History of the Rise of the Huguenots. Baird Henry Martyn

236

The gloomy picture is painted by Henri Martin, x. 158, etc.

237

This statement does not rest upon any documentary proof that I am aware of. It is, however, vouched for by the Hist. ecclés. des égl. réf., ii. 162. Moreover, Admiral Coligny, in his later defence, expressly states, "on the testimony of men worthy of belief," that Guise "was accustomed to boast that, on the capture of the city, he would spare none of the inhabitants, and that no respect would be paid to age or sex." Jean de Serres, iii. 29; Mém. de Condé, iv. 348.

238

Mém. de Soubise, Bulletin, xxiii. (1874) 499.

239

Not without some hesitation, however. So little confidence in his good judgment did his frivolous appearance inspire, that Coligny observed: "I would not trust him, without knowing him better than I do, had not Monsieur de Soubise sent him to me." Mém. de Soubise, Bulletin, xxiii. (1874) 502.

240

The Procès verbal of Poltrot's examination just before his death, March 18th, is inserted in the Hist. ecclés. des égl. réf., ii. 187-198. In this he declares that his first testimony was false and extorted by the fear of death, and exculpates Soubise, Beza, Coligny, etc., from having instigated him. He says that when put to torture he will say anything the questioners want him to. Accordingly, when so tortured, he accuses them, and when released a moment after the horses have begun to rend him in pieces, he conjures up a plot of the Huguenots to sack Paris, etc. May it not properly be asked, what such testimony as this is worth? For or against Coligny, volumes of it would not affect his character in our estimation.

241

The direct testimony of Jacques Auguste de Thou, on a matter with which he was evidently intimately acquainted through his father, is unimpeachable, and will outweigh with every unprejudiced mind all the stories of Davila, Castelnau, etc., founded on mere report. De Thou, Histoire univ. (liv. xxxiv.), iii. 403.

242

Poltrot's pretended confession of Feb. 26th, at Camp Saint Hilaire, near Saint Mesmin, with the replies signed by Coligny, la Rochefoucauld, and Beza to each separate article, is inserted in full in Mém. de Condé, iv. 285-303, and the Hist. ecclés. des égl. réf., ii. 176-186. Coligny's letter to Catharine, ibid., ii. 186, 187, Mém. de Condé, iv. 303.

243

That Catharine de' Medici was no very sincere mourner for Guise is sufficiently certain; and it is well known that there were those who believed her to have instigated his murder (See Mém. de Tavannes, Pet. ed., ii. 394). This is not surprising when we recall the fact that almost every great crime or casualty that occurred in France, for the space of a generation, was ascribed to her evil influence. Still the Viscount de Tavannes makes too great a draft upon our credulity, when he pretends that she made a frank admission of guilt to his father. "Depuis, au voyage de Bayonne, passant par Dijon, elle dit au sieur de Tavannes: 'Ceux de Guise se vouloient faire roys, je les en ay bien gardé devant Orléans.'" The expression "devant Orléans" can hardly be tortured into a reference to anything else than Guise's assassination.

244

I entirely agree with Prof. Baum (Theodor Beza, ii. 719) in regarding "this single circumstance as more than sufficient to demonstrate both the innocence of Coligny and his associates, and the consciously guilty fabrication of the accusations."

245

Besides the authorities already referred to, the Journal of Bruslart, Mém. de Condé, i. 123, 124; Davila, bk. iii. 86, 87; Claude Haton, i. 322, etc.; J. de Serres, ii. 343-345; and Pasquier, Lettres (Œuvres choisies), ii. 258, may be consulted with advantage. Prof. Baum's account is, as usual, vivid, accurate, and instructive (Theodor Beza, ii. 706, etc.). Varillas, Anquetil, etc., are scarcely worth examining. There is the ordinary amount of blundering about the simplest matters of chronology. Davila places the wounding of Guise on the 24th of February, his death three days later, etc.

246

Mém. de Condé, i. 124; Hist. ecclés. des égl. réf., ii. 164.

247

Claude Haton, i. 325, 326.

248

See Riez's letter to the king, reprinted in Mém. de Condé, iv. 243-265, and in Cimber and Danjou's invaluable collection of contemporary pamphlets and documents, v. 171-204; Hist. ecclés. des égl. réf., ii. 164.

249

Hist. ecclés. des égl. réf., ubi supra. There is extant an affecting letter from the aged Renée of Ferrara to Calvin, in which she complains with deep feeling of the reformed, and especially their preachers, for the severity with which even after his death they attacked the memory of her son-in-law, and even spoke of his eternal condemnation as an ascertained fact. "I know," she said, "that he was a persecutor; but I do not know, nor, to speak freely, do I believe that he was reprobated of God; for he gave signs to the contrary before his death. But they want this not to be mentioned, and they desire to shut the mouths of those who know it." Cimber et Danjou, v. 399, etc. Calvin's reply of the 24th of January, 1564, is admirable for its kind, yet firm tone (Bonnet, Lettres franç. de Calvin, ii. 550, etc., Calvin's Letters, Am. edit., iv. 352, etc.). He freely condemned the beatification of the King of Navarre, while the Duke of Guise was consigned to perdition. The former was an apostate; the latter an open enemy of the truth of the Gospel from the very beginning. Indeed, to pronounce upon the doom of a fellow-sinner was both rash and presumptuous, for there is but one Judge before whose seat we all must give account. Yet, in condemning the authors of the horrible troubles that had befallen France, and which all God's children had felt scarcely less poignantly than Renée herself, sprung though she was from the royal stock, it was impossible not to condemn the duke "who had kindled the fire." Yea, for himself, although he had always prayed God to show Guise mercy, the reformer avowed, in almost the very words of Beza, that he had often desired that God would lay His hand upon the duke to free His Church of him, unless He would convert him. "And yet I can protest," he added, "that but for me, before the war, active and energetic men would have exerted themselves to destroy him from the face of the earth, whom my sole exhortation restrained."

Some of the composers of Huguenot ballads were bitter enough in their references to Guise's death and pompous funeral; see, among others, the songs in the Chansonnier Huguenot, pp. 253 and 257.

250

Hist. ecclés. des égl. réf., ii. 285, 286. The story is well told in Memorials of Renée of France, 215-217. De Thou (liv. xxx.), iii. 179, has incorrectly placed this occurrence among the events of the first months of the war. During the second war Brantôme once stopped to pay his respects to Renée, and saw in the castle over 300 Huguenots that had fled there for security. In a letter of May 10, 1563, Calvin speaks of her as "the nursing mother of the poor saints driven out of their homes and knowing not whither to go," and as having made her castle what a princess looking only to this world would regard almost an insult to have it called – "God's hostelry" or "hospital" (ung hostel-Dieu). God had, as it were, called upon her by these trials to pay arrears for the timidity of her younger days. Lettres franç., ii. 514 (Amer. trans., iv. 314).

251

Despatch to the queen, Blois, February 26, 1562/3, Forbes, State Papers, ii. 340. "Of the thre things that did let this realme to come to unity and accorde," adds Smith, "I take th' one to be taken away. How th' other two wil be now salved – th' one that the papists may relent somwhat of their pertinacie, and the Protestants have som affiaunce or trust in there doengs, and so th' one live with th' other in quiet, I do not yet se."

252

Mém. de Castelnau, liv. iv., c. xii.; Davila, bk. iii. 88; Journal de Bruslart, Mém. de Condé, i. 124; Letter of Catharine to Gonnor,