History of the Rise of the Huguenots. Baird Henry Martyn
almost entirely unprotected, the six thousand Swiss being still at Château-Thierry, thirty miles higher up the Marne. Instant orders were sent to bring them forward as quickly as possible, and the night of the twenty-eighth of September witnessed a scene of abject fear on the part of the ladies and not a few of the gentlemen that accompanied Charles and his mother. At three o'clock in the morning, under escort of the Swiss, who had at last arrived, the court started for Paris, which was reached after a dilatory journey that appeared all the longer because of the fears attending it.438 The Prince of Condé, who had been joined as yet only by the forerunners of his army, engaged in a slight skirmish with the Swiss; but a small band of four or five hundred gentlemen, armed only with their swords, could do nothing against a solid phalanx of the brave mountaineers, and he was forced to retire. Meanwhile Marshal Montmorency, sent by Catharine to dissuade the prince, the admiral, and Cardinal Châtillon from prosecuting their enterprise, had returned with the message that "the Huguenots were determined to defeat the preparations made to destroy them and their religion, which was only tolerated by a conditional edict, revocable by the king at his pleasure."439
Cardinal Lorraine invites Alva to invade France.
The Cardinal of Lorraine did not share in the flight of the court to Paris. Never able to boast of the possession of overmuch courage, he may have feared for his personal safety; for it was not impossible that he might be sacrificed by a queen rarely troubled with any feelings of humanity, to allay the storm raging about the ship of state; or he may have hoped to be of greater service to his party away from the capital.440 However this may be, the Cardinal betook himself in hot haste to the city of Rheims, but reached his palace only after an almost miraculous escape from capture by his enemies.441 Once in safety, he despatched two messengers in rapid succession442 to Brussels, and begged Alva to send him an agent with whom he might communicate in confidence. The proposals made when that personage arrived at Rheims were sufficiently startling; for, after calling attention to Philip's rightful claim to the throne of France, in case of the death of Charles and his brothers, he offered in a certain contingency to place in the Spanish monarch's hands some strong places that might prove valuable in substantiating that claim. In return, the Cardinal wished Philip to assume the defence of the papal church in France, and particularly desired him to undertake the protection of his brothers and of himself. The message was not unwelcome either to Alva or to his royal master. They were willing, they said, to assist the King of France in combating the Huguenots,443 and they made no objection to accepting the cities. At the worst, these cities would serve as pledges for the repayment of whatever sums the King of Spain might expend in maintaining the Roman Catholic faith in France. With respect to the propriety of Philip's becoming the formal guardian of the Guises, Alva felt more hesitation, for who knew how matters might turn out? And Philip, never quite ready for any important decision, praised his lieutenant's delay, and inculcated further procrastination.444 But the succession to the throne of France was worthy of deep consideration. As Alva intimated, the famous Salic law, under which Charles's sister Isabella was excluded from the crown, was merely a bit of pleasantry, and force of arms would facilitate the acknowledgment of her claims.445
Condé at Saint Denis.
The blow which the Huguenots had aimed at the tyrannical government of the Cardinal of Lorraine had missed its mark, through premature disclosure; but they still hoped to accomplish their design by slower means. Shut up in Paris, the court might be frightened or starved into compliance before the Roman Catholic forces could be assembled to relieve the capital. With this object the Prince of Condé moved around to the north side of the city, and took up his quarters, on the second of October, in the village of Saint Denis. With the lower Seine, which, in one of its serpentine coils, here turns back upon itself, and retreats from the direction of the sea, in his immediate grasp, and within easy striking distance of the upper Seine, and its important tributary the Marne – the chief sources of the supply of food on which the capital depended – the Prince of Condé awaited the arrival of his reinforcements, and the time when the hungry Parisians should compel the queen to submit, or to send out her troops to an open field. At the same time he burned the windmills that stretched their huge arms on every eminence in the vicinity. It was an ill-advised measure, as are all similar acts of destruction, unless justified by urgent necessity. If it occasioned some distress in Paris,446 it only embittered the minds of the people yet more, and enabled the municipal authorities to retaliate with some color of equity by seizing the houses of persons known or suspected to be Huguenots, and selling their goods to defray part of the expense incurred in defending the city.447
The Huguenot movement alienates the king.
The attempt "to seize the person of the king" – for such the movement was understood to be by the Roman Catholic party – was even more unfortunate. It produced in Charles an alienation448 which the enemies of the Huguenots took good care to prevent him from ever completely forgetting. They represented the undertaking of Meaux as aimed, not at the counsellors of the monarch, but at the "Sacred Majesty" itself, and Condé and Coligny, with their associates, were pictured to the affrighted eyes of the fugitive boy-king as conspirators who respected none of those rights which are so precious in the view of royalty.
