History of the Rise of the Huguenots. Baird Henry Martyn
but a feeble resistance. The papal troops entered the city through the breach their cannon had effected. Never did victorious army act more insolently or with greater inhumanity. None were spared; neither the sick on their beds, nor the poor in their asylums, nor the maimed that hobbled through the streets. Those were most fortunate that were first despatched. The rest were tortured with painful wounds that prolonged their agonies till death was rather desired than dreaded, or were hurled down upon pikes and halberds, or were hung to pot-hooks and roasted in the fire, or were hacked in pieces. Not a few of the women were treated with dishonor; the greater part were hung to doors and windows, and their dead bodies, stripped naked, were submitted to indignities for which the annals of warfare, except among the most ferocious savages, can scarcely supply a parallel. That the Almighty might not seem to be insulted in the persons only of living creatures formed in His own image, the fresh impiety was perpetrated of derisively stuffing leaves torn from French Bibles into the gaping wounds of the dead lying on this field of carnage. Nor did the Roman Catholics of Orange fare much better than their reformed neighbors. Mistaken for enemies, they were massacred in the public square, where they had assembled, expecting rather to receive a reward for their services in assisting the pontifical troops to enter, than to atone for their treachery by their own death.101
François de Beaumont, Baron des Adrets.
But the time for revenge soon came around. The barbarous warfare initiated by the adherents of the triumvirate in Dauphiny and Provence bred or brought forward a leader and soldiers who did not hesitate to repay cruelty with cruelty. François de Beaumont, Baron des Adrets, was a merciless general, who affected to believe that rigor and strict retaliation were indispensable to remove the contempt in which the Huguenots were held, and who knew how by bold movements to appear where least expected, and by vigor to multiply the apparent size of his army. Attached to the Reformation only from ambition, and breathing a spirit far removed from the meekness of the Gospel, he soon awakened the horror of his comrades in arms, and incurred the censure of Condé for his barbarities; so that, within a few months, becoming disgusted with the Huguenots, he went over to the papal side, and in the second civil war was found fighting against his former associates.102 Meantime, his brief connection with the Huguenots was a blot upon their escutcheon all the more noticeable because of the prevailing purity;103 and the injury he inflicted upon the cause of Protestantism far more than cancelled the services he rendered at Lyons and elsewhere. At Pierrelate he permitted his soldiers to take signal vengeance on the garrison for the recent massacre. At Mornas the articles of the capitulation, by which the lives of the besieged were guaranteed, were not observed; for the Protestant soldiers from Orange, recognizing among them the perpetrators of the crimes which had turned their homes into a howling desert, fell upon them and were not – perhaps could not be – restrained by their leader.104 The fatal example of Orange was but too faithfully copied, and precipitating the prisoners from the summit of a high rock became the favorite mode of execution.105 Only one of the unfortunates, who happened to break his fall by catching hold of a wild fig-tree growing cut of the side of the cliff, was spared by his enemies.106 A number of the naked corpses were afterward placed in an open boat without pilot or tiller, and suffered to float down the Rhône with a banner on which were written these words: "O men of Avignon! permit the bearers to pass, for they have paid the toll at Mornas."107
Blaise de Montluc.
Massacre at Toulouse.
The atrocities of Des Adrets and his soldiers in the East were, however, surpassed by those which Blaise de Montluc inflicted upon the Huguenots of the West, or which took place under his sanction. His memoirs, which are among the most authentic materials for the history of the wars in which he took part, present him to us as a remorseless soldier, dead to all feelings of sympathy with human distress, glorying in having executed more Huguenots than any other royal lieutenant in France,108 pleased to have the people call the two hangmen whom he used to take about with him his "lackeys."109 It is not surprising that, under the auspices of such an officer, fierce passions should have had free play. At Toulouse, the seat of the most fanatical parliament in France, a notable massacre took place. Even in this hot-bed of bigotry the reformed doctrines had made rapid and substantial progress, and the great body of the students in the famous law-school, as well of the municipal government, were favorable to their spread.110 The common people, however, were as virulent in their hostility as the parliament itself. They had never been fully reconciled to the publication of the Edict of January, and had only been restrained from interference with the worship of the Protestants by the authority of the government. Of late the Huguenots had discovered on what treacherous ground they stood. A funeral procession of theirs had been attacked, and several persons had been murdered. A massacre had been perpetrated in the city of Cahors, not far distant from them. In both cases the entire authority of parliament had been exerted to shield the guilty. The Huguenots, therefore, resolved to forestall disaster by throwing Toulouse into the hands of Condé, and succeeded so far as to introduce some companies of soldiers within the walls and to seize the "hôtel de ville." They had, however, miscalculated their strength. The Roman Catholics were more numerous, and after repeated conflicts they were able to demand the surrender of the building in which the Protestants had intrenched themselves. Destitute alike of provisions and of the means of defence, and menaced with the burning of their retreat, the latter accepted the conditions offered, and – a part on the day before Pentecost, a part after the services of that Sunday, one of the chief festivals of the Reformed Church – they retired without arms, intending to depart for more hospitable cities. Scarce, however, had the last detachment left the walls, when the tocsin was sounded, and their enemies, respecting none of their promises, involved them in a horrible carnage. It was the opinion of the best informed that in all three thousand persons perished on both sides during the riot at Toulouse, of whom by far the greater number were Huguenots. Even this effusion of blood was not sufficient. The next day Montluc appeared in the city. And now, encouraged by his support, the Parliament of Toulouse initiated a system of judicial inquiries which were summary in their character, and rarely ended save in the condemnation of the accused. Within three months two hundred persons were publicly executed. The Protestant leader was quartered. The parliament vindicated its orthodoxy by the expulsion of twenty-two counsellors suspected of a leaning to the Reformation; and informers were allured by bribes, as well as frightened by ecclesiastical menaces, in order that the harvest of confiscation might be the greater.111
Such were the deeds which the Roman Catholics of southern France have up to our times commemorated by centenary celebrations;112 such the pious achievements for which Blaise de Montluc received from Pope Pius the Fourth the most lavish praise as a zealous defender of the Catholic faith.113
Foreign alliances sought.
