History of the Rise of the Huguenots. Baird Henry Martyn
of Meaux were visited by an iconoclastic rabble on the twenty-sixth of June, the Parisian parliament, on the thirtieth of June, employed the disorder as the pretext of a judicial "declaration" that made the culprits liable to all the penalties of treason, and permitted any one to put them to death without further authorization. The populace of Paris needed no fuller powers to attack the Huguenots, for, within two or three days, sixty men and women had been killed, robbed, and thrown into the river. Parliament, therefore, found it convenient to terminate the massacre by a second order restricting the application of the declaration to persons taken in the very act.150 A few days later (July, 1562), other arrêts empowered all inhabitants of towns and villages to take up arms against those who molested priests, sacked churches, or "held conventicles and unlawful assemblies," whether public or secret; and to arrest the ministers, deacons, and other ecclesiastical functionaries for trial, as guilty of treason against God as well as man.151 Not content with these appeals to popular passion,152 however, the Parisian judges soon gave practical exemplifications of their intolerant principles; for two royal officers – the "lieutenant general" of Pontoise, and the "lieutenant" of Senlis – were publicly hung; the former for encouraging the preaching of God's word "in other form than the ancient church" authorized, the latter for "celebrating the Lord's Supper according to the Genevese fashion." These were, according to the curate of St. Barthélemi, the first executions at Paris for the simple profession of "Huguenoterie" since the pardon proclaimed by Francis the Second at Amboise.153 A few days later, a new and more explicit declaration pronounced all those who had taken up arms, robbed churches and monasteries, and committed other sacrilegious acts at Orleans, Lyons, Rouen, and various other cities mentioned by name, to be rebels, and deprived them of all their offices. Yet, by way of retaliation upon Condé for maintaining that he had entered upon the war in order to defend the persons of the king and his mother, unjustly deprived of their liberty, parliament pretended to regard the prince himself as an unwilling captive in the hands of the confederates; and, consequently, excepted him alone from the general attainder.154 But the legal fiction does not seem to have been attended with the great success its projectors anticipated.155 The people could scarcely credit the statement that the war was waged by the Guises simply for the liberation of their mortal enemy, Condé, especially when Condé himself indignantly repelled the attempt to separate him from the associates with whom he had entered into common engagements, not to add that the reputation of the Lorraine family, whose mouthpiece parliament might well be supposed to be, was not over good for strict adherence to truth.
Meanwhile the triumvirs were more successful in their military operations than the partisans of the prince. Their auxiliaries came in more promptly, for the step which Condé now saw himself forced to take, in consequence of his opponents' course, they had long since resolved upon. They had received reinforcements from Germany, both of infantry and cavalry, under command of the Rhinegrave Philip of Salm and the Count of Rockendorf; while Condé had succeeded in detaching but few of the Lutheran troopers by a manifesto in which he endeavored to explain the true nature of the struggle. Soldiers from the Roman Catholic cantons had been allowed a free passage through the Spanish Franche-Comté by the regent of the Low Countries, Margaret of Parma. The Pope himself contributed liberally to the supply of money for paying the troops.156 But the Protestant reinforcements from the Palatinate and Zweibrücken (Deux-Ponts), and from Hesse, which D'Andelot, and, after him, Gaspard de Schomberg, had gone to hasten, were not yet ready; while Elizabeth still hesitated to listen to the solicitations of Briquemault and Robert Stuart, the Scotchman, who had been successively sent to her court.157
Military successes of the triumvirs.
Fall of Bourges.