Negotiations opened. The Huguenots gradually abate their demands.
Constable Montmorency the mouthpiece of intolerance.
Meantime Catharine was not slow in resorting to the arts by which she was accustomed to seek either to avert the evil consequences of her own short-sighted policy, or to gain time to defeat the plans of her opponents.449 The Huguenots received a deputation consisting of the chancellor, the Marshal de Vieilleville, and Jean de Morvilliers – three of the most influential and moderate adherents of the court – through whom Charles demanded the reason of the sudden uprising which causelessly threatened his own person and the peace of the realm. The Huguenot leaders replied by denying any evil design, and showing that they had armed themselves only in self-defence against the manifested malice of their enemies.450 Subsequent interviews between Condé and the envoys of Charles seemed to hold forth some hopes of peace. The king declared himself ready to furnish the Protestants with proofs of the uprightness of his intentions, and L'Hospital even exhibited the draft of an edict in which their rights should be guaranteed. As this proved unsatisfactory, the prince, at the chancellor's suggestion, submitted the requests of his associates. These related to the banishment of the foreign troops, the permission to come and present their petitions to the king, the confirmation and maintenance of the past edicts, with the repeal of all restrictive interpretations, the assembling of the states general, and the removal of the burdensome imposts under which the people groaned, and which were of advantage only to the crowd of Italians and others enjoying extraordinary credit at court.451 If the first of these demands were sufficiently bold, the last demand was little calculated to conciliate Catharine, who naturally conceived herself doubly insulted by the covert allusion to her own prodigality and by the reference to her countrymen. She found no difficulty in inducing Charles to answer through a proclamation sent by a herald to the confederates, commanding Condé, Coligny, D'Andelot, La Rochefoucauld, Genlis, and the other leaders, by name, to lay down the arms which they had taken up without his consent.452 Perceiving the mistake they had committed in making requests which, although just and appropriate, were in part but ill-suited to the times, the Protestants began to abate their demands. Confining themselves to the matter of religion, they now petitioned only for an unrestricted liberty of conscience and worship, confirmed by the repeal of all ordinances or parliamentary decisions conflicting with it. Their moderation inspired fresh hopes of averting the resort to arms, and
La Fosse, p. 86, represents Charles as exclaiming, when he entered the Porte Saint Denis: "Qu'il estoit tenu à Dieu, et qu'il y avoit quinze heures qu'il estoit à cheval, et avoit eust trois alarmes."
Mém. de Castelnau, liv. vi., c. v.; La Noue, c. xiii. (Anc. Coll., xlvii. 180-185); De Thou, iv. 8; J. de Serres, iii. 129-131; La Fosse, 86; Agrippa d'Aubigné, Hist. univ., i. 210.
"Ravi d'avoir allumé le feu de la gùerre," says De Thou, iv. 9.
De Thou,
The circumstance of two messengers, each bearing letters from the same person, while the letters made no allusion to each other, following one another closely, struck Alva as so suspicious, that he actually placed the second messenger under arrest, and only liberated him on hearing from his own agent on his return that the man's credentials were genuine.
Alva proposed to detach 5,000 men to prevent the entrance of German auxiliaries into France, and protect the Netherlands.
Letter of Alva to Philip, Nov. 1, 1567, Gachard, Correspondance de Philippe II., i., 593.
"Que la ley sálica, que dizien, es baya, y las armas la allanarian." Ibid, i. 594.
The price of wheat, Jehan de la Fosse tells us (p. 86) advanced to fifteen francs per "septier."
Journal d'un curé ligueur (J. de la Fosse), 86.
In one of Charles's first despatches to the Lieutenant-Governor of Dauphiny, wherein he bids him restrain, and, if necessary, attack any Huguenots of the province who might undertake to come to Condé's assistance, there occurs an expression that smacks of the murderous spirit of St. Bartholomew's Day: "You shall cut them to pieces," he writes, "without sparing a single person; for the more dead bodies there are, the less enemies remain (car tant plus de mortz, moins d'ennemys!)" Charles to Gordes, Oct. 8, 1567, MS. in Condé Archives, D'Aumale, i. 563.
Davila (i. 113) makes the latter her distinct object in the negotiations: "The queen, to protract the time till supplies of men and other necessary provisions arrived, and to abate the fervor of the enemy, being constrained to have recourse to her wonted arts, excellently dissembling those so recent injuries, etc."
Of course "Sieur Soulier, prêtre" sees nothing but perversity in these grounds. "Ils n'alleguèrent que des raisons frivolles pour excuser leur armement." Histoire des édits de pacification, 64.
Davila is certainly incorrect in stating that the Huguenots demanded "that the queen mother should have nothing to do in the government" (p. 113).
October 7th, Soulier, Hist. des édits de pacification, 65.