Guelders, 99. 
 
 Gueux, The, 28, 99. 
 
 Guise, House of, 7, 9, 13, 16, 17, 19, 24, 
 
 29. 30, 35, 36, 39-41, 45-48, 52-59, 63, 
 
 80, 85, 89, 95, 101-103, III, 112, 115. 
 Guise, Duke Claude, 45. 
 Guise, Duke Francis, 7, 8, 16, 23, 46, 48, 
 
 55, 85, loi, no, 114. 
 Guise, Duke Henry, 53-62, 67, 6y, 72, 80, 
 
 86, 89, 90, 112, 121. 
 Guise, Duke Charles, 79, iiS. 
 Guise, Catherine of. See Montpensier, 
 
 Duchess of. 
 Guyenne, 19-21, 24, 26, 34, 42, 56, 118. 
 Guyenne, Estates of, 52. 
 
 Hainault, 3, 98, 107, 108. 
 
 Hamilton, Cure, 74. 
 
 Hapsburg, House of, 32, 100. 
 
 Harlay, President de, d^- 
 
 Haton, Claude, 50. 
 
 Havre, 27, 85, 94. 
 
 Henry IL, 3, 6-8, 19, 36, 38, 45, 48, 55, 85, 
 
 94, 118. 
 Henry II L, 40, 42, 56, 59, 62, 65, 72, 88, 
 
 90, 94-96, 100, 103, 104, 106, 111-116. 
 Henry IV., 26, 29, 33, 38-46, 57-59, 65, 72, 
 
 79, 82, 85, 89, loi, no, 112, 115, 116, 
 
 122, 123. 
 Holland, 97-100, 108. 
 Hotman, F., 35. 
 Hotman, C, 57. 
 
 Isle of France, 59. 
 Ivri, Battle of, 73, 117. 
 
 James V. of Scotland, 45, 55. 
 January, Edict of, 15, 25, 31, 92. 
 Jarnac, Battle of, 18, 27, 32, 90. 
 Jeanne d'Albret, Queen of Navarre, 7, 17, 
 
 29. . 
 Jeannm, 123. 
 
 Jesuits, The, 62, 70, 112, 122, 123. 
 John, Don of Austria, 106, 107. 
 John Casimir, Prince Palatine, 38, 39, 106, 
 
 107. . 
 Joyeuse, Duke of, 59, 113, 114. 
 Joyeuse, Henri de, 71, 118. 
 
 La Ferte sous Jouarre, Synod of, 35. 
 
 Lagni, 117. 
 
 La Huguerye, 18, 19. 
 
 Languedoc, 19, 22, 24, 34, 37, 42, 59, 71, 
 
 114. 
 Languet, H., 16, 35. 
 La Noue, 20, 39, 50, :oi, 114. 
 La Rochefoucauld, 19. 
 La Roue, 75. 
 La Tremouille, 43. 
 Leicester, Earl of, 96. 
 Leo X., Pope, 86. 
 
INDEX 
 
 :27 
 
 Le Puy, 20, 6-j, 71. 
 Lescar, Bishop of, 14. 
 Lesdiguieres, 116. 
 L'Estoile, 62, 74, 75, 117. 
 L'Hopital, 9, 25, 28, 85, 92, 94. 
 Lies;e, 98. 
 Lille, 3, 98. 
 Limburg, 98, 99. j 
 
 Lincestre, Cure, 63. 
 
 Lippomano, 86, 87. I 
 
 Loire, The, 21-24, 43, 44, 59, 115, 117. j 
 
 Lorraine, Cardinal of, 6, 8, 16, 36, 46, 47, j 
 54, 55. "I. 118. \ 
 
 Lorraine, Duchy of, 7, 45, 47, 85. 
 Lorraine, Charles, Duke of, 55, 58, 79. 
 Lorraine, Rene, Duke of, 45. 
 Lorraine, House of, 7, 28, 55, 56, 79. 
 Louis XL, 10, 26, 76, 84, 88, 112. 
 Louis XIL, 10, 45, 55, 77. 
 Louis XIV., 44, 78, 8S. 
 Louviers, 25. 
 Louvre, The, 61. 
 Lovers', The, War, 39. 
 Luxemberg, 98, 99. 
 Lyons, 22, 54, 59, 118. 
 
 Machiavelli, 10, 11, 87. 
 
 Macon, 20. 
 
 Maestricht, 98. 
 
 Maine, 22. 
 
 Maistre, De, 75. 
 
 Margaret of Valois, 55, 89, 95, 96, loi. 
 