After effecting the important capture of the city of Poitiers, Marshal Saint André, at the head of a Roman Catholic army, had marched, about the middle of August, toward Bourges, perhaps the most important place held by the Protestants in central France. Beneath the walls of this city he joined the main army, under Navarre's nominal command, but really led by the Duke of Guise. The siege was pressed with vigor, for the king was present in person with the "Guisards." To the handful of Huguenots their assailants appeared to be "a marvellous army of French, Germans, reiters, Spaniards, and other nations, numbering in all eighty or a hundred thousand men, with the bravest cavalry that could be seen."158 And, when twenty or twenty-five cannon opened upon Bourges with balls of forty or fifty pounds' weight, and when six hundred and forty discharges were counted on a single day, and every building in the town was shaken to its very foundations, the besieged, numbering only a few hundred men, would have been excusable had they lost heart. Instead of this, they obstinately defended their works, repaired the breach by night, and inflicted severe injury on the enemy by nocturnal sallies. To add to the duke's embarrassment, Admiral Coligny, issuing from Orleans, was fortunate enough to cut off an important convoy of provisions and ammunition coming from Paris to the relief of the besiegers.159 Despairing of taking the city by force, they now turned to negotiation. Unhappily, M. d'Ivoy, in command of the Huguenot garrison, was not proof against the seductive offers made him. Disregarding the remonstrances of his companions in arms, who pointed to the fact that the enemy had from day to day, through discouragement or from sheer exhaustion, relaxed their assaults, he consented (on the thirty-first of August) to surrender Bourges to the army that had so long thundered at its gates. D'Ivoy returned to Orleans, but Condé, accusing him of open perfidy, refused to see him; while the Protestants of Bourges shared the usual fate of those who trusted the promises of the Roman Catholic leaders, and secured few of the religious privileges guaranteed by the articles of capitulation.160
With the fall of Bourges, the whole of central France, as far as to the gates of Orleans, yielded to the arms of Guise. Everywhere the wretched inhabitants of the reformed faith were compelled to submit to gross indignities, or seek safety in flight. To many of these homeless fugitives the friendly castle of Montargis, belonging to the Duchess of Ferrara, to which reference will shortly be made, afforded a welcome refuge.161
Help from Queen Elizabeth.
The necessity of obtaining immediate reinforcements had at length brought Condé and the other great Huguenot lords to acquiesce in the offer of the only terms upon which Elizabeth of England could be persuaded to grant them actual support. As the indispensable condition to her interference, she demanded that the cities of Havre and Dieppe should be placed in her hands. These would be a pledge for the restoration of Calais, that old English stronghold which had fallen into the power of the French during the last war, and for whose restoration within eight years there had been an express stipulation in the treaties Cateau-Cambrésis. This humiliating concession the Huguenots reluctantly agreed to make. Elizabeth in turn promised to send six thousand English troops (three thousand to guard each of the cities), who should serve under the command of Condé as the royal lieutenant, and pledged her word to lend the prince and his associates one hundred and forty thousand crowns toward defraying the expenses of the war.162 On the twentieth of September the Queen of England published to the world a declaration of the motives that led her to interfere, alleging in particular the usurpation of the royal authority by the Guises, and the consequent danger impending over the Protestants of Normandy through the violence of the Duke of Aumale.163
The tidings of the alliance and of some of its conditions had already reached France, and they rather damaged than furthered the Protestant cause. As the English queen's selfish determination to confine her assistance to the protection of the three cities became known, it alarmed even her warmest friends among the French Protestants. Condé and Coligny earnestly begged the queen's ambassador to tell his mistress that "in case her Majesty were introduced by their means into Havre, Dieppe, and Rouen with six thousand men, only to keep
Abbé Bruslart, Mém. de Condé, i. 90; Hist. ecclés. des égl. réf., ii. 66; Journal de Jehan de la Fosse, 52. The latter erroneously calls it an edict "de par le roi;" but certainly gives the essence of the order according to the popular estimate when he says "qu'il estoit permis au peuple de tuer tout huguenot qu'il trouveroit, d'où vint qu'il y en eust en la ville de Paris plusieurs tués et jetés en l'eau."
Mém. de Condé, i. 91. Text of arrêt of July 13th, ib., iii. 544; of arrêt of July 17th, ib., iii. 547. Hist. ecclés. des égl. réf.,
Nicholas Pithou has left in his MSS., which, unfortunately, have not yet been published entire, a thrilling narrative of the savage excesses committed partly by the authorities of Troyes, partly by the soldiers and the rabble, under their eyes and with their approval. There is nothing more abominable in the annals of crime than what was committed at this time with the connivance of the ministers of law. The story of the sufferings of Pithou's sister, Madame de Valentigny, will be found of special interest. See Recordon, 107-129.
Mém. de Condé, i. 91, and Hist. ecclés. des égl. réf.,
Mém. de Condé, i. 91-93; Hist. ecclés. des égl. réf.,
It appears from a letter of the Nuncio Santa Croce (April 29th), that, as early as two months before, the court flattered itself with the hope of deriving great advantages from excluding Condé from the ban, and affecting to regard him as a prisoner (Aymon, i. 152, and Cimber et Danjou, vi. 91). "Con che pensano," he adds, "di quietar buona parte del popolo, che non sentendo parlar di religione, e parendoli ancora che la guerra si faccia per la liberatione del Principe de Condé, stara a vedere."
