History of the Rise of the Huguenots. Baird Henry Martyn
we have seen, had been rejected, and the miserable assassin had been torn into pieces by four horses, upon the Place de Grève, on the very day preceding that which witnessed the signing of the Edict of Amboise. If, however, the queen mother had hoped to diminish the difficulties of her position by taking this course, she had greatly miscalculated. In spite of his protestations, and of a second and more popular defence which he now made,281 the Guises persisted in believing, or in pretending to believe, Coligny to be the prime cause of the murder of the head of their family. His very frankness was perverted into a proof of his complicity. The admiral's words, as an eminent historian of our own day observes, bear the seal of sincerity, and we need go for the truth nowhere else than to his own avowals.282 But they did not satisfy his enemies. The danger of an open rupture was imminent. Coligny was coming to court from his castle of Châtillon-sur-Loing, with a strong escort of six hundred gentlemen; but so inevitable did a bloody collision within the walls of Paris seem to the queen, that she begged Condé to dissuade him for the present from carrying out his purpose. Meantime, Condé and the two Montmorencies – the constable and his son, the marshal – espoused Coligny's cause as their own, by publicly declaring (on the fifteenth of May) his entire innocence, and announcing that any blow aimed at the Châtillons, save by legal process, they would regard and avenge as aimed at themselves.283 Taking excuse from the unsettled relations of the kingdom with England and at home, the privy council at the same time enjoined both parties to abstain from acts of hostility, and adjourned the judicial investigation until after arms had been laid down.284
Petition of the Guises.
At length, on the twenty-sixth of September – two months after the reduction of Havre – the Guises renewed their demand with great solemnity. Charles was at Meulan (on the Seine, a few miles below Paris), when a procession of mourners entered his presence. It was the family of Guise, headed by the late duke's widow, his mother, and his children, coming to sue for vengeance on the murderer. All were clad in the dress that betokened the deepest sorrow, and the dramatic effect was complete.285 They brought a petition couched in decided terms, but making no mention of the name of Coligny, and signed, not only by themselves, but by three of the Bourbons – the Cardinal Charles, the Duke of Montpensier, and his son – and by the Dukes of Longueville and Nemours.286 Under the circumstances, the king could not avoid granting their request and ordering inquisition to be made by the peers in parliament assembled.287 But the friends of the absent admiral saw in the proposed investigation only an attempt on the part of his enemies to effect through the forms of law the ruin of the most prominent Huguenot of France. It was certain, they urged, that he could expect no justice at the hands of the presidents and counsellors of the Parisian parliament. Nor did they find it difficult to convince Catharine that to permit a public trial would be to reopen old sores and to risk overturning in a single hour the fabric of peace which for six months she had been laboring hard to strengthen.288 The king was therefore induced to evoke the consideration of the complaint of the Guises to his own grand council. Here again new difficulties sprang up. The Duchess of Guise was as suspicious of the council as Coligny of the parliament, and challenged the greater number of its members as too partial to act as judges. In fact, it seemed impossible to secure a jury to settle the matter in dispute. After months spent to no purpose in wrangling, Charles determined to remove the question both from the parliament and from the council, and on the fifth of January, 1564, reserved for himself and his mother the duty of adjudication. At the same time, on the ground that the importance of the case demanded the deliberations of a prince of greater age and of more experience than he as yet possessed, and that its discussion at present might prove prejudicial to the tranquillity of the kingdom, he adjourned it for three full years, or until such other time as he might hereafter find to be convenient.289
Embarrassment of Catharine.
The feud between the Châtillons and the Guises was not, however, the only embarrassment which the government found itself compelled to meet. Catharine was in equal perplexity with respect to the engagements she had entered into with the Prince of Condé. It was part of the misfortune of this improvident princess that each new intrigue was of such a nature as to require a second intrigue to bolster it up. Yet she was to live long enough to learn by bitter experience that there is a limit to the extent to which plausible but lying words will pass current. At last the spurious coin was to be returned discredited to her own coffers. Catharine had enticed Condé into concluding a peace much less favorable to the Huguenots than his comrades in arms had expected in view of the state of the military operations and the pecuniary necessities of the court, by the promise that he should occupy the same controlling position in the government as his brother, the King of Navarre, held at the time of his death. We have seen that he was so completely hoodwinked that he assured his friends that it was of little consequence how scanty were the concessions made in the edict. He would soon be able, by his personal authority, to secure to "the religion" the largest guarantees. If we may believe Catharine herself, he went so far in his enthusiastic desire for peace as to threaten to desert the Huguenots, if they declined to embrace the opportunity of reconciliation.290
The majority of Charles proclaimed.