 MarfUac. Archbishop, 9. 
 
 Marne, The, 117. 
 
 Marseilles, 50, 96, 11 3. 
 
 Mary of Guise, Regent of Scotland, 46, 55. 
 
 Mary Stuart, 7, 8, 55, 60, 95, 106. 
 
 Maximilian i.. Emperor, 10. 
 
 Maximilian IL, Emperor, 94, 103. 
 
 Mayenne, Duke of, 71-76, 79, 118, 123. 
 
 Meaux, 10, 22. 
 
 Melun, 117. 
 
 Mendoca, 49, 73. 
 
 Mercceur, Duke of, 55, 79, So, 118. 
 
 Mercuriale, The, 5, 6. 
 
 Mesmes, Henri de, 93. 
 
 Metz, 46. 
 
 Michieli, 19, 49, loi. 
 
 Moncontour, Battle of, 27, 28, 32, 90. 
 
 Mons, 100. 
 
 Monsieur, Peace of, 36, 52, 109, 11 1. 
 
 Montauban, 16, 34. 
 
 Montereau, 117. 
 
 Montgomery, 19, 87. 
 
 Montluc, Bishop, 9, no. 
 
 Montluc, Blaise de, 19, 21, 24, 25, 29, 51, 
 52, 93- 
 
 Montmorenci, Anne, Duke of and Con- 
 stable, 7, 17, 28, 36, 37, 46, 48, 49, 99, 
 no. 
 
 Montmorenci, Francis, Duke of and Mar- 
 shal, 36, 37. 
 
 Montmorenci, Henry (Damville), Duke of 
 and Constable, 37-39, 41, 71. 114, nS. 
 
 Montmorenci, House of, 7-9, 13, 17, 30, 
 36, 45- . 
 
 Montpellier, 16, 22. 
 
 Montpensier, Catherine, Duchess of, 41, 
 
 46, 55. 71-75- 
 Montpensier, Charlotte of, Abbess of Jou- 
 
 arre, 106. 
 Montpensier, Duke of, 41, 55. 
 Moreo, 57. 
 
 Nantes, 19. 
 
 Nantes, Edict of, 22, 43, 44, 120. 
 
 Nassau, Louis of, 100, loi. 
 
 Navarre, 58. See Antony, Henry IV., 
 
 Jeanne d'Albret. 
 Nemours, Duke of, 47, 75, 79, iiS 
 Nemours, Duchess of, 71. 
 Nerac, 21, 88. 
 Netherlands, The, 2, 3, 28, 38, 48, 54, 96- 
 
 100, 104-110. 
 Nevers, Duchy of, 47. 
 Nimes, 16, 22, 34, 37. 
 Normandy, 4, 12, 19-22, 26, 56, 59, 77, 80, 
 
 113, 114, 121. 
 Notre Dame de Clery, 26. 
 
 Orange, William of, 5, 6, 97-99, 104-109. 
 Orleans, 22, 23, 26, 49, 59, 67, 117. 
 
 Pacification, Edict of, 15. 
 
 Pamiers, Bishop of, 120. 
 
 Panigarola, Bishop of Asti, 62, 66, 76. 
 
 Paris, 22, 26, 28, 33, 45, 49-53, 57, 60, 63, 
 
 65j 67, 70-82, 88, 96, loi, 114-118. 
 Parliaments, 2, 4, 16, 24, 25, 64, 67, 92, 
 
 120, 122. 
 Parliament of Aix, 70. 
 Parliament of Dijon, 121. 
 Parliament of Nantes and Rennes, 70. 
 Parliament of Paris, 4, 15, 47, 49, 50, 69, 
 
 70, 74-76, 120. 
 Parliament of Rouen, 25, 70, 77. 
 Parliament of Toulouse, 20, 25, 70, 121. 
 Parma, Duke of, 74, 107, 109, 116. 
 Pasquier, E., 120. 
 Paul IV., Pope, 4. 
 Paulette, The, 121. 
 Pelletier, Cure, 75. 
 Penthievre, House of, 55. 
 Peronne, 53. 
 Phillip II. of Spain, 10, 28, 57, 64, 73, 78, 
 
 95-97, 103, 106, 109. 
 Picardy, League of, 53-56, 58. 
 Plessis, Treaty of, 107. 
 Poissi, Colloquy of, 14-16. 
 Poitiers, 5. 
 
 Poitou, 19, 21, 37, 42. 
 Politiques, The, 36-38, 52, 59, 71, 74-76, 
 
 78, 82, 105, 114-116. 
 Pons, ISIarquis of, 58. 
 Porcian, Prince of, 19. 
 Portugal, King of, 96. 
 Portugal, Queen of, 95. 
 Pragmatic Sanction, 31, 122. 
 Priali, 33. 
 