"The byshopp off Rome hathe lent these hys cheampions and frends on hundrethe thousand crowns, and dothe pay monthely besyds six thousand sowldiers." Throkmorton to the Council, July 27, 1562, Forbes, State Papers, ii. 5.
De Thou, iii. 191, etc.; Hist. ecclés. des égl. réf., ii. 64, etc.
The number was, in fact, only about 15,000 foot and 3,000 horse, according to De Thou, iii. 198.
Although Coligny captured six cannon and over forty wagons of powder, he was compelled reluctantly to destroy, or render useless, and abandon munitions of war of which he stood in great need; for the enemy had taken the precaution to kill or drive away the horses, and the wagons could not be dragged to Orleans, a distance of over twenty miles. It happened that Sir Nicholas Throkmorton, whose instructive correspondence furnishes so lucid a commentary upon the events from 1559 to 1563, was travelling under escort of the royal train, to take leave of Charles IX. at Bourges. In the unexpected assault of the Huguenots he was stripped of his money and baggage, and even his despatches. Under these circumstances he thought it necessary to accompany Coligny to Orleans. Catharine, who knew well Throkmorton's sympathy with the Protestants, and hated him heartily ("Yt is not th' Ambassador of Englande," he had himself written only a few days earlier, "which ys so greatlye stomackyd and hatyd in this countreye, but yt ys the persone of Nicholas Throkmorton," Forbes, ii. 33), would have it that he had purposely thrown himself into the hands of the Huguenots. His confidential correspondence with Queen Elizabeth does not bear out the charge. Despatch from Orleans, Sept. 9, 1562, Forbes, State Papers, ii. 36, etc. Catharine assured Sir Thomas Smith, on his arrival at court as English ambassador, that she wished he had been sent before, instead of Throkmorton, "for they took him here to be the author of all these troubles," declaring that Throkmorton was never well but when he was making some broil, and that he was so "passionate and affectionate" on the Huguenots' side, that he cared not what trouble he made. Despatch of Smith, Rouen, Nov. 7, 1562, State Paper Office.
Histoire ecclés., ii. 296-306 (the terms of capitulation, ii. 304, 305); Mém. de Castelnau, liv. iii., c. xi. (who maintains they were implicitly observed); Throkmorton, in Forbes, State Papers, ii. 41; Davila, bk. iii., p. 71; De Thou, iii. 198, 199. "Bituriges turpiter a duce præsidii proditi sese dediderunt, optimis quidem conditionibus, sed quas biduo post perfidiosissimus hostis infregit." Beza to Bullinger, Sept. 24, 1562, Baum, ii., Appendix, 194. M. Bourquelot has published a graphic account of the capture of Bourges in May, by the Huguenots, under Montgomery, and of the siege in August, from the MS. Journal of Jean Glaumeau, in the National Library (Bulletin de l'hist. du prot. fr., v. 387-389). M. L. Lacour reprints in the same valuable periodical (v. 516-518) a contemporary hymn of some merit, "Sur la prise de Bourges." We are told that a proverb is even now current in Berry, not a little flattering to the Huguenot rule it recalls:
Jean de Serres, De statu relig. et reip., ii. 258, 259.
This conclusion was arrived at as early as Aug. 29th. Froude, Hist. of England, vii. 433. Seventy thousand crowns were to be paid to the prince's agents at Strasbourg or Frankfort so soon as the news should be received of the transfer of Havre, thirty thousand more within a month thereafter. The other forty thousand were in lieu of the defence of Rouen and Dieppe, should it seem impracticable to undertake it. Havre was to be held until the Prince should have effected the restitution of Calais and the adjacent territory according to the treaties of Cateau-Cambrésis, although the time prescribed by those treaties had not expired, and until the one hundred and forty thousand crowns should have been repaid without interest. The compact, signed by Queen Elizabeth at Hampton Court, Sept. 20, 1562, is inserted in Du Mont, Corps Diplomatique, v. 94, 95, and in Forbes, State Papers, ii., 48-51.
See the declaration in Hist. ecclés. des égl. réf., ii. 415, 416; and Forbes, State Papers, ii. 79, 80. J. de Serres, ii. 261, etc. Cf. Forbes, State Papers, ii. 60, 69-79.