How to get rid of the troublesome obligation she had assumed, was now the problem; since to fulfil her promise honestly was, for a person of her crooked policy and inordinate ambition, not to be thought of for an instant. The readiest solution was found in abolishing the office of lieutenant-general. This could be done only by declaring the termination of the minority of Charles. For this an opportunity presented itself, when, on the seventeenth of August, 1563,291 the queen and her children, with a brilliant retinue, were in the city of Rouen, on their return from the successful campaign against Havre. That day Charles the Ninth held a "lit de justice" in the palace of the Parliament of Normandy. Sitting in state, and surrounded by his mother, his younger brothers, and a host of grandees, he proceeded to address the assembled counsellors, pronouncing himself of full age, and, in the capacity of a major king, delivered to them an edict, signed the day before, ordering the observance of his Edict of Amboise and the complete pacification of his kingdom by a universal laying down of arms.292 True, Charles was but a few days more than thirteen years of age; but his right to assume the full powers of government was strenuously maintained by Chancellor L'Hospital, upon whom devolved the task of explaining more fully the king's motives and purposes. Then Catharine, the author of the pageant, rising, humbly approached her son's throne, and bowed to the boy in token that she resigned into his hands the temporary authority she had held for nearly three years. Charles, advancing to meet her, accepted her homage, saying, at the same time, in words that were but too significant and prophetic of the remainder of his reign: "Madame ma mère, you shall govern and command as much or more than ever."293
Charles and the refractory Parliament of Paris.
The Parliament of Rouen, flattered at being selected for the instrument in so important an act, published and registered the edict of Charles's majority, notwithstanding some unpalatable provisions. Not so the Parliament of Paris. The counsellors of the capital were even more indignant at the slight put upon their claim to precedence, than at the proposed disarming of the Roman Catholics – a measure particularly distasteful to the riotous population of Paris.294 The details of their opposition need not, however, find a record here. In the end the firmness of the king, or of his advisers, triumphed. At Mantes295 Charles received a deputation from the recalcitrant judges, with Christopher de Thou, their first president, at its head. After hearing their remonstrances, he replied to the delegates that, although young and possessed of little experience, he was as truly king of France as any of his predecessors, and
Declaration dated Châtillon-sur-Loing, May 5, 1563. Mém. de Condé, iv. 339-349; and Jean de Serres, iii. 15-29.
Martin, Hist. de France, x. 164.
De Thou, iii. (liv. xxxv.), 415, 416. Catharine had been the involuntary instrument of renewing the old friendship between the constable and his nephews, when, on Guise's death, she conferred the office of grand master upon his young son, instead of restoring it to Anne de Montmorency, to whom the dignity had formerly belonged. Three months later (Aug. 30, 1563) Condé drew up another paper, assuming the entire responsibility for all the acts of the Châtillon brothers during the war: "Acte par lequel M. le prince de Condé déclare que tout ce que M. l'amiral de Coligny et M. D'Andelot son frère ont fait pendant les troubles, ils ont fait à sa réquisition et par ses ordres." Mém. de Condé, iv. 651.
See Martin, x. 174, 175.
Davila, bk. iii. 92, and D'Aubigné, liv. iv., c. iii. (i. 201), both of whom mistake the place of the occurrence, supposing it to have been Paris.
Copie de la requeste présentée au Roy très-chrestien par ceulx de la mayson de Guyse, etc. Mém. de Condé, iv. 667, 668.
Ibid., iv. 668.
"C'est un vray moyen pour destruire et gaster en une heure tout le fondement de ce qu'elle a prins grand' peine de bastir depuis six mois." Mémoire présenté à la Reine-mère, pour empêcher que la maison de Guyse n'allât demander justice au parlement de Paris, de l'assassinat de François duc de Guise. Mém. de Condé, iv. 493-495.
Arrêt du conseil du Roy, par lequel il évoque à sa personne le procès meu entre les maisons de Guyse et de Chastillon, etc. Mém. de Condé, iv. 495.
"Ne parlez encore à personne," writes Catharine to M. de Gonnor (March 12, 1563), "des conditions, car j'ay toûjours peur qu'ils ne nous trompent; encore que le Prince de Condé leur a déclaré que s'ils n'acceptent ces conditions et s'ils ne veulent la paix, qu'il s'en viendra avec le Roy mon fils, et se déclarera leur ennemy, chose que je trouve très-bonne." Le Laboureur, ii. 241.
Not September 15th, as Davila states, nor September 24th, as D'Aubigné seems to assert; but his narrative is confused.
The two documents – address and edict – in Mém. de Condé, iv. 574-581.
Floquet, Hist. du parlement de Normandie, ii. 584. The entire scene is very vividly portrayed, ibid., ii. 561-586. Bruslart, Mém. de Condé, i. 132; De Thou, iii. (liv. xxxv.) 421-424; Jean de Serres, iii. 32; Mém. de Castelnau, liv. v., c. iv., etc.; Agrippa d'Aubigné, Hist. univ., liv. iv., c. iii. (i. 200-202); Davila, bk. iii. 90.
"Les Parisiens furent fort pressés qu'ils eussent à mettres les armes bas," says the metropolitan curate, Jean de la Fosse, under date of May, 1563, "mais ils n'en volurent jamais rien faire." Mém. d'un curé ligueur, 63, 64.
A town on the left bank of the Seine, four leagues beyond Meulan.