 Provence, 20, 24, 59, 79, 113, 114, 118. 
 Pyrenees, The, 16, 20, 21, 58, 78. 
 
 Renee, Duchess of Ferrara, 45. 
 Rennes, 50, 70. 
 
128 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Requesens, io6. 
 
 Reveil Matin, The, 56. 
 
 Rheims, 67, 77. 
 
 Rhine, The, 39. 
 
 Rhone, The, 21. 
 
 Richelieu, 5, 44, 88. 
 
 Rochelle, 5, 20, 41, 42, 99, 104. 
 
 Rochelle, Treaty of, 36. 
 
 Rohan, Duke of, 19. 
 
 Rose, Bishop of Senlis, 62, 75, 76. 
 
 Rosieres, 54, 55. 
 
 Rouen, 23, 70, 76, 116, 117. 
 
 Roye, Eleonore de, 7, 86. 
 
 St. Andre, Marshal, 49. 
 
 St. Bartholomew, Massacre of, 18, 28-33, 
 
 36, 41, 51-55, 60, 75, 82, 86, 89, 93, loi- 
 
 106, III. 
 St. Denis, Battle of, 28, 37, 94. 
 St. Germain, Assembly of, 92, 99. 
 St. Germain, Treaty of, 25, 29, 96. 
 St. Jean d'Angely, 28. 
 Saintonge, 113. 
 Salic Law, 41, 55, 63, 81. 
 Saluzzo, 79. 
 Sancerre, 104. 
 Saune, The, 21. 
 Saracini, 56. 
 
 Savoy, Duke of, 22, 78, 79, 118. 
 Schomberg, 27, 96. 
 Seine, The, 26, 89. 
 Sixteen, The, 66, 70, 72-76, 78. 
 Si-xtus v.. Pope, 65, 66, 116. 
 Smith, Sir T., 19. 
 Soissons, Count of, 41, 82. 
 Somme, The, 43, 117. 
 Soranzo, 5. 
 
 Sorbonne, The, 69, 76, 78, 122. 
 Strozzi, 47, 100. 
 SuUi, 12, 123. 
 Swiss, The, 24, 30, 60, 61, 80, 97. 
 
 Tanquerel, J., 64. 
 
 Tassis, 57. 
 
 Tavannes, Gaspard de Sauex, ig, 29, 32, 
 
 37) 45> 48> 49> 59; 76> 80-82, 87, 88, 90, 
 
 114, 118, 120, 124. 
 
 Tavannes, Marshal, 20, 21, 24, 26, 28, 53, 
 
 76, 93, III, 112. 
 Tehgni, 33, 99. 
 Tende, Comte de, 24. 
 Three Bishoprics, The, 38, 85, 118. 
 Tornabuoni, 11, 21. 
 Toulouse, 20, 24, 50, 59, 70, 71. 
 Tours, 43, 120. 
 Trent, Council of, 14, 57, 78. 
 Troyes, 20, 77. 
 Troyes, Bishop of, 13. 
 Troyes, Treaty of, 95. 
 Turenne, Vicomte de, 37, 44. 
 Tuscan Envoys, 5, 11, 13, 21, 50, 56, 60, 
 
 89, 90, 109, 115. 
 Tuscany, Duke of, 118. 
 
 University of Paris, 49, 50, 74. 
 University of Toulouse, 20. 
 Usez, Bishop of, 14. 
 Utrecht, Union of, 107. 
 
 Valence, Bishop of, 14. 
 
 Valenciennes, 3, 98, 100, loi. 
 
 Valois, House of, 17, 26, 48, 53, 55, 56, 60, 
 
 63, 69, 119. 
 Vassi, 16, 49. 
 Vaudois, The, 22. 
 Velai, The, 20, 22, 67, 71. 
 Vendome, Cardinal, 82. 
 Vendome, Duke of, 7. 
 Venetian Envoys, 5, 11, 13, 19, 28, 32, 40, 
 
 49, 69, 86-88, loi, 103. 
 Vielleville, Marshal, 5, 28, 93, 94. 
 Villars, Marshall, 118. 
 Villeroy, 123. 
 
 Vindicis contra tyrannos, The, 35- 
 Viscounts, The, 28. 
 Vivarais, The, 20, 22. 
 
 VValsingham, 98. 
 
 Ybarra, 73. 
 
 Zealand, 99, 100, 108. 
 
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