Meanwhile, about Paris and Orleans the war lagged. Both sides were receiving reinforcements. The ban and rear-ban were summoned in the king's name, and a large part of the levies joined Condé as the royal representative in preference to Navarre and the triumvirate.114 Charles the Ninth and Catharine had consented to publish a declaration denying Condé's allegation that they were held in duress.115 The Guises had sent abroad to Spain, to Germany, to the German cantons of Switzerland, to Savoy, to the Pope. Philip, after the abundant promises with which he had encouraged the French papists to enter upon the war, was not quite sure whether he had better answer the calls now made upon him. He was by no means confident that the love of country of the French might not, after all, prove stronger than the discord engendered by their religious differences, and their hatred of the Spaniard than their hatred of their political rivals.116
De Thou (whose graphic account I have principally followed), iii. 226-228; J. de Serres, ii. 183, 184; Hist. ecclés. des égl. réf., iii. 164-167.
Agrippa d'Aubigné has inserted in his history (i. 154-156) an interesting conversation which he held with the Baron des Adrets, then an old man, a dozen years later, in the city of Lyons. In answer to the question, Why he had resorted to acts of cruelty unbecoming to his great valor? the baron replied that no one commits cruelty in avenging cruelty; for, if the first measures are
And yet I agree with Von Polenz, Gesch. des Franz. Calvinismus (Gotha, 1859), ii. 188, 189, note, in regarding the Roman Catholic accounts of Des Adrets's cruelties and perfidy as very much exaggerated, and in insisting upon the circumstance that the barbarity practised at Orange had furnished him not only the example, but the incentive.
According to Jean de Serres, this leader was the Baron des Adrets in person; according to De Thou, Montbrun commanded by the baron's appointment. So also Histoire ecclés., iii. 171.
So at Montbrison, the Baron des Adrets reserved thirty prisoners from the common slaughter to expiate the massacre of Orange by a similar method. One of them was observed by Des Adrets to draw back twice before taking the fatal leap. "What!" said the chief, "do you take
J. de Serres, ii. 188; Castelnau, liv., iv. c. ii. But the "Discours des Guerres de la comté de Venayscin et de la Prouence … par le seigneur Loys de Perussiis, escuyer de Coumons, subiect uassal de sa saincteté" (dedicated to "Fr. Fabrice de Serbellon, cousin-germain de N. S. P. et son général en la cité d'Avignon et dicte comté,") Avignon, 1563, and reprinted in Cimber (iv. 401, etc.), makes no mention of the fig-tree, and regards the preservation as almost miraculous. There is a faithful representation of the ruined Château of Mornas above the frightful precipice, in Count Alexander de Laborde's magnificent work, Les Monuments de la France (Paris, 1836), plate 179.
Discours des Guerres de la comté de Venayscin, etc., 453; De Thou, iii. 240.
Mém. de Blaise de Montluc, iii. 393 (Petitot ed.): "pouvant dire avec la vérité qu'il n'y a lieutenant de Roy en France qui ait plus faict passer d'Huguenots par le cousteau ou par la corde, que moy."
"Me deliberay d'user de toutes les cruautez que je pourrois." Ib., iii. 20. "Je recouvray secrettement deux bourreaux, lesquels on appella depuis mes laquais, parce qu'ils estoient souvent après moy." Ib., iii., 21. Consult the succeeding pages for an account of Montluc's brutality, which could scarcely be credited, but that Montluc himself vouches for it.
Since the publication of the Edict of January at Toulouse (on the 6th of February), the Protestant minister had sworn to observe its provisions before the seneschal, viguier, and capitouls, and, when he preached, these last had been present to prevent disturbance. A place of worship, twenty-four cannes long by sixteen in width (174 feet by 116), had been built on the spot assigned by the authorities. Hist. ecclés. des égl. réf., iii. 1.
De Thou, iii. 294; Hist. ecclés. des égl. réf., iii. 1-32.
Even in 1762, Voltaire remonstrated against a jubilee to "thank God for four thousand murders." Yet a century later, in 1862, Monseigneur Desprez, Archbishop of Toulouse, gave notice of the recurrence of the celebration in these words: "The Catholic Church always makes it a duty to recall, in the succession of ages, the most remarkable events of its history – particularly those which belong to it in a special manner. It is thus that we are going to celebrate this year the jubilee commemorative of a glorious act accomplished among you three hundred years ago." The archbishop was warm in his admiration of the last centennial procession, "at which were present all the persons of distinction – the religious orders, the officiating minister under his canopy, the red robes, and the members of parliament pressing behind the university, the seneschal, the
Papal brief of April 23, 1562: "Ista sunt vere catholico viro digna opera, ista haud dubie divina sunt beneficia. Agimus omnipotenti Deo gratias, qui tam præclaram tibi mentem dedit," etc. Soldan, ii. 61.
De Thou, iii. 149-151.
Ibid., iii. 143, April 7th.
Catharine de' Medici stated to Sir Harry Sydney, the special English envoy, in May, 1562, that her son-in-law, the King of Spain, had offered Charles thirty thousand foot and six thousand horse "payd of his owne charge," besides what the Duke of Savoy and others were ready to furnish. Letter of Sidney and Throkmorton to Queen Elizabeth, May 8, 1562, MSS. State Paper Office. Duc d'Aumale, Princes de Condé, Pièces justif., i. 363.